DANTE: "THE CENTRAL MAN OF ALL THE WORLD. "

A Course of Lectures Delivered Before the Student Body of theNew York State College for Teachers, Albany, 1919, 1920

by

JOHN T. SLATTERY, Ph. D. 

With a Preface by John H. Finley, L. H. D. 

New YorkP. J. Kenedy & Sons1920Copyright, 1920, byP. J. Kenedy & Sons, New YorkPrinted in U. S. A. 

DEDICATION

THIS MODEST WORK OWES ITSPUBLICATION TO THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF

PRESIDENT ABRAM R. BRUBACHER

AND

DEAN HARLAN H. HORNER

OF THE STATE COLLEGE FOR TEACHERS, ALBANY, N. Y. 

 WHERE MANY PLEASANT HOURS WERE PASSED IN DELIVERING THESE LECTURES. TO THESE FRIENDS AND TO THE STUDENT-BODY OF THE COLLEGE THE AUTHOR HAS THE HONOR OF DEDICATING THIS BOOK

PREFACE

I stand as does the reader at the entrance to this book which I have notas yet entered myself. I have before me the journey through the Infernoand Purgatorio, into Paradise, with a new companion. I have made thejourney before many times with others, or with Dante and Virgil alone, but I know that I shall enjoy especially the companionship and commentof one with whom I have had such satisfaction of comradeship in ourjourney as neighbors for a little way across this earth. I inviteothers, and I hope they may be many, to make this brief journey withus, not because I know specifically what Dr. Slattery will say alongthe way, but because whatever he says out of his deep and reverentacquaintance with the Divine Comedy will help us all who follow him, whether we are of his particular faith or not, to an appreciation ofthe meaning of this immortal poem, and make us desire to go again andagain in our reading through these spaces of the struggles of human souls. 

A world-literary-movement will commemorate in 1921 the six hundredthanniversary of the death of the immortal Dante. That a medievalistshould call forth the homage of the twentieth century to the extent ofbeing honored in all civilized lands and by cultured peoples who, forthe most part, do not know the language spoken by him, or who do notprofess the religion of him who wrote the most religious book ofChristianity, is a marvel explainable by the fact that the Divine Comedyis a drama of the soul, --the story of a struggle which every man mustmake to possess his own spirit against forces that would enslave it. Thecentral interest of the poem is in the individual who may be you or Iinstead of Dante the subject of the work, and that fact exalts thepersonal element and gives the spiritual value which we of modern timesappreciate as well as did the thirteenth century. 

The Divine Comedy is attractive for other reasons. It may appeal to usas it did to Tennyson, because of "its divine intensity, " or it mayaffect us as it did Charles Eliot Norton by "its powerful exposition ofmoral penalties and rewards, " showing that righteousness is inexorable;or it may interest us because of its solid realism, its pure strength ofconception, its surpassing beauty, its vivid imaginative power, itsperfection of diction "without superfluousness, without defect. "Whatever be the reason of our interest in Dante, the study of his DivineComedy will ever be both a discipline "not so much to elevate ourthoughts, " says Coleridge, "as to send them down deeper, " and a delightcalling forth the deepest emotions of our being. 

JOHN H. FINLEY. 

CONTENTS

 PAGE

 Dante and His Time 1

 Dante, The Man 49

 Dante's Inferno 101

 Dante's Purgatorio 151

 Dante's Paradiso 219

DANTE AND HIS TIME

DANTE AND HIS TIME

To know Dante we must know the age which produced Christianity'sgreatest poet, he whom Ruskin calls "the central man of all the world, as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral andintellectual faculties, all at their highest. " Other writers are not sodependent upon their times for our clear understanding of their books. Dante to be intelligible to the modern mind, cannot be taken out of thethirteenth century. "Its contemporary history and its contemporaryspirit" says Brother Azarias in his Phases of Thought and Criticism, "constitute his clearest and best commentary. " Only in the light of thiscommentary can we hope to know his message and realize its supremacy. And that it is worth while to make the study there can be no doubt uponthe part of any seeker of truth and admirer of beauty. 

Emerson said: "I think if I were a professor of rhetoric I should useDante for my text-book. Dante is the rhetorician. He is all wings, pureimagination and he writes like Euclid. " James Russell Lowell told hisstudents in answer to the question as to the best course of reading tobe followed: "If I may be allowed a personal illustration, it was myown profound admiration for the Divina Commedia of Dante that lured meinto what little learning I possess. " Gladstone declared: "In the schoolof Dante I learned a great part of that mental provision ... Which hasserved me to make the journey of human life. " It surely must be ofinestimable advantage to sit under the instruction of one of the race'smaster teachers who stimulates one to lofty thinking and deep feeling, leads one into realms of wider knowledge and helps one to know his ownage by revealing a mighty past. 

To see that mighty past, to live again with Dante in the thirteenthcentury is possible only after we have cleared the way with whichignorance and misrepresentation have encumbered the approach. Here, perhaps, more than in any other period of civilization is the dictumtrue that history is often a conspiracy against the truth. We modernswho are not only obsessed with the theory of evolution, but aredominated by the idea that nothing of permanent value can come frommedievalism, arrogantly proclaim that ours is the greatest of centuriesbecause we have not only what all other centuries had, but somethingelse distinctively our own--a vast contribution to the world's progress. This self-complacency makes us forget that whatever truth there may bein the great theory of evolution, certainly the validity of the theoryis not confirmed by the intellectual history of the human race. As wassaid of the Patriarchal Age so we may say of Dante's times "there weregiants in those days" which we presume to ignore. Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, indeed stand forth in irrefutable protest against thequestionable assertion of evolution that the present is intellectuallysuperior to the past. 

The evolutionary theory prejudices our age against acknowledging thehigh accomplishments of the past. So to know the truth we must overcomethe conspiracy with which so-called history has enveloped the past, especially those generations immediately prior to Dante's. How thatignorance of the history and spirit of that period can blind even agreat writer to the wonderful feats inherited from the centuriesimmediately preceding the thirteenth, is revealed by the assertion ofCarlyle that "in Dante ten _silent_ centuries found a voice. " Tostate what history now regards as fact, it must be said that while Danteby his giant personality and sublime poetic genius could alone ennobleany epoch he was not "a solitary phenomenon of his time but a worthyculmination of the literary movement which, beginning shortly before1200, produced down to 1300 such a mass of undying literature" thatsubsequent generations have found in it their model and inspirationand have never quite equalled its originality and worth. 

In verification of this statement I have only to mention to you thenames of the Cid of Spain, the Arthurian Legends of England, theNibelungen Lied of Germany and the poems of the Meistersingers, theTrouveres and the Troubadours. The authors of these works had beentaught to make themselves eternal as Dante says Brunetto Latini taughthim. They are proof against the alleged dumbness of the ages justpreceding Dante's. Of those times speaks Dr. Ralph Adams Cram, renownedequally for historical study and for architectural ability: "The twelfthwas the century of magnificent endeavors and all that was great in itssuccessor is here in embryo not only in art but in philosophy, religionand the conduct of life. The eleventh century is a time of aspirationand vision, of the enunciation of new principles and of the first shockof the contest between the old that was doomed and the new that wasdestined to unprecedented victories. " (The Substance of Gothic, p. 69. )

Let us now make a general survey of Dante's century and then considerthe more particular events and circumstances of his environment. 

It may be a surprise to you to know that there is a book entitled TheThirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries by Dr. James J. Walsh, in itsfifth edition with a sale of 70, 000 copies. He indeed is not the onlyman of letters who signalizes that century for its greatness. To confinethe quotations to two writers well known in our day, I find that Fiskein his Beginnings of New England says of the thirteenth century: "It wasa wonderful time but after all less memorable as the culmination ofmedieval empire and medieval church than as the dawning of the new erain which we live today. " Frederic Harrison, in his Survey of theThirteenth Century says, "Of all the epochs of effort after a new lifethat ... Is the most spiritual, the most really constructive and indeedthe most truly philosophic. It had great thinkers, great rulers, greatteachers, great poets, great artists, great moralists, and greatworkmen. It could not be called the material age, the devotional age, the political age or the poetic age in any special degree. It wasequally poetic, political, industrial, artistic, practical, intellectualand devotional. And these qualities acted on a uniform conception oflife with a real symmetry of purpose. "

Ours is an age of thought but of thought finding concrete expressionin practical invention and especially in activities in the line ofmanufacture and commerce. Posterity will probably characterize our ageas the Industrial Age, a phrase that will signalize our period both forthe development of industries not thought possible a century ago andfor the evolution of the industrial worker to a position of strikingimportance and power. For the first time in the history of humanity theworkman's status is the subject of international agreement. The Leagueof Nations promises to treat Labor from a humanitarian point of viewand so to place it on the broad, firm pathway leading to industrialpeace and economical solidarity for the common good. That would seema necessity in view of the strides of progress in other directions. 

Now wireless telegraphy crosses oceans and unites continents. Thewireless telephone between ships and shore is in operation. It has beenfound practicable to transport by submarine a cargo from Bremen toBaltimore. In aircraft the development has been just as wonderful. Lessthan ten years ago the world's record for long flight by aeroplane wasmade, with no regard for time, with two stops between Albany and NewYork. In July, 1919, an aeroplane making no stop covered the distancebetween New York and Chicago in some six hours. Furthermore an Americanseaplane, in three stages made the trip from New York to England andthen a British Dirigible without making a stop came from England toLong Island in ninety-six hours. "This is the end and the beginning ofan age" says the author of Mr. Brittling Sees It Through. "This issomething far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformationand we live in it. "

We indeed consider it the age of "big things. " Dynasties fall andrepublics spring up. When war breaks out it is a World War involvingtwenty-four nations and causing 7, 781, 806 deaths (Nelson's Encyclopedia, V. Iv, p. 519) and costing $200, 000, 000, 000. In the first year in whichwe were at war, our country spent more than had been the cost ofconducting the government for 124 years, including the expenses of the Civil and the Spanish-American Wars. Yes, it is an age of "bigthings. " The Allies in the Champagne offensive of September, 1915, threw 50, 000, 000 shells into the German lines in three days. Was it oneout of sympathy with "big things, " one intent on the quiet of the higherlife as contrasted with the din of the day, who said that "moderncivilization is noise and the more civilization progresses, the greaterwill be the noise?" In any event the muses who inspired Dante, arealmost dumb. Now the captains of industry are the commanding figures ofthe day and the student, the poet, the philosopher, the statesman havegone into innocuous desuetude. Amy Lowell is preferred to Longfellow:Charlie Chaplin draws bigger crowds than Shakespeare can interest. Trainmen get wages higher than are the salaries of some of ourgovernors. Unskilled labor is paid more than the teachers of our youthreceive. The cost of living was never higher in the history of mankind. 

How illuminating to turn from this picture to that of Dante's age. Thenin Florence, a bushel of wheat cost about fifteen cents, a carpentercould buy a broad ax for five cents, a saw for three cents, a planefor four cents, a chisel for one cent. The average daily wage of awoolworker was about thirty-six cents. In view of the high purchasingpower of money in Dante's age, the fact that he borrowed at least sevenhundred and fifty seven and a half golden florins, a debt that was notpaid until after his death, leads one to think that he must have beenregarded by his contemporaries as prodigal in the use of money. Hisfinancial difficulties must have given him an uneasy conscience for heinsists repeatedly on the wickedness of prodigality. In fact he makesthe abuse of money on the part either of a miser or of a spendthrift asin against the social order punishable according to the gravity of theoffence in Hell or Purgatory. 

To return to the matter of prices in Dante's day. In England a goosecould be bought for two and a half pence. A stall-fed ox commandedtwenty-four shillings while his fellow brought up on grass was sold forsixteen shillings. A fat hog, two years old, --and this is interesting tous who pay seventy-five cents a pound for bacon--a fat hog two years oldcost only three shillings four pence and a fat sheep shorn, one shillingand two pence. A gallon of oysters was purchasable for two pence, adozen of the best soles for three pence. A yard of broadcloth cost onlyone shilling one pence, a pair of shoes four pence. These figures ofEnglish money are taken from an act of Edward III of England who wasborn seven years after Dante's death. Parliamentarian enactment underthe same king fixed a table of wages. 

For a day's work at haymaking or weeding of corn, for instance, a womangot one penny. For mowing an acre of grass or threshing a quarter ofwheat a man was paid four pence. The reaper received also four pence forhis day's labor. Eight hours constituted a working day. The people ofthe Middle Ages not only had the Saturday half-holiday but they enjoyedrelease from work on nearly forty vigils of feast days during the year. That they were as well off, e. G. As the unskilled laborer of our day, who demands from four to eight dollars a day as a wage, is evident fromthe fact that while he has to pay forty cents a pound for mutton, theworkman of Edward the Third's day earned enough in four days to buy awhole sheep and a gallon of ale. So plentiful was meat in England thatit was the ordinary diet of the poor. A preamble of an act of Parliamentof the fourteenth century in specifying beef, pork, mutton and vealdeclares that these are "the food of the poorer sort. " (The Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries, p. 479. )

Speaking of live-stock leads to the observation that the people ofDante's time for the most part lived in the country. Cities had not yetbecome magnets. London is supposed to have had a population oftwenty-five thousand, York ten thousand four hundred, Canterbury, fourthousand seven hundred, Florence, in the year 1300, according toVillani, a contemporary of Dante, had "ninety thousand enjoying therights of citizenship. Of rich Grandi, there were fifteen hundred. Strangers passing through the city numbered about two thousand. Inthe elementary schools were eight thousand to ten thousand children. "(Staley's Guilds of Florence, p. 555. )

The means of travel and communication, of course, were few anddifficult. The roads were bad and dangerous. In France, Germany andItaly there were so many forms of government, dukedoms, baronies, marquisates, signories, city republics, each with its own customregulations, not to speak of each having its own coinage and language, that travelers encountered obstacles almost at every step. For the mostpart, journeys had to be made afoot and a degree of safety was attainedonly if the traveler joined a large trade caravan, a pilgrimage or agovernmental expedition. Night often found the party far from a hospiceor inn and so they were obliged for shelter to camp on the highway orin the fields. Necessarily the traveler was subjected to innumerableprivations and sufferings. 

I have not been able to get accurate information as to the exact lengthof time required to make a trip, say from London to Paris--a distancecovered the other day by an aeroplane in eighty minutes. But, the"Consuetudines" of the Hereford Cathedral, England, afford us some dataupon which to base the conclusion that six weeks were necessary forsuch a trip, allowing another week for religious purposes. The"Consuetudines" after specifying that no canon of the cathedral was tomake more than one pilgrimage beyond the seas in his lifetime, allowsthe clergyman seven weeks' absence to go abroad to the tomb of St. Denisin the suburbs of Paris, sixteen weeks to Rome and a year to Jerusalem. 

A table of time limits between Florence and the principal cities ofEurope and the East made by the Florentine Banking houses in Dante'sday, showed the number of days required for consignments of specie andgoods to reach their destination. Rome was reached in fifteen days, Venice and Naples in twenty days, Flanders in seventy days, England andConstantinople in seventy-five days, Cyprus in ninety days. How long ittook Dante to make the trip from Florence to Rome, we do not know buthistory tells us that he went to the Eternal City in the year 1300. Hewas indeed a great traveler. During his twenty years' exile, we knowthat our poet's itinerary led him among other places to Padua, Venice, Ravenna, Paris and there is good reason to believe, as Gladstonecontends, that he went for study to Oxford. The regret is permissiblethat he did not leave us an account of his journeyings. "Had he given uspictures--as he alone could have painted them--of scenes by the waysideand of the courts of which he was an honored guest, " says Dr. J. A. Zahmin his Great Inspirers, "we should have had the most interestingand the most instructive travel book ever written. "

We cannot but notice one great effect brought about by traveling inthose days, especially by pilgrimages and by the Crusades formed indefence of pilgrimages to the Holy Land and that is, that there arose onall sides a desire for liberty and the growth of a spirit of nationalitythat worked to the destruction of absolute government. The power of thecommon people began to assert itself. In 1215, England forced from JohnLackland the Magna Charta, the foundation of all the liberty of Englishspeaking people even in modern times. The very year in which Dante wasborn, representatives of the townspeople were admitted as members of theEnglish Parliament. In France, during the thirteenth century, thecentralization of power in the hands of the kings went forward with thegradual diminution of the influence of the nobility--a fact operating tothe people's advantage. 

In 1222 the nobles forced Andrew II of Hungary to issue the Golden Bull, the instrument which Blackstone later declared turned "anarchy intolaw. " In Germany and Sicily Frederick II published laws giving a largermeasure of popular freedom. In Italy, the existence of the cityrepublics--especially those of Florence, Sienna, Pisa--showed howsuccessfully the ferment of liberty had penetrated the mass of thebody-politic. 

Coming now to regard the characteristics of Dante's age we must say thatthe first big thing that looms in sight is the fact that this was thegolden age of Christian faith. Everywhere the Cross, the symbol ofsalvation, met the eye. It was the age when men lived in one faith, usedone ritual, professed one creed, accepted a common doctrine and moralstandard and breathed a common religious atmosphere. Heresy was notwholly absent but it was the exception. Religion regarded then not as anaccident or an incident of life but as a benign influence permeatingthe whole social fabric, not only cared for the widow and orphan andprovided for the poor, but it shaped men's thoughts, quickened theirsentiments, inspired their work and directed their wills. These menbelieved in a world beyond the grave as an ever present reality. Hell, Purgatory, Heaven were so near to them that they, so to speak, couldtouch the invisible world with their hands. To them, as to Dante, "thislife was but a shadowy appearance through which the eternal realities ofanother world were constantly betraying themselves. " Of the intensityand universality of faith in that life beyond death, Dante is not theexception but the embodiment. His poem has no such false note ofscepticism as we detect in Tennyson's In Memoriam. Note the words of themodern poet:

 "I falter where I firmly trod And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar stairs That slope through darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith and grope And gather dust and chaff and call To what I feel is Lord of all And faintly trust the larger hope. "

Not thus does Dante speak. As the voice of his age he begins with faith, continues with faith and leads us to the unveiled vision of God. Heboth shows us his unwavering adherence to Christian doctrine in thatscene in Paradiso where he is examined as to his faith by St. Peter andhe teaches us that the seen is only a stepping stone into the unseen. Ithas been said of him in reference to his Divina Commedia, "The light offaith guides the poet's steps through the hopeless chambers of Hell witha firmness of conviction that knows no wavering. It bears him throughthe sufferings of Purgatory, believing strongly fits reality: it raiseshim on the wings of love and contemplation into Heaven's Empyrean, wherehe really hopes to enjoy bliss far beyond that whereof he says. "(Brother Azarias. )

Leading the religious awakening of the thirteenth century and makingpossible Dante's work at the end of the century were two of the world'sgreatest exponents of the spiritual life, both signalized in theParadiso. St. Dominic characterized by Dante (Par. XII, 56) as "ajealous lover of the Christian faith with mildness toward his disciplesbut formidable to his foes, " founded an order to be "the champions ofFaith and the true lights of the world. " Even in its early days it gaveto the world eminent scholars such as Albertus Magnus and St. ThomasAquinas, and it has never ceased to number among its members greatthinkers, ardent apostles, stern ascetics and profound mystics. InDante's time it was the only order specially charged with the office ofpreaching and from its founder's time down to the present day the onewho acts as the Pope's Theologian has been taken from the ranks of thisorder. Besides preaching to all classes of Christian society andevangelizing the heathen, the Dominicans in Dante's day fought againstheresy and schism, lectured in the universities, toiled among the poor, activities in which the order is still engaged. 

But perhaps the man whose spiritual influence was greatest inmedievalism, if not in all the history of Christianity, was Francis ofAssisi, who "all seraphical in order rose a sun upon the world. " (Par. XI, 37. ) Born at Assisi in Umbria in 1182, the son of a wealthy clothmerchant and of Pica, a member of a noble family of Provence, Francisgrew up a handsome, gay and gallant youth "the prime favorite among theyoung nobles of the town, the foremost in every feat of arms, the leaderof civil revels, the very king of frolic. " A low fever contracted whenwith his fellow citizens he fought against the Perugians turned histhoughts to the things of eternity. Upon his recovery he determined todevote himself to the service of his fellow man for the honor of God. 

His renunciation of the things of this life was dramatic. To swerve himfrom the new life his father had cited him to appear before the Bishop. Francis, unmoved by the appeal of his father persisted in hisresolution. Stripping himself of the clothes he wore, the Bishopcovering his nakedness, Francis gave his clothes to his father saying, "Hitherto I have called you Father, henceforth I desire to say only OurFather who art in heaven. " Then and there as Dante sings, weresolemnized Francis' nuptials with his beloved Spouse, the Lady Poverty, under which name, in the mystical language afterwards so familiar toFrancis, "he comprehended the total surrender of all wordly goods, honors and privileges. " He went forth and attracted disciples. Withthese partaking of his zeal and animated by his charity, he labored tomake his generation turn from the sordid to the spiritual, diffusingover all the people a tender love of nature and God. 

Among his disciples--great minds of the time--were Thomas of Celano, oneof the literary geniuses of the day, the author of the sublime DiesIrae--a religious poem chanted to this day at every funeral high massin the Catholic Church, and frequently sung or played in great operahouses, --Bonaventure, professor of philosophy and theology at theuniversity of Paris, Roger Bacon, the friar, the renowned teacher atParis and Oxford, Duns Scotus, the subtile doctor. In the Third Orderestablished for those not following the monastic life the membership, in the course of time, embraced among others St. Louis, King of France, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and Dante. 

He, towards the end of his exile, footsore, weary and discouraged, buffeted by the adverse winds of fortune knocked, a stranger, at thegates of the Franciscan monastery at Lunigiana. "As neither I nor any ofthe brothers recognized him, " writes Brother Hilary, the Prior, "I askedhim what he wished. He made no answer but gazed silently upon thecolumns and galleries of the cloister. Again I asked him what he wishedand whom he sought and slowly turning his head and looking around uponthe brothers and me, he answered 'Peace. '"

The monks spoke gently to him, ministered with kindly and delicatesympathy to his bodily and spiritual needs. His reticence left him andhis reserve melted away. Here the object of loving hospitality, heremained finding means and opportunity for profound study. Before hedeparted he drew from his bosom a part of the precious manuscript ofDivina Commedia and trustingly giving it into the hands of the Priorsaid, "Here, Brother, is a portion of my work which you may not haveseen: this remembrance I leave with you: forget me not. "

That he himself was not unforgetful of the sympathy of the simple andwarm-hearted followers of St. Francis is evident from the fact that hegloried in his membership of the Third Order, wearing about his body theFranciscan cincture for chastity and it is not unlikely that at Ravennabefore he finally closed his eyes upon the turmoil of the world full ofvicissitudes, he modestly requested that he be buried in the simplehabit of the order and be laid to rest in a tomb attached to theirmonastery. In any event such was his burial. 

For our sympathetic understanding of the supremacy of religion inDante's day, may I again quote Ralph Adams Cram, whose words on theeleventh century are equally applicable to the era of our Florentine andto his country? Dr. Cram writes: "It is hard for us to think back intosuch an alien spirit and time as this and so understand how withone-tenth of its present population England could support so vast andvaried a religious establishment, used as we are to an age wherereligion is only a detail for many and for most a negligible factor. Weare only too familiar with the community that could barely support oneparish church, boasting its one-half dozen religious organizations, alltogether claiming the adherence of only a minority of the population, but in the Middle Ages, religion was not only the most important andpervasive thing, it was a moral obligation on every man, woman andchild, and rejection or even indifference was unthinkable. If once wegrasp this fact, " continues Cram, "we can understand how in the eleventhcentury, the whole world should cover itself with 'its white robe ofchurches. '"

The second great fact observable in the times of Dante is that it was anage of inquiry and of efficient craftsmanship. Many of our generationthink that Dante's day being so far removed from the age of printing andthe spirit of positivism, and being given to the upholding of authorityalmost as an unexhaustible source of knowledge, was wholly unacquaintedwith scientific research. Furthermore they declare that education thenwas almost at its minimum stage. A little study will show that thepeople of that era were not unacquainted with the scientific spirit andit will also prove that if education did not prevail, in the sense thateverybody had an opportunity to read and write--a consummation hardly tobe expected--education in the sense of efficiency--education in theetymological sense, i. E. The training of the faculties so that theindividual might develop creative self-expression and especially that hemight bring out what was best in him, all which meant knowledge highlyuseful to himself and others--that kind of education was not uncommon. 

To give an idea of the scientific inquiry and sharp observation of mindin those days, I might cite Dante as a master exponent of nature study, and adept of science. Passing over his experiment in optics given inParadiso, given so naturally as to justify the inference thatinvestigation in physics was then not an uncommon mode of gainingknowledge, I call your attention to an observation made by AlexanderVon Humboldt, the distinguished scientist, to prove that nothing escapedthe eyes of Dante, intent equally upon natural phenomena and the thingsof the soul. Von Humboldt suggests that the rhetorical figure employedby Dante in his description of the River of Light with its banks ofwonderful flowers (Par. XXX, 61) is an application of our poet'sknowledge of the phosphorescence of the ocean. If you have ever lookeddown the side of a steamship at night as it ploughed its way forward, and if you have ever observed in the sea the thousand darting lightsjust below the water line your enjoyable experience will enable youto appreciate the beauty of this passage. I now quote:

 "I saw a glory like a stream flow by In brightness rushing and on either side Were banks that with spring's wondrous hues might vie And from that river living sparks did soar And sank on all sides in the flow'rets bloom Like precious rubies set in golden ore Then as if drunk with all the rich perfume Back to the wondrous torrent did they roll And as one sank another filled its room. "

Commenting on this passage, Von Humboldt says "It would seem as if thispicture had its origin in the poet's recollection of that peculiar andrare phosphorescent condition of the ocean in which luminous pointsappear to rise from the breaking waves and, spreading themselves overthe surface of the waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea ofstars. " This mention of a sea brings to mind the striking fact that DeanChurch has pointed out, viz. , when Dante speaks of the Mediterranean, hespeaks not as a historian or an observer of its storms or its smiles butas a geologist. The Mediterranean is to him: "The greatest _valley_in which water stretcheth. " (Par. IX, 82. )

So also when he speaks of light he regards it not merely in itsbeautiful appearances but in its natural laws (Purg. XV). And when Dantecomes to describe the exact color, say of an apple blossom, his splendidand unequalled power as a scientific observer of Nature and a poet ismost evident. Ruskin (Mod. Painters III, 226) commenting on the passage:flowers of a color "less than that of roses but more than that ofviolets" (Purg. XXXII, 58) makes this interesting remark: "It certainlywould not be possible in words, to come nearer to the _definition_of the exact hue which Dante meant--that of the apple blossom. Had heemployed any simpler color phrase, as 'pale pink' or 'violet pink' orany other such combined expression, he still could not have completelygot at the delicacy of the hue; he might, perhaps, have indicated itskind, but not its tenderness; but by taking the rose-leaf as the typeof the delicate red, and then enfeebling this with the violet gray hegets, as closely as language can carry him to the complete rendering ofthe vision although it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfectbeauty ineffable. "

These examples of Dante's interest in scientific observation prove hisfitness to be considered a representative of his age in its love forscience. Instead, however, of proposing Dante as a typical example ofthe experimental inquiry of his age--you may say that he is _suigeneris_--I shall call forth other witnesses. 

First let Albertus Magnus speak. He was distinguished as a theologianand philosopher and was also renowned as a scientist. In his tenth bookafter describing all the trees, plants and herbs then known, he says:"All that is here set down is the result of our own observation or hasbeen borrowed from others whom we have known to have written what theirpersonal experience has confirmed, for in these matters, experiencealone can give certainty (_experimentum solum certificat in talibus_). "

We may be sure that such an investigator showing in his method aprodigious scientific progress was on the line so successfully followedby modern natural philosophy. This conclusion is confirmed by evidencefrom his other books showing that he did a great deal of experimentalwork, especially in chemistry. In his treatise De Mineralibus, AlbertusMagnus keen to observe natural phenomena, enumerates differentproperties of natural magnets and states some of the properties commonlyattributed to them. 

In his book on Botany he treats of the organic structure and physiologyof plants so accurately as to draw from Meyer, a botanist of thenineteenth century, this appreciative tribute. "No botanist who livedbefore Albert can be compared to him unless Theophrastus, with whom hewas not acquainted: and after him none has painted nature with suchliving colors or studied it so profoundly until the time of ConradGesner and Cesalpino"--a high compliment indeed for Albertus forleadership in science for three centuries. To quote Von Humboldt again, "I have found in the book of Albertus Magnus, De Natura Locorum, considerations on the dependence of temperature concurrently on latitudeand elevation and on the effect of different angles of incidence of thesun's rays in heating the ground, which have excited my surprise. "

Albertus Magnus gains renown also from his distinguished pupil RogerBacon who, some think, should have the honor of being regarded as thefather of inductive science--an honor posterity has conferred uponanother of the same family name who lived 300 years later. We, who weareye-glasses would be willing, I think, to vote the honor to the elderBacon, because if we do not owe to him the discovery of lenses, we arehis debtors for his clarification of the principles of lenses and forhis successful efforts in establishing them on a mathematical basis. Inany event, he was a pioneer in inductive science. 

Before gunpowder is known to have been discovered in the West, the friarRoger Bacon must have made some interesting experiments along the lineof explosives, else he could not have made the following remarkablestatement as to the property of gunpowder: "One may cause to burst frombronze, thunderbolts more formidable than those produced by nature. Asmall quantity of prepared matter causes a terrible explosionaccompanied by a brilliant light. One may multiply this phenomenon sofar as to destroy a city or an army. " Anticipating the use of even motorboats and automobiles driven by gasoline, this thirteenth centuryscientist wrote: "Art can construct instruments of navigation such thatthe largest vessels governed by a single man will traverse rivers andseas more rapidly than if they were filled with oarsmen. One may alsomake carriages which, without the aid of any animal, will run withremarkable swiftness. " This man whose clarity of vision anticipatedthose discoveries of the nineteenth century, left three disciples afterhim, --John of Paris, William of Mara and Gerard Hay--who followed theirmaster's methods, especially of testing by observation and by carefulsearching of authorities, every proposition that came up for study. 

Perhaps the most striking argument in favor of the experimental attitudeof Dante's century is that afforded by certain facts in the history ofmedicine of that epoch. Then surgery began to make vast strides. Pagel, regarded in our time as the best informed writer on the history ofmedicine, has this to say of the surgery in Dante's age. "The stream ofliterary works on surgery flows richer during this period. Whilesurgeons are far from being able to emancipate themselves from theruling pathological theories, there is no doubt that in one department, that of manual technics, free observation came to occupy the first placein the effort for scientific progress. Investigation is less hamperedand concerns itself with practical things and not with artificialtheories. Experimental observation was in this not repressed by anunfortunate and iron-bound appeal to reasoning. " (The Popes and Science, p. 172. )

As to medical practice in the thirteenth century, interesting data arefurnished by the Bulletin of Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Journal ofthe American Medical Association, January, 1908. The former publicationgives us remarkable instances of surgical operations and of thetreatment of Bright's disease, matters which we might have thoughtpossible only in the nineteenth century; the latter publishes in fullthe law for the regulation of the practice of medicine issued by EmperorFrederick II in 1240 or 1241. According to that law binding on the twoSicilies, three years of preparatory university work were requiredbefore the student could begin the study of medicine. Then he had todevote three years to the study of medicine and finally he had to spenda year under a physician's direction before a license was issued to him. In connection with this high standard of a medical education, the lawof Frederick II forbade not only the sale of impure drugs under penaltyof confiscation of goods, but also the preparation of them under penaltyof death--stern legislation, anticipating by nearly seven centuries theAmerican Pure Drug Law. (The Popes and Science, p. 419. )

Undoubtedly the experimental demonstration and original observation ofDante's time sprang either from the training or pedagogical methods ofthe great universities of that period. There were universities atOxford, Paris, Cologne, Montpelier, Orleans, Angers. Spain had fouruniversities; Italy, ten. The number of students in attendance mustamaze us if we think that higher education did not then prevail. Professor Thomas Davidson in his History of Education, says: "The numberof students reported as having attended some of the universities inthose early days almost passes belief, e. G. Oxford is said to have hadabout 30, 000 about the year 1300 and half that number as early as 1224. The numbers attending the University of Paris were still greater. Thenumbers become less surprising when we remember with what pooraccommodations--a bare room and an armful of straw--the students ofthose days were content and what numbers of them even a single teacherlike Abelard could, long before, draw into lonely retreats. "

That in the twelfth and following centuries there was no lack ofenthusiasm for study, notwithstanding the troubled conditions of thetimes, is very clear. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, education rose in many European states to a height which it had notattained since the days of Seneca and Quintilian. 

The curriculum followed by a student in Dante's time embraced the sevenliberal arts of the Trivium and the Quadrivium, namely Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astrology. Thehigher education comprised also Physics, Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, andTheology. Of the cultural effect of the old education, Professor Huxleyspoke in the highest praise on the occasion of his inaugural address asrector of Aberdeen University. "I doubt, " he said, "if the curriculumof any modern university shows so clear and generous a comprehensionof what is meant by culture as the old Trivium and Quadrivium does. "(The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries, p. 466. )

Speaking of education in those distant days, one thinks of the supremeintellect of medieval life, the giant genius St. Thomas Aquinas, whosephilosophy was the food of Dante and became the basis not only ofDante's great poem but of Christian Apologetics down to our own day, when Pope Leo XIII directed that all Catholic seminaries anduniversities implant the doctrine expounded by Thomas, Angel of theSchools. A philosopher whose breadth and lucidity of mind gave suchperennial interest to a system of thought that it is still followed moregenerally than that of any other school of philosophy--taught in theregular course even at Oxford, Harvard, Columbia--such a philosophercould have left the impress of his genius upon seven succeedingcenturies only if his work had been to philosophy what Dante's DivinaCommedia is to literature. 

The subject of scholastic philosophy now more or less claims attentionhere, since the coming to our country of the most distinguished exponentof Neo-scholasticism. Cardinal Mercier before becoming a prince of theChurch, held the chair of neo-scholastic philosophy at Louvain where hemade his department so distinguished for deep scholarship that pupilscame from afar to sit under his instruction or to prepare themselves fora doctorate of philosophy whose requirements at Louvain were perhaps, more exacting than at any other modern university. 

In 1889 Bishop John H. Keane engaged in the task of getting together afaculty for the Catholic University at Washington went to Louvain to seeDr. Mercier. "I want you to go to Washington and become head of ourschool of philosophy, " said the visitor. "I am perfectly willing to go, nothing could please me more. But we must first get the permission ofthe Pope, " answered the Belgian scholar. Bishop Keane went to Rome andpresented the matter to Leo XIII. "Better leave him where he is, "replied the Pope. "He is more needed in Belgium than in the UnitedStates. " So it was owing to the wisdom of Pope Leo in keeping the rightman in the right place that Belgium's strongest man was held for hiscountry against the evil hour to be a terror to wrongdoers and aninspiration and object of reverence. 

The World's War revealed Belgium's Primate not only as a great lucidthinker who shattered the subtilities with which the philosophy of mighttried to confuse the mind of the world, but also as an undaunted leaderwho could not be frightened or defeated by all the forces of militarism. To my mind the secret of the dominating influence working upon CardinalMercier's character and making him a world-hero came from his trainingin scholastic philosophy and from his having assimilated the spirit ofthe thirteenth century. 

