From Vita Nuova to Paradiso, two essays on the vital relations between Dante's successive works

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From Vita Nuova to Paradiso

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From

Vita Nuova to Paradiso

r/^O ESSATS

on the vital relations between Dante's successive
works

er

^^ By

PHILIP H. WICKSTEED. M.A., LittD.

V^

1790/ 2
33 3. 3 3

1922

Manchester ' ' ^ At the University Press
London, New York, Sec: Longmans, Green & Co.

PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
No. CLI

{All rights reserved)

And this is what Rabbi Hanina said : ** / have
learned much from my teachers ; and from my com-
panions more than from my teachers ; and from my
pupils more than from all"

PREFATORY SYNOPSIS

I suppose it is still true (as it certainly was not long
ago) that the successive Cantiche of Dante's Comedy
appeal to successively narrowing circles of readers.
Many who are fairly acquainted with representative
portions at least of the Inferno^ and in whose minds
Dante ranks high as a poet on the strength of them,
have but the vaguest conception even of the Fur-
gatorio. Many readers of the Purgatorio^ to whom
Dante is a prophet and teacher as well as a poet, find
theirhigh anticipations perplexed and perhaps chilled
when they come to the Paradiso, Many of those to
whom parts of the Paradiso itself make a direct
appeal of transmuting power, on the mystic and
experiential side, are baffled by the intricacies of its
scholastic theology and philosophy.

But to Dante himself the movement of the whole
Comedy, from the first Canto to the last, was deter-
mined and controlled by the central thought of the
Paradiso, He spoke as one whom a vision of the
ultimate goal and the inmost meaning of life was
drawing, as with some spiritual magnetism or force
of gravitation, to the conclusive and all-fulfilling
consummation, with a trend so overmastering as to
assimilate to itself all experiences of life and all
records of history, and set them in living relations
with each other and with itself.

In the Comedy Dante strove to set time in the
light of eternity, fully convinced that so far as he
could do this he would turn " folk living in this mortal
life from misery and bring them to the state of bliss."

vii

PREFATORY SYNOPSIS

^ He was well aware that many who started with
him on what he loves to think of as his " voyage "
would be more interested in the incidents of the
passage than in the " desired haven *' which it
sought ; and he is even content that relatively few
should follow his special guidance to the end. But
he could at least reckon on all his serious readers so
far understanding his purpose as to share with him
the clear intellectual conception, if not the mystic
realization, of the nature of the haven itself. Heaven
and the beatific vision meant something perfectly
definite and intelligible to Dante's contemporaries ;
and, however much or little it might be to the heart
or soul, it was firmly enough held in the brain to
enable them to understand how the successive
portions of the Comedy were related to it, and
how they took their direction and movement
from it.

It is the object of the first of the two essays in this
volume to help the modern reader to place himself
approximately at this point of vantage ; for if the
study of the Inferno and the Purgatorio is often found
to be a disappointingly inadequate preparation for
reading and feeling the Paradiso^ on the other hand
the comprehension of the central theme of the
Paradisoy even though it be only on its intellectual
side, and though the crowning Cantica itself should
never fully assert its power, will be found the best
of all preparations for apprehending the deeper
meaning and the deeper beauties of Dante*s con-
ception and treatment of hell and purgatory.

viii

PREFATORY SYNOPSIS

The second essay is concerned with kindred but
far more intricate and difficult matter ; for it deals
no longer with the organism of the Comedy and the
mutual relations of its parts, but with the relation of
Dante's Minor Works to the conception and pur-
pose of the Comedy itself. To accomplish the one
task we have only to place the poet's own avowed
and conscious purpose in the light of the current
theological conceptions of his day ; whereas to
succeed in the other we must trace the sometimes
devious steps that led the travellerfrom the beginning
to the end of his journey even when he himself but
dimly realised whither they were taking him. Look-
ing back from the end to the beginning we must
survey and relate to each other all the intermediate
stretches of the path.

Fortunately the chronological succession of the
works that directly concern our inquiry may be taken
as established with an adequate approximation to
general assent. The Vita Nuova is followed by the
main body of the Canzoni^ so far as they are not
contemporary with it and immediately related to its
subject matter. Then follow the Convivio^ the
Monarchia, and the Commedia, Carefully read in
their order these works reveal one line at least of
steady advance from the starting point to the goal.
They show us the unbroken development of Dante's
attitude towards Christian theology. In the Vita
Nuova we are in an atmosphere of na'ive and un-
questioning devoutness, in which the teaching of the
Church is taken for granted. In this phase of thought,

ix

PREFATORY SYNOPSIS

the religion of ideal love, can breathe an atmosphere
kindred to its own. In the Canzoni and the Convivio
we find (with other matter) widening intellectual
interests, strengthening powers of observation and
reflection, and a missionary ardour to enrich the
minds and direct the ideals of starved or misled
humanity. Here Dante not only remains a devout
believer but is becoming an ardent and systematic
student of theology. As yet, however, his interest
in the divine science is stimulated chiefly by its
reaction upon secular ideals. For these ideals, when
reverently contemplated in the light of their analogies
with the spiritual order of things, gain a depth and a
consecration that bring out their own highest beauty.
To refute materialistic conceptions of True Nobility
is a task akin to that of S. Thomas Aquinas when
he undertook to refute the Heathen. To carry the
truths of philosophy out of the cloister and the
schools into the busy and preoccupied world is to
imitate the Divine mercy which condescends to give
to the common man, by revelation, assurance not
only of truths inaccessible to reason, but also of much
that it is indeed within the range of the human
faculties to compass, but which only a chosen few
would have time or opportunity or power to secure,
or even to test, for themselves. And indeed what is
philosophy, either to the learned or to the simple,
save the love of Wisdom ? And was it not Wisdom's
self that came down to earth and assumed our nature,
to teach us the truth ? The consecration of the
Divine example then shines upon the teacher's task.

PREFATORY SYNOPSIS

These thoughts permeate the Convivio. But in
that work Dante's mind is still dominated by the
Ethnic sages, though touched with the glow of
Christian devotion. He still thinks in terms of the
Aristotelian distinction between the practical or civic
and the speculative or theoretical life, and he has not
yet grasped its relations to the ecclesiastical and
mystic distinction between the active life of good
works and the contemplative life of communion with
the Deity.

In the last book of the Convivio^ however, there
emerges a conception of the Roman Empire as
divinely guided and inspired which must be regarded
as the last and most significant of the reactions of
theology upon secular ideals which we have to
examine. And this implicit parallel between the
temporal and the spiritual order is explicitly de-
veloped in the Monarchia and pervades the Comedy.
In the Monarchia the recognition of a Divine
guidance of secular forces in the history of Rome,
analogous to that of spiritual forces in the history of
Palestine and the Church, is already so far advanced
that the exposition by Aquinas of the need of a
supreme authority in matters of faith, represented by
the office of the Pope, can be elaborated by Dante to
support the authority of the Emperor as the supreme
administrator of Roman Law. The parallelism
between temporal and spiritual things is now fully
worked out and systematized ; the Ethnic distinction
between the practical and the theoretical intelligence
falls into the background, while that between Reason

xi

PREFATORY SYNOPSIS

and Revelation comes to the front ; and the spiritual
order having standardized and illuminated the poet's
conception of the temporal order is now drawing his
mind more and more directly to itself for his own sake.
The Monarchia sets forth the whole framework and
scaffolding of the Comedy so completely that it
may safely be trusted as the '* key " to the sym-
bolism and the main allegory of every part of the
Poem.

This clear and unbroken line of progress when
once distinctly recognized can never be lost sight of
or obscured ; and it leaves no room to doubt that
the Comedy as we now know it could not have been
conceived in its general outline and structure until
Dante's mind had definitely moved away from the
stage of development represented by the Convivio,
and had reached the equilibrium of a fuller and firmer
synthesis and a deeper spiritual insight.

But the recognition of this unbroken line of pro-
gress does not furnish us with a complete solution
of the complex and entangling problems presented
by the Convivio, from which I have provisionally dis-
engaged it. In the Canzoni that lie outside the cycle
of the Fita Nuova, and in the Convivio, there is a
distinct movement away from Dante's self-dedica-
tion to the task of raising a monument to Beatrice ;
and moreover there are sometimes clear and some-
times half-obliterated traces of what is openly con-
fessed in the Comedy, namely a period in Dante's
life during which he had not cared to dwell upon his

xii

PREFATORY SYNOPSIS

memories of Beatrice and the hopes and purposes
associated with them, because his current interests
and standards had seemed even at the time to be
aHen from such memories. In the retrospect they
seemed deeply unworthy of them.

All these and other aspects of the Convivio have
been subjected to examination in the second essay in
this book ; and the attempt has been made, by first
disentangling and then recombining them, to arrive
at a psychologically intelligible account of how that
early purpose of writing of Beatrice ** what ne*er was
writ of woman," after seeming to fall into the back-
ground and almost into oblivion for twenty years,
finds its transfigured fulfilment at last in the poem
which seeks to rescue *' those living in this mortal
life from the state of misery and to bring them to the
state of bliss.**

It is almost exactly a hundred years since the
serious attempt to present Dante's work from first
to last as an intelligible whole was initiated by the
German Dantist, Witte (then some twenty-two or
twenty-three years of age), in the first of the brilliant
scries of essays which may be said to have dominated
the Dante studies of the last century. Those who
have any acquaintance with Witte's work will sec that
it is impossible for mc to exaggerate the extent of
my indirect obligation to the stimulus he gave to
Dante scholarship. At the same time they will under-
stand that his placing the composition of the
Monarchia in the early years, before Dantc*s exile, led

xiii

PREFATORY SYNOPSIS

to what I cannot but regard as a fatal misconception
of the CoHvivio,

And what is worse, it consequentially led Witte
and his followers to an allegorizing interpretation of
the Thirtieth and Thirty-first Cantos of the Pur-
gatorio which would altogether mar the directness
and universality of their appeal and would persuade
us that the great majority of readers are so deeply
moved by them only because they misunderstand
them. These mists and obfuscations of the most
intensely personal utterances of the poet would be
finally dispelled if the attempt here made to recover
the links between the Vita Nuova and the Comedy
were to approve itself, in the main, to students of
Dante.

• . • I have not wished to interrupt the reading of the
essays by frequent indices, but have given continu-
ously, at the foot of the pages, what I hope will be
found sufficiently full references to enable students
readily to verify or check the translations and para-
phrases in the text. In the prose works the lines re-
ferred to are those of the Oxford Dante, and [in
square brackets] the sections of the Florentine Testo
Critico, 1 92 1, are added.

I am indebted to the Rev. R. Travers Herford
for the correct form of Rabbi Hanina's words cited
on p. V, and for the reference to Talmud Babli,
Taanith 7^, where they are recorded.

n ^A P- H. W.

Childret, May 1922

xiv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Prefatory Synopsis

vii

Part I. The Comedy

The Inferno and the Purgatorio in the light

of the Paradiso

3

The Beatific Vision

4

The Life of Innocence and the Fall

^5

Hell

34

Purgatory and the Recovered Eden

42

Epilogue

5^

Part II. The Minor Works

The Vita Nuova

59

The Canzoni

70

The Convivio in its Apologetic Aspect

80

The Convivio in its Positive Content

93

The Monarchia and the Comedy

122

Appendix ; Chronology of Dante's Works

H5

rv

THE COMEDY

EDMVNDO GARRATT GARDNER

qvo svperstite
non omnis moriar

'p-^%r I

THE COMEDY

(The Inferno and the Purgatorio in the light
of the Paradiso)

The poetic splendour of the Inferno breaks upon the
reader as soon as he opens the first pages of the
Comedy ; but it is often obscured by historical
allusions, astronomical circumlocutions, and terms
of mediaeval science or philosophy, which darken
and at times quench its light. These obstacles, how-
ever, soon begin to yield to patient study, and what
threatened to choke the flame catches fire from it
and in its turn flings light into every corner of the
world in which Dante lived and thought.

Meanwhile, earlier or later as the case may be,
the reader becomes aware of an underlying purpose
and significance, seldom obtruded but always pre-
sent, that gives unity and direction to the movement
of the whole poem, breathing into it a vital spirit
of its own and appealing for its interpretation to no
other lore than such as knowledge of ourselves and
observation of life can give us.

Presently, when we grow familiar with the Purga-
torio and the Paradiso^ the InfernOy in spite of its
direct and arresting grip upon our imagination,
reveals itself as a beginning that must be read in the
light of the middle and the end if we are to under-
stand it truly ; and we begin to feel, perhaps
gropingly, for the organic relauon of the parts to the

3

THE COMEDY

whole. The misleading suggestion will probably
present itself to us, at this point, that the first
Cantica of the Comedy is the foundation on which
the whole structure stands, and that the way to
heaven lies through hell. There is indeed a sense
in which this is true, but we can never rightly grasp
it till we have realized the far deeper sense in which
it is false. This is the first point to which we must
turn our attention.

I. THE BEATIFIC VISION

In the heaven of the primum mobile Dante sees a
single point of intensest Ught, and since its spaceless
glory represents God himself Beatrice tells him
that " from that point all Heaven and Nature

^if is the purpose of this essay to show how the
Comedy itself, in its animating spirit and its intimate
structure, " depends from that point."

In the medieval belief both angels and men were
created by the divine will to be recipients of the
divine goodness ; and the life of heaven consisted
in the contemplation by these recipient spirits ot
the primal Goodness that created them. As to
the difference between the angelic and the human
nature there will be something to say presently
(p. 26), but we must note at once that, for man,

1 Da quel punto

depende il cielo e tutta la natura.

Paradiso xxviii : 41 -ff-

4

THE BEATIFIC VISION

the life of Eden as a stage was a no less essential
part of the divine purpose than the life of Heaven
as the goal. Further, the whole material creation,
including the revolving heavens, and even time and
space themselves, were designed with reference to
this earthly life of man.

The Faradiso deals with the life of Heaven and
the last six Cantos of the Purgatorio with the life of
Eden. And these two, with all that they involve,
not only '* depend " directly from God, but embody
the whole of the primary and essential purpose of
the Creator for his creatures.

But the Fall brought with it a warpmg and dis-
tortion of the divine pattern, and since violent dis-
turbances of order are to be understood only by
reference to the order they have disturbed it is but
natural that the most intimately characteristic features
of Dante's representations alike of Hell and Purga-
tory should depend upon his conception of the state
of unfallen man and of his heavenly destiny. The
fixed and firm attachment therefore is from above
and not from below, and the structure of the Comedy
as a whole ** depends from the Faradiso " rather than
" rests on the Inferno^ Unless we have formed a
clear conception of what Dante meant by Heaven
we shall only dimly understand what he meant by
Hell and Purgatory.

There is much less that divides Dante*s intellectual
conception of Heaven from the received teaching of
his time than there is with respect to the correspond-
ing conceptions of hell and purgatory ; and conse-

5

THE COMEDY

quently Dante was able to assume that his readers
would start with the same presuppositions as to the
ultimate goal of humanity that he himself accepted.
However much deeper his realization of divine and
spiritual things might be than that of the average
believer, and however much the readers of the
Faradiso might deepen their own spiritual experience
and realization by studying it, yet their intellectual
belief as to what constitutes the heavenly life itself
would need no change. They began their reading
of the Comedy, as we do not, with a precisely
formulated belief as to Heaven that agreed with that
of their author.

But, on the other hand, hell and purgatory had a
different meaning to Dante from that which they
bore to his contemporaries, and this precisely because
he saw them in closer relation to heaven than they
did. Hell, as a fact, he accepted (not without inward
protest) from authoritative tradition ; but what he
read into it could only be seen in the light of heaven,
and therefore could not be seen at all by the world-
ling, or by the damned themselves. And purgatory
was not to Dante, as it was to others, a painful price
paid by man for permission to enter heaven, but a
blessed opportunity allowed him of bringing himself
into tune with heaven. These modifications of the
current conceptions were forced upon him as neces-
sarily involved in that very conception of heaven
which was accepted by his contemporaries with as
little question as by himself; and it is under this
light that we must consider them.

6

THE BEATIFIC VISION

** Seeing God in his essence ** is what Dante and
his contemporaries meant by " heaven." Our im-
mediate task, then, is to arrive, if we can, at an exact
conception of what these words conveyed to the
mind, and a sympathetic insight into the feelings
with which they were associated on the Hps of the
first readers of the Comedy. We must be content to
advance slowly, step by step, and the first and easiest
step is to realize that " seeing " is to be understood
very definitely and strictly in the metaphorical sense
in which we say that we " see " a truth, or that we
" sec " a friend's thought, purpose, line of argument,
or unacknowledged affections or aversions. We
must check not only our thought, but our imagina-
tion, by constantly reminding ourselves that in this
sense, even when we are concerned with material
things, a blind man can see what he sees as well and
as truly as we can, though he cannot see all the things
that we see. He cannot see that one colour is deeper
than another, but he can " see " that one object is
harder than another ; and he can see a truth or an
argument or a kind or hostile intention in exactly the
same sense in which we can see them. To " see "
anything, then, in our sense of the word, is to have a
direct, full, and clear consciousness of it. And it is
in this sense that we are to understand the expression
** seeing God."

The next step is to consider the difference between
thus ** seeing " anything ** in its essence," and
seeing or knowing it only through its effect upon us.
To know a thing in its essence meant so to under-

7

THE COMEDY

Stand its inmost being as to see how all its manifesta-
tions and effects must necessarily flow from it be-
cause they are involved in it ; and the question arises
whether we can in this sense see, or know, anything
whatever " in its essence."

Now, on this subject Dante and the teachers he
followed ^ deliberately held a philosophy concerning
the nature and limits of human knowledge, apart
from revelation, which easily approves itself to the
average common sense of mankind, though by no
means unchallenged by metaphysicians. According
to this philosophy our senses give us notice of a
material world that actually exists outside our con-
sciousness and independently of it, but of which we
can have no kind of knowledge except in and
through its effects upon our consciousness through
our senses. Of what it is " in itself" or " in its
essence " we can have no knowledge or even con-
ception.

Neither can we have any knowledge of what our

^ S. Thomas Aquinas (ti274) is the teacher from whom we can
best gather the philosophical and theological system which Dante
presupposes everywhere, and expressly sets forth and expounds as
occasion rises. On its purely philosophical side this system is based
on Aristotle's teaching — developed, however, in directions of which
Aristotle knew nothing; and brought into relation with the mystic
and dogmatic inheritance of the Church. And this ecclesiastical
tradition, in its turn, was saturated with Platonic influences. Dante
studied Aristotle at first hand, though (in common with Aquinas
himself and his teacher Albertus Magnus) he read him in Latin
translations only. He looks at Aristotle essentially from the point of
view of Aquinas, but he is not a slavish disciple.

8

THE BEATIFIC VISION

consciousness is " in itself,** apart from its content ;
apart, that is, from the impressions received from the
external world and the processes in our minds that
they provoke. As soon as the sense images fall upon
the mind its latent powers are awakened into actuality
and we enjoy or fear, remember or desire, as many of
the higher animals do also. But what is this mind or
consciousness " in itself* before it is conscious of
anything ? In itself, and before it comes into action,
how does the naked capacity for abstracting,
generalizing, reasoning, and inferring, which is
specific to man, differ from the naked capacity for
receiving sense impressions and being attracted or
repelled, pleased or displeased, which is shared by
other animals ? We cannot answer these questions,
and therefore we can understand neither external
things nor the organ of consciousness ** in them-
selves.** And neither can we understand the con-
nection between our consciousness and the bodily
organs through which we receive our impressions of
the external world, of which they themselves are a
part. We can know none of these things therefore
in their essential being. God only, the Creator and
first cause of all things, can so know what these
things are in their inmost nature as to see how their
relations to each other and reactions with each other
follow from and are involved in what they are ** in
themselves,** We can know things only by their
effects, as apprehended in our conscious experiences.
But now if we take all these fundamental connec-
tions and relations as we find them, not in themselves,

9

THE COMEDY

but in their united and reciprocal action, not asking
what mind, matter, and sense organs are in them-
selves or how their relations rise out of their essence,
but simply examining the resultant impressions and
processes or goings on in our own minds, we are on
very different ground. We find, for instance, that
out of the data supplied us by the senses we are
capable of forming certain general conceptions, such
as the ideas of " whole " and " part." We find
special instances of a whole, with its parts, in the
external world ; but the generalized conception of
** whole " or " part " as such is something in the
mind or consciousness ^ itself. Moreover, we no
sooner form these general conceptions of " whole **
and " part '* than we are compelled to admit, as a
general self-evident proposition or axiom, that the
whole is greater than its part : that is to say, em-
braces the part and something more. There are
other logical and mathematical axioms that assert
themselves inevitably as soon as we have formed

1 The terms consciousness, mind, and soul are used in this essay-
as the convenience of the context suggests without any careful or
significant distinction. Strictly, consciousness is the widest and most
comprehensive term. Mind suggests a special region or aspect of
consciousness. Soul suggests to us a conscious entity that has, or may
have, an independent existence of its own ; but the mediaeval
thinker would speak of the animal or vegetable soul with no such
implication or even suggestion, using the term as the mere equivalent
of " life " or " vitality." Thus for him to speak of the " human
soul " did not in itself imply the existence of a psychic entity, though
as a matter of fact he believed (if a Christian) the human soul to be
such an entity.

lO

THE BEATIFIC VISION

certain elementary generalizations or abstract ideas.
Then, further, we find that these axioms involve
many unsuspected consequences which we may be
slow to perceive, but which when once perceived
assert themselves as inevitably involved in the
axioms themselves, and as necessarily flowing from
them. Thus the whole body of logical truth (in-
cluding mathematics, that marvellous erection of
specialized logic with its intense intellectual interest
and its innumerable practical applications) has all
been evolved in the progress of the ages out of the
little stock of axioms that everyone capable of under-
standing their terms must inevitably accept. Any
mathematical or logical conclusion that cannot be
shown to be involved in the axioms is unstable and
liable to challenge.

Now, of all these processes^ so far as our own minds
are capable of them, we have direct knowledge " as
they are in themselves.'* We see how one follows
upon another because it is already virtually contained
in it. In a word, we can find their source and germ
and can trace their movement " from inside " as a
development and unfolding of their own inmost
nature.

Note here that in these general or abstract con-
ceptions our minds transcend the data of the senses
that set them at work. For we can neither touch nor
smell nor see a mathematical line that has no
breadth. Nor can any such conception as " necessary
sequence '* or *' truth *' be the object of sense per-
ception. Of these abstractions or conceptions in our

II

THE COMEDY

own minds we have direct consciousness (whether
vague or precise) " as they are." But what is the
relation in this matter of one mind to another ?
To begin with, since I have no direct access to the
processes of any mind but my own, I can only receive
communications from another mind, or even know
that it exists, in virtue of its expressing itself through
some medium that can act upon the senses.^ Such ex-
pression I interpret on the analogy of my own in-
ward experience. The whole process of teaching and
learning in the region of pure thought consists in
enabling the less developed mind to climb back
through the expressions of the more developed mind
to an understanding of the actual processes internal
to that mind itself.

How different it would be if we had some " sense *'
by which we could, up to the measure of our inherent
capacity, actually " see " the processes themselves
of the more developed mind with the same direct
consciousness with which we " see " our own I The
teacher would always know exactly where the pupil's
mind was and what next step would be clear to it ;
and the pupil would see the very process which he
was invited to follow in the mind of the teacher, not

1 We need not enter upon the question whether any approxima-
tion to such direct " thought reading " is, in fact, possible to us ; for
Dante and his contemporaries, with whose philosophy we are here
concerned, had no doubt on the subject. They held quite firmly
that so long as our souls remain in organic relation with our mortal
bodies we can have no direct perception of the contents of another's
mind, but must depend upon our interpretation of such indications
as can reach the senses.

12

THE BEATIFIC VISION

a confused and distorted image of it crossed by his
own preconceived ideas and blurred by finding sand
instead of wax in his mind to receive its impress.

But as things are, since we have no direct insight
into the processes of another mind, we are in one
respect worse off, but in another better, with regard
to another mind than we are with regard to material
objects. We are worse off, because the impress of
mind upon mind can never be direct as it is in the
case of the impressions made on the senses ; but we
are better off, because as far as we can indirectly get
at the processes of another mind we may hope, by
the analogy of our own mind, to understand them
from the inside and as they are " in themselves,'*
whereas our perception of external things, however
direct, can never be intimate.

We have been dealing with general ideas and the
propositions that concern them : that is to say, with
the purely intellectual aspect of our consciousness.
But we are directly conscious of many other things
than these. We have desires and impulses, pleasant
and unpleasant sensations and experiences, hopes,
fears, and purposes, that are not purely intellectual.
At the root ot all this is the fact that some things
attract us when we are aware of them and rejoice or
satisfy us when we possess or experience them, while
others repel, terrify, or distress us. From the ex-
perience that things of very different kinds have the
power of attracting us we form the general concep-
tion of attractiveness.

