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 DANTE 
 
 AND 
 
 DE MONARCHIA.
 
 DANTE, 
 
 ^n dz&sn'Q. 
 
 BY 
 
 R. W. CHURCH, M.A., D.C.L. 
 
 DEA.N OF ST. PAUL'S, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 To which is added 
 A TRANSLATION OF 
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 By F. J. CHURCH. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO.^ 
 1879.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, 
 CRYSTAL PALACB VRESS.
 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 The following Essay first appeared in the " Christian 
 Remembrancer" of January, 1850, and it was re- 
 printed in a volume of " Essays and Reviews," 
 published in 1854. 
 
 It was written before the appearance in Germany 
 and England of the abundant recent literature on 
 the subject. With the exception of a few trifling 
 corrections, it is republished without change. 
 
 By the desire of Mr. Macmillan, a translation of 
 the De Monarchia is subjoined. I am indebted for 
 it to my son, Mr. F. J. Church, late Scholar of New 
 College. It is made from the text of Witte's second 
 edition of the De Monarchia, 1874. The De Mo- 
 narchia has been more than once translated into 
 Italian and German, in earlier or later times. But I 
 do not know that any English translation has yet 
 appeared. It is analysed in the fifteenth chapter of 
 Mr. Bryce's " Holy Roman Empire." 
 
 Witte, with much probability, I think, places the 

 
 vi NOTICE. 
 
 composition of the work in the first part of Dante's 
 hfe, before his exile in 1301, while the pretensions 
 and arguments of Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) were 
 being discussed by Guelf and Ghibelline partisans, 
 but before they were formally embodied in the famous 
 Bull Unaiii Sanctam, 1302. The character of the 
 composition, for the most part, formal, general, and 
 scholastic, sanguine in tone and with little personal 
 allusion, is in strong contrast with the passionate and 
 despairing language of resentment and disappoint- 
 ment which marks his later writings. As an example 
 of the political speculation of the time, it should be 
 compared with the '■^ De Regimine Principum" ascribed 
 to Thomas Aquinas. The whole subject of the me- 
 diaeval idea of the Empire is admirably discussed 
 in Mr. Bryce's book referred to above. 
 
 R. W. C, 
 
 St. Paul's, 
 
 November , 187S.
 
 DANTE.
 
 DANTE/ 
 
 [Jan. 1850.] 
 
 The Divina Conimedia is one of the landmarks of 
 history. More than a magnificent poem, more than 
 the beginning of a language and the opening of a 
 national literature, more than the inspirer of art, and 
 the glory of a great people, it is one of those rare 
 and solemn monuments of the mind's power, which 
 measure and test what it can reach to, which rise 
 up ineffaceably and for ever as time goes on, 
 
 * Dautes Divine Comedy, the Inferno ; a literal Prose Translation, 
 zoith the Text of the Original. By J. A. Carlyle, ■M.D., London : 1S49. 
 I have never quite forgiven myself for not having said more of the 
 unpretending but honest and most useful volume which stood at the 
 head of this essay when it first appeared as an article. It was placed 
 there, according to what was then a custom of article writers, as a peg 
 to hang remarks upon which might or might not be criticisms of the 
 particular book so noticed. It did not offer itself specially to my use, 
 and my attention was busy with my own work. But this was no 
 excuse for availing myself of a good book, and not giving it the notice 
 which it deserved. To an English student beginning Dante, and 
 wishing to study him in a scholarly manner, it is really more useful 
 than a verse translation can be ; and I have always greatly regretted 
 that the plan of translating the whole work was dropped for want of 
 the appreciation which the first instalment ought to have had. {1S7S.) 
 
 B 
 
 /
 
 DANTE. 
 
 marking out its advance by grander divisions than 
 its centuries, and adopted as epochs by the con- 
 sent of all who come after. It stands with the 
 Iliad and Shakspere's Plays, with the writings of 
 Aristotle and Plato, with the Novitvi Organon and 
 the Principia, with Justinian's Code, with the Par- 
 thenon and S. Peter's. It is the first Christian poem; 
 and it opens Ern'Opean literature, as the Iliad did that 
 of Greece and Rome. And, like the Iliad, it has never 
 become out of date; it accompanies in undiminished 
 freshness the literature which it began. 
 
 We approach the history of such works, in which 
 genius seems to have pushed its achievements to a new 
 limit, with a kind of awe. The beginnings of all things, 
 their bursting out from nothing, and gradual evolution 
 into substance and shape, cast on the mind a solemn 
 influence. They come too near the fount of being to 
 be followed up without our feeling the shadows which 
 surround it. We cannot but fear, cannot but feel 
 ourselves cut off from this visible and familiar world 
 —as we enter into the cloud. And as with the pro- 
 cesses of nature, so it is with those offsprings of man's 
 mind, by which he has added permanently one raore 
 crreat feature to the world, and created a new power 
 which is to act on mankind to the end. The mystery 
 of the inventive and creative faculty, the subtle and 
 incalculable combinations by which it Avas led to its
 
 DANTE. 
 
 work, and carried through it, are out of the reach of 
 investigating thought. Often the idea recurs of the 
 precariousness of the result ; by how Httle the world 
 might have lost one of its ornaments— by one sharp 
 pang, or one chance meeting, or any other among 
 the countless accidents among which man runs his 
 course. And then the solemn recollection supervenes, 
 that powers were formed, and life^reserved, and cir- 
 cumstances arranged, and actions controlled, that 
 thus it should be : and the work which man has 
 brooded over, and at last created, is the foster-child 
 too of that " Wisdom which reaches from end to end, 
 strongly and sweetly disposing all things." 
 
 It does not abate these feelings, that we can follow 
 in some cases and to a certain extent, the progress of 
 a work. Indeed, the sight of the particular accidents 
 among which it was developed — which belong perhaps 
 to a heterogeneous and widely discordant order of 
 things, which are out of proportion and out of har- 
 mony with it, which do not explain it, which have, as 
 it may seem to us, no natural right to be connected 
 v/ith it, to bear on its character, or contribute to its 
 accomplishment, to which we feel, as it Avere, ashamed 
 to owe what v/e can least spare, yet on which its 
 forming mind and purpose were dependent, and Avitli 
 which they had to conspire — affects the imagination 
 even more than cases where we see nothing. We are 
 
 B 2
 
 DANTE. 
 
 tempted less to musing and wonder by the Iliad, a 
 work without a history, cut off from its past, the 
 sole relic and vestige of its age, unexplained in its 
 origin and perfection, than by the Divina Commedia, 
 destined for the highest ends and most universal 
 sympathy, yet the reflection of a personal history, and 
 issuing seemingly from its chance incidents. 
 
 The Divina Coniuicdia is singular among the great 
 
 works with which it ranks, for its strong stamp 
 
 of personal character and history. In general we 
 
 associate little more than the name — not the life — of 
 
 a great poet with his works ; personal interest belongs 
 
 more usually to greatness in its active than its creative 
 
 forms. But the whole idea and purpose of the 
 
 Commedia, as well as its filling up and colouring, are 
 
 determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, 
 
 perhaps, in its aim and flight of all poems, it is also 
 
 the most individual ; the writer's own life is 
 
 chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of 
 
 all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the 
 
 sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and 
 
 grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of 
 
 the transient names, and local factions, and obscure 
 
 ambitions, and forgotten crimes, of the poet's own 
 
 day ; and in that awful company to which he leads 
 
 us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose 
 
 sight of himself And when this peculiarity sends us
 
 DANTE. 5 
 
 to history, it seems as if the poem which was to hold 
 such a place in Christian literature hung upon and 
 Gfrew out of chance events, rather than the deliberate 
 desien of its author. History indeed here, as 
 generally, is but a feeble exponent of the course of 
 growth in a great mind and great ideas. It shows us 
 early a bent and jjurpose — the man conscious of 
 power and intending to use it — and then the accidents 
 among which he worked : but how that current of 
 purpose threaded its way among them, how it was 
 thrown back, deflected, deepened, by them, we cannot 
 learn from history. It presents but a broken and 
 mysterious picture. A boy of quick and enthusiastic 
 temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The 
 lady of his mystic passion dies early. _He_dreams of 
 her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a Saint in 
 Paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, 
 a strange and perplexing work of fiction — quaint and 
 subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit ; but, on the 
 other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep 
 feeling. It is a first essay ; he closes it abruptly as if 
 dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of 
 raising at a future day a worthy monument to the 
 memory of her whom he has lost. It is the promise 
 and purpose of a great work. But a prosaic change 
 seems to come over this half-ideal character. The 
 lover becomes the student — the student of the 13th
 
 DANTE. 
 
 century — struggling painfully against difficulties, 
 eager and hot after knowledge, wasting eyesight and 
 stinting sleep, subtle, inquisitive, active-minded and 
 sanguine, but omnivorous, overflowing with dialectical 
 forms, loose in premiss and ostentatiously rigid in 
 syllogism, fettered by the refinements of half- 
 awakened taste, and the mannerisms of the Pro- 
 vengals. Boethius and Cicero, and the mass of 
 mixed learning Avithin his reach, are accepted as the 
 consolation of his human griefs : he is filled with the 
 passion of universal knowledge, and the desire to 
 communicate it. Philosophy has become the lady of 
 his soul — to wTite allegorical poems in her honour, 
 and to comment on them with all the apparatus of 
 his learning in prose, his mode of celebrating her. 
 Further, he marries ; it is said, not happily. The 
 antiquaries, too, have disturbed romance by dis- 
 covering that Beatrice also was married some years 
 before her death. He appears, as time goes on, as 
 a burgher of Florence, the father of a family, a 
 politician, an envoy, a magistrate, a partisan, taking 
 his full share in the quarrels of the day. At length 
 we see him, at once an exile, and the poet of the 
 Coiiunedia. Beatrice reappears — shadowy, melting 
 at times into symbol and figure — but far too living 
 and real, addressed with too intense and natural 
 feeling, to be the mere personification of anything.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 The lady of the philosophical Canzoni has vanished. 
 The student's dream has been broken, as the boy's 
 had been ; and the earnestness of the man, en- 
 lightened by sorrow, overleaping the student's 
 formalities and abstractions, reverted in sympathy to 
 the earnestness of the boy, and brooded once more 
 on that Saint in Paradise, whose presence and 
 memory had once been so soothing, and vdio now 
 seemed a real link between him and that stable 
 country, "where the angels are in peace." Round 
 her image, the reflection of purity, and truth, and 
 forbearing love, was grouped that confused scene of 
 trouble and effort, of failure and success, which the 
 poet saw round him ; round her image it arranged 
 itself in awful order — and that image, not a meta- 
 physical abstraction, but the living memory, freshened 
 by sorrow, and seen through the softening and 
 hallowing vista of years, of Beatrice Portinari — no 
 figment of imagination, but God's creature and 
 ser\'ant. A childish love, dissipated by study and 
 business, and revived in memory by heavy sorrow — 
 a boyish resolution, made in a moment of feeling, 
 interrupted, though it would be hazardous to say in 
 Dante's case, laid aside, for apparently more manly 
 studies, gave the idea and suggested the form of the 
 " Sacred poem of earth and heaven." 
 
 And the occasion of this startling unfolding of the
 
 8 DANTE. 
 
 poetic gift, of this passage of a soft and dreamy boy, 
 into the keenest, boldest, sternest of poets, the free 
 and mighty leader of European song, was, what is 
 not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspira- 
 tion, — the political life. The boy had sensibility, high 
 aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature ; the 
 student added to this energy, various learning, gifts 
 of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and 
 ends of man. But it Avas the factions of Florence 
 which made Dante a great poet. But for them, he 
 might have been a modern critic and essayist born 
 before his time, and have held a high place among the 
 writers of fugitive verses ; in Italy, a graceful but 
 trifling and idle tribe, often casting a deep and beau- 
 tiful thought into a mould of expressive diction, but 
 oftener toying with a foolish and glittering conceit, 
 and whose languid genius was exhausted by a sonnet. 
 He might have thrown into the shade the Guidos and 
 Cinos of his day, to be eclipsed by Petrarch. But 
 he learned in the bitter feuds of Italy not to trifle ; 
 they opened to his view, and he had an eye to see, the 
 true springs and abysses of this mortal life — motives 
 and passions stronger than lovers' sentiments, evils 
 beyond the consolations of Boethius and Cicero ; 
 and from that fiery trial which without searing 
 his heart, annealed his strength and purpose, he drew 
 that great gift and power, by which he stands pre-
 
 DANTE. 
 
 eminent even among his high compeers, the gift of 
 beine real. And the idea of the Comvicdia took 
 shape, and expanded into its endless forms of terror 
 and beauty, not under the roof-tree of the literary 
 citizen, but when the exile had been driven out to the 
 highways of the world, to study nature on the sea or 
 by the river or on the mountain track, and to study 
 men in the courts of Verona and Ravenna, and in the 
 schools of Bologna and Paris — perhaps of Oxford. 
 
 The connexion of these feuds with Dante's poem 
 has given to the middle age history of Italy an 
 interest of which it is not undeserving in itself, full as 
 it is of curious exhibitions of character and contri- 
 vance, but to which politically it cannot lay claim, 
 amid the social phenomena, so far grander in scale 
 and purpose and more felicitous in issue, of the other 
 \vestern nations. It is remarkable for keeping up an 
 antique phase, which, in spite of modern arrange- 
 ments, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. 
 In ancient history all that is most memorable and 
 instructive gathers round cities ; civilisation and 
 empire w^ere concentrated ^^•ithin walls ; and it baffled 
 the ancient mind to conceive how power should be 
 possessed and wielded, by numbers larger than might 
 be collected in a single market-place. The Roman 
 Empire indeed aimed at being one in its administra- 
 tion and law ; but it was not a nation, nor were its-
 
 lo DANTE. 
 
 provinces nations. Yet everywhere but in Italy, it 
 prepared them for becoming nations. And while 
 everywhere else parts were uniting and union was 
 becoming organisation — and neither geographical 
 remoteness, nor unwieldiness of numbers, nor local 
 interests and differences, were untractable obstacles 
 to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition 
 of the few and the instinct of the many ; and cities, 
 even where most powerful, had become the centres of 
 the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political 
 network — while this was going on more or less 
 happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the 
 ancient classic idea lingered in its simplicity, its 
 narrowness and jealousy, wherever there was any 
 political activity. The history of Southern Italy 
 indeed is mainly a foreign one, the history of modern 
 Rome merges in that of the Papacy ; but Northern 
 Italy has a history of its own, and that is a history of 
 separate and independent cities — points of reciprocal 
 and indestructible repulsion, and within, theatres of 
 action where the blind tendencies and traditions of 
 classes and parties weighed little on the freedom of 
 individual character, and citizens could Avatch and 
 measure and study one another with the minuteness 
 of private life. 
 
 Two cities were the centres of ancient history in 
 its most interesting time. And two cities of modern
 
 DANTE. 1 1 
 
 Italy represent, with entirely undesigned but curiously 
 exact coincidence, the parts of Athens and Rome. 
 Venice, superficially so unlike, is yet in many of its 
 accidental features, and still more in its spirit, the 
 counterpart of Rome, in its obscure and mixed origin, 
 in its steady growth, in its quick sense of order and 
 early settlement of its polity, in its grand and serious 
 public spirit, in its subordination of the individual to 
 the family, and the family to the state, in its combina- 
 tion of remote dominion with the liberty of a solitary 
 and sovereign city. And though the associations and 
 the scale of the two were so different— though Rome 
 had its hills and its legions, and Venice its lagunes 
 and galleys — the long emipire of Venice, the heir of 
 Carthage and predecessor of England on the seas, the 
 great aristocratic republic of looo years, is the only 
 empire that has yet matched Rome in length and 
 steadiness of tenure. Brennus and Hannibal were 
 not resisted with greater constancy than Doria and 
 Louis XII. ; and that great aristocracy, long so proud, 
 so high-spirited, so intelligent, so practical, who com- 
 bined the enterprise and wealth of merchants, the self- 
 devotion of soldiers and gravity of senators, Avith the 
 uniformity and obedience of a religious order, may 
 compare without shame its Giustiniani, and Zenos, 
 and Morosini, with Roman Fabii and Claudii. And 
 Rome could not be more contrasted with Athens than
 
 12 DANTE. 
 
 Venice with Italian and contemporary Florence — 
 stability with fitfulncss, independence impregnable 
 and secure, with a short-lived and troubled liberty, 
 empire meditated and achieved, with a course of 
 barren intrigues and quarrels. Florence, gay, 
 capricious, turbulent, the city of party, the head and 
 busy patroness of democracy in the cities round her — 
 Florence, where popular government was inaugurated 
 with its utmost exclusiveness and most pompous cere- 
 monial ; waging her little summer wars against 
 Ghibelline tyrants, revolted democracies, and her own 
 exiles ; and further, so rich in intellectual gifts, in 
 variety of individual character, in poets, artists, wits, 
 historians — Florence in its brilliant days recalled the 
 image of ancient Athens, and did not depart from its 
 prototype in the beauty of its natural site, in its noble 
 public buildings, in the size and nature of its territory. 
 And the course of its history is similar and the result 
 of similar causes — a traditional spirit of freedom, with 
 its accesses of fitful energy, its periods of grand 
 display and moments of glorious achievement, but 
 producing nothing politically great or durable, and 
 sinking at length into a resigned servitude. It had its 
 Peisistratidse more successful than those of Athens ; 
 it had, too, its Harmodius and Aristogeiton ; it had 
 its great orator of liberty, as potent and as unfortunate 
 as the antagonist of Philip. And finally, like Athens, 
 it became content with the remembrance of its former
 
 DANTE. \% 
 
 o 
 
 glory, Avith being the fashionable and acknowledged 
 seat of refinement and taste, with being a favoured 
 dependency on the modern heir of the Caesars. But 
 if to Venice belongs a grander public history, Floren- 
 tine names and works, like Athenian, will be living 
 among men, when the Brenta shall have been left 
 unchecked to turn the Lagunes into ploughland, and 
 when Rome herself may no longer be the seat of the 
 Popes. 
 
 The year of Dante's birth was a memorable one in 
 the annals of Florence, of Italy, and of Christendom.* 
 The year 1265 Avas the year of that great victory 
 of Benevento, where Charles of Anjou overthrew 
 Manfred of Naples, and destroyed at one blow the 
 power of the house of Swabia. From that time till 
 the time of Charles V., the emperors had no footing 
 in Italy. Further, that victory set up the French 
 influence in Italy, which, transient in itself, produced 
 such strange and momentous consequences, by the 
 intimate connexion to which it led betw^een the French 
 kings and the Popes. The protection of France was 
 dearly bought by the captivity of Avignon, the great 
 western schism, and the consequent secularisation of 
 the Papacy, which lasted on uninterrupted till the 
 Council of Trent. Nearly three centuries of degrada- 
 tion and scandal, unrelieved by one heroic effort 
 
 * May, 1265. (Pelli.) Benevento : Feb. 26, 126^. The Floientine 
 year began March 25.
 
 14 DANTE. 
 
 among- the successors of Gregory VIL, connected the 
 Reformation with the triumph of Ch;irles and the Pope 
 at Benevento. Finally, by it the Guelf party was 
 restored for good in Florence ; the Guelf democracy, 
 which had been trampled down by the Uberti and 
 Manfred's chivalry at Monteaperti, once more raised 
 its head ; and fortune, which had long wavered between 
 the rival lilies, finally turned against the white one, 
 till the name of Ghibelline became a proscribed 
 one in Florence, as Jacobite was once in Scotland, or 
 Papist in England, or Royalist in France. 
 
 The names of Guelf and Ghibelline were the 
 inheritance of a contest which, in its original meaning, 
 had been long over. The old struggle between the 
 priesthood and the empire was still kept up tradition- 
 ally, but its ideas and interests were changed : they 
 were still great and important ones, but not those of 
 Gregory VII. It had passed over from the mixed 
 region of the spiritual and temporal into the purely 
 political. The cause of the popes was that of the 
 independence of Italy — the freedom and alliance of 
 the great cities of the north, and the dependence of 
 the centre and south on the Roman See. To keep 
 the Emperor out of Italy — to create a barrier of 
 powerful cities against him south of the Alps — to 
 form behind themselves a compact territory, rich, 
 removed from the first burst of invasion, and main-
 
 DANTE. 15 
 
 taining a strong body of interested feudatories, had 
 now become the great object of the popes. It may 
 have been a wise pohcy on their part, for the main- 
 tenance of their spiritual influence, to attempt to 
 connect their own independence with the pohtical 
 freedom of the Italian communities ; but certain it is 
 that the ideas and the characters which gave a 
 religious interest and grandeur to the earlier part of 
 the contest, appear but sparingly, if at all, in its later 
 forms. 
 
 The two parties did not care to keep in view prin- 
 ciples which their chiefs had lost sight of The 
 Emperor and the Pope were both real powers, able to 
 protect and assist ; and they divided between them 
 those who required protection and assistance. Geo- 
 graphical position, the rivalry of neighbourhood, family 
 tradition, private feuds, and above all private interest, 
 were the main causes which assigned cities, families, 
 and individuals to the Ghibelline or Guelf party. One 
 party called themselves the Emperor's liegemen, and 
 their watchword was authority and law ; the other 
 side were the liegemen of Holy Church, and their cry 
 was liberty; and the distinction as a broad one is 
 true. But a democracy would become Ghibelline, 
 without scruple, if its neighbour town was Guelf; and 
 among the Guelf liegemen of the Church and liberty 
 the pride of blood and love of power were not a whit
 
 i6 DANTE. 
 
 inferior to that of their opponents. Yet, though the 
 original principle of the contest was lost, and the 
 political distinctions of parties were often interfered 
 with by interest or accident, it is not impossible to 
 trace in the two factions differences of temper, of 
 moral and political inclinations, which though visible 
 only on a large scale and in the mass, were quite suffi- 
 cient to give meaning and reality to their mutual 
 opposition. These differences had come down, greatly 
 altered of course, from the quarrel in which the parties 
 took their rise. The Ghibellines as a body reflected 
 the worldliness, the licence, the irreligion, the reckless ' 
 selfishness, the daring insolence, and at the same time 
 the gaiety and pomp, the princely magnificence and 
 generosity and largeness of mind of the house of 
 Swabia ; they were the men of the court and camp, 
 imperious and haughty from ancient lineage or the 
 Imperial cause, yet not wanting in the frankness and 
 courtesy of nobility ; careless of public opinion and 
 public rights, but not dead to the grandeur of public 
 objects and public services. Among them were 
 found, or to them inclined, all who, whether from a 
 base or a lofty ambition, desired to place their will 
 above law* — the lord of the feudal castle, the robber- 
 
 * " Maghinardo da Susinana {il Demonio, Purj^. 14) fu uno grande e 
 savio tiranno .... gran castellano, e con molti fedeli : savio fu 
 di guerra e bene avventuroso in piu battaglie, e al suo tempo fece gran
 
 DANTE. 
 
 17 
 
 knight of the Apennine pass, the magnificent but 
 terrible tyrants of the cities, the pride and shame of 
 Italy, the Visconti and Scaligers. That renowned 
 Ghibelline chief, whom the poet finds in the fiery 
 sepulchres of the unbelievers with the great Ghibelline 
 emperor and the princely Ghibelline cardinal — the 
 disdainful and bitter but lofty spirit of Farinata degli 
 Uberti, the conqueror, and then singly and at his own 
 risk, the saviour of his country which had wronged 
 him, represents the good as well as the bad side of 
 his party. 
 
 The Guelfs, on the other hand, were the party of 
 the middle classes ; they rose out of and held to the 
 people ; they were strong by their compactness, their 
 organisation in cities, their commercial relations and 
 interests, their command of money. Further, they 
 were professedly the party of strictness and religion, 
 a profession which fettered them as little as their 
 opponents were fettered by the respect they claimed 
 for imperial law. But though by personal unscrupu- 
 lousness and selfishness, and in instances of public 
 vengeance, they sinned as deeply as the Ghibellines, 
 they stood far more committed as a party to a public 
 
 cose. Ghibellino era di sua nazione e in sue opere ; ma co' Fiorentini 
 era Guelfo e nimico di tutti i loro nimici, o Guelfi o Ghibellini che 
 fossono." — G. Vill. vii. 149. A Ghibelline by birth and disposition ; 
 yet, from circumstances, a close ally of the Guelfs of Florence. 
 
 G
 
 1 8 DANTE. 
 
 meaning- and purpose — to improvement in law and 
 the condition of the poor, to a protest against the 
 insolence of the strong, to the encouragement of 
 industry. The genuine Gucif spirit was austere, 
 frugal, independent, earnest, religious, fond of its home 
 and Church, and of those celebrations which bound 
 together Church and home ; but withal very proud, 
 very intolerant ; in its higher form intolerant of evil, 
 but intolerant always to whatever displeased it. Yet 
 there was a grave and noble manliness about it which 
 long kept it alive in Florence. It had not as yet 
 turned itself against the practical corruptions of the 
 Church, which was its ally ; but this also it was to do, 
 v.^hen the popes had forsaken the cause of liberty, and 
 leagued themselves with the brilliant tyranny of the 
 Medici. Then Savonarola invoked, and not in vain, 
 the stern old Guelf spirit of resistance, of domestic 
 purity and severity, and of domestic religion, against 
 unbelief and licentiousness even in the Church ; and 
 the Guelf " Piagnoni " presented, in a more simple 
 and generous shape, a resemblance to our own 
 Puritans, as the Ghibellines often recall the coarser 
 and worse features of our own Cavaliers. 
 
 In Florence, these distinctions had become mere 
 nominal ones, confined to the great families who 
 carried on their private feuds under the old party 
 names, when Frederick II. once more gave them
 
 DANTE. 19 
 
 their meaning. " Although the accursed Guelf and 
 Ghibelline factions lasted amongst the nobles of 
 Florence, and they often waged war among them- 
 selves out of private grudges, and took sides for 
 the said factions, and held one with another, and 
 those who called themselves Guelfs desired the esta- 
 blishment of the Pope and Holy Church, and those 
 who called themselves Ghibellines favoured the 
 Emperor and his adherents, yet withal the people and 
 commonalty of Florence maintained itself in unity, to 
 the well-being and honour and establishment of the 
 commonwealth."* But the appearance on the scene 
 of an emperor of such talent and bold designs revived 
 the languid contest, and gave to party a cause, and to 
 individual passions and ambition an impulse and pre- 
 text. The division between Guelf and Ghibelline 
 again became serious, involved all Florence, armed 
 house against house, and neighbourhood against 
 neighbourhood, issued in merciless and vindictive 
 warfare, grew on into a liopeless and deadly breach, 
 and finally lost to Florence, without remedy or repair, 
 half her noble houses and the love of the greatest of 
 her sons. The old badge of their common country 
 became to the two factions the sign of their impla- 
 cable hatred ; the white lily of Florence, borne by the 
 
 * G. Vilhni, vi. 33. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 Ghibellines, was turned to red by the Guelfs, and the 
 flower of two colours marked a civil strife as cruel and 
 as fatal, if on a smaller scale, as that of the English 
 roses.* 
 
 It was waged with the peculiar characteristics of 
 Italian civil war. There the city itself was the scene 
 of battle. A thirteenth century city in Italy bore on 
 its face the evidence that it was built and arranged 
 for such emergencies. Its crowded and narrow streets 
 were a collection of rival castles, whose tall towers, 
 rising thick and close over its roofs, or hanging 
 perilously over its close courts, attested the emulous 
 pride and the insecurity of Italian civic life. There, 
 within a separate precinct, flanked and faced by 
 jealous friends or deadly enemies, were clustered 
 together the dwellings of the various members of each 
 g-reat house — their common home and the monument 
 of their magnificence and pride, and capable of being, 
 as was so often necessary, their common refuge. In 
 these fortresses of the leading families, scattered about 
 the city, were the various points of onset and recovery 
 in civic battle ; in the streets barricades were raised, 
 mangonels and crossbows were plied from the towers, 
 a series of separate combats raged through the city, 
 till chance at length connected the attacks of one side, 
 
 * G. Villani, vi. 33, 43 ; Farad. 19.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 21 
 
 or some panic paralysed the resistance of the other, 
 or a conflagration interposed itself between the com- 
 batants, burning out at once Guelf and Ghibelline, 
 and laying half Florence in ashes. Each party had 
 their turn of victory; each, when vanquished, went into 
 exile, and carried on the war outside the walls ; each 
 had their opportunity of remodelling the orders and 
 framework of government, and each did so relentlessly 
 at the cost of their opponents. They excluded classes, 
 they proscribed families, they confiscated property, 
 they sacked and burned warehouses, they levelled the 
 palaces, and outraged the pride of their antagonists. 
 To destroy was not enough, without adding to it the 
 keenest and newest refinement of insult. Two 
 buildings in Florence were peculiarly dear — among 
 their '' cari liioghi" — to the popular feeling and the 
 Guelf party : the Baptistery of St. John, " il mio bel 
 St. Giovanni," " to which all the good people resorted 
 on Sundays,"* where they had all received baptism, 
 where they had been married, where families were 
 solemnly reconciled ; and a tall and beautiful tower 
 close by it, called the " Torre del Guardamorto," where 
 the bodies of the " good people," who of old were all 
 buried at S. Giovanni, rested on their way to the 
 grave. The victorious Ghibellines, when they levelled 
 
 * G. Villani, vi. 33, iv. 10; Inf. 19; Parad. 25.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 the Guelf towers, overthrew this one, and endeavoured 
 to make it crush in its fall the sacred church, 
 "which," says the old chronicler, "was prevented by a 
 miracle." The Guelfs, when their day came, built the 
 walls of Florence with the stones of Ghibelline 
 palaces.* One great family stands out pre-eminent 
 in this fierce conflict as the victim and monument of 
 party war. The head of the Ghibellines was the proud 
 and powerful house of the Uberti, who shared with 
 another great Ghibelline family, the Pazzi, the valley 
 of the upper Arno. They lighted up the war in the 
 Emperor's cause. They supported its weight and 
 guided it. In time of peace they were foremost 
 and unrestrained in defiance of law and in scorn of 
 the people — in war, the people's fiercest and most 
 active enemies. Heavy sufferers, in their property, 
 and by the sword and axe, yet untamed and in- 
 corrigible, they led the van in that battle, so long 
 remembered to their cost by the Guelfs, the battle of 
 Monteaperti (1260) — 
 
 Lo strazio, e '1 gran scempio 
 
 Che fece 1' Arbia colorata in rossa. — Inf. 10. 
 
 That the head of their house, Farinata, saved 
 Florence from the vengeance of his meaner associates, 
 was not enough to atone for the unpardonable wrongs 
 
 G. Villani, vi. 39, 65.
 
 DANTE. 23 
 
 which they had done to the Guelfs and the democracy. 
 When the red hly of the Guelfs finally supplanted the 
 white one as the arms of Florence, and the badge of 
 Guelph triumph, they were proscribed for ever, like 
 the Peisistratidae and the Tarquins. In every amnesty 
 their names vv'ere excepted. The site on which their 
 houses had stood was never again to be built upon, 
 and remains the Great Square of Florence ; the archi- 
 tect of the Palace of the People was obliged to sacri- 
 fice its symmetry, and to place it awry, that its walls 
 might not encroach on the accursed ground.* " They 
 had been," says a writer, contemporary with Dante, 
 speaking of the time when he also became an exile ; 
 "they had been for more than forty years outlaws 
 from their country, nor ever found mercy nor pity, 
 remaining always abroad in great state, nor ever 
 abased their honour, seeing that they ever abode 
 with kings and lords, and to great things applied 
 themselves." f They Avere loved as they were 
 hated. When under the protection of a cardinal 
 one of them visited the city, and the chequered 
 blue and gold blazon of their house was, after 
 an interval of half a century, again seen in the 
 streets of Florence ; " many ancient Ghibcllinc men 
 
 * G. Villani, vi. 33, viii. 26 ; Vasari, Arnolfo di Lapo, i. 255 
 (Fir. 1846), t l^ino Compagni, p. 88.
 
 24 jDANTE. 
 
 and women pressed to kiss the arms,"* and even the 
 common people did him honour. 
 
 But the fortunes of Florentine factions depended 
 on other causes than merely the address or vigour of 
 their leaders. From the year of Dante's birth and 
 Charles's victory, Florence, as far as we shall have to 
 do with it, became irrevocably Guelf Not that the 
 whole commonalty of Florence formally called itself 
 Guelf, or that the Guelf party was co-extensive with 
 it ; but the city was controlled by Guelf councils, 
 devoted to the objects of the great Guelf party, and 
 received in return the support of that party in curbing 
 the pride of the nobles, and maintaining democratic 
 forms. The Guelf party of Florence, though it was 
 the life and soul of the republic, and irresistible in its 
 disposal of the influence and arms of Florence, and 
 though it embraced a large number of the most 
 powerful families, is always spoken of as something 
 distinct from, and external to, the governing powers, 
 and the whole body of the people. It was a body 
 with a separate and self-constituted existence ; — in 
 the state and allied to it, but an independent element, 
 holding on to a large and comprehensive union with- 
 out the state. Its organisation in Florence is one of 
 the most curious among the many curious combina- 
 
 Dino Compapii, p. 107.
 
 DANTE. 25 
 
 tions which meet us in Italian history. After the 
 final expulsion of the Ghibellines, the Guelf party took 
 form as an institution, with definite powers, and a local 
 existence. It appears with as distinct a shape as the 
 Jacobin Club or the Orange Lodges, side by side with 
 the go\-ernment. It was a corporate body A\ith a 
 common seal, common property, not only in funds 
 but lands — officers, archives, a common palace,* a 
 great council, a secret committee, and last of all, a 
 public accuser of the Ghibellines ; of the confiscated 
 Ghibelline estates one-third went to the republic, 
 another third to compensate individual Guelfs, the 
 rest was assigned to the Guelf party.f A pope, 
 (Clement IV., 1265-68) had granted them his own 
 arms J; and their device, a red eagle clutching a 
 serpent, may be yet seen, with the red lily, and the 
 party-coloured banner of the commonalty, on the 
 battlements of the Palazzo Vecchio. 
 
 But the expulsion of the Ghibellines did but little 
 to restore peace. The great Guelf families, as old as 
 many of the Ghibellines, had as little reverence as they 
 for law or civic rights. Below these, the acknowledged 
 nobility of Florence, were the leading families of the 
 "people," houses created by successful industry or 
 commerce, and pushing up into that privileged order, 
 
 * Giotto painted in it : Vasari, Vit. di Giotto, p. 314- 
 + G. Villani, vii. 2, 17. % Ibid. vii. 2.
 
 26 DANTE. 
 
 which, however ignored and even discredited by the 
 laws, Avas fully recognised by feeling and opinion in 
 the most democratic times of the republic. Rivalries 
 and feuds, street broils and conspiracies, high-handed 
 insolence from the great men, rough vengeance from 
 the populace, still continued to vex jealous and 
 changeful Florence. The popes sought in vain to 
 keep in order their quarrelsome liegemen ; to reconcile 
 Guelf with Guclf, and even Guelf with Ghibelline. 
 Embassies went and came, to ask for mediation and to 
 proffer it ; to apply the healing paternal hand ; to 
 present an obsequious and ostentatious submission. 
 Cardinal legates came in state, and were received 
 with reverential pomp ; they formed private com- 
 mittees, and held assemblies, and made marriages ; 
 they harangued in honeyed words, and gained the 
 largest promises ; on one occasion the Great Square 
 was turned into a vast theatre, and on this stage one 
 hundred and fifty dissidents on each side came forward, 
 and in the presence and with the benediction of the 
 cardinal kissed each other on the mouth.* And if per- 
 suasion failed, the pope's representative hesitated not 
 to excommunicate and interdict the faithful but obdu- 
 rate city. But whether excommunicated or blessed, 
 Florence could not be at peace ; however wise and 
 
 G. Villani, vii. 56.
 
 DANTE. 27 
 
 subtle had been the peace-maker's arrangements, his 
 departing cortege was hardly out of sight of the city 
 before they were blown to the winds. Not more suc- 
 cessful were the efforts of the sensible and moderate 
 citizens who sighed for tranquillity within its walls. 
 Dino Compagni's interesting though not very orderly 
 narrative describes with great frankness, and with the 
 perplexity of a simple-hearted man puzzled by the 
 continual triumph of clever wickedness, the variety 
 and the fruitlessness of the expedients devised by him 
 and other good citizens against the resolute and in- 
 corrigible selfishness of the great Guelfs — ever, when 
 checked in one form, breaking out in another ; proof 
 against all persuasion, all benefits; not to be bound by 
 law, or compact, or oath ; eluding or turning to its 
 own account the deepest and sagest contrivances of 
 constitutional wisdom. 
 
 A great battle won against Ghibelline Arezzo* 
 raised the renown and the military spirit of the 
 Guelf party, for the fame of the battle was very 
 great ; the hosts contained the choicest chivalry of 
 either side, armed and appointed with emulous 
 splendour. The fighting was hard, there was brilliant 
 and conspicuous gallantly, and the victory was com- 
 plete. It sealed Guelf ascendancy. The Ghibelline 
 
 * Campaldino, in 1289. G. 'Vill. vii. 13 1 ; Dino Cotnp. p. 14.
 
 2 8 DANTE. 
 
 warrior-bishop of Arezzo fell, with three of the Uberti, 
 and other Ghibelline chiefs. It was a day of trial, 
 " Many that day who had been thought of great 
 prowess were found dastards, and many who had 
 never been spoken of were held in high esteem." It 
 repaired the honour of Florence, and the citizens 
 showed their feeling of its importance by mixing' up 
 the marvellous Avith its story. Its tidings came to 
 Florence — so runs the tale in Villani, who declares 
 what he "heard and saw "himself — at the very hour 
 in Avhich it was won. The Priors of the republic were 
 resting in their palace during the noonday heat ; 
 suddenly the chamber door was shaken, and the cry 
 heard: "Rise up! the Aretini are defeated." The 
 door was opened, but there was no one ; their servants 
 had seen no one enter the palace, and no one came 
 from the army till the hour of vespers, on a long 
 summer's day. In this battle the Guelf leaders had 
 won great glory. The hero of the day was the 
 proudest, handsomest, craftiest, most winning, most 
 ambitiou.s, most unscrupulous Guelf noble in Florence 
 — one of a family who inherited the spirit and reck- 
 lessness of the proscribed Uberti, and did not refuse 
 the popular epithet of " Malcfavii " — Corso Donati. 
 He did not com.e back from the field of Campaldino, 
 where he had won the battle by disobeying orders
 
 DANTE. 29 
 
 with any increased disposition to yield to rivals, or 
 court the populace, or respect other men's rights. 
 Those rivals, too — -and they also had fought gallantly 
 in the post of honour at Campaldino — were such as 
 he hated from his soul — rivals whom he despised, and 
 who yet were too strong for him. His blood was 
 ancient, they were upstarts ; he was a soldier, they 
 were traders ; he was poor, they the richest men in 
 Florence. They had come to live close to the Donati, 
 they had bought the palace of an old Ghibelline 
 family, they had enlarged, adorned, and fortified it, 
 and kept great state there. They had crossed him in 
 marriages, bargains, inheritances. They had won 
 popularity, honour, influence ; and yet they were but 
 men of business, while he had a part in all the 
 political movements of the day. He was the friend 
 and intimate of lords and noblemen, with great con- 
 nexions and famous through all Italy ; they were the 
 favourites of the common people for their kindness 
 and good nature ; they even showed consideration for 
 Ghibellines. He was an accomplished man of the 
 world, keen and subtle, "full of malicious thoughts, 
 mischievous and crafty ; " they were inexperienced in 
 intrigue, and had the reputation of being clumsy and 
 stupid. He was the most graceful and engaging of 
 courtiers ; they were not even gentlemen. Lastly, in
 
 so DANTE. 
 
 the debates of that excitable repubhc he was the most 
 eloquent speaker, and they were tongue-tied.* 
 
 "There was a family," writes Dino Compagni, "who 
 
 called themselves the Cerchi, men of low estate, but 
 
 good merchants and very rich ; and they dressed richly, 
 
 and maintained many servants and horses, and made a 
 
 brave show ; and some of them bought the palace of 
 
 the Conti Guidi, which was near the houses of the 
 
 Pazzi and Donati, who were more ancient of blood 
 
 but not so rich ; therefore, seeing the Cerchi rise to 
 
 great dignity, and that they had walled and enlarged 
 
 the palace, and kept great state, the Donati began to 
 
 have a great hatred against them." Villani gives the 
 
 same account of the feud.f " It began in that quarter 
 
 of scandal the Sesta of Porta S, Piero, between the 
 
 Cerchi and Donati, on the one side through jealousy, 
 
 on the other through churlish rudeness. Of the house 
 
 of the Cerchi was head Messer Vieri de' Cerchi, 
 
 and he and those of his house were people of great 
 
 business, and powerful, and of great relationships, and 
 
 most wealthy traders, so that their company was one 
 
 of the greatest in the world ; men they were of soft life, 
 
 and who meant no harm ; boorish and ill-mannered, 
 
 like people who had come in a short time to great 
 
 state and power. The Donati were gentlemen and 
 
 * Dino Comp. pp. 32, 75, 94, 133. t G. Vill. viii. 39.
 
 DANTE. 31 
 
 warriors, and of no excessive wealth . . . They were 
 neighbours in Florence and in the country, and by 
 the conversation of their jealousy with the peevish 
 boorishness of the others, arose the proud scorn that 
 there was between them." The glories of Campaldino 
 were not as oil on these troubled waters. The con- 
 querors flouted each other all the more fiercely in the 
 streets on their return, and ill-treated the lower people 
 with less scruple. No gathering for festive or serious 
 purposes could be held without tempting strife, A 
 marriage, a funeral, a ball, a gay procession of 
 cavaliers and ladies — any meeting where one stood 
 while another sat, where horse or man might jostle 
 another, where pride might be nettled or temper 
 shown, was in danger of ending in blood. The lesser 
 quarrels meanwhile ranged themselves under the 
 greater ones ; and these, especially that between the 
 Cerchi and Donati, took more and more a political 
 character. The Cerchi inclined more and more to 
 the trading classes and the lower people ; they threw 
 themselves on their popularity, and began to hold 
 aloof from the meetings of the " Parte Guelfa," while 
 this organised body became an instrument in the 
 hands of their opponents, a club of the nobles. Corso 
 Donati, besides mischief of a more substantial kind, 
 turned his ridicule on their solemn dulness and 
 awkward speech, and his friends the jesters, one
 
 32 DANTE. 
 
 ScampoHno in particular, carried his gibes and nick- 
 names all over Florence. The Cerchi received all in 
 sullen and dogsred indifference. Thev were satisfied 
 with repelling attacks, and nursed their hatred.* 
 
 Thus the city was divided, and the attempts to 
 check the factions only exasperated them. It was 
 in vain that, when at times the government and 
 the populace lost patience, severe measures Avere 
 taken. It was in vain that the reformer, Gian 
 della Bella, carried for a time his harsh " orders 
 of justice " against the nobles, and invested popular 
 vengeance with the solemnity of law and with the 
 pomp and ceremony of a public act — that when a 
 noble had been convicted of killing a citizen, the 
 great officer, " Standard-bearer," as he was called, " of 
 justice," issued forth in state and procession, with the 
 banner of justice borne before him, with all his train, 
 and at the head of the armed citizens, to the house of 
 the criminal, and razed it to the ground. An eye- 
 witness describes the effect of such chastisement : — • 
 *' I, Dino Compagni, being Gonfalonier of Justice in 
 1293, went to their houses, and to those of their rela- 
 tions, and these I caused to be pulled down according 
 to the laws. This beginning in the case of the other 
 Gonfaloniers came to an evil effect; because, if they 
 
 * Dim Compagni, pp. 32, 34, 38.
 
 DANTE. 2yZ 
 
 demolished the houses according to the laws, the 
 people said that they were cruel ; and if they did not 
 demolish them completely, they said that they were 
 cowards ; and many distorted justice for fear of the 
 people." Gian della Bella was overthrown with few 
 regrets even on the part of the people. Equally vain 
 was the attempt to keep the peace by separating the 
 leaders of the disturbances. They were banished by 
 a kind of ostracism ; they departed in ostentatious 
 meekness, Corso Donato to plot at Rome, Vieri de' 
 Cerchi to return immediately to Florence. Anarchy 
 had got too fast a hold on the city, and it required a 
 stronger hand than that of the pope, or the signory of 
 the republic, to keep it dowm. 
 
 Yet Florence prospered. Every year it grew 
 richer, more intellectual, more refined, more beautiful^ 
 more gay. With its anarchy there was no stagnation. 
 Torn and divided as it was, its energy did not slacken, 
 its busy and creative spirit v/as not deadened, its 
 hopefulness not abated. The factions, fierce and 
 personal as they were, did not hinder that interest in 
 political ideas, that active and subtle study of the 
 questions of civil government, that passion and 
 ingenuity displayed in political contrivance, which 
 now pervaded Northern Italy, everywhere mar- 
 vellously patient and hopeful, though far from being 
 equally successful. In Venice at the close of the 
 
 D
 
 34 DANTE. 
 
 thirteenth century, that pohty was finally settled and 
 consolidated, by which she was great as long as cities 
 could be imperial, and which even in its decay 
 survived the monarchy of Louis XIV. and existed 
 within the memory of living men. In Florence, the 
 constructive spirit of law and order only resisted, 
 but never, triumphed. Yet it was at this time resolute 
 and sanguine, ready with experiment and change, 
 and not yet dispirited by continual failure. Political 
 interest, however, and party contests were not suf- 
 ficient to absorb and employ the citizens of Florence. 
 Their genial and versatile spirit, so keen, so inventive, 
 so elastic, which made them such hot and impetuous 
 partisans, kept them from being only this. The time 
 was one of growth ; new knowledge, new powers, 
 new tastes were opening to men — new pursuits 
 attracted them. There was commerce, there was the 
 school philosophy, there was the science of nature, 
 there was ancient learning, there was the civil law, 
 there were the arts, there was poetry, all rude as yet, 
 and unformed, but full of hope — the living parents 
 of mightier offspring. Fred erick II. had once m ore 
 opened Aristotle to the Latin world ; he had given 
 an impulse to the study of the great monuments of 
 Roman legislation which was responded to through 
 Italy ; himself a poet, his example and his splendid 
 court had made poetry fashionable. In the end of 
 the thirteenth century a great stride was made at
 
 DANTE. 35 
 
 Florence. While her great poet was growing up to 
 manhood, as rapid a change went on in her streets, 
 her social customs, the wealth of her citizens, their 
 ideas of magnificence and beauty, their appreciation 
 of literature. It v/as the age of growing commerce 
 and travel ; Franciscan missionaries had reached 
 China, and settled there;* in 1294, Marco Polo 
 returned to Venice, the first successful explorer of 
 the East. The merchants of Florence lagged not ; 
 their field of operation was Italy and the West ; they 
 had their correspondents in London, Paris, and 
 Bruges ; they were the bankers of popes and kings.f 
 And their city shows to this day the wealth and 
 magnificence of the last years of the thirteenth 
 century. The ancient buildings, consecrated in the 
 memory of the Florentine people, were repaired, 
 enlarged, adorned with marble and bronze — Or San 
 Michele, the Badia, the Baptistery ; and new buildings 
 rose on a grander scale. In 1294 was begun the 
 Mausoleum of the great Florentine dead, the Church 
 of S. Croce. In the same year, a few months later, 
 Arnolfo laid the deep foundations which were after- 
 Avards to bear up Brunelleschi's dome, and traced the 
 plan of the magnificent cathedral. In 129S he began 
 
 See the curious letters of John de Monte Co>~iniio, about his mis- 
 sion in Cathay, 1289-1305, in Wadding, vi. 69. 
 
 t E.g. the Mozzi, of Greg. X. ; Peruzzi, of Phihp le Bel ; Spini, of 
 Boniface VIII, ; Ccrchi del Garbo, of Benedict XI. (G. Vill. vii. 42, 
 viii. 63, 71 ; Dim Comp. p. 35). 
 
 D 2
 
 36 DANTE. 
 
 to raise a Town-hall worthy of the Republic, and of 
 being the habitation of its magistrates, the frowning 
 mass of the Palazzo Vecchio. In 1299, the third 
 circle of the walls was commenced, with the bene- 
 diction of bishops, and the concourse of all the " lords 
 and orders " of Florence. And Giotto was now 
 beginning to throw Cimabue into the shade — Giotto, 
 the shepherd's boy, painter, sculptor, architect, and 
 engineer at once, who a few years later was to com- 
 plete and crown the architectural glories of Florence 
 by that masterpiece of grace, his marble Campanile. 
 
 Fifty years made then all that striking difference 
 in domestic habits, in the materials of dress, in the 
 value of money, which they have usually made in 
 later centuries. The poet of the fourteenth century 
 describes the proudest nobleman of a hundred years 
 before "with his leathern girdle and clasp of bone;" 
 and in one of the most beautiful of all poetic cele- 
 brations of the good old time, draws the domestic 
 life of ancient Florence in the household where his 
 
 ancestor was born : 
 
 A cosi riposato, a cosi bello 
 
 Viver di cittadini, a cosi fida 
 
 Cittadinanza, a cosi dolce ostello 
 
 Maria mi die, chiamata in alte grida. — Pa7: c. 15.* 
 
 * Florence, confined within that ancient wall, 
 
 Whence still the chimes at noon and evening sound, 
 
 Was sober, modest, and at peace with all. 
 * * *
 
 DANTE. 37 
 
 There high-born dames, he says, still plied the distaff 
 and the loom ; still rocked the cradle with the words 
 which their own mothers had used ; or working with 
 their maidens, told them old tales of the forefathers 
 of the city, " of the Trojans, of Fiesole, and of Rome." 
 Villani still finds this rudeness within forty years of 
 the end of the century, almost within the limits of 
 his own and Dante's life ; and speaks of that " old 
 first people," il primo Popolo VeccJiio, with their coarse 
 food and expenditure, their leather jerkins, and plain 
 close gowns, their sm.all dowries and late marriages, 
 as if they were the first founders of the city, and not 
 a generation which had lasted on into his own.* 
 Twenty years later, his story is of the gaiety, the 
 riches, the profuse munificence, the brilliant festivities, 
 the careless and joyous life, which attracted foreigners 
 to Florence as the city of pleasure ; of companies of 
 
 Myself have seen Bellincion Berti pace 
 
 The street in leathern belt ; his lady come 
 Forth from her toilet with unpainted face. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Oh happy wives ! each soon to lay her head 
 
 In her own tomb ; and no one yet compelled 
 To weep deserted in a lonely bed. 
 
 * ♦ * 
 
 To such pure life of beauty and repose — 
 
 Such faithful citizens — such happy men — 
 The virgin gave me, when my mother's throes 
 
 Forced her with cries to call on Mary's name. — WRIGHT. 
 
 * G, Vill. vi. 69 (1259).
 
 38 DANTE. 
 
 a thousand or more, all clad in white robes, under 
 a lord, styled " of Love," passing their time in sports 
 and dances ; of ladies and knights, " going through 
 the city with trumpets and other instruments, with 
 joy and gladness," and meeting together in banquets 
 evening and morning ; entertaining illustrious strangers, 
 and honourably escorting them on horseback in their 
 passage through the city; tempting by their liberality, 
 courtiers, and wits, and minstrels, and jesters, to add 
 to the amusements of Florence.* Nor were these the 
 boisterous triumphs of unrefined and coarse merri- 
 ment. How variety of character was drawn out, how 
 its more delicate elements were elicited and tempered, 
 how nicely it was observed, and how finely drawn, let 
 the racy and open-eyed story-tellers of Florence 
 testify. 
 
