OF THE UNIVERSITY yyu^ /. M^ K/f^'^ . €I)arIe6 91. T)intimtixt* AIDS TO THE STUDY OF DANTE. IIlus- trated. Large crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.50, net. Postage extra. THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE. Large crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.50, net. Postpaid, $1.63. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, Boston and New York. W0k THE TEACHINGS OE DANTE BY CHARLES ALLEN DINSMORE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY BEPLACINQ COPYRIGHT, IQOI, BY CHARLES A. DINSMORB ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published September, igoi MA /A TO MY WIFE WHOSE DEVOTION HAS MADE POSSIBLE THESE STUDIES I DEDICATE THIS BOOK PEEFACE One hot summer's morning several years ago, wishing to make more enjoyable a day of leisure, I searched through a friend's library for an in- teresting book to take into the woods. Most of the volumes, being upon theology and philoso- phy, appeared too dry and heavy. Finally, I selected Longfellow's translation of Dante's " Inferno," for the three-fold reason that I had little knowledge of the illustrious Italian, the book itself was attractive, and the title seemed to accord with the heat of the day. No sooner, however, had I begun to read than indolence changed to an absorbed attention. The unique- ness of the theme, the vividness of Dante's pic- tures, the beauty of Longfellow's translation fascinated me. The book became a constant companion during the simimer, and when the work of the year began the spell of Dante's great personality was upon me. Again and again I turned from him, fearing that I could vi PREFACE not afford the time and energy required truly to appreciate his thought. It was like trying to escape the law of gravitation. Irresistibly I was drawn back to one who not only gave the intellect rest by leading the thoughts into times so different from our own, but also girded the mind with power by bringing it into the pre- sence of exalted ideals, intensest passions, and ele- mental truths. De Quincey divides Hterature into the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. Surely in the literature of power the " Divine Comedy " is unsurpassed. Dante makes a continuous and irresistible appeal to the imagination, compelling it to range through strange, soul-stirring expe- riences, stimulating it with pictures of rarest beauty, taxing it to the uttermost to conceive that which no thought can grasp. He carries the mind at once into the region of the loftiest and most commanding truths, and in that invig- orating moral atmosphere it comes to a new con- sciousness of itself and its possibilities. The study of such an author as Dante is valu- able in enabling one to organize his knowledge and to resist the insidious evil of reading dis- connectedly many themes and writers. Mr. Lowell's experience, which he gave in one of PREFACE vli his unpublished college lectures, is most inter- esting. " One is sometimes asked by young men to recommend to them a course of reading. My advice would always be to confine yourself to tlie supreme books in whatever Hterature ; still better, to choose some one great author and grow thoroughly familiar with him. For as all roads lead to Rome, so they all likewise lead thence ; and you will find that in order to understand perfectly and weigh exactly any really vital piece of hterature, you will be gradually and pleasantly persuaded to studies and explorations of which you little dreamed when you began, and will find yourselves scholars before you are aware. If I may be allowed a personal illustra- tion, it was my own profound admiration for the ' Divina Commedia ' of Dante that lured me into what little learning I possess. For re- member that there is nothing less fruitful than scholarship for the sake of mere scholarship, nor anything more wearisome in the attainment. But the moment you have an object and a centre, attention is quickened, the mother of memory ; and whatever you acquire groups and arranges itself in an order which is lucid because it is everywhere in intelHgent relation to an vlii PREFACE object of constant and growing interest. Thus, as respects Dante, I asked myself, What are his points of hkeness or unlikeness with the authors of classical antiquity? in how far is either of these an advantage or a defect? What and how much modern literature had preceded him ? How much was he indebted to it ? How far had the ItaHan language been subdued and suppled to the uses of poetry or prose before his time ? How much did he color the style or thought of the authors who followed him ? Is it a fault or a merit that he is so thoroughly impregnated with the opinions, passions, and even prejudices not only of his age but his country ? Was he right or wrong in being a Ghibelline ? To what extent is a certain freedom of opinion which he shows sometimes on points of religious doctrine to be attributed to the humanizing in- fluences of the Crusades in enlarging the horizon of the Western mind by bringing it in contact with other races, religions, and social arrange- ments ? These and a hundred other such ques- tions were constant stimulants to thought and inquiry, stimulants such as no merely objectless and, so to speak, impersonal study could have supplied." It is certainly of inestimable advantage to PREFACE ix come under the influence of one of the impe- rial minds of the race, who challenges every lover of his to high thinking and lofty feel- ing, and who, embodying in himself the life of so many centuries, readily charms the mind into various fields of knowledge, and reveals to us our own time by unveiling a mighty past. Dante is so rich in suggestive symbolism that the temptation is constant to read into his im- agery meanings entirely foreign to his thought, and to obscure his most important teachings by mingling them in a mass of instructive but sub- ordinate details. Both of these temptations I have endeavored to resist, striving honestly to interpret Dante's conceptions, and seeking to secure clearness by disclosing only the frame- work of his thought. My indebtedness to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton is very great. A new zest was given to my studies when I became acquainted with his trans- lations of "The New Life" and "The Divine Comedy." Although Longfellow's version of the "Comedy" is a marvel of accurate and comprehensive scholarship, and is ingeniously true to Dante in metre and style, yet it is impos- sible to render a foreign tongue into English verse without losing much of the flavor of the X PREFACE original and obscuring the sense. Mr. Norton's prose translations avoid these defects. He fits our English words to Dante's thought so closely that we feel the beauty and vigor of the original^ and more easily grasp the author's unfamihar teachings. When the substance of some of the following chapters appeared in the " Atlantic Monthly," Mr. Norton wrote of his satisfaction in the justness of the interpretations and the quahty of the work, and expressed a wish that the studies be gathered into a book. On the completion of the volume he suggested the title and generously offered to read the proofs. I certainly do not seek to add the weight of his authority to any comments I have made on the value of mediaeval or modern religious doctrine, or to commit him to the approval of every de- tail of the exposition ; but the fact that this in- terpretation of Dante's thought has won his commendation is a sufficient guaranty of its accuracy. I wish also to express my obligation to the Rev. Wilbert L. Anderson, whose fine literary taste has saved me from many mfeHcities in expression ; and to Mr. William B. Parker for much encouragement during the early days of my Dante studies. PREFACE 3d The prose quotations from the " Comedy " which appear in the book are taken from Pro- fessor Norton's translations; the metrical versions are Longfellow's unless otherwise indicated. CHARLES ALLEN DINSMORE. Boston, July, 1901. i CONTENTS DANTE PAQE I. Modern Interest in Dante 3 n. The Outward Life 8 m. The Llfb within 16 rV. Characteristics op the Prophet .... 23 V. His Place in History 35 THE BURDEN OF THE MESSAGE I. The CatjTj of the Prophet 47 II. The Message 50 III. Its Political Aspect 51 IV. Its Religious Teaching 58 V. The Value of his Thought 62 THE VISION OF SIN I. The Dark Spot in the Universe .... 77 II. The "Inferno" an Experience .... 79 III. The Three Degrees of Sin 81 IV. The Nature of Sin . 83 V. Sin personlfibd in Demons 84 VI. The Atmosphere Sin creates .... 91 VII. The Effect of Sin on the Soul .... 94 Vni. An Interpretation of Dante's Conception op Sin . 96 THE QUEST OF LIBERTY I. The Vitality of the "Purgatorio" . . . 109 11. The Return to Eden 113 III. The Holy Mountain 115 IV. Truths taught in Ante-Purgatory . . . 117 V. The Way a Soul is cleansed 119 VI. Where the Sense, of Sin is keenest . . . 127 xiv CONTENTS Vn. The Mind purged from an Evil Conscience, and ENDUED WITH POWER 130 VIII. The Doctrine of Expiation 134 IX. The Absence of Christ 137 X. The Separation of Morality from Religion . 141 XI. Intercessory Prayer 143 XII. A Self-centred Salvation 145 XIII. Purgatory in Literature 141 XIV. Conclusion 154 THE ASCENT TO GOD I. The Sublime Canticle of the Comedy . . . 161 II. The Theme of the "Paradiso" .... 165 III. The Beginnings of the Spiritual Life . . . 166 IV. The Astronomical Framework of the Poem . 169 V. Two Fundamental Truths 171 VT. Light, Life, Truth 175 VII. The Supreme Truths taught in the Lower Heavens 182 a. The Shadow of Earth ..... 182 6. God's Will is our Peace 183 c. The Influence of the Stars .... 184 d. The Freedom of the Will 187 Vni. The Truths declared in the Unshadowed Planets 189 a. The Sun 189 b. Mars 192 c. Jupiter 195 d. Saturn 196 IX. The Two Heavens of Redemptive and Celestial Mysteries 198 X. The Ultimate Beatitude 204 XI. A Study of Spiritual Values 210 Appendix • • • • • 217 DANTE " The central man in all the world, as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral, and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante." — John Ruskin. " The secret of Dante's power is not far to seek. Whoever can express himself vi'iih. the full force of unconscious sincerity will be found to have uttered something ideal and universal." — James Russell Lowell. " There are few other works of man, perhaps there is no other, which afford such evidence as the Divine Comedy of uninter- rupted consistency of purpose, of sustained vigor of imagination, and of steady force of character controlling alike the vagaries of the poetic temperament, the wavering of human purpose, the fluctuation of human powers, the untowardness of cir- cumstance. From beginning to end of this work of many years, there is no flagging of energy, no indication of weakness. The shoulders, burdened by a task almost too great for mortal strength, never tremble under their load." — Charles Eliot Norton. MODERN INTEREST IN DANTE The last century has witnessed a remarkable awakening of interest in the study of Dante. It may have been true in Macaulay's day that the majority of young people who read Ital- ian would " as soon read a Babylonian brick as a canto of Dante," but to-day multitudes are learning Italian to enjoy the sweetest poet who ever spoke that tongue. This increasing appreciation is favored by a peculiar sympathy between the poet and the spirit of our age. These are the days of the microscope, the etch- ing tool, and the specialist. We delight in minute investigation and exact scholarship ; we believe in realism and in details. A poem whose structure is as deHcate and minutely exact as a rare Florentine mosaic, and which, though touching the heights of idealism, is reahstic to the last degree, cannot fail to challenge our at- tention. It was different in an age which looked up to Dr. Johnson as a model in composition, and delighted in pompous amplitude of diction. This is a time when popular rights are much 4 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE vaunted, and Dante, aristocratic and disdainful though he was, unhesitatingly ascribing the evils of Florence to the boorish plebeians, now is counted a champion of the people's rights. The tremendous emphasis he placed upon the worth of the soul lifted the individual man above all titles and claims of blood, so that free Italy found in him its prophet, and his writings proved an armory filled with keenest weapons for the destruction of the claims of the Church to temporal dominion. Again, the nineteenth century was distinc- tively scientific. We gave over a hundred years to the investigation of nature ; and the price has been slight compared with the victories we have won. But a too steady gaze at the natural has made dim the supernatural. The soul is begin- ning to cry out fiercely against its bondage. The prophets of materialism and agnosticism have had their day, and now the clearest voice that in modern times has spoken the soul's deep con- sciousness of its mastery over matter and fate is being heard. To Dante the physical is fleeting, the spiritual is the real. He saw time under the forms of eternity. The seen is the stepping- stone into the unseen. This is the steadily grow- ins: conviction of the world. In a time of vanish- ing materiahsm, with its attending fatalism, we exult in this superb reassertion of the freedom of the will, by one whom Lowell calls " the MODERN INTEREST IN DANTE 5 highest spiritual nature that has expressed itself in rhythmical form." The great revival of interest in him is also due to the splendid sincerity of his convictions, which quicken those moods that our minds, troubled with doubt, crave. We are living in a time of intense spiritual desire. We are stretching out hands toward the gloom and calling into the unknown. Our representative poets are strug- gling for a faith, and the strong tide of interest in our best literature is toward spiritual prob- lems. Our greatest writers are not engrossed with the actions of men, as was Homer ; they are not absorbed in delineating their passions, as was Shakespeare ; but are turning their thoughts into the deeps of the soul to learn the meaning of life and the realities confronting it. Of this realm of the spirit Dante is preemi- nently the prophet. His robust faith makes to us a mighty appeal. We receive immense in- spiration from one, who, instead of leading us from doubt to faith, begins with faith and leads us up to God. We most clearly discern the needs of our own age when we see them mirrored in our most characteristic poet, and contrast his mental attitude with that of Dante. Tennyson, in " In Memoriam," says : — "I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar stairs That slope through darkness up to God, 6 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE " I stretch faint hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope." Dante did not stretch out faint hands, but with subHme and confident faith he put his feet on the great world's altar stairs and steadfastly followed Reason and Revelation until they led him through darkness into the perfect light. The best religious life of our day is flowing in channels not of contemplation, but of philan- thropy. Our saints Hnger longer over their frater-nosters than over their pater-nosters. Dante is certainly not the prophet of socialism or of humanitarianism. To him the noblest form of religious activity was the absorption of the mind in pondering the deep things of God. ^' They shall see His face " was to him a more significant description of Heaven than " His ser- vants shall serve Him." In this he does not reflect our age ; but in his impressive assertion of the reality and supremacy of the spiritual, in his passionate desire to know, in his conception of the strenuousness of life, and the austere rigors of the moral law, he finds a response in many hearts. We have a deep need of just what this Tuscan prophet can give. Into our feverish life he brings the silence of the centuries, and as we enter the mystic cathedral of his thought, — " The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait." MODERN INTEREST IN DANTE 7 To our easy tolerance he opposes the austeri- ties of the higher law. , When we confound moral with natural evil, he quickens our per- ception of how voluntary and damnable it is, and he answers our feeble agnosticism with a tremorless assurance that the Infinite is the mystery of light and not of darkness, and that man can know. Dante is the greatest prophet of the Chris- tian centuries because he has given utterance to the largest aggregation of truth, in terms of universal experience, and in a form permanent through its exceeding beauty. That so many minds are turning to him for light and vigor is most significant and hopeful. n THE OUTWARD LIFE Of his appearance Boccaccio gives a graphic description — " Our poet was of middle height and stooped when he walked, being now of mature years; his aspect was grave and quiet, and his dress seemly and serious as became his age. His face was long, his nose aquiline, his eyes rather large than Httle, his nostrils large, and the underHp a little prominent; his com- plexion was dark, his hair and beard thick, black, and curling, and his countenance always melancholy and thoughtful." ^ Giovanni Villani, a contemporary, furnishes in his chronicle a most interesting glimpse of how Dante appeared to those who knew him : " This man was a most excellent scholar in almost every branch of learning, albeit he was a layman ; he was a most excellent poet and philosopher, and a perfect rhetorician alike in prose and verse, a very noble orator in public speaking, supreme in rhyme, with the most polished and beautiful style which in our language ever was up to his time ^ Vita di Dante. THE OUTWARD LIFE 9 and beyond it. This Dante because of his know- ledge was somewhat haughty and reserved and disdainful, and after the fashion of a philoso- pher, almost ungracious and not easy in his con- verse with laymen : but because of the lofty virtues and knowledge and worth of so great a citizen, it seems fitting to confer lasting memory upon him in this chronicle, although, indeed, his noble works, left to us in writing, are the true testimony to him, and are an honorable report to our city." ^ The events of his life are soon told. He was born in Florence in 1265, of the ancient and knightly house of the Alighieri, whose arms were a golden wing on a field of azure, a fit em- blem of that darino^ o^enius that soared into the height of the unseen. He was also fortunate in his name, Dante, a contraction of Durante, the '' enduring one." Whether his parents, of whom we know little, detected any unusual ability in their proud and reticent boy, it is impossible to tell ; but they certainly spared nothing to make his education complete, according to the standards of the day. He came under the mfluence of Brunetto Latini, " the first master in refining the Florentines," who taught the ambitious lad how a man makes himself eternal. Dante must have been an apt pupil, for had he never immortalized himself as a poet, he would have been known as 1 Croniche Fiorentinef B. IX. § 136. 10 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE the most learned man o£ his day, his insatiable mind appropriating all the knowledge of the time. He was married about 1291 to Gemma dei Donati, and throuofh her became connected with Corso Donati, one of the most powerful nobles of Flor- ence. Whether their married life was happy or not is a matter of conjecture. Boccaccio insinu- ates that it was not, and one can easily imagine that the poet was too preoccupied and imperious to make an ideal husband. Through this union several children were born. In the stormy controversies that distracted the city Dante seems to have been the recognized leader of the moderates, and being, as Villani tells us, " a perfect rhetorician " and " a very noble orator," he is said to have been sent on many important diplomatic missions. The government of the city was intrusted to seven officials, — six priors of profession and one gonfaloniere of justice, who held their office for only two months. In 1300 Dante was elected one of the priors, and in a letter now lost, but a part of wdiich is preserved in the Life of him by Leonardo Bruni, he says, " All my w^oes and misfortunes had their cause and beginning in the unlucky election of my priorship. Though I was not, on the score of wisdom, worthy, nevertheless on the score of faith and age, I was not unworthy of it." The lack of wisdom which the reflection of after years detected in THE OUTWARD LIFE 11 his official conduct may have been the opposi- tion of himself and his colleagues to Cardinal Matteo, whom the Pope sent as his legate to pacify Florence, and who, faiHng in his mission, departed in anger, leaving the city excommuni- cated and interdicted. It was probably during his priorship that the leaders of both contending parties were banished. Machiavelli cites this as a proof of Dante's prudence and courage, but the poet may have felt otherwise in after years. Poets are not usually good road builders, but a curious document has quite recently come to light showing that the writer of the "Vita Nuova" was a practical man of affairs. In April, 1301, a petition was presented to the Com- mittee on Streets, Squares, and Bridges, asking that a certain road be widened and mended. The committee ordered the work to be done, and Dante was appointed to oversee the whole matter. Angered by the failure of Cardinal Matteo's mission, the Pope called upon Charles of Valois to bring Florence to her senses, and gave him the title of " Pacifier of Tuscany." Dante was sent to Eome to avert, if possible, this dire calamity ; but while he was there Charles occupied Florence, and the poet's enemies, being in possession of the government, passed sentence of exile against him on the 27th of January, 1302, with a heavy fine 12 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE to be paid within two months. Dante proving contumacious, a second sentence was pronounced in less than two months, condemning him to be burned aUve if he should ever set foot wdthin the jurisdiction of Florence. Thus did the unhappy city pass judgment upon herself. During the remaining nineteen years of his life he was a wanderer. In his own pathetic words he says : " Through almost all parts where this language [Italian] is spoken, a wanderer, almost a beggar, I have gone, showing against my will the wound of fortune. Truly I have been a ship without a sail and without a rudder, borne to divers ports and bays and shores by that hot blastj the breath of doleful poverty: and I have appeared vile in the eyes of many, who per- haps through some fame may have imagined me in other form. In whose view was not only my person debased, but every work of mine, whether done or yet to do, became of less value." ^ For a few years he was identified with his fel- low exiles in attempts to reinstate themselves. He was one of their council of twelve ; but finally, disgusted with their folly, he withdrew and formed a party of himself. His wanderings after this are quite obscure. Yillani says he " went to study at Bologna, and then to Paris, and into several parts of the world." In the year 1310, when Henry VII. of Luxemburg arrived in Italy, the ^ Convito, Tratt. 1, Cap. iii. THE OUTWARD LIFE 13 hopes of the exile were raised to the highest pitch, for he thought that it was this prince who would restore order to the frenzied state, and realize the ideal universal Roman Empire. Hearing that the Florentines were preparing to resist Henry, he wrote them a wrathful letter, reproaching them bitterly for their rebellion against the lawful C«sar. For reply his beloved city reaffirmed the previous condemnation against him, and with the untimely death of Henry Dante's political hopes forever vanished. In 1316 the gates of Florence were opened to him on condition of his paying a fine and doing penance, but with noble dignity he refused. " Is this, then, the glorious recall of Dante Alighieri to his country after having borne exile for nearly fifteen years ? Is this the reward of innocence patent to all ? Of perpetual sweat and toil of study ? Far from a man, the familiar friend of philosophy, be the reckless humility of a heart of earth, that would allow him to make an offer- ing of himself as if he were a caitiff ! Far be it from a man, a preacher of justice, to pay those who have done him wrong as for a favor ! " This is not the way for me to return to my country ; but if another can be found that shall not derogate from the fame and honor of Dante, that mil I take with no lagging steps. But if by no such way Florence is to be entered, then Florence I shall never enter. And what then ! 14 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE Can I not everywhere behold the mirrors of the sun and stars ? Contemplate the sweetest truths under any sky, without first giving myself up inglorious, nay, ignominious, to the populace and the city of Florence ? And bread, I trust, shall not fail me." ^ The weary exile, ever hoping honorably to return to the fair fold in which he slept when a lamb, continued his studies and his wanderings. His longest stay was at Verona, where he was received and nobly entertained by Can Grande della Scala. His last refuge was at Ravenna, where he died in 1321, shortly after completing the Sacred Poem, to which heaven and earth had set their hand. Thus was fulfilled the wish of his life, as expressed in the closing words of the " Vita Nuova," that he might go to behold the face of his lady when he had said that of her which was never said of any woman. Death was a merciful release. Having looked into the face of God he was not compelled to tame his " mind down from its own infinity — To live in narrow ways with little men, A common sight to every common eye." He was buried with honors suitable to his lofty genius under a monument bearing an inscription which he is said to have written upon his death- bed. The paraphrase is Mr. Lowell's. 1 Letter to a Florentine Friend. The authenticity of this let- ter is much debated. THE OUTWARD LIFE 16 " The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the Stream of Fire, the Pit, In vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit ; But since my soul, an alien here, hath flown to nobler wars, And happier now, hath gone to seek its Maker 'mid the stars, Here am I Dante shut, exiled from the ancestral shore, Whom Florence, the of all least-loving mother, bore." m THE LIFE WITHIN But if the external events of his wanderings furnish but a meagre record, there was taking place in the soul of the great ideahst an experi- ence of such mingled pathos and beauty that it has held the fascinated attention of the world for nearly six centuries. We know as Httle of the outward life of Dante as of that of Homer or Shakespeare ; but of his spiritual struggles, the motives w^hich governed him, the judgments he formed, the passions that at one moment glowed hot with righteous fury and the next burned with a seraphic love, we have a most noble disclosure. In the fine words of Marti- neau, " the best end of all a [man's] work is to show us what he is. The noblest workers of our world bequeath us nothing so great as the image of themselves." While the personahties of his compeers in song are lost in their work, Dante has thrown the shadow of his imasre on this world and on the world that comes here- after. The most reticent of men has given us the clearest revelation of himself. THE LIFE WITHIN 17 When he was nine years of age, he tells us in his quaint language, " the glorious Lady of my mind, who was called Beatrice by many who knew not what to call her, first appeared to my eyes." Her coming was the awakening of love, and the beginning of that new life which was to ascend continually — " uublasted by the glory, though he trod From star to star to reach the almighty throne." ^ Who this Beatrice was is a matter of much dis- pute. The statement of Boccaccio, who wrote some thirty years after Dante's death, that she was Beatrice Portinari, the daughter of a near neighbor, who afterward married Simone de' Bardi, and died in 1290 at the age of twenty- four, has usually been accepted. But it seems more probable that she was some maiden to whom Dante gave the name of Beatrice, the blessed one, to hide her identity. When he was eighteen, they again met and she saluted him with such ineffable courtesy " that it seemed to me that I saw all the bounds of bliss." To her the poet gave all the chival- rous devotion of his heart. She became to him the embodiment of everything divine, and under the sweet influence she exerted over his soul, he lived an innocent life of simple religious faith, undisturbed by mental struggle and unshadowed by doubt. 