Dante Alighieri (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Dante Alighieri
Dante's engagement with philosophy cannot be studied apart from his
vocation as a writer, in which he sought to raise the level of public
discourse by educating his countrymen and inspiring them to pursue
happiness in the contemplative life. He was one of the most learned
Italian laymen of his day, intimately familiar with Aristotelian logic
and natural philosophy, theology (he had a special affinity for the
thought of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas), and classical
literature. His writings reflect this in their mingling of philosophical
and theological language, invoking Aristotle and the neo-Platonists
side by side with the poet of the psalms. Like Aquinas, Dante wished to
summon his audience to the practice of philosophical wisdom, though by
means of truths embedded in his own poetry, rather than mysteriously
embodied in scripture.
Dante was born in 1265 in Florence. At the age of 9 he met for the
first time the eight-year-old Beatrice Portinari, who became in effect
his Muse, and remained, after her death in 1290, the central
inspiration for his major poems. Between 1285, when he married and
began a family, and 1302, when he was exiled from Florence, he was
active in the cultural and civic life of Florence, served as a soldier
and held several political offices.
Since the early thirteenth century two great factions, the Guelfs
and the Ghibellines, had competed for control of Florence. The Guelfs,
with whom Dante was allied, were identified with Florentine political
autonomy, and with the interests of the Papacy in its long struggle
against the centralizing ambitions of the Hohenstaufen emperors, who
were supported by the Ghibellines. After Charles of Anjou, with the
blessing of the Papacy and strong Guelf support, defeated Hohenstaufen
armies at Benevento (1265/6) and Tagliacozzo (1268), the Guelfs became
the dominant force in Florence. By the end of the century, the Guelfs
were themselves riven by faction, grounded largely in family and
economic interests, but determined also by differing degrees of loyalty
to the papacy and to Guelf allegiances.
In 1301, when conflict arose between the &Blacks,& the faction most
strongly committed to Guelf and papal interests, and the more moderate
Whites, Pope Boniface VIII instigated a partisan settlement which
allowed the Blacks to exile the White leadership, of whom Dante was
one. He never returned to Florence, and played no further role in
public life, though he remained passionately interested in Italian
politics, and became virtually the prophet of world empire in the years
leading up to the coronation of Henry VII of Luxemburg as head of the
Holy Roman Empire (1312). The development of Dante's almost messianic
sense of the imperial role is hard to trace, but it was doubtless
affected by his bitterness over what he saw as the autocratic and
treacherous conduct of Pope Boniface, and a growing conviction that
only a strong central authority could bring order to Italy.
During the next twenty years Dante lived in several Italian cities,
spending at least two long periods at the court of Can Grande della
Scala, lord of Verona. In 1319 he moved from Verona to Ravenna, where
he completed the Paradiso, and where he died in 1321.
Dante's engagement with philosophy cannot be studied apart from his
vocation as a writer&as a poet whose theme, from first to last is
the significance of his love for Beatrice, but also as an intellectual
strongly committed to raising the level of public discourse. After his
banishment he addressed himself to Italians generally, and devoted much
of his long exile to transmitting the riches of ancient thought and
learning, as these informed contemporary scholastic culture, to an
increasingly sophisticated lay readership in their own vernacular.
This project was Dante's contribution to a long-standing Italian
cultural tradition. His reading in philosophy began, he tells us, with
Cicero and Boethius, whose writings are in large part the record of
their dedication to the task of establishing a Latinate intellectual
culture in Italy. The Convivio and the De vulgari
eloquentia preserve also the somewhat idealized memory of the
Neapolitan court of Frederick II of Sicily () and his son
Manfred (1232&66), intellectuals in their own right as well as patrons
of poets and philosophers, whom Dante viewed as having revived the
ancient tradition of the statesman-philosopher [Van Cleve, 299-332;
Morpurgo]. Dante himself probably studied under Brunetto Latini
(1220&94), whose encyclopedic Livres dou Tresor (1262&66),
written while Brunetto was a political exile in France, provided
vernacular readers with a compendium of the Liberal Arts and a digest
of Aristotelian ethical and political thought [M Imbach (1993),
37&47; Davis (1984), 166&97].
But the fullest medieval embodiment of Dante's ideal is his own
writings. In them we see for the first time a powerful thinker, solidly
grounded in Aristotle, patristic theology, and thirteenth-century
scholastic debate, bringing these resources directly to bear on
educating his countrymen and inspiring them to pursue the happiness
that rewards the philosopher.
Though he evidently did not begin serious study of philosophy until
his mid-twenties, Dante had already been intellectually challenged by
the work of a remarkable group of poets, practitioners of what he would
later recall as the dolce stil novo, in whose hands a lyric
poetry modelled on the canso of the Proven&al
troubadours became a vehicle for serious enquiry into the nature of
love and human psychology. A generation earlier Guido Guinizzelli
() had puzzled contemporaries with poems treating love in
terms of the technicalities of medicine and the cosmology of the
schools, while celebrating in quasi-mystical language his lady's power
to elevate the spirit of her poet-lover:
Splende in la intelligenz&a del cielo
Deo cr&ator, pi& che &n nostri occhi &
ella intende suo fattor oltra &l cielo,
e &l ciel volgiando,
cos& dar dovria, al vero,
la bella donna, poi che &n gli occhi splende
del suo gentil, talento,
chi mai da lei obedir non si disprende.
[Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore, 41&44, 47&50]
Translation:
God the creator shines in the intelligence of heaven more than the sun
in our eyes, and this [intelligence] understands her maker beyond the
universe. Making the heavens turn, she submits to obey Him . . . So
truly should the beautiful lady, when she shines on the eyes of her
gentle [lover], impart the desire that his obedience to her never
The Lady, exerting on her lover a power derived from the participation
of her understanding in the divine, plays the role of the celestial
intelligenze, who transmit the influence of the First Mover to
the universe at large. The poet is thus caught up in a circular process
through which his understanding, like theirs, is drawn toward the
divine as manifested in the lady's divinely inspired radiance. For
Guinizelli this exploitation of the idea of celestial hierarchy is
perhaps only a daring poetic conceit. For Dante it will become a means
to the articulation of his deepest intuitions.
Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's older contemporary and the single
strongest influence on his early poetry, was renowned not only as a
poet, but for his knowledge of natural philosophy. His great
canzone, &Donna mi prega,& which became
the subject of learned Latin commentaries, deals with ideas commonly
associated with the &radical Aristotelianism& or
&Averroism& of his day. The purpose of this astonishing
poem is to describe in precise philosophical terms
(&naturale dimostramento&) the experience of
For Guido there is an absolute cleavage between the sensory and
intellectual aspects of the response to a loved object. Once the
phantasma of the object becomes an abstracted form in the possible
intellect, it is wholly insulated from the diletto of the
anima sensitiva (21&28). This has seemed to modern
commentators to imply an Averroist view of the intellect as a separate,
universal entity [Corti (1983), 3&37], and the lines which follow
(30&56), where the vert& of the sensitive soul
displaces reason and &assumes its function,& presenting to the will an
object whose desirability threatens a fatal disorientation, sustain
this impression. Love is still the aristocratic vocation of the
troubadours, and Guido acknowledges that noble spirits are aroused by
it to prove their merit. But they work in darkness, for the force that
moves them obscures the light of intellectual contemplation (57&68).
The canzone is so exclusively an exercise in &natural
philosophy,& so centered on biological necessity, that consciousness
itself is wholly excluded from consideration. The ethical dimension of
love consists in the challenge its blind urgency presents to reason.
&Nobility& is a matter of self-control, and the precarious happiness
that such love affords has no ideal dimension.
Guido's influence on Dante was profound. But the Vita nuova,
an anthology of Dante's early poetry interspersed with a narrative
combining commentary on his poetic development with the history of his
devotion to Beatrice during her earthly life, reveals a growing
realization that his own conception of poetry and love differ
fundamentally from Guido's [Ardizzone]. Like Guido Dante accepted love
as being, for better or worse, fundamental to the noble life, and his
early lyrics express a sense like Guido's of the internally divisive
power of desire. But as the Vita nuova unfolds there is a
gradual shift of focus: having failed to win his lady's favor by
dramatizing his own sufferings, Dante resolves to devote his poetry
henceforth wholly to praise of her [VN, c. 18.4&6]. The result
of this new resolve is a
canzone, &Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore& (&Ladies
who have intelligence of love&), which returns to the source of his
inspiration and Guido's in the poetry of Guinizelli, and makes a wholly
new departure. For Guido, the &heavenly& allure of the lady is a
deception perpetrated by the senses, all the more dangerous as the
lover's gentilezza responds more fully to the attraction of
her beauty and subjects itself to the &fierce accident& of passion.
Dante, too, sees that the experience his early, tormented lyrics depict
is &an accident occurring in a substance& [VN 25.1&2], but the &fiery
spirits of love& which strike the eyes of those on whom his lady
bestows her greeting are not just goads to desire:
E quando trova alcun che degno sia
di veder lei. quei prova sua vertute,
ch& li avvien, ci& che li dona, in salute,
e s& l'umilia ch'ogni offesa oblia.
Ancor l'ha Dio per maggior grazia dato
che non p& mal finir chi l'ha parlato.
[Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore, 37&42, VN 19.10]
Translation:
And when she finds one who is worthy to behold her, he feels her power,
for what she bestows on him is restorative, and humbles him, so that he
forgets any injury. Moreover God has made the power of her grace even
greater, for no one who has spoken with her can come to a bad end.
Pursuit of the lady's favor has become a test, not just of nobility,
but of virtue. Her beauty is perfect, the fullest possible exampling of
nature's power to reveal God's creative love. The climax of the
Vita nuova occurs when Dante encounters Guido's lady,
Giovanna, followed by his own Beatrice, &one marvel,& as he says,
&following the other& [VN 24.8]. At once he realizes that Giovanna's
beauty, like the prophecy of the biblical Giovanni, is a precursor,
heralding the &true light& of Beatrice, just as Guido's poetry of
earthly love is finally a foil to his own celebration of the
transcendent love revealed to him in Beatrice.
The philosophical content of the Vita nuova is minimal, a
skeletal version of contemporary faculty psychology and a few brief
references to metaphysics. But while finding his orientation as a poet
Dante was also engaged in the study of philosophy, and spent &some
thirty months& frequenting &the schools of the religious orders and the
disputations of the philosophers& [Conv. 2.12.7]. This period
must have included study in the Dominican school at Santa Maria
Novella, where Dante could have learned logic and natural philosophy,
and heard Fra Remigio de'Girolami (d. 1319) expound a theology based
on Thomas and Aristotle [P Davis (1984), 198&223]. Remigio, like
Dante, read widely in classical literature of all sorts, and he was
fond of drawing lessons in political and ethical conduct from his
reading. For both Remigio and Dante, moreover, Thomas was primarily the
author of the Summa contra Gentiles and the commentary on the
Ethics, concerned, like Aristotle himself, to demonstrate the
capacities of human reason as a means to truth.
Dante cites a dozen works of Aristotle, apparently at first hand, and
shows a particularly intimate knowledge of the Ethics,
largely derived, no doubt, from Thomas [Minio-Paluello]. But his
Aristotelianism was nourished by other sources as well. Bruno Nardi
has argued persuasively that his attitude toward the study of
philosophy also owes a great deal to the more eclectic Albert the
Great [Nardi (1967); 63&72; (1992), 28&29; Vasoli (1995b); Gilson (2004)]. In Albert
he encountered a wide-ranging encyclopedism which included original
work, experimental and theoretical, in natural science, and treated
Aristotelian natural philosophy and psychology in the light of a
neo-Platonism derived from Arabic philosophers and such Greco-Arab
sources as the Liber de Causis, as well as the Christian
neo-Platonist tradition of the Pseudo-Dionysius. Albert aimed to
discover Aristotle's own meaning, with the help of Greek and Arab
commentators who led him into disagreement with other Latini,
including at certain points his pupil Thomas, and he asserts more than
once that philosophy and theology are separate spheres of
knowledge. It was doubtless this willingness to pursue philosophy on
its own terms that appealed to Dante, who also sought to distinguish
philosophical and religious knowledge without simply subordinating the
former to the latter.
