The Foundations of Science and Religion in Dante's Debt to Aristotle
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THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN DANTE’S DEBT TO ARISTOTLE By JONATHAN WRIGHT, M.D. PLEASANTVILLE, N. Y. ALTHOUGH a recent Italian reviewer culture, knowledge, science and refinement in Scientia admits that the throughout the whole continent of Europe. A—civilization of Europe had its So strong and so universal was the religious Ax. rejuvenescence, in the first stages, prejudice, especially following the crusades from the darkness of the Middle Ages given for many hundred years, that this historical it by Islam, he thinks this is grossly exag- fact was obscured and ignored by the gerated and an unjust view as to the Italian historians of Europe. The reaction against Renaissance. This complaint from a patriot this perverse lack of candor by Christian is perhaps to be viewed with lenity, but that writers may be said to have begun before the Italian Renaissance, properly defined, rather than after the first publication, in was a somewhat later and more complicated 1852, of Renan’s essay on Averrhoes.1 The result of the infiltration of oriental thought, nephew then sat on the throne of France, some three or four hundred years earlier, but it was the great Napoleon who had car- can scarcely be denied. As to the germina- ried the eagles and scientists of France to tion of philosophy and science in the Egypt fifty years before. There the latter Dugento and Trecento, the pre-Renaissance opened their eyes not only to the fancy that of learning, there certainly can be no doubt. forty centuries looked down on them from At the time of the birth of Dante, at least the tops of the pyramids, but to the fact by the time of the death of Saint Thomas that somewhat less than a thousand years (1274), not directly due to criticisms and after the fall of Rome, the science, the comments that arose among ecclesiastics literature and the culture of the Arabs had both Christian and Mohammedan, it was taken the place of the Roman and the Greek, true, nevertheless, that the philosophical at Alexandria. It cannot be doubted that they thought of the pre-Renaissance was greatly reflected on its introduction at that time stimulated. In this the name of Ibn Roschid into their own country, but it was Renan or Averrhoes, as we know him, is preemin- who made it clear to the world. By the time ent. Through Averrhoes and the opposition (1258) the Mongols had shattered the in intellectual problems which he excited power of the Arabs in their homeland and in Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus and had sacked and burned Bagdad, the great their followers, calling for a mental activity awakening in Europe was under way, with hitherto strange to the Middle Ages, this which the Nestorians and the Jews had at philosophical thought came into promi- their very start inoculated the fierce fol- nence. Through these men, Averrhoes, the lowers of the prophet. Arabian, primarily stirred up a European It seems to have needed the brilliant antagonism and Aristotle came into his own exaggerations of Draper in 18642 to bring again. the fact fully home to the consciousness of It has long been known to all those whose the writers of European history for Renan’s learning was sufficiently large to interest far more temperate and evenly balanced them in the history of thought that it was 1 Renan, E. Averrhoes et 1’Averrhoisme. Essai the Arab conquest of the southern fringe historique. Caiman-Levy, Paris, 1884. of Italy and of the better part of Spain for 2 Draper, J. W. History of the Intellectual Develop- eight hundred years which began and spread ment of Europe. Bell & Daldy, Lond., 1864, 2 vols. and better authenticated research had to to conquer the infidel in battle, the priest- wait thirty years for its republication and hood tried to convert them by gentler means expansion. By that time Draper’s work and and this opened another path to Arabian the work which it stimulated had made the influence when these cowled men returned era of Arabian science familiar, at least, to home unsuccessful, but even before this the academic circles. Since then Berthelot, and eastern tales had drifted in. There was in our day Holmyard and Sudhoff are only a extant in the eleventh century a manu- few among many, who have illuminated the script which was translated from the San- subject. It is not possible to go into this skrit into what was then modern Greek; here, but as a Consequence, perhaps, a this was a collection of Hindu tales about Catholic priest in Spain has brought forward animals that talked like men, which before a topic less familiar to scientific men, yet