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Dante's Political Ideas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Barbara Barclay Carter
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Extract

Joachim De Flora, the Calabrian Abbot whom Dante places in Paradise as “one who possessed the spirit of prophecy,” had foreseen the year 1260 as the beginning of a new age. And there is asense in which we may consider him justified. History is a continuous process—Joachim himself made the fruitio of one age the preparatio of the next—but there are certain periods that give the impression of turning points.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 1943 , pp. 339 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1943

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References

1 If this and the following passages, and indeed others in the present article reproduce what I have already written on Dante's political conceptions in the Hibberi Journal some years ago, I must plead the excuse of the preacher who, having to give a yearly sermon on St. Joseph, ended by referring his hearers to his last year's utterance, saying that no fresh facts on the subject hadcome to light since he last addressed them.

2 Compare Plato's Timaeus: “God discovered and bestowed sight upon us in order that we might observe the orbits of reason which are in heaven, and make use of them for the revolution of thought in our own souls, which are akin to them, the troubled to the serene; and that learning them and acquiring natural truth of reasoning we might imitate the divine movements that are ever unerring and bring into order those things within us that are astray.”

3 Joachim de Flore et les Milieux Courlois, Paris, 1931Google Scholar.

4 Sacrum Imperium, Berlin and Munich, 1929Google Scholar.

5 Msgr. Tondelli communicated his discovery to a meeting of the Arcadia society, reported in the Osservatore Romano of January 31, 1937.

6 Notably the mysterious “Veltro” in the Divine Comedy, who was to drive the “wolf” back to Hell. In the Liber Fieurarum there is the figure of a Greyhound, overshadowed by the Dove of the Holy Spirit.

7 It is striking that Professor Valli interprets the Vila Nuova in much the same way while knowing nothing of Olivi or the light thrown by Joachimism on the whole problem.

8 The usual classification of him as a Ghibelline, even an embittered Ghibelline, is belied by his own words where, in the Heaven of Mercury, he says of the imperial eagle:

“Then let the Ghibellines pursue their schemes

with other banner; he serves unworthily

who separable it from justice deems.…”

9 Church and State, New York, 1940, p. 123Google Scholar.

10 Compare his indignant reference to the Pope's action in calling a Crusade against Christians (the Colonna who laid claim to papal territories) and his impassioned denunciation of the outrage suffered by Boniface at the hands of agents of the King of France:

“I see Anagni by the Lilies ta'en

and in His Vicar, Christ a prisoner.

I see Him there derided yet again.

I see the gall and vinegar as of old.

and twixt two living thieves He lieth slain.…”

(Pure. XX. 86–90)

11 A point brought out by Dr. G. P. Gooch in his recent book. Studies in Diplomacy and Statecraft, in the essay on “Politics and Morals,” where he concludes that “the only way to bridse the gulf between politics and mo-als al its deepest point is to organize the world as a whole.”

12 Letter of Fra llario, now recognised as authentic. When shaping my reconstruction of Dante's life in the form of a novel Ship Without Sails, it became clear to me that all objections to its authenticity disappeared if the journey to Pans of which it speaks were placed in 1314. instead of the date some vea's earlier to which it is usually assigned. The same conclusion has recenlv been reached by one of the leading Dante scholars in Italy.

13 The Christian theory of the Just War is admirably analysed in Don Sturzo's, book, The International Community and the Right of War (New York, 1930)Google Scholar.

14 It should be remembered that the Divine Comedy has a four-fold sense, literal, allegorical, moral and mystical. (See Dante's Letter to Can Grande).

15 Compare his Letter to the King of Enqland. “Since the cne God has willedthat all men, separate in kingdoms and provinces, should be subject to one prince so that for the glory of the divine order they should prosper in peace and concord, fortified in charity and faith. He in His wisdom and goodness willed that supreme authority, uncertain in the early centuries and passing from one people to another as these abandoned their Creator, should be conferred on the Romans, so that the place destined for the Apostolic See of the Pontificate should be also the supreme seat of the Empire, and from one and the same point shine forth the power of the Pontiff and the Emperor.… The supreme throne, vacant through the death of the second Frederick, is now again occupied, and, for the comfort of the world and in fulfillment of long cherished desire, the Roman Empire is now restored.

16 Cardinal Cerejeira, Allocution to the Clergy of Lisbon. See The Commonweal, February 5, 1943.

17 See Luigi Sturzo, Church ami State.