Purgatorio (The Divine Comedy series Book 2)

by Dante

  69. Jacopo refers to the Marches, the area between Romagna, to the north, and the kingdom of Naples, governed by Charles of Anjou in 1300, to the south. [return to English / Italian]

  71. Should Dante ever find himself in Fano, in the March of Ancona, where Jacopo’s relatives and friends survive, his news of Jacopo’s salvation may, by causing them to pray for him, serve to shorten his time in ante-purgatory. [return to English / Italian]

  74. Jacopo’s blood, of which we shall hear more in his final lines, the seat of the soul (see Purg. XXV.37–45), left his body through the wounds caused by the murderous Paduans who waylaid him in 1298. Padua was founded by Antenor, according to Virgil (Aen. I.242–249). Servius’s comment on these verses added the detail that Antenor, before he escaped from Troy, had given the Greeks the Palladium, thus connecting him with betrayal of one’s country (and suggesting to Dante a name, Antenora, for the second region of the ninth Circle of hell, Inf. XXXII.88). [return to English / Italian]

  77–78. Azzo VIII d’Este became marquis of Este in 1293. Jacopo here would seem to be suggesting that the Paduans who killed him were in cahoots with Azzo, the ringleader of the plot. Dante’s own former opinion of Azzo was negative (see Dve I.xii.5, II.vi.4). Here Jacopo admits a certain culpability in having aroused Azzo’s wrath, reminding us that he has had to forgive his slayer in order to have been saved. The commentator Jacopo della Lana, in his gloss to vv. 70–72, gives some of the reasons for Azzo’s hatred of Jacopo. When Azzo wanted to make himself ruler of Bologna, the Bolognesi called on Jacopo to be podestà of their city. In opposing Azzo he, according to the fourteenth-century commentator, was unceasing in his vilifications of his enemy, claiming, for instance, that he had slept with his stepmother and was in fact the son of a washerwoman.

  For the sin of wrath, in its hardened form, as a sin of will and not of incontinence, see notes to Inferno VII.109–114 and XII.16–21 (last paragraph). Because Azzo was alive in 1308, Dante could not place him in hell; it seems likely that he would have considered setting him down among the murderers in the company of his father, Obizzo, whom Azzo indeed, according to many commentators, strangled in 1293. See Inferno XII.111–112. [return to English / Italian]

  79–80. Jacopo, reconsidering his actions, realizes that he might have made good his escape had he proceeded west in the direction of Milano and headed for the town of La Mira, rather than stopping, off the main road, between Venice and Padua at Oriago. Benvenuto believes that he was on horseback (as seems reasonable) and thus could have made his escape along the good road to La Mira, while the swampy overgrowth made him easy prey for his attackers, stalking him on foot, when he turned back to hide himself but was seen and attacked. [return to English / Italian]

  83–84. Fallen (from his horse?) and apparently hacked to death by those who pursued him on foot, Jacopo watches his blood (and thus his soul) pass from his body. [return to English / Italian]

  88. Buonconte da Montefeltro (ca. 1250–89) was the son of the great Ghibelline leader, Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII.19–132; and see note to Inf. XXVII.4–6). “In June 1287 Buonconte helped the Ghibellines to expel the Guelfs from Arezzo, an event which was the beginning of the war between Florence and Arezzo; in 1288 he was in command of the Aretines when they defeated the Sienese at Pieve del Toppo; and in 1289 he was appointed captain of the Aretines and led them against the Guelfs of Florence, by whom they were totally defeated (June 11) at Campaldino, among the slain being Buonconte himself, whose body, however, was never discovered on the field of battle” (T). It is important to remember that Dante himself was present at this battle as a cavalryman (see note to Inf. XII.75) in what was, for him and his fellow Florentine Guelphs, a great victory. Once again we sense his ability to identify with the loser (see note to Inf. XXI.95). There is not a trace of triumphalism in his exchange with the fallen leader of his enemies. [return to English / Italian]