this had played a considerable part in in its implications quite as important and Persian and Arabian literature for hundreds still more impressive than our present com- of years before it came to the attention of mon knowledge of the role of Arabian science Europeans who could read. These stories in the history of thought. It serves better in in the thirteenth century were translated forcing on our minds the realization of how first into Hebrew and then into Latin to Arabian influence penetrated and permeated make them accessible, however, this is a the minds of men of the Dugento in Italy. matter of slender historical interest to the I am referring to the work of Miguel Asin.3 modern ethnologist. Every continent has Dante, as he says, was midway in life’s known the tales told by Aesop and La journey when he set himself to write the Fontaine and Uncle Remus. They may go “Commedia” and that point in the poet’s back to the caveman but they spring spon- life marks the termination of the Dugento. taneously from all primitive men in contact By 1300 the leaven of Islam had made far with primitive nature. Our point of interest more than a beginning of its ultimately is the early entrance into a receptive primi- widespread influence on science and theol- tive Europe of currents of thought and ogy. Averrhoes had stirred the dead bones of forms of expression, which were oriental. scholasticism and ecclesiasticism into a These are the currents of other parts of life they had never known before without the ocean of Arabian influence which encir- acquiring among his own people, or at least cled Europe before Renaissance days with not for long, any paramount influence, but its crescent, but this book of Asin’s turns beyond the Pyrenees St. Thomas Aquinas our attention to something else. Miguel and Albertus Magnus and a hundred lesser Asin y Palacios is a professor of Arabic in men sprang to the defense of what they the University of Madrid. He wrote a book considered the real tenets of the Christian some time ago on the “Mussulman Church. The great Commentator had mis- Eschatology in the Divine Comedy.” Stim- understood or misinterpreted Aristotle or ulated and supported by the Duke of Ber- deliberately lied about him and in science as wick and Alva he has abbreviated and well as in religion the fight was on which was omitted his references and cut out the the most potent factor in the cause of the Arabic and other foreign texts and Mr. spread of Islamic influence. Doubtless long Harold Sunderland has translated it into before this the men of the pre-Renaissance, English and the Duke of Alva has written no doubt the men of the Middle Ages and an introduction and insists the work is of the Dark Ages too, had absorbed Eastern great value not only as an exposition of tales which have nothing to do either with Islamism, but as proving the profound and science or religion. As the crusaders failed unsuspected influence the latter had on the 3 Asin, M. Islam and the Divine Comedy. Tr. by conceptions with which the “Commedia” Harold Sunderland. John Murray, Lond., 1926. has supplied Christianity for five hundred influence on Provencal literature and the Dante’s day allowed him to give the ancient poetry of the troubadours. Dante was philosophers a tolerable quarter in Hell, but much attracted to it, so much so that in the Averrhoes, the “Grand Commentator” did “Purgatorio” he puts eight lines of it in not fare so well and Mahomet had a hot that tongue by the mouth of Arnaut Daniel. corner. Brunetto Latini, who for other and Much of the collateral and circumstantial far viler practices he placed there too, was evidence, which I have only alluded to, our nevertheless Dante’s teacher from whom he Spanish author, Asin, has left to one side might well have learned much of the Span- without even an allusion and on the other ish-Arabian religion and drunk deep thereby hand he does not lay sufficient emphasis on from their legendary literature. the liability that legends, common to Islam It is Asin’s task to let us see how parallel and Christianity, would be pretty sure to are the accounts we get from Dante and arise among primitive people which would from the Islamic Ibn Arabi and other closely resemble one another because of a Arabian authors. After reading all his evi- common origin in the Christian Gospel. dence and considering what he might have Moreover very many poets, in the history of added, which I have above intimated, any literature and religion, had led their heroes assertion that Dante did not at least know and their saints to Hell and even to Heaven the Mussulman’s fantasy, before he gave and brought them back again to tell what all shape to his own, is incredible.