himself to prove that the office of “Monarch” is necessary to the
well-being of the world, developing his theory of “Monarchy” as such. In
the Second, which is a long panegyric of the Roman Power, conceived as
one and continuous from the days of Aeneas son of Anchises, he points
to Rome as a providential instrument in God’s hand for the governing
of the world and the well-being of mankind.[47] He establishes to his
own satisfaction the thesis that the Holy Roman Empire, and it alone,
provides the “Monarchy” he is seeking. In the Third he argues that,
notwithstanding all that has been said and done by Popes, who (since
Gregory VII—and notably in the person of the Poet’s contemporary,
Boniface VIII)—claimed authority over all earthly potentates, the Secular
Authority is, in its own sphere, not derived from, or subject to the
Spiritual, but is independent; that the “Roman Prince” derives his
authority and his inalienable responsibility direct from God Himself.
This last is the most original part of Dante’s treatise, and that of most
general importance. For it saps the false temporal pretensions of the
Papacy, the rottenness of which Dante was clever enough to discern long
before the famous “Donation of Constantine” had been proved a forgery.
But this subject need not detain us now. Our interest will be focussed
mainly on the theme of the First Book; in a lesser degree on that of
the Second, and we shall consider them both in the light of the _Divina
Commedia_.
* * * * *
Dante’s reverence for the Roman Empire dates probably from his first
study of the _Aeneid_, and is bound up with his passionate devotion
to Virgil,[48] whom he addresses in the opening Canto of the _Divina
Commedia_[49]
O degli altri poeti onore e lume
Vagliami il lungo studio e ’l grande amore
Che m’ ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume!
For him, as we have said, the Roman Power is continuous—from Aeneas,
through Julius Caesar, and through Charlemagne to his own day. In the
Second Book of the _Monarchia_ he sets forth first the nobility of its
origin, then the attestation of its divine character by “miracles”; he
substantiates the claim of the Roman People to rule by the evidence of
their “public spirit” and rightness of aim, and their unique faculty for
governing; by their success against all competitors for world-empire—the
prize sought so keenly by Cyrus, Xerxes, Alexander and the rest was
attained by Rome alone. Finally, he adduces Christ Himself as a witness.
Did He not choose to be born and to die for the world’s salvation under
the authority of the Roman Empire?
In the Divine Comedy the theme of Rome’s glory receives an equally
enthusiastic and a more poetic treatment. Its echoes ring all through
the great poem, they become clamant and compelling in the Sixth Canto
of the _Paradiso_, where, from the mouth of Justinian, in the Heaven
of the world’s Workers, flows the story of the majestic flight of that
“Uccel di Dio,” the Roman Eagle, through the centuries from Aeneas to
Charlemagne.[50]
But the atmosphere of serene satisfaction which pervades the _Monarchia_
is not maintained here. The opening Paean of triumph gives place to a
more mournful note when the great Lawgiver turns to denounce the factions
of later times: “the Guelphs striving to Frenchify Italy, the Ghibellines
to Germanise it.”[51] Bitterly he assails the unworthy partisans of the
Empire. The Eagle stands for Justice; let them practise their intrigues
under some other standard[52]—
Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte
Sott’altro segno....
Here practice comes to blows with theory. The Roman “Monarchy” was,
in Dante’s days, a failure. This failure was partly due to negligence
of individual occupants of the throne of the Caesars, like Rudolf
and Albert of Hapsburg,[53] partly to the usurping pretensions of the
Papacy,[54] partly, again, to the turbulent, anarchic, and self-seeking
spirit of cities and states.[55]
It was Dante’s misfortune to be born into a world seething with political
faction, and into an Italy and a Florence in which the fever of faction
was at its hottest.[56] The two most potent influences in Christendom—the
Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire—were at feud; and half the people of
Italy (largely, if the truth must be told, to justify their existing
group-enmities) sided with the Papacy, and called themselves “Guelfs,”
half with the Empire, and called themselves “Ghibellines.” It is a mark
of Dante’s greatness that, unlike most of his contemporaries, he was able
to hold the balance true; to realise the immense value of each Authority,
the Spiritual and the Temporal, if rightly wielded; to discern the
God-given responsibility of each, and their mutual independence.
