The Divine Comedy Part 8

The Divine Comedy Part - 8 
Of necessity: a conclusion.
Peter James and John and Dante's profession of faith and Saint Bernard and Dante's Amen.


"You have heard, O Virgin, that you will conceive and bear a son; you have heard that it will not be by man but by the Holy Spirit. The Angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us

"The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. In the eternal Word of God we all came to be, and behold, we die. In your brief response we are to be remade in order to be recalled to live. . "

These are not Dante's words, nor do they appear in The Divine Comedy. Instead, they are a quotation from Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), who was reflecting on what was, and is, the most profound and dramatic moment in human history: the salvation history of those who shared, and share, Dante's particular faith, or are otherwise committed to Christ. And they are here, because Saint Bernard, unannounced, makes his appearance in the final three cantos of the Comedy, and who, as a devotee of the Virgin Mother of God, prepares Dante for the fulfillment of his ambition of perfect union with God in the beatific vision.

Now my reason for focusing on Dante's profession of faith and Saint Bernard, rather than on other possible themes, is simple enough.I am avoiding the esoteric, and in the context of Dante the pilgrim, focusing instead on the Christian life as most of us would understand it. And this approach, to some extent, is in keeping with Dante's own objective, which was, that The Divine Comedy should reach as wide an audience as possible; hence its composition in Italian rather than Latin, and his observation to the effect that, even women are capable of thought. And in taking this approach there is something else that needs to be born in mind, something that Dorothy L Sayers acknowledged in her Introduction to Hell in 1949. Not only that we can no longer assume that people are as familiar with the classics as they once were, but with the Bible also. And it is on that principle, that I am going in to some detail about the lives of Peter, James and John as portrayed in the Gospels.

Peter, James and John and their special relationship to Christ.  
Now it helps if we know that in relation to Christ, Peter, James and John occupied a special place. Not only were they chosen at the same time to follow him, but during his ministry, they were chosen to be witness to key events, from which the rest of the disciples were excluded. And though all three were witnesses to these events, there are moments in the Gospels, (prior to the crucifixion of Christ), when it is apparent, that Peter was, in some way, set apart from the rest.

Peter 
Without doubt, the most sacred of these moments in respect of Peter's unique position, was when Jesus asked his disciple the question: "Who do men say that I am?" To which they replied that some said he was John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets. At that, and bringing them to a particular moment of truth, Jesus had a yet more pertinent question, one that they could not avoid. It was: "Who do you say that I am?" And it was Peter who answered: "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God." And what made this moment sacred, was Jesus' response: "Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah!" [Peter's original name] For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in Heaven." Or put another way, Jesus lets it be known that Peter's understanding that He was the Messiah, was not something that he could have known by himself, But that it was a truth revealed to him by God. A point he reinforced with a foretelling of Peter's future, that (because the time was not right), neither Peter nor the other disciples understood. "you are Peter," [rock] he told him, "and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." After which, they were told: :"not to tell anyone that he [Christ] was the Messiah." (Matthew 16:13-20)

But before Peter could assume this new responsibility, something else had to happen, and it came after Christ had risen from the dead, [Easter Sunday] when he gave Peter a threefold opportunity to retract his denial. Three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, and when he was asked for the third time, Peter becomes agitated, and exclaimed: "Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you!" In the words, "you know everything", Peter was acknowledging that before Christ his soul was laid bare, to the point that, with nowhere to hide, he could not but relive, and feel again, the pain of his denial, hence his anguish. For the point of the repeated questioning, wasn't, so that Peter could tell Christ what he knew already, but that Peter would be well prepared, by knowing, and accepting, the truth about himself, and about the nature of forgiveness, before Christ would entrust him with the care of his Church. (John 21: 15-19)

And among the shared experiences, were these:

