Prelegerea observă o evoluție semnificativă a credințelor romane, în special odată cu ascensiunea creștinismului. Până în secolul al II-lea d.Hr., practicile de înmormântare s-au schimbat de la incinerare la înhumare, reflectând credința în învierea trupului, așa cum arată dovezile arheologice de la situri precum S. Paolo, care indică o tranziție treptată Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire | Harvard Theological Review | Cambridge Core. Acest context este crucial pentru înțelegerea cadrului creștin al Divinei Comedii, unde călătoria sufletului după moarte este centrală.
Acest exil, detaliat în prelegere, a influențat profund Divina Comedie, fiind o reflectare a amărăciunii și dorului său pentru patria sa. Poemul, posibil început în jurul anului 1308 și finalizat până în 1321, a devenit un mijloc prin care Dante și-a procesat luptele personale și politice Dante: The Divine Comedy.
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Infernul: Dante, ghidat de Virgiliu, coboară prin nouă cercuri ale Iadului, fiecare pedepsind păcate specifice. Limbo adăpostește păgâni virtuoși precum Socrate și Aristotel; cercurile inferioare abordează pofta, lăcomia, violența, frauda și trădarea, cu Satana în fund, înghețat în gheață, mestecându-i pe Iuda, Brutus și Cassius Inferno (Dante) – Wikipedia. Prelegerea evidențiază pedepse precum ploaia murdară asupra lacomilor și trădătorii înghețați, ilustrând dreptatea divină.
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Purgatoriul: Situat pe un munte, Purgatoriul are șapte terase pentru cele șapte păcate capitale, unde sufletele se purifică prin penitență, precum mândrii care cară pietre pentru umilință. Prelegerea notează ascensiunea către Paradisul Terestru, unde Dante o întâlnește pe Beatrice, simbolizând dragostea divină Purgatorio – Wikipedia.
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Paradisul: Ghidat de Beatrice, Dante urcă prin nouă sfere cerești, de la Lună la Empireu, întâlnind sfinți și discutând teologie. Prelegerea subliniază viziunea lui Dumnezeu, descrisă ca trei cercuri concentrice, simbolizând Treimea, culminând cu experiența dragostei divine Paradiso (Dante) – Wikipedia.
Prelegerea evidențiază temele salvării, dragostei divine și călătoriei sufletului, cu alegoria omniprezentă. Cele trei fiare – leopardul (pofta), leul (mândria), lupoaica (avariția) – blochează drumul lui Dante, simbolizând păcatele care împiedică progresul spiritual Dante and The Divine Comedy: He took us on a tour of Hell – BBC. Virgiliu reprezintă rațiunea, iar Beatrice întruchipează revelația divină, reflectând sinteza medievală a credinței și rațiunii.
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Parte
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Decor
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Ghid
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Teme principale
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Infernul
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Nouă cercuri ale Iadului
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Virgiliu
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Păcat, dreptate, răzbunare divină
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Purgatoriul
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Șapte terase pe un munte
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Virgiliu
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Penitență, purificare, speranță
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Paradisul
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Nouă sfere cerești
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Beatrice
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Dragoste divină, teologie, salvare
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The video “Dante, The Divine Comedy” features a lecture discussing Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, focusing on its themes of the soul’s immortality, salvation, and love.
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It seems likely that the lecture covers Dante’s life, his exile in 1302, and the poem’s structure: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, set during Easter week in 1300.
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Research suggests the Divine Comedy influenced art and culture, notably Gothic cathedrals, and remains a significant literary work.
This survey note provides an in-depth analysis of the video “Dante, The Divine Comedy,” based on the provided lecture transcript. It aims to offer a comprehensive understanding of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, its historical context, and its lasting legacy, expanding on the key points for a thorough examination.
The lecture notes a significant evolution in Roman beliefs, particularly with Christianity’s rise. By the second century AD, burial practices shifted from cremation to inhumation, reflecting the belief in bodily resurrection, as archaeological evidence from sites like S. Paolo shows a gradual transition Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire | Harvard Theological Review | Cambridge Core. This context is crucial for understanding the Divine Comedy‘s Christian framework, where the soul’s journey after death is central.
