thread the whole experience of his life, the whole result of his studies, was to cluster in imperishable crystals. The corner-stone of his system was the Freedom of the Will (in other words, the right of private judgment with the condition of accountability), which Beatrice calls the "noble virtue." 1 As to every man is offered his choice between good and evil, and as, even upon the root of a nature originally evil a habit of virtue may be engrafted,2 no man is excused. "All hope abandon ye who enter in," for they have thrown away reason which is the good of the intellect," and it seems to me no less a marvel to bring back to reason him in whom it is wholly spent than to bring back to life him who has been four days in the tomb."3 As a guide of the will in civil affairs the Emperor; in spiritual, the Pope. Dante is not one of those reformers who would assume the office of God to "make all things new." He knew the power of tradition and

1 Purgatorio, XVIII. 73. He defines it in the De Monarchia (lib. i. § 14). Among other things he calls it “the first beginning of our liberty." Paradiso, V. 19, 20, he calls it "the greatest gift that in his largess God creating made." "Dico quod judicium medium est apprehensionis et appetitus." (De Monarchia, ubi supra.)

Between whose endless jar justice resides."

2 Convito, Tr. IV. c. 22.

"Right and wrong,

(Troilus and Cressida.)

3 Convito, Tr. IV. c. 7. "Qui descenderit ad inferos, non ascen

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But it may be inferred that he put the interests of mankind above both. "For citizens," he says, exist not for the sake of consuls, nor the people for the sake of the king, but, on the contrary, consuls for the sake of citizens, and the king for the sake of the people."

He

habit, and wished to utilize it for his purpose. found the Empire and the Papacy already existing, but both needing reformation that they might serve the ends of their original institution. Bad leader

ship was to blame; men fit to gird on the sword had been turned into priests, and good preachers spoiled to make bad kings. The spiritual had usurped to itself the prerogatives of the temporal power.

"Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was

Two suns to have which one road and the other,
Of God and of the world, made manifest.

One has the other quenched, and to the crosier
The sword is joined, and ill beseemeth it,

Because, being joined one feareth not the other." 2 Both powers held their authority directly from God, "not so, however, that the Roman Prince is not in some things subject to the Roman Pontiff, since that human felicity [to be attained only by peace, justice, and good government, possible only under a single ruler] is in some sort ordained to the end of immortal felicity. Let Cæsar use that reverence toward Peter which a first-born son ought to use toward a father; that, shone upon by the light of paternal grace, he may more powerfully illumine the orb of earth over which he is set by him alone who is the ruler of all things spiritual and temporal." 3 As to the fatal gift of Constantine, Dante demonstrates that an Emperor could not alienate what he held only in trust; but if he made the gift, the Pope should hold it as a feudatory of the

1 Paradiso, VIII. 145, 146. 8 De Monarchia, § ult.

2 Purgatorio, XVI. 106-112.

Empire, for the benefit, however, of Christ's poor.1 Dante is always careful to distinguish between the Papacy and the Pope. He prophesies for Boniface VIII. a place in hell,2 but acknowledges him as the Vicar of Christ, goes so far even as to denounce the outrage of Guillaume de Nogaret at Anagni as done to the Saviour himself. But in the Spiritual World Dante acknowledges no such supremacy, and, when he would have fallen on his knees before Adrian V., is rebuked by him in a quotation from the Apocalypse:

"Err not, fellow-servant am I With thee and with the others to one power." 4 So impartial was this man whose great work is so often represented as a kind of bag in which he secreted the gall of personal prejudice, so truly Catholic is he, that both parties find their arsenal in him. The Romanist proves his soundness in doctrine, the anti-Romanist claims him as the first Protestant; the Mazzinist and the Imperialist can alike quote him for their purpose. Dante's ardent conviction would not let him see that both Church

1 De Monarchia, lib. iii. § 10. "Poterat tamen Imperator in patrocinium Ecclesiæ patrimonium et alia deputare immoto semper superiori dominio cujus unitas divisio non patitur. Poterat et Vicarius Dei recipere, non tanquam possessor, sed tanquam fructuum pro Ecclesia proque Christi pauperibus dispensator." He tells us that St. Dominic did not ask for the tithes which belong to the poor of God. (Paradiso, XII. 93, 94.) "Let them return whence they came," he says (De Monarchia, lib. ii. § 10); "they came well, let them return ill, for they were well given and ill held."

2 Inferno, XIX. 53; Paradiso, XXX. 145-148. 3 Purgatorio, XX. 86-92.

4 Purgatorio, XIX. 134, 135.

and Empire were on the wane. If an ugly suspicion of this would force itself upon him, perhaps he only clung to both the more tenaciously; but he was no blind theorist. He would reform the Church through the Church, and is less anxious for Italian independence than for Italian good government under an Emperor from Germany rather than from Utopia.

The Papacy was a necessary part of Dante's system, as a supplement to the Empire, which we strongly incline to believe was always foremost in his mind. In a passage already quoted, he says that "the soil where Rome sits is worthy beyond what men preach and admit," that is, as the birthplace of the Empire. Both in the Convito and the De Monarchia he affirms that the course of Roman history was providentially guided from the first. Rome was founded in the same year that brought into the world David, ancestor of the Redeemer after the flesh. St. Augustine said that "God showed in the most opulent and illustrious Empire of the Romans how much the civil virtues might avail even without true religion, that it might be understood how, this added, men became citizens of another city whose king is truth, whose law charity, and whose measure eternity." Dante goes further than this. He makes the Romans as well as the Jews a chosen people, the one as founders of civil society, the other as depositaries of the true faith. One side of Dante's mind was so practical

1 This results from the whole course of his argument in the second book of De Monarchia, and in the VI. Paradiso he calls the

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and positive, and his pride in the Romans so intense, that he sometimes seems to regard their mission as the higher of the two. Without peace, which only good government could give, mankind could not arrive at the highest virtue, whether of the active or contemplative life. "And since what

is true of the part is true of the whole, and it happens in the particular man that by sitting quietly he is perfected in prudence and wisdom, it is clear that the human race in the quiet or tranquillity of peace is most freely and easily disposed for its proper work which is almost divine, as it is written, Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.' Whence it is manifest that universal peace is the best of those things which are ordained for our beatitude. Hence it is that not riches, not pleasures, not honors, not length of life, not health, not strength, not comeliness, was sung to the shepherds from on high, but peace." 3 It was Dante's experience of the confusion of Italy, where

Roman eagle "the bird of God" and "the scutcheon of God." We must remember that with Dante God is always the "Emperor of Heaven," the barons of whose court are the Apostles. (Paradiso, XXIV. 115; Ib., XXV. 17.)

1 Dante seems to imply (though his name be German) that he was of Roman descent. He makes the original inhabitants of Florence (Inferno, XV. 77, 78) of Roman seed; and Cacciaguida, when asked by him about his ancestry, makes no more definite answer than that their dwelling was in the most ancient part of the city. (Paradiso, XVI. 40.)

2 Man was created, according to Dante (Convito, Tr. II. c. 6), to supply the place of the fallen angels, and is in a sense superior to the angels, inasmuch as he has reason, which they do not need. 3 De Monarchia, lib. i. § 5.