 Not perhaps in these troops of revellers, but amid 
 music and song, and in the pleasant places of social 
 and private life, belonging to the Florence of arts and 
 poetry, not to the Florence of factions and strife, 
 should we expect to find the friend of the sweet 
 singer, Casella, and of the reserved and bold 
 speculator, Guido Cavalcanti ; the mystic poet of the 
 Vita N2tova, so sensitive and delicate, trembling at a 
 gaze or a touch, recording visions, painting angels, 
 
 * G. Vill. vii. 89 (1283).
 
 DANTE. 39 
 
 composing Canzoni and commenting on them ; finally 
 devoting himself to the austere consolations of deep 
 study. To superadd to such a character that of a 
 democratic politician of the middle ages, seems an 
 incongruous and harsh combination. Yet it was a 
 real one in this instance. The scholar's life is, in cur 
 idea of it, far separated from the practical and the 
 political ; we have been taught by our experience to 
 disjoin enthusiasm in love, in art, in. what is abstract 
 or imaginative, from keen interest and successful 
 interference in the affairs and conflicts of life. The 
 practical m.an may sometimes be also a dilettante ; 
 but the dreamer or the thinker, wisely or indolently, 
 keeps out o f the rough ways where real passions and 
 characters meet and jostle, or if he ventures, seldom 
 gains honour there. The separation, though a natural 
 one, grows wider as society becomes more vast and 
 manifold, as its ends, functions, and pursuits are dis- 
 entangled, while they multiply. But in Dante's time, 
 and in an Italian city, it was not such a strange thing 
 that the most refined and tender interpreter of feeling, 
 the popular poet, whose verses touched all hearts, and 
 were in every mouth, should be also at once the 
 ardent follower of all abstruse and difficult learning, 
 and a prominent character among those who ad- 
 ministered the State. In that narrow sphere of action, 
 in that period of dawning powers and circumscribed
 
 40 DANTE. 
 
 knowledge, it seemed no unreasonable hope or unwise 
 ambition to attempt the compassing of all science, 
 and to make it subserve and illustrate the praise of 
 active citizenship.* Dante, like other literary cele- 
 brities of the time, was not less from the custom of 
 the day, than from his own purpose, a public man. 
 He took his place among his fellow-citizens ; he w^ent 
 out to war with them ; he fought, it is said, among 
 the skirmishers at the great Guelf victory of Campal- 
 dino ; to qualify himself for office in the democracy, 
 he enrolled himself in one of the Guilds of the 
 people, and was matriculated in the " Art " of the 
 Apothecaries ; he served the State as its agent abroad ; 
 he went on important missions to the cities and 
 courts of Italy — according to a Florentine tradition, 
 which enumerates fourteen distinct embassies, even to 
 Hungary and France. In the memorable year of 
 Jubilee, 1300, he was one of the Priors of the Republic. 
 There is no shrinking from fellowship and co-operation 
 and conflict with the keen or bold men of the market- 
 place and council-hall, in that mind of exquisite and, 
 as drawn by itself, exaggerated sensibility. The doings 
 and characters of men, the workings of society, the 
 fortunes of Italy, were watched and thought of with as 
 deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read 
 
 * Vide the opening of the De Moiiarchia.
 
 DANTE. 41 
 
 in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion 
 as in the miraculous page of Virgil ; and no scholar 
 ever read Virgil with such feeling — no astronomer 
 ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. 
 The whole man opens to the world around him ; all 
 affections and powers, soul and sense, diligently and 
 thoughtfully directed and trained, with free and con- 
 current and equal energy, with distinct yet harmonious 
 purposes, seek out their respective and appropriate 
 objects, moral, intellectual, natural, spiritual, in that 
 admirable scene and hard field where man is placed 
 to labour and love, to be exercised, proved, and 
 judged. 
 
 In a fresco in the chapel of the old palace of the 
 Podesta * at Florence is a portrait of Dante, said to 
 be by the hand of his_cqntemporary Giotto. It was 
 discovered in 1841 under the whitewash, and a tracing 
 made by ]\Ir. Seymour Kirkup has been reproduced 
 in fac-simile by the Arundel Society. The fresco was 
 afterwards restored or repainted with no happy 
 success. He is represented as he might have been 
 in the year of Campaldino (1289). The countenance 
 is youthful yet manly, more manly than it appears in 
 the engravings of the picture ; but it only suggests 
 the strong deep features of the well-known traditional 
 
 The Bargello, a prison (1850) ; a museum (1S7S). V. Vasari, p. 311.
 
 42 DANTE. 
 
 face. He is drawn with much of the softness, and 
 melancholy pensive sweetness, and with something 
 also of the quaint stiffness of the Vita Niiova — with 
 his flower and his book. With him is drawn his 
 master, Brun etto L atini,* and Corso Donati. We do 
 not know what occasion led Giotto thus to associate 
 him with the great " Baron." Dante was, indeed, 
 closely connected with the Donati. The dwelling of 
 his family was near theirs, in the " Quarter of 
 Scandal," the Ward of the Porta S. Piero. He 
 married a daughter of their house, Madonna Gemma. 
 None of his friends are commemorated with more 
 affection than the companion of his light and way- 
 ward days, remembered not without a shade of 
 anxious sadness, yet with love and hope, Corso's 
 brother, Forese.f No sweeter spirit sings and smiles 
 in the illumined spheres of Paradise, than she whom 
 Forese remembers as on earth one, 
 
 Che tra bella e buona 
 Non so qual fosse piu — % 
 
 and who, from the depth of her heavenly joy, teaches 
 the poet that in the lowest place among the blessed 
 
 * He died in 1294. G. Vill. viii. 10. + Purgat. c. 23. 
 
 % Ibid. c. 24. 
 
 My sister, good and beautiful — wliicla most I Icnow not. 
 
 Wright.
 
 DANTE. 43 
 
 there can be no envy* — the sister of Forcsc and 
 Corso, Piccarda. The Connncdia, though it speaks, 
 as if in prophecy, of Corso's miserable death, avoids 
 the mention of his name.f Its silence is so remark- 
 able as to seem significant. But though history does 
 not group together Corso and Dante, the picture 
 represents the truth — their fortunes were linked 
 together. They were a.ctors in the same scene — at 
 this distance of time two of the most prominent ; 
 though a scene very different from that calm and 
 grave assembly, which Giotto's placid pencil has 
 drawn on the old chapel wall. 
 
 The outlines of this part of Dante's history are so 
 well known that it is not necessary to dwell on them ; 
 and more than the outlines we know not. The family 
 quarrels came to a head, issued in parties, and the 
 parties took names ; they borrowed them from two 
 rival factions in a neighbouring town, Pistoia, whose 
 feud was imported into Florence ; and the Guelfs 
 became divided into the Black Guelfs who were led 
 by the Donati, and the White Guelfs who sided with 
 the Cerchi.J It still profes-sed to be but a family feud, 
 confined to the great houses ; but they were too 
 powerful and Florence too small for it not to affect 
 the whole Republic. The middle classes and the 
 
 * Parad. c. 3. + Pti'g- c. 24, S2-S7. 
 
 t In 1300. G. Villani, viii. 38, 39.
 
 44 DANTE. 
 
 artisans looked on, and for a time not without satisfac- 
 tion, at the strife of the great men ; but it grew 
 evident that one party must crush the other, and 
 become dominant in Florence ; and of the two, the 
 Cerchi and their White adherents were less formidable 
 to the democracy than the unscrupulous and over- 
 bearing Donati, with their military renown and lordly 
 tastes ; proud not merely of being nobles, but Guelf 
 nobles ; always loyal champions, once the martyrs, 
 and now the hereditary assertors, of the great Guelf 
 cause. The Cerchi with less character and less zeal, 
 but rich, liberal, and showy, and with more of rough 
 kindness and vulgar good-nature for the common 
 people, were more popular in Guelf Florence than the 
 " Parte Guelfa ; " and, of course, the Ghibellines 
 wished them well. Both the contemporary historians 
 of Florence lead us to think that they might have 
 been the governors and guides of the Republic — if 
 they had chosen, and had known how ; and both, 
 though condemning the two parties equally, seemed 
 to have thought that this would have been the best 
 result for the State. But the accounts of both, though 
 they are very different writers, agree in their scorn 
 of the leaders of the White Guelfs. They were 
 upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded ; and 
 they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were 
 too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game
 
 DANTE. 
 
 45 
 
 was in their hands. They wished to rule ; but when 
 they might, they were afraid. The commons were on 
 their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the 
 lovers of republican government, and for the most 
 part the magistrates ; but they shrank from their 
 fortune, "more from cowardice than from goodness, 
 because they exceedingly feared their adversaries." * 
 Boniface VIII. had no prepossessions in Florence, 
 except for energy and an open hand ; the side which 
 was most popular he would have accepted and 
 backed; but "he would not lose," he said, "the men 
 for the women." " lo non vogiio perdere gli iioniini 
 per le femininelkr -^ If the Black party furnished 
 types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in 
 the poet's Hell, the White party surely were the 
 originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly 
 selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are 
 buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the 
 angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but 
 " zuere for tJiansclves ; " and whoever it may be \\\\o 
 is singled out in the " setta dei cattivi," for deeper 
 and special scorn — he, 
 
 Che fece per vilta il gran rifiuto — J 
 
 the idea was derived from the Cerchi in Florence. 
 
 * Dwo Comp. p. 45. t Ibid. p. 62. t !>'/■ c 3> 60.
 
 46 DANTE. 
 
 A French prince was sent by the Pope to mediate 
 and make peace in Florence. The Black Guelfs and 
 Corso Donati came with him. The magistrates were 
 overawed and perplexed. The White party were, 
 step by step, amused, entrapped, led blindly into 
 false plots, entangled in the elaborate subtleties, and 
 exposed with all the zest and mockery, of Italian 
 intrigue — finally chased out of their houses and from 
 the city, condemned unheard, outlawed, ruined in 
 name and property, by the Pope's French mediator. 
 With them fell many citizens who had tried to hold 
 the balance between the two parties : for the leaders 
 of the Black Guelfs were guilty of no errors of weak- 
 ness. In two extant lists of the proscribed — con- 
 demned by default, for corruption and various crimes, 
 especially for hindering the entrance into Florence of 
 Charles de Valois, to a heavy fine and banishment — 
 then, two months after, for contumacy, to be burned 
 alive if he ever fell into the hands of the Republic — 
 appears the name of Dante AHghieri ; and more than 
 this, concerning the history of his expulsion, we know 
 
 not* 
 
 Of his subsequent life, history tells us little more 
 than the general character. He acted for a time in 
 concert with the expelled party, when they attempted 
 
 Pelli, Memorie per sei-vire alla-j'ita di Dante. Fir. 1S23, pp. 105, 106.
 
 DANTE. 47 
 
 to force their way back to Florence ; he gave them 
 up at last in scorn and despair : but he never rctvirncd 
 to Florence. And he found no new home for the 
 rest of his days. Nineteen years, from his exile to 
 his death, he was a wanderer. The character is 
 stamped on his writings. History, tradition, docu- 
 ments, all scanty or dim, do but disclose him to us at 
 different points, appearing here and there, we are not 
 told how or why. One old record, discovered by 
 antiquarian industry, shows him in a village church 
 near Florence, planning, with the Cerchi and the 
 White party, an attack on the Black Guelfs. In 
 another, he appears in the Val di Magra, making- 
 peace between its small potentates : in another, as 
 the inhabitant of a certain street in Padua. The tra- 
 ditions of some remote spots about Italy still connect 
 his name with a ruined tower, a mountain glen, a cell 
 in a convent. In the recollections of the following 
 generation, his solemn and melancholy form mingled 
 reluctantly, and for awhile, in the brilliant court of 
 the Scaligers ; and scared the women, as a visitant of 
 the other world, as he passed by their doors in the 
 streets of Verona. Rumour brings him to the West 
 — with probability to Paris, more doubtfully to 
 Oxford. But little certain can be made out about 
 the places where he was an honoured and admired, 
 but it may be, not always a welcome guest, till we find
 
 48 DANTE. 
 
 him sheltered, cherished, and then laid at last to rest, 
 by the Lords of Ravenna. There he still rests, in a 
 small, solitary chapel, built, not by a Florentine, 
 but a Venetian. Florence, " that mother of little 
 love," asked for his bones ; but rightly asked in vain.* 
 His place of repose is better in those remote and 
 forsaken streets " by the shore of the Adrian Sea," 
 hard by the last relics of the Roman Empire — the 
 mausoleum of the children of Theodosius, and the 
 mosaics of Justinian — than among the assembled 
 dead of S. Croce, or amid the magnificence of 
 S. Maria del Fiore.f 
 
 The Covnnedia, at the first glance, shows the 
 traces of its author's life. It is the work of a 
 wande rer. The very form in which it is cast is that 
 of a journey, difhcult, toilsome, perilous, and full of 
 change. It is more than a working out of that 
 touching phraseology of the middle ages, in which 
 " the way " was the technical theological expression 
 
 * See Dr. Barlow's ^'/jt/Z^ Centettary Festivals of Dante. (1866.) 
 t These notices have been carefully collected by Pelli, who seems 
 to have left little to glean (yJ/c-wm*?, &c. Ed. 2'^^ 1823). A few addi- 
 tions have been made by Gerini {Mem. Star, della Lunigiana), and 
 Troy a {Veltro Allcgorico), but they are not of much importance. 
 Arrivaheiie {Secolo di Dante) has brought together a mass of illustration 
 which is very useful, and would be more so, if he were more careful, 
 and quoted his authorities. Balbo arranges these materials with sense 
 and good feeling ; though, as a writer, he is below his subject. A few 
 traits and anecdotes may be found in the novelists — as Sacchetti.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 49 
 
 for this mortal life ; and " viator " meant man in his 
 state of trial, as ^' co7nprehetisor^' meant man made 
 perfect, having attained to his heavenly country. It 
 is more than merely this. The writer's mind is full of 
 the recollections and definite images of his various 
 journeys. The permanent scenery of the Inferno and 
 Picrgatorio, very variously and distinctly marked, is 
 that of travel. The descent down the sides of the 
 Pit, and the ascent of the Sacred Mountain, show one 
 familiar with such scenes — one who had climbed pain- 
 fully in perilous passes, and grown dizzy on the brink of 
 narrow ledges over sea or torrent. It is scenery from 
 the gorges of the Alps and Apennines, or the terraces 
 and precipices of the Riviera. Local reminiscences 
 abound : — the severed rocks of the Adige Valley — the 
 waterfall of S. Benedetto — the crags of Pietra-pana 
 and S. Leo, which overlook the plains of Lucca and 
 Ravenna — the " fair river " that flows among the 
 poplars between Chiaveri and Sestri — the marble 
 quarries of Carrara — the " rough and desert ways 
 between Lerici and Turbia," and those towery cliffs, 
 going sheer into the deep sea at Noli, which travellers 
 on the Corniche road some thirty years ago may yet 
 remember with fear. Mountain experience furnished 
 that picture of the traveller caught in an Alpine mist 
 and gradually climbing above it ; seeing the vapours 
 grow thin, and the sun's orb appear faintly through
 
 50 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 them ; and issuing at last into sunshine on the 
 mountain top, while the light of sunset was lost 
 already on the shores below : 
 
 Ai raggi, morti gia nei bassi lidi : — Purg. 17. 
 
 or that image of the cold dull shadow over the torrent, 
 beneath the Alpine fir — 
 
 Un' ombra smorta 
 Oual sotto foglie verdi e raijii nigri 
 Sovra suoi freddi rivi, 1' Alpe porta : — Purg. 33* 
 
 or of the large snow-flakes falling without wind, among 
 the mountains — 
 
 d' un cader lento 
 Piovean di fuoco dilatate falde 
 Come di neve in Alpe senza vento. — Inferno, I4.t 
 
 He delights in a local name and local image — the 
 boiling pitch, and the clang of the shipwrights in the 
 arsenal of Venice — the sepulchral fields of Aries and 
 Pola — the hot-spring of Viterbo — the hooded monks 
 of Cologne — the dykes of Flanders and Padua — the 
 Maremma, with its rough brushwood, its wild boars, 
 
 * A death-like shade — 
 Like that beneath black boughs and foliage greeiT 
 O'er the cool streams in Alpine glens display'd. — Wright. 
 
 i" O'er all the sandy desert falling slow, 
 
 Were shower'd dilated flakes of fire, like snow 
 On Alpine summits, when the wind is low. — Ibid.
 
 DANTE. 51 
 
 its snakes, and fevers. He had listened to the south 
 wind among the pine tops, in the forest by the sea, at 
 Ravenna. He had watched under the Carisenda 
 tower at Bologna, and seen the driving clouds " give 
 away their motion " to it, and make it seem to be 
 falling ; and had noticed how at Rome the October 
 sun sets between Corsica and Sardinia* His images 
 
 o 
 
 of the sea are numerous and definite — the ship backing 
 out of the tier in harbour, the diver plunging after the 
 fouled anchor, the mast rising, the ship going fast be- 
 fore the wind, the water closing in its wake, the arched 
 backs of the porpoises the forerunners of a gale, the 
 admiral watching everything from poop to prow, the 
 oars stopping altogether at the sound of the whistle, 
 the swelling sails becoming slack when the mast snaps 
 and falls.f Nowhere could we find so many of the 
 most characteristic and strange sensations of the 
 traveller touched with such truth. Everyone knows 
 the lines which speak of the voyager's sinking of heart 
 on the first evening at sea, and of the longings wakened 
 in the traveller at the beginning of his journey by the 
 distant evening bellj ; the traveller's morning feelings 
 are not less delicately noted — the strangeness on first 
 waking in the open air with the sun high ; morning 
 
 * Inf. 31, iS. 
 
 t Ibid. 17, 16, 31; Ptirg. 24; Par. 2; Inf. 22; Piirg. 30; 
 Par. 25 ; Inf. 7. J Piirg. 8. " Era gia 1' ora," &c. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 DANTE. 
 
 thoughts, as day by day he wakes nearer home ; the 
 morning sight of the sea-beach quivering in the 
 early hght ; the tarrying and Hngering, before setting 
 out in the morning * — 
 
 Noi eravam lunghesso '1 mare ancora, 
 Come gente die pensa al suo cammino, 
 Che va col cuore, e col corpo dimora.t 
 
 He has recorded equally the anxiety, the curiosity, 
 
 the suspicion with which, in those times, stranger 
 
 met and eyed stranger on the road ; and a still more 
 
 characteristic trait is to be found in those lines 
 
 where he describes the pilgrim gazing around in 
 
 the church of his vow, and thinking how he shall tell 
 
 of it : 
 
 E quasi peregrin che si ricrea 
 Nel tempio del suo voto riguardando, 
 E spera gia ridir com' ello stea : — Parad. 31.$ 
 
 or again, in that description, so simple and touching, 
 of his thoughts while waiting to see the relic for which 
 he left his home : 
 
 * Purg. 19, 27, I, 2. 
 
 "t By ocean's shore we still prolonged our stay 
 Like men, who, thinking of a journey near, 
 Advance in thought, while yet their limbs delay. — WRIGHT. 
 X And like a pilgrim who with fond delight 
 Surveys the temple he has vow'd to see. 
 And hopes one day its wonders to recite. — lElD.
 
 DANTE. 53 
 
 Quale e colui che forse di Croazia 
 Vienc a veder la Veronica nostra, 
 Che per 1' antica fama non si sazia, 
 
 Ma dice nel pensier, fin che si mostra ; 
 Signer mio Gesu Cristo, Dio verace, 
 Or fu SI fatta la sembianza vostra? — Parad. 31.* 
 
 Of these years then of disappointment and exile 
 the Diving C onnnedia was the labour and fruit. A 
 story in Boccaccio's Hfe of Dante, told with some 
 detail, implies indeed that it was begun, and some pro- 
 gress made in it, while Dante was yet in Florence — 
 begun_in Latin, and he quotes three lines of it — con- 
 tinued afterwards in Italian. This is not impossible ; 
 indeed the germ and presage of it may be traced in 
 the Vita Nuova. The idealised saint is there, in ali 
 the grace of her pure and noble humbleness, the guide 
 
 * Like one who, from Croatia come to see 
 Our Veronica (image long adored), 
 Gazes, as though content he ne'er could be — 
 Thus musing, while the relic is pourtray'd — 
 "Jesus my God, my Saviour and my Lord, 
 O were thy features these I see display'd ? "—Wright. 
 
 Quella imagine benedetta la quale Gesu Cristo lascio a noi pei 
 esempio della sua bellissima figura. — Vita A'lcova, p. 353. 
 
 He speaks of the pilgrims going to Rome to see it ; compare also 
 the sonnet to the pilgrims, p. 355 : 
 
 Deh peregrini, che pensosi andate 
 Forse di cosa, che non v'e presente, 
 Venite voi di si lontana gente, 
 Com' alia vista voi ne dimostrate.
 
 54 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 and safeguard of the poet's soul. She is already in 
 glory with Mary the queen of angels. She already 
 beholds the face of the Everblessed. And the envoye 
 of the Vita Nuova is the promise of the Commedia. 
 " After this sonnet," (in which he describes how be- 
 yond the widest sphere of heaven his love had beheld 
 a lady receiving honour, and dazzling by her gloiy 
 the unaccustomed spirit) — "After this sonnet there 
 appeared to me a marvellous vision, in which I saw 
 things which made me resolve not to speak more of 
 this blessed one, until such time as I should be able to 
 indite more worthily of her. And to attain to this, 
 I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knows. 
 So that, if it shall be the pleasure of Him, by whom 
 all things live, that my life continue for some years, I 
 hope to say of her that which never hath been said of 
 any woman. And afterwards, may it please Him, 
 who is the Lord of kindness, that my soul may go to 
 behold the glory of her lady, that is, of that blessed 
 Beatrice, who gloriously gazes on the countenance of 
 Him, qui est per omnia seciila benedictusT'^ It would 
 be wantonly violating probability and the unity of a 
 great life, to suppose that this purpose, though trans- 
 formed, was ever forgotten or laid aside. The poet 
 knew not indeed what he was promising, what he was 
 
 * Vita Nuova, last paragraph. See Piirg. 30 ; Farad. 30, 6, 28-33.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 55 
 
 pledging himself to — through what years of toil and 
 anguish he would have to seek the light and the power 
 he had asked ; In what form his high venture should 
 be realised. But the Comniedia is the work of no 
 light resolve, and we need not be surprised at finding 
 the resolve and the purpose at the outset of the poet's 
 life. We may freely accept the key supplied by the 
 words of the Vita Niiova. The spell of boyhood is 
 never_broken, through the ups and downs of life. His 
 course of thought advances, alters, deepens, but is con- 
 tinuous. From youth to age, from the first glimpse to 
 the perfect work, the same idea abides with him, 
 " even from the flower till the grape was ripe." It 
 may assume various changes — an image of beauty, a 
 figure of philosophy, a voice from the other world, a 
 type of heavenly wisdom and joy — but still it holds, 
 in self-imposed and willing thraldom, that creative 
 and versatile and tenacious spirit. It was the dream 
 and hope of too deep and strong a mind to fade and 
 come to naught — to be other than the seed of the 
 achievement and crown of life. But with all faith in the 
 star and the freedom of genius, we_n]iayL doubt whether 
 the prosperous citizen would have done that which was 
 done Jay the man without a home. Beatrice's glory 
 might have been sung in grand though barbarous 
 Latin to the literati of the fourteenth century ; or a 
 poem of new beauty might have fixed the language
 
 56 DANTE. 
 
 and opened the literature of modern Italy ; but it 
 could hardly have been the Commedia . That belongs, 
 in its date and its greatness, to the time when sorrow 
 had become the poet's daily portion, and the condition 
 of his life. 
 
 The Commedia is a novel and startling apparition 
 in literature. Probably it has been felt by some, who 
 have approached it with the reverence due to a work 
 of such renown, that the world has been generous in 
 placing it so high. It seems so abnormal, so lawless, 
 so reckless of all ordinary proprieties and canons of 
 feeling, taste, and composition. It is rough and 
 abrupt ; obscure in phrase and allusion, doubl}^ 
 obscure in purpose. It is a medley of all subjects 
 usually kept distinct : scandal of the day and 
 transcendental science, politics and confessions, 
 coarse satire and angelic joy, private wrongs, with 
 the mysteries of the faith, local names and habitations 
 of earth, with visions of hell and heaven. It is hard 
 to keep up with the ever-changing current of feeling, 
 to pass as the poet passes, without effort or scruple, 
 from tenderness to ridicule, from hope to bitter scorn 
 or querulous complaint, from high-raised devotion to 
 the calmness of prosaic subtleties or grotesque detail. 
 Each separate element and vein of thought has its 
 precedent, but not their amalgamation. Many had 
 written visions of the unseen world, but they had
 
 DANTE. 
 
 57 
 
 not blended^ with them their personal fortunes. 
 S. Augustine had taught the soul to contemplate its 
 own history, and had traced its progress from dark- 
 ness to light ;* but he had not interwoven with it the 
 history of Italy, and the consummation of all earthly 
 destinies. Satire was no new thing; Juvenal had 
 given it a moral, some of the Provencal poets a 
 political turn ; S. Jerome had kindled into it fiercely 
 and bitterly even while expounding the Prophets ; 
 but here it streams forth in all its violence, within the • 
 precincts of the eternal world, and alternates with the 
 hymns of the blessed. Lucretius had drawn forth 
 the poetry of nature and its laws ; Virgil and Livy 
 had unfolded the poetry of the Roman empire ; 
 S. Augustine, the still grander poetry of the history 
 of the City of God ; but none had yet ventured to 
 weave into one the three wonderful threads. And p^'TSok.,! 
 yet the scope of the Italian poet, vast and com- '"^n't'^l^ 
 prehensive as the issue of all things, universal as the '^^^ ^ 
 government which directs nature and intelligence, 3 !*4-\r<. 
 forbids him not to stoop to the lowest caitiff he has 
 ever despised, the minutest fact in nature that has 
 ever struck his eye, the merest personal association 
 which hangs pleasantly in his memory. Writing for 
 all time, he scruples not to mix with all that is august 
 
 * See Convito, i, 2.
 
 58 DANTE. 
 
 and permanent in history and prophecy, incidents the 
 most transient, and names the most obscure ; to waste 
 an immortahty of shame or praise on those about 
 whom his own generation were to inquire in vain. 
 Scripture history runs into profane ; Pagan legends 
 teach their lesson side by side with Scripture scenes 
 and miracles ; heroes and poets of heathenism, 
 separated from their old classic world, have their 
 place in the world of faith, discourse with Christians 
 of Christian dogmas, and even mingle with the 
 Saints ; Virgil guides the poet through his fear and 
 his penitence to the gates of Paradise. 
 
 This feeling of harsh and extravagant incongruity, 
 of causeless and unpardonable darkness, is perhaps 
 the first impression of many readers of the Comniedia. 
 But probably as they read on, there will mingle with 
 this a sense of strange and unusual grandeur, arising 
 not alone from the hardihood of the attempt, and the 
 mystery of the subject, but from the power and the 
 character of the poet. It will strike them that Avords 
 cut deeper than is their wont ; that from that wild 
 uncongenial imagery, thoughts emerge of singular 
 truth and beauty. Their dissatisfaction will be 
 chequered, even disturbed — for we can often bring 
 ourselves to sacrifice much for the sake of a clear and 
 consistent view — by the appearance, amid much that 
 repels them, of proofs undeniable and accumulating
 
 DANTE. 59 
 
 of genius as mighty as it is strange. Their perplexity 
 and disappointment may grow into distinct con- 
 demnation, or it may pass into admiration and 
 deHsht ; but no one has ever come to the end of the 
 Commedia without feeling that if it has given him a 
 new view and specimen of the wildness and unac- 
 countable waywardness of the human mind, it has 
 also added, as few other books have, to his knowledge 
 of its feelings, its capabilities, and its grasp, and 
 suggested larger and more serious thoughts, for 
 which he may be grateful, concerning that unseen 
 world of which he is even here a member. • 
 
 Dante would not have thanked his admirers for 
 becoming apologists. Those in whom the sense of 
 imperfection and strangeness overpowers sympathy 
 for grandeur, and enthusiasm for nobleness, and joy 
 in beauty, he certainly would have left to themselves. 
 But neither would he teach any that he was leading 
 them along a smooth and easy road. The Commedia 
 will always be a hard and trying book ; nor did the 
 writer much care that it should be otherwise. Much 
 of this is no doubt to be set down to its age ; much 
 of its roughness and extravagance, as well as of its 
 beauty — its allegorical spirit, its frame and scenery. 
 The idea of a visionary voyage through the worlds of 
 pain and bliss is no invention of the poet — it was one 
 of the commonest and most familiar medieval vehicles
 
 6o DANTE. 
 
 of censure or warning; and those who love to trace 
 the growth and often strange fortunes of popular 
 ideas, or whose taste leads them to disbelieve in 
 genius, and track the parentage of great inventions 
 to the foolish and obscure, may find abundant 
 materials in the literature of legends* But his own 
 age — the age which received the Conimedia with 
 mingled enthusiasm and wonder, and called it the 
 Divine, was as much perplexed as we are, though 
 probably rather pleased thereby than offended. That 
 within a century after its composition, in the more 
 famous cities and universities of Italy, Florence, 
 Venice, Bologna, and Pisa, chairs should have been 
 founded, and illustrious men engaged to lecture on it, 
 is a strange homage to its power, even in that time of 
 quick feeling ; but as strange and great a proof of its 
 obscurity. What is dark and forbidding in it was 
 scarcely more clear to the poet's contemporaries. 
 And he, whose last object was amusement, invites no 
 audience but a patient and confiding one. 
 
 O voi die siete in piccioletta barca, 
 Desiderosi di ascoltar, seguiti 
 Dietro al mio legno che cantando varca, 
 
 Tornate a riveder li vostri liti : 
 Non vi mettete in pelago, che forse. 
 Perdendo me rimarreste smarriti. 
 
 * Vide Ozaiiam, Daiilc, pp. 535, sqq. Ed. 2^"^.
 
 DANTE. 6 1 
 
 L' acqua ch' io prendo giammai non si corse : 
 Minerva spira, e conducemi Apollo, 
 E nuove muse mi dimostran 1' Orse. 
 
 Voi altri pochi, die drizzaste '1 collo 
 Per tempo al pan degli angeli, del quale 
 Vivesi qui, ma non si vien satoUo, 
 
 Metter potete ben per 1' alto sale 
 Vostro navigio, servando mio solco 
 Dinanzi all' acqua che ritorna eguale. 
 
 Que gloriosi che passaro a Colco, 
 Non s' ammiraron, come voi farete, 
 C2uando Jason vider fatto bifolco. — Parad. 2* 
 
 The character of the Coniinedia belongs much 
 more, in its excellence and its imperfections, to the 
 
 ye who fain would listen to my song, 
 Following in little bark full eagerly 
 
 My venturous ship, that chanting hies along, 
 
 Turn back unto your native shores again ; 
 Tempt not the deep, lest haply losing me, 
 In unknown paths bewildered ye remain. 
 
 1 am the first this voyage to essay ; 
 Minerva breathes — Apollo is my guide ; 
 And new-born muses do the Bears display. 
 
 Ye other few, who have look'd up on high 
 For angels' food betimes, e'en here supplied 
 Largely, but not enough to satisfy, — 
 
 Mid the deep ocean ye your course may take, 
 My track pursuing the pure waters through. 
 Ere reunites the quickly-closing wake. 
 
 Those glorious ones, who drove of yore their prow 
 To Colchos, wonder'd not as ye will do, 
 When they saw Jason working at the plough. 
 
 Wright's Dante.
 
 62 DANTE. 
 
 poet himself and the nature of his work, than to his 
 age. That cannot screen his faults ; nor can it 
 arrogate to itself, it must be content to share, his 
 glory. His leading idea and line of thought was 
 much more novel then than it is now, and belongs 
 much more to the modern than the medieval world. 
 T\\Q Sto7'y of a Life, the poetry of man's journey 
 through the wilderness to his true country, is now in 
 various and very different shapes as hackneyed a form 
 of imagination, as an allegory, an epic, a legend of 
 chivalry were in former times. Not, of course, that 
 any time has been without its poetical feelings and 
 ideas on the subject ; and never were they deeper and 
 more diversified, more touching and solemn, than 
 in the ages that passed from S. Augustine and 
 S. Gregory to S. Thomas and S. Bonaventura. But a 
 philosophical poem, where they were not merely the 
 colouring, but the subject, an epos of the soul, placed 
 for its trial in a fearful and wonderful world, with 
 relations to time and matter, history and nature, good 
 and evil, the beautiful, the intelligible, and the 
 mysterious, sin and grace, the infinite and the eternal 
 — and having in the company and under the influences 
 of other intelligences, to make its choice, to struggle, 
 to succeed or fail, to gain the light, or be lost — this 
 was a new and unattempted theme. It has been 
 often tried since, in faith or doubt, in egotism, in
 
 DANTE. (,2> 
 
 sorrow, in murmuring, in affectation, sometimes in 
 joy — in various forms, in prose and verse, completed 
 or fragmentary, in reality or fiction, in the direct or 
 the shadowed story, in the Pilgrim's Progress, in 
 Rousseau's Confessions, in Wilhchii Aleister diWd Faust, 
 in the Excursion. It is common enough now for the 
 poet, in the faith of human sympathy, and in the sense 
 of the unexhausted vastness of his mysterious subject, 
 to believe that his fellows will not see without interest 
 and profit, glimpses of his own path and fortunes — 
 hear from his lips the disclosure of his chief delights, 
 his warnings, his fears — follow the many-coloured 
 changes, the impressions and workings, of a character, 
 at once the contrast and the counterpart to their own. 
 But it was a new path then ; and he needed to be, and 
 was, a bold man, who first opened it — a path never 
 trod without peril^ usually with loss or failure. 
 
 And certainly no great man ever made less secret 
 to himself of his own genius. He is at no pains to 
 rein in or to dissemble his consciousness of power, 
 which he has measured without partiality, and feels 
 sure will not fail him. " Fidandomi di me piu chc di 
 un altro"* — is a reason which he assigns without 
 reserve. We look with the distrust and hesitation of 
 modern days, yet, in spite of ourselves, not without 
 
 Convito, I, lo.
 
 64 DANTE. 
 
 admiration and regret, at such frank hardihood. It 
 was more common once than now. When the world 
 was young, it was more natural and allowable — it was 
 often seemly and noble. Men knew not their diffi- 
 culties as we know them — we, to whom time, which 
 has taught so much wisdom, has brought so many 
 disappointments — we who have seen how often the 
 powerful have fallen short, and the noble gone astray, 
 and the most adm.irable missed their perfection. It 
 is becoming in us to distrust ourselves — to be shy if 
 we cannot be modest ; it is but a respectful tribute 
 to human weakness and our brethren's failures. But 
 there was a time when great men dared to claim their 
 greatness — not in foolish self-complacency, but in un- 
 embarrassed and majestic simplicity, in magnanimity 
 and truth, in the consciousness of a serious and noble 
 purpose, and of strength to fulfil it. Without passion, 
 without elation as without shrinking, the poet surveys 
 his superiority and his high position, as something 
 external to him ; he has no doubts about it, and 
 affects none. He would be a coward, if he shut his 
 eyes to what he could do ; as much a trifler in dis- 
 playing reserve as ostentation. Nothing is more 
 striking in the Comniedia than the serene and un- 
 hesitating confidence with which he announces himself 
 the heir and reviver of the poetic power so long lost 
 to the world — the heir and reviver of it in all its
 
 DANTE. 65 
 
 fulness. He doubts not of the judgment of posterity. 
 One has arisen who shall throw into the shade all 
 modern reputations, who shall bequeath to Christen- 
 dom the glory of that name of Poet, " che piu dura e 
 piu onora," hitherto the exclusive boast of heathenism, 
 and claim the rare honours of the laurel : 
 
 Si rade volte, padre, se ne coglie 
 Per trionfare o Cesare o poeta, 
 (Colpa e vergogna dell' iimane voglie), 
 
 Che partorir letizia in su la lieta 
 Delfica delta dovria la fronda 
 Peneia quando alcun di se asseta. — Parad. i.* 
 
 He has but to follow his star to be sure of the glorious 
 port : t he is the master of language : he can give 
 fame to the dead — no task or enterprise appals him, 
 for whom spirits keep watch in heaven, and angels 
 have visited the shades — " tal si parti dal cantar 
 alleluia : " — who is Virgil's foster child and familiar 
 friend. Virgil bids him lay aside the last vestige of 
 fear. Virgil is to '' crown him king and priest over 
 
 * For now so rarely Poet gathers these. 
 Or Caesar, winning an immortal praise 
 (Shame mito man's degraded energies), 
 That joy should to the Delphic God arise 
 When haply any one aspires to gain 
 The high reward of the Peneian prize. — Wright. 
 
 t Brunetto Latini's Prophecy, Inf. 15. 
 
 F
 
 66 DANTE. 
 
 himself," * for a higher venture than heathen poetry 
 had dared ; in Virgil's company he takes his place 
 without diffidence, and without vain-glory, among the 
 great poets of old — a sister soul.f 
 
 Poiche la voce fu restata e queta, 
 
 Vidi quattro grand' ombie a noi venire : 
 
 Sembianza avean ne trista ne lieta : 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Cosi vidi adunar la bella scuola 
 Di quel signor dell" altissimo canto 
 Che sovra gli altri come aquila vola. 
 
 Da ch' ebber ragionato insieme alquanto 
 Volsersi a me con salutevol cenno 
 E '1 mio maestro sorrise di tanto. 
 
 E pill d' onore ancora assai mi fenno : 
 Ch' essi mi fecer della loro schiera, 
 Si ch' io fui sesto tra cotanto senno. — Inf. 4.J 
 
 * See the grand ending of Purg. 27. 
 
 Tratto t' ho qui con ingegno e con arte : 
 Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce : 
 Fuor se' dell' erte vie, fuor se' dell' arte. 
 
 Vedi il sole che 'n fronte ti riluce. 
 Vede 1' erbetta, i fiori, e gli arboscelli 
 Che questa terra sol da se produce. 
 
 Mentre che vegnon lieti gli occhi belli 
 Che lagrimando a te venir mi fenno, 
 Seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli. 
 
 Non aspettar mio dir piu ne mio cenno ; 
 Libero, dritto, sano e tuo arbitrio, 
 E fallo fora non fare a suo senno : 
 Perch' io te sopra te corono e mitrio. 
 t Purg. c. 21. 
 
 J Ceased had the voice — when in composed array 
 Four mighty shades approaching I survey'd ; —
 
 DANTE. 67 
 
 This sustained magnanimity and lofty self- 
 reliance, which never betrays itself, is one of the main 
 elements in the grandeur of the Comniedia. It is an 
 imposing spectacle to see such fearlessness, such free- 
 dom, and such success in an untried path, amid 
 unprepared materials and rude instruments, models 
 scanty and only half understood, powers of language 
 still doubtful and suspected, the deepest and strongest 
 thought still confined to unbending forms and the 
 harshest phrase ; exact and extensive knowledge, as 
 yet far out of reach ; with no help from time, Avhich 
 familiarises all things, and of which, manner, elabora- 
 tion, judgment, and taste are the gifts and inheritance; 
 ' — to see the poet, trusting to his eye "which saw 
 everything " * and his searching and creative spirit, 
 venture undauntedly into all regions of thought and 
 feeling, to draw thence a picture of the government 
 of the universe. 
 
 Nor joy, nor sorrow did their looks betray. 
 * * * * 
 
 Assembled thus, was offered to my sight 
 The school of him, the Prince of poetry, 
 Who, eagle-like, o'er others takes his flight. 
 
 When they together had conversed awhile, 
 They turned to me with salutation bland, 
 Which from my master drew a friendly smile : 
 
 And greater glory still they bade me share, 
 ISIaking me join their honourable band — • 
 The sixth united to such genius rare. — Wright. 
 
 * " Dante che tutto vedea."—.5i3r(r(r//^/^/, Nov. 114. 
 
 F 2
 
 6S DANTE. 
 
 But such greatness had to endure its price and its 
 counterpoise. Dante was alone : — except in his 
 visionary world, solitary and companionless. The 
 blind Greek had his throng of listeners ; the blind 
 Englishman his home and the voices of his daughters ; 
 Shakspere had his free associates of the stage ; 
 Goethe, his correspondents, a court, and all Germany 
 to applaud. Not so Dante. The friends of his youth 
 are already in the region of spirits, and meet him 
 there — Casella, Forese ; — Guido Cavalcanti v/ill soon 
 be with them. In this upper world he thinks and 
 writes as a friendless man — to whom all that he had 
 held dearest was either lost or embittered ; he 
 thinks and writes for himself 
 
 And so he is his own law ; he owns no tribunal of 
 opinion or standard of taste, except among the great 
 dead. He hears them exhort him to " let the world 
 talk on — to stand like a tower unshaken by the 
 winds." * He fears to be " a timid friend to truth," 
 " — to lose life among those who shall call this present 
 time antiquity." f He belongs to no party. He is 
 
 * Pitrg. 5. 
 
 f La luce in che rideva il mio tesoro 
 Ch' io trovai li, si fe' prima cormsca, 
 Quale a raggio di sole specchio d'oro ; 
 
 Indi rispose : coscienza fusca 
 O del la propria o dell' altrui vergogna 
 Pur sentira la tua parola brusca ;
 
 DANTE. 69 
 
 his own arbiter of the beautiful and the becomino- • 
 his own judge over right and injustice, innocence and 
 guilt. He has no followers to secure, no school to 
 humour, no public to satisfy ; nothing to guide him, 
 and nothing to consult, nothing to bind him, nothing 
 to fear, out of himself In full trust in heart and will, 
 in his sense of truth, in his teeming brain, he gives 
 himself free course. If men have idolised the worth- 
 less, and canonised the base, he reverses their award 
 without mercy, and without apology ; if they have 
 forgotten the just because he was obscure, he 
 remembers him : if "Monna Berta and Scr Martino,"* 
 
 Ma nondimen, rimossa ogni menzogna, 
 Tutta tua vision fa manifesta, 
 E lascia pur grattar dov' e la rogna : 
 
 Che se la voce tua sara molesta 
 Nel primo gusto, vital nutiimento 
 Lascera poi quando sara digesta. 
 
 Questo tuo grido fara come vento 
 Che le piu alte cime piii percuote : 
 E cio non fia d' onor poco argomento. 
 
 Pero ti son mostrate, in queste ruote, 
 Nel monte, e nella valla dolorosa, 
 Pur r anime che son di fama note. 
 
 Che r animo di quel ch' ode non posa, 
 Ne ferma fede, per esempio ch' aja 
 La sua radice incognito e nascosa, 
 
 Ne per altro argumento che non paja. — Farad. 17. 
 Non creda Monna Berta e Ser Martiao 
 Per vedere un furare, altro offerere, 
 Vederli dentro al consiglio divino : 
 Che quel puo suj-ger, e quel puo cadere. — End. 13.
 
 70 DANTE. 
 
 the wimpled and hooded gossips of the day, with their 
 sage company, have settled it to their own satisfaction 
 that Providence cannot swerve from their general 
 rules, cannot save where they have doomed, or reject 
 where they have approved — he both fears more and 
 hopes more. Deeply reverent to the judgment of the 
 ages past, reverent to the persons whom they have 
 immortalised for good and even for evil, in his own 
 day he cares for no man's person and no man's judg- 
 ment. And he shrinks not from^ the auguries and 
 forecastings of his mind about their career and fate. 
 Men reasoned rapidly in those days on such subjects, 
 and without much scruple ; but not with such delibe- 
 rate and discriminating sternness. The most popular 
 and honoured names in Florence, 
 
 Farinata e '1 Tegghiaio, che fur si degni, 
 Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, e 1 Mosca 
 E gli altri, ch' a ben far poser gl' ingegni ; 
 
 have yet the damning brand : no reader of the 
 Inferno can have forgotten the shock of that terrible 
 reply to the poet's questionings about their fate : 
 
 Ei son txale anime piu nere.* 
 
 If he is partial, it is no vulgar partiality : friendship 
 
 * /;;/ 6.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 71 
 
 and old affection do not venture to exempt from its 
 fatal doom the sin of his famous master, Brunetto 
 Latini ; * nobleness and great deeds, a kindred 
 character and common wrongs, are not enough to 
 redeem Farinata ; and he who could tell her story 
 bowed to the eternal law, and dared not save 
 Francesca. If he condemns by a severer rule than 
 that of the world, he absolves with fuller faith in the 
 possibilities of grace. Many names of whom history 
 has recorded no good, are marked by him for bliss ; 
 yet not without full respect for justice. The penitent 
 of the last hour is saved, but he suffers loss. Man- 
 fred's soul is rescued ; mercy had accepted his tears, 
 and forgiven his great sins ; and the excommunication 
 of his enemy did not bar his salvation : 
 
 Per lor maladizion si non si perde 
 Che non possa tornar 1' eterno amore 
 Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde. — Purg. 3. 
 
 Yet his sin, though pardoned, was to keep him for 
 long years from the perfection of heaven.f And with 
 the same independence with which he assigns their 
 fate, he selects his instances — instances which are to 
 
 * Che in la mente m' e fitta, ed or m' accuora, 
 La car a biiona imagine paterna. — -Inf. 1$. 
 + Charles of Anjou, his Guelf conqueror, is placed above him, in the 
 valley of the kings (Purg. 7), " Colui dal maschio naso" — notwith- 
 standuig the charges afterwards made against him {Purg. 20).
 
 72 DANTE. 
 
 be the types of character and its issues. No man 
 ever owned more unreservedly the fascination of great- 
 ness, its sway over the imagination and the heart ; no 
 one prized more the grand harmony and sense of 
 fitness which there is, when the great man and the 
 great office are joined in one, and reflect each other's 
 greatness. The famous and great of all ages are 
 gathered in the poet's vision ; the great names even 
 of fable — Geryon and the giants, the Minotaur and 
 Centaurs, and the heroes of Thebes and Troy. But 
 not the great and famous only : this is too narrow, 
 too conventional a sphere ; it is not real enough. He 
 felt, what the modern world feels so keenly, that 
 wonderful histories are latent in the inconspicuous 
 paths of life, in the fugitive incidents of the hour, 
 among the persons whose faces we have seen. The 
 Church had from the first been witness to the deep 
 interest of individual life. The risins: taste for novels 
 showed that society at large was beginning to be alive 
 to it. And it is this feeling — that behind the veil 
 there may be grades of greatness but nothing insigni- 
 ficant — that led Dante to refuse to restrict himself to 
 the characters of fame. He will associate with them 
 the living men who have stood round him ; they are 
 part of the same company with the greatest. That 
 they have interested him, touched him, moved his 
 indignation or pity, struck him as examples of great
 
 DANTE. 73 
 
 vicissitude or of a perfect life, have pleased him, loved 
 him — this is enough why they should live in his poem 
 as they have lived to him. He chooses at will ; 
 history, if it has been negligent at the time about 
 those whom he thought worthy of renown, must be 
 content with its loss. He tells their story, or touches 
 them with a word like the most familiar names, 
 according as he pleases. The obscure highway 
 robber, the obscure betrayer of his sister's honour — 
 Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo, and Caccianimico 
 — are ranked, not according to their obscurity, but 
 according to the greatness of their crimes, with the 
 famous conquerors, and " scourges of God," and 
 seducers of the heroic age, Pyrrhus and Attila, and 
 the great Jason of " royal port, who sheds no tear in 
 his torments."* He earns as high praise from Virgil, 
 for his curse on the furious wrath of the old frantic 
 Florentine burgher, as if he had cursed the disturber 
 of the world's peace, f And so in the realms of joy, 
 among the faithful accomplishers of the highest trusts, 
 kings and teachers of the nations, founders of orders, 
 sainted empresses, appear those whom, though the 
 world had forgotten or misread them, the poet had 
 enshrined in his familiar thoughts, for their sweetness, 
 their gentle goodness, their nobility of soul ; the 
 
 * See the magnificent picture, Inf. i8. 
 t Ibid. 8.
 
 74 DANTE. 
 
 penitent, the nun, the old crusading ancestor, the 
 pilgrim who had deserted the greatness which he had 
 created, the brave logician, who " syllogised unpala- 
 table truths " in the Ouartier Latin of Paris.* 
 
 There is small resemblance in all this — this 
 arbitrary and imperious tone, this range of ideas, 
 feelings, and images, this unshackled freedom, this 
 harsh reality — to the dreamy gentleness of the Vita 
 Niiova, or even the staid argumentation of the more 
 mature Comnto. The Vita Nuova is all self- con- 
 centration — a brooding, not unpleased, over the 
 varying tides of feeling, which are little influenced 
 by the world without ; where every fancy, every 
 sensation, every superstition of the lover is detailed 
 with the most whimsical subtlety. The Conunedia, 
 too, has its tenderness — and that more deep, more 
 natural, more true, than the poet had before adapted 
 to the traditionary formulas of the " Courts of Love," 
 — the eyes of Beatrice are as bright, and the " con- 
 quering light of her smile ;"t they still culminate, 
 
 * Cunizza, Piccarda, Cacciaguida, Romeo. {Farad. 9, 3, 15, 6, 10.) 
 
 La luce eterna di Sigieri 
 
 Che leggendo nel vico degli Strami 
 Sillogizzo invidiosi veri 
 
 in company with S. Thomas Aquinas, in the sphere of the Sun. 
 Ozanam gives a few particulars of this forgotten professor of the " Rue 
 ^u Fouarre," pp. 320-23. 
 
 + Vincendo me col lume d' un sorriso. — Farad. 18.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 75 
 
 but they are not alone, in the poet's heaven. And 
 the professed s ubje ct of the Coinuicdia is still Dante's 
 own stor^^,aii4Jifc ; he still makes himself the central 
 point. And steeled as he is by that high and hard 
 experience of which his poem is the projection and 
 type — " Ben tetragon© ai colpi di ventura " — a stern 
 and brief-spoken man, set on objects, and occupied 
 with a theme, lofty and vast as can occupy man's 
 thoughts, he still lets escape ever and anon some 
 passing avowal of delicate sensitiveness,* lingers for 
 a moment on some indulged self-consciousness, some 
 recollection of his once quick and changeful mood — 
 " io die son trasmutabil per tutte guise " f — or half 
 playfully alludes to the whispered name of a lady,J 
 
 * For instance, his feeling of distress at gazing at tlie blind, who 
 were not aware of his presence — 
 
 A me pareva andando fare oltraggio 
 
 Vedendo altrui, non essendo veduto : — Piirg. 13. 
 
 and of shame, at being tempted to listen to a quarrel between two lost 
 spirits : 
 
 Ad ascoltarli er' io del tutto fisso, 
 Quando '1 Maestro mi disse : or pur mira, 
 Che per poco e, che teco non mi risso. 
 
