Interpreters of Dante have to accept a number of impossibilia: one is our inability to be experts in every aspect of the poet’s culture and times. An acute critic and theologian, the late Kenelm Foster alerted us to the fact that “underlying all that is said and done in Dante’s heaven of the Sun is the idea of the ‘procession’” of the Holy Trinity: the Son proceeds from the Father and the Holy Spirit is the Love “Who proceeds from the Father and the Son” (Nicene Creed). Foster also pointed out that “the strangest thing” about Dante’s Siger “is his position in the circle of sapientes, by the side of St. Thomas, his adversary on earth now singing his praises in heaven.”[1] What I suggest here is that the strangest thing about the poet’s presentation of Siger is instead something that appears to have escaped the attention of critics. 

Siger of Brabant was a teacher in the Arts Faculty at Paris who was eventually suspected of heresy. Summoned to appear before the Inquisitor in October 1276, Siger fled to Italy to appeal to the pope. He was probably acquitted of the charge of heresy, but was murdered—probably by his secretary—at the papal curia in Orvieto, c. 1281-1284.[2]

The article on Siger in The Dante Encyclopedia states that: “A document of August 27, 1266, describes Siger as the violent head of a group of students from the province of Picardy […] dedicated to promoting doctrines of radical Aristotelianism.”[3] The second part of this statement is highly debatable; the first, clearly wrong. At this time, Siger was neither notorious nor a leader.[4] Did he in fact ever promote “Averroistic thought”?

I shall attempt to sift the evidence more fully elsewhere. Here, I can only summarize the results of recent research. In his De anima intellectiva (1273/1274), Siger is inspired by the desire to interpret Aristotle correctly rather than by any subservience to Averroes, who is only mentioned twice in the treatise. After stating that weighty arguments lead him to believe that the intellective soul is in fact multiplied by the multiplication of human bodies, Siger admits to having had doubts over many years regarding monopsychism: whether the concept of a single intellect for humanity was a rational tenet and what Aristotle’s teaching had been on this point (the Stagyrite’s De anima 3.4-5 is notoriously ambivalent). However, in such a situation, one must firmly accept the teachings of the Christian faith, “which surpasses all human reasoning.”[5] No one must deny revealed truth on account of any philosophical reason, even if incapable of refuting the latter.[6] Far from promoting “Averroistic thought,” in the last of his extant writings (c. 1275-1276) Siger unequivocally declares that Averroes’ view on the way the intellect is united with the human body is not only heretical but it also appears irrational. Aristotle himself was only human and therefore fallible; hence, Christian teaching on the individual soul must be firmly upheld.[7]           

Was Siger’s deference to revelation and Christian dogma sincere? We can never know. What is certain, however, is that Siger did not uphold the idea of the ‘double truth’:  namely, that some things “are true according to philosophy, but not according to the Catholic faith, as if there [could be] two contrary truths, and as if against the truth of sacred scripture there [might be] another truth in the words of pagans who have been damned […].”[8] Over twenty years ago, Dales demonstrated that “there never was such a doctrine […] It was the intellectual opacity of Bishop Tempier which made the doctrine of the double truth out of a subtle and proper distinction between the realms of nature and supernature.”[9] The only thing that should concern us as readers of the Comedy is the fact that its author evidently believed Siger to be sincere in his adherence to the Christian faith. The evidence is both astonishing and overwhelming. The poet-narrator, scriba Dei, claims that he saw Siger’s “eternal light,” his soul in paradise, united to God, perhaps less than twenty years after the philosopher’s death. Siger is not found among those who had denied the soul’s immortality (monopsychism: Inf. 10; cf. Purg. 25.61-75). We are not even told that he had suffered any ‘delay’ in Purgatory. Instead, he—who had rigidly denied the validity of philosophical inquiry in the sphere of theology—enjoys the Beatific Vision in 1300. He is in fact the only ‘pure’ philosopher to be ‘beatified’ by Dante; hence, my title.[10]  Dante’s fourth heaven is full of surprises: King Solomon is not only saved but shines brighter than any churchman or theologian (Par. 10.109-114; 13.37-111); Joachim of Fiore is recognized as a prophet by Bonaventure (12.139-141); and we find the only contemporary pope ‘beatified’ by the poet (John XXI, 1276-1277: Par. 12.134-135). The biggest surprise, however, seems to have escaped notice, and it is entirely contained within the text of Paradiso 10.

