Commentary Par XXXII 34-36

If Dante's treatment of Augustine remains one of the most puzzling aspects of his poem, he himself is to blame; he seems deliberately to conceal his debt to Augustine (see C.Par.XII.130). Once Dante studies became more 'scientific,' in the nineteenth century, we might have expected that a great 'detective' of Dante's reading habits, Edward Moore, would have started to set things right in this respect. However, when he takes up this subject in Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante (Moor.1896.1), pp. 291-94, he is both tentative and hesitant, lest he overstate the importance of Augustine to Dante. Here are his concluding words (p. 294): 'I must confess, in conclusion, that I have not been able as yet to investigate the question of Dante's probable acquaintance with the works of St. Augustine nearly as fully as the subject seems to deserve. I am continually coming on fresh points of resemblance. There is, however, always this element of uncertainty, that many of his theories or arguments are reproduced by Aquinas,...' One does not want to blame Moore for the general under-appreciation of Augustine's importance for Dante. Nonetheless, the great scholar's hesitance undoubtedly affected others, who felt excused thereby from studying the problem as carefully as it 'seems to deserve.' For better appreciations, if not the central study that is still badly needed, see Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), passim; Newman (Newm.1967.1); Fallani (Fall.1976.1); Freccero (Frec.1986.1), esp. pp. 1-15; Mazzotta (Mazz.1979.1), esp. pp. 147-91; Wingell (Wing.1981.1); Took (Took.1990.1); Hawkins (Hawk.1991.2). Like Hawkins, Sarteschi (Sart.1999.1) believes that there is a widespread and often unacknowledged interaction between the texts of Augustine and those of Dante. Her method may at times seem suspect, in that she on occasion finds familiar Christian topoi in St. Augustine and then argues for their direct influence on Dante, when any number of sources and intermediaries may have shaped the poet's texts. This is not to disagree with the basic purpose of her study, which is to put Augustine more into play as a source than he is sometimes allowed to be. However, it should also be said that, with the exceptions of Mazzoni and Freccero, she has not referred to the work of any of the scholars cited above.

See C.Par.XII.130 for discussion of the appearance of Augustine's name (but not the saint) in Paradiso X and XII. And see Lauren Scancarelli Seem (Seem.2006.1), p. 82, pointing out that these two nominal presences arouse our expectations, but when Augustine finally does appear ([Par XXXII 35]), he is only a word from hitting the cutting-room floor, as it were, to be included, unbeknownst to us, among the unnamed others (e altri) seated in the Rose. This close call (and Dante's playful tussle with the reader over Augustine's fate in the Dantean afterworld) may possibly be explained by the fact of Augustine's strenuous opposition to the imperial (and republican) Roman ideal. Thus the Augustinian tale of two cities, which extols the City of God and its embattled earthly precursor, the Church Militant, but has no room for the empire in its world view, is the work of an enemy. There is no question but that Dante knew Augustine's work and admired it deeply – as theology, but even as theology only up to a point. And the issue that divides these two thinkers is Rome.

Augustine knew that imperial Virgil had to be resisted publicly and spiritedly, and yet he makes his Confessions a sort of epic Mediterranean counter-voyage (see Hollander [Holl.1969.1], p. 12 and n.), in which the pivotal municipal moment occurs not in an imperial monument in Rome but in a church in Milan. And if the text is seemingly a-Virgilian, even anti-Virgilian, it is nonetheless studded with Virgilian references. If that sounds suggestive of Dante's later treatment of Virgil in his Christian epic, the differences are perhaps not so very great (e.g., the gaudy textual transformations of Monica, whom Augustine steals away from (in Book V.8 ) just as Aeneas abandons Dido (in Book IV of the Aeneid), but then who is described (in Book IX.9), as though in apology, in a Virgilian phrase (Aen. VII.57: 'plenis annis nubilis') used of Lavinia. When the late Arthur Hanson and Robert Hollander jointly taught a seminar on 'Virgil in the Middle Ages' in the spring of 1973 at Princeton, Hanson, who entered the seminar an anti-Augustinian pagan-embracing classicist, ended up admiring Augustine, not least because, as one who knew Virgil really well, he recognized a kindred spirit. To be sure, Augustine refers to Virgil with increasing hostility, until, in De civitate Dei, the Roman poet is made the whipping boy for all that brought the imperial city low. At the same time, Hanson found that the Confessions (a work with a public stance that is clearly critical of Virgilian values) exhibits a cento-like tesselation of pieces of the Roman poet that serve no polemical anti-pagan purpose but are there, apparently, simply because Augustine just will not be without them. (The Virgilian aspect of Augustine mainly escapes the attention of James O'Donnell in his fine new biographical study [Odon.2005.1]).

