In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7 Dante’s Davidic Journey From Sinner to Go d’s Scrib e T H E R E S A F E D E R I C I Dante’s debt to the Psalms—the biblical book that, to many of its interpreters , contained the wisdom of the whole Bible in its words—is widely acknowledged, as is the influence of the biblical figure whom he believed to be its single author: King David.1 In Dante’s time, David was considered a sinner, a penitent, a just man, and an exemplary ruler. He was the psalmist, a divinely inspired auctor, a prophet, and a figure of Christ to come. The Book of Psalms was read as a compendium of precepts applicable to every aspect of the human condition. It functioned as a moral guide: in imitating the David of the Psalms, Christians could live a virtuous life. From Augustine onwards, the Book of Psalms was also seen as offering the most complete Christological prophecy of the Old Testament . The crucial importance of the Psalms to medieval society is clear from the attention given to this biblical book by commentators.2 For the Church Fathers, for medieval monastic institutions, and for the devout laity, the Psalms of David played a fundamental role in both communal worship and private prayer. Among his many biblical allusions and borrowings, Dante makes particular use of King David both as a character and as a poet.3 On various occasions throughout the Commedia, Dante uses the figure of David in all his embodiments. This essay analyzes the ways in which Dante draws on established late medieval viewpoints about David and uses them for his own purposes. The breadth of Dante’s biblical and classical borrowings and allusions is well known, as is the fact that Dante adopts no one 180 biblical or classical author as his dominant literary model. Keeping this breadth and complexity in mind, however, I will argue for the importance of David and the Psalms in the construction of the Commedia. Images of David pervade the Commedia from beginning to end, and Dante’s appropriation of Davidic characteristics both validates the intrinsic message of salvation found in the poetry of the Commedia—the work to which “ha posto mano e cielo e terra” (Par. 25.2) [both Heaven and earth have set their hand]—and also gives a divinely chosen precedent for the image of the pilgrim Dante as the archetypal penitent. The image of David obviously most appropriate for Dante’s use in Inferno and Purgatorio is that of the archetypal penitent. This image is almost exclusively connected with Psalm 50, the Miserere—a psalm that had a highly significant role in church ritual and penitential acts. This psalm is used or alluded to in each of Dante’s cantiche, but is of particular importance in Inferno and Purgatorio, where the pilgrim learns about sin and penitence in general and about his own sin, resulting in his own crucial moment of penitence in the Earthly Paradise. For centuries, David the penitent had been perceived as an exemplary model of repentance, and in the Commedia Dante creates an analogous role for the pilgrim, presenting him as a “new David,” a role model for his own times. As Robert Hollander has rightly noted, “the David who sinned in his love for Bathsheba and who for a time was denied his kingdom by his enemies was a natural figural precursor of Dante, a sinner in his false love and a political exile. The cry of the penitential psalmist found a ready way to the penitential Dante.”4 The medieval image of King David that is first appropriated by Dante for the pilgrim is that of sinner and penitent, and it is emblematically evoked by the first words of Psalm 50 in the pilgrim’s first words to Virgil: “Miserere di me” (Inf. 1.65) [Have mercy on me]. Should David function in any way as a model for Dante in Paradiso, clearly it will not be in terms of sinner or penitent. The final citation of Psalm 50 in Paradiso 32, however, invites the reader to look back over the whole of the pilgrim’s journey to the dark wood of sin and that first exclamation of Miserere. Dante’s poetic abilities are of particular thematic importance in Paradiso, as he focuses on his mission to describe his journey as he saw it and to transcribe truthfully the words of the blessed...

Share