Divide and Conquer: Augustine in the Divine Comedy

Abstract

Bible. O NE OF THE surprises in the Divine Comedy is the virtual absence of the figure of Augustine. He does appear briefly at the end of the Paradiso to take his eternal place in the heavenly rose, directly below the saints Francis and Benedict (32.35); but while Benedict is encountered at length in the sphere of Saturn (22) and Francis is praised for almost an entire canto by no less an authority than Thomas Aquinas (11), the Bishop of Hippo is only glimpsed in passing, in the eleventh hour of the poem's penultimate canto. He neither speaks nor is spoken about. It is almost as if, despite his choice seating in paradise, he were judged to be some minor citizen of the city of God rather than the theologian who described it at such imposing length. This minimal presentation in the Comedy is not what Dante's other works might have led one to expect.1 At the outset of the Convivio, for instance, it is to the Augustine of the Confessions that Dante appeals when he seeks a warrant for speaking about the course of his life as moving [non] buono in buono, e di buono in migliore, e di migliore in ottimo (1.2)-a curriculum vitae from bad to best that foreshadows the tripartite itinerary of the Comedy. In the Letter to Can Grande della Scala, Dante uses Augustine to authorize another kind of boldness: should readers have difficulty with Dante's claims to have been taken up into paradise (as was Paul), then let them turn to Augustine's De quantitate anime and no longer begrudge Dante the experience (et non invidebunt [351]).2 In Monarchia, morever, Dante cites only Augustine by name in referring to those who, although coming after Scripture, nonetheless write with something of its divine inspiration (Sunt etiam Scripture doctorum, Augustini et aliorum, quos a Spiritu Sancto adiutos ... [3.3]). Indeed, as Dante's impassioned letter to the Italian cardinals also argues, the church is bereft of genuine spiritual guidance in following the Bible's teaching precisely because it has discarded Augustine, along with other neglected theologians (iacet Augustinus abiectus [339]). Yet it is none other than the poet of the Comedy who seems to have