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

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Prescinding from any attempt to discuss the occult phenomena evoked,
observed and studied in our day or to treat of the matters involved in
the supernatural in the books of the day, one may state as a fact that
the whole tendency of present day literature is to show a yearning for
light on a subject of fundamental importance to human nature. Far back
in the history of the race Job gave voice to the spiritual problems that
are today engaging the attention of the world. Some fifteen hundred
years ago, St. Augustine proposed to himself the question which so
generally concerns the twentieth century: "On what matter of all those
things of which thou art ignorant, hast thou the greatest desire for
enlightenment?" The great Bishop of Hippo becomes the spokesman of
humanity when he answers his own question by proposing another: "Am I
immortal or not?" (Soliloquia 2d).

In the realms of literature no work of man has answered that question
with greater vividness of imagery, intensity of concentration, beauty of
description--all based in a large measure on the teachings of
Christianity--than has Dante in his Divine Comedy. Devised as a love
offering to the memory of his beloved Beatrice who in the work is
symbolized as Heavenly Light on the things hidden from man, the poem
leads the reader through the dark abyss of Hell, the patient abode of
Purgatory, the glorious realm of Heaven as if the poet had seen Eternity
in reality instead of in imagination. Not only the state and the
conditions of the soul after death does he visualize with the precision
of Euclid, but as a philosopher and a theologian he proposes for our
instruction in the course of the journey many questions of dogmatic and
speculative thought affecting the Hereafter. He believes himself called
to be not simply a poet to entertain his readers, but a prophet and a
preacher with burning fire to deliver a message for man's salvation. So
he 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 tongue
so 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 a
little 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 has
added the prefix adjective divine. The term comedy however is not used
in the modern sense which suggests to us a light laughable drama written
in a familiar style. "Comedy" Dante himself explains in his dedication
of the poem, "is a certain kind of poetical narrative which differs from
all others. It differs from tragedy in its subject matter in this way,
that tragedy in the beginning is admirable and quiet, in its ending or
catastrophe foul and horrible ... Comedy on the other hand, begins with
adverse conditions, but its theme has a happy termination. Likewise they
differ 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, for
if we consider the theme in its beginning it is horrible and foul
because it is Hell; in its ending fortunate, desirable and joyful
because it is Paradise: and if we consider the style of language the
style is lowly and humble because it is the vulgar tongue in which even
housewives hold converse."

The theme of the poem Dante himself explains: "The subject of the work
literally taken is the state of souls after death; this is the pivotal
idea of the poem throughout its entire course. In the allegorical sense
the poet treats of the hell of this world through which we are
journeying as pilgrims, with the power of meriting and demeriting, and
the subject is man, in as much as by his merits and demerits he is
subject 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 the
state of the human soul both as connected with the human body and as
separated from it. As the state of the whole is threefold, so does the
author divide his work into three parts. A soul may be in sin; such a
one even while it lives with the body, is morally speaking dead, and
hence it is in moral Hell; when separated from the body, if it died
incurably obstinate, it is in the actual Hell. Again a soul may be
receding from vice: such a one while still in the body is in the moral
Purgatory, or in the act of penance in which it purges away its sin; if
separated, it is in the actual Purgatory. Yet even while living in the
body, a soul is already in a manner in Paradise, for it exists in as
great felicity as is possible in this life of misery: separated from the
body, it is in the heavenly Paradise where there is true and perfect
happiness, where it enjoys the vision of God." (Ozanam, Dante, p. 129.)