  89–90. Unlike Jacopo del Cassero, who hopes that his relatives and friends will pray for him (verse 71), Buonconte realizes that his wife, Giovanna, and other family members have no concern for him. Unlike Jacopo and others of his band, he has been devoid of the hope that has urged the rest to petition Dante for his aid. Now he finds hope in this visitor from the world of the living. This poem, which summarizes its purpose as being to make the living pray better (Par. I.35–36), nowhere better indicates this purpose than in ante-purgatory in such scenes as these. It is undoubtedly the case that any number of people who read or heard the poem in the fourteenth century actually prayed for the souls of those whom Dante reports as needing such prayer. [return to English / Italian]

  91–93. Dante’s desire for knowledge of what happened to Buonconte’s body reflects the concern of others present at the battle of Campaldino. How could the body of so important a personage simply disappear? Several students of this passage have suggested that the poet here has in mind Virgil’s portrait of Palinurus, so deeply troubled by his unburied state, and consider the protagonist’s question a recasting of Aeneas’s question to Palinurus: “Which of the gods, Palinurus, tore you from us and submerged you in the open sea?” (Aen. VI.341–342). While the linguistic fit is not a perfect one, both the circumstance and the fact that Dante seems to have the Palinurus passage in mind at Purgatorio III.130—and surely does so at VI.28–30—makes the reference at least plausible. Chiavacci Leonardi (Chia.1983.1), p. 88n., noted it, as now have Cioffi (Ciof.1992.1) and Stefanini (Stef.1995.1). And for the view that Palinurus operates as a foil to Buonconte, see Picone (Pico.1999.2), pp. 78–80. [return to English / Italian]

  94–99. The Casentino lies in the upper valley of the Arno. The torrent Archiano derives from sources above the valley near the monastery of Camaldoli, situated high in the mountains above the region. The battle of Campaldino took place on a plain below this higher valley and it is the place to which Dante imagines the wounded Buonconte to have made his way, just where the Archiano joins the Arno, several miles above the site of the battle. [return to English / Italian]

  104–108. As commentators notice, the struggle of the good and wicked angel over the soul of Buonconte mirrors the similar scene that occurs at the death of his father, Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII.112–117), when St. Francis and a fallen Cherub struggle for the soul of Guido. Not even Francis can prevail against God’s judgment—if we can accept Guido’s narrative at face value.

  A possible source for this scene is found in the Epistle of Jude (Iudae 9) in a passage that refers to the archangel Michael’s struggle with the devil for the body of Moses. The relevance of this text to Dante’s was perhaps first noted by Scartazzini in the 1870s. For discussion, see Pietropaolo (Piet.1984.1), who points out (p. 125) that, like Buonconte’s, the whereabouts of Moses’ actual burial place was not known (Deuteronomy 34:6).

  Buonconte’s tear (verse 107) reminds us of the similarly plangent Manfred (Purg. III.120). [return to English / Italian]

  109–111. A number of recent commentators here note an echo of Virgil’s first Georgic (I.322–324). For the view that this passage reflects the description of the storm that drives Aeneas’s ships off course in the first book of the Aeneid see Carter (Cart.1944.1). [return to English / Italian]

  112–114. Is Dante suggesting that evil forces have power only over the elements (and the dead bodies of humans—see verse 108)? [return to English / Italian]

  116. The mountain ridge Pratomagno and the alpine protuberances referred to establish the confines of the Casentino at the southwest and northeast, respectively. [return to English / Italian]

  117. Restoring a meaning offered in Benvenuto’s commentary but perhaps never revisited and arguing against the scholarly exertions of others, Pertile (Pert.1996.1), pp. 121–26, presents a strong case for the Tuscan form of the verb intingere’s past participle, intinto in its regular form, but also found as intento (darkened). We have accepted Pertile’s reading in our translation. [return to English / Italian]

