2021 marked the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death and saw the publication on March 25 of Pope Francis’ Candor Lucis Aeterna, a lucid analysis of Dante and his work. This is the fourth and final of a series of Ius et Iustitium pieces by Aníbal Sabater discussing lawyers in the Divine Comedy. The first three pieces, “Dante’s Lawyers from Hell,” “Dante’s Lawyers from Purgatory: Cato,” and “Dante’s Lawyers from Purgatory: Trajan,” can be found here. The goal of the pieces is to show how the classical legal theory pervades the Commedia.
As Beatrice and Dante ascend through Paradiso, they reach the sphere of Mercury, which shines splendidly because of its proximity to the sun. The view is impressive and Dante, mischievously ignoring the immutability of Heaven, claims that the planet becomes even more radiant as Beatrice sets her foot on it. The souls in Mercury are pure light, and one of them offers Dante a seat. Paradiso’s Canto 5 finishes with Dante accepting and asking the spirit who he is. In Canto 6, the spirit responds:
| Cesare fui e son Iustinïano, che, per voler del primo amor ch’i’ sento,d’entro le leggi trassi il troppo e ’l vano.[1] | Cesar I was, and I am Justinian, Who, by will of the first love that I feel,Excised from the laws all that was excessive and vain. |
The speaker is the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian (482-565) and the excised laws he mentions are those in the Corpus Iuris Civilis—his monumental compilation that remains the basis for the study of Roman law today.
In proclaiming that the organization and clarification of positive laws is a virtuous act, Dante is just following the classics. Isidore had said: “Law … should be clearly expressed, lest by obscurity it lead to error….;”[2] and Aquinas made a similar point: “clearness of expression [in the law relates] to the need of preventing any harm ensuing from the law itself.”[3]
Notably, what the classics are prescribing is that positive law be precise and comprehensible, not that it be obsessively comprehensive. Aristotle recommended that positive law “define all those things that admit of being defined and … leave the fewest possible matters to judges.”[4] But as a contemporary Aristotelian has observed, “the very general character of the law implies a certain unpredictability as to whether some fact patterns fall within its scope.”[5] In fact, the prudence needed from the legislator is “architectonic,” that is, prudence to set out rules in sufficient detail as to avoid compromising the community’s ultimate ends; but it then falls on the judges to apply the law and do justice, including in close-call cases that the legislator could not reasonably anticipate or prudentially decided to leave unaddressed. [6] Justinian (both the real one and the character in the Commedia) would have shuddered at Montesquieu’s utopia that judges are “no more than the mouth that pronounces the words of the law, mere passive beings .…”
Dante, of course, did not have the so-called Enlightenment in mind when he wrote Paradiso 6, but he knew what ideas and practices he wanted to rebut. Take, for instance, Justinian’s comment that his decision to clarify positive law was divinely inspired (or, in his words, carried out “per voler del primo amor ch’i’ sento”), as opposed to the result of human prudence. That is a subtle jab at nominalists and voluntarists who denied the existence of universals, the reasonability of divine law (for them anchored in will) and man’s ability to know and understand it. Dante’s view is quite the opposite: God wants human laws to be clear and well-ordered, because so are His laws. It is no coincidence that, having issued clear laws on earth, Justinian’s soul is transformed into pure light—pure clarity—in Heaven.
After introducing himself, Justinian spends the rest of Paradiso 6 extolling the Roman Empire as an instrument of divine justice, which he calls Viva Giustizia.[7] As Aquinas explains, God’s justice is not commutative, but distributive—He gives to each person that which is proper to her condition, and preserves the nature of each person in the order and with the powers that belong properly to her.[8] Obviously, the Commedia is mostly concerned with divine justice after death, as individuals go to Inferno, Purgatorio, or Paradiso; but in Paradiso 6 Dante pauses to explain, through Justinian, how God has used the Roman Empire across the centuries to punish or reward the living.
