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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e241f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63011 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63011) diff --git a/old/63011-0.txt b/old/63011-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fb05ad5..0000000 --- a/old/63011-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7410 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's Dante Alighieri, Apostle of Freedom, by Lonsdale Ragg - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Dante Alighieri, Apostle of Freedom - War-time and Peace-time Essays - -Author: Lonsdale Ragg - -Release Date: August 22, 2020 [EBook #63011] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANTE ALIGHIERI, APOSTLE OF FREEDOM *** - - - - -Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - -DANTE ALIGHIERI - - - - -_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ - - - THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL: Rivingtons, 1898. (‘_The Books of - the Bible._’) - - CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES: Rivingtons, 1900; 2nd Edn. (4th - Impression) 1913. (‘_Oxford Church Textbooks._’) - - ASPECTS OF THE ATONEMENT: Rivingtons, 1904. - - CHRIST AND OUR IDEALS: Rivingtons, 1906. - - DANTE AND HIS ITALY: Methuen, 1907. - - ¹THE MOHAMMEDAN GOSPEL OF BARNABAS: Clarendon Press, 1907. - - THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES: Rivingtons, 1909. (‘_The Church - Universal._’) - - THE BOOK OF BOOKS: Edward Arnold, 1910. - - MEMOIR OF CHARLES EDWARD WICKHAM: Edward Arnold, 1911. - - ¹THINGS SEEN IN VENICE: Seeley, 1913. - - ¹VENICE: A. and C. Black, 1914. - - THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE: Methuen, 1922. (_Westminster - Commentaries._) - -¹ In collaboration with Mrs. Lonsdale Ragg. - - - - -[Illustration: INAUGURATION OF DANTE’S STATUE, FLORENCE, 1865. - -(See pp. IX., 19 and 165)] - - - - - DANTE ALIGHIERI - APOSTLE OF FREEDOM - - War-Time and Peace-Time Essays - - By - LONSDALE RAGG, B.D. - CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD - PREBENDARY OF LINCOLN, MEMBER OF THE SOCIETÀ DANTESCA - ITALIANA - - _Author of “Dante and His Italy.”_ - - LONDON - ARTHUR H. STOCKWELL - 29 LUDGATE HILL, E.C. 4 - - PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WHITFELD & NEWMAN, LTD., DEVONPORT - - - - - DEDICATED BY PERMISSION - - TO THE - - DOTTORESSA MARIA MONTESSORI - - A TRUE APOSTLE OF FREEDOM IN THE EDUCATIONAL SPHERE - - Tu m’ hai di servo tratto a libertate. - - —_Par._ xxxi. 85. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAP. PAGE - - AUTHOR’S PREFACE ix - - PROLOGUE: DANTE, APOSTLE OF LOVE 1 - - I. DANTE AND THE REDEMPTION OF ITALY 10 - - II. DANTE AND POLITICAL LIBERTY 24 - - III. WIT AND HUMOUR IN DANTE 41 - - IV. DANTE AND MEDIAEVAL THOUGHT 72 - - V. DANTE AND EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES 83 - - VI. DANTE AND ISLAM 118 - - VII. DANTE AND THE CASENTINO 137 - - VIII. THE LAST CRUSADE 151 - - APPENDIX I—ANTONIO MASCHIO AND THE - CELEBRATION OF 1865 165 - - APPENDIX II—DANTE AND THE POPE 168 - - APPENDIX III—DANTE THE POET 171 - - INDEX 175 - - - - -AUTHOR’S PREFACE - - -Dante, like Shakespere, speaks to every age, and has a word for every -crisis in the life of men and nations. Perhaps at no time since he passed -into the other world has his spirit been so potent as in these last -years, when his Italy has been putting the last touches to the redemption -of that territory whose boundaries he sketched in famous phrase.[1] - -Scarce were his ashes cold, ere Boccaccio began to expound, from the -professorial chair founded by a repentant Florence, the mysteries of his -great Poem. Scarcely had Italy awaked from her long sleep of slavery to -the foreigner ere she erected in Florence, in the very year in which it -became temporary capital of a free nation,[2] a statue of the prophet of -Italian liberty and unity. - -Some forty-three years later, on the anniversary of the Poet’s death, -September 14th, 1908, Ravenna was _en fête_ with a gathering in which the -“Unredeemed” Brethren from Pola, Fiume, Trieste, and the Trentino mingled -their vows and gifts with those of the City that was his last refuge -and the City that bore him and cast him out. All along, and especially -in the crises of her fate, his great spirit has brooded over the Italy -he loved, the Italy to whom he bequeathed the splendid instrument of -a classical language. To-day, perchance he “sees of the travail of his -soul, and is satisfied.” - -His many-sided genius reveals new splendours when viewed from fresh -angles; and the following Essays, which make no claim to special learning -or originality, attempt to approach him from different sides, and so to -bring out varied aspects of his greatness. But they all, or nearly all, -have one point in common: each sets him forth as an Apostle of Liberty. - -Freedom political, intellectual, spiritual—all these ideals are wrought -into the “Sacred poem to which Heaven and Earth have set their hand,”[3] -and that Poem enshrines, as we have endeavoured to shew, principles -of liberty in the Educational Sphere,[4] which our present age is apt -to hug to itself as its own discovery. The Essays, in their present -form, are all coloured by the atmosphere of the world’s great fight for -freedom. From some of them, written at the very height of the conflict, -a few of the fiercer touches have been removed as “out of tune” in these -critical years of would-be reconciliation and reconstruction, when old -rancours must perforce be exorcised if we would save civilisation from -its post-War perils. If any undue traces of bitterness remain, may Dante -shelter them under the ample cloak of his righteous indignation. He, too, -spoke hotly—of a Florence and of an Italy whose highest good was ever in -his heart. - -The problems and ideals of the Great War are still with us in a new -shape, and man’s greatest need is individual and corporate “freedom of -soul.” If these Essays be recognised as reflecting to any extent Dante’s -great mind on such problems and ideals, the Author will be more than -satisfied. - -Two of these Essays had been published some years ago in the _Modern -Language Review_,[5] and have been slightly retouched: four appeared -during the course of the War, in a somewhat briefer form, in the -_Anglo-Italian Review_[6]; while the Prologue, product of the so-called -days of Peace, was published in the _Guardian_ of August 19th, 1921. -To the Editors and Publishers concerned the writer hereby accords his -acknowledgements and thanks; as also to his friend, Professor Cesare -Foligno,[7] for a kindly glance at the MS., and for the suggestion -that the critical text of 1921 should be cited.[8] Two of the Essays -now see the light for the first time.[9] The longer of these, “Dante -and Educational Principles,” a paper delivered at University College, -London, in the Sexcentenary Series of lectures last year, may perhaps, -with the reprinted articles on “Wit and Humour in Dante,” and “Dante and -Islam,” claim, in a manner, to break new ground. But all alike are humbly -commended to the patient indulgence of the Dante-reading public. - - LONSDALE RAGG. - -_Holy Cross Day_, 1921. - - - - -DANTE ALIGHIERI - - - - -PROLOGUE - -DANTE, APOSTLE OF LOVE - - _But we all with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the - glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from - glory to glory._—2 Cor. iii. 18. - - -These words form the sequel of to-day’s Epistle[10] in which the -temporary reflection of the Shekinah in Moses’s face is contrasted with -the permanent and complete illumination of the Spirit. They form the -climax of a passage which, full of mystery and splendour, leads us up -to those things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard—to that beatific -Vision prepared for God’s unfeigned lovers, who shall shine with His own -likeness because and when they “see Him as He is.” - -A month from to-day—on the day of the Holy Cross—we shall be celebrating -the six hundredth “birthday” into the world beyond of the man whose -eagle vision pierced, dazzled but unafraid, into the blazing glory of -Paradise—Dante, the pilgrim of the world to come. St. Paul’s inspired and -inspiring words bring back to mind the swift upward movement of Dante’s -_Paradiso_, where the spirit mounts from sphere to sphere, from glory to -glory, impelled and wafted by the sheer force of Love, till at last, in -face of the Triune blessedness, it is plunged into an ineffable joy and -wonder—ineffable because, as he says, “as it draweth nigh to its ideal, -the object of its longing, our intellect sinketh so deep that memory -cannot go back upon the track”— - - Perchè, appressando sè al suo disire - Nostro intelletto si profonda tanto, - Che dietro la memoria non può ire.[11] - -The glory of which we speak—which makes the _Paradiso_ a marvel of -dazzling, but, so to speak, graduated splendour—is the glory of Love, -Divine and human; and it is of Dante, the Apostle of Love, that I would -speak to you to-day. In this sexcentenary year all the civilised world is -acclaiming him, and it is well that our Christian Churches should echo -thanksgiving to Almighty God for this most Christian poet, and for the -magnificent bequest that he left, not only to Italian literature, but -to the world. The Pope in his encyclical last spring[12] bore eloquent -testimony to Dante’s loyalty to the Christian heritage, and to the power -by which, as a teacher of the Faith, “he being dead, yet speaketh.” - -He speaks, indeed, with a voice from six hundred years ago, yet not in -the remote language of one nurtured in leisure, ease, and comfort, far -from the annoyances and disappointments, the worries and anxieties and -ugly problems of the rough-and-tumble world we know. On the contrary, -the world in which Dante prayed and strove and studied and dreamed and -wrote-the world from which comes down to us the serene glory of his -Paradise of Love—was astonishingly like our own on its uglier side: -a world of religious and political unrest, of clashing interests and -ideals, of faction, violence, and cruelty, of individual and corporate -predatory self-assertion; a world in which the poet himself, called to -“abandon all that man holds most dear”— - - Ogni cosa diletta - Più caramente[13]— - -wrought out his great work as a nameless wanderer, and died in bitter -exile. So we may listen to him as to one who has a genuine message for us. - - -THE POET OF LOVE - -Amid all that has been said and written this year about the author of the -_Divina Commedia_, there is one note that has rarely, if at all, been -struck; yet it is surely, in some sense, the keynote of all his singing. -Dante is, from the first and to the last, the poet of Love. “I am one,” -he says, “who, when Love breathes in me, take note, and that which he -dictates within I express”— - - I’ mi son un che quando - Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo - Ch’ e’ ditta dentro vo significando.[14] - -His first book—the _Vita Nuova_—testifies to this. It represents a new -movement in love-poetry.[15] The songs of the Troubadours had been, in -their earlier forms, with all their strange beauty, frankly sensual -and immoral; and when, after the religious movement of the Albigensian -Crusade, a greater strictness had perforce been introduced, they had lost -their first warmth and glow and naturalness. The “sweet new style”—_Dolce -Stil nuovo_[16]—of Dante and his circle combined the two requisites of -sincere purity and glowing life. The story of the _Vita Nuova_ is the -story of the precocious passion of a boy of nearly ten years old for a -little girl of nine. It passes through its phase of refined sensuousness -and self-absorption, but it emerges as a pure mystic love that leads -ultimately up to the very Throne of God. - -In the vision with which the book closes—the vision of his Beatrice -after God has called her to Himself—lies the germ of the greatest poem -of Christendom; the poem which, just because it sings the story of man’s -freewill in contact with God’s redeeming grace, has as its supreme and -final theme—Love. We are familiar, no doubt, with the main lines of -Dante’s vision of the world beyond—of the three kingdoms as he conceived -them, of hell, purgatory, and heaven. But I will ask you to be patient if -I attempt to sketch for you something of the great contours of each, that -we may see together how, for this love-poet, eternal Love dominates and -shapes the universe. - -His world beyond is conceived in terms partly belonging to the age -in which he lived, with its scholastic theology and its Ptolemaic -cosmography, partly in terms of the originality of his own genius. Its -details and its hard outlines may be largely obsolete; but its lessons -are true and effective. It is because of its essential Christianity -that Dante’s poetry is so much alive, is more “modern,” as the Papal -Encyclical put it, than much actually contemporary poetry that is -conceived in the spirit of paganism. Dante, for his soul’s health—and -for the benefit of untold generations—must needs pass through all three -kingdoms of the world to come, guided by Virgil, who represents human -reason. Descending down and down into the very bowels of the earth he -sees the doom of unrepented sin. Then, after a wearying subterranean -climb from earth’s centre to the antipodes, he emerges at the foot of -the lofty terraced mountain where repentant souls are cleansed and -brought back to their primal innocence. At the top of this mountain he -finds himself in the earthly paradise, and meets Beatrice, the glorified -“lady of his mind,” who now represents at once Revelation and Grace; sees -wondrous things, submits to mystic rites, and finally is drawn up side -by side with her, by the motive power of Love, from sphere to sphere, -up to the Throne of God, where the redeemed worship Him for ever in the -form of a mystic white rose. That Love is the motive power in Paradise is -obvious. It is the radiant beauty of Beatrice, ever more dazzling as they -mount higher, that lifts him up, and the spirits he meets glow one and -all with the fire of Divine charity. It is not easy, perhaps, to detect -the influence of Love in the dark abyss of the _Inferno_, or in the -stern, long discipline of the Mount of Purgation. - -But love is written even across the portal of Hell. “Abandon hope all ye -that enter here” we all know as its inscription; but that is but the last -line of a nine-line title, and part of that title runs thus—“Divine Power -made me, and Highest Wisdom, and Primal Love”— - - Fecemi la divina potestate - La somma sapienza e ’l primo amore.[17] - -This means, of course, the Blessed Trinity, but the last word about the -Blessed Trinity is—Love. Love can be stern, and outraged love can draw -down, as it were, by the law of being rather than by such vengeful wrath -as we humanly attribute to the Most High, an unimaginable ruin and loss -upon the outrager. In the stern, grim, cruel, sometimes grotesquely -revolting picture Dante draws of the eternal future sinners can -deliberately make for themselves, we see but the fruits of Love offered -and rejected—the inevitable outcome of their own choice. - -When we enter the second kingdom, and begin to climb the mount which -forms the pedestal to Eden, the home of man’s innocency, the breath of -Love is stronger and its radiance more clear. It reveals itself in the -changing beauty of sky and landscape, in the glories of star-light, dawn -and sunset and high noon, in the glad brilliance of wild-flowers, in the -melody and harmony of music, but, not least, in the very structure and -arrangement of Purgatory. Seven terraces ring the mountain round—one -above another—separated by rugged cliffs and sheer precipices which -Dante needs all his cragsmanship to overcome. And on each terrace one -of the seven deadly sins is purged—Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, -Gluttony, Lust. These are arranged on a scheme which brings into relief -a great principle—that all our actions, good or evil, are the fruits of -Love—right love or wrong— - - Esser convene - Amor sementa in voi d’ogni virute - E d’ ogne operazion che merta pene.[18] - -These sins are all results of Love—excessive or defective, or aimed at -the wrong object; and the purgatorial discipline is just the action -of the educative Love of God upon willing penitents—straightening, -developing, governing, and directing the disordered love that has so -marred and stunted the beauty of their souls. The discipline and the -humiliation are seen for what they are, and the Divine Love that speaks -through them finds a ready and prompt response from souls “happy in the -fire,” because of the hope of what it can do for them. - - Contenti - Nel fuoco, perchè speran di venire - Quando che sia a le beate genti.[19] - - Even as Christ ‘for the joy set before Him endured the Cross,’ - So they find in their ‘pain’ their ‘solace.’[20] - -When we pass into the third kingdom, up and up through sphere after -sphere of the heavens, each more radiant with the light of Love, we feel -ourselves “reflecting, as a mirror, the glory of the Lord, transformed -into the same image from glory to glory.” “One star,” indeed, “differeth -from another star in glory.” There is higher and lower in the abode of -bliss, in the “many mansions” of the Father’s House. Dante questions -one whom he meets in the lower sphere—Piccarda—on earth a playmate of -his childhood. “Are you happy? Are you content? Have you no wish to -be placed higher still?” Her answer enunciates the basal principle of -heaven—“Brother, the quality of our love stilleth our will and maketh us -long only for what we have, and giveth us no other thirst.... In His Will -is our peace”— - - Frate, la nostra volontà quieta - Virtù di carità, che fa volerne - Sol quel ch’ avemo, e d’ altro non ci’asseta. - ... - E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace.[21] - -Here Love rules imperially, and the image of God’s Will is stamped in -glory on the souls of those who, “with unveiled face,” are granted to -feast upon the vision of His glory. Pure in heart, their whole being is -full of light. And so, too, the poet, when at last he looked upon God, -found his own will and desire moving in perfect harmony with that “Love -that moves the sun and the other stars.” - - L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.[22] - -So a great lover of Dante, the late Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, summoned up -the teaching of the _Paradiso_: “Wouldst thou enter into God’s Kingdom, O -pilgrim of earth? then love. Wouldst thou share the sweet activities of -its citizens? then love. Wouldst thou know Him who rules over them and -all? then love. For love opens the Kingdom of Heaven, and love makes the -joyousness of its happy services, and none can know the heart of God save -through love; for God is love.”[23] - -Is it not meet that we should thank God this year for the sublime -poet who has drawn for us so splendid a picture of the glory of Love -“penetrating the whole universe”; who has shown us in Love the one motive -force in the world, the one constructive principle? Was there ever a -time when the world needed this teaching more than it does to-day? A -true doctrine, if ever there was one. If God is Love, then Love is the -only principle of life. “He that abideth in love, abideth in God, and -God abideth in him.”[24] Real love—not selfish, sensual passion, not -sentimental sweetness, not unwise and poisonous indulgence; but love, -wise, strong, straight, and pure, like the love of God; love patient, -self-forgetful, self-giving, like the love of Jesus Christ; love -illuminating, invigorating, recreative, like that of the Holy Ghost. If -we could but “reflect” in life and character the “glory” of the Lord!... -There is no glory but love. - -We must descend from the ethereal splendour of Dante’s _Paradiso_ into -the hard realities of workaday life, even as Peter, John, and James came -down from the Mount of Transfiguration to face the shouting, wrangling -crowd and the convulsions of the epileptic boy. But though the radiance -seems to fade, the glory is still with us, for it is the unfailing Love -of Him Who promised to be with us “all the days.” Love, then, accompanied -them down from the height, unlocked the prison house of afflicted souls, -and solved the problems of sin-stricken humanity. And Love, and Love -alone, can do the same to-day. - -Let us face our bewildering problems with confidence, knowing that the -secret of life is ours. Love, the only constructive principle, the only -ultimately victorious power. Our enemies in the late war sounded their -own doom when they promulgated a gospel of hate. Hate can never build up, -only destroy. Alas! they sowed the seeds of hatred outside the sphere -where armies clash, and the devil’s doctrine of class-hatred has been -disseminated far and wide. If only the eyes of those concerned might be -opened to see the mad futility of hate! There is one force at work in the -world that can teach this, that can heal the bleeding wounds of society, -untie the knots of the industrial and social and international tangle—the -force of Christian Love—yours and mine—a love like that of Him Who came -not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as ransom for many; -a love that brought Him to die for a world yet steeped in rebellion -and sin, and moved Him to lay upon His disciples the injunction “Bless -them that curse you.” No merely human organisation for philanthropic -succour or for peace; not even a League of Nations, even though, thank -God, its power and capacity at last be recognised with a gift of solemn -responsibility; nothing but the steady action of that “love of God” which -His grace sheds into Christian hearts, leavening and inspiring such -movements, such organisations, can hope for final success. But Love, -after all, sits enthroned above the water floods, and abideth king for -ever. There is no limit to our opportunity for blessing this poor world -alike by prayer and by action—blessing our own immediate circle, our -civic and Church life, blessing our country, our Empire, and the world’s -fellowship of Nations—if but our wills are moving in one motion with His— - - L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. - - - - -CHAPTER I - -DANTE AND THE REDEMPTION OF ITALY - - Sol nel tuo verbo è per noi la luce, o Rivelatore, - Sol nel tuo canto è per noi la forza, o Liberatore, - Sol nella tua melodia è la molt’ anni lagrimata pace, o Consolatore. - - —_D’ Annunzio._ - - La severa immagine del poeta governa tuttavia i fati delle - generazioni d’ Italia.—_Mazzini._ - - -Dante stands forth as the Apostle of Freedom in many spheres—that -Freedom for which all the world is now longing: freedom for unhindered -self-development of men and nations, freedom of spirit—the true -atmosphere of all education. The _Monarchia_, the Epistles, and, most of -all, the _Divina Commedia_—that “mystical epos of Man’s Free Will”—bear -witness to the truth of the word which Virgil speaks of him at the foot -of the Mount of Purgation— - - Libertà va cercando ... - -This all-pervading spirit of his teaching might perhaps of itself have -been sufficient to make his name an inspiration to the heroes and martyrs -who struggled for Italy’s liberation in the nineteenth century; but it -may be worth while to draw attention to certain aspects of his work, -which give him a more definite and specific claim to be the Father of -Free Italy. - -The other day I turned up, after many years of neglect, Karl Witte’s -Essay on Dante and United Italy. For this suspicious intercourse with -“enemy alien literature” I can plead two extenuating circumstances: -first, the absorbing nature of the topic at this moment, and secondly -that I approached Witte in an English translation. Another point which -might count in my favour is the fact that this particular Essay was -written before 1870. That certainly lends to it a special interest; and -the interest is rather enhanced than otherwise by the circumstance that -Witte prefixed a Prefatory note and added a peroration in 1878. - -Karl Witte, who was born in 1800 and died in 1883, represents the old -vigorous and admirable type of German scholarship which was in very truth -“Stupor Mundi”: a blend of genius and conscientious painstaking on the -reputation of which the Prussianised Kultur of to-day bases a claim to -deference which Europe will more and more hesitate to accord. - -How far, for instance, Germany has fallen from her former position as -regards Dante Scholarship may be gauged from E. Benvenuti’s slashing -article in the _Bullettino della Società dantesca italiana_ of June, -1914, of which a summary appeared in the _Times_ Literary Supplement -on March 4th. The article is the first instalment of a review of -Dante studies in Germany for the years 1908-1913. It is a record, as -the _Times_ reviewer remarks, of “monumental ignorance, inaccuracy, -arrogance, bad taste, and sheer stupidity ... hailed with salvoes of -approbation by the majority of German critics.” - -But Karl Witte is a man of other build than these modern Pan-Germanisers -who are patriotic enough to attribute to Dante pure German ancestry, and -too patriotic by far to soil their hands with the recent works of sound -Italian critics, or their minds with the elements of Italian grammar and -idiom. - -Karl Witte, on the contrary—though he began life as an Infant Prodigy, -matriculating at Leipsic when only nine and a half years old, and reading -his Doctor’s thesis before he was fourteen—won recognition in Italy and -England as well as in Germany as a real force in Dante scholarship: a -great pioneer, who made his mistakes, as all pioneers will, but has won -the gratitude of all subsequent Dantists. - -In the Essay of which I have spoken, written and delivered as a lecture -in 1861, Witte notes the fact and investigates the grounds of the -constant association of Dante’s name with the patriotic aspirations -of Young Italy. “It is a fact,” he says, “that, during the last half -century, a great number of those who aimed at transforming Italy—and -not only men of such moderation as Cesare Balbo, Gino Capponi, or Carlo -Troya, but also the democratic revolutionaries who would take the world -by storm—have hung, and still hang, upon Dante’s _Divine Comedy_, with -passionate enthusiasm. Ugo Foscolo, who preferred poverty and exile to -place and honour under the rule of Austria, devoted the last years of -his life exclusively to a great work on the poem; and after Foscolo’s -death, this new edition of the ‘Prophecy of Italy’s Future,’ as he called -the Comedy, was published by no other than Giuseppe Mazzini himself....” -If the Italian of the Sixties “were asked whence his countrymen drew -their inspiration, he would scarcely hesitate,” says Witte, “to name the -greatest poet of his fatherland.” And again, “the fact that in the days -of foreign oppression patriots recognised each other by their love of the -immortal poet, and greeted one another, as by a secret password, with -the inspiring lines of the Divine Poem, is a symbol of the fact that the -roots of this temper of mind”—the temper of national “self-reliance and -self-renouncing enthusiasm”—“are to be sought in Dante.” - -There are three passions, according to Witte, which are (rightly or -wrongly) traced back to Dante: (1) a glowing love for Italy, (2) a -hatred of the foreign, and above all of the Teuton yoke, and (3) a hatred -of the temporal power of the Pope. - -In the first case—and this is the point that more immediately concerns -us—Witte holds that the contention is justified. “In hope, in sorrow, in -reproof, we see Dante filled,” he says, “with the same glowing love for -the Fatherland of Italy, a love which he is the first to put into words.” - -Before Dante, at any rate, Italy was, in Metternich’s famous phrase, -“nothing but a geographical expression.” The Roman poets of the Empire -praise her scenery, but their devotion as patriots is to Rome itself. -When the Empire broke up, Italy lost her one bond of superficial -cohesion, though a shadowy unity emerged now and again under Visigothic -and Longobardic domination, and the pressure now of Gothic Arianism, now -of Byzantine Iconoclasm, drew Italy’s various groups in self defence -closer to Papal Rome. - -The phenomenon of an apparently independent and united “Kingdom of Italy” -(888-961) after the fall of the House of Charlemagne, is, from this point -of view, as illusory as those of Odoacer and Theodoric, effecting little -or nothing towards the evolution of a national spirit or a national -self-consciousness. Dante is, it would seem, the first to see Italy with -a patriot’s eyes, as being, and as having been for countless ages, a -fatherland for whom one might sing— - - Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. - -She is “that lowlying Italy” on whose behalf the heroes and heroines of -the _Aeneid_ shed their blood so freely: - - ... Quell’ umile Italia.... - Per cui morì la vergine Cammilla, - Eurialo, e Turno, e Niso di ferute. - -He loves her passionately, torn as she is by faction, her own worst -enemy; and he calls on the representative of the Holy Roman Empire to -control her madness and to bring her peace. - -The close association of Italian aspiration with the name of Dante which -Witte observed in 1861, came forcibly under my own notice nearly fifty -years later, when I made a pilgrimage to Ravenna to take part in the -“Feste dantesche,” on September 13th, 1908. Isidoro del Lungo, perhaps -the greatest of Italy’s modern Dantists, was to inaugurate the opening of -a special Dante wing in the Ravenna library, and to dedicate a beautiful -silver lamp—an expiatory offering from the Commune of Florence—to adorn -his tomb. - -The occasion was nominally a Dantist celebration; but it might with -equal truth have been described as an “Irredentist Orgy.” For one of -the great features of the festival was the arrival of a pilgrim-ship, -flying the Italian tricolour, from Trieste, bearing some hundreds of -Italian-speaking devotees from “Italia Irredenta”—the “unredeemed” cities -which remained under Austrian rule when the rest of Italy threw off the -yoke of the foreigner—Trieste itself, and Pola, and Fiume. The people -of Ravenna and the visitors to the Festival, spurred on by eloquent -“posters” exhibited in the streets at the instance of clubs and societies -of every description, and by the proclamation of the Municipality itself, -to give the “Fratelli irredenti” a fraternal welcome, poured out towards -the quay in their thousands, and escorted the pilgrims through the -streets with flags flying and bands playing patriotic airs. Conspicuous -in the procession were half a dozen Garibaldini, veterans of the War of -Liberation, clad in their red shirts; and emotion rose to a high point -when the monument was reached which commemorates those who fell in the -struggle for a free and united Italy. Laughter, tears, embraces and -echoing Evvivas proclaimed the arrival of the _cortège_ at the Municipal -Buildings.... It was a scene which one will never forget, as the Italians -from across the water flung themselves upon their fellow-disciples of -Dante, with the romping and vociferous enthusiasm of children just let -out of school! - -There were, so far as one could judge, from the floods of printed and -of spoken eloquence which marked that day, two prominent thoughts -in people’s minds: two prominent points of contact and association -between the thought of the Divino Poeta and the aspirations of Italian -patriotism. The first of these is more general, the second more specific. -In general, Dante is rightly held to be the true Father of the Italian -language and literature—that “bond which unites us to our native place.” -“Love for our native tongue,” says Witte—and he has in mind a passage of -Dante’s _Convivio_—“is the expression of our love of our native land.” -For Dante Italy is— - - Il bel paese dove il _Si_ suona. - -“The beauteous land where _si_ is uttered”; and to that land the work -of his mind and of his pen lent an added beauty, and wove a spell which -should draw together all her scattered elements in the enthusiasm of a -common speech and a common literary heritage. That is Dante’s first claim -to supply the inspiration of a “United Italy.” - -The second claim is, as we have said, more specific. It is claimed for -him that he described, as it were prophetically, the future boundaries of -Italy. - -In the ninth Canto of the _Inferno_ (113-114) he includes the whole of -the Istrian peninsula in Italy, describing the broad inlet to the east of -it—the bay which stretches northward up to Fiume—as “The Quarnaro which -shuts in Italy and bathes her boundaries”— - - Sì come a Pola presso del Carnaro, - Che Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna.... - -Again, in his words about the Lago di Garda in the Twentieth Canto of the -_Inferno_ (61-63)— - - Suso in Italia bella giace un laco - A piè dell’ alpe che serra Lamagna - Sovra Tiralli, ch’ ha nome Benaco. - -“Up in fair Italy there lies a lake afoot the Alp that bars out Germany -above Tyrol, that bears the name Benaco:” he seems to include not only -the whole of Lake Garda but the Trentino too, “barring out Germany” -beyond the great watershed. - -At Ravenna, in 1908, one might have been led to suppose that these two -passages summed up the main interest of the _Divina Commedia_; but though -the utterances are, as a matter of fact incidental, they do point to -the fact that the Italy which Dante so passionately loved, and which -consciously or unconsciously he did so much to bring into being, was a -definite “geographical expression” if it was also something more. - -If with Witte we go on to enquire how far Young Italy is justified in -fathering upon Dante the passion of “hatred of the foreign, and above -all of the Teuton yoke,” the question is at once confused by the fact -that in Dante’s day the authority and prestige of that Holy Roman Empire, -of which the Poet was so convinced and so enthusiastic an advocate, was -associated with a succession of German princes. Teutons of the Swabian -House of Hohenstaufen, albeit Italian born, were “the illustrious -heroes Frederic the Caesar and his well-begotten Manfred” whom in the -_De Vulgari Eloquentia_ (I. xii. 20; Bemp. p. 330) he extols for their -nurture, in the Sicilian Court, of the beginnings of Italian vernacular -poetry; Teutons the Rudolf and Albert of Hapsburg, to whom the poet of -the _Divine Comedy_ looks in vain for the liberation of Italy from its -overwhelming ills; Teuton also Henry of Luxemburg, on whom his hopes were -finally fixed, the “Alto Arrigo” of the _Paradiso_— - - ... Ch’ a drizzare Italia - Verrà in prima ch’ ella sia disposta, - -for whom he sees a vacant throne prepared in the White Rose of heaven.[25] - -These heroes are not for him, however, Germans, _Tedeschi_, but Roman -Caesars; and had the sceptre of Empire chanced, then, as afterwards, to -have been wielded by other hands, we cannot doubt that a non-Teutonic -line of monarchs would have drawn from him a like reverence, a like -expectation and a like passionate appeal. Similarly, had the House of -Swabia been dissociated from the Roman Imperial tradition and played a -_rôle_ of overweening and unscrupulous self-aggrandisement like that -actually played by Philippe le Bel, Hugh Capet’s words in the fifth -Cornice of _Purgatory_—so well applied by a recent writer in the _Times_ -to the Hohenzollern—would have been put into the mouth of an ancestor of -the two Frederics, and applied to the House of Hohenstaufen. “I was the -root,” he says, “of the evil plant whose shadow blights the whole land of -Christendom”—[26] - - Io fui radice de la mala pianta, - Che la terra cristiana tutta aduggia. - -There is indeed one passage at least where Dante mentions the German -people in a non-political context (_Inf._ xvii. 21), and designates them -from the point of view of their national or racial habits. _Tedeschi -lurchi_—“Guzzling Germans”—he calls them. How one’s heart goes out to -him, as one recalls memories of sojourns in Swiss hotels! Had poor Dante -like experiences or worse to put up with in the days of his wanderings? - -Witte, who spontaneously brings forward this word of insight into -national character, is delightfully frank about it. “Only in one place,” -he says, “does he accuse us of a weakness which we would fain repudiate, -but it has been laid to the charge of Germany down even to our own day, -on so many hands, that we cannot escape the fear that our forefathers at -least must have given grounds for the accusation.” ... - -This is a poor note on which to end our study of Witte. Yet it is one on -which recent events have thrown a portentous illumination. The tendency -which we are combating together, Italians and English, with the haughty -spirit of Dante on our side, is one which begins in grossness of bodily -appetite, and goes all lengths of cruel and brutalising bestiality. - - * * * * * - -It is a relief to turn one’s back on this sordid atmosphere and launch -out once more into the “better waters”[27] of Italian Patriotism. - -I have by me a book which corroborates very strongly—for the sixties at -least—Witte’s contention that Young Italy consciously draws her patriotic -inspiration from Dante. Some few years ago I picked up in Venice a bound -copy of the _Giornale del Centenario di Dante Allighieri_, of which -the first number was published in Florence on February 10th, 1864, and -the 48th on May 31st, 1865. There should by rights have been two more -numbers, published after an interval, with Index and Frontispiece. -Whether these ever appeared in fact, I have not been able to discover. -My copy concludes with Number 48, which describes the Festival, to which -the year’s publication was planned to lead up—the _Feste Dantesche_ held -in Piazza Sta Croce, in May, 1865, the six hundredth anniversary of the -Poet’s birth. In that year Florence became the temporary capital of an -Italy free and united, but still barred out from Rome by French bayonets; -and she signalised the occasion by welcoming back in spirit her exiled -Son to the “Bello ovile,” where as a lamb he had slept,[28] when the _Re -Galantuomo_ himself unveiled the Poet’s statue in the Piazza. A quaint -woodcut of the ceremony adorns the volume.[29] - -The successive numbers of this _Giornale_, with their varied -contributions to the study and appreciation of the Poet—contributions -drawn from every part of the Peninsula—bear eloquent testimony to the -widespread feeling among the Italian patriots of that epoch, that Dante -was rightly to be acclaimed _Pater Patriae_. - -The articles are of all sorts, from chronological and etymological notes -to formal and discursive interpretations and illustrations of Dante’s -writings and his life, and studies of contemporary political and social -problems in the light of his dicta. They would probably repay a fuller -investigation than the present writer has had opportunity to apply to -them. We will take one or two typical utterances to indicate something of -the general tone of the contributors. - -“Dante was the first among his contemporaries,” says Prof. A. -Zoncada,[30] “to rise to the conception of a United Italy”—an Italy -united in powers, in purpose, in language, and that in spite of the -manifold disuniting influences at work in his day. “Fatto è che Dante -primo ne’ suoi tempi seppe levarsi al concetto d’un Italia unita e -concorde d’ intenti, di forze, di favella: primo abbraciò nel suo amore -tutta intera l’ Italia, senza divario di cielo, di usi, di memorie, di -legge, di stato, donde appunto risulta il sentimento di nazionalità.” -Dante’s desire for the establishment of an Imperial Court in Italy was, -he says, a desire for national and linguistic unity. “Non può essere -nazione senza una comune favella, nè comune favella dove nazione non sia. -Il perchè voleva Dante stabilito in Italia la sede degli imperatori, -unico mezzo, a suo credere, di conseguire l’ una e l’ altra unità, -della lingua, cioè, e della nazione.” There may perhaps be a little -exaggeration in this statement of the reciprocal relations of nationality -and vernacular, but at any rate it fastens on facts. Dante, as we have -seen, visualised Italy as one, sighed for her divisions, expostulated -with her on her undisciplined factiousness; longed, hoped, and prayed for -the speedy advent of a strong unifying force. He also devised for her -and bequeathed to her the noble instrument of a classical vernacular; -and if it be not strictly true that a nation cannot exist save where -there is one national language spoken, yet it is more than half true. -Dante doubtless did more in the end for the cause of Italian nationality -by his bequest of that splendid vehicle of thought and feeling which -the mother-tongue became in his hands, and by his initiation of a -glorious literary tradition, than he or any other man could have done -by actual utterances, however inspired. The importance of his work for -the vernacular is recognised again and again by the epigraphists who -in the _Giornale del Centenario_ have taken Dante as their theme. “The -mother-tongue supplies a bond of nationality which cannot be broken,” -exclaims Prof. Lorenzo Berardi in his epigraph,[31] “and that bond we owe -to Dante.” - - DANTE ALLIGHIERI - FU IL PADRE IMMORTALE - DI NOSTRA LINGUA - QUESTA - FU IL VINCOLO NAZIONALE - CHE MAI SI RUPPE. - -Father of the language, father of the national spirit, prophetic -delineator of the national frontiers.[32] So the Festa of 1865 joins -hands with that of 1908, wherein the official document drawn up by -Commendatore Guido Biagi to accompany the gifts offered at the Poet’s -shrine describes the offering communities as— - - CONCORDI IN LUI - CHE NEL VERSO IMMORTALE - SEGNAVA I TERMINI AUSPICATI - DELLA PATRIA ITALIANA - -But these festas are no longer an ideal and a dream; All-Saint’s-tide, -1918, has sounded a note of triumph which resounds, it may be, in the -world whither Dante is gone. Since the words above were penned, there has -rung out at once the knell of the justly hated Hapsburg autocracy, and -the joy-bells of _Italia Redenta_! - -The Piave, associated by Dante[33] with the grim thought of a humbled -and degenerate Italy, harried by the outrageous violence of Eccelino -da Romano and his minions; associated for us all to-day with nobler -memories, as the line of defence where for long months and weary, -patriots shed their blood like water to ward off from Italy horrors of -brutality before which even Eccelino’s record—a byword in the Middle -Age—reads like a little ill-timed horseplay: the Piave and the land -behind it— - - ... Quella parte de la terra.... - Italica che siede tra Rialto - E le fontane di Brenta e di Piava, - -have witnessed wonderful events. That famous river of which D’Annunzio -exclaims:[34] “It runs beside the walls and past the doors and through -the streets of all the cities of Italy; runs past the threshold of all -our dwellings, of all our churches, of all our hospitals. It safeguards -from the destroyer all our altars and all our hearths”; it has witnessed -a great victorious onrush that has swamped the very memory of Caporetto, -just a year, exactly, after that day of disaster. - -And the dream of the Ravenna pilgrims of 1908 has come true. Trento -and Trieste, “staked out,” as it were, by Dante’s verse as Italian, -proclaimed Italian by race and speech and aspiration, are at last Italian -in fact. - -_Evviva Italia Redenta!_ - - * * * * * - -POSTSCRIPT.—September, 1921, takes us back once more to Ravenna. Once -more the short and narrow street that faces the “little cupola more neat -than solemn,” is packed with an enthusiastic crowd. Once more the soul of -Italy is concentrated in that exiguous space, offering votive gifts at -the shrine. But this time the men of the Trentino and of the Dalmatian -cities come as “Redeemed Brothers,” fused in the general life of the -larger Italy. The Army gives a Wreath of bronze and silver, the Communes -of Italy a Bell, the city of Rome a bronze Door. - -The sexcentenary of Dante’s birth in 1865 marked a great stage in the -liberation and unification of Italy; the sexcentenary of his death, a -still greater. - -May the Poet’s best dreams come true, as interpreted by the Prophet -Mazzini, and Dante’s native land find at last that “peace” which she -has been “seeking from world to world”—find it in the fulfilment of her -God-given mission to the nations. - - - - -II - -DANTE AND POLITICAL LIBERTY - - Libertà va cercando, ch’ è sì cara - Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta. - - —_Purg._ i. 71, 72. - - -These words, it will be remembered, are addressed by Virgil, at the foot -of the mountain of Purgatory, to Cato of Utica. Virgil is speaking of -Dante, and of his mystical journey through the eternal world. The object -of that quest, he says, is Liberty—that liberty which will make him -master of himself morally and spiritually, when Virgil himself, at the -summit of the Mountain, ere he takes his leave, shall crown him “King and -bishop of his own mind and soul.”[35] - - ... Te sopra te corono e mitrio. - -These moving lines, as D’Ovidio reminds us,[36] have drawn tears -from many a patriot of the last century; they may well form for us -a starting-point for the consideration of Dante’s attitude towards -Political Liberty. True, it is ultimately _spiritual_ liberty, liberty -of soul, that the Poet “goes seeking” in his pilgrimage, even as it is -slavery of soul from which he announces in Paradise[37] that Beatrice -has delivered him. “Thou hast drawn me,” he says, “out of slavery into -freedom ... thou has given health to my soul”— - - Tu m’ hai di servo tratto a libertate - ... - ... l’ anima mia ... fatt’ hai sana.... - -But the conditions of spiritual and of bodily freedom are very close to -one another—as many a languishing prisoner of war can testify—interlaced -and interwoven if not identical. - - Stone walls do not a prison make, - Nor iron bars a cage. - -It is possible, thank God, for the human spirit to rise superior to the -most degrading conditions which inhuman brutality or fiendish hatred -can impose. Yet an atmosphere of justice and peace is the right and -normal environment for the soul’s free growth; and steady pressure of -tyranny and calculated injustice will all but infallibly blunt and stunt -the moral growth of its victims, as is witnessed by the universally -blighting effect of Turkish rule. Moreover, unless the received political -interpretation of the three Beasts of the Dark Wood[38] is wholly -unwarranted, Professor D’Ovidio is right in claiming[39] that, in a true -if subsidiary sense, Dante’s supernatural journey was “a refuge and a -remedy” from the troubles in which the Poet found himself immersed in the -tangled thicket[40] of an “enslaved Italy,” full of tyrants, and of that -tyrannous faction-spirit which is the worst enemy of Freedom.[41] - -The Italy of his day, like the Florence which cast him out, is a stranger -to that Liberty which only Peace can give—a peace for which, on Dante’s -horizon, no other hope appeared than that of a common subjection to -the “Roman Emperor,” the divinely appointed guardian of justice among -men.[42] Peace is, indeed, so closely linked with freedom that Dante, in -one place,[43] speaks of it as the goal of his mystic quest. - - Quella pace, che ... - Di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face. - -whereas in the First Canto, Virgil has described that goal as liberty— - - Libertà va cercando.... - -We may pause, then, on the context of these lines, wherein Dante’s quest -of liberty is associated with Cato’s suicide. For the difficulty and -obscurity of the situation which they raise will plunge us at once into -the heart of Dante’s Political Theory. - - * * * * * - -The opening Canto of the _Purgatorio_ shews us Cato of Utica, the -austere republican who killed himself rather than bow to the rising -dominance of Julius Caesar,[44] accorded a place of honour as Overseer -of the souls in Ante-Purgatory. His loving wife Marcia is in Limbo; his -fellow-republicans Brutus and Cassius are, with Judas Iscariot, in the -lowest depths of Hell. There is, moreover, a special place in Hell[45] -appointed for suicides, in a gruesome wood made fouler by the Harpies. -Yet here is Cato honoured, and, further, held up by Virgil as pattern of -the patriot who gives life for liberty! It has been a traditional crux -to interpreters of the _Divine Comedy_, to explain and justify Cato’s -position. To understand the fulness of the difficulty, and at the same -time familiarise ourselves with Dante’s theory of the ideal government -of the world, we shall need to turn to the treatise in which he holds up -for the general admiration of mankind that Empire which to Cato was more -hateful than death itself. - - * * * * * - -Next to the _Divina Commedia_, the _De Monarchia_—the “_Monarchia_” as it -is more neatly styled in Italy—is, in many ways, Dante’s most important -work. It lacks the charm as well as the literary importance of the _Vita -Nuova_, and the autobiographical interest of that and the _Convivio_, but -in it Dante develops his political theory, and by it—through Marsiglio -da Padova and his _Defensor Pacis_[46]—he influences all subsequent -generations. - -The “Monarchy” which he expounds therein is not Autocracy as such; it -is the traditional suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire, in which, in -spite of its actual failure in history, he sees an ideal centre of unity -for Christian civilisation, an ideal Court of Appeal for international -quarrels, a divinely ordained curb for personal and national greed and -self-assertion, and so an unique guarantee of peace for the world. - -The _Monarchia_ is comprised in three Books. In the First, Dante sets -himself to prove that the office of “Monarch” is necessary to the -well-being of the world, developing his theory of “Monarchy” as such. In -the Second, which is a long panegyric of the Roman Power, conceived as -one and continuous from the days of Aeneas son of Anchises, he points -to Rome as a providential instrument in God’s hand for the governing -of the world and the well-being of mankind.[47] He establishes to his -own satisfaction the thesis that the Holy Roman Empire, and it alone, -provides the “Monarchy” he is seeking. In the Third he argues that, -notwithstanding all that has been said and done by Popes, who (since -Gregory VII—and notably in the person of the Poet’s contemporary, -Boniface VIII)—claimed authority over all earthly potentates, the Secular -Authority is, in its own sphere, not derived from, or subject to the -Spiritual, but is independent; that the “Roman Prince” derives his -authority and his inalienable responsibility direct from God Himself. - -This last is the most original part of Dante’s treatise, and that of most -general importance. For it saps the false temporal pretensions of the -Papacy, the rottenness of which Dante was clever enough to discern long -before the famous “Donation of Constantine” had been proved a forgery. -But this subject need not detain us now. Our interest will be focussed -mainly on the theme of the First Book; in a lesser degree on that of -the Second, and we shall consider them both in the light of the _Divina -Commedia_. - - * * * * * - -Dante’s reverence for the Roman Empire dates probably from his first -study of the _Aeneid_, and is bound up with his passionate devotion -to Virgil,[48] whom he addresses in the opening Canto of the _Divina -Commedia_[49] - - O degli altri poeti onore e lume - Vagliami il lungo studio e ’l grande amore - Che m’ ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume! - -For him, as we have said, the Roman Power is continuous—from Aeneas, -through Julius Caesar, and through Charlemagne to his own day. In the -Second Book of the _Monarchia_ he sets forth first the nobility of its -origin, then the attestation of its divine character by “miracles”; he -substantiates the claim of the Roman People to rule by the evidence of -their “public spirit” and rightness of aim, and their unique faculty for -governing; by their success against all competitors for world-empire—the -prize sought so keenly by Cyrus, Xerxes, Alexander and the rest was -attained by Rome alone. Finally, he adduces Christ Himself as a witness. -Did He not choose to be born and to die for the world’s salvation under -the authority of the Roman Empire? - -In the Divine Comedy the theme of Rome’s glory receives an equally -enthusiastic and a more poetic treatment. Its echoes ring all through -the great poem, they become clamant and compelling in the Sixth Canto -of the _Paradiso_, where, from the mouth of Justinian, in the Heaven -of the world’s Workers, flows the story of the majestic flight of that -“Uccel di Dio,” the Roman Eagle, through the centuries from Aeneas to -Charlemagne.[50] - -But the atmosphere of serene satisfaction which pervades the _Monarchia_ -is not maintained here. The opening Paean of triumph gives place to a -more mournful note when the great Lawgiver turns to denounce the factions -of later times: “the Guelphs striving to Frenchify Italy, the Ghibellines -to Germanise it.”[51] Bitterly he assails the unworthy partisans of the -Empire. The Eagle stands for Justice; let them practise their intrigues -under some other standard[52]— - - Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte - Sott’altro segno.... - -Here practice comes to blows with theory. The Roman “Monarchy” was, -in Dante’s days, a failure. This failure was partly due to negligence -of individual occupants of the throne of the Caesars, like Rudolf -and Albert of Hapsburg,[53] partly to the usurping pretensions of the -Papacy,[54] partly, again, to the turbulent, anarchic, and self-seeking -spirit of cities and states.[55] - -It was Dante’s misfortune to be born into a world seething with political -faction, and into an Italy and a Florence in which the fever of faction -was at its hottest.[56] The two most potent influences in Christendom—the -Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire—were at feud; and half the people of -Italy (largely, if the truth must be told, to justify their existing -group-enmities) sided with the Papacy, and called themselves “Guelfs,” -half with the Empire, and called themselves “Ghibellines.” It is a mark -of Dante’s greatness that, unlike most of his contemporaries, he was able -to hold the balance true; to realise the immense value of each Authority, -the Spiritual and the Temporal, if rightly wielded; to discern the -God-given responsibility of each, and their mutual independence. - -Exiled himself from Florence by political faction, victim of the ruthless -partisan spirit which ruled in his native city, he felt keenly the need -of a supreme controlling power, a generally accepted and incorruptible -Court of Appeal; and he looked forward to the descent into Italy of the -Emperor Henry VII in 1311 as to the return of a Golden Age[57]—of a Peace -long wept for, and still delayed:[58] - - Della molt’ anni lagrimata pace. - -Many think that the _Monarchia_ was written to celebrate this advent of -one to whom he is not afraid to address the sacred words: “_Ecce Agnus -Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi!_”[59] - -Dante’s hopes in Henry VII were doomed to disappointment. The -disappointment did not shake his faith in the Holy Roman Empire as -a panacea for all the temporal ills of a Christendom distracted by -individual and national self-seeking and aggression. - -If we turn to the First Book of the _Monarchia_, wherein Dante develops -his Political Theory, we shall find that, at first reading, the actual -person of the Emperor seems essential; just as, at first sight, he -seems to rule out Democracy, together with Oligarchy and Tyranny, as -a “perverted form of Government.”[60] Here we must remember Dante’s -environment. His personal experience of the chances of freedom and -justice in his native city would give him an instinctive bias against -a non-monarchial form of government. Whether the system by which -Florence ruled itself in the opening years of the fourteenth century is -technically to be styled Democracy or Oligarchy, or a compound of the -two, it was certainly, in practice, for Dante, a Hydra-headed Tyranny -of the worst description. Further, it may be well to realise that -_personal_ authority was the only type of Suzerainty, the only form in -which a paramount and impartial Sway, or a world-wide Court of Appeal had -appeared on his mental horizon. - -It has been said of Mazzini’s Republicanism that it did not rule -out “Imperialism” in the sense familiar to British minds, of “The -White’s Man’s Burden.” He approved of the British _Raj_ in India, and -pictured his own free Italy of the future as possibly destined to -spread the blessings of her own historic civilisation by a similar -rule over pupil-peoples. May it be claimed in like manner for Dante, -whose writings so profoundly inspired Mazzini and his fellow patriots -of the _Risorgimento_, that though he is in a sense a thorough-going -Imperialist, yet his Imperialism is, at bottom, not inconsistent with a -more modern aspiration for a “World made safe for Democracy,” and kept -safe by a “League of Nations”? - -Dante is Imperialist; but if we enquire of him what is the -_raison-d’-être_ of Empire, he will answer: “It is the temporal -well-being of mankind.” This “well-being” consists in the fulfilment -of the purpose of man’s earthly life; the true and unobstructed -self-expression of that personal freedom of choice—that prerogative of -self-determination—which God has given to man as His divinest gift: -unique and universal endowment of His intelligent creatures—that “Liberty -of Will” which is so nobly hymned by Beatrice in the _Paradiso_ (v. -19-24)— - - Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza - Fesse creando, ed a la sua bontate - Più conformato, e quel ch’ e’ più apprezza, - Fu de la volontà la libertate, - Di che le creature intelligenti, - E tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate. - -In his Political Theory, as in his Mystic Pilgrimage, Dante is the -Apostle of Liberty. - - Libertà va cercando, ch ’è si cara, - Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta. - -This noble couplet, which has moved the hearts of countless heroes and -martyrs of the _Risorgimento_, even as our English Poetess was moved in -’48 at the sound of a child’s voice singing beneath her window “O bella -Libertà, O bella ...!”—this couplet bears with it, as we have seen, a -reference which has puzzled all the commentators, because it links with -Dante’s quest of spiritual liberty the deed of Cato of Utica: the suicide -by which that intransigent republican escaped submission to the founder -of the Empire. And not only is Cato given an honourable place at the -foot of the Mountain of Purgatory, and assured that, at the Great Day, -his self-slain body shall be glorified[61]; but in the _Monarchia_,[62] -Dante actually quotes with approval Cicero’s dictum in the _De Officiis_ -that for Cato “it was more fitting to die than to look upon the face of -a _tyrant_!” There may be other reasons for this strange discrepancy in -Dante’s scheme; but one is clear. Liberty ranks so high in the Poet’s -mind that it over-rides all other considerations: its typical votary may -win most extraordinary and exceptional treatment! - -Well, an essential condition of this all-precious Liberty, this full and -unobstructed self-expression and self-determination among nations, is -Peace. - -Such a peace must needs embrace harmony within the individual life, in -the home circle, in smaller local and municipal units, and, finally, -harmony between the various nations of Christendom, over all of -which, ideally, the mantle of the one Empire would be spread. Such a -Christendom, and such an Empire, for Dante, ideally embraces the whole -of mankind. This all-embracing character is, in fact, essential to it; -and it is important for our purpose to note that this complete world-wide -embrace (the antidote to personal ambition) never has been, and is never -likely to be, achieved by any _personal_ sovereignty. - -In this teaching the Monarchic Principle is, on the surface at least, -more than an abstraction. It is everywhere personified, though it claims -to exclude, as far as may be, the characteristically individual element -of greed and self-assertion.[63] To Dante it is self-evident that peace -in any of the concentric rings of human life—family, municipal, national, -international—can only be secured by the recognised dominance of a -single person in each circle.[64] In illustration of this principle he -quotes (from Aristotle) Homer’s verse about the Cyclops[65]: “Each of -them lays down the law for his own children and wives”; but he ignores -the anarchic conclusion of the sentence ... “and they take no heed of -each other.”[66] Nor does he follow Aristotle[67] in characterising this -as “an uncivilised form of government”; otherwise, he might have adduced -the Cyclops rather as an _abuse_ of the Monarchic Principle. The fact -is, that in each of the concentric circles the principle is only too -liable to abuse; and Dante knows it, else he would not have strewn the -realms of his _Inferno_ with the tormented shades of those who have been -guilty of such abuse—have been brutal tyrants in the home, in the city, -on the throne. If we would gauge the depth of indignation which such -abuse can rouse in Dante, we have only to turn to Hugh Capet’s speech in -_Purg._ xx. 40-96, where the denunciation of the savagely self-assertive -Royal House of France, with its infamous record of oppression, fraud, -treachery, murder, and sacrilege, might be applied directly, with scarce -a change of phrase, to the Hohenzollerns of to-day. - -No doubt the personal guidance—even forceful guidance—may be necessary -in early stages, as we have found it necessary among the child-races of -Africa. Even the Hohenzollern style of rule, in our day so monstrous an -anachronism, might have had its justification in far-back ages. It would -perhaps compare favourably with its true antecedents, the Nineveh and -Babylon of Old Testament times. “The Mailed Fist” may have its place, ere -men have learnt— - - ... how to fill a breach - With olive branches—how to quench a lie - With truth, and smite a foe upon the cheek - With Christ’s most conquering kiss.... - ... - ... We needed Caesars to assist - Man’s justice, and Napoleons to explain - God’s counsel, when a point was nearly missed - Until our generations should attain - Christ’s stature nearer.... - - —_E. B. Browning_: “_Casa Guidi Windows._” - -But now we are beginning to realise that it is a thing— - - Worth a great nation’s finding, to prove weak - The “glorious arms” of military kings. - -Ultimately, it is a Supreme Tribunal that Dante yearns for, albeit -he conceives that Tribunal as personified—incarnate in the “Roman -Prince”.[68] It is impartiality,[69] above all, that Dante looks for; -an impartiality to be guaranteed by that absence of ambition which an -undisputed, world-wide supremacy might carry with it, “leaving nothing -to be desired.” The authority that is free from taint of greed and -self-interest, and so from the temptation to use human lives as means for -its own ends, will most effectually display that “charity or love which -gives vigour to justice.” For “Charity, scorning all other things, seeks -God and man, and, consequently, the good of man.” - -Surely such impartiality and such human consideration might be looked -for in a representative tribunal at least as hopefully as in a fallible -individual like that Henry VII, on whom, in life, he built such soaring -hopes,[70] and for whom, beyond death, he prepared so high a seat in -Heaven?[71] - -That it is a _Tribunal_ that Dante is really seeking, is clear from -the Tenth chapter of the First Book of the _Monarchia_. And it may be -permissible to adduce in this connection a note on that chapter by an -eminent Dante scholar (to whom not a few of the thoughts in this Essay -are indirectly due), written at least ten years before the outbreak of -the World-War. - -“Nothing,” says Mr. Wicksteed, (_ad loc._ p. 149), “could better help -the student to distinguish between the substance and the form of the _De -Monarchia_, or to free himself from slavery to words, than reflection -upon this chapter. He will see that Dante’s ‘imperialism’ does not mean -the supremacy of one nation over others, but the existence of a supreme -law that can hold all national passions in check; so that the development -of international law and the establishment of arbitration are its nearest -modern equivalents; and the main difficulty is found in the want of any -power of compulsion by which the nations can be made to refer their -quarrels to the supreme tribunal and accept its awards, whether it sits -at Rome or at the Hague.”[72] - -What shape, we may ask, would Dante’s theory of the Temporal and -Spiritual Authority have assumed, had it seen the light in the Twentieth -Century instead of the Fourteenth? How would he shape it now?... How, -perchance, _does_ he shape it now if he looks down from “an eternal -place” upon this “little plot” of an earth which has so often been the -cockpit of international ferocity— - - L’ aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci.[73] - -He would see a world that has for generations clean forgotten that Holy -Roman Empire which loomed so large in his day, and is just giving the -_coup-de-grace_ to two unholy Empires that were playing a _rôle_ exactly -the opposite of that of Dante’s ideal Roman Prince, whose chief care is -to see that “in areola ista mortalium libere cum pace vivatur;”[74] a -world in which a bastard Roman Empire, seeking not peace and freedom for -the nations, but living for war, has striven for four long years with all -its might to crush the rest of the world under an iron heel. - -He would see a world in which the Papacy is no longer paramount -in Western Christendom; in which its spiritual claims are largely -challenged, and its temporal pretensions reduced to the shadow of a -sham. A world in which industrialism and the fruits of applied science -have transfigured at once the material and the social landscape. With -the passing of German Military Autocracy, the last traces of Feudalism -are like to disappear.... A world in which the development of national -self-consciousness, in its infancy during his lifetime, has increased and -multiplied. He would see a world, in short, both inwardly and outwardly -utterly different from that for which he legislated in the _Monarchia_, -save for the two permanent factors—the identity of human nature, and the -continuity of Divine guidance, by Him “qui est omnium spiritualium et -temporalium gubernator” (_loc. cit._) - -Would he not acclaim the passion for justice and freedom which has -inspired the nations of the _Entente_ to pile up their enormous -sacrifices in a five years’ struggle? Had he compared the conduct of each -side—had he compared merely their treatment of prisoners of war—could -he have doubted for a moment which side exhibited the princely spirit -of Charity “which gives vigour to justice:” _caritas maxime justitiam -vigorabit_.[75] - -Would he not see in the actions and aims of Italy—“Redeemed Italy”—and -her victorious allies, a surer hope for the stable peace of mankind than -ever his “Romanus Princeps” could have furnished? Would he not have found -his own aspirations for a just and impartial and supra-national Tribunal -embodied in that arbitrament which the “League of Nations” carries with -it? - -Would he not turn to individual nations (in the spirit of _Mon._ i. 5) -and say: “See to it that this principle of freedom and justice rules -throughout; that the spirit which looks ‘only to God and the good -of man’[76] inspires all your life-circles: the Home, the City, the -Province, the entire Nation. See to it that the brotherly, unselfish, -co-operating spirit has sway not only between the members of the various -classes and groups and interests of which your nation is composed, -but that it dominates also the relations of class to class and group -to group? What can better guarantee internal peace in a composite, -democratic community, than that each of the elements of which it is -composed shall be dominated by a single spirit—the spirit of free -fellowship, which is the surest antidote[77] to the anti-social poison of -greed and self-assertion?” - -Would he not also see that the maintenance of such a spirit demands also -a Spiritual Authority, one and forceful? - -The “Sun and Moon” of Spiritual and Temporal Authority of the -_Monarchia_,[78] which in the _Purgatorio_ have become “two Suns,” to -light men on the earthly and the heavenly path, he would find still -essential in a “World made safe for Democracy.” In 1300, he found the -Spiritual Sun usurping the powers of the Temporal, and so putting them -out of gear.[79] The Roman Prelate had annexed the Roman Prince’s sword -and united it incongruously with his own pastoral staff— - - Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo feo - Due soli aver, che l’ una e l’ altra strada - Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo: - L’ un l’ altro ha spento; ed è giunta la spada - Col pasturale, e l’ un con l’ altro insieme - Per viva forza mal convien che vada; - Pero che, giunti, l’ un l’ altro non teme. - -To-day he might rather see the Spiritual Sun eclipsed by the Temporal. -Religious sanctions will be needed to inspire and elevate the democratic -and multi-personal successor of the “Roman Prince” as the guardian of the -world’s Justice and Freedom. God Himself is the “Living Justice,”[80] and -He alone can wean human hearts from envy and that to which envy leads— - - ... Addolcisce la viva giustizia - In noi l’ affetto sì che non si puote - Torcer già mai ad alcuna nequizia. - -And “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.”[81] For -Freedom’s sake and Justice’s sake, Dante would demand some independence -still, of the Sword and the Pastoral Staff. He would demand (to modify -Cavour’s famous phrase) “a free Church in a league of free States”—a -unified Church to match the union of Peoples; a democratic Church to -inspire a democratic World, no longer an Ecclesiastical Autocracy, but -a Federation (shall we say?) of free National Churches, parallel to the -Temporal Authority of the future—the United States of the World. - -A democratic world, indeed, yet an “Empire” too, after all; gladly -submissive to the perfect sway, over Church and State alike, of the King -of Kings[82]— - - ... Quello imperador che là su regna: - -A God whose influence, though more resplendently manifest in some spheres -than in others, interpenetrates the whole of His universe, as in the -magnificent opening words of the _Paradiso_— - - La gloria di colui che tutto move - Per l’ universo penetra, e risplende - In una parte più, e meno altrove; - -A human world which reflects the peace of that wider creation which -“works like a giant and sleeps like a picture”—a peace built on the only -sure foundation, namely, the harmonious co-operation of mighty, God-given -forces, working together under the hand of God Himself.[83] - -With his last breath, as it were, the great Poet reminds us, to look up -to the Eternal Love that sways the constellations ... and the hearts of -men[84]— - - L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. - - - - -III - -WIT AND HUMOUR IN DANTE - - Che è ridere, se non una corruscazione della dilettazione - dell’ anima, cioè un lume apparente di fuori secondo che sta - dentro?—_Conv._ iii. 8.[85] - - -Freedom of spirit—that freedom wherewith the Truth can make us free—is -man’s rightful heritage indeed; but a heritage into the full enjoyment of -which he often needs must pass through suffering and strenuous struggle. -It is not a light, trivial, superficial thing. As Tasso sings— - - ... In cima all’ erto e faticoso colle - Della virtù riposto è nostro bene.[86] - -There is an easy shallowness that apes freedom, and looks like tolerance -which is the full recognition of other men’s right to Freedom. But the -Freedom which Dante “goes seeking” through “an eternal place”—through -the horror and murk of Hell, and by the steep ascent of the Mountain of -Hope, “l’erto e faticoso colle”—is a stern and noble guerdon, and can -only be enjoyed in its fulness by one who has attained to the fulness -of an ordered and disciplined humanity. It is deep conviction alone, as -Bishop Creighton taught us, that can beget true tolerance; the conviction -that the Truth is so sacred and so precious that it were impious to try -to force any soul to accept it (even were such a thing conceivable) by -external pressure. - -The spirit of “Education by Frightfulness” which devastated the -civilised world for five long years cannot, however, be accused of want -of conviction. The mission of Teutonic _Kultur_ was taken only too -seriously. It is no burst of shallow lightheartedness that has driven -a whole people—nay, a group of peoples—forth upon this gruesome and -devilish crusade. They have shewn themselves, throughout, in deadly -earnest.[87] - -What is it, then, that has brought forth from the womb of an earnestness -that breathes incredible industry and ingenuity and unsurpassed readiness -for individual sacrifice, this misbegotten offspring of a cruelly narrow -outlook and a ludicrous intolerance? - -The answer proposed by one of our brilliant essayists in the first months -of the war was nothing more or less than “the lack of a saving sense of -humour.” It is only a partial answer, perhaps, but it is surely true -as far as it goes. The want of “the power to see ourselves as others -see us,” the power to put ourselves in another’s place and see how our -actions would look to him, would affect him, is very close to that -tragic blindness—blindness to the fact that others have a like claim -with ourselves to just and reverent treatment, a like right to peace and -prosperity, to self-government and self-determination. These, who would -set the world right by violently upsetting it and forcibly conforming it -to their own pattern, have not the grace to see how ugly and ungainly -that pattern looks to other eyes. Indeed, self looms so large with them -that it fills the entire foreground, and even obliterates all trace of -background and middle distance. - -Life, as its Creator clearly intended it to be, with all the rich -variety and diversity in which alone its unity can find adequate -expression, is impossible on such terms. Freedom of self-development -and self-expression, which is of the essence of true life, is as likely -to flourish in such an atmosphere as is an “open-air” English girl in -the atmosphere of a stuffy German Wohnzimmer. Civilisation, under such -hegemony, would lose all the beauty of its spontaneity, all the romance -and mystery of its movement; its expansive forces would be imprisoned in -a minute and deadening code of regulations. - -It would be like a “corrected” river flowing evenly between straight -banks of enforced concrete, with nothing except its sober, serious, -and self-concentrated current to speak of the sinuous, sparkling, -effervescent charm, the “careless rapture” of its native motion. - -If we are to substantiate our claim for Dante as the many-sided Apostle -of Liberty, we must satisfy ourselves that he is at least not devoid of -that foundation of the sense of humour which takes a man outside himself, -makes possible to him something of a detached and external point of view, -enables him, if need be, even to see the ridiculous side of his own -earnest efforts. - -That Dante is in earnest, no one doubts. But does he, in his earnestness, -“take himself so seriously” as to incapacitate himself from doing justice -to other points of view? - -Prof. Sannia’s work on the humorous element in the _Divine Comedy_[88] -marks in some respects an epoch in the study of Dante. Its title may seem -audacious, to the verge of irreverence; but if this is so, the fault lies -partly in an age-long neglect of one aspect of the great poet’s nature, -partly in a difficulty (common to both the Italian language and our own) -confronting the critic who would define in appropriate language that -subtle element—now gently playful, now fiercely ironical—which redeems -Dante’s work as a whole from dulness, and makes the _Divine Comedy_ in -particular one of the most human books ever written. - -Whether or not Prof. Sannia has fallen deep into the pit that ensnares -most critics who have a hobby and a mission, his pioneer movement is -certainly far from futile. We believe that he has largely proved his -point, and given us, in consequence, a living Dante in place of the -traditional wooden effigy. At any rate his work will have justified -itself if it turns the attention of all-too-serious Dante students to a -new field, and emphasizes those qualities in the Divine Poet which the -sheer sublimity of his work has hitherto tended to obscure. - -In the following study we shall not confine ourselves to the limits of -the _Divina Commedia_, but gather all we can in so short a space from -his other works, and especially from the _Convivio_ and the _De Vulgari -Eloquentia_. - -As a preliminary we shall do well to bestow a glance at least upon -Dante’s environment from this particular point of view—the temper of -the generation in which he lived, and that of his immediate circle, -not neglecting such inferences as may be suggested by the tradition of -his physiognomy and the evidence of his earliest biographers. For a -provisional definition of the subject we may turn to “The Philosopher” -from whom Dante and his contemporaries drew directly and indirectly. -“Melancholy men of all others are most witty.” So said the “Maestro di -color che sanno,” according to the author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_; -and Boccaccio,[89] describing the habitual expression of Dante’s face, -says it was “always melancholy and thoughtful.” - -Before we draw the enticing inference that Dante was a paragon of wit, -we shall, however, do well to verify our quotation from Aristotle, and -to bear in mind the fact that the words “wit” and “witty,” like their -companions “humour,” “humorous,” have changed their meaning since the -sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By “Wit and Humour,” as applied to -Dante, we mean something vague and general, yet sufficiently definite to -make our quest practicable. The phrase is intended to cover the playful -and fanciful use of the intellect upon literary material, in the broadest -sense: from the simplest and most elementary puns and word-plays to -the subtlest and most surprising analogies; from the most discursive -description of a laughably incongruous situation, to the swift agility -of brilliant paradox; from the quiet, genial sally of the man who laughs -_with_ you; while he laughs _at_ you, to the biting sarcasm of the -satirist, whose keen and often envenomed darts are winged with wrath and -indignation. It is this last phase that we shall naturally expect to find -most prominent in Dante. - -In so far as it is to be expressed by a single Aristotelian word, our -subject corresponds most nearly in connotation to the Greek εὐτραπελία, -that intellectual elasticity and adroitness which seizes instinctively -upon the right subjects on which to vent its fun, and handles them with -a sure, artistic touch. It stands midway between the vulgarity of the -buffoon (βωμολόχος) and the insensibility to humour of the downright boor -(ἄγροικος). Indeed, in one place (_Mag. Mor_, i. 31, 1193) this quality -of εὐτραπελία is described by the Philosopher in terms which practically -identify it with our own useful phrase, “A sense of humour.” “The vulgar -buffoon,” he says, “deems everybody and everything a legitimate mark for -a jest, while the boor has no will to jest himself, and to be jested upon -makes him angry. The witty man”—the true humorist, as we may say—“avoids -both extremes. He selects his subjects—and is not a boor. On the one -hand he has the capacity of jesting with decency and decorum”—his -jokes do not jar on our good taste—“and on the other, he can bear good -humouredly jests of which he is himself the butt.”[90] - -How far Dante would satisfy the second part of this canon, may perhaps -be open to discussion. But this is to anticipate. For the moment it -behoves us to observe that a somewhat tedious search in the Berlin Index -volume for the passage cited in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ reveals the -fact that Burton’s “witty man” is not εὐτράπελος but εὔστοχος.[91] In -other words, what Aristotle attributes to the melancholy temperament is -inductive acumen, the qualification of the scientific discoverer, rather -than a sense of humour. The two qualities have, however, something in -common: the gift of seeing and grasping analogies not obvious to the -plain man in his plain moments.[92] So this crumb of comfort may hearten -us in our quest, although the path be at first sight as unpromising as -were certain stages of the Poet’s mystical journey. - -If then we elect to follow Aristotle, as Dante followed Virgil (and -I feel sure the Divine Poet would approve our choice of guide), we -may draw one more drop of comfort from a passage in the _Endemian -Ethics_,[93] in which the Philosopher, discoursing of friendship, notes -how unlike characters often pair off together, “as austere people -with witty ones (εὐτράπελοι).” May we look for this friendly union of -playfulness and austerity within a single personality? in the redoubtable -person of Dante Alighieri? - -Is it not almost as incongruous, it may be asked, to look for humour -in the _Divina Commedia_ as it would be to search for jokes in the -Bible? We are prepared to maintain that even the intense seriousness of -Dante—that sublime and solemn earnestness which can only be compared to -the temper of Holy Writ, is not merely compatible with a playful use of -the intellect, artistically restrained, but is rendered more complete and -effective thereby. And what about Holy Scripture itself? I speak with all -reverence. - -Hebraists assure us that puns and plays on words are far from rare in the -Old Testament; and there are, in the Psalms and the Book of Isaiah,[94] -and elsewhere, passages of which the irony, at once keen and sublime, -cannot fail to strike the English reader. Would it not be possible -also to quote even from the New Testament—from the Gospels—phrases and -metaphors in which the deepest and most solemn truths are cast into a -form which, for want of a better word, must be described as playful or -witty? The picture of the children in the market place discontented with -their games; the ironical description of the “blind guides of the blind”; -and of the pedants who “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel,” the still -more terrible irony of the “whited sepulchres”—instances like these -show that Truth and Wisdom incarnate did not disdain to use the whip -wherewith the old Hebrew Prophets had scourged the idolatrous follies of -their contemporaries.[95] - -In the light of what has just been said, we may perhaps be justified in -doubting whether the most perfect presentation of ideas—or at any rate -the most surely effective—does not involve of necessity the use of those -faculties with which we are at present concerned. “Without a sense of -humour,” it is often said, “no man can be a perfect Saint.” Surely it is -equally true to say that the same quality is essential for a really great -man of letters, be he Essayist, Historian or Poet. - -One more question before we come to Dante himself. What about the age -and place in which the Poet lived? Were the Italians of Dante’s time -devoid of the spirit of mirth and of the power to express it? Boccaccio -and Sacchetti, the _Novellino_, nay, even the Franciscan Legend with its -_Jaculatores Domini_, and not least the charming _Fioretti_, cry out -with one voice against the unjust imputation. But one single name would -be enough to vindicate for the Italy of Dante’s elder contemporaries, -and for the men who figure largely in Dante’s writings, the possession -of the sense of humour and the gift of wit. Fra Salimbene of Parma, the -immortal gossip, who so dearly loves a joke, and is so ready to pardon -other failings in the man who has “a pretty wit.” He peoples the world -into which Dante Alighieri was born with folk whose joy of laughter and -rollicking sense of fun match in their intensity the sternness, cruelty, -savagery of those strange days. And to Florence he accords the palm for -wit and humour,[96] though not in the strict Aristotelian sense; for -Salimbene’s Florentines are far from being always seemly and decorous in -their jests. - -The mirthful spirit that pervades the pages of Salimbene recalls -indeed most forcibly a passage of Aristotle to which we have not yet -referred, and a definition of _urbanitas_ (εὐτραπελία) which, if slightly -mysterious, is the most epigrammatic and the most suggestive of all his -utterances on the subject. - -“The young,” he says in the second book of the _Rhetoric_, “are -laughter-loving, and therefore witty, for wittiness is πεπαιδευμένη -ὕβρις....[97]” How shall we render it? “A disciplined ‘cheek,’” an -“educated insolence!” The riotous, effervescent self-assertion of the -Middle Ages, outcome of abundant vitality, offered splendid raw material -for the manufacture of _urbanitas_. The uncontrollable vivacity which -vented itself in the field of life sometimes in horseplay or in huge -practical jokes; too often in fighting and bloodshed; which vented itself -in the field of Art in the fantastically contorted and quaintly humorous -subjects of the illuminations with which even sacred MSS. were adorned, -and in the carving of grotesque figures in wood or stone— - - Come, per sostentar solaio o tetto - Per mensola tal volta una figura - Si vede giugner le ginocchia al petto;[98] - -and in the field of literature ranged from sheer profanity and lewdness -to the edifying if amusing hagiological tales which meet us everywhere in -the pages of Tammassia’s work upon St. Francis.[99] - -That Dante’s own literary circle was not innocent of this πεπαιδευμένη -ὕβρις—ὕβρις, that is, more or less πεπαιδευμένη—a glance at the dainty -little collection in Rossetti’s volume will show at once.[100] Not -to speak of the famous _Tenzone_ or “literary wrangle” between Dante -and Forese Donati, of which the Poet, it would seem, was afterwards -ashamed[101]; a group which included the extravagantly humorous Cecco -Angiolieri cannot be described as wanting in the “playful use of the -intellect.” - -“Del resto,” says Prof. Sannia, “Dante era un toscano, un fiorentino; -che è tutto dire ... nella facoltà comica e satirica ei fu degno -rappresentante della sua stirpe, il più degno e il più alto: il genio -comico e satirico fu in lui impronta, eredità etnica.”[102] - -And though he fails to cross-examine the Friar of Parma—perhaps the -most telling of all witnesses on this point—he has much to adduce to -the same effect. Most pertinent is his quotation of D’Ancona’s remark -that the gay songs with which the streets of old Florence rang were not -all love-ditties. Popular poetry was one of the forces which ruled the -city, “Firenze fu un Comune nel quale la poesia era uno dei pubblici -poteri.” It cannot fail to be significant that Dante spent the most -impressionable years of his life where the _poesia popolare_, by the -inspiration of its eulogy and the stimulus of its satire, took the place -of our modern newspapers in the formation, guidance and control of -effective public opinion. And if the lessons of Florence were not fully -learned at the time—if the _Vita Nuova_ may be said by the unsympathetic -to reveal something of the prig—the rough and tumble of an exiled life in -fourteenth century Italy had no mean share of teaching to offer. - -We have thus narrowed the field of observation to Dante himself, and are -justified in claiming to have established at the outset at least so much -as this: that if Dante was humourless, it was not for want of inspiration -in his environment, or of material in the human—the _very_ human—spirits -among whom he moved. - -It is not unnatural to ask first of all, whether Dante’s physiognomy -has anything to tell us on the subject. Two features act emphatically -as index of the movements of the unseen spirit—as the Author himself -points out in the _Convivio_[103]—the eyes and the mouth, those “Balconi -della donna che nello edificio del corpo abita.” And though the spirit -of pleasantry and humour is apt to reveal itself through these windows -chiefly in momentary flashes, the genial temper will usually leave some -prominent tokens of its influence more especially about the corners of -the mouth. As regards the eye, that most expressive of all our features, -no fourteenth century portraiture, however faithful, could hope to -reproduce its living flesh. Moreover, the most authentic portrait -of Dante is blind, alas, or rather worse than blind: fitted with an -execrable false eye by the much-abused Marini. The pose of Dante’s mouth -might teach us something, if only we could be sure of it. Mr. Holbrook in -his recent monograph[104] has confirmed our suspicions about the famous -“Death Mask,” which at best would naturally have furnished nothing more -significant than the smile of peace which so often graces our poor clay, -a parting gift from the spirit as it leaves. - -The magnificent Naples Bust is seemingly, like the so-called “Death Mask” -itself, the creation of some abnormally gifted artist, who derived his -inspiration, perhaps indirectly, through the Palatine Miniature (No. -320)[105] from the Bargello portrait to which we have already referred. -In vain, therefore, does its splendid physiognomy, completely human, give -such promise of a sense of humour as a face in repose can be expected -to give. Nor does it matter for our purpose that the “Ritratto brutto” -(as the Riccardian picture—attached to MS. 1040—is justly styled by some -distinguished Florentines) would suggest the bare possibility rather than -the probability of a sense of humour; for that work of Art (if it may be -so called), is probably derived, like the famous Torrigiani Mask, from -the Naples Bust. - -The one probably genuine contemporary portrait, the Bargello Fresco, -which a merciful criticism still allows us to attribute to Giotto, is -only preserved in the drawings of Kirkup and Faltoni. In these, one -window of the soul, the eye, is wanting, and there is considerable -difference between the two reproductions of that most essential feature, -the mouth; where Kirkup has much more of the conventional “Cupid’s -Bow.”[106] The most that can be said here is what we said of the Naples -Bust, that it certainly leaves room for a play of humour, restrained and -dignified. - -When we pass from portraiture to written record, we have but little -material that is really _à propos_ in the early biographers of Dante. -Boccaccio, after pourtraying his character and features says, “his -expression was ever melancholy and thoughtful”—“nella faccia sempre -malinconico e pensoso” (_Vita_, § 8), but goes on to describe him as -“smiling a little”—“sorridendo alquanto” (_ib._), when he overheard the -gossips of Verona commenting on the crisped hair and darkened complexion -of the man who “goes down to Hell and returns at will to bring back -word of those below.” Later on in his biography he draws out with -evident relish the power of the poet’s sarcastic satire: “with a fine -resourcefulness of invention,” says Boccaccio (§ 17), “he fixes his fangs -on the vices of many yet alive and lashes the vices of many that have -passed away”—“con invenzione acerbissima morde le colpe di molti viventi -e quelle de’ preteriti castiga.” And speaking, in an earlier passage, -of his courtesy in intercourse with others[107]—“più che alcun altro -cortese e civile”—he takes something of the edge off Giovanni Villani’s -description of a man “somewhat haughty, reserved and disdainful, and -after the fashion of a philosopher, careless of graces and not easy -in his intercourse with laymen.”[108] Yet we feel all the time that -Villani’s description is, speaking broadly, the more convincing; and are -relieved when we realise that it is the outwardly and obviously genial -temperament rather than the saving sense of humour that the Florentine -historian would deny to his great contemporary. - -Next, before we turn to the testimony of Dante’s own works, we may -refer briefly to the stories told of him; for if none of these be -incontrovertibly authentic, and not a few of them be comparatively late -in origin, their cumulative evidence should be of some value, at any rate -in suggesting what his own countrymen of succeeding generations regarded -as compatible with the Poet’s temperament.[109] - -We may dismiss, if we will, as apocryphal, the tale of Dante’s -conversation with the fish at the Venetian Doge’s banquet, and of the -smearing of his court dress at King Robert’s feast, we may reject, -perhaps, with more hesitation and regret, Sacchetti’s stories of the -harmonious but offending blacksmith and the donkey-driver who farced -Dante’s songs with an interpolated _Arrhi!_ We may relinquish the -pun on Can Grande’s name, while retaining Petrarca’s story (of which -Michele Savonarola’s is possibly a “doublet”) wherein Dante administers -a deserved rebuke to Can Grande and his court for their preference of -a buffoon to a poet. But even the rejected legends add their quota of -testimony to the general and traditional belief that the Divino Poeta -could unbend, and was capable of making a joke. - -And there is a certain residuum—some would say larger, some smaller—of -anecdotes that may be believed to contain a nucleus of truth. - -There is to me a convincing ring about the comment of the _Anonimo -Fiorentino_ on _Purg._ iv. 106. When Belacqua makes excuses for his -laziness on the ground of the Aristotelian dictum that “by repose and -quiet mind the mind attains to wisdom,” Dante retorts: “Certainly, if -repose will make a man wise, you ought to be the wisest man on earth!” - -A like readiness of wit, in a moment where all depended on readiness, -is evinced in the story of his reply to the Florentine envoy who was -sent to Porciano to demand his extradition. “Is Dante Alighieri still -at Porciano?” asked the messenger who met the fore-warned exile on the -road, in the act of escaping. “When I was there, he was there,” was the -non-self-committing response: “quand io era, v’ era’.”[110] The stories -told of Dante, if they do not suggest a genial and convivial temperament, -do suggest a ready and caustic wit. But it is time to turn to Dante’s -own works, and taste for ourselves. - -The _Divina Commedia_ is the criterion by which most would judge him, -and on this we shall spend the bulk of the space at our disposal; but -no discussion of this or any other aspect of Dante’s literary genius -can afford to neglect the field of his minor works, which are, in this -particular case, of not a little importance. The _Convivio_ (if we may -anticipate) supplies us, among other things, with Dante’s own idea of -what laughter should be; and the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ furnishes a -practical illustration of his treatment of a subject like _patois_ which -lends itself to humorous handling even in a serious treatise. - -These three works not only cover a large proportion of Dante’s total -literary remains, but they are also representative of his three chief -styles of writing: Poetry, Italian Prose, and Latin Prose. - -In opening the _Divina Commedia_ one would venture to issue a further -warning on the mistake of limiting the field of observation to the -_Inferno_, or of allowing its temper and atmosphere too great a place -in our estimate of the characteristics of Dante. Whatever he was to the -women of Verona, Alighieri is to us much more than “the man who goes -down to Hell and comes up again at will.” Yet now and then even educated -Italians, if you mention Dante’s name, are apt to make it clear that they -knew him mainly as the creator of two episodes—_Paolo and Francesca_ -and _Conte Ugolino_; and there is a real danger among Englishmen—amply -illustrated in Dr. Paget Toynbee’s _Dante in English Literature_—of -laying too much stress on the _Inferno_, even if they do not confine -themselves to it. - -The humour of the _Inferno_ is, of necessity, prevailingly grim; -sometimes almost coarsely grotesque. Here we may see the hand of the -subtle artist, and detect a deliberate purpose on Dante’s part to pour -(as I have said elsewhere) “a disdainful and indignant ridicule upon -the futile, monstrous, hideousness of sin.”[111] “His fine scorn of sin -tempts him to heap upon it all the ... burden of loathsome grotesqueness -that the resources of his imagination can furnish.” - -Typical of this method is the fierce sport of the scene described in -_Inf._ xxii-xxiii, which culminates in the “nuovo ludo”[112] (puzzlingly -compared by Dante to the apocryphal Aesopian Fable of the “Frog and the -Mouse”)[113] in which Ciampolo outwits the Demons and brings them to -confusion.