devoting themselves to the greatest sacrifices and difficulties, not for the sake of worldly advantage, but to be enabled to weep, at the grave of their Redeemer, tears of repentance and gratitude, and to rescue it from the profane hands of the enemies of Christianity.

66

Think as one may of this age. no impartial historian will venture to deny, that it bears the character of gigantic power and boldness, a devotion to the objective interests of the church almost without parallel in history, ruling as it did all the relations of life at the time. And such a wealth of romantic poetry lay in all these events, that one would have been astonished, had Providence not taken care to provide a master-hand to embody them in a worthy manner, in indelible lineaments for all ages. "The owl of Minerva," says a deep thinker, with reference to the relation of philosophy to life, which she represents, commences her flight with the first blush of dawn." The lyre of Apollo, we may add, sounds mellowest and clearest in the cool evening. So the singer of mediæval Catholicism made his appearance, not in the moment of its highest bloom and power, but when the dissolution of the gigantic edifice was visibly approaching, and was filling the friend of the Past with deep sadness, but at the same time calling him to gaze, full of hope, into a better Future. As the setting sun casts his loveliest and softest glance yet once more upon the tops of the mountains, or into the mirror of the ocean, to make his departure more heavily felt, and to waken more lively desire for his return, so the philosophy, theology, and religion of the middle ages, were reflected yet once more before their departure, in a poem fully worthy of its high subject.

We have thus designated the historical stand-point from which we must proceed, if we would reach a proper understanding of the Divine Comedy. It is the swansong of the thirteenth century, and with it, of mediæval Catholicism in the fullness of its world-power.* All the great ideas

* Hence Carlyle's otherwise striking judgment must be corrected accordingly: "Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the thought they lived by, stands here in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian meditation of all good men who had gone before."

of that time, whose vibration was still felt in the fourteenth century, collected themselves in this wonderful work, to receive their poetical consecration, and to represent a picture of human life under the character of Eternity. A thorough knowledge of that age, especially of the scholastic theology and philosophy, is hence indispensably necessary for the full understanding of Dante. One may call him the poetical Thomas Aquinas, who was, so to speak, the Christian Aristotle, and the proper church theologian of the thirteenth century.

We have thought proper to premise thus much before entering upon a consideration of the poem itself. We will now, in the first place, contemplate its external form, then seek to gain a clear conception of its contents and object, and lastly, examine its relation to Catholicism and Protestantism.

I. Dante himself, in accordance with the somewhat strange phraseology of the time, termed his poem a comedy,* partly on account of its contents, commencing as it does in a sad strain, with the contemplation of Hell, and ending joyfully with Paradise; partly also on account of its form, because it is written in the common language of the country, (locutio vulgaris.) Its additional name, "The Divine," has been added by an admiring posterity, also with reference both to its form and contents. It is difficult to decide to what class of poetry it properly belongs. Rosenkranzt regards it as an allegorical poem. Generally, however, it is considered as belonging to epic poetry. Solger calls it a didactic epos.t The materials are certainly not drawn from the subjective feelings as in lyric poetry, but are objective and historical. But on the other hand, this epic matter is not merely a single act or a series of events, but the whole worldhistory, so to speak; and then again, it is

*In his dedicatory letter to Cangrande della Scala, and again in the poem itself, Inf. xvi. 128, per le note di questa commedia ; xxi. 2, la mia commedia.

+Manual of General History of Poetry, Halle, 1832, Part 11. p 221.

"This epos may be called a didactic one, inasmuch as it starts from a scientific, dogmatic standpoint. The most important, however, is the revelation of the idea through the universe, whereby the poem on the whole becomes allegorical, while at the same time it has quite a mystical character, inasmuch as the symbol coincides altogether with the allegory." (Lectures on Esthetics, Leipsig, 1829, p. 293.

survey the course of the great judgment of the world. In doing this he does not permit himself to be influenced by any subjective feelings or personal considerations, but by his conception of Divine Justice alone. Thus, with incorruptible severity, in the fifth Canto of the Inferno, he assigns a place in Hell to the beautiful Francesca of Rimini, who had been guilty of adultery with her brother-in-law, Paolo Malatesta, although he was under great obligations to her friends, and especially her nephew, in whose house he breathed his last. Resolute belief had not yet come to be confounded with the idea of uncharitable bigotry.

In the case of an ordinary mind, the mere thought of such an undertaking would have been considered ridiculous impudence. In a spirit like that of Dante, it is the evidence of a great and noble boldness of genius. The successful execution of the idea proves that Dante had an internal call to such a work, that he acted under a commission from the spirit of history and the Church. In this great picture we meet with the most distinguished personages that flourished before and during the time of Dante, famous either for their vices or their virtues, and who were thus a blessing or a curse to humanity. He leads us in succession by poets and learned men, heroes and conquerors, princes and kings, monks and priests, prelates and popes, as by so many statues of brass; illumines them by the glance of his fancy and the doctrine of the Church; exhibits to us the irreversible result of their life upon earth as the just doom of God; and fills us with horror in view of the sins and punishments of the inhabitants of Hell, with tender sympathy for the penitent in Purgatory, and with an earnest and holy longing for the bliss of the pure and blessed in Paradise. We

may say indeed that a grander theme never entered into the imagination of a poet. But it well suited the character of his age, which, in all its strivings, aimed at the infinite. As little able as our age would be to create the conception of a dome like that of Cologne, or a cathedral like that of Strasburg, so little could it give birth to a "Divina Commedia."