Exiled himself from Florence by political faction, victim of the ruthless
partisan spirit which ruled in his native city, he felt keenly the need
of a supreme controlling power, a generally accepted and incorruptible
Court of Appeal; and he looked forward to the descent into Italy of the
Emperor Henry VII in 1311 as to the return of a Golden Age[57]—of a Peace
long wept for, and still delayed:[58]
Della molt’ anni lagrimata pace.
Many think that the _Monarchia_ was written to celebrate this advent of
one to whom he is not afraid to address the sacred words: “_Ecce Agnus
Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi!_”[59]
Dante’s hopes in Henry VII were doomed to disappointment. The
disappointment did not shake his faith in the Holy Roman Empire as
a panacea for all the temporal ills of a Christendom distracted by
individual and national self-seeking and aggression.
If we turn to the First Book of the _Monarchia_, wherein Dante develops
his Political Theory, we shall find that, at first reading, the actual
person of the Emperor seems essential; just as, at first sight, he
seems to rule out Democracy, together with Oligarchy and Tyranny, as
a “perverted form of Government.”[60] Here we must remember Dante’s
environment. His personal experience of the chances of freedom and
justice in his native city would give him an instinctive bias against
a non-monarchial form of government. Whether the system by which
Florence ruled itself in the opening years of the fourteenth century is
technically to be styled Democracy or Oligarchy, or a compound of the
two, it was certainly, in practice, for Dante, a Hydra-headed Tyranny
of the worst description. Further, it may be well to realise that
_personal_ authority was the only type of Suzerainty, the only form in
which a paramount and impartial Sway, or a world-wide Court of Appeal had
appeared on his mental horizon.
It has been said of Mazzini’s Republicanism that it did not rule
out “Imperialism” in the sense familiar to British minds, of “The
White’s Man’s Burden.” He approved of the British _Raj_ in India, and
pictured his own free Italy of the future as possibly destined to
spread the blessings of her own historic civilisation by a similar
rule over pupil-peoples. May it be claimed in like manner for Dante,
whose writings so profoundly inspired Mazzini and his fellow patriots
of the _Risorgimento_, that though he is in a sense a thorough-going
Imperialist, yet his Imperialism is, at bottom, not inconsistent with a
more modern aspiration for a “World made safe for Democracy,” and kept
safe by a “League of Nations”?
Dante is Imperialist; but if we enquire of him what is the
_raison-d’-être_ of Empire, he will answer: “It is the temporal
well-being of mankind.” This “well-being” consists in the fulfilment
of the purpose of man’s earthly life; the true and unobstructed
self-expression of that personal freedom of choice—that prerogative of
self-determination—which God has given to man as His divinest gift:
unique and universal endowment of His intelligent creatures—that “Liberty
of Will” which is so nobly hymned by Beatrice in the _Paradiso_ (v.
19-24)—
Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza
Fesse creando, ed a la sua bontate
Più conformato, e quel ch’ e’ più apprezza,
Fu de la volontà la libertate,
Di che le creature intelligenti,
E tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate.
In his Political Theory, as in his Mystic Pilgrimage, Dante is the
Apostle of Liberty.
Libertà va cercando, ch ’è si cara,
Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.
This noble couplet, which has moved the hearts of countless heroes and
martyrs of the _Risorgimento_, even as our English Poetess was moved in
’48 at the sound of a child’s voice singing beneath her window “O bella
Libertà, O bella ...!”—this couplet bears with it, as we have seen, a
reference which has puzzled all the commentators, because it links with
Dante’s quest of spiritual liberty the deed of Cato of Utica: the suicide
by which that intransigent republican escaped submission to the founder
of the Empire. And not only is Cato given an honourable place at the
foot of the Mountain of Purgatory, and assured that, at the Great Day,
his self-slain body shall be glorified[61]; but in the _Monarchia_,[62]
Dante actually quotes with approval Cicero’s dictum in the _De Officiis_
that for Cato “it was more fitting to die than to look upon the face of
a _tyrant_!” There may be other reasons for this strange discrepancy in
Dante’s scheme; but one is clear. Liberty ranks so high in the Poet’s
mind that it over-rides all other considerations: its typical votary may
win most extraordinary and exceptional treatment!
Well, an essential condition of this all-precious Liberty, this full and
unobstructed self-expression and self-determination among nations, is
Peace.
