Dante and the Franciscans (The Medieval Franciscans)

DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS

THE MEDIEVAL FRANCISCANS GENERAL EDITOR

Steven J. McMichael University of St. Thomas

VOLUME 3

DANTE AND THE FRANCISCANS EDITED BY

SANTA CASCIANI

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1572–6991 ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15495 7 ISBN-10: 90 04 15495 7 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ...................................................................... Notes on Contributors .............................................................. Introduction ................................................................................ Santa Casciani

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Dante, Peter John Olivi, and the Franciscan Apocalypse ...... V.S. Benfell III Clarissan Spirituality and Dante ................................................ Tonia Bernardi Triggiano Bernardino: Reader of Dante .................................................... Santa Casciani What Dante Learned from St Francis ...................................... William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman A Franciscan explanation of Dante’s cinquecento diece e cinque ........ Elvira Giosi Dante’s Franciscanism ................................................................ Giuseppe Mazzotta The Life of the World to Come: The Franciscan Character of Paradiso .............................................................................. Amanda D. Quantz The Cross as te in “The Canticle of Creatures,” Dante’s “Virgin Mother,” and Chaucer’s “Invocation to Mary” .... Sister Lucia Treanor Pax et bonum: Dante’s Depiction of Francis of Assisi in Paradiso 11 .......................................................................... Alessandro Vettori Vestiges and Communities: Franciscan Traces in Dante’s New Life .................................................................................. Brenda Wirkus

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Index ..........................................................................................

51 85 113 141 171

199

229

289

307

345

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to the many individuals who have supported me in this project and who have reviewed essays for the volume. I owe much to Sister Ingrid Peterson of the Sisters of Saint Francis (Franciscan Federation), to Christopher Kleinhenz (University of Wisconsin), to Giuseppe Mazzotta (Yale University), to Alessandro Vettori (Rutgers University), to David Burr (Professor Emeritus of Virginia Tech), and to Ronald B. Herzman (State University of New York, Geneseo) for reading and giving their expertise on Dante and the Franciscans respectively. I also wish to thank both the Franciscan Institute at Saint Bonaventure University and the Franciscan Federation for hosting through the last several years sessions on Dante and his relationship to the Franciscans. Special thanks go to Steven J. McMichael (University of Saint Thomas), General Editor of The Medieval Franciscan Movement series for having trusted me to edit this volume. My gratitude also goes to my colleagues Brenda Wirkus (Philosophy Department) and Serena ScaiolaZiska (Classical and Modern Languages and Cultures), and to my work-study students, Scott Orr and Nina Dambrosio, for their help in the proof-reading of the essays. I must also thank Mary Beth Brooks and Giuseppina Mileti who both work for the Bishop Anthony M. Pilla Program in Italian American Studies—the Program I direct— for taking on some of my administrative duties so that I could finish this volume. I must also express my deepest gratitude to my home institution, John Carroll University, the Jesuit University in Cleveland, for granting me a Grauel Faculty Fellowship Leave in fall 2003 to begin to assemble the work presented in this volume. I wish also to thank Julian Deahl and Marcella Mulder of Brill for accepting this volume. My greatest debt I owe to the authors for the quality of their work and for bearing patiently my requests for revisions and editorial changes. Santa Casciani John Carroll University, The Jesuit University in Cleveland Cleveland, Ohio

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

V.S. Benfell III is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University. He has published articles on Dante, Renaissance epic, and Petrarchism. His current research interests concern the history of biblical interpretation and its relation to poetry. He is currently completing a book-length study on Dante’s use of the Bible. Tonia Bernardi Triggiano is an Assistant Visiting Professor of Italian at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. She teaches in a variety of Italian studies including language, linguistics, culture, and medieval literature. Her research revolves around Dante’s Paradiso and the poetry of medieval Franciscan women especially as it appears in primary sources. She is currently working on a compilation and transcription of the written works of Battista da Montefeltro-Malatesta. Santa Casciani is an Associate Professor of Italian at John Carroll University, The Jesuit University in Cleveland, where she also directs the Bishop Anthony M. Pilla Program in Italian American Studies and the John Carroll University at Vatican City Study Abroad Program. She has published articles on Italian and Italian American literature, and pedagogy, including also works on authors such as Dante, Michelangelo and Ruzante. She has co-edited a collection of essays, Word, Image, Number: Communications in the Middle Ages (with John Contreni) and co-translated and co-edited The Fiore (and Detto d’amore): A Late 13th-century Italian Translation of the Roman de la Rose (with Christopher Kleinhenz). She teaches a number of courses related to Franciscan spirituality and literature. William R. Cook is Distinguished Teaching Professor at the State University of New York, Geneseo. He has published a brief biography of Saint Francis (Liturgical Press, 1989) as well as two books on early Franciscan art, most recently Images of St. Francis of Assisi (Leo S. Olschki, 1999). He has also edited The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy (The Medieval Franciscans).

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Elvira Giosi is Visiting Assistant Professor at Saint Louis University and has also held an academic position at Stony Brook University where she taught both language and literature courses. Her scholarly interests focus on medieval Italian literature and she has published on a variety of Italian authors. Her Ph.D. dissertation addresses “Beatrice’s Prophesy in Purgatorio 33.” Ronal Herzman is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the College at Geneseo. His publications include The Medieval World View (with William Cook) and The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature (with Richard Emmerson). His work on Francis includes a video/audio course which he team teaches with William Cook in the Teaching Company’s “Great Courses” series. Giuseppe Mazzotta is Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian at Yale University, where he serves as Chairman of the Department of Italian Studies. He is the current President of the Dante Society of America. A scholar of rare distinction, Professor Mazzotta is the author of several ground-breaking studies dealing with the tangle of literature, politics, theology and philosophy in different periods and authors of Italian literature. His work on Dante includes books that are widely acknowledged as classics in the field: Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and allegory in the Divine Comedy and Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. He has also edited Critical Essays on Dante and the Norton Critical edition of Inferno. Amanda Quantz is Assistant Professor of the History of World Christianity at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Her research interests span the Eastern and Western branches of the Christian tradition. She teaches and writes about topics that highlight the intersection between church history and visual art, and has a particular interest in Franciscan intellectual history. Sister Lucia Treanor, F. S. E., a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist, is an Affiliate Professor in the Writing Department of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, where she also teaches medieval and early modern European literature. She has lectured on palindromic structure at Georgetown University, Columbia University and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and is currently writing a book about it.

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Alessandro Vettori teaches in the Department of Italian at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He published a book on Francis and Iacopone da Todi and is currently working on a book-length project on the concept of exile in Dante’s Divine Comedy. He has also published articles on novels and plays that reproduce the biblical texts in contemporary Italian literature. Brenda Wirkus is the Don Shula Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she has also served as chairperson of that department and as director of both the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Program in Applied Ethics. Her publications focus on issues in social philosophy, ethics, and feminist theory; the most recent investigates the ontological status of communities. Her work continues to center on questions of individuation and community throughout the history of philosophy.

INTRODUCTION Santa Casciani

The joy of editing this volume comes from my long interest in understanding Dante’s Divine Comedy in relation to the Franciscan intellectual tradition, an interest which began when I was a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My interest in understanding the Franciscan charism dates back to my childhood. I was born in a small town near L’Aquila and immigrated with my parents to Rochester, New York in 1969. As a young child, growing up and living in a Franciscan convent/boarding school in L’Aquila operated by the Franciscan Sisters of Mercy, I would ask myself why so many Franciscan convents and why so many friars lived in L’Aquila. Moreover, why would they wear sandals during our bitter cold winters? Were they not cold like the rest of us? How could they stand to wear sandals in the winters? I never understood until I was older that “bare feet” was and is part of the humility that Saint Francis instilled in his friars. Still today, I remember all those Sunday afternoons away from the enclosed walls of the all-girl convent where I was studying away from home, only able to leave to attend public school in L’Aquila. Every Sunday with my cousins Luigia and Stefania I would go to the Convent of Saint Bernardino in L’Aquila where Friar Casimiro, with a smile on his face, would always welcome us to the recreation room where we would play ping-pong and eat cookies. These memories would accompany me for years to come in America during the days when I would miss my life in Italy. Friar Casimiro’s smile is still embedded in my mind today along with the smell of the cookies he gave us for our afternoon snack. For years I would wonder what it was about the Franciscan Order that made me feel at peace and at home. Perhaps it was the sense of charity that emanated from Friar Casimiro’s smile, his sense of humility that freed him from any kind of discrimination, his sense of equality which removed from me that sense of inferiority I felt growing up in a country that showed discrimination among classes. (These were the sixties before Italy moved towards social democracy.)

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When it came time to choose a dissertation topic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I knew that I really wanted to work on the Franciscans of L’Aquila because I wanted to reconnect my work with my own identity. I wanted to understand why all of the doors of the lower part of the city had a sun depicted on them with 12 rays and why the people of L’Aquila would call it the Saint Bernardino’s sun. What did the image of the sun have to do with Franciscan spirituality? And how did it relate to Dante’s idea of the Pentecostal gift? I discovered an interesting relationship between Dante and Bernardino, and I address it in my own essay in this volume. However, this collection of essays offers much more than the relationship between Dante and Bernardino. It presents a Franciscan reading of the Divine Comedy. In the last decade there has been a growing interest in the study of the history of the Franciscan movement in relation to Dante Alighieri. However, this study is only the second volume dedicated to Dante and the Franciscans.1 Nine of the ten essays presented here are a clear sign that Dante’s Comedy and his Vita Nuova were very much influenced by Franciscan spirituality. The tenth essay addresses the influence that Dante’s Comedy had on the preaching of the Franciscan Order. The contributions to the volume are from scholars of literature, philosophy, theology and history and represent a much needed analysis of Franciscan influence on Dante’s literary production, and of the influence that Dante had on the preaching of Bernardino of Siena. The result is, I believe, a significant contribution to the study of how Dante understood and employed Franciscan sources in his literary production and how Bernardino of Siena integrate Dante’s work into his preaching. V.S. Benfell III examines Dante’s use of the final book of the Bible in The Divine Comedy and how that usage may have been influenced by Franciscan understandings of the Apocalypse, especially as interpreted by Olivi. In analyzing Dante’s understanding of the Apocalypse and how it compares to the “Franciscan apocalypse,” Benfell demonstrates how Dante and Olivi shared many of the same concerns regarding church corruption, and that Dante found in the Franciscan apocalypse a vocabulary and a set of images useful for his articulation of how history was ordered. The essay addresses how the Spiritual Franciscans sought to understand why the purity of their order was 1 See Nick Havely, Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the “Commedia” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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being undermined, even—in their view—flagrantly disregarded, and so many turned to the biblical book that for them contained the key to understanding history: the Apocalypse—especially as interpreted by Joachim of Fiore. They began to see the present corruption as playing a part in the providential ordering of history; God would soon intervene in order to issue a new age, a period of history in which the “pure” Franciscans would play a key role. Peter John Olivi was a leading exponent of the spiritualist viewpoint (though far from being the movement’s most radical member), and he wrote an extremely important commentary on the Apocalypse. Benfall argues that although Dante never mentions Olivi by name, we know that he taught in Florence at Santa Croce in the late 1280s and that the similarities between Dante’s own use of the Apocalypse and Olivi’s has led to speculation that Dante must have known Olivi’s work or even Olivi himself, or, at worst, Olivi’s follower at Santa Croce, Ubertino of Casale, a figure Dante does mention in Paradiso 12. 124–26. Ultimately, though, the differences between their apocalyptic visions are as noteworthy as the similarities; Dante takes what suits him from the Spiritual Franciscans, but the vision of history that he expounds in the Comedy is very much his own. Tonia Bernardi Triggiano revisits the role that Piccarda Donati plays in Dante’s Comedy. Originally interpreted as a symbol of inconstancy, Piccarda, according to Triggiano, ought to more fittingly be appreciated as the first in a long line of heavenly interlocutors, one of many to afford the pilgrim intellectual passage toward the divine vision of God. The reader of the Commedia becomes acquainted with Piccarda in Paradiso 3. There, in the sphere of the moon, the poet assigns Piccarda a pivotal role whereby she not only recalls a specific relationship to the poet’s own contemporary Florentine history but more importantly, serves to introduce the prima materia of the canticle—the soul’s enjoyment of the beatific vision in the afterlife as reward for one’s proper use of free will during the earthly life. The economy of the Paradiso depends upon a process of question and answer, and Piccarda is instrumental in this first phase of the pilgrim’s educational program. Piccarda clarifies both her own history in her thwarted attempt for sisterhood, and she addresses larger theological truths. Like other figures in the Commedia, Piccarda is emblematic. She personifies a specific category of religious women and her representation of the order of St. Clare speaks primarily of integration in the context of a variety of relationships: she, in relation to

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her place among the blessed, and in relation to her vocation. Dante’s recreation of his kinswoman as a virgin sister who speaks to the tenets of Clarissan spirituality places her into the order of Saint Clare, in this way correcting the violence done to her by her brother, Corso. Dante demonstrates that although Corso was successful in his plan to reroute his sister’s physical promise to the cloister, he had no power in diverting her spiritual and intellectual attachment. Indeed, the allegory of Paradiso 3 depends upon the notion of promises and the will required in preserving them. My essay, “Bernardino: Reader of Dante,” is the only essay dedicated to Dante’s reception in the Franciscan Order. In addressing Dante’s influence on the Franciscan Order of fifteenth-century Italy and applying theories of readership, which explicate the complex relationship among authorship, interpretation, and audience, I analyze Bernardino of Siena’s preaching. In addressing the faithful, some of Bernardino’s sermons use Dante’s idealized perspective on Christianity— ideals which for Dante emerge from his understanding of Franciscan spirituality. Specifically, for Bernardino, Dante becomes the voice of morality. In Sermon 23, preached in Piazza del Campo in 1427, the Saint recalls the episode of Guido of Montefeltro who in Inferno 27 is punished for betraying the ideals of Francis. This canto of The Comedy was particularly important to Bernardino, for he employed it to juxtapose the contemporary world of factions in Siena to the true Franciscan piety and to show the people of Siena the consequences of factionalism. For Bernardino, the Comedy recalls Francis’ idea that intellectual pursuits should aim toward a living faith and not by rhetorical speculation. In fact, Francis advocated a language obedient to the Word of God and not one that would fall into sophistic rhetoric. In the essay I conclude that Bernardino, using Dante’s Inferno 27, shows how Dante in this particular canto ironically reveals his intention to create a just world at peace both socially and spiritually. William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman, as they attempt to address the question of what Dante learned from St. Francis, begin with a reflection on the lives of Francis and Dante, lives which show both striking parallels and unexpected differences. The essay tells the story of Francis’ life by emphasizing the way in which quintessential Franciscan virtues emerged as Francis came face to face with his own vocation. It then shows how these virtues were necessary to Dante as he came face to face with his own exile. The essay then analyzes key Franciscan moments in the Divine Comedy by placing

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them in the larger context of what Dante learned from Francis. Thus the essay attempts to show how a number of important ways of looking at the Commedia, including Dante as critic of church wealth, as a crusader, as a peacemaker, and even as a “cosmic poet,” owe an enormous debt to Francis. In her essay Elvira Giosi addresses the problematic phrase of “cinquecento diece e cinque” (“five hundred and Ten and Five”) uttered by Beatrice in Purgatorio 33. In her analysis, she reinterprets the accepted idea of this phrase, which critics have associated with a numerical transposition of the Latin Letters DXV to DUX and which is believed to refer to an Emperor who, according to Dante, would bring an end to the corruption and the political disorder of his times. Specifically, in explicating this mysterious number, Giosi considers the influences of Franciscan Joachimite mysticism, and those of Jewish mysticism on Dante’s poetic creation of the DXV. Namely, she shows how the Florentine poet uses the Jewish numerology along with the late medieval eschatology—as found in the works of Spiritual Franciscans such as Peter Olivi, Ubertino of Casale and Alexander of Brema— in order to create a numerical symbol of Charity, Justice and Rectitude. Furthermore, in analyzing how the cinquecento diece e cinque can be connected to the Spiritual Franciscans’ expectations of a new era, she concludes that Dante in the DXV meant to identify Saint Francis as the messianic avenger in his Comedy. Giuseppe Mazzotta, in defining the nature of creative energy found in the Franciscan movement, analyzes the multiple strain of the Franciscan tradition in Dante’s Comedy. He first examines how Dante responded to medieval Franciscanism by interpreting the meaning of Guido of Montefeltro in Inferno 27. He notes that in this particular character, Dante wishes to raise issues of papal power (and political theology), and most importantly trace the boundaries of the thirteenthcentury debate between Franciscan theologians and secular masters. Specifically, the canto evokes the key questions of the thirteenthcentury debate on the liberal arts and the Franciscan attack against logic and speculative grammar. He then turns to the cantos in which Dante refers to the Heaven of the Sun (Paradiso 10–13) and demonstrates how Dante explores further the sense of the Franciscan intellectual traditions, connecting the Divine Comedy’s concern with gifts to the Franciscan theology of spiritual gifts. In her essay Amanda D. Quantz shows how Dante employs a Franciscan heuristic lens throughout the Divine Comedy. It is a perspective

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that underpins the framework for his understanding of sin, purgation and salvation. Unlike other scholastic authors, such as Anselm and Aquinas, Dante communicates clearly that it is not wisdom, obedience or virtuosity that determines one’s capacity to live out the Reign of God, but rather, the love that moves the sun and other stars. Furthermore, she explores how for Dante, life is a training ground for perfect beatitude, while the vita apostolica of the Franciscan variety is the lifestyle that most closely resembles the life lived by Love incarnate. God provides grace in the form of sustenance, consolation and companionship throughout the journey, in order to afford the individual the greatest possible opportunity for the success that the saints enjoy to various degrees. According to Dante, our task on earth is to cooperate with the grace that is continually offered, so that we might live out our potential as creatures made in the image and likeness of God who is love. Indeed, all three books of the Divine Comedy make this point for the reader, whether by admonition or example. Sister Lucia Treanor addresses the importance of the Greek tau in Hebrew history (Ezk. 9.4), the significance of which Pope Innocent III recounted at the Fourth Lateran Council, and interprets it as a sign of renewal in the Church. Specifically, the Pope honored it as “the form of the cross,” and elevated this allegorical image to the position of sacramental, for the letter t, in sound and analogic resemblance, evoked the sacred. Although there is no historical proof that the Franciscans of the thirteenth century knew the pronouncements of the Council, we know for sure that from the very beginning of the Order of Friars Minor, and certainly after the stigmatization of Francis, the cross was central to the spirituality of every Franciscan. The essay identifies Francis of Assisi’s “The Canticle of Creatures” as a palindromic structure that was imitated and extended by Dante and Chaucer. It considers the palindrome from the formal point of view of semiotics, and classifies several examples from major works of the classical and medieval periods, locating “The Canticle” within the spectrum of the classification. Although this poem has been studied in its outer beauty, Treanor shows that scholars need to consider its inner graphic design in order to appreciate fully its aporetic characteristic. Alessandro Vettori, focusing on the duplicity and specularity of Paradiso 11, demonstrates how the figures of speech and the binary quality of this canto aim at communicating a sense of peace and

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reconciliation, already present thematically in this canto. He argues that the sense of peace, which in De Monarchia Dante regards as a universal human goal, is featured within the innermost poetic folds of Paradiso 11 as a representative characteristic of Franciscanism at its inceptive steps. He addresses the double structure of Paradiso 11 and 12 (a unique case of twin cantos in the Divine Comedy), which are dedicated to the two Mendicant Orders, one to Francis and one to Dominic. Furthermore, he analyzes the sense of unity created by the intertwining of the accounts: Francis’s life is told by Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican; Dominic’s life is narrated by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, a Franciscan. He demonstrates that the frequent use of chiasmus and other binary rhetorical structures in the two cantos bear a direct or indirect message of reconciliation and harmony as main qualities of Franciscanism. In emphasizing poverty and humility, Dante portrays Francis as the reformer of the Church from within. The scene of his nude conversion on Piazza San Rufino, his mystical marriage to Lady Poverty, the foundation of the Order, and the final gift of the stigmata are the scattered facts that determine Dante’s representation of the Poverello—all within an aura of peacefulness and reconciliation. Brenda Wirkus examines Dante’s Vita Nuova with the intent of uncovering its philosophical foundations, specifically those derived from the Franciscan tradition. More specifically still, she focuses on two Franciscan themes: finding traces of God in the world and seeing human relationships as essentially communal. In developing the first theme, she explores Dante’s use of the character Beatrice as emblematic of truth and beauty and, thus, of the love of God. The distance that separated Dante from Beatrice, Wirkus argues, made it possible for him to view her as a medium which reveals the goodness of God rather than as a concrete, particular individual making moral demands upon him. In this way, Dante’s The New Life appears as a call to a “truer” life, one which seeks the higher through the lower. And that call clearly reflects the theme of Saint Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum: that we can find the shadows and vestiges of God in the sensible world, in the movement, order, and beauty of things. In the second part of her essay, she argues that La Vita Nuova is not simply an individual chronicle of an individual’s relationship with a woman he barely knows; in fact its structure reveals much more. Friends—relatives and neighbors—were an indispensable part of the medieval Italian city. The male protagonist of La

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Vita Nuova refers frequently to his friends and companions. Furthermore, he addresses many of his poems to the reader as a peer and potential friend, to the “courteous man” and to “women with understanding of love.” Dante’s work, according to Wirkus, is self-consciously aware of the relationship between a poet and his public. At the same time this work is a chronicle of a young poet attempting to articulate his unique vision and discover his own poetic voice. His journey, she concludes, can thus also be characterized as a process of individuation from his many communities, including the community of troubadour poets and his first friend Guido Cavalcanti. Readers thus can observe both the poet emerging from those many communities and the man returning, transformed, to those communities, echoing clearly a Franciscan sensibility and perspective. The most remarkable aspect of this book is the interrelationship between Dante and the Franciscan intellectual tradition. All essays contribute to a wider understanding of this relationship and show how all disciplines can come together to shed light on how the Franciscan intellectual component informs so much of Dante’s writing.

DANTE, PETER JOHN OLIVI, AND THE FRANCISCAN APOCALYPSE V.S. Benfell III

Dante’s poem begins, as do all of our journeys, in the middle of things, and yet it is preoccupied with apocalypse, that is, with the end time. As Frank Kermode has noted, this divided attention to both present and future proves typical of western literature, since human beings “need fictive concords with origins and ends, such as give meaning to lives and to poems.” Thus, as we situate our own lives within a larger narrative that projects forward to a time of closure, we do so in order to make sense of our lives now, since “the End [we] imagine will reflect [our] irreducibly intermediary preoccupations.”1 It is not surprising, therefore, that Apocalypticism flourishes during periods of transition and crisis, partly because these times often strike those living through them as heading toward a historical climax, but predominantly because it is through the imposition of an end that individuals can come to an understanding and acceptance of their present.2 That is, apocalypse offers a way of perceiving the world to those seeking order and purpose. This apocalyptic hermeneutic proves to be characteristic both of Dante’s poem and of the writings of a group of Franciscans who were convinced that the mainstream of their order had betrayed the ideals of its founder. This faction of rigorists, whom we normally

1 Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 7. 2 Norman Cohn and others have argued that this sense of crisis is primarily what motivates apocalyptic movements. See Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (London: Temple Smith, 1970). I find Bernard McGinn’s notion, however—that those who turn to apocalyptic thought do so in order to make sense of the present—more persuasive. See, for example, his introduction to Apocalyptic Spirituality (Mahway, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979), 8: “The apocalyptic mentality is a particular form of pre-understanding rather than a mere way of responding. More sensitive to change than the mass of their fellows, apocalypticists are more in need of a religious structure within which to absorb and give meaning to the anxieties that always accompany existence and change.”

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refer to as Spiritual Franciscans,3 came under persecution for their vocal and determined resistance to what they saw as the increasing materialism of their order. They turned to the Apocalypse as a way of understanding the growing laxity of other Franciscans and the importance of their own adherence to the ideal of evangelical poverty in the face of opposition. The most influential Spiritual Franciscan exegete of the Bible’s final book was Peter John Olivi, whose views of the end time (and hence of the moment in which he wrote) proved so dangerously influential that they were condemned posthumously by Pope John XXII in 1326. There is evidence that Dante knew of and to some degree sympathized with the Spirituals, and it also seems clear that the Spirituals’ apocalyptic views had some influence over Dante. In this essay, I will explore both Dante’s use of the final book of the Bible and how that usage may have been influenced by Franciscan understandings of the Apocalypse. First, though, we must review the evidence of Dante’s knowledge of and sympathy for Peter John Olivi and the Spirituals.

The Spiritual Franciscans and Dante Even before Saint Francis died in 1226, the tensions that would lead to the split in the Franciscan order and the rise of a group of Spirituals were already visible. Francis had envisioned a group of minor friars who would be characterized by their embrace of poverty and extreme humility. As the order grew, however, the difficulties of translating that ideal into an institutional context became increasingly apparent.4 3 David Burr writes in his recent history of the movement, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), that prior to 1320, the word “spiritual” was not used frequently in reference to this faction of the order; in the early fourteenth century, for example, they were more often referred to by the name of their leader at the time, Ubertino da Casale, as “‘Ubertino and his associates from the province of Provence’ or simply ‘Ubertino and his associates’” (viii). As we will see, this is how Dante refers to the faction as well. For the sake of convenience, however, I will use the slightly anachronistic designation of “Spiritual Franciscans” or “Spirituals” to refer to Olivi, Ubertino, and their associates throughout this essay. 4 See David Burr, “The Franciscan Dilemma,” in The Spiritual Franciscans, 1–10. Much of my summary of the Spirituals derives from this and other works of Burr, as well as the work of Raoul Manselli. See, in particular, Da Gioacchino da Fiore a Cristoforo Cololmbo: Studi sul Francescanesimo spirituale, sull’ecclesiologia e sull’escatologismo bassomedievali (Rome: Istituto storico Italiano per il medio evo, 1997). An earlier history

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Francis eventually resigned from the leadership of the order in late 1220, though he continued to influence its direction by writing the order’s rule and by dictating his Testament, which he intended to serve as a guide to the rule, near the time of his death. But within a few years, the order had become a powerful and influential movement within the Church, and its members were wanted for prominent ecclesiastical positions, government service, and teachers of theology, all of which seemed, to many, to contradict the ideals of the order’s founder.5 There is little evidence of any coordinated Spiritualist movement prior to 1274. At that time, more public controversies began to surface within the order that paved the way for the later conflict. Perhaps the most important surrounded the question of the Franciscan vow of poverty and usus pauper, and it revolved around the figure of Petrus Iohannis Olivi, a friar from the south of France.6 As the order grew, it became apparent to most friars that Francis’s early ideal of absolute poverty would not work for a prominent order involved in the government of the Church. Early on, therefore, a compromise was reached in the papal bull Quo elongati, issued by Pope Gregory IX on September 28, 1230, in which Gregory made the important distinction between use and ownership.7 The friars could not actually own property, which was clearly prohibited by the vow that the friars made upon joining the order, but they needed to have the necessities of life; the bull allowed the Franciscans use of these things as long as they were owned by someone else, such as the pope or the cardinal protector of the order. Some forty years later or so, a controversy arose regarding the definition of use. Some friars, such as Olivi, felt that the Franciscan vow, while it allowed for use even of the movement is Decima L. Douie, The Nature and the Effect of the Heresy of the Fraticelli (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1932). 5 In terms of ecclesiastical positions, for example, Burr notes that the “first Franciscan cardinal dates from 1273; the first inquisitors from the 1250s; the first bishops, from even earlier” (348, n. 11). The first Franciscan pope was Nicholas IV ( Jerome of Ascoli), elected in 1288. For a standard account of the history of the Franciscan order, see John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order: From Its Origins to the Year 1517 (1968. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988). 6 This seems to be the correct form of Olivi’s name, which means Peter [son] of John Olivi, with Iohannis serving as a patronymic. I follow, however, the standard English form of his name: Peter John Olivi. The standard biography of Olivi is David Burr, The Persecution of Peter Olivi, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 66, part 5 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976). 7 Moorman, History, 90; Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, 15.

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while it prohibited ownership, also demanded poor use, usus pauper. This distinction was important to Olivi, because he saw that without it, the practice of use without ownership was open to widespread abuse, as many friars gravitated toward usus dives, or rich use. Although Olivi’s views concerning what constituted poor use were actually fairly moderate, many of the leaders of the order objected to his statement of his position, and Olivi found himself on the negative end of a lengthy controversy. In 1283, he was officially censured by a commission of seven Paris scholars, who also dismissed him from his teaching post and confiscated his writings. In 1287, however, Olivi was evidently rehabilitated, as he was given a new teaching post as a lector in the Florentine Franciscan school of Santa Croce. He returned to Provence in 1289 and seems to have remained free from censure and persecution until his death in 1298. Nevertheless, the controversy shows a widening split between two groups who had differing ideas about the role of poverty in the life of the order,8 and at the general chapter meeting in 1299, Olivi’s writings were again condemned. After Olivi’s return to southern France, the split between the two groups back in Italy widened dramatically. When the hermit Pietro da Morrone was, surprisingly, elected pope in 1294, a group of rigorist Franciscans centered in Ancona, led by Angelo Clareno, appealed directly to the new pope. Celestine V recognized this group as a new order, the Poor Hermits of Pope Celestine, in which the former friars “gave up the Franciscan name but kept the Franciscan rule.”9 Within six months, however, Celestine had abdicated, and his successor, Boniface VIII, quickly rescinded all of Celestine’s legislation, including that concerning the Poor Hermits, who were put back under the control of their former superiors. This conflict escalated over the next several years until Clement V decided to intervene at the Council of Vienne; in 1312, he issued the bull Exivi de paradiso, which was intended to create a compromise between the two groups. The settlement, however, was of short duration, and in 1317 John XXII issued an ultimatum to the Spirituals in southern France, which led to the execution in the following year of several Franciscans who refused 8 On the usus pauper controversy, see Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, 43–65; and, for a more extended treatment, Burr, Olivi and Franciscan Poverty: The Origins of the “Usus Pauper” Controversy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989). 9 Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, 69.

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to submit to the papal demands. During that same year, the papacy moved against the man who, after Francis, seemed to be the guiding light for the Spirituals: Olivi. Following his death and burial in Narbonne in 1298, Olivi’s body had become a pilgrimage site, and there were many reports of miracles being wrought by his dead body. Indeed, a kind of informal hagiography was at work in more ways than one. Angelo Clareno suggested that Joachim of Fiore had foretold the coming of Olivi as well as the coming of Francis.10 The leadership of the Church and order moved to squelch this unapproved veneration, and, in 1318, Olivi’s body was exhumed and moved to a new, undisclosed location, and his tomb was destroyed. His most influential writing—the Lectura super Apocalipsim—was condemned in 1326. Gradually, the leaders of the Spirituals went elsewhere, and their movement tended to die out. During the time that Dante was writing the Commedia, however, the movement, and the controversy surrounding it, was vibrant. It is obvious that Dante had a great affection for Saint Francis and for the order he founded, though how far this sympathy carried him is a matter of some debate.11 The best evidence, however, for Dante’s sympathy for the Franciscans and for the Spiritualist movement within the order is in the Paradiso’s heaven of the sun, whose center piece is the dual account of the founding of the Franciscans and the Dominicans in the thirteenth century. Dante establishes a kind of symmetry between the two orders; Saint Thomas Aquinas, the representative speaker of the Dominicans, tells the life of Francis in canto 11, while Saint Bonaventure, speaking for the Franciscans, praises Dominic by telling of his life in canto 12. The apparent symmetry, however, masks the subtle ways in which Dante works to

10 Angelo makes this claim in his “Historia Septem Tribulationum,” found in Archiv für Litteratur-und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, ed. H. Denifle and F. Ehrle, 7 vols. (Berlin, 1885–1900), 2.289; cited in the Introduction to Warren Lewis’ dissertation, “Peter John Olivi: Prophet of the Year 2000” (University of Tübingen, 1972), 397–398, n. 3. 11 There are early rumors, for example, first proposed in Francesco da Buti’s commentary, that Dante had at one point been a Franciscan novice, or that he joined the third order of lay Franciscans, though this biographical detail may have been invented to explain Inferno 16. 106–08, where the pilgrim takes off a corda with which he had hoped “to capture the speckled-skinned leopard.” Recent treatments of the question include Manselli, “Dante e l ‘Ecclesia spiritualis,’” in Da Gioacchino da Fiore, 55–78; and Nick Havely, Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the “Commedia” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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praise Francis as superior to Dominic, thus showing Dante’s great attraction to Francis and his ideals.12 The life narrated by Aquinas, however, also shows Dante’s sympathy for certain elements of the Spiritualist movement. The focal point, for example, of the life that Aquinas recounts is Francis’s marriage to Lady Poverty (Paradiso 11. 55–75), an emphasis that accords with the Spirituals’ insistence on usus pauper and a literal interpretation of the rule. Dante also takes some pains to emphasize that the earliest Franciscans went barefoot, another point of contention, as the Spirituals complained that, although the rule prohibited the wearing of shoes, most Franciscans commonly wore them.13 Given this context, Dante’s insistence that Francis’s first three disciples all joined him only after removing their shoes, a detail that Dante’s primary source here—Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior —does not include, certainly implies that he is anxious to identify what the Spirituals called “poor use” with the life of Francis and his early disciples.14 Later, in fact, Dante characterizes the early apostles in the same way, as Peter Damian tells the pilgrim that Peter and Paul both came “magri e scalzi, / prendendo il cibo da qualunque ostello” (“lean and barefoot, taking food at whatever inn” [Paradiso 21. 127–129]). 12 See Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 194–217. There are many works on Dante’s portrayal of Francis in this heaven; see especially the following: Manselli, “San Francesco e san Domenico nei canti del Paradiso,” in Gioacchino da Fiore, 201–211; Erich Auerbach, “St. Francis of Assisi in Dante’s Commedia,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (1959. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 79–98; Ronald Herzman, “Dante and Francis,” Franciscan Studies 42 (1982): 96–114; Sergio Cristaldi, “Dalle beatitudini all’Apocalisse: Il Nuovo Testamento nella Commedia,” Letture Classensi 17 (1988): 35–45; Nicolò Mineo, “Il canto XI del Paradiso (La ‘vita’ di San Francesco nella ‘festa di paradiso’),” in Lectura Dantis Metelliana: I primi undici canti, ed. Attilio Mellone (Rome: Bulzoni, 1992), 221–320; and most recently, Havely, Dante and the Franciscans, 130–153. 13 Shoes, for example, were discussed by Ubertino da Casale in response to questions suggested by Clement V in 1310. Burr provides a summary and analysis of the document in Spiritual Franciscans, 115–127. 14 Dante uses the verb scalzarsi, (“to take off one’s shoes”) three times, in lines 80–83: “Bernardo / si scalzò prima . . . Scalzasi Egidio, scalzasi Silvestro.” Citations of the Commedia are according to the Petrocchi text as found in Dante, The Divine Comedy, 3 vols., trans. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970–75). Unless otherwise noted, all translations (including those of Dante) are my own. It is true, as Havely points out, that Bonaventure’s Legenda and the Bardi Dossal painting found in Santa Croce (which Havely sees as a possible source for Dante) portray Francis removing his shoes upon his hearing the reading of Matthew 10.9 during mass. It is nevertheless revealing that Dante chooses to portray Francis’s disciples, and not Francis himself, removing their shoes. Dante also makes similarly positive statements concerning the importance of poverty in the church in the Monarchia. For a brief discussion, see Havely, 154–159.

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When these details are juxtaposed, they offer further evidence that Dante saw the early Franciscans as reenacting the life of the early apostles. Indeed, Nick Havely has argued that Saint Peter’s invective in Paradiso 27 is largely directed not against Boniface VIII, but against John XXII, who was pope when Dante was most likely writing the canto. This pope was notable for his determination to wipe out the Spirituals, and Dante seems to borrow specific images from the Spiritual polemics against Nicholas, which he places in the mouth of Peter. In particular, Havely argues that Dante draws on Apocalypse 17.6 (“And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus”) according to its Spiritual interpretation, that the image refers to the contemporary carnal Church in its persecution and martyrdom of Spirituals.15 The proposition that Dante identifies with the views and the plight of the Spirituals, however, is complicated by Paradiso 12, in which Bonaventure provides a biography of Dominic before using the Spanish saint’s great virtue to criticize the current state of his own order. Whereas the friars used to follow in the footsteps of Francis, now they move backward, and they will be surprised at the end of time to find themselves judged to be tares rather than wheat. There are still some faithful, however, who can say “I am as I always was”: ma non fia da Casal né d’Acquasparta, là onde vegnon tali a la scrittura, ch’uno la fugge e altro la coarta. (12. 124–126) (but they are not from Casale nor from Acquasparta; there, where such come to the rule, one flees it and another constricts it.)

The identification of Aquasparta as a place where friars are found that do not meet Bonaventure’s standard is hardly surprising. Dante is most likely referring here to Matthew of Acquasparta, who was minister general of the order from 1287–89 and cardinal of the Church beginning in 1288. Dante’s personal antipathy may well derive from Matthew’s role as an agent of Boniface VIII; according to Dino Compagni, Matthew was sent by Boniface to Florence in 1300 to make peace between the Florentine factions, the Black and White Guelfs, but he acted simply to further Boniface’s interests by supporting the Blacks’ cause and working for the exile of the prominent Whites, including Dante.16 More surprising, in light of Dante’s apparent 15 16

Dante and the Franciscans, 168–175. Cronica 1.21.

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sympathy for the Spiritualist cause, is his mentioning of Casale. This allusion is no doubt to Ubertino da Casale, the prominent spokesman for the Spirituals (he was, for example, one of the primary representatives of the faction at the Council of Vienne) and author of the apocalyptic treatise, Arbor vitae crucifixae. Dante’s sense that Ubertino and his followers improperly “constrict” the rule, together with his choice of Bonaventure as a spokesman for the Franciscans, implies that while he decried the corruption of the order, he was not willing to go as far as the more radical Spirituals in his claims.17 And since it was common to refer to the Spirituals before 1320 as “Ubertino and his associates,” Dante’s use of the name here may well be a shorthand reference for the entire faction.18 Most important for our purposes, however, Dante further supports the Franciscan reading of history in his insistence that Francis uniquely renewed the ideals of the evangelical life through a re-enactment of the life of Christ. In Aquinas’s account of Francis’s marriage to Lady Poverty, he notes that Poverty had been deprived of her first husband (Christ) for over 1100 years (Paradiso 11. 64–66).19 Further, he describes Francis’s receipt of the stigmata as his receiving the “final seal” from Christ (da Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo; 11. 107). Dante sees Francis as, in some ways, restoring the ideals of Christianity through his reenactment of Christ’s life, an idea that comes through in the opening lines of Aquinas’s account, when he refers to Francis’s birth as that of a sun:

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While this reading of Par. 12. 124–26 is by far the most common, it is possible to read “fugge” as referring to Ubertino, who was criticized by some Franciscan leaders for “fleeing” the rule by first entering the service of his patron, Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, and then by becoming a Benedictine in 1317 when he feared that were he to return to the Franciscans his life would be in danger. Matthew of Aquasparta would then be understood as “restricting” the rule by limiting its requirement of poverty to a simple lack of ownership without further including usus pauper. 18 See note 2. This interpretation is disputed by Manselli, who sees Ubertino as one of the more radical of the Spirituals, and that Dante’s insistence that Franciscans observe both poverty and obedience is matched by Olivi’s views. See “Dante e l’‘Ecclesia spiritualis,’” 78, n. 57. 19 Havely argues that in canto 11 Francis “is primarily a reviver of apostolic ideals rather than an alter Christus” (130). I would argue, however, that these two things are not so easily disjoined. Indeed, his marriage to Lady Poverty is portrayed, as noted above, as significant precisely because Poverty has been a widow since the death of Christ, and so in taking up the marriage to Lady Poverty, Francis is also imitating Christ.

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Di questa costa, là dov’ella frange più sua rattezza, nacque al mondo un sole, come fa questo talvolta di Gange. Però chi d’esso loco fa parole, non dica Ascesi, ché direbbe corto, ma Orïente, se proprio dir vuole. (49–54)

(From this slope, there where it breaks its steepness the most, a sun was born to the world, as this one does sometimes from the Ganges. Therefore who speaks of this place should not say “Assisi,” which would be to say too little, but Orient, if he wishes to speak correctly.) Dante’s portrayal of Francis as a sun derives from the Franciscan tradition, most immediately from the prologue to Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior, in which Francis is portrayed as the angel from Apocalypse 7. 2: And so not without reason is he considered to be symbolized by the image of the Angel who ascends from the sunrise bearing the seal of the living God, in the true prophecy of that other friend of the Bridegroom, John the Apostle and Evangelist. For “when the sixth seal was opened,” John says in the Apocalypse: “I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun (ascendentem ab ortu solis), having the seal of the living God.”20

Bonaventure’s identification of Francis with the angel of the Apocalypse has important implications for his view of Francis’s role in the history of Christianity. For most Christian exegetes, the Apocalypse was not (or not merely) a guide to the future; it presented the key to understanding the world’s history. Bonaventure’s appropriation of the angel of chapter seven for Francis asserts the world-historical significance of the saint; Francis is the angel or messenger who takes up the gospel anew and revives it. Dante seems to allude to the angel of Apocalypse 7 in his portrayal of Francis as a “sun,” implicitly tying together the story of Francis and the Apocalypse. Ronald Herzman argues that Dante grasps this central idea of Bonaventure’s Legenda and writes it into his life of Francis: “Francis has become a document

20 Translation of the Legenda Maior is taken from Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of Saint Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 181. Bonaventure uses the Apocalypse throughout his biography in order to understand Francis and his significance. See Richard K. Emmerson and Ronald B. Herzman, “The Legenda Maior: Bonaventure’s Apocalyptic Francis,” in The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 36–75.

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to be read, a document written by God and authenticated by this seal, which is at the same time proof of his likeness to the crucified Christ.”21 And while Bonaventure saw Francis through the prophecies of the Apocalypse, it was the Spirituals who made the most extensive use of this image and who began to draw on the Apocalypse as a way of understanding, not only Francis, but also the history of their order and what they saw as its present decline and corruption. It is to this tradition that we now turn.

The Spiritual Franciscan Apocalypse As we have seen, many Franciscans, including Saint Bonaventure, saw a renewal or restoration of evangelical truth in the person of Saint Francis, an interpretation of his life that seemed to be authenticated by God himself when Francis received the stigmata in September of 1224 on the mountain top of La Verna. Franciscans who possessed this sense of their founder and his order were struck when they turned to the writings of Joachim of Fiore, a Calabrian visionary who claimed to have received through revelation the true meaning of the Bible’s final book. Prior to Joachim, the interpretation of the Apocalypse largely followed interpretive lines laid down by Saint Augustine, who, following Tyconius,22 discouraged reading the book as if it provided a detailed guide to the unfolding of the future. And while Augustine certainly accepts the reality of a literal, bodily resurrection and a final judgment,23 he has little interest in trying to decipher a timetable for the second coming of Christ. Instead, the tribulations and blessedness described by John in such vivid detail refer to the life of the Church now, since it is always divided between wheat and tares.24 21 Ronald B. Herzman, “Dante and the Apocalypse,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 407. 22 Tyconius was a lay theologian contemporary to Augustine, about whom we know little, as only one of his works survives. He was a Donatist, though an independentminded one, and he had a profound influence on Augustine. He wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse that has not survived. 23 See for example, on his discussion of the last judgment, De civitate dei, 20; on the resurrection, see De civitate dei, 22. 4–5. 24 For a concise account of Augustine’s reading, see Paula Frederiksen, “Tyconius and Augustine on the Apocalypse,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, 20–37; and

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This reading of the Apocalypse remained standard until Joachim, who offered a new interpretation based on a Trinitarian conception of history: there were three ages of world history, each governed by one member of the Trinity. These ages, however, overlapped with one beginning while the previous age was still well under way. Thus, the age of God the Father corresponded to the history of the world from Adam to the incarnation (corresponding to the Old Testament), and was characterized by Joachim as the time of the order of the married; the age of God the Son corresponded roughly to the time of the New Testament through the present day, though it began with King Josiah (d. 609 B.C.), and it was the age of the clerics; the final age of history, that of God the Holy Spirit, had already been inaugurated with Saint Benedict, but it would soon flourish and ultimately result in a renewal of religious life in the great age of the monastic orders. Joachim read this tripartite structure of history in the Apocalypse and, like the Franciscans, saw history moving toward renewal. Even more appealing to the Franciscans was his reading of the two witnesses of chapter eleven (verses 3–13) as representing two new orders of “spiritual men” who would help to usher in the final age or status of the Holy Spirit, which many Franciscans saw as referring to themselves.25 Joachim’s apocalyptic views and his views of the Trinity were considered suspect at best (the Fourth Lateran Council condemned his view of the Trinity in 1215),26 and Franciscans who began to preach Frederiksen’s entry, “Apocalypticism,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 49–53. In this last entry, she concludes: “He created a third way, reading ad litteram—historically but not literally—and thus affirmed the historical realism of Christian redemption while renouncing any terrestrial eschatology” (53). Frederiksen here uses “literally” in its modern rather than ancient sense (which was precisely to read ad litteram). 25 On Joachim, see: Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Latter Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 1–132; Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985); and Gian Luca Potestà, Il tempo dell’Apocalisse: vita di Gioacchino da Fiore (Rome: Laterza, 2004). More concise accounts include E. Randolph Daniel, “Joachim of Fiore: Patterns of History in the Apocalypse,” in Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, 72–88; and Richard K. Emmerson and Ronald B. Herzman, “The Apocalypse and Joachim of Fiore: Keys to the Medieval Apocalyptic Imagination,” in Apocalyptic Imagination, 1–35. For a general overview of how the Franciscans approached the Apocalypse, see Gian Luca Potestà, I francescani e la Bibbia nel ‘200 (Milan: Biblioteca Francescana, 1994). 26 As Richard Emmerson notes, however, “Joachim himself was never branded a heretic and was proclaimed orthodox by Honorius III in 1220.” See his entry, “Joachim of Fiore,” in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000), 537–538.

