The world of Dante's Divine Comedy
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Dante's words on the gates to hell; almost always translated as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".
However, Clive James (yes, that Clive James), translated it much better as:
"Forget your hopes. They are what brought you here."
An utterly unforgettable bloke to all those who met him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_James
The original almost literally translates to the most common English translation:
Lasciate = leave behind
ogne = every
speranza = hope
voi = you
ch' = who
intrate = enter
Very funny. That's deep, dark humor. I see why it's called a comedy.
Walking with Dante by Mark Scarbrough: https://walkingwithdante.captivate.fm
It's slow and immensely comprehensive, but also very accessible and so much fun! His love for the subject and enthusiasm are contagious.
Sharing this because thanks to HN I learned about some of my other favourite podcasts: Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur and The History of Rome by Marc Duncan. I finished THoR twice and I listen to Isaac's podcast every week. I keep coming back to Dante.
ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne:
se non che la mia mente fu percossa
da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne.
A l'alta fantasia qui mancò possa
ma già volgeva il mio disio e 'l velle
sì come rota ch'igualmente è mossa,
l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.
And my own wings were far too weak for that.
But then my mind was struck by light that flashed
and, with this light, received what it had asked.
Here force failed my high fantasy
but my desire and will were moved already —
like a wheel revolving uniformly — by
the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.- But I'll tell ya what, how 'bout if I send you a $20,000 gift certificate from Bob and Jerry's World of Wicker?
- Hey that's wicker! Dude, thanks a lot!
My friends and I would say we were shopping for wicker whenever we were going out in high school.
So I bought wicker.com.
The guy who owns it now cleans out estates, and cold-emailed me. I said I didn't want money, I want something interesting. The 1544 printing was the offer, which I accepted.
His wife is a wicker importer.
or intuitively, it is when you start to lose influence and power that you become more crazy and aggressive about maintaining what you have, like the truism that really tough guys don't act all macho, a truly dominant church does not mind the small theological disputations.
Alighieri Dante è condannato per baratteria, frode, falsità, dolo, malizia, inique pratiche estortive, proventi illeciti, pederastia, e lo si condanna a 5000 fiorini di multa, interdizione perpetua dai pubblici uffici, esilio perpetuo (in contumacia), e se lo si prende, al rogo, così che muoia
(Libro del chiodo - Archivio di Stato di Firenze - 10 marzo 1302)Did Giordano Bruno die for his astronomical discoveries or his atheism? False dichotomy: you can’t have a mind that questions the stars but never thinks to question the Bible."
- Kolmogorov Complicity And The Parable Of Lightning | Slate Star Codex (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-...)
The point is that it is (almost) always about politics. Just the Church changed it is the position from a firm one to one for which dissidents pose political danger.
I found it surprising, but in the Middle Ages, there was a certain permission for atheism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb5mYqnKFlI
Despite referring to the Pope or the Emperor, it is my understanding that the division between Guelfi and Ghibellini, or Guelfi Bianchi and Guelfi Neri, were almost exclusively based on political interests and being able to control power (see for example https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ghibellini-e-guelfi-in-...)
The Church of the Middle Ages did not have a tolerance towards discussion, criticism, and contradictions. They had a narrow corridor of discussion that was considered acceptable (i.e. orthodoxy), and if anyone stepped out of line and refused to recant, it was declared a heresy and extirpated. Anyone that did not toe the line of Aristotle, Augustine, and Anselm, were declared heretical and either forced to recant, imprisoned, excommunicated, or executed.
To wit:
Elipandus of Toledo claimed that Jesus was the adoptive Son of God in his human nature. He was condemned at multiple councils, including the Council of Frankfurt (794), with proponents forced to recant or lose their positions.
The Paulicians were a dualist and Gnostic sect originating in Armenia that rejected the material world and Catholic sacraments. They were persecuted by the Byzantine Empire and anathematized by the pre-Schism Church.
Berengarius of Tours (ca. 999–1088) denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, arguing for a symbolic interpretation. He also was condemned at several councils, including the Synod of Rome (1050), and forced to recant under threat of excommunication.
The Cathars also rejected the material world, sacraments, and clerical hierarchy. They were brutally suppressed in the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), followed by the establishment of the Medieval Inquisition.
Arnold of Brescia (ca. 1090–1155) criticized the wealth and corruption of the Church, calling for clerical poverty. He was executed by hanging and burning after condemnation by the Church.
Peter Abelard was accused of heresy for applying logic to theology, as well as arguing against Anselm's satisfaction theory of atonement with the arguably more defensible and sensical moral influence theory. He was condemned at the Council of Soissons (1121) and forced to burn his works.
Then there are the Waldensians. A movement founded by Peter Waldo emphasizing poverty, lay preaching, and direct access to the Bible. His followers were declared heretical at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and persecuted throughout Europe.
And even Dante was exiled from Florence at the machinations of the Papacy.
And these are only the most famous cases. There are countless others not notable enough, nor successful enough to be recorded in any great detail.
