Protestantism

Jiang treats it as a geopolitical rebellion against Catholic authority whose central religious promise is more direct access to God and scripture.

The Catholic conversion testimony Jiang allows into the conversation presents art, music, incense, and other sensory materials as a bodily route that awakens the soul more powerfully than abstract Protestant symbol systems.

He argues that Protestantism is not primarily an attempt to promote Dante but a rebellion of local princes against the authority of the Catholic Church.

He says Protestant influence from Dante would have been indirect and largely unconscious rather than a self-aware adoption of Dante's theology.

Jiang frames the core Protestant idea as direct connection to God through the Bible, against a Church that insists believers must come through priestly mediation.

The student argues that Dante is doing something like an early Protestant move by returning readers to Jesus's own values instead of endorsing the Catholic Church's unequal and feudal power structures.

Jiang says the Protestant movement was not a sudden novelty because opposition to the Catholic Church had always existed, especially around two complaints: the Church was too worldly and it blocked direct access to God.

Jiang says the Protestant breakthrough was successful but not unprecedented, because opposition to the Catholic Church had always existed over corruption and denial of direct access to God, and Dante treats those same pressures at depth in the Divine Comedy.

Protestant or Calvinist England and the Dutch Republic are presented as becoming energetic, open, cohesive, trade-oriented societies in contrast with Catholic Spain.