Dante now retired to Ravenna, whither | placed him in his Disputa on the Holy Sahe caused also his children to be brought. crament, between Thomas Aquinas and His daughter Beatrice retired to a con- Duns Scotus, and in his Parnassus, between vent. According to a notice, which is not, Virgil and Homer. however, sufficiently authenticated, he himself became a monk of the Franciscan order. In this city, and in the neighboring monasteries, he completed his great poem, and died on the day of the Holy Cross, the 14th September, 1321. The honor which his fellow-citizens denied to him while living, was now shown to him by strangers, when dead. His patron, Guido Novello da Polenta, the Lord of Ravenna, caused his corpse to be carried to the chief church by the most respected citizens of the city, and to be interred in a marble coffin in the church of the Minorites. Only lately (1830) has Florence compensated the injustice done to the greatest of her sons, by erecting to his memory in the church of Santa Croce, the pantheon of Italian geniuses, a costly monument, between those of Michael Angelo and Alfieri, with the inscription: Onorate l'altissimo poeta, (Honor the most exalted of poets.) Dante was of middle stature, somewhat bent in later years, yet full of dignity in his general appearance. His countenance, which has been preserved for the future world, by his friend the celebrated painter Giotto, is very characteristic: a noble poetical brow, a bold aquiline nose, a proudly prominent lower lip; conveying the expression of nobleness and earnestness, and of a contemplative and commanding disposition. One reads Eternity enstamped upon these features, and does not wonder that the women of Verona pointed at him, with the words: Eccovi l' uom oh' è stato all' inferno! (Behold the man that has been in Hell!) He was of a melancholy temperament. He lived buried in profound thought, and brooded over the past. Hence he appeared tiresome to spiritless and common-place minds. Prince Cangrande of Verona once asked him, why he could not entertain his court so well as a certain buffoon, who happened to be present. Dante replied, with sarcastic pride: Perche ciascuno ama il suo simile, (because every one loves his like.) His works, more especially his Divina Commedia, exhibit a rare union of the philosopher and the poet. Hence Raphael, with genial grasp, has The age of Dante presents to us the transition of the middle ages from the time of their highest glory over into the period which led the way to the reformation. That wonderful structure, the Romano-German Catholicism, had become complete in the thirteenth century. The papacy reached its consummation in the person of Innocent III., and then waved its bishop's crosier over all the lands and nations of Europe. Opposite to this stood the Germano-Roman empire as the greatest secular power, which was most vigorously upheld by the Hohenstauffen, and which, after repeated attempts at emancipation, was again compelled to lay down its crown at the feet of the Pope. The scholastic, by which we mean the church theology of the age, as resting upon the Aristotelian philosophy and Catholic tradition, had found in Thomas Aquinas its most genial and profound representative; and had sought to show that its doctrines were the absolute truth, even to the smallest particulars. At the side of this, in the way of supplement, stood the system of the Mystics; in which, with the neglect of dialectic thought and disputation, it was attempted to enter into communion with the original fountain of life, by a bold act of direct consciousness and love-inspired feeling; according to the maxim of Bernard of Clairvaux: Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Monkery had also reached its highest point, in the formation of those colossal monastic orders, the Franciscans, Dominicans, &c., which surrounded the moral life of the nations as with a net, and introduced the practical ideas of Catholicism into the poorest huts. In the same century were erected the most celebrated of those Gothic domes, which by a wonderful and profound symbolism represented the reconciliation of heaven and earth, and formed an image of the hierarchy itself. Finally, the greatest crusades were now accomplished, in which whole hosts of soldiers, peasants, princes, and prelates of the Occident, had, at the command of the successor of Peter, left their homes, families, trades, property, and possessions, devoting themselves to the greatest sacrifices and difficulties, not for the sake of worldly advantage, but to be enabled to weep, at the grave of their Redeemer, tears of repentance and gratitude, and to rescue it from the profane hands of the enemies of Christianity. Think as one may of this age, no impartial historian will venture to deny, that it bears the character of gigantic power and boldness, a devotion to the objective interests of the church almost without parallel in history, ruling as it did all the relations of life at the time. And such a wealth of romantic poetry lay in all these events, that one would have been astonished, had Providence not taken care to provide a master-hand to embody them in a worthy manner, in indelible lineaments for all ages. "The owl of Minerva," says a deep thinker, with reference to the relation of philosophy to life, which she represents, commences her flight with the first blush of dawn." The lyre of Apollo, we may add, sounds mellowest and clearest in the cool evening. So the singer of mediæval Catholicism made his appearance, not in the moment of its highest bloom and power, but when the dissolution of the gigantic edifice was visibly approaching, and was filling the friend of the Past with deep sadness, but at the same time calling him to gaze, full of hope, into a better Future. As the setting sun casts his loveliest and softest glance yet once more upon the tops of the mountains, or into the mirror of the ocean, to make his departure more heavily felt, and to waken more lively desire for his return, so the philosophy, theology, and religion of the middle ages, were reflected yet once more before their departure, in a poem fully worthy of its high subject. We have thus designated the historical stand-point from which we must proceed, if we would reach a proper understanding of the Divine Comedy. It is the swansong of the thirteenth century, and with it, of medieval Catholicism in the fullness of its world-power.