Let us follow the daring poet on the journey which, in spirit and in a vision, he made through the other world. We will

tarry longest in Hell, because this part of the poem has generally been considered the best.

Two

He commenced his journey in the year 1300, at the dawn of a new century, in the middle of his life,* that is, in his thirty-fifth year; for in Psalm xc. 10, the extent of human life is said to be threescore years and ten. The day was Good Friday, the day of the death of our Lord. days he spent in Hell, precisely as long as Christ remained in spirit in the lower world, according to Thomas Aquinas, who for this purpose combined the two passages, Luke xxiii. 43 and 1 Pet. iii. 19. He needs one day to pass from Hell to Purgatory. On Easter morning he again rises to the light, in four days of toiling ascends the mountain of Purgatory, and flies through Paradise in one day. The duration of the whole journey then is eight days, which Dante, by a significant fiction, has distributed into the week of our Lord's passion and resurrection.

The poet transports us first into a gloomy forest, which is to represent the human heart as lying in sin and error, and at the same time the condition of the world in the age of Dante. With the dawn of day he reaches its end, and seeks now to ascend mountain illumined by the sun, the symbol of divine revelation, but in vain, for he is confronted and driven back by three animals, a deceitful leopard, a haughty lion, and a ravenous wolf. These are intended to represent three sins, which, besides being actualized in every human heart, were also prominently displayed in the chief powers of that age; namely, Cunning, which had its seat then especially in Florence, Violence, which was then threatening the Church from the direction of France, from Philip IV., and Avarice, which had its seat in Rome, in the worldly-minded and domineering popes, such as Boniface VIII. According to this, the allegory has not only a moral but also a historical sense.§ Just as the poet is about

* Inf. i, 1.

Inf xxi. 112. The subject of the determination of the dates of the poem has been fully investigated by Kannegieser, in his German translation of the Divina Commedia, Vol. I. p. lviii.

Doubtless he had in mind here the passage in Jeremiah v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evening shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities."

§ Dante himself distinguishes between the literal

turning back again into the gloomy forest, the singer of the Æneid, sent by Beatrice, suddenly appears to him, predicts, under the form of a grayhound, a reformer in the Church, and invites him to make a journey through Eternity in his company. He himself would attend him through Hell and Purgatory, in order to view in the first the terrible consequences of sin, and in the second the voluntary sufferings of those who desired to escape the wrath of God and to be saved. Through Paradise he should be conducted by a worthier spirit, Beatrice herself.

Dante determines to undertake the journey, under the guidance of his honored master Virgil. Passing through a portal, over which the meaning of Hell and the doom of its inhabitants is inscribed in fearfully sublime characters, they reach the domain of Hell itself. This, according to Dante, is situated in the centre of the earth. In this respect he followed the view of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the prevailing conceptions of his Church, which probably arose from taking in its literal sense the article of the Apostolic Creed, descendit ad inferos. Besides, he could not well devise any other locality for Hell, since he held the Ptolemaic view of the world, that the earth formed the centre of the universe, and that all the bodies by which it was surrounded belonged to one of the different heavenly regions. In like manner he gives Purgatory and Paradise also a definite locality, as we shall see hereafter. This is plainly in much better accordance with the nature of poetry, which should always give us concrete views, than the method chosen by Milton, who removes his spiritual scenes into an undefined and abstract infinitude, in which the fancy speedily tires, like a bird on the ocean, that, wearied by his flight, finds no

and spiritual sense of his poem, and divides this latter again into an allegorical one, (in a narrower sense of the term,) which has reference to Faith, amoral one, which has reference to Love or Christian Action, and an anagogical one, which has reference to Hope.

Littera gesta refert, quid credas, allegoria
Moralis, quid agas, quid speres, anagogia.
(See his letter to Cangrande.)

The fact that the poem is intended to convey so many different meanings makes it difficult to be understood, and injures its simplicity and naturalness, but is in accordance with the spirit of that age, and especially its theology.

resting place for his feet. Hence, with all the undeniable sublimity, the tiresomeness also of the poetry of Milton and Klopstock, whom few even of their most enthusiastic admirerssucceed in reading through; while Dante keeps the fancy constantly enchained in a lively interest by the fixed and clearly defined outline of his figures.

