TORRE DEL FAME (DANTE, PISA)
PALAZZO PRETORIO (TODI)
No better introduction to Dante could be obtained than this from Dean Church. Those who have found it difficult to get interested in the great Florentine poet, and who have been prone to think that perhaps the pretended liking for him on the part of many people was an affectation rather than a sincere expression of opinion, should read this essay and learn [{307}] something of the wealth of sympathy there is in Dante for even the man of these modern times. Our Thirteenth Century poet is not easy to read but there is probably no reading in all the world that brings with it so much of intellectual satisfaction, so much of awakening of the best feelings in man, so many glimpses into the depths of his being, as some lines from Dante pondered under favorable circumstances. Like one of these Gothic cathedrals of the olden times he never grows old, but, on the contrary, every favorite passage seems to have a new message for each mood of the reader. This is particularly true for the spiritual side of man's being as has been pointed out by Dean Church in a well-known passage toward the end of his essay.
"Those who know the Divina Commedia best will best know how hard it is to be the interpreter of such a mind; but they will sympathize with the wish to call attention to it. They know, and would wish others also to know, not by hearsay, but by experience, the power of that wonderful poem. They know its austere yet submitting beauty; they know what force there is in its free and earnest and solemn verse to strengthen, to tranquillize, to console. It is a small thing that it has the secret of Nature and Man; that a few keen words have opened their eyes to new sights in earth, and sea, and sky; have taught them new mysteries of sound; have made them recognize, in distinct image of thought, fugitive feelings, or their unheeded expression, by look, or gesture, or motion; that it has enriched the public and collective memory of society with new instances, never to be lost, of human feeling and fortune; has charmed mind and ear by the music of its stately march, and the variety and completeness of its plan. But besides this, they know how often its seriousness has put to shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faint-heartedness, its living energy their indolence, its stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its thrilling tenderness overcome sullenness and assuaged distress, its strong faith quelled despair, and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp imparted the sense of harmony to the view of clashing truth. They know how often they have found in times of trouble, if not light, at least that deep sense of reality, permanent though unseen, which is more than light can [{308}] always give—in the view which it has suggested to them of the judgments and love of God."
As might have been expected from the fact of Dante's English popularity paralleling the Oxford Movement, both the great English Cardinals who were such prominent agents in that movement, looked upon him as a favorite author. Both of them have given him precious tributes. Newman's lofty compliment was the flattery of imitation when he wrote the Dream of Gerontius, that poem for poets which has told the men of our generation more about the immediate hereafter than anything written in these latter centuries. No poet of the intervening period, or of any other time, has so satisfactorily presented the after world as these writers so distant in time, so different in environment,—the one an Italian of the Thirteenth, the other an Englishman of the Nineteenth Century.
Cardinal Manning's tribute was much more formal though not less glorious. It occurs in the introduction to Father Bowden's English edition of the German critic Hettinger's appreciation of Dante, and deserves a place here because it shows how much a representative modern churchman thinks of the great Florentine poet.
"There are three works which always seem to me to form a triad of Dogma, of Poetry, and of Devotion,—The Summa of St. Thomas, The Divina Commedia, and the Paradisus Animae (a manual of devotional exercises by Horstius). All three contain the same outline of Faith. St. Thomas traces it on the intellect, Dante upon the imagination, and the Paradisus Animae upon the heart. The poem unites the book of Dogma and the book of Devotion, clothed in conceptions of intensity and of beauty which have never been surpassed nor equalled. No uninspired hand has ever written thoughts so high in words, so resplendent as the last stanza of the Divina Commedia. It was said of St. Thomas, 'Post Summan Thomae nihil restat nisi lumen gloriae'—After the Summa of Thomas nothing is left except the light of glory. It may be said of Dante, 'Post Dantis Paradisum nihil restat nisi visio Dei,'—After Dante's Paradise nothing is left except the vision of God."