Lee Daniel Snyder
Professor Emeritus
Department of History
E-mail:  lsnyder@ncf.edu

                LLDSnyder@aol.com

 Research Interests: 1. Dante  2. Macro History 

Research Interests

• Dante’s Search for Truth and Love:

  Creating A Christian Epic

   

  An Historian’s Reading of Dante

   

              by    Lee Daniel Snyder

Forword: A Companion for Reading the Divine Comedy

Introduction: Dante’s Struggle To Understand His Exile

Chapter I: Reading Dante: How Can He write

at Many Different Levels at the Same Time? 1-20

Chapter II: The Hidden Christ of the Inferno,

A New Reading of the Old Man of Crete 21-37

Chapter III: Dante’s Powerful Cord, Resisting the Anti-Christ (Geryon) 38-42

Chapter IV: Hell’s Impact on Dante: The Message of the Inferno 43-67

Chapter V: Ritual as Education in the Purgatorio 68-87

Chapter VI: The Eagle and the Siren: Dante’s Use

of Symbols to Emphasize His Themes 88-110

Chapter VII: Matilda, Key to Dante’s Message in The Divine Comedy 111-136

Chapter VIII: Love Natural and Supernatural,

Dante’s Unifying Vision, From Guilt to Shame 137-160

Chapter IX: Dante’s Messianic Kingdom, The Empty Throne 161-180

Chapter X: The Surprising Absence of Christ in

Dante’s Vision of Paradise 181-197

Chapter XI: Dante’s Place in Western History:

The Interaction of Three Cosmologies 198-217

Charts Comparing the Three Canticas and Other Relationships 218-220

Bibliography and Index 221-

October, 1998

Lee Daniel Snyder, New College of USF

Dante can be difficult to read if one approaches the Divine Comedy like a modern novel. The literal story line is important, but obviously not the only level of discourse and in the end not the most important. Though Dante swears that his Comedy is literally true, and just at the point where it is most fantastic with the appearance of Geryon, it is obviously not literally true but a poetic fantasy, developed by his imagination. It is an extended metaphor, pointing beyond itself to fundamental truths about life and reality, revealed by the logic and implications of the metaphor but not to be confused with it. It is Dante’s vision of truth, expressed indirectly and allegorically. Consequently it takes some skill to read and interpret, at least in order to understand the richness of Dante’s message.

Dante raises the question of allegory himself in the Convivio in interpreting his own canzone about Lady Philosophy, and again in his famous letter to Can Grande della Scala, but never with sufficient clarity to explain fully what he was actually doing in the Comedy. Simple poetic allegory, where abstractions are discussed by telling stories about personifications, as in the Roman de la Rose, simply will not work for the Comedy, although it did for the Convivio. Nor is the allegorical interpretative tradition of Hellenistic Alexandria, where epic heroes are explained as personification of abstractions, very revealing, although closer to Dante’s strategy in the Comedy. Some commentators have down-played the allegorical approach as destructive of the poetic story and oversimplifying, as for instance, when Virgil is simply seem as a personification of rationality. Perhaps it is more profitable to abandon the abstract discussion of allegory as such and examine what Dante actually does in the Comedy to speak simultaneously or almost simultaneously at several different levels. How was he able to communicate at four or more levels in telling the same story, at least for active readers?

While a number of ways can be utilized to identify different levels in the Comedy, I would like to suggest a strategy which I believe comes close to Dante’s actual practice and opens up a richer way to read through several simple distinctions. First of all, one should notice that Dante’s epic combines what he himself referred to as the poetic and Biblical traditions. The poetic tradition as established in the Medieval period focused on fantasy, an imaginary world different from actual reality but nevertheless able to reveal a different level of truth, a deeper level beyond appearances, but through metaphor and symbolism. This type of writing was challenged by Medieval theologians as lying, but defended and used by poets Alan de Lille, and Dante. The second tradition, associated with Scripture, was based on history, i.e. telling the story of actual events and thus literally true, although with implications for more than the actual participants. It was not fantasy, but historical fact, and thus for theologians more fundamental than fiction. Some scholars refer to this tradition as typology, as characters in the story, repeat earlier stories, as Christ repeated the stories of earlier Biblical characters like Moses, and as the same stories will be repeated in the future, perhaps even in the life of the reader, as the story of St. Paul’s conversion becomes a pattern for all later Christian conversions. Characters in the story are thus not just individuals but types for repeating human experiences.

Dante in the Comedy breaks new ground essentially by combining these two traditions, of poetic fantasy and historical story telling. His story is first of all a real historical narrative about a real person, history, that is his own story, the story of his exile, his fall, and gradual, although in some ways perhaps sudden, redemption through the inspiration of Virgil and Beatrice. In other words, the Comedy is first of all autobiography, as Freccero has said, and like any autobiography, a story that is made meaningful partly by reliving earlier stories of redemption, and a story relevant to the reader, and future persons, because it is a story that my be relived again and again. It is the story of a man, who happens to be a poet, who moves from confusion and despair to a sense of purpose, as he finds his way through the ambiguities of life and the treachery of men to a sense of true human fulfillment, happiness and community, from an historical world of corruption and injustice to a vision of life as it should be and can in fact be with the right guidance and divine assistance.

It is a story reconceptualized as the story of a pilgrimage, a quest, a type of story designed to clarify the issues he has struggled with in his life and a type of story familiar to his contemporaries. In this sense, it is not simple history, retelling events one by one, but an interpretative retelling of a journey to enlightenment. Historians have some leeway to reconstruct the past to make it more intelligible to the reader, although, of course, a modern historian, would hesitate to change the literal story quite as much as Dante did. Dante felt that this was his true story, but as a poet, it made sense for him to put it into an epic formate. In the end, any journey, pilgrimage or quest, is really important as an inner experience, a psychological journey of inner transformation, not simply an outward trip, a truth well understood in Medieval religious and literary tradition, and not irrelevant today. So the reader of the Comedy should see first of all the story of a real person, Dante the poet-pilgrim, making a journey of discovery and personal transmutation.