[114] We are in mid-Hell, in the fifth _Bolgia_ of the eighth -circle, _Malebolge_, the place of the _Barattieri_, of those, that is, -who have made traffic of justice or of public interests. Dante, who had -been falsely accused of this crime, expends all the resources at his -command to express his detestation of it, and holds it up at once to -ridicule and loathing. - -In Purgatory, on the terrace where pride is purged, he seems to -acknowledge his appropriate place; but far different is his attitude -towards the spot in Hell where his political enemies would fain have -placed him. - -The whole of these two Cantos and a half is pervaded by an unholy reek of -boiling pitch; the appropriate similes are those of frogs immersed to the -muzzle in stagnant ditch water[115]; of clawings, flayings, proddings of -raw flesh.[116] Here, if anywhere, Dante verges on the vulgar. The names -of the Demons are fantastically ridiculous and unpleasantly suggestive; -their actions and their gestures, their badinage and their horseplay -all remind one that the stately pageant of the Middle Ages had its -unspeakable and unpresentable side. The Cantos are only redeemed from -unreadableness by the fine similes, the lofty poetical touches which -Dante, because he was Dante, could not but introduce here and there. - -The graphic picture of the Venetian arsenal in full activity,[117] the -swiftly drawn but masterly sketches of the wild duck’s dive to escape the -swooping falcon,[118] of the mother’s rescue of her child by night from -a flaming house[119]; the vivid reminiscences of Dante’s own campaigning -days, at Caprona and before Arezzo: these play, like sunlit irridescence -on the surface of a noisome pool, where foul creatures sport and gambol -in a nightmare fashion. - -We must note, however, one point; that Dante never represents himself -here as moved to mirth by the fiendish antics he so conscientiously -describes. Rather he is pictured as consistently consumed by fear and -loathing.[120] - -More reprehensible from the point of view of good taste is the Poet’s -eager attention attracted to the vulgar harlequinade between Master Adam -the false-coiner and the Greek Sinon, where the latter strikes the former -on his “inflated paunch” till it resounds— - - Come fosse un tamburo.[121] - -But Dante is careful to put things right in the sequel, and makes his own -blush of shame respond at once to Virgil’s chiding— - - ... Or pur mira - Ch’ è per poco che teco non mi risso![122] - -Less broad in its grim playfulness is the taunt which the spendthrift -Jacomo da Sant’ Andrea, hunted and breathless, gasps out at his -fellow-sufferer: “Lano, at Toppo’s jousts thy legs were not so nimble”— - - Lano, sì non furo accorte - Le gambe tue a le giostre dal Toppo![123] - -Exquisite in the irony of its situation is in _Inf._ xix, in which Dante, -in order to find a place for solemn invective against Boniface VIII,[124] -and to assign him, while still alive, his place in Hell, makes Nicholas -III mistake the Poet’s voice for that of the Pontiff, and exclaim— - - Se’ tu già costì ritto, - Se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio? - -Whereat Dante represents himself as quite non-plussed and unable to grasp -the speaker’s meaning! - -Nor is the scene itself without a picturesque absurdity that evinces a -subtle sense of humour, especially when we remember the over-weening -pretensions of Boniface to unearthly dignity. The flaming legs of -Simonists kicking to and fro above the surface of the ground wherein the -rest of them is buried headforemost; and the neat epigram in which Pope -Nicholas describes his plight— - - Su l’ avere, e qui me misi in borsa— - -“I pursed wealth above, and here—myself.”[125] - -Bearing in mind the Poet’s solemn and deliberate purpose, as we conceive -it, to pour scathing ridicule upon that which qualifies man for a place -in Hell, we may fairly aver that even in the most critical scenes and -episodes he does not transgress the canons of the Master whom he revered. -If there is βωμολοχία—unseemly and unrestrained jesting—in his Inferno, -it is not Dante’s, but the Demons’. Dante, as we have seen, deliberately -dissociates himself from it; and the absence of all such extravagance -from his description of Paradise and even of Purgatory confirms our -inference that the humorous element, even at its grimmest and coarsest, -is carefully proportioned to the environment with which he is dealing. - -The _Purgatorio_ and _Paradiso_ are marked (like the scene with Nicholas -III) by occasional outbursts of political or quasi-political invective, -seasoned with stinging satire. In these tirades against Florence or the -Papacy Dante is sometimes his own spokesman; sometimes they are put into -another mouth. - -The concluding verses of _Purg._ vi. will at once come to mind: the -famous invective in which he ironically congratulates his native city on -her “feverish” energy,[126] shown in the disinterested eagerness of her -citizens to take up the lucrative burdens of public office, and in the -amazing agility of her legislative activity, beside which the democratic -traditions of Ancient Athens— - - Fecero al viver ben un picciol cenno—[127] - -the laws passed in October being superseded by the middle of November— - - ... Che fai tanto sotili - Provedimenti, che a mezzo novembre - Non giugne quel che tu d’ ottobre fili. - -Then there is the scarcely less famous passage in _Par._ xxi,[128] where -St. Peter Damian, inveighing against the Roman Curia, describes the fat -Cardinals as supported on every side as they go—held up to right and -left, and pushed and pulled along— - - Or voglion quinci e quindi chi i rincalzi - Li moderni pastori, e chi gli meni - Tanto son gravi! e chi di rietro gli alzi. - -And when they ride, covering their palfreys with their ample robes, “so -that two beasts are moving ’neath one hide”— - - Sì che due bestie van sott’ una pelle.[129] - -Or again, there is Beatrice’s tirade in _Par._ xxix.[130] against the -farce of unauthorised indulgences, and against the fashions of the -contemporary pulpit: the fashion of neglecting the Gospel, and straining -after originality, as though Christ’s mandate had been: “Go ye into all -the world, and preach—frivolities!” - - Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance.[131] - -The modern preacher’s “head is swelled” (if we may so translate _Gonfia -il cappuccio_), and he is perfectly content if by his jests and gibes he -can raise a laugh, while the fiend sits unseen in the corner of his hood. - -This passage is as perennially applicable as any in Dante, and combines -the satire of Alexander Pope with the stern earnestness of the author of -the _Task_, so aptly compared to it by W. W. Vernon. - -Dante no doubt felt a certain appropriateness which justified him -in putting these invectives into the mouths of his august _dramatis -personae_: but we are apt to hear the ring of _his_ voice in each of -them. There are, however, other passages in the _Purgatorio_ and the -_Paradiso_ of which the playfulness belongs to the characters themselves. - -In _Purg._ xx. we have two instances given to show that the risible -faculties are not extinguished by the pains of purification. - -Greedy Midas’ dismal surprise when, in answer to his ill-advised prayer, -his very food turned to gold and became uneatable, is a legitimate and -unfailing cause of laughter— - - Per la qual sempre convien che si rida—[132] - -to those who lie fettered face downwards[133] in the terrace of the -avaricious. And it is with evident relish that the same souls repeat -their last lesson: “Tell us, Crassus, for thou knowest, what is the -flavour of gold?” - - Crasso, - Dilci, che ’l sai: di che sapore è l’ oro?[134] - -In the next Cantos, xxi. and xxii., the Poet delights us with scenes of -a graceful and most appropriate playfulness. First there is the charming -episode, _Purg._ xxi. 100 _sqq._, where Statius, addressing Virgil, whom -he does not recognise, says: “What would I have given to have been on -earth when the author of the _Aeneid_ was alive!” and Dante, in spite -of Virgil’s unspoken but unmistakable “_Taci!_” betrays the situation -by an uncontrollable smile. Then in the next Canto (xxii.), when the -puzzled Virgil mistakes the guilt for which Statius is suffering for -_avarice_, it is Statius’ turn to laugh. The gentle, mirthful grace of -the whole scene is enhanced by the pathetic sequel, when Statius explains -that it was Virgil who converted him, by his famous fourth Eclogue, -to Christianity, like one who, walking himself in darkness, carries a -lantern behind his back to illumine the path of those who follow— - - Facesti come quei che va di notte - Che porta il lume dietro, e sè non giova - Ma dopo sè fa le persone dotte.[135] - -Charming too is the playful irony of the scene in the Earthly Paradise -where Matelda gravely discourses to Dante, in presence of Virgil and -Statius, about the poets who in days of yore sang of the Golden Age— - - Quelli ch’ anticamente poetaro - L’ età del’ oro e suo stato felice—[136] - -and Dante looks round on them and sees them smiling. - - Io mi volsi in dietro allora tutto - A’ miei poeti, e vidi che con riso - Udito avevan l’ ultimo costrutto.[137] - -The smiles which wreathe the lips of the denizens of the Heavenly -Paradise, like that which gleams in Beatrice’s eyes,[138] are something -ineffably solemn and sublime: like the _Gloria_ chanted in the Starry -Heaven, of which the Poet exclaims— - - ... mi sembiava - Un riso de l’ universo.[139] - -But there is a touch of the more distinctively human in the suggestion -thrown out in the following Canto that St. Gregory woke up in heaven -to the true facts about the Angelic Hierarchy, and “smiled at his own -mistake” in departing from the Dionysian scheme. - - Onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse - In questo ciel, di sè medesmo rise.[140] - -The passages we have touched upon in the _Divina Commedia_ are those -most obviously to the point. Prof. Sannia’s Italian mind can discern -subtleties of humour in places where the foreigner cannot always hope -to follow. But there is one point on which he lays much stress, namely -the importance, for our purpose, of observing Dante’s attitude towards -himself throughout the mystical journey, and especially as he passes -through the dismal regions of the First Kingdom. The Dante so graphically -depicted to us in the _Divine Comedy_ is altogether different from the -cold, abstract Dante of tradition. He is an impatiently curious child, -in whom the passion of curiosity even conquers fear. And while the -pilgrim is depicted to us in very human guise, and his motions and his -attributes described in terms which presuppose not only a remarkable -degree of self-knowledge, and a striking power of psychological analysis, -but also a very real sense of humour; the poet who sings of the pilgrim, -reveals to us by the way, a whole group of characteristics which claim -the humorous gift as their inevitable associate. Such are his broad -humanity, his sympathy, his reverence even for the noble damned, his very -modern type of tenderness shown by interest in the ways of children, -animals, birds, insects, from whose life he loves to draw his similes. -“True humour,” says Carlyle, “is sensibility in the most catholic and -deepest sense.” Virgil—the Virgil of history—had this in a pre-eminent -degree—and so has his mystic companion of the Eternal World.[141] - -Popular tradition has imagined him as a heartless, unfeeling judge, -without that indulgence towards human frailty which the gift of humour -presupposes: but the entire _Purgatorio_ belies this calumny, and not a -few episodes in the _Inferno_ itself. - -To pass from the _Divina Commedia_ to the _Convivio_ is in any case a -drop down. If it is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, -the sublimity of the _Divina Commedia_ should bring us very close to -the regions where laughter is generated. The _Convivio_, with all its -manifold interest is obviously far below the level on which thought and -feeling habitually move in the _Divine Comedy_. Has it therefore less -promise in the matter of our quest? - -I venture to think that there is a strain of playfulness underlying a -good deal of the argument of this work; and that even if we can bring -ourselves to believe Dante’s own solemnly elaborate interpretation of his -love-songs to be quite serious in the main. - -And apart from this, if we take the _Convivio_ with the utmost -seriousness, we may remember for our comfort that πορίζεσθαι τὰ -γέλοια[142] is one of the qualifications of Aristotle’s εὐτράπελος and -the willingness to be laughed at another; and see in Dante (with all -reverence) an example of those who, more or less unconsciously provide -matter for amusement to posterity. Nay, we may treat him as he treats St. -Gregory, and look upon him as laughing now at his own certitude about -the ten heavens and the angelic hierarchy, from his place in the mystic -rose—or are we to say on the terrace of Pride? - -But to return to the _Convivio_. It is here, as we have already -suggested, that Dante gives us his description of the ideal nature of -Laughter. “Ridere,” he says, “è una corruscazione della dilettazione de -l’ anima.”[143] On the Aristotelian principle of the Mean (though his -actual reference is not to Aristotle, but to Pseudo-Seneca “On the Four -Cardinal Virtues”), he urges that laughter should be moderate and modest, -with no violent movement (such as convulses the pages, e.g. of Franco -Sacchetti) and no “cackling” noise. Laughter is, in fact—like little -children—“best seen and not heard.” - -From each of the four extant treatises, quotations may be adduced which -at any rate show the writer’s sympathy with that view of life which -fastens on the incongruous and sees in it matter for genial irony or for -bitter sarcasm, according to the moral context. - -_Tratt. I._ Chapter xi. opens with a delicious satire on the “sheep-like -opinion” of the multitude, which I have elsewhere compared to the -charmingly nonsensical scene—“Less Bread, More Taxes!”—with which Lewis -Carroll inaugurates his _Sylvie and Bruno_. - -The “man in the street,” says Dante, is ready to follow any cry that is -raised. Thus the populace will be found exclaiming “Viva la lor morte! -Muoia la lor vita!—purchè alcuno cominci.” They are for all the world -like sheep who follow their leader blindly over a high precipice or down -a well. He goes on to rail at “a bad workman who blames his tools,” the -many who “_sempre danno colpa alla materia dell’ arte apparecchiata, -overo alo strumento; siccome lo mal fabro biasima ferro appresentato a -lui_.”[144] - -Nor can we fail to find in the next chapter (I, xii.) a touch of the -drily humorous spirit; in the passage which Dr. Toynbee in his Anthology -entitles _Of Silly Questions_. - -“If flames were plainly to be seen issuing from the windows of a house, -and a bystander were to enquire whether that house were on fire, and -another man to reply that it was, I should find it difficult to decide -which of the two was the more ridiculous.”[145] - -What are we to say of the _Trattato II_? Here, if anywhere, Dante poses -as the unconscious humorist; here, if anywhere, in his elaborately solemn -disquisition upon arrangement of the heavens and their analogues in the -_trivium_ and _quadrivium_, he is qualifying himself to play the _rôle_ -of St. Gregory in the other world! But even here he finds leisure to cast -occasionally a satirist’s eye on the contemporary world— - - l’ aiuolo che ci fa tanto feroci; - -and the naïveté of his references to it is delightful. They sometimes -come in incidentally in the form of similes. In Chapter vii.,[146] for -instance, is an illusion to the perennial banishments and sieges with -which the factions of Guelf and Ghibelline, Black and White, harassed the -cities of the peninsula: “When we speak of ‘the city,’” he says, “we -are wont to mean those who are in possession of it, not those who are -attacking it, albeit the one and the other be citizens.” Or again, in -Chapter xi.,[147] a reference to the decline of good taste and culture -is ingeniously worked into a question of etymology. “_Cortesia_” is -equivalent to “_onestade_,” and “because in courts of old time virtuous -and fair manners were in use (as now the contrary), this word was derived -from courts, and ‘courtesy’ was as much as to say ‘after the usage of -courts.’ If the word had been derived in modern days from the same -origin, it could have signified nothing else than _turpezza_.” - -In _Tratt. III_, as elsewhere, the playfulness is for the most part so -spread out that it is difficult to quote. There is, however, a touch of -real satire in such passages as that in which Dante twits the lawyers, -physicians, and members of religious orders with their disqualification -for the reputation of a true philosopher.[148] - -“We are not to call him a real philosopher who is a friend of wisdom for -profit’s sake, as are lawyers, physicians, and almost all the members of -the religious orders, who do not study in order to know, but in order -to get money or office; and if any one would give them that which it is -their purpose to acquire, they would linger over their study no longer.” - -_Trattato IV_ is more obviously fruitful. Here again he girds at -the lawyers and doctors, suggesting that they might at least give -_un_professional advice gratis, and, in another place, ventures timidly -to assert that it may be possible “to be religious though married.”[149] -Again, in Ch. xvi., if _nobile_ simply meant _notus_, then the Obelisk -of St. Peter would be the noblest stone on earth, and Asdente the -cobbler (of whom Salimbene gives us so lively a sketch) would be noblest -among the citizens of Parma.[150] - -Some arguments are so senseless, he says a little earlier, that they -deserve to be answered not with a word, but with a knife. “Risponder si -vorrebbe non colle parole ma col coltello a tanta bestialità.”[151] - -Lastly, he has in this treatise the audacity to depict to us the -sublimest sage, “il maestro di color che sanno,” as indulging in a burst -of hypothetical laughter at the idea of a double origin of the human -race. “Senza dubbio, forte riderebbe Aristotile”; and, he adds, “those -who would divide mankind into two separate species like horses and asses -are (with apologies to Aristotle) themselves the asses.”[152] - -In the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_, as we have already hinted, the “idioma -incomptum et ineptum” of various localities, alike on the right and on -the left of the Apennines, gives play for pleasantry of which does Dante -not fail to take advantage. It is with evident relish that he puts on -record typical uncouth phrases of each dialect: the Roman _Mezzure quinto -dici_, the _Chignamente_, _frate_, _sc-tate_ of the Marches of Ancona, -the Milanese _Mes d’ ochiover_, the _Çes fastú_ which men of Aquileja and -Istria “crudeliter accentuando, eructuant.” The feminine softness of the -Romagna, and especially of Forlì, with its _corada mea_;[153] the more -than masculine roughness of the men of Verona, Vicenza, Brescia—all those -who say “Magara”; the _nof_ and _vif_ of Treviso. - -In Chapter xi. he has his knife into mediaeval Rome, the proud and -corrupt. “Sicut ergo Romani se cunctis preponendos extimant, in hac -eradicatione sive discerptione non immerito eos aliis preponamus, -protestantes eosdem in nulla vulgaris eloquentie ratione fore tangendos.” -The primacy which the Romans claim in all things may certainly be theirs -in this. In our eliminating process they shall be first to be rejected -from the candidature to furnish a classical vernacular for all Italy! - -Their dialect (he goes on), like their morals, is the most degraded -in the whole peninsula, and has spread its corrupting influence into -neighbouring districts. It is indeed not worthy to be called a _vulgare_ -(vernacular), but rather a depraved misuse of speech (_tristiloquium_), -and is “italorum vulgarium omnium ... turpissimum.”[154] - -At the end of Chapter xiii. he tilts at the Genoese Z—an ugly sound in -itself, but one which, if lost or mislaid by defect of memory, would -leave the poor people of Genoa without a means of transmitting their -thoughts! The loss of this one letter would leave them dumb, or impose -on them the necessity of inventing an entirely new mode of speech. “Si -per oblivionem Ianuenses ammitterent _z_ litteram, vel mutire totaliter -eos vel novam reperare oporteret loquelam: est enim _z_ maxima pars eorum -locutionis: que quidem littera non sine multa rigiditate profertur.”[155] - -On a different plane is Dante’s lamentation in Ch. xii. over the decay -of literary culture in Sicily since the glorious days of Frederic and -Manfred, which gave the title “Sicilianum” to the work of Dante’s -predecessors in the vernacular: a passage (to me at least) somewhat -obscure, in which Frederic II of Sicily, Charles II of Naples, Azzo -Marquis of Este, and John Marquis of Montferrat are accused of -blood-thirstiness, treachery and avarice: “Venite carnifices; venite -attriplices; venite avaritiae sectatores....”[156] - -Turning to Bk. II we find the same Azzo ironically praised in Chapter -vi., in a “copy-book phrase” of which the incidental introduction gives -point to the satire: “Laudabilis discretio marchionis Estensis et sua -magnificentia preparata cunctis, cunctis illum facit esse dilectum.” - -More delightful still is a sentence which closely follows, quoted -solemnly like the former merely as an example of good phraseology -appropriate to a lofty subject, in which Charles of Valois plays the -_rôle_ of a “second Totila,” and his calamitous dealings with Florence -(including, presumably, Dante’s own banishment) are adduced as a fitting -prelude to his futile descent upon Sicily. “Ejecta maxima parte florum de -sinu tuo, Florentia, nequicquam Trinacriam Totila secundus adivit.”[157] - -Earlier in the book there is another humorous touch with which we may -conclude our list, at the risk, perchance, of an anti-climax. A passage -near the end of Chapter i. recalls, in a curious way, a line from the -_Epistles_ of Horace. - -Dante, having premised that every one should adorn (_exornare_) his -verses as far as possible, goes on to point out that there are limits -beyond which adornment becomes incongruous and absurd. “We do not speak -of an ox caparisoned like a horse or a belted pig as _ornatus_; we -laugh at them, and would rather apply the word _deturpatus_.” This _bos -ephippiatus_ most aptly typifies incongruity of adornment. In Horace’s -well-known line— - - Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus,[158] - -the point of the satire is different. It is the Roman poet’s favourite -theme of universal discontent—each envying another’s lot. - -In Dante’s phrase we may perhaps detect an unconscious or semi-conscious -adoption or adaptation of a classical image: parallel, in a humble -way, with those splendid thefts from Virgil and Ovid with which he has -enriched the _Divina Commedia_: conceptions too unquestionably original -in their new form to be classed as mere plagiarisms. - -“Cicero hath observed,” says the _Spectator_ of Nov. 5, 1714,[159] “that -a jest is never uttered with a better grace than when it is accompanied -with a serious countenance.” - -If this be true, our quest may perhaps modestly congratulate itself on -the avoidance of undue levity. Nor need we take it seriously to heart if -we have failed to vindicate for Dante the character of a humorist in the -modern sense, and of the American type. The most that our investigation -can be said to have proved is that Dante, embittered as he was by his -exile, and emaciated by long and serious study, was not devoid of that -sense of humour whereby man is able to wring matter for cheerfulness and -mirth out of the most unlikely material, and, going through this vale of -misery—“questo aspro disorto”—to “use it for a well.” But neither is he -the cold abstraction, both less and more than human, which tradition, -of a sort, has handed down to us. His works display, for those who care -to look for them, a breadth of sympathy, a capacity for observation -and discernment, a keenness of interest, an eye for the incongruous, -a richness and sureness of self-expression that are guarantees of the -possession of the sense of humour.[160] The manifold play of the forces -of one of the most picturesque ages of human history found a sympathetic -response in Dante’s genius, though the sublimity and the restraint of -his work has obscured this. This side of his genius is well summed up by -Sannia.[161] - -“La coscienza lucidissima di sè stesso, l’ attitudine all’ analisi -psicologica, la febbrile curiosità del mondo esterno, naturale ed umano, -lo spirito d’ osservazione, il senso più squisito dell’ arte, la divina -serenità, la multiforme impressionabilità dell’ artista, il senso del -tenero, la pietà umana, il pessimismo furono note spiccatissime, eminenti -del suo genio.” - - - - -IV - -DANTE AND MEDIAEVAL THOUGHT - - Vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno - Seder tra filosofica famiglia. - Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno. - - —_Inf._ iv. 131-3. - - -Those who were privileged to listen to Mr. Trevelyan’s lecture on -“Italy’s Part in the War,” and to see the wonderful slides presented to -him by the _Comando Supremo_, will remember the thrill contributed by -the last picture—the great statue of Dante at Trento, with the fugitive -Austrian soldiers at its base, fleeing, as it were, before his face. -Dante, we felt, has at last come to his own; the Trentino is at last -indefeasibly— - - Suso in Italia bella, - -and the “alps above Tiralli” effectively “bar out” the Teuton![162] - -Dante’s inspiration has indeed brooded over the heroic efforts and -struggles of Italy’s twentieth century patriots, even as over their -forefathers of the Risorgimento. And this living influence of the Divine -Poet’s genius has been brought before our readers in the first two Essays -of this collection. - -Perhaps it may not be amiss to follow up those former articles with a -complementary study of the Poet—no longer as the inspirer of nineteenth -and twentieth century ideals, but as the supreme representative of -the thought and feeling of his own century, the thirteenth. Like -Shakespeare, Dante never grows old. There is a quality of universality -about his genius, and a broad and deep human appeal in his writing which -renders it the proper heritage of every generation. And, haughty and -aloof as was his spirit during life, with an aloofness intensified by -bitter exile and by the sickness of ever-deferred hope, he was not one of -those great ones who are entirely out of touch with their contemporaries, -living in an age not yet born. Scarcely had he passed from mortal sight -when a chorus of appreciation made itself heard, which, though it has -waned in ages of waning taste, has never ceased to sound. - -In a very true sense, Dante sums up in himself all that is best in -mediaeval thought. - -So Mr. Henry Osborne Taylor, in his formidable study of _The Mediaeval -Mind_, significantly heads the forty-third and last chapter “The -Mediaeval Synthesis: Dante.” “There is unity,” he affirms, “throughout -the diversity of mediaeval life; and Dante is the proof of it.”[163] It -is pre-eminently as a religious thinker that Dante holds this place, and -supplies this synthesis. - -Theology as conceived in the thirteenth century was not only the -“Queen of Sciences”; the religious conception of knowledge embraced -and included all else. To Dante, the theologian-poet, as to Thomas -Aquinas, the theologian-philosopher, all knowledge whatsoever was -ultimately _one_; its end and purpose, its ground and justification, -its key and explanation were to be found in the mystery of the Blessed -Trinity-in-Unity. - -Theology was not one among many departments of knowledge; it was the -sum of knowledge, the key to all problems of the universe. Some of us -retain, deep down in our nature, a conviction that, in this point at -least, the scholastic theologians were right. While thankfully accepting -the results of the scientific “division of labour,” the marvellous -practical and theoretical fruits of a free and systematic investigation -of phenomena which have transformed our very conception of knowledge -and the knowable, we are apt to feel sometimes that the thirteenth -century thinkers, with their complete mastery and mapping-out of the -comparatively narrow field of the “scibile,” were not so liable as -ourselves to lose sight of the wood by reason of the multitude of the -trees, to lose the idea of an universe in the absorbing interest of its -details. - -At any rate, it may be accepted as beyond discussion that to the great -mediaeval thinkers—to Peter Lombard, to Abelard, to St. Bernard, to -St. Bonaventura and Albertus Magnus, to Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus; -above all, perhaps, to St. Thomas Aquinas and to Dante, all knowledge -is ultimately religious knowledge: just because God is conceived and -realised as being the beginning and end and groundwork of all things. -This truth underlies the beautiful language of the first canto of -_Paradiso_— - - La gloria di colui che tutto move - Per l’ universo penetra e risplende - In una parte più e meno altrove. - -and again— - - ... Le cose tutte quante - Hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma - Che ’l universo a Dio fa simigliante.[164] - -It also underlies the description of the damned as those who have lost -“the Good of the intellect.”[165] - - Noi siam venuti al luogo ove io t’ ho detto - Che tu vedrai le genti dolorose - Ch’ hanno perduto il ben de l’ intelletto. - -This tendency to subsume all knowledge under religious knowledge is -indeed one of the most important ways in which Dante is representative of -his time. To that we shall revert later on. Now let us turn to consider -for a moment some of the elements and sources of mediaeval knowledge as -Dante knew and mastered it. - -Holy Scripture, the Patristic writings, ancient classical lore, the -Graeco-Arabian philosophy and science of which the groundwork was -Aristotle—these are the main antecedents of the mediaeval system of -knowledge, and they are blended together in characteristic ways, and -dissolved, as it were, in a fluid composed of romantic chivalry and other -elements of preponderatingly Teutonic and Celtic origin. - -(1) The groundwork of all is, of course, Holy Scripture: known and -studied exclusively in the Latin Vulgate text, a rather degenerate -and corrupt representative of the (in its way) masterly and excellent -translation from the Hebrew and Greek made by St. Jerome in the fifth -century. - -The Bible, as we know quite well to-day,—even those of us who are more -than ever convinced of its inspiration—is not a manual of natural science -or philosophy, nor even an absolutely infallible guide in matters of -history and chronology. Its scientific standpoint is that of the age in -which each part was composed, however eternal be the significance and -application of its fundamental religious principles. - -To the mediaeval mind, however, Scripture was a universal text-book -of science. So that countless questions were regarded as foreclosed -because the Bible appeared to have pronounced upon them. The scientific -mind of the Middle Ages felt itself committed at a hundred points -to the rather crude conceptions of the ancient Hebrews, and to a -literal interpretation, very often, of figurative and highly poetical -expressions. - -The disadvantages of this state of things are obvious to us: we must not -forget, however, that they were largely modified by the fact that while -all knowledge was regarded as ultimately religious knowledge, it is just -in its religious principles that the Bible is supreme, and is permanently -true. - -(2) The interpretation of Scripture in the Middle Ages is largely based -on patristic exegesis; on the writings of the really great minds of the -third, fourth and fifth centuries, when men like Athanasius, Cyril of -Alexandria, Basil and the Gregories, Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine, -laid the foundations of systematic Christian thought; men steeped in -the Holy Scriptures, and bringing to them an intellect furnished with -ideas and categories inherited in part from the classical world—from -Graeco-Roman literature and philosophy. The most influential of them all, -perhaps, upon mediaeval thought were Jerome (through his translation of -the Bible) and Augustine, the deepest and most original thinker (with the -exception of Origen) among all the “Fathers.” - -Holy Scripture then, patristically interpreted, is the first and most -important element in mediaeval knowledge; and the place it holds in Dante -may be roughly estimated by the calculations of Dr. Moore in his _Dante -Studies_ (Vol. I), where he shows that in his extant works the Poet -quotes the Vulgate more than five hundred times. - -Dante is representative of the Middle Ages in his reverence for and -his use of Holy Scripture, interpreted for the most part by traditions -derived from the Christian Fathers. - -Scripture itself was mediaevally supplemented by hagiology—the lives and -legends of the Saints—nor is this element lacking in Dante.[166] - -(3) But the place of honour, next to Scripture, in Dante, must be -assigned, surely, to classical lore—to the mythology and literature of -the ancient Graeco-Roman civilisation for which the mediaeval mind had so -profound a reverence. Greek philosophy, as represented by Aristotle— - - il maestro di color che sanno[167] - -is a category by itself, to which we shall turn our attention in a -moment. But classical lore in general, as represented by such writers as -Virgil (quoted 200 times), Ovid (100), Cicero (50), Lucan (50), Horace -(15?), Livy (15?), finds very definite recognition in Dante’s works. - -The old Roman Empire was viewed by Dante with a truly religious -veneration, as is clear not only from many a passage in the _Divina -Commedia_ (e.g. _Par._ vi), but from the whole argument of the _De -Monarchia_.[168] This veneration, which shed lustre and dignity upon a -“Holy Roman Empire” which even in Dante’s day had become actually, though -not technically, German, is characteristic especially of the Italian -mind; and Dante was Italian as well as mediaeval. The Italians even of -to-day are proud to regard themselves as the direct successors of the -old Romans of the Republic and of the Caesars: in Dante’s time they were -prepared to trace their ancestry to the divinely guided companions of -Aeneas of Troy. - -Rome looms large in the providential ordering of human history: Dante’s -conception of her sovereign place is drawn from the author of the -princely _Aeneid_, whose function in the _Divine Comedy_ is guarantee of -the affectionate reverence which Dante bore to him. - -But it is not only Roman history, but classical mythology that weaves -itself into the texture of Dante’s religious thought. If he quotes Virgil -some two hundred times, he quotes Ovid about one hundred. - -The tendency to mingle together examples from Scripture and from pagan -mythology is characteristically mediaeval. In Dante it is a well known -feature, most typically represented perhaps in the sculptures, visions -and voices of the Purgatorio. - -He who is bold enough in _Purg._ xxx. to blend together the Scriptural -_Benedictus qui venis_ with Virgil’s _Manibus o date lilia plenis_ is -not afraid to invoke the Muses and Apollo (mystically interpreted) as he -begins a new _cantica_.[169] He does not hesitate to apostrophise the -Saviour of the world in terms which blend the Christian with the antique -pagan tradition—[170] - - ... O Sommo Giove, - Che fosti in terra per noi crucifisso! - -This is well explained by Mr. Taylor. “With Dante,” he says,[171] “the -pagan antique represented much that was philosophically true, if not -veritably divine. In his mind, apparently, the heathen good stood for -the Christian good, and the conflict of the heathen deities with Titan -monsters[172] symbolised, if indeed it did not continue to make part of, -the Christian struggle against the power of sin.” - -This principle may be regarded as being, in a way, the mediaeval analogue -of our broad modern conceptions derived from a comparative study of -religions. - -(4) But supreme among the influences derived by the Middle Ages from -classical antiquity is the philosophy of Aristotle, which holds the next -place to Scripture alike in the “Summa” of Thomas Aquinas, and in the -_Divina Commedia_ of Dante. - -Mediaeval Christianity drew its knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy -from Mohammedan sources. The great Arab scientists and philosophers of -mediaeval times, represented in the _Commedia_ by Avicenna and— - - Averroìs che il gran comento feo[173] - -(his commentary on Aristotle was translated into Latin about 1250), -gave back, in a modified form, to Western Europe, the works of the -Philosopher, of which the original Greek was not acquired by them till -several centuries later. - -This Graeco-Arabian philosophy forms the basis of those constantly -recurring, and to many of us rather tiresome, astronomical excursions -which form so characteristic a feature of the _Divine Comedy_. - -This form of Aristotelianism plays an immense part in the scholastic -philosophy; and his deference to it is among Dante’s chief claims to be -representative of the religious thought and teaching of his day. - -In countless other ways the Poet’s writings are representative of -what was best and highest in contemporary thought: the wide grasp of -innumerable topics and details, the encyclopaedic temper, quaintly -obvious in the _Convivio_ but more worthily embodied in the _Divina -Commedia_; the spiritualising of troubadour love, beautifully manifested -in the promise of _Vita Nuova_ and _Canzoniere_, but more sublimely -still in the Beatrice of the _Paradiso_; the blending of religious with -political theory so conspicuous in the _Monarchia_ and _Commedia_; the -realistic vividness of conception; the eye for contrast, which makes -Dante’s great poem a mirror of the kaleidoscopic life of the Middle Ages. - -Among the qualities which made Dante what he was—and is—two would seem -to be supreme. First his encyclopaedic knowledge, and secondly the -unrivalled power of plastic visualisation, by which he was enabled “to -use as a poet what he had acquired as a scholar.”[174] - -Dante has been described by Eliot Norton as an instance of “the -incredible diligence of the Middle Ages.” In days when there was no -Funk and Wagnalls Company to minister encyclopaedic knowledge by cheap -instalments—when everything must be painfully acquired from MSS. and -the diligent student ran the risk not only of leanness[175] but of -blindness[176] Dante appears, from his extant works, to have known all -that was to be known. Dr. Moore’s investigations (in _Dante Studies_, -Vol. I) go some way towards justifying—if anything can absolutely justify -so dogmatic a statement—the perhaps over-enthusiastic words of A. G. -Butler: - -“Dante was born a student as he was born a poet, and had he never written -a single poem, he would still have been famous as the most profound -scholar of his time.”[177] - -But if Dante had finished the _Convivio_, and written nothing else, his -vast learning would have been as uninteresting to the average modern -mind as is that of Albertus Magnus or Thomas Aquinas. Albertus Magnus -with his incredible learning and his more than incredible fecundity -and voluminousness is unknown to most of us. Thomas Aquinas, though -the soundness of his judgment and the depth of his insight have given -his writings a permanent place of honour, more especially in the Roman -Communion, is little more than a name to the average student even of -literature and philosophy. - -Albert and Thomas were theologians: so was Dante, but he was a poet as -well.[178] Dante is saturated with the entire knowledge of the Middle -Ages; he has absorbed and assimilated it, and he gives it out again -transfigured—alive! It becomes in his hands an original and immortal -contribution to the intellectual, moral and aesthetic heritage of mankind. - -From our present study the Divine Poet emerges once more as the “Apostle -of Freedom.” He handles his subject-matter with the master-touch that -makes it _live_, and with the independence of standpoint and sincerity -of judgment that draws Catholics to claim him as a Catholic, and -Protestants as a Protestant. As a matter of fact he is a loyal Catholic, -as was rightly proclaimed by the late lamented Pope Benedict XV in his -Encyclical of May, 1921.[179] A Catholic, but above all, a Christian. -And, as the Pope also justly remarked, his work and his message are alive -to-day—more living than that of many a present-day Poet—just because he -is not dependent on mere pagan models and sources, however classical, but -is saturated with Christian thought and feeling. For the future lies with -Christianity. - -In our next Essay we shall endeavour to show how the free spirit of the -artist and the theologian merges into that of the Educationist: how the -characteristic modern principles of freedom in the educational sphere -underlie Dante’s thought and writing, and how, in particular, they -dominate his scheme of the _Purgatorio_. - - - - -V - -DANTE AND MODERN EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES - - ... Io sarò tua guida - E trarrotti di qui per loco eterno. - - —_Inf._ i. 177 _sq._ - - -In face of Benedetto Croce’s new Book,[180] wherein all the meticulous -industry exerted by the typical Dantist upon side-issues of the _Divine -Comedy_ is held up to scorn, and denounced, like Cromwell’s House -of Lords, as “useless and dangerous,” one hardly dares to labour a -point—even if it be so exalted a point as the principles and method of -education. But it is the criticism of Dante’s Poesy that is Croce’s -concern: his jealous anxiety is directed against any admixture in that -criticism of any irrelevant considerations—allegorical, theological, -philosophical, poetical. As we are not attempting a criticism of Dante’s -Poesy (though none can approach the _Commedia_ without falling under the -spell of its beauty and passion), we may perhaps hope to evade the fiery -darts of the Poet’s latest critic. - -Croce himself would be the last to deny Dante’s extraordinary -versatility: only he pleads that if the author of the _Divine Comedy_ had -not been, “as he is, _grandissimo poeta_,” the world would not have noted -his other accomplishments.[181] We may therefore perhaps be pardoned if -we indulge in something of that “sonorous but empty phraseology”[182] -which he attributes to those who look for much more than Poetry in the -great Poem; and come to the _Commedia_ as to a mine of varied treasures -reflecting the versatile spirit of one who was not only a sublime poet, -but also a man of many-sided knowledge and experience—theological, -philosophical, political, practical—and who poured all the wealth of his -knowledge and experience into the supreme effort of his genius: - - Il poema sacro - Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra. - -Before Dante as a boy learnt his lessons of the good friars of Sta. -Croce, and in the school of the great lord, Love blossomed out into -verse under the sunshine of his “first friend’s” encouragement, pored -over crabbed manuscripts under the inspiration of the learned Ser -Brunetto, and grew up to be an unique exponent of mediaeval lore; that -lore, which formed the material out of which he wrought the scheme of -his immortal poem had very slowly and gradually come into being. The -course of Christian Education had passed through rhythmic vicissitudes -of advance and retrogression, of decadence and revival. Sown broadcast -over the fields of the Graeco-Roman world by Apostolic hands[183] the -seed fructified and gave forth foliage to delight and refresh mankind. -In the golden age of the Greek Fathers, when Clement and Origen wrote -and taught, when Basil and Gregory at the University of Athens drank in -all that the old world had to teach, and transmuted it into something -fresh and new by the fertilising power of the New Life that was in them, -the Christian Church became, in Harnack’s phrase, “the great elementary -schoolmistress of the Roman Empire.” - -Then followed a decline. The barbarian invasions kept men fighting, and -left no time to muse or think, or write. Dante’s hero, Boethius, stands -out an almost solitary luminous figure in a world of growing intellectual -darkness, of which Gregory of Tours despairingly exclaimed: “Periit -studium litterarum.” By the middle of the eighth century the lamp was -nearly extinguished. To our own Alcuin of York belongs the glory of -having preserved the continuum of literary studies which made a Dante -possible. His patient and persevering labours at the court of Charles the -Great laid the foundations on which was ultimately built—of multifarious -material, partly recovered through Arabic sources—the splendid structure -of mediaeval scholasticism which forms much of Dante’s mental background. - -After Dante’s death the same rhythmic alternation of advance and -retrogression, of greater and less vitality, may, on the whole, be -discerned in the course of educational history; and as our object is to -unearth in the _Divine Comedy_ some educational principles vaunted as -“peculiarly modern,” it may be best to dwell for a moment—if still all -too superficially—on this second half of the story. - -When the impulse of Scholasticism had well-nigh spent itself—and with -it the splendid revival at once of practical and of intellectual -Christianity which came in with “The Coming of the Friars”—the dawn -of the Renaissance was already gleaming in the Eastern sky, and the -fall of Constantinople flooded Western Europe with a new interest in, -and passion for, Hellenic culture. The birth-throes of the Reformation -ushered into the world a “New Learning.” In a couple of centuries the -fire of this impulse in turn died down, and (in England, at any rate) -Education largely fell back, speaking generally—with smaller actions and -reactions—into something like a mere mechanical routine. The Classics -became an end, and not a means, and the study of them was divorced from -citizenship and from life. The aim and method of the average schoolmaster -would almost appear to have degenerated into a grinding of his pupils all -alike in the same mill, or a feeding of their diverse digestions all on -the same “iron rations”: the pedagogue himself innocent alike of an as -yet undiscovered psychological method in teaching, and in many cases also -failing to realise the paramount importance of the formation of character -as the only result worth striving for. - -Then came, with Rousseau, the first streaks of the dawn of the “New -Teaching,” and there followed, in a brightening sky, Pestalozzi and -Froebel abroad, and here in England Arnold and Thring and the rest. And -this New Teaching, using the present-day opportunities of co-operation -and tabulation of experimental results on a large scale, has, by dint of -Conferences and Congresses, grown into something of a world-wide unity. -Modern Science has thus leavened educational method both in general and -in particular. In general, its spirit and principles have been employed -to make available for all the investigations of each; in particular, -the recent developments of psychology and psycho-physics have given a -new impulse and a new direction to child-study, and made possible an -elaboration of scientific method and of didactic apparatus such as was -not available in any previous age. Here the instinctive methods employed -unconsciously by the “born teachers” of all generations have been brought -up to the level of consciousness, and systematised and made available, to -a large extent, for those in whom the instinctive gift is not so great. - -One of the prominent tendencies of the New Teaching is to revert to, and -elaborate, that Direct Method in the teaching of Languages which was -characteristic of the “New Learning” in the days of Erasmus and his -fellow pioneers. This we shall see foreshadowed in Dante. It is a part -of a tendency to make education “paido-centric”; to lay its emphasis on, -and find its focus in, the child rather than in the instructor; to make -it less of an imposition of the dominant teacher upon a submissive and -receptive pupil. The New Teaching requires that “the relative activities -of teacher and pupil” should be “reversed.” It recognises that pupils -need to be “trained in initiative,” and “made increasingly responsible -for their own education”; that the inertia of many pupils has to be met -not by force or browbeating, but “by taking steps to reach indirectly the -goal of stimulating their individual activity.”[184] - -The watchword therefore of the modern teaching is _Liberty_. And this -principle of Liberty—the recognition that all education is, at bottom, -self-education; and that the teacher’s business is to liberate (or make -possible the liberation of) the inherent evolutionary forces latent in -the pupil—finds its climax in the doctrine of Dante’s compatriot and -sincere admirer, Madame Montessori. She is also, in a sense, the most -modern of the Modernists; for in her method is carried, probably to its -highest point, the application of psycho-physical science to education. -She represents in some ways—and especially on the individualistic -side—the extreme advance of the modern movement; and it is with her -system that we shall institute later on a somewhat detailed comparison of -the educational principles underlying Dante’s _Purgatorio_. - -Dante’s name is not popularly associated with those of the World’s -Greatest Educators—with Aristotle and Quintilian, with Alcuin and Alfred, -with Colet and Erasmus, with Pestalozzi and Froebel and Montessori. He is -not claimed as the conscious originator of new didactic method. He has -not left us any systematic treatise on Education. Yet many have found in -him a mighty Teacher, “who being dead yet speaketh”; and to such it will -bring no surprise to find great educational principles embodied in his -work. - -We may compare and contrast his opportunities with those of his great -contemporary, Robert Grosseteste, who as “First Chancellor,” if we may -call him so, of the University of Oxford, may rank in a sense as a -professional Teacher. Such a comparison would surely demonstrate that the -permanent influence of the illustrious Bishop of Lincoln upon subsequent -generations bears no comparison with that of the Florentine Poet. - -Grosseteste may claim a place among the world’s Educators not only in -virtue of his general influence upon English education at a period when -the Oxford Franciscans were about to take the lead in European culture, -but also—and more especially—because, in an age when study had become -largely a second-hand matter of commenting on someone else’s commentary, -Robert called men back to a diligent first-hand study of originals; -a principle of the utmost importance alike for Education and for -Learning.[185] - -Dante, too, was a keen, first-hand student; but his place in the history -of Education is different from that of Grosseteste. He attained to no -such commanding position in ecclesiastical or political life, with the -power that official status gives of forcing one’s ideas on public -notice. His brief tenure of the high office of Prior in his native city -of Florence was followed immediately by those years of exile and ignominy -in which his best work was done. His sole means of influencing his own -and succeeding generations was by his writings. But these writings not -only proclaimed him (as all the world admits) the very flower and crown -of Mediaeval Education—its justifying product—but also earn him, we would -contend, a place among the World’s Great Educators, and perhaps we may -add, its Educationalists. But first of all we may remind ourselves of -Dante’s position, as the finest and most typical product of Mediaeval -Education. Benedetto Croce[186] is doubtless right in denying him the -right to be called a _pioneer_ in metaphysics or ethics, in political -theory or philological science: in such lines it is vain to attribute to -him the same originality which is rightly his in the realm of Poetry. -Yet his learning remains encyclopaedic.[187] His amazing erudition is -displayed in his Minor Works; in the _Divine Comedy_ it is concealed with -the most consummate art. In the _Convivio_, where he is, perhaps, most -consciously and deliberately (if least successfully) the Teacher, he -revels in erudition, and so too in the _Monarchia_. Perhaps the clearest -and swiftest demonstration of the vast range of his learning is afforded -by a glance through the pages—or even the index—of Dr. Moore’s _Studies -in Dante_ (First Series). - -Dante was not a Greek scholar, like Grosseteste, but he had a thorough -acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures in the Vulgate, and with a large -part of the theological and mystical writings of the Middle Age. He -was familiar with all the extant works of Aristotle in two Latin -translations. He quotes also, and in some cases very frequently, from -Classical and post-classical authors of repute. He has thoroughly -mastered the Graeco-Arabian Astronomy of his day: so thoroughly, that, -to the despair of some of his humbler votaries, he can toy with its -ponderous intricacies as with a plaything! Nor must we forget that his -studies were conducted in an age when printing had yet to be invented; -so that all his reading must needs be done with rare, costly, cumbrous -and eye-wearying manuscripts. Well may he, in the _Paradiso_, describe -his labours as “emaciating,” and in the _Convivio_ allude to a temporary -blindness caused by overstrain.[188] - -It has been plausibly conjectured that he studied as a boy under the -Franciscan Fathers of Sta Croce.[189] The idea that Brunetto Latini -(or “Latino”), the author of the “Tesoro” (_Livre dou Tresor_), was -the regular preceptor of his youth, however just an inference it may -seem from the famous passage in the _Inferno_,[190] is disproved by the -exigencies of chronology. And, in the end, he must have been largely -self-taught, since his visit to the University of Paris, alleged by -Boccaccio, is placed towards the end of his life, when most of his extant -work was already done. - -In his attitude Dante is a traditionalist, but not a blind one; his -originality everywhere tends to modify his conservatism. A true son of -the thirteenth century, he accepts loyally the traditional authority of -Scripture and of Aristotle. He accepts the tradition of the old Roman -culture: the “Seven Liberal Arts” of the Trivium and Quadrivium find a -place in the scheme of his world and a symbolic significance therein. -According to a well-known passage in the _Convivio_[191] these seven -sciences correspond to the seven lowest Heavens. - -The mythology of Greece and Rome, on which the minds of our Public School -boys are still fed, are caught up into the scheme of the _Divine Comedy_ -as “didactic material” side by side with scenes from history and from -Holy Writ. The Ptolemaic system of the universe is accepted; but Dante -uses his own genius freely in the handling of details, adorning the vast -framework with a symbolism of his own, and spreading over it a network of -intense human interest.[192] - -So also in the sphere of Theology, he takes up traditional beliefs and -makes them living and concrete, vitalising them by the force of his -own originality. In his volume on _Dante and Aquinas_, Mr. Wicksteed -has drawn out very strikingly the contrast between the two: between -the “layman, poet, and prophet, and the ecclesiastic, theologian, and -philosopher.” “Aquinas,” he says, “regards the whole range of human -experiences and activities as the collecting ground for illustrations -of Christian truth; Dante regards Christian truth as the interpreting -and inspiring force that makes all human life live.”[193] This contrast -comes out, as we shall see, with special emphasis in the conception of -Purgatory, where Aquinas is thinking all along of the formal completion -of the sacrament of Penance, while Dante, who, with most daring -originality, makes his Mountain of Purgation the pedestal of the Earthly -Paradise, is intent on the redressing of man’s inner psychological and -spiritual balance. Eden itself is to be the immediate goal of penitence. -Before this earthly life is superseded by the heavenly, man shall win -his way to the primal Garden of Delight, and “experience the frank and -full fruition of his nature, as God first made it.”[194] He shall have -achieved inner balance and self-mastery. Says Virgil, on the threshold of -Eden— - - Free, sound and upright is thy will.... Wherefore over thyself - I invest thee with supreme control.[195] - - Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio, - ... - Per ch’ io te sopra te corono e mitrio. - -We may note then, in passing, that Dante, like all the best educators, -has his eye on the “formation of character.” - -Such erudition, originality, insight, give promise that we shall find in -Dante a real teacher; and the promise is abundantly fulfilled to those -who tread the spacious halls of his School, which is his Poem. - -The very language in which the _Divina Commedia_ is written is a -testimony to the Poet’s grasp of the fundamental condition of all -teaching—that it should be intelligible! There is a saying of Alcuin’s -great disciple, Rabanus Maurus, which expresses simply and well this -obvious, but oft-forgotten principle. “Teach,” he says, “in words that -teach; not in words that do not teach.” With this principle, surely, in -mind—for his purpose in creating the great Poem was a practical one—the -strangely haughty and aloof spirit of Dante girds itself to a humble use -of the “Vulgar Tongue.” When we remember that this magnificent structure -of his is the first big effort in the Italian vernacular, and that one -of his reasons for calling it a “Comedy” is that “its method of speech -is lax and humble, for it is the vernacular speech in which mere women -communicate,”[196] we cannot but see in this pioneer work of Italian -literature evidence of that discerning sympathy with the needs and -capacities of the learner which marks the born teacher. Another mark of -the true educator is his practical aim. Dante is not content to “teach -the classics _in vacuo_,” as our English Public Schools once were: he -does not divorce learning from life. In the famous Tenth Epistle he -defines the “Moral Sense” of the Poem as “The conversion of the Soul -from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace”; and, again, -he describes “the end of the whole” thus: “To remove those living in -this life from the state of misery and to lead them to the state of -felicity.”[197] He has his eye upon life in the highest sense: “Come l’ -uom s’eterna.” To this end he displays to us the unique means provided -by Heaven for his own salvation, and allows us in his company to visit -the three kingdoms of the Eternal World. He performs for us the office -fulfilled by Virgil towards himself— - - ... I will be thy guide, and will conduct thee hence - through an eternal place. - - ... Io sarò tua guida - E trarrotti di qui per loco eterno.[198] - -We must see with his eyes to what state of ineffable woe, not Divine -Justice merely, but the sinner’s own choice will bring him. We must watch -with him the Divine process of purgation, the eagerly-accepted suffering -of those whose penitent love longs above all things to undo the ruin that -sin has wrought—[199] - - ... Contented in the fire, for that they hope - In God’s good time to reach the blessed folk - - ... Contenti - Nel foco, perchè speran di venire, - Quando che sia, a le beate genti.... - -and finally he will take us up with him into the Blessed Place itself, to -behold “the things which God has prepared for them that unfeignedly love -Him.” - -Here again is the true teacher, adopting the story-telling method of the -Teacher of Nazareth:[200] the method of which the usefulness—nay, the -indispensableness—was never more appreciated than to-day. - -Nor is it merely that the Poet narrates instead of preaching. What he -does, he does with the most consummate art.[201] The story that he -tells—the pilgrimage on which he goes—is one which both he and we really -share; we become his fellow-pilgrims, his intimates, before whom, without -the least touch of self-consciousness, he manifests his joy and his -despondency, his courage and his cowardice, his native dignity and his -occasional lapses therefrom.... The narrative reads like a truthful and -vivid diary of his actual experiences from the night of Maundy Thursday -till Easter Wednesday in the Year of Grace One Thousand and Three Hundred. - -It may be claimed for Dante’s method of teaching in the _Divina Commedia_ -that it is in a very real sense a “direct method,” and one in which -teacher and pupil co-operate as fellow-learners. - -The educational quality of the poem is at its highest in the -_Purgatorio_, because it is in this realm that the conditions approach -most nearly to those of our present life. Like the normal life of a -faithful Christian here below, that of the souls in this “Second Realm” -is a struggle, but a struggle upwards, inspired and sweetened by the -“sure and certain hope.” It is a process of growing transformation into -the Divine ideal, of gradual achievement of a perfect union of will -with the Will of God, wrought out by means of a providentially ordered -discipline eagerly embraced by the penitent. - -All this may seem a little vague and elusive. Probably the quality -claimed for Dante will be brought into higher relief if we concentrate -our attention upon one or two definite points. - -In the attempt to emphasise the “modern” character of Dante’s educational -principles we shall be bold enough to confront him with the very latest -of educational methods—that of Dr. Montessori, which originated but a few -years ago in Dante’s native Italy. - -The fundamental principle of Madame Montessori’s Method is that of -Liberty. Education, she would say, must be a free organic process of -development from within. This vital growth may be guarded, nourished, -and (within limits) guided. The right kind of atmosphere and of -external stimulus is of immense importance; but mechanical pressure, -or domineering force, or inappropriate stimulus will only stunt and -distort the growth, deaden the life that is calling out for free -self-development. All this is not, of course, a new discovery. It was -enunciated in other forms by Pestalozzi and by Froebel; it is implied -in the words and works of all the greatest educators—of Vittorino da -Feltre in the Renaissance, of Quintilian in the early Empire, and of -Aristotle himself. But in Montessori the principle of individual freedom -acquires a new prominence, and is given a larger scope than ever before; -and the principle is coming to its own in many phases and many grades of -our present-day education. It is interesting, therefore, to note what -a fundamental position it holds in Dante’s _Purgatorio_, the central -Cantica of what Professor Edmund Gardner rightly calls “The mystical -Epos of the Freedom of Man’s Will.” - -Liberty—that true liberty of soul which is found in perfect conformity -to the Will of God—is the end and purpose of the Poet’s grim journey. -_Libertà va cercando_—“he goes seeking freedom”—says Virgil to Cato at -the foot of the Mountain:[202] the freedom which Dante himself, a little -later, identifies with inward peace—“That peace which ... draws me on in -pursuit from world to world.”[203] - - ... Quella pace - Che, dietro a’ piedi di sî fatta guida - Di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face. - -It is to the entrance upon this peace and this freedom that Virgil refers -in his words quoted above, where on the threshold of the Earthly Paradise -he declares the pilgrim to be, at last, “King and Bishop of his own soul”— - - Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.[204] - -And, finally, in the heaven of heavens itself Dante pours out his thanks -to Beatrice for liberty regained—“Thou has led me forth from bondage into -liberty.” - - Tu m’ hai di servo tratto a libertate.[205] - -We have already spoken of the spontaneity of Dante’s Penitents; the eager -gladness and alacrity with which they embrace the discipline appointed -for them, “glad in the Fire”: a temper which finds its typical expression -in the attitude of the souls who are purging the sin of Lust in literally -burning flames. “Certain of them,” says the Poet, “made towards me, so -far as they could, ever on their guard not to come forth beyond the -range of the burning”— - - Poi verso me, quanto potean farsi, - Certi si feron, sempre con riguardo - Di non uscir dove non fosser arsi.[206] - -Or, again, on the Terrace of the Gluttonous, where Forese explains to -Dante that the voluntary pain of the penitents (which is also their -solace) is mystically identified with that of Christ upon the Cross—“For -the same desire doth conduct us to the tree, which moved Christ to say -with joy: ‘Eli,’ when by His blood He won our freedom.” - - Che quella voglia a li albori ci mena - Che menò Cristo lieto a dire ‘Elì,’ - Quando ne liberò con la sua vena.[207] - -And this spontaneity on their part is matched and helped by the -atmosphere and environment provided for them. Their movements and -occupations are indeed, in one sense, unnatural; but this is because -their purpose is the counteraction of that most unnatural of all things, -Sin. Here, however, are no frequent warders and task-masters, like -the grotesque fiends of the Inferno. The Angel guardians of each of -the seven terraces where sins are purged are no more in evidence than -is the Teacher in a Montessori School; an unobtrusive, ever-present, -never-interfering inspiration to the pupil’s own spontaneous development. -There is no external voice to bid a spirit move on when its purgation is -done. So Statius explains to Dante when describing the impulse of his own -upward movement. “Of the cleansing, the will alone gives proof, which -fills the soul, all free to change her cloister, and avails her to will. -She wills indeed before; but that desire permits it not which Divine -justice sets, counter to will, toward the penalty, even as it was toward -the sin”— - - De la mondizia sol voler fa prova, - Che, tutto libero a mutar convento, - L’ alma sorprende, e di voler le giova. - Prima vuol ben, ma non lascia il talento - Che divina giustizia, contra voglia, - Come fu al peccar, pone al tormento.[208] - -When the soul is ready for another task, it moves on, naturally and -spontaneously,—like a Montessori child! - -This consideration accounts for a feature of the purgatorial discipline -which at first sight would appear quite contrary to the Montessori -spirit. On the lower slopes of the Mountain, below the gate of -Purgatory proper, the souls whom Dante meets are grouped informally, -or encountered individually; but within the gate, on each of the seven -terraces where the seven capital sins are successively purged, the souls -are engaged in groups on the same task, or similar ones. How is this -consistent with free, spontaneous, individual development? Is not this -simultaneous occupation at the same lesson more like a Froebel class, -or even an old-fashioned Public School form than a Montessori group? -The answer, surely, is in the negative. Collective work has indeed its -permanent value, and simultaneous movements at intervals, their ample -justification. In the _Purgatorio_, as in the Montessori School, the -class-system in its extreme and rigid form has been superseded; though -scope is given, in certain ways (as in the _revised_ Montessori scheme), -for the expression of the social instinct.[209] When the pupil is -inwardly fit for a move, he “feels it in his bones”; and then—and not -till then—he moves. The task in which he is engaged in company with his -fellows holds him just so long as it is needful and appropriate to his -own case: the moment of its beginning and that of its ending are entirely -independent of the doings of his fellow-learners. - -Once more, the Terrace of Purgatory resembles a Montessori group rather -than a Kindergarten class in its freedom from obvious direction. There is -no attractive, central, dominating figure, like the Froebelian teacher, -on whom all eyes are fixed in the spirit of Psalm cxxiii, _Ad te levavi -oculos meos._ The grouping of the learners is apparently spontaneous, and -different groups are sometimes engaged simultaneously on different tasks. - -Again, the School of Purgatory is essentially modern in its emphasis on -“expression work,” and its abundant supply of “didactic material.” - -By expression work we mean the endeavour to enforce a lesson, to hasten -its assimilation and ensure its retention, by means of some appropriate -activity on the part of the learner. This is of course much older than -Montessorism, as even our best Sunday school teachers can testify; it -can be traced back also beyond Froebel. Its origin is, surely, lost in -the prehistoric ages of pedagogy. But it was Froebel in the nineteenth -century who first claimed for this factor the importance which it holds -in modern education. Yet if we study Dante’s _Purgatorio_ we shall find -expression work on every terrace of the Mountain, from the humble, -stooping march of the cornice of Pride to the significant exclamations -wherewith the once Lustful, on the uppermost terrace, punctuate the -chanting of their hymn, _Summae Deus clementiae_. Purgatory is not for -Dante, as for Aquinas, merely penal suffering—“something to be borne.” -It must be (as Mr. Wicksteed observes)[210] something active—“something -to be and to do”—somewhat more definite, more specific, more varied than -mere suffering is needed for the building up of the new life which is to -be at home once more in Eden. - -As in the Montessori school, so in these mystic “cloisters” the learners -are led to concentrate and focus on a single task a number of faculties -and senses: eye, ear, voice, memory, attitude, gesture and movement -all conspire to enforce the lesson. And this variety of expression -work is rendered effective by an abundant supply of didactic material, -an apparatus as carefully and scientifically thought out as that of -Italy’s latest educational leader. One need only instance the famous -wall-sculptures[211] and the inlaid pavement[212] of the Terrace of -Pride, the description of which forms one of the loveliest passages in -this most beautiful poem. - -We have spoken of the Angels who preside over these terraces, engaged in -the apparently superfluous task of controlling those whose will is bent -manfully upon the task before them, lifted as they are for ever above the -zone where temptation has any power.[213] What a task, we are inclined to -say, for angelic faculties! What a sinecure! Yet the resemblance to the -human “Guardian Angel” of the Montessori school is surely too striking -to be without significance: and modern educational principles of which -the Dottoressa is by no means the exclusive exponent, may help us to -realise how—in this as in so many other things—we shall do well to range -ourselves “on the side of the Angels.” The Montessori teacher—may we -not say the truly modern teacher of whatever type?—submits to an arduous -and exacting course of training—far more arduous and exacting than that -which “qualified” previous generations of teachers ... and all for—what? -To know what _not_ to do, what _not_ to say; to be able to practise at -the right moment a fully qualified self-restraint, and so allow free -scope to the inner forces of expansion in the pupil’s personality: an -expansion which too heavy a hand, however lovingly laid upon the growing -life, might crush or stunt or warp! A constant presence, inspiring but -unobtrusive; realised but not dominant or over-insistent; not obviating -or unduly curtailing those movements and processes which in education -are infinitely more valuable than immediate results ... yet ever at hand -when really needed.... Is not this a _rôle_ worthy of angelic power and -dignity? Is it not precisely the traditional _rôle_ of the Guardian Angel -in whose beneficent existence some of us are still childlike enough to -believe? - -Surely they were not mere figureheads, those “Birds of God,” whose -stately grace and beauty Dante delights to portray? Even so is it with -the “Guardian Angels” of the Montessori school—with the restrained -efficiency and enthusiasm and the carefully calculated use of personal -influence of the best teachers of all types and grades: their dignity -and essentially angelic quality is apt to be in proportion to their -unobtrusiveness. Education is, after all, not “forcible feeding” or -“cramming”; its office is to educe—to draw forth. In Socrates’ homely -phrase it is a midwife. “Sairey Gamp” was certainly not an angel; but -there are those of her craft who are. More and more this _maieutic_ -office of the Teacher is realised, and with its realisation Teachers -grow less and less like the castigating demons of Inferno—more and more -angelic. - - Omai vedrai di sì fatti ufficiali.[214] - -Another point which brings the _Purgatorio_, in its educational scheme, -down to our own days, is the _orderly progression_ of its lessons. -The tasks set for the penitents are carefully classified and, so to -speak, “graded.” The very form of the Mountain, with its system of -gigantic steps or terraces, signifies as much. It symbolises even -more: for education even in the infant stage involves the conquest of -external difficulties, and, still more, the arduous conquest of self. -The prominence of this “joy of overcoming” is one of the happiest -psychological phenomena of a Montessori school. And as relations with -our fellows become more complex and responsibilities multiply, this -“battle of life” is ever more consciously felt. The New Teaching aims at -“breaking the back” of a soul’s troubles in the early stage, by inducing -a habit of mind to which the appearance of difficulties, instead of -depressing, at once suggests victorious effort. In this way the battle of -the free will becomes, in a sense, most strenuous at the start, as Marco -Lombardo says, “And freewill, which, tho’ it hath a hard struggle in its -first encounter with the heavenly influences, in the end wins the day -completely, if it be well supported.” - - E libero voler; che, se fatica - Ne le prime battaglie col ciel dura - Poi vince tutto, se ben si notrica.[215] - -And the same thought of a gradation, a succession of efforts, each of -which, bravely faced, makes those that follow lighter, is symbolised -in the shape of the mountain of Purgatory, which in reality would have -rather the form of a rounded dome than that of the tall pyramid of the -customary illustration. Says Virgil, in his comforting way, to Dante, -breathless after his first steep climb: “The nature of this eminence is -such, that ever at starting from below it is fatiguing, but in proportion -as a man mounts, he feels it less; wherefore, when it shall appear to -thee so gentle that the ascent is as easy as sailing downward with the -stream, then shalt thou be at the end of this path; there mayest thou -hope to rest thy weariness.” - - ... Questa montagna è tale - Che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave: - E quant’ uom più va su, e men fa male. - Però, quand’ ella ti parrà soave - Tanto che il su andar ti fia leggero, - Com’ a seconda giù andar per nave, - Allor sarai al fin d’ esto sentiero: - Quivi di riposar l’ affanno aspetta![216] - -There is a moral progression by which man enters gradually and by -accumulation into the fulness of self-conquest, and so, of his -inheritance of Freedom. - -But “grading” also, in the more specific sense, seems to be symbolised in -the _Purgatorio_. This principle was not born with Froebel, though its -emphatic recognition to-day may be an outcome of his message that each -stage of the child-life has its own absolute value and rights. - -We are apt to wonder now how people were ever so psychologically -impious as to attempt to teach in a single group, by means of the same -cut-and-dried phrases, minds at every different stage of growth and of -receptiveness; hurling ready-made truths at the devoted heads of pupils -like so many tons of explosive bombs shot down from aircraft upon massed -enemy battalions! Grading, and the individual point of contact—which, -after all, is just Aristotle’s time-honoured principle of “beginning from -that which we know”—these we recognise to be of the first importance, and -that whether we be University professors or Sunday school teachers. And -so we are prepared to appreciate a fourteenth century scheme which is -dominated by the principle of graded progress. - -We note that the souls which are not yet psychologically fit to begin -the regular course of purgation are kept outside, in Antepurgatory, for -a longer or shorter term of years, as each has need. The “Infants,” -so to speak, are graded among themselves, and are not grouped with -“Standard I.” Within the Gate, the seven terraces are arranged in an -order corresponding (not, of course, to a psychological series that would -be accepted as it stands to-day, but) to a very carefully-thought-out -classification of the seven capital sins; and until the lesson of a given -Terrace is completely mastered, there is no chance of moving up. When, on -the other hand, the teaching in that particular grade has been thoroughly -grasped and the pupil has nothing more to learn there, no power in heaven -or earth—or anywhere else—can keep him back. In Dante’s School there are -no mistakes in grading, and no wrong removes. - -We have spoken of the “atmosphere” of the _Purgatorio_ as one of -“naturalness,” meaning by that, that it is an environment not calculated -to hamper or restrict normal and spontaneous development. It is “natural” -also in a more literal sense, in that the Poet has seen fit to depart -from the almost invariable tradition of his predecessors (who place -Purgatory underground, side by side with Hell, and make it scarcely -distinguishable therefrom save in the matter of duration) and to furnish -his penitents with an “open-air cure.” - -It is this background of noble scenery, of landscape and skyscape, of -slope and scarp, of Flowery Valley and Divine Forest, of star-light and -dawn, of sunrise and high noon and sunset—it is this that gives its -peculiar beauty to the second _Cantica_ of the _Divine Comedy_. But -this open-air Purgatory is more than a clever artifice, by which a fine -dramatic contrast is produced after the murk and gloom of the _Inferno_. -It is, as we have seen, essential to Dante’s conception of the perfect -work of penitence in man, that it should draw his footsteps up to the -Earthly Paradise, the primal home of Innocence. And so the background -of the _Purgatorio_, as it were inevitably, completes the illusion of -“naturalness” in the world beyond, and enforces the parallel between -the upward struggle of those elect spirits and our own daily pilgrimage -in this life. It suggests further, all that the magic phrase “Open Air” -means to our modern ears: that healthy out-door life, nurse of the _mens -sana in corpore sano_, that life of robust activities in close contact -with external Nature of which the prime importance is recognised by all -schools of thought in the world of modern education. - -Finally (and here we touch upon one of the most beautiful features of -Dante’s conception), the spiritual atmosphere, in spite of purgatorial -framework of the Seven Sins, is not that of the Decalogue, but of the -Beatitudes. The Sins themselves are interpreted as disordered Love, -and the manifold love which goes up to make a Saint is expressed in -sweetest harmony when each successive barrier is passed.[217] Love is the -atmosphere, and Love the supreme lesson, the learning whereof continues -beyond the grave. - -The conception of Love as the universal motive power, expressed at length -in _Purg._ xvii. 91 _sqq._— - - Nè creator nè creatura mai - Cominciò el, figliuol, fu sanza amore ... - -suggests a comparison of Dante’s psychology with that of the most -modern school. In an age when (as a glance at Fra Salimbene’s pages -will demonstrate)—pages written, it must be remembered, for the eye of -a Sister of the Order of Sta Clara!—something more than Elizabethan -broadness of speech was not uncommon, Dante pours out volumes of prose -and verse, every line of which may be said to be suitable _pour les -jeunes filles_. He would scarcely have subscribed to that domination -of the Sex-instinct which is an axiom of the Freudian psychology. In -the lines referred to above he more or less adumbrates the doctrine of -“Libido”; but it does not occur to him to label that psychic force with -so doubtfully reputable a name as “Libido.” The noble title “Amor” is for -him, as for earlier philosophers, the more appropriate one. - -It would, of course, be absurd to credit Dante with the place of a -pioneer of the twentieth century psychology of the Unconscious, which -had its roots in the Psychical Research of F. W. Myers and his friends, -and sprouted up to visible life and growth so recently under the hands -of the Viennese Freud and the Switzer Jung. But it would probably not -be too much to say, in view of his remarkably intelligent interest in -mental processes, and especially in the phenomena of dreams and of the -border-land between sleeping and waking, that, given the assets and the -advantages of our modern thinkers, he would have taken no mean place -among psychologists of the modern type. - -From _Inf._ i. 10—Tant ’era pien di sonno—to _Par._ xxxiii. 58, we find -this interest displayed; and before we pass on to consider his teaching -on the more human aspect of Education, the personal relation between -Teacher and Pupil, it may be worth while to direct attention to one or -two passages which emphasise this point. - -In the 30th Canto of _Inferno_[218] he uses as a simile that significant -situation in which the dreamer hopes he is dreaming— - - Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna, - Che sognando desidera sognare ... - -In another passage[219] he sketches a case where the wakened dreamer -forgets the “dream-cognition,” but is still dominated by the “affect”— - - ... Colui che somniando vede - Che dopo il sogno la passione impressa - Rimane, e l’ altro a la mente non riede.... - -Ere he quits the Terrace of Accidie, Dante falls asleep, and here he -describes[220] in vivid and picturesque language the process of going to -sleep, when thought follows thought in more or less inconsequent fashion— - - Novo pensiero dentro a me si mise - Del qual più altri nacquero, e diversi; - E tanto d’un in altro vaneggiai, - Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, - E ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai. - -At the opening of the next Canto[221] comes the dream—dream of the two -symbolic Ladies—and the awakening. The dreamer is apparently roused by -the intensity of a dream-stench; but his awakening is due as a matter of -fact to the arresting voice of Virgil, whose person is projected into the -“manifest content” of the dream a few lines earlier,[222] in the cry of -the “Donna Santa”— - - O Virgilio, o Virgilio, chi è questa? - -“Three times,” says Dante’s Guide, “have I called you. Get up, and come -along!” - - ... Il buon maestro, “Almen tre - Voci t’ ho messe,” dicea, “Surgi e viene!” - -In the last Canto of _Purgatory_ proper[223] we have another picture of a -going to sleep and an awaking. The sleepiness has been induced by a sort -of natural self-hypnotism, the poet’s gaze steadily fixed on a few bright -stars seen through the confined opening between the cliffs as he lies on -the rocky stair. - - Poco potea parer li del di fori; - Ma, per quel poco, vedev’ io le stelle - Di lor solere e più chiare e maggiori - Sì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle, - Mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente, - Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle. - -This time the awakening is not sudden or violent.[224] After the -altogether lovely dream of Lia—the sublimation of Dante’s desire, -suggested, or coloured, by the natural anticipations of one on the -threshold of the earthly Paradise—he wakes up quite naturally, his sleep -“breaking from him” with the breaking dawn.[225] - - Le tenebre fuggian da tutti lati - E il sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’ mi. - -Dante’s analysis of Dreams was naturally relative to the knowledge and -tendency of his day. The presaging quality of Dreams— - - ... Il sonno che sovente - Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle; - -like the proverbial belief that the truest dreams are those that come -before dawn— - - ... Presso al mattin del ver si sogna[226] - -is not for him the fruit of scientific psycho-analysis; but rather the -unscientific or quasi-scientific deduction of untold generations of men -on whom the dreams that “came true” left a far deeper impress than the -large majority that proved fallacious. - -Dante was, however, a real psychologist of his own time and date, as -many qualities of his thought and interest testify; and his discerning -interest in the dream-consciousness supplies a definite link between the -thinkers of the Trecento and our modern Masters. - - -III - -It must not, however, be supposed that the somewhat specialised -comparison of Dante’s purgatorial scheme with the Montessori Method -sketched above[227] by any means exhausts the educational principles -of the _Purgatorio_; still less that it covers the whole area of -such principles enshrined in the _Divine Comedy_. The old-fashioned -relation between Master and Pupil has still something to be said for -it. The personal element cannot be eliminated, however great may be the -need—especially in certain stages of self-restraint and self-effacement. -This personal relation, in its permanently important aspects, is -beautifully figured in the relation between Dante as learner and Virgil, -Beatrice, and Statius as teachers. - -Benedetto Croce[228] draws attention to the frequent _Intramesse -didascaliche_ which mark the XXIst and following Cantos of the -_Purgatorio_—notably the discourse of Statius on “generation” in _Purg._ -xxv. “This poetry,” he says, “breathes throughout the spirit of the -Master who knows, and desires to make clear the idea he is expounding; -who stoops down towards the pupil to embrace him and lift him up -towards the Truth.”[229] Beatrice, again, as Croce points out,[230] -taking Virgil’s place in the journey through the skies, is like an -elder sister patiently schooling her younger brother. She helps him to -overcome his prejudices, to solve his problems, to conquer his doubts; -now turning upon him the eye of a fond mother nursing a delirious -child,[231] now laughing him out of his “childish notions,” the charm -of her resplendent beauty and the illumination of her smile giving just -that touch of romance to their relations that suggests the final stage -of the transfiguration of the half-earthly love of the _Vita Nuova_ -into something wholly celestial. But the type of this relation between -Master and Pupil is most surely and most prominently drawn in that -which subsists all through the first two cantiche between Virgil and -Dante.[232] “Mia scuola,” Virgil calls this relation in the beautiful -scene with Statius;[233] and a striking feature of this “School,” -recurring in the same Canto[234] and elsewhere, is the close, intimate, -easy and even playful mutual understanding between Teacher and Pupil. To -this point we shall return; but first a word may be said on the sterner -aspect of Education, from the pupils’ point of view. - -Granted that the “Primrose Path” is the only appropriate one for infant -steps to toddle on; that path itself has its ups and downs—slight -gradients from the adult point of view, but for the infant involving -a demand for real effort and adventure. And the end of man—our human -Good—lies above the zone where primroses bloom, on the heights: as Tasso -sings— - - ... In cima all’ erto e faticoso colle - Della virtù è riposto il nostro bene.[235] - -Let us glance, then, at what Dante has to say about the sterner side of -Education—the necessary sacrifices that must be made for Liberty—and -about the responsibilities of the teacher in his relation to the pupil -whom he would guide up to freedom of mind and soul. - -To the former we have already referred above (p. 102) in connection with -the Montessori principle of the joyous facing of difficulties. The hard -initial battle[236] is symbolically represented by the place which the -_Inferno_ holds in Dante’s quest of Liberty. For him indeed the “prime -battaglie” are the hardest. No essential routine or inevitable drudgery -which beset the path of learning can match in sheer distastefulness -the weary horror of that first part of the Poet’s journey, of which -his self-pitying anticipations are recorded in the lovely and pathetic -opening lines of the second canto: “The day was departing, and the -darkened air was relieving from their labours the animals on earth, and I -was preparing all alone to sustain the struggle alike of the journey and -of my piteous thoughts.” - - Lo giorno se n’ andava, e l’ aere bruno - Toglieva gli animai che sono in terra - Dalle fatiche loro; e io sol uno - M’ apparecchiava a sostener la guerra - Sì del cammino e sì della pietate.[237] - -The youthful scholar, in his quest for knowledge and truth and the -freedom that is truth’s guerdon, has not, as a rule, to face this literal -isolation in drudgery and painfulness. For him the social instinct and -the companionship of fellow-victims, not to say the healthy stimulus of -friendly rivalry and competition, are present to lighten his burden and -sweeten his lot. Yet each, after all, has to tackle the drudgery and the -difficulties for himself. There is no Royal Road. The Master may spur -him on with the vision of the “gladsome mountain which is the origin and -source of all joy.” - - Dilettoso monte - Ch’ è principio e cagion di tutta gioia; - -may encourage him to face the flames by the thought of the welcoming -smile of Beatrice on the other side: “as you tempt a child with an -apple!” “Mark you, my son, this barrier separates thee from Beatrice.” - - Or vedi, figlio: - Tra Beatrice e te è questo muro;[238] - -but, none the less, the grim journey has to be undertaken, the -distasteful plunge to be made. It is largely the Teacher’s attitude and -example that make this effort possible; that evoke the manly spirit in -the pupil, and encourage him to persevere in face of difficulties. - -All this is recognised by the best modern theory and practice. “The New -Teaching,” says Professor Adams,[239] “does not seek to free the pupils -from effort”—we have seen that this is really the case, even in its -extremest form of Montessorianism, with its individualistic charter of -Child-liberty—“not ... to free the pupils from effort, but to encourage -them to strenuous work”; it “does not seek to get rid of drudgery, but -to make it tolerable by giving it a meaning, and shewing its relation to -the whole learning process in school, and to the whole process of living -in the world.” This is exactly Virgil’s attitude towards Dante. He is, -first of all, alert to cheer and encourage him in moments of special -difficulty. He encourages Dante both by example and by precept to mount -the grisly back of the monster Geryon, their sole means of descent into -the Abyss[240]; and later, when the flame has to be faced before entering -the Earthly Paradise,[241] he reminds him of the success of that past -experiment of faith, much in the manner of the noble self-encouragement -of that Homeric hero, who, known to Dante only at second-hand, yet -captured his imagination. “Be of good cheer, my heart, we have suffered -worse things ere this.” - - τέτλαθι δὴ κραδίη, καὶ κύντερον ἄλλος ποτ’ ἔτλης.[242] - -Or again, when at the foot of the mountain Dante is dismayed at its -steepness, the Master explains: “It is ever easier as you ascend.”[243] -When Dante is frightened as the Mountain trembles (_Purg._ xx. 135) -Virgil interposes with a call to confidence— - - Non dubbiar mentr’ io ti guido - -But Virgil not only encourages; he explains. From time to time he pauses -with the double object of giving his companion a breathing-space and -of enheartening him by an exposition of the end and purpose of the -drudgery—of the whole scheme, of which the experience they are now -undergoing is an integral and necessary part. Thus he expounds to his -disciple the topography of Hell when they have passed within the rampart -of the City of Dis, and before they begin the steep and terrible descent, -and encounter the Minotaur.[244] Again, after the uncomfortable ordeal -of the suffocating fumes on the Terrace of Wrath, he diverts his pupil’s -attention with a sketch of the order and inner meaning of the purgatorial -terraces, and explains how Sin, in all its deadly forms, is just -“disordered Love.”[245] And we may note in passing how this postponement -of the explanation and the detailed scheme till the movement of learning -is well on its course, is itself typical of the New Teaching,[246] and -grounded on sound psychological principles. Virgil supplies, indeed, in -the first Canto of the _Inferno_, a summary forecast of the journey, but -does not sit down at the beginning and burden his Pupil’s mind with an -elaboration of details. Nor can we leave the lecture on “Disordered Love” -of _Purg._ xvii. without drawing attention to the ideal relations of -Teacher and Pupil depicted in the following Canto, and especially to the -masterly way in which Virgil suggests ever fresh problems to Dante’s mind -and draws him on with an increasing “thirst to know.”[247] - -The liberty which Education “goes seeking,” and in which its nobler forms -live and move as in a bracing atmosphere, demands some sacrifice alike -from Teacher and from Pupil. From the Pupil, especially in its earlier -middle stages, it demands a degree of submissiveness and docility, -and courage and perseverance to face distasteful drudgery; from the -Teacher, that self-restraint of which we have already spoken—yet not mere -self-effacement. Like the Divine Master, he must “begin to do and to -teach.”[248] He must be a fellow-pilgrim, sharing the toils of the road, -and over the roughest places a leader, even as Virgil volunteers to go -first where the grim descent begins into the “cieco mondo”: “I will go -first and thou shalt follow me.” - - Io sarò primo, e tu sarai secondo.[249] - -As fellow-pilgrim, he will not hesitate to let the Pupil witness -something of his distress. The Master girds himself to the descent pallid -with sympathetic suffering—_tutto smorto_[250]—nor does he hide the -tokens of shame and confusion when he becomes conscious that he has been -a party to an unwarranted delay.[251] And we note the effect of this -frankness on the Pupil—an enhancement of loyal admiration for the Master; -and, for his own conscience, a more delicate perception of moral values: -“He appeared to me self-reproached. O noble, stainless, conscience, how -bitter to thy taste is a trifling fault!” - - El mi parea da se stesso rimorso; - O dignitosa coscienza e netta, - Come t’ è picciol fallo amaro morso! - -Even so pleads the spirit of the New Teaching.[252] Let not the Teacher -“put on airs of omniscience and solemnity. He must be a part of the gay -company; he must not mind ‘giving himself away,’ he must be a human -being, not a wooden stick; gladly must he learn, and then he will gladly -teach.” Thus Virgil moves in Dante’s company as a fellow-learner, not -omniscient, not infallible; ever ready to confess with frankness his own -limitations, and to own up to his mistakes. In this spirit he apologises -to Pier delle Vigne[253] for the inconsiderate act to which he was forced -owing to his inability to convince Dante through the medium of his own -verses. In the same spirit he gives place to Nessus when a description is -needed of Nessus’ own region of the Inferno, reversing his _dictum_ about -the original descent: “Regard him (Nessus) as thy prime authority, and me -as secondary.” - - Questi ti sia or primo, e io secondo.[254] - -In like manner he gives way to Statius when an explanation is wanted of -the emaciation of spirits no longer subject to bodily hunger,[255] and -leads Dante to expect from Beatrice the completion of his own careful but -yet not fully satisfying exposition of a heavenly matter: “And if this -argument of mine doth not appease thy cravings thou wilt see Beatrice, -and she will fully relieve thee of this and every other desire.” - - E se la mia ragion non ti disfama - Vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente - Ti torrà questa e ciascun altra brama.[256] - -Dante in his portrait of Virgil reminds us that the quest of Truth -demands “truth in the inward parts,” that a humble and limpid sincerity -is essential. Finally, he shews us this humility transfigured into a -Divine self-effacement, where the elder Poet hands over his disciple -entirely into his own guidance and that of Beatrice, in humble -acknowledgement of his own limitations.[257] This act of self-effacement -has indeed been in his mind from the first. When the time shall come -for Dante’s ascent to the realms of the _beate genti_, “a spirit more -worthy than I shall be appointed thereto, with whom I will leave thee at -my departure; for that Potentate who reigns in heaven above, because I -was rebellious against His law, wills not that any by my guidance should -enter His city.” - - Anima fia a ciò più di me degna; - Con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire; - Chè quello imperador che là su regna - Perch’ io fu’ ribellante a la sua legge - Non vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna.[258] - -And so Virgil’s work is done, and the Teacher shews himself sublimest in -the last act. “The hardest lesson,” says the apostle of the New Teaching, -“for a clever teacher to learn, is to let a clever pupil be clever in -his own way,” nor “has a teacher been really successful” until “he has, -by skilful preparation, enabled his pupil to do without him.”[259] This -final self-effacement of the Teacher, with its corollary, the achievement -of self-mastery and self-determination in the Pupil—the achievement of -that _liberty of soul_ which is the supreme aim of the pilgrimage—is best -described in Virgil’s matchless words of farewell, which we may now quote -in their fulness. His “skilful preparation” has all led up to this ... to -make itself dispensable! “By force of wit and skill I have conducted thee -hither; henceforward let thine own pleasure be thy guide; from both the -steep and the narrow ways thou art now free.... No longer await either -word or sign from me; free, sound, and upright is thy will, and it would -be amiss not to do its bidding; wherefore over thyself I invest thee with -supreme control.” - - Tratto t’ ho qui con ingegno e con arte; - Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce; - Fuor sei de l’ erte vie, fuor sei de l’ arte. - ... - Non aspettar mio dir più, nè mio cenno, - Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio - E fallo fora non far a suo senno: - Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.[260] - - - - -VI - -DANTE AND ISLAM - -(_As represented by_ “THE GOSPEL OF BARNABAS”) - - E solo in parte vidi il Saladino. - - —_Inf._ iv. 129. - - -The aim of these Essays has been to present Dante in different aspects as -the Apostle of Freedom: a man endowed with those profound convictions on -which alone true tolerance can be built, a man whose deep and passionate -earnestness is tempered and balanced by a saving sense of humour. The -substantiation of this claim may perhaps justify us in carrying the -reader into a remote by-way of Italian literature; in asking him to -note points of contact and of contrast which emerge when the Poet is -confronted, so to speak, with a document which we may be sure he never -saw,[261] but which yet seems to bear, here and there, strange marks of -the impress of his thoughts and of his phraseology. If the comparison of -the two writers should seem at first sight gratuitous and far-fetched, it -may yet succeed in throwing light on Dante’s genius and temper from an -unfamiliar angle. - -The Clarendon Press published in 1907 an _Editio princeps_ of the -Mohammedan _Gospel of Barnabas_ from an unique MS. of the latter half -of the sixteenth century in the Imperial Library at Vienna.[262] This -document—apart from its theological and dogmatic importance—should prove -to be of considerable interest to students of Italian literature, as well -on account of its grammatical and orthographic peculiarities, as for -the positive literary merits which not infrequently relieve a style in -general somewhat rough and bald. - -The task of preparing for the press a translation of this remarkable -document could not fail to bring before one’s mind certain points of -contact with Dante, more especially as the curious archaic Italian in -which the “Gospel” is written lends itself, in a certain measure, to -verbal coincidences and quasi-coincidences with passages in the Poet’s -writings. The points of contact which will be adduced in the present -paper are none the less interesting because the date of the original -_Gospel of Barnabas_ still remains to a certain extent an open question, -and with it also the nature of the relations, direct or indirect, that -may have subsisted between its compiler and the author of the _Divina -Commedia_.[263] - -But first a word is due about the character and scope of this very -apocryphal Gospel. The MS., as we have already suggested, is of -comparatively recent date. Paper, binding, and orthography all combine -with the script to place it—not, as its eighteenth century critics -supposed, in the fifteenth century, or earlier, but—in the latter half of -the sixteenth century.[264] It is, however, of course possible that the -Vienna Codex may be a copy of an earlier MS.; and, curiously enough, one -of the strongest arguments for this earlier original arises, as we shall -shortly see, out of an apparent reference to the famous Jubilee of 1300 -A.D. which looms so large in Dante’s life and writings. - -The book is a frankly Mohammedan Gospel, giving a full, but garbled, -story of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, from a Moslem point of -view. It claims to have been written by Saint Barnabas (who figures in -it as one of the Twelve—to the exclusion of poor Saint Thomas!) at the -injunction of his Master, for the express purpose of combating the errors -taught by Saint Paul and others. These errors are summed up under three -heads: (1) the doctrine that Jesus is Son of God, (2) the rejection of -Circumcision, and (3) the permission to eat unclean meats. Of these three -errors the first is regarded as of the greatest importance; and not only -is the Gospel narrative contorted and expurgated to suit the writer’s -purpose, but Christ Himself is made repeatedly to deny his own Divinity -and even his Messiahship, and to predict the advent of Mohammed, the -“Messenger of God.” - -About two-thirds of the material is derived, without question, from our -four Canonical Gospels, of which a decidedly unscientific “harmony” forms -the framework of Barnabas’ narrative; the remaining third, which takes -the form of discourses put into the mouth of Christ, is purely oriental -in character, and largely an elaboration of germs or hints to be found in -the Koran or in Jewish tradition. It is on this section of the book that -the Dantist’s interest will be concentrated. - -The brief words of awful solemnity in which the Gospels speak of the doom -of the lost are supplemented in Barnabas by elaborate descriptions of -infernal torments which, whencesoever ultimately derived, are expressed -in terms which exhibit remarkable coincidences with the _Inferno_ and -_Purgatorio_ of Dante. Mohammed’s two favourite themes were, the final -Judgment and the horrors of Hell on the one hand, and, on the other, -the delights of Paradise. And the second theme is treated in Barnabas -almost as fully as the first. The Paradise of Barnabas has perhaps little -in common with the Earthly Paradise of Dante, and still less with the -Celestial; but it gives our author scope for an excursion into the realms -of astronomy, whereby he finds himself (perhaps unconsciously), at the -end of his journey, much nearer to Dante’s scheme of the Ten Heavens than -to the normal tradition of the Jews and Arabs. - -It will be convenient to deal first with this teaching on Paradise, -secondly with the _Inferno_ of Barnabas, and thirdly with certain verbal -and other points of contact between Barnabas and Dante; concluding with -some more general considerations regarding the tone and colouring of the -“Gospel.” - -It would be strange if the Paradise of Barnabas had not some features -in common with Dante’s. Man’s dreams of an ideal resting-place, whether -past or future, have a tendency to express themselves in terms of -greensward and flowers and luscious fruits, cool streams and sunshine -tempered by refreshing shade. The name “Paradise” itself means “park” or -“plaisance” as we know, and though Barnabas is not conspicuously happy -when he poses as an etymologist,[265] the connotation of the word was too -securely established alike in Moslem and in Christian tradition to admit -of much variation. Paradise, of course, has two different meanings in -Dante, and the same is true of its use in Barnabas; but inasmuch as the -distinction in the latter is not expressly marked, it will be convenient -for our purpose to group together the conceptions of the Earthly and the -Celestial Paradise. In Barnabas, as in Dante, the name is applied to the -scene of man’s creation— - - il loco - Fatto per proprio dell’ umana spece,[266] - -and of his temptation, fall and expulsion.[267] In both again it is -used also of the eternal home of God, the good angels and redeemed -mankind.[268] Speaking generally, the main features of the Paradise of -Barnabas resemble more closely those of Dante’s Earthly Paradise; while -its position in the scheme of the universe corresponds rather to that -of the Celestial Paradise of Dante. Thus the four perfumed rivers[269] -of this “Gospel,” though derived, almost certainly, from the Koran, -correspond, in a sense, to the miraculously clear and limpid stream which -arrested the poet’s progress[270]; while its profusion of flowers and -fruits[271] recall the scene portrayed in Virgil’s parting words— - - ... l’ erbetta, i fiori e li arbuscelli,[272] - -and— - - La gran varïazion de’ freschi mai.[273] - -which drew Dante’s wondering eyes across the stream to where Matelda -tripped singing through the painted meadow— - - Cantando ed iscegliendo fior da fiore - Ond’ era pinta tutta la sua via.[274] - -Again, a somewhat terse definition of Paradise in Barnabas reminds one -of a still shorter phrase of Dante’s. The author of the _De Vulgari -Eloquentia_ describes the home which man forfeited by his first sin as -“delitiarum patria[275]” while for Barnabas, “Il parradisso he chassa -doue DIO chonsserva le sui delitie[276]”; or, as he puts it further on -“DIO ha chreato il parradisso per chassa delle sui delitie.”[277] - -But the heavenly Paradise of the Empyrean is also described by Dante in -material phrase as “God’s garden.” “Questo giardino”[278] is the name -by which Saint Bernard designates the Mystic Rose, as he unveils its -mysteries to Dante; and already in the Eighth Heaven Beatrice had essayed -to divert the Poet’s gaze from her own loveliness— - - ... al bel giardino - Che sotto i raggi di Cristo s’ infiora.[279] - -Here we may note that in Barnabas[280] GOD (not Christ, of course) is the -sun of Paradise, while Mohammed is its moon. - -But there is another passage in the _Paradiso_, where Dante himself is -speaking in answer to Saint John’s catechizing: a passage which may well -detain us a little longer. Here Paradise is described in so many words as -the “Garden of the Eternal Gardener”— - - Le fronde onde s’ infronda tutto l’ orto - De l’ ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto, - Quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto.[281] - -Is it fanciful to see a subtle resemblance—in thought, perhaps, more -than in phrase (though Dante’s symbolic meaning is wanting)—in Barnabas’ -description of Paradise as a place “doue ... ogni chossa he _frutuossa, -di fruti proportionati ha cholui che lo ha choltiuato_?”[282] - -There emerge, at any rate, from both passages, the thought of the -Divine Gardener ... and of a _proportion_ for which He is in some way -responsible. But perhaps a more striking coincidence—if coincidence -it be—is that between the answer given to a problem raised by Saint -Bartholomew in Barnabas and the assurance vouchsafed by Piccarda[283] in -resolution of Dante’s difficulty concerning degrees of glory in Heaven. - -“O Master,” says Bartholomew,[284] “shall the glory of Paradise be -equal for every man? If it be equal, it will not be just, and if it be -unequal, the lesser will envy the greater.” Jesus answers: “Non sera -equalle perche dio he iusto he ogniuno si chontentera perche hiuui non -he inuidia,” and again, There shall be “tutta una gloria sebene sara ha -chi più ha chi meno. Non portera alloro inuidia ueruna.” So, when Dante -questions the beatified Piccarda, in her earth-shadowed sphere— - - Desiderate voi più alto loco ...?[285] - -the spirit replies, in words which, though more beautiful and more -profound, are inevitably called up by the passage of Barnabas just quoted— - - Si che, come noi sem di soglia in soglia - Per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace - Com’ allo re ch’ a suo voler ne invoglia: - En’ la sua voluntade è nostra pace.[286] - -Turning now to the geographical or rather astronomical aspect of the -subject, we find in Barnabas a definite divergence from the doctrine of -the _Koran_, and adoption of a Ptolemaic scheme closely resembling that -of Dante’s _Paradiso_. There are nine heavens, not counting Paradise, -_i.e._ ten heavens in all. “Noue sono li cielli li quali sono distanti -luno dal altro chome he distante il primo cielo dala terra. Il quale he -lontano dalla terra cinquecento hanni di strada.”[287] In the “five -hundred years’ journey” there is a reminiscence of Jewish tradition: -but the seven heavens of the Talmud and of the _Koran_ have become ten. -And though these heavens are not definitely stated to be arranged, like -Dante’s, as a series of concentric spheres with earth as the centre, -they form a graduated series, in which each is to the next as a “punto -di ago,”[288] or as a grain of sand.[289] The planets, again, have their -place in the scheme. They are not, apparently, identified with the -several “cieli,” as in Dante’s arrangement, but are “set between” or -“amongst” them: “li cielli fra li qualli stano li pianeti.”[290] - -The point of resemblance is to be found in a graduated series of ten (and -not seven) heavens, characterised by an ascending scale of magnitude, and -culminating in the Paradise of the Blessed. - -The resemblances are indeed striking; but though ‘Barnabas is vastly -superior to previous Moslem writers in the richness of his conception -of Heaven,’ (they in common with their Christian contemporaries shewing -much more spontaneity and exuberance of fancy in describing the torments -of Hell), Dante excels markedly in the glowing wealth of his picture -of Paradise—its radiance, its variety, its peace, its activity, its -all-pervading love.[291] - -So far, it may be said, the suggested points of contact between -Barnabas and Dante have been somewhat vague and hypothetical. They -may, perhaps, be adequately accounted for on the basis of a common -tradition—the practically universal tradition of a Garden-Paradise, and -the Aristotelo-Ptolemaic scheme of astronomy common to all the civilised -West, whether Christian or Mohammedan, till the days of Copernicus and -Galileo. But in the Inferno of Barnabas we may discover more definite -and more convincing resemblances to features and passages of the _Divina -Commedia_. - -Islam, except in its later developments,[292] has no place for a -Purgatory. There is no mention of a Purgatorio in the Koran or in -this “Gospel,” though Barnabas gives even the Faithful a probationary -residence of torment in Hell, varying from Mohammed’s own brief term of -“the twinkling of an eye” to a duration of 70,000 years![293] But the -Barnaban arrangement of Hell itself furnishes an almost exact parallel -to the scheme of Dante’s Purgatorio. The framework of the arrangement is -that of the seven capital sins. Hell is divided[294] into seven circles -or “centri” wherein are punished respectively (1) lo irachondo, (2) il -gollosso, (3) lo acidiosso, (4) il lusuriosso, (5) lo hauaro, (6) lo -inuidiosso, (7) il superbo. The order of the sins differs considerably -from that adopted by Dante, and indeed is not repeated in any of the -typical arrangements given in Dr. Moore’s well-known Table;[295] coming -nearest to that of Aquinas. In common, however, with Dante’s arrangement -it has the juxtaposition of Pride and Envy and their position at the -lower end of the series: a point which is perhaps the more significant -in that Barnabas approaches his Inferno from the bottom (not, as one -would have expected, from the top), beginning with “il più basso centro” -of Pride. There is another point also, in which the Inferno of Barnabas -resembles both the Inferno and the Purgatorio of Dante—the principle -which runs through all its torments “per quae peccat quis ... per haec -et torquetur.” The proud shall be “trampled under-foot of Satan and his -devils,”[296] the envious shall be tormented with the delusion that -even in that joyless realm “ogniuno prendi allegrezza del suo malle he -si dolgia che lui non habia peggio”;[297] the slothful shall labour at -tasks like that of Sisyphus,[298] and the gluttonous be tantalised with -elusive dainties.[299] Nor can we fail to notice here how in the story -of the serpent’s doom[300] there comes out the idea of all pollutions of -human sin—especially repented sin—streaming back eventually to Satan: -the conception which underlies the system of Dante’s rivers of Hell, -including the “ruscelletto” that trickles down from Purgatory.[301] - -There is a vivid description in _Barnabas_ of the “Harrowing of Hell” -at the coming of God’s Messenger, which though it has nothing in common -with the account of the Saviour’s Descent as related by Virgil in -Limbo, is strongly suggestive of a later scene where at the advent of -the much-debated “Messo del ciel,”[302] who comes to open the gates of -Dis, both banks of the Styx tremble, and more than a thousand “anime -distrutte” fly headlong like frogs before a water-snake.[303] “Onde -tremera,” says Barnabas, “lo infferno alla sua pressenzza[304] ... quando -elgi ui andera tutti li diauoli stridendo cercherano di asscondersi sotto -le ardente brasse dicendo luno allo altro: scampa scampa che elgi uiene -machometo nosstro innimicho.”[305] - -While the general atmosphere of Hell in _Barnabas_, with its “neui he -giazi intollerabili,”[306] its torturing fiends, its biting serpents, its -Sisyphus-labours and Tantalus-pains, its harpies, its burning filth and -nameless horrors, has the same “reek” as that of Dante’s Inferno, there -are passages which present an almost verbal parallel. In his description -of the cries of the lost, Barnabas says: “malladirano ... il loro padre -he madre he il loro chreatore.” Who can but recall Dante’s words about -the dismal spirits assembled on the bank of Acheron, who— - - Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti?[307] - -This brings us to the subject of actual verbal coincidences, of which -we must confess we have found but two, though a more systematic -investigation might well yield a much larger number. - -Barnabas’ recurring characterisation of the idols of the heathen as -“dei falsi he bugiardi”[308] is surely too remarkable to be without -significance, and is enforced and supported by the occurrence of another -cadence of the same canto of the _Inferno_ in the phrase “rabbiosa fame,” -which in Barnabas, however, applies not to the symbolic lion of the -_Divina Commedia_,[309] but to the torments of the Lost. - -There remains one more point to be adduced—an incidental and a -somewhat subtle one which makes, not so much for a relation between -Dante’s writings and the _Gospel of Barnabas_ as for a relation of -contemporaneity between the two writers. The inference which it would -suggest is so definite and precise, that it is only fair to remark -that there are puzzlingly contradictory arguments to be drawn from the -language and style of Barnabas. - -Our point, then, is as follows. Barnabas puts into the mouth of our Lord, -as we have observed above, numerous predictions of the future advent of -Mohammed as “Messiah” and “Messenger of GOD.” In one of these a “Jubilee” -is spoken of as recurring every hundred years: “il iubileo ... che hora -uiene ogni cento hanni.”[310] The writer or compiler here, as often, -fails to throw himself back into the Palestine of the first century, -in which, as his very considerable knowledge of the Old Testament[311] -should have reminded him, the Hebrew Jubilee of fifty years would -have been in force. Whence, then, comes this Jubilee? He cannot have -derived it from the _Koran_. We are almost forced to the conclusion -that the “hora” of the passage quoted is a literal “now” and refers to -a contemporary institution—to the Jubilee as conceived of at the moment -when the lines were penned; and that, the Jubilee of Western Christendom. -This carries us back beyond the twenty-five years’ Jubilee of modern -times—beyond the year when Clement VI, for his own ends, instituted a -Jubilee of fifty years after the Hebrew model; and would give us as our -_terminus ad quem_ the year 1349. For the upper limit—the _terminus a -quo_ of the original Barnabas we must turn to the famous Jubilee of -1300, the ideal date of Dante’s pilgrimage. For though the Bull[312] by -which that Jubilee was promulgated alleged antecedent tradition, and the -contemporary chroniclers naturally followed suit,[313] there seems to -be no sufficient historical evidence for a precedent. Thus, between the -years 1300 and 1350—and, apparently, only during that period—it would -have been possible to speak of the centennial Jubilee as an established -institution. If this be so, the writing of this passage in _Barnabas_ -is relegated to the years in which the _Divina Commedia_ took its final -shape, or those just after the poet’s death in 1321 when the poem so -swiftly took its place among the classics of the world’s literature. - -The foregoing sketch does not pretend to be exhaustive;[314] it does not -even claim to have proved anything of a substantial nature: but it may -perhaps suggest to some more competent mind a line of study which has at -least the merit of freshness, and it may serve to introduce to those who -are not acquainted with it, a document of no ordinary interest and of no -little beauty. - -It is sometimes stated that Dante places Mohammed not among pagans -nor among heretics but with the schismatics: as though he shared the -optimistic view of some of his contemporaries, that the Moslems were but -an extreme form of Christian “sect.” - -But Dante distributes his pagans without prejudice throughout the -successive circles, from the “Nobile Castello” in Limbo[315] to the -central seat of infamy in the Giudecca; and, as a matter of fact, a -pagan, Curio, is partner of Mohammed’s doom in the penultimate “bolgia” -of Malebolge. Obviously “scisma” must not be taken too technically -from Mohammed’s lips, supplemented as it is by the more general phrase -“seminator di scandalo.”[316] The “schism” of which the False Prophet -is guilty is rather that introduction of discord and strife into the -civilised world which makes “Macometto cieco” in the eighteenth canzone a -personification of the factious spirit of Florence. - -Yet if it had fallen to Dante’s lot to judge the Founder of Islam -by the spirit of this Mohammedan Gospel, he might have shared that -milder and more optimistic view of Mohammedanism which, according to -a recent writer,[317] inspired Saint Francis when he set out upon his -Egyptian mission. For here he would have found, side by side with -the inevitable denial of our Lord’s Divinity, an attribution to him -not only of the Gospel miracles, but of others beside. He would have -found deep teachings on prayer and fasting and almsgiving; on humility, -penitence[318] and self-discipline; on meditation and mystic love. He -would have found an asceticism in some ways as extravagant as any to -be discovered in mediaeval legend, yet tempered with saving humour and -common sense; a tolerant and charitable spirit which rivals even that of -the “Cristo d’ Italia,” and “a succession of noble and beautiful thoughts -concerning love of God, union with God, and God as Himself the final -reward of faithful service, which it would be difficult to match in any -literature.”[319] - - * * * * * - -Eleven years after the above lines were written, there appeared in -Madrid a study of Dante’s relations with Mohammedan Eschatology,[320] -which may possibly prove to hold the key to some of the problems raised -by the _Gospel of Barnabas._ The learned Spanish Professor of Arabic -is by no means the first to explore the field of possible Oriental -sources for the Divine Comedy. Since Ozanam wrote his _La Philosophie -Chrétienne avant Dante_, a number of writers—D’Ancona, D’Ovidio and -others in Italy, and Vossler in Germany—have busied themselves with this -subject; and in 1901, M. Blochet[321] brought both the general idea of -the Unearthly Pilgrimage and some of its details into what looks like -a derivative relationship with the two great Oriental Ascension-myths: -the very ancient Mazdean story of Arda-Viraf, of Persian origin, and the -secondary legend of Mohammed’s one-night journey through the heavens, -founded on a short and obscure passage in the _Koran_[322] and known -as the _Miradj_. Together with other researchers in the same field, M. -Blochet brings in also Sinbad the Sailor, the Voyage of St. Brendan, -and all the family of the Quest of the Fortunate Isles; working up the -pedigree right back to the Hesperides of the Hellenic myths—themselves -descended from an ancestry more ancient still, and of origin further -East. He suggests the many possible channels of transmission of oriental -lore to Western Europe, and in particular to Ireland[323] by the more -easterly “Amber Route” which archaeology shews to have passed from -Mesopotamia over the Caucasus and through Russia to the Baltic. He -points again to the openings made by the Crusades, and singles out the -work of Dante’s Venetian contemporary, Marin Sanudo, _Liber secretorum -fidelium crucis_,[324] as evincing such a mastery of the entire “Eastern -Question” as would imply a very exact knowledge of the Moslem religion -and its legends. He points also to Paget Toynbee’s demonstration of -Dante’s indebtedness in no less than ten passages of the _Vita Nuova_ and -_Convivio_, to the Moslem astronomer Djaafer-îbn-Mohammed-el-Balkhi, -known to the mediaeval West by the less cumbrous name of Alfraganus.[325] - -New ground has, however, undoubtedly been opened up by Dr. Asín. In his -Inaugural Lecture he makes claims which, no doubt, will be fiercely -combated, and in the end largely discounted. Dr. Parodi in his important -notice of this book[326] points out that Asín’s contention is two-fold, -and one half of it, at least, unprovable. The Spanish Orientalist claims -to have proved (1) that the Western legends of the World Beyond are -derived from Arab (and ultimately from Persian) sources, (2) that Dante -was acquainted with specific Moslem sources, and used them freely. - -For the first of these contentions, which was, in substance -Blochet’s,[327] he has brought—so Parodi admits—fresh and varied -evidence; and this part of the claim may now be regarded as largely -substantiated. The second claim: that Dante actually knew, and drew from, -the Moslem legend “is” says the Italian reviewer, “and will remain, I -fear, incapable of demonstration.”[328] Yet he admits that the parallels -adduced between the Moslem Hell and Dante’s Inferno, and still more -between the _Miradj_ and the _Paradiso_, are such as to arouse perplexity -and astonishment in a mind hostile to, or unconvinced by, the theory of -the learned Spaniard. The parallels he interprets[329] as remarkable -instances of the similar working of human imagination on similar topics, -all over the world. Whether such a hypothesis meets all the facts may -still be an open question. But there can be no question whatever that -if Dante, who certainly owes the biggest debt to his “true precursor,” -Virgil, be indebted also to the _Miradj_ or other Mohammedan legend,[330] -he has more than repaid his debt in the splendid originality with which -he has bent and transformed such material to his own higher purposes: -a use which implies masterly assimilation and adaption, and amounts to -creative work. - -Yet we would venture to plead for an open mind, even on the subject of -Asín’s second contention, and venture to ask whether the _Gospel of -Barnabas_ does not contribute some little additional force to the Spanish -professor’s argument? When all deductions have been made, has he not gone -far towards proving that Dante was more definitely indebted to Moslem -thought and legend than has been hitherto believed; and in particular -that he may have drawn, directly or indirectly, from Mohammedan sources -the architectonic idea of “Hell,” and other parts of his scheme of -which the affinity with “Barnabas” has been noted in the preceding -pages? If so, we may with some probability attribute to those same -sources the occasional striking identity of phraseology which we have -observed—regarding them as, in some sense, sources both for Dante and -for “Barnabas”; though in some cases it is difficult to believe that the -so-called “Barnabas” is not quoting Dante from memory. - -The man who placed the Moslem Captain Saladin and the Moslem Philosophers -Averroes and Avicenna in the same region of the other world as his own -dear master Virgil[331]; who placed the condemned Averroist, Sigieri of -Brabant, in the Fourth Heaven as companion of the recognised Doctors -of the Church, and put an eulogy of him into the mouth of his opponent -Thomas Aquinas,[332] would surely not be willing to borrow from Moslem -sources ideas and materials for his mighty building— - - al quale ha posta mano e cielo e terra.[333] - -That suitable material was in existence (though in the Arabic language) -has been abundantly proved. From the various mediaeval forms of the -Mohammedan legend of the Prophet’s visit to the other world, Professor -Asín draws numerous and striking parallels to the _Divina Commedia_. The -topography of Hell, with its most infamous of sinners in the lowest pit, -the scheme of the Heavens, which, like Dante’s, follows the Ptolemaic -system of concentric spheres, and many more detailed analogies. He -finds the closest affinity in a writer of the same century, Ibn Arabi, -a Spanish thinker, who died twenty-five years before Dante was born. By -this Arabi the legend—which may have formed the basis of much of the -eschatology of “Barnabas”—was presented together with a mystical and -allegorical interpretation, such as Dante himself suggests for his own -work in the Epistle to Can Grande.[334] Dante’s noble contemporary, -Raymond Lull, seems to have known this book of Arabi’s in the original. -Dante was not, like Raymond, an Arabic scholar, but he may well have -become, by oral means, acquainted with something of its substance. - -The court of Alfonso X of Seville, into which Dante’s Brunetto plunged -in the abortive embassy of 1260, was a hive of Moslem learning and -speculation. And though Brunetto’s visit was but short (and from this -point Dr. Parodi does not fail to draw full capital), he was not -the only Florentine who found his way to Seville.[335] Commercial -relations between Tuscany and Seville were alive in Dante’s day; and the -intercourse of trade brings with it a measure of intellectual commerce. -The Papal Court to which the Poet paid his fatal visit as Florentine -Ambassador must still have held fresh memories of St. Peter Pascual, who -was conversant with the Mohammedan legends of Hell and Paradise; and -in Ricoldo of Montecroce Dante had an illustrious fellow-townsman who -was notably learned in Moslem lore,[336] though missionary travels kept -the good Dominican away from Florence during the years of the Poet’s -residence, and he only returned as Prior of Sta. Maria Novella in 1301, -the year of Dante’s exile, and died the year before his death, in 1320. - -Altogether, there seems good reason to believe that Mohammedan materials, -if not actual Mohammedan sources, were accessible to Dante, and that with -large-hearted tolerance he was content to use them, and so to give them -an immortality which they could not otherwise have achieved. - -Thus we may conjecture a definite relation between “Barnabas” and the -_Divine Comedy_: not through a debt of either to other (unless it be of -“Barnabas” to Dante), but through a measure of common ancestry. - - - - -VII - -DANTE AND THE CASENTINO - - Li ruscelletti che de’ verdi colli - Del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno. - - —_Inf._ xxx. 64 _sq._ - - -The “Apostle of Freedom” must needs be a patriot among his own people; -and patriotism involves readiness to fight for the community. Dante’s -temperament—like that of scores of our young poets and artists who have -fought and fallen in the Great War—was not naturally at home in the -practice of arms. Yet he took his place and “did his bit” as a valiant -Guelf of Florence in the battle of Campaldino; and so the Casentino -valley still speaks to us to-day of a thirteenth century “Student -in Arms.” It speaks to us, again, of an exiled patriot, who went, -“seeking freedom,” “through well-nigh all the regions in which” the -Italian “tongue was spoken,”[337] and in the early days of his lifelong -banishment found shelter from his foes with the hospitable Conti Guidi, -and a comforting atmosphere of appreciation and respect as antidote to -the _piaga della fortuna_ and the _dolorosa povertà_ of an outcast. - -The Valley has also for us, as it had already for Dante, hallowed -associations redolent of that “freedom of spirit” which comes to a simple -and austere life lived for highest ideals. St. Francis, whose name still -lingers in the Casentino, was, in a true sense, an “Apostle of Freedom” -too. So perhaps no apology is needed for associating with the other -essays in this volume a narrative of a visit paid to the scenes so -familiar both to St. Francis and to Dante. Since the words above were -written, Italy has herself officially set her seal upon the thought -contained in them. - -“This could be no ordinary centenary,” writes Lina Waterfield (of the -Sexcentenary celebrations of Sept., 1921). “Italy had won the boundaries -Dante desired her to possess, and in honouring him she celebrated her -victory of complete liberation. The official visits ... to the castles of -the Casentino ... and to the battlefield of Campaldino, where he fought -for ‘Libertas’ in 1289, were all undertaken in the spirit of exalted -patriotism. Sometimes the poet was forgotten, or rather merged in the -spirit of ‘Italianità,’ when the rafters of the mediaeval banqueting hall -of Poppi rang to the cries of ‘Viva Fiume’! September 16th was spent -in the Casentino. Next day all Florence turned out to see the pageant -of victorious Florentines returning from Campaldino, perhaps the most -decisive battle ever fought in Tuscany, for it broke the power of the -Ghibelline nobles. ‘Evviva la Libertà!’” - -Meanwhile, at Ravenna, a great band of Franciscan Tertiaries had paid -their homage at the Poet’s tomb. - -And now for the record of a pre-war pilgrimage to the Casentino. - -From Pontassieve, the third station on the railway line between Florence -and Arezzo, a drive of some four hours will take you into the heart -of the Casentino; into a country well worth a visit for its own wild -and delicate beauty, but rendered immeasurably more interesting by its -thronging memories of Dante. - -The Casentino is the valley of the Upper Arno, whose course from its -source on Monte Falterona is sketched by the poet in those strangely -bitter lines put into the mouth of Rinier da Calboli in Purgatory,[338] -while its trickling tributary streams, bathing the verdant slopes, are -vividly described in a single _terzina_ by poor parched Adamo in Hell— - - Li ruscelletti che de’ verdi colli - Del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno - Facendo i lor canali freddi e molli.[339] - -We are in the country of the famous Conti Guidi, that stalwart family -who so successfully maintained their feudal sway amid an environment of -burgher republicanism; the clan of strong men who, for more than four -centuries at least, were masters of this fertile district which stretches -from the slopes of Falterona southward to the walls of Arezzo—that city -of “curs” from which Arno “turns aside its nose in scorn.”[340] - -The offspring of the romance[341] of Guido Vecchio and “la buona -Gualdrada,”[342] this grim four-branched family—the Guidi of Porciano, -of Romena, of Battifolle and of Dovandola—they have left their lasting -mark upon the country. Three of their castles remain, castles in which -Dante was harboured in the earlier years of his exile. Porciano—playfully -referred to, surely, in the “brutti porci” of Riniero?[343]—and Romena -both in picturesque ruin; Poppi (Arnolfo’s first draft, as it is said, -for the similar Palazzo Vecchio at Florence) repaired throughout the -centuries, since Count Francesco handed it over in 1440 to Neri Capponi, -representative of the Florentine Republic. - -We are in the country of Campaldino, the battle where Dante fought, -and Corso Donati and Vieri de’ Cerchi, soon to be leaders of opposing -factions in their native town, performed prodigies of valour side by -side: the battle where on St. Barnabas’ Day in 1289 the Guelf party -decisively reversed the humiliation of twenty-nine years before, and that -under the very walls of the Convent of Certomondo, founded by the Guidi -two years after Montaperti, in thanksgiving for that bloody victory— - - Lo strazio e ’l grande scempio - Che fece l’ Arbia colorata in rosso.[344] - -We are in the country of St. Francis of Assisi, Dante’s great religious -ideal; for a morning’s drive or walk up the steep road from Bibbiena -brings us right up to the foot of the “Rude crag betwixt Tiber and -Arno”[345] which all Christendom reveres. - -In taking the old road over the Consuma Pass from Pontassieve, we are -following in the tracks of the Florentine host as it marched forth in -June, 1289. After much discussion as to the best route, as Villani and -Dino Campagni tell us,[346] they wisely decided to take this steeper and -more perilous but shorter path. A short way beyond Pontassieve they would -have left the Val d’ Arno, to strike the river again but a few miles from -its source. They left it flowing north towards Florence; they would find -it again running southwards in the direction of Arezzo. - -As Dante rode up from the valley with his comrades, his eyes so quick -to detect the characteristic features and moods of Nature would note -the growing severity of the landscape—in his day perhaps less marked -than now, when feckless generations of short-sighted inhabitants have -denuded the hills of their timber. As the road wound up the steep he -would glance now north, now south, and perhaps occasionally back to the -west. Northwards he would see towering up the mass of Monte Morello, the -bare heap of a mountain that rises above his native city. Besides it his -eye would light upon the small but conspicuous wooded hill of Monte -Senario, on which, nearly sixty years before, the sainted founders of -the Servite Order had established themselves: Florentines all of good -family, and one a scion of that famous house of the Amidei whose quarrel -with the Buondelmonti in 1215 had already begun to bear fruit of internal -discord in the city—the first drops of the storm that was to sweep poor -Dante into exile. Westward, beyond the Arno, the hill of the “Incontro” -would catch his eye, the traditional site of the meeting between Saint -Francis and Saint Dominic which has provided an inspiring theme for so -many artists; while on the south his view would be bounded by the thickly -wooded ridge of Vallombrosa, where San Giovanni Gualberto had gathered -more than two centuries before (in 1015) a band of followers for whom -the discipline of San Miniato had grown too lax. Almost at the watershed -of the Consuma range, he would observe the track upon the right—only a -few years ago (1905) converted into a _strada carrozzabile_—by which -one might pass on horseback or on foot from Vallombrosa to Consuma, -and so into the Casentino. Halting, perhaps, for a few moments in the -village of Consuma—probably not very different then from what it is -to-day, a collection of charcoal-burners’ dwellings—then trotting down -the other side, past the hamlet of Ponticelli, swerving to the right -over the shoulder of a ridge, they passed the ancient little hostelry of -Casaccia, and stopped, so tradition asserts, for rest and refreshment in -the bleakly situated Badiola, which crouches in the midst of a windswept -group of unhappy trees, on an outlying hillock to the left of the road, -looking down on the Casentino itself. - -Resuming their downward journey with lighter hearts, yet some of them no -doubt a little fluttered already by the anticipation of an encounter (as -Dante confesses to have been on the morning of the battle),[347] they -would ride past the ill-omened mound which still gives to a neighbouring -hamlet, the grim name of Ommorto or _Omo Morto_, the spot where Adamo of -Brescia[348] was burned alive (as some think only a year before—1288) -for counterfeiting the coinage of Florence at the instigation of the -Conti Guidi of Romena. And but a little way further on that same Castle -of Romena would burst upon their view—the fortress with the seven-fold -circle of defensive walls which were to suggest to the poet, in his -sojourn of some fourteen years later, the _nobile castello_[349] of -Limbo, wherein the spirits of the just and illustrious pagans lived their -dignified life—_senza martiri_,[350] but also _senza speme_.[351] - -The ruins that can be visited to-day shew but the vague outlines of its -former grandeur; yet one may see the green-carpeted _cortile_ where -the great spirits walked to and fro _sopra il verde smalto_,[352] and -fragments at least of the very walls within whose shelter the poet -probably elaborated this and much else of the Inferno: and within the -outer circle of defences, the famous Fonte Branda[353] whose cool waters -were recalled to mind by poor Adamo in his torment—waters sipped to-day -by the devout Dantist pilgrim almost as though it were indeed a holy -well.[354] - -We hear of no assault made upon the Castle in passing. Probably the place -was too strong and the work before the Guelf Army needed haste. On the -other hand the force within, thinned to strengthen the Ghibelline host -below, was no doubt too weak to attempt an effective onslaught upon the -cavalcade; though, as Dino implies, the Florentines were passing through -awkward country, wherein “if they had been found of the foe, they had -received no small damage.”[355] - -The armies faced one another in the valley’s bottom, on that level -stretch of alluvial land which lies to the north of the rock on which -stands the Castle and the town of Poppi. North and south the field was -commanded by a Guidi fortress; it stretched like a vast “lizza” or -tilting-ground between Poppi and Romena. - -The corn would be well advanced on that eleventh of June: not so -rich a promise, perhaps as that on which the daughter of Ugolino -della Gherardesca afterwards commented so bitingly to the daughter -of Buonconte, when the ground had been fertilised with torrents of -Ghibelline blood.[356] Perchance the approaching harvest may have -been already ruined by the devastating march of the Aretines. But the -general features of the country would have lost none of their charm. The -graceful, whispering poplars and willows surely then as now lined Arno’s -banks, recalling to some of the elder warriors the poplars of Montaperti, -fringing the Biena, Malena and Arbia—the tall trees that still whisper -shudderingly of the day when their three streams ran red. - -The vine-festoons—if then as now, and as in the Medicean days, the valley -was garlanded with vineyards—would still be in fresh verdure, and would -form an effective setting for the gay colours of a mediaeval armament. -Dante and his companions would indeed have as fair a scene to fight in -as poet or artist turned soldier could wish; albeit the day was cloudy, -presaging a night of storm.[357] Immediately behind the gaily decked -arena stood the bold grey mass of Poppi, and beyond this again the more -distant background of hills, flanked on the left by La Verna with its -hallowed and inspiring memories. - -And what a glorious prospect of the whole field of battle had the ladies -of the Guidi household from the casements of that castle whose walls -are still adorned with fragments of _affreschi_, which Dante’s eyes -must have seen! All the pomp and pageantry of the war visible from a -place of security, a veritable eagle’s nest. And beyond the battle a -clear view across to Romena, Falterona and the sources of Arno; with a -peep, perhaps, of the castle of Porciano—the northernmost stronghold -of the clan since the practical demolition, after Montaperti, of the -neighbouring Castel Castagnajo. - -Here in their own country they would have every confidence of success. -They would rejoice in the brave show of chivalry, the gorgeous -armour caparisons and banners—a spectacle of the meeting of the two -best-appointed hosts that the countryside had ever witnessed.[358] They -would watch with triumph the first irresistible charge of the Aretine -cavalry, which drove Dante and his fellows back in confusion upon their -infantry, and they would feel the victory already won. - -They would mark with wonder and horror the unaccountable retreat of -Count Guido Novello, who was to have delivered a flank attack with his -hundred and fifty horse, remembering perchance with scorn that it was -his untimely flight which, twenty-three years before, had brought to a -premature end the Ghibelline domination in Florence.[359] - -They would note the sudden move of Corso Donati and his Pistojesi, whose -charge upon the Aretine flank was the beginning of the end. Then came the -wholesale slaughter and pursuit, wherein unnerved warriors, forgetful of -everything but the fear of death, streamed in flight past Poppi and down -the valley towards Bibbiena. One of these hunted knights they may have -observed in the earlier stages of his flight; for the name and figure of -Buonconte di Montefeltro[360] would be well known to them. But if their -eyes were sharp and keen enough to catch a glimpse of him as he passed, -it was but a glimpse. His end none saw or knew till Dante met the dead -count’s spirit in Purgatory; though the scene of it, as there described, -may well be the faithful reminiscence of the Poet’s own impression as he -galloped with the pursuers towards Bibbiena. - -The spot where Arno and Archiano meet is dear to every student of Dante, -though comparatively few are privileged to see it with their eyes. -And when you see it, it is just a confluence of two mountain-streams, -flanked by heaps of grey water-worn stones, and fringed by tall poplars -and brushwood—this in the flat bottom of a fertile and well cultivated -valley. But the rushing water has a voice unlike the sound of ordinary -streams: the grey piles of pebbles and boulders, the tall whispering -poplars and the bushes at their feet casting a dark line of shade along -the river’s brim—these have something pathetic, tragic, funereal in their -aspect. - -One seems to see Buonconte[361] staggering to the brink, bursting his -way blindly through the hedge of trees and bushes, while his life-blood -ebbs out from the wounded throat, and leaves a crimson track upon the -plain—see him fall senseless, with just an instinctive crossing of -the arms and an inaudible invocation of the name of Mary, that was to -baulk the fiend of his prey. Then night falls, and the mountain tops -“from Pratomagno to the main ridge” of Apennine, and all the valley -between, are swathed in storm-clouds, and the _fossati_ are filled with -drenching rain. The Archiano dashes down its steep course from “above the -hermitage” of Camaldoli (whose founder, St. Romoald, has his place with -St. Benedict in Paradise),[362] a roaring, foaming torrent, and swirls -the corpse down the stream of Arno, unlocking the arms by force from that -cross upon the breast which had served the soul so well— - - Sciolse al mio petto la croce - Ch’ i’ fe’ di me quando ’l doler mi vinse,[363] - -and engulfs the body, soon to be covered with spoils of the river-bed. - -It is but a short walk down the steep lane from Bibbiena and through the -meadows to the _imboccatura_, and the inhabitants of the hill-town may -well have witnessed from their walls many a like tragedy on that day, -as breathless Ghibellines at their last gasp found themselves caught in -the trap—pulled up suddenly by Arno or Archiano, and overtaken ere their -bewildered brains could decide what course to follow. - -Far different memories from those of the northward plain cling to that -bold wooded peak which rises on the east of Bibbiena. The pilgrimage -to La Verna from that town is one of the most delightful that can be -imagined. After the first steep descent—for Bibbiena stands on the top -of a hill almost precipitous on every side—one mounts again, passing -through groves of tender spring green, the beautiful green of young oaks, -with rich, yellow-red soil as a foil to it; and then down a second time -past Campi into the fair valley of the Corsalone, with its long rows of -poplars like these of Campaldino and Montaperti. After that it is all -one long ascent, and for the most part a steep one. The lane winds up -through sparse woods again, mainly of small oaks, and is bordered, in -spring, by garlands of primroses and violets. For a time one loses sight -of the goal (which had been visible from Bibbiena, and again from above -Campi), though the view opens out wonderfully upon the left, up the Arno -valley past Poppi to Falterona. Then at last, after an hour or so of -steady climbing, the bold wooded cliff heaves in sight again, and one -distinguishes the buildings of the monastery perched high up on the edge -of a vast precipice. Another hour will bring us to its foot. As he toils -up to this sanctuary even the most devoted Dantist cannot but have in -mind, besides the eleventh Canto of _Paradiso_, certain passages also of -the _Fioretti_. - -Every holy spot, almost, is marked by a chapel, wherein man’s handiwork -obscures—and dare we say mars?—while it exalts, the memories of the past. -It is all so unlike what Saint Francis saw when he rode up on his donkey -from the other side to take possession of Orlando’s gift of the ‘divoto -monte.’ Yet one cannot stand without emotion before the commonplace -chapel that marks the spot where the little birds came to welcome -him: “con cantare e con battere l’ ali,” making “grandissima festa e -allegrezza,” settling on his head and shoulders and arms and in his -bosom.[364] And when one has entered the portal, one is fain to see not -only the Chapel of the Stigmata, with the very spot marked out for honour -where in 1221 the Saint— - - Da Cristo preso l’ ultimo sigillo - Che le sue membra due anni portarno,[365] - -and the “_sasso spicco_”—that weird rent in the rocks concerning which -Saint Francis believed himself to have divine revelation, that it was -the result of the earthquake at the crucifixion: “quando, secondo che -dice il Vangelista, le pietre si spezzarono.”[366] This, too, is an -inevitable object of the Dantist’s pilgrimage, for he regards it as -extremely probable that the idea of the cloven rocks in the twelfth of -_Inferno_[367] came to Dante from La Verna and Franciscan lore. But -there are other spots untouched by Dante, yet hallowed by memories of -the “poverello di Cristo.” Such is the hollow _grembo_ in the cliff-side -where the rock received the Saint into her maternal bosom, yielding -“like molten wax” to the impress of his form,[368] when the fiend would -have hurled him down the precipice. Such, again, is the grotto where his -hermit-bed is shewn,[369] wherein he passed the first Lent of his sojourn -at La Verna; and such, too, is the stone, self-consecrate, and so used -without further benediction as an altar top, whereon, so legend says, the -Redeemer often-times stood and conversed familiarly with his poor servant -“face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend.”[370] - -Dante rests under the shadow of Saint Francis—not at La Verna, indeed, -but at Ravenna. The Campanile of the Franciscan church stands sentry over -his tomb. It is known that he was buried in the Franciscan habit: and it -has been justly conjectured that his association with the Order was no -mere thing of sentiment. One of the earliest commentators on the _Divina -Commedia_[371] asserts that for a time he actually joined the Order, to -whose girdle of cord he seems to refer,[372] as worn formerly by him as a -safeguard against youthful lusts— - - Io avea una corda intorno cinta - E con essa pensai alcuna volta - Prender la lonza a la pelle dipinta. - -And a living Dantist has recently put forth the suggestion that this -connection with the Franciscans began with his boyish studies. Between -his ninth and his eighteenth year, when, according to the _Vita Nuova_, a -something unnamed kept him apart from the lady of his heart, he was, so -it is thought, living under strict rule, studying as a pupil under the -good friars of Santa Croce,[373] and laying the foundations at once of -that theological lore which amazes us to-day, and of that lofty ideal of -virtue of which he sings— - - ... già m’ avea trafitto - Prima ch’ io fuor di puerizia fosse.[374] - -But apart from all conjecture, ancient or modern, the Poet’s admiration -of Saint Francis is so obvious and his appreciation of him so just and -true, that none can read the eleventh canto of _Paradiso_ without feeling -that a Dantist’s pilgrimage to the Casentino culminates not in the -memories of Campaldino or of the meeting of the waters; not even in the -personal reminiscences of the Poet’s exile suggested by the modern tablet -on the ruined walls of Romena, but rather at La Verna— - - Nel crudo sasso intra Tevere ed Arno - -where the re-discoverer of Christ for the Middle Ages— - - Da Cristo preso l’ ultimo sigillo - Che le sue membra due anni portarno.[375] - ... - -Valour, and sincerity, and simplicity. The Casentino of Dante and St. -Francis recalls to us the golden principles which alone make life worth -living now. Patriotism, keen and fervid as that whose echoes rang just -now thro’ the ancient hall at Poppi: but “Patriotism is not enough.” - -Readiness to lay down one’s life for a Cause: that is the temper which -has saved civilisation from utter shipwreck: but is it securely saved? - -Purity of purpose, sincerity in speech and conduct—_sancta -simplicitas_—ready to cast away earthly privilege, to face joyfully the -call to “low living and high thinking,” and to find freedom in fewness of -material possessions and richness of moral and spiritual endowment—that -is the temper eagerly embraced by Francis and his followers, loyally -accepted by Dante, exile and pilgrim; and it is the only temper which can -adapt itself to live happily in a denuded world: the temper which, when -saturated with the passion of loving service as was that of “Christ’s -Poor Man” may hope, Franciscan-wise, to heal the world’s wounds, to -assuage its quarrels, and to build up better and more strongly that which -has been broken down. - -BEATI MITES; QUONIAM IPSI POSSIDEBUNT TERRAM. - -BEATI PACIFICI: QUONIAM FILII DEI VOCABUNTUR. - - - - -VIII - -THE LAST CRUSADE - - Pero ch’ me venia “Resurgi e Vinci.” - - —_Par._ xiv. 125. - - -It is a far cry from Dante Alighieri to Torquato Tasso: from -thirteenth-century Florence to seventeenth-century Ferrara. Yet Tasso is, -poetically, a direct descendant of the great Florentine, down the line -of Petrarca and Ariosto. His Italian represents the utmost legitimate -development of Dante’s language, beyond which lies decadence. The -purity, if not the exuberance, of his style and the grandeur of his epic -treatment flows direct from the fountain-head of _Italianità_—the _Divine -Comedy_; and the great poem has left its clear impress now and again upon -the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, in haunting phrases. - -Thus the “fierce Circassian,” in Canto x. 56 of the _Gerusalemme_, -assumes the attitude of Sordello in _Purg._ vi. 66— - - A guisa di leon quando si posa; - -and two Cantos further on (x. 59) we have a reminiscence of _Purg._ iii. -9, the dignity of Virgil’s sensitive conscience, when Armida’s dupes -stand abashed before Gottofredo— - - Vergognando tenean basse le fronti - Ch’ era al cor piccol fallo amaro morso. - -Dante and Tasso alike wrote for all time, and wrote in circumstances of -personal straitness and distress: each gave to the world his best, out -of the treasure of a bleeding heart; and if Tasso’s work cannot compare -for grandeur of conception with Dante’s immortal epic of the spiritual -liberty of Man, yet it too has Liberty for its theme, and a background -ideal and spiritual. - -Contemporary critics dealt with Tasso more cruelly than ever any dared to -deal with Dante; yet Tasso has outlived his critics. And the sympathy and -admiration bestowed on him by his English contemporaries, and notably by -Edmund Spencer, was well bestowed, and forms a link in that long chain -of intellectual sympathy between England and Italy which we trust to see -strengthened year by year. - -Tasso’s great poem may therefore not inappropriately supply an epilogue -to those studies of his greater predecessor which are associated in -different ways with the horrors and splendours of the great World War. - -In a recent article in the _Anglo-Italian Review_,[376] an organ whose -special aim has been to foster and develop that intellectual sympathy -between England and Italy of which we have spoken above, Sir Sidney Lee -draws our attention to the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. - -“There is some special appropriateness,” he says, “at the moment in -recalling attention to Tasso’s association with English poetry—with -that manifestation of English genius whence Great Britain derives no -inconspicuous part of her renown. For Tasso made his chief bid for -immortality as the poetic chronicler of the First Crusade whereby the -City of Jerusalem was first wrested from the Moslem sway and restored -to Christian rule. The army which achieved the hardly won victory was -drawn from the chivalry of all Western Europe; but the chief command was -in French hands, and Godfrey of Bouillon, a nobleman of France, is the -hero of Tasso’s epic. The Italian poet credits the French generalissimo -with every moral and military virtue. His courage goes hand in hand -with a dignified caution. He is pious, humane, far-seeing in counsel, -resolute in action, modest in bearing. The stirring military adventures -which Tasso narrates with abundance of romantic embellishment and magical -episode end on a strikingly subdued note. The last stanza of the long -poem shows Godfrey with his aides-de-camp, just after the last strenuous -resistance of the enemy had been overcome, reverently walking in the -light of the setting sun through the captured city. Without pausing to -change their war-stained habiliments, Godfrey and his companions enter -the Holy Sepulchre, and there, hanging up their arms, they offer on their -knees humble prayer.” - -General Allenby’s ever-memorable entry through the Golden Gate, on foot, -into a Jerusalem freed from an even more blighting and desolating tyranny -than that of the eleventh century, may well form a starting-point for -a comparison of the great movement of the First Crusade with a still -greater movement of to-day. - -We might, indeed, concentrate our attention upon the history itself, -rather than upon the Poet’s imaginative presentment of it at a distance -of nearly five centuries; for Tasso was further removed from Godfrey and -his contemporaries than we are from him. We might dwell on the fruitful -analogies between the two Crusades—that earliest of all, and this last -and greatest. We might note the curious resemblances and the curious -differences, and see our own World-War prefigured in that old-time -adventure which, like our own linked together representatives of almost -all the European nations in one great league for an ideal, impelling -them to give up all that the individual life holds dear, to forego all -material hopes and prospects, for the sake of a Cause that offered as -immediate guerdon little but danger and extreme discomfort, wounds and -death, or worse than death. - -We might point to striking coincidences in detail, as, for instance, the -original costly and disastrous attempt upon Nicaea—like our tragedy of -Gallipoli in the same region—and the part there played by the treachery -of a Greek King, a perfidy which, even when the place was won, robbed the -Crusaders of the fruits of their victory. We might adduce the importance -of the help rendered in each case by the allied flotilla, and the timely -aid given in Palestine of old, as in Europe to-day, by the “handyman” of -the Marine forces. Or again we might consider the fruits and consequences -of the old Crusades, and see the promise of them on a larger scale -to-day; the first-fruits already harvested even in the midst of the -struggle—the widening of insular minds, the growth of international -comradeship, the manifold educational potencies of an experience that -involves at once the intellectual stimulus of foreign travel, the moral -inspiration of strenuous, exacting and self-reliant effort in entirely -new conditions, the spiritual stimulus of a daily and hourly converse -with Death. - -If the Crusades did so much to educate Europe in olden days, what may not -the World-War achieve, if followed by a “brotherly covenant” and a League -of Peoples? - -But our present aim is a rather different one; following the lead given -by Sir Sidney Lee to try, so far as we may, to look at our own times -through Tasso’s eyes; to search and see if the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ has -not a direct word to speak to our own generation. - - * * * * * - -Does Tasso’s own generous use of fancy make such an attempt too fanciful? -We are dealing with hard, stern facts—the hardest and sternest that any -generation has ever had to face; Tasso’s theme had the mellowing light -of intervening centuries playing upon it, and his treatment is frankly -imaginative. He opens his Poem (i. 2) with an apology to the Muse for his -fanciful embroidering of the historical material— - - ... Tu perdona - S’ intesso fregi al ver, s’ adorno in parte - D’ altri diletti, che de’ tuoi, le carte. - -Sometimes his imagination works simply on a gorgeous description, as when -he depicts for us the pageant of the rival armies: the Crusading host -reviewed by Godfrey beneath the walls of Tortosa (i. 36 _sqq._), and the -Egyptian army by the King of Egypt (xvii. 9 _sqq._) in the frontier town -of Gaza, famous—as our own troops realised to their cost in the early -stages of the Palestinian campaign—for its “Immensi solitudini d’ arena,” -(xvii. 1). - -Marvellous as are these descriptions, and more full of colour—be it -conceded—than any modern massing of khaki-clad armed men, Tasso would -have had greatly vaster, if not more varied, groups to depict on our -Eastern-European front when the Russian army was still a factor, and -vaster still in these last months on the West. And for picturesqueness -and glamour, our Oriental battlefields and movements of troops offer -scenes which would run even Tasso’s gorgeous pages very close. Take for -instance the picture, drawn by the Australian official correspondent, -of the entry of the allied troops into Damascus on the first days of -October, 1918— - - “Past applauding multitudes ... rode the dashing Australian - Light Horsemen, followed by brilliant cavalry from the - Indian Highlands, then by Yeomanry from the English Shires, - black-skinned French Colonials from North Africa on their barb - stallions, sturdy New Zealand machine-gunners and batteries - from England and Scotland.” These, with the “swarthy Hedjaz - Arabs beautifully mounted on black and white horses and on - camels ... formed a magnificent demonstration of the might of - the British and allied forces.” - -How well this would look in Tasso’s sonorous verse! - -But the characteristic products of Tasso’s fancy are more imaginative -than these, outrageously imaginative, one might call them, though they -have, withal, a dramatic appropriateness, since he is treading on Moslem -soil, and his magicians and fair women, his bejewelled halls beneath the -river-bed, his enchanted forest and spellbound island-mountain give us -the true savour of the Arabian Nights. - -But was it ever so true as it is to-day that “truth is stranger than -fiction?” Was ever enchanted forest more repellent in its horrors than -some of those stricken woods on our Western Front? If it had fallen to -Tasso to describe in his verse our modern air-fighting, would it not -have afforded his genius far more scope than was offered even by the -wonderful description of the journey of the enchanted boat in which the -two paladins sail out along the coast of Africa and between the Pillars -of Hercules into the great Ocean to rescue Rinaldo (xv. 6 _sqq._)? Or -Ismeno’s magic car, mist-swathed, and leaving no track upon the sand? -When, in his first Canto (i. 14, 15), he depicts the Angel Gabriel -cutting his way through winds and clouds, hovering over Lebanon, and then -swooping down upon Tortosa— - - Pria sul Libano monte ei si ritenne - E si librò su l’ adeguate penne, - E ver le piazze di Tortosa poi - Drizzò precipitando il volo in giuso ... - -might it not have been, almost, a literal description of a flight of his -own compatriot and fellow-poet Gabriele d’ Annunzio? - -Again, one of the most characteristic of the _fregi_ with which Tasso -adorns the chroniclers’ story is found in the prominence of his -heroines. Doubtless we owe this largely to the brilliant originality of -the Italian ladies of the Renaissance, in which the House of Este, under -his patron Alfonso, was _facile princeps_; just as the poet’s exuberance -of fancy and occasionally melodramatic touch reflects the eager, playful, -pleasure-loving, fanciful, and histrionic tone of his favourite Court -of Ferrara. His heroines certainly stand forth in dazzling prominence. -Clorinda, the fair Amazon, is a fighting man to all intents, with a man’s -mien, a man’s directness, a man’s sense of fair play, added to the charm -of a beautiful, high-born Lady. Armida, matchless in her witchery, is a -doughty warrior too; but also, by turns, languishing lover and ruthless, -Circe-like enchantress. Erminia, disinherited Princess, gracious, tender, -shy and sensitive, is yet bold to face all things—even the sight and -touch of blood—if so she may help and tend the man who, in the day of her -calamity, saved her from shame. - -Fanciful figures: yet Clorinda and Armida (in her warrior-rôle) have not -been without their parallels on the Russian front. And the fair Erminia -might stand for us as the prototype of the gently nurtured girl of our -time who has found herself and her true _métier_ in the self-sacrificing -toils of Red Cross work. Of the knowledge of healing herbs, says Tasso -(vi. 67)— - - Arte, che, per usanza, in quel paese - Nelle figlie de’ re par che si serbe; - -And indeed the tendance of the wounded is essentially a royal task in -any country; and one in which not a few royal princesses have shewn -themselves versed in our day. Erminia, when at last she finds her love, -tends him right royally (xix. 111 _sqq._), but her address to the -exhausted Tancred evinces also something peculiarly modern. What could be -more in the professional Red Cross style than her injunction: “You shall -know all you ask in good time; now you must be obedient and hold your -tongue, and try to get some sleep” (xix. 114)?— - - Saprai, rispose, il tutto: or (tel comando - come medica tua), taci, e riposa. - -But are Tasso’s heroines after all so wonderful? To-day is the day of -Women. They have proved and established in National Service their claim -to the National Franchise and to a place in the National Legislature, -and, what is more, their claim to be man’s companion and competitor in -countless fields of activity. For a large part of the last century we had -a woman on the throne: the present century may yet see a woman actually -leading the king’s government. It is their War as well as ours; and now -the victory is won, their part in it—without which victory had been -unattainable—shall have full recognition. Apart from the noble work of -the Red Cross Sisters and helpers, from the valour of the girl-chauffeurs -and others who have sought and found a place as near as possible to -the firing line, we have thousands of maidens and young matrons ready -to risk comeliness and health and their whole physical future in the -pestilent atmosphere of munition shops; thousands more who have donned -the King’s uniform as “Waac’s” and “Wrens” and “Penguins.” How few and -far between, in comparison, are the Women in Tasso’s scheme! How sorely -his imagination would have been taxed, yet withal how congenially, had it -fallen to him to describe the manifold activities—and the undiminished -charms—of our twentieth century girlhood! Erminia is in some ways more -of a Victorian type; but, if the fight is recognised as being fought -elsewhere than in the actual front line, Clorinda is with us everywhere; -strengthening the hands and inspiring the hearts of her compatriots, -striking the chill of fear into the foe, and the dart of cupid into the -susceptible hero at her side. - -Armida, in Tasso’s scheme, bridges the gap between the seen and the -unseen, between women’s work and the work of the Angels—good Angels, -and bad. This brings us to another of Tasso’s _fregi_, and one of his -most imaginative “embroideries”: I mean his elaborate description of the -part played in the drama of the Crusade by the heavenly hosts and the -hosts of the infernal regions. To the latter, surely, and especially to -the magnificent picture of Satan’s Council of War (iv. 1-19), Milton -must probably owe more than we ordinarily recognise. Among the most -splendid passages of the Poem are, on the other hand, the descriptions -of the counter-activities of the heavenly armies: God’s sending -forth of Gabriel (i. 7), the Court of the Most High (ix. 55 _sqq._), -Michael’s scornful, single-handed rout of the massed battalions of -Hell (ix. 63-5). But mythological as is the tone in which these events -are narrated, and mythical as the whole conception might have seemed -to a more materialistic generation than our own, we shall be ready -to recognise that all this strain in the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ is, -after all, based, in a sense, on hard fact. It is, in fact, the Poet’s -recognition of the paramount spiritual impulse which drove those hordes -of Crusaders across a dangerous Europe into a still more dangerous Asia: -his consciousness that the war they were waging was, in our present-day -phrase, a “Spiritual War.” Have we not too our still warm and throbbing -legend of the “Angels at Mons” and of the “White Companion”? Have not our -own soldiers each his Guardian Angel, his “Defensor celeste” (vii. 84)? -Whether Angel forms were seen at Mons or not, those of us who believe in -their existence at all, believe that they were there, and not there only; -but their force is everywhere joined to ours as often as we are really -fighting “for God and the Right.” - -One further point, as regards angelic agency—this time the evil angels. -Tasso, like Dante in his classic episode of Buonconte (_Purg._ v. 109 -_sqq._), attributes to the fiends a certain control over the weather -(vii. 115 _sqq._) Many of us would like to share this conviction with -him when we think of the repeated occasions in which our well-planned -offensives in the West have been wrecked by the sudden break-up of a fine -spell. And to the intervention of St. Michael, on the contrary, we would -blithely ascribe that most opportune change of wind in the early morning -of the day when we first played with gas at Loos. - -The spiritual motive of the Crusades is finely typified in the character -of Godfrey, who like our own loved Lord Roberts, initiated every fresh -plan with prayer; whose incorruptible soul saw nothing of the material -openings that a Crusade might offer—openings that were the very -_raison-d’-être_ of crusading to the shrewd merchants of Venice in later -years—Godfrey, to whom was unthinkable the mere notion of such bargaining -and traffic as Frederic of Swabia was to employ a century later. “We are -not out for gain,” he says to Altamoro of Samarcand, “we are not traders, -but Crusaders.” - - Che della vita altrui prezzo non cerco; - Guerreggio an Asia, non cambio o merco. - ... - -We should like to picture Tasso weaving into his stately verse, -descriptions of submarine warfare, of the advance of the tanks, of -an artillery barrage on a fifty-mile front: and we could find in -_Gerusalemme Liberata_ a starting-point for most of these. But space -permits us only two more points. - -The Hun-spirit, and the glory of our Boy-heroes, are both depicted in -Tasso’s magic tapestry: the one succinctly and sternly, the other more -diffusely and with all the glamour of his genius. - -The brutal measures devised—some of them not put into practice—by the -Sultan against the subject Christian population of Jerusalem, and all the -other infidel horrors of oppression and cruelty which Tasso evidently -puts forth as the _ne plus ultra_ of bygone barbarism, have been matched -and exceeded by those wreaked upon Christian populations by the modern -Turk with the connivance of his Teutonic ally; matched and exceeded by -the votaries of the “good German God” themselves, upon defenceless civil -populations of invaded districts, and equally defenceless prisoners of -war. But the spirit of “Frightfulness” itself is sharply sketched with a -single stroke of the pen in the description of one of the leaders of the -Egyptian army (vii. 22): “no true knight, but a fierce, murderous robber.” - - Albiazar ch’ è fiero - Omicida ladron, non cavaliero. - -But now that victory is won, and those horrors (save for the deep wounds -of Europe) seem an evil dream, we fain would forget the unforgettable, -lest we retard the work of reconciliation. - -Let us finish on a happier note, with Rinaldo—Rinaldo who, as Spenser -says in his Prefatory Letter to the _Faëry Queen_, represents “the -Vertues of a private man,” even as Godfrey those of a good governour. - -Rinaldo’s very existence is, doubtless, largely due to “dynastic -reasons”: to the necessity of flattering, that is, the House of Este; -yet he concentrates in himself all the elements of the perfect knight, -the pattern of chivalry, as conceived by Tasso. If the desire to please -a patron, Alfonso d’ Este, brought Rinaldo into the world, did not a -similar motive assist at the birth of Virgil’s _Pius Aeneas_? Both Aeneas -and Rinaldo are strong enough to “stand on their own feet.” - -Rinaldo is in many ways the true type of our modern Boy-heroes—yes, our -heroes, and those of the other side—as well as of mediaeval chivalry. -Unable to rest at home when war is raging across the world, he dashes -off, while still under sixteen years of age, by paths known only to -himself, and “joins up” in Palestine. - - Allor (ne pur tre lustri avea forniti) - Fuggì soletto, e corse strade ignote, - Varcò l’ Egeo, passò di Greca i liti, - Giunse nel campo in region remote - Nobilissima fuga, e che l’ imiti - Ben degna alcun magnanima nipote. - Tre anni son ch’ è in guerra: e intempestiva - Molle piuma del mento appena usciva. - -Many a lad of this generation has indeed imitated his “noble flight”; has -seen three years of war—and what a war!—ere his face first felt the touch -of the razor. They have sped forth from the fields, from the mines and -mills, and from luxurious homes where too much softness was in danger of -undermining their manhood. They have “climbed the steep ascent” of the -Hill of Valour—they have, in fact, heard and responded to a call like -that which came to Rinaldo after he had lain spell-bound in Armida’s -Garden, (xvii. 61)— - - Signor, non sotto l’ ombra in piaggia molle - Tra fonti e fior, tra ninfe e tra sirene - Ma in cima all’ erto e faticoso colle - Della virtù è riposto il nostro bene. - -“They in a short time have fulfilled a long time.” For them the fruits -of manhood have followed hard upon the bloom of youth. In them soft -gentleness is conjoined with royalty of mien and soldierly bearing. -In battle, Mars; in face, Eros; the cynosure of a world’s admiring -eyes—Behold Rinaldo! - - Dolcemente feroce alzar vedresti - La regal fronte, e in lui mirar sol tutti. - L’ età precorse, e la speranza; e presti - Pareano i fior, quando n’ uscirò i frutti: - Se ’l miri fulminar nell’ arme avvolto, - Marte lo stimi: Amor, se scopre il volto. - - - - -APPENDICES - - - - -APPENDIX I - -ANTONIO MASCHIO AND THE CELEBRATION OF 1865 - - -The Dante Celebrations of the last fifty-six years—the years that mark -the duration of the Poet’s life—have always had about them, as was meet, -a touch of fervid Italian patriotism. For Dante is in a true sense -“Pater Patriae.” The sexcentenary of his birth in 1865 coincided with -the new dignity of Florence as temporary capital of a largely united and -independent Italy. It was celebrated by the unveiling of Dante’s statue -by Victor Emmanuel, protagonist of the New Italy in the chief Piazza of -his new Capital, and it was celebrated with military as well as civic -honours. - -The Celebration of 1921, on the sexcentenary of the Poet’s death, was -marked again with patriotic fervour. The troops who had redeemed “Italia -irredenta” in the Great War offered a wreath of bronze and silver at his -shrine in Ravenna; and shouts of “Viva l’ Italia! Viva Fiume!” echoed in -the Banqueting Hall of the castle of Poppi in Casentino, where Dante had -been a guest of the Conti Guidi, and in sight of which he had fought as -a young man in defence of his native city. The patriotic cries had now -a new note of triumph about them, because Dante’s prophetic envisaging -of Italy as “one, and to be loved” and his incidental marking out of her -true boundaries had at last been verified.[377] - -Between these two, on September 14th, 1908, Ravenna, his “last refuge,” -was the scene of a most enthusiastic ceremony, to which flocked -representatives of the as yet unredeemed Italian fringe, and men of Trent -and Trieste and Gorizia and Pola and Fiume claimed Dante as the prophet -of their own “italianità” and of their proximate liberation from the -foreign yoke. - -There is a little-known incident connected with the first of these -Celebrations—that of 1865—which is worth recording, if only for its -simple pathos. The story of an attempt at Dante-worship that was motived -rather by personal loyalty than by patriotic ardour, yet was baulked by -the barrier set up by a foreign domination between a true-hearted Italian -and his goal. - -Antonio Maschio[378] was close upon forty years old when the news came to -him in his humble Venetian dwelling that Italy was going to celebrate her -greatest Poet in his native City of Florence. - -He was a simple gondolier, son of a small pork-butcher on the island -of Murano. In the year ’48, so notable in the annals of Italy’s fight -for freedom, he picked up some stray sheets of paper in a tobacconist’s -shop, on which were printed Cantos xiii. and xiv. of the _Inferno_. He -took them home and read and re-read them: From that day he took Dante -as his Master, and devoted all his spare moments to the study of the -_Divina Commedia_. He lived to see, as he conceived, Dante’s prophecy of -the “Veltro”—the great Liberator—fulfilled in 1871; when Victor Emmanuel -entered Rome, and before he died he was in correspondence with some of -the greatest Dante scholars in Italy and abroad. - -Far advanced in his Dante studies in 1865, and over head and ears in love -with the great Poet, he dared to brave the Austrian frontier guards—for -Venetia was still Austrian territory—setting out on foot for Florence -to keep tryst with his Maestro “duca, signore e Maestro.” Before the -middle of March he packed up in two great bundles all the Dante material -he had collected and evolved, put a favourite “Dantino” in his pocket -and started with his precious burden on the adventurous pilgrimage. He -passed the first line of guards, posing as a wine-seller from Chioggia. -His great obstacle was the river Po, running high and with current all -too swift. Moreover it was night, and no boat was to be found. It was but -human to shrink back, but the love of Dante conquered his fear. Did he -recall the passage where Dante, shrinking from the wall of flame, hears -Virgil’s appeal: “Senti figlio, Fra Beatrice e te è questo muro”?[379] -Dauntless he flung himself into the chill waters and struck out for the -farther shore. In a life and death struggle with the current he lost his -precious bundles, and landed more dead than alive, with nothing in his -pocket but the little volume of the _Divina Commedia_; and he afterwards -declared that Dante had saved his disciple from drowning that night, -even as in his earthly life he had saved a child in the Baptistery at -Florence.[380] Next morning the hapless man fell into the hands of the -Sindaco of La Mesola, who handed him over to the police, and he suffered -a month’s durance in an Austrian prison, after which he was ignominiously -sent back to his native town. - -It was a famous gathering on that 14th of May in the broad space before -the church of Santa Croce; and many learned and ingenious speeches marked -the occasion. But the Festival was the poorer by the enforced absence of -one who had risked his life to be there: Antonio Maschio, “il Gondolier -Dantista.” - - - - -APPENDIX II - -DANTE AND THE POPE - - -Interesting on several grounds is the Encyclical of His Holiness Benedict -XV, published in the _Osservatore Romano_ of May 4th last, in which he -commends to all Catholic teachers and students the study of the works of -Italy’s greatest Poet. He seems to admit that a certain constraint lay -upon him in the matter, that the successor of St. Peter could not afford -to be silent while all the civilised world was sending up a chorus of -praise. That indeed, it would befit him to propose himself as Choragus: -“Jam vero tam mirifico quasi choro bonorum omnium non solum non deesse -Nos decet, sed quodammodo praeesse.” Yet the eulogy which he utters, if -here and there it suggests a touch of patronising, is, on the whole so -spontaneous and sincere in tone, that one is inclined to forgive the -half-evasion with which he manipulates the awkward fact of Dante’s fierce -invective—“perquam acerbe et contumeliose”—directed against the Holy -Father’s illustrious predecessors. First of all he suggests for Dante -the excuse of a harassed and embittered spirit, misled by the poison of -malicious tale-bearers; and next, with an appearance of candour which it -would be discourteous to discount, he asks, Who denies that there were -in those days; there were faults even in the ordained clergy—“Quis neget -nonnulla eo tempore fuisse in hominibus sacri ordinis haud probanda?” -... a somewhat general statement which might or might not include the -Infallible. For the rest, Dante is praised as a true-hearted Catholic—as -indeed he was—and as an extraordinarily effective teacher of the -Catholic Faith. The spirit and purpose of the _Divine Comedy_—the aim, -as set forth in the famous tenth Epistle[381]—and the Poet’s treatment -of his subject in his pictures of Hell, Paradise and Purgatory, all come -in for hearty commendation. His ever-living treatment of an ever-living -theme is rightly characterised as strikingly modern compared with -the revived Paganism of some modern poets. The teaching power of his -spiritual ideas outsteps the bounds of the archaic Ptolemaic system in -which they are framed. True to the teaching of his great master Aquinas, -he attracts moderns to that teaching by the sublimity of his poetic -genius. The Pope claims to know personally unbelievers who have been -converted to the Faith by the study of Dante. - -This emphasis on Dante’s importance as a religious teacher is interesting -in view of Benedetto Croce’s recent critique, in which he dismisses the -theological aspect of Dante as irrelevant. In this connection it is worth -noting that a distinguished Friar has been lecturing in Rome on Dante’s -theology, and directly attacking Croce for his depreciation of the same. - -We have thus two Benedicts disputing over the spirit of Dante, even as -the Archangel and another disputed over the body of Moses—Benedict the -Pope and Benedict the Philosopher, Critic and Minister of Education. That -the latter has the greater name in the realm of literary criticism, we -cannot doubt. His best friends go far to claim for him infallibility in -that line. The infallible claims of the former are confined to the region -of Faith and Morals; but if Dante could be called in as arbitrator he -would probably decide in favour of the Pope, pronouncing with regard to -his own religious teaching that it was meant to count, and does count. It -is, however, with no animus against the other Benedict in his official -capacity that His Holiness proceeds—making an excellent point, which -most of us would applaud—to note the absurdity of a State system of -secularised Education which tries to banish the Name and the thought of -God from the schools, and at the same time hold up the _Divina Commedia_ -as an indispensable instrument of culture. Italian priests of to-day -are ready to defend the present Minister of Public Instruction as one -who, whatever his personal views may be, has endeavoured to mete out -evenhanded justice even to “denominational” Education. - - - - -APPENDIX III - -DANTE THE POET - - -Benedetto Croce’s[382] contention is, of course, fundamentally true, -that Dante is first and last a Poet, and that it is the magnetism of his -poetic genius that attracts interest to all the varied subjects which -he touches. If he had not been a Poet, these essays would never have -been written; and the writer hopes that the poetic quality of his hero -will have been felt as a background all through the book. His lyrical -power is the driving force of his many-sided message. To the struggling -patriot, whether of 1848 or of 1918, he is a Tyrtaeus; to the artist in -poetry, a Horace (although he never saw the _Ars Poetica_); to the lover, -a Christian Anacreon; to the religious devotee, a Psalmist and Prophet -in one; to the student of human nature in its detail and its large epic -aspect, a Homer and a Virgil; in every aspect a supreme poet. The very -magnetism of his lyrical appeal will, however, continue to keep countless -disciples busy, in the future as in the past, exploring the by-ways -and investigating the by-products of his genius; gloating over his -obscurities, and glorying in everything, big or little, that Dante has -touched. Those “questioni dantesche” on the more puerile of which Croce -rightly pours his scorn,[383] will emerge to the end of the chapter—a -lush growth of mingled flowers and weeds witnessing to the extraordinary -fertility of the soil. - -And we may go on to ask, what, exactly, is the value, or the nature -of that “lyrical quality” which Croce justly exalts if it is entirely -divorced from its content, its subject-matter? - -True, Beauty has a value of its own, as Dante himself saw. In theory, -indeed, he makes Poetry a humble gilding of the didactic pill, on the -Horatian principle of _miscere utile dulci_; a beauteous fiction for a -moral purpose—“una verità ascosa sotto bella menzogna”[384] a “clumsy -device,” as Professor Foligno puts it, “to rivet the attention of readers -while the lessons of virtue and truth were expounded.”[385] In practice, -however, the author of the _Convivio_ “spoke as Love dictated”[386]—nay, -even in the _Convivio_ itself (as Prof. Foligno points out), in the -_envoi_ of the first Canzone,[387] he bids his poetry, if its argument -prove unintelligible, take heart of grace and draw attention to its own -sheer beauty— - - Allor ti priego che ti ricomforte, - Dicendo lor, diletta mia novella. - “Ponete mente almen com’ io son bella!” - -But lyrical form cannot exist as a mere abstraction. It must needs -express itself in words that have a meaning—in “subject-matter.” The Poet -sings of what is in his heart, and sings— - - ... A quel modo - Ch’ e’ ditta dentro; - -he sings because he _must_. And Dante has this irresistible impulse of -the artist to express himself. He tells us in the XIXth chapter of the -_Vita Nuova_ the story of the birth of his canzone, “Donne ch’ avete -intelletto d’ amore,” the famous song by which Bonagiunta knew him in -Purgatory.[388] First, a great desire for utterance, then a pondering -over the appropriate mode, and finally, “I declare,” he says, “my tongue -spake as though by its own impulse and said— - - Donne ch’ avete intelletto d’ amore.”[389] - -That is the artistic impulse to create, and represents, indeed, the sum -total of his “Message” as conceived by many an artist. But Dante took -his message and his mission seriously; and unless we recognise as a -factor in his poetry this sense of responsibility for the gift, and for -the use of it—in however exalted a sense—as the handmaid of Religion, we -surely misconceive him. He is essentially (not accidentally) didactic, -prophetic, a conscious and purposeful inspirer of his own generation and -of those to come. - -From the point of view of purely aesthetic criticism his “Theological -Romance,” his “Epic of man’s freewill,” with its massive architectural -framework and its recurring theological, philosophical, political and -otherwise didactic passages may be entirely secondary—may be, in fact, -so much awkward and obstructive material which the poet only reduces to -order and dominates by force of titanic genius.[390] - -Dante certainly rises superior in fact to the contemporary theory -of the Art of Poetry which he repeats in the _Convivio_ and the _De -Vulgari Eloquentia_.[391] It is this which makes his verse to be, as -we have called it, the driving power of his message. But this homage -to the traditional theory is not mere lip-service. Supreme poet as he -is, he deliberately makes his sublime verse the instrument of spiritual -teaching. And in so doing only renders it the more sublime. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] See esp. _Inf._ ix. 113; xx. 61: “Dante and the Redemption of Italy,” -p. 15. - -[2] 1865: See _ib._ p. 19. - -[3] _Par._ xxv. 1, 2. - -[4] “Dante and Educational Principles,” pp. 83 _sqq._ - -[5] Nos. III and VI. - -[6] Nos. I, II, IV, and VIII. - -[7] Prof. Foligno has, of course, no responsibility for the opinions set -forth in this volume. - -[8] _Le opere di Dante: testo critico della Società dantescha italiana, -etc._ Firenze: R. Bemporad & Figlio. MCMXXI. Cited in the notes as -“Bemporad.” In the case of quotations from the prose works, an attempt -has been made to consult the convenience of English readers by the -reference to the paging of Dr. Moore’s Oxford Edition as well as to that -of the _Testo critico_ (Bemporad). - -[9] Nos. V and VII. - -[10] This Sermon was preached in Lincoln Cathedral on Aug. 14th, 1921 -(Twelfth Sunday after Trinity). - -[11] _Par._ i. 6-8. - -[12] See _Osservatore Romano_, May 4th, 1921. And _cf._ Appendix II. - -[13] _Par._ xvii. 55. - -[14] _Purg._ xxiv. 52-4. - -[15] _Cf._ A. G. Ferrers-Howell, “Dante and the Troubadours,” in the -Memorial Volume, _Dante, Essays in Commemoration_, 1321-1921, London -Univ. Press, 1921. - -[16] _Purg._ xxiv. 57. - -[17] _Inf._ iii. 5, 6. - -[18] _Purg._ xvii. 103-105. - -[19] _Inf._ i. 118-20. - -[20] _Purg._ xxiii. 71-74. - -[21] _Par._ iii. 70-72, 85. - -[22] _Par._ xxxiii. 145. - -[23] _The Spiritual Message of Dante_, Williams & Norgate, 1914, p. 225. - -[24] 1 John iv. 16. - -[25] _Par._ xxx. 133-7. - -[26] _Purg._ xx. 43. - -[27] _Purg._ i. 1. - -[28] _Par._ xxv. 5. - -[29] A pathetic episode connected with this Celebration is related in -Appendix I, p. 165. - -[30] _Giornale_, p. 215: Art. “Firenze e Italia nel concetto e nel cuore -di Dante.” - -[31] _Giornale_, p. 344. - -[32] A similar chorus of reverent homage to Dante as the good genius of -Italy’s fortunes, was evoked by the war, in the shape of “Dante e la -Guerra,” Nos. 6-9 of _Nuovo Convito_, June-Sept., 1917. - -[33] _Par._ ix. 27. - -[34] “To the Defenders of the Piave: November, 1917, to November, 1918.” -Art. in _Anglo-Italian Review_, Nov., 1918, p. 244. - -[35] _Purg._ xxvii. 142. - -[36] _Il Purgatorio_, p. 58. - -[37] _Par._ xxxi. 85-89. - -[38] _Inf._ i. 31-34. - -[39] _Loc. cit._ - -[40] Italy is likened by Dante to a wood (_silva_) in _V.E._, I, xi. - -[41] _Purg._ vi. 76-fin. - -[42] _Purg._ vi. 91 _sqq._; _Mon._ I, xii. - -[43] _Purg._ v. 61. - -[44] See _Mon._ II, v. 132 _sqq._; 159 _sqq._, quoted below; pp. 355 -_sq._, Oxf. Ed.; p. 379, Bemporad. - -[45] _Inf._ xii. 1-21. - -[46] _Defensor Pacis_ written c. 1324 (three years after Dante’s death) -to support the claims of the Emperor Lewis IX (of Bavaria) against Pope -John XXII, starts, as Dante does, from Aristotle and Holy Scripture, but -carries the relentless exposure of papal pretensions much further, and -strikes the note of appeal to a General Council which was one of the -watchwords of the Reformation. - -[47] This theme he took up earlier in the Fourth Treatise of the -_Convivio_, chaps. iv. and v. - -[48] _Cf._ especially his quotations from the _Aeneid_ in _Conv._ -IV, iv. (Bemp., 252) and _Mon._ II, vii. 70 _sqq._ (Bemp., 381); the -Divine injunction is taken by Dante, almost as though the _Aeneid_ were -‘Scripture’! - - Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, momento, - Hae tibi erunt artes, pacique imponere morem; - Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. - - —_Aen._ vi. 852-4. - -[49] _Inf._ i. 82. - -[50] vi. 34-96. - -[51] W. W. Vernon, _Readings on the Paradiso_, Vol. I, p. 199. - -[52] _Par._ vi. 103-104. - -[53] _Purg._ vii. 94; vi. 97. - -[54] _Purg._ xvi. 106 _sqq._; 127 _sqq._ - -[55] _Purg._ vi. 76 _sqq._ - -[56] _Purg._ vi. fin. - -[57] _Ep._ vii. - -[58] _Cf._ _Purg._ x. 35. - -[59] _Ep._ vii. 44, p. 410, Oxf. Ed.; p. 427, Bemporad. - -[60] I. xii. 58; Oxf. Ed. p. 347; p. 365, Bemporad. - -[61] _Purg._ i. 75. - -[62] II, v. 158 _sqq._; Oxf. Ed. II, v. 17; p. 379, Bemporad. - -[63] _Cf._ _Mon._ I, xi. Bemporad, pp. 362-364. - -[64] _Mon._ I, v. - -[65] _Od._ ix. 114-115. θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστος Παίδων ἠδ’ ἀλόγων.... - -[66] οὐδ’ ἀλλήων ἀλέγουσιν. - -[67] _Pol._ i. 2. - -[68] It is interesting to note, in this connection, that when Dante, -in his work on “The Vulgar Tongue,” is seeking a _Literary_ Tribunal—a -sort of Academy of Letters—he asserts that where there is no Prince, his -presence may be supplied by ‘the gracious light of reason.’ There is no -king, he says, in Italy, as there is in Germany, to gather to his court -poets and _literati_ and form in his own person the centre of a brilliant -literary circle; but the members of such a court—the elements of such a -circle—are there, though scattered, and they have a bond of union in the -_gratioso lumine rationis_.—_V.E._ I, xviii. fin; Oxf. p. 389; Bemporad, -p. 336. - -[69] _Mon._ I, xi. 78-110. Oxf., p. 346; Bemp., pp. 363 _sq._ - -[70] _Ep._ vii. - -[71] _Par._ xxx. 133 _sqq._ - -[72] At the last moment before going to press, it is cheering to find -this contention (treated more fully by the present writer in an article -in the _Anglo-Italian Review_, Dec., 1918), corroborated by Prof. A. J. -Grant, who, in an article on “Dante’s conception of History” (_History_, -Vol. VI, Jan., 1922), speaks thus of the Poet’s praise of the Empire: -“It is a demand for a world-order resting on laws that are sensible and -generally known, and which control the lives of states as well as of -individuals. It is little exaggeration to say that it is a plea for a -League of Nations; and the _De Monarchia_ is not a bad handbook for those -who are called upon to speak for the League” (p. 229). - -[73] _Par._ xxii. 151. - -[74] _Mon._ iii. 16; Oxf., p. 376; Bemp. p. 411. - -[75] _Mon._ I, xi; Oxf. p. 345; Bemporad, p. 364. - -[76] _Mon._ I, xi., _ut supra_. - -[77] _Mon._ I, xi. - -[78] III, iv. init. Oxf., p. 365; Bemporad, p. 394. Dante combats and -refutes the traditional argument in vogue in his day, which assumed that -the creation of sun and moon in Gen. i. had a mystical reference to the -Spiritual and Temporal powers respectively and argued that therefore, -because the moon derives her _light_ from the sun, the Temporal must owe -its _authority_ to the Spiritual; but, later in the chapter (Oxf., p. 366 -_sq._; Bemporad, p. 396), he seems to admit a workable _analogy_ between -the luminaries and the authorities. - -[79] _Purg._ xvi. 106 _sqq._ - -[80] _Par._ vi. 121 _sq._ - -[81] 2 Cor. iii. 17. - -[82] _Inf._, i. p. 124. - -[83] _Cf._ _V.E._, I, vii. 28; p. 382, Oxf.; p. 324, Bemporad. _Ipsum -naturantem, qui est Deus._ - -[84] _Par._ xxxiii. 145. - -[85] Oxf. Ed., p. 282; Bemporad, p. 222. - -[86] _Gerusalemme Liberata_, xvii. 63. - -[87] The best spirits among our late enemies have already begun to -reap the reward of their deadly earnestness in a wider and saner point -of view: a realisation of variety of national characteristics and -an appreciation of them; a longing to clear away misapprehensions, -and “openly to call injustice injustice—to forgive and to expect -forgiveness.” See an excellent article by Hedwig von Saenger in _Student -Movement_, Oct., 1921. - -[88] _Il comico, l’ umorismo e la satira nella Divina Commedia._ Da -Enrico Sannia. 