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Joachite ideas began to attract unwanted attention to the order. The most famous example was Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, who in 1254 published a work entitled Evangelium aeternum (“The Everlasting Gospel”), a work that was to combine three of Joachim’s major writings together with an introduction and commentary by Gerard, though it is doubted that this full work ever appeared. Instead, we know that Paris booksellers did sell an abbreviated version that contained Gerard’s introduction and Joachim’s Liber de concordia. Gerard’s introduction does not survive, but if the accounts of it (and the excerpts of it contained in the accounts) are to be believed, it was by medieval standards an extreme and heretical document, which argued that the period of the Apostles was to be surpassed by the coming third age, and that the Scriptures themselves would soon be proved inadequate. According to the Franciscan chronicler Salimbene of Parma, Gerard argued that “the gospel of Christ and the doctrine of the New Testament did not lead to perfection and were to be superseded in 1260.”27 The release of the introduction was particularly ill-timed, as it corresponded with the height of the controversy in Paris between the secular masters of the university and the mendicants who, the seculars thought, were stealing their students and destroying the proper functioning of the university. The secular masters seized on this document as evidence of the dangerous ideas of the mendicants, and in 1255 Gerard’s introduction was condemned by Pope Alexander IV. The result was reluctance by Franciscans openly to embrace Joachim. John of Parma, who was minister general of the order during the scandal over the Everlasting Gospel, was pressured to resign because he was known to hold Joachite views. Bonaventure, who succeeded John as minister general in 1257 upon John’s recommendation, felt

27 Cited in David Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom: A Reading of the Apocalypse Commentary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 17. 1260 was an important year for Joachites, as the pseudo-Joachim Commentary on Jeremiah, probably written in the early 1240s, predicted that 1260 would mark a definite transition to the third and final age of world history, a calculation based upon Joachim’s notion that there would be 42 generations, each consisting of 30 years (for a total length of 1260 years) between the advent of Christ and full coming of the third age. See Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 159. Manselli argues that Dante would have known this commentary, based upon the similarity between Inf. 27.85, which refers to Boniface as the “principe de’ novi farisei” and the commentary that refers to the clergy “ob novorum phariseorum superbiam et scribarum,” as well as other similarities. See Da Gioacchino da Fiore, 63–64.

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obliged to put his predecessor on trial for his Joachite views.28 Bonaventure, however, as we have seen, was also drawn to the apocalypse and Joachim’s interpretation of it as a way of making sense of Christian history and the place of his order within that history. We must, therefore, view his condemnation of John of Parma’s views as involving political expediency or perhaps some aspect of his apocalypticism with which Bonaventure disagreed rather than with the entire apocalyptic project. This discussion leads us to the central figure in considering the Franciscan Apocalypse: Peter John Olivi. He proves to be an important figure in the development of the Spiritualist movement not only because of his views on poverty which we have already briefly discussed, but also because of his longstanding interest in the Apocalypse.29 His commentary was frequently read and cited by Spirituals following his death, and it became so troublesome that, as mentioned above, it was eventually condemned in 1326. Indeed, the Inquisitor Bernard Gui comments that many of the Beguins30 looked to Olivi for their opinions, especially to his Apocalypse commentary, which they possessed both in Latin and in vernacular translation.31 There is thus good evidence that it circulated widely in the early years of the fourteenth century, and it is therefore possible that Dante would have seen the commentary. The question of Dante’s knowledge of Olivi is a debated one. The basic facts are these: Dante never mentions Olivi in any of his works, but his use of the Apocalypse and his view on certain issues are 28 The story is told by Moorman, 145–146, and by Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom, 7–14. 29 David Burr and others have shown that although Olivi’s commentary on the Apocalypse dates from the end of his life, he had an interest in apocalypticism early on, and it influenced most of his work prior to the writing of the commentary. See, e.g., Burr, Persecution, 17–24. 30 The term “Beguin” refers to members of the third order of Franciscans, especially those in southern France influenced by Olivi and devoted to the principles of the Spirituals. It is not to be confused with “Beguines,” which refers to a movement of female communal spirituality. For a convenient summary of the two phenomena, see the entries by Robert E. Lerner, “Beguines and Beghards,” and “Beguins” in The Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph Strayer (New York: Scribner, 1982), 2. 157–162, 162–163. 31 Bernard Gui, Manuel de l’inquisiteur, 2 vols., ed. G. Mollat (Paris: Champion, 1926), 1. 110: “quod errores suos et opiniones hujusmodi pestiferas ipsi habuerunt et collegerunt partim quidem ex libris seu opusculis fratris Petri Johannis Olivi . . . videlicet ex postilla ejusdem super Apocalipsim quam habent tam in latino quam etiam transpositam in vulgari.”

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similar to those of Olivi.32 Olivi taught as a lector in Santa Croce from 1287–89, and Dante may have met him then. Dante tells us in the Convivio that at one point in his life he began to frequent “the schools of the religious and the debates of the philosophers,” which most commentators have identified as the schools attached to the Franciscan and Dominican churches Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella,33 though Dante identifies this time as following the death of Beatrice in 1290. Nevertheless, Charles T. Davis has suggested that Dante’s education at Santa Croce antedated that time. Raoul Manselli thinks it unlikely that Dante met Olivi, though he thinks it certain that he did know Olivi’s work, as Olivi’s influence continued at Santa Croce throughout the fourteenth century and into the fifteenth; and, as we have seen, Dante certainly knew the work of Olivi’s student in Florence, Ubertino da Casale.34 A man who was a charismatic and popular thinker would no doubt have attracted the attention of a well-educated and curious layman with undoubted sympathies for the Franciscan order, such as Dante.35 If we are to gain an appreciation, then, of both the Franciscan Apocalypse and Dante’s knowledge of and sympathy for it, we can do no better than turn to Olivi’s commentary. We will begin with a brief overview of the reading of the Apocalypse presented in his commentary before turning to Dante’s poem and the specific uses 32 Manselli suggests that the reason for Dante’s silence on Olivi is Dante’s awareness of the controversy surrounding the Franciscan. See Manselli’s entry on Olivi in the Enciclopedia Dantesca, ed. Umberto Bosco, 6 vols. (Rome: Istituto dell’ Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970–78), 4. 135–137. Other recent attempts to discuss the relationship between the two men include: Nicolò Mineo, “Gli spirituali francescani e l’’Apocalisse’ di Dante,” La rassegna della letteratura italiana 102 (1998): 26–46; Alberto Forni, “Pietro di Giovanni Olivi e Dante, ovvero il panno e la gonna,” in Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248–1298): Pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société, ed. Alain Boureau and Sylvain Piron (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1999), 341–352. 33 Convivio 2. 12. 7: “E da questo imaginare cominciai ad andare là dov’ella si dimostrava veracemente, cioè ne le scuole de li religiosi e a le disputazioni de li filosofanti.” I cite the Convivio, ed. Cesare Vasoli and Domenico de Robertis, in Dante Alighieri: Opere Minori, volume 2, parts 1 and 2 (1988. Milan: Ricciardi, 1995). See the extended notes from this edition on this passage in part 1, pages 205–210. 34 Charles T. Davis, “Education in Dante’s Florence,” in Dante’s Italy and Other Essays (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 137–165. Manselli, “Dante e l’‘Ecclesia spiritualis,’” 67; and “Firenze nel Trecento: Santa Croce e la cultura francescana,” in Da Gioacchino da Fiore, 257–273. 35 I too think it very likely that Dante knew Olivi’s work and possibly Olivi himself. Because Olivi’s commentary was so widespread and so influential on Franciscan thinking about the Apocalypse, I have chosen to concentrate on the similarities between Olivi and Dante as a way of gaining a sense of Dante’s indebtedness to the Franciscan Apocalypse.

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he makes of the Apocalypse there, and how these uses relate to Olivi’s views of that biblical book.

Olivi’s “Lectura super Apocalipsim” Peter John Olivi felt that he had an understanding of the Apocalypse that was superior to those that preceded him, but this comprehension was due more to his place in history than it was to his skills as an exegete. His moment in history was propitious for gaining a fuller knowledge of the book because of the spiritual gifts that the period enjoyed (exemplified in Joachim) and also because, during the expanse of time since the writing of the Apocalypse, certain features of world history had become apparent. For in the previous five ages of the Church it was not granted to the saints, however inspired, to open up the secrets of this book, which were to be opened more fully only in the sixth and seventh ages, just as neither in the first five ages of the Old Testament was it granted to prophets to open clearly the secrets of Christ and of the New Testament but only in the sixth age of the world.36

This passage reveals a few things about Olivi’s grasp of the Apocalypse and his understanding of history that proves central to it.37 First, he sees history as a progressive unfolding, and it allows for increased knowledge along the way. Second, he sees history as divided into different periods or ages. This feature of his apocalyptic thought derives ultimately from the Apocalypse itself, but it is mediated through several centuries of tradition. 36 “Nam in prioribus quinque ecclesie statibus non fuit concessum sanctis, quantumcumque illuminatis, aperire illa secreta huius libri, que in solo sexto et septimo statu erant apertius reseranda, sicut nec in primis quinque etatibus veteris testamenti fuit prophetis concessum clare aperire secreta Christi et novi testamenti in sexta etate seculi reserandis et reseratis.” I cite Olivi’s Lectura super Apocalipsim according to the only modern critical edition available, contained in the doctoral thesis of Warren Lewis, op. cit. This citation is found on page 564. Further references to the Lectura will occur in the text. Lewis is currently at work on revising and publishing this edition, and he has been kind enough to send me revised versions of several portions of the text. 37 My understanding of the Lectura super Apocalipsim has been shaped primarily by three studies: Raoul Manselli, La “Lectura super Apocalipsim” di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi: Ricerche sull’escatologismo medioevale (Rome: Istituto storico Italiano per il medio evo, 1955); Warren Lewis’s introduction to his dissertation, “Ecclesiology and Eschatology in the Lectura super Apocalipsim”; and Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom. Lewis also provides a useful summary of the history of scholarship on Olivi’s commentary up to the time of his dissertation on pages 91–117.

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The Book of Revelation is filled with sevens. Chapters two and three contain seven letters, one to each of the seven churches in Asia. In chapters four through eight we hear about the opening of the seven seals. In chapter fifteen we learn that there are seven angels that have seven vials that they later open in order to unleash plagues upon the world. Medieval exegetes, therefore, saw seven as an organizing principle not only of the scriptural book but also of the history of the world that it recounts. Olivi was no exception, and he saw world history divided into seven great ages. The first five correspond to times before the coming of Christ; the birth of Christ signaled the dawning of the sixth age of world history. This history was also organized, however, into the tripartite division of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that Olivi found in Joachim.38 Moreover, world history was subdivided into two further divisions corresponding to the Old and New Testaments, and each of these divisions also possessed seven ages or status. But these seven ages from the two parts of the Bible also had a typological relationship of anticipation and fulfillment with each other; the New Testament ages referred back to and also fulfilled those of the Old Testament, a relationship which Joachim referred to as concordia. These various divisions and ages have a complex, overlapping correlation.39 For our purposes, however, the most important aspect of his theory concerns his seven ages of the history of the Church following the advent of Christ, which correspond to the great ages of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we will therefore concentrate on these (and in fact the bulk of his commentary is concerned with this aspect of world history). We can summarize the seven periods of Church history as follows: First period – time of the apostles, who combat Judaism Second period – time of the martyrs, who fight the persecution of the pagans Third period – time of the Church fathers, who dispute with the heretics 38 Manselli rejected the suggestion that Joachim had any special meaning for Olivi beyond that of other exegetes: “insisteremo nel dire che l’Olivi considera Gioacchino una auctoritas come tutte le altre” (186). Most scholars now, however, agree with Marjorie Reeves who insisted that, pace Manselli, Olivi was a Joachite. See Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages, 195–197. 39 Lewis provides a useful “Chart of Sevens” that outlines the concordances between the various sevens that Olivi identifies in his commentary. See “Ecclesiology and Eschatology,” 131–139.

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Fourth period – time of the anchorites, who oppose hypocrites Fifth period – time of the monks, who fight the growing wealth of the Church Sixth period – time of the friars or the “Church of evangelical perfection” Seventh period – time of the “Church of the peaceful sabbath”40 These divisions were not strictly separate; thus, one would not begin neatly as the other ended. Rather, these periods overlap, sometimes for considerable lengths of time. The importance of this schema lies in its overall understanding of history rather than its strict chronological accuracy. The time in which Olivi lived, for instance, was simultaneously the end of the fifth period and the beginning of the sixth. As far as the content of Olivi’s schema is concerned, as David Burr points out, in Olivi’s time the first four divisions of Church history were fairly standard; it is in the fifth, sixth, and seventh periods that Olivi begins to chart new ground and provide a more Franciscan reading of the progress of history.41 Instead of seeing the fifth age as the age of the precursors of the Antichrist, Olivi sees it as the culmination of the growth of the Church in power and wealth, a process that also contributes to its corruption so that, by the end of this age, it is completely rotten. “Around the end of the fifth time, from the souls of the feet up to the head the entire Church is undone and brought into confusion almost as if it were made into a new Babylon.”42 This period also sees the advent of the “mystical Antichrist,” who opens the door for the true Antichrist, which results in the persecution of the elect; the mystical Antichrist may well be a pseudo pope who attacks those who follow Franciscan poverty. Eventually, the new Babylon and its leaders are destroyed by a pagan (most likely Moslem) army. Nevertheless, this period is also a time of renewal, as it corresponds with the beginning of the sixth period, which begins with the revelations of Joachim and the coming of Francis and his followers.43 Olivi follows Bonaventure here by recognizing Francis as the angel 40 This brief summary is based on Lewis, “Ecclesiology and Eschatology,” 140–141; Burr, Persecution, 18–20; and Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom, 75–77. 41 Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom, 76. 42 “circa finem quinti temporis a planta pedis usque ad verticem est fere tota ecclesia infecta et confusa et quasi nova Babilon effecta” (52). 43 Burr notes that “Olivi recognizes not one but several beginnings for the sixth period,” including Joachim’s prophecies, the establishment of the Franciscan order, the preaching of spiritual men, and the destruction of Babylon. See Persecution, 19.

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of the sixth seal from Apocalypse 7. 2. The sixth and seventh ages correspond to Joachim’s third age of the Holy Spirit, and in them Olivi finds the final great temptation of the elect with the coming of the great Antichrist, who may well be a new pseudo pope who supports the pagan (or Moslem) temporal leader and who leads an attack on Christian doctrine through paths opened up by the Aristotelian philosophy of Olivi’s time.44 At his death, however, the promise of Christian renewal will be realized, and the evangelical life taught and lived by Christ and his apostles will be reestablished and flourish in a way not yet seen on earth. This is not to say that Francis and his followers supersede Christ and the apostles, an implication Olivi was always anxious to avoid. Nevertheless, while Francis is only the one who restores or renews the evangelical life, he ends up initiating a historical process that culminates in a great age of peace that supersedes all other historical periods.45 Olivi sees the historical process, in other words, as involving both restoration and progression. Francis renews the evangelical ideal so that it can spread and permeate earthly life in an unprecedented way. One other aspect of Olivi’s Lectura deserves mention: the timing of apocalyptic events. Unlike Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, Olivi is very tentative in his suggestion of concrete dates for the unfolding of apocalyptic events. While he is quite certain that he is living at the end of the fifth period and the beginning of the sixth, and that the events that will precipitate the end of the sixth age and the start of the seventh and final age are near at hand, he resists assigning concrete dates to them, and he often in fact proposes several possibilities. We should be careful, though, to avoid making Olivi’s exegesis overly Augustinian. Burr writes, concerning Olivi’s timetable, that “[h]owever general the numbers may be, they regularly place the destruction of Babylon and the temptation of the great Antichrist somewhere in the first four decades of the fourteenth century.”46 It is in this expectant 44 For a detailed consideration of the question of how we should view these two Antichrists, something beyond the scope of this essay, see Burr’s chapter “The Double Antichrist,” in Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom, 132–162. 45 This view too, though, was considered heretical. For a detailed consideration of the degree of Olivi’s heresy, see Warren Lewis, “Peter John Olivi, Author of the Lectura Super Apocalipsim: Was He Heretical?” in Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248–1298), 135–156. Lewis argues that “[b]y the standards of his time . . . Olivi was heretical in his ecclesiology and his eschatology” (147). 46 See Burr’s chapter, “The Apocalyptic Timetable,” in Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom, 163–178. The citation is found on 176.

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vagueness, however, that we find a parallel with Dante, who, in his numerous prophecies within the Commedia, frequently asserts the nearness of divine intervention while remaining stubbornly vague about particulars, asserting (as Beatrice does at the end of the Purgatorio) that the events of history will solve the puzzle.47 Even with this brief overview, it should be apparent why it is plausible that Dante would have found Olivi’s commentary on the Apocalypse sympathetic. Dante too felt that the Church had become increasingly corrupt and was in desperate need of reform, and he too saw in history a providential pattern that promised divine intervention in the near future. And we have already seen that, like Olivi, he saw an apocalyptic significance in Saint Francis. The question then arises: to what degree did Dante’s use of the Apocalypse accord with that of Olivi, and how similar is his own view of the unfolding of history to that of the Spiritual Franciscans? In order to answer this question we must turn again to the Commedia itself for a consideration of two key moments where the Apocalypse of John forms an especially crucial subtext: Inferno 19 and Purgatorio 32.

Inferno 19 Canto 19 occupies a unique place in the Inferno. Unlike the cantos that surround it, the canto of the simonists has an elevated tone that culminates in the pilgrim’s biblical denunciation of papal simony, and it is the only canto in the poem’s first canticle in which the Bible has a positive and direct role to play, and which includes an important citation of the Apocalypse.48 Furthermore, this canto has a number of ties to the Franciscans. For example, when the pilgrim approaches Pope Nicholas III, who is unrecognizable because he is planted upside down in one of the holes that dot the floor of this bolgia, he describes himself as “standing like a friar” (Io stava come ’l frate) over the figure of the Pope (19. 49). This canto therefore 47 “ma tosto fier li fatti le Naiade, / che solveranno questo enigma forte” (Purg. 33. 49–50). 48 For a fuller treatment of canto 19, especially as it relates to the Bible’s place within the canto, see my “Prophetic Madness: The Bible in Inferno XIX,” MLN 110 (1995): 145–63; reprinted in Dante: The Critical Complex, ed. Richard Lansing, vol. 4, Dante and Theology: The Biblical Tradition and Christian Allegory (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 323–41.

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proves to be an excellent place to begin looking for Dante’s Apocalypse and for understanding to what degree it accords with Olivi’s. In this canto, Dante portrays the simonists, those guilty of buying and selling spiritual goods, especially Church offices.49 We have already seen that, for Olivi, the fifth period was one of laxity in which the Church became completely corrupted, and he saw simony as one of the defining sins, if not the defining sin, of this fifth period. Thus, in the prologue to the Lectura, he writes Among the laxities, however, we must understand simony, by which all ecclesiastical things are sold and bought by everyone, and they are considered almost venial things, and again the eager and avaricious abuses of ecclesiastical possessions and legacies and innumerable and horrendous fornications, with which the divine sacraments are managed.50

Whether Dante knew this commentary or not, he certainly accords with Olivi in identifying simony as one of the defining elements of Church corruption, and one that was directly prophesied in the Apocalypse. It is intriguing that Olivi associates simony with fornication, an association that Dante also makes; in fact, beginning with the canto’s opening lines, it becomes the defining metaphor of Inferno 19: O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci che le cose di Dio, che di bontate deon essere spose, e voi rapaci per oro e per argento avolterate, or convien che per voi suoni la tromba però che ne la terza bolgia state. (Inferno 19. 1–6) (O Simon Magus, o wretched followers that the things of God, which should be brides of goodness, you rapacious ones adulterate for gold and for silver; now it is time that the trumpet sound for you, as you are in the third pouch.)

Dante here draws upon the commonplace of the Church as the bride of Christ, which is instead made to fornicate, or even more, to prostitute itself for the goods of this world. Unlike Olivi, however, who remarks 49 For a brief overview of simony in Dante, see my entry, “Simony,” in the Dante Encyclopedia, 782. For an extensive consideration of the rise of simony in the Middle Ages, see Joseph H. Lynch, Simonaical Entry into Religious Life from 1000 to 1260 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976). 50 “Inter laxationes autem intellige simonias, quibus omnia ecclesiastica fere ab omnibus venduntur et emuntur et quasi venalia reputantur, et iterum ambitiosos et avaros abusus ecclesiasticarum possessionum et reddituum et fornicationes innumeras et horrendas, cum quibus divina sacramenta tractantur” (29).

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that simony is practiced by almost everyone, Dante limits simony to a few papal examples, whom he blames for the corruption of the Church as a whole. After Nicholas describes, in addition to his own wickedness, that of Boniface who is now alive, and that of Clement V to come, Dante has the pilgrim speak seemingly to all of the papal simonists, past (Nicholas III), present (Boniface VIII), and future (Clement V): “la vostra avarizia il mondo attrista, / calcando i buoni e sollevando i pravi” (“your avarice saddens the world, trampling the good and raising up the depraved” [19. 104–05]). It is nevertheless precisely in criticizing the corruption of the Church and identifying its corruption with its avaricious papal leaders, that Dante comes close to the views of Olivi and other Spiritual Franciscans. And it is in linking this critique of Church corruption to the Apocalypse and a vision of providential history that Dante approaches the Spirituals even more closely. This is not to say that many thirteenth-century exegetes of the Apocalypse did not link the corruption of prelates with the precursors of the Antichrist; many did. What differentiates both Olivi and Dante is their inclusion of the popes in the general corruption of the Church. For Dante in particular, papal corruption is primarily responsible for the widespread degeneration of the Church. Toward the end of the canto Dante turns to the Apocalypse as a way of making sense of papal simony. Following Nicholas III’s description of his own sins, and those of Clement to come, the pilgrim launches into a biblically laced invective against the popes. During the first part of this speech, the pilgrim uses the Bible in an almost Protestant fashion, treating the New Testament portraits of the Church and its leaders as normative models, which he then uses to judge the popes who deviate from their biblical exemplars. The Lord, unlike contemporary simonists, did not ask for treasure from Saint Peter before giving him the keys of the Church; he only asked for discipleship. Similarly, Peter and his colleagues in their turn did not ask Matthias for gold or silver when they offered him Judas Iscariot’s place among the apostles.51 After accusing Nicholas of a specific act of simony,52 Dante continues his denunciation while expressing hesitancy over his bold words. E se non fosse ch’ancor lo mi vieta

51

See Inf. 19. 90–96. “guarda ben la mal tolta moneta/ch’esser ti fece contra Carlo ardito” (19. 98–99). This seems to refer to the belief that Nicholas III used the funds of the 52

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v.s. benfell iii la reverenza de le somme chiavi che tu tenesti ne la vita lieta, io userei parole ancor più gravi. (Inferno 19. 100–03) (And if the reverence for the highest keys that you held during the happy life did not prohibit it to me, I would use even harsher words.)

Earlier, Dante had also expressed reluctance over the pilgrim’s words by wondering if they were “troppo folle,” (“too foolish”). As Umberto Bosco has argued in his classic essay on Dante’s “follia,” Dante’s folly or madness here and throughout the poem refers not to a condition of mental instability but to “a certain spiritual attitude” characterized by a transgressive desire to exceed lawful limits, a meaning reinforced here by the qualifier “troppo.”53 But we may also see in Dante’s use of this word the Franciscan exaltation of folly over worldly wisdom, just as Francis purposefully assumed the role of fool for Christ’s sake.54 Dante’s biblical citations reach their climax with a turn to the Apocalypse, as he finds in the papal simonists the fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecy. Di voi pastor s’accorse il Vangelista, quando colei che siede sopra l’acque puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu vista; quella che con le sette teste nacque, e da le diece corna ebbe argomento, fin che virtute al suo marito piacque. (Inferno 19. 106–111) (The Evangelist saw you pastors, when she who sits on the waters fornicating with kings was seen by him; she who was born with seven heads, and who had strength from the ten horns, as long as virtue pleased her husband.)

The imagery that the pilgrim uses here derives from chapter 17 of the Apocalypse, and we first need to come to an understanding of how Dante’s use of this imagery accords with his biblical source. The first three verses of Apocalypse 17 read as follows:

church to oppose Charles I of Anjou; it may even refer to the rumor (now discredited) that Nicholas received Byzantine funds, which he used to foment a rebellion against Charles, actions that led to the Sicilian Vespers. The rumor is recounted by Villani, at Cronica, 8. 57. 53 Umberto Bosco, “La ‘follia’ di Dante,” Dante Vicino (Rome: Salvatore Sciascia, 1966), 55–75. 54 Havely, Dante and the Franciscans, 60–61.

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And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven vials and spoke with me, saying: Come, I will show thee the condemnation of the great harlot, who sitteth upon many waters (damnationem meretricis magnae quae sedet super aquas multas): With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication (cum qua fornicati sunt reges terrae). And they who inhabit the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her whoredom. And he took me away in spirit into the desert. And I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns (capita septem et cornua decem).55

Even a cursory examination reveals that Dante has changed many details and the interpretive force of others. First, in the biblical text, there is no indication that the “great harlot” has been corrupted or that she was at one time virtuous, while Dante implies a process of degeneration, since he states that she acted in a certain way “fin che virtute al suo marito piacque.” In Dante’s hands we have the image of a married woman who is now, because of her husband’s changing taste, fornicating with kings. It is possible that Dante may have been thinking here of the “woman clothed with the sun” in chapter 12 of the Apocalypse; this woman is with child and “in pain to be delivered,” when a dragon appears, “having seven heads and ten horns and on his heads seven diadems.” After taking the third part of the stars of heaven and casting them to the earth, he stands before the woman “that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son.” The woman delivers a child “who was to rule the nations with an iron rod,” and he is “taken up to God and to his throne.” The woman then flees to the wilderness, to a place prepared for her by God. This woman was usually identified, as she is in the Glossa Ordinaria, with the Church, and the conflict between the woman and the dragon was read as representing the struggles of the early Church. Dante seems to take this woman of Apocalypse 12 and read her into the harlot of chapter 17, thereby creating the image of the Church corrupted. Second, and most crucially, Dante adds a husband for the harlot, for which there is no biblical precedent. Third, in the biblical version the harlot is seated upon the beast, and it is the beast that possesses the seven heads and ten horns, while in Dante’s poem, the beast and the woman merge together into the figure of a woman with seven heads and ten horns. Finally, the addition of the husband

55

Citations of the Bible in English refer to the Douay-Rheims translation.

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changes the meaning of those heads and horns; in the biblical account they are glossed later in the same chapter as “the seven mountains, upon which the woman sitteth: and they are seven kings” and “ten kings” that “shall fight with the Lamb” respectively. The generally negative view of these details is reinforced in the Glossa Ordinaria, which reads the seven heads of the beast, for example, as “the senses, and then error, and finally the Antichrist, through which seven things the devil leads men into sin.”56 In Dante’s version, however, we must assume that the heads and horns have a positive value (at least until corruption sets in), since the harlot was born with the seven heads and had strength from the horns as long as she was governed with virtue. Thus, most commentators interpret these details as referring to the seven sacraments or the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Ten Commandments respectively.57 The implications of these changes are clear: Dante is seeking to blame the popes, the subject of his biblically inspired denunciation, and he adopts a biblical text for this purpose. There is an underlying consistency in the canto in Dante’s use of the image of a female Church corrupted by a male figure that is to be identified with the pope. If we think back, for example, to Nicholas’s first words to the pilgrim, whom he mistakes for Boniface, we find that they contain the same image of a pristine female Church prostituted by a male figure: Se’ tu sì tosto di quell’aver sazio per lo qual non temesti tòrre a ‘nganno la bella donna, e poi di farne strazio? (Inferno 19. 55–57) (Have you been so quickly inundated with that wealth for which you did not fear to take the beautiful woman with deceit and then to prostitute her?)

56 “Id est sensus corporis, et postea errorem et tandem Antichristum, per quae septem diabolus ducit homines ad peccatum.” Citations of the Glossa Ordinaria refer to Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria: Facsimile reprint of the Editio Princeps Adoph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81, 4 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992). The Glossa reads the ten horns according to the self exegesis of the Apocalypse: “id est, decem regna quae erunt tempore Antichristus, per quae alia intelliguntur.” 57 A noted exception to this reading is Richard Kay’s interpretation, found in his “The Pope’s Wife: Allegory as Allegation in Inferno 19. 106–111,” Studies in Medieval Culture 12 (1978): 105–11. Kay’s major objection to the traditional view is that it contradicts the appearance of these same images in Purgatorio 32. I do not find his own interpretation persuasive—that Dante is alluding to a text of cannon law and to chapter 10 of the third book of Kings in order to criticize the Donation of Constantine.

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The notion of the Church as an erring spouse has rich biblical associations, especially in the Old Testament. Frequently the prophets compare Israel to the bride of Yahweh, who nevertheless “goes whoring after other Gods,”58 a metaphor that becomes literalized for the prophet Hosea, whom God commands to marry a prostitute in order to provide a sign of Israel’s infidelity (see Hosea 1–3). What is unique about Dante’s handling of this image is his addition of the male figure, a pimp or husband who corrupts the woman in his charge. The continuity between Boniface as pimp in lines 55–57 and the apocalyptic harlot with her corrupt husband in 106–111 underscores the identification of the “harlot” with the Church rather than the city of Rome.59 This identification of the harlot of Apocalypse 17 with the corrupt Church has parallels in Olivi’s commentary. In traditional medieval exegesis, this passage describes the time of the Antichrist, who is represented by the meretrix magna. As the Glossa Ordinaria reads verse one, the harlot refers to some yet undetermined Antichrist (Meretrix ista magna est Antichristus), according with the Augustinian tradition of exegesis. Olivi, on the other hand, also sees in the whore of Apocalypse 17 an image of the corrupt Church: “she is therefore called a great prostitute, because withdrawing from the faithful worship and genuine love and delights of the God Christ her bridegroom, she clings to this age and its delights and riches and the devil and even the kings and magnates and prelates and all other lovers of this world,”60 although he does not link the corruption directly to the papacy, much less to individual, and specifically named, popes. In this respect, Dante is closer to Ubertino da Casale, who declared in his Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu that the mystical Antichrist had already

58

See, for example, Ezekiel 16. 8–15. Charles T. Davis has several times argued for the identification of the harlot with the city of Rome. See, for example, “Canto XIX: Simoniacs,” Lectura Dantis: Inferno, ed. Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 262–274; and “Poverty and Eschatology in the Commedia,” in Dante’s Italy and Other Essays (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 42–70. 60 “Vocatur ergo meretrix magna, quia a fideli cultu et a sincero amore et deliciis dei Christi sponsi sui recedens adheret huic seculo et divitiis et deliciis eius et diabolo propter ista et etiam regibus et magnatibus et prelatis et omnibus aliis amatoribus huius mundi” (826). 59

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appeared in the popes Boniface VIII and his successor Benedict XI.61 Like Dante, however, Olivi seems to link the mulier of chapter 12 with the meretrix magna of chapter 17. He refers to the earlier woman as “in general the Church and in particular the primitive Church,”62 while he reads, as we have seen, the later meretrix as the carnal Church, thus implying that the two women may in fact be one, representing the Church at different moments in her history.63 Likewise, Dante’s merging of the beast and the woman has a counterpart in Olivi’s commentary, as he writes, “this woman, inasmuch as she is carnal and bestial is called a beast; truly, inasmuch as she was set above and ruled over the bestial peoples of the world and, furthermore, as she is lord over more bestial peoples that are placed under her, she is said to sit on the beast.”64 Charles Davis has in fact argued that it is only “Olivi, and not Richard [of Saint Victor] or Joachim or Ubertino [that] connected the words of the Apocalypse unmistakably with Christian Rome,” and that this identification provides a close parallel with Dante.65 In both Dante and Olivi, then, we have a linkage of Church corruption with imagery from the Apocalypse, imagery that associates the contemporary carnal Church with the harlot and beast of the scriptural account.

61 See section 5. 8 of the Arbor vitae. Here too, though, there is a difference; as Davis remarks, “whereas Ubertino called Boniface VIII and Benedict XI the beasts coming out of the sea and arising from the land, Dante connected Nicholas III, Boniface, and Clement V with the more famous and poetically effective image of the meretrix dallying with the kings.” See “Poverty and Eschatology in the Commedia,” 63–64. For a consideration of the differences between Olivi’s and Ubertino’s views of the mystical Antichrist, see Manselli, “L’Anticristo mistico, Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, Ubertino da Casale, e i papi del loro tempo,” in Da Giocchino da Fiore, 469–490. 62 “Per generalem vero intelligentiam hec mulier est generalis ecclesia et specialiter primitiva” (623). 63 Earlier in the commentary (in his discussion of 3.11), Olivi argues that just as the glory of the synagogue passed to the primitive church, so “etiam gloria parata finali ecclesie quinti status transferetur propter eius adulteria ad electos sexti status; unde et in hoc libro vocatur Babilon meretrix circa initium sexti status damnanda” (246). 64 “mulier ista in quantum est carnalis et bestialis dicitur bestia; in quantum vero quondam prefuit et regnavit super bestiales gentes mundi et adhuc super plures bestiales sibi subditas dominatur, dicitur sedere super bestiam” (828). Enrico Proto writes that “tutti i commentatori finivano per confondere la donna con la bestia.” See L’Apocalisse nella “Divina Commedia” (Naples: Luigi Piero, 1905), 9. 65 Davis, “Dante and the Papal City,” in Dante and the Idea of Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 227. Another way in which Dante is closer to Olivi than to Ubertino is in their views of the status of Boniface VIII. Ubertino considered

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Indeed, Olivi goes on in his exegesis of chapter 17 to link the corrupt harlot with simony. In his reading of verse four, “And the woman was clothed round about with purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication,” Olivi suggests that the harlot’s “fornication” must be understood as sins against God, “especially, however, in this time her crime is most horrible extravagance and simony,” while in the times of the pagans it was idolatry.66 Olivi thus links, as does Dante, the image of sexual immorality with simony, and both sexual immorality and simony with idolatry. Indeed, Dante follows his citation of the Apocalypse in lines 106–111 with the following accusation: Fatto v’avete dio d’oro e d’argento; e che altro è da voi a l’idolatre, se non ch’elli uno, e voi ne orate cento? (Inferno 19. 112–114) (You have made yourselves a god of gold and silver; and what difference is there between you and an idolator, if not that that he worships one and you a hundred gods?)

The words “gold” and “silver” appear at two other times in the canto, largely to present a contrast between the biblical leaders of the Church, who repeatedly claimed not to possess the two precious

Boniface an illegal usurper and the persecution that he received at the hands of the Colonna cardinals at Anagni a working out of the will of God. Dante, however, seems to have accepted the legitimacy of Bonfiace’s election, as did Olivi, and vigorously criticized Boniface’s persecution at Anagni at Purg. 20. 82–96. There remains, however, the more general question of the extent to which Dante may be indebted simply to Ubertino rather than to Olivi. This is a question that deserves a separate and much more careful study than I have space for here, but the few critics who have treated the topic (Davis, op. cit., and Manselli) come to the conclusion that the evidence, while not conclusive, suggests that Dante knew both Ubertino’s Arbor vitae and Olivi’s commentary. The most thorough treatment is Manselli’s “Pietro di Giovanni Olivi ed Ubertino da Casale (a proposito della Lectura super Apocalipsim e dell’Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu),” in Da Gioacchino da Fiore, 79–107. Manselli argues that while Dante certainly knew Ubertino, he saw him as an unsubtle, polemical thinker, and that he therefore turned primarily to Bonaventure and Olivi as his guides to Franciscanism. 66 “Quamvis per fornicationem eius intelligatur hic omne peccatum morale deo et sanctis immundum et abominabile, precipue tamen pro isto tempore crimen sue horrendissime luxurie et simonie, pro tempore vero paganismi crimen idolatrie et etiam luxurie, quibus tanquam omnium regina et magistra potavit non solum se sed etiam omnes gentes sibi subiectas” (829–30).

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metals that current Church leaders pursue so vigorously.67 Dante, that is, joins with Olivi and the Franciscan spirituals as seeing the current state of the Church as almost hopelessly corrupt, in finding the responsibility for that corruption in the highest leadership of the Church, and in identifying that corruption with an excessive preoccupation with material goods that betrays the evangelical ideals of Christ and the apostles. Given Dante’s undoubted sympathy with at least this aspect of Franciscan Spiritualist exegesis, it becomes equally clear from a study of this canto that there are also important differences between Dante and Olivi’s Spiritualist Apocalypse. First, we can see a difference in the scope of the two attacks on ecclesiastical corruption. While both men see the Church’s attachment to material goods as the source of its corruption, Dante’s indictment of the corruption goes back further chronologically and applies to the entire Church, whereas Olivi dates the “condescension” of the Church into materialism to the fifth age. Dante, that is, ultimately blames the fall of the Church on the well intentioned but tragic gift known as the Donation of Constantine, and he thus ends his denunciation in canto 19 by pointing to that gift as the source of the simony that he has the pilgrim criticize at such length. Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre, non la tua conversion, ma quella dote che da te prese il primo ricco patre!

(Inferno 19. 115–117)

(Oh, Constantine, you were the mother of so much evil, not by your conversion, but by that gift that from you made the first rich father.)

We will have occasion to discuss Dante’s views on the Donation at greater length when we discuss Purgatorio 32, but at this point it will suffice to note that Dante credits Constantine’s gift with much of the ensuing Church corruption, including simony, while Olivi and other

67 The other passages from canto 19 containing the words are: “e voi rapaci/per oro e per argento avolterate” (3–4); “Né Pier né li altri tolsero a Matia/oro od argento” (94–95). Dante’s direct linking of gold and silver with idolatry derives from the biblical verse Hosea 8:4: “of their silver and gold they have made idols unto themselves.” Other relevant biblical passages include Christ’s words, “Do not possess gold, nor silver, nor money in your purses” (Matthew 10:9); and Peter’s words to the lame man in front of the temple, “silver and gold I have none” (Acts 3:6). Dante has St. Benedict refer to the last of these scriptures at Par. 22. 88: “Pier cominciò sanz’oro e sanz’argento.”

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Spirituals did not have much to say about the Donation and instead concentrated on papal attacks on the Franciscan rule and the pure adherents of the order. Thus, in Olivi’s exegesis of the phrase “full of names of blasphemy,” he identifies the blasphemy as the condemnation of Christ through transgressions of his precepts and his example, “and above all when through the crimes that are called sins against the Holy Spirit, she [the beast] hates and blasphemes and attacks the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is the spiritual life of the saints, so it will be in the time of the mystical Antichrist.”68 Olivi’s reference to the “spiritual life of the saints” makes the most sense as a reference to the rigorists in the order. We can also see important differences in the ways in which Dante and Olivi interpret and use the biblical text. While both look to the same passage of scripture to discover how Church corruption fits into the divinely ordered history of the Church, Olivi stays fairly close to the literal text, while Dante does not. As we have seen, both Olivi and Dante end up fusing the harlot and the beast on which she sits into one figure, though Olivi does so by making an argument about details in the text, while Dante simply omits the beast altogether. Furthermore, Dante invents with no apparent biblical precedent a new figure—that of the husband who forces his wife into prostitution when he is no longer pleased by virtue, a figure not found in Olivi’s commentary. Furthermore, Dante does not call attention to his innovation but instead claims to repeat the words and images of Saint John, something that he signals by the use of a “quotation tag,” “Di voi pastor s’accorse il Vangelista.”69 Dante, that is, claims a kind of prophetic authority in how he uses the Bible, 68 “Per ipsa etiam crimina blasphemat, id est contemnit Christum, cuius precepta et exempla transgreditur et maxime quando per illa crimina, que vocantur peccata in spiritum sanctum, odit et blasphemat et impugnat spiritus sancti gratiam, id est spiritualem vitam sanctorem, sicut faciet tempore mistici antichristi” (828–829). 69 The notion of the “quotation tag” as verifying a citation, especially one that may be modified, in a scriptural context has been explored by Michael Fishbane through his notion of “inner biblical exegesis.” He argues that a trait of Old Testament prophecy is that it uses canonical writings in a free way, changing scriptural texts but claiming to speak the very truth proclaimed by those same texts. In this way, “unchanging” scriptural truths can be updated and made new. See Michael Fishbane, “Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” in The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 3–18; and Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 281–317. For a more extended treatment of how this hermeneutic applies to Dante in this canto, see my “Prophetic Madness,” 161–163.

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as he takes the liberty of changing it so as to make its meaning clearer for his contemporaries, even while claiming that he speaks the very words found in the scriptures themselves. Olivi’s project, while deemed radical by later standards, is more modest in the claims that he makes about his own authority. Inferno 19, then, shows us some important similarities as well as some key differences in how Dante and the Franciscan Spirituals used the Apocalypse. Both Dante and Olivi see, in the seventeenth chapter of the final biblical book, a prophecy that finds its fulfillment in contemporary Church corruption, especially in simony and the pursuit of material goods by Church leaders. Dante, however, perceives broader implications for this fulfillment, both in terms of how the Church is affected and how far back in Church history the problem lies, than does Olivi. And finally, Dante claims a broader authority that results not only in an interpretation of the biblical text, but also in an appropriation of it that allows him to alter it even as he claims its authority.

Purgatorio 32 Canto 32 of the Purgatorio is the fifth of six cantos devoted to the earthly paradise found at the top of Mount Purgatory. In canto 28, Dante makes his way through the outskirts of the earthly paradise, walking alongside the Lethe River, until in canto 29 he stops and witnesses an elaborate procession of figures symbolizing the Bible and the coming of Christ; prominent among the figures is a cart pulled by a griffin. In canto 30, Beatrice appears in the cart and rebukes Dante, which leads to the pilgrim’s confession and his subsequent immersion in the river, Lethe, in canto 31. The pilgrim then follows the procession until the cart is tied to a tree. Here Dante and the others stop, and there follows a symbolic enactment of the history of the Christian Church, where Dante once again draws on the Apocalypse to provide a framework in which he is able to work out his sense of history’s progression. Much of the action of canto 32 and indeed of the earthly paradise as a whole is symbolic. The pilgrim moves in and around allegorical figures that have a physical presence in the earthly paradise, but which we are meant to read as allegorical actors in a cosmic drama that is played out for the pilgrim and hence for us as the

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poem’s readers. The meaning of these allegorical figures, however, is a matter of some debate, and it is beyond the scope of this essay to attempt a definitive exegesis of the canto. Nevertheless, there is, it seems to me, a broad critical consensus on the general meaning of the drama, and it is this meaning that I will draw on in considering how Dante’s eschatological vision of history is in agreement with Olivi’s. Canto 32 begins as the figures that participated in the procession of cantos 29 and 30 turn around and move back in the direction from which they came. Dante, Statius, and Matelda follow the procession until it comes to a stop, and Beatrice descends from the cart. The griffin pulling the cart is then tied to a tree that is bereft of foliage, while all of the figures murmur “Adam.” When the griffin refrains from eating the tree, the others in the procession remark, Beato se’, griffon, che non discindi col becco d’esto legno dolce al gusto, poscia che mal si torce il ventre quindi. (Purgatorio 32. 43–45) (Blessed are you, griffin, for you did. not with your beak tear this tree, which is sweet to the taste, but by it, the belly is badly twisted.)

The tree then suddenly comes to life, and new foliage appears. The most common interpretation of this episode is as follows: the griffin, because of its dual nature, represents Christ. The bare tree in the earthly paradise is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, signified by its barren state, by the murmuring of “Adam,” and by the reference to Eve earlier in the canto, when Dante tells us that they passed through the “ancient forest, empty by fault of the woman who believed the serpent” (“Sì passeggiando l’alta selva vòta, / colpa di quella ch’al serpente crese” [32. 31–32]). Thus, when the griffin is tied to the tree and the tree receives new life, the incarnation is symbolized, and Christ, by refusing the temptation of eating of the tree, reverses the effects of the fall.70 The importance of these events

70

Most of the modern commentaries follow this interpretive line, but it is not without controversy. The most forceful objection to the standard reading is by Peter Armour, who makes several objections to the traditional identification of the griffin with Christ and the interpretations that come from that reading. See Dante’s Griffin and the History of the World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). John A. Scott similarly objects to the traditional identification in Dante’s Political Purgatory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 187–89. Despite the value of these two studies, in my view the traditional reading makes the most sense.

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lies in the way in which they symbolically recapitulate salvation history from the fall through the incarnation, thus preparing us for the representation of the Christian Church since the death of Christ, which is to follow. Dante, that is, begins to situate us within the context of a meditation on the history of the world and its meaning when seen within God’s ordering of that history. Eschatology is a hermeneutic enterprise that allows Dante to understand the moment in which he lives. The participants in the procession next sing a hymn that is so sweet that it overcomes Dante’s senses, and he falls into a sleep, something he finds himself incapable of representing. The method by which he chooses to represent his waking, however, is telling. Quali a veder de’ fioretti del melo che del suo pome li angeli fa ghiotti e perpetüe nozze fa nel cielo, Pietro e Giovanni e Iacopo condotti e vinti, ritornaro a la parola da la qual furon maggior sonni rotti, e videro scemata loro scuola così di Moïsè come d’Elia, e al maestro suo cangiata stola; tal torna’io, e vidi quella pia sovra me starsi che conducitrice fu de’ miei passi lungo ’l fiume pria. (Purgatorio 32. 73–84) ( Just as Peter and James and John were taken to see the flowers of that apple tree, whose fruit makes the angels hungry and causes continuous wedding feasts in heaven, and, overcome, returned at the word by which greater sleeps were broken, and saw their school reduced thus by Moses as well as by Elias, and their master’s changed dress, so I returned, and I saw that compassionate woman standing over me, who earlier accompanied my steps along the river.)