 Quando io '1 senti' a me parlar con ira 
 Volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna, 
 Ch' ancor per la memoria mi si gira, &c. — inf. 30. 
 
 and the burst, 
 
 O dignitosa coscienza e netta, 
 Come t' e picciol fallo amaro morso. — Purg. 3. 
 t Farad. 5. % Purg. 24.
 
 76 DANTE. 
 
 whose pleasant courtesy has beguiled a few days of 
 exile. But he is no longer spell-bound and entangled 
 in fancies of his own weaving — absorbed in the un- 
 profitable contemplation of his own internal sensations. 
 The man is indeed the same, still a Florentine, still 
 metaphysical, still a lover. Pie returns to the haunts 
 and images of youth, to take among them his poet's 
 crown ; but " with other voice and other garb," * a 
 penitent and a prophet — with larger thoughts, wider 
 sympathies, freer utterance ; sterner and fiercer, yet 
 nobler and more genuine in his tenderness — as one 
 whom trial has made serious, and keen, and intolerant 
 of evil, but not sceptical or callous ; yet with the 
 impressions and memories of a very different scene 
 from his old day-dreams. 
 
 After that it was the pleasure of the citizens of that fairest 
 and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me forth 
 from her most sweet bosom (wherein I had been nourished up 
 to the maturity of my life, and in which, with all peace to her, 
 I long with all my heart to rest my weary soul, and finish the 
 time which is given me), I have passed through almost all the 
 regions to which this language reaches, a wanderer, almost a 
 beggar, displaying, against my will, the stroke of fortune, which 
 is ofttimes unjustly wont to be imputed to the person stricken. 
 Truly, I have been a ship without a sail or helm, carried to 
 divers harbours, and gulfs, and shores, by that parching wind 
 which sad poverty breathes ; and I have seemed vile in the eyes 
 of many, who perchance, from some fame, had imagined of me 
 
 * Parad. 25.
 
 DANTE. 77 
 
 in another form; in the sight of whom not only did my presence 
 become nought, but every work of mine less prized, both what 
 had been and what was to be wrought. — Convito, Tr. i. c. 3. 
 
 Thus proved, and thus furnished — thus inde- 
 pendent and confident, daring to trust his instinct 
 and genius in what was entirely untried and unusual, 
 he entered on his great poem, to shadow forth, under 
 the figure of his own conversion and purification, not 
 merely how a single soul rises to its perfection, but 
 how this visible world, in all its phases of nature, life, 
 and society, is one with the invisible, which borders 
 on it, actuates, accomplishes, and explains it. It is 
 this vast plan — to take into his scope, not the soul 
 only in its struggles and triumph, but all that the soul 
 finds itself engaged with in its course ; the accidents 
 of the hour, and of ages past ; the real persons, great 
 and small, apart from and without whom it cannot 
 think or act ; the material world, its theatre and 
 home — it is this which gives so many various sides to 
 the Conimedia, which makes it so novel and strange. 
 It is not a mere personal history, or a pouring forth of 
 feeling, like the Vita Nuova, though he is himself the 
 miysterious voyager, and he opens without reserve his 
 actual life and his heart ; he speaks, indeed, in the 
 first person, yet he is but a character of the drama, 
 and in great part of it with not more of distinct 
 personality than in that paraphrase of the penitential
 
 78 DANTE. 
 
 Psalms, in which he has preluded so much of the 
 Commedia. Yet the Conimedia is not a pure allegory; 
 it admits, and makes use of the allegorical, but the 
 laws of allegory are too narrow for it ; the real in it 
 is too impatient of the veil, and breaks through in all 
 its hardness and detail, into what is most shadowy. 
 History is indeed viewed not in its ephemeral look, 
 but under the light of God's final judgments; in its 
 completion, not in its provisional and fragmentary 
 character ; viewed therefore but in faith ; — but its 
 issues, which in this confused scene we ordinarily 
 contemplate in the gross, the poet brings down to 
 detail and individuals ; he faces and grasps the 
 tremendous thought that the very men and women 
 whom we see and speak to, are now the real repre- 
 sentatives of sin and goodness, the true actors in that 
 scene which is so familiar to us as a picture — un- 
 flinching and terrible heart, he endures to face it in 
 its most harrowing forms. But he wrote not for 
 sport, nor to give poetic pleasure ; he wrote to warn ; 
 the seed of the Commedia was sown in tears, and 
 reaped in misery : and the consolations which it offers 
 are awful as they are real. 
 
 Thus, though he throws into symbol and image, 
 what can only be expressed by symbol and image, 
 we can as little forget in reading him this real world 
 in which we live, as we can in one of Shakspere's
 
 DANTE. 
 
 79 
 
 plays. It is not merely that the poem is crowded 
 with real personages, most of them having the single 
 interest to us of being real. But all that is associated 
 with man's history and existence is interwoven with 
 the main course of thought — all that gives character 
 to life, all that gives it form and feature, even to 
 quaintness, all that occupies the mind, or employs 
 the hand — speculation, science, arts, manufactures, 
 monuments, scenes, customs, proverbs, ceremonies, 
 games, punishments, attitudes of men, habits of living 
 creatures. The wildest and most unearthly imagina- 
 tions, the most abstruse thoughts take up into, and 
 incorporate with themselves the forcible and familiar 
 impressions of our mother earth, and do not refuse 
 the company and aid even of the homeliest. 
 
 This is not mere poetic ornament, peculiarly, 
 profusely, or extravagantly employed. It is one of 
 the ways in which his dominant feeling expresses 
 itself — spontaneous and instinctive in each several 
 instance of it, but the kindling and effluence of 
 deliberate thought, and attending on a clear purpose 
 — the feeling of the real and intimate connexion 
 between the objects of sight and faith. It is not that 
 he sees in one the simple counterpart and reverse of 
 the other, or sets himself to trace out universally their 
 mutual correspondences ; he has too strong a sense of 
 the reality of this familiar life to reduce it merely to
 
 8o DANTE. 
 
 a shadow and type of the unseen. What he struggles 
 to express in countless ways, with all the resources of 
 his strange and gigantic power, is that this world and 
 the next are both equally real, and both one — parts, 
 however different, of one whole. The world to come 
 we know but in " a glass darkly ;" man can only 
 think and imagine of it in images, which he knows to 
 be but broken and faint reflections : but this world we 
 know, not in outline, and featureless idea, but by 
 name, and face, and shape, by place and person, by 
 the colours and forms which crowd over its surface, 
 the men who people its habitations, the events which 
 mark its moments. Detail fills the sense here, and is 
 the mark of reality. And thus he seeks to keep alive 
 the feeling of what that world is which he connects 
 with heaven and hell ; not by abstractions, not much 
 by elaborate and highly-finished pictures, but by 
 names, persons, local features, definite images. Widely 
 and keenly has he ranged over and searched into the 
 world — with a largeness of mind which disdained not 
 to mark and treasure up, along with much unheeded 
 beauty, many a characteristic feature of nature, un- 
 noticed because so common. All his pursuits and 
 interests contribute to the impression, which, often 
 instinctively it may be, he strives to produce, of the 
 manifold variety of our life. As a man of society, his 
 memory is full of its usages, formalities, graces, follies.
 
 DANTE. 8r 
 
 fashions — of expressive motions, postures, gestures, 
 looks — of music, of handicrafts, of the conversation of 
 friends or associates — of all that passes, so transient, 
 yet so keenly pleasant or distasteful, between man 
 and man. As a traveller, he recalls continually the 
 names and scenes of the world ; — as a man of specu- 
 lation, the secrets of nature — the phenomena of light, 
 the theory of the planets' motions, the idea and laws 
 of physiology. As a rnan of learning, he is filled with 
 the thoughts and recollections of ancient fable and 
 history ; as a politician, with the thoughts, prognosti- 
 cations, and hopes, of the history of the day ; as a 
 moral philosopher he has watched himself, his ex- 
 ternal sensations and changes, his inward passions, 
 his mental powers, his ideas, his conscience ; he has 
 far and wide noted character, discriminated motives, 
 classed good and evil deeds. All that the man of 
 society, of travel, of science, of learning, the pohtician, 
 the moralist, could gather, is used at will in the great 
 poetic structure ; but all converges to the purpose, 
 and is directed by the intense feeling of the theologian, 
 who sees this wonderful and familiar scene melting 
 into, and ending in another yet more wonderful, but 
 which will one day be as familiar — who sees the diffi- 
 cult but sure progress of the manifold remedies of the 
 Divine government to their predestined issue ; and, 
 over all, God and His saints. 
 
 G
 
 82 DANTE. 
 
 So comprehensive in interest is the Commedia. 
 Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest 
 to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology 
 itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the 
 key-note ; but history, natural and metaphysical 
 science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the 
 harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. 
 If from the poem itself we could be for a single 
 moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place 
 of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the Convito 
 would show how he placed " the Divine Science, full 
 of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and 
 sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, 
 which is God," in single perfection above all other 
 sciences, " which are, as Solomon speaks, but queens, 
 or concubines, or maidens ; but she is the ' Dove,' and 
 the ' perfect one ' — ' Dove,' because without stain of 
 strife — 'perfect,' because perfectly she makes us 
 behold the truth, in which our soul stills itself and is 
 at rest." But the same passage * shows likewise how 
 he viewed all human knowledge and human interests, 
 as holding their due place in the hierarchy of wisdom, 
 and among the steps of man's perfection. No account 
 of the Commedia will prove sufficient, which does not 
 keep in view, first of all, the high moral purpose and 
 
 * Convito, Tr, 2, c. 14, 15.
 
 DANTE. 83 
 
 deep spirit of faitli with which it was written, and 
 
 then the wide hberty of materials and means which 
 
 the poet allowed himself in working out his design. 
 
 Doubtless, his writings have a political aspect. 
 
 The " great Ghibelline poet " is one of Dante's 
 
 received synonymes ; of his strong political opinions, 
 
 and the importance he attached to them, there can be 
 
 no doubt. And he meant his poem to be the vehicle 
 
 of them, and the record to all ages of the folly and 
 
 selfishness with which he saw men governed. That 
 
 he should take the deepest interest in the goings on 
 
 of his time, is part of his greatness ; to suppose that 
 
 he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to 
 
 political objects or feelings all the other elements of 
 
 his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very 
 
 narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of 
 
 mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the 
 
 Commedia in their own mother-tono-ue. It has been 
 
 maintained as a satisfactory account of it — maintained 
 
 with great labour and pertinacious ingenuity — that 
 
 Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the 
 
 conflicts and ideal triumph of a political party. The 
 
 hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but 
 
 a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, 
 
 under the veil of historic images and scenes, to 
 
 insinuate what it was dangerous to announce ; and 
 
 Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a 
 
 G 2
 
 84 DANTE. 
 
 specimen of the jargon, cant, and slang of Ghibellinc 
 freemasonry. When Itahans write thus, they degrade 
 the greatest name of their country to a depth of 
 laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen 
 and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the 
 enigma of Dante's works, by imagining for him a 
 character in which it is hard to say which predomi- 
 nates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that 
 we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even 
 enter with gravity on the examination of Father 
 Hardouin's Historic Doubts. The fanaticism of an 
 outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice 
 and despotism, is but a poor excuse for such perverse 
 blindness.* 
 
 Dante..waa-not a Ghibellinc, though he longed for 
 the interposition of an Imperial power. Historically 
 he did not belong to the Ghibellinc party. It is true 
 that he forsook the Guelfs, with whom he had been 
 brought up, and that the White Guelfs, with whom 
 he was expelled from Florence, were at length merged 
 and lost in the Ghibellinc partyf ; and he acted with 
 them for a time. J But no words can be stronger 
 
 * In the Remains of Arthur Henry Hallain is a paper, in which 
 he examines and disposes of this theory with a courteous and forbearin"- 
 irony, which would have deepened probably into sortlething more, on 
 thinking over it a second time. 
 
 + Dino Co7np. pp. 89-91, 
 
 :|: His name appears among the White delegates in 1 307. Pelli, p. 1 1 7.
 
 DANTE. 85 
 
 than those in which he disjoins himself from that 
 "■evil and foolish company," and claims his inde- 
 pendence — 
 
 A te fia bello 
 Avertifatto parte per te stesso* 
 
 And it is not easy to conceive a Ghibelline partisan 
 putting into the mouth of Justinian, the type of law 
 and empire, a general condemnation of his party as 
 heavy as that of their antagonists ; — the crime of 
 having betrayed, as the Guelfs had resisted, the great 
 symbol of public right — 
 
 Omai puoi giudicar di que' cotali 
 Ch' io accusal di sopra, e de' lor falll 
 Che son cagion di tutti i vostri mail. 
 
 L' uno al pubblico segno 1 gigli gialli 
 Oppone, e quel s' appropria I'aliro a parte, 
 Si ch' e forte a veder qual piu si falli. 
 
 Facciaii li Ghibellin,faccia7i lor arte 
 Sotf altro segno; eke vial segue qiiello 
 Seinpre chi la giustizia e lui diparte.\ 
 
 And though, as the victim of the Guelfs of Florence, 
 he found refuge among Ghibelline princes, he had 
 friends among Guelfs also. His steps and his tongue 
 were free to the end. And in character and feeling, 
 in his austerity, his sturdiness and roughness, his 
 intolerance of corruption and pride, his strongly- 
 
 * Farad. 17. f Ibid. 6.
 
 86 DANTE. 
 
 marked devotional temper, he was much less a Ghibel- 
 line than like one of those stern Guelfs who hailed 
 Savonarola. 
 
 But he had a veiy dedded and complete political 
 theory, which certainly was not Guelf ; and, as parties 
 then were, it was not much more Ghibelline. Most 
 ' assuredly no set of men would have more vigorously 
 resisted the attempt to realise his theory, would have 
 joined more heartily with all immediate opponents 
 — Guelfs, Black, White, and Green, or even Boni- 
 face VIII., — to keep out such an emperor as Dante 
 imagined, than the Ghibelline nobles and potentates. 
 
 Dante's political views were a dream; though a 
 dream based on what had been, and an anticipation 
 of what was, in part at least, to come. It was a dream 
 in the middle ages, in divided and republican Italy, 
 the Italy of cities — of a real and national government, 
 based on justice and law. It was the dream of a real 
 state. He imagined that the Roman empire had been 
 one great state ; he persuaded himself that Christen- 
 dom might be such. He was wrong in both instances ; 
 but in this case, as in so many others, he had already 
 caught the spirit and ideas of a far-distant future ; 
 and the political organisation of modern times, so 
 familiar to us that we cease to think of its exceeding 
 wonder, is the practical confirmation, though in a 
 form very different from what he imagined, of the
 
 DANTE. 87 
 
 depth and farsightedness of those expectations which 
 are in outward form so chimerical — " i miei non falsi 
 err or i!' 
 
 He had studied the "infinite disorders of the 
 world " in one of their most unrestrained scenes, the 
 streets of an Italian republic. Law was powerless, 
 good men were powerless, good intentions came to 
 naught ; neither social habits nor public power could 
 resist, when selfishness chose to have its way. The 
 Church was indeed still the salt of the nations ; but it 
 had once dared and achieved more ; it had once been 
 the only power which ruled them. And this it could 
 do no longer. If strength and energy had been 
 enough to make the Church's influence felt on govern- 
 ment, there was a Pope who could have done it — a 
 man who was undoubtedly the most wondered at and 
 admired of his age, whom friend or foe never charac- 
 terised, without adding the invariable epithet of his 
 greatness of soul — the " mag-jmnimtis peccaior,"^ whose 
 Roman grandeur in meeting his unworthy fate fasci- 
 nated into momentary sympathy even Dante.t But 
 
 * Benvenuto da Imola. 
 + Veggio in Alagna entrar lo fiordaliso, 
 E nel vicario suo Cristo esser catto ; 
 Veggiolo un' altra volta esser deriso ; 
 . Veggio rinnovellar I'aceto e '1 fele, 
 
 E tra \'ivi Jadroni essere anciso. — ^ufg. 20. 
 
 G. Villani, viii. 63. Come magnanimo e valente, disse, Dacchl per
 
 88 DANTE. 
 
 among the things which Boniface VIII. could not 
 do, even if he cared about it, was the maintaining 
 peace and law in Italian towns. And while this great 
 political power was failing, its correlative and anta- 
 gonist was paralysed also. " Since the death of 
 Frederic II.," says Dante's contemporary, "the fame 
 and recollections of the empire were well - nigh 
 extinguished."* Italy was left without government 
 — "come nave senza nocchicro in gran tempesta" — to 
 the mercies of her tyrants : 
 
 Che le terre d' Italia tutte piene 
 Son di tiranni, e un Marcel diventa 
 Ogni villan, die parteggiando viene. — Ptirg. 6. 
 
 In this scene of violence and disorder, with the 
 Papacy gone astray, the empire debased and impotent, 
 the religious orders corrupted, power meaning lawless- 
 ness, the well-disposed become weak and cowardly, 
 religion neither guide nor check to society, but only 
 the consolation of its victims — Dante was bold and 
 hopeful enough to believe in the Divine appointment, 
 and in the possibility, of law and government — of a 
 state. In his philosophy, the institutions which provide 
 
 tradimento, come Gesh Crisio, voglio csscr prcsoemiconviene morh-e, alineno 
 •voglio morireco»ie Papa; e di presente si fece parare dell' ammanto 
 di S. Piero, e colla corona di Constantino in capo, e colle chiavi e croce 
 in mano, e in su la sedia papale si pose a sedere, e giunto a lui Sciarra 
 e gli altri suoi nimici, con villane parole lo scherniro. 
 * Dbw Compagni, p. 135.
 
 DANTE. 89 
 
 for man's peace and liberty in this life are part of God's 
 great order for raising men to perfection ; — not indis- 
 pensable, yet ordinary parts ; having their important 
 place, though but for the present time ; and though 
 imperfect, real instruments of His moral government. 
 He could not believe it to be the intention of Provi- 
 dence, that on the introduction of higher hopes and 
 the foundation of a higher society, civil society should 
 collapse and be left to ruin, as henceforth useless or 
 prejudicial in man's trial and training ; that the sig- 
 nificant intimations of nature, that law and its results, 
 justice, peace, and stability, ought to be and might be 
 realised among men, had lost their meaning and faded 
 away before the announcement of a kingdom not of 
 this world. And if the perfection of civil society had 
 not been superseded by the Church, it had become 
 clear, if events were to be read as signs, that she was 
 not intended to supply its political offices and functions. 
 She had taught, elevated, solaced, blessed, not only 
 individual souls, but society ; she had for a time even 
 governed it : but though her other powers remained, she 
 could govern it no longer. Failure had made it cer- 
 tain that, in his strong and quaint language, " Virtiis 
 atithorizandi regniim nostrcs mortalitatis est contra 
 nat2iram ccclesi(S ; ergo non est de nimiero virtiitnm 
 suariimy^' Another and distinct organisation was 
 
 * De Monarch, lib. iii. d. 188, Ed. Fraticelli.
 
 go DANTE. 
 
 required for this, unless the temporal order was no 
 longer worthy the attention of Christians, 
 
 This is the idea of the De Monarchia ; and 
 though it holds but a place in the great scheme of the 
 Conimedia, it is prominent there also — an idea seen 
 but in a fantastic shape, encumbered and confused 
 with most grotesque imagery, but the real idea of 
 polity and law, which the experience of modern 
 Europe has attained to. 
 
 He found in clear outline in the Greek philosophy, 
 the theory of merely human society ; and raising its 
 end and purpose, ''^ fincni totius JmniancB civilitatis" to 
 a height and dignity which Heathens could not fore- 
 cast, he adopted it in its more abstract and ideal 
 form. He imagined a single authority, unselfish, 
 inflexible, irresistible, which could make all smaller 
 tyrannies to cease, and enable every man to live in 
 peace and liberty, so that he lived in justice. It is 
 simply what each separate state of Christendom has 
 by this time more or less perfectly achieved. The 
 theoriser of the middle ages could conceive of its 
 accomplishment only in one form, as grand as it was 
 impossible — a universal monarchy. 
 
 But he did not start from an abstraction. He 
 believed that history attested the existence of such a 
 monarchy. The prestige of the Roman empire was 
 then strong. Europe still lingers on the idea, and
 
 DANTE. 91 
 
 cannot even yet bring itself to give up its part in that 
 great monument of human power. But in the middle 
 ages the Empire was still believed to exist. It was 
 the last greatness which had been seen in the world, 
 and the world would not beheve that it Vvas over. 
 Above all, in Italy, a continuity of lineage, of 
 language, of local names, and in par!: of civilisation 
 and law, forbad the thought that the great Roman 
 people had ceased to be. Florentines and Venetians 
 boasted that they were Romans : the legends Vvdiich 
 the Florentine ladies told to their maidens at the 
 loom were tales of their mother city, Rome. The 
 Roman element, little understood, but profoundly 
 reverenced and dearly cherished, was dominant ; the 
 conductor of civilisation, and enfolding the inheritance 
 of all the wisdom, experience, feeling, art, of the past, 
 it elevated, even while it overawed, oppressed, and 
 enslaved. A deep belief in Providence added to the 
 intrinsic grandeur of the empire a sacred character. 
 The flight of the eagle has been often told and often 
 sung ; but neither in Livy or Virgil, Gibbon or 
 Bossuet, with intenser sympathy or more kindred 
 power, than in those rushing and unflagging verses in 
 which the middle-age poet hears the imperial legis- 
 lator relate the fated course of the "sacred sign," 
 from the day when Pallas died for it, till it accom- 
 plished the vengeance of heaven in Judsea, and
 
 92 DANTE. 
 
 afterwards, under Charlemagne, smote down the 
 enemies of the Church.^ 
 
 The following passage, from the De Monarchia, 
 will show the poet's view of the Roman empire, and 
 its office in the world : 
 
 To the reasons abo\-e alleged, a memorable experience 
 brings confirmation : I mean that state of mankind which the 
 Son of God, when He would for man's salvation take man upon 
 Him, either waited for, or ordered when so He willed. For if 
 from the fall of our first parents, which was the starting-point 
 of all our wanderings, we retrace the various dispositions of 
 men and their times, we shall not find at any time, except under 
 the divine monarch Augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed, 
 that the world was everywhere quiet. And that then mankind 
 was happy in the tranc|uillity of universal peace, this all writers 
 of history, this famous poets, this even the Scribe of the meek- 
 ness of Christ has deigned to attest. And lastly, Paul has 
 ' called that most blessed condition, the fulness of time. Truly 
 time, and the things of time, were full, for no mystery of our 
 felicity then lacked its minister. But how the world has gone 
 on from the time when that seamless robe was first torn by the 
 claws of covetousness, we may read, and would that we might 
 not also see. O race of men, by how great storms and losses, 
 by how great shipwrecks hast thou of necessity been vexed 
 since, transformed into a beast of many heads, thou hast been 
 struggling different ways, sick in understanding, equally sick in 
 heart. The higher intellect, with its invincible reasons, thou 
 reckest not of; nor of the inferior, with its eye of experience ; 
 nor of affection, with the sweetness of divine suasion, when the 
 trumpet of the Holy Ghost sounds to thee — " Behold, how good 
 is it, and how pleasant, brethren, to dwell together in unity." — 
 De MonarcJt. \\h. i. p. 54. 
 
 * Farad, c. 6.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 Yet this great Roman empire existed still unim- 
 paired in name — not unimposing even in what really 
 remained of it. Dante, to supply a want, turned it 
 into a theory — a theory easy to smile at now, but 
 which contained and was a beginning of unknown or 
 unheeded truth. What he yearns after is the pre- 
 dominance of the principle of justice in civil society. 
 That, if it is still imperfect, is no longer a dream in 
 our day ; but experience had never realised it to him, 
 and he takes refuge in tentative and groping theory. 
 The divinations of the greatest men have been vague 
 and strange, and none have been stranger than those 
 of the author of the Dc AlonarcJiia. The second 
 book, in which he establishes the title of the Roman 
 people to Universal Empire, is as startling a piece of 
 mediaeval argument as it would be easy to find. 
 
 As when we cannot attain to look upon a cause, we 
 commonly wonder at a new effect, so when we know the cause, 
 we look down with a certain derision on those who remain in 
 wonder. And I indeed wondered once how the Roman people 
 had, without any resistance, been set over the world ; and 
 looking at it superficially, I thought that they had obtained this 
 by no right, but by mere force of arms. But when I fixed deeply 
 the eyes of my mind on it, and by most effectual signs knew 
 that Divine Providence had wrought this, wonder departed, and 
 a certain scornful contempt came in its stead, when I perceived 
 the nations raging against the pre-eminence of the Roman 
 people : — when I see the people imagining a vain thing, as I 
 once used to do ; when, moreover, I grieve over kings and 
 princes agreeing in this only, to be against their Lord and his
 
 94 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 anointed Roman Emperor. Wherefore in derision, not without 
 a certain grief, I can cry out, for that glorious people and for 
 Ctesar, with him who cried in behalf of the Prince of Heaven, 
 " Why did the nations rage, and the people imagine vain things ; 
 the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were joined in 
 one against the Lord and his anointed." But (because natural 
 love suffers not derision to be of long duration, but, like the 
 summer sun, which, scattering the morning mists, irradiates the 
 east with light, so prefers to pour forth the light of correction) 
 therefore to break the bonds of the ignorance of such kings and 
 rulers, to show that the human race is free from their yoke, I 
 will exhort myself, in company with the most holy Prophet, 
 taking up his following words, " Let us break their bonds, and 
 cast away from us their yoke." — De Mona-rch. lib. ii. p. 58. 
 
 And to prove this pre-eminence of right in the 
 Roman people, and their heirs, the Emperors of 
 Christendom, he appeals not m.erely to the course 
 of Providence, to their high and noble ancestry, to the 
 blessings of their just and considerate laws, to their 
 unselfish guardianship of the Avorld — " Romanum 
 imperhivi de fonte nascitiir pietatis ; " — not merely 
 to their noble examples of private virtue, self-devo- 
 tion, and public spirit — " those most sacred victims 
 of the Decian house, who laid down their lives for the 
 public weal, as Livy — not as they deserved, but as he 
 was able — tells to their glory ; and that unspeakable 
 sacrifice of freedom's sternest guardians, the Catos ; " 
 not merely to the "judgment of God" in that great 
 duel and wager of battle for empire, in which heaven 
 declared against all other champions and "co-athletes"
 
 DANTE. 
 
 95 
 
 — Alexander, Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and by all the 
 formalities of judicial combat awarded the great prize 
 to those who fought, not for love or hatred, but justice 
 — " Qids igitur nunc adeo obtuse^ mentis est, qni non 
 videat, sub jure duelli gloriosuni popidiun coronani totius 
 orhis esse liicratiim ? " — not merely to arguments 
 derived "from the principles of the Christian faith "— 
 but to miracles. " The Roman empire," he says, 
 " was, in order to its perfections, aided by the help of 
 miracles ; therefore it was willed by God ; and, by 
 consequence, both was, and is, of right." And these 
 miracles, "proved by the testimony of illustrious 
 authorities," are the prodigies of Livy — the ancile of 
 Numa, the geese of the Capitol, the escape of Clelia, 
 the hail-storm which checked Hannibal.* 
 
 The intellectual phenomenon is a strange one. It 
 would be less strange if Dante were arguing in the 
 schools, or pleading for a party. But even Henry of 
 Luxemburg cared little for such a throne as the poet 
 wanted him to fill, much less Can Grande and the 
 Visconti. The idea, the theory, and the argument, 
 are of the writer's own solitary meditation. We may 
 wonder. But there are few things more strange than 
 the history of argument. How often has a cause or 
 an idea turned out, in the eyes of posterity, so much 
 
 * De Monarch, lib. ii. pp. 62, 66, 78, 82, 84, 108-114, 116, 72-76«
 
 96 DANTE. 
 
 better than its arguments. How often have we seen 
 argument getting as it were into a groove, and unable 
 to extricate itself, so as to do itself justice. The every- 
 day cases of private experience, of men defending 
 right conclusions on wrong or conventional grounds, 
 or in a confused form, entangled with conclusions of a ' 
 like yet different nature ; — of arguments, theories, 
 solutions, which once satisfied, satisfying us no longer 
 on a question about which we hold the same belief — 
 of one party unable to comprehend the arguments of 
 another — of one section of the same side smiling at 
 the defence of their common cause by another — are 
 all reproduced on a grander scale in the history of 
 society. There too, one age cannot comprehend 
 another ; there too it takes time to disengage, subor- 
 dinate, eliminate. Truth of this sort is not the elabora- 
 tion of one keen or strong mind, but of the secret 
 experience of many ; " niJiil sine atate est, 07nnia tempiis 
 expectant." But a counterpart to the De Monarchia is 
 not wanting in our own day ; theory has not ceased 
 to be mighty. In warmth and earnestness, in sense 
 of historic grandeur, in its support of a great cause and 
 a great idea, not less than in the thought of its motto, 
 els Koipavos e(TTco, Dc Maistre's volume Bn Pape, recalls 
 the antagonist De Monarchia ; but it recalls it not 
 less in its bold dealing with facts, and its bold assump- 
 tion of principles, though the knowledge and debates
 
 DANTE. 97 
 
 cf five more busy centuries, and the experience of 
 modern courts and revolutions, might have guarded 
 the Piedmontese nobleman from the mistakes of the 
 old Florentine. 
 
 But the idea of the De Monarchia is no key to the 
 Comvudia. The direct and primary purpose of the 
 Commedia is surely its obvious one. It is to stamp a 
 deep impression on the mind, of the issues of good 
 and ill doing here — of the real worlds of pain and joy. 
 To do this forcibly, it is done in detail — of course it 
 can only be done in figure. Punishment, purification, 
 or the fulness of consolation are, as he would think, at 
 this very moment, the lot of all the numberless spirits 
 who have ever lived here — spirits still living and 
 sentient as himself: parallel with our life, they too are 
 suffering or are at rest. Without pause or interval, in 
 all its parts simultaneously, this awful scene is going 
 on — the judgments of God are being fulfilled — could 
 we but see it. It exists, it might be seen, at each 
 instant of time, by a soul whose eyes were opened, 
 which was carried through it. And this he imagines. 
 It had been imagined before ; it is the working out, 
 which is peculiar to him. It is not a barren vision. 
 His subject is, besides the eternal worlds the soul 
 which contemplates it ; by sight, according to his 
 figures — in reality, by faith. As he is led on from 
 woe to deeper woe, then through the tempered chas- 
 
 H
 
 98 DANTE. 
 
 tisements and resignation of Purgatory to the beatific 
 vision, he is tracing the course of the soul on earth, 
 reahsing sin and weaning itself from it — of its purifica- 
 tion and preparation for its high lot, by converse with 
 the good and wise, by the remedies of grace, by efforts 
 of will and love, perhaps by the dominant guidance 
 of some single pure and holy influence, whether of 
 person, or institution, or thought. Nor will we say but 
 that beyond this earthly probation, he is not also 
 striving to grasp and imagine to himself something of 
 that awful process and training, by which, whether in 
 or out of the flesh, the spirit is made fit to meet its 
 Maker, its Judge, and its Chief Good. 
 
 Thus it seems that even in its main design, the 
 poem has more than one aspect ; it is a picture, a 
 figure, partially a history, perhaps an anticipation. 
 And this is confirmed, by what the poet has himself 
 distinctly stated, of his ideas of poetic composition. 
 His vicAv is expressed generally in his philosophical 
 treatise, the Convito ; but it is applied directly to the 
 Commedia, in a letter, which, if in its present form, of 
 doubtful authenticity, without any question represents 
 his sentiments, and the substance of which is incorpo- 
 rated in one of the earliest writings on the poem, Boc- 
 caccio's commentary. The following is his account of 
 the subject of the poem : 
 
 For the evidence of what is to be said, it is to be noted, that 
 this work is not of one single meaning only, but may be said tc-
 
 DANTE. 
 
 99 
 
 have many meanings {" polysensiatm^'). For the first meaning- 
 is that of the letter — another is that of things signified by the 
 letter ; the first of these is called the literal sense, the second, 
 the allegorical or moral. This mode of treating a subject may 
 for clearness' sake be considered in those verses of the Psalm, 
 " In exitii Israel." "When Israel came out of Egypt, and the 
 house of Jacob from the strange people, Judah was his sanc- 
 tuary, and Israel his dominion." For if we look at the letter 
 only, there is here signified, the going out of the children of 
 Israel in the time of Moses — if at the allegory there is signified 
 our redemption through Christ — if at the vioral sense there is 
 signified to us the conversion of the soul from the mourning 
 and misery of sin to the state of grace — ^if at the anagogic 
 sense,* there is signified the passing out of the holy soul from 
 the bondage of this corruption to the liberty of everlasting glory. 
 And these mystical meanings, though called by different names, 
 may all be called allegorical as distinguished from the literal or 
 
 historical sense This being considered, it is plain that 
 
 there ought to be a twofold subject, concerning which the two 
 corresponding meanings may proceed. Therefore we must 
 consider first concerning the subject of this work as it is to be 
 understood literally, then as it is to be considered allegorically. 
 The subject then of the whole work, taken literally only, is the 
 state of souls after death considered in itself. For about this, and 
 on this, the whole work turns. But if the work be taken allegori- 
 cally, its subject is man, as, by his freedom of choice deserving well 
 or ill, he is subject to the justice which rewards and punishes.t 
 
 The passage in the Convito is to the same effect ; 
 but his remarks on the moral and anagogic meaning 
 may be quoted : 
 
 The third sense is called moral; that it is which readers 
 
 * Litera gesta refert, quid credas allegoria, 
 Moralis quid agas, quid speres anagogia. 
 
 De Witte's note from Bali. 
 + Ep. ad Kan Grand. § 6, 7. 
 
 H 2
 
 lOO 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 ought to go on noting carefully in writings, for their own profit 
 and that of their disciples : as in the Gospel it may be noted, 
 when Christ went up to the mountain to be transfigured, that of 
 the twelve Apostles, he took with him only three ; in which morally 
 we may understand, that in the most secret things we ought to 
 have but few companions. The fourth sort of meaning is called 
 anagogic, that is, above our sense ; and this is when we 
 spiritually interpret a passage, which even in its literal meaning 
 by means of the things signified, expresses the heavenly things 
 of everlasting glory : as may be seen in that song of the 
 Prophet, which says, that in the coming out of the people of 
 Israel from Egypt, Judah was made holy and free ; which 
 although it is manifestly true according to the letter, is not less 
 true as spiritually understood ; that is, that when the soul comes 
 out of sin, it is made holy and free, in its own power.* 
 
 With this passage before us there can be no doubt 
 of the meaning-, however veiled, of those beautiful 
 hnes, already referred to, in which Virgil, after having 
 conducted the poet up the steeps of Purgatory, where 
 his sins have been one by one cancelled by the 
 ministering angels, finally takes leave of him, and 
 bids him wait for Beatrice, on the skirts of the earthly 
 
 Paradise : 
 
 Come la scala tutta sotto noi 
 Fu corsa e fummo in su '1 grado superno, 
 In me ficco Virgilio gli occhi suoi, 
 
 E disse : " II temporal fuoco, e 1' eterno 
 Veduto hai, figlio, e se' venuto in parte 
 Ov' io per me piu oltre non discerno. 
 
 Tratto t' ho qui con ingegno e con arte : 
 Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce ; 
 
 * Cojtvito, Tr, 2, c. I.
 
 DANTE. loi 
 
 Fuor se' dell' erte vie, fuor se' dell' arte. 
 
 Vedi il sole che 'n fronte ti riluce : 
 Vedi r erbetta, i fiori, e gli arboscelli 
 Che quella terra sol da se produce. 
 
 Mentre che vegnon lieti gli occhi belli 
 Che lagrimando a te venir mi fenno, 
 Seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli. 
 
 Non aspettar mio dir piii ne mio cenno : 
 Libero, dritto, sano e tuo arbitrio, 
 E fallo fora non fare a suo senno : — 
 
 Perch' io te sopra te corono e mitrio." * 
 
 The general meaning of the Commcdia is clear 
 enough. But it certainly does appear to refuse to be 
 
 * When we had run 
 O'er all the ladder to its topmost round, 
 As there we stood, on me the Mantuan fix'd 
 His eyes, and thus he spake : "Both fires, my son, 
 The temporal and the eternal, thou hast seen : 
 And art arrived, where of itself my ken 
 No further reaches. I with skill and art, 
 Thus far have drawn thee. Now thy pleasure take 
 For guide. Thou hast o'ercome the steeper waj, 
 O'ercome the straiten Lo ! the sun, that darts 
 His beam upon thy forehead : lo ! the herb, 
 The arborets and flowers, which of itself 
 This land pours forth profuse. Till those bright eyes 
 With gladness come, which, weeping, made me haste 
 To succour thee, thou mayest or seat the'e down. 
 Or wander where thou wilt. Expect no more 
 Sanction of warning voice or sign from me, 
 Free of thine own arbitrement to choose, 
 Discreet, judicious. To distrust thy sense 
 Wcie henceforth error. I invest thee then 
 With crown and mitre, sovereign o'er thyself." 
 
 Piirg. c. 27. — Gary.
 
 I02 DANTE. 
 
 fitted into a connected formal scheme of interpreta- 
 tion. It is not a homogeneous, consistent allegory, 
 like the Pilgrims Progress and the Fairy Queen. 
 The allegory contin^ally_ breaks off, shifts its ground, 
 gives^place to other elements, or mingles with them — 
 like a stream which suddenly sinks into the earth, 
 and after passing under plains and mountains, re- 
 appears in a distant point, and in different scenery. 
 We can, indeed, imagine its strange author com- 
 menting on it, and finding or marking out its prosaic 
 substratum, with the cold-blooded precision and 
 scholastic distinctions of the Convito. However, he 
 has not done so. And of the many enigmas which 
 present themselves, either in its structure or sepa- 
 rate parts, the key seems hopelessly lost. The 
 early commentators are very ingenious, but very 
 unsatisfactory ; they see where we can see, but 
 beyond that they are as full of uncertainty as 
 ourselves. It is in character with that solitary 
 and haughty spirit, while touching universal sym- 
 pathies, appalling and charming all hearts, to have 
 delighted in his own dark sayings, which had 
 meaning only to himself It is true that, whether 
 in irony, or from that quaint studious care for 
 the appearance of literal truth, which makes him 
 apologise for the wonders which he relates, and 
 confirm them by an oath, " on the words of his
 
 DANTE. 103 
 
 poem,"=i^ he provokes and challenges us ; bids us 
 admh-e "doctrine hidden under strange verses ;"t 
 bids us strain our eyes, for the veil is thin : 
 
 Aguzza, qui, letter, ben 1' occhi al vero : 
 
 Che il velo e ora ben tanto sottile, 
 
 Certo, che il trapassar dentro e leggiero. — Purg. c. 8. 
 
 But eyes are still strained in conjecture and doubt. 
 
 Yet the most certain and detailed commentary, 
 one which assigned the exact reason for every image 
 or allegory, and its place and connexion in a general 
 scheme, would add but little to the charm or to the 
 use of the poem. It is not so obscure but that every 
 man's experience who has thought over and felt the 
 mystery of our present life, may supply the com- 
 mentary — the more ample, the wider and more 
 various has been his experience, the deeper and 
 keener his feeling. Details and links of connexion 
 may be matter of controversy. Whether the three 
 beasts of the forest mean definitely the vices of the 
 time, or of Florence specially, or of the poet himself 
 — " the wickedness of his heels, compassing him round 
 
 * Sempre a quel ver, ch' ha faccia di menzogna, 
 De' r uom chiuder le labbra, quanto puote, 
 Pero che senza colpa fa vergogna. 
 
 Ma qui tacer nol posso ; e per le note 
 Di questa Commedia, lettor, ti giuro 
 S' elle non sien di lunga grazia vote, &c. — Inf. 1 6. 
 + Inf. 9.
 
 I04 DANTE. 
 
 about " — may still exercise critics and antiquaries ; 
 but that they carry Avith them distinct and special 
 impressions of evil, and that they are the hindrances 
 of man's salvation, is not doubtful. And our know- 
 ledge of the key of the allegory, where we possess it, 
 contributes but little to the effect. We may infer 
 from the Convito^ that the eyes of Beatrice stand defi- 
 nitely for the demonstrations, and her smiles for the 
 persuasions of wisdom ; but the poetry of the Paradiso 
 is not about demonstrations and persuasions, but 
 about looks and smiles ; and the ineffable and holy 
 calm — " sercnitatis ct ccternitatis afflatus " — which per- 
 vades it, comes from the sacred truths, and holy per- 
 sons, and that deep spirit of high-raised yet composed 
 devotion, which it requires no interpreter to show us. 
 
 Figure and symbol, then, are doubtless the law of 
 composition in the Conimedia ; but this law discloses 
 itself very variously, and with different degrees of 
 strictness. In its primary and most general form, it 
 is palpable, consistent, pervading. There can be no 
 doubt that the poem is meant to be understood 
 figuratively — no doubt of what in general it is meant 
 to shadow forth — no doubt as to the greneral meaning 
 of its parts, their connexion with each other. But in 
 its secondary and subordinate applications, the law 
 
 * Conz'ito, Tr. 3, c. 15.
 
 DANTE. 105 
 
 works — to our eye at least — irregularly, unequally, 
 and fitfully. There can be no question that Virgil, 
 the poet's guide, represents the purely human element 
 in the training of the soul and of society, as Beatrice 
 does the divine. But neither represent the whole ; he 
 does not sum up all appliances of wisdom in Virgil, 
 nor all teachings and influences of grace in Beatrice ; 
 these have their separate figures. And both represent 
 successively several distinct forms of their general anti- 
 types. They have various degrees of abstractness, 
 and narrow down, according to that order of things 
 to which they refer and correspond, into the special 
 and the personal. In the general economy of the 
 poem, Virgil stands for human wisdom in its widest 
 sense ; but he also stands for it in its various shapes, 
 in the different parts. He is the type of human 
 philosophy and science.* He is, again, more defi- 
 nitely, that spirit of imagination and poetry, which 
 opens men's eyes to the glory of the visible, and the 
 truth of the invisible ; and to Italians, he is a definite 
 embodiment of it, their own great poet, '' vates, poeta 
 iiosta-r f In the Christian order, he is human 
 wisdom, dimly mindful of its heavenly origin — pre- 
 saging dimly its return to God — sheltering in heathen 
 
 "O tu ch' onori ogni scienza ed arte." — Inf. 4. " Quel savio 
 gentil che tutto seppe." — Inf. 7. "II mar di tutto '1 senno." — Inf. 8. 
 ^ De Moftarckia.
 
 io6 DANTE. 
 
 times that " vague and unconnected family of religious 
 truths, originally from God, but sojourning without 
 the sanction of miracle or visible home, as pilgrims up 
 and down the world." * In the political order, he is 
 the guide of law-givers, wisdom fashioning the im- 
 pulses and instincts of men into the harmony of 
 society, contriving stability and peace, guarding 
 justice ; fit part for the poet to fill, who had sung 
 the origin of Rome, and the justice and peace of 
 Augustus. In the order of individual life, and the 
 progress of the individual soul, he is the human con- 
 science witnessing to duty, its discipline and its hopes, 
 and with yet more certain and fearful presage, to 
 its vindication ; the human conscience seeing and 
 acknowledging the law, but unable to confer power to 
 fulfil it — wakened by grace from among the dead, 
 leading the living man up to it, and waiting for its 
 light and strength. But he is more than a figure. 
 To the poet himself, who blends with his high argu- 
 ment his whole life, Virgil had been the utmost that 
 mind can be to mind — teacher, quickener and revealer 
 of power, source of thought, exemplar and model, 
 never disappointing, never attained to, observed with 
 " long study and great love : " 
 
 Tu duca, tu signer, e tu maestro. — Inf. 2. 
 * Newman's Arians.
 
 DANTE. 107 
 
 And towards this great master, the poet's whole 
 soul is poured forth in reverence and affection. To 
 Dante he is no figure, but a person — with feelings 
 and weaknesses — overcome by the vexation, kindling 
 into the wrath, carried away by the tenderness, of the 
 moment. He reads his scholar's heart, takes him by 
 the hand in danger, carries him in his arms and in 
 his bosom, "like a son more than a companion," 
 rebukes his unworthy curiosity, kisses him when he 
 shows a noble spirit, asks pardon for his own mis- 
 takes. Never were the kind, yet severe ways of a 
 master, or the disciple's diffidence and open-hearted- 
 ness, drawn with greater force, or less effort ; and he 
 seems to have been reflecting on his own affection to 
 Virgil, when he makes Statius forget that they were 
 both but shades : 
 
 Or puoi la quantitate 
 
 Comprender dell' amor ch' a te mi scalda, 
 Quando dismento la tiostra vanitate 
 Trattando V ombre come cosa salda. — Purs:. "2.1. 
 
 And so with the poet's second guide. The great 
 idea which Beatrice figures, though always present, is 
 seldom rendered artificially prominent, and is often 
 entirely hidden beneath the rush of real recollections, 
 and the creations of dramatic power. Abstractions 
 venture and trust themselves among realities, and for 
 the time are forgotten. A name, a real person, a
 
 io8 DANTE. 
 
 historic passage, a lament or denunciation, a tragedy 
 of actual life, a legend of classic times, the fortunes of 
 friends — the story of Francesca or Ugolino, the fate 
 of Buonconte's corpse, the apology of Pier delle Vigne, 
 the epitaph of Madonna Pia, Ulysses' western voyage, 
 the march of Roman history — appear and absorb for 
 themselves all interest : or else it is a philosophical 
 speculation, or a theory of morality, or a case of con- 
 science — not indeed alien from the main subject, yet 
 independent of the allegory, and not translateable into 
 any new meaning — standing on their own ground, 
 worked out each according to its own law ; but they 
 do not disturb the main course of the poet's thought, 
 Avho grasps and paints each detail of human life in its 
 ovv-n peculiarity, while he sees in each a significance 
 and interest beyond itself He does not stop in each 
 case to tell us so, but he makes it felt. The tale ends, 
 the individual disappears, and the great allegory 
 resumes its course. It is like one of those great 
 musical compositions which alone seem capable of 
 adequately expressing, in a limited time, a course of 
 unfolding and change, in an idea, a career, a life, a 
 society — where one great thought predominates, recurs, 
 gives colour and meaning, and forms the unity of the 
 whole, yet passes through many shades and transi- 
 tions ; is at one time definite, at another suggestive 
 and mysterious ; incorporating and giving free place
 
 DANTE. 109 
 
 and play to airs and melodies even of an alien cast ; 
 striking off abruptly from its expected road, but 
 without ever losing itself, without breaking its true 
 continuity, or failing of its completeness. 
 
 This then seems to us the end and purpose of the 
 Commedia ; — to produce on the mind a sense of the 
 judgments of God, analogous to that produced by 
 Scripture itself. They are presented to us in the 
 Bible in shapes which address themselves primarily to 
 the heart and conscience, and seek not carefully to" 
 explain themselves. They are likened to the " great 
 deep," to the "strong mountains" — vast and awful, 
 but abrupt and incomplete, as the huge, broken, 
 rugged piles and chains of mountains. And we see 
 them through cloud and mist, in shapes only approxi- 
 mating to the true ones. Still they impress us deeply 
 and truly, often the more deeply because uncon- 
 sciously. A character, an event, a word, isolated and 
 unexplained, stamps its meaning ineffaceably, though 
 ever a matter of question and wonder ; it may be 
 dark to the intellect, yet the conscience understands 
 it, often but too well. In such suggestive ways is the 
 Divine government for the most part put before us in 
 the Bible — v/ays which do not satisfy the under- 
 standing, but which fill us with a sense of reality. 
 And it seems to have been by meditating on them, 
 which he certainly did, much and thoughtfully — and
 
 no DANTE. 
 
 on the infinite variety of similar ways in which the 
 strongest impressions are conveyed to us in ordinary 
 life, by means short of clear and distinct explanation 
 — by looks, by images, by sounds, by motions, by 
 remote allusion and broken words, that Dante was led 
 to choose so new and remarkable a mode of con- 
 veying to his countrymen his thoughts and feelings 
 and presentiments about the mystery of God's counsel. 
 The Bible teaches us by means of real history, traced 
 so far as is necessary along its real course. The poet 
 expresses his view of the world also in real history, 
 but carried on into figure. 
 
 The poetry with which the Christian Church had 
 been instinct from the beginning, converges and is 
 gathered up in the Commedia. The faith had early 
 shown its poetical aspect. It is superfluous to dwell 
 on this, for it is the charge against ancient teaching 
 that it was too large and imaginative. It soon began 
 to try rude essays in sculpture and mosaic : expressed 
 its feeling of nature in verse and prose, rudely also, 
 but often with originality and force ; and opened a 
 new vein of poetry in the thoughts, hopes, and aspira- 
 tions of regenerate man. Modern poetry must go 
 back, for many of its deepest and most powerful 
 sources, to the Avritings of the Fathers, and their 
 followers of the School. The Church further had a 
 poetry of its own, besides the poetry of literature ;
 
 DANTE. Ill 
 
 it had the poetry of devotion — the Psalter chanted 
 daily, in a new language and a new meaning ; and 
 that wonderful body of hymns, to which age after age 
 had contributed its offering, from the Ambrosian 
 hymns to the Veni, Sancte Spiritus of a king of 
 France, the Pange lingua of Thomas Aquinas, the 
 Dies ircBj and Stahat Mater, . of the two Fran- 
 ciscan brethren, Thomas of Celano, and Jacopone.^^ 
 The elements and fragments of poetry were every- 
 where in the Church — in her ideas of life, in her rules 
 and institutions for passing through it, in her prepara- 
 tion for death, in her offices, ceremonial, celebrations, 
 usages, her consecration of domestic, literary, com- 
 mercial, civic, military, political life, the meanings 
 and ends she had given them, the religious seriousness 
 with which the forms of each were dignified — in her 
 doctrine, and her dogmatic system — her dependence 
 on the unseen world — her Bible. From each and all 
 of these, and from that public feeling, which, if it 
 expressed itself but abruptly and incoherently, was 
 quite alive to the poetry which surrounded it, the 
 poet received due impressions of greatness and 
 beauty, of joy and dread. Then the poetry of 
 Christian religion and Christian temper, hitherto 
 dispersed, or manifested in act only, found its full and 
 
 Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, 1849.
 
 112 DANTE. 
 
 distinct utterance, not unworthy to rank in grandeur, 
 in music, in sustained strength, with the last noble 
 voices from expiring Heathenism. 
 
 But a long interval had passed since then. The 
 Comniedia first disclosed to Christian and modern 
 Europe that it was to have a literature of its own, 
 great and admirable, though in its own language and 
 embodying its own ideas. " It was as if, at some of 
 the ancient games, a stranger had appeared upon the 
 plain, and thrown his quoit among the marks of 
 former casts, which tradition had ascribed to the 
 demi-gods." * We are so accustomed to the excellent 
 and varied literature of modern times, so original, so 
 perfect in form and rich in thought, so expressive of 
 all our sentiments, meeting so completely our wants, 
 fulfilling our ideas, that we can scarcely imagine the 
 time when this condition was new — when society Avas 
 beholden to a foreign language for the exponents of 
 its highest thoughts and feelings. But so it was 
 when Dante wrote. The great poets, historians, 
 philosophers of his day, the last great works of 
 intellect, belonged to old Rome, and the Latin 
 language. So wonderful and prolonged was the 
 fascination of Rome. Men still lived under its 
 influence ; believed that the Latin language was the 
 
 * Ilallam's Middle Agcs^ z ix. vol. iii. p. 563.
 
