Lenten Meditations on Purgatorio: Lust

Canto 24 is taken up with the climb of the three poets from the terrace of greed to the terrace of lust, and an extended conversation they have along the way in which Statius explains for Dante's benefit the relationship between the physical body and the soul (according to a mix of theology and Aristotelian biology) and how this accounts for the fact that the bodies of the souls in purgatory cannot die yet can suffer the visible deprivations of hunger. This is a sort of Aristotelian SciFi element to the Divine Comedy which, though doubtless fascinating to its medieval readers, often give the work a reputation for being hard to understand among 20th century readers.

At last, the poets come reach the next terrace, much of which is covered by a wall of fire. They begin to move carefully along the edge of the terrace, with fire to the left and a precipice to their right, and soon realize that there are spirits moving through the fire, and calling out to one another encouragement in the form of examples single and marital of chastity from Christian history and pagan mythology.

From inside the fire, souls call out to Dante asking him who he is that he walks unburned and still in his mortal body, but as he is about to explain he sees another group of souls coming through the fire walking in the opposite direction of those who have stopped to speak to him.

For down the middle of the burning road
Came people with their faces opposite
To these, and they made me stare in suspense.

There I saw all the shades on either side
Hurrying and kissing one another
Without halting, content with this brief greeting:

As ants in black battalions rub their muzzles,
One with another, so as to seek out,
Perhaps, their prospects and their way ahead.

As soon as these break off their friendly welcome,
Before they take the first step to set off,
Each one attempts to outshout all the rest,

The newcomers crying "Sodom and Gomorrah!"
The others, "Pasiphae climbs in the cow
To let the bull come gallop to her lust!"

Then just like cranes that fly away, some
To the Riphean mountains, some toward the sands,
These to escape the frost and those the sun:

One group of people leaves and one comes on,
And they return in tears to their first chants
And to the shout most suitable for them.
(Purg. XXVI, 28-48)

[Note: In Greek mythology, the Cretan queen Pasiphae was taken with a lust for a bull as a result of a spell put on her by the god Poseidon. She had a wooden cow (with necessary openings) made for her so that she could attract the bull's attention, and as a result conceived the Minotaur, half man and half bull.]



Once the other group of souls has moved off, those who had first asked Dante for his story repeat their request, and he explains about how Beatrice's prayers have resulted in the gift of a chance to travel through hell, purgatory and heaven in order that he may return to the road of virtue. Dante then asks the souls the nature of the other group which just passed going in the other direction and they explain the nature of their own sins and those of the other group of souls.

"The people who don’t come with us offended
By that same sin for which Caesar in triumph
Once heard a voice call out against him, ‘Queen!’

"And that is why they run off shouting ‘Sodom!’
Railing against themselves, as you have heard,
And so support the burning with their shame.

"In sinning we were heterosexual:
But since we did not yield to human law,
Following our appetites like beasts,

"To heap opprobrium upon ourselves,
Leaving those shades, we blare the name of her
Who bestialized herself in beast-like planks.
(Purg. XXVI, 76-87)

Dante's point here about the two forms of sexual sin (gay and straight) is interesting: He labels both sodomy and "straight" fornication and adultery as sins against nature, the former for obvious reasons and the latter because they violate the state of faithful natural marriage. Because Dante sees monogamous fidelity as the natural state of the human person, even "straight" sexual sins are deformations of nature's intent.

Sinners gay and straight now share a brief embrace and kiss as they pass each other in the flames, in sign that they now understand the right place of physical affection and do not allow it to be a lure which draws them from the path towards salvation.

The shades speaking to Dante then introduce themselves personally. They prove to be authors of courtly Italian love poetry, which was a great influence on Dante's early style, and the poets take a few moments to express admiration for each others' work before the penitents continue their journey through the flames and Dante (after promising to pray for them) continues along the terrace with his guides.

A little way further and Dante reaches his most difficult point yet on the journey which has taken him from the wasteland of sin, through hell and repentance to this point. They reach the pass up from the terrace of lust, guarded by the angel of chastity.

He stood upon the bank, outside the flames,
And sang aloud, "Blessed are the clean of heart!"
In a voice far more alive than ours.

Then, "You may go no further, holy souls,
Unless the fire sting you: enter it,
And don’t be deaf to what is sung beyond,"

He said to us when we drew near to him;
And when I heard him speak so, I became
Like someone buried in the pit, alive.

I now arched forward over my clasped hands.
Staring at the fire, I clearly pictured
Human bodies I had once seen burned.

My kindly escorts turned in my direction,
And Virgil said to me, "My son, there may
Be suffering here, but there can be no death.
(Purg. XXVII, 7-21)

Despite Virgil's reassurances, Dante is terrified of going through the fire. When Virgil does convince him to go through, it is only with Virgil reminding Dante that it is only by going through the fire that Dante can see Beatrice again.

It's interesting, I think, that this last penance is one suffered at least briefly by every single soul, and which Dante himself (who has not yet actually been subjected to any punishments or penances in his journey through the afterlife) too must suffer from the flames that purge away lust. Lust is, after all, one of the most basic of human sins, and is found admixed in even the most virtuous married relationships. While it was not through sexual sin that Adam and Eve fell, the first sign of their fall was when they realized that they were naked, and became ashamed. As John Paul II pointed out, writing 700 years after Dante, the first result of the fall was that Adam and Eve each realized that they were capable of taking sexual advantage of the other, and as such sought to protect themselves from each others' gaze.

At last, Dante follows Virgil into the fire.

At that he shook his head and said, "What’s this?
You’d have us stay on this side?" Then he smiled,
As one does at a child won by an apple.

Then he stepped in the flames ahead of me,
Requesting Statius, who a long way now
Had walked between us, to approach behind.

Once in the fire, I would have flung myself
Into molten glass to feel cooled off,
The burning heat inside was so intense.

My tender father, trying to comfort me,
Kept talking about Beatrice as we walked,
Saying, "I seem to see her eyes already!"

A singing voice, beyond, was guiding us;
And we, while listening all the time to it,
Came outside at the point which starts to climb.
(Purg. XXVII, 43-57)

Dante finds himself now on the ascending stair from this last terrace of penance. However, sunset and darkness falls on the poets, and they are forced to take their rest on the steps, spending one last night in Purgatory.

Taking one more moment on this last terrace of purgation, in which Dante share (however briefly) in the redemptive suffering, the contrast between the punishments of Purgatorio and Inferno strikes me yet again. Though Dante certainly gives us a powerful image of the heat (wishing he could throw himself into molten glass to cool himself) he spends far more time on his effort to gain the strength of will to enter the fire, and to keep moving through it. No one will push Dante into the fire. While in the Inferno demons, fellow sinners and other keepers constantly force the damned back into their punishments, and capture them if they try to escape, the "punishments" of the Purgatorio are all voluntarily assumed. Dante could, should he have chosen, waited indefinitely on the terrace, refusing to enter the fire.

Climbing a mountain really is the ideal metaphor for Purgatory and for the efforts at spiritual and moral self improvement in life which Purgatory, in Dante' and the reader's earthly lives, represents. It is a difficult task requiring effort and at times suffering, but undertaken because one knows and desires the goal.

No one is going to do anything to these penitents in Purgatory, but they choose to undergo these sufferings because they know that only through the purgation of disordered habits and loves can they reach the promised goal of heaven.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by AllenMandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

Another Dante Blogger

Another Catholic blogger, a fellow by the name of Murray, is doing a start-to-finish blog-through of Dante's Purgatorio for Lent this year.

Rerun time: Let Not the Precious Time Be Lost

Darwin's Lenten series on Purgatorio, and my own reading of Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, brought to mind this piece from 2007 on sloth. Interestingly enough, many of the particulars are the same now -- I'm still exercising, and "the baby" is now potty-training herself. And my kitchen is still a mess.

Here's Darwin's Purgatorio meditation on sloth.

Lately, I've been feeling burned-out. The kids have more energy than I do, and they burn it off by fighting with each other or throwing all their stuffed animals on the floor or raiding the freezer. On top of that, keeping house is a dull occupation for a results-oriented person, because even if you clean the kitchen one day you have to do it again the next day, and the next day, and the next day. It seems like I have to run as fast as I can just to stay in one place, and recently my speed has been slacking.