THE COMEDY

Now, some of the things that attract us, such as
food for example, appeal to what we commonly
mean by appetites ; but in Italian and in late or
scholastic Latin a thing is appetibile^ or '* the object
of appetite," if it is anything that we " go for " for
any reason or with any part of our nature. Thus, to
desire and seek {appetere) truth is as much an
" appetite " as if truth were food. If a man " hungers
and thirsts after righteousness " that, too, is " appe-
tite ** ; and here also we generalize and learn to
recognize something that all the objects of our desire
have in common and which is some form of" good.*'
It is by a correct instinct that we call both things to
eat and virtuous dispositions by the same name of
"good.^'i They both have the same quality of
** appetibility.'* To the normal mind they are all of
them " things to be sought ** in due time and
measure. When we choose one thing in preference
to another we are comparing them sub specie boni :
that is to say, we pronounce this as more to be desired
than that because it is " better." So this act of
choice is an expression of appetite, but appetite that
has an intellectual element in it inasmuch as it is
influenced by the generalized conception of good
and by the comparison of things, otherwise unlike
each other, in respect of their " goodness." So
the mediaeval thinkers tell us that the act of choice

^ Therefore, whether we are considering material or immaterial
things we must be jealously on our guard against the exclusively
ethical connotation which is apt, in so many connections, to attach
itself to the word " good."

14

THE BEATIFIC VISION

or election is the act of an " intellectual appetite."
It is only when the passion or impulse on which we
act is so overpowering as to obliterate the conscious-
ness of any alternative that* our action ceases to be
voluntary and to obey our choice.

But we all know too well that the things that
present themselves as desirable, or good, do not
always turn out to be so ; and therefore it is only
good for us to get what we want when what we want
is really good. Hence there are two branches of
wisdom in this matter. The one consists in having
what would now be called a true scale of values :
that is to say, in recognizing what are the truly good
and best objects of desire, and in what proportions,
and what are the true relations of secondary and
subordinate to primary and supreme objects of
desire. The other consists in having sound judge-
ment as to the means of getting the things that we
desire, whatever they may be.

Returning now to the question of the nature of
our knowledge or understanding of another man's
mind, we may repeat that with our present powers
such knowledge or understanding can never be
direct, but it may be in various degrees intimate ; for
we understand a man's reasoning in so far as we
understand his axioms and the processes (sound or
fallacious) by which he deduces his conclusions from
them. And we understand his actions and his feel-
ings so far as we understand his scale of values, his
physical capacities and sensations, the degree of his
insight into the relation of means to ends, and the

15

THE COMEDY

extent to which his intelligence is clouded by his
passions. Note, too, that both as to action and as to
thought we may learn by observation to expect and
reckon upon conduct and mental processes in an-
other which, in the sense explained, we cannot
be said to ** understand,** because we cannot
find the key to them in our own experience or
feelings. Of such we have a scientific knowledge
from the outside, but no ** understanding " from
within.

To sum up, then, the whole course both of direct
instruction and of what we call the " influence of a
personality," consists in one soul being brought,
by impressions made upon the senses, to an (indirect
and imperfect) insight into the processes within
another soul.

But how if, instead of having to rely upon in-
ference (however certain, spontaneous, and even
unconscious it may in some cases be), we really had
the power, about which we so often speculate, of
direct vision of another's thoughts and emotions
and the whole sum of the processes in his conscious-
ness I How if we could really " see ** another soul
in all its vital movements and experiences I Now,
this is exactly the power which, according to the
mediaeval belief, the disembodied souls of the blessed
will actually acquire (and retain when reunited to the
glorified body of the resurrection) and which the
angels enjoyed, by their very nature, from the first.
Each such soul or angelic spirit can, up to the
measure of its primal and inherent endowment, read

i6

THE BEATIFIC VISION

the consciousness of every other as directly as it can
read its own.

But there is more than this. We have seen that
we do not know or understand even our own souls
" in themselves ** (p. 9). If we really knew them
in their essential being how could philosophers have
discussed for ages whether the soul is material or
immaterial in its nature, whether or not any of its
functions are independent of bodily organs, whether
by its nature it is mortal or immortal ? But according
to Dante's teachers, angels, unlike men, do actually
** know themselves,** and therefore by their very
nature know God, not indeed in himself, but through
his highest and noblest effects. For they have direct
knowledge not only of themselves in their inmost
essence and constitution, but of each other also.
And a like knowledge of themselves, of each other,
and of the angelic spirits will be conferred upon the
souls of the blessed.

Let us try to realize something of what this would
mean. Not only would our initiation into the
processes of another's mind become swift and secure
and be freed from all obscurities and misconceptions
of expression, but there would be a complete re-
moval of all possibility of confusion between the
limitations imposed upon our own thoughts by the
constitution of our minds and those imposed by their
present state. There are, as we have seen, certain
axioms or propositions that we cannot conceive as
being other than true. But a proposition may be
axiomatic to one mind which to another mind is

17 B

THE COMEDY

manifestly untrue. Thus (to borrow and elaborate
an illustration from Aristotle), to the mind of a
mathematically uneducated person the proposition
that the side and the diagonal of a square are in-
commensurable conveys at first no meaning and then
becomes so astonishing that it seems impossible to
understand how it can possibly be true. That it is
in some sense true can only be uncomprehendingly
accepted on authority. To the mathematically
educated mind, on the other hand, it would involve a
flat contradiction to suppose that the two lines are
commensurable. Thus, what one mind cannot con-
ceive as being so another cannot conceive as being
other than so.

And this need not be a difference of constitution
between the two minds, for the one may well
be capable of being brought to the fuller insight
of the other. Thus Aristotle himself took it as
axiomatic that if one body were twice as heavy as
another it would fall through space twice as fast.
But afterwards Galileo first saw that this coul^ not
be true and then demonstrated to the incredulous that
it was not. And this not because his mind was
differently constituted from Aristotle's, for Aristotle
would have reached Galileo's position in a moment
had anyone been at hand to direct his mind to
certain obvious facts and principles. Thus, if we had
direct access to our own souls and to other and higher
souls than our own we could never fall into that
" illusion of incapacity '' which so often paralyzes
effort and checks progress. We should never think

i8

THE BEATIFIC VISION

ourselves constitutionally incapable of learning things
when all that was really wanting was to see our
teacher's thought behind his words or even without
words, and to be willing to try to follow it. We
might indeed see in spirits of greater power than
our own processes that we could not follow, but
within the range of our actual capacity it would be
impossible for us to cling hopelessly and helplessly
to false axioms or false deductions which we were,
in fact, constitutionally capable of seeing through, if
once we had seen the truth in another's mind. Our
minds might grow, and until they had reached the
limit of their capacity they would grow ; but though
there would be teaching there would be no perplexed
and bewildered learners and no vexed or baffled or
disappointed teachers. Seeing a mind at work on a
level too high for our comprehension would provoke
wonder and admiration, but could never create
confusion.

And the analogue of all this in matters of emo-
tion and choice, or in the grading of values,
would be equally true. " We needs must love
the highest when we sec it," and if we saw
another's soul we should see all things under its
scale of values ; and so far as our souls were
capable of right estimates we could not love the
lower better than the higher when the higher had
once been seen.

As we are now constituted every process of in-
fluencing or training of one mind by another must
consist in getting the one mind, indirectly and im-

19

THE COMEDY

perfectly, through media and by inference, into
some kind of understanding of what is in the other;
and under such influencing and training we make
our way to such truth of insight and feeUng as we
attain ; but what if we could really " see ** the
thoughts and feelings of a Shakespeare or a Newton,
and lay their insight and their scheme of values side
by side with our own ! Could we ever live and think
on the old levels again ? And in matters of right
and wrong, or of noble and ignoble motive, if a word
from a friend or even the thought of him or a chance-
struck sentence or line in a book can often startle us
into a sudden insight and a rectification of moral
values, what if we could actually " see " the higher
scheme that we can only feel after in semi-darkness 1
Surely, even though our lives under stress of passion
should fail to conform themselves to the higher
insight (even as they fail to conform themselves to
such ideals as we have actually won through to),
yet their compelling and persuasive force could
never be escaped nor could we ever find refuge from
them in the belief that we were constitutionally in-
capable of seeing and feeling what we had actually
seen and felt.

So much for conceivable insight into created
spirits. But what if we could ** see '* God himself?
Should we not then see things in their absolute
truth and in their absolute values ? And would
it not be impossible to be drawn aside from
that vision of the perfect whole to any frag-
mentary object of bewildered and distorting

20

THE BEATIFIC VISION

" appetite " ? ^ That surely were Heaven. But may
such a thing be ?

A recapitulation at this point will show us at once
what progress we have made and how far we still are
from the goal. We can indirectly infer from outward
signs the inward processes of other minds because
we believe them to be analogous to those we are
directly conscious of in ourselves. We can attach
some meaning to the idea of having a direct per-
ception of those processes in another mind because
we actually have direct perception of things analo-
gous to them in our own. We can perhaps in some
sort imagine new powers which would enable us to
know our own souls in their intimate and essential
being, and if we could do that might we not be able
to have a direct knowledge of other souls like our
own ? Nay, if there are angelic spirits whose intelli-
gence is that of a created and limited consciousness,
and is so far analogous to our own, might we not
conceive it possible that we should have some direct
knowledge of them too, which, in spite of their
loftier and intenser insight, should be true up to the
limit of our powers of comprehension ?

But why have I constantly introduced the qualifi-

* A quella luce tal si diventa,

che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto
h impossibil che mai si consenta;
Pcr6 che il ben, ch* h del volere objetto,
tutto s* accoglie in lei ; e fuor di quella
h defettivo ci6 ch* h li perfetto.

ParaJiso ixxii i : i oo- 105.
21

THE COMEDY

cation " up to the measure of our inherent capacity "
in expounding Dante's philosophy ? What exactly
does it mean and what does it involve ? It was the
firm belief both of Dante and his teachers that
whereas every human soul had certain faculties
(whether in realized or only in potential activity),
such as the power of making comparisons and
generalizations, grasping axiomatic truths, deducing
consequences from them, experiencing and com-
paring attractions and repulsions, conceiving desires
and selecting means by which to fulfil them, yet in
different individuals these powers were possessed in
different degrees of sensitiveness and strength.
Though of the same essential quality and character
in all, these powers were inherently and ultimately
capable of higher development in one than in an-
other. Thus, though an axiom might be equally
obvious and certain to two minds it might be in-
definitely richer in its implied content and so more
fertile to one of them than to the other. And this
not only by circumstance, but by inherent capacity.

So, too, if new powers should be conferred on the
soul after death, such as the power of direct vision of
spiritual essences, these powers also would be as-
signed in different degree to different individuals.
And in either case, as there are limits of degree for
the individual so there are limits of quality proper
to the race of men, and to the nature of each angelic
being, or common to all the created intelligence as
such.

It is with the limitations of created intelligence

22

THE BEATIFIC VISION

as such that we are now concerned ; for all the pro-
cesses and all the creatures which we have even
imagined ourselves to know by direct access to their
essential being lie within the limits of created con-
sciousness. Of matter "in itself** we cannot even
conceive ourselves as having intimate knowledge,
because it is not consciousness ; nor of God ** in
himself,*' because he is not created. To the supreme,
the unconditioned, the self-sustained, the eternal
first cause, as he exists essentially in and to himself,
our own created intelligence gives us no access by
any kind of analogy. To ** see God ** would be not
to receive some new power in expansion of our
human nature, but to break out beyond the bounds of
** created consciousness ** itself, whether human or
angelic. It would make us partakers of the divine crea-
tive Life itself: for God alone can know himself.

" Can this be } " And if so, " how can it be .'' *' and
"what must it be.*^** To these questions I must sim-
ply try to give the answers expressly elaborated by
Aquinas and everywhere assumed by Dante. My
task as an expounder extends no further.

Can it be : It must be. Philosophy and natural
religion, confirmed by revelation, tell us that the
Creator will not thwart the essential nature of his
creature. Now, the longing for conclusive blessed-
ness and the unquenchable sense that such blessed-
ness is not a mere dream, but an actual possibility,
belong to the essential nature of man. Man there-
fore is destined to attain it ; and nothing short of
** dciformity,** or likeness to God in our own inward

23

THE COMEDY

being, will give it. It must be God's will, therefore,
that man should share his essential being.

" How " then can it be ? To human or angelic
nature it is, in itself, impossible to be or to become
deiform, but to God all things are possible ; and by-
impressing his very self, essentially, upon the created
spirit he can so transfuse it with the ** light of glory "
(lumen gloria) that ** in that light it can see the light.'*
For when assimilated to the essential being of God
it can, up to the measure of the initial capacity
divinely bestowed, see God as he sees himself. —
" Up to its measure." For the infinite must remain
in infinite excess of the finite. But the assimilation
within that measure may be perfect and may con-
stitute, to that spirit, the absolute fulfilment of its
longing for perfect vision and for perfect blessedness.

" What " will it be } The direct vision of perfect
power, wisdom, love ; of perfect goodness, truth,
beauty ; not as abstractions or ideals of our minds,
but as the very being of God, who is Being's self.

By assimilation to the divine being and participa-
tion therein the blessed spirit sees God as he sees
himself, and sees all things and all beings as God
sees them : in their perfect and untarnished truth
and beauty. There is no room here for accepting or
rejecting. Seeing God, the spirit sees all things
under God's own values, and is caught into the glory
of his ineffable love and bliss. Standing thus at the
fontal source of all being, the blessed spirit sees the
material as well as the spiritual side of creation in its
Psalm xixv : lo [A.V. xxxvi : 9].

24

EDEN AND THE FALL

intrinsic nature, even as the Creator sees it. Time,
space, and causation are no longer conditions that
bind the thought and experience upon which they
are imposed, but acts of the Creative Mind itself,
above which that mind, with all that it has called
into fellowship with itself, stands supreme. God and
his elect see the universe and love it not in fragments
but as a whole, not as a stream of effects which they
must stem in order to reach up towards the first
cause, but as an utterance flowing, as by force of its
intrinsic and divine fitness and glory, from the
central Consciousness itself within which they stand
and by which they are compassed.

II. THE LIFE OF INNOCENCE AND
THE FALL

Our next step must be to try to understand the
mediaeval conception of the life of man on earth as it
was before the Fall, and would have remained had
Adam not fallen. Dante tells us that collective
humanity is not only a whole consisting of parts,
but also a part of a greater whole. And this is
equally true of each individual. It follows that a
twofold harmony is needed if man*s life is to conform
in all respects to the purpose of his Creator. Not only
must the varied appetites, faculties, and desires upon
which man's life is built work in perfect harmony
and balance with each other, so that there may be no
internal warp or discord within him, but also he
Monarchia I. vii.

2^

/

THE COMEDY

must duly relate this internally harmonious life of his
to the greater whole of which it is a part. As to this
latter harmony the scholastic philosophy and theo-
logy start from the assumption that the goodness of
God, the infinite and absolute Perfection, must flow
out in some form of self-expression or self-utterance
in and to beings that can share the joy of conscious
existence. But since a complete expression of the
Infinite is impossible (except as expressed by and to
itself) variety of expression must compensate, as best
may be, for the inherent limitations of receptive
susceptibility on the part of the created intelligences
to whom the revelation is to be conveyed. So when
God uttered himself in creation he called into being
countless hosts of angels, all pure spirit like him-
self, and all endowed with direct spiritual vision
enabling them to see themselves and each other in
their essence, and thus to see in themselves their
Creator as manifested in his highest effects. So far
their own nature went, but (as we have seen) it was
only by a miraculous act from outside their nature
that they could be brought to and sustained in the
direct " vision of God " ; and Satan and the rebel
angels, not brooking even an instantaneous proba-
tion, fell in their pride " unripe ": that is to say,
without ever reaching the consummation to which
the faithful angels were instantaneously and irre-
vocably called. Of these immaterial beings, con-
firmed in bliss, every single one had his own proper
vision of God — and therefore his own quality of
knowledge, of love, and of joy — so distinctive as to

26

EDEN AND THE FALL

make him not only a different individual, but of a
different species from all the rest. Yet each saw God
truly as he is : in his essence, not merely in his effects.
Even this unimaginable variety of self-com-
munication, however, did not exhaust God's self-
utterance in calling conscious beings into participa-
tion of his joy. He willed further to create an order
of beings who, unlike the angels, should grow
through a succession of experiences and a continuous
development to the full realization of their natural
powers instead of reaching them at a bound in
accomplished fullness ; and this order of beings was
not all to be created simultaneously, as the angels
were, but was to spring from a single pair and was
to multiply through the ages. Moreover, the suc-
cessions and limitations of their development were
to be controlled by the conditions of time and space
in contradistinction from the timeless and spaceless
existence of pure spirit. So man was to be a material
as well as a spiritual being. His soul was to be so
associated with a physical body as to receive all the
materials for its full development through the gates
of the senses. This human soul or vital principle
had, indeed, as we have already seen (p. 1 1), latent
powers which could ultimately transcend the limits
of the material organs with which it was associated
and reach by abstraction to a realm of immaterial
truth, though not to the direct perception of im-
material beings ; and these powers may be thought
of as constituting a ** mind ** or ** spirit ** which is
the highest aspect of the human ** life '* or ** soul,**

27

THE COMEDY

and which differentiates it from the life or soul of the
plants and lower animals. But the matter on which
these higher powers were to exercise themselves,
and above which they were to rise, must all be sup-
plied by the senses. It was from sense data that all
else must be developed.

Adam himself received his natural powers and
his full stores of knowledge instantaneously at his
creation ; but this was a personal gift, not a part of
the human nature he was to transmit to his posterity.
Moreover, though he received his knowledge miracu-
lously it was natural, not miraculous, knowledge
that he received : just as in the Gospel though the
man born blind received his sight miraculously it
was natural sight that he so received.

We must not, however, judge of human nature as
it was created in Eden altogether from human nature
even at its best and inmost as we know it now.
Adam had, and his descendants would have had, not
only (as we shall see) a more harmonious nature,
but quicker spiritual perceptions and a more direct
knowledge both of self, of fellow-man, and of God
(though not in his essence) than we can now have on
earth. Had Adam not fallen the normal education
and development of man from infancy to maturity
would have had that sweet and frictionless move-
ment, without wavering or error in its progress, that
we have imagined as flowing from a power of direct
vision of the processes of another mind (p. 12).
Moreover, man would normally have inherited in
the earthly life certain revealed truths inaccessible

28

EDEN AND THE FALL

to the human faculties even in their unfallen state ;
and then, after the fullest fruition of the perfect
earthly life, man, without the death of the body or the
provisional isolation of the soul, would have passed
from the earthly to the heavenly life. His soul trans-
muted by the ** light of glory ** and his body trans-
formed into a perfect and unresisting instrument of
his soul, he would have " seen God,'* seen the uni-
verse as God sees it, and entered the eternal life.

Man, then, has his own proper place in the divine
scheme, and the fall of the angels, even if it was the
occasion, was not the deepest cause or reason of his
creation, for he was an integral part of the divine
self-utterance, which would not have been complete
without him. The whole order of the material
creation exists for the sake of man, and for his sake
only. Its function is threefold : to sustain his body,
to educate and develop his spirit, and to give him
the material for that moulding and artistic self-
utterance which is his nearest analogue to the divine
privilege of creation.

Now that we see how far the whole scheme of
God*s self-revelation extends beyond humanity we
can understand more clearly what is meant by the
distinction between the inward order of man's
powers and appetites among themselves and his
conformity to the greater order of which his whole
being is in its turn a part.

Now, since man, even in his first perfection, could
not grasp the whole purpose of God, there was this
difference between his ordering of his life in itself

29

THE COMEDY

and his ordering of it with reference to the whole
creative plan, namely, that whereas all the elements
of the one order were within the range of his own
direct perception he had to take those of the other
on trust. So when God made Adam and Eve and set
them in Eden they realized the perfect balance of
their powers, as applied to the totality of their own
fruition of life ; but their relation to God's wider
plan was beyond their ken, and with respect to this
conformity a command must take the place of the
spontaneous following of unerring impulse.

Dante's own account of the spontaneous internal
harmony of the life of unfallen man is placed by him
on the lips of Virgil when the pilgrims have actually
reached the Garden of Eden, or Earthly Paradise,
itself, at the summit of the Purgatorial Mount in
the southern hemisphere. " Thy will," he says to
Dante, " is free, upright, and sound. It were a fault
not to act according to its prompting." ^ This is the
state described by Wordsworth :

When love is an unerring light
And joy its own security.

Aquinas gives a more elaborate and analytical ac-
count of this primal state of man, but it is in complete
accord with the utterances of the poets. He tells us
that Adam and Eve had all the natural appetites and
desires both of the senses and of the mind, and that

1 Libero, dritto e sano h tuo arbitrio,
e fallo fora non fare a sue senno.

Purgatorio xxvii : 140 sq.

30

EDEN AND THE FALL

the fineness of their spiritual and material percep-
tions made their enjoyment far keener than ours
can be, but that all impulses were so controlled by
reason as never to press for any gratification which
would disturb the full harmony and balance of their
being. In this description we must not be misled by
the associations of the word "reason," for with the
Schoolmen it does not stand merely for the cold
ratiocinative faculty as opposed to emotion. Here
again Wordsworth comes to our aid, with his phrase ;

Yea, all the adamantine holds of truth
By reason built, or passion, which itself
Is highest reason in a soul sublime.

Wc are to imagine the appetites, then, not as con-
trolled by something outside themselves that re-
strains them, so much as inspired by an inward sense
of the harmony in which, and in which alone, each
finds its full self-realization.

So Adam and Eve were incapable by their very
constitution of sinning against their own higher
nature, considered in itself, or of allowing any im-
pulse to demand independent play in defiance of the
rest. It was only in the collective rhythm of all that
each could find full scope for the combined self-
abandonment and self-expression which is its life
and fulfilment. When our first parents desired to
cat of the forbidden fruit that very desire is the
proof that what they sought was neither evil in itself
nor intrinsically evil for them. But to desire it now
and thus was a breach of that subordination of their

31

THE COMEDY

life in its fullness to the total order to which they
were bidden to adjust themselves by obedience and
not by sight. It was because Adam, tempted by Eve,
could not rest content under the provisional veiling
of this wider purpose from human sight that man
fell. Had man been obedient this larger relation in
which he stood would have been revealed to him in
due course, for it was good for him to have it,
though not to have it thus and now.

The punishment was in exact accord with the
offence. As man had refused to seek the fulfilment
of his desire in due subordination to the whole of
which he was a part, so now his several passions,
impulses, and desires imitated his own insubordina-
tion and no longer conspired to make perfect the
whole of which they were parts, but each asserted
itself in reckless isolatioii, and destructively invaded
that harmony which it had before supported. Thus
reason (the perception of the true harmonies of
human nature) was no more the concordant and
spontaneous self-weaving of the varied impulses and
faculties of man into the pattern that gave each its
full interpretation and glory ; for reason had now to
hold a precarious and tottering seat above a host of
seething and rebellious passions and desires that
recognized neither its authority nor each other's
rights. Man still retained so much of the divine
light as to see dimly that there must be some con-
clusive and all-embracing bliss behind and beyond
these blind and mutually-destructive, or even self-
destructive, pretenders to the throne, no one of which

32

EDEN AND THE FALL

kept, or could keep, its promises. But though the
love of beauty, of goodness, and of truth were still
innate to man, yet every gleam of random and partial
good might henceforth claim to direct his steps, and
the very innocence of the young soul, instead of
being its guarantee of safety, might betray it to its
corruption.^

Such, then, is the state of fallen man, and such was
his original nature and destiny. The whole history of
man since the Fall is the history, on the one hand, of
human aberration, and, on the other, of the means
of escape and recovery vouchsafed by the divine
mercy. Not only were the life and death upon earth
of the Incarnate Word and the healing power of the
Church and her administrations means and channels
of this grace, but so, too, were the civil ordinances
and studies that regulate the mundane affairs,
relations, thoughts, and imaginings of men ; for
they, too, though on a lower plane, are a part of the
divine provision for the rescue of fallen humanity.
Secular as well as sacred learning has its sanction
as a means of " repairing the ravage of the Fall."

* L* anima simplicetta, che sa nulla,
salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore,
volentier torna a ci6 che la trastulla,

Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore ;
quivi 8* inganna, e dietro ad essa corre,
se guida o fren non torce suo amore.

Purgatorio xvi : 88 sqq.

33

THE COMEDY

III. HELL

And now at length we have reached a point at which
we can trace the precise bearing of these fundamental
beliefs in Dante's mind upon his treatment of hell
and purgatory in the Comedy. His essential or
positive theme is found in his delineations of the
Earthly Paradise and Heaven, for it is here that the
true nature of human life and the true destiny of
man are portrayed. But in order to regain the lost
position from which the realization of this true life
and destiny is possible we must first understand the
nature of our aberrations, and in the second place
must not only turn away from them but must so
reverse and cancel them that it shall be as though
they had never been. Only when we have unlived
our evil lives shall we be able to enter upon our true
life with no uncancelled record of perversity to mar
its purity.

