“You were not made to live like brute beasts, but to pursue virtue and knowledge.” Inferno 26.119-120

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of the great poetic geniuses of the Western tradition. His Divine Comedy, composed between 1308-1320, chronicles the author’s (or “the pilgrim’s”) journey through Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. The influence of this masterpiece is such that T.S. Eliot declared that “Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third.”

As with Shakespeare, the beauty of Dante’s poetry sometimes obscures his stature as a thinker. The beatific vision presented in the Comedy has led generations to interpret Dante as the premiere poet of medieval Christianity, but a closer reading indicates a heterodox political thinker of the first order. This misunderstanding is, at least partly, by design. Dante himself explains that his work must be interpreted allegorically to reach the “truth disguised under a beautiful lie.”

Dante’s indirect style of writing can be partially explained by the intellectual and political circumstances of his time. The thirteenth century was a period of great intellectual ferment. Over the previous century, Aristotle’s recovered texts had opened European minds to lines of thinking previously closed by the overwhelming influence of the Church . Inspired by ancient philosophy, thinkers such as Siger de Brabant and Boethius of Dacia explored reason’s potential for acting independently of revelation. Yet this new rational opening was not without dangers. Reason unbound soon came into conflict with Christian orthodoxy, provoking a backlash from ecclesiastical authorities. Official condemnations of Aristotelian doctrines, such as those issued by the Bishop of Paris in 1270 and 1277, admonished that only so much philosophy would be tolerated.

Dante admired Siger—he appears as a character in Paradise—but did not wish to share his fate. Dante therefore wrote in a politic manner, such that his message could be discerned by those willing and able to understand it, while he avoided the ire of censorious authorities.

Philosophy in Convivio and De Monarchia 

Dante’s Convivio (The Banquet) written between 1304-1307, is an unfinished work of prose and poetry in which he describes his immersion in philosophical study. He likens philosophy to a “donna gentile” or “noble woman” who is his second love after the death of Beatrice, describing philosophy as “the most beautiful and dignified daughter of the Emperor of the Universe.” Aristotle is declared “master and leader of human reason.”

Convivio also articulates a theory of a dual human nature, which reappears throughout Dante’s works. Man has an immortal soul which finds eternal happiness only in salvation. This aspect of our nature calls for the exercise of the “theological virtues”, such as faith, hope, and charity. Yet man also has a worldly nature which operates independently of his spiritual nature. Dante’s understanding of man’s worldly nature is clearly influenced by Aristotle. “Nobility” is seen as the perfection of a thing according to its nature, and reason is the characteristic human capacity. Therefore, earthly happiness for humans consists in the exercise of moral and intellectual virtue through reason. We can attain worldly happiness by putting into practice the teachings of philosophy, whereas happiness in eternal life is attained by practicing spiritual teachings which transcend reason.

Dante thus goes beyond his Christian predecessors in the degree of his praise of the independent importance of reason and human virtue. For Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle’s rational virtue was good, but inferior to Christian spiritual ethics. For Dante, religion and reason ruled in separate and independent spheres. Religion, through the guidance of the Church, can help us attain happiness in the next life. Reason, through the guidance of philosophy, leads us to happiness in this one. While in earlier Christian thought, the role of philosophy was circumscribed by faith.. Dante opens the possibility of reason operating autonomously in its own proper sphere.

Dante draws out the political implications of man’s dual nature most explicitly in Monarchia. He is critical of the world around him and the moral state of its inhabitants, particularly Florentines. He sees them as prone to sin, corruption, and conflict. Humanity’s fallen state, however, is not intrinsic to human nature. Dante believes that the seeds of virtue exist in all human souls, but must be nourished by the right conditions. Nor are men, for the most part, being corrupted by bad laws. The problem, in Dante’s view, is that the laws are not being properly enforced by the political authorities.

In part, local political leadership was to blame, as is evidenced by the case of Florence in which the political class spent much more energy on factional squabbling than on enforcing just laws. However, even well-intended political leaders were thwarted by conflicts with other powers, and by the perpetual meddling of Rome. In Dante’s view, Papal interference in the world of politics was the most serious political problem facing medieval Europe.

The Monarchia is thus an appeal for political centralization in the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor. Dante’s claim is that human happiness consists in the development of reason and virtue in the entire human race. This is a collective enterprise that requires, among other things, world peace, which can only be enforced by a single political authority. Dante thus argues that the Holy Roman Emperor should be the overarching political authority, and that his authority is conferred directly by God, and not by the ecclesiastical power of the pope.

