Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person

Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person is a pilgrimage to rediscover the spiritual and humanizing benefit of the Commedia. Treating each cantica of the poem, this volume offers profound meditations on the intertwined themes of memory, prayer, sainthood, the irony of sin, theological and literary aesthetics, and desire, all while consistently reflecting upon the key themes of mercy and beauty in the revelation of the human person within the drama of divine love. ""This thoughtful collection of essays convincinglydemonstrates that that the Divine Comedy has something to say to a society that is overly plugged-in yet increasingly disconnected, tribal, and short on that quality of mercy by which we come to recognize both beauty and God's unimaginable, steadfast love.Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Personis a gift of respite and reorientation to our roiling age."" --Elizabeth Scalia, Author ofStrange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life ""This superb collection is more than simply an anthology of scholarly essays on Dante'sCommedia;it is also an invitation for readers to be transformed intellectually, aesthetically, and spiritually as they journey through Dante's poem into his living theological imagination and his extraordinary vision of the mystery and grandeur of human personhood. Read alongside Dante himself, this volume may become something more than an invitation--it may become an initiation!"" --Jacob Holsinger Sherman, University Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion, University of Cambridge and author ofPartakers of the Divine: Contemplation and the Practice ofPhilosophy ""This delightful volume invites us to see Dante's poem as a pilgrimage, and to ourselves take steps along with the poet, not as solitary seekers of truth but as a community of fellow travellers who need to learn from one another. Written for the general audience by gifted scholars of literature, theology, and philosophy, the volume invites us into one of the greatest poetic accounts of the journey from dark to light, not in some other lifetime, but right in the midst of this one."" --Janet Soskice, Professor of Philosophical Theology, University of Cambridge Leonard J. DeLorenzo is Associate Professional Specialist in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, with a concurrent appointment in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Vittorio Montemaggi is Associate Professor of Religion and Literature and Concurrent Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.