 DANTE. 113 
 
 perfect and permanent instrument of thought in its 
 highest forms, the only expression of refinement and 
 civihsation ; and had not conceived the hope that 
 their own dialects could ever rise to such heights of 
 dignity and power. Latin, which had enchased and 
 preserved such precious remains of ancient wisdom, 
 was now shackling the living mind in its efforts. 
 Men imagined that they were still using it naturally 
 on all high themes and solemn business ; but though 
 they used it with facility, it was no longer natural ; 
 it had lost the elasticity of life, and had become in 
 their hands a stiffened and distorted, though still 
 powerful, instrument. The very use of the word 
 latino in the writers of this period, to express 
 what is clear and philosophical in language,* while it 
 shows their deep reverence for it, shows how Latin 
 civilisation was no longer their own, how it had 
 insensibly become an external and foreign element. 
 But they found it very hard to resign their claim to a 
 share in its glories ; with nothing of their own to 
 match against it, they still delighted to speak of it as 
 " our language," or its writers as " our poets," " our 
 historians." f 
 
 The spell was indeed beginning to break. Guido 
 
 * Farad. 3, 12, 17. Convit, p. 108. "A ^\h. Laiinamente vedere 
 la sentenza letterale." 
 
 t Vici. the De Monarchia.
 
 114 DANTE. 
 
 Cavalcanti, Dante's strange, stern, speculative friend, 
 who is one of the fathers of the Itahan language, is 
 characterised in the Comincdia^ by his scornful dislike 
 of Latin, even in the mouth of Virgil. Yet Dante 
 himself, the great assertor, by argument and example, 
 of the powers of the Vulgar tongue, once dared not 
 to think that the Vulgar tongue could be other to the 
 Latin, than as a subject to his sovereign. He was 
 bolder when he wrote De Viilgari Eloqiiio : but in 
 the earlier Convito, while pleading earnestly for the 
 beauty of the Italian, he yields with reverence the 
 first place to the Latin — for nobleness, because the 
 Latin is permanent, and the Vulgar subject to fluctua- 
 tion and corruption ; for power, because the Latin 
 can express conceptions to which the Vulgar is 
 unequal ; for beauty, because the structure of the 
 Latin is a masterly arrangement of scientific art, and 
 the beauty of the Vulgar depends on mere use.f The 
 very title of his poem, the Coinmedia, contains in it a 
 homage to the lofty claims of the Latin. It is called 
 a Comedy, and not Tragedy, he says, after a mar- 
 vellous account of the essence and etymology of the 
 two, first, because it begins sadly, and ends joyfully ; 
 and next, because of its language, that humble 
 
 Inf. lo, and compare the Vit. N. p. 334, ed. Fi-aticellt 
 t Convito, i, 5.
 
 DANTE. 115 
 
 speech of ordinary life, " in which even women 
 converse." * 
 
 He honoured the Latin, but his love was for the 
 Italian. He was its champion, and indignant defender 
 against the depreciation of ignorance and fashion. 
 Confident of its power and jealous of its beauty, he 
 pours forth his fierce scorn on the blind stupidity, the 
 
 Ep. ad Kan Grand. § 9,— a curious specimen of tlie learning of 
 the time: "Sciendum est, quod Comcedia dicitm a. Kcofirj, vtV/a et adr], 
 quod est cantus, unde Comcedia quasi villaniis canfns. Et est Comcedia 
 genus quoddam poeticiZ ttarraiionis, ab omnibus aliis differens. Differt 
 ergo a Tragoedia in materia per hoc, quod Tragcedia in principio est 
 admirabilis et quieta, in fine foetida et horribilis ; et dicitur propter hoc 
 a Tpayos, i.e. /lircus, et ai3r), quasi cantiis Mrcimis, i.e. foetidus ad 
 modum hirci, ut patet per Senecam in suis tragoediis, Comcedia vero 
 inchoat asperitatem alicujus rei, sed ejus materia prospere terminatur, 
 ut patet per Terentium in suis Comccdiis. . . . Similiter differunt in 
 modo loquendi ; elate et sublime Tragcedia, Comcedia vero remisse et 
 humiliter sicut vult Horat. in Poet. . . . Et per hoc patet, quod 
 Comcedia diciter prssens opus. Nam si ad materiam respiciamus, a 
 principio horribihs et foetida est, quia hifermis : in fine prospera, 
 desiderabilis et grata, quia Paradisiis. Si ad modum loquendi, 
 remissus est modus et humilis, quia locutio Vulgaris, in qua et mulier- 
 culse commimicant. Et sic patet quia Comcedia dicitur." Cf. de Vulg. 
 Eloq. 2, 4, Par ad. 30. He calls the yEneid, "/' alta Tragcdia," Inf. 
 20, 113. Compare also Boccaccio's explanation of his mother's dream 
 of the peacock. Dante, he says, is like the Peacock, among other 
 reasons, " because the peacock has coarse feet, and a quiet gait ; " and 
 "the vulgar language, on which the Commedia supports itself, is coarse 
 in comparison with the high and masterly literary style which every 
 other poet uses, though it be more beautiful than others, being in con- 
 formity with modern minds. The quiet gait signifies the humility of 
 the style, which is necessarily required in Commedia, as those know 
 who understand what is meant by Commedia." 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 DANTE. 
 
 affectation, the vain glory, the envy, and above all, 
 the cowardice of Italians who held lightly their 
 mother tongue. " Many," he says, after enumerating 
 the other offenders, "from this pusillanimity and 
 cowardice disparage their own language, and exalt 
 that of others ; and of this sort are those hateful 
 dastards of Italy — abboniinevoli cattivi d' Italia — who 
 think vilely of that precious language ; which, if it is 
 vile in anything, is vile only so far as it sounds in the 
 prostituted mouth of these adulterers."* He noted 
 and compared its various dialects ; he asserted its 
 capabilities not only in verse, but in expressive, 
 flexible, and majestic prose. And to the deliberate 
 admiration of the critic and the man, were added the 
 homely but dear associations, which no language can 
 share with that of early days. Italian had been the 
 language of his parents — " Questo uiio Volgare fu il 
 congiiignitore delli uiiei gejicranti, che con csso parlavano" 
 — and further, it was this modern language, '^questo 
 inio Volgare',' which opened to him the way of know- 
 ledge, which had introduced him to Latin, and the 
 sciences which it contained. It was his benefactor 
 and guide — he personifies it — and his boyish friendship 
 had grown stronger and more intimate by mutual 
 good offices. " There has also been between us the 
 
 * Convito, i. II.
 
 DANTE. 117 
 
 goodwill of intercourse ; for from the beginning of my 
 life I have had with it kindness and conversation, and 
 have used it, deliberating, interpreting, and questioning; 
 so that, if friendship grows with use, it is evident how- 
 it must have grown in me." * 
 
 From this language he exacted a hard trial ; — a 
 Avork which should rank with the ancient works. 
 None such had appeared ; none had even advanced 
 such a pretension. Not that it was a time dead to 
 literature or literary am.bition. Poets and historians 
 had written, and were writing in Italian. The same 
 year of jubilee which fixed itself so deeply in Dante's 
 mind, and became the epoch of his vision — the same 
 scene of Roman greatness in its decay, which after- 
 wards suggested to Gibbon the Decline and Fall, 
 prompted, in the father of Italian history, the desire 
 to follow in the steps of Sallust and Livy, and prepare 
 the way for Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Davila, and 
 Fra Paolo. -|- Poetry had been cultivated in the 
 
 * Convifo, i. 13. 
 
 t G. Villani was at Rome in the year of jubilee 1300, and 
 describes the great concourse and order of the pilgrims, whom he 
 reckons at 200,000, in the course of the year. "And I," he pro- 
 ceeds, "finding myself in that blessed pilgrimage in the holy city of 
 Rome, seeing the great and ancient things of the same, and reading the 
 histories of the great deeds of the Romans, written by Virgil, and 
 by Sallust, and Lucan, and Titus Livius, and Valerius, and Paulus 
 Orosius, and other masters of histories, who wrote as well of the smaller 
 matters as of the greater, concerning the exploits and deeds of the
 
 ii8 DANTE. 
 
 Roman languages of the West — in Aquitaine and 
 Provence, especially — for more than two centuries ; 
 and lately, with spirit and success, in Italian. Names 
 had become popular, reputations had risen and waned, 
 verses circulated and were criticised, and even des- 
 cended from the high and refined circles to the 
 workshop. A story is told of Dante's indignation, 
 when he heard the canzoni which had charmed the 
 Florentine ladies mangled by the rude enthusiasm of 
 a blacksmith at his forge.* Literature was a grow- 
 ing fashion ; but it was humble in its aspirations 
 and efforts. Men wrote like children, surprised and 
 pleased with their success ; yet allowing themselves 
 in mere amusement, because conscious of weakness 
 which they could not cure. 
 
 Romans ; and further, of the strange things of the whole world, for 
 memory and example's sake to those who should come after — I, too, 
 took their style and fashion, albeit that, as their scholar, I be not 
 worthy to execute such a work. But, considering that our city of 
 Florence, the daughter and creation of Rome, was in its rising, and on 
 the eve of achieving great things, as Rome was in its decline, it seemed 
 to me convenient to bring into this volume and new chronicle all the 
 deeds and beginnings of the city of Florence, so far as I have been able 
 to gather and recover them ; and for the future, to follow at large the 
 doings of the Florentines, and the other notable things of the world 
 briefly, as long as it may be God's pleasure ; under which hope, rather 
 by his grace than by my poor science, I entered on this enterprise : and 
 so, in the year 1300, being returned from Rome, I began to compile 
 this book, in reverence towards God and St. John, and commendation 
 of our city of Florence." — G. Vill. viii. 36. 
 * Sacchetti, Nov. 1 14.
 
 DANTE. 119 
 
 Dante, by the Dlvina Covnuedia, was the restorer 
 of seriousness in literature. He was so, by the 
 magnitude and pretensions of his work, and by the 
 earnestness of its spirit. He first broke through the 
 prescription which had confined great works to the 
 Latin, and the faithless prejudices which, in the 
 language of society, could see powers fitted for no 
 higher task than that of expressing, in curiously 
 diversified forms, its most ordinary feelings. But he 
 did much more. Literature was going astray in its 
 tone, while growing in importance ; the Commedia 
 checked it. The Provencal and Italian poetry was, 
 with the exception of some pieces of political satire, 
 almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and 
 affected fashion. Li expression, it had not even the 
 merit of being natural ; in purpose it was trifling ; in 
 the spirit which it encouraged, it was something 
 worse. Doubtless it brought a degree of refinement 
 with it, but it was refinement purchased at a high 
 price, by intellectual distortion, and moral insensi- 
 bility. But this was not all. The brilliant age of 
 Frederick H., for such it was, was deeply mined by 
 religious unbelief However strange this charge first 
 sounds against the thirteenth century, no one can 
 look at all closely into its history, at least in Italy, 
 without seeing that the idea of infidelity — not heresy, 
 but infidelity — was quite a familiar one ; and that
 
 I20 DANTE. 
 
 side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bona- 
 Ventura, there was working among those who in- 
 fluenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, 
 and the men to whom learning was a profession, a 
 spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous 
 for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's 
 refined and enlightened court. The genius of the 
 great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin 
 Schools, but not the free and home thoughts which 
 found utterance in the language of the people, if the 
 solemn beauty of the Italian Covimedia had not 
 seized on all minds. It would have been an evil 
 thing for Italian, perhaps for European literature, if 
 the siren tales of the Decaineron had been the first to 
 occupy the ear with the charms of a new language. 
 
 Dante has had hard measure, and from some who 
 are most beholden to him. No one in his day served 
 the Church more highly, than he whose faith and 
 genius secured on her side the first great burst of 
 imagination and feeling, the first perfect accents of 
 modern speech. The first-fruits of the new literature 
 were consecrated, and offered up. There was no 
 necessity, or even probability in Italy in the fourteenth 
 century that it should be so, as there might perhaps 
 have been earlier. It was the poet's free act — free in 
 one, for whom nature and heathen learning had 
 strong temptations — that religion was the lesson and
 
 DANTE. 121 
 
 influence of the great popular work of the time. 
 That which he held up before men's awakened and 
 captivated minds, was the verity of God's moral 
 government. To rouse them to a sense of the 
 mystery of their state ; to startle their commonplace 
 notions of sin into an imagination of its variety, its 
 magnitude, and its infinite shapes and degrees ; to 
 open their eyes to the beauty of the Christian temper, 
 both as suffering and as consummated ; to teach them 
 at once the faithfulness and awful freeness of God's 
 grace ; to help the dull and lagging soul to conceive 
 the possibility, in its own case, of rising step by step 
 in joy without an end— of a felicity not unimaginable 
 by man, though of another order from the highest 
 perfection of earth ; — this is the poet's end. Nor was 
 it only vague religious feelings which he wished to 
 excite. He brought within the circle of common 
 thought, and translated into the language of the 
 multitude, what the Schools had done to throw light 
 on the deep questions of human existence, which all 
 are fain to muse upon, though none can solve. He 
 who had opened so much of men's hearts to them- 
 selves, opened to them also that secret sympathy 
 which exists between them and the great mysteries 
 of the Christian doctrine. * He did the work, in 
 
 Vide Ozanam.
 
 122 DANTE. 
 
 his day, of a great preacher. Yet he has been both 
 claimed and condemned, as a disturber of the Church's 
 faith. 
 
 He certainly did not spare the Church's rulers. 
 He thought they were betraying the most sacred of all 
 trusts ; and if history is at all to be relied on, he had 
 some grounds for thinking so. But it is confusing 
 the feelings of the middle ages with our own, to 
 convert every fierce attack on the Popes into an 
 anticipation of Luther. Strong language of this sort 
 was far too commonplace to be so significant. No 
 age is blind to practical abuses, or silent on them ; 
 and when the middle ages complained, they did so 
 with a full-voiced and clamorous rhetoric, which 
 greedily seized on every topic of vilification within its 
 reach. It was far less singular, and far less bold, to 
 criticise ecclesiastical authorities, than is often sup- 
 posed ; but it by no means implied unsettled faith, or 
 a revolutionary design. In Dante's case, if words 
 have any meaning — not words of deliberate qualifica- 
 tion, but his unpremeditated and incidental expres- 
 sions — his faith in the Divine mission and spiritual 
 powers of the Popes was as strong as his abhorrence 
 of their degeneracy, and desire to see it corrected by 
 a power which they would respect — that of the 
 temporal sword. It would be to mistake altogether^ 
 his character, to imagine of him, either as a fault or
 
 DANTE. 123 
 
 as an excellence, that he was a doubter. It might as 
 well be supposed of Aquinas. 
 
 No one ever acknowledged with greater serious- 
 ness, as a fact in his position in the world, the agree- 
 ment in faith among those with whom he was born. 
 No one ever inclined with more simplicity and 
 reverence before that long communion and consent in 
 feeling and purpose, the '' piibliciis sensus " of the 
 Christian Church. He did feel difficulties ; but the 
 excitement of lingering on them was not among his 
 enjoyments. That was the lot of the heathen ; Virgil, 
 made wise by death, counsels him not to desire it : 
 
 " Matto e clii spera, che nostra ragione 
 Possa trascorrer la 'nfinita via 
 Che tiene una sustanzia in tre Persone. 
 
 State contenti, umana gente, al quia ; 
 Che se potuto aveste veder tutto, 
 Mestier non era partorir Maria : 
 
 E disiar vedeste senza frutto 
 Tai, che sarebbe lor disio qnetato, 
 Ch' eternamente e dato lor per lutto ; 
 
 I' dice d' Aristotile e di Plato, 
 E di molti altri : " — e qui chino la fronte, 
 E piu non disse, e rimase turbato. — Picrg. c. 3.* 
 
 » 
 
 " Insensate he, who thinks with mortal ken 
 To pierce Infinitude, which doth enfold 
 Three Persons in one Substance. Seek not then, 
 
 O mortal race, for reasons —but believe, 
 And be contented ; for had all been seen, 
 No need there was for Mary to conceive.
 
 124 DANTE. 
 
 The Christian poet felt that it was greater to 
 believe and to act. In the darkness of the world 
 one bright light appeared, and he followed it. Pro- 
 vidence had assigned him his portion of truth, his 
 portion of daily bread ; if to us it appears blended 
 with human elements, it is perfectly clear that he was 
 in no position to sift them. To choose was no trial 
 of his. To examine and seek, where it was im- 
 possible to find, would have been folly. The authority 
 from which he started had not yet been seriously 
 questioned ; there were no palpable signs of doubtful- 
 ness on the system which was to him the represen- 
 tative of God's will ; and he sought for none. It 
 came to him claiming his allegiance by custom, by 
 universality, by its completeness as a whole, and 
 satisfying his intellect and his sympathies in detail. 
 And he gave his allegiance — reasonably, because 
 there was nothing to hope for in doubting — wisely, 
 because he gave it loyally and from his heart. 
 
 And he ha d his reward — tlie reward of him who 
 throws himselfjwith frankness and earnestness into a 
 system ; who is not afraid or suspicious of it ; who is 
 
 Men have ye known, who thus desired in vain ; 
 
 And whose desires, that might at rest have been, 
 
 Now constitute a source of endless pain ; 
 Plato, the Stagirite ; and many more, 
 
 I here allude to ; " — then his head he bent, 
 
 Was silent, and s. troubled aspect wore. — Wright.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 125 
 
 not unfaithful to it. He gained not merely pow er — 
 lie_gained_tha.t JVeedom and_Jargene^ss of niind which 
 tjie^s2ici^iiis^rj;h£^njaithful miss. His loyalty to 
 the Church was no cramping or blinding service ; it 
 left to its full play that fresh and original mind, left 
 it to range at will in all history and all nature for the 
 traces of Eternal wisdom, left it to please itself with 
 all beauty, and pay its homage to all excellence. 
 For upon all wisdom, beauty, and excellence, the 
 Church had taught him to see, in various and duly 
 distinguished degrees, the seal of the one Creator. 
 She imparts to the poem, to its form and progressive 
 development, her own solemnity, her awe, her calm, 
 her serenity and joy ; it follows her sacred seasons 
 and hours; repeats her appointed words of benediction 
 and praise ; moulds itself on her belief, her expecta- 
 tions, and forecastings.* Her intimations, more or 
 less distinct, dogma or tradition or vague hint, guide 
 the poet's imagination through the land where all 
 eyes are open. The journey begins under the Easter 
 moon of the year of jubilee, on the evening of Good 
 Friday ; the days of her mourning he spends in the 
 regions of woe, where none dares to pronounce the 
 name of the Redeemer, and he issues forth to " behold 
 again the stars," to learn hov/ to die to sin and rise to 
 
 * 9. 
 
 ee an article in the Brit. Critic, No. 65, p. 120.
 
 126 DANTE. 
 
 righteousness, very early in the morning, as it begins 
 to dawn, on the day of the Resurrection. The whole 
 a rrangement of the Purgatorio is drawn from Church 
 usages. It is a picture of men sjififerin g in calm 
 and holy hope the sharp discipline of repentance, 
 amid the prayers, the melodies, the consoling images 
 and thoughts, the orderly ritual, the hours of devotion, 
 the sacraments of the Church militant. When he 
 ascends in his hardiest flight, and imagines the joys 
 of the perfect and the vision of God, his abundant 
 fancy confines itself strictly to the limits sanctioned 
 by her famous teachers — ventures into no new sphere, 
 hazards no anticipations in which they have not pre- 
 ceded it, and is content with adding to the poetry 
 which it elicits from their ideas, a beauty which it is 
 able to conceive apart altogether from bodily form — 
 the beauty, infinite in its variety, of the expression of 
 the human eye and smile — the beauty of light, of 
 sound, of motion. And when his song mounts to 
 its last strain of triumph, and the poet's thought, 
 imagination, and feeling of beauty, tasked to the 
 utmost, nor failing under the weight of glory which 
 they have to express, breathe themselves forth in 
 words, higher than v/hich no poetry has ever risen, 
 and represent, in images transcending sense, and 
 baffling it, yet missing not one of those deep and 
 transporting sympathies which they were to touch,
 
 DANTE. 
 
 the sight, eye to eye, of the Creator by the creature — 
 
 he beholds the gathering together, in the presence of 
 
 God, of "all that from our earth has to the skies 
 
 returned," and of the countless orders of their thrones 
 
 mirrored in His light — 
 
 Mira 
 
 Quanto e '1 convento delle bianche stole — 
 
 under a figure already taken into the ceremonial of 
 the Church — the mystic Rose, whose expanding 
 leaves image forth the joy of the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 both triumphant and militant.* 
 
 * See the form of benediction of the "Rosa d' oro." Rituum 
 
 Ecclesim Rom. Libri Tres. fol. xxxv. Venet 15 16. Form of giving: 
 
 "Accipe rosam de manibus nostris. . . . per quam designatus gaudium 
 
 utriusque Hierusalem triumphantis scilicet et militantis ecclesise per 
 
 quam omnibus Christi fidelibus manifestatur flos ipse pretiosissimus qui 
 
 est gaudium et corona sanctorum omnium." He alludes to it in the 
 
 Conviio, iv. 29. 
 
 O i splendor di Dio, per cu' io vidi 
 
 L' alto trionfo del regno verace, 
 
 Dammi virtu a dir com' io lo vidi. 
 
 Lume e lassu, che visibile face 
 Lo creatore a quella creatura, 
 Che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace 1 
 
 E si distende in circular figm-a 
 In tanto, che la sua circonferenza 
 Sarebbe al Sol troppo larga cintura. 
 * * * * 
 
 E come clivo in acqua di suo imo 
 Si specchia quasi per vedersi adorno, 
 Quanto e nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo j 
 
 SI soprastando al lume intorno intorno 
 Vidi specchiarsi in piii di mille soglie, 
 Quanto di noi lassu fatto ha ritorno.
 
 128 DANTE. 
 
 But this universal reference to the religious ideas 
 of the Church is so natural, so unaffected, that it 
 leaves him at full liberty in other orders of thought. 
 He can afford not to be conventional — he can afford 
 to be comprehensive and genuine. It has been re- 
 marked how, in a poem where there would seem to 
 be a fitting place for them, the eccles iastica l legends 
 of the middle ages are, almo st en tirel y absent. The 
 sainted spirits o£jt he P aradiso are not exclusively or 
 chiefly the Saints of popular devotion. After the 
 Saints of the Bible, the holy women, the three great 
 Apostles, the Virgin mother, they are either names 
 personally dear to the poet himself, friends whom he 
 had loved, and teachers to whom he owed wisdom — 
 
 E se r infimo grado in se raccoglie 
 
 SI grande lume, quant' e la larghezza 
 
 Di questa rosa nell' estreme foglie ? 
 * * ♦ * 
 
 Nel giallo della rosa sempiterna, 
 
 Che si dilata, rigrada, e redole 
 
 Odor di lode al Sol, che senipre vema, 
 Qual' e colui, die tace e dicer vuole. 
 
 Mi trasse Beatrice, e disse ; mira 
 Quanto e '1 convento delle bianche stole I 
 
 Vedi nostra Citta quanto ella gira ! 
 
 Vedi li nostri scanni si ripieni, 
 
 Che poca gente omai ci si dislra. 
 * * * * 
 
 In forma dunque di Candida rosa 
 
 Mi si mostrava la milizia santa, 
 
 Che nel suo sangue Cristo face sposa. — Farad. 30, 31.
 
 DANTE. 129 
 
 or great men of masculine energy in thought or 
 action, in their various Hnes "compensations and 
 antagonists of the world's evils" — Justinian and 
 Constantine, and Charlemagne — the founders of the 
 Orders, Augustine, Benedict, and Bernard, Francis 
 and Dominic — the great doctors of the Schools, 
 Thomas Aquinas,^nd Bona vent ura, whom the Church 
 had not yet_canonized. And with them are joined — 
 and that with a full consciousness of the line which 
 theology draws between the dispensations of nature 
 and grace — some rare types of virtue among the 
 heathen. Cato is admitted to the outskirts of 
 Purgatory ; Trajan, and the righteous king of Virgil's 
 poem, to the heaven of the just.* 
 
 Without confusion or disturbance to the religious 
 character of his train of thought, he is able freely to 
 subordinate to it the lessons and the great recollec- 
 tions of the Gentile times. He contemplates them 
 with the veil drawn off from them ; as now known to 
 
 * Chi crederebbe giu nel mondo errante, 
 Che Rifeo Trojano^ in questo tondo 
 Fosse la quinta delle luci sante ? 
 
 Ora conosce assai di quel, che '1 mondo 
 Veder non puo della divina grazia ; 
 Benche sua vista non discerna il fondo. — Parad. c. 20. 
 
 ' Rhipeus justissimus unus 
 Qui fuit in Teucris, et servantissimus aequi. — A^n. ii. 
 
 K
 
 I30 DANTE. 
 
 form but one whole with the history of the Bible and 
 the Church, in the design of Providence. He presents 
 them in their own colours, as drawn by their own 
 writers — he only adds what Christianity seems to 
 show to be their event. Under the conviction, that 
 the light of the Heathen was a real guide from above, 
 calling for vengeance in proportion to unfaithfulness, 
 or outrage done to it — " He that nurtureth the 
 heathen, it is He that teacheth man knowledge — shall 
 not He punish ?" — the great criminals of profane 
 history are mingled with sinners against God's 
 revealed will — and that, with equal drainatic power, 
 with equal feeling of the greatness of their loss. The 
 story of the voyage of Ulysses is told with as much 
 vivid power and pathetic interest as the tales of the 
 day.* He honours unfeignedly the old heathen's 
 brave disdain of ease ; that spirit, even to old age, 
 eager, fresh, adventurous, and inquisitive. His faith 
 allowed him to admire all that was beautiful and 
 excellent among the heathen, without forgetting that 
 it fell short of what the new gift of the Gospel can 
 alone impart. He saw in it proof that God had never 
 left His will and law without their witness among 
 men. Virtue was virtue still, though imperfect, and 
 unconsecrated — generosity, largeness of soul, truth, 
 
 * Inf. c. 26.
 
 DANTE. ir 
 
 condescension, justice, were never unworthy of the 
 reverence of Christians. Hence he uses without fear 
 or scruple the classic element. The examples which 
 recall to the minds of the penitents, by sounds and 
 sights, in the different terraces of Purgatory, their sin 
 and the grace they have to attain to, come indis- 
 criminately from poetry and Scripture. The sculptured 
 pavement, to which the proud are obliged ever to 
 bow down their eyes, shows at once the humility of 
 S. Mary and of the Psalmist, and the condescension 
 of Trajan ; and elsewhere the pride of Nimrod and 
 Sennacherib, of Niobe, and Cyrus. The envious hear 
 the passing voices of courtesy from saints and heroes, 
 and the bursting cry, like crashing thunder, of repen- 
 tant jealousy from Cain and Aglaurus ; the avaricious, 
 to keep up the memory of their fault, celebrate by 
 day the poverty of Fabricius and the liberality of 
 S. Nicolas, and execrate by night the greediness of 
 Pygmalion and Midas, of Achan, Heliodorus, and 
 Crassus. 
 
 Dante's all-surveying, all-embracing mind, was 
 worthy to open the grand procession of modern 
 poets. He had chosen his subject in a region remote 
 from popular thought — too awful for it, too abstruse. 
 He had_acceptcd frankl y the dogmatic li mits o f the 
 Church, and thrown himself with even enthusiastic 
 faith into her reasonings, at once so bold and so 
 
 K 2
 
 DANTE. 
 
 undoubting — her spirit of certainty, and her deep 
 contemplations on the unseen and infinite. And in 
 Hterature, he had taken as guides and models, above 
 all criticism and all appeal, the classical writers. Yet 
 with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions 
 of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste 
 always owning allegiance to Virgil, Ovid, and Statius 
 — keen and subtle as a Schoolman — as much an 
 idolator of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of 
 the Renaissance — his eye is as open to the delicacies of 
 character, to the variety of external nature, to the 
 wonders of the physical world — his interest in them 
 as diversified and fresh, his impressions as sharp 
 and distinct, his rendering of them as free and true 
 and forcible, as little weakened or confused by imita- 
 tion or by conventional words, his language as elastic, 
 and as completely under his command, his choice of 
 poetic materials as unrestricted and original, as if he 
 had been born in days which claim as their own such 
 freedom, and such keen discriminative sense of what 
 is real, in feeling and image ; — as if he had never felt 
 the attractions of a crabbed problem of scholastic 
 logic, or bowed before the mellow grace of the Latins. 
 It may be said, indeed, that the time was not yet 
 come when the classics could be really understood 
 and appreciated ; and this is true, perhaps fortunate. 
 But admiring them with a kind of devotion, and
 
 DANTE. 133 
 
 showing not seldom that he had caught their spirit, 
 he never attempts to copy them. His poetry in form 
 and material is all his own. He assert ed the p oet's 
 claim to _ borrow from all science, and from every 
 phase of nature, the associations and images which he 
 wants ; and he showed that those images and associa- 
 tions did not lose their poetry by being expressed 
 with the most literal reality. 
 
 But let no reader of fastidious taste disturb his 
 temper by the study of Dante. Dante certainly 
 opened that path of freedom and poetic conquest, in 
 which the greatest efforts of modern poetry have 
 followed him — opened it with a magnificence and 
 power which have never been surpassed. But the 
 greatest are but pioneers ; they must be content to 
 leave to a posterity, which knows more, if it cannot 
 do as much, a keen and even growing sense of their 
 defects. The Coininedia is open to all the attacks 
 that can be made on grotesqueness and extravagance. 
 This is partly owing, doubtless, to the time, in itself 
 quaint, quainter to us, by being remote and ill- 
 understood ; but even then, weaker and less daring 
 writers than Dante do not equally offend or astonish 
 us. So that an image or an expression Avill render 
 forcibly a thought, there is no strangeness which 
 checks him. Barbarous words are introduced, to 
 express the cries of the demons or the confusion of
 
 134 DANTE. 
 
 Babel — even to represent the incomprehensible song 
 of the blessed ;* inarticulate syllables, to convey 
 the impression of some natural sound — the cry of 
 sorrowful surprise : 
 
 Alto sospir, che diiolo strinse in Jmi; — Ptirg. i6. 
 
 or the noise of the cracking ice : 
 
 Se Tabernicch 
 
 Vi fosse su caduto, o Pietra-pana 
 
 Non avria pur del orlo fatto cricch ; — Inf. 32. 
 
 even separate letters — to express an image, to spell a 
 name, or as used in some popular proverb.f He 
 employs without scruple, and often with marvellous 
 force of description, any recollection that occurs to 
 him, however hom el y, of every day life ; — the old 
 tailor threading his needle with trouble {Inf. 15); — 
 the cook's assistant watching over the boiling broth 
 {Inf. 21) ; — the hurried or impatient horse-groom 
 
 * Par ad. 7, I -3. 
 
 t To describe the pinched face of famine ; — 
 
 Parean 1' occhiaje annella senza gemme. 
 
 Chi nel viso degli uomini legge OMO 
 
 Ben avria quivi conosciuto T ernme (M). — Purg. 23. 
 
 Again, 
 
 Quella reverenza che s' indonna 
 
 Di tutto me, pur per B e per ICE. — Parad. 7. 
 
 Ne O si tosto mai, ne I si scrisse, 
 Com' ei s' accese ed arse. — Inf. 24.
 
 DANTE. 135 
 
 using his curry-comb {Inf. 29) ; — or the common 
 sights of the street or the chamber — the wet wood 
 sputtering on the hearth : 
 
 Come d' un stizzo verde che arso sia 
 Dair un de' capi, che dall' altro geme 
 E cigola per vento che va via ; — Inf. 13.* 
 
 the paper changing colour when about to catch fire : 
 
 Come procede innanzi dall' ardore 
 
 Per lo papiro suso un color bruno 
 Che non e nero ancoi"a, e '1 bianco niuore : — Inf. 25. f 
 
 the steaming of the hand when bathed, in winter : 
 
 Fuman come man bagnata il verno : — 
 or the ways and appearances of animals — ants meeting 
 on their path : 
 
 Li veggio d' ogni parte farsi presta 
 Ciascun' ombra, e baciarsi una con una 
 Senza restar, contente a breve festa : 
 
 Cosi per entro loro schiera bruna 
 •S"' animus a V una co7i P ultra fornica, 
 Forse a spiar lor via e lor fortuna ; — Pii7-g. 26.+ 
 
 * Like to a sapling, lighted at one end, 
 
 Which at the other hisses with the wind. 
 And drops of sap doth from the outlet send : 
 So from the broken twig, both words and blood flow'd forth. 
 
 Wright. 
 f Like burning paper, when there glides before 
 
 The advancing flame a brown and dingy shade, 
 Which is not black, and yet is white no more. — Ibid. 
 X On either hand I saw them haste their meeting, 
 And kiss each one the other — pausing not — 
 Contented to enjoy so short a greeting.
 
 136 DANTE. 
 
 the snail drawing in its horns {Inf. 25) ; — the hog 
 shut out of its sty, and trying to gore with its tusks 
 (/;// 30) ; — the dogs' misery in summer {Inf. 17) ; — 
 the frogs jumping on to the bank before the water- 
 snake {Inf. 9) ; — or showing their heads above water: 
 
 Come al orlo dell' acqua d' un fosso 
 
 Stan gli ranocchi piir col imiso fuori, 
 
 Si che celano i piedi, e 1' altro grosso. — Inf. 22.* 
 
 It must be said, that most of these images, though 
 by no means all, occur in the Inferno ; and that the 
 poet means to paint sin not merely in the greatness 
 of its ruin and misery, but in characters which all 
 understand, of strangeness, of vileness, of despicable- 
 ness, blended with diversified and monstrous horror. 
 Even he seems to despair of his powder at times : 
 
 S' io avessi le rime e aspre, e chiocce, 
 Come si converrebbe al tristo buco, 
 Sovra 1 qual pontan tutte 1' altre rocce ; 
 
 Thus do the ants among their dingy band, 
 Face one another — each their neighbour's lot 
 Haph' to scan, and how their fortunes stand. — Wright. 
 
 * As in a trench, frogs at the water side 
 
 Sit squatting, with their noses raised on high, 
 The while their feet, and all their bulk they hide — 
 
 Thus upon either hand the sinners stood. 
 But Barbariccia now approaching nigh, 
 
 Quick they withdrew beneath the boiling flood. 
 
 I saw — and still my heart is thrill'd with fear — 
 One spirit linger ; as beside a ditch. 
 One frog remains, the others disappear. — Ibid.
 
 DANTE. 137 
 
 lo premerrei di mio concetto il suco 
 
 Piu pienamente ; ma perch' io non 1' abbo, 
 
 Non senza tenia a dicer mi conduco : 
 Che non e 'mpresa da pighare a gabbo 
 
 Descriver fondo a tutto 1' universo, 
 
 Nedahngua, che chiami mamma, o babbo. — hrf. yi* 
 
 Feelinof the dirference between sins, in their ele- 
 ments and, as far as we see them, their baseness, he 
 treats them variously. His ridicule is apportioned 
 with a purpose. He passes on from the doom of the 
 sins of incontinence — the storm, the frost and hail, the 
 crushing weights — from the flaming minarets of the 
 city of Dis, of the Furies and Proserpine, " Donna 
 deir eterno pianto," where the unbelievers lie, each in 
 his burning tomb — from the river of boiling blood — 
 the wood with the Harpies — the waste of barren sand 
 with fiery snow, where the violent are punished — to 
 the Malebolge, the manifold circles of Falsehood. 
 And here scorn and ridicule in various degrees, 
 according to the vileness of the fraud, begin to pre- 
 dominate, till they culminate in that grim comedy, 
 
 * Had I a rhyme so rugged, rough, and hoarse 
 
 As would become the sorrowful abyss, 
 
 O'er which the rocky circles wind their course, 
 Then with a more appropriate form I might 
 
 Endow my vast conceptions ; wanting this, 
 
 Not without fear I bring myself to write. 
 For no light enterprise it is, I deem, 
 
 To represent the lowest depth of all ; 
 
 Nor should a childish tongue attempt the theme. — WRIGHT.
 
 138 DANTE. 
 
 with its dramatis p&rsonce and battle of devils, 
 Draghignazzo, and Graffiacane, and Malacoda, where 
 the peculators and sellers of justice are fished up by 
 the demons from the boiling pitch, but even there 
 overreach and cheat their tormentors, and make them 
 turn their fangs on each other. The diversified 
 forms of falsehood seem to tempt the poet's imagina- 
 tion to cope \Yith its changefulness and inventions, as 
 well as its audacity. The transformations of the 
 wildest dream do not daunt him. His power over 
 language is nowhere more forcibly displayed than in 
 those cantos, which describe the punishments of theft 
 — men passing gradually into serpents, and serpents 
 into men : 
 
 Due e nessun 1' imagine perversa 
 Parea. — Inf. 25. 
 
 And when the traitor, who murdered his own kins- 
 man, was still alive, and seemed safe from the infamy 
 which it was the poet's rule to bestow only on the 
 dead, Dante found a way to inflict his vengeance 
 without an anachronism : — Branca D'Oria's body, 
 though on earth, is only animated by a fiend, and his 
 spirit has long since fled to the icy prison.* 
 
 * Ed egli a me : Come '1 mio corpo stea 
 Nel mondo su, nulla scienzia porto. 
 Cotal vantaggio ha questa Tolommea, 
 Che spesse volte 1' anima ci cade 
 Innanzi, ch' Atropos mossa le dea.
 
 DANTE. 139 
 
 These are strange experiments in poetry ; their 
 strangeness is exaggerated as detached passages ; but 
 they are strange enough when they meet us in their 
 place in the context, as parts of a scene, where the 
 mind is strung and overawed by the sustained power, 
 with which dreariness, horror, hideous absence of 
 every form of good, is kept before the imagination 
 and feehngs, in the fearful picture of human sin. But 
 they belong to the poet's system of direct and forcible 
 representation. What his inward eye sees, what he 
 feels, that he means us to see and feel as he does ; to 
 make us see and feel is his art. Afterwards we may 
 
 E perche tu piu volontier mi rade 
 Le 'nvetriate lagrime dal volto, 
 Sappi, che tosto che 1' anima trade, 
 
 Come fee' io, il corpo suo 1' e tolto 
 Da un Dimonio, che poscia il governa, 
 Mentre che '1 tempo suo tutto sia volto. 
 
 Ella ruina in si fatta cisterna ; 
 E foise pare ancor lo corpo suso 
 Deir ombra, che di qua dietro mi verna. 
 
 Tu '1 dei saper, se tu vien pur mo giuso : 
 Egli e ser Branca d' Oria, e son piu anni 
 Poscia passati, ch' ei fu si racchiuso. 
 
 Io credo, diss' io lui, che tu m' inganni, 
 Che Branca d' Oria non morl unquanche, 
 E niraigia, e bee, e domie, e veste panni. 
 
 Nel fosso su, diss' ei, di Malebranche, 
 La dove bolle la tenace pece, 
 Non era giunto ancora Michel Zanche ; 
 
 Che questi lascio '1 diavolo in sua vece 
 Nel corpo suo, e d' un suo prossimano, 
 Che '1 tradimento insieme con lui fece. — Inf. 33.
 
 I40 DANTE. 
 
 reflect and meditate ; but first we must see — must see 
 what he saw. Evil and deformity are in the world, as 
 well as good and beauty; the eye cannot escape them, 
 they are about our path, in our heart and memory. 
 He has faced them without shrinking or dissembling, 
 and extorted from them a voice of warning. In all 
 poetry that is written for mere delight, in all poetr}' 
 which regards but a part or an aspect of nature, they 
 have no place — they disturb and mar ; but he had 
 conceived a poetry of the whole, which would be 
 weak or false without them. Yet they stand in his 
 poem as they stand in nature — subordinate and 
 relieved. If the grotesque is allowed to intrude itself 
 — if the horrible and the foul, undisguised and un- 
 softened, make us shudder and shrink, they are kept 
 in strong check and in due subjection by otlier 
 poetical influences ; and the same power which 
 exhibits them in their naked strength, renders its full 
 grace and glory to beauty ; its full force and delicacy 
 to the most evanescent feeling. 
 
 Dante's eye wa s free and open to external nature 
 in a degree new among poets ; certainly in a far 
 greater degree than among the Latins, even including 
 Lucretius, whom he probably had never read. We 
 have already spoken of his minute notice of the 
 appearance of living creatures ; but his eye was 
 caught by the beautiful as well as by the grotesque.
 
 DANTE. 141 
 
 Take the following beautiful picture of the bird 
 looking out for dawn : 
 
 Come I'augello intra I'amate fronde, 
 
 Posato al nido de'suoi dolci nati, 
 
 La notte, che le cose ci nasconde, 
 Che per veder gli aspetti dcsiati, 
 
 E per trovar lo cibo, onde li pasca, 
 
 In che i gravi labor gh sono aggrati, 
 Previene '1 tempo in su T aperta frasca, 
 
 E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, 
 
 Fiso' guardando, pur che I'alba nasca. — Parad. 23.* 
 
 Nothing indeed can be more true and original than 
 his images of birds ; they are varied and very 
 numerous. We have the water-birds rising in 
 clamorous and changing flocks : 
 
 Come augelli surti di riviera 
 Quasi cottgratula7ido a lor pasture ., 
 Fanno di se or tonda or lunga schiera ; — Parad. iS.f 
 
 * E'en as the bird that resting in the nest 
 
 Of her sweet brood, the shelt'ring boughs among 
 While all things are enwrapt in night's dark vest — 
 
 Now eager to behold the looks she loves, 
 And to find food for her impatient young 
 (\\Tience labour grateful to a mother proves), 
 
 Forestalls the time, high pcrch'd upon the spray. 
 And with impassion'd zeal the sun expecting, 
 
 Anxiously waiteth the first break of day. — Wright. 
 
 t And as birds rising from a stream, whence they 
 
 Their pastures view, as though their joy confessing. 
 Now form a round, and now a long array. — Ibid.
 
 142 DANTE. 
 
 the rooksj beginning to move about at daybreak : 
 
 E come per lo natural costume, 
 Le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno 
 Si muovono a scaldar le fredde piume, 
 
 Poi altre vanno via senza ritorno, 
 Altre rivolgon se onde son mosse 
 Ed altre roteando fan soggiorno ; — Parad. 21.* 
 
 the morning sounds of the swallow : 
 
 Neir ora che comincia i tristi lai 
 La rondinella presso alia mattina, 
 Forse a memoria de' suoi primi guai ; — Piirg. 9. + 
 
 the joy and delight of the nightingale's song {Purg. 
 17) ; the lark, silent at last, filled with its own sweet- 
 ness : 
 
 Oual lodoletta, che 'n aere si spazia, 
 Prima cantando, e poi tace conteiita 
 Dell' ultima dolcezza che la sazia ; — Parad. 20. % 
 
 the flight of the starlings and storks {Inf. 5, Piirg. 
 24) ; the mournful cry and long line of the cranes 
 
 * And as with one accord, at break of day, 
 
 The rooks bestir themselves, by nature taught 
 To chase the dew-drops from their wings away ; 
 Some flying off, to reappear no more — 
 Others repairing to their nests again — 
 Some whirling round — then settling as before. — Wright. 
 
 + What time the swallow pours her plaintive strain, 
 Saluting the approach of morning gray, 
 Thus haply mindful of her former pain. — Ibid. 
 
 X E'en as the lark high soaring pours its throat 
 Awhile, then rests in silence, as though still 
 It dwelt enamour'd of its last sweet note. — Ibid.
 
 DANTE. 143 
 
 {Inf. 5, Piirg. 26) ; the young birds trying to escape 
 from the nest {Purg. 25) ; the eagle hanging in the 
 sky : 
 
 Con 1' ale aperte, e a calare intesa ;— 
 
 the dove, standing close to its mate, or wheeling 
 
 round it : 
 
 Si come quando '1 Colombo si pone 
 Presso al compagno, 1' uno e 1' altro panda 
 Girando e mormorando I'affezione ; — Parad. 25.* 
 
 or the flock of pigeons, feeding : 
 
 Adunati alia pastura, 
 Oueti, senza mostrar /' tisato orgoglio. — Purg. 2. 
 
 Hawking supplies its images : the falcon coming 
 for its food : 
 
 II falcon die prima a pie si mira, 
 Indi si volge al grido, e si protende, 
 Per lo disio del pasto, che \k il tira ; — Purg. ig.f 
 
 * As v.hen unto his partner's side, the dove 
 
 Approaches near — both fondly circling round, 
 And cooing, show the fervour of their love ; 
 So these great heirs of immortality 
 
 Receive each other ; while they joyful sound 
 
 The praises of the food they share on high. — Wright. 
 
 + And, as a falcon, which first scans its feet, 
 
 Then turns him to the call, and forward flies. 
 In eagerness to catch the tempting meat. — Ibiu
 
 144 DANTE. 
 
 or just unhooded, pluming itself for its flight : 
 
 Quasi falcon, ch' esce del cappello, 
 Muove la testa, e con 1' ale s' applaude, 
 Voglia viostra/ido, e facendosi bello ; — Parad. 1 9.* 
 
 or returning without success, sullen and loath : 
 
 Come '1 falcon ch' e stato assai su \ ali, 
 Che senza veder logoro, o uccello, 
 Fa dire al falconiere : Oime tu cali ! 
 Discende lasso onde si muove snello 
 Per cento ruote, e da lungi si po7ie 
 Dal suo maestro, disdegnoso e fello. — Inf. 17. f 
 
 It is curious to observe him taking Virgil's similes, 
 and altering them. When Virgil describes the throng 
 of souls, he compares them to falling leaves, or 
 gathering birds in autumn : 
 
 Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo 
 Lapsa cadunt foliai, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto 
 Quam mult£e glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus 
 Trans pontum fugat, et terris immittit apricis — 
 
 Dante uses the same images, but without copying : 
 
 Come d' Autunno si levan le foglie, 
 L' una appresso dell' altra, infin che '1 ramo 
 
 * Lo, as a falcon, from the hood released, 
 
 Uplifts his head, and joyous flaps his wings, 
 
 His heauty and his eagerness increased. — Wright. 
 
 t E'en a? a falcon, long upheld in air, 
 
 Not seeing lure or bird upon the wing, 
 So that the falconer utters in despair 
 " Alas, thou stoop'st ! " fatigued descends from high ; 
 And whirling quickly round in many a ring, 
 Far from his master sits^disdainfully. — Ii id.
 
 DANTE. 145 
 
 Rende alia terra tutte le sue spoglie ; 
 
 Similemente il mal seme d' Adamo : 
 Gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una 
 Per cenni, com' augel per suo richiamo. 
 
 Cosi sen vanno su per 1' onda bruna, 
 Ed avanti che sien di la discese, 
 Anche di qua nuova schiera s' aduna. — Inf. 3.* 
 
 Again — compared with one of Virgil's most highly- 
 finished and perfect pictures, the flight of the pigeon, 
 disturbed at first, and then becoming swift and 
 smooth : 
 
 Qualis spelunca subito commota columba, 
 Cui domus et dukes latebroso in pumice nidi, 
 Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis 
 Dat tecto ingentem, mox aere lapsa quieto 
 Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas — 
 
 the Itahan's simplicity and strength may balance the 
 " ornata parola " of Virgil : 
 
 Quali colombe dal disio chiamate, 
 Con /' all aperte e ferme al dolce nido 
 Volan per 1' aer dal voler portate. — Inf. 5.t 
 
 * As leaves in autumn, borne before the wind, 
 Drop one by one, until the branch laid bare, 
 Sees all its honours to the earth consign'd : 
 So cast them downward at his summons all 
 The guilty race of Adam from that strand — 
 Each as a falcon answering to the call. — Wright. 
 
 t As doves, by strong affection urged, repair 
 
 With firm expanded wings to their sweet nest, 
 
 Borne by the impulse of their will through air. — Ibid. 
 
 it is impossible not to be reminded at every step, in spite of the 
 knowledge and taste which Mr. Gary and Mr. Wright have brought to 
 
 L
 
 146 DANTE. 
 
 Take, again, the times of the day, with what is 
 characteristic of them — appearances, hghts, feehngs — 
 seldom dwelt on at length, but carried at once to the 
 mind, and stamped upon it sometimes by a single 
 word. The sense of morning, its inspiring and 
 cheering strength, softens the opening of the Inferno ; 
 breathes its refreshing calm, in the interval of repose 
 after the last horrors of hell, in the first canto of the 
 Piirgatorio ; and prepares for the entrance into the 
 earthly Paradise at its close. In the waning light 
 of evening, and its chilling sense of loneliness, he 
 prepared himself for his dread pilgrimage : 
 
 Lo giorno se n' andava, e 1' aer bruno 
 Toglieva gli animai che sono 'n terra 
 Dalle fatiche loro ; ed io sol uno 
 
 M' apparechiava a sostener la guerra 
 Si del cammino, e si della pietate. — Inf. 2. 
 
 their most difficult task, of the truth which Dante has expressed with 
 his ordinary positiveness. 
 
 He is saying that he does not wish his Canzoni to be explained in 
 Latin to those who could not read them in Italian: "Che sarebbe 
 sposta la loro sentenzia cola dove elle non la potessono colla loro bdlczza 
 portare. E pero sappia ciascuno che nulla cosa per legame musaico 
 (j,.e. poetico) armonizzata, si puo della sua loquela in altra trasmutare 
 senza rompere tutta la sua dolcezza e armonia. E questa e la ragione 
 per che Omero non si muto mai di Greco in Latino, come 1' altre 
 scritture che av^emo da loro. — Convito, i. c. 8, p. 49. 
 
 Dr. Carlyle has given up the idea of attempting to represent Dante's 
 verse by English verse, and has confined himself to assisting English- 
 men to read him in his own language. His prose translation is accurate 
 and forcible. And he has added sensible and useful notes.
 
 DANTE. 147 
 
 Indeed there is scarcely an hour of day or night, 
 
 which has not left its own recollection with him ; — of 
 
 which we cannot find some memorial in his poem. 
 
 Evening and night have many. ' Evening, with its 
 
 softness and melancholy — its exhaustion and languor, 
 
 after the work, perhaps unfulfilled, of day — its regrets 
 
 and yearnings — its sounds and doubtful lights — the 
 
 distant bell, the closing chants of Compline, the 
 
 Salve Regina, the Tc hicis ante termimirn — with its 
 
 insecurity, and its sense of protection from above 
 
 — broods over the poet's first resting-place on his 
 
 heavenly road — that still, solemn, dreamy scene — the 
 
 Valley of Flowers in the mountain side, where those 
 
 who have been negligent about their salvation, but 
 
 not altogether faithless and fruitless, the assembled 
 
 shades of great kings and of poets, wait, looking 
 
 upwards, " pale and humble," for the hour when they 
 
 may begin in earnest their penance. {Purg. 7 and 8.) 
 
 The level, blinding evening beams {Purg. 15) ; the 
 
 contrast of gathering darkness in the valley or on the 
 
 shore with the lingering lights on the mountain (Purg. 
 