One example is that of the heretics found in Goslar in what is now modern Germany in 1051:
>The heretics "were finally condemned when one of the bishops, more zealous in his presentation of the case than mindful of the dignity of his rank, presented them with a live chicken and ordered them to wring its neck. They refused to kill the bird, and were deemed beyond hope of redemption. Ignoring the arguments and threats of the assembly, they refused to recant and were hanged upon a gibbet."
>The execution of these heretics, as near as can be determined by modern scholars, was ordered because it was felt that "their attitude implied a dualist-type belief in the transmigration of souls through the animal kingdom" and suggested that they were Manichaeans. The events at Goslar — and this group was not alone among persecuted Christian groups in the eleventh century C.E. in its refusal to kill animals — are often treated by scholars as an important step toward the twelfth century full-blown assault on heresy by the Church linked to the newly proclaimed death penalty for heresy.
The entire point of the Church, throughout its history, is not to have discussions, criticisms, and contradictions. That is what orthodoxy is. Diversity of thought in any fundamental dimension in the Deposit of Faith is schismatic and antithetical to the goals of One, Holy, and Apostolic Church.
The attitude that you hold illustrates what Noam Chomsky pointed out in 1998:
>"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
The Catholic Church throughout its history has exemplified this paternal shepherding attitude. Sure, you can explore Orthodoxy and embellish it all you want, but stray outside of what has been set in stone and refuse to "disagree and commit" and you're branded an outcast and your ability to participate vanishes. Good (nulla salus extra ecclesiam) Catholics will say that this is a Good Thing, which is their right, but please, own it as it's a feature, not a bug, and don't try to cloak the history of the Church.
The point is that the Middle Ages were way more tolerant and open to discussiim than what we're led to believe, and that the vast majority of the truly bad stuff that the Church did actually happened later.
Before the Gregorian Reform in the 11th century, the Papacy’s direct influence on 'frontier' archbishoprics was relatively negligible. However, as the centralization of Rome, the Roman Rite, and ecclesiastical subordination to the Papacy took full form, the Church’s suppression of divergent practices and beliefs became systematic. This period saw the emergence of many of the 'truly bad' features often associated with the Church, such as uniform enforcement of orthodoxy and suppression of dissent. See R. I. Moore's The Formation of the Persecuting Society for a full treatment.
Your argument is like claiming that Red Hat in the 2000s promoted diversity because independent Linux distributions existed. In reality, Red Hat itself has always been monolithic. The existence of an independent Linux ecosystem that preceded Red Hat does not make Red Hat a promoter of diversity. Similarly, the diversity of regional practices in early medieval Christendom was not a feature of the Church but a byproduct of decentralization, which later reforms actively sought to eliminate. Diversity arising from a lack of control is not the same as cultivating it within an institution.
Moreover, reliance on orthodoxy is a feature, not a bug, of the Roman Catholic Church. This reliance has historically been central to the Church's identity and governance. Attempts to portray the Church as inherently diverse prior to the Counter-Reformation overlook its systematic suppression of autochthonous rites and regional practices as centralization took hold. Rather than prevaricating, Catholics need to embrace this reliance on orthodoxy as central to the Church’s unity instead of this kind of revisionism.
There was no liberal freedom or value of toleration as we understand it prior to the resolution of the wars of religion. There was, however, a variegated patchwork of ad hoc arrangements based on custom, convenience, common interest, charity, forbearance (notably NOT liberal freedom or toleration) that allowed people with different religious beliefs, practices, and levels of commitment to live together in relative peace over long periods of time.
He also gives material evidence of how the reformation, counter-reformation, wars of religion, and the emergent nation state systematically destroyed these intricate arrangements.
After the end of the Western Roman Empire, the Catholic Church was fundamentally an administrative body tasked with ensuring the continuity and overall coherency of the European way of life. As such, it was culturally conservative and focused on self-preservation, but could also be quite progressive whenever it suited its aims. Theological arguments were fundamentally political arguments, so the acceptance of this or that interpretation was strictly linked to the political needs of this or that time.
In this context, "heretics" were fought mercilessly whenever they became politically dangerous (or worse), but otherwise left alone or even engaged - many of the order-founding saints were "heretics" in all but name, barely paying lip service in terms of obedience to the pope. In modern terms, it was not unlike the ruthless treatment of Black Panthers in the context of a society otherwise focused on accepting increased equality for black people. If a big and strong Germanic tribe showed up with some quirky beliefs, they would be promptly "retconned" into Catholic doctrine if it ensured those tribes would pay their taxes to the Church. If a particular Pope needed to shore up support in this or that matter, he would accept novel interpretations. And so on and so forth - after all, any institution that can survive a thousand years is unlikely to always be consistent on almost anything.
It is true that it was also a brutal organization - they were brutal times, after all. The conquest of Italy by the Longobards enshrined in law the acceptance of revenge killings and bloody family feuds; the ruling classes were defined by their professional mastery of immediate violence; and Europe was the theatre of continuous warfare. Most Church personnel were drafted from the upper classes, bringing with them bellicose beliefs and a muscular approach to the exercise of power. It is somewhat unrealistic to expect modern attitudes to inclusivity from such times. Even the Ottoman Empire, at the time a beacon of tolerance, equality, and social mobility, ended up banning the dangerous printing press.
