Pope Benedict XV issued In Praeclara Summorum on Dante Alighieri. It reads:
Beloved Children,
Health and the Apostolic Benediction.
Among the many celebrated geniuses of whom the
Catholic faith can boast who have left undying fruits in literature and art
especially, besides other fields of learning, and to whom civilization and
religion are ever in debt, highest stands the name of Dante Alighieri, the
sixth centenary of whose death will soon be recorded. Never perhaps has his
supreme position been recognized as it is today. Not only Italy, justly proud
of having given him birth, but all the civil nations are preparing with special
committees of learned men to celebrate his memory that the whole world may pay
honour to that noble figure, pride and glory of humanity.
2. And surely we cannot be absent from this
universal consensus of good men; rather should We take the lead in it as the
Church has special right to call Alighieri hers.
3. So, just as at the beginning of Our
Pontificate by a Letter to the Archbishop of Ravenna We promoted the
restoration of the temple where the ashes of the poet lie, so now, to initiate
the cycle of the centenary celebrations, it has seemed most opportune to Us to
speak to you all, beloved children, who cultivate letters under the maternal
vigilance of the Church, to show even more clearly than before the intimate
union of Dante with this Chair of Peter, and how the praises showered on that
distinguished name necessarily redound in no small measure to the honour of the
Catholic Church.
4. And first of all, inasmuch as the divine poet
throughout his whole life professed in exemplary manner the Catholic religion,
he would surely desire that this solemn commemoration should take place, as
indeed will be the case, under the auspices of religion, and if it is carried
out in San Francesco in Ravenna it should begin in San Giovanni in Florence to
which his thoughts turned during the last years of his life with the desire of
being crowned poet at the very font where he had received Baptism. Dante lived
in an age which inherited the most glorious fruits of philosophical and
theological teaching and thought, and handed them on to the succeeding ages
with the imprint of the strict scholastic method. Amid the various currents of
thought diffused then too among learned men Dante ranged himself as disciple of
that Prince of the school so distinguished for angelic temper of intellect,
Saint Thomas Aquinas. From him he gained nearly all his philosophical and
theological knowledge, and while he did not neglect any branch of human
learning, at the same time he drank deeply at the founts of Sacred Scripture and
the Fathers. Thus he learned almost all that could be known in his time, and
nourished specially by Christian knowledge, it was on that field of religion he
drew when he set himself to treat in verse of things so vast and deep. So that
while we admire the greatness and keenness of his genius, we have to recognize,
too, the measure in which he drew inspiration from the Divine Faith by means of
which he could beautify his immortal poems with all the lights of revealed
truths as well as with the splendours of art. Indeed, his Commedia,
which deservedly earned the title of Divina, while it uses various
symbolic images and records the lives of mortals on earth, has for its true aim
the glorification of the justice and providence of God who rules the world through
time and all eternity and punishes and rewards the actions of individuals and
human society. It is thus that, according to the Divine Revelation, in this
poem shines out the majesty of God One and Three, the Redemption of the human
race operated by the Word of God made Man, the supreme loving-kindness and
charity of Mary, Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, and lastly the glory on
high of Angels, Saints and men; then the terrible contrast to this, the pains
of the impious in Hell; then the middle world, so to speak, between Heaven and
Hell, Purgatory, the Ladder of souls destined after expiation to supreme
beatitude. It is indeed marvellous how he was able to weave into all three
poems these three dogmas with truly wrought design. If the progress of science
showed later that that conception of the world rested on no sure foundation,
that the spheres imagined by our ancestors did not exist, that nature, the
number and course of the planets and stars, are not indeed as they were then
thought to be, still the fundamental principle remained that the universe,
whatever be the order that sustains it in its parts, is the work of the
creating and preserving sign of Omnipotent God, who moves and governs all, and
whose glory risplende in una parte piu e meno altrove; and though
this earth on which we live may not be the centre of the universe as at one
time was thought, it was the scene of the original happiness of our first
ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as too of the Redemption of mankind
through the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. Therefore the divine poet
depicted the triple life of souls as he imagined it in a such way as to
illuminate with the light of the true doctrine of the faith the condemnation of
the impious, the purgation of the good spirits and the eternal happiness of the
blessed before the final judgment.