 17) ; the rapid sinking of the sun, and approach of 
 
 night in the south [Purg. 27) ; the fiiaming sunset 
 
 clouds of August ; the sheet-lightning of summer 
 
 {Purg. 5) ; have left pictures in his mind, which an 
 
 incidental touch reawakens, and a few strong words 
 
 are sufficient to express. Other appearances he 
 
 L 2
 
 148 DANTE. 
 
 describes with more fulness. The stars coming out 
 one by one, baffling at first the eye : 
 
 Ed ecco intorno di chiarezza pari 
 Nascer un lustro sopra quel che v'era, 
 A guisa d' orizzonte, che rischiari. 
 
 E SI come al salir di prima sera 
 Comincian per lo del niiove parvenze, 
 SI cJie la cosa pare e non par vera ; — Parad. 14.* 
 
 or else, bursting out suddenly over the heavens : 
 
 Quando colui che tutto il mondo allume, 
 Del' emisperio nostro si discende, 
 E '1 giorno d' ogni parte si consuma ; 
 
 Lo ciel che sol di lui prima s' accende, 
 Subitamente si rifa parv^ente 
 Per molte luci in che una risplende ;—Pa}'ad. 20.f 
 
 or the effect of shooting-stars : 
 
 Quale per li seren tranquilli e puri 
 Discorre ad ora ad or subito fuoco 
 Movendo gli occhi che stavan sicuri, 
 
 E pare Stella che tramuti loco, 
 
 * And lo, on high, and lurid as the one 
 Now there, encircling it, a light arose, 
 Like heaven when re-illumined by the sun : 
 And as at the first lighting up of eve 
 The slvy doth new appearances disclose, 
 That now seem real, now the sight deceive. — Weight. 
 
 t When he, who with his universal ray 
 
 The world illumines, quits our hemisphere, 
 And, from each quarter, daylight wears away ; 
 The heaven, erst kindled by his beam alone, 
 Sudden its lost effulgence doth repair 
 By many lights illumined but by one. — Ibid.
 
 DANTE. 149 
 
 Se non die dalla parte onde s' accende 
 
 Nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco •,— Parad. 15.* 
 
 or, again, that characteristic sight of the Itahan 
 summer night — the fire-flies : 
 
 Quanta il villan che al poggio si riposa, 
 Nel tempo che colui che '1 mondo schiara 
 La faccia sua a noi tien men ascosa, 
 
 Come la mosca cede alia zenzara, 
 Vede lucciole giu per la vallea 
 Forse col^ dove vendemmia ed ara. — Inf. 26.t 
 
 Noon, too, does not want its characteristic touches 
 — the h'ghtning-hke glancing of the lizard's rapid 
 motion : 
 
 Come il ramarro sotto la gran fersa 
 Ne' di canicular cangiando siepe 
 Folgore par, se la via attraversa ; — Inf. 25.!]: 
 
 the motes in the sunbeam at noontide {Par. 14); its 
 
 * As oft along the pure and tranquil sky 
 A suddeii fire i^y night is seen to dart, 
 Attracting forcibly the heedless eye ; 
 And seems to be a star that changes place, 
 Save that no star is lost from out the part 
 It quits, and that it lasts a moment's space. — Wright. 
 
 t As in that season when the sun least veils 
 His face that lightens all, what time the fly 
 Gives place to the shrill gnat, the jieasant then, 
 Upon some cliff reclined, beneath him sees 
 Fire-flies innumerous spangling o'er the vale. 
 Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies. — Cary. 
 X As underneath the dog-star's scorching ray 
 
 The lizard, darting swift from fence to fence, 
 
 Appears like lightning, if he cross the way. — Wright.
 
 I50 DANTE. 
 
 clear, diffused, insupportable brightness, filling all 
 
 things : 
 
 E tutti eran gik pieni 
 
 Dell' alto di i giron del sacro monte. — Ptirg. 19. 
 
 and veiling the sun in his own light : 
 
 lo veggio ben si come tii f annidi 
 Nel propria lume. 
 
 * * » » 
 
 Si come '1 sol die si cela egli stessi 
 Per troppa luce, quando '1 caldo ha rose 
 Le temperanze de' vapori spessi. — Parad. 5. 
 
 But the sights and feelings of morning are what 
 he touches on most frequently ; and he does so with 
 the precision of one who had watched them with 
 often-repeated delight : the scented freshness of the 
 breeze that stirs before daybreak : 
 
 E quale annunziatrice degli albori 
 Aura di maggio muovesi ed olezza 
 Tutta impregnata dall' erba e da' fiori ; 
 
 Tal mi senti' un vento dar per mezza 
 La fronte ; — Piirg. 24.* 
 
 the chill of early morning {Piirg. 19) ; the dawn 
 stealing on, and the stars, one by one, fading "infino 
 
 * As when, announcing the approach of day, 
 
 Impregnated with herbs and flowers of Spring, 
 Breathes fresh and redolent the air of May — 
 Such was the breeze that gently fann'd my head ; 
 And I perceived the waving of a wing 
 Which all aroimd ambrosial odom^s shed. — Wright,
 
 DANTE. 151 
 
 alia piu bella " {Parad. 30) ; the brightness of the 
 " trembling morning star " — 
 
 Par tremolando mattutina Stella ; — 
 the serenity of the dawn, the blue gradually gathering 
 in the east, spreading over the brightening sky 
 [Parad. i) ; then succeeded by the orange tints — 
 and Mars setting red, through the mist over the sea : 
 
 Ed ecco, qual sul presso del mattino 
 Per li grossi vapor Alarte rosseggia 
 Giu nel ponente, sopra '1 suol marino, 
 
 "Cotal m' apparve, s' io ancor lo veggia, 
 Un lunie per lo mar venir si ratto 
 Che '1 muover suo nessun volar pareggia •,-—Ptirg. 2* 
 
 the distant sea-beach quivering in the early light : 
 
 L' alba vinceva 1' ora mattutina 
 Che fuggia innanzi, si die di lontano 
 Conobbi il tremolar della mar ma ; — Purg i.t 
 
 the contrast of east and west at the moment cf sun- 
 rise, and the sun appearing, clothed in mist : 
 
 lo vidi gia nel cominciar del giorno 
 La parte oriental tutta rosata 
 
 * When lo ! like Mars, in aspect iiery red 
 
 Seen through the vapour, when the morn is nigh 
 Far in the west above the briny bed, 
 So (might I once more see it) o'er the sea 
 A liglit approach'd with such rapidity, 
 Flies not the bird that might its equal be.— Wright. 
 
 + Now 'gan the vanquish'd matin hour to flee ; 
 And seen from far, as onward came the day, 
 I recognised the trembling of the sea. — Ibid.
 
 152 DANTE. 
 
 E r altro ciel di bel sereno adorno ; 
 
 E la faccia del sol nascere ombrata 
 Si die per temperanza di vapori 
 L' occhio lo sostenea lungo fiato \—Piirg. 3.* 
 
 or breaking through it, and shooting his beams over 
 
 the sky : 
 
 Di tutte parti saettava il giorno 
 Lo sol ch' avea con le saette conte 
 Di mezzo '1 ciel cacciato '1 Capricorno. — Purg. 2.f 
 
 But ligJit in general is his special and chosen 
 source of poetic beauty. No poet that we know has 
 shown such singular sensibility to its varied appear- 
 ances — has shown that he felt it in itself the cause of 
 a distinct and peculiar pleasure, delighting the eye 
 apart from form, as music delights the ear apart from 
 words, and capable, like music, of definite character, 
 of endless variety, and infinite meanings. He must 
 have studied and dwelt upon it like music. His mind 
 is charged with its effects and combinations, and they 
 are rendered with a force, a brevity, a precision, a 
 
 * Erewhile the eastern regions have I seen 
 
 At daybreak glow with roseate colours, and 
 The expanse beside all beauteous and serene : 
 And the sun's face so shrouded at its rise, 
 And temper'd by the mists which overhung, 
 That I could gaze on it with stedfast eyes. — Wright. 
 
 f On every side the sun shot forth the day, 
 And had already with his arrows bright 
 From the mid-heaven chased Capricorn away. — IsiD.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 153 
 
 heedlessness and unconsciousness of ornament, an 
 indifference to circumstance and detail ; they flash 
 out with a spontaneous readiness, a suitableness and 
 felicity, which show the familiarity and grasp given 
 only by daily observation, daily thought, dail}- 
 pleasure. Light everywhere — in the sky and earth 
 and sea — in the star, the flame, the lamp, the gem — 
 broken in the Avater, reflected from the mirror, trans- 
 mitted pure through the glass, or coloured through 
 the edge of the fractured emerald — dimmed in the 
 mist, the halo, the deep water — streaming through 
 the rent cloud, glowing in the coal, quivering in the 
 lightning, flashing in the topaz and the rub}', veiled 
 behind the pure alabaster, mellowed and clouding 
 itself in the pearl — light contrasted with shadow — 
 shading off and copying itself in the double rainbow, 
 like voice and echo — light seen within light, as voice 
 discerned within voice, " quando una e ferma, e V altra 
 va e riedc " — the brighter " nestling " itself in the 
 fainter — the purer set off on the less clear, ''come 
 perla in bianca fronte" — light in the human eye and 
 face, displaying, figuring, and confounded with its 
 expressions — light blended with joy in the eye : 
 
 luce 
 Come letizia in pupilla viva ; 
 
 and in the smile : 
 
 Vincendo me col lume d' un sorriso ;
 
 154 DANTE. 
 
 joy lending its expression to light : 
 
 Quivi la donna mia vidi si lieta — 
 Che pill lucente se ne fe il pianeta. 
 
 E se la Stella si cainbio, e rise, 
 Oual mi fee' io ; — Parad. 5. 
 
 light from every source, and in all its shapes, illu- 
 minates, irradiates, gives its glory to the Commedia. 
 The remembrance of our " serene life " beneath the 
 " fair stars " keeps up continually the gloom of the 
 Inferno. Light, such as we see it and recognise it, 
 the light of morning and evening growing and fading, 
 takes off from the unearthliness of the Purgatorio ; 
 peopled, as it is, by the undying, who, though suffering 
 for sin, can sin no more, it is thus made like our 
 familiar world, made to touch our sympathies as an 
 image of our own purification in the flesh. And when 
 he rises beyond the regions of earthly day, light, 
 simple, unalloyed, unshadowed, eternal, lifts the cre- 
 ations of his thought above all afhnity to time and 
 matter ; light never fails him, as the expression of the 
 o-radations of bliss ; never reappears the same, never 
 refuses the new shapes of his invention, never becomes 
 confused or dim, though it is seldom thrown into 
 distinct figure, and still more seldom coloured. Only 
 once, that we remember, is the thought of colour 
 forced on us ; when the bright joy of heaven suffers
 
 DANTE. 155 
 
 change and eclipse, and deepens into red at the 
 sacrilege of men.'!^ 
 
 Yet his eye is everywhere, not confined to the 
 beauty or character of the sky and its lights. His 
 range of observation and largeness of interest prevent 
 that line of imagery, which is his peculiar instrument 
 and predilection, from becoming, in spite of its bright- 
 ness and variety, dreamy and monotonous ; prevent 
 it from arming against itself sympathies which it does 
 not touch. He has watched with equal attention, 
 and drav/s with not less power, the occurrences and 
 sights of Italian country life ; the summer whirl- 
 wind sweeping over the plain — " dinanzi polveroso va 
 superbo " {Inf. 9) ; the rain-storm of the Apennines 
 {Purg. 5) ; the peasant's alternations of feeling in 
 spring : 
 
 In quella parte del giovinetto anno 
 Che '1 sole i crin sotto 1' Aquario tempra, 
 E gik le notti al mezzo dl sen vanno ; 
 
 Ouando la brina in su la terra assempra 
 L' imagine di sua sorella bianca, 
 Ma poco dura alia sua penna tempra, 
 
 Lo villanello a cui la roba manca 
 Si leva e guarda, e vede la campagna 
 Biancheggiar tutta ; ond ei si batte 1' anca ; 
 
 Ritorna a casa, e qua e la si lagna 
 Come '1 tapin che non sa che si faccia : 
 Poi riede e la speranza ringavagna 
 
 * Farad. 27.
 
 156 DANTE. 
 
 Veggendo '1 mondo aver canglata faccia 
 In poco d' ora, e prende il suo vincastro 
 E fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia : — Inf. 24.* 
 
 the manner in which sheep come out from the fold : 
 
 Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso 
 A ima a due a ire, e V allre statino, 
 Timidctte aft err undo P occhio e' I iniiso ; 
 
 E cib die fa la prima, e /' altre fantto, 
 Addossandosi a lei s'' ella j' arresta 
 Semplici e quete, e lo 'mperche non sanno : 
 
 Si vid' io muover a venir la testa 
 Di quella mandria fortunata allotta, 
 Pudica in faccia e nell' andare onesta. 
 
 Come color dinanzi vider rotta 
 La luce 
 
 Ristaro, e trasser se indietro alquanto, 
 E tutti gli altri che veniano appresso, 
 Non sappiendo il pcrche, fero altrettanto. — Purg. 3. 
 
 So with the beautiful picture of the goats upon 
 the mountain, chewing the cud in the noontide heat 
 
 * In the new year, when Sol his tresses gay 
 Dips in Aquarius, and the tardy night 
 Divides her empire with the lengthening day — 
 
 When o'er the earth the hoar-frost pure and bright 
 Assumes the image of her sister white. 
 Then quickly melts before the genial light — 
 
 The rustic, now exhausted his supply. 
 
 Rises betimes — looks out — and sees the land 
 All white around, whereat he strikes his thigh — • 
 
 Turns back — and grieving — wanders here and there, 
 Like one disconsolate and at a stand ; 
 Then issues forth, forgetting his despair, 
 
 For lo ! the face of nature he beholds 
 
 Changed on a sudden — takes his crook again, 
 
 . And drives his flock to pasture from the folds. — Wright.
 
 DANTE. 157 
 
 and stillness, and the goatherd, resting on his staff 
 and watching them — a picture which no traveller 
 among the mountains of Italy or Greece can have 
 missed, or have forgotten : 
 
 Ouali si fanno ruminando manse 
 Le capre, state rapide e protcrve 
 Sopra le ciine avanti che sien pranse, 
 
 Tacite al oinbra nienire che V solferve, 
 Guardate dal pasto?' che 'n su la verga 
 Poggiato s' e, e lor poggiato serve. — Purg. 27.* 
 
 So again, with his recollections of cities : the crowd 
 running together to hear news {Pitrg: 2), or pressing 
 after the winner of the game [Purg: 6) ; the blind 
 men at the church doors, or following their guide 
 through the tlirong {Purg: 13, 16) ; the friars walking 
 along in silence, one behind another : 
 
 Taciti, soli, e senza compagnia 
 N' andavam, /' tin dinanzi, e /' altro dopo 
 Come if rati minor v anno per via. — Inf. 23, 
 
 He turns to account in his poem, the pomp and 
 clamour of the host taking the field (/;// 22) ; the 
 devices of heraldry ; the answering chimes of morning 
 
 Like goats that having over the crags pursued 
 Their wanton sports, now, quiet pass the time 
 In ruminating — sated with their food, 
 
 Beneath the shade, while glows the sun on Iiigh — 
 Watched by the goatherd with unceasing care, 
 As on his staff lie leans, with watchful eye. — Ibid.
 
 iS8 DANTE. 
 
 bells over the city;* the inventions and appliances of 
 
 art, the wheels within wheels of clocks [^Par. 24), the 
 
 many-coloured carpets of the East {Inf. 17) ; music 
 
 and dancing — the organ and voice in church : 
 
 — Voce mista al dolce suono 
 
 Che or si or no s' intendon le parole, — Picrg. 9. 
 
 the lute and voice in the chamber {Par. 20) ; the 
 
 dancers preparing to begin,t or waiting to catch a 
 
 new strain. J Or, again, the images of domestic life. 
 
 the mother's ways to her child, reserved and reproving 
 
 — "che al figlio par superba " — or cheering him with 
 
 her voice, or watching him compassionately in the 
 
 wandering of fever : 
 
 Ond' ella, appresso d' un pio sospiro 
 Gli occhi drizzo ver me, con quel sembiante 
 Che madre fa sopra figliuol deliro. — Pa7\xd. i. 
 
 * Indi come orologio che ne chiami 
 Nell' ora che la sposa di Dio surge 
 A mattinar lo sposo perche 1' ami, 
 
 Che r una parte e 1' altra tira ed urge 
 Tin tin sonando con si dolce nota 
 Che '1 ben disposto spirto d' amor turge ; 
 
 Cosi vid' io la gloriosa ruota 
 Muoversi e render voce a voce, in tempra 
 Edindolcezza ch' esser non puo nota 
 
 Se non cola dove '1 gioir s' insempra. — Farad. lO, 
 
 + E come surge, e va, ed entra in hallo 
 Vergine lieta, sol per fame onore 
 Alia novizia, e non per alcun fallo. — Ibid. 25. 
 
 J Donne mi parver, non da ballo sciolte, 
 Ma che s' arrestin tacite ascoltando 
 Fin che le nuove note lianno ricolte. — Ibid. 10.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 159 
 
 Nor is he less observant of the more dehcate pheno- 
 mena of mind, in its inward workings, and its con- 
 nexion with the body. The play of features, the 
 involuntary gestures and attitudes of the passions, 
 the power of eye over eye, of hand upon hand, the 
 charm of voice and expression, of musical sounds 
 even when not understood — feelings, sensations, and 
 states of mind which have a name, and others, equally 
 numerous and equally common, which have none — 
 these, often so fugitive, so shifting, so baffling and 
 intangible, are expressed with a directness, a sim- 
 plicity, a sense of truth at once broad and refined, 
 which seized at once on the congenial mind of his 
 countrymen, and pointed out to them the road which 
 they have followed in art, unapproached as yet by 
 any competitors.* 
 
 * For instance : — thoughts upon thoughts, ending in sleep and dreams : 
 Nuovo pensier dentro de me si mise, 
 
 Dal qual piu altri nacquero e divers! : 
 E tanto d' uno in altro vaneggiai 
 Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopeisi, 
 E ' I pensamejito in sogno trasmutai. — Pn7-g iS. 
 
 sleep stealing offivhen broken by light : 
 
 Come si frange il sonno, ove di butto 
 Nuova luce percuote '1 viso chiuso, 
 Chefratto guizza pria che muoja tutto. — Ibid. 17 
 
 the shock of siidden awakening: 
 
 Come al lume acuto si disonna, 
 
 * * * * 
 
 E lo svegliato cid che vede abborre,
 
 i6o DANTE. 
 
 And he has anticipated the latest schools of 
 modern poetry, by making not merely nature, but 
 
 SI nescia e la subita vigilia, 
 Finche la sti-mativa nol soccorre. — Farad. 26. 
 umasy feelings produced by sight or representation ofsometh ing 11 iinaturai. : 
 Come per sostentar solajo o tetto . 
 Per mensola talvolta una figura 
 Si vede giunger le ginocchia al petto, 
 
 La qual fa del non vcr vera ranciira 
 Nascer a chi la vede ; cosi fatti 
 Vid' io color. — Purg. 10. 
 ■blushing in innocent sympathy fjr others . 
 
 E come donna onesta die permane 
 Di se sicura, e per V altfiii fallenza 
 Pure ascoltando timida si fane: 
 
 Cosi Beatrice trasmuto sembianza. — Ibid. 27. 
 asking and answering by looks only : 
 
 Vols! gli occhi agli occhi al signor mio ; 
 Ond' elli m' assenli con lieto cenno 
 Cio che chiedea la vista del disio. — Purg. 19. 
 2fatching the effect of words : 
 
 Posto avea fine al suo ragionamento 
 L' alto dottore, ad attento guardava 
 Nella mia vista s' io parea contento. 
 
 Ed io, cui nuova sete ancor frugava, 
 Di fuor taceva e dentro dicea : forse 
 Lo troppo dimandar ch' io fo, li grava. 
 Ma quel padre verace, che s' accorse 
 Del timido voler che non s' apriva, 
 Parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse. — Ibid. 18. 
 Dante betraying VirgiVs presence to Statins, by his involuntary smile; 
 Volser Virgilio a me queste parole 
 Con viso che tacendo dicea : " taci ;" 
 Ma non puo tutto la virtu che vuole ; 
 Che riso e pianto son tanto seguaci 
 Alia passion da che ciascun si spicca, 
 Che men seguon voler ne' piii veraci.
 
 DANTE. i6i 
 
 science tributary to a poetry with whose general aim 
 and spirit it lias little in common — tributary in its 
 
 lo pur sorrisi, come V uotn ch^ atnmicca : 
 Perchc V ombra si iacqiie, e riginrdamini 
 Ncgli occhi ove '/ sembiante pin si ficca. 
 
 E se tanto lavoro in bene assommi, 
 
 Disse, perche la faccia tua testeso 
 
 Un lampcgi^iar a' im riso dimostrommi ? — Purg. 21. 
 
 smiles and words together : 
 
 Per le sorrise parolette brevi. — Farad, i. 
 
 eye meeting eye : 
 
 Gli occhi ritorsi avanti 
 
 Dritti nel lume della dolce guida 
 
 Che sorridendo ardea negli occhi santi. — Ibid. 3, 
 
 Come si vede qui alcuna volta 
 L' affetto nella vista, s' ello e tanto 
 Che da lui sia tutta 1' anima tolta : 
 
 Cos! nel fiammeggiar del fulgor santo 
 A cui mi volsi, conobbi la voglia 
 In lui di ragionarmi ancore alquanto. — Ibid. 18. 
 
 gentleness of voice : 
 
 E cominciommi a dir soave e piana 
 
 Con angelica voce in sua favella. — luf. 2. 
 
 E come agli occhi miei si fe' piii bella, 
 Cos! con voce piii dolce e soave, 
 Ma non con questa moderna favella, 
 Dissemi ; — Parad. 16. 
 
 ihanting : 
 
 Te liicis ante si divotamente 
 Le usci di bocca e con si dolce note, 
 Che fece me a me uscir di mente. 
 
 E 1' altre poi dolcemente e divote 
 Seguitar lei per tutto 1' inno intero, 
 Avendo gli occhi alle superne ruote. — Purg, 8. 
 
 M
 
 i62 DANTE. 
 
 exact forms, even in its technicalities. He speaks of 
 the Mediterranean Sea, not merely as a historian, or 
 
 chanting blended tvith the sound of the organ : 
 
 lo mi rivolsi attento al primo tuono, 
 E Te Demn laiidamus mi parea 
 Udire in voce mista al dolce suono. 
 Tale imagine appunto mi rendea 
 Cio ch' io udiva, qual prender si suole 
 Quando a cantar con organi si stea ; 
 
 Ch^ or si, or no, j' in tendon le parole. — Piirg. 9. 
 
 voices in concert: 
 
 E come in voce voce si disceme 
 Quando una eferma, e V altra va e riede. — Farad. S. 
 
 attitudes and gestures : e.g. Beatrice addressing him, 
 
 Con atto e voce di spedito duce. — Ibid. 30. 
 
 Sordello eyeing the travellers : 
 
 Venimmo a lei : o anima Lombarda, 
 Come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa, 
 E nel muover degli occhi onesta e tarda. 
 
 Ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa, 
 Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando, 
 A guisa di leon quando si posa. — Purg. 6. 
 
 the angel moving " dry-shod" over the Stygian pool : 
 Dal volto nmovea quell' aer grasso 
 Menando la sinistra innanzi spesso, 
 E sol di quell' angoscia parea lasso. 
 
 Ben m' accorsi ch' egli era del ciel messo, 
 E volsimi al maestro ; e quel fe' segno 
 Ch' io stessi cheto ed inchinassi ed esso. 
 Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno. 
 * * * ♦ 
 
 Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda, 
 
 E non fe' motto a noi, ma fe, sembiante 
 D' uomo cui altra cura stringa e morde 
 Che quella di colui die gli e davante. — In/. 9.
 
 DANTE. 163 
 
 an observer of its storms or its smiles, but as a 
 geologist ;* of light, not merely in its beautiful 
 appearances, but in its natural laws.f There is a 
 charm, an imaginative charm to him, not merely in 
 the sensible magnificence of the heavens, " in their 
 silence, and light, and watchfulness," but in the 
 system of Ptolemy and the theories of astrology ; and 
 he delights to interweave the poetry of feeling and of 
 the outward sense with the grandeur — so far as he 
 knew it — of order, proportion, measured magnitudes, 
 the relations of abstract forces, displayed on such a 
 scene as the material universe, as if he wished to show- 
 that imagination in its boldest flight was not afraid of 
 the company of the clear and subtle intellect. 
 
 Indeed the real never daunts him. It is his 
 leading principle of poetic composition, to draw out 
 of things the poetry which is latent in them, either 
 essentially, or as they are portions, images, or reflexes 
 of something greater — not to invest them with a 
 poetical semblance, by means of words which bring 
 with them poetical associations, and have received a 
 general poetical stamp. Dante has few of those 
 indirect charms which flow from the subtle structure 
 and refined graces of language — none of that ex- 
 quisitely-fitted and self-sustained mechanism of choice 
 
 * La maggior valle, in che 1' acqua si spandi. — Farad. 9. 
 t E.g. Pnrg. 15. 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 DANTE. 
 
 words of the Greeks — none of that tempered and 
 majestic amphtudc of diction, which clothes, Hke the 
 folds of a royal robe, the thoughts of the Latins — none 
 of that abundant play of fancy and sentiment, soft or 
 grand, in which the later Italian poets delighted. 
 Words with him are used sparingly, never in play — 
 never because they carry with them poetical recollec- 
 tions — never for their own sake ; but because they 
 are instruments which will give the deepest, clearest, 
 sharpest stamp of that image which the poet's mind, 
 piercing to the very heart of his subject, or seizing 
 the characteristic feature which to other men's eyes 
 is confused and lost among others accidental and 
 common, draws forth in severe and living truth. 
 Words will not always bend themselves to his 
 demands on them ; they make him often uncouth, 
 abrupt, obscure. But he is too much in earnest to 
 heed uncouthness ; and his power over language is 
 too great to allow uncertainty as to what he means, 
 to be other than occasional. Nor is he a stranger to 
 the utmost sweetness and melody of language. But 
 it appears, unsought for and unlaboured, the spon- 
 taneous and inevitable obedience of the tongue and 
 pen to the impressions of the mind ; as grace and 
 beauty, of themselves, " command and guide the eye" 
 of the painter, who thinks not of his hand but of 
 them. All is in character with the absorbed and
 
 DANTE. 165 
 
 serious earnestness which pervades the poem ; there 
 is no toying, no ornament, that a man in earnest 
 might not throw into his words ; — whether in single 
 images, or in pictures, hke that of the Meadow of the 
 Heroes (////. 4), or the angel appearing in hell to 
 guide the poet through the burning city {Inf. 9) — or 
 in histories, like those of Count Ugolino, or the life of 
 S. Francis [Parad. 11) — or in the dramatic scenes 
 like the meeting of the poets Sordello and Virgil 
 {Purgat. 6), or that one, unequalled in beauty, v.here 
 Dante himself, after years of forgetfulness and sin, 
 sees Beatrice in glory, and hears his name, never but 
 once pronounced during the vision, from her lips.-= 
 
 * lo vidi gia nel cominciar del giorno 
 
 La parte oriental tutta rosata, 
 E r altro ciel di bel sereno adorno, 
 
 E la faccia del sol nascere ombrata, 
 Si che per temperanza di vapori 
 L' occhio lo sostenea lunga fiata ; 
 
 Cosi dentro una nuvola di fieri, 
 Che dalle mani angeliche saliva, 
 E ricadeva giii dentro e di fuori, 
 
 Sovra candido vel cinta d' oliva 
 
 Donna m' apparve sotto verde manto 
 Vestita di color di fiamma viva. 
 
 E lo spirito mio, che gia cotanto 
 
 Tempo era stato che alia sua presenza 
 Non era di stupor, tremando, affranto. 
 
 Senza degli occhi aver piii conoscenza, 
 Per occulta virtii, che da lei mosse, 
 D' antico amor senti' la gran potenza.
 
 1(56 DANTE. 
 
 But this, or any other array of scenes and images, 
 might be matched from poets of a far lower order 
 than Dante : and to specimens which might be 
 brought together of his audacity and extravagance, 
 no parallel could be found except among the lowest. 
 We cannot, honestly, plead the barbarism of the time 
 as his excuse. That, doubtless, contributed largely 
 to them ; but they were the faults of the man. In 
 another age, their form might have been different ; 
 yet we cannot believe so much of time, that it would 
 have tamed Dante. Nor can we wish it. It might 
 have made him less great : and his greatness can well 
 
 Volsimi alia sinistra col rispitto, 
 
 Col quale il fantolin corre alia mamma, 
 Quando ha paura, o quando egli e afflitto, 
 
 Per dicere a Virgilio : Men che dramma 
 Di sangue m' e rimasa, che non tremi : 
 Conosco i segni dell' antica fiamma. 
 
 Ma Virgilio n' avea lasciati scemi 
 
 Di se, Virgilio dolcissimo padre, 
 
 Virgilio, a cui per mia salute diemi : 
 * * * * ♦ 
 
 Dante, perche Virgilio se ne vada, 
 
 Non piangere anche, non piangere ancora 
 
 Che pianger ti convien per altra spada. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Regalmente nell' atto ancor proterva 
 Continue, come colui che dice, 
 E il piu caldo parlar diretro serva, 
 Guardami ben : ben son, ben son "Beatrice : 
 Come degnasti d' accedere al monte ? 
 Non sapei tu, che qui e 1' uom felice? — Purg. 30. 
 
 But extracts can give but an imperfect notion of this grand and 
 touching canto.
 
 DANTE. 167 
 
 bear its own blemishes, and will not less meet its due 
 honour among men, because they can detect its 
 kindred to themselves. 
 
 The greatness of his work is not in its details — to 
 be m.ade or marred by them. It is the greatness of a 
 comprehensive and vast conception, sustaining with- 
 out failure the trial of its long and hazardous 
 execution, and fulfilling at its close the hope and 
 promise of its beginning ; like the greatness — which 
 v/e watch in its course with anxious suspense, and look 
 back upon when it is secured by death, with deep 
 admiration — of a perfect life. Many a surprise, many 
 a difficulty, many a disappointment, many a strange 
 reverse and alternation of feelings, attend the progress 
 of the most patient and admiring reader of the Covi- 
 media ; as many as attend on one who follows the 
 unfolding of a strong character in life. We are often 
 shocked when we were prepared to admire — repelled, 
 when we came with sympathy ; the accustomed key 
 fails at a critical moment — depths are revealed which 
 we cannot sound, mysteries which baffle and confound 
 us. But the check is for a time — the gap and chasm 
 does not dissever. Haste is even an evidence of life 
 — the brief word, the obscure hint, the unexplained, 
 the unfinished, or even the unachieved, are the marks 
 of human feebleness, but are also among those of 
 human truth. The unity of the Avhole is unimpaired.
 
 1 68 DANTE. 
 
 The strength which is working it out, though it may 
 have at times disappointed us, shows no hoUowness 
 or exhaustion. The surprise of disappointment is 
 balanced — there is the surprise of unimagined ex- 
 cellence. Powers do more than they promised ; and 
 that spontaneous and living energy, without which 
 neither man nor poet can be trusted, and which 
 showed its strength even in its failures, shows it more 
 abundantly in the novelties of success — by touching 
 sympathies which have never been touched before, by 
 the unconstrained freshness with which it meets the 
 proverbial and familiar, by the freedom with which 
 it adjusts itself to a new position or an altered task — 
 by the completeness, unstudied and instinctive, with 
 which it holds together dissimilar and uncongenial 
 materials, and forces the most intractable, the most 
 unaccustomed to submission, to receive the colour of 
 the whole — by its orderly and unmistakable onward 
 march, and its progress, as in height, so in what 
 corresponds to height. It was one and the same 
 man, who rose from the despair, the agony, the vivid 
 and vulgar horrors of the Inferno, to the sense and 
 imagination of certainty, sinlessness, and joy ineffable 
 — the same man whose power and whose sym- 
 pathies failed him not, whether discriminating and 
 enumerating, as if he had gone through them all, the 
 various forms of human suffering, from the dull.
 
 DANTE. 169 
 
 gnawing sense of the loss of happiness, to the infinite 
 woes of the wrecked and ruined spirit, and the coarser 
 pangs of the material flesh ; or dwelling on the 
 changeful lights and shades of earnest repentance, 
 in its hard, but not unaided or ungladdened struggle, 
 and on that restoration to liberty and peace, which 
 can change even this life into paradise, and reverse 
 the doom which made sorrow our condition, and 
 laughter and joy unnatural and dangerous — the 
 penalty of that first fault, which 
 
 In pianto ed in affanno 
 Cambio onesto riso e dolce giuoco : 
 
 or rising finally above mortal experience, to imagine 
 the freedom of the saints and the peace of eternity. 
 In this consists the greatness of his power. It is not 
 necessary to read through the Coniiiicdia to see it — 
 open it where we please, we see that he is on his way, 
 and whither he is going ; episode and digression share 
 in the solemnity of the general order. 
 
 And his greatness was more than that of power. 
 That reach and play of sympathy ministered to a 
 noble wisdom, which used it tJioughtfully and con- 
 sciously for a purpose to which great poetry had 
 never yet been applied, except in the mouth of 
 prophets. Dante was a stern man, and more than 
 stern, among his fellows. But he has left to those
 
 lyo DANTE. 
 
 who never saw his face an inheritance the most 
 precious ; he has left them that which, reflecting and 
 interpreting- their minds, does so, not to amuse, not to 
 bewilder, not to warp, not to turn them in upon 
 themselves in distress or gloom or selfishness ; not 
 merely to hold up a mirror to nature ; but to make 
 them true and make them hopeful. Dark as are his 
 words of individuals, his thoughts are not dark or 
 one-sided about mankind ; his is no cherished and 
 perverse severity — his faith is too large, too real, for 
 such a fault. He did not write only the Inferno. 
 And the Piwgatorio and the Paradiso are not an 
 afterthought, a feebler appendix and compensation, 
 conceived when too late, to a finished whole, which 
 has taken up into itself the poet's real mind. No- 
 where else in poetry of equal power is there the sarne 
 balanced view of what man is, and may be ; nowhere 
 so wide a grasp shown of his various capacities, so 
 strong a desire to find a due place and function for 
 all his various dispositions. Where he stands con- 
 trasted in his idea of human life with other poets, 
 who have been more powerful exponents of its 
 separate sides, is in his large and truthful compre- 
 hensiveness. Fresh from the thoucrht of man's 
 condition as a whole, fresh from the thought of his 
 goodness, his greatness, his power, as Avell as of his
 
 DANTE. 171 
 
 evil, his mind is equally in tune when rejoicing 
 over his restoration, as when contemplating the ruins 
 of his fall. He never lets go the recollection that 
 human life, if it grovels at one end in corruption 
 and sin, and has to pass through the sweat and dust 
 and disfigurement of earthly toil, has throughout, 
 compensations, remedies, functions, spheres innumer- 
 able of profitable activity, sources inexhaustible of 
 delidit and consolation — and at the other end a 
 perfection which cannot be named. No one ever 
 measured the greatness of man in all its forms with 
 so true and yet with so admiring an eye, and Avith 
 such glowing hope, as he who has also portrayed so 
 awfully man's littleness and vileness. And he went 
 farther — no one who could understand and do homage 
 to greatness in man, ever drew the line so strongly 
 between greatness and goodness, and so unhesitatingly 
 placed the hero of this world only — placed him in all 
 his magnificence, honoured with no timid or dissem- 
 bling reverence — at the distance of worlds, below the 
 place of the lowest saint. 
 
 Those who know the Divina Commedia best, 
 will best know how hard it is to be the interpreter 
 of such a mind ; but they will sympathise with the 
 wish to call attention to it. They know, and would 
 wish others also to know, not by hearsay, but by
 
 172 DANTE. 
 
 experience, the power of that wonderful poem. They 
 know its austere, yet subduing beauty ; they know 
 what force there is, in its free and earnest and solemn 
 verse, to strengthen, to tranquillisc, to console. It 
 is a small thing that it has the secret of Nature and 
 Man ; that a few keen words have opened their eyes 
 to new sights in earth, and sea, and sky ; have taught 
 them new mysteries of sound ; have made them re- 
 cognise, in distinct image or thought, fugitive feelings, 
 or their unheeded expression, by look, or gesture, or 
 motion ; that it has enriched the public and collective 
 memory of society with new instances, never to be 
 lost, of human feeling and fortune ; has charmed 
 ear and mind by the music of its stately march, and 
 the variety and completeness of its plan. But, besides 
 this, they know how often its seriousness has put to 
 shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faint- 
 heartedness, its living energy their indolence, its 
 stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its 
 thrilling tenderness overcome sullcnness and as- 
 suaged distress, its strong faith quelled despair and 
 soothed perplexity, its vast grasp imparted the 
 sense of harmony to the view of clashing truths. 
 They know how often they have found, in times 
 of trouble, if not light, at least that deep sense of 
 reality, permanent, though unseen, which is more
 
 DANTE. 173 
 
 than light can always give — in the view which it 
 has suggested to them of the judgments and the 
 love of God.* 
 
 * It is necessary to state, that these remarks were written before 
 we had seen the chapter on Dante in " Italy, past and present, by 
 L. iNlariotti." Had we become acquainted with it earlier, we should 
 have had to refer to it often, in the way of acknowledgment, and as 
 often in the way of strong protest.
 
 DE MONARCHIA.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 I. — It veiy greatly concerns all men on whom a 
 higher nature has impressed*^ the love of truth, that, 
 as they have been enriched by the labour of those 
 before them, so they also should labour for those 
 that are to come after them, to the end that posterity 
 may receive from them an addition to its wealth. 
 For he is far astray from his duty — let him not 
 doubt it — who, having been trained in the lessons 
 of public business, cares not himself to contribute 
 aught to the public good. He is no "tree planted 
 by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in 
 due season." He is rather the devouring whirlpool, 
 ever engulfing, but restoring nothing. Pondering, 
 therefore, often on these things, lest some day I 
 
 * << 
 
 '/« quos veritatis amorcm natiira superior impressit." On the 
 ancient idea (Aug. De Tri?:. iii. 4; Aquin. Stiinin. i, 66, 3) of the 
 influence or impression of higlier natures on lower, cf. Farad, i. 103, 
 X. 29.
 
 1 78 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 should have to answer the charge of the talent 
 buried in the earth, I desire not only to show the 
 budding promise, but also to bear fruit for the 
 general good, and to set forth truths by others 
 unattempted. For what fruit can he be said to 
 bear who should go about to demonstrate again 
 some theorem of Euclid ? or when Aristotle has 
 shown us what happiness is, should show it to us 
 once more ? or when Cicero has been the apologist 
 of old age, should a second time undertake its 
 defence ? Such squandering of labour would only 
 engender weariness and not profit. 
 
 But seeing that among other truths, ill-understood 
 yet profitable, the knowledge touching temporal 
 monarchy is at once most profitable and most 
 obscure, and that because it has no immediate 
 reference to worldly gain it is left unexplored by 
 all, therefore it is my purpose to draw it forth from 
 its hiding-places, as well that I may spend my toil 
 for the benefit of the world, as that I may be the 
 first to win the prize of so great an achievement 
 to my own glory. The work indeed is difficult, and 
 I am attempting what is beyond my strength ; but I 
 trust not in my own powers, but in the light of that 
 Bountiful Giver, *' Who giveth to all men liberally, 
 and upbraideth not." 
 
 n. — First, therefore, we must see what is it
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 179 
 
 that is called Temporal Monarchy, in its idea, so 
 to speak, and according to its purpose. Temporal 
 Monarchy, then, or, as men call it, the Empire, is 
 the governnient of one prince above all men in time, 
 or in those things and over those things which are 
 measured by time. Three great questions are asked 
 concerning it. First, there is the doubt and the ques- 
 tion, is it necessary for the welfare of the world .'' 
 Secondly, did the Roman people take to itself by 
 right the office of Monarchy "i And thirdly, does 
 the authority of Monarchy come from God directly, 
 or only from some other minister or vicar of God .'' 
 
 Now, since every truth, which is not itself a first 
 principle, becomes manifest from the truth of some 
 first principle, it is therefore necessary in every inquiry 
 to have a knowledge of the first principle involved, 
 to which by analysis we may go back for the certainty 
 of all the propositions which are afterwards accepted. 
 And since this treatise is an inquiry, we must begin 
 by examining the first principle on the strength of 
 which deductions are to rest. It must be understood 
 then that there are certain things which, since they 
 are not subject to our power, are matters of specu- 
 lation, but not of action : such are Mathematics and 
 Physics, and things divine. But there are some things 
 which, since they are subject to our power, are matters 
 of action as well as of speculation, and in them we
 
 i8o DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 do not act for the sake of speculation, but contrari- 
 wise : for in such things action is the end. Now, 
 since the matter which we have in hand has to do 
 with states, nay, with the very origin and principle 
 of good forms of government, and since all that 
 concerns states is subject to our power, it is manifest 
 that our subject is not in the first place speculation, 
 but action. And again, since in matters of action 
 the end sought is the first principle and cause of all 
 (for that it is which first moves the agent to act), it 
 follows that all our method concerning the means 
 which are set to gain the end must be taken from^ 
 the end. For there will be one way of cutting wood 
 to build a house, and another to build a ship. That 
 therefore, if it exists, which is the ultimate end for 
 the universal civil order of mankind, will be the first 
 principle from which all the truth of our future de- 
 ductions will be sufiliciently manifest. But it is folly 
 to think that there is an end for this and for that 
 particular civil order, and yet not one end for all. 
 
 III. — Now, therefore, we must see what is the 
 end of the whole civil order of men ; and when 
 we have found this, then, as the Philosopher* says 
 in his book to Nicomachus,t the half of our 
 
 * The common title for Aristotle from the first half of the thirteenth 
 century. Vide Jourdain, Rechenhes siir les traductions d'Ari stole, p. 212^ 
 note. 
 
 t Arist. Ethics, i. 7.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. i8i 
 
 labour will have been accomplished. And to render 
 the question clearer, we must observe that as there 
 is a certain end for which nature makes the thumb, 
 and another, different from this, for which she makes 
 the whole hand, and again another for which she 
 makes the arm, and another different from all for 
 which she makes the whole man ; so there is one 
 end for which she orders the individual man, and 
 another for which she orders the family, and another 
 end for the city, and another for the kingdom, and 
 finally an ultimate one for which the Everlasting 
 God, by His art which Is nature, brings into being 
 the whole human race. And this is what we seek 
 as a first principle to guide our whole inquiry. 
 
 Let it then be understood that God and nature 
 make nothing to be idle. Whatever comes into 
 being, exists for some operation or working. For no 
 created essence is an ultimate end in the creator's 
 purpose, so far as he is a creator, but rather the 
 proper operation of that essence. Therefore it follows 
 that the operation does not exist for the sake of the 
 essence, but the essence for the sake of the operation. 
 
 There is therefore a certain proper operation 
 of the whole body of human kind, for which this 
 whole body of men in all its multitudes is ordered 
 and constituted, but to which no one man, nor single 
 family, nor single neighbourhood, nor single city, nor
 
 1 82 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 particular kingdom can attain. What this is will 
 be manifest, if we can find what is the final and 
 characteristic capacity of humanity as a whole. I 
 say then that no quality which is shared by different 
 species of things is the distinguishing capacity of 
 any one of them. For were it so, since this capacity 
 is that which makes each species what it is, it 
 would follow that one essence would be specifically 
 distributed to many species, which is impossible. 
 Therefore the ultimate quality of men is not exist- 
 ence, taken simply ; for the elements share therein. 
 Nor is it existence under certain conditions ;* for 
 \NQ. find this in minerals too. Nor is it existence 
 with life ; for plants too have life. Nor is it per- 
 cipient existence ; for brutes share in this power- 
 It is to be percipientf with the possibility of under- 
 standing, for this quality falls to the lot of none 
 but man, either above or below him. For though 
 there are other beings which with him have under- 
 standing, yet this understanding is not, as man's, 
 capable of development. For such beings are only 
 certain intellectual natures, and not anything besides, 
 and their being is nothing other than to understand ; 
 which is without interruption, otherwise they would 
 not be eternal. It is plain, therefore, that the dis- 
 
 * " Esse complexionatum." 
 + '' AppreJiejisivuin per intellechim possibilem." V. Aqziiii. I. 79. i, 2, 10.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 1S3 
 
 tinguishing quality of humanity is the faculty or the 
 power of understanding. 
 
 And because this faculty cannot be realised in act 
 in its entirety at one time by a single man, nor by any 
 of the individual societies which we have marked, 
 therefore there must be multitude in the human 
 race, in order to realise it : just as it is necessary 
 that there should be a multitude of things which 
 can be brought into being * so that the capacity of the 
 primal matter for being acted on may be ever open 
 to what acts on it. For if this were not so, we could 
 speak of a capacity apart from its substance, which 
 is impossible. And with this opinion Averroes, in 
 his comment on [Aristotle's] treatise on the Soul, 
 agrees. For the capacity for understanding, of 
 which I speak, is concerned not only with universal 
 forms or species, but also, by a kind of exten- 
 sion, with particular ones. Therefore it is com- 
 monly said that the speculative understanding 
 becomes practical by extension ; and then its end 
 is to do and to make. This I say in reference to 
 things which may be done, which are regulated by 
 political wisdom, and in reference to things which 
 may be made, which are regulated by art ; all which 
 things wait as handmaidens on the speculative in- 
 
 " Generabilium.''
 
 1 84 DE MONARCH! A. 
 
 tellect, as on that best good, for which the Primal 
 Goodness created the human race. Hence the saying 
 of the Pohtics* that those who are strong in under- 
 standing are the natural rulers of others. 
 
 IV. — It has thus been sufficiently set forth that 
 the proper work of the human race, taken as a 
 whole, is to set in action the whole capacity of that 
 understanding which is capable of development : 
 first in the way of speculation, and then, by its exten- 
 sion, in the way of action. And seeing that what is 
 true of a part is true also of the whole, and that it is by 
 rest and quiet that the individual man becomes perfect 
 in wisdom and prudence ; so the human race, by living 
 in the calm and tranquillity of peace, applies itself 
 most freely and easily to its proper work ; a work 
 which, according to the saying; " Thou hast made him 
 a little lower than the angels," is almost divine. Whence 
 it is manifest that of all things that are ordered to 
 secure blessings to men, peace is the best. And hence 
 the word which sounded to the shepherds from above 
 was not riches, nor pleasure, nor honour, nor length 
 of life, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty ; but peace. 
 For the heavenly host said : " Glory to God in the 
 highest, and on earth, peace to men of goodwill." 
 Therefore also, " Peace be with you," was the saluta- 
 
 • Arist. Folit. i. 5, 6.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 185 
 
 tion of the Saviour of mankind. F'or it behoved 
 
 Him, who was the greatest of saviours, to utter in 
 
 His greeting the greatest of saving blessings. And 
 
 this custom His disciples too chose to preserve ; and 
 
 Paul also did the same in his greetings, as may appear 
 
 manifest to all. 
 
 Now that Ave have declared these matters, it is 
 
 plain what is the better, nay the best, way in which 
 mankind may attain to do its proper work. And 
 consequently we have seen the readiest means by 
 which to arrive at the point, for which all our works 
 are ordered, as their ultimate end ; namely, the^ 
 universal peace, which is to be assumed as the first 
 principle for our deductions. As we said, this assump- 
 tion was necessary, for it is as a sign-post to us, that 
 into it we may resolve all that has to be proved, as 
 into a most manifest truth. 
 
 V. — As therefore we have already said, there are 
 three doubts, and these doubts suggest three questions, 
 concerning Tem.poral Monarchy, which in more 
 common speech is called the Empire ; and our purpose 
 is, as we explained, to inquire concerning these ques- 
 tions in their given order, and starting from the first 
 principle which we have just laid down. The first 
 question, then, is whether Temporal Monarchy is neces- 
 sary for the welfare of the world ; and that it is neces- 
 sary can, I think, be shown by the strongest and most
 
 1 86 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 manifest arguments ; for nothing, either of reason or 
 of authority, opposes me. Let us first take the autho- 
 rity of the Philosopher in his PoHtics.* There, on his 
 venerable authority, it is said that where a number of 
 things are arranged to attain an end, it behoves one 
 of them to regulate or govern the others, and the 
 others to submit. And it is not only the authority of 
 his illustrious name which makes this worthy of belief, 
 but also reason, instancing particulars. 
 
 If we take the case of a single man, we shall see 
 the same rule manifested in him : all his powers are 
 ordered to gain happiness ; but his understanding is 
 what regulates and governs all the others ; and other- 
 wise he would never attain to happiness. Again, take 
 a single household : its end is to fit the members 
 thereof to live well ; but there must be one to regulate 
 and rule it, who is called the father of the family, or, 
 it may be, one who holds his office. As the Philosopher 
 says : " Every house is ruled by the oldest."t And, as 
 Homer says, it is his duty to make rules and laws for 
 the rest. Hence the proverbial curse: " Mayst thou 
 have an equal at home."J Take a single village : its 
 end is suitable assistance as regards persons and 
 
 * Arist. Polit. i. 5. 
 
 t Ibid. i. 2, 6, quoting Horn. Od. ix. 114. — (W.) 
 % Ficinus translates : ' ' Uno proverbio che quasi bestemmiando dice, 
 Abbi pari in casa."
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 1S7 
 
 goods, but one in it must be the ruler of the rest, 
 either set over them by another, or with their consent, 
 the head man amongst them. If it be not so, not only 
 do its inhabitants fail of this mutual assistance, but 
 the whole neighbourhood is sometimes wholly ruined 
 by the ambition of many, who each of them wish to 
 rule. If, again, we take a single city : its end is to 
 secure a good and sufficient life to the citizens ; but 
 one man must be ruler in imperfect* as well as in 
 good forms of the state. If it is otherwise, not only 
 is the end of civil life lost, but the city too ceases to 
 be what it was. Lastly, if we take any one kingdom, 
 of which the end is the same as that of a city, only 
 with greater security for its tranquillity, there must 
 be one king to rule and govern. For if this is not 
 so, not only do his subjects miss their end, but the 
 kingdom itself falls to destruction, according to that 
 word of the infallible truth : " Every kingdom divided 
 against itself shall be brought to desolation." If then 
 this holds good in these cases, and in each individual 
 thing which is ordered to one certain end, what we 
 have laid down is true. 
 
 Nov/ it is plain that the whole human race is 
 ordered to gain some end, as has been before shown. 
 There must, therefore, be one to guide and govern, 
 
 * " Ol'h'i/iia" = 7rapfK^d(T€is. V. Arist. Eik. viii. 10; PoL iii. 7.— (W.)
 
 1 88 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 and the proper title for this ofiFice is Monarch or 
 Emperor. And so it is plain that Monarchy or the 
 Empire is necessar}^ for the welfare of the world. 
 