Such a peace must needs embrace harmony within the individual life, in
the home circle, in smaller local and municipal units, and, finally,
harmony between the various nations of Christendom, over all of
which, ideally, the mantle of the one Empire would be spread. Such a
Christendom, and such an Empire, for Dante, ideally embraces the whole
of mankind. This all-embracing character is, in fact, essential to it;
and it is important for our purpose to note that this complete world-wide
embrace (the antidote to personal ambition) never has been, and is never
likely to be, achieved by any _personal_ sovereignty.
In this teaching the Monarchic Principle is, on the surface at least,
more than an abstraction. It is everywhere personified, though it claims
to exclude, as far as may be, the characteristically individual element
of greed and self-assertion.[63] To Dante it is self-evident that peace
in any of the concentric rings of human life—family, municipal, national,
international—can only be secured by the recognised dominance of a
single person in each circle.[64] In illustration of this principle he
quotes (from Aristotle) Homer’s verse about the Cyclops[65]: “Each of
them lays down the law for his own children and wives”; but he ignores
the anarchic conclusion of the sentence ... “and they take no heed of
each other.”[66] Nor does he follow Aristotle[67] in characterising this
as “an uncivilised form of government”; otherwise, he might have adduced
the Cyclops rather as an _abuse_ of the Monarchic Principle. The fact
is, that in each of the concentric circles the principle is only too
liable to abuse; and Dante knows it, else he would not have strewn the
realms of his _Inferno_ with the tormented shades of those who have been
guilty of such abuse—have been brutal tyrants in the home, in the city,
on the throne. If we would gauge the depth of indignation which such
abuse can rouse in Dante, we have only to turn to Hugh Capet’s speech in
_Purg._ xx. 40-96, where the denunciation of the savagely self-assertive
Royal House of France, with its infamous record of oppression, fraud,
treachery, murder, and sacrilege, might be applied directly, with scarce
a change of phrase, to the Hohenzollerns of to-day.
No doubt the personal guidance—even forceful guidance—may be necessary
in early stages, as we have found it necessary among the child-races of
Africa. Even the Hohenzollern style of rule, in our day so monstrous an
anachronism, might have had its justification in far-back ages. It would
perhaps compare favourably with its true antecedents, the Nineveh and
Babylon of Old Testament times. “The Mailed Fist” may have its place, ere
men have learnt—
... how to fill a breach
With olive branches—how to quench a lie
With truth, and smite a foe upon the cheek
With Christ’s most conquering kiss....
...
... We needed Caesars to assist
Man’s justice, and Napoleons to explain
God’s counsel, when a point was nearly missed
Until our generations should attain
Christ’s stature nearer....
—_E. B. Browning_: “_Casa Guidi Windows._”
But now we are beginning to realise that it is a thing—
Worth a great nation’s finding, to prove weak
The “glorious arms” of military kings.
Ultimately, it is a Supreme Tribunal that Dante yearns for, albeit
he conceives that Tribunal as personified—incarnate in the “Roman
Prince”.[68] It is impartiality,[69] above all, that Dante looks for;
an impartiality to be guaranteed by that absence of ambition which an
undisputed, world-wide supremacy might carry with it, “leaving nothing
to be desired.” The authority that is free from taint of greed and
self-interest, and so from the temptation to use human lives as means for
its own ends, will most effectually display that “charity or love which
gives vigour to justice.” For “Charity, scorning all other things, seeks
God and man, and, consequently, the good of man.”
Surely such impartiality and such human consideration might be looked
for in a representative tribunal at least as hopefully as in a fallible
individual like that Henry VII, on whom, in life, he built such soaring
hopes,[70] and for whom, beyond death, he prepared so high a seat in
Heaven?[71]
That it is a _Tribunal_ that Dante is really seeking, is clear from
the Tenth chapter of the First Book of the _Monarchia_. And it may be
permissible to adduce in this connection a note on that chapter by an
eminent Dante scholar (to whom not a few of the thoughts in this Essay
are indirectly due), written at least ten years before the outbreak of
the World-War.
