Essays On Dante Author:Karl Witte Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I.—DANTE BRESLAU, 1831 Inscribed to Domprediger Blanc of Halle [Danie-Forschungen, vol. i. pp. 1-20 (1869).] The Gothic cathedral has been regarded as ... more »the symbol of that mediaeval spirit of which it is itself the purest product. And it is easy to carry the comparison down into detail. Two summits rise triumphantly above the chapels, arches, gables, and pinnacles, as if inspiring and directing the whole lift of the pile, and standing for the common types of all the other parts. But even they, boldly as they rise into the air, and mightily as buttress and pillar thrust them upward, for the most part fail in their ascent long ere the crowning point of the pyramid shows the way beyond the clouds and casts upon the ground the dial- shadow to regulate the ways of men. There are weird traditions of how the wondrous building rose to such heights through no rightful aid, how the Evil One himself had a hand in their construction, here smuggling his buildings into the world as the houses of God, there hurling down the eager master-builder from the towers of the half- finished work. And so the people look with shuddering awe upon the pile—unfinished, yet beginning to fall to pieces already,—and ever remain in doubt which side is built in honour of God and which in honour of the devil. In like fashion the Empire and the Papacy at first rose parallel and harmonious above mediaeval society. But they soon forgot that both alike were but called to complete and crown the visible Church of God ; and while each sought to outstrip the other's growth, each taxed the other with serving the powers of darkness under pretext that they were the powers of light; while all the time each was trembling on its own foundations. Then, as in the Cathedral of Cologne, the lowly built their tabernacles b...« less