The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The Medieval Religious Worldview in Dante’s “Divine Comedy”

[ 1 ] Today we want to discuss one of the greatest works of world literature: Dante’s Divine Comedy. We must realize that if we wish to gain even a little understanding of this work of poetry, we will need to transport ourselves back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Goethe has his Faust say:

What you call the spirit of the times,
Is, in essence, the lords’ own spirit,
In which the times are reflected.

[ 2 ] When someone wants to interpret a poem from an earlier time, it usually happens that they project their own mind into it and read into the poem what stems from their subjective feelings.

[ 3 ] In Dante’s Divine Comedy, one can see how difficult it is to put oneself in the mindset of the Middle Ages. There are all sorts of interpretations of it. For example, there is a German translation by Garneri. From the preface, it is clear that he undertook an extraordinary risk. He says that the “Divine Comedy” is always marred by the theological perspective that interpreters impose upon it. He claims to have introduced a purely human perspective. Garneri is the ethicist of Darwinism. Based on Darwinism, he has established a moral doctrine—a noble ethic, yet a materialistic one, devoid of any awareness of the spiritual forces in the world. A materialistic mindset permeates his entire translation. This is “the spirit of the masters themselves, in which the times are reflected.”

[ 4 ] But now let’s really try to put ourselves in the mindset of that time. We must completely forget everything we have absorbed since childhood in order to place ourselves in those bygone times. Back then, people thought and felt very differently. We have learned how the planets form a system with the Sun, and that this system is one among many. In school, we learn: The Sun stands at the center of this one system, and the planets orbit around it. Abstract laws of reason govern everything that orbits, everything that lives, and everything that floats in the infinite expanse of space around us. Anyone who thinks this way sees nothing in this vast expanse of space but celestial bodies orbiting in the great, infinite, empty space—celestial bodies and the living beings upon them.

[ 5 ] The view of the world was quite different for people living in Dante’s time. No one back then thought of anything like these abstract concepts. Our Earth was the center of the entire world system. But it was not merely this solid planet; within the Earth were beings that were connected to human beings. There were forces there that made human beings animal-like creatures. These were located at the center of the Earth. Within them lay the various levels of what was called “Hell.” Just as Dante describes these things, so they were regarded as real by the people of that time. This is not fiction in Dante’s work. Anyone who can even for a moment imagine that Dante regarded this as mere superstition does not understand him. At that time, people held the belief that in the afterlife, on the other side of the Earth, gravity acts in the opposite direction. There, medieval people imagined the forces that were opposed to human beings—the forces that detached them from everything that constitutes spiritual earthbound heaviness. There was the purifying fire, Kamaloka.

[ 6 ] When one looked out into outer space from there, the ideas were quite different. The Moon was not a mineral, but the body of a spiritual being, inhabited by many spiritual beings—a world body. Beings lived there who had undergone stages of development similar to those of human beings. However, they had fallen deeper than humans; it was just that their vices were of a more spiritual nature than the animalistic vices of humans.

[ 7 ] Mercury was also imagined as a physical being that encompassed a spirit. Just as we derive the human being from the innermost core of the soul, so too did medieval people conceive of the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn as spiritual beings. At that time, people perceived spirit everywhere. To them, the world was populated everywhere by spiritual beings.

[ 8 ] Christ had been living in the firmament of fixed stars ever since he left the world. Beyond the sky of fixed stars lay the Empyrean—that is, the tenth heaven—which encompassed the very foundations of all existence. Human beings imagined that those beings who were not here on Earth in this body dwelled in some realm outside of Earth. According to the beliefs of that time, a warrior who had passed through death would be found on Mars. One who had led a contemplative life would be on Saturn. Those who had ascended even higher could be found in the sky of fixed stars, where Christ was after his death. Above that were even higher beings.

[ 9 ] It was from this way of thinking that Dante composed his Divine Comedy. People today have absolutely no conception of the fact that people of that time still saw something spiritual in everything material. From the perspective of that era, there is no such thing as the purely physical or the purely spiritual. Thus, the interweaving of the physical and the spiritual was self-evident to everyone. When we put ourselves in that frame of mind, we live and move within the same feelings from which the “Divine Comedy” was written. It is pointless to argue over whether Beatrice was merely a symbol or Dante’s beloved. There is no contradiction here at all. Beatrice was a real person, but she was also the expression of all that is spiritual. To the inner sense that has not been lost, Beatrice is the true personification of Theologia.

[ 10 ] We will now examine the intellectual atmosphere from which the poem emerged. It is the highest expression of Christian Catholicism in the 13th and 14th centuries, prior to the schism, from which such minds as Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa—who emerged from Scholasticism—drew their inspiration. Dante was a student of Scholasticism. He viewed the world in the same way as his teacher, Thomas Aquinas.

[ 11 ] What was the mission of Christianity? Its mission was to establish a fundamental religious worldview different from the one that had previously existed on Earth. Before that, a range of religious beliefs had spread throughout the world. Now a different fundamental worldview emerged.