“Nothing,” says Mr. Wicksteed, (_ad loc._ p. 149), “could better help
the student to distinguish between the substance and the form of the _De
Monarchia_, or to free himself from slavery to words, than reflection
upon this chapter. He will see that Dante’s ‘imperialism’ does not mean
the supremacy of one nation over others, but the existence of a supreme
law that can hold all national passions in check; so that the development
of international law and the establishment of arbitration are its nearest
modern equivalents; and the main difficulty is found in the want of any
power of compulsion by which the nations can be made to refer their
quarrels to the supreme tribunal and accept its awards, whether it sits
at Rome or at the Hague.”[72]
What shape, we may ask, would Dante’s theory of the Temporal and
Spiritual Authority have assumed, had it seen the light in the Twentieth
Century instead of the Fourteenth? How would he shape it now?... How,
perchance, _does_ he shape it now if he looks down from “an eternal
place” upon this “little plot” of an earth which has so often been the
cockpit of international ferocity—
L’ aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci.[73]
He would see a world that has for generations clean forgotten that Holy
Roman Empire which loomed so large in his day, and is just giving the
_coup-de-grace_ to two unholy Empires that were playing a _rôle_ exactly
the opposite of that of Dante’s ideal Roman Prince, whose chief care is
to see that “in areola ista mortalium libere cum pace vivatur;”[74] a
world in which a bastard Roman Empire, seeking not peace and freedom for
the nations, but living for war, has striven for four long years with all
its might to crush the rest of the world under an iron heel.
He would see a world in which the Papacy is no longer paramount
in Western Christendom; in which its spiritual claims are largely
challenged, and its temporal pretensions reduced to the shadow of a
sham. A world in which industrialism and the fruits of applied science
have transfigured at once the material and the social landscape. With
the passing of German Military Autocracy, the last traces of Feudalism
are like to disappear.... A world in which the development of national
self-consciousness, in its infancy during his lifetime, has increased and
multiplied. He would see a world, in short, both inwardly and outwardly
utterly different from that for which he legislated in the _Monarchia_,
save for the two permanent factors—the identity of human nature, and the
continuity of Divine guidance, by Him “qui est omnium spiritualium et
temporalium gubernator” (_loc. cit._)
Would he not acclaim the passion for justice and freedom which has
inspired the nations of the _Entente_ to pile up their enormous
sacrifices in a five years’ struggle? Had he compared the conduct of each
side—had he compared merely their treatment of prisoners of war—could
he have doubted for a moment which side exhibited the princely spirit
of Charity “which gives vigour to justice:” _caritas maxime justitiam
vigorabit_.[75]
Would he not see in the actions and aims of Italy—“Redeemed Italy”—and
her victorious allies, a surer hope for the stable peace of mankind than
ever his “Romanus Princeps” could have furnished? Would he not have found
his own aspirations for a just and impartial and supra-national Tribunal
embodied in that arbitrament which the “League of Nations” carries with
it?
Would he not turn to individual nations (in the spirit of _Mon._ i. 5)
and say: “See to it that this principle of freedom and justice rules
throughout; that the spirit which looks ‘only to God and the good
of man’[76] inspires all your life-circles: the Home, the City, the
Province, the entire Nation. See to it that the brotherly, unselfish,
co-operating spirit has sway not only between the members of the various
classes and groups and interests of which your nation is composed,
but that it dominates also the relations of class to class and group
to group? What can better guarantee internal peace in a composite,
democratic community, than that each of the elements of which it is
composed shall be dominated by a single spirit—the spirit of free
fellowship, which is the surest antidote[77] to the anti-social poison of
greed and self-assertion?”
Would he not also see that the maintenance of such a spirit demands also
a Spiritual Authority, one and forceful?
The “Sun and Moon” of Spiritual and Temporal Authority of the
_Monarchia_,[78] which in the _Purgatorio_ have become “two Suns,” to
light men on the earthly and the heavenly path, he would find still
essential in a “World made safe for Democracy.” In 1300, he found the
Spiritual Sun usurping the powers of the Temporal, and so putting them
out of gear.[79] The Roman Prelate had annexed the Roman Prince’s sword
and united it incongruously with his own pastoral staff—
Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo feo
Due soli aver, che l’ una e l’ altra strada
Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo:
L’ un l’ altro ha spento; ed è giunta la spada
Col pasturale, e l’ un con l’ altro insieme
Per viva forza mal convien che vada;
Pero che, giunti, l’ un l’ altro non teme.
To-day he might rather see the Spiritual Sun eclipsed by the Temporal.
Religious sanctions will be needed to inspire and elevate the democratic
and multi-personal successor of the “Roman Prince” as the guardian of the
world’s Justice and Freedom. God Himself is the “Living Justice,”[80] and
He alone can wean human hearts from envy and that to which envy leads—
... Addolcisce la viva giustizia
In noi l’ affetto sì che non si puote
Torcer già mai ad alcuna nequizia.
