Dante and his time - III

It should take too long to show, through the past centuries, how it came to be, at Dante’s time, the balance of powers. As matter of fact Dante found a world that was dying, an ancient order perishing, that had his roots craved in the crush of the roman empire and in the rise of the Germans power, which took place at the same time all along the last height centuries before his birth. In the time after the crush of roman empire, which historians date at 453 A.D., we can see haw the rude and uncivilized Germans get captured by the past  roman greatness, whose remnants they could find in the Papacy. It was the Papacy indeed which inherited, though transforming it a religious form, the power lost by the Romans, in terms of civilization, culture, language, customs and juridical organization. We could say with Horace’s verses, changing the subject,  “Roma capta ferum victorem cepit”.

And this world of distribution of the powers between the Church and the Empire was ending at long.

But Dante sight was able to go very farther than all his contemporaries.

Dante’s political ideal was instead that the Pope had to have the spiritual power while the monarchy in all temporal questions. Exactly what hat to be realized after centuries from his death.

That’s why I can’t agree on what writes A.N. Wilson in his recent book “Dante in love”, where he accuses  Dante of being incoherent and instable of mind and thought till madness.

And I’m very curious instead of reading what Angelo Ruggeri writes on his answering book of Wilson’s evidence on Dante’s life and his time.

The Italian writer warns not to mistaken on confusing the Guelfs Dante belonged (actually partisans of the autonomy of the Communes against both Pope and Emperor, so said With Guelfs) with the Black Gulefs, whe exiled him for his life, being in favour of the Pope against the Emperor.

… to be continued…