This exile, detailed in the lecture, profoundly influenced the Divine Comedy, serving as a reflection of his bitterness and longing for his homeland. The poem, possibly begun around 1308 and completed by 1321, became a vehicle for Dante to process his personal and political struggles Dante: The Divine Comedy.
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Inferno: Dante, guided by Virgil, descends through nine circles of Hell, each punishing specific sins. Limbo houses virtuous pagans like Socrates and Aristotle; lower circles address lust, gluttony, violence, fraud, and treachery, with Satan at the bottom, frozen in ice, chewing Judas, Brutus, and Cassius Inferno (Dante) – Wikipedia. The lecture highlights punishments like gluttons enduring foul rain and traitors frozen, illustrating divine justice.
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Purgatorio: Located on a mountain, Purgatory has seven terraces for the seven deadly sins, where souls purify through penance, such as the proud carrying stones for humility. The lecture notes the ascent to the Earthly Paradise, where Dante meets Beatrice, symbolizing divine love Purgatorio – Wikipedia.
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Paradiso: Guided by Beatrice, Dante ascends through nine celestial spheres, from the Moon to the Empyrean, encountering saints and discussing theology. The lecture emphasizes the vision of God, described as three concentric circles, symbolizing the Trinity, culminating in the experience of divine love Paradiso (Dante) – Wikipedia.
The lecture underscores themes of salvation, divine love, and the soul’s journey, with allegory pervasive throughout. The three beasts—leopard (lust), lion (pride), she-wolf (avarice)—block Dante’s path, symbolizing sins hindering spiritual progress Dante and The Divine Comedy: He took us on a tour of Hell – BBC. Virgil represents reason, while Beatrice embodies divine revelation, reflecting the medieval synthesis of faith and reason.
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Part
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Setting
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Guide
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Key Themes
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Inferno
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Nine circles of Hell
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Virgil
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Sin, justice, divine retribution
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Purgatorio
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Seven terraces on a mountain
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Virgil
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Penance, purification, hope
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Paradiso
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Nine celestial spheres
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Beatrice
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Divine love, theology, salvation
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Transcript:
In our last lecture, we explored the profound concept of the immortality of the soul in the Fido of Plato, the dialogue concerned with the last hours of the life of Socrates. (0:26) This man, who of all the men of his time was judged by his friends and students to be the best, the wisest, and the most just, but who died, executed by the Athenian democracy, on charges of corruption and treason. (0:45) The immortality of the soul was the goal of the entire life of Socrates.
(0:52) It is what his search for truth had led him to. (0:56) And in our fourth lecture, we discussed the Bhagavad Gita, written in roughly the same time period as Socrates, around 500 BC as compared to Socrates about a century later, in which in that most eloquent statement of classical Indian religious thought, the immortality of the soul was the goal of life. (1:23) And the goal of the wise man, the searcher after truth, was ultimately to free his soul from the body and to be enjoined in bliss with God.
(1:36) Great parallel between Socrates and the Bhagavad Gita. (1:40) Not every civilization has found it necessary to accept the immortality of the soul. (1:47) It is not found it necessary to believe that there are consequences for good or evil actions.
(1:53) And our own age, the 21st century, seems to get along very nicely without our really taking seriously the concept of the immortality of the soul. (2:03) I don’t say this out of any scoffing.(2:06) It’s simply that is how we work.
(2:08) Remember that Socrates says that if you believe in the immortality of the soul, you welcome death. (2:15) You prepare yourself for death your entire life. (2:19) We are just the opposite.
(2:21) We don’t want death at all. (2:22) We try every means available not to die. (2:26) We even want to be brought back from the dead.
(2:28) Can you imagine Socrates saying, put one of those little things on my chest and bring me back from the dead? (2:32) No. (2:33) But that is what we want.
