virtue of his general influence upon English education at a period when
the Oxford Franciscans were about to take the lead in European culture,
but also—and more especially—because, in an age when study had become
largely a second-hand matter of commenting on someone else’s commentary,
Robert called men back to a diligent first-hand study of originals;
a principle of the utmost importance alike for Education and for
Learning.[185]
Dante, too, was a keen, first-hand student; but his place in the history
of Education is different from that of Grosseteste. He attained to no
such commanding position in ecclesiastical or political life, with the
power that official status gives of forcing one’s ideas on public
notice. His brief tenure of the high office of Prior in his native city
of Florence was followed immediately by those years of exile and ignominy
in which his best work was done. His sole means of influencing his own
and succeeding generations was by his writings. But these writings not
only proclaimed him (as all the world admits) the very flower and crown
of Mediaeval Education—its justifying product—but also earn him, we would
contend, a place among the World’s Great Educators, and perhaps we may
add, its Educationalists. But first of all we may remind ourselves of
Dante’s position, as the finest and most typical product of Mediaeval
Education. Benedetto Croce[186] is doubtless right in denying him the
right to be called a _pioneer_ in metaphysics or ethics, in political
theory or philological science: in such lines it is vain to attribute to
him the same originality which is rightly his in the realm of Poetry.
Yet his learning remains encyclopaedic.[187] His amazing erudition is
displayed in his Minor Works; in the _Divine Comedy_ it is concealed with
the most consummate art. In the _Convivio_, where he is, perhaps, most
consciously and deliberately (if least successfully) the Teacher, he
revels in erudition, and so too in the _Monarchia_. Perhaps the clearest
and swiftest demonstration of the vast range of his learning is afforded
by a glance through the pages—or even the index—of Dr. Moore’s _Studies
in Dante_ (First Series).
Dante was not a Greek scholar, like Grosseteste, but he had a thorough
acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures in the Vulgate, and with a large
part of the theological and mystical writings of the Middle Age. He
was familiar with all the extant works of Aristotle in two Latin
translations. He quotes also, and in some cases very frequently, from
Classical and post-classical authors of repute. He has thoroughly
mastered the Graeco-Arabian Astronomy of his day: so thoroughly, that,
to the despair of some of his humbler votaries, he can toy with its
ponderous intricacies as with a plaything! Nor must we forget that his
studies were conducted in an age when printing had yet to be invented;
so that all his reading must needs be done with rare, costly, cumbrous
and eye-wearying manuscripts. Well may he, in the _Paradiso_, describe
his labours as “emaciating,” and in the _Convivio_ allude to a temporary
blindness caused by overstrain.[188]
It has been plausibly conjectured that he studied as a boy under the
Franciscan Fathers of Sta Croce.[189] The idea that Brunetto Latini
(or “Latino”), the author of the “Tesoro” (_Livre dou Tresor_), was
the regular preceptor of his youth, however just an inference it may
seem from the famous passage in the _Inferno_,[190] is disproved by the
exigencies of chronology. And, in the end, he must have been largely
self-taught, since his visit to the University of Paris, alleged by
Boccaccio, is placed towards the end of his life, when most of his extant
work was already done.
In his attitude Dante is a traditionalist, but not a blind one; his
originality everywhere tends to modify his conservatism. A true son of
the thirteenth century, he accepts loyally the traditional authority of
Scripture and of Aristotle. He accepts the tradition of the old Roman
culture: the “Seven Liberal Arts” of the Trivium and Quadrivium find a
place in the scheme of his world and a symbolic significance therein.
According to a well-known passage in the _Convivio_[191] these seven
sciences correspond to the seven lowest Heavens.