2 vols. Milan, 1909. - -[89] _Vita_, s. 8. - -[90] _Mag. Mar._ i, 31, 1193. εὐτραπελία δ’ ἐστὶ μεσότης βωμολοχίας -καὶ ἀγροικίας. ὅ τε γὰρ βωμολόχος ἐστὶν ὁ πάντα καὶ πᾶν οἰόμενος δεῖν -σκώπτειν, ὅ τε ἄγροικος ὁ μήτε σκώπτειν βουλόμενος, μήτε σκωφθῆναι, -ἀλλ’ ὀργιζόμενος. ὁ δ’ εὐτράπελος ἀνὰ μέσον τούτων, ὁ μήτε πάντας καὶ -παντῶς σκώπτων, μητ’ αὐτὸς ἄγροικος ὤν. ἔσται δ’ ὁ εὐτράπελος διττῶς -πως λεγόμενος. καὶ γὰρ ὁ δυνάμενος σκῶψαι ἐμμελῶς, καὶ ὃς ἂν ὑπομείνῃ -σκωπτόμενος. - -[91] _De divinatione per somnum_ ii. (464ᵃ 33) οἱ δὲ μελαγχολικοὶ διὰ τὸ -σφόδρα, ὥσπερ βάλλοντες πόρρωθεν, εὔστοχοί εἰσιν. _Cf._ _Eth. Nic._ vi. -10 (1142ᵇ 2), where εὐστοχία is distinguished from βούλευσις as “swift -and wordless”; ἄνευ τε γὰρ λόγου καὶ ταχύ τι ἡ εὐστοχία. And a little -further on it is said that ἀγχίνοια—“ready wit,” “shrewdness,” is a kind -of εὐστοχία. - -[92] _Rhet._ iii. II, 1412ᵃ. εὐστοχία sees analogies, like Archytas, who -says “a διαιτητὴς is like an altar”—for to both the injured flee! - -[93] _Eth. Eud._ vii. 5, 1240ᵃ 2. - -[94] _Cf._ Ps. cxv. 4-8. Esp. Isaiah xliv. and xlvi. - -[95] A recent writer, H. McLachlan (_St. Luke, the Man and his Work_, -Manchester Univ. Press, 1920), has drawn attention to the humorous -gift of the third Evangelist, and entitles one of his chapters “Luke -the Humorist.” See also the present writer’s _St. Luke_ (Westminster -Commentaries, Methuen, 1922, Introduction, pp. xxix. _sq._). - -[96] _Cronica Fratris Salimbene de Adam_ (Ed. Holder-Egger, Hanover, -1905-1913), pp. 77 _sqq._ “Florentini ... trufatores maximi sunt.” - -[97] _Rhet._ ii. 1389ᵇ 10. οἰ νέοι ... φιλογέλωτες, διὸ καὶ εὐτράπελοι; ἡ -γὰρ εὐτραπελία πεπαιδευμένη ὕβρις ἐστίν. - -[98] _Purg._ x. 130-3. - -[99] Nino Tammassia, _S. Francesco d’ Assisi e la sua Leggenda_, Padova, -Drucker, 1906. (Eng. Tr. Fisher Unwin, 1910). - -[100] D. G. Rossetti, _The Early Italian Poets, etc._ - -[101] _Purg._ xxiii. 115 _sqq._ - -[102] _Op. cit._ pp. 55-6. - -[103] _Conv._ III, viii. 70; Oxf., p. 282; Bemporad, p. 222. - -[104] _Portraits of Dante from Giotto to Raffael: a critical study, with -a concise iconography_, by Richard Thayer Holbrook. London: Philip Lee -Warner, 1911. - -[105] Holbrook, _l.c._ pp. 68-72. - -[106] Holbrook, _op. cit._ p. 102 and illustration opposite p. 98. - -[107] _Vita_, § 8. Ne’ costumi domestici e publici mirabilmente fu -ordinato e composto, e in tutti più che un altro cortese e civile. - -[108] _Hist._ ix. 136. Per lo suo sapere fu alquanto presuntuoso e schifo -e isdegnoso, e quasi a guisa di filosofo mal grazioso. Non bene sapea -conversare co’ laici. - -[109] _Cf._ Toynbee, _Dante Alighieri_, Methuen, 3rd ed., 1904, p. 176 -_sqq._ - -[110] This is quoted from C. Bruni’s excellent _Guida al Casentino_, p. -167. B. does not specify his authorities, but says in a footnote: “Questo -aneddoto è così riferito da varii scrittori danteschi.” - -[111] _Dante and His Italy_, pp. 141, 2. - -[112] _Inf._ xxii. 118. - -[113] _Inf._ xxiii, 4 _sqq._ - -[114] Sannia not inappropriately describes this passage as “il comico -populare della D.C.” (p. 193). - -[115] _Inf._ xxii. 25. - -[116] _Inf._ xxii. 41, 57, 60, 72, _cf._ xxi. 55 _sqq._ - -[117] _Inf._ xxi. 7-15. - -[118] _Inf._ xxii. 130. - -[119] _Inf._ xxiii. 37. - -[120] _Inf._ xxi. 31, 88 _sqq._, 127 _sqq._; xxii. 31. - -[121] _Inf._ xxx. 103. - -[122] _Inf._ xxx. 131, 2. - -[123] _Inf._ xiii. 120 _sqq._ - -[124] _Inf._ xix. 52 _sqq._ _Cf._ Boccaccio, _Vita_, § 17. - -[125] _Inf._ xix. 72. - -[126] _Purg._ vi. 149 _sqq._ - -[127] _Purg._ vi. 141. - -[128] _Par._ xxi. 130 _sqq._ - -[129] _Par._ xxi. 134. - -[130] _Par._ xxix. 34 _sqq._ - -[131] _Par._ xxix. 110. - -[132] _Purg._ xx. 108. - -[133] _Purg._ xix. 72, 124. - -[134] _Purg._ xx. 116-17. - -[135] _Purg._ xxii. 67-9. - -[136] _Purg._ xxviii. 139. - -[137] _Purg._ xxviii. 145. - -[138] _Par._ xxiii. 22. - -[139] _Par._ xxvii. 4. - -[140] _Par._ xxviii. 137-8. - -[141] _Essay on Richter_, cited by Glover, _Virgil_, Methuen, 1920, p. 27. - -[142] _Eth. Eud._ iii. 1234ᵃ 17. - -[143] _Conv._ III, viii., 95 _sqq._ p. 282, Oxf.; p. 222, Bemporad. - -[144] Oxf. Ed. p. 248; Bemporad, p. 165. - -[145] Oxf. Ed. p. 249; Bemporad, p. 166; Toynbee, _In the Footprints of -Dante_, p. 303. - -[146] (vi.) Oxf. Ed. p. 259; Bemporad, p. 183. - -[147] xi. 60 _sqq._; p. 263, Oxf. Ed.; (x.) p. 190, Bemporad. - -[148] xi. 100 _sqq._; p. 287, Oxf. Ed.; p. 230, Bemporad. - -[149] IV, xxviii. 70 _sqq._; p. 335, Oxf. Ed.; p. 311, Bemporad. - -[150] IV, xvi. 69; p. 318, Oxf. Ed.; p. 283, Bemporad. Salimbene (_ed. -cit._), pp. 457, 512, 530 _sqq._ - -[151] IV, xiv. 105; p. 315, Oxf. Ed.; p. 278, Bemporad. - -[152] IV, xv. 135; p. 316, Oxf. Ed.; p. 280, Bemporad. - -[153] I, xiv.; p. 387, Oxf. Ed.; pp. 329, 332, Bemporad. - -[154] p. 385, Oxf. Ed.; p. 329, Bemporad. - -[155] _V.E._ I, xiii. _fin._; p. 387, Oxf. Ed.; p. 331, Bemporad. - -[156] “Quid nunc personat tuba novissimi Frederici? quid tintinabulum -secundi Caroli? quid cornua Iohannis et Azzonis marchionum potentum? quid -aliorum magnatum tibiae? nisi _Venite carnifices, etc._,” p. 386, Oxf. -Ed.; p. 330, Bemporad. - -[157] _V.E._ II, vi. 42-6; p. 394, Oxf. Ed.; p. 343 _sq._, Bemporad. - -[158] Hor. _Ep._ I., xiv, 43. - -[159] No. 616. - -[160] Dr. Reid, in an article on “Humour” (_Encyclopaedia of Religion -and Ethics_, Vol. VI, p. 272), which had not yet appeared when these -lines were written, describing the gift as follows: “Humour is -invariably associated with alertness and breadth of mind, a keen sense -of proportion, and faculties of quick observation and comparison. It -involves a certain detachment from, or superiority to, the disturbing -experiences of life. It appreciates the whimsicalities and contradictions -of life, recognises the existence of what is unexpected or absurd, and -extracts joy out of what might be a cause of sadness....” - -[161] _Op. cit._ p. 51. - -[162] _Inf._ xx. 61-3. - -[163] Vol. II, p. 534. - -[164] _Par._ i. 1 _sqq._, 103 _sqq._ - -[165] _Inf._ iii. 16-18. - -[166] _Cf._ e.g., the legend of St. Gregory alluded to in _Purg._ x. 75. - -[167] _Inf._ iv. 131. - -[168] See above, pp. 28 _sqq._ and “Dante and A League of Nations,” -_Anglo-Italian Review_, December, 1918, pp. 327-335. - -[169] _Purg._ i. 7 _sqq._; _Par._ i. 13 _sqq._; _cf._ _Inf._ ii. 7. - -[170] _Purg._ vi. 118. - -[171] _Mediaeval Mind_, Vol. II, p. 544. - -[172] _Inf._ xxxi. - -[173] _Inf._ iv. 144. - -[174] _Mediaeval Mind_, Vol. II, p. 541, note. - -[175] _Par._ xxv. 3. - -[176] _Conv._ III, ix., fin.; p. 285, Oxf. Ed.; p. 227, Bemporad. - -[177] Croce on the contrary urges with perhaps too great a bias in the -other direction, that if Dante were not so great as a Poet, little would -be thought of his achievements in other lines: “Se Dante non fosse, -com’ è, grandissimo poeta, è da presumere che tutte quelle altre cose -perderebbero rilievo.”—_Poesia di Dante_, p. 10. - -[178] “On Dante the Poet,” see an admirable lecture delivered before the -British Academy on May 4th, 1921, by Professor Cesare Foligno. (Humphrey -Milford, 1/6 net). See also Appendix III. - -[179] _Osservatore Romano_, May 4th, 1921. See Appendix II. - -[180] _La Poesia di Dante_, Laterza, 1921. - -[181] _Id._, pp. 9, 10. - -[182] _Id._, p. 27. - -[183] _Cf._ Statius’ words in _Purg._ xxii. 76— - - Già era ’l mondo tutto quanto pregno - De la vera credenza, seminata - Per li messaggi dell’ etterno regno. - -[184] See _The New Teaching_, edited by Prof. John Adams (Hodder and -Stoughton, 1918, 10/6), pp. 9, 11. This work came into the writer’s -hands after the virtual completion of the present essay; but it sums up -so compactly the point of view of the modern principles he desired to -illustrate, that he has found occasion to refer to it with some frequency. - -[185] _Cf._ _The New Teaching_, p. 64, where Prof. J. Adams says of the -study of English Literature: “the radical difference between the old -teaching and the new is that we have passed from books about books to the -books themselves.” - -[186] See _La Poesia di Dante_, pp. 14, 15. - -[187] See H. O. Taylor, _The Mediaeval Mind_. Mr. Taylor heads his 43rd -and last chapter “The Mediaeval Synthesis: Dante.” See Vol. II, p. 534; -and _Dante and Mediaeval Thought_, in the present volume, p. 80. - -[188] _Par._ xxv. 3; _Conv._ III, ix. 146 _sqq._; p. 285, Oxf. Ed.; p. -226 _sq._, Bemporad. - -[189] Federzoni, _Vita di Beatrice Portinari_, 2nd Ed., p. 14; and below -_Dante and Casentino_, pp. 148 _sq._ - -[190] _Inf._ xv. 82-85. - -[191] _Conv._ II, xiv. (xiii.), pp. 265-7, Oxf. Ed.; pp. 193-7, Bemporad. - -[192] Benedetto Croce (_op. cit._) has much to say on the power of -Dante’s poetic genius to transmute the intractable and unpoetical -scholastic and didactic matter. See esp. pp. 67, 161. - -[193] _Dante and Aquinas_, p. vii; _cf._ and pp. 226 _sqq._, and esp. p. -232. - -[194] Wicksteed, _loc. cit._ - -[195] _Purg._ xxvii. 140, 142. The English renderings are mainly from -Tozer’s Translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. - -[196] _Epist._ x. (xiii.), p. 416, Oxf. Ed.; p. 439, Bemporad. “Locutio -vulgaris in qua et muliercule communicant.” - -[197] _Epist._ x. (xiii.) 265 _sqq._; p. 417, Oxf. Ed.; p. 440, Bemporad. - -[198] _Inf._ i. 113 _sq._ - -[199] _Inf._ i. 118-120. - -[200] See esp. Luke vii. 18-23, where, in answer to a question from the -Baptist’s disciple, He gives a “demonstration” of Messianic works, and -says “Go and describe what you have seen.” - -[201] Not only in the formally “didactic passages” does he act—in Croce’s -words, “like a master who knows, and is bent on making it clear to the -pupil.” _Op. cit._, p. 121. - -[202] _Purg._ i. 71. - -[203] _Purg._ v. 61 _sqq._ - -[204] _Purg._ xxvii. 142. - -[205] _Par._ xxxi. 85. - -[206] _Purg._ xxvi. 13. - -[207] _Purg._ xxiii. 73 _sqq._ - -[208] _Purg._ xxi. 61 _sqq._ - -[209] Mme. Montessori’s earlier utterances were justly criticised for a -too thoroughgoing individualism that claimed to have rung the death-knell -of the “class system.” The individualist attitude and the collective -have each a place in the New Teaching, though the former tends to be -emphasised most. The characteristic Montessorian expression of the social -instinct is the “Silence Game.” See _The New Teaching_, pp. 15, 16, 22. - -[210] _Op. cit._, p. 234. - -[211] _Purg._ x. 31 _sqq._ - -[212] _Purg._ xii. 16 _sqq._ - -[213] Very little transpires as to the office and function of those -Angels except in the matter of removal of the P’s from the forehead of -penitents as they mount up to the successive Terraces. In _Purg._ xvi. -142-5, there is a glimpse of their usefulness, where Marco Lombardo is -reminded of the boundary of his “beat” by the nearness of the Angel of -the Anger-Terrace. “L’Angelo è i’vi!” - -[214] _Purg._ ii. 30. - -[215] _Purg._ xvi. 76-78. For this reference and several others the -writer is indebted to an illuminating article on “La Pedagogia in Dante -Alighieri,” by Sac. Dott. Fernando Cento in _Il VIº Centenario Dantesco_, -March, 1916. - -[216] _Purg._ iv. 88-95. - -[217] _Purg._ xii. 110; xv. 38; xvii. 68 etc. - -[218] _Inf._ xxx. 136 _sqq._ - -[219] _Par._ xxxiii. 58 _sqq._ - -[220] _Purg._ xviii. 141. - -[221] _Purg._ xix. 1 _sqq._ - -[222] _Purg._ xix. 28. - -[223] _Purg._ xxvii. 88 _sqq._ - -[224] As in the case last quoted, or e.g. in _Purg._ xvii. 40 _sqq._: -_Come si frange il sonno, etc._, where the sleep is broken by the sudden -striking of a light upon the sleeper’s eyes. - -[225] _Purg._ xxvii. 112. - -[226] _Inf._ xxvi. 7. - -[227] See pp. 95 _sqq._ - -[228] p. 120 _sq._ - -[229] p. 121. He goes on: “Perciò i concetti esposti vi si rivestono -d’immagini corpulenti e fulgidissimi.” - -[230] Croce, p. 135. - -[231] _Par._ i. 100. - -[232] Strictly, from _Inf._ i. 112 to _Purg._ xxvii. 142; Virgil -disappears, _Purg._ xxx. 49. - -[233] _Purg._ xxi. 33. - -[234] _Purg._ xxi. 103; _cf._ i. 125; xix. 85 _sqq._, etc. - -[235] _Gerus. Lib._ xvii. 63. - -[236] _Purg._ xvi. 77. - -[237] _Inf._ ii. 1-5. - -[238] _Inf._ i. 77-78; _Purg._ xxvii. 35-36. - -[239] _Op. cit._, p. 37. - -[240] _Inf._ xvii. 79 _sqq._ - -[241] _Purg._ xxvii. 22 _sqq._ - -[242] Homer, _Od._ xx. 18. Dante, _Inf._ xxvi. 56 _sqq._; _Purg._ xix. -22; _Par._ xxvii. 83. - -[243] _Purg._ iv. 89 _sqq._ - -[244] _Inf._ xi. 10-66; xii. init. - -[245] _Purg._ xvii. 88-139. - -[246] _Cf._ _The New Teaching_, p. 40, where Prof. Adams remarks, -“The postponing of grammar studies to a comparatively late stage in -school life is one of the most striking recognitions of the elementary -psychological truths that underlie the principles of teaching.” - -[247] _Purg._ xviii. esp. 40-43. - -[248] Acts i. 1. - -[249] _Inf._ iv. 13-15; _cf._ _Inf._ xvii. 79 (above), and _Purg._ xxvii. -46. - -[250] _Inf._ iv. 14. - -[251] _Purg._ iii. 7-9. - -[252] _New Teaching_, p. 153 (Dr. Rouse). - -[253] _Inf._ xiii, 28 _sqq._; _Aen._ iii. 22 _sqq._ - -[254] _Inf._ xii. 114. - -[255] _Purg._ xxv. 25 _sqq._ - -[256] _Purg._ xv. 76-78. _Cf._ _Purg._ xviii. 46-48. - -[257] _Purg._ xxvii. 139 _sqq._ - -[258] _Inf._ i. 122 _sqq._ - -[259] _The New Teaching_, pp. 20, 26 (Prof. Adams). - -[260] _Purg._ xxvii. 139-142. - -[261] There is some reason (see below, pp. 121 _sqq._) for attributing -to a common origin some of the points of resemblance which are noted in -the body of this Essay. Professor Foligno, however, like Dr. Parodi (see -below, pp. 133 _sq._) is convinced of the fallaciousness of all arguments -hitherto adduced in favour of direct contact of Dante with Moslem -sources—and, in particular, of the reasoning of Professor Asín (p. 133). - -[262] _The Gospel of Barnabas._ Edited and translated from the Italian -MS. in the Imperial Library at Vienna by Lonsdale and Laura Ragg. Oxford: -1907. - -[263] On this subject, see below, pp. - -[264] See Introduction to Oxford Ed., pp. xiii. _sq._ and xliii. - -[265] As for instance in his definition of the word “Pharisee,” -“_farisseo propio uolle dire cercha DIO nella linggua di chanaam_” -(_Barnabas_, 157ᵇ). - -[266] _Par._ i. 56-7. _Cf._ _Barn._ 40ᵃ, _sq._ - -[267] _Purg._ xxviii. 94, etc., _cf._ _Barn._ 41ᵇ-43ᵇ. - -[268] _Barn._ 189ᵃ, _cf._ (for angels) Canz. iv. 24, 25, _Par._ xx. 102. - -[269] _Barn._ 189ᵃ, _Koran_, Surah xlvii. The _original_ source is -perhaps _Gen._ ii. 10 _sqq._ - -[270] _Purg._ xxviii. 25 _sqq._ - -[271] _Barn._ 187ᵃ, 189ᵃ. - -[272] _Purg._ xxvii. 134. - -[273] _Purg._ xxviii. 36. - -[274] _Purg._ xxviii. 41, 42. - -[275] _V.E._ i. 7, 10-11. Oxf. p. 382; Bamp. p. 324. - -[276] 185ᵃ. - -[277] 185ᵇ. - -[278] _Par._ xxxi. 97; xxxii. 39. - -[279] _Par._ xxiii. 71, 72. - -[280] 190ᵃ. - -[281] _Par._ xxvi. 64-66. - -[282] 185ᵇ. - -[283] _Par._ iii. 70 _sqq._ - -[284] _Barn._ 189ᵇ. - -[285] _Par._ iii. 65. - -[286] _Par._ iii, 82-85. A reviewer of the Oxford Edition (_Guardian_, -Aug. 21st, 1907) points out a further significant resemblance between -_Par._ xxxi. 7 _sqq._ and _Barn._ 56ᵇ, where it is said of the angels -that, “chome appe uenirano intorno per circuito dello nontio di DIO.” - -[287] _Barn._ 111ᵃ, _cf._ 190ᵇ. - -[288] 111ᵃ. - -[289] iiiᵇ, 190ᵇ. - -[290] 190ᵇ. - -[291] _Cf._ E. Blochet, _Les sources orientales de la Divine Comédie_, -Paris, 1901, p. 193: “Ce qui distingue surtout la _Divine Comédie_ de -toutes les autres formes de la Legende de l’ Ascension, ce qui la rende -même supérieure aux livres religieux de toutes les epoques et de tous -les pays, c’est que le poête a su décrire aussi completement le bonheur -éternel du Paradis que les tortures infinies du Malebolge.” - -[292] E.g. in the Motalizite Sect (see _Encycl. Brit._ vol. xvi, p. 592). - -[293] 149ᵇ _sqq._ - -[294] 146ᵇ-149ᵃ. - -[295] _Studies in Dante_, Series II. - -[296] 146ᵇ. - -[297] 147ᵃ. - -[298] 148ᵃ. - -[299] 148ᵇ. - -[300] 43ᵃ. - -[301] _Inf._ xiv. 85 _sqq._; xxxiv. 130. - -[302] _Inf._ ix. 85. - -[303] _Inf._ ix. 66 and 76 _sqq._ - -[304] 149ᵇ. - -[305] 150ᵃ. - -[306] _Barn._ 113ᵃ, _cf._ _Inf._ xxxii. 22 _sqq._ - -[307] _Barn._ 63ᵃ: Dante, _Inf._ iii. 103. - -[308] In 23ᵃ, 81ᵃ, 225ᵇ. It is characteristic of the MS. that the three -passages furnish as many different spellings of the last word: _bugiari_, -_bugiardi_ and _buggiardi_! Cf. _Inf._ i. 72. - -[309] _Inf._ i. 47; _Barn._ 62ᵇ. - -[310] 85ᵇ and 87ᵃ. - -[311] A little earlier (76ᵇ) he has what seems to be a quotation from -memory of Lev. xxvi. 11, 12; the Law of the Jubilee is to be found, of -course, in the chapter immediately preceding. - -[312] _Antiquorum habet_ (Coqueline, iii. 94). - -[313] E.g. Cron. Astense (Muratori, R. S. I., tom. xi. p. 192): Jacobus -Cardinalis (in Raynald, tom. iv. sub an. 1300): Villani, viii. 36. - -[314] Another point that might have been adduced is the counsel -“habbandonare il perchè,” _Barn._ 95ᵇ; _cf._ _Purg._ iii. 37. - -[315] _Inf._ iv. 67 _sqq._ Here, standing apart, but near the heroes and -heroines of ancient Rome, Dante places the Moslem champion Saladin (_ib._ -129). - -[316] _Inf._ xxviii. 35. - -[317] Prof. N. Tamassia, _S. Francesco d’ Assisi e la sua Leggenda_, p. -88. - -[318] Including (38ᵇ) a striking statement of the impossibility of -penitence (and therefore of absolution) to one meditating fresh sin: -_cf._ Dante, _Inf._ xxvii. 118 _sq._ - -[319] Introduction to Oxford Edition, p. xxxiv. - -[320] _La Escatologia musulmana en la “Divina Commedia.”_ Discorso leído -en el acto de su recepción, par D. Miguel Asín Palacios ... Madrid, -Estanislao Maestre, 1919. - -[321] _Les sources Orientales de la Divina Comédie._ Paris, E. Blochet. -Paris, Maisonneuve, 1901. - -[322] _Koran_, chap. xvii. (xv.) init. “Praise be unto him who -transported his servant by night, from the sacred temple of Mecca to -the further temple of Jerusalem, the circuit of which we have blessed, -that we might shew him some of our signs; for God is he who heareth and -seeth.” (Sale’s translation). On this passage a most elaborate story was -built up by subsequent legend-makers. - -[323] Ireland is undoubtedly the focus in Europe of legends _Persian_ in -origin. Appropriate to our subject are not only the St. Brendan Legend, -but also the Purgatory of St. Patrick and the Descent of St. Paul. -Blochet, _op. cit._, p. 117 _sqq._ - -[324] _Ib._ p. 161. - -[325] _Ib._ p. 172. - -[326] _Bulletino della Società dantesca italiana_, Nov. Ser., fasc. 4, -(Dec., 1919), pp. 163-181. - -[327] See above, p. 131, note 4. - -[328] _Bulletino_ _ut supra_, p. 166. - -[329] _Bulletino_ _ut supra_, esp. p. 181. Ma il meglio sarà contentarsi -di meditare sull’ affinità delle menti umane e sulla verosimiglianza che -cause simili producano, in luoghi diversi, effetti non troppo dissimili. - -[330] Dr. Parodi’s view would probably be like that of Gherardo de’ Rossi -about the vision of Alberic, which he quotes on p. 163: that the _Miradj_ -“possa aver all’ Omero italiano suggerito l’ idea della _Commedia_ come -un pezzo di marmo potrebbe somministrare ad uno scultore l’ idea d’ una -statua.” - -[331] _Inf._ iv. 129, 143-4. - -[332] _Par._ x. 136-8. - -[333] _Par._ xxv. 2. - -[334] _Ep._ x. (Oxford Ed.), xiii. (Bemporad), 87 _sqq._ See Sir T. W. -Arnold, “Dante and Islam,” _Contemp. Review_, Aug., 1921, to which the -present writer owes most of the substance of this paragraph and what -follows. - -[335] Arnold, p. 205-6. - -[336] _Ib._ p. 206-7. - -[337] _Conv._ I, iii.; Oxf. Ed., p. 240; Bemporad, p. 151 _sq._ - -[338] _Purg._ xiv. 16 _sqq._ - -[339] _Inf._ xxx. 64 _sqq._ - -[340] _Purg._ xiv. 46 _sqq._ - -[341] _Villani_, v. 37. - -[342] _Inf._ xvi. 37. - -[343] _Purg._ xiv. 43. - -[344] _Inf._ x. 85. - -[345] _Par._ xi. 106. - -[346] _Vill._ vii. 131; _Dino_, i. 9. - -[347] Leonardo Bruni Vita di Dante. Dove mi trovai non fanciullo nelle -armi, e dove ebbi temenza molta.... - -[348] _Inf._ xxx. 37 _sqq._ Perhaps of English extraction: in a document -at Ravenna he is described as “de Anglia.” - -[349] _Inf._ iv. 106 _sqq._ - -[350] _Inf._ iv. 48. - -[351] _Inf._ iv. 42. - -[352] _Inf._ iv. 118. - -[353] _Inf._ xxx. 78. - -[354] It is strange to find even in so recent a work as Mr. Tozer’s Prose -Translation of the _Divine Comedy_, reference still made to the fountain -of the name in _Siena_. The context is all in favour of a spring near -Romena. - -[355] _Dino_, i. 10. - -[356] _Sacchetti_, Nov. clxxix. - -[357] _Purg._ v. 116 _sqq._ - -[358] _Villani_, vii. 130-131. - -[359] _Villani_, vii. 13-14. - -[360] _Purg._ v. 85-129. - -[361] _Purg._ v. 97 _sqq._ - -[362] _Par._ xxii. 49. - -[363] _Purg._ v. 126 _sq._ - -[364] Fioretti: Prima considerazione delle sacre sante stimate. - -[365] _Par._ xi. 107-8. - -[366] Fioretti: seconda considerazione. - -[367] _Inf._ xii. 1-45. - -[368] _Fioretti_: _loc. cit._ - -[369] _loc. cit._ - -[370] _Ex._ xxxiii. 11. - -[371] Buti, on _Inf._ xvi. 106. _Purg._ xxx. 42. - -[372] _Inf._ xvi. 106. For further “Franciscan” references see Paget -Toynbee, _Life of Dante_ (last Ed.) p. 72 n. - -[373] _Federzoni_, _Vita di Beatrice Portinari_, 2nd Ed., p. 14. - -[374] _Purg._ xxx. 41 _sq._ - -[375] _Par._ xi. 106-108. - -[376] Vol. II, p. 18, (Sept., 1918). _Tasso and Shakespeare’s England._ - -[377] _Inf._ i. 104 _sqq._ _Inf._ ix. 133 _sqq._ and xx. 59 _sqq._ (See -above, pp. 13 _sq._) - -[378] The facts about Maschio are drawn from an article in the _Strenna -per l’ anno._ 1897, of the Venetian _Educatorio Rachitici, “Regina -Margherita,”_ by Signor Giuseppe Bianchini. - -[379] _Purg._ xxvii. 25. - -[380] _Inf._ xix. 16, _sqq._ - -[381] _Thirteenth_ in the _Testo Critico_ of 1921 (Bemporad). - -[382] Benedetto Croce, _La Poesia di Dante_. Bari: Laterza, 1921, p. 10. - -[383] _Ib._ pp. 63, 197 _sqq._ - -[384] Foligno, _Dante, the Poet_, p. 8. - -[385] Foligno, p. 15. - -[386] _Purg._ xxiv. 52-54. - -[387] Oxford Ed., p. 251; Bemporad, p. 171. - -[388] _Purg._ xxiv. 51. - -[389] _V.N._, xix. _ad init._ (Oxf. Ed., p. 215; Bemporad, p. 21). - -[390] Croce, _Poesia di Dante_, p. 67. - -[391] _V.E._, II, iv. _sub init._ (Oxf. Ed., p. 393; Bemporad, p. 341; -_cf._ Foligno, p. 8.) - - - - -INDEX - -PROPER NAMES, ETC. - - -N.B.—_Names of characters in the DIVINE COMEDY are not included as such. -See INDEX OF REFERENCES TO DANTE’S WORKS._ - - Abelard: p. 74 - - Adams, Professor: pp. 87, 112 _sq._ - - Albertus, Magnus: pp. 74, 80 _sq._ - - Alcuin: pp. 85, 88 - - Alfonso X: p. 135 - - Alfraganus: 132 _sq._ - - _Anglo-Italian Review_: pp. 22, 36, 77, 152 _sq._ - - Aquinas, S. Thomas: pp. 74, 79, 80 _sq._, 126 - - Arabi, Ibn: p. 135 _sq._ - - Archiano (river): p. 146 _sq._ - - Arda-Viraf: p. 132 - - Aristotle: pp. 34, 45 _sqq._, 64, 75, 77, 88, 90 - - Ariosto: p. 151 - - Arnold, Dr. Thomas: p. 86 - - Arnold, Sir T. W.: 135 - - Asín, Professor: 118 _sqq._ - - Augustine, S.: p. 76 - - Averroes: pp. 79, 134 - - - Bacon, Roger: p. 74 - - Balbo, Cesare: p. 12 - - _Barnabas, Gospel of_: pp. 118 _sqq._ - - Basil, S.: p. 84 - - Benedict XV, Pope: pp. 81, 168 _sqq._ - - Benvenuti, E.: p. 11 - - Berardi, L.: p. 20 - - Bernard, S.: p. 74 - - Biagi, Dr. Guido: p. 21 - - Bianchini: p. 166 - - Blochet, E.: pp. 125, 131 - - Boccaccio, Giovanni: pp. ix, 44, 53, 58 - - Boethius: p. 85 - - Bonaventura, S.: p. 74 - - Boyd Carpenter, Bishop: pp. 7 _sq._ - - Browning, Mrs. E. B.: pp. 32, 35 - - Bruni, C.: p. 54 - - Bruni, Leonardo: p. 142 - - Brunetto Latino: p. 135 - - _Bulletino della Società dantesca italiana_: pp. 11, 118, 133 _sq._ - - Burton (_Anatomy of Melancholy_): pp. 44, 46 - - Buti: p. 148 - - Butler, A. G.: p. 80 - - - Capponi, Gino: p. 12 - - Carlyle, Thomas: p. 63 - - Carroll, Lewis: p. 64 - - Casentino, Valley of: pp. 137 _sqq._ - - Croce, Benedetto: pp. 83, 89, 91, 94, 109, 169, 171 - - Crusades: pp. 152 _sqq._, 160 - - _Centenario Dantesco, Il viº_: 102 - - _Centenario, Giornale del_: pp. 18 _sq._ - - Cento, F.: p. 102 - - Clement of Alexandria, S.: p. 84 - - Creighton, Bishop: p. 41 - - Campagni, Dino: pp. 140, 143 - - _Cronicon Astense_: p. 129 - - - D’Ancona: p. 131 - - D’Annunzio: pp. 10, 22, 156 - - Dante Alighieri: _passim_ - - ——, Commemorations of: pp. ix, 2, 14 _sqq._, 18 _sqq._, 138, 165 _sqq._ - - ——, Educational principles in: pp. 83 _sqq._ - - ——, Franciscan relations of: pp. 148 _sq._ - - ——, and Italian language and literature: p. x, 15, 20 _sqq._, 93 - - ——, learning of: pp. 72 _sqq._ - - ——, love-poetry of: pp. 3 _sqq._ - - —— as patriot: pp. ix, 13 _sqq._ - - —— as poet: pp. 171 _sqq._ - - —— as psychologist: pp. 106 _sqq._ - - —— as religious teacher: pp. 168 _sqq._ - - Del Lungo, Isidoro: p. 14 - - D’Ovidio, F.: pp. 24, 25, 131 - - Duns Scotus: p. 74 - - - Emperor, Empire, Roman: pp. 16 _sqq._, 25, 27 _sqq._, 34 _sq._, 77, 84 - - Erasmus: pp. 87, 88 - - - Federzoni, Prof.: pp. 90, 149 - - Ferrara, Court of,: p. 157 - - _Fioretti di S. Francesco_: pp. 48, 147 _sqq._ - - Fiume: pp. 14, 15 - - Florence: pp. 19, 30, 48 _sq._, 50, 59 - - Foligno, Prof. Cesare: pp. 81, 118, 172 _sq._ - - Fonte Branda: p. 142 - - Foscolo, Ugo: p. 12 - - Francis, S.: pp. 137 _sqq._, 140, 146 _sqq._ - - Freud, Dr.: p. 106 - - Froebel: 86, 88, 98 _sq._ - - - Gardner, Prof. E. G.: p. 95 - - Giotto: p. 52 - - Glover, Dr.: p. 63 - - Grant, Prof. A. J.: p. 36 - - Gregory, Nazianzeu, S.: p. 84 - - Gregory the Great, S.: pp. 62, 76 - - Gregory of Tours: p. 85 - - Grosseteste: p. 88 _sq._ - - Guidi, Couti: pp. 142 _sq._ - - - Harnack, Dr. A.: p. 84 - - Henry VII, Emperor: pp. 17, 30, 36 - - Holbrook, R. T.: pp. 51 _sqq._ - - Homer: p. 34, 113 - - Horace: p. 69, 172 - - Howell, A. G. Ferrars: p. 3 - - - Islam: pp. 118 _sqq._ - - - Jerome, S.: p. 76 - - Jerusalem: p. 153 - - Jubilee: pp. 129 _sq._ - - Jung, Dr.: p. 106 - - - Kirkup, Seymour: p. 52 - - Koran: pp. 120, 126, 129, 132 - - - _League of Nations_: pp. 36 _sqq._, 77 - - Lee, Sir Sidney: pp. 152 _sq._ - - - McLachlan, H.: p. 48 - - Marsiglio da Padova: p. 27 - - Maschio, Antonio: pp. 165 _sqq._ - - Mazzini, Giuseppe: pp. 10, 12, 23, 31 - - Metternich: p. 13 - - _Miradj_: p. 132 - - Mohammed: pp. 120 _sqq._ - - Montaperti, Battle of: p. 140 - - Montessori, Dr.: pp. 87 _sq._, 95, 97 _sqq._, 101 _sq._, 111 _sq._ - - Moore, Dr. E.: pp. 76, 80, 89, 126 - - Myers, F. W.: p. 106 - - - _New Teaching, The_: 87 _sq._, 98, 112 _sq._ - - Norton, Eliot: p. 80 - - _Nuovo Convito, Il_: p. 21 - - - Origen: p. 84 - - _Osservatore Romano_: pp. 2, 168 - - - Parodi, Dr.: pp. 118, 133 _sq._ - - Pestalozzi: pp. 86, 88, 95 - - Peter Pascual, S.: p. 136 - - Petrarch: p. 151 - - Piave, river: pp. 21 _sqq._ - - Pola: pp. 14 _sqq._ - - Pope, Alexander: p. 60 - - Psychology: pp. 86, 106 _sqq._ - - - _Quadrivium_: p. 90 - - Quintilian: p. 88 - - - Rabanus Maurus: p. 92 - - Ragg, Lonsdale: pp. 48, 56, 77, 119 - - Ravenna: pp. 14, 148 - - Raymond Lull: p. 135 - - Reid, Dr.: p. 70 - - Roman, _see_ Empire - - Rossetti, D. G.: p. 50 - - Rouse, Dr.: p. 115 - - Rousseau: p. 86 - - - Sacchetti, Franco: p. 48 - - Salimbene: pp. 48 _sqq._, 67, 105 - - Sannia, Prof. E.: pp. 43 _sqq._, 56 - - Sanudo, Marin: p. 132 - - Shakespeare: p. 73 - - _Spectator, The_: p. 70 - - Spenser: p. 152 - - Statius: pp. 61 _sqq._ - - _Student Movement, The_: p. 42 - - - Tamassia, Prof. N.: pp. 49, 130 - - Tasso: pp. 41, 110, 151-162 - - Taylor, H. O.: pp. 73 _sqq._ - - Thring, Dr.: p. 86 - - Toynbee, Dr. Paget: pp. 53, 55, 65, 132, 148 - - Tozer, H. F.: pp. 92, 142 - - Trentino, The: pp. 16, 22, 72 - - Trevelyan, G. M.: p. 72 - - Trieste: pp. 16, 22 - - Troya, Carlo: p. 12 - - - Verna, La: pp. 146 _sqq._ - - Vernon, W. W.: pp. 29, 60 - - Villani, Giovanni: pp. 53, 129, 139 _sq._, 144 - - Virgil: pp. 10, 13, 28, 61, 63, 77, 96, 112 _sqq._, 134 - - Vossler, K.: p. 131 - - - Wicksteed, P.: pp. 91, 99 _sq._ - - Witte, K.: pp. 10, 11 - - - Zoncada, A.: p. 19 - - - - -REFERENCES TO DANTE’S WORKS - - - _VITA NUOVA_ - xix _ad init_: p. 172 _sq._ - - _CONVIVIO:_ pp. 15, 44, 55, 80 - I: p. 64 - I, iii: p. 137 - I, xi: p. 64 - II: p. 65 - II, vii: p. 65 - II, xi: p. 66 - II, xiv: pp. 67, 91 - III, viii: pp. 41, 51, 64 - III, ix: pp. 80, 90 - III, xi: p. 66 - IV, iv, v: p. 27 - IV, xv: p. 67 - IV, xvi: pp. 66, 67 - IV, xxviii: p. 66 - - _MONARCHIA:_ pp. 10, 27 - I: p. 27 - I, v: p. 34 - I, xi: pp. 33, 35, 38 - I, xii: p. 31 - II, p. 28 - II, v: pp. 26, 33 - III, iv: p. 39 - III, xvi: p. 37 - - _DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA_ - I, vii: pp. 40, 122 - I, xi: pp. 25 - I, xii: p. 16 - I, xiii: p. 68 - I, xiv: p. 67 - II, iv: p. 173 - II, vi: p. 69 - - _EPISTOLAE_ - vii: pp. 30, 36 - x (xiii): pp. 92 _sq._, 135 - - _LA DIVINA COMMEDIA_ - - _Inferno:_ p. 126 - - _Inf. i:_ - 31-34: p. 25 - 47: p. 128 - 72: p. 128 - 77, 78: p. 112 - 82: p. 28 - 104 _sqq._: p. 165 - 113 _sq._: p. 93 - 118-120: pp. 6, 93 - 122 _sqq._: p. 116 - 124: p. 40 - 177 _sq._: p. 83 - - _Inf. ii:_ - 1-5: p. 111 - 7: p. 78 - - _Inf. iii:_ - 5, 6: p. 5 - 16-18: p. 74 - 103: p. 128 - - _Inf. iv:_ - 13-15: p. 114 - 42: p. 142 - 48: p. 142 - 67 _sqq._: p. 130 - 106 _sqq._: p. 142 - 118: p. 142 - 129: p. 130 - 131-133: pp. 72, 77 - 143, 144: pp. 79, 134 - - _Inf. ix:_ - 66: p. 127 - 76 _sqq._: p. 127 - 85: p. 127 - 113: pp. ix, 15 - 133 _sqq._: p. 165 - - _Inf. x:_ - 85: p. 140 - - _Inf. xi:_ - 10-66: p. 113 - - _Inf. xii:_ - 1 _sqq._: p. 113 - 1-21: p. 26 - 1-45: p. 148 - 114: p. 115 - - _Inf. xiii:_ - 28 _sqq._: p. 115 - 120 _sqq._: p. 58 - - _Inf. xiv:_ - 85 _sqq._: p. 127 - - _Inf. xv:_ - 82-85: p. 90 - - _Inf. xvi:_ - 87: p. 139 - 106: p. 148 - - _Inf. xvii:_ - 79 _sqq._: p. 112 - - _Inf. xix:_ - 16: p. 167 - 52 _sqq._: p. 58 - 72: p. 58 - - _Inf. xx:_ - 59 _sqq._: p. 165 - 61: pp. ix, 16, 72 - - _Inf. xxi:_ - 7-15: p. 57 - 31: p. 57 - 55 _sqq._: p. 56 - 88 _sqq._: p. 57 - 127 _sqq._: p. 57 - - _Inf. xxii:_ - 25: p. 56 - 31: p. 57 - 41: p. 56 - 57: p. 56 - 60: p. 56 - 72: p. 56 - 118: p. 86 - 130: p. 57 - - _Inf. xxii, xxiii:_ p. 56 - - _Inf. xxiii:_ - 4 _sqq._: p. 56 - 37: p. 57 - - _Inf. xxvi:_ - 7: p. 108 - 56 _sqq._: p. 113 - - _Inf. xxvii:_ - 118 _sq._: p. 131 - - _Inf. xxviii:_ - 35: p. 130 - - _Inf. xxx:_ - 37 _sqq._: p. 142 - 64: pp. 137, 139 - 78: p. 142 - 103 _sq._: p. 57 - 131: p. 57 - 136 _sqq._: p. 106 - - _Inf. xxxi:_ p. 78 - - _Inf. xxxii:_ - 22 _sqq._: p. 127 - - _Inf. xxxiv:_ - 130: p. 127 - - _PURGATORIO:_ 87, 126 - - _Purg. i:_ - 1: p. 18 - 7 _sqq._: p. 78 - 71: p. 96 - 71 _sq._: p. 24 - 75: P. 33 - 125: p. 110 - - _Purg. ii:_ - 30: p. 102 - - _Purg. iii:_ - 7-9: p. 115 - 9: p. 151 - 37: p. 130 - - _Purg. iv:_ - 88-95: p. 103 - 89 _sqq._: p. 113 - 106: p. 54 - - _Purg. v:_ - 61: pp. 25, 96 - 85-129: p. 145 - 97 _sqq._: p. 145 - 116 _sqq._: p. 143 - 126 _sq._: p. 146 - - _Purg. vi:_ - 66: p. 151 - 76-_fin._: pp. 25, 30 - 91 _sqq._: p. 25 - 97: p. 30 - 118: p. 78 - _fin._: p. 30 - - _Purg. vii:_ - 94: p. 30 - - _Purg. x:_ - 31 _sqq._: p. 100 - 35: p. 30 - 75: p. 76 - 130-133: p. 49 - - _Purg. xii:_ - 16 _sqq._: p. 100 - 110: p. 105 - - _Purg. xiv:_ - 16 _sqq._: 138 - 43: 139 - 46 _sqq._: 139 - - _Purg. xv:_ - 38: p. 105 - 76-78: p. 116 - - _Purg. xvi:_ - 76-78: p. 102 - 77: p. 111 - 106 _sqq._: pp. 30, 39 - 127 _sqq._: p. 30 - 142-145: p. 108 - - _Purg. xvii:_ - 40 _sqq._: p. 108 - 68: p. 105 - 88-139: p. 113 - 91 _sqq._: p. 105, 114 - 103-105: p. 6 - - _Purg. xviii:_ p. 114 - 40-43: p. 114 - 46-48: p. 116 - 141: p. 107 - - _Purg. xix:_ - 1 _sqq._: p. 107 - 22: p. 113 - 25 _sqq._: p. 115 - 28: p. 107 - 72: p. 61 - 85 _sqq._: p. 110 - 124: p. 61 - - _Purg. xx:_ - 40-96: p. 34 - 43: p. 17 - 108: p. 60 - 116 sq.: p. 61 - - _Purg. xxi:_ - 33: p. 110 - 61 _sqq._: p. 98 - 103: p. 110 - - _Purg. xxi and xxii:_ p. 61 - - _Purg. xxii:_ - 67-69: p. 61 - 76: p. 84 - - _Purg. xxiii:_ - 71-74: p. 6 - 73 _sqq._: p. 97 - 115 _sqq._: p. 50 - - _Purg. xxiv:_ - 51-54: p. 172 - - _Purg. xxv:_ - 25 _sqq._: p. 115 - - _Purg. xxvi:_ - 13: p. 97 - - _Purg. xxvii:_ - 22 _sq._: p. 112 - 25: p. 167 - 35 _sq._: p. 112 - 46: p. 114 - 88 _sqq._: p. 107 - 112: p. 108 - 134: p. 122 - 139 _sqq._: pp. 116, 117 - 140, 142: p. 92 - 142: pp. 24, 96 - - _Purg. xxviii:_ - 25 _sqq._: p. 122 - 36: p. 122 - 41 _sq._: p. 122 - 94: p. 122 - 139: p. 61 - 145: p. 62 - - _Purg. xxx:_ - 41 _sq._: p. 149 - 42: p. 148 - 49: p. 110 - - _PARADISO i:_ - 1 _sqq._: p. 75 - 6-8: p. 2 - 13 _sqq._: p. 78 - 56 _sq._: p. 122 - 100: p. 110 - 103 _sqq._: p. 74 - - _Par. iii:_ - 65: p. 124 - 70 _sqq._: p. 124 - 70-72, 75: p. 7 - 82-85: p. 124 - - _Par. v:_ - 19-24: p. 32 - - _Par. vi:_ p. 77 - 34-96: p. 29 - 103 _sq._: p. 29 - 121 _sq._: p. 39 - - _Par. ix:_ - 27: p. 21 - - _Par. x:_ - 136-8: p. 134 - - _Par. xi:_ - 106: p. 140 - 106-108: p. 149 - 107 _sq._: p. 147 - - _Par. xiv:_ - 125: p. 151 - - _Par. xvii:_ - 55: p. 3 - - _Par. xx:_ - 102: p. 122 - - _Par. xxi:_ - 130 _sqq._: p. 59 - 134: p. 60 - - _Par. xxii:_ - 49: p. 146 - 151: p. 37 - - _Par. xxiii:_ - 22: p. 62 - 71 _sq._: p. 123 - - _Par. xxiv:_ - 52-54: p. 3 - 57: p. 3 - - _Par. xxv:_ - 1, 2: p. x - 2: p. 135 - 3: pp. 80, 90 - 5: p. 19 - - _Par. xxvi:_ - 64-66: p. 123 - - _Par. xxvii:_ - 4: p. 62 - 83: p. 113 - - _Par. xxviii:_ - 133-135: p. 62 - - _Par. xxix:_ - 34: _sqq._: p. 60 - 110: p. 60 - - _Par. xxx:_ - 133 _sqq._: p. 36 - 135-137: p. 17 - - _Par. xxxi:_ - 85: p. 96 - 85-89: p. 24 - 97: p. 123 - - _Par. xxxii:_ - 39: p. 123 - - _Par. xxxiii:_ - 58 _sqq._: p. 107 - 145: pp. 7, 40 - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dante Alighieri, Apostle of Freedom, by -Lonsdale Ragg - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANTE ALIGHIERI, APOSTLE OF FREEDOM *** - -***** This file should be named 63011-0.txt or 63011-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Dante Alighieri, Apostle of Freedom - War-time and Peace-time Essays - -Author: Lonsdale Ragg - -Release Date: August 22, 2020 [EBook #63011] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANTE ALIGHIERI, APOSTLE OF FREEDOM *** - - - - -Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i"></a>[i]</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">DANTE ALIGHIERI</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a>[ii]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="center larger"><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></p> - -<div class="ad"> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">The Second Book of Samuel</span>: Rivingtons, 1898. -(‘<cite>The Books of the Bible.</cite>’)</p> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">Christian Evidences</span>: Rivingtons, 1900; 2nd Edn. -(4th Impression) 1913. (‘<cite>Oxford Church Textbooks.</cite>’)</p> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">Aspects of the Atonement</span>: Rivingtons, 1904.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">Christ and Our Ideals</span>: Rivingtons, 1906.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">Dante and his Italy</span>: Methuen, 1907.</p> - -<p class="hanging">¹<span class="smcap">The Mohammedan Gospel of Barnabas</span>: Clarendon -Press, 1907.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">The Church of the Apostles</span>: Rivingtons, 1909. -(‘<cite>The Church Universal.</cite>’)</p> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">The Book of Books</span>: Edward Arnold, 1910.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">Memoir of Charles Edward Wickham</span>: Edward -Arnold, 1911.</p> - -<p class="hanging">¹<span class="smcap">Things Seen in Venice</span>: Seeley, 1913.</p> - -<p class="hanging">¹<span class="smcap">Venice</span>: A. and C. Black, 1914.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">The Gospel according to St. Luke</span>: Methuen, 1922. -(<cite>Westminster Commentaries.</cite>)</p> - -</div> - -<p class="center">¹ In collaboration with Mrs. Lonsdale Ragg.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a>[iii]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="500" height="525" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">INAUGURATION OF DANTE’S STATUE, FLORENCE, 1865.</p> -<p class="caption">(See pp. <a href="#Page_ix">IX.</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a> and <a href="#Page_165">165</a>)</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv"></a>[iv]</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">DANTE ALIGHIERI<br /> -<span class="smaller">APOSTLE OF FREEDOM</span></p> - -<p class="center">War-Time and Peace-Time Essays</p> - -<p class="titlepage">By<br /> -LONSDALE RAGG, B.D.<br /> -<span class="smcap smaller">Christ Church, Oxford<br /> -Prebendary of Lincoln, Member of the Società Dantesca Italiana</span></p> - -<p class="center smaller"><i>Author of “Dante and His Italy.”</i></p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">LONDON</span><br /> -ARTHUR H. STOCKWELL<br /> -<span class="smaller">29 LUDGATE HILL, E.C. 4</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[v]</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WHITFELD & NEWMAN, LTD., DEVONPORT</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[vi]</span></p> - -<p class="dedication"><span class="smaller">DEDICATED BY PERMISSION<br /> -TO THE</span><br /> -DOTTORESSA MARIA MONTESSORI<br /> -<span class="smaller">A TRUE APOSTLE OF FREEDOM<br /> -IN THE<br /> -EDUCATIONAL SPHERE</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Tu m’ hai di servo tratto a libertate.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>Par.</cite> xxxi. 85.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2> - -</div> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td class="tdr smaller">CHAP.</td> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td><span class="smcap">Author’s Preface</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#AUTHORS_PREFACE">ix</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td><span class="smcap">Prologue: Dante, Apostle of Love</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PROLOGUE">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Dante and the Redemption of Italy</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#I">10</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Dante and Political Liberty</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#II">24</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Wit and Humour in Dante</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#III">41</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">IV.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Dante and Mediaeval Thought</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IV">72</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">V.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Dante and Educational Principles</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#V">83</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VI.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Dante and Islam</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VI">118</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VII.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Dante and the Casentino</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VII">137</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">VIII.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Last Crusade</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VIII">151</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td><span class="smcap">Appendix I—Antonio Maschio and the Celebration of 1865</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_I">165</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td><span class="smcap">Appendix II—Dante and the Pope</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_II">168</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td><span class="smcap">Appendix III—Dante the Poet</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX_III">171</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td><span class="smcap">Index</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INDEX">175</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a>[viii]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[ix]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="AUTHORS_PREFACE">AUTHOR’S PREFACE</h2> - -</div> - -<p>Dante, like Shakespere, speaks to every age, and has -a word for every crisis in the life of men and nations. -Perhaps at no time since he passed into the other world -has his spirit been so potent as in these last years, when -his Italy has been putting the last touches to the redemption -of that territory whose boundaries he sketched in -famous phrase.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p>Scarce were his ashes cold, ere Boccaccio began to -expound, from the professorial chair founded by a repentant -Florence, the mysteries of his great Poem. Scarcely -had Italy awaked from her long sleep of slavery to the -foreigner ere she erected in Florence, in the very year -in which it became temporary capital of a free nation,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> -a statue of the prophet of Italian liberty and unity.</p> - -<p>Some forty-three years later, on the anniversary of -the Poet’s death, September 14th, 1908, Ravenna was -<i lang="fr">en fête</i> with a gathering in which the “Unredeemed” -Brethren from Pola, Fiume, Trieste, and the Trentino -mingled their vows and gifts with those of the City that -was his last refuge and the City that bore him and cast -him out. All along, and especially in the crises of her -fate, his great spirit has brooded over the Italy he loved,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[x]</span> -the Italy to whom he bequeathed the splendid instrument -of a classical language. To-day, perchance he “sees of -the travail of his soul, and is satisfied.”</p> - -<p>His many-sided genius reveals new splendours when -viewed from fresh angles; and the following Essays, -which make no claim to special learning or originality, -attempt to approach him from different sides, and so to -bring out varied aspects of his greatness. But they all, or -nearly all, have one point in common: each sets him forth -as an Apostle of Liberty.</p> - -<p>Freedom political, intellectual, spiritual—all these -ideals are wrought into the “Sacred poem to which -Heaven and Earth have set their hand,”<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> and that Poem -enshrines, as we have endeavoured to shew, principles of -liberty in the Educational Sphere,<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> which our present age -is apt to hug to itself as its own discovery. The Essays, -in their present form, are all coloured by the atmosphere -of the world’s great fight for freedom. From some of -them, written at the very height of the conflict, a few of -the fiercer touches have been removed as “out of tune” -in these critical years of would-be reconciliation and reconstruction, -when old rancours must perforce be exorcised -if we would save civilisation from its post-War perils. If -any undue traces of bitterness remain, may Dante shelter -them under the ample cloak of his righteous indignation. -He, too, spoke hotly—of a Florence and of an Italy whose -highest good was ever in his heart.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi"></a>[xi]</span></p> - -<p>The problems and ideals of the Great War are still with -us in a new shape, and man’s greatest need is individual -and corporate “freedom of soul.” If these Essays be -recognised as reflecting to any extent Dante’s great mind -on such problems and ideals, the Author will be more than -satisfied.</p> - -<p>Two of these Essays had been published some years -ago in the <cite>Modern Language Review</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and have been -slightly retouched: four appeared during the course of the -War, in a somewhat briefer form, in the <cite>Anglo-Italian -Review</cite><a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>; while the Prologue, product of the so-called -days of Peace, was published in the <cite>Guardian</cite> of August -19th, 1921. To the Editors and Publishers concerned the -writer hereby accords his acknowledgements and thanks; -as also to his friend, Professor Cesare Foligno,<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> for a -kindly glance at the MS., and for the suggestion that the -critical text of 1921 should be cited.<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Two of the Essays -now see the light for the first time.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> The longer of these, -“Dante and Educational Principles,” a paper delivered -at University College, London, in the Sexcentenary Series -of lectures last year, may perhaps, with the reprinted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xii"></a>[xii]</span> -articles on “Wit and Humour in Dante,” and “Dante -and Islam,” claim, in a manner, to break new ground. -But all alike are humbly commended to the patient -indulgence of the Dante-reading public.</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Lonsdale Ragg.</span></p> - -<p><i>Holy Cross Day</i>, 1921.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p> - -<h1>DANTE ALIGHIERI</h1> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PROLOGUE">PROLOGUE<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE, APOSTLE OF LOVE</span></h2> - -</div> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p><i>But we all with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the -glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, -from glory to glory.</i>—2 Cor. iii. 18.</p> - -</div> - -<p>These words form the sequel of to-day’s Epistle<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> in -which the temporary reflection of the Shekinah in Moses’s -face is contrasted with the permanent and complete -illumination of the Spirit. They form the climax of a -passage which, full of mystery and splendour, leads us -up to those things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard—to -that beatific Vision prepared for God’s unfeigned lovers, -who shall shine with His own likeness because and when -they “see Him as He is.”</p> - -<p>A month from to-day—on the day of the Holy Cross—we -shall be celebrating the six hundredth “birthday” -into the world beyond of the man whose eagle vision -pierced, dazzled but unafraid, into the blazing glory of -Paradise—Dante, the pilgrim of the world to come. St. -Paul’s inspired and inspiring words bring back to mind -the swift upward movement of Dante’s <cite>Paradiso</cite>, where -the spirit mounts from sphere to sphere, from glory to -glory, impelled and wafted by the sheer force of Love, -till at last, in face of the Triune blessedness, it is plunged<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span> -into an ineffable joy and wonder—ineffable because, as -he says, “as it draweth nigh to its ideal, the object of -its longing, our intellect sinketh so deep that memory -cannot go back upon the track”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Perchè, appressando sè al suo disire</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che dietro la memoria non può ire.<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The glory of which we speak—which makes the <cite>Paradiso</cite> -a marvel of dazzling, but, so to speak, graduated -splendour—is the glory of Love, Divine and human; and -it is of Dante, the Apostle of Love, that I would speak to -you to-day. In this sexcentenary year all the civilised -world is acclaiming him, and it is well that our Christian -Churches should echo thanksgiving to Almighty God for -this most Christian poet, and for the magnificent bequest -that he left, not only to Italian literature, but to the -world. The Pope in his encyclical last spring<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> bore -eloquent testimony to Dante’s loyalty to the Christian -heritage, and to the power by which, as a teacher of the -Faith, “he being dead, yet speaketh.”</p> - -<p>He speaks, indeed, with a voice from six hundred years -ago, yet not in the remote language of one nurtured in -leisure, ease, and comfort, far from the annoyances and -disappointments, the worries and anxieties and ugly -problems of the rough-and-tumble world we know. On -the contrary, the world in which Dante prayed and strove -and studied and dreamed and wrote-the world from -which comes down to us the serene glory of his Paradise -of Love—was astonishingly like our own on its uglier side: -a world of religious and political unrest, of clashing -interests and ideals, of faction, violence, and cruelty, of -individual and corporate predatory self-assertion; a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span> -world in which the poet himself, called to “abandon all -that man holds most dear”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Ogni cosa diletta</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Più caramente<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>—</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">wrought out his great work as a nameless wanderer, -and died in bitter exile. So we may listen to him as to one -who has a genuine message for us.</p> - -<h3>THE POET OF LOVE</h3> - -<p>Amid all that has been said and written this year about -the author of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>, there is one note that -has rarely, if at all, been struck; yet it is surely, in some -sense, the keynote of all his singing. Dante is, from the -first and to the last, the poet of Love. “I am one,” he -says, “who, when Love breathes in me, take note, and -that which he dictates within I express”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">I’ mi son un che quando</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ch’ e’ ditta dentro vo significando.<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">His first book—the <cite>Vita Nuova</cite>—testifies to this. It -represents a new movement in love-poetry.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> The songs of -the Troubadours had been, in their earlier forms, with all -their strange beauty, frankly sensual and immoral; and -when, after the religious movement of the Albigensian -Crusade, a greater strictness had perforce been introduced, -they had lost their first warmth and glow and naturalness. -The “sweet new style”—<i lang="it">Dolce Stil nuovo</i><a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>—of Dante and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span> -his circle combined the two requisites of sincere purity and -glowing life. The story of the <cite>Vita Nuova</cite> is the story of -the precocious passion of a boy of nearly ten years old -for a little girl of nine. It passes through its phase of -refined sensuousness and self-absorption, but it emerges -as a pure mystic love that leads ultimately up to the very -Throne of God.</p> - -<p>In the vision with which the book closes—the vision of -his Beatrice after God has called her to Himself—lies -the germ of the greatest poem of Christendom; the poem -which, just because it sings the story of man’s freewill in -contact with God’s redeeming grace, has as its supreme -and final theme—Love. We are familiar, no doubt, with -the main lines of Dante’s vision of the world beyond—of -the three kingdoms as he conceived them, of hell, purgatory, -and heaven. But I will ask you to be patient if -I attempt to sketch for you something of the great contours -of each, that we may see together how, for this love-poet, -eternal Love dominates and shapes the universe.</p> - -<p>His world beyond is conceived in terms partly belonging -to the age in which he lived, with its scholastic theology -and its Ptolemaic cosmography, partly in terms of the -originality of his own genius. Its details and its hard outlines -may be largely obsolete; but its lessons are true and -effective. It is because of its essential Christianity that -Dante’s poetry is so much alive, is more “modern,” as -the Papal Encyclical put it, than much actually contemporary -poetry that is conceived in the spirit of paganism. -Dante, for his soul’s health—and for the benefit of untold -generations—must needs pass through all three kingdoms -of the world to come, guided by Virgil, who represents -human reason. Descending down and down into the very -bowels of the earth he sees the doom of unrepented sin. -Then, after a wearying subterranean climb from earth’s -centre to the antipodes, he emerges at the foot of the lofty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span> -terraced mountain where repentant souls are cleansed and -brought back to their primal innocence. At the top of -this mountain he finds himself in the earthly paradise, and -meets Beatrice, the glorified “lady of his mind,” who now -represents at once Revelation and Grace; sees wondrous -things, submits to mystic rites, and finally is drawn up -side by side with her, by the motive power of Love, from -sphere to sphere, up to the Throne of God, where the -redeemed worship Him for ever in the form of a mystic -white rose. That Love is the motive power in Paradise is -obvious. It is the radiant beauty of Beatrice, ever more -dazzling as they mount higher, that lifts him up, and the -spirits he meets glow one and all with the fire of Divine -charity. It is not easy, perhaps, to detect the influence of -Love in the dark abyss of the <cite>Inferno</cite>, or in the stern, long -discipline of the Mount of Purgation.</p> - -<p>But love is written even across the portal of Hell. -“Abandon hope all ye that enter here” we all know as -its inscription; but that is but the last line of a nine-line -title, and part of that title runs thus—“Divine Power -made me, and Highest Wisdom, and Primal Love”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Fecemi la divina potestate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">La somma sapienza e ’l primo amore.<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">This means, of course, the Blessed Trinity, but the last -word about the Blessed Trinity is—Love. Love can be -stern, and outraged love can draw down, as it were, by -the law of being rather than by such vengeful wrath as we -humanly attribute to the Most High, an unimaginable -ruin and loss upon the outrager. In the stern, grim, cruel, -sometimes grotesquely revolting picture Dante draws of -the eternal future sinners can deliberately make for themselves, -we see but the fruits of Love offered and rejected—the -inevitable outcome of their own choice.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span></p> - -<p>When we enter the second kingdom, and begin to -climb the mount which forms the pedestal to Eden, the -home of man’s innocency, the breath of Love is stronger -and its radiance more clear. It reveals itself in the changing -beauty of sky and landscape, in the glories of star-light, -dawn and sunset and high noon, in the glad brilliance of -wild-flowers, in the melody and harmony of music, but, -not least, in the very structure and arrangement of Purgatory. -Seven terraces ring the mountain round—one -above another—separated by rugged cliffs and sheer -precipices which Dante needs all his cragsmanship to -overcome. And on each terrace one of the seven deadly -sins is purged—Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, -Gluttony, Lust. These are arranged on a scheme which -brings into relief a great principle—that all our actions, -good or evil, are the fruits of Love—right love or wrong—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Esser convene</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Amor sementa in voi d’ogni virute</div> - <div class="verse indent0">E d’ ogne operazion che merta pene.<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">These sins are all results of Love—excessive or defective, -or aimed at the wrong object; and the purgatorial -discipline is just the action of the educative Love of God -upon willing penitents—straightening, developing, governing, -and directing the disordered love that has so marred -and stunted the beauty of their souls. The discipline and -the humiliation are seen for what they are, and the Divine -Love that speaks through them finds a ready and prompt -response from souls “happy in the fire,” because of the -hope of what it can do for them.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">Contenti</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nel fuoco, perchè speran di venire</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quando che sia a le beate genti.<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Even as Christ ‘for the joy set before Him endured the Cross,’</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So they find in their ‘pain’ their ‘solace.’<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span></p> - -<p>When we pass into the third kingdom, up and up -through sphere after sphere of the heavens, each more -radiant with the light of Love, we feel ourselves “reflecting, -as a mirror, the glory of the Lord, transformed into -the same image from glory to glory.” “One star,” -indeed, “differeth from another star in glory.” There is -higher and lower in the abode of bliss, in the “many -mansions” of the Father’s House. Dante questions one -whom he meets in the lower sphere—Piccarda—on earth -a playmate of his childhood. “Are you happy? Are you -content? Have you no wish to be placed higher still?” -Her answer enunciates the basal principle of heaven—“Brother, -the quality of our love stilleth our will and -maketh us long only for what we have, and giveth us no -other thirst.... In His Will is our peace”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Frate, la nostra volontà quieta</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Virtù di carità, che fa volerne</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sol quel ch’ avemo, e d’ altro non ci’asseta.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace.<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Here Love rules imperially, and the image of God’s Will is -stamped in glory on the souls of those who, “with unveiled -face,” are granted to feast upon the vision of His glory. -Pure in heart, their whole being is full of light. And so, -too, the poet, when at last he looked upon God, found his -own will and desire moving in perfect harmony with that -“Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>So a great lover of Dante, the late Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, -summoned up the teaching of the <cite>Paradiso</cite>: -“Wouldst thou enter into God’s Kingdom, O pilgrim of -earth? then love. Wouldst thou share the sweet activities -of its citizens? then love. Wouldst thou know Him who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span> -rules over them and all? then love. For love opens the -Kingdom of Heaven, and love makes the joyousness of -its happy services, and none can know the heart of God -save through love; for God is love.”<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p> - -<p>Is it not meet that we should thank God this year for -the sublime poet who has drawn for us so splendid a -picture of the glory of Love “penetrating the whole -universe”; who has shown us in Love the one motive -force in the world, the one constructive principle? Was -there ever a time when the world needed this teaching -more than it does to-day? A true doctrine, if ever there -was one. If God is Love, then Love is the only principle -of life. “He that abideth in love, abideth in God, and -God abideth in him.”<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Real love—not selfish, sensual -passion, not sentimental sweetness, not unwise and -poisonous indulgence; but love, wise, strong, straight, -and pure, like the love of God; love patient, self-forgetful, -self-giving, like the love of Jesus Christ; love illuminating, -invigorating, recreative, like that of the Holy Ghost. If -we could but “reflect” in life and character the “glory” -of the Lord!... There is no glory but love.</p> - -<p>We must descend from the ethereal splendour of -Dante’s <cite>Paradiso</cite> into the hard realities of workaday life, -even as Peter, John, and James came down from the -Mount of Transfiguration to face the shouting, wrangling -crowd and the convulsions of the epileptic boy. But -though the radiance seems to fade, the glory is still with -us, for it is the unfailing Love of Him Who promised to -be with us “all the days.” Love, then, accompanied them -down from the height, unlocked the prison house of -afflicted souls, and solved the problems of sin-stricken -humanity. And Love, and Love alone, can do the same -to-day.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span></p> - -<p>Let us face our bewildering problems with confidence, -knowing that the secret of life is ours. Love, the only -constructive principle, the only ultimately victorious -power. Our enemies in the late war sounded their own -doom when they promulgated a gospel of hate. Hate can -never build up, only destroy. Alas! they sowed the seeds -of hatred outside the sphere where armies clash, and the -devil’s doctrine of class-hatred has been disseminated far -and wide. If only the eyes of those concerned might be -opened to see the mad futility of hate! There is one force -at work in the world that can teach this, that can heal -the bleeding wounds of society, untie the knots of the -industrial and social and international tangle—the force -of Christian Love—yours and mine—a love like that of -Him Who came not to be served, but to serve and to -give His life as ransom for many; a love that brought -Him to die for a world yet steeped in rebellion and sin, -and moved Him to lay upon His disciples the injunction -“Bless them that curse you.” No merely human organisation -for philanthropic succour or for peace; not even a -League of Nations, even though, thank God, its power and -capacity at last be recognised with a gift of solemn -responsibility; nothing but the steady action of that -“love of God” which His grace sheds into Christian -hearts, leavening and inspiring such movements, such -organisations, can hope for final success. But Love, after -all, sits enthroned above the water floods, and abideth -king for ever. There is no limit to our opportunity for -blessing this poor world alike by prayer and by action—blessing -our own immediate circle, our civic and Church -life, blessing our country, our Empire, and the world’s -fellowship of Nations—if but our wills are moving in -one motion with His—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="I"><span class="smcap">Chapter I</span><br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE AND THE REDEMPTION OF ITALY</span></h2> - -</div> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sol nel tuo verbo è per noi la luce, o Rivelatore,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sol nel tuo canto è per noi la forza, o Liberatore,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sol nella tua melodia è la molt’ anni lagrimata pace, o Consolatore.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>D’ Annunzio.</cite></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>La severa immagine del poeta governa tuttavia -i fati delle generazioni d’ Italia.—<cite>Mazzini.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<p>Dante stands forth as the Apostle of Freedom in many -spheres—that Freedom for which all the world is now -longing: freedom for unhindered self-development of -men and nations, freedom of spirit—the true atmosphere -of all education. The <cite>Monarchia</cite>, the Epistles, and, most -of all, the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>—that “mystical epos of -Man’s Free Will”—bear witness to the truth of the word -which Virgil speaks of him at the foot of the Mount of -Purgation—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Libertà va cercando ...</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This all-pervading spirit of his teaching might perhaps -of itself have been sufficient to make his name an inspiration -to the heroes and martyrs who struggled for Italy’s -liberation in the nineteenth century; but it may be worth -while to draw attention to certain aspects of his work, -which give him a more definite and specific claim to be the -Father of Free Italy.</p> - -<p>The other day I turned up, after many years of neglect, -Karl Witte’s Essay on Dante and United Italy. For this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span> -suspicious intercourse with “enemy alien literature” I -can plead two extenuating circumstances: first, the -absorbing nature of the topic at this moment, and secondly -that I approached Witte in an English translation. Another -point which might count in my favour is the fact that this -particular Essay was written before 1870. That certainly -lends to it a special interest; and the interest is rather -enhanced than otherwise by the circumstance that Witte -prefixed a Prefatory note and added a peroration in -1878.</p> - -<p>Karl Witte, who was born in 1800 and died in 1883, -represents the old vigorous and admirable type of German -scholarship which was in very truth “Stupor Mundi”: -a blend of genius and conscientious painstaking on the -reputation of which the Prussianised Kultur of to-day -bases a claim to deference which Europe will more and -more hesitate to accord.</p> - -<p>How far, for instance, Germany has fallen from her -former position as regards Dante Scholarship may be -gauged from E. Benvenuti’s slashing article in the -<cite>Bullettino della Società dantesca italiana</cite> of June, 1914, of -which a summary appeared in the <cite>Times</cite> Literary Supplement -on March 4th. The article is the first instalment of a -review of Dante studies in Germany for the years 1908-1913. -It is a record, as the <cite>Times</cite> reviewer remarks, of -“monumental ignorance, inaccuracy, arrogance, bad -taste, and sheer stupidity ... hailed with salvoes of -approbation by the majority of German critics.”</p> - -<p>But Karl Witte is a man of other build than these -modern Pan-Germanisers who are patriotic enough to -attribute to Dante pure German ancestry, and too patriotic -by far to soil their hands with the recent works of sound -Italian critics, or their minds with the elements of Italian -grammar and idiom.</p> - -<p>Karl Witte, on the contrary—though he began life as an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span> -Infant Prodigy, matriculating at Leipsic when only nine -and a half years old, and reading his Doctor’s thesis before -he was fourteen—won recognition in Italy and England as -well as in Germany as a real force in Dante scholarship: -a great pioneer, who made his mistakes, as all pioneers will, -but has won the gratitude of all subsequent Dantists.</p> - -<p>In the Essay of which I have spoken, written and delivered -as a lecture in 1861, Witte notes the fact and investigates -the grounds of the constant association of -Dante’s name with the patriotic aspirations of Young -Italy. “It is a fact,” he says, “that, during the last half -century, a great number of those who aimed at transforming -Italy—and not only men of such moderation as Cesare -Balbo, Gino Capponi, or Carlo Troya, but also the democratic -revolutionaries who would take the world by storm—have -hung, and still hang, upon Dante’s <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>, -with passionate enthusiasm. Ugo Foscolo, who preferred -poverty and exile to place and honour under the rule of -Austria, devoted the last years of his life exclusively to a -great work on the poem; and after Foscolo’s death, this -new edition of the ‘Prophecy of Italy’s Future,’ as he called -the Comedy, was published by no other than Giuseppe -Mazzini himself....” If the Italian of the Sixties “were -asked whence his countrymen drew their inspiration, he -would scarcely hesitate,” says Witte, “to name the greatest -poet of his fatherland.” And again, “the fact that in -the days of foreign oppression patriots recognised each -other by their love of the immortal poet, and greeted one -another, as by a secret password, with the inspiring lines of -the Divine Poem, is a symbol of the fact that the roots of -this temper of mind”—the temper of national “self-reliance -and self-renouncing enthusiasm”—“are to be -sought in Dante.”</p> - -<p>There are three passions, according to Witte, which are -(rightly or wrongly) traced back to Dante: (1) a glowing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span> -love for Italy, (2) a hatred of the foreign, and above all of -the Teuton yoke, and (3) a hatred of the temporal power -of the Pope.</p> - -<p>In the first case—and this is the point that more immediately -concerns us—Witte holds that the contention is -justified. “In hope, in sorrow, in reproof, we see Dante -filled,” he says, “with the same glowing love for the -Fatherland of Italy, a love which he is the first to put into -words.”</p> - -<p>Before Dante, at any rate, Italy was, in Metternich’s -famous phrase, “nothing but a geographical expression.” -The Roman poets of the Empire praise her scenery, but -their devotion as patriots is to Rome itself. When the -Empire broke up, Italy lost her one bond of superficial -cohesion, though a shadowy unity emerged now and again -under Visigothic and Longobardic domination, and the -pressure now of Gothic Arianism, now of Byzantine Iconoclasm, -drew Italy’s various groups in self defence closer to -Papal Rome.</p> - -<p>The phenomenon of an apparently independent and -united “Kingdom of Italy” (888-961) after the fall of the -House of Charlemagne, is, from this point of view, as -illusory as those of Odoacer and Theodoric, effecting little -or nothing towards the evolution of a national spirit or a -national self-consciousness. Dante is, it would seem, the -first to see Italy with a patriot’s eyes, as being, and as -having been for countless ages, a fatherland for whom one -might sing—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">She is “that lowlying Italy” on whose behalf the heroes -and heroines of the <cite>Aeneid</cite> shed their blood so freely:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">... Quell’ umile Italia....</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Per cui morì la vergine Cammilla,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Eurialo, e Turno, e Niso di ferute.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">He loves her passionately, torn as she is by faction, her own -worst enemy; and he calls on the representative of the -Holy Roman Empire to control her madness and to bring -her peace.</p> - -<p>The close association of Italian aspiration with the -name of Dante which Witte observed in 1861, came forcibly -under my own notice nearly fifty years later, when I made -a pilgrimage to Ravenna to take part in the “Feste -dantesche,” on September 13th, 1908. Isidoro del Lungo, -perhaps the greatest of Italy’s modern Dantists, was to -inaugurate the opening of a special Dante wing in the -Ravenna library, and to dedicate a beautiful silver lamp—an -expiatory offering from the Commune of Florence—to -adorn his tomb.</p> - -<p>The occasion was nominally a Dantist celebration; -but it might with equal truth have been described -as an “Irredentist Orgy.” For one of the great -features of the festival was the arrival of a pilgrim-ship, -flying the Italian tricolour, from Trieste, bearing some -hundreds of Italian-speaking devotees from “Italia Irredenta”—the -“unredeemed” cities which remained under -Austrian rule when the rest of Italy threw off the yoke -of the foreigner—Trieste itself, and Pola, and Fiume. -The people of Ravenna and the visitors to the Festival, -spurred on by eloquent “posters” exhibited in the streets -at the instance of clubs and societies of every description, -and by the proclamation of the Municipality itself, to give -the “Fratelli irredenti” a fraternal welcome, poured out -towards the quay in their thousands, and escorted the -pilgrims through the streets with flags flying and bands -playing patriotic airs. Conspicuous in the procession were -half a dozen Garibaldini, veterans of the War of Liberation, -clad in their red shirts; and emotion rose to a high point -when the monument was reached which commemorates -those who fell in the struggle for a free and united Italy.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span> -Laughter, tears, embraces and echoing Evvivas proclaimed -the arrival of the <i lang="fr">cortège</i> at the Municipal Buildings.... It -was a scene which one will never forget, as the Italians -from across the water flung themselves upon their fellow-disciples -of Dante, with the romping and vociferous enthusiasm -of children just let out of school!</p> - -<p>There were, so far as one could judge, from the floods of -printed and of spoken eloquence which marked that day, -two prominent thoughts in people’s minds: two prominent -points of contact and association between the thought of -the Divino Poeta and the aspirations of Italian patriotism. -The first of these is more general, the second more specific. -In general, Dante is rightly held to be the true Father of -the Italian language and literature—that “bond which -unites us to our native place.” “Love for our native -tongue,” says Witte—and he has in mind a passage of -Dante’s <cite>Convivio</cite>—“is the expression of our love of our -native land.” For Dante Italy is—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Il bel paese dove il <em>Si</em> suona.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“The beauteous land where <em>si</em> is uttered”; and to -that land the work of his mind and of his pen lent an added -beauty, and wove a spell which should draw together all -her scattered elements in the enthusiasm of a common -speech and a common literary heritage. That is Dante’s -first claim to supply the inspiration of a “United -Italy.”</p> - -<p>The second claim is, as we have said, more specific. -It is claimed for him that he described, as it were prophetically, -the future boundaries of Italy.</p> - -<p>In the ninth Canto of the <cite>Inferno</cite> (113-114) he includes -the whole of the Istrian peninsula in Italy, describing the -broad inlet to the east of it—the bay which stretches northward -up to Fiume—as “The Quarnaro which shuts in -Italy and bathes her boundaries”—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sì come a Pola presso del Carnaro,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Again, in his words about the Lago di Garda in the Twentieth -Canto of the <cite>Inferno</cite> (61-63)—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Suso in Italia bella giace un laco</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A piè dell’ alpe che serra Lamagna</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sovra Tiralli, ch’ ha nome Benaco.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“Up in fair Italy there lies a lake afoot the Alp that -bars out Germany above Tyrol, that bears the name -Benaco:” he seems to include not only the whole of Lake -Garda but the Trentino too, “barring out Germany” -beyond the great watershed.</p> - -<p>At Ravenna, in 1908, one might have been led to suppose -that these two passages summed up the main interest -of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>; but though the utterances are, -as a matter of fact incidental, they do point to the fact -that the Italy which Dante so passionately loved, and -which consciously or unconsciously he did so much to -bring into being, was a definite “geographical expression” -if it was also something more.</p> - -<p>If with Witte we go on to enquire how far Young Italy -is justified in fathering upon Dante the passion of “hatred -of the foreign, and above all of the Teuton yoke,” the question -is at once confused by the fact that in Dante’s day -the authority and prestige of that Holy Roman Empire, -of which the Poet was so convinced and so enthusiastic -an advocate, was associated with a succession of German -princes. Teutons of the Swabian House of Hohenstaufen, -albeit Italian born, were “the illustrious heroes Frederic -the Caesar and his well-begotten Manfred” whom in the -<cite>De Vulgari Eloquentia</cite> (I. xii. 20; Bemp. p. 330) he extols -for their nurture, in the Sicilian Court, of the beginnings of -Italian vernacular poetry; Teutons the Rudolf and Albert -of Hapsburg, to whom the poet of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite> looks<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span> -in vain for the liberation of Italy from its overwhelming -ills; Teuton also Henry of Luxemburg, on whom his -hopes were finally fixed, the “Alto Arrigo” of the -<cite>Paradiso</cite>—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">... Ch’ a drizzare Italia</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Verrà in prima ch’ ella sia disposta,</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">for whom he sees a vacant throne prepared in the White -Rose of heaven.<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p> - -<p>These heroes are not for him, however, Germans, -<i lang="it">Tedeschi</i>, but Roman Caesars; and had the sceptre of -Empire chanced, then, as afterwards, to have been wielded -by other hands, we cannot doubt that a non-Teutonic line -of monarchs would have drawn from him a like reverence, -a like expectation and a like passionate appeal. Similarly, -had the House of Swabia been dissociated from the Roman -Imperial tradition and played a <i lang="fr">rôle</i> of overweening and -unscrupulous self-aggrandisement like that actually played -by Philippe le Bel, Hugh Capet’s words in the fifth Cornice -of <cite>Purgatory</cite>—so well applied by a recent writer in the -<cite>Times</cite> to the Hohenzollern—would have been put into the -mouth of an ancestor of the two Frederics, and applied to -the House of Hohenstaufen. “I was the root,” he says, -“of the evil plant whose shadow blights the whole land -of Christendom”—<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Io fui radice de la mala pianta,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che la terra cristiana tutta aduggia.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>There is indeed one passage at least where Dante mentions -the German people in a non-political context (<cite>Inf.</cite> -xvii. 21), and designates them from the point of view of -their national or racial habits. <i lang="it">Tedeschi lurchi</i>—“Guzzling -Germans”—he calls them. How one’s heart goes out to -him, as one recalls memories of sojourns in Swiss hotels!<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span> -Had poor Dante like experiences or worse to put up with -in the days of his wanderings?</p> - -<p>Witte, who spontaneously brings forward this word of -insight into national character, is delightfully frank about -it. “Only in one place,” he says, “does he accuse us of a -weakness which we would fain repudiate, but it has been -laid to the charge of Germany down even to our own day, -on so many hands, that we cannot escape the fear that our -forefathers at least must have given grounds for the -accusation.” ...</p> - -<p>This is a poor note on which to end our study of Witte. -Yet it is one on which recent events have thrown a portentous -illumination. The tendency which we are combating -together, Italians and English, with the haughty -spirit of Dante on our side, is one which begins in grossness -of bodily appetite, and goes all lengths of cruel and brutalising -bestiality.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It is a relief to turn one’s back on this sordid atmosphere -and launch out once more into the “better waters”<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> of -Italian Patriotism.</p> - -<p>I have by me a book which corroborates very strongly—for -the sixties at least—Witte’s contention that Young -Italy consciously draws her patriotic inspiration from -Dante. Some few years ago I picked up in Venice a bound -copy of the <cite>Giornale del Centenario di Dante Allighieri</cite>, of -which the first number was published in Florence on -February 10th, 1864, and the 48th on May 31st, 1865. -There should by rights have been two more numbers, -published after an interval, with Index and Frontispiece. -Whether these ever appeared in fact, I have not been able -to discover. My copy concludes with Number 48, which -describes the Festival, to which the year’s publication was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span> -planned to lead up—the <i lang="it">Feste Dantesche</i> held in Piazza -Sta Croce, in May, 1865, the six hundredth anniversary -of the Poet’s birth. In that year Florence became the -temporary capital of an Italy free and united, but still -barred out from Rome by French bayonets; and she -signalised the occasion by welcoming back in spirit her -exiled Son to the “Bello ovile,” where as a lamb he had -slept,<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> when the <i lang="it">Re Galantuomo</i> himself unveiled the -Poet’s statue in the Piazza. A quaint woodcut of the ceremony -adorns the volume.<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p> - -<p>The successive numbers of this <cite>Giornale</cite>, with their -varied contributions to the study and appreciation of the -Poet—contributions drawn from every part of the -Peninsula—bear eloquent testimony to the widespread -feeling among the Italian patriots of that epoch, that -Dante was rightly to be acclaimed <i lang="la">Pater Patriae</i>.</p> - -<p>The articles are of all sorts, from chronological and -etymological notes to formal and discursive interpretations -and illustrations of Dante’s writings and his life, and studies -of contemporary political and social problems in the -light of his dicta. They would probably repay a fuller -investigation than the present writer has had opportunity -to apply to them. We will take one or two typical utterances -to indicate something of the general tone of the -contributors.</p> - -<p>“Dante was the first among his contemporaries,” -says Prof. A. Zoncada,<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> “to rise to the conception of a -United Italy”—an Italy united in powers, in -purpose, in language, and that in spite of the manifold -disuniting influences at work in his day. “Fatto è che<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span> -Dante primo ne’ suoi tempi seppe levarsi al concetto -d’un Italia unita e concorde d’ intenti, di forze, di favella: -primo abbraciò nel suo amore tutta intera l’ Italia, senza -divario di cielo, di usi, di memorie, di legge, di stato, -donde appunto risulta il sentimento di nazionalità.” -Dante’s desire for the establishment of an Imperial Court -in Italy was, he says, a desire for national and linguistic -unity. “Non può essere nazione senza una comune -favella, nè comune favella dove nazione non sia. Il perchè -voleva Dante stabilito in Italia la sede degli imperatori, -unico mezzo, a suo credere, di conseguire l’ una e l’ altra -unità, della lingua, cioè, e della nazione.” There may -perhaps be a little exaggeration in this statement of the -reciprocal relations of nationality and vernacular, but -at any rate it fastens on facts. Dante, as we have seen, -visualised Italy as one, sighed for her divisions, expostulated -with her on her undisciplined factiousness; longed, -hoped, and prayed for the speedy advent of a strong -unifying force. He also devised for her and bequeathed -to her the noble instrument of a classical vernacular; -and if it be not strictly true that a nation cannot exist -save where there is one national language spoken, yet -it is more than half true. Dante doubtless did more in the -end for the cause of Italian nationality by his bequest of -that splendid vehicle of thought and feeling which the -mother-tongue became in his hands, and by his initiation -of a glorious literary tradition, than he or any other man -could have done by actual utterances, however inspired. -The importance of his work for the vernacular is recognised -again and again by the epigraphists who in the -<cite>Giornale del Centenario</cite> have taken Dante as their theme. -“The mother-tongue supplies a bond of nationality which -cannot be broken,” exclaims Prof. Lorenzo Berardi in his -epigraph,<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> “and that bond we owe to Dante.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span></p> - -<p class="center">DANTE ALLIGHIERI<br /> -<span class="allsmcap">FU IL PADRE IMMORTALE<br /> -DI NOSTRA LINGUA<br /> -QUESTA<br /> -FU IL VINCOLO NAZIONALE<br /> -CHE MAI SI RUPPE.</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">Father of the language, father of the national spirit, -prophetic delineator of the national frontiers.<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> So the -Festa of 1865 joins hands with that of 1908, wherein the -official document drawn up by Commendatore Guido -Biagi to accompany the gifts offered at the Poet’s shrine -describes the offering communities as—</p> - -<p class="center allsmcap">CONCORDI IN LUI<br /> -CHE NEL VERSO IMMORTALE<br /> -SEGNAVA I TERMINI AUSPICATI<br /> -DELLA PATRIA ITALIANA</p> - -<p>But these festas are no longer an ideal and a dream; -All-Saint’s-tide, 1918, has sounded a note of triumph -which resounds, it may be, in the world whither Dante is -gone. Since the words above were penned, there has -rung out at once the knell of the justly hated Hapsburg -autocracy, and the joy-bells of <i lang="it">Italia Redenta</i>!</p> - -<p>The Piave, associated by Dante<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> with the grim thought -of a humbled and degenerate Italy, harried by the outrageous -violence of Eccelino da Romano and his minions; -associated for us all to-day with nobler memories, as the -line of defence where for long months and weary, patriots -shed their blood like water to ward off from Italy horrors of -brutality before which even Eccelino’s record—a byword<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span> -in the Middle Age—reads like a little ill-timed horseplay: -the Piave and the land behind it—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... Quella parte de la terra....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Italica che siede tra Rialto</div> - <div class="verse indent0">E le fontane di Brenta e di Piava,</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">have witnessed wonderful events. That famous river of -which D’Annunzio exclaims:<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> “It runs beside the walls -and past the doors and through the streets of all the cities -of Italy; runs past the threshold of all our dwellings, of -all our churches, of all our hospitals. It safeguards from -the destroyer all our altars and all our hearths”; it has -witnessed a great victorious onrush that has swamped -the very memory of Caporetto, just a year, exactly, after -that day of disaster.</p> - -<p>And the dream of the Ravenna pilgrims of 1908 has -come true. Trento and Trieste, “staked out,” as it were, -by Dante’s verse as Italian, proclaimed Italian by race -and speech and aspiration, are at last Italian in fact.</p> - -<p><i lang="it">Evviva Italia Redenta!</i></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p><span class="smcap">Postscript.</span>—September, 1921, takes us back once -more to Ravenna. Once more the short and narrow street -that faces the “little cupola more neat than solemn,” is -packed with an enthusiastic crowd. Once more the soul -of Italy is concentrated in that exiguous space, offering -votive gifts at the shrine. But this time the men of the -Trentino and of the Dalmatian cities come as “Redeemed -Brothers,” fused in the general life of the larger Italy. -The Army gives a Wreath of bronze and silver, the Communes -of Italy a Bell, the city of Rome a bronze Door.</p> - -<p>The sexcentenary of Dante’s birth in 1865 marked a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span> -great stage in the liberation and unification of Italy; -the sexcentenary of his death, a still greater.</p> - -<p>May the Poet’s best dreams come true, as interpreted -by the Prophet Mazzini, and Dante’s native land find at -last that “peace” which she has been “seeking from -world to world”—find it in the fulfilment of her God-given -mission to the nations.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE AND POLITICAL LIBERTY</span></h2> - -</div> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Libertà va cercando, ch’ è sì cara</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>Purg.</cite> i. 71, 72.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p>These words, it will be remembered, are addressed by -Virgil, at the foot of the mountain of Purgatory, to Cato -of Utica. Virgil is speaking of Dante, and of his mystical -journey through the eternal world. The object of that -quest, he says, is Liberty—that liberty which will make -him master of himself morally and spiritually, when -Virgil himself, at the summit of the Mountain, ere he -takes his leave, shall crown him “King and bishop of his -own mind and soul.”<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... Te sopra te corono e mitrio.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">These moving lines, as D’Ovidio reminds us,<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> have drawn -tears from many a patriot of the last century; they may -well form for us a starting-point for the consideration of -Dante’s attitude towards Political Liberty. True, it is -ultimately <em>spiritual</em> liberty, liberty of soul, that the Poet -“goes seeking” in his pilgrimage, even as it is slavery of -soul from which he announces in Paradise<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> that Beatrice -has delivered him. “Thou hast drawn me,” he says, “out -of slavery into freedom ... thou has given health to my -soul”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Tu m’ hai di servo tratto a libertate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">... l’ anima mia ... fatt’ hai sana....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span></p> - -<p>But the conditions of spiritual and of bodily freedom -are very close to one another—as many a languishing -prisoner of war can testify—interlaced and interwoven -if not identical.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Stone walls do not a prison make,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Nor iron bars a cage.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It is possible, thank God, for the human spirit to rise -superior to the most degrading conditions which inhuman -brutality or fiendish hatred can impose. Yet an atmosphere -of justice and peace is the right and normal environment -for the soul’s free growth; and steady pressure of tyranny -and calculated injustice will all but infallibly blunt and -stunt the moral growth of its victims, as is witnessed by -the universally blighting effect of Turkish rule. Moreover, -unless the received political interpretation of the three -Beasts of the Dark Wood<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> is wholly unwarranted, -Professor D’Ovidio is right in claiming<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> that, in a true if -subsidiary sense, Dante’s supernatural journey was “a -refuge and a remedy” from the troubles in which the -Poet found himself immersed in the tangled thicket<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> of an -“enslaved Italy,” full of tyrants, and of that tyrannous -faction-spirit which is the worst enemy of Freedom.<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p> - -<p>The Italy of his day, like the Florence which cast him -out, is a stranger to that Liberty which only Peace can -give—a peace for which, on Dante’s horizon, no other hope -appeared than that of a common subjection to the -“Roman Emperor,” the divinely appointed guardian of -justice among men.<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> Peace is, indeed, so closely linked -with freedom that Dante, in one place,<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> speaks of it as -the goal of his mystic quest.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Quella pace, che ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">whereas in the First Canto, Virgil has described that goal -as liberty—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Libertà va cercando....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>We may pause, then, on the context of these lines, -wherein Dante’s quest of liberty is associated with Cato’s -suicide. For the difficulty and obscurity of the situation -which they raise will plunge us at once into the heart of -Dante’s Political Theory.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The opening Canto of the <cite>Purgatorio</cite> shews us Cato of -Utica, the austere republican who killed himself rather -than bow to the rising dominance of Julius Caesar,<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> -accorded a place of honour as Overseer of the souls in -Ante-Purgatory. His loving wife Marcia is in Limbo; -his fellow-republicans Brutus and Cassius are, with Judas -Iscariot, in the lowest depths of Hell. There is, moreover, -a special place in Hell<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> appointed for suicides, in a gruesome -wood made fouler by the Harpies. Yet here is Cato -honoured, and, further, held up by Virgil as pattern -of the patriot who gives life for liberty! It has been a -traditional crux to interpreters of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>, to -explain and justify Cato’s position. To understand the -fulness of the difficulty, and at the same time familiarise -ourselves with Dante’s theory of the ideal government -of the world, we shall need to turn to the treatise in which -he holds up for the general admiration of mankind that -Empire which to Cato was more hateful than death -itself.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Next to the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>, the <cite>De Monarchia</cite>—the -“<cite>Monarchia</cite>” as it is more neatly styled in Italy—is,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span> -in many ways, Dante’s most important work. It lacks -the charm as well as the literary importance of the <cite>Vita -Nuova</cite>, and the autobiographical interest of that and the -<cite>Convivio</cite>, but in it Dante develops his political theory, -and by it—through Marsiglio da Padova and his -<i lang="la">Defensor Pacis</i><a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>—he influences all subsequent generations.</p> - -<p>The “Monarchy” which he expounds therein is not -Autocracy as such; it is the traditional suzerainty of -the Holy Roman Empire, in which, in spite of its actual -failure in history, he sees an ideal centre of unity for -Christian civilisation, an ideal Court of Appeal for international -quarrels, a divinely ordained curb for personal -and national greed and self-assertion, and so an unique -guarantee of peace for the world.</p> - -<p>The <cite>Monarchia</cite> is comprised in three Books. In the -First, Dante sets himself to prove that the office of -“Monarch” is necessary to the well-being of the world, -developing his theory of “Monarchy” as such. In the -Second, which is a long panegyric of the Roman Power, -conceived as one and continuous from the days of Aeneas -son of Anchises, he points to Rome as a providential -instrument in God’s hand for the governing of the world -and the well-being of mankind.<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> He establishes to his -own satisfaction the thesis that the Holy Roman Empire, -and it alone, provides the “Monarchy” he is seeking. -In the Third he argues that, notwithstanding all that has -been said and done by Popes, who (since Gregory VII—and -notably in the person of the Poet’s contemporary,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span> -Boniface VIII)—claimed authority over all earthly -potentates, the Secular Authority is, in its own sphere, -not derived from, or subject to the Spiritual, but is independent; -that the “Roman Prince” derives his authority -and his inalienable responsibility direct from God -Himself.</p> - -<p>This last is the most original part of Dante’s treatise, -and that of most general importance. For it saps the false -temporal pretensions of the Papacy, the rottenness of -which Dante was clever enough to discern long before -the famous “Donation of Constantine” had been proved -a forgery. But this subject need not detain us now. Our -interest will be focussed mainly on the theme of the First -Book; in a lesser degree on that of the Second, and we -shall consider them both in the light of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Dante’s reverence for the Roman Empire dates -probably from his first study of the <cite>Aeneid</cite>, and is bound -up with his passionate devotion to Virgil,<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> whom he -addresses in the opening Canto of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite><a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O degli altri poeti onore e lume</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Vagliami il lungo studio e ’l grande amore</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che m’ ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>For him, as we have said, the Roman Power is continuous—from -Aeneas, through Julius Caesar, and through -Charlemagne to his own day. In the Second Book of the -<cite>Monarchia</cite> he sets forth first the nobility of its origin, then<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span> -the attestation of its divine character by “miracles”; -he substantiates the claim of the Roman People to rule -by the evidence of their “public spirit” and rightness -of aim, and their unique faculty for governing; by -their success against all competitors for world-empire—the -prize sought so keenly by Cyrus, Xerxes, Alexander -and the rest was attained by Rome alone. Finally, he -adduces Christ Himself as a witness. Did He not choose -to be born and to die for the world’s salvation under the -authority of the Roman Empire?