It should be read as an autobiography, but not simply at that level. For Dante saw his spiritual education in Christian terms, so that it is a story not only about Dante, but repeats the story of salvation portrayed, for instance, in the stories of Christ, St. Paul, and St. Augustine. And it should have implications for the future, for every thoughtful reader, who can become a new Dante, or perhaps more precisely, a new Christian or newly enlightened person. As Freccero pointed out, this dimension of the story has a structure based on past, present, and future, as it seeks to clarify the significance of the pilgrimage. Time and history are fundamental to the structure.

Before turning to fantasy, we should note that this autobiographical side of the Comedy needs to be further divided into two levels, the level of Dante the pilgrim, the literal character of the story, who learns and changes along the way, and Dante the poet, who is telling the story about his salvation, after it was over, and consequently can comment on occasion about the significance of events, but is also carrying on a dialogue with the reader about the nature of poetry. He was quite aware that he was creating a new poetic form, an epic that was patterned after Virgil, but not a tragedy in the Classical form but a Comedy, and a poetic form that could be very elevated in style like Virgil, but could explore all sorts of other styles in the vernacular. As a self-conscious poet, he combines lyric, dramatic and epic poetry, to celebrate a new vision that incorporates the best of the Classical but breaks new ground. Sometimes this discussion is indirect, as in the implied comparison between his successful voyage and Ulysses’s disastrous one, but sometimes it becomes more direct, as he challenges Ovid in the Inferno and meets his troubadour and vernacular forerunners in the Purgatorio.

This historical pilgrim, however, makes a journey through a fantastic world. This is the basic strategy that enables Dante to combine the two key traditions, history of a real person with a fantastic allegorical world. In my view, the active reader should make a sharp distinction between the traveler and the world through which he moves, for they have different logics and different messages. In other words, in the Comedy a real life story, governed by the principles of psychology and religious conversion, is combined with a journey through an imaginary world, presumably the world of life after death and thus beyond normal human experience, and a world governed by the principles of symbolism and allegory. While there were obviously earlier visions of life after death, of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, though often vague and elusive, visions which influenced Dante, he nevertheless felt quite free as a poet of fantasy, to reconstruct that world according to his own particular purposes.

As an allegorical world, it was structured by abstract truths about reality, in Dante’s view at least, not by awareness of geography or nature as such, although he makes an amazing attempt to show that this fantasy world connects with the normal world of nature known to science, for in the end there is only one coherent truth about reality, following the arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas, combining the natural and supernatural worlds together under the one Creator. This principle is most evident in Purgatory, pictured as a mountain in the southern hemisphere, subject to the movement of the sun, and at least partially by the forces of weather (before the Gate of Purgatory). Still the ledges of Purgatory are determined by the seven deadly sins, and not by natural erosion, and the Earthly Paradise is a forest standing outside normal time and weather. In the Paradiso, Dante tries to connect his journey with scientific astronomy as understood in his day, but this is clearly secondary to the allegorical function of the heavenly spheres. Nature is supplemented by super-nature, but the journey is structured by principles of truth, true justice in Hell, true education in Purgatory, and true transfiguration in Paradise. Consequently the territory transversed in the Comedy must be read differently from the story of the traveler. The interplay between the two is critical for understanding the overall message, but they are built on different principles that should not be confused. Still, as we have noted, the two levels are partly conformed to mesh with each other, the autobiography retold as an epic journey and the supernatural reality reformulated as an extension of the natural world.

As Freccero has noted, this allegorical world of fantasy can have an infinite number of interpretations, and therefore it must be pinned down to those levels of meaning clearly indicated in the text. In my view, Dante reveals his strategy in Inferno II where he says ironically that he cannot undertake this journey because he is neither Aeneas nor St. Paul. Since Aeneas is the founder of Rome, whose story is told by Virgil, and thus represents the whole level of politics and history, and St. Paul is in a way the founder of the Church, whose story is central to Dante’s new epic, and thus represents the whole level of divine grace and the community of the saints, I believe that Dante wants us to focus on these two levels in interpreting the allegory of the fantastic world encountered on the journey. In other words, Dante will be trying to reveal the truth about both the State and the Church in the process of unfolding this pilgrimage. Dante’s exile will not allow him to ignore either the issue of justice in history or the problem of individual salvation beyond history. In fact, this two-fold distinction correlates exactly with St. Augustine’s distinction between the City of Man and the City of God, two realms equally part of God’s providence but operating on different principles. And the fact that there are two cities rather than one marks a key difference in my view between the Classical and the Christian worlds, another one of Dante’s basic themes.

In other words, just as we found two levels in dealing with the autobiographical side, Dante the pilgrim vs. Dante the poet, so here at the allegorical level, the level of the fantastic world, we see two different issues under discussion, the nature of the State and the nature of the Church, creating four basic levels of discourse continuing through the Comedy. But how can Dante manage to create two different levels of allegory without confusion? In my view, he does this with a very simple technique, a contrast between what is heard and what is seen. In the Inferno, as again Freccero has pointed out, the difference between the two modalities is most striking, creating a basic strategy of irony, i.e. what people say is disconnected with where they are. Their placement in Hell and the often dramatic punishments they are undergoing sharply contradicts their own stories of victimization and lack of responsibility. The souls in Hell characteristically do not see the present and do not really understand their punishment, and of course have no recognition of their guilt or sorrow for their misdeeds.

When we as readers concentrate on what is heard, we receive a vivid picture of the world of history with its self-delusions, corruption, greed, and ambition. It is the City of Man, the world without God, not the whole of history, as we will see in Purgatory, but that part of history which is in rebellion against God, and as St. Augustine said, governed by self-love and hatred for anything that stands in the way of self-will. Dante the pilgrim meets many interesting, dynamic, proud and famous persons as he descends though the levels of Hell, along with a few monsters and devils, confirming the opinion of many that most of the really interesting persons in history have gone to Hell. Indeed in their own minds, and to some extent in the minds of writers, these figures of literature like Ulysses and figures of history like Aristotle, Caesar, and of course, Virgil himself, are heroes, and perhaps also in the minds of naive readers. When they speak and tell their stories, they were usually moved by noble intentions and merely victims of an unkind fortune. In perspective, this side of history and politics and love is revealed as based on corrupted will and ignorance of the true order of reality. It is the story of personal and historical injustice.