Albert's view of the procession of the universe from the
&substantial light& of the divine intellect through the operation of a
hierarchy of lesser intelligences is clearly perceptible in Dante's
treatment of the cosmic intelligenze or sostanze
separate in the Convivio [Conv. 2.4&5; Nardi
(1992), 47&62]. It shows up again in his treatment of the growth of the
human embryo, which seems to imply, not a sequence of animations by
nutritive, sensitive and intellective powers, as for Thomas, but the
continuous operation of a single virtus formativa, whose
operation Albert compares to that of the prima intelligentia
in the soul [De intellectu & intelligibili 2.2], and which
is responsible not only for the development of the human creature but
for effecting its union with an essentially external anima
intellectiva [Boyde (; Nardi (1960), 9&68; (1967),
Albert is thus a likely conduit for seemingly Averroist elements in
Dante's thought. He regards intellectual activity as the operation of
the intellectus agens, through which the human soul is
illumined by the divine Intelligence. Each soul possesses its own
intellect, but this intellect is a &reflection& (resultatio)
of the light of the primal mind, which thus, in effect, becomes itself
the true agent intellect. Albert explicitly rejects the Averroist view
of the active intellect as itself a celestial intelligence, a single,
separate substance which actualizes in the passive intellect phantasms
supplied by individual human minds. But he argues that only an
intellect universal in nature can produce an understanding of universal
forms. The intellect and the soul of which it is a function thus
partake of the character of the separate intelligences. Soul is not the
actualizing essence of the human creature, as in Thomas, but is related
to body through the mediation of its organic faculties. In itself,
through its agent intellect, the soul is drawn to contemplate the
intelligences which order the universe at large, is informed by them
with the transcendent knowledge they manifest, and finally &stands& in
the divine intellect. In this way certain men are enabled to fulfil the
innate human desire for understanding and attain a natural beatitude,
&substantiated and formed in the divine being& [Albert, De
intellectu & intelligibili 2.2&12; Nardi (1960), 145&50].
That this fulfillment is attained through natural understanding, with
no recourse to the theology of grace and revelation, marks a crucial
difference between Albert and Thomas, who devotes several chapters of
the Summa contra gentiles to a forceful refutation of the
notion that final happiness as defined by Aristotle is possible in
this life [SCG 3.37&48]. For Thomas the desire to know is one
and the same at all levels, and philosophy, seeking the causes of
things, is ultimately &ordered entirely to the knowing of
God& [SCG 3.25.9] Dante's own position on this question is
difficult to define precisely.
The poet of the Paradiso is
at one with Thomas on the value of philosophy as consisting finally in
its power to prepare the mind for faith [Par. 4.118&32;
29.13&45], but he shares Albert's fascination with natural
understanding, and in earlier writings his willingness to grant
philosophy a &beatitude& of its own hints at a latent
dualism in his thought [Foster (1965), 51&71; (1977),
193&208; de Libera (1991), 333&36].
How far this reflects
his responsiveness to neo-Platonism as mediated by Albert or in such
works as the Liber de causis is hard to determine. Nardi, who
argued successfully for seeing Dante as an eclectic thinker [Diomedi
(2005), 1&23], stressed the importance of the Liber de
But recent studies have argued that Nardi, in his zeal
to free Dante from the constraints of the orthodox Thomism that
scholars like Pierre Mandonnet and Giovanni Busnelli claimed to find
in him [Maier&, 128-35; Stabile (2007), 359-70], exaggerates
the neo-Platonist strain in his thinking [Iannucci (1997); Moevs,
Dante was surely aware also of a &radical& Aristotelianism
centered in Bologna, where masters influenced by Siger of Brabant and
Boethius of Dacia were affirming the autonomy of human reason and its
capacity to attain happiness through its own powers [Corti (1981),
9&31; Vanni Rovighi]. But these thinkers, too, were following
paths first taken by Albert, and his influence, together with that of
Thomas, is sufficient to account for the distinctive features of
Dante's use of philosophy [Imbach (1996b), 399&413].
the precise channels, Dante was unquestionably one of the most learned
Italian laymen of his day, aware of the issues contested in the
schools, and at home with the modes of discourse in which they were
discussed.
But there is also an old-fashioned strain in Dante's thinking, an
idealistic, Platonizing view of the mental universe which recalls not
just the neo-Platonized Aristotle of the Liber de causis, but
the more primitive encyclopedism of twelfth- century thinkers like
Bernardus Silvestris and Alan of Lille, poet-philosophers whose world
view, inherited from late-antique neo-Platonism, was defined by the
Liberal Arts and the cosmology of Plato's Timaeus [Vasoli
(1995a, 2008); , 83&102; Garin, 64&70]; Stabile,
173-93]. In Bernardus' Cosmographia and
Alan's Anticlaudianus, the unfolding of the secrets of nature
by the enquiring mind generates an allegory of intellectual pilgrimage
toward truth. Dante's experience of philosophy, though defined in more
dynamic and sophisticated terms, is a version of the same journey. The
experience of love becomes a means to self-realization, and an
awareness of the hierarchy of forces operative in the universe at
large, which makes possible an
ascensus mentis ad sapientiam, to that &amoroso uso della
sapienza& which enables the human mind to participate in the
The record of Dante's thirty months of study, and the fullest
expression of his philosophical thought, is the Convivio, in
which commentary on a series of his own canzoni is the
occasion for the expression of a range of ideas on ethics, politics,
and metaphysics, as well as for extended discussion of philosophy
itself. Dante describes the genesis of his love of philosophy, and
reflects on the ability of philosophical understanding to mediate
religious truth, tracing the desire for knowledge from its origin as an
inherent trait of human nature to the point at which the love of wisdom
expresses itself directly as love of God.
Philosophy itself is the &love of Wisdom,& and Dante's central
metaphor for representing it is the poetic celebration of a noble lady,
a donna gentile, an act which, like Guinizelli, he sees as
involving the influence of cosmic powers. His poetry, &materiated& out
of love and virtue [Conv. 1.1.14] comes into being because his
nature is responsive to the influence of the &movers& of the universe,
the intelligences, whose loving understanding determines &the most
noble form of heaven& as they in turn respond to &the love of the Holy
Spirit& [2.5.13, 18]. Their cosmic activity is a continual translation
of understanding into love and natural process, and it is this which
causes Dante to sing [2, Canzone, 1&9]:
Voi che &ntendendo il terzo ciel movete,
udite il ragionar ch'& nel mio core,
ch'io nol so dire altrui, s& mi par novo.
El ciel che segue lo vostro valore,
gentili creature che voi sete,
mi tragge ne lo stato ov'io mi trovo.
Onde &l parlar de la vita ch'io provo,
par che si drizzi degnamente a vui:
per& vi priego che lo mi &ntendiate.
