A review of Dante and the Limits of the Law, by Justin Steinberg

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Notes

1. See, in particular, Schmitt's essay Political Theology (1922).

2. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2002).

3. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (first published in German, 1860).

4. Italian scholars are obsessed with Dante's double pedigree, a man who toggles between the Middle Ages and the emerging modernity; P. Sabbatino, Dante e il Rinascimento: Rasegna Bibliografica e Studi in Onore di Aldo Vallore (Florence: Olschki, 1994).

5. See, for instance, Docta Sanctrorum Patrum, a bull issued by John XXII, an able Avignon pontiff, in 1324.

6. Dante actually was very explicit about his views in his theoretical work De Monarchia (1312–13). The Commedia just reiterates in artistic form the message conveyed in De Monarchia in polemic form.