John T. Slattery - Dante: The Central Man of All the World

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First, devotion to the sacred Humanity of Christ. In eleven places does
he speak at length of Christ's two-fold nature as God and Man; in ten
places does he refer to Christ as the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity, and wherever Cristo occurs at the end of a line, Dante out of
reverence for the Sacred Person does not rime with it, but repeats the
name itself. The climax of the Purgatorio is the apparition of the
Griffin, the symbol of Christ. Further, on the stellar white cross of
red-glowing Mars the poet shows the figure of the Redeemer. In the
Empyrean Christ is represented in the unveiled glory of His human and
divine natures. So teaching the doctrine of the Incarnation most clearly
and most ardently Dante seeks to promote this cultus as the soul of the
Catholic religion.

Dante's second special devotion is to the Blessed Virgin. His Paradiso
contains the best treatise on Mariology. The whole Divine Comedy indeed
is the poet's loving testimonial of gratitude to the Madonna. It was
through Mary that his visionary voyage to the other world was made
possible. She rescued him when he was enslaved by sin and sent as his
successive guides Virgil, Beatrice and St. Bernard. She of all creatures
is proclaimed on every terrace of Purgatory first in virtue and highest
in dignity and her example is exhibited as an unfailing source of
inspiration to the Souls, to endure suffering cheerfully and to make
themselves, like her, the exemplars of goodness in the highest degree.
In Paradiso she is seen by the poet in all her unspeakable loveliness
and beatitude and as Queen of Angels and of Saints her intercession is
favorably invoked that Dante might enjoy the Vision of God himself. In
the last canto of the poem her super-eminence and incomparable
excellence are sung "with a sweetness of expression, a depth of
philosophy and a tenderness of feeling that have never been surpassed
in 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 in
Purgatory--a pious practice founded upon the scriptural words: "It is a
holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be
loosed from their sins." Not only does Dante answer the objection raised
as 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 to
arouse in others on earth a helpful sympathy for those souls. "Truly" he
says, "we ought to help them to wash away their stains which they have
borne hence, so that, pure and light, they may go forth to the starry
spheres," (Purg. VI, 34.)

To sum up Dante's attachment to his religion we can truly say not only
his life but his great poem radiates the spirit and doctrine of the
Church. Hettinger says of Dante: "In truth he anticipated the most
pregnant developments of Catholic doctrine, mastered its subtlest
distinctions and treated its hardest problems with almost faultless
accuracy. Were all the libraries in the world destroyed and the Sacred
Scripture with them, the whole Catholic system of doctrine and morals
might be almost reconstructed out of the Divina Commedia."

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

Intense in his own life Dante had no sympathy with slackers or the
lukewarm whom he characterizes as never having been alive, i.e. of never
having awakened to responsibility to take part in good or evil. As a
consequence they never contributed anything to society. Because in this
life they shifted from one side to another, they are now depicted
running perpetually after an aimlessly dodging banner. Here is the
description 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, words
of pain, accents of wrath, voices loud and weak, and the sound of hands
accompanying them, made a tumult which revolves forever in that air
endlessly dark, like sands blowing before a whirlwind. And I, whose head
was hooded with horror, exclaimed: 'Master, what is it I hear? What
kind 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 who
lived without infamy and without glory. They are mingled with the mean
choir 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 be
spoiled; and deep Hell will not receive them, because the damned might
derive some satisfaction from them.'

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

Of the renown of Dante's own name our poet has no misgivings. He reveals
himself as a man having supreme confidence in his own powers. Boccaccio
represents him as saying when he was with his party at the head of the
government of the republic of Florence, and when there was question of
sending 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 worth
among them all, and as if the others were nothing worth except through
him." It is certain that Dante put a high valuation upon his genius, an
estimate due, perhaps, to the belief he held, like Napoleon, in the
potency of his star. He was born under the constellation of the Gemini
and 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 to
himself, 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 the
nest." He is so sure that posterity will confer immortality upon his
work that he does not hesitate to make himself sixth among the greatest
writers of the world. This passage occurs when he enters Limbus
accompanied by Virgil to whom a group of spirits, Homer, Horace, Ovid,
and Lucan, make salutation. (Inf., IV, 76.) Posterity has bestowed
greater renown on Dante's name than even he presumed to hope, for it
has placed him in the Court of Letters with only one of the writers
of antiquity, Homer, and with two subsequent writers, Cervantes
and Shakespeare.

