Art as God’s Grandchild: Dante’s Aristotelian Case against Usury

• In Event: Art and the Symbolization of Order

Abstract

Many commentators read Dante’s condemnation of usury in the Inferno as a mere product of its time. However, this interpretation fails to do justice to both the text and its historical context. In Canto 11, Dante is perplexed by the placement of the usurers in the seventh circle of hell, the circle of the violent. He asks Virgil to go back and explain why usury offends God’s goodness (Inf. 11.94-96). Given that Virgil rarely stops to explain any given contrapasso, it seems that the author wants us to likewise pause and ponder the nature of this sin. Despite the emphasis placed on usury in Canto 11, the usurers themselves make only a brief appearance in Canto 17. Sitting beneath a rain of fire, their faces are obscured, and they are identifiable only by the family crests on their money pouches (Inf. 17.52-66). This detail suggests that Dante’s stance against usury has less to do with the individual and more to do with the practice itself. Moreover, the imagery itself tells us something about his views on usury: Dante subverts the anti-Semitic trope of the Jewish moneylender, often depicted with moneybags worn around the neck, to condemn several prominent Italian families. As Teodolinda Barolini notes, this detail is often overlooked because the “commentary tradition of the Commedia does not look at the social and historical context of usury,” so “readings of Inferno 17 do not bring up the topic of anti- Semitism.”2It is the goal of this paper to provide that context in order to better understand the philosophical content of Dante’s critique.
Dante’s condemnation of usury in lines 97 to 111 in Canto 11 of the Inferno is best understood as part of a broader critique of the emerging political economy of Europe. As we shall see shortly, moneylending by prominent Italian families in Dante’s native Florence had become increasingly commonplace, despite the Church’s ban on usury. Moreover, this influx of wealth created new financial interests that destabilized Italian politics. Dante’s critique of usury was in fact highly topical, even controversial. Moreover, although Dante generally followed the scholastics in his line of critique, his argument is first and foremost Aristotelian in character. This is especially apparent in his characterization of art as the grandchild of God. By extending Aristotle’s analogy between art and nature to nature and God, Dante traces a “lineage” of sorts between God and art. The usurer therefore scorns not just nature by his misdeeds but art as well. However, it is ambiguous precisely how the usurer sins against art, even though this is the rationale for the inclusion of usury in the seventh circle. One possible interpretation of this analogy closely parallels scholastic thinking on the topic. However, we will suggest that Dante may have had a more directly Aristotelian argument in mind.

Author

• Monica Jeffery, The Catholic University of America