Et vidi caelum novum et terram novam
(Revelation 21:1)

1. Calling to Prophecy

         What prompted Dante to write the Divine Comedy? Why did he leave Convivio unfinished to devote himself to the “sacred poem”, a radically different work dictated by “a total ethical-religious commotion” that “bursts into the first tercets of Inferno”? ^[1]  No one can ever say for sure, because none of his previous works is a necessary prerequisite “for the grandiose discourse with himself and with men, which he begins as if suddenly” ^[2]. Must we therefore remain in the nebulous mystery that surrounds Dante, fuelled by the absence of reliable biographical information, the lack of autographs, and the jungle of interpretations, which are only probable at best and never certified by ipse dixit? Must we agree with Carducci when he says: “Dante descended from Paradise, bringing with him the keys to the other world, and threw them into the abyss of the past: no one has ever found them again”? ^[3] Where is the key that Benedetto Croce spoke of, necessary to unlock the meaning of the allegories and give them an authentic interpretation? Was Dante not born of himself, as Giambattista Vico claimed, and made a poet by himself? ^[4] Croce then explained that the cause of such uncertainty lay within us, in our inability to relive the Middle Ages, “within this representation, grandly concluded in itself but in every way foreign to us”, because European culture is still shaken by the separation of Christianity from the Ptolemaic and geocentric view of the world characteristic of the Middle Ages ^[5]. The modernist priest Ernesto Buonaiuti wrote: “If those keys have not been found again, there is only one reason, simple and peremptory, that in Dante’s work it is the whole Middle Ages that sang of its ideals and fundamental experiences, and since we have irremediably distanced ourselves from the universal ideals of the Christian Middle Ages, the thresholds of Dante’s experience have remained impenetrably closed to us” ^[6]. How, then, can we recover the intimate inspiration and prodigious warmth of the divine poem without resorting to elaborate and convoluted exegesis? The only way is through history, based on the texts written during the period under examination, in relation to which the historian acts as a scribe, posthumous transcriber and verifier, neither forcing nor gently prompting them, not pretending hypotheses, mindful of the old rule of logic that Bruno Nardi adduced with regard to Dante’s presumed sources: “a posse ad esse non datur illatio” ^[7]. With these methodological premises, the judgement given by the texts will be like that of Minos, “a cui fallar non lece”.
         One event was linked to the decision to write the Comedy: the news of Henry VII’s descent into Italy. Events unfolded rapidly. On 1 May 1308, Albert of Habsburg, King of Germany and Emperor, was assassinated: he had always been uninterested in Italy: “O German Albert! who abandonest / her that has grown recalcitrant and savage, / and oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow”, as Dante would reproach him in Purg. VI, 97-99. On 27 November, Henry, Count of Luxembourg, was elected King of Germany and crowned in Aachen on 6 January 1309. At the end of July, Pope Clement V set the date of the imperial coronation for 2 February 1312, but the new king intended to hasten his arrival to pacify Italy. On 1 September 1310, with the bull Exultet in gloria, Clement V appealed to the subjects and prelates of the Kingdom of Naples to welcome the designated emperor. He entered Susa on 23 October, Turin on 30 October, and Milan on 23 December. Dante echoed the pope, quoting him in a letter addressed not only to Robert of Anjou, King of Naples, but also to Frederick II of Aragon, King of Sicily, to the senators of beloved Rome, to the dukes, marquises, counts and to all the peoples. Imbued with prophetic spirit, it sees in Arrigo the new Moses who will free poor Italy from the slavery of Egypt and lead it to the land flowing with milk and honey, where peace and justice reign. The peaceful Titan was sent by the merciful lion of the tribe of Judah, that is, by Christ, who in the Apocalypse rises triumphantly to take the book from the right hand of the Father to open its seven seals, saying: “I am the root of David”, of the spiritual life of the ancient fathers and the new faithful, putting an end to the lamentations and sighs over the closing of the book (Rev 5:5). This was quickly followed by a harsh letter to the “scelestissimi” Florentines, urging them not to delay in repenting of their presumption (31 March 1311), and another (17 April) to Henry himself, urging him not to delay in moving towards Tuscany while remaining in northern Italy.
         Herry’s journey to Rome for his coronation, which took place in St. John Lateran on 29 June 1312 and ended with his premature death from malaria in Buonconvento on 24 August of the following year, was perceived as an extraordinary event. Dino Compagni wrote of it: “He came down, descending from land to land, bringing peace as if he were an angel of God” ^[8]. Another event that heralded great and serious consequences was the transfer of the papal seat to Avignon in early 1309. But Clement V himself did not envisage a permanent stay, and in any case, the Roman Curia had been outside Italy for nine years. Only five years later, at the conclave following the death of Clement V (20 April 1314), Dante would rail against the “obprobrium” of the Gascons so that the cardinals would not abandon the city of Rome, widowed and alone, deprived of imperial and papal light.
         When Dante received news of Henry’s arrival in Italy, he was busy writing Convivio, which he had begun in exile a few years earlier. In the fourth treatise, he wrote about the “root of David” to demonstrate that God’s plan to send a “heavenly king” from a pure lineage – that of Jesse, father of David, according to Isaiah’s prophecy – from which Mary, “the pride and honour of the human race”, was born, coincided with another plan, the divine election of the Roman Empire: David was born at the same time as Rome, when Aeneas came from Troy to Italy (IV, v, 3-9). The universal monarchy, willed and prepared by God in the two peoples, Jewish and Gentile, was realised in the Roman Empire foretold by Virgil: “To them […] I set no limit of things or time; to them I have given endless empire” (IV, iv, 11). It was also a time of universal peace:

“Nor has the world ever been or will ever be so perfectly disposed as it was then, at the voice of one man, prince of the Roman people and commander … as Luke the Evangelist testifies. And because there was universal peace everywhere, which never was nor will be again, the ship of human society sailed straight on a smooth course to its proper port” (IV, v, 8) ^[9].

          The announced arrival of the Luxembourger instilled hope that universal peace would soon return. In the time between what he wrote in Convivio, where there is indeed adherence to universal monarchy but without prophetic inspiration, and the impetus that pervades the letters sent during Arrigo’s Italian journey, the Comedy was probably conceived, marked in the first canto by Virgil’s prophecy of the coming of the greyhound who will kill the greedy she-wolf and be the saviour of “humble Italy”. The decision to write the “sacred poem” was accompanied by the reading of the prophetic work that was the banner of the advocates of Church reform: the commentary on the Apocalypse by the Franciscan Peter of John Olivi.
         Born around 1248 in Sérignan (Hérault), Olivi became a novice at the age of twelve in the convent of Béziers, the city that in 1209 had witnessed the massacres of Simon de Montfort in the crusade against the Albigensians. Disciple of Bonaventure in Paris in 1266; present in Rome and Assisi in 1279 to collaborate on the drafting of Exiit qui seminat, the constitution with which Nicholas III had sought to resolve the disputes within the Franciscan Order, Olivi had composed numerous philosophical works and commented on almost the entire Scripture. Some of his quaestiones had provoked accusations from members of the Order, who called him “the leader of a sect of superstitions, a source of divisions and errors”. However, the new Minister General of the Friars Minor, Matteo d’Acquasparta, elected at the chapter in Montpellier on 25 May 1287, and even Pope Nicholas IV, did not share this opinion and appointed him to Florence as a lecturer in theology. Olivi’s teaching at Santa Croce was the premise for a closer relationship between the two souls, Provençal and Italian, of Franciscan spiritualism, originally marked by considerable differences. As Raoul Manselli wrote, the Spirituals were not “a party or a faction but a ferment of life among the Minors, an awareness, a firm assertion of the Order’s peculiarity, an ‘attitude critique’, a ‘mouvement d’espérance’; and of all this, Olivi is the one who best understands the religious, historical and human value and meaning” ^[10]. They wanted a return to the Rule of St Francis, maintaining a state of absolute poverty within the Order.
         His confraternity brother Ubertino da Casale listened to Olivi’s lessons, and the effect was explosive: “in a short time he initiated me into the high perfections of the soul of the beloved Jesus […] into the depths of Scripture and the mysteries of the third state of the world, of the renewal of the life of Christ, so that from then on I became mentally a new man” ^[11]. The spirit of Christ also fermented in others, such as the Sienese tertiary Pier Pettinaio, remembered by Sapìa in the second terrace of Dante’s Purgatory as the one who, through prayer, had shortened her penance (Purg. XIII, 127-129). What was the content of such a shocking teaching?
         Strongly anti-Aristotelian and anti-Thomist, Olivi’s vision is christocentric like that of Bonaventure. The exemplary life of Christ – or his law (the Rule is synonymous with “life”) – imposed on the apostles and written in the Gospels, must be perfectly imitated and shared in our lives and be the goal of all our actions. “Caput universale omnis temporis”, Christ is the centre of time. The middle person of the Trinity, mediator between God and man to whom he shows the way, he is the point at which the rays of the Church-sphere converge in its past, present and future history. As far as the human person is concerned, Olivi is a staunch advocate of free will, proven by the intimate feeling with which the will, reflected on itself, experiences existence. On a historical level, the friar believes that he is living in a period – the sixth of the seven status or epochs of the Church – in which a novum saeculum is fermenting, a universal palingenesis that will ultimately lead to the conversion of infidels and Jews to Christ. This sixth status, which for Olivi corresponds to modern times and, together with the seventh and final period, coincides with the age of the Spirit of Joachim of Fiore, encompasses all the enlightenment and also all the evil of past ages. In the sixth status, the second coming of Christ in the Spirit (after the first, in the flesh, and before the third, in the Last Judgement) brings a new life to his disciples, whether they are members of a religious order or individuals. The homo novus hears the teachings that come from Christ, who dictates from within, and witnesses miracles that are not physical, as in the early days of the Church, but intellectual; he is given the experience of tasting the divine in this life. In this age renewed by the Holy Spirit, understood as the spirit of Christ, as long awaited as the Augustan age heralded in Virgil’s fourth eclogue, an inner revolution is accomplished by the word that converts and breaks the hardness of hearts, the word that Love breathes from within into preachers, opening their will to speak. If until now Christ, as a man, has taught with external doctrine, and as the Word with intellectual light, from now on he will also teach through the taste of love proper to his Spirit.
         Before peace and justice triumph, the man of the sixth status will have to face terrible trials and sufferings, induced by the Antichrist and his beastly and devious followers. The new martyrs do not only experience physical torment, they are above all tormented by doubts about the true faith, influenced by subtle philosophical arguments, deceptive Scriptures, hypocritical pretence of holiness, and the false image of papal authority, as false pontiffs rise up, just as Annas and Caiaphas rose up against Christ. To intensify this psychological martyrdom, the executioners themselves perform miracles. The temptation caused by doubt leads even the elects into error, as Christ testifies in the great eschatological passage of Matthew XXIV. Before the battle against the apocalyptic beast, the angel of the sixth seal will rise from the east, that is, from Rome, the “city of the sun” mentioned by Isaiah (Is 19:18), to herald the advent of the true sun; he will mark with the cross the elects of Christ’s army who will lead the vulgar ranks to victory against the Antichrist. A new Zerubbabel, rebuilder of the Temple of Jerusalem, “universalis pontifex … quasi novus dux”, the angel will be given the power to innovate the Christian religion and to establish the universal kingdom of God on earth.
        After moving from Florence to Montpellier in 1289, Olivi devoted himself mainly to writing Lectura super Apocalipsim, which he completed shortly before his death in Narbonne in 1298. The work emphasised eschatology which, to quote Arsenio Frugoni, “as well as being an ideology of struggle and reform of the spiritual group, was also a genuine historical sentiment […] a tension of renewal, an anxiety for salvation, which in 1300, the centenary year of the Nativity, had found activation in a sense of the fullness of time, which had to correspond to a fact, a marvellous and new event” ^[12]. An eschatology that Boniface VIII was about to crystallise into law with the proclamation of the first Jubilee.
         A “summa” of its author’s life, ideals and thought, the Lectura was also the banner of the Spirituals and, for more than a quarter of a century, the object of unparalleled persecution “even beyond death, when his bones will be mercilessly exhumed and outraged, his writings confiscated and destroyed, his name abhorred and silenced” ^[13]. This persecution intensified after the Council of Vienne (1311-1312) under the pontificate of John XXII (1316-1334), through successive censures until the definitive condemnation of the Lectura as “a pestilential and heretical dogma against the unity of the Catholic Church and the authority of the Supreme Pontiff of Rome” which, according to the testimony of the Dominican inquisitor Bernard Gui, the pope pronounced in a public consistory on 8 February 1326. But in the first decade of the 14th century, when Dante began writing the Comedy, the situation was different: the Spirituals had not been defeated, and reform of the Church was still possible.
       After Olivi’s death in Narbonne (14 March 1298), the Lectura super Apocalipsim immediately spread throughout Italy. Boniface VIII (who died on 11 October 1303) entrusted the Augustinian Egidio Romano with a refutation that has not survived. Between March and September 1305, Ubertino da Casale had it beside him while he was writing the Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu at La Verna, quoting entire and extensive passages from it in the fifth book. The following year, Ubertino became chaplain to Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, protector of the Spirituals, who, among the various legations entrusted to him by Clement V, worked in 1306 and 1307 for the return of the exiles to Florence, an action that failed because the clash in Gargonza between the Blacks and the cardinal’s troops, guest of the Guidi counts, did not take place ^[14]. In October 1306, Dante was in Lunigiana as a peace broker with the bishop of Luni on behalf of the Malaspina family; in 1307, or in the autumn of 1308, he was in Casentino, from where he sent Moroello Malaspina the canzone “Montanina”. After the disappointment following the defeat of the Bianchi at La Lastra in 1304, the poet was open to attempts at reconciliation. In the same years, and in neighbouring if not identical places, Dante and Ubertino were working for peace, and one can well imagine how much the activities of the friar and the cardinal were close to the poet’s heart. This was Dante’s last chance to return to Florence before he began writing the Comedy. It is likely that, at an unspecified time after the autumn of 1306, it was Ubertino himself who gave Dante a copy of the Lectura super Apocalipsim.
         “Apocalypse” is a Greek term that sounds like “revelatio” in Latin, meaning “unveiling”; it was granted by God (the main cause) to Christ as a man (the secondary cause), and from him through an angel (the intermediate cause) to John (the proximate cause). It is a prophecy, but not of events in the distant future, but of things that must happen soon, which are hastened by the need for divine justice to intervene against the reprobate. John, the author of the book, was shown a single purely intellectual vision on Patmos; then, when he was commanded to write it down, he adapted it for human minds, manifesting it in several visions through figurative signs, that is, through similes drawn from natural phenomena. The final cause of the book is bliss: “Blessed is he who reads and who hears the words of the prophecy, and keeps them” (Rev 1:3).
         When Dante saw Olivi’s Lectura super Apocalipsim, many thoughts must have crossed his mind: to express, as St John did in exile on Patmos, his intellectual vision by condescending with examples and similes to human minds based on sensory perception; to travel as an imitator of Christ in the history of the collective salvation of humanity, which has Beatrice as its final cause; to emulate the Bible, even the Old Testament, rediscovering it in modern times; to have two guides, personifying respectively the external teachings through the intellectual light of Christ the man and the intimate taste of love proper to his Spirit; to insert, as is proper to the prophetic spirit, the detail of the Tuscan and Italian microcosm into the universal macrocosm of divine designs; to extend the sacred prerogatives of the Church to the human world and first of all to the Empire; to express, giving voice to the eschatological anxiety for renewal, the sense of a wonderful and new event instilled by the jubilee of 1300; to give the ancients, first and foremost Virgil and Aristotle, citizenship “of that Rome for which Christ is Roman” by descending into Limbo at the time of the new spiritual advent, in his imitators, of the Saviour; to confront hundreds of quotations, which Olivi had included and elaborated in his commentary, from the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore “gifted with prophetic spirit” (because he was a seer of the third age), to which he lent “feet and hands” in his verses in order to become himself the initiator of the “new third theology” ^[15]; to break the harshness of hellish punishment by making the dead speak, almost as if dictated from within, driven by the desire to be written in the book of life; to feel himself noble and outside the “vulgar rank” of poets, not by lineage but by election as a friend of God chosen in his militia, confirming what he had written in Convivio (IV, xx, 3-6); to describe the invisible, giving shape to theological concepts contained in apocalyptic exegesis.
         Verbs such as concedere, manifestare, palesare, mostrare, segnare, figurare are frequently borrowed by the author of the Comedy from apocalyptic language. By forging verses on that prophecy and on his grandiose commentary, he could have created a liber concordiae in which to place his own experiences, knowledge, and independent solutions to doctrinal or philosophical questions, imposing a higher concordia on earth between opposing city factions, between adverse speculative positions, between the empire and the papacy, the “two suns” in conflict, between two works that are antagonistic par excellence in their assessment of Romanity, such as the Aeneid and the Apocalypse: in this way, he would have shown himself to be a true “Catholic”, that is, universal poet ^[16]. Each would have had its place in the history of collective salvation marked by the signs of divine will.