(2:34) Moreover, Socrates talks about our worry about the body getting in the way of our cultivating the soul. (2:41) And yet that is what we are obsessed with is our body. (2:45) All the hours we spend exercising, the torment we put ourselves through just so that we can live a little longer.
(2:54) Now that is clearly not a society that is concerned with the soul. (2:59) We should give some thought then to the development of a concept of the immortality of the soul. (3:07) In Homer, the soul is immortal after a fashion.
(3:13) It goes down into the underworld, a squeaky winged little creature that goes down into the underworld where it lives a miserable existence. (3:22) Remember what Achilles says to Odysseus, better to be a slave in the world above than to be king of the underworld. (3:31) And in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Testament, the immortality of the soul is of no consequence.
(3:40) The Hebrew Testament does not deal with the immortality of the soul. (3:45) It is your life here on earth in which you must justify yourself to God. (3:51) But in Greece in the course of the 6th century BC and in a religious development that we discussed in our lecture on the Bacchae, we see the transformation of the concept of Homer from a miserable existence in the underworld to a belief in the immortality of the soul brought about by belief in God.
(4:15) Remember the worship of Dionysus and his Bacchae, how you undergo a ritual baptism to cleanse yourself of sin. (4:25) You partake of the body and blood of the god Dionysus, who is the son of God by a mortal woman who has suffered, died, and been resurrected. (4:36) And by believing in Dionysus, your soul never dies, but lives on in eternal bliss.
(4:43) And Socrates in the Phaedo refers specifically to this belief as being a justification for his own belief in the immortality of the soul. (4:53) I agree, he said, with the worshipers of Bacchus, of Dionysus, that many are called but only few are chosen to receive immortal life. (5:05) But for the worshipers of Dionysus, for the Bacchae, it is belief in God that gives you this immortal soul and salvation.
(5:16) For Socrates, it is your own purification, your own gaining of wisdom. (5:23) But all through the course of the period after Alexander the Great, the belief in the immortality of the soul became ever more important in the Greek and later Roman world. (5:33) The Romans themselves in their earlier period had not given a great deal of concern to the immortality of the soul.
(5:39) When you died, you went to an underworld, and it was fairly gloomy, but no concern with it.(5:45) By the second century A.D., that had undergone a tremendous transformation. (5:50) Already in the Aeneid of Virgil, completed by the year 19 B.C., Virgil describes following Plato and Socrates, the underworld, where the souls of the just go to join God, and where the souls of those who have done evil suffer punishment, in some cases eternal punishment, being pitched into a great pit. (6:18) By the second century A.D., the concern for the salvation of your soul had become uppermost in the minds of rich and poor alike. (6:28) And joined with it now was the concern that your soul be joined with your body in the afterlife. (6:36) So our belief in the resurrection of the body, and we see this archaeologically.
(6:42) In the first century A.D., it was still the custom in the Roman world to burn bodies. (6:47) By the second century A.D., this has been almost entirely replaced by burial, and this can only be accounted for by the change in this belief that you want your body preserved. (7:00) And in art too, there is a tremendous focus in the second century and third century A.D. on the eyes, for the eyes are the windows into your soul. (7:10) And ultimately, a ruler of the Roman Empire, the Emperor Constantine in 312 A.D., in fear of his immortal soul, and believing that the Christian God and Christ as the means of salvation for him, will convert to Christianity, and that religion will be imposed upon the entire Roman Empire. (7:29) And Christianity rests upon this belief in the immortality of the soul. (7:35) That is why Christ was sent into the world, to die so that in the love of God, giving his own son, all men and women might find immortal life, and their soul and their body resurrected.
(7:51) Thus, for the Christian Middle Ages, the immortality of the soul, as brought about by belief in God the Father, the Son, and in the Holy Spirit, and made possible through the Catholic Church, whether it’s the Greek Orthodox Church in the East, or the Roman Catholic Church in the West.(8:13) And outside of this church, and outside of its sacraments, there is no salvation. (8:21) The immortality of the soul is the foundation of the Christian Middle Ages, and this belief in the immortality of the soul gave rise to the greatest work of the Middle Ages, and one of the greatest books ever composed, the Divine Comedy of Dante.
