Discussion 7

Brenda Deen Schildgen

Dante's Utopian Political Vision, the Roman Empire, and the Salvation of Pagans

^^ "'[•••] velut in ultimum finem, omnia nostra opera ordinantur, quia est pax

universalis [...]."

{Monarchia I. lv.5)'

"Ethics," writes Giorgio Agamben, "begins only when the good is revealed to

consist in nothing other than a grasping of evil [...] truth is revealed only by

giving a place to non-truth — that is, as a taking-place of the false, as an exposure of its own innermost impropriety" (Coming Community IV). The premise that truth cannot be understood except by showing the false drives both

the ethical and poetic rhythms in the Commedia. Starting with the false, the

poem consistently exposes its contrasting truth. However, because of the apparently moral standing of the virtuous pagans, one of the more perplexing

and elusive aspects of this dichotomy between false and true is the ethical

conundrum Dante poses about the judgment that condemns the pagans to Limbo.

This essay argues that Dante's Utopian politics based on Orosius's

historiographical legacy is precisely what directs him to exile his Latin poets — Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan — to Limbo. Their appearance in the poem in contrast to those pagans Dante selects for salvation suggests that Dante believed

his ancient poets lacked the vision to see the Empire as the instrument of

providential history.

In Inferno 4, Dante the author exalts himself ("m'essalto" 120)^ in the

company of the ancient poets, even while he seems to be arguing that despite

their literary gifts, the poets deserved Limbo, the "verde smalto" (118). Dante

returns to the issue of the virtuous excluded from salvation throughout the poem,

but Paradiso 19 and 20 particularly address the problem. Indeed, scholars have

argued that Par. 19: 70-78, where Dante raises the issue of the salvation of non-

Christians, perhaps suggests Dante's doubts about the condemnation of the

virtuous pagans in Limbo (Padoan 120-22; Foster; Sanguineti 235-54; Casella,

"Figurazione"). Of course, Dante does select certain figures ft^om the ancient

' "[...] all our human actions are directed as to their Una! end. That means is universal

peace."

^ Throughout this essay. I refer to the Giorgio Petrocchi critical edition of The Divine

Comedy used by Singleton.

Annali d 'Italianistica 1 9 (200 1

)

52 Brenda Deen Schildgen

world as redeemed pagans — Statius, {Purg. 21 and 22), Cato (Purg. 1), Trajan (Par. 20; 44), and Ripheus (Par. 20: 68). Therefore, his decision to exile the

ancient poets emphasizes that Dante chooses to distinguish pagans he deemed worthy of salvation from those he assigned to Limbo. Also, the tantalizing void

created by the absence of Livy and "M buono Augusto" {/nf. 1: 71), and Virgil's

strong presence in Inferno and Purgatorio (along with the great poets of his

century, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan) emphasizes Dante's distinction between his

condemned Latin poets and other pagans he chose to save. The ethics of salvation is thus revealed by one "non-truth" giving way to an absolute truth, but the latter cannot be seen without also understanding and knowing the other, as

Agamben argues.

Taking into consideration Dante's commitment to the Roman imperial model of government, the cultural legacy of Virgil, and the status of the salvation

of pagans as an intellectual and theological issue from the twelfth century

onwards, this essay examines the ethical criteria Dante adopts for the salvation

of pagans.

Salvation of Pagans

The salvation of pagans is not nearly the unorthodox position that many believe it to be (Caperan; Sullivan). There were strong arguments from the twelfth

century on reaching back to Pauline and Augustinian statements that moral Jews

and pagans who had lived before the coming of Christ had equal access to salvation. For if all mankind had the same roots and the same creator God, they

all had to have access to the same possibility of salvation. This is the argument

that Augustine made on several occasions: "All together we are members of

Christ and are his body; and not just we who are in this place only, but throughout the world; and not at this time only, but — what shall I say — from Abel the just man until the end of time, as long as man begets and is begotten,

whoever among the just made his passage through this life, whether now, that is,

not in this place, but in the present life, or in generations to come, all the just are

this one body of Christ, and individually his members" (Serm. 341:9.11 Col.

1499-1500). Note here Augustine's emphasis on the Roman virtue of "justice,"

which makes mankind members of the body of Christ. Similarly in De Vera Religione^ he wrote that in his time Christianity was the one true religion

(XXV.46) but in the Retractationes^ pointing out that Christianity did not exist in

antiquity, he contended that Christ's salvation had to be open to all mankind

from the beginning of time because God's purpose in creating the universe was

the salvation of humanity (I.xiii.3). Here there is no stipulation about baptism or

"knowing" Christ intellectually.