 VI. — And as the part is to the whole, so is the 
 order of parts to the order of the whole. The part is 
 to the whole, as to an end and highest good which is 
 aimed at ; and, therefore, the order in the parts is to 
 the order in the whole, as it is to the end and highest 
 good aimed at. Hence we have it that the goodness 
 of the order of parts docs not exceed the goodness 
 of the order of the whole, but that the converse of this 
 is true. Therefore we find a double order in the 
 world, namely, the order of parts in relation to each 
 other, and their order in relation to some one thing 
 which is not a" part (as there is in the order of the 
 parts of an army in relation to each other, and then in 
 relation to the general) ; and the order of the parts in 
 relation to the one thing which is not a part is the 
 higher, for it is the end of the other order, and the 
 other exists for the sake of it. Therefore, if the 
 form of this order is found in the units of the mass of 
 mankind, much more may we argue by our syllogism 
 that it is found in mankind considered as a whole ; 
 for this latter order, or its form, is better. But as was 
 said in the preceding chapter, and it is sufficiently 
 plain, this order is found in all the units of the mass 
 oi mankind. Therefore it is, or should be, found in
 
 DE MONARCH/A. 1S9 
 
 the mass considered as a whole. And therefore all 
 the parts that we have mentioned, which are com- 
 prised in kingdoms, and the kingdoms themselves 
 ought to be ordered with reference to one Prince or 
 Princedom, that is, with reference to a Monarch or 
 Monarchy. 
 
 Vn. — Further, the whole human race is a whole 
 with reference to certain parts, and, with reference 
 to another whole, it is a part. For it is a whole with 
 reference to particular kingdoms and nations, as we 
 have shown; and it is a part with reference to the 
 whole universe, as is manifest without argument. 
 Therefore, as the lower portions of the whole system 
 of humanity are well adapted to that whole, so that 
 whole is said to be well adapted to the whole which is- 
 above it. It is only under the rule of one prince that 
 the parts of humanity are well adapted to their whole, 
 as may easily be collected from what we have said ; 
 therefore it is only by being under one Princedom, or 
 the rule of a single Prince, that humanity as a whole 
 is well adapted to the Universe, or its Prince, who is 
 the One God. And it therefore follows that Monarchy 
 is necessary for the Avelfare of the world. 
 
 "Vin. — And all is well and at its best which 
 exists according to the will of the first agent, who is 
 God. This is self-evident, except to those who deny 
 that the divine goodness attains to absolute perfection.
 
 I go DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 Now, it is the intention of God that all created things 
 should represent the likeness of God, so far as their 
 proper nature will admit. Therefore was it said : " Let 
 us make man in our image, after our likeness." And 
 though it could not be said that the lower part of 
 creation was made in the image of God, yet all things 
 may be said to be after His likeness, for what is the 
 whole universe but the footprint of the divine good- 
 ness .'' The human race, therefore, is well, nay at its best 
 state, when, so far as can be, it is made like unto God. 
 But the human race is then most made like unto God 
 when most it is one ; for the true principle of oneness 
 is in Him alone. Wherefore it is written : " Hear, O 
 Israel; the Lord thy God is one God." But the 
 race of man is most one when it is united wholly 
 in one body, and it is evident that this cannot be, 
 except when it is subject to one prince. Therefore ' 
 in this subjection mankind is most made like unto 
 God, and, in consequence, such a subjection is in 
 accordance with the divine intention, and it is indeed " 
 well and best for man when this is so, as we showed 
 at the beginning of this chapter, 
 
 IX. — Again, things are well and at their best with 
 every son when he follows, so far as by his proper nature 
 he can, the footsteps of a perfect father. Mankind is the 
 son of heaven, which is most perfect in all its works; 
 for it is "man and the sun which produce man," accord-
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 191 
 
 ing to the second book on Natural Learning* The 
 human race, therefore, is at its best when it imitates the 
 movements of heaven, so far as human nature allows. 
 Andsincethewholeheavenis regulated with one motion, 
 
 . to wit, that of the primum mobile, and by one mover, 
 who is God, in all its parts, movements, and movers 
 (and this human reason readily seizes from science) ; 
 therefore, if our argument be correct, the human race 
 is at its best state when, both in its movements, and 
 
 " in regard to those who move it, it is regulated by a 
 single Prince, as by the single movement of heaven, 
 and by_one law, as by the single motion. Therefore 
 it is evidently necessary for the welfare of the world 
 for there to be a Monarchy, or single Princedom, 
 which men call the Empire. And this thought did 
 Boethius breathe when he said : " Oh happy race of 
 men, if your hearts are ruled by the love which rules 
 the heaven. "-f- 
 
 X. — Wherever there is controversy, there ought 
 to be judgment, otherwise there would be imper- 
 fection without its proper remedy,^ which is im- 
 possible ; for God and Nature, in things necessary, do 
 not fail in their provisions. But it is manifest that there 
 may be controversy between any two princes, where the 
 
 Arist, Phys. Ansc. ii. 2.— (W.) t Be Consol. Phil. ii. met. 8.— (W.) 
 X ' ' Sine pi-op7-io perfect ivo. "
 
 192 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 one is not subject to the other, either from the fault of 
 themselves, or even of their subjects. Therefore between 
 them there should be means of judgment. And since, 
 when one is not subject to the other, he cannot be 
 judged by the other (for there is no rule of equals 
 over equals), there must be a third prince of wider 
 jurisdiction, within the circle of whose laws both may 
 come. Either he will or he will not be a Monarch. 
 If he is, we have what we sought ; if not, then this one 
 again will have an equal, Avho is not subject to his 
 jurisdiction, and then again we have need of a third. 
 And so we must either go on to infinity, which is im- 
 possible, or we must come to that judge who is first 
 and highest ; by whose judgment all controversies 
 shall be either directly or indirectly decided ; and he 
 will be Monarch or Emperor. INIonarchy is therefore 
 necessary to the world, and this the Philosopher saw- 
 when he said : " The world is not intended to be dis- 
 posed in evil order ; ' in a multitude of rulers there 
 is evil, therefore let there be one prince.' "* 
 
 XL — Further, the w^orld is ordered best when 
 justice is most paramount therein : whence Virgil, 
 washing to celebrate that age, which in his own 
 time seemed to be arising, sang in his Bucolics :-\ "Now 
 
 Arist. Metaphys. xii. lO, who quotes from Horn. //. ii. 204.— (W.) 
 
 t Ed. iv. 6.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 193 
 
 doth the Virgin return, and the kingdom of Saturn." 
 For Justice was named " the Virgin," and also Astraea. 
 The kingdom of Saturn was the good time, which 
 they also called the Golden Age. But Justice is 
 paramount only in a Monarchy, and therefore a 
 Monarchy, that is, the Empire, is needed if the 
 world is to be ordered for the best. For better 
 proof of this assum.ption it must be recognised that 
 Justice, considered in itself, and in its proper nature, 
 is a certain rightness or rule of conduct, which re- 
 jects on either side all that deviates from it. It is 
 like whiteness considered as an abstraction, not 
 admitting of degrees. For there are certain forms of 
 this sort which belong to things compounded, and 
 exist themselves in a simple and unchanging essence, 
 as * the Master of the Six Principles rightly says. Yet 
 qualities of this sort admit of degrees on the part of 
 their subjects with which they are connected, accord- 
 ing as in their subjects more or less of their contraries 
 is mingled. Justice, therefore, is strongest in man, 
 both as a state of mind and in practice, where there is 
 least admixture of its opposite ; and then we may say 
 of it, in the words of the Philosopher, that " neither the 
 
 * Gilbert de la Porree, tii54. The " Six Principles" were the last 
 six of the Ten Categories of Aristotle, and the book became one of the 
 chief elementary logic-books of the Middle Ages. Vide Haureau, 
 Philosophie Scolasiique, i^ Partie, p. 452. 
 
 O
 
 194 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 star of morning nor of evening is so admirable."* 
 For then is it like Phoebe, when she looks across 
 the heavens at her brother from the purple of the 
 morning calm. 
 
 Now Justice, as a state of mind,t has a force which 
 opposes it in the will ; for wdiere the will of a man is 
 not pure from all desire, then, though there be Justice, 
 yet there is not Justice in all its ideal brightness ; for 
 there is in that man, however little, yet in some 
 degree, an opposing force ; and therefore they, who 
 would work on the feelings J of a judge, are rightly 
 repelled. But, in practice, § Justice finds an opposing 
 force in what men are able to do. For, seeing that it 
 is a virtue regulating our conduct towards other men, 
 how shall any act according to Justice if he has not 
 the power of rendering to all their due } Therefore it 
 is plain that the operation of Justice will be wide in 
 proportion to the power of the just man. 
 
 From this let us argue : Justice is strongest in the 
 world when it is in one who is most willing and most 
 powerful ; only the Monarch is this ; therefore, only 
 when Justice is in the Monarch is it strongest in the 
 world. This pro-syllogism goes on through the 
 second figure, with an involved negative, and is like 
 
 From Arist. ir/z^/rj, V. I. — (W.) + " Quanitim ad habitum" 
 X '^ Fassionare.'^ § " Quantum ad operationem."
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 195 
 
 this : All B is A ; only C is A ; therefore only C is B : 
 or all B is A ; nothing but C is A ; therefore nothing 
 but C is B. 
 
 Our previous explanation makes the first pro- 
 position apparent : the second is proved thus, first in 
 regard to will, and secondly in regard to power. 
 First it must be observed that the strongest opponent 
 of Justice is Appetite, as Aristotle intimates in the 
 fifth book to Nicomachus.* Remove Appetite alto- 
 gether, and there remains nothing adverse to Justice ; 
 and therefore it is the opinion of the Philosopher 
 that nothing should be left to the judge, if it can be 
 decided by law ;t and this ought to be done for fear 
 of Appetite, which easily perverts men's minds. Where, 
 then, there is nothing to be wished for, there can be 
 no Appetite, for the passions cannot exist if their 
 objects are destroyed. But the Monarch has nothing 
 to desire, for his jurisdiction is bounded only by the 
 ocean ; and this is not the case with other princes, 
 whose kingdoms are bounded by those of their neigh- 
 bours ; as, for instance, the kingdom of Castile is 
 bounded by the kingdom of Aragon. From which 
 it follows that the Monarch is able to be the purest 
 embodiment of Justice among men. 
 
 Further, as Appetite in some degree, however 
 
 * Eih. V. 2.— (W.) + Rhetoric, i. i.— (Vv-.) 
 
 O 2
 
 196 DE MONARCHIA, 
 
 small, clouds the habit of Justice, so does Chanty, or 
 rightly-directed affection, sharpen and enlighten it. 
 In whomsoever, therefore, rightly-directed affection 
 may chiefly dwell, in him may Justice best have 
 place : and of this sort is the Monarch. Therefore 
 where a Monarch reigns Justice is, or at least may 
 be, strongest. That rightly-directed affections work- 
 as we have said, we may see thus : Appetite, scorn- 
 ing* what in itself belongs to man, seeks for other 
 things outside him ; but Charity sets aside all else, 
 and seeks God and man, and consequently the good 
 of man. And since of all the good things that men 
 can have the greatest is to live in peace (as we have 
 already said), and as it is Justice which most chiefly 
 brings peace, therefore Charity will chiefly make 
 Justice strong, and the more so in proportion to its 
 own strength. 
 
 And it is clear that right affections ought to exist 
 in a Monarch more than in any other man for this 
 reason : the object of love is the more loved the 
 nearer it is to himi that loves ; but men are nearer 
 to a Monarch than they are to other princes ; there- 
 fore it is by a Monarch that they are, or ought to be, 
 most loved. The first proposition is manifest if the 
 nature of activity and passivity are considered. The 
 
 * "P£7sdtas hominum ^' =■*' facullas per se subsistendi." — Ducange.
 
 DE MONARCH/A. 197 
 
 second is manifest because men are brought near to a 
 Monarch in their totality,* but to other princes only 
 partially ; and it is only by means of the ]\Ionarch 
 that men are brought near other princes at all. Thus 
 the Monarch cares for all primarily and directly, 
 whereas other princes only care for their subjects 
 through the Monarch, and because their care for 
 their subjects descends from the supreme care of the 
 Monarch. 
 
 Again, a cause has the nature of a cause in pro- 
 portion as it is more universal ; for the lower cause is 
 such only on account of the higher one, as appears 
 from the Treatise on Causes. f And, in proportion as 
 a cause is really a cause, it loves Avhat it effects ; for 
 such love follows the cause by itself. Now Monarchy 
 is the most universal cause of men living well, for 
 other princes work only through the Monarch, as 
 we have said ; and it therefore follows that it is the 
 Monarch who will most chiefly love the good of men. 
 But that in practice the Monarch is most disposed to 
 work Justice, who can doubt, except indeed a man 
 
 * ^' Secundum totum." 
 
 + A compilation from the Arabians, or perhaps Aristotle or Proclus, 
 which, under various names, passed for a work of Aristotle, and is 
 ascribed by Albert the Great to a certain David the Jew. It is quoted 
 in the twelfth century, and was commented on by Albert and Thomas 
 Aquinas. Vide Jourdain, Recherches stir les traductions d'Aristote (1842), 
 pp. 114, 184, 193, 195, 445 ; Philosophie de S. Thomas (1858), i. 94,
 
 3 93 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 \v\\o understands not the meaning of the word ? for if 
 he be really a Monarch he cannot have enemies. 
 
 The principle assumed being therefore sufficiently- 
 explained^ the conclusion is certain, to wit, that a. 
 Monarch is necessary that the world may be ordered 
 for the best, 
 
 XIL— Again, the human race is ordered best when 
 it is most free. This will be manifest if we see what 
 is the principle of freedom. It must be understood 
 that the first principle of our freedom is freedom 
 of will, which many have in their mouth, but few 
 indeed understand. For they come so far as to say 
 that the freedom of the will means a free judgment 
 concerning will. And this is true. But what is 
 meant by the words is far from them : and they do 
 just as our logicians do all day long with certain 
 propositions which are set as examples in the books 
 of logic^ as that, " the three angles of a triangle are 
 equal to two right angles."* 
 
 Therefore I say that Judgment is between Appre- 
 hension and Appetite. First, a man apprehends a 
 thing ; then he judges it to be good or bad ; then he 
 pursues or avoids it accordingly. If therefore the 
 Judgment guides the Appetite wholly, and in no way 
 
 * Cf. Arist. Magna Jlloral, i. i : "It would be absurd if a man, 
 wishing to prove that the angles of a triangle were equal to two right 
 angles, assumed as his principle that the soul is immortal." — WiTTE.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 199 
 
 is forestalled by the Appetite, then is the Judgment 
 free. But if the Appetite in any Avay at all forestalls 
 the Judgment and guides it, then the Judgment cannot 
 be free : it is not its own : it is captive to another 
 power. Therefore the brute beasts cannot have 
 freedom of Judgment ; for in them the Appetite 
 always forestalls the Judgment. Therefore, too, it is 
 that intellectual beings whose wills are unchangeable, 
 and souls which are separate from the body, which 
 have gone hence in peace, do not lose the freedom 
 of their walls, because their wishes cannot change ; 
 nay, it is in full strength and completeness that their 
 wills are free.* 
 
 It is therefore again manifest that this liberty, or 
 this principle of all our liberty, is the greatest gift 
 bestowed by God on mankind : by it alone we gain 
 happinessf as men : by it alone we gain happiness 
 elsewhere as gods. J But if this is so, \\\\o will say that 
 human kind is not in its best state, when it can most 
 use this principle "i But he who lives under a Monarchy 
 is most free. Therefore let it be understood that he is 
 free who exists not for another's sake but for his own, 
 as the Philosopher, in his Treatise of simple Being, 
 thought. § For everything which exists for the sake 
 
 * Cf. Purgatorio, xviii. 22. — Witte. + '■'■ Fdicitamur^' 
 
 X "UtDii-" cf. Paradiso, v. 19. — WiTTE. 
 § I.e. Metaphys. i, 2.— (W.)
 
 200- DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 of some other thing, is necessitated by that other 
 thing, as a road has to run to its ordained end. Men 
 exist for themselves, and not at the pleasure of 
 others, only if a Monarch rules ; for then only are 
 the perverted forms of government set right, while 
 democracies, oligarchies, and tyrannies, drive man- 
 kind into slavery, as is obvious to any who goes 
 about among them all ; and public power* is in the 
 hands of kings and aristocracies, which they call the 
 rule of the best, and champions of popular liberty. 
 And because the Monarch loves his subjects much, 
 as we have seen, he wishes all men to be good, which 
 cannot be the case in perverted forms of govern- 
 ment :t therefore the Philosopher says, in his Politics :% 
 " In the bad state the good man is a bad citizen, but 
 in a good state the two coincide." Good states in 
 this way aim at liberty, that in them men may live 
 for themselves. The citizens exist not for the good 
 of consuls, nor the nation for the good of its king ; 
 but the consuls for the good of the citizens, and the 
 king for the good of his nation. For as the laws 
 are made to suit the state, and not the state to suit 
 the laws, so those who live under the laws are not 
 ordered for the legislator, but he for them ;§ as also 
 
 * " Folitizant reges." + '' Oblique folitizanies" 
 
 X Polit. iii. 4. § Ibid. iii. 16, 17.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 201 
 
 the Philosopher holds, in what he has left us on the 
 present subject. Hence, too, it is clear that although 
 the king or the consul rule over the other citizens in 
 respect of the means* of government, yet hi_respect 
 of the_end of government they are the servants of 
 the citizens, and especially the Monarch, who, without 
 doubt, must be held the servant of all. Thus it 
 becomes clear that the Monarch is bound by the end 
 appointed to himself in making his laws. Therefore 
 mankin d is best off under a Monarchy, and hence it 
 follows that Monarchy is necessary for the welfare of 
 the ux)rld. 
 
 XIII. — Further, he who can be best fitted to rule 
 can best fit others. For in every action the main end 
 of the agent, whether acting by necessity of nature or 
 voluntarily, is to unfold his own likeness ; and there- 
 fore every agent, so far as he is of this sort, delights in 
 action. For since all that is desires its own existence, 
 and since the agent in acting enlarges his own existence 
 in some way, delight follows action of necessity ; for 
 delight is inseparable from gaining what is desired. 
 Nothing therefore acts unless it is of such sort as that 
 which is acted on ought to be ; therefore the Philosopher 
 said in his Metaphysics,'^ " Everything which becomes 
 
 * ^' Rcspcctu via . . . respcctu termini " 
 t Mdaphys. ix. 8.— {\Y.)
 
 202 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 rxtual from being potential, becomes so by means of 
 something actual of the same kind," and were any- 
 thing to try to act in any other way it would fail. 
 Hence we may overthrow the error of those who 
 think to form the moral character of others by speak- 
 ing well and doing ill ; forgetting that the hands of 
 Jacob were more persuasive with his father than his 
 v/ords, though his hands deceived and his voice spake 
 truth. Hence the Philosopher, to Nicomachus : " In 
 matters of feeling and action, words are less to be 
 trusted than deeds."* And therefore God said to 
 Da.vid in his sin, " What hast thou to do to declare my 
 statutes?" as though He would say, "Thou speakest 
 in vain, for thou art different from what thou speakest." 
 Hence it may be gathered that he needs to be fitted 
 for his work in the best way who wishes to fit others. 
 But the Monarch is the only one who can be 
 fitted In the best possible way to govern. Which is 
 thus proved : Each thing is the more easily and 
 perfectly qualified for any habit, or actual work, 
 the less there is in it of what is contrary to such 
 a disposition. Therefore, they who have never even 
 heard of philosophy, arrive at a habit of truth in 
 philosophy more easily and completely than those 
 who have listened to it at odd times, and are filled with 
 
 * Arist. Eth. x. I.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 203 
 
 false opinions. For v/liich reason Galen well says : 
 " Such as these require double time to acquire 
 knowledge."* A Monarch then has nothing to tempt 
 appetite, or, at least, less than any other man, as 
 we have shown before ; v^hereas other princes have 
 much ; and appetite is the only corrupter of righteous- 
 ness, and the only impediment to justice. A Monarch 
 therefore is Avholly, or at least more than any other 
 prince, disposed to govern well : for in him there may be 
 judgment and justice more strongly than in any other. 
 But these two things are the pre-eminent attributes 
 of a maker of law, and of an executor of law, as that 
 most holy king David testified when he asked of God 
 the things which were befitting the king, and the 
 king's son, saying : " Give the king thy judgment, O 
 God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son."t 
 
 We were right then when we assumed that only 
 the Monarch can be best fitted to rule. Therefore 
 only the Monarch can in the best way fit other men. 
 Therefore it follows that Monarchy is necessary for 
 the best ordering of the world. 
 
 XTV.— And where a thing can be done by one agent, 
 it is better to do it by one than by several, for this 
 reason : Let it be possible to do a certain thing by 
 
 * De cognosc. animi mojins, c, 10. — WiTTE. 
 
 * Cf. Farad, xiii, 95.— (W.)
 
 2 04 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 means of A, and also by means of A and B. If 
 therefore what is done by A and B can be done by A 
 alone, it is useless to add B ; for nothing follows from 
 the addition ; for the same end which A and B pro- 
 duced is produced also by A. All additions of this 
 kind are useless and superfluous : all that is super- 
 fluous is displeasing to God and Nature : and all that 
 is displeasing to God and Nature is bad, as is 
 manifest. It therefore follows not only that it is 
 better that a thing should be done by one than by 
 many agents, if it is possible to produce the effect by 
 one ; but also that to produce the effect by one is 
 good, and to produce it by many is simply bad. 
 Again, a thing is said to be better by being nearer to 
 the best, and the end has the nature of the best. But 
 for a thing to be done by one agent is better, for so 
 it comes nearer to the end. And that so it comes 
 nearer is manifest ; for let C be the end which may be 
 reached by A, or by A and B together : plainly it is 
 longer to reach C by A and B together than by B 
 alone. But mankind may be governed by one 
 supreme prince, who is, the Monarch, 
 
 But it must be carefully observed that when we 
 say that mankind may be ruled by one supreme 
 prince, we do not mean that the most trifling judg- 
 ments for each particular town are to proceed imme- 
 diately from him. For municipal laws sometimes fail,
 
 DE MONARCH/A. 205 
 
 and need guidance, as the Philosopher shows in his 
 fifth book to Nicomachus, when he praises equity.* 
 For nations and kingdoms and states have, each of 
 them, certain pecuHarities which must be regulated by 
 different laws. For law is the rule which directs life. 
 Thus the Scythians need one rule, for they live beyond 
 the seventh climate,t and suffer cold which is almost 
 unbearable, from the great inequality of their days and 
 nights. But the Garamantes need a different law, for 
 their country is equinoctial, and they cannot wear 
 many clothes, from the excessive heat of the air, 
 because the day is as long as the darkness of the 
 night. But our meaning is that it is in those 
 matters which are common to all men, that men 
 should be ruled by one Monarch, and be governed 
 by a rule common to them all, with a view to 
 their peace. And the individual princes must receive 
 this rule of life or law from him, just as the prac- 
 tical intellect receives its major premiss from the 
 speculative intellect, under which it places its own 
 particular premiss, and then draws its particular 
 
 * Eih. V. 14.— (W.) 
 
 + Ptolemy, the medieval authority on geography, divided the known 
 world into Kk'niara, zones of slope toward^ the pole, or belts of latitude, 
 eight of which from the equinoctial to the mouths of the Tanais and the 
 Riphccan mountains. The seventh "clima" passed over the mouths 
 of the Borysthenes. See Mercator's map in Bertius' Theatrum Geo- 
 graphic Veteris (1618), art. "Ptolemy" in Smith's Dictionary oj 
 Biography, p. 577. Dictionary of Antiquities, art. "Clima."
 
 2o6 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 conclusion, with a view to action. And it is not only- 
 possible for one man to act as we have described ; it 
 is necessary that it should proceed from one man only 
 to avoid confusion in our first principles. Moses 
 himself wrote in his law that he had acted thus. For 
 he took the elders of the tribes of the children of Israel, 
 and left to them the lesser judgments, reserving to 
 himself such as were more important, and wider in 
 their scope ; and the elders carried these wider ones 
 to their tribes, according as they were applicable to 
 each separate tribe. 
 
 Therefore it is better for the human race to be 
 ruled by one than by many, and therefore there 
 should be a Monarch, who is a single prince ; and 
 if it is better, it is more acceptable to God, since 
 God always wills what is best. And since of these 
 two ways of government the one is not only the 
 better, but the best of all, it follows not only that 
 this one is more acceptable to God as between one 
 and many, but that it is the most acceptable. There- 
 fore it is best for the human race to be governed by- 
 one man ; and Monarchy is necessary for the welfare 
 of the world. 
 
 XV. — I say also that Being, and Unity, and the 
 Good come in order after the fifth mode of priority.* 
 
 * Arist. Caieg., e.g.: Priority is said in five ways — i. Y\r&i\n time. 
 2. First in presupposition. 3. First in order. 4. First in excellence. 
 5. First in logical sequence.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 207 
 
 For Being comes by nature before Unity, and Unity 
 before Good. Where Being is most, there Unity is 
 greatest ; and where Unity is greatest, there Good is 
 also greatest ; and in proportion as anything is far 
 from Being in its highest form, is it far from Unity, 
 and therefore from Good. Therefore in every kind of 
 things, that which is most one is best, as the Philo- 
 sopher holds in the treatise about simple Being. There- 
 fore it appears that to be one is the root of Good, and 
 to be many the root of Evil. Therefore, Pythagoras in 
 his parallel tables placed the one, or Unity, under tlie 
 line of good, and the many under the line of Evil ; as 
 appears from the first book of the Metaphysics.^ 
 Hence we may see that to sin is nothing else than to 
 pass on from the one which we despise and to seek 
 many things, as the Psalmist saw when he said : 
 "By the fruit of their corn and wine and oil, are they 
 multiphed."t 
 
 Hence it is plain that whatever is good, is good for 
 this reason, that it consists in unity. And because 
 concord is a good thing in so far as it is concord, it 
 is manifest that it consists in a certain unity, as its 
 proper root, the nature of which will appear if v/e find 
 the real nature of concord. Concord then is the 
 uniform motion of many wills ; and hence it appeai-s 
 
 * V. Arist. Mdaph. i, 5 ; Ethics i. 4 ; cf. Ritter and Preller, 
 Hist. Philos. sec. 105 f Ps. iv. S (vulg.).
 
 2oS DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 that a unity of wills, by which is meant their uniform 
 motion, is the root of concord, nay, concord itself. 
 For as we should say that many clods of earth are 
 concordant, because that they all gravitate together 
 towards the centre ; and that many flames are con- 
 cordant because that they all ascend together towards 
 thecircumference,if they did this of their own free will, 
 so we say that many men are in concord because that 
 they are all moved together, as regards their willing, 
 to one thing, which one thing is formally in their 
 wills just as there is one quality formally in the clods 
 of earth, that is gravity, and one in the flame of fire, 
 that is lightness. For the force of willing is a certain 
 power ; but the quality of good which it apprehends 
 is its form ; which form, like as others, being one is 
 multiplied in itself, according to the multiplication 
 of the matters which receive it, as the soul, and 
 numbers, and other forms which belong to what is 
 compound.* 
 
 To explain our assumption as we proposed, let us 
 argue thus : All concord depends on unity which is in 
 wills ; the human race, when it is at its best, is a 
 kind of concord ; for as one man at his best is a kind 
 of concord, and as the like is true of the family, the 
 city, and the kingdom ; so is it of the whole human 
 
 * On the scholastic doctrine of forms, v. Thorn. Aquin. Summ^ 
 I. 105, art. 4.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 209 
 
 race. Therefore the human race at its best depends 
 on the unity which is in will. But this cannot be 
 . unless there be one will to be the single mistress and 
 regulating influence of all the rest. For the wills of 
 men, on account of the blandishments of youth, 
 require one to direct them, as Aristotle shows in the 
 tenth book of his Ethics.^ And this cannot be unless 
 there is one prince o\''er all, whose will shall be the 
 mistress and regulating influence of all the others. 
 But if all these conclusions be true, as they are, it is 
 necessary f or the highest welfare of the human race 
 t hat ther e should be a Monarch in the world ; and 
 therefore Monarchy is necessary for the good of the 
 world. 
 
 XVI. — To all these reasons alleged above a 
 memorable experience adds its confirmation. I mean 
 that condition of mankind which the Son of God, 
 when, for the salvation of man, He was about to 
 put on man, either waited for, or, at the moment 
 when He willed, Himself so ordered. For if, from 
 the fall of our first parents, which was the turning 
 point at which all our going astray began, we carry 
 our thoughts over the distribution of the human race 
 and the order of its times, we shall find that never but 
 under the divine Augustus, who was sole ruler,, and 
 
 • Arist. Eth. X. 5.— (W.)
 
 2IO DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 under whom a perfect Monarchy existed, was the 
 world everywhere quiet. And that then the human 
 race v/as happy in the tranquilhty of universal peace, 
 this is the witness of all writers of history ; this is the 
 witness of famous poets ; this, too, he who wrote the 
 story of the " meekness and gentleness of Christ " has 
 thought fit to attest. And last of all, Paul has called 
 that most blessed condition "the fulness of the times," 
 For then, indeed, time was full, and all the things of 
 time ; because no office belonging to our felicity 
 wanted its minister. But how the world has fared 
 since that ^' seamless robe " has suffered rending by 
 the talons of ambition, we may read in books ; would 
 that we might not see it with our eyes. Oh, race of 
 mankind ! what storms must toss thee, v.'hat losses 
 must thou endure, Avhat shipwrecks must buffet thee, 
 as long as thou, a beast of many heads, strivest after 
 contrary things. Thou art sick in both thy faculties 
 of understanding ; thou art sick in thine affections. 
 Unanswerable reasons fail to heal thy higher under- 
 standing ; the very sight of experience convinces not 
 thy lower understanding ; not even the sweetness of 
 divine persuasion charms thy affections, when it 
 breathes into thee through the music of the Holy 
 Ghost : " Behold, how good and how pleasant a thing 
 it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity."* 
 
 * Ps. cxxxii. I.— (W.)
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 I. — " Why do the heathen rage, and the people 
 imagine a vain thing ? The kings of the earth stand up, 
 and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord 
 and against His anointed, saying : * Let us break their 
 bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us."'-:= 
 As we commonly wonder at a new effect, when we have 
 never been face to face with its cause ; so, as soon as 
 we understand the cause, we look down with a kind of 
 scorn on those who remain in wonder. I, myself, was 
 once filled with wonder that the Roman people had 
 become paramount throughout all the earth, with- 
 out any to withstand them ; for when I looked at 
 the thing superficially I thought that this supremacy 
 had been obtained, not by any right, but only by 
 arms and violence. But after that I had carefully 
 and thoroughly examined the matter, when I had 
 
 ♦Ps. ii. 1-3.— (W.) 
 
 p 2
 
 212 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 recognised by the most effectual signs that it was 
 divine providence that had wrought this, my wonder 
 ceased, and a certain scornful contempt has taken its 
 place, when I perceive the nations raging against the 
 pre-eminence of the Roman people ; when I see the 
 people imagining a vain thing, as I of old imagined ; 
 when, above all, I grieve that kings and princes 
 agree in this one matter only, iji_opposing their 
 Lord j_and His one only_Roman Emperor. Wherefore 
 in derision, yet not without a touch of sorrow, I can 
 cry on behalf of the glorious peoj^le and for Caesar, 
 together with him who cried on behalf of the Prince 
 of heaven : " Why do the heathen rage, and the people 
 imagine a vain thing ? The kings of the earth stand 
 up, and the rulers take counsel together against the 
 Lord and against His anointed." But the love which 
 nature implants in us allows not scorn to last for long ; 
 but, like the summer sun that when it has dispersed the 
 morning clouds shines with full brightness, this love 
 prefers to put scorn aside, and to pour forth the 
 light which shall set men right. So, then, to break 
 the bonds of the ignorance of those kings and princes, 
 and to show that mankind is free from iJicir yoke, I 
 will comfort myself in company with that most holy 
 prophet, whom I follow, taking the words which come 
 after : " Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast 
 away their yoke from us,"
 
 DE MONARCH! A. 213 
 
 These two things will be sufficiently performed, if 
 I address myself to the second part of the argument, 
 and manifest the truth of the question before us. 
 For thus, if we show that the Roman Empire is by 
 right, not only shall we disperse the clouds of ignor- 
 ance from the eyes of those princes who have wrongl}' 
 seized the helm of public government, falsely imput- 
 ing this thing to the Roman people; but all men 
 shall understand that they are free from the yoke 
 of these usurpers. The truth of the question can be 
 made clear not only by the light of human reason, 
 but also__by the ray of God's authority ; and when 
 these two coincide, then heaven and earth must agree 
 together. Supported, therefore, by this conviction, 
 and trusting in the testimony both of reason and of 
 authority, I proceed to settle the second question. 
 
 II. — Inquiry concerning the truth of the first 
 doubt has been made as accurately as the nature 
 of the subject permitted ; we have now to inquire 
 concerning the second, which is : Whether the Roman 
 people assumed to itself of right the dignity of the 
 Empire } And the first thing in this question is to 
 find the truth, to which the reasonings concerning it 
 may be referred as to their proper first principle. 
 
 It must be recognised, then, that as there are 
 three degrees in every art, the mind of the artist, his 
 instrument, and the material on which he works, so
 
 2 14 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 we may look upon nature in three degrees. For 
 nature exists, first, in the mind of the First Agent, who 
 is God ; then in heaven ; as in an instrument, by means 
 of which the likeness of the Eternal Goodness unfolds 
 itself on shapeless* matter. If an artist is perfect 
 in his art, and his instrument is perfect, any fault in 
 the form of his art must be laid to the badness of 
 the material ; and so, since God holds the summit of 
 perfection, and since His instrument, which is heaven, 
 admits of no failure of its due perfection (which is 
 manifest from our philosophy touching heaven), it 
 follovv's that whatever fault is to be found in the lower 
 world is a fault on the part of the subject matter, and 
 is contrary to the intention of God who makes 
 nature,t and of heaven ; and if in this lower world 
 there is aught that is good, it must be ascribed first to 
 the artist, who is God, and then to heaven, the instru- 
 ment of God's art, which men call nature; for the 
 material, being merely a possibility, can do nothing of 
 itself J 
 
 Hence it is apparent that, since all Right § is good, 
 it therefore exists first in the mind of God ; and since 
 all that is in the mind of God is God, according to the 
 
 * " Fhiitantem." f "Dei natiirantis." 
 
 % Witte refers to Farad, xiii. 67, xxix. 32, i, 127-130. Cf. 
 Thom. Aquin. Siivim. I., q. 66, art. 1-3; q. no, art, 2; q. 115, 
 art. 3-6. This view satisfied thinkers to the time of Hooker {E. P. 
 I. iii. ), but was criticised by Bacon, Noz'. Org. i. 66. § "Jits."
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 215 
 
 saying, "What was made, in Him was life ;"* and as 
 God chiefly wishes for what is Himself, it follows that 
 Right is the wish of God, so far as it is in Him. And 
 since in God the will and the wish are the same, it 
 further follows that this Right is the will of God. 
 Again it follovv-s that Right in the world is nothing 
 elsejhanjhejikeness of the will of God, and therefore 
 whatever does not agree with the divine will cannot 
 be Right, and whatever does agree with the divine 
 will is Right itself Therefore to ask if a thing be by 
 Right is only to ask in other vcords if it is what God 
 wills. It may therefore be assumed that what God 
 wills to see in mankind is to be held as real and true 
 Right. 
 
 Besides we must remember Aristotle's teaching in 
 the first book of his Ethics, where he says : " We must 
 not seek for certitude in every matter, but only as far 
 as the nature of the subject admits." f Therefore our 
 arguments from the first principle already found will 
 be sufficient, if from manifest evidence and from the 
 authority of the wise, we seek for the right of that 
 glorious people. The will of God is an invisible 
 thing, but " the invisible things of God are seen, being 
 understood by the things vrhich are made." For 
 when the seal is out of sight, the wax, Vvdiich has its 
 
 *St. Jclini. 3.— (W.) 
 
 ^ Eth. i. 7, from Thorn. Aq. Lcct. XI.— (W.)
 
 2i6 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 impression, gives manifest evidence of it, though it be 
 unseen ; nor is it strange that the will of God must 
 be sought by signs ; for the human will, except to the 
 person himself who wills, is only discerned by signs.* 
 III. — My answer then to the question is, that it was 
 by right, and not by usurpation, that the Roman people 
 assumed to itself the office of Monarchy, or, as men 
 call it, the Empire, over all mankind. For in the 
 first place it is fitting that the noblest people should 
 be preferred to all others ; the Roman people was the 
 noblest ; therefore it is fitting that it should be pre- 
 ferred to all others. By this reasoning I make my 
 proof; for since honour is the reward of goodness, 
 and since to be preferred is always honour, therefore 
 to be preferred is always the reward of goodness. It 
 is plain that men are ennobled for their virtues ; that 
 is, for their own virtues or for those of their ancestors ; 
 for nobleness is virtue and ancestral wealth, according 
 to Aristotle in his Politics ; and according to Juvenal, 
 "There is no nobleness of soul but virtue,"t which two 
 statements refer to two sorts of nobleness, our own 
 and that of our ancestors,^ 
 
 * The image of the wax and seal was a favourite one. V. Farad. 
 vii. 68, viii. 127, xiii. 67-75, quoted by Witte, who also refers to the 
 £j)ist. ad Reges, § 8, p. 444, ed. Fraticelli. 
 
 + Arist. Pol. iii. 12; Juv. viii. 20.— (W.) 
 
 X Witte refers to Dante's commentary on his own Canzone in the 
 Convito iv. 3, and the Farad, xvi. I.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 217 
 
 To be preferred, therefore, is, according to reason, 
 the fitting reward of the noble. And since rewards 
 must be measured by desert, according to that saying 
 of the Gospel, "with what measure ye mete, it shall 
 be measured to you again ; " therefore to the most 
 noble the highest place should be given. The testi- 
 monies of the ancients confirm our opinion ; for 
 Virgil, our divine poet, testifies throughout his ySneid, 
 that men may ever remember it, that the glorious 
 king, ^neas, was the father of the Roman people. 
 And this Titus Livius, the famous chronicler of the 
 deeds of the Romans, confirms in the first part of his 
 work, which takes its beginning from the capture of 
 Troy. The nobleness of this most unconquerable 
 and most pious ancestor not only in regard to his 
 own great virtue, but also to that of his forefathers 
 and of his wives, the nobleness of whom was combined 
 in their descendant by the rightful law of descent, I 
 cannot unfold at length ; " I can but touch lightly on 
 the outlines of the truth." * 
 
 For the virtue then of yEneas himself, hear what 
 our poet tells us when he introduces Ilioneus in the 
 first j^neid, praying thus : "yEneas was our king ; in 
 justice and piety he has not left a peer, nor any to 
 equal him in war." Hear Virgil in the sixth ALneid, 
 
 * " Sed summa sequar vestigia rerum," Virg. ^n. i. 342 
 
 ("fastigia" in all good MSS. and edd.).
 
 2iS DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 when he speaks of the death of Misenus, who had 
 been Hector's attendant in war, and, after Hector's 
 death, had attached himself to ^neas ; for there 
 Virgil says that Misenus " followed as good a man ; " 
 thus comparing yEneas to Hector, whom* Homer ever 
 praises above all men, as the Philosopher witnesses in 
 his Ethics, in what he writes to Nicomachus on habits 
 to be avoided. 
 
 But, as for hereditary virtue, he was ennobled 
 from all three continents both by his forefathers and 
 his wives. From Asia came his immediate ancestor, 
 Assaracus, and others who reigned in Phrygia, which 
 is a part of Asia. Therefore Virgil writes in the third 
 jEneid: "After that it had seemed good to Heaven 
 to overthrow the power of Asia, and the guiltless race 
 of Priam." From Europe came the male founder of 
 his race, Vv'ho was Dardanus ; from Africa his grand- 
 mother Electra, daughter of the great king Atlas, to 
 both which things the poet testifies in the eighth 
 jiEneid, where ^Eneas says to Evander : " Dardanus, 
 the father of our city, and its founder, whom the 
 Greeks call the son of Atlas and Electra, came to the 
 race of Teucer — Electra, whose sire was great Atlas, 
 on whose shoulders rests the circle of heaven." But 
 in the third ^neid Virgil says that Dardanus drew his 
 
 * ^n. i. 544, vi. 170. //. xxiv. 258, quoted in Aristotle, Ethics, 
 ■s'ii I.— (v;.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 219 
 
 origin from Europe. " There is a land which the 
 Greeks have named Hesperia, an ancient land, strong 
 and wealthy, where the ^notrians dwell ; it is said 
 that now their descendants have named the country 
 Italy, from the name of their king. There is our 
 rightful home ; from that land did Dardanus come." 
 That Atlas came from Africa, the mountain called by 
 his name, which stands in that continent, bears 
 witness ; and Orosius says that it is in Africa in his 
 description of the world, where he writes : " Its 
 boundary is Mount Atlas, and the islands which are 
 called ' the happy isles.' " " Its "—that is, " of Africa," 
 of which he was speaking.* 
 
 Likewise I find that by marriage also ^neas was 
 ennobled ; his first wife, Creusa, the daughter of king 
 Priam, was from Asia, as may be gathered from our 
 previous quotations ; and that she was his wife our 
 poet testifies in the third yEiieid, where Andromache 
 asks ^neas: "What of the boy Ascanius, whom 
 Creusa bore to thee, while the ruins of Troy were yet 
 smoking } Lives he yet to breathe this air } " t The 
 second wife was Dido, the queen and foundress 
 of Carthage in Africa. That she was the wife of 
 ^neas our poet sings in his fourth JEneid, where he 
 
 * j^n. iii. I, viii. 134, iii. 163 ; Oios. i. 2.— (W.) 
 fill. 339. The best INISS. of Yirsil omit "peperit fumante 
 Creusa."
 
 2 20 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 says of Dido : " No more does Dido think of love in 
 secret. She calls it marriage, and with this name she 
 covers her sin." The third wife Avas Lavinia, the 
 mother of Albans and Romans alike, the daughter of 
 king Latinus and his heir, if we may trust the testi- 
 mony of our poet in his last yEneid, where he intro- 
 duces Turnus conquered, praying to ^neas thus : 
 " Thou hast conquered, and the Ausonians have seen 
 me lift my hands in prayer for mercy ; Lavinia is 
 thine."* This last wife was from Italy, the noblest 
 region of Europe. 
 
 And now that we have marked these things for 
 evidence of our assertion, who will not rest persuaded 
 that the father of the Romans, and therefore the 
 Romans themselves, were the noblest people under 
 heaven .'' Who can fail to see the divine predestina- 
 tion shown forth by the double meeting of blood 
 from every part of the world in the veins of one 
 man .-' 
 
 IV.— Again, that which is helped to its perfection 
 by miracles is willed by God, and therefore it is of 
 right. This is manifestly true, for as Thomas says in 
 his third book against the Gentiles, "a miracle is 
 something done by God beyond the commonly 
 established order of things." f And so he proves that 
 
 ■ ^n. xii. 936. — (W.) t Contra Gait. iii. loi.— (W.)
 
 DE AIONARCHIA. 221 
 
 God alone can work miracles ; and his proof is 
 strengthened by the authority of Moses ; for on the 
 occasion of the plague of lice, when the magicians of 
 Pharaoh used natural principles artfully, and then 
 failed, they said: "This is the finger of God."* A 
 miracle therefore being the immediate working of the 
 first agent, without the co-operation of any secondary 
 agents, as Thomas himself sufficiently proves in the 
 book which we have mentioned, it is impious to say 
 where a miracle is worked in aid of anything, that 
 that thing is not of God, as something well pleasing 
 to him, which he foresaw. Therefore it is religious 
 to accept the contradictory of this. The Roman 
 Empire has been helped to its perfection by miracles ; 
 therefore it was \\-illed by God, and consequently ^^ as 
 and is by right.f 
 
 It is proved by the testimony of illustrious authors 
 that God stretched forth His hand to work miracles 
 on behalf of the Roman Empire. For Livy, in the 
 first part of his work, testifies that a shield fell from 
 heaven into the city chosen of God in the time of 
 Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, whilst he 
 was sacrificing after the manner of the Gentiles. 
 Lucan mentions this miracle in the ninth book of his 
 Pharsalia, when he is describing the incredible force 
 
 * Exod. vii. 12-15. — (^V.) 
 
 t Witte refers to the Ep. ad Rcgcs, § 8, for the same thought.
 
 222 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 of the South wind. He says : " Surely it was thus, 
 while Numa was offering sacrifices, that the shield fell 
 with which the chosen patrician youth moves along. 
 The South wind, or the North wind, had spoiled the 
 people that bore our shields."* And when the Gauls 
 had taken all the city, and, under cover of the dark- 
 ness, were stealing on to attack the Capitol itself, the 
 capture of which was all that remained to destroy 
 the very name of Rome, then as Livy, and many 
 other illustrious writers agree in testifying, a goose, 
 which none had seen before, gave a warning note of 
 the approach of the Gauls, and aroused the guards to 
 defend the Capitol. f And our poet commemorates 
 the event in his description of the shield of ^neas in 
 the eighth book. " Higher, and in front of the temple 
 stood Manlius, the watchman of the Tarpeian keep, 
 guarding the rock of the Capitol. The palace stood 
 out clear, rough with the thatch which Romulus had 
 laid ; here the goose, inlaid in silver, fluttered on the 
 portico of gold, as it warned the Romans that the 
 Gauls were even now on the threshold.''^ 
 
 And when the nobility of Rome had so fallen 
 under the onset of Hannibal, that nothing remained for 
 the final destruction of the Roman commonwealth, 
 but the Carthaginian assault on the city, Livy tells us 
 
 * Luc. ix. 477.— (W.) + V. Liv. v. 47, and the Conznio, iv. 5-— (W.) 
 
 X^En. viii. 652. — (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 223 
 
 in the course of his history of the Punic war, that a 
 sudden dreadful storm of hail fell upon them, so that 
 the victors could not follow up their victory.* 
 
 Was not the escape of Cloelia wonderful, a woman, 
 and captive in the power of Porsenna, when she burst 
 her bonds, and, by the marvellous help of God, swam 
 across the Tiber, as almost all the historians of Rome 
 tell us, to the glory of that city ? f 
 
 Thus was it fitting that He should work Avho 
 foresaw all things from the beginning, and ordained 
 them in the beauty of His order ; so that He, who 
 when made visible was to show forth miracles for the 
 sake of things invisible, should, whilst invisible, also 
 show forth miracles for the sake of things visible. 
 
 V. — Further, whoever works for the good of the 
 state, works with Right as his end. This may be 
 shown as follows. Right is that proportion of man 
 to man as to things, and as to persons, which, when it 
 is preserved, preserves society, and when it is destroyed, 
 destroys society. J The description of Right in the 
 Digest does not give the essence of right, but only 
 describes it for practical purposes.§ If therefore our 
 definition comprehends well the essence and reason of 
 
 * Liv. xxvi. II ; Oros. iv. 17. — (W.) 
 
 tLiv. ii. 13; Oros. ii. 5.— (W.) % Cf. Aristotle, ^//^.-Vj, v. 6. 
 § '■'Jus est ars boni et requi."' L. i, fr. Dig. Dejiistitia et Jzire, 
 i. i.-{W.)
 
 2 24 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 Right, and if the end of any society is the common 
 good of its members, it is necessary that the end of all 
 Right is the common good, and it is impossible that 
 that can be Right, which does not aim at the common 
 good. Therefore Cicero says well in the first book of 
 his Rhetoric : " Laws must always be interpreted for 
 the good of the state."* If laws do not aim at the good 
 of those who live under them, they are laws only in 
 name ; in reality they cannot be laws. For it behoves 
 them to bind men together for the common good ; 
 and Seneca therefore says well in his book " on the four 
 virtues: " " Law is the bond of human society."t It is 
 therefore plain that whoever aims at the good of the 
 state, aims at the end of Right ; and therefore, if the 
 Romans aimed at the good of the state, we shall say 
 truly that they aimed at the end of Right. 
 
 That in bringing the whole world into subjection, 
 they aimed at this good, their deeds declare. They 
 renounced all selfishness, a thing always contrary to 
 the public weal ; they cherished universal peace 
 and liberty ; and that sacred, pious, and glorious 
 people are seen to have neglected their own private 
 interests that they might follow public objects 
 for the good of all mankind. Therefore was it well 
 
 * De Invent, i. 3S.— (W.) 
 
 t Not Seneca, but Martin, Bp. of Biaga, fsSo.— (W.) V. Biog. 
 Univ.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 written : " The Roman Empire springs from the 
 fountain of piety."* 
 
 But seeing that nothing is known of the intention 
 of an agent who acts by free choice to any but the 
 agent himself, save only by external signs, and since 
 reasonings must be examined according to the subject 
 matter (as has already been said), it will be sufficient 
 on this point if we set forth proofs which none can 
 doubt, of the intention of the Roman people, both in 
 their public bodies and individually. 
 
 Concerning those public bodies by which men 
 seem in a way to be bound to the state, the 
 authority of Cicero alone, in the second book of the 
 De Officiis, will suffice. " So long," he says, " as the 
 Em.pire of the republic was maintained not by in- 
 justice, but by the benefits which it conferred, we 
 fought either for our allies or for the Empire. Our 
 wars brought with, them an ending which was either 
 indulgent, or else was absolutely necessaiy. All 
 kings, peoples, and nations found a port of refuge 
 in the Senate. Our magistrates and generals alike 
 sought renown by defending our provinces and our 
 allies with good faith and with justice. Our govern- 
 ment might have been called not so much Empire, as 
 a Protectorate of the whole world." So wrote Cicero.f 
 
 * ^^ Rovianujn imperium de fonte nascitur pietatis" — (Witte.) He 
 has not h^en able to trace the saying. t Dc Off. ii. 8, — (W.) 
 
 Q
 
 2 26 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 Of individuals I will speak shortly. Shall we not 
 say that they intended the common good, who by 
 hard toil, by poverty, by exile, by bereavement of 
 their children, by loss of limb, by sacrifice of their 
 lives, endeavoured to build up the public weal ? Did 
 not great Cincinnatus leave us a sacred example of 
 freely laying down his office at its appointed end, 
 when, as Livy tells us, he was taken from the plough 
 and made dictator ? And after his victory, after his 
 triumph, he gave back his Imperator's sceptre to the 
 consuls, and returned to the ploughshare to toil after 
 his oxen.* Well did Cicero, arguing against Epicurus, 
 in the volume De Finibus, speak in praise of him, 
 mindful of this good deed.f "And so," he says, "our 
 ancestors took Cincinnatus from the plough, and 
 made him dictator." 
 
 Has not Fabricius left us a lofty example of 
 resisting avarice, when, poor man as he was, for the 
 faith by which he was bound to the republic, he 
 laughed to scorn the great weight of gold Vv^hich was 
 offered him, and refused it, scorning it with words 
 which became him well. His story too is confirmed 
 by our poet in the sixth ^neid,X where he speaks of 
 " Fabricius strong in his poverty." 
 