The raising of Talitha from the dead.
When one of the leaders of the synagogue Ja-i'rus came to Jesus and on his knees begged him to come to the aid of his daughter who was dying, Jesus set out for his house; but was delayed, not just by the crowd that were following him, but by the woman, who, desperate to be healed of a haemorrhage had touched the hem of his garment and was cured. Having stopped to reassure her, and praise her for her "faith", by the time Jesus got to the house the child was dead, and the assembled mourners, weeping and wailing..And when Jesus asked why they were making such a commotion, and they laughed at him, because he told them: "the child is not dead but sleeping", we are told that he put them out of the house, and having reassured Tal'i-tha's parents and encouraged them to "believe" [have faith], he only allowed Peter, James and John from among his disciples, to accompany them to the room where the child lay, so as to witness his raising her from the dead. An experience that he "ordered" them not to speak of. (Mark. 5: 21-43)  

The transfiguration
Another such experience came with the transfiguration: that occasion when Jesus took Peter James and John onto a high mountain "by themselves" where he was transfigured before them, so that his face, "shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white." after which, the Old Testament prophets, Moses and Elijah "appeared to them." and "a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said;"This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased, listen to him."" In his account of this event, Matthew tells us that the disciples were overcome with fear and fell to the ground; but that Jesus, touching them, told them not to be afraid; and, that "when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone." And yet again they were told, not to tell anyone of this vision "until after the Son of Man [Christ] has been raised from the dead." (Matthew 17: 1-9)

Jesus prays in Gethsemane before his betrayal and arrest 
Having celebrated the feast of the Passover, (popularly known as, The Last Supper), and with Judas Iscariot having left to betray him, for thirty pieces of silver, Jesus went with his disciples to pray in Gethsemane. And having instructed his disciples to wait at a particular spot, we are told that he took Peter, James and John with him further into the garden, where, telling them that he was "deeply grieved" at the prospect of his betrayal and death, he asked them to keep watch with him while he prayed. Three times he prayed, prayers of anguish, but always of submission to the will of his Heavenly Father. And three times he returned, only to find the chosen three, sleeping. [Perhaps, and in sensing that something dramatic was about to happen, depressed ?] (Matthew 20: 36-40)
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Now in all of this it is easy to see why Peter would question Dante on Faith, a little less clear as to why James was chosen for Hope, except that Beatrice lets it be known, on two accounts, in Canto XXV (25). First, when the "light" that was James, joined Peter, she exclaimed:

17                  "Look now, look, there is the master
      For whose sake there are pilgrims in Galacia

St James is the patron saint of Spain, and the reference to Galacia relates to his shrine at Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. Since the ninth century it has been a place of pilgrimage, and therefore of hope. It is believed that he preached in Galacia, and that his body was returned there, after he was martyred at Jerusalem. And the second reason given by Beatrice, is the one that we have been considering, the fact that James was one of "the three", to whom Jesus had shown: "more kindness" than to the rest. (l.33)
   
As for John, I am not aware that he ever put a foot wrong. Not only that, but there was speculation that Jesus had foretold that he would not die; an idea that John himself refutes in the final paragraph of his Gospel.. (John 21:20_23).But, in the context of love, what we know is, that John was described as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." And that from the cross, he entrusted to him, the care of his mother; and told Mary to regard John as her son. (John 19:25-27). Sentiments that Beatrice captures with eloquence at the point when the "light" that was the soul of John, appeared;

112   "That is he who lay upon the breast
         Of our pelican in the wilderness, and he
         Who was chosen, from the cross, for the great office."    
_________

Now when Dante meets Saint Peter in the Eighth Heaven of the Fixed Stars, he appears as a light brighter than the rest, and he symbolically circles Beatrice three times; after which, Beatrice invites him to test Dante as to his Faith. The first question that Peter puts to him is direct and to the point: "What is faith?" to which Dante replies, by drawing Saint Peter's attention to his own second Epistle in which he referenced St Paul; before, in his reply, echoing the words of St Paul in his letter to the Hebrews (II:1)

64   Faith is the substance of things hoped for
      And the argument for what is not seen;
      And that seems to me the quality of it."

Now as the examination progresses, and as we would expect, the questions become more expansive, so that even when Dante has identified scripture, (the work of the Holy Spirit) as the pure "coin" of his belief; Saint Peter, seeking like a good examiner to widen his students horizons, presses him to explain how he can know, that the scriptures are authentic. And taking the hint, Dante focuses on the evidence as it is to be found in the world:

100   And I: "The proof which reveals the truth to me
        Is in the works which followed, for which nature
        Did not heat the iron or strike the anvil."