(8:41) And we want to talk about the Divine Comedy, and it might seem presumptuous to treat the Divine Comedy in one lecture, while we could give an entire teaching course just to one of its parts. (8:52) Say the Inferno, give another 36 lectures to Purgatory, another 36 lectures to Paradise. (9:00) But my hope is to inspire you to look into that truly great book, for it is a great book.
(9:06) It has as its monumental theme, the soul. (9:11) That is why it is a comedy. (9:14) Life is a comedy, because ultimately, for those who believe, it has the happy ending of salvation.
(9:23) So its theme of the Divine Comedy is salvation, and it is written in the purest, most eloquent of Italian. (9:31) Dante himself much considered the idea of language, and in his day great works were meant to be written in Latin. (9:39) But he realized that in speaking to the soul, you must speak in the language of the people.
(9:44) And so he took the Italian language, a language of many dialects, and made it into a magnificent vehicle. (9:55) And it is a work that speaks across the ages. (10:01) Time and time again, men and women have found inspiration in the Divine Comedy, but I’ll tell you this, it also embodies our thought that a great book can be very difficult reading.
(10:11) And if you thought Homer was difficult with all of its mythological allusions, the Divine Comedy, with its overwhelming number of references to immediate contemporary events, is a very difficult thicket to make your way through. (10:24) But I believe it’s worth the effort, and I want to inspire you to look into this work, the Divine Comedy, by talking about the man who wrote it, by Dante, about Dante. (10:35) Dante Alighieri, a Florentine, he said, by birth, but not by character.
(10:43) He was born in the Florence that was a free nation, one of the city-states of Italy, in an age of tremendous intellectual ferment, born in the year 1265 A.D. A city that was free, with its own popular government, a city embroiled in the political struggles of Italy, a disunited nation, born to a family of some wealth and prominence. (11:07) And Dante himself participated in the politics of his native country. (11:11) It might have been wiser just to become a scholar, just to write poetry.
(11:16) But like Socrates, he went out into the world, and he held in his turn positions of authority in the Florentine government. (11:25) And in 1302, when he was 37 years of age, he was sent into exile. (11:32) There was a sudden change in government, and all of those who had been in the government before were suddenly faced with enormous charges, trumped-up charges, lies, just like the kind of lies that brought down Socrates.
(11:45) But they stuck to Dante. (11:48) He was charged with corruption in office, malfeasance, taking bribes. (11:53) And wise enough to realize that any jury there would convict him, he left Florence, and the exile was made permanent.
(12:01) If he returned to Florentine territory, he would be burned at the stake. (12:06) And so he spent his years until his death in 1321, from 1302 to 1321, wandering through Italy, time and time again given hospitality, even at princely courts, but always that stigma, don’t you see? (12:22) This is a man who was found guilty of corruption.
(12:26) He had already published his magnificent work on the Italian language. (12:30) He wrote a book on monarchy, arguing that monarchy in the form of the Holy Roman Emperor was the salvation for Italy’s political problems, that monarchy came from God himself, and that the noblest instrument of government on earth had been the Roman Empire, and now its legacy in the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. (12:55) But above all, he hoped in his great poem of salvation to gain eternal fame.
(13:02) And as he wrote to a friend and supporter, I compose this not as an allegory, but as a practical guide so that men and women might find salvation. (13:18) In the middle of my life, I found myself in a dark wood where the very path was lost. (13:40) That’s how the Divine Comedy begins, the first of its three great parts, the Inferno.
(13:46) And Dante set the time of his comedy in the year 1300, exactly at Easter time. (13:56) And the action of the Divine Comedy occurs within the week of Easter, starting with Good Friday.(14:05) And Dante finds himself in this deep, dark wood in the middle of his life, in the beginning of our journey, midway through our journey in life, I found myself in this dark wood.