Translation:
You who by understanding move the third heaven, hear the discourse
which is in my heart, and which seems so strange to me that I know not
how to say it to others. The heaven which responds to your power, noble
creatures that you are, draws me into the state in which I find myself,
and so it seems that speech about the life I am experiencing is most
appropriately addresses to you. Therefore I pray that you will
understand me.
The intellective power or intendimento of the intelligences
moves Dante to an utterance which only these same powers can fully
understand. Thus there is a continuum, a process of
circulazione which begins in the mind of God and descends
through the work of the intelligenze to draw Dante's nature
into that praise of the donna gentile which constitutes the
fulfillment of his own nature, the highest expression of which his
desire and intellect are capable [2.5.15, 18; 2.6.5, Diomedi
Of the four books or trattati of the Convivio the
first is largely a defense of Dante's decision to write his prose
commentaries, as well as the poems they expound, in the Tuscan
vernacular rather than in Latin. The second book provides a delineation
of the Ptolemaic universe which the intelligenze govern,
capped by a description of the Empyrean Heaven [2.3.8&11]:
. . . outside all of these [spheres, heavens] the Catholics
place the Empyrean heaven, which is to say, &the heaven of flame,& or
&luminous heaven&; and they hold it to be motionless because it has in
itself, with respect to each of its parts, that which its matter
desires. This is why the Primum Mobile has t for
because of the most fervent desire that each part of the ninth heaven
has to be conjoined with every part of that divinest, tranquil heaven,
to which it is contiguous, it revolves beneath it with such desire that
its velocity is almost incomprehensible. Stillness and peace are the
qualities of the place of that Supreme Deity which alone completely
beholds itself. This is the place of the blessed spirits, according to
the will of the Holy Church, which cannot lie. Aristotle, to anyone who
rightly understands him, seems to hold the same opinion in the first
book of Heaven and the World [i.e. De caelo]. This is
the supreme edifice of the universe in which all the world is enclosed
and beyond wh it is not itself in space but was
formed solely in the Primal Mind, which the Greeks call Protonoe. This
is that magnificence of which the Psalmist spoke when he says to God:
&Your magnificence is exaltled above the heavens.&
The role of the Empyrean in thirteenth-century thought is equivocal.
Some thinkers attempt to explain it scientifically, as a comprehensive
cosmic principle, while for Thomas and Albert any such realm must be
spiritual in nature, and can bear no natural relation to the
astronomical universe, though both at times seem to grant it a certain
influence on the natural order [Nardi (1967), 196&214; Vasoli (1995a),
Dante's account reflects these uncertainties. He begins by
citing &the Catholics,& or orthodox belief, as authority for his
account of this &abode of the supreme deity,& but then goes on to
treat the Empyrean as a created thing, &formed in the Primal Mind,&
and as the motionless cause of motion in the physical universe. If God
dwells in this place, the Empyrean resides equally in Him, and the
universe at large is encompassed, causally and locally, by the
Empyrean. Dante deploys the Aristotelian physics of desire to explain
the relationship of the Empyrean to the lesser heavens, yet it is at
the same time beyond space, a wholly spiritual realm where blessed
spirits participate in the divine mind. Dante seems to emphasize this
double status by mingling theological and philosophical language, and
invoking Aristotle and the neo-Platonists side by side with the poet
of the Psalms. In the Paradiso the problems raised here will
be implicitly resolved by a brilliant recourse to the &metaphysics of
light&; when Dante and Beatrice, emerging from the &greatest body,&
the crystalline sphere or Primum Mobile, pass on &al ciel
ch'& pura luce, / Luce intellettual piena d'amore&
[Par. 30.39&40], we know that we are at the precise point at
which the bonum diffusivum sui that is God's love transforms
itself to cosmic energy, &the love that moves the sun and the other
stars.& But poetry is perhaps the only means of defining this
threshold [Bonaventure, Sent. 2. d. 2, a. 2, q. 1, c. 4;
Thomas, Quodl. 6, q. 11, a. unicus 19].
Similar ambiguities appear in Dante's discussion of the
intelligenze themselves. Since in governing the several
heavens the intelligences engage in a kind of civil life, they must
enjoy an active as well as a contemplative existence. But the latter is
of a higher order than the former, and no single intelligence can
partake of both. Influenced perhaps by Thomas's commentary, Dante
imputes to Aristotle in the Ethics the view that such divine
beings must know only a contemplative life [2.4.13; cp. Aristotle, NE
10.8, 1178b; Thomas, Exp. Eth. 10, lect. 12, 2125]. Dante's
attempt to resolve the issue is oddly unpersuasive. He argues that the
circular motion of the heavens, by which the world is governed, is
really a function of the contemplative activity of the intelligences
[2.4.13]. Here, as in the case of the Empyrean which they inhabit, we
can see Aristotle's celestial movers undergoing a neo-Platonizing
transformation, but Dante ends this stage of his discussion by noting
that the truth concerning the Intelligences can not be fully grasped by
our earthly understanding [2.4.16&17].
The second book concludes with an extended allegory in which the
concentric &heavens& or planetary spheres are identified with the seven
Liberal Arts, the &starry sphere& with physics and metaphysics, the
Primum mobile with moral philosophy, and the Empyrean beyond
with theology. This synthesis of the natural and the intellectual
universe expresses an ideal of education which harks back to the
late-antique sources of twelfth-century Platonism, but which Dante has
imbued with new life. His emphasis on the ordering function of moral
wisdom, and on the happiness attainable through intellectual
contemplation, reflects an engagement with the philosophical
tradition, and a commitment to philosophy as such, which belong to the
later thirteenth century. The final chapter of Book Two affirms the
beauty that consists in seeing the causes of those
&wonders& which, as the opening of
the Metaphysics declares, draw us to philosophy.
The third book is perhaps the most important for the student of
Dante's knowledge and use of philosophy. Its central theme is praise
of philosophy's power, as &l'amoroso uso della sapienza,&
&the loving use of wisdom,& to impart the highest
happiness to those who love her, perfecting their natures and drawing
them close to God, of whose majesty and wisdom her beauty is the
expression. It is largely a meditation on love, understood as Dante's
response, intellectual, poetic and psychological, to his enlightenment
at the hands of the beautiful lady whom he celebrates as
Philosophy.