* All the great ideas *Hence Carlyle's otherwise striking judgment must be corrected accordingly: "Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the thought they lived by, stands here in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian meditation of all good men who had gone before." of that time, whose vibration was still fek in the fourteenth century, collected themselves in this wonderful work, to receive their poetical consecration, and to represent a picture of human life under the character of Eternity. A thorough knowl edge of that age, especially of the scholastic theology and philosophy, is hence indispensably necessary for the full understanding of Dante. One may call him the poetical Thomas Aquinas, who was, so to speak, the Christian Aristotle, and the proper church theologian of the thirteenth century. We have thought proper to premise thus much before entering upon a consideration of the poem itself. We will now, in the first place, contemplate its external form, then seek to gain a clear conception of its contents and object, and lastly, examine its relation to Catholicism and Protestantism. as I. Dante himself, in accordance with the somewhat strange phraseology of the time, termed his poem a comedy,* partly on account of its contents, commencing it does in a sad strain, with the contem plation of Hell, and ending joyfully with Paradise; partly also on account of its form, because it is written in the common language of the country, (locutio vulgaris) Its additional name, The Divine," has been added by an admiring posterity, also with reference both to its form and contents. It is difficult to decide to what class of poetry it properly belongs. Ro senkranzt regards it as an allegorical poem. Generally, however, it is considered as belonging to epic poetry. Solger calls it a didactic epos. The materials are cer tainly not drawn from the subjective feelings as in lyric poetry, but are objective and historical. But on the other hand, this epic matter is not merely a single act or a series of events, but the whole worldhistory, so to speak; and then again, it is In his dedicatory letter to Cangrande della Scala, and again in the poem itself, Inf. xvi. 128, perle note di questa commedia ; xxi. 2, la mia commedia. +Manual of General History of Poetry, Halle, 1832, Part II. p 221. "This epos may be called a didactic one, ing much as it starts from a scientific, dogmatic standpoint. The most important, however, is the reve lation of the idea through the universe, whereby the poem on the whole becomes allegorical, while at the same time it has quite a mystical character. inasmuch as the symbol coincides altogether with the allegory." (Lectures on Esthetics, Leipsig, 1829, p. 293. not merely poetically related and described, | to reach an even measure, or to make use as, for example, in the Iliad of Homer or the Jerusalemme Liberata of Tasso, or the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, but serves everywhere as a foundation only for philosophical and theological ideas, which are veiled under the form of profound allegory, and at the same time are difficult to be understood. It is perhaps best then to term it an allegorical, philosophical epos of world and church history. ers. of a certain economy in the form, we may mention the circumstance that each of the three parts closes with the word "stelle," or stars; for these are, according to him, the blessed abodes of peace, whither his view is ever directed, and to which he would also gladly draw with him his readIt is with still deeper meaning that he always makes the name of Christ to rhyme only with itself, using it of course for this purpose three times* in every case. The reason of this cannot be that the Italian language affords no rhymes to the word Christo. Such are numerous, as acquisto, misto, visto, &c. It is his intention rather to indicate the matchlessness and singleness of this name, which is exalted above all names, and beside which there is no name given whereby men can saved. It is remarkable also that Christ does not come forward at all in Hell under this name, (for the damned cannot endure it,) but is only distantly indicated. language of the poem is everywhere made to correspond with the character of the thoughts: in Hell it is awfully earnest; in Purgatory affectingly pensive; in Paradise transportingly charming; always full of images, and graphic, powerful, and melodious, simple and noble, chaste and worthy of the subject, solemn and elevated. The Dante was the creator of Italian poetry, as Boccaccio of Italian prose. The whole poem consists of three parts -Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.) Each of these parts consists again of nine subdivisions and thirty-three songs or cantos. Hell, however, is prefaced by a canto as a general introduction to the whole, so