The rediscovery of Aristotle in the twelfth century likewise gave rise to

persuasive arguments, particularly presented by Peter Abelard, among others,

that the Greeks — Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates — as well as the great Latin writers must have access to heaven under the same rules as the Hebrew

Dante 's Political Values, the Roman Empire, and the Salvation ofPagans 53

patriarchs {Introd. ad Theol. PL 178. I. 25. Col. 1034 C-D; Theol. Christ II. Col. 1 179C and Expositio ad. Rom.'" I Col. 802 D). But even more important, as argued by Hugh of St. Victor (De Sacram. 11. pt. Vl.vii), Albert the Great (Commentarii in tertium libri sententiarum, dist. XXV, B, art. II, Ad. 6), Thomas Aquinas {Summa Theologica. Secunda Secundae, Quest. 1; art. VII), and Bonaventure (!n tertium librum sententiarum. d. 25, a. 1, q.2, ad. 6), for

those who had not received the sacrament of baptism, a conversion of heart might be sufficient, for the providence of God was deemed most merciful (Caperan 170-200). Thus there was widespread belief in the possibility of

salvation, particularly for those who had lived before Christ, or for those who had never encountered Christianity but were nonetheless just. Furthermore and

more importantly in a sense, from the twelfth century on, the salvation of pagans

was a topic open to theological discussion without any absolute convictions

regulating the conclusions except that those people who were eligible for salvation had to be virtuous.

Dante's Political Ideas

"Romanae spatium est urbis et orbis idem" ('The space of Rome's city is the

same as the world" Fasti 2.684). Ovid's proclamation equates the orbis terrarum

with the Roman Empire and with the city of Rome as its center. This legacy of the ancient Roman imperial hegemony shaped Dante's geo-political imagination because for him, the peace of the political world was coterminous with the space

of the Roman Empire (Mazzotta 1-13). The birth of Christ during the reign of Augustus Caesar, first Roman Emperor, was, as for Orosius and in contrast to Augustine (Fortin vii-xxvi), too fortuitous for Dante to dismiss as mere

coincidence. Dante, in fourteenth-century Italy plagued by civil strife, whether

inter-city or intra-city, looked back to an unproblematic peace he imaginatively

created out of the memories of the ancient Roman Empire, the model for the time

of peace he desired for the present. Dante's desire is a desperate attempt to

restore Rome as the world's center and to reinstate Roman civic virtue (Hollander and Rossi 74). In his own time, their value had been shattered by

Italy's inter-city squabbling, the relocation of the Pope to Avignon, and the

rejection of Henry VII, whom, in his Letters V, VI, and VII, Dante had

welcomed to Italy to be crowned emperor-elect (1310-1312).

Dante's views on the Roman Empire are, of course, well known to scholars

of his work.-^ Memory of the Roman imperium as a structure of civic power

formed Dante's desire for a restored Roman Empire. In this political vision, the

^ For works on Dante's idea of Rome, his politics, and ihe roles of pope and emperor, see

Nardi. "11 concetto" 2 1 5-75 and 'intorno" 1 5 1 -3 1 3; Silverstein 1 87-2 1 8; d'Entreves 311-

50; Barbi 49-68; Kantorowicz; Davis. Dante and the Idea ofRome and "Dante's Vision"

23-41; De Angelis; Limentani 113-37; Mazzoni, "Teoresi" 9-111; Mazzotta 66-106;

DuBois 28-51. 52-70; Ferrante 3-131; Schnapp 14-35; Sistrunk; Armour; Scott 29-59.

54 Brenda Deen Schildgen

virtues with which he characterized the Romans, justice in particular, would rule,

and the Church would lose all temporal power. But in the Monarchia, the

Commedia, Convivio, and the political letters, there is no imperial infrastructure,

no concrete political program; only Utopian political visions based on nostalgia

and desire. Davis sums up Dante's theory of history and politics: "It rests on

memory and desire, memory of an alleged golden age under Augustus, a universal peace that Dante believed existed only once in human history, and

desire for a savior, evidently a new Augustus, who would restore this unique and vanished order to the modern world" ("Dante and the Empire" 73).

To eliminate wars and their cause, as Dante proposed in the Convivio, it is

necessary that "tutta la Terra, e quanto all'umana generazione a possedere e

dato, esser Monarcia, cioe uno solo Principato e uno Principe avere, il quale,

tutto possedendo e piu desiderare non possendo, li re tenga contenti nelli termini

delli regni, sicche pace intra loro sia, nella quale si posino le cittadi, e in questa

posa le vicinanze s'amino, in questo amore le case prendano ogni loro bisogno,

il quale preso, Tuomo viva felicemente; ch'e quello per che Tuomo e nato" (4. 4.

