II - In the beginning was the word

When we talk about the medieval world Dante Alighieri lived in we talk about a world being based more and more on the philosophy of Aristotle. (And less and less on the works of Plato [quote Störig]) Now part of this philosophy was the idea that meaning can only be conveyed with two or more words: a statement of one word is considered an exclamation. Seen this way words do not have meaning but they are meaning something to someone.
For ME philosophy this was a debatable point in a theological way. Is the blessing in church (I'm a bit of a lazy philosopher here) itself the real thing or does it create the blessing? Modern people may feel offended by someone cursing but I dont think many people would suppose a curse caused something bad by itself as a word because of the classification as bad as the premisses. Than half of society thought like this.
The Comedy shows an approach of an individual to be critical about ideas. The various popes, theologically the representatives of Jesus on earth, are being criticised more than once for their acts not suiting their words.
At the same time the theatre of the Comedy is ME society. None of the accused made on the journey through hell to the various people there seem invented but coming from a chronicler's knowledge of events. Instead of living like a hermit seeking the truth by force Dante lived a life of an exile. His whereabouts may be determined but up until the end of his live Dante fully made part of ME society. What was Dante's relation with ME people who in the end gave his magnus opus the criticism of being divine? []
For a lot of people historical poetical works about theology like the Comedy or Paradise Lost have become part of the Bible.[quote] What was the opinion of Dante about the beginning of The Gospel According to John? Was the discussion about the Unversalia really as black and white? Was Dante a modern individual disguised as a medieval christian?
The aristotelian interpretation of John would be something with cause and effect, a word as the cause of love. The platonic emphasis would be more on the divine nature of the Word. To proceed we need to determine Dante's position on this subject by looking into the historical data. []
In the times of Plato teaching Aristotle the philosophical debate was about the nature of written words. Both estimated spoken words higher than written words so Plato put his lessons in the form of dialogues between various people. Aristotle probably did not write his works by himself but he gave lessons to students and they have more or less created the corpus we now know as Aristotle [quote]. I gues this point is as obvious for anyone so keen ME students on the emerging (sunday) schools, like Dante, will have known at least some about the arguments in this debate. What people started learning was, and still is, the act of writing. Or anatomically : coordinate arm muscles to outline a thought with a pen on paper.
ME people lived in a pack society. Nowadays we don't have much news on people being excommunicated for religious crimes. To most of us modern people it seems irrelevant if you go to church or not. Then all your customers or your employers would have been christian talking only to other christians. Nowadays a fatwa would have been pronounced for someone. Being an exile Dante stood up to such rhetoric, validating the individual soul higher than friendship, and the struggle has been onging ever since.