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St. Thomas and Dante
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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The legend of Dante’s ‘Thomism’ arose from the fact that a main component of his culture is obviously ‘scholastic’, and that until not so very long ago the authentic thought of St Thomas had not been clearly differentiated from its general scholastic background. A poet writing within a few decades of St Thomas’s death, and showing a great respect for him, and delighting to reason, even in verse, about form and matter, act and potency and so on, seemed plainly a ‘Thomist’; and when this designation began to be questioned there were not wanting those who went on insisting on it for the greater glory of the Dominican Order or of Catholic culture, which was thought to have reached its apex in the work of Aquinas. But now all that has changed. Since the pioneering labours of Bruno Nardi and Gilson’s brilliant book it has become increasingly evident that Dante cannot be called a Thomist in any strict sense of the term as denoting a body of doctrine characteristic of St Thomas.
However there is, I think, a qualified sense in which one may speak of the poet’s Thomism, and which it is one purpose of these notes to indicate. But first a little more should be said about the question in general; and here I may be allowed to bring myself briefly into the picture. When, some years ago, I undertook to write the article ‘Tommaso d’Aquino’ for the Enciclopedia Dantesca, I naturally set about reading or re-reading all the relevant texts, beginning with Dante. My task, as I saw it, was twofold. First, on the abstract doctrinal plane—comparing ideas with ideas—I had to try to decide how far Bruno Nardi had been right in his lifelong effort to detach Dante from Aquinas by expounding the poet’s philosophy as a variant on the Neoplatonist tradition, with traces (especially in the Monarchia) of Averroism.
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- Copyright © 1974 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 I have in mind particularly the work of two Dominicans and one Jesuit: Cordovani, M. O.P., in Xenia Thomistica, III, Rome, 1925, pp. 309–26Google Scholar; Mandonnet, P O.P., Dante le théologian, Paris, 1935Google Scholar; and G. Busnelli, S.J.'s learned but very tendentions commentary on the Convivio in the ‘Edizione Nazionale’ of D's works, Florence, 1934–37.
2 For a full bibliography of Nardi's writings down to 1954 see Medioevo e Rinascimento: Studi in onore di B.Nardi, 2 vols., Forence, 1954, pp. 907–24Google Scholar. Nardi's chief studies in this field since 1955 are collected in Dal ‘Convivio’ alla ‘Commedia’, Rome, 1960Google Scholar, and Saggi e note di critica dantsca, Milan‐Naples, 1966Google Scholar.
3 Dante et la philosophie, Paris, 1939Google Scholar (Eng. tr. Dante the Philosopher, London, 1948Google Scholar).
4 Published at Rome by the ‘Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana’. It will consist of live volumes, three of which had appeared by the end of 1973.
5 Par. XXIX, 22–4, 34–6. On angelic influences on the sublunary world see (to begin with)Par. II, 112–38, VII, 121–41: on angels and the heavenly bodies. Par. XXIX, 37–45.
6 On this crucial matter see E. Gilson, Dante et la philosophie, op. cit., pp. 100–199, and my own essay ‘Religion and Philosophy in D.’ in Ithe Mind of Dante, ed. Limentani, U., Cambridge, 1965, pp. 47–78Google Scholar.
7 Conv. II, xii, 7. On Italian Thomism in Dante's time the best general study is still perhaps M. Grahmann's Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, I, Munich, 1926, pp. 332–391Google Scholar. See also Kristeller, P. O., Le thomisme et la pensée italienne de la Renaissance (‘Conférence Albert‐le‐Grand’ 1965), Montréal‐Pari, 1967, pp. 41–125Google Scholar; and with particular reference to Dante, Davis, C. T., ‘Education in Dante's Florence’, Speculum, 40 (1965), pp. 415–435CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Dante's statement in Conv. II, xi, 7 can however be taken with a pinch of salt; he shows signs of having some philosophical culture in poems written before 1290.
9 I refer to legislation of the General Chapters of the Order in 1278, 1279, 1286 and 1313; see Monumenta Ord. Fr. Praed., ed. Reichert, I, pp. 199, 204, 235; II, p. 64. A brief but well‐documented account of the late 13th century controversies over Thomism is in F. J. Roensch, Early Thomistic School, Dubuque, lowa, 1964, espec. pp. 1–27, 170–199. See also the excellent survey by C. Fabro in Enciclopedia Cattolica, XII (1954), col. 281–285.
