Abundantly clear to anyone comparing the two authors, St. Augustine and Dante Alighieri are like oil and water when it comes to their opinion of pagan works such as Virgil’s Aeneid or Homer’s Iliad. Augustine rebukes the material as “foolish delusions” (37) Book 17, while Dante showers praise upon Virgil from the very onset when he casts him as his very own guide in The Divine Comedy, saying about the man:

O light and honor of all other poets,
may my long study and the intense love
that made me search your volume serve me now.
You are my master and my author, you
– the only one from whom my writing drew
the noble style for which I have been honored.” (Inf. I, 79-87)

Why the stark contrast when both writers are devout Christians attempting to bring their readers closer to God? The answer to Augustine’s disdainful view on pagan literature as opposed to Dante’s more embracing and positive outlook on the subject, reflects their separate journeys through Christianity– which I believe is the root of the difference and ultimately what inspired them to write such different works.  

Confessions, especially at the first can be seen in many ways as a cautionary tale, listing the various ways not to spend young adulthood. Long before he wrote the book, Augustine was himself a pagan and spent his life chasing after hedonistic pursuits, including sex, petty theft, and an academic career. In light of this, we can see why Augustine places the Aeneid alongside his past sins and merely categorizes it as distraction from one’s duty to love and worship God.

Dante finds a way to marry his love for Virgil and the Aeneid with his love for God, justifying that while it may indeed be pagan there is a light, a worth to be found in great literature no matter where it comes from. That detail seems to show Dante as a forward thinker as he is willing and able to cross-pollinate his work with earlier poems.

One could in fact make the argument that Augustine begrudgingly drew about as much from the Aeneid for his Confessions as did Dante for his Divine Comedy, and it is more a matter of the intent in which they did so — Dante to honor the classics, and Augustine to push back against them.