Editorial note: Project Gutenberg has an earlier version of this work,
which is titled Beacon Lights of History, Volume III,
part 2: Renaissance and Reformation. See E-Book#1499,
https://www.gutenberg.org/etext98/32blh10.txt or
https://www.gutenberg.org/etext98/32blh10.zip
The numbering of volumes in the earlier set reflected
the order in which the lectures were given. In the
current (later) version, volumes were numbered to put
the subjects in historical sequence.
LORD'S LECTURES
BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME VI
RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION.
BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
ETC., ETC.
CONTENTS.
DANTE.
RISE OF MODERN POETRY.
The antiquity of Poetry
The greatness of Poets
Their influence on Civilization
The true poet one of the rarest of men
The pre-eminence of Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Goethe
Characteristics of Dante
His precocity
His moral wisdom and great attainments
His terrible scorn and his isolation
State of society when Dante was born
His banishment
Guelphs and Ghibellines
Dante stimulated to his great task by an absorbing sentiment
Beatrice
Dante's passion for Beatrice analyzed
The worship of ideal qualities the foundation of lofty love.
The mystery of love
Its exalted realism
Dedication of Dante's life-labors to the departed Beatrice
The Divine Comedy; a study
The Inferno; its graphic pictures
Its connection with the ideas of the Middle Ages
The physical hell of Dante in its connection with the Mediaeval doctrine
of Retribution
The Purgatorio; its moral wisdom
Origin of the doctrine of Purgatory
Its consolation amid the speculations of despair
The Paradiso
Its discussion of grand themes
The Divina Commedia makes an epoch in civilization
Dante's life an epic
His exalted character
His posthumous influence
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
ENGLISH LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
The characteristics of the fourteenth century
Its great events and characters
State of society in England when Chaucer arose
His early life
His intimacy with John of Gaunt, the great Duke of Lancaster
His prosperity
His poetry
The Canterbury Tales
Their fidelity to Nature and to English life
Connection of his poetry with the formation of the English Language
The Pilgrims of the Canterbury Tales
Chaucer's views of women and of love
His description of popular sports and amusements
The preponderance of country life in the fourteenth century
Chaucer's description of popular superstitions
Of ecclesiastical abuses
His emancipation from the ideas of the Middle Ages
Peculiarities of his poetry
Chaucer's private life
The respect in which he was held
Influence of his poetry
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
MARITIME DISCOVERIES.
Marco Polo
His travels
The geographical problems of the fourteenth century
Sought to be solved by Christopher Columbus
The difficulties he had to encounter
Regarded as a visionary man
His persistence
Influence of women in great enterprises
Columbus introduced to Queen Isabella
Excuses for his opponents
The Queen favors his projects
The first voyage of Columbus
Its dangers
Discovery of the Bahama Islands
Discovery of Cuba and Hispaniola
Columbus returns to Spain
The excitement and enthusiasm produced by his discoveries
His second voyage
Extravagant expectations of Columbus
Disasters of the colonists
Decline of the popularity of Columbus
His third voyage
His arrest and disgrace
His fourth voyage
His death
Greatness of his services
Results of his discoveries
Colonization
The mines of Peru and Mexico
The effects on Europe of the rapid increase of the precious metals
True sources of national wealth
The destinies of America
Its true mission
SAVONAROLA.
UNSUCCESSFUL REFORMS.
The age of Savonarola
Revival of Classic Literature
Ecclesiastical corruptions
Religious apathy; awakened intelligence; infidel spirit
Youth of Savonarola
His piety
Begins to preach
His success at Florence
Peculiarities of his eloquence
Death of Lorenzo de' Medici
Savonarola as a political leader
Denunciation of tyranny
His influence in giving a constitution to the Florentines
Difficulties of Constitution-making
His method of teaching political science
Peculiarities of the new Rule
Its great wisdom
Savonarola as reformer
As moralist
Terrible denunciation of sin in high places
A prophet of woe
Contrast between Savonarola and Luther
The sermons of Savonarola
His marvellous eloquence
Its peculiarities
The enemies of Savonarola
Savonarola persecuted
His appeal to Europe
The people desert him
Months of torment
His martyrdom
His character
His posthumous influence
MICHAEL ANGELO.
THE REVIVAL OF ART.
Michael Angelo as representative of reviving Art
Ennobling effects of Art when inspired by lofty sentiments
Brilliancy of Art in the sixteenth century
Early life of Michael Angelo
His aptitude for Art
Patronized by Lorenzo de' Medici
Sculpture later in its development than Architecture
The chief works of Michael Angelo as sculptor
The peculiarity of his sculptures
Michael Angelo as painter
History of painting in the Middle Ages
Da Vinci
The frescos of the Sistine Chapel
The Last Judgment
The cartoon of the battle of Pisa
The variety as well as moral grandeur of Michael Angelo's paintings
Ennobling influence of his works
His works as architect
St. Peter's Church
Revival of Roman and Grecian Architecture
Contrasted with Gothic Architecture
Michael Angelo rescues the beauties of Paganism
Not responsible for absurdities of the Renaissance
Greatness of Michael Angelo as a man
His industry, temperance, dignity of character, love of Art for Art's sake
His indifference to rewards and praises
His transcendent fame
MARTIN LUTHER.
