>1) It seems to me that Dante regards the Bible in its traditional sense as
>Holy Writ, the word of God, and a supreme authority for that reason.  Where
>the teachings  of the Church do not exactly match the words of the Bible, or
>are not completely supported by the Bible, Dante seems to always prefer the
>Bible.  This is almost the position of Erasmus or Martin Luther at much later
>dates.

Dear Pat,

Sorry, but this is wishful thinking. In fact very little systematic research
has been done to identify the exegetic sources (or specific traditions
present in more than one possible source) which have informed Dante's
understanding and use of passages of the Bible. Even more so, the current
inventories of his biblical citations/allusions to the Bible itself are far
from being complete, because the philologists who compiled these inventories
used to focus attention on verbal parallels (parallels between the wording
of D's text and the wording of the Vulgate), but noted only rarely
significant parallels on the level of the 'res' (as for instance between the
groups of twelve souls in the heaven of the sun and the biblical catalogues
of the twelve apostles). It is true that the commentary tradition uses to
comment on D's biblical citations/allusions **as if** he was a sort of
proto-Lutheran, without previously consulting the patristic and medieval
exegesis of the biblical passages in question, but this does not mean that
Dante himself shared this kind of ignorance and wanted it to be shared by
the "beati pochi" of his readers. The actual state of research does not
allow generalizing conclusions as to which degree D adopted or rejected
traditional understandings of his biblical sources. But there are certainly
no grounds for the "always" in your statement above. Also you should
reconsider your phrasing "match the words of the Bible". Are you referring
to the "words" strictu sensu? To the litteral and historical sense (as
modern philologists would establish it)? Do you include the spiritual sense
and imply that D would have dismissed its traditional understanding in order
to establish his own? In any case, the best (the only) way to approach a
reconstruction of his understanding is to analyse his use of the Bible in
the context of the patristic and medieval sources which he and his learned
contemporaries would have consulted.

  I notice it mostly in the "errors" made by saints, most obviously
>when Beatrice says Jerome misunderstood certain verses in the Bible (the
>annotators say Gen 1.1 is one of those verses).  This is maybe to remind us
>that the saints are human beings like the rest of us (to err is human), and
>cannot be regarded as demigods.

The saints in this world, of course. The example which you cite is D's
rejection of Jerome's understanding that the angels might have been created
a long time before the world. But this rejection is by no means D's own
idea. The problem had been discussed for a long time, especially by
commentators of the book of Genesis and of the _Sententiae_ (lib. II, cap.
3, num. 2) of Petrus Lombardus, and Dante only adopts a traditional position
established long before in this controversy. BTW, while it may be true that
Jerome's interpretation does not "match with the words", I still wouldn't
say that the orthodox interpretation which Dante adopted, according to which
the creation of the angels is implied in the "fiat lux" of the first day,
offers a much better "match" with these words.

  In the Bible, Aaron is the high priest of
>Israel but also the fabricator of the Golden Calf. Peter is the rock on which
>the Church is founded, but also the second betrayer of Christ after Judas.
> David is the apple of God's eye, but sins with Bathsheba and Uriah.  I
>suppose the implication might be that God chose Aaron, Peter, and David
>because nobody any better was available. All human beings sin and make
>errors.  
>
>Has this been discussed in the literature or have you discussed it?  The
>saints who make "errors" include Jerome, James, Augustine, and (though I
>think you won't agree) Bernard.  I'm wondering if other "mistaken" (or less
>than perfect) saints have been noticed.

I don't know where you find James (which one?) and Augustine corrected by
Dante, but Gregory the Great would have to be added to your list (Pd
28,133ss., corrected in accordance with a previous scholastic discussion
where the contradictions between Gregory's description of the angelic
hierarchy and the Dionysian description used to be decided in favour of
Ps.-Dionysius; a good match to D's argument, stressing Ps.-Dionysius as an
ear-witness of St. Paul, is to be found in Bonaventura, _In Sent._, lib. II,
dist. 9, praenot.).

I can't refer you to a good discussion of Dante's treatment of the
possibility of human error in saints. I myself have briefly touched the
problem in my diss, with regard to Dante's presentation the heaven of the
Sun (and esp. his treatment of Salomon, Siger and Joachim), but this
discussion of mine is not yet published, and it is not a good one :-)

>
>2) Exegesis.  Wicksteed says that Ulysses' last voyage is entirely of Dante's
>invention. Another possibility is that it might be an "exegetical"
>reinterpretation of Ulysses' visit to the afterworld in the Odyssey.  And it
>might be explained by the Alberigo episode.  
>
>Homer says Ulysses returned safely from the afterworld, where Tiresias
>predicts Ulysses will die at a very old age and far from the sea.  But, in
>Dante's terms, Homer is one of the "blind" pagans who lack clear Christian
>vision.  Maybe what returned was an Alberigo-like shell, a corpse inhabited
>by a devil.  What "actually" happened to Ulysses is as Dante tells the story
>in Inferno. Ulysses drowned, never reached the afterworld, and his soul
>descended to hell.  So Christian Dante understands what really happened, and
>pagan Homer does not.
>
>Again, has this possibility been discussed in the literature?  What Eliot did
>is very clever. He borrows from Ulysses' last voyage more often than from any
>other episode in Commedia, except perhaps for the Arnaut episode.  This has
>been known for a long time.  In The Waste Land (1922), he juxtaposes
>borrowings from Ulysses' last voyage with other borrowings from the Alberigo
>episode.  And of course if one thinks of both episodes together, one sees the
>possibility.  
>
>That doesn't prove it's a right or wrong interpretation, and I'm only
>interested in finding out if anyone else has suggested it.  I don't feel it's
>my place to argue for or against it, first because I don't know enough about
>Commedia and second because I don't even regard it as my own idea.  I know I
>got it from reading Eliot's poem, and I hadn't even been thinking about
>Ulysses' last voyage.

First, there was no way for Dante to read Homer's own account. And second,
Alberigo (whose explanations are maybe a very good example for doctrinal
explanations which should not be taken at face value) explains clearly that
the premortal separation of body and soul is a specifity only of the souls
punished in his own realm ("Cotal vantaggio ha questa Tolomea" If 33,124),
in the Tolomea in the 9th circle, so that his words cannot well apply to
Ulysses (8th circle), not to mention Ulysses' companions. For both reasons I
doubt think that your interpretation (or Eliot's rewriting) of the Ulysses
episode can help us to understand the sense intended by Dante.

I don't know whether this interpretation was suggested also by others. The
literature on Dante's Ulysses is more than abundant (Cassel's bibliography
alone lists some 300 titles for the time 1800-1981, see Italian Culture 3
[1981], p.23-45) and rarely rewarding, which is why I feel rather
disinclined to make myself an expert there :-)

Yours,

  Otfried



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