103   The reply I was given was: "Tell me, who assured you
        That those works took place? The same scripture
        That is to be proved, and no other swears to it."
    :  
106   "If the world turned to Christianity,"
        I said "without miracles, it is itself so much
        A miracle, that the others are nothing to it,

109   That you came in poverty and hunger,
        On to the field, to sow the good plant
        Which was a vine and has become a thorn"

                                      (Paradiso XXIV (24)

Now mirrored in these exchanges, are the Gospel of Matthews, and Saint Augustine's, City of God. Saint Matthew reminds us that when Jesus first sent out his apostles to preach and teach, they were told to travel as poor men, taking neither gold, silver, copper, nor a purse, but instead to rely on the hospitality of of others. An injunction, that as Dante sees it, has become a burden: "a thorn" in the Church. And Saint Augustine, (lines.106-08), gives a particular context to the absence of miracles, ("without miracles") which, paradoxically, for Dante, was a miracle, as it was for Saint Augustine. For Augustine, the authenticity of the Church's message is apparent in its success, from the humblest of beginnings:

“There were just a few men, the merest handful, untrained in the liberal arts, completely uneducated, as far as pagan philosophy is concerned, with no knowledge of literature, no equipment in logic, no trappings of rhetoric. And Christ sent them out as fishermen with the nets of faith into the sea of the world, and in this way he caught all those fish of every kind, including – more wonderful, because rarer – even some of the philosophers themselves. And so if you please, (or rather because you ought to be pleased), let us add a third incredulity to the others.

"Here then we have those incrediblities; and yet they happened. It is incredible that Christ rose in the flesh and with the flesh ascended into heaven. It is incredible that the world believed so incredible an event; and it is incredible that men of no birth, no standing, no learning, and so few of them, should have been able to persuade, so effectively, the whole world, including the learned men . . . “

    
                                        (City of God  Book XXVI (26) Chapter 5) 

In the end, and with the heavenly choir singing the Te Deum, a hymn of praise from the fourth century, Dante is required by to Saint Peter to state the details of what it is that he believes, so that the examination concludes with him making a declaration of his beliefs, based on the propositions of the Nicene Creed:

130 And I replied: "I believe in one God,                    [Nicene creed
      Sole and eternal, who moves all the heavens    [Aristotle
      With love and desire, and is himself unmoved.

133 And for this belief I have not only proofs,           [Aquinas

      Physical and metaphysical, but there is given me

      Also the truth which is poured down on us

136 Through Moses, through the prophets and the psalms,

      Through the Evangelists and you who wrote   [St Peter 

      When the burning spirit had made you divine.

139 And I believe in three eternal persons, and these   [the Trinity

      I believe one essence, unity and trinity,

      So that singular and plural are combined.

142 This mystery of the divine nature                    [Matt 25:19.2

      I now speak of, is stamped in my mind            [2 Cor 13.14

      More than once by the doctrine of the gospel.  [John 5.7 

145 This is the beginning that is the spark

      Which spreads out into a living flame

      And sparkles like a star in heaven."

                          (Paradiso XXIV (24) 130-144)

And Dante knows that he has passed the test, when Saint Peter, symbolically circles him three times, as he had Beatrice at the outset.
__________

Now in the telling, the story of Dante's examination by James, follows a similar pattern. It begins with a preamble, in which Dante reinforcing the point that his poem is divinely inspired, expresses the hope that he will return to Florence, to the place where he was baptised, to be acclaimed as a poet. A hope that was not to be realized: And at the point where he is about to be examined, (and with his eyes cast down), Beatrice, sensing his vulnerability, takes the initiative and speaks on his behalf. And in replying to the questions put to him, Dante, (as any wise student would do), never fails to quote from his examiners own works: And here too, as evidence that the session is drawing to a successful conclusion, a voice is heard singing Sperent in te "they will trust in thee" after which, the rest of the heavenly choir join in the singing of Psalm 9.

