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The Thomistic Institute

The Depths and the Heights: The Comedy As Pilgrimage | Dr. Robert Royal

The Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute

Thomism, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Catholic, Philosophy, Catholicism

4.8873 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2019

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This retreat conference was given at the Fall 2019 Intellectual Retreat "Dante and Aquinas: The Theological Vision of the Divine Comedy" held at the Moody Center on 20-22 September 2019.


Presenters at this retreat were Fr. Gregory Pine, OP (Thomistic Institute), Dr. Robert Royal (Faith and Reason Institute), and Fr. Albert Trudel, OP (Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception).


For more information on this and other events, go to thomisticinstitute.org/events-1

Transcript

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0:00.0

I want to talk in this session about pilgrimage and connect pilgrimage with the idea of final causes.

0:08.0

Now, some of you I know have read Aristotle.

0:11.0

By the way, I had read some Aristotle when I came to Dante, but it didn't touch me somehow.

0:19.0

I don't know. It was somehow distant from me.

0:20.9

But when I saw it in Inferno, it kind of went in.

0:25.2

And it's an arrow that never came out.

0:27.3

And for good or for bad, this is what happens to some of us.

0:32.4

But I want to talk about, first, the idea of, is such a pilgrimage possible?

0:42.0

Somebody asked about that in the last session, that he really did this, he really do this.

0:47.2

And in his letter to his patron, Con Grande de la Scala, which I already mentioned, which is

0:52.2

kind of a long, well, I mean, if you printed it out,

0:55.9

it was probably to be seven or eight pages. But it's worth looking at because he talks about how,

1:00.3

in a way, the poem has multiple senses, like the four senses of scripture, what he intended

1:05.9

to do by this. And then he says, he asks a question that we think is a modern question but was a

1:12.6

question in the Middle Ages as well you know people are asking is such a journey

1:17.2

possible so here's what he says to his his patron this will maybe get us

1:26.3

going I'm quoting here from the letter. The human intellect at the

1:31.8

end of life, because of the inborn nature and affinity which it has for the separate intellectual

1:38.2

substance. I don't exactly understand that. Maybe the Dominicans can tell us what that is.

1:43.5

When it is raised, is raised to such an extent that memory is lacking after its return, since it transcended humankind. And this is shown to us by the Apostle, saying, St. Paul, speaking to the Corinthians, where he says, I know a man, whether in the body or out of the body,

2:03.0

I know not, God knoweth, caught up to the third heaven, and he saw the secret things of God,

2:10.5

which is not granted to man to utter. Thus, after the, and now Dante is back, speaking in its own voice, thus, after the intellect

...

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