2. A palimpsest poem: the Commedia as a parody of
Peter of John Olivi’s Lectura super Apocalipsim

          Such a bold assertion – that Dante, in writing the Commedia, knew and drew on Pietro di Giovanni Olivi’s Lectura super Apocalipsim – requires adequate and irrefutable proof. Here, the historian and philologist must become a semiologist, seeking help from masters in the field such as Roland Barthes, Gérard Genette and Umberto Eco, in the sense of asking themselves, taking into account their teachings, what judgement they might have made if they had found themselves comparing and examining the texts.
          Comparing the two works, one in Latin and the other in vernacular, these experts would have encountered intertextuality that was not immediately apparent but became clear upon closer examination. Below are some examples taken from different and distant passages of the two works:

         Were these just coincidences, perhaps the result of a common linguistic sensibility? How could this be, given that they appeared repeatedly, in different places in the two texts, and not just dozens, but hundreds of times? Such a widespread phenomenon could not be found by comparing the Commedia with other well-known works to Dante, such as Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae or Augustine’s De civitate Dei. Even with Virgil, Ovid, Lucan or Boethius, when there is a precise textual reference, it is always limited. From the apparent randomness, it was therefore necessary to trace back to the rules governing such intense intertextual responses. Was this something that could actually be called “intertextuality”?
          By studying the relationship between the two texts synoptically, those scholars would have been able to record the following laws linking B (the Commedia) to A (the Lectura super Apocalipsim):

a) Groups of closely related words found in the Lectura super Apocalipsim are found, with equally closely related words, but freely placed in the most varied forms, in the Commedia, almost like threads drawn from another warp and, intertwined with others, woven into a new one. The phenomenon is too widespread to be accidental. These are not isolated words, but placed in a semantic field within restricted textual spaces; the combinations are not trivial or obvious. This is not a cast or a rewriting; the transfer is not of phrases – and could not be from prose to poetry – but of semantic elements (actual keywords) that are signals, in a high rhetoric of the signifier. The coexistence is evident in the Commedia‘s lexicon as far as it derives from Latin, whether in the form of Latinisms or terms that have already entered Florentine usage. But even the Florentine words from every social stratum, or those taken from other dialects of the peninsula, Gallicisms, Arabisms and neologisms agree with the apocalyptic exegesis, sometimes even through phonetic similarity, surrounded by signals (key words) that seem to draw the reader towards the other text.

          With systematic analysis, it can be verified – in hundreds of cases – how, starting from single words, in the same verse or in the verses immediately surrounding it, there are other words that refer, by coinciding semantics (when the vernacular derives from Latin) or concordant semantics (when it replaces it), to the same place in apocalyptic exegesis (not only to the text of the Apocalypse, but to this and its exegesis). Furthermore, these semantic associations do not occur between words that can be juxtaposed in common parlance, such as water and baptism, or fire and smoke, but between distant elements. For example:

           A corollary to a) is the fact that numerically corresponding groups of tercets, at different stages of the Commedia, contain keywords that lead to the same exegetical page of the Lectura. For exemples: Ap 5, 8; 7, 3-4; 7, 13-14.
        Conducting another investigation into the hapax legomena of the Commedia (as the rarest or most studied words) highlights this phenomenon once again.

b) The same place in the Lectura leads, through the coexistence of words, to several places in the Comedy, and vice versa; unity is transferred into multiplicity, which refers back to what is united. This means that the same exegesis of a passage from the Apocalypse was used at different moments in the writing of the poem. Even by analysing a single verb, many examples can be found. For example, the verb derivare (Latin form meare) is accompanied in the verses, in different cases and even in rhyme, by other semantic elements: all refer to the exegesis of the luminous river that flows in the middle of the heavenly Jerusalem, where the expression “dirivatur seu communicatur” is present:

          The words terra, pace and the verb togliere are threads that form part of the fabric of both Francesca’s speech and that of Catalano, one of the two ‘enjoying’ friars from Bologna in the pit of hypocrites. In both cases, the reference exegesis is Ap 6:4, relating to the opening of the second seal. While the words are identical, their placement is completely different in the two distinct episodes. The original meaning – ‘to take peace from the earth’ – is retained in both.

c) Several passages from the Lectura can be collated with each other, according to an analogical procedure typical of the distinctiones used by 13th-century preachers ^[17]. The choice is not arbitrary. It is predetermined by the scriptural text itself, since the Apocalypse contains expressions, such as Leitmotive, that recur several times (e.g. fulgura, voces, tonitrua, terremotus; vox aquarum multarum), or passages introduced by identical or similar verses or closely consequential verses or verses dealing with the same subject. The choice is also determined by keywords that link the passages to be collated. Sometimes it is the exegete himself who proposes it, as in the case of the angel of the sixth seal (Rev 7:2) and the angel with the sun-like face (Rev 10:1-3), both identified with St Francis. The mutua collatio of parts of the Lectura enriches the meaning associated with the words and allows for a broader thematic development.
To give an example, zeal can be directed towards the good of others (Rev 3:19), or it can come from holy prayer made in the temple that is in heaven (Rev 14:17-18), or even designate the eternal ardour that descends from heaven, and this flame, which indicates the firm steadfastness of the saints, can be punitive or purgative (Rev 20:9). The collation of the three places (others could be added) offers a doctrine to which the individual semantic elements refer, varied as necessary in echoing Eve’s boldness (Purg. XXIX, 23-24), in the good and holy zeal that “cries” in heaven against “the modern shepherds” rebuked by Pier Damiani, and this crying out is characteristic of flames that descend and remain (Par. XXI, 136-142; XXII, 7-15); or again in the “eternal heat” that descends on the sand like the “firm flames” seen falling from Alexander the Great on his troops in India (Inf. XIV, 31-37) and even in the verse against the Uberti, “such orisons in our temple to be made” (Inf. X, 87).

d) Olivi, in commenting on the Apocalypse, follows the twenty-two chapters of the sacred text in order. However, in the prologue to the Lectura, he suggests a different method of understanding and aggregating the text, based on the seven status, i.e. the eras into which the history of the Church is divided, prefigured in the Old Testament.
The Apocalypse is divided into seven visions: the seven churches of Asia, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the woman clothed with the sun (the seven wars fought by the Church), the seven bowls, the judgment of Babylon (the carnal Church) in the seven heads of the dragon, and the heavenly Jerusalem. The first six visions can in turn be divided into seven moments, each of which refers to one of the seven periods. By assembling, for the first six visions, all the first elements (church, seal, trumpet, war, cup, moment of the judgement of Babylon), all the second, third and so on, we obtain seven groups of theological material, corresponding to the complex of themes pertaining to each of the seven status. To these seven groups are added two more: the exegesis of the seventh vision (without internal divisions) and the exegesis of chapters of the scriptural text, or parts of them, introducing the subsequent specifications of the individual visions for seven parts, which Olivi defines as “radicalia” or “fontalia”. This results in nine groups: the introductory parts, the seven sets of seven and the seventh vision. The great prologue of the Lectura, divided into thirteen notabilia, can also be regrouped according to the seven status. A book (the Lectura) therefore contains principles and criteria, suggested by the exegete himself, so that the discerning reader can draw from it another book, made with the same material but recomposed and distributed in a different form. A biblical exegesis can thus be transformed, without depriving the text of a single word, into a theology of history.
The Commedia, when compared with the Lectura, shows an internal order different from that which appears to the reader: Dante’s journey has a cyclical sevenfold pattern, corresponding to the seven periods of the history of the Church, that is, to the categories with which Olivi organises the exegetical material. This internal order can be recorded in progressive zones of the poem where, through key words, the semantics referable to a single status prevails. This is prevalent but not exclusive, because themes from other status are interwoven with it. This creates an intimate structure that breaks down the literal boundaries established by the cantos and all the material divisions into circles, terraces, and heavens. Each status, which has different beginnings, is linked by concurrentia, like the links of a chain, with the one that precedes it and the one that follows it. In this way, maps can be drawn up that encompass the spiritual order of the Commedia.
The technique of collating different passages used in the Lectura, considered under c), proceeds not only by distinguishing words and associating meanings, but also by connecting the exegetical material related to each status. The term valor, one example among many, appears only once in the Lectura, in the introduction to the exposition of the fifth chapter (second apocalyptic vision) and with reference to the opening of the third seal. From the association of this part of the exegesis with other passages dedicated to the third status, a semantics develops that is widely found in the verses, varying between the individual elements, whenever the term valore appears.