That period indeed not only trained its people to a high spiritual idealbut gave them golden opportunities to express themselves and to putforth, under the inspiration of religion, the best that was in them. The medium was the guild system which, working from a self-protectingalliance of traders, extended itself to every existing form of industryand commerce and gave "the workman a position of self-respect andindependence such as he had never held before and has failed to achievesince" (Cram). 

A remarkable thing about the guild system was that it established andmaintained what we, today, call technical schools for the training ofapprentices. But more remarkable was the spirit which animated thesystem. _Operare est orare_ was its principle. As a result of thatteaching that labor is practical prayer, that the worker should labornot simply for a wage, but for perfection, men with untiring energystraining for finer and better work came to make the best things theirminds could conceive, their taste could plan, their hands could fashion. Bell-making in Dante's day attained such perfection that the form andcomposition of bells have ever since been imitated. Workers of preciousmetals produced such wonderful chalices that succeeding generations havenever equalled the ancient model. The masonry of medievalism has secretsof construction lost to our age. Mechanical engineering solved withoutthe use of steel girders problems in the structural work of cathedrals, palaces, fortresses and bridges that causes open-eyed astonishment inthe twentieth century. Wood carving as seen in many medieval chairs, tables, and choir equipment is of design so exquisite and of finish ofdetail so artistic that it is the despair of the cabinet makers of ourage. 

The beauty of the thirteenth century needlework made into chasubles, copes, albs, stoles, altar covers, --triumphs of artistic excellence, isseen in the typical example of the Cope of Ascoli for which Mr. PierpontMorgan about ten years ago, paid sixty thousand dollars. So high a pricewas paid for this ecclesiastical vestment not because it was an antiquebut because marvelous expertness in artcraft had given it such value. Beit recorded to the honor of the American millionaire, that he returnedthe treasure to a church in Italy when he discovered that he hadunknowingly bought stolen property. 

Of iron-mongery of Dante's time, the author of the Thirteenth theGreatest of Centuries writes as follows: "It is difficult to understandhow one of the village blacksmiths of the time made a handsome gate thathas been the constant admiration of posterity ever since, or designedhigh hinges for doors that artists delight to copy, or locks and latchesand bolts that are transported to our museums to be looked at withinterest not only because they are antiques but for the wonderfulcombination of the beautiful and the useful which they illustrate. Thesurprise grows the greater when we realize that these beautiful objectswere made not only in one place or even in a few places, but in nearlyevery town of any size in England, France, Italy, Germany and Spain atvarious times during the thirteenth century and that at any time a townof considerably less than ten thousand inhabitants seemed to be able toobtain among its own inhabitants, men who could make such works of artnot as copies nor in servile imitation of others, but with originalideas of their own, and make them in such perfection that in many casesthey have remained the models for many centuries. "

That is especially true of the thirteenth century glass windows as seen, for example, in the Cathedrals of York, Lincoln, Westminster, Canterbury, Chartres, Rheims, and in Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle, Paris. Modern art with all its boasting cannot begin to make anythingcomparable to that antique glass made and put in place by faith and lovelong before Columbus discovered America. There are tiny bits of it inthis country as a result of the relic hunting of our soldiers in theWorld's War. Many of them got a fragment of the shattered glass ofRheims, "petrified color" deep sky blue, ruby, golden green, and sent ithome to a sweetheart, a wife or sister to be mounted on a ring or set ina pin. 

The donors for the most part of the glass of the thirteenth centuryCathedrals, were guilds at that time. For the Cathedral of Chartrese. G. The drapers and the furriers gave five windows, the porters one, the tavern-keepers two, the bakers two. 

In Dante's time glass-making reached its climax and then the curve beganto decline, until in the eighteenth century and in the early part of thenineteenth century glass-making reached its lowest point. 

Great as was Dante's day in the efficiency and education promoted by theGuild system--Dante himself was a member of it--the achievement of hisera in architecture was the "most notable perhaps because what happenedthere epitomizes all that was done elsewhere and the nature of what wasaccomplished is precisely that which informed the whole body of medievalachievement. " (The Substance of Gothic, p. 137. )

In the course of the century that gave birth to Dante, architecture roseto a glory never equalled before or after. In France alone between theyears of 1180 and 1270 eighty great cathedrals and five hundred abbeyhouses were constructed. It was in this century that Notre Dame, Paris, arose, "the only un-Greek thing" said R. M. Stevenson, "which unitesmajesty elegance and awfulness. " But it was not alone. Other Notre Damessprung up in Germany, Italy and Spain. In England also, in that periodthere were more than twenty cathedrals in the course of construction, some of them in places as small as Wells, whose population neverexceeded four thousand. 

To look today upon Wells with its facade of nearly three hundredstatues, one hundred and fifty-three of which are life size or heroicand then to realize that this magnificent poem in stone was composed byvillagers unknown to us and unhonored and unsung, is to open our eyesto the wonders accomplished by the foremost age of architecture. 

So wonderful are those cathedrals that Ferguson, the standard Englishauthority on Gothic architecture, does not hesitate to say; "If any oneman were to devote a lifetime to the study of one of our greatcathedrals, assuming it to be complete in all its medievalarrangements--it is questionable whether he would master all its detailsand fathom all the reasonings and experiments which led to the resultbefore him. 

"And when we consider that not only in the great cities alone, but inevery convent and in every parish, thoughtful men were trying to excelwhat had been done and was doing by their predecessors and theirfellows, we shall understand what an amount of thought is built into thewalls of our churches, castles, colleges and dwelling houses. My ownimpression is that not one-tenth part of it has been reproduced in allthe works written on the subject up to this day and much of it isprobably lost never again to be recovered for the instruction anddelight of future ages. "

The irreparable shattering of the greatest of these monuments of thepast, occurred in our day. The Cathedral of Rheims, the crowningperfection of architecture having survived "the ravages of wars, thebrutishness of revolutions, the smug complacency of restoration whichhad stripped it of its altars, its shrines and its tombs of unnumberedkings" was the target for two years of German shell and shrapnel andtoday it stands gaunt and scathed in a circle of ruin. But even in itsruin it shows infinite majesty and if it is left as it is, --and may thatbe so--for restoration would only vulgarize its incomparable art, Rheimswill stand as a monument both to the thirteenth century which had madeit the supreme type of the Gothic ideal to raise men's souls to God, andto the twentieth century against whose materialism it was an offence anda protest. 

The third characteristic of the age of Dante is its chivalry, whichplaced woman on the highest pedestal she had ever occupied. Inliterature that unique influence is seen in a new and an exaltedconception of love. Love is now coupled with nobility of life. Thetroubadours had sung of love as a quality belonging to gentle folk, meaning by that phrase the nobility, and nobility had been defined bythe Emperor Frederick II, patron of the troubadours, as a combinationof ancestral wealth and fine manners. In the Banquet (bk. IV) Danterejects that definition and transfers nobility from the social to themoral order holding that "nobility exists where virtue dwells. "

Love, the flowering of this nobility, may be found in the heart of himeven lowest in the social scale provided that he is a virtuous man. Itis not an affair solely of gentle blood. It has no pedigree of birth orrichness. "In this sense the true lover need not be a _gentleman_but he must be a _gentle man_, loving not by genteel code of castebut by gentle code of character. " (J. B. Fletcher: Dante p. 27. )

Thus Dante makes Guido Guinicelli say: "Love and the gentle heart areone and the same thing. " And Dante himself in one of his Canzoni writes:

 "Let no man predicate That aught the name of gentleman should have Even in a king's estate Except the heart there be a gentle man's. "

Love, Then, Became In Literature Such A Refined Emotion That To QuoteDante: "It Makes Ill Thought To Perish, It Drives Into Foul Hearts ADeadly Chill" And On The Other Hand It Fills Indeed The Lover With SuchDelicacy Of Sentiment For His Beloved That She Is His Inspiration ToVirtue And The Muse Who Directs His Pen. In Harmony With "The Sweet NewStyle" Of Sincerity With Which Dante Treats Of Love, Thomas Bernart DeVentadorn Sings:

"It is no wonder if I sing better than any other singer, for my heartdraws near to Love and I am a better man for Love's command. "

Not in literature alone but in actual life did chivalry exalt "theeternal womanly. " In Dante's age, to quote the author of Phases ofThought and Criticism, "Knights passed from land to land in search ofadventure, vowed to protect and defend the widow and the orphan and thelonely woman at the hazard of their lives: they went about with a prayeron their lips and in their hearts the image of the lady-love whom theyhad chosen to serve and to whom they had pledged loyalty and fidelity:they strove to be chaste in body and soul and as a tower of strength forthe protection of this spirit of chastity, they were taught to veneratethe Virgin Mother Mary and cultivate toward her a tender devotion as thepurest and holiest ideal of womanhood. This spirit of chivalry is theruling spirit of Dante's life and the inspiration of some of hissublimest flights. "

All these high achievements of Dante's century are all the more notablein view of the fact that war with its horror and destruction was neverabsent from those times. Every European country was involved often inwar and Asia and Africa were not free from its devastation. 

In such stirring times, Dante was born at Florence. A city of flowersand gay festivities, the home of a cultured pleasure-loving people, itwas the frequent scene of feuds and factions handed down from sire toson. The hatred they engendered and the desolation they caused may beunderstood from the reading of Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy whose sceneis laid in Verona in the year 1303 and to the families concerned inwhich Dante makes allusion in the sixth canto of his Purgatorio. ButVerona and Florence were not the only cities involved by the militarismof the age. Especially in northern Italy were strife and bloodshedcommon. Province, city, town, hamlet and even households were torn byinternal dissensions, which only complicated the main conflict of thatday, viz. , the world struggle for supremacy of pope and emperor. 

The imperial party called Ghibellines, composed mainly of aristocratsand their followers, aimed to break down the barriers which kept theGerman Emperor out of Italy, their object being to have him subjugatethe whole country, even the states of the Pope. The papal or popularparty, known as Guelfs, had as its purpose the independence ofItaly--the freedom and alliance of the great cities of the north ofItaly and dependence of the center and southern parts on the Roman See. A few months after Dante's death, the Ghibellines, the imperial party, suffered a defeat by the overthrow of King Manfred from which they neverrecovered. But in Florence for many years they maintained theirstruggle. 

To add to the confusion of the Florentines whose sympathy was mostlyGuelf--i. E. Favorable to the papal or popular cause--the Guelf party ofFlorence was divided into two factions, the Bianchi and the Neri, thehistory of whose tumults often leading to blood and mischief may beknown by the frequent allusions of our poet. Embroiled by those feuds, Dante is found not only as a prior among the ruling Bianchi but as asoldier under arms at the battle of Campaldino and at the siege ofCaprona. Later when the Neri were restored to power, Dante was banishedand never again beheld his beloved city. In exile Dante transferred hisallegiance to the Ghibellines though he upheld the Guelf view as to theprimacy of the Church. Subsequently he tried, but in vain, to form aparty independent of Guelf, Ghibelline, Bianchi or Neri. 

May I conclude this chapter by giving you another view of Dante'senvironment? To point out the degeneracy of Florence, Dante becomes a_laudator acti temporis_ in a picture of the earlier Florence thathas never been equalled. 

"Florence was abiding in peace, sober and modest. She had not necklaceor coronal or women with ornamented shoes or girdle which was more to belooked at than the person. Nor yet did the daughter at her birth givefear to her father, for the time and dowry did not outrun measure onthis or that side. She had not houses empty of families. I sawBellencion Berti go girt with leather and bone and his lady come fromthe mirror with unpainted face. I saw him of the Nerlo and him of theVecchio satisfied with unlined skin and their ladies with the spindleand the distaff. O! fortunate women, each was sure of her burial place"(Paradiso IV, 97). 

But time changed all that. With her population vastly increased inDante's day and her commerce on all seas and on every road and herbanking system controlling the markets of Europe and the East, Florencehad become such a mighty city that Pope Boniface VIII could say to theFlorentine embassy who came to Rome to take part in the Jubilee of 1300:"Florence is the greatest of cities. She feeds, clothes, governs us all. Indeed she appears to rule the world. She and her people are, in truth, the fifth element of the universe. " (The Guilds of Florence, p. 562. )

Such greatness was attained according to Dante only at the loss ofpristine simplicity and virtue. So he apostrophizes his native city:"Rejoice O Florence, since thou art so mighty that thou canst spreadthy wings over sea and land and thy name is known throughout Hell. "Notorious for crime Florence still kept a big place in her life forreligion. There "religion was abused but its beneficial effectscontinued to be manifest--vice was flagrant but it never lost the senseof shame--men were cruel but their cruelty was followed by sincereregrets--misfortunes were frequent and signal but they were acceptedwith resignation or with the hope of retrieval or men gloried in themon account of the cause in which they suffered. " (Brother Azarias. )

And, meanwhile, side by side with fierce and bloody struggles thecreative forces of art and architecture were making marvelous progressbefore the very eyes of Dante. Niccolo Pisano had finished his Siennapulpit and with his son was engaged on his immortal works of sculpture. Orcagna had made a wonderful tabernacle for the Florentine church of SanMichele, Cimabue had painted the Madonna which is now in the Rucellaichapel. Giotto had completed his work at Assisi and Rome and would soongive to the world the Florentine Campanile. Fra Sisto and Fra Ristorohad built the church Santa Maria Novella at Florence and Arnolfo diCambio, while Dante was writing sonnets, had begun the duomo orcathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. The stout walls and lofty tower ofthe Bargello had sprung into beauteous being. Santa Croce destined tobe the burial place of illustrious Italians, had been built and remainstoday one of Florence's greatest churches. St. John's Baptistry, _ilmio bel Giovanni_, had received its external facing of marble, and inten years after Dante's death would get its massive bronze doors whichare unparalleled in the world. 

The century closed with the opening of the great Jubilee at Rome. Marchtwenty-fifth of the following year, 1300, Dante places as the time forhis journey through the realms of the unseen--the story of which is toldin the Divina Commedia. If sympathy with Dante and his work is notaroused already, perhaps these two quotations may quicken your interest. 

Charles Elliot Norton writes: "There are few other works of man, perhapsthere is no other, which affords such evidence as the Divine Comedy, ofuninterrupted consistency of purpose, of sustained vigor of imagination, and of steady force of character controlling alike the vagaries of thepoetic temperament, the wavering of human purpose, the fluctuation ofhuman powers, the untowardness of circumstances. From the beginning tothe end of his work of many years there is no flagging of energy, noindication of weakness. The shoulders burdened by a task almost toogreat for mortal strength, never tremble under their load. "

And Dr. Frank Crane, a foremost writer of the syndicate press, says "Ihave put a good deal of hard labor digging into Dante and while I cannotsay that I ever got from him any direct usable material, yet I no moreregret my hours spent with him than I regret the beautiful landscapes Ihave seen, the great music I have heard, the wise and noble souls I havemet, the wondrous dreams I have had. These are all a part of one'seducation, of one's equipment for life and perhaps the best part. "

DANTE THE MAN

DANTE THE MAN

Fifty-five years ago when called on for a poem to celebrate the sixthhundredth anniversary of Dante's birth, Tennyson, feeling his ownlittleness before "this central man of all the world, " wrote:

 "King, that has reigned six hundred years and grown In power and ever growest I, wearing but the garland of a day, Cast at thy feet one flower that fades away. "

New tributes to the genius of Dante will be offered by our generation, for already great preparations are under way in all parts of Italy andthe literary world to commemorate in 1921, the six hundredth anniversaryof the death of the author of the greatest of all Christian poems. Thequestion naturally suggests itself: Has not the world moved forward manycenturies from Dante's viewpoint and lost interest in many thingsregarded as truths or at least as burning issues by Dante? Who is nowconcerned with the Ptolomaic system of astronomy, which is so often thesubject of Dante's thought? Who is now interested in the tragicjealousies and injustices suffered by the people of Florence which ledto the bitter feuds that helped to make Dante the great poet? Who, inthis twentieth century so intent upon making the world safe fordemocracy, has sympathy with Dante's advocated scheme of a world-wideabsolute monarchy as the cure for the ills of the society of his day?Is this generation which sees Italy united as a result of the overthrowof the Papal states, so universally concerned with Papal claims whichwere matters of vital importance to Dante and his generation? Is ourera, which unfortunately looks upon religion as a negligible factor andnot as the animating principle of life, interested in the golden age offaith of which Dante is the embodiment, and his message in which theeternal is the object?

Yet, Dante's following is today larger than ever before; his empire overminds and hearts is more extensive. The moving pictures feature hisInferno; the press issues, even in languages not his own, such a mass ofbooks and articles concerning him that a specialist can hardly keeptrack of the output. In the universities, especially of Harvard, Cornelland Columbia, not to speak of those in other lands, the courses on Danteattract an unusually large number of students. Outside of the academicatmosphere there are thousands of readers who still find in hiswritings, a solace in grief, a strength in temptation, a deep sense ofreality, permanent though unseen, of the love of God and of His justice. The reasons are not far away. 

"Our poet, " says Grandgent "was a many sided genius who has a messagefor nearly everyone. "

Dante's compelling renown among us, is due says Dr. Frank Crane both "tothe intrinsic greatness of the man's personality and to the sheer beautyof his craftsmanship. "

"The secret of Dante's power" writes James Russell Lowell "is not farto seek. Whoever can express _himself_ with the full force ofunconscious sincerity will be found to have uttered something idealand universal. "

Whether one or all these reasons are the true explanation of thetwentieth century's great interest in Dante, the fact remains, asTennyson said, that far from being a waning classic, Dante "in powerever grows, " and the interest he calls forth constitutes, as James Bryceobserved in his Lowell Institute lectures "the literary phenomenon ofEngland and America. "

Now to Dante as the man let us turn. To know the fibre of his manhoodwill help us to appreciate the genius of his art. "It is needful to knowDante as man" wrote Charles Elliot Norton, "in order fully toappreciate him as poet. " The thought is expressed in another way byJames Russell Lowell: "The man behind the verse is far greater than theverse itself and Dante is not merely a great poet but an influence, partof the soul's resources in time of trouble. From him the soul learnsthat 'married to the truth she is a mistress but otherwise a slave shutout of all liberty'" (The Banquet). But that knowledge is dependent uponour intimacy with the life and spirit of Dante. In many other cases theknowledge of the life and personality of an author may not be essentialto either our enjoyment or our understanding of his work. In the case ofDante "he faces his own mirror and so appears in the mid-foreground ofhis reflected word. " Before looking into that mirror for Dante'spicture, let us first recall some of the established facts in his lifeand then see what manner of man he appeared to those who were hiscontemporaries or who lived chronologically near him. 

Dante was born in Florence in the year 1265. His father was a notarybelonging to an old but decadent Guelph family, his mother, named Bella, was a daughter of Durante Abati, a Ghibelline noble. Whether his ownfamily was regarded among the first families of nobility or not, it iscertain that Dante enjoyed the honor of knowing that one of hisforebears, Cacciaguida, had been knighted by Emperor Conrad II on theSecond Crusade. Precocious Dante must have been, as a boy, withfaculties and emotions extraordinarily developed, for in his ninth year, while attending a festal party, he fell in love with a little girl namedBeatrice Portinari, eight years old. "Although still a child" to quoteBoccaccio his earliest biographer "he received her image into his heartwith such affection that from that day forward never so long as helived, did it depart therefrom. " She became the wife of Simone deiBardi, and died in her twenty-fourth year, the subject of many sonnetsfrom her mystic lover who, if he had never written anything else, wouldhave been entitled, by his book of sonnets, his New Life, to rank as apoet of the first class. 

Two years after the death of Beatrice, Dante married Gemma Donati, amember of an old aristocratic family of Florence and by her had fourchildren. In the period between the death of Beatrice and his marriagehe had seen military service, having borne arms as a Guelph at thebattle of Campaldino (Purg. V, 91-129) in which the Florentines defeatedthe Ghibelline league of Arezzo and he took part at the siege of Capronaand was present at its surrender by the Pisans (Inf. , XXI, 95. ) When hewas thirty years old he became a member of the Special Council of theRepublic, consisting of eight of the best and most influential citizensand in 1300, at the age of thirty-five, midway in the journey of hislife, he was elected one of the six Priors (chief magistrates of hiscity) for the months of June and July. Shortly after this Dante withthree others went to Rome on an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII to getthat pontiff's veto to the intervention of Charles de Valois, brotherof Philip IV of France, in the affairs of Florence. But there was delayin the transaction of the business and that gave the stranger time towin the city by treachery. When the news reached Dante, he hurriedhomeward. At Sienna he learned that his house had been pillaged andburned and he himself had been accused of malfeasance in office. Withouta trial he was condemned to a heavy fine and to perpetual banishmentunder penalty that if he returned he would be burned alive. Then beganhis twenty years' exile--years in which he went sometimes almost beggingand at all times even when he was an honored guest in the home ofnobility--knowing as only an exile can know "how bitter is the bread ofdependence and how steep the stranger's stairs. " It was during his exilethat Dante completed his immortal Divina Commedia, the child of histhought "cradled into poetry by wrong. " Dante never again saw Florencefor which he yearned with all the intensity of the Hebrew captives weepingon the rivers of Babylon for a sight of Jerusalem. Death came to free hisundaunted soul in the year 1321 while he was a guest at Ravenna of GuidoNovello da Polenta, a nephew of Francesca da Rimini. At Ravenna the lastseat of Roman arts and letters, in a sepulchre attached to the conventof the Franciscan monks, he was buried with the honors due to a saintand a sage. The inscription on his epitaph said to have been composed byhim on his deathbed, is paraphrased by Lowell in the following words:

 "The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the stream of Fire, the Pit In vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit. But since my soul, an alien here, hath flown to nobler wars, And happier now, hath gone to seek its Maker with the stars, Here am I, Dante, shut, exiled from the ancestral shore Whom Florence, the fairest of all-least-loving mothers, bore. "

Such is the brief outline of the outward life of him of whomMichelangelo declared:

"Ne'er walked the earth a greater man than he. "

It will help us to a better understanding of that man if his likeness isimpressed upon our memory. The portrait made by his friend Giotto, showshim as a young man perhaps of twenty to twenty-five years, with a facenoble, beardless, strong, intelligent and pensive--a face which wouldnot lead one to suspect an appreciation of humor. Yet writers find twodistinct forms of that quality--a playfulness in his eclogues and agrotesqueness in certain of his assignments to punishments in Hell. Contrasting with this picture of his early life is the face of his deathmask and of the Naples bust, suggesting the lines

 "How stern of lineament, how grim The father was of Tuscan song. "

Here we see him mature with strength of character in every feature and aseriousness of mien which shows a man with whom one might not takeliberties. It was of Dante in mature life that Boccaccio wrote: "Ourpoet was of moderate height and after reaching maturity was accustomedto walk somewhat bowed with a slow and gentle pace, clad always in suchsober dress as befitted his ripe years. His face was long, his noseaquiline and his eyes rather large than small. His jaws were large andhis lower lip protruded beyond the upper. His complexion was dark andhis expression very melancholy and thoughtful. His manners, whether inpublic or at home, were wonderful, composed and restrained, and in allways he was more courteous and civil than any one else. "

Bruni, on the other hand, who wrote a century later describes Dante asif he had in mind Giotto's fresco of the poet. This is Bruni'sword-picture: "He was a man of great refinement, of medium height anda pleasant but deeply serious face. It was remarkable that although hestudied incessantly, none would have supposed from his happy manner andyouthful way of speaking that he had studied at all. " However well thesepictures may visualize the poet for us, I cannot help thinking thatDante himself, after the manner of great artists who paint their ownpictures, gives us a far better portrait of himself. What we know of himfrom others is as nothing compared to the revelation he has made ofhimself in his writings. For, as Dr. Zahm, in his Great Inspirers, hassaid: "Dante, although the most concealing of men was, paradoxical as itmay seem, the most self-revealing. " The indirect recorder of his ownlife, he discloses to us an intimate view of his spiritual struggles, ofthe motives which actuated him, of the passions he experienced, not tospeak of the judgments he formed upon all great questions. "So true isthis that if it were possible to meet him, we should feel that he wasan intimate friend who had never concealed anything from us--who haddiscoursed with us on all subjects; science, literature, philosophy, theology, love, poetry, happiness, the world to come and all that ofwhich it most imports us to have accurate knowledge. " Let us then seethe man as reflected in his writings. 

First of all he reveals himself as a man profoundly animated byreligion. He is not a Huysmanns or a François Coppée, a Brunetiere, a Paul Bourget, forsaking the religious teachings of his youth only toembrace them in mature life. Never for a moment did he deflect from theCatholic doctrine, though his studies led him to the consideration ofthe most subtle arguments raised against it. He was indeed the defenderand champion of faith, having no sympathy for a mind which would loseitself in seeking the solution of the incomprehensible mysteries ofreligion. So he has Virgil say:

 "Insensate he who thinks with mortal ken To pierce Infinitude which doth enfold Three persons in one substance. Seek not, then, O Mortal race, for reasons, but believe And be content, for had all been seen No need there was for Mary to conceive. Men have ye known who thus desired in vain And whose desires, that might at rest have been, Now constitute a source of endless pain. Plato, the Stagerite, and many more I here allude to. Then his head he bent, Was silent and a troubled aspect wore. " (Purg. , III, 34. )

Guided by the wisdom he thus enunciated Dante from youth to deathmaintained a child-like faith that satisfied his intellect and animatedhis sentiments. His faith really grew into a passion. His fidelity tothe truth of the doctrines of the Church or to the sacred offices of thepapacy was never shaken either by the scandals of clerical life or theopposition of different popes to his political ideals. Frequently heraised his voice in protest yet, notwithstanding his censures againstwhat he considered abuses in the external administration of the Churchand the policy of her popes, on his part there was not the leastsuspicion of unsettled faith or revolutionary design. Strongly convincedof the divinity of the Church, his passionate nature could not helpexecrating the human element that would weaken her influence. "Heteaches that the mystical Vine of the Church still grows and Peter andPaul who died for it, still live. He holds by that Church. He begsChristians not to be moved feather-like by every wind of doctrine. 'Youhave' he tells them 'the Old Testament and the New. The Pastor of theChurch guides you, let this suffice for your salvation'" (BrotherAzarias). In his devotional life Dante is just as ardent as he is firmin his adherence to dogma. While all Catholics are held to profess acommon creed, each may follow the bent of his disposition and sympathyin pious practices, theologically called devotions. It seems to me thatDante had three such devotions which he practised intensely in his innerlife. 

First, devotion to the sacred Humanity of Christ. In eleven places doeshe speak at length of Christ's two-fold nature as God and Man; in tenplaces does he refer to Christ as the Second Person of the BlessedTrinity, and wherever Cristo occurs at the end of a line, Dante out ofreverence for the Sacred Person does not rime with it, but repeats thename itself. The climax of the Purgatorio is the apparition of theGriffin, the symbol of Christ. Further, on the stellar white cross ofred-glowing Mars the poet shows the figure of the Redeemer. In theEmpyrean Christ is represented in the unveiled glory of His human anddivine natures. So teaching the doctrine of the Incarnation most clearlyand most ardently Dante seeks to promote this cultus as the soul of theCatholic religion. 

Dante's second special devotion is to the Blessed Virgin. His Paradisocontains the best treatise on Mariology. The whole Divine Comedy indeedis the poet's loving testimonial of gratitude to the Madonna. It wasthrough Mary that his visionary voyage to the other world was madepossible. She rescued him when he was enslaved by sin and sent as hissuccessive guides Virgil, Beatrice and St. Bernard. She of all creaturesis proclaimed on every terrace of Purgatory first in virtue and highestin dignity and her example is exhibited as an unfailing source ofinspiration to the Souls, to endure suffering cheerfully and to makethemselves, like her, the exemplars of goodness in the highest degree. In Paradiso she is seen by the poet in all her unspeakable lovelinessand beatitude and as Queen of Angels and of Saints her intercession isfavorably invoked that Dante might enjoy the Vision of God himself. Inthe last canto of the poem her super-eminence and incomparableexcellence are sung "with a sweetness of expression, a depth ofphilosophy and a tenderness of feeling that have never been surpassedin human language. "

 "Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son, Humble and high beyond all other creatures, The limit fixed of the eternal counsel; Thou art the one who such nobility To human nature gave that its Creator Did not disdain to make Himself its creature. Within thy womb rekindled was the love By heat of which in the eternal peace, After such wise, this flower was germinated. Here unto us thou art a noonday torch Of charity, and below there among mortals Thou art the living fountainhead of hope. 

 Lady, thou art so great and so prevailing, That he who wishes grace nor runs to thee, His aspirations without wings would fly. Not only thy benignity gives succor To him who asketh it, but oftentimes Forerunneth of its own accord the asking. In thee compassion is, in thee is pity, In thee magnificence; in thee unites Whatever of goodness is in any creature. "

The third private devotion of Dante is devotion to the Souls inPurgatory--a pious practice founded upon the scriptural words: "It is aholy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may beloosed from their sins. " Not only does Dante answer the objection raisedas to the efficacy of prayer offered for the souls in Purgatory (VI, 28)but in many passages he promises his own prayers and works and seeks toarouse in others on earth a helpful sympathy for those souls. "Truly" hesays, "we ought to help them to wash away their stains which they haveborne hence, so that, pure and light, they may go forth to the starryspheres, " (Purg. VI, 34. )

To sum up Dante's attachment to his religion we can truly say not onlyhis life but his great poem radiates the spirit and doctrine of theChurch. Hettinger says of Dante: "In truth he anticipated the mostpregnant developments of Catholic doctrine, mastered its subtlestdistinctions and treated its hardest problems with almost faultlessaccuracy. Were all the libraries in the world destroyed and the SacredScripture with them, the whole Catholic system of doctrine and moralsmight be almost reconstructed out of the Divina Commedia. "

Intensity, indeed, is the characteristic of Dante's spiritual life. Inbringing that quality to his faith and religious practice he was onlymanifesting the operation of the dominating quality which regulated hiswhole life and shaped all his mental and emotional habits. The realm ofhis thought and feeling was truly the land of the strenuous life. Havingonce set out to say of Beatrice what had never been said of any woman, Dante applied himself to his prodigious task with a consistency ofpurpose that was unmoved by persecution and unshaken by time. In allthe years that he spent in the composition of the Divina Commedia therewas no flagging of interest, no indication of weakness. No one everapplied himself with more complete absorption or with greater powerof unfaltering concentration, just as no one ever felt more deeplythe outrageous arrows of fortune or the transcendent supremacy of love. It is precisely because of this intensity that his thoughts and feelingsaffect us so profoundly six centuries later. 

Intense in his own life Dante had no sympathy with slackers or thelukewarm whom he characterizes as never having been alive, i. E. Of neverhaving awakened to responsibility to take part in good or evil. As aconsequence they never contributed anything to society. Because in thislife they shifted from one side to another, they are now depictedrunning perpetually after an aimlessly dodging banner. Here is thedescription of the punishment of the lukewarm:

"Now sighs, cries, and shrill shrieks rang through the starless air:Whereat at first I began to weep, strange tongues, hurried speech, wordsof pain, accents of wrath, voices loud and weak, and the sound of handsaccompanying them, made a tumult which revolves forever in that airendlessly dark, like sands blowing before a whirlwind. And I, whose headwas hooded with horror, exclaimed: 'Master, what is it I hear? Whatkind of people is it that seems so vanquished by grief? And he replied:'This is the miserable way followed by the sorry souls of those wholived without infamy and without glory. They are mingled with the meanchoir of those angels who were not rebels and were not faithful to God, but were for themselves. Heaven cast them out lest its beauty should bespoiled; and deep Hell will not receive them, because the damned mightderive some satisfaction from them. '

"'Master, ' I said, 'what is so grievous to them which makes themcomplain so loud?' 'I shall tell thee right briefly' he answered. 'Thesepeople have no hope of death and their blind life's so vile that theyare envious of any other lot. The world allows no report of them tolast: mercy and justice disdain them. Let us not speak of them but lookand pass by!' And I, looking, saw a banner which ran circling so swiftthat it seemed scornful of all rest: and after it there came trailingsuch a long train of people that I should never have thought death hadundone so many. When I had made out one or two of them I saw andrecognized the shade of him who, for cowardice, made the great refusal. Forthwith I understood and was convinced that this was the sect ofpoltroons, obnoxious both to God and to God's enemies. These lucklesscreatures who never had been really alive, were naked and badly stungby flies and wasps which were there. These insects streaked their faceswith blood which, mixed with tears, was caught by disgusting worms attheir feet--" (Inferno III, 33. Grandgent's translation. ) In readingthat description of the punishment of the lukewarm, one cannot fail toobserve that not one is called by name. Because they "lived withoutinfamy and without glory" their name deserves to be lost forever tothe world. 

Of the renown of Dante's own name our poet has no misgivings. He revealshimself as a man having supreme confidence in his own powers. Boccacciorepresents him as saying when he was with his party at the head of thegovernment of the republic of Florence, and when there was question ofsending him on an embassy to Rome, "If I go, who stays? And if I stay, who goes?" "As if he alone, " is the comment of Boccaccio, "was worthamong them all, and as if the others were nothing worth except throughhim. " It is certain that Dante put a high valuation upon his genius, anestimate due, perhaps, to the belief he held, like Napoleon, in thepotency of his star. He was born under the constellation of the Geminiand to them in gratitude for his self-recognized talent he gives praise:

 "O glorious stars, O light impregnated With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge All of my genius whatso'er it be, With you was born, and hid himself with you, He who is father of all mortal life, When first I tasted of the Tuscan air. " (Par. XXII, 112)

Certain it is that Dante acted on the counsel which, addressed tohimself, he puts into the mouth of his beloved teacher, Brunetto Latini, "Follow thy star and thou cans't not miss the glorious port. " (Inf. , XV, 55. ) In Purgatorio Dante says: "My name as yet marks no great sound, "but he boasts that he will surpass in fame the Guidos, writers of verse:"Perchance some one is already born who will drive both from out thenest. " He is so sure that posterity will confer immortality upon hiswork that he does not hesitate to make himself sixth among the greatestwriters of the world. This passage occurs when he enters Limbusaccompanied by Virgil to whom a group of spirits, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, make salutation. (Inf. , IV, 76. ) Posterity has bestowedgreater renown on Dante's name than even he presumed to hope, for ithas placed him in the Court of Letters with only one of the writersof antiquity, Homer, and with two subsequent writers, Cervantesand Shakespeare. 

Naturally we think that a writer who was so positively confident andboastful of his powers must have been given to pride and Dante indeedplainly indicates to us that he was guilty of this. But it was pride, we think, that was honorable and not a vice, a pride of which a lesserlight, Lacordaire says, "By the grace of God, I abhor mediocrity. " Inthe dark wood Dante represents the Lion (Pride) as preventing him fromascending the mountain--"He seemed to be coming to me with head uprearedand with such raging hunger, that the air appeared to be in fear ofhim. " (Inf. , I, 43. )

And that the poet's trepidation was justified he later makes known(Purg. XI, 136) when he expresses the fear that for pride he may beeternally punished. Perhaps it was because Dante recognized the pride ofhis learning, of his ancestry, of his associations with distinguishedpersonages as his besetting sin that he exercised his skill as a masterin showing us profound imagery representing the characteristics ofpride. Carved out of the mountain in the first circle of a terrace ofPurgatory are scenes illustrative of humility. While looking on thesescenes, which seem to live and speak in their beautiful and compellingreality, the poet turns and sees approaching the forms of the proud. Onearth they had exalted themselves as if they had the weight of the worldon their shoulders, so now they are seen bent under huge burdens ofstone, crumpled up in postures of agonizing discomfort. The poet, to letus know that he shares in their punishment, says:

 "With equal pace as oxen in the yoke, I, with that laden spirit, journey'd on Long as the mild instructor suffer'd me. " (Purg. XII, 1)

He apostrophizes them, but the words are really an upbraiding of himselffor pride. 

