Beatrice
Beatrice (from Occitan: "the Beatifying"; Latin: Beatrix) is a central figure in works by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). In Dante's imagery, she is a symbol of the purified astral body transformed into the spirit self, which in Christian terminology is also called the Virgin Sophia. As a symbol of the vita contemplativa, she embodies the true Christian faith, the true "theologia", which Dante interprets entirely in terms of Templar esotericism.
„If you follow the teachings of the Templars, there is something at the centre that was worshipped as something feminine. This feminine was called the divine Sophia, the divine wisdom. Manas is the fifth principle, the spiritual self of man, which should arise, to which a temple should be built. And just as the pentagon from the entrance to Solomon's temple characterises the five-membered man, so too does this feminine characterise the wisdom of the Middle Ages. With his "Beatrice", Dante wanted to portray nothing other than this wisdom. Only those who look at Dante's "Divine Comedy" from this point of view can understand it. Therefore you will find the same symbols in Dante's work that are expressed in the Templars, the Christian knighthoods, the Grail knights and so on.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 152)
Literature
- Giovanni Boccaccio: Das Leben Dantes, Übertragen von Edmund Theodor Kauer, Deutsche Buchgemeinschaft, Berlin
- Arthur Schult: Dantes Divina Commedia als Zeugnis der Tempelritter-Esoterik, Turm-Verlag, Bietigheim 1979, ISBN 978-3799901840
- Rudolf Steiner: Die Tempellegende und die Goldene Legende , GA 93 (1991), ISBN 3-7274-0930-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
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References
- ↑ Rossetti writes in a letter to William Graham of 3 March 1873 that his painting was intended
- „not as a representation of the incident of the death of Beatrice, but as an ideal of the sub- ject, symbolized by a trance or sudden spiritual transfiguration. Beatrice is rapt visibly into Heaven, seeing as it were through her shut lids (as Dante says at the close of the Vita Nuova): "Him who is Blessed throughout all ages"; and in sign of the supreme change, the radiant bird, a messenger of death, drops the white poppy between her open hands. In the background is the City which, as Dante says: "sat solitary" in mourning for her death; and through whose street Dante himself is seen to pass gazing towards the figure of Love opposite, in whose hand the waning life of his lady flickers as a flame. On the sundial at her side the shadow falls on the hour of nine, which number Dante connects mystically in many ways with her and with her death. The date below the predella (3ist March 1300) is that of Dante's meeting Beatrice in the Garden of Eden. [The date 9 June 1290 heading the main panel represents the date of Beatrice's death.] The words, "Veni, Sponsa De Libano" are sung at the meeting by the women in the train of Beatrice.“ (zit. nach Lady Frances Horner: Time Remembered, W. Heinemann, London 1933 [1]
