entry Aug 2008
Enrico Cerulli
(1898-1988)
Enrico Cerulli was
a Neapolitan scholar and eventually came to be regarded
as somewhat the dean of Italian orientalists,
specializing in the languages and culture of Ethiopia
with secondary, but important, contributions in Arabic
and Islamic scholarship. He attended the Orientale University of Naples
and studied under some prominent scholars, including
Giorgio Levi della Vida, the prominent Jewish scholar
well-known for refusing to swear allegiance to Italian
Fascism.
Cerulli came of age during
the beginnings of Italian colonialization in Africa and,
as an adult, became politically active during
Mussolini’s further pursuit of colonial glory in Africa;
Cerulli became Vice Governor of Italian East Africa
during the Fascist period. After the war, the restored
regime of Haile Sellasie tried to have him charged with
war crimes in Ethiopia, but the charges were eventually
dropped. Cerulli was, however, barred from ever again
setting foot in Ethiopia, notwithstanding the
considerable body of work he had contributed to the
study of the area. His first works in East African
ethnography appeared in the early 1920s and he continued
publishing until late in life; his last work was in 1971
and was entitled L'Islam di ieri e di oggi (Islam: Yesterday and Today). He was one of
the founders in 1975 of the Italian Institute for
Philosophical Studies.
His
most interesting work to me is in the field of Islamic
studies, if that is the proper term for his 1949 book
entitled Il 'Libro della Scala' e la questione delle
fonti arabospagnole della Divina Commedia. (The Book
of the Scale and the Question of Arab-Spanish Sources of
the Divine Comedy.)
Perhaps “Islamic-Christian studies” or something similar
would be a better term.
Briefly,
the book deals with the possibility of a Muslim source for
Dante’s masterpiece, The Divine Comedy.
That source, at least, as an inspiration, might have been
the Kitab al Miraj
(Book of the Miraj, the Arabic word for
Muhammad’s miraculous night
ride from Mecca to Jerusalem and ascension into
the heavens. The story, itself, is mentioned in the Koran
and in more detail in the body of supplemental commentary
on the Koran called the hadith. The Book of the Miraj was
probably written in the mid-1000s by Abu'l-Qasim
'Abdalkarîm bin Hawâzin bin 'Abdalmalik bin Talhah bin
Muhammad al-Qushairî al-Nisaburi. It was translated into
Latin in the mid-1200s as Liber Scale Machometi;
generally, it is called The
Book of the Scale in English (“scale” meaning
steps or ladder—thus, the book of the upward journey of
Muhammad). The structure of the book into different
degrees of heaven and hell, and descriptions (and graphic
illustrations in many editions) bear a resemblance to the
later Divine Comedy.
Cerulli
was not the first person to come up with the idea of
Muslim influence on Dante. That honor goes to the Spanish
scholar Don Miguel Asín Palacios, whose 1919 work, La escatología muselmana en la Divina Comedia
started a never-ending discussion about the possibility
that Dante used a Muslim source for inspiration. Also in
1949, besides Cerulli’s book, another work on the same
subject appeared in Spanish: La escala de
Mahoma by José Muñoz Sendino.
One
hears that Cerulli and others claim that Dante used the
Muslim work as a source. That is overstated. All they say
is that it is plausible; after all, one of Dante’s
teachers, Brunetto Latini, happened to be in Cordoba in
1264; it is certainly plausible that he had access to the
Latin translation. They all go on to point out the
differences and, of course, the particular and
specifically European genius that Dante’s work reflects.
When Cerulli was awarded an honorary degree in 1963 in Rome, his one-time mentor, Giorgio Levi della Vida, spoke of him as a “prodigy” who at the age of 16 was already studying the languages and culture of east Africa; he was always up at the military hospital in Naples, interviewing soldiers returned from Africa, getting their impressions and whatever tid-bits of language and local culture they happened to have brought back with them. Cerulli was the born scholar. His association with and participation in Italian colonialism in Africa came back to haunt him, however; he never wound up as a professor at an Italian university.
Reference:
Untitled review by A.R. Nykl of Il 'Libro della Scala' e la questione delle fonti arabospagnole della Divina Commedia by Enrico Cerulli, in Speculum, Vol. 26. No. 2 (Apr., 1951), pp. 376-80.
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