Early in the third book Dante cites the Liber de Causis:
Every &substantial form& proceeds from the first cause,
God, and participates in His divine nature according to its nobility
[3.2.4&7; LC 1.1]. The human soul, noblest of all created forms,
loves all things to the degree that they manifest the divine goodness,
but desires above all to be united with God. Philosophy is the
expression of this desire: Its &form& is &an almost
divine love of knowledge& [3.11.13] which leads to &the
spiritual uniting of the soul with what it loves& [3.2.3]. It is
through philosophy that humanity perfects its &truly human or,
better, angelic nature, that is to say the rational [nature]&
[3.3.11], discovering in itself &that distinguished and most
precious part which is deity& and &participating in the
divine nature as an everlasting intelligence& [3.2.14, 19]. As
such it mirrors the nobility, wisdom and love of the divine essence
and its &loving use of wisdom& becomes by participation
&marriage& with God [3.12.11&14].
All of this may appear sheer fantasy, but we should remember that the
aim of philosophy as the Convivio pursues it is to attain,
through natural reason, the greatest happiness of which we are capable
in our earthly state. Such felicity is of course circumscribed by our
mortality, and the Dante who can celebrate philosophical understanding
as a quasi-mystical union with God knows at the same time that true
union is granted only through grace, to a soul made receptive by the
infusion of virtues which wholly transcend the workings of rational,
natural virtue. For as Thomas says, the rational virtues &are
dispositions by which man is fittingly disposed with reference to the
nature by which he is a man. But the infused virtues dispose man in a
higher way, and in
and also, it follows, with
reference to some higher nature& [ST 1.2.110.3r]. This
&higher nature& is of course the divine nature
&through participation in which we are reborn in
Dante acknowledges Thomas's distinction when he speaks of the soul
after death as &more than human& [2.8.6], and asserts that
to perceive God is not possible for our nature [3.15.10]. For both
Dante and Thomas humanness is defined by the conjoining of soul and
body, and human knowledge depends on the evidence of the senses
[Foster (1965), 69&71; Thomas, ST 1.89a1]. Aristotle had
similarly argued that a life of pure contemplation is beyond our
str we can live in this way only to the extent
that we have in us &something divine& [NE 10.7,
1177b]. Thomas argues more subtly that the modus essendi of
the soul joined to the body differs from that of the soul in
though they are the same in nature, the separated soul
understands, not by means of sensory images, but &through
species which it participates in by virtue of the divine light&
[ST 1.89.1r]. In the meantime, as Dante acknowledges, there are truths
which we can apprehend only as if in a dream, &come
sognando,& [Conv. 3.15.6; Nardi (1944),
81&90], and our desire for perfect understanding is necessarily
limited, &proportionate to the wisdom which can be acquired
here&; for to desire what is beyond the capacity of our
intellectual nature would be ethically and rationally incoherent, a
desire for imperfection rather than perfection of understanding
[3.15.8&10].
But the Convivio continually strains against these limits.
For Dante, first and foremost a poet of love, the experience of
acquiring philosophical understanding has an important psychological
component. By enabling us to analyze the processes of perception,
philosophy brings us into contact with the true nature of things, and
for Dante, as Kenelm Foster observes, the slightest such contact could
have a metaphysical value [Foster (1965), 59&60]: &It did not in one
sense matter to Dante what the particular object of his knowing might
be, since the joy of knowing it was already a foretaste of all
conceivable k and this precisely because, in
knowing, the mind seized truth. . . . once intelligence, the
truth-faculty, had tasted truth as such, that is, its own
correspondence with reality, it could not help desiring truth whole and
entire, that is, its correspondence with all reality.& At this point
knowledge and the joy of possessing it combine to prepare the ground
for faith. By explaining phenomena which without her guidance would
merely astonish us, philosophy inspires us to believe &that every
miracle can be perceived by a superior intellect to have a reasonable
cause& [3.14.14]:
Our good faith has its origin in this, from which comes the hope
that longs and from this springs the activity of
charity. By these three virtues we ascend to philosophize in that
celestial Athens where Stoics and Peripatetics and Epicureans, by the
light of eternal truth, join ranks in a single harmonious will.
Philosophy thus conceived can still be regarded as the handmaid of
theology, but as Dante develops his philosophical ideal metaphorically
in terms of the beauty of the Donna Gentile, it assumes a religious
value of its own. Since the wisdom she embodies is the consummation of
human self-realization, the Donna Gentile resides in the divine mind as
&the intentional exemplar of the human essence& [3.6.6]. In desiring
her we desire our own perfection, for she is &as supremely perfect as
the human essence can be.& When at this point Dante adds a reminder
that nothing in our human experience can fully satisfy this desire, he
seems to be acknowledging that what Thomas' Ethics commentary
calls &the ultimate end of desire's natural inclination& is
unattainable in this life, since it would require an understanding more
complete than any human being can possess [Thomas, Exp. Eth.
1, lect. 9, 107; SCG 3.48.2].
But having provided this caution, Dante seems to ignore it, as if
unable to resist the conviction that philosophy satisfies our desire in
a manner proper to itself. Everything naturally desires its own
perfection, and for human beings this is &the perfection of reason&
[3.15.3&4; cp. Thomas, Exp. Eth. 9, lect. 9, 1872]. But
philosophy, as embodied in the Donna Gentile, is not just the
consummation of natural understanding. For Dante, as for Aristotle, the
human intellect as such is somehow more than human, and he is at times
similarly unclear on the question of whether human beings can attain
happiness through the exercise of virtue, and to what extent it is a
gift of the gods [Foster (1977), 198&201]. Repeatedly he draws a
distinction between merely human happiness and that attainable through
grace, only to seemingly disregard it in subsequent discussion. Thus in
the final chapter of the third treatise he acknowledges the &strong
misgivings& that one might have about the happiness attainable through
philosophy. Since certain things&God, eternity, and primal matter
are named&exceed the capacity of our intellect, our natural desire
to know must remain unfulfilled in this life [3.15.7]. Dante answers
this by affirming, as noted above, that the natural desire for
perfection is always proportionate to our c for to
desire the unattainable would be to desire our imperfection
[3.15.8&11]. Human happiness, then, consists in the attainment of
Aristotle's &human good,& through the exercise of the virtues. This is
what Dante calls &l'umana operazione,& and its end is the
highest that human beings can attain through their own powers.