Dante compares his own waking to that of Peter, James, and John after the transfiguration, which is recounted in Matthew 17:1–13. The transfiguration of Christ was an event that, as Dante tells us, was eschatological in a fundamental sense in that it gave to the apostles a glimpse of Christ’s identity outside of history and outside of time, and allowed them to anticipate the great wedding feast that follows the end time, as prophesied in Apocalypse 19. 9, where the saints “are called to the marriage of the Lamb.” Indeed, the transfiguration was commonly interpreted eschatologically; in the Glossa Ordinaria, Christ’s shining face, for example, is to be seen as an

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“example of future beatitude and brightness.”71 Not surprisingly, in fact, Olivi in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew also interprets this passage as a key to his understanding of history, seeing the indication of the time of the transfiguration’s occurrence (“after six days Jesus taketh unto him Peter and James, and John his brother”) as a prophecy that after six periods of Church history, the Church (or mystical body of Christ) will be transformed, and Francis as the new Elias will come to help effect this transformation.72 While Dante’s version of this biblical passage does not contain any of the specifically Franciscan reading of history that Olivi finds in it, nevertheless, it is true that Dante uses it to mark a moment of eschatological unveiling. Dante places himself in the position of Christ’s earliest apostles, ready to receive a revelation of God’s purposes in history. This aspect of the scene becomes clearer when Beatrice gives him a prophetic commission to observe and to write what he sees for the benefit of the erring world. Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano; e sarai meco sanza fine cive di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano. Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive, al carro tieni or li occhi, e quel che vedi, ritornato di là, fa che tu scrive. (Paradiso 32. 100–105) (Here you will be in the wood a short time; and you will be with me without end a citizen of that Rome where Christ is Roman. Therefore, on behalf of the world that lives badly, fasten your eyes on the chariot, and that which you see, once you have returned there, see that you write it.)

Beatrice’s injunction both to observe and to write is itself a regular feature of apocalyptic revelations, as John is told at the beginning of his book by “one like to the Son of man” to “write therefore the things which thou hast seen” (1. 13, 19).73 What follows Beatrice’s 71 “In exemplum futurae beatitudinis et claritatis, quam videbunt justi, prius sublatis impiis.” 72 For a discussion of this passage in the Lectura super Matthaeum, see Kevin Madigan, Olivi and the Interpretation of Matthew in the High Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 89–91. 73 Bernard McGinn notes that despite the visual and oral nature of the messages delivered in apocalyptic texts, they exist in written form and thus are fundamentally textual. That is, “apocalyptic revelation is part of a broad movement away from the word of God conveyed in oral proclamation and tradition and toward the word of God fixed in written texts. The apocalypses are products of a learned elite.”

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words is a kind of sacred tableau, in which the chariot undergoes repeated modifications that symbolize the history of the Christian Church following the incarnation. As mentioned above, there is a good deal of debate that surrounds the meaning of individual details of this historical tableau, but it does seem clear that, for Dante, the history of the Church is represented by a gradual decline.74 For a general sense of Dante’s portrayal of Church history, see the chart presented at the end of this essay as Appendix I, which provides a general overview of the tableau and its most common interpretation, and which I have relegated there in the interests of space. We will now turn our attention, however, to considering how Dante’s vision of Church history compares to Olivi’s. Like Olivi, Dante portrays the history of the Christian Church as having seven stages; a comparison between the two sets of seven shows that while Dante and Olivi share a general sense of the decline of the Church, there are many important differences between them. Dante portrays his first stage, for example, as corresponding to the persecutions of the Church under the Roman Empire, which corresponds to Olivi’s second stage, the time of the martyrs. Dante has no equivalent to Olivi’s first stage or time of the apostles. Dante’s second and Olivi’s third stage, both of which refer to the time of the Church fathers who combat heresy with their writings, do line up, but this stage was a common one in medieval discussions of

See “Introduction: John’s Apocalypse and the Apocalyptic Mentality,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, 6. In fact, Dante’s earthly paradise episode found in Purgatorio 28–33 meets the generic criteria that McGinn lays out for the genre of “apocalypse,” an idea I will explore at greater length in a future study. 74 The bibliography on Purgatorio 32 is enormous, and so I list only the studies that have most influenced my reading here: R.E. Kaske, “Dante’s Purgatorio XXXII and XXXIII: A Survey of Christian History,” University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 193–214; Kenelm Foster, “Purgatorio XXXII,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante’s “Comedy”, ed. Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 138–154; Kaske, “The Seven Status Ecclesiae in Purgatorio XXXII and XXXIII,” in Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Studies in the Italian Trecento in Honor of Charles S. Singleton, ed. Aldo S. Bernardo and Anthony L. Pellegrini (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1983), 89–113; Peter Hawkins, “Transfiguring the Text: Ovid, Scripture, and the Dynamics of Allusion,” Stanford Italian Review 5 (1985): 115–139; Sergio Cristaldi, “Dalle beatitudini all’Apocalisse,” 45–63; Armour, Dante’s Griffin; Scott, Dante’s Political Purgatory; and Lino Pertile, La puttana e il gigante: Dal “Cantico dei cantici” al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1998). Nick Havely provides a Franciscan reading of this section of the poem in Dante and the Franciscans, 109–122.

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Church history, especially as based on the Apocalypse. Olivi’s and Dante’s fourth stages also have some interesting parallels. In his summary of Church history in the prologue to the Lectura, Olivi presents the fourth stage of Church history, as we have seen, as the time of the anchorites who fight hypocrisy; this is an interpretation of Dante’s fourth stage that is favored by Robert Kaske, who identifies the dragon with hypocrites in the Church, based on medieval traditions concerning the stages of Church history and how they correspond to the details of Dante’s poem.75 The most common interpretation of this stage, however, as representing the rise of Islam, also has parallels in Olivi’s commentary. In his consideration of the opening of the fourth seal, Olivi interprets the appearance of Death, who appears riding a pale horse when the seal is opened, as in part referring to Mohammed, who was known as a rider of horses, and also because he gave the “law of death” to his people, drawing them away from Christ with his heresy.76 There are also substantial parallels in both Dante’s and Olivi’s portrayals of the fifth stage of Church history, which is characterized by corruption, especially the corruption of wealth. We see both in Olivi and in Dante, then, a consistent narrative of Church history as one of progressive corruption largely due to the materialism of the Church. Both also turn to the Apocalypse, and chapter 17 in particular, to find imagery that supports this sense of Church history.77 It is significant that Dante employs this same imagery, though in somewhat different ways, in both Inferno 19 and Purgatorio 32, identifying the corrupt Church with the harlot of Revelation, and finding evidence for her corruption in her “fornicating” with temporal rulers. It seems clear, then, that Dante was influenced by the Spiritual Franciscan reading of the Apocalypse in his use of Apocalypse 17 in the service of his vision of Church corruption. 75

See “The Seven Status Ecclesiae,” 96–99. “Mors etiam dicitur sedere super eum triplici ex causa. Prima est quia Mahomet eorum sessor et pseudopropheta dedit eis legem mortis, et iam plus quam per DC annos fuit innumerabilibus suis sectatoribus causa mortis eterne evellens ab eis Christum, qui solus est vita et redemptio nostra et cuius lex est lex vite” (376). The notion that Mohammed was a Christian heretic was widespread in the Middle Ages; Dante portrays him in this way in Inferno 28. 22–63, placing him among the sowers of schism and division in the ninth bolgia of the eighth circle. 77 Mineo finds a parallel between the giant’s flogging of the whore “dal capo infin le piante” and Olivi’s sense in the prologue to the Lectura that the church is corrupted “a planta pedis usque ad verticem” (52). See “Gli spirituali francescani,” 41. 76

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But it is also in their shared sense of Church corruption that we find the greatest difference between Dante and Olivi. As we saw in Inferno 19, so too in Purgatorio 32, Dante identifies the source of the corruption of the Church with the well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous Donation of Constantine. Indeed, for Dante the third stage of his Church history is limited to this one event, apparently because of its long-reaching effects. Some mendicant commentators had an attitude toward the Donation that resembles Dante’s. In a Dominican commentary on the Apocalypse that Robert Lerner attributes to Hugh of Saint Cher, for example, we find an indictment of the Donation in the exegesis of Apocalypse 12:15. There, the water flowing from the dragon’s mouth is interpreted as “abundance of temporal goods . . . which the dragon sent into the Church of God, when the western empire was given by Constantine to the Church.” This interpretation is followed by a repetition of the legend that when the gift was given, angels’ voices were heard saying, “today poison has been poured into the Church of God,”78 a story that closely resembles Dante’s account of the third stage of Church history, in which a voice from heaven is heard to say, “O navicella mia, com’ mal se’ carca!” (“O my little ship, how you are badly burdened” [32. 129]). Olivi, on the other hand, did not object in principle to the Church owning possessions and in fact suggests that Constantine’s gift benefited the Church until the end of the fifth age.79 This difference in attitude toward the Donation points to a larger difference in the ultimate direction of history for each writer. Olivi, as we have seen, under the influence of Joachim, looked for a coming

78 “Vel per aquam fluminis significatur abundantia terrenorum . . . abundantiam quam misit draco Domino permittente in ecclesiam Dei, quando a Constantino datum est ei imperium occidentalis Ecclesiae. . . . Unde tunc audita fuit vox Angelorum in aere dicentium, ‘Hodie infusum est venenum in Ecclesia Dei,’ sicut legitur in Apocryphis Sylvestri.” This commentary had been attributed to Aquinas, and it can be found in the collection of his complete works, Opera Omnia, 34 vols (Paris, 1876), 31.469–32.86. The citation is from 31.622–623. For a consideration of the commentary, its attribution, and the views on the Donation presented in it, see Robert E. Lerner, “Poverty, Preaching, and Eschatology in the Revelation Commentaries of ‘Hugh of St Cher,’” in The Bible in the Medieval World, ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 157–189. 79 “Consimiliter autem pontificatus Christi fuit primo stirpe vite evangelice et apostolice in Petro et apostolis datus, ac deinde utiliter et rationabiliter fuit ad statum habentem temporalia commutatus, saltem a tempore Constantini usque ad finem quinti status” (51).

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seventh age, corresponding to the age of the Holy Spirit and the third age of world history that would bring about a new, spiritual Church and an extended period of peace. Fundamental to that vision is the role of Saint Francis and his order; they began the process of renewal in the fifth age and would play a vital role in the sixth age, resulting in the overthrow of the great Antichrist and the advent of the new age. While Dante looks to Francis as one who renews and reenacts the life of Christ, he gives no hint, either in Inferno 19 or in Purgatorio 32, that the Franciscans have a crucial role to play in the working out of God’s historical design. In fact, his seven stages narrate a continuous process of downward descent, culminating in the detachment of the chariot from the griffin, or the separation of the Church from Christ. Beatrice does, in her commentary on the tableau offered in canto 33, point to a promise of renewal beyond the seven periods of Church history illustrated in the previous canto, but she points to the Empire rather than to the Franciscans as the source of this renewal. Sappi che ‘l vaso che ‘l serpente ruppe, fu e non è; ma chi n’ha colpa, creda che vendetta di Dio non teme suppe. Non sarà tutto tempo sanza reda l’aguglia che lasciò le penne al carro, per che divenne mostro e poscia preda; ch’io veggio certamente, e però il narro, a darne tempo già stelle propinque, secure d’ogn’ intoppo e d’ogne sbarro, nel quale un cinquecento diece e cinque, messo da Dio, anciderà la fuia con quel gigante che con lei delinque. (33. 34–45) (Know that the vessel that the serpent broke, was and is not; but for the one guilty of it, believe that the justice of God fears no hindrance. The eagle who left the feathers in the chariot will not be long without an heir, for which reason the chariot became a monster and then a prey; and I see certainly, and thus I tell it, stars already near, free from every delay and obstacle, will bring about a time in which a five hundred ten and five, sent by God, will kill the thief with that giant that sins with her.)

Beatrice calls her words a “narrazion buia” (“dark narrative”) and an “enigma forte” (“stubborn enigma”), so it is no surprise that the interpretation of these lines has been a matter of some debate. Certain general issues, however, seem clear. First, the vengeance of God will

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be directed at the Church and the political leaders that collude with her in her temporal ambitions. If the most common interpretation of the giant as Philip the Fair is correct, we may perhaps extrapolate that Beatrice directs her words against both the leaders of a corrupt Church and nationalist political leaders, both of whom resist what Dante sees as the rightful imperial rule in order to pursue their own avaricious interests. This interpretation also accords with Dante’s fifth, sixth, and seventh epistles, all of which concern Dante’s hopes that the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII will become a political savior. In the fifth letter, Dante addresses the people of Italy exhorting them to welcome Henry, since he brings their temporal salvation; in the sixth, he rebukes the Florentines for their refusal to welcome Henry in recognition of his divinely appointed role; and in the final letter of the three, he addresses Henry directly to encourage him to hasten his redemption of Italy. In these letters, the individual rulers of Italy are seen as attempting to block the divinely ordained progress of history. Second, we must assume, as the above discussion implies, that the coming savior is an heir to the empire, as Beatrice suggests in lines 37–39. While it was the imperial gift of Constantine that led to the corruption of the Church, so it will also be the heir of the eagle who kills the harlot that the Church has become by assuming control over all of the temporal affairs of Europe and wresting them away from both the Church and the kings who fornicate with her. The promised savior, in other words, for Dante, is not to be found in a group of new spiritual men or a faction of friars minor that refuses to compromise the ideals of Christ as lived by Francis, but a new Holy Roman Emperor, who restores to the Church its proper role precisely by attacking it in its temporal possessions and killing off its avaricious, worldly ambition. And if we think back to the prophetic commission that Beatrice delivers to Dante just prior to the historical tableau, we will recall that Dante has Beatrice define heaven itself as “that Rome where Christ is Roman,” a detail that reminds us how inextricably Church and empire were tied together in Dante’s historical vision. In the second book of the Monarchia as well as the sixth and seventh cantos of the Paradiso, we see how Dante identifies a providential ordering of imperial as well as salvation history, and that it is only in the proper relationship between Church and empire that history is able to move toward its divinely ordained end.

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Finally, it is worth noting that while Dante and Olivi differ as to the value of the Church’s possessions prior to the final consummation of Church history, they agree in seeing that the Church must eventually become purified of its wealth and return to its “first state.”80 Only when the entire Church, and not just the Franciscans, lives after the example of poverty and humility set by Saint Francis will the Church become purified. As Saint Peter tells Dante in the following canticle: Non fu la sposa di Cristo allevata del sangue mio, di Lin, di quel di Cleto, per essere ad acquisto d’oro usata. (Paradiso 27. 40–42) (The bride of Christ was not nourished by my blood, by that of Linus and Cletus to be used for the purchase of gold.)

These lines recall the use of the Apocalypse that we have seen so far: the imagery of the bride of Christ corrupted for gold recapitulates the imagery employed in both Inferno 19 and Purgatorio 32. Nevertheless, after cataloging the degeneracy of the Church, Peter, as did Beatrice, prophesies the imminent intervention of God to ensure that history will meet its proper end, and he does so by associating divine providence with the progress of Roman rather than Christian history: Ma l’alta provedenza, che con Scipio difese a Roma la gloria del mondo, soccorrà tosto, sì com’io concipio. (Paradiso. 27. 61–63) (By providence from on high, that with which Scipio defended the glory of the world for Rome, will soon intervene, as I conceive.)

Throughout the Comedia, the epistles, and the Monarchia, Dante links Christian and imperial history together. In so doing, he also ties spiritual and temporal salvation together—a concern remote from Olivi and the Spiritual Franciscans.

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Olivi, Lectura, 51: “Pro quanto autem multi sanctorum pontificum fuerunt regulares et in suis scriptis et in habitu sui cordis preferentes paupertatem Christi et apostolorum, omnibus temporalibus ecclesie datis, pro tanto quasi usque ad duplum preeminuit primus ordo sacerdotii apostolici. Congruum est ergo quod in fine omnino redeat et assurgat ad ordinem primum, ad quem spectat iure primogeniture et perfectionis maioris et Christo conformioris.”

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v.s. benfell iii Conclusion

We have seen that Dante’s use of the Apocalypse has some strong similarities to that of Peter John Olivi. Both see current events and trends literally prophesied in the final book of the Bible, and both understand many of the references to Rome in the Apocalypse as referring to the corrupt Church of their own day. Both employ imagery of the woman of Apocalypse 12 and the harlot of Apocalypse 17 to allude to the Church in different stages of its historical development; and both understand history as divinely ordained, moving toward a time in the near future when God will intervene to end Church corruption and inaugurate a new era of peace. But a close examination reveals that the differences between Dante and Olivi are as numerous as the similarities. Dante, unlike Olivi, sees a new emperor as the key to God’s intervention, and while he joins with Olivi in seeing Francis and his order as a key part of the renewal of the Church, he does not discuss the possibility that a group of new, spiritual men will be instrumental in bringing about a third age of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, although Dante does portray Joachim saved in the heaven of the sun and describes him as “endowed with a prophetic spirit” (“di spirito profetico dotato” [Par. 12. 141]), he gives no indication that he accepts Joachim’s tripartite, Trinitarian division of world history. The Apocalypse proves formative for both Dante and Olivi because both men sought to understand the present by comprehending it within a larger narrative framework, one oriented toward an endtime that allowed them to grasp their chaotic and confusing present. But book two of the Monarchia as well as the passages in the Commedia that we have examined show that Dante’s own vision of that narrative owed as much to Roman traditions of exceptionalism as it did to a Franciscan narrative of decline and renewal. Olivi and the Spirituals, then, may well have provided a vocabulary and a set of images, derived from the Apocalypse, that Dante found exceptionally useful in the articulation of his own vision of Church corruption and the place of that corruption in the larger narrative of Church history, but he did not follow Olivi’s Spiritual Franciscan view of the end of history. Dante remained stubbornly resistant to notions of providence that differed from his own teleological blending of imperial and spiritual history.

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Ultimately, then, Dante treats Olivi and the other Spiritual Franciscans much as he does virtually all of his sources—selectively, taking from them what suits his own purposes and his own vision, but not following them. Indeed, one may wonder if Dante in his later life ever felt compelled to follow anyone. For Dante as man, as poet, and as prophetic figure became and remained exiled in more than simply a political sense; in numerous matters of thought and art, he was, as he has Cacciaguida memorably describe himself, a party of one.

Appendix I The Stages of the History of the Christian Church in Purgatorio 32 Lines

Symbol

Traditional Interpretation

109–117

The “bird of Jove” falls through the tree more swiftly than lightning, despoiling it, and then striking the chariot with great force.

This action represents the persecution of the primitive Church by the Roman Empire.

118–123

A fox lacking “all good nourishment” enters the chariot, but Beatrice chases it off.

The fox represents heresy; Beatrice symbolizes theology, which the Church fathers employ to defeat heresy.

124–129

The eagle descends once again and leaves the chariot covered in feathers; a voice from heaven proclaims, “O my little ship, how you are badly burdened.”

The eagle again represents the Roman Empire, and the “feathering” of the chariot refers to the Donation of Constantine.

130–135

The earth opens, and from between the axles of the chariot comes forth a dragon, who tears off part of the base of the chariot with its tail and then wanders off.

The dragon is most frequently identified, especially in the early commentators, with Mohammed and the growth of Islam.

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Symbol

136–141. The feathers, originally offered with good intentions, cover the entirety of the chariot.

Traditional Interpretation Material riches, stemming from Constantine’s well-intentioned gift, begin to permeate every part of the Church, resulting in corruption.

142–147

The chariot then grows heads, seven in all; all of these heads sprout horns, three with two horns each (like oxen), while the others have one, making a total of ten.

This imagery, taken from Apocalypse 17, seems to refer to the growth of corruption because of the Church’s wealth.

148–160

A whore appears sitting on the chariot, with a giant by her side. They kiss, but when her eyes begin to wander, the giant beats her, unties the chariot, and drags the whore and the chariot off into the woods.

The whore is also from Apocalypse 17, and here, as there, she fornicates with the kings of the earth, symbolized by the giant. The giant may represent Philip the Fair, the French king, who induces Clement to move the papacy to Avignon, symbolized by the dragging off of the chariot.

CLARISSAN SPIRITUALITY AND DANTE: PICCARDA DONATI REVISITED Tonia Bernardi Triggiano

In Dante’s lifetime, the Convent of Santa Chiara di Monticelli was located beyond the Arno River and outside the walls of Florence near what is now called the Porta Romana. This, however, is the convent’s second location; founded in 1217, until 1266 it was situated closer to the city, just south of the Porta San Frediano.1 Originally called Santa Maria del Sepolcro di Monticelli, this was the place to which Agnes, daughter of Favarone of Assisi and sister of Clare of Assisi, was sent so that she might give a more definitive shape to a house already aligned with Francis’ gospel way of life.2 Since the Convent of Monticelli was the institution to foster Tuscany’s first diffusion of Clarissan spirituality, so too did those women practice their vocation according to the same tenets as their sisters who lived with Clare at San Damiano. Some thirty years after Agnes’ return to San Damiano, in 1253, Monticelli became the focus of Florence’s political attention. It has been recorded by historians and poets as the cloister from which Piccarda Donati was removed by her brother, Corso, in order to fulfill a marriage arrangement beneficial to the Donati family who, with their moorings in the city’s Black Guelphs, sought alliance within party lines.3 Whether Piccarda sought the shelter of the cloister in order to escape the political designs of her brother, or whether she consciously chose the Franciscan way of life

1 Geographical indications concerning the various locations of the Convent of Monticelli can best be found in P. Zeffirino Lazzeri, “Il Monastero di Piccarda, ossia le clarisse di Monticelli,” La Verna 10 (1912–1913): 169–181, 266–270, 361–367, 440–458. Also see Chiara Augusta Lainati, O.P.C., “Cenni biografici di S. Agnese di Assisi,” in Santa Chiara d’Assisi (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1980), 118–119 and Jeryldene M. Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality, The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 67. 2 When Agnes arrived at Monticelli, sometime between 1228 and 1230, the precepts of the Clarissan forma vitae had already been introduced, perhaps by Francis himself when he was in Florence in 1217. Lazzeri, 174. Lainati, “Cenni biografici,” 120. 3 Ezio Levi, Piccarda e Gentucca, Studi e Ricerche Dantesche (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli editore, 1921), 68.

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above other women’s communities, is unknown. Whatever Piccarda’s motivation in becoming a Sister of Saint Clare, the story of her life, at least from the chronicler’s perspective, is a sad one. The scene of Corso and his band’s attempts to remove Piccarda from the convent recalls an itinerary designed by the two earliest Franciscan women, with one grave exception, the ending.4 Both Clare of Assisi, and her sister, Agnes, executed nocturnal escapes from their home and later became objects of a familial tug-of-war at the convent gates. Clare and Agnes were able to endure their family’s violent assaults while Piccarda became memorialized by her failure, and her eventual selfresignation led her unhappily to the marriage altar.5 Soon after her abduction, Piccarda was married to Rossellino della Tosa, but as one version of the story recounts, some time after her wedding, she was afflicted by a disfiguring illness, and in this way her prayers to maintain her virginity were answered. She died dressed in the habit of Saint Clare. The chronicles generally agree that the removal of Piccarda from Monticelli occurred sometime between 1285 and 1288 while Corso served the city of Bologna, first as capitano del popolo then as podestà.6 It is entirely possible that Dante had first-hand knowledge of this piece of Florentine history, perhaps even by way of Piccarda herself. When her name is first mentioned in the Commedia, in Purgatorio 24, the pilgrim’s recollection of her is determined by her relationship to her brothers: Corso, who is destined to hell in the prophesied future of the poem, and Forese, poet, repentant spirit on the mountain of purgatory, and friend of Dante. These

4 The earliest chronicled version of the story of Piccarda is by Fra Mariano da Firenze, Libro delle dignità et excellentiae del ordine della seraphica madre delle povere donne Sanctae Chiara da Assisi, ed. P.B. Boccali (Assisi: Ed. Studi Francescani, 1986). The writing of this history was commissioned by the Poor Clares of Volterra and was completed in 1519. 5 It is recounted that Clare resisted her family’s efforts by “taking hold of the altar cloths, she bared her tonsured head, maintaining that she would in no way be torn away from the service of Christ.” Thomas of Celano, “The Legend of Saint Clare,” Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, edited and translated by Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. (Saint Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1993), 261. Agnes’ refusal to be carried away is described: “Suddenly, in fact, [Agnes’] body lying on the ground seemed so heavy that the men, many [as there were], exerted all their energy and were not able to carry her beyond a certain stream.” Thomas of Celano, 280. Before Clare and Agnes relocated to their permanent residence at San Damiano, they resided at Sant’Angelo of Panzo. Both are located outside the city of Assisi. 6 Levi, 68.

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Donati siblings are not mere acquaintances of Dante but relatives by way of his wife, the uncelebrated Gemma Donati. That Dante possessed an understanding of the brand of spirituality embraced by Piccarda as participant in the second order of the Franciscan family equal to his knowledge of the first order is not difficult to prove. This study will re-examine the poet’s portrait of Piccarda, whose vow to the silence of the cloister was severed and in this way her story given voice. What Piccarda says to describe the Order of Saint Clare, and her attachment to it, is consonant with what other Franciscan women will have to say in the century that follows Piccarda’s lifetime. These descriptions are most poignantly evidenced by way of biographies and original poetry. By the midfourteenth century, examples of women who were not simply models of Franciscan sanctity but who were also students and emulators of Dante’s works begin to appear, thus providing a modern continuation to the figure created by the poet. The reader of the Commedia meets Piccarda in Paradiso 3. There, in the problematic place of the sphere of the moon, the poet assigns Piccarda a pivotal role whereby she not only recalls a specific relationship to his own contemporary Florentine history but, more importantly, serves to introduce a primary lesson of the canticle—the soul’s enjoyment of the beatific vision as a metaphor for the ineffable communion of the blessed with God. The economy of the Paradiso, as a whole, depends upon a process of question and answer, and Piccarda is instrumental in this first, preparatory phase of the pilgrim’s heavenly education in that she answers the pilgrim’s questions concerning the newly-entered realm of heaven. If Piccarda speaks to elucidate both personal history and larger theological truths, she does so in her own fashion. Piccarda’s responses to the pilgrim’s three questions are bolstered with vocabulary and motifs unmistakably rooted in the ideology of the religious order in which she participated, albeit briefly. In this way, the canto assumes a canonical subtext that hinges upon the principles that determined the Order of Saint Clare.7 It is a canonical subtext that serves a doctrinal main text in the same hierarchical

7 As a sister at the Convent of Monticelli in the 1280’s Piccarda would have fallen under the Rule proposed by Pope Urban IV in 1263. His Ordo sanctae Clarae then gives this name to these Franciscan women. See Maria Pia Alberzoni, “Clare and the Papacy” in Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century (St. Bonaventure, New York: The Franciscan Institute, 2004), 29–87.

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manner in which various orders look to the Church. Further, if the canticle’s greater itinerary is one of negotiating contrasting religious ideologies of the place and time in which the poet moved, then that objective is given impetus here, in a distinctively female Franciscan voice.8 Piccarda is emblematic; she personifies a specific category of religious women and despite her appearance in the lowest heavenly sphere—the place of broken vows—her representation of the Order of Saint Clare speaks rather of integration: her relationship to her place among the blessed; her relationship to her vocation; the Poor Sisters’ relationship to the Friars. Dante’s recreation of his kinswoman as a virgin sister who addresses the tenets of Clarissan spirituality places her back into the order in which she longed to be, in this way correcting the violence done to her by her brother, Corso. And so while Corso was successful in his plan to dissolve his sister’s physical promise to the cloister, he had no power to divert her spiritual and intellectual attachment. Indeed, the allegory of Paradiso 3 depends upon the dynamics of the alliances created by promises and the will required to keep them whole.

Piccarda Donati: Sister of Saint Clare Reinvented Dante and Beatrice meet Piccarda in the sphere of the moon, which as Piccarda says, appears farthest from the Empyrean. This planet, due to its relative proximity to earth, is marred by the earth’s shadow, and so the spirits appearing there maintain a compromised heavenly existence because their goodness was somehow tainted by earthly fault. To the sphere of the moon are found the religious who were inconstant in their formal resolutions; in Mercury are the good who sought earthly fame, and in Venus are found those whose affection

8 The following works treat Paradiso 3 and the figure of Piccarda Donati: Rev. John S. Carroll, In Patria, an Exposition of Dante’s Paradiso (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1971); Edmund G. Gardner, “The Heaven of the Moon,” in Dante’s Ten Heavens, A Study of the Paradiso (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co., 1898), 47–63; Giuseppe Mazzotta, “Teologia ed esegesi biblica (Par. 3–5),” in Dante e la Bibbia, ed. Giovanni Barblan (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1988), 95–112; Francesco Muscogiuri, “Piccarda Donati,” in Di alcuni caratteri meno popolari della Divina Commedia (Florence: Ed. Di Luigi Niccolai, 1889), 37–51; Antonio Nannini, “Piccarda nel terzo canto del Paradiso,” Letture classensi 2 (1969): 245–260.

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crossed the line to sensuality. While the reader of the Commedia must understand that the pilgrim’s journey through heaven is very rapid, if not instantaneous, he must also understand the poet’s need to provide a narrative structure that describes the hierarchy of the blessed. In this way the poet prepares the pilgrim for the ultimate vision of God in a graduated manner. As Dante and Beatrice begin their journey, the reader is forewarned in Paradiso 1 of the impending difficulty of the subject matter now to be treated. Once the poet completes his instructions to the reader to follow his text closely lest he lose his way and have to turn back, the scene changes in Canto 2 from a picture of a little boat on an open sea to a close-up of the travelers. Beatrice in suso, e io in lei guardava; e forse in tanto in quanto un quadrel posa e vola e da la noce si dischiava, giunto mi vidi ove mirabil cosa mi torse il viso a sé; e però quella cui non poteva mia cura essere ascosa, volta ver’ me, sì lieta come bella, “Drizza la mente in Dio grata,” mi disse, “che n’ha congiunti con la prima stella.” (Paradiso 2. 22–30)9 (Beatrice was gazing upward, and I on her; and perhaps in that time that a bolt strikes, flies, and from the catch is released, I saw myself arrived where a wondrous thing drew my sight to it. She, therefore, from whom my thoughts could not be hidden, turned toward me, as glad as she was fair, and “Direct your mind to God in gratitude,” she said, “who has united us with the first star.”)

The couple’s approach to heaven is instantaneous. The poet’s use of hysteron proteron denotes this by reversing the normal series of events: the arrow stops, flies through the air and is released from the bow. The movements appear simultaneous to the onlooker and with similar quickness, the pilgrim’s visual focus moves from one object to another; first he gazes at Beatrice, next his vision is turned to the star of the moon, then he is instructed by Beatrice to change the medium of his focus, in essence, from visual to mental, “Drizza la mente in Dio grata”. In this way, Beatrice extends the archer

9

All citations in Italian and English of the Commedia are taken from Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Translated, with a Commentary by Charles S. Singleton, Bollingen Series 80 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).

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motif and creates a teleological relationship with the poem’s ultimate end by looking directly ahead to God. As this seeing is done by the mind’s eye, the reader is reminded again of the intellectual nature of this new place. As a signal of having followed her directions, the pilgrim’s fitting response recognizes a physical detachment from earth and his next curiosity lies in the mottled appearance of the planet before him. Beatrice’s response corrects his approach to matters that lie beyond the sensible. The human faculty of reason is insufficient here, where spiritual matters reign. With the words, “Ma dimmi quel che tu da te ne pensi” (verse 58) Beatrice volleys the question back upon her student, and the pilgrim answers incorrectly when he states that the moon’s light and dark patches are a product of the planet’s differing stratas of dense and rare matter. Rather, it is due to the many kinds of human virtue that stream down through the stellar heavens, ultimately stamping the moon in patterns of light. Beatrice’s lengthy answer (which occupies the remainder of the canto), is perhaps one of the most difficult episodes of the poem, and purposefully so. Beyond the reader’s comprehension of the content of Beatrice’s explanation lies the real lesson which seeks rather to instruct the proper approach one is to take in understanding this new place. Paradiso is a sacred text, the reading of which requires much more than a purely physical frame of mind; rather, faith and intellect are the necessary cognitive tools. Even though heaven is given form by the hand of Nature as a series of concentric circles with earth at its center, both reader and pilgrim must exchange the physical and sensible code for the mystical and theological. The Empyrean lies outside of the celestial circles, imparting virtue to the nine heavens by way of the Primum Mobile, the first of the moving spheres and the one that imparts movement to all the others. Circumscribed by the Primum Mobile, the stellar heaven diffuses God’s abundant virtue in careful and distinctive measures under the attendance of the cherubim who rule the heaven of the fixed stars. The seven additional spheres lie in concentric spheres, holding earth in their center. While the poet works to construct a material framework to support a non-material experience, the pilgrim struggles from the outset to make a leap in the opposite direction. He must adjust his vision not only to the increasing degrees of light, but, more critically, in order to comprehend the divine lesson here offered to him, he must learn to look beyond the pages upon which it is written, and hence, a realignment of his vision (as a metaphor for the pilgrim’s

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intellectual capacity) is necessitated. If Revelation is the guiding principle here, personified in Beatrice, then the other spirits of heaven have their place, too, in the pilgrim’s educational program, and Piccarda is the first of them to perform this role. Paradiso 3 opens as the pilgrim lifts his head to look upon the face of Beatrice, a gesture that confirms his comprehension of her explanation of the moon spots. Those patches of light and dark signify grace as it is given by God in many different ways and thus filtered down through the universe, with some places more receptive than others. But does the pilgrim really understand? His motion is preempted as he catches a glimpse of something, figures so subtle in their visibility that he mistakes them for mere reflections. tali vid’io più facce a parlar pronte; per ch’io dentro a l’error contrario corsi a quel ch’accese amor tra l’omo e ‘l fonte. (Paradiso 3. 16–18) (So did I behold many a countenance eager to speak; wherefore I fell into the contrary error to that which kindled love between the man and the fountain.)

The pilgrim has fallen into the error contrary to that of Narcissus, who according to the myth instead mistook his reflection in the water for a real person. Dante then quickly turns his eyes in the opposite direction, as he searches for the material origination of the reflections. Finally, his eyes rest upon Beatrice. Sùbito sì com’ io di lor m’accorsi, quelle stimando specchiati sembianti, per veder di cui fosser, li occhi torsi; e nulla vidi, e ritorsili avanti dritti nel lume de la dolce guida, che, sorridendo, ardea ne li occhi santi. (Paradiso 3. 19–24) (No sooner was I aware of them than, taking them for mirrored faces, I turned round my eyes to see of whom they were, and saw nothing; and I turned them forward again, straight into the light of the sweet guide, whose holy eyes were glowing as she smiled.)

Beatrice smiles at her charge’s error and points out that his understanding of this realm is immature. “Non ti maravigliar perch’io sorrida,” mi disse, “appresso il tuo püeril coto, poi sopra ‘l vero ancor lo piè non fida, ma te rivolve, come suole, a vòto:

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tonia bernardi triggiano vere sustanze son ciò che tu vedi, qui rilegate per manco di voto.” (Paradiso 3. 25–30) (“Do not wonder,” she said to me, “that I smile at your childish thought, since it does not yet trust itself upon the truth, but turns you, after its wont, to vacancy. These that you see are real substances, assigned here for failure in their vows.”)

Beatrice tells Dante that he’s putting his foot upon emptiness rather than upon the true matter, in essence, that he lacks the proper foundation to continue his journey. Beatrice, in this way, is calling for the materialization of authoritative groundwork, and this implied void (vòto = vuoto) will be filled by the teachings of Thomas Aquinas whose Summa Theologiae is one of the texts to which the poet turns to provide the doctrinal underpinnings of the canticle. In Question 92 of the Supplement to the Third Volume of the Summa, Aquinas employs the object of the mirror and the activity of reflection to allegorize the process of intellectual maturation. “Of the Vision of the Divine Essence in Reference to the Blessed” is treated in three articles. Article 1 addresses the human’s capability to attain the vision of God. Aquinas proves in his replies to the question’s 16 objections that indeed God will be seen in His divine essence, by way of the intellect. Objection 15 states that God will be seen through a medium like light, but not directly. Aquinas’ objection to this reply refutes the existence of a medium: There is a threefold medium both in bodily and in intellectual vision . . . The third is the medium in which it is seen and this is something by gazing on which the sight is led to something else: thus by looking in a mirror it is led to see the things reflected in the mirror, and by looking at an image it is led to the thing represented by the image. In this way, too, the intellect from knowing an effect is led to the cause, or conversely.10

The action suggested by moving from cause to effect and back again is echoed at various moments in Paradiso 2 and 3, witnessed in the pilgrim’s physical reaction and described by the verb torcere (to twist). In this instance, the pilgrim first looks at Beatrice, then at a void (where he thought the spirits were standing) then back at the light of Beatrice (“li occhi torsi e nulla vidi, e ritorsili avanti,” Paradiso 10 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Tertia, Suppl., Qu. xcii, Art. 1, Obj. 15, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Chicago: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1948), 2963.

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3. 21–22). She is, for now, the medium upon which his vision depends. The reader is also reminded of the pilgrim’s series of doubletakes, witnessed in his attempt to understand the mottled appearance of the moon (“mi torse il viso a sé,” Paradiso 2. 26), but critical are her instructions to him to change the focus of his gaze, that is, to turn his gaze away from her and place it directly upon God. And so, the paradigm of visionary realignment is designed by the act of looking, twisting and straightening, and looking again. Reflection and the danger of mistaken perception recall the myth of Narcissus whose story centers upon the notion of vanity. This allegory might be extended as vanity, or vanitas, recalls two definitions: ostentation (on the part of the poor fellow who falls in love with his watery image) and emptiness (a quality that confounds the pilgrim in this canto in a variety of forms). The poet’s play on the words, vòto (vuoto) and voto will be developed in verse 57 where Piccarda uses the rhyming pair to answer the pilgrim’s question concerning her station in heaven. A promise (voto) not completely filled (as it is incomplete, it is in some degree empty or vuoto) is the reason her place in heaven appears so lowly. At this point, the conversation turns upon Beatrice’s oral signal, Però, and the pilgrim is encouraged to take his first steps. His feet have found more solid ground. “Però parla con esse e odi e credi; ché la verace luce che le appaga da sé non lascia lor torcer li piedi.” E io a l’ombra che parea più vaga di ragionar, drizza’mi, e cominciai, quasi com’ uom cui troppa voglia smaga. (Paradiso 3. 31–36) (“Wherefore speak with them and hear and believe, for the true light that satisfies them does not suffer them to turn their steps aside from it.” And I directed myself to the shade who seemed most eager to speak, and I began like a man whom excessive desire confuses.)

Conversely, the feet of the souls of heaven are firmly planted. Because they are so happily drawn to the true light of God, they are not willing to turn their steps aside. As a result, the pilgrim is instructed to go to them. He approaches the one who appears most willing to speak; indeed, he is overcome with the desire to ask questions. As the pilgrim negotiates these heavenly spheres, his questions mark the way. He is clearly eager to proceed, and this canto demonstrates this eagerness in terms of hunger and satisfaction. There are

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a number of different kinds of voids to fill here such as empty promises, airy footing, and immaterial substances. The female interlocutors in this canto address the requests of the pilgrim thus providing momentum to his educational itinerary. Satiation of his appetite for information recalls a similar experience found earlier in the poem. In Purgatorio 23 and 24, Dante and Virgil dialogue with the souls who are repenting the sin of gluttony. Upon that terrace of the mountain of purgatory, trees heavy with ripe fruit tempt souls emaciated almost beyond recognition. Dante is happy to come upon an old friend and relative, Forese Donati (who died in 1296). The scene of their mutual recognition and the recollection of old times have an intimate ring, harking back to their days as fellow poets. Upon that terrace, where there is a marked emphasis upon the corporeal presence (absence, rather) of the souls, edible nourishment is replaced by literary sustenance, and the lyric is the mainstay of the diet of the poets encountered there. The most refined style of lyric poetry will be discussed when Dante outlines the terms of the “sweet new style” in his conversation with Bonagiunta da Lucca. Before Bonagiunta appears, however, Dante and Forese continue their dialogue on a familial note. In verse 9 of Purgatorio 24 the pilgrim asks Forese the whereabouts of his sister, Piccarda. Forese’s response indicates, without doubt, that she is in heaven. “La mia sorella, che tra bella e buona non so qual fosse più, trïunfa lieta ne l’alto Olimpo già di sua corona.” (Purgatorio 24. 13–15) (“My sister, who whether she was more fair or good I do not know, triumphs already on high Olympus, rejoicing in her crown.”)

This brief interchange serves to not only clarify the pilgrim’s relationship with the Simone Donati family but also highlights the absence of one of its siblings. If Forese can now be found in purgatory, and if his sister, Piccarda, is to be found in heaven, the reader might surmise by creative design that the eventual resting place of Corso, will be hell.11 Corso was not only guilty of abusing his sister’s life to

11 The conversation between Forese and the pilgrim concludes with an allusion to Corso’s death, which occurs in 1308 when he is killed while trying to escape the Catalan horsemen ordered to return him to Florence. In the seven years after Corso’s siege of the city of Florence in 1301, disagreement among the Neri caused the priors to be suspicious of Corso. He was ultimately condemned to death as a traitor

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promote his own political endeavors, but he also had a hand in Dante’s expulsion from Florence by way of his participation with the city’s Black Guelph party. That Piccarda’s presence in heaven is confirmed by her own brother, the good brother, further establishes a connection to the contemporary Florence in which Dante was at one time so engaged. If the interchange of hunger and satiation, at work on the terrace of gluttony, functions there in physical terms, in the sphere of the moon it functions in philosophical terms. In a type of captatio benevolentiae, the pilgrim addresses one of the spirits: “O ben creato spirito, che a’ rai di vita etterna la dolcezza senti che, non gustata, non s’intende mai, grazïoso mi fia se mi contenti del nome tuo e de la vostra sorte.” (Paradiso 3. 37–41) (“O well-created spirit, who in the rays of life eternal do taste the sweetness which, if not tasted, is never understood, it would be a kindness to me if you satisfied me with your name and with your lot.”)

The pilgrim’s first question is a request for both personal and communal information. Centering upon the word sorte, it inquires the fate of the spirits gathered there. But Piccarda’s response establishes spatial orientation as she uses the word sorte as a departure point to explain her place as it exists within the greater realm of heaven. She unveils her identity to the pilgrim who doesn’t recognize her at first; she has a new and divine beauty about her. She was a virgin sister on earth, now stationed in the sphere that appears so low because her vows were in some way unfulfilled: “E questa sorte che par giù cotanto però n’è data, perché fuor negletti li nostri voti, e vòti in alcun canto.” (Paradiso 3. 55–57) (“And this lot, which appears so lowly, is given to us because our vows were neglected and void in some particular.”)

The language Piccarda uses to answer the pilgrim’s questions depends largely upon the word volere, both in its nominal and verbal forms. She

when he refused to appear before the podestà. For the story of his violent death and for an explanation of Forese’s prophecy, see Singleton, Purgatorio 24, verses 82–99 and accompanying commentary, Singleton, Purgatorio, pages 574–580.

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mixes this expression of wanting ten times with others like desiderare and piacere and she chooses carefully among them.12 Nominal variants of volere (voglia, volontà, volontade) as well as piacere consistently express the meaning of will whereby a distinction is made between the faculty of moral strength fundamental to the proper activity of the soul and the appetitive activity of desiring or yearning. While Piccarda correctly uses the terminology of volere, her understanding of the capacities of the will is limited. It will be after Piccarda’s departure from the scene that Beatrice, in Paradiso 4, will further clarify the different types of will at work in humans which are the properties inherent to the absolute will and the conditioned will. That Piccarda’s discussion never enters this level of philosophical inquiry may relate to the poet’s diagnosis of her principal weakness. And yet, the poet does charge Piccarda with the responsibility of establishing the primary theme of the canticle—that the collective objective of all the souls of heaven, no matter their place, is God. Further, Piccarda develops the complementary principle that integral to the proper activity of the will is the virtue of charity. The combined appearance of volontas and caritas in Piccarda’s responses reiterates another fundamental truth the pilgrim must discover here. The object of both charity and the will is the divine good, which can be known solely by way of the intellect.13 The pilgrim’s second question, embodied in the canto’s central tercet, brings forth the most critical topic of doctrine to be treated here. “Ma dimmi: voi che siete qui felici, disiderate voi più alto loco per più vedere e per più farvi amici?” (Paradiso 3. 64–66)

12 For a more complete discussion of the relationship between Piccarda’s use of the word volere and its variants and the significance of her failed will, see Richard H. Lansing, “Piccarda and the Poetics of Paradox: A Reading of Paradiso 3,” Dante Studies 15 (1987): 63–77. 13 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae, Qu. xxiv, Art I: “Appetite is of two kinds, sensitive and intellective, which latter is called the will, each having the good as its object, though diversely. For in the case of the sense-appetite it is good perceived by the senses, but with the will, it is the good as a value which is universal, such as only the intellect can grasp. Now charity’s object is not some good of the senses, but divine good, known by intellect alone. Consequently, charity is to be found not in the sense appetite, but the intellective appetite, that is to say in the will.” From “Charity,” Vol. 34, trans. R.J. Batten, O.P. (New York: Blackfriars in Conjunction with McGraw-Hill, 1974), 35–36.

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(“But tell me, you who are happy here, do you desire a more exalted place, to see more, and to make yourselves more dear?”)

Dante again formulates his question in terms of desire. Piccarda realizes that his thinking needs redirection and her response is prefaced by the gently correcting, frate. “Frate, la nostra volontà quïeta virtù di carità, che fa volerne sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta.” (Paradiso 3. 70–72) (“Brother, the power of love quiets our will and makes us wish only for that which we have and gives us no other thirst.”)

Here, the question of happiness of station within heaven is addressed, and her responses reflect the poet’s hand at work in explaining Thomas Aquinas’ argument which states that every spirit in heaven is happy according to its individual capacity and so even though Piccarda appears in the “spera più tarda,” the “slowest sphere,” and that one farthest from the Empyrean, she is content because her place conforms to God’s will. God gives each person a certain quality of sight which increases upon entrance into heaven as it is directed toward the divine object of God. Upon this visual capacity depends each person’s happiness, and so while the souls of the moon appear farthest away from their Maker, all souls are equally content. In Question 93 (Summa, Secunda Secundae) “Of the Happiness of the Saints and of Their Mansions”, Aquinas maintains that the differing degrees of happiness existent in heaven are not dependent solely upon the works of charity performed in one’s life but upon God’s gift of vision as it is shaped and qualified by His love.14 So it seems that Piccarda’s student is beginning to understand as his response is a distilled interpretation of the theory into a single 14 Aquinas Summa Theologiae, Tertia, Suppl., Qu. xciii, Art. 3 treats the question “Whether the Various Mansions Are Distinguished According to the Various Degrees of Charity?” Aquinas answers “The distinctive principle of the mansions or degrees of beatitude is two-fold, namely proximate and remote. The proximate principle is the difference of disposition which will be in the blessed, whence will result the difference of perfection in them in respect to the beatific operation: while the remote principle is the merit by which they have obtained that beatitude. In the first way the mansions are distinguished according to the charity of heaven, which the more perfect it will be in any one, the more will it render him capable of the Divine clarity, on the increase of which will depend the increase in perfection of the Divine vision. In the second way the mansions are distinguished according to the charity of the way. For our actions are meritorious, not by the very substance of the action, but only by the habit of virtue with which they are informed,” 2971.

