Conversations with Kenelm Essays on the Theology of the Commedia John Took ARTS AND HUMANITIES PUBLICATIONS Conversations with Kenelm Essays on the Theology of the Commedia John Took Professor of Dante Studies UCL UCL Arts & Humanities Publications 2013 ][u ubiquity press London Published by Ubiquity Press Ltd. Gordon House 29 Gordon Square London WC1H 0PP www.ubiquitypress.com and The Faculty of Arts and Humanities University College London Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT Text © John Took 2013 First published 2013 Cover illustration: Dante, Paradiso X, depicting twelve teachers of wisdom led by Thomas Aquinas; MS Thott 411.2. By kind permission of the Royal Library of Copenhagen. Printed in the UK by Lightning Source Ltd. ISBN (PDF): 978-1-909188-08-2 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/baa This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This licence allows for copying any part of the work for personal and commercial use, providing author attribution is clearly stated. Suggested citation: Took, J. 2013 Conversations with Kenelm. London: University College London Arts & Humanities Publications / Ubiquity Press. DOI: http:// dx.doi.org/10.5334/baa To read the online open access version of this book, either visit http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/baa or scan this QR code with your mobile device: For Paul ... e ’l padre dice al figlio ‘amor mio’ Convivio( III.xi.16) Contents Foreword i I Between Philology and Friendship: Dante and Aquinas Revisited 1 1. Preliminary considerations: Dante, Aquinas and intimations of otherness. 2. Patterns of deconstruction and reconstruction: Nardi, Gilson and Foster. 3. An alternative proposal: modes of reading and reception. 4. Dante and the theological project: theology and the crisis of existence. 5. Conclusion: philology, friendship and the common proclamation. II The Twin Peaks of Dante’s Theology in the Paradiso 49 1. Introduction: preliminary emphases – being, affectivity and a reconfiguration of the theological issue. 2. Atonement theology I: Anselm and the Christ event as a matter of reparation. 3. Atonement theology II: Dante and the Christ event as a matter of re-potentiation. 4. Election theology I: Thomas, implicit faith and salvation in casu. 5. Election theology II: Dante, explicit faith and the love-susceptibility of the Godhead. III Dante and the Modalities of Grace 81 1. Preliminary considerations: Singleton, Singletonians, and patterns of grace-theological consciousness. 2. Dante and the revised geometry of grace awareness. 3. Dante and the modalities of grace: grace as a principle of encouragement (being under the aspect of fortitude) – grace as a principle of emancipation (being under the aspect of freedom) – grace as a principle of ecstasy (being under the aspect of rejoicing). 4. Conclusion: grace as but love by another name. IV Events and Their Inner Life: an Essay in Actual Eschatology 105 1. Preliminary considerations: patterns of eschatological awareness in Dante. 2. Axes of concern: the triumph of the innermost over the aftermost (the cases of Francesca da Rimini, Pier della Vigna and Guido da Montefeltro). 3. Conclusion: eschatology, immanence and the power to terrify. V Two Dantes or One? An Essay in Transparency and Theatricality 121 1. Introduction: ego, alter ego and the problem of authorial intentionality – a preliminary response. 2. Piety, Peripateticism and sin as unreason: ‘The Theology of the Inferno’. 3. Irreconcilability in the depths: ‘The Two Dantes’. 4. Two Dantes or one?: dimensionality, decorum and the comprehensive geometry of the text. VI Complementarity and Coalescence: Dante and the Sociology of Authentic Being 139 1. Introduction: the social dimension of the Inferno and a moment of misgiving. 2. The New Testament perspective: Pauline and Johannine collectivity. 3. The sociology of estrangement: self-denial and social denial. 4. The sociology of emergence: co-presence, co-immanence and the revised dimensionality of being. VII Dante and the Protestant Principle 155 1. Introduction: Protestantism and the protestant principle – preliminary considerations. 2. The Dantean protest: patterns of sacramentalism (Dante, grace and the historical encounter) and superintendence (Dante, episcopacy and self-episcopacy). 3. Conclusion: ecclesiality, existentiality and the whereabouts of the Dantean protest. VIII The Courage of the Commedia 171 1. Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be, and species of ontological anxiety: the anxiety of death and fate – the anxiety of guilt and condemnation – the anxiety of meaninglessness. 2. A further distinction: the courage to be as part and the courage to be as oneself – Dante and the courage to be as part (civitas, imperium and ecclesia). 3. Dante and the courage to be as oneself: the moment of acknowledgement (Inferno), the moment of alignment (Purgatorio), and the moment of actualization (Paradiso). 