that the poem consists altogether of one hundred cantos and 14,230 verses. The system of versification chosen by Dante for the expression of his thoughts was the Terza Rima, which combines the character of earnestness and solemnity with that of gracefulness and musical fullness, and is admirably adapted to the contents of the poem. Each terza rima is composed of thirty-three syllables. Everywhere then we meet with the number three. It is the symbolic number of Divinity. The whole Paradise is full of the praise of the Triune. The superscription of Hell, consisting of three verses, - (Canto iii. 1-9,) reminds us already of him with fearful earnestness, and the whole poem closes in the 33d Canto of Paradise, with seeing him face to face. Even with Aristotle everything consists of beginning, middle, and end. According to Thomas Aquinas and Dante, this fundamental idea of Christianity pervades the whole constitution of the world. The name of the Holy Trinity is written upon creation and stamped upon eternity. Our poet even represents Satan with three faces, as the terrible antitype of the Triune God. The fact that the whole consists of one hundred songs has reference to the perfection of the work, which the poet would wish to have considered complete in itself, as a true picture or copy of the harmonious universe. The number ten is the symbol of perfection numero perfetto, as Dante himself designates it in his Vita Nuova-and its square, one hundred, (numero perfettissimo,) designates absolute perfection or completion. To show how strictly he made it his objecte II. This interesting form now is but the body of still more interesting contents—the silver shell of a golden fruit. The poet chose the highest and most comprehensive theme for his poem, even eternity itself with its three domains. He exhibits to us the world as it exists there, with its doings and sufferings; the bad damned by Divine Justice, the good made happy by Divine Love. In the full consciousness of his poetical power, he ventures to assign his cotemporaries, and the mighty dead of past centuries, according to their moral worth, a place in one of the three divisions in which, according to the Catholic faith, men must take up their abode hereafter, and thus undertakes to *For ex. Paradiso xiv. 104, 103, 108; xix. 104, 106, 108; xxxii. 83, 85, 87. survey the course of the great judgment of | tarry longest in Hell, because this part of the world. In doing this he does not per- the poem has generally been considered mit himself to be influenced by any sub- the best. jective feelings or personal considerations, but by his conception of Divine Justice alone. Thus, with incorruptible severity, in the fifth Canto of the Inferno, he assigns a place in Hell to the beautiful Francesca of Rimini, who had been guilty of adultery with her brother-in-law, Paolo Malatesta, although he was under great obligations to her friends, and especially her nephew, in whose house he breathed his last. Resolute belief had not yet come to be confounded with the idea of uncharitable bigotry. In the case of an ordinary mind, the mere thought of such an undertaking would have been considered ridiculous impudence. In a spirit like that of Dante, it is the evidence of a great and noble boldness of genius. The successful execution of the idea proves that Dante had an internal call to such a work, that he acted under a commission from the spirit of history and the Church. In this great picture we meet with the most distinguished personages that flourished before and during the time of Dante, famous either for their vices or their virtues, and who were thus a blessing or a curse to humanity. He leads us in succession by poets and learned men, heroes and conquerors, princes and kings, monks and priests, prelates and popes, as by so many statues of brass; illumines them by the glance of his fancy and the doctrine of the Church; exhibits to us the irreversible result of their life upon earth as the just doom of God; and fills us with horror in view of the sins and punishments of the inhabitants of Hell, with tender sympathy for the penitent in Purgatory, and with an earnest and holy longing for the bliss of the pure and blessed in Paradise. We may say indeed that a grander theme never entered into the imagination of a poet. But it well suited the character of his age, which, in all its strivings, aimed at the infinite. As little able as our age would be to create the conception of a dome like that of Cologne, or a cathedral like that of Strasburg, so little could it give birth to a "Divina Commedia." Let us follow the daring poet on the journey which, in spirit and in a vision, he made through the other world. We will Two He commenced his journey in the year 1300, at the dawn of a new century, in the middle of his life, that is, in his thir ty-fifth year; for in Psalm xc. 10, the extent of human life is said to be threescore years and ten. The day was Good Friday, the day of the death of our Lord. days he spent in Hell, precisely as long as Christ remained in spirit in the lower world, according to Thomas Aquinas, who for this purpose combined the two passages, Luke xxiii. 