And speaking of placing one foot in front of the next, I'm physically tired. Darwin and I have finally come to terms with the fact that our average metabolisms and relative youth won't last forever, and have decided to take steps to get and stay in shape. And that means running. (Well, for Darwin it means running -- for me it means a mixture of walking and jogging and hoping to God that no one drives by and sees me.) The fickle bathroom scale is putting me at a pound or two less, but the progress is hard and slow and sometimes seems pointless.

There are times when all I want to do is just read my book, for Pete's sake, but real life keeps trying to intrude. Julia's potty training is going oh-so-slowly because she doesn't seem to care about it, and it's getting to where I don't either. Baby is a good-natured little thing, but she gets tired of sitting in the recliner with my book long before I do, and she loathes the computer. Eleanor wants to raid the fridge or climb up to various shelves to get picture albums or dishes to play with. And I just want to be left alone to do my own thing, because what's the point of wiping down the table or folding the laundry when I'm just going to have to do it again tomorrow? LEAVE ME ALONE and let me read!

Yesterday afternoon as I was standing amidst the wreckage of the kitchen, I realized that my shirking of responsibilities was more than mere laziness or burn-out. It was sloth -- "not merely idleness of mind and laziness of body: it is that whole poisoning of the will which, beginning with indifference, and an attitude of 'I couldn't care less', extends to the deliberate refusal of joy and culminates in morbid introspection and despair."* Sloth can take different forms -- Tolerance, Disillusionment, Escapism. And I was worn-out with being slothful, and I was ready to combat it.

So I pulled out our copy of Dante's Purgatory to discover what the penitents on the Fourth Cornice did to atone for their sloth, and what prayer they chanted. Upon flipping to Canto 18, I at once found the passage where the souls cry to each other, "Quick! Quick! Let not the precious time be lost for lack of love! ...In good work strive, till grace revive from dust!" The slothful souls are the only ones in Purgatory who are given no prayer to pray -- their prayer is in their labor.

And the labor that makes up their penance? Ceaseless activity. Namely, running.

*The description of sloth is taken from the commentary on the Image of Sloth in Dorothy Sayers' translation of Purgatory, Penguin, 1955

Lenten Meditations on Purgatorio: Gluttony

As Canto XXII opens, the poets have just ascended from the terrace on which greed and prodigality (both unbalanced loves of material possessions) are purged, and the angel who guards the pass has wiped another P from Dante's forehead. Virgil and the second century Roman poet Statius are deep in conversation. Virgil asks Statius how it is that he came to be a Christian.

And he told him, "You were the first to send me
Toward Parnassus to drink within its caves,
And you the first to light my way to God.

"You were like one who, traveling by night,
Carries the torch behind — no help to him —
But he makes those who follow him the wiser,

"When you announced, ‘The ages are made new:
Justice returns and the first world of man,
And a new progeny comes down from heaven.’

"Through you I was a poet, through you a Christian.
(Purg. XXII, 64-73)

Statius paraphrases, in Dante's Italian, several of the most famous lines from Virgil's 4th Eclogue. The poem talks about the coming of a new golden age, started by a man sent down from heaven:

Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung
Has come and gone, and the majestic roll
Of circling centuries begins anew:
Justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign,
With a new breed of men sent down from heaven.
Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom
The iron shall cease, the golden race arise,
Befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own
Apollo reigns.

Written during the Augustan peace, the 4th Eclogue is a "prophecy" to the consul during whose period in office Augustus had been born, and it describes the new Golden Age which will unfold when this child comes to reign over the world. However, since the poem was written shortly before the birth of Christ, and Virgil was revered as the greatest Latin poet throughout the Middle Ages, Virgil's poem was often interpreted by Medieval Christians as being an unknowing prophecy of the coming of Christ. Dante uses that mythology surrounding Virgil to provide an example of how non-Christian art can nonetheless powerfully guide people towards Christian truth -- because Truth itself is one. He imagines Statius, who revered Virgil deeply, to have come across the early Christian community in Rome and immediately seen them to be the coming of the new age into the world which Virgil had foretold. And thus we get this beautiful (though in a sense tragic) image of Virgil bearing a light behind him which for others illuminates the path of truth, but which Virgil himself cannot see. Although the truth of Virgil's poetry helped guide Statius into the Church, Virgil himself is relegated to the Limbo of the virtuous pagans, an afterlife like heaven as these pagans had imagined it (with green grass, white marble buildings, and good company) yet without that greatest happiness of which they had had no knowledge, the beatific vision of the infinite God.

Statius then goes on to describe how he long admired the Christians as they suffered persecution, and at last was baptized, though he kept up an outward show of paganism to avoid sharing in their persecution and for this failing spent many centuries farther down the mountain on the terrace of sloth.

Their conversation ended, they set off along the new terrace they have reached. Soon the poets come upon a tree in the path, with a stream of clear, cool water cascading down upon it from above. A voice from within the tree tells them that they must not eat of the tree or drink of the spring, and then recites a series of examples of fasting or abstinence from the Bible and antiquity.

They are about to move on when they hear a psalm called out from behind them:

And suddenly in tears and song we heard
"Open my lips, O Lord," sung in such tones
That it gave birth to gladness and to grief.

"O gentle father, what is this I hear?"
I wondered; and he: "Shades who journey on,
Perhaps loosening the knot of their bad debt."

Like pilgrims who go wrapped in pious thought
And, overtaking strangers on the road,
Turn toward them but do not stop to talk,

So from behind us, moving faster, coming
And passing by, there gazed at us in wonder
A throng of spirits, silent and devout.

The eyes of each were dark and hollowed-out,
Their faces pale and they so shriveled up
That their skin took its contour from their bones.
(Purg. XXIII, 10-24)

One of these spirits hurrying by slows to speak to Dante, and reveals himself to be Forese Donati -- a long time friend, fellow poet. Dante, who had not recognized him in his emaciated form, greets him joyfully. Forese asks about how Dante comes to be there with his companions, and then tells them about the plight of the souls on this terrace:

"All these people who in weeping sing
Resanctify themselves in thirst and hunger
For having followed appetite too much.

"Craving for food and drink is kindled in us
By the fragrance wafted from the fruit
And from the water splashed on the green leaves;

"And not just once while we walk round this road
Is our ordeal renewed — I say ordeal
And yet I ought to say our consolation,

"For that same will that leads us to the tree
Led Christ in gladness to call out ‘Eli,’
When he delivered us with his own blood."
(Purg. XXIII, 64-75)

It's important to consider the difference between this terrace of purgatory and the circle of gluttony in Inferno, because it tells us something important about Dante's understanding of Purgatory, and how the sufferings of these souls (though often severe) are not mere punishments. In the Inferno, the gluttonous wallow in a muddy swamp with rain beating down on them. The ever-hungry Cerberus runs throughout the circle, biting and snapping at the damned with this three heads. The punishment is the sin exemplified. When we give ourselves up to gluttony we wallow in consumption while at the same time being chased by hunger. We eat or drink compulsively, not because we need to, but because the appetite drives us to dig ourselves in deeper and deeper. Indulgence enfolds us like the swamp, yet even so the appetite remains. We want more because we have given in so completely to the habit of consumption. We hunger because we are eating, and eat because we hunger.

The souls here did not give themselves in completely to appetite -- however much they indulged in gluttony they kept their central desire for God. But they allowed their wills to be weakened through so often giving in and making consumption a little god. Now they are purifying their wills by remaining intent upon their eternal goal despite deprivation. They hurry constantly round the terrace, racing along the path towards God, while foregoing the refreshing water and fruit they see before them. Their bodies as seen in Purgatory do not require rest and sustainance -- they are not being damaged by their hunger and constant hurry -- but what they are suffering is the denial of will.

In Lent, this is a good point to consider. We never seek to hurt ourselves through Lenten sacrifices. The purpose of penance is not to suffer, but rather to accustom ourselves to mastering our appetites and wills. For most healthy adults in modern occupations, giving up food for a day (partially or even completely) will not harm us in any real way. But the difficulty of overcoming that natural desire to eat (and the confidence of seeing that we can do it) helps us to own ourselves more fully and see how we can do what we believe is right or necessary even in difficult circumstances.

