Albert and Thomas were theologians: so was Dante, but he was a poet as well.[178] Dante is saturated with the entire knowledge of the Middle Ages; he has absorbed and assimilated it, and he gives it out again transfigured—alive! It becomes in his hands an original and immortal contribution to the intellectual, moral and aesthetic heritage of mankind. From our present study the Divine Poet emerges once more as the “Apostle of Freedom.” He handles his subject-matter with the master-touch that makes it _live_, and with the independence of standpoint and sincerity of judgment that draws Catholics to claim him as a Catholic, and Protestants as a Protestant. As a matter of fact he is a loyal Catholic, as was rightly proclaimed by the late lamented Pope Benedict XV in his Encyclical of May, 1921.[179] A Catholic, but above all, a Christian. And, as the Pope also justly remarked, his work and his message are alive to-day—more living than that of many a present-day Poet—just because he is not dependent on mere pagan models and sources, however classical, but is saturated with Christian thought and feeling. For the future lies with Christianity. In our next Essay we shall endeavour to show how the free spirit of the artist and the theologian merges into that of the Educationist: how the characteristic modern principles of freedom in the educational sphere underlie Dante’s thought and writing, and how, in particular, they dominate his scheme of the _Purgatorio_. V DANTE AND MODERN EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES ... Io sarò tua guida E trarrotti di qui per loco eterno. —_Inf._ i. 177 _sq._ In face of Benedetto Croce’s new Book,[180] wherein all the meticulous industry exerted by the typical Dantist upon side-issues of the _Divine Comedy_ is held up to scorn, and denounced, like Cromwell’s House of Lords, as “useless and dangerous,” one hardly dares to labour a point—even if it be so exalted a point as the principles and method of education. But it is the criticism of Dante’s Poesy that is Croce’s concern: his jealous anxiety is directed against any admixture in that criticism of any irrelevant considerations—allegorical, theological, philosophical, poetical. As we are not attempting a criticism of Dante’s Poesy (though none can approach the _Commedia_ without falling under the spell of its beauty and passion), we may perhaps hope to evade the fiery darts of the Poet’s latest critic.