 "O ye proud Christians, wretched weary ones, Who in the vision of the mind infirm, Confidence have in your backsliding steps, Do ye not comprehend that we are worms Born to bring forth the angelic butterfly That flieth unto judgment without screen? Who floats aloft your spirit high in air? Like are ye unto insects undeveloped Even as the worm in whom formation fails! As to sustain a ceiling or a roof In place of corbel, sometimes a figure Is seen to join unto its knees its breast Which makes of the unreal, real anguish Arise in him who sees it: fashioned thus Beheld I these, when I had ta'en good heed True is it, they were more or less bent down According as they were more or less laden And he who had most patience on his looks Weeping did seem to say I can no more. " (Purg. X, 121)

Like all great men of undoubted sincerity Dante was intellectually bigenough to change his mind when a new view presented itself incondemnation of an earlier judgment. So his "Vernacular Composition"retracts a statement he had made in the New Life where he had held thatas amatory poems were addressed to ladies ignorant of Latin, Love shouldbe the only subject the poet ought to present in the vernacular. Helearned later and published his new view that there is good precedentfor treating in the vulgar tongue not only Love but also Righteousnessand War. 

Other examples of his honesty of mind are furnished in the Paradisewhere he expresses through the mouths of his disembodied teachers viewsopposed to those he had already advanced in his other works. Thus histheory of the spots on the moon, his statement as to the respective rankof the angelic orders, his assumption that Hebrew was the language ofAdam and Eve--all yield to a maturer conception in contradiction to hisoriginal views. He is, it is true, sometimes blinded by partisanship orlacking in the historical perspective necessary for a true judgment ofhis contemporaries--but Dante is naturally so sincere a man that he iseager to be just to every one. Perhaps there is no better instance ofthe exercise of this quality than in his assigning to the heaven ofJupiter, Constantine, to whose supposed donation of vast territories, then regarded as genuine, Dante ascribes the corruption of the Church. 

Many readers, whose acquaintance with our poet does not extend beyondthe Inferno, see in him only the incarnation of savagery and scorn. Theyfail to pay tribute to the wonderful power of his friendship or torecognize that his sufferings of adversity and injustice gave birth todeep passion. To them he seems only to place his few friends in Heavenand in Hell to roast all his enemies. It must be at once confessed thatthere are instances in the Divina Commedia which, taken by themselves, would lead one to so superficial an estimate of the man. In Canto VIIIof the Inferno Dante with his guide, Virgil, enters a bark on the Styxand sails across the broad marsh. During the passage a spirit allcovered with mud addresses Dante, who recognizes him as Filippo Argenti, a Florentine notorious for his arrogance and brutal violence. "Master, "says Dante to Virgil, "I should be glad to see him dipped in this swillere we quit the lake. " And he to me, 'Before the shore comes to thy viewthou shalt be satisfied. ' A little while after this I saw the muddypeople make such a rending of him that even now I praise and thank Godfor it. Such gloating over suffering surely seems to say to you: Herewe have a man of a cruel vindictive nature. 

Again, in the ice of Caina, the region where traitors are immersed up totheir heads, Dante hits his foot violently against the face of Boccadegli Abati who betrayed the Florentines at the crucial battle ofMontaperti. "Weeping it cried out to me: 'Why tramplest thou on me? Ifthou comest not to increase the vengeance for Montaperti, why dost thoumolest me?' I said: 'What art thou who thus reproachest others?' 'Naywho art thou' he answered 'that through the Antenora goest, smiting thecheeks of others, so that if thou wert alive, it were too much. ' 'I amalive' was my reply 'and if thou seekest fame, it may be precious tothee, that I put thy name among the other notes. ' And he to me. 'Thecontrary is what I long for, take thyself away!' Then I seized him bythe afterscalp and said: 'It will be necessary that thou name thyself orthat not a hair remain upon thee here. ' Whence he to me: 'Even if thouunhair me I will not tell thee who I am. ' I already had his hair coiledon my hand and had plucked off more than one tuft of it, he barking andkeeping down his eyes, when another cried, 'What ails thee Bocca?'Having thus learned the sinner's name, the poet releases him, saying:'accursed traitor I do not want thee to speak, for to thy shame I willbear true tidings'" (Inf. , XXXII, 97. ) Some may say that it is to Dante'sshame that he shows himself so devoid of pity. 

Another example would seem to confirm this startling view of Dante'scharacter. At the bottom of Hell, eager to learn the identity of areprobate, a certain Friar Albergo, the poet promises him in return forthe desired information to remove the ice from his eyes so that he mayhave "the poor consolation of grief unchecked. "

"Remove the hard veils from my face that I may vent the grief whichstuffs my heart, a little ere the weeping freeze again! Wherefore I saidto him. 'If thou woulds't have me aid thee, tell me who thou art, and ifI do not extricate thee, may I have to go to the bottom of the ice. '"The poet of course knows that he must go thither to continue his journeyto Purgatory, but the reprobate soul is unaware of such a course, andbelieves that the visitor has fortified his promise with a true oath. Both his name and the damning story of his life are soon told by thepoor wretch, who then asks Dante for the fulfillment of thepromise--the removal of the ice so that sight may be restored even for aminute. "'Open my eyes' he said--but I opened them not, to be rude tohim was courtesy" (Inf. , XXXIII, 148. ) Does not Dante by his own wordsshow himself deep-dyed in hatred and cruelty?

"The case against him" says Dinsmore, "is not so bad as the firstreading would indicate. Part of the explanation of his apparent crueltyundoubtedly lies in the fact that the poet would teach us that characteris influenced by environment. In the circle of wrath, he is wrathful, inthe pit of traitors he is false. Then we are to recall that Danteundoubtedly laid to heart Virgil's reproof, when he wept at the sadpunishment of the soothsayers: 'Who is more wicked than he who feelscompassion at the Divine Judgment. ' Passionate love of God, Dante holds, implies passionate hatred of God's enemies. That is a thought expressedby the Psalmist. 'Lord, have I not hated them that hate thee and pinedaway because of thy enemies? I have hated them with a perfect hatred andthey are become enemies to me' (CXXXVIII, 21). So it may be said thatDante has the spirit of the psalmist and seeks to love, as God loves, and to hate as God hates. "

Whether that explanation satisfy my readers or not, there is anotherside to Dante's character that is most attractive. "Dowered with thehate of hate, the scorn of scorn, " he was a paradox, --gentle and tender. Failure to see this phase of Dante's nature led Frederick Schlegel todeclare that Dante's "chief defect is the want of gentle feelings"--astatement that called forth this exclamation from Lord Byron: "Of gentlefeelings. And Francesca of Rimini and the father's feelings in Ugolinoand Beatrice and the Pia! Why there is a gentleness in Dante above allgentleness when he is tender!"

Let us see some examples of this tender quality in our poet. Only oneendowed with gentleness and beauty of soul, could have conceived aPurgatory "not hot with sulphurous flames" remarks Dinsmore, "buthealing the wounded spirit with the light of shimmering sea, the gloriesof morning, the perfume of flowers, the touch of angels, the livingforms of art and the sweet strains of music. "

Only a man of warm-heartedness and delicate susceptibility at the sightof a row of souls, temporarily blinded, would have been touched to suchan extent that he would be filled with anxiety lest in looking upon themand silently passing them by who could not return his gaze, he wouldshow them some discourtesy. 

 "It were a wrong, methought, to pass and look On others, yet myself, the while unseen, To my sage counsel therefore did I turn. " (Purg. XIII, 73)

Gentleness also reveals itself in lovely lines wherein the poet speaksof the relations of parent and child. He tells us, for instance, how

 "An infant seeks his mother's breast When fear and anguish vex his troubled heart. " (Purg. XXX. )

He recalls how he himself with child-like sorrow stood confessing hissins:

 "As little children, dumb with shame's keen smart, Will listening stand with eyes upon the ground Owning their faults with penitential heart So then stood I. " (Purg. XXXI, 66)

When overcome by the splendor of the heaven Saturn it is as a child heturns to Beatrice for assurance:

 "Oppressed with stupor, I unto my guide Turned like a little child who always runs For refuge there where he confideth most, And she, even as a mother who straightway Gives comfort to her pale and breathless boy With voice whose wont is to reassure him, Said to me: 'Knowest thou not thou art in heaven?'" (Par. XXII, I)

Again, it is the gentle heart of a fond father who speaks in thefollowing lines:

 "Awaking late, no little innocent So sudden plunges towards its mother's breast With face intent upon its nourishment As I did bend. " (Par. XXX, 85, Grandgent's trans. )

Another figure of beautiful imagery makes us appreciate Dante'sunderstanding of infantile emotion. He is eager to tell us how brightsouls flame upward towards the Virgin Mother and here is the simile:

 "And as a babe which stretches either arm To reach its mother, after it is fed Showing a heart with sweet affection warm, Thus every flaming brightness reared its head And higher, higher straining, by its act The love it bore to Mary plainly said. " (Par. XXIII, 121 Grandgent's trans. )

Perhaps the most appealing example of Dante's kindly love for childrensprings from the fact that instead of following the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, who holds that in heaven the risen bodies of babychildren will appear in the aspect of the prime of life, our poetdiscloses them with the charm of babyhood carrolling, as it were, thenursery songs of Heaven. Of those blessed infants he speaks:

 "Their youth, those little faces plainly tell, Their childish treble voices tell it, too, If thou but use thine eyes and listen well. " (Par. XXXII, 46. Grandgent's trans. )

Seeing so many examples of Dante's love for motherhood and children, onenaturally wonders why he makes no mention of his own wife and children. But we have only to remember that a nice sense of delicacy may haverestrained him from speaking of the sacredness of his family life. Inthis matter he exhibited the wisdom of the gentleman-Saint, Francis deSales, who used to say, "Without necessity never speak of yourself wellor ill. " It was indeed a principle of propriety with our poet thattalking about one's self in public is to be avoided as unbecoming unlessthere is need of self vindication or edification of others. Only once inthe Divine Comedy does he mention his own name and at once he apologizesfor the intrusion. It is true that the poem is autobiographical but itis that in so far as it concerns matters of universal interest fromwhich the poet may draw the moral that what God has done for him He willdo for all men if they will but let Him. That being so it was notnecessary for him to exploit his family affairs. 

Out of the kindly heart of Dante sprang gratitude, one of the strongestvirtues of his being. He never wearies in pouring forth thanks to hisMaker for the gift of creation and His fatherly care of all beings inthe universe. He is filled with unbounded gratitude to the Saviour forhaving become man and for having suffered and died for our salvationinstead of taking an easier way of satisfying divine justice. In hisworks he mentions the name or the offices of the Holy Ghost eight times. To the Blessed Virgin, the saints and especially to Beatrice for theirvirtuous example and loving protection he is heartily grateful. Histhankful affection is extended to those who showed him kindnessparticularly during the years of his homeless poverty. To them he offersthe only thing he has to give--an undying tribute of praise. Tenderly hemakes known his obligations to all those who taught him, both theteachers of his own day and the masters of past ages. But it is toVirgil, his ideal author, the guide whom he has chosen for his journeythrough Hell and Purgatory, that he offers his most touching tribute ofgratitude. The occasion arises when he discovers his beloved Beatrice inthe Garden of Eden and turns to Virgil to tell him of his overwhelmingjoy. But behold! his guide has vanished, his mission fulfilled. And allthe joys of the earthly Paradise, originally forfeited by the sin ofEve, cannot compensate the disciple for the loss of his great master. Inloneliness he weeps, staining again his face that had been washed cleanwith dew by Virgil when they emerged from Hell. Is there not genuinepathos in these lines?

 "Virgil was gone! and we were all bereft! Virgil my sweetest sire! Virgil who led My soul to safety, when no hope was left. Not all our ancient mother forfeited, All Eden, could prevent my dew cleansed cheek From changing whiteness to a tearful red. " (Purg. XXX, 45, Grandgent's trans. )

One quality is still necessary to complete the picture which our poetgives of himself. So far we see him as a man of strong faith, of abidingintensity--a man having supreme confidence in himself with resultingpride of life, a man big with splendid sincerity and dowered with deeppassion, yet manifesting a gentle, gracious and grateful spirit. Socomposed, he is a combination of virtues that may inspire and traitsthat may attract many readers. But this is not the finished picture ofthe strangely fascinating man who has for six hundred years exercised anirresistible sway over hearts and minds. What feature is lacking? Theone which has made him master over willing subjects who love and admirehim whether they live in a monarchy or republic, a hovel or a palace, whether they are of his faith or alien to it. Because the world everloves a lover, and because Dante is The Lover _par excellence_ whoselove-story is one "to which heaven and earth have put their hand, " hestands forth with a hold on humanity that is both enduring and supreme. 

Love as a passion and a principle of action never left him to his dyingday, from the time when he, a boy of nine years of age, became attractedby the sweet little girl Beatrice. "She appeared to me" he says, "clothed in a most noble color, a modest and becoming crimson, and shewas girt and adorned in such wise as befitted her very youthful age. " Ifwe add to those few lines the brief statements made later in the _NewLife_ that her hair was light and her complexion a pearl-pink and thatwhen he saw her as a maiden she was dressed in white, we have the onlydescription that Dante ever gave of her personal appearance. It waslove at sight. "I truly say that at that instant the spirit of lifewhich dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart, said these words:'Behold a god stronger than I, who coming shall rule over me. ' From thattime forward Love lorded it over my soul which had been so speedilywedded to him and he began to exercise over me such control and suchlordship, through the power which my imagination gave him, that itbehooved me to do completely all his pleasure. "

If we are disposed to doubt Dante's capability of deep emotion at sotender an age we have only to remember that Cupid's darts pierced at anearly age the hearts of others of precocious sensibilities. The loveexperience of Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, and Canova the sculptor, whenthey too were only children is a matter of history. This statement weshall the more readily accept if we recall the dictum of Pascal: "Thepassions are great in proportion as the intelligence is great. In agreat soul everything is great. " In the light of that principle we mustsay that if Dante's love attachment in early life runs counter to theexperience of mankind, he is, even as a boy, exceptional in the power ofimagination and peculiarly sensitive to heart impressions. 

His experience as a nine year old boy loving with a depth of increasingemotion a girl with whom there probably had never been anycommunication except a mere greeting, a love reverential, persisting, even after her marriage to another, continuing through the married lifeof the poet himself, a love, the story of which is celebrated inmatchless verse, --all that is so unique a thing that critics have beenled to deny the very existence of Beatrice or to see in the story anallegory which may be interpreted in various ways. 

Some critics see in Beatrice only the ideal of womanhood; others makeher an allegory of conflicting things. Francesco Perez holds thatBeatrice is only the figure of Active Intelligence, while Dante GabrielRossetti advances the fantastic theory that she is the symbol of theRoman Empire, and love--the anagram of Roma--on Dante's part is onlydevotion to the imperial cause. According to Scartazzini, Beatrice isthe symbol of the Papacy. Gietmann denies the historicity of Beatriceand declares that she typifies the Church. The argument for this theoryexpressed by a sympathetic reviewer of Gietmann's book, "Beatrice, Geistund Kern der Danteshen Dichtung, " follows: "Beatrice is the soul andcenter of the poet's works, his inspiring genius, the ideal which mouldshis life and character. If we consider her as a mere historicalpersonage we must look upon those works as silly and meaninglessromances, and on the poet himself as a drivelling day-dreamer. 

"But if we are able to assign to Dante's beloved an appropriate andconsistent allegorical character, in keeping with the views of thepoet's time, and with the quality of the varied material which goes tobuild up his poetic structures, his creations will appear not onlyintelligible and natural, but unfold a treasure of thought and beautynowhere else to be found, while the poet himself will be shown to be notonly one of the greatest masters of thought and imagination, but one ofthe noblest and loftiest minds to be met with in the history of letters"(John Conway, Am. Cath. Quar. Review, April, 1892). 

The editor of the English Quarterly Review (July, 1896, p. 41) while notdenying the real existence of Beatrice argues that she represents Faith, and affirms that the story of Dante's love for her, a love wavering attimes, represents the conflict of Faith and Science. You will beinterested in seeing, as a curiosity of literature, how that authorattempts the translation into allegory of Dante's account of his firstmeeting with Beatrice. 

This is the translation--Dante speaking in the first person says: "Atthe close of my ninth year I experienced strong impressions of religion. This was the time of my Confirmation and my First Communion. I wasfilled with reverence for the wondrous truths instilled into my mind bythose whom I loved best: and my whole being glowed with the roseate glowof a first love. My feelings were rapturous yet constant; and from thattime I date the beginning of a New Life. From that time forward I was socompletely under the influence of this divine principle that my soulwas, as it were, espoused to heavenly love, and it was in the preceptsand ordinances of the Church that this passion found its propersatisfaction. Often and often did it lead me to the congregation of thefaithful, where I had meetings with my youthful angel and these were sogratifying that all through my boyhood I would frequently go in searchof a repetition of those pleasures and I perceived her so noble andadmirable in all her bearings, that of her might assuredly be said thatsaying of Homer: 'She seemed no daughter of mortal man but of God. '"

We need not be surprised that there is such divergence of opinion amongcritics as to the interpretation of Dante. He himself in The Banquet(bk. II, ch. 15), written some years after his New Life, tells us thatthere is a hidden meaning back of the literal interpretation of hiswords. That is especially true of the Divine Comedy, as he writes to CanGrande in explanation of the purpose of the poem. In the Paradiso hebids this lacking in power of penetration to pierce the symbolism, toaccompany him no longer on his journey through the invisible world. 

 "O ye who in some pretty little boat Eager to listen, have been following Behind my ship, that singing sails along, Turn back to look again upon your shores, Do not put out to sea, lest, peradventure, In losing me, you might yourselves be lost. " (Par. Bk. II, I. )

With obscurity thus acknowledged, is it any wonder that Dante issubjected to prolonged controversy by historical criticism which has nothesitated to cast doubt upon the authorship of the Iliad and the SynoticGospels? In the face of this obscurity it is the opinion of such wellknown Dantian scholars as D'Ancona, Charles Eliot Norton, John AddingtonSymonds, Dean Plumtre, Edmund Gardiner, W. W. Vernon, Paget Toynbe, C. H. Grandgent, Jefferson B. Fletcher, James Russell Lowell--that Beatrice isboth a real human being and a symbol. 

The direct testimony, not to urge the subtle arguments furnished byinternal evidence of Dante's works, as to the reality of BeatricePortinari as the beloved of our poet is offered first by Boccaccio whowas acquainted with Dante's daughter Beatrice, a nun who lived nearenough to the poet to get information from the Portinari family. Certainly Boccaccio did not hesitate when chosen in 1373 by theFlorentines to lecture on Dante, to make the very positive statementthat the boy Dante, "received the image of Beatrice Portinari into hisheart with such affection that from that day forward as long as he livedit never departed from him. " That statement was doubtless made withinthe hearing of many relatives and friends of the families concerned, theAlighieri, the Portinari, the Bardi. "If the statement was false, "argues Dr. Edward Moore, England's foremost Dantian scholar, "it musthave been so glaring and palpable that its assertion could only havecovered Boccaccio with ridicule. " The second authority for the statementthat Beatrice Portinari had a real existence and was the object ofDante's love is furnished by Dante's own son Pietro, who wrote acommentary on the Divine Comedy nineteen years after his father'sdemise--a commentary in which he declares "because mention is here firstmade of Beatrice of whom so much has been said, especially in the thirdbook of the Paradiso, it is to be premised that there really was a ladyBeatrice by name, greatly distinguished for her beauty and virtues who, in the time of the author, lived in the city of Florence and who was ofthe house of certain Florentine citizens called the Portinari, of whomthe author Dante was a suitor. During the life of the said lady, he washer lover and he wrote many ballads to her honor. After her death inorder that he might make her name famous, he, in this his poem, frequently introduced her under the allegory and style of theology. "

The third witness quoted by W. W. Vernon, is Benvenuto da Imola whoattended the lectures of Boccaccio and succeeded him as incumbent of thechair of Dantian literature, established by the government of Florence. This Florentine professor whose "commentary on Dante was written onlyfifty years after the death of the poet, expressly states that thisBeatrice (he does not mention her family name) was really and truly aFlorentine of great beauty and most honorable reputation. When she waseight years old she so entered into Dante's heart that she never wentout from it and he loved her passionately for sixteen years, at whichtime she died. His love increased with his years: he would follow herwhere-ever she went and always thought that in her eyes he could beholdthe summit of human happiness. Dante in his works, at one time, takesBeatrice as a real personage and at another in a mysterious sense asSacred Theology" (Readings on Inf. , I, 61. )

The question now arises: Did Beatrice know of Dante's love and did shereciprocate his passion? Many critics answer in the negative, believingthat an affirmative view must premise a guilty love since Beatrice wasmarried to Simone de Bardi and Dante to Gemma Donati. But an oppositeview holds that such a deduction overlooks the unique fact that the loveof Dante and Beatrice was purely spiritual and mystical. Doctor Zahmsays that Dante's passion was "a species of homage to the beloved whichwas common during the age of the troubadours but which has long sincedisappeared--a chivalrous devotion to a woman, neither wife normistress, by means of which the spirit of man, were he knight or poet, was rendered capable of self-devotion, and of noble deeds and of risingto a higher ideal of life" (Great Inspirers, p. 245. )

In any event we know that it was a most noble, exalting sentiment and ifwe accept the statement of Bishop de Serravalle, the love was mutual andlasting. This ecclesiastic while attending the council of Florence in1414 was asked by the Bishops of Bath and Salisbury, England, to make aLatin translation of the Divine Comedy. In the preamble to histranslation he not only declares that Dante historically and literallyloved Beatrice (_"Dantes delexit hanc puellam historice etliteraliter"_) but he affirms that the love was reciprocal and that itlasted during the lifetime of Beatrice, ("_Philocaptus fuit de ipsa etipsa de ipso, qui se invicem dilexerunt quousque vixit ipsa puella_"). 

Only by holding such a view can we really appreciate the significanceand beauty of that episode in Purgatorio depicting the first meeting ofthe lovers in the invisible world after ten years' separation--a meetingsaid to be "one of the most touching and beautiful episodes in allliterature. "

In the Terrestrial Paradise a voice is heard after the sudden departureof Virgil. "Dante" it says "though Virgil leave thee, weep not, weep notyet, for thou must weep for a greater wound. I beheld that Lady who haderst appeared to me under a cloud of flowers cast by angel's hands: andshe was gazing at me across the stream ... 'Look at us well. We are, indeed Beatrice. Hast thou then condescended to come to the mountain?'(the mountain of discipline)--Shame weighed down my brow. The ice thathad collected about my heart, turned to breath and water and with agonyissued from my breast through lips and eyes. " Beatrice then proceeds totell the angels of her love for the poet and of his faithlessness toher. "For some time I sustained him with the sight of my face. Showingto him my youthful eyes I led him toward the right quarter. As soon as Ireached the threshold of the second age of man and passed from mortal toeternal life he took himself from me and gave himself to another. "

Beatrice now turns to Dante and rebukes him: "In order the more to shamethee from thine error and to make thee stronger, never did nature andart present to thee a charm equal to that fair form now scattered inearth with which I was enclosed. And if this greatest of charms soforsook thee at my death, what mortal thing should thereafter have ledthee to desire it? Verily at the first hour of disappointment overelusive things, thou shouldst have flown up after me who was no longerof them. Thou shouldst not have allowed thy wings to be weighed down toget more wounds, either by a little maid or by any other so short livedvanity. " The effect of her rebuke is the overwhelming of his heart withshame and contrition. "So much remorse gnawed at my heart that I fellvanquished and what I then became she knoweth who gave me the cause"(Purg. XXXI, 49). He arose forgiven, the memory of his sin removed bythe waters of Lethe. Then drinking of the waters of Eunoe he was madefit to ascend to Heaven. 

To understand the allusion to his defection and to see the progressivedevelopment of his love of Beatrice as a woman, then as a living idealand finally as an animated symbol--the various transfigurations in whichBeatrice appears to him, we must go back to his New Life--the book ofwhich Charles Eliot Norton says--"so long as there are lovers in theworld and so long as lovers are poets this first and tenderestlove-story of modern literature will be read with appreciation andresponsive sympathy. "

It is hardly to be supposed that the nine year old lover noted withminute care in his diary, his first meeting of Beatrice Portinari but ashe looked back on the event years later he saw that the vision had beenthe the greatest crisis in his mental, moral and spiritual history. Thestory begins in the first page of the New Life. A real living childfamiliarly called Bice, the diminutive for Beatrice, enamoured Dantewith a real, genuine love. "After that meeting, " says the poet, "I in myboyhood often went seeking her and saw her of such noble andpraiseworthy deportment that truly of her might be said the word of thepoet Homer: 'She seems not the daughter of mortal man but of God. '" Nineyears passed and the child, now a maiden, "blooming in her beauty'sspring, saluted me with such virtue that it seemed to me that I saw allthe bounds of bliss. Since it was the first time her words came to myears I took in such sweetness that, as it were intoxicated, I turnedaway from the folk and betaking myself to the solitude of my ownchamber I sat myself down to think of this most courteous lady. "

A little later the wrapt expression of his loving eyes as he looks atBeatrice attracts the attention of others and to misdirect them, hefeigns love for the lady he calls the screen of truth and writes versesin her honor. On the part of Beatrice there is misunderstanding of theamatory verses he writes at this period and she withholds her greeting. Then, more than ever, he realizes what that salutation meant to him. Deprived of it now, he dwells upon the sweet memory of the salutation:"In the hope of her marvelous salutation there no longer remained to mean enemy, nay, a flame of charity possessed me which made me pardoneveryone who had done me wrong. " Under the influence of her salutation, Dante tells us that he devised this sonnet:

 "So gentle and so gracious doth appear My lady when she giveth her salute That every tongue becometh, trembling, mute: Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare Although she hears her praises, she doth go Benignly vested with humility: And like a thing come down, she seems to be, From heaven to earth, a miracle to show. So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh. She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes, Which none can understand who doth not prove And from her countenance there seems to move A spirit, sweet, and in Love's very guise, Who to the soul, in going sayeth: 'Sigh. '" (Norton's translation. )

Because she now denies to him the bliss of salutation he says: "I wentinto a solitary place to bathe the earth with most bitter tears. " Butthis misunderstanding is not his only torment. Almost from his secondmeeting he fears that his beloved will soon die. His prophetic visionbecomes an agonising reality when in 1290 in her twenty-fourth year, theeyes that radiated bliss are closed in death. 

So stunned was he by the blow that his life was despaired of. When herecovered it seemed to him that Florence had lost her gaiety anddesolate is mourning the loss of his beloved one. Pilgrims passing ontheir way to Galicia do not appear to share the general grief. To arousetheir sympathy in the loss which the city has sustained the heart-brokenpoet lover devises a sonnet "in which I set forth that which I had saidto myself. 

 Pilgrims: If through your will to hear, awhile ye stay, Truly my heart with sighs declare to me That ye shall afterwards depart in tears. Alas her Beatrice now lost hath she. And all the words that one of her way may say Have virtue to make weep whoever hears. "

 (Norton's translation. )

In his great affliction his grieving heart is sustained by his belief inimmortality. His vision penetrates the skies and he sees his 'lady ofvirtue' in glory in the regions of the eternal. 

 "The gentle lady to my mind had come Who, for the sake of her exceeding youth, Had by the Lord most High been ta'en from earth To that calm heaven where Mary hath her home. "

In heaven indeed more than upon earth she enamours the poet. Theredivested of her mortal veil, to his eyes she

 "grew perfectly and spiritually fair, "

leading him to fit himself to put on immortality. The passion of hisboyhood has now become the ennobling ideal of his life. Sustaining andstimulating him, saving him from himself, ever leading him upward andonward, his angelicized lady is an abiding presence with him whether heis deep in the contemplation of the study of philosophy and the learningof the ancients, or engaged in the activity of military or politicallife, or as homeless wayfarer in exile, making his way from place toplace. When he falls from grace it is Beatrice who disturbs his peace ofmind by "a battle of thoughts. " It is the "strong image" of Beatrice whocomes to him as he had seen her as a child, raises him from moralobliquity, fills him with the very essence of the spiritual. Then he hasa wonderful vision--"a vision in which I saw things which made meresolve to speak no more of this blessed one (Beatrice) until I couldmore worthily treat of her. And to attain to this I study to the utmostof my power as she truly knows: So that if it shall please Him throughwhom all things live that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope tosay of her what was never said of any woman. "

That promise, involving years of intense study and increasing devotionto his beloved, Dante kept. The Divine Comedy is his matchless monumentto her who is the protagonist and muse of his poem and the love of hisheart. "Not only has the poet made her" says Norton, "the loveliest andmost womanly woman of the Middle Ages at once absolutely real and trulyideal, " but he has done what no poet had ever before conceived, therebyachieving something unique in the whole range of literature--he has"imparadised" among the saints and angels his lovely wonder, Beatrice, "that so she spreads even there a light of love which makes the angelsglad and even to their subtle minds can bring a certain awe of profoundmarvelling. " He has given to her such a glorious exaltation that afterRachel and Eve she of all women is enthroned in the glowing Rose ofHeaven next to the Virgin Mother, "our tainted nature's solitary boast, "and so enthroned, Beatrice is at once his beloved and the symbol ofrevelation, the heavenly light that discloses to mankind both the trueend of our being and the realities of Eternity. 

Now with tremulous delight in his heart, admiration on his lips, ecstasyin his soul, he is able to render her perhaps the very purest tribute ofpraise and gratitude that ever came out of a human soul:

 "O Lady, thou in whom my hope is strong And who, for my salvation, didst endure In Hell to leave the imprint of thy feet, Of whatsoever things I have beheld, As coming from thy power and from thy goodness I recognize the power and the grace. Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom, By all those ways, by all the expedients, Whereby thou hast the power of doing it. Preserve towards me thy magnificence So that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body. "

Norton says: "It is needful to know Dante as a man in order fully toappreciate him as poet. "

What manner of man then was he? Redeemed by love, he was, to quote JohnAddington Symonds, "the greatest, truest, sincerest man of modernEurope. "

DANTE'S INFERNO

DANTE'S INFERNO

At no period of modern times do we find that literature showed aninterest more keen in the Hereafter than at the present day. Religionhas always used both pen and voice to direct men's thoughts towardseternity, but now it is literature that goes for subject-matter toreligion. This change of attitude is due, no doubt, to the fact thatseveral factors in present-day life--factors that literature cannotignore, have turned popular thought to religion. The World-war hasdisciplined the character of men by the unspeakable experiences ofcontact with shot, shell and shrapnel and the result has been thatcountless numbers have turned to religion for strength and consolation. Countless thousands whose dear ones made the supreme sacrifice for theideals of patriotism, also find in religion their only solace. 

Those who have not this refuge turn to spiritualism and psychicalresearch in a futile effort to find a satisfactory solution of theproblem of the Hereafter. Again and again we see the unrest of theever-questioning soul depicted in the drama and the literature of theday as it seeks enlightenment on the potentiality of the future life. The stage presents plays based on spiritualistic manifestations or uponsupernatural healing or miraculous intervention. Many recent novels haveeither psychical phenomena for their central interest or plots evolvedout of the miraculous in religion. As exponents of psychical research, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, W. T. Stead and Sir Oliver Lodge make an appealto readers to accept as scientific truths, the psychical manifestationsof the unseen world. A typical answer is given to that appeal by adistinguished writer, Doctor Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, London, whodeclares: "If this kind of after-life were true, this portrayed in thepitiable revival of necromancy in which many desolate hearts have soughtspurious satisfaction, it would, indeed, be a melancholy postponement ornegation of all we hope and believe about our dead. "

Prescinding from any attempt to discuss the occult phenomena evoked, observed and studied in our day or to treat of the matters involved inthe supernatural in the books of the day, one may state as a fact thatthe whole tendency of present day literature is to show a yearning forlight on a subject of fundamental importance to human nature. Far backin the history of the race Job gave voice to the spiritual problems thatare today engaging the attention of the world. Some fifteen hundredyears ago, St. Augustine proposed to himself the question which sogenerally concerns the twentieth century: "On what matter of all thosethings of which thou art ignorant, hast thou the greatest desire forenlightenment?" The great Bishop of Hippo becomes the spokesman ofhumanity when he answers his own question by proposing another: "Am Iimmortal or not?" (Soliloquia 2d). 

In the realms of literature no work of man has answered that questionwith greater vividness of imagery, intensity of concentration, beauty ofdescription--all based in a large measure on the teachings ofChristianity--than has Dante in his Divine Comedy. Devised as a loveoffering to the memory of his beloved Beatrice who in the work issymbolized as Heavenly Light on the things hidden from man, the poemleads the reader through the dark abyss of Hell, the patient abode ofPurgatory, the glorious realm of Heaven as if the poet had seen Eternityin reality instead of in imagination. Not only the state and theconditions of the soul after death does he visualize with the precisionof Euclid, but as a philosopher and a theologian he proposes for ourinstruction in the course of the journey many questions of dogmatic andspeculative thought affecting the Hereafter. He believes himself calledto be not simply a poet to entertain his readers, but a prophet and apreacher with burning fire to deliver a message for man's salvation. Sohe asks the help of Heaven:

"O Supreme Light that so high upliftest Thyself from mortal conceptions, re-lend a little to my mind of what Thou didst appear and make my tongueso powerful that it may be able to leave one single spark of Thy glory, for the future people: for by returning to my memory and by sounding alittle in these verses, more of Thy victory shall be conceived" (Par. XXXIII, 67). 

Comedy is the title which Dante gives to his trilogy and posterity hasadded the prefix adjective divine. The term comedy however is not usedin the modern sense which suggests to us a light laughable drama writtenin a familiar style. "Comedy" Dante himself explains in his dedicationof the poem, "is a certain kind of poetical narrative which differs fromall others. It differs from tragedy in its subject matter in this way, that tragedy in the beginning is admirable and quiet, in its ending orcatastrophe foul and horrible ... Comedy on the other hand, begins withadverse conditions, but its theme has a happy termination. Likewise theydiffer in their style of language, for tragedy is lofty and sublime, comedy lowly and humble. 

"From this it is evident why the present work is called a comedy, forif we consider the theme in its beginning it is horrible and foulbecause it is Hell; in its ending fortunate, desirable and joyfulbecause it is Paradise: and if we consider the style of language thestyle is lowly and humble because it is the vulgar tongue in which evenhousewives hold converse. "

The theme of the poem Dante himself explains: "The subject of the workliterally taken is the state of souls after death; this is the pivotalidea of the poem throughout its entire course. In the allegorical sensethe poet treats of the hell of this world through which we arejourneying as pilgrims, with the power of meriting and demeriting, andthe subject is man, in as much as by his merits and demerits he issubject to divine Justice, remunerative or retributive" (Epis. Dedicat. Ad Can Grande). 

