The
guerdon of his search was doubt. But Dante, as we have seen, made his
very doubts help him upward toward certainty; each became a round in the
ladder by which he climbed to clearer and clearer vision till the
end.[152] Philosophy had made him forget Beatrice; it was Philosophy who
was to bring him back to her again, washed clean in that very stream of
forgetfulness that had made an impassable barrier between them.[153]
Dante had known how to find in her the gift of Achilles's lance,
"Which used to be the cause
First of a sad and then a gracious boon."[154]
There is another possible, and even probable, theory which would
reconcile the Beatrice of the _Purgatorio_ with her of the _Vita Nuova_.
Suppose that even in the latter she signified Theology, or at least some
influence that turned his thoughts to God? Pietro di Dante, commenting
the _pargoletta_ passage in the _Purgatorio_, says expressly that the
poet had at one time given himself to the study of theology and deserted
it for poesy and other mundane sciences. This must refer to a period
beginning before 1290. Again there is an early tradition that Dante in
his youth had been a novice in a Franciscan convent, but never took the
vows. Buti affirms this expressly in his comment on _Inferno_, XVI.
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