And yet, even in such difficult times, the Church ensured a level of cultural life survived. They established what were, in context, academic research bodies in a number of areas. Theological debate was not dead and fixed, but actually extremely alive and strong - most modern intellectuals would not survive a month in a medieval context, where the mastery of logic and recall was everything. Yes, you had to play by certain rules, but the skill necessary to do so while arguing against practices observed for centuries was massive.
It's a bit like contemporary China, where scientific and social progress is accepted and encouraged, academic prowess is prized, but you can't make any argument against the primacy of the Party or you get "disappeared". You can still bring about change (the various PCC heads have modified the orthodoxy many times), but you have to do it without threatening to burn down the house.
History is all about complexity, and reducing the role of the Catholic Church to Hollywood stereotypes is ungenerous.
The only asterisk I would put on this quote is that individuals are more benign still and why I will not for the foreseeable future join the Church.
And I’m a talking porcupine. Your anti-religious screed is pretentious nonsense.
I'm not against Christ (very much the contrary!), nor in fundamental opposition to the Catholic Church, but what I am against is the unchallenged promulgation of distorting the truth in service to institutions and the meting out of evil for perceived evil.
Inquisitors are a necessary evil for the needs of the Roman Catholic Church, but any that forget that a necessary evil remains evil leaves their own soul in jeopardy.
Dante's Paradise, canto XXXIII, lines 133–135, contain the verse:
As the geometer his mind applies To square the circle, nor for all his wit Finds the right formula, howe'er he tries
Qual è ’l geométra che tutto s’affige per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova, pensando, quel principio ond’elli indige,
Eternity in heaven with a bunch of joyless saints and martyrs just sounds like an additional circle of hell.
Reminds me of this post:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qZJBighPrnv9bSqTZ/31-laws-of...
>Beware of packing your Utopia with things you think people should do that aren't actually fun. Again, consider Christian Heaven: singing hymns doesn't sound like loads of endless fun, but you're supposed to enjoy praying, so no one can point this out.
I don't know if they're in heaven (i.e., are saints), but James Earl Jones, Chris Farley, Bob Newhart, Bing Crosby, Ricardo Montalbán, James Cagney, Gregory Peck, Alec Guinness, Andy Warhol, and Alfred Hitchcock were all Catholic, so there's some chance you could meet up with them.
We just replaced the Bible and Homeric texts with Star Wars and marvel. Everybody at the time would know the biblical allusions even if they were illiterate.
> many conditions that nowadays are routinely cured or prevented would have been inevitably fatal; not all of the souls in the Comedy who died in their thirties and forties
Are they confusing average lifespan for typical lifespan? Isn’t this contradicted by the later paragraph in the same article?
And as soon as the poem was published, people started writing explanations for the difficult bits. Dante's son Jacopo wrote a commentary in 1322, Graziolo Bambaglioli wrote another in 1324, and by the end of the 14th century there were at least fifteen. This shows that the poem quickly found an audience that was not familiar with all the references.
It think it's a bit of both. Dante moved in high circles, particularly after he was exiled; and as an intellectual at court, he was effectively tasked with being an entertainer to his masters (which he didn't like, but had to accept to survive). In that context, creating work that requires active engagement from the audience, basically quizzing them around historical and literary knowledge, would have been of great value - and of great fun. Imagine people chatting around a fireplace or a banquet table, and Dante reciting a small verse - challenging someone in the audience (particularly other intellectuals he'd be sharing favours with) to go "I know! He's talking about such and such!". And when it came to the then-contemporary popes and rulers, everyone would laugh at the satirical tones, like you would with a stand-up comedian delivering a joke about "the orange man".
Comic book folks might be familiar with "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" by Alan Moore. That follows a similar approach; most people will recognize enough of the main characters to follow the story, but very few will get them all - which is why third-party commentaries and companions exploring them, have been pretty popular.
But he does not give notes for Abel, Noah, Moses at 4.55; Abraham, David, Israel and Rachel at 4.58; Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucian at 4.88; Aristotle at 4.130; Socrates and Plato at 4.133; Diogenes, Thales, Anaxagoras, Zeno, Heraclitus, and Empedocles at 4.136; Dioscorides, Orpheus, Cicero, Linus, and Seneca at 4.139; Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and Averroës at 4.142.
So Jacopo, at any rate, thought that readers might need help with mythological and historical references, but not with biblical and philosophical; or maybe he thought it was clear enough from the text that Diogenes, Thales, Anaxagoras, etc. were pagan philosophers. But Guido da Pisa's 1328 commentary has detailed notes on all of these. So there must have been readers who wanted more information on these figures.
And I am adding that while always interesting and rewarding for those that are obsessed with a work, "getting" the references in Dante's Comedy or any other work of merit is not the point, and they are not all that important in the work.
And further, since I am near the subject, I am engraving my personal ad hominem, that it is the characteristic mark of a certain class of readership (which I hold in low regard) to fixate on which 7th century monk in which manuscript first introduced some mentioned doctrine before having (and never-to-have) attempted to commune with the work itself.