5. But among the truths that shine out in the
triple poem of Alighieri as in his other works We think that these things may
serve as teaching for men of our times. That Christians should pay highest
reverence to the Sacred Scripture and accept what it contains with perfect
docility he proclaims when he says that "Though many are the writers of
the Divine Word nevertheless there is but one Dictator, God, Who has deigned to
show us His goodwill through the pens of many" (Mon. III, 4).
Glorious expression of a great truth. Again, when he says that "The Old
and the New Testament, prescribed for eternity, as the Prophet says, contain
'spiritual teachings transcending human reason,' given 'by the Holy Ghost who
by means of the Prophets and sacred writings, through Jesus Christ coeternal
Son of God and through His disciples revealed the supernatural truth necessary
for us"' (Mon. III, 3, 16). And therefore regarding the life to
come "It is assured by the true doctrine of Christ who is the Way, the
Truth and the Life: the Way because by that way we advance without hindrance to
the happiness of that immortality; the Truth because He is free from all error;
the Light because He enlightens us in the darkness of ignorance of this
world" (Conv. II, 9). And no less reverence he pays to "those
venerable Great Councils the presence of Christ in which no one of the faithful
doubts"; and great is his esteem for "writings of the Doctors,
Augustine and the others, and if any one doubt that they were aided by the Holy
Ghost either he has not seen their fruits or if he has seen he has not
tasted" (Mon. III, 3).
6. No need to recall Alighieri's great reverence
for the authority of the Catholic Church, the account in which he holds the
power of the Roman Pontiff as the base of every law and institution of that
Church. Hence the outspoken warning to Christians: You have the Old and the New
Testament: the Pastor of the Church as Guide; Let that suffice for your salvation.
He felt the troubles of the Church as his own, and while he deplored and
condemned all rebellion against its Supreme Head he wrote as follows to the
Italian Cardinals during the stay at Avignon: "To us who confess the same
Father and Son, the same God and Man, the same Mother and Virgin; to us for
whom and for whose salvation the message was given, after the triple Lovest
thou Me? Feed My sacred sheepfold; to us, driven to mourn with Jeremias - but
not over things to come but over things that are - for Rome - that Rome on
which Christ, after all the old pomp and triumph, confirmed by word and work
the empire of the world, and which Peter, too, and Paul the Apostle of the
Nations consecrated with their very blood as Apostolic See - now widowed and
desolate; to us it is as terrible grief to see this as to see the tragedy of
heresy" (Epist. VIII). For him the Roman Church is The Most Holy
Mother, Bride of Him Crucified and to Peter, infallible judge of revealed
truths, is owing perfect submission in matters of faith and morals. Hence,
however much he may hold that the dignity of the Emperor is derived immediately
from God, still he asserts that this truth "must not be understood so
strictly as to mean that the Roman Prince is not subject to the Roman Pontiff in
anything, because this mortal happiness is subjected in certain measure to
immortal happiness" (Mon. III, 16). Excellent and wise principle
indeed which, if it were observed today as it ought to be, would bring to
States abundant fruits of civil prosperity. But, it will be said, he inveighs
with terrible bitterness against the Supreme Pontiffs of his times. True; but
it was against those who differed from him in politics and he thought were on
the side of those who had driven him from his country. One can feel for a man
so beaten down by fortune, if with lacerated mind he breaks out sometimes into
words of excessive blame, the more so that, to increase his feeling, false
statements were being made by his political enemies ready, as always happens,
to give an evil interpretation to everything. And indeed, since, through mortal
infirmity, "by worldly dust even religious hearts must needs be
soiled" (St. Leo M. S. IV de Quadrag), it cannot be denied that at that
time there were matters on which the clergy might be reproved, and a mind as
devoted to the Church as was that of Dante could not but feel disgust while we
know, too, that reproof came also from men of conspicuous holiness. But,
however he might inveigh, rightly or wrongly, against ecclesiastical personages,
never did he fail in respect due to the Church and reverence for the
"Supreme Keys"; and on the political side he laid down as rule for
his views "the reverence which a good son should show towards his father,
a dutiful son to his mother, to Christ, to the Church, to the Supreme Pastor,
to all who profess the Christian religion, for the safeguarding of truth"
(Mon. III, 3).
