DANTE ALIGHIERI CENTENARY

New Zealand Tablet, 25 August 1921, Page 17

DANTE ALIGHIERI CENTENARY

The. followng is the text of the Encyclical letter on Dante, addressed by the Pope "to Our beloved sons, professors and pupils of all Catholic Institutes of learning on the occasion of the sixth centenary of the death" of Dante Alighieri."

''Beloved Sons: Greetings and Apostolic Benediction.

"Among the many and illustrious and talented men who are the pride of the Catholic Faith and who, besides in other fields, left particularly in that, of literature and art the immortal- fruits of their genius well deserving of recogntion by religion and civilisation, supreme arises Dante Alighieri, of whose death the sixth centenary is on the eve of being celebrated. His singular greatness never was put in so strong a light as it is to-day when not only Italy, justly proud to have given birth- to him, but all civilised nations, by means of special committees of learned men, prepare themselves to solemnise his memory, so that his sublime figure, the honor and glory of humanity, may be exalted by the whole world.

"We, therefore, in this universal concert of good men, must absolutely not fail to take part, but rather preside over it, because to -the Church especially belongs the right to call Alighieri her own.

"And as, on the beginning of Our Pontificate, in a letter directed to the Archbishop of Ravenna, We made Oursclf the promoter of repairs to the temple near which the Poet's remains are resting, so now, almost as an inauguration of the. cycle of the centenary festivities, We have deemed it opportune to address Our word to you all, beloved sons, who cultivate literature under the maternal vigilance of the Church to demonstrate even more clearly the close union of Dante with this Chair of Peter, and how the praises bestowed upon so distinguished a name, must necessarily in no small part, redound to the honor of th« Catholic Church.

"And first of all, since the divine Poet, during his whole life, professed and exemplified the Catholic religion, We may say that it is according to his wishes, that this solemn commemoration be made, as it will be made, under the auspices. of religion. As it will end in St. Francis in Ravenna, so let it begin in Florence, in his beautiful San Giovanni, to which, with intense nostalgia, the thoughts of the exile went back in the last years of his life when he desired to bo crowned poet. of this city of his baptism.

Disciple of St. Thomas Aquinas.

"Living in an age, which, collecting as an heritage from the ancients the. most splendid fruits of doctrine and of philosophical and theological speculation,, handed them down to posterity with the impression of the rigorous scholastic method, Dante, amidst the many currents of thought, which even then were diffused among the learned, became the disciple of that Prince of Schools, so illustrious for the angelic temper of his intellect, St. Thomas of Aquino. From him he drew almost all his philosophical and theological opinions, and while he neglected no.branch of human knowledge, he drank eagerly at the sources of Holy Scripture and of the Fathers.

"Having thus learnt almost all the science of his time and being particularly nourished with Christian knowledge, when he prepared to write, he took from the very field of religion the immense and vital theme which he wanted to sing in verse. In this, if one must admire the prodigious scope and acuteness of his intellect, one mustv also recognise that he received from the divine Faith the strong impulse of* inspiration, and that' he could thus embellish his immortal poem with many gems of revealed truth, no less than with all the splendors of art. In fact, his Comedy, which deservedly was called Divine, even in its various symbolic fictions and in the remembrances of the life of mortals on earth, has the sole object of glorifying the justice and the providence of Go 4 who rules the world in time and in eternity, and'chastises and rewards the actions of individuals and of human society.

"Therefore, in accordance with the divine revelation, in this poem shines the majesty of God One and Triune, the redemption, of mankind effected by the Word of God made Man, the immense mercy and liberality of Mary

Virgin and Mother, Queen of Heaven, and lastly the supreme glory of the saints, the angels and the redeemed; to which the infernal abyss forms a terrible contrast, with its angelic and human inhabitants forever damned; and, as a middle world between heaven and hell, the purgatory of souls destined, after expiation, to supreme blessedness.

