that is, as already said, of God's "strength," which, made perfect in his weakness, transformed his very fault into a saving grace. Finally, his association with Folquet and the heaven of Venus may be insinuated in Folquet's remark: Ma perchè le tue voglie tutte piene Ten porti, che son nate in questa spera, In other words, Dante's "will and desire" are moved in perfect accord with divine love, caritas in patria; but the grade of his charity is indicated by association with the earth-shadowed heaven of Venus. If thus his future rank among the blest is comparatively modest, among men he goes possessed of another grace "freely given," that is, altogether independent of his own merit, which makes him. an inspired instrument of God. God has revealed himself to him; and by that revelation he is given the gift of prophecy, both foreseeing and far-seeing, that is, capable both of predicting future contingencies 86 and of interpreting things beyond sense. Moreover, with that gift is given also the ancillary gift, or grace, of "discourse," the "bello stile " in which Virgil had indeed been his human master,87 but now he follows the dictation of a power greater than any human art, namely, of holy Love,88 which, in the last analysis, is but the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, who is Love.89 Dante of course has already experienced this forgetfulness of his past fault after immersion in Lethe. Purg. xxxiii, 91-96. 84 Ib. 103-105. 85 Par. ix, 109-111. E. g., the coming triumph of the Veltro. 87 Inf. i, 85-87. 88 Purg. xxiv, 52-54. St. Thomas, S. T. I, xxxvii. Cf. ib. II-II, clxxvii, 1, 1m: “. . . Spiritus Sanctus excellentius operatur per gratiam sermonis id, quod potest ars operari inferiori modo." In connection with the above definition of Dante's claim of the gift of prophecy, cf. Ib. II-II, clxxi-clxxvii. 90 In spite of these distinctions, the question presses for answerDid Dante-not the protagonist of the Comedy, but the actual Dante Alighieri who wrote the Comedy,-experience the mystic vision of God, or think so? Of course, to such a question a categorical yes or no is impossible. At most, we can only urge probabilities. To my mind, the gravest objection to taking Dante at his apparent word is the apparently total absence of contemporary acceptance of, or even interest, in the matter. If a man of Dante's position and note had seriously put forward a claim not uncommon among mystics, we should hardly expect the conspiracy of silence that exists. His own son, Pietro, in his commentary frankly calls the literal story of the Comedy a "poetic fiction," (ficta poesia). It seems unlikely that he could so misconceive so tremendous an experience of his own father's. Without pretending demonstrative certainty, I would offer a compromise view. Feeling himself moved by a strong spirit of charity actualized by the influence of Beatrice, Dante would have theological justification for believing himself given in consequence the gifts of the Holy Spirit." Principal among the gifts of the Holy Spirit are intelligence and wisdom, possessing which man "by a certain connaturalness" has cognition of divine things, not by discursive reason merely, but by a "divine instinct" above reason and participant in the intuitive faculty of separate, or angelic, intelligences. The terminus ad quem of this intuitive cognition of divine things is the beatific vision, or intuitive cognition of the supremely divine thing, God. Dante's "poetic fiction," then, would 92 Mr. E. G. Gardner in his Dante and the Mystics, finds more positively affirmative grounds in the Epistle to Can Grande than I can quite accept. Unquestionably, assuming the rôle of his protagonist, Dante writes as if he had had the vision. "... qui charitatem habet, omnia dona Spiritus Sancti habet, quorum nullum sine charitate haberi potest." St. Thomas, S. T. I-II, lxviii, 5, c. "... Sapientia, quae est donum, causam quidem habet in voluntate, scilicet charitatem, sed essentiam habet in intellectu, cujus actus est recte judicare." St. Thomas, S. T. II-II, xlv, 2, c. “... sapientia dicitur intellectualis virtus, secundum quod procedit ex judicio rationis: dicitur autem donum, secundum quod operatur ex instinctu divino." Ib. I-II, lxviii, 1, 4m. ". . . quamvis cognitio humanae animae proprie sit per viam rationis, est tamen in ea aliqua participatio illius simplicis cognitionis quae in substantiis superioribus invenitur." De ver. xv, 1, meo. 66 be to represent his protagonist as possessing to its human limit a gift of the Holy Spirit actually possessed by himself, but in lower degree. Such is his procedure with all his principal characters,except indeed with the Virgin Mary, who needs no such enlargement of function. But Beatrice, who represents divine charity, caritas in patria, for him, is conceived as representing divine charity in itself. Lucia, the light-bringer to darkened eyes, be"intellectual light" itself. Virgil, the poet of a perfectly rational philosophy and unwitting prophet of Christ, becomes Reason itself made the instrument of God by the infusion of grace freely