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tercet. As the poet recites the main lesson of the canto, Piccarda’s message is simplified in content and language. Chiaro mi fu allor come ogne dove in cielo è paradiso, etsi la grazia del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove. (Paradiso 3. 88–90) (Then it was clear to me how everywhere in Heaven is Paradise, even if the grace of the Supreme Good does not there rain down in one same measure.)

With one appetite satisfied, the other remains unsatisfied, and the pilgrim’s thoughts move eagerly to the next question. While the protagonist wants to know the rest of Piccarda’s story the poet leaves out a written verbalization in deference to its intimate nature. Instead, the pilgrim couches his request in the form of a weaving metaphor “to learn from her what was the web through which she had not drawn the shuttle to the end” (Paradiso 3. 95–96)—a gentle reminder that she did not answer his first question fully but also a comment upon the monastic vow not carried through to its proper end. In Piccarda’s response to this third question, a sure discretion is at work: “Perfetta vita e alto merto inciela donna più sù,” mi disse, “a la cui norma nel vostro mondo giù si veste e vela, perché fino al morir si vegghi e dorma con quello sposo ch’ogne voto accetta che caritate a suo piacer conforma. Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinetta fuggi’mi, e nel suo abito mi chiusi e promisi la via de la sua setta. Uomini poi, a mal più ch’a bene usi, fuor mi rapiron de la dolce chiostra: Iddio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi.” (Paradiso 3. 97–108) (“Perfect life and high merit enheaven a lady more aloft,” she said to me, “according to whose rule, in your world below, are those who take the robe and veil themselves that they, even till death, may wake and sleep with that Spouse who accepts every vow which love conforms unto His pleasure. From the world, to follow her, I fled while yet a girl, and in her habit I clothed me and promised myself to the way of her order. Then men, more used to evil than to good, snatched me from the sweet cloister: and God knows what then my life became.”)

Piccarda doesn’t really give much information here, and she certainly does not indulge her audience with any personal details. It may be profitable to compare Piccarda’s withholding of information

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with that of another female figure in the Commedia, also gracious in her speech.15 Quando leggemmo il disïato riso esser basciato da cotanto amante, questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante. Galeotto fu ‘l libro e chi lo scrisse: quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante. (Inferno 5. 133–138) (When we read how the longed-for smile was kissed by so great a lover, this one, who never shall be parted from me, kissed my mouth all trembling. A Gallehault was the book and he who wrote it; that day we read no further in it.)

Francesca da Rimini’s final line leaves out the most poignant of details, the act in which she and Paolo consummate their adulterous love. And yet, the lacuna she creates by pointing to, but not describing, the act is less due to modesty than to allusion by natural consequence. The reader easily configures the sequence: the dropping of the book, Paolo’s kiss on her trembling mouth followed by submission to their mutual passion. Francesca’s language is both economical and, at the same time, profuse, rife with stilnovistic vocabulary and motifs which she uses with the intention of manipulation. As a type of antithesis to Francesca, Piccarda speaks in key notes that she carefully uses in order to enlighten the pilgrim and, differently from Francesca, to afford him intellectual passage. Francesca, on the other hand, succeeds in holding back the pilgrim, who at the end of their dialogue loses consciousness and collapses. Piccarda and Francesca do have another feature in common: they are both the first interlocutors of their appropriate realm: Francesca is the first of the damned to speak, as is Piccarda among the blessed. And fittingly, Dante’s questions to Francesca revolve around wrongful will. Ma dimmi: al tempo d’i dolci sospiri, a che e come concedette amore che conosceste i dubbiosi disiri? (Inferno 5. 118–120) (But tell me, in the time of the sweet sighs, by what and how did Love grant you to know the dubious desires?)

15 For a more complete treatment of the relationship between Francesca and Piccarda, see Aldo Vallone, “Verità ed errore nel III canto del Paradiso,” Critica Letteraria 23 (1995): 181–193.

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Another comparison is between Francesca’s suspicious desires and the right will recognized in the pilgrim by Piccarda: “La nostra carità non serra porte / a giusta voglia” (Paradiso 3. 42–43). In this way, the dialogue of Paradiso 3 marks a progression in the pilgrim’s thinking: a change of subject matter, for certain, but also a graduation in the way he approaches texts. Both Francesca and the pilgrim are immature readers because they misjudge the value of the story to which they are exposed in Inferno 5: Francesca vis-à-vis the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, the pilgrim with Francesca and Paolo. That the poet recreates the figure of Piccarda Donati to participate in the tutelary relationship in which Beatrice is the pilgrim’s primary instructor, is demonstrated not only in the text’s insistence upon the development of the pilgrim’s vision but also by way of the content of his questions to Piccarda. Indeed, the poet’s recreation of his kinswoman is given experience and voice, vehicles of expression that work together to establish other relationships in the reader’s mind besides being relegated to a place in heaven seemingly less receptive to God’s grace.16 One must understand that Dante gives such prominence to the figure of Piccarda because he identifies with her as one who suffered the violence of being separated from one’s natural place and further, at the hand of the very same man. Dante seeks to remedy the situation by showing that despite Piccarda’s failed will to return to the Convent of Monticelli, she did maintain a philosophical communication with the order that governed it. Piccarda’s intellectual engagement with the tenets of Clarissan spirituality imbue the language with which she responds to the pilgrim’s three questions. Piccarda’s answer to the pilgrim’s third question picks up the thread that was left off in the first and in this last monologue, she recounts the final events of her earthly life in a clear and undramatic tone. She prefaces her story by reestablishing her place; she points up to Saint Clare whose life was perfect, complete in its adherence to her spiritual way of life. Then she points down to indicate the material world of the cloister that continues to carry out the rule that takes a different groom, a divine groom, one who accepts every promise, shaping it with charity to His liking. In the next two tercets, she explains what happened to herself, leaving out names and

16 Piccarda says to the pilgrim: “vere sustanze son ciò che tu vedi, / qui rilegate per manco di voto,” Paradiso 3. 29–30.

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details. She escaped from the world to follow Saint Clare, closed herself in her habit and promised herself to the path determined by Clare’s Order. The term sect gives a distinctive quality and status to this particular way of life. It is a word that ascribes its relationship with the First Order of Franciscans as a type of offshoot (Clare called herself Francis’ “first little plant”), but it also distinguishes itself as extraordinary among other female religious orders. Clare’s perfect vision and interpretation of the strictest understanding of poverty was the dynamic at work in a movement that sought to make a place for a way of life for women heretofore unknown. That Dante saw the women who came to be known as the Poor Clares as an integrated and functional movement, stands in contrast to his commentary on the First Order (in Paradiso 12) which speaks of disintegration into splinter groups and the dissolution of the founder’s primary ideologies.17 An examination of the subtext of Paradiso 3 reveals that the poet highlights the two characteristics that most clearly distinguish the Clarissan order from all others—their uncompromising commitment to a state of complete and utter poverty and an existence maintained in unanimity, whereby the common life is one marked by an exchange of worldly goods for a kind of nothingness—one whose immateriality is fed on the charism of the Holy Spirit, which is the gift of caritas.18 In verses 70–81, Piccarda constructs the relationship between the common will of the souls gathered there and the love for God that they share. It is a description of a communion of the purest type of equilibrated interdependence which is necessary in order to afford a total independence from the world outside the cloister. This notion is encapsulated in the following tercet, powerfully introduced by the adverb, Anzi: Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse tenersi dentro a la divina voglia, per ch’una fansi nostre voglie stesse. (Paradiso 3. 79–81) (Nay, it is the essence of this blessed existence to keep itself within the divine will, whereby our wills themselves are made one.)

17 Saint Bonaventure discusses the division of the friars into the “Conventuales” and the “Spirituales”. See Paradiso 12, verses 112–140. 18 In Chapter 10 of her Form of Life, Clare states “7. Let them be always eager to preserve among themselves the unity of mutual love which is the bond of perfection.” Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 77.

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The virtue of charity maintains both entrance into, as well as permanence within, the sacred place, as one of Clare’s main objectives was to nurture within the convent a climate of commonality through love, humble work and prayer. Enclosure marks the greatest difference between the men and the women of the Franciscan family of the thirteenth century wherein the vehicle of itinerancy put the men to work in the world, giving as they went. The women reinvented Francis’ ideal of apostolicism through the renunciation of all possessions, personal and communal, and while the regulations concerning the sisters’ communication with the world outside of the convent were strict, they were a natural consequence of the combined objective of charity and poverty in that all attachments to the materiality of the secular world are necessarily severed. Clare’s spirit, which was at the same time ascetic and generous, ensured equality among the sisters, including those sisters who were allowed to come and go, (called serviziali), and interior hierarchies, at least at the house of San Damiano, did not exist.19 Clare’s Form of Life is a work of intense literary and spiritual beauty. It is the product of the foundress’ clear thinking and purity of intention as its modeling stretched over most of Clare’s adult life before becoming formally drawn up and accepted by the papacy. Clare undertook its written composition in the last year of her life and despite what might appear to be a certain simplicity in its exposition, it is rather the distilled culmination of a life’s struggle to remain faithful to Francis’ prescription to live life “according to the perfection of the Holy Gospel” and the negotiation of the ecclesiastical forces that sought to regulate and institutionalize a new way of life and its quickly-growing following.20

19 Clara Gennaro, “Clare, Agnes and their Earliest Followers,” Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, trans. Margery J. Schneider (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 45. 20 The forma vitae given by Francis to the Damianites says: “1. Because by divine inspiration you have made yourselves daughters and servants of the most high King, the heavenly Father, and have taken the Holy Spirit as your spouse, choosing to live according to the perfection of the holy Gospel, 2. I resolve and promise for myself and for my brothers to have that same loving care and special solicitude for you as [I have] for them.” Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 311–312.

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Clare of Assisi: First Poor Sister In 1217, just about five years after Clare and the first group of Poor Sisters began to reside at San Damiano, pressed by prescriptions outlined in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Cardinal Ugolino Conti di Segni (papal legate of Tuscia and Lombardy from 1217 to 1219) assigned to these women a rule based largely on the Rule of St. Benedict. The sisters abided by this rule, but in 1228, as Pope Gregory IX, he allowed Clare to incorporate into the Damianite way of life the practice of absolute poverty which served to eliminate the ownership of all material possessions.21 In 1247, Pope Innocent IV gave the unwilling sisters a new, more relaxed, rule allowing ownership of things held in common. Three years later, at Clare’s own insistence to adhere to the strictest interpretation of Christ-like poverty, Innocent IV modified this rule. In September of 1252, Clare’s Form of Life was approved by Cardinal Rainaldo (Cardinal Archbishop of Ostia and Velletri and protector of the Poor Ladies) but Clare still did not rest. Papal validation came almost one year later by Pope Innocent IV by way of the bull Solet annuere. Two days later, on August 11, 1253, Clare died having accomplished, in both letter and spirit, Francis’ calling to establish a formula vitae for the women of the Franciscan family. Even from this brief history, it is not difficult to see that the one point that was both the catalyst of Clare’s creative spiritual imagination and the manifesto of her order was the vow to absolute poverty. Clare dedicated Chapter 6 of her Form of Life to the question of poverty; it is entitled “The Lack of Possessions” and it is the centerpiece of the document in both form and content: 10. As I, together with my sisters, have ever been solicitous to safeguard the holy poverty which we have promised the Lord God and blessed Francis, 11. so, too, the Abbesses who shall succeed me in office and all the sisters are bound to observe it inviolably to the end: 12. that is, by not receiving or having possession or ownership either of themselves or through an intermediary, 13. or even anything that might reasonably be called property, 14. except as much land as necessity requires for the integrity and proper seclusion of the monastery, 21 The Privilege of Poverty includes the following passage: “7. Therefore, we confirm with our apostolic authority, as you requested, your proposal of most high poverty (cf. 2 Cor 8:2), granting you by the authority of this letter that no one can compel you to receive possessions.” Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 86.

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tonia bernardi triggiano 15. and this land may not be cultivated except as a garden for the needs of the sisters.22

This is an explanation in realistic terms; there is no room here for uncertainty. All worldly things—movable and immovable—are renounced to make room for the heavenly. The sisters commit themselves to an absence of material goods, to a certain nothingness that governed every aspect of their life in the cloister. It is a promise sustained by the image of the Poor Christ. The notion of immateriality appears at several moments in Paradiso 3. First, the pilgrim misapprehends the corporality of the souls of the moon. Then the pilgrim’s intellectual footing is unstable because the proper groundwork is missing. Then, there are the empty promises of the inconstant souls to reconcile. What the poet further puts into relief is the contrast between the will necessary to keep promises whole, the volere intero explained by Beatrice in the following canto, and the circumstances in a person’s life (Piccarda, Costanza, himself ) that might adversely affect the integrity of the will and the contracts that result from such a state of imperfection. In Canto 4, Beatrice comments upon the inconstant souls by way of an example in contrast, “Se fosse stato loro volere intero / come tenne Lorenzo in su la grada” (verses 82–83). Piccarda also offers the pilgrim an example in contrast to her own situation when she points up to Saint Clare whose life was perfect—in this way complete and lacking nothing. If this attribute of imperfection is the one thing that differentiates Piccarda from Clare, it remains safe to say that they maintain something in common. Both participated in the Order whose communal and individual vow was to relinquish all material things. And so, the poet’s play upon the pair voto / vòto (first in rhyming position in verses 28 and 30 and then collocated on verse 57) might additionally comment upon this particular facet of the Clarissan canon. This is not simply then, a description of the weakness that taints the souls gathered there, un voto vuoto, an empty promise, but additionally a description of a facet particular to the order Piccarda emblematizes, un voto al vuoto—a promise to nothingness, a promise to have nothing, to want nothing. There is clearly present here an exchange of one kind of life for another—the earthly for the heavenly—and Piccarda’s final locution of the word voto (verse 101) suggests a different kind 22

Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 72.

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of promise since this one was made to that Bridegroom who accepts every vow because His kind of love shapes each vow individually to His will. The reader is to glean what Piccarda modestly leaves unsaid, that is, that she died with her virginity intact. In essence, her promise to God was greater than her promise to the convent. This is Piccarda’s final message to the pilgrim, that that kind of promise supercedes all others and the same is true for Costanza, who was similarly returned to the world but was never stripped of the veil of her heart.23 Ma poi che pur al mondo fu rivolta contra suo grado e contra buona usanza, non fu dal vel del cor già mai disciolta. (Paradiso 3. 117–119) (Yet, turned back as she was into the world, against her will and against right custom, from her heart’s veil she was never loosed.)

The reader must not feel pity. These women are, after all, in heaven; they only seem so lowly so as to appeal to the pilgrim whose understanding still relies on sense perception, and this Beatrice will explain in the next canto.24 By recalling the word sorte Beatrice touches upon the pilgrim’s first question to Piccarda (“grazioso mi fia se mi contenti / del nome tuo e de la vostra sorte,” Paradiso 3. 40–41) and to Piccarda’s subsequent response (“E questa sorte che par giù cotanto,” Paradiso 3. 55) in order to elucidate Piccarda’s words. All of the blessed live in the Empyrean, but each one possesses, in varying degrees, acuity in apprehending God. Beatrice explains the necessity of employing physical signs in the exegesis of God’s words and works: Qui si mostraro, non perché sortita sia questa spera lor, ma per far segno de la celestïal c’ha men salita. Così parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno, però che solo da sensato apprende ciò che fa poscia d’intelletto degno. (Paradiso 4. 37–42) (These showed themselves here, not because this sphere is allotted to them, but to afford sign of the celestial grade that is least exalted. It is needful to speak thus to your faculty, since only through sense perception does it apprehend that which it afterwards makes fit for the intellect.) 23 Constance was the mother of Frederick II, according to legend she was a nun and was encouraged to marry Henry VI by Pope Clement III. See Singleton, Paradiso 3. verses 109–120 and accompanying commentary, Singleton, Paradiso, pages 72–74. 24 Piccarda uses the verb parere (to appear, to seem) in her statement, “E questa sorte che par giù cotanto,” Paradiso 3, 55.

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That Beatrice is called upon to gloss earlier discussions is true, but it is also true that Piccarda effectively prepared her student for these difficult lessons. For, if Beatrice elaborates on the specific types of will (absolute and conditioned) at work in the activity of humans on earth, Piccarda, more than simply representing one type, exemplifies and verbalizes the interdependent vitality of the forces of love and the right will as the formula for the happiness each soul of heaven enjoys no matter what his or her station, and this happiness depends upon vision. In addition, if Beatrice must further delineate the properties of vision as a metaphor for the faculty of the intellect, Piccarda assists the process of improving the pilgrim’s capacity by encouraging him to look, not once but twice, at the lessons before him: in essence to focus upon the itinerary of which God is the final destination. Canto 3 of the Paradiso ends with the pilgrim completing the gesture that was preempted at the beginning of the canto in which he had begun to lift his head as a signal of having understood Beatrice’s explanation of the moon spots. As Piccarda and Costanza vanish in the same way a heavy object disappears into deep water, Dante’s gaze returns to Beatrice. He is struck by the radiance of her face. He quickly recovers and his thinking moves to his next question and to the next canto. That Dante may have witnessed for himself the events mitigating Piccarda’s personal history is not difficult to imagine for not only were Dante and Piccarda related by familial ties, the Alighieri home looked out over la Corte dei Donati.25 This is the world from which Piccarda escapes when she recounts the first steps of her Clarissan itinerary, “Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinetta / fuggi’mi, e nel suo abito mi chiusi / e promisi la via de la sua setta,” (Paradiso 3. 103–105). This tercet describes a phenomenon that has been termed as fuga mundi whereby a departure from one’s familiar environment is met by the destination of the cloister viewed as a refuge—la dolce chiostra, as Piccarda will also say. It is a paradigmatic movement away from the ambitions and corruptions of earthly life, and the cloister, as a house of purification, becomes the intermediate place between earth and heaven. The many metaphors present in Clarissan literature that describe this iter include the passage from a state of dirtiness to a state of cleanliness, from darkness to light, from motion to stasis and,

25

Levi, 4.

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strangely, from void to void whereby the vacuous routines of daily life are exchanged for an existence more wholly based on the absence of other things, as in silence, chastity, and poverty. In the rendering of this last metaphor, the term vanitas (in its nominal and adjectival forms) appears consistently even in the earliest Franciscan writings as it characterizes a rejection of ostentatious society. In her Third Letter to the Blessed Agnes of Prague, Clare writes to encourage Agnes in her commitment to a life of poverty, specifically in response to a papal bull (February 9, 1237) which required of the sisters a complete abstinence from meat. Clare writes: 5. Truly I can rejoice and no one can rob me of such joy 6. since, having at last what under heaven I have desired, I see that, helped by a special gift of wisdom from the mouth of God Himself and in an awe-inspiring and unexpected way, you have brought to ruin the subtleties of our crafty enemy, the pride that destroys human nature, and the vanity that infatuates human hearts. 7. [I see, too] that by humility, the virtue of faith, and the strong arms of poverty, you have taken hold of that incomparable treasure hidden in the field of the world and of the human heart (cf. Mt 13:44), with which you have purchased that by Whom all things have been made from nothing.26

In this paragraph, Clare plays upon the dynamics of wanting and providing and the purchasing of the ultra-mundane.27 Divine nothingness is that abundant source from which all things flow and that substance from which God makes all things. Here, vanity is recognized as a sinful force that fills rather than depletes as it is symptomatic of the vice of pride. Clare’s Testament is a biographical work that tells the story of the Damianites, their relationship with Francis and the responsibilities undertaken by their mission. In the third and fourth paragraphs she 26 Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 45. “Vere gaudere possum, nec me aliquis posset a tanto gaudio facere alienam, cum, quod sub caelo concupivi iam tenens, callidi hostis astutuas et perditricem humanae naturae superbiam et vanitatem humana corda infatuantem . . .” The Latin versions of Saint Clare’s texts have been collected in a bilingual edition by Ignacio Omaechevarria, O.F.M., Escritos de Santa Clara y Documentos Contemporaneos (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1970), 332. 27 The preceding paragraph of the same letter states “3. I am filled with such joys at your well-being, happiness, and marvelous progress through which, I understand, you have advanced in the path you have undertaken to win a heavenly prize (cf. Phil 3:14). 4. And I sigh with so much more exultation in the Lord as I have known and believe that you supply most wonderfully what is lacking both in me and in the other sisters in following the footprints of the poor and humble Jesus Christ.” Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 44.

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makes a distinction between the secular life and life after the profession of vows: 6. Therefore, beloved sisters, we must consider the immense gifts that God has bestowed on us, 7. especially those that He has seen fit to work in us through His beloved servant, our blessed father Francis, 8. not only after our conversion but also while we were still [living among] the vanities of the world. 9. In fact, almost immediately after his conversion, when he had neither brothers nor companions, 10. while he was building the church of San Damiano, where he was totally visited by divine consolation and impelled to completely abandon the world, 11. through the great joy and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, the holy man made a prophecy about us that the Lord later fulfilled.28

Note the spatial relationship created by the repeated appearance of the word conversion and the passage in which she moves from the vanities of the world to, specifically, the place of San Damiano. This is significant in that San Damiano was the same place in which Francis was instructed by God to rebuild his Church and which later became the established convent of Saint Clare and the home of the first Poor Sisters—it becomes in this text, proof of the objective locus as the Franciscan family watched its second branch move decidedly away from the secular world. Clare’s death in 1253 and her canonization in 1255 produced not only the written testimonial of her life and her miracles but additionally sparked the construction of a church and convent closer to the center of the city of Assisi. Appropriately named after Saint Clare, this larger space was needed to accommodate the growing number of professed and lay devotees. In 1253 the group of sisters originally housed with Clare at San Damiano was moved to the new site (originally San Giorgio) where it stands today on the south-east side of the city of Assisi, facing the Church of Saint Francis which stands on the far west side. Rebuilt and decorated, it was consecrated in 1265. That the female branch of the Franciscan family, encouraged as it was by ecclesiastical forces toward claustration, came to symbolize a life of complete rupture from the world is reflected in some

28 Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, 57. “Igitur considerare debemus, Sorores dilectae, immense beneficia Dei nobis collate; sed inter cetera, quae per servum suum dilectum Patrem nostrum beatum Franciscum in nobis dignatus est operari, non solum post conversionem nostrum, sed etiam dum essemus in saeculi vanitate.” Omaechevarria, 277–278.

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of their early names; for example, in the year 1230 the women of the Convent of Monticelli are referred to as pauperes moniales inclusae.29 It is essential to understand that the vehicle that completed the paradigm of fuga mundi (a force growing among thirteenth-century women in a wide variety of forms) to the reclusio perpetua, as eventually exemplified by the Poor Sisters, is precisely the formula vitae written by Cardinal Ugolino in 1239.30 Drafted in response to the problematic situation at San Damiano in which a group of women sought a radical and unprecedented way of life, particularly in Clare’s desire to maintain a working relationship with the Friars, this document had a great collecting and enclosing effect.31 For Cardinal Ugolino (who became Pope Gregory IX in 1227) sought to formalize and legitimize the quickly-growing numbers of religious and semi-religious women of Tuscany and Umbria who were establishing or joining any number of associations that were either loosely affiliated with a religious group or who were simply withdrawing into reclusive communities either in small groups of two or three women, or sometimes completely alone. Female penitents, anchoresses, women of the third orders (particularly Dominican and Franciscan) practiced their religiosity in the margins of society as they congregated outside the city walls. The many names for these, mostly unprofessed and uncloistered, abound. Women who generally followed the Clare’s Form of Life or the Rule of Augustine but who were loosely organized under the jurisdiction of local Church authorities were called religiose mulieres, domine, sorores or domine recluse.32 More specific names of female groups

29 Giovanni Giacinto Sbaraglia, Bullarium Franciscanum Romanorum Pontificum 1 (Santa Maria degli Angeli: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1983), 62. 30 Mario Sensi, “Anchoresses and Penitents in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Umbria,” Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, Edited by Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, Translated by Margery J. Schneider (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 59. For a treatment of the question of enclosure, see Chiara Augusta Lainati, O.P.C., “The Enclosure of St. Clare and of the First Poor Clares in Canonical Legislation and in Practice.” This is a translation from the French original: Sr. Chiara Augusta Lainati, O.S.C., “La Clôture de Sainte Claire et des Premières Clarisses dans la legislation canonique et dans la pratique,” Laurentianum 2 (1973). 31 Especially relevant is Maria Pia Alberzoni’s historical unveiling of the negotiations that led to the distancing of the Sisters from the Friars. See her collection of translated articles entitled, Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century. 32 Giovanna Casagrande, “Forme di vita religiosa femminile nell’area di Città di Castello nel sec. 13,” Il movimento religioso femminile in Umbria nei secoli 8–14, ed. Roberto Rusconi (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1984), 139, 143.

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that were more focused in their vocation but not necessarily more orthodox and certainly not all formally institutionalized were the zoccole, sacche, cappane, bizzoche, clareni and the gerolamini.33 The mendicant orders were, in this way, instrumental in the institutionalization of female penitents, and the Damianite way of life, as prescribed by Cardinal Ugolino, became the example and reservoir into which many other currents of female religiosity flowed. At the end of the thirteenth century, in 1298, Boniface VIII will insist on claustration across all female associations, and the face of female religiosity in fourteenth-century Italy, most especially in Tuscany and Umbria, will change as it takes on a new itinerary itself, all the while maintaining the routine of prayer and performing works of charity. As the phenomenon of the third orders flourished in the first half of the fourteenth century, perhaps because they were closely supervised by the Church, women especially were afforded an option to practice a semi-religious life of penitence within a regular community, and so this branch of the mendicant orders (which also existed for men) gave birth to both the Regular and Secular types. Two of the most prominent examples of the female Franciscan Third Orders are Angela of Foligno and Margaret of Cortona.34 In the hundred years following the death of Saint Clare, the number of houses present in Italy that were affiliated in some way with

33 Mario Sensi, Le Osservanze francescane nell’Italia Centrale (Secoli 14 –15) (Rome: Collegio San Lorenzo da Brindisi Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1985). Zoccole is the name given to a group of women, professed, Franciscans and followers of Angelina of Monte Giove who, in contrast to lay sisters who wore shoes, wore rough-hewn wooden sandals (Sensi, 205–209). Sacche described the followers of Paoluccio dei Trinci who founded the Monastery of S. Maria dell’Annunziata in 1370; they were given this name because of the sacks they carried over their shoulders when begging alms (Sensi, 210–211). Cappane, or the sisters of S. Caterina di Monte Sinai, were so called after they moved from their hermitage in the remote countryside to the city of Foligno (Sensi, 214–215). The name bizzocche describes any type of group of hybrid sisters who were considered neither lay nor nuns because, although most wore white habits and tunics, they were not professed (Sensi, 219–220). The clareni was a group of third order Franciscans and were specifically dedicated to the writings of Angelo Clareno (Sensi, 118–123). Gerolamini were the first groups of hermits dedicated to the imitation of St. Jerome (Sensi, 119–120). 34 For more information concerning these women, see Il libro della Beata Angela da Foligno, edizione critica, second edition, ed. Ludger Their, O.F.M. and Abele Calufetti, O.F.M., (Grottaferrata, Rome: Collegii Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1985); Paul LaChance, Angela of Foligno, Complete Works, (New York: Paulist Press, 1993); Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., A Tuscan Penitent, The Life and Legend of St. Margaret of Cortona, (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, Ltd., 1907).

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the Poor Sisters basically doubled in number; in 1253 there were 127 and by around 1350 there were 220.35 In Umbria alone, in the years that span the period between the foundation of San Damiano, (1211) and 1350 there were about 31 Clarissan houses founded and thriving. In Tuscany, between the years 1219, which marks the original establishment of the Convent of Monticelli, and 1350, there were about 26 Clarissan houses. In the same span of time, there are records that evidence the founding of at least 7 houses in some way associated with the Poor Clares in Florence alone.36 As it became more and more possible for families of the nobility to contribute land and holdings to third order establishments, a new style of life for women became popular. New groups of religious women, who were mostly educated, many who made the choice of entering a convent as tertiaries while in a married state, began to appear, and the religious phenomenon of the bizzocche was reborn and revitalized. One such institution is Sant’Anna of Foligno, also known as lu munisterio delle Contesse.37 Santa Lucia in Foligno, which later took the informal title il bizzocaggio istituzionalizzato, also collected women of the area’s noble families and played an extremely important role in the Observance, a wave that sought new reforms of the first and second orders of the Franciscan family by fostering a return to the original principles set out by Francis and Clare.38 For Franciscan women of the early Quattrocento, this generally meant the reinstitution of the profession of vows. In her introduction to the diary of Santa Lucia in Foligno, Sr. Angela Emmanuela Scandella describes

35 My sincere thanks go to Sr. Pacelli Millane, O.S.C., who consulted the following work at the library of the Monastère Sainte Claire de l’Immaculée Conception and forwarded to me the results. Marie-Colette Roussey, “Atlas du deuxième ordre. Étapes de l’expansion de l’ordre,” Saint Clare d’Assise et sa postérité. Actes du Colloque international organisé à l’occasion du VIII e Centenaire de la naissance de Sainte Claire; U.N.E.S.C.O (29 septembre-1er octobre 1994), ed. Geneviève Brunel-Lobrichon, Dominique Dinet, Jacqueline Gréal, Damien Vorreux, (Paris : Les Éditions franciscaines, 1995), 445–498, Carte 1 (1253) and Carte 2 (vers 1350). 36 The statistics on the regions of Umbria and Tuscany and on the city of Florence are gathered from the website by Katherine Gill and Lisa M. Bitel, “Monasticon,” Matrix, a Collection of Resources for the Study of Women’s Religious Communities, 500–1500, (9 September 2004), 37 Katherine Gill, “Women and the Production of Religious Literature in the Vernacular, 1300–1500,” in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylavania Press, 1994), 69. 38 Mario Sensi, Le Osservanze francescane, 265–279.

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the Monastery of Santa Lucia as the “fulcrum” that linked the early phases of the Observance to these women as Clarissans.39 In this sense, Santa Lucia can be considered one of the most progressive female religious institutions of the fifteenth century, as it contributed aggressively to the goals of Franciscan reformation by sending small contingents of sisters to other convents in order to oversee the association in its conversion from lay to professed.40 On the other hand, Santa Lucia was also typical in that it collected women of the area’s elite, many of whom were related by blood or marriage. Many of these houses were built and sustained financially by the families of the sisters, and so the Clarissan convents of Italy’s Quattrocento, as they housed mothers and their daughters, nieces and cousins, mirrored the courts in which the women were raised. New hierarchies were created in these houses, as well, as certain women (converse) were assigned to the labor-intensive jobs, while others engaged in activities such as handwork, the copying of manuscripts and study.41 Most often, these new Franciscan Observants were well-educated, and a body of original literature was born as testimony to a new melding of spiritual and literary impulses. This combined impetus moved these women out of their homes and marriages into convents that had perhaps not the same interpretations of Saint Clare’s prescription of poverty but were, nonetheless, still adherent to certain principles of enclosure and the women dedicated themselves to chastity and to doing charitable works.

Battista da Montefeltro-Malatesta: Poor Clare and Emulator of Dante Battista da Montefeltro was born in 1384 at Urbino to Count Antonio and Agnesina dei Prefetti di Vico.42 At the age of 22, she was married to Galeazzo Malatesta, one of three sons of Pandolfo Malatesta 39 Ricordanze del monastero di S. Lucia osc. in Foligno (cronache 1424–1786), ed. Sr. Angela Emmanuela Scandella and appendix of other Umbrian women’s communities by Giovanni Boccali (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1987), xxii. 40 A. Fantozzi, “La Riforma Osservante dei Monasteri delle Clarisse nell’Italia Centrale,” Archivum Francescanum Historicum 23 (1930) 361–382, 488–550. 41 Wood, “A Network of Nuns,” in Women, Art and Spirituality, The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy, 86–120. 42 A presentation of some biographical information concerning Battista Malatesta as well as a treatment of two of her longer poems appear in Gino Franceschini, “Battista da Montefeltro-Malatesta, signora di Pesaro,” Studia Oliveriana 6 (1958): 7–43.

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of Pesaro. While Galeazzo showed little interest in the affairs of his family, Pandolfo, despite many physical infirmities, was a strong leader and avid reader and writer of poetry, and his court employed many famous medical doctors and learned men. Battista shared an intellectual and spiritual relationship with her father-in-law, who was also known as il Malatesta dei sonetti.43 A long exchange of religious sonnets in the vernacular testifies to their common interests and desires which speak of the difficulties of earthly life and a continual longing for salvation. In 1407 Battista gave birth to her only child, Elizabeth, and in the years that follow, the Malatesta house began gradually to empty out. Battista’s sisters-in-law were married, and with the death of Pandolfo, political difficulties mounted. While his son, Carlo, tried to keep the Malatesta properties intact, his death in 1438 left Galeazzo the sole inheritor of the family’s estate. Because of his unwillingness to govern, the Malatesta family’s territories were gradually sold off, and in 1445 Galeazzo ceded the signoria of Pesaro to Alessandro Sforza. He went to Tuscany, taking with him his natural son, and left Battista to expedite the transference of government.44 Battista did not follow Galeazzo to Tuscany, instead she returned to her home in Urbino where she remained about a year. Her letters document that she spent this time obtaining a dispensation from her married state.45 Battista’s written works include letters, orations in Latin and religious poetry in the vernacular. Her poetic compositions include sonnets, ballate and canzoni and one prayer written in terza rima. Her poem in praise of St. Jerome is perhaps her most accomplished work and not least because of its significant length, as it contains 176

43 Franceschini, 15. Many, but not all, of Battista’s poems are collected in a single codex housed at the Biblioteca Oliveriana in Pesaro (454 Miscellanea). This codex, bound in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, also contains some of Pandolfo’s poetic compositions in addition to some of Battista’s letters and other forms of prose works in both Latin and the vernacular. For transcriptions of more of her works than what is offered here, see Tonia Bernardi Triggiano, “Piety Among Women of Central Italy (1300–1600): A Critical Edition and Study of Battista da MontefeltroMalatesta’s Poem in Praise of St. Jerome” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1999), 20–47. 44 Franceschini, 36. 45 A. Fattori and B. Feliciangeli, editors, “Lettere inedite di Battista da Montefeltro,” Rendiconti, Reale accademia dei lincei, classe di scienze morali, storiche, e filologiche 5, 6 (1917): 214–215.

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verses. A ballata titled “Quando sarà quel giorno anima mia” is dedicated entirely to the expression of Battista’s desire for claustration. In the fifth stanza she uses the metaphor of a live burial to signify the stillness she imagines therein, created by the program of meditation, prayer and silence: Quando sarò io mai viva sepulta dentro a quella clausura ch’io spero, però ch’en mezo ‘l cor la porto sculta con l’abito sacrato et col vel nero. E talor sto sì fissa in quel pensiero, che quasi mi si pare esser entrata allegra et consolata. Or voglia il buon Jesù che presto sia.46 (When shall I ever be buried alive inside of the cloister for which I so hope, for I have it engraved in the center of my heart with the blessed robe and black veil. And often I am so transfixed by that thought, it seems to me that I have already entered, and in it I am happy and consoled. Now may good Jesus make it happen soon.)

In the refrain of this ballata, Battista’s desire to enter specifically a Clarissan institution is evidenced by the repetition of Saint Clare’s formula vitae of obedience, chastity and poverty. The refrain reads: Quando sarà quel giorno anima mia che l’infetto tuo corpo e immondo core sol pel fervente amore obbediente, chasto e pover sia? (When will the day come, my soul, that your corrupt body and unclean heart, solely because of your fervent love, will be made obedient, chaste and poor?)

Battista finds the world dirty and corrupt; she sees the cloister as il lavatoio (the washing place) of her soul. Her earthly environment is described as “questo cieco mondo falso et rio” (“this blind world that is false and wicked”). Terms associated with the idea of vanity can be found frequently in Battista’s poetry to describe her life and times. She says in the third stanza of this same poem that she wants to renew her vain and ambitious life, “sì ch’io rinnovi questa mia vita vana et ambiziosa.” In this instance, the adjective vana recalls 46 All translations of Battista Malatesta’s poetry are my own. For a full transcription of this poem see Agostino Fattori, “Rime inedite di Battista da Montefeltro,” Picenum Seraphicum (1917): 5–7.

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the age-old sin of Eve in which vanity is a purely female characteristic, associated with excessive attention to oneself. Battista tells the story of Saint Clare in another poem where she describes the adolescent saint as one who “Essendo d’anni dodici desprezò / el falso mondo con il suo van dilecto” (Clare, “being then twelve years of age, despised the false world with all its empty pleasures”).47 In this instance, the adjective vano expresses the quality of temporality wherein life on earth is a futile pastime, its emptiness tempered only by the hope for a more significant investment of time which, for Battista, meant a life as a Poor Clare. Although it was after many years of unhappy marriage that Battista finally had the possibility of entering a professed vocation, she did so in the customary way, which included the dispersal of her properties and possessions among the poor.48 In 1446 Battista entered the convent of Santa Lucia in Foligno with only one personal effect— a collection of Saint Jerome’s letters. After the usual year of probation, Battista professed her vows as a sister of Saint Clare, taking the name Suor Girolama. She died one year later, in 1448.49 It is most likely within that brief span of two years that Battista composed her poem in praise of Saint Jerome, “O glorioso padre, almo doctore”. Above all, this poem is a praiseful narrative of the saint’s life, but also includes fervent personal prayer as Battista requests his intercession at this, the last moment of her life.50 Battista’s execution of terza rima is technically perfect; however, an artful interweaving of thought, image and verse is not present. Despite this weakness, her use of terza rima has a positive effect in that the meter lends a certain sophistication to the composition both in its formal 47 In ciel gemma lucente has not been fully transcribed but a treatment of this poem can be found in Triggiano, 32–33. 48 Cesare Cenci, “Il Testamento della b. Cecilia da Perugia e di Battista (Girolama) di Montefeltro,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 69 (1976): 222. 49 For a discussion of other women associated with the Monastery of Santa Lucia di Foligno, see S. M. Mazzara, “Monache francescane del Rinascimento in S. Lucia di Foligno,” Studi Francescani 8 (1922): 165–175 and appendix, 175–178. Also see Luciano Cononici, Santa Lucia di Foligno, Storia di un monastero e di un ideale (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1974). 50 There are, to my knowledge, twelve manuscript copies of Battista Malatesta’s poem in praise of Saint Jerome in existence in Italy. At the Newberry Library in Chicago there is a manuscript copy of this poem in roll form which is not an autograph copy, see Case MS 122. For a description of this manuscript see Triggiano, 153–168 and for the critical and diplomatic texts of the poem, see Triggiano, 88–115.

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complexity and in its simple ability to recall the Commedia.51 Terza rima, then, acts as a support to Battista’s portrait of Saint Jerome, a figure to whom she owed the most elevated praise and the most sincere prayer. At one point in the poem she describes the saint’s episodes of temporary communion with the triune God: O Gloria excelsa de tuta Dalmatia, Tucto eri absorto in Dio ch’è trino et uno, Delectandoti in lui cum tal dolceza Che sprimer nol porria calamo alcuno. (54–57) (O highest glory of all Dalmatia, you were absorbed into the triune God and there you delighted in Him with such sweetness that no pen could express it.)

Although the motif of ineffability is often used in religious writings to express the author’s self-confessed inadequacy before the description of the divine experience, in this example Battista points not only to Saint Jerome but rather includes all authors who have confronted the same difficulty. The noun calamo specifically names the shaft of the feather, or pen, the part that holds the ink. As Battista points to the writing instrument rather than to the living figure of the poet or author, the metaphor describes the general difficulty of the task as it has presented itself in all of written history, from Saint Paul to Saint Jerome to Dante. In the same tradition, Dante ultimately leaves his reader without a description of God’s face, but the reader is to believe that the vision was fully apprehended by the pilgrim, even though the poet doesn’t write it.52 In the end, desire and will become

51 Battista’s father hosted Fazio degli Uberti at his court in Urbino, and it was perhaps through him that Dante’s works were first introduced to the Montefeltro family. Franceschini, 17. 52 “tal era io a quella vista nova: / veder voleva come si convenne / l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova; / ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne: / se non che la mia mente fu percossa / da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne. / A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa; / ma già volgeva il mio disio e ‘l velle, / sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, / l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.” (Paradiso 33. 136–145) “such was I at that new sight. I wished to see how the image conformed to the circle and how it has its place therein; but my own wings were not sufficient for that, save that my mind was smitten by a flash wherein its wish came to it. Here power failed the lofty phantasy; but already my desire and my will were revolved, like a wheel that is evenly moved, by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars.”

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integrated to allow perfect vision, and all wills flow together into one mutual objective, as Piccarda states: sì che, come noi sem di soglia in soglia per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace com’ a lo re che ‘n suo voler ne ‘nvoglia. E ‘n sua volontade è nostra pace: ell’ è quel mare al qual tutto si move ciò ch’ella crïa o che natura face. (Paradiso 3. 82–87) (So that our being thus from threshold to threshold throughout this realm is a joy to all the realm as to the King, who draws our wills to what He wills; and in His will is our peace. It is that sea to which all moves, both what It creates and what nature makes.)

We are reminded of Piccarda’s earlier explanation of this formula: “Frate, la nostra volontà quïeta virtù di carità, che fa volerne sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta.” (Paradiso 3. 70–72) (Brother, the power of love quiets our will and makes us wish only for that which we have and gives us no other thirst.)

By addressing the pilgrim as frate, Piccarda reiterates her relationship with the Franciscan family and, importantly, includes him in it. She speaks as both Clarissan and inhabitant of heaven. She describes the equal satisfaction all the souls feel there, where all wills intersect perfectly and are satisfied like a thirst that is fully quenched. It is the same thirst Battista describes in her ballata “Che farai tu, chor mio, tutto ghiacciato” (composed after her profession of vows at Santa Lucia) in which she continues to feel the discomfort of earthly life. She writes in the seventh stanza: Io mi rimangho chon lla sete usata et sto fuor del convito pure aspettavo d’esser invitata. (And I am left with my usual thirst, here, outside of the banquet, even though I expected to be invited.)

She sees the banquet before her and waits patiently to be invited to partake in it. While the cloister is an intermediate place between earth and heaven, Battista discovers that the real reward still awaits her. Dante’s recreation of the figure of Piccarda Donati deserves the long history of analysis devoted to understanding her better, for she is both forthright and cautious. And, because of the complexity of

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her recreated story Piccarda, herself, is made complex by the Commedia. For it is the opinion of this reader and commentator of Dante’s Commedia that Piccarda acts in a number of interrelated roles: as teacher in the service of Dante the pilgrim; as contemporary and expatriate together with Dante the Florentine; and as portrait and model of Clarissan spirituality at the artful hand of Dante the poet.

BERNARDINO: READER OF DANTE Santa Casciani

In contrast to Dante’s popularity in fourteenth century Italy,1 his readership declined in the fifteenth century. Paolo Cortese, in De hominibus doctis, writes that although he does not dispute the importance of Dante, his work resembles an ancient painting; once you take away the colors, he claims, the features no longer delight. Moreover, Cortese continued, that while it may be fit and proper to pay tribute to Dante for his incredible ingenuity and inventive genius, the poet was much too quick in criticizing and reproaching his contemporaries.2 On the other side of the debate over Dante, Cino Rinuccini launched an invective against Niccolò Niccoli, a critic who vilified Dante as a poet for cobblers and bakers.3 Rinuccini countered by defining Dante as a touchstone of medieval science, and stated that The Comedy 4 represented the nucleus of medieval science for it was the ideal expression of the quadrivium: Poi, per mostrarsi literatissimi al vulgo, dicono che lo egregio e onore de’ poeti Dante Alighieri essere suto poeta da calzolai; non dicono che ‘l parlare poetico è quello che sopra agli altri come aquila vola, cantando con maravigliosa arte e fatti groliosi degl’igniominiosi uomini e pognendo per nostro ben vivere inanzi agli occhi tutte le storie, 1 Of the more than 600 manuscripts of The Divine Comedy known today, 200 belong to the fourteenth century. See “Dante, il suo pensiero, il suo tempo nella predicazione di San Bernardino da Siena,” in Dante nel pensiero e nella esegesi dei secoli XIV e XV (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1975), 95. 2 Paolo Cortesi, De Hominibus Doctis Dialogus, ed. & trans. Maria Teresa Graziosi (Roma: Bonacci Editore, 1973), 16–18; for a study of Dante’s reception in fifteenth century Italy, see Antonio Altamura, “Per la fortuna di Dante nel Quattrocento,” in Annali pontifici dell’Istituto superiore di scienze e lettere di Santa Chiara, (12): 37–47. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Italian and Latin are mine. 3 These epithets also stemmed from Dante’s popularity in his century. For example, we find a reference to a cobbler who sang verses from The Comedy as he worked; see Franco Sacchetti, Il trecentonovelle, ed. Antonio Lanza (Firenze: Sansoni, 1984), 231–234. 4 For the Italian passages of the Comedy, see Dante Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, Edizione Nazionale, 4. vols. (Milano: Mondatori, 1966–67); for all English passages, see Dante Alighieri, The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols. trans., Allen Mandelbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

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santa casciani mescolando alcuna volta la dilettevole astronomia, alcuna volta l’ottima filosofia morale, alcuna volta ’e santi comandamenti delle leggi, alcuna volta la vera e santa teologia5 (To show the people how learned they are they claim that the great poet, Dante Alighieri, is a poet for cobblers. However, they neglect to mention that Dante’s poetry takes wing like an eagle over all other poetry, singing beautifully and placing before our very eyes the stories of mere mortals. [Dante’s poetry works for our benefit] by blending together a great variety of topics, delightful astronomy, edifying moral philosophy, the laws of the Ten Commandments and the truths of sacred theology.)