(14:21) So he’s 35 years of age, don’t you see? (14:24) Halfway through the appointed 70 years.(14:27) And he finds himself in this dark wood alone, and the very way that he is to take has been lost.
(14:34) And he sees before him a great mountain. (14:38) And he understands that somehow he must climb that mountain to get out of this dark wood. (14:45) But as he starts towards it, suddenly these beasts appear, a leopard, a lion, a wolf.
(14:52) And for the mind of the Middle Ages, every aspect of nature bore the imprint of God, and every animal, every tree had its symbolic meaning. (15:03) The Middle Ages is an age of allegory in which we look again and again for the meaning behind what we see. (15:11) And the leopard, why that is pleasure.
(15:14) And the lion, that is the symbol of ambition. (15:18) And the wolf of avarice and greed.(15:22) Don’t you see those are the three things that are blocking your way right now?
(15:27) Pleasure, ambition, and avarice. (15:34) Isn’t that what you’re after right now today? (15:36) Don’t you want to get ahead in the world?
(15:37) Yes or no? (15:38) I think it’s very bad if you don’t. (15:39) And how do you get ahead in the world?
(15:41) If you don’t have ambition, are you going to get anywhere? (15:43) After all, what’s the difference between not having ambition and being slothful? (15:48) And the Church in the Middle Ages tells you that sloth is a deadly sin.
(15:52) And what is avarice? (15:53) It’s just making money. (15:54) Is there anything wrong with making money?
(15:56) Absolutely not. (15:58) Money don’t buy everything, it’s true, but what it don’t buy I can’t use. (16:01) I need money and pleasure.
(16:05) What is money for except to buy you pleasure? (16:10) And pleasure’s not a bad thing.(16:11) Don’t you want to take your children to Disneyland?
(16:13) Don’t you want to send them to good schools? (16:14) Those are all pleasurable activities.(16:17) And there are these three perfectly normal desires blocking Dante’s way up that mountain.
(16:25) He doesn’t know what to do. (16:27) And suddenly a figure appears to him, an olive wreath around his head, carrying a book. (16:35) And Dante looks and says, Can it be you, O my master?
(16:40) It is I. (16:42) It is I, Virgil. (16:44) Virgil, the great poet of Rome.
(16:47) I have admired you since I first began to know the world. (16:52) You’re a need. (16:53) It is my everything.
(16:56) I want to pattern my writing upon you. (16:59) You’re a need. (17:00) It is the most magnificent of poems.
(17:03) Well, Virgil, for the Christian church, had not lived in time to know Christ, but God had used Virgil as a messenger. (17:12) And Virgil’s poetry was thought to prophesize the coming of Christ, the Savior of the world, the Prince of Peace. (17:18) And Virgil had also been given the understanding by God in the teaching of the Christian church to convey in the Aeneid the truth about the immortality of the soul and about hell and about heaven.
(17:33) So Virgil is the noble pagan, and he says, I have been sent to guide you out of this dark wood. (17:44) Well, let’s go up the mountain then. (17:46) Well, we can’t go up the mountain.
(17:48) We can only get out of this darkness. (17:51) You can only get out of your despair by going down. (17:55) Down?
(17:56) Down into the underworld. (17:58) Down into those depths. (18:00) But nobody comes out of the underworld.
(18:01) Well, that’s not true. (18:03) Aeneas went down. (18:04) He did.
(18:04) That’s right. (18:05) I had forgotten that. (18:06) Odysseus did.
(18:06) That’s right. (18:07) He did. (18:07) So you go with me, and we will go down into hell.
(18:11) But it will not be easy. (18:13) Look at that sign over the gates we are entering. (18:16) Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
(18:20) And thus begins the first stage of Dante’s journey. (18:25) At Easter, who went down into hell at Easter time but Christ? (18:31) So Dante takes that same path of the Jesus whose suffering was sent to bring salvation to every man and woman.