           The metamorphosis of the “book written inside and outside” (Rev 5:1), which is also the “book of life” (Rev 20:12), extends from the incipit to the explicit; it touches on its constituent elements, discussed in the first verse. It takes on the movements of Scripture, now constrained, now extended by spiritual force. From exegesis, it derives the doctrine of loss of original charity, descending from it in stages and recovering it by ascending, as well as the possibility of describing “the sweet life“, differentiated in the individual heavens, of the blessed souls who reside in the Empyrean.
           The “sacred poem” is song and praise. The themes of the Lectura are given form in the recognitions, in the memory of a golden and Edenic age, in the ascent to ever more difficult visions and in the passage to unusual and supernal regions, in the veil that from being foreign and closed becomes gradually lighter and more open, in perceiving with the ear things more subtle and intellectual than is possible with sight.
          On the basis of what has been brought to light in the research carried out, our three experts in structuralism and semiotics would have concluded without any doubt that we are not dealing with generic intertextuality, a term which, in studies on Dante, is mostly used to define the identification of sources. The relationship between the Commedia and the Lectura constitutes parody, not with a mocking or burlesque intent, but as imitation, transposition, metamorphosis. In the relationship between the hypertext B (the Commedia) and the earlier hypotext A (the Lectura super Apocalipsim), the order is that of metamorphosis, i.e. transformation: B does not speak of A at all, but does not exist without A, in the sense that the author chose it to transform it from Latin prose into vernacular verse. The quantity of references, governed by precise and constant laws, is such as to make it a primary quality. The parody carried out in B extends in fact to the whole of A. Roland Barthes would have seen in it an empire of signs. Gérard Genette, a scholar of paratextuality, i.e. of second-degree literature, would have had no difficulty in considering the Commedia a hypertext and assigning it the importance it deserves. Dante would thus have shared with Corneille, Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, Joyce, Borges and others the front row of the large group of authors of “palimpsests”, metamorphoses, in various guises, of earlier works. Umberto Eco would certainly have considered these aspects when exploring the theory of the sign function. And Alberto Asor Rosa, in his presentation of Eco’s book on esoteric interpretations of Dante, wrote:

Dante […] would never have dreamed of not being understood. The fact that it is so difficult to do so should not lead us to give up in favour of an arbitrariness entirely based on the point of view of the lector. Hermeneutics cannot ignore an ontology of poetic creation: if it does, it is a reading of nothing. This is the only but grandiose mystery that every reader of Dante has to deal with (incomparable with those cheap mysteries with which the Aroux and Guénon have measured themselves): the mystery of the sign, or of that system of signs, which has enclosed a whole world in a set of multisensory images. We have to come to terms with this mystery ^[18].

          A is a work of exegesis; it contains quotations from Scripture and from authors who have expounded or interpreted it, together with the exegete’s own considerations. In essence, it deals with theological concepts. B is a poetic work that describes a journey in which the author encounters mythological and historical characters, both ancient and modern; natural phenomena (cold, heat, earthquake, wind, sun, moon, etc.) occur, and philosophical or theological questions are also addressed. In narrating all this, B uses semantics taken from the Latin of A or, in the case of words that are not of Latin origin, semantics that agree with it. This semantics is a set of signs that refer from B to A. In the literal sense of B, therefore, the meaning of the concepts given by A is embedded, which can be called, generically, spiritual or mystical. The Commedia appears, like the Apocalypse, a “book written inside and outside”, with a double meaning.
          Delving into the intimate literary nature of the Commedia, our experts would have found that the meanings conveyed by the signs of B refer in A exclusively to the history of the Church and in particular to the Franciscan Order, while B spreads them over the entire universe and the life of men on earth, with their passions and needs. If parody changes the condition of the characters it disguises, in this case, where exegetical-theological concepts are endowed with “feet and hands”, it is the entire context that is changed. Like the musician who composed the Apocalypsis cum figuris in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, the poet makes unequal things equal and knows how to vary the themes, used indifferently for descriptions of hell or paradise, in such a way that, while preserving them strictly, they are not recognised as repetitions. This echoes Dante’s own definition of his poem as polysemic, i.e. with multiple meanings (Epistola XIII, 20).
          The great sacred parody envelops many other, so to speak, small parodies, well known to Dante scholars who identify this or that passage from Scripture, emphasising the poet’s independence in elaborating the quotation.From the rules governing the relationship between the two texts, considered above, it follows that the Lectura, before being parodied by the Commedia, had undergone a double reorganisation. The first, based on Olivi’s own indications, according to the exegetical material attributable to individual status or periods in the history of the Church. The second, following the principle applied in the distinctiones for use by preachers, according to analogically collated lemmas. The apocalyptic commentary becomes the canvas of the “sacred poem” for all its 14,233 verses, the “cloth” on which the “gown” is sewn, according to the simile of the “good tailor” expressed by St Bernard in Par. XXXII, 140-141.
      Parody was not unknown to Dante before he began writing the Commedia, as demonstrated by the textual comparison between the “nove rime” and Olivi’s works prior to the Lectura super Apocalipsim. We do not know whether Dante attended Olivi’s lectures at Santa Croce between 1287 and 1289. However, it cannot be ignored that the theology of modern times proposed by Olivi, coinciding with the sixth period (status) of the history of the Church, characterised by freedom of speech dictated by an inner voice that opens hearts, is singularly in tune with the poetics of his contemporary Dante. This is defined in the sixth terrace of Purgatory in the encounter with Bonagiunta da Lucca: a poetics based on the breath of Love, which dictates from within, and on taking note and strictly following its dictates, as if they were those of an imposed and accepted evangelical rule (Purg. XXIV, 49-63). The beginning of Dante’s “nove rime” came about by virtue of an inner dictator: “Then I say that my tongue spoke almost as if moved by itself and said: ‘Donne ch’avete intellecto d’amore’” (Vita Nova, 10. 13 [XIX 2]). Vita Nova is the story of a new coming of Christ, of the “miraculous” Beatrice, who came with such grace to the people that she performed wonders among them. The woman died in 1290, the year after Olivi left Florence.

      3. “I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any other woman”

        The prophetic commitment to Beatrice promised at the end of Vita Nova (31.2 [xlii.2]) was upheld through a profound inner revolution, reinforced by a vademecum that would accompany the author throughout the entire writing of the ‘sacred poem”. New scenarios opened up with the idea of sewing the “gown” onto the ‘cloth’ offered by Olivi’s Lectura super Apocalipsim.

          3.1. The glory of the tongue

          Latin was a language for the few, no longer sufficient for all expressive needs: the Latin of biblical exegesis is close to the vernacular; the verses of the poem are based on this non-curial Latin. Étienne Gilson wrote that “of all styles of language none was more familiar to Dante than that of the Scriptures”, as the spoken Florentine language was indeed closer to the biblical language than the Parisian spoken language ^[19]. It can be said that no language is more familiar to Florentine speech than the Latin of biblical exegesis. It is the sermo humilis which, as Erich Auerbach stated, “teaches the depths of the faith to the simple” ^[20]. It is the “sweet and plain” language with which Beatrice, humbling herself to descend into Limbo, the “door of the dead”, addresses the great tragic Virgil “with an angelic voice” (Inf. II, 55-57). Thanks to this Latin, through which the vernacular became a new universal language and the key to all knowledge, Thomas Stearns Eliot felt he could experience the emotions of the Commedia even without a complete knowledge of Italian ^[21]. The vernacular, no longer just “illustrious” but for everyone, would become a new “lingua gratiae”, as was Hebrew, the language spoken by the Redeemer in his incarnation (De vulgari eloquentia, I, vi, 5-7).
    Herbert Grundmann pointed out in 1955 that Bonaventure’s theology and Olivi’s spiritualism did not give rise, as might have been expected, to religious literature in the vernacular such as that which developed in Germany with the speculative mysticism of Eckhart, Seuse, Tauler and other Dominicans ^[22]. In fact, something different flourished on Olivi’s exegesis, and in particular on the Lectura super Apocalipsim: the vernacular language of Dante’s Commedia. The seed planted by the Provençal friar bore its best fruit in Italy, and the Florentine poet achieved “the glory of the tongue” through an intense parodic elaboration of the Lectura super Apocalipsim, completed (1297-1298) just ten years before he began writing his “sacred poem” (ca. 1307-1309). But just as the grain of wheat must die to bear fruit, so the relationship between the Lectura and the Commedia underwent a profound metamorphosis of Olivi’s apocalyptic commentary, marking his departure from the circle of the Friars Minor towards human life. Just as Luther, by translating the Bible, would forge the modern German language, so Dante, by parodying Olivi’s Lectura, created the language “of the beautiful country where ‘yes’ is said”.

             3.2. “Imitatio Bibliae” and “imitatio Christi”

         To lend “feet and hands” poetically to an apocalyptic exegesis focused on Christ, the centre of time as Bonaventure and Olivi had understood it, would have meant spreading the story of Christ, his passion and resurrection, throughout the human universe. His prerogatives could have been appropriate to anyone, in conformity or dissimilarity, to the blessed, the purgend or the damned. The tragedy of Count Ugolino is marked by the days of the Passion; Francesca and Paolo are overcome by a false Scripture and an erroneous image of the splendour of Christ’s face, in an battle against doubt that marks the psychological, rather than physical, martyrdom of the last days. If, as Auerbach wrote, “the personal passions, which previously had been little more than instinctual drives, had risen to a position of prestige and dignity” ^[23], this is because suffering participates, in a right or distorted way, to the suffering of Christ. Not only that of the historical Christ, but also of his spiritual disciples in the second coming of the Redeemer, already at work in 1300, in which the Spirit moves those on earth who conform to him. Dante climbs the mountain of purgatory with the seven “P” marked on his forehead, which are “wounds”, like the angel of the sixth seal, whom Olivi identifies with St. Francis, rising from the East «“habentem signum Dei vivi”, signum scilicet plagarum Christi crucifixi». Thus, the exegesis, in the Lectura entirely focused on Francis and his Order, would have been variously spread over several subjects according to what Gianfranco Contini called “discretive worldliness” ^[24]. The themes proper to the angel of the sixth seal could have been applied to the author in his ascent of the “delightful mountain”, or to Virgil removing the obstacles placed by the she-wolf and the ancient demons, or to Beatrice in her appearance in Eden, or finally where it would have been more natural to find them, in Thomas Aquinas’s praise of Francis in the Heaven of the Sun. Cacciaguida, who in anticipation of the grave blows of exile confirms and informs Dante of his future, would be assigned, among many roles, that of St. Francis, who will rise gloriously to confirm and inform his disciples in the Babylonian temptation in which his Rule, like Christ, will be crucified.
             Christ’s teaching is twofold: one, proper to his being man, with his external voice and, as the Word, with intellectual light (“lux simplicis intelligentie”); the other, which belongs to his divinity, with inner inspiration through the taste of Love proper to the Spirit. The preparation of the external doctrine will be replaced in the renewed world by the inner dictation, by the word moved by Love: what better part, respectively, for Virgil and Beatrice, with the former abandoning the field to the latter in Eden? Descending into Limbo to save her friend, the woman moves Virgil “so that I may be consoled”, and the ancient representative of high tragedy moves to bring Dante to her as if by an inner dictation from the consoling Paraclete, preparing the disciple to taste so much with his external “ornate word”.

