If you have never read Dante’s Divine Comedy, this may be the perfect time to do so. During Lent and Easter, the University of Notre Dame will host a lecture series entitled, “Dante, Mercy and the Beauty of the Human Person.” The series is comprised of ten lectures featuring Dante scholars from a range of disciplines including theology and romance languages.
Each of the five scheduled evenings will feature two lectures with the first beginning at 6:00pm and a second lecture beginning at 7:15pm. All of the lectures will be held in the Eck Visitors Center Auditorium and are open to the public free of charge.
In addition to the lecture series, a one-credit course on the Divine Comedy will be offered by Professor Leonard DeLorenzo of the Notre Dame Theology Department. Students can enroll by contacting Professor DeLorenzo directly at ldeloren@nd.edu. For those unable to take the course, members of the community are invited to join reading groups as they make their way through the Divine Comedy from Lent to Easter. A link to sign up for a reading group can be found on the event page: http://bit.ly/dantemercy
Coinciding with the Year of Mercy, “Dante, Mercy and the Beauty of the Human Person” echoes the words of Pope Francis on the 750th anniversary of Dante’s birth: "[The Divine Comedy] is an invitation to rediscover the lost or obscured meaning of our human path and to hope to see again the glowing horizon on which the dignity of the human person shines in its fullness." Pope Francis has called Dante a “prophet of hope” and the Divine Comedy “vital reading” for the Year of Mercy. Join the Notre Dame community in celebrating this spiritual and literary masterpiece.
The lecture series is sponsored by the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life and the Office of Human Dignity and Life Initiatives with support from the Henkels Lecture Fund.
February 11
6:00pm: Encountering Mercy: Dante, Mary, and Us
- Prof. Vittorio Montemaggi, Departments of Romance Languages & Literatures and Theology, University of Notre Dame
7:15pm: Encountering Mercy: Dante on Forgetting, Remembering, and Learning to Speak
- Fr. Kevin Grove, C.S.C., University of Notre Dame
February 24
6:00pm: The Kingdom of Irony: Augustine, Sin, and Dante’s Inferno
- Prof. John C. Cavadini, Department of Theology and McGrath-Cavadini Director, Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame
7:15pm: Dante: Knowing Oneself, Knowing God
- Prof. Christian Moevs, Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Notre Dame
March 16
6:00pm: Beginning Midway: Reading Dante in the Midst of Life
- Prof. Matthew Treherne, Head of the School of Languages, Cultures and and Societies, University of Leeds; Co-director, Leeds Center for Dante Studies
7:15pm: Hastening to Heal: Purgatorial Prayer and the Order of Grace
- Prof. Leonard DeLorenzo, Department of Theology; Director, Notre Dame Vision, University of Notre Dame
March 29
6:00pm: Uniting the Eyes: From Fixation toward Fascination in the Easter Tuesday Cantos
- Fr. Chase Pepper, C.S.C., Campus Ministry and Department of Theology, King's College, Wilkes-Barre, PA
7:15pm: Geographics of Stars, Metaphysics of Light: Theological Aesthetics and the Form of Human Life in Dante'sParadiso
- Prof. Jennifer Newsome Martin, Program of Liberal Studies and Theology, University of Notre Dame
April 7
6:00pm: Love's Recollection: Paradiso and Healed Memory
- Jessica Keating, Director, Office of Human Dignity & Life Initiatives, Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame
7:15pm: Heaven as the Sacrifice of Praise: The Paradiso and the Overcoming of Rivalry
- Prof. Cyril O'Regan, Huisking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame
More information can be found at http://bit.ly/dantemercy
Contact: Brett Robinson
Tel. 574-631-6109
Email: brobins6@nd.edu