When we turn to what we see, a very different picture emerges, a world of grim punishment and pain, except for Limbo, where there is no pain but also no hope. This vision, of course, is not the Church, the City of God itself, but its opposite, the Kingdom of Satan, a picture of everything the Church is not, at least in terms of God’s intention. It is a negative picture of God’s justice, as the gate of Hell proclaimed, a picture of divine punishment to contrast with the later vision of divine rewards. It is not a picture of the city of evil itself, but a vision of the eternal results of evil, thus not history but the unchanging order of justice, outside of time, which exposes the anti-city of history, where the underlying evil of self-indulgence, violence, and treachery can not be hidden or excused. The historical mask is removed; the self-delusions of the perverted will are laid bare, just as in the end symbolically the devil himself, though terrifying in appearance, is completely helpless and ineffective and purposeless frozen in the ice. The inevitable self-destructiveness of evil before divine order clears away the ambiguities of history and politics. Evil may rage and terrify and seem to be control, but in the end is powerless to resist God, and those protected by God, as vividly illustrated at the Gate of Dis. The anti-city and its folly is dramatically exposed. No commentary is needed. We hear about the evils of history, mankind gone wrong, but we see the justice of God, the order of eternity.

When we turn to the Paradiso, the opposition between what is heard and what is seen disappears, but the distinction between the discussions of State and Church continues. Indeed it is surprising that in Heaven there is still so much discussion of politics and justice and history, climaxing with the empty throne at the center of the Celestial Rose. The saints repeatedly comment on the state of history, as when St. Peter himself denounces the corruption of the papacy. It is history in a new perspective, looking down from the skies, as in Cicero’s famous dream, but it is still history and provides an even more negative interpretation, because it is point by point contrasted with the story of the good side of history, attempted but only momentarily realized, as in the justice codified by Justinian and the ideal of poverty embodied in St. Francis. This is dramatically illustrated by Dante’s encounter with his ancestor, Cacciaguida. The nobility of 12th Century Florence is sharply contrasted with the corruption of the present, and Dante himself is charged to return to history to fight as a poetic crusader for its restoration . Florence may be beyond hope, but mankind is not, at least when the messianic good emperor appears. At first consideration, the dialogue, what is heard, no longer seems to be sharply different from what is seen, for the saints are wise and in harmony with God’s providence, but through the dialogue with the souls of the saints, as explained, Dante continues to search for meaning in history, only now with some optimism.

When we turn to what is seen, the vision of Heaven is clearly that of the Triumphant Church, the Church as God intended it to be, with a differentiation of functions and a community of love. No self-will, only God’s benevolent and all-wise will. It fits St. Paul’s image of the Church as the Body of Christ, where all of the various parts, different in function, yet live and grow together in harmony and love. It is the Church outside of time, not the historical Church, but the community of saints existing eternally in God’s presence. The Rose emphasizes the unity and community; the passage through the planets the diversity of functions, from the base in theology, to the righteous rulers, to the dedicated crusaders, to the contemplatives, led by the Apostles and supported by various lesser figures and angels. It is the true Church, a mirror to show the historical church the true path. Dante indeed acknowledges that his journey through Paradise is in reality a divine theater to clarify his vision of the true divine order that he can bring back and incorporate in his epic. Through God’s grace victims are saved, sacrifice becomes meaningful, justice is defined and instituted, wisdom is clarified, and crusaders are to fight against God’s enemies.

In the Purgatorio Dante presents an intermediate world, not just the evil, and not just the divine justice, but history as it really is, a mixture of good and evil, reform and failure, the realm where Augustine’s two cities interact. Tillich calls it the realm of "life", in contrast with the Existential world of suffering and the Idealistic world of perfection. Thus at the level of what is heard, the dialogue with the souls, we see history again, as individuals struggle to come to terms with their failures, sins, and ignorance. In telling their stories, they recognize their short-comings and violations of God’s law, but also God’s mercy. So they have hope and freely engage in an educational process to grow in virtue and wisdom. So some of them discuss more than their past, because the future is now more important than the past, and indeed show off their growing understanding of human freedom and the need for proper guidance, like Marco Lombardo. The negative forces in history are still revealed, as in the story of Manfred, but also God’s power to overcome them. Still Dante is called upon to denounce the corruption of Italy in his famous response to Sordello and to expose the corruption of the historical Church with Pope Adrian and the second pageant in the Earthly Paradise. We hear about the problems of injustice and sin, distorted will and corrupted love, even as we see individuals rescued from these evil forces, but at the end of the Purgatorio history seems to be going down hill, as the giant carries off the whore in the second pageant. The problem of individual salvation is being addressed, but historical salvation still seems problematic. Virgil can speak about personal virtue and nature, but still offers no hope for history and thus disappears near the end, just before Beatrice appears as divine revelation.

Something quite different appears when we concentrate on what is seen in the Purgatorio. For me it is a vision of the Militant Church, what Augustine would call the invisible church within the historical church, or as he says elsewhere, a community of love and a hospital for sinners. To see the invisible church, of course, is a poetic irony, and made possible by purgatory itself, which is in one sense an extension of time and nature, but in another a departure from history, a world of disembodied souls, a facet of Dante’s pilgrimage that seems to fascinate the poet as it did the souls themselves. This church, a community of wounded sinners, is also clearly a liturgical community, guarded by angels, constantly instructed by exempla of good and evil, assisted by sacramental acts, helping one another, as on the terrace of envy the blind are leading the blind, seeking enlightenment and inner transformation. It is a church in time, in history, and yet beyond time and history as a manifestation of divine grace, divine intervention into the realm of history to save many. It is the pastoral church, compassionate and educational, not always gentile, but always acting for the best of the individuals involved, functioning even when the historical church is corrupted. It is a vital link in Dante’s vision of truth.