4). Dante's political vision incorporates the whole earth under a single rule and a

single ruler! This grand poetic project, like his later prophetic utterances in the

Paradiso, expresses his Utopian desire for peace in the world. As Justinian says

in Paradiso 6, "Poi, presso al tempo che tutto 'I ciel vole / redur lo mondo a suo

modo sereno, / Cesare per voler di Roma il tolle" (55-57). Dante probably developed his political ideas under the influence of Remigio

dei Girolami who was a lettore at the studium at the Dominican Santa Maria

Novella in Florence (Davis, "The Florentine Studio"' 347-61). Remigio, a

Florentine born in 1247, was a disciple of Thomas Aquinas in Paris in 1269, and

died in 1319 in Florence. He gave courses at the studium that lay people could

attend, and among his many sermons are De bono pads, De iustitia, and De

peccato usurae, all of which are themes in Dante's poetry. Remigio, in contrast

to Dante, however, developed a philosophy of community closer to Thomistic,

Augustinian, and Aristotelian social-political thought, which emphasized the idea

of social collectivism and civitas, both of which would affect a general political

theory (Davis "Remigio de' Girolami"; De Matteis; Capitani, "II De Peccato

Usure'';). Two other sources of inspiration for Dante's political ideas, particularly in terms of church-state relationships, are John of Salisbury and

Bernard of Clairvaux. John's Policraticus discussed at length the respective

roles of king and emperor (Pezard 163-91); likewise, Bernard's De

Consideratione addressed the limits of papal power in the secular domain

(Botterill 13). Unlike Remigio's more practical, although visionary politics,

Dante's empire, emperor, and pope as conceived in the Monorchia are Utopian

ideals (Capitani, "Spigolatura" 81), for he has constructed the myth of the pax

romano as a radical critique of his own age of political turmoil and fratricidal

conflict. The Monorchia is clearly in dialogue with the documents issued by the

offices of the Emperor, the Pope, the King of France and the King of Naples, but

Dante 's Political Values, the Roman Empire, and the Salvation ofPagans 55

Dante's politics nonetheless remain a project of his desires and do not conclude

in a specific political action (Limentani 133; Davis, "Dante and the Empire").

Whether the poet's idea of the empire was in support of Henry V!l or

another emperor, hope fuelled his commitment to the possibility of a world

unified by justice and liberty. This was the point made by Giovanni Gentile in a

lecture titled "La profezia di Dante," delivered Feb. 17, 1918 {Studi di Dante

69). As a literary undertaking, Dante's political Utopia was a mimesis of the

Roman Empire as ruled ideally by Justinian {Par. 6), according to Law, not the

military-political project of Constantine or the political-monarchical aspirations

of the French kings who had initiated the crusades (Schildgen, "Dante and the

Crusades"). Dante was the first to advocate the idea of a "universal temporal

community," which would demand the "collaboration of a completely unified

human race" (Gilson 165-66).

Although Convivio (4. 5) and Monarchia (I. 16) recall the historical time of

peace when Augustus Caesar reigned, by providence contemporaneously with

the birth of Christ, to prove why Rome should be the center of his Utopian plans,

Dante also turned to the legendary story of Aeneas and the Virgilian text. He

features Aeneas's miscegenated family history and Rome's hybrid culture to

support his argument for Rome as the heir to universal government. In other

words, Rome's and the Romans' intrinsic superiority, in addition to being

divinely supported {Convivio 4. 4), he argued, was earned by virtue and by

hereditary right {Monarchia 2-3) (Silverstein). Rome was uniquely situated to

take on leadership of the world because its exemplary "nobility" was its "hybrid"

inheritance. Dante argued that through Aeneas Rome combined all three

continents (Asia, Europe, and Africa), thus moving the center of the world, in

Dante's view, to Italy through hereditary rights and miscegenation. Dante

rereads history through poeta noster, Virgil, and he adopts the Roman poets'

imperium as his literary project, even though some of these poets were clearly

less optimistic about these universal ideals than Dante. Thus Dante adopts the

idea of the Roman Empire of his Roman forbears, but his attitude towards it

differs. While the Roman poets proclaim it, they simultaneously veil their

proclamations with unresolved tensions about its goals and achievements,

whereas Dante uses it as his symbolic geo-political Utopia that he wishes his own

world to imitate.

The Legacy of Virgil

Critics generally agree that the Roman poets share a common pessimism about

human behavior, particularly in the political sphere, which called into question

the goals of the Empire."* This pessimism in his poetic forebears may indeed lie

'^ Those who have taken up these tensions in the Roman poets include Leach 191;

Johnson, Darkness \'isible, whose thesis is the visible darkness in Virgil's poem; Conte

56 Brenda Deen Schildgen

behind Dante's confinement of "le gente di molto valore" {Inf. 4, 44) to Limbo.

Virgil himself tells Dante that he and the others are there for no other fault ("non

per altro rio" Inf. 4, 40) than that they did not adore God properly. Now they live in desire without hope, a fitting contrapasso for those who lived without hope

but with desire in life:

E s' e' furon dinanzi al crislianesmo

non adorar debitamente a Dio;

e di questi cotai son io medesmo.

Per tai difetti. non per altro rio,

semo perduti, e sol di tanto otTesi

che sanza spemc vivemo in disio.

{Inferno 4, 37-42)

Because Christian political optimism and hope in Orosian historiography was

linked to the Roman imperiunu this living without hope distances the Roman

poets from Dante's idea of a redeemed history. It is true that the added pathos of

Dante's parting from his maestro in Purgatorio 27 provides a substantial

aesthetic reason for assigning Virgil to Limbo. But the tragic, or hopeless, and

ultimately Stoic view of history that Virgil reveals in his poem might also help

explain why Dante's Virgil ends up in Limbo along with all the other Roman

poets who concomitantly shared Virgil's misgivings about the Empire.