Naturally we think that a writer who was so positively confident and
boastful of his powers must have been given to pride and Dante indeed
plainly 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 lesser
light, Lacordaire says, "By the grace of God, I abhor mediocrity." In
the dark wood Dante represents the Lion (Pride) as preventing him from
ascending the mountain--"He seemed to be coming to me with head upreared
and with such raging hunger, that the air appeared to be in fear of
him." (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 be
eternally punished. Perhaps it was because Dante recognized the pride of
his learning, of his ancestry, of his associations with distinguished
personages as his besetting sin that he exercised his skill as a master
in showing us profound imagery representing the characteristics of
pride. Carved out of the mountain in the first circle of a terrace of
Purgatory are scenes illustrative of humility. While looking on these
scenes, which seem to live and speak in their beautiful and compelling
reality, the poet turns and sees approaching the forms of the proud. On
earth they had exalted themselves as if they had the weight of the world
on their shoulders, so now they are seen bent under huge burdens of
stone, crumpled up in postures of agonizing discomfort. The poet, to let
us 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 himself
for 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 big
enough to change his mind when a new view presented itself in
condemnation of an earlier judgment. So his "Vernacular Composition"
retracts a statement he had made in the New Life where he had held that
as amatory poems were addressed to ladies ignorant of Latin, Love should
be the only subject the poet ought to present in the vernacular. He
learned later and published his new view that there is good precedent
for treating in the vulgar tongue not only Love but also Righteousness
and War.

Other examples of his honesty of mind are furnished in the Paradise
where he expresses through the mouths of his disembodied teachers views
opposed to those he had already advanced in his other works. Thus his
theory of the spots on the moon, his statement as to the respective rank
of the angelic orders, his assumption that Hebrew was the language of
Adam and Eve--all yield to a maturer conception in contradiction to his
original views. He is, it is true, sometimes blinded by partisanship or
lacking in the historical perspective necessary for a true judgment of
his contemporaries--but Dante is naturally so sincere a man that he is
eager to be just to every one. Perhaps there is no better instance of
the exercise of this quality than in his assigning to the heaven of
Jupiter, 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 beyond
the Inferno, see in him only the incarnation of savagery and scorn. They
fail to pay tribute to the wonderful power of his friendship or to
recognize that his sufferings of adversity and injustice gave birth to
deep passion. To them he seems only to place his few friends in Heaven
and in Hell to roast all his enemies. It must be at once confessed that
there are instances in the Divina Commedia which, taken by themselves,
would lead one to so superficial an estimate of the man. In Canto VIII
of the Inferno Dante with his guide, Virgil, enters a bark on the Styx
and sails across the broad marsh. During the passage a spirit all
covered 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 swill
ere we quit the lake." And he to me, 'Before the shore comes to thy view
thou shalt be satisfied.' A little while after this I saw the muddy
people make such a rending of him that even now I praise and thank God
for it. Such gloating over suffering surely seems to say to you: Here
we have a man of a cruel vindictive nature.

Again, in the ice of Caina, the region where traitors are immersed up to
their heads, Dante hits his foot violently against the face of Bocca
degli Abati who betrayed the Florentines at the crucial battle of
Montaperti. "Weeping it cried out to me: 'Why tramplest thou on me? If
thou comest not to increase the vengeance for Montaperti, why dost thou
molest me?' I said: 'What art thou who thus reproachest others?' 'Nay
who art thou' he answered 'that through the Antenora goest, smiting the
cheeks of others, so that if thou wert alive, it were too much.' 'I am
alive' was my reply 'and if thou seekest fame, it may be precious to
thee, that I put thy name among the other notes.' And he to me. 'The
contrary is what I long for, take thyself away!' Then I seized him by
the afterscalp and said: 'It will be necessary that thou name thyself or
that not a hair remain upon thee here.' Whence he to me: 'Even if thou
unhair me I will not tell thee who I am.' I already had his hair coiled
on my hand and had plucked off more than one tuft of it, he barking and
keeping 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 will
bear true tidings'" (Inf., XXXII, 97.) Some may say that it is to Dante's
shame that he shows himself so devoid of pity.

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

"Remove the hard veils from my face that I may vent the grief which
stuffs my heart, a little ere the weeping freeze again! Wherefore I said
to him. 'If thou woulds't have me aid thee, tell me who thou art, and if
I 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 journey
to Purgatory, but the reprobate soul is unaware of such a course, and
believes 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 the
poor wretch, who then asks Dante for the fulfillment of the
promise--the removal of the ice so that sight may be restored even for a
minute. "'Open my eyes' he said--but I opened them not, to be rude to
him was courtesy" (Inf., XXXIII, 148.) Does not Dante by his own words
show himself deep-dyed in hatred and cruelty?

