Alessandro Vettori
Rutgers University
The administration of money and the sin of usury have deep personal, social, and political implications for Dante. His condemnation of usury as an “unnatural” sin of violence against God in Inferno XVII (43-75) is in line with the biblical reprobation of making money from money in Genesis 3:17-19, while also having echoes of familial financial troubles for the poet. Even his choice of Bernard Claivaux as his third guide can be viewed as having economic foundations, since Saint Bernard was a reformer of the Cistercian Order on the basis of a return to the initial poverty of the Benedictines and a life based on agricultural labor rather than the accumulation of riches (as was the case for the Cluniacs that Dante condemns among the hypocrites in Inferno XIX 58-67). But Dante’s true obsession, when it comes to the church’s attachment to worldly possessions—and its consequent political power—is the Donation of Constantine. Although the poet believed the Donation to be authentic, he nevertheless proves its illegitimacy in Monarchia 3.10.5, where he references Aristotle’s Ethics concerning the need for a gift to be justified, but also reaches back to the gospels of Matthew 10:9-10 and Luke 22:35-36 to show how poverty is evangelical in inspiration. His direct criticism toward the opulence of contemporary ecclesiastical lifestyle is an indirect approval of the animated debate on poverty among Franciscan friars, who were divided on the correct interpretation of Francis of Assisi’s mandate to be poor, the Relaxed faction supporting a more indulgent rule, while the Spiritual believing in an inflexible application of it. The exaltation of Francis and his marriage with Lady Poverty in Paradiso XI re-propose Dante’s Franciscan thinking on economic issues as well as on poetic grounds.