Join Dr. Russell and your fellow students to learn why Dante is the greatest author of the greatest book on the greatest subject of any ever written by a man not known by the Church to be directly inspired by God!

Instructor Access (Optional grading support) is available for this course. Please note: this is ONLY recommended if you wish to write the optional paper. All quizzes are internally graded in this course. Optional papers will be completed via this page (click here) for an Instructor Access fee of $75.

Instructor: Dr. Henry Russell

Course Description: Dante Alighieri is the only “secular” author in praise of whom a Pontiff has written an encyclical letter. Pope Benedict XV’s “In Praeclara Summorum” of 1921 rightly says, “We admire in him not only supreme height of genius but also the immensity of the subject which holy religion put to his hand. If his genius was refined by meditation and long study of the great classics it was tempered even more gloriously, as we have said, by the writings of the Doctors and the Fathers which gave him the wings on which to rise to a higher atmosphere than that of restricted nature.”

Dante teaches us what it might mean to be a Catholic in every element of our thought and culture. His work is not only sublimely beautiful, but filled with the most important truths. He was a complete Catholic in an age of political and heretical turmoils, but an age blessed with the influence of towering saints like Bernard, Francis, Dominic, and Thomas Aquinas. His Divine Comedy intends to teach us how to harmonize the demands of Church and State, community and individual, authority and conscience, divine and natural knowledge, intellect and emotion. The Comedy provides a vision of eternity in order to teach man how to live in time in his brief span before forever. The Inferno provides the greatest examination of our conscience as we come to see our own affinities to the souls who have chosen Hell. Again, as Benedict XV wrote, “The more profit you draw from study of him the higher will be your culture, irradiated by the splendours of truth, and the stronger and more spontaneous your devotion to the Catholic Faith.”

Technical Help: If you experience technical difficulty with watching the recorded classes or have a question about course content, please email us at homeschoolconnections@gmail.com.