He would see a world that has for generations clean forgotten that Holy Roman Empire which loomed so large in his day, and is just giving the coup-de-grace to two unholy Empires that were playing a rôle exactly the opposite of that of Dante’s ideal Roman Prince, whose chief care is to see that “in areola ista mortalium libere cum pace vivatur;”[74] a world in which a bastard Roman Empire, seeking not peace and freedom for the nations, but living for war, has striven for four long years with all its might to crush the rest of the world under an iron heel.
He would see a world in which the Papacy is no longer paramount in Western Christendom; in which its spiritual claims are largely challenged, and its temporal pretensions reduced to the shadow of a sham. A world in which industrialism and the fruits of applied science have transfigured at once the material and the social landscape. With the passing of German Military Autocracy, the last traces of Feudalism are like to disappear.... A world in which the development of national self-consciousness, in its infancy during his lifetime, has increased and multiplied. He would see a world, in short, both inwardly and outwardly utterly different from that for which he legislated in the Monarchia, save for the two permanent factors—the identity of human nature, and the continuity of Divine guidance, by Him “qui est omnium spiritualium et temporalium gubernator” (loc. cit.)
Would he not acclaim the passion for justice and freedom which has inspired the nations of the Entente to pile up their enormous sacrifices in a five years’ struggle? Had he compared the conduct of each side—had he compared merely their treatment of prisoners of war—could he have doubted for a moment which side exhibited the princely spirit of Charity “which gives vigour to justice:” caritas maxime justitiam vigorabit.[75]
Would he not see in the actions and aims of Italy—“Redeemed Italy”—and her victorious allies, a surer hope for the stable peace of mankind than ever his “Romanus Princeps” could have furnished? Would he not have found his own aspirations for a just and impartial and supra-national Tribunal embodied in that arbitrament which the “League of Nations” carries with it?
Would he not turn to individual nations (in the spirit of Mon. i. 5) and say: “See to it that this principle of freedom and justice rules throughout; that the spirit which looks ‘only to God and the good of man’[76] inspires all your life-circles: the Home, the City, the Province, the entire Nation. See to it that the brotherly, unselfish, co-operating spirit has sway not only between the members of the various classes and groups and interests of which your nation is composed, but that it dominates also the relations of class to class and group to group? What can better guarantee internal peace in a composite, democratic community, than that each of the elements of which it is composed shall be dominated by a single spirit—the spirit of free fellowship, which is the surest antidote[77] to the anti-social poison of greed and self-assertion?”
Would he not also see that the maintenance of such a spirit demands also a Spiritual Authority, one and forceful?
The “Sun and Moon” of Spiritual and Temporal Authority of the Monarchia,[78] which in the Purgatorio have become “two Suns,” to light men on the earthly and the heavenly path, he would find still essential in a “World made safe for Democracy.” In 1300, he found the Spiritual Sun usurping the powers of the Temporal, and so putting them out of gear.[79] The Roman Prelate had annexed the Roman Prince’s sword and united it incongruously with his own pastoral staff—
Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo feo