Produced by Emanuela Piasentini, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries at http://www.archive.org/details/danteessaytowhic00chur.) [Transcriber's Note: Spelling and punctuation have been retained as they appear in the original, but obvious printer errors have been corrected without note. Printer errors in Italian passages from _The Divine Comedy_ have been corrected using the Italian-English Princeton University Press edition (trans. Charles S. Singleton, 1973). A Table of Contents has been added for the reader's convenience. The original contains a separate Contents of De Monarchia at the end of De Monarchia.] DANTE AND DE MONARCHIA. [Illustration] DANTE. _An Essay._ BY R. W. CHURCH, M.A., D.C.L. DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD. _To which is added_ A TRANSLATION OF DE MONARCHIA. BY F. J. CHURCH. _London:_ MACMILLAN AND CO. 1879. CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS. CONTENTS NOTICE DANTE DE MONARCHIA CONTENTS OF DE MONARCHIA PUBLISHER'S CATALOGUE NOTICE. The following Essay first appeared in the "Christian Remembrancer" of January, 1850, and it was reprinted in a volume of "Essays and Reviews," published in 1854. It was written before the appearance in Germany and England of the abundant recent literature on the subject. With the exception of a few trifling corrections, it is republished without change. By the desire of Mr. Macmillan, a translation of the _De Monarchia_ is subjoined. I am indebted for it to my son, Mr. F.J. Church, late Scholar of New College. It is made from the text of Witte's second edition of the _De Monarchia_, 1874. The _De Monarchia_ has been more than once translated into Italian and German, in earlier or later times. But I do not know that any English translation has yet appeared. It is analysed in the fifteenth chapter of Mr. Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire." Witte, with much probability, I think, places the composition of the work in the first part of Dante's life, before his exile in 1301, while the pretensions and arguments of Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) were being discussed by Guelf and Ghibelline partisans, but before they were formally embodied in the famous Bull _Unam Sanctam_, 1302. The character of the composition, for the most part, formal, general, and scholastic, sanguine in tone and with little personal allusion, is in strong contrast with the passionate and despairing language of resentment and disappointment which marks his later writings. As an example of the political speculation of the time, it should be compared with the "_De Regimine Principum_," ascribed to Thomas Aquinas. The whole subject of the mediæval idea of the Empire is admirably discussed in Mr. Bryce's book referred to above. R.W.C. ST. PAUL'S, _November_, 1878. DANTE.[1] [JAN. 1850.]