Defender of Dogma. £

ll lt is a wonder, the way in which, in all the three canticles, he knows how to intertwine these and other dogmas with sapient design. And if the progress of astronomic sciences showed afterwards that his conception of the world had no foundation, and that the spheres supposed by the ancients did not exist, since the nature, the number and the course of the stars and heavenly bodies are quite different from what they thought, the fundamental principle never failed, that the universe, whichever may be the order that sustains it in its parts, is work of the creating and preserving action of God Almighty, Who moves and rules everything, and whose glory ' shines in one place more and less elsewhere '; and this earth that we inhabit, although it is not the centre of the universe, as once it was believed, nevertheless was the theatre of the primitive happiness of our forefathers, and witness of the fatal fall as well as of the human redemption, effected by the passion and death of Jesus Christ. "Therefore, the Divine Poet explained the threeformed life of the souls imagined by him, so as to illustrate, before the final judgement, the damnation of the wicked, the purgation of the good spirits, as well as the eternal happiness of the blessed, with a. light that was derived from the Faith. "Thus among the truths illustrated by Alighieri in the three books of his poem, as well as in his other works we believe there are many that may serve as teaching to the men of the present time. That Christians owe the greatest reverence to the Sacred Scripture and that thev must accept what is contained in it, Dante expressly affirms when he writes that ' although many are the writers of the divine word, He who dictates is One-God, who has designed to signify to us His pleasure by the pen of others ' (De Monarchia 111, 4.) Magnificent expression of a great truth! Thus also, when he affirms that the Old and the New Testament, which are prescribed for ever as the Prophet says,, contain spiritual teachings which transcend human reason, imparted by the Holy Ghost, who, through the Prophets and the sacred writers, by Jesus Christ coeternal Son of God, and by His disciples, revealed the truth supernatural and necessary to US (De Monarchia ill, k 16.) And very justly he says regarding the future he he accepts for it the most true doctrine of Christ, which 1S Way, Truth, and Light; Way, because through it we go without hindrance to the happiness of that immortality; Truth, because'it does not suffer any errorLight because it illuminates us in the darkness of the world's ignorance.' (Convivio 11, 0.) . "Scarcely less reverence does he show to those venerJw ri m T CUncils at Which no faithful Catholic doubts that Christ was present; and he holds in great esteem the writings of the Doctors, of Augustine and others o " he who doubts that they were assisted by the Holy Go rt them' S m \r fru i ts ' °; TT if he saw them —^e" mem. (Do Monarchia, 111, 3).

Respect for the Church.

I.- I! I *!,-", . not ' l<wssal T to recall the consideration in which Ahghieri held the authority of the Catholic Church and how he respected the power of the R„ ma „ Pontiff as that on which every law and institution, of the Catholb to Ch - s^ lf *"• Hence the e *Pfcatic admonition and the Sn Z **£ ■**? &nd the new lament and tie Pastor of the Church who guides vou • lot rhi« h a enough for your salvation.' 7 '■ 1S be

"He felt the evils of the Church, as if they were his ,own, and while he deplored and execrated £ ebell on against her Supreme Chief, he thus wrote to the Ita an Cardinals during the stay of the Popes in Avignon < We therefore, who confess the same Father and Son the same God and Man \ the same Virgin and Mother; we for whom SO6 Peter and"? TIV **** "^**** on £*£ Go Peter and feed the sacred fold" we, who on Rome

(on that Rome, to which after the pomp of so many triumphs, Christ with words and acts confirmed the empire of universe, and which Peter and Paul, the Apostles of the peoples, consecrated with their own blood as apostolic see), are obliged with Jeremias, not complaining for the future but for the present, to weep as on a widow and derelict, we are sorely grieved in seeing her reduced in such a condition, no less than in contemplating the deplorable sores of the heresies. (Epistle III). "For him the Roman Church is the most pious mother, the Bride'of the Crucifix; and to Peter, the infallible judge of revealed truth,, the most perfect submission is due on every matter of faith and morality. Therefore, although he believes that the authority of Emperor derives directly from God, he asserts, however, that this truth must not be so strictly understood, thai the Roman Prince be not subject in any thing to the Roman Pontiff; because this mortal felicity, is in a certain way subordinate to the immortal felicity. (De Monarchia 11, 16). Excellent, indeed, and wise principle, which, if it were still observed as it ought to be, would certainly bring to the States rich fruits of civil prosperity.

Man Battered by Fate.

"But, it will be said, he railed with insulting acrimony against the Sovereign Pontiffs of his time. It is true; but against those who differed from him in politics and whom ho believed to bo on the side of others who had driven him out of his own country. But one must pity a man, so battered by fate, if sometime, with ulcerated mind, he broke into invectives which exceeded all limits, and the more so, as, to exasperate his anger, false statements were artfully spread, as it offen happens, by political adversaries, ever inclined to interpret malignantly every happening. On the other side, who can deny that in those times there was much to be blamed in the clergy, and a spirit so devoted to the Church as Dante's was, could not but be disgusted; and we know that other men, eminent for holiness, loudly reproved them. "But although in his violent invectives he fell, rightly or wrongly on ecclesiastical personages, he never failed in the respect due to the Church and in < the reverence to the Supreme Keys'; wherefore in his political work, he purposed to defend his own opinion with that obsequiousness that must be used by a son pious towards the mother pious towards Christ, pious towards the Church, pious towards the Pastor, pious towards all those who profess the Christian religion, for the protection of truth. . (De Monarchia 111, 3). "Therefore, having based on these strong religious principles all the structure of his poem, it is not to be wondered if in it a treasure of Catholic doctrine is to be found; that is to say, not only the essence of philosophv and of Christian theology, but also the compendium of the divine laws much must preside over the order and the administration of the States; because Aligheri was not a man, who, in order to enlarge' his country or to gratify the princes, would assert that the State has the right of denying justice and right, which he well knew to be the chief foundation of all civil nations.

