Dante

by Edmund G. Gardner

2. The “Monarchia”

The Empire.—Upon all the political life of mediaeval Italy lay the gigantic shadow of a stupendous edifice, the Holy Roman Empire. Although the barbarians had struck down the body of the Empire of Rome, the spirit of Julius Caesar was mighty yet, as in Shakespeare’s tragedy. The monarchy of Augustus, of Trajan, of Constantine and Justinian, still lived; not in the persons of the impotent Caesars of Byzantium, but in those of the successors of Charlemagne. From the coronation of Otto the Saxon (962) to the death of the Suabian Frederick II. (1250), the mediaeval western world saw in the man whom the Germans recognised as their sovereign the “King of the Romans ever Augustus,” the Emperor-elect, who when crowned at Rome would be “Romanorum Imperator,” the supreme head of the universal Monarchy and the Vicar of God in things temporal, even as the Pope was the supreme head of the universal Church and the Vicar of God in things spiritual. In the eyes of Dante, the Papacy and the Empire alike proceeded from God, and were inseparably wedded to Rome, the eternal city; from which as two suns they should shed light upon man’s spiritual and temporal paths, as divinely ordained by the infinite goodness of Him from whom the power of Peter and of Caesar bifurcates as from a point (Purg. xvi. 106-108, Epist. v. 5).

Papal Claims.—With the increase of their temporal power, the successors of Hildebrand, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had extended their authority from spiritual into purely secular regions. For them the imperial dignity was not of divine origin, but the gift of the Church to Charlemagne and his German successors. “What is the Teutonic King till consecrated at Rome?” wrote Adrian to Frederick Barbarossa: “The chair of Peter has given and can withdraw its gifts.” In the interregnum that followed the fall of the house of Suabia, the Popes had claimed to exercise imperial rights in Italy, with disastrous results. They had joined the sword with the pastoral staff; and the Church, by confounding in herself the two governments, had fallen into the mire (Purg. xvi. 109-112, 127-129). And this tendency in the Papacy culminated in the extravagant pretensions of Boniface VIII., in his relations with both the Empire and France, and his famous Bull Unam Sanctam (November 1302), declaring that the temporal power of kings is subject to the spiritual power of the priesthood, and directed by it as the body by the soul.

Date of the “Monarchia.”—The Monarchia is Dante’s attempt to solve this burning mediaeval question of the proper relations of Church and State, of spiritual and temporal authority. Although it is undoubtedly the most famous of his prose works, the most widely divergent views have been held as to its date of composition. If the Vita Nuova is the most ideal book of love, the Monarchia is one of the most purely idealistic works ever written on politics. Even as Beatrice is the most glorious lady of the poet’s mind, la gloriosa donna de la mia mente, so the temporal monarchy or Empire is to be considered by the poet in its ideal aspect according to the divine intention, typo et secundum intentionem (Mon. i. 2). Like the Vita Nuova, and unlike any other of Dante’s longer works, the Monarchia contains no mention of the poet’s exile, and no explicit references or allusions to contemporary events or persons. From this, and other considerations, it has sometimes been held that the Monarchia was written during his political life in Florence. Boccaccio, on the other hand, declares that Dante made this book on the coming of Henry VII., and the trend of criticism to-day is to accept 1313 as the approximate date. There are, however, scholars who consider it more probable that the Monarchia was written towards the close of the poet’s life.

Book I.—The Monarchia is divided into three books, corresponding to the three questions to be answered touching this most useful and least explored amongst occult and useful truths, the knowledge of the temporal monarchy (i. 1). In its ideal sense, the temporal Monarchy, or Empire, is defined as “a unique princedom extending over all persons in time, or in and over those things which are measured by time” (i. 2). And the first question arising concerning this temporal Monarchy is—whether it is necessary for the well-being of the world.

The proper function of the human race taken as a whole, the ultimate end or goal, for which the eternal God by His art, which is nature, brings into being the human race in its universality, is constantly to actualise or bring into play the whole capacity of the possible intellect, for contemplation and for action, for speculation and for operation (i. 3). And, for this almost divine function and goal, the most direct means is universal peace (i. 4). Since it is ordained for this goal, the human race must be guided by one ruling power, the Emperor, with reference to whom all its parts have their order; in subjection to whom, the human race becomes in its unity most like to God (i. 5-9). There must be some one supreme judge to decide by his judgment, mediately or immediately, all contentions; and such a judge can only be the Monarch (i. 10).