4. Conclusion: the courage of the pilgrim and the courage of the poet. Afterword 191 Index of names 195 Foreword Indi, come orologio che ne chiami ne l’ora che la sposa di Dio surge a mattinar lo sposo perché l’ami, che l’una parte e l’altra tira e urge, tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota, che ’l ben disposto spirto d’amor turge; così vid’ ïo la gloriosa rota muoversi e render voce a voce in tempra e in dolcezza ch’esser non pò nota se non colà dove gioir s’insempra. (Par. X.139-48)1 My first encounter with Kenelm Foster was in the depths of the Cambridge winter. The snow lay round about, and I had come to Blackfriars as a doctoral student just starting out and seeking advice on the usefulness or otherwise of comparing Dante and the second-generation Thomist 1 Then, like a clock which calls us at the hour when the bride of God rises to sing her matins to her bridegroom, that he may love her, in which one part draws or drives the other, sounding ting! ting! with notes so sweet that the well-disposed spirit swells with love, so did I see the glorious wheel move and render voice to voice with harmony and sweetness that cannot be known except there where joy is everlasting. Principal editions: for the Commedia, ed. G. Petrocchi, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, 4 vols (Milan and Verona: Mondadori, 1966-67); for the Vita Nuova, ed. D. De Robertis in Opere minori, 2 vols (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1984), vol. 1, part 1, pp. 1-247; for the Rime, ed. G. Contini, 2nd edn (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), and in Opere minori, 2 vols (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1984), vol. 1, part 1, pp. 249-552 ; for the De vulgari eloquentia, ed. P. V. Mengaldo in Opere minori (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979), vol. 2, pp. 3-237; for the Convivio, ed. C. Vasoli and D. De Robertis in Opere minori (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1988), vol 1, part 2; for the Monarchia, ed. P. G. Ricci (Milan: Mondadori, 1965) and P. Shaw (ed. and trans.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); for the Epistole, A. Frugoni and G. Brugnoli in Opere minori (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979), vol. 2, pp. 505-643. Translations (slightly amended): for the Commedia, The Divine Comedy, C. S. Singleton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973-1980); for the Convivio, C. Ryan, Dante. The Banquet (Saratoga (Calif.): Anma Libri, 1989); for the Monarchia, P. Shaw cit. I am grateful to Princeton University Press for permission to quote from the Singleton translation. ii Conversations with Kenelm John of Paris in the area of political thought. I knocked, the door opened, and there he was, spectacularly dishevelled but at once notable for his sparkling Thomist eyes, eyes accustomed to seeing into the nature of things and determining their specificity. Not quite sure what to say or how to get started, he ushered me into his study, found me somewhere to sit among the piles of books competing for space on his floor, enquired of me whether I was up to speed with the Mittelalterliches Geistesleben of Grabmann, and straightaway fell into a gentle state of abstraction. But the best was yet to come, for having looked over my plan and commented in a preliminary way on its viability, he led me through to the kitchen, sat me down at a large oval table with those brothers recently returned from the town, from the garden and from the chapel, took his place at the table – but at a chair’s remove from me – and once again retreated into the stillness of his own inner world. The silence, I remember, seemed interminable. I coughed, rearranged myself on my seat, and eyed one by one the kindly faces of the brethren, the modest fair on the table, the bereft state of the room in which we were sitting, Kenelm himself in his egg- stained abstraction, and the world-weary chair between us confirming in its inbetweenness his, for the moment at least, total unreachability. But then all of a sudden, and as if summoned from deep within himself by an ancient comforter and companion, he lent over the empty chair, cocked his ear in an attitude of attentiveness, and whispered gently, ‘I wonder what Brother Thomas would have to say about that’; for there in the chair between us was Brother Thomas, less than discernible, certainly, to the naked eye, but very definitely there, and perfectly prepared, as Brother Thomas always had been for Kenelm, to resolve the passing doubt and to assuage the passing anxiety. I was – and still am – impressed, for in my part of the Church there is nothing quite like it. For while in my part of the Church we revere our heroes – Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Kierkegaard, Barth, Tillich and the cloud of Protestant witnesses generally, rarely do we lean over the chair to engage them in quite the same way and with quite the same degree of affection.