1 Byron, The Prophecy of Dantef canto i. 18 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE With the death of Beatrice in his twenty-fifth year the first great sorrow came into his fife. The blow stagfijered him. His serene faith be- came clouded. He began to question and to doubt, entering upon that chill, foggy land of mental and spiritual uncertainty, which for all earnest souls lies between the simple faith of childhood and the assured convictions of maturer years. To assuage his grief he began the study of philosophy, and threw himself into the active political conflicts of his time. Many go so far as to assert that he yielded to sensual lusts, sinking far below the moral elevation of his youth. It is not improbable that the year 1300, when, as he tells us in the opening of the " Divine Comedy," he found himself in a dark wood, marks a real epoch in his life, and explains why he chose it as the time of his wonderful journey. Pope Boniface YHI. proclaimed a jubilee at Rome, to extend from Christmas, 1299, to Easter, 1300, and the pilgrims who visited continually for fifteen days the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul were " granted full and entire remission of all their sins, both the guilt and the punish- ment thereof, they having made or to make con- fession of the sins. And for consolation of the Christian pilgrims, every Friday and every solemn feast day, was shown in St. Peter's the Veronica, the true image of Christ, on the napkin." Dante may have snatched time from his engrossing pub- THE LIFE WITHIN 19 lie duties to make this pilgrimage, not as a mere on-looker, but as a believer who felt the need of the forgiveness promised. The sight of the vast throngs of eager pilgrims, the beholding of the true face of his suffering Saviour on the sacred cloth, the hours spent in meditation and worship, evidently made a deep impression upon his ardent and sensitive spirit. Florence, with its distrac- tions and ambitions, seemed far away, while the eternal world, with its solemn and imposing reali- ties, reasserted its supremacy over his hushed and humbled mind. He realized that in the fervor of his patriotic devotion to his city, in his zeal- ous study of a worldly philosophy, in his intense occupation with temporal things, and perhaps in sensual indulgence, he had wandered from the true way and become lost in an entangling forest. In the stillness of those days of thought and prayer he resolved to seek a worthier success. He would climb the sunlit mountain by putting forth all his powers ; he would live more nobly and valiantly. On his return to Florence he is drawn into the political struggles of the day, he becomes prior, is sent on his fruitless embassy to the Pope, is exiled, and tries vainly to reenter his native city. In the chagrin of defeat and in the bitterness of his disappointment he perceives that he has been seekingr the unattainable. Then it is that he hears a voice that through long silence 20 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE seemed hoarse. It is the calling of reason, awak- ened in his bewildered soul by divine grace approaching him through its supreme revela- tions ; and the courteous Mantuan spirit — a type of that right reason which apprehends the nature of sin and its penalties, and points out the paths of virtue and liberty — leads him into the better way. Thus he returns to the faith of his boyhood, and gladly yields himself again to the sway of those transcendent truths which to him found their fittest symbol in Beatrice. These three distinct periods of his life — that of child-like faith and joy ; succeeded by doubt, worldliness, and intellectual pride ; and ending in triumphant religious assurance — find expression in three works of marvelous beauty and power, which together give us an unparalleled revela- tion of God's way with a soul. The first, the " Vita Nuova," or the New Life, deals with the youthful period, briefly mentions the lapse, and closes with an account of a vision of Beatrice which caused him to resolve to say of her " what was never said of any woman." This book is one of the sweetest love stories in the world. No fairer figure is enshrined in literature than that of Beatrice as her lover paints her. She has a delicacy of reserve, an unconscious dignity, a grace and courtesy, which give her an ineffable charm. Read as plain prose the tale seems bizarre enough, and Dante THE LIFE WITHIN 21 appears almost ridiculous, so shaken is he by his passion ; but as Mr. Charles Eliot Norton has so well explained : " The story based upon actual experience, is ordered not in literal conformity with fact, but according to the ideal of the im- agination : and its reality does not consist in the exactness of its record of events, but in the truth of its poetic conception. Under the narra- tive lies an allegory of the power of love to transfigure earthly things into the likeness of heavenly, and to lift the soul from things material and transitory to things spiritual and eternal." ^ The period of his lapse from his high moral elevation finds its monument in the " Convito," or Banquet. During the earlier part of this ex- perience Dante had written many canzoni, all of them of great beauty and two of them at least strongly expressive of earthly passions. Finding himself in this dark wood and wishins: to redeem his reputation from the charge of fickleness, he resolves to allegorize these poems, showing that the philosophy in which he is now absorbed is one with the Beatrice of his younger days. But the task proves too great, some of the canzoni breathe a spirit altogether alien to the lofty purity of the blessed one. They are not to be explained away, but to be repented of. His study of philo- sophy, beginning as mere worldly wisdom, has ^ The Warner Classics. Poets, p. 83. 22 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE led him up to divine truth, and Beatrice touches his soul again with all her former beauty and power. She becomes to him the symbol o£ God's revelation of Himself to men, the embodiment of those radiant truths which lift the soul to eternal blessedness. With the enthronement of his old faith and love in more than their original glory, he abandoned the " Convito " and resolved to speak no more of this blessed one, until he could more worthily treat of her. Thus he entered upon the last period of his life, when his enkindled faith " is the spark which afterwards dilates to vivid flame, and like a star in heaven " will shine for- ever in the " Divine Comedy." CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROPHET Like all men who ever cut their names deep in the world's memory he had unswerving con- fidence in his own powers. With perfect assur- ance he numbers himself with Homer and Virg-il and the illustrious poets of antiquity as the sixth amid so much wit. " Follow thy star," says Latini, " thou canst not miss the glorious port." ^ " My name as yet makes no great sound," ^ he declares in " Purgatory," but he everywhere assumes that his verdict will confer immortality of honor or shame, and that he has but to utter his vision for the world to listen. He is at peace because his life has a future far beyond men's perfidies. The popular notion of Dante has been created by the pictures which his death-mask inspired, and by the mistaken idea that he roasted all his enemies in Hell and enthroned his few friends in Heaven. It is not strange, therefore, that the common idea is that he was a volcano in a con- stant state of eruption, forever pouring hot lava 1 Inf. XV. 55, 56. ^ p^^^, ^iy, 21. 24 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE on the many objects of his wrath. It must be confessed that a superficial reading of the " Comedy " does leave this impression. Dante appears to be a spirit, grievously wounded by its wrongs, that turns upon its injurers with a fero- city of resentment and an almost superhuman intensity of vindictiveness dreadful to contem- plate. One has a feeling akin to horror at see- ing him sitting in his boat on the Styx, gloating over the sufferings of Filippo Argenti, and re- marking : " I saw such rending of him by the muddy folk that I still praise God therefor, and thank Him for it." ^ We seem to witness the cold drip of his malig- nity as, in the pit of the barrators, with fiendish composure, he calls one by one the travestied names of the Florentine authorities by whom he was banished.^ There seems to be a pitiless savagery of soul, for which we can scarce forgive him, when in the depth of Hell, where the cold congealed the tears of the sufferers, hearing one pleading that the veil of ice be lifted a moment from his eyes that he might have the poor consolation of grief un- checked, Dante promised on condition that the lost soul reveal its identity. Not only did the wretch tell his name, but also his story ; yet 1 Inf. viii. 58-60. 2 Inf. xxi. 118-123 ; vide Moore, Studies in Dante, second series, p. 232. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROPHET 25 when he begged for the fulfillment of the promise, the poet turned away. " I opened them not for him, and to be rude to him was courtesy." ^ But Dante seems to carry this fierceness of per- sonal hatred into Purgatory. On the ledge of the envious he delivers perhaps the most stinging invective that was ever pointed at one's father- land. One of the shades describino^ the course of the Arno says that in the valley from the river's spring to its mouth, " virtue is driven away as an enemy by all men, like a snake." The people dwelhng at the source are " foul hogs, more fit for acorns than for other food ; " com- ing down to Arezzo, it finds " snarling curs ; " the dosrs are chano^ed to " wolves " when Flor- ence is reached ; while at Pisa it finds " foxes full of fraud." ' Even in Paradise there seems to be a rancorous spot in his heart, unpenetrated by celestial light. With fierce disdain he speaks of his companions in exile, as " all ungrateful, all senseless, and im- pious." ^ In the Empyrean the splendor of God and the high triumph of the kingdom are insuffi- cient to divert his mind from his enemies, for the sight of the vacant seat where Henry VII. is to sit causes him to turn his thoughts to the Pope who had betrayed the hopes of Italy, and he makes the last words of Beatrice, " sweet guide and dear," a damnation of this Pope to a hole in 1 Inf. xxxiii. 149, 150. ^ Purg. xiv. ^ Par. xvii. 64. 26 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE the third boloia of the eighth circle of Hell, where he shall push Boniface VIII. down a little deeper ! ^ " Merciful heavens ! " we exclaim, " has this man no heart ! Is Lethe sufficient to make him forofet his own sins, but ineffective to wash out the memory of the sins of others ! " But a deeper study of this prophet of the fiery heart shows that the case against him is not so bad as the first reading would indicate. Part of the explanation of his apparent cruelty undoubt- edly lies in the fact that the poet would teach us that character is influenced by environment. In the circle of wrath he is wrathful, in the pit of traitors he is false. He may also have sympa- thized with the Jesuitical casuistry that no faith need be kept with traitors, and that with the f ro- ward it is right to show one's self fro ward. We must remember, what the vividness of the poem causes us easily to forget, that we are reading not a descrijDtion of actual events but of imagined in- cidents, all of them having a symbolic meaning. We are to recall also the doctrine of the Church that the very saints in glory have no charity to- ward sinners under the condemnation of God. Dante undoubtedly laid to heart Virgil's reproof when he wept at the sad punishment of the sooth- sayers : " Who is more wicked than he who feels compassion at the Divine judgment ? " ^ A man is not to be more just than God. Moreover, we 1 Par, XXX. 145-148. ^ /„y; ^x. 29, 30. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROPHET 27 must constantly bear in mind that he felt him- self to be a prophet of justice. He is making no idle journey to the throne of the Almighty, that there he may be rapt in a swoon of mystic de- light. He stands before the Ineffable Glory, that from that lofty height, and in the clear light that streams from the Eternal Fountain, he may better behold the needs and conditions of earth. No splendor of supernal brightness for a mo- ment makes him fororet his mission. As God's prophet he will hate sin as God hates it ; he will abhor evil with all the ceaseless loathing of the Most Holy. He will be as " harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice." If Divine Jus- tice and Love ordained the supreme penalties of Hell, then he will rejoice in them. His unfal- terinof heart does not shrink from the task of seeking to love as God loves and to hate as God hates ; and so in his immortal poem he has re- vealed to the world a passion of hatred, a magnifi- cence of wrath, an indignation so profound and monumental that he shocks our shallow kindliness unspeakably. Probably that is exactly what Dante meant to do. " Do not I hate them, Lord, that hate thee ? and am not I grieved wdth those that rise up against thee? Yea, I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them mine enemies." ^ Yet it is perilous for a man, however preternat- 1 Ps.cxxxix.2, 22. 28 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE urally endowed, to lift the thunderbolts of the Almighty. To break the commandment " judge not " must inevitably bring its penalty. When one identifies himself with the judgment seat of God he is prone to mistake personal sentiment for holy anger, and to smite where he should heal. We can no more justify Dante for many of his venomous sentences on the ground of his strenu- ous moral earnestness than we can excuse Wen- dell Phillips for calling Lincoln " the blood- hound of slavery," or Garrison as with benig- nant smile he describes the church as " the spawn of Hell ! " Samuel Johnson has said that a man can- not love well unless he is a good hater. No one disputes the stinging ferocity of Dante's hatred ; but few appreciate that his love was as sweet and beautiful as his wrath was bitter. There was in his passionate heart affection im- measurable in its wealth of exquisite tenderness. Lord Byron in his diary makes this comment on Frederick Schleofel's statement that " Dante's chief defect is the want, in a word, of gentle feelings : " " Of gentle feehngs. And Francesca of Rimini, and the father's feelings in Ugohno, and Beatrice, and the Pia ! Why, there is a gen- tleness in Dante above all o^entleness when he is tender. Who but Dante could have introduced any gentleness at all into hell ? Is there any in Milton ? No : and Dante's heaven is all love, CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROPHET 29 and glory, and majesty." Stern and forbidding as this austere prophet often seems, no soul in literature has been more completely and continu- ously dominated by love. Love first woke his spirit to life, and ruled all his earlier years. One cannot read the " New Life " even casually with- out being impressed with the constant recurrence of the words, " sweet," " blessed," " gentle." After the death of Beatrice the ardent affection of his heart went out toward Philosophy, and he beo["an " to feel so much of her sweetness that love of her chased away and destroyed every other thouofht." When he found that this love of truth merged itself through divine philosophy in the old affection for the blessed one, he came under the sway of powers which lifted his soul to such heio^hts of thouoht and feelino^ that he wrought that which will ever stand as one of the noblest expressions of the mind's power. If the wrath of this censor of mankind is unsurpassed in strength, the purity, tenderness, sublimity of his love is equally conspicuous. Only a mind of singular beauty could have conceived a Purga- tory, not hot with sulphurous flames, but healing the wounded spirit with the light of the shimmer- ing sea, the glories of the morning, the perfume of flowers, the touch of angels, the living forms of art, and the sweet strains of music. Only a spirit of majestic purity and love could have thought out a Heaven, unstained by one sensuous 30 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE line, revealing' glory upon glory until the ascend- ing soul is lost in the splendor of incommuni- cable truth and the ardor of unutterable love. Out of this loftiness of soul there came a chiv- alrous devotion to truth that elsewhere finds no such rapturous expression. The beauty of truth is the smile of Beatrice, and its demonstrations are her eyes. But as by faith he gazed on the beau- teous orbs he seemed to touch all the depths of o-race, and he needed the admonition that there are services to be rendered as well as truths to be contemplated. " Turn thee about and listen ; Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise." ^ The glory of the truth grew so insufferable as he ascended that at last Beatrice could not smile, lest at the effulgence his mortal power should be as a bough shattered by the lightning ; and this knightly soul could imagine no greater bliss than to behold forever the essence of truth with eyes unveiled, and thus to glow eternally with love. But Dante felt that he did more than love truth in the abstract ; he loved it in men. " The leaves wherewith embowered is all the garden Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love As much as he has granted them of good." ^ Moreover it was a love so of"enuine that it did not exhaust itself in mere rhapsody, but became the fountain of his splendid courage. He loved 1 Par. xviii. 20, 21. 2 Par. xxvi. 64-06. CHARACTEKISTICS OF THE PROPHET 31 truth so earnestly that to proclaim it he was will- ing to sacrifice all. Every man who attains em- inence prizes most highly the recognition given him by his native place ; and it was the constant hope of Dante that he might return to Florence, and receive the laurel crown by the baptismal font where he first entered into faith. Yet not to gratify these desires will he blur a single truth. He will " make the whole vision manifest," and let the " scratching be ever where the itch is." He will be no timid friend of truth, but like the wind will strike heaviest the loftiest summits. He will seal his loyalty by making a willing ofPer- inof of all that is dear to him. Above all thinsfs Dante loathed a coward. He showed his con- tempt by spewing all craven, shame-laden souls out of both Heaven and Hell. He feared to make the great refusal. With dehberate resolve he put aside all personal considerations and wrote the bravest, most unsparing denunciatory song in any language. It takes a high-souled man to give all for righteousness' sake. This unflinch- ing and sustained devotion to his ideal made it possible for him to undertake the most tremendous task ever attempted by a poet. He would have failed in his high endeavor had not the fibre of his manhood equaled the quahty of his genius. It was not enough that he have rare artistic skill and poetic gifts of superlative merit. Others have had these and have fallen short of the noblest eminence. 32 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE He has taken his place among the preeminent poets of the world because he held his brilliant intellectual endowments, his enormous erudition, and the glowing ardors of his temperament in bondage to a spiritual integrity and heroism of soul which enabled him, through long years of suffering, dolorous poverty, and arduous labors? to keep himself steadily to one almost superhu- man task. This capacity of complete absorption in one prodigious work, this fusion of his whole being in his mission, this power of unfaltering concentration upon one masterly achievement, is as conspicuous a characteristic of Dante — " the enduring one " — as his masterful genius. This self-sustaining quality of his manhood, permit- ting him to make his work vital by sinking his whole life in it, has made him a most distinguished illustration of the fundamental law of success in all lines of endeavor ; " whosoever will lose his life shall find it." He welded himself to his task as by fire, and there came into his heart a myste- rious strength and into his mind a supernal illu- mination. If to Dante's volcanic wrath, his beauty of spirit, his rapturous love of truth, his unwearied loyalty to his duty, we add a pity which, as Car- lyle has said, was as tender as a woman's, and a patrician pride which in Purgatory made him bend low under its weight, we have a fairly ac- curate portrait of this strangely fascinating man. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROPHET 33 ■who exercises such an irresistible attraction upon those who come within the circle of his influence. Dante doubtless felt that his life had fallen upon evil times, and that he was fortunate only in that he had been born when the sun was in the sign of the Twins, which stars, being impreg- nate with great virtue, had given him his lofty genius ; but he was in reality singularly fortunate in the conditions of his life. Had he been popu- lar and prosperous his energies might easily have been dissipated by a multitude of distractions. Had he become a fad, his light would soon have failed. But he was stripped for an herculean task ; poor, homeless, reheved of most of the duties that would have diverted him, he was free to turn all his powers into one channel. Had he been of a slighter spirit he would have been broken by his burden and the hardness of his surroundings, and have wasted his life in wailing and satire, like many a fierce genius to whom the world has been rous^h. But his dauntless soul turned vigorously upon the hos- tile circmnstances and conquered them. It was through suffering that he became a perfect artist. His proud and sensitive nature, bruised and wounded as it was, must perforce question life to its depths. He was driven into the heart of truth for his consolation. He was OTeat as an artist because he suffered greatly as a man. His very destitution gave him his opportunity. If 34 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE Michael Anorelo could have devoted all his vast energies to the rearing of one immense cathedral, conceived in every detail from foundation to turret by his own majestic mind, adorned with statues to which his skilled hands had given the breath of life, all the pictures that ever came o'lowinor and terrible from his brushes ornament- ing its walls and ceilings, and the whole crowned with a dome as stately as St. Peter's, he would have wrought in stone what Dante accomplished in the " Divine Comedy." But Michael Angelo had no opportunity to give his Avhole life to one grand achievement ; he was at the whim of cities and popes, and could only work upon scattered fragments. It was Dante's rare fortune that for years he could brood continuously over one colossal theme, and, unhindered by a clamoring public, gather into one monumental whole all the residts of his splendid genius and energy. Thus his poem is a solemn memorial of the mind's power when the eye is single, the purpose clear, and powers of supreme brilliancy and magnitude are concentrated upon one endeavor. The "Divine Comedy" is unique as the complete ex- pression of superlative genius, given wholly to its task, and glowing with a steadily increasing splendor until its work is done. V HIS PLACE m HISTORY Dante was exceedingly fortunate in the epoch in which he lived. His was the rare opportunity of standing at one of the pivotal points of his- tory. It was given to him to be the morning star that closed the millenniimi of darkness and ushered in the new day. Ruskin bears this testimony : '' All great European art is rooted in the thirteenth century, and it seems to me that there is a kind of central year about which we may consider the energy of the Middle Ages to be gathered ; a kind of focus of time, wdiich, by what is to my mind a most touching and impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by the greatest writer of the Middle Ages in the first words he utters, namely, the year 1300, the 'mezzo del cammhi' of the hfe of Dante." ^ In a similar strain is the judgment expressed by Frederick Maurice : " His poem, coeval as it is with the great judg- Aient of the papacy under Boniface, with the practical termination of the religious wars, and with the rise of a native literature, not only in the 1 Stones of Venice^ ii. 312. 