Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/679

 DANTE 675 right of the Roman empire to the universal sovereignty. One of his arguments is that Christ consented to be born under the reign of Augustus ; another, that he assented to its ju- risdiction in allowing himself to be crucified under a decree of one of its courts. The atone- ment could not have been accomplished unless Christ suffered under sentence of a court hav- ing jurisdiction, for otherwise his condemna- tion would have been an injustice, and not a penalty. Moreover, since all mankind was typified in the person of Christ, the court must have been one having jurisdiction over all mankind; and since he was delivered to Pi- late, an officer of Tiberius, it must follow that the jurisdiction of Tiberius was universal. He draws an argument also from the wager of battle to prove that the Roman empire was divinely permitted, at least, if not instituted. For since it is admitted that God gives the victory, and since the Romans always won it, therefore it was God's will that the Romans should attain universal empire. In the third book he endeavors to prove that the emperor holds by divine right, and not by permission of the pope. He assigns supremacy to the pope in spirituals, and to the emperor in tem- porals. This was a delicate subject, and though the king of Saxony (a Catholic) says that Dante did not overstep the limits of orthodoxy, it was on account of this part of the book that it was condemned as heretical. Though we have doubts whether we possess the treatise J)e Vulgar i Eloquio as Dante wrote it, in- clining rather to think that it is a copy in some parts textually exact, in others an ab- stract, there can be no question either of its great glossological value, or that it conveys the opinions of Dante. We put it next in order, though written later than the Convito, only because, like the De Monarchic*,, it is written in Latin. It is a proof of the national instinct of Dante, and of his confidence in his genius, that he should have chosen to write all his greatest works in what was deemed by scholars a, patois, but which he more than any other man made a classic language. Had he in- tended the De Monarchia for a political pam- phlet, he would certainly not have composed it in the dialect of the few. TheZte Vulgari Elo- quio was to have been in four books. Whether it was ever finished it is impossible to say, but only two books have come down to us. It treats of poetizing in the vulgar tongue, and of the different dialects of Italy. The Florentines have denied its authenticity, because it does not allow the supremacy of the Tuscan. From the particularity with which it treats of the dialect of Bologna, it has been supposed to have been written in that city, or at least to furnish an argument in favor of Dante's having at some time studied there. In lib. ii. cap. 2, is a remarkable passage in which, defining the various subjects of song and what had been treated in the vulgar tongue by different poets, he says that his own theme had been right- eousness. The Convito is also imperfect. It was to have consisted of 14 treatises, but, as we have it, contains only four. In the first he justifies the use of the vulgar idiom in prefer- ence to the Latin. In the other three he com- ments on three of his own Canzoni. It is an epitome of the learning of that age, philosophi- cal, theological, and scientific. As affording illustration of the Commedia, and of Dante's style of thought, it is invaluable. It is reck- oned by his countrymen the first piece of Italian prose, and there are parts of it which still stand unmatched for eloquence and pathos. The Italians find in it and a few passages of the Commedia the proof that Dante as a natu- ral philosopher was wholly in advance of his age ; that he had, among other things, antici- pated Newton in the theory of gravitation. But this is as idle as the claim that Shakespeare had discovered the circulation of the blood be- fore Harvey ; and one might as well attempt to dethrone Newton because Chaucer speaks of the love which draws the apple to the earth. The truth is, it was only as a poet that Dante was great and original, and in matters of science, like all his contemporaries, he sought the guiding hand of Aristotle. Dante is as- sumed by many to have been a Platonist, but this is not true in the strict sense of the word. Like all men of great imagination, he was an idealist, but his direct acquaintance with Plato may be reckoned as nothing ; and we consider it as having strongly influenced his artistic development for the better, that, transcenden- talist as he was by nature, his habits of thought should have been made precise and his genius disciplined by a mind so severely logical as that of Aristotle. This does not conflict with what we believe to be equally true, that the Platonizing commentaries on his poem, like that of Landino, are the most satisfactory. Besides the prose already mentioned, we have a small collection of Dante's letters, the recov- ery of the larger number of which we owe to Prof. Witte. They are all interesting, some of them especially so, as illustrating the pro- phetic character with which Dante invested himself. The longest is addressed to Can Grande della Scala, explaining the intention of the Commedia and the method to be em- ployed in its interpretation. Dante's minor poems, full of grace and depth of mystic senti- ment, would have given him a high place in the history of Italian literature, even had he written nothing else. They are so abstract, however, that without the extrinsic interest of having been written by the author of the Commedia, they would probably find few readers. All that is certainly known in re- gard to the Commedia is that it was composed during the 19 years between Dante's banish- ment and his death. Attempts have been made to fix precisely the dates of the different parts, but without success. Foscolo has con- structed an ingenious argument to show that no part of the poem was published before the