</p> - -<p>In the Divine Comedy the theme of Rome’s glory -receives an equally enthusiastic and a more poetic treatment. -Its echoes ring all through the great poem, they -become clamant and compelling in the Sixth Canto of -the <cite>Paradiso</cite>, where, from the mouth of Justinian, in the -Heaven of the world’s Workers, flows the story of the -majestic flight of that “Uccel di Dio,” the Roman Eagle, -through the centuries from Aeneas to Charlemagne.<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p> - -<p>But the atmosphere of serene satisfaction which -pervades the <cite>Monarchia</cite> is not maintained here. The -opening Paean of triumph gives place to a more mournful -note when the great Lawgiver turns to denounce the -factions of later times: “the Guelphs striving to Frenchify -Italy, the Ghibellines to Germanise it.”<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> Bitterly he -assails the unworthy partisans of the Empire. The Eagle -stands for Justice; let them practise their intrigues under -some other standard<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a>—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Sott’altro segno....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Here practice comes to blows with theory. The Roman -“Monarchy” was, in Dante’s days, a failure. This failure -was partly due to negligence of individual occupants of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span> -the throne of the Caesars, like Rudolf and Albert of -Hapsburg,<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> partly to the usurping pretensions of the -Papacy,<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> partly, again, to the turbulent, anarchic, and -self-seeking spirit of cities and states.<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p> - -<p>It was Dante’s misfortune to be born into a world -seething with political faction, and into an Italy and a -Florence in which the fever of faction was at its hottest.<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> -The two most potent influences in Christendom—the -Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire—were at feud; and -half the people of Italy (largely, if the truth must be -told, to justify their existing group-enmities) sided with -the Papacy, and called themselves “Guelfs,” half with -the Empire, and called themselves “Ghibellines.” It is -a mark of Dante’s greatness that, unlike most of his -contemporaries, he was able to hold the balance true; -to realise the immense value of each Authority, the -Spiritual and the Temporal, if rightly wielded; to discern -the God-given responsibility of each, and their mutual -independence.</p> - -<p>Exiled himself from Florence by political faction, -victim of the ruthless partisan spirit which ruled in his -native city, he felt keenly the need of a supreme controlling -power, a generally accepted and incorruptible Court of -Appeal; and he looked forward to the descent into Italy -of the Emperor Henry VII in 1311 as to the return of a -Golden Age<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>—of a Peace long wept for, and still delayed:<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Della molt’ anni lagrimata pace.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Many think that the <cite>Monarchia</cite> was written to celebrate -this advent of one to whom he is not afraid to address -the sacred words: “<i lang="la">Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata -mundi!</i>”<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span></p> - -<p>Dante’s hopes in Henry VII were doomed to disappointment. -The disappointment did not shake his faith -in the Holy Roman Empire as a panacea for all the temporal -ills of a Christendom distracted by individual and -national self-seeking and aggression.</p> - -<p>If we turn to the First Book of the <cite>Monarchia</cite>, wherein -Dante develops his Political Theory, we shall find that, -at first reading, the actual person of the Emperor seems -essential; just as, at first sight, he seems to rule out -Democracy, together with Oligarchy and Tyranny, as a -“perverted form of Government.”<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> Here we must remember -Dante’s environment. His personal experience of -the chances of freedom and justice in his native city would -give him an instinctive bias against a non-monarchial -form of government. Whether the system by which -Florence ruled itself in the opening years of the fourteenth -century is technically to be styled Democracy or Oligarchy, -or a compound of the two, it was certainly, in practice, for -Dante, a Hydra-headed Tyranny of the worst description. -Further, it may be well to realise that <em>personal</em> authority -was the only type of Suzerainty, the only form in which a -paramount and impartial Sway, or a world-wide Court -of Appeal had appeared on his mental horizon.</p> - -<p>It has been said of Mazzini’s Republicanism that it -did not rule out “Imperialism” in the sense familiar to -British minds, of “The White’s Man’s Burden.” He approved -of the British <i>Raj</i> in India, and pictured his own -free Italy of the future as possibly destined to spread the -blessings of her own historic civilisation by a similar rule -over pupil-peoples. May it be claimed in like manner for -Dante, whose writings so profoundly inspired Mazzini -and his fellow patriots of the <i lang="it">Risorgimento</i>, that though -he is in a sense a thorough-going Imperialist, yet his -Imperialism is, at bottom, not inconsistent with a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span> -more modern aspiration for a “World made safe -for Democracy,” and kept safe by a “League of -Nations”?</p> - -<p>Dante is Imperialist; but if we enquire of him what -is the <i lang="fr">raison-d’-être</i> of Empire, he will answer: “It is -the temporal well-being of mankind.” This “well-being” -consists in the fulfilment of the purpose of man’s earthly -life; the true and unobstructed self-expression of that -personal freedom of choice—that prerogative of self-determination—which -God has given to man as His -divinest gift: unique and universal endowment of His -intelligent creatures—that “Liberty of Will” which is -so nobly hymned by Beatrice in the <cite>Paradiso</cite> (v. -19-24)—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Fesse creando, ed a la sua bontate</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Più conformato, e quel ch’ e’ più apprezza,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fu de la volontà la libertate,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Di che le creature intelligenti,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">E tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In his Political Theory, as in his Mystic Pilgrimage, -Dante is the Apostle of Liberty.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Libertà va cercando, ch ’è si cara,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This noble couplet, which has moved the hearts of -countless heroes and martyrs of the <i lang="it">Risorgimento</i>, even -as our English Poetess was moved in ’48 at the sound of -a child’s voice singing beneath her window “O bella -Libertà, O bella ...!”—this couplet bears with it, as -we have seen, a reference which has puzzled all the commentators, -because it links with Dante’s quest of spiritual -liberty the deed of Cato of Utica: the suicide by which -that intransigent republican escaped submission to -the founder of the Empire. And not only is Cato given -an honourable place at the foot of the Mountain of Purgatory,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span> -and assured that, at the Great Day, his self-slain -body shall be glorified<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>; but in the <cite>Monarchia</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> Dante -actually quotes with approval Cicero’s dictum in the <cite>De -Officiis</cite> that for Cato “it was more fitting to die than to -look upon the face of a <em>tyrant</em>!” There may be other -reasons for this strange discrepancy in Dante’s scheme; -but one is clear. Liberty ranks so high in the Poet’s mind -that it over-rides all other considerations: its typical -votary may win most extraordinary and exceptional -treatment!</p> - -<p>Well, an essential condition of this all-precious Liberty, -this full and unobstructed self-expression and self-determination -among nations, is Peace.</p> - -<p>Such a peace must needs embrace harmony within the -individual life, in the home circle, in smaller local and -municipal units, and, finally, harmony between the various -nations of Christendom, over all of which, ideally, the -mantle of the one Empire would be spread. Such a -Christendom, and such an Empire, for Dante, ideally -embraces the whole of mankind. This all-embracing -character is, in fact, essential to it; and it is important -for our purpose to note that this complete world-wide -embrace (the antidote to personal ambition) never has -been, and is never likely to be, achieved by any <em>personal</em> -sovereignty.</p> - -<p>In this teaching the Monarchic Principle is, on the -surface at least, more than an abstraction. It is everywhere -personified, though it claims to exclude, as far -as may be, the characteristically individual element of -greed and self-assertion.<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> To Dante it is self-evident -that peace in any of the concentric rings of human life—family, -municipal, national, international—can only be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span> -secured by the recognised dominance of a single person -in each circle.<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> In illustration of this principle he quotes -(from Aristotle) Homer’s verse about the Cyclops<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>: -“Each of them lays down the law for his own children -and wives”; but he ignores the anarchic conclusion of -the sentence ... “and they take no heed of each other.”<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> -Nor does he follow Aristotle<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> in characterising this as -“an uncivilised form of government”; otherwise, he -might have adduced the Cyclops rather as an <em>abuse</em> of the -Monarchic Principle. The fact is, that in each of the concentric -circles the principle is only too liable to abuse; -and Dante knows it, else he would not have strewn the -realms of his <cite>Inferno</cite> with the tormented shades of those -who have been guilty of such abuse—have been brutal -tyrants in the home, in the city, on the throne. If we would -gauge the depth of indignation which such abuse can -rouse in Dante, we have only to turn to Hugh Capet’s -speech in <cite>Purg.</cite> xx. 40-96, where the denunciation of the -savagely self-assertive Royal House of France, with -its infamous record of oppression, fraud, treachery, -murder, and sacrilege, might be applied directly, -with scarce a change of phrase, to the Hohenzollerns of -to-day.</p> - -<p>No doubt the personal guidance—even forceful -guidance—may be necessary in early stages, as we have -found it necessary among the child-races of Africa. Even -the Hohenzollern style of rule, in our day so monstrous -an anachronism, might have had its justification in far-back -ages. It would perhaps compare favourably with -its true antecedents, the Nineveh and Babylon of Old -Testament times. “The Mailed Fist” may have its place, -ere men have learnt—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">... how to fill a breach</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With olive branches—how to quench a lie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With truth, and smite a foe upon the cheek</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With Christ’s most conquering kiss....</div> - <div class="verse indent0">...</div> - <div class="verse indent8">... We needed Caesars to assist</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Man’s justice, and Napoleons to explain</div> - <div class="verse indent0">God’s counsel, when a point was nearly missed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Until our generations should attain</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Christ’s stature nearer....</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>E. B. Browning</cite>: “<cite>Casa Guidi Windows.</cite>”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But now we are beginning to realise that it is a thing—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Worth a great nation’s finding, to prove weak</div> - <div class="verse indent4">The “glorious arms” of military kings.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Ultimately, it is a Supreme Tribunal that Dante yearns -for, albeit he conceives that Tribunal as personified—incarnate -in the “Roman Prince”.<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> It is impartiality,<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> -above all, that Dante looks for; an impartiality to be -guaranteed by that absence of ambition which an undisputed, -world-wide supremacy might carry with it, “leaving -nothing to be desired.” The authority that is free from -taint of greed and self-interest, and so from the temptation -to use human lives as means for its own ends, will most -effectually display that “charity or love which gives -vigour to justice.” For “Charity, scorning all other -things, seeks God and man, and, consequently, the good -of man.”</p> - -<p>Surely such impartiality and such human consideration -might be looked for in a representative tribunal at -least as hopefully as in a fallible individual like that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span> -Henry VII, on whom, in life, he built such soaring hopes,<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> -and for whom, beyond death, he prepared so high a seat -in Heaven?<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p> - -<p>That it is a <em>Tribunal</em> that Dante is really seeking, is -clear from the Tenth chapter of the First Book of the -<cite>Monarchia</cite>. And it may be permissible to adduce in this -connection a note on that chapter by an eminent Dante -scholar (to whom not a few of the thoughts in this Essay -are indirectly due), written at least ten years before the -outbreak of the World-War.</p> - -<p>“Nothing,” says Mr. Wicksteed, (<cite>ad loc.</cite> p. 149), -“could better help the student to distinguish between the -substance and the form of the <cite>De Monarchia</cite>, or to free -himself from slavery to words, than reflection upon this -chapter. He will see that Dante’s ‘imperialism’ does not -mean the supremacy of one nation over others, but the -existence of a supreme law that can hold all national -passions in check; so that the development of international -law and the establishment of arbitration are its -nearest modern equivalents; and the main difficulty is -found in the want of any power of compulsion by which -the nations can be made to refer their quarrels to -the supreme tribunal and accept its awards, whether it -sits at Rome or at the Hague.”<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a></p> - -<p>What shape, we may ask, would Dante’s theory of -the Temporal and Spiritual Authority have assumed,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span> -had it seen the light in the Twentieth Century instead of -the Fourteenth? How would he shape it now?... How, -perchance, <em>does</em> he shape it now if he looks down from -“an eternal place” upon this “little plot” of an earth -which has so often been the cockpit of international -ferocity—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">L’ aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci.<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">He would see a world that has for generations clean -forgotten that Holy Roman Empire which loomed so -large in his day, and is just giving the <i lang="fr">coup-de-grace</i> to two -unholy Empires that were playing a <i lang="fr">rôle</i> exactly the opposite -of that of Dante’s ideal Roman Prince, whose chief -care is to see that “in areola ista mortalium libere cum -pace vivatur;”<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> a world in which a bastard Roman -Empire, seeking not peace and freedom for the nations, -but living for war, has striven for four long years with all -its might to crush the rest of the world under an iron heel.</p> - -<p>He would see a world in which the Papacy is no longer -paramount in Western Christendom; in which its spiritual -claims are largely challenged, and its temporal pretensions -reduced to the shadow of a sham. A world in which -industrialism and the fruits of applied science have -transfigured at once the material and the social landscape. -With the passing of German Military Autocracy, the last -traces of Feudalism are like to disappear.... A world in -which the development of national self-consciousness, in -its infancy during his lifetime, has increased and multiplied. -He would see a world, in short, both inwardly and -outwardly utterly different from that for which he -legislated in the <cite>Monarchia</cite>, save for the two permanent -factors—the identity of human nature, and the continuity -of Divine guidance, by Him “qui est omnium spiritualium -et temporalium gubernator” (<cite>loc. cit.</cite>)</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span></p> - -<p>Would he not acclaim the passion for justice and freedom -which has inspired the nations of the <i lang="fr">Entente</i> to -pile up their enormous sacrifices in a five years’ struggle? -Had he compared the conduct of each side—had he -compared merely their treatment of prisoners of war—could -he have doubted for a moment which side exhibited -the princely spirit of Charity “which gives vigour to -justice:” <i lang="la">caritas maxime justitiam vigorabit</i>.<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p> - -<p>Would he not see in the actions and aims of Italy—“Redeemed -Italy”—and her victorious allies, a surer -hope for the stable peace of mankind than ever his -“Romanus Princeps” could have furnished? Would he -not have found his own aspirations for a just and impartial -and supra-national Tribunal embodied in that arbitrament -which the “League of Nations” carries with it?</p> - -<p>Would he not turn to individual nations (in the spirit -of <cite>Mon.</cite> i. 5) and say: “See to it that this principle of -freedom and justice rules throughout; that the spirit -which looks ‘only to God and the good of man’<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> inspires -all your life-circles: the Home, the City, the Province, -the entire Nation. See to it that the brotherly, unselfish, -co-operating spirit has sway not only between the members -of the various classes and groups and interests of which -your nation is composed, but that it dominates also the -relations of class to class and group to group? What can -better guarantee internal peace in a composite, democratic -community, than that each of the elements of which -it is composed shall be dominated by a single spirit—the -spirit of free fellowship, which is the surest antidote<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> -to the anti-social poison of greed and self-assertion?”</p> - -<p>Would he not also see that the maintenance of such -a spirit demands also a Spiritual Authority, one and -forceful?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span></p> - -<p>The “Sun and Moon” of Spiritual and Temporal -Authority of the <cite>Monarchia</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> which in the <cite>Purgatorio</cite> -have become “two Suns,” to light men on the earthly -and the heavenly path, he would find still essential in a -“World made safe for Democracy.” In 1300, he found the -Spiritual Sun usurping the powers of the Temporal, and -so putting them out of gear.<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> The Roman Prelate had -annexed the Roman Prince’s sword and united it incongruously -with his own pastoral staff—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo feo</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Due soli aver, che l’ una e l’ altra strada</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">L’ un l’ altro ha spento; ed è giunta la spada</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Col pasturale, e l’ un con l’ altro insieme</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Per viva forza mal convien che vada;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pero che, giunti, l’ un l’ altro non teme.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">To-day he might rather see the Spiritual Sun eclipsed by -the Temporal. Religious sanctions will be needed to inspire -and elevate the democratic and multi-personal successor -of the “Roman Prince” as the guardian of the world’s -Justice and Freedom. God Himself is the “Living -Justice,”<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> and He alone can wean human hearts from -envy and that to which envy leads—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... Addolcisce la viva giustizia</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In noi l’ affetto sì che non si puote</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Torcer già mai ad alcuna nequizia.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.”<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> -For Freedom’s sake and Justice’s sake, Dante would -demand some independence still, of the Sword and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span> -Pastoral Staff. He would demand (to modify Cavour’s -famous phrase) “a free Church in a league of free States”—a -unified Church to match the union of Peoples; a -democratic Church to inspire a democratic World, no -longer an Ecclesiastical Autocracy, but a Federation -(shall we say?) of free National Churches, parallel to the -Temporal Authority of the future—the United States -of the World.</p> - -<p>A democratic world, indeed, yet an “Empire” too, -after all; gladly submissive to the perfect sway, over -Church and State alike, of the King of Kings<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a>—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... Quello imperador che là su regna:</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">A God whose influence, though more resplendently -manifest in some spheres than in others, interpenetrates -the whole of His universe, as in the magnificent opening -words of the <cite>Paradiso</cite>—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">La gloria di colui che tutto move</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Per l’ universo penetra, e risplende</div> - <div class="verse indent4">In una parte più, e meno altrove;</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">A human world which reflects the peace of that wider -creation which “works like a giant and sleeps like a -picture”—a peace built on the only sure foundation, -namely, the harmonious co-operation of mighty, God-given -forces, working together under the hand of God -Himself.<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p> - -<p>With his last breath, as it were, the great Poet reminds -us, to look up to the Eternal Love that sways the constellations -... and the hearts of men<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a>—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">WIT AND HUMOUR IN DANTE</span></h2> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Che è ridere, se non una corruscazione della dilettazione -dell’ anima, cioè un lume apparente di -fuori secondo che sta dentro?—<cite>Conv.</cite> iii. 8.<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p>Freedom of spirit—that freedom wherewith the Truth -can make us free—is man’s rightful heritage indeed; -but a heritage into the full enjoyment of which he often -needs must pass through suffering and strenuous struggle. -It is not a light, trivial, superficial thing. As Tasso sings—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... In cima all’ erto e faticoso colle</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Della virtù riposto è nostro bene.<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>There is an easy shallowness that apes freedom, and -looks like tolerance which is the full recognition of other -men’s right to Freedom. But the Freedom which Dante -“goes seeking” through “an eternal place”—through -the horror and murk of Hell, and by the steep ascent of -the Mountain of Hope, “l’erto e faticoso colle”—is a -stern and noble guerdon, and can only be enjoyed in its -fulness by one who has attained to the fulness of an -ordered and disciplined humanity. It is deep conviction -alone, as Bishop Creighton taught us, that can beget true -tolerance; the conviction that the Truth is so sacred -and so precious that it were impious to try to force any -soul to accept it (even were such a thing conceivable) by -external pressure.</p> - -<p>The spirit of “Education by Frightfulness” which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span> -devastated the civilised world for five long years cannot, -however, be accused of want of conviction. The mission -of Teutonic <i lang="de">Kultur</i> was taken only too seriously. It is no -burst of shallow lightheartedness that has driven a -whole people—nay, a group of peoples—forth upon this -gruesome and devilish crusade. They have shewn themselves, -throughout, in deadly earnest.<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p> - -<p>What is it, then, that has brought forth from the womb -of an earnestness that breathes incredible industry and -ingenuity and unsurpassed readiness for individual -sacrifice, this misbegotten offspring of a cruelly narrow -outlook and a ludicrous intolerance?</p> - -<p>The answer proposed by one of our brilliant essayists -in the first months of the war was nothing more or less -than “the lack of a saving sense of humour.” It is only -a partial answer, perhaps, but it is surely true as far as it -goes. The want of “the power to see ourselves as others -see us,” the power to put ourselves in another’s place and -see how our actions would look to him, would affect him, -is very close to that tragic blindness—blindness to the -fact that others have a like claim with ourselves to just -and reverent treatment, a like right to peace and prosperity, -to self-government and self-determination. These, -who would set the world right by violently upsetting it -and forcibly conforming it to their own pattern, have not -the grace to see how ugly and ungainly that pattern looks -to other eyes. Indeed, self looms so large with them that -it fills the entire foreground, and even obliterates all trace -of background and middle distance.</p> - -<p>Life, as its Creator clearly intended it to be, with all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span> -the rich variety and diversity in which alone its unity can -find adequate expression, is impossible on such terms. -Freedom of self-development and self-expression, which -is of the essence of true life, is as likely to flourish in such -an atmosphere as is an “open-air” English girl in the -atmosphere of a stuffy German Wohnzimmer. Civilisation, -under such hegemony, would lose all the beauty of its -spontaneity, all the romance and mystery of its movement; -its expansive forces would be imprisoned in a -minute and deadening code of regulations.</p> - -<p>It would be like a “corrected” river flowing evenly -between straight banks of enforced concrete, with nothing -except its sober, serious, and self-concentrated current -to speak of the sinuous, sparkling, effervescent charm, -the “careless rapture” of its native motion.</p> - -<p>If we are to substantiate our claim for Dante as the -many-sided Apostle of Liberty, we must satisfy ourselves -that he is at least not devoid of that foundation of the -sense of humour which takes a man outside himself, -makes possible to him something of a detached and external -point of view, enables him, if need be, even to see -the ridiculous side of his own earnest efforts.</p> - -<p>That Dante is in earnest, no one doubts. But does he, -in his earnestness, “take himself so seriously” as to -incapacitate himself from doing justice to other points of -view?</p> - -<p>Prof. Sannia’s work on the humorous element in the -<cite>Divine Comedy</cite><a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> marks in some respects an epoch in the -study of Dante. Its title may seem audacious, to the verge -of irreverence; but if this is so, the fault lies partly in an -age-long neglect of one aspect of the great poet’s nature, -partly in a difficulty (common to both the Italian language -and our own) confronting the critic who would define in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span> -appropriate language that subtle element—now gently -playful, now fiercely ironical—which redeems Dante’s -work as a whole from dulness, and makes the <cite>Divine -Comedy</cite> in particular one of the most human books ever -written.</p> - -<p>Whether or not Prof. Sannia has fallen deep into the -pit that ensnares most critics who have a hobby and a -mission, his pioneer movement is certainly far from futile. -We believe that he has largely proved his point, and given -us, in consequence, a living Dante in place of the traditional -wooden effigy. At any rate his work will have -justified itself if it turns the attention of all-too-serious -Dante students to a new field, and emphasizes those -qualities in the Divine Poet which the sheer sublimity of -his work has hitherto tended to obscure.</p> - -<p>In the following study we shall not confine ourselves -to the limits of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>, but gather all we -can in so short a space from his other works, and especially -from the <cite>Convivio</cite> and the <cite>De Vulgari Eloquentia</cite>.</p> - -<p>As a preliminary we shall do well to bestow a glance -at least upon Dante’s environment from this particular -point of view—the temper of the generation in which -he lived, and that of his immediate circle, not neglecting -such inferences as may be suggested by the tradition of -his physiognomy and the evidence of his earliest biographers. -For a provisional definition of the subject we -may turn to “The Philosopher” from whom Dante and -his contemporaries drew directly and indirectly. “Melancholy -men of all others are most witty.” So said the -“Maestro di color che sanno,” according to the author -of the <cite>Anatomy of Melancholy</cite>; and Boccaccio,<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> describing -the habitual expression of Dante’s face, says it was -“always melancholy and thoughtful.”</p> - -<p>Before we draw the enticing inference that Dante was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span> -a paragon of wit, we shall, however, do well to verify -our quotation from Aristotle, and to bear in mind the -fact that the words “wit” and “witty,” like their -companions “humour,” “humorous,” have changed -their meaning since the sixteenth and seventeenth -centuries. By “Wit and Humour,” as applied to Dante, -we mean something vague and general, yet sufficiently -definite to make our quest practicable. The phrase is -intended to cover the playful and fanciful use of the intellect -upon literary material, in the broadest sense: from -the simplest and most elementary puns and word-plays -to the subtlest and most surprising analogies; from the -most discursive description of a laughably incongruous -situation, to the swift agility of brilliant paradox; from -the quiet, genial sally of the man who laughs <em>with</em> you; -while he laughs <em>at</em> you, to the biting sarcasm of the satirist, -whose keen and often envenomed darts are winged with -wrath and indignation. It is this last phase that we shall -naturally expect to find most prominent in Dante.</p> - -<p>In so far as it is to be expressed by a single Aristotelian -word, our subject corresponds most nearly in connotation -to the Greek εὐτραπελία, that intellectual elasticity and -adroitness which seizes instinctively upon the right -subjects on which to vent its fun, and handles them with -a sure, artistic touch. It stands midway between the -vulgarity of the buffoon (βωμολόχος) and the insensibility -to humour of the downright boor (ἄγροικος). -Indeed, in one place (<cite>Mag. Mor</cite>, i. 31, 1193) this quality -of εὐτραπελία is described by the Philosopher in terms -which practically identify it with our own useful phrase, -“A sense of humour.” “The vulgar buffoon,” he says, -“deems everybody and everything a legitimate mark -for a jest, while the boor has no will to jest himself, and -to be jested upon makes him angry. The witty man”—the -true humorist, as we may say—“avoids both extremes.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span> -He selects his subjects—and is not a boor. On the one -hand he has the capacity of jesting with decency and -decorum”—his jokes do not jar on our good taste—“and -on the other, he can bear good humouredly jests of which -he is himself the butt.”<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p> - -<p>How far Dante would satisfy the second part of this -canon, may perhaps be open to discussion. But this is to -anticipate. For the moment it behoves us to observe that -a somewhat tedious search in the Berlin Index volume -for the passage cited in the <cite>Anatomy of Melancholy</cite> reveals -the fact that Burton’s “witty man” is not εὐτράπελος -but εὔστοχος.<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> In other words, what Aristotle attributes -to the melancholy temperament is inductive acumen, -the qualification of the scientific discoverer, rather than -a sense of humour. The two qualities have, however, -something in common: the gift of seeing and grasping -analogies not obvious to the plain man in his plain -moments.<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> So this crumb of comfort may hearten us -in our quest, although the path be at first sight as unpromising -as were certain stages of the Poet’s mystical -journey.</p> - -<p>If then we elect to follow Aristotle, as Dante followed -Virgil (and I feel sure the Divine Poet would approve our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span> -choice of guide), we may draw one more drop of comfort -from a passage in the <cite>Endemian Ethics</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> in which the -Philosopher, discoursing of friendship, notes how unlike -characters often pair off together, “as austere people with -witty ones (εὐτράπελοι).” May we look for this friendly -union of playfulness and austerity within a single -personality? in the redoubtable person of Dante -Alighieri?</p> - -<p>Is it not almost as incongruous, it may be asked, to -look for humour in the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> as it would be to -search for jokes in the Bible? We are prepared to maintain -that even the intense seriousness of Dante—that -sublime and solemn earnestness which can only be compared -to the temper of Holy Writ, is not merely compatible -with a playful use of the intellect, artistically restrained, -but is rendered more complete and effective -thereby. And what about Holy Scripture itself? I speak -with all reverence.</p> - -<p>Hebraists assure us that puns and plays on words -are far from rare in the Old Testament; and there are, -in the Psalms and the Book of Isaiah,<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> and elsewhere, -passages of which the irony, at once keen and sublime, -cannot fail to strike the English reader. Would it not be -possible also to quote even from the New Testament—from -the Gospels—phrases and metaphors in which the -deepest and most solemn truths are cast into a form which, -for want of a better word, must be described as playful -or witty? The picture of the children in the market -place discontented with their games; the ironical description -of the “blind guides of the blind”; and of the -pedants who “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel,” -the still more terrible irony of the “whited sepulchres”—instances -like these show that Truth and Wisdom incarnate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span> -did not disdain to use the whip wherewith the old -Hebrew Prophets had scourged the idolatrous follies of -their contemporaries.<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a></p> - -<p>In the light of what has just been said, we may perhaps -be justified in doubting whether the most perfect -presentation of ideas—or at any rate the most surely -effective—does not involve of necessity the use of those -faculties with which we are at present concerned. “Without -a sense of humour,” it is often said, “no man can be -a perfect Saint.” Surely it is equally true to say that the -same quality is essential for a really great man of letters, -be he Essayist, Historian or Poet.</p> - -<p>One more question before we come to Dante himself. -What about the age and place in which the Poet lived? -Were the Italians of Dante’s time devoid of the spirit -of mirth and of the power to express it? Boccaccio and -Sacchetti, the <cite>Novellino</cite>, nay, even the Franciscan -Legend with its <cite>Jaculatores Domini</cite>, and not least the -charming <cite>Fioretti</cite>, cry out with one voice against the unjust -imputation. But one single name would be enough to -vindicate for the Italy of Dante’s elder contemporaries, -and for the men who figure largely in Dante’s writings, -the possession of the sense of humour and the gift of wit. -Fra Salimbene of Parma, the immortal gossip, who so -dearly loves a joke, and is so ready to pardon other failings -in the man who has “a pretty wit.” He peoples the -world into which Dante Alighieri was born with folk -whose joy of laughter and rollicking sense of fun match -in their intensity the sternness, cruelty, savagery of those -strange days. And to Florence he accords the palm for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span> -wit and humour,<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> though not in the strict Aristotelian -sense; for Salimbene’s Florentines are far from being -always seemly and decorous in their jests.</p> - -<p>The mirthful spirit that pervades the pages of Salimbene -recalls indeed most forcibly a passage of Aristotle -to which we have not yet referred, and a definition of -<i lang="la">urbanitas</i> (εὐτραπελία) which, if slightly mysterious, -is the most epigrammatic and the most suggestive of all -his utterances on the subject.</p> - -<p>“The young,” he says in the second book of the -<cite>Rhetoric</cite>, “are laughter-loving, and therefore witty, for -wittiness is πεπαιδευμένη ὕβρις....<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>” How shall we -render it? “A disciplined ‘cheek,’” an “educated -insolence!” The riotous, effervescent self-assertion of -the Middle Ages, outcome of abundant vitality, offered -splendid raw material for the manufacture of <i lang="la">urbanitas</i>. -The uncontrollable vivacity which vented itself in the -field of life sometimes in horseplay or in huge practical -jokes; too often in fighting and bloodshed; which -vented itself in the field of Art in the fantastically contorted -and quaintly humorous subjects of the illuminations -with which even sacred MSS. were adorned, and in -the carving of grotesque figures in wood or stone—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Come, per sostentar solaio o tetto</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Per mensola tal volta una figura</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Si vede giugner le ginocchia al petto;<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and in the field of literature ranged from sheer profanity -and lewdness to the edifying if amusing hagiological tales -which meet us everywhere in the pages of Tammassia’s -work upon St. Francis.<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span></p> - -<p>That Dante’s own literary circle was not innocent -of this πεπαιδευμένη ὕβρις—ὕβρις, that is, more or less -πεπαιδευμένη—a glance at the dainty little collection -in Rossetti’s volume will show at once.<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> Not to speak -of the famous <i lang="it">Tenzone</i> or “literary wrangle” between -Dante and Forese Donati, of which the Poet, it would -seem, was afterwards ashamed<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a>; a group which included -the extravagantly humorous Cecco Angiolieri cannot -be described as wanting in the “playful use of the intellect.”</p> - -<p>“Del resto,” says Prof. Sannia, “Dante era un toscano, -un fiorentino; che è tutto dire ... nella facoltà comica e -satirica ei fu degno rappresentante della sua stirpe, il -più degno e il più alto: il genio comico e satirico fu in -lui impronta, eredità etnica.”<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p> - -<p>And though he fails to cross-examine the Friar of -Parma—perhaps the most telling of all witnesses on this -point—he has much to adduce to the same effect. Most -pertinent is his quotation of D’Ancona’s remark that the -gay songs with which the streets of old Florence rang -were not all love-ditties. Popular poetry was one of the -forces which ruled the city, “Firenze fu un Comune nel -quale la poesia era uno dei pubblici poteri.” It cannot fail -to be significant that Dante spent the most impressionable -years of his life where the <i lang="it">poesia popolare</i>, by the -inspiration of its eulogy and the stimulus of its satire, -took the place of our modern newspapers in the formation, -guidance and control of effective public opinion. And if -the lessons of Florence were not fully learned at the time—if -the <cite>Vita Nuova</cite> may be said by the unsympathetic to -reveal something of the prig—the rough and tumble of an -exiled life in fourteenth century Italy had no mean -share of teaching to offer.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span></p> - -<p>We have thus narrowed the field of observation to -Dante himself, and are justified in claiming to have established -at the outset at least so much as this: that if -Dante was humourless, it was not for want of inspiration -in his environment, or of material in the human—the -<em>very</em> human—spirits among whom he moved.</p> - -<p>It is not unnatural to ask first of all, whether Dante’s -physiognomy has anything to tell us on the subject. Two -features act emphatically as index of the movements of -the unseen spirit—as the Author himself points out in -the <cite>Convivio</cite><a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a>—the eyes and the mouth, those “Balconi -della donna che nello edificio del corpo abita.” And though -the spirit of pleasantry and humour is apt to reveal itself -through these windows chiefly in momentary flashes, the -genial temper will usually leave some prominent tokens -of its influence more especially about the corners of -the mouth. As regards the eye, that most expressive -of all our features, no fourteenth century portraiture, -however faithful, could hope to reproduce its -living flesh. Moreover, the most authentic portrait of -Dante is blind, alas, or rather worse than blind: fitted -with an execrable false eye by the much-abused Marini. -The pose of Dante’s mouth might teach us something, -if only we could be sure of it. Mr. Holbrook in his recent -monograph<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> has confirmed our suspicions about the -famous “Death Mask,” which at best would naturally -have furnished nothing more significant than the smile -of peace which so often graces our poor clay, a parting -gift from the spirit as it leaves.</p> - -<p>The magnificent Naples Bust is seemingly, like the -so-called “Death Mask” itself, the creation of some -abnormally gifted artist, who derived his inspiration,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span> -perhaps indirectly, through the Palatine Miniature -(No. 320)<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> from the Bargello portrait to which we have -already referred. In vain, therefore, does its splendid -physiognomy, completely human, give such promise of -a sense of humour as a face in repose can be expected to -give. Nor does it matter for our purpose that the “Ritratto -brutto” (as the Riccardian picture—attached to -MS. 1040—is justly styled by some distinguished Florentines) -would suggest the bare possibility rather than the -probability of a sense of humour; for that work -of Art (if it may be so called), is probably derived, -like the famous Torrigiani Mask, from the Naples -Bust.</p> - -<p>The one probably genuine contemporary portrait, the -Bargello Fresco, which a merciful criticism still allows us -to attribute to Giotto, is only preserved in the drawings -of Kirkup and Faltoni. In these, one window of the soul, -the eye, is wanting, and there is considerable difference -between the two reproductions of that most essential -feature, the mouth; where Kirkup has much more of -the conventional “Cupid’s Bow.”<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> The most that can -be said here is what we said of the Naples Bust, that it -certainly leaves room for a play of humour, restrained -and dignified.</p> - -<p>When we pass from portraiture to written record, we -have but little material that is really <i lang="fr">à propos</i> in the -early biographers of Dante. Boccaccio, after pourtraying -his character and features says, “his expression was ever -melancholy and thoughtful”—“nella faccia sempre -malinconico e pensoso” (<cite>Vita</cite>, § 8), but goes on to describe -him as “smiling a little”—“sorridendo alquanto” (<cite>ib.</cite>), -when he overheard the gossips of Verona commenting -on the crisped hair and darkened complexion of the man<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span> -who “goes down to Hell and returns at will to bring -back word of those below.” Later on in his biography he -draws out with evident relish the power of the poet’s -sarcastic satire: “with a fine resourcefulness of invention,” -says Boccaccio (§ 17), “he fixes his fangs on the -vices of many yet alive and lashes the vices of many that -have passed away”—“con invenzione acerbissima morde -le colpe di molti viventi e quelle de’ preteriti castiga.” -And speaking, in an earlier passage, of his courtesy in -intercourse with others<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a>—“più che alcun altro cortese -e civile”—he takes something of the edge off Giovanni -Villani’s description of a man “somewhat haughty, -reserved and disdainful, and after the fashion of a philosopher, -careless of graces and not easy in his intercourse -with laymen.”<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> Yet we feel all the time that Villani’s -description is, speaking broadly, the more convincing; -and are relieved when we realise that it is the outwardly -and obviously genial temperament rather than the saving -sense of humour that the Florentine historian would deny -to his great contemporary.</p> - -<p>Next, before we turn to the testimony of Dante’s own -works, we may refer briefly to the stories told of him; -for if none of these be incontrovertibly authentic, and not -a few of them be comparatively late in origin, their -cumulative evidence should be of some value, at any rate -in suggesting what his own countrymen of succeeding -generations regarded as compatible with the Poet’s -temperament.<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p> - -<p>We may dismiss, if we will, as apocryphal, the tale -of Dante’s conversation with the fish at the Venetian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span> -Doge’s banquet, and of the smearing of his court dress -at King Robert’s feast, we may reject, perhaps, with -more hesitation and regret, Sacchetti’s stories of the -harmonious but offending blacksmith and the donkey-driver -who farced Dante’s songs with an interpolated -<em>Arrhi!</em> We may relinquish the pun on Can Grande’s -name, while retaining Petrarca’s story (of which Michele -Savonarola’s is possibly a “doublet”) wherein Dante -administers a deserved rebuke to Can Grande and his -court for their preference of a buffoon to a poet. But even -the rejected legends add their quota of testimony to the -general and traditional belief that the Divino Poeta could -unbend, and was capable of making a joke.</p> - -<p>And there is a certain residuum—some would say -larger, some smaller—of anecdotes that may be believed -to contain a nucleus of truth.</p> - -<p>There is to me a convincing ring about the comment -of the <cite>Anonimo Fiorentino</cite> on <cite>Purg.</cite> iv. 106. When Belacqua -makes excuses for his laziness on the ground of the -Aristotelian dictum that “by repose and quiet mind the -mind attains to wisdom,” Dante retorts: “Certainly, -if repose will make a man wise, you ought to be the wisest -man on earth!”</p> - -<p>A like readiness of wit, in a moment where all depended -on readiness, is evinced in the story of his reply to the -Florentine envoy who was sent to Porciano to demand his -extradition. “Is Dante Alighieri still at Porciano?” -asked the messenger who met the fore-warned exile on -the road, in the act of escaping. “When I was there, he -was there,” was the non-self-committing response: -“quand io era, v’ era’.”<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> The stories told of Dante, if they -do not suggest a genial and convivial temperament, do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span> -suggest a ready and caustic wit. But it is time to turn -to Dante’s own works, and taste for ourselves.</p> - -<p>The <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> is the criterion by which most -would judge him, and on this we shall spend the bulk of -the space at our disposal; but no discussion of this or -any other aspect of Dante’s literary genius can afford to -neglect the field of his minor works, which are, in this -particular case, of not a little importance. The <cite>Convivio</cite> -(if we may anticipate) supplies us, among other things, -with Dante’s own idea of what laughter should be; -and the <cite>De Vulgari Eloquentia</cite> furnishes a practical -illustration of his treatment of a subject like <i lang="fr">patois</i> -which lends itself to humorous handling even in a -serious treatise.</p> - -<p>These three works not only cover a large proportion -of Dante’s total literary remains, but they are also -representative of his three chief styles of writing: Poetry, -Italian Prose, and Latin Prose.</p> - -<p>In opening the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> one would venture -to issue a further warning on the mistake of limiting the -field of observation to the <cite>Inferno</cite>, or of allowing its -temper and atmosphere too great a place in our estimate -of the characteristics of Dante. Whatever he was to -the women of Verona, Alighieri is to us much more than -“the man who goes down to Hell and comes up again -at will.” Yet now and then even educated Italians, if you -mention Dante’s name, are apt to make it clear that they -knew him mainly as the creator of two episodes—<cite>Paolo -and Francesca</cite> and <cite>Conte Ugolino</cite>; and there is a real -danger among Englishmen—amply illustrated in Dr. -Paget Toynbee’s <cite>Dante in English Literature</cite>—of laying -too much stress on the <cite>Inferno</cite>, even if they do not confine -themselves to it.</p> - -<p>The humour of the <cite>Inferno</cite> is, of necessity, prevailingly -grim; sometimes almost coarsely grotesque. Here we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span> -may see the hand of the subtle artist, and detect a deliberate -purpose on Dante’s part to pour (as I have said elsewhere) -“a disdainful and indignant ridicule upon the -futile, monstrous, hideousness of sin.”<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> “His fine scorn -of sin tempts him to heap upon it all the ... burden of -loathsome grotesqueness that the resources of his imagination -can furnish.”</p> - -<p>Typical of this method is the fierce sport of the scene -described in <cite>Inf.</cite> xxii-xxiii, which culminates in the -“nuovo ludo”<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> (puzzlingly compared by Dante to the -apocryphal Aesopian Fable of the “Frog and the Mouse”)<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> -in which Ciampolo outwits the Demons and brings them -to confusion.<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> We are in mid-Hell, in the fifth <i lang="it">Bolgia</i> of -the eighth circle, <i lang="it">Malebolge</i>, the place of the <i lang="it">Barattieri</i>, -of those, that is, who have made traffic of justice or of -public interests. Dante, who had been falsely accused of -this crime, expends all the resources at his command to -express his detestation of it, and holds it up at once to -ridicule and loathing.</p> - -<p>In Purgatory, on the terrace where pride is purged, he -seems to acknowledge his appropriate place; but far -different is his attitude towards the spot in Hell where his -political enemies would fain have placed him.</p> - -<p>The whole of these two Cantos and a half is pervaded -by an unholy reek of boiling pitch; the appropriate -similes are those of frogs immersed to the muzzle in -stagnant ditch water<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a>; of clawings, flayings, proddings -of raw flesh.<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> Here, if anywhere, Dante verges on the -vulgar. The names of the Demons are fantastically -ridiculous and unpleasantly suggestive; their actions<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span> -and their gestures, their badinage and their horseplay -all remind one that the stately pageant of the Middle -Ages had its unspeakable and unpresentable side. The -Cantos are only redeemed from unreadableness by the -fine similes, the lofty poetical touches which Dante, -because he was Dante, could not but introduce here and -there.</p> - -<p>The graphic picture of the Venetian arsenal in full -activity,<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> the swiftly drawn but masterly sketches of the -wild duck’s dive to escape the swooping falcon,<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> of the -mother’s rescue of her child by night from a flaming -house<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a>; the vivid reminiscences of Dante’s own campaigning -days, at Caprona and before Arezzo: these -play, like sunlit irridescence on the surface of a noisome -pool, where foul creatures sport and gambol in a nightmare -fashion.</p> - -<p>We must note, however, one point; that Dante never -represents himself here as moved to mirth by the fiendish -antics he so conscientiously describes. Rather he is pictured -as consistently consumed by fear and loathing.<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a></p> - -<p>More reprehensible from the point of view of good -taste is the Poet’s eager attention attracted to the vulgar -harlequinade between Master Adam the false-coiner -and the Greek Sinon, where the latter strikes the former -on his “inflated paunch” till it resounds—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Come fosse un tamburo.<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">But Dante is careful to put things right in the sequel, -and makes his own blush of shame respond at once to -Virgil’s chiding—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">... Or pur mira</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ch’ è per poco che teco non mi risso!<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Less broad in its grim playfulness is the taunt which the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span> -spendthrift Jacomo da Sant’ Andrea, hunted and breathless, -gasps out at his fellow-sufferer: “Lano, at Toppo’s -jousts thy legs were not so nimble”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Lano, sì non furo accorte</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Le gambe tue a le giostre dal Toppo!<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Exquisite in the irony of its situation is in <cite>Inf.</cite> xix, in -which Dante, in order to find a place for solemn invective -against Boniface VIII,<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> and to assign him, while still alive, -his place in Hell, makes Nicholas III mistake the Poet’s -voice for that of the Pontiff, and exclaim—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">Se’ tu già costì ritto,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio?</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Whereat Dante represents himself as quite non-plussed -and unable to grasp the speaker’s meaning!</p> - -<p>Nor is the scene itself without a picturesque absurdity -that evinces a subtle sense of humour, especially when we -remember the over-weening pretensions of Boniface to -unearthly dignity. The flaming legs of Simonists kicking -to and fro above the surface of the ground wherein the -rest of them is buried headforemost; and the neat -epigram in which Pope Nicholas describes his plight—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Su l’ avere, e qui me misi in borsa—</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">“I pursed wealth above, and here—myself.”<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a></p> - -<p>Bearing in mind the Poet’s solemn and deliberate -purpose, as we conceive it, to pour scathing ridicule upon -that which qualifies man for a place in Hell, we may -fairly aver that even in the most critical scenes and episodes -he does not transgress the canons of the Master -whom he revered. If there is βωμολοχία—unseemly and -unrestrained jesting—in his Inferno, it is not Dante’s, but -the Demons’. Dante, as we have seen, deliberately dissociates<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span> -himself from it; and the absence of all such -extravagance from his description of Paradise and even -of Purgatory confirms our inference that the humorous -element, even at its grimmest and coarsest, is carefully -proportioned to the environment with which he is dealing.</p> - -<p>The <cite>Purgatorio</cite> and <cite>Paradiso</cite> are marked (like the -scene with Nicholas III) by occasional outbursts of -political or quasi-political invective, seasoned with stinging -satire. In these tirades against Florence or the Papacy -Dante is sometimes his own spokesman; sometimes they -are put into another mouth.</p> - -<p>The concluding verses of <cite>Purg.</cite> vi. will at once come to -mind: the famous invective in which he ironically congratulates -his native city on her “feverish” energy,<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> -shown in the disinterested eagerness of her citizens to -take up the lucrative burdens of public office, and in the -amazing agility of her legislative activity, beside which -the democratic traditions of Ancient Athens—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Fecero al viver ben un picciol cenno—<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">the laws passed in October being superseded by the middle -of November—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">... Che fai tanto sotili</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Provedimenti, che a mezzo novembre</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Non giugne quel che tu d’ ottobre fili.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Then there is the scarcely less famous passage in <cite>Par.</cite> xxi,<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> -where St. Peter Damian, inveighing against the Roman -Curia, describes the fat Cardinals as supported on every -side as they go—held up to right and left, and pushed -and pulled along—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Or voglion quinci e quindi chi i rincalzi</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Li moderni pastori, e chi gli meni</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tanto son gravi! e chi di rietro gli alzi.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And when they ride, covering their palfreys with their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span> -ample robes, “so that two beasts are moving ’neath one -hide”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sì che due bestie van sott’ una pelle.<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Or again, there is Beatrice’s tirade in <cite>Par.</cite> xxix.<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> against -the farce of unauthorised indulgences, and against the -fashions of the contemporary pulpit: the fashion of -neglecting the Gospel, and straining after originality, -as though Christ’s mandate had been: “Go ye into all -the world, and preach—frivolities!”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance.<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">The modern preacher’s “head is swelled” (if we may so -translate <i lang="it">Gonfia il cappuccio</i>), and he is perfectly content -if by his jests and gibes he can raise a laugh, while the -fiend sits unseen in the corner of his hood.</p> - -<p>This passage is as perennially applicable as any in -Dante, and combines the satire of Alexander Pope with -the stern earnestness of the author of the <cite>Task</cite>, so aptly -compared to it by W. W. Vernon.</p> - -<p>Dante no doubt felt a certain appropriateness which -justified him in putting these invectives into the mouths -of his august <i lang="la">dramatis personae</i>: but we are apt to hear -the ring of <em>his</em> voice in each of them. There are, however, -other passages in the <cite>Purgatorio</cite> and the <cite>Paradiso</cite> of -which the playfulness belongs to the characters themselves.</p> - -<p>In <cite>Purg.</cite> xx. we have two instances given to show that -the risible faculties are not extinguished by the pains of -purification.</p> - -<p>Greedy Midas’ dismal surprise when, in answer to his -ill-advised prayer, his very food turned to gold and became -uneatable, is a legitimate and unfailing cause of laughter—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Per la qual sempre convien che si rida—<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">to those who lie fettered face downwards<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> in the terrace -of the avaricious. And it is with evident relish that the -same souls repeat their last lesson: “Tell us, Crassus, -for thou knowest, what is the flavour of gold?”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">Crasso,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dilci, che ’l sai: di che sapore è l’ oro?<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In the next Cantos, xxi. and xxii., the Poet delights us -with scenes of a graceful and most appropriate playfulness. -First there is the charming episode, <cite>Purg.</cite> xxi. 100 -<i>sqq.</i>, where Statius, addressing Virgil, whom he does not -recognise, says: “What would I have given to have -been on earth when the author of the <cite>Aeneid</cite> was alive!” -and Dante, in spite of Virgil’s unspoken but unmistakable -“<i lang="it">Taci!</i>” betrays the situation by an uncontrollable -smile. Then in the next Canto (xxii.), when the puzzled -Virgil mistakes the guilt for which Statius is suffering for -<em>avarice</em>, it is Statius’ turn to laugh. The gentle, mirthful -grace of the whole scene is enhanced by the pathetic -sequel, when Statius explains that it was Virgil who converted -him, by his famous fourth Eclogue, to Christianity, -like one who, walking himself in darkness, carries a -lantern behind his back to illumine the path of those who -follow—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Facesti come quei che va di notte</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che porta il lume dietro, e sè non giova</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Ma dopo sè fa le persone dotte.<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Charming too is the playful irony of the scene in the -Earthly Paradise where Matelda gravely discourses to -Dante, in presence of Virgil and Statius, about the poets -who in days of yore sang of the Golden Age—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Quelli ch’ anticamente poetaro</div> - <div class="verse indent2">L’ età del’ oro e suo stato felice—<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">and Dante looks round on them and sees them smiling.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Io mi volsi in dietro allora tutto</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A’ miei poeti, e vidi che con riso</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Udito avevan l’ ultimo costrutto.<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The smiles which wreathe the lips of the denizens of -the Heavenly Paradise, like that which gleams in Beatrice’s -eyes,<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> are something ineffably solemn and sublime: -like the <cite>Gloria</cite> chanted in the Starry Heaven, of which the -Poet exclaims—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">... mi sembiava</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Un riso de l’ universo.<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But there is a touch of the more distinctively human -in the suggestion thrown out in the following Canto that -St. Gregory woke up in heaven to the true facts about the -Angelic Hierarchy, and “smiled at his own mistake” in -departing from the Dionysian scheme.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In questo ciel, di sè medesmo rise.<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The passages we have touched upon in the <cite>Divina -Commedia</cite> are those most obviously to the point. Prof. -Sannia’s Italian mind can discern subtleties of humour in -places where the foreigner cannot always hope to follow. -But there is one point on which he lays much stress, -namely the importance, for our purpose, of observing -Dante’s attitude towards himself throughout the -mystical journey, and especially as he passes through -the dismal regions of the First Kingdom. The -Dante so graphically depicted to us in the <cite>Divine -Comedy</cite> is altogether different from the cold, abstract -Dante of tradition. He is an impatiently curious -child, in whom the passion of curiosity even conquers -fear. And while the pilgrim is depicted to us in very<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span> -human guise, and his motions and his attributes described -in terms which presuppose not only a remarkable degree -of self-knowledge, and a striking power of psychological -analysis, but also a very real sense of humour; the poet -who sings of the pilgrim, reveals to us by the way, a whole -group of characteristics which claim the humorous gift -as their inevitable associate. Such are his broad humanity, -his sympathy, his reverence even for the noble damned, -his very modern type of tenderness shown by interest -in the ways of children, animals, birds, insects, from whose -life he loves to draw his similes. “True humour,” says -Carlyle, “is sensibility in the most catholic and deepest -sense.” Virgil—the Virgil of history—had this in a -pre-eminent degree—and so has his mystic companion -of the Eternal World.<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p> - -<p>Popular tradition has imagined him as a heartless, -unfeeling judge, without that indulgence towards human -frailty which the gift of humour presupposes: but the -entire <cite>Purgatorio</cite> belies this calumny, and not a few -episodes in the <cite>Inferno</cite> itself.</p> - -<p>To pass from the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> to the <cite>Convivio</cite> -is in any case a drop down. If it is but one step from the -sublime to the ridiculous, the sublimity of the <cite>Divina -Commedia</cite> should bring us very close to the regions where -laughter is generated. The <cite>Convivio</cite>, with all its manifold -interest is obviously far below the level on which thought -and feeling habitually move in the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>. Has -it therefore less promise in the matter of our quest?</p> - -<p>I venture to think that there is a strain of playfulness -underlying a good deal of the argument of this work; and -that even if we can bring ourselves to believe Dante’s own -solemnly elaborate interpretation of his love-songs to -be quite serious in the main.</p> - -<p>And apart from this, if we take the <cite>Convivio</cite> with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span> -the utmost seriousness, we may remember for our comfort -that πορίζεσθαι τὰ γέλοια<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> is one of the qualifications -of Aristotle’s εὐτράπελος and the willingness to be laughed -at another; and see in Dante (with all reverence) an -example of those who, more or less unconsciously provide -matter for amusement to posterity. Nay, we may treat -him as he treats St. Gregory, and look upon him as laughing -now at his own certitude about the ten heavens and -the angelic hierarchy, from his place in the mystic rose—or -are we to say on the terrace of Pride?</p> - -<p>But to return to the <cite>Convivio</cite>. It is here, as we have -already suggested, that Dante gives us his description -of the ideal nature of Laughter. “Ridere,” he says, “è una -corruscazione della dilettazione de l’ anima.”<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> On the -Aristotelian principle of the Mean (though his actual -reference is not to Aristotle, but to Pseudo-Seneca “On -the Four Cardinal Virtues”), he urges that laughter should -be moderate and modest, with no violent movement -(such as convulses the pages, e.g. of Franco Sacchetti) -and no “cackling” noise. Laughter is, in fact—like little -children—“best seen and not heard.”</p> - -<p>From each of the four extant treatises, quotations may -be adduced which at any rate show the writer’s sympathy -with that view of life which fastens on the incongruous and -sees in it matter for genial irony or for bitter sarcasm, -according to the moral context.</p> - -<p><cite>Tratt. I.</cite> Chapter xi. opens with a delicious satire on -the “sheep-like opinion” of the multitude, which I have -elsewhere compared to the charmingly nonsensical scene—“Less -Bread, More Taxes!”—with which Lewis Carroll -inaugurates his <cite>Sylvie and Bruno</cite>.</p> - -<p>The “man in the street,” says Dante, is ready to -follow any cry that is raised. Thus the populace will be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span> -found exclaiming “Viva la lor morte! Muoia la lor -vita!—purchè alcuno cominci.” They are for all the world -like sheep who follow their leader blindly over a high -precipice or down a well. He goes on to rail at “a bad -workman who blames his tools,” the many who “<i lang="it">sempre -danno colpa alla materia dell’ arte apparecchiata, overo alo -strumento; siccome lo mal fabro biasima ferro appresentato -a lui</i>.”<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a></p> - -<p>Nor can we fail to find in the next chapter (I, xii.) a -touch of the drily humorous spirit; in the passage -which Dr. Toynbee in his Anthology entitles <cite>Of Silly -Questions</cite>.</p> - -<p>“If flames were plainly to be seen issuing from the -windows of a house, and a bystander were to enquire -whether that house were on fire, and another man to -reply that it was, I should find it difficult to decide which -of the two was the more ridiculous.”<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></p> - -<p>What are we to say of the <cite>Trattato II</cite>? Here, if anywhere, -Dante poses as the unconscious humorist; here, -if anywhere, in his elaborately solemn disquisition upon -arrangement of the heavens and their analogues in the -<i lang="la">trivium</i> and <i lang="la">quadrivium</i>, he is qualifying himself to play -the <i lang="fr">rôle</i> of St. Gregory in the other world! But even here -he finds leisure to cast occasionally a satirist’s eye on the -contemporary world—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">l’ aiuolo che ci fa tanto feroci;</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and the naïveté of his references to it is delightful. They -sometimes come in incidentally in the form of similes. -In Chapter vii.,<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> for instance, is an illusion to the perennial -banishments and sieges with which the factions of Guelf -and Ghibelline, Black and White, harassed the cities of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span> -the peninsula: “When we speak of ‘the city,’” he says, -“we are wont to mean those who are in possession of -it, not those who are attacking it, albeit the one and the -other be citizens.” Or again, in Chapter xi.,<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> a reference -to the decline of good taste and culture is ingeniously -worked into a question of etymology. “<i lang="it">Cortesia</i>” is -equivalent to “<i lang="it">onestade</i>,” and “because in courts of old -time virtuous and fair manners were in use (as now the -contrary), this word was derived from courts, and ‘courtesy’ -was as much as to say ‘after the usage of courts.’ -If the word had been derived in modern days from the -same origin, it could have signified nothing else than -<i lang="it">turpezza</i>.”</p> - -<p>In <cite>Tratt. III</cite>, as elsewhere, the playfulness is for the -most part so spread out that it is difficult to quote. There -is, however, a touch of real satire in such passages as -that in which Dante twits the lawyers, physicians, and -members of religious orders with their disqualification for -the reputation of a true philosopher.<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a></p> - -<p>“We are not to call him a real philosopher who is a -friend of wisdom for profit’s sake, as are lawyers, -physicians, and almost all the members of the religious -orders, who do not study in order to know, but in order -to get money or office; and if any one would give them -that which it is their purpose to acquire, they would -linger over their study no longer.”</p> - -<p><cite>Trattato IV</cite> is more obviously fruitful. Here again he -girds at the lawyers and doctors, suggesting that they -might at least give <em>un</em>professional advice gratis, and, in -another place, ventures timidly to assert that it may be -possible “to be religious though married.”<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> Again, in -Ch. xvi., if <i lang="it">nobile</i> simply meant <i lang="la">notus</i>, then the Obelisk of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span> -St. Peter would be the noblest stone on earth, and Asdente -the cobbler (of whom Salimbene gives us so lively a -sketch) would be noblest among the citizens of -Parma.<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p> - -<p>Some arguments are so senseless, he says a little -earlier, that they deserve to be answered not with a -word, but with a knife. “Risponder si vorrebbe non colle -parole ma col coltello a tanta bestialità.”<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a></p> - -<p>Lastly, he has in this treatise the audacity to depict -to us the sublimest sage, “il maestro di color che sanno,” -as indulging in a burst of hypothetical laughter at the -idea of a double origin of the human race. “Senza dubbio, -forte riderebbe Aristotile”; and, he adds, “those who -would divide mankind into two separate species like -horses and asses are (with apologies to Aristotle) themselves -the asses.”<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a></p> - -<p>In the <cite>De Vulgari Eloquentia</cite>, as we have already -hinted, the “idioma incomptum et ineptum” of various -localities, alike on the right and on the left of the Apennines, -gives play for pleasantry of which does Dante not -fail to take advantage. It is with evident relish that -he puts on record typical uncouth phrases of each dialect: -the Roman <i lang="it">Mezzure quinto dici</i>, the <i lang="it">Chignamente</i>, <i lang="it">frate</i>, -<i lang="it">sc-tate</i> of the Marches of Ancona, the Milanese <i lang="it">Mes d’ -ochiover</i>, the <i lang="it">Çes fastú</i> which men of Aquileja and Istria -“crudeliter accentuando, eructuant.” The feminine softness -of the Romagna, and especially of Forlì, with its -<i lang="it">corada mea</i>;<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> the more than masculine roughness of the -men of Verona, Vicenza, Brescia—all those who say -“Magara”; the <i lang="it">nof</i> and <i lang="it">vif</i> of Treviso.</p> - -<p>In Chapter xi. he has his knife into mediaeval Rome,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span> -the proud and corrupt. “Sicut ergo Romani se cunctis -preponendos extimant, in hac eradicatione sive discerptione -non immerito eos aliis preponamus, protestantes -eosdem in nulla vulgaris eloquentie ratione fore tangendos.” -The primacy which the Romans claim in all -things may certainly be theirs in this. In our eliminating -process they shall be first to be rejected from the candidature -to furnish a classical vernacular for all Italy!</p> - -<p>Their dialect (he goes on), like their morals, is the most -degraded in the whole peninsula, and has spread its -corrupting influence into neighbouring districts. It is -indeed not worthy to be called a <i lang="la">vulgare</i> (vernacular), but -rather a depraved misuse of speech (<i lang="la">tristiloquium</i>), and -is “italorum vulgarium omnium ... turpissimum.”<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a></p> - -<p>At the end of Chapter xiii. he tilts at the Genoese Z—an -ugly sound in itself, but one which, if lost or mislaid -by defect of memory, would leave the poor people of -Genoa without a means of transmitting their thoughts! -The loss of this one letter would leave them dumb, or -impose on them the necessity of inventing an entirely -new mode of speech. “Si per oblivionem Ianuenses -ammitterent <i>z</i> litteram, vel mutire totaliter eos vel novam -reperare oporteret loquelam: est enim <i>z</i> maxima pars -eorum locutionis: que quidem littera non sine multa -rigiditate profertur.”<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a></p> - -<p>On a different plane is Dante’s lamentation in Ch. xii. -over the decay of literary culture in Sicily since the glorious -days of Frederic and Manfred, which gave the title -“Sicilianum” to the work of Dante’s predecessors in the -vernacular: a passage (to me at least) somewhat obscure, -in which Frederic II of Sicily, Charles II of Naples, Azzo -Marquis of Este, and John Marquis of Montferrat are -accused of blood-thirstiness, treachery and avarice:<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span> -“Venite carnifices; venite attriplices; venite avaritiae -sectatores....”<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a></p> - -<p>Turning to Bk. II we find the same Azzo ironically -praised in Chapter vi., in a “copy-book phrase” of which -the incidental introduction gives point to the satire: -“Laudabilis discretio marchionis Estensis et sua magnificentia -preparata cunctis, cunctis illum facit esse -dilectum.”</p> - -<p>More delightful still is a sentence which closely follows, -quoted solemnly like the former merely as an example of -good phraseology appropriate to a lofty subject, in which -Charles of Valois plays the <i lang="fr">rôle</i> of a “second Totila,” -and his calamitous dealings with Florence (including, -presumably, Dante’s own banishment) are adduced as a -fitting prelude to his futile descent upon Sicily. “Ejecta -maxima parte florum de sinu tuo, Florentia, nequicquam -Trinacriam Totila secundus adivit.”<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a></p> - -<p>Earlier in the book there is another humorous touch -with which we may conclude our list, at the risk, perchance, -of an anti-climax. A passage near the end of Chapter i. -recalls, in a curious way, a line from the <cite>Epistles</cite> of Horace.</p> - -<p>Dante, having premised that every one should adorn -(<i lang="it">exornare</i>) his verses as far as possible, goes on to point -out that there are limits beyond which adornment becomes -incongruous and absurd. “We do not speak of an ox -caparisoned like a horse or a belted pig as <i lang="la">ornatus</i>; we -laugh at them, and would rather apply the word <i lang="la">deturpatus</i>.” -This <i lang="la">bos ephippiatus</i> most aptly typifies incongruity -of adornment. In Horace’s well-known line—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus,<a id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">the point of the satire is different. It is the Roman poet’s -favourite theme of universal discontent—each envying -another’s lot.</p> - -<p>In Dante’s phrase we may perhaps detect an unconscious -or semi-conscious adoption or adaptation of a -classical image: parallel, in a humble way, with those -splendid thefts from Virgil and Ovid with which he has -enriched the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>: conceptions too unquestionably -original in their new form to be classed as mere -plagiarisms.</p> - -<p>“Cicero hath observed,” says the <cite>Spectator</cite> of Nov. 5, -1714,<a id="FNanchor_159" href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> “that a jest is never uttered with a better grace -than when it is accompanied with a serious countenance.”</p> - -<p>If this be true, our quest may perhaps modestly -congratulate itself on the avoidance of undue levity. Nor -need we take it seriously to heart if we have failed to -vindicate for Dante the character of a humorist in the -modern sense, and of the American type. The most -that our investigation can be said to have proved is that -Dante, embittered as he was by his exile, and emaciated -by long and serious study, was not devoid of that sense -of humour whereby man is able to wring matter for cheerfulness -and mirth out of the most unlikely material, and, -going through this vale of misery—“questo aspro disorto”—to -“use it for a well.” But neither is he the cold abstraction, -both less and more than human, which tradition, -of a sort, has handed down to us. His works display, -for those who care to look for them, a breadth of sympathy, -a capacity for observation and discernment, a -keenness of interest, an eye for the incongruous, a richness -and sureness of self-expression that are guarantees -of the possession of the sense of humour.<a id="FNanchor_160" href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> The manifold<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span> -play of the forces of one of the most picturesque ages of -human history found a sympathetic response in Dante’s -genius, though the sublimity and the restraint of his work -has obscured this. This side of his genius is well summed -up by Sannia.<a id="FNanchor_161" href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a></p> - -<p>“La coscienza lucidissima di sè stesso, l’ attitudine all’ -analisi psicologica, la febbrile curiosità del mondo esterno, -naturale ed umano, lo spirito d’ osservazione, il senso -più squisito dell’ arte, la divina serenità, la multiforme -impressionabilità dell’ artista, il senso del tenero, la pietà -umana, il pessimismo furono note spiccatissime, eminenti -del suo genio.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE AND MEDIAEVAL THOUGHT</span></h2> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Seder tra filosofica famiglia.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 131-3.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p>Those who were privileged to listen to Mr. Trevelyan’s -lecture on “Italy’s Part in the War,” and to see the -wonderful slides presented to him by the <i lang="it">Comando -Supremo</i>, will remember the thrill contributed by the -last picture—the great statue of Dante at Trento, with -the fugitive Austrian soldiers at its base, fleeing, as it -were, before his face. Dante, we felt, has at last come -to his own; the Trentino is at last indefeasibly—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Suso in Italia bella,</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and the “alps above Tiralli” effectively “bar out” -the Teuton!<a id="FNanchor_162" href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a></p> - -<p>Dante’s inspiration has indeed brooded over the heroic -efforts and struggles of Italy’s twentieth century patriots, -even as over their forefathers of the Risorgimento. And -this living influence of the Divine Poet’s genius has been -brought before our readers in the first two Essays of this -collection.</p> - -<p>Perhaps it may not be amiss to follow up those -former articles with a complementary study of the -Poet—no longer as the inspirer of nineteenth and -twentieth century ideals, but as the supreme representative -of the thought and feeling of his own century,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span> -the thirteenth. Like Shakespeare, Dante never grows -old. There is a quality of universality about his genius, -and a broad and deep human appeal in his writing which -renders it the proper heritage of every generation. And, -haughty and aloof as was his spirit during life, with -an aloofness intensified by bitter exile and by the sickness -of ever-deferred hope, he was not one of those -great ones who are entirely out of touch with their contemporaries, -living in an age not yet born. Scarcely -had he passed from mortal sight when a chorus of appreciation -made itself heard, which, though it has waned in -ages of waning taste, has never ceased to sound.</p> - -<p>In a very true sense, Dante sums up in himself all -that is best in mediaeval thought.</p> - -<p>So Mr. Henry Osborne Taylor, in his formidable -study of <cite>The Mediaeval Mind</cite>, significantly heads the -forty-third and last chapter “The Mediaeval Synthesis: -Dante.” “There is unity,” he affirms, “throughout -the diversity of mediaeval life; and Dante is the proof -of it.”<a id="FNanchor_163" href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a> It is pre-eminently as a religious thinker that -Dante holds this place, and supplies this synthesis.</p> - -<p>Theology as conceived in the thirteenth century -was not only the “Queen of Sciences”; the religious -conception of knowledge embraced and included all else. -To Dante, the theologian-poet, as to Thomas Aquinas, -the theologian-philosopher, all knowledge whatsoever -was ultimately <em>one</em>; its end and purpose, its ground -and justification, its key and explanation were to be found -in the mystery of the Blessed Trinity-in-Unity.</p> - -<p>Theology was not one among many departments of -knowledge; it was the sum of knowledge, the key to -all problems of the universe. Some of us retain, deep -down in our nature, a conviction that, in this point -at least, the scholastic theologians were right. While<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span> -thankfully accepting the results of the scientific “division -of labour,” the marvellous practical and theoretical -fruits of a free and systematic investigation of phenomena -which have transformed our very conception of knowledge -and the knowable, we are apt to feel sometimes that -the thirteenth century thinkers, with their complete -mastery and mapping-out of the comparatively narrow -field of the “scibile,” were not so liable as ourselves -to lose sight of the wood by reason of the multitude of -the trees, to lose the idea of an universe in the absorbing -interest of its details.</p> - -<p>At any rate, it may be accepted as beyond discussion -that to the great mediaeval thinkers—to Peter -Lombard, to Abelard, to St. Bernard, to St. Bonaventura -and Albertus Magnus, to Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus; -above all, perhaps, to St. Thomas Aquinas and to Dante, -all knowledge is ultimately religious knowledge: just -because God is conceived and realised as being the beginning -and end and groundwork of all things. This truth -underlies the beautiful language of the first canto of -<cite>Paradiso</cite>—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">La gloria di colui che tutto move</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Per l’ universo penetra e risplende</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In una parte più e meno altrove.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and again—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">... Le cose tutte quante</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che ’l universo a Dio fa simigliante.<a id="FNanchor_164" href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">It also underlies the description of the damned as those -who have lost “the Good of the intellect.”<a id="FNanchor_165" href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Noi siam venuti al luogo ove io t’ ho detto</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che tu vedrai le genti dolorose</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Ch’ hanno perduto il ben de l’ intelletto.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This tendency to subsume all knowledge under<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span> -religious knowledge is indeed one of the most important -ways in which Dante is representative of his time. To -that we shall revert later on. Now let us turn to consider -for a moment some of the elements and sources of -mediaeval knowledge as Dante knew and mastered it.</p> - -<p>Holy Scripture, the Patristic writings, ancient classical -lore, the Graeco-Arabian philosophy and science of -which the groundwork was Aristotle—these are the main -antecedents of the mediaeval system of knowledge, and -they are blended together in characteristic ways, and dissolved, -as it were, in a fluid composed of romantic chivalry -and other elements of preponderatingly Teutonic and -Celtic origin.</p> - -<p>(1) The groundwork of all is, of course, Holy Scripture: -known and studied exclusively in the Latin Vulgate -text, a rather degenerate and corrupt representative -of the (in its way) masterly and excellent translation -from the Hebrew and Greek made by St. Jerome in the -fifth century.</p> - -<p>The Bible, as we know quite well to-day,—even -those of us who are more than ever convinced of its -inspiration—is not a manual of natural science or philosophy, -nor even an absolutely infallible guide in matters -of history and chronology. Its scientific standpoint is -that of the age in which each part was composed, however -eternal be the significance and application of its fundamental -religious principles.</p> - -<p>To the mediaeval mind, however, Scripture was -a universal text-book of science. So that countless -questions were regarded as foreclosed because the Bible -appeared to have pronounced upon them. The scientific -mind of the Middle Ages felt itself committed at a hundred -points to the rather crude conceptions of the ancient -Hebrews, and to a literal interpretation, very often, of -figurative and highly poetical expressions.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span></p> - -<p>The disadvantages of this state of things are obvious -to us: we must not forget, however, that they were -largely modified by the fact that while all knowledge -was regarded as ultimately religious knowledge, it is just -in its religious principles that the Bible is supreme, and -is permanently true.</p> - -<p>(2) The interpretation of Scripture in the Middle -Ages is largely based on patristic exegesis; on the -writings of the really great minds of the third, fourth -and fifth centuries, when men like Athanasius, Cyril of -Alexandria, Basil and the Gregories, Chrysostom, Jerome -and Augustine, laid the foundations of systematic Christian -thought; men steeped in the Holy Scriptures, and -bringing to them an intellect furnished with ideas and -categories inherited in part from the classical world—from -Graeco-Roman literature and philosophy. The -most influential of them all, perhaps, upon mediaeval -thought were Jerome (through his translation -of the Bible) and Augustine, the deepest and most -original thinker (with the exception of Origen) among -all the “Fathers.”</p> - -<p>Holy Scripture then, patristically interpreted, is -the first and most important element in mediaeval -knowledge; and the place it holds in Dante may be -roughly estimated by the calculations of Dr. Moore in -his <cite>Dante Studies</cite> (Vol. I), where he shows that in his -extant works the Poet quotes the Vulgate more than -five hundred times.</p> - -<p>Dante is representative of the Middle Ages in his reverence -for and his use of Holy Scripture, interpreted for the -most part by traditions derived from the Christian Fathers.</p> - -<p>Scripture itself was mediaevally supplemented by -hagiology—the lives and legends of the Saints—nor is -this element lacking in Dante.<a id="FNanchor_166" href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span></p> - -<p>(3) But the place of honour, next to Scripture, in -Dante, must be assigned, surely, to classical lore—to -the mythology and literature of the ancient Graeco-Roman -civilisation for which the mediaeval mind had so -profound a reverence. Greek philosophy, as represented -by Aristotle—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">il maestro di color che sanno<a id="FNanchor_167" href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">is a category by itself, to which we shall turn our attention -in a moment. But classical lore in general, as represented -by such writers as Virgil (quoted 200 times), -Ovid (100), Cicero (50), Lucan (50), Horace (15?), -Livy (15?), finds very definite recognition in Dante’s -works.</p> - -<p>The old Roman Empire was viewed by Dante with -a truly religious veneration, as is clear not only from -many a passage in the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> (e.g. <cite>Par.</cite> vi), -but from the whole argument of the <cite>De Monarchia</cite>.<a id="FNanchor_168" href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a> -This veneration, which shed lustre and dignity upon a -“Holy Roman Empire” which even in Dante’s day -had become actually, though not technically, German, -is characteristic especially of the Italian mind; and Dante -was Italian as well as mediaeval. The Italians even of -to-day are proud to regard themselves as the direct -successors of the old Romans of the Republic and of the -Caesars: in Dante’s time they were prepared to trace -their ancestry to the divinely guided companions of -Aeneas of Troy.</p> - -<p>Rome looms large in the providential ordering of -human history: Dante’s conception of her sovereign -place is drawn from the author of the princely <cite>Aeneid</cite>, -whose function in the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite> is guarantee<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span> -of the affectionate reverence which Dante bore to -him.</p> - -<p>But it is not only Roman history, but classical mythology -that weaves itself into the texture of Dante’s -religious thought. If he quotes Virgil some two hundred -times, he quotes Ovid about one hundred.</p> - -<p>The tendency to mingle together examples from -Scripture and from pagan mythology is characteristically -mediaeval. In Dante it is a well known feature, -most typically represented perhaps in the sculptures, -visions and voices of the Purgatorio.</p> - -<p>He who is bold enough in <cite>Purg.</cite> xxx. to blend together -the Scriptural <i lang="la">Benedictus qui venis</i> with Virgil’s <i lang="la">Manibus -o date lilia plenis</i> is not afraid to invoke the Muses and -Apollo (mystically interpreted) as he begins a new -<i lang="it">cantica</i>.<a id="FNanchor_169" href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> He does not hesitate to apostrophise the Saviour -of the world in terms which blend the Christian with -the antique pagan tradition—<a id="FNanchor_170" href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">... O Sommo Giove,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che fosti in terra per noi crucifisso!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This is well explained by Mr. Taylor. “With Dante,” -he says,<a id="FNanchor_171" href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> “the pagan antique represented much that was -philosophically true, if not veritably divine. In his mind, -apparently, the heathen good stood for the Christian -good, and the conflict of the heathen deities with Titan -monsters<a id="FNanchor_172" href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> symbolised, if indeed it did not continue to -make part of, the Christian struggle against the power -of sin.”</p> - -<p>This principle may be regarded as being, in a way, -the mediaeval analogue of our broad modern conceptions -derived from a comparative study of religions.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span></p> - -<p>(4) But supreme among the influences derived by -the Middle Ages from classical antiquity is the philosophy -of Aristotle, which holds the next place to Scripture -alike in the “Summa” of Thomas Aquinas, and in the -<cite>Divina Commedia</cite> of Dante.