Lecture III

Truly a wonderful spiritual star shone over the spiritual life of Europe in that School of Chartres, where to this day there stand the wonderful architectural forms of the Cathedral, revealing most beautifully the work of many centuries. In other places too, this spiritual life was living. It was a spiritual life working in spiritual ways and giving an altogether different and more spiritual insight into nature than that which afterwards came to take its place. It is interesting to see the manifold ways in which that spiritual life rayed out. In France, in one place after another we can see how even in the teaching that was given, the spirit of Chartres lived on in the High Schools carried over into Southern France, and even into Italy. But it lived not only in the teachings, it lived on in an immediately spiritual way. Interesting it is how Brunetto Latini, having been an Ambassador in Spain during a certain time, returned to Florence, the city of his fathers, heard of its misfortune even from a distance, and thus suffered a powerful convulsion of his soul, to which was added a slight attack of sunstroke. In this bodily condition the human being is easily accessible to spiritual influences that work in a spiritual way. It is indeed well known how Brunetto Latini on his way to Florence experienced what was actually a kind of elementary initiation. Brunetto Latini became Dante's teacher, and the spirituality of the Commedia proceeds from the teachings which Brunetto Latini gave to his pupil Dante.