The first step is to realize what we have fallen to.
The second step is to cancel the fall by an ascent.
Hell is the disordered life into which we have
fallen. Purgatory is the cancelling penitence by
which we regain the estate from which we have
lapsed.

Dante's vision of Hell, therefore, is not so much
a warning or a threat as to the consequence of sin as
a revelation of its inmost nature ; and to reveal the
true nature of sin is to reveal the true state of fallen
and sinful man. As a presentation of an awful fate

34

HELL

that will catch the impenitent sinner hereafter
Dante's Inferno must rank with other descriptions
of hell. As a revelation of what the evil choice is in
itself, wherever and whenever made, here or here-
after, it stands alone.

And in like manner Dante*s Purgatorio reveals not
the painful condition on compliance with which
heaven is offered to the repentant sinner, but a
blessed opportunity of cancelling from within his
own evil past. The man who sees where his choice
has so identified him with things evil, and so alienated
him from things good, that his own record would
make a discord with heaven in his soul, is now
allowed to build up for himself a new record
of passionate self-identification with good which
shall utterly annul the record of his former self-
surrender to evil and shall construct a record
through which " the stream of memory can flow
unstained."^

In other words, Dante's Inferno is a revelation of
the falseness of the values by which we live when we
sin. And his Purgatorio tells how a new life, lived in
tune with a new sense of values, may make our whole
consciousness, not only our aspirations and desires,
harmonious with the experiences of Eden and of
Heaven.

But here (to borrow a technical term from Dante's

^ Se tosto grazia risolva le schiume
di vostra conscicnza, si chc chiaro
per essa scenda della mente il fiumc.

Purgatorio xiii : 88 /ff.

THE COMEDY

vocabulary) we must be careful to " distinguish.'*
On its own denizens hell has no remedial effect
whatever, for it brings no revelation to them. It is
the place in which " there is no returning to a right
state of will/' ^ and to say that there is no possibility
of repentance in Hell is to say that there can be no
changed sense of values, and so no revelation of the
true meaning of sin to those who are there. So far
Dante was in close accord with the received teaching
of his time, and, indeed, with the professed creed of
the vast majority of Christians in almost every age.
Hell, to Dante as to others, was eternal — not, indeed,
in the primary sense of being altogether out of rela-
tion to time, without beginning or end, and without
any conscious successions, but in the secondary
sense of " ever-enduring " and " not subject to
essential change." Hell therefore is the place of
impenitent sin, in which the sinners, though
raging against their accomplices, accusing their
ill-luck, or cursing God, their parents, and their
kin —

The human race, the seed from which they grew,
The hour and place they were begotten in ^ —

(Musgrave)

^ U' non si riede
giammai a buon voler.

Paradiso xx : 1 06 sq.

2 Bestemmiavano Iddio e lor parenti,

1' umana specie, il luogo, il tempo e il seme
di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti.

Inferno iii : 103 sqq.

36

HELL

yet never essentially change their ideals. However
well they see the folly of what they did^ they no more
feel the vileness or vanity of what they aimed at than
they did on earth. But the very consistency and force
with which Dante holds this belief transforms his
vision of Hell into a revelation of the nature of the
evil choice itself and of the state of mind that it
expresses. And it is this that distinguishes, from the
moral and spiritual point of view, Dante's descrip-
tions from those, for instance, of Aquinas or of
Bunyan. While they in their delineations of Hell
exhaust their genius in the attempt to impress upon
us the frightful consequences we shall incur by sin,
Dante reveals to us the inherent evilness of the evil
choice itself, and turns not only our deliberate will,
but our affections and our very passions clean away
from it.

The manner in which Dante accomplishes his
purpose can be brought under no formula. It is true,
in general, to say that in reading the Inferno we realize
how the man who makes an evil choice has simply
to have rope enough, and to get, without qualifica-
tion or relief, exactly what he seeks, in order therein
and thereby to be utterly damned. Thus we see the
misers rolling huge stones with ceaseless strain and
toil, but accomplishing nothing, and getting no-
where, for ever and ever. But this is just what the
miser is doing now. He is courting toil and weariness
and depriving himself of all their fruits. To do this
always and only is his constant endeavour, and to
succeed in doing it is Hell. Or we may listen to the

37

THE COMEDY

confession of the sullen souls sunken in the mire of

the river Styx :

Sullen we were
Once in the sweet air where the Sun makes glee,
And sluggish vapours then within us bare ;
Now in these bitter dregs sullen are we ! ^

(MUSGRAVE.)

This is what sulking is. If we choose by a deliberate
exercise of will to shut out the sunshine and air of
converse with those around us, and to nurse a venge-
ful sense of grievance in the sodden blackness of our
minds, and if we are strong enough to persist and
to succeed, then we have achieved — Hell.

The attempt has sometimes been made to work
out this idea, and this alone, through every circle
and into every detail. But this is to reduce the free
play of Dante's splendid and appalling imagination
to the artificiality of an ingenious but frigid allegory ;
and, as a fact, his method varies. Sometimes the
punishment of the sin is represented under the
more obvious and familiar type of the sinner re-
ceiving the same measure which he had himself
meted. Thus, the sowers of schism, who have dis-
severed those who belong to each other and who
must ever yearn for reunion, are themselves cleft
and mangled — to reunite and be cleft again — by
the scimitar of a fiend. In other cases the form

1 Tristi fummo

neir aer dolce che dal sol s' allegra,
portando dentro accidioso fummo :
Or ci attristiam nella belletta negra.

Inferno vii : \2\ sqq.

38

HELL

of punishment is, in the first instance at least, sug-
gested, for example, by a current etymology that
connected the word " hypocrite ** with the Greek
word for ** gold," or by the scriptural association of
the punishment of unnatural vice with the fiery rain
that fell upon the Cities of the Plain. But whenceso-
ever Dante derives his materials and whatever the
particular relation between sin and punishment into
which he works them, the whole atmospheric im-
pression is uniform and is irresistible. Every reader
who is not paralyzed by mere horrors, or carried
away by isolated splendours of poetry, feels, vaguely
perhaps at first, but with inevitable cumulative effect
as he reads on and as he reads again, that a great seer
is unfolding to him the Vision of Sin, and this as the
first step in his task of striving " to rescue those who
are yet living from the state of misery and lead them
to the state of bliss.**

In his dogmatic conception of hell, then, as a
place of eternal and hopeless misery Dante stands
where his contemporaries stood, but under this
aspect he does not make the least attempt to explain
it, or bring it into relation with our human sense of
justice. He simply accepts it as a part of the divine
scheme. It wakes pity and horror in the poet's own
heart. The enlightened eyes of Beatrice seeing it as
God sees it can look upon it unmoved.^ But it is in
Epistola ad Kanem Grandem (15): 268 sff. [39].

^ lo son fatto da Dio, sua merc^, tale,
che la vostra miseria non mi tange.

Inferno ii : 91 /f.

39

THE COMEDY

the Strength of faith, not of sight, that Dante calls it
the work of ** the Divine Power, the Supreme
Wisdom, and the Primal Love." He cannot look
upon it without being caught by swirls of uncon-
trollable anguish or having to wrestle with a passion-
ate inward protest.

It is by thus abstaining from all attempts to ex-
plain Hell, or to ** justify the ways of God " in
creating it, that Dante gives it the impersonality
which alone makes it tolerable. It fixes the reader*s
mind upon Hell not as a material fact (which
however it scared could hardly convert or enlighten
him), but as a symbol of impenitent sin — a symbol
which can never lose its significance or its redeeming
power so long as men are capable of erring and of
recognizing that they have erred.

It remains, in this connection, to note that it was
in relation to the dogma of an eternal Hell that
Dante's faith found its hardest and perhaps its only
trial. That a Virgil or an Aristotle, for no defect in
their own lives or conduct, and for no neglected
opportunity that had ever been presented to them,
should be eternally barred from conclusive bliss, and
should be condemned for ever to live in longing that
knew no hope, appeared so cruelly unjust that we
feel the strain upon his faith almost reaching the
breaking-point. The thought of Virgil's exile gives
to Dante's portraiture of him a pathos that has no
parallel in literature ; and the ** thirst of many
years" with which it parched his soul, though it
prompted one of the sublimest songs of faith ever

40

HELL

Uttered by man, was carried back from heaven to
earth unslaked, however soothed.

The hell of Dante's creed, then, is an unexplained
and unintelligible place of torture ; but the Hell of
his vision is the revelation of the nature of impenitent
sin. And it follows, on either count, that the vision
of Hell vouchsafed to the pilgrims can never be
shared by the Denizens of hell itself; for sin, so
long as it is impenitent, cannot see itself as it is.
The message that the souls in hell have for Dante,
and through him for us, they can never receive them-
selves. Trajan, it is true, had been in hell, and at
the prayer of Gregory had been released from
bondage, so that Dante saw his soul in the heaven
of the just. But even he had not repented, or rather
had not come to the right view of truth, in hell, but
had been restored miraculously to the earthly life
in order that he might be capable of the enlighten-
ment which it was unthinkable that he should receive
in hell.

It is possible to initiate on earth the process which,
continued in Purgatory, shall lead to the Terrestrial
Paradise and ultimately to Heaven. But it is not
possible for that process to be initiated in hell.
Hence there is an absolute and final discontinuity
between hell and purgatory, objectively and for
their denizens. The departing soul takes its journey
cither to the bank of Acheron to find its eternal
place in hell, or else to the mouth of Tiber to gain
the shore of the purifying mount, the Garden of

Paradiio xix, xx.

4>

THE COMEDY

Eden, and then Heaven, in its continuous progress
towards its eternal place of fruition in God. But these
are alternatives, and there is no passing through Hell
to Purgatory.

Nevertheless, so completely does Dante*s vision
dominate his dogma in the resultant impression left
on the reader's mind that nothing is more common
than to find the subjective continuity of the pilgrim's
experience translated into terms of an objective con-
tinuity of function in the regions he traverses.
Hence, such assertions as that, " according to Dante,
Hell is the first step towards Heaven.'* How en-
tirely this contradicts Dante's conception we have
clearly seen, for Hell is the evil choice stereotyped
and irrevocable. It is a false scheme of values
arrested, ingrained, and become indelible. But
whereas the damned for ever see sin as it is not, they
reveal it as it is, and therefore the vision of Hell is
indeed what Hell itself is not — the first step to
Heaven. To have ** seen " what the fallen state is
fills us with heimweh for the Paradise we have lost
and sets our will to regain it.

IV. PURGATORY AND THE RECOVERED

EDEN

Dante uniformly represents his vision as the record
of an actual experience which had been granted to
him by a miraculous intervention wholly outside the
ordinary course of nature. He was called to this
experience by the divine mercy as the sole means of

42

PURGATORY AND EDEN

breaking down the obduracy of his own sinful heart
which had resisted even the exceptional means of
grace already vouchsafed to him. But the facts which
he represents as brought home to him with over-
whelming force and directness by miraculous means,
are accessible enough to all of us on earth if we
would but see them. Dante saw the evil choice as it
really is because he saw it stripped of all disguise,
freed from all admixture, and robbed of the glamour
with which false imaginations and associations in-
vest it. But we, too, may see it as it is if we will but
open our eyes. Nor does Dante conceive that God
has left us, even in our fallen state, altogether with-
out succour. Reason, it is true, was weakened and
confused by the Fall, and the passions now no longer
spontaneously acknowledge her sway. But it is still
her function to emancipate all our natural impulses
and appetites, both of sense and soul, from the im-
potence and thwartings of isolated self-assertion and
to bring them back to the freedom and harmony of
mutual support and order. Under her control the
earthly life, even of fallen man, may approximate
ever more closely to the life of Eden. And so even
as the divine grace condescended to prepare through
long ages the redemptive plan which, in its last
great act on the Mount of Calvary, should cancel
3ie ** long prohibition ** that had barred man out of
his forfeited heaven, so, too, by a contemporaneous
evolution on the secular side this same grace had
elaborated a system for the regulation of the affairs

Purgatorio xxx: 133-138.

43

THE COMEDY

of this world which should enable man in large
measure to " repair the ravage of the Fall " on its
temporal and earthly side.

Nothing is more essential for the right under-
standing of Dante than a clear conception of this two-
fold work of restoration as he conceives it. In Eden
Reason spontaneously secured man in the enjoyment
of terrestrial felicity, and Revelation would have led
him, in due course, first to a knowledge of the con-
ditions of celestial bliss and then to its fruition.
Nor did either Reason or Revelation abdicate its
function at the Fall. It is still Reason's business to
lead man to a life as of Eden ; and that is why Virgil
is Dante's guide not only in Hell, but right up into
the very Garden of Eden itself at the summit of the
Mount of Purgatory. And it is still the function of
Revelation to declare to man the nature of heavenly
bliss and to direct him to its attainment. Reason has
spoken through the great philosophers and poets,
and has organized her counsels for the regulation of
social life in that august instrument of administrative
justice the Roman Law, called by Dante scritta
ragione — " Reason codified.'' And in like manner
Revelation has been embodied in the Scriptures of
the Old and New Testaments.

Nor did the divinely granted succour to fallen
man arrest itself here : for Scripture and Roman
Law were each of them committed to the authorized
guardianship and interpretative administration of a
great institution which had been elaborated -pari
-passu with them ; the institutions, namely, of the

44

PURGATORY AND EDEN

Empire and the Church, the ** spouse and secretary
of God ** who " cannot lie."

It is with the former of these two institutions that
we are immediately concerned. Had the Empire
performed its duties, and had Roman Law been
duly enforced, there would have been a standing
vindication of justice upon earth and a perpetual
setting forth of the true scheme of moral values.
Greed, the greatest foe of justice, would have been
held in check ; with justice assured peace would
have been firmly established ; in relations of mutual
helpfulness the nations of the earth would have
supplemented and aided each the other's progress,
and the goal of human civilization would have been
reached in a life of earthly felicity reflecting, at least,
though not fully realizing, the original design of the
Creator for the earthly stage of man's existence. But
the Empire, internally false to its mission and ex-
ternally thwarted by the secular usurpations of the
Church, had failed to give the needed guidance and
support to frail and hesitating human virtue, and man
had gone farther and farther astray for lack of true
leaders. Nevertheless, in the heart of man the light
of Reason still shone, though with dimmed lustre,
and was still shed abroad by the writings of poets
and philosophers, while the protest of the Roman
Law against every form of injustice still stood.

Convivio II. vi : 33 sq. [v : 5], iv : 32 /f. [iii : 10]. Cf. IV. xv :

Monarchic I. iii /ff ., III. xvi, and passim. Purgatorio xvi : 97 /f^.,
zzzii : 94 /f f .,and many other passages in the Comedy and elsewhere.

45

THE COMEDY

Men therefore were not without means of ethical
grace, and only the most hardened could fail to see,
at least in their better moments, the true nature of
good and evil and to turn from the evil that had
stained their own lives. Such repentance when deep
and sincere would not be a mere intellectual per-
ception, however vivid, of the right values and of the
reasonableness of a life regulated by them. It would
be a definite act of the will and of the affections,
going out in passionate love to the virtues erst
neglected, and actively repelling and abominating
the evil once embraced. To the truly penitent
an evil choice is not something that, though still
attractive, must be resisted. For true repentance is a
turning away of the whole heart and the whole will
and inclination from evil ways. To the truly penitent
such ways have become hateful.

Yet here on earth this true repentance may be
short-lived. It is, indeed, easy to imagine one who
has practised, let us say, wanton cruelty to man or
beast seeing at a flash the true nature of his action
and by a definitive revulsion of feeling becoming in-
capable of ever again committing such acts or taking
pleasure in them. Such a one would be seized by an
almost intolerable sense of compunction and by a
longing to do and to bear in the cause of mercy and
tenderness, and to cancel the self-identification with
a hateful thing which stained the record of his life.
Such a repentance, in the case supposed, would be
conclusive and final. But it is only too familiar to
human experience that a repentance equally pas-

46

PURGATORY AND EDEN

sionate and sincere and perhaps equally secure of its
own permanence nevertheless may break down
under stress of temptation. The thing that had be-
come hateful has resumed its power of attraction,
and the false values again blur the true. Thus, on
earth the glimpses of the Hell of evil choice and will,
conclusive as they seem to us at the time, may yet
pass away. But as long as true penitence lasts it is no
determination to abandon a course that still attracts
(for this at best is only a desire to repent, and not
repentance), but an actual "conversion,** a "turning
round ** of our affections themselves.

On earth, then, impulses to good and evil may
chase each other across our hearts, and even whilst
we are definitely overcoming our evil ways we may
constantly have to fortify our will against unregener-
ate impulses that refuse to be silenced even when
controlled. But according to Dante's view this is
not so either in Hell or in Purgatory. For in the one
.realm penitence is impossible and in the other it has
been, so to say, " lock-stitched " and is irreversible.

Dante believed that genuine and passionate con-
version or repentance is in any case necessary to
salvation. If a man is not so repentant at the moment
of death his way lies to Acheron, and repentance is
for ever impossible. But if, at that moment of death,
not only his aspirations and resolves but his affec-
tions and impulses are directed aright, then there
is no going back for him, and his dispositions,
secure from all change or slackening, become ir-
revocable as he passes into the world of spirits.

47

THE COMEDY

When Dante had seen Hell he felt that whatever
weakness or fluctuation there might still be in his
life the vision itself could never wax dim. Hence-
forth he would always know sin for what it was ;
and when the decisive moment came the rush of his
affections would inevitably sweep him towards that
which is good ; just as when we are most chilled or
even embittered in our feelings towards those we
love, we know in our heart that if, at that instant, our
whole relation to them were collectively and con-
clusively at stake our trivial sense of alienation would
be utterly consumed in the flame of all-embracing
love ; and this very knowledge makes us ashamed of
the momentary disproportions which our distorted
vision has imposed upon the things that matter and
the things that do not. It was to secure men to this
condition of underlying certainty of affection, even
amid the rise and fall of random impulses not yet
under full control, that Dante delivered his message
to " remove those living in this life from the state
of misery and bring them to the state of bliss."
Thus, if the Inferno is a study of unrepentant sin,
the Purgatorio is a study of the state of true penitence
wherever and whenever it may exist.

It was a part of the general belief and tradition of
Dante's day that though the act of repentance fol-
lowed by confession and absolution obliterates the
guilt of sin, yet unperformed penances and the per-
petual accretion, at the very least, of venial sin will
in all cases, save that of saints and martyrs, leave a
surplus to be expiated in dire pain of the senses after

48

PURGATORY AND EDEN

death. Here as elsewhere we read Dante*s mind in
his distribution of stresses more than in the articles
of his creed. He accepted indeed the penal and
expiatory function of Purgatory, but his stress is
laid on a conception of it that the official repre-
sentatives of the Church overlooked if they did not
deny. For to him not even the most efficacious
sacrament, not the atoning death on the cross, not
even the sense of the divine forgiveness can super-
sede the need of the self-expression of penitence
following on the act of repentance : and it is to
this essential quality of penitence that he directs
our minds. For he regards the pains of the souls in
Purgatory not as a price they have to pay for entry
into Heaven, but as a medium through which they
can vitally utter their repudiation of their own past
and assert their loyalty to the things they had once
denied and betrayed. Thus, the pains of Purgatory
are not endured, but are welcomed and embraced as
a solace and support which relieves the else in-
tolerable sense of discord in the soul between the
things it loves and the things it has actively stood for.
So whether the avaricious, for example, who had
turned away from the stars of heaven and fixed their
gaze upon the dust of earth, in sordid preference for
low and cramping aims, still lie prone and bound,
testifying to their unworthincss to look upon the
heaven they love or away from the earth that bears
witness against them ; or whether the gluttons — so
famished that their sunken eye-sockets are ** like
Purga/mo xivi : 13-15, xxiii : 70-75, 85 Sf., ixi : 64-66.
49 D

THE COMEDY

rings from which the jewel has been thrust out " —
who pass by the deHcious fruit-trees feehng and
mastering the tug, in its full organic strength, of that
appetite which in its mere languor of self-cultivation
had once enslaved them ; in every case the sufferings
are no mere passive endurance. In every case they
are an active self-expression, a reversing and un-
living of the past life, a countering of its evil record;
a thing positive, not negative, a self-identification
with the values of Eden ; an act, not a mere acquies-
cence, of the will.

The souls of the repentant do indeed desire so to
complete their repudiation of the past that it shall
once for all be cast off and done with, so that they
shall no longer feel that it belongs to them or they in
any sense to it. Then they will be able to enter the
life of Innocence in the Garden of Eden without
feeling that they themselves make a discord with it
and are a blot upon its beauty and its sweetness.
When that time comes the spontaneous impulse to
rise into the unreproved fruition of their inheritance
of delight will " surprise *' them, and at the same
moment the whole mountain will shake with a cry
of sympathetic triumph rising from the souls that
still have to dree their weird. But, until that moment
comes for it, each soul flings itself upon its pain, not
so much because it is incidentally painful as because
it is essentially expressive of its present passion.

To sum up, then, the Inferno shows us what the

Purgatorio xviii : 115-117, xx : 127-138, with xxi : 58-66.
Cf. xix : 1 39-141.

50

PURGATORY AND EDEN

loss of Eden means. To have seen Hell is to hate
evil and to turn with strong rebound to the blurred
and desecrated ideals of that better self which still
preserves the impress of the life of Innocence. To
go through Purgatory is to undo the past, and, at
last, to resolve the discord between what we love
and what we have been ; so the Purgatorio teaches
us that Eden may be and must be regained, and
shows us the way. But there is yet another step.
On the terraces of purgation on the Mount the
souls contemplate evil as the foul thing they have
embraced and good as the loveliness they have cast
away. Must not the very passion of concentrated
repudiation stamp the memory, at any rate, of evil,
all the more indelibly upon the consciousness }
Perhaps. But it is not so in Eden itself. Actually to
live the life of Innocence, with the sense of utterly
belonging to it, makes past evil so unreal and un-
believable that it is as though it had not been. It has
no hold upon mind or memory. And so Dante tells
us of the stream of Lethe that springs, not on the
purgatorial sides of the Mount, but in the Garden
of Eden itself. When he has drunk of that stream
and stands unreproved by Beatrice's side the whole
history of his aberrations and his recovery drops
clean out of his mind. His present innocence links
itself directly to the innocence of those early days
when Beatrice still led his willing feet ** upon the
true path," and he is conscious of no alien wander-
ings ever having intervened. To have seen Hell, to
have gone through Purgatory, to have lived the life

51

THE COMEDY

of Innocence and drunk the waters of Lethe, is to
stand where our first parents stood — or would have
stood had they persevered under their first trial —
with young-eyed wonder and delight, in a world
whose beauty cannot ensnare nor its loves betray.

EPILOGUE

A right understanding of the relation of Purgatory
to the Earthly Paradise and of the Earthly Paradise
to Heaven as Dante conceived them will bring out
the profound significance of a special feature in his
representation of the site of purgatory that everyone
has noticed but not everyone has understood. He
departs from the uniform assumption of his con-
temporaries that purgatory lay in the subterranean
purlieus of hell ; and he locates it on the sides of a
great mountain at the antipodes of Jerusalem. The
full meaning of this will be grasped when we note
that, according to Dante, this mountain originally
rose, not as a place of purgation, but as what we may
call the pedestal of the Garden of Eden. It was only
when man had fallen from his high estate and must
toilsomely regain what had originally been his birth-
right that he had to ** climb " that mount to the
summit of which he was by rights native. To Dante
it was an inevitable dictate of symbolical logic that
the process of vital recovery of the state of Innocence
should be worked out in process of the physical
ascent to the actual Eden.

And note, above all, that to Dante Eden is still
52

EPILOGUE

the appointed vestibule of Heaven. He had no con-
ception of the ideal earthly life being a non-essential
part of the experience of man that had been per-
manently lost by the Fall. The earthly life existed
of its own right, and not only as a prelude to the
heavenly life. He would have endorsed with all his
heart the opinion of Aquinas previously expounded
(p. 27), that the human experience of a mind de-
veloping under the stimulus of the senses and up-
building itself on the materials supplied by them —
in perfect balance and spontaneous symmetry,
abandoning itself with entire confidence to the
guidance of its own impulses and never betrayed by
them — was needed not only for the replacing of the
fallen angels, and not only for the training of man
for Heaven, but also on its own account as a phase
of the creative joy of God and the perfection of the
universe. The belief that some approach to this
ideal life on earth was still possible inspired Dante
with his profound reverence for all the instruments
of good government and for every artistic expression
of beauty ; and it fed that native optimism as to the
future possibilities of the human race which is con-
stantly cropping up through the surface of his official
pessimism and triumphing over the darkness of his
personal experience. Yet the life we now live could
at best render but an imperfect and distorted image
of the life of Eden, as it stood at the beginning in the
creative plan. And to Dante therefore it was a
spiritual necessity to think of the ideal state of Eden
itself being actually experienced on this eanh^ if not

53

THE COMEDY

in this life ; that there might be no hiatus or defect
in the full realization of the earthly and the heavenly
joy of the elect.