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION.
Luther's predecessors
Corruptions of the Church
Luther the man for the work of reform
His peculiarities
His early piety
Enters a Monastery
His religious experience
Made Professor of Divinity at Wittenberg
The Pope in great need of money to complete St. Peter's
Indulgences; principles on which they were based
Luther, indignant, preaches Justification by Faith
His immense popularity
Grace the cardinal principle of the Reformation
The Reformation began as a religious movement
How the defence of Luther's doctrine led to the recognition
of the supreme authority of the Scriptures
Public disputation at Leipsic between Luther and Eck
Connection between the advocacy of the Bible as a supreme
authority and the right of private judgment
Religious liberty a sequence of private judgment
Connection between religious and civil liberty
Contrast between Leo I. and Luther
Luther as reformer
His boldness and popularity
He alarms Rome
His translation of the Bible, his hymns, and other works
Summoned by imperial authority to the Diet of Worms
His memorable defence
His immortal legacies
His death and character
THOMAS CRANMER.
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
Importance of the English Reformation
Cranmer its best exponent
What was effected during the reign of Henry VIII
Thomas Cromwell
Suppression of Monasteries
Their opposition to the revival of Learning
Their exceeding corruption
Their great wealth and its confiscation
Ecclesiastical courts
Sir Thomas More: his execution
Main feature of Henry VIII.'s anti-clerical measures
Fall of Cromwell
Rise of Cranmer
His characteristics
His wise moderation
His fortunate suggestions to Henry VIII
Made Archbishop of Canterbury
Difficulties of his position
Reforms made by the government, not by the people
Accession of Edward VI
Cranmer's Church reforms: open communion; abolition of
the Mass; new English liturgy
Marriage among the clergy; the Forty-two Articles
Accession of Mary
Persecution of the Reformers
Reactionary measures
Arrest, weakness, and recantation of Cranmer
His noble death; his character
Death of Mary
Accession of Elizabeth, and return of exiles to England
The Elizabethan Age
Conservative reforms and conciliatory measures
The Thirty-nine Articles
Nonconformists
Their doctrines and discipline
The great Puritan controversy
The Puritans represent the popular side of the Reformation
Their theology
Their moral discipline
Their connection with civil liberty
Summary of the English Reformation
IGNATIUS LOYOLA.
RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS.
The counter-reformation effected by the Jesuits
Picture of the times; theological doctrines
The Monastic Orders no longer available
Ignatius Loyola
His early life
Founds a new order of Monks
Wonderful spread of the Society of Jesus
Their efficient organization
Causes of success in general
Virtues and abilities of the early Jesuits
Their devotion and bravery
Jesuit Missions
Veneration for Loyola; his "Spiritual Exercises"
Lainez
Singular obedience exacted of the members of the Society
Absolute power of the General of the Order
Voluntary submission of Jesuits to complete despotism
The Jesuits adapt themselves to the circumstances of society
Causes of the decline of their influence
Corruption of most human institutions
The Jesuits become rich and then corrupt
_Ésprit de corps_ of the Jesuits
Their doctrine of expediency
Their political intrigues
Persecution of the Protestants
The enemies they made
Madame de Pompadour
Suppression of the Order
Their return to power
Reasons why Protestants fear and dislike them
JOHN CALVIN.
PROTESTANT THEOLOGY.
John Calvin's position
His early life and precocity
Becomes a leader of Protestants
Removes to Geneva
His habits and character
Temporary exile
Convention at Frankfort
Melancthon, Luther, Calvin, and Catholic doctrines
Return to Geneva, and marriage
Calvin compared with Luther
Calvin as a legislator
His reform
His views of the Eucharist
Excommunication, etc
His dislike of ceremonies and festivals
The simplicity of the worship of God
His ideas of church government
Absence of toleration
Church and State
Exaltation of preaching
Calvin as a theologian; his Institutes
His doctrine of Predestination
His general doctrines in harmony with Mediaeval theology
His views of sin and forgiveness; Calvinism
He exacts the same authority to logical deduction from admitted
truths as to direct declarations of Scripture
Puritans led away by Calvin's intellectuality
His whole theology radiates from the doctrine of the majesty
of God and the littleness of man
To him a personal God is everything
Defects of his system
Calvin an aristocrat
His intellectual qualities
His prodigious labors
His severe characteristics
His vast influence
His immortal fame
LORD BACON.
THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.
Lord Bacon as portrayed by Macaulay
His great defects of character
Contrast made between the man and the philosopher
Bacon's youth and accomplishments
Enters Parliament
Seeks office
At the height of fortune and fame
His misfortunes
Consideration of charges against him
His counterbalancing merits
The exaltation by Macaulay of material life
Bacon made its exponent
But the aims of Bacon were higher
The true spirit of his philosophy
Deductive philosophies
His new method
Bacon's Works
Relations of his philosophy
Material science and knowledge
Comparison of knowledge with wisdom
GALILEO.
ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.