Dante deviates from medieval writers who allegorized Virgil and made him

a hidden Christian. This reading habit was based on Eclogue 4, which seemed to

prophesy the coming of the savior and also on allegorical readings of the .Aeneid

that heralded a triumphant Christian Rome.'' Hollander and others are correct in

141-84; Segal; Galinsky 210-61; DuBois 28-51; Armstrong 93-116; Quint 21-96; and

.lohnson. Momentary Monsters. ^ The range of readings of Virgil in the long millennium called the Middle Ages is

expansive. Besides the interpretation that he was a prophet of Christianity, those readings

also include allegorizations of the Aeneid, as for example, by Fulgentius, the fourth

century Macrobius. followed later by the twelfth century Bernardus Silvestris. both of

whom advance neo-platonic readings. Servius's fourth-century commentary adopted a

more literal approach, whereas the twelfth-century .lohn of Salisbury's discussion of the

.Aeneid in Policralici I and II, as Augustine's earlier use and reference to Virgil, reveal an

intense appreciation of his poetry, which could prove philosophically useful. One might

also include here Dante's Monorchia, which, while interpreting Virgil's poem, makes it a

political allegory for the founding of Rome as part of God's providential plan. For a

recent and thorough summary work on these readings, see Courcelle and Pierre and

Jeanne Courcelle. For readings of Virgil in the Middle Ages, see Comparer's still

outstanding survey; for Servius's commentary, see Thomas; de Lubac 233-62. Hollander

surveys the late classical and later traditions for reading Virgil, which included

literal/historical, allegorical, and moral (Donatus. Servius. Macrobius. Fulgentius.

Prudentius. Augustine, .lerome, Isidore of Seville, and Bernardus Silvestris) in .lacoff and

Dante 's Political Values, the Roman Empire, and the Salvation ofPagans 57

arguing that Dante's Virgil is "first and foremost the Virgil of the Aeneid ?ind not

the Virgil of the commentators" {Allegory 96). Particularly in the Commedia where he quotes the Aeneid frequently, the acuity of Dante's reading habits

makes it very evident that he has moved beyond the commentaries circulating in his times. His reading is not the literal Virgil of Servius, nor the allegorical

reading of Fulgentius, nor the neo-platonist allegory of Bernardus Silvestris,

although hints of all of these can be seen in the Commedia.^ Dante's reading of

Virgil shares with Saint Augustine's a great appreciation for the lyric power of

Virgil's poetry (Hagendahl):

"Or se' tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte

che spandi di parlar si largo fiume?"

"Tu se' lo mio maestro e '1 mio autore.

tu se' solo colui da cu' io lolsi

lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore"

(Inf. 1.79-80. 85-87)

Dante has in common with Augustine also a similar habit of reading the Aeneid as history. In the Monarchia, Dante freely uses Virgil's story of Aeneas's

conquest of Latium to establish the superior nobility of the Roman people and their right to rule the world. In the Commedia, he continues his imperial polemic,

but he sets the story of the founding of Rome against the poet who sang its glories. Having Virgil label his own poem a "tragedy" ("I'alta mia tragedia" Inf. 20, 1 13), Dante presents his ancient friend as blind to the providential history of

Rome. Virgil is "de li altri poeti onore e lume" (Inf. 1, 82); he is Dante's guide

through "la citta dolente"; he is "il lume" (Purg. 22, 68) to whom Statius could say, "Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano" (Purg. 22, 73). However, he is confined

to a permanent "esilio," rhymed with "Virgilio" {Par. 26, 116, 118), to where, as

Adam says, Dante's lady moved him ("mosse tua donna" Par. 26, 1 18), perhaps an ironic use of the word, since Virgil can never move (Barolini, Dante's Poets

253; Allan: Barolini, "Q.").

Schnapp 96-103. Of Dante's reading he writes, "the major impulse behind Dante's sense

of Virgil springs from his reading Virgil as Virgil "read' himself; treating the literal sense

as the record of actual events" (103). See also Mazzoni, "Saggio" 29-206; Hollander.

"Dante's Misreadings" 79-93; 265-270; Padoan; lannucci 69-128; DuBois 28-51;

Barolini, The Vndivine Comedy 76-80; see also Hollander, "II Virgilio dantesco." For the

role of tensions between Augustine's critique of Virgil's poem and Dante's undermining

of Virgil, see Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert 147-91; Paratore; Pasquazi 45-69;

Hollander. "The Tragedy" 131-218.

^ Hollander, Allegory 92-103; see also Ronconi, who concludes that "Dante sa che

scrittori cristiani. da Lattanzio a Prudenzio a Abelardo, intesero I'ecloga come profetica;

ma il pari di S. Girolamo non crede a un Virgilio "cristiano senza cristo'" (570).