In summary, we have argued that Dante carries on four levels of dialogue in the Comedy by three simple distinctions, first by separating the story of the hero, Dante, from the fantastic land through which he is journeying; second by distinguishing between the historical Dante the poet and Dante the type of the Christian pilgrim, at the first level, and then, third, by separating what is heard from what is seen at the second. These four level enable him to discuss his own autobiography, the path of salvation for any pilgrim, the historical and ideal nature of the state (history), and the true nature of the church (the interaction of the natural and the supernatural). Dante thus appears as Dante the poet, Dante the pilgrim, Dante the true Aeneas, and Dante the recreation of St. Paul. Virgil, in a reciprocal relationship, becomes Virgil the epic poet, Virgil the Classical sage and moralist, Virgil the Roman patriot, and Virgil the stand-in of John the Baptist, the wise but incomplete precursor.

Can we relate these four levels to the traditional four levels of interpretation used by Scripture? A simple identification would seem to miss the subtlety and innovation of Dante’s strategy, but a rough parallel could be noted. Obviously the literal-historical level relates to the first, Dante the historical poet, symbolically telling his story. The third level of history could be connected with the tropological or moral level, for it is basically a discussion of virtue and political justice, Biblical righteousness. The fourth could be related to the anagogical level of last things, for it discusses the eternal nature of the Church and anti-church as the extension of God’s eternal will both within and beyond history. If this correlation is correct, than the allegorical level of abstract truth must relate to the level of Dante the pilgrim, something of a surprise, since we have argued that this level reflects the traditions of typology and not that of poetic allegory. And yet this level embodies the key to Dante’s understanding of truth, the pattern of individual salvation. Nature and history are the larger framework that define humanity, but it is the individual story which is central to God’s plan of salvation. This level, of course, correlates also with Virgil, with the story of Aeneas interpreted as the universal story of human striving for wisdom and self-fulfillment.

Finally I would add a fourth distinction to open up the complete complexity of Dante’s literary strategy. In his desire to unify all knowledge, to finish his encyclopedia, Dante can be seen as always interested in both the personal-social level of experience and the intellectual level of understanding. If we combine this distinction with the others, our four levels of discourse can be multiplied to eight. They are not to be sharply separated, as heart and mind, will and intellect, are always closely connected in Dante, but the distinction helps to explain why Dante has no problem with inserting didactic sections into his poetry. They make the intellectual discourse explicit, to clarify and consolidate, to educate the whole person, and to comment upon the progress of the pilgrim. These didactic sections are directed to Dante the pilgrim, and thus to the reader, and not to the other souls, who seem to learn through direct inspiration. Still we should remember that in a narrative, especially in a long complex epic, issues are also discussed implicitly, by the story itself, by the comparison of episodes, by successes and failures, by climax and endings, and do not necessarily need explicit commentary. Like any good poet, Dante leaves many insights to the active and thoughtful reader. As noted above, he does not need to explain what the picture of Satan frozen in ice, beating his wings in a purposeless pretense of activity, really means. Then again, some of his symbolic figures, like the Old Man of Crete and Geryon, are more subtle and elusive.

If we apply this distinction to the four levels, we can see the central topics that preoccupy Dante’s mind. Each level has a matching intellectual discussion; in fact, I would argue that each level seems to have two intellectual dimensions, one about truth and one about method, one about understanding and one about teaching. The first draws on the philosophical tradition from the Classical world, the second on the rhetorical tradition, that other Classical tradition from Cicero and the Sophists that lies behind much of Medieval writing. One must know the truth, but also be able to persuade others to live by it. In the Convivio, Dante calls the first the eyes of Lady Philosophy and the second the smile.

For the first level, the literal, historical story of Dante the Poet, we have a discussion of the topic central to Medieval poets, the nature of love. Following in the tradition of earlier 12th and 13th Century authors, he is searching to reconcile the courtly love tradition with the Christian tradition, a issue vividly raised by the contrast between the vulgate Quest for the Holy Grail, which rejects the courtly and denies the possibility of reconciliation, and Wolfram’s version of the same story, Parzival, which demonstrates that they can be united, but only with difficulty. Dante’s choice of Beatrice as his guide through the Paradiso in itself demonstrates that he sees a reconciliation, but in the process of his pilgrimage he explores all varieties of human and divine love, both eros and agape, and makes no simple analysis. He examines perverted love, natural love, and finally divine compassionate love, and embraces both the upward and outward thrusts. In this way, Dante can be seen as the climax of the Medieval debate on this key topic, which unites the theoretical and the existential. And he not only combines religion and literature, but also includes the philosophical tradition rooted in Plato, while rejecting the anti-religious naturalism of the Roman de la Rose.

With the teaching dimension, Dante the poet naturally discusses poetry and the power of language. Some of this is implied, as when he hears Casella singing one of his lyrics, or when he meets Sordello, and discusses politics. Or it is involved with his long and complex relationship with Virgil, both as mentor and incomplete guide. His vision of the Christian epic begins with a Classical inspiration, but clearly moves ahead to being, in his own words, a Comedy. Since many scholars have explored this dimension extensively, we need not proceed further.

The level of Dante the pilgrim, the exemplar of Christian redemption, appropriately centers on the understanding of the pilgrimage itself, that is, the basic stages and steps in the process of moving from sin to union with God. This is the tradition of St. Bernard and the Cistercian School, expressed in his famous exposition of the Song of Songs, which traces the three fundamental steps symbolically as kisses, the kissing of the foot, then the hand, and then the lips, that is, purgation, good works, and personal union, a pattern followed by the three-fold structure of the Comedy. It is not surprising that St. Bernard appears at the end of the journey. This discussion of pattern of salvation is, of course, rooted in St. Augustine, and further developed by the Franciscans, as in Bonaventure’s also famous work, the Mind’s Road to God. It is one side of theology, the doctrine of God’s grace, with all it nuances, and human cooperation.

