The Renaissance
... choice and human free will versus divine will. Dante wrote that sinners are only in Hell because they have chosen to sin. The concept that individuals are able to take part in deciding their own destiny is so progressive that Dante was often labeled a heretic by the church. Dante also taught that sin is sin, and that its consequences are logical, rational, and inevitable which is demonstrated through the different circles of hell in The Inferno. When Dante the pilgrim’s allegorical journey in The Inferno first began, he claimed to have strayed from the True Way wherein he then ‘woke himself,’ signifying that Dante the pilgrim made the decision to choose a new path. However, his path was revealed to him with the help of divine guidance. “By God’s grace” Dante the pilgrim will begin his journey. Another case of divine guidance alongside of human motivation is when Dante the Pilgrim wished to enter the sixth circle, the City of Dis. Without his own will and the guidance of the Heavenly Messenger, Dante the Pilgrim could not have even attempted to get through the gate. The importance of Dante’s character depending on his own strengths yet ultimately needing assistance from a heavenly source is a common theme throughout Renaissance art and literature and is what defines Dante Alighieri not only as a writer but as a humanist. The importance of free will along with the guidance of a supreme creator is echoed in Pico Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man as well. Pico states that God created man in an “indeterminate and indifferent nature” thus letting man choose his or her own future. Pico also believed that the study of philosophy prepared man to recognize the truth and make better decisions. In his speech, Pico declared that unlike other creatures, mankind has not been assigned a fixed place in the universe. He describes humans as free to become whatever they choose. Our destiny is not determined by anything outside us. God has bestowed upon us a unique distinction which is the liberty to determine the form and value our lives shall acquire. In other words, Pico claimed that man is the master of his own destiny. Such a powerful statement also landed Pico in the heretic category just as Dante did a couple hundred years earlier. His inspirational, “reach-for-the-stars” speech allows Pico to demonstrate the significance of the fact that the human experience is made up of millions of decisions that thus determines the “bounds” and “limits” of our nature. Pico makes sure to mention, however, that our form is not fixed because the “great Artisan” created us in that light. For almost every sentence or statement in Pico’s speech that pertains to the freedom of humans, there is another counter-statement that reminds the reader of the “generosity of God” for giving man such freedom, therein, balancing divine will and human free will. Pico then praises God to the extent of criticizing others’ beliefs such as the Pythagoreans, Hebrews, and Muhammed. Yet another juxtaposition of beliefs is Dante’s position on religion and the church, which is reflected in The Divine Comedy. Dante was a huge advocate of Christianity. Dante repeatedly showed the importance of Christ in The Inferno almost to the point of excessively preaching Christianity. Along Dante the pilgrim’s journey, every step he took or move he made was guided by some sort of divine power. Metaphorically speaking, Dante the pilgrim’s expedition was meant to find himself and explore life through God. Even scholars such as Aristotle and Plato were used as iconic symbols, of hell, because they defied Christ by simply living before his time. Dante also stressed that without Christianity or God human life could almost not be completed. Throughout the text, Dante the pilgrim is guided by divine forces who ultimately lead him on a path to Heaven. But even though Dante’s warmth for Christianity shone through in the text of The Divine Comedy, so did his discontent for the church. He considered the church a ‘harlot’ of his time in which no longer served God. Dante undoubtedly saw that the self-indulgence of the church for secular rule was a cause of spiritual weakness, and he was often full of rigid criticism. He did not hesitate to assert that it was beyond the power of the papacy to excommunicate any man from the Divine forgiveness, giving on this point a direct challenge to the Church's teaching (Purgatorio, Canto V) at that time, as he did when he consigned the Franciscan to Hell for a sin for which he had received absolution in advance (Inferno, Canto XXVII). As seem in The Inferno, popes and clergy member were not excluded from the depths of hell. The very passion of his love for the Church is the measure of his bitterness against a pope who could use his office to betray it. Like Dante, Pico Mirandola also felt a similar relationship with Christianity and the church which is voiced through the Oration on the Dignity of Man. “Let us disdain earthly things,” Pico says while trying to emphasize the fact that a physical church is not needed to be close to Christianity or God. The ‘earthly things,’ that Pico mentioned, symbolizes the church. This church was created by humans thus making it unimportant in the eyes of God. Pico also believed that each individual could commune directly with God, and that the priesthood had falsely claimed this singular power. Pico's constant reference to things beyond this world being in control demonstrates the continuing power of the Church over expression during the Renaissance. However much tension Pico might have with the church as an individual body, Pico, nevertheless, is influenced by Christianity. Pico repeatedly refers to biblical figures such as Adam and Eve and Moses. “Let a holy ambition enter into our souls,” Pico says. This ambiguous statement is almost a subtle command to Pico’s readers to follow the wisdom of Christianity. Pico’s use of the collective “our” signifies that Pico himself is pursuing a life full of “holy ambition.” “Judge little of what is in this world,” Pico stresses, meaning all things material in worth. This could again be argued to connote the physical aspects of the church. The allusions to the metaphysical structures of the universe are images in which Pico purposely excluded the architecture of “this world” to accentuate the trivialness of the concrete world surrounding man. In Pico’s text, theology, or the reason behind the creation of man, and the church are entirely different entities in which Pico deals with separately. This inevitably exemplifies Pico’s feelings towards the separation of church and Christianity. Humanism finds its way through this notion by heavily measuring the worth of an individual based on a scale almost completely composed of achievement or what one does with so such an excess of choices. Throughout Pico’s entire text of the Oration on the Dignity of Man, the curiosity with human interaction, rank among the heavens, and beauty in which man is seen is quite overwhelming. The humanistic notion that man is weighed through accomplishment is stressed through the concept of free will. “Strive after the highest and expend all our strength in achieving it.” Not only is Pico concerned with man in the biblical sense but in the order in which humankind is ranked in comparison to God and all of the other earthly creatures. In the second passage of the Oration on the Dignity of Man, Pico depicts the “chain of being.” The “Supreme Architect” built the ‘heavens like a temple with eternal souls,’ ‘lower worlds with every animal,’ and ‘creatures filled with infinite beauty in the middle world.’ Those filled with this beauty were man. Even though much of Pico’s speech is devoted to the ...