Dante compliments Forso Donati on having got so far up Mt. Purgatory in the mere four years since his death, and Forso explains that this is due in great part to the prayers of his wife (still living) and his sister (dead and in heaven.) He then points out several people whom Dante knows or has heard of, including Pope Martin IV, who died after overindulging in eels.

At last, Forso can hold back from his purpose no longer, and runs off to catch up with the other penitents. The poets continue on, and shortly reach another tree where they hear examples of the suffering brought on by gluttony. After an angel has wiped one more P from Dante's forehead, they poets begin their ascent to the next terrace.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by AllenMandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

So Much For Selection

While out on a round of birthday shopping (typically last minute) for our Now Very Big Three-Year-Old Girl, I stopped by Borders thinking, "Surely a place as big as Borders will have the currently in-print translations of Dante and I can see if any of them have footnotes on every page instead of the end of each canto."

Ha. More fool I.

I checked in both Literature and Poetry (a two bookshelf section sharing an aisle with the much larger Gay & Lesbian section) but they did not have a single Dante translation. Not one.

And they wonder why we say the world is going to the dogs.

So I spent a little time yesterday evening browsing the Look Inside! links on Amazon and it appears that there are no current editions with notes on the bottom of the page. Sorry, Bearing. I am, however, very curious to pick up the Anthony Esolen translations. Soon, but soon, I hope.

If you don't mind reading online, the Cotter translation has notes right next to the text.

Lenten Meditations on the Divine Comedy: Our Story So Far

It's Lent, and so on DarwinCatholic it's time to return to Dante's great Christian spiritual epic, the Divine Comedy. Over the last two years we've worked through the Inferno and the first twenty-one cantos of the Purgatorio. This year we'll cover at least the remaining 12 cantos of the Purgatorio, and hopefully a good chunk of the Paradiso as well. But first a little review, as a help for readers old and new, and also to get myself back in the Dantean groove.

Too many people recall the Divine Comedy, if they recall it at all, as that weird, dark, violent medieval poem that they had to wade through in college, written by that dour Italian guy who put all his enemies in hell. This image is hardly helped by the fact that while many people are assigned to read at least parts of Inferno, few read Purgatorio and fewer still read Paradiso. And yet this really is too bad, because it is only through reading all the way through Dante's great work that his purpose comes fully into view.


A Catholic to the core, Dante's story which ranges from the torments in the deepest, frozen pits of hell (for Dante's hell has indeed frozen over) to the beatific vision, is at core a story of conversion and the cleansing of sins. The first lines of the Inferno read:

Halfway through the journey we are living
I found myself deep in a darkened forest,
For I had lost all trace of the straight path.
(Inf. I, 1-3)

At middle age, the in the jubilee year of 1300, Dante finds himself off the path towards Christ, and lost in a wood of sin and attachment to sin. He tries to struggle back to the path unaided, but is overcome by the figures of the vices he is attached to. And from thence he is rescued by Virgil, the great Roman poet, released from Limbo by command of a lady in heaven to guide Dante through hell, up the mountain of purgatory, and at last to heaven. Virgil must lead Dante through the first two thirds of his journey, because Dante has lost his faith so thoroughly that it is through the humanism of art and natural virtue, as symbolized by the great pagan poet in whose work many in the Middle Ages saw prophetic echoes of the messiah to come, that he must rediscover the nature of sin and, rejecting it, develop virtue.

Thus, as the poets descend through hell Dante comes to understand the nature of sin. In upper levels of hell, where the sins of indecision (see: The Lost) and mis-placed love (see: Swept Away by Sin) are punished, Dante often finds himself sympathizing with the damned and questioning how God could be so hard as to punish them thus. But as they travel deeper and Dante's vision becomes clearly, he comes to see the repulsiveness of sin. Yet along the way humanity is never lost. Dante has a tearful conversation with one of his old teachers among the burning sands of the sodomites. And in the frozen lake at the center of hell we read the equal parts pitiable and shocking story of betrayal and hate feeding upon itself.

At last the poets and the reader as well are battered and sobered by all the horrors they have seen. They reach the very deepest part of hell, where Satan himself, giant in size and chewing on the souls of Judas, Brutus and Cassius -- history's three greatest traitors. To leave hell the poets climb down Satan's shaggy fur, through a channel in the ice, until they pass the center of the globe and reach a winding stair that leads them up to the other side of the world where Mt. Purgatory stands.

While Inferno is increasingly dark and terrible, Purgatorio seems saturated with sunlight as it opens. A ship of souls approaches the shore, driven by an angel whose flapping wings send the vessel skimming over the water. As the souls disembark, they are soon running at full speed down the beach, eager to make progress towards the salvation they are not certain of.

The poets follow them, and as they do so meet groups of souls who are purging themselves of those vices which keep them from God. First among these are the late repentant and those so enwrapped in earthly power and glory that they paid little attention to God until their deaths. Traveling up the mountain, the poets meet those purging pride, envy, wrath, sloth, and greed.

And there, with Dante's upward journey, I will be resuming. The path through purgatory spiral ever upward until Dante reaches the earthly paradise which serves as a launching pad towards heaven, where images of sin and its purgation are replaced with example of virtue, drawing ever closer to the beatific vision, in whose presence Dante's artistic powers at last fail him:

As the geometer who sets himself
To square the circle and who cannot find,
For all his thought, the principle he needs,

Just so was I on seeing this new vision
I wanted to see how our image fuses
Into the circle and finds its place in it,

Yet my wings were not meant for such a flight —
Except that then my mind was struck by lightning
Through which my longing was at last fulfilled.

Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,

By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
(Para. XXXIII, 133-145)

I do this first of all because I enjoy doing it. I look forward to it each year, though somehow when the discipline of Lent falls away, my ability to keep up the Dante posts falls away as well.

And I hope in the process to share some of the text and images and lessons of one of the greatest literary works of Catholic culture. The Commedia is beautiful both as an artistic and humanistic work, but also as a work of devotion and a guide to the spiritual path, from that gloomy wood halfway through life's journey to the eternal vision of God, which we are called to tread.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by AllenMandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

Lenten Meditations on Purgatorio: Avarice & Prodigality

[Things have been very busy at work lately, and we've both been involved in various parish activities leading up to Holy Week, so my progress through Purgatorio has been sadly slowed. I'll probably be finishing well into Easter Season at this point, but I do plan to push through and finish blogging the second volume of the Commedia this year. I'll save Paradiso for next year.]

When I stepped out into the fifth circle,
I witnessed people on it who were weeping,
Lying on the ground with faces downward.

"My soul cleaves to the dust," this psalm I heard
Them murmuring with sighs so deep and gasping
That scarcely could the words be understood.
(Purg. XIX, 70-75)

As soon as the poets reach the fifth terrace, they find the ground covered with penitents laying face down in the dust. Dante asks if any of them are Italian and if someone can explain to him the nature of the sin they are seeking to expiate, and he is answered by Pope Adrian V, who reigned for one month only in 1276.

Pope Adrian tells Dante of how his ascension to the papal throne showed him at last that earthly honors and possessions do not bring true happiness, and brought about in him a conversion to true love of God -- and just in time as he lived but one month more. On this terrace, those who placed their love in earthly things and turned their backs to God lay face down, facing the earth which they so loved, with their backs to heaven. They water the earth with the tears of their repentance until they are judged ready to move upwards.

Dante is moved to be addressed by one of the successors of Peter, and is about to kneel down before him, but Pope Adrian orders him to remain standing:

"Straighten your legs, my brother, on your feet!"
He answered, "Make no mistake: with you and others
I am a fellow-servant of one Power.

"If ever you have understood the word
The Holy Gospel sounds in ‘They neither marry,’
You can see clearly why I speak this way.

"Now move along: I would not have you stay
Since your remaining here keeps me from weeping
The tears to ripen penance which you spoke of.
(Purg. XIX, 133-141)

Obedient to the pope, the poets move on down the terrace, which is so covered with the prostrate penitents that they have to pick their way carefully in order to avoid stepping on anyone.Greed is the most heavily populated terrace we have reached since pride -- humanity hasn't changed much in the 700 years since Dante's time.

After proceeding a little way, they hear called out three examples of holy poverty and generosity: Mary's giving birth to our Savior in a stable; the early Roman consul Fabius, who died in poverty rather than accept bribes; and St. Nicholas, lauded for helping the three dowerless maidens, among many others.