A brilliant portent
The greatness of the sixteenth century
Artists, scholars, reformers, religious defenders
Maritime discoveries
Literary, ecclesiastical, political achievements
Youth of Galileo
His early discoveries
Genius for mathematics
Professor at Pisa
Ridicules the old philosophers; invents the thermometer
Compared with Kepler
Galileo teaches the doctrines of Copernicus
Gives offence by his railleries and mockeries
Theology and science
Astronomical knowledge of the Ancients
Utilization of science
Construction of the first telescope
Galileo's reward
His successive discoveries
His enemies
High scientific rank in Europe
Hostility of the Church
Galileo summoned before the Inquisition; his condemnation
and admonition
His new offences
Summoned before a council of Cardinals
His humiliation
His recantations
Consideration of his position
Greatness of mind rather than character
His confinement at Arceti
Opposition to science
His melancholy old age and blindness
Visited by John Milton; comparison of the two, when blind
Consequence of Galileo's discoveries
Later results
Vastness of the universe
Grandeur of astronomical science
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VI.
Galileo at Pisa
_After the painting by F. Roybet_.
Dante in Florence
_After the painting by Rafaeli Sorbi_.
The Canterbury Pilgrimage
_From the frieze by R.W.W. Sewell_.
Columbus at the Court of Spain
_After the painting by Vaczlav Brozik, Metropolitan Museum, New_
_York_.
Savonarola
_From the statue by E. Pazzi, Uffizi Gallery, Florence_.
Michael Angelo in His Studio Visited by Pope Julius II
_After the painting by Haman_.
Luther Preaching at Wartburg
_After the painting by Hugo Vogel_.
Henry VIII. of England
_After the painting by Hans Holbein, Windsor Castle, England_.
Cranmer at the Traitor's Gate
_After the painting by Frederick Goodall_.
Madame de Pompadour
_After the painting by Fr. Boucher_.
John Calvin
_From a contemporaneous painting_.
Lord Francis Bacon
_After the painting by T. Van Somer_.
Galileo Galilei
_After the painting by J. Sustermans, Uffizi Gallery, Florence_.
BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY
* * * * *
DANTE.
* * * * *
A. D. 1265-1321.
RISE OF MODERN POETRY.
The first great genius who aroused his country from the torpor of the
Middle Ages was a poet. Poetry, then, was the first influence which
elevated the human mind amid the miseries of a gloomy period, if we may
except the schools of philosophy which flourished in the rising
universities. But poetry probably preceded all other forms of culture in
Europe, even as it preceded philosophy and art in Greece. The gay
Provencal singers were harbingers of Dante, even as unknown poets
prepared the way for Homer. And as Homer was the creator of Grecian
literature, so Dante, by his immortal comedy, gave the first great
impulse to Italian thought. Hence poets are great benefactors, and we
will not let them die in our memories or hearts. We crown them, when
alive, with laurels and praises; and when they die, we erect monuments
to their honor. They are dear to us, since their writings give
perpetual pleasure, and appeal to our loftiest sentiments. They appeal
not merely to consecrated ideas and feelings, but they strive to conform
to the principles of immortal art. Every great poet is as much an artist
as the sculptor or the painter; and art survives learning itself. Varro,
the most learned of the Romans, is forgotten, when Virgil is familiar to
every school-boy. Cicero himself would not have been immortal, if his
essays and orations had not conformed to the principles of art. Even an
historian who would live must be an artist, like Voltaire or Macaulay. A
cumbrous, or heavy, or pedantic historian will never be read, even if
his learning be praised by all the critics of Germany.
Poets are the great artists of language. They even create languages,
like Homer and Shakspeare. They are the ornaments of literature. But
they are more than ornaments. They are the sages whose sayings are
treasured up and valued and quoted from age to age, because of the
inspiration which is given to them,--an insight into the mysteries of
the soul and the secrets of life. A good song is never lost; a good poem
is never buried, like a system of philosophy, but has an inherent
vitality, like the melodies of the son of Jesse. Real poetry is
something, too, beyond elaborate versification, which is one of the
literary fashions, and passes away like other fashions unless redeemed
by something that arouses the soul, and elevates it, and appeals to the
consciousness of universal humanity. It is the poets who make
revelations, like prophets and sages of old; it is they who invest
history with interest, like Shakspeare and Racine, and preserve what is
most vital and valuable in it. They even adorn philosophy, like
Lucretius, when he speculated on the systems of the Ionian philosophers.
They certainly impress powerfully on the mind the truths of theology, as
Watts and Cowper and Wesley did in their noble lyrics. So that the most
rapt and imaginative of men, if artists, utilize the whole realm of
knowledge, and diffuse it, and perpetuate it in artistic forms. But real
poets are rare, even if there are many who glory in the jingle of
language and the structure of rhyme. Poetry, to live, must have a soul,
and it must combine rare things,--art, music, genius, original thought,
wisdom made still richer by learning, and, above all, a power of
appealing to inner sentiments, which all feel, yet are reluctant to
express. So choice are the gifts, so grand are the qualities, so varied
the attainments of truly great poets, that very few are born in a whole
generation and in nations that number twenty or forty millions of
people. They are the rarest of gifted men. Every nation can boast of its
illustrious lawyers, statesmen, physicians, and orators; but they can
point only to a few of their poets with pride. We can count on the
fingers of one of our hands all those worthy of poetic fame who now
live in this great country of intellectual and civilized men,--one for
every ten millions. How great the pre-eminence even of ordinary poets!
