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Historical and Personal Background of the Divine Comedy

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Historical and Personal Background of the Divine Comedy 1 Historical and Personal Background of the Divine Comedy By Joseph Crane May 2012 This essay is to accompany Between Fortune and Providence: Astrology and the Universe in Dante’s Divine Comedy. What follows is the overview and timeline I wish I had when I first started reading the Divine Comedy. Many commentaries of the Divine Comedy give background historical information, usually consisting of a general introduction and brief explanations when specific characters and events come up within the poem. Here I will proceed sequentially, beginning centuries before Dante’s birth and concluding in the year of his death. When I first mention a historical person whose character appears in the Divine Comedy, the name will be in bold, followed by page references from Between Fortune and Providence. Because this section gives an overview specific to the Divine Comedy, Italy and the city-states of northern Italy, especially Florence, is our focus. This essay is partly organized according to the modern astrological practice that uses cycles of the modern planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. When relevant, we will look at outer planet configurations when they form conjunctions, opening squares, oppositions, and closing squares that correspond to New, First Quarter, and Full, and Third Quarter Moons. Since many readers of Between Fortune and Providence are astrologers or are interested in modern astrology, this will be useful for them. Those who are not astrologers can pass over this material. Here’s a preliminary summary of some the interacting themes of Church, politics, and economics that provide some background for the Divine Comedy. Religion: Understanding the medieval Church takes a special leap of the imagination. The Church had a dominant role in organizing and giving cohesiveness to Europe over a very long time. Yet the Church had its ups and downs, politically and spiritually. Because of its wealth and political power, the Church was also vulnerable to being abducted by strong secular rulers, and this is the case throughout the medieval era. In this essay we first encounter the Church as largely controlled by secular authorities, but reform movements were afoot that would help give it greater independence and spiritual authority over time. As the Church grew stronger, however, it would become more empire than religion and at times was unbelievably worldly. Over the centuries the papacy sometimes inaugurated some attempts to reform the Church. There were also reform movements from the monastic side. Other Church reform movements, like the orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans, began with charismatic leaders. 2 There were also some failed attempts that have come down to us as “heresies.” Two centuries after Dante’s death, one heretical preacher, Martin Luther, would help launch the Protestant Reformation. Politics: In Dante’s lifetime, the Italian peninsula was comprised of many autonomous and economically diverse regions. In the south were the vulnerable but cosmopolitan kingdoms of Sicily and Naples. The central region was governed by the Pope. In the wealthier and more urbanized north, including Florence, there were many independent and prosperous city-states that were frequently at war with each other and with the larger political entities around them. Beginning around the time of Dante’s birth, the “Holy Roman Empire” was a loose confederation of warring German princes and their territories that were governed by an Emperor – at least in theory. In the centuries before Dante, the Holy Roman Empire was more dominant in Italian affairs. Just before and during the poet’s lifetime, however, the French monarchy had become a major player in European affairs. Dante resented this greatly. He was nostalgic for a renewed Roman Empire, but the reality was the perpetually disappointing contemporary “Holy Roman Empire.” Dante did not know that Europe’s future would favor not empires but nations like France, England, and Spain. Economics: The monetary and banking systems of Dante’s world would be more familiar to us than its religious and political institutions. Unlike the more rural and feudal Europe to its north and west, northern Italy contained commercial and banking institutions similar to ours. Italy benefited from its proximity to major trade routes and, with the Crusades, more traffic that moved back and forth across the Mediterranean. Toward Dante’s lifetime, Florence was a prosperous banking center and was also known for its textile industry. Dante loathed the commercialization of Florence and northern Italy in general. Yet this commercial activity would help bankroll Italy’s greatest eras in the centuries to come. In short, Dante’s conceptions of the flow of history into the future turned out to be completely wrong. He longed for a renewal of times that would never return. 