 Has not Camillus left us a memorable example of 
 
 * Liv. vi. 28, 29; Oros. ii. 12.— (W.) 
 t II. 4--(^V.) : VI. S44.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCH/A. 227 
 
 obeying the laws instead of seeking our private 
 advantage ? For according to Liv>' he was condemned 
 to exile, and then, after that he had delivered his 
 country from the invaders, and had restored to Rome 
 her own Roman spoils, he yet turned to leave the 
 sacred city, though the whole people bade him stay ; 
 nor did he return till leave was given him to come 
 back by the authority of the Senate. This high- 
 souled hero also is commended in the sixth yEjieid, 
 where our poet speaks of " Camillus, that restored to 
 us our standards."* 
 
 Was not Brutus the first to teach that our sons, 
 that all others, are second in importance to the liberty 
 of our country ? For Livy tells us how, when he was 
 consul, he condemned his own sons to death, for that 
 they had conspired with the enemy. His glory is 
 made new in our poet's sixth book, where he sings 
 how "The father shall summon the sons to die for 
 the sake of fair liberty, when they seek to stir fresh 
 
 wars."t 
 
 Has not Mucins encouraged us to dare everything 
 for our country's sake, when after attacking Porsenna 
 unawares, he watched the hand which had missed its 
 stroke being burnt, though it was his own, as if he 
 were beholding the torment of a foe .'' This also Livy 
 witnesses to with astonishment. 
 
 * Liv. V. 46; ^n. vi. 826.— (W.) t ^n. vi. S21.— (W.) 
 
 Q 2
 
 2 28 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 Add to these those sacred victims the Decii, 
 who laid down their Hves by an act of devotion 
 for the pubhc safety, whom Livy glorifies in his 
 narrative, not as they deserve, but as he v;as able. 
 Add to these the self-sacrifice, which words cannot 
 express, of Marcus Cato, that staunchest champion of 
 true liberty. These were men of whom the one, 
 that he might save his country, did not fear the 
 shadow of death ; while the other, that he might 
 kindle in the world the passionate love of liberty, 
 showed how dear was liberty, choosing to pass out 
 of life a free man, rather than without liberty to 
 abide in life.* The glory of all these heroes glows 
 afresh in the words of Cicero in his book De Finibiis ; 
 of the Decii he speaks thus : " Publius Decius, the 
 head of the Decii, a consul, when he devoted himself 
 for the state, and charged straight into the Latin 
 host, was he thinking aught of his pleasure, where 
 and when he should take it ; — when he knew that he 
 had to die at once, and sought that death with more 
 eager desire than, according to Epicurus, we should 
 seek pleasure } And were it not that his deed had 
 justly received its praise, his son would not have done 
 
 * Witte quotes the ConvUo, iv. 5, where all these examples are 
 recounted, almost in the same language. He compares Parad. vi. 46 
 (Cincinnatus), Purgat. xx. 25 (P'ahricms), Parad, vi. 47 (Decii), Piirg. i. 
 ■where Cato guards the approach to Purgator}'.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 229 
 
 the like in his fourth consulship ; nor would his grand- 
 son, again, in the war with Pyrrhus, have fallen, a 
 consul, in battle ; and, a third time in continuous 
 succession in that family, have offered himself a 
 victim for the commonwealth." But in the De 
 Officiis,'^- Cicero says of Cato : " Marcus Cato was 
 in no different position from his comrades v»ho in 
 Africa surrendered to Caesar. The others, had they 
 slain themselves, would perhaps have been blamed 
 for the act, for their life was of less consequence,f 
 and their principles were not so strict. But for Cato, 
 to whom nature had given incredible firmness and 
 who had strengthened this severity by his un- 
 remitting constancy to his principles, and who never 
 formed a resolution by which he did not abide, he was 
 indeed bound to die rather than to look on the face of 
 a tyrant." 
 
 VI.— Two things therefore have been made clear: 
 first, that whoever aims at the good of the state aims 
 at right; J and secondly, that the Roman people in 
 bringing the world into subjection, aimed at the 
 public weal. Therefore let us argue thus : Whoever 
 aims at right, walks according to right ; the Roman 
 people in bringing the world into subjection aimed at 
 
 I. 31 (W.), carelessly quoted. + " Zcz'/^r " al. " !e. 
 
 J ' ' Finem juris intendit. ' '
 
 230 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 right, as we have made manifest in the preceding 
 chapter. Therefore in bringhig the world into sub- 
 jection the Roman people acted according to right, 
 consequently it was by right that they assumed the 
 dignity of Empire. 
 
 We reach this conclusion on grounds which are 
 manifest to all. It is manifest from this, that who- 
 soever aims at right, walks according to right. To 
 make this clear, we must mark that everything is 
 made to gain a certain end, otherwise it Avould be in 
 vain, and as we said before this cannot be. And as 
 everything has its proper end, so every end has some 
 distinct thing of which it is the end. And there- 
 fore it is impossible that any two things, spoken of 
 as separate things,* and in so far as they are two, 
 should have the same end as their aim, for so the 
 same absurdity f would follow, that one of them 
 would exist in vain. Since, then, there is a certain 
 end of right, as we have explained, it necessarily 
 follows that when we have decided what that end 
 is, we have also decided what right is ; for it is the 
 natural and proper effect of right. And since in 
 any sequence it is impossible to have an antecedent 
 without its consequent, for instance, to have " man " 
 without "animal," as is evident by putting together and 
 
 * " Per se loquendo." + ^^ Inconveniens,'''
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 231 
 
 taking to pieces the idea,* so also it is impossible to 
 seek for the end of right without right, for each tiling 
 stands in the same relation to its proper end, as the 
 consequent does to its antecedent ; as without health 
 it is impossible to attain to a good condition of the 
 body. Wherefore, it is most evidently clear that he 
 who aims at the end of right must aim in accordance 
 with right ; nor does the contradictory instance 
 which is commonly drawn from Aristotle's treatment 
 of "good counsel" avail anything.f He there says : 
 " It is possible to obtain what is the right result from 
 a syllogism, which is incorrect, but not by an argu- 
 ment which is right, for the middle term is wrong." 
 For if sometimes a right conclusion is obtained from 
 false principles, this is only by accident, and happens 
 only in so far as the true conclusion is imported in 
 the words of the inference. Truth never really follows 
 from falsehood ; but the signs of truth may easily 
 follow from the signs of falsehood. So also it is 
 in matters of conduct. If a thief helps a poor man 
 out of the spoils of his thieving, we must not call that 
 charity; but it is an action which would have the form 
 of charity, if it had been done out of the man's own 
 substance. And so of the end of right. If anything, 
 
 * " Construendo et destniendo." Technical terms of the conditional 
 iyllogism, constructive and destructive. 
 + Ev^ovXia. Ethics, vi. lo.
 
 232 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 such as the end of right, were ganied without right, it 
 would only be the end of right, that is, the common 
 good, in the same sense that the gift, made from evil 
 gains, is charity. And so the example proves nothing, 
 for in our proposition we speak, not of the apparent 
 but of the real end of right. What was sought, 
 therefore, is clear. 
 
 VII. — What nature has ordained is maintained of 
 right. For nature in its providence does not come 
 short of men's providence ; for if it were to come short, 
 the effect would excel the cause in goodness, which is 
 impossible. But we see that when public bodies are 
 founded, not only are the relations of the members to 
 each other considered, but also their capacities for 
 exercising offices ; and this is to consider the end 
 of right in the society or order which is founded, 
 for right is not extended beyond what is possible. 
 Nature then, in her ordinances, does not come short 
 in this foresight. Therefore it is clear that nature, 
 in ordaining a thing, has regard to its capacities ; 
 and this regard is the fundamental principle of right 
 which nature lays down. From this it follows that 
 the natural order of things cannot be maintained 
 without right ; for this fundamental principle of 
 right is inseparably joined to the natural order of 
 things. It is necessary, therefore, that it is of right 
 that this order is preserved.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 233 
 
 4 
 
 The Roman people was ordained for empire, by 
 nature, and this may be shown as follows : The man 
 would come short of perfection in his art, who aimed 
 only to produce his ultimate form, and neglected the 
 means of reaching it ; in the same way, if nature only 
 aimed at reproducing in the world the universal form 
 of the divine likeness, and neglected the means of 
 doing so, she VvOuld be imperfect. But nature, which 
 is the work of the divine intelligence, is wholly 
 perfect ; she therefore aims at all the means by which 
 her final end is arrived at. 
 
 Since then mankind has a certain end, and since 
 there is a certain means necessary for the universal 
 end of nature, it necessarily follows that nature aims 
 at obtaining that means. And therefore the Philo- 
 sopher, in the second book of Natural Learning,'^ 
 well shovv's that nature always acts for the end. And 
 since nature cannot reach this end through one man, 
 because that there are many actions necessary to it, 
 which need many to act, therefore nature must pro- 
 duce many men and set them to act. And besides 
 the higher influence,t the powers and properties 
 of inferior spheres contribute much to this. And 
 therefore we see not only that individual men, but 
 
 * Arist. Phys. Aiisc. ii. i. — (W.) 
 
 t I.e. of the heavens. Witte quotes Farad, viii. 97, Purg. xiv. 3S.
 
 234 DE MONARCH/A. 
 
 also that certain races are born to govern, and certain 
 others to be governed and to serve, as the Philosopher 
 argues in the Politics ;^^'^ and for the latter, as he him- 
 self says, subjection is not only expedient, but just, 
 even though they be forced into subjection. 
 
 And if this is so, it cannot be doubted that nature 
 ordained in the vv^orld a country and a nation for 
 universal sovereignty ; if this were not so, she would 
 have been untrue to herself, which is impossible. But 
 as to where that country is, and which is that nation, 
 it is sufficiently manifest, both from what we have 
 said and from what we shall say, that it was Rome 
 and her citizens or people; and this our poet very skil- 
 fully touches on in the sixth y^jicid, Avhere he intro- 
 duces Anchises prophesying to ^neas, the ancestor of 
 the Romans : "Others may mould the breathing bronze 
 more delicately — I doubt, it not ; they ma}^ chisel from 
 marble the living countenance ; they may surpass 
 thee in pleading causes ; they may track the course 
 of the heavens with the rod, and tell when the stars 
 will rise ; but thou, Roman, remember to rule the 
 nations with thy sway. These shall be thy endow- 
 ments — to make peace to be the custom of the world ; 
 to spare thy foes when they submit, and to crush 
 the proud." t And again, Virgil skilfully notes the 
 
 * I. 5, II ; 6, 9.— (W.) + ^7i. vi. S48, iv. 227.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 235 
 
 appointment of the place, in the fourth JSjicid, when 
 he brings in Jupiter speaking to Mercury concerning 
 ^neas : " His fair mother did not promise him to us 
 to be such as this : it was not for this that twice she 
 rescues him from Grecian arms ; but that there should 
 be one to rule over Italy, teeming with empires, tem- 
 pestuous Vvith wars." It has, therefore, sufficiently 
 been show^n that the Roman people was by nature 
 ordained to empire. Therefore it was of right that 
 thqy gained empire, by subduing to themselves the 
 world. 
 
 "VIII. — But in order properly to discover the truth 
 in our inquiry, we must recognise that the judgment 
 of God is sometimes made manifest to men, and 
 sometimes hidden from them. 
 
 It may be made manifest in two ways, namely, by 
 reason and by faith. 
 
 There are some judgments of God to which the 
 human reason, by its own paths, can arrive ; as, that 
 a man should risk death to save his country. For a 
 part should always risk itself to save its whole, and 
 each man is a part of his State, as is clear from the 
 Philosopher in his Politics."^ Therefore every man 
 ought to risk himself for his country, as the less 
 good for the better ; whence the Philosopher says to 
 
 * Arist. Pol. i. 2, 12.— (W.)
 
 2-, 6 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 
 
 Nicomachus : " The end is desirable, indeed, even for 
 an individual, but it is better and more divine for a 
 nation and State."* And this is the judgment of God, 
 for if it were not so, right reason in men would miss 
 the intention of nature, which is impossible. 
 
 There are also some judgments of God to which, 
 though human reason cannot reach them by its own 
 powers, yet, by the aid of faith in those things which 
 are told us in Holy Scripture it can be lifted up : as, 
 for instance, that no one, however perfect he may be 
 in moral and intellectual virtues, both in habit and in 
 action, can be saved without faith ; it being supposed 
 that he never heard aught of Christ. For human 
 reason cannot of itself see this to be just, yet by faith 
 it can. For in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is 
 written, "without faith it is impossible to please 
 God ;"t and in Leviticus, "what man soever there 
 be of the House of Israel that killeth an ox, or 
 lamb, or goat in the camp, or that killeth it out 
 of the camp, and bringeth it not to the door of the 
 tabernacle to offer an offering unto the Lord, blood 
 shall be imputed to that man." J The door of the 
 tabernacle stands for Christ, who is the door of the 
 kingdom of heaven, as may be proved from the 
 
 * Ethics, i. I. + Cf. Farad, xix. 70.— (W.) 
 
 X Heb. ii. 6; Levit. xvii. 3, 4. — (W.).
 
 BE MONARCHIA. 237 
 
 Gospel : the killing of animals represents men's 
 actions.* 
 
 But the judgment of God is a hidden one, when 
 man cannot arrive at the knowledge of it either by 
 the law of nature or by the written law, but only 
 occasionally by a special grace. This grace comes in 
 several ways : sometimes by simple revelation, some- 
 times by revelation assisted by a certain kind of trial 
 or debate. Simple revelation, too, is of two kinds : 
 either God gives it of his ov/n accord, or it is gained 
 by prayer. God gives it of his own accord in two 
 ways, either plainly, or by a sign. His judgment 
 against Saul v/as revealed to Samuel plainly ; but it 
 was by a sign that it was revealed to Pharaoh what 
 God had judged touching the setting free of the 
 children of Israel. The judgment of God is also given 
 in answer to prayer, as he knew who spoke in the 
 second book of Chronicles :t "When we know not 
 what we ought to do, this only have we left, to direct 
 our eyes to Thee." 
 
 * Witte quotes from Isidore of Seville, a writer much used in the 
 middle ages, the following : "In a moral sense, we offer a calf when 
 we conquer the pride of the flesh ; a lamb, when we correct our irra- 
 tional impulses ; a kid, when we master impurity ; a dove, when we 
 are simple ; a turtle-dove, when we observe chastity ; unleavened 
 bread, 'when we keep the feast not in the leaven of malice, but in the 
 unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.' " 
 
 t 2 Chron. xx. 12 (Vulg.),
 
 2:, 8 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 Revelation by means of trial is also of two kinds. 
 It is given either by casting lots, or by combat ; for 
 "to strive" {certare), is derived from a phrase which 
 means " to make certain " {certiim facere). It is clear 
 that the judgment of God is sometimes revealed to 
 men by casting lots, as in the substitution of Matthias 
 in the Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 Again the judgment of God is revealed to men by 
 combat in two ways : either it is by a trial of strength, 
 as in the duels of champions who are called ''duellioyics," 
 or it is by the contention of many men, each striving 
 to reach a certain mark first, as happens in the con- 
 tests of athletes who run for a prize. The first of 
 these methods was prefigured among the Gentiles 
 by the contests between Hercules and Antaeus, which 
 Lucan mentions in the fourth book of his Pharsalia, 
 and Ovid in the ninth book of his Metamorphoses. 
 The second is prefigured by the contest between 
 Atalanta and Hippomenes, described in the tenth 
 book of Ovid's MetaniorpJioses.'^ 
 
 Moreover, it ought not to pass unnoticed concern- 
 ing these two kinds of strife, that while in the first 
 each champion may fairly hinder his antagonist, m. 
 the second this is not so ; for athletes must not hinder 
 one another in their strife, though our poet seems to 
 
 * Phars. iv. 593; Afetam. ix. 183, x. 569.— (W.).
 
 DE MONARCH/A. 239 
 
 have thought differently in the fifth ^neid where 
 Euryalus so receives the prize.* But Cicero has done 
 better in forbidding this practice in the third book of 
 the De Officiis, following the opinion of Chrysippus.f 
 He there says : " Chrysippus is right here, as he often 
 is, for he says that he who runs in a race should strive 
 with all his might to win, but in no way should he try 
 to trip up his competitor." 
 
 With these distinctions, then, we may assume 
 that there are two ways in which men may learn the 
 judgment of God, as we have on this point stated ; 
 first by the contests of athletes, and secondly by the 
 contests of champions. These ways of discovering 
 the judgment of God I will treat of in the chapter 
 following. 
 
 IX. — That people then, v/hich conquered when all 
 were striving hard for the Empire of the world, con- 
 quered by the will of God. For God cares more to 
 settle a universal strife than a particular one ; and 
 even in particular contests the athletes sometimes 
 throw themselves on the judgment of God, according 
 to the common proverb : " To whom God makes the 
 grant, him let Peter also bless."J It cannot, then, be 
 
 * V. 335--(W.) t III. io.-(W.) 
 
 X Witte only gives a query (?). The sapng expresses the Ghibelline 
 
 view of the relation of the Empire to the Pope ; it may have originated 
 
 with the coronation of Charles the Great.
 
 240 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 doubted that the victory in the strife for the Empire 
 of the world followed the judgment of God. The 
 Roman people, when all were striving for the Empire 
 of the world, conquered ; it will be plain that so it 
 was, if we consider the prize or goal, and those who 
 strove for it. The prize or goal was the supremacy 
 over all men ; for it is this that we call the Empire. 
 None reached this but the Roman people. Not only 
 were they the first, they were the only ones to reach 
 the goal, as we shall shortly see. 
 
 The first man who panted for the prize was Ninus, 
 King of the Assyrians ; but although for more than 
 ninety years (as Orosius tells*) he, with his royal 
 consort Semiramis, strove for the Empire of the 
 world and made all Asia subject to himself, neverthe- 
 less he never subdued the West. Ovid mentions both 
 him and his queen in the fourth book of the Meta- 
 .-norphoses, when he says, in the story of Pyramus:-}- 
 " Semiramis girdled the round space with brick-built 
 walls;" and, "let them come to Ninus' tomb and 
 hide beneath in its shade." 
 
 Secondly, Vesoges, King of Egypt, aspired to this 
 prize ; but though he vexed the North and South 
 of Asia, as Orosius relates,! yet he never gained for 
 himself one-half of the world ; nay, when, as it were, 
 
 * I. 4.— (W.) t Mdam. iv. 58, 8S.— (W.) + Oros. i. 14.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCH/A. 241 
 
 between the judges* and the goal, the Scythians 
 drove him back from his rash enterprise. 
 
 Then Cyrus, King of the Persians, made the same 
 attempt ; but after the destruction of Babylon, and 
 the transference of its Empire to Persia, he did not 
 even reach the regions of the West, but lost his life 
 and his object in one day at the hands of Tamiris, 
 Queen of the Scythians, f 
 
 But after that these had failed, Xerxes, the son of 
 Darius and king among the Persians, assailed the 
 world with so great a multitude of nations, with so 
 great a power, that he bridged the channel of the sea 
 which separates Asia from Europe, between Sestos 
 and Abydos. And of this wonderful work Lucan 
 makes mention in the second book of his Pharsalia :J 
 " Such paths across the seas, made by Xerxes in his 
 pride, fame tells of" But finally he was miserably 
 repulsed from his enterprise, and could not attain the 
 goal. 
 
 Besides these kings, and after their times, Alex- 
 ander, King of Macedon, came nearest of all to 
 the prize of monarchy; he sent ambassadors to the 
 Romans to demand their submission, but before the 
 
 * " Athlothetse. " The judges or umpires in the Greek games, 
 whose seats were opposite to the goal at the side of the stadium. Vide 
 Sm.\i\\'s Dictionary of Antiquities, %. v. "stadium." 
 
 t Oros. ii, 7.— (W.) % Phars. ii. 692.— (W.) 
 
 R
 
 242 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 Roman answer came, he fell in Egypt, as Livy* tells 
 us, as it were in the middle of the course. Of his 
 burial there, Lucan speaks in the eighth book of his 
 Fharsalia,\ v/here he is inveighing against Ptolemy, 
 King of Egypt : " Thou last of the Lagasan race, soon 
 to perish in thy degeneracy, and to yield thy kingdom 
 to an incestuous sister ; while for thee the Macedonian 
 is kept in the sacred cave " 
 
 " Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
 and knowledge of God !" Who will not marvel at 
 thee here ? For when Alexander was trying to hinder 
 his Roman competitor in the race, thou didst suddenly 
 snatch him away from the contest that his rashness 
 might proceed no further. 
 
 But that Rome has won the crown of so great a 
 victory is proved on the testimony of many. Our 
 poet in his first y^neid S3.ys '.X "Hence, surely, shall 
 one day the Romans come, as the years roll on, to be 
 the leaders of the world, from the blood of Teucer 
 
 * Not Livy. Cf. ix. i8, 3, where, speaking of Alexander and the 
 Romans, he says : " Quern ne fama quidem ilhs notum arbitror fuisse." 
 The story is Greek in origin, coming from Cleitarchus (according to 
 Pliny, Hist. Nat. iii. 9), who accompanied Alexander on his Asiatic 
 expedition. Cf. Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Ro?ne, lect. 52, 
 Grote, History of Greece, vol. xii. p. 70, note, who argue for its 
 truth, and Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. i. p. 394, who argues 
 against it. Dante, says Witte, used legends about Alexander now- 
 lost. Cf. Inf. xiv. 31. 
 
 t VIII. 692. t I. 234.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCH! A. 243 
 
 renewed ; over the sea and over the land they shall 
 hold full sway."* And Lucan, in his first book, 
 writes : " The sword assigns the kingdom ; and the 
 fortune of that mighty people that rules o'er sea and 
 land and the whole earth, admitted not two to rule." 
 And Boethius, in his second book,t speaking of the 
 Roman prince says: "With his sceptre he ruled the 
 nations, those whom Phoebus beholds, from his rising 
 afar to where he sinks his beams beneath the waves ; 
 those who are benumbed by the frosty Seven Stars of 
 the north, those whom the fierce south wind scorches 
 with his heat, parching the burning sands." And Luke, 
 the Scribe of Christ, bears the same testimony, whose 
 every word is true, where he says : " There went out 
 a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world 
 should be taxed ;" from which words we must plainly 
 understand that the Romans had jurisdiction over the 
 whole world. 
 
 From all this evidence it is manifest that the 
 Roman people prevailed when all were striving to 
 gain the Empire of the world. Therefore it was by 
 the judgment of God that it prevailed ; consequently 
 its Empire was gained by the judgment of God, which 
 is to say, that it was gained by right. 
 
 X. — And what is gained as the result of single 
 
 * I. 109.— (W.) + De Consol. Phil. ii. 6.— (W.) 
 
 R 2
 
 244 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 combat or duel is gained of right. For whenever 
 human judgment fails, either because it is involved in 
 the clouds of ignorance, or because it has not the 
 assistance of a judge, then, lest justice should be left 
 deserted, we must have recourse to Him who loved 
 justice so much that He died to fulfil what it required 
 by shedding His own blood. Therefore the Psalmist 
 wrote : " The righteous Lord loveth righteousness." 
 This result is gained when, by the free consent of the 
 parties, not from hatred but from love of justice, men 
 inquire of the judgment of God by a trial of strength 
 as well of soul as of body. And this trial of strength 
 is called a duel, because in the first instance it was 
 between two combatants, man to man. 
 
 But when two nations quarrel they are bound to 
 try in every possible way to arrange the quarrel by 
 means of discussion ; it is only when this is hopeless 
 that they may declare war. Cicero and Vegetius 
 agree on this point, the former in his De Officiis* 
 the latter in his book on war. In the practice of 
 medicine recourse may only be had to amputation 
 and cauterising when every other means of cure have 
 been tried. So in the same way, it is only when we 
 have sought in vain for all other modes of deciding 
 a quarrel that we may resort to the remedy of 
 
 * Dc Off.\. 12 ; De Re Milit. iii. prol.—{\N.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 245 
 
 a single combat, forced thereto by a necessity of 
 justice. 
 
 Two formal rules, then, of the single combat are 
 clear, one which we have just mentioned, the other, 
 which we touched on before, that the combatants or 
 champions must enter the lists by common consent, 
 not animated by private hatred or love, but simply 
 by an eager desire for justice. Therefore Cicero, in 
 touching on this matter, spoke well when he said : 
 "Wars, which are waged for the crown of empire, 
 must be waged without bitterness."* 
 
 But, if the rules of single combat be kept when 
 men are driven by justice to meet together by com- 
 mon consent, in their zeal for justice (and if they are 
 not, the contest ceases to be a single combat), do not 
 they meet together in the name of God .^ And if it 
 is so, is not God in the midst of them, for He Himself 
 promises us this in the Gospel ? And if God is there, 
 is it not impious to suppose that justice can fail .' 
 — that justice which He loved so much, as we have 
 just seen. And if single combat cannot fail to secure 
 justice, is not what is gained in single combat gained 
 as of right .'' 
 
 This truth the Gentiles, too, recognised before the 
 trumpet of the Gospel was sounded, vrhen they sought 
 
 * " Imperii ^vV/cz," not '^ corona, ^^ in Cic. dc Ojf, i. I2. — (^Y.)
 
 2 46 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 for a judgment in the fortune of single combat. So 
 Pyrrhus, noble both in the manners and in the blood 
 of /Eacidas, gave a worthy answer when the Roman 
 envoys were sent to him to treat for the ransom of 
 prisoners. " I ask not for gold ; ye shall pay me no 
 price, being not war-mongers, but true men of war. 
 Let each decide his fate with steel, and not with gold. 
 Whether it be you or I that our mistress wills to 
 reign, or what chance she may bring to each, let us 
 try by valour. Hear ye also this word : those whose 
 valour the fortune of war has spared, their liberty 
 will I too spare. Take ye them as my gift."* So 
 spoke Pyrrhus. By "mistress" he meant Fortune, 
 which we better and more rightly call the Providence 
 of God. Therefore, let the combatants beware that 
 they fight not for money ; then it would be no true 
 single combat in which they fought, for they would 
 strive in a court of blood and injustice ; and let it not 
 be thought that God would then be present to judge ; 
 nay, for it would be that ancient enemy who had 
 been the instigator of the strife. If they wish to be 
 true combatants, and not dealers in blood and injustice, 
 let them keep Pyrrhus before their eyes when they 
 enter the arena, the man who, when he was striving 
 for empire, so scorned gold, as we have said. 
 
 * Ennius in Cic. de Off. i. I2 (W.) "War-monger" is Spenser's 
 word. F. Q. 3, lo, 29.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 247 
 
 But, if men will not receive the truth which we 
 have proved, and object, as they are wont, that all 
 men are not equal in strength, v.-e will refute them 
 with the instance of the victory of David over 
 Goliath ; and if the Gentiles seek for aught more, 
 let them repel the objection by the victory of 
 Hercules over Antaeus. For it is mere folly to fear 
 that the strength which God makes strong should be 
 weaker than a human champion. It is, therefore, 
 now sufficiently clear that what is acquired by single 
 combat is acquired by right. 
 
 XI. — But the Roman people gained their empire 
 by duel between man and man ; and this is proved 
 by testimonies that are worthy of all credence ; and 
 in proving this, we shall also show that where 
 any question had to be decided from the beginning 
 of the Roman Empire, it was tried by single 
 combat. 
 
 For first of all, when a quarrel arose about the 
 settling in Italy of Father vEneas, the earliest ancestor 
 of this people, and when Turnus, King of the Rutuli, 
 withstood yEneas, it was at last agreed between the two 
 kings to discover the good pleasure of God by a single 
 combat, which is sung in the last book of the ySneid. 
 And in this combat ^neas Avas so merciful in his 
 victory, that he v/ould have granted life and peace 
 to the conquered foe, had he not seen the belt which
 
 243 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 Turnus had taken on slaying Pallas, as the last verses 
 of our poet describe. 
 
 Again, when two peoples had grown up in Italy,, 
 both sprung from the Trojan stem, namely, the 
 Romans and the Albans, and they had long striven 
 whose should be the sign of the eagle,* and the 
 Penates of Troy, and the honours of empire ; at last 
 by mutual consent, in order to have certain knowledge 
 of the case in hand, the three Horatii, who were 
 brethren, and the three Curatii, who were also 
 brethren, fought together before the kings and all the 
 people anxiously waiting on either side ; and since 
 the three Alban champions were killed, while one 
 Roman survived, the palm of victory fell to the 
 Romans, in the reign of Hostilius the king. This 
 story has been diligently put together by Livy, in 
 the first part of his history, and Orosius also gives 
 similar testimony.-f- 
 
 Next they fought for empire with their neighbours 
 the Sabines and Samnites, as Livy tells us ; all the laws 
 of war were kept ; and though those who fought were 
 very many in number, the war was in the form of a 
 combat between man and man. In the contest with 
 the Samnites, Fortune nearly repented her of what she 
 had begun, as Lucan instances in the second book of 
 
 * ^' II sacrosanfo scgiio." V. Farad, vi. 32. + I.iv. i. 24 ; Oros. ii. 4.
 
 DE MONARCH/A. 249 
 
 his Phafsalia:^' "How many companies lay dead by 
 the Colh'ne gate then, when the headship of the world 
 and universal empire well-nigh were transferred to 
 other seatSj and the Samnite heaped the corpses of 
 Rome beyond the numbers t of the Caudine Forks." 
 
 But after that the intestine quarrels of Italy had 
 ceased, and while the issue of the strife with Greece 
 and Carthage was not yet made certain by the judg- 
 ment of God — for both Greece and Carthage aimed at 
 empire — then Fabricius for Rome, and Pyrrhus for 
 Greece, fought with vast hosts for the glory of empire, 
 and Rome gained the day. And when Scipio for 
 Rome, and Hannibal for Carthage, fought man to 
 man, the Africans fell before the Italians, as Livy and 
 all the other Roman historians strive to tell. 
 
 Who then is so dull of understanding as not to 
 see that this glorious people has won the crown of 
 all the world, by the decision of combat ? Surely the 
 Roman may repeat Paul's words to Timothy : " There 
 is laid up for me a crown of righteousness," laid up, 
 that is, in the eternal providence of God. Let, then, 
 the presumptuous Jurists see how far they stand 
 below that watch-tower of reason whence the mind 
 
 * n. 135. 
 + " Romanaque Samnis 
 Ultra Caudinas superavit vulnera furcas." 
 Another reading is "speravit."
 
 2 50 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 of man regards these principles : and let them be 
 silent, content to show forth counsel and judgment 
 according to the meaning of the la\y. 
 
 It has now become manifest that it was by combat 
 of man against man that the Romans gained their 
 empire : therefore it was by right that they gained 
 it, and this is the principal thesis of the present book. 
 Up to this point we have proved our thesis by argu- 
 m.ents which mostly rest on principles of reason ; we 
 must nov.^ make our point clear by arguments based 
 on the principles of the Christian faith. 
 
 XII. — For it is they Vv'ho profess to be zealous for the 
 faith of Christ who have chiefly " raged together," and 
 " imagined a vain thing " against the Roman empire ; 
 men who have no compassion on the poor of Christ, 
 whom they not only defraud as to the revenues of the 
 Church ; but the very patrimonies of the Church 
 are daily seized upon ; and the Church is made poor, 
 while making a show of justice they yet refuse to 
 allov/ the minister of justice to fulfil his office. 
 
 Nor does this impoverishment happen vvithout 
 the judgment of God. For their possessions do not 
 afford help to the poor, to whom belongs as their 
 patrimony the wealth of the Church ; and these 
 possessions are held without gratitude to the empire 
 which gives them. Let these possessions go back to 
 whence they came. They came well ; their return is
 
 DE MONARCH/A. 251 
 
 evil : for they were well given, and they are mis- 
 chievously held. What shall we say to shepherds like 
 these ? What shall we say when the substance of 
 the Church is wasted, while the private estates of 
 their own kindred are enlarged ? But perchance it is 
 better to proceed with what is set before us ; and in 
 religious silence to wait for our Saviour's help. 
 
 I say, then, that if the Roman empire did not 
 exist by right, Christ in being born presupposed 
 and sanctioned an unjust thing. But the consequent 
 is false ; therefore the contradictory of the antecedent 
 is true ; for it is always true of contradictory pro- 
 positions, that if one is false the other is true. It 
 is not needful to prove the falsity of the consequent 
 to a true behever : for, if he be faithful, he will grant 
 it to be false ; and if he be not faithful, then this 
 reasoning is not for him. 
 
 I prove the consequence thus : wherever a m.an 
 of his own free choice carries out a public order, he 
 countenances and persuades by his act the justice 
 of that order ; and seeing that acts are more forcible 
 to persuade than words (as Aristotle holds in the 
 tenth book of his Ethics),'^ therefore by this he per- 
 suades us more than if it were merely an approval 
 in words. But Christ, as Luke who writes His story, 
 
 * Eih. X. I.
 
 252 DE MONARCH! A. 
 
 says, willed to be born of the Virgin Mary under 
 an edict of Roman authority, so that in that un- 
 exampled census of mankind, the Son of God, made 
 man, might be counted as man : and this was to carry 
 out that edict. Perhaps it is even more religious to 
 suppose that it was of God that the decree issued 
 through Caesar, so that He who had been such long 
 years expected among men should Himself enroll 
 himself with mortal man. 
 
 Therefore Christ, by His action, enforced the 
 justice of the edict of Augustus, who then wielded 
 the Roman power. And since to issue a just edict 
 implies jurisdiction, it necessarily follows that He 
 who showed that He thought an edict just, must also 
 have showed that He thought the jurisdiction under 
 which it was issued just ; but unless it existed by right 
 it were unjust. 
 
 And it must be noted that the force of the argu- 
 ment taken to' destroy the consequent, though the 
 argument partly holds from its form, shows its force 
 in the second figure, if it be reduced as a syllogism, 
 just as the argument based on the assumption of the 
 antecedent is in the first figure. The reduction is 
 made thus : all that is unjust is persuaded to men un- 
 justly ; Christ did not persuade us unjustly ; therefore 
 He did not persuade us to do unjust things. From 
 the assumption of the antecedent thus : all injustice
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 253 
 
 is persuaded to men unjustly : Christ persuaded a 
 certain injustice to man, therefore He persuaded 
 unjustly. 
 
 XIII. — And if the Roman empire did not exist by 
 right, the sin of Adam was not punished in Christ. 
 This is false, therefore its contradictory is true. The 
 falsehood of the consequent is seen thus. Since by 
 the sin of Adam we were all sinners, as the Apostle 
 says : — "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the 
 world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon 
 all men, for that all have sinned," — then, if Christ had 
 not made satisfaction for Adam's sin by his death, we 
 should still by our depraved nature be the children of 
 wrath. But this is not so, for Paul, speaking of the 
 Father in his Epistle to the Ephesians, says : " Having 
 predestinated us unto the adoption of children by 
 Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good plea- 
 sure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His 
 grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the 
 beloved, in whom we have redemption by His blood, 
 the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His 
 grace, wherein He has abounded towards us." And 
 Christ Himself, suffering in Himself the punishment, 
 says in St. John : " It is finished;" for where a thing 
 is finished, naught remains to be done. 
 
 It is convenient that it should be understood 
 that punishment is not merely penalty inflicted on
 
 254 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 him who has done wrong, but that penalty inflicted 
 by one who has penal jurisdiction. And therefore a 
 penalty should not be called punishment, but rather 
 injury, except where it is inflicted by the sentence of > 
 a regular judge.* Therefore the Israelites said unto 
 Moses : " Who made thee a judge over us .?" 
 
 If, therefore, Christ had not suffered by the sentence 
 of a regular judge, the penalty would not properly- 
 have been punishment ; and none cquldLbea regular 
 judge who had not jurisdiction over all mankind ; for 
 all mankind was punished in the flesh of Christ, who 
 " hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows," as 
 saith the Prophet Isaiah. And if the Roman empire 
 had not existed by right, Tiberius Cssar, whose 
 vicar was Pontius Pilate, would not have had juris- 
 diction over all mankind. It was for this reason that 
 Herod, not knowing what he did, like Caiaphas, when 
 he spoke truly of the decree of heaven, sent Christ 
 to Pilate to be judged, as Luke relates in his 
 gospel. For Herod was not the vicegerent of 
 Tiberius, under the standard of the eagle, or the 
 standard of the Senate ; but only a king, with 
 one particular kingdom given him by Tiberius, and 
 ruling the kingdom committed to his charge under 
 Tiberius. 
 
 * ^^Ab ordinatio jiidice,"
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 25s 
 
 Let them cease, then, to insult the Roman empire, 
 who pretend that they are the sons of the Church ; 
 when tliey see that Christ, the bridegroom of the 
 Church, sanctioned the Roman empire at the be- 
 ginning and at the end of His Avarfare on earth. 
 And now I think that I have made it sufficiently clear 
 that it was by right that the Romans acquired to 
 themselves the empire of the world. 
 
 Oh happy people, oh Ausonia, how glorious hadst 
 thou been, if either he, that weakener of thine empire, 
 had never been born, or if his own pious intention had 
 never deceived him .^* 
 
 * Constantine the Great. — (W.)
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 I.—" He hath shut the Hons' mouths and they 
 have not hurt me, forasmuch as before Him justice 
 was found in me."* At the beginning of this work 
 I proposed to examine into three questions, ac- 
 cording as the subject-matter would permit me. 
 Concerning the two first questions our inquiry, as 
 I think, has been sufficiently accomplished in the 
 preceding books. It remains to treat of the third 
 question ; and, perchance, it may arouse a certain 
 amount of indignation against me, for the truth of 
 it cannot appear without causing shame to certain 
 men. But seeing that truth from its changeless 
 throne appeals to me — that Solomon too, entering on 
 the forest of his proverbs, teaches me in his own person 
 "to meditate on truth, to hate the wicked ;" f seeing that 
 the Philosopher, my instructor in morals, bids me, for 
 the sake of truth, to put aside what is dearest ; J I will, 
 therefore, take confidence from the words of Daniel 
 in which the power of God, the shield of the 
 defenders of truth, is set forth, and, according to 
 
 * Dan. vi. 22, Viilg.— (W.) t Prov. vii. 7. Vulg.— (W.) 
 
 i Arist. Eth. i. 4.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 ^■Sl 
 
 the exhortation of St. Paul, " putting on the breast- 
 plate of faith," and in the heat of that coal Vv'hich one 
 of the seraphim had taken from off the altar, and 
 laid on the lips of Isaiah, I will enter on the present 
 contest, and, by the arm of Him who delivered us 
 by His blood from the powers of darkness, drive out 
 from the lis^s the wicked and the liar, in the sight of 
 all the world. Why should I fear, when the Spirit, 
 which is co-eternal v/ith the Father and the Son, 
 saith bv the mouth of David : " The righteous shall be 
 had in everlasting remembrance, he shall not be afraid 
 of evil tidings".?* 
 
 The present question, then, concerning which we 
 have to inquire, is between two great luminaries, the 
 Roman Pontiff and the Roman Prince : and the 
 question is, does the authority of the Roman Monarch, 
 who, as we have proved in the second book, is the 
 monarch of the world, depend immediately on God, or 
 on some minister or vicar of God ; by whom I under- 
 stand the successor of Peter, who truly has the keys 
 of the kingdom of heaven ? 
 
 II. — For this, as for the former questions, we must 
 take some principle, on the strength of which we may 
 fashion the arguments of the truth which is to be 
 expounded. For what does it profit to labour, even 
 
 Ps. cxii. 7.— (W.)
 
 2S8 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 in speaking truth, unless we start from a principle ? 
 For the principle alone is the root of all the proposi- 
 tions which are the means of proof. 
 
 Let us, therefore, start from the irrefragable truth 
 tliat that__which is repugnant to the intention ..of 
 
 nature, is against the will of God. For if this were 
 
 not true its contradictory would not be false ; namely, 
 that what is repugnant to the intention of nature is 
 not against God's will, and if this be not false neither 
 are the consequences thereof false. For it is impos- 
 sible in consequences which are necessary, that the 
 consequent should be false, unless the antecedent 
 were false also. 
 
 But if a thing is not ^'■against the will" it must 
 either be willed or simply "not willed," just as "not to 
 hate" means "to love," or "not to love ;" for "not to 
 love " does not mean " to hate," and " not to will " 
 does not mean " to will not," as is self-evident. But 
 if this is not false, neither will this proposition be 
 false ; " God wills what He does not will," than which 
 a greater contradiction does not exist. 
 
 I prove that what I say is true as follows : It is 
 manifest that God wills the end of nature ; otherwise 
 the motions of heaven would be of none effect, and 
 this we may not say. If God willed that the end 
 should be hindered. He would will also that the 
 hindering power should gain its end, otherwise His
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 259 
 
 will would be of none effect. And since the end of 
 the hindering power is the non-existence of what it 
 hinders, it would follow that God wills the non- 
 existence of the end of nature which He is said 
 to will. 
 
 For if God did not will that the end should be 
 hindered, in so far as He did not will it, it would 
 follow as a consequence to His not willing- it, that 
 He cared nought about the hindering power, neither 
 whether it existed, nor whether it did not. But he 
 who cares not for the hindering power, cares not for 
 the thing which can be hindered, and consequently 
 has no wish for it ; and when a man has no wish for 
 a thing he wills it not. Therefore, if the end of 
 nature can be hindered, as it can, it follows of 
 necessity that God wills not the end of nature, and 
 we reach our previous conclusion, that God wills 
 what He does not will. Our principle is therefore 
 most true, seeing that from its contradictions such 
 absurd results follow. 
 
 in.— At the outset we must note in reference to 
 this third question, that the truth of the first question 
 had to be made manifest rather to remove ignorance 
 than to end a dispute. In the second question we 
 sought equally to remove ignorance and to end a 
 dispute. For there are many things of which we 
 
 are ignorant, but concerning which we do not quarrel. 
 
 s 2
 
 26o DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 In geometry we know not how to square the circle, 
 but we do not quarrel on that point. The theologian 
 does not know the number of the angels, but he does 
 not quarrel about the number. The Egyptian is 
 ignorant of the political system of the Scythians, but 
 he does not therefore quarrel concerning it.* But 
 the truth in this third question provokes so much 
 quarrelling that, whereas in other matters ignorance 
 is commonly the cause of quarrelling, here quarrelling 
 is the cause of ignorance. For this always happens 
 where men are hurried by their wishes past what they 
 see by their reason ; in this evil bias they lay aside 
 the light of reason, and being dragged on blindly by 
 their desires, they obstinately deny that they are blind. 
 And, therefore, it often follows not only that falsehood 
 has its own inheritance, but that many men issue 
 forth from their own bounds and stray through the 
 foreign camp, where they understand nothing, and no 
 man understands them ; and so they provoke some to 
 anger, and some to scorn, and not a few to laughter. 
 
 Now three classes of rnen chiefly strive against the 
 truth which we are trying to prove. 
 
 First, the Chief Pontiff, Vicar of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ and the successor of Peter, to whom we owe, 
 
 * " Scythariim Civilifatcvi." Cf. Arist. Ethics, iii. 5, where 
 T(') fdovXevTov is discussed, and thence come the first and the third 
 example, a little altered, the Egyptian being substituted for the Spartani
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 261 
 
 not indeed all that we owe to Christ, but all that we 
 owe to Peter, contradicts this truth, urged it may be 
 by zeal for the keys ; and also other pastors of the 
 Christian sheepfolds, and others whom I believe to 
 be only led by zeal for our mother, the Church. These 
 all, perchance from zeal and not from pride, withstand 
 the truth which I am about to prove. 
 
 But there are certain others in whom obstinate 
 greed has extinguished the light of reason, who are of 
 their father the devil, and yet pretend to be sons of 
 the Church. They not only stir up quarrels in this 
 question, but they hate the name of the most sacred 
 office of Prince, and would shamelessly deny the 
 principles which we have laid down for this and the 
 previous questions. 
 
 There is also a third class called Decretalists,* 
 utterly without knowledge or skill in philosophy or 
 theology, who, relying entirely on their Decretals 
 (which doubtless, I think, should be venerated), 
 and hoping, I believe, that these Decretals will pre- 
 vail, disparage the power of the Empire. And no 
 wonder, for I have heard one of them, speaking of 
 these Decretals, assert shamelessly that the traditions 
 of the Church are the foundation of the faith. May 
 this wickedness be taken away from the thoughts 
 
 * Farad, ix. 133.— (W.)
 
 262 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 of men by those who, antecedently to the traditions 
 of the Church, have beheved in Christ the Son of 
 God, whether to come, or present, or as having 
 ah-eady suffered ; and who from their faith have 
 hoped, and from their hope have kindled into love, 
 and who, burning with love, will, the world doubts 
 not, be made co-heirs with Him. 
 
 And that such arguers may be excluded once for all 
 from the present debate, it must be noted that part of 
 Scripture was before the Church, that part of it came 
 with the Church, and part after the Church. 
 
 Before the Church were the Old and the New 
 Testament — the covenant which the Psalmist says 
 was "commanded for ever," of which the Church 
 speaks to her Bridegroom^ saying : " Draw me after 
 thee."* 
 
 With the Church came those venerable chief 
 Councils, with which no faithful Christian doubts 
 but that Christ was present. For we have His own 
 words to His disciples when He was about to ascend 
 into heaven : " Lo, I am with you always, even unto 
 the end of the world," to which Matthew testifies 
 There are also the writings f of the doctors, Augustine 
 and others, of whom, if any doubt that they were aided 
 by the Holy Spirit, either he has never beheld their 
 
 * Ps. cxi. 9. Cant. i. 3.— (W.) f " Scripttcra:.'"
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 26 
 
 J 
 
 fruit, or if he has beheld, he has never tasted 
 thereof 
 
 After the Church are the traditions which they 
 call Decretals, which, although they are to be vene- 
 rated for their apostolical authority, yet we must not 
 doubt that they are to be held inferior to fundamental 
 Scripture, seeing that Christ rebuked the Pharisees for 
 this very thing ; for when they had asked : "Why do thy 
 disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?" (for 
 they neglected the washing of hands). He answered 
 them, as Matthew testifies : " Why do ye also trans- 
 gress the commandment of God by your tradition?" 
 Thus He intimates plainly that tradition was to have 
 a lower place. 
 
 But if the traditions of the Church are after the 
 Church, it follows that the Church had not its authority 
 from traditions, but rather traditions from the Church ; 
 and, therefore, the men of whom we speak, seeing that 
 they have nought but traditions, must be excluded 
 from the debate. For those who seek after this truth 
 must proceed in their inquiry from those things from 
 which flows the authority of the Church. 
 
 Further, we must exclude others who boast them- 
 selves to be white sheep in the flock of the Lord, 
 when they have the plumage of crows. These are the 
 children of wickedness, who, that they may be able to 
 follow their evil ways, put shame on their mother,
 
 2 64 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 drive out their brethren, and when they have done all 
 will allow none to judge them. Why should we seek 
 to reason with these, when they are led astray by 
 their evil desires, and so cannot see even our first 
 principle ? 
 
 Therefore there remains the controversy only with 
 the other sort of men who are influenced by a certain 
 kind of zeal for their mother the Church, and yet 
 know not the truth v/hich is sought for. With these 
 men, therefore — strong in the reverence which a 
 dutiful son owes to his father, which a dutiful son 
 owes to his mother, dutiful to Christ, dutiful to the 
 Church, dutiful to the Chief Shepherd, dutiful to all 
 who profess the religion of Christ — I begin in this 
 book the contest for the maintenance of the truth. 
 
 IV.— Those men to whom all our subsequent 
 reasoning is addressed, when they assert that the 
 authority of the Empire depends on the authority of 
 the Church, as the inferior workman depends on the 
 architect, are moved to take this view by many argu- 
 ments, some of which they draw from Holy Scripture, 
 and some also from the acts of the Supreme Pontiff 
 and of the Emperor himself Moreover, they strive 
 to have some proof of reason. 
 
 For in the first place they say that God, according 
 to the book of Genesis, made two great lights, the 
 greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 265 
 
 rule the night; this they understand to be an allegory, 
 for that the lights are the two powers,* the spiritual 
 and the temporal. And then they maintain that as 
 the moon, which is the lesser light, only has light 
 so far as she receives it from the sun, so the temporal 
 power only has authority as it receives authority from 
 the spiritual power. 
 
 For the disposing of these, and of other like argu- 
 ments, we must remember the Philosopher's words 
 in his book on Sophistry, "the overthrow of an 
 argument is the pointing out of the mistake."t 
 
 Error may arise in two ways, either in the matter, 
 or in the form of an argument ; cither, that is, by 
 assuming to be true v/hat is false, or by transgressing 
 the laws of the syllogism. The Philosopher raised ob- 
 jections to the arguments of Parmcnides and Melissus 
 on both of these grounds, saying that they accepted 
 what was false, and that they did not argue correctly. J 
 I use "false " in a large sense, as including the incon- 
 ceivable,§ that which in matters admitting only of 
 probability has the nature of falseness. If the error 
 is in the form of an argument, he who wishes to 
 destroy the error must do so by showing that the 
 laws of the syllogism have been transgressed. If the 
 error is in the matter, it is because something has 
 
 * "licgimina" t Sop'i. El. ii. 3.— (W.) 
 
 + Aristotle, Fhys. i. 2.— (W.) § "Imj>inabili:'
 
 266 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 been assumed Avhich is either false in itself, or false in 
 relation to that particular instance. If the assump- 
 tion is false in itself, the argument must be destroyed 
 by destroying the assumption ; if it is false only in 
 that particular instance, we must draw a distinction 
 between the falseness in that particular instance and 
 its general truth. 
 
 Having noted these things, to make it more clear 
 how we destroy this and the further fallacies of our 
 adversaries, we must remark that there are two ways 
 in which error may arise concerning the mystical 
 sense, either by seeking it where it is not, or by 
 accepting it in a sense other than its real sense. 
 
 On account of the first of these ways, Augustine 
 says, in his work Of the City of God;-^ that we must 
 not think that all things, of vv'-hich we are told, have 
 a special meaning ; for it is on account of that which 
 means something, that that also which means nothing 
 is woven into a story. It is only with the plough- 
 share that we turn up the earth ; but the other 
 parts of the plough are also necessary. 
 
 On account of the second wav in which error 
 touching the interpretation of mysteries may arise, 
 Augustine, in his book 'Concerning Christimi doctrine^' 
 speaking of those who wish to find in Scripture some- 
 
 * Dante does not quote St. Augustine's words, but gives his 
 meaning, xvii. 2. — (W.)
 
 DE AIONARCHIA. 267 
 
 thing other than he who wrote the Scripture meant * 
 says, that such "are misled in the same way as a 
 man who leaves the straight path, and then arrives 
 at the end of the path by a long circuit." And he 
 adds : " It ought to be shov/n that this is a mistake, 
 lest through the habit of going out of the A\ay, the 
 man be driven to going into cross or wrong ways." 
 And then he intimates why such precautions must be 
 taken in interpreting Scripture. " Faith will falter, if 
 the authority of Scripture be not sure." But I say 
 that if these things happen from ignorance, we must 
 pardon those who do them, when we have carefully 
 reproved them, as we pardon those Avho imagine a lion 
 in the clouds, and are afraid. But if they are done 
 purposely, we must deal with those who err thus, 
 as we do with tyrants, who instead of following the 
 laws of the state for the public good, try to pervert 
 them for their own advantage. 
 
 Oh worst of crimes, even though a man commit it in 
 his dreams, to turn to ill use the purpose of the Eternal 
 Spirit. Such an one does not sin against Moses, or 
 David, or Job, or Matthew, or Paul, but against the 
 Eternal Spirit that speaketh in them. For though 
 the reporters of the words of God are many, yet there 
 is one only that tells them what to write, even God, 
 
 * I- 36, 37. Dante writes: "per gjTum." The Benedictine text 
 has : "per agrum."
 
 268 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 who has deigned to unfold to us His will through the 
 pens of many writers. 
 