How very great the pre-eminence of those few whom all ages and
nations admire!
The critics assign to Dante a pre-eminence over most of those we call
immortal. Only two or three other poets in the whole realm of
literature, ancient or modern, dispute his throne. We compare him with
Homer and Shakspeare, and perhaps Goethe, alone. Civilization glories in
Virgil, Milton, Tasso, Racine, Pope, and Byron,--all immortal artists;
but it points to only four men concerning whose transcendent creative
power there is unanimity of judgment,--prodigies of genius, to whose
influence and fame we can assign no limits; stars of such surpassing
brilliancy that we can only gaze and wonder,--growing brighter and
brighter, too, with the progress of ages; so remarkable that no
barbarism will ever obscure their brightness, so original that all
imitation of them becomes impossible and absurd. So great is original
genius, directed by art and consecrated to lofty sentiments.
I have assumed the difficult task of presenting one of these great
lights. But I do not presume to analyze his great poem, or to point out
critically its excellencies. This would be beyond my powers, even if I
were an Italian. It takes a poet to reveal a poet. Nor is criticism
interesting to ordinary minds, even in the hands of masters. I should
make critics laugh if I were to attempt to dissect the Divine Comedy.
Although, in an English dress, it is known to most people who pretend to
be cultivated, yet it is not more read than the "Paradise Lost" or the
"Faerie Queene," being too deep and learned for some, and understood by
nobody without a tolerable acquaintance with the Middle Ages, which it
interprets,--the superstitions, the loves, the hatreds, the ideas of
ages which can never more return. All I can do--all that is safe for me
to attempt--is to show the circumstances and conditions in which it was
written, the sentiments which prompted it, its historical results, its
general scope and end, and whatever makes its author stand out to us as
a living man, bearing the sorrows and revelling in the joys of that high
life which gave to him extraordinary moral wisdom, and made him a
prophet and teacher to all generations. He was a man of sorrows, of
resentments, fierce and implacable, but whose "love was as transcendent
as his scorn,"--a man of vast experiences and intense convictions and
superhuman earnestness, despising the world which he sought to elevate,
living isolated in the midst of society, a wanderer and a sage,
meditating constantly on the grandest themes, lost in ecstatic reveries,
familiar with abstruse theories, versed in all the wisdom of his day
and in the history of the past, a believer in God and immortality, in
rewards and punishments, and perpetually soaring to comprehend the
mysteries of existence, and those ennobling truths which constitute the
joy and the hope of renovated and emancipated and glorified spirits in
the realms of eternal bliss. All this is history, and it is history
alone which I seek to teach,--the outward life of a great man, with
glimpses, if I can, of those visions of beauty and truth in which his
soul lived, and which visions and experiences constitute his peculiar
greatness. Dante was not so close an observer of human nature as
Shakspeare, nor so great a painter of human actions as Homer, nor so
learned a scholar as Milton; but his soul was more serious than
either,--he was deeper, more intense than they; while in pathos, in
earnestness, and in fiery emphasis he has been surpassed only by Hebrew
poets and prophets.
It would seem from his numerous biographies that he was remarkable from
a boy; that he was a youthful prodigy; that he was precocious, like
Cicero and Pascal; that he early made great attainments, giving
utterance to living thoughts and feelings, like Bacon, among boyish
companions; lisping in numbers, like Pope, before he could write prose;
different from all other boys, since no time can be fixed when he did
not think and feel like a person of maturer years. Born in Florence, of
the noble family of the Alighieri, in the year 1265, his early education
devolved upon his mother, his father having died while the boy was very
young. His mother's friend, Brunetto Latini, famous as statesman and
scholarly poet, was of great assistance in directing his tastes and
studies. As a mere youth he wrote sonnets, such as Sordello the
Troubadour would not disdain to own. He delights, as a boy, in those
inquiries which gave fame to Bonaventura. He has an intuitive contempt
for all quacks and pretenders. At Paris he maintains fourteen different
theses, propounded by learned men, on different subjects, and gains
universal admiration. He is early selected by his native city for
important offices, which he fills with honor. In wit he encounters no
superiors. He scorches courts by sarcasms which he can not restrain. He
offends the great by a superiority which he does not attempt to veil. He
affects no humility, for his nature is doubtless proud; he is even
offensively conscious and arrogant. When Florence is deliberating about
the choice of an ambassador to Rome, he playfully, yet still arrogantly,
exclaims: "If I remain behind, who goes? and if I go, who remains
behind?" His countenance, so austere and thoughtful, impresses all
beholders with a sort of inborn greatness; his lip, in Giotto's
portrait, is curled disdainfully, as if he lived among fools or knaves.