</p> - -<p>Mediaeval Christianity drew its knowledge of Aristotelian -philosophy from Mohammedan sources. The great -Arab scientists and philosophers of mediaeval times, -represented in the <cite>Commedia</cite> by Avicenna and—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Averroìs che il gran comento feo<a id="FNanchor_173" href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">(his commentary on Aristotle was translated into Latin -about 1250), gave back, in a modified form, to Western -Europe, the works of the Philosopher, of which the original -Greek was not acquired by them till several centuries -later.</p> - -<p>This Graeco-Arabian philosophy forms the basis -of those constantly recurring, and to many of us rather -tiresome, astronomical excursions which form so characteristic -a feature of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>.</p> - -<p>This form of Aristotelianism plays an immense part -in the scholastic philosophy; and his deference to it is -among Dante’s chief claims to be representative of the -religious thought and teaching of his day.</p> - -<p>In countless other ways the Poet’s writings are -representative of what was best and highest in contemporary -thought: the wide grasp of innumerable -topics and details, the encyclopaedic temper, quaintly -obvious in the <cite>Convivio</cite> but more worthily embodied in -the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>; the spiritualising of troubadour -love, beautifully manifested in the promise of <cite>Vita Nuova</cite> -and <cite>Canzoniere</cite>, but more sublimely still in the Beatrice -of the <cite>Paradiso</cite>; the blending of religious with political -theory so conspicuous in the <cite>Monarchia</cite> and <cite>Commedia</cite>;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span> -the realistic vividness of conception; the eye for contrast, -which makes Dante’s great poem a mirror of the kaleidoscopic -life of the Middle Ages.</p> - -<p>Among the qualities which made Dante what he -was—and is—two would seem to be supreme. First -his encyclopaedic knowledge, and secondly the unrivalled -power of plastic visualisation, by which he was -enabled “to use as a poet what he had acquired as a -scholar.”<a id="FNanchor_174" href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a></p> - -<p>Dante has been described by Eliot Norton as an -instance of “the incredible diligence of the Middle -Ages.” In days when there was no Funk and Wagnalls -Company to minister encyclopaedic knowledge by cheap -instalments—when everything must be painfully acquired -from MSS. and the diligent student ran the risk not only -of leanness<a id="FNanchor_175" href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> but of blindness<a id="FNanchor_176" href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> Dante appears, from his -extant works, to have known all that was to be known. -Dr. Moore’s investigations (in <cite>Dante Studies</cite>, Vol. I) -go some way towards justifying—if anything can absolutely -justify so dogmatic a statement—the perhaps -over-enthusiastic words of A. G. Butler:</p> - -<p>“Dante was born a student as he was born a poet, -and had he never written a single poem, he would still -have been famous as the most profound scholar of his -time.”<a id="FNanchor_177" href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a></p> - -<p>But if Dante had finished the <cite>Convivio</cite>, and written -nothing else, his vast learning would have been as uninteresting -to the average modern mind as is that of Albertus -Magnus or Thomas Aquinas. Albertus Magnus with his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span> -incredible learning and his more than incredible fecundity -and voluminousness is unknown to most of us. Thomas -Aquinas, though the soundness of his judgment and the -depth of his insight have given his writings a permanent -place of honour, more especially in the Roman Communion, -is little more than a name to the average student even of -literature and philosophy.</p> - -<p>Albert and Thomas were theologians: so was Dante, -but he was a poet as well.<a id="FNanchor_178" href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> Dante is saturated with the -entire knowledge of the Middle Ages; he has absorbed -and assimilated it, and he gives it out again transfigured—alive! -It becomes in his hands an original and immortal -contribution to the intellectual, moral and aesthetic -heritage of mankind.</p> - -<p>From our present study the Divine Poet emerges once -more as the “Apostle of Freedom.” He handles his -subject-matter with the master-touch that makes it <em>live</em>, -and with the independence of standpoint and sincerity -of judgment that draws Catholics to claim him as a Catholic, -and Protestants as a Protestant. As a matter of -fact he is a loyal Catholic, as was rightly proclaimed -by the late lamented Pope Benedict XV in his Encyclical -of May, 1921.<a id="FNanchor_179" href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> A Catholic, but above all, a Christian. -And, as the Pope also justly remarked, his work and his -message are alive to-day—more living than that of many -a present-day Poet—just because he is not dependent -on mere pagan models and sources, however classical, -but is saturated with Christian thought and feeling. -For the future lies with Christianity.</p> - -<p>In our next Essay we shall endeavour to show how the -free spirit of the artist and the theologian merges into -that of the Educationist: how the characteristic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span> -modern principles of freedom in the educational -sphere underlie Dante’s thought and writing, and -how, in particular, they dominate his scheme of -the <cite>Purgatorio</cite>.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE AND MODERN EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES</span></h2> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">... Io sarò tua guida</div> - <div class="verse indent0">E trarrotti di qui per loco eterno.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>Inf.</cite> i. 177 <i>sq.</i></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p>In face of Benedetto Croce’s new Book,<a id="FNanchor_180" href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> wherein all the -meticulous industry exerted by the typical Dantist upon -side-issues of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite> is held up to scorn, -and denounced, like Cromwell’s House of Lords, as -“useless and dangerous,” one hardly dares to labour a -point—even if it be so exalted a point as the principles -and method of education. But it is the criticism of Dante’s -Poesy that is Croce’s concern: his jealous anxiety is -directed against any admixture in that criticism of any -irrelevant considerations—allegorical, theological, philosophical, -poetical. As we are not attempting a criticism -of Dante’s Poesy (though none can approach the <cite>Commedia</cite> -without falling under the spell of its beauty and passion), -we may perhaps hope to evade the fiery darts of the Poet’s -latest critic.</p> - -<p>Croce himself would be the last to deny Dante’s -extraordinary versatility: only he pleads that if the -author of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite> had not been, “as he is, -<i lang="it">grandissimo poeta</i>,” the world would not have noted his -other accomplishments.<a id="FNanchor_181" href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> We may therefore perhaps be -pardoned if we indulge in something of that “sonorous -but empty phraseology”<a id="FNanchor_182" href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> which he attributes to those<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span> -who look for much more than Poetry in the great Poem; -and come to the <cite>Commedia</cite> as to a mine of varied treasures -reflecting the versatile spirit of one who was not only -a sublime poet, but also a man of many-sided knowledge -and experience—theological, philosophical, political, practical—and -who poured all the wealth of his knowledge -and experience into the supreme effort of his genius:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">Il poema sacro</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Before Dante as a boy learnt his lessons of the good -friars of Sta. Croce, and in the school of the great lord, -Love blossomed out into verse under the sunshine of -his “first friend’s” encouragement, pored over crabbed -manuscripts under the inspiration of the learned Ser -Brunetto, and grew up to be an unique exponent of -mediaeval lore; that lore, which formed the material -out of which he wrought the scheme of his immortal -poem had very slowly and gradually come into being. -The course of Christian Education had passed through -rhythmic vicissitudes of advance and retrogression, of -decadence and revival. Sown broadcast over the fields -of the Graeco-Roman world by Apostolic hands<a id="FNanchor_183" href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> the -seed fructified and gave forth foliage to delight and refresh -mankind. In the golden age of the Greek Fathers, when -Clement and Origen wrote and taught, when Basil and -Gregory at the University of Athens drank in all that -the old world had to teach, and transmuted it into something -fresh and new by the fertilising power of the New -Life that was in them, the Christian Church became, in -Harnack’s phrase, “the great elementary schoolmistress -of the Roman Empire.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span></p> - -<p>Then followed a decline. The barbarian invasions kept -men fighting, and left no time to muse or think, or write. -Dante’s hero, Boethius, stands out an almost solitary -luminous figure in a world of growing intellectual darkness, -of which Gregory of Tours despairingly exclaimed: -“Periit studium litterarum.” By the middle of the -eighth century the lamp was nearly extinguished. To -our own Alcuin of York belongs the glory of having -preserved the continuum of literary studies which made -a Dante possible. His patient and persevering labours -at the court of Charles the Great laid the foundations -on which was ultimately built—of multifarious material, -partly recovered through Arabic sources—the splendid -structure of mediaeval scholasticism which forms much -of Dante’s mental background.</p> - -<p>After Dante’s death the same rhythmic alternation of -advance and retrogression, of greater and less vitality, -may, on the whole, be discerned in the course of educational -history; and as our object is to unearth in the -<cite>Divine Comedy</cite> some educational principles vaunted as -“peculiarly modern,” it may be best to dwell for a moment—if -still all too superficially—on this second half of the -story.</p> - -<p>When the impulse of Scholasticism had well-nigh -spent itself—and with it the splendid revival at once of -practical and of intellectual Christianity which came in -with “The Coming of the Friars”—the dawn of the -Renaissance was already gleaming in the Eastern sky, -and the fall of Constantinople flooded Western Europe -with a new interest in, and passion for, Hellenic culture. -The birth-throes of the Reformation ushered into the -world a “New Learning.” In a couple of centuries the -fire of this impulse in turn died down, and (in England, -at any rate) Education largely fell back, speaking generally—with -smaller actions and reactions—into something<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span> -like a mere mechanical routine. The Classics became an -end, and not a means, and the study of them was divorced -from citizenship and from life. The aim and method of -the average schoolmaster would almost appear to have -degenerated into a grinding of his pupils all alike in the -same mill, or a feeding of their diverse digestions all on -the same “iron rations”: the pedagogue himself innocent -alike of an as yet undiscovered psychological method -in teaching, and in many cases also failing to realise the -paramount importance of the formation of character as -the only result worth striving for.</p> - -<p>Then came, with Rousseau, the first streaks of the -dawn of the “New Teaching,” and there followed, in -a brightening sky, Pestalozzi and Froebel abroad, and -here in England Arnold and Thring and the rest. And this -New Teaching, using the present-day opportunities of -co-operation and tabulation of experimental results on -a large scale, has, by dint of Conferences and Congresses, -grown into something of a world-wide unity. Modern -Science has thus leavened educational method both in -general and in particular. In general, its spirit and principles -have been employed to make available for all the -investigations of each; in particular, the recent developments -of psychology and psycho-physics have given a -new impulse and a new direction to child-study, and made -possible an elaboration of scientific method and of didactic -apparatus such as was not available in any previous -age. Here the instinctive methods employed unconsciously -by the “born teachers” of all generations have -been brought up to the level of consciousness, and systematised -and made available, to a large extent, for those -in whom the instinctive gift is not so great.</p> - -<p>One of the prominent tendencies of the New Teaching -is to revert to, and elaborate, that Direct Method in the -teaching of Languages which was characteristic of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span> -“New Learning” in the days of Erasmus and his fellow -pioneers. This we shall see foreshadowed in Dante. It is -a part of a tendency to make education “paido-centric”; -to lay its emphasis on, and find its focus in, the child rather -than in the instructor; to make it less of an imposition -of the dominant teacher upon a submissive and receptive -pupil. The New Teaching requires that “the relative -activities of teacher and pupil” should be “reversed.” -It recognises that pupils need to be “trained in initiative,” -and “made increasingly responsible for their own education”; -that the inertia of many pupils has to be met -not by force or browbeating, but “by taking steps to -reach indirectly the goal of stimulating their individual -activity.”<a id="FNanchor_184" href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a></p> - -<p>The watchword therefore of the modern teaching is -<em>Liberty</em>. And this principle of Liberty—the recognition -that all education is, at bottom, self-education; and that -the teacher’s business is to liberate (or make possible -the liberation of) the inherent evolutionary forces latent -in the pupil—finds its climax in the doctrine of Dante’s -compatriot and sincere admirer, Madame Montessori. -She is also, in a sense, the most modern of the Modernists; -for in her method is carried, probably to its highest point, -the application of psycho-physical science to education. -She represents in some ways—and especially on the individualistic -side—the extreme advance of the modern -movement; and it is with her system that we shall -institute later on a somewhat detailed comparison of -the educational principles underlying Dante’s <cite>Purgatorio</cite>.</p> - -<p>Dante’s name is not popularly associated with those<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span> -of the World’s Greatest Educators—with Aristotle and -Quintilian, with Alcuin and Alfred, with Colet and Erasmus, -with Pestalozzi and Froebel and Montessori. He is -not claimed as the conscious originator of new didactic -method. He has not left us any systematic treatise on -Education. Yet many have found in him a mighty Teacher, -“who being dead yet speaketh”; and to such it will -bring no surprise to find great educational principles -embodied in his work.</p> - -<p>We may compare and contrast his opportunities with -those of his great contemporary, Robert Grosseteste, who -as “First Chancellor,” if we may call him so, of the -University of Oxford, may rank in a sense as a professional -Teacher. Such a comparison would surely demonstrate -that the permanent influence of the illustrious Bishop -of Lincoln upon subsequent generations bears no comparison -with that of the Florentine Poet.</p> - -<p>Grosseteste may claim a place among the world’s -Educators not only in virtue of his general influence -upon English education at a period when the Oxford -Franciscans were about to take the lead in European -culture, but also—and more especially—because, in an -age when study had become largely a second-hand matter -of commenting on someone else’s commentary, Robert -called men back to a diligent first-hand study of originals; -a principle of the utmost importance alike for Education -and for Learning.<a id="FNanchor_185" href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a></p> - -<p>Dante, too, was a keen, first-hand student; but his -place in the history of Education is different from that -of Grosseteste. He attained to no such commanding -position in ecclesiastical or political life, with the power -that official status gives of forcing one’s ideas on public<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span> -notice. His brief tenure of the high office of Prior in his -native city of Florence was followed immediately by -those years of exile and ignominy in which his best work -was done. His sole means of influencing his own and -succeeding generations was by his writings. But these -writings not only proclaimed him (as all the world admits) -the very flower and crown of Mediaeval Education—its -justifying product—but also earn him, we would contend, -a place among the World’s Great Educators, and perhaps -we may add, its Educationalists. But first of all we may -remind ourselves of Dante’s position, as the finest and -most typical product of Mediaeval Education. Benedetto -Croce<a id="FNanchor_186" href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> is doubtless right in denying him the right to be -called a <em>pioneer</em> in metaphysics or ethics, in political -theory or philological science: in such lines it is vain -to attribute to him the same originality which is rightly -his in the realm of Poetry. Yet his learning remains -encyclopaedic.<a id="FNanchor_187" href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> His amazing erudition is displayed in -his Minor Works; in the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite> it is concealed -with the most consummate art. In the <cite>Convivio</cite>, where -he is, perhaps, most consciously and deliberately (if least -successfully) the Teacher, he revels in erudition, and so -too in the <cite>Monarchia</cite>. Perhaps the clearest and swiftest -demonstration of the vast range of his learning is afforded -by a glance through the pages—or even the index—of -Dr. Moore’s <cite>Studies in Dante</cite> (First Series).</p> - -<p>Dante was not a Greek scholar, like Grosseteste, but -he had a thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures -in the Vulgate, and with a large part of the theological -and mystical writings of the Middle Age. He was familiar -with all the extant works of Aristotle in two Latin translations.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span> -He quotes also, and in some cases very frequently, -from Classical and post-classical authors of repute. He -has thoroughly mastered the Graeco-Arabian Astronomy -of his day: so thoroughly, that, to the despair of some of -his humbler votaries, he can toy with its ponderous -intricacies as with a plaything! Nor must we forget -that his studies were conducted in an age when printing -had yet to be invented; so that all his reading must needs -be done with rare, costly, cumbrous and eye-wearying -manuscripts. Well may he, in the <cite>Paradiso</cite>, describe his -labours as “emaciating,” and in the <cite>Convivio</cite> allude to -a temporary blindness caused by overstrain.<a id="FNanchor_188" href="#Footnote_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a></p> - -<p>It has been plausibly conjectured that he studied as a -boy under the Franciscan Fathers of Sta Croce.<a id="FNanchor_189" href="#Footnote_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> The idea -that Brunetto Latini (or “Latino”), the author of the -“Tesoro” (<cite>Livre dou Tresor</cite>), was the regular preceptor of -his youth, however just an inference it may seem from the -famous passage in the <cite>Inferno</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_190" href="#Footnote_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> is disproved by the exigencies -of chronology. And, in the end, he must have been -largely self-taught, since his visit to the University of -Paris, alleged by Boccaccio, is placed towards the end -of his life, when most of his extant work was already -done.</p> - -<p>In his attitude Dante is a traditionalist, but not a -blind one; his originality everywhere tends to modify -his conservatism. A true son of the thirteenth century, -he accepts loyally the traditional authority of Scripture -and of Aristotle. He accepts the tradition of the old -Roman culture: the “Seven Liberal Arts” of the -Trivium and Quadrivium find a place in the scheme of -his world and a symbolic significance therein. According<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span> -to a well-known passage in the <cite>Convivio</cite><a id="FNanchor_191" href="#Footnote_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> these seven -sciences correspond to the seven lowest Heavens.</p> - -<p>The mythology of Greece and Rome, on which the -minds of our Public School boys are still fed, are caught -up into the scheme of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite> as “didactic -material” side by side with scenes from history and from -Holy Writ. The Ptolemaic system of the universe is -accepted; but Dante uses his own genius freely in the -handling of details, adorning the vast framework with -a symbolism of his own, and spreading over it a network -of intense human interest.<a id="FNanchor_192" href="#Footnote_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a></p> - -<p>So also in the sphere of Theology, he takes up traditional -beliefs and makes them living and concrete, vitalising -them by the force of his own originality. In his volume -on <cite>Dante and Aquinas</cite>, Mr. Wicksteed has drawn out very -strikingly the contrast between the two: between the -“layman, poet, and prophet, and the ecclesiastic, theologian, -and philosopher.” “Aquinas,” he says, “regards -the whole range of human experiences and activities as -the collecting ground for illustrations of Christian truth; -Dante regards Christian truth as the interpreting and -inspiring force that makes all human life live.”<a id="FNanchor_193" href="#Footnote_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a> This -contrast comes out, as we shall see, with special emphasis -in the conception of Purgatory, where Aquinas is thinking -all along of the formal completion of the sacrament of -Penance, while Dante, who, with most daring originality, -makes his Mountain of Purgation the pedestal of the -Earthly Paradise, is intent on the redressing of man’s -inner psychological and spiritual balance. Eden itself is -to be the immediate goal of penitence. Before this earthly -life is superseded by the heavenly, man shall win his way<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span> -to the primal Garden of Delight, and “experience the -frank and full fruition of his nature, as God first made it.”<a id="FNanchor_194" href="#Footnote_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> -He shall have achieved inner balance and self-mastery. -Says Virgil, on the threshold of Eden—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Free, sound and upright is thy will.... Wherefore -over thyself I invest thee with supreme control.<a id="FNanchor_195" href="#Footnote_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Per ch’ io te sopra te corono e mitrio.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">We may note then, in passing, that Dante, like all the -best educators, has his eye on the “formation of character.”</p> - -<p>Such erudition, originality, insight, give promise that -we shall find in Dante a real teacher; and the promise -is abundantly fulfilled to those who tread the spacious -halls of his School, which is his Poem.</p> - -<p>The very language in which the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> is -written is a testimony to the Poet’s grasp of the fundamental -condition of all teaching—that it should be intelligible! -There is a saying of Alcuin’s great disciple, -Rabanus Maurus, which expresses simply and well this -obvious, but oft-forgotten principle. “Teach,” he says, -“in words that teach; not in words that do not teach.” -With this principle, surely, in mind—for his purpose in -creating the great Poem was a practical one—the strangely -haughty and aloof spirit of Dante girds itself to a humble -use of the “Vulgar Tongue.” When we remember that -this magnificent structure of his is the first big effort in -the Italian vernacular, and that one of his reasons for -calling it a “Comedy” is that “its method of speech -is lax and humble, for it is the vernacular speech in which -mere women communicate,”<a id="FNanchor_196" href="#Footnote_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> we cannot but see in this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span> -pioneer work of Italian literature evidence of that discerning -sympathy with the needs and capacities of the -learner which marks the born teacher. Another mark -of the true educator is his practical aim. Dante is not -content to “teach the classics <i lang="la">in vacuo</i>,” as our English -Public Schools once were: he does not divorce learning -from life. In the famous Tenth Epistle he defines the -“Moral Sense” of the Poem as “The conversion of the -Soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace”; -and, again, he describes “the end of the whole” thus: -“To remove those living in this life from the state of -misery and to lead them to the state of felicity.”<a id="FNanchor_197" href="#Footnote_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a> He has -his eye upon life in the highest sense: “Come l’ uom -s’eterna.” To this end he displays to us the unique -means provided by Heaven for his own salvation, and -allows us in his company to visit the three kingdoms -of the Eternal World. He performs for us the office -fulfilled by Virgil towards himself—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... I will be thy guide, and will conduct thee hence</div> - <div class="verse indent0">through an eternal place.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">... Io sarò tua guida</div> - <div class="verse indent0">E trarrotti di qui per loco eterno.<a id="FNanchor_198" href="#Footnote_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">We must see with his eyes to what state of ineffable woe, -not Divine Justice merely, but the sinner’s own choice -will bring him. We must watch with him the Divine -process of purgation, the eagerly-accepted suffering of -those whose penitent love longs above all things to undo -the ruin that sin has wrought—<a id="FNanchor_199" href="#Footnote_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... Contented in the fire, for that they hope</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In God’s good time to reach the blessed folk</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">... Contenti</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nel foco, perchè speran di venire,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quando che sia, a le beate genti....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">and finally he will take us up with him into the Blessed -Place itself, to behold “the things which God has prepared -for them that unfeignedly love Him.”</p> - -<p>Here again is the true teacher, adopting the story-telling -method of the Teacher of Nazareth:<a id="FNanchor_200" href="#Footnote_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> the method -of which the usefulness—nay, the indispensableness—was -never more appreciated than to-day.</p> - -<p>Nor is it merely that the Poet narrates instead of -preaching. What he does, he does with the most consummate -art.<a id="FNanchor_201" href="#Footnote_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a> The story that he tells—the pilgrimage -on which he goes—is one which both he and we really -share; we become his fellow-pilgrims, his intimates, -before whom, without the least touch of self-consciousness, -he manifests his joy and his despondency, his courage -and his cowardice, his native dignity and his occasional -lapses therefrom.... The narrative reads like a truthful -and vivid diary of his actual experiences from the night -of Maundy Thursday till Easter Wednesday in the Year -of Grace One Thousand and Three Hundred.</p> - -<p>It may be claimed for Dante’s method of teaching -in the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> that it is in a very real sense a -“direct method,” and one in which teacher and pupil -co-operate as fellow-learners.</p> - -<p>The educational quality of the poem is at its highest -in the <cite>Purgatorio</cite>, because it is in this realm that the conditions -approach most nearly to those of our present -life. Like the normal life of a faithful Christian here -below, that of the souls in this “Second Realm” is a -struggle, but a struggle upwards, inspired and sweetened<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span> -by the “sure and certain hope.” It is a process of growing -transformation into the Divine ideal, of gradual achievement -of a perfect union of will with the Will of God, -wrought out by means of a providentially ordered discipline -eagerly embraced by the penitent.</p> - -<p>All this may seem a little vague and elusive. Probably -the quality claimed for Dante will be brought into higher -relief if we concentrate our attention upon one or two -definite points.</p> - -<p>In the attempt to emphasise the “modern” character -of Dante’s educational principles we shall be bold enough -to confront him with the very latest of educational -methods—that of Dr. Montessori, which originated but -a few years ago in Dante’s native Italy.</p> - -<p>The fundamental principle of Madame Montessori’s -Method is that of Liberty. Education, she would say, -must be a free organic process of development from within. -This vital growth may be guarded, nourished, and (within -limits) guided. The right kind of atmosphere and of -external stimulus is of immense importance; but mechanical -pressure, or domineering force, or inappropriate -stimulus will only stunt and distort the growth, deaden -the life that is calling out for free self-development. -All this is not, of course, a new discovery. It was enunciated -in other forms by Pestalozzi and by Froebel; it -is implied in the words and works of all the greatest -educators—of Vittorino da Feltre in the Renaissance, -of Quintilian in the early Empire, and of Aristotle himself. -But in Montessori the principle of individual freedom -acquires a new prominence, and is given a larger -scope than ever before; and the principle is coming to -its own in many phases and many grades of our present-day -education. It is interesting, therefore, to note what -a fundamental position it holds in Dante’s <cite>Purgatorio</cite>, -the central Cantica of what Professor Edmund Gardner<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span> -rightly calls “The mystical Epos of the Freedom of Man’s -Will.”</p> - -<p>Liberty—that true liberty of soul which is found in -perfect conformity to the Will of God—is the end and -purpose of the Poet’s grim journey. <i lang="it">Libertà va cercando</i>—“he -goes seeking freedom”—says Virgil to Cato at the -foot of the Mountain:<a id="FNanchor_202" href="#Footnote_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a> the freedom which Dante himself, -a little later, identifies with inward peace—“That -peace which ... draws me on in pursuit from world to -world.”<a id="FNanchor_203" href="#Footnote_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">... Quella pace</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che, dietro a’ piedi di sî fatta guida</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">It is to the entrance upon this peace and this freedom that -Virgil refers in his words quoted above, where on the -threshold of the Earthly Paradise he declares the pilgrim -to be, at last, “King and Bishop of his own soul”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.<a id="FNanchor_204" href="#Footnote_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And, finally, in the heaven of heavens itself Dante pours -out his thanks to Beatrice for liberty regained—“Thou -has led me forth from bondage into liberty.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Tu m’ hai di servo tratto a libertate.<a id="FNanchor_205" href="#Footnote_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">We have already spoken of the spontaneity of Dante’s -Penitents; the eager gladness and alacrity with which -they embrace the discipline appointed for them, “glad -in the Fire”: a temper which finds its typical expression -in the attitude of the souls who are purging the sin of -Lust in literally burning flames. “Certain of them,” -says the Poet, “made towards me, so far as they could,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span> -ever on their guard not to come forth beyond the range -of the burning”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Poi verso me, quanto potean farsi,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Certi si feron, sempre con riguardo</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Di non uscir dove non fosser arsi.<a id="FNanchor_206" href="#Footnote_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Or, again, on the Terrace of the Gluttonous, where Forese -explains to Dante that the voluntary pain of the penitents -(which is also their solace) is mystically identified with -that of Christ upon the Cross—“For the same desire doth -conduct us to the tree, which moved Christ to say with -joy: ‘Eli,’ when by His blood He won our freedom.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Che quella voglia a li albori ci mena</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che menò Cristo lieto a dire ‘Elì,’</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Quando ne liberò con la sua vena.<a id="FNanchor_207" href="#Footnote_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And this spontaneity on their part is matched and helped -by the atmosphere and environment provided for -them. Their movements and occupations are indeed, in -one sense, unnatural; but this is because their purpose -is the counteraction of that most unnatural of all things, -Sin. Here, however, are no frequent warders and task-masters, -like the grotesque fiends of the Inferno. The -Angel guardians of each of the seven terraces where sins -are purged are no more in evidence than is the Teacher -in a Montessori School; an unobtrusive, ever-present, -never-interfering inspiration to the pupil’s own spontaneous -development. There is no external voice to bid -a spirit move on when its purgation is done. So Statius -explains to Dante when describing the impulse of his own -upward movement. “Of the cleansing, the will alone -gives proof, which fills the soul, all free to change her -cloister, and avails her to will. She wills indeed before; -but that desire permits it not which Divine justice sets, -counter to will, toward the penalty, even as it was toward -the sin”—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">De la mondizia sol voler fa prova,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che, tutto libero a mutar convento,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">L’ alma sorprende, e di voler le giova.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Prima vuol ben, ma non lascia il talento</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che divina giustizia, contra voglia,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Come fu al peccar, pone al tormento.<a id="FNanchor_208" href="#Footnote_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">When the soul is ready for another task, it moves -on, naturally and spontaneously,—like a Montessori -child!</p> - -<p>This consideration accounts for a feature of the -purgatorial discipline which at first sight would appear -quite contrary to the Montessori spirit. On the lower -slopes of the Mountain, below the gate of Purgatory -proper, the souls whom Dante meets are grouped informally, -or encountered individually; but within the gate, -on each of the seven terraces where the seven capital -sins are successively purged, the souls are engaged in -groups on the same task, or similar ones. How is this -consistent with free, spontaneous, individual development? -Is not this simultaneous occupation at the same -lesson more like a Froebel class, or even an old-fashioned -Public School form than a Montessori group? The answer, -surely, is in the negative. Collective work has indeed its -permanent value, and simultaneous movements at intervals, -their ample justification. In the <cite>Purgatorio</cite>, as in -the Montessori School, the class-system in its extreme -and rigid form has been superseded; though scope is -given, in certain ways (as in the <em>revised</em> Montessori -scheme), for the expression of the social instinct.<a id="FNanchor_209" href="#Footnote_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a> When -the pupil is inwardly fit for a move, he “feels it in his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span> -bones”; and then—and not till then—he moves. The -task in which he is engaged in company with his fellows -holds him just so long as it is needful and appropriate -to his own case: the moment of its beginning and that -of its ending are entirely independent of the doings of -his fellow-learners.</p> - -<p>Once more, the Terrace of Purgatory resembles a -Montessori group rather than a Kindergarten class in -its freedom from obvious direction. There is no attractive, -central, dominating figure, like the Froebelian teacher, -on whom all eyes are fixed in the spirit of Psalm cxxiii, -<i lang="la">Ad te levavi oculos meos.</i> The grouping of the -learners is apparently spontaneous, and different groups -are sometimes engaged simultaneously on different -tasks.</p> - -<p>Again, the School of Purgatory is essentially modern -in its emphasis on “expression work,” and its abundant -supply of “didactic material.”</p> - -<p>By expression work we mean the endeavour to enforce -a lesson, to hasten its assimilation and ensure its retention, -by means of some appropriate activity on the part -of the learner. This is of course much older than Montessorism, -as even our best Sunday school teachers can -testify; it can be traced back also beyond Froebel. Its -origin is, surely, lost in the prehistoric ages of pedagogy. -But it was Froebel in the nineteenth century who first -claimed for this factor the importance which it holds -in modern education. Yet if we study Dante’s <cite>Purgatorio</cite> -we shall find expression work on every terrace of the -Mountain, from the humble, stooping march of the cornice -of Pride to the significant exclamations wherewith the -once Lustful, on the uppermost terrace, punctuate the -chanting of their hymn, <cite>Summae Deus clementiae</cite>. Purgatory -is not for Dante, as for Aquinas, merely penal -suffering—“something to be borne.” It must be (as Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span> -Wicksteed observes)<a id="FNanchor_210" href="#Footnote_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a> something active—“something to -be and to do”—somewhat more definite, more specific, -more varied than mere suffering is needed for the building -up of the new life which is to be at home once more in -Eden.</p> - -<p>As in the Montessori school, so in these mystic -“cloisters” the learners are led to concentrate and focus -on a single task a number of faculties and senses: eye, -ear, voice, memory, attitude, gesture and movement all -conspire to enforce the lesson. And this variety of expression -work is rendered effective by an abundant supply of -didactic material, an apparatus as carefully and scientifically -thought out as that of Italy’s latest educational -leader. One need only instance the famous wall-sculptures<a id="FNanchor_211" href="#Footnote_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> -and the inlaid pavement<a id="FNanchor_212" href="#Footnote_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> of the Terrace of Pride, -the description of which forms one of the loveliest passages -in this most beautiful poem.</p> - -<p>We have spoken of the Angels who preside over these -terraces, engaged in the apparently superfluous task of -controlling those whose will is bent manfully upon the -task before them, lifted as they are for ever above the -zone where temptation has any power.<a id="FNanchor_213" href="#Footnote_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> What a task, -we are inclined to say, for angelic faculties! What a -sinecure! Yet the resemblance to the human “Guardian -Angel” of the Montessori school is surely too striking -to be without significance: and modern educational -principles of which the Dottoressa is by no means the -exclusive exponent, may help us to realise how—in this -as in so many other things—we shall do well to range -ourselves “on the side of the Angels.” The Montessori<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span> -teacher—may we not say the truly modern teacher of -whatever type?—submits to an arduous and exacting -course of training—far more arduous and exacting than -that which “qualified” previous generations of teachers -... and all for—what? To know what <em>not</em> to do, what <em>not</em> -to say; to be able to practise at the right moment a -fully qualified self-restraint, and so allow free scope to -the inner forces of expansion in the pupil’s personality: -an expansion which too heavy a hand, however lovingly -laid upon the growing life, might crush or stunt or warp! -A constant presence, inspiring but unobtrusive; realised -but not dominant or over-insistent; not obviating or -unduly curtailing those movements and processes which -in education are infinitely more valuable than immediate -results ... yet ever at hand when really needed.... Is -not this a <i lang="fr">rôle</i> worthy of angelic power and dignity? -Is it not precisely the traditional <i lang="fr">rôle</i> of the Guardian -Angel in whose beneficent existence some of us are still -childlike enough to believe?</p> - -<p>Surely they were not mere figureheads, those “Birds -of God,” whose stately grace and beauty Dante delights -to portray? Even so is it with the “Guardian Angels” of -the Montessori school—with the restrained efficiency -and enthusiasm and the carefully calculated use of personal -influence of the best teachers of all types and grades: -their dignity and essentially angelic quality is apt to be -in proportion to their unobtrusiveness. Education is, -after all, not “forcible feeding” or “cramming”; its -office is to educe—to draw forth. In Socrates’ homely -phrase it is a midwife. “Sairey Gamp” was certainly -not an angel; but there are those of her craft who are. -More and more this <em>maieutic</em> office of the Teacher is -realised, and with its realisation Teachers grow less and -less like the castigating demons of Inferno—more and -more angelic.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Omai vedrai di sì fatti ufficiali.<a id="FNanchor_214" href="#Footnote_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Another point which brings the <cite>Purgatorio</cite>, in its -educational scheme, down to our own days, is the <em>orderly -progression</em> of its lessons. The tasks set for the penitents -are carefully classified and, so to speak, “graded.” The -very form of the Mountain, with its system of gigantic -steps or terraces, signifies as much. It symbolises even -more: for education even in the infant stage involves -the conquest of external difficulties, and, still more, the -arduous conquest of self. The prominence of this “joy -of overcoming” is one of the happiest psychological -phenomena of a Montessori school. And as relations with -our fellows become more complex and responsibilities -multiply, this “battle of life” is ever more consciously -felt. The New Teaching aims at “breaking the back” -of a soul’s troubles in the early stage, by inducing a habit -of mind to which the appearance of difficulties, instead -of depressing, at once suggests victorious effort. In this -way the battle of the free will becomes, in a sense, most -strenuous at the start, as Marco Lombardo says, “And -freewill, which, tho’ it hath a hard struggle in its first -encounter with the heavenly influences, in the end wins -the day completely, if it be well supported.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">E libero voler; che, se fatica</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Ne le prime battaglie col ciel dura</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Poi vince tutto, se ben si notrica.<a id="FNanchor_215" href="#Footnote_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And the same thought of a gradation, a succession of -efforts, each of which, bravely faced, makes those that -follow lighter, is symbolised in the shape of the mountain -of Purgatory, which in reality would have rather the form -of a rounded dome than that of the tall pyramid of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span> -customary illustration. Says Virgil, in his comforting way, -to Dante, breathless after his first steep climb: “The -nature of this eminence is such, that ever at starting from -below it is fatiguing, but in proportion as a man mounts, -he feels it less; wherefore, when it shall appear to thee so -gentle that the ascent is as easy as sailing downward -with the stream, then shalt thou be at the end of this -path; there mayest thou hope to rest thy weariness.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">... Questa montagna è tale</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">E quant’ uom più va su, e men fa male.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Però, quand’ ella ti parrà soave</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Tanto che il su andar ti fia leggero,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Com’ a seconda giù andar per nave,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Allor sarai al fin d’ esto sentiero:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Quivi di riposar l’ affanno aspetta!<a id="FNanchor_216" href="#Footnote_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">There is a moral progression by which man enters gradually -and by accumulation into the fulness of self-conquest, -and so, of his inheritance of Freedom.</p> - -<p>But “grading” also, in the more specific sense, seems -to be symbolised in the <cite>Purgatorio</cite>. This principle was -not born with Froebel, though its emphatic recognition -to-day may be an outcome of his message that each stage -of the child-life has its own absolute value and rights.</p> - -<p>We are apt to wonder now how people were ever so -psychologically impious as to attempt to teach in a single -group, by means of the same cut-and-dried phrases, minds -at every different stage of growth and of receptiveness; -hurling ready-made truths at the devoted heads of pupils -like so many tons of explosive bombs shot down from -aircraft upon massed enemy battalions! Grading, and -the individual point of contact—which, after all, is just -Aristotle’s time-honoured principle of “beginning from -that which we know”—these we recognise to be of the -first importance, and that whether we be University -professors or Sunday school teachers. And so we are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span> -prepared to appreciate a fourteenth century scheme which -is dominated by the principle of graded progress.</p> - -<p>We note that the souls which are not yet psychologically -fit to begin the regular course of purgation are kept outside, -in Antepurgatory, for a longer or shorter term of years, -as each has need. The “Infants,” so to speak, are graded -among themselves, and are not grouped with “Standard -I.” Within the Gate, the seven terraces are arranged in an -order corresponding (not, of course, to a psychological -series that would be accepted as it stands to-day, but) -to a very carefully-thought-out classification of the seven -capital sins; and until the lesson of a given Terrace is -completely mastered, there is no chance of moving up. -When, on the other hand, the teaching in that particular -grade has been thoroughly grasped and the pupil has -nothing more to learn there, no power in heaven or earth—or -anywhere else—can keep him back. In Dante’s School -there are no mistakes in grading, and no wrong removes.</p> - -<p>We have spoken of the “atmosphere” of the <cite>Purgatorio</cite> -as one of “naturalness,” meaning by that, that it is an -environment not calculated to hamper or restrict normal -and spontaneous development. It is “natural” also in -a more literal sense, in that the Poet has seen fit to depart -from the almost invariable tradition of his predecessors -(who place Purgatory underground, side by side with -Hell, and make it scarcely distinguishable therefrom save -in the matter of duration) and to furnish his penitents -with an “open-air cure.”</p> - -<p>It is this background of noble scenery, of landscape -and skyscape, of slope and scarp, of Flowery Valley and -Divine Forest, of star-light and dawn, of sunrise and high -noon and sunset—it is this that gives its peculiar beauty -to the second <cite>Cantica</cite> of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>. But this -open-air Purgatory is more than a clever artifice, by which -a fine dramatic contrast is produced after the murk and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span> -gloom of the <cite>Inferno</cite>. It is, as we have seen, essential to -Dante’s conception of the perfect work of penitence in -man, that it should draw his footsteps up to the Earthly -Paradise, the primal home of Innocence. And so the background -of the <cite>Purgatorio</cite>, as it were inevitably, completes -the illusion of “naturalness” in the world beyond, and -enforces the parallel between the upward struggle of -those elect spirits and our own daily pilgrimage in this -life. It suggests further, all that the magic phrase “Open -Air” means to our modern ears: that healthy out-door -life, nurse of the <i lang="la">mens sana in corpore sano</i>, that life of -robust activities in close contact with external Nature -of which the prime importance is recognised by all schools -of thought in the world of modern education.</p> - -<p>Finally (and here we touch upon one of the most -beautiful features of Dante’s conception), the spiritual -atmosphere, in spite of purgatorial framework of the Seven -Sins, is not that of the Decalogue, but of the Beatitudes. -The Sins themselves are interpreted as disordered Love, -and the manifold love which goes up to make a Saint -is expressed in sweetest harmony when each successive -barrier is passed.<a id="FNanchor_217" href="#Footnote_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> Love is the atmosphere, and Love the -supreme lesson, the learning whereof continues beyond -the grave.</p> - -<p>The conception of Love as the universal motive -power, expressed at length in <cite>Purg.</cite> xvii. 91 <i>sqq.</i>—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nè creator nè creatura mai</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Cominciò el, figliuol, fu sanza amore ...</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">suggests a comparison of Dante’s psychology with that -of the most modern school. In an age when (as a glance -at Fra Salimbene’s pages will demonstrate)—pages written, -it must be remembered, for the eye of a Sister of the Order -of Sta Clara!—something more than Elizabethan broadness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span> -of speech was not uncommon, Dante pours out -volumes of prose and verse, every line of which may be -said to be suitable <i lang="fr">pour les jeunes filles</i>. He would scarcely -have subscribed to that domination of the Sex-instinct -which is an axiom of the Freudian psychology. In the -lines referred to above he more or less adumbrates the -doctrine of “Libido”; but it does not occur to him to -label that psychic force with so doubtfully reputable a -name as “Libido.” The noble title “Amor” is for him, -as for earlier philosophers, the more appropriate one.</p> - -<p>It would, of course, be absurd to credit Dante with -the place of a pioneer of the twentieth century psychology -of the Unconscious, which had its roots in the Psychical -Research of F. W. Myers and his friends, and sprouted -up to visible life and growth so recently under the hands -of the Viennese Freud and the Switzer Jung. But it would -probably not be too much to say, in view of his remarkably -intelligent interest in mental processes, and especially -in the phenomena of dreams and of the border-land -between sleeping and waking, that, given the assets and -the advantages of our modern thinkers, he would have -taken no mean place among psychologists of the modern -type.</p> - -<p>From <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 10—Tant ’era pien di sonno—to <cite>Par.</cite> -xxxiii. 58, we find this interest displayed; and before we -pass on to consider his teaching on the more human -aspect of Education, the personal relation between -Teacher and Pupil, it may be worth while to direct attention -to one or two passages which emphasise this point.</p> - -<p>In the 30th Canto of <cite>Inferno</cite><a id="FNanchor_218" href="#Footnote_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> he uses as a simile -that significant situation in which the dreamer hopes he -is dreaming—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che sognando desidera sognare ...</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">In another passage<a id="FNanchor_219" href="#Footnote_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> he sketches a case where the wakened -dreamer forgets the “dream-cognition,” but is still -dominated by the “affect”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... Colui che somniando vede</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che dopo il sogno la passione impressa</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rimane, e l’ altro a la mente non riede....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Ere he quits the Terrace of Accidie, Dante falls asleep, -and here he describes<a id="FNanchor_220" href="#Footnote_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> in vivid and picturesque language -the process of going to sleep, when thought follows -thought in more or less inconsequent fashion—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Novo pensiero dentro a me si mise</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Del qual più altri nacquero, e diversi;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">E tanto d’un in altro vaneggiai,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">E ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>At the opening of the next Canto<a id="FNanchor_221" href="#Footnote_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> comes the dream—dream -of the two symbolic Ladies—and the awakening. -The dreamer is apparently roused by the intensity of a -dream-stench; but his awakening is due as a matter -of fact to the arresting voice of Virgil, whose person is -projected into the “manifest content” of the dream a -few lines earlier,<a id="FNanchor_222" href="#Footnote_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> in the cry of the “Donna Santa”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O Virgilio, o Virgilio, chi è questa?</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">“Three times,” says Dante’s Guide, “have I called you. -Get up, and come along!”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... Il buon maestro, “Almen tre</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Voci t’ ho messe,” dicea, “Surgi e viene!”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">In the last Canto of <cite>Purgatory</cite> proper<a id="FNanchor_223" href="#Footnote_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a> we have another -picture of a going to sleep and an awaking. The sleepiness -has been induced by a sort of natural self-hypnotism, the -poet’s gaze steadily fixed on a few bright stars seen through<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span> -the confined opening between the cliffs as he lies on the -rocky stair.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Poco potea parer li del di fori;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Ma, per quel poco, vedev’ io le stelle</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Di lor solere e più chiare e maggiori</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">This time the awakening is not sudden or violent.<a id="FNanchor_224" href="#Footnote_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> After -the altogether lovely dream of Lia—the sublimation of -Dante’s desire, suggested, or coloured, by the natural -anticipations of one on the threshold of the earthly -Paradise—he wakes up quite naturally, his sleep “breaking -from him” with the breaking dawn.<a id="FNanchor_225" href="#Footnote_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Le tenebre fuggian da tutti lati</div> - <div class="verse indent2">E il sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’ mi.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Dante’s analysis of Dreams was naturally relative to -the knowledge and tendency of his day. The presaging -quality of Dreams—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">... Il sonno che sovente</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle;</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">like the proverbial belief that the truest dreams are those -that come before dawn—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... Presso al mattin del ver si sogna<a id="FNanchor_226" href="#Footnote_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">is not for him the fruit of scientific psycho-analysis; but -rather the unscientific or quasi-scientific deduction of -untold generations of men on whom the dreams that -“came true” left a far deeper impress than the large -majority that proved fallacious.</p> - -<p>Dante was, however, a real psychologist of his own -time and date, as many qualities of his thought and interest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span> -testify; and his discerning interest in the dream-consciousness -supplies a definite link between the thinkers -of the Trecento and our modern Masters.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>It must not, however, be supposed that the somewhat -specialised comparison of Dante’s purgatorial scheme -with the Montessori Method sketched above<a id="FNanchor_227" href="#Footnote_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> by any -means exhausts the educational principles of the <cite>Purgatorio</cite>; -still less that it covers the whole area of such -principles enshrined in the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>. The old-fashioned -relation between Master and Pupil has still -something to be said for it. The personal element cannot -be eliminated, however great may be the need—especially -in certain stages of self-restraint and self-effacement. -This personal relation, in its permanently important -aspects, is beautifully figured in the relation between -Dante as learner and Virgil, Beatrice, and Statius as -teachers.</p> - -<p>Benedetto Croce<a id="FNanchor_228" href="#Footnote_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a> draws attention to the frequent -<i lang="it">Intramesse didascaliche</i> which mark the XXIst and -following Cantos of the <cite>Purgatorio</cite>—notably the discourse -of Statius on “generation” in <cite>Purg.</cite> xxv. “This -poetry,” he says, “breathes throughout the spirit of -the Master who knows, and desires to make clear the idea -he is expounding; who stoops down towards the pupil to -embrace him and lift him up towards the Truth.”<a id="FNanchor_229" href="#Footnote_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> -Beatrice, again, as Croce points out,<a id="FNanchor_230" href="#Footnote_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> taking Virgil’s -place in the journey through the skies, is like an -elder sister patiently schooling her younger brother.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span> -She helps him to overcome his prejudices, to solve his -problems, to conquer his doubts; now turning upon him -the eye of a fond mother nursing a delirious child,<a id="FNanchor_231" href="#Footnote_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> now -laughing him out of his “childish notions,” the charm -of her resplendent beauty and the illumination of her smile -giving just that touch of romance to their relations that -suggests the final stage of the transfiguration of the -half-earthly love of the <cite>Vita Nuova</cite> into something wholly -celestial. But the type of this relation between Master -and Pupil is most surely and most prominently drawn -in that which subsists all through the first two cantiche -between Virgil and Dante.<a id="FNanchor_232" href="#Footnote_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a> “Mia scuola,” Virgil calls this -relation in the beautiful scene with Statius;<a id="FNanchor_233" href="#Footnote_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> and a striking -feature of this “School,” recurring in the same -Canto<a id="FNanchor_234" href="#Footnote_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> and elsewhere, is the close, intimate, easy and even -playful mutual understanding between Teacher and Pupil. -To this point we shall return; but first a word may be -said on the sterner aspect of Education, from the pupils’ -point of view.</p> - -<p>Granted that the “Primrose Path” is the only appropriate -one for infant steps to toddle on; that path itself -has its ups and downs—slight gradients from the adult -point of view, but for the infant involving a demand for -real effort and adventure. And the end of man—our -human Good—lies above the zone where primroses bloom, -on the heights: as Tasso sings—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... In cima all’ erto e faticoso colle</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Della virtù è riposto il nostro bene.<a id="FNanchor_235" href="#Footnote_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Let us glance, then, at what Dante has to say about -the sterner side of Education—the necessary sacrifices -that must be made for Liberty—and about the responsibilities<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span> -of the teacher in his relation to the pupil whom -he would guide up to freedom of mind and soul.</p> - -<p>To the former we have already referred above (p. 102) -in connection with the Montessori principle of the joyous -facing of difficulties. The hard initial battle<a id="FNanchor_236" href="#Footnote_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a> is symbolically -represented by the place which the <cite>Inferno</cite> holds -in Dante’s quest of Liberty. For him indeed the “prime -battaglie” are the hardest. No essential routine or -inevitable drudgery which beset the path of learning -can match in sheer distastefulness the weary horror of -that first part of the Poet’s journey, of which his self-pitying -anticipations are recorded in the lovely and -pathetic opening lines of the second canto: “The day -was departing, and the darkened air was relieving from -their labours the animals on earth, and I was preparing -all alone to sustain the struggle alike of the journey and -of my piteous thoughts.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Lo giorno se n’ andava, e l’ aere bruno</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Toglieva gli animai che sono in terra</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Dalle fatiche loro; e io sol uno</div> - <div class="verse indent0">M’ apparecchiava a sostener la guerra</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sì del cammino e sì della pietate.<a id="FNanchor_237" href="#Footnote_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The youthful scholar, in his quest for knowledge and -truth and the freedom that is truth’s guerdon, has not, -as a rule, to face this literal isolation in drudgery and -painfulness. For him the social instinct and the companionship -of fellow-victims, not to say the healthy -stimulus of friendly rivalry and competition, are present -to lighten his burden and sweeten his lot. Yet each, -after all, has to tackle the drudgery and the difficulties -for himself. There is no Royal Road. The Master may -spur him on with the vision of the “gladsome mountain -which is the origin and source of all joy.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">Dilettoso monte</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ch’ è principio e cagion di tutta gioia;</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">may encourage him to face the flames by the thought of -the welcoming smile of Beatrice on the other side: “as -you tempt a child with an apple!” “Mark you, my son, -this barrier separates thee from Beatrice.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Or vedi, figlio:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tra Beatrice e te è questo muro;<a id="FNanchor_238" href="#Footnote_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">but, none the less, the grim journey has to be undertaken, -the distasteful plunge to be made. It is largely the -Teacher’s attitude and example that make this -effort possible; that evoke the manly spirit in the -pupil, and encourage him to persevere in face of difficulties.</p> - -<p>All this is recognised by the best modern theory and -practice. “The New Teaching,” says Professor Adams,<a id="FNanchor_239" href="#Footnote_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a> -“does not seek to free the pupils from effort”—we have -seen that this is really the case, even in its extremest -form of Montessorianism, with its individualistic charter -of Child-liberty—“not ... to free the pupils from effort, -but to encourage them to strenuous work”; it “does -not seek to get rid of drudgery, but to make it tolerable -by giving it a meaning, and shewing its relation to the -whole learning process in school, and to the whole process -of living in the world.” This is exactly Virgil’s attitude -towards Dante. He is, first of all, alert to cheer and encourage -him in moments of special difficulty. He encourages -Dante both by example and by precept to mount -the grisly back of the monster Geryon, their sole means -of descent into the Abyss<a id="FNanchor_240" href="#Footnote_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a>; and later, when the flame -has to be faced before entering the Earthly Paradise,<a id="FNanchor_241" href="#Footnote_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> -he reminds him of the success of that past experiment -of faith, much in the manner of the noble self-encouragement -of that Homeric hero, who, known to Dante only<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span> -at second-hand, yet captured his imagination. “Be of -good cheer, my heart, we have suffered worse things -ere this.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">τέτλαθι δὴ κραδίη, καὶ κύντερον ἄλλος ποτ’ ἔτλης.<a id="FNanchor_242" href="#Footnote_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Or again, when at the foot of the mountain Dante is -dismayed at its steepness, the Master explains: “It is -ever easier as you ascend.”<a id="FNanchor_243" href="#Footnote_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> When Dante is frightened -as the Mountain trembles (<cite>Purg.</cite> xx. 135) Virgil interposes -with a call to confidence—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Non dubbiar mentr’ io ti guido</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But Virgil not only encourages; he explains. From -time to time he pauses with the double object of giving -his companion a breathing-space and of enheartening -him by an exposition of the end and purpose of the -drudgery—of the whole scheme, of which the experience -they are now undergoing is an integral and necessary -part. Thus he expounds to his disciple the topography -of Hell when they have passed within the rampart of -the City of Dis, and before they begin the steep and terrible -descent, and encounter the Minotaur.<a id="FNanchor_244" href="#Footnote_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> Again, after -the uncomfortable ordeal of the suffocating fumes on -the Terrace of Wrath, he diverts his pupil’s attention -with a sketch of the order and inner meaning of the -purgatorial terraces, and explains how Sin, in all its -deadly forms, is just “disordered Love.”<a id="FNanchor_245" href="#Footnote_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a> And we may -note in passing how this postponement of the explanation -and the detailed scheme till the movement of learning -is well on its course, is itself typical of the New Teaching,<a id="FNanchor_246" href="#Footnote_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span> -and grounded on sound psychological principles. Virgil -supplies, indeed, in the first Canto of the <cite>Inferno</cite>, a summary -forecast of the journey, but does not sit down at -the beginning and burden his Pupil’s mind with an elaboration -of details. Nor can we leave the lecture on “Disordered -Love” of <cite>Purg.</cite> xvii. without drawing attention -to the ideal relations of Teacher and Pupil depicted in -the following Canto, and especially to the masterly way -in which Virgil suggests ever fresh problems to Dante’s -mind and draws him on with an increasing “thirst to -know.”<a id="FNanchor_247" href="#Footnote_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a></p> - -<p>The liberty which Education “goes seeking,” and in -which its nobler forms live and move as in a bracing -atmosphere, demands some sacrifice alike from Teacher -and from Pupil. From the Pupil, especially in its earlier -middle stages, it demands a degree of submissiveness and -docility, and courage and perseverance to face distasteful -drudgery; from the Teacher, that self-restraint of which -we have already spoken—yet not mere self-effacement. -Like the Divine Master, he must “begin to do and to -teach.”<a id="FNanchor_248" href="#Footnote_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> He must be a fellow-pilgrim, sharing the toils -of the road, and over the roughest places a leader, even -as Virgil volunteers to go first where the grim descent -begins into the “cieco mondo”: “I will go first and thou -shalt follow me.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Io sarò primo, e tu sarai secondo.<a id="FNanchor_249" href="#Footnote_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>As fellow-pilgrim, he will not hesitate to let the Pupil -witness something of his distress. The Master girds -himself to the descent pallid with sympathetic suffering—<i lang="it">tutto -smorto</i><a id="FNanchor_250" href="#Footnote_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a>—nor does he hide the tokens of shame and -confusion when he becomes conscious that he has been<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span> -a party to an unwarranted delay.<a id="FNanchor_251" href="#Footnote_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> And we note the effect -of this frankness on the Pupil—an enhancement of loyal -admiration for the Master; and, for his own conscience, -a more delicate perception of moral values: “He appeared -to me self-reproached. O noble, stainless, conscience, how -bitter to thy taste is a trifling fault!”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">El mi parea da se stesso rimorso;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">O dignitosa coscienza e netta,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Come t’ è picciol fallo amaro morso!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Even so pleads the spirit of the New Teaching.<a id="FNanchor_252" href="#Footnote_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> Let not -the Teacher “put on airs of omniscience and solemnity. -He must be a part of the gay company; he must not -mind ‘giving himself away,’ he must be a human being, -not a wooden stick; gladly must he learn, and then he -will gladly teach.” Thus Virgil moves in Dante’s company -as a fellow-learner, not omniscient, not infallible; ever -ready to confess with frankness his own limitations, -and to own up to his mistakes. In this spirit he apologises -to Pier delle Vigne<a id="FNanchor_253" href="#Footnote_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a> for the inconsiderate act to which -he was forced owing to his inability to convince Dante -through the medium of his own verses. In the same -spirit he gives place to Nessus when a description is -needed of Nessus’ own region of the Inferno, reversing -his <i lang="la">dictum</i> about the original descent: “Regard him -(Nessus) as thy prime authority, and me as secondary.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Questi ti sia or primo, e io secondo.<a id="FNanchor_254" href="#Footnote_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">In like manner he gives way to Statius when an explanation -is wanted of the emaciation of spirits no longer -subject to bodily hunger,<a id="FNanchor_255" href="#Footnote_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a> and leads Dante to expect -from Beatrice the completion of his own careful but yet -not fully satisfying exposition of a heavenly matter: -“And if this argument of mine doth not appease thy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span> -cravings thou wilt see Beatrice, and she will fully relieve -thee of this and every other desire.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">E se la mia ragion non ti disfama</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Ti torrà questa e ciascun altra brama.<a id="FNanchor_256" href="#Footnote_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Dante in his portrait of Virgil reminds us that the quest -of Truth demands “truth in the inward parts,” that a -humble and limpid sincerity is essential. Finally, he -shews us this humility transfigured into a Divine self-effacement, -where the elder Poet hands over his disciple -entirely into his own guidance and that of Beatrice, in -humble acknowledgement of his own limitations.<a id="FNanchor_257" href="#Footnote_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> This -act of self-effacement has indeed been in his mind from -the first. When the time shall come for Dante’s ascent -to the realms of the <i lang="it">beate genti</i>, “a spirit more worthy -than I shall be appointed thereto, with whom I will leave -thee at my departure; for that Potentate who reigns in -heaven above, because I was rebellious against His law, -wills not that any by my guidance should enter His city.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Anima fia a ciò più di me degna;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Chè quello imperador che là su regna</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Perch’ io fu’ ribellante a la sua legge</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Non vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna.<a id="FNanchor_258" href="#Footnote_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And so Virgil’s work is done, and the Teacher shews -himself sublimest in the last act. “The hardest lesson,” -says the apostle of the New Teaching, “for a clever -teacher to learn, is to let a clever pupil be clever in his -own way,” nor “has a teacher been really successful” -until “he has, by skilful preparation, enabled his pupil -to do without him.”<a id="FNanchor_259" href="#Footnote_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a> This final self-effacement of the -Teacher, with its corollary, the achievement of self-mastery<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span> -and self-determination in the Pupil—the achievement -of that <em>liberty of soul</em> which is the supreme aim of -the pilgrimage—is best described in Virgil’s matchless -words of farewell, which we may now quote in their fulness. -His “skilful preparation” has all led up to this ... -to make itself dispensable! “By force of wit and skill I -have conducted thee hither; henceforward let thine own -pleasure be thy guide; from both the steep and the narrow -ways thou art now free.... No longer await either -word or sign from me; free, sound, and upright is thy -will, and it would be amiss not to do its bidding; wherefore -over thyself I invest thee with supreme control.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Tratto t’ ho qui con ingegno e con arte;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Fuor sei de l’ erte vie, fuor sei de l’ arte.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Non aspettar mio dir più, nè mio cenno,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio</div> - <div class="verse indent2">E fallo fora non far a suo senno:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.<a id="FNanchor_260" href="#Footnote_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE AND ISLAM<br /> -(<i>As represented by</i> “<span class="smcap">The Gospel of Barnabas</span>”)</span></h2> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">E solo in parte vidi il Saladino.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 129.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p>The aim of these Essays has been to present Dante in -different aspects as the Apostle of Freedom: a man -endowed with those profound convictions on which alone -true tolerance can be built, a man whose deep and passionate -earnestness is tempered and balanced by a saving -sense of humour. The substantiation of this claim may -perhaps justify us in carrying the reader into a remote -by-way of Italian literature; in asking him to note -points of contact and of contrast which emerge when the -Poet is confronted, so to speak, with a document which -we may be sure he never saw,<a id="FNanchor_261" href="#Footnote_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a> but which yet seems to -bear, here and there, strange marks of the impress of -his thoughts and of his phraseology. If the comparison -of the two writers should seem at first sight gratuitous and -far-fetched, it may yet succeed in throwing light on -Dante’s genius and temper from an unfamiliar angle.</p> - -<p>The Clarendon Press published in 1907 an <i lang="la">Editio -princeps</i> of the Mohammedan <cite>Gospel of Barnabas</cite> from -an unique MS. of the latter half of the sixteenth century<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span> -in the Imperial Library at Vienna.<a id="FNanchor_262" href="#Footnote_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a> This document—apart -from its theological and dogmatic importance—should -prove to be of considerable interest to students -of Italian literature, as well on account of its grammatical -and orthographic peculiarities, as for the positive literary -merits which not infrequently relieve a style in general -somewhat rough and bald.</p> - -<p>The task of preparing for the press a translation of -this remarkable document could not fail to bring before -one’s mind certain points of contact with Dante, more -especially as the curious archaic Italian in which the -“Gospel” is written lends itself, in a certain measure, -to verbal coincidences and quasi-coincidences with passages -in the Poet’s writings. The points of contact which -will be adduced in the present paper are none the less -interesting because the date of the original <cite>Gospel of -Barnabas</cite> still remains to a certain extent an open question, -and with it also the nature of the relations, direct -or indirect, that may have subsisted between its compiler -and the author of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>.<a id="FNanchor_263" href="#Footnote_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a></p> - -<p>But first a word is due about the character and scope -of this very apocryphal Gospel. The MS., as we have -already suggested, is of comparatively recent date. Paper, -binding, and orthography all combine with the script -to place it—not, as its eighteenth century critics supposed, -in the fifteenth century, or earlier, but—in the -latter half of the sixteenth century.<a id="FNanchor_264" href="#Footnote_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a> It is, however, -of course possible that the Vienna Codex may be a copy -of an earlier MS.; and, curiously enough, one of the -strongest arguments for this earlier original arises, as we -shall shortly see, out of an apparent reference to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span> -famous Jubilee of 1300 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> which looms so large in -Dante’s life and writings.</p> - -<p>The book is a frankly Mohammedan Gospel, giving -a full, but garbled, story of the life and teaching of Jesus -Christ, from a Moslem point of view. It claims to have -been written by Saint Barnabas (who figures in it as one -of the Twelve—to the exclusion of poor Saint Thomas!) -at the injunction of his Master, for the express purpose -of combating the errors taught by Saint Paul and others. -These errors are summed up under three heads: (1) -the doctrine that Jesus is Son of God, (2) the rejection -of Circumcision, and (3) the permission to eat unclean -meats. Of these three errors the first is regarded as of -the greatest importance; and not only is the Gospel -narrative contorted and expurgated to suit the writer’s -purpose, but Christ Himself is made repeatedly to deny -his own Divinity and even his Messiahship, and to -predict the advent of Mohammed, the “Messenger of -God.”</p> - -<p>About two-thirds of the material is derived, without -question, from our four Canonical Gospels, of which a -decidedly unscientific “harmony” forms the framework -of Barnabas’ narrative; the remaining third, which -takes the form of discourses put into the mouth of Christ, -is purely oriental in character, and largely an elaboration -of germs or hints to be found in the Koran or in Jewish -tradition. It is on this section of the book that the -Dantist’s interest will be concentrated.</p> - -<p>The brief words of awful solemnity in which the Gospels -speak of the doom of the lost are supplemented in Barnabas -by elaborate descriptions of infernal torments which, -whencesoever ultimately derived, are expressed in terms -which exhibit remarkable coincidences with the <cite>Inferno</cite> -and <cite>Purgatorio</cite> of Dante. Mohammed’s two favourite -themes were, the final Judgment and the horrors of Hell<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span> -on the one hand, and, on the other, the delights of Paradise. -And the second theme is treated in Barnabas almost -as fully as the first. The Paradise of Barnabas has perhaps -little in common with the Earthly Paradise of Dante, and -still less with the Celestial; but it gives our author -scope for an excursion into the realms of astronomy, -whereby he finds himself (perhaps unconsciously), at -the end of his journey, much nearer to Dante’s scheme -of the Ten Heavens than to the normal tradition of the -Jews and Arabs.</p> - -<p>It will be convenient to deal first with this teaching -on Paradise, secondly with the <cite>Inferno</cite> of Barnabas, and -thirdly with certain verbal and other points of contact -between Barnabas and Dante; concluding with some -more general considerations regarding the tone and colouring -of the “Gospel.”</p> - -<p>It would be strange if the Paradise of Barnabas had -not some features in common with Dante’s. Man’s dreams -of an ideal resting-place, whether past or future, have a -tendency to express themselves in terms of greensward -and flowers and luscious fruits, cool streams and sunshine -tempered by refreshing shade. The name “Paradise” -itself means “park” or “plaisance” as we know, and -though Barnabas is not conspicuously happy when he -poses as an etymologist,<a id="FNanchor_265" href="#Footnote_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a> the connotation of the word -was too securely established alike in Moslem and in -Christian tradition to admit of much variation. Paradise, -of course, has two different meanings in Dante, and the -same is true of its use in Barnabas; but inasmuch as -the distinction in the latter is not expressly marked, it -will be convenient for our purpose to group together -the conceptions of the Earthly and the Celestial Paradise.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span> -In Barnabas, as in Dante, the name is applied to the -scene of man’s creation—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent14">il loco</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fatto per proprio dell’ umana spece,<a id="FNanchor_266" href="#Footnote_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and of his temptation, fall and expulsion.<a id="FNanchor_267" href="#Footnote_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a> In both again -it is used also of the eternal home of God, the good angels -and redeemed mankind.<a id="FNanchor_268" href="#Footnote_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> Speaking generally, the main -features of the Paradise of Barnabas resemble more closely -those of Dante’s Earthly Paradise; while its position in -the scheme of the universe corresponds rather to that of -the Celestial Paradise of Dante. Thus the four perfumed -rivers<a id="FNanchor_269" href="#Footnote_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a> of this “Gospel,” though derived, almost certainly, -from the Koran, correspond, in a sense, to the miraculously -clear and limpid stream which arrested the poet’s -progress<a id="FNanchor_270" href="#Footnote_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a>; while its profusion of flowers and fruits<a id="FNanchor_271" href="#Footnote_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a> -recall the scene portrayed in Virgil’s parting words—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... l’ erbetta, i fiori e li arbuscelli,<a id="FNanchor_272" href="#Footnote_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">La gran varïazion de’ freschi mai.<a id="FNanchor_273" href="#Footnote_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">which drew Dante’s wondering eyes across the stream -to where Matelda tripped singing through the painted -meadow—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Cantando ed iscegliendo fior da fiore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ond’ era pinta tutta la sua via.<a id="FNanchor_274" href="#Footnote_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Again, a somewhat terse definition of Paradise in Barnabas -reminds one of a still shorter phrase of Dante’s. The -author of the <cite>De Vulgari Eloquentia</cite> describes the home -which man forfeited by his first sin as “delitiarum patria<a id="FNanchor_275" href="#Footnote_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a>”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span> -while for Barnabas, “Il parradisso he chassa doue <span class="allsmcap">DIO</span> -chonsserva le sui delitie<a id="FNanchor_276" href="#Footnote_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a>”; or, as he puts it further on -“<span class="allsmcap">DIO</span> ha chreato il parradisso per chassa delle sui delitie.”<a id="FNanchor_277" href="#Footnote_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a></p> - -<p>But the heavenly Paradise of the Empyrean is also -described by Dante in material phrase as “God’s garden.” -“Questo giardino”<a id="FNanchor_278" href="#Footnote_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a> is the name by which Saint Bernard -designates the Mystic Rose, as he unveils its mysteries -to Dante; and already in the Eighth Heaven Beatrice -had essayed to divert the Poet’s gaze from her own -loveliness—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent16">... al bel giardino</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che sotto i raggi di Cristo s’ infiora.<a id="FNanchor_279" href="#Footnote_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Here we may note that in Barnabas<a id="FNanchor_280" href="#Footnote_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> <span class="smcap">God</span> (not Christ, of -course) is the sun of Paradise, while Mohammed is its -moon.</p> - -<p>But there is another passage in the <cite>Paradiso</cite>, where -Dante himself is speaking in answer to Saint John’s -catechizing: a passage which may well detain us a little -longer. Here Paradise is described in so many words -as the “Garden of the Eternal Gardener”—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Le fronde onde s’ infronda tutto l’ orto</div> - <div class="verse indent2">De l’ ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto.<a id="FNanchor_281" href="#Footnote_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Is it fanciful to see a subtle resemblance—in thought, -perhaps, more than in phrase (though Dante’s symbolic -meaning is wanting)—in Barnabas’ description of Paradise -as a place “doue ... ogni chossa he <i lang="it">frutuossa, di fruti -proportionati ha cholui che lo ha choltiuato</i>?”<a id="FNanchor_282" href="#Footnote_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a></p> - -<p>There emerge, at any rate, from both passages, the -thought of the Divine Gardener ... and of a <em>proportion</em> -for which He is in some way responsible. But perhaps -a more striking coincidence—if coincidence it be—is that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span> -between the answer given to a problem raised by Saint -Bartholomew in Barnabas and the assurance vouchsafed -by Piccarda<a id="FNanchor_283" href="#Footnote_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a> in resolution of Dante’s difficulty concerning -degrees of glory in Heaven.</p> - -<p>“O Master,” says Bartholomew,<a id="FNanchor_284" href="#Footnote_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a> “shall the glory -of Paradise be equal for every man? If it be equal, it -will not be just, and if it be unequal, the lesser will envy -the greater.” Jesus answers: “Non sera equalle perche -dio he iusto he ogniuno si chontentera perche hiuui -non he inuidia,” and again, There shall be “tutta una -gloria sebene sara ha chi più ha chi meno. Non portera -alloro inuidia ueruna.” So, when Dante questions the -beatified Piccarda, in her earth-shadowed sphere—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Desiderate voi più alto loco ...?<a id="FNanchor_285" href="#Footnote_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">the spirit replies, in words which, though more beautiful -and more profound, are inevitably called up by the -passage of Barnabas just quoted—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Si che, come noi sem di soglia in soglia</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Com’ allo re ch’ a suo voler ne invoglia:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">En’ la sua voluntade è nostra pace.<a id="FNanchor_286" href="#Footnote_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Turning now to the geographical or rather astronomical -aspect of the subject, we find in Barnabas a definite -divergence from the doctrine of the <cite>Koran</cite>, and adoption -of a Ptolemaic scheme closely resembling that of Dante’s -<cite>Paradiso</cite>. There are nine heavens, not counting Paradise, -<i>i.e.</i> ten heavens in all. “Noue sono li cielli li quali sono -distanti luno dal altro chome he distante il primo cielo -dala terra. Il quale he lontano dalla terra cinquecento<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span> -hanni di strada.”<a id="FNanchor_287" href="#Footnote_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a> In the “five hundred years’ journey” -there is a reminiscence of Jewish tradition: but the seven -heavens of the Talmud and of the <cite>Koran</cite> have become ten. -And though these heavens are not definitely stated to -be arranged, like Dante’s, as a series of concentric spheres -with earth as the centre, they form a graduated series, -in which each is to the next as a “punto di ago,”<a id="FNanchor_288" href="#Footnote_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> or -as a grain of sand.<a id="FNanchor_289" href="#Footnote_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a> The planets, again, have their place -in the scheme. They are not, apparently, identified with -the several “cieli,” as in Dante’s arrangement, but are -“set between” or “amongst” them: “li cielli fra li -qualli stano li pianeti.”<a id="FNanchor_290" href="#Footnote_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a></p> - -<p>The point of resemblance is to be found in a graduated -series of ten (and not seven) heavens, characterised by -an ascending scale of magnitude, and culminating in -the Paradise of the Blessed.</p> - -<p>The resemblances are indeed striking; but though -‘Barnabas is vastly superior to previous Moslem writers -in the richness of his conception of Heaven,’ (they in -common with their Christian contemporaries shewing much -more spontaneity and exuberance of fancy in describing -the torments of Hell), Dante excels markedly in the -glowing wealth of his picture of Paradise—its radiance, -its variety, its peace, its activity, its all-pervading love.<a id="FNanchor_291" href="#Footnote_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a></p> - -<p>So far, it may be said, the suggested points of contact -between Barnabas and Dante have been somewhat -vague and hypothetical. They may, perhaps, be adequately -accounted for on the basis of a common tradition—the -practically universal tradition of a Garden-Paradise, -and the Aristotelo-Ptolemaic scheme of astronomy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span> -common to all the civilised West, whether Christian or -Mohammedan, till the days of Copernicus and Galileo. -But in the Inferno of Barnabas we may discover more -definite and more convincing resemblances to features -and passages of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>.</p> - -<p>Islam, except in its later developments,<a id="FNanchor_292" href="#Footnote_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a> has no place -for a Purgatory. There is no mention of a Purgatorio -in the Koran or in this “Gospel,” though Barnabas gives -even the Faithful a probationary residence of torment -in Hell, varying from Mohammed’s own brief term of -“the twinkling of an eye” to a duration of 70,000 years!<a id="FNanchor_293" href="#Footnote_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a> -But the Barnaban arrangement of Hell itself furnishes -an almost exact parallel to the scheme of Dante’s Purgatorio. -The framework of the arrangement is that of the -seven capital sins. Hell is divided<a id="FNanchor_294" href="#Footnote_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a> into seven circles or -“centri” wherein are punished respectively (1) lo irachondo, -(2) il gollosso, (3) lo acidiosso, (4) il lusuriosso, -(5) lo hauaro, (6) lo inuidiosso, (7) il superbo. The order -of the sins differs considerably from that adopted by -Dante, and indeed is not repeated in any of the typical -arrangements given in Dr. Moore’s well-known Table;<a id="FNanchor_295" href="#Footnote_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a> -coming nearest to that of Aquinas. In common, however, -with Dante’s arrangement it has the juxtaposition of -Pride and Envy and their position at the lower end of -the series: a point which is perhaps the more significant -in that Barnabas approaches his Inferno from the bottom -(not, as one would have expected, from the top), beginning -with “il più basso centro” of Pride. There is another -point also, in which the Inferno of Barnabas resembles -both the Inferno and the Purgatorio of Dante—the principle -which runs through all its torments “per quae peccat -quis ... per haec et torquetur.” The proud shall be -“trampled under-foot of Satan and his devils,”<a id="FNanchor_296" href="#Footnote_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a> the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span> -envious shall be tormented with the delusion that even -in that joyless realm “ogniuno prendi allegrezza del suo -malle he si dolgia che lui non habia peggio”;<a id="FNanchor_297" href="#Footnote_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a> the slothful -shall labour at tasks like that of Sisyphus,<a id="FNanchor_298" href="#Footnote_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> and the -gluttonous be tantalised with elusive dainties.