In describing hope, Dante references Peter Lombard, (1095-1160), a theologian and bishop whom we first encounter along with other luminaries in the sphere of the Sun; referencing his popular text-book Sentences:

67 I said:”Hope is a certain expectation

    Of future glory, and it is the product

    Of divine grace and of precedent merits.

But there are many sources, or "stars" , for his hope, he tells him, including the psalms, in particular the 9th psalm of David, which he quotes, and which as we saw above, the heavenly choir eventually intone. And as James has never spoken of hope, Dante (the student), as it were, pulls off a masterful stroke, by referencing his brother (John), when James invites him to say what it is that hope promises him; which in effect is redemption, and union with God in eternal life:

91 Isaiah says that every soul shall be

     Dressed in a double garment, in his own land;

     And “his own land” is the delightful life.

94 And your brother makes his revelation to us

     With more particularity, when he talks

    Of those who are clothed with white robes.”

_________

Now among the serious stuff, it would be quite easy to be too po-faced when reading Dante, which was why, when reading Dorothy L Sayers Introduction to Hell, I was pleased to see that one of the qualities that she attributes to the The Divine Comedy, is humour. For it had occurred to me that humour had survived in the translation. For as I pointed out, it seemed that there was humour in the encounter between Lucy and Beatrice, when Lucy was sent to alert Beatrice to the state of Dante's soul. And it is present in these cantos, XXIV-XXVI (24-26) in a subtle way, for there is a worldliness in the way that Dante portrays the relationship between the student and his teacher, which in effect, is what is going on. So when Dante meets John, it is no surprise that things go awry  that he is distracted by things other than the task in hand, and as a consequence is punished. though not to the point of failing the exam. So intent is he, in trying to penetrate the "light" that is John, to see if it is true that he has his mortal body in heaven, that he is admonished by John, and his sight temporarily impaired.

In his replies to John, Dante acknowledges love as being the very essence of what God is. He is the alpha and omega of all the knowledge that he has acquired of love, from whatever source. And when, as was the case with James, John steers him away from a too narrow response, and asks him what else there is that is drawing him to God, Dante tells him that his love is sustained, not just by the fact of his existence, or by the beauty and goodness that he finds in nature, but what is drawing him above all else to Love, is the crucifixion of Christ. Or as Dante puts it, His willingness to die, so that he might live. And here too, Dante doesn't fail, (from a worldly point of view) to flatter his examiner:

43 It is made plain by you also, at the beginning

    Of the great proclamation which cries on earth

    The secret of the place above all other edicts.”

The "you also" alludes to the well known opening passage in John's Gospel, which taken in its entirety traces the origin of Christianity from the creation, the prophets of the Old Testament, through to the advent of John the Baptist, who foretells of the imminent arrival of the Messiah through to Christ's crucifixion, death, and resurrection from the dead. And with the clear inference that as God is the giver of all things, divine love, is omnipresent.

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Now in the Empyrean, when Bernard makes his appearance it is unexpected. For when Dante, gazing in awe at how heaven is arranged, turns to Beatrice, he finds instead, "an old man". And though as yet he has no idea who he is, he knows what he represents::

61   In his eyes and over his cheeks there was

      An air of benign happiness, and his manner

      Was what you might see in a tender father.

64   “And where is she?” I said suddenly.

       He answered: “It was for your final satisfaction

      That Beatrice asked me to leave my place;

67   And if you look up in the third circle

       Below the highest, you will see her again,

       On the throne for which her merits destined her.”

As The Divine Comedy draws to a close, these are dramatic moment, moments when the tercets should be allowed to speak for themselves. In the first instance, to tell of Dante's invocation to Beatrice now that she has gone; and secondly, so as to see, how and why, Bernard was moved to disclose his identity:

79   “O lady in whom my hope always springs,

      And who for my salvation have submitted

      To leave the print of your face in Hell,

82   By all the many things that I have seen,

      I recognize the grace and capacity

      There is in your power and your goodness.

85   You have brought me from servitude

      To liberty, through all those ways and means

      Which you had in your power to use.

