Dante and His Inquiring Mind

The Divine Comedy explores a question that is even more urgent in our culture than it was in medieval culture: Why do we believe in things we cannot see?

After two posts on northern European, English-language spirituality in the early and late Middle Ages, it’s time to move south. More specifically, to Tuscany, where Dante Alighieri composed one of the most famous and revered works of literature in history.

The Divine Comedy is a masterpiece of such extraordinary genius that it seems to confirm Hamlet’s generous words for human nature:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!

Stanza after stanza, canto after canto, Dante sings of a spiritual journey that fuses poetry, narrative, psychology, and philosophy into a uniquely compelling and cosmic vision of the human experience. So supremely artistic and yet so keenly intellectual, the Divine Comedy leads us into rare moments of resonant union between heart and mind. To read it is to behold the breadth and depth of the beauty that is within man’s reach; to study it is the work of a lifetime.

Modern society has circulated various clichés about religion in the Middle Ages: blind faith and superstition were the norm, doubters were persecuted, dissenters were burned at the stake, Galileo was imprisoned for believing in science (actually that was during the Renaissance), and so forth. Such ideas are a confused mixture of truths, misunderstandings, and distortions, which I have no intention of sorting out. I do, however, want to share what Dante has to teach us about the mystery of belief, and more specifically, belief in things that we cannot see or touch.

Human beings naturally and instinctively trust their sensory observations. That which lies outside the sensory realm is more elusive, and even after thousands of years of history in which religion of all kinds has been a key structural component of human society, faith does not always come easily. Dante’s “examination” on faith in the Divine Comedy shows us that medieval culture could be very sensitive to questions and doubts that are now seen as defining features of modern spirituality.

The examination occurs in Paradiso, canto 24. Dante is in heaven and converses with St. Peter, who says to the poet in rather intimidating fashion, “Speak, good Christian, make yourself clearly known: / what is faith?”¹ This is a curious question to ask a man who has already traveled through Hell, Purgatory, and part of the celestial Paradise, his five senses immersed in supernatural realities that are concealed from everyone else. But that is precisely the point: He has seen so much since descending with Virgil into the underworld, but how can he know that it’s real? What if it’s all a dream? What if it’s all in his imagination? And of course it is all in his imagination: Dante is writing a poem, not a chronicle of factual events. Where does his poem—or anyone else’s personal poem of faith—end, and where does the spiritual reality begin?

The examination in canto 24 is strongly paradoxical. The discussion of faith is formal, almost legalistic, and draws upon the style of scholastic philosophy. Dante uses specialized vocabulary—silogizzar (“to form or use a syllogism”) and silogismo (“syllogism”)—to create an air of detached rationality, and he declares that he prepared for this interrogation by “arming myself with all my reasoning.” And yet he knows, as so many other believers have known, that faith can never be reduced to reason! He knows that when doubts and fears arise, rational argumentation is so often like rain trickling off a rooftop—it simply cannot penetrate into that secret alcove of human nature where our afflicted spirituality dwells.

The formality of the discussion also serves as a counterpoint to the unsettling gravity of the issues at hand. Beneath the surface of this academic exchange between Dante and St. Peter are questions that shake the foundations of the medieval world: How can any human being know with certainty that God exists? That the soul exists? That Christian doctrine is truly the path of salvation? That the Bible is truly the word of God?

Dante’s reasoning is generally sound but comes across as unconvincing, and as if to accentuate its inadequacy, St. Peter even accuses him of a logical fallacy! The problem begins when Dante defends the authority of the Bible by adducing biblical miracles:

The proof that discloses the truth to me
are the works that followed, which have no heat,
no hammer strike, from nature’s earthly forge.

St. Peter immediately warns him about his circular reasoning:

Tell me, then: who assures you
that those works were real? You know them only
from that very thing which you now seek to prove.

Dante recovers after this misstep, but his logical argumentation never seems to be the vital force in this canto. What stays with me is, above all, his spirit of inquiry. Clearly a committed Christian, Dante—like the medieval culture that surrounded and formed him—was not afraid to ask heavy questions about the world that lay beyond his sensory horizon. And he was not afraid to ask heavy questions about himself.

Dante’s inquiring mind shows us an antidote to beliefs that have become stale or mechanical. T. S. Eliot said that “the key word for Dante” was, above all others, love.

In its depths I saw ingathered,
bound with love into one volume,
the scattered pages of the universe.²

As with so much else in the Divine Comedy, the questions that challenge Dante’s faith are a prelude to greater love. Such questions do not imply that all faith is arbitrary or personal, but they do imply that dogmatic or public faith should be deeply personal as well. And they are not an invitation to dreary doubts or corrosive skepticism; Dante had not the slightest intention of denying any essential doctrine of his religion. Instead, they should bring unity to the outward self and the inward self. They should be a path to wholeness, and to renewal of the heart.

Dante gives us an image of this wholeness as canto 24 moves toward its conclusion; his tone changes—becomes more spiritual, less academic—and his magnificent poetry guides our thoughts to the light of God, and the light within:

I believe in one God, sole and eternal,
who is unmoved and moves the heavens
with love and the power of loving desire.
...
This is the origin, this is the spark,
which later grows to a vital flame
and shines, like a star in heaven, in me.

1. All of the quotations from the Divine Comedy are my translations.

2. Paradiso, canto 33.