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Caritas vs. Avarice: The Embroiled Church and Empire

John Michael Potvin

FYW 1232

Professor Fink

December 14, 2018

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A narrative of corruption runs through the Divine Commedia, especially that of the

church and empire. It is obvious why this theme is so central in the Commedia, for it was these

institutions that upended Dante’s life, making him an exile in his own city of Florence. Dante

viewed the church and empire both as being under the ordination of God, making their

corruption even more abominable. Dante gives us a grand overview of the various people in

positions of power within the church and state, those who are evil, and are burning in Hell, those

repenting in Purgatory, and the exceptional ones who are in Paradise. Through their actions and

monologues, Dante gives his principles of what the church and state should be, including the

condition of those inside of them, and by what means these divine institutions were destroyed.

The heart of his conviction lies in that of the virtue of caritas. It is through caritas that Dante’s

theology and philosophy of love illuminates and explores the innerworkings of humanity’s

relationship with itself and with God. Love is at the foundation of Dante’s universe, and is the

cause by which all things move. In this essay, I am seeking to show how Dante develops and

uses the virtue of caritas in context of the church and empire, and how the lack of caritas, in the

form of the vice of Avarice, most destroys these divine institutions.

I will set up the essay as follows: I will present Dante’s mind-directed love and contrast

that with caritas. I will contextualize caritas and then outline the elements that make up Dante’s

conception of caritas. After that I will demonstrate the binding force of caritas in the

communities of the church and empire. Following this, I’ll transition to the corruption of the

church and state by introducing the vice of avarice and its antithetical relationship with caritas.

By using examples from all three cantiche, we will see avarice’s effect on these temporal

institutions.
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Dante’s Explanation of Love

Dante presents in the Commedia a broad definition of love when discussing what

motivates one’s actions. Virgil explains that love is the “true seed of every merit, and of all acts;”

thus, love is responsible for both good and evil (Purg. 17.103-5). So, Virgil sets a dichotomy

between two types of love: “the action of animal or of mind-directed love” (Purg. 17.92-3). This

mind-directed love is love that “desires Eternal Good and measures its wish for secondary goods

in reason,” while animal love refers to love “when it turns to evil, or shows more or less zeal

than it ought for what is good” (Purg.17.97-9 and 17.100-1) Ultimately, all actions good and evil

find their origin in either true love or perverted love. Both of these loves can be further divided

into a system of virtues and vices. The seven cardinal vices are attributed to animal-love and the

four cardinal virtues to mind-directed love. The cardinal virtues are capable of being possessed

by both pagans and Christians alike, as human reasoning is enough to lead one to these goods.

The virtuous pagans in Limbo and Cato of Utica on the shores of Purgatory exemplify this

characteristic (Pur. 1.36-37). Virgil says of those in Limbo “they did not sin. Though they have

merit, that is not enough, for they were unbaptized, denied the gateway to the faith that you

profess” (Inf. 4.34-36). For Christians, according to Catholic theology, must be in possession of

all three Theological Virtues, faith, hope, and love, in order to receive salvation. The most

important Theological Virtue is that of caritas, which is another form of love exclusively for

those that are Christians. I believe that although mind-directed love can be possessed without

caritas, it is impossible for caritas to be without mind-directed love, as it is a necessary

component to it. This concept will be clearer as we explore the nature of caritas.

What is Caritas?
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Caritas, or charity in English, is the Latin translation of the Greek word agape, which is used

throughout the Bible (1 Cor. 13 being a prime example).1 Agape in the Christian tradition means

divine love, which manifests itself in mankind’s relationship with itself in the following way:

love for God through which we have love for fellow man.2 1 John 4:12 explicitly states this: “No

man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is

perfected in us.”3 This love, however, is distinct in that it is not purely emotional, it is an active4

force that is “voluntarily self-sacrificial and gratuitous.”5 Aquinas viewed charity as being the

root of the theological virtues for “all the other virtues’ acts are directed to charity’s distinctive

end, which is its object: the highest good.” Because charity is “the higher virtue or power,” then

“charity commands the acts of all the virtues and thus is called the mover.”6 Later in this essay, I

will continue to explore the meaning of caritas and its implications and aspects through its

special relationship with the church. It is first necessary to identify the source and purveyor of

caritas; for what moves the mover?