This testimony as to the subject matter of the Divine Comedy is brought
forth to offset the statements not infrequently made by expositors who
deny or ignore the supernatural that Dante's full thought can be
realized even if the reader rejects the poet's spiritual teaching,
especially his doctrine of the existence of a real Heaven and a real
Hell. It is true that Dante is "such a many-sided genius that he has a
message for almost every person." It is likewise true that an
allegorical interpretation may be adopted with no belief in the
Hereafter and it may open up many fruitful lessons for the reader. That
being granted, one may still ask whether one can ignore Dante's doctrine
of future rewards and punishment and so get full satisfaction from
treating 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 evil
always followed by retribution. Dante as the prophet and the preacher of
Christianity 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 the
Hereafter, for our acts make our eternity. So the poet holds that while
this life according as it shows the soul in sin, in repentance or in
virtue may be considered allegorically Hell, Purgatory or Heaven, before
the Last Judgment a real Hell, a real Purgatory, a real Heaven is the
abode of disembodied spirits according to their demerits or merits and
after the Last Judgment, Purgatory no longer existing, souls will be in
eternal suffering in Hell or in unending joy in Heaven.

It is not to be expected that any reader will believe that Dante's Hell
is a photograph of reality. It is a Hell largely fashioned by poetic
visions and political theories, peopled in a great measure by those who
stand in opposition to the poet's theory of government. It is not, as is
sometimes asserted, a place to which the poet consigns his personal
enemies. As Dinsmore says: "Dante had too much greatness in his soul and
too much pride (it may be) to make revenge a personal matter: he had
nothing but contempt for his own enemies and never except in the case of
Boniface VIII ... did he place a single one of them in the Inferno, not
even his judge Cante Gabriella."

Though largely colored by his political theories Dante's Hell is also a
theological conception based on the teaching of the Catholic Church that
Hell exists as a place or state of punishment for the rebel angels and
for man dying impenitent, that is, for man in whom sin has become so
humanized that death finds him not simply in the act or habit of sin but
so transformed that in the striking words of Bossuet, "he is man made
sin." Dante fully accepted that doctrine which had been the constant
tradition and faith of the Church and had been reaffirmed in the second
ecumenical Council of Lyons held when Dante was a boy, nine years of
age.

It is not unlikely with his precocity for knowledge and sentiment at
that age that he was deeply impressed with the history of that council
especially as its legislation also dealt with the Crusades, the union of
Churches, the reform of the Church, the appointment of a king of the
Romans and an emperor--matters of vital importance to him later. He must
have recalled that Council also with special interest, for two of his
ideal personages, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure met their death, one on
his way to the Council, the other while actually attending its sessions.

In any event Dante firmly believed the doctrine of the Hereafter "that
they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that
have done evil, into everlasting fire." He held that the punishment of
the damned is two-fold. The greater punishment, called the pain of loss,
consists in the loss of the Beatific Vision, a suffering so great that
the 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 very
greatness of God." The other pain of the reprobate consists in the
torment of fire so frequently mentioned in Holy Writ. "According to the
greater number of theologians the term fire denotes a material and so a
real fire ... (but) there have never been wanting theologians who
interpret the scriptural term fire metaphorically as denoting an
incorporeal 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 essence
of the punishment of Hell, theologians teach that there are other
sufferings called accidental. The reprobate never experience v.g. the
least real pleasure nor are they ever free from the hideous presence of
one another. After the Last Judgment the lost souls will also be
tormented by union with their bodies, a union bringing about a fresh
increase of punishment. On this subject, for our information Dante
addresses Virgil his guide through Hell: "Master, will these torments
after the great sentence increase or diminish?" Virgil explains that
they will become worse because when the soul is united again to the body
there will be perfection of being and the resulting sensitiveness will
be the more intense.

"Return unto thy science," answers Virgil, "which wills that as a thing
more 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 from
Hell once a soul is condemned. Following a legend commonly believed in
the Middle Ages that in answer to the prayers of Pope Gregory the Great,
the soul of the Emperor Trajan was delivered from Hell, Dante assumes
that 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 for
salvation. So regenerated Trajan is placed by Dante, in the Heaven of
Jupiter (Par. XX 40, 7). Referring to this incident the Catholic
Encyclopedia says: "In itself it is no rejection of Catholic dogma to
suppose that God might at times by way of exception, liberate a soul
from Hell. Thus some argued from a false interpretation of I Peter III,
19 seq. that Christ freed several damned souls on the occasion of His
descent into Hell. Others were led by untrustworthy stories into the
belief that the prayers of Gregory the Great rescued the Emperor Trajan
from Hell but now theologians are unanimous in teaching that such
exceptions never take place and never have taken place" (VIII, 209.)

