Nor did the religious spirit of the age tend less to this result than its political circumstances.Fanaticism is an evil, but it is not the greatest of evils.It is good that a people should be roused by any means from a state of utter torpor;--that their minds should be diverted from objects merely sensual, to meditations, however erroneous, on the mysteries of the moral and intellectual world; and from interests which are immediately selfish to those which relate to the past, the future, and the remote.These effects have sometimes been produced by the worst superstitions that ever existed; but the Catholic religion, even in the time of its utmost extravagance and atrocity, never wholly lost the spirit of the Great Teacher, whose precepts form the noblest code, as His conduct furnished the purest example, of moral excellence.It is of all religions the most poetical.The ancient superstitions furnished the fancy with beautiful images, but took no hold on the heart.The doctrines of the Reformed Churches have most powerfully influenced the feelings and the conduct of men, but have not presented them with visions of sensible beauty and grandeur.The Roman Catholic Church has united to the awful doctrines of the one that Mr Coleridge calls the "fair humanities" of the other.It has enriched sculpture and painting with the loveliest and most majestic forms.To the Phidian Jupiter it can oppose the Moses of Michael Angelo; and to the voluptuous beauty of the Queen of Cyprus, the serene and pensive loveliness of the Virgin Mother.The legends of its martyrs and its saints may vie in ingenuity and interest with the mythological fables of Greece;its ceremonies and processions were the delight of the vulgar;the huge fabric of secular power with which it was connected attracted the admiration of the statesman.At the same time, it never lost sight of the most solemn and tremendous doctrines of Christianity,--the incarnate God,--the judgment,--the retribution,--the eternity of happiness or torment.Thus, while, like the ancient religions, it received incalculable support from policy and ceremony, it never wholly became, like those religions, a merely political and ceremonial institution.
The beginning of the thirteenth century was, as Machiavelli has remarked, the era of a great revival of this extraordinary system.The policy of Innocent,--the growth of the Inquisition and the mendicant orders,--the wars against the Albigenses, the Pagans of the East, and the unfortunate princes of the house of Swabia, agitated Italy during the two following generations.In this point Dante was completely under the influence of his age.
He was a man of a turbid and melancholy spirit.In early youth he had entertained a strong and unfortunate passion, which, long after the death of her whom he loved, continued to haunt him.
Dissipation, ambition, misfortunes had not effaced it.He was not only a sincere, but a passionate, believer.The crimes and abuses of the Church of Rome were indeed loathsome to him; but to all its doctrines and all its rites he adhered with enthusiastic fondness and veneration; and, at length, driven from his native country, reduced to a situation the most painful to a man of his disposition, condemned to learn by experience that no food is so bitter as the bread of dependence ("Tu proverai si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e come e duro calle Lo scendere e'l sa'ir per l'altrui scale."Paradiso, canto xvii.), and no ascent so painful as the staircase of a patron,--his wounded spirit took refuge in visionary devotion.Beatrice, the unforgotten object of his early tenderness, was invested by his imagination with glorious and mysterious attributes; she was enthroned among the highest of the celestial hierarchy: Almighty Wisdom had assigned to her the care of the sinful and unhappy wanderer who had loved her with such a perfect love.("L'amico mio, e non della ventura." Inferno, canto ii.) By a confusion, like that which often takes place in dreams, he has sometimes lost sight of her human nature, and even of her personal existence, and seems to consider her as one of the attributes of the Deity.
But those religious hopes which had released the mind of the sublime enthusiast from the terrors of death had not rendered his speculations on human life more cheerful.This is an inconsistency which may often be observed in men of a similar temperament.He hoped for happiness beyond the grave: but he felt none on earth.It is from this cause, more than from any other, that his description of Heaven is so far inferior to the Hell or the Purgatory.With the passions and miseries of the suffering spirits he feels a strong sympathy.But among the beatified he appears as one who has nothing in common with them,--as one who is incapable of comprehending, not only the degree, but the nature of their enjoyment.We think that we see him standing amidst those smiling and radiant spirits with that scowl of unutterable misery on his brow, and that curl of bitter disdain on his lips, which all his portraits have preserved, and which might furnish Chantrey with hints for the head of his projected Satan.