The mythology of Greece and Rome, on which the minds of our Public School
boys are still fed, are caught up into the scheme of the _Divine Comedy_
as “didactic material” side by side with scenes from history and from
Holy Writ. The Ptolemaic system of the universe is accepted; but Dante
uses his own genius freely in the handling of details, adorning the vast
framework with a symbolism of his own, and spreading over it a network of
intense human interest.[192]
So also in the sphere of Theology, he takes up traditional beliefs and
makes them living and concrete, vitalising them by the force of his
own originality. In his volume on _Dante and Aquinas_, Mr. Wicksteed
has drawn out very strikingly the contrast between the two: between
the “layman, poet, and prophet, and the ecclesiastic, theologian, and
philosopher.” “Aquinas,” he says, “regards the whole range of human
experiences and activities as the collecting ground for illustrations
of Christian truth; Dante regards Christian truth as the interpreting
and inspiring force that makes all human life live.”[193] This contrast
comes out, as we shall see, with special emphasis in the conception of
Purgatory, where Aquinas is thinking all along of the formal completion
of the sacrament of Penance, while Dante, who, with most daring
originality, makes his Mountain of Purgation the pedestal of the Earthly
Paradise, is intent on the redressing of man’s inner psychological and
spiritual balance. Eden itself is to be the immediate goal of penitence.
Before this earthly life is superseded by the heavenly, man shall win
his way to the primal Garden of Delight, and “experience the frank and
full fruition of his nature, as God first made it.”[194] He shall have
achieved inner balance and self-mastery. Says Virgil, on the threshold of
Eden—
Free, sound and upright is thy will.... Wherefore over thyself
I invest thee with supreme control.[195]
Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio,
...
Per ch’ io te sopra te corono e mitrio.
We may note then, in passing, that Dante, like all the best educators,
has his eye on the “formation of character.”
Such erudition, originality, insight, give promise that we shall find in
Dante a real teacher; and the promise is abundantly fulfilled to those
who tread the spacious halls of his School, which is his Poem.
The very language in which the _Divina Commedia_ is written is a
testimony to the Poet’s grasp of the fundamental condition of all
teaching—that it should be intelligible! There is a saying of Alcuin’s
great disciple, Rabanus Maurus, which expresses simply and well this
obvious, but oft-forgotten principle. “Teach,” he says, “in words that
teach; not in words that do not teach.” With this principle, surely, in
mind—for his purpose in creating the great Poem was a practical one—the
strangely haughty and aloof spirit of Dante girds itself to a humble use
of the “Vulgar Tongue.” When we remember that this magnificent structure
of his is the first big effort in the Italian vernacular, and that one
of his reasons for calling it a “Comedy” is that “its method of speech
is lax and humble, for it is the vernacular speech in which mere women
communicate,”[196] we cannot but see in this pioneer work of Italian
literature evidence of that discerning sympathy with the needs and
capacities of the learner which marks the born teacher. Another mark of
the true educator is his practical aim. Dante is not content to “teach
the classics _in vacuo_,” as our English Public Schools once were: he
does not divorce learning from life. In the famous Tenth Epistle he
defines the “Moral Sense” of the Poem as “The conversion of the Soul
from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace”; and, again,
he describes “the end of the whole” thus: “To remove those living in
this life from the state of misery and to lead them to the state of
felicity.”[197] He has his eye upon life in the highest sense: “Come l’
uom s’eterna.” To this end he displays to us the unique means provided
by Heaven for his own salvation, and allows us in his company to visit
the three kingdoms of the Eternal World. He performs for us the office
fulfilled by Virgil towards himself—
... I will be thy guide, and will conduct thee hence
through an eternal place.
... Io sarò tua guida
E trarrotti di qui per loco eterno.[198]
We must see with his eyes to what state of ineffable woe, not Divine
Justice merely, but the sinner’s own choice will bring him. We must watch
with him the Divine process of purgation, the eagerly-accepted suffering
of those whose penitent love longs above all things to undo the ruin that
sin has wrought—[199]
... Contented in the fire, for that they hope
In God’s good time to reach the blessed folk
... Contenti
Nel foco, perchè speran di venire,
Quando che sia, a le beate genti....
and finally he will take us up with him into the Blessed Place itself, to
behold “the things which God has prepared for them that unfeignedly love
Him.”
Here again is the true teacher, adopting the story-telling method of the
Teacher of Nazareth:[200] the method of which the usefulness—nay, the
indispensableness—was never more appreciated than to-day.
Nor is it merely that the Poet narrates instead of preaching. What he
does, he does with the most consummate art.[201] The story that he
tells—the pilgrimage on which he goes—is one which both he and we really
share; we become his fellow-pilgrims, his intimates, before whom, without
the least touch of self-consciousness, he manifests his joy and his
despondency, his courage and his cowardice, his native dignity and his
occasional lapses therefrom.... The narrative reads like a truthful and
vivid diary of his actual experiences from the night of Maundy Thursday
till Easter Wednesday in the Year of Grace One Thousand and Three Hundred.