             3.3. Modern Apocalypse

         The Lectura brought eschatology to the fore, the expectation of a new age, a feeling perceived by many. The signs of divine providence have come down to modern times (the sixth status of the Church), in which a palingenesis is already at work in consciences that will lead to a novum saeculum. Although Olivi is very cautious in his use of pagan authors, there is a perfect spiritual and even literal concordance between what he says about this renovatio and Virgil’s fourth eclogue. The quotation of the “cantor de’ buccolici carmi” (“the singer of the Songs Bucolic”), made by Statius in his conversation with Virgil, would have meant making him a prophet not only of the first coming of Christ in the flesh, but also of his second, modern coming in the Spirit.
          The Lectura gave Dante an awareness of his mission. The spiritual disciples, who embody the spirit of Christ in his second coming – and these are not only a religious Order, but also “singulares personae” – are sent to preach again in the world as St John did. In Dante, alter Iohannes, who is commanded to write – by Beatrice, Cacciaguida and St Peter – in the exile he shares with the Evangelist, a vision as real as that of Patmos, only historically updated, his will was one with that of Christ-Love dictating within him; he belonged, Auerbach would say, to the “party of God” ^[25]. Not only would the individual be inserted into the divine order, the part into the whole, but this insertion was necessary because the poet would write about things that, as the Apocalypse says, “must soon take place” (Rev 1:1). Thus, the “sacred poem” could become a new Johannine revelation, understood as such from the first to the last verse, and not only in the places where Apocalypse is clearly quoted. The journey would take place by retracing the history of humanity through the status or periods of the Church. First, the Old Testament, in which the seven seals remain closed in a blind world of stony hardness, but not entirely closed to spiritual enlightenment; thus, in Hell, the damned would speak as if dictated by an inner voice (characteristic of the sixth status) and in the quiet of their punishment (characteristic of the seventh). Then, with the seven terraces of Purgatory, the New Testament would be traversed with the first advent of Christ in the flesh and the history of the Church with its seven periods. The first, apostolic status is followed by the second of the martyrs; then, at the time of Justinian, the third status of the doctors, who refute heresies with their intellect, runs together with the fourth status of the affectionate anchorites devoted to the Eucharistic meal, lofty in contemplation but also active as rulers of the people; starting with Charlemagne, the fifth status, pious and condescending, open to the associated life of the multitudes, beautiful in its beginnings but then corrupted to the point of transforming almost the entire Church into a new Babylon, takes over; reform intervenes, starting with Francis, with the Christ-like sixth status, until the defeat of the Antichrist; finally, the silence and tranquillity of the peaceful seventh status takes over. This final period, which takes place partly in this life and partly in the next, would have the last terrace of the mountain and Eden at its summit as its setting on earth; then in heaven, with Paradise, the state of the blessed souls after death awaiting resurrection. In writing about the differentiated “sweet life” of heaven, it was precisely an internal articulation by status or historical periods that would have solved the problems arising from narrating the unutterable while keeping the story in time in places where, as the angel of Revelation 10:6 swears, tempus amplius non erit.
            As at the opening of the sixth seal, the signati are distinguished, because they are friends of God, from the vulgar militia, so Dante, for his friend Beatrice, has left “la volgare schiera” (“the vulgar rank”) of poets (Inf. II, 103-105). Dante is the new John, doctor of the Church who refutes the simoniacs as if they were heretics and is depositary of the only true language that belonged to Heber and is now in the house of Peter – the learned language (“lingua erudita”) that governs the people and corrects the indomitable -; he follows Virgil as St. Peter followed Christ to the cross, breaks the baptismal font to save from the deadly waters of erroneous faith, renews himself like the Franciscan plant, travels through the stages of the apocalypse and reaches the finish line before their actual conclusion. Just as the angel urges John to preach “again” (iterum) without fear to the whole world after the apostles, swallowing the book with its bitter and sweet taste (Rev 10:9-11), so the author hears from Cacciaguida his future destiny and the painful events of exile, tasting together the bitterness of his future suffering with the sweetness of the fame that is reserved for him (Par. XVII). This sweet and bitter nature is also present in the effects of the poem, unpleasant at first taste but then wholesome. From his ancestor, and then from St Peter (Par. XXVII, 64-66), Dante receives the injunction to make manifest, once he has returned “again” (ancor) to the world, what he has been shown during his journey and he has noted in his poem.

          3.4. Poetry and theology

          Poetry would not have been ancilla theologiae; instead, it would have been the saeculum humanum that appropriated the sacred prerogatives in favour of the human well-being. Therefore, as Marie-Dominique Chenu wrote, if Dante is “still the witness of a static hierarchy in which the ‘status of the world’ remain as in the subsoil of a sacred society”, now “nature, reason and society will serve faith and grace all the better, as they will no longer do so under infantile tutelage, but in the autonomy of their methods” ^[26].
          The prophetic spirit, which is not merely a prediction of future events, would give events an exemplary value. All three of the most serious deadly sins – pride, envy and avarice – cooperate in the divisions of Florence and are a contributing cause of them, according to Ciacco (Inf. VI, 74-75). A particular civic event would be elevated to a model of universal evil, and this expansion towards the universal beyond the particular, only to return to it, is a characteristic of the approach taken by the great prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel, and by Christ himself. Thus, it can still be said of Florence’s fame that it “spreads” throughout hell (Inf. XXVI, 1-3), or that the city “was planted” by Lucifer (Par. IX, 127-128).
        Having become Scripture, the “sacred poem” could freely use all four interpretative senses. On the allegorical sense, in the Convivio Dante had warned that “theologians take this sense differently from poets”, even though both consider the literal sense to precede the other senses, in that enclosed (II, i, 2-15). Now allegory would no longer be “a truth hidden under a beautiful lie”, that is, under the letter of poetry, but would correspond to the theologian’s view of the events of Christ and the Church as prefigured in the deeds and sayings of the prophets of the Old Testament. For theologians, not only the letter has historical value, which cannot therefore be a fiction, but also allegory with reference to ancient history, “figure” of the new. Poetic fiction became a biblical metaphor, which Thomas Aquinas considered necessary, useful and hidden, useful in order to study and counter the mockery of infidels (Summa Theologiae, I, qu. I, a. 9).
         One can understand what it would have meant to apply this way of understanding allegory to the ancients. Orpheus, who with his lyre tames wild beasts and moves trees and stones, represents the voice of the wise man who humbles cruel hearts and brings together those who do not use reason: it is only a fable by Ovid, cited in the Convivio as an example of poetic allegory. The giant Antaeus, who lays Virgil and Dante on the ice of Cocytus, in bringing a thousand lions as prey to the valley where the battle of Zama was to be fought, is a foreshadowing of Scipio, who gloriously defeated Hannibal; this battle in turn is a foreshadowing of the “high war” which, like the ancient war of Phlegra against Jupiter, in the sixth status of the Church will see Christ and the Antichrist opposed with their armies: that is, Anthaeus is a “figure” actually encountered during the journey.

              3.5. The Ancients

          The Lectura considered the history of the Church as an individual in the process of development. Since Redemption was not accomplished with the first coming of Christ in the flesh, but in the course of history the Gentiles will be incorporated into Christ, and then the relics of the Gentiles, and finally all Israel, new citizens could enter  into “quella Roma onde Cristo è romano” (“that Rome from which Christ is a Roman”). Whether they were pagans or Mohammedans, they would be chosen not for the nobility of their blood, but for their spiritual sonship, for the gift of Grace that descends from the “Father of light”, according to the Letter of St James (1:17). With an update of what was stated in the Lectura super Apocalipsim on the incorporation of the Gentiles into the Rome of the righteous or the reprobate, who are pilgrims together on earth, it was possible to attribute to the classics a sacredness that until then had been peculiar only to the Church itself. Homer would have taken on the appearance of Gregory the Great, who like an eagle flew above the others in traversing the high paths of allegory; Aristotle would have been endowed with the prerogatives of the One who sits on the throne in heaven and governs with wisdom, in a place (the “noble castle” of Limbo) that is the earthly image of the Empyrean; savouring the divine, the fisherman Glaucus could have been, in the “trasumanar”, the figure of St Peter, who savoured the incorporation of the Gentiles and Israel. Gaeta, the place to which Aeneas gave the name of his nurse, would have prefigured the theme of the Church as the nurse of the faithful; “Ascesi-Oriente”, where “a sun was born into the world”, would have indicate the toponym of the angel of the sixth seal, “ascendens ab ortu solis”. Embracing evangelical and spiritual concepts, Ulysses would have lost himself in a journey towards the sixth status before its time, a journey into the future that anticipates providential designs and transcends the boundaries of ethics – the moral sense assigned to the Ancients – flying in the anagogical sense.