3 905: A Fine Place to Start We begin in an astrological manner by noting that there was a Neptune/Pluto conjunction in 905. Neptune and Pluto are the two outermost planets and their cycles represent the life span of long-term historical patterns. Neptune suggests an era’s ideals, while the grim task of turning them into reality belongs to Pluto. The beginning of a cycle, like the New Moon, is in the dark, but suggests a future that will manifest more clearly in the quarter, halfway, and three-quarter positions of the cycle. This particular Neptune-Pluto cycle that began in 905 found much of European culture and civilization at a low point. The previous century had seen destructive Viking attacks throughout Europe. This had done great damage to the fragmenting Carolingian Empire (named after Charlemagne) that then included present-day France, Germany, and northern Italy. It is more likely, however, that rivalries within the Carolingian dynasty caused their rulers to become weaker and their Empire to become more fragmented throughout the previous century. Italy was also fragmented and was surrounded by greater powers. To its east were invasions by the Magyars and this particularly impacted Italy; to the south and south-east and in the Mediterranean Sea were the Muslims who by 905 had control of Sicily and much of southern Italy. The Byzantine Empire also had holdings in southern Italy. Fearing the Muslims over all, this would drive the Church in Rome into the hands of the secular powers of the north (Carolingian rulers) and the east (Byzantine rulers) for protection. At this time northern Italy was within the “Kingdom of Italy” and theoretically governed by the Carolingian Empire and dominated by an older Lombard and Frankish aristocracy. But this area’s regions were relatively free politically and had become more economically 4 independent. The year 905 was close to the end for the Eastern Carolingian kings who would be gradually replaced by the Ottonian emperors. The Ottonians directly controlled an area roughly where Germany is now, but they were quite interested in north Italy’s wealth and relative stability. During this century Ottonian emperors would sometimes govern north Italy but this was resented by other secular authorities. The Ottonian empire would become the “Holy Roman Empire” that would have such an important role to play in the centuries ahead. In 905 was also the beginning of the gradual diminishing of the Viking invasions throughout Europe. A few years afterwards a group of Vikings were given a kingdom of their own in on the Eastern coast of France; descendents of the Normans (“North-men”) would dominate much of southern Italy for several hundred years. The 900’s became a period of (very) relative peace that saw the growth of serfdom and of the feudal system, especially in the remnants of the Carolingian Empire, yet these structures of social and economic relationship never took firm hold in northern Italy with its stronger city life. There will be more of that to come. With greater security there was renewed political and commercial activity, and so there would be more markets for the commercial cities of northern Italy. Its commercial activity and proximity to the Mediterranean gave the area a more fluid political and class structure. At this time the most prosperous Italian cities were Milan, Genoa, and Venice; Florence would join this group much later. The Papacy had politically allied themselves with the Carolingians and then with the Ottonians. As a result, the Papacy was dominated by these secular powers. Ottonian rulers could appoint and depose Popes and other church officials; the moral and religious authority of the Papacy was at a low point throughout the tenth century. There were other trends that began early in this century. The Church saw the beginnings of a major reform movement when the first Cluniac monastery began in Burgundy in 910. Unlike the other Church institutions at this time, this monastery did not answer to local or regional secular authorities but rather answered directly to the Pope himself. The Cluniac movement aimed toward reducing the corruption of the Church and promoting a greater separation between Church and secular authority. Although monastic in nature, this movement would greatly affect the Church as a whole and promote a gradual renewal throughout the next two centuries. This was the first of many reform movements during the centuries prior to the life of Dante. 987: A New Set Of French Kings In 987, the he last king of the Carolingian dynasty in the west died and Hugh Capet (p. 61) was elected king of (what we call) France by the nobility of the area. This began the Capetian Dynasty that would last for several hundred years. We meet Capet in Purgatorio 20 5 among the avaricious, and his appearance gives Dante a chance to criticize the line of French kings as insufferably greedy. Often when we think of French kings in history we think of very powerful and arrogant individuals like Louis XIV of the seventeenth century.
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