Nick Havely. Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the Commedia.

Lonergan, Corinna Salvadori

Nick Havely. Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the Commedia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Pp. 212.

The frontispiece is a most apt illustration to this book: Dante and Virgil are confronting Guido da Montefeltro, clearly recognizable, through the flames enveloping him, as a cordigliero with arms devotionally crossed; beyond him is Pope Boniface VIII, enthroned, stern, with a gesture that both threatens and absolves. As is stated in the Introduction, three main concerns of the poem are drawn together in this book: "Franciscanism, papal power and the vernacular poet's voice" (3).

Dante consistently condemns cupiditas, the she-wolf that destroys justitia, and is rampant not just among the sheep but, more seriously, among the pastors; renewal of the latter can be only through an espousal of that Lady Poverty supremely celebrated in Paradiso. Havely's research documents that Dante's determined plea to the clergy for renunciation of temporal power and property through a return to apostolic principles, through going, literally and metaphorically, 'discalced', is expressed through language that converges many a time in what is found in the writings of the Spiritual Franciscans. This work is textually based; all arguments are exemplified by Dante's writings and by a wide range of documents, with careful, accurate, and sensitive interpretation of language and images therein. Chronologically it looks before, during, and after Dante's time, and the result is a scholarly feat. The author is much to be complimented--Dante and Francis are due campioni--and he has covered much contemporary parallel material, modern exegesis, and literary interpretation; the amount and diversity would have daunted a lesser scholar.

Chapter 1 serves the reader well in providing clearly and economically a richly referenced background. Havely looks at Tuscan writing on wealth and poverty, against which he places the possibly Dantean Fiore, some canzoni, Convivio, the Sacrum Commercium (with more on this in Appendix I), biblical and patristic sources. Other sections illustrate contentious debate about Franciscan poverty, and how the linking of poverty with spiritual renewal generated polemical but also poetic texts (Jacopone). Further pieces in this marquetry are the studium in Santa Croce, Servasanto da Faenza, the Liber de virtutibus et vitiis (it touches on the ethics of finance and usury) in the light of which Havely looks at Olivi and Ubertino (both were in Florence in the late 1280s), and reminds us of their identification of the monsters of the Apocalypse with corrupt ecclesiastical authority (in Ubertino's case even with specific popes). The final tassello is on the Franciscans and the papacy, including Pier da Morrone.

The next three chapters look closely at each of the three cantiche. Chapter 2, "Avarice and Authority," is on Inferno, where Dante never uses the word poverta. Havely's systematic examination gives us innumerable references that enrich our reading of the poetic text. Most interesting are the pages on the choice of Nicholas III, whose somewhat pro-Franciscan and anti-French position Dante might have viewed with favour, but whose nepotism (with the image of the she-bear and her cubs) was known and condemned in the pseudo-Joachimist Vaticinia, a text useful also for Clement V (70-72). Indeed, abundant wealth is to be reaped in the analysis of canto 19, where several key words--pietra, frate, borsa, folle--are enriched by their connection to religious texts, a technique that works well also for corda and capestro in canto 27. In the section on "The Franciscans and the Papal Inquiry of 1309-12" the convergences between Dante's texts (including Bonaventura in Paradiso 12) and, mainly, Ubertino's crucial contributions to the case of the Spirituals, and that of Olivi, are cogently illustrated. The chapter draws to a close with the decline in Avignon and Assisi.

The Franciscan features of ascent are highlighted in chapter 3, "Purgatorio: Poverty in Spirit." Some affinities between the Sacrum commercium and Purgatorio, both stories of an ascent, have been noted by earlier scholars, as copiously documented here, but Havely is gifted in synthesizing and taking the argument further, in this particular instance with the archetype of the mountain as a place of trial and purgation. The vestimento of the angel-gatekeeper is fascinatingly linked to discussion of Franciscan writing on the colour and cloth of the habit, and the tradition and imagery that emerge unlock some new interpretations of pride and brotherhood (frate) in Purgatorio 11-19. Discussion of Dante's presentation of the poverty of Mary in the style of a Franciscan lauda is part of the section on "Poverty and the Poets," and chapter 3 ends with further evidence of links between ascent and vision in Dante's text, and the culture and literature of Franciscan poverty to be found in much of the detail in cantos 32-33, including rewarding discussion of the meretrix magna. The pilgrim Dante, addressed as frate (brother) by fellow poets, by a pope (Adriano, expiating avarice) and by Beatrice, finally "appears both as a member of a community and as a privileged prophetic and even apostolic voice" (110).

Chapter 4, entitled "Paradiso: Poverty and Authority," is the most exciting as we reach the exaltation of evangelical poverty, and Havely's writing assumes some of the resonance of his texts. Piccarda, Romeo, and Folchetto are read as thematic forerunners of Francis, the reviver of apostolic ideals (principally poverty). Here we read wonderfully illuminating pages (130-49) on Dante's portrayal of the saint in relation to both literary (Celano and Bonaventura) and visual traditions (the Bardi Dossal, also in Appendix II). The section on Monarchia III (154-59) brings deftly together the many strands in this study. The following one, on Paradiso 18 and 27, illustrates first, how Dante seems to be using against John XXII the "kind of rhetoric that he [the pope] was using to denounce the Spirituals" (168), and second, how Peter in his invective deploys some of the discourse of the Spiritual dissidents (168-75), with the beguins and Bernardo Gui featuring prominently. Dante's voice, first raised against the avari in "Doglia mi reca" strikes hard at the highest peaks. Finally, the Epilogue documents, albeit briefly but most interestingly, how convergence of discourse between Dante and the Spiritual Franciscans goes on beyond his lifetime.

Poverty, of an ungenerous kind, seems to have affected the publishers, and the lack of colour in the valuable illustrations is much to be regretted.

Corinna Salvadori Lonergan, Trinity College Dublin