36 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE south, but in the north, is a better epoch from which to commence the new age of European thought than the German reformation of the sixteenth century." ^ And so this sacl-eyed prophet, who compared himself to a bark with- out a rudder, driven about by hostile winds upon a stormy sea, was in reality the mountain peak separating the old from the new, with sides slop- ing toward the past and the future. With the fall of the empire of Charlemagne, Europe was given over to two centuries of dis- integration and chaos. After the year 1000 had passed, and the world, contrary to a general expectation, had not come to an end, the hopes of men revived, and they set about making this earth a fit place to dwell in. The fresh inflow of life expressed itself in many forms. The crusades opened up a new world of thought, and afforded a vent for military enthusiasm ; Hilde- brand, with splendid heroism and extraordinary ability, sought to bring purity out of the general corruption, and restore order by bringing a dis- rupted society under the supreme control of the Church ; monasteries became more than ever the seats of devotion and learning ; the monks re- deemed the wilderness and restored agriculture over a great part of Europe ; the universities started into life ; and those vast cathedrals, which have been the admiration of subsequent times, ^ Mediaeval Philosophy ^ p. 253. HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 37 began to rise ; St. Francis enkindled a new en- thusiasm of humanity ; the Dominicans estab- Kshed the dogmas of the Church in the universi- ties and in the minds of the people ; Thomas Aquinas, than whom Europe has never produced a more profound, subtle, and lucid mind, essayed the gigantic task of combining the religious thought of those analytical and audacious cen- turies into a perfect system, and accomplished it. The end of the twelfth and the beg-inninof of the thirteenth century was the flood-tide of the Middle Ages. There was what had never been before and has never been since, a European consciousness ; there was one Church everywhere present, one language spoken by all educated people, one faith and philosophy of life univer- sally accepted. But by the end of the thirteenth century the tide was rapidly ebbing. Dante was born in 1265. Thomas Aquinas and Bona- ventura died in 1274, Albertus Magnus passed away in 1280, and Duns Scotus in 1308. With their going scholasticism became a spent force, for they left no successors of equal power. The same century saw the utter defeat of the house of Hohenstaufen, and the close of that obstinate conflict between Church and Empire, which had engrossed the thoughts of Europe for five cen- turies. The year 1300, when Dante saw his immortal vision, was the one appointed by the Pope to celebrate the victory of the Church. 38 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE Of this world of chivalrous love, clear thought, astute speculation, ardent piety, and tumultuous, fierce, barbaric energy, Dante is the complete representative. With a genius so universal that he seemed to touch and penetrate every part of its seething and deep-flowing life, he compressed all into his strange " mediaeval miracle of song." In his lifelong devotion to Beatrice we see the incarnation of that romantic conception of love which was the knightly ideal of the Middle Ages ; in the Inferno we have a graphic and powerful delineation of their fears ; in the Purgatorio there is a lucid exposition of their scheme of salvation ; in the Paradiso their crude system of astronomy is made the stairway up which their glowing faith mounted to the throne of God. The theology of Thomas Aquinas and the philosophy of Aristotle are the structural principles of the poem ; while the unearthly spirituality which breathes in the art and poetry of the time and culminates in the ecstatic visions of the mystics here find noblest expression. Here also we see portrayed with unequaled beauty that ideal of the Holy Roman Empire, as familiar to those times as it is alien to our own. The craving of that period was for unity. Charlemagne had sought it in the State, Hildebrand would organize it through a sovereign Church, Aquinas had brought thought into one harmonious system, Dante conceived it HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 39 to be found in a regenerated society, ruled by Pope and Emperor. The prayer that came up from every earnest heart in those turbulent and warring times was for peace and unity. To answer that ceaseless aspiration Dante felt to be a great part of his holy mission. But while the seer is thoroughly mediaeval in theology and philosophy, in chivalrous and ro- mantic love, in his conception of a world-wide empire, and in his quenchless yearning for unity, he is unconsciously the warder of the gates lead- in o^ into a far different future. In the fine words of Shelley he " was the first awakener of entranced Europe, the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning, the Lucifer of that starry flock that in the thirteenth century shone forth from Repub- lican Italy." Standing completely in the circle of mediaeval conceptions he was the tallest moun- tain peak, and thus first caught the light of the coming day. The deep spirit of the centuries preceding him had sought truth supremely, and had delighted to express it in symbolism ; the period immediately following rejoiced more in form and symmetry : before him was the age of faith, after him came the age of taste. Beauty, that heretofore had been feared as sensuous and evil, now became of commanding importance, and aesthetic perfection and proportion in the last detail were carefully studied. While Dante com- 40 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE pletely mirrored the old spirit he became a model for the new, enshrining truth in beauty, and com- bininof faith with taste. The " Divine Comedy " also ushers a new force into literature. It brouo^ht thouc^ht out of the stilted and unnatural Latin tongue, and com- mitted it to the living and flexible language of the common people. It was the first work of a great literature, the creator of a national tongue, and the boundary between ancient and modern speech. From the days of Rome's magnificence the Latin had been the vehicle of all worthy prose and verse. It was the language of edu- cated minds everywhere, and in its stately forms were written all the masterpieces which Dante revered. He himself yielded it the first place for nobleness, power, and beauty. It required a darinof soul to break all traditions and intrust the labor of a lifetime to the shifty bark of the Italian vernacular. None knew better than he, who made the first critical study of languages in modern times, how limited in range it yet w^as, and how liable to fluctuation and corruption ; but by the magic of his regal genius he extended the common speech to contain his thought, moulded it into dignity and strength, and first revealed its marvelous charm and capacity, so that after six centuries his native tongue is con- temporaneous with the Italian of our own day. It is no ordinary mind that dares to be a Colum- HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 41 bus on an untried sea, or a Prometheus bringing fire from the stars for the common use of men. He fulfilled the prediction which Byron made him utter five centuries after : — " My bones shall rest within thy breast, My soul within thy language." ^ Dante was also distinctively modern in his theme. His many predecessors, who had written of the adventures of the soul in the eternal world, made the form of his poem belong to the mediaeval times ; but his thought is essen- tially modern. The journey he described really takes place in one's own soul. Hell is the dark cavern within us, Paradise the heavenly disposi- tion of the mind, Purgatory the way of salvation. He portrayed God's way of dealing with a human life. The vision turned within, behold- ing the fears and hopes, the faith and failure, the defeats and possibilities of the soul as it faces the mysteries of God and works out its destiny, is characteristic of our own day. In thus sing- ing of the conditions of the soul, rather than of arms and adventure, Dante gave voice to the new epoch and became the leader of a noble company of poets. He would be considered rash indeed who claimed this grim prophet as in any way an ex- ponent of the newer religious thinking, which has broken with the stern and mechanical dog- 1 The Prophecy of Dante, canto ii. 42 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE mas of the old theology. Yet it is exceedingly interesting to note how nearly every truth which has been prominently asserted in our times by the leaders of thought has found expression in Dante. He emphasized as strongly as did Channing or Phillips Brooks the essential divineness of man. " And it is nature which, from height to height, On to the summit prompts us." ^ Evil choices are not the result of total depravity ; it is through lack of knowledge that evil appears the good. He taught the coordmating and co- operating power of spirituality and reason, a truth which we are reviving to end the chronic warfare between science and religion. No mod- ern evangelical preacher lays more weighty stress on the sovereign freedom of the will. He dif- fers widely from those Puritan rationalists who constructed theology almost wholly out of the analytical faculty and distrusted spiritual vision. He anticipates the faith of Horace Bushnell in the trustworthiness of the intuitions ; it is after theology personified in Beatrice has done its best that by direct vision he sees the ultimate myste- ries. The immanence of God is the fundamental doctrine of the best religious thought of our day. It is a truth which is commonly supposed to have been lost during the period of Romanized thought, which prevailed from Augustine down to the middle of the nineteenth century. Undoubtedly 1 Par. iv. 127, 128. (Gary's trans.) HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 43 Dante did not give it the prominence we accord it, but he recognized it, and clearly stated it in the first line of the " Paradiso." " The glory of Him who moves everything penetrates through the universe ; " and elsewhere " it irradiates everything," and " naught can be an obstacle to it ; " and in the beatific vision, when he beheld reality, he saw God in all things and all things in God. The services of this mediaeval seer to modern times cannot well be estimated. Besides beino* the never-failing fire in which lofty minds of sub- sequent generations have kindled their torches, he took the initiative in popularizing literature, and gave form to a most noble language ; he elevated to an almost unattainable lieioht the standard of hterary form and beauty ; he has indelibly impressed upon the world's thought the worth of the individual man, lifting the most insignificant to inconceivable greatness in the decision of eternal issues amidst the contention of supernal forces ; he has helped to terminate the debate between Church and State by point- ing out that the happiness and unity of mankind come not through the supremacy of either, but through a regenerated society where the people are served by both. Greater than all else, his most memorable service has been that over those hot, stormy, creative centuries — centuries which, with all their crudeness and barbarism, followed 44 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE the highest spiritual ideals with a passionate en- thusiasm which has never been equaled, and, with vision clearer than our own, realized the presence of the eternal — he pondered until he caught their spirit, incarnated it in a form of deathless beauty, and left it as a perpetual standard to reveal the greatness and the littleness of subse- quent ages. THE BURDEN OF THE MESSAGE " An odd poem, but gleaming with natural beauties, a work in which the author rose in parts above the bad taste of his age and his subject, and full of passages written as purely as if they had been of the time of Ariosto and Tasso." — Voltaire. " The * Divina Commedia' is one of the landmarks of liistory. More than a magnificent poem, more than the beginning of a language and the opening of a national literature, more than the inspirer of art and the glory of a great people, it is one of those rare and solemn monuments of the mind's power which measure and test what it can reach to, which rise up ineffaceably and for- ever as time goes on, marking out its advance by grander divi- sions than its centuries, and adopted as epochs by the conseut of all who come after. It stands with the ' Iliad ' and Shakespeare's plays, with the writings of Aristotle and Plato, with the 'Novum Organon ' and the ' Prineipia,' with Justinian's ' Code,' with the Parthenon and St. Peter's. It is the first Christian poem ; and it opens European literature, as the * Iliad' did that of Greece and Rome ; and, like the * Iliad,' it has never become out of date ; it accompanies in undiminished freshness the literature which it began." — Dean Church. THE CALL OF THE PROPHET The great Florentine was profoundly con- vinced that he was a prophet sent from God with an imperative communication for the world. The very stars had foretold it. When he first felt the Tuscan air the sun was in the sign of the Twins, in the heaven of the Fixed Stars, presided over by the cherubim, who look into the face of the Most High and spread a knowledge of Him to all beneath. To the prenatal influence of these stars, " impregnate with great virtues," Dante ascribed his rare intellectual insight and his extraordinary powers of expression. They gave him his ability to penetrate the Divine mys- teries and his commission to cooperate with the cherubim in diffusing the truth. He spoke in the vulo^ar tonofue that his word mio^ht come to all. Even Isaiah, after his exalted vision in the tem- ple, had not a more urgent sense of mission than had this rus^ored soul as he wandered about the world experiencing and working out his " mystic, unfathomable song." He too had had a vision. In closing the " Vita Nuova " he says : " It was 48 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE given unto me to behold a very wonderful vision ; wherein I saw things that determined me that I would say nothing further of this blessed one until such a time as I could discourse more wor- thily of her. And to this end I labor all I can, as she well knoweth." From our knowledge of Dante we may well believe that this was more than a beholding of the ascended Beatrice, whom he had loved in the flesh. It was a vision of that which she symbolized to his mind, namely, the Divine Wisdom and its dealings with the children of men. He too would justify the ways of God to men ; and his whole after life was a training, " So that the shadow of the blessed realm Stamped in my brain I can make manifest." ^ Down through the world of endless bitterness, and over the mountain from whose fair summit the eyes of his Lady had lifted him, and after- ward through the heavens from light to light, he had learned his message. Not for a moment does he forget that this high privilege is given to him that he may throw the blaze of things eternal upon this life. Beatrice, St. Peter, Cacciaguida repeatedly charge him to make known the whole vision. When he reaches the very heaven of heavens he does not permit himself the swoon of infinite delight, which has been the aspiration of mystics ; but seeks yet more eagerly for truth, that he may turn the glory of the supernal splen- dor upon the reeking corruption of the papal 1 Par. i. 23, 24. THE CALL OF THE PROPHET 49 court ; and his final prayer, as he joins his look unto the Infinite Goodness, is that he may not fail of his lofty mission : — ^^ Supreme Light, that so high uplifted Thy- self from mortal conceptions, re-lend a little to my mind of what Thou didst appear, and make my tongue so powerful that it may be able to leave one single spark of Thy glory for the future people; for, by returning somewhat to my memory and by sounding a little in these verses, more of Thy victory shall be conceived." ^ Dante was one of the three preeminent poets of the world, because first of all he was a seer. " He saw through life and death, through good and ill, He saw through his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll Before him lay." - " The more I think of it," says Ruskin, " I find this conclusion more impressed upon me, — that the greatest things a human soul ever does is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think ; but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one." No eye ever saw more clearly the heart of man and the grandeur of the moral law than did this world-worn prophet. What he saw so vividly he could state vitally. He was a poet, because the heart of all truth has rhythm and poetry in it. 1 Par. xxxiii. 67-75. 2 Tennyson, The Poet. n THE MESSAGE What was the message this poet-prophet soufifht to deliver to the world ? Let us use his own words in his letter dedicating the " Paradiso " to his friend and protector, Can Grande : " The aim of the whole and the individual parts is two- fold, a nearer and a farther, but if we seek into the matter closely we may say briefly that the aim of the whole and the individual parts is to bring: those who are Hvinof in this life out of a state of misery and to guide them to a state of happiness." How the soul of man, lost in the mazes of life and defeated by the fierceness of its own passions, can learn its peril, escape from the stain and power of sin, and enter into perfect blessedness, — this is his theme. He sets it forth in three works which are distinctively religious, the "New Life," the "Banquet," and the " Divine Comedy." The last is the completest and fullest statement of what is vital in the first two. in ITS POLITICAL ASPECT Although the main current is religious there flows through the " Comedy " another stream of thought which is poHtical. The author has an ideal civil polity to advocate, as well as an ideal righteousness to impress. Like the stern Hebrew prophet, whom he so much resembled, this Tuscan seer was an ardent patriot. He never divorced his religion from his politics, but brought both under the same august moral order. He loved Florence and his native Italy with a love that was notable, even in those days of intense feel- inof. And because he loved them he felt the steady pressure of a great duty to rebuke their sins and point out the way of political stabiHty and peace. The fierce debate between Church and State during the Middle Ages was in large part over the right of investiture. The Emperor claimed it as essential to all orderly civil government, while the great Hildebrand and his successors asserted that it must be in the hands of the Pope to preserve the purity and unity of the Church. 62 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE In the incessant and bitter clash o£ these two colossal powers Italy was at once the stake and the battle o^round. She became a land of walled cities, local pride and jealousy grew intense and masterful, partisan feeling ran high, and fac- tional lines were strict and pronounced. By sid- ing now with one party and now with the other, the cities obtained their liberties. Domestic in- dustry and foreign commerce made them rich ; the conflict between the mitre and the crown made them free. In the joy of freedom life within the walls grew robust, self-reliant, fertile of vast enterprises. Like overgrown boys just released from leading-strings they were vigorous, boastful, insolent, fickle, lavish in expenditure, quick to draw the sword, and overflowing with a lusty exuberance of vitality. The cities were u unwelcome anomalies in mediaeval Europe. So- ciety had been clerical and aristocratic ; with the rise of the municipalities a new class came into prominence. The citizen order, upon which our modern civilization is based, now for the first time became a force ; it could maintain itself, however, only by constant fighting, and ceaseless strife bred a temper that was a source of per- petual internecine feud. The implacable and rancorous party spirit engendered by the long wars of investiture was an unmitio^ated curse to ^ Italy, and a great price to pay for freedom. We search in vain to find any consistent principle ITS POLITICAL ASPECT 53 dividino^ the contendino^ factions. The terms Guelf and GhibelHne, that in a rough way distin- guished the partisans of the Church and the par- tisans of the Empire, came to be symbols of deep- seated jealousies, and altered their meaning with time and place. The real cause of the fright- ful internal strife was the struggle of the con- tendino^ forces of the old social order based on the force of the few, and the new based on the strength of the many. The growing towns were communities with an intense spmt of rivalry, and, therefore, they fought for existence, for command of harbors, for keys to the mountain passes, for leadership in commerce. Moreover, the same unbridled passions that swept Italy with a steady storm of battle divided the cities themselves into turbulent factions, filling the streets with constant brawls, carousals, family feuds, and justifying Napier's characterization of their life a^^ one universal burst of unmitigated anarchy." JY The deep, persistent prayer of Dante, as of every lofty soul, was for peace. But where was peace to be found? The law-making and law- abiding power was not to be sought in the fickle people, and therefore the poet turned to that brilliant illusion whose glory so enslaved the im- agination of the Middle Ages — the Holy Roman Empire. The most significant pohtical pheno- menon of the three preceding centuries had been 54 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE the formation of the nationalities of Europe. Their growth and expanding power was a sonrce of perpetual war, and the idealists of those rest- less and batthng centuries longed for some supreme power, which should express the political unity of Christendom, be the ultimate tribunal of appeal, the fountain of law, and the admin- istrator of impartial justice. Hildebrand had attempted to realize this splendid ideal in the universal Church, whose head should be the ar- biter of the nations, the source of authority and order. To establish this conception, which in unapproached grandeur makes the dreams of ^ empire of Charlemagne and Napoleon seem paltry, he had given all his vast ability and the superb energy of his stormy life. It was a noble theory worthy of his statesmanlike mind ; but in practice it had failed, because the seven mortal sins w^ere as strong in the hearts of popes and cardinals as in those of kings. When the corruption of the yL Roman court filled Europe with its stench, the thoughts of many minds turned to the earher conception of the Empire as it had existed before the sword was joined to the crozier. This dream of the Middle Ages finds its loftiest expression fif^ in Dante's treatise on the " Monarchy." He main- /^ tains that universal peace is essential to freedom. Peace can be attained only under a monarchy whose head seeks the good of all alike. As man has a corruptible and an incorruptible nature, he ITS POLITICAL ASPECT 55 therefore has two ends, active virtue on earth and the enjoyment of the sight of God hereafter. Temporal happiness is gained by the practice of the four cardinal virtues, and spiritual blessed- ness throuo-h the theolos^ical virtues. Two guides are needed, the emperor and the pontiff, the one supreme in temporal things, the other in spiritual, both equally ordained of God, and co- operating for the common good of man. Dante believed that the chief source of the corruption of the Church was its assumption of political power, and with sentences that flashed fire he souofht to restore tlie ancient order. This political ideal, mingling with his ideal righteousness, dominated his whole life. He named one of his daughters Beatrice, and Dean Plumptre^ states on the authority of Passerini that he named another Imperia.^^n the " Vita Nuova " we see the be^'innino^ of the stream of the poet's religious life ; in " De Monarchia " the flow of his political aspirations. The two currents unite in the " Divina Commedia." The one is typified in Virgil, the other in Beatrice. One leads to peace on earth, the other to felicity in heaven. The political ideal blends with the religious in the opening canto of the " Inferno," where Virgil's voice is hoarse through long silence, because, being the poet of the ancient Roman Empire, his message has so long been unheard. ^ Studies, p. 361. 