<a id="FNanchor_299" href="#Footnote_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a> Nor can -we fail to notice here how in the story of the serpent’s -doom<a id="FNanchor_300" href="#Footnote_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a> there comes out the idea of all pollutions of human -sin—especially repented sin—streaming back eventually -to Satan: the conception which underlies the system of -Dante’s rivers of Hell, including the “ruscelletto” that -trickles down from Purgatory.<a id="FNanchor_301" href="#Footnote_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a></p> - -<p>There is a vivid description in <cite>Barnabas</cite> of the “Harrowing -of Hell” at the coming of God’s Messenger, which -though it has nothing in common with the account of -the Saviour’s Descent as related by Virgil in Limbo, is -strongly suggestive of a later scene where at the advent -of the much-debated “Messo del ciel,”<a id="FNanchor_302" href="#Footnote_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a> who comes to open -the gates of Dis, both banks of the Styx tremble, and more -than a thousand “anime distrutte” fly headlong like -frogs before a water-snake.<a id="FNanchor_303" href="#Footnote_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a> “Onde tremera,” says -Barnabas, “lo infferno alla sua pressenzza<a id="FNanchor_304" href="#Footnote_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a> ... quando -elgi ui andera tutti li diauoli stridendo cercherano di -asscondersi sotto le ardente brasse dicendo luno allo -altro: scampa scampa che elgi uiene machometo nosstro -innimicho.”<a id="FNanchor_305" href="#Footnote_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a></p> - -<p>While the general atmosphere of Hell in <cite>Barnabas</cite>, -with its “neui he giazi intollerabili,”<a id="FNanchor_306" href="#Footnote_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a> its torturing fiends, -its biting serpents, its Sisyphus-labours and Tantalus-pains, -its harpies, its burning filth and nameless horrors, -has the same “reek” as that of Dante’s Inferno, there -are passages which present an almost verbal parallel. -In his description of the cries of the lost, Barnabas<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span> -says: “malladirano ... il loro padre he madre he il -loro chreatore.” Who can but recall Dante’s words about -the dismal spirits assembled on the bank of Acheron, -who—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti?<a id="FNanchor_307" href="#Footnote_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">This brings us to the subject of actual verbal coincidences, -of which we must confess we have found but two, though -a more systematic investigation might well yield a much -larger number.</p> - -<p>Barnabas’ recurring characterisation of the idols of -the heathen as “dei falsi he bugiardi”<a id="FNanchor_308" href="#Footnote_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a> is surely too -remarkable to be without significance, and is enforced -and supported by the occurrence of another cadence of -the same canto of the <cite>Inferno</cite> in the phrase “rabbiosa -fame,” which in Barnabas, however, applies not to the -symbolic lion of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_309" href="#Footnote_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a> but to the torments -of the Lost.</p> - -<p>There remains one more point to be adduced—an -incidental and a somewhat subtle one which makes, not -so much for a relation between Dante’s writings and the -<cite>Gospel of Barnabas</cite> as for a relation of contemporaneity -between the two writers. The inference which it would -suggest is so definite and precise, that it is only fair to -remark that there are puzzlingly contradictory arguments -to be drawn from the language and style of Barnabas.</p> - -<p>Our point, then, is as follows. Barnabas puts into the -mouth of our Lord, as we have observed above, numerous -predictions of the future advent of Mohammed as “Messiah” -and “Messenger of <span class="smcap">God</span>.” In one of these a -“Jubilee” is spoken of as recurring every hundred years: -“il iubileo ... che hora uiene ogni cento hanni.”<a id="FNanchor_310" href="#Footnote_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a> The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span> -writer or compiler here, as often, fails to throw himself -back into the Palestine of the first century, in which, -as his very considerable knowledge of the Old Testament<a id="FNanchor_311" href="#Footnote_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a> -should have reminded him, the Hebrew Jubilee of fifty -years would have been in force. Whence, then, comes this -Jubilee? He cannot have derived it from the <cite>Koran</cite>. -We are almost forced to the conclusion that the “hora” -of the passage quoted is a literal “now” and refers to a -contemporary institution—to the Jubilee as conceived -of at the moment when the lines were penned; and that, -the Jubilee of Western Christendom. This carries us back -beyond the twenty-five years’ Jubilee of modern times—beyond -the year when Clement VI, for his own ends, -instituted a Jubilee of fifty years after the Hebrew model; -and would give us as our <i lang="la">terminus ad quem</i> the year 1349. -For the upper limit—the <i lang="la">terminus a quo</i> of the original -Barnabas we must turn to the famous Jubilee of 1300, -the ideal date of Dante’s pilgrimage. For though the -Bull<a id="FNanchor_312" href="#Footnote_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a> by which that Jubilee was promulgated alleged -antecedent tradition, and the contemporary chroniclers -naturally followed suit,<a id="FNanchor_313" href="#Footnote_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a> there seems to be no sufficient -historical evidence for a precedent. Thus, between the -years 1300 and 1350—and, apparently, only during that -period—it would have been possible to speak of the -centennial Jubilee as an established institution. If this -be so, the writing of this passage in <cite>Barnabas</cite> is relegated -to the years in which the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> took its final -shape, or those just after the poet’s death in 1321 when -the poem so swiftly took its place among the classics -of the world’s literature.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span></p> - -<p>The foregoing sketch does not pretend to be exhaustive;<a id="FNanchor_314" href="#Footnote_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a> -it does not even claim to have proved anything -of a substantial nature: but it may perhaps suggest to -some more competent mind a line of study which has at -least the merit of freshness, and it may serve to introduce -to those who are not acquainted with it, a document of -no ordinary interest and of no little beauty.</p> - -<p>It is sometimes stated that Dante places Mohammed -not among pagans nor among heretics but with the -schismatics: as though he shared the optimistic view of -some of his contemporaries, that the Moslems were but -an extreme form of Christian “sect.”</p> - -<p>But Dante distributes his pagans without prejudice -throughout the successive circles, from the “Nobile -Castello” in Limbo<a id="FNanchor_315" href="#Footnote_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a> to the central seat of infamy in the -Giudecca; and, as a matter of fact, a pagan, Curio, is -partner of Mohammed’s doom in the penultimate “bolgia” -of Malebolge. Obviously “scisma” must not be -taken too technically from Mohammed’s lips, supplemented -as it is by the more general phrase “seminator -di scandalo.”<a id="FNanchor_316" href="#Footnote_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a> The “schism” of which the False Prophet -is guilty is rather that introduction of discord and strife -into the civilised world which makes “Macometto -cieco” in the eighteenth canzone a personification of the -factious spirit of Florence.</p> - -<p>Yet if it had fallen to Dante’s lot to judge the Founder -of Islam by the spirit of this Mohammedan Gospel, he -might have shared that milder and more optimistic view -of Mohammedanism which, according to a recent writer,<a id="FNanchor_317" href="#Footnote_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a> -inspired Saint Francis when he set out upon his Egyptian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span> -mission. For here he would have found, side by side with -the inevitable denial of our Lord’s Divinity, an attribution -to him not only of the Gospel miracles, but of others -beside. He would have found deep teachings on prayer -and fasting and almsgiving; on humility, penitence<a id="FNanchor_318" href="#Footnote_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a> -and self-discipline; on meditation and mystic love. He -would have found an asceticism in some ways as extravagant -as any to be discovered in mediaeval legend, yet -tempered with saving humour and common sense; a -tolerant and charitable spirit which rivals even that -of the “Cristo d’ Italia,” and “a succession of noble and -beautiful thoughts concerning love of God, union with -God, and God as Himself the final reward of faithful -service, which it would be difficult to match in any -literature.”<a id="FNanchor_319" href="#Footnote_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Eleven years after the above lines were written, there -appeared in Madrid a study of Dante’s relations with -Mohammedan Eschatology,<a id="FNanchor_320" href="#Footnote_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a> which may possibly prove -to hold the key to some of the problems raised by the -<cite>Gospel of Barnabas.</cite> The learned Spanish Professor of -Arabic is by no means the first to explore the field of -possible Oriental sources for the Divine Comedy. Since -Ozanam wrote his <cite>La Philosophie Chrétienne avant Dante</cite>, -a number of writers—D’Ancona, D’Ovidio and others -in Italy, and Vossler in Germany—have busied themselves -with this subject; and in 1901, M. Blochet<a id="FNanchor_321" href="#Footnote_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a> brought<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span> -both the general idea of the Unearthly Pilgrimage and -some of its details into what looks like a derivative -relationship with the two great Oriental Ascension-myths: -the very ancient Mazdean story of Arda-Viraf, -of Persian origin, and the secondary legend of Mohammed’s -one-night journey through the heavens, founded on a short -and obscure passage in the <cite>Koran</cite><a id="FNanchor_322" href="#Footnote_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a> and known as the -<cite>Miradj</cite>. Together with other researchers in the same field, -M. Blochet brings in also Sinbad the Sailor, the Voyage -of St. Brendan, and all the family of the Quest of the -Fortunate Isles; working up the pedigree right back to the -Hesperides of the Hellenic myths—themselves descended -from an ancestry more ancient still, and of origin further -East. He suggests the many possible channels of transmission -of oriental lore to Western Europe, and in particular -to Ireland<a id="FNanchor_323" href="#Footnote_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a> by the more easterly “Amber Route” -which archaeology shews to have passed from Mesopotamia -over the Caucasus and through Russia to the -Baltic. He points again to the openings made by the -Crusades, and singles out the work of Dante’s Venetian -contemporary, Marin Sanudo, <cite>Liber secretorum fidelium -crucis</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_324" href="#Footnote_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a> as evincing such a mastery of the entire “Eastern -Question” as would imply a very exact knowledge of -the Moslem religion and its legends. He points also to -Paget Toynbee’s demonstration of Dante’s indebtedness -in no less than ten passages of the <cite>Vita Nuova</cite> and <cite>Convivio</cite>, -to the Moslem astronomer Djaafer-îbn-Mohammed-el-Balkhi,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span> -known to the mediaeval West by the less -cumbrous name of Alfraganus.<a id="FNanchor_325" href="#Footnote_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a></p> - -<p>New ground has, however, undoubtedly been opened -up by Dr. Asín. In his Inaugural Lecture he makes claims -which, no doubt, will be fiercely combated, and in the -end largely discounted. Dr. Parodi in his important -notice of this book<a id="FNanchor_326" href="#Footnote_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a> points out that Asín’s contention -is two-fold, and one half of it, at least, unprovable. The -Spanish Orientalist claims to have proved (1) that the -Western legends of the World Beyond are derived from -Arab (and ultimately from Persian) sources, (2) that -Dante was acquainted with specific Moslem sources, and -used them freely.</p> - -<p>For the first of these contentions, which was, in substance -Blochet’s,<a id="FNanchor_327" href="#Footnote_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a> he has brought—so Parodi admits—fresh -and varied evidence; and this part of the claim -may now be regarded as largely substantiated. The second -claim: that Dante actually knew, and drew from, the -Moslem legend “is” says the Italian reviewer, “and will -remain, I fear, incapable of demonstration.”<a id="FNanchor_328" href="#Footnote_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a> Yet he -admits that the parallels adduced between the Moslem -Hell and Dante’s Inferno, and still more between the -<cite>Miradj</cite> and the <cite>Paradiso</cite>, are such as to arouse perplexity -and astonishment in a mind hostile to, or unconvinced by, -the theory of the learned Spaniard. The parallels he -interprets<a id="FNanchor_329" href="#Footnote_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a> as remarkable instances of the similar working -of human imagination on similar topics, all over the -world. Whether such a hypothesis meets all the facts -may still be an open question. But there can be no question -whatever that if Dante, who certainly owes the biggest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span> -debt to his “true precursor,” Virgil, be indebted also to the -<cite>Miradj</cite> or other Mohammedan legend,<a id="FNanchor_330" href="#Footnote_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a> he has more than -repaid his debt in the splendid originality with which he -has bent and transformed such material to his own higher -purposes: a use which implies masterly assimilation and -adaption, and amounts to creative work.</p> - -<p>Yet we would venture to plead for an open mind, -even on the subject of Asín’s second contention, and venture -to ask whether the <cite>Gospel of Barnabas</cite> does not -contribute some little additional force to the Spanish -professor’s argument? When all deductions have been -made, has he not gone far towards proving that Dante -was more definitely indebted to Moslem thought and -legend than has been hitherto believed; and in particular -that he may have drawn, directly or indirectly, from -Mohammedan sources the architectonic idea of “Hell,” -and other parts of his scheme of which the affinity with -“Barnabas” has been noted in the preceding pages? -If so, we may with some probability attribute to those -same sources the occasional striking identity of phraseology -which we have observed—regarding them as, in -some sense, sources both for Dante and for “Barnabas”; -though in some cases it is difficult to believe that the so-called -“Barnabas” is not quoting Dante from memory.</p> - -<p>The man who placed the Moslem Captain Saladin and -the Moslem Philosophers Averroes and Avicenna in the -same region of the other world as his own dear master -Virgil<a id="FNanchor_331" href="#Footnote_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a>; who placed the condemned Averroist, Sigieri -of Brabant, in the Fourth Heaven as companion of the -recognised Doctors of the Church, and put an eulogy -of him into the mouth of his opponent Thomas Aquinas,<a id="FNanchor_332" href="#Footnote_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span> -would surely not be willing to borrow from Moslem -sources ideas and materials for his mighty building—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">al quale ha posta mano e cielo e terra.<a id="FNanchor_333" href="#Footnote_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">That suitable material was in existence (though in the -Arabic language) has been abundantly proved. From -the various mediaeval forms of the Mohammedan legend -of the Prophet’s visit to the other world, Professor Asín -draws numerous and striking parallels to the <cite>Divina -Commedia</cite>. The topography of Hell, with its most infamous -of sinners in the lowest pit, the scheme of the -Heavens, which, like Dante’s, follows the Ptolemaic -system of concentric spheres, and many more detailed -analogies. He finds the closest affinity in a writer of the -same century, Ibn Arabi, a Spanish thinker, who died -twenty-five years before Dante was born. By this Arabi -the legend—which may have formed the basis of much -of the eschatology of “Barnabas”—was presented together -with a mystical and allegorical interpretation, such -as Dante himself suggests for his own work in the Epistle -to Can Grande.<a id="FNanchor_334" href="#Footnote_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a> Dante’s noble contemporary, Raymond -Lull, seems to have known this book of Arabi’s in the -original. Dante was not, like Raymond, an Arabic scholar, -but he may well have become, by oral means, acquainted -with something of its substance.</p> - -<p>The court of Alfonso X of Seville, into which Dante’s -Brunetto plunged in the abortive embassy of 1260, was -a hive of Moslem learning and speculation. And though -Brunetto’s visit was but short (and from this point Dr. -Parodi does not fail to draw full capital), he was not the -only Florentine who found his way to Seville.<a id="FNanchor_335" href="#Footnote_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a> Commercial<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span> -relations between Tuscany and Seville were alive in Dante’s -day; and the intercourse of trade brings with it a measure -of intellectual commerce. The Papal Court to which -the Poet paid his fatal visit as Florentine Ambassador -must still have held fresh memories of St. Peter Pascual, -who was conversant with the Mohammedan legends of -Hell and Paradise; and in Ricoldo of Montecroce Dante -had an illustrious fellow-townsman who was notably -learned in Moslem lore,<a id="FNanchor_336" href="#Footnote_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a> though missionary travels kept -the good Dominican away from Florence during the years -of the Poet’s residence, and he only returned as Prior -of Sta. Maria Novella in 1301, the year of Dante’s exile, -and died the year before his death, in 1320.</p> - -<p>Altogether, there seems good reason to believe that -Mohammedan materials, if not actual Mohammedan -sources, were accessible to Dante, and that with large-hearted -tolerance he was content to use them, and so -to give them an immortality which they could not otherwise -have achieved.</p> - -<p>Thus we may conjecture a definite relation between -“Barnabas” and the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>: not through a -debt of either to other (unless it be of “Barnabas” to -Dante), but through a measure of common ancestry.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE AND THE CASENTINO</span></h2> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Li ruscelletti che de’ verdi colli</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>Inf.</cite> xxx. 64 <i>sq.</i></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p>The “Apostle of Freedom” must needs be a patriot -among his own people; and patriotism involves readiness -to fight for the community. Dante’s temperament—like -that of scores of our young poets and artists who have -fought and fallen in the Great War—was not naturally -at home in the practice of arms. Yet he took his place -and “did his bit” as a valiant Guelf of Florence in the -battle of Campaldino; and so the Casentino valley still -speaks to us to-day of a thirteenth century “Student in -Arms.” It speaks to us, again, of an exiled patriot, who -went, “seeking freedom,” “through well-nigh all the -regions in which” the Italian “tongue was spoken,”<a id="FNanchor_337" href="#Footnote_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a> -and in the early days of his lifelong banishment found -shelter from his foes with the hospitable Conti Guidi, -and a comforting atmosphere of appreciation and respect -as antidote to the <i lang="it">piaga della fortuna</i> and the <i lang="it">dolorosa -povertà</i> of an outcast.</p> - -<p>The Valley has also for us, as it had already for Dante, -hallowed associations redolent of that “freedom of spirit” -which comes to a simple and austere life lived for highest -ideals. St. Francis, whose name still lingers in the Casentino, -was, in a true sense, an “Apostle of Freedom” too. -So perhaps no apology is needed for associating with the -other essays in this volume a narrative of a visit paid<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span> -to the scenes so familiar both to St. Francis and to Dante. -Since the words above were written, Italy has herself -officially set her seal upon the thought contained in them.</p> - -<p>“This could be no ordinary centenary,” writes Lina -Waterfield (of the Sexcentenary celebrations of Sept., -1921). “Italy had won the boundaries Dante desired her -to possess, and in honouring him she celebrated her victory -of complete liberation. The official visits ... to the -castles of the Casentino ... and to the battlefield of -Campaldino, where he fought for ‘Libertas’ in 1289, were -all undertaken in the spirit of exalted patriotism. Sometimes -the poet was forgotten, or rather merged in the -spirit of ‘Italianità,’ when the rafters of the mediaeval -banqueting hall of Poppi rang to the cries of ‘Viva -Fiume’! September 16th was spent in the Casentino. -Next day all Florence turned out to see the pageant of -victorious Florentines returning from Campaldino, perhaps -the most decisive battle ever fought in Tuscany, -for it broke the power of the Ghibelline nobles. ‘Evviva -la Libertà!’”</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, at Ravenna, a great band of Franciscan -Tertiaries had paid their homage at the Poet’s tomb.</p> - -<p>And now for the record of a pre-war pilgrimage to the -Casentino.</p> - -<p>From Pontassieve, the third station on the railway -line between Florence and Arezzo, a drive of some four -hours will take you into the heart of the Casentino; into -a country well worth a visit for its own wild and delicate -beauty, but rendered immeasurably more interesting -by its thronging memories of Dante.</p> - -<p>The Casentino is the valley of the Upper Arno, whose -course from its source on Monte Falterona is sketched -by the poet in those strangely bitter lines put into the -mouth of Rinier da Calboli in Purgatory,<a id="FNanchor_338" href="#Footnote_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a> while its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span> -trickling tributary streams, bathing the verdant slopes, -are vividly described in a single <i lang="it">terzina</i> by poor parched -Adamo in Hell—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Li ruscelletti che de’ verdi colli</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Facendo i lor canali freddi e molli.<a id="FNanchor_339" href="#Footnote_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>We are in the country of the famous Conti Guidi, -that stalwart family who so successfully maintained -their feudal sway amid an environment of burgher -republicanism; the clan of strong men who, for more -than four centuries at least, were masters of this fertile -district which stretches from the slopes of Falterona -southward to the walls of Arezzo—that city of “curs” -from which Arno “turns aside its nose in scorn.”<a id="FNanchor_340" href="#Footnote_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a></p> - -<p>The offspring of the romance<a id="FNanchor_341" href="#Footnote_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a> of Guido Vecchio -and “la buona Gualdrada,”<a id="FNanchor_342" href="#Footnote_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a> this grim four-branched -family—the Guidi of Porciano, of Romena, of Battifolle -and of Dovandola—they have left their lasting mark -upon the country. Three of their castles remain, castles -in which Dante was harboured in the earlier years of his -exile. Porciano—playfully referred to, surely, in the -“brutti porci” of Riniero?<a id="FNanchor_343" href="#Footnote_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a>—and Romena both in -picturesque ruin; Poppi (Arnolfo’s first draft, as it is -said, for the similar Palazzo Vecchio at Florence) -repaired throughout the centuries, since Count Francesco -handed it over in 1440 to Neri Capponi, representative -of the Florentine Republic.</p> - -<p>We are in the country of Campaldino, the battle -where Dante fought, and Corso Donati and Vieri de’ -Cerchi, soon to be leaders of opposing factions in their -native town, performed prodigies of valour side by side: -the battle where on St. Barnabas’ Day in 1289 the Guelf<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span> -party decisively reversed the humiliation of twenty-nine -years before, and that under the very walls of the Convent -of Certomondo, founded by the Guidi two years after -Montaperti, in thanksgiving for that bloody victory—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">Lo strazio e ’l grande scempio</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che fece l’ Arbia colorata in rosso.<a id="FNanchor_344" href="#Footnote_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>We are in the country of St. Francis of Assisi, Dante’s -great religious ideal; for a morning’s drive or walk up -the steep road from Bibbiena brings us right up to the -foot of the “Rude crag betwixt Tiber and Arno”<a id="FNanchor_345" href="#Footnote_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a> which -all Christendom reveres.</p> - -<p>In taking the old road over the Consuma Pass from -Pontassieve, we are following in the tracks of the Florentine -host as it marched forth in June, 1289. After much -discussion as to the best route, as Villani and Dino -Campagni tell us,<a id="FNanchor_346" href="#Footnote_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a> they wisely decided to take this -steeper and more perilous but shorter path. A short -way beyond Pontassieve they would have left the Val d’ -Arno, to strike the river again but a few miles from its -source. They left it flowing north towards Florence; -they would find it again running southwards in the direction -of Arezzo.</p> - -<p>As Dante rode up from the valley with his comrades, -his eyes so quick to detect the characteristic features and -moods of Nature would note the growing severity of the -landscape—in his day perhaps less marked than now, -when feckless generations of short-sighted inhabitants -have denuded the hills of their timber. As the road -wound up the steep he would glance now north, now -south, and perhaps occasionally back to the west. Northwards -he would see towering up the mass of Monte -Morello, the bare heap of a mountain that rises above -his native city. Besides it his eye would light upon the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span> -small but conspicuous wooded hill of Monte Senario, -on which, nearly sixty years before, the sainted founders -of the Servite Order had established themselves: Florentines -all of good family, and one a scion of that famous -house of the Amidei whose quarrel with the Buondelmonti -in 1215 had already begun to bear fruit of internal discord -in the city—the first drops of the storm that was to sweep -poor Dante into exile. Westward, beyond the Arno, -the hill of the “Incontro” would catch his eye, the traditional -site of the meeting between Saint Francis and Saint -Dominic which has provided an inspiring theme for so -many artists; while on the south his view would be bounded -by the thickly wooded ridge of Vallombrosa, where -San Giovanni Gualberto had gathered more than two -centuries before (in 1015) a band of followers for whom -the discipline of San Miniato had grown too lax. Almost -at the watershed of the Consuma range, he would observe -the track upon the right—only a few years ago (1905) -converted into a <i lang="it">strada carrozzabile</i>—by which one might -pass on horseback or on foot from Vallombrosa to Consuma, -and so into the Casentino. Halting, perhaps, for -a few moments in the village of Consuma—probably not -very different then from what it is to-day, a collection -of charcoal-burners’ dwellings—then trotting down the -other side, past the hamlet of Ponticelli, swerving to the -right over the shoulder of a ridge, they passed the ancient -little hostelry of Casaccia, and stopped, so tradition -asserts, for rest and refreshment in the bleakly situated -Badiola, which crouches in the midst of a windswept -group of unhappy trees, on an outlying hillock -to the left of the road, looking down on the Casentino -itself.</p> - -<p>Resuming their downward journey with lighter -hearts, yet some of them no doubt a little fluttered already -by the anticipation of an encounter (as Dante confesses<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span> -to have been on the morning of the battle),<a id="FNanchor_347" href="#Footnote_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a> they would -ride past the ill-omened mound which still gives to a -neighbouring hamlet, the grim name of Ommorto or -<i lang="it">Omo Morto</i>, the spot where Adamo of Brescia<a id="FNanchor_348" href="#Footnote_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a> was burned -alive (as some think only a year before—1288) for counterfeiting -the coinage of Florence at the instigation of the -Conti Guidi of Romena. And but a little way further on -that same Castle of Romena would burst upon their view—the -fortress with the seven-fold circle of defensive walls -which were to suggest to the poet, in his sojourn of some -fourteen years later, the <i lang="it">nobile castello</i><a id="FNanchor_349" href="#Footnote_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a> of Limbo, wherein -the spirits of the just and illustrious pagans lived their -dignified life—<i lang="it">senza martiri</i>,<a id="FNanchor_350" href="#Footnote_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a> but also <i lang="it">senza speme</i>.<a id="FNanchor_351" href="#Footnote_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a></p> - -<p>The ruins that can be visited to-day shew but the -vague outlines of its former grandeur; yet one may see -the green-carpeted <i lang="it">cortile</i> where the great spirits walked -to and fro <i lang="it">sopra il verde smalto</i>,<a id="FNanchor_352" href="#Footnote_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a> and fragments at least -of the very walls within whose shelter the poet probably -elaborated this and much else of the Inferno: and within -the outer circle of defences, the famous Fonte Branda<a id="FNanchor_353" href="#Footnote_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a> -whose cool waters were recalled to mind by poor Adamo -in his torment—waters sipped to-day by the devout -Dantist pilgrim almost as though it were indeed a holy -well.<a id="FNanchor_354" href="#Footnote_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a></p> - -<p>We hear of no assault made upon the Castle in passing. -Probably the place was too strong and the work before -the Guelf Army needed haste. On the other hand the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span> -force within, thinned to strengthen the Ghibelline host -below, was no doubt too weak to attempt an effective -onslaught upon the cavalcade; though, as Dino implies, -the Florentines were passing through awkward country, -wherein “if they had been found of the foe, they had -received no small damage.”<a id="FNanchor_355" href="#Footnote_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a></p> - -<p>The armies faced one another in the valley’s bottom, -on that level stretch of alluvial land which lies to the north -of the rock on which stands the Castle and the town of -Poppi. North and south the field was commanded by -a Guidi fortress; it stretched like a vast “lizza” or -tilting-ground between Poppi and Romena.</p> - -<p>The corn would be well advanced on that eleventh -of June: not so rich a promise, perhaps as that on which -the daughter of Ugolino della Gherardesca afterwards -commented so bitingly to the daughter of Buonconte, -when the ground had been fertilised with torrents of -Ghibelline blood.<a id="FNanchor_356" href="#Footnote_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a> Perchance the approaching harvest -may have been already ruined by the devastating march -of the Aretines. But the general features of the country -would have lost none of their charm. The graceful, -whispering poplars and willows surely then as now lined -Arno’s banks, recalling to some of the elder warriors the -poplars of Montaperti, fringing the Biena, Malena and -Arbia—the tall trees that still whisper shudderingly -of the day when their three streams ran red.</p> - -<p>The vine-festoons—if then as now, and as in the -Medicean days, the valley was garlanded with vineyards—would -still be in fresh verdure, and would form an effective -setting for the gay colours of a mediaeval armament. -Dante and his companions would indeed have as fair a -scene to fight in as poet or artist turned soldier could -wish; albeit the day was cloudy, presaging a night of -storm.<a id="FNanchor_357" href="#Footnote_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a> Immediately behind the gaily decked arena stood<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span> -the bold grey mass of Poppi, and beyond this again the -more distant background of hills, flanked on the left by -La Verna with its hallowed and inspiring memories.</p> - -<p>And what a glorious prospect of the whole field of -battle had the ladies of the Guidi household from the -casements of that castle whose walls are still adorned -with fragments of <i lang="it">affreschi</i>, which Dante’s eyes must have -seen! All the pomp and pageantry of the war visible -from a place of security, a veritable eagle’s nest. And -beyond the battle a clear view across to Romena, -Falterona and the sources of Arno; with a peep, perhaps, -of the castle of Porciano—the northernmost stronghold -of the clan since the practical demolition, after Montaperti, -of the neighbouring Castel Castagnajo.</p> - -<p>Here in their own country they would have every -confidence of success. They would rejoice in the brave -show of chivalry, the gorgeous armour caparisons and -banners—a spectacle of the meeting of the two best-appointed -hosts that the countryside had ever witnessed.<a id="FNanchor_358" href="#Footnote_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a> -They would watch with triumph the first irresistible -charge of the Aretine cavalry, which drove Dante and his -fellows back in confusion upon their infantry, and they -would feel the victory already won.</p> - -<p>They would mark with wonder and horror the unaccountable -retreat of Count Guido Novello, who was to -have delivered a flank attack with his hundred and fifty -horse, remembering perchance with scorn that it was his -untimely flight which, twenty-three years before, had -brought to a premature end the Ghibelline domination -in Florence.<a id="FNanchor_359" href="#Footnote_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a></p> - -<p>They would note the sudden move of Corso Donati -and his Pistojesi, whose charge upon the Aretine flank -was the beginning of the end. Then came the wholesale -slaughter and pursuit, wherein unnerved warriors,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span> -forgetful of everything but the fear of death, streamed in -flight past Poppi and down the valley towards Bibbiena. -One of these hunted knights they may have observed in -the earlier stages of his flight; for the name and figure -of Buonconte di Montefeltro<a id="FNanchor_360" href="#Footnote_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a> would be well known to -them. But if their eyes were sharp and keen enough to -catch a glimpse of him as he passed, it was but a glimpse. -His end none saw or knew till Dante met the dead count’s -spirit in Purgatory; though the scene of it, as there -described, may well be the faithful reminiscence of -the Poet’s own impression as he galloped with the pursuers -towards Bibbiena.</p> - -<p>The spot where Arno and Archiano meet is dear to -every student of Dante, though comparatively few are -privileged to see it with their eyes. And when you see -it, it is just a confluence of two mountain-streams, -flanked by heaps of grey water-worn stones, and fringed -by tall poplars and brushwood—this in the flat bottom -of a fertile and well cultivated valley. But the rushing -water has a voice unlike the sound of ordinary streams: -the grey piles of pebbles and boulders, the tall whispering -poplars and the bushes at their feet casting a dark -line of shade along the river’s brim—these have something -pathetic, tragic, funereal in their aspect.</p> - -<p>One seems to see Buonconte<a id="FNanchor_361" href="#Footnote_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a> staggering to the brink, -bursting his way blindly through the hedge of trees -and bushes, while his life-blood ebbs out from the wounded -throat, and leaves a crimson track upon the plain—see -him fall senseless, with just an instinctive crossing of -the arms and an inaudible invocation of the name of -Mary, that was to baulk the fiend of his prey. Then night -falls, and the mountain tops “from Pratomagno to the -main ridge” of Apennine, and all the valley between, are -swathed in storm-clouds, and the <i lang="it">fossati</i> are filled with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span> -drenching rain. The Archiano dashes down its steep -course from “above the hermitage” of Camaldoli (whose -founder, St. Romoald, has his place with St. Benedict -in Paradise),<a id="FNanchor_362" href="#Footnote_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a> a roaring, foaming torrent, and swirls -the corpse down the stream of Arno, unlocking the arms -by force from that cross upon the breast which had -served the soul so well—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Sciolse al mio petto la croce</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ch’ i’ fe’ di me quando ’l doler mi vinse,<a id="FNanchor_363" href="#Footnote_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and engulfs the body, soon to be covered with spoils -of the river-bed.</p> - -<p>It is but a short walk down the steep lane from -Bibbiena and through the meadows to the <i lang="it">imboccatura</i>, -and the inhabitants of the hill-town may well have witnessed -from their walls many a like tragedy on that day, -as breathless Ghibellines at their last gasp found themselves -caught in the trap—pulled up suddenly by Arno -or Archiano, and overtaken ere their bewildered brains -could decide what course to follow.</p> - -<p>Far different memories from those of the northward -plain cling to that bold wooded peak which rises on the -east of Bibbiena. The pilgrimage to La Verna from that -town is one of the most delightful that can be imagined. -After the first steep descent—for Bibbiena stands on the -top of a hill almost precipitous on every side—one mounts -again, passing through groves of tender spring green, -the beautiful green of young oaks, with rich, yellow-red -soil as a foil to it; and then down a second time past -Campi into the fair valley of the Corsalone, with its long -rows of poplars like these of Campaldino and Montaperti. -After that it is all one long ascent, and for the -most part a steep one. The lane winds up through sparse -woods again, mainly of small oaks, and is bordered, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span> -spring, by garlands of primroses and violets. For a time -one loses sight of the goal (which had been visible from -Bibbiena, and again from above Campi), though the view -opens out wonderfully upon the left, up the Arno valley -past Poppi to Falterona. Then at last, after an hour or -so of steady climbing, the bold wooded cliff heaves in -sight again, and one distinguishes the buildings of the -monastery perched high up on the edge of a vast precipice. -Another hour will bring us to its foot. As he toils up to -this sanctuary even the most devoted Dantist cannot -but have in mind, besides the eleventh Canto of <cite>Paradiso</cite>, -certain passages also of the <cite>Fioretti</cite>.</p> - -<p>Every holy spot, almost, is marked by a chapel, wherein -man’s handiwork obscures—and dare we say mars?—while -it exalts, the memories of the past. It is all so unlike -what Saint Francis saw when he rode up on his donkey -from the other side to take possession of Orlando’s gift -of the ‘divoto monte.’ Yet one cannot stand without -emotion before the commonplace chapel that marks the -spot where the little birds came to welcome him: “con -cantare e con battere l’ ali,” making “grandissima festa -e allegrezza,” settling on his head and shoulders and -arms and in his bosom.<a id="FNanchor_364" href="#Footnote_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a> And when one has entered the -portal, one is fain to see not only the Chapel of the Stigmata, -with the very spot marked out for honour where in -1221 the Saint—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Da Cristo preso l’ ultimo sigillo</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che le sue membra due anni portarno,<a id="FNanchor_365" href="#Footnote_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and the “<i lang="it">sasso spicco</i>”—that weird rent in the rocks concerning -which Saint Francis believed himself to have divine -revelation, that it was the result of the earthquake at -the crucifixion: “quando, secondo che dice il Vangelista, -le pietre si spezzarono.”<a id="FNanchor_366" href="#Footnote_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a> This, too, is an inevitable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span> -object of the Dantist’s pilgrimage, for he regards it as -extremely probable that the idea of the cloven rocks -in the twelfth of <cite>Inferno</cite><a id="FNanchor_367" href="#Footnote_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a> came to Dante from La Verna -and Franciscan lore. But there are other spots untouched -by Dante, yet hallowed by memories of the “poverello di -Cristo.” Such is the hollow <i lang="it">grembo</i> in the cliff-side where -the rock received the Saint into her maternal bosom, -yielding “like molten wax” to the impress of his form,<a id="FNanchor_368" href="#Footnote_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a> -when the fiend would have hurled him down the precipice. -Such, again, is the grotto where his hermit-bed is shewn,<a id="FNanchor_369" href="#Footnote_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a> -wherein he passed the first Lent of his sojourn at La -Verna; and such, too, is the stone, self-consecrate, and -so used without further benediction as an altar top, -whereon, so legend says, the Redeemer often-times -stood and conversed familiarly with his poor servant -“face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend.”<a id="FNanchor_370" href="#Footnote_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a></p> - -<p>Dante rests under the shadow of Saint Francis—not -at La Verna, indeed, but at Ravenna. The Campanile -of the Franciscan church stands sentry over his tomb. -It is known that he was buried in the Franciscan habit: -and it has been justly conjectured that his association -with the Order was no mere thing of sentiment. One of -the earliest commentators on the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite><a id="FNanchor_371" href="#Footnote_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a> -asserts that for a time he actually joined the Order, to -whose girdle of cord he seems to refer,<a id="FNanchor_372" href="#Footnote_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a> as worn formerly -by him as a safeguard against youthful lusts—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Io avea una corda intorno cinta</div> - <div class="verse indent2">E con essa pensai alcuna volta</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Prender la lonza a la pelle dipinta.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And a living Dantist has recently put forth the suggestion -that this connection with the Franciscans began with his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span> -boyish studies. Between his ninth and his eighteenth -year, when, according to the <cite>Vita Nuova</cite>, a something -unnamed kept him apart from the lady of his heart, he -was, so it is thought, living under strict rule, studying -as a pupil under the good friars of Santa Croce,<a id="FNanchor_373" href="#Footnote_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a> and laying -the foundations at once of that theological lore which -amazes us to-day, and of that lofty ideal of virtue of -which he sings—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">... già m’ avea trafitto</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Prima ch’ io fuor di puerizia fosse.<a id="FNanchor_374" href="#Footnote_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But apart from all conjecture, ancient or modern, the -Poet’s admiration of Saint Francis is so obvious and his -appreciation of him so just and true, that none can read -the eleventh canto of <cite>Paradiso</cite> without feeling that a -Dantist’s pilgrimage to the Casentino culminates not in -the memories of Campaldino or of the meeting of the -waters; not even in the personal reminiscences of the -Poet’s exile suggested by the modern tablet on the ruined -walls of Romena, but rather at La Verna—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nel crudo sasso intra Tevere ed Arno</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">where the re-discoverer of Christ for the Middle Ages—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Da Cristo preso l’ ultimo sigillo</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che le sue membra due anni portarno.<a id="FNanchor_375" href="#Footnote_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a></div> - <div class="verse indent0">...</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Valour, and sincerity, and simplicity. The Casentino -of Dante and St. Francis recalls to us the golden principles -which alone make life worth living now. Patriotism, -keen and fervid as that whose echoes rang just now -thro’ the ancient hall at Poppi: but “Patriotism is -not enough.”</p> - -<p>Readiness to lay down one’s life for a Cause: that is -the temper which has saved civilisation from utter -shipwreck: but is it securely saved?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span></p> - -<p>Purity of purpose, sincerity in speech and conduct—<i lang="la">sancta -simplicitas</i>—ready to cast away earthly privilege, -to face joyfully the call to “low living and high thinking,” -and to find freedom in fewness of material possessions -and richness of moral and spiritual endowment—that is -the temper eagerly embraced by Francis and his followers, -loyally accepted by Dante, exile and pilgrim; and it is -the only temper which can adapt itself to live happily -in a denuded world: the temper which, when saturated -with the passion of loving service as was that of “Christ’s -Poor Man” may hope, Franciscan-wise, to heal the world’s -wounds, to assuage its quarrels, and to build up better -and more strongly that which has been broken down.</p> - -<p><span class="allsmcap">BEATI MITES; QUONIAM IPSI POSSIDEBUNT TERRAM.</span></p> - -<p><span class="allsmcap">BEATI PACIFICI: QUONIAM FILII DEI VOCABUNTUR.</span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE LAST CRUSADE</span></h2> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Pero ch’ me venia “Resurgi e Vinci.”</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>Par.</cite> xiv. 125.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p>It is a far cry from Dante Alighieri to Torquato Tasso: -from thirteenth-century Florence to seventeenth-century -Ferrara. Yet Tasso is, poetically, a direct descendant -of the great Florentine, down the line of Petrarca and -Ariosto. His Italian represents the utmost legitimate -development of Dante’s language, beyond which lies -decadence. The purity, if not the exuberance, of his -style and the grandeur of his epic treatment flows direct -from the fountain-head of <i lang="it">Italianità</i>—the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>; -and the great poem has left its clear impress now and again -upon the <cite>Gerusalemme Liberata</cite>, in haunting phrases.</p> - -<p>Thus the “fierce Circassian,” in Canto x. 56 of the -<cite>Gerusalemme</cite>, assumes the attitude of Sordello in <cite>Purg.</cite> -vi. 66—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A guisa di leon quando si posa;</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and two Cantos further on (x. 59) we have a reminiscence -of <cite>Purg.</cite> iii. 9, the dignity of Virgil’s sensitive conscience, -when Armida’s dupes stand abashed before Gottofredo—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Vergognando tenean basse le fronti</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ch’ era al cor piccol fallo amaro morso.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Dante and Tasso alike wrote for all time, and wrote -in circumstances of personal straitness and distress: -each gave to the world his best, out of the treasure of -a bleeding heart; and if Tasso’s work cannot compare -for grandeur of conception with Dante’s immortal epic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span> -of the spiritual liberty of Man, yet it too has Liberty -for its theme, and a background ideal and spiritual.</p> - -<p>Contemporary critics dealt with Tasso more cruelly -than ever any dared to deal with Dante; yet Tasso has -outlived his critics. And the sympathy and admiration -bestowed on him by his English contemporaries, and -notably by Edmund Spencer, was well bestowed, and -forms a link in that long chain of intellectual sympathy -between England and Italy which we trust to see strengthened -year by year.</p> - -<p>Tasso’s great poem may therefore not inappropriately -supply an epilogue to those studies of his greater predecessor -which are associated in different ways with the -horrors and splendours of the great World War.</p> - -<p>In a recent article in the <cite>Anglo-Italian Review</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_376" href="#Footnote_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a> an -organ whose special aim has been to foster and develop -that intellectual sympathy between England and Italy -of which we have spoken above, Sir Sidney Lee draws -our attention to the <cite>Gerusalemme Liberata</cite>.</p> - -<p>“There is some special appropriateness,” he says, -“at the moment in recalling attention to Tasso’s association -with English poetry—with that manifestation of -English genius whence Great Britain derives no inconspicuous -part of her renown. For Tasso made his chief -bid for immortality as the poetic chronicler of the First -Crusade whereby the City of Jerusalem was first wrested -from the Moslem sway and restored to Christian rule. -The army which achieved the hardly won victory was -drawn from the chivalry of all Western Europe; but the -chief command was in French hands, and Godfrey of -Bouillon, a nobleman of France, is the hero of Tasso’s -epic. The Italian poet credits the French generalissimo -with every moral and military virtue. His courage goes -hand in hand with a dignified caution. He is pious,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span> -humane, far-seeing in counsel, resolute in action, modest -in bearing. The stirring military adventures which -Tasso narrates with abundance of romantic embellishment -and magical episode end on a strikingly subdued -note. The last stanza of the long poem shows Godfrey -with his aides-de-camp, just after the last strenuous -resistance of the enemy had been overcome, reverently -walking in the light of the setting sun through the captured -city. Without pausing to change their war-stained -habiliments, Godfrey and his companions enter the -Holy Sepulchre, and there, hanging up their arms, they -offer on their knees humble prayer.”</p> - -<p>General Allenby’s ever-memorable entry through the -Golden Gate, on foot, into a Jerusalem freed from an -even more blighting and desolating tyranny than that -of the eleventh century, may well form a starting-point -for a comparison of the great movement of the First -Crusade with a still greater movement of to-day.</p> - -<p>We might, indeed, concentrate our attention upon -the history itself, rather than upon the Poet’s imaginative -presentment of it at a distance of nearly five centuries; -for Tasso was further removed from Godfrey and his -contemporaries than we are from him. We might dwell -on the fruitful analogies between the two Crusades—that -earliest of all, and this last and greatest. We might -note the curious resemblances and the curious differences, -and see our own World-War prefigured in that old-time -adventure which, like our own linked together representatives -of almost all the European nations in one great -league for an ideal, impelling them to give up all that -the individual life holds dear, to forego all material hopes -and prospects, for the sake of a Cause that offered as -immediate guerdon little but danger and extreme discomfort, -wounds and death, or worse than death.</p> - -<p>We might point to striking coincidences in detail,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span> -as, for instance, the original costly and disastrous attempt -upon Nicaea—like our tragedy of Gallipoli in the same -region—and the part there played by the treachery of -a Greek King, a perfidy which, even when the place was -won, robbed the Crusaders of the fruits of their victory. -We might adduce the importance of the help rendered -in each case by the allied flotilla, and the timely aid given -in Palestine of old, as in Europe to-day, by the “handyman” -of the Marine forces. Or again we might consider -the fruits and consequences of the old Crusades, and see -the promise of them on a larger scale to-day; the first-fruits -already harvested even in the midst of the struggle—the -widening of insular minds, the growth of international -comradeship, the manifold educational potencies -of an experience that involves at once the intellectual -stimulus of foreign travel, the moral inspiration of -strenuous, exacting and self-reliant effort in entirely -new conditions, the spiritual stimulus of a daily and hourly -converse with Death.</p> - -<p>If the Crusades did so much to educate Europe in -olden days, what may not the World-War achieve, if -followed by a “brotherly covenant” and a League of -Peoples?</p> - -<p>But our present aim is a rather different one; following -the lead given by Sir Sidney Lee to try, so far as we -may, to look at our own times through Tasso’s eyes; -to search and see if the <cite>Gerusalemme Liberata</cite> has not a -direct word to speak to our own generation.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Does Tasso’s own generous use of fancy make such an -attempt too fanciful? We are dealing with hard, stern -facts—the hardest and sternest that any generation has -ever had to face; Tasso’s theme had the mellowing -light of intervening centuries playing upon it, and his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span> -treatment is frankly imaginative. He opens his Poem -(i. 2) with an apology to the Muse for his fanciful embroidering -of the historical material—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">... Tu perdona</div> - <div class="verse indent0">S’ intesso fregi al ver, s’ adorno in parte</div> - <div class="verse indent0">D’ altri diletti, che de’ tuoi, le carte.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Sometimes his imagination works simply on a gorgeous -description, as when he depicts for us the pageant of -the rival armies: the Crusading host reviewed by Godfrey -beneath the walls of Tortosa (i. 36 <i>sqq.</i>), and the Egyptian -army by the King of Egypt (xvii. 9 <i>sqq.</i>) in the frontier -town of Gaza, famous—as our own troops realised to their -cost in the early stages of the Palestinian campaign—for -its “Immensi solitudini d’ arena,” (xvii. 1).</p> - -<p>Marvellous as are these descriptions, and more full -of colour—be it conceded—than any modern massing of -khaki-clad armed men, Tasso would have had greatly -vaster, if not more varied, groups to depict on our Eastern-European -front when the Russian army was still a factor, -and vaster still in these last months on the West. And -for picturesqueness and glamour, our Oriental battlefields -and movements of troops offer scenes which would run -even Tasso’s gorgeous pages very close. Take for instance -the picture, drawn by the Australian official correspondent, -of the entry of the allied troops into Damascus on -the first days of October, 1918—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Past applauding multitudes ... rode the dashing -Australian Light Horsemen, followed by brilliant -cavalry from the Indian Highlands, then by Yeomanry -from the English Shires, black-skinned French -Colonials from North Africa on their barb stallions, -sturdy New Zealand machine-gunners and batteries -from England and Scotland.” These, with the -“swarthy Hedjaz Arabs beautifully mounted on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span> -black and white horses and on camels ... formed a -magnificent demonstration of the might of the -British and allied forces.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>How well this would look in Tasso’s sonorous verse!</p> - -<p>But the characteristic products of Tasso’s fancy are -more imaginative than these, outrageously imaginative, -one might call them, though they have, withal, a dramatic -appropriateness, since he is treading on Moslem soil, and -his magicians and fair women, his bejewelled halls beneath -the river-bed, his enchanted forest and spellbound island-mountain -give us the true savour of the Arabian Nights.</p> - -<p>But was it ever so true as it is to-day that “truth is -stranger than fiction?” Was ever enchanted forest -more repellent in its horrors than some of those stricken -woods on our Western Front? If it had fallen to Tasso -to describe in his verse our modern air-fighting, would it -not have afforded his genius far more scope than was -offered even by the wonderful description of the journey -of the enchanted boat in which the two paladins sail out -along the coast of Africa and between the Pillars of -Hercules into the great Ocean to rescue Rinaldo (xv. -6 <i>sqq.</i>)? Or Ismeno’s magic car, mist-swathed, and -leaving no track upon the sand? When, in his first -Canto (i. 14, 15), he depicts the Angel Gabriel cutting his -way through winds and clouds, hovering over Lebanon, -and then swooping down upon Tortosa—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Pria sul Libano monte ei si ritenne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">E si librò su l’ adeguate penne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">E ver le piazze di Tortosa poi</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Drizzò precipitando il volo in giuso ...</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">might it not have been, almost, a literal description of -a flight of his own compatriot and fellow-poet Gabriele -d’ Annunzio?</p> - -<p>Again, one of the most characteristic of the <i lang="it">fregi</i> with -which Tasso adorns the chroniclers’ story is found in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span> -prominence of his heroines. Doubtless we owe this largely -to the brilliant originality of the Italian ladies of the -Renaissance, in which the House of Este, under his patron -Alfonso, was <i lang="la">facile princeps</i>; just as the poet’s exuberance -of fancy and occasionally melodramatic touch -reflects the eager, playful, pleasure-loving, fanciful, and -histrionic tone of his favourite Court of Ferrara. His -heroines certainly stand forth in dazzling prominence. -Clorinda, the fair Amazon, is a fighting man to all intents, -with a man’s mien, a man’s directness, a man’s sense of -fair play, added to the charm of a beautiful, high-born -Lady. Armida, matchless in her witchery, is a doughty -warrior too; but also, by turns, languishing lover and -ruthless, Circe-like enchantress. Erminia, disinherited -Princess, gracious, tender, shy and sensitive, is yet bold -to face all things—even the sight and touch of blood—if -so she may help and tend the man who, in the day of -her calamity, saved her from shame.</p> - -<p>Fanciful figures: yet Clorinda and Armida (in her -warrior-rôle) have not been without their parallels on -the Russian front. And the fair Erminia might stand for -us as the prototype of the gently nurtured girl of our time -who has found herself and her true <i lang="fr">métier</i> in the self-sacrificing -toils of Red Cross work. Of the knowledge -of healing herbs, says Tasso (vi. 67)—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Arte, che, per usanza, in quel paese</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nelle figlie de’ re par che si serbe;</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And indeed the tendance of the wounded is essentially -a royal task in any country; and one in which not a few -royal princesses have shewn themselves versed in our -day. Erminia, when at last she finds her love, tends him -right royally (xix. 111 <i>sqq.</i>), but her address to the exhausted -Tancred evinces also something peculiarly modern. -What could be more in the professional Red Cross style -than her injunction: “You shall know all you ask in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span> -good time; now you must be obedient and hold your -tongue, and try to get some sleep” (xix. 114)?—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Saprai, rispose, il tutto: or (tel comando</div> - <div class="verse indent4">come medica tua), taci, e riposa.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But are Tasso’s heroines after all so wonderful? -To-day is the day of Women. They have proved and -established in National Service their claim to the National -Franchise and to a place in the National Legislature, and, -what is more, their claim to be man’s companion and -competitor in countless fields of activity. For a large -part of the last century we had a woman on the throne: -the present century may yet see a woman actually leading -the king’s government. It is their War as well as ours; -and now the victory is won, their part in it—without -which victory had been unattainable—shall have full -recognition. Apart from the noble work of the Red Cross -Sisters and helpers, from the valour of the girl-chauffeurs -and others who have sought and found a place as near -as possible to the firing line, we have thousands of maidens -and young matrons ready to risk comeliness and health -and their whole physical future in the pestilent atmosphere -of munition shops; thousands more who have donned -the King’s uniform as “Waac’s” and “Wrens” and -“Penguins.” How few and far between, in comparison, -are the Women in Tasso’s scheme! How sorely his -imagination would have been taxed, yet withal how congenially, -had it fallen to him to describe the manifold -activities—and the undiminished charms—of our -twentieth century girlhood! Erminia is in some ways -more of a Victorian type; but, if the fight is recognised -as being fought elsewhere than in the actual front line, -Clorinda is with us everywhere; strengthening the hands -and inspiring the hearts of her compatriots, striking the -chill of fear into the foe, and the dart of cupid into the -susceptible hero at her side.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span></p> - -<p>Armida, in Tasso’s scheme, bridges the gap between -the seen and the unseen, between women’s work and the -work of the Angels—good Angels, and bad. This brings -us to another of Tasso’s <i lang="it">fregi</i>, and one of his most imaginative -“embroideries”: I mean his elaborate description -of the part played in the drama of the Crusade by the -heavenly hosts and the hosts of the infernal regions. -To the latter, surely, and especially to the magnificent -picture of Satan’s Council of War (iv. 1-19), Milton must -probably owe more than we ordinarily recognise. Among -the most splendid passages of the Poem are, on the other -hand, the descriptions of the counter-activities of the -heavenly armies: God’s sending forth of Gabriel (i. 7), -the Court of the Most High (ix. 55 <i>sqq.</i>), Michael’s scornful, -single-handed rout of the massed battalions of Hell -(ix. 63-5). But mythological as is the tone in which these -events are narrated, and mythical as the whole conception -might have seemed to a more materialistic generation -than our own, we shall be ready to recognise that all -this strain in the <cite>Gerusalemme Liberata</cite> is, after all, -based, in a sense, on hard fact. It is, in fact, the Poet’s -recognition of the paramount spiritual impulse which -drove those hordes of Crusaders across a dangerous -Europe into a still more dangerous Asia: his consciousness -that the war they were waging was, in our present-day -phrase, a “Spiritual War.” Have we not too our -still warm and throbbing legend of the “Angels at Mons” -and of the “White Companion”? Have not our own -soldiers each his Guardian Angel, his “Defensor celeste” -(vii. 84)? Whether Angel forms were seen at Mons -or not, those of us who believe in their existence at all, -believe that they were there, and not there only; but -their force is everywhere joined to ours as often as we are -really fighting “for God and the Right.”</p> - -<p>One further point, as regards angelic agency—this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span> -time the evil angels. Tasso, like Dante in his classic -episode of Buonconte (<cite>Purg.</cite> v. 109 <i>sqq.</i>), attributes to -the fiends a certain control over the weather (vii. 115 <i>sqq.</i>) -Many of us would like to share this conviction with him -when we think of the repeated occasions in which our -well-planned offensives in the West have been wrecked -by the sudden break-up of a fine spell. And to the intervention -of St. Michael, on the contrary, we would blithely -ascribe that most opportune change of wind in the early -morning of the day when we first played with gas at -Loos.</p> - -<p>The spiritual motive of the Crusades is finely typified -in the character of Godfrey, who like our own loved Lord -Roberts, initiated every fresh plan with prayer; whose -incorruptible soul saw nothing of the material openings -that a Crusade might offer—openings that were the very -<i lang="fr">raison-d’-être</i> of crusading to the shrewd merchants of -Venice in later years—Godfrey, to whom was unthinkable -the mere notion of such bargaining and traffic as Frederic -of Swabia was to employ a century later. “We are not -out for gain,” he says to Altamoro of Samarcand, “we -are not traders, but Crusaders.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Che della vita altrui prezzo non cerco;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Guerreggio an Asia, non cambio o merco.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">...</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>We should like to picture Tasso weaving into his -stately verse, descriptions of submarine warfare, of the -advance of the tanks, of an artillery barrage on a fifty-mile -front: and we could find in <cite>Gerusalemme Liberata</cite> a -starting-point for most of these. But space permits us -only two more points.</p> - -<p>The Hun-spirit, and the glory of our Boy-heroes, are -both depicted in Tasso’s magic tapestry: the one succinctly -and sternly, the other more diffusely and with all -the glamour of his genius.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span></p> - -<p>The brutal measures devised—some of them not put -into practice—by the Sultan against the subject Christian -population of Jerusalem, and all the other infidel horrors -of oppression and cruelty which Tasso evidently puts -forth as the <i lang="la">ne plus ultra</i> of bygone barbarism, have been -matched and exceeded by those wreaked upon Christian -populations by the modern Turk with the connivance -of his Teutonic ally; matched and exceeded by the -votaries of the “good German God” themselves, upon -defenceless civil populations of invaded districts, and -equally defenceless prisoners of war. But the spirit of -“Frightfulness” itself is sharply sketched with a single -stroke of the pen in the description of one of the leaders -of the Egyptian army (vii. 22): “no true knight, but a -fierce, murderous robber.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent12">Albiazar ch’ è fiero</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Omicida ladron, non cavaliero.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But now that victory is won, and those horrors (save -for the deep wounds of Europe) seem an evil dream, we -fain would forget the unforgettable, lest we retard the -work of reconciliation.</p> - -<p>Let us finish on a happier note, with Rinaldo—Rinaldo -who, as Spenser says in his Prefatory Letter to the <cite>Faëry -Queen</cite>, represents “the Vertues of a private man,” even -as Godfrey those of a good governour.</p> - -<p>Rinaldo’s very existence is, doubtless, largely due to -“dynastic reasons”: to the necessity of flattering, -that is, the House of Este; yet he concentrates in himself -all the elements of the perfect knight, the pattern -of chivalry, as conceived by Tasso. If the desire to please -a patron, Alfonso d’ Este, brought Rinaldo into the world, -did not a similar motive assist at the birth of Virgil’s -<cite>Pius Aeneas</cite>? Both Aeneas and Rinaldo are strong -enough to “stand on their own feet.”</p> - -<p>Rinaldo is in many ways the true type of our modern<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span> -Boy-heroes—yes, our heroes, and those of the other side—as -well as of mediaeval chivalry. Unable to rest at home -when war is raging across the world, he dashes off, while -still under sixteen years of age, by paths known only to -himself, and “joins up” in Palestine.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Allor (ne pur tre lustri avea forniti)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fuggì soletto, e corse strade ignote,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Varcò l’ Egeo, passò di Greca i liti,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Giunse nel campo in region remote</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nobilissima fuga, e che l’ imiti</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ben degna alcun magnanima nipote.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tre anni son ch’ è in guerra: e intempestiva</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Molle piuma del mento appena usciva.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Many a lad of this generation has indeed imitated -his “noble flight”; has seen three years of war—and -what a war!—ere his face first felt the touch of the razor. -They have sped forth from the fields, from the mines -and mills, and from luxurious homes where too much -softness was in danger of undermining their manhood. -They have “climbed the steep ascent” of the Hill of -Valour—they have, in fact, heard and responded to a -call like that which came to Rinaldo after he had lain -spell-bound in Armida’s Garden, (xvii. 61)—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Signor, non sotto l’ ombra in piaggia molle</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tra fonti e fior, tra ninfe e tra sirene</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ma in cima all’ erto e faticoso colle</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Della virtù è riposto il nostro bene.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“They in a short time have fulfilled a long time.” -For them the fruits of manhood have followed hard upon -the bloom of youth. In them soft gentleness is conjoined -with royalty of mien and soldierly bearing. In battle, -Mars; in face, Eros; the cynosure of a world’s admiring -eyes—Behold Rinaldo!</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Dolcemente feroce alzar vedresti</div> - <div class="verse indent0">La regal fronte, e in lui mirar sol tutti.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">L’ età precorse, e la speranza; e presti</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pareano i fior, quando n’ uscirò i frutti:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Se ’l miri fulminar nell’ arme avvolto,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Marte lo stimi: Amor, se scopre il volto.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDICES">APPENDICES</h2> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_I">APPENDIX I<br /> -<span class="smaller">ANTONIO MASCHIO AND THE CELEBRATION OF 1865</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>The Dante Celebrations of the last fifty-six years—the -years that mark the duration of the Poet’s life—have -always had about them, as was meet, a touch of fervid -Italian patriotism. For Dante is in a true sense “Pater -Patriae.” The sexcentenary of his birth in 1865 coincided -with the new dignity of Florence as temporary -capital of a largely united and independent Italy. It -was celebrated by the unveiling of Dante’s statue by -Victor Emmanuel, protagonist of the New Italy in the -chief Piazza of his new Capital, and it was celebrated -with military as well as civic honours.</p> - -<p>The Celebration of 1921, on the sexcentenary of the -Poet’s death, was marked again with patriotic fervour. -The troops who had redeemed “Italia irredenta” in the -Great War offered a wreath of bronze and silver at his -shrine in Ravenna; and shouts of “Viva l’ Italia! Viva -Fiume!” echoed in the Banqueting Hall of the castle of -Poppi in Casentino, where Dante had been a guest of -the Conti Guidi, and in sight of which he had fought as -a young man in defence of his native city. The patriotic -cries had now a new note of triumph about them, because -Dante’s prophetic envisaging of Italy as “one, and to be -loved” and his incidental marking out of her true boundaries -had at last been verified.<a id="FNanchor_377" href="#Footnote_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a></p> - -<p>Between these two, on September 14th, 1908, Ravenna, -his “last refuge,” was the scene of a most enthusiastic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span> -ceremony, to which flocked representatives of the as yet -unredeemed Italian fringe, and men of Trent and Trieste -and Gorizia and Pola and Fiume claimed Dante as the -prophet of their own “italianità” and of their proximate -liberation from the foreign yoke.</p> - -<p>There is a little-known incident connected with the -first of these Celebrations—that of 1865—which is worth -recording, if only for its simple pathos. The story of an -attempt at Dante-worship that was motived rather by -personal loyalty than by patriotic ardour, yet was baulked -by the barrier set up by a foreign domination between -a true-hearted Italian and his goal.</p> - -<p>Antonio Maschio<a id="FNanchor_378" href="#Footnote_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a> was close upon forty years old when -the news came to him in his humble Venetian dwelling -that Italy was going to celebrate her greatest Poet in his -native City of Florence.</p> - -<p>He was a simple gondolier, son of a small pork-butcher -on the island of Murano. In the year ’48, so notable in -the annals of Italy’s fight for freedom, he picked up some -stray sheets of paper in a tobacconist’s shop, on which -were printed Cantos xiii. and xiv. of the <cite>Inferno</cite>. He took -them home and read and re-read them: From that day -he took Dante as his Master, and devoted all his spare -moments to the study of the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>. He lived -to see, as he conceived, Dante’s prophecy of the “Veltro”—the -great Liberator—fulfilled in 1871; when Victor -Emmanuel entered Rome, and before he died he was in -correspondence with some of the greatest Dante scholars -in Italy and abroad.</p> - -<p>Far advanced in his Dante studies in 1865, and over -head and ears in love with the great Poet, he dared to -brave the Austrian frontier guards—for Venetia was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span> -still Austrian territory—setting out on foot for Florence -to keep tryst with his Maestro “duca, signore e Maestro.” -Before the middle of March he packed up in two great -bundles all the Dante material he had collected and evolved, -put a favourite “Dantino” in his pocket and started -with his precious burden on the adventurous pilgrimage. -He passed the first line of guards, posing as a wine-seller -from Chioggia. His great obstacle was the river Po, -running high and with current all too swift. Moreover -it was night, and no boat was to be found. It was but -human to shrink back, but the love of Dante conquered -his fear. Did he recall the passage where Dante, shrinking -from the wall of flame, hears Virgil’s appeal: “Senti -figlio, Fra Beatrice e te è questo muro”?<a id="FNanchor_379" href="#Footnote_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a> Dauntless he -flung himself into the chill waters and struck out for the -farther shore. In a life and death struggle with the current -he lost his precious bundles, and landed more dead than -alive, with nothing in his pocket but the little volume of -the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite>; and he afterwards declared that -Dante had saved his disciple from drowning that night, -even as in his earthly life he had saved a child in the -Baptistery at Florence.<a id="FNanchor_380" href="#Footnote_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a> Next morning the hapless man -fell into the hands of the Sindaco of La Mesola, who -handed him over to the police, and he suffered a month’s -durance in an Austrian prison, after which he was ignominiously -sent back to his native town.</p> - -<p>It was a famous gathering on that 14th of May in the -broad space before the church of Santa Croce; and many -learned and ingenious speeches marked the occasion. -But the Festival was the poorer by the enforced absence -of one who had risked his life to be there: Antonio -Maschio, “il Gondolier Dantista.”</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_II">APPENDIX II<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE AND THE POPE</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>Interesting on several grounds is the Encyclical of His -Holiness Benedict XV, published in the <cite>Osservatore -Romano</cite> of May 4th last, in which he commends to all -Catholic teachers and students the study of the works -of Italy’s greatest Poet. He seems to admit that a certain -constraint lay upon him in the matter, that the successor -of St. Peter could not afford to be silent while all the -civilised world was sending up a chorus of praise. That -indeed, it would befit him to propose himself as Choragus: -“Jam vero tam mirifico quasi choro bonorum omnium -non solum non deesse Nos decet, sed quodammodo praeesse.” -Yet the eulogy which he utters, if here and there -it suggests a touch of patronising, is, on the whole so -spontaneous and sincere in tone, that one is inclined to -forgive the half-evasion with which he manipulates the -awkward fact of Dante’s fierce invective—“perquam -acerbe et contumeliose”—directed against the Holy -Father’s illustrious predecessors. First of all he suggests -for Dante the excuse of a harassed and embittered -spirit, misled by the poison of malicious tale-bearers; -and next, with an appearance of candour which it would -be discourteous to discount, he asks, Who denies that there -were in those days; there were faults even in the ordained -clergy—“Quis neget nonnulla eo tempore fuisse in hominibus -sacri ordinis haud probanda?” ... a somewhat -general statement which might or might not include the -Infallible. For the rest, Dante is praised as a true-hearted -Catholic—as indeed he was—and as an extraordinarily<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span> -effective teacher of the Catholic Faith. The spirit and -purpose of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>—the aim, as set forth in -the famous tenth Epistle<a id="FNanchor_381" href="#Footnote_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a>—and the Poet’s treatment of -his subject in his pictures of Hell, Paradise and Purgatory, -all come in for hearty commendation. His ever-living -treatment of an ever-living theme is rightly characterised -as strikingly modern compared with the revived Paganism -of some modern poets. The teaching power of his spiritual -ideas outsteps the bounds of the archaic Ptolemaic -system in which they are framed. True to the teaching -of his great master Aquinas, he attracts moderns to that -teaching by the sublimity of his poetic genius. The -Pope claims to know personally unbelievers who have -been converted to the Faith by the study of Dante.</p> - -<p>This emphasis on Dante’s importance as a religious -teacher is interesting in view of Benedetto Croce’s recent -critique, in which he dismisses the theological aspect of -Dante as irrelevant. In this connection it is worth noting -that a distinguished Friar has been lecturing in Rome on -Dante’s theology, and directly attacking Croce for his -depreciation of the same.</p> - -<p>We have thus two Benedicts disputing over the spirit -of Dante, even as the Archangel and another disputed -over the body of Moses—Benedict the Pope and Benedict -the Philosopher, Critic and Minister of Education. That -the latter has the greater name in the realm of literary -criticism, we cannot doubt. His best friends go far to -claim for him infallibility in that line. The infallible -claims of the former are confined to the region of Faith -and Morals; but if Dante could be called in as arbitrator -he would probably decide in favour of the Pope, pronouncing -with regard to his own religious teaching that it was -meant to count, and does count. It is, however, with no -animus against the other Benedict in his official capacity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span> -that His Holiness proceeds—making an excellent point, -which most of us would applaud—to note the absurdity -of a State system of secularised Education which tries -to banish the Name and the thought of God from the -schools, and at the same time hold up the <cite>Divina Commedia</cite> -as an indispensable instrument of culture. Italian priests -of to-day are ready to defend the present Minister of -Public Instruction as one who, whatever his personal -views may be, has endeavoured to mete out evenhanded -justice even to “denominational” Education.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_III">APPENDIX III<br /> -<span class="smaller">DANTE THE POET</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>Benedetto Croce’s<a id="FNanchor_382" href="#Footnote_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a> contention is, of course, fundamentally -true, that Dante is first and last a Poet, and that -it is the magnetism of his poetic genius that attracts -interest to all the varied subjects which he touches. -If he had not been a Poet, these essays would never have -been written; and the writer hopes that the poetic -quality of his hero will have been felt as a background -all through the book. His lyrical power is the driving -force of his many-sided message. To the struggling -patriot, whether of 1848 or of 1918, he is a Tyrtaeus; -to the artist in poetry, a Horace (although he never saw -the <cite>Ars Poetica</cite>); to the lover, a Christian Anacreon; -to the religious devotee, a Psalmist and Prophet in one; -to the student of human nature in its detail and its large -epic aspect, a Homer and a Virgil; in every aspect a -supreme poet. The very magnetism of his lyrical appeal -will, however, continue to keep countless disciples busy, -in the future as in the past, exploring the by-ways and -investigating the by-products of his genius; gloating -over his obscurities, and glorying in everything, big or -little, that Dante has touched. Those “questioni dantesche” -on the more puerile of which Croce rightly pours -his scorn,<a id="FNanchor_383" href="#Footnote_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a> will emerge to the end of the chapter—a -lush growth of mingled flowers and weeds witnessing to -the extraordinary fertility of the soil.</p> - -<p>And we may go on to ask, what, exactly, is the value,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span> -or the nature of that “lyrical quality” which Croce -justly exalts if it is entirely divorced from its content, -its subject-matter?</p> - -<p>True, Beauty has a value of its own, as Dante himself -saw. In theory, indeed, he makes Poetry a humble gilding -of the didactic pill, on the Horatian principle of <i lang="la">miscere -utile dulci</i>; a beauteous fiction for a moral purpose—“una -verità ascosa sotto bella menzogna”<a id="FNanchor_384" href="#Footnote_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a> a “clumsy -device,” as Professor Foligno puts it, “to rivet the -attention of readers while the lessons of virtue and truth -were expounded.”<a id="FNanchor_385" href="#Footnote_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a> In practice, however, the author -of the <cite>Convivio</cite> “spoke as Love dictated”<a id="FNanchor_386" href="#Footnote_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a>—nay, even -in the <cite>Convivio</cite> itself (as Prof. Foligno points out), in the -<i lang="fr">envoi</i> of the first Canzone,<a id="FNanchor_387" href="#Footnote_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a> he bids his poetry, if its argument -prove unintelligible, take heart of grace and draw -attention to its own sheer beauty—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Allor ti priego che ti ricomforte,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dicendo lor, diletta mia novella.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">“Ponete mente almen com’ io son bella!”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But lyrical form cannot exist as a mere abstraction. -It must needs express itself in words that have a meaning—in -“subject-matter.” The Poet sings of what is in his -heart, and sings—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">... A quel modo</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ch’ e’ ditta dentro;</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">he sings because he <em>must</em>. And Dante has this irresistible -impulse of the artist to express himself. He tells us in the -XIXth chapter of the <cite>Vita Nuova</cite> the story of the birth -of his canzone, “Donne ch’ avete intelletto d’ amore,” -the famous song by which Bonagiunta knew him in -Purgatory.<a id="FNanchor_388" href="#Footnote_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a> First, a great desire for utterance, then a -pondering over the appropriate mode, and finally, “I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span> -declare,” he says, “my tongue spake as though by its -own impulse and said—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Donne ch’ avete intelletto d’ amore.”<a id="FNanchor_389" href="#Footnote_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>That is the artistic impulse to create, and represents, -indeed, the sum total of his “Message” as conceived by -many an artist. But Dante took his message and his -mission seriously; and unless we recognise as a factor -in his poetry this sense of responsibility for the gift, -and for the use of it—in however exalted a sense—as the -handmaid of Religion, we surely misconceive him. He is -essentially (not accidentally) didactic, prophetic, a -conscious and purposeful inspirer of his own generation -and of those to come.</p> - -<p>From the point of view of purely aesthetic criticism -his “Theological Romance,” his “Epic of man’s freewill,” -with its massive architectural framework and its recurring -theological, philosophical, political and otherwise didactic -passages may be entirely secondary—may be, in fact, -so much awkward and obstructive material which the -poet only reduces to order and dominates by force of -titanic genius.<a id="FNanchor_390" href="#Footnote_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a></p> - -<p>Dante certainly rises superior in fact to the contemporary -theory of the Art of Poetry which he repeats in -the <cite>Convivio</cite> and the <cite>De Vulgari Eloquentia</cite>.<a id="FNanchor_391" href="#Footnote_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a> It is this -which makes his verse to be, as we have called it, the -driving power of his message. But this homage to the -traditional theory is not mere lip-service. Supreme poet -as he is, he deliberately makes his sublime verse the instrument -of spiritual teaching. And in so doing only renders -it the more sublime.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak">FOOTNOTES</h2> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> See esp. <cite>Inf.</cite> ix. 113; xx. 61: “Dante and the Redemption of -Italy,” p. 15.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> 1865: See <cite>ib.</cite> p. 19.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxv. 1, 2.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> “Dante and Educational Principles,” pp. 83 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> Nos. III and VI.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> Nos. I, II, IV, and VIII.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> Prof. Foligno has, of course, no responsibility for the opinions -set forth in this volume.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> <cite>Le opere di Dante: testo critico della Società dantescha italiana, -etc.</cite> Firenze: R. Bemporad & Figlio. MCMXXI. Cited in the notes -as “Bemporad.” In the case of quotations from the prose works, -an attempt has been made to consult the convenience of English -readers by the reference to the paging of Dr. Moore’s Oxford Edition -as well as to that of the <cite>Testo critico</cite> (Bemporad).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> Nos. V and VII.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> This Sermon was preached in Lincoln Cathedral on Aug. 14th, -1921 (Twelfth Sunday after Trinity).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> i. 6-8.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> See <cite>Osservatore Romano</cite>, May 4th, 1921. And <i>cf.</i> Appendix II.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xvii. 55.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxiv. 52-4.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> <i>Cf.</i> A. G. Ferrers-Howell, “Dante and the Troubadours,” in the -Memorial Volume, <cite>Dante, Essays in Commemoration</cite>, 1321-1921, -London Univ. Press, 1921.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxiv. 57.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iii. 5, 6.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xvii. 103-105.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 118-20.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxiii. 71-74.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> iii. 70-72, 85.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxxiii. 145.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> <cite>The Spiritual Message of Dante</cite>, Williams & Norgate, 1914, -p. 225.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> 1 John iv. 16.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxx. 133-7.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xx. 43.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> i. 1.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxv. 5.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> A pathetic episode connected with this Celebration is related -in Appendix I, p. 165.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> <cite>Giornale</cite>, p. 215: Art. “Firenze e Italia nel concetto e nel -cuore di Dante.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> <cite>Giornale</cite>, p. 344.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> A similar chorus of reverent homage to Dante as the good -genius of Italy’s fortunes, was evoked by the war, in the shape of -“Dante e la Guerra,” Nos. 6-9 of <cite>Nuovo Convito</cite>, June-Sept., 1917.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> ix. 27.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> “To the Defenders of the Piave: November, 1917, to November, -1918.” Art. in <cite>Anglo-Italian Review</cite>, Nov., 1918, p. 244.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 142.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> <cite>Il Purgatorio</cite>, p. 58.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxxi. 85-89.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 31-34.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a> <cite>Loc. cit.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a> Italy is likened by Dante to a wood (<i lang="la">silva</i>) in <cite>V.E.</cite>, I, xi.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">[41]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> vi. 76-fin.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">[42]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> vi. 91 <i>sqq.</i>; <cite>Mon.</cite> I, xii.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">[43]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> v. 61.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">[44]</a> See <cite>Mon.</cite> II, v. 132 <i>sqq.</i>; 159 <i>sqq.</i>, quoted below; pp. 355 <i>sq.</i>, -Oxf. Ed.; p. 379, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">[45]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xii. 1-21.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">[46]</a> <cite>Defensor Pacis</cite> written c. 1324 (three years after Dante’s death) -to support the claims of the Emperor Lewis IX (of Bavaria) against -Pope John XXII, starts, as Dante does, from Aristotle and Holy -Scripture, but carries the relentless exposure of papal pretensions -much further, and strikes the note of appeal to a General Council -which was one of the watchwords of the Reformation.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">[47]</a> This theme he took up earlier in the Fourth Treatise of the -<cite>Convivio</cite>, chaps. iv. and v.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">[48]</a> <i>Cf.</i> especially his quotations from the <cite>Aeneid</cite> in <cite>Conv.</cite> IV, iv. -(Bemp., 252) and <cite>Mon.</cite> II, vii. 70 <i>sqq.</i> (Bemp., 381); the Divine -injunction is taken by Dante, almost as though the <cite>Aeneid</cite> were -‘Scripture’!</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, momento,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hae tibi erunt artes, pacique imponere morem;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse right">—<cite>Aen.</cite> vi. 852-4.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">[49]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 82.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">[50]</a> vi. 34-96.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">[51]</a> W. W. Vernon, <cite>Readings on the Paradiso</cite>, Vol. I, p. 199.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">[52]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> vi. 103-104.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">[53]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> vii. 94; vi. 97.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">[54]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xvi. 106 <i>sqq.</i>; 127 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">[55]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> vi. 76 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">[56]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> vi. fin.