Justinian ascribes to divine justice, among other events, the fall of Hannibal, Cleopatra, Brutus, and Cassius, the closing of the temple of Janus at the time of the Incarnation, the rise of Augusts, and the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus’s legions.[9]
Dante’s views on the Empire and its necessary role for global governance are best set out in De Monarchia.[10] In the Commedia, Dante insists on those views, mostly to warn against both the usurpation and the “immanentization” of the Empire—the idea that the polis has no superior origin, answers to no higher judgment, and can be used for personal gain. Thus, the Ghibellines are indicted for affecting loyalty to the Empire and its justice as a cover to achieve their own ambitions:
| Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor artesott’ altro segno, ché mal segue quellosempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte[11] | Let the Ghibellins, let them do their craft under another banner, because those who separate this banner [of the Empire] from justice are not its real followers. |
For Dante, of course, if the Empire is an instrument of justice, then the ruler must recognize that he serves a goal beyond himself and that doing justice is his leading duty, such that all other activities become secondary.[12] This requires a healthy dose of humility, a favorite topic of Dante, who in all his portraits of the elected deftly inserts lines where the character acknowledges his own limitations. In Paradiso 6, those lines come when Justinian is revealing his identity to Dante. He says:
| E prima ch’io a l’ovra fossi attento,una natura in Cristo esser, non piùe,credea, e di tal fede era contento;ma ’l benedetto Agapito, che fue
sommo pastore, a la fede sincera mi dirizzò con le parole sue. [13] |
Before I paid attention to this work [i.e., the preparation of the Corpus Iuris Civilis], one nature in Christ, no more, was what I believed in, and I was content with that faith; but blessed Agapetus, who was the highest shepherd [i.e., Pope], led me to the truthful faith with his words. |
Justinian is narrating here the apocryphal story of his conversion from Monophysitism through the intervention of Pope Agapetus. Following that conversion, he realized he had to focus on the codification of the law and gave up his involvement in military operations (multum, non multa!), which he entrusted to general Belisarius:
| e al mio Belisar commendai l’armi, cui la destra del ciel fu sì congiunta,che segno fu ch’i’ dovessi posarmi[14] | and to my Belisarius I commended the arms, which the right hand of heaven indeed favored,and that was a sign that I had to rest. |
That arrogance engenders hyper activism, and humility contemplation, is a recurring point in the Commedia—and across tradition. In 2005, Benedict XVI published his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. He did not mention Dante in it, but in later commentary explained that the encyclical was heavily inspired in the Commedia.[15] One passage in Deus Caritas Est in particular expands elegantly on Paradiso 6:
There are times when the burden of need and our own limitations might tempt us to become discouraged. But precisely then we are helped by the knowledge that, in the end, we are only instruments in the Lord’s hands; and this knowledge frees us from the presumption of thinking that we alone are personally responsible for building a better world. In all humility we will do what we can, and in all humility we will entrust the rest to the Lord. It is God who governs the world, not we. We offer him our service only to the extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the strength.[16]
.
- Par. 6, 10-12. ↑
- Etymologies, V. 21. ↑
- S.Th. II-I, q. 95, a. 3. ↑
- Rhetoric I, 11. ↑
- Hervada, J., “Reflexiones acerca de la prudencia jurídica y el derecho canónico,” Revista Española de Derecho Canónico. XVI, 1961, 415, 425. ↑
- Id., 418. ↑
- Par. 6, 88 & 121. ↑
- S.Th. I, q. 21, a. 1. ↑
- Par. 6, 49-93. ↑
- See also, this blog’s sister publication: https://thejosias.com/2015/06/24/world-government-is-required-by-natural-law/. ↑
- Par. 6, 103-105. ↑
- Id. 88. Dante had made the same point when discussing Trajan in Purgatory. ↑
- Par. 6, 13-18. ↑
- Par. 6, 25-27. ↑
- https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/why-love-is-the-theme-benedict-xvi/. ↑
- Deus Caritas Est, 35. ↑