One of the earliest commentators amplifies the poet's statement. Benvenuto da Imola writes: "The matter or subject of this book is thestate of the human soul both as connected with the human body and asseparated from it. As the state of the whole is threefold, so does theauthor divide his work into three parts. A soul may be in sin; such aone even while it lives with the body, is morally speaking dead, andhence it is in moral Hell; when separated from the body, if it diedincurably obstinate, it is in the actual Hell. Again a soul may bereceding from vice: such a one while still in the body is in the moralPurgatory, or in the act of penance in which it purges away its sin; ifseparated, it is in the actual Purgatory. Yet even while living in thebody, a soul is already in a manner in Paradise, for it exists in asgreat felicity as is possible in this life of misery: separated from thebody, it is in the heavenly Paradise where there is true and perfecthappiness, where it enjoys the vision of God. " (Ozanam, Dante, p. 129. )

This testimony as to the subject matter of the Divine Comedy is broughtforth to offset the statements not infrequently made by expositors whodeny or ignore the supernatural that Dante's full thought can berealized even if the reader rejects the poet's spiritual teaching, especially his doctrine of the existence of a real Heaven and a realHell. It is true that Dante is "such a many-sided genius that he has amessage for almost every person. " It is likewise true that anallegorical interpretation may be adopted with no belief in theHereafter and it may open up many fruitful lessons for the reader. Thatbeing granted, one may still ask whether one can ignore Dante's doctrineof future rewards and punishment and so get full satisfaction fromtreating the poet's conception of the Hereafter as a mere allegory. 

The allegory presupposes that sin inevitably brings its own penalty. But in this life virtue does not always bear its own reward nor is evilalways followed by retribution. Dante as the prophet and the preacher ofChristianity would have us understand, as Benvenuto da Imola points out, that if the moral law is not vindicated in this life it will be in theHereafter, for our acts make our eternity. So the poet holds that whilethis life according as it shows the soul in sin, in repentance or invirtue may be considered allegorically Hell, Purgatory or Heaven, beforethe Last Judgment a real Hell, a real Purgatory, a real Heaven is theabode of disembodied spirits according to their demerits or merits andafter the Last Judgment, Purgatory no longer existing, souls will be ineternal suffering in Hell or in unending joy in Heaven. 

It is not to be expected that any reader will believe that Dante's Hellis a photograph of reality. It is a Hell largely fashioned by poeticvisions and political theories, peopled in a great measure by those whostand in opposition to the poet's theory of government. It is not, as issometimes asserted, a place to which the poet consigns his personalenemies. As Dinsmore says: "Dante had too much greatness in his soul andtoo much pride (it may be) to make revenge a personal matter: he hadnothing but contempt for his own enemies and never except in the case ofBoniface VIII ... Did he place a single one of them in the Inferno, noteven his judge Cante Gabriella. "

Though largely colored by his political theories Dante's Hell is also atheological conception based on the teaching of the Catholic Church thatHell exists as a place or state of punishment for the rebel angels andfor man dying impenitent, that is, for man in whom sin has become sohumanized that death finds him not simply in the act or habit of sin butso transformed that in the striking words of Bossuet, "he is man madesin. " Dante fully accepted that doctrine which had been the constanttradition and faith of the Church and had been reaffirmed in the secondecumenical Council of Lyons held when Dante was a boy, nine years ofage. 

It is not unlikely with his precocity for knowledge and sentiment atthat age that he was deeply impressed with the history of that councilespecially as its legislation also dealt with the Crusades, the union ofChurches, the reform of the Church, the appointment of a king of theRomans and an emperor--matters of vital importance to him later. He musthave recalled that Council also with special interest, for two of hisideal personages, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure met their death, one onhis way to the Council, the other while actually attending its sessions. 

In any event Dante firmly believed the doctrine of the Hereafter "thatthey that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they thathave done evil, into everlasting fire. " He held that the punishment ofthe damned is two-fold. The greater punishment, called the pain of loss, consists in the loss of the Beatific Vision, a suffering so great thatthe genius of St. Augustine can hardly translate it in human language. "To be separated from God, " he says, "is a torment as great as the verygreatness of God. " The other pain of the reprobate consists in thetorment of fire so frequently mentioned in Holy Writ. "According to thegreater number of theologians the term fire denotes a material and so areal fire ... (but) there have never been wanting theologians whointerpret the scriptural term fire metaphorically as denoting anincorporeal fire and thus far the Church has not censured their opinion"(Cath. Encyclo. , VIII, 211. )

While the pain of loss and the pain of sense constitute the very essenceof the punishment of Hell, theologians teach that there are othersufferings called accidental. The reprobate never experience v. G. Theleast real pleasure nor are they ever free from the hideous presence ofone another. After the Last Judgment the lost souls will also betormented by union with their bodies, a union bringing about a freshincrease of punishment. On this subject, for our information Danteaddresses Virgil his guide through Hell: "Master, will these tormentsafter the great sentence increase or diminish?" Virgil explains thatthey will become worse because when the soul is united again to the bodythere will be perfection of being and the resulting sensitiveness willbe the more intense. 

"Return unto thy science, " answers Virgil, "which wills that as a thingmore perfect is the more it feels of pleasure and of pain. " (Inf. , VI, 40. )

Dante also holds that only by way of exception is there any escape fromHell once a soul is condemned. Following a legend commonly believed inthe Middle Ages that in answer to the prayers of Pope Gregory the Great, the soul of the Emperor Trajan was delivered from Hell, Dante assumesthat God who could not save Trajan against his will, allowed his soul to"come back to its bones" and while thus united to use its will forsalvation. So regenerated Trajan is placed by Dante, in the Heaven ofJupiter (Par. XX 40, 7). Referring to this incident the CatholicEncyclopedia says: "In itself it is no rejection of Catholic dogma tosuppose that God might at times by way of exception, liberate a soulfrom Hell. Thus some argued from a false interpretation of I Peter III, 19 seq. That Christ freed several damned souls on the occasion of Hisdescent into Hell. Others were led by untrustworthy stories into thebelief that the prayers of Gregory the Great rescued the Emperor Trajanfrom Hell but now theologians are unanimous in teaching that suchexceptions never take place and never have taken place" (VIII, 209. )

As to the location of Hell it is the poet Dante and not Dante thetheologian, as we shall see later, who gives definite place andboundaries to Hell. He knows that on this subject the Church has decidednothing, holding to the statement of St. Augustine: "It is my opinionthat the nature of hell-fire and the location of Hell are known to noman unless the Holy Ghost made it known to him by a special revelation. "

Dante makes his Hell big enough to hold the majority of mankind. Hethinks that the elect will be comparatively few--just numerous enough tofill those places in heaven forfeited by the rebel angels who formedaccording to his conjecture, about a tenth of the angelical host. Thattheir places in Heaven are already nearly filled leaving little room forfuture generations Dante makes known in the words of Beatrice:

 "Behold our City's circuit, oh how vast Behold our benches now so full that few Are they who are henceforth lacking here. " (Par. XXX, 130. )

His theory of restrictive salvation, it may be noted, is not in accordwith the teaching of the Church which holds that to every man God givesgrace sufficient for salvation. That is true even as affecting theheathen and those living in place or in time far removed from the Cross. St. Thomas Aquinas expresses this doctrine of the Church when he writes:"If anyone who is born in a barbaric nation does what lieth in him, Godwill reveal what is necessary for salvation, either by internalinspiration or by a teacher. "

The farcical element is not wanting in the Inferno, a fact proving thatour poet, in furnishing the episodes, not superior to his age whichdemanded especially in the religious plays presented in the publicsquare the sight of the discomfiture of the devil in scenes provokingthe audience to laughter. The best example of such farcicality occurs inthe eighth circle, fifth bolgia, where officials, traffickers in publicoffices, or unjust stewards are immersed in boiling pitch. From time totime when the fiends are not alert the reprobate here come to thesurface for a breathing or cooling spell, like dolphins on the approachof a storm darting in the air and diving back again or like frogs withtheir muzzles alone exposed and their bodies covered by the water, resting on the banks of a stream into which they drop at the firstapproach of danger. 

Getting in this way momentary relief from suffering a grafter namedCiampolo, a former retainer of King Thibaut II of Navarre, lingered toolong and was deftly hooked by Graffiacane amid the savage exultations ofthe other fiends, who proceed to maltreat the unfortunate wretch. Thehideous confusion of attacks by the demons is stopped long enough forthe poet to learn his history, and also what is more interesting toDante, the names of two Italians, Friar Gomita and Michel Zanche who arelikewise suffering in the boiling pitch. Ciampolo, to save himself fromfurther maltreatment and to escape from his captors, now has recourse tostratagem. He promises that if they consent to withdraw out of sight hewill whistle a signal that will be recognized only by his haplesscomrades; the two Italians and five others will then come to the surfacefor cool air. The fiends may then have not one, but seven to rend! Thecrafty plan succeeds. The demons withdraw behind the crags and thenCiampolo plunges deeply into the boiling pitch. Two devils, endeavoringto swoop down upon him now beyond their reach, fall upon each other inbrutal fury, while the rest of the troop hurry to the opposite shore torescue the belimed pair. Here is Dante's description of the farce:

"As dolphins, when with the arch of the back; they make sign tomariners that they may prepare to save their ship: so now and then, toease the punishment, some sinner showed his back and hid in less timethan it lightens. And as at the edge of the water of a ditch, the frogsstand only with their muzzles out, so that they hide their feet andother bulk: thus stood on every hand the sinners; but as Barbaricciaapproached, they instantly retired beneath the seething. I saw, and myheart still shudders thereat, one linger so, as it will happen that onefrog remains while the other spouts away; and Graffiancane, who wasnearest to him, hooked his pitchy locks and haled him up, so that to mehe seemed an otter. 

"I already knew the name of every one, so well I noted them as they werechosen, and when they called each other, listened how. 'O Rubicante, seethou plant thy clutches on him, and flay him!' shouted together all theaccursed _crew_. And I: 'Master, learn if thou canst, who is thatpiteous _wight_, fallen into the hands of his adversaries. ' My Guidedrew close to (his side) and asked him whence he came; and he replied:'I was born in the kingdom of Navarre. My mother placed me as servant ofa lord; for she had borne me to a ribald master of himself and of hissubstance. Then I was domestic with the good King Thibault; here I setmyself to doing barratry, of which I render reckoning in this heat. ' AndCiriatto, from whose mouth on either side came forth a tusk as from ahog, made him feel how one of them did rip. Amongst evil cats the mousehad come; but Barbariccia locked him in his arms, and said: 'Stand offwhilst I enforke him!' And turning his face to my Master: 'Ask on, ' hesaid, 'if thou wouldst learn more from him, before some other undo him. '

"The Guide therefore: 'Now say, of the other sinners knowest thou anythat is a Latian, beneath the pitch?' And he: 'I parted just now fromone who was a neighbour of theirs (on the other side); would I stillwere covered with him, for I should not fear claw nor hook!' AndLibicocco cried: 'Too much have we endured, ' and with the hook seizedhis arm and mangling carried off a part of brawn. Draghignazzo, he too, wished to have a catch at the legs below; whereat their decurion wheeledaround around with evil aspect. When they were somewhat pacified, myGuide, without delay, asked him that still kept gazing on his wound:'Who was he, from whom thou sayest that thou madest an ill departure tocome ashore?' And he answered: 'It was Friar Gomita, he of Gallura, vessel of every fraud, who had his master's enemies in hand, and did soto them that they all praise him for it: money took he for himself, anddismissed them smoothly, as he says; and in his other offices besides, he was no petty but a sovereign barrator. With him keeps company DonMichel Zanche of Logodoros; and in speaking of Sardinia the tongues ofthem do not feel weary. Oh me! see that other grinning; I would saymore; but fear he is preparing to claw my scurf. ' And their greatMarshal, turning to Farfarello, who rolled his eyes to strike, said:'Off with thee, villainous bird!' 'If you wish to see or hear Tuscans orLombards, ' the frightened sinner then resumed, 'I will make them come. But let the (evil claws hold back) a little, that they may not feartheir vengeance; and I, sitting in this same place, for one that I am, will make seven come, on whistling, as is our wont to do, when any of usgets out. '

"O Reader, thou shalt hear new sport! All turned their eyes toward theother side, he first who had been most unripe for doing it. TheNavarrese chose well his time; planted his soles upon the ground, and inan instant leapt and from their purpose freed himself. Thereat each wasstung (with guilt); but he most who had been the cause of the mistake;he therefore started forth, and shouted: 'Thou'rt caught!' But little itavailed (him); for wings could not outspeed the terror; the _sinner_went under; and he, flying, raised up his breast: not otherwise the ducksuddenly dives down, when the falcon approaches, and he returns up angryand defeated. 

"Calcabrina, furious at the trick, kept flying after him, desirous thatthe sinner might escape, to have a quarrel. And, when the barrator haddisappeared, he turned his talons on his fellow, and was clutched withhim above the ditch. But the other was indeed a sparrowhawk to claw himwell; and both dropt down into the middle of the boiling pond. The heatat once unclutched them; but rise they could not, their wings were sobeglued. Barbariccia with the rest lamenting, made four of them fly overto the other coast with all their drags; and most rapidly on this side, on that, they descended to the stand; they stretched their hooks towardsthe limed pair, who were already scalded within the crust; and we leftthem thus embroiled. " (XXII, 19. )

The grotesque, also, plays a part in the Inferno appearing not only inthe demons taken from classical legend and deformed into caricatures, but also in the punishment of crimes, v. G. Simony and malfeasance inpublic office, regarded by our poet as malicious in themselves andgrotesque in their perversity. 

Readers who regard the grotesque as a repelling element in the Infernomay be surprised to learn that Ruskin considers this feature of Dante'swritings an expression of the highest human genius. The great Englishcritic writes:

"I believe that there is no test of greatness in nations, periods, normen more sure than the development, among them or in them of a noblegrotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of onekind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention orincapability of understanding it. I think that the central man of allthe world, as representing in perfect balance and imaginative, moral andintellectual faculties, all at their highest is Dante; and in him thegrotesque reaches at once the most distinct and the most nobledevelopment to which it was ever brought in the human mind. Of thegrotesqueness of our own Shakespeare I need hardly speak, nor of itsintolerableness to his French critics; nor of that of Æschylus andHomer, as opposed to the lower Greek writers; and so I believe it willbe found, at all periods, in all minds of the first order. "

Dante's doctrine of punishment presupposes certain primary truths whichthe Church proclaims today as she did in Dante's day. According to theFlorentine's creed, man must answer to God for his moral life because hehas free will. He cannot excuse his evil deed on the ground ofnecessity. Even in the face of planetary influence and of temptationfrom within, by his evil inclinations, and from without by solicitationof other agents man has still such discernment between good and evil andsuch power to make choice freely, that moral judgment with him is free. "Who hath been tried thereby and made perfect, " says Holy Writ, "heshall have glory everlasting. He that could have transgressed, and hathnot transgressed and could do evil things, and hath not done them. "(Eccli. , XXXI, 10. )

Against this doctrine of free will the sociology, the philosophy and themedical science of the present day contend with a theory which minimizesman's accountability for sin if it does not wholly excuse him as thevictim of heredity, environment or society. Literature also, asreflected not only in the Greek tragedies but in the writings of authorsfrom Shakespeare to Shaw portray the evil doer as the victim of fate ordeterminism. 

Against all such theories and views Dante appears as the fearless, uncompromising champion of the doctrine of the greatness of man in theexercise of the divine gift of Free Will. His own life, showing how hehad won victory over the forces of poverty and persecution, is symbolicof the glorious truth he would teach; viz. , that man, endowed with freewill and animated with the grace of God, is master of his destiny andcannot be defeated even by principalities and powers. So he tells us, "And free will which if it endure fatigue in the first battles with theheavens, afterwards if it be well nurtured, conquers everything. "(Purg. , XVI, 76. ) He makes Beatrice testify to the supremacy of thewill: "The greatest gift which God in His bounty bestowed in creatingand that which He prizes most, was the freedom of will with which thecreatures that have intelligence--they all and they alone--wereendowed. " (Cf. Purg. , XVIII, 66-73. )

But such a distinctive endowment may be the the curse of man if he failsto use it rightly. Like Job, Dante insists that life is a warfare. Victory is possible only by the right exercise of the will enlightenedby God. Defeat is sure if the will embraces sin. To Dante sin is not amere vulgarity or the violation of a social convention or "a softinfirmity of the blood. " "Very hateful to his fervid heart and sinceremind, " says James Russell Lowell, "would have been the modern theorywhich deals with sin as involuntary error. " To Dante sin is the greatestevil of the world--not only because it is the source of all other evils, but because it is at once the denaturing of man--the damned arecharacterized as "the woeful people who have lost the good of theunderstanding" (Inf. , III, 18), and it is also a defiance of God. Sin, then, is Atheism--a rejection of God, with a conviction that pleasure orhappiness can be attained outside of God, independent of God and inopposition to God. Apart from the inspired writers of Holy Writ it isdoubtful whether any other writer ever had such an awful sense of sinand such a vivid vision of sin and its consequences as Dante has givento the world in a picture which has burned terror into the thought ofman. 

To show us that life is a warfare against sin, Dante gives us severalstriking pictures of temptation and heavenly deliverance from evil. Atthe very beginning of the Divine Comedy, we see his ascent to themountain of the Lord barred by Lust, Pride and Avarice represented by aleopard, a lion, and a wolf. He is victorious over those enemies of hissalvation because Reason (Virgil) and Beatrice (Revelation) come to hisaid. Temptation is also exhibited in Ante-Purgatorio and that is themore remarkable because both as a theologian and a poet Dante holds thatthe present life is the end of man's probation and that as aconsequence, temptation is not to be encountered in the next life. Whyit is put forth in Ante-Purgatorio is explained by the theory that ourpoet here nods, that he means, not the actual Purgatory of disembodiedspirits, but moral Purgatory, _i. E. _, the present life wherein man, striving upward, is attacked by temptation to keep him from the end forwhich God created him. 

Showing temptation in Ante-Purgatorio, the poet gives us a picture ofsouls protected by two angels against the serpent. Here is the scene:

 "Now was the hour that wakens fond desire In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful heart Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell, And pilgrim newly on his road with love Thrills, if he hear the vesper bell from far, That seems to mourn for the expiring day": A band of souls approach: "I saw that gentle band silently next Look up, as if in expectation held, Pale and in lowly guise; and, from on high, I saw, forth issuing descend beneath, Two angels, with two flame-illumined swords, Broken and mutilated of their points. Green as the tender leaves but newly born, Their vesture was, the which, by wings as green Beaten, they drew behind them, fann'd in air. A little over us one took his stand; The other lighted on the opposing hill; So that the troop were in the midst contain'd. But in their visages the dazzled eye Was lost, as faculty that by too much Is overpower'd. 'From Mary's bosom both Are come, ' exclaimed Sordello, 'as a guard Over the vale, 'gainst him, who hither tends, The serpent. ' Whence, not knowing by which path He came, I turn'd me round; and closely press'd, All frozen, to my leader's trusted side. "

After describing an interview with one of the souls, the poet continueshis narrative:

 "While yet he spoke, Sordello to himself Drew him, and cried: 'Lo there our enemy!' And with his hand pointed that way to look Along the side, where barrier none arose Around the little vale, a serpent lay, Such haply as gave Eve the bitter food. Between the grass and flowers, the evil snake Came on, reverting oft his lifted head; And, as a beast that smooths its polish'd coat. Licking his back. I saw not, nor can tell, How those celestial falcons from their seat Moved, but in motion each one well described. Hearing the air cut by their verdant plumes, The serpent fled; and, to their stations, back The angels up return'd with equal flight. " (Purg. , VIII. )

A third picture of temptation is furnished by the episode of one of theSirens who appears first repulsive and then seems to the poet sweet andalluring. Only when Virgil discloses her hideous nature does Dante seehow easily he might have fallen a victim to her wiles. He tells us thatin his sleep there appeared to him a woman with stammering utterance, squinting eyes, deformed hands. "I gazed at her, and as the sun restoresthe cold limbs made heavy by night, thus my look loosened her tongue, then straightened her all out in a little while and colored her wan faceas love demands. When her speech was thus unbound she began to sing sothat I could hardly have turned my attention from her. 'I am, ' she sang, 'I am sweet Siren who bewitch sailors by mid-sea, so full am I of charmto hear. By my song I turned Ulysses from his wandering way. Andwhosoever abides with me seldom departs, so wholly do I satisfy him. 'Her lips were not yet closed when a lady, swift and holy, appeared at myside to confound the other. 'O Virgil, Virgil, who is this?' she saidproudly; and he advanced with his eyes fixed only on this modest woman. "Virgil (Reason called by Conscience) comes to the rescue of theentranced poet and reveals the Siren in all her foul ugliness. At thatDante awakes from his dream more than ever convinced of the evil of sinand its hideousness. (Purg. , XIX, 9. )

Our poet, as we said, is firmly convinced that sin will be punished inHell. But where is Hell? Popular tradition attributing an infernalconnection with volcanic phenomena and moved by those passages in HolyScripture which describe Hell as a place to which the reprobate descend, locates Hell in the interior of the earth. Dante not only follows thistradition for his Hell, but he does what no other writer before or afterhim ever did--he constructs a Hell with such rare architectural skillthat the awful structure stands forth in startling reality, visualizedeasily as to form an atmosphere, and with a finish of detail that isamazing. Covered by a crust of earth it is situated under Jerusalem andextends in funnel shape to the very center of the earth. 

How it got this shape is told by the poet. When Lucifer was hurled fromHeaven by the justice of God, he kept falling until he reached thecenter of earth, whence further motion downward was impossible. At theapproach of Lucifer the earth is represented as recoiling and so makingthe cavity of Hell. The earth dislodged by the cataclysm was forcedthrough an opening, a kind of nozzle of the funnel of Hell, to theantipodes and it there emerged, forming a mountain, which became thesite of the Garden of Eden and Purgatory. The phenomenon made land inthe northern and water in the southern hemisphere. Here is thedescription:

 "Upon this side he fell down out of heaven And all the land, that whilom here emerged For fear of him made of the sea a veil And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure To flee from him, what on this side Left the place vacant here and back recoiled. " (Inf. , XXXIV, 121. )

The material structure of the Inferno is a series of nine concentriccircles--darkness brooding over the whole region, --with ledges, chasms, pits, swamps and rivers. The rivers, though different in name andaspect, appear to be one and the same stream winding its way through thevarious circles. We see it first as the boundary of Hell proper and itis known as the Acheron. It comes again to view in the fourth circle andis called the Styx. In the seventh circle, second round, it emerges asthe red blood stream of Phlegethon. In the very depths of Hell it formsthe frozen lake of Cocytus. The circles of Hell, distant from oneanother, decrease in circumference as descent is made--the top circlebeing the widest. Galileo estimates that Dante's Hell is about 4, 000miles in depth and as many in breadth at its widest diameter. Itsopening is near the forest at the Fauces Averni, near Cuma, Italy, whereVirgil places the site of the entrance of his Inferno. 

Dante's Hell in its moral aspect is Aristotelian. Sins are divided intothree great classes, incontinence, bestiality and malice. Incontinenceis punished in the five upper circles; bestiality and malice in the Cityof Dis, lower Hell. More particularly stated, Dante's scheme ofpunishment in the underworld, not considering the vestibule of Hell, where neutrals are confined, is as follows: 1, Limbo; 2, The Circle ofLust; 3, Gluttony; 4, Avarice and Prodigality; 5, Anger, Rage and Fury;6, Unbelief and Heresy; 7, Violence; 8, Fraud; 9, Treason. 

In regard to this plan of punishment three things are to be noted: (a)Though generally following the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, hereDante, in his conception of Limbo, differs from his master. Our poet'sLimbo, wherein are the souls of unbaptized children and others who diedstained with original sin, but without personal grievous guilt, is amuch more severe abode than that of the Angelic Doctor. The latterteaches that Limbo is a place or a state, not merely of exemption fromsuffering and sorrow, but of perfect natural happiness unbroken even bya knowledge of a higher, a supernatural destiny that has never beengiven. Dante's Limbo, on the other hand, represents the souls in sadnessbrought about by their constant desire and hope never realizable, ofseeing God. They suffer no pain of sense, but they are baffled in theirendless yearning for the Beatific Vision. To quote Dante:

 "There, in so far as I had power to hear, Were lamentations none, but only sighs That tremulous made the everlasting air. And this arose from sorrow without torment, Which the crowds had, that many were and great, Of infants and of women and of men. To me the Master good: 'Thou dost not ask What spirits these may be, which thou beholdest? Now will I have thee know, ere thou go farther, That they sinned not; and if they merit had, 'T is not enough, because they had not baptism, Which is the portal of the Faith thou holdest; And if they were before Christianity, In the right manner they adored not God; And among such as these am I myself. For such defects, and not for other guilt, Lost are we, and are only so far punished, That without hope we live on in desire. '" (IV, 25. )

(b) Our poet represents a soul as punished but for one sin, though itmay be guilt-dyed by its having broken all the commandments. Even so, itis placed in one particular circle wherein a certain sin is punished andwe are not told that it passes to other circles. In explanation of thiswe have only to remember that Dante, for our instruction, is showing usobject lessons of evil, types of certain sins. Judas, for example, whosename is synonymous with traitor, is exhibited as suffering in the ninthcircle, the circle of treason, the poet taking no notice of other sins, v. G. , sacrilege, avarice, suicide, of which the fallen apostle may havebeen guilty. Furthermore, Dante as a master psychologist and moralistwould teach us the lesson that the evil doer may come to damnationthrough one sin if that acquires such an ascendency over his will as tobecome a capital sin or predominant passion of his life. Then thebesetting passion is the father of an innumerable progeny of evil. Thisis seen (Purg. , XX, 103) in the case of Pygmalion, whose predominantpassion, avarice, made him a traitor, a thief and a parricide. 

(c) Let us not be surprised that Dante is so lenient in the punishmentof carnal sinners. He assigns a lighter punishment to the unchaste thanto the unjust. Back of his plan is a sound theological doctrine. Guiltis to be estimated not simply from the gravity of the matter prohibitedto conscience and the knowledge that one has of the evil, but moreespecially from the malice displayed by the will in its voluntarychoosing and embracing the evil. Now impurity, it is held, is often asin of impulse. It springs from concupiscence, a common humaninclination, wrong only when there is inordinateness. Then though a manfreely consents to the temptation and thereby commits a grievous sin, his will generally is not overcast with perversion or affected withmalice. That being so, Dante in assigning punishment for sins againstthe virtue of purity is moved by the thought that such sins deserve amilder punishment in Hell, because they may be oftener surprises thaninfidelities. 

To make known the nature of the particular sin he depicts Dante shows usthe evil in various phases. First of all it is personified in repulsivedemons, the guardians of the circles of Hell. At the very entrance, sits, symbolizing the evil conscience, the sinners' judge "Minoshorrific and grins. The ill-born spirit comes before him, confesses alland that sin-discerner (Minos) sees what place in Hell is for it, andwith his tail makes as many circles round himself as the degrees he willhave it descend. " (Inf. , V, 2. ) In the circle of Gluttony, the sin issymbolized by the three-headed monster Cerberus, "who clutches thespirits, flays and piecemeal rends them. "

Plutus, the ancient god of riches--"a cursed wolf"--commands the circleof Avarice. Phlegyas, who in fury set fire to Apollo's temple, is headof the circle of Anger. Symbolizing remorse, the three Furies, in thesemblance of women girt with green water snakes, with snakes for hair, and the Gorgon Medusa, representing the heart-hardening effect ofsensual pleasures, are found on the fire-glowing towers of the City ofDis, Inner Hell. In the seventh circle presides Minotaur, half-man, half-bull, the symbol of bloodthirsty violence and brutal lust. 

Fraud is typified by Geryon, having the face of an honest man and thebody of a dragon. Further down giants are seen, emblematic of theenormity of crime. At the very lowest point of Hell is Lucifer, "emperorof the Realm of Sorrow. " A gigantic monster, he is imprisoned in iceformed from rivers which freeze by the movements of his bat-like wingsflapping in vain efforts to raise himself. To him, as to the source ofall evil, flow back all the streams of guilt. As he sinned against theTri-une God, he is represented with three faces, one crimson, anotherbetween white and yellow, and the third black. (XXXIV, 55. )

Not only by such terrible monsters, but by the environment of thecondemned sinner, does our poet reveal the hideousness of sin. Tomention only the three great divisions of Hell, the abodes ofincontinence, bestiality and malice, we find in murky gloom theincontinent whose sin had darkened their understanding. In the City ofDis, red with fire, are the violent and the bestial, who in this lifehad burned either with consuming rage or unnatural passion; in thefrozen circle of malice are those whose sins had congealed humansympathy and love into cold, calculating destruction of trust reposed inthem. 

But it is principally by depicting the intellectual, the moral and thephysical sufferings of the damned that Dante would teach us the natureof sin. To depict physical sufferings the poet was under the necessityof creating provisional bodies for his damned. Without such a poeticdevice the souls of the reprobate before the resurrection of theirbodies cannot be conceived to suffer physically, since they lack thesenses and organs of pain. So Dante pictures the damned united to formsshadowy yet real, palpable and visible. They sometimes lose the humansemblance and assume more sinister shapes, grovelling as hideousserpents, bleeding and wailing from shrubs and trees, or bubbling in aslushing stream. 

In such forms the souls are seen in punishment fitting their sin, on theprinciple that "by what things a man sinneth by the same he istormented. " (Wisdom XI, 17. ) The unchaste because they allowed theirreason to be subjected to the hot blasts of passion are now driven by "ahellish storm which never rests; whirling and smiting, it vexes them. "(Inf. , V, 31. ) The gluttonous howl like dogs as hail and rain and snowbeat down upon them and Cerberus attacks and rends them. The misers andspendthrifts to whom money was king, now are occupied in rolling hugestones in opposite directions. The wrathful, all muddy and naked, assailand tear one another. 

The sullen are fixed in slime and gurgle a dismal chant. The materialistand the heretic, whose existence, Dante holds, was only a living death, are confined in blazing tombs. Murderers and tyrants are immersed inboiling blood. 

With poetic justice, suicides are represented as stunted trees laceratedby the beaks of foul harpies. The violent lie supine on a plain of dryand dense sand, upon which descend flakes of fire like "snow in theAlps, without a wind. " Usurers--should we call them profiteers?--sufferalso from a rain of fire and carry about their necks money bags stampedwith armorial designs. Thieves, to remind them of their sneaking trade, are repeatedly transformed from men into snakes, hissing and creeping. Hypocrites march in slow procession with faces painted and with leadencloaks all glittering with gold on the outside. With such realism doesDante declare the nature of sin and its inevitable consequences. 

Let us now accompany Dante through the Underworld. The scene opens atdawn in a dark and tangled wood. Dante, the type of humanity, is unableto ascend the Hill of the Lord, as we said before, because his way isbarred successively by a leopard, a lion and a wolf, representing thepassions of life. Virgil (Reason), sent by Beatrice (Revelation), offersto conduct the poet by another road. It is a way which leads throughHell and Purgatory. Through the heavens Beatrice herself will be theguide. Descending through the earth the two poets come to the Vestibuleof Hell. On the gate appears this inscription:

 "Through me you pass into the city of woe Through me you pass into eternal pain Through me among the people lost for aye Justice, the founder of my fabric, moved To rear me was the task of Power divine, Supremest wisdom and primeval Love Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here. "

It may be said in passing that in these nine lines Dante attains aneffect for which Milton, with all his heavy description of the gatewayof Hell, labors in vain. Contrast with the Florentine's the words of theauthor of Paradise Lost:

 "Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid roof And thrice three fold the gates: three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock. Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, Yet unconsumed. Before the gate there sat On either side a formidable shape, " etc. 

Not by gigantic images which only astonish the reader, but by wordswhich burn into the brain and leave him dismayed, does our poet drivehome his thought. 

Passing through a crowd of neutrals the poets come to the river Acheron, where assemble those who die in mortal sin, to be ferried over by thedemon Charon. He refuses passage to Dante: "By other ways, by otherferries, shalt thou pass over, a lighter boat must carry thee. " (Inf. , III, 91. ) An earthquake occurs, accompanied with wind and lightning, andDante falls into a state of insensibility. Upon coming to consciousnesshe finds himself on the brink of the Abyss, whence the poets enterLimbo. Here Christ descended, Virgil says, and "drew from us the shadeof our first parent, of Abel, his son; that of Noah, of Moses, thelawgiver, the obedient; patriarch Abraham and King David; Israel, withhis father, and with his sons and with Rachel, for whom he wrought much, and many others and made them blessed. " (Inf. , IV, 55. )

In the second circle, where carnal sinners are punished, Dante sees, among others, Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris. Thepoet's attention is suddenly attracted by two spirits, who prove to beFrancesca da Rimini and her lover, Paolo, murdered by her husband whenDante was twenty-four years old. The scandal of their illicit love andthe penalty they paid by their lives must have been so generally knownthat Dante, though attached to her family by the memory of hospitalityreceived from her nephew, Guido Novello da Polenta, the lord of Ravenna, is dominated by the necessity of declaring in Francesca and Paolo theoperation of the unalterable law which rules the terrible consequencesof crime unforgiven by Heaven. Was it gratitude for kindness extended tohim, an exile, by the Lord of Ravenna, or was it the memory ofassociation with the brother of Francesca, at the battle of Campaldino, that led our poet to treat the whole episode of the fatal liaison withsuch tender sympathy for the unfortunate lady that he hoped torehabilitate her memory? In any event, the poet represents himself asgracious and benign when addressing Francesca, and she, moved by hisfriendly attitude, tells the story of her intrigue, in lines justlyregarded as the most beautiful ever written in verse. The reader willnot fail to observe that the fatal denouement is only hinted, nottold--the line, "that day we read no more, " making what is admitted tobe the finest ellipsis in all the literature of the world. 

 "Then turning, I to them, my speech address'd And thus began: 'Francesca! Your sad fate Even to tears my grief and pity moves. But tell me, in the time of your sweet sighs, By what and how Love granted that ye knew Your yet uncertain wishes. ' She replied: 'No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when misery is at hand. Yet so eagerly If thou art bent to know the primal root From whence our love gat being, I will do As one who weeps and tells his tale. One day For our delight, we read of Lancelot, How him love thrall'd. Alone we were, and no Suspicion near us. Oft times by that reading Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue Fled from our alter'd cheek. But at one point Alone we fell. When of that smile, we read, The wish'd smile so rapturously kiss'd By one so deep in love, then he who ne'er From me shall separate, at once my lips All trembling kiss'd. The book and writer both Were love's purveyors. In its leaves that day We read no more. ' While thus one spirit spake, The other wail'd so sorely, that heart-struck I through compassion fainting, seem'd not far From death, and like a corse fell to the ground. "

In the next circle where, with faces to the ground, the gluttons sufferin a ceaseles storm, the shade of Ciacco, the Florentine, sits up as herecognizes a fellow-citizen:

 "He said to me: 'Thy City which is filled With envy, like a sack that overflows, Once held me in its tranquil life, well skilled In dainties, and a glutton, and by those Who dwelt there Ciacco called, but now the blows Of this fierce rain avenge my wasteful sin. Sad as I am, full many another knows For a like crime like penalty within This circle', and more word he spake not. " (VI, 49. )

In the fourth circle the poet sees the souls of the prodigal andavaricious rolling heavy stones, against each other with mutualrecriminations:

 "Almighty Justice! in what store thou heap'st New pains, new troubles, as I here beheld, Wherefore doth fault of ours bring us to this? E'en as a billow, on Charybdis rising Against encountered billow dashing breaks; Such is the dance this wretched race must lead Whom more than elsewhere numerous here I found. " (VII, 19. )

The next is the circle of the wrathful and the sullen. Following is thecircle of the materialists and heretics, all covered with burningsepulchres:

 "Soon as I was within, I cast around My eyes and saw extend on either hand A spacious plain, that echoed to the sound Of grief and torment sore; as o'er the land At Aries where Rhone's vast waters stagnant stand Or Pola, near Quarnero Bay, that bounds And bathes the line of Italy, expand Plains rough and heaving with supulchral mounds, 'Tis thus the plain, wherein I stood, with tombs abounds, Save that the buried were more grimly treated. For twixt the graves were scattered tongues of fire By which to such a pitch the place was heated That iron could no fiercer flame require For art to mould it: lamentation dire Issued from each unlidded vault, and seemed The voice of those in torment. "

From one of these fiery tombs, the Florentine freethinker, the haughtyFarinata, rises "with breast and brow erect, as holding Hell in greatcontempt, " and tells Dante that the souls of the lost have no knowledgeconcerning things that are actually passing on earth, though they knowthe past and see the future. He foretells the duration of the poet'sexile and boasts that he himself saved Florence from being razed to theground. 

