How The Divine Comedy drew on 2 Corinthians
A documented line of influence: Dante Alighieri demonstrably engaged Paul’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
2 Corinthians
Paul · c. 56
BibleThe influenced
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri · 1320
MedievalRelevance
8/10
On The Divine Comedy’s page
- Before Dante's ascent comes Paul's — the mystic caught up to the third heaven of 2 Corinthians 12
- Dante invokes him by name at the threshold: "I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul" — the two men who went and came back
- Reading Paul first shows you the seed of the Paradiso's whole architecture: the hierarchy of heavens, the vision a living man isn't supposed to survive
On 2 Corinthians’s page
- Paul's single strange sentence — caught up to the third heaven, 2 Corinthians 12 — became Dante's license to write Paradise
- Dante names him directly: Io non Enea, io non Paulo sono, "I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul" — measuring his own pilgrim against Paul's rapture
- The Comedy's tiered heavens and ascending vision take this Pauline glimpse beyond the body as their precedent