88   Continue your munificence to me

      So that my soul, which you have made whole,

      May please you when it is untied from my body.”

   
                          (Paradiso. Canto XXXI (31))

__________

94   And the holy man said: “So that you may

      Perfectly finish the path on which you are set            [The vision of God]

      -The end for which prayer and holy love have sent me here-

97   Let your eyes wander over this garden;

      For seeing it will make your sight more fit

      To climb at last through the divine ray.

100 And the queen of heaven, for whom I am completely          [Mary}

      Consumed with love, will grant the grace we need

      Because I am her faithful Bernard.”

With that, Bernard encourages Dante to cast his eyes over what he sees, "this garden", as a prelude and preparation for experiencing the beatific vision [vision of God]. The garden that is Empyrean is laid out as a magnificent rose, in which all who dwell in the presence of God are systematically arrayed. An idea analogous to the great cathedral rose windows. And the penultimate canto is taken up with Bernard, the great teacher, explaining to Dante, (as their eyes descend through the layers of the rose), who is who and why, in accordance with the divine plan, things are arranged as they are. Or as Higgins puts it:

"Saint Bernard identifies for Dante the elect from those born before and after Christ who, redeemed, are seated in glory in the rose-shaped court of the Empyrean, true Paradise, and explains to him the presence there of unbaptised children."

And as previously, n The Divine Comedy Bernard is keen to impress upon Dante, the justice in the divine plan:

52   Within the length and breadth of this kingdom
      There is no such thing as a place left to chance,
      Any more than there is sadness or thirst or hunger;

55   For whatever you see has been established
      By eternal law, so that everything fits
      As closely as  the ring does to the finger.

                                   (Paradiso Canto XXXII (32))

And as this canto ends with Bernard inviting Dante to join with him in preparing for the beatific vision, so the final canto opens with Saint Bernard's prayer to the Virgin Mary, that she might act as an intermediary before God, so that Dante might not only cope with the beatific vision, but be able to tell of it when he returns to earth. A prayer that has been described by one commentator as perhaps the greatest ever prayer composed to the Virgin Mary:

      "Virgin Mother, daughter of your son,
      Humbled and exalted beyond any other creature,
      The settled end of the eternal plan,

 4   You are she who made human nature
      So noble, that the maker of it himself
      Did not scorn to have himself made by it.

 7   In your womb was lit again the love
      By whose warmth, in the eternal peace
      This flower has germinated as it is.

 10  For us here you are a midday blaze
      Of love; and down there, among mortals,
      You are the ever-living sporing of hope.

13   Lady, you are so great, and have such power,
      That whoever seeks grace without recourse to you
      Is like someone wanting to fly without wings.

16   You are so benign that you not only help
      Whoever asks you but, very often,
      Spontaneously give before the prayer is made.

19   In you there is mercy, in you there is pity,
      In you magnificence, in you there is
      Whatever goodness there ever was in creatures.

22   Now this man who from the lowest sink        
       Of the universe has seen one by one
       How spirits live, from there to this point,

25  Implore you, of your grace, that he be given
      Enough grace for him to lift his eyes
      Higher towards the ultimate beatitude.

28   And I, who never burned more for my own vision
      Than I do for his, I offer all my prayers,
      And pray that they may not be insufficient;

31   That you may disencumber him of all
      Clouds of mortality, with your own prayers,
      So that the supreme pleasure may unfold.

34   Alas I pray you, queen, who can do anything
      You choose to do: after this great vision
      Enable him to keep his affections sane.

37   May your protection extinguish human impulses:
      See Beatrice, with how many of the blessed,
      Putting her hands together for my prayer."
           :   

                                       (Paradiso Canto XXXIII (33))

And Dante's immediate response:

46   An I, who was drawing near the end
       Of all desires, felt as I must do
       The ardour of desire in me finished.

49   Bernard indicated that I might look up,
      And smiled at me, but I was already
      Of my own motion as he would have me be;

52   For my sight, becoming clarified,
      entered deeper and deeper through the ray
      Of that profound light which is true in itself.

55   From that moment what I saw was greater
      Than our language, which fails at such a prospect,
      As memory fails at something so out of the way.