As to the location of Hell it is the poet Dante and not Dante the
theologian, as we shall see later, who gives definite place and
boundaries to Hell. He knows that on this subject the Church has decided
nothing, holding to the statement of St. Augustine: "It is my opinion
that the nature of hell-fire and the location of Hell are known to no
man 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. He
thinks that the elect will be comparatively few--just numerous enough to
fill those places in heaven forfeited by the rebel angels who formed
according to his conjecture, about a tenth of the angelical host. That
their places in Heaven are already nearly filled leaving little room for
future 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 accord
with the teaching of the Church which holds that to every man God gives
grace sufficient for salvation. That is true even as affecting the
heathen 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, God
will reveal what is necessary for salvation, either by internal
inspiration or by a teacher."

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

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

"As dolphins, when with the arch of the back; they make sign to
mariners that they may prepare to save their ship: so now and then, to
ease the punishment, some sinner showed his back and hid in less time
than it lightens. And as at the edge of the water of a ditch, the frogs
stand only with their muzzles out, so that they hide their feet and
other bulk: thus stood on every hand the sinners; but as Barbariccia
approached, they instantly retired beneath the seething. I saw, and my
heart still shudders thereat, one linger so, as it will happen that one
frog remains while the other spouts away; and Graffiancane, who was
nearest to him, hooked his pitchy locks and haled him up, so that to me
he seemed an otter.

"I already knew the name of every one, so well I noted them as they were
chosen, and when they called each other, listened how. 'O Rubicante, see
thou plant thy clutches on him, and flay him!' shouted together all the
accursed _crew_. And I: 'Master, learn if thou canst, who is that
piteous _wight_, fallen into the hands of his adversaries.' My Guide
drew 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 of
a lord; for she had borne me to a ribald master of himself and of his
substance. Then I was domestic with the good King Thibault; here I set
myself to doing barratry, of which I render reckoning in this heat.' And
Ciriatto, from whose mouth on either side came forth a tusk as from a
hog, made him feel how one of them did rip. Amongst evil cats the mouse
had come; but Barbariccia locked him in his arms, and said: 'Stand off
whilst I enforke him!' And turning his face to my Master: 'Ask on,' he
said, 'if thou wouldst learn more from him, before some other undo him.'

"The Guide therefore: 'Now say, of the other sinners knowest thou any
that is a Latian, beneath the pitch?' And he: 'I parted just now from
one who was a neighbour of theirs (on the other side); would I still
were covered with him, for I should not fear claw nor hook!' And
Libicocco cried: 'Too much have we endured,' and with the hook seized
his arm and mangling carried off a part of brawn. Draghignazzo, he too,
wished to have a catch at the legs below; whereat their decurion wheeled
around around with evil aspect. When they were somewhat pacified, my
Guide, without delay, asked him that still kept gazing on his wound:
'Who was he, from whom thou sayest that thou madest an ill departure to
come 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 so
to them that they all praise him for it: money took he for himself, and
dismissed them smoothly, as he says; and in his other offices besides,
he was no petty but a sovereign barrator. With him keeps company Don
Michel Zanche of Logodoros; and in speaking of Sardinia the tongues of
them do not feel weary. Oh me! see that other grinning; I would say
more; but fear he is preparing to claw my scurf.' And their great
Marshal, turning to Farfarello, who rolled his eyes to strike, said:
'Off with thee, villainous bird!' 'If you wish to see or hear Tuscans or
Lombards,' the frightened sinner then resumed, 'I will make them come.
But let the (evil claws hold back) a little, that they may not fear
their 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 us
gets out.'