It may be claimed for Dante’s method of teaching in the _Divina Commedia_
that it is in a very real sense a “direct method,” and one in which
teacher and pupil co-operate as fellow-learners.
The educational quality of the poem is at its highest in the
_Purgatorio_, because it is in this realm that the conditions approach
most nearly to those of our present life. Like the normal life of a
faithful Christian here below, that of the souls in this “Second Realm”
is a struggle, but a struggle upwards, inspired and sweetened by the
“sure and certain hope.” It is a process of growing transformation into
the Divine ideal, of gradual achievement of a perfect union of will
with the Will of God, wrought out by means of a providentially ordered
discipline eagerly embraced by the penitent.
All this may seem a little vague and elusive. Probably the quality
claimed for Dante will be brought into higher relief if we concentrate
our attention upon one or two definite points.
In the attempt to emphasise the “modern” character of Dante’s educational
principles we shall be bold enough to confront him with the very latest
of educational methods—that of Dr. Montessori, which originated but a few
years ago in Dante’s native Italy.
The fundamental principle of Madame Montessori’s Method is that of
Liberty. Education, she would say, must be a free organic process of
development from within. This vital growth may be guarded, nourished,
and (within limits) guided. The right kind of atmosphere and of
external stimulus is of immense importance; but mechanical pressure,
or domineering force, or inappropriate stimulus will only stunt and
distort the growth, deaden the life that is calling out for free
self-development. All this is not, of course, a new discovery. It was
enunciated in other forms by Pestalozzi and by Froebel; it is implied
in the words and works of all the greatest educators—of Vittorino da
Feltre in the Renaissance, of Quintilian in the early Empire, and of
Aristotle himself. But in Montessori the principle of individual freedom
acquires a new prominence, and is given a larger scope than ever before;
and the principle is coming to its own in many phases and many grades of
our present-day education. It is interesting, therefore, to note what
a fundamental position it holds in Dante’s _Purgatorio_, the central
Cantica of what Professor Edmund Gardner rightly calls “The mystical
Epos of the Freedom of Man’s Will.”
Liberty—that true liberty of soul which is found in perfect conformity
to the Will of God—is the end and purpose of the Poet’s grim journey.
_Libertà va cercando_—“he goes seeking freedom”—says Virgil to Cato at
the foot of the Mountain:[202] the freedom which Dante himself, a little
later, identifies with inward peace—“That peace which ... draws me on in
pursuit from world to world.”[203]
... Quella pace
Che, dietro a’ piedi di sî fatta guida
Di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face.
It is to the entrance upon this peace and this freedom that Virgil refers
in his words quoted above, where on the threshold of the Earthly Paradise
he declares the pilgrim to be, at last, “King and Bishop of his own soul”—
Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.[204]
And, finally, in the heaven of heavens itself Dante pours out his thanks
to Beatrice for liberty regained—“Thou has led me forth from bondage into
liberty.”
Tu m’ hai di servo tratto a libertate.[205]
We have already spoken of the spontaneity of Dante’s Penitents; the eager
gladness and alacrity with which they embrace the discipline appointed
for them, “glad in the Fire”: a temper which finds its typical expression
in the attitude of the souls who are purging the sin of Lust in literally
burning flames. “Certain of them,” says the Poet, “made towards me, so
far as they could, ever on their guard not to come forth beyond the
range of the burning”—
Poi verso me, quanto potean farsi,
Certi si feron, sempre con riguardo
Di non uscir dove non fosser arsi.[206]
Or, again, on the Terrace of the Gluttonous, where Forese explains to
Dante that the voluntary pain of the penitents (which is also their
solace) is mystically identified with that of Christ upon the Cross—“For
the same desire doth conduct us to the tree, which moved Christ to say
with joy: ‘Eli,’ when by His blood He won our freedom.”