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">[57]</a> <cite>Ep.</cite> vii.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">[58]</a> <i>Cf.</i> <cite>Purg.</cite> x. 35.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">[59]</a> <cite>Ep.</cite> vii. 44, p. 410, Oxf. Ed.; p. 427, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">[60]</a> I. xii. 58; Oxf. Ed. p. 347; p. 365, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">[61]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> i. 75.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">[62]</a> II, v. 158 <i>sqq.</i>; Oxf. Ed. II, v. 17; p. 379, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">[63]</a> <i>Cf.</i> <cite>Mon.</cite> I, xi. Bemporad, pp. 362-364.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">[64]</a> <cite>Mon.</cite> I, v.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">[65]</a> <cite>Od.</cite> ix. 114-115. θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστος Παίδων ἠδ’ ἀλόγων....</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">[66]</a> οὐδ’ ἀλλήων ἀλέγουσιν.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">[67]</a> <cite>Pol.</cite> i. 2.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">[68]</a> It is interesting to note, in this connection, that when Dante, -in his work on “The Vulgar Tongue,” is seeking a <em>Literary</em> Tribunal—a -sort of Academy of Letters—he asserts that where there is no -Prince, his presence may be supplied by ‘the gracious light of reason.’ -There is no king, he says, in Italy, as there is in Germany, to gather -to his court poets and <i lang="it">literati</i> and form in his own person the centre -of a brilliant literary circle; but the members of such a court—the -elements of such a circle—are there, though scattered, and they have -a bond of union in the <i lang="la">gratioso lumine rationis</i>.—<cite>V.E.</cite> I, xviii. fin; -Oxf. p. 389; Bemporad, p. 336.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">[69]</a> <cite>Mon.</cite> I, xi. 78-110. Oxf., p. 346; Bemp., pp. 363 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">[70]</a> <cite>Ep.</cite> vii.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">[71]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxx. 133 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">[72]</a> At the last moment before going to press, it is cheering to find -this contention (treated more fully by the present writer in an article -in the <cite>Anglo-Italian Review</cite>, Dec., 1918), corroborated by Prof. A. J. -Grant, who, in an article on “Dante’s conception of History” (<cite>History</cite>, -Vol. VI, Jan., 1922), speaks thus of the Poet’s praise of the -Empire: “It is a demand for a world-order resting on laws that are -sensible and generally known, and which control the lives of states -as well as of individuals. It is little exaggeration to say that it is -a plea for a League of Nations; and the <cite>De Monarchia</cite> is not a -bad handbook for those who are called upon to speak for the -League” (p. 229).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">[73]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxii. 151.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">[74]</a> <cite>Mon.</cite> iii. 16; Oxf., p. 376; Bemp. p. 411.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">[75]</a> <cite>Mon.</cite> I, xi; Oxf. p. 345; Bemporad, p. 364.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">[76]</a> <cite>Mon.</cite> I, xi., <i>ut supra</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">[77]</a> <cite>Mon.</cite> I, xi.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">[78]</a> III, iv. init. Oxf., p. 365; Bemporad, p. 394. Dante combats and -refutes the traditional argument in vogue in his day, which assumed -that the creation of sun and moon in Gen. i. had a mystical reference -to the Spiritual and Temporal powers respectively and argued -that therefore, because the moon derives her <em>light</em> from the sun, the -Temporal must owe its <em>authority</em> to the Spiritual; but, later in the -chapter (Oxf., p. 366 <i>sq.</i>; Bemporad, p. 396), he seems to admit a -workable <em>analogy</em> between the luminaries and the authorities.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">[79]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xvi. 106 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">[80]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> vi. 121 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">[81]</a> 2 Cor. iii. 17.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">[82]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite>, i. p. 124.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">[83]</a> <i>Cf.</i> <cite>V.E.</cite>, I, vii. 28; p. 382, Oxf.; p. 324, Bemporad. <i lang="la">Ipsum -naturantem, qui est Deus.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">[84]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxxiii. 145.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">[85]</a> Oxf. Ed., p. 282; Bemporad, p. 222.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">[86]</a> <cite>Gerusalemme Liberata</cite>, xvii. 63.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">[87]</a> The best spirits among our late enemies have already begun to -reap the reward of their deadly earnestness in a wider and saner -point of view: a realisation of variety of national characteristics -and an appreciation of them; a longing to clear away misapprehensions, -and “openly to call injustice injustice—to forgive and to -expect forgiveness.” See an excellent article by Hedwig von Saenger -in <cite>Student Movement</cite>, Oct., 1921.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">[88]</a> <cite>Il comico, l’ umorismo e la satira nella Divina Commedia.</cite> Da -Enrico Sannia. 2 vols. Milan, 1909.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">[89]</a> <cite>Vita</cite>, s. 8.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">[90]</a> <cite>Mag. Mar.</cite> i, 31, 1193. εὐτραπελία δ’ ἐστὶ μεσότης βωμολοχίας -καὶ ἀγροικίας. ὅ τε γὰρ βωμολόχος ἐστὶν ὁ πάντα καὶ πᾶν οἰόμενος -δεῖν σκώπτειν, ὅ τε ἄγροικος ὁ μήτε σκώπτειν βουλόμενος, μήτε -σκωφθῆναι, ἀλλ’ ὀργιζόμενος. ὁ δ’ εὐτράπελος ἀνὰ μέσον τούτων, -ὁ μήτε πάντας καὶ παντῶς σκώπτων, μητ’ αὐτὸς ἄγροικος ὤν. -ἔσται δ’ ὁ εὐτράπελος διττῶς πως λεγόμενος. καὶ γὰρ ὁ δυνάμενος -σκῶψαι ἐμμελῶς, καὶ ὃς ἂν ὑπομείνῃ σκωπτόμενος.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">[91]</a> <cite>De divinatione per somnum</cite> ii. (464ᵃ 33) οἱ δὲ μελαγχολικοὶ διὰ -τὸ σφόδρα, ὥσπερ βάλλοντες πόρρωθεν, εὔστοχοί εἰσιν. <i>Cf.</i> <cite>Eth. -Nic.</cite> vi. 10 (1142ᵇ 2), where εὐστοχία is distinguished from βούλευσις -as “swift and wordless”; ἄνευ τε γὰρ λόγου καὶ ταχύ τι ἡ εὐστοχία. -And a little further on it is said that ἀγχίνοια—“ready wit,” -“shrewdness,” is a kind of εὐστοχία.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">[92]</a> <cite>Rhet.</cite> iii. II, 1412ᵃ. εὐστοχία sees analogies, like Archytas, who -says “a διαιτητὴς is like an altar”—for to both the injured flee!</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">[93]</a> <cite>Eth. Eud.</cite> vii. 5, 1240ᵃ 2.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">[94]</a> <i>Cf.</i> Ps. cxv. 4-8. Esp. Isaiah xliv. and xlvi.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">[95]</a> A recent writer, H. McLachlan (<cite>St. Luke, the Man and his Work</cite>, -Manchester Univ. Press, 1920), has drawn attention to the humorous -gift of the third Evangelist, and entitles one of his chapters “Luke -the Humorist.” See also the present writer’s <cite>St. Luke</cite> (Westminster -Commentaries, Methuen, 1922, Introduction, pp. xxix. <i>sq.</i>).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">[96]</a> <cite>Cronica Fratris Salimbene de Adam</cite> (Ed. Holder-Egger, Hanover, -1905-1913), pp. 77 <i>sqq.</i> “Florentini ... trufatores maximi sunt.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">[97]</a> <cite>Rhet.</cite> ii. 1389ᵇ 10. οἰ νέοι ... φιλογέλωτες, διὸ καὶ εὐτράπελοι; -ἡ γὰρ εὐτραπελία πεπαιδευμένη ὕβρις ἐστίν.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">[98]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> x. 130-3.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">[99]</a> Nino Tammassia, <cite>S. Francesco d’ Assisi e la sua Leggenda</cite>, -Padova, Drucker, 1906. (Eng. Tr. Fisher Unwin, 1910).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">[100]</a> D. G. Rossetti, <cite>The Early Italian Poets, etc.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">[101]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxiii. 115 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">[102]</a> <cite>Op. cit.</cite> pp. 55-6.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">[103]</a> <cite>Conv.</cite> III, viii. 70; Oxf., p. 282; Bemporad, p. 222.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">[104]</a> <cite>Portraits of Dante from Giotto to Raffael: a critical study, with -a concise iconography</cite>, by Richard Thayer Holbrook. London: -Philip Lee Warner, 1911.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">[105]</a> Holbrook, <cite>l.c.</cite> pp. 68-72.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">[106]</a> Holbrook, <cite>op. cit.</cite> p. 102 and illustration opposite p. 98.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">[107]</a> <cite>Vita</cite>, § 8. Ne’ costumi domestici e publici mirabilmente fu -ordinato e composto, e in tutti più che un altro cortese e civile.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">[108]</a> <cite>Hist.</cite> ix. 136. Per lo suo sapere fu alquanto presuntuoso e schifo -e isdegnoso, e quasi a guisa di filosofo mal grazioso. Non bene sapea -conversare co’ laici.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">[109]</a> <i>Cf.</i> Toynbee, <cite>Dante Alighieri</cite>, Methuen, 3rd ed., 1904, p. 176 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">[110]</a> This is quoted from C. Bruni’s excellent <cite>Guida al Casentino</cite>, p. -167. B. does not specify his authorities, but says in a footnote: -“Questo aneddoto è così riferito da varii scrittori danteschi.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">[111]</a> <cite>Dante and His Italy</cite>, pp. 141, 2.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">[112]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxii. 118.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">[113]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxiii, 4 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">[114]</a> Sannia not inappropriately describes this passage as “il comico -populare della D.C.” (p. 193).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">[115]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxii. 25.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">[116]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxii. 41, 57, 60, 72, <i>cf.</i> xxi. 55 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">[117]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxi. 7-15.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">[118]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxii. 130.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">[119]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxiii. 37.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">[120]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxi. 31, 88 <i>sqq.</i>, 127 <i>sqq.</i>; xxii. 31.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">[121]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxx. 103.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">[122]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxx. 131, 2.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">[123]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xiii. 120 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">[124]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xix. 52 <i>sqq.</i> <i>Cf.</i> Boccaccio, <cite>Vita</cite>, § 17.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">[125]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xix. 72.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">[126]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> vi. 149 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">[127]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> vi. 141.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">[128]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxi. 130 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">[129]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxi. 134.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">[130]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxix. 34 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">[131]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxix. 110.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">[132]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xx. 108.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">[133]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xix. 72, 124.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">[134]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xx. 116-17.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">[135]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxii. 67-9.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">[136]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxviii. 139.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">[137]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxviii. 145.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">[138]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxiii. 22.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">[139]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxvii. 4.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">[140]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxviii. 137-8.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">[141]</a> <cite>Essay on Richter</cite>, cited by Glover, <cite>Virgil</cite>, Methuen, 1920, p. 27.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">[142]</a> <cite>Eth. Eud.</cite> iii. 1234ᵃ 17.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">[143]</a> <cite>Conv.</cite> III, viii., 95 <i>sqq.</i> p. 282, Oxf.; p. 222, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">[144]</a> Oxf. Ed. p. 248; Bemporad, p. 165.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">[145]</a> Oxf. Ed. p. 249; Bemporad, p. 166; Toynbee, <cite>In the Footprints -of Dante</cite>, p. 303.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">[146]</a> (vi.) Oxf. Ed. p. 259; Bemporad, p. 183.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">[147]</a> xi. 60 <i>sqq.</i>; p. 263, Oxf. Ed.; (x.) p. 190, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">[148]</a> xi. 100 <i>sqq.</i>; p. 287, Oxf. Ed.; p. 230, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">[149]</a> IV, xxviii. 70 <i>sqq.</i>; p. 335, Oxf. Ed.; p. 311, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">[150]</a> IV, xvi. 69; p. 318, Oxf. Ed.; p. 283, Bemporad. Salimbene -(<cite>ed. cit.</cite>), pp. 457, 512, 530 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">[151]</a> IV, xiv. 105; p. 315, Oxf. Ed.; p. 278, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">[152]</a> IV, xv. 135; p. 316, Oxf. Ed.; p. 280, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">[153]</a> I, xiv.; p. 387, Oxf. Ed.; pp. 329, 332, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="label">[154]</a> p. 385, Oxf. Ed.; p. 329, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="label">[155]</a> <cite>V.E.</cite> I, xiii. <i>fin.</i>; p. 387, Oxf. Ed.; p. 331, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="label">[156]</a> “Quid nunc personat tuba novissimi Frederici? quid tintinabulum -secundi Caroli? quid cornua Iohannis et Azzonis -marchionum potentum? quid aliorum magnatum tibiae? nisi -<i lang="la">Venite carnifices, etc.</i>,” p. 386, Oxf. Ed.; p. 330, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="label">[157]</a> <cite>V.E.</cite> II, vi. 42-6; p. 394, Oxf. Ed.; p. 343 <i>sq.</i>, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158" class="label">[158]</a> Hor. <cite>Ep.</cite> I., xiv, 43.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_159" href="#FNanchor_159" class="label">[159]</a> No. 616.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_160" href="#FNanchor_160" class="label">[160]</a> Dr. Reid, in an article on “Humour” (<cite>Encyclopaedia of Religion -and Ethics</cite>, Vol. VI, p. 272), which had not yet appeared when these -lines were written, describing the gift as follows: “Humour is -invariably associated with alertness and breadth of mind, a keen -sense of proportion, and faculties of quick observation and comparison. -It involves a certain detachment from, or superiority to, -the disturbing experiences of life. It appreciates the whimsicalities -and contradictions of life, recognises the existence of what is unexpected -or absurd, and extracts joy out of what might be a cause of -sadness....”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_161" href="#FNanchor_161" class="label">[161]</a> <cite>Op. cit.</cite> p. 51.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_162" href="#FNanchor_162" class="label">[162]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xx. 61-3.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_163" href="#FNanchor_163" class="label">[163]</a> Vol. II, p. 534.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_164" href="#FNanchor_164" class="label">[164]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> i. 1 <i>sqq.</i>, 103 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_165" href="#FNanchor_165" class="label">[165]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iii. 16-18.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_166" href="#FNanchor_166" class="label">[166]</a> <i>Cf.</i> e.g., the legend of St. Gregory alluded to in <cite>Purg.</cite> x. 75.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_167" href="#FNanchor_167" class="label">[167]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 131.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_168" href="#FNanchor_168" class="label">[168]</a> See above, pp. 28 <i>sqq.</i> and “Dante and A League of Nations,” -<cite>Anglo-Italian Review</cite>, December, 1918, pp. 327-335.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_169" href="#FNanchor_169" class="label">[169]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> i. 7 <i>sqq.</i>; <cite>Par.</cite> i. 13 <i>sqq.</i>; <i>cf.</i> <cite>Inf.</cite> ii. 7.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_170" href="#FNanchor_170" class="label">[170]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> vi. 118.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_171" href="#FNanchor_171" class="label">[171]</a> <cite>Mediaeval Mind</cite>, Vol. II, p. 544.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_172" href="#FNanchor_172" class="label">[172]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxxi.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_173" href="#FNanchor_173" class="label">[173]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 144.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_174" href="#FNanchor_174" class="label">[174]</a> <cite>Mediaeval Mind</cite>, Vol. II, p. 541, note.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_175" href="#FNanchor_175" class="label">[175]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxv. 3.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_176" href="#FNanchor_176" class="label">[176]</a> <cite>Conv.</cite> III, ix., fin.; p. 285, Oxf. Ed.; p. 227, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_177" href="#FNanchor_177" class="label">[177]</a> Croce on the contrary urges with perhaps too great a bias in the -other direction, that if Dante were not so great as a Poet, little would -be thought of his achievements in other lines: “Se Dante non -fosse, com’ è, grandissimo poeta, è da presumere che tutte quelle -altre cose perderebbero rilievo.”—<cite>Poesia di Dante</cite>, p. 10.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_178" href="#FNanchor_178" class="label">[178]</a> “On Dante the Poet,” see an admirable lecture delivered before -the British Academy on May 4th, 1921, by Professor Cesare Foligno. -(Humphrey Milford, 1/6 net). See also Appendix III.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_179" href="#FNanchor_179" class="label">[179]</a> <cite>Osservatore Romano</cite>, May 4th, 1921. See Appendix II.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_180" href="#FNanchor_180" class="label">[180]</a> <cite>La Poesia di Dante</cite>, Laterza, 1921.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_181" href="#FNanchor_181" class="label">[181]</a> <cite>Id.</cite>, pp. 9, 10.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_182" href="#FNanchor_182" class="label">[182]</a> <cite>Id.</cite>, p. 27.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_183" href="#FNanchor_183" class="label">[183]</a> <i>Cf.</i> Statius’ words in <cite>Purg.</cite> xxii. 76— -</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Già era ’l mondo tutto quanto pregno</div> - <div class="verse indent4">De la vera credenza, seminata</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Per li messaggi dell’ etterno regno.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_184" href="#FNanchor_184" class="label">[184]</a> See <cite>The New Teaching</cite>, edited by Prof. John Adams (Hodder and -Stoughton, 1918, 10/6), pp. 9, 11. This work came into the writer’s -hands after the virtual completion of the present essay; but it -sums up so compactly the point of view of the modern principles -he desired to illustrate, that he has found occasion to refer to it with -some frequency.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_185" href="#FNanchor_185" class="label">[185]</a> <i>Cf.</i> <cite>The New Teaching</cite>, p. 64, where Prof. J. Adams says of the -study of English Literature: “the radical difference between the -old teaching and the new is that we have passed from books about -books to the books themselves.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_186" href="#FNanchor_186" class="label">[186]</a> See <cite>La Poesia di Dante</cite>, pp. 14, 15.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_187" href="#FNanchor_187" class="label">[187]</a> See H. O. Taylor, <cite>The Mediaeval Mind</cite>. Mr. Taylor heads his -43rd and last chapter “The Mediaeval Synthesis: Dante.” See -Vol. II, p. 534; and <cite>Dante and Mediaeval Thought</cite>, in the present -volume, p. 80.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_188" href="#FNanchor_188" class="label">[188]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxv. 3; <cite>Conv.</cite> III, ix. 146 <i>sqq.</i>; p. 285, Oxf. Ed.; p. 226 <i>sq.</i>, -Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_189" href="#FNanchor_189" class="label">[189]</a> Federzoni, <cite>Vita di Beatrice Portinari</cite>, 2nd Ed., p. 14; and below -<cite>Dante and Casentino</cite>, pp. 148 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_190" href="#FNanchor_190" class="label">[190]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xv. 82-85.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_191" href="#FNanchor_191" class="label">[191]</a> <cite>Conv.</cite> II, xiv. (xiii.), pp. 265-7, Oxf. Ed.; pp. 193-7, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_192" href="#FNanchor_192" class="label">[192]</a> Benedetto Croce (<cite>op. cit.</cite>) has much to say on the power of -Dante’s poetic genius to transmute the intractable and unpoetical -scholastic and didactic matter. See esp. pp. 67, 161.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_193" href="#FNanchor_193" class="label">[193]</a> <cite>Dante and Aquinas</cite>, p. vii; <i>cf.</i> and pp. 226 <i>sqq.</i>, and esp. p. 232.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_194" href="#FNanchor_194" class="label">[194]</a> Wicksteed, <cite>loc. cit.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_195" href="#FNanchor_195" class="label">[195]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 140, 142. The English renderings are mainly from -Tozer’s Translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_196" href="#FNanchor_196" class="label">[196]</a> <cite>Epist.</cite> x. (xiii.), p. 416, Oxf. Ed.; p. 439, Bemporad. “Locutio -vulgaris in qua et muliercule communicant.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_197" href="#FNanchor_197" class="label">[197]</a> <cite>Epist.</cite> x. (xiii.) 265 <i>sqq.</i>; p. 417, Oxf. Ed.; p. 440, Bemporad.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_198" href="#FNanchor_198" class="label">[198]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 113 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_199" href="#FNanchor_199" class="label">[199]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 118-120.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_200" href="#FNanchor_200" class="label">[200]</a> See esp. Luke vii. 18-23, where, in answer to a question from the -Baptist’s disciple, He gives a “demonstration” of Messianic works, -and says “Go and describe what you have seen.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_201" href="#FNanchor_201" class="label">[201]</a> Not only in the formally “didactic passages” does he act—in -Croce’s words, “like a master who knows, and is bent on making it -clear to the pupil.” <cite>Op. cit.</cite>, p. 121.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_202" href="#FNanchor_202" class="label">[202]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> i. 71.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_203" href="#FNanchor_203" class="label">[203]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> v. 61 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_204" href="#FNanchor_204" class="label">[204]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 142.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_205" href="#FNanchor_205" class="label">[205]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxxi. 85.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_206" href="#FNanchor_206" class="label">[206]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvi. 13.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_207" href="#FNanchor_207" class="label">[207]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxiii. 73 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_208" href="#FNanchor_208" class="label">[208]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxi. 61 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_209" href="#FNanchor_209" class="label">[209]</a> Mme. Montessori’s earlier utterances were justly criticised for -a too thoroughgoing individualism that claimed to have rung the -death-knell of the “class system.” The individualist attitude and -the collective have each a place in the New Teaching, though the -former tends to be emphasised most. The characteristic Montessorian -expression of the social instinct is the “Silence Game.” See -<cite>The New Teaching</cite>, pp. 15, 16, 22.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_210" href="#FNanchor_210" class="label">[210]</a> <cite>Op. cit.</cite>, p. 234.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_211" href="#FNanchor_211" class="label">[211]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> x. 31 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_212" href="#FNanchor_212" class="label">[212]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xii. 16 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_213" href="#FNanchor_213" class="label">[213]</a> Very little transpires as to the office and function of those -Angels except in the matter of removal of the P’s from the forehead -of penitents as they mount up to the successive Terraces. In <cite>Purg.</cite> -xvi. 142-5, there is a glimpse of their usefulness, where Marco -Lombardo is reminded of the boundary of his “beat” by the -nearness of the Angel of the Anger-Terrace. “L’Angelo è i’vi!”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_214" href="#FNanchor_214" class="label">[214]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> ii. 30.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_215" href="#FNanchor_215" class="label">[215]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xvi. 76-78. For this reference and several others the writer -is indebted to an illuminating article on “La Pedagogia in Dante -Alighieri,” by Sac. Dott. Fernando Cento in <cite>Il VIº Centenario -Dantesco</cite>, March, 1916.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_216" href="#FNanchor_216" class="label">[216]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> iv. 88-95.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_217" href="#FNanchor_217" class="label">[217]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xii. 110; xv. 38; xvii. 68 etc.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_218" href="#FNanchor_218" class="label">[218]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxx. 136 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_219" href="#FNanchor_219" class="label">[219]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxxiii. 58 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_220" href="#FNanchor_220" class="label">[220]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xviii. 141.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_221" href="#FNanchor_221" class="label">[221]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xix. 1 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_222" href="#FNanchor_222" class="label">[222]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xix. 28.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_223" href="#FNanchor_223" class="label">[223]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 88 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_224" href="#FNanchor_224" class="label">[224]</a> As in the case last quoted, or e.g. in <cite>Purg.</cite> xvii. 40 <i>sqq.</i>: <i lang="it">Come si -frange il sonno, etc.</i>, where the sleep is broken by the sudden striking -of a light upon the sleeper’s eyes.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_225" href="#FNanchor_225" class="label">[225]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 112.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_226" href="#FNanchor_226" class="label">[226]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxvi. 7.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_227" href="#FNanchor_227" class="label">[227]</a> See pp. 95 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_228" href="#FNanchor_228" class="label">[228]</a> p. 120 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_229" href="#FNanchor_229" class="label">[229]</a> p. 121. He goes on: “Perciò i concetti esposti vi si rivestono -d’immagini corpulenti e fulgidissimi.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_230" href="#FNanchor_230" class="label">[230]</a> Croce, p. 135.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_231" href="#FNanchor_231" class="label">[231]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> i. 100.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_232" href="#FNanchor_232" class="label">[232]</a> Strictly, from <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 112 to <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 142; Virgil disappears, -<cite>Purg.</cite> xxx. 49.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_233" href="#FNanchor_233" class="label">[233]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxi. 33.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_234" href="#FNanchor_234" class="label">[234]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxi. 103; <i>cf.</i> i. 125; xix. 85 <i>sqq.</i>, etc.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_235" href="#FNanchor_235" class="label">[235]</a> <cite>Gerus. Lib.</cite> xvii. 63.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_236" href="#FNanchor_236" class="label">[236]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xvi. 77.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_237" href="#FNanchor_237" class="label">[237]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> ii. 1-5.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_238" href="#FNanchor_238" class="label">[238]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 77-78; <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 35-36.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_239" href="#FNanchor_239" class="label">[239]</a> <cite>Op. cit.</cite>, p. 37.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_240" href="#FNanchor_240" class="label">[240]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xvii. 79 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_241" href="#FNanchor_241" class="label">[241]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 22 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_242" href="#FNanchor_242" class="label">[242]</a> Homer, <cite>Od.</cite> xx. 18. Dante, <cite>Inf.</cite> xxvi. 56 <i>sqq.</i>; <cite>Purg.</cite> xix. 22; -<cite>Par.</cite> xxvii. 83.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_243" href="#FNanchor_243" class="label">[243]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> iv. 89 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_244" href="#FNanchor_244" class="label">[244]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xi. 10-66; xii. init.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_245" href="#FNanchor_245" class="label">[245]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xvii. 88-139.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_246" href="#FNanchor_246" class="label">[246]</a> <i>Cf.</i> <cite>The New Teaching</cite>, p. 40, where Prof. Adams remarks, “The -postponing of grammar studies to a comparatively late stage in -school life is one of the most striking recognitions of the elementary -psychological truths that underlie the principles of teaching.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_247" href="#FNanchor_247" class="label">[247]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xviii. esp. 40-43.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_248" href="#FNanchor_248" class="label">[248]</a> Acts i. 1.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_249" href="#FNanchor_249" class="label">[249]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 13-15; <i>cf.</i> <cite>Inf.</cite> xvii. 79 (above), and <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 46.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_250" href="#FNanchor_250" class="label">[250]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 14.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_251" href="#FNanchor_251" class="label">[251]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> iii. 7-9.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_252" href="#FNanchor_252" class="label">[252]</a> <cite>New Teaching</cite>, p. 153 (Dr. Rouse).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_253" href="#FNanchor_253" class="label">[253]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xiii, 28 <i>sqq.</i>; <cite>Aen.</cite> iii. 22 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_254" href="#FNanchor_254" class="label">[254]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xii. 114.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_255" href="#FNanchor_255" class="label">[255]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxv. 25 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_256" href="#FNanchor_256" class="label">[256]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xv. 76-78. <i>Cf.</i> <cite>Purg.</cite> xviii. 46-48.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_257" href="#FNanchor_257" class="label">[257]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 139 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_258" href="#FNanchor_258" class="label">[258]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 122 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_259" href="#FNanchor_259" class="label">[259]</a> <cite>The New Teaching</cite>, pp. 20, 26 (Prof. Adams).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_260" href="#FNanchor_260" class="label">[260]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 139-142.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_261" href="#FNanchor_261" class="label">[261]</a> There is some reason (see below, pp. 121 <i>sqq.</i>) for attributing -to a common origin some of the points of resemblance which are -noted in the body of this Essay. Professor Foligno, however, like -Dr. Parodi (see below, pp. 133 <i>sq.</i>) is convinced of the fallaciousness -of all arguments hitherto adduced in favour of direct contact of -Dante with Moslem sources—and, in particular, of the reasoning -of Professor Asín (p. 133).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_262" href="#FNanchor_262" class="label">[262]</a> <cite>The Gospel of Barnabas.</cite> Edited and translated from the Italian -MS. in the Imperial Library at Vienna by Lonsdale and Laura -Ragg. Oxford: 1907.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_263" href="#FNanchor_263" class="label">[263]</a> On this subject, see below, pp.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_264" href="#FNanchor_264" class="label">[264]</a> See Introduction to Oxford Ed., pp. xiii. <i>sq.</i> and xliii.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_265" href="#FNanchor_265" class="label">[265]</a> As for instance in his definition of the word “Pharisee,” “<i lang="it">farisseo -propio uolle dire cercha DIO nella linggua di chanaam</i>” (<cite>Barnabas</cite>, -157ᵇ).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_266" href="#FNanchor_266" class="label">[266]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> i. 56-7. <i>Cf.</i> <cite>Barn.</cite> 40ᵃ, <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_267" href="#FNanchor_267" class="label">[267]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxviii. 94, etc., <i>cf.</i> <cite>Barn.</cite> 41ᵇ-43ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_268" href="#FNanchor_268" class="label">[268]</a> <cite>Barn.</cite> 189ᵃ, <i>cf.</i> (for angels) Canz. iv. 24, 25, <cite>Par.</cite> xx. 102.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_269" href="#FNanchor_269" class="label">[269]</a> <cite>Barn.</cite> 189ᵃ, <cite>Koran</cite>, Surah xlvii. The <em>original</em> source is perhaps -<cite>Gen.</cite> ii. 10 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_270" href="#FNanchor_270" class="label">[270]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxviii. 25 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_271" href="#FNanchor_271" class="label">[271]</a> <cite>Barn.</cite> 187ᵃ, 189ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_272" href="#FNanchor_272" class="label">[272]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 134.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_273" href="#FNanchor_273" class="label">[273]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxviii. 36.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_274" href="#FNanchor_274" class="label">[274]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxviii. 41, 42.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_275" href="#FNanchor_275" class="label">[275]</a> <cite>V.E.</cite> i. 7, 10-11. Oxf. p. 382; Bamp. p. 324.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_276" href="#FNanchor_276" class="label">[276]</a> 185ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_277" href="#FNanchor_277" class="label">[277]</a> 185ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_278" href="#FNanchor_278" class="label">[278]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxxi. 97; xxxii. 39.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_279" href="#FNanchor_279" class="label">[279]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxiii. 71, 72.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_280" href="#FNanchor_280" class="label">[280]</a> 190ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_281" href="#FNanchor_281" class="label">[281]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxvi. 64-66.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_282" href="#FNanchor_282" class="label">[282]</a> 185ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_283" href="#FNanchor_283" class="label">[283]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> iii. 70 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_284" href="#FNanchor_284" class="label">[284]</a> <cite>Barn.</cite> 189ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_285" href="#FNanchor_285" class="label">[285]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> iii. 65.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_286" href="#FNanchor_286" class="label">[286]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> iii, 82-85. A reviewer of the Oxford Edition (<cite>Guardian</cite>, -Aug. 21st, 1907) points out a further significant resemblance between -<cite>Par.</cite> xxxi. 7 <i>sqq.</i> and <cite>Barn.</cite> 56ᵇ, where it is said of the angels that, -“chome appe uenirano intorno per circuito dello nontio di DIO.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_287" href="#FNanchor_287" class="label">[287]</a> <cite>Barn.</cite> 111ᵃ, <i>cf.</i> 190ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_288" href="#FNanchor_288" class="label">[288]</a> 111ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_289" href="#FNanchor_289" class="label">[289]</a> iiiᵇ, 190ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_290" href="#FNanchor_290" class="label">[290]</a> 190ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_291" href="#FNanchor_291" class="label">[291]</a> <i>Cf.</i> E. Blochet, <cite>Les sources orientales de la Divine Comédie</cite>, Paris, -1901, p. 193: “Ce qui distingue surtout la <cite>Divine Comédie</cite> de toutes -les autres formes de la Legende de l’ Ascension, ce qui la rende même -supérieure aux livres religieux de toutes les epoques et de tous les -pays, c’est que le poête a su décrire aussi completement le bonheur -éternel du Paradis que les tortures infinies du Malebolge.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_292" href="#FNanchor_292" class="label">[292]</a> E.g. in the Motalizite Sect (see <cite>Encycl. Brit.</cite> vol. xvi, p. 592).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_293" href="#FNanchor_293" class="label">[293]</a> 149ᵇ <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_294" href="#FNanchor_294" class="label">[294]</a> 146ᵇ-149ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_295" href="#FNanchor_295" class="label">[295]</a> <cite>Studies in Dante</cite>, Series II.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_296" href="#FNanchor_296" class="label">[296]</a> 146ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_297" href="#FNanchor_297" class="label">[297]</a> 147ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_298" href="#FNanchor_298" class="label">[298]</a> 148ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_299" href="#FNanchor_299" class="label">[299]</a> 148ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_300" href="#FNanchor_300" class="label">[300]</a> 43ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_301" href="#FNanchor_301" class="label">[301]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xiv. 85 <i>sqq.</i>; xxxiv. 130.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_302" href="#FNanchor_302" class="label">[302]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> ix. 85.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_303" href="#FNanchor_303" class="label">[303]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> ix. 66 and 76 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_304" href="#FNanchor_304" class="label">[304]</a> 149ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_305" href="#FNanchor_305" class="label">[305]</a> 150ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_306" href="#FNanchor_306" class="label">[306]</a> <cite>Barn.</cite> 113ᵃ, <i>cf.</i> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxxii. 22 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_307" href="#FNanchor_307" class="label">[307]</a> <cite>Barn.</cite> 63ᵃ: Dante, <cite>Inf.</cite> iii. 103.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_308" href="#FNanchor_308" class="label">[308]</a> In 23ᵃ, 81ᵃ, 225ᵇ. It is characteristic of the MS. that the three -passages furnish as many different spellings of the last word: -<i lang="it">bugiari</i>, <i lang="it">bugiardi</i> and <i lang="it">buggiardi</i>! Cf. <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 72.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_309" href="#FNanchor_309" class="label">[309]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 47; <cite>Barn.</cite> 62ᵇ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_310" href="#FNanchor_310" class="label">[310]</a> 85ᵇ and 87ᵃ.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_311" href="#FNanchor_311" class="label">[311]</a> A little earlier (76ᵇ) he has what seems to be a quotation from -memory of Lev. xxvi. 11, 12; the Law of the Jubilee is to be found, of -course, in the chapter immediately preceding.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_312" href="#FNanchor_312" class="label">[312]</a> <cite>Antiquorum habet</cite> (Coqueline, iii. 94).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_313" href="#FNanchor_313" class="label">[313]</a> E.g. Cron. Astense (Muratori, R. S. I., tom. xi. p. 192): Jacobus -Cardinalis (in Raynald, tom. iv. sub an. 1300): Villani, viii. 36.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_314" href="#FNanchor_314" class="label">[314]</a> Another point that might have been adduced is the counsel -“habbandonare il perchè,” <cite>Barn.</cite> 95ᵇ; <i>cf.</i> <cite>Purg.</cite> iii. 37.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_315" href="#FNanchor_315" class="label">[315]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 67 <i>sqq.</i> Here, standing apart, but near the heroes and -heroines of ancient Rome, Dante places the Moslem champion -Saladin (<cite>ib.</cite> 129).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_316" href="#FNanchor_316" class="label">[316]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxviii. 35.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_317" href="#FNanchor_317" class="label">[317]</a> Prof. N. Tamassia, <cite>S. Francesco d’ Assisi e la sua Leggenda</cite>, p. 88.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_318" href="#FNanchor_318" class="label">[318]</a> Including (38ᵇ) a striking statement of the impossibility of -penitence (and therefore of absolution) to one meditating fresh sin: -<i>cf.</i> Dante, <cite>Inf.</cite> xxvii. 118 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_319" href="#FNanchor_319" class="label">[319]</a> Introduction to Oxford Edition, p. xxxiv.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_320" href="#FNanchor_320" class="label">[320]</a> <cite>La Escatologia musulmana en la “Divina Commedia.”</cite> Discorso -leído en el acto de su recepción, par D. Miguel Asín Palacios ... -Madrid, Estanislao Maestre, 1919.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_321" href="#FNanchor_321" class="label">[321]</a> <cite>Les sources Orientales de la Divina Comédie.</cite> Paris, E. Blochet. -Paris, Maisonneuve, 1901.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_322" href="#FNanchor_322" class="label">[322]</a> <cite>Koran</cite>, chap. xvii. (xv.) init. “Praise be unto him who transported -his servant by night, from the sacred temple of Mecca to -the further temple of Jerusalem, the circuit of which we have blessed, -that we might shew him some of our signs; for God is he who heareth -and seeth.” (Sale’s translation). On this passage a most elaborate -story was built up by subsequent legend-makers.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_323" href="#FNanchor_323" class="label">[323]</a> Ireland is undoubtedly the focus in Europe of legends <em>Persian</em> -in origin. Appropriate to our subject are not only the St. Brendan -Legend, but also the Purgatory of St. Patrick and the Descent of -St. Paul. Blochet, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 117 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_324" href="#FNanchor_324" class="label">[324]</a> <cite>Ib.</cite> p. 161.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_325" href="#FNanchor_325" class="label">[325]</a> <cite>Ib.</cite> p. 172.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_326" href="#FNanchor_326" class="label">[326]</a> <cite>Bulletino della Società dantesca italiana</cite>, Nov. Ser., fasc. 4, (Dec., -1919), pp. 163-181.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_327" href="#FNanchor_327" class="label">[327]</a> See above, p. 131, note 4.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_328" href="#FNanchor_328" class="label">[328]</a> <cite>Bulletino</cite> <i>ut supra</i>, p. 166.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_329" href="#FNanchor_329" class="label">[329]</a> <cite>Bulletino</cite> <i>ut supra</i>, esp. p. 181. Ma il meglio sarà contentarsi di -meditare sull’ affinità delle menti umane e sulla verosimiglianza che -cause simili producano, in luoghi diversi, effetti non troppo dissimili.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_330" href="#FNanchor_330" class="label">[330]</a> Dr. Parodi’s view would probably be like that of Gherardo de’ -Rossi about the vision of Alberic, which he quotes on p. 163: that -the <cite>Miradj</cite> “possa aver all’ Omero italiano suggerito l’ idea della -<cite>Commedia</cite> come un pezzo di marmo potrebbe somministrare ad uno -scultore l’ idea d’ una statua.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_331" href="#FNanchor_331" class="label">[331]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 129, 143-4.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_332" href="#FNanchor_332" class="label">[332]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> x. 136-8.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_333" href="#FNanchor_333" class="label">[333]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxv. 2.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_334" href="#FNanchor_334" class="label">[334]</a> <cite>Ep.</cite> x. (Oxford Ed.), xiii. (Bemporad), 87 <i>sqq.</i> See Sir T. W. -Arnold, “Dante and Islam,” <cite>Contemp. Review</cite>, Aug., 1921, to which -the present writer owes most of the substance of this paragraph -and what follows.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_335" href="#FNanchor_335" class="label">[335]</a> Arnold, p. 205-6.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_336" href="#FNanchor_336" class="label">[336]</a> <cite>Ib.</cite> p. 206-7.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_337" href="#FNanchor_337" class="label">[337]</a> <cite>Conv.</cite> I, iii.; Oxf. Ed., p. 240; Bemporad, p. 151 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_338" href="#FNanchor_338" class="label">[338]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xiv. 16 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_339" href="#FNanchor_339" class="label">[339]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxx. 64 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_340" href="#FNanchor_340" class="label">[340]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xiv. 46 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_341" href="#FNanchor_341" class="label">[341]</a> <cite>Villani</cite>, v. 37.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_342" href="#FNanchor_342" class="label">[342]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xvi. 37.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_343" href="#FNanchor_343" class="label">[343]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xiv. 43.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_344" href="#FNanchor_344" class="label">[344]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> x. 85.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_345" href="#FNanchor_345" class="label">[345]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xi. 106.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_346" href="#FNanchor_346" class="label">[346]</a> <cite>Vill.</cite> vii. 131; <cite>Dino</cite>, i. 9.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_347" href="#FNanchor_347" class="label">[347]</a> Leonardo Bruni Vita di Dante. Dove mi trovai non fanciullo -nelle armi, e dove ebbi temenza molta....</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_348" href="#FNanchor_348" class="label">[348]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxx. 37 <i>sqq.</i> Perhaps of English extraction: in a document -at Ravenna he is described as “de Anglia.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_349" href="#FNanchor_349" class="label">[349]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 106 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_350" href="#FNanchor_350" class="label">[350]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 48.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_351" href="#FNanchor_351" class="label">[351]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 42.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_352" href="#FNanchor_352" class="label">[352]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> iv. 118.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_353" href="#FNanchor_353" class="label">[353]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xxx. 78.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_354" href="#FNanchor_354" class="label">[354]</a> It is strange to find even in so recent a work as Mr. Tozer’s -Prose Translation of the <cite>Divine Comedy</cite>, reference still made to the -fountain of the name in <em>Siena</em>. The context is all in favour of a -spring near Romena.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_355" href="#FNanchor_355" class="label">[355]</a> <cite>Dino</cite>, i. 10.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_356" href="#FNanchor_356" class="label">[356]</a> <cite>Sacchetti</cite>, Nov. clxxix.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_357" href="#FNanchor_357" class="label">[357]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> v. 116 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_358" href="#FNanchor_358" class="label">[358]</a> <cite>Villani</cite>, vii. 130-131.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_359" href="#FNanchor_359" class="label">[359]</a> <cite>Villani</cite>, vii. 13-14.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_360" href="#FNanchor_360" class="label">[360]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> v. 85-129.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_361" href="#FNanchor_361" class="label">[361]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> v. 97 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_362" href="#FNanchor_362" class="label">[362]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xxii. 49.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_363" href="#FNanchor_363" class="label">[363]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> v. 126 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_364" href="#FNanchor_364" class="label">[364]</a> Fioretti: Prima considerazione delle sacre sante stimate.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_365" href="#FNanchor_365" class="label">[365]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xi. 107-8.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_366" href="#FNanchor_366" class="label">[366]</a> Fioretti: seconda considerazione.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_367" href="#FNanchor_367" class="label">[367]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xii. 1-45.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_368" href="#FNanchor_368" class="label">[368]</a> <cite>Fioretti</cite>: <cite>loc. cit.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_369" href="#FNanchor_369" class="label">[369]</a> <cite>loc. cit.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_370" href="#FNanchor_370" class="label">[370]</a> <cite>Ex.</cite> xxxiii. 11.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_371" href="#FNanchor_371" class="label">[371]</a> Buti, on <cite>Inf.</cite> xvi. 106. <cite>Purg.</cite> xxx. 42.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_372" href="#FNanchor_372" class="label">[372]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xvi. 106. For further “Franciscan” references see Paget -Toynbee, <cite>Life of Dante</cite> (last Ed.) p. 72 n.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_373" href="#FNanchor_373" class="label">[373]</a> <cite>Federzoni</cite>, <cite>Vita di Beatrice Portinari</cite>, 2nd Ed., p. 14.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_374" href="#FNanchor_374" class="label">[374]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxx. 41 <i>sq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_375" href="#FNanchor_375" class="label">[375]</a> <cite>Par.</cite> xi. 106-108.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_376" href="#FNanchor_376" class="label">[376]</a> Vol. II, p. 18, (Sept., 1918). <cite>Tasso and Shakespeare’s England.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_377" href="#FNanchor_377" class="label">[377]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> i. 104 <i>sqq.</i> <cite>Inf.</cite> ix. 133 <i>sqq.</i> and xx. 59 <i>sqq.</i> (See above, pp. -13 <i>sq.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_378" href="#FNanchor_378" class="label">[378]</a> The facts about Maschio are drawn from an article in the <cite>Strenna -per l’ anno.</cite> 1897, of the Venetian <cite>Educatorio Rachitici, “Regina -Margherita,”</cite> by Signor Giuseppe Bianchini.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_379" href="#FNanchor_379" class="label">[379]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxvii. 25.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_380" href="#FNanchor_380" class="label">[380]</a> <cite>Inf.</cite> xix. 16, <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_381" href="#FNanchor_381" class="label">[381]</a> <cite>Thirteenth</cite> in the <cite>Testo Critico</cite> of 1921 (Bemporad).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_382" href="#FNanchor_382" class="label">[382]</a> Benedetto Croce, <cite>La Poesia di Dante</cite>. Bari: Laterza, 1921, p. 10.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_383" href="#FNanchor_383" class="label">[383]</a> <cite>Ib.</cite> pp. 63, 197 <i>sqq.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_384" href="#FNanchor_384" class="label">[384]</a> Foligno, <cite>Dante, the Poet</cite>, p. 8.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_385" href="#FNanchor_385" class="label">[385]</a> Foligno, p. 15.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_386" href="#FNanchor_386" class="label">[386]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxiv. 52-54.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_387" href="#FNanchor_387" class="label">[387]</a> Oxford Ed., p. 251; Bemporad, p. 171.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_388" href="#FNanchor_388" class="label">[388]</a> <cite>Purg.</cite> xxiv. 51.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_389" href="#FNanchor_389" class="label">[389]</a> <cite>V.N.</cite>, xix. <i>ad init.</i> (Oxf. Ed., p. 215; Bemporad, p. 21).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_390" href="#FNanchor_390" class="label">[390]</a> Croce, <cite>Poesia di Dante</cite>, p. 67.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_391" href="#FNanchor_391" class="label">[391]</a> <cite>V.E.</cite>, II, iv. <i>sub init.</i> (Oxf. Ed., p. 393; Bemporad, p. 341; <i>cf.</i> -Foligno, p. 8.)</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">INDEX<br /> -<span class="smaller">PROPER NAMES, ETC.</span></h2> - -</div> - -<p>N.B.—<i>Names of characters in the <span class="smcap">Divine Comedy</span> are not included -as such. See <span class="smcap">Index of References to Dante’s Works</span>.</i></p> - -<ul> - -<li class="ifrst">Abelard: p. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Adams, Professor: pp. <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Albertus, Magnus: pp. <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alcuin: pp. <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alfonso X: p. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alfraganus: <a href="#Page_132">132 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Anglo-Italian Review</cite>: pp. <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aquinas, S. Thomas: pp. <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arabi, Ibn: p. <a href="#Page_135">135 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Archiano (river): p. <a href="#Page_146">146 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arda-Viraf: p. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aristotle: pp. <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ariosto: p. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arnold, Dr. Thomas: p. <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arnold, Sir T. W.: <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Asín, Professor: <a href="#Page_118">118 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Augustine, S.: p. <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Averroes: pp. <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bacon, Roger: p. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Balbo, Cesare: p. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Barnabas, Gospel of</cite>: pp. <a href="#Page_118">118 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Basil, S.: p. <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Benedict XV, Pope: pp. <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Benvenuti, E.: p. <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Berardi, L.: p. <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bernard, S.: p. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Biagi, Dr. Guido: p. <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bianchini: p. <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blochet, E.: pp. <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boccaccio, Giovanni: pp. <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boethius: p. <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bonaventura, S.: p. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boyd Carpenter, Bishop: pp. <a href="#Page_7">7 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, Mrs. E. B.: pp. <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bruni, C.: p. <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bruni, Leonardo: p. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brunetto Latino: p. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Bulletino della Società dantesca italiana</cite>: pp. <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burton (<cite>Anatomy of Melancholy</cite>): pp. <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Buti: p. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Butler, A. G.: p. <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Capponi, Gino: p. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carlyle, Thomas: p. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carroll, Lewis: p. <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Casentino, Valley of: pp. <a href="#Page_137">137 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Croce, Benedetto: pp. <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Crusades: pp. <a href="#Page_152">152 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Centenario Dantesco, Il viº</cite>: <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Centenario, Giornale del</cite>: pp. <a href="#Page_18">18 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cento, F.: p. <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clement of Alexandria, S.: p. <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Creighton, Bishop: p. <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Campagni, Dino: pp. <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Cronicon Astense</cite>: p. <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">D’Ancona: p. <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="indx">D’Annunzio: pp. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dante Alighieri: <i>passim</i></li> - -<li class="indx">——, Commemorations of: pp. <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_18">18 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">——, Educational principles in: pp. <a href="#Page_83">83 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span>——, Franciscan relations of: pp. <a href="#Page_148">148 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">——, and Italian language and literature: p. <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> - -<li class="indx">——, learning of: pp. <a href="#Page_72">72 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">——, love-poetry of: pp. <a href="#Page_3">3 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">—— as patriot: pp. <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">—— as poet: pp. <a href="#Page_171">171 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">—— as psychologist: pp. <a href="#Page_106">106 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">—— as religious teacher: pp. <a href="#Page_168">168 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Del Lungo, Isidoro: p. <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> - -<li class="indx">D’Ovidio, F.: pp. <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Duns Scotus: p. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst" id="Empire">Emperor, Empire, Roman: pp. <a href="#Page_16">16 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_34">34 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Erasmus: pp. <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Federzoni, Prof.: pp. <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ferrara, Court of,: p. <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Fioretti di S. Francesco</cite>: pp. <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fiume: pp. <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Florence: pp. <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Foligno, Prof. Cesare: pp. <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fonte Branda: p. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Foscolo, Ugo: p. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Francis, S.: pp. <a href="#Page_137">137 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Freud, Dr.: p. <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Froebel: <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Gardner, Prof. E. G.: p. <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Giotto: p. <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glover, Dr.: p. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grant, Prof. A. J.: p. <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gregory, Nazianzeu, S.: p. <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gregory the Great, S.: pp. <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gregory of Tours: p. <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grosseteste: p. <a href="#Page_88">88 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Guidi, Couti: pp. <a href="#Page_142">142 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Harnack, Dr. A.: p. <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Henry VII, Emperor: pp. <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Holbrook, R. T.: pp. <a href="#Page_51">51 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Homer: p. <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Horace: p. <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Howell, A. G. Ferrars: p. <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Islam: pp. <a href="#Page_118">118 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jerome, S.: p. <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jerusalem: p. <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jubilee: pp. <a href="#Page_129">129 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jung, Dr.: p. <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Kirkup, Seymour: p. <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Koran: pp. <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>League of Nations</cite>: pp. <a href="#Page_36">36 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lee, Sir Sidney: pp. <a href="#Page_152">152 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">McLachlan, H.: p. <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marsiglio da Padova: p. <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Maschio, Antonio: pp. <a href="#Page_165">165 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mazzini, Giuseppe: pp. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Metternich: p. <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Miradj</cite>: p. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mohammed: pp. <a href="#Page_120">120 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Montaperti, Battle of: p. <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Montessori, Dr.: pp. <a href="#Page_87">87 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_101">101 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_111">111 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Moore, Dr. E.: pp. <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Myers, F. W.: p. <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>New Teaching, The</cite>: <a href="#Page_87">87 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Norton, Eliot: p. <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Nuovo Convito, Il</cite>: p. <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Origen: p. <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Osservatore Romano</cite>: pp. <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Parodi, Dr.: pp. <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pestalozzi: pp. <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Peter Pascual, S.: p. <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Petrarch: p. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Piave, river: pp. <a href="#Page_21">21 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pola: pp. <a href="#Page_14">14 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pope, Alexander: p. <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Psychology: pp. <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Quadrivium</cite>: p. <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Quintilian: p. <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Rabanus Maurus: p. <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span>Ragg, Lonsdale: pp. <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ravenna: pp. <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Raymond Lull: p. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reid, Dr.: p. <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Roman, <i>see</i> <a href="#Empire">Empire</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rossetti, D. G.: p. <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rouse, Dr.: p. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rousseau: p. <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sacchetti, Franco: p. <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Salimbene: pp. <a href="#Page_48">48 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sannia, Prof. E.: pp. <a href="#Page_43">43 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sanudo, Marin: p. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shakespeare: p. <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Spectator, The</cite>: p. <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spenser: p. <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Statius: pp. <a href="#Page_61">61 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Student Movement, The</cite>: p. <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Tamassia, Prof. N.: pp. <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tasso: pp. <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151-162</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Taylor, H. O.: pp. <a href="#Page_73">73 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thring, Dr.: p. <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Toynbee, Dr. Paget: pp. <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tozer, H. F.: pp. <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trentino, The: pp. <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trevelyan, G. M.: p. <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trieste: pp. <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Troya, Carlo: p. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Verna, La: pp. <a href="#Page_146">146 <i>sqq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vernon, W. W.: pp. <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Villani, Giovanni: pp. <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Virgil: pp. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112 <i>sqq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vossler, K.: p. <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Wicksteed, P.: pp. <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Witte, K.: pp. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Zoncada, A.: p. <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -</ul> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="REFERENCES_TO_DANTES_WORKS">REFERENCES TO DANTE’S WORKS</h2> - -</div> - -<ul> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>VITA NUOVA</cite></li> -<li class="isub1">xix <i>ad init</i>: p. <a href="#Page_172">172 <i>sq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>CONVIVIO:</cite> pp. <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I: p. <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, iii: p. <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, xi: p. <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> -<li class="isub1">II: p. <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> -<li class="isub1">II, vii: p. <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> -<li class="isub1">II, xi: p. <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> -<li class="isub1">II, xiv: pp. <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> -<li class="isub1">III, viii: pp. <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> -<li class="isub1">III, ix: pp. <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> -<li class="isub1">III, xi: p. <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> -<li class="isub1">IV, iv, v: p. <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> -<li class="isub1">IV, xv: p. <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> -<li class="isub1">IV, xvi: pp. <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> -<li class="isub1">IV, xxviii: p. <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>MONARCHIA:</cite> pp. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I: p. <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, v: p. <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, xi: pp. <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, xii: p. <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> -<li class="isub1">II, p. <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> -<li class="isub1">II, v: pp. <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> -<li class="isub1">III, iv: p. <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> -<li class="isub1">III, xvi: p. <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA</cite></li> -<li class="isub1">I, vii: pp. <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, xi: pp. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, xii: p. <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, xiii: p. <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> -<li class="isub1">I, xiv: p. <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> -<li class="isub1">II, iv: p. <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> -<li class="isub1">II, vi: p. <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>EPISTOLAE</cite></li> -<li class="isub1">vii: pp. <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> -<li class="isub1">x (xiii): pp. <a href="#Page_92">92 <i>sq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>LA DIVINA COMMEDIA</cite></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inferno:</cite> p. <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. i:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">31-34: p. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> -<li class="isub2">47: p. <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> -<li class="isub2">72: p. <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> -<li class="isub2"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span>77, 78: p. <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> -<li class="isub2">82: p. <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> -<li class="isub2">104 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> -<li class="isub2">113 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> -<li class="isub2">118-120: pp. <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> -<li class="isub2">122 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> -<li class="isub2">124: p. <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> -<li class="isub2">177 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. ii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">1-5: p. <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> -<li class="isub2">7: p. <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. iii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">5, 6: p. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> -<li class="isub2">16-18: p. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> -<li class="isub2">103: p. <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. iv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">13-15: p. <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> -<li class="isub2">42: p. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> -<li class="isub2">48: p. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> -<li class="isub2">67 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> -<li class="isub2">106 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> -<li class="isub2">118: p. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> -<li class="isub2">129: p. <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> -<li class="isub2">131-133: pp. <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> -<li class="isub2">143, 144: pp. <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. ix:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">66: p. <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> -<li class="isub2">76 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> -<li class="isub2">85: p. <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> -<li class="isub2">113: pp. <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> -<li class="isub2">133 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. x:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">85: p. <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">10-66: p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">1 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> -<li class="isub2">1-21: p. <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> -<li class="isub2">1-45: p. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> -<li class="isub2">114: p. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xiii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">28 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> -<li class="isub2">120 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xiv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">85 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">82-85: p. <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xvi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">87: p. <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> -<li class="isub2">106: p. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xvii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">79 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xix:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">16: p. <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> -<li class="isub2">52 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> -<li class="isub2">72: p. <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xx:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">59 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> -<li class="isub2">61: pp. <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">7-15: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> -<li class="isub2">31: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> -<li class="isub2">55 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> -<li class="isub2">88 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> -<li class="isub2">127 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">25: p. <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> -<li class="isub2">31: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> -<li class="isub2">41: p. <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> -<li class="isub2">57: p. <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> -<li class="isub2">60: p. <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> -<li class="isub2">72: p. <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> -<li class="isub2">118: p. <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> -<li class="isub2">130: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxii, xxiii:</cite> p. <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxiii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">4 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> -<li class="isub2">37: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxvi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">7: p. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> -<li class="isub2">56 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxvii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">118 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxviii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span>35: p. <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxx:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">37 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> -<li class="isub2">64: pp. <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> -<li class="isub2">78: p. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> -<li class="isub2">103 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> -<li class="isub2">131: p. <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> -<li class="isub2">136 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxxi:</cite> p. <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxxii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">22 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Inf. xxxiv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">130: p. <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>PURGATORIO:</cite> <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. i:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">1: p. <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> -<li class="isub2">7 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> -<li class="isub2">71: p. <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> -<li class="isub2">71 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> -<li class="isub2">75: P. <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> -<li class="isub2">125: p. <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. ii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">30: p. <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. iii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">7-9: p. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> -<li class="isub2">9: p. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> -<li class="isub2">37: p. <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. iv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">88-95: p. <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> -<li class="isub2">89 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> -<li class="isub2">106: p. <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. v:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">61: pp. <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> -<li class="isub2">85-129: p. <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> -<li class="isub2">97 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> -<li class="isub2">116 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> -<li class="isub2">126 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. vi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">66: p. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> -<li class="isub2">76-<i>fin.</i>: pp. <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> -<li class="isub2">91 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> -<li class="isub2">97: p. <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> -<li class="isub2">118: p. <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> -<li class="isub2"><i>fin.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. vii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">94: p. <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. x:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">31 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> -<li class="isub2">35: p. <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> -<li class="isub2">75: p. <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> -<li class="isub2">130-133: p. <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">16 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> -<li class="isub2">110: p. <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xiv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">16 <i>sqq.</i>: <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> -<li class="isub2">43: <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> -<li class="isub2">46 <i>sqq.</i>: <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">38: p. <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> -<li class="isub2">76-78: p. <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xvi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">76-78: p. <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> -<li class="isub2">77: p. <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> -<li class="isub2">106 <i>sqq.</i>: pp. <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> -<li class="isub2">127 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> -<li class="isub2">142-145: p. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xvii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">40 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> -<li class="isub2">68: p. <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> -<li class="isub2">88-139: p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> -<li class="isub2">91 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> -<li class="isub2">103-105: p. <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xviii:</cite> p. <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> -<li class="isub2">40-43: p. <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> -<li class="isub2">46-48: p. <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> -<li class="isub2">141: p. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xix:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">1 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> -<li class="isub2">22: p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> -<li class="isub2">25 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> -<li class="isub2">28: p. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> -<li class="isub2">72: p. <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> -<li class="isub2">85 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> -<li class="isub2"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span>124: p. <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xx:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">40-96: p. <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> -<li class="isub2">43: p. <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> -<li class="isub2">108: p. <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> -<li class="isub2">116 sq.: p. <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">33: p. <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> -<li class="isub2">61 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li> -<li class="isub2">103: p. <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxi and xxii:</cite> p. <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">67-69: p. <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> -<li class="isub2">76: p. <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxiii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">71-74: p. <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> -<li class="isub2">73 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> -<li class="isub2">115 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxiv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">51-54: p. <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">25 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxvi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">13: p. <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxvii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">22 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> -<li class="isub2">25: p. <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> -<li class="isub2">35 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> -<li class="isub2">46: p. <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> -<li class="isub2">88 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> -<li class="isub2">112: p. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> -<li class="isub2">134: p. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> -<li class="isub2">139 <i>sqq.</i>: pp. <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> -<li class="isub2">140, 142: p. <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> -<li class="isub2">142: pp. <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxviii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">25 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> -<li class="isub2">36: p. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> -<li class="isub2">41 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> -<li class="isub2">94: p. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> -<li class="isub2">139: p. <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> -<li class="isub2">145: p. <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Purg. xxx:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">41 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> -<li class="isub2">42: p. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> -<li class="isub2">49: p. <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>PARADISO i:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">1 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> -<li class="isub2">6-8: p. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> -<li class="isub2">13 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> -<li class="isub2">56 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> -<li class="isub2">100: p. <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> -<li class="isub2">103 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. iii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">65: p. <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> -<li class="isub2">70 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> -<li class="isub2">70-72, 75: p. <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> -<li class="isub2">82-85: p. <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. v:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">19-24: p. <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. vi:</cite> p. <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> -<li class="isub2">34-96: p. <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> -<li class="isub2">103 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> -<li class="isub2">121 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. ix:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">27: p. <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. x:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">136-8: p. <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">106: p. <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li> -<li class="isub2">106-108: p. <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> -<li class="isub2">107 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xiv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">125: p. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xvii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">55: p. <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xx:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">102: p. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">130 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> -<li class="isub2"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span>134: p. <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">49: p. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> -<li class="isub2">151: p. <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxiii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">22: p. <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> -<li class="isub2">71 <i>sq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxiv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">52-54: p. <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> -<li class="isub2">57: p. <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxv:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">1, 2: p. <a href="#Page_x">x</a></li> -<li class="isub2">2: p. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> -<li class="isub2">3: pp. <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> -<li class="isub2">5: p. <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxvi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">64-66: p. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxvii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">4: p. <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> -<li class="isub2">83: p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxviii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">133-135: p. <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxix:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">34: <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> -<li class="isub2">110: p. <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxx:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">133 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> -<li class="isub2">135-137: p. <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxxi:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">85: p. <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> -<li class="isub2">85-89: p. <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> -<li class="isub2">97: p. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxxii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">39: p. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="isub1"><cite>Par. xxxiii:</cite></li> -<li class="isub2">58 <i>sqq.</i>: p. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> -<li class="isub2">145: pp. <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> - -</ul> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dante Alighieri, Apostle of Freedom, by -Lonsdale Ragg - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANTE ALIGHIERI, APOSTLE OF FREEDOM *** - -***** This file should be named 63011-h.htm or 63011-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/0/1/63011/ - -Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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