Dante’s Divine Comedy

THE DIVINE COMEDYThe structure of the three realms follow a common numerical pattern of 9 plus 1 for a total of 10: 9 circles of the Inferno, followed by Lucifer contained at its bottom; 9 rings of Mount Purgatory, followed by the Garden of Eden crowning its summit; and the 9 celestial bodies of Paradiso, followed by the Empyrean containing the very essence of God. Within the 9, 7 correspond to a specific moral scheme, subdividing itself into three subcategories, while two others of more particularity are added on for a completion of nine. For example, the seven deadly sins of the Catholic Church that are cleansed in Purgatory are joined by special realms for the Late repentant and the excommunicated by the church. The core seven sins within purgatory correspond to a moral scheme of love perverted, subdivided into three groups corresponding to excessive love (Lust, Gluttony, Greed), deficient love (Sloth), and malicious love (Wrath, Envy, Pride).In central Italy’s political struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante was part of the Guelphs, who in general favored the Papacy over the Holy Roman Emperor. Florence’s Guelphs split into factions around 1300, the White Guelphs, and the Black Guelphs. Dante was among the White Guelphs who were exiled in 1302 by the Lord-Mayor Cante de’ Gabrielli di Gubbio, after troops under Charles of Valois entered the city, at the request of Pope Boniface VIII, who supported the Black Guelphs. This exile, which lasted the rest of Dante’s life, shows its influence in many parts of the Comedy, from prophecies of Dante’s exile to Dante’s views of politics to the eternal damnation of some of his opponents.In Hell and Purgatory, Dante shares in the sin and the penitence respectively. The last word in each of the three parts of the Divine Comedy is stelle, “stars.”THE MONARCHY:It is made up of three books, but the most significant is the third, in which Dante most explicitly confronts the subject of relations between the Pope and the emperor. Dante firstly condemns the theocratic conception of the power elaborated by the Roman Church and solemnly confirmed by the papal bull Unam sanctam of 1302. The theocratic conception assigned all power to the Pope, making his authority superior to that of the emperor: this meant that the Pope could also legitimately intervene in the matters usually in the sphere of secular authority.Against this theocratic conception, Dante expressed his need for another strong Holy Roman Emperor and proposed the idea that man essentially pursues two ends: the happiness of earthly life and that of eternal life. Dante argues that to the Pope is assigned the management of men’s eternal life (though he still recognizes this as the higher of the two), but to the emperor is assigned the task of leading men towards earthly happiness. From this he derives the autonomy of the temporal sphere, under the emperor, from the spiritual sphere, under the Pope – the pontiff’s authority should not influence that of the emperor in their competing tasks.Dante wanted to demonstrate that the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope were both human and that both derived their power and authority directly from God. To understand this it is necessary to think that man is the only thing to occupy an intermediate position between corruptibility and incorruptibility. If it is considered that man is only made up of two parts, that is to say the soul and the body, he is corruptible – only in terms of the soul is he incorruptible. Man, then, has the function of uniting corruptibility with incorruptibility. The Pope and Emperor were both human, and no peer had power over another peer. Only a higher power could judge the two “equal swords,” as each was given power by God to rule over their respected domains.