58 Brenda Deen Schildgen

Dante's Redeemed Pagans The criterion for the salvation of the pagans in Dante's poem provides an important clue to his own theology of salvation for the ancient world. In Paradiso 19 and 20, Dante takes up his own concern about whether there is salvation outside of Christianity (Jacomuzzi). Canto 20, with the appearance of

Ripheus, a pre-Christian pagan character (68) from Virgil's Aeneid {U. 339, 394,

and 426-27), and Trajan, a post-Christian pagan (44-45), introduces a question

about salvation outside of Christian time (Foster; Russo; Schildgen, "Dante and

the Indus"). Likewise, the appearance of Cato, a pagan suicide and supporter of

the Roman Republic in Purgatorio 1 and 2, unsettles any convictions that the poem conforms to a narrow version of Christianity. The presence of these figures on the way to salvation, or already saved souls, disrupts the claims to an

exclusively Judeo-Christian heaven. When we consider both whom among the pagans Dante chose to save and whom he praised while leaving in silence their places in the afterlife, we can see an interesting pattern. In fact, Caperan suggests

that Dante is more restrictive on the salvation of pagans than the theology of his

own time gave him license to be (206-12). Therefore, we have to look for some special reasons for his choices. In Paradiso 20, Dante hints at what

characteristics single out the saved pagans. Speaking of Trajan, Dante has the

Eagle say,

"Che Tuna de lo 'nferno, u' non si ricdc

gia mai a buon voler. torno a I'ossa;

e cio di viva spene fu mercede:

di viva spene, che mise la possa

nc' prieghi fatti a Dio per suscitarla.

si che potesse sua voglia esser mossa."

(Par. 20. 106-111)

The other, Ripheus, "tutto suo amor la giu pose a drittura" (20, 121). Thus,

the first, Dante doubly emphasizes, possessed living hope, whereas the second,

also given over to righteousness, possessed hope and love. What made these

figures unique was their openness and commitment to hope and to love. His

emphasis on love and hope (rather than the Roman cardinal virtues alone) points

to the criteria Dante has elected to decide which pagans to save and which to

leave in Limbo; their selection reflects this dispensation.

Dante sends Statius, who stands in poetic opposition to Virgil, who is not

saved, to heaven. Like Ripheus, Cato, and Trajan, Statius was deeply committed

to the good of the state, and, with Domitian's patronage, he was a strong

Dante 's Political Values, the Roman Empire, and the Salvation ofPagans 59

supporter of the Empire.^ While claiming that Virgil's poetry made him both a poet and a Christian, Statius nonetheless is very different from Virgil. But

although his poetry, like Virgil's, condemns Greek violence and treachery, in focusing on Greek failures Statius's poetry lacks Virgil's pessimistic concern

with the generalized human incapacity to control impulses, an emotional handicap that Virgil places at the heart of history's blindness in the Aeneid.

Virgil's position follows from the Stoic legacy that informs the poetry of all his

Roman poetic companions in Limbo. Although Stoicism in particular experienced a rebirth in the Renaissance,

and Seneca's importance in the later period is well established (Pena; Daraki;

Colish; Verbeke 1-19), it has not been generally recognized how widespread both Stoic and Epicurean ideas were in the Middle Ages. Cicero and Seneca

were the two most important sources of Stoic ideas throughout the Middle Ages,

but Ovid, Lucan, Horace, and Virgil all show interest in one or the other

philosophy. Virgil's hint about the transmigration of souls in Book VI of the

Aeneid (724-51) links him with Platonism and Stoic ethics, and his sense of

ineluctable and destructive forces, whether of human passions or of divine

origin, likewise links him with Stoicism. In the tradition of the Stoic critique of

Roman and Macedonian imperial aggrandizement, Lucan's Book 10 of the Pharsalia reflects this Stoic conviction. The Pythagorean discourse of Book 15

in the Metamorphoses exposes Epicureanism as Ovid contrasts Pythagorean

philosophy's Stoic ethic to Epicurean pleasure (15, 59-478). Padoan had argued

that Dante used Fulgentius to develop an allegorical reading of Statius's

Thebaid, whereby Theseus as hero became a figure for Christ. More convincing

is Barolini's argument that Statius identifies himself with providential history

because he says, echoing Virgil's "buon Augusto" {Inf. 1, 71), that he was born

under '"1 buon Tito" {Purg. 21, 82; on this issue see: Barolini, Dante's Poets

263; Di Scipio 85-86). Dante identifies Titus as one of the critical emperors in

Justinian's providential history of Rome (Par. 6, 92). Thus one dimension of Dante's decision to save Statius is not merely his support of the Empire, but

recognition that he represents an optimistic view of history, which saw the

founding of Rome and the pacification of the Mediterranean basin by Romans as

central moments in salvation history.

