When I was originally struggling with reading The Divine Comedy, I tried some of Dante’s other writings. Dante wrote up a whole system about how to read on more than one level and this, oddly, was a good entry point for me, because my mother had shared this system with a whole bunch of teenage friends of mine, fifty years ago. Dante said there was a literal meaning and then an allegorical one, which he defined as hidden truth. Then, he explained several kinds of allegorical meaning. I simplified this as a literal level and then three allegorical levels, in line with the way my mother taught about it. 

The literal level involved the direct words on the page and the allegorical levels were ways to discuss what the words could tell you about yourself, the world, and God. There’s a hint of overthinking in this. Dante discussed hidden meaning without necessarily giving it so many layers. Moreover, he seems to warn against to many layers, in some writings I haven’t studied, but that others have.

Dorothy Sayers wrote about Dante’s system in her Paradiso commentary  (pages 44-48 of the Penguin Classics paperback Dante). It’s quite a discussion, including someone who ended up deciding that perhaps there are at least nine levels of meaning that we should look for in Dante. Sayers concludes that this person is like someone who takes a wrong turn, gets lost, and finally shows up at his or her destination. Such a person will tell you that there are lots of ways to get from A to B, but it’s not really ideal to take instruction from them unless you always want to start by making wrong turns. She also references Professor C. S. Singleton in a footnote. According to her he says that over the years Dante “shift[s] from the allegory of poets to the allegory of theologians.”

This is the kind of thing that I avoided passionately when I was first reading The Divine Comedy. 

But I’ve been reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church this year and it includes this remarkable passage. 

The senses of Scripture

115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.” ⁸³ 

117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.

(1) The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism. ⁸⁴

(2) The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”. ⁸⁵

(3) The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem. ⁸⁶

118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:

The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny. ⁸⁷

Thomas Aquinas is the author of the quote from paragraph 116 about the literal level being the basis of understanding Scripture. 

Augustine of Dacia is given in the footnotes to the CCC as the author of the couplet in paragraph 118. He was a Scandinavian Dominican who died in either 1282 or 1285. His verse — Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia — is found in a little handbook he wrote. There aren’t many Scandinavian Dominicans who are remembered, so looking this guy up is a fascinating rabbit hole. The Danes like to remember him, and a Calvinist (referenced below) had nice things to say. 

But the important thing, to me, is that Dante was likely to have heard of him. Others have shown long since that Dante was deeply influenced by Saint Thomas Aquinas. He didn’t just put the guy in Heaven and give him a lot to say. He used various writings of Saint Thomas as organizing principles in his Comedy. So it makes sense that Dante was familiar with other Dominican writers.

This brings me back to the quote above from Professor Singleton, about the allegory of poets versus the allegory of theologians. Well, it sort of brings me back. I can’t say I really care about the difference, or even know what it is. I can say that reading on more than one level is rewarding and the Catechism agrees.

One more quote for thought.

114 Be attentive to the analogy of faith.⁸ By “analogy of faith” we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.   (CCC)

Footnote {83} points to Saint Thomas Aquinas , SThI, 1, 10, ad1.  -=-  

{84} 1 Cor 10:2  -=-  

{85} 1 Cor 10:11 & Heb ???  -=-  

{86} Rev 21: 1 thru 22:5  -=-   

{87} Augustine of Dacia.

For a Protestant commentary on this “medieval couplet” see https://historicalhorizons.org/2014/06/13/is-there-a-place-for-medieval-exegesis-in-evangelical-christianity/