And what then is the teaching dimension? How does the individual learn about grace and cooperation? This goes beyond intellectualizing, because lessons must not only be understood but deeply incorporated into the character of the individual as he/she is transformed. We might call this method introspection and confession, self-knowledge matched against divine compassion, for in the end it must be a transition from a life based on fear of punishment and hope for rewards, to a dedication to a Benefactor based on gratitude and unselfish love. From the Purgatory, God’s school for souls, we might call it ritualistic and disciplinary, for the corrupted will must be liberated from its faulty impulses, not just the mind from ignorance.

When we turn to the third level, the City of Man, the level of history and politics, we see the focus shift from the intensely personal to the social, in modern terms from the psychological to the social scientific. As discussed above, this is where Dante discusses the problematic of history. It is thus the story, or better the myth, of Rome, for Dante the archetype of the state and the center of history, with the sharp contrast between its idealized form and its corrupted reality. At the intellectual level, it is the analysis of the true Rome, or more abstractly and philosophically, the nature of justice, or more Biblically, the character of righteousness. Since justice is more easily discussed in negative terms, Dante has much to say about injustice. In another sense, justice involves rewards and punishments, properly applied when the state is just, improperly when corrupt or weak. Consequently throughout the Comedy, even in the Paradiso, we hear about the injustice of human government in contrast with the justice of God. Hell dramatizes the just punishments for injustice, but personalized as the punishment for sin to intensify its effect; Paradise dramatizes the rewards for justice, the saintly triumph over sin. In the Purgatory there is a constant contrast between just and unjust behavior and attitudes. So we might summarize the Comedy as moving from a harsh picture of divine justice in Hell, to an analysis of virtue and its opposites in Purgatory, and to a picture of divine benevolence in Paradise, built on law, Justinian, but administered with mercy. Still the acquisition of sainthood, personal virtue, was required for admittance into the presence of this righteous God.

In parallel with the discussion of love on the first level, we see three sub-issues here as well, first justice, second virtue, its personal reciprocal, and third the pattern of history. Since the third is the most elusive and probably most difficult for Dante, it needs some special comment. From Inferno I, Dante has raised the issue of a coming messiah to resolve the question of historical justice. Obviously Henry VII, in spite of early success, did not make it. Dante may be referring consequently to the Second Coming of Christ, in harmony with the main line of Medieval thinking. On the other hand, he may have been influenced by the mythology of the Good Emperor and particularly the reworked periodization of history developed by Joachim of Flora and popular with some Franciscans. His Age of the Father can be correlated with the Inferno, the harsh judgment of God on sin; his Age of the Son can also be correlated with the Purgatorio, the period of the Catholic Church, marked by the saving of individuals, but also by continuing battles with the forces of evil, and moving towards a climax of conflict, as portrayed in the second pageant in the Earthly Paradise. That would mean that Dante may have expected a soon-to-be Age of the Spirit, a kind of messianic age, suggested in the Paradiso. The Purgatorio ends with a prediction of a messiah and the Celestial Rose surrounds an empty throne. Clearly the community of saints is completely governed by the Spirit of God, directly received, with the liturgical trappings of the Purgatorio missing, so that one might argue that Dante is giving the reader his version of what the Age of the Spirit would be like, when it comes, by his description of Paradise. Joachim is included among the intellectuals of the sun, and Cacciaguida directs Dante to think about the rise and fall of cities, that one age will be replaced by another.

Although the teaching of virtue has been problematic since the time of Socrates, nevertheless the rhetorical tradition was based on certain established practices, that even Plato utilized in the Republic and considered critical for political justice. In particular, a discipline of rewards and punishments, taught through praising and blaming, encouraged virtue in theory and practice and punished its opposite. Since only Purgatory involves souls capable of learning and changing, Dante uses this strategy of praising and blaming most explicitly in the terraces of purgatory proper, through the device of exempla, short stories of individual’s virtues and vices. They are communicated to the souls briefly through image or word, but repeatedly on each circling of the mountain. For Dante, however, and the reader, many exempla of punishment for sin fill Hell and exempla of rewards for virtue fill Paradise.

Finally, at the fourth level, the vision of the Church in terms of eternal truth, what it is not, what it is becoming, and what it is ideally, correlates with theology, a discussion and analysis of God’s over-all strategy for governing the universe. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity means fundamentally that God in Himself is a mystery and will always be a mystery, so that theology is really an understanding of his actions and will, his plans for his creation. And since God is outside of time and creation is in time, theology wrestles with an understanding of the truth of God’s unchanging plan for his universe. In other words, the drama of history and salvation, dealt with on the other three levels, must be embedded in an understanding of the surrounding structure, the platform that God created for the drama, if Dante is to complete his picture of reality. This platform is composed in Dante’s view, following Thomas Aquinas, of two basic parts, Nature, which is the structure of the physical world, known by philosophy and science through perception, and Super-nature, the non-physical world, known by theology through revelation and unaccessible to perception. These two parts fit together perfectly in God’s plan, there is only one truth, and they are basically connected by the Church, which participates in both.

Consequently in order to understand fully the nature of God’s plan, Dante must see the Church in its true reality, i.e. beyond its historical manifestation, as embedded in these two realms, bringing together the natural and supernatural worlds. The Church makes the supernatural world accessible to the world, to individual persons and society, and raises the individual and human community out of nature to the higher realm, where its true character is revealed, at least after death, but theoretically always when it is true to God’s intention. All of this is based on the reality of human creation, as a body with an immortal soul, but the role and importance of the Church and its work is immensely strengthened when its relationship to the whole divine-natural order is understood. Nature exists for mankind and mankind exists for God. Nature may seem independent to the ignorant person and God elusive, but Dante’s pilgrimage proves that all of nature, all of human life is permeated by God’s presence and no human fulfillment is possible without coming to terms with that reality. Consequently Dante’s seeks to incorporate all knowledge of nature into his epic, but balanced against a higher knowledge of the divine plan that curbs its pretensions of comprehensiveness. Aristotle and Plato remain in Limbo.

