Dante Archives - Rest and Trust

Holiday, Henry; Dante and Beatrice; Walker Art Gallery; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/dante-and-beatrice-97987

Why wasn’t the Ponte Vecchio bombed during World War II? World War II is full of its legends. In the summer of 1944, as Allied forces closed in on Florence, retreating German troops were ordered to destroy every bridge over the Arno to slow their advance.

Every bridge was blown up — except the Ponte Vecchio. The German officer assigned to demolish it refused. “This is the bridge where Dante met Beatrice,” he said. “I cannot possibly destroy it.”

He then radioed the Allies and informed them that the bridge would remain intact — on one condition: they must promise not to use it. The agreement was honored, the Ponte Vecchio was spared, but the officer himself was executed for disobedience.

What compelled this man to sacrifice his life for a bridge? The bridge must have spoken to him about something worth more than life itself — the beauty of the Divine hidden behind ordinary things. Dante’s love for Beatrice was unique in that he never separated his love for an earthly woman from his love for God.

In fact, loving Beatrice was not a distraction from God but the very path to God. For Petrarch — and many other poets — their earthly love was a distraction from God. Petrarch’s inner struggle was precisely that Laura competed with God for his heart.

He loved her intensely, but he also felt guilty that this human passion distracted him from pursuing God. Not so with Dante. He said of Beatrice:

O lady, you who strengthen my hope
and who, for my salvation,
have suffered to leave your footprints even in Hell…

For him, to see Beatrice was to see God. Beatrice became an icon of the Divine — a revelation of God within the physical realm. Dante’s revolutionary thought was precisely this — that whatever you love on earth can lead you to God if you see it as an icon.

If you don’t see it as an icon, it becomes an idol and competes with the Divine in your heart. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

“The eye is the lamp of the body.” — Jesus

Icon and idol are often the same thing — the difference lies in how we look. If we look at a thing, it becomes an idol. If we look through it, it becomes an icon. Dante looked through Beatrice and communed with Divine Light.

Perhaps that is what the German officer saw on the Ponte Vecchio that day. Perhaps he caught a glimpse of that light through the bridge and realized that it was worth more than life itself.

What is the point of raising awareness? When we received an email from our son’s high school requesting our consent for him to attend an “awareness class” for the second year in a row, we refused. My wife wrote them that he had already taken this class last year and that he didn’t need to hear it all over again.

When we asked him what kind of awareness they raised, he told us a bunch of stuff that was not easy to listen to. One might say, “But this is life. The child needs to know all these things to be prepared.”

Like many medieval thinkers, Dante sincerely believed that a person cannot see hell until they have seen enough Paradise. To be prepared to see evil, one must spend most of their time in Paradise.

In Divine Comedy, Canto 28, Dante, speaking of Beatrice, says: “She imparadised my mind.”

Quella che ‘mparadisa la mia mente.

It turns out there is no such word in Italian. Dante invented it to show what Beatrice did for him. She placed his mind firmly in Paradise — “imparadised” his mind. Only with Paradise imprinted deep in our minds are we prepared to face the Inferno.

We knew that the school wasn’t doing for our son what Beatrice did for Dante. They don’t imparadise his mind. The “raising awareness” idol demands that children be placed right into hell to be prepared for hell. There is no preparation for hell in hell. It’s a soul-contaminating mechanism.

The best way to be prepared for darkness is to have enough experience of light. The best way to be prepared for hardship is to have enough experience of joy. The best way to be prepared for the earth is to have enough experience of heaven.

That’s what Franco Nembrini, a famous Italian pedagogue and a director of a private school, told a father who kept telling his son that life was a bunch of bullshit. When Franco asked why he kept telling him that, the father was surprised: “Because it’s true! He must know that.”

Franco paused and said, “I agree. Life is often bullshit. But since, as you say, you are already there, it makes no sense to dive deeper into it. I can promise you that even if you are head and shoulders into this thing, you will see a speck of light if you only look up. Let it be your guide. Go up, not down. If you follow that speck of light, it will lead you out of that thing. Teach your son to look at the stars.”

We have forgotten what medieval thinkers knew instinctively — you must not look at evil until your mind is imparadised. Evil will break you and corrupt you. We believe in raising awareness about hell but not Paradise. Hell does not prepare you to face hell; it prepares you to become part of it.

When we find ourselves in BS, it’s time to look up, not down. One of the best metaphors for the power of looking up is the experience of ancient Israelites in the desert. They were in a bunch of BS of their own making after incessant complaining about eating manna every day. Poisonous snakes came out of nowhere and started biting people.

God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. Anyone who would look up at the serpent would be healed from the snakebites. When you see a bunch of problems down below, the hardest thing is to look up. It’s hard to take your eyes off of your BS. It takes a leap of faith to look up.

The moment you do take your eyes off the hissing snakes at your feet, you are saved. There is no magic here; it’s all common sense.