The Source of Caritas

We know what caritas is, but what are its sources, how does this love come about? Dante

is asked this question during his cross-examination on love administered by St. Peter in the

eighth sphere. St. Peter calls upon Dante to explain “what made you draw your bow at this

1
"Agape." In New World Encyclopedia. Accessed December 14, 2018.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Agape.
2
Jack Zavada, "Agape: What Does the Bible Say About the Highest Form of Love?" ThoughtCo, July 31, 2018,
Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.thoughtco.com/agape-love-in-the-bible-700675.
3
"1 John 4, King James Bible." Accessed December 14, 2018. https://biblehub.com/kjv/1_john/4.htm.
4
Jack Zavada, "Agape: What Does the Bible Say About the Highest Form of Love?"
5
"Agape." In New World Encyclopedia.
6
St. Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Charity, trans. Jeffrey Hause and Claudia Eisen Murphy
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010), 114.
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exalted target—what and who” (Par. 26.23-24). Dante replies that it is human reason: “the mind

must move once it has seen the truth that is the proof and argument that so compels man’s love”

(Par. 26.34-36). However, it is God who reveals the truths to which humankind must reason

with: “That truth he first made evident to me whose proofs set forth the First Cause and First

Love of every sempiternal entity (Par. 26.37-39).” Thus, the source of caritas is knowledge

through the union of “human reason and Holy Writ,” as St. Peter puts it. There is a connection

between how both Augustine and Dante relate this love and knowledge to each other.

The Love-Knowledge Feedback Loop

This following discussion is necessary, for later in the essay, as avarice will be shown to

drive a wedge between love and knowledge, preventing their unique relationship with each other

from being evinced in man. Mazzeo summarizes Augustine’s view in Trinitate as follows: “Love

follows upon knowing, but it is a desire to know more. Because a man loves what he knows, he

desires to know what he does not yet know. Knowledge generates love which in turn demands

more knowledge.”7 The idea of what I call the knowledge/love feedback loop is persistent in

Paradiso. In the fourth sphere, Solomon describes how their inner caritas is displayed: “Each

robe reflects love’s ardor shining fourth; the ardor, the vision; the vision shines down to us as

each is granted grace beyond his worth” (Par. 14.40-42). The vision which is given to them is

that of God, who is ultimately the object of caritas. Solomon continues “the vision shall increase;

increase the ardor that the vision kindles” (Par. 14.49-50). Here we have the knowledge of God

(e.g the vision) increase one’s caritas (e.g radiance), which in turn “demands” the increases of

one’s knowledge of God, thus completing the loop. Beatrice summarizes knowledge as the

7
Joseph Anthony Mazzeo, Dantes Conception of Love (1957), 148.
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impetus for love when she explains to Dante the angel hierarchy, “the most blest condition is

based on the act of seeing, not of love, love being the act that follows recognition” (Par 28.109-

11). This concept of the knowledge/love feedback loop should be kept in mind when we return

to the subject of how avarice prevents caritas by deranging wisdom. Since I have noted some of

the attributes of caritas, I would like, in the next part of this essay, to apply and expand our

knowledge of caritas as it relates to how caritas binds man to God, and then man with fellow

man.

Man with God: The Weight of Love

Mezzeo posits that Dante’s understanding of love is in line with that of Augustine.

Augustine developed his understanding of love from the Aristotelian tradition. There are two

concepts of the nature of love in Aristotle which are relevant to Augustine. Firstly, the notion

that love being “the natural inclination, the natural appetite of anything whatsoever for its

object.”8 Secondly, “weight as due to natural place.”9 Augustine thought that God put in man the

desire, or nesus, to return to Him as he is the creator of man’s soul. Love lifts one’s soul to God,

while the lack of love draws one further away from God. Therefore, love, or the lack thereof, is

the object by which the soul in its lightness quickens to God, or is weighed down further,

separating the soul from its creature. The Commedia exhibits love’s quality of “spiritual gravity”

in both contexts.10 In Paradiso, Beatrice recounts the fall of the angels, describing Satan as the

“dark principal you saw crushed by the world’s whole weight in deepest Hell” (Par. 29.57).