             3.6. The Empire

          If Dante conceived the Comedy at the time of Henry VII’s descent into Italy, he must have been familiar with the reflections on universal monarchy and the rule of a single monarch that would take shape in his famous treatise. What suggestions could he have drawn from reading Olivi’s works? The friar’s conception of the Church could be extended secularly to universal monarchy: just as the Church can never be extinguished and, however corrupt, survives spiritually as an unsewn tunic (tunica inconsutile) even in very few individuals, so the Empire passes from hand to hand, it can remain temporarily “without a heir”, but is immutable in itself. Strange as it may seem to us, the very root of the Franciscan experience gave life to the idea of the universal monarch. The evangelical vow of poverty – the “altissima paupertas” – according to Olivi, and the monarchy according to Dante have something essential in common: stability, non-transmutability, indissolubility. Just as the evangelical vow cannot be dispensed or commuted to a lower state, not even by the pope, who would otherwise be treated as a heretic and schismatic – according to Olivi’s Quaestio de votis dispensandis ^[27] –, so monarchy – as Dante asserts against the supporters of the Donation of Constantine to the pope – cannot be alienated or diminished, not even by the emperor, because jurisdiction precedes its judge (Monarchia, III, x, 10-12) ^[28]. Those who profess the evangelical vow, based on the counsels given by Christ, aim at the universal good; so does the monarch, who is the most universal cause of the good life of men. The evangelical vow places those who profess it in a state of supreme poverty (“altissima paupertas“), its immutability removes every opportunity, motive or desire to attain dignity or fame based on riches: nothing dampens the appetite for something like the impossibility of obtaining it ^[29]. The evangelical vow is therefore the opposite of concupiscence. Even the monarch has nothing left to desire. The effect is the same, but the reasons are opposite, because the monarch possesses everything, as his jurisdiction is bounded only by the ocean, while those in a state of supreme poverty possess nothing and can hope to possess nothing. But for both, greed is completely extinguished, with the result that charity prevails, which for Dante gives vigour to justice and to the monarch’s just love for men. Furthermore, by removing greed, supreme poverty creates a peaceful society and ignites ardent charity, just as the monarch, through justice strengthened by charity, achieves peaceful coexistence, a good of the utmost importance for man (Monarchia, I, xi, 11-14) ^[30].
        Updating Olivi’s historical perspective with parody, the Empire could find its autonomy. Some passages of the Lectura super Apocalipsim, if parodied, would have corroborated the equal dignity of the Empire and the Papacy. In Rev 12:14, it is said that the woman (the Church), in order to fly like a queen in the desert of the Gentiles, was given two wings of a great eagle, interpreted as the third status or period, proper to doctors (who refute heresies with the reason’sword), and the fourth, proper to anchorites or contemplatives (dedicated to the devout Eucharistic meal): thus, their prerogatives – two historical moments of clear wisdom, distinct but together contributing to enlightening the world – could be assimilated to the Empire and the Papacy, the sword and the crozier, the “two suns” of which Marco Lombardo speaks (Purg. XVI, 106-114). They, “which one road and the other, / of God and of the world, made manifest”, correspond to the two ends proposed to man by Providence, which are discussed in Monarchia, the bliss of this life and the bliss of eternal life (III, xv, 7-10). The first end, presided over by the emperor, is reached through philosophy, following it in acting according to moral and intellectual virtues: it is specular, in the relationship that would be established between the Lectura and the Commedia, to the light of the doctors of the Church who rule with reason. The other end, the bliss of eternal life that belongs to the pope, is attained through spiritual teachings that transcend human reason, following them in acting according to the theological virtues: this would correspond to the holy life and the “pascualis refectio”, the “pastus” of the anchorites, the contemplatives to whom the following period, the fourth status, is appropriate, designated by the other wing of the great eagle given to the woman.
          Again, in Rev 22:1-2, there is mention of the luminous river flowing in the middle of the heavenly Jerusalem. It has two banks, the human and the divine, with Christ-lignum vitae in the centre, whose dual nature as man and God shadows both: that sacramental shadow of higher truths could be reflected both on “the shadow of the sacred plumes” (“l’ombra de le sacre penne”) of the imperial Eagle, of which Justinian will speak (Par. VI, 7) as on the “the shadow of the sacred wimple” (“l’ombra de le sacre bende”) proper to the religious and evangelical life of which Piccarda will speak (Par. III, 114), that is, on the two ends of bliss assigned to man by Providence, which is the subject of the Monarchia. Having become the spouse of the Church in heaven, the Empire would participate fully in the eternal generation of the Word and his becoming flesh. Just as Christ was subject to the Father because of his mortal humanity, but was no less consubstantial and equal to him, so the Roman Prince, assimilated to the Son of Man, would have had to pay reverence to the Father and submit to him “in aliquo”, as written at the end of Monarchia, without being any less equal to him. If, as Marco Lombardo would have said, the imperial sword was extinguished by the pope and joined with the pastoral staff, this constituted a heresy comparable to that of Arius, who divided the Son from the Father, considering him not consubstantial, on the level of a creature, or, even better, to that of Sabellius, who unified the Father and the Son in the same person.
          The necessity of a universal monarchy is based on the existence of an operation proper to the whole of humanity, that of implementing in the serenity of peace the intellectual faculty, an operation which cannot be achieved by individuals, whether they be men, families, villages, cities or particular kingdoms ^[31]. This philosophical principle could have found a spiritual plane by putting into verse the image of the “vox aquarum multarum”, the song of the companions of the Lamb on Mount Zion, a single voice proceeding in harmony from many voices (“ex magno et multo collegio sanctorum et plurium virtualium affectuum ipsorum procedens et concorditer unita”), formed by several individuals but at the same time transcending into one. It would have been the same Eagle, in the Heaven of Jupiter, whose voice would have sounded in the singular («e sonar ne la voce e “io” e “mio”») despite being formed by many blessed loves and therefore plural in thought (“quand’ era nel concetto e ‘noi’ e ‘nostro’”), like a single heat felt by many burning coals, like a single scent from many flowers (Par. XIX, 10-12; 19-24) ^[32].
          The history of Rome is the manifestation of the signs of God, which carry out his will on earth: “divina voluntas per signa querenda est” (Monarchia II, ii, 8). These signs, in the words of Justinian in Par. VI, inspired by the “sacrosanct standard” of the Eagle “that made the Romans reverend to the world” (XIX, 101-102), would be modulated in a sevenfold pattern, that of the future seven status or periods of the Church and the events that took place in them according to the Lectura super Apocalipsim, whereby what happened in ancient times before Christ would be revealed as a sacred prefiguration of the new history, which is both that of the Empire and of the Church.
       At first, the Church had to fight against the Jews. The virtue that made the sign of the Eagle worthy of reverence “began from the hour / when Pallas died to give it sovereignty”. The son of King Evander, who died fighting for Aeneas against Turnus, is a figure of Christ, the founder of the Church, who elevated man to his kingdom and priesthood and to whom belongs glory and empire for ever and ever.
      Then, during the three hundred years of persecutions, the martyrs fought against paganism. This was foreshadowed by the seat of the Eagle in Albalonga for three hundred years and more, until the battle of the Horatii and Curiatii, the rape of the Sabine women, and the suicide of Lucretia, which caused the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus.
            This was followed, in the third status, by the war against the heretics, led by the famous doctors of the Church who clearly explained the faith to the already converted universe. This corresponds to the time when the “illustrious Romans” carried the banner “against Brennus, against Pyrrhus, / against the other princes and confederates”, where they brought fame to “Torquato and Quinzio, who was named from the cirrus / neglected, the Deci and the Fabi”.
In the fourth period of the Church, the Saracens arrived and devastated almost everything, subjugating the churches of the East and almost destroying the Roman one. In the past, the sacred sign of the eagle “brought down the pride of the Arabs”, that is, it defeated the Carthaginians, who crossed the Alps behind Hannibal: the fall of Rome’s enemies from their lofty and arduous heights is a foreshadowing, but applied to different times and situations, of the fall of the anchorites, the  contemplatives “in desertis Arabie et Egipti tali vite congruis”, from their elevated and proud position and their destruction by the Saracens.
            In the fifth status, the Church was restored by Charlemagne and reunited in Rome. A condescending way of life was established so that Grace could work in a lower state for those who could not remain in one that was too arduous. But against those who could not maintain the mediocre and condescending state, the severe zeal of correction was rightly directed, so that the holy fathers moved against their own subjects. Caesar’s dazzling exploits, an ancient anticipation of the fifth period, could be described in seven tercets (Par. VI, vv. 58-78), corresponding to the seven cups of divine judgment poured out by the seven angels in the fifth apocalyptic vision, at the end of which the eighth tercet (vv. 79-81) alluded to the fact that with Augustus the world was placed “in so great peace, / that unto Janus was his temple closed”, because, with the wars over, on entered the temple of serene peace and arcane contemplation of God. In Rev 15:8, it is stated that “no one may enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels are completed”, that is, according to one interpretation, no one may enter the serene peace of arcane contemplation until the seven plagues are completed. The angels who pour out the cup act on God’s command, inspired by him, moving as ministers of his judgment, not of their own will or animosity but “as pleased Another” (“com’altrui piacque”). Thus Caesar acts by the will of the Roman people, that is, by divine providence, just as living justice will inspire Justinian’s speech.
            The sixth status of ancient Roman civilisation coincided with the beginning of the sixth age marked by the advent of Christ in the flesh. It foreshadowed in the death of “the mournful Cleopatra” the killing of the apocalyptic prostitute of the last days of the Church; the barking of Brutus and Cassius in hell anticipated the beast and his pseudo-prophet thrown into the lake burning with sulphurous fire. The seventh status, the last, quiet and peaceful, is characterised by Augustan peace, which in this sense also coincides with the beginning of the sixth age.
           Adherence to a theology of history, on which to weave the intimate plot of a poem, would mark the difference with the fourth treatise of the Convivio. In the work that preceded the Comedy the history of Rome was sacred history, but it did not bear the insignia of a process that was not originally its own, which it could appropriate, whereby the Empire would participate in the sacredness of the Church. 

        3.7. Sacred polysemy

    The metamorphosis of the Lectura super Apocalipsim into vernacular verse did not diminish the deliberate polysemy of the “sacred poem”, as the author himself would later affirm in his Epistle to Cangrande. With the exegesis of the last canonical book, set out in a theology of history that by means of septenaries embraces the entire Scripture (which in turn is the form, example and end of all science) all knowledge, all experience and all independent solutions to doctrinal questions would be consistent. The Lectura would not have been a source, but rather the book of the history of the illuminations of wisdom with which everything would have been in agreement. Furthermore, on a doctrinal level, Joachim of Fiore could very well have figured alongside Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure among the wise souls of the Heaven of the Sun. The sixth and seventh status of the Church, according to Olivi, correspond to Joachim’s third age, that of the Holy Spirit, but, in a substantial departure from the Calabrian abbot, they are not appropriate to a single person of the Trinity, but to the Spirit of Christ, the centre of progressively developing history. Therefore, the abbot would have been present in the Commedia in a diffuse way, because his hundreds of quotations in the Lectura would have been incorporated into the general metamorphosis.

              3.8. The ancient network of the “holy smile”

          The figure of Beatrice could have boasted sacred signs: “fattura” (“creature”) of God, according to what St Paul wrote to the Ephesians 2:10 (Inf. II, 91-92); Scriptura lacrimosa, divine precept that makes the eyes shine, purifies through tears, clarifies and illuminates with humility Virgil, the high tragedy (Inf. II, 116). Three names could be attributed to her in the filigree of the verses, which, as a sign of reverence, cannot be translated. The first is the greek “apocalypse”, which means “revelation”: it belongs to the woman in her unveiling in Eden, together with all the semantic and conceptual elements that accompany the term “apocalypse” in the first three verses of the sacred book. The woman’s name also coincided with the final cause of the book, “beatitudo”. The other two names were hebrew: “alleluia”, meaning “praise God” – “Quod est hebreum et est idem quod laudare Deum” – and “amen”, meaning “truly” – «“Amen, alleluia”, id est vere est Deus ineffabiliter laudandus». Lucia would then turn to her in the Empyrean to urge her to save her friend: “Beatrice, loda di Dio vera” (“Beatrice, praise God truly”: Inf. II, 103), uttering three words venerated and not translated in the sacred text: “apocalipsis, alleluia, amen”. Beatrice could have embodied in her smile the splendour of the face (“splendor faciei”) of Christ the supreme shepherd, which instils trembling and oblivion in those who look at it (Rev 1:16-17); what iconography had traditionally avoided in depictions of the Redeemer would have been possible for her.
      The poet’s realism could carry human passions into the afterlife, but by giving them a sacred aspect, he would have made them emblematic and universal. This is what happens with Beatrice. A real woman, on seeing her again, the poet’s spirit “felt the great power of ancient love”. But it is a Beatrice found and immediately lost, because humanity is only bait for the eyes (“so the holy smile / drew them unto itself with the old net!”) in which hides the sting of the divinity of a woman now ascended from flesh to spirit, grown in beauty and virtue.

            3.9. An audience conceived but never formed

          Many new ideas must have flashed through Dante’s mind as he read the Lectura super Apocalipsim. A new audience was taking shape. The principle according to which clerus vulgaria tempnit, to use the words of Giovanni del Virgilio in his carmen addressed to Dante, would be disproved. The literal meaning of the Comedy would contain keywords providing access to another text, Olivi’s commentary on the Apocalypse. It was a process of memory art: the words had to act on the reader as imagines agentes to prompt him towards a work of broad learning, which he already knew, but which he could reread mentally paraphrased in the vernacular, deeply updated according to the author’s own intentions, in verses that lent it “feet and hands” and endowed it with contemporary and familiar examples. In the literal sense of “sacred poem” other interpretative meanings were incorporated: allegorical, moral and anagogical (which Dante, in his Epistola to Cangrande, collectively defines as “mystical” or “allegorical”). The poet aimed not only at a lay audience, or generically at clerics, but also at preachers and reformers of the Church – at the Franciscan Spirituals, and perhaps not only at them, if the Lectura had spread to other Orders – at those who, through preaching, could reform the Church and convert the world with its vernacular. The “sacred poem” would serve as a speculum for that reformist group. Not only could they preach it, but it would also be a guide in leading the flock entrusted to them. A devout shepherd close to the Christian people, who would “let Caesar sit upon the saddle”, not engaged in disputing opposing extremisms, not afraid of classicism to the point of recognising Aristotle as the “Master of those who know”, but with the not insignificant clause of agreeing with Olivi’s apocalyptic vision (which summarises the entire Scripture); ready to admit ancient and modern poets as figures of the new poet “the sixth ‘mid so much wit” and of his true vision; convinced that the conversion of the “the land depraved / of Italy” should be held up as a universal example of the future final conversion of the nations and of Israel. If, thanks to the Comedy, Dante had returned to Florence “with other voice forthwith, with other fleece”, how many preachers would have quoted it from the city pulpits! But the hoped-for audience of religious reformers did not materialise, because the Spirituals were persecuted and their banner book, censored in 1318-1319 and condemned in 1326, was doomed to clandestinity and almost to disappearance.
          The same exegesis could be used, varying the themes semantically, at different stages of the poem’s composition. Whether the poem was published in groups of cantos, which could no longer be modified, or in revised canticles, the persistence of a “cloth” – that is, another text from which to draw the spiritual meanings of the poem, materially elaborated through words – could serve to maintain the unity and internal coherence of the fabric, of the “gown”. The art of memory by keywords could also serve both the intended audience of the Spirituals and the author. The fact that groups of numerically corresponding tercets, at different stages of the Comedy, contain keywords that lead to the same exegetical page of the Lectura indicates that these words, if they were meant to be mnemonic signs to another text for the spiritual reader, were also signs for the poet of the number of verses, the place where to put the same signs in different forms and contexts.