I believe that a student of Dante must understand this complex multi-level strategy he uses in order to grasp fully his rich wisdom, but that does not mean that every reader must read at every level all the time. Some readers are more interested in poetry, some in history, some in psychology. They can explore those dimensions of the Comedy with profit as they prefer, but Dante is not content to restrict his epic to one or two dimensions alone. If one understands his strategy, and the key structural principles he uses in his writing, then one can hopefully move from one level to another as one pleases and sharpen his/her appreciation of his insights with each visit.

• Macro-History, A Theoretical Approach to Comparative World History
•     The Edwin Mellen Press, 1999        ISBN 0-7734-8271-7

Macro-History is an attempt to create a model of the cultural-historical process that will explain historical change for all societies-civilizations. The proposed model operates in the spirit of the social sciences, not as a philosophy; it is focused on patterns of change and not some goal or end of history. It was developed as an alternative to the various myths of progress current in the West from Liberalism to Marxism, and should be tested both empirically and theoretically. I have attempted to provide enough historical data in various periodization charts to show how the empirical testing can proceed, and I believe that thus far in my research the data supports the model. I have also tried to develop the structure of the model sufficiently that internal coherence, logical consistency, and comprehensiveness can be evaluated. I begin with a discussion of scientific truth in history to clarify my basic epistemological presuppositions and strategy.

In principle I begin with a holistic presupposition that the whole may be greater than the parts, and thus I start with history in its broadest possible framework and then work downward. I argue that this largest framework is a "culture-system", called a Culture or a Civilization by many, not humanity as a whole, and is generally a large, very complex interacting system located in a specific geographical region and at a particular historical time. While differing in details, I generally follow Toynbee in this approach, but differ sharply in insisting that within a Culture-System the basic unit is the 300-400 year Historical Cycle, something that no other theorist has recognized. All cycles are different in content, the unique aspects of history are still basic, but they still all have a definable common pattern, which I illustrate with my charts. These cycles then compose characteristic chains. In principle I have thus excluded consideration of "pre-civilized" societies and I have also excluded New World cultures as beyond the scope of my knowledge. Obviously only well known Culture-Systems will provide a good test for the model.

To be useful for historical analysis, which proceeds primarily at the micro level, I then need to show how one passes from the macro level to the micro level and back. To do this I have developed a structural analysis of the internal processes within the Culture-System during an historical cycle. I have included my first intuitive effort to show how the model was developed, but I later turned to systems theory for a more persuasive analysis. My three sub-systems are not particularly original, but the three parallel sub-structures in each do seem to break new ground as far as I know. At least they organize widely recognized factors in different disciplines in a novel way. My most interesting innovation, however, comes with identifying four environments of the cultural-social system, and in particular treating the individual human as an environment of the social system rather than a basic part, as is common in the social sciences. This allows me to explore the unique role of the individual in history without distorting the social processes that operate on trans-personal principles. I do not know of any other theorist who does this and believe it opens up many new creative ways of understanding culture. While I believe the structure of my model is innovative, my objective is to build on the consensus of knowledge among historians and social scientists as much as possible. Still many will disagree. In the end I believe my model does not sacrifice the importance of unique historical events, unlike say Sorokin’s, but still provides enough structure to open up new analytical perspectives and new questions, and makes possible a whole range of interesting comparisons between civilizations and different historical periods.

As a teacher of Dante, I have discovered that contemporary college students, even very bright ones, have to learn how to read before they can appreciate the text. They are usually shocked to hear this, assuming they are already skillful readers. They are, of course, in some respects, but unless alerted to the differences between modern novels and Medieval epics, they approach the text with faulty assumptions that make it seem boring and elusive. In a similar way readers of Macro-History need to be alerted to the nature of this project, so that faulty expectations do not block their understanding and short-circuit the argument being presented. Unfortunately my argument is long and complex, because history is complex and everything about interpreting it is controversial. There is little consensus among historians, social scientists, and philosophers; all of the academic disciplines that study history in its various forms are divided about approach and interpretive models. I am not arguing that my model is the only way to study history, but I do believe that it is interesting enough to received a fair hearing. It should not be evaluated only in detached parts. Once the model is fully presented and its inner logic explained, then it should be properly challenged and criticized, like any hypothetical model, and not simply accepted. It should become the starting point for debate and hopefully further historical research. Consequently some aspects of my strategy should be clarified from the beginning.

1) How should one deal with a subject full of controversy? I have assumed that issues should be faced openly and as honestly as possible within the limits of my knowledge without getting bogged down with consideration of every possible alternative and source. This is not a literature review. There are many good authors who have provided that; it need not be repeated. I am trying to present a positive, constructive, useful, and coherent explanatory model with brief references that hopefully will be sufficient for those familiar with the controversies. An intellectual history of this proposal will remain in the future.

2) This is not a "history." I will not be attempting to tell the story of world history, but merely providing a few selective and hopefully suggestive details, many in the charts, that will enable those familiar with the various areas and periods of history to connect theory with the historical record. A detailed account of history, using the principles articulated here, remains a project greatly needed, but one for the future. My immediate purpose is "meta-history." I will be attempting to uncover the underlying principles that lie behind the history of complex societies, principles that help to explain the historical process, but still need to be translated from the theoretical level to the level of particular historical sequences. This translating process can not be taken for granted. We will try to provide bridges and strategies, but will only translate in a very general way.

3) My fundamental assumption is Aristotelian, i.e. that there is an underlying logic and order to everything in nature, to be found within the phenomena itself, in history as in all other parts of nature, but an order often very difficult to uncover; that this logic does not basically derive from human thinking, but careful analysis and imagination are necessary to discover it, or more precisely, to approach an understanding of it. If this assumption is not acceptable, then the reader should proceed no further. Every theorist should try to reveal his/her basic assumptions, so that they can be challenged. This is why Chapter I is a discussion of history considered as a science.