Although throughout the fifteenth century Dante’s Comedy was the target of humanistic attacks,6 it stimulated a host of critical reading, biographical sketches, including works by Leonardo Bruni and Giannozzo Manetti.7 The Florentine poet also became a source of inspiration for Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444), leader of the Franciscan Observants8 of fifteenth century Italy. In using Dante’s idealized perspective on Christianity9 in his preaching, the poet became a voice of morality in the preaching of Bernardino of Siena and his followers. Although the Senese Saint never cites Dante by name, he emulates the poet and uses the Comedy10 as a moral teach-

5 Giovanni da Prato, Il Paradiso degli Alberti, ritrovi e ragionamenti del 1389, romanzo di Giovanni da Prato dal codice autografo e anonimo della Ricciardiana, ed. Alessandro Wesselofsky (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1867), 310. 6 For a study on Dante’s humanistic disputes, see Giorgio Padoan “Dante di fronte all’umanesimo letterario,” Lettere Italiane 17 (1965): 237–257. 7 “Per la fortuna di Dante nel Quattrocento,” 31. 8 The Observants, a new branch of the Franciscan Oder, was found by Paoluccio Trinci da Foligno in 1368 and later was led by Bernardino of Siena, Alberto da Sartano, Giovanni da Capestrano and Giacomo della Marca. Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444), along with his Franciscan brothers, renewed and reinvigorated religious life through itinerant preaching. For studies on the subject, see Stanislao da Compagnola, Le Origini Francescane come problema storiografico (Perugia: Tipografia Porziuncola, 1974); John R H Moorman, A history of the Franciscan Order from its origins to the year 1517 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968); Lazaro Iriarte, Storia del Fracescanesimo (Naples: Edizione Dettoniane, 1982). 9 Unlike the Dominicans who in their works emphasize the intelligence of Scripture, the Franciscans illustrate the importance of its morality, which in their theology is expressed as love. For studies on this subject, see Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1964), Gian Roberto Sarolli, Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” (Firenze: Olschki, 1971); Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis (Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000). 10 The phenomenon of including poetic verses into Franciscan sermons began with John Packham, Bishop of Canterbury when in the Lambeth Constitutiones of 1273

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ing tool to educate his audience and at the same time to overturn humanistic criticism. Dante’s scholarship has not yet begun to address the question of readership in Franciscan preaching and literature, and the topic remains largely unstudied. In this essay I will focus on the interrelationship between Dante’s Divine Comedy, specifically Inferno 27, and Bernardino’s sermon 23, preached in Piazza del Campo in Siena, on September 7, 1427.11 In this sermon, as the Saint addresses political factionalism and the consequences of false rhetoric, Dante becomes a legitimizing and negotiating force. In a 1995 critical essay, Giuseppe Mazzotta discusses the critical relationship between author and audience intentions. He states that “poetic texts themselves have no a priori self-identical fixity of meaning but are part and parcel of the temporal mobility we claim for ourselves or Dante claims for himself in The Divine Comedy.”12 In other words, in the Comedy, Dante the writer negotiates hermeneutical fragments of knowledge, i.e. what is known, to intersect with areas of ignorance, i.e. what is not known; these fragments intercommunicate and form the global vision with which the poem culminates.13 directed all Franciscan friars to use vernacular verses in their sermons. See Sandro Sticca, Il Planctus Marie in The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages (Athens, GA: University of Georgia, 1988). I have also identified more than 100 sermons in codices in the National Library in Naples, in the Convento of San Francesco in Capestrano in the Province of L’Aquila, in the Provincial Library in L’Aquila and in the Archivio di Stato in L’Aquila. These sermons are interspersed with verses from Dante’s Comedy. For example, in addressing the subject of envy, in Sermo de invidia (Codex 423, 100v in Naples), the preacher cites Inferno 13 to illustrate how court intrigue and jealousy led to the suicide of Pier delle Vigne. 11 See, Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, ed. Carlo Delcorno (Milano: Rusconi, 1989), 650–681. 12 Giuseppe Mazzotta, “Why Did Dante Write the Comedy? Why and How Do We Read It?: The Poet and the Critics,” in Dante Now, ed. Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 65. 13 In chapters two and eleven of “Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) and in Dante Between Philosophers and Theologians (Binghamton: Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, 2004), Mazzotta argues that Dante’s understanding of poetry’s role during his time shapes the encyclopedic knowledge of the Comedy and makes concrete and immediate what remains abstract in both philosophy and theology. Furthermore, he states that the complexity of the text lies in how Dante understood the idea of theologia ludens, which demonstrates both the ethics of risk and the notion of the joyful essence of divinity. In other words, through poetry, the poet was able to create a figurative discourse which illustrates the complexity and richness of meaning which Dante defined as polisemìa. For a study on the use of polisemìa in Dante’s literary works, see Santa Casciani, “Consider the Rose, Where it Grows” in Italiana: Pluralism & Critical Practice, eds. Paolo A. Giordano and Anthony Julian Tamburri (West Lafayette: Bordighera Press, 1999).

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Thus, if Dante’s poetry originates in the tension built around the ambiguity of the historical sign, readers must not only assess their position within Dante’s specific historical space, but they must also negotiate their own position within the text itself. Specifically, Mazzotta argues that “. . . when readers read because they consider the poem a means to their own personal ends they are confirming once again, their own superiority and lordship over the text, for indeed they make it the reified object of their illusions of mastery.”14 Thus he claims that readers who use Dante’s text solely as a means of personal fulfillment are indulging in a hubristic reading of the text; they reify it and commodify it by uprooting it from its setting. A more holistic reading would require that readers read Dante’s Comedy as the medium for the negotiation of a borderless culture, a culture that is not sharply divided between author and reader, but rather one in which both are engaged in an interactive and dialectical manner. Roger Chartier,15 like Mazzotta, also explores the basic premises behind the concept of readership. He states that interpretive communities—and by extension all readers—are shaped by conventions, frameworks, and collective schemata of perception and judgment, which intersect with and interact with those of the author who has even laid traps for the reader. This intersection and interaction construct our interpretation of the author’s text: . . . writing deploys strategies that are meant to produce effects, dictate a posture, and oblige the reader. It lays traps, which the reader falls into without even knowing it, because the traps are tailored to the measure of a rebel inventiveness he or she is always presumed to possess. But that inventiveness itself depends on specific skills and cultural habits that characterize all readers, inasmuch as everyone belongs to a community of interpretation.16

Although Mazzotta and Chartier are exploring the same territory, that of an interactive and negotiated readership, Mazzotta argues that in order to do justice to Dante’s Comedy, readership must be an “all inclusive poetic reservoir of shared memories and language,”17 which reclaims the intention of the text. Chartier, instead, argues

14

Mazzotta, Dante Now, 66. Forms and Meaning: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). 16 Ibid., 5. 17 Mazzotta, Dante Now, 73. 15

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that the text is an artifact which is negotiated according to frameworks and collective memories of specific communities in specific moments in history. The question of readership addressed by Mazzotta and Chartier is relevant to my investigation of how Bernardino of Siena interpreted Dante and how he integrated the poet’s message into his work, negotiating imageries and iconographies to intersect with his theological and literary framework.

Dante and the Franciscan Spirituality Before analyzing Bernardino’s sermon 23, it is necessary to outline Dante’s relationship to Franciscan spirituality. In Inferno 27 Dante addresses the false rhetoric of Guido of Montefeltro, a Franciscan friar who betrayed the ideals of Francis.18 In this canto Dante uses the same kind of rhetorical cleverness of Inferno 26 where Ulysses rhetorically seduces his companions with his famous “orazion picciola.”19 In Inferno 27, the poet recollects the story of Guido of Montefeltro, who was a famous Ghibelline leader and shrewd soldier who reconciled himself to the Church and became a Franciscan friar in 1296. According to legend, Pope Boniface VIII in 1296 persuaded Guido to advise him on how to reduce the stronghold of Palestrina, which was held by the Colonna family. Based on this story, Dante places Guido in the bolgia of the fraudulent counselors for having betrayed the Colonna family. In Dante’s representation of Guido’s sin, we learn that the Franciscan friar tries to evade Boniface’s request to advise fraud (98–99), but the pope argues from his own authority, delegated to him by Christ (100–104). Guido found the pope’s argument compelling since, as a Franciscan friar, he was bound by his oath of obedience to higher authority: Allor mi pinser li argomenti gravi Là ’ve ’l tacer mi fu avviso ’l peggio, e dissi: “Padre, da che tu mi lavi di quel peccato ov’io mo cader deggio,

18 The following paragraphs previously appeared in a slightly different form as part of my “Reason, Deception, and Franciscan Spirituality, in Inferno 26 and 27,” in Quaderni d’italianistica, vol. 2. (2001): 22:37–55. 19 Ibid., 37–46.

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santa casciani lunga promessa con l’attender corto ti farà trïunfar ne l’alto seggio”. (Inferno 27.106–111) (Then his grave arguments compelled me so, My silence seemed a worse offense than speech, and I said: ‘Since you cleanse me of the sin that I must now fall into, Father, know: long promises and very brief fulfillments. will bring a victory to your high throne.’)

Inferno 27 ends with a struggle between Saint Francis and the devil over Guido’s soul: Francesco venne poi, com’io fu’ morto, per me; ma un d’i neri cherubini li disse: ‘Non portar; non mi far torto. “. . . Venir se ne dee giú tra ’miei meschini perché diede ’l consiglio frodolente, dal quale in qua stato li sono a ’crini; ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente, né pentere e volere insieme puossi per la contradizion che nol consente.” Oh me dolente! come mi riscossi quando mi prese dicendomi: “Forse tu non pensavi ch’io löico fossi!” (Inferno 27.115–123) (‘. . . Then Francis came, as soon as I was dead, for me; but one of the black cherubin told him: ‘Don’t bear him off; do not cheat me. He must come down among my menials; the counsel that he gave was fraudulent; since then, I’ve kept close track, to snatch his scalp; one can’t absolve a man who’s not repented, and no one can repent and will at once; the law of contradiction won’t allow it.’ O miserable me, for how I started when he took hold of me and said: ‘Perhaps you did not think that I was a logician!’)

Giuseppe Mazzotta, in his book Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge, argues that in this particular scene of Inferno 27, Dante not only addresses the betrayal of Franciscan piety, but also challenges, as did the Franciscan intellectuals of his time, the logician’s category of knowledge. When the devil appeals to the logical principle of non-contradiction, he uses logic only rhetorically, allowing syllogistic reasoning to become

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a sophistic argument through which the devil defeats Saint Francis. Furthermore, Dante represents Guido as a logician who drew the wrong logical inferences from his actions, as when he became a friar believing that he would make amends with this past.20 As a Franciscan, Guido should not have believed solely in the power of confession and thus not settled for a pharisaic formula such as “Father, since you do wash me of that sin into which I now must fall.”21 Furthermore, in my essay “Reason, Deception, and Franciscan Spirituality, in Inferno 26 and 27,” I have argued that Francis advocated a language obedient to the Word of God, not one that would lose itself in sophistic rhetoric.22 According to Francis’ spirituality, human words should reflect the voice of conscience, and Guido should have known that obedience to the voice of conscience was and remains the ideal of Franciscan spirituality, as Francis states in chapter X of the The Late Rule: Let the brothers who are the ministers and servants of the others visit and admonish their brothers and humbly and charitably correct them, not commanding them anything that is against their souls and our rule. Let the brothers who are subject, however, remember that, for God’s sake, they have renounced their own wills. Therefore, I strictly command them to obey their ministers in everything they have promised the Lord to observe and which is not against their souls or our Rule.23 20

Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision, 67–84. Ibid., 72. 22 In his regula bullata, Francis states: “I warn and urge my fellow brothers that in the sermons they deliver to the people, their speeches be cautious and chaste. When speaking to them about vices and virtues, punishment and glory, they must use speeches that are brief and to the point, for, on earth, God made them concise. See Francis of Assisi, Regula bullata, in Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis, ed. Caietanus Esser (Grottaferrata [Rome]: Ad Claras Quas, 1978). Also in a letter to Saint Anthony of Padua, Francis writes: “I am pleased that you teach sacred theology to the brothers providing that, as is contained in the Rule, you do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion during study of this kind. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, eds. Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap., J.A. Wayne Hellmannn, O.F.M. Conv., and William J. Short, O.F.M. (New York: New City Press, 1999), 107. 23 In Early Documents, 105. The requirement to observe one’s own conscience is made even more explicit in The Earlier Rule where Francis stated: “If anyone of the ministers commands one of the brothers something contrary to our life or to his soul, he is not bound to obey him because obedience is not something in which a fault or sin is committed,” see Early Documents, 67; And again in the Admonitions, he affirmed: “That person who offers himself totally to obedience in the hands of his prelate leaves all that he possesses and loses his body. And whatever he does and says which he knows is not contrary to his will is true obedience, provided that what he does is good,” see Early Documents, 130. 21

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In repenting and becoming a friar,24 had not Guido promised the Lord to observe all, including that which was not against his conscience? In Inferno 27, unlike the apostles who began to preach the Word of God, Guido uses faulty logic and falls into the hands of the Devil who sees through his flawed confession and outwits him. Ironically, in Hell, Guido is trapped in a tongue of fire, a symbol of the misuse of his Pentecostal gift.25 Moreover, in the verse, “Là ‘ve ‘l tacer mi fu avviso ’l peggio (“My silence seemed a worse offense than speech” [Inferno 27.107]), Guido, moved by political reason and Boniface’s “grave arguments,” falls into the trap of the pope’s sophisms. As educated readers who read the Comedy as (in Mazzotta’s words) an “all inclusive poetic reservoir of shared memories and language,”26 we may want to ask if Dante, in Chartier’s words, “has trapped”27 Guido into representing himself to the reader as a traitor of Franciscan spirituality. The noun “tacer [silence],” in the above verse brings to mind Inferno 1 where Dante the pilgrim is thrust back into darkness because he failed to see the true meaning of God’s light “Mi ripigneva là dove ’l sol tace (“had thrust me back to where the sun is speechless” [60]), and the verses in Paradiso 29 where Beatrice attacks those preachers who disseminated ill reasoned theologies through the use of false rhetoric: Per apparer ciascun s’ingegna e face sue invenzioni; e quelle son trascorse da’ predicanti e ’l Vangelio si tace.(94–96) (Each one strives for display, elaborates his own inventions; preachers speak at length of these—meanwhile the Gospels do not speak.)

In all three instances above, the idea of silence refers to misleading truths. Guido, in giving priority to silence rather than to speech, which would have reflected the Franciscan voice of conscience, does

24

Inferno 27, 79–84 For a discussion on the gift of the Pentecost, see Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision, 70, 254. Also, for a detailed analysis on the subject of the tongues of fire, see Richard Bates and Thomas Rendall, “Dante’s Ulysses and the Epistle of James,” Dante Studies 57 (1989): 33–44, and Alison Cornish “The Epistle of James in Inferno 26,” Traditio, 5 (1989–90): 356–379. 26 See note 15. 27 As we recall the Fraudulent Counselors are trapped in burning clothes which are in the form of tongues. 25

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not excuse but accuses himself of his own sin,28 and metaphorically traps himself in his own word. The use of the noun “tacer [silence]” in Inferno 27 is in complete opposition to the meaning of silence in Franciscan spirituality. In the concluding chapter of the Itinerarium mentis in Deum, citing Dionysius, Bonaventure states that the “absolute and changeless mysteries of theology are shrouded in the super-luminous darkness of a silence, teaching secretly in the utmost obscurity that is manifest above all manifestation; of a darkness that is resplendent above all splendor, and in which everything shines forth; of a darkness which fills invisible intellects full above all plenitude with the splendors of invisible good things that are above all good.”29 Furthermore, citing once again Dionysius, he invites the faithful to unite “with Him Who is above all essence and all knowledge . . . [and to transcend oneself ] . . . to the super-essential gleam of the divine darkness by an incommensurable and absolute transport of a pure mind.”30 For Bonaventure, the Word—the Eternal Exemplar and the “locus of divine ideas”31—is the creation which gave rise to God’s created world.32 In the beginning of Paradiso 29, Beatrice tells the pilgrim that outside time and space, God’s free and divine action opens itself in a multiplicity of new forms of love. Creation, she continues, is Divine Love which rejoices in creating creatures which are not God, but are God’s self-expression: Non per aver a sé di bene acquisto, ch’esser no può, ma perché suo splendore potesse, risplendendo, dir “Subsisto”, in sua etternità di tempo fore,

28 See Benvenuto, “Sic comes dum nitens se excusare, accusat, quia voluit potius contra [suam] conscientiam complacere Bonifacio, quan displicere illi pro salute animae suae [So then the companion of [Ulysses] striving to excuse himself accuses [himself ] since he preferred to please Boniface against his own conscience than to displease him for the salvation of his own soul,” cited in Natalino Sapegno’s comment in Inferno 27 in Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, 3 vols., ed. Natalino Sapegno, (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979). 29 Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, in Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. 2, trans. Philotheus Boehner O.F.M. (Saint Bonaventure: The Franciscan Institute, 1998), 99. 30 Ibid., 101. 31 Denis Edwards, “The Discovery of Chaos and the Retrieval of the Trinity,” in Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives and Divine Actions, eds. Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and Arthur R. Peacocke (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, 1997), 157–175. 32 Ibid., 161.

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santa casciani fuor d’ogne altro comprender, come i piacque, s’aperse in nuovi amor l’etterno amore. (13–18) (Not to acquire new goodness for Himself— which cannot be—but that his splendor might, as it shines back to Him, declare ‘Subsisto,’ In His eternity outside of time, beyond all other borders, as pleased Him, Eternal Love opened into new loves.)

The verses above recall Bonaventure’s Fountain of Fullness ( fontalis plenitudo), the Trinity. The Love between the Word (God the Father), and the Image (God the Son) “reaches its consummation in the . . . Spirit, thus the Holy Spirit.”33 We can note thus, how the power of the Word, and consequently the proper use of logic, lies in the power to distinguish that which was determined by God. The use of logic is justified only if it is inspired by God, for the human mind possesses vestiges of truth that can only be partially deciphered through vision and faith. Dante, in Guido’s speech in Inferno 27, portrays the abuse of true logic, which only rests in the Word of God, as seen in Paradiso 24 when the pilgrim professes his faith before Saint Peter: . . . “Le profonde cose che mi largiscon qui la lor parvenza, a li occhi di là giú son sí ascose, che l’esser loro v’è in sola credenza, sopra la qual si fonda l’alta spene; e però di sustanza prende intenza. E da questa credenza ci convene silogizzar, sanz’ avere altra vista: però intenza d’argomento tene.” (70–78) (. . . “The deep things that on me bestow their image here, are hid from sight below, so that their being lies in faith alone, and on that faith the highest hope is founded; and thus it is that faith is called a substance. And it is from this faith that we must reason, deducing what we can from syllogisms, without our being able to see more: thus faith is also called an evidence.”)

33

Edwards, “Discovery,” 161.

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To Dante’s words, Saint Peter responds: . . . “Se quantunque s’acquista giú per dottrina, fosse cosí ’inteso, non lí avria loco ingegno di sofista.” (79–81) (. . . “If all one learns below as doctrine were so understood, there would be no place for the sophist’s cleverness.”)

As expressed in the above verses, faith for Dante becomes the vision through which human beings deduce what they can of God’s Truth from true syllogisms.34 In these verses, the poet recalls Bonventure’s paradigms of seeing and perceiving represented in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum: “. . . in the third way of seeing, he who investigates with his reason sees that some things merely exist, that others exist and live, that still others exist, live, and discern.”35 Moreover, in Question Four of the Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ 36 Bonaventure holds that only those who are able to enter into the innermost silence of the soul come to see God’s Immutable Truth, a Truth accessible only to the supreme lover of eternity, not the sinner: The person of wisdom attains to the reasons in one way and the person of knowledge in another. The person of science attains to them as to the principles that move the mind. The person of wisdom attains to them as that in which the human spirit finds rest. And no one arrives at this wisdom “except those who are first purified by the justice of faith.” . . . Attaining to these [eternal] reasons does not make anyone wise unless that person is aware of attaining to them and finds repose in them. This is, indeed, the mark of the wise person. For the intellects of people of science attain these reasons as principles that move the mind, while the intellects of the wise attain these reasons as principles by which they are lead back to a point of repose.37

34 For an enlightening reading of the relationship between faith in and reason in The Comedy, see Mazzotta Dante’s Vision, 174–196. 35 Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 45. 36 In medieval universities Disputed Questions were formal lectures that were intended to treat a particular subject in depth for a restricted audience. Bonaventure delivered these lectures during his tenure in Paris. For a study see Norman Kretzmann et al. eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 37 Bonaventure, Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, in Works of Saint Bonaventure, vol. 4, tr. Zachary Hayes, O.F.M. (Saint Bonaventure: The Franciscan Institute, 1992), 137–141.

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For Bonaventure, this knowledge requires the lovers of eternity to want to return their knowledge to Its source and not to appropriate it merely for their own perfection. Thus, the lover of eternity comes to silence in front of the Word of God, which is, in Mazzotta’s words, a “syllogism that establishes the truth in such a way that in comparison to it every demonstration is dull.”38 Dante recalls the relationship between the person of wisdom and the person of knowledge in Paradiso—a relationship which lies in the symbiosis between what is immanent and what is transcendent (what is already visible and what is the potential of the human being beyond the physical), and not in the use of logic for logic’s sake. For human knowledge must understand that the ultimate Truth lies in the plurality of divine Ideas, which is but one Idea, as Dante puts it Paradiso 13: “. . . Ciò che non more e ciò che può morire non è se non splendor di quella idea che partorisce, amando, il nostro Sire; ché quella viva luce che sí mea dal suo lucente, che non si disuna da lui né da l’amor ch’a lor s’intrea, per sua bontate il suo raggiare aduna, quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze, etternalmente rimanendosi una. . . .” (52–60) (“. . . Both that which never dies and that which dies are only the reflected light of that Idea which our Sire, with Love, begets; because the living Light that pours out so from Its bright Source that It does not disjoin from It or from the Love intrined with them, through Its own goodness gathers up Its rays within nine essences, as in a mirror, Itself eternally remaining One. . . .”)

Dante’s idea of Truth which lies in the plurality of divine Ideas also evokes Bonaventure’s idea of reduction as found in On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology. In this treatise, Bonaventure portrays all of the varied forms of human knowledge into a unity—a unity which expresses God as both “the Alpha and the Omega.”39 38

Dante’s Vision, 189. Ed. Hayes Zachary, O.F.M. (Saint Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1996), 57. 39

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In Inferno 27 Dante portrays the dangers of syllogistic reasoning that traps the human being and blocks human transcendence. In Paradiso 11, he makes a clear reference to “false syllogisms” and links the false nature of Guido of Montefeltro’s false logic: O insensata cura de’ mortali, quanto son difettivi silogismi quei che ti fanno in basso batter l’ali!

(1–3)

(O senseless cares of mortals, how deceiving are syllogistic reasonings that bring your wings to flight so low, to earthly things!)

Now, how can we relate Guido’s misuse of logic to the Franciscan notion that human pursuits should rest in a living faith and not in rhetorical speculation? The Assisi Compilation relates a story about a spiritual man and a Doctor of Sacred Theology who visited Francis and asked him to comment on the words of Ezechiel (3:18) “If you do not warn the wicked man about his wickedness, I will hold you responsible for his soul.” Francis replied: If that passage is supposed to be understood in a universal sense, then I understand it to mean that a servant of God should be burning with life and holiness so brightly, that by the light of example and the tongue of his conduct, he will rebuke all the wicked. In that way, I say, that the brightness of his life and the fragrance of his reputation will proclaim the wickedness to all of them.40

The man went way edified and said to his companions, “My brothers, the theology of this man, held aloft by purity and contemplation is a soaring eagle, while our learning crawls on its belly on the ground.41 Francis’ spirituality reflects a word, which returns to the Word of God, but Guido’s misuse of words are imprisoned in a tongue of fire.

40 Francis of Assisi, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, eds. Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. Ca., J.A. Wayne Hellmann, O.F.M. Conv., and William J. Short, O.F.M. (New York: New City Press, 1999), 1509–1510. 41 Ibid., 1510.

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Dante’s popularity with Bernardino of Siena can be attributed to the praises that Dante confers on Bonaventure in Paradiso 12. In Paradiso 11, Thomas Aquinas pays tribute to Francis for having brought Christian life back to its original purity and reprimands the corruption of the Dominicans. In Paradiso 12 Bonaventure praises Dominic and scolds both the Conventuals42 and the Spirituals43 for having moved away from the correct way of interpreting Francis’ rule. In both cantos, Dante shows how in heaven all rivalries vanish and reminds both orders about the importance of loyalty to their respective founders. The idea of faithfulness to Francis’ rule was of great importance to the Observants—they believed that their Order was found on the principle of renewing the primitive Franciscan rule.44 Furthermore, Francis and the early Franciscan order emphasized the equality of all Christians before God and renounced wealth, bringing religious renewal, but also subversive ideas—that the lower classes might break free from feudal tyranny and oppression by the upper echelons of society. The Franciscan way of life was in fact not only a religious movement but also an incipient social one as well.45 Furthermore, Francis not only imbued the Franciscan movement with his desire to realize the Gospel’s ideal in a very radical way,46 but also demonstrated how a life of poverty manifests God’s immeasurable generosity. In other words, Francis’ conversion to live in poverty occurred after he began to notice social poverty and choose to get

42 On the interpretation of Francis’ rule, see Armando Quaglia, L’originalità della regola francescana (Ancona: La Pace, 1959). 43 For a recent history of the Spiritual Franciscans, see David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: from Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), and his Olivi and Franciscan Poverty: the Origins of the Usus Pauper Controversy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989). 44 See the work of Giovanni Hofer, Giovanni of Capestrano (L’Aquila: Chiappini, 1955). Also see The Prologue to Bernardino’s sermons in Prediche volgari, ed. Carlo Del Corno, 82. 45 See Raul Manselli, “Evangelismo e povertà” in Povertà e ricchezza nella spiritualità dei secoli XI e XII, Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale, Convegni 8 (Todi: Presso l’Accademia Tudertina), 1969, 9–12. 46 See Dominic Monti, O.F.M., “Francis as Vernacular Theologian: a Link to the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition?” in The Franciscan Intellectual Tradition, ed. Elise Saggau, O.S.F. (Saint Bonaventure, New York: The Franciscan Institute), 2002, 21–42.

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closer to people without any social restraints. For Francis, Poverty created a space where the Franciscan Order’s spirituality was nurtured by intellectual pursuits towards a living faith. Francis neither choose poverty to deny himself nor to discipline himself, but embraced it because he believed that God is humility, for God impoverished Himself for humanity. Therefore poverty becomes generosity of will,47 which leads to peace on earth and consequently to the realm of God. Bonaventure recalls Francis’ idea of generosity of will in The Reduction. When speaking about the third sense, he states: . . . something is called right when . . . in the consideration of rectitude there is manifested the union of the soul with God, for since God is above, it necessarily follows that the apex of the mind itself must be raised aloft. And indeed this is what actually happens when our rational nature assents to the first truth . . . when our irascible nature strives after the highest generosity, and when our concupiscible nature clings to the good. One who keeps close to God in this way is one spirit with God.48

Peace and good will are also Dante’s goal in The Comedy which is acquired through just actions and through the understanding that people on earth must live according to God’s created order, so that they may be drawn back to God: Questi ordini di sú tutti s’ammirano, e di giú vincon sí, che verso Dio tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano. (Paradiso 28. 127–129) (These orders all direct—ecstatically— their eyes on high; and downward, they exert such force that all are drawn and draw to God.)

Bernardino of Siena and his followers rekindled the message of Francis’s peace in their preaching49 by educating audiences on matters of faith and morals and on the consequences of vices present in the milieu of their time.50 Bernardino’s preaching career extended

47 This idea comes from the lecture, “Francis of Assisi: Poverty, the Key to the Reign of God,” that Dominic Monti, O.F.M. delivered on September 22, 2004 at John Carroll University in Cleveland. 48 Bonaventure, On the Reduction, 59–60. 49 Franciscan preaching had experienced a decline during the fourteenth century. See note eight for studies on Franciscan preaching. 50 Saint John of Capestrano, Bernardino’s contemporary, while preaching from the Old Testament, was asked by the people of Siena to alter his subject and to preach against vices ( John of Capestrano, Capestrano XXXI, fol. 181r—the manuscript

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over 27 years, from 1417 to his death in the city of L’Aquila in 1444. He devoted his entire life to itinerant preaching in the vernacular language and preached with such strong fervor and severity that his sermons bring to mind Dante’s harshest invectives found in The Comedy. Bernardino believed that through the spoken vernacular word which should be understood by all, he could bring humans to enlightenment: . . . bisogna che il nostro dire sia inteso. Sai come? Dirlo chiarozo, chiarozo, acciò che [chi] ci ode, ne vada contento e illuminato, enone imbarbagliato.51 (It is necessary that our words be understood. And do you know how? Say them clearly, clearly, so that the one who hears, may go away happy and enlightened, and not confused.)

Through penitential preaching, Bernardino preached to persuade listeners to avoid sin with a language that was more colloquial and pictorial than ever before. His preaching style made his sermons against vice more concrete and pungent. In both his Latin and vernacular sermons, Bernardino emphasized the role of an effective preacher. He contended that effective preaching required preachers to identify themselves with and immerse themselves in the culture of their audiences. In his sermon 23, while preaching on political factionalism in Piazza del Campo in Siena on September 7, 1427, the Saint states: Io ti prometto ch’io non direi in Lombardia queste parole per buona cosa. Quando io vo predicando di terra in terra, quando io giogno in uno paese, io m’ingegno di parlare sempre sicondo i vocaboli loro; io avevo imparato e so parlare al lor modo molte cose.52 (I assure you that in Lombardy I would not use these expressions for good reason. When I go preaching from land to land, and I arrive in a specific place, I make sure that I always use the language of the local people when I speak to them, for I have learned different dialects and I know how to discuss a multitude of subjects in them.)

is in the Convent of San Giuliano in L’Aquila); also for a recent study on the subject of vices in Bernardino’s preaching see Cyntia L. Plecritti, Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy: Bernardino of Siena & his Audience (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2000). 51 Luciano Banchi, Le prediche volgari di San Bernardino da Siena, dette nella Piazza del Campo l’anno MCCCCXXVII, 3 vols., (Siena: Tip. Edit all’inseg. di S. Bernardino, 1880–1888), I.69. 52 Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari: Sul Campo di Siena 1427, ed. Carlo Del Corno 3 vols (Milan: Rusconi, 1989), I. 672–673.

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Throughout his preaching career, Bernardino was preoccupied by vices that divided and destroyed communities.53 Partisans, according to the Saint, were responsible for the destruction of the well-being of communities, and should be punished harshly.54 One of the most frightening warnings we notice in both his Latin and vernacular preaching against factions is the fire and destruction which will take place on earth after factions will have ruined their home-land and everyone in it.55 In sermon 23, he first addresses the partisans’ love for the devil and how their love condemns them to hell; secondly he attacks the consequences of their evil because it destroys properties and individuals; lastly he addresses the ramification of war which results in exile. He shows how those who practice factionalism have renounced their faith because they are at the service of the devil, and concludes by asking confessors not to absolve those who adhere to factions. Moreover, he fiercely attacks those who practice political factionalism and directs his wrath against the people of Siena who support and adhere to factions. Specifically, in addressing the factions which resulted from the conflict between Guelfs and Ghibellines, he reminds them that the only worthy affiliation is the one with God.56 He uses imagery which recalls painful events such as war and exile, and then citing Jeremiah 46.12, shows how factions lead to destruction.57 Cynthia L. Polecritti in her study Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy: Bernardino of Siena & his Audience suggests that Bernardino calls to mind the images represented in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescos of the Cattivo Governo,58 which show consequences such as famine, crime, violence, poverty, and ransacking.59 These images mediate the understanding of such

53 Perhaps Bernardino’s resentment was a result of the internal schism that beset the order over the correct way of interpreting Francis’ testament in regards to the poverty clause. For studies on the subject, see Iriarte, Storia del Francescanesimo, Armando Quaglia, L’originalità della regola francescana (Ancona: La Pace, 1959); Giovanni Tarello, “Profili giuridici della questione della povertà nel francescanesimo prima di Ockman” Annali della facoltà di giurisprudenza dell’università di Genova 3 (1964): 338–448. 54 See Cynthia L. Polecritti, Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy: Bernardino of Siena & His Audience (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 131. 55 Ibid., 131–132. 56 Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari, 673. 57 Ibid., 672. 58 These frescos are in the Palazzo Pubblico in the city of Siena. 59 Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy, 132.

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evil ramifications and allow Bernardino’s audience to internalize the image, and in turn influence its reception.60 What is striking about this sermon is that Bernardino recalls Dante’s views on sophism expressed in Inferno 27. In addressing the confessors who give false absolutions to those who feed factionalism with the practice of deceptive rhetoric Bernardino states: … questo peccato delle parti è sì grande e sì grave, che non può mai essare absoluto da niuna creatura sopra della terra. O confessori, o voi che confessate e absolvete, sapete che a casa calda, a casa calda ve n’andate attaccati l’uno all’altro? Io ti dico che tu nol puoi absolvare, se elli tiene queste parti; e se tu l’assolvi, elli non è absoluto. Vuoi absolvarlo? Fa’ che prima tu facci che elli rinnieghi tutte le parzialità . . . e che mai più elli no le tenga più; e poi l’absolve. Ma se elli non le rinniega, io ti dico che elli va a casa del diavolo, e tu con lui insieme, se tu l’absolvi. Sai come disse colui? Assolvar non si può chi non si pente; né pentere e volere insieme puossi, per la contradizion che nol consente.61 (This sin of faction is so big and so serious that it can never be absolved by any creature on earth. Oh confessors, oh you who confess and absolve, do you know that you will go to the hot house, to the hot house (here he refers to hell) attached to one another? I say to you that you can not absolve if he chooses these factions, and if you absolve him, he is not absolved. Do you want to absolve him? Make sure that first he renounces all factions . . . and that he’ll never resume them, and then absolve him. But if he does not renounce them (factions), then I say to you that he goes to the house of the devil and you with him, if you absolve him. Do you know what he [Dante] said? Once can’t absolve a man who’s not repented, And no one can repent and will at once; The law of contradiction won’t allow it.)

It is not surprising that Bernardino would cite Dante’s Comedy since he had studied Dante in Siena.62 He refers to Dante by name in Sermon 42 in the same cycle preached in Piazza del Campo. In this

60 For a study on the use of images built on contrast, see my study “Sacred Oratory and Audience: Preaching in Medieval Italy,” in Word, Image, Number: Communication in the Middle Ages, eds. John J. Contreni and Santa Casciani (Florence: SISMEL—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2002), 247–262. 61 Prediche volgari, ed. Carlo Del Corno, 676. 62 Ronald B. Herzman, “Dante and the Art of Assisi,” in The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy. Ed. Willaim R. Cook (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 209.

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particular sermon, while preaching on the prophet David’s desperate search for peace on earth and on his failure to find it, turning to the people of Siena, Bernardino states: O tu che araguni araguni, e mai non ti vedi sazio, deh, ataccati a Davit, el quale volse cercare d’andare a trovare el paradiso, come Dante s’ataccò a Vergilio per volere vedere l’inferno. (O tu che dormi, impara stamane e sta’ desto, acciò che tu non capiti male, credendoti avere il paradiso, e forse arai l’inferno.)63 (Oh you, that amasses, amasses (here is referring to amassing wealth) and you who never see yourself sated, you should attach yourself to David who wanted to search for Paradise. Do like Dante who attached himself to Virgil because he wanted to see hell. Oh you who sleeps, learn this morning and stay awake because if you think you have paradise and you don’t avoid evil, you find yourself in hell.)

Now, why would Bernardino cite Inferno 27 in Sermon 23, and why would he refer to this particular canto again in Sermons 4264 and 34? In Sermon 42 he addresses human thirst for power, and in 34, while preaching on the consequences of war and referring to the soldiers, who like scorpions, first lick, then embrace and finally bite, he states: Così fanno i manigoldi di Dio. Quelli uomini i quali Iddio lassa sopra la terra per punire i peccati de’ popoli, prima leccano. Sai che è questo leccare? Sono le dolci parole che si dicono; sono le dolci promesse; sono le dolci lusinghe. Hai mai udito: “Longhe promesse coll’attener corto?”65 (God’s scoundrels’ behave [like the scorpions.] Those men who God leaves on earth to punish the sins of people, lick first. Do you know what the meaning of this licking is? They are the sweet words that people say—the sweet promises, the sweet flatteries. Have you ever heard the saying: “long promises and very brief fulfillments?”66)

The sermons in questions demonstrate that Inferno 27 was particularly important to Bernardino in his preaching because he could use it to juxtapose the contemporary world of factions in Siena to the true Franciscan piety. In his preaching, like Dante, he shows that there is no room for sophistry because sophistry destroys good will

63 64 65 66

Prediche volgari, ed. Carlo Del Corno, 1234. Prediche volgari, ed. Carlo Del Corno, 1248 Ibid., 965. Here Bernardino refers to Inferno 27. 110.

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and peace. In so doing he overturns the sophistic rhetoric of Guido of Montefeltro and indirectly shows the incongruity of faulty logic, which Dante wished to portray with Guido’s speech. Furthermore, Bernardino advocates a language that recaptures the true meaning of Franciscan ideals—ideals through which every human being willing to live with God can follow and in doing so, ultimately finds truth. In this sermon, Bernardino promotes a life of obedience solely to the Word of God, and it is no coincidence that he recalls Matthew 4.4 where the devil tempts Jesus, but Jesus remains obedient to the Word of God and the devil is defeated. Bernardino earlier in the sermon had stated: . . . chi crede co’ la buona volontà, e poi opera con fede, riceve interamente la grazia di Dio. E perch’è detto: “Non in solo pane vivit homo, non vive l’uomo solamente di pane, no; sed in omni verbo, quod procedit de ore Dei, ma delle parole che escono della bocca di Dio,” di quello che Idio mette nella bocca dell’uomo, sì vive l’uomo. E ciò che Idio vi mette, viene da tutta la perfezione della Trinità Santa, dal padre, dal Figliuolo e dallo Spirito Santo.67 (. . . he, who believes with good will and then carries it out with faith, receives wholly God’s grace. Because it is said: “Man does not live by bread alone, no, but lives by every word that comes out of God’s mouth,” he must live from that which God put in his mouth. . . . And all that which God put in [his mouth] comes from the perfection of the Holy Trinity, from the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.)

In this particular passage, Bernardino in using images from the New Testament, which are tangible and active (indirectly referring to acts of eating), creates a mental picture which helps the audience visualize the contrast between vices and virtues, i.e., the sacrament of communion versus sinning against God’s created order. Furthermore, the idea of the Word of God that for Bernardino comes only from God’s perfection, recalls Dante’s idea of true knowledge that is ironically expressed in Inferno 26. For the Florentine poet, knowledge acquires value only when illuminated by divine grace because, as a gift from God, it is a privilege that must be kept within bounds so that “non corra che virtú nol guidi” (“it not run where virtue does not guide” [Inferno 26.22]). Furthermore Bernardino addresses the

67

Prediche volgari, ed. Carlo Del Corno, 653.

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contradiction that lies within the sinners’ desire to repent and will to sin again: Non si può pentere del peccato e volerlo fare a un’otta. Come tu vedi che queste due non possono stare insieme, così non possono stare insieme, colpa e grazia in uno corpo: chi è in colpa è del diavolo, e chi è in grazia è di Dio. Come si può dunque essare di Dio e del diavolo?68 (You cannot repent of your sin and still have the desire to sin again. As you can see these two things cannot be together as sin and grace cannot dwell in the same body. The sinner belongs to the devil and the one who is not a sinner belongs to God. How can you be with God and with the devil?)

Then he reminds the confessors about the Pentecostal gift and pointedly warns them of the consequences of its misuse: “Adunque, o tu che absolve, guarda quello che tu fai”69 (“thus you, who have the power to absolve, be careful of what you do”). Then, Bernardino cites Matthew 18.18 to make his point: “. . . Colui che sarà sciolto da voi sacerdoti, in terra, sarà sciolto anco in cielo.” Io dico se lo sciogli con verità; e se tu lo sciogli, e non lo puoi sciogliare, io ti dico ch’egli non è sciolto, ma tu e lui insieme andate a casa del diavolo.70 (Whoever shall be forgiven by you priests on earth shall also be forgiven in heaven, if forgiven in Truth. But I say to you, that if you forgive him and you cannot do so, I say that he is not forgiven and you and he will go to hell.)

In this example, Bernardino recalls Guido’s damnation in hell. Guido the confessor and Boniface the sinner are both condemned to hell for eternity. Earlier in the sermon, he had turned to the people of Siena and addressed the sin of faction, and citing Augustine’s De Civitate Dei (XIX. 7), he told them that they were in contradiction with reason: “. . . O tu che tieni parte, va’ legge quello che disse Agustino in libro De Civitate Dei, e vedrai il tuo stato. . . . La ragione. Ora dico che tu non puoi mettare il piè in due calzari; così non puoi servire a due signori. La Scrittura il dice71. . . Non si può servire a Dio e al diavolo 68 69 70 71

Ibit., Ibit., Ibit., Here

677. 677. 677. Bernardino cites Luke 16.13.

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santa casciani a un tempo.” Idio è quello signore il quale ha fatto tute le cose sopra della terra; e quelle che si veggono e quelle che non si veggono, tutte l’ha fatte Idio.72 (You who choose faction, go and read that which Augustine said in the book De Civitate Dei and you will see your state. . . . The reason. Now I tell you that you cannot put your foot in two shoes in the same manner that you cannot serve two lords. Scripture says that . . . you cannot serve God and the devil at the same time. God is the Lord who has created all things on earth; those which are visible and those which are not, all have been created by God.)

Then he continues by stating that if they choose to understand God’s created world, they can decipher the use of correct logic: Quelli che so’ in gloria, so’ sempre d’uno volere con lui. Quelli che so’ nel mondo possono tenere con lui e essare contra lui, per l’albitrio che Idio ci ha dato.73 (Those who are in glory are with His will. Those who are in the world can choose to be with Him or against Him, because God gave us free will.)

We can ask ourselves why Bernardino would choose to cite Dante in this particular sermon and why would Dante be relevant? Perhaps because Bernardino like Dante suffered the hatred and slander from his native city: . . . quanti luoghi io predicai mai, mai non mi fu fatto in niuno luogo quello che m’è stato fatto ne la mia città, e né mai in nessuno luogo ricevetti tanto scandolo, quanto da voi. . . . O debbo io ricevere questo da voi? . . . Io so ch’io vi predicai la verità di questo nome, e che questo nome è sopra a tutti i nomi.74 (. . . of the many places where I have preached, never has been done to me that which my city has done to me, and in no other place did I ever receive such humiliation as much as I have from you. . . . Why should I receive this from you? . . . I know that I have preached the truth here in that name which is a name above all names.)

In this passage, the Senese Saint recounts the slander he experienced from his native Siena because of the special veneration he professed for the sacred name of Jesus represented on a wooden tablet he

72 73 74

Prediche volgari, ed. Carlo Del Corno, 674. Ibid., 675. Ibid., Sermon 29, 850–851.

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himself designed and constructed in the form of a sun with the first three letters of the name of Jesus (IHS).75 More historical proof against his wooden monogram can be found in Alessandro de Riciis’ Cronica Ordinis Minorum. De Riciis, an Observant himself, records that Bernardino while preaching in L’Aquila or while walking would carry around a small wooden monogram and when showing it to the people of L’Aquila, he would say: “This drives the devil away.”76 Because he would refer to the devil and because most of his audience would not recognize the theological meaning of his wooden monogram, Bernardino was accused and tried for witchcraft several times.77 Bernardino, in the representation of the twelve rays in his sun monogram, wanted to represent the gifts of the Holy Spirit the Apostles received on Pentecost. Furthermore, with his words: “this drives the devil away,” Bernardino wanted to address that the gift of the Holy Spirit, which in Francis’ words works only in those who do God’s “most holy will,”78 is the only way to combat evil actions. In exploring Bernardino’s understanding of Dante’s Comedy, we can ask if as a reader of Dante, he, in Mazzotta’s words, commodifies or reclaims the intention of the text? And we can ask with Chartier whether he understood and negotiated the poet’s works in terms of his preaching needs? It is my contention that Bernardino’s preaching reveals Dante’s intentions of creating a just world and at peace in The Comedy, which recalls Bonaventure’s idea of the Trinity. Giuseppe Mazzotta, in his article, “Ancient Rome and its Legacy in the Italian Renaissance,”79 argues that the principle that human beings are what they make of themselves comes from the idea of universality— the idea of will and making—and from the Roman idea of aequitas— which is the common law of all people. This principle of “making,” already present in Greek and Roman history, however can also be found in the Middle Ages in Franciscan spirituality. In the Breviloquium

75 See, Hans Rheinfelder , in Atti del Convegno di Studi realizzato dal Comune di Melfi in collaborazione con la Biblioteca Provinciale di Potenza e il Seminario di Studi Danteschi di Terra di Lavoro (Firenze: Olschki Editore, 1975), 95. 76 This manuscript is in the Provincial Library of L’Aquila and carries the number S73. This particular statement is found on folio 175r. 77 “Dante nella predicazione di Bernardino da Siena”, 95. 78 “The Canticle of the Creatures,” in The Prayers of Saint Francis, ed. W. Bader (New York: New City Press, 1996), 42–43. 79 Mosaico: A Bilingual Publication of the Bishop Anthony M. Pilla Program in Italian American Studies 3 (2003), 13–18.