Ripheus — "Cadit et Ripheus, iustissimus unus / qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus aequi" ("Ripheus, too, falls, foremost in justice among the

' This fact was known in the Middle Ages because all medieval Statius manuscripts

identified him with the reign of Domitian. For discussions of Statius and his Christianity,

see Brugnoli. "Stazio in Dante" who argued that Statius's Christianity was an invention

of Dante's. But in a more recent article he argues that, though he believes that Dante had

special reasons for making Statius Christian, it was not his invention ("Lo Stazio"). See

also Barolini, Dante's Poets 256-69; Heilbron; Padoan argues that for Dante, Statius's

hero Theseus was a type of Christ figure (134-36).

60 Brenda Deen Schildgen

Trojans, and most zealous for the right" Aeneid II, 426-27) — is among the just rulers in Paradiso (20, 68). As a Trojan noted, according to Virgil, for justice,

Ripheus belongs to a select group of moral pre-Christian pagans whose people

would participate in the providential founding of Rome. On the other hand, Dante recalls the emperor Trajan (b. 53, d. 117; reigned 98-1 17) who lived after Christ's birth as the emperor "il cui valore / mosse Gregorio e la sua gran

vittoria" ("whose worth moved Gregory to his great victory" Purg. 10, 74-75).

Trajan's story was actually a celebrated exemplum of the possibility of the

salvation of pagans in the period, because believing that Trajan could be saved,

even after death, left open the possibility that any model pagan could also be

saved (Caperan 167-68). A medieval tradition recorded in Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Historiale (XI. 46; XXIII. 22) and told in the Vita S. Gregorii Magni

of Paulus Diaconus, held that Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), seeing the

famous story of a widow's appeal on Trajan's column, was so "moved" that he

prayed that Trajan be released from hell (Vickers). John of Salisbury's

Policraticus refers to Trajan as "Gloriam tamen militarem moderatione

superavit, Romae et per provincias omnibus se aequalem exhibens" ("By

moderation he has risen above military glory both at Rome and throughout the provinces, showing himself fair to all" Policraticus I.V.8). Thomas Aquinas

praises him in the same way {Summa III, suppl.71.5). Tradition held that Trajan

had responded with generosity and a sense of justice to the woman whose son

had been killed. Dante writes, "Or ti conforta; ch'ei convene / ch'i' solva il mio

dovere anzi ch'i' mova:/ giustizia vuole e pieta mi ritene" {Purg. 10, 91-93).

Dante's version of Trajan suggests the influence of John of Salisbury's

Policraticus where he receives an encomium for his ideal leadership which

concludes, "Felicior Augusto, melior sis Traiano" ("Happier than Augustus,

better than Trajan")^ Dante characterizes Trajan with essential Roman virtues,

"giustizia" and "pieta," both celebrated in Virgil's Aeneid as ideals, but

° "Gloriam tamen militarem moderatione superavii. Romae tamen et per provincias

omnibus se aequalem exhibens. amicos salutandi causa frequentans vel egrolantes vel

testis diebus. cum eisdem indiscreta vicissim habens convivia. vehiculis eorum et

vestibus indifferenter utens, publice et privatim dilans omnes, immunitates civitatibus

largiens, relaxans tributa provinciis. nulli gravis, cams omnibus, adeo et usque ad nosram

etatem in senatu non aliter principibus acclametur: Felicior Augusto, melior sis Traiano!"

"Quare Traianus videatur omnibus praeferendus" (By moderation he has risen above

military glory, both in Rome and throughout the provinces showing himself the equal of

all. For the sake of greeting friends he spent time with the sick, and on festive days he,

more than once, gave them all a place at the dinner table. Me would ride in their carts and

dress like them. Publicly and privately he would enrich all. bestowing exemptions on

citizens, reducing taxes in the provinces. He was heavy-handed with none, dear to all. So

that even in our day in the Senate, leaders are acclaimed in no other way than. "You are

happier than Augustus, better than Trajan'" Policraticus I. 315).

Dante 's Political Values, the Roman Empire, and the Salvation ofPagans 61

transformed and translated into Dante's own ideological idiom.^ Like Ripheus,

Trajan finds himself among the just rulers in Dante's heaven {Par. 20, 44-45).

But there is another feature to Trajan that cannot be casually overlooked.

Not only was the story of Trajan's generosity to the widow widespread, but so

too was the conviction that his sins had been remitted as a consequence. Thus

Thomas Aquinas wrote "quod Traianus precibus beati Gregorii ad vitam fuerit

revocatus et ita gratiam consecutus sit, per quam remissionem peccatorum habuit

et per consequens immunitatem a poena" ("that by the prayers of blessed

Gregory Trajan would be called back to life and thus attain the grace through

which he had the forgiveness of sin and consequently freedom from punishment"

Siimma III, supp. 71,5). Repeating John of Salisbury's "Felicior Augusto, melior

sis Traiano" (Comentum III 285), Benvenuto da Imola's gloss points to the

virtues "umilta" and "giustizia" in Trajan: "certe maxima humiliatio fuit quod

altissimus princeps ita inclinaret imperatoriam maiestatem ad audiendam

mulierculam plorantem, sub superbis signis, in campo martio superbo, inter

equites superbos" ("certainly greater was that humiliation whereby the highest

emperor so bent down his imperial majesty to hear the simple woman begging

beneath the exalted emblems, in the exalted martian field, among his exalted

knights" Comentum III 288-89).

