APPENDIX II
DANTE AND THE POPE
Interesting on several grounds is the Encyclical of His Holiness Benedict XV, published in the Osservatore Romano of May 4th last, in which he commends to all Catholic teachers and students the study of the works of Italy’s greatest Poet. He seems to admit that a certain constraint lay upon him in the matter, that the successor of St. Peter could not afford to be silent while all the civilised world was sending up a chorus of praise. That indeed, it would befit him to propose himself as Choragus: “Jam vero tam mirifico quasi choro bonorum omnium non solum non deesse Nos decet, sed quodammodo praeesse.” Yet the eulogy which he utters, if here and there it suggests a touch of patronising, is, on the whole so spontaneous and sincere in tone, that one is inclined to forgive the half-evasion with which he manipulates the awkward fact of Dante’s fierce invective—“perquam acerbe et contumeliose”—directed against the Holy Father’s illustrious predecessors. First of all he suggests for Dante the excuse of a harassed and embittered spirit, misled by the poison of malicious tale-bearers; and next, with an appearance of candour which it would be discourteous to discount, he asks, Who denies that there were in those days; there were faults even in the ordained clergy—“Quis neget nonnulla eo tempore fuisse in hominibus sacri ordinis haud probanda?” ... a somewhat general statement which might or might not include the Infallible. For the rest, Dante is praised as a true-hearted Catholic—as indeed he was—and as an extraordinarily effective teacher of the Catholic Faith. The spirit and purpose of the Divine Comedy—the aim, as set forth in the famous tenth Epistle[381]—and the Poet’s treatment of his subject in his pictures of Hell, Paradise and Purgatory, all come in for hearty commendation. His ever-living treatment of an ever-living theme is rightly characterised as strikingly modern compared with the revived Paganism of some modern poets. The teaching power of his spiritual ideas outsteps the bounds of the archaic Ptolemaic system in which they are framed. True to the teaching of his great master Aquinas, he attracts moderns to that teaching by the sublimity of his poetic genius. The Pope claims to know personally unbelievers who have been converted to the Faith by the study of Dante.
This emphasis on Dante’s importance as a religious teacher is interesting in view of Benedetto Croce’s recent critique, in which he dismisses the theological aspect of Dante as irrelevant. In this connection it is worth noting that a distinguished Friar has been lecturing in Rome on Dante’s theology, and directly attacking Croce for his depreciation of the same.
We have thus two Benedicts disputing over the spirit of Dante, even as the Archangel and another disputed over the body of Moses—Benedict the Pope and Benedict the Philosopher, Critic and Minister of Education. That the latter has the greater name in the realm of literary criticism, we cannot doubt. His best friends go far to claim for him infallibility in that line. The infallible claims of the former are confined to the region of Faith and Morals; but if Dante could be called in as arbitrator he would probably decide in favour of the Pope, pronouncing with regard to his own religious teaching that it was meant to count, and does count. It is, however, with no animus against the other Benedict in his official capacity that His Holiness proceeds—making an excellent point, which most of us would applaud—to note the absurdity of a State system of secularised Education which tries to banish the Name and the thought of God from the schools, and at the same time hold up the Divina Commedia as an indispensable instrument of culture. Italian priests of to-day are ready to defend the present Minister of Public Instruction as one who, whatever his personal views may be, has endeavoured to mete out evenhanded justice even to “denominational” Education.
APPENDIX III
DANTE THE POET
Benedetto Croce’s[382] contention is, of course, fundamentally true, that Dante is first and last a Poet, and that it is the magnetism of his poetic genius that attracts interest to all the varied subjects which he touches. If he had not been a Poet, these essays would never have been written; and the writer hopes that the poetic quality of his hero will have been felt as a background all through the book. His lyrical power is the driving force of his many-sided message. To the struggling patriot, whether of 1848 or of 1918, he is a Tyrtaeus; to the artist in poetry, a Horace (although he never saw the Ars Poetica); to the lover, a Christian Anacreon; to the religious devotee, a Psalmist and Prophet in one; to the student of human nature in its detail and its large epic aspect, a Homer and a Virgil; in every aspect a supreme poet. The very magnetism of his lyrical appeal will, however, continue to keep countless disciples busy, in the future as in the past, exploring the by-ways and investigating the by-products of his genius; gloating over his obscurities, and glorying in everything, big or little, that Dante has touched. Those “questioni dantesche” on the more puerile of which Croce rightly pours his scorn,[383] will emerge to the end of the chapter—a lush growth of mingled flowers and weeds witnessing to the extraordinary fertility of the soil.