Do you consider the Divine Comedy a Catholic masterpiece?

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LeonardDeNoblac

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As an Italian, I’m pretty familiar with the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. It is universally considered one of the main works in the history of Italian literature, and every Italian who goes to public school studies it at middle school and for the last three years of high school (I’m still going to high school, I’m in my final year before university, so I’m now studying the Paradise ).
I know that the Divine Comedy, as an absolute masterpiece of Medieval literature, is also studied in other countries, especially since Dante has had a pretty strong influence on English literature (the Divine Comedy was a source of ispiration for John Milton’s Paradise Lost ).
Therefore, I think someone here has at least some notion of it. So, what’s your opinion? Dante was a devout Catholic (he had a particular devotion to Saint Lucy ), but it’s probable (even thought it has never been proved ) that he had some heterodox ideas (one of his works, the treatise De Monarchia, “On Monarchy”, was put on the Index, but I think his errors were limited on the question of the relation between the temporal and the spiritual power ). However, since I’ve started to study the Divine Comedy, I’ve never noticed any other error in Dante’s theology - indeed, he draws heavily from Saint Thomas Aquinas (who died when Dante was 9 ), Saint Bonaventure and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. He has lots of words of praise for figures like Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic.
 
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From a theological standpoint, most of what Dante wrote in the Divine Comedy is speculation, at best, and ascriptural. That being said, I think there is no doubt the Divine Comedy is one of the seminal achievements in High Middle Age/ Early Renaissance literature. The Inferno especially is a keen commentary on the political figures of Italy.
 
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The Comedy is indeed a masterpiece. But it’s also part political polemic (at the time) as well as high drama. It has Catholic imagery and themes but I wouldn’t say it’s anything more than literature.
 
Yes, it is speculation (or, maybe, poetic imagination ), but no one has ever claimed doctrinal authority for the Divine Comedy. However, some of his ideas on the disposition of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise were just a personal elaboration of common and popular images of his time. Also, while it’s not scriptural (Scripture is pretty much silent on the matter, and even theologians like Saint Thomas Aquinas were very basic on that ), it’s not inconsistent with Scripture.
Actually, Dante lived in the XIII-XIV century (1265-1321 ), so in Late Middle Ages, not Renaissance.
 
Rhubarb said:
But it’s also part political polemic (at the time) as well as high drama.
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Yes, indeed it is. Dante wasn’t very kind with his political enemies - the list included, but was by no means limited to, Pope Boniface VIII himself (yes, that Boniface, the author of the encyclical Unam Sanctam ), for whom Dante even reserved a place in the section of Hell prepared for… the heretics.
 
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Here in Italy we don’t consider him a Renaissance author. Petrarch is the first one who, I think, can be said to be a proto-Renaissance author.
 
I regularly teach it and have for years. Graduate students at a university and adults at parishes. It is always a hit, loved for both its literary qualities and its theology. It is beautiful. Many, many good discussions about Catholic thought and culture come from it.
 
Dante’s Divine Comedy is fiction, although a classic.

He never visited Heaven, Purgatory or Hell, but in many schools it was taught as nonfiction.

In Inferno, Dante did have the courage to place the current Pope of his time in hell, along with Bishops and Cardinals.

Unfortunately, it fed the mindset of many scrupulous Catholics and they never knew the love and mercy of God. in their lifetime. They feared hell more than having hope and trust in God and pretty much transferred that anxiety to others.
 
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JimR-OCDS said:
Dante’s Divine Comedy is fiction, although a classic.

He never visited Heaven, Purgatory or Hell, but in many schools it was taught as nonfiction.
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Where and when? I’ve heard no one who has ever taught the Divine Comedy as nonfiction. Dante never claimed it wasn’t fiction.
JimR-OCDS said:
In Inferno, Dante did have the courage to place the current Pope of his time in hell, along with Bishops and Cardinals.
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The audacity or the rashness? Even Dante himself acknowledged his own problems with pride (according to some interpretations, he even placed himself in Purgatory for that… ). However, in some cases he was right to denounce corrupt clergymen. Also, Boniface VIII was no longer the current Pope when Dante was writing (Dante started the Divine Comedy in 1307, while Boniface VIII died in 1303 ).
JimR-OCDS said:
Unfortunately, it fed the mindset of many scrupulous Catholics and they never knew the love and mercy of God. in their lifetime. They feared hell more than having hope and trust in God and pretty much transferred that anxiety to others.
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You probably are considering only Hell. The Paradise is the exact opposite - it’s all about hope, joy and mercy. Even in Purgatory the mercy of God is one of the current themes.
 
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It was the way it was taught in Catholic High Schools

Usually, they began with Inferno and few Catholics I know, remember the other two books
 
That’s probably because Hell is the simplest to understand. It’s full of politics and worldly stories, and the main reasons are the low status of Hell in God’s creation - wich fits low themes - and the fact that the souls of the damned are thought as more attached to their earthly life - wich would be hardly surprising, considering their present condition.
The Paradise is actually a headache (at least in my experience ) for everyone who is not familiar with Catholic theology - if you are lucky enough to be so, you should probably love it.
 
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In all my years (33) teaching it to people of all ages, I never yet encountered a person who was told it was non-fiction in school. Many, many of the older adults I teach it to read it in highschool. If younger adults read it in school at all, it was often just Inferno, which is indeed tragic since it is only the beginning of the story. Purgatorio is actually pretty easy to read, but you have to believe in Purgatory to get the impact and many readers today don’t. Paradise is indeed fairly tough–Dante even gives strict warnings about who should read it in the first couple cantos–but it is tough because it is often mystical and requires a lot of imagination. Many readers just don’t have the sensibility or the patience.
 
I don’t think they’re told it’s fiction or non-fiction. It’s just told barely or never mentioned
 
Limoncello4021 said:
Purgatorio is actually pretty easy to read, but you have to believe in Purgatory to get the impact and many readers today don’t. Paradise is indeed fairly tough–Dante even gives strict warnings about who should read it in the first couple cantos–but it is tough because it is often mystical and requires a lot of imagination. Many readers just don’t have the sensibility or the patience.
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That’s pretty much the situation that we have also here in Italy. Public schools often teach that Purgatory was made up in the Middle Ages (I had to study Church history and theology for myself to find out that it’s actually a lie ), so it’s unfortunately common that people disregard it. For the Paradise, many students find it very boring - but I think they simply don’t have the sensibility or the patience to truly understand it, as you said.
 
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In answer to your original question, the Divine Comedy is not only a masterpiece but an authentically Catholic masterpiece. In the translation I read, by Dorothy L. Sayers, the introductions and notes repeatedly stress how carefully Dante researched the theological underpinning of his poem. As a poet, of course, he drew freely on his own creative imagination for the storyline, the incidents, the settings, the characterizations, and so on. He added to the theology, but he never distorted or falsified the underlying Catholic theology.
 
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The Divine Comedy is my favorite work of all time. I read it as a junior in high school (individually, not as part of my class) after one of my teachers mentioned it in passing in relation to a poem we were reading. It probably impacted my faith more than any other work I’ve ever read, including real theology books. I originally read it in translation, and I plan to read it again in Italian in the near future to get the full effect of the poetry. That said, I am curious about where this was taught as non-fiction. I certainly understood it to be fictional even as a teenager, and I’ve never encountered a single person who thought it was real.
 
I like that in the Divine Comedy Virgil tells the troubled Dante that there is a way forward but that it involves a journey through Hell. It is a metaphor for confronting sin and dysfunction with honesty.
 
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