Dante also argued for the desirability of world empire (as opposed to Aristotle’s preference for the polis) because Christendom faced a threat from Islam, which had conquered Northern Africa and occupied Spain. A strong central authority was required to defend against further encroachment. Moreover, the defining feature of European politics was the division between ecclesiastical and political authority. the countries of Western Europe shared a religion which had a central leader in the Roman pope but they were divided politically. The result was that no individual leader could resist interference by the Church. The position of Holy Roman Emperor, which was supposed to provide political unity to Europe existed technically, but was ineffectual. Dante believed that only a strong emperor with independent authority could check the power of Rome, thus maintaining the crucial division between the political and spiritual spheres.

The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy tells the story of Dante’s journey through the afterlife, beginning in the Inferno, moving through Purgatory, and Paradise, and culminating in the Empyrean or the heaven of pure light. Dante’s poetic genius shines brightest in this poetic vision of the Christian afterlife.

The beauty of the poetry and the familiarity of its subject matter has led many interpreters to see the Comedy as a move away from the positions represented in Dante’s other works. According to this interpretation, the Convivio and Monarchia were written under heavy Aristotelian influence, but the Comedy represents a return to Christian orthodoxy. There is some evidence for this interpretation. The work is explicitly concerned with the afterlife life rather than the present life, and the prophetic tone of the Comedy differs sharply from the measured analysis of the Convivio and Monarchia.

However, the interpretation of the Comedy as primarily a traditional religious work neglects Dante’s use of allegory. It is in the Comedy that Dante most deftly dresses philosophy in the cloak of orthodox Christianity. The Comedy carries the same “truth” as the less famous Monarchia, but is elevated by the beauty of its poetry to the highest circle of Christendom’s literary firmament. Dante himself indicates that his poem should be interpreted allegorically. In a letter to Can Grande, Dante explains that while the poem’s literal subject is “the state of souls after death”, its allegorical subject is “man, as by good or ill desserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his will, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice.” Seen in this light, the Comedy is better read as a complement to the Monarchia and Convivio than as a repudiation.

The political allegory of the Commedia is evident from its opening scene, in which Dante is lost in a forest and encounters three beasts: a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf. The leopard, with its spots, represents Florence which was riven by a rivalry between the factions “the Whites” and “the Blacks.” The lion, a traditional symbol of royalty, represents the king of France, and the she-wolf, the most fearsome of the three, represents Rome or the papacy. The pilgrim is rescued by Virgil, who guides him on a journey through hell and purgatory which is an allegorical account of the major events of Dante’s life and the political struggles of his time.

Canto 16 of Purgatory is the 50th canto of the Comedy as a whole, and marks the end of the first half of the epic. Here, the pilgrim encounters the soul of Marco Lambardo who echoes many of the views expressed in Dante’s other works. He explains that the fate of humans is not determined by their stars, but by themselves, and that they come to corruption by the action of their own free wills. However, Marco soon turns to political causes. Because the human soul was created weak, it requires other powers to direct it, i.e. political authority. Misrule rather than fate is the source of men’s depravity. More specifically, this misrule is the result of a dangerous mixing of political and religious authority. In Dante’s allegorical formulation, Rome, “which made the world good,” was lit by two suns which illuminated the world’s path and God’s. Now one sun has eclipsed the other, and the sword (political power) has joined the crozier (ecclesiastical power) corrupting both.

When the pilgrim crosses from purgatory to paradise, he leaves the company of Virgil, who represents reason, and is led by Beatrice, who represents faith. Often, this has led interpreters to conclude that the Paradise is the book least concerned with worldly affairs. However, while the Paradise literally represents the Christian heaven, one may argue that allegorically it represents Dante’s political vision. The different circles of paradise portray the rifts that divided medieval Europe as now healed. Allegorically Dante depicts the unification of various political factions that split Florence, Italy, and Europe. Intellectual and religious divisions are also settled. In Canto 10, St. Thomas praises his erstwhile rival Siger de Brabant, and later even the rival Dominican and Franciscan monastic orders reconcile. This picture of harmony is capped by a reference to political unification under a Holy Roman Emperor. When Dante and Beatrice reach the tenth and final stage of heaven, the Empyrean, they come to a great city in which there are chairs awaiting the blessed. Among these chairs is an empty throne with a crown above it, which is saved for “the imperial soul of lofty Henry”, that is, Henry VII, king of Germany, who Dante hoped would unite Italy as Holy Roman Emperor. Dante would eventually be disappointed in his hopes for Henry. And perhaps the “empty throne” is Dante’s nod to the infeasibility of his own “imperial” hopes. Yet Henry’s presence in Paradise indicates the book’s political concerns.

Dante’s political philosophy belongs to the new intellectual world brought about by the rediscovery of Aristotle. However, as the condemnations of 1270 and 1277 demonstrates, the triumph of philosophy would not be immediate. Dante, therefore, cloaked his philosophy in poetry, attempting to teach a world unready for reason unadorned.