 "When all decreed that Florence should be laid in ruin I alone with fearless face defended her. " (X, 91. )

In the seventh circle Virgil leads Dante to the river of blood, "inwhich boils every one who by violence injures others. " Centaurs, halfhorses and half men, are there. "Around the fosse they go by thousands, piercing with their arrows whatever spirit wrenches itself out of theblood farther than its guilt has allotted for it. " (XII, 73. ) Withcharacteristic realism the poet describes Chiron, one of the leaders ofthe Centaurs, pushing back with an arrow his beard as he prepares tospeak:

 "Chiron took an arrow, and with the notch put back his beard upon his jaws. When he had uncovered his great mouth, he said to his companions: 'Have ye perceived that the one behind (Dante) moves what he touches? The feet of the dead are not wont to do so. '" (XII, 76. )

In the third round of Circle VII Dante meets his friend Brunetto Latini, punished for unnatural offences. 

 "I remembered him and toward his face My hand inclining, answered: Ser Brunetto! And are ye here? He thus to me: 'My son! Oh let it not displease thee, if Brunetto Latini but a little space with thee Turn back, and leave his fellows to proceed. ' I thus to him replied: 'Much as I can, I thereto pray thee: and if thou be willing That I here seat me with thee, I consent: His leave with whom I journey, first obtain'd. ' 'O Son, ' said he, 'whoever of this throng One instant stops, lies then a hundred years, No fan to ventilate him, when the fire Smitest sorest. Pass thou therefore on. I close Will at thy garments walk and then rejoin My troup, who go mourning their endless doom. '"

 * * * * *

 "Were all my wish fulfill'd, " I straight replied, Thou from the confines of man's nature yet Hadst not been driven forth; for in my mind Is fix'd, and now strikes full upon my heart, The dear, benign, paternal image, such As thine was, when so lately thou didst teach me The way for man to win eternity: And how I prized the lesson, it behoves, That, long as life endures, my tongue should speak. (XV, 28. )

The eighth circle is known as Malebolge, Evil Pouches, of which thereare ten. Here are punished differently panders, seducers, flatterers, simonists, magicians, cheats, hypocrites, thieves, evil-counsellors, forgers. 

In the ninth circle, the abode of traitors, which comprises fourdivisions, named respectively after Cain (Caina), Antenor of Troy(Antenora), Ptolemy of Jericho (Tolomea), and Judas Iscariot (Giudecca), Dante sees in the second division, Antenora, the shade of the traitorUgolino imprisoned in ice with his enemy, Archbishop Ruggieri, by whomhe was betrayed. Ugolino, with his two sons and two grandsons, werelocked in the Tower of Famine at Pisa, the key of the prison was throwninto the river and the prisoners began their term of starvation endingin death. The story of the imprisonment and the death of the fiveprisoners is one of the most tragic recitals in the domain ofliterature. In the passage I quote, Ugolino is relating his feelingswhen he finds himself imprisoned with his sons and grandsons in theTower of Famine. 

 "When I awoke before the morn, that day, I heard my little sons, who shared my cell, For bread, even in their slumber, moaning pray; Hard art thou, if unmoved thou hearest me tell The message that my heart had guessed too well! If this thou feel not, what can make thee feel? And when we all were risen, the hour befell At which was brought to us the morning meal, Yet each one doubted sore what might their dreams reveal. 

 And as the locking of the gate I heard Beneath that terrible tower, I gazed alone Into my children's faces, without a word. I wept not, for within I turned to stone; But saw that they were weeping every one; 'Twas then my darling little Anselm cried: 'You look so, father! Say, what have they done?' Still not a tear I shed, nor word replied That day, nor till that night in next day's dawning died. 

 And as there shot into this prison drear A little sunbeam, by whose light I caught My look upon four faces mirrored clear; Both of my hands I bit, by grief o'erwrought. Then suddenly they rose as if they thought I did it hungering; 'Less our misery, ' They cried, 'Should'st thou on us feed, who are nought But creatures vested in our flesh by thee: Then strip away the weeds that still thine own must be. '

 It calmed me to make them feel less their fate; Two days we spent in silence all forlorn; Earth, Earth, oh wherefore wert thou obdurate, And would'st not open! On the following morn Gaddo, before my face, from life was torn! 'Can you not help me, father?' first he cried, And perished; then, I saw the younger born, Three, one by one, fall ere the sixth day sped-- Plainly as you see me, and this accursed head. 

 'Already blind, I fondly grope my way To them, and for three days their names I call After their death; then famine found its prey And did what sorrow could not. ' This was all He said. " (XXXIII, 35. )

And now we come with the poets to the lowest depths of Hell, where wesee imprisoned in ice Lucifer, huge and hideous. As we gaze on mankind'senemy, an archangel fallen and punished for sin, the words of Isaiascome to mind: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, who did'strise in the morning! How art thou fallen to the earth, that did'st woundthe nations. And thou saidst within thy heart, 'I will ascend intoHeaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God--I will be likethe most High. But yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, into the verydepth of the pit. " (Is. , XIV, 12. )

Let us see how Dante puts Lucifer "into the very depth of the pit. "

 "The lamentable kingdom's emperor Issued from out the ice with half his breast; And with a giant more do I compare Than with his arms do giants; therefore see How great must be that whole which corresponds Unto a part so fashioned. If he was As beautiful as he is ugly now, And raised his brows against his Maker, sure All sorrowfulness must proceed from him. Ah! how great marvel unto me it seemed When I beheld three faces to his head! The one before, and that was vermeil-hue; Two were the others which adjoined to this, Over the midst of either shoulder, and They made the joining where the crown is placed. And between white and yellow seemed the right; The left was such an one to be beheld As come from there wherein the Nile is sunk. There issued under each two mighty wings, Such as 'twas fitting for so great a bird: I never saw the sails of shipping such. They had not feathers, but the mode thereof Was like a bat's; and these he fluttered so That from him there was moved a threefold wind: Cocytus all was frozen over hence. With six eyes wept he, and three chins along The weeping trickled, and a bloody foam. At every mouth he shattered with his teeth A sinner, in the manner of a brake, So that he thus made woful three of them. The biting for the foremost one was nought Unto the scratching, for at times the spine Remained of all the skin completely stripped. 'That soul above which has most punishment Is, ' said my lord, 'Judas Iscariot, Who has his head within, and outside plies His legs. O' the other two, whose head is down, Brutus is he who from the black head hangs; See how he writhes, and does not speak a word: The other's Cassius, who appears, so gaunt, '" (XXXIV, 28-67)

Now that the lesson is learned that the wages of sin is death, that sinwill find a man out and bring him to the judgment of God, the graciousguide can release his companion from his awful contemplation. 

"Now it is time for us to go, " says Virgil, "for we have seen all. " By asecret path leading to Purgatory the pilgrims make their way through thedarkness, guided by the encouraging murmur of running water. It is astreamlet of discarded sin, flowing constantly from Purgatory, whencewickedness is washed down to its original Satanic source. 

 "By that hidden way My guide and I did enter, to return To the fair world; and heedless of repose We climb'd, he first, I following his steps, Till on our view the beautiful lights of Heaven Dawn'd through a circular opening in the cave Thence issuing we again beheld the stars. "

DANTE'S PURGATORIO

DANTE'S PURGATORIO

Purgatory, as a doctrine, is peculiar to the Catholic Church; Purgatory, as a discipline from sin to virtue, is a practice followed by a largeportion of humanity. The latter fact explains why so many who reject thedogma, still love and admire Dante's Purgatorio, which, while it teachesthe doctrine of the intermediate state, also serves as an allegory, themost helpful and beautiful allegory, perhaps, in the literature of theworld. In the opinion of Dean Stanley, it is the most religious book heever read. It makes a peculiar appeal to the modern mind because, asGrandgent says: "It's theme is betterment, release from sin andpreparation for Heaven" ... (and) "its atmosphere is rightly one of hopeand progress. "

Dinsmore declares: "Purgatory as a place may not exist in our system ofthought, but life is a cleansing process if we take its hardships in aproper spirit. " In another place he asserts: "In pondering the way oflife by which this high priest of the Middle Ages (Dante) proclaims thatmen attain perfect liberty, we cannot but remark the stress he laysupon a principle which has well-nigh faded from the Protestant mind. Itis that of expiation--(and) expiation is no musty dogma of theschoolmen, but a living truth.... Dante placed more emphasis on thehuman side of the problem than we, and for this reason he deservesattentive study, having portrayed most powerfully some truths which ourage, so eager to break from the narrowness of the past, has overlooked. "

In agreement with this statement of the learned Congregational divine isWilliam T. Harris, former United States Commissioner of Education, whoobserves in his "Spiritual Sense of the Divina Commedia, " that ifPurgatory is absent from the Protestant creed, the thought of whichPurgatory in this life is the symbol, is not uncommon in non-Catholicliterature. His exact words are: "If Protestantism has omitted Purgatoryfrom its religion, certainly Protestant literature has taken it up andabsorbed it entire, " and for proof he points to the moral, among otherbooks, of The Scarlet Letter, The Marble Faun, Adam Bede and Romola, allshowing

 "That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things. "

Dante, the theologian, makes his allegory grow out of the doctrine ofPurgatory. According to the teaching of the Catholic Church, temporalpunishment is connected with sin. Even when the guilt of sin isforgiven, the justice of God in most cases calls for amends by means ofthe temporal punishment of the sinner. Holy Writ gives us instances ofthe operation of this law. Adam, though brought out of his disobedience(Wisdom X, 2) was condemned "to eat bread in the sweat of his face"(Gen. III, 19) to his dying day. Moses and Aaron were forgiven for theirsin of incredulity, but they were punished by being deprived of theglory of entering "the Land of Promise. " (Num. , XX, 12. ) To King David, perfectly contrite, the prophet Nathan announces in the name of God, theforgiveness of the guilt of adultery and murder, yet he must suffer forhis sin. "Nathan said to David: 'The Lord also hath taken away thy sin. Thou shalt not die. Nevertheless, because thou hast given occasion tothe enemies of the Lord to blaspheme for this thing, the child shalldie, ' and it came to pass on the seventh day that the child died" (IIKings XII, 13. )

From these instances it is evident that when God forgives the guilt ofsins and the eternal punishment due to such of them as are mortal, Hedoes not remove the temporal punishment which must be satisfied in thislife or in the life to come. That is true, the Church teaches, even ofunrepented venial sin with its debt of temporal punishment. Whilevenial sin does not destroy the supernatural life of the soul and while, therefore, it is not said to be punishable in Hell, still it is sin inthe sight of Him "whose eyes are too pure to behold evil. " (Hab. , I, 13. ) Now the Church has ever held that into Heaven "there shall notenter anything defiled. " (Apoc. , XXI, 27. ) Likewise, she has taught thatHell is the eternal punishment of souls whose grievous guilt has notbeen forgiven. It follows, therefore, according to her teachings, thatthere must be a middle state for the cleansing of unrepented venial sinsand for the satisfaction of sins already forgiven but not whollyexpiated. 

This state or place is called Purgatory, the belief in the existence ofwhich is confirmed by the practice of praying for the dead, a practicebased on the teachings of the Old and of the New Testament. In thesecond book of Maccabees (XII, 43, 46) we read that Judas, the generalof the Hebrew army, "sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalemfor sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well andreligiously concerning the resurrection. (For if he had not hoped thatthey that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluousand vain to pray for the dead. ) And because he considered that they whohad fallen asleep with godliness had great grace laid up for them. Itis, therefore, a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead thatthey may be loosed from sins. "

This doctrine presupposes that the dead for whom prayer is profitableare neither in Heaven, the abode of the elect, nor in Hell, from whichrelease is not possible, but in a state of purification, lasting for atime. The New Testament alludes to that state. Christ declares: "Andwhosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall beforgiven him; but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shallnot be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come. "(Matt. , XII, 32. ) These words imply that there is a future state inwhich some sins are purged away, while there is another state (Hell) inwhich the punishment is eternal. The words of St. Paul: "If any man'swork burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet soas by fire" (1 Cor. , III, 15), are interpreted to mean the existence ofa middle state in which unforgiven venial sins and the temporalpunishment due to sin will be burnt away and the soul thus purified willattain eternal life. 

To state the doctrine of the Church briefly, let it be said that theChurch has defined that there is a Purgatory and that the souls inPurgatory are helped by the suffrages of the faithful. 

Out of facts so general, Dante the poet, has created a Purgatory whollyunique in the realms of literature, and amazingly definite as to place, form, atmosphere, inhabitants and their activities. In the southernhemisphere, at the very antipodes of Jerusalem, out of an ocean on whichthere is no other land (according to Dante's system of cosmography)springs the island of Purgatory, redolent with flowers, lovely withmusic, peace keeping pace with penance over all the region. Not a flat, unbroken plain is this island, but a mountain whose shores are washed bythe ocean, from which the earth forced from the interior by Lucifer'sfall, rises in a truncated conical structure. While its coast and theland below the terraces are within the zone of air, its heights extendinto the sphere of fire and its crown is the Garden of Eden. The lowestpart of the mountain called Ante-Purgatorio is the abode of theprocrastinators and the excommunicated who put off their repentance tothe end and now must suffer a proportionate delay before they arepermitted to begin their ascent, their work of purification. 

Purification begins only after the soul passes into Purgatory proper. Atthe entrance is St. Peter's gate, guarded by an angel, who, with hissword inscribes on the brow of the penitent seven times the letter P, the first letter of the word Peccatum, signifying sin. These seven P's, outward signs of inward evil, represent the seven capital sins, the P'sof which are removed in succession by an angel as penance is done foreach sin on its corresponding terrace. The seven terraces which runaround the mountain, rise in succession with lessening circuit as ascentis made, their width being about seventeen or eighteen feet. Connectingeach terrace and cut out of solid rock is a narrow stairway, guarded byan angel. The steps of each successive stairway become less steep aseach terrace is attained. Crowning the mountain is the Garden of Eden, lonely and deserted since Adam and Eve, after six hours of occupancy, were forced from its confines. Its herbage is still luxuriant, itsflowers endless and fragrant, its trees, melodious with birds, rustlewith the balmy wind, its waters serve to irrigate the garden as well asto help the soul. These waters, the rivers Lethe and Eunoe, are producedfrom heavenly sources and have miraculous powers. The former removes thememory of sin; the latter restores the recollection of virtuous deeds, apoetical way of expressing the Catholic dogma, that with the revival ofgrace in the heart of the converted sinner comes back the merit that hadbeen acquired by moral acts. 

The problem which Dante sets out to solve in his Purgatory is this:Assuming that the sinner has been baptized, how can he break hisshackles and attain to the liberty of the children of God? The literalnarrative of Dante's Purgatory presupposing that the soul at the hour ofdeath is in the state of grace, now shows us that soul working towardsperfection by way of expiation for unforgiven venial sin and for thetemporal punishment due to sin. It is the only way by which it can againattain its pristine dignity. "And to his dignity he never returns, " saysDante, "unless where sin makes void, he fill up for evil pleasures justpenalties. "

The rule holds good, also, for salvation in this world. The thin veil ofallegory enables us to penetrate Dante's teaching that this life also isa Purgatory, and here, too, we may cast off the defilement of sin bymeans of repentance and expiation. But first the soul must be girt withthe rush of humility, and have perfect contrition represented by itsbeing washed with the dew, the moisture that descends from Heaven. ToVirgil (Reason guided by Heaven) says Cato (the symbol of Liberty), "Go, then, and see that thou gird this man with a smooth rush and that thouwash his face (with dew) so that thou efface from it all foulness, forit would not be fitting to go into the presence of the first Minister, who is of those of Paradise, with eyes dimmed by any mist. " (1, 95. )

But even if the soul, by perfect contrition, is freed from its guilt ofmortal sin, it must according to the mind of Christ, who instituted thesacrament of Penance for the remission of sin, submit to the power ofthe keys committed to the priesthood and that will be the more necessaryif its contrition is imperfect. While perfect contrition without thesacrament of Penance may remit sin, if the supernatural motive of sorrowis not the love of God, but a motive less worthy, _e. G. _, fear ofpunishment, forgiveness is to be obtained only by the worthy receptionof Penance. In other words, the penitent must confess his sin to a dulyauthorized priest, express his contrition, accept the penance enjoinedby the confessor for the satisfaction of sin and be absolved by virtueof the words of Christ: "Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgivenand whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. "

All this is most beautifully expressed by Dante in his description ofthe Gate of St. Peter and its angelic keeper:

 "The lowest stair was marble white, so smooth And polish'd that therein my mirror'd form Distinct I saw. The next of hue more dark Than sablest grain, a rough and singed block, Cracked lengthwise and across. The third, that lay Massy above, seemed prophyry, that flam'd Red as the life-blood spouting from a vein. On this God's angel either foot sustain'd, Upon the threshold seated, which appear'd A rock of diamond. Up the trinal steps My leader cheerly drew me. 'Ask, ' said he, 'With humble heart, that he unbar the bolt. ' Piously at his holy feet devolv'd I cast me, praying him for pity's sake That he would open to me: but first fell Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times The letter, that denotes the inward stain, He on my forehead with the blunted point Of the drawn sword inscrib'd. And 'Look, ' he cried, 'When enter'd, that thou wash these scars away. ' Ashes, or earth ta'en dry out of the ground, Were of one colour with the robe he wore. From underneath that vestment forth he drew Two keys of metal twain: the one was gold, Its fellow silver. With the pallid first, And next the burnish'd, he so ply'd the gate, As to content me well. 'Whenever one Faileth of these, that in the keyhole straight It turn not, to this alley then expect Access in vain. ' Such were the words he spake, 'One is more precious; but the other needs Skill and sagacity, large share of each, Ere its good task to disengage the knot Be worthily perform'd. From Peter these I hold, of him instructed, that I err Rather in opening than in keeping fast, So but the suppliant at my feet implore. ' Then of that hallow'd gate he thrust the door, Exclaiming, 'Enter, but this warning hear: He forth again departs who looks behind. '" (IX, 75. )

The allegory back of these words is put forth in clear language by MariaF. Rossetti. "We need hardly to be told" she writes in her Shadow ofDante (pp. 112-13) "that the Gate of St. Peter is the Tribunal ofPenance. The triple stair stands revealed as candid Confession mirroringthe whole man, mournful Contrition breaking the hard heart of the gazeron the Cross, Love all aflame offering up in Satisfaction the lifebloodof body, soul, and spirit:--the adamantine threshold-seat as thepriceless merits of Christ the Door, Christ the Rock, Christ the sureFoundation and the precious Corner-Stone. In the Angel of the Gate, asin the Gospel Angel of Bethesda, is discerned the Confessor; in thedazzling radiance of his countenance, the exceeding glory of theministration of righteousness; in the penitential robe, the sympatheticmeekness whereby, restoring one overtaken in a fault, he considershimself lest he also be tempted; in the sword, the wholesome severity ofhis discipline; in the golden key, his divine authority; in the silver, the discernment of spirits whereby he denies absolution to theimpenitent, the learning and discretion whereby he directs thepenitent. "

Dante's plan of Purgatorial punishment makes no distinction between thepunishment put forth for unforgiven venial sin and that due insatisfaction for the violation of the moral order by one whose guilt hasbeen remitted. Both partake of the same penalty. Is that because thepoet thinks that if forgiveness is finally won by sorrow and suffering, expiation for the offence is still to be made? Or does he hold that theseven capital sins entailing temporal punishment either operateeffectively in every soul, or exist at least radically according to theprinciple voiced by Hamilton Wright Mabie: "The man who slowly buildsHeaven with him, has constantly the terrible knowledge that he has onlyto put his hand forth in another direction in order to build Hell?"

In any event Dante, who shows in Hell how men are made sin eternally, inPurgatory exhibits the sinful disposition more or less under the controlof the will, yet of such a nature that only the grace of God held thesoul back from the Abyss. It must be purged of all tendency to evil soas to be made "pure and ready to mount to the stars. " (XXXIII, 140. ) Thepurgation is seen in process in a threefold manner according to Dante. Amaterial punishment is inflicted to mortify the evil passion and toincite the soul to virtue; the soul meditates upon the capital sin andits opposite virtue, moved to abhorrence of the evil and to admirationof the good by examples drawn from sacred and profane history; vocalprayer is addressed to God and it brings forth grace to purify andstrengthen the soul. Hard in the beginning is this work of repentance, but it becomes easy as the habit of virtue is formed. 

 "The mountain is such, that ever At the beginning down below, 'tis tiresome And aye the more one climbs, the less it hurts. " (IV, 90. )

As purification from each capital sin is effected, the soul experiencesthe removal of a heavy burden and the consequent enjoyment of newliberty, Dante, purified from pride, asks Virgil: "Master, say whatheavy thing has been lifted from me, that scarce any toil is perceivedby me in journeying. " He answered "When the P's which have remainedstill nearly extinguished on thy face, shall like the one be whollyrased out, thy feet shall be so vanquished by goodwill, that not onlywill they feel it no toil, but it shall be a delight to them to be urgedupward. " (XII, 118). 

Mention was made of the material punishment of the souls in Purgatory. Unlike the retributive penalties inflicted in Hell, this punishment isreformative, confirming the penitent in good habits of thought and deed. The proud here realize the irrevocable sentence "everyone who exaltethhimself shall be humbled. " They creep round with huge burdens of stonebowing them down to the very dust and so abased their hearts are turnedto humility. 

The envious sing the praises of generosity while their eyes, the seat oftheir sins, are tortured by sutures of wire shutting out the light. 

The slothful cannot be restrained in their hurry forward, the leaders, shouting with tears, examples of diligence, a pair in the rear cryingout instances of sloth. 

Penitents expiating the sins of avarice and prodigality lie prostrateand motionless bound hand and foot, with their faces to the ground, murmuring the words of the psalmist: "My soul hath cleaved to thepavement" (Ps. , 118, 25. ) During the day they eulogize the liberal;during the night they denounce instances of avarice. 

The gluttonous suffer so much from hunger and thirst that they arereduced to a state of pitiable emaciation. All the while hungering forrighteousness, they glory in crucifying the old Adam in them. 

The unchaste purify their passion in hot flames while other penitentssing the loveliness of chastity and proclaim many examples of thatvirtue. 

Through this purification by suffering, the spirits not only submitwillingly but they exhibit real contentment if not actual love of thechastisement imposed upon them. The unchaste not only heedfully keepwithin the flames but gladly endure the fire because they are convinced"with such treatment and with such diet must the last wound be healed"(XXV, 136). And most beautiful and enlightening of all, one of the soulstells Dante that the same impulse which brought Christ gladly to theagony of the Cross throws them upon their sufferings. Forese, speakingfor the gluttonous, says that the mood in which they accept thepenitential pains is one of submission as well as of solace. "And notonly once, while circling this road, is our pain renewed. I say pain andought to say solace, for that desire leads us to the tree which led gladChrist to say, 'Eli, ' when He made us free with his blood. " (XXIII, 71). The avaricious confess "so long as it shall be the pleasure of the justLord, so long shall we lie here motionless and outstretched" (XIX, 125). Among the envious, Guida del Duca prays Dante to continue his journeyinstead of stopping to interrogate him, for he himself "delights farmore to weep than to talk" (XIV, 125). The slothful in their eagernessnot to interrupt their diligence in penance, by their conversing withVirgil, entreat him not to ascribe this attitude to discourtesy, "Weare so filled with desire to speed on" they tell the poets "that stay wecannot, therefore forgive if thou hold our penance for rudeness. "(XVIII, 115). 

By such instances and by many others does our poet show the contentedspirit prevailing in Purgatory. He makes it, indeed, a realm whose veryatmosphere is one of peace, because the will of God is done there evenin the midst of suffering. The greeting there is "My brothers, may Godgive us peace" (XXI, 13). The penitents pray for a far greater measureof peace: "Voices I heard and every one appeared to supplicate for peaceand misericord the Lamb of God who takes away our sins" (XVI, 15). Whenthe wrathful finish their penance an angel says to them, "Blessed arethe peacemakers who are without ill anger" (XVII, 68). 

The waters of Purgatory are called "the waters of peace which are thesouls diffused from the eternal fountain" (XVI, 133). Dante addressesthe souls as certain of gaining the unending peace of Paradise. "OSouls, sure in the possession whenever it may be of a state of peace"(XXVI, 54). And when the day of release comes on which a soul attainsperfect peace, the whole mountain of Purgatory literally thrills withjoy and every voice is raised to join the harmonious concert of theangelic hymn first sung at Bethlehem, _Gloria in Excelsis Deo_. In thisway does the poet teach us the lesson that both Purgatory proper and thepenitential discipline of life give us a peace wholly in contrast withthe uproar of sin whether heard in the halls of conscience or in theeternal Hereafter. "How different are those openings from those inHell, " he says, "for here we enter through songs and down there throughfierce wailings" (XII, 112). 

Although our poet, imbued with the Catholic doctrine, teaches thatintercessory prayer helps the soul to shorten its term in Purgatory--adoctrine bound up with the doctrine of the Communion of Saints--it mustnever be forgotten that Dante is a Catholic preacher when he insiststhat personal effort aided by God's grace, is the thing of supremeimportance in the matter of salvation and purification. Neitherlip-sorrow nor the sacraments themselves unless accompanied by truesorrow and repentance, can profit the soul. "He cannot be absolved whodoth not first repent, nor can he repent the sin and will it at the sametime, for this were contradiction to which reason cannot assent" (Inf. , XXVII, 118. ) Prayer can help the soul struggling in life or in Purgatoryproper, but the assistance derived from prayer can never do away withthe necessity of personal penance. "Conquer thy panting with the soulthat conquers every battle if with its heavy body it sinks not down. "

Let us now hear how Dante sings "of that second realm in which the humansoul is purified and becomes worthy to ascend to Heaven" (I, 5). Comingout of the blackness of Hell just before dawn on Easter Sunday, Virgiland Dante are entranced at the beautiful scene before them. Through acloudless sky of that deep blue for which the sapphire is noted, shinesVenus, the morning star; in the south appear four wonderful stars ofstill greater brilliancy, seen before only by our first parents. 

 "Sweet sheen of oriental sapphire hue That, mantling in the aspect calm and bright Of the pure air, to the primal circle grew, Began afresh to give my eyes delight Soon as I issued from the deathful air That had cast sadness o'er my mind and sight, The beauteous planet that for love takes care Was making the East laugh through all its span, Veiling the Fish, that in its escort were Turned to the right, I set my mind to scan The other pole; and four stars met my gaze Ne'er seen before, except by primal man Heaven seemed rejoicing in their flaming rays. "

The two poets looking to the north see Cato the Warder of Purgatory, hisface illuminated by the four stars, typical of the cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. Is Dante's selection ofCato, the pagan suicide, as the guardian of Christian Purgatory, to betaken as an example of the broadmindedness of the poet who believes "sowide arms hath goodness infinite, that it receives all who turn to it?"Or is it an instance showing how the leaven of the old Roman spirit inthe poet--a spirit which justifies suicide, prevails with his professionof Christianity which condemns the taking of one's life? Whatever be theanswer "Cato's taking his own life rather than renounce liberty issymbolical of the soul, destroying all selfishness that it may attainthe light and freedom of spiritual life. " In the poem Cato isrepresented as challenging the poets as if they were fugitives fromHell. When he is told that it is by divine decree that the pilgrims aremaking the journey, he bids Virgil cleanse Dante with dew and gird himwith a rush and he concludes by saying: "then be not this way yourreturn, the sun which now is rising, will show you how to take the mountat an easier ascent"--words whose spiritual sense would seem to be thatonce the soul has turned to virtue, it must never go back to sin and inits upward path to perfection it will be guided by the rays of divinegrace (the sun) whose enlightenment will make the ascent easier. 

While lingering on the shore, undecided which way to turn, the poets seea great marvel. Over the water dancing with sunlight comes a white boatpropelled by the white wings of an angel called the Divine Bird, redwith flame and bringing from the banks of the Tiber, the bosom of theChurch, over a hundred souls to begin their term in Purgatory. InCharon's bark the reprobate souls fill the air with their imprecations;in the angel-steered boat the spirits coming to Purgatory devoutlychant: "When Israel went out of Egypt, " the psalm so fittinglydescriptive of their own liberation from guilt and their coming intopeace. Here is the description of the scene:

 "And lo! as when, upon the approach of morning, Through the gross vapours Mars grown fiery red Down in the West upon the ocean floor, Appeared to me--may I again behold it!-- A light along the sea so swiftly coming, Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled; From which when I a little had withdrawn Mine eyes, that I might question my Conductor, Again I saw it brighter grown and larger. Then on each side of it appeared to me I knew not what of white, and underneath it Little by little there came forth another. My Master yet had uttered not a word While the first whiteness into wings unfolded; But when he clearly recognized the pilot, He cried: 'Make haste, make haste to bow the knee! Behold the Angel of God! fold thou thy hands! Henceforward shalt thou see such officers! See how he scorneth human arguments, So that nor oar he wants, nor other sail Than his own wings, between so distant shores. See how he holds them pointed up to heaven, Fanning the air with the eternal pinions, That do not mount themselves like mortal hair!' Then as still nearer and more near us came The Bird Divine, more radiant he appeared, So that near by the eye could not endure him, But down I cast it; and he came to shore With a small vessel, very swift and light, So that the water swallowed naught thereof. Upon the stern stood the Celestial Pilot; Beatitude seemed written in his face, And more than a hundred spirits sat within. " (II, 13. )

And now occurs a touching episode which shows how deep and rich isfriendship in Dante's heart. One of the shades recognizing him, stepsforward with a look so full of affection to embrace him that the poetis moved to do likewise. Amazement ensues on both sides. The spiritfinds Dante alive in the flesh and he in turn on account of theimpalpability of the shade clasps only empty air. But there is mutualrecognition. Dante asks his newly-found friend Casella, the musician, tosing as he used to do when his sweet voice soothed the troubled heart ofthe poet and banished his cares. "May it please thee therewith to solaceawhile my soul that with its mortal form, journeying here, is soredistressed. " Casella's answer is as loving as it is surprising. He singsone of Dante's canzoni and the whole party listen with intent delightfinally broken by the chiding words of Cato:

 "What is this ye laggard spirits? What negligence, what standing still is this? Run to the mountain to strip off the slough That lets not God be manifest to you. " (II, 117. )

At the foot of the mountain the poets meet a troop of spirits who, though excommunicated, died contrite. For their delay in submitting tothe Church for absolution they must wait thirty times as long as theperiod of their excommunication. One of them, King Manfred, Chief of theGhibellines, son of Emperor Frederick II, tells of his last momentconversion and also how the Bishop of Cosenza at the word of PopeClement IV, enforcing the penalty of excommunication against the corpseof the king, had it removed from the Papal realm and thrown into theriver Verde. 

In narrating how a Christian may be saved even if he died under the banof the Church, Dante is only expressing what every Catholic knows as tothe effect of excommunication. This ecclesiastical censure incurred by acontumacious member of the Church, a censure entailing forfeiture of allrights and privileges common to a Christian, such as the right to thesacraments, --a right restored through the confessor, however, wheneverthere is danger of death--the right to public service and prayers, theright to jurisdiction, and to benefices, the right to the canonicalforum, to social intercourse and to Christian burial, this censure ofexcommunication does not in the mind of the Church carry with itexclusion from Purgatory or Heaven. 

According to a principle of canon law applied to censures, _Ecclesia deinternis non judicat_, the Church in the matter of crime does notconcern itself with interior dispositions, excommunication far frombeing a sentence of damnation in the next world, is a penalty pertainingto the external forum of the Church in this life. Even if the penaltyfollows the corpse so far as to exclude it from Christian burial, evenhere the purpose of the Church is not to pronounce a verdict of the lossof the contumacious soul in the Hereafter, but to stigmatize among theliving, the memory of the person and so to inspire in them a hatred ofthe evil condemned and a respect for law. The story of Manfred nowfollows:

 "And one of them began: 'Whoe'er thou art, Thus going turn thine eyes, consider well If e'er thou saw me in the other world' I turned me tow'rds him, and looked at him closely; Blond was he, beautiful, and of noble aspect, But one of his eyebrows had a blow divided. When with humility I had disclaimed E'er having seen him, 'Now behold, ' he said. And showed me high upon his breast a wound. Then said he with a smile: 'I am Manfredi, The grandson of the Empress Costanza; Therefore, when thou returnest, I beseech thee Go to my daughter beautiful, the mother Of Sicily's honor and of Aragon's, And the truth tell her, if aught else be told. After I had my body lacerated By these two mortal stabs, I gave myself Weeping to Him, who willingly doth pardon. Horrible my iniquities had been; But Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms, That it receives whatever turns to it, Had but Cosenza's pastor, who in chase Of me was sent by Clement at that time, In God read understandingly this page, The bones of my dead body still would be At the bridge-head, near unto Benevento, Under the safeguard of the heavy cairn. Now the rain bathes and moveth them the wind, Beyond the realm, almost beside the Verde, Where he transported them with tapers quenched. By malison of theirs is not so lost Eternal Love, that it cannot return, So long as hope has anything of green. '" (III, 105. )

Following the directions given by Manfred and his companions ourtravelers continue their way upward until they reach a broad ledge cutout in the side of the mountain. While resting here Dante sees a spiritwhom he recognizes as Balaqua, a maker of musical instruments, whoselaziness was a byword in Florence. Our poet who knew the man intimatelyhad often upbraided him for his indolence. It is said that to excusehimself in the days of his mortal life, Balaqua quoted a line ofAristotle: "By sitting down and resting the soul is rendered wise, " towhich Dante retorted: "Certainly if one becomes wise by sitting downnone was ever so wise as thou. " Now in Purgatory there is amusedindulgence upon Dante's part as he addresses his former fellow citizen"sitting and clasping his knees, holding his face down between them, lazier than if sloth were his very sister" (IV, 10). 

 "His sluggish attitude and his curt words A little unto laughter moved my lips Then I began: 'Balaqua I grieve not For thee henceforth; but tell me wherefore seated In this place art thou? Waitest thou an escort? Or has thy usual habit seized upon thee?' And he: 'O brother, what's the use of climbing? Since to my torment would not let me go The angel of the Lord who sitteth at the gate. First heaven must needs so long revolve me round Outside thereof, as in my life it did, Since the good sighs I to the end postponed, Unless e'er that some prayer may bring me aid Which rises from a heart that lives in grace. " (IV, 120. )

Unless assisted by the prayer of the sinless faithful upon earth, Balaqua and his class must stay in Outer-Purgatory, each for a termequal to the period of his natural life. The third and the fourthclasses in Outer-Purgatory, viz. , those who died of violence, deferringtheir repentance to the last hour, and kings and princes who because oftemporal concerns of state put off their conversion to the last--allthose also must remain in Outer-Purgatory for a period equal to that oftheir lives upon earth, unless the time be shortened by intercessoryprayer. It is to be noted that the souls of the violently slain press soclosely and so insistently about Dante in their eagerness to obtain hisgood offices in favor of prayerful intercession for them by theirfriends upon earth that he has great difficulty in getting away fromthese souls. He succeeds by making promises to execute theirdesires--comparing his difficulty of advancing to the trouble a winnerat dice experiences when bystanders crowd about him in obstructivecongratulations and make his way impracticable until he gives some ofhis winnings to this one, and some to that one. 