Dante is eager to find the speaker, and when he identifies the penitent who has been crying out these examples asks him who he is. The soul identifies himself as Hugh Capet, the founder of the French royal dynasty, who ruled from 987 to 996 AD. Hugh bewails the depths to which greed for wealth, land and power has driven his descendants, culminating in a prophecy of the kidnapping of the pope and Avignon Papacy -- which would begin five years after the internal date of the Divine Comedy, 1300, but before Dante's writing of it in 1308-1321.

Between these two characters to whom Dante speaks, we see examples of the two sources of power in medieval Europe, church and royalty, condemned for greed. The symmetry is surely not coincidental.

Hugh then goes on to list a number of examples of greed -- far more than the normal three we have heard on other terraces. Perhaps the pervasive and consuming nature of avarice deserves more exemplars. Among them are King Midas, Achan who tried to keep for himself spoils from Jericho in the book of Joshua, Sapphira and Ananias from Acts, and Marcus Licinius Crassus -- the Roman triumvir so known for greed that when the Parthians defeated and killed him in 53 B.C., their king had molten gold poured down the throat of his severed head, which was then left out as a warning to others.

After talking with Hugh, the poets move on around the terrace.

We were already gone away from him
And struggling to go forward on the road,
So far as our own powers would permit us,

When I felt — like something that is falling —
The mountain tremble, and at that a chill
Gripped me, as grips one going to his death.

Surely Delos did not shake so sharply
Before Latona built her nest in it
To give birth to the two eyes of the sky.

Then such a cry on all sides started up
That my master drew close to me and said,
"Don’t be afraid while I am guiding you."

"Glory to God in the highest" they all cried,
By what I understood from those close by,
Where the crying could be comprehended.

Motionless and in suspense we stood,
Just like the shepherds who first heard that song,
Until the trembling stopped and the song ended.

Then we took up again our holy road,
Looking at shades that lay along the ground
Already turned to their accustomed weeping.
(Purg. XX, 124-144)

Dante is so amazed by the tremor and the cry that he is afraid to ask any of the souls they pass the meaning of the event. After a few minutes the hear a greeting of, "My brothers, may God give you peace!" And turning, they see a soul approaching them from behind, walking upright among the see of prostrate penitents.

Virgil tells this new arrival the nature of their journey and asks him what the meaning of the recent tremor and cry of rejoicing was. The soul explains that when, after many years of penance, a penitent's will suddenly find itself able to conform perfectly with the virtue proper to the terrace, the soul rises from his penance and proceeds to the angel who guards the pass to the next terrace. As the soul rises, all the other penitents on the mountain cry out in rejoicing, and the mountain itself is shaken with God's joy.

The soul now speaking to them is the penitent who has just risen from over a hundred years spent on this terrace. Dante asks him who he was in life, and he says that he was Statius, a Roman poet of the first century A.D.

Statius waxes eloquent about poetry, and the inspiration he drew from reading the poetry of Virgil, who lived just a hundred years before. Dante cannot help smiling at this, and when Statius questions him reveals to him that it is the shade of Virgil who is standing with them at that very moment. Statius is overjoyed, but Virgil refuses the homage that Statius tries to pay him, saying that they are all brothers now in death.

Still immersed in conversation about poetry, the poets reach the angel who guards the pass to the next terrace. Another "p" is erased from Dante's forehead.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by AllenMandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

Lenten Meditations on Purgatorio: Sloth

As the poets reach the next terrace of Mt. Purgatory, the sun sets, and so the poets have to stop where they are for the night. No movement goes on in Purgatory under cover of dark. Dante suggests they talk while they pass the night so that their delay may not be spend unprofitably, and so Virgil embarks on a meditation on the nature of love and how it may be wrong in object or in degree.

We never wish ill upon ourselves, he argues, and so when we sin we either desire an evil upon someone else, or we love secondary goods out of proper proportion. The three terraces below serve to purge Pride, Envy and Wrath, which Virgil defines as three different forms of wishing ill upon one's neighbor:

"There is the man who through his neighbor’s fall
Hopes to advance, and only for this reason
He longs to see him cast down from his greatness,

"There is the man who dreads the loss of power,
Favor, fame, and honor at another’s rise,
And pines so at it that he wants him ruined;

"And there is the man who grows so resentful
For injury, he’s greedy for revenge,
An such a man must seek another’s harm.
(Purg. XVII, 115-123)
The next three groups of penitents, Virgil explains, purge from themselves a love that is rightly directed, but not proportionate. This terrace is where sloth is purged, a lack of zeal in love.

Dante wants to continue their conversation on love and will, and so Virgil continues with a discussion of the levels of natural appetite and the human person's unique power over desire through free will. Then the moon rises, throwing light across the terrace, and a few moments later they hear the sound of a great crowd running towards them and calling out encouragement to each other as they run.

How soon they were upon us — since that whole
Huge company was moving at a run,
And two of them up front cried out in tears:

"Mary ran with haste to the hill country!
And Caesar to subdue Lerida thrust
First at Marseilles and then sped on to Spain!"

"Faster! faster! let no time be lost
Through little love," the rest who followed cried,
"So zeal for good may make grace green again."
(Purg. XVIII, 97-105)

While on previous terraces the examples of virtue contrary to the vice being purged have been passively seen or heard, those overcoming the vice of sloth call out their examples themselves as they run around the mountain. And perhaps in keeping with their newly-learned urgency, they have two examples of zeal rather than three.

Virgil calls out to the running souls asking for directions, and they exhort the poets to follow them, but say they cannot stop to talk. One penitent calls out his name to Dante as he passes: he was an Italian abbot and provided his monastery with more momentum than leadership. The crowd ofpenitents is now moving off into the distance, but the poets hear them call out their two examples of sloth: the Israelites who, having been delivered from Egypt, fell away from God while wandering in the desert, and the companions of Aeneas who, having reached Sicily with him in his wanderings, refused to go any farther.

The sound of the running penitents then dies off into the distance, and the poets are left alone for the remainder of the night. Dante falls asleep, and while sleeping has a dream. She is cross-eyed and crooked-legged, pale, sickly and stooped. But as Dante looks at her, she rapidly becomes beautiful, and then begins to sing. She is, she sings, the Siren, whose song has led many a traveller from his planned course.

Another lady then appears, a beautiful and saintly one who appears by Dante's side and demands that he turn his gaze from the Siren. She tears at the Siren's dress, and beneath the shining exterior which Dante's gaze has allowed the Siren to build, a repulsive creature is exposed who smells so badly that Dante awakens suddenly from his sleep.

Virgil has been trying to wake him for some minutes, and now that Dante is awake, the poets quickly reach the angel who guards the pass to the next terrace. Another "p" is wiped from Dante's forhead, and they move upwards. However, Virgil sees that Dante remains troubled by his dream:

"What’s wrong, that you keep gazing on the ground?"
My guide began to say to me, just when
We had both climbed a bit above the angel.

And I: "A strange new vision makes me trudge on
With such mistrust: it bends me inwardly
So that I cannot stop from thinking of it."

"You have beheld," he said, "that ancient witch
For whom alone those now above us weep:
You saw how man sets himself free from her.

"That is enough! now beat your heels on earth
And turn your eyes up to the lure spun from
The mighty spheres by the eternal King."
(Purg. XIX, 52-63)

The Siren, thus, is the symbol of those secondary goods which grow under our desire to appear to be great goods unto themselves, and thus turn us away from seeking the true goods. And on these next terraces, Dante will encounter sins which result from excessive love of lesser goods.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by AllenMandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

Lenten Meditations on Purgatorio: Wrath

Having left behind them the terrace of Envy, the poets are now confronted with the "whip" of Wrath: a set of images which exemplify wrath's opposite virtue, gentleness.

There it seemed that I was all at once
Caught up into an ecstatic vision
And saw a temple filled with crowds of people

And saw a woman there about to enter,
With a mother’s tender attitude,
Saying, "My son, why have you done this to us?

"See how your father and I have sought for you,
Sorrowing." And as she then was silent,
That which at first appeared there, disappeared.

