[211] But in the Spiritual World Dante acknowledges no such
supremacy, and, when he would have fallen on his knees before Adrian V.,
is rebuked by him in a quotation from the Apocalypse:--
"Err not, fellow-servant am I
With thee and with the others to one power."[212]
So impartial was this man whose great work is so often represented as a
kind of bag in which he secreted the gall of personal prejudice, so truly
Catholic is he, that both parties find their arsenal in him. The Romanist
proves his soundness in doctrine, the anti-Romanist claims him as the
first Protestant, the Mazzinist and the Imperialist can alike quote him
for their purpose. Dante's ardent conviction would not let him see that
both Church and Empire were on the wane. If an ugly suspicion of this
would force itself upon him, perhaps he only clung to both the more
tenaciously; but he was no blind theorist. He would reform the Church
through the Church, and is less anxious for Italian independence than for
Italian good government under an Emperor from Germany rather than from
Utopia.
The Papacy was a necessary part of Dante's system, as a supplement to the
Empire, which we strongly incline to believe was always foremost in his
mind. In a passage already quoted, he says that "the soil where Rome sits
is worthy beyond what men preach and admit," that is, as the birthplace
of the Empire.
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