Dante’s «De Monarchia»: The Frontier of the Middle Ages and Modernity

Abstract

De Monarchia is one of Dante’s most politically influential works. He was probably moved to write it around 1313. With it, Dante wanted to contribute to eradicating the prevailing anarchy of his time, in Italy and, specifically, in his Florentine city. He dreamed of a social order that would establish universal peace. The tone of the work, distinctly Ghibelline, shows a Dante who has evolved intellectually. Dante is shown here as an intellectual somewhere between scholasticism and the flowering of a new style. There is a whole series of clearly medieval turns of phrase, expressions, allegories, images and symbolism, but also a set of ideas which, against the tide, contributed to changing the way of interpreting the world. His De Monarchia must be considered an innovative work because, although the text certainly took up preceding legal, juridical, political and theological traditions, its greatest merit lay in the elaboration of a dense, brilliant and novel theory, according to which the emperor not only owed his power to the direct election of God —thus his investiture did not become a mere office of the Church— but also that the imperial institution was superior to the pontifical one. It must therefore be asked whether «Monarchy» is a work that will precede some of the main theses that the Protestant Reformation will later defend in political matters.