Dante and the Gaels
Maura, Sister
DANTE'S magnificent originality is fed by two fountains, religion and literature. It is supremely to the great artist's credit that he could gather into the melodious current of his verse all the...
...The Vision of Tundale, written by an Irish monk of Ratisbon, relates how a knight of Cashel, "noble in blood, but bloody of deed...
...and the huge demon miller of another island, who grinds in his ugly mill all things that have been begrudged on earth, is a conception worthy of Dante...
...Of all writings, these chiefly inspired Dante's masterpiece and helped to shape its art...
...Paradiso, XXXIII, 54-82...
...In the course of their voyagings, the saintly abbot and his companions spend several happy weeks and celebrate Pentecost on an island where they are entertained by lovely dove-like birds...
...Near Our Lord are His Blessed Mother and the Apostles, and about them are gathered the patriarchs, prophets, disciples, virgins, children, and the angelic "birdchoirs...
...Of this Voyage, Renan says: "The poem of Saint Brendan is one of the most marvelous creations of the human spirit and perhaps the most complete expression of the Celtic ideal...
...These are angels (Purgatorio, II, 38, and elsewhere) who sinned, not by pride, but by following Lucifer...
...Saint Brendan sees Judas in torment (Inferno, XXXIV, 61-63) and weeps to hear him recount the still greater tortures he must endure...
...The bright land of fair weather" which is his abode of the saints, lies beneath a skyey dome where, rank upon rank, the nine orders of angels are ranged (plan of the Paradiso...
...Never before or since has so sweet and benevolent a glance been cast upon the world...
...The very animals share in this universal sweetness...
...Among the literary kinds they brought to perfection, the "immram" or voyage and the "fis" or vision captivated the imagination of Christendom...
...Evil appears in the form of wandering monsters of the deep, or of cyclops prisoned in volcanic islands...
...In Great Britain, in France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, they preached and taught...
...They sing Divine Office with the monks, and accompany the chant with a clapping of their snowy wings which makes a sound as musical as the tinkle of delicate glass...
...By far the most famous version of the "immram" is The Voyage of Saint Brendan...
...It is the world seen through the crystal medium of a conscience without stain...
...but the lost shall suffer for all eternity torments that rival and often resemble those of the Inferno in their harrowing ingenuity...
...His angel guardian, whom he first sees as "a light like a star" (Purgatorio, II, 13-18) approaching to rescue him from the demons into whose clutches he has fallen, is his guide through the horrors of hell and the joys of heaven...
...It is supremely to the great artist's credit that he could gather into the melodious current of his verse all the age he lived in had to give: the vitalizing light of Holy Scripture, the goodness of saints, the wisdom of philosophers, the romance and grace of the troubadours, the literary art and epic quality of Vergil, as well as the multiform human activity of his day—all assimilated and transmuted by his creative genius...
...Here all is beautiful, pure, and innocent...
...But one stream that went to swell the mighty river has been ignored...
...this was known throughout Europe, and became almost a classic in the ninth-century Latin—Peregrinatio Sancti Brandani...
...On another island, near the forges of hell...
...their churches and schools dominated Europe, and all they had they shared...
...Plan of Purgatorio...
...The Divine Comedy differs from them in magnitude rather than in quality, and owes them motivation as well as detail and the suggestion of incident...
...Purgatorio, the Earthly Paradise...
...Paradiso, V, 1-3...
...Adamnan, the high scholar of the western world, an abbot of the seventh century, journeyed once in spirit through the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, and left the story to his followers to be told in the Fis Adamnain (Vision of Little Adam...
...Paradiso, X X I I I . ) The presence of God is brightness ineffable...
...In The Voyage of Maelduin's Curagh, which Professor Zimmer refers to the eighth century, it is an Irish prince who sails westward and ever westward in search of the murderer of his father...
...Maelduin finally sails near the sunset Isle of Paradise...
...Before attaining the vision of God, the soul must pass through seven stages of purification, called heavens, each presided over by an angel...
...but God destroys them the one by the other and will not let them harm the good...
...they wear the freshness of the dawn...
...The island of the races at which he touches, where horses and jockeys resolve themselves into demons, is vaguely like several of the circles of the Inferno...
...The "immram" must have originated in the visit of some daring Gael to the southern shore of North America by way of Iceland and the northern seas...
...now they must dwell forever in the Paradise of Birds...
...the abbot's compassionate prayer obtains him a night-long respite from these...
...During the years after Saint Patrick's death, the Irish conquered the world and held it for centuries, not by the sword, but by the word of the Gospel and the power of a fine civilization...
...All these visions and voyages are at once literary and charmingly religious...
...it is the influence of earlier Gaels...
...The date of the adventure is given (Inferno, I, i) as 1149, and before the close of that century...
...there is not a cruel idea, not a trace of sadness or of repentance...
...The Vision was translated from the original Latin into many other languages...
...Through a doorway in the wall of fire which circles round it, he and his companions can catch now and then a glimpse of the beauty and happiness within, and can hear the delightful sound of festive music...
...Seven walls (Inferno, IV, 106-108) of crystal girdle the heavenly city, and thousands of angels, flaming like great candles, illumine it...
...company answers company in heavenly harmony...
...Essais de Morale et de Critique...
...fair as to body, but careless about his soul," is taken on a saving journey (Purgatorio, XXX, 136-138) similar to Dante's...
...The Divine Comedy being at once a voyage and a vision, both are of especial interest to Dante lovers...
...On this warp of fact, Christian writers wove the beautiful web of their fancies...
...Those in whose lives neither good nor evil has predominated, must linger (Purgatorio, IV, 130-131) in darkness on "a shore of perpetual pain" until the end of time, then they shall be saved...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 7