          3.10. The theodicy of the “sacred poem”

          Ignaz von Döllinger, the fierce opponent of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council, who preferred Dante to Goethe, in his lecture Dante als Prophet given in 1887 at the Academy of Sciences in Munich conceived the Comedy as a theodicy, that is, as an exposition of the divine plan for the universe. In this sense, the author was a prophet, because he found in the historical perspective of the past and future a refuge from the pessimism induced by the present time and a stimulus for his mission of universal conversion ^[33]. Charles Southward Singleton would dwell on the first reader of this theodicy in 1965, announcing the discovery of the number seven as central to the Comedy, revealing an admirable hidden structure yet to be deciphered. Just as in Chartres Cathedral, the stonemasons left beautiful friezes high up, where the human eye could not reach, so the order and inner intelligence of the poem were not conceived solely for human eyes: “that design, whatever its place in the structure, would be seen by the One who sees all, the One who created the world with marvellous order, in proportion, number and measure; and He would certainly have looked upon it as proof that the human architect had imitated the universe that He, the divine architect, had created first for His own contemplation, and then for the contemplation of angels and men” ^[34]. The semiotic-spiritual structure of the “sacred poem”, an expression of the pilgrim’s self, was conceived primarily “in the service of the Most High”.

             3.11. Conclusions

          To represent the afterlife as “the theatre of man and his passions” ^[35], Dante chose to parody not just any theology, but a theology of contemporary history that was being renewed. It provided him with concepts with which to clothe men and their lives on earth, and images to be applied to different times. But it was sacred history, and sacred was the garb cut out for the characters, places and events placed and described in the poem. The author believed he had had a true intellectual vision, like that of St John in Patmos, and that he had to write it down for the conversion of humanity using the forms of this world so as to make it understandable to all in a new universal language, as was been Latin. The visitor “per l’aere perso” believed in the existence of the afterlife, of hell and its punishments, and would never have considered it empty. In his journey through the sacred and earthly history of humanity, the hell presented itself to him as the Old Testament, populated not only by ancient demons and giants, but also by those who had not been able in life to renew themselves and who, only at the passing of the herald of new poetry, spoke as for inner conversion, remembering their past lives.
          The parody, which operated on the history of the Church, secularly extended the sacred to new subjects and needs, incorporating pagan and Arab philosophy as well as the imperial institution. Earthly passions, put into verse, resonated so strongly in eternal places that they immediately shed their sacred garb and became independent realities. The condemnation in 1326 of the Lectura super Apocalipsim, the theology of history that provided the “cloth” for the “gown”, with the consequent oblivion of the features of the history of collective salvation marked by the friar of Sérignan, immediately removed any possibility of rediscovering the mystical meanings of the Commedia, leaving only the literal meaning and the forest of interpretations. Ariel, the ethereal spirit of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, could perhaps sing of Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, persecuted in life and death by many storms:

                                                     Those are pearls that were his eyes;
                                                     Nothing of him that doth fade,
                                                     But doth suffer a sea-change
                                                     Into something rich and strange.     

4. Quo vadis, Dantes?

          ‘Dad, tell me, who was Dante’s teacher?’ When my seven-year-old son asked me this question during his first year at school, I was, to be honest, somewhat taken aback. Poor Tommaso, faced with my temporary but eloquent silence, must have felt a sense of despair similar to that felt by Guido Cavalcanti’s father, Farinata’s companion in the kindled tomb, when faced with Dante’s silence following the agonising question of whether his son was still alive. Because Tommaso felt within himself that his teacher, the one he had found at school, was something decisive for him. Perhaps, unconsciously, he was a mediator between himself and his father. And in those evening readings of Dante, which were very similar to the readings of novels that parents used to do for their children in their early school years, his father unworthily assumed the role of Beatrice, when it was instead his son’s gaze that increased the ardour of the reading and consequently increased the listener’s love for him. But how to answer such a question? Who was Dante’s real teacher, his spiritual guide? I could have said that he had several, but a child who is beginning to climb the mountain of Minerva needs a single teacher. At the beginning of conversion, the vow is made for one rule, not for more. In addition to being unique, it must be a permanent guide. Aristotle, the “teacher of those who know”, sits among the philosophical family, honoured but confined to Limbo, the first circle of the blind prison. Dante’s affection for Brunetto Latini’s “dear and good paternal image” is fleeting, so much so that the disciple would not have recognised his teacher if he had not grabbed him “by the hem”. The episode is as poignant as it is fleeting. Virgil is a much more authoritative candidate, but he accompanies Dante to the earthly paradise. His figure is that of a true master, and the poet’s loss of his “sweet father” was, for my Tommaso, the most moving moment of the reading. Beatrice remained, but how could one define as ‘teacher’ the one who makes every drop of the poet’s blood tremble? Unable to do everything virtue desires, I answered the question by promising that I would study the matter. One day, I came across some verses in Canto V of Paradise that seemed to be an almost literal translation of a passage from a quaestio by Pietro di Giovanni Olivi (Sérignan 1248? – Narbonne 1298). These were not minor verses: they dealt with the freedom of the human will, we were faced with the first blessed souls, it was Beatrice who was speaking. Perhaps Dante’s spiritual master, his vademecum in tribulatione, had been the Franciscan from Languedoc, loved as a father by the Spirituals and contested in life and death by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, not a doctor angelicus like his Dominican adversary – Thomas Aquinas – whom he fought tenaciously, but, more humbly, vir angelicus as Bernardino da Siena, who had him as his secret teacher, would have called him?
      When, in 1995, the author of this research decided to devote himself to a textual comparison between the works of Dante and those of Olivi, he did not imagine that what is written in Convivio (II, xii, 5) would happen to him, namely that sometimes “man seeks silver and, outside of his intention, finds gold, which presents a hidden cause; perhaps not without divine command”. The author has become a scribe of what the texts reveal to him, and the philologist has been accompanied by the archaeologist who digs into the Comedy, highlighting its quality as a ‘great sacred parody’ of the Lectura super Apocalipsim by the friar of Sérignan (some more advanced scholars might go so far as to speak of the DNA of the text). ‘Great’ because it is widespread throughout the poem; ‘parody’ because it is a metamorphosis of doctrinal concepts; ‘sacred’ because, through these concepts, it inserts human reality into divine designs.
      As the research progressed, an endless semiotic field emerged: rooted in the literal meaning of the Comedy, key words refer, through the art of memory, to the doctrine of the Lectura, updated according to the poet’s intentions. Dante, for whom the poem was “polisemos, hoc est plurium sensuum”, conceived, among many possibilities, a specific audience, that of the Franciscan Spirituals who were supposed to reform the Church. An audience that was lost due to the persecutions suffered from the second decade of the 14th century onwards. The Lectura was condemned by John XXII in 1326, but continued to circulate clandestinely; Dante had already condemned the popes by varying the themes contained in the “pestifera postilla” on the Apocalypse.
      Eric Auerbach observed that Dante’s work was the culmination of a development that ended with him: “No one was able to continue or to extend his total cosmic and historical edifice, for it collapsed”. The judgement of God, which actualises, orders and renders eternal the tragedy with which Dante had placed the individual in the universal order, was missing: “Later, the individual man was alone, his tragedy ended with his life” ^[36]. In that “autumn of the Middle Ages”, the Lectura super Apocalipsim also collapsed, because it was the subject of unparalleled persecution and because the sense of a history of collective salvation was lost. Silence fell on the inner language of the Comedy, which was immediately interpreted by contemporaries as a literary fiction. But a comparison between the Comedy and the Lectura shows how Olivi’s apocalyptic exegesis was the sacred source of Dante’s prophetic vocation; following the development of the semantic parody throughout the poem is equivalent to leafing through the spiritual diary of the poem’s writing. The research has resulted in a spiritual topography of the “Commedia”, where for almost every verse, or group of verses, hypertext links lead to the exegetical “cloth” provided by the Lectura super Apocalipsim, on which the “good tailor” made “the gown”, to use the words of St Bernard in Par. XXXII, 140-141.
       Unconditionally supported from the outset by Ovidio Capitani, and encouraged by a fruitful correspondence with Guglielmo Gorni, the research has been met with deafening silence from the academic world for twenty years. While most remain unaware of its existence, it leaves those who are aware disconcerted, among whom perhaps some wonder who this man is who, a stranger to the circles where these things are subtly studied, garrulus factus, has glimpsed alone in the sand grains of gold from which science can draw many conclusions. Beyond the absolute novelty and complexity of the research, which traces paths on new ground but requires faith and dedication from those who intend to verify or continue it, the academic silence stems above all from a problem of areas of expertise (the laughable attempts to classify these studies in the vein of Dante’s esotericism can be disregarded). Today’s Dante scholars, skilled navigators along the coast but inexperienced and generally fearful of the “open sea”, have only a superficial knowledge of Olivi’s Lectura and, except in very rare cases, do not consider the semiotic field and the art of memory: they are therefore unable to confirm or refute anything. Conversely, in the field of historical studies, Olivi is confined to the Franciscan sphere, while Dante is the preserve of literary history. The fact that the Lectura remained unpublished for seven hundred years and was known only in excerpts did not help, nor does the faulty critical edition by the American Warren Lewis encourage further study ^[37]. To this must be added the eclipse of historical-religious studies, which, after more than half a century, are still far from having surpassed the pioneering work in this field of Raoul Manselli. Thus, we continue to talk about Dante as a theologian and prophet, we seek intertextuality with the most disparate sources, we refine previous editions philologically, but we neglect the greatest contemporary eschatological work, emptying the poet of his historical significance. Removing the Lectura from Dante’s library, or failing to fully appreciate the great weight it carried in the writing of the poem, is equivalent to conceiving of Augustine without Orosius’Historiae, Cervantes without chivalric novels, Proust without Ruskin and Bergson, Thomas Mann without Goethe, Italo Calvino without Kipling and Conrad.
        Those who fear Dante’s heterodoxy would find profound human and Christian meanings in Olivian eschatology, imbued with the ideas of Joachim of Fiore, first and foremost the aspiration for peace. Conversely, those who fear a Dante turned friar would see how the themes dear to the Spirituals spill over from the Church to the human world, onto the “secular ideals of human dignity, the creative power of the individual, and culture conceived as a means of spiritual perfection, characteristic of the new age of the Renaissance” ^[38]. The great parody highlights the two natures of Dante’s soul, dual like that of Faust – to use a famous definition by Benedetto Croce – “divided between the persistent Middle Ages and the incipient Renaissance” ^[39].
          The aim of this research is to make known to everyone, whether they are people involved in culture and historical science or simply curious, the existence of an unexplored side, so that others may ascend a path already marked out, opening up new paths in turn.
          Italians will be able to see how much our language, which Dante wanted to be universal, was rooted in the humble Latin of biblical exegesis. Giuseppe Mazzini wrote that the best way to honour Dante is to learn from him “how to serve one’s native land, as long as action is not forbidden; how to live in misfortune” ^[40]. This was true in the hardships of the Risorgimento, and it is still a comfort in times of suffering, whether individual or collective. What use could Dante, restored to the Middle Ages, be to the present day? How can, in Gramsci’s words, help “the forces in development to become more aware of themselves and therefore more concretely active and effective”? ^[41] Starting from the particulars of the Tuscan microcosm to ascend to the human macrocosm where individual facts and passions are eternalised; creating a universal language that can be understood beyond the literal meaning of words, so that, unlike what happens with other poets, Thomas Stearn Eliot felt he could read the Comedy even without understanding Italian ^[42]; transferring the fierce political events of Italian cities to a sacred historical plane, even presenting them as a renewal of the passion of Christ; to consider the past history of Europe as a foreshadowing of the present and, from the pessimism induced by current events, to find refuge in the prophetic expectation of the coming renewal, “mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde”; promoting humble Italy as the garden of the Empire, giving a politically non-existent nation an awareness of its own dignity and the cosmopolitan significance of its values: these are useful lessons at a time when the winds of history are smoothing out, like footprints in the sand, the cultural, political and religious marks that were believed to be permanently engraved.
        Dante, who would never have thought he would not be understood, albeit in different ways depending on the different levels of the reading public of his polysemic poem, does not escape the grip, wants to be won over, for him the words of the Eagle apply: “Regnum celorum violenza pate” (Par. XIX, 94). It is therefore time for the best minds to ask themselves the question: Quo vadis, Dantes? and, like the “astripeta” eagle, to grasp the deepest meanings of the “sacred poem”, performing the divine score so that their sound, like that heard by St John in Patmos, becomes “the voice of many waters”.