given," but without the "grace making acceptable." Cato, martyr to self-freedom, stands for the very principle of Free Will. And so it is with the rest. Now one man actually fulfilled the requirements for making the human comedy of salvation perfect, who in this life rose out of the uttermost depths of spiritual misery to the uppermost heights of spiritual felicity. That man was of course St. Paul. And Dante, always imaginatively sensitive to analogies and correspondences more or less mystical, discovered many such between his own spiritual experiences and those of the Apostle, enough at least to justify his asking, What man so worthy to represent St. Paul as Dante? even as he had asked, What man so worthy to represent God as Cato ?93 But his poetically affirmative answer in his own case no more meant that he regarded himself as the actual peer of St. Paul than that his affirmative answer in Cato's case meant that he regarded Cato the actual peer of God. In conclusion, it may be again noted that that which, as Dante said, gave "perfection" to his exordium-declaration of the beatific vision-gave also perfection, in the same literally rhetorical sense, to his " comedy" as such. It is altogether incorrect therefore to define the hero of the poem as allegorically signifying typical Man, as, for instance, does the hero of Everyman or Bunyan's Christian. The "Dante" of the Comedy, on the contrary, 94 23 Conv. IV, xxviii, 121-123. 94 Cf. Paget Toynbee, Concise Dante Dictionary, s. n: Dante': "... Dante, as he appears in the poem, represents in the literal sense the Florentine Dante Alighieri; in the allegorical, Man on his earthly pilgrimage; in the moral, Man turning from vice to virtue; in the anagogical, the Soul passing from a state of sin to that of glory." represents, not mean humanity, but progressively the whole potentiality of human nature from worse than brute to equal with angel. Or, in other words, the character is an example, not of Man as he normally is, but of Man as he may by perversion of free will, or by the grace of omnipotent God, extraordinarily become. And the Comedy of Dante is that, in the beginning a potential demon, he was raised by love of the perfectly loving Beatrice to connaturalness with her, the actual peer of angels. Columbia University. 96 Cf. Conv. III, vii, 69-88. This assimilating power of love is clearly stated by Albertus Magnus: ". . . est enim amor amantis et amati quasi quaedam unio potissimum in bonis, et naturaliter illud quod amatur, in sui naturam suum convertit amatorem." De laudibus b. Mariae Virginis, IV, xvii, 1. DANTE'S SCHEME OF HUMAN LIFE By ERNEST H. WILKINS My purpose in this study is not to contribute new conclusions, but to emphasize, and perhaps to clarify, by the assembling of related passages, by tabulation, and by brief comment, certain fundamental elements of Dante's thought. Two extensive statements dealing with the joy possible to man during his life on earth appear in the Convivio, Book IV, Chapters XVII and XXII, as follows:1— ... ... ... Dov'è da sapere che propriissimi nostri frutti sono le morali Virtù; perocchè da ogni canto sono in nostra podestà, e queste diversamente da diversi Filosofi sono distinte e numerate. Ma perocchè in quella parte dove aperse la bocca la divina sentenza d'Aristotile, da lasciare mi pare ogni altrui sentenza, volendo dire quali queste sono, brievemente, secondo la sua sentenza, trapasserò di quelle ragionando. Queste sono undici virtù dal detto Filosofo nomate . . . Fortezza ... Temperanza . . . Liberalità .. Magnificenza ... Magnanimità . . . Amativa d'onore ... Mansuetudine... Affabilità... Verità... Eutrapelia . . . Giustizia ... E queste sono quelle che fanno l'uomo beato, ovvero felice, nella loro operazione, siccome dice il Filosofo nel primo dell' Etica, quando difinisce la Felicitade, dicendo che Felicità è operazione secondo virtù in vita perfetta. Bene si pone Prudenza, cioè Senno, per molti essere morale Virtù; ma Aristotile dinumera quella intra le intellettuali, avvegnachè essa sia con· ducitrice delle morali Virtù, e mostri la via per che elle si compongono e senza quella essere non possono. Veramente è da sapere che noi potemo avere in questa vita due Felicità, secondo due diversi cammini, buono e ottimo, che a ciò ne menano: l'una è la vita Attiva, e l' altra la Contemplativa. La quale (avvegnachè per l' Attiva si pervegna, come detto è, a buona Felicità) ne mena a ottima Felicità e beatitudine, secondochè prova il Filosofo nel decimo dell' Etica. E Cristo l'afferma colla sua bocca nel Vangelo di Luca . . . [Dante here at some length interprets the words of Christ to Martha as indicating the goodness of the active life and the superior excellence of the contemplative.] Potrebbe alcuno però dire, contro a me argomentando: poichè la Felicità della vita Contemplativa è più eccellente che quella dell' Attiva, e l' una e l'altra possa essere e sia frutto e fine di Nobiltà, perchè non anzi si procedette per la via delle Virtù intellettuali che delle morali? A ciò si può brievemente rispondere, I quote from the Oxford Dante. |