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of Beatrice shall stand before men as the synonym of whatever is inspiring in love and ennobling in womanhood. The passion of boyhood followed her to the heavenly abode in which he fancied her, and waxed with years into a most ideal and spiritual influence until it finally ripened in the poet's heart through long and laborious study, into the fulfilment of his early promise "to say of her what was never said of any woman.”1 This spiritualized type of womanhood stands out unique in the whole range of literature. It is Dante's own creation; rather it is the creation of the Christianity that reveres and honors the Virgin Mother. Love was the actuating principle of the poet's life. Not love of woman only, but love of country, love of study, love of religion; and not simply love, but love enlightened and strengthened by a Faith that pierces the veil of the visible and transient and beholds the regions of the spiritual and eternal.'

Dante's love for the religion of his birth grew in him into a passion. Neither the Guelf hatred of his youth, nor the Ghibelline hatred of his later years, against the persons of several Popes, ever for a moment obscured his mind to the truth of the doctrines of the Church or the sacred office of the Papacy. In his view, the greatness of ancient Rome was decreed solely to render it worthy of being the Holy Place in which should sit the successors of the great Fisherman.3 The mystical vine of the Church still grows, and Peter and Paul who died for it still live. He holds by that Church; he begs Christians not to be moved, featherlike, "by every wind of doctrine." "You have," he tells them, "the Old Testament and the New, and the Pastor of the Church who guides you; let this suffice for your salvation." With this profound respect for the Church, he loved her ceremonies, her dogma, her teachings, her institutions. He to whom the heavens and all that they contain were symbols of the spiritual essences they veil, could not fail to grasp the poetry and the meaning of every prayer and ceremony and office of that Church who, through whatever is in and about her temples, speaks eloquently to men in sign and symbol. There is not a stone in her cathedrals that has not its mystical meaning; there is not a garment with which her priest vests himself that is

1 Vita Nuova, xliii.

2 See N. Tommaseo L'Inferno, Int. p. xlvi.

La quale, e 'l quale, a voler dir lo vero,

Fur stabiliti per lo loco santo,

U' siede il successor del maggior Piero.-Inferno, ii., 22–24.

♦ Pensa che Pietro e Paolo, che moriro

Per la vigna che guasti, ancor son vivi.-Paradiso, xviii., 131-132.

5 Avete 'l vecchio e 'l nuovo Testamento,

E'l Pastor della Chiesa che vi guida :

Questo vi basti a vostro salvamento.-Paradiso, v., 76–78.

not emblematic of some spiritual truth; there is not an anthem or antiphon in her offices that does not help to draw out the beauty and significancy back of it all. "The elements and fragments of poetry," says the Dean of St. Paul's, in his charming monograph, "were everywhere in the Church-in her ideas of life, in her rules and institutions for passing through it, in her preparation for death, in her offices, ceremonial, celebrations, usages, her consecration of domestic, literary, commercial, civic, military, political life, the meanings and ends she had given them, the religious seriousness with which the forms of each were dignified-in her doctrine and her dogmatic system-her dependence on the unseen world-her Bible. From each and all of these, and from that public feeling, which, if it expressed itself but abruptly and incoherently, was quite alive to the poetry which surrounded it, the poet received an impression of greatness and beauty, of joy and dread." How far the poet made use of the impulses emanating from one and all of these influencing agencies is known only to him who has made a complete and thorough study of the great poem embodying their inspirations. For we must not lose sight of the fact that the poem is, in all the grandeur and depth of its mystical meaning, made up of the spirit and doctrine of the Church. The spites and personal animosities are but specks scattered here and there upon the whole surface of crystalline beauty. Shining out in pristine splendor is the Spiritual Sense. Let us now glance at the philosophy and doctrine underlying that Sense.

VI.

