Coming now to regard the characteristics of Dante's age we must say that
the first big thing that looms in sight is the fact that this was the
golden age of Christian faith. Everywhere the Cross, the symbol of
salvation, met the eye. It was the age when men lived in one faith, used
one ritual, professed one creed, accepted a common doctrine and moral
standard and breathed a common religious atmosphere. Heresy was not
wholly absent but it was the exception. Religion regarded then not as an
accident or an incident of life but as a benign influence permeating
the whole social fabric, not only cared for the widow and orphan and
provided for the poor, but it shaped men's thoughts, quickened their
sentiments, inspired their work and directed their wills. These men
believed in a world beyond the grave as an ever present reality. Hell,
Purgatory, Heaven were so near to them that they, so to speak, could
touch the invisible world with their hands. To them, as to Dante, "this
life was but a shadowy appearance through which the eternal realities of
another world were constantly betraying themselves." Of the intensity
and universality of faith in that life beyond death, Dante is not the
exception but the embodiment. His poem has no such false note of
scepticism as we detect in Tennyson's In Memoriam.
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