Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Virgil and Statius: Dante's Old and New Humanisms Part I




In Canto 21, of Il Purgatorio, there is a very felicitous, and at the same time, sad endounter between the poets, Dante and Virgil, with the Silver Age Roman poet Statius. The moment is happy in the sense that Statius, who is said to have converted to Christianity because of Virgil's poetry, and on account of this, Statius owes him a great debt of gratitude. It is a sad encounter, for we know that after Virgil has ascended to the Earthly Paradise, his role in Dante's (and perhaps Statius', too) is ended, and he must thenceforth take his place once again among the shades in Limbo, that region in hell where the Righteous Pagans abide. After all, even though he doesn't suffer the most cruel torments of the nether regions of hell, we are reminded that he is still a damned soul. The meeting between Statius and Virgil, therefore, is a bittersweet one.

Yet Virgil, damned as he is to live perpetually in Limbo, nonetheless has a job to accomplish for Dante: he must prepare him for that anticipated meeting with the woman who provided him with the inspiration for the journey-Beatrice-who stands here as an image of divine grace. This meeting will take place, with a flurry of processions and religious pageantry, in the Earthly Paradise, the very pinnacle of Mt. Purgatory (Canto XXXIII). All through the Inferno Virgil guided Dante, helping him to see sin and vice for what they really are. Lady Philosophy provides a similar guidance to Boethius in the Consolatione, weaning him away from the shadows (identifying fortune as the highest good) and to a knowledge of hi true end (happiness as the true summam bonum). Virgil similarly helps Dante to reorient his gaze, away from proximate goods, and towards the true highest good.

But how can Virgil, a damned soul, provide this service for Dante? To answer this question, we must remember that while damned, Virgil is nonetheless a righteous pagan. As such, he had mastered the natural, or cardinal, virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. These virtues are called cardinal virtues (cardo-hinge) precisley because all other human virtues hinge on these four. Many pagans, for example, show knwoledge of what to do and what to avoid, thereby dispalying prudence. They might show excellence in giving everyone what is his due, and thus act with justice. They show great temprance in controling the appetites and moderating pleasure. Finally, a pagan can indeed show a firmness of spirit, doing his duty in the face of opposition and even death, and thus display fortitude. These virtues, in other words, are the highest that a person can achieve, apart from divine grace.

But the fact that they are achieved apart from gace makes them deficient, for, as good and noble as they are, they are not enough to restore humanity to its ultimate end-union with God. But he can lead Dante to the highest end of human proximate goods, by teaching him to imitate his hero Aeneas, who would not waver from his duty to show pietas by obeying the divine injunction to found the best of earthly cities, Rome. Likewise, Dante is helped by Virgil to attain to his ultimate end by setting earthly life in order by the cultivation of the cardinal virtues named above.

But to do that, he needed to be shown the utlimate end of sin and vice-the ninth circle, the circle of those who betrayed their lords (in this case, Satan, Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Casius). This circle is cold, and Satan, formerly Lucifer, is frozen and stiff, his flapping wings making this circle even colder. His only relationship to others is a consuming one, each of his three faces gnawing on the other traitors. Sin and vice end in this, a total breakdown in ecclesial and civic community. As a resident of hell, nonetheless inhabiting the circle of the righteuous pagans (in addition to his being the poet of the Augustan ascendency, and the Pax Romana that resulted from it), Virgil is Dante's best guide through the vices.

In Purgatory, however, Virgil is in unfamiliar territory. He does not quite have the same confidence he had in hell. Purgatory is a training ground for virtue, where the cardinal virtues are perfected by grace (Sayers). In lines 64ff, Virgil explains to Cato, who is now the guardian of Mt. Purgatory, the long journey through hell that brought them to this very moment of grace:

I've shown him Hell with all its guilty herd,
and mean to show him next the souls who dwell
Making purgation here beneath thy ward.