[ 12 ] We must go back a long way if we want to understand the underlying theme of Dante’s poem. About ten thousand years before our era, the vast continent known as Atlantis began to sink deeper and deeper. In the journal Kosmos, the naturalist Arldt provides scientific proof of the existence of Atlantis. What we call the Great Flood is the gradual submergence of this continent. The ancestors of today’s European and Asian peoples lived on this continent. A deep kinship can be found among all these peoples in their mythology. German mythology speaks of this Atlantis and calls the Atlantean continent Niflheim, or “Land of Mist.” What made its way to Germany was the worldview brought to us by the figure who reigned as Wotan. Wotan is the same as Bodha or Buddha. The Vedas and the Eddas, for example, also share the same linguistic origin.

[ 13 ] All of these views, which exist here, as it were, as a kind of ancient residue, have one thing in common. Originally, reincarnation was something they took for granted. Buddhism, however, spread among the Mongolian peoples, not among the Aryan peoples. The Semitic element, which knows nothing of reincarnation, crept into the worldview of the Aryan peoples. The most sublime expression of this form of religion, which posits only a single incarnation, is Christianity. Its defining characteristic is that it posits only one incarnation. This was not the case in esoteric Christian teaching, but the doctrine of reincarnation was not part of popular religion. Ancient Judaism and Arabism did not recognize the doctrine of reincarnation.

[ 14 ] If one accepts this premise, one has the fundamental tone from which Dante’s magnificent poem sprang. The poem depicts a vision that begins on Good Friday. That was the day that marked the victory of life over death. This was not conceived of in abstract terms. On Good Friday and at Easter, people sensed that the sun was receiving the new power of spring. It rises and enters the constellation of Aries, or the Lamb. It brings forth the plant world. The sun was regarded as the expression of a spiritual being. People imagined a connection between the spiritual and soul forces and the spirit of the sun. Thus, the night of Good Friday was perceived as the most appropriate time for the soul to enter into what lies beyond death.

[ 15 ] Dante’s poem is a vision—a vision in the sense that an initiate experiences it: a reality in the spiritual world. Dante is truly able to perceive the spiritual. He perceives what exists in the spiritual world with his spiritual senses. He envisions this as a Christ-Catholic initiate. In this vision, he brings with him what has become part of his being through the Catholic world, but he perceives it spiritually. At all times, human beings perceive the spiritual through the lens of their experiences. Just as a child’s time in the mother’s womb relates to the physical plane, so does our time in the spiritual world relate to what we experience spiritually here on Earth. Here in our earthly life, we mature, as it were, just as in the womb, in order to rise spiritually afterward. The senses we have developed for the spiritual realm depend on life on this Earth. Here we mature for the hereafter; here we prepare our spiritual eyes and ears for the hereafter. That is why Dante had developed his spiritual faculties in the manner that the Christ-Catholic world had brought forth.

[ 16 ] When we pass into the other realm of existence, we will be able to perceive what is now within us. This will then become visible to us from the outside. We say that passions, instincts, and drives belong to us. Once we have entered the spiritual worlds, the contents of our soul organism become something that exists outside of us, just as external objects are perceived in physical existence. What lives in our soul becomes symbolically visible to us.

[ 17 ] Dante names three symbols that represent the three main characteristics of his vital body, his astral body, and his lower soul: a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf. His main passions thus appear to him in the form of three animals. But this is not merely a metaphor. When a person enters the astral plane, the lower passions truly do confront him in the form ‘animals.’ The she-wolf symbolizes one such passion. It is the same she-wolf that once nursed Romulus and Remus. This is the passion that was adopted by humanity at the time the Roman people were founded—the passion that lives in everything directed toward possession: greed, on the one hand, and the right to personal property, on the other. This passion was instilled in people back when the she-wolf nursed Romulus and Remus; before that, humans had acquired the quality of bravery, which is expressed in the lion and which can become a thirst for power. Even further back lies the development of greater cunning from the priestly rule: the panther, the Odysseus-like quality. When Virgil confronts Dante, he says: “I cannot free you from the three animals, least of all from the she-wolf.”—He says this because Dante had outgrown what remained in Italy of the ancient Roman passions. Dante had to take Virgil—who had presented a picture of initiation in the Aeneid—as his guide. From Virgil, people in those days learned most about what the afterlife looks like. They conceived of the afterlife in three stages: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

[ 18 ] There are only two consistent worldviews. One is that of Augustine; the other is that of reincarnation and karma. Augustine says: On this earth, some people are destined for good and others for evil. — The other worldview is that according to which we develop through many incarnations. Only these two worldviews are possible. Dante stands on the ground of the Augustinian worldview. According to this view, a person prepares in this earthly life for a destiny in eternity. Therefore, this earthly life is immediately followed by hell, purgatory, or heaven. One regards this single earthly life as decisive. One looks only at the person’s individuality.