[1] G. PETROCCHI, Biografia, in Enciclopedia Dantesca, Roma 1984², Appendice, 41.

[2] A. PAGLIARO, Ulisse. Ricerche semantiche sulla Divina Commedia, I, Messina-Firenze 1967, 1-2.

[3] G. CARDUCCI, Dello svolgimento della letteratura nazionale, in Discorsi letterari e storici, Ed. nazionale delle Opere, VII, 80.

[4] G.B. VICO, De constantia iurisprudentis liber alter, De constantia philologiae, XII, 21: “in summa italorum barbarie, sine ullo exemplo proposito, ex sese primum natus, ex sese quoque poeta factus absolutissimus”, in IDEM, Il diritto universale, ed. F. Nicolini, II, Bari 1936, 378.

[5] B. CROCE, Due postille alla critica dantesca, in “La Critica. Rivista di Letteratura, Storia e Filosofia”, 39 (1941), 133-141: 136.

[6] E. BUONAIUTI, Storia del Cristianesimo, II, Milano 1941, 544.

[7] B. NARDI, Pretese fonti della «Divina Commedia», in “Nuova Antologia”, 90 (1955), 383-398, republished in IDEM, Dal “Convivio” alla “Commedia”. Sei saggi danteschi, Roma 1960 (Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo. Studi Storici, 35-39), 356.

[8] DINO COMPAGNI, Cronica delle cose occorrenti ne’ tempi suoi, ed. G. Bezzola, Milano 1995, III,  24, p. 232: “venne giù, discendendo di terra in terra, mettendo pace come fusse agnolo di Dio”.

[9] The text of Convivio is edited by F. Brambilla Ageno, Firenze 1995. The English translation is ours.

[10] Cfr. P. VIAN, “Se il chicco di grano …”. Raoul Manselli, Pietro di Giovanni Olivi e il francescanesimo spirituale. Nuovi appunti di lettura, in “Nisi granum frumenti…”. Raoul Manselli e gli studi francescani, ed. F. Accrocca, Roma, Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2011 (Bibliotheca Seraphico-Capuccina, 93), 30-33.

[11] UBERTINO DA CASALE, Arbor vitae crucifixae Iesu, Venetiis 1485, facsimile reprint by C. T. Davis, Torino 1961, prologus I, f. 4a-b: “qui me modico tempore … sic introduxit ad altas perfectiones anime dilecti Iesu … et ad profunda scripture et ad intima tertii status mundi et renovationis vite Christi, ut iam ex tunc in novum hominem mente transiverim”.

[12] A. FRUGONI, La Roma di Dante, tra il tempo e l’eterno, in IDEM, Pellegrini a Roma nel 1300. Cronache del primo Giubileo, presentation by C. Frugoni, edited with an introduction by F. Accrocca, Casale Monferrato 1999, 102-103.

[13] P. VIAN, Introduzione to Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, Scritti scelti, Roma 1989, 8.

[14] DINO COMPAGNI, Cronica delle cose occorrenti ne’ tempi suoi, III, 15-18, pp. 210-217; GIOVANNI VILLANI, Nuova Cronica, ed. G. Porta, II, Varese 2007², IX, 85 (year 1306), pp. 653-654; 89 (year 1307), pp. 657-659; (p. 653, year 1306): “il quale (cardinale messer Nepoleone degli Orsini dal Monte, legato e paciaro generale in Italia) si partì da Leone sopra Rodano, e passò i monti, e mandando a’ Fiorentini che voleva venire in Firenze per fare pace e concordia da loro e i loro usciti […]”. Cf. P. VIAN, «Noster familiaris solicitus et discretus»: Napoleone Orsini e Ubertino da Casale, in Ubertino da Casale. Atti del XLI Convegno Internazionale. Assisi 18-20 ottobre 2013, Spoleto 2014 (Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani – Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani), 217-298: 246-249.

[15] H. U. von BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord. A Theological Aesthetics, III: Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles, Eng. transl. San Francisco U.S.A. 1986, 10.

[16] H. GRUNDMANN, Dante und Joachim von Fiore. Zu Paradiso X-XII, in “Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch”, 14 (NF 5), 1932, 210-256, republished in IDEM, Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 2. Joachim von Fiore, Stuttgart 1977 (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Band 25, 2), 193.

[17] See L.-J. BATAILLON, Les images dans les sermons du XIII^e siècle, in “Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie”, 37/3 (1990), 327-395; The Tradition of Nicholas of Biard’s Distinctiones, in “Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies”, 25 (1994), 245-288; C. DELCORNO, Dante e il linguaggio dei predicatori, in Letture Classensi, 25 (Intertestualità dantesca), ed. E. Pasquini, Ravenna 1996, 51-74.

[18] A. ASOR ROSA, Epilogue to L’idea deforme. Interpretazioni esoteriche di Dante, ed. M. P. Pozzato, Milano 1989, 316.

[19] É. GILSON, Dante The Phylosopher, Eng. transl., London 1948, 74; Dante et Béatrice: Ètudes dantesques, Paris 1974, 85.

[20] E. AUERBACH, Sacrae Scripturae sermo humilis (1941), in Neue Dantestudien, Istanbul 1944, 10.

[21] T. S. ELIOT, Dante, London 1929, 16-18.

[22] H. GRUNDMANN, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, Hildesheim 1961, 526.

[23] E. AUERBACH, Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Eng. transl. Princeton University Press 1993, 306.

[24] G. CONTINI, Filologia ed esegesi dantesca (1965) in Un’idea di Dante. Saggi danteschi, Torino, 1970 and 1976, 135.

[25] AUERBACH, Literary Language and its Public (note 23), 309.

[26] M.-D. CHENU, La Théologie au douzième siècle, Paris 1957, 243.

[27] Quaestio de votis dispensandis, in P. I. OLIVI Quaestiones de romano pontifice, ed. M. Bartoli, Grottaferrata 2002 (Collectio Oliviana, IV), 121-170: 132, 135, 141-142, 150.

[28] Monarchia is cited in the edition by B. Nardi, in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, II, Milano-Napoli, 1979.

[29] Quaestio de altissima paupertate, ed. J. Schlageter, Das Heil der Armen und das Verderben der Reichen. Petrus Johannis Olivi OFM. Die Frage nach der höchsten Armut, Werl/Westfalen, 1989; Responsio principalis, I.1.3, p. 88.

[30] See A. FORNI, Pietro di Giovanni Olivi nella penisola italiana: immagine e influssi tra letteratura e storia in Pietro di Giovanni Olivi frate minore. Atti del XLIII Convegno Internazionale. Assisi 16-18 ottobre 2015, Spoleto 2016 (Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani – Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani), 395-437: 428-430.

[31] Monarchia, I, iii, 4: “Est ergo aliqua propria operatio humane universitatis, ad quam ipsa universitas hominum in tanta multitudine ordinatur; ad quam quidem operationem nec homo unus, nec domus una, nec una vicinia, nec una civitas, nec regnum particulare pertingere potest”.

[32] See G. VINAY, Interpretazione della “Monarchia” di Dante, Firenze 1962, 73: “Starting from a philosophical proposition, venturing into the thicket of a juridical and theological dispute, Dante arrives at his conclusion without realizing that he has shifted to the plane of pure spirituality, on which alone it is possible to understand the ultimate meaning of Monarchia”.

[33] I. von DÖLLINGER, Dante als Prophet, in IDEM, Akademische Vorträge, I, Nordlingen, 1888, 78-117. See P. VIAN, Dante, Pietro di Giovanni Olivi e lo spiritualismo minoritico: fra ipotesi e certezze, in Dante, Francesco e i frati Minori. Atti del XLVII Convegno Internazionale. Assisi, 14-16 ottobre 2021, Spoleto 2020, pp. 99-151: 101. Vian traces the centuries-old historiography on the relationship between Dante and the Franciscan Spirituals, from Ignaz von Döllinger to Alberto Forni.

[34] Ch. S. SINGLETON, The Poet’s Number at the Center, MLN, Vol. 80, No 1. Italian Issue (1965), 1-10: 10.

[35] E. AUERBACH, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Eng. transl. Princeton University Press 1953, 176.

[36] E. AUERBACH, Literary Language and its Public (note 23), 317.

[37] PETRUS IOHANNIS OLIVI, Lectura super Apocalypsim, edited by W. Lewis, Saint Bonaventure University, Saint Bonaventure, NY, Franciscan Institute Publications, 2015, pp. lxxii-899.

[38] R. MORGHEN, Medioevo cristiano, Bari 1974⁴, 263-264.

[39] B. CROCE, Ancora della lettura poetica di Dante (1948), in Letture di poeti e riflessioni sulla teoria e la critica della poesia, Bari 1950, 3-20.

[40] G. MAZZINI, Dell’amor patrio di Dante (1826), in Scritti editi e inediti, II, Roma 1887⁴, 19-40: 40.

[41] A. GRAMSCI, Quaderni del carcere, 19 (X), 1934-1935, ed. V. Gerratana, III,  1983-1984, Torino 1975.

[42] See note 21.

All quotations from the Lectura super Apocalipsim found in the essays or articles published on this website are taken from the edition, complete with notes and indexes, of ms. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 713, by Alberto Forni and Paolo Vian. The biblical passages referred to in the exegesis are enclosed in quotation marks “ ”; for sources other than those indicated, please refer to the online edition. The critical edition edited by Warren Lewis (Franciscan Institute Publications, St. Bonaventure – New York, 2015) is not taken into consideration due to the issues it raises, which are discussed in Alberto Forni – Paolo Vian, A proposito dell’edizione di Warren Lewis della Lectura super Apocalipsim di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi. Some observations, in “Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,” 109 (2016), 99-161.

For the English translation of the verses of the Comedy, reference was made, with some variations, to that of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867), published by the Dartmouth Dante Project. The English translation of the authors’ quotations, unless taken from the works cited in the footnotes, is our own.

