ABSTRACT
Peter Dronke’s extensive work on Dante Alighieri has explored his relationship to what has been called the ‘twelfth-century Renaissance’ and to writers earlier than Dante, in particular, Boethius, whose Consolation of Philosophy, written in prison, sets out the importance of Philosophy, who appears as a woman to the captive Boethius. Dronke makes the point that as Dante feels his joy increase, he feels a ‘letargo’ – lethargy – which Dronke explains in medieval terms as a medical condition, almost a kind of madness. Dante’s image of Bernard the loving contemplative suggests he can have known little of the saint’s personal or public career. In the dramatic lauda of the Judgement from Perugia, which is a generation or so older than Dante’s Paradiso, Mary, in complete contrast, is presented as helpless and despairing, pleading for grace for human beings passionately but in vain.
