Meditations on the Divine Comedy: Index AB

Absolution

MedXIV:2 The penitence performed on the Mount of Purgatory absolves the spirits of their sins.

Angels

MedVIII:2 The Angels who fell with Satan, guard the city of Dis. They manifest pride, the besetting sin of Hell, and the cause of Satan’s fall. An angel from above (though Dante does not describe him as such) comes to assist the Poet’s entry to the city.

MedXXXVI:1 The birdlike Angel of God, using his wings as sails, ferries spirits from the Tiber to the Mount of Purgatory. The wings are white: the feathers do not moult. The Angels are ‘ministers of God’.

MedXXXIX:2 An Angel caught up Buonconte’s repentant spirit.

MedXLII:1 The Angels dressed in green robes, carrying blunted and burning swords that guarded Eden, and guard the ante-Purgatory. Their hair is blonde, their faces dazzle the sense of sight.

MedXLIII:2 A courteous Angel guards the Gate of Purgatory. His face dazzles, his naked sword reflects the sun’s rays, the light of Divine Love.

MedXLV:1 The Angels sacrifice their free will to God in humility.

MedXLVI:2 On each terrace of the Mount Dante meets an Angel whose attribute is the opposite of the sin purged there. Here the Angel of Humility on the first terrace.

MedXLIX:1 Dante finds the Angel of Fraternal Love on the exit from the second terrace.

MedL:1 The planetary spheres influence fate through the Angelic presences which guide them.

MedLI:2 The Angel of Meekness on the third terrace (and the other Angels) emits intense light as a receptacle and transmitter of God’s light. It shares its knowledge without prompting, fulfilling the nature of its role.

MedLIII:1 The Angel of Zeal, with gentle voice, and swan-like wings, guides the Poets onwards from the fourth terrace.

MedLVI:1 The Angel of Liberality on the fifth terrace sends them onwards with a word.

MedLVIII:3 The Angel of Temperance glows red hot, but fans Dante with a perfumed breeze, at the exit from the sixth terrace.

MedLXI:1 The Angel of Chastity sings with a voice ‘more thrilling than ours’ at the exit from the seventh Terrace. Its presence is within a bright light that overpowers the sense of sight.

MedLXIV:1 The Angels sing at the sight of Dante’s shame, and show compassion for his state. They harmonise their melody to that of the eternal spheres.

MedLXIX:3 Each ‘planetary’ sphere has its own Angelic presence mingled with it, which determines its virtue and qualities. Likewise the Cherubim mediate the virtues of the Stellar Heaven.

MedLXXV:2 Divine providence structures and controls the creation in its nature and its continuing welfare. This is achieved through the angelic intellects present in the planetary spheres. Since God and they are perfect then the results must be regular and not chaotic, art and not disorder. Dante expresses his belief in the completeness of this created Nature.

MedLXXVI:1 Cunizza da Romano refers to the Angelic Hierarchies, specifically the Order of Thrones, the ‘mirrors’ of God’s judgement.

MedLXXXVI:1 God’s Justice is beyond human understanding. Even Lucifer, an Angel, was too limited to see all, and fell through his own impatience for greater knowledge.

MedXC:1 Gabriel, the Angel of the Annunciation, formed like a coronet of flame, crowns the Virgin Mary.

MedXCV:1 Beatrice explains the nine orders of the angelic hierarchy.

MedXCVI Beatrice explains aspects of the Angels. They were instaneously created as order and substance. They are actualised and complete. They underwent no development but are complete, and have intellect and free will, but require no memory. They are innumerable.

Arabic, Arab, Muslim, Islamic, Islam

MedII:1 Dante inherited the poetic tradition of Provence influenced by Arabic sources.

MedXXVIII:1 Mahommed, split like a wine-cask, is among the schismatics who split the true Church, rather than among the heretics. The Caliph Ali is also with him in Hell, as a sower of dissent within Islam itself.

MedLIX:1 Statius explains the origin of the individual, unified, soul. After death it retains intellect, memory and will, and around it a ‘shadow’ or ‘shade’ is manifested that reflects its desires and affections. He specifically rejects the teachings of Averroës, the great Arabian philospher and Aristotelian, on this subject. Averroism was disseminated extensively throghout the universities, including Padua and Bologna.

MedLXVI:2 Dante watches a symbolically enacted history of the Church and Empire. The Church is attacked, corrupted and divided, acquiring temporal power in a fatal confusion of the spiritual and earthly spheres. The vision culminates in the whorish mating of a French pope to the French court, and the transfer of the Papacy from its true home, Rome, to Avignon. The dragon represents the Islamic schism. Mohammed is seen as a schismatic rather than as a heretic.

MedLXXVIII:2 Saint Francis attempted to convert the Sultan in 1219. There was strong resistance to the attempt.

