A Frenchman and Catholic wrote a little volume in which he set himself to answer the following question: "Did Dante return a better man from the other world?" He answers the question in the negative, taking into consideration the poet's tenderness for seductive sins, his lack of compunction for his own faults, and the fact that the only fault which seems to bother him there at all is the omission of a "vendetta." Although he accomplishes the formulas of penitence with a very good grace in Purgatory, he thinks a gr

1299, and extending through 1300, the Catholic Church celebrated the first of its jubilees. The Pope decreed that "whatever Roman should visit continuously for thirty days the churches of the Blessed Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and to all other people who were not Romans who should do likewise for fifteen days, there should be granted full and entire remission of all their sins, both the guilt and the punishment thereof, they having made or to make confession of the same." Rome was thronged with devout worshipers. So impressive was the Eternal City and the thronged churches to Giovanni Villani, that he resolved to chronicle the events of Florence, even as Sallust and Livy had written the history of the parent city. Although Dante was bitterly opposed to the reigning Pope and to his temporal pretensions, there is no evidence that he was ever skeptical of the spiritual claims of the Church. There is no proof that he made a pilgrimage to Rome, but in "Inferno," XVIII, 28, we have a description of the throng crossing the bridge of Castello Sant' Angelo which indicates that he witnessed the crowds of the faithful who at this time visited Rome. (Dinsmore 135)

Through his inclusion of many ideals and standards of his faith, some have seen his works as spiritual and worthy quests, yet his emphasis on self determination and self-judgment was contrary to the validity of the central authority of the Catholic faith, regardless of his desire to embrace it. His witnessing of the personal pilgrimages of others did not necessarily allow him the promised forgiveness of all his sins, as he had broken a spoken and unspoken rule, to choose for oneself the manner in which he, his friends and his enemies would be judged, in the eternal.

Dante questioned in an individual manner that created strife, for those who would have liked to maintain centralized power and authority, eternally. Regardless of his intent to simply record his own personal trials and tribulations, through the context of his belief system, one that was congruent as he understood it to his faith, he was doing so at his own peril and his failings were obvious even to himself and that demanded answers from within, not from a central authority.

DanteEp. IV, of 1307-8, may well have been addressed to Moroello Malaspina, Marquis of Giovagallo, the "fiery vapor from Val di Magra" (Inf. XXIV. 145) who led the Black exiles to victory against the Whites of Pistoia, and whose wife Alagia Fieschi is praised in Purg. XIX. 142-45. If so, the exiled poet's friendship with a Black Guelf general (perhaps as a result o

Some common words found in the essay are:
Inferno Dante, Frenchman Catholic, Purgatorio Hopes, Divine Comedy, Rome Dinsmore, II Dante, Middle Ages, Black Guelf, Catholic Church, Dante Alighieri, catholic faith, inferno dante, catholic church, faith doing, di magra, scott 40, malaspina marquis, own personal, political religious, central authority,
Approximate Word count = 1741
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)