Posted by VIRGIL on January 13, 192001 at 23:55:45:
In Reply to: Chirp Chirp? posted by Jeremy Daniels on January 13, 192001 at 18:19:39:
"Dante seems to avoid the problem of what happens to infants who die before baptism. According to the Catholic Church, they are off in Limbo/Hell.
"But I would think that many parents don't like the thought of that. So is that why Dante avoided the subject, and didn't mention the un-baptised infants?
"Or was there another reason?"
Okay, Jeremy --
You're right about the unbaptised infants ... a lot of folks have pointed this out and commentaries have been written about it ... but ....
Have you read Dostoyevski? In THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Ivan asks: "What of the children, Alyosha" and, as if in answer, the novel ends with the anticipation of the Resurrection in the form of a love-feast, with the children gathered around the table recalling the former life. Discounting the mention of children in the Ugolino story near the end of INFERNO (and we know those children were not as young as Dante's fiction presents them), the most notable account of children in the comedy is near the end of PARADISO, the children in the stadium of the Rose. (See Canto II) Here we see pre-Christian children saved by love and Christian Children saved by baptism. Oddly, many of the children died (let me quote John Ciardi here) "before they had achieved the true volition of reason and faith. They could not, therefore, win salvation by their own merit, but by another's, under strict condition. The necessary qualification for election is belief in Christ. THese souls were too young at death to have formed their faith. Salvation is granted them hnot directly through belief in Christ but through the faith and prayers of their parents, relatives, and others of the faithful who interceded for them." Further in his footnotes to Canto II Ciardi writes: "The infants are ranked in tiers that indicate degrees of heavenly merit. But if they were saved through no merit of their own, how can one be more worthy than the other? Such is Dante's doubt, which Bernard goes on to set at rest by telling him, in essence, that God knows what He is doing."
As Bernard puts it (in Ciardi's translation): "The king in whom this realm abides unchanging/ in so much love and bliss that none dares will/ increase of joy, creating and arranging/ the minds of all in the glad Paradise/ of His own sight, grants them degrees of grace/ as He sees fit. Here let the effect suffice."
Need Bernard, or God, say more? What seems significant is that the issue of unbaptised babies may well be resolved in these lines. Why are there no babies in Hell? God, wiser than us all, does what he wants to do.
Too, figure in the reason Dante wrote the COMEDY. Though the book does contain much commentary relating to Medieval Catholicism, there is much more it does not contain. The COMEDY is not a religious commentary, per se. It is a work of fiction conceived by the author as the book which will allow him to gain heroic welcome back into Florence. Dante tends to deal with those stories which will help him achieve his end to bolster confidence in his political viewpoint and bash his enemies. Of course, that's simplifying the COMEDY, but the point is that everything need not be included. Heck ... didn't Dante get in enough already? If God can do what he wants to in Heaven, then we should be allowed to expect Dante to be able to do what he wants to in his own book.
Here let the effect suffice.
--VIRGIL (happy to see this board is not totally silent anymore) --