The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1921-06-18
PAPAL ENCYCucAL ON DANTE
Continued from Page ~

to enlarge his country or to crafty the
princes, would assert that the State
has the right of denying justice and
right, which he we'll knew to be the
chief foundation of all civil nations.
The Poem That Made Converts
'It Isl impossible, then, to express
the intellectual enjoyment procured
by the study of the Supreme Poet; but
no less is the advantage that the stu
dent derives from it, of perfecting his
artistic taste and kindling him with
zeal for virtue; with the condition,
however, that he be free from preju-
dices and open to the influence of
truth. And while the number of Cath
Ollie poets who unite utility with plea
sure is not small, the singularity of
Dante consists in this, that delighting
the reader with the wonderful variety
of imagery, the brilliant dazzle of col
ors, the grandiosity of expression and
of thoughts, he entices him to the love
Of Christian wisdom; and nobody can
forget that he openly declared that he
composed his poem to give everyone
vital nourishment." And, in fact we
know, that even recently, some men,
not contrary, but far apart from Jesus
Christ, studying with love the Divine
Comedy, through the grace of God, be-
gan first to admire the truth of the
Catholic faith, and at the end threw
themselves enthusiastically into the
arms of the Church.
''What we have said already is suf-
ficient to demonstrate how opportune
it is that on the occasion of this un-
iversal centenary, everyone should in
tensify his own zeal to preserve the
Faith, which so LUMINOSITY revealed
itself, if in anyone, in Alighieri as sup
porter of culture and of art. Because
in him not only the vastness Of genius
is to be admired, but also the great
ness of the argument, which holy re-
ligion offered to his song. If the
acuteness of his intellect was sharpen
ed by the meditation and study on the
masterpieces of the ancient classics,
it was tempered even more strongly
as we have said, by the writings of
DOSCOAO anu Il dIAC1O, WIN save W
him the powerful wings on which
he scared to wander to horizons much
more wide than those enclosed in the
narrow ambit of nature Therefore,
although divided from us by an inter-
val of centuries, he still preserves the
freshness of poet of our times, and
certainly he is much more modern
than some recent poets, who exhume
that paganism, which was swept away
forever by Christ triumphant on His
Cross. The same piety breathes in
Alighieri, that breathes in us, the
same feelings, the same faith, and the
same wells shade the truth that so
exalted us, and which from heaven
has come down to us.
The Poet of Christian Ideals.
This is his chief merit: to have
been Christian poet: to have sung in
divine accents those Christian ideals
which he passionately admired in all
the splendor of their beauty, feeling
them deeply, and living them. And
those who dare to deny this glory to
Dante, and reduce the religious sub
stratum of the Divine Comedy to a
vague theology, without any founda-
ton of truth, disown in Dante what is
his characteristic and the inspiration
of all his other merits
"And if Dante owes so much of his
fame and greatness to the Catholic
faith, let this one example suffice,
passing others in silence, to show how
untrue it is that the homage of mind
and heart to God clips the wings of
genius, when on the contrary, it spurs
and sleyates it: and how wrongly OPP