“Enlightened by the Light of Paternal Grace”: Understanding Dante’s Views on Church-State Relations, Part II
The following is a guest submission by Dr. Daniel T. L. Moore.
Continuing from part 1, Dante’s philosophy on Church-State relations was not a novel idea concocted by the great medieval poet. Rather, he formulated his theory from previous thinkers that came before him. Such a thinker was Aristotle. Even though Aristotle never touched upon relations between secular and ecclesiastical powers, seeing that the Church was not established during his lifetime, Dante drew from the ancient Greek philosopher to devise his reasoning that helped to support his political theory. A great example is found when Dante rebutted his opponents’ argument that since the Old Testament Prophet Samuel declared that the Israelite King Saul was no longer the rightful ruler of Israel then the pope could, under his discretion, depose secular rulers.[1]
Dante responded by asserting that just because God ordained one of his prophets to operate in the capacity of king making and deposing did not qualify the pope, and by implication the Church, to act in kind.[2] To support this, Dante cited Aristotle who in turn quoted a Greek poet named Agathon who stated, “This thing alone not God himself can do—To make undone that which hath once been done.”[3] Aristotle explicated this quote by arguing that no man thinks on what has occurred for “the past cannot be undone.”[4] Aristotle certainly was not arguing that God was bound by anything but that what He decreed to occur was not going to change in the slightest.[5] So, in the same way, Dante argued that the Church could not change how God ordained the Church to operate, with the same to be said with the fact that the way God ordained the State to function could not be altered by the Church or even by the State itself.[6]
What Dante asserted is what historians have called a “dualistic ethical-political theory,” holding to what historian George Corbett contends as “the autonomy of Empire and Church…[that] independently derive their authority directly from God.”[7] Such “dualistic” thinking was held by fellow medievalists before Dante’s time. For instance, historian Wolfgang Muller contends that the medieval lawyer Huguccio (12th-13th century) devised in his work titled Summa Decretorum that God made the Church and the State and that they were separate from one another, not conjoined.[8] Huguccio further contended that, without the Church’s authorization, the State could “accomplish nothing in the ecclesiastical sphere” but that both the Church and State had their “plenitude of power in their respective spheres,” with the addition that it was the State who oversaw the ruling of the general population and that the Church was not to be involved, in this case, in any appointments or dethroning of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.[9]
One can see how very similar Dante and Huguccio’s views were on this key political issue. Both men argued that the Church should not interfere in crucial political matters that did not involve the spiritual life of the State and that God did not authorize the Church to perform political matters.[10] Although there is no clear connection between Huguccio and Dante, it can be inferred that Dante may have read Huguccio and gained some influence from him since their views were so very similar.[11] However, both philosophers did not believe that the Church was totally absent from every single area of the State’s prerogatives.[12] Huguccio believed that the pope could dethrone the Holy Roman Emperor if those who chose the emperor from the respective principalities of the Empire called upon the Church to do so.[13] Also, Huguccio believed that both the Church and State “depended on the other’s assistance.”[14]
Unfortunately, modern scholars tend to associate Dante with a complete separation of Church and State. Ferrante argues that Dante presented a Church that was detached from every “temporal affair” and that “all temporal wealth and power” had to be drained from it.[15] Anthony Cassell supports Ferrante by asserting that Dante contended for “the God-ordained empire to enjoy the mutual aid of a restricted ecclesiastical power within ideal traditional limits,” with the addition that Dante helped to bolster the “foundations for justifying absolutism in the temporal field.”[16] Ernst Kantorowicz even contends that Dante asserted a secular government “free from papal subordination” and that it was not even connected with the Church in any which way or form.[17] Nothing could be further from the truth and Dante seemed to have foreseen these kinds of deductions from his works.[18]