10 I may refer to my own study, ‘The Celebration of Order:Paradiso X’, in Dante Studies (Cambridge, Mass.) XC, 1972, pp. 109–124.
11 Parad. XXIX, 21–36; Conv. III, vii, 5.
12 Conv. III, iii, 5; Purg. IV, 1–12; XXV, 61–75.
13 Mon. I, v, 4; Par. XXVIII, 106–111.
14 Saggi di filosofia dantesca, Città di Castello, 1931. pp. 67–78.
15 Dante et la philosophie, op. cit., p. 158, n. 1.
16 Cf. E. Gilson, op. cit., p. 263.
17 Par. X, 136–138.
18 Par. XIII, 109–142.
19 Par. XXIX, 22–24.
20 Par. XXIX, 37–45‐Where Dante seems to say that all the angelic Orders are essentially movers of this or that heavenly ‘sphere’. This goes far beyond St Thomas's position in Contra Gentiles II, 92. It is interesting to note that the Dominican Robert Kilwardby, St Thomas's contemporary and critic, was still further from Dante on this point; he saw no reason to think that any of the angels were star‐movers; seeChenu, M. D. in Mélanges Mandonnet, 'Bibliothèque Thomiste XIII, Paris, 1930, I, pp. 191–222Google Scholar.
21 Mon. III, Xv, 5–6.
22 See Renaudet, A., Dante humaniste, Paris, 1952, p. 124Google Scholar.
23 Epist. XIII, 53–61.
24 Dante et la philosophie, op. cit., p. 118.
25 Conv. IV, Xxx, 3.
26 Among these references are 34 to the Nicomachean Ethics, 10 to the De Anima, 8 to the Metaphysics, 7 to the Physics, 6 to the De Coela et Mindo, 2 to the Politics.
27 II, iii, 2; xiii, 6; xiii, 18; IV, viii, 6; xi, 9; xii, 8. There is a similar case in Quaestio de aqua et terra, 77.
28 See note 26 above.
29 To St Albert, Avicenna, Alfraganus, Ptolemy, for example, for natural science; to the Liber de Causis (the Thomist commentary on which Dante shows no sign of having read) for neoplatonist tendencies; to the Pseudo‐Denys and Bonaventure for aspects of angelology and trintarian theology.
30 Dante had a great respect for Averroes (cf.Inf. IV, 144) but rejected his monopsychism, Purg. XXV, 61–66.
31 Dante has raised the question whether, in refuting the Emperor Frederick It's opinion on ‘nobility’, he had been guilty of ‘irreverence’. So he defines ‘reverence’. It is a ‘fruit’ of ‘discrezione’, which in turn is identified with the kind of knowing that St Thomas had called ‘proper to the reason’,. i.e. ‘ordinem…unius rei ad aliam cognoscere’, In X libros Ethicorum Expositio, I, lect. l 1. This is the passage referred to the Conv. IV, viii, 1.
32 Compare Conv. IV, v, 9: viii, 1–5; xiii, 8; xv, 12–13.
33 II, xiv, 14; IV, xxx, 3.
34 II, xiv, 14.
35 See note 31 above.
36 ‘I was a lamb of the holy flock that Dominic leads along a path where you fatten well if you don't waste time’.
37 In Paradiso, X, XI, XIII.
38 Conv. IV, x, 3. In their context the words refer, a bit ironically, to the Emperor Frederick II.
39 ‘and here we must carefully distinguish’
40 ‘he reasoned out truths that brought him ill favour’
41 ‘the flaming courtesy of brother Thomas and his well considered speech’
42 This is well attested, Boccaccio adds, and we have no reason to disbelieve him, that the Monarchia was publicly burned at Bologna by order of the Cardinal Legate (Trattatello in laude di Dante, c. 24). See D.A., Monarchia, ‘Edizione Nazionale’, ed. P. G. Ricci, Milan, 1965, pp. 3–4.
43 De reprobatiione Monarchiae, ed. N. Matteini, Padua, 1958. On Guido Vernani se also T. Kaeppeli, O.P., in Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibiotheken, XXVIII. 1937–38, pp. 107–146.
44 Monumenta Ord. Fr. Praed. Hist., XX. Acta Cap. Prov. Provinciae Romanae (1243–1344), ed. T. Kaeppeli and A. Dondaine, 1941, p. 286.
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