Another woman then appeared to me,
With her cheeks drenched by water grief distills
When it arises out of deep resentment,

And she spoke, "If you are lord of the city
Whose naming was debated by the gods,
And which beams with all knowledge everywhere,

"Take your revenge against those brazen arms
Which embraced our daughter, O Pisistratus!"
And her lord seemed to me gentle and kind

In answering her with a temperate look,
"What shall we do to one who wants to hurt us
If we condemn someone who shows us love?"

Then I saw people fired up with anger
Stoning a young man to death, and loudly
Clamoring to each other, "Kill! Kill!"

And I saw him sink down, since death already
Weighed heavily upon him, toward the ground,
But ever he made his eyes gates for heaven,

Praying to the high Lord in such pain
That He show pardon to his persecutors,
With that look which unlocks true compassion.

When my mind turned again to outward things
Which, independent of it, still are real,
I recognized the truth within my errors.
(Purg. XV, 85-117)

The whip of Pride features sculpture, the whip of Envy, words. On the terrace of wrath, Dante experiences a sort of living dream in which he witnesses scenes of gentleness and restraint. In the second image, drawn from Athenian civic mythology, the tyrant Pisistratus (who was a ruler of Athens from the period before democracy) was reputed to have refused to use his civic power to punish a young man who (though Pisistratus had warned him against wooing her) was seen kissing his daughter.

The last stanza provides an interesting comment on reality and art. Caught up in the vision, Dante had for the duration of it taken what he saw to be reality. Now, his mind turns back to the things which exist beyond his experience of them: the "real world" outside him. And yet, while turning to the outside world, he recognizes as equally real the truths which his brief vision conveyed to him.

Proceeding along the terrace as the sun begins to set, the poets see before them a dark cloud of smoke. As they enter it, Dante finds it stings his eyes so intensely that he is forced to close them, and follow along with his hand on Virgil's shoulder like a blind man being led.

Voices I heard and each one seemed to pray
The Lamb of God who takes away our sins
To grant his mercy to us and his peace.

"Agnus Dei" their response began,
As if one word and measure were in all
So that full harmony appeared among them.

"Are those whom I am hearing, master, spirits?"
I asked. And he told me, "You grasp the truth,
And they go loosening the knot of anger."
(Purg. XVI, 16-24)

Each terrace in Purgatory has its own assigned prayer acclamation, and here it is the Agnus Dei. The souls call upon Christ by His title as the Lamb of God, conquering through gentleness. One of the souls among the smoke hears Dante speaking to Virgil and asks who he is and how he comes, while living, to be among the joyful sufferers in Purgatory. Dante explains his journey and asks the soul, who identifies himself as Marco of Lombardy (not a known historical figure outside the Commedia), something that has been troubling him: Why does the world (circa 1300) seem to be so nearly bereft of any virtue?

Marco first, as does every soul in Purgatory, asks Dante to remember him in his prayers, and then expounds at length on man's condition as a creature with free will, and but a dim understanding of the true good.

"If, then, the world today has gone astray,
In you the cause lies, in you it’s to be sought!
And now I’ll prove a true informant for you.

"From out the hands of Him who fondly loves her
Before she comes to be, there issues forth,
Like a child at play in tears and laughter,

"The simple soul without a shred of knowledge,
Except that, springing from a joyous Maker,
Willingly she turns to what delights her.

"With trifles she first satisfies her taste:
She is beguiled and gambols after them
Unless a guide or bridle bend her love.

"Therefore, law was needed as a curb,
And needed also was a king who could
Discern at least the tower of the true city.
(Purg. XVI, 82-96)

However, this guidance has been sadly lacking of late, Marco observes, with the papacy and many other clerics too much taken up with politics and power, and not enough with providing men with moral teaching. His own region in Lombardy, says Marco, is safe now for all men but good ones, due to the constant wars between the Papal States and Holy Roman Empire.

Leaving Marco behind, the poets soon emerge from the cloud of smoke, and blink for a moment in the light. The sun is just setting behind Mr. Purgatory, and yet its final rays are nearly blinding to the poets after being in the choking darkness for so long. Just then the three images of wrath which form the bridle of that vice come upon Dante:

The impious act of her who changed her form
Into the bird that most delights in singing
Appeared to shape in my imagining.

And here my mind was so withdrawn within
Upon itself that nothing from the outside
Could have come then to be admitted in it.

Then there rained down within my heightened fancy
A figure crucified, scornful and fierce
In his look, exactly as he died.

Around him stood the great Ahasuerus,
Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai
Who showed integrity in word and deed.

And as this image burst all by itself,
Just like a bubble when the water runs
Out from under where the film has formed,

There rose into my vision a young girl
Bitterly weeping, and she said, "O Queen,
Why in your anger did you slay yourself?

"You took your life to keep Lavinia:
Now you have lost me! I am one who mourns,
Mother, more for your ruin than another’s."

As sleep is broken when all of a sudden
New light strikes upon unopened eyes
And, broken, flickers before it fully dies,

So my imagining fell straight away
As soon as light, more intense by far
Than what we are inured to, struck my eyes.
(Purg. XVII, 19-45)

The first of these is Procne from Greek mythology. Procne was married to the king of Thrace, but her husband developed an overpowering lust for her sister, Philomela. He raped Philomela, and then cut out her tongue so that she could not tell what had been done to her. However, Philomela wove a tapestry which told her sister what had happened to her. Procne then flew into such a rage that she killed her son and served him to her husband in order to get revenge. It is this sort of blinding wrath (however justified by other evils) which the smoke on the terrace of wrath symbolizes. And it is, similarly, the blind intensity of such wrath which causes people to hurt others indiscriminately when they have been wronged -- as Procne killed her innocent son in order to avenge the wrong committed by her husband.

As these visions pass, they reach the angel who guards the passage to the next terrace, and another P is wiped from Dante's forehead as another acclamation is chanted: Beati pacifici, blessed are the peacemakers.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by Allen Mandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

Lenten Meditations on Purgatorio: Envy

Having left behind the terrace of the proud, the poets now reach the terrace on which the sin of envy is purged away. At first they find themselves on an empty shelf of stone, with no visible carvings of paintings adorning this level of the mountain. Virgil turns and leads them on towards the right. (In Purgatory, the poets always ascend towards the right, while in Hell they descended while turning always towards the left, in a minor piece of symbolism, recalling Christ's parable of the sheep and the goats, who are separated out onto right and left.)

As they walk along the terrace, they hear a sound:

And flying toward us we heard but did not see
Spirits calling gracious invitations
To banquet at the table of love’s feast.

The first voice that flew past cried out aloud
"They have no wine!" and it sped on by us
Off to our rear, re-echoing the words.

And before it fully faded out of hearing
Distance, another voice passed with the cry,
"I am Orestes!" and also did not pause.

"Oh," I cried, "father, what are these voices?"
And just as I asked this, listen! a third
Exclaimed, "Love those who do you injury!"

And my kind master said, "This circle scourges
The sin of envy, and for this reason
The whip is fashioned with the cords of love.
(Purg. XIII, 25-39)

On the terrace of Pride, the examples of humility and pride were shown in sculpture, here they consist of quotes from the story of the Wedding at Cana, from a myth related by Cicero in which Pylades offers himself up to be killed in place of his friend Orestes, and Christ's words in the Beatitudes. The reason that this terrace's reminders of virtue and vice are heard rather than seen quickly becomes clear:

And when we went straight forward a short space,
I heard cried out " Mary, pray for us!"
And cried out "Michael" and "Peter" and "All saints."

I do not think there walks on earth today
A man so hard of heart he’d not be stabbed
By keen compassion at what I witnessed there,

For, when I came up close enough to them
That their condition became clear to me,
Tears of deep grief drained slowly from my eyes.

...

An iron thread pierces and sews up
All of their eyelids, as is done to falcons
Still so wild they recoil at keeping quiet.

I thought that I did wrong to walk about
Seeing others who could not see me
And so I turned to my wise counselor.
(Purg. XIII, 49-57; 70-75)

Virgil assures him there is no wrong in asking the souls here about their suffering, and so Dante asks if any among them are Italian and can tell him about how they came to be there. A noblewoman named Sapia speaks up and tells him how, as a Florentine army went out under the leadership of a rival political faction, she prayed to God that they would suffer a defeat, and rejoiced at it when they did. Their suffering in no way advanced her cause, she rejoiced in it simply because she wished them to enjoy no good. At the end of her tale, she asks:

"But who are you who come inquiring
Of our condition, with your eyes unsewn,
So I believe, and breathing when you talk?"