Here, Dante uses the imagery of heaviness to describe Satan’s condition of existence apart from

God. Dante uses the same type imagery to the opposite effect to describe the way in which he

8
Ibid, 147.
9
Ibid, 148.
10
Ibid, 147.
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and Beatrice ascend from the moon to mercury. Dante says this of Beatrice, “Then she turned

full of yearning, to the part where the world is quickened most by the True Light” (Par. 5.86—

87). Dante continues this theme of the soul becoming lighter as it becomes closer to its source.

“And like an arrow driven with such might it strikes its mark before the string is still, we soared

to the second kingdom of the light” (Par. 5.91-93) Here, I have shown how caritas draws man

closer to God through the imagery of weight.

Approach to Discussion on Man with Fellow Man

This love for God also translates into love for fellow man. Rather than just focusing on

caritas as it should be in an individual, I want to explore the dynamics of caritas as it relates to

broader groups of people, because as we shall see caritas is a social virtue, which means the two

largest social institutions of Dante’s time, the church and empire, should operate with caritas as

the leading virtue. This, however, it not to say that I will not talk about caritas or the lack thereof

in individuals, because of course, individuals make up these institutions. This means I will look

at the effects of caritas or vice in an individual when they relate to the institutions as a whole.

With that being said, let us see how caritas should function in the church and empire by looking

at examples from the Commedia and by discussing caritas in the economic setting of the

medieval ages in order to contrast that with what the lack of caritas did to these temporal

institutions.

Man with Fellow Man: Caritas in Community

Caritas is the social virtue that dictates the relationship between humans, both in the

economic sense and the religious sense, although, as I’ll show the two in Dante’s time were in

fact the same. In Chapter 15 of Money and the Middle Ages, Jacques Le Goff presents that the

medieval economic system revolved around caritas. He says that “Caritas in general and money
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in particular…are…associated within one same economic process.”11 This process being one of a

gift economy, where almsgiving was the “essential act” of the use of money, which occurred

under the purview of the church, making the church inseparable from the “functioning of

medieval society.” Therefore, “we should locate trade and material wealth firmly ‘within a value

system that was always subject to caritas.’”12 Here, we have caritas as an essential part of the

social fabric. In Montemaggi’s commentary, he says that one’s pursuit of knowledge and virtue

should be tied to that of community, because when community is abandoned, as illustrated by

Dante’s depiction of Ulysses, virtue cannot be gained.13 He says the “understanding of truth is

determined by the extent to which one is willing to have one’s actions defined, and one’s truth

constantly refined, by the presence and needs of others.”14 Caritas has been shown to be the

prime social virtue that binds one with one’s community in which truth and knowledge can

develop. When Virgil, Statius, and Dante exit the fifth cornice where avarice is purged, an angel

cries out the modified fourth beatitude, which is “Blessed are the hungry who thirst after

justice.”15 Justice is, in this case, the same as righteousness.16 Righteousness or justice certainly

apply to the proper relationship man should have with his community. And what is the motivator

to fulfill these social demands? It is Caritas. This special relationship that caritas has with

community extends to that of the church.

Man with Fellow Man: Caritas-ecclesia

11
Jaques Le Goff, Money and the Middle Ages, trans. Jean Barrel (MA: Polity Press, 2012), 144.
12
Ibid, 145.
13
Vittorio Montemaggi, Unknowability of Love: The Theology of Dante's Commedia (IN: Univ. of Notre Dame), 74.
14
Ibid, 82.
15
Stanley V. Benfell, The Biblical Dante (Toronto: Univ of Toronto Press, 2011), 107-142.
16
Fred Clark, “On justice vs. righteousness.” Patheos, July 29, 2014,
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/07/29/on-justice-vs-righteousness/
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In Nasti’s commentary she writes that Augustine noted that the earthly church has both

the mali, the evil faithful and the boni fideles, the good faithful.17 It is the perfect minority in the

“mini-church” of the boni fideles who are bound together by caritas.18 Bonaventure said that

caritas is “the root of that ecclesial unity which makes the church what she is.” 19 And by what

means are these believers so bound together by caritas? It is their love for God. Dante uses a

“daring and suggestive imagine” 20 to represent this relationship the community of believers have

with God.

