De Monarchia – Dante Alighieri
The treatise ‘De monarchia’, in three books, originally written in Latin, here in an English translation, contains the mature statement of Dante’s political ideas. In it he propounds the theory that the supremacy of the emperor is derived from the supremacy of the Roman people over the world, which was given to them direct from God. As the emperor is intended to assure their earthly happiness, so does their spiritual welfare depend upon the pope, to whom the emperor is to do honour as to the first-born of the Father. The date of its publication is almost universally admitted to be the time of the descent of Henry VII. into Italy, between 1310 and 1313, although its composition may have been in hand from a much earlier period. The book was first printed by Oporinus at Basel in 1559, and placed on the Index of forbidden books. This edition is annotated with a wealth of notes.
De Monarchia.
Format: eBook.
De Monarchia.
ISBN: 9783849653538
Excerpt from the introduction:
He who was “the spokesman of the Middle Ages,” who saw and told of his fellow-men and their destiny, uttered a message not for one century of time only, nor of one significance. In each of Dante’s larger works, the Vita Nuova, the Convito, the De Monarchia, and the Divine Comedy, this message is pronounced in one or all of its three phases, the religious, the philosophical, and the political. Because no author ever wrote with such singleness of purpose, nor through such diverse mediums carried to completion a solemn intent, the series of his productions are bound together as inevitably as the links of a chain, lending to one another meaning and value. And because these productions are so similar in purpose, if various in manner of expression, we may call them a unified message, and may apply to them all the words of explanation the poet sent to Can Grande when he presented to him “the sublime Canticle of the Comedy which is graced with the title of Paradiso.” “The aim of the whole and the part,”he wrote, “is to remove those living in this life from a state of misery, and to guide them to a state of happiness.”
The recognition by the student of this desire to know and to help his brother man, which gives to Dante’s writings a loftiness of tone and elevation of character that six centuries have failed to obscure, is the preventer of much misunderstanding, and the first essential to appreciative interpretation. The keynote of philanthropic endeavor Dante strikes early in the Convito, where he says, “I, knowing the miserable life of those whom I have left behind me, and moved to mercy by the sweetness of that which I have gained little by little, while not forgetting myself, have reserved for those wretched ones something which I have already for some time held before their eyes.” And again in the De Monarchia the author determines to concern himself “in laboring for posterity, in order that future generations may be enriched” by his efforts. The message that Dante felt called upon to deliver to the world is, then, virtually the same in the four works we have mentioned, but in the Vita Nuova the religious aspect is paramount, in the Convito the philosophical, in the De Monarchia the political, while the Divine Comedy concerns itself with the message as a whole. We might say that each of the first three writings has its own melody, a simple motif; in the Comedy the three themes combining swell into a movement of wondrous and complex harmony. And we might sum up the thought of the entire message in the words of Matthew: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Lowell, recognizing the ministering spirit of Dante, has said: “There is proof upon proof that he believed himself invested with a divine mission. Like the Hebrew prophets, with whose writings his whole soul was imbued, it was back to the old worship and the God of the fathers that he called his people; and not Isaiah himself was more destitute of that humor, that sense of ludicrous contrast, which is an essential in the composition of a sceptic.”
Or, to put the matter more concretely, Dante had looked abroad on mediæval society, had engaged in the practical affairs of Italy, had grown to feel that he understood conditions better than other men, and so believed that he was called of God to point out to men the right road. He beheld the two institutions that had for centuries striven to unite all Europe in a common interest—the Empire that had been revived under Charles the Great, and the Church that had attained to supremacy under Gregory VII—and he realized how sadly each had failed of its ambition. He saw, further, that despite these efforts there had come about in Europe the formation of nationalities, each differing in language and character, each having its own peculiar government, each torn by internecine strife, and each at times warring with the others. And he, together with other thinkers of that period, longed for unity among men, for unity that seemed never to be made a reality. Yet Dante believed and proclaimed that such a unity could come about, but in one way only, through a regeneration of society and a uniting of political interests under one head independent of the Church. This is the political aspect of Dante’s message.