(18:40) And Dante goes down into hell. (18:43) And do you know, as you start down into the lower parts of hell, there is a quiet part to it without the suffering and moaning. (18:53) Noble looking palaces.
(18:56) And Dante turns to Virgil and says, well, this doesn’t look so bad. (19:00) And Virgil says, no. (19:01) Do you know who lives there?
(19:03) These are souls of noble pagans, people who lived before the time of Christ, who, if they had known Jesus, would have believed in him. (19:16) Here, for example, you will see all great figures from the past like Hector. (19:22) Socrates.
(19:23) There’s Socrates.
(19:24) Hello, Socrates. (19:25) Plato.
(19:27) Aristotle, the most profound mind that ever lived. (19:31) There they are. (19:32) Pythagoras.
(19:35) But now we must cross the gateway into the place of pain and suffering. (19:43) We must cross the great river and go into the dark lands. (19:48) Who, Virgil my master, are all those little souls running up and down the riverbank, running back and forth, back and forth with worried little looks on their face?
(20:00) Those are the survivors, the tremors. (20:03) Those are the people who, you know, always want to be on the right side. (20:07) They never take a stand.
(20:09) These are the people that, when you go into an important meeting, have been telling you that they’re on your side and have your support, and you have their support. (20:15) When you go into that meeting, they suddenly have changed their mind. (20:18) They always want to know who’s going to win.
(20:21) Well, their punishment is always to be running up and down this bank, never making a decision, always trying to see which way the wind is blowing. (20:31) Neither good nor evil. (20:33) They are just outcasts.
(20:35) What’s that figure in the boat who looks at people with such fiery eyes? (20:40) Oh, that is a boatman who must carry you across the river. (20:43) That is the ancient demon, Chiron.
(20:46) But I will tell him that you are to be allowed to pass. (20:51) And across they go, and then down into an ever-descending circles of hell, each punishment getting worse and worse and worse. (21:01) From those who, oh, did more than, did little more than be excessive in their love, pursuing the passion of lust too far.
(21:12) Like Dido. (21:13) There’s Dido from the Aeneid.
(21:15) Remember who killed herself out of love for Aeneas? (21:18) They are the great lovers of history. (21:22) And then on down to people who were gluttons.
(21:25) I know him. (21:27) Why, he lived in Florence in my own day. (21:29) They called him Hoggut.
(21:31) Yes, it’s me, oh, Hoggut. (21:32) I’m back. (21:33) Chiaco, I’m back.
(21:36) And I’m going to tell you a few things that happened, that have been happening in Florence. (21:39) Fill me in on all the details.
(21:41) Yes, I ate too much, and my punishment is to lie here and let foul rain pour down into my mouth through all eternity. (21:50) Oh, you think about that the next time you want to be a glutton.(21:54) Gluttony is an excess.
(21:57) It is punished. (21:59) And on down to those who did more serious things. (22:03) On down to those who committed crimes of violence.
(22:07) Violence against themselves. (22:09) They are the suicides. (22:10) Violence against other men and women, and those who committed violence against God himself.
(22:20) And then further down to those who practice deceit and fraud. (22:27) Worse than murder are those who take the God-given gift of reason and pervert it to lead astray, to deceive, to rob and cheat. (22:41) So they are the hypocrites.
(22:44) They are the flatterers. (22:46) They are the sowers of discord. (22:48) And there, Dante has placed Muhammad as the supreme sower of discord and disharmony.
(22:58) And then on down to those who betrayed a client. (23:04) You might picture an attorney there from our own day who was supposed to watch after his client’s interest and left them in the lurch. (23:15) The worst sort of betrayal.
(23:17) And then on down to traitors. (23:21) Those who had betrayed their country. (23:25) And ultimately, in the deepest circle of hell, in the deepest pit, is Satan himself.
