DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63447#0539
DANTE.
523
all, has never, since his own poem, been written again
with majesty as exalted and pathos as profound. There
are, however, far deeper and loftier topics treated in the
“Divina Commedia,” and these we have purposely reserved
to the last.
We have already alluded, in the former chapters on
Frederick II., to the great hold which free thought had
already made on the Italian nation even during his reign,
and to the many causes which brought this consequence
inevitably about. Not only the obvious and public ones
are to be studied, but others less known may be found in
the “ Histoire Critique ” of Vincent de Beauvais and
Brucker, vol. iii.
We have all before our eyes the naif painting in the
“ Belle Arti,” in Florence, of the “Doctors of the Church,”
and Averrhoes, and other “ heretics ” chained under the
feet of these grim authorities of the Christian dispensa-
tion. Such a painting happily expresses precisely mediaeval
opinions of “orthodoxy.”
Dante, who was afterwards censured in the same merci-
less manner by Borne for his honest denunciation of
moral crimes, was in no way superior to the level of his
day when “ heresy ” was in question ; and as this sub-
ject leads to varied research and to extensive ramifications,
we find, so long as eight hundred years ago, the germs
already in vigour of all the principles on which modern
society is based ; deformed indeed by a fiery and a fero-
cious intolerance (from which it is the boast and the privi-
lege of modern society to be free); but there is really very
little absolutely new in our days, either in facts or in pro-
gress of human intellect, with regard to the laws that
ought to govern man.
Dante himself was fully imbued with the most ardent
belief in the transcendental virtues of the Boman Church
(drawn from the Platonic doctrines and theories of the
Alexandrine school). His burning, glowing ideal of what
those virtues could effect (an ideal in no way too exalted,
could it ever have been realised, and if the attendant cor-
ruption of irresponsible power had not marred the lofty
523
all, has never, since his own poem, been written again
with majesty as exalted and pathos as profound. There
are, however, far deeper and loftier topics treated in the
“Divina Commedia,” and these we have purposely reserved
to the last.
We have already alluded, in the former chapters on
Frederick II., to the great hold which free thought had
already made on the Italian nation even during his reign,
and to the many causes which brought this consequence
inevitably about. Not only the obvious and public ones
are to be studied, but others less known may be found in
the “ Histoire Critique ” of Vincent de Beauvais and
Brucker, vol. iii.
We have all before our eyes the naif painting in the
“ Belle Arti,” in Florence, of the “Doctors of the Church,”
and Averrhoes, and other “ heretics ” chained under the
feet of these grim authorities of the Christian dispensa-
tion. Such a painting happily expresses precisely mediaeval
opinions of “orthodoxy.”
Dante, who was afterwards censured in the same merci-
less manner by Borne for his honest denunciation of
moral crimes, was in no way superior to the level of his
day when “ heresy ” was in question ; and as this sub-
ject leads to varied research and to extensive ramifications,
we find, so long as eight hundred years ago, the germs
already in vigour of all the principles on which modern
society is based ; deformed indeed by a fiery and a fero-
cious intolerance (from which it is the boast and the privi-
lege of modern society to be free); but there is really very
little absolutely new in our days, either in facts or in pro-
gress of human intellect, with regard to the laws that
ought to govern man.
Dante himself was fully imbued with the most ardent
belief in the transcendental virtues of the Boman Church
(drawn from the Platonic doctrines and theories of the
Alexandrine school). His burning, glowing ideal of what
those virtues could effect (an ideal in no way too exalted,
could it ever have been realised, and if the attendant cor-
ruption of irresponsible power had not marred the lofty