"My eyes," I said, "will here be taken from me,
But not for very long, because they rarely
Committed sin by casting looks of envy.

"Far greater is the fear that keeps my soul
Suspended, of the torment there below,
For even now that burden weighs me down."
(Purg. XIII, 130-138)

We can see in his answer Dante's growing self knowledge -- he knows that he is not fully innocent of this sin, and feels hard upon him the guilt for pride which is purged on the terrace below. In closing, Dante asks Sapia if she would like him to pray for her and mention her to other still alive, both of which offers she eagerly accepts.

Two more spirits, farther up the terrace, hear their conversation, and one of them asks Dante who he is and how he comes to travel through Purgatory while still alive. These prove to be two Italian noblemen, who catalog the evils of the current leading families throughout Italy. By the end of their discussion, the two lords are so overcome with sorrow for their homeland they say they must now return to shedding tears, and the poets move on.

Advancing down the terrace, they hear boom forth from above audible reminders of two characters who represent the vice of envy: Cain who killed his brother because Abel's sacrifice was better appreciated by God, and Aglauros, who in mythology was turned to stone because she envied her sister the love of the god Mercury.

They reach the angel who guards the passage to the next terrace, and Dante is overwhelmed by the brightness of him:

"Sweet father, what is that from which I cannot
Screen my eyes in any helpful way,"
I asked, "and which seems ever to approach us?"

"Do not marvel if the host of heaven
Still dazzles you," he answered me, "this is
The messenger who invites us to ascend.

"Soon it will be no burden to behold
These things, rather you will find delight
As deep as nature destines you to feel."

When we had come up to the blessed angel,
He said with a glad voice, "Enter here
To stairs that are less steep than were the others."

We left him there and we then climbed beyond,
Until "Blessed are the merciful" rang out
In song behind us, and "Conqueror, rejoice!"
(Purg. XV, 25-39)

Dante's nature is still too dimmed by sin to look without pain upon those who are truly of God's realm. As they leave the terrace, the souls upon it all cry out a prayer, as when a soul departs any of Purgatory's terraces. Souls may suffer here, but they are a members of one Body of Christ, and rejoice in each others' spiritual progress.

As they climb to the next terrace, the poets discuss how envy has its root in excessive love of earthly goods, which by their nature are diminished by sharing. When souls turn, instead, to the true good of loving charity, the more that it is shared, the greater it is.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by Allen Mandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

Lenten Mediations on the Divine Comedy, Year Two

This year for Lent I'm bringing back the Meditations on Dante's Divine Comedy series from last year, in hopes of getting through Purgatory by Easter. Last year, I worked through the Inferno and the first eleven books of the Purgatorio up until the poets leave the terrace of Pride. I've reposted the last of those posts (Purgatorio: Pride) directly below this one for anyone who wants to refresh their minds on where we left off. The whole series of Commedia posts can be found here.

This post will provide a brief introduction (or re-introduction, for those who were reading a year ago) to the Commedia and its particular appropriateness to Lent.


Why read Dante for Lent? Why read Dante at all?

For far too many in the modern world, Dante is that medieval guy who wrote the poem about hell. The Inferno is by far the most read, and when it crops up in high school or college reading lists, it's often read quickly with an emphasis on some of the more horrific images involved and Dante's notorious propensity to put real characters (ranging from political enemies to recent popes) in hell. This is a shame, because in focusing on some of the more spectacular surface elements of the first third of the Commedia, one loses the real sense of what Dante was trying to achieve.

At root, the Divine Comedy is about the spiritual progress of the soul, from attachment to sin, through repentance and purgation, to virtue and salvation. At the beginning of the Inferno, Dante finds himself "midway through life's journey" in a gloomy wood. He is lost, and beset by threatening creatures who represent the different categories of vice by which he finds his progress towards the East hindered: lust, pride and greed.

Unable to make further progress on his own, Dante is sent help at the request of Beatrice (a good and saintly woman, now in heaven, for whom he had, while she was alive, had great love) in the form of the poet Virgil. Virgil will lead him back onto the road towards heaven, but only by first confronting vice and going through purgation via a guided trip through Hell and Purgatory.

Down they go into the underworld, where sinners of various descriptions suffer in concentric circles designed for the punishment of different sins, with the worst sins (betrayal) lurking in the deepest circles of hell near where Satan himself is sunk waist-deep in a frozen lake, eternally chewing on the souls of the three most notorious traitors: Judas, Brutus and Cassius.

As he descends hell, Dante at first finds himself, with his attachment to sin, entirely sympathetic to the suffering souls. How could the sins of these people merit sufferings so great? As he goes deeper, though, and interacts with the damned, Dante begins to see how these punishments merely make visible the ugliness of the sins to which these souls remain attached in death as they were in life. For instance, as the violent boil in a rive of blood, it is as much their own constant fighting and pulling each other under that keeps them in torment as their demonic overseers.

Reaching the bottom of the pit of hell, Dante and Virgil pass through the center of the earth and climb upwards to Mount Purgatory, a gigantic mountain standing on the opposite side of the globe from the known world. Here, coming into the light again, the begin to meet the souls of those who are destined for heaven, yet have much work to do in order to purge themselves of the sins to which they are attached. On the shores of the mountain they meet the late repentant, including some who died unshriven or in excommunication, who in the last moments of their lives reconciled themselves with God, yet must now through strenuous effort make up for the many years in which they refused to take advantage of the time that was given them to repent.

Right away we see a great difference between the souls of Purgatory and those of Hell. The damned were greatly turned in on themselves and on their sin, while these souls in waiting have a powerful sense of purpose, one which at first seems overwhelming to Dante, who himself is not yet strong enough in his drive away from vice and towards virtue.

Beginning to climb the mountain, Dante and Virgil come upon the proud, bent double under heavy burdens. At first, Dante is shocked by the sight, but he finds the souls cheerful in the knowledge of their progress towards salvation. He marvels at the fame of some of those he meets, but they correct him with reminders that earthly fame is fleeting.

The story of the Commedia is, thus, an allegory of spiritual progress. In the Inferno, Dante learns the nature of sin, while in the Purgatory he learns to strive to replace each sin with its opposing virtue. The Paradiso is, in turn, an allegory of prayer and the spiritual life culminating in the beatific vision of God surrounded by a "celestial rose" made of the angels and the ever-rejoicing saints.

In this sense, a prayerful reading of the Divine Comedy is most appropriate for Lent, when we seek to assure that we are on the long road that winds Eastward, and making progress towards our Maker.

Easter Meditations on Purgatorio: Pride

[Originally posted on May 2nd, 2007 -- re-posted to begin the 2008 Commedia series.]

Having gone through St. Peter's gate in to Purgatory proper, Dante climbs up a long narrow path, and onto the first terrace of purgatory, where the proud work to purge themselves of their attachment to that root of all sin. Here he sees that the inner wall of the terrace is made of beautiful white marble, on which are carved scenes of conspicuous humility.

From that spot we had yet to take a step
When I discerned that all the inner cliff-ring,
Which rose so steep there was no way to scale it,

Was pure white marble, and so decorated
With carvings that they would have put to shame
Not only Polycletus but nature too.

The angel who came down to earth decreeing
The peace which, deeply mourned for many years,
Has opened heaven from its long interdict

Appeared before us there so faithfully
Chiseled out in his soft-spoken bearing
That he did not seem to be a silent image:

One would have sworn that he was saying "Ave,"
Since she who turned the key to open up
Love on high was also imaged there,

And her attitude appeared stamped with the words:
"Behold the handmaid of the Lord," as sharply
As a figure is engraved on sealing wax.
(Purg. X, 28-45)

No where in hell was art ever to be seen, but here on the terraces of purgatory beautifully made works of art will consistently be used to give the repentant souls images of the virtues they must cultivate, and the vices they must reject. Purgatory is the place in which souls must purge away their attachment to the sins they loved on earth, and as such this is the appropriate place for sacred visual art. The souls are not yet ready to behold the wonders of heaven directly, but through beautiful images etched in the earth, they are preparing themselves for the heavenly vision.

