RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Bante
than the dry land or habitable part of the earth ? (8) The Bucolic Eclogues : Two Epistles in Latin hexameters, to Giovanni del Vergilio, who blamed Dante for not writing the Commedia in Latin, and urged him to compose Latin poems, and to come to Bologna to receive the poetic crown. (9) The Divina Commedia : It is written in terza rima, and the theme is Dante's journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise. The poem is called Commedia, because although it begins horribly with hell, it ends happUy with paradise. The epithet " Divine " was a later addition of admirers. Dante says that the subject of the work, taken literally, is the state of souls after death, regarded as a matter of fact. Taken allegorically, it is man, so far as by merit or demerit in the exercise of free will he is exposed to the rewards or punishments of justice. The astronomical and geographical elements of the poem are derived from the Ptolemaic system of astronomy and from the geographical writings of Orosius (4th cent.). Hell and purgatory are treated as geographical facts. Hell is directly beneath Jerusalem, the center of the land-hemisphere. It is a hollow inverted cone, the interior circumference of which is divided into nine concentric ledges, each devoted to the punishment of a distinct class of sinners. At the apex of the cone, the center of gravity, Lucifer is fixed in eternal ice. Purgatory is a lofty conical mountain rising from an island in the southern hemisphere. Its lower section, antepurgatory, is traversed by a spiral track of three rounds, which terminates at the gate of St. Peter. Above this is purgatory proper, which consists of seven concentric terraces, on each of which one of the seven deadly sins is expiated. At the summit of the mountain is the earthly paradise, the original Eden, where is the river Lethe, whose waters obliterate the memory of sin and sorrow, and the river Eunoe, which restores the memory of good actions.
The poem consists of three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. In Apr., 1300, Dante finds himself astray in a rough and gloomy forest. Emerging from this, he attempts to ascend a hill, but is driven back by three ravenous beasts. He is met by the shade of Vergil, who proposes to conduct him through hell and purgatory, and then to commit him to the charge of Beatrice, who will guide him through paradise. On the evening of Good Friday, Apr. 8, they enter the gate of hell, and, passing through the successive circles, reach the apex, pass the center of gravity, and ascend to the island of purgatory. Through antepurgatory they reach the gate of St. Peter, are admitted, and traverse the successive terraces. At the summit Dante sees a magnificent symbolic vision of the triumph of the Church. Beatrice appears, and Vergil vanishes. Having been plunged in Lethe, and having drunk of Eunoe, Dante mounts with Beatrice through the nine heavens to the empyrean, where he beholds the bliss of the glorified, and the blessed Trinity.
It is preeminently a moral and religious work. It is the story of the human soul in its relation to God. In the conditions of departed souls which it portrays it reflects the multiform aspects of the life of men and women of all ranks, stations, and
employments, from the emperor to the peasant. It is the consummate expression of medievalism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The range of allusion is vast and wonderful in its variety. The portrayal of human character and human passion is vivid and subtle. The poet's intense, pervading moral purpose divests of vulgarity even the hideous details of the Inferno. He is a plain speaker, but no word or picture ever appeals to a sensual instinct. Under his dominant conception of man as the inheritor of a moral destiny, distinctions of time, race, and position disappear, and classic heroes and mythological monsters mingle with popes, martyrs, and Christian emperors. His biting satire respects neither civil nor ecclesiastical dignity. The poem is packed with similes, allegories, portraits, historical and personal references, and theological and philosophical disquisitions. It is intensely personal, often egotistic, revealing the poet's consciousness of his own genius, tinged with bitterness of spirit, yet displaying the sympathy and the tenderness of a great soul. Dante is impatient of vagueness. He is intensely realistic. Every space is measured, every region mapped, every dimension recorded. His similes are chosen without regard to their source, with the single view of illustrating his thought; and the most grotesque images appear amid the very sublimities of heaven. With his wonderful sense of form he unites a delicate sense of color and sound.
M. R. Vincent.
Bibliography: Lists of literature are: C. de Batines, Bibliografia Dantesca, 2 vols., Prato, 1845-46, supplemented by C. F. Carpellini, 1866, by B. della Lega, 1883, and by Guido Biagi, 1888; G. J. Ferazzi, Manuale Dantesco, 5 vols., Bassano, 1865-77 (useful, but confused in arrangement); T. W. Koch, Dante in America, Cambridge, Mass., 1896 (for the Dante Society); W. C. Lane, Dante Collections in the Harvard and Boston . Libraries, Boston, 1890; W. M. Rossetti, Bibliography of the Works of Dante, London, 1905.
General and introductory critical works are: G. A. Scartazzini, Dante-Handbuch, Leipsic, 1892, Eng. transl., London, 1893; H. C. Barlow, Critical, Historical and Philosophical Contributions to the Study of Dante, 2 vols., ib. 1864-65; E. Moore, Studies in Dante, 3 series, ib. 1896- 1903 (very valuable); F. X. Kraus, Dante, sein Leben und sein Werk, Berlin, 1897. More popular works are: M. F. Rossetti, A Shadow of Dante, Edinburgh, 1884; R. W Church, Dante and Other Essays, London, 1888; J. A. Symonds, Introduction to the Study of Dante, ib. 1890; L. Ragg, Dante and His Italy, ib. 1907. On Dante's astronomy, geography, and chronology consult E. Moore, in Dante Studies, vol. iii., London, 1903, and his Time References in the Divina Commedia, ib. 1887.
Biographical works: The biographies by Boccaccio and Bruni are translated by P. H. Wicksteed, in A Provisional Transl. of the Early Lives of Dante, Hull, 1898; a critical r^sum^ of the five early biographies is by E. Moore, Dante and his Early Biographers, London, 1880. Consult further: F. X. Wegele, Dante Alighieri's Leben und Werke, Jena, 1879 (valuable); G. A. Scartazzini, Dante Alighieri, Frankfort, 1879.
Dictionaries and concordances are: L. G. Blanc, Vocabolario Dantesco, Leipsic, 1852; Donato Bocci, Dizionario . . della Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri, Turin, 1873; G. A. Scartazzini, Enciclopedia Dantesca, Milan, 1896-99, continued by A. Fiamazzo, 1905 (supplement includes the Latin works; valuable); P. Toynbee, Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in Dante, London, 1898 (useful); E. A. Fay, Concordance of the Divina Commedia, Boston, 1894 (very valuable); E. Sheldon and A. C. White, Concordanze delle opere . di Dante, ib. 1905 (also indispensable).
Editions deserving notice are: The superb quarto of G. G. Warren Lord Vernon, in which the four earliest
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