 Having thus first noted these things, I will pro- 
 ceed, as I said above, to destroy the argument of 
 those who say that the two great lights are typical of 
 the two great powers on earth : for on this type rests 
 the whole strength of their argument. It can be 
 shown in two vrays that this interpretation cannot be 
 upheld. First, seeing that these two kinds of power 
 are, in a sense, accidents of men, God would thus 
 appear to have used a perverted order, by producing 
 the accidents, before the essence to which they belong 
 existed ; and it is ridiculous to say this of God. For 
 the two great lights were created on the fourth day, 
 while man was not created till the sixth day, as is 
 evident in the text of Scripture. 
 
 Secondly, seeing that these two kinds of rule are 
 to guide men to certain ends, as we shall see, it 
 follows that if man had remained in the state of 
 innocence in which God created him, he would not 
 have needed such means of guidance. These kinds 
 of rule, then, are remedies against the weakness of 
 sin. Since, then, man was not a sinner on the fourth 
 day, for he did not then even exist, it Avould have 
 been idle to make remedies for his sin, and this would 
 be contrary to the goodness of God. For he would 
 be a sorry physician who would make a plaster for
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 269 
 
 an abscess which was to be, before the man was born. 
 It cannot, therefore, be said that God made these two 
 kinds of rule on the fourth day, and therefore the 
 meaning of Moses cannot have been what these men 
 pretend. 
 
 We may also be more tolerant, and overthrow this 
 falsehood by drawing a distinction. This way of 
 distinction is a gentler way of treating an adversary, 
 for so his arguments are not made to appear con- 
 sciously false, as is the case when we utterl}^ over- 
 throw him. I say then that, although the moon has 
 not light of its own abundantly, unless it receives 
 it from the sun, yet it does not therefore follow that 
 the moon is from the sun. Therefore be it known 
 that the being, and the power, and the working of 
 the moon are all different things. For its being, the 
 moon in no way depends on the sun, nor for its 
 power, nor for its working, considered in itself. Its 
 motion comes from its proper mover, its influence is 
 from its own rays. For it has a certain light of its 
 own, which is manifest at the time of an eclipse ; 
 though for its better and more powerful working it 
 receives from the sun an abundant light, which 
 enables it to work more powerfully. 
 
 Therefore I say that the temporal power does 
 not receive its being from the spiritual power, nor 
 its power which is its authority, nor its working
 
 2 70 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 considered in itself. Yet it is good that the temporal 
 power should receive from the spiritual the means of 
 working more effectively by the light of the grace 
 which the benediction of the Supreme Pontiff bestows 
 on it both in heaven and on earth. Therefore we 
 may see that the argument of these men erred in 
 its form, because the predicate of the conclusion is 
 not the predicate of the major premiss. The argu- 
 ment runs thus : The moon receives her light from 
 the sun, which is the spiritual power. The temporal 
 power is the moon. Therefore the temporal power 
 receives authority from the spiritual power. " Light" 
 is the predicate of the major premiss, "authority" 
 the predicate of the conclusion ; which two things 
 we have seen to be very different in their subject and 
 in their idea. 
 
 V. — They draw another argument from the text 
 of Moses, saying that the types of these two powers 
 sprang from the loins of Jacob, for that they are 
 prefigured in Levi and Judah, whereof one was 
 founder of the spiritual power, and the other of the 
 temporal. From this they argue : the Church has 
 the same relation to the Empire that Levi had to 
 Judah. Levi preceded Judah in his birth, therefore 
 the Church precedes the Empire in authority. 
 
 This error is easily overthrown. For when they 
 say that Levi and Judah, the sons of Jacob, are the
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 271 
 
 types of spiritual and temporal power, I could show 
 this argument, too, to be wholly false ; but I will 
 grant it to be true. Then they infer, as Levi came 
 first in birth, so does the Church come first in 
 authority. But, as in the previous argument, the 
 predicates of the conclusion and of the major premiss 
 are different : authority and birth are different things, 
 both in their subject and in their idea ; and therefore 
 there is an error in the form of the argument. The 
 argument is as follows : A precedes B in C ; D and 
 E stand in the same relation as A and B ; therefore 
 D precedes E in F. But then F and C are different 
 things. And if it is objected that F follows from C, 
 that is, authority from priority of birth, and that the 
 effect is properl}/ substituted for the cause, as if 
 " animal " were used in an argument for men, the 
 objection is bad. For there are many men, who 
 were born before others, who not only do not precede 
 those others in authority, but even come after them : 
 as is plain where we find a bishop younger than his 
 archpresbyters. Therefore their objection appears 
 to err in that it assumes as a cause that which is 
 none. 
 
 VI. — Again, from the first book of Kings they 
 take the election and the deposition of Saul ; and 
 they say that Saul, an enthroned king, was deposed 
 by Samuel, who, by God's command, acted in the
 
 2 72 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 stead of God, as appears from the text of Scripture. 
 From this they argue that, as that Vicar of God 
 had authority to give temporal power, and to take 
 it away and bestow it on another, so now the Vicar 
 of God, the bishop of the universal Church, has 
 authority to give the sceptre of temporal power, and 
 to take it away, and even to give it to another. And 
 if this were so, it would follow without doubt that 
 the authority of the Empire is dependent on the 
 Church, as they say. 
 
 But we may answer and destroy this argument, 
 by which they say that Samuel was the Vicar of 
 God : for it was not as Vicar of God that he acted, 
 but as a special delegate for this purpose, or as a 
 messenger bearing the express command of his Lord. 
 For it is clear that what God commanded him, that 
 only he did, and that only he said. 
 
 Therefore we must recognise that it is one thing 
 to be another's vicar, and that it is another to be his 
 messenger or minister, just as it is one thing to be a 
 doctor, and another to be an interpreter. For a 
 vicar is one to whom is committed jurisdiction with 
 law or with arbitrary power, and therefore within the 
 bounds of the jurisdiction which is committed to 
 him, he may act by law or by his arbitrary power 
 without the knowledge of his lord. It is not so with a 
 mere messenger, in so far as he is a messenger ; but
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 273 
 
 as the mallet acts only by the strength of the smith, 
 so the messenger acts only by the authority of him 
 that sent him. Although, then, God did this by 
 His messenger Samuel, it does not follow that the 
 Vicar of God may do the same. For there are many 
 things which God has done and still does, and yet 
 will do through angels, which the Vicar of God, the 
 successor of Peter, might not do. 
 
 Therefore we may see that they argue from the 
 whole to a part, thus : ]\Ien can hear and see, there- 
 fore the eye can hear and see : which does not hold. 
 Were the argument negative, it would be good : for 
 instance, man cannot fly, therefore man's arm cannot 
 fly. And, in the same way, God cannot, by his 
 messenger, cause what is not to have been,-'- as 
 Agathon says ; therefore neither can his Vicar. 
 
 Vn.— Further, they use the offering of the wise 
 men from the text of Matthew, saying that Christ 
 accepted from them both frankincense and gold, to 
 signify that He was lord and ruler both of things 
 temporal and of things spiritual ; and from this they 
 infer that the Vicar of Christ is also lord and ruler 
 both of things temporal and of things spiritual ; and 
 that consequently he has authority over both. 
 
 To this I answer, that I acknowledge that Matthew's 
 
 * As quoted by Aristotle, Ethics, vi. 3.— (W.)
 
 274 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 words and meaning are both as they say, but that the 
 inference which they attempt to draw therefrom fails, 
 because it fails in the terms of the argument. Their 
 syllogism runs thus : God is the lord both of things 
 temporal and of things spiritual, the holy Pontiff is 
 the Vicar of God ; therefore he is lord both of things 
 temporal and of things spiritual. Both of these pro- 
 positions are true, but the middle term in them is 
 different, and four terms are introduced, by which the 
 form of the syllogism is not kept, as is plain from 
 what is said of " the syllogism simply."* For " God " 
 is the subject of the major premiss, and "the Vicar 
 of God" is the predicate of the minor ; and these are 
 not the same. 
 
 And if anyone raises the objection that the Vicar 
 of God is equal in power to God, his objection is 
 idle ; for no vicar, whether human or divine, can be 
 equal in power to the master whose vicar he is, which 
 is at once obvious. We know that the successor of 
 Peter had not equal authority with God, at least in 
 the works of nature ; he could not make a clod of 
 earth fall upwards, nor fire to burn in a downward 
 direction, by virtue of the office committed to him.. 
 Nor could all things be committed to him by God ; 
 for God could not commit to any the power of 
 
 * Arist. Anal. Prior., or rather, the Sumnuilm Logica, 1. iv., of 
 Petrus Hispanus. — (W. )
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 275 
 
 creation, and of baptism, as is clearly proved, not- 
 withstanding what* the Master says in his fourth 
 book. 
 
 We know also that the vicar of a mortal man is 
 not equal in authority to the man whose vicar he is, 
 so far as he is his vicar ; for none can give away what 
 is not his. The authority of a prince does not belong 
 to a prince, except for him to use it ; for no prince 
 can give to himself authority. He can indeed receive 
 authority, and give it up, but he cannot create it in 
 another man, for it does not belong to a prince to 
 create another prince. And if this is so, it is manifest 
 that no prince can substitute for himself a vicar equal 
 to himself in authority respecting all things, and 
 therefore the objection to our argument has no 
 weight. 
 
 VIII.— They also bring forward that saying in 
 Matthew of Christ to Peter : " Whatsoever thou shalt 
 bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and what- 
 soever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in 
 heaven;" which also, from the text of Matthew and 
 John, they allow to have been in like manner said 
 to all the Apostles. From this they argue that it 
 has been granted by God to the successor of JPeter 
 to be able to bind and to loose all things ; hence 
 
 Peter Lombard, "magister sententianim," iv. dist. 5, f. 2.— (W.) 
 
 T 2
 
 276 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 they infer that he can loose the laws and decrees of 
 the Empire, and also bind laws and decrees for the 
 temporal power ; and, if this were so, this conclusion 
 would rightly follow. 
 
 But we must draw a distinction touching their 
 major premiss. Their syllogism is in this form. Peter 
 could loose and bind all things ; the successor of Peter 
 can do whatever Peter could do ; therefore the suc- 
 cessor of Peter can bind and can loose all things : 
 whence they conclude that he can bind and can loose 
 the decrees and the authority of the Empire. 
 
 Now I admit the minor premiss ; but touching 
 the major premiss I draw a distinction. The universal 
 "everything" which is included in "whatever" is not 
 distributed beyond the extent of the distributed term. 
 If I say "all animals run," "all" is distributed so as 
 to include everything which comes under the class 
 " animal." But if I say " all men run," then " all " is 
 only distributed so as to include every individual in 
 the class " man ; " and when I say " eveiy grammarian 
 runs," then is the distribution even more limited. 
 
 Therefore we r nust alway s look to see what it is 
 that is to be included in the word "all," and when 
 we know the nature and extent of the distributed 
 term, it will easily be seen how far the distribution 
 extends. Therefore, when it is said "whatsoever 
 thou shalt bind," if " whatsoever " bore an unlimited
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 277 
 
 sense, they would speak truly, and the power of the 
 Pope would extend even beyond what they say ; for 
 he might then divorce a wife from her husband, and 
 marry her to another while her first husband was yet 
 alive, which he can in no wise do. He might even 
 absolve me when impenitent, which God Himself 
 cannot do. 
 
 Therefore it is manifest that th e distributipn of the 
 term_jn^^uestion is not absolute, but in reference to 
 something. What this is will be sufficiently clear if 
 we consider what power was granted to Peter. Christ 
 said to Peter : " To thee will I give the keys of the 
 kingdom of heaven " — that is, " I will make thee the 
 doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven." And then 
 He adds : " Whatsoever," which is to say " all that " — 
 to wit, all that has reference to this duty — " thou shalt 
 have power to bind and to loose." And thus the 
 universal which is implied in " whatsoever " has onh- 
 a li mited distribution, referring to the ofiice of the 
 keys of the kingdom of heaven. And in this sense 
 the proposition of our opponents is true, but, taken 
 absolutely, it is manifestly false. I say, then, that 
 although the successor of Peter has power to bind 
 and to loose, as belongs to him to whom the ofiice of 
 Peter was committed, yet it does not therefore follow 
 that he has power to bind and to loose the decrees of 
 the Empire, as our opponents say, unless they further
 
 2 78 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 prove that to do so belongs to the office of the keys, 
 which we shall shortly show is not the case. 
 
 IX. — They further take the words in Luke which 
 Peter spake to Christ, saying : " Behold, here are two 
 swords;" and they understood that by these two 
 swords the two kinds of rule were foretold. And 
 since Peter said " here," where he was, which is to say, 
 " with him," they argue that the authority of the two 
 kinds of rule rests with the successor of Peter. 
 
 We must answer by showing that the interpreta- 
 tion, on which the argument rests, is wrong. They 
 say that the two swords of which Peter spake mean 
 the two kinds of rule which we have spoken of; but 
 this we wholly deny, for then Peter's answer would 
 not be according to the meaning of the words of 
 Christ ; and also we say that Peter made, as was his 
 wont, a hasty answer, touching only the outside of 
 things. 
 
 It will be manifest that such an answer as our 
 opponents allege would not be according to the mean- 
 ing of the words of Christ, if the preceding words, 
 and the reason of them, be considered. Observe, 
 then, that these words were spoken on the day of the 
 feast, for a little before Luke writes thus : " Then 
 came the day of unleavened bread, when the Passover 
 must be killed ;" and at this feast Christ had spoken 
 of His Passion, which was at hand, in which it was
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 279 
 
 necessary for Him to be separated from His disciples. 
 Observe, too, that when these words were spoken the 
 twelve were assembled together , and therefore, shortly- 
 after the words which we have just quoted, Luke says : 
 " And when the hour was come He sat down, and the 
 twelve Apostles with Him." And continuing His 
 discourse with them. He came to this : " When I sent 
 you, without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye 
 anything ? And they said, Nothing. Then said 
 He unto them : But now, he that hath a purse, let 
 him take it, and likewise his scrip ; and he that hath 
 no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." 
 From these words the purpose of Christ is sufti- 
 ciently manifest ; for He did not say : " Buy, or 
 get for yourselves, two swords," but rather " twelve 
 swords," seeing that He spake unto twelve dis- 
 ciples : " He that hath not, let him buy," so 
 that each should have one. And He said this to 
 admonish them of the persecution and scorn that they 
 should suffer, as though He would say : " As long as 
 I was with you men received you gladly, but now you 
 will be driven away ; therefore of necessity ye must 
 prepare for yourselves those things which formerly I 
 forbade you to have." And therefore if the answer 
 of Peter bore the meaning which our opponents assign 
 to it, it would have been no answer to the words of 
 Christ ; and Christ would have rebuked him for
 
 28o DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 answering foolishly, as He often did rebuke him. But 
 Christ did not rebuke him, but was satisfied, saying 
 unto him : "It is enough," as though He would say: 
 " I speak because of the necessity ; but if each one of 
 you cannot possess a sword, two are enough." 
 
 And that it was Peter's wont to speak in a 
 shallow manner is proved by his hasty and thought- 
 less forwardness, to which he was led not only by the 
 sincerity of his faith, but also, I believe, by the natural 
 purity and simplicity of his character. All the Evan- 
 gelists bear testimony to this forwardness. 
 
 Matthew writes that when Jesus had asked His 
 disciples: "Whom say ye that I am.?" Peter answered 
 before them all and said: "Thou art Christ, the Son of 
 the living God." He writes also that when Christ 
 was saying to His disciples that he must go up to 
 Jerusalem and suffer many things, Peter took Him 
 and began to rebuke Him, saying: "Be it far from 
 Thee, Lord ; this shall not be unto Thee." But Christ 
 turned and rebuked him, and said : " Get thee behind 
 me, Satan." Matthew also writes that in the Mount 
 of Transfiguration, on the sight of Christ, and of 
 Moses and Elias, and of the two sons of Zebedee, 
 Peter said: "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if 
 Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for 
 Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias." He also 
 writes that when the disciples were in a ship, in the
 
 DE MONARCHIA, 2S1 
 
 night, and Christ went unto them walking on the 
 sea, then Peter said unto Him : " Lord, if it be 
 Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water." And 
 when Christ foretold that all His disciples should be 
 offended because of Him, Peter answered and said: 
 " ThouQ-h all men shall be offended because of Thee, 
 yet will I never be offended;" and then: "Though I 
 should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee." 
 And to this saying Mark bears witness also. And 
 Luke writes that Peter had said to Christ, a little 
 before the words touching the swords which we have 
 quoted: "Lord, I am ready to go with Thee, both into 
 prison and to death." And John says of him, that, 
 when Christ wished to wash his feet, Peter answered 
 and said: "Lord, dost Thou wash my feet.^" and 
 then : " Thou shalt never wash my feet." The same 
 Evangelist tells us that it was Peter who smote the 
 Hieh Priest's servant with a sword, and the other 
 Evangelists also bear witness to this thing. He tells 
 us also how Peter entered the sepulchre at once, when 
 he saw the other disciple waiting outside, and how, 
 when Christ was on the shore after the resurrection, 
 when Peter had heard that it was the Lord, he girt 
 his fisher's coat unto him (for he was naked) and did 
 cast himself into the sea. Lastly, John tells that 
 when Peter saw John, he said unto Jesus: "Lord, and 
 what shall this man do ? "
 
 282 DE MONARCH/A. 
 
 It is a pleasure to have pursued this point about 
 our Chief Shepherd,* in praise of his purity of spirit; 
 but from what I have said it is plain that when he 
 spake of the two swords, he answered the words of 
 Christ with no second meaning. 
 
 But if we are to receive these words of Christ and 
 of Peter typically, they must not be explained as 
 our adversaries explain them ; but they must be 
 referred to that s^vord of which Matthew writes : 
 " Think not that I am come to send peace on the 
 earth ; I come not to send peace, but a sword. For 
 I am come to set a man at variance against his 
 father," &c. And this comes to pass not only in 
 words, but also in fact. And therefore Luke speaks 
 to Theophilus of all "that Jesus began both to do 
 and to teach." It was a sw^ord of that kind that 
 Christ commanded them to buy ; and Peter said that 
 it was already doubly there. For they w'ere ready 
 both for words and for deeds, by which they should 
 accomplish what Christ said that He had come to do 
 by the sword. 
 
 X.— Certain persons say further that the Emperor 
 Constantine, having been cleansed from leprosy by 
 the intercession of Sylvester, then the Supreme Pontiff, 
 gave unto the Church the seat of Empire v/hich was 
 
 "Archimandrita nostro." Cf. Farad, xi. 09, of St. Francis. — (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 283 
 
 Rome, together with many other dignities belonging 
 to the Empire.* Hence t hey . axgue that no man can 
 take unto himself these dignities unless he receive 
 them from the Church, whose they are said to be. 
 From this it would rightly follow, that one authority 
 depends on the other, as they maintain. 
 
 The arguments which seemed to have their roots 
 in the Divine words, have been stated and disproved. 
 It remains to state and disprove those which are 
 grounded on Roman history and in the reason of 
 mankind. The first of these is the one which we have 
 mentioned, in which the syllogism runs as follows : 
 No one has a right to those things which belong to 
 the Church, unless he has them from the Church ; 
 and this we grant. The government of Rome belongs 
 to the Church ; therefore no one has a right to it 
 unless it be given him by the Church. The minor 
 premiss is proved by the facts concerning Constantine, 
 which we have touched on. 
 
 This minor premiss then will I destroy ; and as 
 for their proof, I say that it proves nothing. For the 
 dignity of the Empire was what Constantine could 
 not alienate, nor the Church receive. And Vvhen they 
 insist, I prove my words as follows : No man on the 
 strength of the office which is committed to him, may 
 
 * On the Donation of Constantine, Witte refers to Inf. xxxviii. 94 ; 
 xix. 115 ; Pnrg. xxxii. 124; Farad, xx. 35 ; supra ii. 12.
 
 2S4 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 do_au gill— that is contrary to that office ; for so one 
 and the same man, viewed as one nian, would be 
 contrary to himseh"", which is impossible. But to 
 divide the Empire is contrary to the office committed 
 to the Emperor; for his office is to hold mankind in_ 
 all things subject to one will : as may be easily seen 
 from the first book of this treatise. Therefore it is 
 not permitted to the Emperor to divide the Empire. 
 If, therefore, as they say, any dignities had been 
 alienated by Constantine, and had passed to the 
 Church, the " coat without seam " — which even they, 
 who pierced Christ, the true God, with a spear, dared 
 not rend — would have been rent.* 
 
 Further, just as the Church has its foundation, so 
 has the Empire its foundation. The foundation of 
 the Church is Christ, as Paul says in his first Epistle 
 to the Corinthians : " For other foundation can no 
 man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus 
 Christ.''t He is the rock on which the Church is 
 built ; but the foundation of the Empire is human 
 right. Now I say that, as the Church may not go con- 
 trary to its foundation — but must always rest on its 
 foundation, as the words of the Canticles say : " Who 
 
 * Each side in the controversy used the type of the "seamless robe," 
 one of the Empire {supra i. 16), the other of the Church; e.g., in the 
 Bull of Boniface YIII., '■'Unam Sanctam.'' 
 
 t I Cor. iii. II.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 285 
 
 is she that cometh up from the desert, abounding 
 in dehghts, leaning on her beloved ?"* — in the same 
 way I say that the Empire may not do aught that 
 transgresses human right. But were the Empire to 
 destroy itself, it would so transgress human right. 
 Therefore the Empire may not destroy itself Since 
 then to divide the Empire would be to destroy it, 
 because the Empire consists in one single universal 
 Monarchy, it is manifest that he who exercises the 
 authority of the Empire may not destroy it, and 
 from what we have said before, it is manifest that 
 to destroy the Empire is contrary to human right. 
 
 Moreover, all jurisdiction is prior in time to the 
 judge who has it ; for it is the judge who is ordained 
 for the jurisdiction, not the jurisdiction for the judge. 
 But the Empire is a jurisdiction, comprehending 
 within itself all temporal jurisdiction : therefore it 
 is prior to the judge who has it, who is the Emperor. 
 For it is the Emperor who is ordained for the Empire, 
 and not contrariwise. Therefore it is clear that the 
 Emperor, in so far as he is Emperor, cannot alter 
 the Empire ; for it is to the Empire that he owes 
 his being. I say then that he who is said to have 
 conferred on the Church the authority in question 
 either was Emperor, or he was not. If he was not, 
 
 • Cant. viii. 5.— (W.)
 
 2 86 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 it is plain that he had no power to give away 
 any part of the Empire. Nor could he, if he was 
 Emperor, in so far as he was Emperor, for such a 
 gift would be a diminishing of his jurisdiction. 
 
 Further, if one Emperor were able to cut off a 
 certain portion of the jurisdiction of the Empire, so 
 could another ; and since temporal jurisdiction is 
 finite, and since all that is finite is taken away by 
 finite diminutions, it would follow that it is possible 
 for the first of all jurisdictions to be annihilated, 
 which is absurd. 
 
 Further, since he that gives is in the position of 
 an agent, and he to whom a thing is given in that 
 of a patient, as the Philosopher holds in the fourth 
 book to Nicomachus,* therefore, that a gift may be 
 given, we require not only the fit qualification of the 
 giver, but also of the receiver ; for the acts of the 
 agent are completed in a patient who is qualified.f 
 But the Church was altogether unqualified to receive 
 temporal things ; for there is an express command, 
 forbidding her so to do, which Matthew gives thus : 
 " Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your 
 purses." For though we find in Luke a relaxation of 
 the command in regard to certain matters, yet I have 
 not anywhere been able to find that the Church after 
 
 * Eth. iv. I. — (W.) + ^'Dispositio ; disposiius ; indisposita."
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 2 8; 
 
 that prohibition had licence given her to possess gold 
 and silver. If therefore the Church was unable to 
 receive temporal power, even granting that Constantino 
 was able to give it, yet the gift was impossible ; for 
 the receiver was disqualified. It is therefore plain 
 that neither could the Church receive in the way of 
 possession, nor could Constantino give in the way of 
 alienation ; though it is true that the Emperor, as 
 protector of the Church, could allot to the Church a 
 patrimony and other things, if he did not impair his 
 supreme lordship, the unity of which does not allow 
 division. And the Vicar of God could receive such 
 things, not to possess them, but as a steward to dis- 
 pense the fruits of them to the poor of Christ, on 
 behalf of the Church, as we know the Apostles did. 
 
 XI. — Our adversaries further say that the Pope 
 Hadrian* summoned Charles the Great to his own 
 assistance t and to that of the Church, on account of 
 the wrongs suffered from the Lombards in the time 
 of their king Desiderius, and that Charles received 
 from that Pope the imperial dignity, notwithstanding 
 that Michael was emperor at Constantinople. And 
 therefore they say that all the Roman emperors who 
 succeeded Charles were themselves the " advocates " 
 of the Church, and ought by the Church to be 
 
 * A.D. 773.— (W.) t "AdvocavU:'
 
 2S8 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 called to their office. From which would follow that 
 dependence of the Empire on the Church which they 
 wish to prove. 
 
 But to overset their argument, I reply that what 
 they say is nought ; for a usm jaation of right does 
 not make right ; and if it were so, it might be proved 
 in the same way that the Church is dependent on the 
 Empire ; for the Emperor Otto restored the Pope 
 Leo, and deposed Benedict, leading him into exile to 
 Saxony.* 
 
 XII. — But from reason they thus argue : they take 
 the principle laid down in the tenth book of ''Pliilo- 
 sophia Prima',' -^ saying that all things which belong to 
 one genus are to be brought under one head, which 
 is the standard and measure of all that come under 
 that genus. But all men belong to one genus : there- 
 fore they are to be brought under one head, as the 
 standard and measure of them all. But the Supreme 
 Pontiff and the Emperor are men ; therefore if the 
 preceding reasoning be true, they must be brought 
 under one head. And since the Pope cannot come 
 under any other man, the result is that the Emperor, 
 together with all other men, must be brought under 
 the Pope, as the measure and rule of all ; and then, 
 what those who argue thus desire follows. 
 
 * Otto I. (964) deposed Benedict V. and restored Leo VIII. 
 t Arist. Mctaph. x. I.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 289 
 
 To overset this argument, I answer that they are 
 right when they say that all the individuals of one 
 genus ought to be brought under one head, as their 
 measure ; and that they are again right when they 
 say that all men belong to one genus, and that they 
 are also right when they argue from these truths 
 that all men should be brought under one head, taken 
 from the genus man, as their measure and type. But 
 when they obtain the further conclusion concerning 
 the Pope and the Emperor, they fall into a fallacy 
 touching accidental attributes. 
 
 That this thing may be understood, it must be 
 
 clearly known that to be a man is one thing, and to 
 
 be a pope or an emperor is another ; just as to be 
 
 a man is different from being a father or a ruler. 
 
 A man is that which exists by its essential form, 
 
 which gives it its genus and species, and by which 
 
 it comes under the category of substance. But a 
 
 ■father is that which exists by an accidental form, 
 
 that is, one which stands in a certain relation which 
 
 gives it a certain genus and species, and through 
 
 ■which it comes under the category of relation. If 
 
 this were not so, all things would come under the 
 
 category of substance, seeing that no accidental form 
 
 can exist by itself, without the support of an existing 
 
 substance ; and this is not so. Seeing, therefore, 
 
 that the Pope and the Emperor are what they are 
 
 u
 
 2 90 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 by virtue of certain relations : for they owe their 
 existence to the Papacy and the Empire, which are 
 both relations, one coming within the sphere of father- 
 hood, and the other within that of rule ; it manifestly 
 follows that both the Pope and the Emperor, in so 
 far as they are Pope and Emperor, must come under 
 the category of relation ; and therefore that they 
 must be brought under some head of that genus. 
 
 I say then that there is one standard under which 
 they are to be brought, as men ; and another under 
 which they come, as Pope and Emperor. For in so 
 far as they arc men, they have to be brought under 
 the best man, whoever he be, who is the measure and 
 the ideal of all mankind ; under him, that is, who is 
 most one in his kind,* as may be gathered from 
 the last book to Nicomachus.f When, however, tw^o 
 things are relative, it is evident that they must 
 either be reciprocally brought under each other, if 
 they are alternately superior, or if by the nature of 
 their relation they belong to connected species ; or 
 else they must be brought under some third thing, 
 as their common unity. But the first of these sup- 
 positions is impossible : for then both would be 
 predicable of both, which cannot be. We cannot 
 say that the Emperor is the Pope, or the Pope the 
 
 * "Ad existentem maxime unum in gene re sua." 
 t EiL X. 5, 7.-(W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 291 
 
 Emperor. Nor again can it be said that they are 
 connected in species, for the idea of the Pope is quite 
 other than the idea of the Emperor, in so far as they 
 are Pope and Emperor. Therefore they must be 
 reduced to some single thing above them. 
 
 Now it must be understood that the relative is to 
 the relative as the relation to the relation. If, there- 
 fore, the Papacy and the Empire, seeing that they are 
 relations of paramount superiority, have to be carried 
 back to some higher point of superiority from which 
 they, with the features which make them different,* 
 branch off, the Pope and Emperor, being relative to 
 one another, must be brought back to some one unity 
 in which the higher point of superiority, without this 
 characteristic difference, is found. And this will be 
 either God, to whom all things unite in looking up, 
 or something below God, which is higher in the scale 
 of superiority, while differing from the simple and 
 absolute superiority of God. Thus it is evident that 
 the Pope and the Emperor, in so far as they are men, 
 have to be brought under some one head ; while, in 
 so far as they are Pope and Emperor, they have to be 
 brought under another head, and so far is clear, as 
 regards the argument from reason. 
 
 Xiii.— We have now stated and put on one side 
 
 ^Cum differentialibiis suis." 
 
 U 2
 
 292 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 those erroneous reasonings on which they, who assert 
 that the authority of the Roman Emperor depends 
 on the Pope of Rome, do most chiefly rely. We have 
 now to go back and show forth the truth in this third 
 question, which we proposed in the beginning to 
 examine. The truth will appear plainly enough if I 
 start in my inquiry from the principle which I laid 
 down, and then show that the a^uthority of the Empire 
 springs immediately from the head of all being, who 
 is_God. This truth will be made manifest, either if it 
 be shown that the authority of the Empire does not 
 spring from the authority of the Church ; for there 
 is no argument concerning any other authority. Or 
 again, if it be shown by direct proof that the authority 
 of the Empire springs immediately from God. 
 
 We prove that the authority of the Church is not 
 the cause of the authority of the Empire in the fol- 
 lowing manner. Nothing can be the cause of power 
 in another thing when that other thing has all its 
 power, while the first either does not exist, or else 
 has no power of action.* But the Empire had its 
 power while the Church was either not existing at all, 
 or else had no power of acting. Therefore the 
 Church is not the cause of the power of the Empire,, 
 and therefore not of its authority either, for power 
 
 * '■^Non virtttante"
 
 DE MONARCHTA. 293 
 
 and authority mean the same thhig. Let A be the 
 Church, B the Empire, C the authority or power of 
 the Empire. If C is in B while A does not exist, A 
 cannot be the cause of C being in B, for it is impos- 
 sible for an effect to exist before its cause. Further, 
 if C is in B while A does not act, it cannot be that 
 A is the cause of C being in B ; for, to produce an 
 effect, it is necessaiy that the cause, especially the 
 efficient cause of which we are speaking, should have 
 been at work first. The major premiss of this argu- 
 ment is self-evident, and the minor premiss is con- 
 firmed by Christ and the Church. Christ confirms it by 
 His birth and His death, as we have said; the Church 
 confirms it in the words which Paul spake to Festus 
 in the Acts of the Apostles : " I stand at Caesar's 
 judgment-seat, where I ought to be judged," and by 
 the words which an angel of God spake to Paul a 
 little afterwards : " Fear not, Paul ; thou must be 
 brought before Caesar ; " and again by Paul's words 
 to the Jews of Italy : " But when the Jews spake 
 against it, I was constrained to appeal unto Caesar ; 
 not that I had aught to accuse my nation of," but "to 
 deliver my soul from death." But if Caesar had not 
 at that time had the authority to judge in temporal 
 matters, Christ would not have argued thus ; nor 
 would the angel have brought these words; nor would 
 he, who spake of himself as " having a desire to depart
 
 294 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 and to be with Christ," have made an appeal to a 
 judge not having authority.* 
 
 And if_ Constantine had not had the authority 
 over the patronage of the Church, those things which 
 he allotted from the Empire he could not have had 
 the right to allot ; and so the Church would be using 
 this gift against right ; whereas God wills that offer- 
 ings should be pure, as is commanded in Leviticus : 
 " No meat offering that ye shall bring unto the Lord 
 shall be made with leaven." And though this com- 
 mand appears to regard those who offer, nevertheless 
 it also regards those who receive an offering. For it is 
 folly to suppose that God wishes to be received that 
 which He forbids to be offered, for in the same book 
 there is a command to the Levites: "Ye shall not 
 make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing 
 that creepeth ; neither shall ye make yourselves un- 
 clean with them, that ye shall be defiled thereby." f 
 But to say that the Church so misuses the patrimony 
 assigned to her is very unseemly ; therefore the 
 premiss from which this conclusion followed is 
 false. 
 
 XIV. — Again, if the Church had power to bestow 
 authority on the Roman Prince, she would have it 
 
 * "Incompetentem." Acts xxv. lo ; xxvii. 24; xxviii. 19. Phil, 
 i. 23. -(W.) 
 
 t Levit. ii. 11 ; xi. 43. — (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 295 
 
 either'' from God, or from herself, or from some 
 Emperor, or from the universal consent of mankind, 
 or at least of the majority of mankind. There is no 
 other crevice by which this power could flow down 
 to the Church. But she has it not from any of these 
 sources ; therefore she has it not at all. 
 
 It is manifest that she has it from none of these 
 sources ; for if she had received it from God, she 
 would have received it either by the divine or by the 
 natural law : because what is received from nature is 
 received from God ; though the converse of this is not 
 true. But this power is not received by the natural 
 law ; for nature lays down no law, save for the effects of 
 nature, for God cannot fail in power, where he brings 
 anything into being without the aid of secondary 
 agents. Since therefore the Church is not an effect 
 of nature, but of God who said : " Upon this rock 
 I will build my Church," and elsewhere : " I have 
 finished the work which Thou gavest me to do," it 
 is manifest that nature did not give the Church this 
 law. 
 
 Nor was this power bestowed by the divine law ; 
 for the whole of the divine laAV is contained in the 
 bosom of the Old or of the New Testament, and I 
 cannot find therein that any thought or care for 
 worldly matters was commanded, either to the early 
 or to the latter priesthood. Nay, I find rather
 
 296 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 such care taken away from the priests of the Old 
 Testament by the express command of God to 
 Moses,* and from the priests of the New Testament 
 by the express command of Christ to His disciples.f 
 But it could not be that this care was taken away 
 from them, if the authority of the temporal power 
 flowed from the priesthood ; for at least in giving 
 the authority there would be an anxious watchful- 
 ness of forethought, and afterwards continued pre- 
 caution, lest he to whom authority had been given 
 should leave the straight way. 
 
 Then it is quite plain that the Church did not 
 receive this power from herself; for nothing can give 
 what it has not. Therefore all that does anything, 
 must be such in its doing, as that which it intends to 
 do, as is stated in the book "of Simple Being." J But 
 it is plain that if the Church gave to herself this 
 power, she had it not before she gave it. Thus she 
 would have given what she had not, which is im- 
 possible. 
 
 But it is sufficiently manifest from what we have 
 previously made evident that the Church has received 
 not this .pow:er.. from any Emperor. 
 
 And further, that she had it not from the consent 
 of all, or even of the greater part of mankind, who 
 
 * Numbers xviii. 20. Cf. Piirg. xvi. 131. — (W.) 
 t Matt. X. 9.— (W.) X Arist. Metaph. ix. 8.— (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 297 
 
 can doubt ? seeing that not only all the inhabitants 
 of Asia and Africa, but even the greater number of 
 Europeans, Iiold the thought in abhorrence. It is 
 mere weariness to adduce proofs in matters which 
 are so plain. 
 
 XV. — Again, that which is contrary to the nature 
 of a thing cannot be counted as one of its essential 
 powers ; for the essential pov/ers of each individual 
 follow on its nature, in order to gain its end. But the 
 power to grant authority in that which is the realm 
 of our mortal state is contrary to the nature of the 
 Church.* Therefore it is not in the number of its 
 essential powers. For the proof of the minor premiss 
 Vv^e must know that the nature of the Church means 
 the form [or essence] f of the Church. For although 
 men use the word nature not only of the form of a 
 thing, but also of its matter, nevertheless, it is of the 
 form that they use it more properly, as is proved in 
 the book "of Natural Learning." J But the [essence 
 or] form of the Church is nothing else than the life of 
 Christ, as it is contained both in His sayings and in 
 His deeds. For His life was the example and ideal 
 of the militant Church, especially of its pastors, and 
 above all of its chief pastor, to whom it belongs to 
 
 * " Virius auctorisandi regnum nosfra: moiiaUtalis est contra 
 tiaturam Ecclesice." 
 
 t "Forma." + Ariit. P/iys. Aiesc. ii. i.— (W.)
 
 298 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 feed the sheep and the lambs of Christ. And there- 
 fore when Christ left His life unto men for an example 
 He said in John's Gospel: "I have given you an 
 example that ye should do as I have done to you." 
 And He said unto Peter specially, after that He had 
 committed unto him the office of shepherd, the words 
 which John also reports: "Peter, follow me." But 
 Christ denied before Pilate that His rule was of this 
 sort, saying : " My kingdom is not of this world : if 
 my kingdom were of this world, then would my 
 servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the 
 Jews ; but now is my kingdom not from hence." ^ 
 
 But this saying must not be understood to mean 
 that Christ, who is God, is not the lord of this kingdom, 
 for the Psalmist says : " The sea is His, and He made 
 it, and His hands formed the dry land."t We must 
 understand it to mean that, as the pattern of the Onirch, 
 He had not the care of this kingdom. It is as if a 
 golden seal were to speak of itself, and say : " I am 
 not the standard for such and such a class of things;" 
 for in so far as it is gold, this saying is untrue, seeing 
 that gold is the standard of all metals ; but it is true 
 in so far as it is a sign capable of being received by 
 impression. 
 
 It belongs, then, to the very form of the Church 
 
 * John xiii. 1 5 ; xxi. 22 ; xviii. 36.— (\V.) f Ps. xcv. S-—{^^'-)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 299 
 
 always to speak the same, always to think the same ; 
 and to do the opposite of this is evidently contrary to 
 its essential form — that is to say, to its nature. And 
 from this it may be collected that the power of 
 bestowing authority on this kingdom is contrary to the 
 nature of the Church ; for contrariety which is in 
 thought or word follows from contrariety which is 
 in the thing thought and the thing said ; just as 
 truth and falsehood in speech come from the being or 
 the not-being of the thing, as we learn from the doc- 
 trine of the Categories. It has then become manifest 
 enough by means of the preceding arguments, by 
 which the contention of our opponents has been 
 shown to lead to an absurd result, that the authority 
 of the Empire is not in any way dependent on the 
 authority of the Church. 
 
 XVI.— Although it has been proved in the pre- 
 ceding chapter that the authority of the Empire 
 has not its cause in the authority of the Supreme 
 Pontiff; for we have shown that this argument led to 
 absurd results ; yet it has not been entirely shown 
 that the authority of the Empire depends directly 
 upon God, except as a result from our argument. For 
 it is a consequence that, if the authority comes not 
 from the vicar of God, it must come from God 
 Himself And therefore, for the complete determi- 
 nation of the question proposed, Ave have to prove
 
 300 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 directly that the emperor or monarch of the world 
 stands in an immediate relation to the King of the 
 universe, who is God. 
 
 For the better comprehending of this, it must be 
 recognised that man alone, of all created things, holds 
 a position midway betv/een things corruptible and 
 things incorruptible ; and therefore* philosophers 
 rightly liken him to a dividing line between two 
 hemispheres. For man consists of two essential 
 parts, namely, the soul and the body. If he be 
 considered in relation to his body only, he is cor- 
 ruptible; but if he be considered in relation to his 
 soul only, he is incorruptible. And therefore the 
 Philosopher spoke well concerning the incorruptible 
 soul when he said in the second book "of the Soul :" 
 " It is this alone which may be separated, as being 
 eternal, from the corruptible." t 
 
 If, therefore, man holds this position midway 
 between the corruptible and the incorruptible, since 
 every middle nature partakes of both extremes, man 
 must share something of each nature. And since 
 every nature is ordained to gain some final end, it 
 follows that for man there is a double end. For as 
 
 * In the De Cans is {v. above, i. Ii), Propos. 9: " Intelligentia 
 comprehendit generata et naturam, et horizontem naturae, scilicet 
 animam ; nam ipsa est supra naturam." — (W.) 
 
 t Arist. Dc Anitn. ii. 2. — (W.)
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 3°^ 
 
 he alone of all beings participates both in the cor- 
 ruptible and the incorruptible, so he alone of all bemgs. 
 is ordained to gain two ends, whereby one is his end 
 in so far as he is corruptible, and the other in so far 
 as he is incorruptible. 
 
 Two ends, therefore, have been laid down by the 
 ineffable providence of God for man to aim at : 
 the blessedness of this life, which consists m the 
 exercise of his natural powers, and which is prefigured 
 in* the earthly Paradise ; and next, the blessedness 
 of the life eternal, which consists in the fruition of the 
 sicTht of God's countenance, and to which man by his 
 o^n natural powers cannot rise, if he be not aided by 
 the divine light ; and this blessedness is understood 
 by the heavenly Paradise. 
 
 But to these different kinds of blessedness, as to 
 different conelusions, we must come by different 
 means For at the first we may arrive by the lessons 
 of philosophy, if only we will follow them, by actmg m 
 accordance with the moral and intellectual virtues 
 But at the second we can only arrive by spin tual 
 lessons, transcending human reason, so that we follow 
 them in accordance with the theological virtues, faitn, 
 hope, and charity. The truth of the first of these 
 conclusions and of these means is made manifest by 
 
 See Pm xxviii. ■ "id Mr. Longfellow's note ad loc.
 
 302 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 human reason, which by the philosophers has been 
 all laid open to us. The other conclusions and 
 means are made manifest by the Holy Spirit, who 
 by the mouth of the Prophets and holy writers, and 
 by Jesus Christ, the co-eternal Son of God, and His 
 disciples, has revealed to us supernatural truth of 
 which we have great need. Nevertheless human 
 passion would cast them all behind its back, if it were 
 not that men, going astray like the beasts that perish,* 
 were restrained in their course by bit and bridle, like 
 horses and mules. 
 
 Therefore man had need of two cruides for his 
 life, as he had a twofold end in life ; vvhereof one 
 is the Supreme Pontiff, to lead mankind to eternal 
 life, according to the things revealed to us ; and the 
 other is the Emperor, to guide mankind to happiness 
 in this world, in accordance Avith the teaching of 
 philosophy. And since none, or but a few only, and 
 even they with sore difficulty, could arrive at this 
 harbour of happiness, unless the waves and blandish- 
 ments of human desires were set at rest, and the 
 human race were free to live in peace and quiet, this 
 therefore is the mark at which he who is to care for 
 the world, and whom we call the Roman Prince, must 
 most chiefly aim at : I mean, that in this little plot of 
 
 * "Sua bestialitate vagantes." V. Ps. xxxii. lO.
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 earth =!= belonging to mortal men, life may pass in 
 freedom and with peace. And since the order of this 
 world follows the order of the heavens, as they run 
 their course, it is necessary, to the end that the learning 
 which brings liberty and peace may be duly applied 
 by this guardian of the Avorld in fitting season and 
 place, that this power should be dispensed by Him 
 who is ever present to behold the whole order of the 
 heavens. And this is He Vv4io alone has preordained 
 this, that by it in His providence He might bind all 
 things together, each in their own order. 
 
 But if this is so, God alone elects, God alone con- 
 firms : for there is none higher than God. And hence 
 there is the further conclusion, that neither those who 
 now are, nor any others who may, in whatsoever way, 
 have been called "Electors," ought to have that name ; 
 rather they are to be held as declarers and announcers 
 of the providence of God. And, therefore, it is that 
 they to whom is granted the privilege of announcing 
 God's will sometimes fall into disagreement ; because 
 that, all of them or some of them have been blinded 
 by their evil desires, and have not discerned the face 
 of God's appointment.f 
 
 It is therefore clear that the authority of temporal 
 
 * Cf. Parad. xxii. 151. "L^ajuola eke si fa tattto fcroci." 
 \ V. Hallam, Middle Ages, c. v. Bryce, Roman Empire, c. xiv. 
 "Witte, Pmf. p. xxxiv. xlv.
 
 3^4 
 
 DE MONARCH! A. 
 
 Monarchy comes down, with no intermedlaiejidlLJbam 
 the fountain of universal authority; and this fountain, 
 one in its unity, flows through many channels out 
 of the abundance of the goodness of God. 
 
 And now, methinks, I have reached the goal 
 which I set before me. I have unravelled the truth 
 of the questions which I asked : whether the office 
 of Monarchy was necessary to the welfare of the 
 Avorld ; whether it was by right that the Roman people 
 assumed to themselves the office of Monarchy ; and, 
 further, that last question, whether the authority of the 
 Monarch springs immediately from God, or from some 
 other. Yet the truth of this latter question must not 
 be received so narrowly as to deny that in certain 
 matters the Roman Prince is subject to the Roman 
 Pontiff. For that happiness, which is subject to 
 mortality, in a sense is ordered with a view to the 
 happiness which shall not taste of death. Let^ there- 
 fore, Ceesar be reverent to Peter, as the first-born son 
 should be reverent to his father, that he may be 
 illuminated with the light of his father's grace, and so 
 may be stronger to lighten the world over which he 
 has been placed by Him alone, who is the ruler of all 
 things spiritual as well as temporal. 
 
 THE END.
 
 1,0 'i 
 
 , F 7 f^ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 DE MONARCHIA. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 WHETHER A TEMPORAL MONARCHY IS NECESSARY FOR THE WELL- 
 BEING OF THE WORLD? 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I.— Introduction. ,....••• ^77 
 
 II. — What is the end of the civil order of mankind ? . . 17S 
 
 III. — It is to cause the whole power of the human intellect to 
 
 act in speculation and operation . . . . iSo 
 
 IV. — To attain this end, mankind needs universal peace . 1S4 
 
 V, — When several means are ordained to gain an end, one 
 
 of them must be supreme over the others , . . 1S5 
 
 VI.— The order which is found in the parts of mankind ought 
 
 to be found in mankind as a whole . . . . iSS 
 
 VII.— Kingdoms and nations ought to stand in the same re- 
 lation to the monarch as mankind to God . . . 1S9 
 
 VIII. — Men were made in the image of God ; but God is one . z7'. 
 
 IX. — Men are the children of Heaven, and they ought to 
 
 imitate the footprints of Heaven .... 190 
 
 X. — There is need of a Supreme Judge for the decision of all 
 
 quarrels ■ 1 •••••• • 19^ 
 
 X
 
 3o6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XI. — The world is best ordered when justice is strongest 
 
 therehi ......... 192 
 
 XIT. — ^^Ien are at their best in freedom 19S 
 
 XIII. — He who is best qualified to rule can best order others . 201 
 
 XIV. — When it is possible, it is better to gain an end by one 
 
 agent than by many 203 
 
 XV. — That which is most one is everywhere best . . . 206 
 
 XVI.— Christ willed to be born in the fulness of time, when 
 
 Augustus was monarch ..•••. 209 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 WHETHER THE ROMAN PEOrLE ASSUMED TO ITSELF BY RIGHT THE 
 
 DIGNITY OF EMPIRE? 
 
 CHAP. P-^GE 
 
 I. — Introduction -ii 
 
 21' 
 
 II.— That which God wills in human society is to be held as 
 Right . ■ • I I • • • • 
 
 III. — It was fitting for the Romans, as being the noblest 
 
 nation, to be preferred before all others . . . 216 
 
 IV,— The Roman Empire was helped by miracles, and there- 
 fore was willed by God ....•• 220 
 
 V. — The Romans, in bringing the world into subjection, 
 aimed at the good of the state, and therefore at the 
 end of Right 223 
 
 VI.— All men, who aim at Right, walk according to Right . 229 
 
 VII.— The Romans were ordained for empire by Nature . . 232 
 
 VIII.— The judgment of God showed that empire fell to the 
 
 lot of the Romans 235
 
 CONTENTS. 307 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 IX. — The Romans prevailed when all nations were striving 
 
 for empire 239 
 
 X. — Wliat is acquired by single combat is acquired as of 
 
 Right 243 
 
 XI. — The single combats of Rome ..... 247 
 
 XII. — Christ, by being born, proves to us that the authority of 
 
 the Roman Empire was just ..... 230 
 
 XIII. — Chiist, by dying, confirmed the jurisdiction of the Roman 
 
 Empire over all mankind ...... 253 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 WHETHER THE AUTHORITY OF THE MONARCH COMES DIRECTLY 
 FROM GOD, OR FROM SOME VICAR OK GOD ? 
 
 CHAP. PACE 
 
 I. — Introduction . . . . . . . .256 
 
 II. — God wills not that which is repugnant to the intention 
 
 of Nature 257 
 
 III. — Of the three classes of our opponents, and of the too 
 
 great authority which many ascribe to tradition . . 259 
 
 IV. — The argument drawn by our opponents from the sun 
 
 and the moon ........ 264 
 
 V. — The argument drawn from the precedence of Levi over 
 
 Judah . . . . . . . . .270 
 
 VI. — The argument drawn from the crowning and deposition 
 
 of Saul by Samuel . . . . . . .271 
 
 VII. — The argument drawn from the oblation of the J.ragi . 273 
 
 VIII. — The argument drawn from the power of the keys given 
 
 to Peter 275
 
 3o8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PACK 
 
 JX. — -The argument drawn from the two swords . . . 27S 
 
 X. — The argument drawn from the donation of Constantine . 2S2 
 
 XI. — The argument drawn from the summoning of Charles 
 
 the Great by Pope Hadrian 287 
 
 XII. — The argument drawn from reason 28? 
 
 XIII. — The authority of the Church is not the cause of the 
 
 authority of tire Empire ...... 291 
 
 XIV. — The Church lias power to bestow such autliority neither 
 
 from God, nor from itself, nor from any emperor . 294 
 
 XV. — The power of giving authority to the Empire is against 
 
 the nature of the Church 297 
 
 XVI. — The authority of the Empire comes directly from God . 299 
 
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 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, TRAVELS, ETC. 7 
 
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 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. I OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 HENRY II. I WILLIAM in. 
 
 EDWARD I. I WALPOLE. 
 
 HENRY VII. I CHATHAM. 
 
 WDLSliY. PITT. 
 
 ELIZABETH. I PEEL. 
 
 Among the writers will be: — 
 MR. EDWARD A. FREEMAN, 
 MR. FREDiiRICK POLLOCK, 
 MR. J. COTTER M>JRIS0N, 
 PROF. M. CREIGHTON, 
 THE DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S, 
 
 MR. FREDERIC HARRISON, 
 MR. H. D. TRAILL, 
 MR. LESLIE STKPHEN, 
 
 AND 
 
 MR. JOHN MORLEY. 
 
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 10 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
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 12 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
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 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, TRAVELS, ETC. 13 
 
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