Dante: "The Central Man of All the World": A Course of Lectures Delivered Before the Student Body of the New York State College for Teachers, Albany, 1919, 1920
Dante Alighieri · en
Dante's description, which now follows, of the lovely art displayed on
the terrace of Pride leads to the reflection that he must have been a
matchless master of visual instruction or at least the representative of
his times, which, before the age of printing, taught the people by means
of pictures painted upon canvas, burnt in glass or chiseled in stone.
Certain it is that the people of Dante's day from seeing the productions
of art knew the Bible and sacred and profane history so well as to amaze
subsequent generations taught from the printed page. Be that as it may,
the power and beauty of Dante's pictures on the terraces of Purgatory
show his consummate knowledge of a principle of psychology very much
operative in our day, a principle which makes character by educating the
will far better than any other pedagogical method. _Verba movent,
exampla trahunt_, is a principle which Dante illustrates on every
terrace of Purgatory.
On the terrace of Pride the penitent sees examples of humility carved of
white marble out of the mountain side like Thorwaldsen's Lion, at
Lucerne, Switzerland. Their reality is so compelling that, "not only
Polycletus (the great Greek sculptor) but Nature there would be put to
shame." First to meet the penitent's eyes is the scene of the
Annunciation--the angel Gabriel saluting the Blessed Virgin and
unfolding to her God's plan of making her the Mother of His Son for the
salvation of mankind. In humility she gives her consent in the words:
"Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy
word." That is the attitude in which she is represented in sculpture,
says Dante, an attitude "imprinting those words as expressly as a figure
is stamped in wax" (X, 44). Near that work of art David stands forth in
marble, dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. Trajan, the Roman
emperor, is also seen, interrupting affairs of state to grant a poor
woman a favor. Not only of humility but also of pride are examples
given. Looking down on the pavement over which they slowly walk with
their heavy burdens, the proud have before their eyes the sculptured
punishment of pride as committed by Satan, Briareus, the Giants, Nimrod,
Niobe, Saul and others. Meditating on the loveliness of humility and the
hatefulness of pride, as suggested by those examples and bearing with
prayer the heavy weights imposed upon them for their humiliation and
penance, the proud experience a transformation of disposition wholly
alien to them in the days of their mortality. Among the souls in this
first terrace is Oderisi, who attained such renown as an illuminator of
manuscripts and a painter of miniatures that he boasted that no one
could surpass him. Now he not only is conscious of his former blatant
pride, but in proof of his change of heart he gives full credit for
superiority to his former pupil and subsequent rival, Franco Bolognese;