There is a common ground on which meet all supreme intelligences. It is the region of the Ideal. It is ascended only by the long and arduous labor of study and thought. There meet poetry and philosophy in their highest soarings. They meet and converse and stand upon the footing of mutual understanding. Poetry is permeated by the philosophic spirit, and philosophy dons the garb of poetry. Few are the souls assembled upon that supreme height. Plato and Virgil dwell there; so do Shakespeare and Goethe. And, consummate singer, profound philosopher and skilled theologian, by every right and title, as being each and all of these, there also is the home of Dante. Sweetest of singers, he is at the same time profoundly scientific; his mental vision sees the nicest intricacies and the most delicate distinctions; eminently religious, he also gathers up the fragments of ancient mythologies and ancient systems that he finds stranded upon his age, and pieces them to1 Rev. R. W. Church, Dante, p. 111.

2 "Dante cristiano, cristianissimo sempre nel Poema e in tutte le opere; Dante Cattolico sempre. "-Balbo Vita, Lib., ii. Cap. ii., p. 232.

gether, giving them deeper import in the light of the Christian mysticism in which he is immersed. "He brought back," says Gioberti, "the Gentile mythology and symbolism to their source, rendering them anew esoteric and poetic." He made them wholly subordinate to the Christian spirit, and by means of them conveyed practical lessons that are balm to the weary and drink to the thirsty. In like manner did he treat the science of his day. He made it the handmaid of the great spiritual truths he would impart. For this reason it is of small moment whether his theories be superseded by others apparently more probable; the moral and spiritual lesson still remains, and still speaks to the same human heart and the same human aspirations. So also did he make use of allegory.

Allegory there was before the time of Dante. Vision, too, was there. Such were the visions of Alberic;2 such the vision of Paul3 and many others. The language of allegory and vision was the favorite mode of conveying spiritual advice. But all previous visions and allegories are to the great allegorical vision of Dante what the old plays and stories out of which our own Shakespeare constructed his immortal masterpieces, are to those masterpieces themselves. In the one case and in the other, we may trace phrases and expressions and conceptions and even whole trains of thought to their sources; but to what avail? In the one case and in the other, the master-mind has given to the phrase or sentence a new application and a larger scope, and with grasp of purpose and sureness of aim, has reset sentence and phrase in a sense in which through all time they will be recognized as the ideal form. To achieve this is the exclusive mission of genius. And in a marked degree was this the mission of Dante. Critics find fault with his occasional coarseness of diction. True it is that Dante does not employ words with the view of concealing the image he would portray. His descriptions are always vivid. Whatever there is in his poem that is beautiful or tender-and much there is of beauty and tenderness-he expresses with delicacy and sweetness the most exquisite; but when the poet would describe the loathsome and the horrible, he makes use of language best calculated to leave a loathsome or horrible impression. Critics should not forget that elegance and prettiness of phrase are not grandeur

1 Del Bello, Cap. x., p. 214.

2 Tommaseo. L'Inferno, p. 416. Discorso: Altre visioni infernali.

3 Ozanam. Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au XIIIme. Siècle, p. 473.

♦ Ibid., pp. 484-491.

5 Ozanam calls attention to the general analogy between the passage of the soul through the spheres of the Paradiso and the favorite titles of the ascetic treatises of St. Bonaventura: Itinerarium mentis ad Deum; Formula aurea de gradibus virtutem; De vii, itineribus aeternitatis. In loc. cit., p. 335.

and strength; that they are wholly incompatible with grandeur and strength; that if Dante were always elegant and pretty in his phrasings Dante would never have been great or sublime, nor would his poem tower through the vista of the ages one of the grandest monuments of human thought and human skill ever conceived and executed. And the secret of it all lies in the poet's intense earnest

ness.