One more subject must be touched upon. The
purpose of this essay was to set forth the essential
thought of Heaven to which the thought of Hell
and of Purgatory is related in Dante's mind. To
enter upon his actual treatment of the transcen-
dent theme of Heaven is beyond its scope. But
there is one point at which the Paradiso is so linked
to the representation of the Terrestrial Paradise that
a few supplementary words must be added to what
can be read in the Purgatorio, We have seen that
Dante, when he has drunk of Lethe, forgets all that
intervened since he strayed from the ideals associated
with Beatrice, so that not only all the beautiful com-
panionship and care of Virgil, but the pleadings
with him, " in dream and otherwise," of Beatrice
herself, and her journey to hell to secure VirgiFs
guidance for him, have passed out of his mind be-
cause the meaning and the occasion of them have
become unrealizable to him inasmuch as they
rested on errors of which there is now no record or
trace in his mind.

But surely these things in themselves were good,
though the occasion that called them forth was evil,
and, as good, they will enter into the consciousness
of his soul in heaven though they have vanished
from it on earth. Yes, for there is another stream be-
sides Lethe in the Earthly Paradise. It is the stream

Purgatorio xxx : 1 3 3- 1 4 1 .

54

EPILOGUE

of Eunoe, or fair memory; and a little after Dante
has drunk of Lethe he drinks of Eunoe also. To live
the life of Innocence not only detaches the soul from
all sense of fellowship with evil, but quickens in it
all memories of good and brings them back from
oblivion with all their deep significance revealed.
This is the last and most perfect gift of the recovered
Eden to Dante's pilgrim soul and to all others who
pass that way. And so we find that the once sinful
souls that Dante meets in heaven have indeed re-
covered the memory of their sins, but remember
them not with any lingering sense that they belong
to them, but only as the occasions that prompted the
redeeming grace that now has undisputed sway in
their triumphant sense of fruition. Rejoicing in the
perfect will of God, and finding therein their peace,
they find their own forgiveness there and they forgive
themselves.

Paradiio ix : 34-36, 103-108.

55

<P'^%^T II
THE MINOR WORKS

In honorem

KAROLI WITTE

^<^%r II

THE MINOR WORKS
(In the light of the Comedy)

Dante*s life, and the record of it contained in his
works, culminate in the Comedy ; and just as the
earlier parts of the Comedy reveal their full meaning
only when related to the Earthly Paradise and to
Heaven, so Dante's Minor Works, in their turn,
only acquire their true significance when we regard
them as the preparation for the Comedy, fore-
shadowing it half-consciously, or unconsciously
leading up to it. I assume a general acquaintance
with these Minor Works themselves, especially the
Vita Nuova^ the Canzoni or Odes, the Cortvivio^ and
the Monarchia ; and, taking them severally, I shall
first offer some comments and reflections upon them
on their own merits, and then try in each case to re-
late them to their final outcome in the Comedy. We
must begin, of course, with the Vita Nuova,

I. THE **VITA NUOVa"

When Dante, in his eighteenth year, wrote the first
poem that we possess from him, or that he himself
acknowledges, there was nothing to distinguish his
general conception of Italian poetry from that of his
fellow-citizens. Other young Florentines of birth
and position were writing love-poems in the verna-
cular ; and their vocabulary, verse-forms, and tradi-
tional images had already been highly elaborated,

59

THE MINOR WORKS

and, in the artistic sense of the term, convention-
alized. The personification of Love, the potency of
the loved one*s salutation, the regenerative influence
of enamourment, conferring, as it were, a patent of
nobility on the true lover and raising the whole tone
of his life, are common form with this group of poets.
But in no other field had the Tuscan vernacular re-
ceived so high a degree of elaboration as a literary
instrument. Italian was indeed already used in Italy
for many purposes of instruction, but the Tuscan
tradition confined its artistic scope to love-lyrics
only ; and Dante and his elder friend Guido Caval-
canti evidently thought it would be a startling im-
propriety to cultivate in the vulgar tongue any other
branch of literature proper. Dante finds the justifica-
tion of withdrawing this one branch of literature
from the domain of Latin and transferring it to the
common speech, in the necessity of writing love-
poetry in a language which could be generally under-
stood and even critically appreciated, by women ;
and it would appear that the Florentine ladies, at any
rate, were in fact keenly interested in this nascent
poetry and that the references to their incisive
judgements and appreciations which we meet in
extant poems or in the traditions that surround them
were far from being mere formal compliments.

Thus, when Dante felt the " new life ** of the
higher sensibilities and perceptions awakened in him
by his early meeting with Beatrice ; when this life
was nurtured and matured by his bashful contem-
plation of the opening beauty of soul that revealed

60

THE "vita NUOVa"

itself in her gracious ways ; when he was thrilled by
a casual interchange of civilities or deeply troubled
by real or fancied slights ; and, finally, when he
reached the unassailable security of a devotion that
demanded neither graceful acknowledgement nor
even bare comprehension in return, he inevitably be-
came Beatrice's poet ; and then, after death had
removed her visible presence and other interests or
passions began to dispute the unique place she had
occupied in his heart, he regarded them, for a time,
as temptations to take up life on a lower plane instead
of allowing it to be further refined and ennobled by
yet deeper devotion to his now glorified lady. At the
end of his own idealized record, in which he weaves
selected poems, on a ground of a continuous prose
narrative, into the ethereal texture known as the
Vita Nuovay he closes on the note suggested by a
wondrous vision which rebaptized his early manhood
in the waters that had consecrated his childish soul
to the service of beauty, truth, and goodness : and he
aspires if his life endures to write of Beatrice ** what
ne'er was writ of woman.**

It was on the eighth day of June in 1290 that
Beatrice died. Dante was twenty-four or possibly
just twenty-five years old, and the Vita Nuova must
have been completed, in the form in which we now
have it, within one or two years of this time.

How large a place in the young citizen and
soldier's life was actually occupied by his ideal pas-

Fita NuovM xxv, especially 43-5 ! [6 /f .]. Cf. xxxi : 1 3-24 [xxx :
2 if.], for the obverse principle.

61

THE MINOR WORKS

sion it is impossible to say. It is certain that he
entered eagerly into many phases of the rich and
varied life of Florence in that marvellous period of
its history. He was well read in the Latin poets and
in the current Latin translations of Aristotle, and he
had a good knowledge of astronomy ; but he did
not regard himself as a student, and had apparently
acquired his knowledge and formed his taste for
literature, much as an Athenian of the age of Pericles
might have done, under the reaction to his environ-
ment as a well-born citizen of ** the Great City " on
the Arno.

The external means of gratifying and developing
his powers would come of themselves, and would
hardly need to be sought by one who lived in the
fellowship of the minds and in practice of the affairs
which made that city great. We know, too, that he
was amongst the fore fighters in the battle of Cam-
paldino in the year before Beatrice's death ; and
his extant poems, outside the canon of the Vita
Nuova but belonging to the period covered by its
composition, show that without passing beyond the
limits of the recognized love-theme and without de-
flection to any of its baser suggestions he had already
found room for a wider and lighter play of fancy and
emotion than could harbour in the cloistral atmo-
sphere of the monument of his early idealism.

On the other hand, it would surely be a profound
misconception to regard the Vita Nuova as some-
thing apart that had no vital connection or ** ex-
change of pulses " with the full-blooded life of this

62

THE "vita NUOVa"

Florentine soldier and man of society and affairs.
At its core it asserts itself as a genuine account of the
birth in his soul of the love of beauty, goodness, and
truth ; the conviction that these are realities and
not mere dreams ; and the consciousness of a mission
to make them real to others. This mission in its suc-
cessive transformations was the inspiration of his
life, and it led him at last to the Beatific Vision.
In the first chapters of the Vita Nuova^ therefore,
we read the beginnings of the life-history which
culminates in the final cantos of the Paradiso ; but
it is no light task to trace the links between the be-
ginning and the end ; and as the initial step in any
such attempt we must note with closer attention
certain details in the Vita Nuova the full significance
of which might well escape our notice.

The first point to observe concerns those elaborate
love-guiles which probably cause a vague uneasiness
to many ingenuous readers who perhaps hardly like
to recognize it even to themselves. No doubt it is
natural for any sensitive soul to wish to shield its
inmost life from the intrusions of curiosity. But here,
in Dante's case, the influence of the Provencal
Troubadours is clearly discernible in the light under
which he places the events he narrates. Unmarried
women were almost inaccessible in Proven(;al society,
whereas young married ladies were the centres of
brilliant circles of admiration, compliment, and
chivalrous service. It was to them that the Trou-
badours paid their court, and as the singer always
professed to be very seriously in love with his lady

63

THE MINOR WORKS

secrecy became a fixed convention in their poetic
tradition. The Troubadour's lady must never be
addressed in his poems under her own name.

Should her identity be suspected means must be
taken to mislead the " busy-bodies,** for whom, in
Troubadour literature, there is a special technical
term. They are sometimes spoken of almost as if
they were an organized body of malignant perse-
cutors of all true lovers, like " the Jews " who lower
as a dark background in the Fourth Gospel. The
whole scheme was obviously in many cases a mere
traditional form. The great lady no doubt would
take the homage of her minstrel for the most part in
perfect innocence, just for what it was worth ; and
the supposed secrecy would conceal nothing and
would have nothing to conceal. An enlightening
though obviously imperfect parallel may be found in
the poetic worship of Gloriana by the Elizabethan
poets. Nevertheless, the convention had its ultimate
ground in the actual social conditions of the Trou-
badour environment. There were certainly cases in
which it closely corresponded with the fact ; and in
such cases it became a matter of consequence to
maintain a real secrecy.

In Dante's Florence, on the contrary, there was
no vital sap in this convention ; for the social con-
ditions and customs were not such as to support it
in any way. So when we find the Vita Nuova follow-
ing the almost stereotyped course of enamourment,
concealment by love-guiles, misunderstandings,
scandalous imputations, exculpation, and explana-

64

THE "vita NUOVa"

tion it is impossible not to recognize the force of the
Troubadour tradition which may well have reacted
unconsciously upon Dante*s real conduct and feelings
at the time, and more consciously perhaps upon his
subsequent interpretation and record of them.
Again, when we read his extant poems of this period
(some of which have been recovered quite recently),
and see that the " feigned " poetic addresses were
occasionally carried further than the narrative of the
Vita Nuova would suggest, the suspicion may well
rise in our minds that the passing susceptibilities of
a young man's heart gave a greater sincerity to some
of his poems to his ** screen '* ladies than he after-
wards chose to admit. Such speculations, however,
must in any case be left as mere conjectures. What
is certain is that not until the traditional cycle has
been completed, and not till the memorable rebuke
administered to the poet by a lady belonging to
Beatrice's circle has shaken him out of his self-
consciousness and artificiality, does the pure stream
of lyric rapture by which the Vita Nuova lives begin
to flow. It is in the first seventeen sections that the
Troubadour scaffoldage is clearly apparent to the
practised eye ; and it is after this that all the poems
occur which either Dante himself or any of his
admirers quote for their own sake.

It is here that the baldanza d' amove — the triumph
and exultation of Dante's love — pours out its rich,
undying utterance.

And again, if the earlier chapters of the Vita
Vita Nuova xviii.

THE MINOR WORKS

Nuova echo the scheme of the Troubadour "pro-
gress of love " the prose poem in its entirety may be
said to foreshadow in a certain sense the entire
scheme of the Comedy, and therefore to become a
kind of symboHc epitome of the whole history of man
as conceived and set forth by the Church. For in the
Vita Nuova^ too, as in the Comedy, there is an
Earthly Paradise and a Fall, and there is a recovery
that reopens the gate of Heaven. The whole tale of
Dante's early love is surrounded by the breath of
Eden. The shadowy suggestion of a Fall appears
when in the later portion of the Vita Nuova Dante
admits a temporary fluctuation in his heart's devo-
tion ; and, whatever may have been the case with the
earlier "screen*' maidens, we are now, at the close,
in presence of a veritable conflict of emotions.
The story of the Pitiful Lady, towards love of whom
Dante was swayed in his affliction, is a touching re-
cord of a human experience fully intelligible to every
human soul and reflecting not the smallest discredit
upon its hero. Yet it is treated by Dante as though
it were a kind of lapse from grace that banished him
from his Eden. The episode stands quite outside the
traditional framework, and the very fact that, as every
reader feels, it perplexes the artistic symmetry and
beauty of the work, is a pledge of its sincerity as a record.
This, then, is the story : A little more than a year
after Beatrice's death Dante noticed that a certain
Gentle Lady, who could see him from her window,
appeared to regard his forlorn and desolate state with
compassion ; and he found a strange comfort in the

66

THE "vita NUOVa"

flow of tears which her sympathy drew from his eyes.
Gradually he began to suspect that it was more her
own presence and tenderness than any quickening
of his thoughts of Beatrice that moved him, and he
was shocked to think that he was already half-faith-
less to the memory that was the consecration of his
life. Then he began to ask himself whether this
gracious presence was not really a message from
Love himself : a message of comfort and of renewed
life ; an invitation to come back from brooding over
the darkness of his loss into the light of present
beauty and joy ? For a moment the new emotion
triumphed, but only to reveal its own inadequacy.
It was the desolate cry for consolation that had
thrown him upon a ** second best '* when his only
manly course was to endure and to work through
his affliction to a yet higher life of realization. A
vision of Beatrice, the red-robed child of eight years,
as he had first seen her, brought back his wandering
heart from this unworthy yearning, and in ** grievous
penitence " he fixed all his thoughts once more upon
Beatrice. Not long afterwards he wrote the final .
sonnet of the Ft fa Nuova, wherein he tells us (the^
translation is Rossetti*s) how :

Beyond the sphere which spreads to widest space
Now soars the sigh that my heart sends above :
A new perception born of grieving Love

Guiding it upward the untrodden ways.

When it hath reached unto the end, and stays,
It lees a lady round whom splendours move
In homage : till, by the great light thereof

Abashed, the pilgrim spirit stands at gaze.

67

THE MINOR WORKS

It sees her such that when it tells me this
Which it hath seen I understand it not —
It hath a speech so subtle and so fine.
And yet I know its voice within my thought
Often remembereth me of Beatrice :
So that I understand it, ladies mine.

Compare this with the lines in the first Canto of the
Paradiso :

In that heaven which most receiveth of his light have I been ; and
have seen things which whoso thence descends hath nor know-
ledge nor power to retell :

For, as it draws anigh to its desire our intellect plunges so deep that
memory cannot follow in the track.

Nathless, whatever of the holy realm I could up-treasure in my
memory shall now be matter of my poesy .^

Thus does the Vita Nuova already faintly fore-
shadow the Paradisoy and with it the essential sub-
jects of the Comedy as a whole.

But we have not yet read quite the last word of the
Vita Nuova ; and that last word is the most signi-
ficant of all from our present point of inquiry.
" After this sonnet," Dante says, " there appeared
to me a wondrous vision which made me purpose to

^ Nel ciel che piu della sua luce prende

fu' io, e vidi cose che ridire

ne sa ne puo chi di lassu discende ;
Perche, appressando se al suo desire,

nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,

che retro la memoria non puo ire.
Veramente quant* io del regno santo

nella mia mente potei far tesoro,

sar^ ora materia del mio canto.

Paradiso i: 4-12.

68

THE "vita NUOVa"

write no more of this blessed one until such time as I
might treat of her more worthily. And to come at
this I study all I may, as she knoweth verily. So that,
if it be His pleasure by whom all things live that
my life endure some few years, I hope to write of her
what ne*er was writ of woman." Then follows the
concluding prayer that when this task shall be ac-
complished he may behold the glory of his lady ** as
she looks upon the face of Him who is blessed for
evermore.'*

This would seem to lead straight to the Paradiso ;
but we have only to study the Comedy in its entirety
to see that there lies much between this early vow
and its fulfilment, and that before it was finally ac-
complished it had already been broken, and that
more than once. In the Purgatorio we read of Dante's
meeting with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise, and
we find that not only does she charge him with
persistent, nay stubborn, faithlessness to the life and
ideals to which she had raised him, but she also de-
clares explicitly that, through dreams and what
pleadings else, she herself had called him back from
his wanderings on the false path — and had called
in vain, ** so little did he heed her." It is quite im-
possible to take this as referring to the innocent
yearning during ** certain days " for human comfort
and affection after Beatrice's death, as recounted in
the Fita Nuova, There had evidently been some far
more real and deeper Fall between the Eden of the

Fita Nuova xliii [xlii]. Purgatorio xxx, xxxi, especially xxx :
133-135. Fita Nuova xl : 13 [xxxix : 2].

69

THE MINOR WORKS

Vita Nuova and the journey of recovery recorded in
the Inferno and the Purgatorio. The " wondrous
vision '* at the close of the Vita Nuova cannot there-
fore be the great revelation that was afterwards dis-
tilled, line by line, into the terzine of the Comedy.
It must be one of those fruitlessly tender attempts to
arrest the wayward steps of the poet on his down-
ward path to which Beatrice alludes as preceding her
appeal to Virgil for help.

We saw from the first that it might prove a diffi-
cult task to trace the promise of the Vita Nuova up to
its fulfilment in the Comedy, and now we need not
be surprised if the first steps seem rather to recede
from the goal than to approach it. With this secure
knowledge, then, of the starting-point and the end,
with this anticipation of the intervening obstacles
and vacillations, and with this warning that Dante
himself may not always have wished to leave his
actual footprints clear for us to trace, we may now
go forward with the task of following the succession
of the poet's works and gaining what light we can
from them as to the antecedents of his supreme
achievement.

II. THE "CANZONI**

Dante's banishment from Florence took place
about eleven and a half years after Beatrice's death,
say ten years after the completion of the Vita Nuova,

Purgatorio xxx : 1 3 6- 1 4 1 .

70

THE "CANZONi"

What can we know of his life during these years ?
There are records, too scanty but authentic as far as
they go, of poHtical and official activities, on which
we shall touch in connection with a later period.
There are certified copies of legal instruments which
show that, in partnership with his brother or on his
sole responsibility, he contracted very considerable
debts during these years, debts which were not
liquidated till after his death. We know that he was
married to Gemma, of the great house of the Donati,
and that he had at least four children by her. Of his
domestic life before his exile we know nothing.
The later tradition that he and Gemma lived un-
happily together is without any substantive founda-
tion. The very little we know of Gemma herself,
who survived her husband for many years, is entirely
to her credit. For anything beyond these bare facts
we must rely upon Dante's own works and an am-
biguous reference to him, here and there, by his
contemporaries.

In the Purgatorio there is,' in addition to the re-
proaches of Beatrice and the answering confession
of the poet, a remarkable passage that has specific
reference to the years now under consideration. It
is where Dante meets his friend Forese Donati, who
was a relative of his wife's, and who died in 1296.
Dante says to him that the way they spent their lives
in the years of their companionship must be of
grievous memory to both of them; and declares, as
from the fictitious or ideal date of Easter 1 300, that
he himself is only now being rescued from that kind

71

THE MINOR WORKS

of life by Virgil. There still survives an exchange of
Sonnets between the two friends Dante and Forese.
They are on a distinctly lower level than anything
else that we have from Dante's hand, but there is
nothing in them seriously to tarnish his good name.

There is better material for the reconstruction of
Dante's intellectual life and development during this
decade in the series of Canzoni^ or Odes, which have
come down to us. The Canzone is a beautiful form
of verse which the Italians had elaborated and
systematized, from the practice of the Troubadours,
till it became an instrument of unrivalled power for
the expression of varied emotions. Dante could
work with supreme effectiveness under the combined
severity and elasticity of this exquisite species of
composition, of which he was truly enamoured.
And to the end of his days, though he had poured out
his whole soul in his own Terza Rima^ he doubtless
regarded the Canzone 2iS the most exalted and majestic
form of Italian poetry.

The decade on which we are now engaged is pre-
eminently the period of the Canzone in Dante's poetic
career, though he had done great things with it be-
fore and was to do great things with it again.

Now, some of these Odes repeat or echo the motives
of the Vita Nuova itself, but others are the direct ex-
pression of the poet's passion for study. They link
themselves to that resolve to dedicate years of
strenuous toil to the task of making himself more
worthy to write of Beatrice with which the Vita

Purgatorio x-nu '. 76-84,115-126.
72

THE "CANZONi"

Nuova closes; and they seem therefore to follow on
from that work rather than to repeat its notes.
But what was animating Dante at the inception of
these systematic studies was surely no prevision of
the Comedy, but rather, we may suppose, a concep-
tion that Beatrice, in her own right, ought to be to
others — to all, indeed, who were worthy — what she
had been to the poet himself. If he could show her to
others as she truly was, and as she had been seen by
him, then she would wake them also to the meaning
of life, and to them, too, she would reveal goodness,
beauty, and truth as present realities and powers.
But in order thus to reveal her he must pass beyond
the stage of instinctive perception, and must analyze,
evolve, and develop all the implications of that
higher life to which he had himself been called and
to which he in turn would fain call others. He must
not only feel the soul, but must understand the
instruments and appliances of that higher wisdom
of which he was to be the apostle. Hence his new-
born zeal for the deepened study of all branches of
truth, including science, theology, and, more especi-
ally, philosophy. Such study was now something
more than a spontaneous expression of his intellec-
tual alertness and enjoyment of life. It had been
drawn into his mission and had become an inspira-
tion and a passion — a passion, as we shall see, that
soon acquired independent strength and, forgetting
itself as a means, became an end.

But how could this zeal for study express itself
in poetry } Here we may detect the first workings

73

THE MINOR WORKS

of an impulse, that runs through Dante's whole
career, to widen the scope of Italian literature and to
annex one after another the provinces over which
Latin had hitherto reigned undisputed. It is true
that he still does full homage to the Tuscan tradition,
but he is already stretching it to cover more than ever
it was made for ! What he is impelled to express
concerns the hopes and fears of the student : his self-
distrust battling with his fervour and his ambition,
his fits of despair, and the rare moments of triumph
when it seemed as though Philosophy herself were
smiling upon her devoted servant and opening to
him her inmost secrets. But is not this the very
theme of love ? Surely he who woos Philosophy may
best tell of his passion in the consecrated forms of
the love lyric. Hence comes the series of ** alle-
gorical " poems in which the lady of the poet*s vows
is none other than my Lady Philosophy herself;
and the passion that now sighs and pleads, and now
rises to awe-struck and half-tremulous exultation, is
the intellectual love that woos that exalted mistress.

To the sympathetic reader there should be no
difficulty in determining which of Dante's poems
belong to this allegorizing group. The test is a
simple one. Does the " allegorical,'' that is, the
philosophical, interpretation of the poem make it
more, or does it make it less, psychologically con-
vincing ? If what seem like mere elegances or con-
ceits when literally interpreted begin to glow when
referred to the experiences of the baffled but in-
domitable student, then Philosophy is the lady of the

74

THE "CANZONI

poet's love. If the passion becomes pale, the images
less vivid, and the expression strained when Philo-
sophy is substituted for a human personality, then
it would be wronging Dante's genius to take the
poems on any other footing than as love-poems in the
primary sense. And this wrong we must not do him
even though it should be at his own bidding 1

It is indeed obvious that the application of this
canon must be purely subjective ; yet it seems safe
to say that students who frankly accept it will not
differ very materially in the conclusions to which it
leads them.

We must follow a little further yet this widening
of the domain of love-rhymes, and therefore of
Italian literature. Dante was stirred during this
period by many other thoughts besides those of the
purely speculative student. He was a keen observer
of the social conditions and manners around him,
and his wrath or contempt was moved by the vulgar
pretender to grace and elegance, the selfish and
sordid man of wealth, or the soulless herd whose
only conception of ** nobility ** was a combination of
distinguished birth with riches, or at best with the
conventional tone of good society. In short, as he
studied Aristotle's Ethics, let us say, he not only
speculated on moral problems, but felt the ** tearing
indignation " of the Roman satirist raging within
him and forcing him to utterance. Despite all his
theories, impassioned speech on such subjects must
shape itself for him in that vernacular to which
(notwithstanding his reverence for Latin and his

75

THE MINOR WORKS

easy, forceful handling of it) he felt a connatural
affinity that would not be denied.

But how were such themes to be brought within
the Tuscan tradition as to Italian poetry? Dante had
already prepared the way for himself unconsciously.
In the Vita Nuova Beatrice is never an isolated figure.
She is at a wedding party, or in church, or she is
weeping at the bedside of a lost friend, or walking
between two companions. The poet delights to sur-
round the central figure of his lady-love with little
insets and medallions representing the gracious com-
pany of maidens amongst whom she moved, and
with whom he might hold converse concerning her
even when she herself withheld her salutation.^
Now, to the mediaeval student, and pre-eminently to
Dante, abstract study was conceived not only as
having in itself an elevating effect upon the mind,
but as closely allied to all the virtues. Should
Philosophy be Dante's mistress, then Generosity,
true Nobility, Graciousness, Justice, and all their
train are, to him, his Lady's court ; and these may be
celebrated by her poet if he dare not, or may not,
come into her immediate presence, or if he cannot
rise to the full height of his central theme. Thus, if
he writes of true Nobility he expressly explains that

Cf. Convivio I. lii, xiii.