Even though Dante clearly associated Trajan with this story of the widow,

which he uses as a circumlocution for talking about him without naming him,

"colui che piu al becco mi s'accosta,/ la vedovella consolo del figlio" {Par. 20,

44-45), Trajan was equally famous for restoring the Empire from decadence, a

history celebrated on Trajan's Column in Rome and recorded in Orosius and

repeated by John of Salisbury in Polleraticus. The column had survived,

tradition held, because Gregory had seen the story of the widow carved into it,

which led to his concern for Trajan. Orosius writes that Trajan was selected

when Nerva recognized that the state was decadent and almost in ruins, "qua

quondam legerat Nerva Hispanum virum Traianum, per quem respublica

reparata est [...]" ("with which Nerva had chosen the Spaniard Trajan, through

whom the state was restored" VI 1.34, 2). Thus Trajan is a figure who represents

the idea of rulership based on worthiness, rather than on inheritance, a position

Dante also had argued in Convivio, for which he gives the example of Hugh

Capet, "figliuol d'un beccaio di Parigi" {Purg. 20, 52), and which Cacciaguida

also supports in Par. 16. Furthermore, Orosius emphasizes Trajan's role in

pacifying the Roman territories, for under Trajan the Empire reached its largest

expansion, including not just the Mediterranean basin but Gaul, Britannia,

Germania, the Euphrates and Tigris river basins, Seleucia, and Babylonia.

Orosius conferred divine intervention on Trajan's reign because Nerva's

^ See Garrison for a history and analysis of the use ofpietas and iustitia from the ancient

Romans to Dryden; Ball; Silverstein for the importance of pietas in the De Monorchia

(192-94); Hollander and Rossi also discuss Roman republican virtues (69-75).

62 Brenda Deen Schildgen

selection of Trajan as his adoptive son and heir was "per quern revera adfiictae

reipublicae divina provisione consuluit" ("through whom by divine foresight the good of the state so severely wounded was restored" VII, 1 1,1). Thus Trajan's

story combines four central issues for Dante: divine and providential interest in

history which led to the pacification and expansion of the Empire; rule based on

worth rather than blood; and commitment to the people of the Empire exercised

with the Roman civic virtues of humility and justice. Dante has no precedent for placing Cato (95-46 BC), a supporter of the

Roman Republic, in Purgatory. Silverstein drew attention to how Dante deviated from standard views on Cato in the Middle Ages. He wrote, "Dante's estimation

of the suicide of Utica thus appears in opposition to that of his Christian sources,

preferring the eulogies of Cicero, Seneca, and the other ancient authorities to the

dispraise and silence of Augustine and Tolomeo and untouched by the cool

reserve of John of Salisbury" (208; Hollander and Rossi 63-64). But Cato, the

lawgiver, like Ripheus and Trajan, is famous for his commitment to liberty, a

Roman virtue central to Dante's Utopian political vision.'^ In the Monorchia, Dante singles out those

qui pro salute publica devotas animas posuerunt, ut Liviiis, non quantum est dignum, sed

quantum potest, glorificando renarrat; accedit et illud inenarrabile sacrifitium severissimi

libertatis tutoris Marci Catonis. Quorum alter! pro salute patrie mortis tenebras non

horruerunt; alter, ut mundo libertatis amores accenderet. quanti libertas esset oslcndit.

dum e vita liber decedere maluit quam sine libertate manere in ilia. {Monarchia 2.5: 15)

(who laid down their lives dedicated to the salvation of the community, as Livy relates to

their glory, not in terms worthy of them but as best he can: and that sacrifice [words

cannot express it] of the most stern guardian of liberty, Marcus Cato. The former for the

deliverance of their fatherland did not recoil from the shadows of death; the latter, in

order to set the world afire with love and freedom, showed the value of freedom when he

preferred to die a free man rather than remain alive without freedom.)

Thomas Aquinas {Summa 5, II, II, q.64; II, 11, q. 125 a. 2; III, q. 47, a. 6) and

Augustine {Cite de Dieu, I, XVII-XXIII, XXVII) both recalled Cato as a figure

who exemplified the value of liberty, and John of Salisbury in the Policraticus

remarked that he was a venerable image of virtue (I, 197). As the first figure

Dante sees on entering Purgatory, he represents the absolute justice of God, for

Whom distinctions between suicide and self-sacrifice, political liberty and

'^ Mazzotta remains by far the best discussion of Cato in the Comedy (14-65), A brief

list of critical studies of Cato in the Comedy includes Pasquazi (All'eterno 175-94). who

gives an overview of the critical discussion concluding that Cato represents "il valore

della liberta" (179). Sanguineti argues that Cato represents a fusion of the Christian idea

of the freedom of the will and an ideal free political regime (125-47). See also Pezard,

"Le Chant" 1 75-90; Renucci 296-3 1 1 ; Auerbach 1 1 -76; Kaske 1-18.