  122. Dante’s term for “seaward stream�
�� is fiume real, or “royal river,” i.e., a river that ends in the sea. [return to English / Italian]

  126–127. The “cross” that Buonconte had made of his arms perhaps expresses both the gesture of a man in the throes of mortal pain and the sign of his hope for redemption. [return to English / Italian]

  128–129. Buonconte’s body finally came to rest on the Arno’s bed, along with the detritus that the rushing torrent had borne along with it until it, too, settled to rest, mingled with the body of the man. [return to English / Italian]

  130–136. The six verses devoted to Pia’s speech have made her one of Dante’s most remembered and admired portraits—even though we do not really know who she was, to whom she was married (nor how many times, but perhaps twice), or who killed her, or how. For the complicated, necessarily hypothetical, and eventually unknowable status of Pia’s identity and story and the possible knowledge that Dante had of them, see Armour (Armo.1993.1), pp. 120–22. See also Giorgio Varanini, ED IV (1973), pp. 462–67. [return to English / Italian]

  133. Pia uses the “polite imperative,” i.e., the impersonal subjunctive, to express her desire (i.e., “may it be remembered by you”): she hopes to be remembered by Dante once he is back on earth so that he can pray for her, as Vellutello (1544) suggests, or recall her to the minds of others for their prayers. [return to English / Italian]

  134. This line, celebrated for its brevity and power, has the lapidary quality of a headstone, perhaps because it represents one: the beginning of Virgil’s epitaph, “Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere.…” (Mantua gave me birth, Calabria took me off), as Gmelin (Gmel.1955.1) was perhaps the first to suggest. See notes to Purgatorio III.27; VI.72. And see Hollander (Holl.1984.4), p. 119, n. 7.

  Armour (Armo.1993.1), p. 116, suggests that, if she was defenestrated by her husband (or one of his agents), as many early commentators claim, then the hard earth of the Maremma actually did “undo” her, smashing her body when she hit it. [return to English / Italian]

  135–136. These final verses of the canto have drawn numerous attempts at a clear understanding. However, without knowing the precise nature of the facts to which Dante has decided to allude, we cannot be certain. Among the more interesting suggestions for a source is Hermann Gmelin’s (Gmel.1955.1): the verses reflect Dido’s remark about her dead husband, Sichaeus, at Aeneid IV.28–29: “ille meos, primus qui me sibi iunxit, amores / abstulit; ille habeat secum servetque sepulchro” (He, who first joined me to him, has sealed up my love; may he have it with him and keep it in his grave). The italicized phrase seems close enough to Dante’s “colui che ’nnanellata pria / disposando” to merit further thought, even if the contexts are not the same, a suffering wife and murderous husband replacing a loyal husband and a would-be loyal wife. Did Pia’s husband himself give her a ring of betrothal before they married or, as Varanini suggests, did the man who eventually killed her, the representative of her husband (one Magliata di Pionpino), present the ring for him? [return to English / Italian]

  Endnote. The three “autobiographies” that make up the last and largest part of this canto are strikingly similar in their construction (for a somewhat different analysis of the structure of this “triptych” see Picone [Pico.1999.2], pp. 75–77), as the following table reveals. The central figure, Buonconte da Montefeltro, allows Dante the occasion to expand the model he had set for himself in the case of Jacopo del Cassero, and then Pia de’ Tolomei offers an occasion to restrict that model, refining it to the very nub of possible composition in the form of a gesture that may remind contemporary readers of the minimalism found in the later works of Samuel Beckett. We should probably be aware that such artistic play is frequently found in medieval writers, who were accomplished practitioners in expansion (amplificatio) and contraction (abbreviatio) of passages in earlier texts.