56 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE The wanderer cannot climb the shining moun- tain, which represents an ideal policy as well as an ideal blessedness, on account of the inconti- nence of Florence, the pride of France, and the wolfish avarice of the Papacy ; but a hound shall at last come who will drive the wolf into Hell. Dante predicts this hound in the same prophetic spirit that possessed Isaiah when he foretold the Messiah. Later, in " Purgatory," he speaks of the expected one as the Dux, who shall slay the thievish harlot of the seven hills, and Beatrice strictly charges him to report what has been revealed to him. In the " Inferno " he dis- covers Brutus and Cassius, traitors against the Empire, as well as Judas, the traitor against the Church, in the bloody maw of Lucifer ; and in " Paradise," as all heaven turns red with just in- dignation, St. Peter pronounces judgment upon the rapacious wolves who wear the garb of a shepherd, enjoining the poet to conceal nothing ; and even the last words of Beatrice are a con- demnation of Pope Clement V. to the eternal pit, for his treachery to Henry. ^Dante's ideal polity was utterly impracticable ; but his essential aspiration is that of many minds to-day, and we are beginning to see its realiza- tion. The code of international law is a source of universal order ; the recent Peace Congress at the Hague, in establishing an international tribu- nal, took a long step toward extending the area ITS POLITICAL ASPECT 57 of peace for which Dante's soul longed ; in America the Church is separated from the State, a precedent which is exerting a wide influence in Europe. _7 IV ITS RELIGIOUS TEACHING Important as this ardent patriot thought his political message to be, it is of value to us largely as a study of mediseval conceptions. The per- petual interest of the poem lies in the charm and power of its religious teachings. Following his great master, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante believed that the final end of all right endeavor is happi- ness. There is a twofold happiness for man be- cause he is a dual creature. He has a corrupti- ble and an incorruptible nature. As a citizen of this world he attains happiness by obeying reason and practicing the four cardinal virtues, pru- dence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. This gives to the natural man perfect temporal felicity. For the spiritual nature the supreme beatitude is the Vision of God. This lies beyond the capa- city of the natural reason ; therefore Revelation, whose channels are the Scriptures, the teachings of the Fathers, and the decisions of Councils, makes known the mysteries of God. By prac- ticing the theological virtues, faith, hope, love, man becomes a partaker of the divine nature and ITS RELIGIOUS TEACHING 59 enters into eternal blessedness, — partially in this world ; perfectly, according to his capacity, in the celestial Paradise. But men miss the true way. They desire hap- piness. Love for the objects which seem good is implanted in the soul, even as zeal in the bee for making honey, yet man tastes the inferior good and is led on toward evil ; — " Of trivial good at first it [the soul] tastes the savour ; Is cheated by it, and runs after it, If guide or rein turn not aside its love." ^ This passion for the lower pleasures is no excuse, for men should bring their desires to the reason, which winnows the good from the evil, and then by the power of the will they can restrain the baser loves. They permit the reason and the will to slumber, and thus lose the way of happi- ness and wander into paths of misery. A fearful vision, even of Hell and the awful consequences of sin, is needed to keep back their feet from evil. The method of relief from the thrall of iniquity and the entrance into moral and spiritual joy Dante graphically describes in the story of his own soul's experience. Midway in the jour- ney of life he found himself lost in a dark wood ; coming to the foot of a high hill he looked up- ward and saw its shoulders clothed with lig-ht. Then was his fear quieted and he strove to ascend the desert slope. Almost at the beginning of the 1 Purg. xvi. 91, 93. CO THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE steep three beasts attacked him, a she-leopard^ a hon, and a she-wolf. As he was falling back before them there appeared to him Virgil, who conducted him through the deeps of Hell, and up the steeps of the mount of Purgatory, leaving him in the Terrestrial Paradise. Here he met Beatrice, who led him through the ascending heavens until he looked into the Fountain of Eternal Light. Thus Dante would teach us that men often unconsciously go astray and awake to find them- selves lost in the tangled labyrinth of the world. Coming to themselves they resolve to escape and achieve some worthy end. Trusting in their own resources, they confidently seek to realize some resplendent ideal ; but the task is hopeless. The leopard of incontinence, the lion of violence, the wolf of avarice, cannot be overcome. They drive the despairing spirit back " where the sun is silent." Man's extremity is God's opportu- nity. Divine Grace quickens their reason to lead them in a better way. It shows them the nature of sin and its terrible effects. It next guides up the steep path of purification and freedom until their souls are brought back to the stainlessness enjoyed by the first pair in Eden. Reason and the practice of the moral virtues can do no more. Spiritual life in this world and the world to come is the gift of God, made known through Revela- tion. Therefore, Beatrice, the Divine Wisdom, ITS RELIGIOUS TEACHING 61 ushers the redeemed spirits into the celestial mys- teries, lifting them from glory to glory until they touch the height of bliss in a rapturous vision of God. THE VALUE OF HIS THOUGHT Is Dante a safe guide ? Has he pointed out the way of life ? In his view the ultimate goal which all men seek is happiness ; but we are accustomed to consider the pursuit of happiness misleading. A better term than happiness is well-being ; happiness is a consequence of a fully developed life, not an end to be sought. In the " Paradiso/' as his thought ascends, he drops the infelicitous term as insufficient. Henceforth bis favorite expression is heatitude, a nobler, more significant word, undegraded by unhallowed associations. The supreme beatitude he unhesi- tatingly affirms to be the Vision of God. To know God, to love Him perfectly, to be like Him in holiness, this is life eternal ; and the statement is unassailable. How shall the perfect blessed- ness be attained? In answering this question modern theology differs radically from Dante both in statement and in point of view. One of the priceless legacies left by the nine- teenth century is its impressive assertion that we are living in a universe. There is — THE VALUE OF HIS THOUGHT 63 " One God, one law, one element, And one far-ofE divine event, To which the whole creation moves." ^ We have hardly thought this stupendous truth through in all its bearings, but it is revolution- ary. The supernatural is but the natural passed beyond our sight ; tune is that spot of eternity which we are now touching ; the temporal is that part o£ the everlasting that sweeps for a moment into the circle of time. Life is all of a piece, and we do not understand it unless we look at it whole. In separating it mechanically and study- ing dissociated processes we get an erroneous impression. Now the Middle Ages, with all their passion for unity, were essentially dualistic. They divided the sovereignty of Europe between the Church and the State ; they considered that man had a twofold end, temporal and spiritual feli- city. The Emperor was the guide to one, the Pope to the other. Reason teaches man how to live amid things temporal, and revelation amid things eternal. The cardinal virtues distinguish one, the theological virtues the other. When St. Thomas Aquinas attempted to gather into one comprehensive system all rehgious and ethical truths, his work had the fatal defect of dualism ; and when Dante made the philoso- phy of Aquinas the fabric of his great poem, he 1 Tennyson, In Memoriam. 64 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE incorporated the flaw along with the truth. A philosopliy of salvation cannot be perfectly true that sets reason so distinctly over against revela- tion, and so completely divorces the ethical from the religious process. In actual life there is no such separation. The moral rests upon the spiri- tual, with no such chasm as the broad division between " Purgatory " and " Paradise " would seem to indicate. A careful observer said that the Wesleyan revival improved the broadcloth of England. Character usually grows out of faith : it is not the pedestal upon which faith plants its feet. We generally consider that the initial step of the right life is an act of faith. The soul realizes its condition, trusts itself to God, and by a spiritual energy takes hold of the divine life. "Faith," says Horace Bushnell, "is a transac- tion. It is the trusting of one's being to a being, there to be rested, kept, guided, moulded, governed, and possessed forevero" Faith is that supreme energy by which the soul attaches it- self in vital union to God. Through this union the life of God enters into the soul, causing a divine regeneration and making the man a new creature. This new spirit changes his purposes, ennobles his loves, purifies his feelings. He is transformed by the renewing of the mind. Our modern orthodox view, beginning with faith, emphasizes the redemptive grace of God, and insists that man is saved, not by what he does for THE VALUE OF HIS THOUGHT 65 himself, but by what God does for him and in him. The thought is constantly coming out in our hymns and sermons that the first step in the way of salvation is the vital union of the soul with God through faith. We measure progress by our deepenmg consciousness that our hves are " hid with Christ in God," and out of this senso of intimate relationship grow all Clu'istian joy and peace and hope. Coming to Dante from the atmosphere of the modern pidpit, we are surprised at the utter absence of this feehng of the union of the soul with God during the process of salvation. The redeemed look continually into His face and are sensibly one with Him ; but the toiling spirits who clhnb the Mount of Purification have no sweet sense of the indwelling Christ ; no " joy in the Holy Ghost ; " they do not " dwell in the secret place of the Most High ; " they would apparently not understand what Paul meant when he said, " It is no longer I that five, but Christ that hveth m me. We shall recur to this thought in our study of the " Purgatorio." It is enough now to point out the fact that Dante's dualism causes him to give an imperfect and thoroughly inadequate impres- sion of the power of the rehgious faith and affec- tions in promoting moral purity. Another characteristic continually manifests itself. One cannot fail to note how conspicuously 66 THE TEACHINGS OF DAXTE Christ is absent from this mighty drama of salva- tion. Plis work of atonement is assumed, His deity is fully recognized, but He Himself is rather a celestial glory in the background than a perva- sive presence on the scene of action. In Dante there is not the faintest intimation of the thought, so prominent in these days, that Christ is Chris- tianity. His is distinctively a gospel of a system, ours of a person. To him the truth came through many channels, the Scriptures, the Fathers, the Councils ; we study chiefly the truth as it is in Jesus. He emphasized the fathomless mysteries of truth ; we call attention to the simplicity that is in Christ. With the Catholic of the Middle Ages faith was usually conceived as belief in a system of dogma ; with us it is trust in a person. Dante the scholar was in sympathy with the conception of his time, but Dante the poet felt his heart crying out for the personal element, which he satisfied in personifying religious truths in the fair form of Beatrice. She occupies the position which a religious genius of a different type, such as St. Francis or Thomas a Kempis, would have given to Christ. But while the form into which this "Lord of the song preeminent" threw his message is alien to many of our modes of thought, the substance changes not. The materials with which he wrought his monumental work are essentially the same in all ages, and what tliis vivid man, with liis THE VALUE OF HIS THOUGHT 67 preternatural insight into the heart of things, saw, — this is his enduring word to the world. Such stuff as his dream was made of is permanent, and what he saw in liis raw material is the real burden of his prophecy. His subject-matter, as he him- self stated it, is " Man, subjected, in so far as by the freedom of his will he deserves it, to just re- ward or punishment." -^ The accountability of man, the supremacy of the moral law, and the cer- tainty of its rewards and punishments, — these truths, profoundly conceived by a master mind, and set forth with extraordinary dramatic power, can be written on no sibyl leaves, easily blown away. They command the attention of all times. Of these eternal verities Dante is the most pow- erful prophet m the Christian centuries. He differs from nearly all preeminent preachers of righteousness in liis starting point. He begins with man, they with God. Among the austere Hebrew prophets Dante most closely resembled Isaiah in majesty of thought and vigor of lan= guage ; but the theme of the Jewish statesman was the awful holiness of Jehovah. Among modern seers Jonathan Edwards is most nearly related to our poet in subtilty of intellect, inten- sity of conviction, and terrific power of imagina- tion. The New Eno^lander saw God, hio^h and lifted up. Before that august vision man shriv- eled into nothingness. He is a worm of the dust, ^ Letter to Can Grande della Scala. 68 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE depraved to the core, and if he is saved, it is through no merit of his own, but through the elective mercy of the Ahnighty. God, His glory, His decrees, His compassion ; and man, a sinner " saved by grace," — this is most often the message of the foremost teachers of Christianity. It seems impossible to have a majestic consciousness of the greatness of God without having man appear a pitiable creature. Dante began with man rather than with God. He riveted his gaze on the sovereign power of the human wdll instead of on the decrees of the Omnipotent. He stood at the opposite pole of thought to Calvin and Edwards. He could never say, with the celebrated French preacher, " God alone is great ! " Man is great, too ; he is no mere worm, plucked by a mighty hand from destruction, and changed into celestial beauty by irresistible grace. He is an imposing figure, master of his fate, fighting against princi- palities and powers, strong through divine help to climb the rugged path of purification and achieve blessedness. Not only was Dante antipodal to many illustri- ous religious teachers in his point of view, but he differed radically from the great dramatists in his conception of the regal power of the will to conquer all the ills of life. Free will is the great- est of God's gifts, as Beatrice informs the poet. This potential freedom, that in every right life is continually becoming actual, makes man superior THE VALUE OF HIS THOUGHT 69 to disaster and every hostile force. Dante called his greatest work a comedy because it had a happy ending. There is a deep reason why it had a happy ending. It is because man can be a complete victor in life's battle. Our poet leads the spectator through fiercer miseries than does ijEschylus or Shakespeare ; but their immortal works are tragedies, ending in death, while his is a comedy, issuing in triumphant life. Two appar- ently antagonistic elements enter into our lives, — Necessity and Freedom. The great tragedies of literature have been built upon necessity. Dante has reared his monumental poem upon freedom. Notice the fundamental conception of Shakespeare in his masterpieces. Since he is looking at this life only, its happiness, its titles, its successes, he declares that man but half controls his fate. Mightier powers are working upon him, in whose hands he is but a plaything. The individual, foolishly dreaming that he is free, is but a shuttle- cock, tossed about by other spiritual forces. Ham- let wills with all his soul to kill the king, but he cannot do it : he has a fatal weakness which he is unable to overcome. Macbeth does not wish to commit murder : he is a puppet in the grasp of a stronger, darker spirit. Othello, blindly led on to his own undoing, enters his hell through no will of his own : a craftier will controls him. The hero of modern tragedy is under the dominion of his chief characteristic. Given this nature of his, 70 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE with certain untoward events, and his doom is sealed. The leading Greek dramas still more impres- sively interpret man as a grain of wheat between the upper and nether millstones of adverse forces. The characters appear to be free, but if one looks deeper down, he perceives that they are the representatives of vast world powers, while the tragedy is the suffering of the individual as the two malio'n enerofies crush asrainst each other. The classic tragedy is commonly constructed on the essential antagonism between the family and the state. The necessity of such collision is no longer apparent to us, and we have changed the names of the colossal powers that make sport of human life. For family and state we read heredity and environment, — taskmasters as ex- acting and irresistible, — which allow even less room for the freedom of the individual will. About three hundred years ago more than a thousand ancestors of each of us were living. Their blood mingling in us determines by an inexorable law what w^e are. Environment com- pletes the work heredity began, making our characters and careers the inevitable resultants of these two forces. In their clashing life finds its sorrow and perhaps its tragic destruction. With any such philosophy Dante might have written out of his own bitter experiences one of the world's darkest tragedies, rather than its THE VALUE OF HIS THOUGHT 71 supreme comedy. He had certainly been the sport of hostile forces. Born of knightly blood, possessed of brilliant genius, cherishing pure aims, sensitive to the sweetest affections and noblest ideals, loving righteousness and hating iniquity, an unsullied patriot, by the fickle pas- sions of a turbulent mob he was deprived of city, home, family, position, property, and made a lonely exile, condemned to a horrible death should he return to Florence. If tragedies grow out of the losses of the individual held in the grasp of relentless and uncontrollable energies, then Dante had in his ow^n life the materials for as black a drama as was ever played on ancient or modern stao-e. But the immortal Florentine had no such fatal- istic message for the world. Stripped of those very things, the loss of which the immortal poets have held made life a disaster, he turned his thoughts inward, and in his soul won a victory over malis^nant fate to which he reared an im- perishable monument. He planted himself firmly on the Biblical teaching of the inherent greatness of man. He believed with Christ that " a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the thino^s which he possesseth," and with Paul that he could lose all things and still be more than con- queror. " And free will, which, if it endure fatigue in the first battles with the heavens, af- terwards, if it be well nurtured, conquers every- 72 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE thing." ^ His is not only the first great Chris- tian poem, but it is distinctively the Christian poem of the world in its majestic conception of man and his possibilities. Shakespeare's religious instincts compared with Dante's were weak. He was " world-wide/' while Dante was "world-deep " and world-hio^h. The Eno^lishman held the mir- ror up to nature ; the Italian looked into the face of God, and beheld all things with Hght of the eternal world upon them. Tennyson had no such triumphant evangel for sorrowing humanity. He had a message of faith and hope for an age of doubt, but he utters no such stirring notes of victory as Dante. His friend, Aubrey de Yere, once remarked to him that " In Memoriam " was analoo'ous to the " Divina Commedia." It was the history of a soul contending with a great sorrow. It began all woe, it had its Purgatorio abounding in consolation and peace, why not add a Paradiso of triumph and joy ? The poet answered, " I have written what I have felt and known, and I wall never write anything else." ^ Dante's poem is an autobiography ; but he passed beyond " con- solation and peace " to a victorious joy. From the heaven of the Fixed Stars he looked back " and saw this globe So pitiful of semblance, that perforce It moved my smiles : and him in truth I hold For wisest who esteems it least." ^ 1 Pxirg. xw\. 76-78. 2 A If red Lord Tennyson ; a Memoir by his Son. Vol. i. p. 294. 3 Par. xxii. 130-133. (Gary's trans.) THE VALUE OF HIS THOUGHT 73 In the insufferable Light he saw his life and knew that the Primal Love shone through it all. We know that in thought, and believe that to a large degree in experience, he had that visio Dei which made him the exultant and confident prophet o£ man's possible victory. That every life can turn the darkest tragedy into glorious comedy, that the dread foes of man are not bellio;erent circum- stances, but the riotous passions, — the leopard of incontinence, the lion of violence, and the wolf of avarice, — this is the ringing proclamation of this mediaeval prophet. No other masterpiece in literature, excepting the Bible, gives such an im- pression of the actual and potential greatness of man. What was probably Dante's last poem clearly shows that he had won in his own heart the victory he declared possible to all. " The king, by whose rich grace His servants be With pleasure beyond measure set to dwell, Ordains that I my bitter wrath dispel And lift mine eyes to the great Consistory; Till, noting how in glorious quires agree The citizens of that fair citadel, To the Creator I His creature swell Their song, and all their love possesses me. So when I contemplate the great reward To which our God has called the Christian seed, I long for nothing else but only this, And then my soul is grieved in thy regard, Dear friend, who seek'st not thy nearest need, Renouncing for slight joys the perfect bliss ! " * 1 To Giovanni Quirino, trans, by Kossetti. THE VISION OF SIN " Wherewithal a man sinneth, by the same also shall he be punished." — Book of Wisdom. " Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell." — Milton. *' Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed To one self place : but where we are is Hell, And where Hell is there we shall ever be. And, to be brief, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified. All places shall be Hell which are not Heaven." — Marlowe. " We cannot doubt that Dante, in recording the vision vouch- safed him by the Spirit of Truth, was moved by more than the overmastering impulse to create ; surely his desire was set to con- vince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. But so far as the action of the poem is concerned, it centres in the salvation of his own soul alone. He accepts, with deep, speechless sorrow, yet seemingly with no instinct to bring succor, the agony which he beholds. Doubtless profound reverence keeps him silent, yet one can imagine no modern man passing through those piteous shades without at least one heart-wrung cry : ' Would God I had died for thee ! ' The austere silence of Dante is for a reader of to-day the most awful thing in the * Inferno.' " — ViDA D. ScuD- D£R. THE DARK SPOT IX THE UNIVERSE Boccaccio is the authority for the following familiar Dante anecdote : "It happened one day in Verona (the fame of his work being al- ready known to all, and especially that part of the ' Commedia ' wdiich is called the ' Inferno') and himself known to many, both men and w^omen, that as he passed before a door where several wo- men were seated, one of them said softly, but not too low to be heard by him and those who were wdth him : ' Do you see him wdio goes to Hell and comes back again when he pleases, and brings back news of those who are down below ? ' To which another of the w^omen answered simply : ' Certainly you speak the truth. See how scorched his beard is, and how dark he is from heat and smoke ! ' When Dante heard this talk behind him, and saw that the women believed entirely what they said, he was pleased, and, con- tent that they should have this opinion of him, went on his way with a smile." ^ If the " Inferno " were what it is commonly be- lieved to be — a horrible and minutely elaborated picture of avast prison-house of torture to frighten ^ Vita di Dante. 78 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE timid souls into larger gifts to the chiircli — even the superhuman genius of the sweetest of singers could not have saved it from oblivion. Its pic- tures of gloom and of fiery horror must reveal enough truth that is ever contemporaneous to ac- count for its enduring power. Dante, being the child of his time, undoubtedly believed in a literal Hell, hideous as a nightmare haunting the sleep of devils. The place as well as the truth was a reality to him. We may reject the dogma of an eternal prison of torment ; but to our peril do we nesflect the truth of which the darkness and the fire are symbols. There is a shadow cast by the world's sin. As long as there is evil there will be a dark spot in the universe, and that spot is Hell. "While sin is. Hell must be. This gloom must be a place of woe and bitter anguish. Love, as well as justice, ordains that sin and its pestilential shade be a place of sorrow, fierce pains, and revolting death. Into this murky darkness, where are to be heard the sighs, laments, deep wailings, strange tongues, horrible cries, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and hoarse, all born of the world's sin, Dante, with his " head girt with hor- ror " and with compassionate heart, entered. He went down deep into the world's iniquity. He pen- etrated into those caverns of woe which lie far down in the soul, that he might know what sin is in its nature and consequences. The " Inferno " is Dante's conception of sin. n THE INFERNO AN EXPERIENCE We must remember also that Dante did not write the " Inferno " to glut his malignant spite on his enemies by revealing them in torment. Wal- ter Savage Landor but showed abysmal ignorance when he described the " Inferno " as the utterance of "personal resentment, outrageous to the pitch of the ludicrous, positively screaming." Much truer is Mazzini's statement : " Dante had too much greatness in his soul, and too much pride (it may be) to make revenge a personal matter ; he had nothing but contempt for his own enemies, and never, except in the case of Boniface VIII., whom it was necessary to punish in the name of religion and Italy, did he place a single one of them in the ' Inferno,' not even his judge, Cante Gabri- elli." ^ Undoubtedly he met many people in that dreadful lazar-house of torture whose fate weig^hed heavily upon his heart. But his poem is largely autobiographical, and perforce he must describe sin as he himself had seen it, and must place the people in the " Inferno " whom he had found suf- fering in the hell which sin always creates. He did 1 Moore, Studies in Dante, second series, p. 219, n. 80 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE not wish to find Francesca wrapped in that fright- ful doom. Her torments made him sad and pit- eous to weeping, yet he had no alternative. Prob- ably in his impressionable boyhood he had heard the pathetic story of her fateful passion. In her tragic experience he had learned that illicit love, ^ though for a moment it may seem innocent and sweet, will become a whirling and smiting tern- ' pest tormenting forever. He could not help meeting her in the nether gloom, because in this life, when she had come within the circle of his knowledge, he had found her in Hell. Brunette Latini was one whom Dante loved, and upon whom he pronounced the loftiest eulogy that can be given a friend : " For in my mind is fixed, and now fills my heart, the dear, good, paternal image of you, when in the world hour by hour you taught me how man makes himself eternal." ^ Surely it afforded the poet no pleasure to meet him, a baked and withered figure, on the burning ^ sands. But Dante knew the man's besetting sin.> Perchance from what he had seen in Latini's sufferings on earth he had learned its scorching, deadly nature, and he had no choice but to find him enduring the consequences of his transgres- sions. The " Inferno " represents his experience with evil in himself and others, where the sins appear in their ultimate results, and the people are fully given over to the wrong they loved. 