The crimes and abuses of the Church of Rome were indeed loathsome to him; but to all its doctrines and all its rites he adhered with enthusiastic fondness and veneration; and, at length, driven from his native country, reduced to a situation the most painful to a man of his disposition, condemned to learn by experience that no food is so bitter as the bread of dependence ("Tu proverai si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e come e duro calle Lo scendere e'l sa'ir per l'altrui scale." Paradiso, canto xvii.), and no ascent so painful as the staircase of a patron,--his wounded spirit took refuge in visionary devotion.

Beatrice, the unforgotten object of his early tenderness, was invested by his imagination with glorious and mysterious attributes; she was enthroned among the highest of the celestial hierarchy: Almighty Wisdom had assigned to her the care of the sinful and unhappy wanderer who had loved her with such a perfect love.

("L'amico mio, e non della ventura." Inferno, canto ii.) By a confusion, like that which often takes place in dreams, he has sometimes lost sight of her human nature, and even of her personal existence, and seems to consider her as one of the attributes of the Deity.
But those religious hopes which had released the mind of the sublime enthusiast from the terrors of death had not rendered his speculations on human life more cheerful.

This is an inconsistency which may often be observed in men of a similar temperament.

He hoped for happiness beyond the grave: but he felt none on earth.