Horne, Brian. “The Devout Critic: Dante and the Church.” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 12, no. 3–4 (2012): 279–92.

Abstract:

It is a mistake to read the late medieval poem the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri as though it were a theological tract or a political treatise; but both theology and politics were central to the mind and heart of the great Florentine poet and it was inevitable that the questions and problems raised by – and left to – Western European society by the Investiture Controversy would find their way into the poetry of this narrative of personal redemption. In particular, it is in the passages of denunciation that we gain insight into both the nature of Dante’s ecclesiology and his beliefs about the relationship between spiritual and temporal power; a theory of dual sovereignty that he would develop in the prose work that is contemporary with the composition of much of the poem, De Monarchia.

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