But the De Monarchia, though it embodies Dante’s political ideals, can be read understandingly and sympathetically only when these political ideals are related to those of his religion as set forth in his other works. These in turn depend upon his theory of the universe and of moral order. To make this matter clear, we will state briefly the fundamental principles upon which Dante constructed his theory. For him the universe begins and ends with God: it begins with God the First Cause, the Primal Motor, the Maker, the Alpha of all things; it terminates in God the Ultimate End, the Great Arbiter, the Chief Good, the Omega of all things. The earth, on which dwells man, is at the centre of the created universe. About it are the nine moving heavens, according to the Ptolemaic astronomy, comprehended in the tenth, the Empyrean, the heaven which is at perfect rest because therein dwells God and Divine Love, and nothing is left for this heaven to desire. The Empyrean “is the sovereign edifice of the universe, in which all the world is included, and beyond which is nothing; and it is not in space, but was formed solely in the Primal Mind.”Ref 003 Not less fundamental than the unitary concept of the universe is that of the duality of man’s nature. This duality is not only in man’s nature, but in all things pertaining to him, his mode of existence, his mode of acquiring knowledge. That is, man is endowed with a twofold nature, a perishable and an imperishable, a soul and a body. He therefore lives for two ends, happiness on earth and happiness to be attained in heaven. Earthly beatitude is reached by the right ordering of temporal affairs; heavenly beatitude is made possible by Papal guidance in matters of the spiritual realm. Moreover, his life is active or contemplative, governed by reason or faith, enlightened by philosophy or revelation. Armed with these two ideas, we can approach the work under consideration.
Starting from man’s dual nature, the De Monarchia sets forth the manner in which the earthly happiness of the human race may be acquired by the right ordering of temporal affairs, the overlordship of a sole Monarch, the presence in the world of a Universal Empire. The body of the work is divided into three books, in each of which is expounded one side of the question at issue: first, the necessity of Universal Empire is proved; second, the right of the Romans to imperial authority; third, the direct bequeathing by God of this authority to the Romans without the mediation of the Church. In the first chapter the author says, “The knowledge of temporal Monarchy, one of the most important and most obscure of subjects, is brought forth from its hiding-place and explained for the good of the world.”
The first book of the De Monarchia pronounces that that which is the purpose or end of the human race is “to actualize continually the entire capacity of the possible intellect, primarily in speculation, . . . secondarily in action;” that “in the calm and tranquillity of peace the human race fulfills most freely and easily its given work;” that “universal peace is the best of those things ordained for our beatitude;” that “to the shepherds sounded from on high the message, not of riches, nor pleasures, nor honors, nor length of life, nor health, nor beauty, but peace.”Ref 004 Peace can come, Dante insists, only when there is one Monarch to own all, to rule all, to embrace in his dominion all kingdoms and states, to harmonize opposing princes and factions, and to judge with justice all temporal questions. And let us not forget that Dante’s passionate plea for peace arises amid the uninterrupted turbulence and strife of the never-to-be-pacified Italy of his day.
In taking up in the second book the question of Rome’s foreordination for supremacy, Dante makes use of what was in his day a startling premise—that, in the same manner in which the Jews were the chosen race for receiving and dispensing the religion of God to the peoples of the earth, so the Romans were the race chosen to receive and dispense the knowledge of law and justice. And in the proof at various points evidence is adduced as indisputably correct from Roman as well as Jew, from Virgil and Ovid, Lucan and Livy, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. History and poetic fiction have equal consideration and equal weight. To question his authorities never occurs to Dante. Especially from Virgil, “our divine poet,” he takes his idea of the Roman Empire—from Virgil, who in his Aeneid and Georgics sang of Rome, the conqueror and civilizer of the world; Rome, of origin divine, of antiquity great, of duration eternal, of jurisdiction universal. That Dante’s reasoning throughout this second division of the treatise is often based on unauthentic statements, that therefore some of his proofs are of no lasting value, it is unnecessary to emphasize. Nor less strange than those that precede it is the final statement, the climax of the argument of the second book, that Christ by His birth under the edict of the Emperor Augustus, and by His death under the vicar of the Emperor Tiberius, confirmed the universal jurisdiction of the Roman Empire.
….