4) Since this analysis is not a history and is based on the possibility of uncovering underlying principles, I am consciously excluding from consideration areas of human development about which I have limited or no special knowledge, either because the sources are minimal or because my education and study is deficient. These areas and periods are thus being bracketed for future research, and probably by other authors. I are excluding all of the Pre-Columbian Americas thus, not because they are unimportant, but because I do not know enough about them to justify analysis. My coverage of East Asia will also be minimal. Generally I am restricting my consideration to complex societies, those generally called "civilizations" by historians, and thus existing after about 3000 B.C.E., although I recognize the difficulty in defining the nature of complex societies. Consequently I am bracketing all non-complex societies, not because they are unimportant, but because my focus is on those societies that make of the bulk of history as generally recognized and because there may yet be an important difference between "complex" societies and pre-literate societies. What that difference is remains a problem for future clarification; I do not know whether my generalizations about culture apply to them or not, although at this point the historical cycle seems to be missing in such cultures. I am also bracketing "civilizations" like the Minoan and Harappan about which little is known. Problems about defining particular "civilizations", another controversial question, will be discussed in Chapter III. My strategy is to keep the number of Culture-Systems to a minimum. For some this will mean that most of human history and many important regions will be excluded from consideration by method. This is true, but if one can define a model that works for the complex societies best known in history, this will already be an enormous task.

5) Stance or point of view is extremely important. History can look very different from different perspectives. These differences are not necessarily contradictory; there is room for a plurality of perspectives, but the stance or level of analysis should be made clear at every point. Some patterns appear only at certain levels of analysis. Consequently a theorist should make clear which level is being considered and how various levels relate to one another. In general, I believe that systemic patterns are clearest at the level of the whole system, and most obscure at the level of the individual participants in the system. At some point thus systems, super-systems, sub-systems, and individual participants must be identified and the movement from one to another clearly identified. My model will try to do this. One of the most important conclusions will be that the social system and the individual human person considered as a system are interdependent but fundamentally different systems operating on different principles. Historians should be able to move from one level to another without confusion, from the micro level of most historical research to the macro level of generalization and back.

6) My objective is to develop a workable explanatory model that will clarify the history of complex societies and provide a basis for rational comparisons between them. I believe I have in fact found such a model, but the quest has not been swift and is certainly not complete. The model as presented here has been developed over a thirty year period, with much change, expansion and refinement. I have thought it appropriate to preserve some of that process of developing sophistication in my presentation, so that the critical reader can examine my conceptual steps and make suggestions or challenge particular moves. In Chapter II thus I discuss the historical cycle, which was my starting point, although one might argue that it should come logically at the end. I have included a chapter on modeling the city, something that might have been omitted or reserved for an appendix, because it was working on this project in a NEH Summer Seminar that I discovered systems theory and thus made a major step forward in developing the model. Chapters on education and religion have come from teaching classes on those subjects which were gradually assimilated into the Macro model. Indeed interaction with students in a seminar on Macro- History theory has over the years forced me to refine many concepts and develop new insights. The historical cycle, perhaps one of our most controversial ideas, but yet one of my most innovative, should not be seen thus as the chief substance of the model. In the end I argue that history is complex because there are three fundamentally different patterns interacting, not just the cyclical one. I acknowledge a debt to many students in these classes over the years for their encouragement and criticisms.

7) I present this model in the spirit of hypothetical thinking, not as dogma. As I tell students, I am not interested in disciples simply repeating my arguments, but in colleagues interested enough to test and investigate to find a more compelling explanatory procedure. While the model is complex and multi-faceted, and unfortunately can not be characterized quickly, as an hypothesis it calls for testing and refinement in competition with other models. In the end it should be supported by a community of scholars, not just an individual, if it is to be successful, but obviously it must start somewhere. In fact, this model is a radical reformulation of Toynbee’s pioneering work. Since history in the broad sense covers all aspects of human achievement over a long period of time in many diverse regions, no individual scholar can master all aspects of the subject. A cooperative effort is needed, but as Thomas Kuhn has noted, such cooperation is impossible without a shared model.

8) I have argued in Chapter I that history can be treated in a scientific manner, opening up a highly controversial question much debated by historians during the Twentieth Century, and largely taking the unpopular side. I have deliberately pushed the argument as far as possible to provoke a response, but the argument in the end is based on a future hope, not a present reality. History is not yet a science, and in any case there is considerable debate as to what constitutes a science since the decline of positivism. I felt it was necessary from the beginning to reveal my assumptions and my hope for what Macro-History might become if successfully sustained. At this point the model represents at best a proto-science. Its objective is scientific as defined in Chapter I, but it is a proposal at this point. I have tried to avoid intuitive judgments, which are common among historians in my view, but I have resorted to some no doubt in order to show where the model might lead. Nevertheless, methodologically I have tried to follow the logic of the model as developed to see where it would lead with, for me at least, interesting results.

I have tried to identify processes in my discussion of the sub-systems and environments to supplement the discussion of structure; indeed I have tried to transcend the distinction between structure and process by using systems theory. I have also tried to recognize gaps and unresolved problems for further investigation and analysis, as appropriate to a hypothetical approach. In the end, I believe the model falls within the theoretical framework of evolution, another controversial question. For me, Culture-Systems, in my view the basis of historical change, compete like any other biological species, but in a unique and very successful way through a new mechanism of cooperation.

Anthropologists call this technique "culture," another controversial concept, but one I find necessary to avoid reductionism, i.e. reducing human history to the biological level. In my view to be successful, the model must avoid the reductionism that has plagued social theory, but without sacrificing the realization that in the end history (society) is also part of nature. The dualism characteristic of Western thought since Descartes must be avoided without losing the critical distinctions that make human society unique. In summary, I see Macro-History rooted in the theory of evolution supplemented by a stress on the uniqueness of culture.

9) In my view, the model proposed does not stress the decline and fall of civilizations as in Spengler and even Toynbee. It avoids this Romantic perspective by building on a much smaller unit, the Historical Cycle, each of which begins with a creative reconstruction of the Culture-System. Yes, the cycle does involve a period of disintegration, this can not be avoided up to a point in the historical record, but the model argues that disintegration can vary from very severe to rather mild, depending on the creative response of the participants and the strength of the underlying social structures. For me the most significant part of history is the creative reconstruction that comes with every cycle in some form, the response to a disintegrating society. In my view this model is not deterministic in the strict sense; it recognizes a large degree of freedom of response by the participants at every point. There are always alternatives, as I will attempt to identify in the discussion of the sub-systems. Consequently, cycles can never be predicted ahead of time; each cycle must be examined and studied for its uniqueness. Yet the model does provide a framework for understanding change. Alternatives are never unlimited and the pattern of the cycle continues, but with amazing variation in ideas and institutions and even in length.

