Dante and Europe

“Viewing Dante as a precursor of the European unity that is being forged is a-historical”. However, his thoughts and writings are marked “by insights that appear distant from Europeanism, not in terms of political project, but rather understood in terms of the ideal common homeland”. Thus declared literature scholar Mario Scotti (1930 – 2008) in an essay dating back to 2003, published for the first time in the latest issue of the Italian cultural magazine Studium (3/2009).Peoples share the same cultural heritage. According to Scotti, the ethical and political outlook of Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), considered “the father of Italian language”, and author of The Divine Comedy, “goes beyond the realm of his own hometown. Indeed, it extends across Italy, which is not viewed as a unitary body with an independent structure. Rather, the author propounds the idea of an Empire, understood as the sacral power bestowed by God to the Romans and implemented by the Carolingian and Germanic monarchies”. Dante views this empire as lacerated by clashes opposing the political and religious realms, and opposing the Angevins and the Suevians, in the framework of tragic historical circumstances, marked by the “The Church’s subservience to France”. The purpose of Dante Aligheri’s polemical writings, according to the scholar, “don’t merely relate to Florence or Tuscany, to Italy or to single European nations. Rather, his vision crosses national borders and encompasses diverse populations that share the same cultural heritage. On the whole, their homelands can be identified with Europe”. Indeed, “the Divine Comedy significantly – albeit seldom – expands this view”. A single nation. “In Dante’s Paradise, the Troad peninsula represents the Eastern border of the Country, ‘the furthest point of Europe”‘; while “the Atlantic shore of Castile”, marks its Western border. Notably, Dante often refers to the Mediterranean, separating Europe from the African continent”. Dante identifies the Christian ecumene “within these borders”, the scholar remarked commenting on Dante’s civitas christiana. Indeed, “Dante’s vision of the political unification of European nations in the empire differs from the contemporary one, that aims at the establishment of a confederation and of one single nation. He considered it the fountainhead of all powers, viewed as the result of metaphysical intervention, while today it is viewed as representing the population – legal subjects, and not legal objects”. Another significant point of Dante’s political reflection, which “contemporary European civilization can ideally identify with, regards the limits of imperial power”, Scotti affirmed. Accordingly, this phrase refers to “universal order, the law that God applied to nature”. “The willingness to acknowledge the value of those experiences which developed beyond the Christian realm, although naturaliter christianae, is in line with the contemporary liberal spirit, present within European culture and politics. This heritage ought to be acknowledged along with the profession of religious faith or laicism”. “The European cultural horizon”. According to the scholar, also Dante’s “cultural horizon” pertains “to the European realm”, which “is not confined within the borders of a given nation”. This conclusion is drawn from his lyrical poetry, from his “interest in history – inasmuch as Dante is not a curious spectator. He is a resentful judge of the events of his epoch – and from his understanding of theology and philosophy”. “In the double circle of sages that the poet depicts as surrounding Beatrice and himself in the sun’s skies” are present “mystical and rationalist thinkers, humble friars and learned scholars” who lived in the period comprised between the 4th and the 12th centuries, in different parts of Europe. These include Paul Orosio, Severino Boezio and Beda Venerabile. Indeed, many of these personalities professed their magisterium “in places distant from their places of birth”, such as German Saint Albertus Magnus, who taught in Cologne and in Paris; Italian Saint Tomas Aquinas, who also taught in Paris, and Pietro Lombardo, professor of theology and later appointed bishop In Paris; Richard of Saint Victor from Scotland, who took his name after the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris, where Flemish theologian Hugo also lived. According to Scotti, “the opposite borders of Dante’s cultural map can be identified on the one side with the town of Fiore in Southern Italy, where Calabria’s abbot Joachim – endowed with ‘prophetic vision’- preached; and on the other with Sorbonne in Paris, described as Siger de Brabant’s learning place”. “The notion of a unitary European culture”, concluded the historian “is here conveyed in concrete terms with enchanting poetic language”.