Yet philosophy offers the promise of more. The same chapter is
climaxed by the vision of Wisdom as &the mother of all things,& the
origin of all motion and order in the created universe, guiding the
quest of human wisdom by the light of the divine intellect. When the
human mind is fully informed by philosophy, it would appear, it becomes
virtually one of the intelligenze, who know both what is above
them and what is below, God as cause and the created universe as effect
[3.6.4&6]. Thus Dante can speak of our rational nature as our &truly
human, or, to speak more exactly, our angelic nature& [3.3.11], as if
it enjoyed a more or less mystical existence of a higher order as well
as that of the &merely& human nature that pursues the active life of
virtue [Moevs, 83&86].
The Liber de causis says that each cause infuses into its
effect the goodness it receives from its own cause, or, in the case of
the soul, from God [Conv. 3.6.11; LC 4.48]. When in gazing on
the body of the Donna Gentile we behold maravigliose cose, we
are perceiving the effect of a cause which is ultimately God, and thus,
Dante asserts [3.6.12&13]:
it is evident that her form (that is, her soul), which directs the
body as its proper cause, miraculously receives the goodness of God's
grace. Thus outward appearance provides proof that this lady has been
endowed and ennobled by God beyond what is due to our nature . . .
Thus in effect the Donna Gentile is the perfection we desire.
Through her we experience the divine goodness, by an outflowing, a
discorrimento which Dante glosses with a further reference to
the Liber de Causis [3.7.2; LC 20.157], in terms of the
hierarchical emanation of the divine goodness. In the quasi-continuous
series of gradations that descends from angel to brute animal, there is
no intervening grade between man and angel, so that some human beings
are so noble as to be nothing less than angels [Aristotle, NE 7.1,
1145a]. Such is the Donna G she receives divine virtue just as
the angels do [3.7.7]. She is a thing visibilmente miraculosa,
ordained from eternity by God in testimonio de la fede for us
[3.7.16&17; Foster (1965), 56]. Philosophy has &wisdom for her subject
matter and love for her form& [3.14.1], and God, by instilling his
radiance in her, &reduces& that love as nearly as possible to his own
similitude [3.14.3; cp. Thomas, SCG 1.91].
Philosophy has clearly become far more than the means whereby human
nature achieves self-realization, though this ideal continues to
provide a framework for Dante's praise of her. She has assumed the
status of Wisdom, sapientia, the divine mind as expressed in
the order and harmony of creation. Her beauty can only be described in
terms of its effects, like the separate substances and God Himself. The
true philosopher &loves every part of wisdom, and wisdom every part of
the philosopher, since she draws him to herself in full measure&
[3.11.12]. Here we may recall Dante's account of how the swift motion
of the Primum Mobile expresses its desire for total participation in
the divinity of the Empyrean [2.3.8]. And it is in such terms that
Dante ends his account of philosophy-as-wisdom. In the final chapter of
the third treatise she is explicitly identified with the all-creating
Wisdom of God [3.15.15], and Dante concludes in prophetic exhortation
[3.15.17]:
O worse than dead are you who flee her friendship! Open
your eyes, and gaze forth! For she loved you before you existed,
preparing and
and after you were made, she came
to you in your own likeness in order to place you on the straight
The fourth treatise of the Convivio seems to have been written
later than the first three, and it is markedly different in
orientation. The principal theme of its canzone is the true
nature of nobility. Introducing his prose discussion, Dante gives a
curious account of how an interruption in his philosophical studies,
caused by what the canzone calls &disdainful and harsh&
behavior on the part of the Donna Gentile, provided an occasion for
taking up this topic [4.1.8]:
Since this lady of mine had somewhat altered the tenderness of her
looks at me, especially in those features at which I would gaze when
seeking to learn whether the primal matter of the elements was
intended by God&and for this reason I refrained for a short
period of time from coming into the presence of her
countenance&while living, as it were, in her absence, I set
about contemplating the shortcoming within man regarding the
above-mentioned error [i.e. a false perception of the bases of human
nobility].
That God is the creator of prime matter was an article of faith, and
Thomas had dealt decisively with the role of divine will and intellect
in the creative act [SCG 2.20.7, 21&24]. That Dante should admit to
having entertained doubts about such a question is perhaps a way of
indicating his awareness of a danger inherent in his philosophical
studies. Deeply concerned to affirm the dignity of reason and the truth
embodied in material creation, he may have sensed himself idolizing the
secondary powers in whose hierarchical circulazione he felt
himself, as poet, to be in a special sense participant, and allowing
these preoccupations to cloud his awareness of God's omnipotence. The
anger of the Donna Gentile would then express his sense of a
corresponding loss of focus, a failure to affirm her unique and
transcendent role in the expression of the divine will.
Whatever the precise nature of the dilemma to which Dante alludes,
the fourth treatise is marked by a noticeable shift away from
metaphysics in the direction of ethics and rhetoric. Philosophical
knowledge is redirected to the purposes of social and political life,
and the treatise, while punctuated like the others by numerous
digressions, pursues a single sustained argument. Dante begins by
explaining that social order as a condition of human happiness, and
that it requires a single governor whose authority embraces that of all
particular governors and directs their several efforts to a single end
[4.4]. After a long digression on the role of Rome in the providential
design of human history, he turns from political to philosophical
authority, citing Aristotle as in effect the governor of the mind,
&master and leader of human reason insofar as it is directed to man's
highest work& [4.6.8]. He then proceeds to qualify both political and
philosophical authority, justifying himself at length as he does so.
Imputing to Aristotle the statement that &whatever appears true to the
majority cannot be entirely false& [Topica 1.1, 100b? NE 1.9.
1098b?], he explains that this must be understood to apply, not to
sense perception, but only to acts of the mind [4.8.6]. An emperor's
authority, too, m the art of ruling and the laws
it creates cannot overrule rational judgment based on the laws of
nature [4.9].
On this basis Dante proceeds to refute the view that nobility
consists in wealth and ancestry, a view which he here attributes to
Frederick II, &the last emperor of the Romans,& and for which he will
elsewhere cite Aristotle's Politics [Mon. 2.3.4; Pol.
4.8, 1294a]. Perhaps as significant as the arguments he musters to show
the treacherous nature of riches and the uncertain course of nobility
from one generation to another is the assertion of Dante's own
authority, as philosopher and citizen, that is implied by his elaborate
apology for speaking as he does [Ascoli, 35&41]. The gesture nicely
epitomizes the project of the Convivio, a vernacular discourse
which defines for its lay audience the limits of political and
scholastic authority, and affirms the autonomy and potential dignity of
individual human reason.
