Patristic/Medieval
Dante Alighieri
1265–1321
“Neither Creator nor a creature ever, Son, ... was destitute of love natural or spiritual; and thou knowest it.”
Dante Alighieri, the Florentine poet who spent his later years in exile, wrote the , the medieval poem of the soul's journey from damnation through purgation to beatitude. He gives scholastic doctrine a body of images: hell's circles, purgatory's mountain, the nine angelic orders revolving about a single Point of light. Love moves the sun and the other stars. What he fixes for later readers is a vision of moral order in which every act finds its place. Poetry becomes a way of knowing.
In the Conversation
9 of the Great Ideas
Ethics
Theology & Metaphysics
Religion
Religion orders the soul's journey toward the vision of God, and the spiritual and temporal powers must not usurp each other's authority.
Sin
Love is the root of every sin and every virtue: misdirected, excessive, or deficient love generates each category of transgression, and Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise are love's possible destinations.
Prophecy
The poet sees himself as a prophetic voice, guided through the afterlife to reveal divine justice and the destiny of Christendom.