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Bonaventure states that the universe is a book which can be read, a book whose words reveal the Creator: From this we may gather that the universe is like a book reflecting, representing and describing its Maker, the Trinity, at three different levels of expression: as a trace (vestigium), an image, and a likeness. The aspect of trace is found in every creature; the aspect of image, in the intellectual creatures or rational spirits; the aspect of likeness, only in those who are God-conformed. Through these successive levels, comparable to the rungs of a ladder, the human mind is designed to ascend gradually to the supreme Principle who is God.80

Bonaventure’s vision of the Trinity as a ladder portrays the concept of “making” through the idea that every creature manifests itself as a trace of God and as a rational creature that both understands and expresses its understanding through God’s morality which in Franciscan theology is always love.81 Specifically the human creature, through its moral activity, participates in God’s Divine Love and understands itself capable of participating in that Love. For Bonaventure, human endeavors, provided that there is a will to love and do “good,” rest in the understanding of their relationship to the Eternal Word which is also Eternal Art.82 Dante recalls Bonaventure’s idea of the universe as a book bound together in God’s Love in Paradise 33: Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna, legato con amore in un volume, ciò che per l’universo si squaderna: sustanze e accidenti e lor costume quasi con flati insieme, per tal modo che ciò ch’i’ dico è un semplice lume.

(85–89)

(In its profundity I saw—ingathered and bound by love into one single volume— what, in the universe, seems separate, scattered: substances, accidents, and dispositions as if conjoined—in such a way that what I tell is only rudimentary.)

80 Bonaventure, The Breviloqium, tr. José de Vinck (Peterson, New Jersey: Saint Anthony Guild Press, 1963), 104. 81 See note 9. 82 “Now, a creature cannot have God for its Principle unless it is conformed to Him in oneness, truth, and goodness. Nor can it have God for its End unless it grasps Him through memory, intelligence, and will.” Bonaventure, The Breviloqium, 104–105.

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In these particular verses, Dante sees God in Its unity, where substances, accidents and dispositions are bound in His Love which is also the Eternal Form: La forma universal di questo nodo Credo ch’i’ vidi, perché piú di largo, dicendo questo, mi sento ch’i’godo. (Paradiso 33. 91–93) (I think I saw the universal shape which that knot takes; for, speaking this, I feel a joy that is more ample. . . .)

Here the pilgrim experiences joy and understands Bonaventure’s notion of “contuition” which is an indirect knowledge of God’s presence together with the object of God’s creation (in this case, Dante himself ).83 Dante knows that the human mind cannot fully decipher God’s true image (Paradiso 33.121–141), and like Bonaventure’s Lover of Eternity, enters into silence before God: Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco al mio concetto! E questo, a quel ch’i’ vidi è tanto, che non basta a dicer ‘poco’. O luce etterna che sola in te sidi, sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta e intendente te ami e arridi! (Paradiso 33. 121–126) (How incomplete is speech, how weak, when set against my thought! And this, to what I saw is such—to call it little is too much. Eternal Light, You only dwell within Yourself, and only You know You; Self-knowing, Self-known, You love and smile upon Yourself!)

Moreover, when his “alta fantasia” (“high fantasy” [Paradiso 33. 142]) is unable to fully describe the vision of God, the poet accepts God’s will and rejoices in His perfect order: A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa: ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle, sí come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

(Paradiso 33.142–145)

83 Ilia Delio, Simply Bonaventure: An Introduction to His Life, Thought, and Writings (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 2001), 63.

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santa casciani (Here force failed my high fantasy; but my desire and will were moved already—like a wheel revolving uniformly—by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.)

Bernardino’s preaching makes manifest a Dante who like Bonaventure believes that human artistic endeavors become validated in their continuous shuttling towards the understanding of Divine Art through which human creations join God’s creativity. In recalling Dante in his sermon, he acknowledges The Comedy as the perfect Christian text, and sees Dante the pilgrim as the lover of eternity who comes to silence in front of the Word of God and Dante as the poet whose poetics lie in the understanding of Divine Art. Furthermore, in citing Inferno 27 Bernardino shows his affinity with Dante. The preacher knows that Dante’s exile was a direct result of Boniface’s army who was at the service of the black Guelfs. In recalling this specific episode, Bernardino makes use of Dante’s moral authority on the subject of factionalism and uses Guido in his sermons to make his own point on the evil consequences of factions and wars.84 Furthermore the senese Saint shows how Guido’s language and the language used by partisans and their confessors perverts the apostles’ knowledge of all tongues under the power of the Holy Spirit.85 In Sermon 9, while preaching on “Why God gave human beings the gift of language,” he states that language is a gift that must be used to praise God, to benefit others and to receive the Eucharist. He continues by affirming: . . . quando Cristo Iesù mandò i discepoli suoi predicando per lo mondo, li mandò quando furono ripieni dello Spirito Santo, il quale lo’ venne da Dio in forma di lengue e così di fuoco, dimostrando non de’ essare altro che carità in noi, i quali andiamo predicando come andoro li apostoli, e come Idio ha comandato. (When Jesus Christ sent his disciples to preach around the world, he sent them when they were full of the Holy Spirit which came from God in the form of tongues of fires. In so doing, He demonstrated that charity is in those of us who go preaching like the apostles have done and like God has ordered.)

84

I am indebted to Ronald Herzman for suggesting this last interpretation to

me. 85 In addressing this point in Dante’s Vision, Giuseppe Mazzotta makes a connection between False Seeming foxiness in Il Fiore and Guido’s language in Inferno 27. See page 72–73.

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This essay only begins to address Dante’s reception in Bernardino of Siena. However, it is particularly important to note how we can use philology and reception theories—theories explicating the complex relationship among authorship, interpretation, and audience— to depict how Bernardino integrated Dante’s work into his preaching. As we explore reception theories, we can ask with Mazzotta whether Bernardino used Dante in a holistic fashion, understanding him in his full cultural specificity. And we can ask with Chartier whether he understood and negotiated the poet’s work in terms of his own specific pastoral frames and needs. It is my contention that Bernardino uses, to a certain degree, Dante’s attacks on factionalism to fulfill his own preaching needs, thus coming close to Chartier’s understanding of reception theories. However, I believe that he retrives, in Mazzotta’s sense the global vision of Dante’s text. If the goal of the preacher/audience relationship is to construct a border-less community, one which is interactive and dialectical, Bernardino re-appropriates the true meaning of The Comedy in his preaching. We can safely say that he does so while destroying the confinements into which Cortese had placed Dante.

WHAT DANTE LEARNED FROM ST FRANCIS1 William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman

Scholars often work hard to answer specific, tightly focused, questions. Without that sort of meticulous scholarship, it would be impossible to tackle larger concerns and make intelligent and useful generalizations. In this essay, however, relying on a huge body of commentary and scholarship and our own combined seventy-plus years of teaching, we are moving in a somewhat different direction: we are going to address a huge question and then refine it a bit: How do we learn from people different from ourselves? We ask this every time a parent, teacher, or even a friend tries to give us some advice. If we do not find some sort of answer to this question, the logical result is that we can only rely on and trust in ourselves since only we really understand ourselves. The problem gets bigger as we deal with generational issues—our grandparents are really out of it—and cultural differences. We observe, listen to, and read about people living on the same planet with us today, often people we admire; but we wonder, given the differences between them and us, whether we can apply anything we learn about them to our lives. Here is a simple example. A Catholic visits a monastery and attends mass. She very much admires the monks and believes that they are serious and devout and holy Christians. Still, she wonders whether there is anything beyond some sort of general sense of deep commitment that she can take away from her temporary monastic experience since she works full-time in an office and is a wife and a mother of three who is constantly transporting her kids to soccer games and dance lessons. If we increase the time and space differences and rely on “advice” in the form of books rather than on personal interaction, the problem sometimes seems to be even greater. Hence all teachers of the humanities face students who tell us that Plato or Shakespeare or

1 Earlier versions of this essay were given as the E.L. Wiegand Public Lecture at the Santa Catalina School, and also at the University of Rochester.

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Mark Twain or Confucius have nothing to teach us because they are so remote temporally and culturally. Sometimes students say something as naïve as, “How can someone who didn’t have a computer (or fill in the blank with any other piece of technology) have anything to teach us?” But there are a lot of variations on this theme; a few years ago, a brouhaha occurred at Stanford with students protesting the study of DWEMs (Dead White European Males). And many traditional college humanities curricula bit the proverbial dust in the late 1960s, succumbing to the charge of irrelevance. Yet we all have both personal and academic experiences that tell us that quite different people, certainly including the dead, have things to teach us; and we constantly learn that the very greatest writers and thinkers learn from their predecessors. Shakespeare learned from Plutarch, who lived 1500 years before the Bard of Avon. St. Thomas Aquinas made Aristotle’s writings central to the development of his own thought despite the fact that Aristotle was a “pagan,” and that the two lived about 1600 years apart. Our task here is a case study of this issue. Instead of answering the general question of how any particular figure in the past has something to teach us, we are instead going to consider how and what Dante Alighieri learned from St. Francis of Assisi. At first glance, what we are attempting to do may appear to be easy. After all, Francis of Assisi and Dante both lived in what we call the Middle Ages, the first from 1182 to 1226 and the second from 1265 to 1321. One all-too-common perception we have found throughout our teaching careers is that, in the mind of the general public, not much happened in the roughly 1000 years we call medieval, let alone in just one century within this larger block. Such a conclusion is based on ignorance of the dynamics of medieval society, combined with our unreflective tendency to telescope time. People today often talk of past centuries as though they were minutes or days. A student once told us that the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire was Rome’s defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War, an event which occurred fully 700 years before the generally accepted date for the collapse of Roman authority in the West. Another reason it may seem simple to conclude that Dante learned easily and naturally from Francis is that they were both males, both Italians, and both serious Catholic Christians. Consequently, shouldn’t it be obvious that one medieval Italian Catholic guy would really understand another one? They would have spoken the same language, both literally and metaphorically.

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Yet, once we look even casually at the lives of Francis and Dante, it is clear that there are some marked differences: Francis: small town rich merchant family chose extreme poverty chose celibacy not very well educated

Dante: big city middle class family lived often in real comfort, at least until his exile married very learned

To put it simply, how can a politically involved love poet from Florence learn from a guy from a small town who renounced worldly interests to live in caves and huts? How can a learned poet at home with academic philosophy, theology, history, literature, and science learn from someone who was essentially a B- Latin student and worried a lot about misguided scholars?

From Saint Francis to Dante Let us begin with a look at the life of Francis.2 He was born to a wealthy merchant family, perhaps the wealthiest in Assisi. He worked with his father in the family’s cloth business and loved to dress in the finest clothes and to party heartily. Apparently, being a rich kid was not enough because, for a while, Francis sought to “move up” socially by pursuing a career as a mounted soldier that would hopefully lead to knighthood and all of the social and legal privileges that went with it. It would have been the best of both worlds—the wealth of a merchant and the status of a knight. The wealth and the quest for knighthood ultimately failed to make Francis happy, despite what “the world” told him. He began to travel to secluded caves on Mount Subasio to pray. He took a pilgrimage

2 There are almost countless biographies of Francis, both medieval and modern. Of the latter, the most detailed is Arnaldo Fortini, Nova Vita di San Francesco (Assisi: Tipografia di Porziuncula, 1959). An abridged English translation is available, Francis of Assisi, trans. Helen Moak (New York: Crossroad, 1981). Perhaps the most useful of modern biographies is Raoul Manselli, San Francesco d’Assisi (Rome: Bulzoni, 1980). It exists in an English translation: St. Francis of Assisi, trans. Paul Duggan (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988). The early lives (better, the vitae) are collected and translated in Francis of Assisi, 3 vols., ed. Regis Armstrong (The Saint, The Founder, The Prophet) (New York: New City Press, 1998–2000).

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to Rome,3 throwing coins through the grate on the tomb of St. Peter and then realizing that this gift to the saint did not give him the satisfaction it should have. Back in Assisi, he developed a specific way of showing his new devotion to God—gathering materials and rebuilding crumbling churches on the city’s outskirts.4 His zeal for this got him in trouble because he sold materials belonging to his father in order to support his rebuilding projects. Ultimately, this led to the famous public confrontation between Francis and his father Pietro in the presence of Guido, Bishop of Assisi.5 Thanks to an extended and brilliant visual tradition, we can clearly envision Francis taking his last piece of clothing off and handing it to his father, who had demanded back everything that belonged to him.6 Several of the early vitae of Francis use this story as the moment of Francis’s conversion from “the world” to the service of God. Francis himself, in the Testament that he dictated on his deathbed, does not recount this story to explain his conversion, but rather presents it in terms of his meeting with lepers.7 One way to think of how Francis was changed by his encounters with lepers is to see them as the focus for a new ability to understand what he had once perceived as bitter to be sweet. Francis also learned that lesson in other ways as well. After he had been living his new life for a while, he realized that a priest had been fixing him special food because of his former status in the world. He took up begging for food, his bowl being filled with various scraps. At first, such slop tasted bitter, but as he more deeply entered into his life following the poor Christ, it became a sweet banquet.8 Similarly, Francis learned to sleep in barns and caves, sometimes with a rock as his pillow. To be removed from all that is familiar and expected is a difficult undertaking, but

3 When considering events in Francis’s life, we will cite the earliest version of a story in the writings of Thomas of Celano. His Vita Prima is the earliest narrative of the life of Francis and will be cited as I Cel followed by a section number. Celano’s second life, The Rememberance of the Desire of a Soul, is cited II Cel. The former is found in Francis of Assisi: The Saint, the second in Francis of Assisi: The Founder. For Francis’ pilgrimage to Rome, see II Cel 8. 4 The first of these was the church of San Damiano. See II Cel 10. 5 I Cel 14–15. 6 Certainly the most famous is the fresco in the Upper Church in Assisi of c.1291, sometimes ascribed to Giotto. The earliest representation of this story is in a section of a panel painting of ca.1245 in the Bardi Chapel of Santa Croce, Florence. 7 Francis of Assisi: The Saint, 124. 8 II Cel 14.

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Francis had the ability to see difficulty as opportunity. This is a lesson not lost on Dante the exile. We recall Dante’s complaint of the saltiness of others’ bread in Paradiso 17. A central tenet of the Franciscan charism is its instability. As much as Francis apparently renounced “the world,” he also remained a part of it. Francis and his earliest followers indeed debated whether they should live in hermitages and pursue lives of contemplation. Later, leaders of the Church would try to fit Francis and his brothers into an existing paradigm for religious vocations. However, Francis ultimately rejected a cloistered life by specifically rejecting traditional forms of religion such as the Rule of St. Benedict, proclaiming himself to be “a new fool in the world.”9 In the Sacrum Commercium, an allegorical reflection on poverty, perhaps written two decades after Francis’s death, the saint is asked where his cloister is; he looks out over the world from a high place and explains that his cloister is the world.10 To state the obvious, Dante, unwillingly of course, lost all the elements of his life’s routine and made his home, or at least his dwelling, in several places including Verona and Ravenna. Francis of course is a man of prayer. He wrote a rule for Franciscan hermitages11 and toward the end of his life spent much of his time in remote places in contemplation. Still, like Christ after the Transfiguration, Francis always “came down from the mountain.” This is true even after the stigmatization; Francis realized that he had to do the same work after he received Christ’s own wounds that he had been doing since the time of his conversion.12 Francis recognized that his life was a continuing dialogue between the active and contemplative lives, and exactly what that meant for his day-to-day schedule changed over time. To use an image that Benedict had earlier employed and Dante would later borrow, there is constant movement up and down on Jacob’s ladder, stretching between earth and heaven. 9 This statement first appears in the so-called Assisi Compilation: ch.18. This text, dating from the 1240s or 1250s, is found in Francis of Assisi: The Founder. 10 This work is translated into English with the title The Sacred Exchange Between St. Francis and Lady Poverty. It is found in Francis of Assisi: The Saint; the particular part mentioned here is found on p. 552. 11 The text is found in Francis of Assisi: The Saint, 61–62. 12 This is most clearly stated in Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior, written ca. 1260. A translation is found in Francis of Assisi: The Founder. This work is usually cited as LM plus a chapter and section number. Francis taking up his work following his reception of the wounds of Christ is found at LM XIII, 5 and XIV, 1.

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Francis chose radical poverty in imitation of Christ, who chose to be poor. For Francis, this was rather obvious. After all, when God chose to become human, He could have been born anywhere and lived in luxury and comfort. However, God chose to be born in a stable and spend his first night in human form sleeping in an animal feeding trough. Worldly power and splendor were in fact the very temptations that Christ rejected, and he died poor and naked. To put it simply, since that is what God chose for Himself, that is what Francis chose. It is easy for us to imagine that such a choice was an easy one for Francis. After all, Francis lived “way back then,” as did Jesus, and both lived in a land of olive trees and shepherds. However, it is important to remember how different ancient Palestine and medieval Umbria were. To state the obvious, Jesus lived almost twelve centuries before Francis. It is useful to remember that Francis is closer to being our contemporary than to being Jesus’. The social and economic structures of thirteenth-century central Italian city-states were radically different from either Galilee or Jerusalem. In other words, Francis developed a way of living that was close to what he imagined Jesus would have chosen had he been a poor babe in Assisi rather than in Bethlehem. Clearly, there were multitudes in Francis’s own time and afterward who believed that Francis was successful. Francis’s most important biographer, Bonaventure, drove this point home by showing that Francis’s reception of the stigmata was God’s seal of authenticity of the Christ-like life that he lived.13 Although Dante’s Florence was a much more cosmopolitan place than Francis’s Assisi, clearly he could see Francis as a useful mirror of Christ when he confronted the question of how he could live his life in imitation of Christ. When we look at Francis’s life of extreme poverty, we are often bemused and confused. Why would he not even allow friars to touch money? Why did he on more than one occasion equate coins with dung? Why did Francis not realize the convenience of money, for example having a few coins to get food or medical care in emergency situations? There are several perspectives that can help us understand Francis’s “obsession” with poverty. First, money itself was rather new during his lifetime, and in fact much more of the economy was

13

LM IV, 11 and XIII, 9.

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barter than we sometimes realize. Money became a fundamentally different way of assessing wealth than land, which had been the traditional way of defining it. Money is both portable and liquid. You can take it with you and spend it in dozens of places. You can sit on your bed at night and play with it by running your fingers through your pile of silver (and, by Dante’s day, gold) coins.14 The pursuit of these pieces of metal tends to make people mad. One day when Francis was tending his father’s shop, a beggar came to ask for money in the name of God. Francis, in the process of learning the life of a merchant, shooed him away; he was bad for business. Only later did Francis realize that if that man had asked for something in the name of some great earthly lord, he would have given it to him—good business practice, after all. But when the beggar asked for help in the name of the Lord, he was tossed out onto the street.15 Francis intuitively realized that in a money economy, everything ultimately becomes defined in terms of its cost. The desire for money can easily trump every other concern. The fourteenth-century Sienese poet Cecco Angiolieri, who sparred poetically with Dante, proclaimed that “Florins are the best of kin.”16 Money trumps family. That same poet also guiltlessly proclaims that money can get him anything— status, power, and even sex! In the world of an emerging money economy, avarice thus becomes the characteristic sin. One only has to listen to the folks Dante meets in hell and purgatory to learn the pervasiveness of the sin of avarice in the world of the late medieval Italian city-states. Francis prophetically takes a stand on this issue by withdrawing fully from the money economy. When Dante is forced into what perhaps could be seen as a kind of genteel poverty and forced into a dependence on patrons after his exile, he will need to re-evaluate his own life and to develop a certain detachment from material goods. Who better to guide him

14 As the title indicates, Lester Little’s Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978) is a thorough examination of the issue. 15 The earliest version of this story is found in a text of 1240–1 usually called The Anonymous of Perugia. It is translated in Francis of Assisi: The Founder, 34–5. 16 Quoted in Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Knopf, 1979), 79. The most recent study of Cecco’s poetry in English is Fabian Alfie, Comedy and Culture: Cecco Angiolieri’s Poetry and Late Medieval Society (Leeds: Northern Universities Press, 2001).

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than Il Poverello, who chose to live without possessions? In one sense, Dante, unlike Francis, has no choice. Poverty, and the powerlessness that poverty entails, is thrust upon him. But in a larger sense, Dante does have the choice of accepting or rejecting the prophetic perspective that poverty will allow him. What perhaps is more difficult for modern people to grasp than Francis’s rejection of money is the joy he found in his abject poverty. In Nikos Kazantzakis’s twentieth-century novel about Francis, the narrator, Brother Leo, tells the reader that he can imitate Francis’s asceticism physically by using a rock for a pillow or eating slop in a beggar’s bowl. What is really hard for him, he confesses, is to find the joy and consolation of spirit that Francis felt in these activities.17 Dante will have to learn more than simply how to survive with less— perhaps much less—when he goes into exile. But he will also need to find joy and the possibility for spiritual growth in what looks hard and feels uncomfortable. The other essential virtue we find exemplified in Francis is humility. Of course, this is the virtue opposed to the vice of vices—pride, the first sin. However, in the Middle Ages, pride was seen as something more than the poster child for sin in general, though it was certainly that. Pride was the vice especially associated with the feudal aristocracy. One finds, for example, on the south porch of Chartres Cathedral, the sin of pride depicted as a knight falling from his horse—pride goes before a fall. Since Francis once sought to be a knight and was raised, as were many sons of merchants in late medieval Italy, on stories of great knights, from the heroes of Arthurian literature to the larger than life and larger than history characters of Charlemagne and Roland, he knew the tradition well.18 It was among these heroes that Francis wanted to locate himself before his conversion. Hence, Francis’s struggle to live according to the virtue of humility has a specific as well as a general dimension, and his desire to turn from knight to Knight of Christ is inseparable from his focus on the virtue of humility. This was not an easy task for him, because in his own lifetime he had already become an icon. Especially toward the end of his life, people treated him as a living saint, literally rushing to touch

17 18

Saint Francis, trans. P.A. Bien (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), passim. In the Assisi Compilation, found in Francis of Assisi: The Founder, 209.

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the hem of his garment. He must have been aware of the reverence with which his brothers, ordinary people, and even the pope regarded him, similar to how the more recent Mother Teresa must have been aware of her status as a living saint. Furthermore, Francis had no doubt that he was the recipient of extraordinary gifts from God; not to recognize that fact would have led to the sin of ingratitude. But it is a slippery slope from recognizing one’s great gifts to a sense of superiority stemming from a perception that somehow those gifts are no more than one’s due. However, Francis countered this temptation. He once stated that, “I can still have sons and daughters,”19 meaning that he understood that it was still possible that he could break his vow of chastity. In Pauline terms, one not only has to start the race, but to finish it as well.20 There is a revealing story in which one day a brother asked Francis what he thought of himself. Upon hearing Francis proclaim himself to be the greatest of sinners, the brother responded with incredulity: How could Francis seriously be comparing himself to thieves and murderers? Francis responded that if those sorts of people had all the gifts from God that he had received, they would have been more grateful than he is.21 In a sense, Francis is saying that goodness cannot be measured by the number of gifts one receives but how one accepts and uses the gifts offered. And this is something that is very hard to measure from the outside. From this point of view, Francis can honestly describe himself as a great sinner because he is in a position to know what the gap is in his life between offer and acceptance. It is likewise clear in reading Dante that he recognizes, as we might say today, how gifted he is; and he tells us in Purgatorio that he will spend a lot of time in the terrace of pride after his death. Dante knew he had to learn the nature of true humility, which was not rooted in denying his giftedness. The idea that humility begins in obedience is rooted in the monastic tradition, from Cassian and Benedict in particular.22 Francis, following this tradition, saw the connection, accepting not just that God

19

II Cel 133. Cf. II Tim 4:7. 21 II Cel 123. 22 In the Rule of St. Benedict, humility is called the first step of obedience. See The Rule of St. Benedict in English ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1982), Chapter 5. 20

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knew what was better for Francis than Francis knew himself, but that other people did as well. Francis realized that when we claim that we allow God alone to guide us, we often define God’s will for us to be what we want to do anyway. After all, God does not usually send us a text or whisper in our ear a precise plan for what we ought to do. On the other hand, people we deal with, especially superiors in the religious life, do make their plans for us perfectly clear, and often they are not quite what we had in mind. Francis sought not only to be obedient directly to God but also to humans. There are numerous stories of his humility before others. His order was “governed” by ministers, not masters, and the very name of the order, Friars Minor, makes a statement about the virtue of humility. The third quality, after poverty and humility, that we want to stress in Francis is his simplicity. Francis hardly invented the focused life, for it is central to the monastic tradition. But the monks practiced their simplicity inside a cloister and largely in rural areas. Francis and his brothers lived in the world, in an increasingly urban environment. It was a world of international trade and the era of the Crusades. Francis’s father often traveled to the fairs in France, and Clare’s mother had been a pilgrim to Jerusalem. The world was becoming bigger and more complex. Staying focused on the pearl of great price, that which is most valuable, was getting more and more difficult. As we look at Francis’s life, whether we concentrate on his asceticism, his preaching, his love of all God’s creatures, or his journey to meet with Sultan Malik al-Kamil, we realize that these are all parts of what, for Francis, was a fully integrated whole. It was God’s word that Francis always sought to listen to and obey. There were no diversions. In the journey of his life, he never strayed from the path or took excessive pleasure in the stops along the way. To state the obvious, if life was complex in Francis’s Assisi, imagine the Florence of Dante with his political, literary, and family interests and commitments. One important part of the complexity of Francis’s time was the growing academic culture of places such as Paris and Bologna. Peter Abelard was dead forty years before Francis was born, and Thomas Aquinas was born while Francis was still alive. At least indirectly, Francis experienced some of the ways this new culture worked through the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The universitytrained theologians and canon lawyers (Pope Innocent III was both) hammered out definitions and regulations. Francis’s carefully selected

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Cardinal Protector of the Order, Cardinal Ugolino, was a canon lawyer who later became Pope Gregory IX. In Francis’s dealings with the Curia and in his attempt to forge a Rule that both Rome and his friars could live with, he certainly dealt with men trained at the new universities. Francis accepted the validity of what these theologians and canon lawyers were doing and demanded that the friars all respect them. However frustrated he might have been with the canon lawyers at the Curia, he humbly worked with them, and a Rule was promulgated. But he clearly had his misgivings. He wondered about the value of scholarship and subtle definitions if they did not lead to lives more focused on what really mattered—God. One way of putting Francis’s concern into words is that Francis must have wondered about the value of learning and creating definitions of love if such work did not lead to one becoming a better lover.23 Although not really part of the university culture, Dante was nothing if not well educated and widely read. However, that does not mean that he always understood the purpose and goals of his own intellectual capacities and achievements. During the course of his life, he was continually reevaluating his own work, up to and including the fact that he abandoned the Convivio, leaving unfinished the work which was his most systematic attempt to disseminate his wide learning. Seen from the vantage point of the Commedia, the Convivio looks suspiciously like learning divorced from the love that moves the sun and the other stars. Although the names of the protagonists change between Francis’s and Dante’s lifetimes, what did not change was the violence and factional disputes that took place in and among the Italian city-states. There are numerous stories of Francis bringing peace where there was civic strife. The most famous of Francis’s peacemaking efforts is probably the colorful story of his driving the demons (of faction) from Arezzo, in part because it is depicted in the fresco cycle of Francis’s life in the Upper Church in Assisi. However, Francis also healed civic divisions, according to the sources, in Siena, Bologna, and Assisi.24 The Assisi story is particularly important. Francis lay ill while the bishop and the podestà were at each other’s throats. Since he could 23

See LM XI, 1. For a discussion of these stories, found in different primary sources, see William Cook, “Beatus Pacificus: Francis of Assisi, “Peacemaker”, The Cord 33 (1983): 130–136. 24

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not go to these two men in person, he wrote a song, now incorporated into the “Canticle of the Creatures,” for one of the brothers to sing to the two combatants. When the two men heard the words that called for forgiveness and reconciliation, they put aside their differences and made peace.25 Francis was a successful peacemaker because he was a creative peacemaker. Sometimes peacemaking requires more than simply having one more negotiating session or issuing one more ultimatum. It is clear from even the most cursory reading of the Inferno that Dante struggled both in the events in his life and intellectually with similar problems of faction and violence. The Commedia details how he had to learn that taking revenge for wrongs done, a formula he followed in the years immediately following his exile from Florence, is not a strategy for peace and security. If we define the mystic’s quest as the search for union with God, then certainly Francis was a mystic. The stigmatization becomes the ultimate evidence for Francis’s union with Christ. Certainly Bonaventure sees the reception of the stigmata in that way as it becomes the centerpiece for his Itinerarium Mentis, a detailed exposition of the mystical ascent written while he was staying at La Verna in imitation of Francis.26 However, Francis is quite unlike many of the well-known mystics of the past, especially those in the monastic tradition. Francis lived in the world and was a preacher. He was neither hermit nor cenobite. He was first and foremost an itinerant preacher and, hence, a talker. Nevertheless, the reception of the stigmata was not an isolated event in Francis’s life. Rather his whole life made up the quest that culminated at La Verna. As Thomas of Celano aptly put it, “Francis was always on his cross.”27 One does not unite with God in isolation from the way one leads one’s life. In an important essay, Ewert Cousins gets at the heart of this connection in describing an aspect of Francis’s mysticism, what he terms the “mysticism of the historical event.”28 This kind of experience of the divine, as Cousins describes it, is open to ordinary people, not

25 This part of the “Canticle of the Creatures,” also called the “Canticle of Brother Sun,” can be found in Francis of Assisi: The Saint, 114, verses 10–11. 26 The best translation of the Itinerarium is found in Bonaventure ed. & trans. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 51–116. 27 I Cel 115. 28 “Francis of Assisi: Christian Mysticism at the Crossroads” in Mysticism and Religious Traditions ed. Steven Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 163–190.

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just ascetics. When Francis brought an ox and an ass and a manger to the Christmas Eve mass at Greccio, he was using material things as a means for those in attendance to go beyond commemorating Christ’s birth to experiencing it through the use of these props that helped people to “be there.” Thomas of Celano understands this when he switches to the present tense when narrating the events at Greccio and by proclaiming that, “Greccio is made a new Bethlehem.”29 By providing props for ordinary people to share in the experience of God, Francis is, to use a modern word, “democratizing” the mystical quest. Of course, he is building on ideas especially central to the Cistercian writers of the twelfth century; one thinks immediately of works such as Aelred of Rievalux’s A Rule of Life for a Recluse.30 However, Francis is removing and adapting this mystical way from the cloister and from those who read Latin to a lay and vernacular world. Although Dante was a reader of Bernard of Clairvaux and other great Christian mystics, he was of course a layperson, active in the world of politics and a husband and father. As he comes to understand that ultimately what he seeks is experience of and union with God, he will look not only to the Abbot of Clairvaux but to Francis as a mentor and guide on that path to the eternal.

From Dante to Saint Francis Thirty-nine years after Francis died naked on the ground outside the Portiuncula, a tiny church just beyond the walls of Assisi, Dante Alighieri was born in the large and bustling city of Florence. Everyone knows that he wrote the monumental epic poem which has come to be called the Divine Comedy, in which a pilgrim (also named Dante) takes a trip to the three parts of the Christian afterlife; to hell, purgatory, and to heaven. We can begin our discussion of this poem by concentrating on one particular aspect of that poem that will be especially useful in our discussion of what Dante learned from Francis. When we teach the poem to our own students, we often begin by asking the following question: “What do you need to be a card-carrying member of Dante’s afterlife?” The answer to this question is 29

I Cel 85. Trans. Mary Macpherson in Aelred of Rievaulx: Treatises; Pastoral Prayer ed. Basil Pennington (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1971), especially 79–102. 30

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obvious, but it is also instructive. First of all, you need to be dead. And second, you need to be dead by the year 1300, which follows from the fact that 1300 is the year in which the poet Dante sets the poem. Viewed this way, the entire poem can be seen, and seen accurately, as Dante’s attempt to answer the question that we set out in our opening paragraph: “How do we learn from people different from ourselves?” For Dante, the pilgrim meets, speaks to, and learns from an astonishing variety of people from all places and times. He meets with people who lived during his own lifetime and who are a part of his own culture. He meets people from different cultures who lived long before he did. In fact, the poem includes, as “characters,” Adam and Eve (one cannot get further back than that); it includes the local town drunk from Dante’s own “town,” the city of Florence; and it includes an amazingly wide variety of people who lived in between, both real and fictional. (One of the daring moves of the Commedia is the way in which it fails to distinguish between what we would call real and fictional characters, as though somehow Shakespeare and Hamlet could occupy the same plane of reality.) So the next question is, once you have your membership card for Dante’s afterlife, what determines in which part you show up? In other words, what are the differences among the folks he meets in hell, the folks he meets in purgatory, and the folks he meets in heaven? When we ask this question of our students, the answer we often get is only half right: “In hell we meet sinners.” Right, we say. But then we quickly add, to the confusion of our students, that in Purgatory and in Paradise we met sinners as well—many every bit as bad as those we have met in hell. Sinning turns out not to be a fundamental distinction at all. Rather, the distinction on which much of the structure of the Commedia hinges is that, in hell, we meet sinners who have not repented. In Purgatory and in Heaven, we meet sinners who have. This is such an important distinction because it speaks not only to what Dante can learn from the characters that he meets in his journey through the afterlife but how he learns as well. A post-1300 example might help to make the point. A contemporary ethicist speaking about his own education during the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s has memorably said that when he learned how lethal racial hatred was, “I did not learn it so much from the sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. as from the video clips of Bull Connor.” (Bull Connor, as some younger readers may not know, was the grimly racist sheriff in Birmingham during the civil

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rights movement.) But then he goes on to say “But King had seen Connor first, and it was his sermons which cued us to look at what we had previously ignored.” Dante encounters figures in Hell so that he (and we) can see the Bull Connors of history. He encounters figures in Purgatory and in Heaven so that he can see the Martin Luther Kings (certainly a sinner himself ) of history. The passage goes on to say, again drawing on the dramatic history of the civil rights movement, “I learned that it was lethal when I heard of the four youngsters killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings in Birmingham: not from looking at the mangled bodies of the four children who died there, but from imagining the mangled selves of the adults whose readiness to destroy others whom they resented had backfired upon themselves and deadened them.”31 In the pilgrim’s extended tour of Hell, some of the most stark and effective scenes in all of literature, Dante “imagines” the mangled selves whose evil, throughout history, has backfired and deadened them. In this imagined Hell, Dante the pilgrim learns the quintessentially Christian lesson that the primary victim of real, radical, hardcore evil is always its perpetrator. Learning that lesson—though it is a lesson he learns only very slowly—is what allows Dante the pilgrim to make a conversion. By the time he gets to Heaven, he has learned what to avoid and why. Only now is he able to learn what to emulate. It is helpful to consider one other issue in thinking about the imaginative sweep of Dante’s cast of characters. Between Adam and the year 1300, there are an awful lot of dead people. Even in a poem as vast and ambitious as the Commedia, choices had to be made because the pilgrim could only meet, talk to, and respond to a very small fraction of that huge “set.” How did he decide on the “subset,” how did he decide whom to include and whom to leave out? He wants to give a sense of covering all the bases, that is, of looking at sin and virtue systematically in his vast poem. By creating elaborate divisions and subdivisions in all the realms of the afterlife, Dante the poet does a masterful job of selecting the right person for the right subdivision: Francesca da Rimini, People Magazine headliner for 1287 as his poster girl for lust, Judas the betrayer of Christ as a representative for treachery, and so on down a very long list. But something else

31 James Tunstead Burtchaell, The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical (Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 267.

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is at work as well. These folks not only work on the level of typical, representative embodiments of sin, helping Dante to draw for his readers a kind of universal picture of the nature of evil. They are also sinners who have the most to teach the pilgrim as a unique character with his own history and his own biography. What are the sins that are most likely to trip him up? For all that Dante the poet is able to conjure towards the illusion of covering everything, of presenting a kind of summa peccatorum, and later in the poem a summa virtutum, the closer one looks, the more one sees in these examples “Ghosts of Christmas Future” for the Pilgrim—what his life might have become without the conversion that the poem narrates. And, when we get to Paradise: What are the virtues he most needs to emulate? It is this question especially that which brings us back to Francis of Assisi. There are many ways to find the influence of Francis on Dante and his great poem. Biographical information should not be dismissed out of hand. Dante is buried in a Franciscan church and his daughter became a Franciscan sister. There is even evidence that Dante himself might have been a lay or Third Order Franciscan. And we can find traces of Francis and his order throughout the Commedia. Nick Havely, in his recent book Dante and the Franciscans, opens out a great many previously unsuspected Franciscan moments in the poem, and in the process does readers of the poem the ambiguous service of showing us how we are still a long way from fully connecting to all of them.32 But we can certainly mention a few of the more obvious ones. Francis himself shows up for a cameo appearance in the Inferno, in a story of the struggle for the soul of the wicked and self-serving Franciscan, Guido da Montefeltro, who winds up with the fraudulent in the eighth circle. Guido’s pride and arrogance can be seen in much sharper relief when viewed against the backdrop of Franciscan concerns that subtly permeate the canto.33 Franciscan moments likewise abound in Purgatory, especially in Dante’s discussion of the virtue of humility on the terrace of the proud. Dante’s paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer in Canto 11 on this

32 Nick Havely, Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the Commedia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 33 For Guido as a Franciscan, see Ronald B. Herzman, “‘I speak not yet of proof ’: Dante and the Art of Assisi,” in The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy ed. William R. Cook (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 199–209.

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terrace combines a Franciscan moment—for Francis himself had written a paraphrase of the Lord’s prayer34—with a strong Franciscan echo: Dante’s paraphrase of the Lord’s prayer includes a clear echo of Francis’s most famous poem, the “Canticle of the Creatures.” And Francis himself is given a particularly exalted place in heaven toward the end of the Paradiso, where he is placed just above St. Benedict and just below St. John the Baptist, in a section reserved for the great founders of religious orders. But the most fruitful place to understand and evaluate what Dante learned from Francis is to see what Dante actually says about Francis when he speaks about him at length. Though the pilgrim does not talk directly to Francis in Paradiso, he listens as another important character in the poem—no less a figure than Thomas Aquinas— recounts his life in the 11th canto. In this biographical sketch from Paradiso, he tells Francis’s story in seventy-five lines; from the point of view of the poem, that is a lot of ink: in fact, it is the longest purely biographical sketch in a poem which is over 14,000 lines long. But Dante, like all medieval—and all modern—biographers of Francis, had hundreds of stories to choose from in deciding what to include about Francis and his extraordinary life. As his principle of selection, he recounted those stories from which the pilgrim is able to draw special significance, stories which spoke to him and his situation. These also turn out to be stories which speak to his readers, then and now. Thus, even though every story Dante used in putting together his picture of Francis was already well known, his account of Francis’s life is unique, a kind of testament of what he learned from Francis that transcended the mundane and temporary. Another way of putting this is to ask two questions: First, why are the virtues of Francis important for Dante? And second, why are the virtues of Francis important for us, the readers of Dante? These questions can provide an implicit guide for the reading of Dante’s Francis. Dante hears the life of Francis in the Circle of the Sun, among the great practitioners of the virtue of wisdom. This is totally appropriate for at least two reasons. First, Francis is himself described as a sun by Thomas Aquinas (who in turn takes this imagery directly from Dante’s chief source for his account of Francis’s life, Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior):

34

Translated in Francis of Assisi: The Saint, 158–60.

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william r. cook and ronald b. herzman Di questa costa, là dov’ ella frange più sua rattezza, nacque al mondo un sole, come fa questo talvolto di Gange.35 (Paradiso 11.49–51) (From this slope where most it breaks its steepness a sun arose on the world, even as this is wont to rise from the Ganges.)

The passage makes the connection between the two suns explicit— between Francis and the Sun of the fourth heaven, the sun that provides heat and light to the universe—by his use of the word “questo,” reminding the reader of precisely where we are in the journey—we are speaking of one sun while we are “physically” in the other. Just as one sun provides the cosmos with heat and light, so does the other: Non era ancor molto lontan da l’orto, ch’el cominciò a far sentir la terra de la sua gran virtute alcun conforto. (Paradiso 11.55–57). (He was not yet very far from his rising when he began to make the earth feel, from his great virtue, a certain strengthening.)

Just as the sun of the heavens provides Dante and his readers the vantage point to contemplate the cosmos and to move from the created cosmos to its creator, seeing God as an artist and the cosmos as his great work of art, we are asked to see Francis, sealed by God with the miniature sun-like imprints of the stigmata, as another apt example of God’s artistry, and we are asked as well to contemplate and to learn from Francis as we learn from contemplating the heavens. Both the overture to the Circle of the Sun in Canto 10 and the description of the stigmatization of Francis in Canto 11 show God imprinting himself on his creation. Leva dunque, lettore, a l’alte rote meco la vista, dritto a quella parte dove l’un moto e l’altro si percuote; e lì comincia a vagheggiar ne l’arte di quel maestro che dentro a sé l’ama, tanto che mai da lei l’occhio non parte. (Paradiso 10.7–12) (Lift then your sight with me, reader, to the lofty wheels, straight to that part where the one motion strikes the other; and amorously there begin to gaze upon that Master’s art who within himself so loves it that His eye never turns from it.)

35 Text and translation of the Commedia are from the edition of Charles S. Singleton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970–75).

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nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arno da Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo, che le sue membra due anno portarno. (Paradiso 11.106–18) (then on the harsh rock between Tiber and Arno he received from Christ the last seal, which his limbs bore for two years.)

Second, Francis’s most important work, itself one of the masterpieces of Italian poetry, “The Canticle of the Creatures,” is also known as the “Canticle of the Sun,” or the “Canticle of Brother Sun.” And for good reason. As Alessandro Vettori puts it in his recent study of the poem: Significantly, the comments pertaining to the sun occupy more poetic space than those of other creatures. The sun is the first creature in the list. The mention of the sun at the beginning of the poem, “messer lo frate sole,” matches God’s first utterance, “Let there be light,” on the first day of creation (Gen. 1:3). The sun rightfully deserves a privileged position, since it mirrors the role of God; the sun’s function in nature resembles that of God in creation, as origin and sustenance of all creatures.36

As the beginning of Canto 10, quoted above, demonstrates, the sun has exactly the same position in Dante’s poem: it “mirrors the role of God.” And it is here through the vantage point provided by the Circle of the Sun that we are presented with one of the poem’s most extended discourses on the nature of the Trinitarian God. The cosmos, as an intricate interrelationship of parts to the whole consisting of both sameness and difference, is meant to lead to the contemplation of God, understood in Christian Trinitarian terms both as sameness in difference and as an intricate loving relationship of parts to the whole. Thus it would not be wrong to see the Circle of the Sun as Dante’s re-writing of the Canticle of the Sun, another homage to the Francis who is presented so prominently there. If this seems like a bit of a stretch to the modern reader, it may in part be because it is harder for us than for Dante and his original audience to see the sophisticated cosmological implications of the “Canticle of the Creatures,” a poem that is frequently seen as charming and even forceful, but like the caricature version of its author, somewhat unsophisticated and naive. But as Vettori has

36 Poets of Divine Love: Franciscan Mystical Poetry of the Thirteenth Century (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 81.

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demonstrated, the sophistication of the Canticle is due in no small part to the way the poem fleshes out an important Franciscan theme: “The recovery of the harmony governing the universe at creation, which the Book of Genesis identifies with the specific locus of the earthly paradise, represents one of the most significant goals for Franciscanism in its beginning stages.”37 His description of the way the “Canticle of Brother Sun” achieves this harmony through music sounds as though it could just as easily be a gloss to the Commedia: Francis’s passion for music naturally overflows into his poetic production. “The Canticle of Brother Sun” is a song that embraces all three types of Boethian music. It exalts the beauty of cosmic harmony as a chief quality of Franciscan theology; it displays the poet’s internal equilibrium of body and soul, which Francis strove to achieve from the beginning of his spiritual ascent . . . and, finally, it features a musical quality with an internal rhythm and a refrain.38

Boethius is of course one of the sages especially singled out in Thomas Aquinas’s description of the theologians who are part of his “wheel” in Canto 10 in the Circle of the Sun, and Boethian ideas of harmony permeate the Commedia.39 And music itself is one of the important themes in the Circle of the Sun, from Canto 10 with its powerful description of the Song of the Bride of God (139–148) to Canto 13 with the Song of the Trinity (25–27). One of the stories that Dante chooses to dramatize in his life of Francis in the Paradiso is his meeting with the sultan, described as follows in the Commedia: E poi che, per la sete del martiro, ne la presenza del Soldan superba predicò Cristo e li altri che ’l seguiro, e per trovare a conversione acerba troppo la gente e per non stare indarno, redissi al frutto de l’italica erba. (Paradiso 11.100–105]). (And when, in thirst for martyrdom, he in the proud presence of the Sultan, had preached Christ and them that followed him, and, finding the people too unripe for conversion and in order not to stay in vain, had returned to harvest of the Italian fields.) 37

Poets of Divine Love, Vettori, 58. Poets of Divine Love, Vettori, 67. 39 Another extremely important Boethian moment in the poem is the structure of the Circle of Mars: the discussion of contingency at the beginning of Paradiso 17 is especially dependent on Boethius. 38

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This is an interesting story about Francis, one that does not appear in all the sources, although it appears frequently in the visual tradition. (It is found in both narratives of Francis’s life in the Bardi chapel and in the Assisi frescoes, to choose three important examples.)40 Francis was looking for martyrdom, the sources tell us, and this seemed as good a way as any to find it. But he failed to find it at the hands of the Sultan because God had something more interesting in mind for him, a unique kind of spiritual martyrdom. In another scene from the life of Francis (one also described very vividly by Dante in this section of the Paradiso), Francis achieves a unique kind of martyrdom by receiving on his body the very wounds of Christ, the stigmata, which, as Dante puts it, was a seal which he wore for the final two years of his life. Francis’s own attempt at martyrdom failed. God’s succeeded. Francis comes back from this failed attempt at martyrdom—which was also a failed attempt at converting the Sultan—to continue his defining task: to preach penance and Christ crucified to those closer to home, to embody in his life the virtues of poverty and humility and simplicity which created an example for all of Europe to follow. He returned, in Dante’s words, to reap a crop in the Italian fields. This story becomes especially relevant to Dante (and to us) if we keep in mind that the background for this encounter between Francis and the Sultan, between Christianity and Islam, is the Crusades. Indeed, it is in the midst of the fifth crusade that Francis makes his journey. After the Circle of the Sun, Dante’s next step in his journey through Paradiso is, not coincidentally, to visit his great, great grandfather Cacciaguida, in the Circle of Mars; for his great, great grandfather, as it turns out, was a crusader. What Dante the pilgrim learns from this noble ancestor, who in fact, at least within the fiction of the poem, died as a martyr in the holy land—who “succeeded” in other words where Francis “failed”—is that his own mission is to be a crusader. But it is to be a crusader understood in a metaphorical way, a way which makes a good deal more sense if we keep in mind

40 For the panel painting in the Bardi Chapel and the fresco in Assisi, see William R. Cook, Images of St Francis of Assisi in Painting, Stone and Glass from the Earliest Images to ca. 1320 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1999), #68 and #25. For the Giotto frescoes in the Bardi Chapel, see William R. Cook, “Giotto and the Figure of St. Francis” in The Cambridge Companion to Giotto ed. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 142–56.