^ This feature of the Fita Nuova is the more significant inasmuch
as, so far as I remember, no Troubadour ever represents his lady as
in any such personal relations or concrete environment. She is always
the isolated object of his devotion, and is never seen in the ordinary
occupations or associations of life. It is only what directly concerns
her relations to him or his to her that receives any notice.

76

THE "CANZONi"

it is because his Lady is unpropitious, and he must
for a time drop those sweet rhymes of which she is
the object, hoping to return to them when she
smiles upon him once more ; and meanwhile he
will at least sing of her friends and so keep near her
presence. In the prose commentary which he after-
wards composed he explains this to mean that once,
when a particularly intricate problem of abstract
philosophy baffled him, he turned aside for relief to
a question concerning one of the virtues, so as still
to keep himself within the environment of his Lady
even when she herself rejected his homage. In
Dante's Odes, or Cartzom, then, we have abundant
evidence of his devotion to study, of his broadening
social and moral observation, and of the pressure
which his artistic genius was already bringing to
bear upon conventional limitations of vernacular
poetry.

But this is not all. Amongst the poems assigned
by common consent to this same decade some of the
most splendid breathe a mundane passion — ** a
terrible and tormenting love," as it has been called,
— equally remote from the atmosphere of the Fifa
Nuova, of the Philosophical love-poems, and of the
Paradiso, Here for the first time we come upon
manifestations of Dante's genius which seem not
so much to lie outside as to cut clean across the line
of progress from the Vita Nuova to the Paradiso,

Convivio IV, lines 1-20 of the Canzone, and chapter i. Cf. Can-
zone lix [Rim. Ixiiiii], Poscia ch*Amor : 1-19.

77

THE MINOR WORKS

That he actually met such ** cross ditches **^ on his
path we already know from the whole structure of
the Comedy, and more especially from Beatrice's
reproaches and Dante's confession in the Earthly
Paradise. We shall in due course see reason to con-
nect these said " cross ditches '* with the poems we
are now considering. They are known as the
" Pietra ** group, because the constant play upon
the word " pietra " — stone or jewel — suggests that
Pietra was the name of the lady whom they concern.

If we now put together all that we have gathered
of Dante's life during this period and survey it in
the light of Beatrice's reproachful declaration that
she had in spirit again and again called him, but
called in vain, back to the nobler life to which she
had for a time uplifted him, we can no longer doubt
that what Dante ultimately regarded as his real Fall
was subsequent to the compilation of the Vita Nuova,
If he continued to think at all of the episode of the
Gentle Lady in whose sympathy he had once sought
comfort the impression might almost merge itself in
later experiences as a mere foreshadowing of them ;
but in itself it cannot form the ground of the burning
shame he feels when standing face to face with
Beatrice.

We need not attempt to give precision to the

^ Purgatorio 1.J.TL '. 25—27.

Quai fossi attraversati o quai catene
trovasti, per che del passare innanzi
douesti cosi spogliar la spene ?

Fide more especially Canzone xii [Rim. ciii].

78

THE "CANZONi"

grounds of Dante*s confession in the Earthly Para-
dise. It is easy to see that there were breaches of
what he himself sincerely regarded as divine ordin-
ances which nevertheless woke no spontaneous re-
pugnance in his own mind and carried no implication
of baseness when he contemplated them in others,
which yet might become the cause of keen self-
reproach if he had himself fallen into them. His
deepening sense of a moral and religious mission
may have held up a standard ever more and more
exacting, and may have thrown back upon his past
life a more and more searching light, casting an ever
darkening shadow upon some of its episodes. Or he
may for a time have actually exhibited that combina-
tion, not rare in natures of exceptional energy, of high
devotion to intellectual pursuits with an addiction to
mundane pleasures and indulgences, felt even at the
time to be unworthy, and crossed by haunting
memories of purer ideals — ideals sometimes clung
to for support and sometimes evaded to escape their
rebuke.

All we know (and we need not care to know more)
is, on the one hand, that to Dante*s sensitive con-
science there came a time when the contrast between
what he had loved and what he had been, caused the
bitter shame which stands confessed in the Purgatorio\
and, on the other hand, that the terzine of the
Paradiso bear their own witness that they flow from a
heart no longer at war with itself, no longer oscil-
lating between renewed and broken vows, no longer
seeking compromises or evasions between the ideals

79

THE MINOR WORKS

of the saint and the accepted standards of the man
of the world. The flame of the Faradiso is smokeless.
We have this foreknowledge of the end, but mean-
while it seems impossible not to recognize certain in-
directions and mental evasions in which for a time
Dante's progress was entangled.

III. THE "CONVIVIO" IN ITS APOLOGETIC
ASPECT

In the early years of his exile Dante began a
treatise (which remained incomplete) on the Italian
language in its relation both to other vernaculars, and
to Latin. He dealt with the dialectical varieties of
Italian and, above all, with the structure of its
recognized metrical forms and the possibility of
fixing a standard literary Italian which every in-
habitant of Italy should recognize as his language
but none should be able to claim as his dialect. The
chief biographical and personal interest of this
treatise is to be found in the evidence it furnishes on
three points : (i) On Dante's continued concern
with literature, and specifically with Italian poetry,
at a period when his own poetic inspiration appears
to have been staunched for the time by the up-
heavals of his life ; (2) on his sense of Italy as a
social and historical unit with a common heritage of
civilization and literature rather than as a single
political or administrative area; and (3) on the still
narrow limits of his conception of the scope and
character of Italian poetry.

80

THE "CONVIVIO" APOLOGETIC

It is this last point that interests our present in-
quiry. The only verse-forms which Dante allows as
legitimate are the Canzone^ the Ballata^ and the
Sonetto, All others are ** irregular and illegitimate."
They would have been relegated to the last place in
his treatise had it ever been completed ; and even
there, we may suppose, would have been dismissed
with a brief and disparaging notice. This is weighty
though indirect evidence against the accuracy of the
contemporary tradition (which is nevertheless too
well authenticated to be simply brushed aside) that
at the time of his exile Dante had already drafted the
first seven Cantos of the Inferno, Can it be possible
that this early draft is identical with the recorded
experiments in a Latin poem on the theme of the
Comedy which Dante subsequently abandoned when
his conception of the scope of Italian poetry had so
notably expanded } It should be observed, however,
that he already admits the subjects of War and
Virtue, side by side with Love, within the legitimate
range of vernacular poetry. So there is already some
progress towards a wider conception of its function.

Of more direct and varied interest to us is another
treatise, also a fragment, that occupied Dante during
these earlier years of exile (i 302-1 308). The
Convivio^ or Banquet, is the monument of what
Dante himself calls his ** second love '* in contra-
distinction to his love of Beatrice.

De Vulgari Eloquentia II. iii : 8-1 1 [2], ii : 41-83 [5-9].
Cf, Appendix, p. 152.

81 p

THE MINOR WORKS

At the end of the Vita Nuova it is for the sake
of making himself more worthy to commemorate
Beatrice that Dante dedicates himself to study. But
when in the Convivio he presents us with the record
of the fruits of that study we notice a subtle but
significant change in his phraseology, for he tells
us that he took to study in hope of consolation
under his loss, and no longer represents it as a
"preparation." Have we then in the Vita Nuova
the register of a resolve and in the Convivio the
record of a result which did not quite conform to it ?
So it would seem ; for in the later work Dante shows
us very clearly that whatever it was that he sought
in his ardent application to study, what he actually
found was not only consolation, but something more:
a new mission, namely, a new inspiration, and even
a new ** enamourment," in the ardour of which his
conception of a work to commemorate Beatrice sank
into the background of his mind and was indefinitely
postponed though not formally abandoned. As to
this there is no room for doubt, for he tells us how
when he sought consolation in Cicero and Boetius,
" as it may chance that a man goes in search of silver
and beyond his purpose findeth gold, the which
some hidden cause brings to view, not peradventure
without divine command : so I, who was seeking to
console myself, found not only a remedy for my
tears, but terms of authors and of sciences and
of books, pondering upon which I judged that
Philosophy was a thing supreme." And even more
explicitly he declares, in relation to his self-abandon-

82

THE "CONVIVIO'* APOLOGETIC

ment to this ** second love,'* and its victory over his
absorption in memories of Beatrice, that ** a man
ought not, on account of a greater friend, to forget
the services received from a lesser ; but, if it be right
to follow the one and leave the other, the better
should indeed be followed but the other not aban-
doned without some fitting lamentation ; wherein
the man gives cause to the one he follows to love
him the more."

It is easy to reconstruct the story so far. And the
fragment of the large design of the Convivio that
was actually executed leaves us in little doubt on the
main point. It may often happen that a task under-
taken in the first instance for a specific purpose
beyond itself presently gains a hold in the strength
of its own fascination, thrusts itself in front of that
for the sake of which it was originally sought, and
becomes an avowed end instead of a means. So it
was with Dante. He became enamoured of Philo-
sophy for her own sake and was inspired with a
passion to reveal her beauty and sing her praises to
all who would hear. As for Beatrice, he retracts no
word he has spoken in the Vita Nuova, He affirms
that she still ** lives in heaven with the angels," in
that better life to which he himself looks forward
after this, and ** on earth with his soul." But he
means to speak of her no more in ** this book "
(the Convivio) on which he is now engaged. Did he
still mean ultimately to write of her ** what had

Fita Nuova xliii [xJii]. Convivio 11. jm-, 3-40 [lii : 1-5], xvi :
50-58, 98-105 [xv : 6, 12] ; III. i : 2 [i].

83

THE MINOR WORKS

never been written else of woman " ? Perhaps. But
the Lady of his present love is one greater than
woman, for she is " the daughter of God," nay, the
Divine Wisdom's self 1

The splendid eloquence of the opening passage of
the Convivio is sufficient evidence that the main im-
pulse that urged its author forward was a missionary
ardour for bringing the feeding truths of philosophy
and perhaps yet more the pure intellectual joy of
study within the reach of busy men and women who
had no opportunity to embrace the life of the pro-
fessed student. But combined with this primary
object were others hardly less near to Dante's heart.
It will be remembered that he had already begun his
lover-like service of my Lady Philosophy in a series
of Canzoni^ or Odes, directly or indirectly conse-
crated to her ; and so it seemed natural enough, not
only to Dante but to his contemporaries also (for
not one of them hints that there was anything strange
about it), that his encyclopaedia of popular science and
theology should take the shape of a commentary or
exposition based on the Odes which had already
made him famous throughout Italy as a poet. The
idea was, of course, suggested by the fact that some
of the Odes in question were in truth a glorification
of Philosophy, or of her " friends," and would
naturally take their place in the elaborated expres-
sion of his devotion to her service. But others, as

Convivio I. I '. Iii-ii5[i6]; II. ii : 6-8 [i], ix : 132-137,
49-55 [viii : 16, 7], liii : 71 [xii : 9]; III. liv : 51-60 [6 /f.]
Cf. p. 96 s^,

84

THE "CONVIVIO" APOLOGETIC

we have seen, were quite alien in their origin from
the praise of Philosophy. To represent them also as
hymns to Philosophy, and so to bring them into rela-
tion with the scheme, would require amazing tours
de force of allegorical interpretation, such as could
only have been contemplated in an age accustomed
to all manner of fantastic feats in this direction.
But Dante's age was such. Not only the Scriptures
and the works of the Latin poets, but the works of
God and Nature too, and even the lives or actions of
men, might be taken to owe their significance not
to what they were, but to what they meant as
symbolical expressions of the divine purpose. More-
over, it did not at all follow that the poets or heroes
themselves were always conscious of the inner
meaning of their utterances or actions. Virgil, for
instance, did not know that he was prophesying of
Christ in his Fourth Eclogue, nor, I suppose, did
Jacob's wives, Leah and Rachel, know that they
were types of Martha and Mary to come, and that
they represented the Practical and the Contemplative
life respectively. Nor was consistency demanded of
the allegorist. The same symbol might stand for
different or opposite things in different connections,
perhaps might even bear contradictory significances
m the same passage according to the scheme of inter-
pretation that was being applied to it at the moment.
Dante had already explained in the Vita Nuova
that passages in his poems which he meant to be
taken as applying to another lady when he wrote
them he wishes to be understood now as applying

85

THE MINOR WORKS

to Beatrice. Might not the process be reversed ?
Might not a poem which was originally written in
connection with Dante*s first love be interpreted in
relation to the second ? By such shifts as this the
whole body of the Canzoni of which he desired to
speak might be included in his work. This form of
presentation, besides maintaining continuity (by
linking his past to his future tribute to my Lady
Philosophy), and besides following the model of the
Vita Nuova (by making a prose framework for a
collection of poems), would have the additional
advantage of giving him a good excuse for an at-
tempt which he longed to make on its own merits —
the attempt, namely, to extend the range and raise
the dignity of Italian Prose as he had already helped
to raise Italian Verse.

His cyclopaedia must be written in the vernacular
for many good reasons, but, if it was to aim at being
at once severe in its argument and of cultured beauty
in its form, prejudice would be against the verna-
cular. Some excuse for this new advance, to protect
the underlying reasons for it, would be welcome ;
and if the work was presented /is a commentary
on an Italian text the excuse might be found in the
congruity between the requirements of the " master '*
text and the powers of the " servant " commentary.
Now, some of Dante's poems, already famous, fell
in quite easily with his central purpose in writing
the Convivio, Such were the genuinely philosophical
and quasi-philosophical Odes, including the noble
Cf. p. 90. Convivio I. x : 74-102 [11-13], xii : 1-17 [i Jf.].

86

the"convivio" apologetic

poem (one of the few that we may be sure were
written during his exile) that begins :

Tre donne intomo al cor mi son venute,

which would give him occasion to treat of Justice
and incidentally to deliver his own apologia for his
political life and to protest against his unjust exile.

But there were also Odes — and amongst them
those that threatened to be the most recalcitrant
to the allegorical treatment — which Dante had special
reasons for bringing under it, because he wished to
remove the impression they gave (or, at least, to
dissociate himself from it) when taken in their
natural and obvious sense. This is the next point
that we must examine.

In the introductory Treatise of the Convivio
Dante apologizes on two grounds for speaking of
himself. One of them is that it is legitimate for a
man to speak of himself if thereby he can clear him-
self ** of some great disgrace." And he goes on to
say, " I myself fear the disgrace of having succumbed
to so great a passion as he who reads the aforenamed
Odes must conceive to have had mastery over me.
Which disgrace is entirely quenched by this present
discourse concerning myself, which shows that not
passion, but virtue, was the moving cause.** Now,
amongst the fourteen Odes that seem to have been
embraced in the scheme of the Convivio those that
belong to the Pietra group are the only ones which
even the most sensitive conscience could regard as
Convivio IV. xivii : 100-103 [11]; I. ii : 1 14-130 [15-17].

87

THE MINOR WORKS

reflecting disgrace upon their author. And since we
have sufficiently clear indications that these parti-
cular Odes were actually to find a place in the work
we may take it as certain that the whole elaborate
scheme of a twofold interpretation, literal and alle-
gorical, which is laid down in the second Treatise of
the Convivio^ was primarily designed for application
to them, and is only consequentially attempted, or is
even abandoned, in other cases.

Thus the second Treatise, commenting on the
Ode

Voi che intendendo il terzo ciel movete,

is, as we shall see, an unsuccessful attempt to explain
away the natural and very innocent meaning of the
poem and to force an allegorical interpretation upon
it. In the next commentary, contained in the third
Treatise, the poem to be dealt with.

Amor che nella mente mi raggiona,

was really written in praise of Philosophy, and
accordingly the case is here reversed and extreme
difficulty arises in keeping up any semblance of a
literal interpretation as distinct from the allegory.
The fourth and last Treatise, commenting on the Ode
Le dolci rime d'amor ch'io solea,

deals with the nature of true Nobility, and does not
lend itself in any kind of way to the twofold inter-

Convivio IV. xxvi : 64-70 [8]. Cf. " Cosl nel mio parlar voglio
esser aspro," line 36. (The mention of Dido is the more significant
as it is the only instance of a proper name occurring in a Canzone of
Dante's.) Convwio II. ii : 52-57 [6],

88

THE "CONVIVIO" APOLOGETIC

pretation. Here the author is obliged frankly to
abandon his method. Fortunately the Pietra poems
were never reached ; but anyone who reads them
will agree that the attempt to allegorize the finest of
them would have proved still more unconvincing
than it is in the case of the Canzone

Voi che intendendo il terzo del movcte,

commented on in the second Treatise, to an examina-
tion of which we must now turn.

This beautiful and touching poem rose out of the
episode of the Gentle Lady in whose sympathy
Dante had found a brief solace in the hour of his
deepest affliction. Was she not (we have already
supposed Dante might ask himself) a kind of fore-
shadowing or anti-type of the more exalted Lady
in whom he was indeed to find comfort, not for
" certain days ** only, but through many a year of
trouble and of exile ? Might not the song once
sung to her in the moment of her passing triumph be
fitly adopted as a sister by the philosophic Canzoni ?
And might not the transient events that gave rise
to it be read and explained in the light of their after-
revealed significance ?

There might be some subjective truth in such a re-
reading of the past. But the objective record stub-
bornly opposed itself to any attempt to show that the
meaning now imported into the poem was that which
it was originally intended to convey, or even cryptic-
ally to hint at. In the Vita Nuova Dante not only
Convivio IV. i : 83-92 [10 /f .].

89

THE MINOR WORKS

confesses to love-guiles, involving intentional mystifi-
cation, but also declares that certain passages in his
poems were intended to be understood one way
when they were written, but are to be understood
now, and were secretly meant from the first, in an-
other way. In these cases he perhaps leaves us in
doubt which of the two meanings was really his when
he wrote the lines in question. But there is no room
even for doubt in the case of the poem we are now
considering. For not only is the allegorical meaning
forced and unnatural, but the objective facts give a
conclusive verdict against it.

In the Vita Nuova the Gentle Lady appears when
** a certain space " has elapsed since the first anni-
versary of Beatrice's death and tries the poet's
constancy for " certain days," during which she
enjoys a brief triumph. Then the memory of Beatrice
victoriously reasserts itself. Dante's thought of the
other lady was, he declares, " most base " in itself
and " gentle " only in so far as its object was a
** Gentle Lady." He " repents grievously " of it,
and with his " whole heart shame-laden " turns back
to Beatrice. In the still extant sonnet,

Parole mie, che per lo mondo siete

Fita Nuovay. 22-32 [3, 4], vi : 1-12 [i /f.]. Cf. Sonnet xxxii
[Rim. Hi] : Guidoy i vorrei che tu e Lapo ed to, in which lines 9, 10
should read :

E monna Vanna e monna Lagia poi
con quella ch' e sul numer de le trenta,

as in the new 0/»^r<r dt Z)tf/?//f (Firenze, 192 1); 2X^0 Vita Nuova
vii~x (especially vii : 44-47 [7]), viii : 70-72 [12].

90

THE "CONVIVIO" APOLOGETIC

(not included in the Vita Nuova)^ he expressly de-
clares that this very poem Voi che intendendo^ etc.,
was addressed to the Lady in whom his heart ** went
astray," and that no members of the group to which
it belongs are any longer to abide with her, ** for
Love is not there."

In the Convivio the Lady of the second love first
appears to him considerably more than three years
after Beatrice's death. It is some thirty months after
this before he had sufficiently overcome the first
difficulties of study to feel the full power of his
enamourment. Some fifteen years, say, after
Beatrice's death, when he writes the Convivio^ the
Second Love still holds him in its full strength, and
he means to speak of Beatrice no more in the work
that is devoted to its expression. Instead of being
ashamed of it he glories in it as in the^better treasure
he has now found.

And again, in commenting on one of the poems
addressed to the Gentle Lady in the Vita Nuova^ he
had expressly said that " heart " was to be taken to
mean ** appetite " as opposed to reason. Now, the
careful reader may note that if this meaning were
assigned to the word in the present connection it
would make the poem harmonize completely with

Fita Nuova xxiv : i-6, xxivi : 1-13 [xxxiv : i, xxxv : i /f.],
xl : 1-23 [xxxix : 1-3], xxxix : 28-32 [xxxviii : 4]. Convivio II.
ii : I sqq. [for the " period " of Venus referred to vide Lu bin's
Dante e gii astronomi Itaiiani (Trieste, 1895). Cf. "Temple
Clawics " ConviviOy p. 433], Convivio II. xiii : 49-52 [xii : 7],
ix : 49-55 [viii : 7], and (as already cited) xvi : 50 sqq. [xv : 6].

91

THE MINOR WORKS

the literal story as told and regarded in the Vita
Nuova^ but would ruin the whole allegorical interpre-
tation offered in the Convivio \ and it is evidently
with this in his mind that Dante now warns his
readers against taking the word in this poem to
mean " any special part of the soul or body," and
bids them understand it simply as the inner man.
Surely all this amounts to a scarcely veiled acknow-
ledgement that we are to take the assertion as to the
meaning of the poem rather as defining his present
attitude of mind than as faithfully interpreting its
original meaning. Can Dante really have expected
or, in spite of his protestations, intended that they
should be understood in any other way ?

It is now perhaps sufficiently clear that the
allegorizing of this particular poem can hardly have
been undertaken on its own merits, and that it is but
a part of a general scheme which was conceived with
special relation to the Pietra group of poems, from
the implications of which Dante was seriously
anxious to dissociate himself.

As to these magnificent poems themselves I can-
not believe that if they had been written by any other
poet they would have been felt by Dante to throw
" disgrace " upon their author, or would have
alienated his heart from him. But it is equally certain
that the passion which breathes through them would

Fita Nuova xxxix : 33-37, 55 xf. [ixxviii : 5, 7]. Convivio II.
vii : 17-22 [vi : 2]. As to the allegory, vide passages already
cited: ConvivioW.Kw 52-57 [6]; I. ii : 1 14-123 [15,16]. Cf.
Purgatorio xxxi : 34-36.

92

THE "CONVIVIO" APOLOGETIC

have called for the cancelling penitence of Purgatory
and was alien from the note of the Convivio,

But, whatever importance may be attached to this
attempt to find in the Convivio the half-obliterated
traces of the false paths on which Dante declares in
the Purgatorio^ with agonized self-reproaches, that
he had trodden since the days of the Vita Nuova^
our estimate of his actual interests, convictions, and
enthusiasms when writing the Convivio itself is quite
independent of this speculative element. As a
veritable document of the stage in Dante's mental
history at which it was composed — as distinct from a
somewhat blurred record of experiences that had
preceded it — it presents its own problems, the solu-
tion of which is unaffected by the success or failure of
the interpretation that has now been given of some
of its incidental features. Bearing this in mind, and
welcoming the relief of treading on firmer ground
and finding less uneasy footing, we may now turn to
these fresh problems.

IV. THE "convivio'* IN ITS POSITIVE
CONTENT

As to the sincerity and the exalted character of
Dante's second enamourment there can be no doubt,
and we must now turn to the prose text of the
Convivio in order to form a clearer conception of its
significance. In doing so we must look both back-
ward and forward — to the Vita Nuova and to the
Comedy. Dante's first love, the Beatrice of the

93

THE MINOR WORKS

Vita Nuova^ is the impersonation of goodness,
beauty, and truth. His second love, my Lady
Philosophy, impersonates nothing, for she is not a
person at all, but only a personification, which may
be, and in this case is, a very different thing. A
personification is primarily a figure of speech or of
rhetoric, and it does not necessarily demand any
greater effort of the imagination or expenditure of
feeling than is involved in an initial letter or a vocative
case. The object of Dante's second love does indeed
represent more, and far more, than this, for she
inspires a genuine passion of devotion. But she
remains a personification, and never becomes a per-
son. Even the evanescent personality which she
borrows from her (fictitious, as we have seen) identi-
fication with the Gentle Lady of the Pita Nuova and
the Canzone is virtually repudiated in the Convivio,
This lack of personality becomes all the clearer if we
compare her with impersonations of human and divine
wisdom in the Virgil and the Beatrice of the Comedy.
As to the vividness of Virgil's personality there
can be no difference of feeling. The very passages
that are framed to fit his allegorical significance most
closely are sometimes the most poignant in the well-
nigh intolerable pressure of their appeal on behalf
of the Exile from heaven — as, for instance, in his
words to Dante :

For as I lived a rebel to His sway,
The Emperor, Who Governeth On High,
Doth all approach through me unto His Courts deny

(Musgrave),

94

THE "CONVIVIO" DIDACTIC

or to Statius: ** May the true court which bindeth me
in eternal exile bring thee in peace to the council of
the blessed.'* Or where Statius tells him, ** 'Twas
thou didst light my way to God. Thou didst as he
who, stepping through the night, beareth the light
behind him, to himself of no avail, but making clear
the path to them that follow." Or in the last scene,
when he vanishes before the presence of Beatrice.