Che quella voglia a li albori ci mena
Che menò Cristo lieto a dire ‘Elì,’
Quando ne liberò con la sua vena.[207]
And this spontaneity on their part is matched and helped by the
atmosphere and environment provided for them. Their movements and
occupations are indeed, in one sense, unnatural; but this is because
their purpose is the counteraction of that most unnatural of all things,
Sin. Here, however, are no frequent warders and task-masters, like
the grotesque fiends of the Inferno. The Angel guardians of each of
the seven terraces where sins are purged are no more in evidence than
is the Teacher in a Montessori School; an unobtrusive, ever-present,
never-interfering inspiration to the pupil’s own spontaneous development.
There is no external voice to bid a spirit move on when its purgation is
done. So Statius explains to Dante when describing the impulse of his own
upward movement. “Of the cleansing, the will alone gives proof, which
fills the soul, all free to change her cloister, and avails her to will.
She wills indeed before; but that desire permits it not which Divine
justice sets, counter to will, toward the penalty, even as it was toward
the sin”—
De la mondizia sol voler fa prova,
Che, tutto libero a mutar convento,
L’ alma sorprende, e di voler le giova.
Prima vuol ben, ma non lascia il talento
Che divina giustizia, contra voglia,
Come fu al peccar, pone al tormento.[208]
When the soul is ready for another task, it moves on, naturally and
spontaneously,—like a Montessori child!
This consideration accounts for a feature of the purgatorial discipline
which at first sight would appear quite contrary to the Montessori
spirit. On the lower slopes of the Mountain, below the gate of
Purgatory proper, the souls whom Dante meets are grouped informally,
or encountered individually; but within the gate, on each of the seven
terraces where the seven capital sins are successively purged, the souls
are engaged in groups on the same task, or similar ones. How is this
consistent with free, spontaneous, individual development? Is not this
simultaneous occupation at the same lesson more like a Froebel class,
or even an old-fashioned Public School form than a Montessori group?
The answer, surely, is in the negative. Collective work has indeed its
permanent value, and simultaneous movements at intervals, their ample
justification. In the _Purgatorio_, as in the Montessori School, the
class-system in its extreme and rigid form has been superseded; though
scope is given, in certain ways (as in the _revised_ Montessori scheme),
for the expression of the social instinct.[209] When the pupil is
inwardly fit for a move, he “feels it in his bones”; and then—and not
till then—he moves. The task in which he is engaged in company with his
fellows holds him just so long as it is needful and appropriate to his
own case: the moment of its beginning and that of its ending are entirely
independent of the doings of his fellow-learners.
Once more, the Terrace of Purgatory resembles a Montessori group rather
than a Kindergarten class in its freedom from obvious direction. There is
no attractive, central, dominating figure, like the Froebelian teacher,
on whom all eyes are fixed in the spirit of Psalm cxxiii, _Ad te levavi
oculos meos._ The grouping of the learners is apparently spontaneous, and
different groups are sometimes engaged simultaneously on different tasks.
Again, the School of Purgatory is essentially modern in its emphasis on
“expression work,” and its abundant supply of “didactic material.”
By expression work we mean the endeavour to enforce a lesson, to hasten
its assimilation and ensure its retention, by means of some appropriate
activity on the part of the learner. This is of course much older than
Montessorism, as even our best Sunday school teachers can testify; it
can be traced back also beyond Froebel. Its origin is, surely, lost in
the prehistoric ages of pedagogy. But it was Froebel in the nineteenth
century who first claimed for this factor the importance which it holds
in modern education. Yet if we study Dante’s _Purgatorio_ we shall find
expression work on every terrace of the Mountain, from the humble,
stooping march of the cornice of Pride to the significant exclamations
wherewith the once Lustful, on the uppermost terrace, punctuate the
chanting of their hymn, _Summae Deus clementiae_. Purgatory is not for
Dante, as for Aquinas, merely penal suffering—“something to be borne.”
It must be (as Mr. Wicksteed observes)[210] something active—“something
to be and to do”—somewhat more definite, more specific, more varied than
mere suffering is needed for the building up of the new life which is to
be at home once more in Eden.
As in the Montessori school, so in these mystic “cloisters” the learners
are led to concentrate and focus on a single task a number of faculties
and senses: eye, ear, voice, memory, attitude, gesture and movement
all conspire to enforce the lesson. And this variety of expression
work is rendered effective by an abundant supply of didactic material,
an apparatus as carefully and scientifically thought out as that of
Italy’s latest educational leader. One need only instance the famous
wall-sculptures[211] and the inlaid pavement[212] of the Terrace of
Pride, the description of which forms one of the loveliest passages in
this most beautiful poem.