Moving up the terrace from the carving of the Annunciation, they also view scenes of Kind David dancing before the ark of the covenant and the Emperor Trajan halting his army in order to administer justice on behalf of a poor widow. (This famous story of Trajan's compassion led to medieval myths that Trajan had secretly converted to Christianity -- or even that he had returned from the dead to be baptised by Pope Gregory the Great.)

Having viewed these examples of the virtue opposite to pride, Dante then catches site of the proud themselves, approaching slowly, bent double, carrying great rocks upon their backs. Dante is at first shocked and can barely look at them. But the souls themselves are hopeful, knowing that through their present suffering they are coming with each step closer to heaven, and shedding their attachment to sin that keeps them from it. As they walk they pray together:

"Our Father, who art in heaven, not bound there,
But dwelling in it for the greater love
Thou bearest toward thy firstborn works on high,

"Hallowed be thy name and be thy worthiness
Through every creature, as it is most fitting
To thank thee for the sweet breath of thy wisdom.

"Thy kingdom come to us in peacefulness,
Because we cannot reach it by ourselves,
Unless it come, for all our striving effort.

"And as the angels do thy will in heaven
By sacrificing theirs, singing hosanna,
So let the men on earth do with their wills.

"Give us this day our daily manna, since
Without it, through this bitter wilderness
He retreats who tries hardest to advance.

"And as we pardon all for the trespasses
That we have suffered, so in loving kindness
Forgive us: do not judge by our deserving.

"Our strength so easily fails: lead us not
Into temptation through our ancient foe,
But deliver us from the evil he provokes.

"This last petition, dearest Lord, we make
Not for our sake, since now we have no need,
But for those people who remain behind us."

This way the souls, praying godspeed for both
Themselves and us, trudged on beneath a burden
Like that one pictures sometimes in a dream,

Unequal in their anguish, all of them
Plodding wearily around the first terrace,
Purging away the black dross of the world.
(Purg. XI, 1-30)

Virgil addresses the penitents, asking them where they can find the stair by which they can ascend to the next level. One comes forward who identifies himself as Omberto Aldobrandesco, a powerful nobleman whose pride quite literally led to his downfall forty years before when he made war against Sienna and was killed in their retaliation. He tells his story and briefly sums it up:

"I am Omberto. And not only has pride
Damaged me but it has dragged down all
My kinsfolk with it into catastrophe.

"And for this sin I here must bear this weight
Until I give God satisfaction — since I
Gave none among the living — among the dead."
(Purg. XI, 67-72)

Dante also recognizes a painter of manuscript illuminations. The penitent acknowledges that he is the artist Dante recognizes, but responds with a meditation on the transitory nature of earthly fame:

"Oh," I cried out, "are you not Oderisi,
Honor of Gubbio, glory of that art
Which in Paris they call ‘illuminating’?"

"Brother," he said, "the pages painted by
Franco Bolognese smile more brightly:
All his the honor now — and partly mine.

"Certainly I would have been less courteous
While I was alive, through my vaulting zeal
For excellence to which my heart aspired.

"The price of pride like this is paid out here;
And still I’d not be here if it were not
That, capable of sin, I turned to God.

"Oh, the vainglory of our human powers!
How brief the time the green grows on the hilltop,
Unless the age that follows it is barren!

"Cimabue thought he held the field
In painting, but now the hue and cry is for
Giotto, and the other’s fame is dulled.
(Purg. XI, 79-96)

Yes, it's that Giotto, whom Oderisi is talking about. Giotto was two years younger than Dante and was at the height of his powers in 1300 when the Commedia takes place. His teacher Cimabue is still certainly regarded as a good artist, but his work is still very much rooted in a medieval sensibility, while Giotto brought a new expressiveness to his art which marked him in some ways as the father of Italian Renaissance in art.

Continuing on along the terrace, the poets see that in the rock on which they tread is carved another set of images in low relief. On the ground are the images of prominent examples of pride, from Lucifer and King Saul to Arachne and the ruins of once-lofty Troy.

Climbing on over these reminders of the sin that must be cast off, the poets come to the angel that guards the stair up out of the terrace of pride. The angel brushes his wing over Dante, who feels a great weight lifted off him as he climbs the stairs up to the next terrace. When he asks Virgil the cause of this, Virgil points out that one of the seven P's with which his forehead was marked is now gone. With the attachment of pride worked off, Dante's climb will now be all the easier.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by Allen Mandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

What the Hell, Dante?

Steven Riddle of Flos Carmelli is rereading Dante, and he provides some very good thoughts on the Inferno in a post from yesterday. The questions he seeks to answer are:

Reading The Inferno gives one pause at moments. Frequently in fact. It isn't so much the punishments described in Hell as it is a number of factors that stem from that. For example, did Jesus not teach us, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." And yet Dante, with impunity, assigns any number of people to any circle of Hell he chooses. Now, were these living people (at the time of his writing) one could say that this were a cautionary tale; however most of them are dead as of the writing of the work. What then do we adjudge from this seeming infraction of a commandment of love?

Next, we get from the Inferno a God of infernal intellect, delicating designing and manipulating Hell as to be of the most exquisite pain to the sinners assigned there. The lavish and ornate punishments that make up the bulk of hellish existence beggar the imagination. What then was Dante about?

Finally, we have an image of a God of such remarkable sternness, indeed of such profound violence that one is at a loss to figure out what Dante wanted us to understand of God from this.

The answers he gives are good. Go read them -- I thought it would be cheating to quote the whole post, though it deserves it.

Which reminds me that I really need to get back to Dante again some day... If not before, maybe I'll blog through the rest of Purgatorio for next Lent.

Easter Meditations on Purgatorio: Moving Towards Holiness

At last, the poets find a narrow way that allows them to climb up to the path that winds around the mountain. The way is steep, and Dante is on the point of giving up and demanding rest when they finally reach the path. He asks Virgil:

"But if it please you, I should like to know
How far we have to travel, for the hillside
Leaps up higher than my eyes can reach."

And he told me, "This mountain is such that
Always at the start the climb is the hardest,
But the higher that one mounts the less one tires.

"Therefore, when it seems to you so gentle
That walking up is just as easy for you
As riding down a river in a boat,

"Then you will be at the end of this path:
There you can hope to rest from your fatigue.
I say no more, but this I know is true."
(Purg. IV, 85-96;)

In the Inferno, Dante had to learn to reject sin. But he has not yet learned to work hard towards virtue. Thus, his first steps up the mount of Purgatory are difficult in the extreme.

On the path, sheltering from the sun behind a boulder, Dante meets another old friend: Belacqua, a Florentine maker of musical instruments known for his laziness. He and others among the slothful who did not repent of their sins until the last moment are waiting outside the gates of Purgatory proper, where they must be for as many years as they delayed in life. He, like Manfred, asks for the prayers of Dante and others to speed his journey. But Virgil is already pressing on up the path that winds around the mountain, and Dante must run to catch up.

Further up they meet another group among the late repentant, who (after marvelling that Dante is in the realms of the dead while still alive, and thus casting a shadow with his mortal body) beseech Dante:

"O soul, who move ahead to be made blessed
In the same limbs you had when you were born,"
They came crying, "a short while stay your steps!

"Look if you ever have seen one of us
That you may carry news of him back there.
Ah, why press on? Ah, why not stop right here?

"All of us shades met with a violent death
And remained sinners up to our last hour.
The light of heaven then had so forewarned us

"That we, by true repenting and forgiving,
Came out of our life, our peace made with the God
Who fills our hearts with longing to see him."
(Purg. V, 46-57;)

We have now seen three groups among the late repentant: Those who, like Manfred, died separated from the Church but sought God's forgiveness; those like Belacqua were simply lazy in life, and did not seek forgiveness until their last days; and now these who were killed before their time, but repented of their sins even in the moment of their deaths.

Several of these souls tell Dante the story of their violent deaths, and others are listed briefly -- all with the request that Dante's readers pray for their souls. The catalog of betrayals, unmarked graves, even a woman killed by her own husband underline the often chaotic and violent background of the art and literature that Renaissance Italy poured out. Dante meditates on his troubled country:

Ah, slavish Italy, hostelry for griefs,
Ship without a captain in huge storms,
No madam of the provinces but of brothels!