The Master of Arts who had remained faithful to his conviction that “No one ought to try to investigate by reason the truths of faith” was chosen by the Comedy’s author to point to the separation between the temporal sphere and humanity’s final goal.[11] In Par. 10.49-51, we learn that:

Tal era quivi la quarta famiglia
de l’alto Padre, che sempre la sazia,
mostrando come spira e come figlia.    (my emphasis)

With supreme irony, Dante tells us that Siger, who had steadfastly refused to step outside the limits of human reason, now enjoys the extraordinary privilege of witnessing God’s demonstration of the supreme mystery of the Christian faith, the procession of the Holy Trinity, something utterly beyond the intellection of even the greatest theologian on earth. And to drive the point home, as the pilgrim and his guide are about to leave the fourth heaven, Siger is one of the spirits that sing three times a hymn in praise of the Trinity (Par. 14.28-33).

[2] Cf. The “Fiore” and the “Detto d’Amore.” A Late 13th-Century Italian Translation of the “Roman de la Rose,” attributable to Dante. A Translation with Introduction and Notes by Santa Casciani & Christopher Kleinhenz (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000): 218-219, sonnet 92, ll. 9-11.

[3]The Dante Encyclopedia, edited by R. Lansing (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 2000): 776.

[4] “Siger […] ne fait figure ni de «chef» ni de «meneur» d’un mouvement concerté […] Siger n’a joué qu’un rôle effacé à cette époque” (F.-X. Putallaz & R. Imbach, Profession: Philosophe. Siger de Brabant [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1997]: 26).

[5] “[…] mihi dubium fuit a longo tempore quid via rationis naturalis in praedicto problemate sit tenendum, et quid senserit Philosophus de dicta questione; et in tali dubio fidei adhaerendum est, quae omnem rationem humanam superat” (Siger de Brabant, De anima intellectiva VII, ll. 42-43, 83-87, ed. B. Bazán, in Quaestiones …, Philosophes médiévaux XIII [Louvain-Paris: Publications universitaires Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1972]: 107-108).

[6] Siger de Brabant, Quaestiones in Metaphysicam. Texte inédit de la reportation de Cambridge. Édition revue de la reportation de Paris, ed. by A. Maurer, Philosophes médiévaux XXV (Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions de l’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1983, [Paris] 3.5, ll. 44-46): 412. Concerning the Aristotelian belief that the world is eternal, “Siger n’a certes pas l’intention de démontrer le contraire de la vérité [chrétienne], de prouver que le monde est éternel; il veut seulement montrer la faiblesse des arguments que l’on apporte en faveur du commencement de l’espèce humaine” (Putallaz & Imbach: 88).

[7] Siger de Brabant, Quaestiones super librum de causis, ed. A. Marlasca, qu. 27, ll. 136-139 and 250-252, Philosophes médiévaux XII (Louvain-Paris: Publications universitaires Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1972): 112 and 115.

[8] Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe. Documents in Translation, edited, with an Introduction, by Edward Peters (London: Scolar Press, 1980): 226 (“The Condemnation of 219 Propositions at Paris, 1277” by Bishop Étienne Tempier: 223-230).

[9] Richard C. Dales, “The Origin of the Doctrine of the Double Truth,” Viator 15 (1984): 179.

[10] Limitations of space make it impossible to illustrate the differences in the roles assigned to philosophy by Siger, on the one hand, and by Aquinas (or even Albert the Great), on the other. Cf. “Per Dante il vero paradigma del filosofo è Sigieri di Brabante […]” (R. Imbach, Dante, la filosofia e i laici [Genova-Milano: Marietti 1820]: 212). See also F. Pironet, “Théologie révélée versus théologie philosophique: Siger de Brabant renverse Thomas d’Aquin,” Philosophiques 31 (2004): 311-347. Readers would do well to reflect on the fact that as a plural noun veri (Par. 10.138) is a hapax in the Comedy.

[11] “Nec debet aliquis conari per rationem inquirere quae supra rationem sunt, vel rationes in contrarium dissolvere” (QMet., cit., 3, 5, ll. 42-43: 412). Cf. Monarchia 3.16 [15].6-10; Purg. 16.106-112.