The Poet, the Saint, and the Friars: Dante, Francis, and Franciscanism

This dissertation examines Dante’s relationship to Saint Francis and the Franciscans. In particular, it takes under examination Paradiso 11 along with several other passages where Dante mentions either the saint or the friars.

Paradiso 11 is one of the most important and finest canti of the Commedia. Dante’s poetry reaches one of its peaks as he describes Francis’s love story with Lady Poverty. Yet, despite the undoubted admiration and respect for Francis, Dante’s attitude towards the Franciscan friars seems to go on the opposite direction. Indeed, in several passages of his oeuvre Dante despises the Franciscans for their hypocritical behavior, as they praise poverty while living in luxury and commodities.

In this dissertation, I argue that Paradiso 11’s Lady Poverty is a personification of true renunciation, and that explains why and how Francis is so central to the Commedia. The key notion in what poverty means for Dante is detachment, or renunciation, which is the opposite of greed, the most terrible sin in Dante’s view. As Francis is the true standard-bearer of renunciation, Dante represents him as the rightful heir of Christ, a prophet sent by God to redeem Christianity. On the contrary, most Franciscans of Dante’s time are not the rightful heirs of Francis, as they either are hypocrites who do not really care about renunciation, or they believe that poverty is an end in itself without understanding the spiritual principle of perfect renunciation which lies behind poverty.