58   As someone who sees something in his sleep
      And after his dream has only an impression
      Of what he felt, and can recall nothing else,

61   So am I, for my vision has almost gone,
      And yet into my heart still, drop by drop,
      Flows the sweetness which was born of it.

64   So the snow looses its shape in the sun;
      So was it that the oracles of the Sibyl,
      On the light leaves, were lost in the wind.

67   O supreme light who rise far above
      Mortal notions, lend my memory
      A little of what then appeared to me,

70   And give my tongue all the power it needs
      So that a single spark of your glory
      May be transmitted to people in the future;

73   For, if something of it comes back to my mind
      And sounds a little in these verses of mine,
      Your triumph will more easily be conceived.

A highly charged and profound response that is crystallized in these three lines:

94   A single moment cost me more forgetfulness
      Than twenty-five centuries have the enterprise
      Which made Neptune marvel at the at the sight of Argo.

From here Dante goes on to describe as best he can, his vision of the Trinity, which he likens to three circles of equal circumference but coloured differently, and with the light fusing between them. And at this point, not only does his speech fail when it comes to describing what he saw, but so too does his mind, as he attempts to contemplate the Trinity, this great mystery of faith. But in truth, and bearing in mind that he is still a mortal, his mission has been accomplished: At the point at which his "high imagination failed", his "desire" and his "will" were at last synchronized with the divine will, so that they:

       Were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed

145  By the love which moves the sun and the other stars..
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AFTERWORD 
Dante's spiritual experience:
In reading Dante we have been delving into the past; but as Dante knew full well, the Church to which he belonged, (warts and all), is destined to continue until the end of time. And here we are today, (war
ts and all), still engaged in the unending struggle between good and evil, between sin and redemption. A struggle that is an inescapable part of the life of the Church, as well as between the church and the secular world: hence the crucifixion and death of Christ.

That said, and as Dante repeatedly asserts that his poem was Divinely inspired, and that he had a spiritual experience in some way comparable to that of Saint Paul, in my reading of The Divine Comedy, and in preparing these blogs, I have treated that claim as a fiction. The fact that Dante makes the claim, is not proof that it is true. And even it it were true, it would be a private revelation that is not in any way comparable to that of Saint Paul, who, as an orthodox Jew, was persecuting the first Christians, when he was spectacularly converted to Christ on the road to Damascus, and whose writing as an evangelist, including his conversion and mystical experiences, are part of the body of Scripture.

Now the fact that I have treated Dante's claims as a fiction, as I see it, does not diminish The Divine Comedy, because its worth does not depend on Dante's claims being true. If we accept that Dante was a man of faith, who, as he represents himself, at one point had strayed from the right path, but was now concerned not just about the state of his own soul, but of the Church, and society also, it would not have been beyond the wit of Dante, when dealing with the subject, to claims to have had an experience comparable to Saint Paul, as a headline grabbing strategy: as a way of getting noticed or having people pay attention to what he has to say. Or more relevant, it being self-evident to him that while in his poetic endeavour his imagination might be capable of constructing images of Hell and Purgatory, it would not be capable of describing the supernatural: what it is to be in the presence of God.So for me, the only way to read The Divine Comedy, is as fiction, even if, as I do, in a broad sense, I accept its spiritual values as "truth".

Some thoughts on the Virgin Mary: in The Divine Comedy

And a last point if I may. I have left almost everything unsaid in respect of those tercets quoted from the final canto, in part, fearing that the blog might never end. But also, because I am happy to leave you the reader with some work to do. But I have some sympathy for those who are not of the Christian faith, or who have no religious faith at all. So in the context of bringing The Divine Comedy into the present, and making things a little clearer, I am going to quote a passage from The Joy of the Gospel, by Pope Francis, because it might help in providing an easier sense of the significance of the prayer of Saint Bernard; a prayer that for the Catholic in particular, is packed with meaning. It is from that part of the document where Pope Francis is reflecting on the present and possible future roles for women in the Church:

"104.   The ministerial priesthood is one means employed by Jesus for the service of his people, yet our great dignity derives from baptism, which is accessible to all. This configuration of the priest to Christ the head - namely, as the principal source of grace - does not imply an exultation which would set him above others. In the Church, functions "do not favour the superiority of some vis-a-vis the others. Indeed, a woman, Mary, is more important than the bishops. . . ."