[ 19 ] When one transcends the personality, one transcends birth and death. That which enters at birth and departs at death transcends the personality. That is individuality. Whatever a person has brought upon themselves through their individuality must be balanced in a future life. If one eliminates reincarnation and karma, then everything must be balanced in a single lifetime. If one seeks retribution for everything pertaining to the personality, one creates the antithesis of the personal—that is hell. Hell is nothing other than being completely entangled in the personal. The antithesis of the personal in this life is hell in the hereafter. The personal must not be so entangled in this life that it embellishes existence. Christianity introduced into the world the notion that everything depends on how this one life unfolds between birth and death. That is why it had to turn the earthly realm into a vale of tears. It had to point out that one must cast off the earthly. Pagan art, on the other hand, is what entangles us in the personal element. The ancient artists sought to render this earthly realm beautiful. Those who see only the personal say: This personal aspect must cast off all that is beautiful. They must make the earth itself less beautiful, tear the personality away from this world. That is why it was only natural that Homer and all the poets of antiquity appeared to Dante in Hell.

[ 20 ] His description of the miser and the spendthrift on the astral plane is accurate. There, a person encounters his own passions reflected back to him. On the astral plane, the miser sees the consequences of his own miserliness as a spendthrift. The spendthrift sees his own traits reflected in the opposite image of the miser.

[ 21 ] In the city of Dis lives Epicurus, the proponent of a worldview focused on the development of this life. The city of Dis is meant to represent the physically real. There, people lie in coffins. The materialists are the living dead. They say that man is merely a corpse. Now they must lie in coffins as dead souls.

[ 22 ] Dante is led from Hell into Purgatory. Rulers who have neglected their own salvation in favor of the good of the state must also be purified in Purgatory. The Christian-Catholic worldview is centered on the development of the individual. Therefore, rulers who have neglected this must languish in Purgatory.

[ 23 ] The next realm Dante encounters between Purgatory and Heaven is the Garden of Eden. There we are introduced to the perspective that is truly Christian: how the origin of the Church lies in the spiritual realm. Anyone who wishes to understand, in the spirit of the Middle Ages, what the Church is meant to be must elevate their perspective to the point of seeing its archetype in the hereafter. Dante develops this concept, drawing on the worldview of Dionysius the Areopagite, from the perspective of the heavenly hierarchies. There is a sequence of levels that Dionysius describes: angels, archangels, primal forces, powers, authorities, dominions, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim. The sequence of levels in the earthly hierarchy of the Church was meant to be a reflection of these heavenly hierarchies. Dante depicts this in the Garden of Eden, where the hierarchies appear to us symbolically.

[ 24 ] Then Beatrice takes the lead. In the soul, we distinguish a feminine element—the inner soul essence—and a masculine element—the spiritual force in the universe that fertilizes the soul. The feminine soul draws us upward. The medieval alchemists called the feminine aspect of the human being the “Lilium.” That is why Goethe, too, speaks of the “beautiful lily” in his fairy tale. Beatrice is indeed portrayed, in the spirit of Dante’s thinking, in such a way that he can express through her the edifice of scholastic theology.

[ 25 ] You, Beatrice, are first led to meet the beings of the Moon who have broken their spiritual vow. They had broken their vow to serve only the spiritual and had once again succumbed to sensuality. In ancient Greek theosophy, Mercury was still the being who played a part when the ancient Atlanteans rose to the concept of the “I.” The first Atlanteans did not yet possess “I”-consciousness. The deity whose sign represents the personal is the god Mercury, Hermes. Human beings attain the personal by descending into selfhood, into egoism. This is also what has made us the kind of people who strive for possessions. That is why Mercury is also the god of merchants.

[ 26 ] On Jupiter, Dante finds the princes who have practiced justice. Something very important is taking place on the Sun. On the Sun, Dante is shown the true nature of the Eternal One; how to understand it when one experiences a day called the Last Judgment. The Last Judgment changes the circumstances. There, two figures approach us: Thomas Aquinas and King Solomon. Thomas Aquinas represents life in the sense of Christianity, of the New Testament, and King Solomon is the teacher of the Old Testament.

[ 27 ] In the priesthood, the Christian saw the physical expression of what Christ was to him in his spiritual development. After his earthly life, Christ ascended and is making his triumphal procession through the fixed-star heavens. Whoever has prepared his spiritual embryo here so that he can see spiritually is able to see Christ in the fixed-star heavens. The most deeply initiated disciple, John, appears as the teacher of this vision. Only Christ and Mary were able to take their bodies up into the fixed-star heavens with them. A Master Individuality also has complete control over the body. Just as the modern civilized human being learns to master the passions through moral ideas, so too does the human being on a higher level learn to truly master the physical body. Jesus and Mary had sanctified the physical body to such an extent that they were able to take it with them into the highest regions.

[ 28 ] Then St. Bernard takes the lead into the higher realms, where Dante receives the vision of God and becomes absorbed in the divine Self. There, Dante transcends the boundaries of ecclesiastical Christianity. He sees the three circles, the threefold primordial essence of the world: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Indian religion calls them Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Here the Trinity of the universe is revealed, where Dante soars to purely spiritual vision and contemplation.

[ 29 ] In the end, it is shown how we live, move, and have our being in God, yet cannot presume to understand God. Only the intuitive certainty of human knowledge of God is presented at the end. For Dante, his poem was the spectacle of the world, viewed from the other side.