Again, the world is best disposed when justice is paramount therein; but this can only be under the Monarch or Emperor, who alone, free from covetousness and supreme in authority, will have the purest will and the greatest power to practise justice upon the earth (i. 11). Under him the human race will be most free, since it will have the fullest use of freewill, the greatest gift of God to man (i. 12). He alone, adorned with judgment and justice in the highest degree, will be best disposed for ruling, and able to dispose others best (i. 13). From him the particular princes receive the common rule by which the human race is guided to peace; his is the dominating will that rules the wills of mortals, disposing them to unity and concord (i. 14, 15). All these and other reasons show that, for the well-being of the world, it is necessary that there should be the Monarchy. And they are confirmed by the sacred fact that Christ willed to become man in the “fullness of time,” when the world was blessed with universal peace under the perfect monarchy of Augustus, the seamless garment that has since been rent by the nail of cupidity (i. 16).

To the modern mind the first book of the Monarchia is the most important. The conception that the goal of civilisation is the realising of all human potentialities is one of abiding significance. Divested of its mediaeval garb, the Empire itself becomes a permanent court of international justice, a supreme and impartial tribunal of international arbitration. Within such a restored unity of civilisation, nations and kingdoms and cities will develop freely and peacefully, in accordance with their own conditions and laws (cf. i. 10, 12, 14, and Conv. iv. 4). Here Dante anticipates what Mazzini called the “United States of Europe,” or, more broadly, “Humanity.”

Book II.—The second book answers the question whether the Roman people took to itself this dignity of Monarchy, or Empire, by right. But right in things is nothing else than the similitude of the Divine Will, and what God wills in human society is to be held as true and pure right. God’s will is invisible; but it is manifested in this matter by the whole history of Rome (ii. 1, 2). The surpassing nobleness of Aeneas, and therefore of his descendants (ii. 3); the traditional miracles wrought for the Romans (ii. 4); the devotion of the great Roman citizens from Cincinnatus to Cato, showing that the Roman people, in subjecting the world to itself, contemplated the good of the Commonwealth, and therefore the end of right (ii. 5, 6); the manifest adaptation of the Roman people by nature for ruling the nations with imperial sway (ii. 7);—all these prove that it was by right that the Romans acquired the Empire. The hidden judgment of God is sometimes revealed by contest, whether in the clash of champions in an ordeal or in the contention of rivals striving together for some prize (ii. 8). Such a prize was the empire of the world, which by divine judgment fell to the Roman people, when all were wrestling for it, and the kings of the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Persians, and even Alexander himself had failed (ii. 9). Their wars, too, from the earliest times were under the form of an ordeal; and Divine Providence declared in their favour. Thus arguments resting on principles of reason prove that the Roman people acquired the supreme and universal jurisdiction by right (ii. 10, 11). And arguments based upon principles of Christian faith support it. Christ, by His birth under the edict of Augustus, confirmed the imperial jurisdiction from which that edict proceeded; and, by His death under the vicar of Tiberius, He confirmed the universal penal jurisdiction of the Emperor over all the human race which was to be punished in His flesh (ii. 12, 13). “Let them cease to reproach the Roman Empire, who feign themselves to be sons of the Church; when they see that the Bridegroom, Christ, thus confirmed it at either limit of His warfare” (i.e. at the beginning and at the end of His life upon earth).

Book III.—And this rebuke to the clergy, from whom the main opposition to the Empire proceeded, naturally leads to the great question of the third book, the pith of the whole treatise.[22] Does the authority of the Roman Monarch or Emperor, who is thus by right the monarch of the world, depend immediately upon God, or upon some vicar of God, the successor of Peter? (iii. 1, 2, 3). The stock arguments of those who assert from passages of Scripture, such as the creation of the sun and moon, or the two swords mentioned in St. Luke’s Gospel, that the authority of the Empire depends upon that of the Church, are readily brushed away (iii. 4-9). And, as for their historical evidence, the donation of Constantine, if genuine, was invalid; the coronation of Charlemagne was an act of usurpation (iii. 10, 11). The authority of the Church cannot be the cause of the imperial authority, since the latter was efficient, and was confirmed by Christ, before the Church existed (iii. 13). Neither has the Church this power of authorising the Emperor from God, nor from herself, nor from any Emperor, nor from the consent of the majority of mankind; indeed, such power is absolutely contrary to her very nature and the words of her Divine Founder (iii. 14, 15).