that everlasting proclamation being made, that its functions were
naturally at an end.

However, in the height of such a state of society in Italy, Dante was
born and flourished; and was himself eminently a picture of the age in
which he lived. But of more importance even than this, to a right
understanding of Dante, is the consideration that the scholastic
philosophy was then at its acme even in itself; but more especially in
Italy, where it never prevailed so exclusively as northward of the Alps.
It is impossible to understand the genius of Dante, and difficult to
understand his poem, without some knowledge of the characters, studies,
and writings of the schoolmen of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth
centuries. For Dante was the living link between religion and
philosophy; he philosophized the religion and christianized the
philosophy of Italy; and, in this poetic union of religion and
philosophy, he became the ground of transition into the mixed Platonism
and Aristotelianism of the Schools, under which, by numerous minute
articles of faith and ceremony, Christianity became a craft of
hair-splitting, and was ultimately degraded into a complete 'fetisch'
worship, divorced from philosophy, and made up of a faith without
thought, and a credulity directed by passion. Afterwards, indeed,
philosophy revived under condition of defending this very superstition;
and, in so doing, it necessarily led the way to its subversion, and that
in exact proportion to the influence of the philosophic schools. Hence
it did its work most completely in Germany, then in England, next in
France, then in Spain, least of all in Italy. We must, therefore, take
the poetry of Dante as christianized, but without the further Gothic
accession of proper chivalry. It was at a somewhat later period, that
the importations from the East, through the Venetian commerce and the
crusading armaments, exercised a peculiarly strong influence on Italy.