He is given to no youthful excesses; he lives simply and frugally. He
rarely speaks unless spoken to; he is absorbed apparently in thought.
Without a commanding physical person, he is a marked man to everybody,
even when he deems himself a stranger. Women gaze at him with wonder and
admiration, though he disdains their praises and avoids their
flatteries. Men make way for him as he passes them, unconsciously.
"Behold," said a group of ladies, as he walked slowly by them, "there is
a man who has visited hell!" To the close of his life he was a great
devourer of books, and digested their contents. His studies were as
various as they were profound. He was familiar with the ancient poets
and historians and philosophers; he was still better acquainted with the
abstruse speculations of the schoolmen. He delighted in universities and
scholastic retreats; from the cares and duties of public life he would
retire to solitary labors, and dignify his retirement by improving
studies. He did not live in a cell, like Jerome, or a cave, like
Mohammed; but no man was ever more indebted to solitude and meditation
than he for that insight and inspiration which communion with God and
great ideas alone can give.
And yet, though a recluse and student, he had great experiences with
life. He was born among the higher ranks of society. He inherited an
ample patrimony. He did not shrink from public affairs. He was
intensely patriotic, like Michael Angelo; he gave himself up to the
good of his country, like Savonarola. Florence was small, but it was
important; it was already a capital, and a centre of industry. He
represented its interests in various courts. He lived with princes and
nobles. He took an active part in all public matters and disputations;
he was even familiar with the intrigues of parties; he was a politician
as well as scholar. He entered into the contests between Popes and
Emperors respecting the independence of Italy. He was not conversant
with art, for the great sculptors and painters had not then arisen. The
age was still dark; the mariner's compass had not been invented,
chimneys had not been introduced, the comforts of life were few. Dames
of highest rank still spent their days over the distaff or in combing
flax. There were no grand structures but cathedral churches. Life was
laborious, dismal, and turbulent. Law and order did not reign in cities
or villages. The poor were oppressed by nobles. Commerce was small and
manufactures scarce. Men lived in dreary houses, without luxuries, on
coarse bread and fruit and vegetables. The crusades had not come to an
end. It was the age of bad popes and quarrelsome nobles, and lazy monks
and haughty bishops, and ignorant people, steeped in gloomy
superstitions, two hundred years before America was discovered, and two
hundred and fifty years before Michael Angelo erected the dome of
St. Peter's.
But there was faith in the world, and rough virtues, sincerity, and
earnestness of character, though life was dismal. Men believed in
immortality and in expiation for sin. The rising universities had gifted
scholars whose abstruse speculations have never been rivalled for
acuteness and severity of logic. There were bards and minstrels, and
chivalric knights and tournaments and tilts, and village _fêtes_ and
hospitable convents and gentle ladies,--gentle and lovely even in all
states of civilization, winning by their graces and inspiring men to
deeds of heroism and gallantry.
In one of those domestic revolutions which were so common in Italy Dante
was banished, and his property was confiscated; and he at the age of
thirty-five, about the year 1300, when Giotto was painting portraits,
was sent forth a wanderer and an exile, now poor and unimportant, to eat
the bread of strangers and climb other people's stairs; and so obnoxious
was he to the dominant party in his native city for his bitter spirit,
that he was destined never to return to his home and friends. His
ancestors, boasting of Roman descent, belonged to the patriotic
party,--the Guelphs, who had the ascendency in his early years,--that
party which defended the claims of the Popes against the Emperors of
Germany. But this party had its divisions and rival families,--those
that sided with the old feudal nobles who had once ruled the city, and
the new mercantile families that surpassed them in wealth and popular
favor. So, expelled by a fraction of his own party that had gained
power, Dante went over to the Ghibellines, and became an adherent of
imperial authority until he died.
It was in his wanderings from court to court and castle to castle and
convent to convent and university to university, that he acquired that
profound experience with men and the world which fitted him for his
great task. "Not as victorious knight on the field of Campaldino, not as
leader of the Guelph aristocracy at Florence, not as prior, not as
ambassador," but as a wanderer did he acquire his moral wisdom. He was a
striking example of the severe experiences to which nearly all great
benefactors have been subjected,--Abraham the exile, in the wilderness,
in Egypt, among Philistines, among robbers and barbaric chieftains; the
Prince Siddârtha, who founded Buddhism, in his wanderings among the
various Indian nations who bowed down to Brahma; and, still greater, the
Apostle Paul, in his protracted martyrdom among Pagan idolaters and
boastful philosophers, in Asia and in Europe. These and others may be
cited, who led a life of self-denial and reproach in order to spread the
truths which save mankind. We naturally call their lot hard, even though
they chose it; but it is the school of greatness. It was sad to see the
wisest and best man of his day,--a man of family, of culture, of wealth,
of learning, loving leisure, attached to his home and country,
accustomed to honor and independence,--doomed to exile, poverty,
neglect, and hatred, without those compensations which men of genius in
our time secure. But I would not attempt to excite pity for an outward
condition which developed the higher virtues,--for a thorny path which
led to the regions of eternal light. Dante may have walked in bitter
tears to Paradise, but after the fashion of saints and martyrs in all
ages of our world. He need but cast his eyes on that emblem which was
erected on every pinnacle of Mediaeval churches to symbolize passing
suffering with salvation infinite,--the great and august creed of the
age in which he lived, though now buried amid the triumphs of an
imposing material civilization whose end is the adoration of the majesty
of man rather than the majesty of God, the wonders of creation rather
than the greatness of the Creator.