Dante 's Political Values, the Roman Empire, and the Salvation ofPagans 63

absolute liberty are more subtle than the human intellect can easily comprehend.

Thus, Dante presents Cato's suicide as a heroic act, because it was not out of

selfishness but out of selfless love of liberty for his country. Cato does not

appear at the beginning of Purgatorio as a type of the future-saved pagans, as

Auerbach argued in "Figura" (11-76). In contrast to Brutus and Cassius, who

chose civil war when faced with what they perceived as tyranny and suicide

when their efforts failed, Cato chose suicide rather than the betrayal of liberty.

As Dante put it, quoting Cicero: "[...] and he had always persisted in any resolve

or plan he had undertaken, it was fitting that he should die rather than set eyes on

the face of the tyrant" ("[...] semperque in proposito susceptoque consilio

permansisset, moriendum ei potius quam tyrampni vultus aspiciendus fuit"

Monorchia, 2.5: 17).

Such a sacrifice — "illud inenarrabile sacrifitium severissimi libertatis tutoris Marci Catonis" {Mon. 2:5:15) — makes Cato the typological opposite to Brutus and Cassius, the betrayers of liberty and the creators of universal schism,

whom Dante has just seen in the mouths of Satan {Inf. 34). In an act of transcendent hope, "To set the world afire with love of freedom" {Mon. 2.5: 15),

Cato had chosen death at his own hands. As the guardian of the gates of

Purgatory and as lawgiver, Cato exemplifies hope spurred by Roman civic

virtue, the foundation of a new world based on law and liberty, limits and

freedom, although they are interdependent and ruled by the human will. In the

Pharsalia, Lucan presents Cato as willing to sacrifice his own life if his death

could save his people from civil war (2:312). Dante's act of saving Cato shows

Roman history can be made consistent with providential history (Mazzotta 21,

59), for like Dante's Trajan and Ripheus, Cato too believed injustice and liberty,

virtues central to romanitas. Thus, rather than ultimately undermining Empire,

Cato's suicide is providential because Roman political ideals and the good of the

state inspired it.

In saving some pagans, Dante chooses those figures that supported the

values that he has assigned to Rome as Republic and as Empire. He connects the

ideal goals and achievements of the Empire with its model citizens: Ripheus, as

an exemplary just Trojan, a type of the future Roman; Cato, as one who

condemns the curse of civil war and symbolizes the Roman civic virtue of

"liberty"; Statius, supporter of the Empire; and Trajan, exemplary restorer of the

Empire's boundaries and model of justice and piety. Although not a strong

argument, because it argues from silence, one cannot help wondering, given

Dante's apparent criteria for selecting pagans for salvation, whether indeed he

did leave open a space for Augustus Caesar and for Livy, "che non erra" {/nf 28,

12). Both, after all, practiced Roman civic virtue and supported the stability of

the imperium, which brought an end to civil war and ushered in an age of peace.

In contrast, Virgil, Lucan, Ovid, Seneca, Cicero, and Horace shared the same

profound doubts about the providentiality of the Empire, for as Virgil says of

himself and his co-residents in Limbo, "non adorar debitamente a Dio: / e di

64 Brenda Deen Schildgen

questi cotai son io medesmo" {Inf. 4, 38-39). In their case, baptism or being born

before Christ {Inf. 4, 35-37) may not indeed be their central deficiency. Rather, not only in the present do "sanza speme vivemo in disio" {Inf. 4, 42), but indeed,

this pessimism characterized how they had actually lived. Dante is seized by sadness when he hears of Virgil's and the other ancient luminaries' mutual fate,

for their suspension — "pero che gente di molto valore / conobbi che 'n quel limbo eran sospesi" {Inf. 4, 44-45) — is, according to Dante's view, like the hopelessness of their vision of human history.

Dante took the Roman Empire as represented by the Roman poets and transformed it into his political ideal, but in his attempt to see divine providence

as history's director, he condemned his poets' pessimism and replaced it with his

own visionary geo-political theory. He confined his great lights, of whom he made himself a joyful associate, to Limbo because of their blindness, but

specifically he singled out other Romans for salvation whom he made co- partners in his own vision. Dante's Utopian political vision put faith in a history

guided by divine providence, whereas in reading his great literary forebears, he

recognized that they did not share this hope.

Returning to the ethical theme undertaken in this discussion, it is in Dante's

contrast between saved pagans and those he assigns to Limbo that he clarifies the

criteria for his poetic choices. As Agamben, rephrasing Aquinas wrote, "the

inhabitants of Limbo do not receive an afflictive punishment, like that of hell,

but only a punishment of privation that consists in the perpetual lack of vision of

God" (11). The ethical principle operating here is that salvation is both the

experience of and the reward for those whose just actions are inspired by hope.

University ofCalifornia, Davis

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