seeing municipal freedom, the only mitigation of turbulence, vanish with the rise of domestic tyrants, Dante raises a passionate cry for some power to still the tempest, not to quench liberty or supersede local self-government, but to correct and moderate them, to restore unity and peace to hapless Italy. His reasoning is throughout closely syllogistic; he is alternately the jurist, the theologian, the scholastic metaphysician. The poet of the Divina Commedia is betrayed only by the compressed energy of diction, by his clear vision of the unseen, rarely by a glowing metaphor.

Monarchy is first proved to be the true and rightful form of government.1 Men's objects are best attained during universal peace. This is possible only under a monarch. And as he is the image of the Divine unity, so man is through him made one, and brought most near to God. There must, in every system of forces, be a primum mobile; to be perfect, every organization must have a centre, into which all is gathered, by which all is controlled.2 Justice is best secured by a supreme arbiter of disputes, himself unsolicited by ambition, since his dominion is already bounded only by ocean. Man is best and happiest when he is most free; to be free is to exist for one's own sake. To this grandest end does the monarch and he alone guide us; other forms of government are perverted, and exist

1 More than half a century earlier the envoys of the Norwegian king, in urging the chiefs of the republic of Iceland assembled at their Althing to accept Hakon as their suzerain, had argued that monarchy was the only rightful form of government, and had appealed to the fact that in all continental Europe there was no such thing as an absolutely independent republic.

2 Suggesting the celestial hierarchies of Dionysius the Areopagite.

8 Quoting Aristotle's Politics.

for the benefit of some class; he seeks the good of all alike, being to that very end appointed.1

Abstract arguments are then confirmed from history. Since the world began there has been but one. period of perfect peace, and but one of perfect monarchy, that, namely, which existed at our Lord's birth, under the sceptre of Augustus; since then the heathen have raged, and the kings of the earth have stood up; they have set themselves against their Lord, and his anointed the Roman prince.2 The universal dominion, the need for which has been thus established, is then proved to belong to the Romans. Justice is the will of God, a will to exalt Rome shown through her whole history. Her virtues deserved honor. Virgil is quoted to prove those of Æneas, who by descent and marriage was the heir of three continents: of Asia, through Assaracus and Creusa; of Africa, by Electra (mother of Dardanus and daughter of Atlas) and Dido; of Europe, by Dardanus and Lavinia. God's favor was approved in the fall of the shields to Numa, in the miraculous deliverance of the capital from the Gauls, in the hailstorm after Cannæ. Justice is also the advantage of the state, that advantage was the constant object of the virtuous Cincinnatus and the other heroes of the republic. They conquered the world for its own good, and therefore justly, as Cicero attests; so that their sway was not so much imperium as 1 "Non enim cives propter consules nec gens propter regem, sed e converso consules propter cives, rex propter gentem."

4

2 "Reges et principes in hoc unico concordantes, ut adversentur Domino suo et uncto suo Romano Principi," having quoted "Quare fremuerunt gentes."

8 Especially in the opportune death of Alexander the Great.

4 Cic. De Off., ii. "Ita ut illud patrocinium orbis terrarum potius quam imperium poterat nominari.”

patrocinium orbis terrarum. Nature herself, the fountain of all right, had, by their geographical position and by the gift of a genius so vigorous, marked them out for universal dominion:

Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera,

Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus;
Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus

Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.

Finally, the right of war asserted, Christ's birth, and death under Pilate, ratified their government. For Christian doctrine requires that the procurator should have been a lawful judge,1 which he was not unless Tiberius was a lawful Emperor.

The relations of the imperial and papal power are then examined, and the passages of Scripture (tradition being rejected), to which the advocates of the papacy appeal, are elaborately explained away. The argument from the sun and moon 2 does not hold, since both lights existed before man's creation, and at a time when, as still sinless, he needed no controlling powers. Else accidentia would have preceded propria

1 "Si Pilati imperium non de iure fuit, peccatum in Christo non fuit adeo punitum."

2 There is a curious seal of the Emperor Otto IV. (figured in J. M. Heineccius, De veteribus Germanorum atque aliarum nationum sigillis), on which the sun and moon are represented over the head of the Emperor. Heineccius says he cannot explain it, but there seems to be no reason why we should not take the device as typifying the accord of the spiritual and temporal powers which was brought about at the accession of Otto, the Guelfic leader, and the favored candidate of Pope Innocent III.

The analogy between the lights of heaven and the potentates of earth is one which medieval writers are very fond of. It seems to have originated with Gregory VII.

in creation. The moon, too, does not receive her being nor all her light from the sun, but so much only as makes her more effective. So there is no reason why the temporal should not be aided in a corresponding measure by the spiritual authority. This difficult text disposed of, others fall more easily: Levi and Judah, Samuel and Saul, the incense and gold offered by the Magi,1 the two swords, the power of binding and loosing given to Peter. Constantine's donation was illegal. No single Emperor nor Pope can disturb the everlasting foundations of their respective thrones. The one had no right to bestow, nor the other to receive, such a gift. Leo the Third gave the Empire to Charles wrongfully: "Usurpatio iuris non facit ius." It is alleged that all things of one kind are reducible to one individual, and so all men to the Pope. But Emperor and Pope differ in kind, and so far as they are men, are reducible only to God, on whom the Empire immediately depends; for it existed before Peter's see, and was recognized by Paul when he appealed to Cæsar. The temporal power of the papacy can have been given neither by natural law, nor divine ordinance, nor universal consent: nay, it is against its own form and essence, the life of Christ, who said, My kingdom is not of this world."

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Man's nature is twofold: corruptible and incorruptible. He has therefore two ends, active virtue on earth, and the enjoyment of the sight of God hereafter; the one to be attained by practice conformed to the precepts of philosophy, the other by the theo

1 Typifying the spiritual and temporal powers. Dante meets this by distinguishing the homage paid to Christ from that which his vicar can rightfully demand.

logical virtues. Hence two guides are needed, the Pontiff and the Emperor, the latter of whom, in order that he may direct mankind in accordance with the teachings of philosophy to temporal blessedness, must preserve universal peace in the world. Thus are the two powers equally ordained of God, and the Emperor, though supreme in all that pertains to the secular world, is in some things dependent on the Pontiff, since earthly happiness is subordinate to eternal. "Let Cæsar, therefore, show toward Peter the reverence wherewith a firstborn son honors his father, that, being illumined by the light of his paternal favor, he may the more excellently shine forth upon the whole world, to the rule of which he has been appointed by Him alone who is of all things, both spiritual and temporal, the King and Governor." So ends the treatise.

Dante's arguments are not stranger than his omissions. No suspicion is breathed against Constantine's donation; no proof is adduced, for no doubt is felt, that the Empire of Henry the Seventh is the legitimate continuation of that which had been swayed by Augustus and Justinian. Yet Henry was a German, sprung from Rome's barbarian foes, the elected of those who had neither part nor share in Italy and her capital.

III. DE VULGARI ELOQUENTIA.

Concerning the significance of this book, George Saintsbury, the distinguished critic, says: "It is in 1 History of Criticism, vol. i. bk. iii. c. ii.