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the model of Francis: Dante is to become a crusader through the word rather than through the sword. Dante, like Francis, will suffer a spiritual martyrdom, in his case not the stigmata but the martyrdom of his own exile. And Dante, in learning to turn the martyrdom of this bitter exile into a true pilgrimage, must preach the vision he has learned in his visit to the afterlife. No less than Francis, he must return from his journey to preach, in order “to reap a crop in the Italian field.” He will reap his crop by sowing the seeds of the Commedia itself. Had Francis received his martyrdom at the hands of the sultan, Dante implies, his work as preacher of the word would have been cut short. But because this work allowed Francis to do what he had been called upon early in his life to do, to rebuild God’s church, Francis’s mission becomes a model for Dante’s mission as preacher of the word through his poema sacro, just as Francis’s virtues are a model for what Dante needs in order to carry out that mission. Francis endures the spiritual but no less real martyrdom of the stigmata. Dante learns from Cacciaguida that he will suffer the spiritual martyrdom of exile, but also that his mission can only be accomplished by embracing his martyrdom rather than fleeing from it. Only in this way will he be able to turn exile into pilgrimage. Cacciaguida is nothing if not forthright about the bitterness of exile as he opens the book of the pilgrim’s future. But this bitterness is precisely what will give Dante’s words the authenticity of lived experience. The story of Francis and the sultan is not simply the story of a quest for martyrdom. It is the story of a gesture of reconciliation as well, a gesture that provides a real alternative to the violence of the Crusades, and was understood this way in early Franciscan documents. In the earliest surviving rule for the order that Francis founded (1221), we are told that those “Going among the ‘Saracens and other Non Believers’ . . . can live spiritually among the Saracens and nonbelievers in two ways. One way is not to engage in arguments and disputes but to be subject to every creature for God’s sake . . .”41 No wonder Francis was not able to win a martyr’s palm. He came not to dispute, let alone to fight, but to speak—and to listen. Francis fashions himself into a new kind of crusader, an anti-crusader, who went among the Sultan as a peacemaker and as a reconciler, and

41

In Francis of Assisi: The Saint, 74.

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the rule of 1221 suggests that this is an appropriate model for the brothers who are to follow him. President Bush’s unfortunate use of the word “Crusade” in the wake of the tragedy of 9/11 suggests that the collective attention span of the Christian West is a lot shorter than that of the Islamic East. The Islamic world remembers all too well what the word “Crusade” originally meant. The fact that a Franciscan alternative to the crusade mentality existed, and that this alternative was in some way sensed by Dante, who learns from Francis that the sword inevitably hurts the one who wields it, can perhaps be seen even today as a sign of hope, a sign that there are other places to seek solutions besides the sword. In any case, it is in this section of the poem that Dante learns that the sword is the problem, not the solution, because in this section of the poem he explicitly renounces the partisan politics which can only be sustained by the sword, and learns that his weapon is the pen.42 The central image in the life of Francis is the cross. It is the cross which speaks to him at the beginning of his life and it is the wounds of the cross which are incorporated into his body toward the end. From beginning to end, his life is best understood, as Bonaventure makes clear, through a series of appearances of the cross, and these appearances represent a deeper and deeper assimilation of the meaning of the cross in his life, so that finally Francis cannot be understood apart from putting on the cross of Christ. In the movement of the Paradiso from the Circle of the Sun to the Circle of Mars, Dante pays homage to this aspect of Francis’s life and connects the two circles by having a cross speak to the pilgrim as well. Francis’s life may be presented in the Circle of the Sun, but it is surely not left behind in the Circle of Mars. For Cacciaguida speaks to Dante from within the cross that bisects the planet Mars and that is a mosaic of the souls who are present there. Thus it would not be wrong to suggest that Cacciaguida, speaking out of the cross of Mars,

42 Michael F. Cusato has recently proposed that there are profound connections between Francis’ encounter with the Sultan and his reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna. Those connections are certainly not without implications for Dante and the way that the stigmatization of Francis is incorporated into the Commedia. See Michael F. Cusato, “Of Snakes and Angels: The Mystical Experience Behind the Stigmatization Narrative of 1 Celano,” in Jacques Dalarun, Michael F. Cusato, Carla Salvati, The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi: New Studies, New Perspectives (St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publication, 2006), 29–74. For a bibliography of recent work on the account of Francis’ meeting with the Sultan, see p. 61, n. 69.

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does for Dante the pilgrim what the cross at the church of San Damiano did for Francis at the beginning of his conversion: Cacciaguida presents Dante with his mission. It is interesting in this context to note that in the third fresco of the life of Francis in the upper church of the Basilica in Assisi, Francis sees crusader crosses in a dream when he is a youth and thinks that his goal will be to become a knight, a crusader.43 Only gradually does he learn that his mission is to turn from a knight of the world to a knight of Christ. Something like that same pattern can be discerned in the Commedia, as Dante learns the limitations of violence, and learns to pick up his own cross. Dante shows us in Inferno 10 what happens when people focus on differences and refuse to consider any commonality. Farinata and Cavalcante, despite commonalties of citizenship and even of kinship, take partisanship to its ultimate extreme by refusing to recognize each other’s existence. As eternal tomb-mates, they embody the absurdity of Guelf-Ghibelline quarrels by showing how they lead to an inevitable solipsistic conclusion. Communities by definition involve living with each other. Hell, at least in Dante’s manifestation, is all about what happens when one refuses to acknowledge “otherness.” One way that Dante learned from Francis, not overlooking all of their differences in lifestyle, circumstances, and education, was to figure out what he did have in common with Francis, and how to use this commonality to continue a tradition, a trajectory which Francis uniquely embodied. Dante and Francis fundamentally shared “creature-hood” (recall Francis’s “Canticle of the Creatures”), humanity, Christianity. Francis and Dante were heirs of much common tradition and culture, coming from classical, biblical, and earlier Christian roots and coming from the land and tongue of Italy. It means a great deal that they prayed the same prayers, visited the same shrines, and ate the same Eucharistic banquet. But what, finally, does Dante learn from Francis? Granting all that they shared, the question then becomes “How did Dante take the quintessential Franciscan virtues and apply them to his own life, recognizing the necessary transposition he needed to apply them to his changed circumstances?” Dante did not put on a rough habit and sandals and preach in the towns of Central Italy, retiring to caves from time to time for periods of extreme asceticism and prayer. He did not found a religious order.

43

See Cook, Early Images, #25.

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He did not receive the wounds of the stigmata. But he took what was central to Francis and made it his own in some powerful ways. We have already suggested that the virtues that Francis preaches are precisely the virtues that Dante needs. He needs humility because pride is his besetting sin, his great temptation, the great temptation for all people of great talent, but especially for a man who cannot help but know how good he really is, and for a man who temperamentally seems almost eager to scorn those who have been given lesser gifts. The Francis who welcomes sister death is Dante’s great teacher, because for Francis humility springs from a recognition that our common humanity reduces differences of accomplishment to incidentals. If Dante needs Francis to teach him the virtue of humility because of nature, he needs Francis to teach him the virtue of poverty because of nurture, which is to say the circumstances of his life. Dante, the poet of exile, must learn to do without. Franciscan poverty teaches Dante that it is possible to face the circumstances of his exile by embracing them, as Francis literally embraces his “lady poverty,” whom he marries in Dante’s daring version of the story when he, Francis, strips himself naked in front of his father. It might be worthwhile to track these virtues in Dante and their relation to the poem in a bit more detail. Some readers of the poem accept Dante’s fiction at face value and have no particular problem with the fact that he assigns real people, many of whom were known to him personally, to all the realms of the afterlife. There are others though, who are troubled, indeed in some cases deeply troubled, by the fact that Dante gets to play God. What gives him the right to judge, and to pretend that his judgments and God’s are the same? How, after all, can he or anyone really know that Boniface VIII will be down with the Simoniacs or that Guido da Montefeltro is in the company of the False Counselors? If we look at it in this way, one needs to search for some sign of humility to rescue a poem which might otherwise be seen as an act of terminal pride. In Dante’s afterlife, there are many sinners who exhibit just the kind of pride to which Dante himself stands in danger of succumbing. Perhaps the best example is Ulysses, whose journey to physical and moral destruction is also the journey of the pride of unfettered intellect. Without humility, Dante’s journey in constructing the Commedia and Ulysses’ journey into unknown territory are the same. The poet knows this and builds it into the fabric of the poem, so that Dante’s journey is Ulysses’ journey rewritten in the spirit. How does he accomplish this?

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Without suggesting that these are in any way exclusive, let us suggest two answers to the question. First, unlike Ulysses, who goes out on his own, Dante puts himself under the yoke of those who have come before him, as seen in his three guides and what they represent. He is not allowed to chart his own course, but must respond to the directions which have been made available to him by his own patient study. It will not do to say that in constructing these guides Dante was simply enabling himself to say what he wanted to say in any case. The Dante who wrote the poem is the Dante who is unmatched in his ability to mine the traditions that he draws from, and the more carefully one reads the intertextual resonances of the poem that constitute the play among these traditions, the more one is astonished at just how careful a student and a scholar Dante was, submitting himself to their discipline before he engages them in debate. They represent the limits that Dante builds into his journey. Second, in presenting the poem as the conversion story of Dante the pilgrim, he shows himself to be guilty of the very sins for which he judges others, opening his worst self up for our scrutiny, and proclaiming by the chain of intercessors that comes to his rescue that it is grace that will allow him to overcome these sins, not personal accomplishment. Like the Francis who says that if great sinners had been given the same graces that he had, they would have responded to them better than he did, Dante asserts that his very salvation is more an act of mercy than of merit, and without that mercy he would be with the likes of Farinata, Pier delle Vigne, and Ulysses. Like Augustine’s Confessions, the poem calls attention to the sinfulness of its protagonist, and presents itself as an extended attempt at a self-scrutiny impossible without the virtue of humility. The virtue of poverty has a very important place in Dante’s conversion, as we have already suggested. Though the condition of poverty was not voluntary for Dante as it was for Francis, his acceptance of that condition is, and is tied to his mission as a poet of exile. Dante did not ask to follow the hard path of exile, coming to know “how salty is the taste of another’s bread and how hard the path to descend and mount by another man’s stairs” (Paradiso 17.58–60). But this is the condition that will enable him to see things as they are, the condition that provides him with the vantage point that will enable him to write the poem. The poverty of exile is a lens for Dante to see reality more clearly. It also provides an important credential for Dante. The Commedia presents a sustained critique of

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the practices of the institutional Church. In a fairly radical way, that critique is tied to the wealth of the Church, a wealth that keeps the Church from focusing on its spiritual mission, a wealth that puts the Church where it does not belong—in the midst of deadly and prolonged power struggles—a wealth, finally, that forces the Church to ignore its origins and its destiny. Whether in the scathing indictment of papal greed and nepotism in Inferno 19 and papal power in Inferno 27, the apocalyptic reflections on the evils of the Donation of Constantine in Inferno 19 and Purgatorio 32, or the denunciation of Simony in Beatrice’s final speech in Paradiso 30, the poem implies that a new commitment to poverty is the communal as well as individual starting point for Church reform. Just as in a general way Dante cannot play the part of the prophet without purifying his own life—his conversion is the precondition for his prophetic denunciations of the evils of his own time—in specific terms Dante cannot authentically and convincingly indict the Church for its wealth without his own embrace of poverty. In this, Francis is his teacher, and he has learned well from him. Clearly a number of the important ways of looking at the Commedia and its creator come into sharper focus when seen in relation to their Franciscan roots. To see Dante as a peacemaker, to see Dante as a “cosmic poet,” to see Dante as a crusader, is to see that his life and his great work owe an enormous amount to Francis. And while it would be wrong to suggest that Dante’s very vocation as a vernacular poet is uniquely Franciscan, it is hard to resist the analogy that Francis is to the vernacularization of piety (and of poetry) as Dante is to the vernacularization of poetry (and of piety, claiming as he does for his work the title of “poema sacro”). To state the obvious, these virtues are no less necessary now as well. Students need the humility to see that they can learn from their teachers. Children need to have the humility to see that they can learn from their parents. But teachers, if they are to be good teachers, must not only learn from their students, but they need the humility to know that they have to learn from their students. And parents, if they are to be good parents, must have the humility to know that the most important lessons they will ever be taught will be from their children. Francis went to the poor not only for what he could do for them, but also for what they could do for him. If we expand this notion to our own role as students of Francis and of Dante, we can see from Francis and from Dante’s appropriation

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of Francis that we too can learn from the most unlikely sources. We, too, as teachers and merchants and plumbers and rocket scientists, as married or single people, as Christians or non-Christians, can live lives of the 21st century that are in certain ways guided by and in imitation of these bookends of the 13th century: Francis and Dante. If we heed them, we discover that they rank with the great teachers and examples of human history.

A FRANCISCAN EXPLANATION OF DANTE’S CINQUECENTO DIECE E CINQUE Elvira Giosi

Non sarà tutto tempo sanza reda L’aguglia che lasciò le penne al carro per che divenne mostro e poscia preda; ch’io veggio certamente, e però il narro, a darne tempo già stelle propinque, secure d’ogn’intoppo e d’ogne sbarro, nel quale un cinquecento diece e cinque, messo di Dio, anciderà la fuia con quel gigante che con lei delinque.1 (Purgatorio 33. 37–45) The eagle that had left its plums within the chariot, which then became a monster and then a prey, will not forever be without an heir; for I can plainly see, and thus I tell it: stars already close at hand, which can’t be blocked or checked, will bring a time in which, dispatched by God, a Five Hundred and Ten and Five will slay the whore together with that giant who sins with her.

In the above verses Beatrice announces to Dante the Pilgrim the arrival of a divine avenger who will kill the Babylonian prostitute and the giant who sins with her. Critics of The Comedy have always interpreted the image of the prostitute and the giant as symbols of the Church and the Empire; while they have viewed the cinquecento diece e cinque as a numerical transposition of the Latin letters DXV.2 1 For the Italian passages of the Comedy, see Dante Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, Edizione Nazionale, 4. vols. (Milano: Mondatori, 1966–67); for all English passages, see Dante Alighieri, The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols. trans., Allen Mandelbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). 2 For the discussion of this problem, see for instance B. Nardi, Dante e la cultura medievale (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1983); N. Havely, Dante and the Franciscans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); C.T. Davis, “Rome and Babylon in Dante,” in Dante, the critical complex 5 (2003): 69–90; G. Petrocchi, Vita di Dante (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1986); for the many interpretations of the DXV, see for instance L’Ottimo Commento della Divina Commedia (Pisa: Capurro, 1827); Enciclopedia Dantesca (Rome: Istituto, 1970–78); C.T. Davis, “Dante’s Vision of History,” Dante Studies 93 (1975);

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According to the most largely accepted theory about this mysterious number, Dante was referring to a DUX, probably an Emperor, who would soon have put an end to the corruption and the political disorder of his times. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the cinquecento diece e cinque, traditionally interpreted as an Emperor or a DUX, heir to the Roman Empire, could be instead a messianic character whose arrival inaugurates the beginning of the seventh status which is believed to come by means of the Spiritual Franciscans of the Joachimite tradition. The traditional interpretation of the cinquecento diece e cinque, which Dante describes as an heir to the “aguglia,” the eagle, is based in turn on the classical interpretation of the eagle as a symbol of the imperial power. Nonetheless, this interpretation of the eagle changes radically in light of an attentive reading of some works by Joachim of Fiore, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Richard of Saint Victor. By closely looking at these texts, in fact, the reader can find a different symbolical interpretation of the eagle itself, which could have shaped the way in which Dante addresses it. In his Enchiridion in Apocalypsim, while describing the New Jerusalem that will descend from Heaven to Earth in the seventh age, Joachim writes that the southern side of the city—whose plan is square— coincides with one of the four living beings of Ezekiel’s prophecy: “The southern side [corresponds] to the eagle, symbol of the contemplatives.”3 According to Joachim, in the eagle is also represented the whole body of the Hierusalem coelestis: “The body of the city [corresponds] to the eagle, which represents the Holy Mother Church, who belongs to the clerics.”4 The episode of the bird losing its feathers5 in Dante’s Purgatory recalls Joachim’s writings in which the eagle is the symbol of the new Church of the contemplatives in the seventh status. The eagle described by Dante, in fact, plummets down to the R. Hollander, Allegory in Dante’s “Commedia” (Princeton: Princeton University, 1969); R. Kay, “Dante’s Razor and Gratian’s DXV,” Dante Studies 97 (1979): 65–95; R. Kaske, “Dante’s DXV and Veltro” Traditio 17 (1961), 185–254; C. Emiliani, “The Veltro and the Cinquecento diece e cinque,” Dante Studies 111 (1993): 149–152. 3 Joachim of Fiore, Enchiridion super Apocalypsim (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Brill, 1986), 80. The Franciscan Spirituals practiced a close observance of the Franciscan Rule and stressed the importance of poverty; they were inspired by the teachings of Joachim of Fiore in their commitment for a reformation of religious morality. 4 Ibid. 5 Purgatorio 32. 124–126.

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ground, losing its feathers and spreading them all over the chariot. In Joachim of Fiore’s Expositio in Apocalypsim it is possible to find the meaning of such allegory depicted in Purgatory. Specifically, when commenting on the passage from Revelation 21:13, Joachim states that the wings of the eagle represent the grace of contemplation: it has two wings, as there are two virtues that are absolutely necessary in contemplation, namely wisdom and charity. Without these virtues there could be no perfection in contemplation.6 Very similar explanations of this symbolism can be found in Saint Thomas Aquinas’ In Psalmos Davidis expositio. In commenting on Psalm 54, he writes that “facility in contemplation is symbolized by the feathers.”7 According to him, feathers are virtues: one kind of feather is charity, which is the virtue that flies the highest in contemplation and another kind of feather is wisdom, through which the Truth is contemplated.8 Furthermore, Saint Thomas reports that, according to Richard of Saint Victor, contemplation can be compared to the flight of birds: flying upwards means to contemplate the highest causes of creation, while flying downwards means to consider the lowest effects.9 In considering these texts, then, Dante’s eagle can be interpreted as the Church. Consequently, its fall and the feathers it leaves in the chariot symbolize its present inability to rise high in a contemplative flight because of its corruption and of its consequent lack of wisdom and, above all, charity. In his Commedia, though, Dante states that this eagle will have an heir: based on Joachim’s and Thomas’s texts, one could suppose that Dante’s heir could be a true contemplative come to restore the virtues of the Church in their original purity. It is evident that the poet knew the above-mentioned exegetical tradition related to the symbolic value of the eagle and its wings and feathers. In fact, in Purgatorio 31, Beatrice reproaches Dante for abandoning the study of theology and devoting himself to the study of pagan philosophy. In this context, pagan philosophy represents a worldlier and material field of interest: Ben ti dovevi, per lo primo strale de le cose fallaci, levar suso di retro a me che non era piú tale. 6 7 8 9

Joachim of Fiore, 161. Saint Thomas Aquinas, In Psalmos Davidis Expositio, Psalmus 54. Ibid. Ibid.

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elvira giosi Non ti dovea gravar le penne in giuso, (my italics) ad aspettar piú colpo, o pargoletta o altra novità con sí breve uso. (55–60). (. . . For when the first arrow of things deceptive struck you, then you surely should have lifted up your wings to follow me, no longer such a thing. No green young girl or other novelty— such brief delight—should have weighed down your wings, awaiting further shafts.) (54–60)

In these verses, Dante is openly using the metaphor of the feathers, which is described as turned downwards. The poet’s intention is to express Beatrice’s disapproval of Dante the pilgrim’s worldly interests, and his consequent descent from the heights of the contemplation of Truth, where she would have carried him, had he chosen to follow her, “di retro a me” (“to follow me” [57]). The cinquecento diece e cinque could then represent a contemplative, able to fly high and, consequently, capable of renewing the contemplative tradition of the Church in the seventh status. Significantly, because of divine intervention, Dante arrives in Purgatory after dreaming of an eagle that flies him high and drops him in front of the entrance of the second reign.10 The pilgrim is now in front of the door of Purgatory, which he can access after climbing three steps of different colors. The guardian angel of Purgatory, armed with a sparkling sword, is represented as having both feet firmly planted on the third and highest step.11 Dante’s experience recalls a passage in the Book of Ezekiel, in which the prophet relates his vision of a divine city to which he arrives after being flown directly by God’s hand. The city is located on top of a mountain, just like Dante’s Purgatory; a sparkling, bronze-colored man welcomes the prophet and leads him to the oriental entrance of the temple, where God himself tells him that the temple is the site of his throne, and the place where the soles of his feet rest.12 What 10

Purgatorio 9. 19–33. “Sovra questo tenëa ambo le piante/l’angel di Dio sedendo in su la soglia/ che mi sembiava pietra di diamante” (“And on this upper step, God’s angel— seated/upon the threshold, which appeared to me/to be of adamant—kept his feet planted.” [Purgatorio. 9. 103–105]) 12 Ezechiel, 43:7: “And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever . . .” 11

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catches the reader’s attention, as in Dante’s narrative, is the emphasis on God’s feet. This reappears in Purgatorio 21 where Dante refers to the guardian angel’s feet being planted on top of the third step.13 Furthermore if we take into consideration the verses of Inferno 9 where the messo celeste is described as crossing the palude stigia without wetting the soles of his feet, we can infer that there is a significant connection to the divine avenger.14 The multiple references to the feet symbolism in The Comedy induce the reader to ask whether their symbolism originates from the Bible. Specifically, many Old Testament passages attempt to render a concrete and anthropomorphic picture of God’s omnipotence by referring to God’s feet, or to the feet of God’s favorites. The extremities, when described as steady and firm, serve as symbols for the soul’s fortitude and rectitude. Innocent and tormented by his enemies, David invokes God for help in Psalm 17: “Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not.”15 In Psalm 18, David admits that “It is God that girdeth [him] with strength, and maketh [his] way perfect. He maketh [his] feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth [he] upon [his] high places.”16 The firmness of David’s feet, then, is a symbol of God’s favor and a concrete representation of his mental strength. Firm human extremities can also be a symbol of steadiness of faith, while on the contrary, when unsteady, they can be used as a representation of a lack of faith.17 To walk along the right path means to follow the divine teachings without going astray. Recalling to true religion all the false faithful, who have wandered away from

13 “Secco vapor non surge piú avante/ch’al sommo d’i tre gradi ch’io parlai/ dov’ ha ’l vicario di Pietro le piante” (“Dry vapor cannot climb up any higher/ than to the top of the three steps of which/I spoke—where Peter’s vicar plants his feet” [Purgatorio, 21. 52–54]). 14 “Come le rane innanzi a la nimica/biscia per l’acqua si dileguan tutte,/fin ch’a la terra ciascuna s’abbica,/vid’ io piú di mille anime distrutte/fuggir cosí dinanzi ad un ch’al passo/passava Stige con le piante asciutte/ . . . Ben m’accorsi ch’elli era da ciel messo” (“As frogs confronted by their enemy,/the snake, will scatter underwater till/each hunches in a heap along the bottom,/so did the thousand ruined souls I saw/take flight before a figure crossing Styx/who walked as if on land and with dry soles. . . . I knew well he was Heaven’s messenger” [Inferno 9. 76–85]). 15 Psalms, 17: 5. 16 Ibid., 18: 32–33. See also 18: 36–38: “Thou hast enlarged my steps under me, that my feet did not slip. I have pursued my enemies, and overtaken them: neither did I turn again till they were consumed. I have wounded them that they were not able to rise: they are fallen under my feet.” 17 See Psalms, 119: 97–105, and 73: 1–3.

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God’s word, the prophet Isaiah calls out: “Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood . . . wasting and destruction are in their paths” (5:79). Since in the Bible feet represent the soul’s rectitude and its coherence in following the path of the divine Word, then it is not a coincidence that both the statue of Nabuccodonosor in Daniel’s Book and that of the Veglio in the Commedia have one unsteady foot that might cause the statue itself to collapse.18 The biblical symbolism of feet can also be found in the New Testament in the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians in which feet represent a courageous disposition of the soul itself, strong and ready to hold out against the attacks of the devil.19 In the Commedia, we find many elements suggesting that Dante had a deep knowledge of this biblical and evangelical symbolism. In fact, the text is literally full of references to extremities, either those belonging to the pilgrim or those belonging to the damned. In Inferno 11, Dante and Virgil are about to enter the city of Dite armed with a feeling of self-confidence granted to them by divine intervention: e noi movemmo i piedi inver’ la terra, sicuri appresso le parole sante. Dentro li ’ntrammo sanz’alcuna guerra. (Inferno 9. 104–106). (And we moved our feet towards that land safely, having heard his holy words. We entered the city without a struggle.) (My translation)

Later on, the two pilgrims are climbing down the ruina scoscesa and Dante notices that his body is unusually heavy. In fact, according to a physical law peculiar to the first reign, his weight is increasing because of the greater gravity of the sins that are punished in that part of Hell. While in Inferno 9, the intervention of the angel had

18

The statue of Nabuccodonosor was used to force idolatry upon the people, so the early Christian commentators connected it to the beast’s apocalyptic number, the 666; this is why it could be given completely different physical attributes than biblical figures such as David, who claimed to moral virtue. Cf. R.K. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: a Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art and Literature, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), 40. 19 The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, 13:15: “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness. And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”

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made his steps sicuri (steady), in Inferno 12 the increasing load of sins makes them unsteady and slippery: Cosí prendemmo via giú per lo scarco di quelle pietre, che spesso moviensi sotto i miei piedi per lo novo carco. (Inferno 12. 28–30) (And so we made our way across that heap of stones, which often moved beneath my feet because my weight was somewhat strange for them.)

In Inferno 16, Dante walks under the rain of fire without being burned by it. The poet has Iacopo Rusticucci stress that this is a clear sign of the pilgrim’s innocence, and the proof that he does not belong to Hell.20 Through Rusticucci’s words, the text clearly connects Dante’s steady feet to his innocence, confirming the interpretation that steady feet symbolize inner purity and conformity with divine will. Dante’s representation of the pilgrim’s path is, nonetheless, completely literal in this first cantica, and the author gives no explicit hint of any allegoric and spiritual meaning to it. Where the symbolism becomes more explicit is in the second cantica. In Purgatorio 15, Dante falls to the ground and starts having prophetic visions. Virgil asks him what is wrong, but a few moments later he admits to the fact that he already knew the answer, and had asked his pupil about the reason of his fainting only to “make his foot strong,” that is, as Virgil himself explains in the subsequent two verses, to awaken him from his unnatural sleep. Here, piede is by Virgil’s admission, a metaphor for a function of the soul, that is to say, its capacity to awaken from sleep.21 When, in Purgatorio 17, an angel invites the pilgrim to climb the mountain, showing them the right direction, Virgil exclaims: “Or accordiamo a tanto invito il piede” (“Now let our steps accept his invitation” [Purgatorio 17. 6]); accordare il piede is, in this context, a clear metaphor of the spiritual attitude they should have in order to 20 “[. . .]la fama nostra il tuo animo pieghi/a dirne chi tu se’, che i vivi piedi/ cosí sicuro per lo ’nferno freghi” (“one said, ‘then may our fame incline your mind/ to tell us who you are, whose living feet/can make their way through Hell with such assurance” [Inferno 16. 31–33]). 21 “Non dimandai “Che hai?” per quel che face/chi guarda pur con l’occhio che non vede,/quando disanimato il corpo giace;/ma dimandai per darti forza al piede: cosí frugar conviensi i pigri, lenti/ad usar lor vigilia quando riede” (“I did not ask ‘What’s wrong with you?’ as one/who only sees with earthly eyes, which—once/the body, stripped of soul, lies dead—can’t see;/I asked so that your feet might find more force” [Purgatorio 15. 133–138]).

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be able to proceed, being that Dante’s physical trip through the three reigns is nothing else than a symbol of his spiritual ascent to God. The spiritual meaning of the word piede becomes even more evident in Purgatorio 18. Here Dante, commenting on Virgil’s explanation of how the human soul becomes attached to the objects of love, observes that the soul makes its way towards a good or evil object not willingly but almost carried and compelled by the object itself. The moral inclination of the soul towards a good or evil object is described by Dante as the act—on the part of the soul itself—of moving its feet along a straight or twisted path.22 Besides, it is Beatrice herself who, in Paradiso 4, warns the reader about the inappropriateness of interpreting too literally any reference to hands and feet in religious texts.23 It is exactly in this third cantica that the spiritual and metaphorical meaning of the feet becomes clear beyond doubt. At the beginning of Paradiso 5, Beatrice explains the origin of the glowing light surrounding the blessed souls—a light created by their charity—which in turn derives from their vision of God, and represents an object of contemplation and love. The movement of the intellect towards its object of contemplation is described by Dante as a movement of the feet towards the apprehended good, which in this case is God himself. “To walk” means then to apprehend an object, and so it is a clear metaphor of the function of the human intellect.24 Later in the Canto, the reader meets the soul of Justinian,

22 “Le tue parole e ’l mio seguace ingegno”,/rispuos’io lui, “m’hanno amor discoverto,/ma ciò m’ha fatto di dubbiar piú pregno;/ché s’amore è di fuori a noi offerto/e l’anima non va con altro piede,/se dritta o torta va, non è suo merto” (“Your speech and my own wit that followed it,”/I answered him, “have shown me what love is; but that has filled me with still greater doubt;/for love’s offered to us from without/and is the only foot with which soul walks,/soul—going straight or crooked—has no merit” [Purgatorio 18. 40–45]). 23 “Cosí parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno,/però che solo da sensato apprende/ ciò che fa poscia d’intelletto degno./Per questo la Scrittura condecende/a vostra facultate, e piedi e mano/attribuisce a Dio e altro intende” (“Such signs are suited to your mind, since from/the senses only can it apprehend/what then becomes fit for the intellect./And this is why the Bible condescends/to human powers, assigning feet and hands/to God, but meaning something else instead” [Paradiso 4. 40–45]). 24 “S’io ti fiammeggio nel caldo d’amore/di là dal modo che ’n terra si vede,/ sí che del viso tuo vinco il valore,/non ti maravigliar, ché ciò procede/da perfetto veder, che, come apprende,/cosí nel bene appreso move il piede” (“If in the fire of love I seem to flame/beyond the measure visible on earth/so that I overcome your vision’s force,/you need not wonder; I am so because of my perfect vision— as I grasp/the good, so I approach (here the literal meaning is ‘I move my feet towards’) the good in act” [Paradiso 5. 1–6]).

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the reformer of the Roman Code of Law: in his words, the act of embracing Christianity, clearly a spiritual process, is also symbolized through the act of moving one’s feet towards it: Tosto che con la Chiesa mossi i piedi, a Dio per grazia piacque di spirarmi l’alto lavoro, e tutto ’n lui mi diedi. (Paradiso 6. 22–24). (As soon as my steps shared the Church’s path, God, of His grace, inspired my high task as pleased Him. I was fully drawn to that.)

In Justinian’s case, the movement of the feet symbolizes his adaptation to the will of God’s revelation. In Paradiso 22, when Saint Benedict tells Dante about his friars’ devotion, steadiness of feet and coherence with Christian faith are clearly identified through his words.25 As Dante’s narrative progresses, he comes to identify the feet with Saint John,26 and the highest level of spiritualization of this fundamental point is reached in Paradiso 20, where the extremities of the human body are used as a symbol for Christ as Redemptor.27 In this case, then, behind the metaphor of the feet, Dante conceals Redemption, that is to say, the most important truth of Christian revelation. One could then ask oneself how the fundamental dogma of Christianity could be symbolized by human feet. However, in the Bible, as we have already seen, feet are considered the symbol of human strength, faith and mind. In addition, in the New Testament one can find an episode that clearly shows the great importance of this part of the human body in the Jewish culture. In his Gospel, Luke the Evangelist narrates the episode of a woman, a sinner who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried them off with her hair and perfumed them with ointments. In this episode, Christ’s feet are the means to the sinner’s salvation: she was redeemed because of her

25 “Qui è Maccario, qui è Romoaldo,/qui son li frati miei che dentro ai chiostri/fermar li piedi e tennero il cor saldo” (“Here is Macarius, here is Romualdus,/here are my brothers, those who stayed their steps/in cloistered walls, who kept their hearts steadfast” [Paradiso 22. 49–51). 26 “O Santo Padre, e spirito che vedi/ciò che credesti sí, che tu vincesti/ver’ lo sepulcro piú giovani piedi” (“O holy father, soul who now can see/what you believed with such intensity/that, to His tomb, you outran younger feet” [Paradiso 24. 124–125]). 27 “D’i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi,/Gentili, ma Cristiani, in ferma fede/quel d’i passuri e quel d’i passi piedi” (“When these souls left their bodies, they were not/Gentiles—as you believe—but Christians, one/with firm faith in the Feet that suffered, one/in Feet that were to suffer” [Paradiso 20.103–105).

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faith and love, which she showed by washing Jesus’ extremities.28 In a nutshell, feet are used as a symbol of the right attitude towards God and faith, as we see in biblical descriptions of angels and divine beings in the Book of Daniel: “His body also was like the beryl . . . and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass.”29 Moreover, in the Book of Ezekiel, in relating his vision of the four cherubs (the same described by Dante in Purgatory 29), Ezekiel states: “their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf ’s foot: and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass.” It is possible to find similar descriptions in the New Testament. In the Apocalypse, John reports his vision of Christ: “His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace.”30 The tradition that— starting from Ezekiel’s prophecy—identifies feet with righteousness proceeds undisturbed to the early centuries of the Middle Ages. Saint Augustine wrote that all who follow God’s teachings “have an upright soul and their feet do not sway.”31 The same identification between righteousness and feet can be found in Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem.32 In the twelfth century, Jewish intellectuals began to discuss Ezekiel’s phrase of “straight feet.” Moses Maimonides33 believed that this expression literally meant that the angels have no articulations in their legs; even though Maimonides wrote in Arabic, he translated Ezekiel from Hebrew, and in Hebrew “straight feet” correspond to the expression regel (feet or lower legs) yesharah (straight). The Jewish philosopher avoided providing an allegorical interpretation of this expression, but one can be found in a treatise of Talmud, the Berakhot. In this work, straight feet are connected to the devotion showed by the faithful during their prayers.34 Also in the Turim, Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (1270–c. 1343) explains that the feet have to stay lined up 28

Luke, 7:41–50. Daniel, 10:6. 30 Revelation, 1:15. 31 Saint Augustine, In Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos tractatus, 25.17. 32 Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, I, 20, 2: “. . . quod non recto pede incederent ad evangelicam veritatem” (“because they did not proceed with right feet towards the evangelical truth.”) 33 The most prominent Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages was well known to Saint Thomas Aquinas, whom he quotes repeatedly in his Summa Theologica under the name of Rabbi Moyses. 34 The Talmud of Babilonia, I: Tractate Berakhot, trans. J. Neusner (Chicago: Scholar Press, 1984), 10b, 88, “And R. Yose b. R. Hanina said in the name of R. Eliezer b. Jacob, He who says the Prayer has to line up his feet [side by side], as it is said And their feet were straight ” (Ez. 1:7). 29

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during the prayer, and thus this is the meaning of the adjective straight.35 Besides, the concept of righteousness in relation to the biblical expression regel yesharah was discussed not only by the Jewish Rabbis, but also by Christian theologians. Saint Thomas discusses at length the symbolism hidden behind the straightness of the feet: he observes that when Saint Paul mentions the gressus rectos (straight steps), he alludes to avoiding the sin of transgression. Saint Thomas continues that Ezekiel’s straight feet need to be interpreted as a symbol for straight passions of the soul.36 Furthermore, Saint Thomas devotes a whole treatise to the concept of righteousness, the Lux orta, explaining that both human intellect and human passions have to be straightened in order for a man to acquire the virtue of Charity. He also maintains that a man should have a straight exterior appearance, and be endowed with straight sight, language and step.37 Eventually, he warns that inner righteousness is always accompanied by the exterior one, and that it is identical to justice, contemplation and charity.38 In this treatise, Saint Thomas explains the reason for which the femmina balba (the “stammering woman”) of Dante’s Purgatorio, represented as false attractiveness of wealth, is portrayed as imperfect in her sight, “guercia” (“her eyes askew”), in her language, “balba” (“stammering”) and her step, “sovra i piè distorta” (“crooked on her feet”) [Purgatorio 19. 7–15]). In fact, since for Saint Thomas straightness of sight, language and step coincides with justice and charity, it is clear that the femmina balba, representing the vice opposite to charity (that is to say, avarice) and consequently identical to injustice according to what Dante writes in De Monarchia,39 must be everything but straight. Besides, it is in this very canto that Pope Adrian

35

Cf. Tur Orach Hayim, 95. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Super Epistolam b. Pauli ad Hebraeos lectura, XII, 1,3. 37 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Lux orta, pars III. 38 Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Lux orta, pars III. A further hint at Ezechiel’s Cherubs is in the Sermones de Pace by Remigio de’ Girolami, who taught at S. Maria Novella in the same years when Dante was completing his education there, writes that in Christian writers feet symbolize the active elements in the Church, while feathers are a symbol of the contemplative. According to Remigio, Ezechiel had wanted to hide in his prophecy a reference to the Preaching Order. Cf. Remigio de’ Girolami, Sermones de Pace Memorie domenicane 16 (1985): 187–198, Sermo IX. 39 See De Monarchia, I.XI, 6. 36

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V reminds Dante of the necessity to maintain a straight step.40 Such an allusion cannot be fortuitous: in Inferno 1, Dante states that he has lost the “diritta via” (“the path that does not stray” [3]), alluding to the importance of maintaining a straight path and the danger of going astray. The Comedy contains also many references to straightness of sight and rectitude in general.41 Again in Purgatory, Dante tells the reader that Love directed to evil objects makes the right path look like it is twisted,42 and that is why many people get lost along their trip towards salvation. This juxtaposition between straight and twisted path is remarkable, since it is symbolic of the contrast between virtuous behavior and sin. Dante clearly says that “Purgatorio ha dritto inizio” (“Purgatory has a straight beginning” [Purgatorio 7. 37–39]) and describes the rocky path to the summit of the mountain with the words “Dritta salia la via per entro ’l sasso” (“The path we took climbed straight within the rock” [Purgatorio 27. 64]). Dante’s references as symbols of steadiness of mind and faith are supported in Purgatorio 27 when Virgil states: “Non aspettar mio dir piú né mio cenno;/libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio” (“Await no further word or sign from me:/your will is free, straight and healthy”43 [Purgatorio 27. 139–140]). If dritto refers to the Thomistic concept of rectitudo (consisting, as we already said, in the acquisition of charity, justice and contemplation), the adjective sano (healthy) points once again to Saint Thomas’s Lux orta, where rectitude and a healthy condition of the soul (sanitas) are closely related and discussed. In Dante’s Paradiso, the reader can also find many examples of the Thomistic concept of rectitude of sight. In fact, in the reign of light, sight is the most important sense. In Paradiso 3, the pilgrim has his first encounter with the blessed souls, whom he mistakes for reflected images. The poet describes his mistake as the act of turning (torcere) his eyes, but when he realizes his error, he looks straight

40 “Qual cagion”, disse, “in giú cosí ti torse?”/E io a lui: “Per vostra dignitate/mia coscïenza dritto mi rimorse”./“Drizza le gambe, lèvati, sú, frate!”/rispuose; “non errar” (“What reason makes you bend your body so?”/ he said. And I to him: “Your dignity/made conscience sting me as I stood erect.”/“Brother, straighten your legs; rise up!” he answered. [Puratorio 19. 130–133]). 41 See Inferno 9.73–74; Purgatorio 1.109–111; Purgatorio 2. 31–34 and 103; Purgatorio 8.82–84 and 130–132. 42 Purgatorio 9. 1–4. 43 My translation.

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at Beatrice. Pointing at the “dolce guida” (“the sweet guide”), Dante’s eyes soon become dritti again.44 In Paradiso 29, rectitude of sight and step form a whole: inviting Dante to proceed in his trip towards God, Beatrice exclaims: “Ma perché siam digressi assai, ritorci/li occhi oramai verso la dritta strada” (“But since we have digressed enough, turn back/your eyes now to the way that is direct” [127–129]). One can easily conclude that Dante’s many references to rectitude originate from the Christian late-medieval exegetical texts (Saint Thomas), which were in turn based on the writings of the early medieval theologians (Saint Augustine and Tertullian). Their discussion of rectitudo, symbolized by the pedes recti or gressus recti, refers back to Saint Paul or directly to Ezekiel’s vision of the four Cherubs whose feet were straight. In the meantime, the Jewish thinkers (especially Maimonides, whose Guide to the Perplexed was largely known among Christian writers) had developed their own reading of Ezekiel’s vision, focusing on the expression regel yesharah, and interpreting it as the correct attitude towards the almighty during the prayer, or literally, as the absence of joints in angels’ legs. According to the Jewish numerological system of Kabbalah (gematria), the numerical value of yesharah (straight) is 515. It is not unlikely that Dante might have decided to hide the mysterious executioner of the prostitute and the giant under the numerical value of rectitude. It has been shown in the previous pages that the poet attributed great importance to this topic, which was largely discussed by both Christian and Jewish philosophers. In fact, all Dante needed to know was the numerical value of the letters of the Jewish alphabet, and it was ideologically consistent for a Christian to have a respectful attitude towards Hebrew.45 As G. Dahan points out, Hugo of Saint 44 “Súbito sí com’io di lor m’accorsi,/quelle stimando specchiati sembianti,/per veder di cui fosser, li occhi torsi;/e nulla vidi, e ritorsili avanti/dritti nel lume de la dolce guida” (“As soon as I had noticed them, thinking/that what I saw were merely mirrorings, I turned around to see who they might be;/and I saw nothing; and I let my sight/turn back to meet the light of my dear guide,/who, as she smiled, glowed in her holy eyes” [Paadiso 3. 19–24). Also see, “Leva dunque lettore, a l’alte rote/meco la vista, dritto a quella parte/dove l’un moto e l’altro si percuote” (“Then, reader, lift your eyes with me to see/the high weels; gaze directly at that part/where the one motion strikes against the other” [Paradiso 10. 7–9]). 45 See also M.E. Kearney and M.S. Schraer, “A better interpretation of Dante’s cinquecento diece e cinque”, in Italica 59 (1972): 32–40. The authors think that Dante might have used the numerological system of Jewish Kabbalah and propose that behind the 515 is hidden the Hebrew word for horn, that is to say, the trumpet of the Day of Judgment. They present a rich documentation about the possible

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Victor considered this numerical value sacred, since it was the language that God himself had used to reveal his truth in the Old Testament. After mentioning Roger Bacon’s views, Dahan quotes the passage in Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia where the poet praises Hebrew as the original language of grace, thanks to which all human knowledge is preserved.46 This attitude towards Hebrew was largely shared among the intellectuals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Furthermore, many Christian authors started studying it in order to be able to read the Old Testament in its original version and grasp its message more deeply. Lists of words taken from the Bible started to circulate around the thirteenth century, and were also attached to the various editions of the Holy Text. Saint Bonaventure himself made extensive use of them, and both Franciscans and Dominicans devoted themselves to the learning and teaching of Hebrew in their studia.47 Dante shows a certain confidence with Hebrew in Paradiso 7, where he manages to form a meaningful sentence by mixing Hebrew and Latin words.48 He uses Hebrew mostly on solemn occasions, such as Beatrice’s ascent to Heaven in the Vita Nuova. However, for symbols of sin—such as Pluto, the guardian monster of the avaricious in Inferno, the femmina balba or the giant Nembrot—Dante has his characters utter incomprehensible words. Nembrot in particular pronounces a completely distorted Hebrew sentence.49 These characters are in opposition to Saint Thomas’ idea of rectitudo locutionis, exterior rectitude. It is important to note that for Aquinas, exterior rectitude is a reflection of the inner one, which identifies with justice and charity. For Dante, as seen in the De Monarchia, charity is the foundation of justice. Consequently, representing symbols of avarice and cupidity,50 Pluto and the femmina balba are also symbols of injustice; Nembrot on the other hand, being one of the monsters contacts between Dante and the Jewish culture, and stress the fact that the numerical symbolism had been largely accepted by the Franciscans. 46 De vulgari eloquentia, I.vi, 5–7. 47 G. Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge (Latour-Maubourg, Paris: Les íditions du Cerf, 1990), 239–248. See also, by the same author, “Saint Bonaventure et les juifs”, in Archivium Franciscanum historicum 77 (1984): 403–405. 48 “Osanna, sanctus Deus sabaòth,/superilustrans claritate tua/felices ignes horum malachòt” (Paradiso 7. 1–3). Dante could find the Hebrew nouns declined in the form of plural genitive in the liturgy of the mass (sabaòth) and the Prologue of the Vulgata by Saint Jerome (malachòt). See G. Giacalone, Divina Commedia, vol. II.105, n. 1. 49 “Raphèl maì amècche zabì amì” (Inferno 31. 67). 50 In a recent essay on ancient Jewish rituals, S.P. Gelbard explains the highly symbolic value of the word yesharah; having quoted the passage from the Talmudic

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of basso Inferno where the sins of iniuria (injustice) are punished, is a symbol of injustice by definition. Their inability to speak (lack of rectitudo locutionis) is then a manifestation of their unjust nature, while on the contrary, those souls who are able to speak God’s language are symbols of inner rectitude and justice. It is not surprising, then, that behind the numerical value 515 Beatrice is hiding a Hebrew word representing rectitude and, consequently, justice. In the Jewish Kabbalah, determining the numerical value of a word meant to discover its inner mystic significance and its essence. In the case of the word yesharah, and according to the rules of Jewish numerology, 515 is attained by adding the individual values of each consonant: Yod = 10; Shin = 300; Resh = 200; Heh = 5. Dante could have chosen the numerological value of yesharah partly because of the extreme importance of the concept of rectitude in his works and in the Divine Comedy in particular and partly because of its very numerical value. In fact, according to the Jewish Kabbalah, words sharing the same numerical value are also intimately connected in their essence, and another Hebrew word with numerical value 515 is va’etchanan (io implorai ), which refers to the episode of Moses’ death in the Old Testament.51 This biblical episode develops into an extended narrative with a series of texts called Midrash Petirat Moshe Rabbenu, whose manuscripts date back to the thirteenth century. In the Midrash known as Jellinek A, the episode of Moses’ death is largely developed, for it reports that Moses, whom God had condemned to die before he could reach the Promised Land, uttered 515 prayers asking the Lord to let him live, at least until he had entered Yerez Israel: And whence do we know that Moses uttered five hundred and fifteen supplications—the numerical value of va-Etchanan el, “and I besought [the Lord]?” (Deut 3. 23).52 treatise Berakhot regarding Ezechiel’s vision of the four Cherubs, Gelbard maintains that the numerical value of Yesharah is equaled by that of the word Tefillah [prayer]. This alludes to the concept that when standing in prayer, one should place his feet together as if they were one. See S.P. Gelbard, Rite and Reason (Petach Tikva, Israel: Mifal Rashi Publications, 1995), 18. 51 See Deuteronomy, 3: 23. 52 See Rulla Kushelevsky, Moses and the Angel of Death (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 206. The tradition concerning Moses’s 515 is more ancient than the Midrash Petirat Moshe Rabbenu. The Midrash Tanna’im (I–VI cent. A.D.) reports Moses’ episode with the same words, stressing the numerical value of va’Etchanan: “‘and I besought the Lord’—Moses prayed 515 prayers, the numerical value of va’ Etchanan,” see R. Kushelevsky, 235, n. 49.