 "When from their game of dice men separate He who hath lost remains in sadness fix'd, Revolving in his mind what luckless throws He cast; but meanwhile all the company Go with the other; one before him runs, And one behind his mantle twitches, one Fast by his side bids him remember him, He stops not, and each one to whom his hand Is stretch'd, well knows he bids him stand aside, And thus he from the crowd defends himself. E'en such was I in that close-crowding throng; And turning so my face around to all, And promising, I 'scaped from it with pains. " (VI, 1. )

Higher up the mountain occurs a touching instance of love of country. Virgil draws near a spirit "praying that it would show us the bestascent"; and that spirit answered not his demand but of our country andof our life did ask us. And the sweet Leader (Virgil) began "Mantua ... "And the shade all rapt in self leaped toward him saying, "O Mantuan, Iam Sordello of thy city. And one embraced the other" (VI, 67). Thisepisode gives to Dante the opportunity to contrast on the one hand thelove of those two fellow citizens drawn together by no other bond thanaffection for their native place and on the other hand hatred with whichliving contemporaries rend one another. 

"Ah Italy, thou slave, that gentle spirit was thus quick, merely at thesweet name of his city, to give greeting there to his fellow citizen andnow in thee thy living abide not without war and one doth rend the otherof those that one wall and one foss shuts in" (VI, 79). 

As night approaches Sordello leads the poets to the angelicallyprotected Flowery Valley wherein are found the souls of those rulers whowere negligent of the spiritual life. Many of them were once old enemiesbut now they not only sing together but live in harmony, united also inpaying tributes to the worth of some reigning monarchs or in expressingdenunciation at the degeneracy of others. Here in the Valley of thePrinces, while sleeping on the grass and among the flowers, Dante has astrange dream indicative of a near episode in his journey. He sees aneagle in the sky with wings wide open and intent upon swooping

 "Then wheeling somewhat more, it seemed to me Terrible as the lightning he descended And snatched me upward even to the (sphere of) fire Therein it seemed that he and I were burning, And the imagined fire did scorch me so That of necessity my sleep was broken. " (IX, 28. )

He awakes to find himself actually transported up the perpendicular wallto the entrance Gate of Purgatory. Virgil interprets the dream, pointingout that the eagle represents Lucia (Illuminating Grace) who has carriedthe poet to St. Peter's Gate. 

 "Thou hast at length arrived at Purgatory; See there the cliff that closeth it around; See there the entrance, where it seems disjoined. While at dawn, which doth precede the day, When inwardly thy spirit was asleep Upon the flowers that deck the land below, There came a Lady and said: 'I am Lucia; Let me take this one up, who is asleep; So will I make his journey easier for him. ' Sordello and the other noble shapes Remained; she took thee, and, as day grew bright, Upward she came, and I upon her footprints. She laid thee here; and first her beauteous eyes That open entrance pointed out to me; Then she and sleep together went away. " (IX, 49. )

The poet, as we said before, cannot enter Purgatory until he mounts thethree steps of confession, contrition and satisfaction. Moreover, hemust receive absolution from the angel-keeper, typical of the priestlyconfessor, and he must have seven P's branded upon his forehead. Whenthis is done the angel opens the gate and Dante enters to the sound of athunder-peal from the organ of Heaven, and of voices expressing the joyof Heaven upon the sinner's doing penance. 

Dante's description, which now follows, of the lovely art displayed onthe terrace of Pride leads to the reflection that he must have been amatchless master of visual instruction or at least the representative ofhis times, which, before the age of printing, taught the people by meansof pictures painted upon canvas, burnt in glass or chiseled in stone. Certain it is that the people of Dante's day from seeing the productionsof art knew the Bible and sacred and profane history so well as to amazesubsequent generations taught from the printed page. Be that as it may, the power and beauty of Dante's pictures on the terraces of Purgatoryshow his consummate knowledge of a principle of psychology very muchoperative in our day, a principle which makes character by educating thewill far better than any other pedagogical method. _Verba movent, exampla trahunt_, is a principle which Dante illustrates on everyterrace of Purgatory. 

On the terrace of Pride the penitent sees examples of humility carved ofwhite marble out of the mountain side like Thorwaldsen's Lion, atLucerne, Switzerland. Their reality is so compelling that, "not onlyPolycletus (the great Greek sculptor) but Nature there would be put toshame. " First to meet the penitent's eyes is the scene of theAnnunciation--the angel Gabriel saluting the Blessed Virgin andunfolding to her God's plan of making her the Mother of His Son for thesalvation of mankind. In humility she gives her consent in the words:"Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thyword. " That is the attitude in which she is represented in sculpture, says Dante, an attitude "imprinting those words as expressly as a figureis stamped in wax" (X, 44). Near that work of art David stands forth inmarble, dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. Trajan, the Romanemperor, is also seen, interrupting affairs of state to grant a poorwoman a favor. Not only of humility but also of pride are examplesgiven. Looking down on the pavement over which they slowly walk withtheir heavy burdens, the proud have before their eyes the sculpturedpunishment of pride as committed by Satan, Briareus, the Giants, Nimrod, Niobe, Saul and others. Meditating on the loveliness of humility and thehatefulness of pride, as suggested by those examples and bearing withprayer the heavy weights imposed upon them for their humiliation andpenance, the proud experience a transformation of disposition whollyalien to them in the days of their mortality. Among the souls in thisfirst terrace is Oderisi, who attained such renown as an illuminator ofmanuscripts and a painter of miniatures that he boasted that no onecould surpass him. Now he not only is conscious of his former blatantpride, but in proof of his change of heart he gives full credit forsuperiority to his former pupil and subsequent rival, Franco Bolognese;

 "O, " asked I him, "art thou not Oderisi, Agobbio's honor and honor of that art Which is in Paris called illuminating? 'Brother, ' said he, 'more laughing are the leaves Touched by the brush of Franco Bolognese. All his the honor now, and mine in part, In sooth I had not been so courteous While I was living, for the great desire Of excellence on which my heart was bent. '" (XI, 79. )

Dante sees here another spirit, Provenzano Salvani. His rapid advancefrom Outer Purgatory to Purgatory was due to the merit of aself-humiliating act performed in favor of a friend. This friend hadbeen taken prisoner by King Charles of Anjou and was held for ransom ofa thousand florins of gold, the threat being made that if the amount wasnot raised within a month he would be put to death. It speaks well forthe tender friendship of Salvani that he put aside all his pride andarrogance while he took his place in the market square to beg alms withwhich to liberate his friend. Dante relates the incident in thefollowing words; "When he was living in highest glory, in the marketplace of Sienna he stationed himself of his own free will and put awayall shame and there to deliver his friend from the pains he wassuffering in Charles' prison, he brought himself to tremble in everyvein" (XI, 133). 

As the poets enter the terrace of Envy aerial voices proclaim examplesof Brotherly Love. First are heard the words of the BlessedVirgin:--"They have no wine, " words in favor of those who were in needat the marriage feast, which led Christ to perform his first miracle. Then as an example of exposing one's self to death for the sake ofanother, the incident is recalled of the pagan Pylades feigning himselfto be Orestes to save the latter from death. The voice saying, "Lovethose from whom ye have had evil, " is an exhortation to the heroic actof charity of returning good for evil. In contrast with those counselsof charity, other voices call out direct warnings against envy. 

On this terrace is neither beauty nor art but envy's own color. A lividhue is the whole landscape. Of this color also are the garments of thesuffering souls. They are depicted one leaning against the other inmutual love and for mutual support, like beggars sitting at the entranceof a church to which crowds go for the gaining of an Indulgence. Pitiable is the scene, for the envious in expiation for their sin, which entered their soul through its windows, the eyes, are deprived ofsight, their lids being fastened by a wire suture such as is used forthe taming of a hawk. Dante says of them:

 "I saw, Shadows with garments dark as was the rock; And when we pass'd a little forth, I heard A crying, 'Blessed Mary! pray for us, Michael and Peter! all ye saintly host!' I do not think there walks on earth this day Man so remorseless, that he had not yearn'd With pity at the sight that next I saw. Mine eyes a load of sorrow teem'd, when now I stood so near them, that their semblance Came clearly to my view. Of sackcloth vile Their covering seem'd; and, on his shoulder, one Did stay another, leaning; and all lean'd Against the cliff. E'en thus the blind and poor, Near the confessionals, to crave an alms, Stand, each his head upon his fellow's sunk; So most to stir compassion, not by sound Of words alone, but that which moves not less, The sight of misery. And as never beam Of noonday visiteth the eyeless man, E'en so was heaven a niggard unto these Of this fair light: for, through the orbs of all, A thread of wire, impiercing, knits them up, As for the taming of a haggard hawk. " (Canto, XIII, 42. )

As the poets continue their way over the second terrace Virgil explainsan obscure phrase uttered by Guido del Duca, a soul punished for the sinof envy. That spirit speaking to Dante reproached mankind for settingits heart upon material things; "The heavens are calling to you andwheel around you, displaying unto you their eternal beauties and youreye gazes only on earth. " Envy is consequently engendered because as thespirit says: "Mankind sets its heart there where exclusion ofpartnership is necessary. " (XV, 43). "What meant the spirit from Romagnaby mentioning exclusion and partnership?" asks Dante. Virgil proceeds totell him that companionship in earthly possessions is not possible, forthe more of any material thing a person has, the less of it remains forothers. Hence envy arises from the very nature of the object whichexcludes partnership. On the other hand the more of the spiritual lifeone has, the more others participate in knowledge, peace and love, andthis is especially true of the angels and the elect. The greater theirnumber, the greater is the sum total of grace bestowed by God and themore each spirit shares his love with others. "The more spirits thereon high yonder who love, the more there are to love perfectly and themore do they love each other and as a mirror one reflects back to theother" (XV, 75). 

This doctrine is expounded until the poets reach the third terrace, where wrath is punished. Here Dante represents himself as having avision wherein he beholds examples of meekness and patience. First hesees the Finding of the Boy Christ in the temple and hears Mary's gentlecomplaint. Then follows the scene of Pisistratus refusing to condemn ayouth for insulting his daughter. The third picture is that of thestoning of St. Stephen. 

 "Then suddenly I seem'd By an ecstatic vision wrapt away: And in a temple saw, methought, a crowd Of many persons; and at the entrance stood A dame, whose sweet demeanor did express Another's love, who said, 'Child! why hast thou Dealt with us thus? Behold thy sire and I Sorrowing have sought thee;' and so held her peace; And straight the vision fled. A female next Appear'd before me, down whose visage coursed Those waters, that grief forces out from one By deep resentment stung who seem'd to say: 'If thou, Pisistratus, be lord indeed Over this city, named with such debate Of adverse gods, and whence each science sparkles, Avenge thee of those arms, whose bold embrace Hath clasp'd our daughter;' and to her, me seem'd, Benigh and meek, with visage undisturb'd, Her sovereign spake: 'How shall we those requite Who wish us evil, if we thus condemn The man that loves us?' After that I saw A multitude, in fury burning, slay With stones a stripling youth, and shout amain 'Destroy, destroy'; and him I saw, who bow'd Heavy with death unto the ground, yet made His eyes, unfolded upward, gates to heaven, Praying forgiveness of the Almighty Sire, Amidst that cruel conflict, on his foes, With looks that win compassion to their aim. " (Canto, XV, 84. )

The wrathful are punished by being enveloped in a dense pungent smoke, emblematic of the stifling caused by angry passions. 

 "Darkness of hell, and of a night deprived Of every planet under a poor sky, As much as may be tenebrous with cloud, Ne'er made unto my sight so thick a veil, As did that smoke which there enveloped us, Nor to the feeling of so rough a texture; For not an eye it suffered to stay open; Whereat mine escort, faithful and sagacious, Drew near to me and offered me his shoulder. E'en as a blind man goes behind his guide, Lest he should wander, or should strike against Aught that may harm or peradventure kill him, So went I through the bitter and foul air, Listening unto my Leader, who said only, 'Look that from me thou be not separated. ' Voices I heard, and every one appeared To supplicate for peace and misericord The Lamb of God who takes away our sins. Still _Agnus Dei_ their exordium was; One word there was in all, and metre one, So that all harmony appeared among them. 'Master, ' I said, 'are spirits those I hear?' And he to me: 'Thou apprehendest truly, And they the knot of anger go unloosing. '" (Canto, XVI, 1. )

Soon after this our poet hears one of the spirits of the wrathful, discoursing on the degeneracy of human life and sees in a second seriesof visions, historic instances of wrath and its punishment. He isawakened from his trance by the shining light and the glad summons ofthe Angel of meekness, who is at the stair leading to the next terrace. 

 "This is a spirit divine who in the way Of going up directs us without asking And who with his own light himself conceals. 

 * * * * *

 Accord we our feet, to such inviting Let us make haste to mount ere it grow dark; For then we could not till the day return. " (XVII, 55. )

Lightened of the third P the poet passes from the circle of the wrathfulup the fourth stairway. Here he takes the opportunity to engage Virgilin conversation regarding love as the seed of the capital sins. Thesesins, it may be remarked in passing, are not always mortal sins, thoughmany Dantian editors make the mistake of so classifying them. It is tobe observed that on all the stairways of Purgatory there is a conferencebetween the two poets on things likely to be of interest to Dante, inthe matter of his salvation. At the end of the present conference Dantefalls into slumber, from which he is aroused by the racing activity ofthe souls of the slothful, shouting instances of zeal and energy. 

Sloth is defined by St. Thomas Aquinas as sadness and torpor in the faceof some spiritual good which one has to achieve, and a preacher of ourday modernizes that definition to mean, the "don't-care-feeling" in thepresence of duty. The sin is unlisted in modern treatises on Ethics, the writers of which see in its symptoms only indications ofmelancholia, neurasthenia or pellagra. But according to the scholasticclassification still followed in this matter by the Catholic Church, sloth is to be considered as a specific vice opposed to the greatcommandment to love God with our whole heart. 

So Dante estimates it in his scheme of punishment, representing thesouls crying out in their diligence, "Haste, haste, let no time be lostthrough little love. " These souls are condemned to rush round and roundat the topmost speed, those in front proclaiming instances of alacrity, viz. , how the Blessed Virgin hastened to the hill country to visitElizabeth and how Julius Caesar hurried to subdue Lerida. Those in therear recall examples of sloth, viz. , how the Israelites throughwandering in the desert lost the Promised Land, and how the Trojans whodallied in Sicily gave themselves up to a life inglorious. Dante'sslothful souls are startlingly swift in their action. One of them, theAbbot Zeno giving directions for ascent to Virgil and reprobating thesins of his successors in the monastery is out of hearing as soon as hespeaks: "If more be said or if he was silent I know not, so far alreadyhad he raced beyond us" (XVIII, 127). 

The reader will not fail to note that the terrace of the slothful isthe only circle of Purgatory where there is no request for intercessoryprayer and that Dante here never speaks to any of those souls. Is thatbecause the poet wishes us to understand that his own sentiment is thatthey do not deserve to be prayed for who neglected through sloth to prayfor themselves and that his own silence in their presence is indicativeof his disregard for souls so stained?

To foreshow the sins to be treated on the three upper terraces, whereare punished those who yielded to the sins of the body, Dante representshimself as tempted by a Siren. She is described as ugly and repulsiveand then becoming, under the gaze of the beholder, fair and alluringlyattractive--a description, perhaps, unconsciously reproduced by Popewhen he wrote:

 "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen. Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face We first endure, then pity, then embrace. "

Saved from the Siren by a noble lady (perhaps Lucia, Illuminating Grace)and Virgil, the poet is brooding upon the dream which has brought to hissenses the pleasures of the world, when his guide admonishes him howsalvation from sin's seduction is to be had--viz. , by using worldlythings as things to be trodden under foot, while the mind is raised toHeaven, God's lure to draw it upward. 

 "Didst thou behold, that old enchantress Who sole above us henceforth is lamented? Didst thou behold how man is free from her? Suffice it thee, and smite earth with thy heels, Thine eyes lift upward to the lure, that whirls The Eternal King with revolutions vast. " (XIX, 58. )

On the fifth terrace our poets find the shades of the avaricious and theprodigals. They lie face to the ground, bound hand and foot, recallingduring the night instances of avarice and during the day proclaiming thepraise of liberality, as manifested in the Blessed Virgin, the paganFabricius and St. Nicholas. The latter is identified in the UnitedStates and some other countries, with the popular Santa Claus. Dantesays of St. Nicholas that "the spirit went on to speak of the bountywhich Nicholas gave to the maidens, to lead their youth to honor" (XX, 32). The allusion is to the legend that this Bishop of Myra secretlythrew at different times into the windows of the home of three destitutemaidens, bags of gold sufficient to provide them with dowries withoutwhich they would have been forced by poverty to a life of shame. In therealm of the avaricious and the prodigals, Dante addresses one of therepentent souls: "Spirit, who thou wast and why ye have your backsturned upward, tell me" (XX, 94). 

The answer of the shade of Pope Adrian IV, who died thirty-nine daysafter his election to the supreme pontificate without having beencrowned, is one of the fine passages of the poem. 

 "And he to me: 'Why Heaven makes us turn our backs to it, thou shalt learn: but first know that I was the successor of Peter. Between Siestri and Chiaveri there rushes down a fair river and from its name the title of my race takes its proudest distinction. For one month and a little more I experienced how heavily the great mantle weighs on him who keeps it out of the mire, so much so that all the other burdens seem but feathers. My conversion alas! was tardy; but when I had become the Roman pastor then I discovered how false life is. In it I found that the heart had no repose nor was it possible to rise higher in that life; wherefore the desire for this (immortal life) was kindled in me. Up to that time, I was a wretched soul and severed from God, wholly given up to Avarice. Now as thou seest I am punished for it here. What is the effect of Avarice is here made manifest in the purgation of the converted souls, and the mountain has no more bitter penalty, as our eyes fixed on earthly things, were not lifted up on high, even so has justice sunk them to the ground in this place. Even as Avarice quenched our love for every good, wherefore our works were lost, so justice doth hold us fast, bound and seized by feet and hands; and so long as it shall be the pleasure of the just Lord, so long shall we lie here motionless and outstretched. '" (XIX, 97. )

At this point occurs one of those delightful surprises full of realism, that Dante uses from time to time to heighten the reader's interest. Thepoet has just learned that the spirit before him is Pope Adrian IV. Atonce Dante falls on his knees to pay homage to the high office of theRoman Pontiff, and he is about to say according to the conjecture ofBenvenuto "Holy Father, I entreat your holiness to excuse my naturalignorance, for I was not aware of your being Pope. " But the spirit bidsthe poet arise, telling him that in the spirit world the dignities andrelations of this life are abolished. 

 "I on my knees had fallen and wished to speak; But even as I began and he was aware, Only by listening, of my reverence, 'What cause, ' he said, 'has downward bent thee thus?' And I told him: 'For your dignity, Standing, my conscience stung me with remorse. ' 'Straighten thy legs, and upward raise thee, brother, ' He answered, 'Err not, fellow servant am I With thee and with the others to one power If e'er that holy, evangelic sound Which sayeth _neque nubent_, thou hast heard Well canst thou see why in this wise I speak. '" (XIX, 127. )

In this part of Purgatory Dante treats his readers to two otherinstances of surprise. The first case which also makes use of thedramatic quality of suspense, postponing the explanation to thefollowing canto in order to prolong the eager expectation of the reader, narrates the occurrence of a wonderful phenomenon, the shaking of themountain of Purgatory, accompanied by a harmonious outburst of joyfulthanksgiving. 

 * * * * *

"We were striving to surmount the way so far as was permitted to our powerwhen I felt the mountain quake like a thing which is falling; whereupon achill gripped me, as is wont to grip him who is given to death. Of a suretyDelos was not shaken so violently ere Latona made her nest therein to givebirth to heaven's two eyes. Then began on all sides a shout, such that theMaster drew toward me saying: 'Fear not while I do guide thee. ' _Gloria inExcelsis Deo_ all were saying, by what I understood from those near by, whose cry could be heard. Motionless we stood and in suspense, like theshepherds who first heard that hymn, until the quaking ceased and it wasended. Then we took up again our holy way, looking at the shades, that layon the ground already returned to their wonted plaint. No ignorance, if mymemory err not in this, did ever with so great assault give me yearning forknowledge, I then seemed to have while pondering: nor by reason of ourhaste was I bold to ask; nor of myself could I see aught there; thus I wenton timid and pensive. "

His curiosity is satisfied in an unexpected way. "The natural thirst whichnever is sated, save with the water whereof the poor Samaritan woman askedthe grace, was burning within me--and lo, even as Luke writes to us thatChrist appeared to the two who were on the way, already risen from themouth of the tomb, a shade appeared to us saying: 'My brothers God give youpeace. ' Quickly we turned us and Virgil gave back to him the sign that isfitting thereto. Then began, 'May the true court that binds me in eternalexile, bring thee peace to the council of the blest. ' 'How, ' said he, andmeantime we met sturdily, 'If ye are shades that God deigns not above, whohath escorted you so far by his stairs'? And my Teacher: 'If thou lookestat the marks which this man bears and which the angel outlines clearlywilt thou see 'tis meet he reign with the good.... Wherefore I was broughtfrom Hell's wide jaws to guide him and I will guide him onward, so far asmy school can lead him. But tell us, if thou knowest, why the mount gavebefore such quakings and wherefore all seemed to shout with one voice downto its soft base. '"

It was the very question Dante had been yearning to utter. 

"Thus, by asking did he thread the very needle of my desire and with thepope alone my thirst was made less fasting. "

 * * * * *

The spirit, Statius by name, who has just obtained his release fromPurgatorial confinement to ascend to Heaven, states that the earthquakewas not due to natural causes, such as strong dry vapors producing wind, but was caused by spiritual elements operative upon a soul's completingthe penance and term assigned. 

 * * * * *

"It quakes here when some soul feeleth herself cleansed, so that she mayrise up or set forth, to mount on high, and such a shout follows her. Ofthe cleansing the will alone gives proof, which fills the soul, all free tochange her cloister, and avails her to will.... And I who have lain underthis torment five hundred years and more, only now felt free will for abetter threshold. Therefore didst thou feel the earthquake and hear thepious spirits about the mount give praises to the Lord. "

 * * * * *

This Statius was a Roman poet who died in the year 96. His term inPurgatory therefore has lasted a little more than eleven centuries. Thenext longest period mentioned by Dante is that of Duke Hugh Capet whohas been in Purgatory over 350 years with his purification stillincomplete. Statius by Dante's poetic invention is represented first assaved through the influence of Virgil's poems and then is shown to be aChristian, having been led to embrace Christianity both from the heroicexample of the martyrs and from his meditation on Virgil's prophecy ofthe Cumæan Sibyl interpreted in the Middle Ages to refer to Christ. Inthe Divina Commedia Statius pays a glowing tribute to the Æneid and itsauthor, wholly ignorant that he is addressing Virgil himself. "Of theÆneid I speak which was a mother to me and was to me a nurse in poesy... And to have lived yonder when Virgil was alive, I would consent toone sun more than I need perform. " Dante is all aquiver to surpriseStatius with the information that Virgil is at hand, "but Virgil turnedto me with a look that silently said, 'be silent. '"

 "But the power which wills Bears not supreme control: laughter and tears Follow so closely on the passion prompts them, They wait not for the motions of the will In nature most sincere. I did but smile, As one who winks; and thereupon the shade Broke off, and peer'd into mine eyes, where best Our looks interpret. 'So to good event Mayst thou conduct such great emprize, ' he cried, 'Say, why across thy visage beam'd, but now, The lightning of a smile. ' On either part Now am I straiten'd; one conjures me speak, The other to silence binds me; whence a sigh I utter, and the sigh is heard. 'Speak on, ' The teacher cried 'and do not fear to speak: But tell him what so earnestly he asks. ' Whereon I thus: 'Perchance, O ancient spirit Thou marvel'st at my smiling. There is room For yet more wonder. He, who guides my ken On high, he is that Mantuan, led by whom Thou didst presume of men and gods to sing. If other cause thou deem'dst for which I smiled, Leave it as not the true one: and believe Those words, thou spakest of him, indeed the cause. ' Now down he bent to embrace my teacher's feet; But he forbade him: 'Brother! do it not: Thou art a shadow, and behold'st a shade. ' He, rising, answer'd thus: 'Now hast thou proved The force and ardor of the love I bear thee, When I forget we are but things of air, And, as a substance, treat an empty shade. '" (XXI, 106. )

On the sixth terrace Dante with five P's removed, accompanied by Virgilsees the souls of those who sinned by gluttony. They are an emaciatedcrowd obliged to pass and repass before a fruit-laden tree bedewed withclear water from a fountain, without being able to satisfy their hungeror quench their thirst. Voices from this tree proclaim examples oftemperance; voices from another tree equally tantalizing, declareexamples of gluttony. 

 "People I saw beneath it (the tree) lift their hands And cry I know not what towards the leaves, Like little children eager and deluded, Who pray, and he they pray to doth not answer But, to make very keen their appetite Holds their desire aloft and hides it not. Then they departed as if undeceived. " (XXIV, 106. )

Here Dante recognizes among the gaunt attenuated figures of thepenitents, Forese Donati, his intimate friend and kinsman of his wifeGemma. Our poet was surprised to find him so soon after his death onone of the terraces of Purgatory, the assumption being that because ofhis delay of conversion to the end of his life Forese would be inOuter Purgatory for a term equal in duration to the length of his lifeon earth. But the reason he had come so quickly to Purgatory is to befound in the efficacy of the prayers of his widow for the repose ofhis soul. 

 "Then answered he: 'That now I wander reaping The bitter sweat of all this punishment My Nella gained for me, her vigil keeping In prayer devout and infinite lament. Thus, here, beyond that shore of waiting sent, I landed, from the lower circles freed. And that more dear to God omnipotent Lives on my little widow, is the meed Of the lone life she spends in many a saintly deed. '" (XXXIII, 85. )

Before ascending to the seventh and last terrace Dante describes howthe angel of abstinence removed the sixth P. 

 "And as the harbinger of early dawn, The air of May doth move and breathe out fragrance Impregnate all with herbage and with flowers, So did I feel a breeze strike in the midst My front, and felt the moving of the plumes That breathed around an odor of ambrosia; And heard it said; Blessed are they whom grace So much illumines that the love of taste Excites not in their breasts too great desire, Hungering at all times so far as is just. " (XXIV, 145. )

And now our penitent as he reaches the seventh terrace, where sinsagainst the virtue of purity are expiated, enters upon the last stage ofhis purification. Here the spirits pass and repass through the midst ofintensely hot flames, proclaiming examples of chastity. It is worthy ofnote that this terrace is the only place in Dante's Purgatory where fireis the punitive agent--a conception of our poet all the more remarkablebecause it runs counter to the view commonly held by the churchmen inthe West, including St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. ThomasAquinas, St. Bonaventure, who teach that fire is the cleansing elementof all Purgatory. That indeed is only a theological opinion. The Churchitself, as the Greeks were assured at the Council of Florence, has neverput forth any dogmatic decree on the subject. 

Bidden by the angel to enter the fire, Dante draws back paralysed withfear. Scenes of burning at the stake come with horror to his mind. Heprobably recalls also that Florence had condemned him to be burnedalive. So, for the first time in Purgatory he recoils at the penance hemust perform. Impassionately Virgil exhorts him. The stubborn pupilyields only at the utterance of Beatrice's name. For love of her he willendure the flame. 

 "The Mantuan spake: 'My son, Here torment thou mayst feel, but canst not death. Remember thee, remember thee, if I Safe e'en on Geryon brought thee; now I come More near to God, wilt thou not trust me now? Of this be sure; though in its womb that flame A thousand years contain'd thee, from thy head No hair should perish. If thou doubt my truth, Approach; and with thy hands thy vesture's hem Stretch forth, and for thyself confirm belief. Lay now all fear, oh! lay all fear aside. Turn hither, and come onward undismay'd. ' I still, though conscience urged, no step advanced. When still he saw me fix'd and obstinate, Somewhat disturb'd he cried: 'Mark now, my son, From Beatrice thou art by this wall Divided. ' As at Thisbe's name the eye Of Pyramus was open'd (when life ebb'd Fast from his veins) and took one parting glance, While vermeil dyed the mulberry; thus I turned To my sage guide, relenting, when I heard The name that springs for ever in my breast. He shook his forehead; and, 'How long, ' he said, 'Linger we now'? then smiled, as one would smile Upon a child that eyes the fruit and yields. Into the fire before me then he walk'd; And Statius, who erewhile no little space Had parted us, he pray'd to come behind, I would have cast me into molten glass To cool me, when I entered; so intense Raged the conflagrant mass. The sire beloved, To comfort me, as he proceeded, still Of Beatrice talk'd. 'Her eyes, ' saith he, 'E'en now I seem to view. ' From the other side A voice, that sang did guide us; and the voice Following, with heedful ear, we issued forth, There where the path led upward. 'Come, ' we heard, 'Come blessed of my Father. '" (Canto, XXVII, 20. )

On emerging from the fire and on the very threshold of the Garden ofEden, Dante is addressed by Virgil, no longer competent to guide himhigher. The Mantuan in touching words tells his disciple that havingpassed through Purgatory he needs no other guide than his own will, upright and sound, until he passes under the tutelage of Beatrice. 

 "The temporal fire and the eternal Son, thou hast seen, and to a place art come Where of myself no farther I discern. By intellect and art I here have brought thee; Take thine own pleasure for thy guide henceforth; Beyond the steep ways and the narrow art thou. Expect no more or word or sign from me; Free and upright and sound is thy free will, And error were it not to do its bidding Thee o'er thyself I therefore crown and mitre. " (XXVII, 127. )

Brother Azarias gives us the mystical sense of this passage. "The soulhas conquered; therefore Virgil leaves the poet free from the dominionof his passions; more than free, a king crowned triumphant over himself;more than a king, a mitred priest, ruling the cloister of his heart, histhoughts and his affections and mediator and intercessor before DivineMercy for himself and those commending themselves to his prayers. "

So crowned and mitred over himself Dante now enters the Garden of Eden. 

"Here did the parents of mankind dwell in innocence; here is thereperpetual spring and every fruit. "

In the forest of Eden is a pure stream with two currents, Lethe andEunoe, "the first has the power of all past sins the memory to erase, the other can restore remembrance of good deeds and pious days. " On thebanks of this stream the poet sees Matilda, who represents the ActiveLife. 

"There appeared to me a lady all alone who went along singing andselecting from among the flowers wherewith all her path was enamelled"... Suddenly "the lady turned completely round towards me, saying, 'MyBrother, look and listen'" (XXIX, 15). A solemn chant is heard, awonderful light is seen. It is a pageant representing the return ofmankind to Eden through membership in the Church. 

First come, shedding heavenly light, the seven mystical candlesticks, symbolic of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost or the seven sacraments ofthe Church. Next follow twenty-four ancients representating the books ofthe Old Testament. Then are seen the four prophetic animals symbolizingthe four Evangelists. Christ drawing a chariot representing the Church, the central figure of the pageant, advances under the form of thefabulous griffin, half eagle and half lion, typifying the two-foldnature of our Lord. On the right side of the chariot, dancing are threenymphs, the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity. On the leftside are four other nymphs--the cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. Next come two old men, dignified and grave, St. Paul and St. Luke, who are followed by four others representingother books of the New Testament viz. , the Epistles of St. James, St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude. The rear guard is an aged Solitarysymbolic of the Apocalypse. 

"And when the chariot was opposite to me" writes Dante, "a clap ofthunder was heard; and those worthy folk seemed to have their furthermarch forbidden, and halted there with the first ensign" (XXIX, 153). 

What is the meaning of this symbolic procession so common to Dante'sday, so alien to ours? We have already said that it is a dramaticrepresentation of the human race finding happiness, finding its Eden inits membership in the Church. But it, also, is a symbolic lesson for theindividual. Dante, the type of humanity having done penance for hissins, is about to be received through the sacrament of penance into thesoul of the Church i. E. Into the full communion of grace. It isfitting, therefore, that the Church should advance to meet him, therepentant sinner, and should reveal itself to him before receiving himinto its bosom. 

If objection be made that Dante already has been absolved from sin andin Purgatory has made expiation for his offences, the answer is given byOzanam; "At the term of the expiatory course, as at its beginning, toquit it as well as to enter upon it, we must render submission to areligious authority and fulfill the conditions without which God doesnot treat with us--confession for oblivion, fears for consolation andshame for definitive rehabilitation. " When the pageant comes to a haltthe participants group themselves about the Griffin and the Chariot, bythat act declaring that the goal and object of their desires arecentered in Christ and His Church. Then one of the company by divinecommand calls aloud three times to a heavenly being, the spouse of theChurch, to appear and the cry is repeated by the whole company. From theChariot arise, as will arise the dead from their graves, a hundredangels scattering flowers over and around the Chariot and also raisingtheir voices in the call for the Heavenly Bride. They first sing thewords of the Canticle of Palm Sunday. _Benedictus qui venis_ (Blessedart thou who comest) and then the beautiful line from the Aeneid:_Manibus o date lilia plenis_ (Oh! give lilies with full hands). Thencomes from the clouds through the midst of the flowers showering downagain within and without the Chariot, arrayed in the colors of the threetheological virtues, the object of the invocation. 

"Crowned with olive over a white veil a Lady appeared to me, vestured inhue of living flame under a green mantle. " It is Beatrice, Dante'sbeloved, now apotheosized in the personification of Revelation. Whatother poet ever dreamed of so glorifying his beloved that for her comingthe natural virtues prepare the way, the supernatural virtues, ashandmaids accompany her to assist us to the understanding of herdoctrine, the angels sing her laudation and she herself in the role bothof unveiler of the Scriptures of the Prophets and the Apostles and themystical Bride of the Canticles is worthy to be called "O Light, O Gloryof the human race?"

Dante before seeing her face, recognizes her by some mysterious instinctof love, recognizes her after a lapse according to fiction of ten years, but in reality of twenty-four years since her death. 

To Virgil, Dante turns to tell the joyous news but Virgil has gone andtears course down the face of his disciple. 

"Dante, " says Beatrice, "weep not that Virgil leaves thee, nay weep thounot yet, for thou wilt have to weep for another wound. " Awed by herappearance, he is taken back by her greeting. The mere thought of herloveliness uplifted him in the world. The hope of seeing her carried himthrough the horrors of Hell and the penance of Purgatory. Crowned andmitred over himself he came to Eden to meet her. And she has onlyreproaches for him. Particularly to the angels does she tell the storyof his defection from the high ideals which she inspired in him. "Thisman was such in his new life potentially that every good talent wouldhave made wondrous increase in him--(but) so low sank he that all meansfor his salvation were already short save showing him the lost people. For this I visited the portal of the dead and to him who has guided himup hither, weeping my prayers were borne. God's high decree would bebroken if Lethe were passed and such viands were tasted, without somesort of penitence that may shed tears. "

To her lover she turns for confirmation of the truth of her words: "Say, say if this is true; to such accusation thy confession must be joined. "

"Confusion and fear together mingled, drove forth from my mouth a'Yea, '" a monosyllable of confession which showed the depth of hisshame. 