MedLXXXII:2 Cacciaguida, Dante’s ancestor died fighting the infidel in the unsuccessful second Crusade of 1147. Dante through him asserts the right of the Christians to the Holy Lands.

MedLXXXV:1 Dante in honouring the warriors endorses the Jewish and Christian incursions into the Holy Land, and the defence of the West against Muslim aggression.

Art

MedXXXVII:1 Casella’s music seduces the spirits and the Poets to delight, such that they temporarily forget their mission. This is the seductiveness of art warned against by Plato in The Republic.

MedLXXV:2 Divine providence structures and controls the creation in its nature and its continuing welfare. This is achieved through the angelic intellects present in the planetary spheres. Since God and they are perfect then the results must be regular and not chaotic, art and not disorder. Dante expresses his belief in the completeness of this created Nature.

MedLXXVI:2 God’s Art beautifies the Universe.

MedLXXVII:1 The Universe reveals the art of the Maker.

MedLXXVII:1 Dante is unable to express the brightness of the sphere of the Sun by any known means, intellect, art, or knowledge, but it can be a subject of faith and hope.

Authority

MedVI:2 The Commedia makes numerous statements of and appeals to authority, whether philosophic/scientific or spiritual. Dante strives to reconcile all issues with orthodoxy and precedent. Virgil discusses the afterlife and the Day of Judgement and its effects on the punishment of sinners. He seeks to trust, through knowledge and belief, in the authority of a separated and reformed Empire and Church on earth, and the authority of Faith as revealed through the spiritual authorities, and revelation (Vision) in Heaven.

Avarice

MedI:1 The she-wolf as a symbol of the Avarice which Dante identifies as a failing of the Papacy.

MedVI:1 Highlighted by Ciacco as a root of the political evils in Florence.

MedVII:1 Punished in the Fourth Circle where the churchmen in particular are singled out for their denial of the way of poverty, and their embracing of the way of ‘getting and spending’.

MedXVIII:2 Dante associates avarice with the city of Bologna.

MedLI:3 A sin arising from excessive love for what should be loved only in moderation, earthly possessions. It is related to Gluttony and Lust. A wrong response of Rational love to desire for the good.

MedLIII:1 The Siren symbolizes the temptation towards this excessive desire.

MedLIII:2 The avaricious purge themselves on the fifth terrace of the Mount. They lie face down turned to the earth by Divine Justice, as they once were turned excessively towards earthly possessions by Avarice.

MedLIV:2 Hugh Capet’s tirade against his own Capetian dynasty, Dante’s hated French line, as examples of avaricious rulers.

MedLIV:3 Examples of avarice at the exit from the fifth terrace. Paired Classical and Biblical examples: Pygmalion and Midas: Achan and Sapphira: Heliodorus and Polymnestor: and finally Crassus.

MedLVI:1 Statius’s error was Prodigality rather than Avarice. The prodigal and extravagant, those who dissipate resources on idle things, are punished with the Avaracious in the fourth circle of Inferno, and Statius claims he only realised his error on reading Virgil’s lines (Aeneid III 56-57) ironically implying that gold may as well drive all human behaviour. Statius then recognised all the dimensions of wrong associated with wealth-driven behaviour.

Beatrice

MedI:4 She will be Dante’s spirit-guide through Paradise. The feminine aspect of soul. An embodiment of Divine Philosophy, and mortal love transcended.

MedII:2 Beatrice is characterized by her beauty, blessedness, her bright and tearful eyes, gentle voice, and her love. She blends the erotic object of desire, with the saint: the friend with the guardian and lover. She asks Virgil to aid Dante.

MedV:1 MedV:2 Beatrice is a spiritualised form of the real girl, embodying erotic charge, saintliness, and symbolizing and demonstrating the philosophic intellect.

MedX:3 She will (through Cacciaguida) reveal his future to him.

MedXV:1 She is Dante’s ‘star’, his guiding light.

MedXL:2 Beatrice is ‘the light linking truth to intellect’, she is Divine Philosophy, and the source of truth in matters of religion. She is smiling and blessed.

MedXLIX:1 Beatrice will free Dante from longing, both intellectual and of every other kind. Divine grace, love and philosophy are therefore beyond the erotic tradition of Courtly love. Divine love is not that longing which is the essence of the Troubadour desire for the lady, but perfect peace.

MedLII:1 Freewill is ‘the noble virtue’ to Beatrice. In other words Dante must transcend his earthly love for her, and allow her to become the symbol of the assent of the will to higher philosophy, to divine love: allowing her spiritualization, while still like the Virgin Mary retaining the deep attributes of the woman. This is not easy to explain: the erotic is not wholly lost, at least in the Purgatorio: Dante feels her presence deeply, but it is transformed in his submission to a higher love, beauty, truth and goodness of which she is a realizable symbol and to which she can be a guide.

