MORINGIELLO: DIVINE PROVIDENCE: A HISTORY

Brenda Deen Schildgen, Divine Providence: A History. The Bible, Virgil,

Orosius, Augustine, and Dante. London and New York: Continuum, 2012

In this short book, Brenda Deen Schildgen “examines the ancient and late an­
tique uses and deliberations on destined history to follow these ideas as explored
by Dante.” This examination occurs by “exploring the genealogy of the idea of
providential or destined history as an ongoing principle for understanding the divine
purpose for humans” (1). The author has divided her study into five chapters and
adds an introduction and a conclusion. In the first chapter, she explores providence
in Virgil, Livy, and the Bible. The second chapter discusses Orosius’s theological
defense of the Roman Empire, and the third chapter discusses Augustine’s “theol­
ogy of history.” Chapters 4 and 5 are the heart of the study. Chapter 4 addresses
Dante’s political tract the Monarchia, and chapter 5 focuses on Dante’s political
thought in the Commedia.
Schildgen’s is an ambitious study, and I think it ends up being too ambitious. If
the book’s main claim is that Dante shifts from a more favorable to a less favorable
view of the Roman Empire, then Schildgen should have made a stronger argument
about why she chose to examine Livy, Orosius, and even Augustine as precursors to
Dante. For example, Dante only mentions Livy once in the Commedia (Inf. 28:12).
He only alludes to Orosius once (Par. 10:118-120), and does not even mention him
by name. Augustine, famously, only appears once in the Commedia (Par. 32:35).
Now, obviously these thinkers could have influenced Dante even if he did not
mention them by name, but in the absence of direct quotation, Schildgen needs to
do more than note similarities between Dante and those who came before bim to
argue that these thinkers influenced Dante. And if exploring how Dante wrestled
with his influences were the point, then Schildgen’s study should have focused on
the medieval theology and poetry that saturates Dante’s corpus. As it is now, the
“history” of divine providence that Schildgen offers jumps from Augustine and
Orosius to Dante himself. To be sure Schildgen does mention Thomas Aquinas,
John of Salisbury and Bernard of Clairvaux (see 102-103) as well as James of
Viterbo, Gilles of Rome, and Pierre Dubois (107), but she only mentions these
figures in passing. A more thorough engagement with these thinkers would have
helped support Schildgen’s argument.
Even if we take Schildgen’s argument as she presents it, problems arise. First of
all, it is clear the book does not offer a history of divine providence. Such a history
is far beyond the parameters set here. What the book offers instead is an argument
about how Dante’s political thought coincides with the political thought of selected
Biblical books, passages from Virgil and Livy, and selections of Orosius and
Augustine. Secondly, even in these limited parameters, it is not clear what Schildgen

Augustinian Studies 45:1 (2013) 117-118

doi: 10.5840/augstudies20144519
 BOOK REVIEWS

wants to say about Dante’s relationship to his forebears. In chapter 4, the author
argues “that in the Monarchia, Dante assumes the authority of a prophet, in this case,
Daniel, ignores Augustinian ‘political realism,’ but adopts Augustine’s interpreta­
tive practices to interpret the Bible” (98). In chapter 5, though, she argues, “that
Dante’s views of Fortune, history, the Roman imperial legacy, the decadent state
of the world in his times develop as an unfolding revelation as he moves through
the poem and up to the heavens” (123). She then goes on to say Dante “expresses
contradictory views both throughout his career and even in the works written in
the same period” (124). If this is the case, then, the author’s ultimate point seems
to be that Dante does not have an imperial theology of history—except when he
does. In any event, it is not clear to this reader how chapters 4 and 5 relate to a
thesis about divine providence.
Finally, Schildgen’s prose is difficult to parse. She has the unfortunate tendency
to refer to God as “the divinity.” There is little rhyme or reason to her use of origi­
nal languages in the main body of the text. (Why not put original languages in the
endnotes and only refer to Latin or Italian in the text if there is a specific linguistic
point she wants to make?) The author also writes sentences like this: “Overriding
the distinctions among history, myth, literature, and sacred scripture (i.e., the tra­
ditional Latin dichotomy between historia and mythologia) in his political treatises
and letters, like Augustine, Dante uses Livy, Virgil, and other Roman poets, Orosius,
and the Bible as authorities on history” (98). Another example is: “Thus, as the
poem moves forward, its message becomes overwhelmingly religious and not
political, in the Augustinian sense whereby the human connection to the divinity
above all becomes the measure of one’s wordly responsibility and felicity” (144).
(If by “political” we mean human beings living together in community, then the
Commedia becomes increasingly political as it goes on because the souls are ever
more united to God’s love. This is Augustinian concord at its most pure.)
Schildgen’s introduction and conclusion remind us that divine providence is still
at work in our supposedly secular society. As she notes, we find secular equivalents
of divine providence in Hegel, Marx, and Napoleon, as well as Manifest Destiny
and US foreign policy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Schildgen is right
to remind us of this importance, and she has offered helpful readings of Orosius,
Augustine, and Dante. Unfortunately, the book falls short of the promise of its title,
and it could have more deeply explored the exact connections between Dante and
his antique and late antique forbears.

Scott D. Moringiello
Villanova University

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