1 Inf. XV. 82-85. m THE THREE DEGREES OF SIN What did this deep-souled, clear-visioned man find out sin to be as in dolorous journey he went through the nether gloom ? In the architecture of the infernal regfion he sets forth his conception of the different degrees of iniquity. Sitting behind the great tomb of Pope Anastasius, while they were becoming ac- customed to the horrible excess of stench which was coming up from the deep abyss of the pit, Virgil unfolds to Dante the structural plan of Hell. It is so constructed that those who have sinned most heinously are the deepest down^ and thus farthest from God, for sin separates, from the Most High. There is, moreover, a broad distinction between sins of impulse and those of settled habit. Of all the dispositions which heaven abides not, incontinence is the least offensive. Therefore the outbreaks of the turbulent and untaught passions — carnality, gluttony, anger — are punished in the upper circles ; the pit of Hell is reserved for sins of malice. Malice wins the hate of God because it 82 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE seeks the injury of others, either by force or fraud. Of the two, fraud is the worse ; there- fore, the fraudulent are in the lowest circles and more woe assails them. Thus the great Tuscan passes judgment upon the fundamental divisions of wrong'-doing : incontinence, violence, and fraud. We make the same general distinctions. Sins of the flesh are less culpable than those of the spirit. Warm-blooded, impetuous faidts are not so damnable as reptilian craft and sneaking de- ceit. The publicans and harlots go into the kinodom before the Pharisees. Dante differs from our modern thought, however, in this. We consider that guilt lies in the intention rather than in the act ; he adopts the elemental principle of Roman jurisprudence that punish- ment shall be proportional to the evil effects upon society from wrong-doing. The individual is accountable, not for the nature of the crime per se, but for the injury done to others. Hence treachery, being the most contrary to the love of man and of God, is the blackest of all sins, and the arch-traitors against Church and State are feeding the insatiable mouth of Lucifer. IV THE NATUBB OF SIN All definitions of sin seem bald and utterly inadequate. To call it " folly/' " missing the mark," " the gap between the real and the ideal," " losing the good of the intellect " — all this is tame enough. Definitions make little impression. Sin must be seen to be shunned ; and only the novelist, the artist, the poet, can set forth transgression in its monstrosity and naked hideousness. Michael Angelo's " Last Judgment" and George Eliot's "Romola" are more powerful deterrents from evil than any definitions of the theologfians. But althoug-h the seed of sin is sown in this life, the harvest ripens in the next. Any adequate revelation of iniquity must have its scene laid in the future world. The seer must go among the " truly dead " to make known the full proportions of his dark and lurid truth. Dante employs three distinct ways of reveal- ing the nature of each sin. It is symbolized in the repulsive monsters presiding over the cir- cles; in the environment in which the sinner is punished ; and in the condition and torment of the sinner himself. SIN PERSONIFIED IN DEMONS The different kinds of sin are usually typified by a demon. The first one to be met is Minos, not the august judge of mythology, but a fiend, it being an accepted notion of the Middle Ages that all the cjods of the heathen Avere devils. Sitting at the entrance of Hell he represents in a striking manner all sin when it comes to judg- ment. It confesses itself, it condemns itself, it snarls at itself. In a stenchful region, whose putrid smells forcibly remind us of the diseases of the glutton, is Cerberus, a personified belly, quivering for food, filthy, greasy, insatiably gnawing the howling spirits with his three bark- ing mouths, and becoming quiet only wdien his ravenous gullets are filled with mud. Pluto, the wolfish god of avarice, raises a cry of alarm when Reason enters his realm, and falls like a mastless sail when he hears the decree of God. Phlegyas, who had fought in impious wrath against the gods, in stifled anger ferried Dante over the river of Hate. The Furies, representing the pride of intellect which makes men hostile SIN PERSONIFIED IN DEMONS 85 to God, are guardians on the glowing towers of the city of Dis ; even Virgil cannot conquer these stubborn wills, but must rely on some heavenly messenger of grace to open the way. Violence is figured in Minotaur, biting himself and plunging in fury. Geryon is the " loath- some image of fraud," having "the face of a just man, so benignant from its face outwardly, and of a serpent all the trunk beside." The giants, guarding the circle of the lowest abyss, and appearing hke enormous towers in the gloom, are emblematic of the enormity of crime. But it is Lucifer himself, at the very bottom of the pit, at the centre of the earth, and there- fore at that point in the universe farthest re- moved from God, who is the most complete type of the real nature of sin. Huge, bloody, loath- some, grotesque, self-absorbed ; not dead nor yet alive ; having three^ faces, one fiery red, one between white and yellow, one black — indi- cating the threefold character of sin as malig- nant, impotent, and ignorant ; every moment sending forth chilling death, making others woe- ful in his own woes ; punishing his followers ^dth frightful torture, and thus undoing himself ; the tears of the world flowing^ back to him as their source and becoming his torment ; the movement of his wings, by which he seeks to extricate him- self, freezing the rivers and thus imprisoning him, — what more fitting personification could 86 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE this seer have devised to show evil in its real deformity and folly ? The hideous and self-cen- tred Lucifer is perhaps the truest characteriza- tion of sin in literature. There is an interesting, although entirely un- conscious corroboration, in the recently published life of Francis Parkman, of Dante's fidelity to experience in representing Satan as bound in a stagnant pool. It is quoted to prove that the Italian was true to life, both as a prophet and artist in his delineation of abject misery. Mr. Parkman says : " From a complete and ample experience of both, I can bear witness that no amount of physical pain is so intolerable as the position of being stranded, and being doomed to lie rotting for year after year." Vassall Mor- ton — the hero of Parkman's only novel, into the sketch of whose character the historian threw so much of his own life — cries out from his Austrian dungeon : " It is but a weak punishment to which Milton dooms his ruined angel. Action, enterprise, achievement, — a Hell like that is Heaven to the cells of Ehrenburg. He should have chained him to a rock, and left him alone to the torture of his own thoughts ; the unutterable agonies of a mind preying on itself for want of other sustenance. Action ! mured in this dungeon, the soul gasps for it as the lungs for air. Action, action, action ! — all in all ! What is life without it ? A marsh, a SIN PERSOXIFIED IN DEMONS 87 quagmire, a rotten, stagnant pool.'' It is singu- lar that both Dante and Parkman should figure the depth of wretchedness as the bondage of a quagmire. Milton has chosen another way to portray the ultimate vulgarity and contemptibleness of sin. In the beginning of " Paradise Lost " Satan appears as a majestic being, titanic in force, possessing still some of his original splen- dor like the sun seen through the misty air. He is an archangel ruined, and full of primal energy is capable of putting to proof the high suprem- acy of heaven's perpetual King. Suddenly out of the infernal deep Pandemonium arises ; seated on his throne of royal state Satan unfolds to his peers in words of lofty eloquence his vast plans of rebellion. Passing beyond the gates of Sin and Death he works his grievous way through chaos till he comes in sio'ht of Eden. Here he falls into many doubts, but unwilling to sub- mit to the will of God, he confirms himself in evil. As craft and serpentine deceit take the place of open war, the dee25er sin brings the deeper ruin to his nature. Returning to his followers he ascends the throne from which but a short time before he had spoken such heroic words. Refulgent with permissive glory he begins to recount his exploits : but paus- ing to receive the expected applause of the Stygian throng he is amazed to hear — 88 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE " from innumerable tongues, A dismal universal hiss." ^ Not long did he wonder ; his face began to draw sharp and spare, his arms clung to his ribs, his lecfs entwined each other, and his noble elo- quence changed into a hiss ! " Down he fell A monstrous serpent on his belly prone, Reluctant, but in vain : a greater power Now rul'd him, punish'd in the shape he sinn'd, According to his doom ; he would have spoke, But hiss to hiss returned with forked tongue To forked tongue, for now were all transform'd Alike to serpents all." ^ Thus does Milton teach the impressive truth that while sin at its beginning may have some- thinof of the m'^'indeur of rebellion and the fasci- nation of daring, in the end it loses all attraction and becomes reptilian, loathsome, deceitful, a thing of the slime, whose proper language is a hiss ! With equal clearness he asserts that the followers of evil will inevitably change from fierce conspirators to the viper's brood. We read the same lesson in even more power- ful colors in the experiences of Him who knew sin as none other has ever known it. He who would save the world must know what sin is in its height and depth. He must feel the burden of it on His own soul, if He would make an atonement for the people. What did He find it to be ? He first met it in its nobler aspect. In the 1 Par. Lost, bk. x. 507. ^ /^j^. 513-520. SIN PERSONIFIED IN DEMONS 89 wilderness He was tempted by the Prince of this world, and the issue was a world-wide and an age-long empire. It was a contention with co- lossal powers for imperial results. As He lived down more deeply into the world's sin, evil changed its form ; it expressed itself in the craft of the Pharisee, the fickleness of the people, the treachery of friends, and the viperous cunning of the priests. Judas and not the great hierarch of darkness now became the type of evil. He goes more deeply yet, even to the bottom of the abyss, and knows sin in its most dismal woe, feeling the utter horror and God-forsakenness of it. This experience, I believe it was, that explains the agony of Gethsemane and the despairing cry of Calvary. Dante, as he entered the stupefying pit of the uttermost sin, hid himself behind Virgil, knowing not in its paralyzing air whether he was dead or ahve ; the Christ as He sank down into the murky blackness of the world's transgression sweat great drops of blood, and in the gloom of the biting darkness that encompassed Him, He discerned not a ray of Divine light. To Him sin was a stupendous burden, a horror, a night where no glory of God shines. We in our easy tolerance think of sin as some " soft infirmity of blood ; " but those master- minds that have gone down the deepest into the heart of evil have felt that they were entering a dismal world of chill fog and sick poison, a place 90 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE of squalor, dull misery, and benumbed wretched- ness ; and He, who most of all the sons of men tasted its true character through his own purity, found it to be paralyzing, horrible, God forsaken. VI THE ATMOSPHERE SIN CREATES It was a favorite thought with Dante that the soul creates the atmosphere in which it Hves, and builds for itself a mansion or a dunofeon accord- ing as its deeds are good or evil. Sin makes the air which the soul breathes black with its own folly, hot with its own passion, penurious with its own sterility, while hope causes it to have the roseate colors of the morning, and love makes it effulgent with celestial light. To live and move and have one's being in the environment one's self has formed is Heaven or Hell. Naturally, therefore, we look with interest upon every new setting to learn the poet's conception of the inner nature of the evil deed. As he has divided sin into three grand divi- sions, incontinence, violence, and fraud, we are not surprised to find that the three are distin- guished by characteristic environments. The incontinent are punished in murky gloom, for lust darkens the mind ; the violent suffer in circles where the perpetual shadow is lighted by the flames decreed by One who is a flame of fire 92 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE against the rebellious ; the treacherous are in a zone of squalor and of arctic cold, because sin at its lowest is a sorry, stupid, paralyzing thing, congealing all flow of human sympathy and chill- ing life into a stagnant, sterile marsh. This general thought Dante refines to set forth the quality of particular sins. I know not in all literature where the inner spirit of paganism, of culture without faith, is more nobly and truly expressed. Its woe is its hopelessness, it has " no plaint but that of sighs which made the eternal air to tremble." In Dante's time the age of faith was rapidly passing away ; a strong taste for classical culture was taking possession of men, presaging a new day. In the rich treasury of ancient learning he who was the morning star of the Renaissance could not but delight, yet his penetrating vision saw that the new culture with- out the spirit of the old faith was the mind's Inferno.^ In a picture of profound pathos he has recorded his judgment ; and whenever since his day culture has been divorced from religious truth its devotees bear " a semblance neither sad nor glad ;" they make no plaint, but without hope they live in desire.^^ Gluttony is a benumbing, coarse, swinish infamy, prolific in stenchful diseases, and is punished with " rain eternal, ac- cursed, cold, and heavy iS^ Coarse hail, and foul water, and snow pour down through the tene- ^ Inf. iv. THE ATMOSPHERE SIN CREATES 93 brous air : the earth that receives them stinks." ^ v^The river of hate, "where the wrathful smite each other, is purple-black ^ — the color of an enraged countenance. '^ The heresy that denies immortal- ity is a real entombment of the soul ; it virtually cabins and confines life to a narrow dungeon, and in the end closes the lid and shuts out the heavens as well as the future, — a fiery tomb is thus its most appropriate symbol.^(yTreachery separates a man from his fellow, freezes the current of human kindness, chills the traitor's own heart, and makes his face currish ; hence in the pit upon which rests the weight of all other crimes, the distorted, livid countenances of traitors leer at the shuddering poet from the frozen pool.* (C^ The part the environment has in typifying and punishing sin is stated in a poetic conception of rare suoforestiveness. The tears and blood of the earth Dante tells us flow down into Hell, formin^r its four rivers, in which the evil-doers are pun- ished. The brown waves of Acheron, Styx darker than perse, Phlegethon of boiling blood, all unite to form the frozen Cocytus, in which Satan and the traitors are imprisoned.^ Thus the misery he inflicts returns upon the evil-doer to be his torment. 1 Inf. vi. 2 Inf. vii. 103. » Inf. ix. * Inf. xxxiv. ^ Inf. xiv. VII THE EFFECT OF SIN ON THE SOUL The condition of the sufferers is perhaps the most graphic portrayal of the nature of the sin\ for which they are in woe. Dante beheved that! the penalty of sin is to dwell in it. Man is pun-' ished by his sins rather than for them. Hell is J^ to hve in the evil character one has made for him- ijx self. " Wherewithal a man sinneth, with the same also shall he be punished." Therefore we have but to observe the appearance, the action, the feelings of the doomed, to know the poet's conception of sin. ^* He affirms that the de- lights of illicit love seem sweet ; but in reality are a smiting storm, whirling and driving onward the shrieking and blaspheming spirits forever- more. ^-Sullenness is stagnant anger ; it is letting the sun go down upon one's wrath, giving place to the Devil, until wrath becomes a sluggish fume in the breast, at last submerging the gurgling soul in its own oppressive slime.^ Flattery is a sickening ffltli ; hypocrisy is a gilded cloak, heavy as lead, a wearisome mantle for eternity ; thieving is a hideous, reptilian sin, and as the THE EFFECT OF SIN ON THE SOUL 95 thief changes disguises that he may ply his sneak- ing trade, so at last his soul will repeatedly turn from human to snaky form, hissing and creeping. Violence against the divine order is most power- fully painted. On a floor of dry and dense sand, as sterile as a life hostile to God, blasphemers are lying supine and looking up into the heavens they defied, all the while weeping miserably ; usurers, who by overvaluing material things be- came sordid and obscured the divine lineaments past all recognition, are crouching, mere wretched lumps of selfishness ; sodomites are raging cease- lessly in their carnal passion, — while " over all the sand, with a slow falling, were raining down dilated flakes of fire, as of snow on Alps without a wind," for against the doers of such deeds the Eternal is a consuming fire.^ By such terrible nocturnes does this grim painter portray sin's essential nature and its in- evitable consequences. 1 Inf. xiv. 19-42. VIII AN INTERPRETATION OF DANTE's CONCEPTION OF SIN The ethical teaching of this austere prophet regarding the true character of sin may be briefly summarized. The first step into the soul's In- ferno is most clearly indicated by the condition of the weary and naked crowd that gathers upon the banks of sad Acheron, which forms the rim of Hell. Gnashing their teeth, " they blasphemed God and their parents, the human race, the place, the time, and the seed of their sowing, and of their birth." ^ In the denial of his responsi- bility, by casting the blame of his evil deeds and woeful condition upon others, man enters the region of hopeless and dismal wretchedness. His punishment, instead of cleansing the heart, hardens it, and fills it with all bitterness, wrath, and violence. Purgatory is pain borne in resig- nation to the will of God : Hell is pain endured with a rebellious heart. A sense of the divine justice in retribution lifts the suffering spirit from the nether gloom to the mountain of hope ; 1 Inf. iii. 103-105. \^ DANTE'S CONCEPTION OF SIN 97 but to view trouble as the whip and sting of an outrageous fortune is to put one's feet in the way that leads to death. It is forever true that to embark on the river of sorrow with a blasphemy upon the lips and bitterness against human kind in the heart is to pass straight to the abyss of woe. This bears out Dante's main contention that Hell is atheism in any of its many forms. When they reached the entrance of Hell, Virgil said to him : " We have come to this place where I have told thee that thou shalt see the woeful jDCople who have lost the good of the under- standing." ^ It was the prevalent belief of the Middle Ages that the highest good of the mind is the contemplation of God. To know Him is life eternal. To have the intellect and the heart rest serenely in the sweet sense that divine com- passion and righteousness are pervading all the processes of nature, the unfolding of history, the disciplines of life, and that all things are working together to carry out a benign wiU, — this is the hiofhest beatitude of earth and the rapture of heaven. The good of the intellect is to see God in the events of individual life and history ; the good of the heart is to reahze His comforting presence in all sorrow ; the good of the will is to feel His strengthening power in every temptation. 1 Inf. iii. 16-18. 98 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE Hell, both here and hereafter, is blindness to ^ the presence of God in His world. It is to be unable to see reason in the trials of life, justice in its penalties, and righteousness in the founda- tions of the social structure. It is to be con- vinced that nature is soulless, the heart comfort- less, life worthless, and the will powerless amid forces whose cruel interactions represent nothing but a high carnival of unreason. This practical atheism is the world's Inferno. It is the gloom and horror of the soul ; not a place so much as a condition of life. " All hope abandon, ye who enter here," is a warning both for individuals and nations. It is a condition first of mental darkness ; then of lawless, fiery passion ; ending in useless weeping, paralyzed despair, and be- numbed wretchedness. Sin is a bondage. Whoever committeth it is first its servant and then its bond-slave. When Y one enters it he puts himself into a dungeon from which there is no escape without divine aid. Francesca cannot fly from the never-resting blast ; Filippo Argenti cannot extricate himself from the muddy river of wrath ; the hypocrite is powerless to lay aside his leaden cloak ; the ice does not give up its dead, nor Satan free his victims. Sin is forever a tyranny, a weight, a chain. Hence Dante, with a keener insight than that of the Greek poets, places no Cerberus at the mouth of Hell. The gravitation of evil is DANTE'S CONCEPTION OF SIN 99 downward toward a deeper death. The Holy City in the Apocalypse suffers no violence, though its gates are unguarded and no visible barrier keeps out the dogs and sorcerers and fornica- tors. The gates of Heaven can be left open toward sin, and no vile person will enter in thereat. The way to purity, truth, holiness is always accessible ; yet the impure, the false, and the treacherous need no barking Cerberus to keep them from thronging the entrance to a better life. They keep themselves in the land of evil. How steady and tremendous is this downward y pressure of sin Dante further intimates in his graphic description of the great toil with which he and Virgil emerged from the hemisphere of darkness into that of light. Lucifer was at the centre of the earth. It was necessary to go by him and take the passage to the other side of the world. To cross the centre of gravity, and pass from the attraction of sin to the attraction of God required a mighty effort. " When we were where the thio'h turns on the thick of the haunch (the body of Lucifer was in one hemisphere, his legs in the other, and his middle at the centre of the earth) my Leader, with effort and stress of breath, turned his head where he had his shanks, and clambered by the hair as a man that ascends, -^ so that I thought to return again to Hell. ^ Cling fast hold/ said the Master, panting like one Cn'^ 100 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE weary, ' for by such stairs it behooves to depart from so much evil.' " ^ Sin is unreasonable. After he has once passed into the gloom of the pit the poet carefully re- frains from speaking the name of Yirgil. One can give no valid reason for sinning, though he may deck the deed with fair excuses. But while sin is the abnegation of reason, it still yields to human wisdom a cringing obedi- ^ ence. The power and the hmitations of a reason- able man surrounded by sin is an interesting study. The wise man can make an angry one both furious and consequently powerless, as Virgil did Minotaur by his taunts ; ^ he can make fraud his servant,^ can rebuke its demons ; * and if some maliofn Medusa would harden his heart he can turn away his eyes.^ There is one thing, however, that reason cannot do, — it cannot per- suade a perverted and violent will.^ Its unaided words are futile in the presence of headstrong maliciousness. This only the grace of God can overcome. Dante was certainly no believer in the popular modern teaching that the rejection of God ulti- mates in the annihilation of the wicked. Sin demonizes but does not destroy the strength of the will. This is taught in many lurid pictures. When Farinata rose in his burning sepulchre 1 Inf. xxxiv. 76-84. ^ jnf xii. 16-25. « Inf. xvii. 91-99. * Inf. vii. 8-12. ^ Inf. ix. 55-63. « Inf. viii. 115 fP. DANTE'S CONCEPTION OF SIN 101 and ^^ straightened himself up with breast and front as though he held Hell in great scorn/' and in his disdainful patrician pride first asked the poet, " who were thy ancestors ? " ere he entered into conversation, he certainly showed no abatement in the force of his imperious will.^ In this Dante agrees with Shakespeare and Milton. Villainy did not weaken the intellec- tual cunning of lago nor cripple the rebellious will of Satan. / ^ It is also suggestive that Dante represents the ^^i^V^lost as punished for but one sin. The evil-doer ^ may have broken every commandment, and been adept in all villainies ; but he is punished for only one offense. He remains in one circle, and there is no hint that he passes to any other. Punishment is for a sing^le root sin out of which all others have grown. The inevitable tendency is for a man to give himself over to one beset- ting passion and to become absorbed in it and dominated by it, while right living expands all the faculties, enlarging and enriching the whole nature. Bad men grow intense in certain fac- ulties. Their strino^ent selfishness binds them down to littleness. They grow imperious, jealous, petulant. However great and dazzhng their achievements may appear, in the midst of their conquered worlds, they are continually tapering down to be sharp, brilliant, little men. This is 1 Inf. X. 31 fe. 102 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE the popular conception of a fiend — one whose energies burn hot at a single point, who is the slave of one devilish passion, — sin's final issue as Dante paints it. The gravitation of a lost soul is toward a single demonized activity. One of the most striking features of the Inferno is the total absence of the feelino; of remorse within its caverns. Accordino^ to the common conception the pain of Hell is the agony of conscious guilt. This is the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched. Nowhere does Shakespeare disclose a more lurid magnifi- cence of power than in his delineation of the pangs of an outraged conscience. His villains are steeped in no deeper Hell, and apparently he conceived of no retribution more inevitable and dire than the scouro'incrs of an aroused moral sense. No sooner does Macbeth commit his atrocious outrao^e than he hears the callins: of a voice, the air is filled with clutching hands, the blood-spot is on his palm, and the " Amen " sticks in his throat. King Richard's Inferno flamed with remorse : — " My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain." ^ All his crimes, threatening dreadful vengeance, thronged the chambers of his soul, and filled him with despair. 1 Richard Illy V. iii. DANTE'S CONCEPTION OF SIN 103 Byron draws a vivid picture o£ the souFs fiercest torment, when he likens it to the writh- ings of a scorpion girt by fire, who to end her pain strikes into her brain her own venom.^ The smiting wrath of an outraged conscience is the deepest Hell into which most of our great poets and prophets penetrate. All the more remarkable is it that from the gloom and agony and chill of Dante's Inferno there comes up not one cry of remorse ; not a sinofle soul feels the ranklina* of conscience or the sting of guilt. Not until the summit of Purgatory is reached and it confronts Beatrice does the soul feel a shrinking horror of itself. It is her pre- sence that causes the writhing: of £:uilt and the torment of an embittered memory. Only the light of God can quicken conscience unto life, and when the soul feels the searching of this clear light it is not in the blackest gloom of Hell, but just outside the gates of Heaven. In placing remorse upon the top of the moun- tain rather than at the bottom of the pit, the poet is strictly true to his philosophy. The soul enters the hopeless shadow of spiritual death when it loses the good of the understanding. The ultimate penalty of sin is to be deprived of the consciousness of God. Heaven is to know God and dwell in Him : Hell is to know sin and abide in it. But remorse implies a flaming reali- ^ The Giaour. 