This earnestness asserts itself throughout the poem chiefly in three lines of thought: 1. A devoted patriot, loving his country, suffering for it, and yearning for its welfare with all the energy of his being, he launches notes of warning and denunciation against its vices, its enemies, and its false friends, and with invective the most scathing vilifies all who seemingly stand between it and its wellbeing. This burning patriotism has made the poem the great national epic. 2. A child of the Church, true and attached, though at times wayward, the poet takes the liberty of a child free-spoken and free to speak, to utter words of censure against what he considers abuses in the external administration of the Church and the policy of her Pontiffs. 3. Finally, Dante's chief mission, the prime motive of his intense earnestness, is the Spiritual Sense underlying his poem. This he has not left to be discovered. He takes the pains to inform the reader. He tells him that leaving aside all subtle investigation, the end and aim of his poem briefly put, both as regards the whole and its parts, is to remove therefrom men living in a state of misery in this life, and lead them to one of happiness.3 This he does upon an ethical basis.

The poet recognizes free-will as the basis of all human responsibility, and the consequent amenability of the soul to reward or punishment: "Inborn in you is the virtue that keepeth counsel and that should guard the threshold of assent. Here is the principle whereto occasion of meriting in you is attached, according as it gathers up and winnows out good or guilty loves." The argument of his poem is man receiving at the hands of Divine Justice his deserts according to the nature of the actions he performs. Man passes from the darkness of sin and the wilderness of error into the light of truth and grace. The poem is a song of emancipation. It chants the break

1 L'Inferno, xxvi., 1-10; Purgatorio, vi., 75-151; Paradiso, xv., xvi. To understand the political aspect of the poem it is essential to read the author's work De Monarchia and some available history of that period, say Villani or Cæsar Cantù. 2 Inferno, xix., 88-117; Paradiso, xviii., 115–136; xxvii., 19-66.

* Sed omissa subtili investigatione, dicendum est breviter, quod finis totius et partis est, removere viventes in hac vita de statu miseriæ, et perducere ad statum felicitatis. Epistola, xi., Ep. ad Kani Grandi de la Scala, 215.

Purgatorio, xviii., 61-66. See the whole of this important passage. Cf. Summa, ii., I, quæst., cxiv., Article 4.

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ing of the bonds of sin, and the passing into the light and freedom of the children of God. It is a song of hope. Evil is indeed mighty, and great is the havoc it plays among souls; but mightier still is God's grace. It is a song of light and life. Its tendency is upward and onward to the triumph of spirit over matter. ever pouring into our souls to the music of

"One clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things." 1

The poem is, therefore, practical. The thought, the energy and the earnestness of the whole age are concentrated upon it. Speculation abounds in it; but it is in order that knowing all the better one may do all the better. The poet is careful to tell us that if he speaks by way of speculation, it is not for the sake of mere barren words, but rather that such may tend to action.' The intellect is made for truth; its ultimate perfection consists in the contemplation of truth. The poet never forgets that true wisdom consists in right-knowing and right-doing.

VII.

In the development of this thought have we the mystical meaning and central idea of the Divina Commedia. It is the drama of human nature sinning, struggling against vice, straining after perfection, and making for the Supreme Good by means of Knowledge and Power: the primary knowledge of one's duties towards oneself, one's neighbor and God, and the larger knowledge of the relation and coördination of those duties in the light of philosophy and theology; the power flowing from this knowledge aided by prayer and grace and the assistance of the unseen, spiritual world.

The element that gives life to the knowledge and makes effective the power, is Love. Love is the inspiration of all knowledge. Without love there can be no philosophy; it is the form-the soul -of philosophy. Be it remembered that philosophy is not, in the intention of Dante, mere speculation. It is an intimate union

1 Tennyson, In Memoriam, I., i.

2 Ep. xi., } 16. "Non ad speculandum, sed ad opus incoeptum est totum."

3 Così della induzione della perfezione seconda le scienze sono cagioni in noi; per l'abito delle quali potemɔ la verità speculare, ch'è ultimà perfezione nostra, siccome dice il Filosofo nel sesto del Etica, quando dice che'l vero è'l bene dello intelletto." Convito, ii., 14, p. 153, Ed. Fraticelli.

✦ "A filosofare è necessario amore." Convito, Tratto iii., Cap. 13.

5 Amore è forma di filosofia. Ibid.

VOL. XI.-28

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