And “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.”[81] For
Freedom’s sake and Justice’s sake, Dante would demand some independence
still, of the Sword and the Pastoral Staff. He would demand (to modify
Cavour’s famous phrase) “a free Church in a league of free States”—a
unified Church to match the union of Peoples; a democratic Church to
inspire a democratic World, no longer an Ecclesiastical Autocracy, but
a Federation (shall we say?) of free National Churches, parallel to the
Temporal Authority of the future—the United States of the World.
A democratic world, indeed, yet an “Empire” too, after all; gladly
submissive to the perfect sway, over Church and State alike, of the King
of Kings[82]—
... Quello imperador che là su regna:
A God whose influence, though more resplendently manifest in some spheres
than in others, interpenetrates the whole of His universe, as in the
magnificent opening words of the _Paradiso_—
La gloria di colui che tutto move
Per l’ universo penetra, e risplende
In una parte più, e meno altrove;
A human world which reflects the peace of that wider creation which
“works like a giant and sleeps like a picture”—a peace built on the only
sure foundation, namely, the harmonious co-operation of mighty, God-given
forces, working together under the hand of God Himself.[83]
With his last breath, as it were, the great Poet reminds us, to look up
to the Eternal Love that sways the constellations ... and the hearts of
men[84]—
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
III
WIT AND HUMOUR IN DANTE
Che è ridere, se non una corruscazione della dilettazione
dell’ anima, cioè un lume apparente di fuori secondo che sta
dentro?—_Conv._ iii. 8.[85]
Freedom of spirit—that freedom wherewith the Truth can make us free—is
man’s rightful heritage indeed; but a heritage into the full enjoyment of
which he often needs must pass through suffering and strenuous struggle.
It is not a light, trivial, superficial thing. As Tasso sings—
... In cima all’ erto e faticoso colle
Della virtù riposto è nostro bene.[86]
There is an easy shallowness that apes freedom, and looks like tolerance
which is the full recognition of other men’s right to Freedom. But the
Freedom which Dante “goes seeking” through “an eternal place”—through
the horror and murk of Hell, and by the steep ascent of the Mountain of
Hope, “l’erto e faticoso colle”—is a stern and noble guerdon, and can
only be enjoyed in its fulness by one who has attained to the fulness
of an ordered and disciplined humanity. It is deep conviction alone, as
Bishop Creighton taught us, that can beget true tolerance; the conviction
that the Truth is so sacred and so precious that it were impious to try
to force any soul to accept it (even were such a thing conceivable) by
external pressure.
The spirit of “Education by Frightfulness” which devastated the
civilised world for five long years cannot, however, be accused of want
of conviction. The mission of Teutonic _Kultur_ was taken only too
seriously. It is no burst of shallow lightheartedness that has driven
a whole people—nay, a group of peoples—forth upon this gruesome and
devilish crusade. They have shewn themselves, throughout, in deadly
earnest.[87]
What is it, then, that has brought forth from the womb of an earnestness
that breathes incredible industry and ingenuity and unsurpassed readiness
for individual sacrifice, this misbegotten offspring of a cruelly narrow
outlook and a ludicrous intolerance?
The answer proposed by one of our brilliant essayists in the first months
of the war was nothing more or less than “the lack of a saving sense of
humour.” It is only a partial answer, perhaps, but it is surely true
as far as it goes. The want of “the power to see ourselves as others
see us,” the power to put ourselves in another’s place and see how our
actions would look to him, would affect him, is very close to that
tragic blindness—blindness to the fact that others have a like claim
with ourselves to just and reverent treatment, a like right to peace and
prosperity, to self-government and self-determination. These, who would
set the world right by violently upsetting it and forcibly conforming it
to their own pattern, have not the grace to see how ugly and ungainly
that pattern looks to other eyes. Indeed, self looms so large with them
that it fills the entire foreground, and even obliterates all trace of
background and middle distance.
Life, as its Creator clearly intended it to be, with all the rich
variety and diversity in which alone its unity can find adequate
expression, is impossible on such terms. Freedom of self-development
and self-expression, which is of the essence of true life, is as likely
to flourish in such an atmosphere as is an “open-air” English girl in
the atmosphere of a stuffy German Wohnzimmer. Civilisation, under such
hegemony, would lose all the beauty of its spontaneity, all the romance
and mystery of its movement; its expansive forces would be imprisoned in
a minute and deadening code of regulations.