Beatrice is generally less vividly felt by the reader
as a personality than Virgil is. Nor is the fusion of
the biographical and the allegorical elements that
combine in her portrayal so complete as in his case.
But at least there can be no doubt of the sense of
her personality in Dante's own mind, and her
allegorical significance even at its highest never
empties her of individuality. Thus, while nothing
but the thought that she represents Revelation
could make it natural, or even tolerable, to introduce
her as riding in a chariot (the Church) drawn by
Christ himself in the form of a griffon ; yet it is in
this very scene that her personal appeal to Dante
breaks through all allegorical swathmgs, and every
unsophisticated reader feels that two human per-
sonalities stand face to face.

But in the Convivio Philosophy has no personality.
The lady of the Ode-
Amor che nclla mentc mi raggiona,
or the Ballade —

Voi chi sapete raggionar d' amore,

Infemo'w 124-126. Purgtttorio x:u\ 16-18, xxii : 67-69,
"* •• 43-S4

95

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may smile or frown as she will, but we never see
either smile or frown pass over a human countenance
The Odes that were truly addressed to Philosophy
are neither allegorical nor literal in any vital sense ;
for they are merely figurative, and Augustine has
taught us to distinguish between figure and allegory.
Thus, when Scripture speaks of the divine power as
** the arm of God " the phrase does not even literally
refer to any bodily organ. It is a figure for " effec-
tive power," and that is what it directly suggests.
And so it is with the smile and frown of the Lady
of Dante's second love. They are just as purely
figurative as the smile on the face of Wordsworth's
" Duty.''

Indeed, this could not be otherwise, for no human
personality, not even that of a Beatrice, could bear
the strain of intimate assimilation to the exalted Lady
of the Convivio, It is only by virtue of vagueness and
indefiniteness of outline that she can cover the whole
range of the poet's imperfectly co-ordinated beliefs
and feelings.

For since Dante is a devout Christian believer and
the Lady of his second love is no other than Wisdom
herself, it follows that she is that very Wisdom cele-
brated in the Book of Proverbs and in the Apocry-
phal Book of Wisdom. Thus, it is of her that it was
written " From the beginning, before the ages, was
I created." She is " The glow of the Eternal Light,
the spotless mirror of the majesty of God." She is
** The spouse of the Emperor of Heaven . . . and
not his spouse only, but his sister and his beloved

96 .

THE "CONVIVIO" DIDACTIC

daughter.** It was with her that God began the
universe and, in particular, the movement of the
heavens. The angels gaze upon her continuously
though we mortals can hold but intermittent converse
with her. And finally (since the ** Wisdom *' of Pro-
verbs is no other than the " Word ** of the proem of S.
John's Gospel), it was she that so loved the world that
she came in our likeness to direct our course aright.

The Beatrice of the Comedy, in her " allegorical **
capacity of Revelation, may be drawn by Christ
himself in the chariot of the Church, may be sur-
rounded by prophets and evangelists and angels,
may have been attended by the moral and theological
virtues " before she descended to earth,** but she
could not have been identified even allegorically
with the Second Person of the Trinity ; and, as we
have seen, it is in the very passage in which her
allegorical character reaches its highest point of
exaltation that our sense of her human personality
becomes most vivid.

Beatrice, then, even in the Comedy, always re-
mains a personality. The Lady of Dante*s second
love neither is nor can be anything more than a
personification. But what does she personify ?

To answer this question fully we must consult not

Cofwivio 111. liv : 58-64 [7], xv : 54 /f. [5], xii : 11 5-1 18
[14], XV : 157-159 [15]. »»»•• 46-55* 70-75 [5» 7], XV : 180-
'84 [17]. Cf. II. and III. passim. It must be a strong faith in
their allegorizing theory that has enabled some commentators to
find t reference to this august Lady in the "pargoletta, o altra
vanitA " of Purgatorio xxxi : 59 /f .

97 o

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only the selected passages in which she is approxi-
mated to, or identified with, the " Word " that was
made flesh, but the great body of the prose of the
Convivio, We shall there find that the Philosophy
of whom' Dante is enamoured includes not only
theology, but all the humbler branches of study,
down to arithmetic, logic, and grammar (that is to
say, the Latin language and literature). She is, in
short, the comprehensive and necessarily vague and
many-coloured symbol of all wisdom, human and
divine; and no one who neglects or depreciates any
branch of knowledge is worthy to be regarded as her
lover. The differentiation, then, between secular and
sacred learning that is so prominent in the sym-
bolism of the Comedy finds no expression at all in
that of the Convivio,

It is true, as we shall see, that the fact and the
importance of Revelation as part, and that the
highest part, of Wisdom are already recognized in the
Convivio ; but Beatrice is not yet brought into any
special relation with it, as she is in the Comedy.
On the contrary, in the conflict between the new
love and the old, Beatrice is not a symbol of Revela-
tion or of anything else. She is just the Florentine
maiden who lives in heaven with the angels and in
Dante's memory on earth. The great scheme of
study which was undertaken for her glorification has
now passed, in its own strength, out of her domain.
Her victorious rival, under whose inspiration Dante
enters on the high emprise of the Convivio^ is the
Convivio II. xiv, xv ; III. xi : 94-129 [9-12].

98

THE "CONVIVIO" DIDACTIC

collective symbol of Wisdom under all her aspects,
including the revealed truths of Theology.

It is to a due appreciation of these facts that we
must look for a solution of the problem that has so
long exercised the minds of Dantists as to the exact
place and meaning that must be assigned to the
Convivio in relation to Dante's other works and to
his mental and spiritual history in general.

The conception of personified Wisdom did not
originate with Dante. Tradition assigned to Solo-
mon all the most important utterances of the Hebrew
sages. And so the Wisdom that is so splendidly
personified in the Book of Proverbs and in the
Wisdom of Solomon might be regarded as at one
moment inspiring her royal pupil with homely
proverbial truths, at another teaching him to speak
" of trees from the cedar which is in Lebanon even
unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall," or
** of beasts and of fowls and of creeping things and
of fishes,'* and at yet another inviting him to hold
intercourse with her because she was " privy to the
mysteries of the knowledge of God."

The more immediate source of Dante's concep-
tion of personified Philosophy, however, is to be
found not so much in the Old Testament as in one
of the very books by which, as he tells us, he sought
consolation after the death of Beatrice. For to

Proverbs viii : i — ^ix : 6. i Kings iv : 33. Wisdom of Solomon
viii : 4. [In the Vulgate, however, somewhat less emphatically
than in the Greek and the A.V., doctrix enim €st discipUnet Dei,

Convivio II. xiii : 14-16 [xii : 2].

99

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Boetius in his captivity and despondence Philosophy
appeared in person to minister consolation. Her
*' undivided robe," representing the practical and
theoretic sciences in their continuous unity, was
woven by her own hands and " at one moment she
confined herself within the wonted stature of a
mortal and at another her towering height seemed to
strike against heaven, nay, when she fully raised her
head she even pierced into heaven itself and drew up
the gaze of man in the vain attempt to follow."^

This figure of the Boetian Wisdom with cloud-
girt brow was known to mediaeval art, and the con-
ception would be familiar to Dante's readers. But
the interesting point is that, at bottom, it is not a
specifically Christian but a characteristically Ethnic
conception. It is important to realize this, and to do
so we must dwell for a moment upon the interesting
personality of Boetius himself.

The writings of Boetius (475-525 A.D.)long pre-
sented a curious problem to the historians and
critics. His great prison book, the Consolatio
Philosophic^ remains throughout on the plane of
Ethnic philosophy and religion. There is nothing in

1 Boetius: Consolatio Philosophic, Lib. I, Prosa i. The transla-
tion in the text is free. The original runs : " Nam nunc quidem ad
communem sese hominum mensuram cohibebat, nunc vero pulsare
caelum summi verticis cacumine videbatur : quae cum caput altius
eitulisset, ipsum etiam caelum penetrabat, respicientiumque homi-
num frustrabatur intuitum." Her robes were " indissolubili materia
perfectae," and the Delphin editor, I think rightly, explains in-
dissolubilis as individua, which reminds us of the seamless garment
in John lix : 23.

100

THE "CONVIVIO" DIDACTIC

it to indicate that the author is a Christian. There is
no reference to the Christian Scriptures, no recogni-
tion of Revelation as distinct from philosophic
reasoning, no trace of any specific Christian doctrine
or article of faith, and no appeal to rewards or
punishments in a future life. It is throughout a
noble plea for the thesis that if we take life as we
find it and rightly weigh its values we shall see that
the good man is never to be pitied and the bad man
never to be envied. It was in these thoughts that
Boetius found consolation in his hour of need.

But, nevertheless, several theological tracts on the
doctrine of the Trinity and on the two natures in
the person of Christ are extant bearing his name ;
and on the strength of them he received unsuspecting
hospitality amongst the Christians for many cen-
turies. His teaching was a counterpoise, assimilated
without any sense of opposition, to excessive
scripturalism of argument and other-worldliness of
appeal, and as such had undoubted spiritual value.
He has been happily described as " the light of
a thousand years," and it has been said that from
his own day to the time of the Renaissance there was
probably no book outside the canon that administered
strength and consolation to so many Christian souls.

No wonder that in the more critical days that
followed the revival of letters the authenticity of the
theological treatises was assailed and, indeed, found
few competent defenders. On the other hand, more
recent researches have placed the Boetian authorship
of these essays beyond the reach of cavil. It had

lOI

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always been well known that Boetius was the intimate
friend and associate of the leading Christian scholars
of his day, and it now seems obvious that whereas he
accepted Christianity sincerely and unquestioningly,
yet his active interests were those of a secular or de-
tached student. He wrote standard treatises on
arithmetic and music, for instance, translated logical
treatises of Aristotle, and intended to carry out a vast
scheme of work on similar lines. He was an ac-
complished Platonist, too ; and thus it was with the
great Ethnic thinkers, saints, and seers that he spent
his days, from them that he drew his spiritual
nourishment, and upon their support that he fell
back in his misfortunes. But he was quite willing,
we may suppose, to lend a hand to his ecclesiastical
friends by throwing into "elegant "philosophical form
the more recondite articles of the creed which he and
they alike professed.^ And the character of the tracts
themselves is in full harmony with this hypothesis.

I have dwelt at length on the position of Boetius
because it is so singularly helpful to us in appreciat-
ing that of Dante at the Convivio stage of his evolu-
tion. The philosophy personified in the Consolatio
covers the whole system of studies of which Dante

^ On Boetius vide " Temple Classics " Paradiso note on x : 1 24-
l29,Wicksteed's Reactions between Dogma and Philosophy (London,
1920), pp. 42-45, 89 sqq., and (for the authenticity of the Theo-
logical tracts) Anecdoton Holderi, Hermann Usener (Leipzig, 1 877).
Even in the Middle Ages some few readers noted the unorthodox or
non-Christian tone of the Consolatio. Vide Nietzsch : Das System
des Boethius (Berlin, 1 860), pp. 27 sqq., and Migne : Pat. Lat. liiv :
col. 1239 Jff.

102

THE "CONVIVIo'' DIDACTIC

was at this time really enamoured ; but she does not
cover all he believed. Like Boetius, only more so,
he accepted and reverenced as true the whole scheme
of Christian doctrines, though his mind was not
habitually engaged on it for its own sake. Specific-
ally Christian subjects of speculation had not yet
wound themselves into his inmost affections. They
had made as yet no large contribution to the gathered
stores of his mind, nor did they spontaneously pre-
sent him with the examples and illustrations he
needed in his discourse. But on the other hand they
had already fired his imagination as they never did
that of Boetius. And therefore the Lady of his second
love is constantly addressed in terms and endowed
with attributes alien to the Philosophia Consolatrix of
Boetius, on which she is modelled. To borrow the
imagery of the Gospels, Dante's " Philosophy," in
the Convivio^ has a net which will hold all the great
fishes of Boetius without breaking, but we see that
the yet greater draft of fishes which this same net is
already opening itself to receive will inevitably burst
it in the end.

Thus Dante recognizes, as we have seen, the dis-
tinction between Revelation and Reason and the
supremacy of the latter. But the distinction finds no
recognition in the symbolism of the Convivio and
makes no contribution to its store of examples. In
like manner the Christian contrast between the
practical and the contemplative life is expressed in
no such symbolism as that of Leah and Rachel in the
John iii : 1 1 . Luke v : 6.
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Comedy, and has not worked itself into conscious
separation from the AristoteHan contrast between
the practical or civic and the theoretical or speculative
life. But, on the other hand, the whole range of
earthly activities and speculations already catch a
glow from their association with their heavenly
analogues, are uplifted into a region of intenser
spiritual fervour, and are inspired with a deeper
significance by the reaction upon them of the theo-
logical studies which have not yet asserted their
direct ascendency in the student's mind. In all this
the Convivio represents an advance towards some-
thing not yet fully apprehended. It is expectant and
transitional. It does not reveal, as has sometimes
been supposed, a lapse from a more advanced posi-
tion once held, but a reaching forth towards one yet
to be taken.

These characteristics of the Convivio we must now
bring out in detail. To begin with, Dante accepts the
distinction between Reason and Revelation and the
more exalted claims of the latter without qualification.
This could hardly be otherwise, for at this time he
was a diligent student of the Contra Gentiles of S.
Thomas, and this very distinction and gradation is
the vertebral column to which all the members of
that treatise are articulated. ** The Emperor of the
Universe,'* Dante declares, being " the light which
illuminates us in the darkness," told us the truth
about the angels, " which we could not know,
neither truly see, without him.'' There are truths
II. vi : 8-20 [v : 2, 3].
104

THE "CONVIVIO'' DIDACTIC

concerning our immortality which ** we see perfectly
by Faith, but see by Reason with a certain darkening
shadow." He who created our reason expressly
willed that it should not cover the whole range of
his power, and established upon the miracles that
transcend reason's grasp that faith which matters
more to the human race than anything else what-
ever, since by it we escape eternal death and gain
eternal life. Where the teaching of the philosophers
and of Christian doctrine coincide, ** the Christian
doctrine is of greater force, and shatters all cavil in
virtue of the supreme light of heaven that illuminates
it." For holy Church is the " spouse and secretary "
of Christ, " who cannot lie." And so in the Song
of Songs ** all the sciences are called queens and con-
cubines and handmaidens," but Theology "is called
the dove, because she is subject to no aspersions
of contention ; and she is called perfect, because she
gives us perfect vision of the Truth in which our
soul finds rest." So far all is in very near conformity
with the teaching of the Contra Gentiles,

Yet it was from Boetius and Cicero, as he tells us,
and not from the Bible or Aquinas, that Dante had
learned to regard my Lady Philosophy as " a thing
supreme " and to hail her as " The daughter of God,
the Queen of all." And even where he expressly
contrasts the Natural and the Theological ap-

II. ix : 127 sq. [viii : 1 5] ; III. vii : 1 57 /ff. [i 5 /f.] ; IV. iv :
90-96 [9]; II. vi: 33/f., iv: 31/f. [v: 5, iii : 10], xv: 179-
184 [xiv: 20]. Cf. Song of Songs vi : 8, 9 [Fulg. 7, 8]; xiii ;
14-74 [xii: 2-9].

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preaches to truth he seems insensible to any real
difference between them; for when after treating of
the divine seed of Nobility in man by ** the natural
way " he turns to the consideration of the same sub-
ject " by the theological way " he quotes Isaiah,
indeed, on the seven Gifts of the Spirit, but the only
conclusion he reaches is the very " natural '* one
that man should exercise himself in right conduct
and the restraint of his passions ** as Augustine, and
also Aristotle, would have him do/* And yet it is on
this very passage in Isaiah that Aquinas founds his
doctrine of the difference between the " natural *'
and the " infused '* virtues, and erects his whole
theory of the higher Christian Ethic which (rising
far above the natural ethic of Aristotle) expresses
itself in the Sermon on the Mount and specifically
in the Beatitudes. No clearer proof could be needed
that at this time, though Dante had accepted the
conception of Christian faith and experience which
afterwards found its symbol in Beatrice, he had not
yet assimilated it. And again, in the very sentence in
which he identifies his Lady with the Logos of the
Gospel of John, he goes on to illustrate the all-
absorbing devotion with which she inspires her
lovers by citing the examples of Democritus, Plato,
Aristotle, Zeno, Socrates, and Seneca without ad-
ducing a single instance from the Old or New
Testament or from the lives of Christian saints or
heroes.

IV. xxi : 100-133 [11-14].

III. xiv : 62-100 [7-10].

106

THE "CONVIVIO" DIDACTIC

It need not surprise us after this to find that on
Dante's lips the ** Celestial Athens *' is as natural an
expression for Heaven as the ** Celestial Jerusalem "
would be, and in a beautiful symbolic passage we
actually find him saying of the virtues of Faith,
Hope, and Charity that " it is by these virtues that
we rise to that celestial Athens where Stoics, Peri-
patetics, and Epicureans, in the light of the eternal
Truth, harmoniously unite in one will." Though in
another place, with closer approach to Christian pro-
priety, he takes the three Marys at the tomb of
Christ as symbols of the ** three sects of the active
(as distinguished from the contemplative) life — to
wit, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics,'*
who seek the true blessedness where it is not to be
found, namely, " in the tomb, which is to say in this
present world." Dante is rightly admired for his con-
sistency, but it is not to the Convivio that his
admirers must appeal when they wish to illustrate
this characteristic. The Boetian net is not yet broken,
but it is under a strain that it cannot long bear ;
and it is worth noting that the passage last cited —
the nearest to the doctrine of the Comedy that we
have yet noticed — occurs in the last Treatise of the
Convivio^ the one in which the allegorical system of
interpretation of the Odes is abandoned. We shall
presently see (p. 115 sqq.) that in another respect also
this same Book, or Treatise, betrays the ripening of
Dante's mind towards its full maturity ; but mean-
Ill. xiv. 1 36-141 [15]; IV. xxii : 149-174 [14, 15] (reading
of the Florentine Testo Critico).

107

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while this wavering treatment of the Ethnic schools
of philosophy challenges attention to the unstable
equilibrium of the teaching of the Convivio on the
subject of the relation of earthly to heavenly fruition.
And this brings us to the next point. The Aristo-
telian distinction between the Practical or Civic
and the Theoretic or Speculative life is in a measure
parallel to the Christian distinction between the
Active and the Contemplative life. But the two
systems are far from completely coinciding. The
Practical life, as conceived by Aristotle, is concerned
with those activities which make a man a good
citizen, alike in the offices of peace and of war, while
the Christian writers generally mean by the Active
life devotion to ** good works '* ; and again, on
Aristotle's lips the Speculative life covers every form
of the pursuit and enjoyment of truth, which is the
proper business of the philosopher or student. It
includes, no doubt, that intense but effortless con-
templation and enjoyment of truth possessed which
is the highest self-realization, and which is the only
life that we can reasonably think of as lived by the
Divine being or beings ;* but it includes also every
humbler branch of the pursuit of truth, whereas
the Christian ** contemplation ** is of divine things
alone. And seeing that in this life we can only know
God by his effects and never in his essence, con-
templation can never be perfect here. Only the
blessed spirits, whether angels or men, who " see
God '* can live this life at its highest ; though
pondering on the truths of revealed religion and on

io8

THE "CONVIVIO'' DIDACTIC

the confident expectation of the ultimate vision may
already give us a foretaste of heavenly bliss even on
earth, and may raise us almost above the limits of our
human nature. Such, at least, was the Christian
doctrine dominant in Dante's day, and it is from this
doctrine that the Comedy, as a living and organic
whole, draws its vital breath. Thus Dante's illus-
trations of contemplation, not only in heaven, but on
earth, are drawn in the Comedy from the ranks of the
Christian mystics : a Richard of S. Victor who
** was more than man " in his concentration of
thought on divine things, a Bernard " who in this
life, by contemplation, tasted of the peace " of
heaven, or a Dionysius " who saw deepest into the
nature and the ministrations *' of the angels, in virtue
of " the great passion with which he set himself to
the contemplation of their orders." But in the
Convivio it is otherwise. Dante does indeed re-
peatedly and clearly announce the principle that the
full felicity of contemplation, which consists in seeing
God, cannot be attained in this life. This same
article of faith is developed with extreme beauty and
eloquence by S. Thomas in the Contra Gentiles^ and
Dante had accepted it as true. But, for all that,
throughout the Convivio he habitually speaks of the
Active and the Practical life or the Contemplative
and the Speculative life as if the two phrases were

ParaJiso iv : 1 24-129, vi : 1 9-2 1, xix : 1 5, xiii : 61-69, xxxiii :
1 39-141 and passim^x; 131 sq., xxxi : 109-iir, x: 11 5-1 17.
Cf. Epist. x: sec. 28 [xiii : 77-82]. Convivio III. xiii : 90-101 [9]*;
IV. xxii : 140 sqq.f 194 /f . [i 3 /f ., 1 7 /f .] (M core's reading).

109

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synonymous ; and he generally keeps well within
the range of Aristotle when speaking of the latter.
The " works of God and of Nature " (rather than
God himself) are described in one passage as the
proper objects of ** contemplation " or ** specula-
tion ** ; and in another, when speaking of the happy
end of an old man whose " good works and con-
templations '* have already ** severed him from all
mundane affairs and cogitations, and surrendered
him to God," he takes as his first example the aged
Cato as portrayed in the De Senectute, Lancelot and
Guido Montefeltrano follow later on ! But Dante
seems to half-grudge the admission (explicitly as he
makes it) that the perfection of bliss is not to be
attained in this life by the lover of philosophy, for he
declares that whereas the active life and the exercise
of the moral virtues can give us only an imperfect
felicity, yet we may attain it ** almost in perfection '*
by the exercise of the intellectual virtues. Indeed,
this intellectual vision is so perfect, when in its per-
fection, that it may not improperly be called perfect,
even in its imperfect state. And, again, he tells
us that the sage is not insatiable, like the miser,
because human desires ** in this life ** should be
regulated by the possibilities of our human faculties,
so that it is not natural to us even to desire to know
what God really is. And in yet another passage the
qualification is still further reduced, and we learn
that the eyes (demonstrations) and the smile (per-
suasions) of Philosophy confer " the loftiest joy of
IV. ixii : 113 Jf. [11], iiviii : 39-65 [5-8].

no

THE "CONVIVIO*' DIDACTIC

blessedness, which is the supreme good of Paradise,"
and that while *' all else here below ** leaves an
unsated longing, yet in this intercourse with Philo-
sophy " man, as man, feels his every desire fulfilled
and so is blessed.'* This (in spite of the qualification
** as man ") runs quite counter to the teaching of
Aquinas, who would have the intelligence always
straining against its earthly limitations, seeking ana-
logies, within its own range, for truths that lie be-
yond it, and consciously yearning for the satisfaction
that will at last come to it in heaven. This attitude
of mind, which, as we have seen, is Dante's in the
Comedy, is essentially foreign to his feelings and
dispositions in the Convivio,

All this, if pressed, would amount to a definite
renunciation of the longings of the Christian mystics
afterwards glorified in the Comedy. But nothing in
the Convivio must be pressed. It is the work of a
thinker in the making, and its inconsistencies,
whether real or apparent, are those of an enthusiast
who believes without question much that has not yet
come under assimilating contact with his personal
experience and feeling or been submitted to the
pressure of his systematic thought.

But Dante has already felt and experienced more
than he can contain, and he overflows with the long-
ing to share his treasures before he has rightly
counted them. The Arabian interpreters of Aristotle
never drew the sharp line between powers natural to
man and powers above his human nature, to be con-

III. xiii: 101-107 [10], XV : 12-55, 76-110 [2-5, 8-10].
Ill

THE MINOR WORKS

ferred upon him in heaven ; and consequently they
believed that in this Hfe the highest mystic insight
was ideally attainable. This was contrary to the
teaching of Aquinas, but while Dante believed with
him he felt with the Arabians. This was the cause of
some uncertainty or even contradiction in expression,
but not of any strain or conflict in feeling. For the
things Dante was actually thinking about were well
within the limits of Aristotelian, to say nothing of
Arabian, " speculation,'* and even when his matter
was most specifically Christian he was never con-
scious of needing any direct support that could not
be found in Aristotelian principles. Thus, in con-
nection with the long disquisition on the different
aspects under which the several orders of the
angels contemplate the Persons of the Trinity
and their relations to each other he argues that
the contemplating angels must be indefinitely
more numerous than the active ones (though,
indeed, the activity of these latter is itself of the
nature of " speculation *'), and in discussing a point
of difliculty he refers to no other authority than
that of Aristotle, with his doctrine of the Practical
and the Speculative life and his contention that the
latter alone is fully consonant with the nature of
the immaterial beings who preside over the circula-
tion of the heavens.

So far we have met with little or nothing to
indicate any closer connection than that of juxta-
position between Dante's obviously sincere and even
Convivio II. v : 89 s^q. [iv : 13].
112

THE "CONVIVIO" DIDACTIC

glowing professions of Christian conviction in the
Convivio and the almost exclusively Ethnic or secular
character of his whole store of illustrations, his
gallery of worthies, and the range of subjects on
which his mind has been exercised and to which he
longs to introduce his readers. Even where he does
use Christian illustrations it is for the sake of secular
applications.

