My apologies for the verbosity of the title of this entry. Consider it practice for when I begin publishing articles and writing books.
Don't worry, this won't be as mentally rigorous as the title may suggest. I wouldn't be a graduate of the Baylor Honors College if I didn't write something about Dante. That's just how it works.
After reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, I became keenly aware that within the Comedy are counter-arguments to many of our pre-conceived notions of how things worked in medieval thought.
For example, we are often told that the adherents of Christianity and Islam have always held an intense hatred for each other from the very beginning. The Crusades are often used as the primary example of this idea. As a result, I find it very interesting that Saladin is given a place among the virtuous pagans; men like Socrates and Plato. In fact, there are a number of medieval accounts roughly contemporary with Saladin’s time that are quite complementary of the kind of person Saladin was, despite the fact that he was a Muslim enemy.
Dr. Wood (Baylor University professor) pointed out to a class of his that Dante includes a man who committed suicide in Purgatory. I find this enormously interesting. Inferno seemed to have taken care of all suicides, which was widely condemned as the elusive “unforgivable sin.” Yet Cato, who committed suicide rather than see the Roman Republic fall, is named as the last denizen of Purgatory to be purged of his sins and granted access to Paradise. All too often we assume that “doctrine” and “dogma” (veritable four-letter words in our modern culture) were set in stone and left no room for debate or furthered understanding. Cato’s presence in Purgatory seems to refute this.
Finally, I find it insulting to the Ancients and Medievals that we teach our children that, until Christopher Columbus, all people thought the world was flat. I could point to Greek writers to disprove this, but I will stick with the Dante theme I have already established. It is clear that Dante has a clear idea of a spherical world. Mount Purgatory is on the opposite side of the world from Jerusalem. Dante’s entire conception of space in Inferno and Purgatory depends on a round earth.
Dante is replete with examples of the vitality and creativity of the Medievals. These are just a few of the examples that stand out to me. Perhaps the problem is that the only people exposed to these ideas are upper-level university students.
It is a shame that we ignore these facts in favor of an “historical” account that discredits all civilizations before the 15th century as the village idiots of human existence.
But that, my friends, is a subject for another day.
this is the start of something good.
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