Then as a clock tower calls us from above when the Bride of God [the church] rises to

sing her matins to the Sweet Spouse [Jesus] that she may earn his love, with one part

pulling and another thrusting, tin-tin, so glad a chime the faithful soul swells with the joy

of love (Par. 139-144).

The language Dante deploys is one that is explicitly sexual. Pertile compares these tercets with

verse 2:10 in Song of Songs.21 Now that we have seen that both the empire and the church are

bound by caritas, we can transition to how avarice effects these communities.

Too Much of a Good Thing: The Siren

The vice of avarice that so broke caritas away from the church and empire, as I will

show, belongs to the category of inordinate love for a good. Dante illustrates the seductive pull

of these vices in this category of avarice, gluttony, and lust by that of a Siren. At first the Siren is

beautiful and draws Dante in, but before his eyes, her veneer is lifted revealing her grotesque

17
Paolo Nasti, Caritas and Ecclesiology in Dante's Heaven of the Sun (IN: Univ. of Notre Dame, 2010), 214.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid, 216.
20
Ibid, 226.
21
Ibid, 227.
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figure. Storm-Maddox gives an insightful interpretation in her commentary on Purgatorio Canto

19. She says, “from her initial hideous appearance to the stench accompanying her eventual

unmasking, is a ‘thing deceptive’ who in this sense figures as Beatrice’s rival,” by “offering

promises of internal happiness that she cannot fulfill.”22 It is the goods that the Siren represents

like that of wealth, food, and love that are perverted by lack of moderation. In this next section, I

want to explore how Dante defines and elaborates on the nature of avarice.

Avarice

The cantos of the “Fifth Cornice” and the “Fourth Circle” provide insight into the exact

nature of avarice. In Inferno, the sinners are divided into two opposing, but related groups, the

hoarders and wasters. This ties back into the Aristotelian framework of virtue being the mean

between two opposing extremes, with the virtue here being liberality.23 Liberality, of course, is a

component of charity, in the sense of giving, which is tied to caritas. The acts of hoarding and

wasting break the human bonds, since one’s personal wealth, whether hoarded or squandered,

affects not just one’s self, but those that are directly or indirectly affected by one’s actions.

Remember that caritas or gifting was the economic model by which society was based on during

Dante’s time. Therefore, a vice such as avarice having to do with greed and wealth management,

would certainly work to upend this system. Before I continue this thought, it is necessary to show

by what means avarice prevents caritas in man, which finally relates back to the concept of the

knowledge/love feedback loop previously mentioned.

Derangement of Wisdom

22
Sara Sturm-Maddox, Lectura Dantis: Purgatori, (Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 2008), 205.
23
Aristotle, The Eudemian Ethics, trans. Anthony Kenny (NY: Cambridge Univ Press, 2011), 18-19.
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In Purgatorio Canto 22, Dante presents the concept that wisdom is incompatible with

avarice. Here, Virgil mistakes Statius’ crime to be avarice, and Virgil questions Statius saying,

“how, amid all the wisdom you possessed—and which you won by such diligence—could

avarice find a place with in your breast?” (Purg 22.22-24) This idea that wisdom and avarice are

unreconcilable is certainly not original to Dante as many philosophers before him expressed

similar views. For example, Cicero stated that “Praiseworthy will be the contempt of money in

every attempt on the part of the expert mind for the love of wisdom.”24 Also, Virgilius

Grammaticus treats the vice of avarice strongly: “no one who is bound by worldly delights and

the desire for wealth can penetrate to true knowledge of wisdom,” and “lust for money renders

the wits of a wise man feeble and devoid of intelligence.”25 Previously I introduced knowledge

by the means of human reason and divine revelation being the initiators of caritas. Of course,

knowledge and wisdom are different, but knowledge is a necessary component of wisdom.

Consequently, the crime of undue love for material wealth a debilitating vice, preventing man

from achieving true virtue, caritas. The avarice in man extends to the perversion of the church

and empire, as the lack of caritas destroys community.