This last remark brings us incidentally to the real
heart of this branch of our investigation. The centre
of gravity of Dante's interest, it is true, still lies well
within the scope of secular studies and ideals ; but,
nevertheless, a vivid belief that the personified
Philosophy which consoled Boetius, and first con-
soled and then inspired Dante himself, is in truth
no other than that very Wisdom of God which
brought salvation to the world gives to the teacher
of secular wisdom a sense of consecration, a mission-
ary ardour, and a reverence for his task which
catches its tone from the preachers of the sacred and
unfailing truths of Revelation. And so the im-
mediate effect of Dante's theological studies is to be
found less in any quickened interest in theology itself
than in their reaction upon his intellectual, moral,
social, and political ideals and impulses.

It is especially the Contra Gentiles^ which we can
trace in its formative reaction and its warming effect
upon the spirit of the Convivio,

Thus the noble exordium of the Convivio is closely
modelled on a corresponding utterance in the Contra
Gentiles. S. Thomas is arguing that it was fitting

113 H

THE MINOR WORKS

for Revelation not only to give assurance concerning
mysteries that transcend the scope of human powers,
but also to confirm many truths that are not really
past finding out by philosophy, because otherwise
very few indeed would gain even a relatively firm
grasp of them. Amongst the reasons for this
Thomas enumerates the lack of time and opportunity
which bars out most men from the long and severe
studies requisite for mastering philosophic truth,
the pressure of practical business, and the intellec-
tual sluggishness which makes many men compara-
tively indifferent to intellectual truth. Dante adopts
and adapts this argument with passionate conviction
and enthusiasm, but he employs it not to show the
necessity of Revelation but to demonstrate the duty
and the privilege of the Student to propagate be-
yond the academic walls the whole range of philo-
sophic and scientific truth. " University Extension '*
(if an emeritus Extensioner may be allowed to put it
so) received a consecration from its analogy with the
outflowing of Revelation beyond its exclusive
domain ; nay, Dante can appropriate to his own
mission, in teaching philosophy to the laity who are
ignorant of Latin, the glowing phrases uttered by
prophet and evangelist in relation to the shining of
the light of Christ and of his Gospel upon the
Heathen and Jewish darkness ; or can compare his
projected popularizing of Philosophy with Christ's
miraculous feeding of the multitude.

Contra Gentiles I. iv. Convwio I. i, xiii : 82-89 [^^J. Cf. John
vi : 10-13; Isaiah ix : 2; Matthew iv : 16, etc.

THE "CONVIVIO" DIDACTIC

Again, in his Contra Gentiles Aquinas contrasts
certain false or imperfect views held by Jewish,
Saracen, or Pagan sages with the rounded and per-
fect teaching of Christian scholarship ; and when
Dante took up arms against false and unworthy con-
ceptions of what constitutes true Nobility — views
which had gained wide currency, or could appeal to
high authority — he felt that, in his mission of de-
fending lofty ideals of human excellence and social
distinction against vulgar or haughty pretensions, he
was engaged in a work that might well rank with
S. Thomas's defence of Christian truth. And so he
desired to call his Ode on true Nobility Contra gli
errantly in avowed imitation of what Aquinas wrote
" to the confusion of all who swerve from our faith.**

But far the most important of the reactions of
Theology upon the secular thought of Dante, and the
one that points us forward most distinctly to the
Monarchia and the Comedy, is to be found in its
influence upon his conception of the significance of
the Roman Empire and Roman Law.

I suppose it IS generally recognized that Roman
Law had reacted upon the regulation of ecclesiastical
institutions, and even upon Christian dogma. The
Decretals were modelled upon the Corpus Juris ;
and forensic theory and practice had defined the
conception of the Atonement. The Decretalists
would study Roman Law less for its own sake than
as a guide and standard by means of which they
might bring method and system into their own
Convhio IV. xix : 23-30 [3].

"5

THE MINOR WORKS

ecclesiastical legislation. As they read and admired
the Justinian Code their constant preoccupation
would be with the concerns of the Church and the
application of standardized legal principles to her
requirements. My suggestion is that during the
Convivio period, and to some extent afterwards,
Dante was reversing the same process on another
field, and that whereas the Decretalists brought
system from Civil into Ecclesiastical Law, Dante
brought system from his belief in the providential
guidance of sacred history into his conception of the
development of law and order in the regulation of
the temporal affairs of men, from its first beginning
to its final embodiment in Roman Law and the
Roman Empire.

The significance of the reclaiming of the waste of
secular history and bringing it into parallelism with
its spiritual analogue in the history of Revelation
and the Church can only be appreciated fully by
reference to its perfected outcome in the Monarchia
and the Comedy ; but it is already in an advanced
stage of embryonic development in the Convivio^
and its revolutionary character is already plain
enough.

The textbook of Roman and universal history
from which Dante and his contemporaries drew their
first impressions on these subjects was written by
Orosius at the request of Augustine for the express
purpose of contrasting the orderly guidance of
sacred history by Divine Providence with the welter
of chaotic passions presented by the blood-stained

Ii6

THE "CONVIVIO" DIDACTIC

annals of the world in which violence perpetually
reigned in the place of law.

Dante, as he expressly tells us, at one time ac-
cepted this reading of secular history, and in dealing
with the Monarchia I shall try to trace the steps by
which his practical acquaintance with the civilizing
power of Roman Law, his study of Virgil, his inborn
sense of the beauty and the divine sanctions of
human relationships and emotions, his vision of
Eden, and his studies of theology led him at last to
exalt the ideal Roman Empire into an analogue on
the temporal side of life with the Church on its
spiritual side. All this is worked out in the Monarchia
and intimately assimilated and illustrated in the
Comedy. It is far from having taken its final form
in the Convivio^ but it is there in more than germ.
For Dante already argues that it is essential to the
wellbeing of the human race that its unity and har-
mony should be secured by a central authority
capable of controlling the ambitions of the several
states and removing the occasions of war between
them. It is from this supreme authority that all
subordinate commands derive their force. And
history, enforced by the sanction of miracles, shows
that the Roman People was the divinely appointed
instrument of this supreme control. The Roman
Emperor, then, as the representative of the Roman
People, is still the fountain and guardian of Universal
Law. The exposition of this doctrine comes in quite
incidentally in the Convivio^ but the eloquence and
enthusiasm by which it is animated give unmis-

117

THE MINOR WORKS

takable proof that it is already an essential factor in
Dante's philosophy of life. The conception of
sacred history as providentially guided and miracu-
lously sanctioned has already reacted upon his con-
ception of the meaning of Roman history, and he
already lays stress on what he regards as a supremely
significant chronological coincidence between the
birth of David (the ancestor of the Virgin) and the
foundation of Rome. These two events mark the
origin of two streams the confluence of which
determined the culminating event of history ; for it
was when Rome had, for the moment, fulfilled her
mission of bringing the world to universal peace
that the Son of God descended to earth to resolve
the discord that the sin of the first man had brought
into human life. And so, too, it must be under
Roman Law that human affairs shall be so regulated
at last as to assimilate human society to "an all-
embracing religious order."

Yet here again the implications so clearly indicated
remain undeveloped. There is not a word in the
Convivio as to the contrast and co-ordination of
the Empire and the Church as the two ruling powers
in the world of man (for even when humanity is
ideally contemplated as one united '* religious order **
it is to the ideal Emperor that it owes its allegiance,
as to its head), and therefore there can as yet be
no special association of Reason with the Empire
and Revelation with the Church. Nor can the dis-
cord of these two powers be alleged, as it is in the
Convivio IV. iv : 59-81 [6].
118

THE "CONVIVIO'' DIDACTIC

Comedy, as the cause of the evil estate of the world.
In the Convivio^ in spite of the foreshadowing of
later developments, we are still in the simpler world
of the Aristotelian partition between the practical
and the speculative spheres. There is Imperial and
there is Philosophical authority, and the only pity
is that the rulers of the world neither by their own
study nor by taking counsel with others add the
weight of philosophical authority to the acts of their
government.

The general outcome of this long examination
may now be briefly summarized. The Convivio re-
veals, even while it conceals, traces of those de-
flections and aberrations from high ideals and high
endeavour for which Beatrice rebukes Dante in the
Earthly Paradise. But these delinquencies are al-
ready things of the past. They haunt Dante with a
sense of uneasiness and incongruity, for his face is
now steadily turned to the light and he is conscious
of a mission that seems to him still higher than the
one to which he devoted himself in the last words of
the Vita Nuova, But there is something gone that
has not been recaptured. A certain bloom has been
brushed away. An aroma has vanished. But if grace
and charm have been lost, strength has been gained.
In intellectual range, in robustness of mind, in
knowledge of men and things the Convivio fully
justifies Dante's own estimate of it when he con-

Purgatorio xvi : 94-1 12 ; xxx, xxxi. ParaJiso xx : 55-60.

119

THE MINOR WORKS

trasts its ** temperate and virile " note with the
** fervid and impassioned '* utterances of the Fita
Nuovay and when he pleads that each should be
regarded as consonant with the period of life at
which it was written. The frequency with which
commentators find their best illustrations of the
Comedy in passages from the Convivio is evidence
of the vast stores of material ultimately to be ab-
sorbed into the Comedy which Dante had gathered
and partly systematized in the great prose fragment
that preceded it. It is already clear that in many
respects the Convivio stands between the Beatrice of
the Vita Nuova^ from whom it seems to be moving
away, and the Beatrice of the Comedy, to whom in so
many respects it seems to be approaching.

Gratuitous confusion is introduced into our pro-
blem if we read the Beatrice of the Comedy into her
of the Vita Nuova, But if we take each of them quite
simply as we find them we can at least lay firm hold
of this clue. Whatever else is doubtful it is certain
that, whereas Dante^s Christian faith never, so far
as we have evidence, for a moment wavered, his
interest in theological studies and his intellectual
grasp of them show a steady progress in a uniform
direction from the Vita Nuova^ through the Convivio
(and we may already add by anticipation the Monar-
chia\ to the Comedy.

But we have not yet found all the unifying

formulae that give cohesion to the Comedy. The

memory of Beatrice has made way for a successful

Convivio I. i : 1 1 1-127 [16 /f.].

120

THE "CONVIVIO DIDACTIC

rival, and the two loves have not found their har-
mony. The authority of the Church is recognized,
but she is not yet raised to her position as a ruling
power over the lives of men, regulating their relations
to things eternal as the Empire regulates their rela-
tion to the things of time. The distinctions between
Reason and Revelation, between Study and Contem-
plation, between Pagan and Christian philosophy,
though recognized, have not been inwardly assimi-
lated. But in all these respects the Convivio repre-
sents an advance towards the thoughts that are to
dominate the Comedy, not a recession from them ;
and meanwhile Dante's sincere conviction that in
studying any branch whatever of philosophy or
science he is indeed holding converse with the
Divine ** Wisdom " herself, hymned in the lyrics
of the Old Testament and incarnate in the central
figure of the New, gives a warmth and a glow to his
devotion to his Lady which raise it almost to the
quality of a mystic experience.

The beliefs of the Convivio already hold in solution
the Vision of the Comedy. When and how shall its
tense but undifferentiated emotion thrill to the
breath of heaven, impregnated with the ecstasies of
the Saints — and of hell laden with the sighs of the
exiled Sages and the tumult of the citid dolente ?

121

THE MINOR WORKS

> )

V. THE '*MONARCHIA AND THE

COMEDY

The development of Dante*s theory of the Roman
Empire will furnish us with the clue we need. But
in order to follow it intelligently we must glance at
the political side of Dante's life, which we have so
far left untouched.

It is essential to the proper understanding of
Dante's political career to throw into the back of our
minds the names of Guelf and Ghibelline and to
relinquish all attempt to express the facts under these
misleading denominations. The Florentine and
other Italian factions had their origin, and must find
their explanation, in conditions that long preceded
the rise of these names and that often cut across the
associations which they carry. The loose impression
that the Guelfs were the party of the Pope and the
Ghibellines the party of the Emperor is particularly
misleading when applied as a key to Dante's political
aims and principles, and we shall do best to put it
altogether out of our thought.

Florence,^ in the thirteenth century, was nominally
governed under a modified system of Roman Law.
But a great number of her most powerful citizens,
while quite willing to administer that (or any other)

^ It will be obvious to the instructed reader that in setting forth
a general theory as to the racial and historical origins of the Italian
factions I am a grateful disciple of Professor Villari and others, and
make no claim to speak with any kind of independent authority.

122

THE "MONARCHIa'* & THE COMEDY

law, were singularly unwilling to obey it themselves.
This state of things had its roots far down in the
conditions resulting from the invasions of the
Barbarians in the earlier Middle Ages. The con-
querors found in the Italian cities a matured tradi-
tion of Law and probably an organized system of
industrial guilds, both of which were alien to their
own system of unwritten ** customs '* and clan
organization for military purposes. Thus the con-
quering and dominant classes, standing on a lower
level of civilization than their subjects and at the
same time despising their weakness and degradation,
arrogated to themselves all administrative functions.
In their capacity as rulers they recognized the law
they found established and were influenced by it in
many ways, but they never recognized its authority
over themselves. Such authority as they did allow
belonged to their own family councils, acting in
closer or looser conformity with custom ; or else, in
case of military necessity, to the authority of a feudal
chief. The history of the rise of the Italian Republics
is the history of the great industrial organizations re-
emerging from the waves of Teutonic invasion and
asserting their right not only to administer and
develop the Roman Law themselves, but also to im-
pose it upon all citizens, breaking down the clan
organizations that proclaimed themselves superior
to it. The representatives of the military aristocracy,
on the other hand, whenever they were hard pressed
by the Popolo^ were apt to seek support from their
natural feudal chief, or any other potentate that

123

THE MINOR WORKS

would assume his functions on terms that gave
mutual satisfaction. Hence Roman Law became to
Dante and to others the symbol of civic freedom,
industrial progress, and the impartial administration
of justice. Any power that attempted to interfere
with this order of things was their foe, and any fac-
tion or party that lent itself to such hostile machina-
tions must be resisted to the last.

Now, though the ** Emperor '* had often in earlier
times been the power to be thus guarded against, it
happened when Dante was entering upon his political
life in Florence that the Emperors had recently been
concerning themselves very little with Italian affairs,
and the danger now lay in the pretensions of the
secularly-minded and ambitious Pope Boniface the
Eighth. It was his intrigues that threatened the
liberty and independence of Florence, and it was
against them that Dante's efforts were consistently
directed, especially when he became a member of the
Priorate, or chief magistracy, from June 15 to
August 15 in 1300. His active, and for the time
successful, opposition to Boniface brought upon
him the Pontiff's relentless hostility ; and when the
French Prince Charles of Valois (who was the mere
tool of Boniface) had raised himself to power in
Florence under pretence of ** pacifying " the
"Black" and "White" factions, the blow fell.
Early in 1 302 Dante was exiled. On his temporary
alliance with the other exiled " Whites " of his party,
and with some of the old Ghibelline families banished
many years before, on the brief duration of this

124

THE "MONARCHIa" & THE COMEDY

alliance, and on its questionable significance we need
not here dilate. It is only necessary to note that
Dante had not been long an exile before he had
learned that party names had very little to do with
principles, and that he could find no true fellowship
under any of the partizan flags.

Our examination of the Convivio has already
shown us the line along which Dante*s mind travelled
during the years that immediately succeeded. And
in the Monarchia^ the work to which we must now
turn our attention, he throws a retrospective glance
on the process by which he reached his exalted con-
ception of the Roman Empire. Roman Law, we
know, had long been the palladium of freedom and
good government to the progressive elements in the
Italian Republics. But Dante tells us that the im-
pression produced upon his mind by his first ac-
quaintance with Roman history had been that of the
triumph of mere brute force. So it was represented
by Orosius, and it must have seemed a strange
paradox to Dante, as soon as he began to reflect on it,
that such a bulwark of civic order and progress
should have been built up by such an agent. But in
course of time, he tells us, he came to see that in fact
force was only the instrument of Roman progress
and dominion, and that not Force, but Justice, was
its vital principle.

It is easy to see that it was Virgil who thus taught
his faithful disciple to adjust his conception of
Roman history to his knowledge and experience of

Paradiso xvii : 61-69.

125

THE MINOR WORKS

Roman Law. For Virgil was Dante's most loved and
venerated author ; and of all Roman writers it is he
who has the clearest insight into the mission of
Rome as the organizer and pacifier of the world.
He regards her political genius as something more
august than even the artistic and scientific genius of
Greece ; and he holds that on her was divinely laid
the task of inuring the nations to the " habit of
peace.**

It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of
this change of conception, brought about in Dante*s
mind by the teaching of Virgil. At a single stroke it
redeemed the whole field of secular history from
chaos. Henceforth there were for Dante two conver-
gent streams of providentially guided history ; and
the potentate who in Dante's day bore the name of
Emperor, who was crowned at Rome, and who
claimed succession from Augustus and Justinian,
was called by his office to the lofty function of curb-
ing reckless ambition, whether factious or national,
and asserting everywhere the majesty of Law. If the
Emperor should forget his high calling and become
the mere feudal chief of a turbulent and lawless
aristocracy this shameful betrayal of a trust could no
more rob the office of its ideal lustre than the infamy
of a simoniacal Pope could cancel the divine com-
mission to S. Peter's successor.

Unfortunately this ideal conception of the Empire

had little to support it in the facts, or even (as we

shall see) in the latent possibilities of the actual

jEneidw'w 848-854. MonarchialL'u

126

THE "MONARCHIA" & THE COMEDY

situation ; yet Italy had never lost consciousness of
belonging to a European confederation, represented
by the tradition of the Empire ; and there was
nothing inconsistent in a man like Dante, who was
proud of his descent from ancestors who had once
resisted Imperial aggression on Florentine civic
independence, nevertheless regarding the Roman
Emperor, in principle, as the God-commissioned
guardian of civic law and arbitrator between con-
tending factions or peoples.

All these ideas we have seen at work in the
Convivio, but they were brought to sudden maturity
by the events of the very year in which that work
was abandoned.

In 1308 Henry of Luxemburg was elected to the
Imperial throne. He was a man of noble character
and great enthusiasm, and he took exactly the same
ideal view of his office that Dante did. He hated the
very names of Guelf and Ghibelline, and would not
allow them to be uttered in his presence. His duty,
he would often declare, was not to Italian or French-
man or German, but to his Brother-Man ; and it
was well known that he cherished exalted hopes of
ending the prolonged agony of Italy's internecine
feuds, of restoring exiles, of reconciling factions, and
of establishing the reign of peace and law. If the
contemporary tradition is to be trusted it was in con-
nection with Henry's election and his subsequent
expedition into Italy that Dante wrote the Monarchia^
and it was certainly then that he wrote the great
Inferno x : 40 /ff .
127

THE MINOR WORKS

Epistles which embody the same political creed as
that treatise.

We can trace the effect of these events upon
Dante*s mind in the opening words of the Monarchia,
All that had hitherto enlisted his enthusiasm seems
to have shrivelled into insignificance in his mind ex-
cept in so far as it was connected with the healing
mission of the Empire, or with the spiritual life
which the Empire should always reverence and pro-
tect. For it is a noteworthy fact that it was just at
this moment when he felt himself to be greeting the
political Messiah, in the person of Henry VII, that
JDante seems suddenly to have realized not only the
scope, but the limitations, of the secular power —
not only what the Empire could do, but also what
lay beyond its reach. Can it have been the friendly
attitude at first assumed towards Henry's purposes
by the reigning Pope Clement V that fired in the
poet's imagination the Vision of a Rome shone upon
by its two great luminaries } Be that as it may, we
find that whereas Dante, in the Monarchia^ is still
mainly concerned with the secular power and makes
It one of his chief concerns to vindicate the deriva-
tion of its authority, not through the mediation of
the Church, but direct from God himself, we
nevertheless encounter in this treatise a quite new
development of the conception of a twofold govern-
ment of the world, corresponding to the twofold
nature of man and his twofold destiny for earthly
and for heavenly bliss.

Monarchia I. i and passim. Epistolce v, vii.
128

THE "MONARCHIA & THE COMEDY

Full Stress now falls upon the distinction between
Reason and Revelation, which we have seen theoreti-
cally recognized but practically ignored in the
Convivio. We are now told that the one is our
guide to the earthly blessedness, in the exercise of
the moral virtues, which is typified by the Terrestrial
Paradise ; and that the other is appointed to lead us
to the supernal bliss of Heaven itself. And further,
that these two principles. Reason and Revelation,
would have sufficed in' their own strength to lead us
to the respective goals had not man fallen. But for
fallen man two organized regimens, the Empire and
the Church, are necessary to keep his recalcitrant
will upon the track. The ideal Empire and Church
therefore are no more than the instruments or em-
bodiments respectively of Reason and Revelation.
In the Convivio Dante had already employed the
phrase ragione scrina, or " reason reduced to
writing," as a synonym for Roman Law. He now
develops the implications of the Empire's function
as guardian of that Law, and teaches us that its
specific business is to quell the spirit of greed, secure
justice (and with justice peace), and so to enable
human civilization to advance towards its goal.
And this goal is nothing less than the realization or
" actualizing " of all the possibilities of human
character and intelligence ; that is to say, the
approximate realization, even under present earthly
conditions, of that life of Reason which man would
have lived in the Garden of Eden had he never fallen.
Convivio IV . 11 : 8i [8].

129 I

THE MINOR WORKS

At the same time the function of the Church is
recognized as something still higher, for it bears
the same relation to man's eternal blessedness that
the Empire does to his earthly welfare, and is the
organ of Revelation as the Empire is of Reason. As
the Emperor is the supreme civic magistrate so the
Pope is the paramount spiritual authority, and on
the harmony and faithfulness of these two the weal
of the world depends.

It may be noticed too, in passing, that we now
encounter for the first time the problem of the ex-
clusion of the Heathen from salvation. Dante men-
tions it incidentally as a matter which unaided reason
cannot fathom, but it appears to cause him no acute
uneasiness as yet, and he is quite content to receive
it on the authority of Revelation.

And again, the tentative linking up of the sacred
and secular histories which we noted in the syn-
chronisms of the Convivio is now developed into an
elaborate and startlingly bold theory as to the part
played by the Roman Empire in the drama of re-
demption itself; for it is in the Monarchia that
Dante first advances the doctrine, familiar to readers
of the Paradiso^ that it was in its capacity of divinely
appointed ruler of the world that the Roman Power
executed judgement on peccant human nature, col-
lectively ** assumed '* in the person of Christ.

The advance in Dante's systematic thinking which
the Monarchia registers must now be evident. But

Monarchia I. iii, iv; III. ivi and passim \ II. viii : 23-35 [vii :
4 Jf .] ; II. xii, xiii [xi, lii]. Cf. Paradiso vii.

130

THE "MONARCHIA" & THE COMEDY

it is only after long and close study that its full
significance can be felt. Augustine somewhere lays
down the golden rule (would that he had himself
observed it better !) that no cardinal point of doc-
trine is ever to be sought in the allegory of Scripture
unless it is to be found clearly set forth somewhere
in its letter. With the Monarchia in our hands we
may apply this wholesome doctrine, with little if any
qualification, to Dante*s works. The Convivio does
indeed furnish us with a rich field on which to collect
illustrations of innumerable points of detail that meet
us in the Comedy, but it is to the Monarchia that we
must look for the systematic setting forth of the
poet's organic thought on the meaning of life and
history, and on the destiny of man here and here-
after ; and it is in this same work that we find the
key to the allegory and the symbolism of the
Comedy. The elaborated conception of the Roman
Empire as the restraining power that must banish
the spirit of greed from earth and establish a life of
well-ordered human relations akin to that of Eden
interprets the Sunlit Hill, the insatiable Wolf and
the noble Hound of the first Canto of the Inferno,
The vindication of the independent significance and
authority of the Empire illuminates the insistence
on the life of Eden as an essential part of the ex-
perience of the saved which underlies the concluding
cantos of the Purgatorio, The parallelism of Empire
and Church, and the significance of their close re-
lations, as expounded in the Monarchia^ but in no
earlier work of Dante's, gives its meaning to in-

THE MINOR WORKS

numerable passages in the Comedy, from the juxta-
position of the visits of ^neas and of Paul to the
unseen world right on through the elaborated
warnings and examples on the terraces of Purgatory.
It interprets Marco Lombardo*s diagnosis of the
evil estate of the world and the pageant of the
confusion of the Powers which tells the Pilgrim
through the Terrestrial Paradise why so scanty a
stream of the Redeemed finds a way back to the
natural abode of man. The great discourses of
Justinian and of Beatrice on the history of Rome,
on the wickedness of those who make its authority a
cloak for faction, and on its intimate connection with
the scheme of salvation itself are all in perfect
harmony with the corresponding chapters of the
Monarchia — are, in fact, sometimes an elaboration
and sometimes a condensation of them, but never
a departure from them. And — not further to
elaborate the obvious — though the Monarchia has no
symbolism of its own, yet its scheme of thought
tacitly draws the sponge across the symbolism of the
Convivio while it arranges the material in perfect
order for that of the Comedy.

