Virgil and Beatrice in The Divine

Comedy: Symbols of Human

Reason and Divine Love
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is a thoroughly Medieval text, not merely because it was
written in the Medieval time period, but also because of the picture Dante presents of the
relationship between human reason, symbolized in The Divine Comedy by the poet Virgil, and
divine love, symbolized in The Divine Comedy by the character of Beatrice.

In the opening scene of The Inferno, the first book of The Divine Comedy, Dante (the author,
the main character, and the first-person narrator) awakens in a dark wood midway through his
life’s journey, having strayed from the True Way. A shade (i.e., a spirit or ghost) of the Roman
poet Virgil appears to Dante, having been sent by Beatrice to lead Dante on a journey through
Hell, Purgatory, and eventually Paradise (Heaven). Virgil leads Dante through the various
circles of Hell and partway up the ascent of Purgatory before Beatrice takes over as Dante’s
guide the remainder of the way through Purgatory and on to Paradise.

So why must Beatrice take over for Virgil as Dante’s guide? As mentioned above, Virgil
symbolizes human reason in The Divine Comedy, the power and achievements of the human
intellect left to its own devices without God, without the redemption offered by Jesus Christ,
and without the influence of the Holy Spirit. Human reason is symbolized elsewhere in The
Divine Comedy by the faint illumination coming from a citadel, what translator John Ciardi calls
the “Citadel of Human Reason” in Limbo, the first circle of Hell (see The Divine Comedy, Canto
IV), where the virtuous pagans and unbaptized souls, those who were otherwise virtuous but
who lived prior to the incarnation of Jesus, and those who were unbaptized and thus unable to
be redeemed and allowed to enter Paradise, reside eternally. Virgil explains to Dante that
Limbo is where he resides as well, having both lived and died before the time of Christ. Limbo
is a place of no punishment but still one of eternal separation from God’s love, and hence a
place of no further hope. At the Citadel of Human Reason in Limbo, Dante finds the great
humanistic philosophers in the history of philosophy: Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Diogenes,
Thales, Anaxagoras, Zeno, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Cicero, and Seneca—even Euclid, Ptolemy,
Hippocrates, and other figures symbolizing the great achievements of pure human reason.
What can we make of the faint glow Dante observes from the Citadel of Human Reason in
Limbo? Light has been a metaphor for knowledge at least since the time of Plato’s Allegory of
the Cave (Republic, Book VII), with the sunlight outside the cave representing knowledge of
the various Platonic forms (Justice, Goodness, Piety, Love, etc.). Although Dante retains the
light metaphor, the light of human reason is not a bright, blinding light like it was for Plato but
rather a relatively dim light in comparison to the light of God and divine love seen in Paradise
later in The Divine Comedy. Human reason is virtuous and provides some illumination, but
human reason, according to Dante, still pales in comparison to the light of God and the faith,
hope, and love that this greater light represents in The Paradiso.

This is why I characterize The Divine Comedy as a thoroughly Medieval text. In the Medieval
period, reason was generally seen as subordinate to faith, and to other facets of the Christian
worldview such as divine revelation, to God Himself, to divine love, and so on. Reason did not
stand alone in the Medieval period as it did both for the Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato
and for philosophers in the later Modern period from Descartes at least through Kant, and
arguably for many of us culturally, intellectually, and scientifically today. According to the
Medieval mindset, human reason is fundamentally finite, imperfect, and flawed compared to
divine reason and divine understanding, which our limited human reason can only partially
grasp or understand.

According to Medieval philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, human reason and philosophy can
shed some light on the truth of religious faith, such as the way in which reason told Thomas
Aquinas (and Aristotle before him) that there must have been a first cause (a prima causa) to
account for the existence of the cosmos in the first place, what is now known as the
“cosmological argument" for God’s existence. But human reason cannot provide the fullness of
truth about God’s nature or about his redemptive plan for humanity in the incarnation, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Reason, therefore, for Medieval thinkers, was limited by definition, a dim light in comparison
to the light of God, but still a light nonetheless—hence the faint glow seen arising from the
Citadel of Human Reason in Limbo in The Inferno and hence why there is no punishment for
the virtuous pagans who reside there, having made full use of their limited but noble powers
of rationality and having reached the achievements of human reason alone, but banished from
Paradise nonetheless because they lacked the greater light of faith and divine love.

Because Virgil symbolizes human reason, and because of the general Medieval mindset that
human reason alone cannot lead to salvation, Virgil, by definition, cannot lead Dante into
Paradise. For Dante’s journey into Paradise he must have another guide: Beatrice, Dante’s
symbol of divine love. Beatrice, of course, was Dante’s principle love interest, as described in
Dante’s La Vita Nuova, a collection of Dante’s poems with his own explanation of their
meaning and symbolism. In La Vita Nuova, Dante recounts three key events in his interaction
with Beatrice: when he first becomes enamored with her as an adolescent, when she rejects
him nine years later, and Beatrice’s death at age 25. The fact that the first two events occurred
at nine-year intervals, the number nine (the square of three, the number of the Holy Trinity)
traditionally representing perfection, undoubtedly influenced not only Dante’s view of Beatrice
as symbolic of divine love both within The Divine Comedy and in the structure of The Divine
Comedy itself: nine circles of Hell, three books of 33 cantos each for a total of 99 cantos, etc.

So, for Dante, divine love is intricately intertwined with Beatrice and with the various instances
of numerological symbolism in The Divine Comedy, both in its structure and within the story
itself. Given Dante’s broadly Medieval views about the relationship between reason and faith,
specifically human reason and divine love, and given Dante’s association of divine love with
Beatrice both in his real life and within The Divine Comedy, Beatrice must take over for Virgil at
some point along Dante’s journey to Paradise, by definition. Human reason, however, can lead
one to genuine faith and to divine love, just as the poet Virgil leads Dante to Beatrice who can
then guide him onward into God’s presence in Paradise. Human reason, therefore, according
to Dante, and according to Medieval thought in general, is necessary, with the potential to
lead one to faith, but not sufficient for salvation or for entering into the fullness and light of
God’s presence in Paradise.