Corruption of Church and Empire

In Inferno Canto 7 and Purgatorio Canto 19 and 20, Dante discusses avarice’s effect on

the church and empire. Many agents of the Catholic church find their eternal damnation in Circle

Four. Although both Virgil and Dante are unable to make out the faces of the damned, they

surmise that most of them are clergy. Their features have been erased by the corruptive vice; this

is the face of avarice. Virgil says, “Those tonsured wraiths of greed were priests indeed, and

24
Vivien Law, Wisdom, Authority and Grammar in the Seventh Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 43.
25
Ibid.
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popes and cardinals for it is these the weed of avarice sows it rankest seed” (Inf. 7.46-48). Here,

we find members of the church mala. Bonaventure noted that “the church was mala because she

only had the love of a meretrix.”26 This ties back into Dante’s use of the Siren, a prostitute

selling out her goods. Here we have a direct comparison between the Bride of God, the perfect

“mini-church,” and a prostitute, a fake lover of God, if you will. Dante references this in Rahab’s

monologue, in which she says that the Vatican was a “cemetery of those faithful hearts” and that

the faithful “shall soon be free of this adultery” (Par. 9.139-43). In Canto 19, we finally have a

personal encounter with a member of the avaricious, Pope Adrian V, who is undergoing

purification. Dante certainly felt much pain over Italy and his home city of Florence where he

witnessed the corrosive effects of avarice. In fact, this theme is foreshadowed in the Dark Wood,

where Dante is prevented from reaching “Mount of Joy,” by the she-wolf who represents the sins

in which avarice is the most prevalent. Dante writes: “A she-wolf drove upon me, starved horror

ravening and wasting beyond all belief” (Inf. 1.48-49). Dante “wavered back…until I slid back

into the sunless wood” (Inf. 1.58-60). This incident mirrors Dante’s own exile, which was due to

the contention between the church and empire over the control of Florence that was caused, as I

will show, by avarice and it’s corruption.

The beginning of corruption starts with Constantine. Dante decries the influence of

money in the church that propagated avarice. “Ah Constantine, what evil marked the hour…of

the fee the first rich Father took from your dower” (Inf. 19.109-11). Hugh Capet’s monologue

gives Dante’s readers a short history into avarice’s corruptive forces acting upon both the church

and empire. He decries the greed with which his own royal lineage acted to gain control over

Papacy. This debasement of all things wise and righteous culminates in the usurping of a Pope

26
Paolo Nasti, Caritas and Ecclesiology in Dante's Heaven of the Sun, 226.
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Boniface VIII (Purg. 20.85-93). Dante saw this corruption as civilization-destroying. He used the

allegory of avarice as a tree blotting out the twin suns of the church and empire, unable to

properly function (Purg. 16.106-8; 17.43-45).27 As you can see, with money comes power,

putting the church in contention with the empire, in this way they corrupt each other. The light of

the church and empire was supposed to illuminate, through caritas, the good path for those under

them. Instead the very communities that were supposed to uphold caritas have become the

agents of their own destruction by the introduction of avarice into their ranks.

Conclusion

In this essay, I have shown how Dante develops and uses the virtue of caritas in context

of the church and empire, and how the lack of caritas, in the form of the vice of avarice, destroys

these divine institutions. I have done this by using examples from the Commedia, along with

using secondary sources in order to contextualize Dante’s poetry within the orthodox theology

and philosophy of the Late-Middle Ages. To summarize of the narrative that I have presented:

Dante identifies two types of love, mind-directed love and animal love, in which virtue and vice

are situated. Caritas is the ultimate virtue that moves all the other theological virtues. Caritas is

present in man through the knowledge/love feedback loop. It binds man to God, and Dante uses

the imagery of weight to demonstrate this. It also binds man to fellow man by holding the

medieval communities together, including the day to day economic life and church life. Dante

identifies avarice as being the corrupter of the church and empire by preventing caritas through

stopping the knowledge/love feedback loop. The passion with which Dante unfolds the cohesive

narrative of the human condition with and apart from God is obvious, as he staunchly condemns

27
Vincent Moleta, Lectura Dantis: Purgatorio (Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 2008), 215.
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the vice of avarice while glorifying the multifaceted virtue of caritas. Although Dante was exiled

from Florence, and lost all that he had there, the prose with which he launched the ambitious

attack against the corrupt institutions of his time have left him a legacy, which continues to this

day.
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