Which takes us back to the Incarnation, the point at which we began, this last, in this series of blogs.

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Note:   When preparing this blog and in relation to the role of Beatrice, that was of particular interest to Harold Bloom, (not a criticism), I had in mind an idea that I had intended to posit, which was the idea the Dante might be attributing his rescue to a particular devotion that he had to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Beatrice did not come to Dante of her own initiative, only as the result of an intermediary, Saint Lucy, sent to her by Mary, (alluded to rather than named). If you put that beside Cangrande della Scala, Dante's patron in exile, and Saint Bernard, both of whom were noted for their devotion to the BVM, it is hard to escape the conclusion, that Dante is telling us something about his own devotional life. To which, I would add this interesting detail.

In Florence in the late thirteenth century, a religious order known as the Order of Servites of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was founded by a group of men of various states of life: unmarried, married, or widowers, and all were merchants or from the merchant class. And they had come together through and ancient guild, the Major Guild of Our Blessed Lady; a guild to which both men and women belonged. This order of Servites was given papal recognition in 1304 and the last of its founder members, there were seven of them, died in 1310.  Cormac 27th February 2014.

__________    . . .
© Cormac McCloskey


Picture of Mary and the child Jesus, taken by me, at the Troja Palace Prague, in September 2011

The sources listed below were referenced, and in most instances, used in the composition of these blogs:

The Divine Comedy
Translated by C.H. Sisson
Introduction and Notes: David H. Higgins
(Oxford World's Classics)
Oxford University Press (2008)
ISBN: 978-0-19953564-4

Dante: The Divine Comedy
I: Hell
Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers
Penguin Classics (1953) edition

The Complete Danteworlds
A Reader's Guide to the Divine Comedy
Guy P. Raffa
University of Chicago Press (2009)
ISBN:10: 0-226-70270-7

The De Monarchia Of
Dante Alighieri
Edited With Translation And Notes
by Aurelia Henry (1904)
Printed in Great Britain
by Amazon.co.uk Ltd

Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol's 1,3,7,11,14 and 28
in respect of a variety of related topics  (1991 edition)
Vol 14: Aristotle. 28: Thomas Aquinas

Aristotle
A very Short Introduction
by Jonathan Barnes
Oxford University Press (2000)
ISBN: 978-19-285408-7

BBC Radio 4 archive
In Our Time, 17th September 2009
"Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, works and enduring influence of the medieval philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, with Martin Palmer, John Haldane and Anabel Brett."  here

Dante Alighieri
Bloom's Modern Critical Views
Editor, Harold Bloom
Chelsea House Publishers,
Philadelphia U.S.A. (2004)
ISBN: 0-7910--7658-X

The Poetics of Conversion
by John Freccero
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London England (1986)
ISBN: 0-674-19225-7 (alk, paper (cloth)
ISBN: 0-674-19226-5 (paper)

Saint Augustine

City of God
Penguin Books 2003
ISBN-13: 978-8-14-044894-8

Evangelii Gaudium
The Joy of the Gospel
Pope Francis
The Word Among Us press 2013

ISBN : 978-1-59325-262-5

(1)    Wikipedia  unam sanctam
         Virgil (40-19BC) Regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets
(2)     Wikipedia, for an excellent broad sweep of The Divine Comedy, go here

3)     De Monarchia Boo II: XIII In the chapter headed "Christ in dying confirmed the jurisdiction of

the  Roman Empire over all humanity" Dante argues the case for the Roman Empire being the lawful authority by which Christ was put to death (lawful, in the sense of being ordained by God) and at XIII.4 he writes "Wherefore let those who pretend they are sons of the Church cease to defame the Roman Empire, to which Christ the Bridegroom gave his sanction both at the beginning and at the close of his warfare. And now I believe, it is sufficiently obvious that the Roman people appropriated the Empire of the world by Right."