43 and 1 Pet. ii. 19. He needs one day to pass from Hell to Purgatory. On Easter morning he again rises to the light, in four days of toiling ascends the mountain of Purgatory, and flies through Paradise in one day. The duration of the whole journey then is eight days, which Dante, by a significant fiction, has distributed into the week of our Lord's passion and resurrection. The poet transports us first into gloomy forest, which is to represent the human heart as lying in sin and error, and at the same time the condition of the world in the age of Dante. With the dawn of day he reaches its end, and seeks now to ascend a mountain illumined by the sun, the symbol of divine revelation, but in vain. for he is confronted and driven back by three animals, a deceitful leopard, a haughty lion, and a ravenous wolf. These are intended to represent three sins, which, besides being actualized in every human heart, were also prominently displayed in the chief powers of that age; namely, Cunning, which had its seat then especial ly in Florence, Violence, which was then threatening the Church from the direction of France, from Philip IV., and Avarice, which had its seat in Rome, in the worldly-minded and domineering popes, such as Boniface VIII. According to this, the allegory has not only a moral but also a historical sense.§ Just as the poet is about * Inf. i. 1. † Inf. xxi. 112. The subject of the determination of the dates of the poem has been fully investigated by Kannegieser, in his German translation of the Divina Commedia, Vol. I. p. lviii. Doubtless he had in mind here the passage in Jeremiah v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evening shad spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities" § Dante himself distinguishes between the literal turning back again into the gloomy forest, | resting place for his feet. Hence, with all the singer of the Eneid, sent by Beatrice, suddenly appears to him, predicts, under the form of a grayhound, a reformer in the Church, and invites him to make a journey through Eternity in his company. He himself would attend him through Hell and Purgatory, in order to view in the first the terrible consequences of sin, and in the second the voluntary sufferings of those who desired to escape the wrath of God and to be saved. Through Paradise he should be conducted by a worthier spirit, Beatrice herself. Dante determines to undertake the journey, under the guidance of his honored master Virgil. Passing through a portal, over which the meaning of Hell and the doom of its inhabitants is inscribed in fearfully sublime characters, they reach the domain of Hell itself. This, according to Dante, is situated in the centre of the earth. In this respect he followed the view of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the prevailing conceptions of his Church, which probably arose from taking in its literal sense the article of the Apostolic Creed, descendit ad inferos. Besides, he could not well devise any other locality for Hell, since he held the Ptolemaic view of the world, that the earth formed the centre of the universe, and that all the bodies by which it was surrounded belonged to one of the different heavenly regions. In like nanner he gives Purgatory and Paradise lso a definite locality, as we shall see hereafter. This is plainly in much better ccordance with the nature of poetry, vhich should always give us concrete iews, than the method chosen by Milton, vho removes his spiritual scenes into an ndefined and abstract infinitude, in which he fancy speedily tires, like a bird on the cean, that, wearied by his flight, finds no nd spiritual sense of his poem, and divides this atter again into an allegorical one, (in a narrower ense of the term,) which has reference to Faith, moral one, which has reference to Love or Chrisin Action, and an anagogical one, which has rerence to Hope. Littera gesta refert, quid credas, allegoria The fact that the poem is intended to convey so any different meanings makes it difficult to be derstood, and injures its simplicity and naturalss, but is in accordance with the spirit of that ge, and especially its theology. the undeniable sublimity, the tiresomeness also of the poetry of Milton and Klopstock, whom few even of their most enthusiastic admirerssucceed in reading through; while Dante keeps the fancy constantly enchained in a lively interest by the fixed and clearly defined outline of his figures. As The shape of Hell is that of a vast funnel, constantly narrowing, its apex standing exactly in the central point of the earth. The inside of this funnel, or inverted cone, consists of different circular terraces, which, with the increasing depth, also grow narrower and narrower. These terraces are occupied by sinners, according to the grade of their wickedness; the lowest place of all, the apex of the funnel, being assigned to the Devil. This form of Hell corresponds with the nature aud progress of sin, which consists in ever narrowing and contracting selfishness. the number of slight and ordinary sinners is larger than that of great transgressors, the upper circles are broader and more densely crowded. It is also very expressive, that over these regions of Hell there reigns a constant darkness,* growing denser with the depth. Still, a faint gleam of light overspreads the gloomy terraces; and the lower portions are illumined by the unquenchable fire, but only to increase the horror of the damned, by rendering their misery mutually visible. Thomas Aquinas also permits the inhabitants of Hell to see their misery sub quadam umbrositate. In consequence of the deep meaning of the number three, reaching as it does even to the lower world, Dante divides Hell into three regions, each one comprising three of the before-mentioned circular terraces, so that it consists on the whole of nine circles; to which must be added also a preliminary circle, the vestibule of Hell. The different regions are separated * See Matt. viii. 12. + Comp. Mark ix. 44, Matt. iii. 12. A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, PAR LOST, Book I. v. 61. et seq. |