The Monarchia Controversy: An Historical Study with Accompanying Translations of Dante Alighieri's Monarchia, Guido Vernani's Refutation of the "Monarchia" Composed by Dante, and Pope John XXII's Bull Si fratrum (review)

Dante's Monarchia was long thought to be an anachronistic, unrealistic attempt to revive the Roman Empire that was inspired by Henry VII's Italian expedition in 1311-13. Instead, it now appears all but certain that the treatise was writen circa 1318 to undermine John XXII's claim, made in the bull Si fratrum(1317), that the pope could appoint new imperial vicars during an interregnum, which involved Dante's patron, Cangrande della Scala of Verona, in a protracted conflict with the papacy that lasted until 1339. Dante's polemic did not become controversial, however, until 1329, when its use in support of Emperor Louis of Bavaria caused it to be burned in Bologna by a papal legate and refuted by a Dominican master of theology, Guido Vernani. Although the significance of the new date has been recognized since 1965, the present book is the longest and most elaborate study yet of the Monarchia controversy.

The core of Cassell's book is a series of essays that, in 105 pages, first summarizes the theories of church-state relations developed before 1318, then treat the purpose, method, and fortuna of the Monarchia itself, and finally consider Vernani's criticisms of it in detail. These essays are followed by Cassell's translation of the Monarchia, together with the first English versions of Vernani's Refutation and the papal bull Si fratrum (ninety pages in all); the original Latin texts are not included. Both essays and translations are abundantly documented by 153 pages of endnotes and thirty-four pages of bibliography.

Organized thus, the book is fiendishly difficult to use, because to follow the argument the attentive reader is forever paging from an essay to its endnote, and from there to the translation and to its endnote. Although footnotes would have greatly reduced such frustration, in this case their use was out of the question, given the author's determination to consign all technicalities to his notes, including exhaustive references to secondary authorities (e.g., the notes to page 3, which cover almost four pages). As a result, the prose of his essays is lucid and witty, while his notes are a labyrinthine mine of information for the advanced scholar, who will especially appreciate the up-to-date and thorough bibliographical references.

Footnotes might well have been used for his commentary on the text of the Monarchia, however, for there his notes are about the same in number and length as those of his predecessors, for instance those of Bruno Nardi (1979) or my own (1998). As a commentator, Cassell is both original and selective; so he supplements rather than replaces the work of his predecessors. His translation is accurate enough but seems less transparent than mine: for example, in the last chapter he renders denunciatores as "heralds" rather than "proclaimers," Fons as "Fount" instead of "source," and princeps as "prince" not "ruler."

Perhaps the author's most original thesis is that Dante's theory of church-state relations is based on that of the canonist Huguccio, which Cassell terms "dual originism." Although the parallels are significant, Huguccio may not have been Dante's immediate source, since he favored Gratian and his commentators, the decretists, whose work Huguccio summarized. Throughout Cassell shares Dante's prejudices, and accordingly he is unsympathetic—not to say hostile—to propapal triumphalists in general and to decretalists in particular, but he is most harsh with Vernani, in whom he discerns "ulterior motives and ultimate frustration" (p. 107). My impression is that Cassell uses biblical and patristic sources with more assurance than canonistic ones; St. Augustine, whom Dante rarely cites, is his special favorite.

Occasional errata are to...