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It is then of fundamental importance to stress the great relevance of the biblical episode of Moses’ trip towards the Promised Land in Dante’s works and its popularity among the Christian theologians. In Purgatorio 2, when entering the “Ante-Purgatory,” the purging souls sing a verse from Psalm CXIII celebrating the Jewish emancipation from their slavery in Egypt (46).53 The symbolic importance of this verse has been highlighted by Charles Singleton,54 especially because of its connection with Dante’s references to this episode both in the Convivio (II. 1–7)55 and in the Epistole XIII.21.56 In fact, in both works, Dante interprets the Jewish exit from Egypt as a metaphor of the liberation of the soul from sin and its admission in the state of grace.57 In the Itinerarium mentis ad Deum, Saint Bonaventure attributes to this famous biblical episode exactly the same symbolic meaning.58 Since Moses’ trip was interpreted by Christian philosophers as a symbol of the ascent of the soul to God, then God’s injunction to Moses not to enter the Promised Land could be a symbol of a defective condition of the soul, which prevents the soul itself from reaching its spiritual goal: this is exactly how the episode of Moses’ death was interpreted in the medieval Christian tradition starting with Saint Augustine. In his Quaestiones in Numeros,59 Augustine maintains that Moses is not given permission to enter the Holy Land because he represents the Law, which, alone, is not enough to introduce the people to Israel (metaphorically, Heaven). According to Augustine, it was Iesus

53

The incipit of the Psalm is “In exitu Israel de Aegypto.” See C.S. Singleton, “In Exitu Israel de Aegypto,” in Dante: a Collection of Critical Essays, edited by J. Freccero (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965): 102–121. 55 Il Convivio, Ridotto a miglior lezione e commentato da G. Busnelli e G. Randelli (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1964). 56 Dante, Tutte le opere (Firenze: Sansoni, 1965). 57 C.S. Singleton, “In Exitu Israel de Aegypto”. 58 Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, I, 9: “Quoniam igitur prius est ascendere quam descendere in scala Iacob, primum gradum ascensionis collocemus in imo, ponendo totum istum mundum sensibilem nobis tamquam speculum, per quod transeamus ad Deum, opificem summum, ut simus veri Hebraei transeuntes de Aegypto ad terram Patribus repromissam, simus etiam Christiani cum Christo transeuntes ex hoc mundo ad Patrem (“Since on Jacob’s ladder the act of going up precedes the act of going down, we establish the first grade of ascension at the bottom of the ladder. We also consider all this sensible world as a mirror, through which we can apprehend God, the high artifex, so that we can be true Jewish going from Egypt to the Promised Land. Also, our purpose is being true Christians going from this world to the world of the Father”). 59 Sancti Aurelii Augustini Opera Omnia (Paris: Gaume Fratres, 1839). 54

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( Joshua in Hebrew) who was able to accomplish this task, and in fact, being a true figura Christi, he represents God’s grace, which alone can lead the soul to Heaven. In a nutshell, Moses represents the inability of the Law to take the human soul to God. In the Contra Faustum, Augustine interprets once again the symbolic meaning of Moses’ death and reaffirms that the biblical Iesus is a typical figura Christi, reminding the reader that, according to the New Testament, Jesus is “rector et doctor populi in haereditatem vitae eternae” (people’s guide to the eternal life.)60 The deep symbolic meaning of the same biblical episode is discussed in Augustine’s Quaestiones in Heptateucum libri VII, where he confirms what he says in his other works, and concludes that the people entered the Promised Land not under the guidance of the Law (represented by Moses) but under the direction of Grace (represented by Iesus.)61 In interpreting Saint Augustine, Saint Bonaventure explains thoroughly the nature of the relationship between Mosaic Law and Christian Grace. In order to be saved, the Doctor Seraphicus explains that two things are necessary: knowledge of truth and practice of virtue. One can achieve knowledge of truth through the Law, but it is only Grace that grants a perfect practice of virtue. Saint Bonaventure concludes that Law without Grace is not sufficient to the attainment of salvation.62 In light of the traditional Christian interpretation of Moses’ death, it is now possible to speculate that Beatrice could also hide in these words an allusion to this famous biblical episode. The episode of the flight from Egypt, that is the beginning of Moses’ trip, coincides in the Divine Comedy with the beginning of the purging souls’ trip in Purgatory 2, while the old patriarch’s death (evoked by the symbolic number 515) which is the end of his trip, could now correspond with the end of the purging soul’s journey on the summit of Mount Purgatory. This concurrence of journey confirms that—to Dante— Moses’ travel symbolizes the path of the soul toward salvation. In fact, in the Christian exegetical tradition, Moses was the symbol of doubt. Augustine argues that Moses had doubts about the Lord’s omnipotence when he hit the rock with his stick to make the water flow out of it, as God had told him to do. It was exactly because 60

Saint Augustine of Hippo, Contra Faustum, XVI, 16, 19. Saint Augustine of Hippo, Quaestionum in Heptateucum libri VII, IV, Quaestiones in Numeros, “An eadem sit causa mortis Moysi et Aaron” 53 (27, 13–14). 62 Saint Bonaventure, Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti, Collatio I, 2. 61

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of his lack of faith that God told him he would never see the Promised Land, and that he would have to climb a mountain and there die.63 His death represents the end of incredulity and the advent of the age of Grace and Faith brought by the Redemptor. In Saint Augustine’s words: What is hidden in the episode of Moses’ death on the mountain? Let us consider these words: climb the mountain and die. Moses’ corporal death symbolizes the death of incredulity, but on a mountain.64

In the Comedy, Dante expresses the same conviction about the role of Faith in Christ for the purpose of salvation.65 In brief, according to Christian exegesis, Moses represents the death of incredulity and, as a result, the advent of the new age of Grace granted by Faith, in which mankind will be characterized by rectitude and justice. In Dante’s cinquecento diece e cinque, then, there might be an allusion to the 515 prayers of the dying old patriarch. Alluding to Moses’ death, Dante may be referring to the Augustinian allegorical interpretation of it as the death of doubt, the end of the age of Law and the beginning of the age of Grace. If it is so, it can easily explain why the numerical value 515 could particularly be appealing to Dante’s allegorical imagination. As Moses’ death (represented by the 515 prayers he recited before dying) inaugurated a new age of Faith, so a mysterious eschatological character (represented by the numerical value of rectitude-namely justice and charity) will soon kill the giant and the prostitute, thus very likely inaugurating the new era of the Holy Spirit which the Spiritual Franciscans were awaiting. In this part of the essay I will analyze how the cinquecento diece e cinque has a strong eschatological meaning and can be connected to Franciscan expectations of a new era in which mankind would be characterized by charity, a virtue traditionally attributed by all Christian commentators to the influence of the Holy Spirit. Even though an extensive use of the symbolism of the pedes recti can be found in the Bible and in the texts of illustrious Christian and Jewish philosophers, there is no hint of a possible eschatological meaning of the 63 For Moses as a symbol of doubt, see Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermo 352, De utilitate agendae penitentiae, “Moysi dubitatio figurative,” 1.4. 64 Ibid., 1.5. 65 “Esso ricominciò: ‘A questo regno/non salí mai chi non credette ‘n Cristo,/né pria né poi ch’el si chiavasse al legno” (“No one without belief in Christ/has ever risen to this kingdom—either/before or after He was crucified” [Paradiso 19.103–105]).

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idea of straight feet in these texts. It is then of fundamental importance to find out whether Dante was the first one to attribute such a meaning to Ezekiel’s words or if he drew inspiration from texts in which the association between the pedes recti and the apocalyptic expectations was already consolidated. It is clear that, if such texts existed and were identified, it would be a fundamental proof in favor of this interpretation of the cinquecento diece e cinque. Exegetical texts, in which angels’ pedes recti have an important eschatological meaning, exist and belong to the Franciscan Spiritual tradition that was inspired by Joachim of Fiore’s writings. In their commentaries on the Revelation, they all dwell on the interpretation of the angelus fortis’ physical attributes,66 especially focusing on the allegorical meaning of his feet. In his commentary, Alexander Minorita interprets the angelus fortis as Saint Benedict of Norcia,67 and maintains that saints’ feet are symbols of virtue, especially because they are straight and steady: And since he made his way towards God’s word, which is powerfully inflamed, his feet were like a column of fire . . . Saints’ feet are virtues . . . And again: their feet are straight, because they are virtuous. And in Ezekiel: Son of man, stay firm on your feet, that is, do not fall from the virtues which are peculiar to you. The column represents steadiness in virtue, as I said before . . . the flames, according to the allegorical meaning, represent the fire of charity . . . (my translation).68

In the same commentary, Alexander describes Saint Francis and Saint Dominic and he focuses on the meaning of their feet. In this passage, feet represent preaching.69 Nonetheless, it is possible to find a third and more important interpretation of the symbol of feet in Alexander’s commentary. He asserts that the two Orders represent the fideles of the last days before the Final Judgment, the citizens of the new Hierusalem.70 Moreover, in the first pages of his work, commenting on John’s vision of God in the middle of the seven golden

66 Cf. Revelation, 10:1: “And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.” 67 Alexander Minorita, Expositio in Apocalypsim, X.162. 68 Ibid., 173. 69 Ibid., 436–437: “Dominicans are excellent preachers . . . in this Order many of the Church’s doctors will gather to worship his footsteps, that is, to imitate him through preaching . . . symbolized in his feet [my translation].” 70 Ibid., 469–470.

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candlesticks, he interprets the detail of God’s feet as the ultimi fideles, tempered by the fire of the Antichrist’s prosecutions: And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace. Brass is a kind of metal that the more it cooks, the more it becomes precious, and they say that it is seven times more precious than gold . . . Feet are the last believers, who will come in the latest days, similar to incandescent brass; in fact, as brass turns into a golden color during its cooking, similarly the believers, thanks to the Antichrist’s prosecutions, will turn into something more precious (my translation).71

In the Franciscan literature of the above mentioned authors, then, feet are an important symbol because they carry an eschatological meaning, which reinforces the hypothesis that Dante could have chosen the biblical expression regel yesharah to symbolize the defeat of the Antichrist (represented by the prostitute and the giant) and the final victory of a new humanity which—according to the Franciscan expectations—would have been characterized by justice and charity. The eschatological role of human extremities can also be found in Saint Bonaventure’s works. He identifies Saint Francis with the angel from the East revealed in Revelation 7:2 in both the Legenda minor and in the Legenda maior. In the chapter of Legenda maior, De transitu mortis, the Doctor Seraphicus identifies Francis with Christ crucified, because of his inflamed charity that made him desire everybody’s salvation. He also compares him to the angel from the East, and in this particular passage, human extremities represent the believers lead by the angel on the way of peace: Like the angel ascending from Orient, he led their feet on the path of peace, and marked their forehead with the seal of the living God, in order for the fire to inflame the hearts of God’s servants with its divine flame (my translation).72

More definite evidence can be found in Ubertino of Casale’s works to support this new interpretation of the cinquecento diece e cinque. In Chapter eight of Book V of the Arbor vitae, Ubertino describes Boniface VIII and his successor Benedict XI as the two beasts of Revelation. Nonetheless, upon the defeat of the beasts, incarnating the mystic Antichrist, the evangelical spirit consolidates, and the renewal of spiritual life takes place. Christ then appears to the viri seraphici, those 71 72

Ibid., 20. S. Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, VII.1, 3.

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who did not allow to be seduced by the mystical Antichrist. In the next chapter, Iesus doctor humilium, Ubertino presents Saint Francis as the one who renewed evangelical life, by announcing God’s judgment on the two beasts, promoting the status evangelicus, and thus reforming the Church. The new Ecclesia will not be simply a small group of believers, but a multitudo magna.73 According to Ubertino, Saint Francis was foreshadowed in the angel of Revelation 10.1, the angelus fortis. The following passage is extremely important for this study of the cinquecento diece e cinque, for Ubertino describes Saint Francis as having straight feet, and represents him as the vindicator and killer of the Antichrist, embodied in the two beasts. So, he [Francis] and his offspring are symbolized by this angel . . . and in this angel is also foreshadowed the head of this renewal after the destruction of the above-mentioned beasts [Boniface VIII and Benedict XI] . . . and he will also have straight and steady feet, inflamed like a column of fire; in fact, because of his burning passion (charity), he will run virtuously and straightly to procure everybody’s salvation (my translation).74

It has already been proposed that Dante’s cinquecento diece e cinque could be the allegorical personification of the numerical value of yesharah, a word that means “straight” and which is part of a biblical expression (regel yesharah) which was largely debated by Christian exegetes and interpreted, especially by Saint Thomas, as representing justice and charity. If this hypothesis is correct, then Ubertino’s hint at Francis’s straight feet, inflamed by the fire of charity, is extremely meaningful, and also especially true if one were to consider that Ubertino was expecting Francis’s resurrection at the end of times. In fact, according to Joachim of Fiore, in the last battle against the manifest Antichrist (who will follow the mystic Antichrist after the sixth period of renewal of the evangelical life) Christ could come in person to fight against him or decide to send Saint Francis instead. Ubertino, of course, supports the second hypothesis: [In] questioning himself on this matter, whether Christ would come in person in such a difficult time to fight against the Antichrist and his followers, Joachim answers: I personally believe that he himself will come to destroy the Antichrist Saint. So it was foretold that Christ would ride on a

73 Cf. the analysis of this chapter by M. Damiata, Pietà e storia nell’Arbor Vitae di Ubertino da Casale (Firenze: Biblioteca di Studi Francescani, 1988), 299–303. 74 Ibid., 303.

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elvira giosi white horse, to show the purity of his body both to the good and the evil men. But this is just Joachim’s opinion; in fact, I do not believe that these predictions will come true literally in the person of Christ, but maybe in the person of some of his Chosen, and especially in the person of the one who represents him, Francis, glorious in his appearance; and in his candid purity he will win this battle.75

In Ubertino’s interpretation, Saint Francis’s straight feet represent his firmness in charity, and it is exactly because of his complete acceptance of the evangelical life that Ubertino describes him as a figura Christi. As a consequence of his full identification with the Savior, he will be chosen at the end of times to fight against the open Antichrist and defeat him. While pedes recti are a symbol of charity in Saint Thomas’s Lux orta, Aquinas does not use them to conceal any eschatological character as Ubertino does. Therefore it is important to recognize that the symbol of the straight feet is a Franciscan idea in Dante’s representation of cinquecento diece e cinque. Moreover, it is also of great importance to closely analyze Ubertino’s identification of Boniface VIII and Benedict XI with the mystical Antichrist. G.L. Potestà’s study on the Arbor vitae provides a detailed analysis of all the passages where Ubertino discusses the two popes. According to Ubertino, Boniface VIII is the Antichrist for he tried to break the indissoluble tie between Christ’s vicar and the Church, taking over Celestine’s office in a fraudulent way.76 Benedict’s election, then, was illegitimate because the real cardinals (from the Colonna family) were excluded from the conclave, while other cardinals (false because nominated by Boniface VIII) were granted the right to vote: The identification of the two popes with the mystical Antichrist is eventually reinforced through the attempt of deciphering the apocalyptic number 666 which, transliterated in Greek, gives the name Benedictòs, meaning the Benedetti: Benedetto from Anagni (Boniface VIII) and Benedict IX. This interpretation is suggested to Ubertino by Clareno. In conclusion, the true Church has been separated from Christ since pope Celestine V, and it has not reunited with him yet. The carnal Church, which coincides with the Roman Curia and is symbolized by the magna meretrix, has taken its place77 (my translation).

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Ubertino of Casale, Arbor vitae (Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1961), V. xvii. G.L. Potestà, Storia ed escatologia in Ubertino da Casale (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1980), 162. 77 Ibid., 163–164. 76

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Both the coming of Saint Francis at the beginning of the sixth status and the founding of the Franciscan Order started a process of deep renewal of the Christian Church, but those events did not eliminate the mystical Antichrist (that is, the carnal Church symbolized by the magna meretrix) who, according to Ubertino, is still firmly installed in the carnal Church and waits to be eradicated. It is in light of this identification of the two popes with the Antichrist that Pietro Olivi’s writing about the coming of the Antichrist’s slayer at the end of times becomes important. In his study, David Burr examines the role of Saint Francis in Pietro Olivi’s works. Saint Bonaventure had already identified Saint Francis with the angel of the sixth seal ascendens ab ortu solis (Revelation 7.22) and Olivi agrees with him. In the Lectura super Apocalypsim, Olivi states that the Saint from Assisi is the angel of the sixth seal, who also symbolizes the multitude of Saint Francis’s followers. The passage where Olivi dwells more extensively upon the interpretation of Saint Francis as an apocalyptic character appears in Chapter 10’s comment on the Revelation. Here Saint Francis appears as the angelus fortis laying his feet on land and sea. The commentator is very well aware that others before him have identified that angel with Christ himself. Yet, on the basis of Joachim of Fiore, Olivi is convinced that the angel is the symbol of a powerful preacher, devoted both to active and contemplative life. Therefore, Olivi does not hesitate to identify him with the founder of his order.78 Hence, the angel ascendens ab ortu solis and the angelus fortis are both symbols of Saint Francis. Olivi’s comments on the description of Saint Francis as the angelus fortis are extremely important in identifying him with Dante’s cinquecento diece e cinque. The following is Manselli’s literal paraphrase of Olivi’s text: Olivi does not hesitate to give a name to this great preacher: he is Saint Francis . . . [Saint Francis] had also straight and steady feet, inflamed like a column of fire, not only because he was high in his contemplation,

78 “It should be known that just as our most holy father Francis is, after Christ and under Christ, the principal founder and initiator and exemplar of the sixth period and its evangelical rule, so he, after Christ, is primarily designated by this angel. Thus as a sign of this fact he appeared transfigured in a fiery chariot in the sun in order to show that he had come in the spirit and in the image of Elijah, as well as to bear the perfect image of the true sun, Christ.” In David Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 120.

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elvira giosi but also in every action of his, as it is abundantly clear if one considers his life.79

Even in Olivi’s comment, the angel’s feet, straight and steady, one on the land and the other on the sea, represent the perfect mix of Francis’s active and contemplative life. He is always characterized by his extreme poverty, charity and preaching. In addition, because of his preaching, he is constantly compared to Christ. Saint Francis is also associated with Christ because of another important element, namely the resurrection. Olivi confronts this delicate eschatological matter in the Lectura super Apocalypsim: I have also heard from a very spiritual man, very worthy of belief . . . something that is consonant with this scripture but which neither I assert nor know nor think should be asserted . . . he [Saint Francis] will rise again glorious, so that just as he was similar to Christ in his life and in the stigmata of the cross, so he will be similar to him in a resurrection necessary for confirming and informing his disciples.80

Even though in this passage Olivi claims that he is not sure about Saint Francis’s resurrection, he maintains that this prediction comes from a very authoritative and reliable source. The passages referring to the pedes recti of the angelus fortis in Ubertino da Casale’s and Pietro Olivi’s works, the identification of this angel with Saint Francis, along with the predictions on his resurrection and ultimate fight against the forces of evil, make extremely probable the identification of the cinquecento diece e cinque with Saint Francis resurrected, seen both as angel ascendens ab ortu solis and angelus fortis. Dante knew the Franciscan tradition that assimilated the Saint from Assisi with the angel in Revelation 7:2, as we see in Paradiso 11: Di questa costa, là dov’ella frange piú sua rattezza, nacque al mondo un sole, come fa questo talvolta di Gange.

79 “L’Olivi non esita a dare un nome a questo grande predicatore: è san Francesco . . . [San Francesco] ebbe anche piedi dritti e solidi e ignei come colonna di fuoco, perché non solo fu sommo nella contemplazione, ma anche in ogni azione come risulta nella maniera più abbondante nella sua vita”. (“Olivi does not hesitate to give a name to this great preacher: he is Saint Francis . . . Saint Francis also had straight and firm feet, and inflamed like a column of fire, because he was excellent both in contemplation and in his actions, as it is clear from his life” [my translation]). The paraphrase of this passage from Olivi is in R. Manselli, La lectura super Apocalypsim di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1955), 214. 80 This passage is quoted by D. Burr, 121.

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Però chi d’esso loco fa parole, non dica Ascesi, ché direbbe corto, ma Orïente, se proprio dir vuole. (11. 49–54). (From this hillside, where it abates its rise, a sun was born into the world, much like this sun when it is climbing from the Ganges. Therefore let him who names this site not say Ascesi, which would be to say too little, but Orient, if he would name it rightly.)

The fact itself that Dante was aware of the identification of Saint Francis with the angel ascendens ab ortu solis demonstrates that the poet had read the Franciscan commentaries in which this topic was discussed and in which Francis himself was also seen as the angelus fortis of Revelation 10.1 who was represented having straight feet. If Dante intended to identify that someone possessing the qualities that would make him the slayer of the Babylonian prostitute and the Giant, that someone would be the Saint Francis described by Ubertino da Casale and Pietro Olivi: straight and steady on his feet of fire and resurrected to defeat evil. The burning steadiness of charity and justice and the extreme poverty of Saint Francis—signaculum Christi—were in fact a perfect antithesis to the greed of the Antichrist. However, although very probable, since in his Commedia Dante does not show explicitly his knowledge of the identification between the angelus fortis and Saint Francis, we should search for an indirect proof of Dante’s knowledge of this mystic connection. In Inferno 19, the sin of simony is considered, from the beginning of the canto, as a sin of avarice. The Simonist clergy—that is, the sinners punished in this circle—are described as extremely rapacious and avid, and its representatives have been condemned to stay stuck upside down in a hole sinking into the ground, while their feet and legs stick out from toe to knee: Le piante erano a tutti accese intrambe; per che sí forte guizzavan le giunte, che spezzate averien ritorte e strambe. Qual suole il fiammeggiar de le cose unte muoversi pur su per la strema buccia, tal era lí dai calcagni alle punte. (Inferno 19. 25–30). (Both soles of every sinner were on fire; their joints were writhing with such violence, they would have severed withes and ropes of grass.

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elvira giosi As flame on oily things will only stir along the outer surface, so there, too, that fire made its way from heels to toes.)

These verses describe the inflamed soles of the feet of a Simonist pope, Niccolò III, and everything seems to suggest that this pope has physical characteristics that are exactly the opposite of those belonging to the angelus fortis of the Revelation, whose feet are straight and inflamed by the fire of charity. The pope’s feet are, on the contrary, tormented by the infernal fire, which is the punishment for his cupidity. Furthermore, his feet are not steadily planted to the ground, but sway in the air, and are even identified with fire itself because of the very way they move (“As flame on oily things will only stir”). The pope’s legs, differently from the apocalyptic angel’s legs, do not resemble at all a column but recall, by antithesis, the Jewish exegetical interpretation of the expression regel yesharah. According to Maimonides’s Guide to the Perplexed, the angels’ feet are straight because of their lack of joints. On the contrary, the joints of this Simonist pope fold and bend violently. The noun ritorte means a kind of wicker rope, but in the meantime it recalls closely the adjective ritorto or torto, that is often used by Dante as opposed to dritto in many verses of the Commedia.81 Niccolò’s soul, whose legs sway more violently than the others, seems to be particularly willingly to talk to Dante. He is wrongfully convinced that Dante is actually Boniface VIII, and that he came to take his place in the hole. He cries out loud to him: Ed el gridò: “Se’ tu già costí ritto, se’ tu già costí ritto, Bonifazio? (Inferno, 19. 52–53) (And he cried out: “Are you already standing, Already standing there, o Boniface?”)

Here, the adjective ritto (“straight” or “standing”) has a strongly ironic connotation, just like the pope’s inflamed feet; it represents an effective parody of the angels’ rectitude. It is Virgil who exhorts Dante to clarify Niccolò’s misunderstanding:

81 See for instance, “Poi fummo dentro al soglio de la porta/che ’l mal amor de l’anime disusa,/perché fa parer dritta la via torta” (“When I had crossed the threshold of the gate/that—since the soul’s aberrant love would make/the crooked way seem straight—is seldom used” [Purgatorio 10.1–4]).

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Allor Virgilio disse: “Dilli tosto: ‘Non son colui, non son colui che credi’”; e io rispuosi come a me fu imposto. Per che lo spirto tutti storse i piedi. (Inferno 19, 61–62). (But Virgil said: “Tell this to him at once: “I am not he—not who you think I am.’” And I replied as I was told to do. At this the spirit twisted both his feet.)

In these verses, the twisting of the pope’s feet is explicit rather than merely suggested by the flickering movement of his legs. Equally interesting is the group of verses in which Niccolò III prophesizes the imminent arrival of Boniface VIII to hell, and his fall into the same hole in which he is entrapped: Ma piú è ’l tempo già che i piè mi cossi E ch’i’ son stato cosí sottosopra, ch’el non starà piantato coi piè rossi: ché dopo lui verrà di piú laida opra, di ver’ ponente, un pastor sanza legge, tal che convien che lui e me ricuopra. (Inferno 19. 79–84). (But I have baked my feet a longer time, have stood like this, upon my head, than he is to stand planted here with scarlet feet: for after him, one uglier in deeds will come, a flawless shepherd from the west, worthy to cover him and cover me.)

These verses are particularly interesting because they are the parody of another fundamental characteristic of the angelus fortis: while the latter’s feet are described by the Bible and the Franciscans as a column of fire, these popes are stuck in the ground in column, one upon the other: as a matter of fact, they form a human inflamed column stuck deep into the infernal soil. Furthermore, according to these verses, Boniface VIII will be soon replaced by another “pastor sanza legge” coming from “ponente” that is, from the West. This image is, in my view, a second reference—by antithesis—to the angelus ab ortu solis and therefore to Saint Francis himself, whom the Franciscans— and Dante with them—identified with each other. Another detail that is worth mentioning is the allusion (once again by antiphrasis) to rectitude, thomistically interpreted as the balance of the passions in the soul. In fact, when Dante reproaches the Simonist pope with the corruption of the Church, he unleashes Niccolò’s anger or remorse, that is to say, an emotional reaction that Saint Thomas would not

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hesitate to classify as a manifestation of a disorder of the affectus and as a proof of the pope’s lack of inner rectitude: “E mentr’io li cantava cotai note/o ira o coscïenza che ’l mordesse,/forte spingava con ambo le piote” (“And while I sang such notes to him—whether/it was his indignation or his conscience/that bit him—he kicked hard with both his soles” [Inferno, 19. 118–20]). In Dante’s description, the damned soul, carried away by anger and remorse, pushes violently his feet into the air. In juxtaposition, angels and God’s chosen souls keep them steadily planted on the ground. Boniface VIII was considered by the Franciscans as an incarnation of the Antichrist, and it cannot be denied that, in this canto, Dante associates him with twisted feet. Of course, Dante does not associate cupidity (which is the main manifestation of the Antichrist) only with Boniface but also with all the corrupted popes. This is why Niccolò’s and Clemente’s feet are—and will remain—twisted for all eternity. Furthermore, through a close reading of Dante’s De Monarchia, one can easily deduce that rectitude must be the main characteristic of the cinquecento diece e cinque. If the “messo di Dio” (God’s avenger) will come to kill the incarnations of evil—whom Dante identifies everywhere in his works with injustice and cupidity, and whose natural enemy is charity—then he cannot be anything else than a just creature. Dante describes the Aristotelian virtue of justice in his De Monarchia as follows: It is necessary to acknowledge that justice, considered in itself and in its nature, is a certain rectitude (quaedam rectitudo), or rule, that teaches us how to avoid whatever deviates from the straight path to one side or the other (I.xi, 3).82

The quality of rectitude identifies the mysterious cinquecento diece e cinque with the description of Saint Francis offered by the radical Franciscans. In their texts, the founder of their Order is the angel with the pedes recti, whose rectitude is a symbol of charity—the virtue acquired through the Holy Spirit—and also the angel ab ortu solis, image of shining contemplation, surrounded by the light of divine grace and blessing. It is exactly this divine blessing and the consequent direct vision of God that will characterize the elected of the seventh

82 For this conception of justice, see also Convivio, IV.xvii, 6 and Nicomachean Ethics, VII, 1,2.

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status expected to come by the Spiritual Franciscans. They will enjoy the same peace and height of contemplation that characterizes the blessed souls in Dante’s Paradise. Since it is likely that the viri spirituales will have straight feet because of their following the divine path of faith, just like their divine avenger, it is possible to describe them through the same words as those that Beatrice uses for the heavenly spirits: Però parla con esse e odi e credi; ché la verace luce che le appaga da sé non lascia lor torcer li piedi. (Paradiso 3.31–33). (Thus, speak and listen; trust what they will say: The truthful light in which they find their peace Will not allow their steps to turn astray.)

DANTE’S FRANCISCANISM Giuseppe Mazzotta

The subject I am treating in the following pages is certainly vast and far from being neglected by scholars over the years. So thorough, as a matter of fact, is Dante’s knowledge and absorption of the theological and moral foundation of Franciscanism in his work that we have been often told of his likely membership in the lay Third Order. Biographical details of Dante’s religious allegiances aside, historians have poignantly and consistently focused on the substance and style of Franciscanism in order to capture the essence of what is generally perceived to have been a unique, even revolutionary spiritual and social phenomenon. Only by defining the nature of the movement can one hope to cast light on Dante’s imagination as well as on the wide array of medieval artistic expressions. Quite clearly, Franciscanism appears as the deep spring from which stemmed the powerful, creative energy of medieval art (Giotto), spirituality (the role of the fraternal orders in, say, Joachim of Flora’s theology of history), literature (Dante, Iacopone da Todi, Petrarch etc.), and even the universities. Indeed, Franciscanism has been acknowledged as the force that revived a new form of representation over several centuries and that altered forever the contours of the intellectual and moral order of the medieval world across national boundaries. The Franciscan masters, from Alexander of Hales to Saint Bonaventure, from Roger Bacon to Ockham shaped what has come to be known as the Franciscan vision: the nature of poverty as the metaphor for the human condition itself; the sacramental quality of the natural world; the value of the intellectual quest in relation to faith; the sense of creation as a “gift”; the view of art as a legitimate route to the knowledge of God; and the understanding of the playfulness of theology, the conviction that Creation itself is God’s playful act. Dante’s Divine Comedy—this is the argument presented in the following pages—gathers within its imaginative compass most of the strains of such a paradoxically simple and yet most profound vision. In fact, Dante explores and creatively adds a specifically esthetic

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dimension to the multiple strain of the Franciscan tradition. To make clear the range and depth of what can be called his response to medieval Franciscanism, I shall start by turning to Inferno 27, because this is the canto that features a Franciscan friar, Guido Da Montefeltro. Around this figure Dante raises issues of papal power (and political theology), the sense of a “humble”, poor style, and the claims of humanistic rhetoric. More importantly, through the representation of Guido, Dante traces the boundaries of the thirteenth-century debate between Franciscan theologians and secular masters. More precisely, the canto evokes the key-questions of the thirteenth-century debate on the liberal arts and the Franciscan attack against logic and speculative grammar. Inferno 27 is usually read in conjunction with the story of Ulysses that precedes it. The dramatic connections between the two narratives, however superficial they may be, are certainly real. It can easily be granted that Inferno 27 is the parodic counter to Inferno 26 and its myth of style. In De vulgari eloquentia in the wake of Horace’s Ars poetica and the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Dante classifies the tragic, elegiac, and comical styles in terms of fixed categories of a subject matter that is judged to be sublime, plain, or low.1 In the canto of Ulysses, with its verba polita, to use Matthew of Vendome’s phrase, moral aphorisms and grandiloquence stage the language of the epic hero whose interlocutor is the epic poet Virgil. Ulysses’ is a high style, making his story a tragic text, for Ulysses is, like all tragic heroes, an overstater, and hyperbole is his figure: he is one who has staked everything and has lost everything for seeking everything. As we move into Inferno 27, there is a deliberate diminution of Ulysses grandeur. His smooth talk is replaced by hypothetical sentences, such as “S’i’ credesse che mia risposta fosse/a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,/questa fiamma staria sanza piú scosse” (“If I thought that my answer were to one who might ever return to the world, this name would shake no more” [61–63]);2 hypothetical

1 De vulgari eloquentia II, iv, 5–6; also Rhetorica ad Herennium IV, viii; and Matthew of Vendome, Ars versificatoria II, 5–8, in Edmond Faral, Les arts póetiques du XII e et du XIII siècles: recherches et documents sur la technique littéraire du moyen âge (É. Champion: Paris, 1924[reprint 1962]). 2 For the Italian passages of the Comedy, see Dante Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgate, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, Edizione Nazionale, 4 vols. (Milano: Mondatori, 1966–67); for all English passages, see Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, 3 vols., trans. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970–75).

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phrases, “se non fosse il gran prete” (“but for the high priest” [70]), parenthetical remarks, “s’i’ odo il vero” (“if what I hear is true” [65]); and swearing, colloquialisms, and crude idioms. From the start, Guido’s speech draws the exchange between Virgil and Ulysses within the confines of dialect. . . . . O tu, a cu’ io drizzo la voce, e che parlavi mo Lombardo dicendo: “Istra ten va, piú non t’adizzo.” (Inferno 27.19–21) (O you to whom I direct my voice and who just now spoke Lombard, saying, “Now go your way, I do not urge you more.”)

Virgil allows Dante to speak to Guido, “Parla tu, questi è latino” (“You Speak: he is Italian” [33]), because Virgil, too, observes the rhetorical rules of stylistic hierarchy. There is a great deal of irony in shifting from Ulysses’ high ground to the specifics of the Tuscan Apennines or Urbino and Ravenna: it is a shift from the grand, formal style to the humble concreteness of Italian history. But from Dante’s viewpoint the irony is vaster: degrees of style are illusory values, and Ulysses and Guido, for all their stylistic differences, are damned to the same punishment of being enveloped in tongues of fire in the area of fraud among the evil counselors. Even though the image of the Sicilian bull within which its maker perishes (7–9) conveys the sense that we are witnessing the fate of contrivers trapped by their own contrivances, it also harks back to Ulysses’ artifact, the Trojan horse. It could be said that Guido is the truth, as it were, of Ulysses. If the pairing of their voices, however, can be construed as a confrontation between the epic and the mock—heroic, style is not just a technique of characterizing their respective moral visions—Guido’s municipal particularity of style introduces us to the question of political rhetoric— the rhetoric by which cities are established or destroyed—which is featured in the canto. What we are shown, to be sure, is an obsessive element of Dante’s political thought: Guido da Montefeltro, the adviser of Pope Boniface VIII, counseled him how to capture the city of Palestrina, and this advice is placed within the reality of the temporal power of the papacy. From this standpoint Inferno 27 prefigures Saint Peter’s invective in Paradiso 27, and it also echoes Inferno 19, the ditch of the Simonists, where Pope Boniface is expected. As in Inferno 19, we are given the cause of the general sickness: just as Constantine sought out Pope Sylvester to cure his leprosy

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(94–99), so did Boniface VIII seek Guido da Montefeltro to cure his pride. If leprosy suggests the rotting away of the body politic, pride is the fever of the mystical body; the origin of both is the Donation of Constantine. The chiasmus that the comparison draws (Boniface is equated with Constantine) points to the unholy mingling of the spiritual and secular orders and to the role reversal of the pope and his adviser. But there is in the canto an attention to political discourse that goes beyond this level of generality. In a way, just as there was a theology of style, we are now allowed to face political theology as the politics of theology. We are led more precisely, into the council chamber—behind the scenes, as it were—where “li accorgimenti e le coperte vie” (“all wiles and covert ways” [76]), the art of wielding naked political power, is shown. Here big deals are struck, so big that they focus on the destruction of cities and the salvation of souls. These are the terms of the transaction: by virtue of his absolute sovereignty—an authority that depends on the argument of the two keys, “Lo ciel poss’io serrare e diserrare,/come tu sai; però son due le chiave/che ‘1 mio antecessor non ebbe care” (“I can lock-and unlock Heaven, as you know; for the keys are two, which my predecessor did not hold dear” [103–105])—the pope promises absolution for Guido’s misdeed (Inferno 27. 100–102). Guido’s advice is simply to make promises without planning to keep them: Lunga promessa con 1’attender corto ti farà trïunfar ne l’alto seggio (Inferno 27.10–11) (Long promise with short keeping will make you triumph on the High Seat).

This advice, I would suggest, textually repeats and reverses Brunetto Latini’s formulation in La rettorica. Commenting on Cicero’s statement that the stability of a city is contingent on keeping faith, on observing laws and practicing obedience to one another, Brunetto adds that to keep faith means to be loyal to one’s commitments and to keep one’s word; “dice la legge che fede è quella che promette l’uno e l’altro l’attende” (“and the law says that faith is that by which one promises and the other keeps it”).3 The deliberate violation of the ethical

3 Brunetto Latini, La rettorica XIX, ed. Francesco Maggini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1968).

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perspective, which alone, as Brunetto fully knows, can neutralize the dangerous simulations that rhetoric affords, brings to a focus what the canto of Ulysses unveils: that ethics is the set of values rhetoric manipulates at will. From Dante’s viewpoint, however, the arrangement between the pope and his counselor is charged with heavy ironies that disrupt the utilitarian calculus of the principals. The pope begins by taking literally what is known as his plenitudo potestatis the fullness of spiritual and temporal powers given to him by God, yet he is powerless to act and seize a town. He believes in the performative power of his words, that by virtue of his office his words are a sacramental pledge. Yet he takes advice to say words that do not measure up to his actions. There is irony even in Dante’s use of the word “officio,” a term which for Cicero means moral duty; its appearance in line 91 only stresses the dereliction of duty. On the other hand, there is Guido, who knows that in the tough political games men play there is a gap between words and reality. Yet he believes in the pope’s “argomenti gravi” (“weighty arguments” [106])—a word that designates probable demonstration according to logical rules—without recognizing that the pope does not deliver what he promises, which, after all, was exactly Guido’s advice to him. The point of these ironies is that Boniface and Guido thoroughly resemble and deserve each other. Both believe in compromises, practical gains, and moral adjustments, as if God’s grace could be made adaptable to their calculus and to the narrow stage of everyday politics. And both are sophists of the kind Saint Augustine finds especially odious in De doctrina Christiana, those who transform the world of political action into a world of carefully spoken words.4 As a sophist, Boniface entertains the illusion that he can control the discourse of others and ends up controlling Guido while at the same time being controlled by him. As a sophist, Guido is the character who is always drawing the wrong logical inference from his actions: he mistakenly believes Dante is dead because he has heard that nobody ever came alive from the depths of hell (61–66); he becomes

4 “There are, moreover, many false conclusions of the reasoning process called sophisms, and frequently they so imitate true conclusions that they mislead not only those who are slow but also the ingenious when they do not pay close attention” Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine II, xxxi, in Corpus christianorum series Latina (CCSL) 28 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970).

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a friar, believing that thus girt he could make amends for this past (66–69). What exactly does it mean to suggest, as I am doing, that Guido is portrayed as if he were a logician? And how does it square with the fact (to the best of my knowledge it has not been investigated by commentators) that he is a Franciscan, or, as he calls himself, a “cordigliero” (a corded friar) (67)? The fact that Guido is a Franciscan has far-reaching implications for the dramatic and intellectual structure of the canto. It accounts, first of all, for the textual references to the bloody heap of the French (44), a reference to a world at war that is the parodic counter of Franciscan ideals of peace. More substantively, the tongues of fire in which the sinners are wrapped are an emblem more appropriate to a Franciscan like Guido than to Ulysses. The tongues of fire are usually explained as a parody of the Pentecostal gift of prophecy that descended on the apostles at the time of the origin of the Church. It happens, however, that the Constitution of the Franciscans established that the friars should convene at the Porziuncola every four years on Pentecost.5 The reason for this ritual is to be found in the Franciscans’ conscious vision of themselves as the new apostles, capable of reforming the world. Guido’s language perverts the Pentecostal gift, and it perverts the Franciscan sense of prophecy: prophecy as the gift of challenging, from the perspective of the Christian promise, all power-centered ideologies. Further, the perversion has put him in touch with the fierce enemies of the Franciscans, the logicians. The possibility for this textual connection is suggested by the canto itself. At Guido’s death there is a disputatio between one of the “neri cherubini” (“black cherubs”) and Saint Francis over Guido’s soul (112–117). The devil wins the debate and speaks of himself as a “löico” (“logician” [123]). The debate between the devil and Saint Francis is not much of a surprise, for as a fallen angel—one of the cherubim—the devil is the 5 The link is made by Saint Bonaventure in Legenda duae de vita S. Francisci seraphici III, 21–22; also in Thomas of Celano, Vita prima, ed. M. Bihl, in Analecta franciscana 10 (1941) chapter 9. 22. Celano writes that, while preaching, Saint Francis spoke with such “fervor” (an over metaphor of fiery spirituality) that he “made a tongue of his whole body.” Guido da Montefeltro, a Franciscan, is now, ironically trapped in a tongue of fire, Vita prima I.27, 73. The importance of Franciscan prophecy and the Joachistic extension of it in Dante has been magisterially illustrated by R.E. Kaske in “Dante’s ‘DXV’ and ‘Veltro,’” Traditio 17 (1961): 185–254. More generally see Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 135–228.

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direct antagonist of Francis, who is commonly described in his hagiographies as “the angel coming from the east, with the seal of the living God.”6 Furthermore, the reference to the devil as one of the cherubim, which means “plenitudo scientiae” and is the attribute of the Dominicans,7 seems to be involved obliquely in Dante’s representation of both orders of friars. But this is not the hidden allegory of a quaestio disputata between Dominicans and Franciscans. What is at stake, on the contrary, is the long debate in which the two fraternal orders were engaged in the thirteenth century—and in which they ended up on the side of their opponents, as Dante implies. The debate centered on the value of the liberal arts at the University of Paris. In historical terms, the debate saw the preachers and the mendicants opposed by the secular masters of theology. The Dominicans, to be sure, adapted quickly to the pressures of university circles because their order was founded with the explicit intellectual aim of combating heresies. The Franciscans, on the other hand, in response to the call for evangelical practice, believed that their homiletics had to retrieve the essence of the good news without any sophistry. Saint Francis was an “idiota,” given to the cult of simplicitas; Paris, the city of learning, was made to appear the enemy of Assisi. This stress on simplicity did not mean that the Franciscans kept away for too long from the world of learning. There was in effect a strong Augustinian strand in their attitude toward academic knowledge. Saint Augustine, it will be remembered, encouraged Christians in De doctrina Christiana to make good use of pagan rhetoric in order to communicate the message of the Revelation effectively. Secular wisdom, which was crystallized in the liberal arts and which Saint Augustine never quite rejected in the Confessions, was viewed as a treasure to be plundered by Christians the way the Hebrews plundered the “Egyptian gold.”8 6 The phrase is from Revelations 7:12. The scriptural phrase is used by Saint Bonaventure, Legenda maior, preface, Opera omnia, ed. PP. Collegii a san Bonaventura, in De reductione artium ad theologiam 5 (1891), (Quaracchi, 1882–1902), 632. 7 “L’un fu tutto serafico in ardore;/l’altro per sapienza in terra fue/di cherubica luce uno splendore” (Paradiso 11, 37–39); “Cherubim interpretatur plenitude scientiae” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I. 63, 7; (Latin text and English trans), Blackfriars Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). 8 “Just as the Europeans had not only idols and grave burdens which the people of Israel detested and avoided, so also they had vases and ornaments of gold and silver and clothing which the Israelites took with them secretly when they fled. . . .

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The Franciscans—figures such as Alexander of Hales, Saint Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus—did move into the universities, but by virtue of their voluntarism they adhered to an essential antiAristotelianism. The formal edifice of Aristotelian logic was severely challenged, both as a theory of abstract reasoning and as a doctrine that the universe is a logical system of numbers and mathematically measurable order.9 In Inferno 27, as the devil is identified as a logician, logic comes forth as the art that deals with judgments about the consistency or contradictions within the structure of an argument, but it radically lacks an ethical perspective. Appropriately, Guido, who has betrayed his Franciscan principles, is now claimed by one of the very logicians the Franciscans opposed. But the debate between Franciscans and the secular masters is not left entirely on this academic level in the canto. There are politica