104 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE zation of the divine. It is the feeling aroused when the sin-stained memory faces an over- powering revelation of the Eternal Majesty. Its pangs, therefore, are always felt in the presence of Beatrice and not in the grisly horror of the under-world. There is hope for one who is startled by the voice of God, and trembles before the intolerable glare of His revelation. He has not yet reached that state where hope never comes because the voice of God is stilled in the soul and the darkness is undisturbed by the light of His presence. Milton in the general scheme of his thought upon this subject concurs with Dante ; although his descriptions of Hell in the soul place him with Shakespeare and Byron. When Satan first alights upon the untempted earth his tumultuous breast boils with doubt and horror. " Now conscience wakes despair That slumbered, wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be," — and from the bottom stirs the Hell within him. Remorse assails him for his rebellion against heaven's matchless King, and he exclaims, — " AVhich way I fly is Hell ; myself am Hell ; " SO near he comes to the verge of relenting and of submitting to the Omnipotent. Never again was he so near Heaven as in that moment of aroused conscience. What he called the Hell within him but bespoke a chance of Heaven. / DANTE'S CONCEPTION OF SIN 105 But when he said, — "Farewell, remorse : all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good," — he entered the hopeless land, the region Dante calls Hell.^ Jean Valjean was in his Inferno when he left the galleys with his mind hot with the fire of a malio^nant hatred : in the face of the good bishop he saw his degradation and wept scalding tears. His remorse was suffered at the entrance of a holy life. Hell is not the anarchy and chaos of the soul, as we usually conceive, when light and darkness, good and evil, are mingled in desperate battle ; it is ordered death, when the conflict has ceased and the spirit dwells wholly in the domain of evil. The vision of Sin is not a fiction, created to delight or terrify. Neither is it a nightmare dream of horror, born in an age of superstition, and fated to pass away with the creed that gave it birth. It is sober reality. We have all beheld in a lesser deo^ree what Dante saw with his keener sight. We, too, have seen the unstable blown about " like the sand when the whirlwind breathes," stung by the pestering gad-flies and wasps of petty passion and annoyances. We have seen " people of much worth " carry intel- lectual culture to its highest point, yet, lacking Christian faith, live without hope in a limbo where " sighs made the eternal air to tremble." 1 Par. Lost, bk. iv. 1-110. 106 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE We have seen the slaves of anger with look of hurt smiting one another as they stand in the foul fen of the river of hate. We have seen the violent shut the gates of the city of Dis in the face of Reason, hut open them at the touch of some heavenly messenger of grace. We have seen flatterers wallowing in their own filth ; and many an Alherigo wdiose body lives, hut whose soul is shrouded in icy death. All these woes and many more have we seen in our own experi- ence, and perhaps we have felt them too ; for who is he who has never put his feet into, the ways of death, and walked in the paths of darkness and of fire ? Happy have we been if Reason has led us out of sin to behold " those beauteous things which heaven bears," and we have come forth to see again the stars, and have humbly washed the grime from off our faces in the dews of repent- ance. We have all had our visions of sin, but it was reserved for one rare and solitary spirit, exiled from his beloved city, stripped of all dead- ening luxuries, kept by dolorous poverty near to the deep heart of reality, to have his sight so clarified by years of study, of wandering, and of bitter disappointment that he could comprehend the sin of the world in all its dark horror, its fiery lawlessness, its cold monstrosity, and then with almost superhuman genius set forth the vision, burned upon his brain, in a picture so lurid and darkly magnificent that it never could fade from the thought of man. THE QUEST OF LIBERTY " And to his dignity he never returns, unless, where sin makes void, he fill up for evil pleasures with just penalties." — Dante. " I do not believe that it would be possible to find any joy com- parable to that of a soul in Purgatory, except the joy of the blessed in Paradise ; a joy which goes on increasing from day to day as God flows in more and more upon the soul. . . . On the other hand they suffer pains so great that no tongue can describe them." — St. Catherine of Genoa. THE VITALITY OF THE " PURGATORIO " Dean Stanley, fresh from the study of the ^' Divine Comedy," declared in his enthusiasm that the " Puro^atorio " was " the most reHofious book he had ever read." While it lacks the dramatic force and the vivid coloring of the " Inferno," and comes short of the blazin^^ g-lories and the heiofhts of vision of the " Paradiso,"it still touches life as we know it more intimately than either of the other portions of this strange mediaeval poem. The poet describes those things which we know in our own experience. We are familiar with the trembling of the sea, the silent splendor of the stars, the burdensome weight of pride, the harsh irritation of envy, and the blinding smoke of wrath. The characters are neither demons nor glorified beings, but human spirits who are being made perfect through suffering. Our own dis- ciplines are here portrayed, and the resistless power of the book lies in its penetrating insight into the struggles of the soul and the forces by which it wins its liberty. It is, perhaps, the most autobiographical of no THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE the trilogy, although it is in the " Paradiso " that the rare sweetness of Dante's spirit and the strength o£ his moral indignation find their high- est expression. When we see him bending low among the proud, as if already the load weighed grievously upon him, we know it to be a confes- sion of his besettino^ sin. He acknowled<2:es his imperious temper by suffering from the acridity of the smoke, black as the gloom of Hell. He confesses that he cannot see the beautiful eyes of Beatrice until he has plunged into the fierce fires that cleanse the soul of lust. There are delicate touches wdiich reveal that he had St. Francis's love for birds, and an artist's delight in natural beauty ; while music such as he must have heard in the old churches when he went to worship, and which rested like a benediction on his hot and wounded spirit, is constantly stealing into his song as a potent healing. Here Dante is seen to be a man — unlike the stern and gloomy poet of popular conception — of noble tranquillity, delicately sensitive to all the finer impressions of beauty. Marvelous it is how the dream of one steeped in mediaeval lore has survived the lapse of centu- ries. The huofe tomes of the master-minds over w^liich he pored with such eager interest lie neg- lected on the shelves, or are translated merely to interpret his weird and mystic poem ; but the weighty truths they held, sinking into the pas- THE VITALITY OF THE "PURGATORIO" 111 sionate heart of this incomprehensible man, and distilled in the alembic of his fiery sufferings with his own life's blood, became instinct with peren- nial vigor. Carlyle calls Dante " the voice of ten silent centuries." Those ages may have been dumb, awaiting their interpreter, but their heart was hot, passion-swept, fermenting with intense aspirations, and he who could comprehend and utter the deep things of its spirit must speak words which the world will always gladly hear. Deep ever calls to deep. Heine has said that every age is a sphinx that plunges into the abyss after it has solved its problem. Dante heard the secret of the Middle Ages from the lips of the mighty creature ere it leaped into the dark below. What he heard he told, and his message is of enduring interest because it is the breaking into song of the deepest life of a great epoch. Certainly the conception of religion held in the most distinc- tively religious centuries in history, the centuries that built the cathedrals and produced spiritual geniuses of enduring lustre and power, cannot be unattractive. The soul changes not, neither do the powers which ransom it. The book is vital, because life is purgatorial. Dante asks a question old as the race and deep as the human heart : How can a man be freed from his sin? He answers it, too, in the way earnest and clear-seeing minds have often an- swered it. This grim and saturnine poet does not 112 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE use the same terms which our modern thinkers employ, but he felt the steady pressure of the same sins, and he laid hold substantially of the same sovereign remedies. He placed more em- phasis on the human side of the problem than yve, and for this reason he deserves attentive study, ha\4ng portrayed most powerfully some truths which our age, so eager to break with the narrowness of the past, has overlooked in its haste. We sometimes call the Middle Ages dark, but he whose spirit brooded over its tumultuous and valorous life until he became its prophet can turn rays of the clearest light upon many of our unsolved enio:mas. n THE RETURN TO EDEN The main purpose of the " Purgatorio " is to point out the way to achieve the primal virtue which was lost in Eden : it is to teach us how to repair the havoc wrought by sin, and to return to the estate surrendered by the Fall. The master- minds of the early Church pondered much on how a man can become what Adam was, pure, happy, free ; how efface the guilt, the power, the stain of sin, and restore the individual to the Edenic liberty. They solved the problem by the doctrines of Bap- tism, Penance, and Purgatory. Baptism washed away the guilt of original sin, saved the indi- vidual from its eternal consequences, and made him a recipient of divine grace. The sins com- mitted after baptism are expiated and purged by the sacrament of Penance, the integral parts of which are confession, contrition, and satisfaction, the form being the absolution pronounced by the priest. This " satisfactory punishment both heals the relicts of sin, and destroys the vicious habits acquired by an evil life, by contrary acts of vir- tue." But life is short and men die before the 114 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE footprints of evil are rubbed out. They are not fit for Heaven, they are not subjects of Hell ; there must, therefore, be an intermediate state where they are cleansed from all unrighteousness. In Purgatory retributive sufferings are designed both to satisfy a violated moral order and to be- come remedial toward the sufferer. Yet the sin- ner need not bear the full recoil upon himself. Intercessory prayers and deeds of love on the part of others take the place of punishment with- out weakening justice, for one act of love is dearer to God than years of penalty. This pur- gatorial process not only completely cleanses the soul ; it restores it to its normal vigor by reviving all the good which sin had weakened or defaced. Dante accepted these teachings of the Church, heart and soul, and they are the architectonic principles of his wondrous poem. Ill THE HOLY MOUNTAIN The form and location of Purgatory appear to have been the poet's own invention. When Lu- cifer was hurled from heaven the soil which fled dismayed as he struck this planet was piled up on the other side of the globe in the form of a mountain, flat upon the top, and lying opposite to Jerusalem in the hemisphere of water. This mountain is di\dded into three sections. The first is Ante-Purgatory, where are found those who died in contumacy of the Church, and the negligent who either put off repentance till the end of life, or were cut off by violent death while presuming upon a long existence, or failed to fulfill the highest mission to which they were called. Above this and separated from it by a steep cliff is Purgatory proper, with its seven ledges, on each of which is purged one of the seven mortal sins of the Church. Upon the flat summit of the mountain is located the ancient garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, typifying the highest temporal happi- 116 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE ness. Here Dante meets Beatrice, comes to a profound consciousness of bis sin of unfaith- fulness to her and to God, sees in splendid apocalyptic vision the history of the Church in its relation to the Empire, and is washed in Lethe and Eunoe, thus purging his memory and restorino^ his soul to full visfor. In passing into the " Purgatorio " out of the " Inferno " one draws a sio:h of immense relief. It is leaving a dungeon of sulphurous gloom and deadly cold for the sweet morning light, the sparkling sea, the blue sky, and infinite hope. It is a proof of the good sense of Dante that he rejected the vulgar conception of his time that Purgatory was a place of fire separated from Hell only by a partition wall, and refused to believe even with Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura that its purifying flames were material. He an- ticipated the modern philanthropist in teaching that the soul is best saved in an atmosphere charged with hope. It must leave the filth, the lurid darkness, the chill despair of the infernal valley, and dwell in a land where the stars shine and the sun makes all the Orient to smile, where art and music and flowers minister to man's higher needs, and where visions of coming bless- edness never fade. His Purgatory is not a place of fiery horror, but a privilege for which to pray. IV TRUTHS TAUGHT IN ANTE-PURGATORY Before the lustral discipline begins Dante teaches some wholesome truths in Ante-Purga- tory. When he sought to chmb the sunlit mountain, described in the opening pages of the '' Inferno/' his disposition was one of belligerent self-assertion. This proved ineffective against the lion, the leopard, and the wolf. Having learned by sad experience, he essays to ascend this second mountain in an entirely different mood. Following Virgil to a shady spot where the dew still lingered, he stretched toward his teacher his tear-stained face that the grime which had gathered, simply from being in the atmos- phere of Hell, might be washed away by the dew of repentance, and submitted to be girded with a reed, type of humility, for it is by self-surrender to higher powers that spiritual liberty is won. Moreover, there must be an insistent p'urpose. One cannot even ling-er to hear Casella sinof one's own sweet songs, but must be given wholly to the task of salvation. On the way of life one must not loiter. Our grim poet might have 118 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE sympathized with the severe resolution Jonathan Edwards made upon his twenty-first birthday : " I will make the salvation of my soul my life- work." Keason, which is amply able to make known the nature and consequence of sin, is not always sufficient to lead the way to liberty. Virgil needs continually to inquire the path, gladly accepting the guidance of Sordello in Ante-Purgatory, of Statins in Purgatory, and resigning his charge to Matilda in the Terrestrial Paradise. Dante evidently believed that the poets are our best instructors in the ways of liberty and happiness, for he accepts the leadership of three poets up the holy mount. Here is taught again the truth so vigorously declared in the " Inferno," that men are punished in the respect they sin. The negligent are neg- lected as many years as they delayed repentance, and the contumacious reap thirty-fold from the seed they sowed. THE WAY A SOUL IS CLEANSED Lifted by the divine grace over a steep he could not well scale, Dante is now ready to climb the Mount of Purification. How shall his sins be purged away ? It is assumed that having been baptized he is freed from the penalties of inherited guilt. From the power and stain of personal sin he is to be cleansed by a thorough application of the sacrament of penance. He must be contrite, he must confess his sins, h must render complete satisfaction, and he mus be absolved. The process by which a soul be- comes purified from personal sin is most exqui- sitely put in miniature/' in Canto ix!. Follomng t Virtril he moves to a chff which rises sheer before him, where in a rift, he says, " I saw a gate, and three steps beneath for going to it of divers colors, and a gate-keeper who as yet said not a Tvord. . . . Thither we came to the first great stair ; it was of white marble so polished and smooth that I mirrored myself in it as I appear.\|^ The second, of deeper hue than perse, was of a rough and scorched stone, cracked lengthwise 120 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE and athwart. The third, which above lies massy, seemed to me of porphyry as flaming red as blood that spirts forth from a vein. Upon this the Angel of God held both his feet, seated upon the threshold that seemed to me stone of adamant. Up over the three steps my Leader drew me with good will, saying, ^ Beg humbly that he undo the lock.' Devoutly I threw myself at the holy feet ; I besought for mercy's sake that he would open for me ; but first upon my breast I struck three times. Seven P's upon my forehead hel inscribed with the point of his sword, and ' See / that thou wash these wounds when thou art within,' he said." The three stairs are the three steps one must take in penance, namely, confession, contrition, and satisfaction. The angel is the type of the priest who administers absolution. The breast is struck three times to denote sincere repentance for sins of thought, of word, of deed. The seven P's — Peccata — signify the seven mortal sins wdiich must be purged away. They are not evil deeds, but the bad dispositions out of which all sin springs ; it is what we are, as well as what we do, that makes us sinners in the sight of God. It is exceedingly significant that all of the P's were incised on Dante's forehead. He may not ! have been guilty of every kind of sin ; but in j him were the potentialities of all, and he has '; come to a full consciousness of them. He now THE WAY A SOUL IS CLEANSED 121 passes within the gate, the symbol of justification, and the healing process begins. Having been justified, he is no longer the servant of his evil dispositions, but their stain is still on his soul and their power is not all gone. A noble type of humanity is this sombre figure, as with the seven scars of sin on his forehead he begins to | climb the rugged and toilsome mountain in quest of liberty ! The first note he hears is " Te Deum laudamus," chanted by sweet voices, for there is joy among the angels over one sinner that re- penteth. The Catholic Church has enumerated seven evil dispositions w^hich exclude God from the life and thus deliver man unto death. They are; pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. Upon each of the seven ledges of the purgatorial mountain the scum of one of these mortal sins is dissolved from off the conscience, and the. lustre of grace and reason is restored by enduring the sacrament of penance.) Two thoughts occupied the mind of this singer of eternal truth as he drew his pictures of the soul's experience upon each of the ledges. One was to reveal the nature of the evil disposition J and its effect on the individual spirit ; the other was to describe the means by which the evil dis- position could be changed and virtue restored. This makes the characterization of sin in the " Purgatorio " differ widely from that of the " Inferno." In the latter the aim was to show sin 122 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE in its true nature, to reveal in form and color and action its essential liideousness. In the " Puro^a- torio " the poet puts forth the wealth of his genius in painting the effect of sin on the soul. He portrays the disposition, and not the deed ; sin in its stain, and not in action. With fervi^ intensity this vivid prophet sought to make en- durino: in the thouo'ht of the world what sin is in its causes, what those evil dispositions are which shut out the divine ardor from raining its fire into the mind. He would depict the atmosphere which these tempers create about the soul, and the results they make inevitable. x\mong the woeful people he taught what sin is when given over to its penalty ; on the Mount of Purgatory we see it as a disease, a deformity, a discoloration of the soul. Wrath in the " Inferno " is described as a dismal marsh, through which flows the river of hate, and the punishment is to be given over to one's rage ; on the holy mountain wrath is a blinding smoke, black as night, and harsh of tissue, since the effect of anger on the soul is to irritate and blind it. In the " Inferno " gluttony is filth, and the glutton wallows in the mire ; his god is his belly, and his punishment is to serve his god. But in the " Purgatorio " gluttony is' portrayed as striking leanness into the soul, a " dry leprosy " which consumes, but does uqIl' nourish. The restoration of the soul to its primal virtue THE WAY A SOUL IS CLEANSED 123 is effected through the sacrament of penance, consisting of contrition, confession, and satisfac- tion^ Evil being in the disposition, or as Dante affirms, in love, excessive, or defective, or dis- torted, the right love requires for its creation the clear realization of truth. After truth has begotten pure affections, the affections become habits, and the habits character by constant prac- tice. " There are two things," says Hugo of St. Victor, " which repair the divine likeness in man, the beholding of truth and the exercise of vir- tue." This relation of idea and will is in ac- cordance with our new psychology. Professor C. C. Everett in unfolding its teaching declares : " We know that thought tends to transform itself into deed. If we had in mind only a single idea, and this represented some act, the act would at once be performed. The same w^ould be true if the idea of the act were sufficiently intense to overpower all inhibiting ideas that might be pre- sent. The will addresses itself not to acts but to thoudits. It holds an idea before the mind until the idea becomes intense enough to carry itself into activity." Dante employs this princi- pie when he asserts that sins of habit are over- come by substituting virtuous habits, and sins of -/' temperament by good thoughts, created by the ardor of love which truth sends into the soid. , To be free the sinful soul must know the truth. The proud see it bodied forth in the visible 124 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE language of sculpture ; the envioas learn the nature of their guilt by hearing voices proclaim the worth of love and the fell results of env\' ; the wrathful, in the midst of their blinding smoke, behold the truth in vision ; the slothful shout it as they run day and night. But the truth must not only be known, it i must be wrouofht into habit and character. The proud purge out the old leaven by continuously exercising a humble disposition ; the envious habitually speak well of others ; the slothful *' fasten upon slothfulness their teeth " with unre- mitting energy ; Pope Martin by '' fasting purges the eels of Bolsena and the Yernaccia wine ; " the avaricious ripen their good will by gazing constantly at the dust to which their souls had cleaved, piteously praising examples of poverty and bounty, and lamenting the evils of the accursed thirst for gold. Our Puritan Dante, Jonathan Edwards, quaintly prescribed the same medicine : " Great instances of mortification are deep wounds given to the body of sin : hard blows which make him staororer and reel. We thereby get strong ground and footing against him, he is weaker ever after, and we have easier work with him next time." The activities and -sufferinors of Purofatorv^ Dante represents as the satisfaction of a \'iolated moral order, and as purifying to the penitent. Their expiatory character is nearly always defi- THE WAT A SOUL IS CLEANSED 125 nitelv declared in words. On the ledo^e of Pride this is stated repeatedly : •* And here must I bear this weight on her i Pride's ) account till God be satisfied." "'of such pride here is paid the fee/' " such money doth he pay in satisfaction." ^ The avaricious he prostrate ; '• So long as it shall be the pleasure of the just Lord, so long shall we stay immovable and outstretched." - The orluttonous '• oro loosinor the knot of their debt." ^ The lust- ful are lq the flames because ** with such cure it is needful, and with such food, that the last wound of all should be closed up." ^ The expia- tory penalties, however, are not vindictive or arbitrary, but are adjusted to the purification of the sold. While they are a satisfaction rendered to a violated moral order they are remedial to the penitent by confirming him in right habits of thought and action. Absolution is pronounced on everv •ledo:e bv the act of the angrel removing: a P. from the poet's forehead, and assurance is made complete by hearing the sweet words of an appropriate beatitude. Thus accordins: to Dante is the soul cleansed from the guilt, the power, the stain of sin. God in Christ has made an atonement for the guilt of the world, which man appropriates in baptism. This saves him from eternal condemnation. The dread power is broken when with humble, repent- 1 Purg. xi. 70. 71, 88, liio. * Purg. lix. 125, 126. » Purg. TTiii. 15. * Purg. xiv. 138, 139. 