Dante’s political thought, which contains points of remarkable originality compared with the treatises of the time, is set out in an organic fashion in the Monarchia, but first indicated in the fourth treatise of the Convivio and later reiterated at various points in his Letters and in the Commedia. Accepting the Aristotelian distinction between humanity’s earthly and spiritual goals, Dante does not consider one superior to the other, thereby differentiating his thought from that of Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic tradition. Although there are those who would view him in a more secular, more contemporary light, Dante always adhered to a dualistic perspective, emphasizing the separation between the temporal and the spiritual, possibly influenced by Averroism. Recognizing earthly happiness as achievable and seeing it as a goal of human mortality, Dante sets the existence of another, supernatural goal, on an eschatological level, beyond history, a goal that belongs to the order of Grace and not to that of Nature. So that humanity, blinded by cupidity, would not become lost, God instituted a dual guide: in the temporal order is the emperor, leading the quest for earthly happiness and in fact identified as Law; in the spiritual order, guiding the achievement of eternal life, is the pope. This distinction between the two levels leads inevitably to the mutual independence of the two authorities, aptly described in Purg., XVI 107-8 as due soli […], / che l’una e l’altra strada / facean veder, e del mondo e di Deo (“two suns which showed the one way and the other, that of the world, and that of God”). But in Dante’s works lucid thought is constantly interwoven with his vehement denunciation of the cupidity afflicting the earth, corrupting both spiritual and temporal power, disrupting peace, unleashing evil and depriving human beings of the wherewithal to achieve their goals. Dante’s irreducible antagonism towards the present is nonetheless tempered by an intense reforming urge and, consequently, a messianic perspective of palingenesis.

Manuscript illumination of Emperor Justinian, Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Holkham misc. 48, p. 123.