That noble spirit was so eager-hearted,
Just at the sweet sound of his city’s name,
To welcome there his fellow-citizen —

And now all those who dwell within you live
In war; enclosed by one same wall and moat,
One person gnaws away at another!
(Purg. VI, 76-84;)

Night is falling, and a Mantuan poet who has befriended them explains that it is not possible to continue climbing the mountain once darkness falls. Thus, he takes them to a sheltered valley in which they can stay for the night. There he points out to them a veritable who's who of 13th century European rulers: kings of England, France, Germany.

As darkness falls, these former wielders of power fall silent and, looking upwards toward the heavens, sing the Te lucis ante from compline, and two angels descend from heaven to guards the valley during the night.

These rulers were not necessarily late in their repentance, as the other souls whom Dante has met outside the gates of purgatory proper, but they were (by the nature of their positions are worldly rulers) focused on things other than the search for holiness during life. Though they may have, within their lives as rulers, tried to follow the path of virtue, they allowed too much of their attention to focus on the world, and not enough on God. Now they, like the late repentant, must spend a time on purgatory's threshold learning to pursue God alone and shun the power and glory that were for so long their focus.

When morning comes, Virgil leads Dante to St. Peter's Gate, where the souls ready to embark upon the final path towards holiness set out. The angel inscribes seven P's on Dante's forehead, and tells him:

"From Peter I keep these keys, and he told me
Rather to err in opening than in closing
If souls but cast themselves down at my feet."

Then he pushed the sacred portal open
And said, "Enter, but I would have you know
Those who look back return outside once more."

And when the pivots of that holy entrance,
Which were round rods of ringing and strong steel,
Turned within the sockets of their hinges,

They made a louder and more resonant clangor
Than Tarpeia did, when the good Metellus
Was snatched from it, the treasure gone forever.

I turned around at the first thundering sound
And thought I heard "Te Deum: Praise to God"
Chanted by voices mixed with that sweet strain.

The notes I heard conveyed to me the same
Exact impression which we have at times
When people sing in concert with an organ

And now and then we just make out the words.
(Purg. IX, 127-145;)

Note the chant of joy that goes up as Dante passes into Purgatory. While hell is typified by the loneliness of sin, purgatory has a strong sense of the Body of Christ, the union of all believers. Souls work together to purge themselves of their attachment to vice, celebrate each others progress on the road to final bliss.

I also think the echo of the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is interestingly used. The angel at St. Peter's gate will let any soul pass that asks, but if the soul turns back (metaphorically longing for the hesitance to pursue God that for so long kept him from the path towards heaven) he will immediately return to the vestibule of purgatory.

But while Orpheus was told to prove his strength of will and faith by walking out from the underworld without looking back to see if Eurydice was following him -- the souls who pass St. Peter's Gate are told they must walk ever towards their goal, never taking their eyes off it. Orpheus was told he had to believe that Eurydice was following him, even though his senses gave no confirmation of it. The souls in purgatory must continue ever upwards towards the goal they can see, rather than allowing themselves to be turned aside by other concerns.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by Allen Mandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.

Easter Meditations on Purgatorio: The Saved

I've been debating back and forth with myself whether to go on with the Divine Comedy at all, but I think at this point that I will, but at a more leisurely pace, and trying very hard to keep the posts down to a reasonable length. As such, I'll be trying to stick to main themes and avoid getting bogged down in quoting at length every interesting exchange of incident.

To race for safer waters, the small ship
Of my poetic powers now hoists sail,
Leaving in her wake that cruel sea.

And I shall sing this second kingdom where
The human spirit purifies itself,
Becoming fit to mount up into heaven. ...

Soft coloring of oriental sapphire,
Collecting in the calm face of the sky,
Clear right up to the edge of the horizon,

Brought back delight again into my eyes
As soon as I stepped out from the dead air
Which overburdened both my sight and breast.
(Purg. I, 1-6; 12-18)

The Purgatorio opens with quietly beautiful imagery. Both the reader and Dante the character are exhausted and mentally bruised from the harrowing sights of the pit of hell. At the end of Inferno, Dante and Virgil emerged from the underground passage leading up from Hell into the starlit night, and compared to the sights they had but recently seen even the dim starlight gave the impression of coming out into the light after a long, dark journey.

Now the first rays of sunrise are breaking of the island of Purgatory. It is Easter morning, 1300 -- a jubilee year declared by the pope, and on the morning of Christ's triumph over sin and death, Dante escapes the realm of sin and eternal death into the land of those who suffer cheerfully, in the knowledge that they are preparing themselves for eternal bliss.

Soon they are confronted by Cato, the guardian of Purgatory. Cato is an interesting figure in Dante's imagery because he is both a pagan and a suicide. Living in the last days of the Roman Republic, as civil war tore the empire apart and Julius Caesar rose to prominence, Cato had the reputation of being an "old Roman" who cared first and foremost about law and virtue. When Caesar seized control of the empire and Cato was ordered to submit to him, he committed suicide instead. As someone who valued virtue and freedom more than life, Dante makes him the guard at the entrance to Purgatory, one of the few pagans not confined to Limbo.

Cato asks the poets the nature of their journey, and once satisfied that it is ordained by Heaven, allows them to continue, but commands Dante to cleanse his face of the dust and tears of Hell. Dante does so, washing his face with the fresh dew on the grass. Then, in the distance, he and Virgil see a boat approaching with great speed.

The opposite of the boat in which Charon which transports the damned into Hell across the river Acheron, this boat is piloted by a radiant angel, who sends the boat skimming over the water by the flapping of his wings. The souls in the boat cheerfully sing out Psalm 113, which tells of Israel's delivery from Egypt. Dante and Virgil fall on their knees at the site of the angel, and do not rise until he has discharged the joyful souls upon the shore.

Among these newest among the saved, Dante meets a friend of his, Casella, a musician and singer who set several of Dante's poems to music. The old friends talk, and sing several of Casella's songs, until Cato comes upon the group of newly disembarked souls milling on the shores and chastises them for wasting time. At this the souls head off for the mountain at a run, leaving Dante and Virgil to follow at a slower pace.

As they circle the mountain, looking for a place where they can start on the path they see spiraling around its steep sides, the poets come upon a large group of souls walking slowly along the shore. These, they discover, are the late repentant: souls who persisted in grave sin until the very moment of their death, and then repented, commending their souls to God. Now they must circle Mt. Purgatory for thirty times as long as they persisted in sin -- unless the prayers of those still living help to shorten their time of waiting.

Among these souls, Dante meets King Manfred, a political hero of Dante's.

Then added with a smile, "I am Manfred,
The grandson of the glorious Empress Constance,
And so I plead that you on your return

"Visit my lovely daughter, mother of
The crowns of Sicily and Aragon,
And whatever else is said, tell her the truth:

"After I had my body riven through
By two mortal thrusts, I gave up my soul
Weeping to Him who pardons willingly.

"Horrible was the depth of my transgressing,
But infinite goodness has its arms so wide
That it embraces all who turn to it.
(Purg. III, 112-123)

After telling how he was buried in unconsecrated ground because he died while fighting in a civil war that put him on the opposite side of Italian politics from the pope, Manfred begs that Dante tell his relatives of his place in purgatory and ask them for their prayers. This will be a continuing theme through the Purgatorio. While the souls of the damned sometimes asked for fame, and other times asked to avoid it, the souls in purgatory at interested primarily in the prayers that will aid their swift ascension to the heavenly spheres, rather than any sort of earthly fame.

Another thing to note here is that Dante shows even those souls whose repentance was truly at the moment of their deaths -- without the chance to receive absolution. The middle ages are at times accused of a magic-like understanding of confession, which failed to take into account heartfelt repentance unaided by the sacraments. However Dante, certain the high point and summation of medieval thought on matters of salvation from an artistic point of view, definitely understands that even such personal contrition directly to God can save. Nonetheless, he holds these late repenting souls accountable for not having repented earlier and sought sacramental absolution, which would have allowed them to avoid this thirty-fold period of waiting.

---

Thanks to:

The translation and notes of James Finn Cotter

The translation, original text, and notes provided by Allen Mandelbaum

And most especially the translation and extensive commentary by Dorothy Sayers, which Penguin keeps appearing to drop, but never quite has.