The later portions of the fourth treatise are grounded in another
Aristotelian definition of nobility, as the perfection of a thing
according to its nature [Conv. 4.16.7; Physics
7.3.246a]. The human expression of this perfection is virtue, moral and
intellectual. Electing to address the moral virtues, as more accessible
to a lay understanding, Dante begins by describing how nobility is
implanted in the nascent soul as the seed of virtue, from which spring
the two branches of the active and the contemplative life. The final
chapters of the Convivio show how the virtues that stem from
nobility can direct &the natural appetite of the mind,& enabling it to
evolve through love of them to the happiness which is the end of virtue
[Conv. 4.17.8&9; NE 1.13, 1102a].
In the final stanza of the canzone analyzed in the fourth treatise,
Dante addresses the poem itself as &Contra-li-erranti mia,& &my song
against-the-erring ones,& and the final chapter of the commentary
explains this as an allusion to the Summa contra gentiles of
Thomas, written &to confound all those who stray from our faith&
[Conv. 4.30.3]. By thus declaring himself the follower of so
fine a craftsman, Dante suggests, he hopes to &ennoble& his own
undertaking.
The Contra gentiles may seem an odd choice of model. Bruno
Nardi considers that Dante had at most a superficial knowledge of this
work at the time when he wrote the Convivio, and it is
certainly the case that he is fundamentally at odds with Thomas over
such specific matters as the origin of the soul, the role of the
celestial intelligences in creation, and, more important, in claiming
for philosophy the power to fulfil the human desire for knowledge in
this life [Nardi (1992), 28&29]. On all of these matters Dante is
closer to the position of Albert.
On the broader question of the nature of the human desire for
knowledge, and the extent to which this desire can be fulfilled by the
rational intellect, Dante remains, throughout the Convivio,
sharply at odds with Thomas. The fourth treatise offers what we may
take as his final word, as philosopher, on this question. Having dwelt
at length on the insatiability of the base desire for riches, Dante
addresses the question of whether our desire for knowledge, too, since
it continues to grow as knowledge is acquired, is not similarly base.
Dante begins his answer by asserting that &the supreme desire of each
thing, and the one that is first given to it by nature, is to return to
its first cause,& and illustrates this proposition by the images of a
traveller on an unfamiliar road, who imagines each house he encounters
to be the inn he seeks, and the desires of youth, which focus first on
an apple or a pet bird, then evolve to encompass love and prosperity
[Conv. 4.12.15&16]. But while this may seem to evoke Thomas's
view of a single desire which seeks to grow continuously toward union
with God, Dante's point is that the path to fulfillment involves
multiple desires and the attainment of multiple perfections
[Conv. 34.13.2]:
For if I desire to know the principles of natural things,
as soon as I know them this desire is fulfilled and brought to an end.
If I then desire to know what each of these principles is and how each
exists, this is a new and separate desire. Nor by the appearance of
this desire am I dispossessed of the perfection to which I was brought
by the other, and this growth is not the cause of imperfection but of
greater perfection.
Thomas can speak of the natural desire to know as a force like gravity,
whose attraction intensifies as it approaches its object [SCG 3.25.13].
In contrast Dante's insistence on types and stages of knowing may seem
almost perverse, a matter of emphasizing the stages of the mind's
ascent rather than the desire that leads it forward from stage to
stage. But what is at stake for Dante is the need to acknowledge human
ends as having a definite value of their own, and this need will play
an equally important role in Dante's other major philosophical work,
the Monarchia.
Before leaving the Convivio, however, I would like to
suggest a way in which Dante's citation of the Summa contra
gentiles is, after all, an appropriate way of labelling his own
undertaking. The Contra gentiles is unique among medieval
summae in aiming to demonstrate, not just the compatibility of
Aristotelian physics and metaphysics with revealed truth, but the
extent to which the invisibilia Dei can be understood without
recourse to that truth. In Norman Kretzmann's phrase it is &a risky
tour de force& that actively engages unbelievers in
metaphysical argument, and spends more time undoing mistakes than
affirming Christian doctrine. Revealed truth provides a means of
determining the topics to be discussed, and the harmony of natural
demonstration with revelation is repeatedly noted, but the basis for
demonstration is provided by Aristotle, and what the first three of
Thomas's four books present is a case, not for Christianity, but for
theism [Kretzmann, pp. 43&53].
Dante seems to acknowledge the pioneering aspect of Thomas's
undertaking. Like Thomas, he is testing philosophy, privileging
Aristotle as a unique resource capable of helping him discover truth by
natural means. Gauthier sees Thomas &nel mezzo del cammin& as he
composes the Contra gentiles, adopting the position of the
Aristotelian sapiens to reflect on his own ongoing work and
justify it to contemporaries [Gauthier, 179&81]. Dante, too, is deeply
concerned to define and justify his own position as a voice of wisdom
for his contemporaries. The truths he affirms are encoded in his own
poetry, rather than mysteriously embodied in Scripture, and he
addresses a cultured but non-Latinate audience unschooled in
philosophy. But in substituting the Donna Gentile of philosophical
wisdom for Beatrice beata, the &authentic,& salvific Beatrice who will
reemerge as the voice of truth in the Commedia, Dante is
establishing a relationship between secular knowledge and the truth
that Beatrice embodies analogous to the relation Thomas establishes
between philosophy and theology proper.
The Monarchia is in its own way as idiosyncratic as the
Convivio. Its purpose, foreshadowed in the discussion of
empire in Convivio IV, is to demonstrate the necessity of a
single ruling power, reverent toward but independent of the Church,
capable of ordering the will of collective humanity in peace and
concord. Under such a power the potential intellect of humanity can be
fully actuated&the intellect, that is, of collective humanity,
existent throughout the world, acting as one. For just as a multitude
of species must continually be generated to actualize the full
potentiality of prime matter, so the full intellectual capacity of
humanity cannot be realized at one time nor in a single individual
[Mon. 1.3.3&8]. Here Dante adds his own further
particularization of this Aristotelian doctrine [De Anima 3.5,
430a10&15], asserting that no single household, community, or city can
bring it to realization. The ordering of the collective human will to
the goal of realizing its intellectual potential requires universal
peace [1.4], and this in turn requires a single ordering power through
whose authority humanity may achieve unity and so realize the intention
and likeness of God [1.8].