MedLX:1 Beatrice as the transformed emblem of the poetic, personal and spiritual journey.

MedLXI:1 The hope of seeing Beatrice strengthens Dante to enter the purging fire of the Seventh terrace that cleanses the spirit of Lust.

MedLXI:2 There are two paths to the good, that of the active and that of the contemplative life, symbolised by Leah and Rachel (or Martha and Mary). Convivio celebrates the supremacy of the contemplative life, but here Dante balances the two. Beatrice, as a symbol of Divine Philosophy, sits with Rachel in Heaven and is associated with the contemplative life.

MedLXI:3 Dante will rest while Beatrice’s eyes move towards him.

MedLXII:1 Matilda is Leah to Beatrice’s Rachel.

MedLXIV:1 Beatrice appears to Dante in a moment of revelation, within the Chariot of the Church, and is both the real Beatrice (she asserts her individual reality: ‘ben son, ben son Beatrice’) and Divine Philosophy. Her presence causes him emotional turbulence, as she rebukes and shames him for his past failings. She wears the colours of the theological virtues, veiled with white Faith, dressed in red Charity, cloaked with green Hope. As she appears, to be his guide through Paradiso, Virgil vanishes.

MedLXV:1 Dante undergoes the sacrament with Beatrice as confessor, the three stages of penitence, confession and forgiveness. She rebukes him for his past, until he falls stunned from shame and remorse. Beneath her white veil of Faith she is more beautiful to him than before, clothed with spiritual power.

MedLXV:2 Dante is forgiven and Beatrice reveals her smile which is that of the three theological virtues, with charity equating to love and forgiveness.

MedLXVI:1 Beatrice, as Divine Philosophy, guards the Chariot of the Church after Christ, bound as it is to the Tree of Empire.

MedLXVII:1 She prophesies the coming of an Imperial saviour. Her new relationship with Dante is that of a sister in Christ. She will guide him from here on.

MedLXVII:2 Dante prepares for his entry into Paradise, with Beatrice as his guide.

MedLXVIII:2 Beatrice is like a mirror which reflects wisdom, and love towards Dante.

MedLXIX:1 Beatrice, Divine Philosophy, is both beautiful to contemplate, and filled with joy.

MedLXX:1 Beatrice is Dante’s ‘sun’. Her eyes have a holy glow of the cardinal virtues.

MedLXXIV:1 Beatrice’s presence still carries an erotic charge to Dante, witnessed by his reactions to her. The charge is transmuted into awe, wonder, gratitude and joy, but it makes her more than merely a symbolic representation.

MedLXXVIII:2 The concept of the idealised Beatrice may have a source in Saint Francis’s embrace of ‘Lady Poverty’, the facets of Courtly Love being transferred to a purely spiritual symbol.

MedLXXXI:2 Beatrice’s beauty is too great for Dante to remember the sight. Her beauty increases at each level, and the Cross is only the greatest sight he has seen so far because he has not yet gazed at Beatrice’s eyes. The sight is both permissible and purer as they ascend.

MedLXXXII:1 Beatrice’s smile in her eyes overpowers Dante. The depth of emotion unites the physical presence with the intellectual symbol, in a profound way that suggests the incarnation of grace, and the elevation, rather than transendence, of earthly love within the divine.

MedXCIII:1 Beatrice’s gaze has the power to restore Dante’s temporarily eclipsed sight.

MedXCIV:2 Beatrice’s beauty exceeds all art and nature.

MedXCVII:1 Beatrice’s beauty now exceeds all measure, and Dante ceases to be able to describe her further.

MedXCVIII:1 Beatrice now rests as Dante’s guide, and Dante in gratitude celebrates her goodness, and her grace that has led him to freedom and the hope of salvation, and asks for her protection.

MedC:1 Beatrice joins Bernard in his prayer to the Virgin on Dante’s behalf.

Beauty

MedLXI:3 The beauty of nature signifies the Earthly Paradise.

MedLXII:1 The wood before the Earthly Paradise invokes the innocence of nature, the uplifting dawn beauty of resurrection and regeneration.

MedLXV:1 Beneath her white veil of Faith she is more beautiful to Dante than before, clothed now with spiritual power.

MedLXV:2 Dante is forgiven and Beatrice reveals her smile which is that of the three theological virtues, with charity equating to love and forgiveness. Her revealed beauty exceeds his powers of decription.

MedLXIX:1 Beatrice, Divine Philosophy, is both beautiful to contemplate, and filled with joy.

MedLXXV:1 Beatrice’s beauty increases as she and Dante ascend through the spheres (and as his intellectual understanding of divine philosophy increases).

MedLXXVI:2 God’s Art beautifies the Universe.

MedLXXXI:2 Beatrice’s beauty is too great for Dante to remember the sight.