Benvenuto da Imola – and Anagogical Readings

After several years of searching for anagogical interpretations of specific passages in Dante’s Divine Comedy in all of the Anglo-American scholarship, and in the more recent Italian scholarship (the last few centuries), we have finally found an illuminating source: Benvenuto da Imola, from around 1385 AD.

This might indicate a certain problem with the perception of reality in the contemporary scholarship, stemming all the way back to humanism and increasing impoverishment in “modernity”, that has detached itself from the fuller picture and largely retreated into artificial internal constructs instead. In effect, it has made the readings often blind to reality, in the bigger picture.

One example is from the opening of Paradiso I, with this passage:

Surge ai mortali per diverse foci
la lucerna del mondo; ma da quella
che quattro cerchi giugne con tre croci, 

con miglior corso e con migliore stella
esce congiunta, e la mondana cera
più a suo modo tempera e suggella.

A literal translation would be:

Rises to/for the mortals through various mouths/outlets
the lamp/light of the world; but from that one
which four circles joins with three crosses

with better course and with better star
comes forth conjoined, and the worldly wax
more to its way tempers/molds and seals/imprints

A key in this passage, building on the approach of anagogical readings and personal transformation, is that the light of the world (God) rises in different ways for different people. But the better direction and shining comes from where the four cardinal and the three theological virtues are combined. Meaning: if you aim for and discern over and over, and participate in, the seven virtues, that will be the better path to gradually understand the Heavens, the Divine, and eventually also God. So this is a “practical lesson” from Dante; if one wishes to come closer to God, aim for the virtues first. They will lead you further, to their deeper source, eventually.

Most current commentaries will focus on the astronomical interpretations here, and some might quote “early commentators” or “ancient commentators” who point to the virtues. But the practical aspect, that God might appear for your soul in various ways – is absent.

And this is where we had to go 650 years back in time, to recover the deeper meaning:

“Yet it can also be understood allegorically: that the Sun of Justice, God, who is the light of the world, rises for humanity through diverse paths, but most powerfully through the four cardinal virtues and the three divine [theological virtues].

And here note well that the perfect rectitude of the soul requires that it be aligned according to a twofold aspect: the superior and the inferior, both in respect to the end [ultimate purpose] and to the means toward that end. Therefore, the soul must—in its superior aspect, where the image of the eternal Trinity resides—be guided by the three theological virtues:

• Faith, directing it toward the Highest Truth by believing and assenting;

• Hope, toward the Highest Arduous Good by striving and awaiting;

• Charity, toward the Highest Good by desiring and loving.

Likewise, in its inferior aspect, the soul must be aligned by the four cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance), which govern moral acts—as has been so often treated in the Purgatorio’s prologue and in many other places and chapters.”

Benvenuto da Imola connects this passage directly to how God rises through different paths, and how one’s own soul must be aligned. Not only an external general observation – but what one has to do, internally, to open up for the Heavens and God, right from this moment.

The good news is that there might be a wealth of more complete commentary already available from the 13 and 14 hundreds, just waiting for a recovery, and help us to restore the Treasures that have been often lost. The anagogical wisdom that underlies and animates the whole Divine Comedy, is right there – waiting for us.