As a caveat to his assertion about the State having undeviating power from God, Dante warned that he in no wise held that the secular government was independent “from all subordination to the Roman Pontiff” but rather that the government owed the pope, and by extension the Church, due “reverence towards” him, adding that such “subordination” from the monarch to the pope was needed because “in a certain fashion…temporal happiness [was] subordinate to…eternal happiness.”[19] In addition, Dante, in a letter to the king and senators of Florence, told them that they needed to give unpaid respect to the Holy Roman emperor, since it was St. Peter, the first pope, who commanded such action from Christians, and which Pope Clement V, the pope during the writing of his letter, “irradiate[d] with the light of the Apostolic blessing.”[20] Even Anthony Cassell argues that in this same letter Dante echoed that “the temporal was always…in some way…under the spirit.”[21] However, as shown earlier, Cassell held that Dante held to a “restricted” Church, since Cassell also contends that Dante wrote Monarchy in order to argue against “the claim of papal jurisdiction over temporal affairs,” which is simply not true.[22] Dante further refuted this denial of Church authority over State authority when he wrote a letter in 1304, on behalf of himself and certain politicians of Florence, to Bishop Nicholas of Ostia and Legate of the Pope in Rome asking that the bishop “bedew [Florence] with the calm of tranquility and peace” and for the bishop to ever “keep under [his] protection” Dante and all of Florence.[23] Therefore, Dante did not advocate a complete separation of Church and State, as future generations of political thinkers did and as historians assert he himself did. Instead, he wanted to purport that the State’s authority was inherited from God and not through the Church, all the while arguing that the State was not at liberty from any and all authority from the Church.[24]
Dante articulated a very clear argumentation of the relations between Church and State. In the backdrop of conflicts between secular and ecclesiastical authorities, Dante believed that both sides were ordained with their own unique powers given to them by God, with the State, in particular, not receiving from the Church its governing abilities.[25] Dante formulated his thesis from philosophers like Aristotle and Huguccio, adding his own influenced arguments in the long history of Christendom’s debate about the proper relationship between the Church and State. Nonetheless, in contrast to modern scholarship, Dante still advocated for a close affiliation between the Church and State.[26] Dante wanted a strong Church and State, with the Church supporting the State and helping it to be “enlightened by the light of [the pope’s] paternal grace,” so that the State could “more powerfully enlighten the world.”[27]
[1] Dante, (Durante) Alighieri, Monarchy and Three Political Letters, trans. Donald Nicholl and Colin Hardy, (London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954), 73.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. R. W. Browne, (London, UK: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), 184.
[4] Ibid, 183-184.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Dante, Monarchy and Three Letters, 73.
[7] George Corbett, “Chapter 2: Dante’s Political Polemic,” in Dante’s Christian Ethics, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 45, 48.
[8] Wolfgang P. Muller, Huguccio: The Life, Works, and Thought of a Twelfth-Century Jurist, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 9.
[9] Ibid, 9, 126.
[10] Muller, Huguccio, 9, 126. Dante, Monarchy and Three Political Letters, 91.
[11] Muller, Huguccio, 9, 126. Dante, Monarchy and Three Political Letters, 91.
[12] Muller, Huguccio, 9, 126. Dante, Monarchy and Three Political Letters, 94.
[13] Muller, Huguccio, 9.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Joan M. Ferrante, “Chapter Two: Church and State in the Comedy,” in The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 130-131.
[16] Anthony K. Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy: An Historical Study with Accompanying Translations of Dante Alighieri’s Monarchia, Guido Vernani’s Refutation of the “Monarchia” Composed by Dante and Pope John XXII’s Bull Si fratrum, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 40.
[17] Ernst H. Kantorowicz, “Chapter VIII: Man-Centered Kingship: Dante,” The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 457.
[18] Dante, Monarchy and Three Political Letters, 94.
[19] Dante, Monarchy and Three Letters, 94.
[20] Dante, “Letter V,” in Monarchy and Three Political Letters, trans. Donald Nicholl and Colin Hardy, (London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954), 102.
[21] Cassell, The Monarchia Controversy, 15.
[22] Ibid, 22.
[23] Dante, “Epistola I,” in Dantis Alagherii Epistolae. The Letters of Dante, trans. Paget Toynbee, (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1920), 10.
[24] Dante, Monarchy and Three Letters, 94.
[25] Dante, Monarchy and Three Letters, 91.
[26] Ibid, 94.
[27] Ibid.
Dr. Daniel T. L. Moore earned his B.S. in History (2019), M.A. in History (2021), and Ph.D. in History (2025) from Liberty University. During his Ph.D. studies, he converted from Reformed Protestantism to Catholicism, along with his seven living siblings, instrumentally being brought in by their father who reverted to the faith. His dissertation is titled “‘Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam: The Religious and Political Missions of the American-Catholic Military Chaplaincy during the Mexican-American War,” which will be taken and published as his first book. He also runs a scholarly YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@TheSt.BedeCenter), Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/thestbedecenter/), and Substack account (https://substack.com/@thestbedecenter), named The St. Bede Center, where he posts Catholic and Catholic-related history content for academics and history buffs to learn and enjoy alike. He is also a freelance writer for 1Peter5, with his first article to be published this April, a history teacher for Scholè Academy, and a freelance editor for Arouca Press. He lives in North Carolina with his large family.
Leave a Reply