Spiritual topography of the Divine Comedy

INFERNO

(The first five ages of the world)

     The ‘spiritual topography’ of the poem shows in Inferno five cycles consisting of seven parts corresponding semantically to the seven periods (status) of the Church described by Olivi and their themes contained in the Lectura (see supra). ‘Themes’ are theological-exegetical concepts that are given “feet and hands” in the literal sense of the verses. These five cycles designate the first five ages of the world (which are in turn grouped together in the first general era, corresponding to Joachim of Fiore’s age of the Father), as a prefiguration of the first coming of Christ and the Church.
          The five cycles of septenaries that follow one another in Inferno starting from the fourth canto (the first three cantos have a particular thematic) are preceded by five zones that can be defined as “junctions”, where themes from several status converge, intertwined to initiate the sevenfold progression. The centre of these “junctions” coincides with a canto (Inf. IV, X, XVII, XXVI, XXXII), but the zone is larger and exceeds the scope given by the literal division of the poem.
        To give an example, in the first cycle, the semantics of Limbo (Inf. IV) respond mainly (but not exclusively) to the thematic relating to the first status. After numerous themes of the second period, specific to martyrs (in the sense that ancient physical martyrdom is replaced by modern psychological martyrdom), have been developed in the fifth canto with the lustful, in the sixth canto it is the semantics of the third period, of the Doctors of the Church, that envelops the gluttonous. In the seventh canto, the description of the avaricious and prodigal records motifs from the fourth status, specific to the contemplatives and running through time together with the third; the situation of the wrathful and slothful refers to the fifth status, that of the relaxed. The motifs of the fifth period continue and prevail in the eighth canto (swamp Styx) where, however, starting from verse 68, the themes of the heavenly Jerusalem, the subject of the seventh apocalyptic vision, are parodied in the description of the city of Dis, motifs that have already crept into the verses relating to the “noble castle” of Limbo (Inf. IV, 106-111). In Inf. IX, themes from the fifth status and the seventh vision are revisited; the motifs of the sixth status grow, reaching their climax with the opening of the gate of Dis by the heavenly messenger (vv. 61-90). The tenth canto begins the second cycle of Inferno.
          In the five seven-part cycles of the first canticle, the sixth period of the Church – the “point” on which the understanding of all human history depends – is marked by the opening of the gate of the city of Dis (Inf. IX, 89-90); by the ascent of Geryon from the abyss (Inf. XVI, 106-136); by the hasty passage from the fifth to the sixth bolgia (Inf. XXIII, 1-57) and then by the metamorphoses in the seventh, where the Florentine thieves turned into snakes and vice versa (Inf. XXIV-XXV); from Antaeus bending down at the bottom of hell (Inf. XXXI, 136-145); and finally from the passage through the centre of the earth, with Virgil’s conversion on Lucifer’s hip (Inf. XXXIV, 70-87), which is the passage to the sixth age, that of the Church, described in Purgatorio.
         The novelty that the sixth status, par excellence the period of renewal of the world, brings to hell is a fictitious novelty: the opening of the gate of the city of Dis is not a real novelty, because it was closed by the obstinacy of the devils, who were repeat offenders after the opening of the gate of hell by Christ (foreshadowed by the arrival of Hercules in Hades, for which Cerberus “for that still bears his chin and gullet peeled”); Geryon comes up at a “new signal” from Virgil, but he is a figure of fraud with a poisonous, stinging tail; the new product of the mutual transformations of snakes and men is something incomplete because rational man, created in the sixth day, regresses to the previous condition.
        If in Inferno the sixth status is never fully realised, the seventh, which is closely connected to it, cannot find an autonomous place either. Nevertheless, themes from the seventh period (and the seventh vision) are widely present. For example, those relating to the seventh church are particularly prominent in the description of the cowards in Inf. III. A time of silence, serene peace, and rest from anxious labours, the seventh status takes over after the terrible temptations inflicted, with a martyrdom that is not physical but psychological, by the executioners of the Antichrist in the sixth period. Just as every moment of human history participates in the imitation of Christ, which reaches its peak in the sixth status, so in every period there is a “quietatio”, a pause of peace, quiet and silence characteristic of the seventh. Thus Francesca speaks and listens “while silent is the wind, as it is now”. The wind – “the infernal hurricane that never rests” – signifies the stormy fluctuations of the passions in the heart.
       Each thematic group is arbitrarily assigned a different colour: Roots (green), I status (teal), II status (red), III status (black), IV status (purple), V status (brown), VI status (blue), VII status (indigo), VII vision (fuchsia).

PURGATORIO

(The sixth age of the world)

          After the first five ages of the world (corresponding to the Old Testament, the Joachimite age of the Father), which marked the downward spiral through the five sevenfold cycles of Hell, Purgatory marks the beginning of the sixth age, that of Christ (the Joachimite age of the Son), which has seven periods, corresponding to the seven status of the Church. First, in the so-called “Ante-Purgatory”, the prevailing themes of the first five status are recorded in succession. The sixth status of the sixth age (which opens the Joachimite age of the Spirit) begins with the opening of St Peter’s gate (the gate of Purgatory). This sixth period also proceeds in a septenary pattern, so it has seven moments, coinciding mainly with a terrace of the mountain, but not entirely, because the spiritual order of the poem always breaks the literal boundaries and material divisions, semantically linking the themes of a prevailing status with those of the preceding and those of the following period, and intertwining them with themes from all the other status.
          It is explained in notabile VII of the Prologue to the Lectura super Apocalipsim that the sixth status of the Church is the second status of Christ and has its seven times, so that the Church, as if it were a sphere, rejoins the first apostolic time in a circular fashion. The seventh of the seven moments of the sixth status of the Church coincides with the seventh general period, which in the poem corresponds in part to the last terrace of the mountain (the seventh, where the lustful are purged) and in part to Eden, with which the second canticle closes.
       Purgatorio, therefore, according to the spiritual meaning, is the history of the Church running towards its sixth status, the reference point for all human events, ancient and modern, that cooperate with it. It is no coincidence that in the sixth terrace of the mountain, in the conversation with Bonagiunta da Lucca, the poetics of Dante’s “nove rime” are clarified and recognised, of the poet already “sesto tra cotanto senno” co-opted into the “bella scola” of the poets of Limbo.
          Olivi’s seventh status is realised partly in this life (as a foretaste on earth of eternal glory, that is, in the earthly Paradise at the top of the mountain) and partly in the future (in the sense of the tranquillity of blessed souls awaiting the resurrection, which is the subject of Paradiso).

PARADISO

(The seventh status of the Church)

        Primum Mobile is the ninth and penultimate heaven, but it is the sixth if we start from the heaven of the Sun. It is also the heaven most marked by the theme of the “point”, to which the sixth status of the Church is assimilated. This allows us to reconstruct the spiritual order of Paradiso by placing the hinge in the fourth heaven of the Sun. According to Alfragano’s doctrine (Par. IX, 118-119), the shadow cast by the earth ends with the third heaven of Venus, while before describing the ascent to the heaven of the Sun, the poet invites the reader to turn “to the high wheels” (Par. X, 7-27). Without the sharp break that, in the first canticle, divides the damned punished within the city of Dis from those outside it and, in the second canticle, separates the souls purging in the seven terraces of the mountain from the souls waiting outside the gate (the so-called “Ante-Purgatory”), even in Paradiso, the spirits that appear in the first three heavens of the Moon, Mercury and Venus (spirits who failed in their vows, spirits who were active in pursuit of honour and fame, loving spirits) are distinguished by their lesser perfection compared to those who appear in the following heavens.
         The ten heavens of Paradiso are therefore arranged in two groups of seven, corresponding to the status of the Church (and their prerogatives) according to Olivi, partially matching (from 1 to 7 and from 4 to 10: the last four numbers of the first group and the first four of the second coincide).

         I. If we consider the first septenary, in the first heaven of the Moon we address the issue of the failure to fulfil vows, which corresponds to the themes of the first church of Ephesus, whose name, if interpreted, oscillates between the fervent initial will and remission (the essence of the vow consists in the will).

         II. In the second heaven of Mercury, the battles fought by the “sacrosanct sign” of the Eagle correspond to the second status, of the martyrs, who are combatants. The doctrine of the incarnation and passion of Christ, subsequently expounded by Beatrice, is also part of the theme, because the whole Church, founded on the passion of Christ, imitates his cross with the martyrs, and this greatly benefits its roots.

             III In the third heaven of Venus, Carlo Martello explains, like the doctors of the third period of the Church who fought against heresy and error, the diversity of human temperaments and how men err by not indulging them; in the same heaven appears Folchetto of Marseille, who as bishop of Toulouse fought the Albigensian heresy.

       IV–I In the fourth heaven of the Sun, the first of the second group of seven for the exaltation of the apostolic life (proper to the first status and renewed in the sixth), we can connect the theme of the sun itself as understood in the exegesis of the fourth trumpet (Rev 8:12): «Per “solem” videtur hic designari solaris vita et contemplatio summorum anachoritarum, qui fuerunt patres et exempla aliorum, vel solaris sapientia et doctrina summorum doctorum». Wisdom and contemplation, doctors of the third period of the Church and anchorites of the fourth, contribute, like Dominic and Francis – “The one was all seraphical in ardour; / the other by his wisdom upon earth / a splendour was of light cherubical” (Par. XI, 37-39) – with mutual courtesy to inflame the midday of the universe.

        V–II The fifth heaven of Mars, second (like the second status, of martyrs) for the exaltation of the cross of Christ formed by the lights of those who fought for the faith, carries within itself the theme of condescension proper to the fifth status, both in the pious descent of Cacciaguida towards Dante for the cross, and in the decline of the “high Florentines”, that is, in the decline of the ancient families, assimilated to the anchorites, once high and then turned downwards.

          VI–III The sixth heaven of Jupiter, third (like the third status of the Church’s doctors) for the explanation of profound truths of faith, develops the motif, proper to the sixth church, of the “open door”. Opening the door means illuminating and sharpening the intellect that penetrates the occult of the Scriptures, and also giving spiritual effectiveness to penetrate the heart of the listener: thus the Eagle opens Dante’s “latebra”, thus the eye of Rifeo Troiano was opened by God to future redemption.

      VII–IV In the seventh heaven of Saturn, the fourth (like the fourth status, of the anchorites), “is silent … the dulcet symphony of Paradise” (Par. XXI, 58-60), and silence is the theme of the seventh status. There, the contemplative spirits, the main subjects of the fourth period, typical of anchorites, are shown: if we count from the fourth heaven of the Sun, considering this as the first or as a new beginning of the sevenfold cycle, the heaven of Saturn is precisely the fourth.

            VIII (V) The seventh heaven of Saturn is followed by the heaven of the Fixed Stars – the eighth and fifth – where the hosts of Christ’s triumph descend from the Empyrean (the fifth status is characterised by “condescensio”) and the triumph of Mary is celebrated (development of the theme, typical of the fifth church, of the admirable beauty of the Church, queen adorned with a golden robe for the charity that unites and surrounded by the variety of gifts and graces of the different members). It is also a recapitulation of the previous seven, according to an interpretation repeatedly present in the Lectura of being “eighth”. For this reason, Dante, standing in the sign of Gemini, looks down and returns with his face to all the previous seven spheres (Par. XXII, 124-154).

          IX (VI) Next comes the Primum Mobile or Crystalline Heaven – the ninth and sixth heaven – where the poet sees the brightest point – God – on which heaven and earth depend, surrounded by nine circles of fire (Par. XXVIII, 16-18, 40-42, 94-96). The sixth status, according to Olivi in notabile VIII of the Prologue, is the “point” on which the other periods depend, because it appears more clearly than the others in the text of the Apocalypse, from which they derive clarity as to their manifestation in history, just as the understanding of things ordered to an end depends on the end.

          X (VII) The quiet and immobility of the Empyrean, the tenth heaven – the “ciel de la divina pace” – correspond to the seventh status, which is characterised by “quietatio”, silence (a theme anticipated by Beatrice’s silence at the beginning of canto XXIX), and peace.

          It should be noted that the “good tailor” did not always use the “cloth” in the same way during his long sewing of the “gown”, so that the relationship with exegesis, although always present, is different in the first three cantos of Inferno, different in the rest of the first canticle, and different in Purgatorio, where cantos IX to XXVII perhaps show the greatest consistency in the cyclical use of themes, while in Paradiso there is great freedom of variation in the motifs.

             Paradiso would therefore have a spiritual order of the following type: