Steve Botterill,
I've been thinking about your saying that Dante is "not anti-Semitic."
I've also been listening in on a Thomas Aquinas list. Somebody posted that
Thomas, in the Summa, stressed the importance of following one's conscience,
even if this led one to the conclusion that one could not accept the teachings
of Christ.
Assuming that Thomas actually said something of this sort (I'm trying to get
more information), I'm wondering if this could have a bearing on Dante. Here,
it's not clear to me just how closely Dante follows Thomas, though I see
annotators mentioning Thomas a lot.
It's also not clear to me how much Thomas drew from Maimonides, and I might
want to know what Maimonides had to say about conscience. I still can't shake
the feeling that it's odd to find a couple of Muslim philosophers in Limbo but
not Maimonides. Except of course as a literary device. The absence of Jews in
Limbo might prefigure the later absence, in the Inferno, of any facility for
punishing Jews who lwere born after the time of Christ but refuse to be
baptized.
Any suggestion for readings on Dante and Aquinas, Aquinas and Maimonides, etc.
would be appreciated. BTW, Steve, I don't recall, anywhere in the Commedia,
any Jew who was born after the time of Christ. Please correct if I'm
mistaken. No reason Dante has to include Jews in his afterworld, of course
(other than the OT Hebrews) , and he only has very few Muslims. It's
Bernard's circumcision versus baptism speech (Parad 33) that brings the
question to the forefront. .
pat sloane
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