Loving wisdom or women? Matteo Romani’s symbolic interpretation of Beatrice in Dante’s three autobiographical works (1858-1862)

The Dante scholarship of the highly learned cleric Matteo Romani (1806-1878) has been neglected, and none of it has been translated into English heretofore. Bringing to light Romani’s commentaries on the Inferno (1858), Purgatorio (1859), Paradiso (1860), and Convito (1862), this article analyses, more specifically, his interventions into the debates about the epistemological status of Beatrice. First, it situates Romani’s symbolic reading of Beatrice in relation to the quaestio Beatricis in the mid-nineteenth century; second, it addresses his interpretation of the Vita Nuova; third, his treatment of Dante’s fear of infamia, commentary on “Voi che ’ntendendo,” and hermeneutical procedure in the Convito; fourth, his interpretation of Dante’s sin (Inf. 1-2) and Beatrice’s reproaches in the Earthly Paradise (Purg. 30-33); and, finally, his purely symbolical interpretation of Beatrice’s place in the heavenly rose in the parallel cantos of Paradiso (Par. 30-33).