But something more was required in order to write an immortal poem than
even native genius, great learning, and profound experience. The soul
must be stimulated to the work by an absorbing and ennobling passion.
This passion Dante had; and it is as memorable as the mortal loves of
Abélard and Héloïse, and infinitely more exalting, since it was
spiritual and immortal,--even the adoration of his lamented and
departed Beatrice.
I wish to dwell for a moment, perhaps longer than to some may seem
dignified, on this ideal or sentimental love. It may seem trivial and
unimportant to the eye of youth, or a man of the world, or a woman of
sensual nature, or to unthinking fools and butterflies; but it is
invested with dignity to one who meditates on the mysteries of the soul,
the wonders of our higher nature,--one of the things which arrest the
attention of philosophers.
It is recorded and attested, even by Dante himself, that at the early
age of nine he fell in love with Beatrice,--a little girl of one of his
neighbors,--and that he wrote to her sonnets as the mistress of his
devotion. How could he have written sonnets without an inspiration,
unless he felt sentiments higher than we associate with either boys or
girls? The boy was father of the man. "She appeared to me," says the
poet, "at a festival, dressed in that most noble and honorable color,
scarlet,--girded and ornamented in a manner suitable to her age; and
from that moment love ruled my soul. And after many days had passed, it
happened that, passing through the street, she turned her eyes to the
spot where I stood, and with ineffable courtesy she greeted me; and this
had such an effect on me that it seemed I had reached the furthest
limit of blessedness. I took refuge in the solitude of my chamber; and,
thinking over what had happened to me, I proposed to write a sonnet,
since I had already acquired the art of putting words into rhyme," This,
from his "Vita Nuova," his first work, relating to the "new life" which
this love awoke in his young soul.
Thus, according to Dante's own statement, was the seed of a never-ending
passion planted in his soul,--the small beginning, so insignificant to
cynical eyes, that it would almost seem preposterous to allude to it; as
if this fancy for a little girl in scarlet, and in a boy but nine years
of age, could ripen into anything worthy to be soberly mentioned by a
grave and earnest poet, in the full maturity of his genius,--worthy to
give direction to his lofty intellect, worthy to be the occasion of the
greatest poem the world has seen from Homer to modern times. Absurd!
ridiculous! Great rivers cannot rise from such a spring; tall trees
cannot grow from such a little acorn. Thus reasons the man who does not
take cognizance of the mighty mysteries of human life. If anything
tempted the boy to write sonnets to a little girl, it must have been the
chivalric element in society at that period, when even boys were
required to choose objects of devotion, and to whom they were to be
loyal, and whose honor they were bound to defend. But the grave poet, in
the decline of his life, makes this simple confession, as the beginning
of that sentiment which never afterwards departed from him, and which
inspired him to his grandest efforts.
But this youthful attachment was unfortunate. Beatrice did not return
his passion, and had no conception of its force, and perhaps was not
even worthy to call it forth. She may have been beautiful; she may have
been gifted; she may have been commonplace. It matters little whether
she was intellectual or not, beautiful or not. It was not the flesh and
blood he saw, but the image of beauty and loveliness which his own mind
created. He idealized the girl; she was to him all that he fancied. But
she never encouraged him; she denied his greetings, and even avoided his
society. At last she died, when he was twenty-seven, and left him--to
use his own expression--"to ruminate on death, and envy whomsoever
dies." To console himself, he read Boëthius, and religious philosophy
was ever afterwards his favorite study. Nor did serenity come, so deep
were his sentiments, so powerful was his imagination, until he had
formed an exalted purpose to write a poem in her honor, and worthy of
his love. "If it please Him through whom all things come," said Dante,
"that my life be spared, I hope to tell such things of her as never
before have been seen by any one."
