trivia question...

[thanate]

Does anyone know if Dante Alighieri believed in the flat Church pardon for all atrocities committed in crusade/"retaking" the holy land? I don't recall any mention of the matter in the Inferno, but I haven't read the other two parts, or much in the way of scholarship about it...

Comments

[wahyagar.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing here a bit, as I have also never found anything that states it specifically, But I am betting that Dante supported the absolution or at the very least accepted it as legitimate. I say that for a couple of reasons:

St. Bernard is one of Dante's instructors in Paradisio, and Bernard preached in favor of the Second Crusade.... I also don't recall any of the Popes who were calling for Crusades being condemned to hell specifically for that. The Popes I DO recall being in hell were there for simony, or supporting a reconciliation between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, etc.

Emperor Frederick II was also condemned to hell in the Inferno, after being excommunicated for promising a crusade and not delivering one.

I know that I'm not showing a lot of definitive support here, but I also have not been able to find any really good documentation on Dante's dogmatic outlooks. Simply that Dante tended to accept the tenents of the church completely, but didn't have any blinders on when it came to the human failings of its' leaders.

I also think that the reason you don't find any real documentation on the subject is that it simply wasn't highly relevant to Dante's life. His greatest concern was for Florence, not necessarily the world at large.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Thanks! This is actually quite helpful to what I was looking for.

[wahyagar.livejournal.com]

No problem! I'm going to have to sit down and do some real digging. I'm actually curious now, and it has been 2 years or so since I last read the Divine Comedy....