The basis of this argument for empire is evidently the first
sentence of the Prologue to Thomas' literal commentary on the
Metaphysics, where he declares that when several things are
ordered to a single end, one of them must govern, &as the Philosopher
teaches in his Politics& [Thomas, Exp. Metaph.,
P Aristotle, Politics 1.5, 1254a-55a]. For Thomas this
is only an analogy, a way of introducing the theme of order as it
applies to the soul and its pursuit of happiness. The passage he cites
from the Politics is concerned only with the rudiments of
the idea of &ordering of things to one end& is present only
by implication, and Aristotle makes no attempt to develop its
metaphysical implications. Dante, however, seems clearly to associate
with Aristotle, or with Thomas' reference to Aristotle, the idea of &a
political organization which leads in its way to
&beatitudo& for the whole human race& [Minio-Paluello,
74&77]. One may wonder if Dante's erroneous impression of the
Aristotelian passage, which he cites directly with no reference to
Thomas in both the Convivio and the Monarchia
[Conv. 4.4.5; Mon. 1.5.3], is not a symptom of his
intense need to draw the Philosopher into support of his view of world
The second of the Monarchia's three books deals with the
great example of Rome, describing the city's providential role in world
history, largely by way of citations from Roman literature aimed at
demonstrating the consistent dedication of Roman power to the public
good, and the conformity of Roman imperium with the order of
nature and the will of God. The third book deals with the crucial issue
of the relationship between political and ecclesiastical authority.
Dante argues on various grounds that power in the temporal realm is
neither derived from nor dependent on spiritual authority, though it
benefits from the power of the Papacy to bless its activity. These
arguments consist largely in refutations of traditional claims for the
temporal authority of the Papacy, but the final chapter makes the
argument on positive grounds. Since man consists of soul and body, his
nature partakes of both the corruptible and the incorruptible. Uniting
two natures, his existence must necessarily be ordered to the goals of
both these natures [Mon. 3.16.7&9]:
Ineffable providence has thus set before us two goals to
aim at: i.e. happiness in this life, which consists in the exercise of
our own powers and is figured in
and happiness in
the eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God
(to which our own powers cannot raise us except with the help of God's
light) and which is signified by the heavenly paradise. Now these two
kinds of happiness must be reached by different means, as representing
different ends. For we attain the first through the teachings of
philosophy, provided that we follow them putting into practice the
whereas we attain the second through
spiritual teachings which transcend human reason, provided that we
follow them putting into practice the theological virtues, i.e. faith,
hope, and charity. These ends and the means to attain them have been
shown to us on the one hand by human reason, which has been entirely
revealed to us by the philosophers, and on the other by the Holy Spirit
This is Dante's most explicit, uncompromising claim for the autonomy of
reason, reinforced by the entire world-historical argument of the
Monarchia and constituting its final justification for world
empire. Dante here goes well beyond Augustine's sense of the
stabilizing function of empire, and eliminates any hint of the
anti-Roman emphasis in Augustine's separation of the earthly and
heavenly cities. In the final sentences of the Monarchia the
temporal monarch becomes, like the aspiring intellect of the
Convivio, the uniquely privileged beneficiary of a divine
bounty which, &without any intermediary, descends into him from the
Fountainhead of universal authority& [Mon. 3.16.15]. Like the
Averroistic reasoning of his earlier claim that only under a world
empire can humanity realize its intellectual destiny, this crowning
claim shows Dante appropriating Aristotle to the service of a unique
and almost desperate vision of empire as a redemptive force. But
whether we consider the world view of the Monarchia an
aberration [D'Entreves, 51] or take it as Dante's straightforward
exposition of his views on the relations of secular and religious
authority, its categorical definition of the twofold purpose of human
life is impossible to explain away. In the Paradiso [8.115&17]
as in the Monarchia, to be a &citizen& is essential to human
happiness, and the idea of an imperial authority independent of papal
control remained fundamental to his political thought.
The Monarchia's crowning vision is not Dante's last word on
the subject of human happiness, nor on the possibility of achieving
happiness by natural means. The &earthly paradise& which we attain for
ourselves through philosophy is certainly not the paradise Dante the
pilgrim will discover at the summit of Purgatory. To the philosopher
the Commedia promises only the cold light and enamelled
greenery of Limbo, the somber Elysium where Dante encounters Aristotle
and the &philosophic family& who look to him as their master, living
out an eternity, not of happiness, but of desire without hope
[Inf. 4.111&20, 130&44, Iannucci (1997)].
The contrast expresses the difference in orientation between the
Commedia on the one hand and the Convivio and
Monarchia on the other. The Commedia is concerned
always with the ultimate, eternal destiny of human life, with the
transcendence, rather than the fulfillment of human
understanding. When Beatrice at the summit of Purgatory utters
prophetic words which &soar& far beyond Dante's power to envision her
meaning, she explains that his limitations are those of &that school
which you have followed,& whose teachings are as far from the divine
way as the earth from the Primum Mobile
[Purg. 33.82&90]. The &school& in question is the study of
philosophy as Dante had pursued and celebrated it in earlier
writings. It is his training in this school that makes possible the
luminous precision of the great doctrinal passages in the
Purgatorio and Paradiso
[Purg. 17.90&139;
25.37&87; Par. 2.112&48; 7.64&77;
13.52&78; 29.13&45; 30; 97&108], but it is a
training that harbors the danger of rationalism and intellectual
The Commedia has its moments of significant
intellectual independence [e.g. Imbach (2002)]. But as Christian Moevs
makes plain, in what is surely the best book ever written on the
philosophical aspect of the Commedia [Moevs, 11&12,
82&90], the fact that the celebration of truth in the
Convivio is interrupted by the &radical revelatory
poetics& of the Commedia expresses Dante's recognition
that the experience the Convivio records had finally involved
no inner change, no &awakening.& In the Convivio
God is the highest good, but remains the distant, unchanging focus of
the aspiring mind. In the Commedia God assumes an active,
transformative role as the dispenser of that grace without which the
intellectual quest is futile:
Io veggio ben che gi& mai non si sazia
nostro intelletto, se &l ver non lo illustra
di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia.
[Par. 4.124&26]
Translation:
I see well that never is our intellect satisfied, unless that truth
illumines it beyond which no truth may soar.
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at , with links to its database.
these pages at the Dante Society of America list
excellent resources for further study of Dante.
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