Dante was not a Greek scholar, like Grosseteste, but he had a thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures in the Vulgate, and with a large part of the theological and mystical writings of the Middle Age. He was familiar with all the extant works of Aristotle in two Latin translations. He quotes also, and in some cases very frequently, from Classical and post-classical authors of repute. He has thoroughly mastered the Graeco-Arabian Astronomy of his day: so thoroughly, that, to the despair of some of his humbler votaries, he can toy with its ponderous intricacies as with a plaything! Nor must we forget that his studies were conducted in an age when printing had yet to be invented; so that all his reading must needs be done with rare, costly, cumbrous and eye-wearying manuscripts. Well may he, in the Paradiso, describe his labours as “emaciating,” and in the Convivio allude to a temporary blindness caused by overstrain.[188]
It has been plausibly conjectured that he studied as a boy under the Franciscan Fathers of Sta Croce.[189] The idea that Brunetto Latini (or “Latino”), the author of the “Tesoro” (Livre dou Tresor), was the regular preceptor of his youth, however just an inference it may seem from the famous passage in the Inferno,[190] is disproved by the exigencies of chronology. And, in the end, he must have been largely self-taught, since his visit to the University of Paris, alleged by Boccaccio, is placed towards the end of his life, when most of his extant work was already done.
In his attitude Dante is a traditionalist, but not a blind one; his originality everywhere tends to modify his conservatism. A true son of the thirteenth century, he accepts loyally the traditional authority of Scripture and of Aristotle. He accepts the tradition of the old Roman culture: the “Seven Liberal Arts” of the Trivium and Quadrivium find a place in the scheme of his world and a symbolic significance therein. According to a well-known passage in the Convivio[191] these seven sciences correspond to the seven lowest Heavens.
The mythology of Greece and Rome, on which the minds of our Public School boys are still fed, are caught up into the scheme of the Divine Comedy as “didactic material” side by side with scenes from history and from Holy Writ. The Ptolemaic system of the universe is accepted; but Dante uses his own genius freely in the handling of details, adorning the vast framework with a symbolism of his own, and spreading over it a network of intense human interest.[192]
So also in the sphere of Theology, he takes up traditional beliefs and makes them living and concrete, vitalising them by the force of his own originality. In his volume on Dante and Aquinas, Mr. Wicksteed has drawn out very strikingly the contrast between the two: between the “layman, poet, and prophet, and the ecclesiastic, theologian, and philosopher.” “Aquinas,” he says, “regards the whole range of human experiences and activities as the collecting ground for illustrations of Christian truth; Dante regards Christian truth as the interpreting and inspiring force that makes all human life live.”[193] This contrast comes out, as we shall see, with special emphasis in the conception of Purgatory, where Aquinas is thinking all along of the formal completion of the sacrament of Penance, while Dante, who, with most daring originality, makes his Mountain of Purgation the pedestal of the Earthly Paradise, is intent on the redressing of man’s inner psychological and spiritual balance. Eden itself is to be the immediate goal of penitence. Before this earthly life is superseded by the heavenly, man shall win his way to the primal Garden of Delight, and “experience the frank and full fruition of his nature, as God first made it.”[194] He shall have achieved inner balance and self-mastery. Says Virgil, on the threshold of Eden—
Free, sound and upright is thy will.... Wherefore over thyself I invest thee with supreme control.[195]
Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio,
...
Per ch’ io te sopra te corono e mitrio.
We may note then, in passing, that Dante, like all the best educators, has his eye on the “formation of character.”