March 18, 2009
This weekend I was blessed to read an article from the 2004 (Ok, I am behind) Dante Studies Report on the context of The Comedy written by Jo Ann Moran Cruz from
Georgetown
University
. It helped me set The Comedy within an historical context that I had completely missed. The events in The Comedy occur in or around Easter on the year 1300. Dante writes The Comedy later while he is in exile, but the story is about Easter 1300. The timing is important. During that year Pope Boniface VIII had declared a plenary indulgence for pilgrims to
Rome
who performed certain actions. This Jubilee indulgence declared that if a pilgrim did what Boniface VIII said then all of his sins would be forgiven. Boniface amplified this indulgence by making it retroactive to Christmas 1299 and by extending it to people who had the intention of coming to
Rome
and were kept from it by death or illness or circumstance. This, of course, is rotten theology. It gets worse. As part of the indulgence meant to bring pilgrims and wealth to
Rome
, Boniface also used this declaration as a tool against his political and ecclesiastical enemies. He listed particular people who were not allowed to have their sins forgiven. Yikes!
But the plot thickens from here. . . . .
Boniface, you see, was acting outside of the general will of the church at that point. The famous 4th Lateran Council which included such dignitaries as St. Thomas Aquinas (no lightweight) had discouraged this wicked practice and Aquinas along with Peter Lombard denied that any indulgence could substitute for real repentance. They claimed that there were actions that could be taken that might remit ecclesiastical punishments and set a person right with the church, but that the only action that set one right with God was true and contrite repentance and God’s gracious forgiveness. Boniface VIII broke with the direction of the Council and was claiming that this indulgence would not just set people right with the church, but would forgive all sins and set people right with God.
Dante is explicitly and devastatingly attacking Boniface’s faulty position in a number of ways that I, until reading this article, missed. He does this with subtlety and grace. First, he puts a number of people who would have taken advantage of this indulgence in Hell. Maybe even more telling, he puts people who were on Boniface’s list of those who could not be forgiven in Purgatory and Heaven. They are numbered among the redeemed. Why? Because they were contrite and repented of their sins! Some even repented at the last moment of their life. God hears the cries of contrite sinners, says The Poet, no matter what the Pope says. The final subtle example of Dante’s devastating critique of Boniface’s overreaching happens at the
shore
of
Mt.
Purgatory as some of the recently deceased citizens of
Rome
arrive. Dante’s friend Casella is among the happy pilgrims reaching the shore. When the boat arrives a strange event occurs—one that I believe has to be understood within the context of Pope Boniface’s mischief. Casella and the rest do not rush to the mountain to begin their cleansing assent to heaven (just as an aside I love Dante but love Purgatory as a book and do not agree with it as a concept). They just hang out. Casella and Dante talk. Casella starts singing a song. It is like a beach picnic. Suddenly, Cato the Elder, the guard of the mountain arrives and chastises the bunch of stragglers. Start climbing you wimps, he basically shouts. They scramble and get to work. Why did it take so long for them to figure out what to do? Cruz speculates, and I agree, Casella and the rest were acting under the false assumption that Pope Boniface’s promises were true. They did nothing because they believed that they had arrived in heaven and that because of the indulgence they would skip Purgatory. Dante subtly skewers this papal fiction. Church authorities, no matter how lofty, can not set you right with God. Only faith and true repentance lead to salvation.