Now what inspired so strange a purpose? Was it a Platonic sentiment,
like the love of Petrarch for Laura, or something that we cannot
explain, and yet real,--a mystery of the soul in its deepest cravings
and aspirations? And is love, among mortals generally, based on such a
foundation? Is it flesh and blood we love; is it the intellect; is it
the character; is it the soul; is it what is inherently interesting in
woman, and which everybody can see,--the real virtues of the heart and
charms of physical beauty? Or is it what we fancy in the object of our
adoration, what exists already in our own minds,--the archetypes of
eternal ideas of beauty and grace? And do all men worship these forms of
beauty which the imagination creates? Can any woman, or any man, seen
exactly as they are, incite a love which is kindred to worship? And is
any love worthy to be called love, if it does not inspire emotions which
prompt to self-sacrifice, labor, and lofty ends? Can a woman's smiles
incite to Herculean energies, and drive the willing worshipper to Aönian
heights, unless under these smiles are seen the light of life and the
blessedness of supernatural fervor? Is there, and can there be, a
perpetuity in mortal charms without the recognition or the supposition
of a moral beauty connected with them, which alone is pure and
imperishable, and which alone creates the sacred ecstasy that revels in
the enjoyment of what is divine, or what is supposed to be divine, not
in man, but in the conceptions of man,--the ever-blazing glories of
goodness or of truth which the excited soul doth see in the eyes and
expression of the adored image? It is these archetypes of divinity, real
or fancied, which give to love all that is enduring. Destroy these, take
away the real or fancied glories of the soul and mind, and the holy
flame soon burns out. No mortal love can last, no mortal love is
beautiful, unless the visions which the mind creates are not more or
less realized in the object of it, or when a person, either man or
woman, is not capable of seeing ideal perfections. The loves of savages
are the loves of brutes. The more exalted the character and the soul,
the greater is the capacity of love, and the deeper its fervor. It is
not the object of love which creates this fervor, but the mind which is
capable of investing it with glories. There could not have been such
intensity in Dante's love had he not been gifted with the power of
creating so lofty and beautiful an ideal; and it was this he
worshipped,--not the real Beatrice, but the angelic beauty he thought he
saw in her. Why could he not see the perfections he adored shining in
other women, who perhaps had a higher claim to them? Ah, that is the
mystery! And you cannot solve it any easier than you can tell why a
flower blooms or a seed germinates. And why was it that Dante, with his
great experience, could in later life see the qualities he adored in no
other woman than in the cold and unappreciative girl who avoided him?
Suppose she had become his wife, might he not have been disenchanted,
and his veneration been succeeded by a bitter disappointment? Yet, while
the delusion lasted, no other woman could have filled her place; in no
other woman could he have seen such charms; no other love could have
inspired his soul to make such labors.
I would not be understood as declaring that married love must be
necessarily a disenchantment. I would not thus libel humanity, and
insult plain reason and experience. Many loves _are_ happy, and burn
brighter and brighter to the end; but it is because there are many who
are worthy of them, both men and women,--because the ideal, which the
mind created, _is_ realized to a greater or less degree, although the
loftier the archetype, the less seldom is it found. Nor is it necessary
that perfection should be found. A person may have faults which alienate
and disenchant, but with these there may be virtues so radiant that the
worship, though imperfect, remains,--a respect, on the whole, so great
that the soul is lifted to admiration. Who can love this perishable
form, unless one sees in it some traits which belong to superior and
immortal natures? And hence the sentiment, when pure, creates a sort of
companionship of beings robed in celestial light, and exorcises those
degrading passions which belong to earth. But Dante saw no imperfections
in Beatrice: perhaps he had no opportunity to see them. His own soul
was so filled with love, his mind soared to such exalted regions of
adoration, that when she passed away he saw her only in the beatified
state, in company with saints and angels; and he was wrapped in
ecstasies which knew no end,--the unbroken adoration of beauty, grace,
and truth, even of those eternal ideas on which Plato based all that is
certain, and all that is worth living for; that sublime realism without
which life is a failure, and this world is "a mockery, a delusion, and
a snare."
This is the history and exposition of that love for Beatrice with which
the whole spiritual life of Dante is identified, and without which the
"Divine Comedy" might not have been written. I may have given to it
disproportionate attention; and it is true I might have allegorized it,
and for love of a woman I might have substituted love for an art,--even
the art of poetry, in which his soul doubtless lived, even as Michael
Angelo, his greatest fellow-countryman, lived in the adoration of
beauty, grace, and majesty. Oh, happy and favored is the person who
lives in the enjoyment of an art! It may be humble; it may be grand. It
may be music; it may be painting, or sculpture, or architecture, or
poetry, or oratory, or landscape gardening, yea, even farming, or
needle-work, or house decoration,--anything which employs the higher
faculties of the mind, and brings order out of confusion, and takes one
from himself, from the drudgery of mechanical labors, even if it be no
higher than carving a mantelpiece or making a savory dish; for all these
things imply creation, alike the test and the reward of genius itself,
which almost every human being possesses, in some form or other, to a
greater or less degree,--one of the kindest gifts of Deity to man.
The great artist, kindled by his visions of imperishable loveliness in
the person of his departed Beatrice, now resolves to dedicate to her
honor his great life-labor,--even his immortal poem, which should be a
transcript of his thoughts, a mirror of his life, a record of his
sorrows, a painting of his experiences, a description of what he saw, a
digest of his great meditations, a thesaurus of the treasures of the
Mediaeval age, an exposition of its great and leading ideas in
philosophy and in religion. Every great man wishes to leave behind some
monument of his labors, to bless or instruct mankind. Any man without
some form of this noble ambition lives in vain, even if his monument be
no more than a cultivated farm rescued from wildness and sterility.