7. Thus, as he based the whole structure of his
poem on these sound religious principles, no wonder that we find in it a
treasure of Catholic teaching; not only, that is, essence of Christian
philosophy and theology, but the compendium of the divine laws which should
govern the constitution and administration of States; for Dante Alighieri was
not a man to maintain, for the purpose of giving greater glory to country or
pleasure to ruler, that the State may neglect justice and right which he knew
well to be the main foundation of civil nations.
8. Wonderful, therefore, is the intellectual
enjoyment that we gain from the study of the great poet, and no less the profit
for the student making more perfect his artistic taste and more keen his zeal
for virtue, as long as he keeps his mind free from prejudice and open to accept
truth. Indeed, while there is no lack of great Catholic poets who combine the
useful with the enjoyable, Dante has the singular merit that while he
fascinates the reader with wonderful variety of pictures, with marvelously
lifelike colouring, with supreme expression and thought, he draws him also to
the love of Christian knowledge, and all know how he said openly that he
composed his poem to bring to all "vital nourishment." And we know
now too how, through God's grace, even in recent times, many who were far from,
though not averse to Jesus Christ, and studied with affection the Divina
Commedia, began by admiring the truths of the Catholic Faith and finished
by throwing themselves with enthusiasm into the arms of the Church.
9. What We have said above suffices to show how
opportune it is that on the occasion of this world centenary each should
intensify his zeal for the preservation of that Faith shown by Dante
pre-eminently as support of learning and the arts. For We admire in him not
only supreme height of genius but also the immensity of the subject which holy
religion put to his hand. If his genius was refined by meditation and long
study of the great classics it was tempered even more gloriously, as We have
said, by the writings of the Doctors and the Fathers which gave him the wings
on which to rise to a higher atmosphere than that of restricted nature. And
thus it comes that, though he is separated from us by centuries, he has still
the freshness of a poet of our times: certainly more modern than some of those
of recent days who have exhumed the Paganism banished forever by Christ's
triumph on the Cross. There breathes in Alighieri the piety that we too feel;
the Faith has the same meaning for us; it is covered with the same veil,
"the truth given to us from on high, by which we are lifted so high."
That is his great glory, to be the Christian poet, to have sung with Divine
accents those Christian ideals which he so passionately loved in all the
splendour of their beauty, feeling them intimately and making them his life.
Such as dare to deny to Dante this award and reduce all the religious content
of the Divina Commedia to a vague ideology without basis of truth fail to see
the real characteristic of the poet, the foundation of all his other merits.
10. If then Dante owes so great part of his fame
and greatness to the Catholic Faith, let that one example, to say nothing of
others, suffice to show the falseness of the assertion that obedience of mind
and heart to God is a hindrance to genius, whereas indeed it incites and
elevates it. Let it show also the harm done to the cause of learning and
civilization by such as desire to banish all idea of religion from public
instruction. Deplorable indeed is the system prevalent today of educating young
students as if God did not exist and without the least reference to the supernatural.
In some places the "sacred poem" is not kept outside the schools, is
indeed numbered among the books to be studied specially; but it does not bring
to the young students that "vital nourishment" which it should do
because through the principle of the "lay school" they are not
disposed towards the truths of the Faith as they should be. Heaven grant that
this may be the fruit of the Dante Centenary: that wherever literary
instruction is given the great poet may be held in due honour and that he himself
may be for the pupils the teacher of Christian doctrine, he whose one purpose
in his poem was "to raise mortals from the state of misery," that is
from the state of sin, "and lead them to the state of happiness,"
that is of divine grace (Epist. III, para. 15).
11. And you, beloved children, whose lot it is
to promote learning under the magisterium of the Church, continue as you are
doing to love and tend the noble poet whom We do not hesitate to call the most
eloquent singer of the Christian idea. The more profit you draw from study of
him the higher will be your culture, irradiated by the splendours of truth, and
the stronger and more spontaneous your devotion to the Catholic Faith.
As pledge of celestial favours and witness of
Our paternal benevolence we impart to you, beloved children, with all Our
heart, the Apostolic benediction.
Given at Rome at St. Peter's, April 30, 1921,
the seventh year of Our Pontificate.