Poem that Made Converts.

It is impossible, then, to express the intellectual enjoyment procured by the study of the Supreme Poetbut no less is the advantage that the student derives from .it, or perfecting his artistic taste and kindling him with zeal for virtue; with the condition, however, that he be tree from prejudices and open to the influence of truth And while the number of Catholic poets who unite utility m h pleasure is not small the singularity of Dante consists in this that delighting the reader with the wonderful variety of imagery the brilliant dazzle of colors, the grandiosity of expression and of thoughts, he entices him that I 1 nst r™ sdom; and nobod y ca forget that he open y declared that he composed his poem, to give everyone ■ vital nourishment.' ' And, in fact we know! hat even recently, some men, not contrary, but far apart IIZ W, S mt ' S , tUdying With love the °™* Comedy, of thf r grace rf.God, began first to admire the truth of the Cathohc Faith, and at the end threw themselves enthusiastically to the arms of the Church. --•' ?

Opportune Observance. “What Wo have said already is sufficient to demonstrate how opportune it is that on the occasion of this universal centenary, everyone should intensify his own zeal to preserve the Faith, which so luminously revealed itself, if anyone, in Alighieri as supporter of culture and of art. Because in him not only the vastness, of genius is to be admired, but also the greatness of the argument, which holy religion offered to his song. If the acuteness of his intellect was sharpened by the meditation and study on the masterpeces of the ancient classics, it was tempered even more strongly as we have said, by the writings of Doctors and Fathers, who gave to him the powerful wings on which he soared to wander ,in horizons much more wide than those enclosed in the narrow ambit of nature. Therefore, although divided from us by an interval of centuries, he still preserves the freshness of a poet of our times, and certainly he is much more modern than some recent poets, who exhume that paganism, which was swept away for ever by Christ. triumphant on His Cross. The same piety breathes in Alighieri, that breathes in us, the same feelings, the same faith, and the same veils shade the truth that so exalts us, and which from heaven has come down to us.

Poet of Christian Ideals. “This is his chief merit; to have been a Christian poet; to have sung in divine accents those Christian ideals which ho passionately admired in all the splendor of their beauty, feeling them deeply, and living them. And those who dare to deny this glory to Dante and reduce the religious substratum of the Divine Comedy to a vague ideology, without any foundation of truth, disown in Dante what is his characteristic and the inspiration of all his other merit.

"And if Dante owes so much of his fame and greatness to the Catholic Faith, let this one example suffice, passing others in silence, to show how untrue it is that the homage of mind and heart to God, clips the wings of genius, when on the contrary, it spurs and elevates it and how wrongly opposed to the progress of culture and refinement are those who. want to banish from public instruction any idea of religion..

"Very deplorable is, indeed, the method reigning today, of educating the studious youth as if God did not exist, and without the smallest allusion to the supernatural. Because, although in some places the ' Sacred Poem ' is not kept away from the schools, and is on the contrary ■included among these books that must be deeply studied, it does not, however, bring usually to young people that vital nourishment it is destined to produce, as, owing to the secular direction they have received, they are not disposed, as they ought to be, towards the truths of Faith.

Fruit of Dante’s Centenary. Would to God that tin's were the fruit of Dante’s centenary that in all places where literary teaching is imparted, the sublime Poet were held in the honor due to him, and that he himself were to the pupils teacher of Christian doctrine; he who had no other object in his poem than to raise the mortals from the slate of misery (that is of sin) and to lead them to the state of happiness-that is, of divine grace.

"And you, beloved sons, who have the fortune to cultivate literature under the training of the Church, love and hold dear, as'you do, this sublime Poet, whom We do not hesitate to proclaim the most eloquent singer of the Christian idea. The more you will profit from his study, tho more your culture will rise, irradiated by the splendors of truth, and stronger and more profound will be your defence towards the Catholic Faith.

As a pledge of the heavenly favors and as attestation of paternal benevolence, We impart to you all, beloved sons,, with the effusion of Our heart, the Apostolic Benediction. "Given in Rome, at. St. Peter's, 30th April, 1921 seventh year of Our Pontificate. ' ■

"Bbnedictus PP. XV."