How I have brought him through, 'twere long to tell;
Power from on high helps me to guide his feet
To thee, to see and hear and mark thee well. (Divine Comedy, trans. by D. Sayers, Canto I, lines 64-69)

Right reason, represented by Virgil, prepares the soul for grace, and it is grace that expands, without destroying, the capacity of reason to ascend higher up the school of virtue known as Purgatory. The meeting with Cato of Utica, who is an image and type of the moral virtues (Sayers note, Canto I), is telling in this regard. Cato, though not a Christian in life, is nonetheless chosen as a "doorkeeper" to Mt. Purgatory.

These associations (natural and supernatural virtues) continue, and eventually meet, in the person of Statius. This is the most significant aspect of the meeting between Staius and Virgil, for Statius, once the pagan writer of The Thabaid, became, through Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, a follower of Christ. If Virgil represents the natural virtues, Statius represents those same virtues trnasformed by Christ through the infusion of the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. The appearance of Statius, then, signals a key point in Dante-the-Poet's transformation: he "authorizes the new vernacular Christian Dante-poeta in the process of defining himself over the course of the Commedia's story of Dante-protagonist." (Kevin Brownlee, "Dante and the Classical Poets," in R. Jacoff, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante Cambridge, 1993 p. 108)

In other words, there is a major poetic, as well as spiritual, shift. Virgil, that great celebrant of the great earthly city, gives way to a new poetry, taking all that was good of the old, but marshalling it now to a more excellent city-the city of God.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Louis Bouyer's Doctrine of the Papacy: Towards an Orthodox/Roman Catholic Convergence?

Al Kimmel of Pontifications has a rather lengthy quote by Louis Bouyer on the meaning of the Petrine ministry of the papacy: http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1995

Does Louis Bouyer's doctrine of primacy converge with traditional Orthodox notions? Compare Bouyer's argument with that of Emmanuel Clapsis': http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article8523.asp

At issue, I think, is whether or not the Orthodox Church can allow a wider role for a restored papacy as the voice of the Church's unity.

Read Louis Bouyer's reflection on this issue (quoted in the Pontifications blog) and read the lengthy discussion this question is generating.

To tantalize you, here's an excerpt:

Catholic doctrine teaches, according to the texts of the First Vatican Council, corroborated and clarified by those of the Second, that the pope is no more an “Apostle” than the other bishops are. On the contrary, he is a bishop like the rest—a successor of the apostles in the very precise and defined sense that the others are. But as the bishop of the Roman Church, and like all the other bishops of Rome before him, the pope is a particular successor of Peter, who before he died had settled in Rome in the task to which he had been assigned from among the other apostles. This task was (and remains) keeping the Church and her development in unity by personally exercising (always within the college to which he belonged and in conjunction with it) the responsibilities which were (and are) those of the whole college. To be understood, this requires that we no more look at the pope as a “superbishop” than at Peter as a “super apostle.” Indeed, as we have seen, Peter’s unique role and function were not different from the duties of the apostolic college of which he was a part. His primacy was due to the fact that what was entrusted to all (including him) was first entrusted to him; even more, it was due to the fact that he received personally what all were to receive collectively. He was thereby called not to supplant, nor even to govern from above and without, the other apostles, but to express, guide, and foment their unity of action from within.

Read the rest here: http://catholica.pontifications.net/

Friday, September 15, 2006

Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary



Collect:
O God, in whose Passion, according to the prophesy of Simeon, a sword of grief pierced through the well-beloved soul of the glorious Virgin Mother Mary: mercifully grant that we who devoutly call to mind her sorrows, may obtain the blessed fruit of thy Passion. Who with God the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest, world without end. Amen

Sermon for the second Nocturns in Matins, by St. Bernard of Clairvaux:

The martyrdom of the Virgin is set before us both in Simeon's prophecy and in the narrative of the Lord's Passion. "This Child is destined," the holy old man said of the child Jesus, "for a sign that shall be contradicted; and your own soul," he said to Mary "a sword shall pierce." and in truth, O blessed Mother, your soul was pierced. Unless the sword had passed through your soul, it would not have pierced the flesh of your Son. And after your Jesus had sent forth His spirit, clearly the cruel lance that opened His side could not reach His soul, but it pierced yours. For His soul was no longer there, but yours could not be torn away.

Read the rest here: http://web2.airmail.net/carlsch/MaterDei/Saints/7sorrows.htm

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Feast of the Holy Cross



Leo the Great's Sermon On the Lord's Passion:

When Christ is exalted on the Cross, beloved brothers, do not let only those things which the ungodly have seen come to the sight of your mind. For to them it was said through Moses, " And your life will be hanging before your eyes and you will tremble day and night and not believe in your life." For they could think of nothing except their crime in connection with the crucified Lord, and they were afraid, not with the fear by which true faith justifies, but with that by which a bad conscience is tormented. But our mind, which is enlightend with the spirit of truth, should receive the glory of the Cross, illuminating heaven and earth, in a heart that is pure and free. And we should see with inward vision what the Lord said when He spoke of His imminent Passion, "Now is the judgment of the world; now will the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself."
O wonderful power of the Cross! O unutterable glory of the Passion, in which is to be found the judgment-set of the Lord and the judgment of the world and the power of the Crucified! For You drew all things to Yourself, Lord; when You stretched out Your hands all day to an unbelieving and contradicting people, the whole world knew that this gesture signified its obligation to confess Your majesty. You drew all things to Yourself, Lord, when in horror of the crime of the Jews all the elements of nature expressed their common feeling: when the lights of heaven were darkened and day turned to night and the earth shook with strange tremors and all creatures refused their services to ungodly men. You drew all things to Yourself, Lord, when the veil of the Temple was torn and the Holy of holies taken away from the unworthy priests that the figure might be changed to the reality, the prophecy to the manifestation, and the law into the Gospel.

Read the rest of the sermon: http://web2.airmail.net/carlsch/MaterDei/Fathers/leo-cross.htm

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Starting Your Own Garage Schola Cantorum



Now we're jammin' with the best of them! Look out, Metalica! The Chant Boys are commin'.

Excellent article. Do try it at your home parish.

Here's the link:
http://crisismagazine.com/julaug2006/tucker.htm

Biretta Tip to Huw Raphael: http://raphael.doxos.com/comments.php?id=P3818_0_1_0

Friday, September 08, 2006

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary




Sermon by St. Andrew of Crete:

The present Feast is for us the beginning of feasts. Serving as boundary to the law and to prototypes, at the same time it serves as a doorway to grace and truth. "For Christ is the end of the law" (Rom 10:4), Who, having freed us from the letter (of the law), raises us to spirit.
Here is the end (to the law): in that the Lawgiver, having made everything, has changed the letter in spirit and gathers everything in Himself (Eph 1:10), enlivening the law with grace: grace has taken the law under its dominion, and the law has become subjected to grace, so that the properties of the law not suffer reciprocal commingling, but only so that by Divine power, the servile and subservient (in the law) are transformed into the light and free (in grace), so that we are not "in bondage to the elements of the world" (Gal 4:3) and not in a condition under the slavish yoke of the letter of the law.
Here is the summit of Christ's beneficence towards us! Here are the mysteries of revelation! Here is the theosis [divinization] assumed upon humankind, the fruition worked out by the God-Man.
The radiant and bright descent of God for people ought to have a joyous basis, opening to us the great gift of salvation. Such also is the present feastday, having as its basis the Nativity of the Theotokos, and as its purpose and end, the uniting of the Word with flesh, this most glorious of all miracles, unceasingly proclaimed, immeasurable and incomprehensible.
The less comprehensible it is, the more it is revealed; and the more it is revealed, the less comprehensible it is. Therefore the present God-graced day, the first of our feastdays, showing forth the light of virginity and the crown woven from the unfading blossoms of the spiritual garden of Scripture, offers creatures a common joy.
Be of good cheer, it says, behold, this is the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin and of the renewal of the human race! The Virgin is born, She grows and is raised up and prepares Herself to be the Mother of the All-Sovereign God of the ages. All this, with the assistance of David, makes it for us an object of spiritual contemplation. The Theotokos manifests to us Her God-bestown Birth, and David points to the blessedness of the human race and wondrous kinship of God with mankind.

Read the rest here: http://chattablogs.com/hagioipateres/archives/cat_the_mother_of_god.html