Now Dante's monument is "the marvellous, mystic, unfathomable song," in
which he sang his sorrows and his joys, revealed his visions, and
recorded the passions and sentiments of his age. It never can be
popular, because it is so difficult to be understood, and because its
leading ideas are not in harmony with those which are now received. I
doubt if anybody can delight in that poem, unless he sympathizes with
the ideas of the Middle Ages; or, at least, unless he is familiar with
them, and with the historical characters who lived in those turbulent
and gloomy times. There is more talk and pretension about that book than
any one that I know of. Like the "Faerie Queene" or the "Paradise Lost,"
it is a study rather than a recreation; one of those productions which
an educated person ought to read in the course of his life, and which if
he can read in the original, and has read, is apt to boast of,--like
climbing a lofty mountain, enjoyable to some with youth and vigor and
enthusiasm and love of nature, but a very toilsome thing to most people,
especially if old and short-winded and gouty.
In the year 1309 the first part of the "Divine Comedy," the _Inferno_,
was finished by Dante, at the age of forty-four, in the tenth year of
his pilgrimage, under the roof of the Marquis of Lunigiana; and it was
intrusted to the care of Fra Ilario, a monk living on the beautiful
Ligurian shores. As everybody knows, it is a vivid, graphic picture of
what was supposed to be the infernal regions, where great sinners are
punished with various torments forever and ever. It is interesting for
the excellence of the poetry, the brilliant analyses of characters, the
allusion to historical events, the bitter invectives, the intense
sarcasms, and the serious, earnest spirit which underlies the
descriptions. But there is very little of gentleness or compassion, in
view of the protracted torments of the sufferers. We stand aghast in
view of the miseries and monsters, furies and gorgons, snakes and fires,
demons, filth, lakes of pitch, pools of blood, plains of scorching
sands, circles, and chimeras dire,--a physical hell of utter and
unspeakable dreariness and despair, awfully and powerfully described,
but still repulsive. In each of the dismal abodes, far down in the
bowels of the earth, which Dante is supposed to have visited with Virgil
as a guide, in which some infernal deity presides, all sorts of physical
tortures are accumulated, inflicted on traitors, murderers,
robbers,--men who have committed great crimes, unpunished in their
lifetime; such men as Cain, Judas, Ugolino,--men consigned to an
infamous immortality. On the great culprits of history, and of Italy
especially, Dante virtually sits in judgment; and he consigns them
equally to various torments which we shudder to think of.
And here let me say, as a general criticism, that in the _Inferno_ are
brought out in tremendous language the opinions of the Middle Ages in
reference to retribution. Dante does not rise above them, with all his
genius; he is not emancipated from them. It is the rarest thing in this
world for any man, however profound his intellect and bold his spirit,
to be emancipated from the great and leading ideas of his age. Abraham
was, and Moses, and the founder of Buddhism, and Socrates, and Mohammed,
and Luther; but they were reformers, more or less divinely commissioned,
with supernatural aid in many instances to give them wisdom. But Homer
was not, nor Euripides, nor the great scholastics of the Middle Ages,
nor even popes. The venerated doctors and philosophers, prelates,
scholars, nobles, kings, to say nothing of the people, thought as Dante
did in reference to future punishment,--that it was physical, awful,
accumulative, infinite, endless; the wrath of avenging deity displayed
in pains and agonies inflicted on the body, like the tortures of
inquisitors, thus appealing to the fears of men, on which chiefly the
power of the clergy was based. Nor in these views of endless physical
sufferings, as if the body itself were eternal and indestructible, is
there the refinement of Milton, who placed misery in the upbraidings of
conscience, in mental torture rather than bodily, in the everlasting
pride and rebellion of the followers of Satan and his fallen angels. It
was these awful views of protracted and eternal physical torments,--not
the hell of the Bible, but the hell of priests, of human
invention,--which gives to the Middle Ages a sorrowful and repulsive
light, thus nursing superstition and working on the fears of mankind,
rather than on the conscience and the sense of moral accountability. But
how could Dante have represented the ideas of the Middle Ages, if he had
not painted his _Inferno_ in the darkest colors that the imagination
could conceive, unless he had soared beyond what is revealed into the
unfathomable and mysterious and unrevealed regions of the second death?
After various wanderings in France and Italy, and after an interval of
three years, Dante produced the second part of the poem,--the
_Purgatorio_,--in which he assumes another style, and sings another
song. In this we are introduced to an illustrious company,--many beloved
friends, poets, musicians, philosophers, generals, even prelates and
popes, whose deeds and thoughts were on the whole beneficent. These
illustrious men temporarily expiate the sins of anger, of envy, avarice,
gluttony, pride, ambition,--the great defects which were blended with
virtues, and which are to be purged out of them by suffering. Their
torments are milder, and amid them they discourse on the principles of
moral wisdom. They utter noble sentiments; they discuss great themes;
they show how vain is wealth and power and fame; they preach sermons. In
these discourses, Dante shows his familiarity with history and
philosophy; he unfolds that moral wisdom for which he is most
distinguished. His scorn is now tempered with tenderness. He shows a
true humanity; he is more forgiving, more generous, more sympathetic. He
is more lofty, if he is not more intense. He sees the end of expiations:
the sufferers will be restored to peace and joy.
But even in his purgatory, as in his hell, he paints the ideas of his
age. He makes no new or extraordinary revelations. He arrives at no new
philosophy. He is the Christian poet, after the pattern of his age.