As

The shape of Hell is that of a vast funnel, constantly narrowing, its apex standing exactly in the central point of the earth. The inside of this funnel, or invert-' ed cone, consists of different circular terraces, which, with the increasing depth, also grow narrower and narrower. These terraces are occupied by sinners, according to the grade' of their wickedness; the lowest place of all, the apex of the funnel, being assigned to the Devil. This form of Hell corresponds with the nature aud progress of sin, which consists in ever narrowing and contracting selfishness. the number of slight and ordinary sinners is larger than that of great transgressors, the upper circles are broader and more densely crowded. It is also very expressive, that over these regions of Hell there reigns a constant darkness,* growing denser with the depth. Still, a faint gleam of light overspreads the gloomy terraces; and the lower portions are illumined by the unquenchable fire, but only to increase the horror of the damned, by rendering their misery mutually visible. Thomas Aquinas also permits the inhabitants of Hell to see their misery sub quadam umbrositate.

In consequence of the deep meaning of the number three, reaching as it does even to the lower world, Dante divides Hell into three regions, each one comprising three of the before-mentioned circular terraces, so that it consists on the whole of nine circles; to which must be added also a preliminary circle, the vestibule of Hell. The different regions are separated

See Matt. viii. 12.

† Comp. Mark ix. 44, Matt. iii. 12.
Milton too sings:

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace, flam'd; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible,
Serv'd only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.

PAR LOST, Book I. v. 61. et seq.

from one another by the windings of a large stream, which flows in circles through Hell. Of these circular windings there are four. The first, separating the forecourt from Hell properly so called, is the joyless Acheron, the second the marshy Styx, the third the burning Phlegethon, and the fourth the cold Čocytus. The stream ends at last in an icy lake, in the centre of which sits the Devil. This is probably intended to represent the stream of Belial, mentioned in 2 Sam. xxii. 5, as encompassing the dead in Hell. It rises, according to Dante, in the island of Crete, from the confluence of all the tears which the human race has ever wept in consequence of sin, and will yet weep during the different ages of its existence, which increase in wickedness, and find their representatives in these four streams.

In the division of the sins our poet follows Aristotle, who divides the bad into three classes, namely, incontinence, (dxgadía,) wickedness, (xaxía,) and violence or beastly wildness, (Ongións).* But, in accordance with his Christian stand-point, Dante differs from Aristotle in that he places wickedness, or as he terms it, cunning, (froda,) lowest in the scale. The first kind of sin, that of incontinence, is human; the second, violence, is bestial; the third, cunning, is demoniacal. Each of these genera comprises again a number of distinct species. Under incontinence, for example, he ranks licentiousness, avarice, prodigality, wrath, &c.; under violence he includes murder, blasphemy, &c.; under cunning especially the different forms of treachery.

The punishments of the damned are, according to Dante, not only spiritual but bodily also. The spiritual punishments consist chiefly in an impotent hatred towards God, in envying the happy condition of the blessed, in dissensions among themselves, and in a continual lust for sin without the power or prospect of satisfying it. This everlasting torment also expresses itself externally, and Dante loves most to tarry in describing these bodily punishments. In doing this, he follows in general the principle laid down in Wisdom xi. 17, "Wherewithal a man sinneth, by

* Ethics, vii. 1.

the same also shall he be punished." A similar thought was supposed to be implied in the assertion of our Lord: "With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.' Mark iv. 24; Luke vi. 38. Sin itself, in the other world, is the punishment of sin. Sinners flee from the punishment but desire the sin; the desire is present, but its satisfaction unattainable; the desire itself has become a tormenting sting. This general idea of the close connection between sin and the form of its punishment is, however, carried out, not in à pedantic and literal, but in a very free and manifold way. The lazy, for example, roll themselves about in mire; the licentious are driven to and fro by a storm-wind; the irascible smite each other in the muddy Styx; the Archbishop Ruggieri, who upon earth had denied food to Count Ugolino, is doomed to have his head chewed constantly by him in Hell.

a

Our limited time will not permit us to tarry separately in the different circles of Hell. Dante has here brought together a variegated mass of pictures from all ages and ranks. Poets, learned men, philosophers, heroes, princes, emperors, monks, priests, cardinals, and popes-in short, all that truth and history, poetry and mythology, have been able to afford of distinguished sins and vices, he causes to pass before us, living, speaking, and suffering; until overcome with fear and horror, we feel compelled to bow ourselves in deep reverence before the judgment-seat of that just God, to whom every sin is an abomination. There is opened here to the careful reader a wide field of the most interesting historical, psychological, metaphysical, theological, and edifying observations. We shall be able only, by the way of example, to contemplate the beginning and the end of Hell, the lightest and the heaviest sins, before passing over to Purgatory.

In front of Hell properly so called, in its vestibule or outer court, Dante very characteristically places the indifferent, those lukewarm, honorless souls who have no desire for the good and no courage for the bad, who live rather like the irrational and slavish vegetable and animal world, and on this account are rejected alike of Heaven and Hell. As companions, he assigns them those angels who in the great original apostacy remained neutral.