Dante and the Blessed Virgin

McInerny . Continued from front flap Dante Dante and the and the “Keen as our aesthetic enjoyment of the Comme- Blessed Virgin Blessed Virgin dia may be,” McInerny explains in the epilogue, Ralph McInerny Dante Ralph McInerny “intriguing as are the intellectual elements of the narrative, we know that Dante was after a deeper “Dante was a literary genius with a profound understand- “The theme of this little book, Dante and the response than those. He wanted to move us from ing of St. Thomas Aquinas and the philosophia perennis that Blessed Virgin, provides a Catholic reader with a the misery of sin to eternal happiness. And he structured and permeated the Divina Commedia. Who better unique opportunity to respond to this central shows us the inescapable centrality of the Blessed to help us get beyond the (brilliant) surface to the depths of element of the great poet’s work in a way that Dante Virgin Mary in that conversion.” This engagingly Dante than the most literarily genial of Thomas’ twentieth- goes far beyond scholarly or aesthetic appreci- (and twenty-first-) century disciples, the indefatigable Ralph written book will serve as a welcome guide for ation. The Catholic can see Dante’s devotion McInerny? Dante needed guides, from Vergil to Beatrice, to anyone approaching Dante’s work for the first to the Blessed Virgin in warm continuity with his reach the summit of Paradiso. Fortunately, we have Ralph own beliefs and practices. Central as Mary is to time, as well as all those who value the work of McInerny to accompany us on the same journey.” the Divine Comedy, she has become even more Ralph McInerny. —Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., Founder and Editor, Ignatius Press central in Catholic belief in the centuries since it was written.” —from the Prologue RALPH MCINERNY is professor of philosophy a and the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval “Weaving together poetry, philosophy, and theology, Ralph nd the Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is McInerny shows that ‘the Blessed Virgin Mary is the key to Dante and the Blessed Virgin is distinguished phi- author and editor of numerous books, including Dante.’ Starting with the Vita Nuova and the beginning of the losopher Ralph McInerny’s eloquent reading of Divine Comedy, this becomes ever more explicit throughout Bl and the one of Western literature’s most famous works his autobiography, I Alone Have Escaped to Tell the great poem, till the magnificent closing cantos of the Par- You (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), and Virgin essed by a Christian writer. The book provides Catho- the first two volumes of The Writings of Charles adiso. The book is beautifully written, making sense of every lic readers, especially those new to Dante’s Divine De Koninck (University of Notre Dame Press, step, however complex at times, of the great journey to the Comedy, with a concise companion volume. gate of heaven described by Dante in the Commedia, drawing 2008, 2009). on Scripture, on Aquinas, on philosophers like Aristotle, on a McInerny draws from a diverse group of writers medley of modern and contemporary writers, with immense Blessed throughout this book, including Plato, Aristotle, learning. Dominant themes that concern everyone, such as St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, love or happiness, are treated with freshness and clarity so the reader is made to feel that he or she is discovering them and George Santayana. It is St. Thomas, however, anew. The total effect is joy induced by the incredible wealth to whom McInerny most often turns, and this of content of this little book and by the light it sheds on so Virgin book also provides an accessible introduction many vital issues.” to Thomistic moral philosophy, focusing on the —Thomas De Koninck, Laval University appetites, the ordering of goods, the distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders, the classification of capital vices and virtues, and Jacket art: Dante Alighieri and a Statue of the Virgin the nature of the theological virtues. Mary. Images courtesy of clipart.com © [2009] Jupiter- University of Notre Dame Press images Corporation. Notre Dame, IN 46556 Jacket design: Margaret Gloster undpress.nd.edu Continued on back flap . Ralph McInerny McInerny.indd 1 11/17/09 1:51:51 PM Dante and the BlesseD Virgin Dante and the BlesseD Virgin r a l p h M c i n e r n y University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana Copyright © 2010 by University of notre Dame notre Dame, indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu all rights reserved Manufactured in the United states of america Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mcinerny, ralph M. Dante and the Blessed Virgin / ralph Mcinerny. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. isBn-13: 978-0-268-03517-4 (cloth : alk. paper) isBn-10: 0-268-03517-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Dante alighieri, 1265–1321—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Dante alighieri, 1265–1321—Characters—Mary, Blessed Virgin, saint. 3. Mary, Blessed Virgin, saint—in literature. I. title. pQ4419.M2M35 2010 851'.1—dc22 2009041749 This book is printed on recycled paper. For Cathy, Mary, Anne, Nancy, Beth, Amy, Terrill, Ellen, Clare, Lucy, Rita, and Vivian sed certe ad hoc opus nimiam omnino fateor esse meam insufficientiam, propter nimiam materiam incomprehensibilitatem, propter nimiam scientiae meae tenuitatem, propter nimiam linguae meae indignitatem, et propter nimiam personae laudandae laudem et laudabilitatem. Certainly i must confess my utter insufficiency to write this book—because of the matter, difficult of comprehension; because of the thinness of my knowledge; because of the unworthiness of my syle; and because of the profound praise due the person to be honored. —Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis, prologus CO n t e n t s prologue ix note on translations, editions, and abbreviations xv O n e a new life Begins 1 t WO in the Midst of My Days 13 t h r e e The seven storey Mountain 35 f ou r Queen of heaven 101 epilogue 143 notes 145 index 155 p r O l O g U e One of the marvels of art is that our appreciation of it does not re- quire that we share the outlook of the artist. There must, of course, be sympathy, and more than sympathy, with the protagonist and with his manner of viewing his plight. a reader in the third millennium can be drawn into a greek tragedy and experience the anguish of a character whose culture is utterly alien to his own. explanations of this have been advanced. it requires a willing suspension of disbelief, a dismissal of the differences, and then immersion in a plot involv- ing decisions almost wholly foreign in their weight and gravitas to those that engage the latter-day reader. Almost wholly foreign. What counterpart in our times could there be, pace freud, to the dilemma of Oedipus? nonetheless, it may well be said that beneath the unde- niable strangeness is the note of familiarity, a familiarity due to our common humanity. The great imaginative works bring about in us a sense of affinity with agents living in cultural circumstances long since gone. But we need not appeal only to the chronologically distant. When we read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the mesmerizing voice of the narrator establishes a rapport with such a one as Kurtz, a Kurtz who, alive or dead, we could never be. Moreover, we grasp the contrast between a europe that no longer exists and a colonial africa that is no more. it seems not to matter at all that those referents no longer exist. ix x Prologue Call our empathy aesthetic, in the best sense of the term. for the du- ration of the story, we sense and feel that the protagonist is ourselves and we are him. We reach across the differences and in some way we are one with Kurtz, notre semblable, notre frère. I think, too, of Matthew arnold’s “Dover Beach.” One who does not share the poet’s interpretation of the way in which Christianity is the putative casualty of nineteenth-century philology and science can nonetheless occupy the outlook of the poem and be stirred. The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now i only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world. One can argue with arnold’s prose work on these matters, but the argument of the poem requires only our responding to the feelings that would accompany holding arnold’s melancholy views, and we experience a similar frisson. Great imaginative works enable us to sense a common humanity with those with whom we have almost nothing else in common. But it would not do to suggest that there is just some residue of common nature that remains when all the differences have been thought away. appreciation of the story requires that, for a time, we take on an outlook and occupy circumstances that have little to do with our own lives. All this is fanfare for the way we read Dante. i have sometimes been struck, at meetings of medievalists, by the way in which the beliefs of those long ago days are discussed with perceptiveness and intelligence, but also with the unstated sense that we are dealing with matters no longer believed, indeed, incredible. aesthetically, from the vantage point of the scholar, surpassed attitudes can be reoccu- pied and things said of pith and moment.

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