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

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

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

Readers who regard the grotesque as a repelling element in the Inferno
may be surprised to learn that Ruskin considers this feature of Dante's
writings an expression of the highest human genius. The great English
critic writes:

"I believe that there is no test of greatness in nations, periods, nor
men more sure than the development, among them or in them of a noble
grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one
kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention or
incapability of understanding it. I think that the central man of all
the world, as representing in perfect balance and imaginative, moral and
intellectual faculties, all at their highest is Dante; and in him the
grotesque reaches at once the most distinct and the most noble
development to which it was ever brought in the human mind. Of the
grotesqueness of our own Shakespeare I need hardly speak, nor of its
intolerableness to his French critics; nor of that of AEschylus and
Homer, as opposed to the lower Greek writers; and so I believe it will
be found, at all periods, in all minds of the first order."

Dante's doctrine of punishment presupposes certain primary truths which
the Church proclaims today as she did in Dante's day. According to the
Florentine's creed, man must answer to God for his moral life because he
has free will. He cannot excuse his evil deed on the ground of
necessity. Even in the face of planetary influence and of temptation
from within, by his evil inclinations, and from without by solicitation
of other agents man has still such discernment between good and evil and
such power to make choice freely, that moral judgment with him is free.
"Who hath been tried thereby and made perfect," says Holy Writ, "he
shall have glory everlasting. He that could have transgressed, and hath
not 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 the
medical science of the present day contend with a theory which minimizes
man's accountability for sin if it does not wholly excuse him as the
victim of heredity, environment or society. Literature also, as
reflected not only in the Greek tragedies but in the writings of authors
from Shakespeare to Shaw portray the evil doer as the victim of fate or
determinism.

Against all such theories and views Dante appears as the fearless,
uncompromising champion of the doctrine of the greatness of man in the
exercise of the divine gift of Free Will. His own life, showing how he
had won victory over the forces of poverty and persecution, is symbolic
of the glorious truth he would teach; viz., that man, endowed with free
will and animated with the grace of God, is master of his destiny and
cannot be defeated even by principalities and powers. So he tells us,
"And free will which if it endure fatigue in the first battles with the
heavens, afterwards if it be well nurtured, conquers everything."
(Purg., XVI, 76.) He makes Beatrice testify to the supremacy of the
will: "The greatest gift which God in His bounty bestowed in creating
and that which He prizes most, was the freedom of will with which the
creatures that have intelligence--they all and they alone--were
endowed." (Cf. Purg., XVIII, 66-73.)

But such a distinctive endowment may be the the curse of man if he fails
to use it rightly. Like Job, Dante insists that life is a warfare.
Victory is possible only by the right exercise of the will enlightened
by God. Defeat is sure if the will embraces sin. To Dante sin is not a
mere vulgarity or the violation of a social convention or "a soft
infirmity of the blood." "Very hateful to his fervid heart and sincere
mind," says James Russell Lowell, "would have been the modern theory
which deals with sin as involuntary error." To Dante sin is the greatest
evil 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 are
characterized as "the woeful people who have lost the good of the
understanding" (Inf., III, 18), and it is also a defiance of God. Sin,
then, is Atheism--a rejection of God, with a conviction that pleasure or
happiness can be attained outside of God, independent of God and in
opposition to God. Apart from the inspired writers of Holy Writ it is
doubtful whether any other writer ever had such an awful sense of sin
and such a vivid vision of sin and its consequences as Dante has given
to the world in a picture which has burned terror into the thought of
man.

To show us that life is a warfare against sin, Dante gives us several
striking pictures of temptation and heavenly deliverance from evil. At
the very beginning of the Divine Comedy, we see his ascent to the
mountain of the Lord barred by Lust, Pride and Avarice represented by a
leopard, a lion, and a wolf. He is victorious over those enemies of his
salvation because Reason (Virgil) and Beatrice (Revelation) come to his
aid. Temptation is also exhibited in Ante-Purgatorio and that is the
more remarkable because both as a theologian and a poet Dante holds that
the present life is the end of man's probation and that as a
consequence, temptation is not to be encountered in the next life. Why
it is put forth in Ante-Purgatorio is explained by the theory that our
poet here nods, that he means, not the actual Purgatory of disembodied
spirits, but moral Purgatory, _i.e._, the present life wherein man,
striving upward, is attacked by temptation to keep him from the end for
which God created him.

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