Dante's view of Augustine, as is his view of other major sources, is various. For him, Augustine has most of the important equations -- the theological ones -- right; he is desperately wrong about a single major issue: the relation of Roman imperium to God's plan for the world. Aquinas is better on that subject, but gets a failing grade for his hostility to poetry as a way to truth. Virgil got most things right except for the most important one: God. Francis understood the role of love in God's world perhaps better than anyone else, but failed to grasp the importance of reason (Thomas's bailiwick). Among the ancients, Aristotle understood the framework of the created universe perhaps better than anyone (at least before Thomas), but couldn't marry the concept of spirit to his otherwise flawless understanding. Plato and later platonizing thinkers, on the other hand, were admirable in that respect, but they failed utterly to comprehend the importance of this world and its progress through time. It is perhaps fair to say that Dante was possibly the first great synthesizer of the modern era (the Renaissance is generally seen as the period in which modern syncretism was born [the word apparently has its first post-classical appearance in the Adagia of Erasmus], what with such thinkers as Pico della Mirandola seeking to develop a system that reflected many others). If this is true, why have we not appreciated it before? (See, however, C.Par.X.99 for Baranski's use of the term.) Dante is frequently understood and often presented as the most 'orthodox' of thinkers, the exponent of the medieval and theologized Christian sense of life. Such a view is not incorrect; that was precisely what Dante hoped he had accomplished. However, the formulation does not take into account the violence that he does to every system of thought that he incorporates in his own. As a result, any attempt to square Dante with a single school of thought (e.g., Busnelli's Thomist Dante) is eventually doomed to failure.

The word sincretismo is a late arrival to the commentary tradition (at least as it is represented by the holdings of the DDP). It is first found in Sapegno's notes, where it occurs four times (DDP Sapegno.Inf.XIV.86, DDP Sapegno.Inf.XXIV.25, DDP Sapegno.Purg.XXX.21, DDP Sapegno.Purg.XXXIII.49-51), always in the limited sense found in his phrase 'consueto sincretismo di elementi classici e medievali' (usual syncretism of classical and medieval elements [cited from the last occurrence]). In other words, Sapegno is speaking of a 'limited sincretism,' indicating only Dante's Christianizing treatment of pagan sources. As the term is more properly used, it has the following main characteristic, according to the entry in Wikipedia (online): 'Religious syncretism exhibits the blending of two or more religious belief systems into a new system, or the incorporation into a religious tradition of beliefs from unrelated traditions.' Historically, the word has a brief but distinguished history, which is attested in many sources: 'The Greek word occurs in Plutarch's (1st century AD) essay on "Fraternal Love" in his Moralia (2.490b). He cites the example of the Cretans who reconciled their differences and came together in alliance when faced with external dangers. "And that is their so-called Syncretism." . . . Erasmus probably coined the modern usage of the Latin word (in his Adagia, published in the winter of 1517–1518) to designate the coherence of dissenters in spite of their differences in theological opinions. In a letter to Melancthon of April 22, 1519, Erasmus specifically adduced the Cretans of Plutarch as an example of his adage "Concord is a mighty rampart").'

Mattalia (DDP Mattalia.Inf.IV.130) refers to the syncretic nature of Scholasticism itself, weaving a unitary view out of many strands of diverse authorities. That passage is perhaps the only one found in the commentary tradition to modify the sense found in Sapegno of a more limited pagan-Christian 'syncretism.' And Sapegno's is the sense active in the three uses of the word in Bosco/Reggio (DDP Bosco.Inf.XIV.68-70; DDP Bosco.Purg.XXX.21; DDP Bosco.Par.II.8-9) -- their first use of the word may reflect Sapegno's usage in the same passage in Inferno.