126 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE ant mind and firm purpose the sinner stands at the door of the Church to pray for pardon and heaUng grace. He has been born into a new world where hope, art, music, Hght, right, reason, and divine love may minister to him. The stain is washed away when through penance, thoroughly applied, the moral law has been satisfied by just retribu- \ tions, which, endured in a penitential spirit, have \ broken down the bad habits by substituting good j ones, and have driven out the evil dispositions by I love of the truth as seen in the lives of the good | and holy. From the besrinninof to the end of this toilsome cHmb divine grace helps the weary penitent over the hard places, and guides him in moments of doubt, until at last, when all wounds are healed, the whole mountain trembles Avath sympathetic joy, and the enfranchised spirit, crowned and mitred over himself, roams in the ancient Para- dise in all " the glorious liberty of the children of God." VI <^ WHERE THE SENSE OF SIN IS KEENEST As the exulting poet T\'anders at ease througb the groves of Eden, he meets her who had mspiredT the dream of his youth, commanded all his maturer i years, and was to him the revelation and the power I of salvation, BeatHce. Virgil does not linger to attest the beautiful eyes that, weeping, had sent him on his arduous journey, for divme wisdom is self -revealing to the prepared soul. What inde- scribable beauty as well as deep religious signifi- cance Dante puts into this account of their meet- ing ! " And my spirit that now for so long a'1 time had not been broken down, trembling with : amazement at her presence, through occult virtue that proceeded from her, felt the great potency of ancient love. . . . ' Dante,' she said, ' though Virgil be gone away, weep not yet, weep not yet, for it behooves thee to weep by another sword.' . . . Royally, still haughty in her mien, she went on, as one who speaks, and keeps back his warm- est speech : ' Look at me well : I am, indeed, I am, indeed, Beatrice. How hast thou deigned to approach the mountain ? Didst thou not know that man is happy here ? ' My eyes fell down 128 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE into the clear fount ; but seeing myself in it I drew them to the grass, such great shame bur- dened my brow." But when he heard the angels sing their compassionate song " the ice that was bound tight around my heart became breath and water, and with anguish poured from the h^art through mouth and eyes." ^ It seems singular that Dante, purified by the fire, and with brow cleared of every scar, should shrink back with great shame when he beheld himself in the fount, and that Beatrice should L seem sternly proud. He had been cleansed from sin, why should he be so abject in the presence of glorified truth ? It may be that the poet is speaking of his own individual sins rather than as a representative man ; still it is more probable that he seeks impressively to teach that the supreme sin is faithlessness to revealed truth, " following false images of good, which pay no promises in full,"^ and that " the high decree of God would be broken, if Lethe should be passed, and such viands should be tasted without any scot of re- pentance which may pour forth tears." ^ r It is with true insight into Christian experience that Dante does not place the most poignant consciousness of sin at the base of the purgato- rial mount, when he first sets his feet in the way that leads upward, and merely washes his face in 1 Purg. XXX. 34 fP. 2 p^^^^, ^xx. 131^ 132. ^ Purg. XXX. 142-144. / WHERE THE SENSE OF SIN IS KEENEST 129 the dews of repentance and is girded with the reed ^ of humility ; or later when he strikes his breast ^ three times ; but on the summit in the stern pre- sence of the veiled Beatrice. Then great shame ^ burdens his brow ; he dares not behold his true / image in the water at his feet, and in utter misery / pours forth copious tears. Nowhere is the poet -^ more truly a representative man. The keenest-? sense of sin comes when the penitent soul first confronts the perfect righteousness. When the -^ pure in heart see God they recognize the foulness S of their past, and what before appeared only to be a slight lapse is now seen as an affront to God. ^' Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned " is the final view of personal wrongdoing. John Henry Newman, in his noble poem '' The Dteam of Gerontius," makes the soul's sharpest Purgatory to be the meeting with Christ. " The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts. Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him, And feel as though thou could'st but pity Him, That one so sweet should e'er have placed Himself At disadvantage such, as to be used So vilely by a being so vile as thee. There is a pleading in His pensive eyes Will pierce thee to the quick and trouble thee. And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself, for though Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast siun'd, As never thou didst feel ; and wilt desire To slink away, and hide thee from His sight." Remorse is the feeling of the penitent at the gate of heaven, and not the torment of the lost. VII THE MIND PURGED FROM AN EVIL CONSCIENCE, AND ENDUED WITH POWER Dante now confronts one of the deepest of all spiritual problems :( How cleanse the mind of a bad memory?' One cannot enter into everlast- ing felicity unless he is in harmony with God, himself, and mth his own record. Must an ugly crime always throw its black shadow on celestial light ? Must the memory forever hold its haunt- ing spectres to bring regret amid heavenly joys ? Every deep religious thinker, every aroused conscience, has eagerly asked these questions. The Persian Omar gives a well-nigh hopeless response : — " The Moving Finger writes ; and having writ, Moves on ; not all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." ^ The startled mind of Macbeth, girt with horror as he peers into the future, asks of the phy- sician : — " Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, * Rubdiydtj Ixxi. fifth edition. MIND PURGED FROM EVIL CONSCIENCE 131 Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart ? " ^ He, too, is hopeless and feels that the one ruddy drop of his sin will incarnadine the sea. The penetrating and comprehensive mind of Paul perceived and resolutely grappled the diffi- culty. Christ may justify us before God, but ^ who is able to justify us before the bar of our 1/ own conscience ? God may forgive, but the soul / will still remember. To relieve the memory of ' y its burden of sin is speculatively imj)ossible; but j^ractically Paul felt that he had solved the enigma. He wrenched himself so completely from his old life that he was dead to it. He was a new crea- ture. " It is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me," he exclaimed. The fact of sin mio'ht remain, but he had chano^ed his rela- tionship to it ; repentance had modified the effect of it upon his spirit ; and his new purpose, his changed environment, his vivid consciousness of the breadth and length and depth and height of Christ's love had merged his memory in a sea of new life and joy, so that the unsightly record was really lost like a pebble in the ocean. Edwards with his lofty sense of the divine sover- eignty went even further, and asserted that the recollection of a godless past would be sweet to 1 Macbeth^ Act V. Sc. iii. 132 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE the redeemed, as through it all could be seen the shininjx of divine gfrace. Dante embodies his solution in a scene of re- ^l markable beauty/ When he recovered from the \ swoon, into which he had fallen at the reproach of Beatrice, Matilda drew him into the river ^ Lethe, while sweet voices from the blessed shore sang : '' Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean." When he had drunk of the strange waters all memory of his former sins vanished, indicatinof that a life of active virtue leads to a forgetfulness of past evil. He would have come much nearer the Biblical solution, if Beatrice, the Divine Revelation — rather than Matilda, . virtuous activity — had plunged him into the mao^ical wave. It is the realization of divine \ mercy and not absorption in work that draws the >^ sting from the past. One more experience awaits the redeemed soul ere it is fit to Aving its flight to the stars. The Catholic Church teaches the doctrine of " reviv- ing merit." The good which men have done lives in them. The fair as well as the foul is written on the tablets of the mind, and what is good, God never allows to be blotted out. And so into the river Eunoe, flowing from the same source as Lethe, the poet is led, and takes of that sweet draught which revives his powers crippled by sin : " I returned from the most holy wave, ^ Purg. xxxi. MIND PURGED FHOM EVIL CONSCIENCE 133 renovated as new plants renewed with new foliage, pure and disposed to mount unto the stars." ^ Whatever one's philosophy the fact remains that in the human spirit there is an immense power ^^ of recovery, amounting ^practically to the wiping out of the old and the creation of the new, to a Lethe and a Eunoe. ^ Purg. xxxiii. 142-145. VIII THE DOCTRINE OF EXPIATION In pondering the way of life by which this high-priest of the Middle Ages proclaims that men attain perfect liberty, one cannot but remark the stress he lays upon a principle which has well-nicrh faded from the Protestant mind. It is that of expiation. Dante elsewhere very tersely states this satisfaction which one must render to the moral law : " And to his dignity he never returns, unless, where sin makes void, he fill up for evil pleasures with just penalties." ^ Sin cleaves the moral order as ho-htnino^ does the atmosphere, causing an inevitable reaction to re- store the equilibrium of forces. This inexorable setting in of the moral energies to fill the void made by evil doing we call retributive justice, or the wrath of God. Indio^nant riohteousness is the same wherever found, whether in an individ- ual, in a community, or in the Almighty. By one of two ways only can it be propitiated ; either by a restitution equal to the injury, or by a full realization of the sin and an adequate contrition 1 Par. vii. 82-84. THE DOCTRINE OF EXPIATION 135 therefor. A perfect aniendment of the havoc wrought by iniquity is impossible ; the soul must seek justification by the alternative path. It must enter the gate of justification by treacling each of the three steps upon which Dante pressed his feet. The sinner must see himself mirrored as he is, he must be completely contrite, and then bring forth fruit meet for repentance, atoning as far as in him lies for the evil he has done. Expiation is no musty dogma of the school- men, but a hving truth. Sin can be completely pardoned only when there is a fuU-souled con- fession, contrition, and such measure of satis- faction as the wrong- doer can render. Dr. Johnson, going in his old age to Lichfield, and standing all day in the market-place, amid sneers and rain, to expiate his refusal to keep his father's book-stall upon the very spot where he had once made the refusal, is a pathetic illustra- tion that man cannot forofive himself until he has made public confession of his repentance and done something to prove his sincerity. The pro- phet Hosea could not take his faithless wife at once to his bosom : — " In silence and alone In shame and sorrow, wailing, fast and prayer She must blot out the stain that made her life One long pollution." This stern and august conception of the re- tributive recoil of the moral order upon sin has 13G THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE fifrown somewhat dim in the modern relirious consciousness. We emphasize the fatherhood rather than the justice of God. We make the penalties for crime corrective, rather than puni- tive, and rightly ; nevertheless, we must rein- state in our thouo^ht in somethino^ of its former grandeur and power the unvarying law, which to the swarthy Florentine prophet works through all life : " Where sin makes void," man must " fill up for evil pleasures with just penalties." Nemesis was no idle dream of classical antiquity, and the doctrine of expiation which has loomed so large in the thought of the profoundest minds of the Church, while it may need restate- ment, will refuse to be so jauntily rejected as it is by much of our newer theology. Neglected in the religious teachings oi the day, it is reap- pearing as the dominant truth in the master- pieces of fiction. But although it needs fuller recognition than it receives, there tower above it other monumental verities, whose shining glory neither Dante nor our modern novelists have be- held. IX THE ABSENCE OF CHRIST It is doubtless true that the "Purgatorio" is one of the most deeply religious books in the world. Yet it still comes far short of embodying the loftiest spiritual ideals. Its way to liberty is not the path pointed out by Him who said " I am the way." Christ laid emphasis on the in- timate relationship of His disciples with Himself as the power to redeem them from sin. Their love for Him and His presence in them was to free them from the bondage and relics of evil. Paul faced identically the same problem that confronted our austere prophet ; but his answer was far different : " For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death." ^ He did not think of him- self as creeping up some almost inaccessible height. A stupendous power of life had gotten hold of him, mastered him to his being's core, and was working out its own purpose. The love of Christ constrained him rather than a desire for personal salvation. John Wesley felt he 1 Rom. 8 : 2. 138 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE had not been converted until he had given up " will- work " and " self re-generation," and trusted in the indwelling Christ for his sanctifi- cation. Dante .is not merely the child of his time in thus seeking liberty ; he is the child of his temperament. St. Francis, whom he praises so ardently in the " Paradiso," was loosed from the bondage of his sin through his rapturous love of an ever present Saviour. He repented of his sins and confessed them in genuine contrition, and then brought forth fruit meet for repent- ance ; but he was conscious of no long sad years of dreary labor in order to fill up the void made by evil pleasures with just penalties. His thoughts were not centred upon his own suf- ferings, but upon Christ's, until the very print of the nails appeared upon his hands and feet^ He did not set himself resolutely to break down evil habits by a toilsome building up of virtuous ones. His ceaseless activities sprang sponta- neously out of his fervent love for his divine master, and this made his earthly purgatorial life exultant with a joy that is wanting in Dante's " Purgatory." St. Bernard, whom Dante so reverenced as to choose him as interpreter in that supreme moment when he was about to look upon God, could not have left a sense of sweet personal communion w^tli Christ so completely out of the " Purgatorio " and ^' Paradiso." He said to THE ABSENCE OF CHRIST 139 the people who flocked to his cloister : " If thou writest, nothing therein has savor to me unless I read Jesus in it. If thou discussest or con- versest, nothing there is agreeable to me unless in it also Jesus resounds. Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, a song of jubi- lee in the heart." ^ Horace Bushnell in his im- pressive sermon on *^ The Lost Purity Restored " considers the same problem that interested Dante, but his solution is far different. " It is Christ beheld with face unveiled, reflecting God's own beauty and love upon us, as in a glass, that changes us from glory to glory. If by faith we go with Christ, and are perfectly insphered in his society, so as to be of it, then we shall grow pure. The assimilating power of Christ, when faithfully adhered to as the soul's divine brother, and lived with and lived upon, will infallibly renovate, transform, and purify us. The result is just as certain as our oneness or society with Hun. We shall grow pure because He is. The glorious power of His character and life will so invest our nature, that we shall be in it, and live it. . . . Havino^ that faith to which Jesus is personally revealed, you can be conscious of a growing purity of soul, and I know not any other way. . . . When a soul is there enfolded, hid with Christ in the recesses of God's pure majesty, ! what airs of health breathe upon it ^ Bernard of Clairvaux, by R. S. Storrs, p. 17. 140 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE and throuo-li it ! How vital does it become, and how rapidly do the mixed causes of sin settle into the transparent flow of order and peace ! " ^ 1 Sermons for the New Lifey p. 276 ff. THE SEPARATION OF MORALITY FROM RELIGION This omission of the presence of a personal Redeemer is partly due to Dante's emphasis upon God's manifestation of Himself in a system of theology rather than in a Saviour, — Beatrice, not Christ, was the supreme revelation of the Father, — and partly to the vicious and artificial distinction which the schoolmen made between the moral and the rehsfious. St. Thomas souo-ht to draw a hue between what a man can know and attain through the exercise of his own facul- ties, and what must be disclosed to hmi. He recognized a gulf between the natural and the supernatiu*al. Man's native reason is able to show him the nature and consequences of sin, and to lead him to temporal felicity and purity of heart. But God, immortality, and high spiritual truths are beyond reason and must be revealed. Upon this distinction are built the " Purgatorio " and the " Paradiso ; " yet it is hurtful. It is the old baneful separation of the ethical and spiritual life. Cardmal Newman has said that the atonement should not be preached to 142 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE the unconverted, but that the preacher should mark out obedience to the moral law as the ordinary means of attaining to the Christian faith. That is, first moral purity, then re- ligion. Paul's programme was different ; when he went to Corinth he preached first of all the forsriveness of sins and the resurrection. He brought the repentant soul, not through a long process of moral purgation, but face to face with the living Christ; this infuses a new life and calls forth an answering love. The expulsive power of this ardent affection makes a new creature, who does not set himself doggedly to break down old habits and form better ones, but constrained by love gives himself to grate- ful service. This is the way to the "glorious liberty of the children of God," and it is a diviner way than that over which this sad-souled prophet, who had not yet caught sight of the robes of Christ, or seen the beautiful eyes of Beatrice, pressed his weary feet. Yet Dante's way of life is a true way, traveled often by men in all communions who purify their souls by beholding truth in the fives of others, by the constant practice of virtue, and by patiently follomng reason, instead of joyfully serving Christ. XI INTERCESSORY PRAYER There is a second principle that formed a very prominent part of Dante's thought. He asked Virgil in Ante-Purgatory how intercessory prayer could bend the decree of heaven. The reply was : " For top of judgment vails not itself, because a fire of love may, in one instant, fulfill that which he who is stationed here must satisfy." ^ That is, love can take the place of punishment without weakening justice. Prayers and good deeds of the innocent are accepted in lieu of the expiatory punishment of the guilty. It is notable that Dante does not lay stress upon masses and alms- giving, though once he seems to hint of the effi- cacy of both words and works. " How much may be said or done by us to help them purge away the stains." Doubtless the wild excesses into which the doctrine of supererogatory merits was being carried in his day held him back ; but he puts repeated emphasis on the value of inter- cessory prayer and the grace it works on the soul of the one for whom prayers are offered. 1 Purg. vi. 37-39. 144 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE In Purgatory proper the prayers of the living have for their object the tempering of the mind of the sufferer that he may the more speedily be made perfect through his sufferings : — " Well may we help them wash away the marks That hence they carried, so that clean and light They may ascend unto the starry wheels ! " ^ "With this thought we are familiar in so far as it applies to this life. Protestants have almost universally refused to pray for the dead because, in their rejection of the Catholic dogma of Pur- gatory, the Reformers asserted that the dead went immediately to their final state, and against this irrevocable doom all petitions were unavailing. Now that the prevailing conception is that there may be a progressive development after death it is not impossible that prayers for the departed may yet be heard in Protestant pulpits. I Purg. xi. 34-36. XII A SELF-CENTRED SALVATION Dante's way of life is susceptible to this fur- ther criticism. It is too individualistic. His souls are in a sort of moral gymnasium with thoughts centred on their own salvation. They render no service, if we except the occasional prayers offered for those on earth. He who would save his life must lose it. Vicarious suf- fering is the chief redemptive force in life. We save ourselves in self-forgetful deeds for others. Souls in Paradise indeed grow brighter when they are pleasing others, but in Purgatory we find a conscious self-redemption that is painful and unreal. Blessedness is achieved by working at duty rather than at goodness. However, Dante does not forget to mention that strong bond of sympathy which always unites those who have fellowship in suffering in hope of a common reward. While he and Virgil were advancing along the road upon the ledge of the Avaricious, the mountain shook violently as with an earth- quake, and all the imprisoned spirits lifted their voices in praise, saying : — " Gloria in excelsis 146 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE DeoT Thirstino: to know the cause of this strange event, Dante was making his way along the encumbered road when the shade of the poet Statins appeared, who explained that when a soul felt itself pure, and, impelled by a strong inclina- tion, moved upward, then the whole mountain trembled in sympathetic joy, and every spirit joined in a hymn of praise/ This beautiful ex- pression of the unity of the sufferers in joy almost atones for the lack of any intimation that they had learned the New Testament injunction to bear one another's burdens. 1 Purg. XX. 124 ff. XIII PURGATORY m LITERATURE Purgatory is a process rather than a place. We may deny the place, but the process is life itself, which no one can ponder deeply and de- scribe Tvdthout picturing a " Purgatorio." Most of the masterpieces of fiction are but a restate- ment of Dante's task. Their problem is to show how sms are expiated and souls purified by pam and toil. Purgatory banished from theology has made its home in literature, yet in this meta- morphosis from a dogma of the theologian to the plot of the novelist its essential character is unchanged. The purgatorial process portrayed in hterature comes much nearer the standard of the Tuscan poet than the ideals of the New Testament. I can find no indication in Hawthorne's life that he ever read a canto of Dante. " The Scarlet Letter " was written before he learned Italian, but the similarity between this powerful novel and the " Purgatorio " is very striking. The scene of one is m Boston, and of the other on the Holy Mountain j but in both the interest centres in 148 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE tracing the rugged and fiery path by which hberty from the stain and power of sin is at- tained. The weird and gloomy genius of the Protestant has drawn even a more terrible pic- ture than did the Catholic of the Middle Ao^es. Hawthorne's purpose was to show how Hester Prynne, who for the sin of adultery was con- demned to wear the scarlet letter A exposed upon her bosom, and Arthur Dimmesdale, her unrevealed partner in guilt, purified their souls through purgatorial sufferings. So closely do the minds of these two powerful writers keep to- gether in unfolding their common thought that sometimes almost identical forms of expression and experience are used. In one place Haw- thorne employs a sentence to describe the lot of his hero that reminds us very forcibly of Dante's famous account of his own experiences. Mr. Dimmesdale had chosen single blessedness ; therefore he is compelled " to eat his unsavory morsel always at another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside." ^ Very similar is Dante's statement of his own homeless condition in the well-known prophecy of Cacciaguida : — " Thou shalt have proof how savoureth of salt The bread of others, and how hard a road The going down and up another's stairs." 2 1 The Scarlet Letter, cliap. ix. ^ p^r. xvii. 58-GO. PURGATORY IN LITERATURE 149 The sweetest passage in the " Inferno " is the poet's recital of his meeting with Francesca da Ri- mini. Leigh Hunt calls it " a lily in the mouth of Tartarus." The only consolation left to poor Francesca, as she was swept about on the never resting blast, was that from Paolo she would never be separated. Their sin had made them one for- ever. Hester had been carried into the same Inferno by the impetuous rush of the same pas- sion, and while there her solace was also the same. She might have fled from the Puri- itan colony and thus have escaped part of her penalty, but she refused, because " there dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their mar- riage altar for a joint futurity of endless retribu- tion. Over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation and laughed at the j)assionate and desperate joy with which she seized, and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its duno^eon." ^ Thus did Hester for a moment taste of the sweet com- fort which was Francesca' s sole alleviation in tor- ment, but she escaped from her own Hell into Purgatory because she thrust it from her, and with acquiescent mind endured her punishment. ^ The Scarlet Letter^ chap. v. 150 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE Dante's problem was to erase the seven P's from his forehead ; Hawthorne's was to let the scarlet letter A burn on the breast of Hester until it purified her soul. Each shows that the w^ay to absolution is up the three steps of contrition, confession, expiation. True contrition there was in the hearts of both Hester and the clergyman, but the latter's life was a sickening tragedy be- cause he lacked the courage to confess his crime. He would have two steps rather than three by which to enter into the gate, but he learned that there can be no true contrition without a confes- sion. " Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom ! Mine burns in secret ! Thou little knowest what a re- lief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am ! Had I a friend — or w^ere it my w^orst enemy ! — to whom, when sickened wdtli the praises of all other men, I could daily betake my- self and be known as the vilest of all sinners, me- thinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even this much of truth would save me. But now it is all falsehood ! — all emptiness ! — all death ! " ^ And it is not until he makes a pub- lic confession on the scaffold that he dies in hope. In that last tracjic scene he attests that God's grace working through the stern and indispen- sable trinity, confession, contrition, satisfaction, ^ Ihid. chap. xvii. PURGATORY IN LITERATURE 151 which Dante recognized, had ransomed his soul : " God knows ; and He is merciful ! He hath proved his mercy most of all in my afflictions by giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast ! by sending yonder dark and terrible old man to keep the torture always at red-heat ! by bringing us hither to die this death of trium- phant ignominy before the people ! Had either of these agonies been wanting I should have been lost forever I " ^ But the absorbing interest of Hawthorne's powerful story hes in the revelation of how expiatory sufferings cleanse Hester's soul. The shades whom Dante saw upon the mountain preferred to remain constantly in their torments that they might the sooner be purified. Hester abode near the scene of her guilt that " perchance the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost ; more saintlike, because the result of martyrdom." '^ These continual suf- ferings, at once expiatory toward the moral sense of the community and remedial to herself, finally changed the scarlet letter from a badge of shame to a symbol of purity and holiness. We miss in Hawthorne what we missed in Dante. There is no strong sense of the forgive- ness of God, no mighty and triumphant love heal- ing the soul and urging it to joyful service. The cross is but a dim light in the background, not a 1 Ibid. chap, xxiii. ^ Ihid. chap, v. 152 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE living reality changing a vague hope to love. The novelist doubtless portrayed common life, but Mary Magdalene, with her loving devotion to Christ, walked in a better way than Hester Prynne. Tennyson's " Guinevere " embodies the same truths and the same radical defect as the " Purga- torio." The queen by her sin with Lancelot had stained her own soul black with guilt, had spoiled the purpose of King Arthur's Hfe, and brought " red ruin and the breaking up of laws " into the kingdom. Is it possible for her to so purify herself that she may be reunited to the king ? " Per- chance," says Tennyson : and in the dialogue be- tween Arthur and the queen he describes the identical purgatorial process which the laureate of the mediaeval church has laid down. King Arthur could say to his guilty spouse : — " Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God Forgives : do thou for thine own soul the rest." Her part is to fully know her sin. " Bear with me for the last time while I show, Ev'n for thy sake, the sin which thou hast siun'd." She must repent : — " prone from off her seat she fell, And grovell'd with her face against the floor." Her own deeds must supplement the grace of God: — " Let no man dream but that I love thee still. Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, PURGATORY IN LITERATURE 153 And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, Hereafter in that world where all are pure ' We two may meet before high God, and thou Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know I am thine husband." Thus did the queen fit herself for the bosom of Arthur. Shut in by " narrowing nunnery walls " she wore out in " almsdeed and in prayer The sombre close of that voluptuous day," ministerintr to the hearts of others and thus heal- ing her own, until she " past To where beyond these voices there is peace." All this is rigidly true of life, but one coming fresh from the pages of the New Testament can- not read this story without feeling that the som- bre evening of the queen's voluptuous day lacked certain sunset clouds of glory which are so clearly promised to those who have been forgiven much. What is true of the " Scarlet Letter " and of " Guinevere " is true of most of the great works of modern fiction. They are Dantean rather than Christian. XIV CONCLUSION There are certain ineffaceable impressions made upon the mind of every earnest student of the " Purgatorio." One is that the soul begins the upward way of liberty and power when it recog- nizes the justice and wisdom of God in its jDun- ishments, and by acquiescing in them makes them disciplinary and cleansing. The consciousness of God determines whether life is a Hell or a Pur- gatory. Without this recognition of the divine order all pain is torment ; with it suffering be- comes corrective and purifying. Most powerful also is the teaching that it is sin rather than punishment from which men need to be delivered. The problem of much theology, both Catholic and Protestant, is to shield the soul from the penalties of its wrong-doing ; the aim of the Scriptures is to save man from sinning. Tetzel w^ould release tortured spirits from purga- torial fires ; Luther fiercely challenged the. right- eousness of the procedure : " If God has thought fit to place man in Purgatory, who shall say that it is 2:ood for him to be taken out of it? Who CONCLUSION 155 shall even say that he himself desires it ? " ^ Dante in this agreed with the reformer. He represents the spirits as singing in the fire ; the slothful were so eag^er to work out their sloth that in their haste they seemed churlish ; the lustful would not come out of the flames lest for a single moment the refining should stop ; the gluttonous eat the wormwood of their torments as a sweet morsel ; and the prayers of others are invoked not to draw them out of pain, but to help them out of sin. Equally impressive is the statement of the in- evitable and fearful consequences of sin. In the " Inferno " we were appalled by a vision of sin in its essential nature. Here we behold it in its terri- ble effects. It is no slight thing easily overlooked. It is a crime against God. It creates a void in the moral universe which must be filled Avith just penalties. It is a blow at the divine order, and the recoil is as sure as the decrees of the Al- mighty. Moreover, it is an injury to the indi- vidual. No slightest evil temper can be indulged without a black registry upon the soul itself. The blow anger aims at another falls upon one's self and the lust that burns toward others kindles a fiercer fire in the sinner's spiritual nature. Yet it is impossible to enter into hfe and joy until these effects are expunged. The debt must be paid in full to an outraged moral order ; there ^ Moore, Studies in Dante, second series, p. 51. 156 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE can be no shuffling. It may demand the death of the Son of God, and the unspeakable suffer- ings of the race ; but cost what it may in pain and tears and passionate love, the scales of God's justice must balance. The scars also which sin has made upon the soul must all be erased, though the price paid be a millennium of wandering upon the Mount of Pain. Almost fiercely does Dante assert that while the divine love works upon a man in a thousand ways, yet human cooperation must be continuous, absorbed, energetic. The stain of sin is no trivial thing, easily wiped out by a prayer. Salvation is no ready-made article which man has but to ac- cept. The soul is not saved unless it keeps think- ing. It drives out bad thoughts by good ones. Constant contemplation of virtue creates love for it, and hate for the opposite sin ; the new thought and the new love being converted into charac- ter by ceaseless practice. Very different as well as much inferior is the common Catholic concep- tion, so admirably expressed by Newman, that the soul is passive in Purgatory : — " Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow ; Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here, And I will come and wake thee on the morrow."^ To Dante's clearer vision the prisoner of hope must needs strive mightily. He must work out his salvation with tremblinc^ eaoferness and win his liberty through fiery conflict. 1 The Dream of Gerontius. CONCLUSION 157 Ineradicable also is the conviction produced that liberty comes only with moral purity. When the prophets of modern democracy first spoke, they proclaimed liberty to be the solvent of most of the evils of the world, and the nineteenth century gave itself heartily to the work of enfranchise- ment ; but the last decade of that wonderful cen- tury witnessed a startling decline in its faith in universal freedom. Dante teaches us that liberty is a more comprehensive and significant word than democracy has dreamed. The brain and the heart of man must be free as well as his hands. Liberty is not a donation ; it is an achievement. It dwells on the summit of the mountain and not at its base. It is no easy thing granted by a legislature, but must be attained by infinite toil and suffering. These truths the swarthy prophet learned upon the Holy Mountain. In words of sweetest music and pictures of imperishable beauty he wrote them upon tables of stone, and then with face shining from his vision, he brought them down to the people upon the plain who heedlessly feasted and danced about their golden calf. THE ASCENT TO GOD •' I know not in the world an affection equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love ; like the wail of seolian harps, soft, soft ; like a child's young heart ; — and then that stern, sore-saddened heart ! These longings of his toward his Beatrice ; their meetings together in the Para- dise ; his gazing into her pure transfigured eyes, her that had been purified by death so long, separated from him so far : — one likens it to the song of angels ; it is among the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came out of a human soul." — Carlyle. ** Even as the atmosphere, when flooded by the light of the sun, is transfigured into such clearness of light that it does not so much seem to us to be illuminated as to have itself become elemental light, so it is needful that in the holy every human affection should in some ineffable way clear itself from itself, and become inwardly transformed into the will of God." — St. Bernard. " It was for this supremest experience that Bernard labored and prayed ; that he might know, in some measure, while on earth, the holy joy of saints in light. When such a final, transfiguring love should be vitally present God would be revealed not to the soul only, but within it. It would have the immediate intuition of Him, as declared in its ecstatic consciousness ; and in that would be perfect felicity. . . . With him the only perfect attainment of the soul was its union with the Divine, while personal conscious- ness was to be maintained even in that ecstatic tranquillity. Toward this he aspired and constantly labored, seeking to arise, by contemplation, prayer, assiduous self-discipline, noble service, to a point where, by God's grace, through the indwelling of His Spirit, he might discern Him in the soul, become a partaker of the Divine nature, be filled even unto His fullness." — R. S. Storks. THE SUBLIME CANTICLE OF THE COMEDY The " Inferno " is the most widely known por- tion of the " Divine Comedy," and the " Purgato- rio " the most human and natural because it best describes the present life in its weaknesses and its disciplines ; yet Dante undoubtedly considered the " Paradiso " to be the supreme triumph of his prophetic and artistic genius, as well as the cul- mination of his thought. His theme here reaches the fullness of its gran- deur, and to rise to the height of his great argu- ment he realized that he taxed his powers to their utmost. In his dedication of it to Can Grande he called it " the sublime Canticle of the Comedy." He felt that he was constantly struggling with the ineffable, that the vision hopelessly transcended his speech. Into this con- secrated poem he threw his whole soul. " It is no coasting voyage for a little barque, this which the intrepid prow goes cleaving, nor for a pilot who would spare himself,"^ and he pleads that he may well be excused, if, under the ponderous 1 Par. xxiii. 67-69. 1G2 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE burden, liis mortal shoulder sometimes trembles. Greater task, indeed, never essayed poet or pro- phet. He sought to combine in a form o£ per- fect beauty the Ptolemaic system of astronomy ; the teachings of Dionysius the Areopagite re- garding the celestial hierarchy ; the current as- trological dogma of stellar influences ; the guesses of the crude science of the times ; the cumbrous theology of Aquinas ; the rapt vision of the mys- tics ; his own personal experiences ; his passion- ate love for Beatrice the Florentine maiden, and Beatrice the symbol of divine revelation ; the whole process of the development of a soul from the first look of faith to the final beatitude ; and even to symbolize the Triune God Himself as He appears beyond all space and time. No wonder that as he embarks on the deeps of this untried sea he warns the thoughtless not to follow him. " O ye, who in some pretty little boat, Eager to listen, have been following Behind my ship, that singing sails along, Turn back to look again upon your shores ; Do not put out to sea, lest peradventure, In losing me, you might yourselves be lost. The sea I sail has never yet been passed ; Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo, And Muses nine point out to me the Bears." ^ How well he succeeded in this most hazardous voyage is a matter of diverse opinion. Leigh Hunt, who w^as quite incapable of appreciating justly such a nature as Dante's, and such a poem 1 Par. ii. 1-9. SUBLIME CANTICLE OF THE COMEDY 163 as the Divine Comedy, in his little book entitled '' Stories from the Italian Poets/' says : " In ' Paradise ' we realize little but a fantastical assem- blage of doctors and doubtful characters, far more angry and theological than celestial ; giddy rap- tures of monks and inquisitors dancing in circles, and saints denouncing Popes and Florentines ; in short, a heaven libelling itself with invectives against earth, and terminating in a great pre- sumption." It must be confessed that there is much in this canticle that on first acquaintance strikes one as ridiculous. When we behold the flaming spirit of the venerable Peter Damian, whirling like a mill-stone, making a centre of his middle, we are far more inclined to laugh at our own crude conception of the grotesque figure he makes, than to picture the beauty of the swiftly circling flame and marvel at the vigorous spiritual life which his cyclonic gyrations were intended to suggest. Doubtless also the many quaint mediaeval discussions regarding the spots on the moon, the influences of the planets on human destiny, the language Adam spoke, and the length of time he spent in Eden before he ate the fatal apple, have little immediate interest for us, and are endured as one traverses the desert for the good that lies beyond. Yet we must remember that Dante distinctly states in his dedication of this portion of his work to Can Grande that when he deals in speculative philo- 164 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE sopliy, it is not for the sake of the philosophy, but for practical needs. Notwithstanding all that is scholastic and stranjre to our notion in the " Paradiso," its most careful students are generally agreed that it is the fitting crown of the great trilogy. " Every line of the ' Paradiso/ " says Ruskin, " is full of the most exquisite and spiritual expressions of Chris- tian truths, and the poem is only less read than the ' Inferno ' because it requires far greater at- tention, and, perhaps for its full enjoyment, a holier heart." ^ In this w^onderful book, which to Carlyle was full of " inarticulate music," poetry seems to reach quite its highest point. " It is a perpetual hymn of everlasting love," exclaims Shelley ; " Dante's apotheosis of Beatrice and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness by which as by steps he feigns himself to have as- cended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry." ^ Not less pronounced is Hallam's judgment that it is the noblest expression of the poet's genius. Comparing Dante with Milton, he says : " The philosophical imagination of the former in this third part of his poem, almost defecated from all sublunary things by long and solitary musing, spiritualizes all that it touches."^ 1 Stones of Venice, ii. 324. ^ Defense of Poetry. ^ Literature of Europe, vol. iv. chap. v. n THE THEME OF THE PARADISO In this canticle Dante seeks to describe the nature of the religious life, its dominant truths, its felicities, and its ultimate beatitude. He is not painting a rapturous picture of bliss to comfort and lure the soul of the believer, but is making a sober attempt to show the spiritual life in its meaning, development, and final glory. As he could not make known the true hideousness of sin without following it into the future where it made the full disclosure of itself ; as the purga- torial process, although taking place in this w^orld and in the next, has the scene laid after death that the completed work may be revealed ; so the true life of man is delineated against the background of eternity. This affords a canvas large enough to portray the spiritual life when it has come to the perfection of its stature. It is not Heaven he is describing, but the religious life. These temporal experiences he Hfts into the eternal light and displays the fullness of their glory. m THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The first steps in the religious life find their descriptions in that wonderfully beautiful and significant scene in '^ Purgatory " where the poet meets Beatrice in the Terrestrial Paradise. When the soul comes face to face with the revealed truth of God, it sees its sin, repents of it, con- fesses it, and looks toward Christ for atoning mercy. Now it is ready to enter the way that leads toward the Highest. The penitent soul begins the spiritual life when it centres itself upon God. "Man," says Horace Bushnell, "finds his paradise when he is imparadised in God. It is not that he is squared to certain abstractions or perfected in his moral conformity to certain impersonal laws ; but it is that he is filled with the sublime personality of God, and forever exalted by his inspiration, moving in the divine movement, rested on the divine centre, blessed in the divine beatitude."^ Thus a New England preacher, though little familiar with Dante, describes exactly the experience the poet went ^ Sermons for the New Life, pp. 41, 42. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 167 through, when after squaring himself to the im- personal laws of Purgatory, he fixed his eyes upon the Sun — the symbol of God. With tliis steady gaze there came into his soul a new power, and day seemed to be added to day. Having centred his life on God, he now turns his gaze to Beatrice, the revealed truth. In this most im- pressive way does Dante give us his definition of faith. It is the look of the soid toward divine truth ; it is that spiritual energy by which man commits himself to truth ; it is a look that trust- fully, without analysis, receives its object as a whole into the soul. Yet it is a look into the eyes of Beatrice, those eyes which typify the demonstrations of truth. Here again we come upon the thought that it was truth in its many manifestations which was dear to Dante's soul. If Christ was not supreme in his religious thinking, the fault was due to his temperament rather than to any mediaeval dogma. The faith of St. Francis had a different quality. When, struggling in his early days to enter the peace and joy of religion, he was praying in the Chapel of St. Damian, before the crucifix ; "little by little it seemed to him that his gaze could not detach itself from that of Jesus ; he felt some- thing marvelous taking place in and around him. The sacred victim took on life, and in the out- ward silence he was aware of a voice which softly stole into the very depths of his heart, 168 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE speaking to him an ineffable language. This vision marks the final triumph of Francis. His union with Christ is consummated ; from this time he can exclaim Avith the mystics of every age : ' My beloved is mine, and I am his.' " ^ Spurgeon's experience was similar : " I looked at Christ, and He looked at me, and we were one forever." That peculiarly fervent religious tem- perament Dante did not have. His mind rested in the truth, while his heart was satisfied with its personification in one whose memory was to him a religion. ^ Sabatier's St. Francis of Assisi, p. 55. IV THE ASTRONOMICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE POEM The idea of describing the development of the Christian life as an ascent from star to star was a sublime conception of artistic genius. Accord- ing to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy the earth was the centre of the universe, being encom- passed by a zone of air and that by a zone of fire. Beyond the sphere of fire were seven planets, each revolvinix within a heaven of its own. These seven encircling heavens were those of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Sa- turn ; above were the Fixed Stars ; then came a crystalline heaven, originating all movement and called the Primum Mobile ; and surrounding all was the Empyrean, — the place of eternal, un- changing peace. As the Catholic Church taught that there were seven virtues, Dante employed the seven planets to represent them. The prevalent belief that the earth cast a shadow on the first three planets enabled him to mark the distinction between the three theological and the four cardinal virtues. It is only vaguely hinted that the first three stars 170 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE typify faith, hope, and charity, since these virtues do not come to their full vigor except through moral discipline ; ^ but the last four clearly indi- cate the cardinal virtues prudence, fortitude, justice, temperance. Dante believed that the penitent having begun to live the blessed life by faith, hope, and love, which are necessarily imperfect, is trained by the moral virtues into robust character. After the perfected character, and resulting from it, comes a completed faith, hope, and love. Having done the will he can know the teaching ; therefore after ascending through these seven planets, in the eighth and ninth spheres Dante learns the loftiest truths revealed to the faithful. In the eighth he is taught the important truths of redemption, and in the ninth the celestial mysteries. Being now faultless in character and creed, the tenth heaven receives him into the ultimate blessedness. Thus the astronomical order proved a most serviceable framework for the poet's symbolism.^ ^ Many of the best authorities question whether the first three planets have any reference to the theological virtues. ^ I wish to acknowledg'e my indebtedness to Dante'' s Ten HeavenSy by Edmund G. Gardner, M. A., for valuable suggestions regarding the structure and significance of the Paradiso. TWO FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS The prevailing system of astronomy also en- abled one so adept in allegory to give singularly interesting expression to two most important truths. The three shadowed stars suggest that the shadow of earthly sins falls upon Heaven, in accordance with the immemorial faith of Christian thinkers that men are rewarded in the hereafter according to their fidelity here. This shadow of time upon eternity has no other influence, however, than to affect the capacity for bliss, since all dweUing in the celestial sphere are per- fectly happy. " Everywhere in Heaven is Para- dise, although the grace of the Supreme Good rains not there in one measure." ^ The four unshadowed planets he uses to teach that there are many ways by which men come to God, and that the conditions of the journey pro- foundly influence one's destmy. The warrior on the battlefield moves by as direct a road as the scholar in his study ; the just ruler is as sure of salvation as the wan hermit in his cell. In the 1 Par. iii. 88-90. 172 THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE Terrestrial Paradise four beautiful ones covered Dante with their arms and led him to Beatrice as she stood by the Griffon, saying : " Here we are nymphs ; in Heaven we are stars/' ^ symbolizing that the four cardinal virtues bring one into the presence of the truth as it is in Christ. The same teaching is here elaborated. The nymphs are now stars, typical of the virtues which must adorn him who would understand the redemptive and celestial mysteries to be revealed in the eighth and ninth heavens. The way to the ulti- mate beatitude is along this four-fold road, and the final felicity is shaped and colored by that virtue w^hich is most characteristic. Thus time again projects itself into eternity, and the condi- tion of one's mortal warfare affects his final destiny. Each of the four greater planets stands for one of the cardinal virtues : the Sun for pru- dence ; red Mars for fortitude ; the white Jupiter for spotless justice ; and Saturn, calm and cold, is typical of temperance or contemplation. The spirits appear in that planet by which they have been most influenced, and whose virtue has been most conspicuous in their lives. They do not dwell there, but have come down to meet Dante that they may instruct him. In the sun flame forth the spirits of the men of understanding and wisdom, the renowned scholars, and distinguished theologians, whose presence was apparent in ' Purg. xxxi. lOG. TWO FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS 173 that great orb by a lustre more brilliant than its own ; in Mars the brave warriors of the faith range themselves into a fiery cross, the symbol by which they conquered ; in Jupiter just rulers, moved by a concordant will, even as a single heat comes from many embers, form themselves into a colossal eagle, ensign of empire ; and in Saturn there shine in ineffable light the clear, radiant spirits of the contemplative, who mount to the Highest up the golden stairway of meditation. It was clearly in Dante's thought to teach that these four virtues differ in their worth, that when one passes from prudence to fortitude he comes nearer to God, and that the saint rapt in mystic contemplation of divine truth is closer to the ultimate joy than the just ruler upon his throne. This is in perfect harmony with the deep-seated conviction of the times, in this respect so unlike our own, that a cloistered life of ecstatic com- munion with God is holier than one spent in active benevolence. But this ascending series of virtues involves us in a perplexity. The light of Dante's mind, as Beatrice was the glory of his soul, was St. Thomas Aquinas. He is appropri- ately placed in the sun, the sphere of wisdom and truth, ranking thus below Cacciaguida in Mars, and William of Sicily and Rhipeus the Trojan in Jupiter. The most satisfactory explanation is that though justice is a nobler virtue than pru- dence and the just ruler walks in a diviner way 174 THE TI:ACHINGS OF DANTE than the profound scholar, yet there are different degrees of glory in the same realm, — and he who shines with the full brightness of the sphere of the sun may be nearer God, and more filled with the light eternal, than most of those who inhabit a hiofher circle. That there are various gradations of bliss in the same planet is declared by Piccarda when she says that Constance " glows with all the light of our sphere." The grand divisions mentioned are marked in the poem by the termination of the earth's shadow, — a long prologue also prefacing the ascent to the sun, — by the ladder of gold lead- ing to the eighth and ninth heavens, and by the essentially different character of the Empyrean. VI LIGHT, LIFE, TRUTH Not the least proof of Dante's extraordinary creative power is the simpHcity of the material which he uses in the construction of this immense spiritual edifice. Three leading ideas only he employs, light, life, and vision of truth. Hallam finds them to be light, music, and motion ; ^ but music occupies only a subordinate place, while the growing knowledge of truth is an organic thought. Motion is but another term for life, and by rapidity of movement Dante would sym- bolize abundant life. With rare artistic skill and spiritual discernment he chose his materials ; the religious life is the life with God, and God is light, life, and truth. No poet has been more keenly sensitive to \i