The "Fede Santa"

In the Vienna Museum there are two medallions, one representing Dante and the other the painter Peter of Pisa; on the reverse side both bear the letters F.S.K.I.P.F.T., which Aroux interprets as: Frater Sacre Kadosch, Imperialis Principatus, Frater Templarius. For the first three letters this interpretation is obviously incorrect and does not convey any intelligible meaning; we think it should read Fidei Sanctce Kadosch. The Association of the Fede Santa, of which Dante seems to have been a leader, was a tertiary order of Templar filiation, justifying the name Frater Templarius; its dignitaries bore the title of Kadosch, a Hebrew word meaning 'holy' or 'consecrated', which has been preserved to our days in the high grades of Masonry. It is not without reason then that Dante takes St. Bernard, who established the rule of the Order of the Temple, as his guide for the completion of his own celestial journey [^8]: he seems to be pointing out that, given the conditions characteristic of his time, access to the highest possible degree of the spiritual hierarchy was only attainable in this way. As for explaining the Imperialis Principatus, one need not perhaps limit oneself to considering Dante's political role, which shows only that the organisations to which he belonged were at the time well disposed toward the imperial power. We must point out in this connection that the 'Holy Empire' has a symbolic significance, and that today once more, in Scottish Masonry, the members of the Supreme Councils bear the titles of dignitaries of the Holy Empire, the title 'Prince' appearing in the denominations of many grades. Moreover, from the beginning of the 16th century, the leaders of the different organisations of Rosicrucian origin bore the title of Imperator; and there are reasons to think that in Dante's time the Fede Santa bore certain similarities to what later became the 'Rosicrucian Brotherhood', even if the latter is not more or less directly derived from the former. We shall find many more parallels of this kind, and Aroux himself indicated a considerable number of them. One of the essential points that he brought to light, without perhaps drawing all the necessary conclusions, is the significance of the different symbolic regions Dante describes, and more especially the 'heavens'. These regions are in reality so many different states; and the heavens are, literally, 'spiritual hierarchies': that is to say, degrees of initiation. In this context an interesting concordance could be established between Dante's conception and that of Swedenborg, without mentioning some theories of the Hebrew Kabbalah, and particularly those of Islamic esoterism. In this respect Dante himself has provided a clue worth mentioning: "A vedere quello che per terzo cielo s'intende... dico che per cielo intendo la scienza e per cieli le scienze." But what exactly are these 'sciences' understood under the symbolic designation of the 'heavens', and must we see therein an allusion to the 'seven liberal arts' so often men- tioned elsewhere by Dante and his contemporaries? What leads us to think that this must be the case is that, according to Aroux, "the Cathars had, as early as the 12th century, some signs of recognition, passwords, and astrological doctrine (they conducted their initiations at the vernal equinox). Their scientific system was founded on the doctrine of correspondences: Grammar corresponded to the Moon, Dialectic to Mercury, Rhetoric to Venus, Music to Mars, Geometry to Jupiter, Astronomy to Saturn, and Arithmetic or Illumined Reason to the Sun." Accordingly, to the seven planetary spheres-the first seven of Dante's nine heavens-corresponded the seven liberal arts respectively; and precisely these same designations are depicted on the seven rungs of the left upright of the Ladder of the Kadosch (30th degree of Scottish Masonry). The ascending order, in this latter case, differs in an inversion, on the one hand, of Rhetoric and Logic (which is substituted here for Dialectic), and, on the other, of Geometry and Music; and also in that the science corresponding to the Sun (Arithmetic) occupies the rank normally assigned to that star in the astrological order of the planets-the fourth, or mid-point of the septenary-whereas the Cathars placed it on the highest rung of their Mystical Ladder, as Dante does for its corresponding one on the opposite upright of the ladder, Faith (Emounab)-that is to say this mysterious Fede Santa of which he was himself Kadosch. [^10] A further comment is necessary on this subject, for how is it that correspondences of this kind, where an assimilation to real initiatic degrees is implied, have been attributed to the liberal arts, which were after all taught publicly and officially in the schools? We think that they must have been conceived in two ways, the one exoteric and the other esoteric. It is possible to superimpose on any profane science another science that is related to the same object but looks at it from a higher viewpoint, and which is to that profane science what the higher meanings of the scriptures are to their literal meaning. One could also say that external sciences afford a means of expression for higher truths since they themselves stand in the relation of symbol to another order: as Plato said, the perceptible is only a reflection of the intelligible. The phenomena of nature and the events of history all have a symbolic value, for they express something of the principles upon which they depend, and of which they are the more or less remote consequences. Through a suitable transposition, all science and all art can assume a true esoteric value; why then should the expressions drawn from the liberal arts not have played, in the initiations of the Middle Ages, a role comparable to that played in speculative Masonry by language borrowed from the art of the builders? We will go further: to look at things in this way is, after all, to bring them back to their principle; this point of view is, therefore, inherent in their very essence, and not accidentally super-added; and if this is the case, could not the tradition to which they are connected go back to the very origin of the sciences and arts, whereas the exclusively profane viewpoint preponderant in the modern age results only from forgetfulness of this tradition? We cannot deal here with this question and all the developments that it would entail, but let us see how Dante himself, in the commentary he gives on his first Canzone, points out the way he applies to his own work the principles of some of the liberal arts: "O uomini, che ved- ere non potete la sentenza di questa Canzone, non la rifiutate però; ma ponete mente alla sua bellezza, che è grande, sì per costruzione, la quale si pertiene alli grammatici; sì per l'ordine del sermone, che si pertiene alli rettorici; si per lo numero delle sue parti, che si pertiene alli musici." [^11] Do we not hear an echo of the Pythagorean tradition in this way of relating music and number in a science of rhythm, with all its correspondences?; and is it not this same tradition, precisely, that makes possible an understanding of the 'solar' role attributed to arithmetic? For arithmetic is the common center of all the other sciences, and also of the correspondences that unite them: in the cases of music and geometry, through knowledge of proportion in forms (which finds its direct application in architecture); and in astronomy, through knowledge of the harmony of the celestial spheres. We shall have ample opportunity later to see what fundamental importance the symbolism of numbers assumes in Dante's work; and even if this symbolism is not uniquely Pythagorean, and reappears in other doctrines for the simple reason that truth is one, it is no less permissible to think that, from Pythagoras to Virgil, and from Virgil to Dante, the 'chain of the tradition' was undoubtedly unbroken on Italian soil.