The Lady of Dante's second love was a vague
symbol of the Greek Speculative or Theoretical Life,
wearing (loosely enough) the garments of the Divine
Wisdom, and therefore claiming to represent both
human and divine science. The proper contrast to
her is the Practical or Civic Life. Accordingly, in

Inferno \\\ 10-33. PurgatorioTv'w 6\S(jq. Paradisovi'. 1-108,
vii : 19-120.

132

THE "MONARCHIA" & THE COMEDY

the Convivio Dante has already found his contrast
to Philosophy, not on the higher plane of Revelation
(which she theoretically includes, though she has not
really assimilated it), but in the form of Civic Life
presented by the Roman institutions, with their
supreme guardian in the person of the Roman
Emperor. Thus, in the fourth treatise of the
Convivio he delimits the contrasted spheres over
which the Empire and philosophy (represented in
this case by Frederick II and Aristotle) respectively
exercise authority. But in the Monarchia the Em-
peror and the Philosopher cannot be contrasted at all,
for the Empire itself rests upon (human) philosophy,
or Reason, and the natural balance to their joint
authority is found in that of the Church, resting upon
Revelation. And in this, too, the Monarchia explains
the Comedy.

The all-comprehending Philosophy of the Con-
vivio^ then, falls into two divisions in the Monarchia
and in the Comedy. So far as human reason can
carry it philosophy is no longer contrasted with
Empire, but is regarded as its naturally guiding
principle, and in its higher reaches Revelation re-
places Reason and inspires the Church as the organ
of the divine science.

The Empire, or temporal Monarchy, is carefully
defined as supreme over the things and relations of
Time, with tacit reference to the Spiritual power
which is concerned with the things of Eternity.

I Convivio IV. vi. Monarchia III. xvi. Purgatorio xvi : io6— 1 14 ;

the Comedy passim,
133

THE MINOR WORKS

The Emperor is the unique umpire in temporal
affairs, just as Aquinas had said (though Dante does
not refer to him in this connection) that it belonged
to the Pope's office to interpret authoritatively the
voice of the Church. And though the Emperor de-
rives his authority direct from God he should,
nevertheless, look upon the Pontiff with the filial
reverence that is his due. And he will irradiate the
world the better if he is himself shone upon by the
paternal grace of the successor of Peter.

And, finally, the claim to miraculous sanction
already made for Rome in the Convivio is now
strengthened by citation of the definition of a
miracle given by S. Thomas and the demonstration
that the miracles of Roman history conformed
thereto.

All is ready, then, for the parallelisms that run
through the Comedy, for Reason finding its highest
function as the ally and emissary of Revelation,
and for the two guides who are to lead the pilgrim
to Earthly and Heavenly bliss.

The closeness of the connection between Reason
and the Roman Empire and the decisive part that
Virgil actually played in Dante's mind in bringing
secular into vitalizing connection with sacred history,
and so embracing both in the same providential
scheme, explains why, in the Comedy, Reason, as
the emissary of Revelation, should be represented by

Monarchia I. ii : 3-15 [2 jf.]. Sum. Theol. IIa-II«, i: 10 c.
Monarchia I. x; II. passim ^ especially iv ; III. xvi : 129-140

THE "MONARCHIA'' & THE COMEDY

Virgil. It was indeed Aristotle who had enriched
Dante's mind with the material of scientific know-
ledge and the instruments of philosophic thought ;
but it was Virgil who had taught him to bring the
whole range of human thought and activity within
the light of providential guidance by revealing to
him the meaning of Roman history. And since it
was the specific business of the Roman Empire
inspired by Reason to bring men to the earthly
happiness and health typified by the Terrestrial
Paradise, we can see why Virgil must be the guide
not only through Hell, but to Eden.

And Beatrice ? There is not a word about her in
the Monarchia^ though it is full of Virgil ; but, never-
theless, it prepares for her the place that she occupies
in the Paradiso no less than for Virgil his place in the
Inferno and the Purgatorio, Can we find, at least by
conjecture, as firm a link between the Beatrice of the
Vita Nuova and of the Paradiso as we have found be-
tween the Virgil of the Monarchia and of the Comedy ?

Let us once more summarize and define the
materials at our command and the problem we have
to solve. Dante tells (i) that he entered on his
serious studies as a preparation for his task of com-
memorating Beatrice more worthily. Here Philo-
sophy is an auxiliary to the memory of Beatrice {Vita
Nuova), He tells us afterwards (2) that it was con-
solation for the loss of Beatrice that he sought in the
study of Philosophy (Convivio) ; and further (3)
that the actual study so enamoured him of his new
mistress as to draw his heart away from the memory

^35

THE MINOR WORKS

of Beatrice and postpone, at least, if it did not super-
sede, his purpose of writing "more worthily" of her.
Yet further we find evidence, hard to resist, to the
effect that (4) this avowed eclipsing of the memory
of Beatrice by the love of Philosophy was made into
a literary veil wherewith to cover up the record of
some actual unfaithfulness to the ideals for which
Beatrice had once stood ; and this at a time when
these ideals were reasserting their supremacy and
seeking to dissociate themselves from all jarring
elements in the poet's past life or utterances (Can-
zoni — Convivio — Purgatorio), And finally we witness
(5) the resolution of the undifferentiated conception
of Philosophy into its two constituents of Reason and
Revelation (Monarchia) ; and (6) we meet Beatrice
herself as the impersonated Revelation and learn that
Reason, in the person of Virgil, was her emissary,
and so far from having led Dante away from her
had been the means of bringing him back to her
from that unfaithfulness over which he had once
attempted to throw a veil of allegory. Our problem
is to find further light on the last step in this pro-
gression— I mean the progression from Philosophy
as an instrument, through Philosophy as a consola-
tion. Philosophy as an enlargement of life interests
and purposes, and Philosophy as a screen, back to
Philosophy both as an instrument and as a goal,
though not the supreme and ultimate goal ; and
further to connect this same progress with the note-
worthy fact that it begins by receding from Beatrice
and ends by finding her.

136

THE "MONARCHIA" & THE COMEDY

To help us in this task we note (i) that Dante*s
apparently independent reflections had brought him
to convictions which constitute an intellectual frame-
work into which the symbolism of his final synthesis
fits with perfect symmetry (Monarchia) ; and (2)
that this final movement of his mind was accom-
panied by a quickening of moral perceptions and
deepening of his spiritual insight which have lifted
him into his place as the supreme prophet-poet of all
the ages.

" The Spirit bloweth where it listeth,** and in
seeking to track its workings we may often mistake
the nature of the fuel that chances to be at hand for
the source of the divine and consuming flash that
enkindles it. But we can only work within the limits
of our own powers, and we must often, as here, be
content to seek in outward events the occasion of
that which must ever conceal its deeper causes from
our eyes.

Once again it is in the events of 1 308 to 1 3 1 3 that
we find our best clue. Henry was elected Emperor
in 1308, he was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle in the
June of 1309, and in that year or in 13 10 before the
autumn we may suppose the Monarchia to have
been written. In the autumn of 1 3 10 Henry crossed
the Alps and entered Turin ; in the January of 1 3 1 1
he was crowned in Milan; and in that same year
Dante wrote the three letters, glowing with prophetic
fervour and exaltation, to the Princes of Italy, to
Henry himself, and to the ** Florentines within "
(as opposed to the Florentines in exile). Then the

137

THE MINOR WORKS

impossibilities of Henry*s undertaking relentlessly
developed themselves, and in the August of 13 13
he died near Sienna, a saint and hero who had only
wrought destruction where he had willed salvation,
baffled by a world he loved but did not understand.
Dante had felt the most assured confidence in the
success of the Emperor^s expedition, and had been
unable to regard the resistance of Florence as any-
thing but an act of blind defiance of the will of God
and the authority of his vicegerent on earth. It is
one of our most precious evidences of the nobility
of his character that in the moment of his utmost
confidence in immediate and conclusive victory his
voice was raised to urge his fellow-exiles not to re-
turn as conquerors seeking vengeance and making
reprisals, but in the spirit of reconciled brethren
setting behind them for ever the weary record of
sufferings and injustices. When Henry was en-
camped before the walls of Florence, Dante, ** in
reverence for his native land," refused to accompany
him in the triumphal entry to which he looked
forward. But in actual fact neither Henry's nor
Dante's expectations were fulfilled. Henry's project
had from the first been impossible of execution, for
though he came as a deliverer and pacifier he could
have no executive power except either as a foreign
conqueror or as a faction leader. Had he proved
victorious he would perhaps have failed in his real
purpose even more disastrously than he did under

Epist. v: 69-93 [15-17]. Leonardo Bruni: Fita di Dante
Alighieri.

138

THE "MONARCHIa" Sc THE COMEDY

his defeat. His army had to withdraw from Florence,
and with his death some months later all Dante's
hopes perished.

Such an experience may shrivel or poison a man*s
moral nature, or it may throw him upon the deeper
life which no ** happenings " can blight. The
Comedy is there to tell us how Dante faced his
altered world. In such a crisis there is no proportion
between time and mental or spiritual growth and
change. Days may do the work of years. Henry
died in 13 13, and it is impossible to put the con-
ception and initial execution of the Comedy, as an
ordered whole, much later than 13 14. What has the
poet of the Comedy held fast, what has he cast away,
and what has h? gained ? He still holds fast by his
lofty conception of the possibilities of this earthly
life as an " all-embracing religious order ** ; but the
glow of prophetic rapture and the anticipation of the
immediate redemption of human society have passed
away. He can no longer cry ** For a new day be-
ginneth to glow, showing forth the dawn which is
even now dissipating the darkness of our long
calamity ; and already the breezes of the east begin
to blow, the lips of heaven glow red and confirm the
auspices of the nations with a caressing calm." No.
The vision is now " for many days to come.'* The
world must wait in patience for the noble " hound "
of Empire who is to ** harry " the wolf of Greed
** through every city," and who at last " will hunt
her back to Hell." Meanwhile she, with the other
Convivh IV. iv : 59-81 [6 /f.]. Epistoia v : 1-8 [i].

THE MINOR WORKS

beasts, holds the mountain-side. The sunlit height
of a well-ordered life on earth, reflecting the happy-
state of Eden, cannot as yet be scaled, and he who
would even now find inward peace for himself and
strive to " remove the dwellers in this life from the
state of misery and bring them to the state of bliss "
must not look for the triumphant banner of a
political Messiah to lead him. " Needs must he take
another way," for he must see Hell and Purgatory
and Heaven, and must recognize what he himself
has been and what he was called to be.

Through such a furnace only the pure ore of
truth can pass. When with his deepened spiritual
insight and his quickened moral perceptions Dante
looked back upon his own past he found in it not
only much to deplore, but much also that he had
himself misread but could now read aright. Now
that speculations on divine things had passed from a
branch of philosophical study into an experience
that uplifted the soul above the warfare of time into
the peace of eternity there came back, as from the
far-off memory of a childish dream, the sense of one
who had for a time made this earth bear the fruits
of Eden for him, and afterwards, from her seat in
heaven, had drawn his pilgrim soul upward into a
glory that the illuminated intelligence could catch
for a moment but could not retain in the memory
or bring back with it to earth. But now ** the sweet-
ness that was born " of that far-off vision once again
"dropped within his heart," and he recognized the
beginning in the end, the end in the beginning.

140

THE "MONARCHIA" & THE COMEDY

Beatrice had been, and was, to him " Revelation ** in
a sense even deeper than that in which Virgil was
" Reason." Why did he only know it now ? Why
had he stubbornly turned away from the thought of
her ? Only because the ** false-seeming pleasure ** of
unworthy things had so seduced him that nothing
short of a veritable journey through Hell itself could
flash upon his soul the conviction of the true worth
of that which he had chosen and of that which he had
rejected. The vain pretences of the Convivio were a
mockery. Repudiation and evasion are not repent-
ance and confession, and they cannot do their work.
If there be that in a man*s past life from which he
would fain dissociate himself he cannot explain it
away. He must purge it by action and endurance
that outwork and only so outwash its stains. As long
as Dante had sought in his studies mainly a consola-
tion for Beatrice's death, or had found in them escape
into opening life and broadening horizons, and yet
more when he had flung them as a screen between
himself — or the world — and a past that grieved
and embarrassed him, so long could he in one
way or another represent Philosophy as having
drawn him away from Beatrice. But when he under-
stood that through his studies there had run a golden
thread linking his earliest lessons in grammar and
logic and his highest eflx)rts of constructive social
and political idealism with his deepest assimilation
of the thought and experience of saintly theologians

Paradiso ixxiii : 58-63. Vita Nuova ilii. Purgatorio xix : 133-
138. Inferno i, ii.

141

THE MINOR WORKS

and mystics, then he knew how far from this noble
path that by-way stretched on which he had
wandered from Beatrice ; and he recognized in
Virgil, the personified Reason, the emissary, rather
than the rival of Beatrice. Philosophy had led him
back to her, not away from her, and she herself stood
behind the flame that girt the Terrestrial Paradise
with a welcome that was itself the bitterest of re-
proaches ; and yet a reproach that opened the way
through repentance to salvation.

Thus, with eyes unsealed Dante saw Hell, with
humbled heart he climbed the Mount of Purgatory.
Virgil had led him into the presence of Beatrice.
His eye fell before her and his heart cried in anguish,
** That is what I love — and this is what I am 1 **
And then — the draught of Lethe, the recovered
Eden, the opened heavens, and the Beatific Vision.

142

APPENDIX

ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF
DANTE'S WORKS

<^'P'PE3^T>IX

ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF
DANTE'S WORKS

It would be foreign to my purpose to enter upon
any detailed discussion of the chronology of Dante's
writings, but the reader may reasonably expect a
brief statement of the grounds on which the order
of composition assumed throughout this essay has
been determined, and the degree to which the re-
construction it attempts is dependent upon the
chronological scheme adopted.

As to the FuaNuova there is happily no need of dis-
cussion. The old idea that it was not completed till the
year 1 300 rests on a false reading {andava for i;^inxli:
2 [i]), and it is now generally admitted that the work
must have been finished within the second year after
Beatrice's death, that is to say, not later than in 1292.

The Odes were composed at various times. Two
of them seem to belong to the cycle of the Vita
Nuova^ and must have been written before its poems
were collected and enshrined in their prose frame-
work. Two others contain explicit references to the
poet's exile ; one of them {Amor^ dacchh convien
pur cK to mi dogIia\ lying altogether outside the
scheme of the Cortvivio, appears to be the latest of all.
There remain eleven Odes, most if not all of which
we may suppose to belong to the years between
1292 and 1302. Some scholars, however, would
assign one or two of these also to a later date.

The First Book of the De Vulgari Eloquentia con-
tains references to contemporary rulers which fix

145 K

APPENDIX

the date of 1 304 for its composition ; and there is no
sufficient reason to suppose, as some have done, that
any considerable interval passed between the writing
of the First Book and the Second.

The Convivio was undertaken when Dante had
long been an exile (I. iii : 15-43 [3-5]> iv : 94-
105 [13]). An allusion in the Fourth Book (xxix :
16 sq, [2]) fixes 1308, with high probability, as the
date of its composition, and there is no good reason
for supposing that the four Books were written in any
other order than that in which they now stand. In
particular the form which the Fourth Book takes,
breaking away as it does from the general scheme
laid down in the Second Book, seems to indicate that
this Fourth Book is the later (Convivio II. i : 119-
126 [15] ; IV. i : 89-92 [11]). This would make
the Convivio follow the De Vulgari Eloquentia,

An objection may be based on a passage in the
Convivio (I. v : 6 1 -69 [9 j^.]) in which Dante speaks
of the De Vulgari Eloquentia as a work which he
" intends to write,*' not as one that he has written.
As to this it may be noted that as both the treatises
in question were left incomplete by their author he
must in any case have been engaged upon one of
them while the other was still unfinished and might
be spoken of as projected rather than executed. It
may be freely admitted that there is some appearance
of violence in this interpretation of the words, but
the positive data as to the years 1304 for the one
treatise and 1 308 for the other must be taken to out-
weigh any objection on that score. The chronological
relations of the De Vulgari Eloquentia and the Con-

146

CHRONOLOGY OF DANTE's WORKS

vivio have, however, little or no bearing on the
mental history of their author.

When we come to the Monarchia we are in real
difficulties. Since it contains no reference to the
author's exile it used to be supposed by some
scholars to be earlier than 1302 and to follow next
after the Fita Nuova in the succession of Dante's
principal works. But it is so obviously maturer than
the Convivio that it cannot be supposed to precede
it in time. Others have placed it near the close of
Dante's life, for it offers many parallels in thought
and in expression to the Paradiso, Indeed, the text,
as given in the MSS., contains a direct reference to
the Paradiso as a work already in the reader's hands.
In the passage in question {Monarchia I. xii : 39 sqq,
[6]) we read ** Hec libertas [sc. arbitrii] sive princi-
pium hoc totius libertatis nostre, est maximum
donum humane nature a deo collatum " ; and the
MSS. add ** sicut in paradiso comedie iam dixi,"
which must be understood as a reference to Para-
diso V : 19-24. But the strangeness of such a form
of reference must strike any reader whom long study
has made sensitive to Dante's modes of expression.
And since the words that open this same chapter are
** Et humanum genus potissime liberum optime se
habet. Hoc erit manifestum si principium pateat
libertatis. Propter quod sciendum quod principium
primum nostre libertatis est libertas arbitrii," it
seemed obvious to take the sicut iam dixi as a reference
back to this passage, and to regard the in paradiso
comedie as a marginal reference (by a reader who had
missed the point) that came to be incorporated in the

147

APPENDIX

text. As Dante repeatedly speaks of himself in the
first person in the Monarchia (cf. I. i : 14 sg^, [3
s^q.] ; II. i : II s^g, [i]), there is no insurmountable
difficulty in this hypothesis, and it has been adopted
by Witte and Moore. Of the two latest editors,
however, Bertalot accepts and Rostagno rejects the
whole of the passage (cf,, further, nofe i on next
page). For myself I cannot doubt that the reference
to the Paradiso is spurious. Surely it is inconceiv-
able that Dante, after speaking of the Paradiso as he
does in Canto xxv of the poem itself, and in his
correspondence with Del Virgilio, could have written
of himself, as he does in the first words of the
Monarchia^ as one who had been enriched from the
open fountains of wisdom but had himself made no
contribution to the common store. Whereas it is
conceivable enough that when the Messianic vision
of a regenerated Italy broke upon him with Henry's
election he might regard the literary and academic
activities that had hitherto so largely engrossed his en-
ergies as but a trivial contribution to the reorganiza-
tion of human society if measured against the debt due
from the heir of Justinian's Law and VirgiFs Gospel.
Moreover, the great Political Letters, which quite
certainly date from the first years of Henry's expedi-
tion, 13 10 and 131 1, and the Letter to the Italian
cardinals, written soon after Henry's death in 13 13,
correspond exactly in their political, ecclesiastical,
and philosophical conceptions (though not in their
tone) with the Monarchia}

^ The solitary exception to the harmony between the Letters and
the Monarchia is found in the fact that in the sixth Epistle (lines 53-

148

CHRONOLOGY OF DANTe's WORKS

On the balance of evidence, then, the tradition
that connects the composition of the Monarchia with
the expedition of Henry seems to be justified, but in
any case the Letters show that in the years 131 1-
1 3 14 Dante had risen above the cruder system of the
Convivio and had definitely reached those views
which find their complete expression in the Monar-
chia (whenever it was written) and underlie the
structure of the Comedy as an organic whole. This
is beyond dispute, and happily it is all that is needed
to justify^ the use that has been made of the Monarchia
in my attempted reconstruction of the movement of
Dante*s mind from the days of the Vita Nuova to
those of the Comedy.^

55 [^]) ^^^ author incidentally adopts, as a figure, the current sym-
bolism in which the sun and moon represent respectively the Papacy
and the Empire, though he will not allow it as the basis of a serious
argument in the Monarchia.

^ Professor Foligno, in the volume of Commemorative Essays
issued from the London University Press in 1921, pp. 143-156,
argues, with abundant references to recent discussions, for a date
between April 13 13 and March 13 14, chiefly on the strength of
relations which certain scholars find between the Monarchia and the
papal bull Pastoralis Cura, together with a Letter subsequently
issued by King Robert of Sicily. Professor Foligno accepts the sicut
in paradiso passage in its entirety, but regards it as a later
addition from Dante's own hand. *' It seems scarcely credible," he
well remarks, " that Dante should have written any considerable part
of the treatise and far less initiated such a work after Henry's death "
(P* ^53)* ^y o^"^ impression is strong that the Monarchia was
written before the Letters. The restraint of the former contrasted
with the tone of exaltation and passion of the latter argues that the
Treatise was written in the hope of convincing, before the crisis,
when men's minds were expectant; and the Letters later on, when,
at the crisis itself, men were swept off their feet by hopes and fears.

149

APPENDIX

And now, lastly, as to the Comedy itself. Almost
the only certain datum we have is derived from
Dante's correspondence with Del Virgilio. From
this it appears that in the year 13 19 the Purgatorio
was already completed and the Paradiso was in pro-
gress. An intimate friend like Del Virgilio had as
yet seen little or nothing of it, but was looking for-
ward to its appearance with eager expectation.

It is further obvious that the general framework
and underlying conceptions of the Comedy repre-
sent a later stage than that of the Convivio^ written
about 1308, just before Henry's expedition. And
the amazing development from the mentality of this
work revealed in the Monarchia^ and presupposed in
the essential conceptions and the artistic form and
scope of the Comedy, must be supposed to have
taken place in close connection with Henry's expedi-
tion itself; so that the date of the Comedy as a
whole would be subsequent to Henry's death in
13 1 3. In full accord with all this is the evidence of
a passage in the nineteenth Canto of the Inferno
(lines 79—84), in which reference is made, under the
form of a veiled prophecy, to the death of Clement V,
which took place in 13 14.

But if these considerations indicate that the
Comedy, as an organized whole, dates from the
last seven years of Dante's life that does not in itself
preclude the hypothesis that earlier work may have
been incorporated into the design. The great passage
in the sixth Canto of the Purgatorio on the factions of
Italy almost forces us to ask whether it was not
written while Albert was still on the throne, or

150

CHRONOLOGY OF DANTE's WORKS

had only just fallen (May 1308). And the close
analogy of the imagery in that Canto and in two
passages of the Convivio (IV. ix : 100 sqq, [10], and
xxvi : 43 sqq, [6]) written in 1308 has suggested,
in spite of a wide divergence of tone, a coincident
date. I have sometimes wondered whether the great
hymn to Francis {Paradiso xi), with or without its
companion in Praise of Dominic, was originally an
independent composition. The words "la cui mirabil
vita meglio in gloria del ciel si canterebbe** have
puzzled the commentators, for the encomium is
being ** sung in heaven." Has it been transplanted
there, and is this a trace of the soil in which it grew
that has escaped the gardener's notice ? Speculation
is rife in regard to the actual date of composition
of other portions of the Comedy ; and, above all,
there is the tradition, already referred to (p. 81),
that the earlier Cantos of the Inferno were composed
before Dante*s banishment.^ These speculations,
however, should be kept within modest limits by
the cardinal fact that in 1304, or later, Dante re-
garded all Italian forms of verse outside the Canzone^
the Eallata^ and the Sonetto as " irregular and ille-
gitimate.** When he so wrote he can hardly have
had in his mind the concept of a great synthetic

^ In an article on the ethical system of the Inferno printed in
Modem Language Review, vol. xvi,No. 4, October 1921, 1 have tried
to show how my (somewhat hazardous) suggestion that the pre-
exilian draft of the early Gintos of the Inferno was written in Latin
would fall in with the indirect evidence of the De Vulgari Eloquentia
and with the manifest transformation and expansion of the original
plan of the Inferno which may be detected in the want of continuity
and symmetry in its ethical system.

APPENDIX

Italian poem on the scale of an epic and aspiring
to the position of a classic. So it would seem that
whatever instinctive premonitions may have shaped
Dante's earlier experiments, and whatever material
he may have found ready to his hand, our conclusion
holds that the Comedy, as we know it, took shape
after the failure of Henry's expedition in 13 13.
Its whole scheme, as foreshadowed in the opening
Cantos of the Inferno^ cannot have been firmly laid
down and held at any earlier period.

The outcome of our examination of Dante's
Minor Works is the conviction that whereas there
is a real breach in some respects between the Vita
Nuova and the Convivioj nevertheless, in the purely
mental development the progress is steady and con-
tinuous, in a uniform direction, from the Vita Nuova^
through the Canzoni^ the Convivio^ and the Monar-
chia^ to the Comedy. And at the end of this progress
we find ourselves brought back to Beatrice, from
whom at first it seemed to be leading us away.

The De Vulgari Eloquentta^ theEpisfo/^ythe Eclog^^
and the De Aqua et Terra fall easily into their places
in the scheme. The points of the greatest importance
are just the ones most securely established ; and it
would need external or internal evidence of a very
different order to any that has yet been urged to
shake their stability.

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