We have spoken of the Angels who preside over these terraces, engaged in
the apparently superfluous task of controlling those whose will is bent
manfully upon the task before them, lifted as they are for ever above the
zone where temptation has any power.[213] What a task, we are inclined to
say, for angelic faculties! What a sinecure! Yet the resemblance to the
human “Guardian Angel” of the Montessori school is surely too striking
to be without significance: and modern educational principles of which
the Dottoressa is by no means the exclusive exponent, may help us to
realise how—in this as in so many other things—we shall do well to range
ourselves “on the side of the Angels.” The Montessori teacher—may we
not say the truly modern teacher of whatever type?—submits to an arduous
and exacting course of training—far more arduous and exacting than that
which “qualified” previous generations of teachers ... and all for—what?
To know what _not_ to do, what _not_ to say; to be able to practise at
the right moment a fully qualified self-restraint, and so allow free
scope to the inner forces of expansion in the pupil’s personality: an
expansion which too heavy a hand, however lovingly laid upon the growing
life, might crush or stunt or warp! A constant presence, inspiring but
unobtrusive; realised but not dominant or over-insistent; not obviating
or unduly curtailing those movements and processes which in education
are infinitely more valuable than immediate results ... yet ever at hand
when really needed.... Is not this a _rôle_ worthy of angelic power and
dignity? Is it not precisely the traditional _rôle_ of the Guardian Angel
in whose beneficent existence some of us are still childlike enough to
believe?
Surely they were not mere figureheads, those “Birds of God,” whose
stately grace and beauty Dante delights to portray? Even so is it with
the “Guardian Angels” of the Montessori school—with the restrained
efficiency and enthusiasm and the carefully calculated use of personal
influence of the best teachers of all types and grades: their dignity
and essentially angelic quality is apt to be in proportion to their
unobtrusiveness. Education is, after all, not “forcible feeding” or
“cramming”; its office is to educe—to draw forth. In Socrates’ homely
phrase it is a midwife. “Sairey Gamp” was certainly not an angel; but
there are those of her craft who are. More and more this _maieutic_
office of the Teacher is realised, and with its realisation Teachers
grow less and less like the castigating demons of Inferno—more and more
angelic.
Omai vedrai di sì fatti ufficiali.[214]
Another point which brings the _Purgatorio_, in its educational scheme,
down to our own days, is the _orderly progression_ of its lessons.
The tasks set for the penitents are carefully classified and, so to
speak, “graded.” The very form of the Mountain, with its system of
gigantic steps or terraces, signifies as much. It symbolises even
more: for education even in the infant stage involves the conquest of
external difficulties, and, still more, the arduous conquest of self.
The prominence of this “joy of overcoming” is one of the happiest
psychological phenomena of a Montessori school. And as relations with
our fellows become more complex and responsibilities multiply, this
“battle of life” is ever more consciously felt. The New Teaching aims at
“breaking the back” of a soul’s troubles in the early stage, by inducing
a habit of mind to which the appearance of difficulties, instead of
depressing, at once suggests victorious effort. In this way the battle of
the free will becomes, in a sense, most strenuous at the start, as Marco
Lombardo says, “And freewill, which, tho’ it hath a hard struggle in its
first encounter with the heavenly influences, in the end wins the day
completely, if it be well supported.”
E libero voler; che, se fatica
Ne le prime battaglie col ciel dura
Poi vince tutto, se ben si notrica.[215]
And the same thought of a gradation, a succession of efforts, each of
which, bravely faced, makes those that follow lighter, is symbolised
in the shape of the mountain of Purgatory, which in reality would have
rather the form of a rounded dome than that of the tall pyramid of the
customary illustration. Says Virgil, in his comforting way, to Dante,
breathless after his first steep climb: “The nature of this eminence is
such, that ever at starting from below it is fatiguing, but in proportion
as a man mounts, he feels it less; wherefore, when it shall appear to
thee so gentle that the ascent is as easy as sailing downward with the
stream, then shalt thou be at the end of this path; there mayest thou
hope to rest thy weariness.”