Church and Empire: Separate Roles for Separate Institutions
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published 02/06/2008
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Summary
Dante’s Divine Comedy is a political work as much as it is a religious one. Amongst the imprecations against Florence, the Papacy, and the French monarchy, there is a dominant political philosophy that shapes how Dante characterizes the political bodies that threaten his vision of universal imperial power. He believes that the goal of humanity is to attain its full intellectual potential. This is only possible if mankind lives in a state of order and peace, or buon comune. In the Commedia as well as his other works he argues that the only way to establish this buon comune, which is the will of God, is through the intervention of the Holy Roman Emperor. Neither the pope nor other strong secular rulers such as the French kings could fulfill the precise role ascribed to the emperor – to Dante, only empire was the way to peace.
Table of Contents
- Dante's Monarchia outlines his arguments for supreme monarchy.
- This power over all cannot be in the hands of the church. Imperial power over the whole world is the right of the Roman Empire.
- The Commedia is rife with examples of how the power of the papacy is destroying buon comune in Florence.
- Canto XIX of the Inferno demonstrates the way recent popes had misused their papal power in the interests of simony and nepotism.
- Dante objected to France's actions of debasing the papacy and working against the Holy Roman Empire.
- Dante denounces Florence throughout the Commedia as the ultimate corrupt city, symbolized by the sinfulness of the Inferno.
- Dante recognized the problems that plagued Italy were those of disunity and disorder, exacerbated by the papacy, the French, and the Florentines.
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