But it is the sight of the superhuman beauty of Beatrice which completeshis contrition and resuscitates his love so as to fit him to passthrough the waters of the Lethe. 

"My eyes beheld Beatrice, turned toward the animal (the Griffin) that isOne Person only (Christ) in twofold nature (i. E. God and man). Under herveil and on the far side of the stream she seemed to me to surpass moreher ancient self, than she surpassed the others here when she was withus. So much remorse gnawed at my heart that I fell vanquished and what Ithen became she knoweth who gave me the cause. " (XXXI, 82. )

When he recovers consciousness he finds his immersion in the Lethe inprogress by Matilda. Then he is led to Beatrice by the four nymphs (thecardinal virtues) and at the request of the three nymphs who typify thetheological virtues she smiles upon him. 

"The fair lady (Matilda) dipped me where I must needs swallow of thewater, then drew me forth and led me, bathed, within the dance of thefour fair ones, and each did cover me with her arm. 'Here we are nymphsand in heaven are stars. Ere Beatrice descended to the world, we wereordained for her handmaids: we will lead thee to her eyes: but the threeon the other side who deeper gaze will sharpen thine eyes to the joyouslight that is within. "

Beholding the glorified beauty of Beatrice wholly inexpressible, Danteis in such rapture that he is oblivious of everything else. 

 "Mine eyes with such an eager coveting Were bent to rid them of their ten years' thirst No other sense was waking; and e'en they Were fenced on either side from heed of aught: So tangled, in its custom'd toils, that smile Of saintly brightness drew it to itself. "

When our poet comes out of his rapture, the Chariot and the mysticalcompany are moving to a tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evilwhich according to a beautiful tradition has become the Cross of Christ, the tree of salvation. To that tree is attached the Chariot which Christ(the Griffin) now leaves to enter Heaven again with the ancients and theangels. Beatrice remains with the seven nymphs to guard the Chariot (theChurch). Up to this point the picture of the Church has been one ofpeace and happiness. Now with prophetic eye the poet beholds thetribulations which the Church will suffer from without and within. Thedescription of the vision and the explanation of the symbolism are sowell set forth by Ozanam that I quote his words unable to improve uponthem, as I also share his view as to the unwarranted severity here ofDante's censures of the Church. 

"An eagle falls like lightning upon the tree, from which he tears thebark, and upon the car, which bends beneath his weight. Then comes a foxwhich finds its way within, and then a portion is torn off by a dragonthat issues from the gaping earth. Thus far it is easy to recognize thepersecutions of the Roman emperors which so harried the Church, theheresies by which it was desolated, and the schisms by which it wastorn. Soon, the eagle reappeared, less menacing but not less dangerous;he shook his plumes above the sacred car, which speedily underwent amonstrous transformation. From divers parts of it arose seven headsarmed with ten horns; a courtesan was seated in the midst; a giant stoodat her side, exchanging with her impure caresses which he interrupted toscourge her cruelly. Then, cutting loose the metamorphosed car, he bearsit away, and is lost with it in the depths of the forest. 

"Is not this again the Church, enriched, by the gifts of princes whohave become her protectors, sadly marred in appearance, sundry of hermembers defiled by the taint of the seven capital sins, and herselfruled over by unworthy pontiffs? Is not this the court of Rome, exchanging criminal flatteries with the temporal power, which flatteriesare to be followed by cruel injuries, when the Holy See, torn from thefoot of the cross of the Vatican, is transferred to a distant land, onthe banks of a foreign river? But these ills will not be without end norwithout retribution. The tree that lost and that saved the world cannotbe touched with impunity, and if the Church has been made militant herebelow, it is with the liability of suffering from passing reverses, butalso with the assurance of final victory. "

Dante's own eternal victory is now assured, Beatrice directs Matilda tolead him to the Eunoe, whose waters will regenerate him and fit him toascend to Paradise. "Behold, Eunoe which gushes forth yonder, lead himthereto and as thou art wont, revive in him again his fainting powers. "

The poem closes with an address to the reader:

 "If, Reader, I possessed a longer space For writing it, I yet would sing in part Of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me; But inasmuch as full are all the leaves Made ready for this second canticle, The curb of art no farther lets me go. From the most holy water I returned Regenerate, in the manner of new trees That are renewed with a new foliage, Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars. " (Purg. , XXXIII, 136. )

DANTE'S PARADISO

DANTE'S PARADISO

Of Dante's trilogy the Paradiso is truly his "medieval miracle of song, "the supreme achievement of his genius. Here the poetry of the sublimereaches its highest point--the summit on which Dante is a lonely andunchallenged figure. "No uninspired hand, " says Cardinal Manning, "hasever written thoughts so high in words, so resplendent, as the laststanza of the Divina Commedia. " It was said of St. Thomas: "_Post SummamThomæ nihil restat nisi lumen gloriæ_. " It may be said of Dante: "_PostDantis Paradisum nihil restat nisi visio Dei. _" ("After Dante's Paradisonothing remains but the vision of God. ")

Shelley's tribute to the supremacy of Dante's Heaven is no lessbeautiful: "Dante's apotheosis of Beatrice and the gradations of his ownlove and her loveliness by which, as by steps, he feigns himself to haveascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most gloriousimagination of modern poetry. "

Ruskin says: "Every line of the Paradiso is full of the most exquisiteand spiritual expressions of Christian truths and the poem is only lessread than the Inferno because it requires far greater attention andperhaps, for its full enjoyment, a holier heart. "

That Dante's Inferno is more popular reading than his Paradiso is due tothe fact that evil and its consequences offer to the artist richermaterial for dramatic fascination and to the reader more lively interestin characters intensely human, than does the less sensational story ofthe Elects finding peace and happiness in a realm transcending theexperiences of human nature. Dante's Purgatorio also finds a widercircle of readers because his penitents, suffering, struggling andaspiring, like people upon earth, have more human traits and exhibitmore human interest than the saints confirmed in grace against humanweakness. 

Another reason for lesser interest manifested in this part of the DivinaCommedia is the difficulty and obscurity of the Paradiso. It is not easyreading, because it requires study, repetition, concentration, meditation, qualities absent from the art of reading as it prevailstoday. If we ever have time to look at a book, the habit of skimmingwith inattentive rapidity so urges us onward that we find ourselvesflitting from page to page, from chapter to chapter, panting anduninstructed. And if we belong to the bookless majority who have no timeto read, we rush to the moving picture theatre to get our mentalpabulum--often a season's best seller--boiled down, served inrapid-fire order and bolted in the twinkling of an eye. For all suchDante's Paradiso is an intellectual as well as a spiritual impossibilityand the poet begs such not to follow him on his voyage to the eternalkingdom. 

 "Oh ye who in some pretty little boat Eager to listen, have been following Behind my ship, that singing sails along, Turn back to look again upon your shores; In losing me, you might yourselves be lost. The sea I sail has never yet been passed. Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo, And Muses nine point out to me the Bears. Ye other few, who have the neck uplifted Betimes to th' bread of Angels upon which One liveth here and grows not sated by it, Well may you launch upon the deep salt-sea Your vessel, keeping still my wake before you Upon the water that grows smooth again. Those glorious ones who unto Colchos passed Were not so wonder-struck as you shall be, When Jason they beheld a ploughman made. " (II, 1. )

The song which Dante sings in the Paradiso is the eternal happiness ofman in vision, love and enjoyment united to his Creator. In preparationfor this final consummation the poet, as he ascends to the Empyrean, gives a most beautiful epitome of the principal mysteries of religionand of some of the tenets of scholastic philosophy, treating especiallythe Fall of Man, Predestination, Free Will, the Redemption, theImmortality of the Soul and the theory of Human Knowledge. Allegoricallyconsidered, the poem is a veil, under which we see the ideal life of manupon earth, exercising virtue and gaining virtue's rewards. 

To exhibit man's supreme, happiness in the next life, the Christianpoet, insisting that his purpose is the inculcation of truth, both tosave and to adorn the soul, must base his theme upon the doctrines ofthe Church. The definition of some of those dogmas Dante anticipated. All may be summed up in the following statement:

"It is of Catholic faith that the souls of the blessed see God directlyand face to face and this vision is Supernatural; that there are degreesof this vision, corresponding to the merits of the elect; that to seeGod in His Essence, the intellect is supernaturally perfected; that theBeatific Vision is not deferred to the Day of Judgment, but is possessedat once after death but the Just, in whom there is no stain of sin orwho have no temporal punishment to be expiated; and, furthermore, thatall human beings at the end of the world will arise with their ownbodies. "

How will the poet bring home those incomprehensible truths to hisreaders? He has to treat a subject wholly transcendent and supernatural. Though his vision be celestial, his langauge must be terrestrial. Hemust visualize states of the soul which are alien to the eyes of thebody and translate into terms of the senses things which are whollynon-sensuous. Dante is aware that no poet ever essayed that feat before:"The sea I sail has never yet been passed. " (1, 8. ) He knows, also, thatshoals and rocks, seemingly impassable and a sea which may engulf hisgenius, are before him. "It is no coastwise voyage for a little barque, this sea through which the intrepid prow goes cleaving nor for a pilotwho would spare himself. " (XXIII, 67. )

And yet he will attempt the impossible, he will endeavor to sing not ofthe scenes but of the states of suprasensible spiritual joys--joys whichBishop Norris says "are without example, above experience and beyondimagination, for which the whole creation wants a comparison, we anapprehension and even the word of God, a revelation. " Conscious of allthat, Dante confesses the impotency of speech, the inadequacy of memory, the helplessness of imagination for the task to which he sets himself. He tells us that the sublime songs of the elect "have lapsed and fallenout of my memory"--"that to represent and transhumanize in wordsimpossible were. " (I, 71. )

 "And what was the sun wherein I entered, Apparent, not by color, but by light I, though I call on genius, art and practice Cannot so tell that it could be imagined. " (X, 41. )

So by the very nature of the subject visualization can be onlypartial--only "the shadow of the blessed realm, " can be shown. But whathuman nature can do, even if its feat seems solitary and unique, Dantehas accomplished in a failure which constitutes the most wonderfulachievement in the domain of the sublime in literature, an achievementleaving us with a sense of his own ineffable bliss and of theinexpressible joys of the Elect--an achievement which came to pass, saysome readers, because his poem is an account of a supernaturalvision--and Dante hints that he thinks he was so favored, or because itis a work to which both heaven and earth have set their hand, showinghim, as Emerson observes, "all imagination, " or, as James Russell Lowellsays, "The highest spiritual nature which has expressed itself inrhythmical form. "

There are two methods of representing man's supreme happiness, relativeand absolute: one is to depict nature at her best, untouched by sin, andto show man free from every defect and blemish, in the full perfectionof his being. Naturally the imagery in this case is the imagery born offinite human experiences. The other method describes, as we said, notscenes of happiness but transcendent conditions of the soul as it isbrought into ultimate communion with Supreme Goodness--the finitepossessing and enjoying the Infinite. Here the human mind, let us repeatit, finds earthly images powerless to translate its thought, for it hathnot entered into the heart of man to conceive the glory of the spiritualworld. These two methods Dante follows successively. 

His Eden on the summit of Purgatory is literally the earthly Paradise ofAdam and Eve. It is pictured in moving imagery as man's "native countryof delights, " a "lofty garden" of ineffable loveliness, high above allthe physical and moral disturbances of earth, its waters, its winds, itsflowers and its music all coming from supernatural sources, its blissspringing from the perfect harmony of man's animal, intellectual andspiritual powers in full and perfect accord with reason. It is ParadiseRegained by man's climbing the mountain of Purgatory, and itssignificance is understood if we remember that Dante would teach usthat the present life can be made dual, a life worth while in itself, full of service and godliness as well as a preparation for the unendinglife of Heaven. 

For Dante there must be, also, the Celestial Paradise where man'ssupernatural destiny will be realized in joys which the eye has not seenand in music which the ear has not heard. His Paradiso has been calledthe Ten Heavens, but in reality there is in his plan only one Heaven, the Empyrean, the abode of the angels, of the blessed spirits and ofGod. It is high above the planets and the stars, beyond time and space. The Church has never answered the question: Where is Heaven?Theologians, however, have put forth various opinions. "Some say, "writes Father Honthein, that "Heaven is everywhere, as God iseverywhere, the blessed being free to move freely in every part of theuniverse while still remaining with God and seeing Him everywhere. "Others hold that Heaven is "a special place with definite limits. Naturally this place is held to exist, not within the earth, but inaccordance with the expressions of Scripture, 'without and beyond itslimits. '" (Cath. Encycl. , VII, 170. )

According to Dante's conception, Heaven, being non-spatial andnon-temporal, is not a place but a state of spiritual life. As an aid indepicting that state he makes use of a unique literary device. Hepoetically creates nine Heavens, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile or FirstMovement. These, according to the Ptolemaic system which our poetfollows, are concentric with the earth, around which as their centerthey revolve, while the earth remains fixed and motionless. The motionof each of these nine spheres, originally coming from the Primum Mobile, is communicated to it by the love of the angelic guardians, a literalapplication of the common saying that "love makes the world go around. "

As a poetic fiction necessary for him to enter finally the true HeavenDante is required to pass through these nine spheres, the fiction beingused by him as an artist to declare the glories of the heavens and as ateacher to inculcate doctrines for the instruction and edification ofmankind. In each of the nine Heavens groups of the blessed arerepresented as coming to meet him "as he returns to God as to the portwhence (he) set out when (he) first entered upon the sea of this life. "

This peerless rhetorical figure is explained in the Banquet, where hesays: "As his fellow-citizens come forth to meet him who returns from along journey even before he enters the gates of his city; so to thenoble soul come forth the citizens of the eternal Life. " This apparitionof the blessed spirits to greet the mystic traveller as he mounts fromsphere to sphere has several advantages: "it peoples with hosts ofspirits, the immense lonely spaces through which the journey lies"; itaffords the poet the opportunity of asking them "many things which havegreat utility and delight"; it finally gives him a sensible sign of thedegree of beatitude which they possess in that realm of many mansionswhere each is rewarded according to his merit and capacity, the capacityof each spirit being in proportion to its degree of knowledge and love. This is stressed by the poet's representing the apparitions first asfaint yet beautiful outlines of human features, then as ascent is madeto the other Heavens, the spirits make themselves known by increasingmanifestations of light so dazzling finally that the splendor wouldblind Dante if his vision were not divinely adapted to its supernaturalneeds. 

The inequalities of bliss are also symbolized by the sphere in which thespirits appear to him; those in the sphere of the moon, e. G. , are lessfavored than those in the Heaven of Mercury. The inequality of merit, and therefore of reward, is also declared by the difference in both thequickness of the spirits' movement and their clearness of vision intothe essence of God. The Empyrean, it is worth while repeating, is theonly true Paradise, the nine Heavens being only myths or poetic devices. If spirits are seen there, they have come forth only from the Empyreanand will quickly return there after preparing the poet for the eternalLight of Light. 

The materials out of which Dante constructs his Paradiso are not, as weare already aware, fantastic images such as he employed for the firsttwo parts of the Divina Commedia, but are things of the spirit, viz. , knowledge, beauty, faith, love, joy; and he is aided in making visiblethose invisible entities of the spiritual life by such intangible thingsas sound, motion and light. 

Light, indeed, is one of the leading elements in the Paradiso. The poembegins with a reference to the light of God's glory, and its last linespeaks of "the Love which moves the Sun and the other stars. " Andbetween this beginning and this end in thirty-three cantiche light isrepresented not only by degrees of increasing intensity and variety ofunlocked for movements but as surrounding the spirits, living flames, and constituting, symbolically, the beatitude of Heaven. 

Dean Church, in his classic essay on Dante, has a beautiful paragraphthat here calls for quotation: "Light in general is his special andchosen source of poetic beauty. No poet that we know has shown suchsingular sensibility to its varied appearances.... Light everywhere--inthe sky and earth and sea--in the stars, the flames, the lamp, thegems--broken in the water, reflected from the mirror, transmittedthrough the glass, or colored through the edge of the fracturedemerald--dimmed in the mist. The halo, the deep water--streaming throughthe rent cloud, glowing in the coal, quivering in the lightning, flashing in the topaz and the ruby, veiled behind the pure alabaster, mellowed and clouding itself in the pearl-light contrasted with shadow, shading off and copying itself in the double rainbow like voice andecho--light seen within light--light from every source and in all itsshapes illuminates, irradiates, gives glory to the Commedia.... And whenhe (Dante) rises beyond the regions of earthly day, light, simple andunalloyed, unshadowed and eternal, lifts the creations of his thoughtabove all affinity to time and matter; light never fails him, as theexpression of the gradations of bliss; never reappears the same, neverrefuses the new shapes of his invention, never becomes confused or dim, though it is seldom thrown into distinct figure and still more seldomcolored. "

In making light such a central feature of Heaven and symbolically inidentifying light with God and the angels and the blessed, Dante is onlyexpressing--but expressing beautifully and supremely--the thought whichpagan oracles proclaimed and Holy Writ and the Church made known. Fromthe earliest ages the sun which vivifies and illuminates the world wasregarded by many nations as the symbol of the Deity--and by still othernations it was adored. The psalmist, addressing God, says: "Thou artclothed with light as with a garment. " (Ps. , CIII, 2. ) St. Paul declaresthat the Lord of Lords "inhabiteth light inaccessible. " (1 Tim. , VI, 16. ) The Seer of Patmos tells us that the heavenly Jerusalem has no needof the light of the sun and the moon to shine upon it, "for the glory ofGod hath enlightened it and the Lamb is the lamp thereof. " (Apoc. , XX, 23. ) "I am the light of the world, " declares Christ, and with thatrevelation ringing in his ears the Beloved Disciple does not hesitate tosay: "and this is the declaration which we have heard--that God islight. " (I John, I, 5. ) In narrating his vision of Heaven, Ezechialcompares the light emanating from and enveloping the Deity, to fire. "Isaw the likeness as of the appearance of fire, as the appearance ofbrightness. " (XXIV, 17. ) Moses on the mountain saw the Lord in the midstof fire, and on another mountain Christ, "the brightness of his Father'sglory was transfigured before his apostles and his face did shine as theSun and his garments became shining or glittering. " (Matt. , XVII, 2. )Small wonder then that the Nicaean creed declares that Christ is "God ofGod, Light of light. " Not only with God, but with His saints is the ideaof visible light intimately associated. The prophet Daniel tells usthat "They that are learned shall shine as the brightness of thefirmament, and they that instruct many unto justice, as stars to alleternity. " (XII, 3. ) And it is Christ Himself who says: "Then shall thejust shine as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father. " (Matt. , XIII, 43. )

In using such a subtle, dazzling element as light so generally and insuch countless varieties throughout his Paradiso, Dante is exposed tothe danger of palling his readers with brightness and making them loseinterest in things glorious and supernal. But the genius of the mansaves the artist. By a conception of matchless beauty he binds the lightof heaven to the human, making the smile in the eye of his belovedguide, Beatrice, express his own personal heaven, in the light thatenters his mind and the ardor which quickens his heart. As he mountswith her the stairway of the heavens leading to the Eternal Palace andhis motion is brought about simply by his gazing into her eyes, shemakes known to him by her increasing brightness both his own mountingknowledge and his ascent nearer the Empyrean. 

As Dante represents the increase of light and love deepening andexpanding in him as he rises empyreanward all by the loved smile of hisbeloved Beatrice, it is well that we bear in mind the significance ofthe symbolism as expounded by the poet in his Banquet. (III, 15. )Beatrice being Revelation or Wisdom made known to the world, "in herface appear things that tell of the pleasures of Paradise and ... Theplace wherein this appears is in her eyes and her smile. And here itshould be known that the eyes of Wisdom are the two demonstrations bywhich is seen the truth most certainly; and her smile is her persuasionby which is shown forth the interior light of Wisdom under some veil;and in these two things is felt the highest pleasure of beatitude, whichis the greatest good of Paradise. "

Beatrice--Revealed Truth--remains the poet's guide until he comes tobehold the Beatific Vision. Then, no longer needed, she withdraws infavor of the contemplative St. Bernard as guide, just as Virgil hadwithdrawn when he was powerless and when Beatrice was needed. 

The question here presents itself: In what does Dante place thehappiness of Heaven? Does he paint such a Heaven that it showsprincipally the rectifications of the inequalities of this life--aHeaven of such happiness, e. G. , that the poor will love poverty or beresigned to it in the hope of possessing the riches of this Eternity? IsDante's Heaven one in which happiness is so alluring that innocence willgladly submit to calumny and faith will lovingly welcome the sword orstake, in the certain confidence of gaining unending glory or bliss?The Paradiso does reward poverty, crown innocence, glorify martyrdom, but it was never intended to be an account of what takes place in thereal Heaven, or to be a description of the particular acts of goodnesswhich win Heaven for the soul, or a rapturous picture appealing to theemotions of the believer and alluring him from earth. 

Does Dante place the happiness of Heaven in the bliss and glorificationof family reunion?

He is too good a theologian to place the essential happiness of Heavenmerely in the joy of family reunion. He does not ignore that feature ofeternity, but he does not stress it, because temperamentally he is movedless by sentiment of family and ties of friendship than by his curiosityfor knowledge, by his yearnings to behold Eternal Wisdom. Only once doeshe mention Heaven as the state of reunion of families and friends, andthat is when he comments upon the action of the twenty-three spirits inthe Heaven of the Sun, in expressing their agreement with Soloman'sdiscourse as to the participation which the human body will have, afterthe Resurrection in the glories of Paradise:

 "So ready and so cordial an Amen Follow'd from either choir, as plainly spoke Desire of their dead bodies; yet perchance Not for themselves, but for their kindred dear, Mothers and sires and those whom best they loved, Ere they were made imperishable flames. " (XIV, 65. )

For Dante, Heaven must be the beatitude of the intellect and thatprimarily by the intellect's having an intuition full of joy in theDivine Essence, and secondly by its possessing full light on all thosevexatious problems and mysteries which baffle us in this life. 

 "Well I perceive that never sated is Our intellect unless Truth illumines it, Beyond which nothing true expands itself. It rests therein, as wild beast in his lair When it attains it and it can attain it. " (IV, 125. )

In insisting upon the power of the mind to know the truth and to findperfect happiness in the supernatural act of beholding God face to face, Dante is not in agreement with Pragmatism, Hegelianism and the "newRealist" theory--all which make truth elusive to the mind; but he is infull accord with the teaching of the Catholic Church, which defends therights of reason holding, e. G. , that "by the natural light of reasonGod can be known with certainty, by means of created things" (VaticanCouncil), and proclaiming that "all the saints in Heaven have seen anddo see the Divine Essence by direct intuition and face to face in suchwise that nothing created intervenes as an object of vision; ... Thatthe Divine Essence presents itself to their immediate gaze, unveiled, clearly and openly; that in this vision they enjoy the Divine Essence, and in virtue of this vision and this enjoyment they are truly blessedand possess eternal life and eternal rest. " (Benedict XII, Cath. Encycl. , VII, 171. )

It is interesting to see how Dante's Master, St. Thomas Aquinas, demonstrates the proposition that the beatitude of man consists in thevision of the Divine Essence. With his usual lucidity of thought hewrites: "The last and perfect happiness of man cannot be otherwise thanin the vision of the Divine Essence. In evidence of this statement twopoints are to be considered: first, that man is not perfectly happy solong as there remains anything for him to desire and seek; secondly, that the perfection of every power is determined by the nature of itsobject. Now the object of the intellect is the essence of a thing; hencethe intellect attains to perfection so far as it knows the Essence ofwhat is before it. And therefore, when a man knows an effect and knowsthat it has a cause, there is in him an outstanding natural desire ofknowing the essence of the cause. If, therefore, a human intellect knowsthe essence of a created effect without knowing aught of God beyond thefact of His existence, the perfection of that intellect does not yetadequately reach the First Cause, but the intellect has an outstandingnatural desire of searching into the said Cause; hence it is not yetperfectly happy. For perfect happiness, therefore, it is necesary thatthe intellect shall reach as far as the very essence of the FirstCause. " (Rickaby, Aquinas Ethicus I, 2 q. , 3 a, 8. )

This masterly exposition is after all only the philosophical developmentof what every Catholic child learns from one of the first questions ofthe little Catechism: "Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, tolove Him, and to serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Himforever in the next. " With the satisfaction of the intellect's boundlessyearning for knowledge attained by intuition of the Essence of God, aconsummation that will somewhat deify us--"Who shall be made like tohim, because we shall see him as he is" (I John, III, 2. ), the happinessof man will be primarily intellectual, being as Dante beautifully says:"Light intellectual full of love, love of the true good, full of joy, joy that transcendeth all sweetness. " (XXX, 40. )

His Heaven, then, is no Nirvana, for each spirit will for eternity haveits individuality, and its activity will be unremitting in seeing Godface to face--a vision that will cause the spirit increasing wonder inan act that will have no flagging nor satiety. "What, after all, isHeaven, " says Bulwer Lytton, "but a transition from dim guesses to thefullness of wisdom, from ignorance to knowledge, but knowledge of whatorder?" To that exclamation of the nineteenth century writer themedieval seer answers with conviction that the _summum bonum_ is to befound only in the intellect's attaining Truth. 

Let us now join Dante in his mystic journey to the Heavenly Kingdom. Weleft him after three days and three nights in Purgatory, standing withBeatrice on the summit of the mountain in the Earthly Paradise, where heremained six hours. At noon he begins his ascent through space, a feataccomplished by Beatrice's looking up to the Heavens and by Dante'sfixing his eyes upon her. At once his human nature is supposed to takeon agility, the supernatural quality which makes the body independent ofspace, and he begins to rise with incomprehensible velocity. Though theyare travelling without conscious movement at the rate of 84, 000 miles asecond, there is time for Dante's mind to operate in desire to know howhe can ascend counter to gravitation and for Beatrice to discourse uponthe law--Dante's invention--of universal (material and spiritual)gravitation. 

 "The newness of the sound and the great light Kindled in me a longing for their cause Never before with such acuteness felt. And she began: 'Thou makest thyself so dull With false imagining, that thou sees not What thou wouldst see if thou hadst shaken it off. Thou are not upon earth as thou believest; But lightning, fleeing its appropriate site, Ne'er ran as thou, who thitherward returnest. '" (I, 88. )

She explains the order established by Providence by force of whichcreated beings seek their natural habitat, earthly things beingattracted downward, spiritual entities being drawn upward irresistiblyif they do not oppose this innate inclination to good. "It is as naturalfor a man purged of all evil to ascend to God, " she declares, "as it isfor a stream from a mountain height to fall into a valley. "

Very shortly after this, the first stage of the celestial journey isreached. "Direct thy mind to God in gratitude, " she said, "who hathunited us with the first star. " "Me seemed a cloud enveloped us, shiningdense, firm and polished like a diamond smitten by the sun. Withinitself the eternal pearl received us, as water doth receive a ray oflight, though still itself uncleft. " This is the Heaven of the Moon, theplanet farthest removed from the Empyrean and therefore the sphere wherenot only motion but also beatitude are least in the heavenly bodies. Thesphere of the Moon, indeed with those of Mercury and of Venus, is heldby Dante's cosmography to be within the shadow cast by the earth. Consequently, the spirits in those three lowest Heavens are representedas less perfect than those in the higher spheres, because in the moralsense the shadow of earth fell upon their lives making them imperfectthrough inconstancy, vain glory or unlawful love. 

In the Heaven of the Moon a long disquisition is carried on by Beatricein explanation of Dante's question as to why there are spots on themoon. It is very likely that this matter of apparent irrelevance in theheavenly realms is introduced here at the very first stage of the ascentto give the poet the opportunity of proclaiming that the first thing onemust learn in his passage heavenward--even if this is to be understoodin an allegorical sense--is that the laws of the laboratory are not the_rationale_ of the heavenly world and that to employ them to explain thesupernal is to violate the very science of these laws, in anapplication of scope to which in their very nature they protest. Thispoint of seeing natural causes for the unexplainable phenomenon ofHeaven and especially of relying upon the testimony of the senses issoon brought out by Beatrice reproving Dante for thinking that thespirits whom he now sees are only reflections of the human face:

 "Marvel thou not, " she said to me, "because I smile at this thy puerile conceit, Since on the truth it trusts not yet its foot, But turns thee, as 'tis wont, on emptiness. True substances are these which thou beholdest, Here relegate for breaking of some vow. Therefore speak with them, listen and believe. " (III, 25. )

So directed, the poet gazes again upon the faint forms appearing likereflections seen in a plate of glass or in a dark, shallow pool. These, the first spirits he meets, are apparitions in human form. In the otherspheres all that he will see of the souls will be the light whichenvelopes them and which seemingly is identified with them, but here hesees beautiful women divinely glorious even in their dim outline, who asnuns had violated their vow of perpetual chastity. In the Inferno thepoet, to lead the reprobate soul to speak to him, promised earthlyfame; in Purgatorio there was the offer of intercessory prayer, here inthe first Heaven there is only an appeal to the charity which inflamesthe spirit. All eagerness, Dante now addresses the spirit, who appearsmost desirous to converse with him. This is Piccarda, kinswoman of hiswife and sister of his friend Forese (Purg. XXIII, 40), a Poor Clarenun, who was compelled by her brother, Corse, to leave her convent andmarry Rossellino della Tosa in the expectation that the marriage wouldpromote a political alliance. So sacrificed, the young virgin sister oflofty ideals and delicate spiritual sensibility, experiencedunhappiness, the intensity of which is revealed by the ellipsiscontained in the magic line: "And God doth know what my life became. "Dante addresses Piccarda:

 "'O well-created spirit, who in the rays Of life eternal dost the sweetness taste Which being untasted ne'er is comprehended, Grateful 'twill be to me, if thou content me Both with thy name and with your destiny. ' Whereat, she promptly and with laughing eyes: 'Our charity doth never shut the doors Against a just desire, except as she Who wills that all her court be like herself. I was a virgin sister in the world; And if thy mind doth contemplate me well, The being more fair will not conceal me from thee, But thou shalt recognize I am Piccarda, Who, stationed here among these other blessed, Myself am blessed in the lowest sphere. All our affections, that alone inflamed Are in the pleasure of the Holy Ghost, Rejoice at being of his order formed; And this allotment, which appears so low, Therefore is given us, because our vows Have been neglected and in some part void. ' Whence I to her: 'In your miraculous aspects There shines I know not what of the divine, Which doth transform you from our first conceptions. Therefore I was not swift in my remembrance; But what thou tellest me now aids me so, That the refiguring is easier to me. '" (III, 37. )

Dante, you recall, had found the souls in Purgatory contented with theirlot, though they were enduring great suffering; in Heaven he is eager tolearn in the very beginning whether the Elect are satisfied with thedecree which awards to them happiness in unequal measure. So he asksPiccarda whether she and the other spirits in this lowest sphere are noteager for a higher place. The answer is one of the most touching andbeautiful passages in the poem, summing up in language of radiantgladness the law of Heaven that in "God's will is our peace, " wordswhich Gladstone says "appear to have an unexpressible majesty of truthabout them, to be almost as if they were spoken from the very mouth ofGod. "

 "'But tell me, ye who in this place are happy, Are you desirous of a higher place, To see more or to make yourselves more friends?' First, with those other shades, she smiled a little; Thereafter answered me so full of gladness, She seemed to burn in the first fire of love: 'Brother, our will is quieted by virtue Of charity, that makes us wish alone For what we have, nor gives us thirst for more. If to be more exalted we aspired, Discordant would our aspirations be Unto the will of Him who here secludes us; Which thou-shalt see finds no place in these circles, If being in charity is needful here, And if thou lookest well into its nature; Nay 'tis essential to this blest existence To keep itself within the will divine, Whereby our very wishes are made one; So that, as we are station above station Throughout this realm, to all the realm 'tis pleasing, As to the King, who makes His will our will. And His will is our peace; this is the sea To which is moving onward whatsoever It doth create, and all that nature makes. ' Then it was clear to me how everywhere In Heaven is Paradise, although the grace Of good supreme there rain not in one measure. " (III, 64. )

Piccarda then tells the moving story of her life, how as a girl sheentered the order of St. Clare, only to be torn from the nunnery andgiven into marriage. 

 "A perfect life and merit high in Heaven A lady o'er us, " said she, "by whose rule Down in your world they vest and veil themselves, That until death they may both watch and sleep Beside that Spouse who every vow accepts Which charity conformeth to his pleasure. To follow her, in girlhood from the world I fled, and in her habit shut myself, And pledged me to the pathway of her sect. Then men accustomed unto evil more Than unto good, from the sweet cloister tore me; God knows what afterward my life became. " (III, 97. )

Certain questions interesting to a seeker of truth grow out ofPiccarda's statement and these Beatrice proceeds to solve for theedification of Dante. The first question asks whether in the assignmentto the lowest sphere of souls who violated their vows, there is divineJustice; the second concerns Plato's teaching that souls really comefrom the stars and return thither; the third is about the loss of meritthrough coercion of the will, as exemplified in the case of Piccarda. The solution of these difficulties need not detain us if only weremember Dante's view that "the theories maintained by him in the Heavenof the Moon are intended to manifest, " as Gardner and Scartazzini pointout, "the moral freedom of man and to show that no external thing caninterfere with the soul that is bent upon attaining the end for whichGod has destined it. "

To the next Heaven, the sphere of Mercury, Beatrice and Dante soar moreswiftly than an arrow attains its mark while the bow is still vibrating. Increasing in loveliness as she ascends, Beatrice, in the second realm, radiates such splendor that Mercury itself, apart from its own light, gains such glory from her that it seems to glitter or smile from verygladness. 

 "My lady there so joyful I beheld As unto the brightness of that heaven she entered More luminous thereat the planet grew, And if the star itself was changed and smiled What became I who by my nature am Exceeding mutable in every guise?" (V, 97. )

Greeting the travellers, more than a thousand spirits joyfully exclaim:"Lo, one who shall increase our loves!" The Saints in Mercury thustestify to their delight that one (Dante) has come to be the freshobject of their love, just as it is said that "there shall be joy beforethe angels of God upon one sinner doing penance. " (Luke XV, 10. ) Thesesplendors in Mercury are the souls of those in whose virtue there wasthe alloy of ambition and vainglory--a combination, according to Dante, which makes "the rays of true love less vividly mount upwards. " The poetis addressed by a spirit who bids him ask any question he will andBeatrice confirms the invitation. "Speak, speak with confidence andtrust them even as gods. " All eagerness for knowledge, Dante inquires ofthe friendly splendor who he is and why he is in this particular Heaven. 

The story told by the spirit of Emperor Justinian is a brief sketch ofhis own life, with reference to his conversion from heresy by PopeAgapetus, to the victories of his general, Belisarius, and to his owngreat work of the codification of the Roman law. He then traces thehistory of Rome from the time of Æneas to the thirteenth century, bentupon showing that the Roman Empire, as a world-power over governmentsand peoples, is divine in its institution and providentially protectedin its course. Two facts are adduced in crowning proof of this audaciousstatement, viz. , Christ's choosing to be born and to be registered as asubject of Cæsar and His crucifixion under Tiberius, acting throughPontius Pilate as the divinely constituted instrument of eternal justiceexercised by the Heavenly Father against His Son, at once the victim ofsin and its atonement. 