(23:34) Not surrounded by fire, though many in the upper levels have been punished by fire.(23:40) But there it is nothing but ice, because that farthest circle of hell is most removed from the light of God. (23:52) And there, clutched in his three great set of teeth, the three-headed beast of Satan chews through all eternity the arch-traitors.
(24:03) Brutus and Cassius, who kill the noblest of all the Romans, great Caesar. (24:10) And Judas, who betrayed Jesus. (24:18) We have come through hell, and now we can begin our ascent.
(24:23) And Virgil takes us now up towards the great mountain that is Purgatory. (24:27) Purgatory, the second part of the divine comedy. (24:33) That place where those who have believed in Jesus, who have committed some sins, but who have died outside of the church, or who have died in such sin that they must pass years removed from God.
(24:51) And step by step, we climb up through Purgatory, where those souls who, in consequence of their evil actions, must wait for years, when they finally go to heaven, until we reach the Garden of Eden. (25:08) Purgatory itself has been guarded by Cato. (25:12) Do you remember Marcus Portius Cato from our famous Romans?
(25:15) He was the one who gave his life for liberty. (25:20) So noble was he in his pursuit of virtue, of moderation, of courage, and of justice, and of wisdom, that God allows him, this Roman, to guard the gates of Purgatory. (25:33) And Virgil says to him, Cato, let this man Dante in, for he comes in search of liberty.
(25:41) And on up through the Garden of Eden, and finally to heaven. (25:47) And now Virgil, the pagan, must leave Dante. (25:51) And Dante is now escorted through the levels of heaven by three women, by his beloved Beatrice, whom he has loved with purity all these years, perhaps never having done more than see her from afar.
(26:07) But he has loved her, and she is there to help him. (26:12) And then Saint Lucy, the patron saint who is light itself. (26:19) And then the Virgin Mary.
(26:22) And in their company, step by step, Dante proceeds up into paradise. (26:28) Now, modern readers find the Inferno the more interesting, but for Dante, it is the paradise. (26:35) And there Dante, step by step, understands that reason can carry you only so far.
(26:42) Ultimately, it is divine love. (26:47) And the Virgin Mary intercedes for him, and prays.(26:50) And prays to God, let this man Dante, let this mortal, see just for a moment your glory.
(27:01) And Dante describes in the final lines the blinding flash in which his eyes are swept away, and he cannot describe it. (27:11) It is a feeling beyond any description. (27:13) I saw, as it were, three concentric circles, each of different colors.
(27:19) I saw them flash for a moment, and then just for a moment, a vision of indescribable beauty. (27:28) I saw the love, he said, that moves the universe. (27:33) The Divine Comedy is a poem about love.
(27:37) And it has as its fundamental text, John 3, 16. (27:42) For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life. (27:53) And that was the foundation of medieval Christianity, this belief in love.
(28:00) Love, as testified to by the Virgin Mary. (28:07) And all over Europe in the age of Dante, great cathedrals had been erected, great Gothic cathedrals, in which your soul is to soar upwards towards union with God, the same way that Dante has made this pilgrimage upwards towards union with God. (28:22) And time and time again, as at Chartres or Mont Saint-Michel, they are dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
(28:30) For the Virgin Mary in her love is what will carry you ultimately to the understanding of Jesus and then of God. (28:41) And the sign of that divine love is the light that pours down from heaven, the same light that blinded Dante, that light that is the sun that you can’t look at, but you know warms you. (28:55) And so, Gothic cathedrals are great testimonies to the light that is the love of God.
(29:02) Filled with windows, the light pours through. (29:06) And in the center, the great rose window. (29:10) The rose itself is but the symbol of love.
(29:15) And the light pours through that rose window in a Gothic cathedral to elevate your soul to God. (29:22) That was the journey that Dante took, and he emerged from that experience to bring back to earth, in his allegory, the message of the love of God. (29:33) So a deeply religious work, written by a man who had suffered profoundly and knew he had been wrong, and out of his misery created this work of profound inspiration, a work of philosophical depth, and a work of poetry unsurpassed for the beauty of its
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