Dante's Divine Comedy is widely considered to be one of the most significant works of literature ever written. It is renowned not only for its ability to make truths known but also for its power to make them loved. It captures centuries of thought on sin, love, community, moral living, God's work in history, and God's ineffable beauty. Like a Gothic cathedral, the beauty of this great poem can be appreciated at first glance, but only with a guide can its complexity and layers of meaning be fully comprehended.
After I read The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis, I went looking for more by Jason M. Baxter and was delighted to see this book. Where better to have a medieval mindset explained than through this masterpiece which was written for those very people?
What makes A Beginner's Guide shine is the way Baxter bridges the gap between our different ways of thinking. He explains the theology, the poetry, the context (both historical and literary), and makes Dante more accessible than any other guide I've read — and I've read a lot of very good ones. I really appreciated the way that he kept connecting different parts of the poem to each other for contrasting so that we could get the deeper message as well as appreciate Dante's artistry.
As with his other book, Baxter displays real skill in showing how differently the medievals thought about the world and our place in it, and also how they were superbly logical which is not something the modern reader expects. Through that lens, the average person can understand and appreciate the depth of structure and thought that underpin this book.
Above all, He helps us dip our toes, just for a moment, into the beauty that shines around us — and not just in this book. Here is a lengthy excerpt to help you see a little of what I mean. After Dante enters heaven, he describes a world of warmth, light, and harmony. Baxter puts this into deeper context for us.
At the same time that the pilgrim feels the order of the heavens, he is also struck by its dazzling brightness. In the medieval world, the spectator delighted in the mere quality of color or light in a way that is hard for us to conceive—we who live in a world flooded by artificial lights. He could almost taste its radiance. ...
What is more, just as we all know that the orbit of the moon affects the tides of large bodies of water, so did medieval people think all heavenly bodies exerted their influence on earth. Looking at the stars wasn't just pretty it was opening yourself to spiritual powers that penetrated your body. Their beauty was spiritually radioactive. For Dante's contemporaries, then, even the basic idea of flying through this place of peace and radiance would have been a wildly exciting, sci-fi journey. The pilgrim visits that region bathed in happiness and light, which flows into his body. It is this visceral feeling for the physical effects of light and music that appears everywhere throughout Dante's final canticle.
And so medieval men and women looked up at the sky and saw it as beautiful, radiant, dazzling, and ordered—or rather, felt it as perfection. It always moved in order, always obeyed, always sang. But although this ordered motion was most perfectly embodied in the starry sky, this order, this love, if you will, also flowed throughout the world, and in fact, was thought to keep everything in motion. It was love that regulated the seasons as they yielded to each other; it was love that ensured that the sea harmoniously lapped the land without overflowing its boundaries; it was even love that bound the soul to the body.
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