Dante enlarges on this point in his Monarchia. "If the Roman Empire didnot exist by right, the sin of Adam was not punished in Christ.... If, therefore, Christ had not suffered by the sentence of a regular judge, the penalty would not have been properly punished; and none could be aregular judge who had not jurisdiction over all mankind, for all mankindwas punished in the flesh of Christ, who 'hath borne our infirmities andcarried our sorrows, ' as said the prophet Isaias. And if the RomanEmpire had not existed by right, Tiberius Cæsar, whose vicar was PontiusPilate, would not have had jurisdiction over all mankind. " To us boththe argument and its conclusion are wholly indefensible. It seems indeeda mockery and a blasphemy to attribute to such a monster as TiberiusCæsar glory because Christ was crucified in his reign. Dante's words, however, as spoken by Justinian, leave no room for doubt that the poetwas convinced that all the ancient celebrity of Rome was insignificantas compared to the glory that would come to it because it would carryout the crucifixion of Christ. 

 "But what the standard that has made me speak Achieved before, and after should achieve Throughout the mortal realm that lies beneath, Becometh in appearance mean and dim If in the hand of the third Cæsar seen With an eye unclouded and affection pure Because the living Justice that inspires me Granted it, in the hand of him I speak of The glory of doing vengence for its wrath. " (VI, 82. )

Shining among the splendors of Mercury is a spirit who, though he wasnot a lawmaker like Justinian, attained earthly renown by arranging themarriages of four Kings. Known by the name of Romeo, a word meaning apilgrim of Rome, this man came a stranger to the Court of RaymondBerenger, Court of Provence, multiplied the income without lessening thegrandeur of his master and brought about the marriages to royalty of thefour daughters of the household--Margaret to St. Louis of France, Eleanor to Henry III of England, Sanzia to Richard, Earl of Cornwall(brother of Henry III), elected King of the Romans, Beatrice to Charlesof Anjou, later by Papal investiture, King of Naples. Charged by jealousbarons with having wasted his master's goods, Romeo established hisinnocence and then departed as he came, on a mule and with a pilgrim'sstaff. From affluence he goes a-begging and this is so much like Dante'sown case that the poet's sympathy goes out to the calumniated man, andhe says with touching simplicity:

 "If the world could know the heart he had In begging bit by bit his livelihood, Though much it laud him, it would laud him more. " (VI, 140. )

Justinian's words as to the crucifixion of Christ suggest to Dante thisquestion: Why was man's redemption effected by the death of Christ uponthe Cross rather than by some other mode? Investing the argumentativepropositions of St. Thomas with poetic beauty, Dante shows that whileGod might have freely pardoned man without exacting any satisfaction, on the hypothesis that He had chosen to restore mankind to His favor andat the same time to require full satisfaction as a condition of pardonand deliverance, there was only one way for the accomplishment of thisreconciliation and that was by the atonement of One who was both God andMan. For sin, inasmuch as it is an act against the Infinite Being, requires a satisfaction of infinite value. Man being finite is incapableof adequately making such satisfaction. But the Word was made flesh thatby His atonement on the Cross Mercy would be declared and Justice wouldbe satisfied. 

"Your nature, when it sinned in its totality in its first seed, fromthese dignities, even as from Paradise, was parted; nor might they berecovered, if thou look right keenly, by any way save passing one or theother of these fords: either that God, of his sole courtesy, should haveremitted; or that man should of himself have given satisfaction for hisfolly. Man had not power, within his own boundaries, even to rendersatisfaction, since he might not go in humbleness by after-obedience sodeep down as in disobedience he had framed to exalt himself on high; andthis is the cause why from the power to render satisfaction by himselfman was shut off. Wherefore needs must God with his own ways reinstateman in his unmaimed life, I mean with one way or with both the two. Butbecause the doer's deed is the more gracious the more it doth presentus of the heart's goodness whence it issued, the divine Goodness whichdoth stamp the world, deigned to proceed on all his ways to lift you upagain; nor between the last night and the first day was, nor shall be, so lofty and august a progress made on one or on the other, for moregenerous was God in giving of himself to make man able to uplift himselfagain, than had he only of himself granted remission; and all othermodes fell short of justice, except the Son of God had humbled him tobecome flesh. " (VII, 85. )

From Mercury to Venus the ascent has been so rapid that Dante is unawarethat he has reached the third Heaven until he sees the greaterloveliness of Beatrice represented by her greater radiance. As ascent ismade heavenward it will also be found that the spirits are seen not ashuman faces, as was the case in the Heaven of the Moon, but as lightsincreasing in intensity and manifesting a movement of greater speed tothe accompaniment of diverse music. It is necessary to keep in mind thisplan of the poet lest thinking the lovely lights, and lovely sounds andlovely movements are only terms descriptive of physical, thoughimpalpable phenomena, we lose the deep and beautiful symbolism that isthe magic secret of the seraphic poesy of the Paradiso. Of thebrilliancy and movement of the spirits of the Sphere of Venus--spiritswho in this life failed in Christian ideals because of their amours, Dante says, and his description is that of an expert musiciandistinguishing between the singing of one who sustains the main-themeand that of other voices rising and falling in subordination to theprincipal melody:

 "And as within a flame a spark is seen, And as within a voice discerned, When one is steadfast, and one comes and goes, Within that light beheld I other lamps Move in a circle, speeding more and less, Methinks in a measure of their inward vision. From a cold cloud descended never winds, Or visible or not, so rapidly They would not laggard and impeded seem To any one who had those lights divine Seen come towards us, leaving the gyration Begun at first in the high Seraphim. And behind those that most in front appeared Sounded 'Osanna!' so that never since To hear again was I without desire. Then unto us more nearly one approached, And it alone began: 'We all are ready Unto thy pleasure, that thou joy in us. 

 We turn around with the celestial Princes, One gyre and one gyration and one thirst, To whom thou in the world didst say, "Ye who, intelligent, the third heaven are moving;" And are so full of love, to pleasure thee A little quiet will not be less sweet. '" (VIII, 16. )

The speaker discloses himself to be Charles Martel, once titular King ofHungary, who on the occasion of a nineteen days' visit to Florence, formed an intimate friendship with the poet. For the latter'sedification the spirit expounds the problem: Why from the same parents, children grow up different in disposition, talent and career, a problemjust as interesting to the twentieth as the thirteenth century. Weaccount for the difference according to the principles of variation, heredity and environment, but to stellar influence intent upon securingthe fulfillment of the law of individuality, was the differenceattributed by the medieval mind, which regarded the stars and planetsnot as soulless spheres, but as orbs palpitating with the life ofangelic intelligences and radiating their influence upon the people ofthe earth. 

Hence it was held that the Heavens affected the diversity of thecharacters of children who otherwise would be cut out the exact patternof their parents. "The begotten nature would ever take a course like itsbegetters, did not divine provision overrule. " (VIII, 136. ) Thenecessity for diversity in man's life is deduced from the fact that insociety men are providentially destined for different vocations. "Wherefore is one born Solon (a legislator), another Xerxes (a soldier), another Melchisedech (a priest), and the man who soaring through thewelkin lost his son. " (Daedalus, the typical mechanician. ) But stellarinfluence always controlled by man's free will is often ignored, especially when we put into the sanctuary one who should be on thebattle field and when we gave a throne to him whose right place is inthe pulpit. 

 "And if the world below would fix its mind On the foundation which is laid by nature, Pursuing that, 't would have the people good. But you into religion wrench aside Him who was born to gird him with the sword, And make a king of him who is for sermons; Therefore your footsteps wander from the road. " (VIII, 142. )

The next four spheres being beyond the earth's shadow are for spiritswhose virtue was undimmed by human infirmity and whose place in eternallife is consequently one of greater vision and bliss. In the first ofthese higher spheres, the Sphere of the Sun, the fourth Heaven, Dantesees the spirits of great theologians and others who loved wisdom--greatteachers of men. Around him and Beatrice, as their center, twelve ofthem appear in one circle and twelve in another, while behind thosedazzling splendors of spirits are other vivid lights probablyrepresenting authors whom the poet had not read or comprehended orsymbolizing the men of science, the lovers of wisdom, who in the futureby their discoveries would add to our knowledge of truth. As one of thebasic truths of Revelation is the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, herein the Heaven of the Doctors the dogma is made prominent by specialfrequency of reference and symbolism. The Creation, as an act of theThree Divine Persons, is mentioned in lines of exquisite grace:

 "Looking into His Son with all the Love Which each of them eternally breathes forth The primal and unutterable Power Whate'er before the mind or eye revolves With so much order made, there can be none Who thus beholds, without enjoying it. " (X, 1. )

Not only by thought, but by dancing, is the same truth expressed: "thoseburning suns round about us whirled themselves three times. " (X, 76. )Again in song they proclaim the mystery of the Holy Trinity:

 "The One and Two and Three who ever liveth And reigneth ever in Three and Two and One Not circumscribed and all circumscribing Three several times was chanted by each one Among those spirits, with such melody That for all merit it were just reward. " (XIV, 27. )

In this Heaven we hear the eulogy of St. Francis of Assisi pronouncedby a Dominican and the praises of St. Dominic sung by aFranciscan--consummate art that is an indirect invitation to thetwo orders of monks upon earth to avoid jealousy and to practice mutualrespect. It has been said that these narratives give us the essence ofwhat constitutes true biography, viz. , a picture of the spiritualelement in man drawn in such words as ever to command the understandingand elicit the respect of the reader of every period. The first speakeris St. Thomas Aquinas, and his reference to the mystical marriage of St. Francis and Lady Poverty will be the better understood if we have beforethe mind's eye Giotto's painting which hangs over the tomb of thefounder of the Franciscans. The figures in the pictures are describedby Gardiner (Ten Heavens, p. 113): Christ, standing upon a rock, unitesSt. Francis to his chosen bride, who is haggard and careworn, clothed inragged and patched garments, barefooted and girded with a cord. Rosesand lilies spring up behind her and encircle her head; she wears theaureole and has wings, though weak; but thorns and briars are around herfeet. Hope and Love are her bridesmaids; Hope clothed in green withuplifted hand and Love with flame-colored flowers and holding a burningheart. A dog is barking at the Bride and boys are assaulting her withsticks and stones, but all around are bands of angelic witnesses, theirflowing raiment and mighty wings glowing with rainbow hues. In thesedays when money seems the ideal of thousands, Poverty, whose mysticalappeal is so glowingly painted, still speaks to great numbers of men andwomen who give up material comforts and ease to embrace as monks andnuns the state of voluntary poverty. Let us now hear how St. Thomasrecounts the life and work of St. Francis of Assisi:

 "He was not yet much distant from his rising, When his good influence 'gan to bless the earth. A dame, to whom one openeth pleasure's gate More than to death, was 'gainst his father's will, His stripling choice; and he did make her his, Before the spiritual court, by nuptial bonds, And in his father's sight: from day to day, Then loved her more devoutly. She, bereaved Of her first husband, slighted and obscure, Thousand and hundred years and more, remain'd Without a single suitor, till he came. There concord and glad looks, wonder and love, And sweet regard gave birth to holy thoughts, So much that venerable Bernard first Did bare his feet, and, in pursuit of peace So heavenly, ran, yet deem'd his footing slow. O hidden riches! O prolific good! Egidius bares him next, and next Sylvester, And follow, both, the bridegroom: so the bride Can please them. Thenceforth goes he on his way The father and the master, with his spouse, And with that family, whom now the cord Girt humbly: nor did abjectness of heart Weigh down his eyelids, for that he was son Of Pietro Bernardone, and by men In wondrous sort despised. But royally His hard intention he to Innocent Set forth; and, from him, first received the seal On his religion. Then, when numerous flock'd The tribe of lowly ones, that traced _his_ steps, Whose marvelous life deservedly were sung In heights empyreal; through Honorius' hand A second crown, to deck their Guardian's virtues, Was by the eternal Spirit inwreathed: and when He had, through thirst of martyrdom, stood up In the proud Soldan's presence, and there preach'd Christ and his followers, but found the race Unripen'd for conversion; back once more He hasted (not to intermit his toil), And reap'd Ausonian lands. On the hard rock, 'Twixt Arno and the Tiber, he from Christ Took the last signet, which his limbs two years Did carry. Then, the season come that he, Who to such good had destined him, was pleased To advance him to the meed, which he had earn'd By his self-humbling; to his brotherhood, As their just heritage, he gave in charge His dearest lady: and enjoin'd their love And faith to her; and, from her bosom, will'd His goodly spirit should move forth, returning To its appointed kingdom; nor would have His body laid upon another bier. " (XI, 55. )

At the conclusion of this discourse the spirits in both circles, arranged like the concentric circles of a double rainbow, express theirjoy by a gyrating dance and song. 

If St. Francis was "a sun upon the world, " St. Dominic is shown by thenext speaker, St. Bonaventure, to be "a splendor of cherubic delight. ""In happy Callaroga was born the passionate lover of the Christianfaith, the holy champion, gentle to his own, and without mercy to hisenemies. As soon as his soul had been created it was so replete withenergy that, within his mother's womb, it made her a prophetess. Whenthe pledges for his baptism had been given at the sacred font, and heand Faith had become one, dowering each other with salvation, the ladywho had given assent for him, beheld in her sleep the wonderful fruitwhich would one day come of him, and of his heirs. He was named Dominic. I speak of him as the husbandman whom Christ chose to assist Him withHis garden. Of a truth did he seem Christ's messenger and friend, forthe very first inclination which he manifested was to follow the firstpercept which Christ gave. Not for the world, love of which at presentmakes men toil, but for love of the true manna, did he, in short while, become a mighty teacher, such that he set about pruning the vineyard ofthe church, which soon runs wild if the vinedresser be negligent. 

"From the Papal chair which, in former days, was more generous to therighteous poor, not because it has grown degenerate in itself, butbecause of the degeneracy of him who sits upon it, Dominic begged not tobe allowed to dispense to the poor only two or three where six was due, nor sought the first vacant benefice, the tithes of which belong toGod's poor. He begged rather for leave to fight against the erring worldin behalf of the seed of true faith, four and twenty plants of whichencircle you. Then, armed with doctrine and firm determination, togetherwith the sanction of the Papacy, he issued forth like a torrent from onhigh, and on heretics his onslaught smote with greatest force where wasmost resistance. Afterward, from him there burst forth various streamsby which the Catholic garden is watered so that the plants in it arebecoming vigorous. " (XII, 48. )

Transported into the Heaven of Mars Dante is made aware of his ascentthither only by the glow of the ruddy planet, so different from thewhite sheen of the sun. At once he beholds a spectacle far moremarvelous than the circles of dancing lights he has just seen. It fillshim with such wonder and bliss that he falls into an ecstasy and onlyafter that does he look into the eyes of Beatrice, now more lovely thanever. What is the new marvel? A starry cross traversing the sphere--across, the arms and body of which, each like a Milky Way, are made up ofdazzling lights of the souls of those who laid down their lives for theFaith. On the Cross is flashed the blood red image of the Crucified, likewise formed by glowing stars, the souls of Christian warriors. Notstationary do the splendors remain, but through the glittering mass theydart to and fro like motes in a sunbeam that finds its way through ashutter or screen. With eyes amazed the poet now hears such a wondrousmelody that he says: "I was so much enamoured therewith that up to thispoint there had not been anything which bound me with fetters of suchdelight. " (XIV, 128. )

The names of some of the spirits forming the Stellar Cross are madeknown to the poet--Joshua and Judas Maccabaeus, the intrepid heroes ofthe Old Testament, the Christian Knights, Charlemagne and Orlando thePaladin, William of Aquitaine and Rainouart, Godfrey de Bouillon, conqueror of Jerusalem, Robert Guiscard, military executor of PopeHildebrande. 

Darting along the arm of the Stellar Cross and coming to its foot is asplendor who greets Dante with warm affection. This is the spirit of hisgreat-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, who sings the glory of ancientFlorence the better to describe the deterioration of the city in Dante'sday and to censure its people for their civil feuds, corruption andopposition to the Imperial Eagle. Then at Dante's request the crusaderspirit interprets for his descendant the various predictions made to thelatter during his passage through Hell and Purgatory. Evil days willcome upon him (it must be remembered that this prophecy by Cacciaguidais supposed to occur a year or two before Dante's exile), he will beexiled from Florence and will become a homeless wanderer. 

Let him, however, write his poem and declare his vision, no matter ifoffense will be taken by the high ones of the earth. He, having aprophet's work to do, must speak with all the boldness of a prophetwithout fear or dissimulation. The words, while assuring the poet of thesweetness of everlasting fame, bring to his mind, also, the bitternessof the injustice of his exile and suffering, and apparently he harborsthe thought of vengeance upon his enemies. Beatrice, however, checks hisresentment, assuring him that she, so near to God, will assist him--amost beautiful passage showing the relations between her and the poet, whether the words are taken literally as exhibiting her as hisintercessor before the throne of the Most High, or allegoricallyconsidered as declaring that Revealed Truth takes from man the desire ofvengeance and places his case in the hands of Him who has said:"Vengeance is mine, I will repay. " For Dante's spiritual perfection hislovely guide bids him not simply look into her her eyes (allegoricallymeaning not merely to contemplate theological truth) but follow theexample of men sturdy of faith and valiant of deed. The passage herefollows:

 "Now was alone rejoicing in its word That soul beatified, and I was tasting My own, the bitter tempering with the sweet, And the Lady who to God was leading me Said: 'Change thy thought; consider that I am Near unto Him who every wrong disburdens. ' Unto the loving accents of my comfort I turned me round, and then what love I saw Within those holy eyes I here relinquish Not only that my language I distrust, But that my mind cannot return so far Above itself, unless another guide it. Thus much upon that point can I repeat. That, her again beholding, my affection From every other longing was released. While the eternal pleasure, which direct Rayed upon Beatrice, from her fair face Contented me with its reflected aspect, Conquering me with the radiance of a smile She said to me, 'Turn thee about and listen; Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise. Here are blessed spirits that below, ere yet They came to Heaven, were of such great renown That every Muse therewith would affluent be Therefore look thou upon the cross' horns. '" (XVIII, 4. )

Now rising to Jupiter, where appear the spirits of those who upon earthin a signal manner loved and rightly administered justice, Dante isagain made aware of his uplifting by the increased beauty of Beatrice, by the new light different from that of ruddy Mars, which envelopes himand by the perception of his own increase of virtue and power. Here thepoet has recourse to a most ingenious system of symbols to give varietyto his descriptions and doctrine, and so to sustain the interest of thereader. Many hundreds of the souls of the just appear as golden lightsand so group themselves as to spell against the glowing white backgroundof the light of the planet, the maxim from the Book of Wisdom:"_Diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram_" (Love justice ye who judgethe earth. ) Then fade away all the letters except the last one, the M ofterram, M, symbol of Monarchy, and that M stands out in general outlinesomewhat like the Florentine lily, the armorial sign of Florence. Andnow other golden lights come from the Empyrean and transform the M intothe figure of an eagle, the bird of Jove, with outstretched wings. Butthe marvel is only partly revealed, for soon the Eagle speaks and itsvoice, though made up of a thousand voices of the Just, comes forth asingle sound, like a single heat that comes from many brands or the oneodor that is exhaled from many flowers. 

What a startling spectacle it must have been to the mind of thethirteenth century, used to candles as the ordinary means ofillumination, to have visualized before it the blessed spirits in thelight of Heaven, dancing, whirling, circling in perfect harmony andmaking more formal designs to express their bliss by the rapidity oftheir rhythmical movements! Even though exquisitely quaint as thepicture may appear to us, it has been executed so reverently thatcriticism has rarely if ever attacked this conception of our poet. Withlight as his principal material to make known to us the joys of Heaven, he has to paint everything in high light, using no shadows and he solveshis artistic problem by the variety of his "splendors" and by the deepsymbolism of their action. His nine Heavens are not meant to be apicture true to reality of what the Souls in Heaven are doing. Thesenine Heavens, as we said before, are only myths to which from theEmpyrean come forth the Elect in condescension to Dante's sense-boundfaculties, in order to symbolize certain truths. So in this sixth spherethe poet would teach us that the Heaven of Jupiter represents justice onearth and on the screen of this sphere he would put forth by means ofthe Imperial Eagle the arguments he has already advanced in hisMonarchia that the Roman Empire is divine in its origin--that only fromsuch an institution can human justice proceed from civil government. Herepresents unity coming from the Roman Empire by his showing to us theunison with which all the splendors of the Eagle speak in a voiceblended as one sound--clearly also an allegory for the Guelf forces tobecome an integral part of the Universal Monarchy. 

Justice is the quality which this Heaven symbolizes and the Eagle readsin Dante's mind a doubt against the operation of justice and proceeds todispel it. 

 "For saidst thou: 'Born a man is on the shore Of Indus, and is none who there can speak Of Christ, nor who can read, nor who can write; And all his inclinations and his actions Are good, so far as human reason sees, Without a sin in life or in discourse: He dieth unbaptized and without faith; Where is this justice that condemneth him? Where is his fault, if he do not believe?'" (XIX, 70. )

The question is answered both directly and indirectly. The exclusion ofthe virtuous pagan from Heaven is assumed to be an act of injustice "butwho art thou who wouldst set upon the seat to judge at a thousand milesaway with the short sight that carries but a span?" (XIX, 79. ) As ourvery idea of justice comes from God all just and all wise, that thoughtought to assure us that not even the virtuous heathen will be excludedfrom Heaven. Faith indeed is required for salvation, but many havingfaith will be condemned, while many seemingly without it will beadmitted into Heaven. 

 "But look thou, many crying are, 'Christ, Christ'! Who at the judgment will be far less near To him than some shall be who knew not Christ. Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn When the two companies shall be divided, The one forever rich, the other poor. " (XIX, 106. )

The indirect answer to Dante's objection as to the exclusion of thevirtuous heathen from Heaven is given by the poet speaking through thebeak of the Eagle and showing in this Heaven as one of the lights of theEagle itself, the soul of Rhipeus mentioned by Æneas "as above allothers the most just among the Trojans and the strictest observer ofright. " "So now, " says Benvenuto, the fourteenth century lecturer onDante, "our author fitly introduces a pagan infidel in the person ofRhipeus, of whose salvation there would seem the very slightest chanceof all; by reason of the time, so many centuries before the advent ofChrist; by reason of the place, for he was of Troy where exceeding pridewas then paramount; by reason of the sect, for he was a pagan andgentile, not a Jew. Briefly then our author wishes us to gather fromthis fiction--this conclusion, --that even such a pagan of whosesalvation no one hoped, is capable of salvation. "

In the Heaven of Saturn, Beatrice tells the poet that she does not smileout of regard for his human vision not powerful enough to sustain herexcess of beauty. The lovely symphonies of Paradise are also silent forthe same reason. This in effect is a poetical way of saying that thebliss and glory in Saturn are greater than any beatitude in the lowerspheres. 

This seventh Heaven is the Heaven where appear saints distinguished forcontemplation, the principle representatives being St. Peter Damian andSt. Benedict. The latter wrote a treatise in which he likened the ruleof his order to a ladder having twelve rungs by means of which themystic might mount to Heaven. The second rung in that ladder is silence. If Dante was familiar with the Benedictine treatise, the significance ofsilence in Saturn is at once suggested. The figure of a ladder is a verycommon one in mystical theology, which borrows the conception from theexperience of Jacob (Gen. XXVIII, 12). "And he saw in his sleep a ladderstanding upon the earth and the top thereof touching heaven, the angelsalso of God ascending and descending. " To symbolize the truth thatHeaven is to be reached through the Church by means of the contemplationof eternal things Dante now shows us the Golden Ladder, down which gleamso many radiant spirits that it seems as if all the stars of Heaven areapproaching. 

 "Colored like gold, on which the sunshine gleams, A stairway I beheld to such a height Uplifted, that mine eye pursued it not. Likewise beheld I down the steps descending So many splendors, that I thought each light That in the heaven appears was there diffused. " (XXI, 28. )

In the Heaven of the Fixed Stars the triumph of Christ gladdens thewondering eyes of the poet:

"Behold the hosts of Christ's triumphal march and all the fruitharvested by the rolling of these spheres. "

At these words of Beatrice Dante turns and beholds all the saints seenin the other spheres and many other spirits gathered round the God-manto praise Him for the Redemption and Atonement. Christ here revealsHimself in the form of a gorgeous Sun surrounded by those countlessspirits, appearing as lights or flowers. Apparently the poet gets justa momentary glimpse of the glorified humanity of the Saviour. The directrays of the divine splendor cannot long be endured, so, in condescensionto Dante's weakness of vision, a cloudy screen permits the poet tosustain the Vision now irradiating its light on the living, spiritualflowers. 

 "Saw I, above the myriad of lamps, A sun that one and all of them enkindled, E'en as our own doth the supernal sights, And through the living light transparent shone The lucent substance so intensely clear Into my sight, that I sustained it not. 'O Beatrice, thou gentle guide and dear!' To me she said: 'What overmasters thee A virtue is from which naught shields itself. There are the wisdom and the omnipotence That ope the thoroughfares 'twixt heaven and earth For which there erst had been so long a yearning. '" (XXIII, 28. )

After Christ withdraws to the Empyrean the poet finds that he has beenso much strengthened and enlightened by the Vision that increased powerof sight is given to him again to behold the smile of his guide. Shesays to him:

 "Open thine eyes and look at what I am Thou has beheld such things, that strong enough Hast thou become to tolerate my smile. " (XXIII, 46. )

He continues in ecstasy to gaze upon her surpassing beauty until shebids him look upon the "meadow of flowers, " the angels and saints:

 "Why doth my face so much enamor thee, That to the garden fair thou turnest not, Which under the rays of Christ is blossoming? There is the Rose in which the Word Divine Became incarnate; there the lilies are By whose perfume the good way was discovered. " (XXIII, 70. )

The lilies are the apostles, the Rose the Blessed Virgin Mary. "Mary, "says Cardinal Newman, "is the most beautiful flower that ever was seenin the spiritual world. She is the Queen of spiritual flowers andtherefore she is called Rose, for the rose is fitly called of allflowers that most beautiful. " Dante says: "The name of the fair flowerthat I e'er invoke morning and night utterly enthralled my soul to gazeupon the greater fire. " Now with joy the poet sees the coronation by thespirits of Mary, Mystical Rose, and then his eyes follow her as shemounts to the Empyrean in the wake of her divine Son while the gleamingsaints sing her praises in the _Regina Coeli_. 

The eight Heavens through which the poet has come, have been so manystages of preparation for the final vision of Paradise. His eyes havebeen gradually gaining strength by gazing upon miracles of light andbeauty and by seeing truth embodied in many representative forms to fithim finally to see God in His Essence. Before that consummation, however, one more preparatory vision is necessary. The poet must firstsee the symbolic image of God. "What!" you may exclaim, "will Dante beaudacious enough to attempt to picture the Invisible Himself? Grantedthat 'he is all wings and pure imagination' can he hope to image theIncomprehensible Being 'who only hath immortality and inhabiteth lightinaccessible, whom no man hath seen nor can see?' (I Tim. VI, 16). Willhe not defeat his purpose by employing a symbol circumscribing Him whois beyond circumscription?" But the genius of Dante does not fail him inhis daring undertaking, and this is the more remarkable because insteadof selecting as a symbol something infinitely large, he choses somethingatomically small. In the ninth Heaven surrounded by the nine orders ofpure spirits God is represented "as an indivisible atomic Pointradiating light and symbolizing the unity of the Divinity as a fittingprelude to the more intimate vision of the Blessed Trinity which will bevouchsafed in the Empyrean. " "A Point I saw that darted light so sharpno lid unclosing may bear up against its keenness. On that Point dependthe heavens and the whole of nature" (XXXVIII, 16). 

On the appropriateness of this symbol Ozanam makes this interestingcomment: "God reveals Himself as necessarily indivisible andconsequently incapable of having ascribed to Him the abstraction ofquantity and quality by which we know creatures: indefinable, becauseevery definition is an analysis which decomposes the subject defined;incomparable because there are no terms to institute a comparison; sothat one may say, giving the words an oblique meaning, that He isinfinitely little, that He is nothing. But on the other hand, that whichis without extension, moves without resistance; that which is not to begrasped, cannot be contained; that which can be enclosed within nolimits, either actual or logical is by that very fact limitless. Theinfinitely little is then also the infinitely great and we may say thatit is all. " The indivisible atomic Point of intensest light as a symbolof God is indeed a sublime conception of faith and genius that appealsequally to the child, the philosopher and the mystic. 

The supreme thing still necessary for the consummation of Dante'spilgrimage is the Beatific Vision of God. That occurs in the Empyreanwhere symbol gives way to reality, where the Elect are seen no longer informs veiled in light but in the glorified semblance of their earthlybodies, where contemplation gives direct vision of God in His essence. How will the poet, while still in the flesh, endure this vision of theInfinite, Incomprehensible Eternal God? Prepared as he has been by theexperiences of the nine Heavens, he has still further need ofsupernatural assistance. That is now given to him by means of a flashwrapping him in a garment of light, which blinds him and thenilluminates his sight and intellect and enables him to see a morecomplete foreshadowing of truth dissolving into Divine Wisdom. 

The spectacle he now beholds, perhaps suggested to the poet by thepassage from the Apocalypse (XXII, 1). "And he showed me a river ofwater of life, clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and ofthe Lamb, "--the spectacle which now presents itself is that of a riverof light flowing between two banks of flowers and vivid with dartingsparks. The river represents illuminating grace, the sparks angels, theflowers saints. This river of light wherein are reflected the Elect, asverdure and flowers on a hillside are mirrored in a limpid stream atits foot, is poetically represented as having the effect of asacrament. It bestows grace and that grace called _lumen gloriae_, lightof glory, endowing the soul with a faculty beyond its natural needs ormerits, so disposes the soul that it becomes deiform and is renderedcapable of immediate intuition of the Divine Essence. 

 "There is a light above, which visible Makes the Creator unto every creature Who only in beholding Him, has peace. " (XXX, 100. )

Beatrice tells Dante that he must drink his fill of the stupendoussplendor by gazing intently on the river of pure light, so that he maybe able to contemplate the whole unveiled glory and then see Goddirectly. 

As Dante gazes on the illuminating stream it undergoes a marveloustransformation, taking the form of a Rose the center of which is a seaof radiance. 

 "And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me Out of its length to be transformed to round. Then as a folk who have been under masks Seem other than before, if they divest The semblance not their own they disappeared in, Thus into greater pomp were changed for me The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest. " (XXX, 87. )

The two courts of Heaven, angels and saints, are made manifest in theRose which spreads out like a vast amphitheatre the lowest circle ofwhich is wider than the circumference of the sun. Above the center ofthe Rose as the Point of light, is God in all His glory and love, adoredin blissful raptures by the saints who form the petals of the heavenlyflower. Angels with faces aflame, in white garments and with goldenwings fly down to the petals as bees to flowers, bringing God'sblessings to the saints and fly back to God as bees to their hive, carrying the adoration of the Elect. 

Beatrice leads the poet into the center of the Heavenly Rose. 

 "Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odor Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun, As one who silent is and fain would speak, Me Beatrice drew on, and said: 'Behold Of the white stoles how vast the convent is! Behold how vast the circuit of our city! Behold our seats so filled to overflowing, That here henceforward are few people wanting!'" (XXX, 124. )

While Dante gazes on the supernatural spectacle Beatrice slips away totake her place the third seat below the throne of the Blessed Virgin. Ashis guide she has led him to the highest Heaven and has instructed himin all that concerns God and His attributes. Her mission as Revelationor Divine Science being finished, she withdraws and sends St. Bernard tobring the poet into intimate union with the Godhead. 

 "The general form of Paradise already My glance had comprehended as a whole, In no part hitherto remaining fixed, And round I turned me with rekindled wish My lady to interrogate of things Concerning which my mind was in suspense. One thing I meant, another answered me; I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw An Old Man habited like the glorious people. O'er flowing was he in his eyes and cheeks With joy benign, in attitude of pity As to a tender father is becoming. And 'She, where is she?' instantly I said; Whence he: 'To put an end to thy desire, Me Beatrice hath sent from mine own place. And if thou lookest up to the third round Of the first rank, again shalt thou behold her Upon the throne her merits have assigned her. ' Without reply I lifted up mine eyes, And saw her, as she made herself a crown Reflecting from herself the eternal rays. Not from that region which the highest thunders Is any mortal eye so far removed, In whatsoever sea it deepest sinks, As there from Beatrice my sight; but this Was nothing unto me; because her image Descended not to me by medium blurred. " (XXXI, 52. )

St. Bernard, the mystic, celebrating the Blessed Virgin's praises in amarvelous outburst of song, unsurpassed for lyrical beauty, beseechesher intercession that Dante may see God face to face. 

 "Now doth this man, who from the lowest depth Of the universe as far as here has seen One after one the spiritual lives, Supplicate thee through grace for so much power That with his eyes he may uplift himself Higher towards the uttermost salvation. And I, who never burned for my own seeing More than I do for his, all of my prayers Proffer to thee, and pray they come not short, That thou wouldst scatter from him every cloud Of his mortality so with thy prayers, That the Chief Pleasure be to him displayed. Still farther do I pray thee, Queen, who canst Whate'er thou wilt, that sound thou mayst preserve After so great a vision his affections. Let thy protection conquer human movements; See Beatrice and all the blessed ones My prayers to second clasp their hands to thee! The eyes beloved and revered of God, Fastened upon the speaker, showed to us How grateful unto her are prayers devout; Then unto the Eternal Light they turned, On which it is not credible could be By any creature bent an eye so clear. " (XXXIII, 22. )

The prayer is granted. "My vision becoming undimmed, more and moreentered the beam of light which in itself is Truth. " (XXXIII, 52. ) Theveil is removed. He gazes into the limitless depths of the Divinity. Heenjoys the Beatific Vision. 

First he sees by immediate intuition the Divine Essence in its creativepower, the examplar of all substances, modes and accidents united inharmony and love; then he beholds the Creator Himself and all thedivine perfections and all the eternal plans of God. Clear to the poetnow is the truth of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity unveiled incircles of light like rainbows of green, white and red of equalcircumference, the Second being as it were the splendor of the First andthe Third emanating from the two others. Unravelled also is the mysteryof the two natures human and divine, in the divine person of Christ seenin human form in the second luminous circle. But the Vision is so farabove the poet's memory to retain or his speech to express that hecannot find words to make intelligible the splendor he beholds or therapture he experiences. 

"Oh grace abounding, wherein I presumed to fix my look on the eternallight so long that I consumed my sight thereon! Within its depths I sawingathered, bound by love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all theuniverse; substance and accidents and their relations, as thoughtogether fused, after such fashion that what I tell of is one simpleflame. 

"In the profound and shining being of the deep light appeared to methree circles, of three colours and one magnitude; one by the second asIris by Iris seemed reflected, and the third seemed a fire breathedequally from one and from the other. Oh, but how scant the utterance, and how faint, to my conceit! and it, to what I saw, is such that itsufficeth not to call it little. O light eternal who only in thyselfabidest, only thyself dost understand, and to thyself, self-understood, self-understanding, turnest love and smiling! That circling whichappeared in thee to be conceived as a reflected light, by mine eyesscanned some little, in itself, of its own colour, seemed to be paintedwith our effigy, and thereat my sight was all committed to it. 

"To the high fantasy here power failed; but already my desire and willwere rolled--even as a wheel that moveth equally--by the Love that movesthe sun and the other stars. " (XXXIII, 82. )