"The case against him" says Dinsmore, "is not so bad as the first
reading would indicate. Part of the explanation of his apparent cruelty
undoubtedly lies in the fact that the poet would teach us that character
is influenced by environment. In the circle of wrath, he is wrathful, in
the pit of traitors he is false. Then we are to recall that Dante
undoubtedly laid to heart Virgil's reproof, when he wept at the sad
punishment of the soothsayers: 'Who is more wicked than he who feels
compassion at the Divine Judgment.' Passionate love of God, Dante holds,
implies passionate hatred of God's enemies. That is a thought expressed
by the Psalmist. 'Lord, have I not hated them that hate thee and pined
away because of thy enemies? I have hated them with a perfect hatred and
they are become enemies to me' (CXXXVIII, 21). So it may be said that
Dante 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 another
side to Dante's character that is most attractive. "Dowered with the
hate 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 to
declare that Dante's "chief defect is the want of gentle feelings"--a
statement that called forth this exclamation from Lord Byron: "Of gentle
feelings. And Francesca of Rimini and the father's feelings in Ugolino
and Beatrice and the Pia! Why there is a gentleness in Dante above all
gentleness when he is tender!"

Let us see some examples of this tender quality in our poet. Only one
endowed with gentleness and beauty of soul, could have conceived a
Purgatory "not hot with sulphurous flames" remarks Dinsmore, "but
healing the wounded spirit with the light of shimmering sea, the glories
of morning, the perfume of flowers, the touch of angels, the living
forms of art and the sweet strains of music."

Only a man of warm-heartedness and delicate susceptibility at the sight
of a row of souls, temporarily blinded, would have been touched to such
an extent that he would be filled with anxiety lest in looking upon them
and silently passing them by who could not return his gaze, he would
show 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 speaks
of 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 his
sins:

"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 he
turns 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 the
following 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's
understanding of infantile emotion. He is eager to tell us how bright
souls 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 children
springs from the fact that instead of following the teaching of St.
Thomas Aquinas, who holds that in heaven the risen bodies of baby
children will appear in the aspect of the prime of life, our poet
discloses them with the charm of babyhood carrolling, as it were, the
nursery 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, one
naturally 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 have
restrained him from speaking of the sacredness of his family life. In
this matter he exhibited the wisdom of the gentleman-Saint, Francis de
Sales, who used to say, "Without necessity never speak of yourself well
or ill." It was indeed a principle of propriety with our poet that
talking about one's self in public is to be avoided as unbecoming unless
there is need of self vindication or edification of others. Only once in
the Divine Comedy does he mention his own name and at once he apologizes
for the intrusion. It is true that the poem is autobiographical but it
is that in so far as it concerns matters of universal interest from
which the poet may draw the moral that what God has done for him He will
do for all men if they will but let Him. That being so it was not
necessary for him to exploit his family affairs.

Out of the kindly heart of Dante sprang gratitude, one of the strongest
virtues of his being. He never wearies in pouring forth thanks to his
Maker for the gift of creation and His fatherly care of all beings in
the universe. He is filled with unbounded gratitude to the Saviour for
having become man and for having suffered and died for our salvation
instead of taking an easier way of satisfying divine justice. In his
works he mentions the name or the offices of the Holy Ghost eight times.
To the Blessed Virgin, the saints and especially to Beatrice for their
virtuous example and loving protection he is heartily grateful. His
thankful affection is extended to those who showed him kindness
particularly during the years of his homeless poverty. To them he offers
the only thing he has to give--an undying tribute of praise. Tenderly he
makes known his obligations to all those who taught him, both the
teachers of his own day and the masters of past ages. But it is to
Virgil, his ideal author, the guide whom he has chosen for his journey
through Hell and Purgatory, that he offers his most touching tribute of
gratitude. The occasion arises when he discovers his beloved Beatrice in
the Garden of Eden and turns to Virgil to tell him of his overwhelming
joy. But behold! his guide has vanished, his mission fulfilled. And all
the joys of the earthly Paradise, originally forfeited by the sin of
Eve, cannot compensate the disciple for the loss of his great master. In
loneliness he weeps, staining again his face that had been washed clean
with dew by Virgil when they emerged from Hell. Is there not genuine
pathos in these lines?

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