10) Following Pascal’s distinction, this model is basically synthetic, only secondarily analytic. I have tried to absorb and integrate many, often contradictory theories, whether successfully or not, of course, is open to argument. The model incorporates for instance both conflict theories of society and cooperative theories; it combines both structural analysis and functional explanations. I acknowledge that from the beginning I have sought to find an alternative to Marxism as inappropriately simplistic, and to positivism as inappropriately reductionistic. I have also tried to escape from the many anti-historical theories common in the social sciences during the Twentieth Century, various kinds of structuralism that try to replace a dynamic process with an unchanging underlying reality, again as reductionistic. This is why I have opted for systems theory that starts with the presupposition that all of nature is built upon structured processes of change. There may be better theoretical approaches. Professor Iberall has informed me in personal conversation that fluid dynamics in physics provides a sounder theoretical basis than systems theory, but since I lack the mathematical sophistication to use and understand fluid dynamics, I have relied upon systems theory.

These choices are open to challenge, but in the end I believe I have incorporated many elements from many different perspectives. One of the advantages of this model seems to be its power to absorb various points of view. As an intellectual historian, I acknowledge that I have given special attention to ideas in history, to education, art, and religion, partly because these areas are traditionally neglected in the social sciences but necessary for a full understanding of human experience. It is also a strategy endorsed by systems theory, however, as I understand it. Consequently, if the model is successful, it could provide a basis for a broader cooperation among scholars and disciplines, embracing the humanities as well as the social sciences.

11) Empirical testing of the model does present some special problems. Because every historical cycle varies in detail and structure and remains unique, sometimes with a very strongly articulated pattern and sometimes with one much more subtle and obscure, it is not always easy to identify and allows experts in the period to disagree on interpretation of key elements and boundaries. It is appropriate to emphasize that in science a model is not rejected because various manifestations of it in nature vary in detail; every crystal and every snowflake differ, like every historical cycle. Still the model must illumine every example and be able to explain why the variation occur in different situations. There is a mutual interaction of the model and the examples, as the model helps to explain the example and the example helps to refine the model.

The Macro-History model should do likewise, but the complex variations in history and the incompleteness of evidence, never exhaustive until the last two centuries and sometimes frustratingly scanty, naturally produce a debate about interpretation among experts in the field, which is familiar to historians and characteristic of the discipline. This debate is complicated by the fact that various cultures have historical myths (to be explained later in the text) that can disguise particular changes or factors, like the Chinese emphasis on dynasties, but which nevertheless shape the historiographic tradition. Consequently the recognition of some cycles remains particularly problematic. In fact, there is almost always room for experts on a period to argue and debate definitions, assuming they are willing to consider the reality of structures in history at all, rather than simply a unique chain of events. Nevertheless I believe that there is generally more consensus among historians in the various periods and regions than often admitted.

Still the definitions about boundaries in time and space, and the key elements defining each particular society, should be subject to debate and reevaluation on the basis of new research, and yes also on the basis of which explanatory model is being used, but some consensus usually is also apparent. In making the charts and identification of particular cycles I have tried to follow the consensus of scholarship, sometimes with more confidence, sometimes with less, but recognizing the boundaries can be fuzzy. Systems theory allows for fuzzy boundaries as long as the core structures are widely recognized. This makes empirical testing difficult, in some cases impossible, usually probabilistic and tentative, but that is the nature of the historical sources and the complexity of process under study. In an important sense these realities make the need for a good model more critical, not less.

12) I acknowledge that there is a tension between rhetoric and "scientific analysis" in my presentation. The rhetorical is necessary because there remains an important heuristic side to my objective. Consequently I have worded some things in a purposely provocative manner, pressed some lines of analysis beyond my level of knowledge, and probably entered into some unnecessary controversies in various disciplines, because I am trying to defend a new point of view, a new orientation to most of my intended readers, to provoke thinking and counter-arguments, and establish a model in a field where no model is dominant and most are skeptical even about the possibility of having a model. I am not sure where this new orientation will lead for students and scholars, but I believe it has the potential of opening up new research and producing new insights about the historical process.

Yet I also believe that this exercise in modeling can and should be done in a "scientific spirit," as argued in Chapter I, and therefore, whenever possible, intuitive judgments, generally characteristic of history, should be replaced by the logical implications of the model in question, and the underlying methodology of the supporting theory, in this case systems theory. This tension will probably displease both those who support a scientific approach and those who reject such an approach in history, but for me it seems unavoidable in a "pre-scientific" (T. Kuhn) situation. Must not all new models be presented in a forceful way in any discipline? In any case, this model can not be fully evaluated, refined or rejected, until it can be seen as a whole, and that requires a balanced presentation that stretches my observations beyond the usual disciplinary boundaries and even requires some daring leaps. Many of my errors and short-comings can be corrected later without destroying the model as a whole, although, of course, there are also many conclusions that would destroy the model and require a better replacement.

In conclusion, I believe that this Macro-History model offers enough potential advantages to be considered seriously and subjected to a refining debate. For me it creates the possibility of cooperation between many fields of study and many scholars from a diversity of perspectives; it helps to identify where the problems lie in understanding the dynamics of cultural-historical change and opens up new problems with the potential of stimulating historical research; and it provides a basis for comparative history in a new and more defensible form. It solves the problem of relating the individual and society by considering the individual as a separate and different type of system. It also gives a more powerful way of understanding the role of art, education and religion, indeed ideas-culture in general, in the historical process. It also solves the dichotomy between nature and history that has plagued Western thought. With these potential advantages, it deserves a fair hearing in spite of its many short-comings.