  JACOPO DEL CASSERO BUONCONTE DA

  MONTEFELTRO PIA DE’ TOLOMEI

  captatio (64–66) captatio (85–87) captatio (130–131)

  homeland and hope for prayer there (67–72) name, homeland: no hope for prayer there (88–90) hope for prayer, name, homeland, and place of death (133–134)

  place and cause of death (73–81) place and cause of death (94–99) cause of death (135–136)

  moment of death (82–84) moment of death (100–102) moment of death (134)

  postlude (103–129)

  PURGATORIO VI

  1–12. Frankel (Fran.1989.1), pp. 113–16, discussing this opening simile, deploys the argument that the figure of the loser within the simile equates with that of Virgil in the narrative. That so reasonable an interpretation took six and a half centuries to be developed is a mark of the continuing obstinately rosy view of Virgil and of his role in the poem among its interpreters. It was only in 1968 that any commentator tried to find a counterpart for the “loser”; Giacalone thinks he may correspond to Dante, because of the poet’s many troubles at the hands of his enemies. Yet it is hard to see how Dante can be both winner (to whom he is explicitly compared) and loser. Singleton (1973 [at verse 2]) offers the following pronouncement: “This figure of the loser, though serving to make the whole scene more graphic, finds no correspondence in the second term of the simile.” He is in part correct: both Dante and the crowd of petitioners do correspond to figures within the simile (winner and the crowd of spectators, respectively); that the reference to Virgil is suppressed, inviting the reader to supply it, makes it all the more telling. For support for Frankel’s analysis see Hollander (Holl.1990.1), p. 31. Reviewing the commentators, we are able to witness centuries of avoidance behavior (e.g., Momigliano [1946]: the simile is produced “as a piece unto itself, with but slight regard for the context”).

  For information on the game of zara (from Arabic zahr, a die, through French hazard and Provençal azar) see Singleton’s lengthy gloss in his commentary to the opening verse of the canto. Similar to the modern game of craps, zara involved betting on the numbers, from 3 to 18, resulting from the cast of three dice. The numbers 3, 4, 17, and 18 were, like 2 and 12 in the modern game, “craps,” or zara, i.e., an undesirable result—unless the player called them out before he threw his dice. The game was apparently played by two players, as is reflected by Dante’s reference to only a single winner and loser in this passage.

  At verse 8 the reference is to the reward the winner traditionally bestowed upon the onlookers—a bit of his winnings (a practice found today in those at gaming tables who tip the croupier when they conclude their gambling happily). [return to English / Italian]

  13–24. These six males, all of whom died violently between 1278 and 1297, are presented as a sort of coda to the three developed figures who bring the preceding canto to its end (Jacopo, Buonconte, Pia), leaving us with the impression of the potentially more extensive narratives that might have accompanied their names, with still more resultant pathos. They also, as Chiavacci Leonardi (Chia.1994.1), p. 173, points out, remind us, in their violent deaths, of the unsettled political condition of Italy (even though the last of them, Pierre de la Brosse, is French), a subject that will dominate the final section of this canto. [return to English / Italian]

  13–14. The Aretine is Benincasa da Laterina, “(in the upper Val d’Arno), a judge of Arezzo; according to the old commentators, while acting as assessor for the Podestà of Siena, he sentenced to death a brother (or uncle) of Ghino di Tacco, a famous robber and highwayman of Siena; in revenge Ghino stabbed him while he was sitting in the papal audit office at Rome, whither he had got himself transferred from Siena, at the expiry of his term there, in order to be out of Ghino’s reach” (T). Jacopo della Lana says (comm. to vv. 13–14) that Ghino cut off Benincasa’s head in full view of the assembled papal court of Boniface VIII (ca. 1297) and somehow managed to make good his escape. Ghino di Tacco was of a Sienese noble family; exiled from his city, he became a famous highwayman. According to Boccaccio (Decameron X.ii), his nobility of character eventually resulted in his reconciliation with Pope Boniface before both of them died (in 1303). I
n Dante’s reference to him here there is no such positive treatment; Benincasa, not Ghino, is presented as being saved. [return to English / Italian]

  15. This brief and unadorned reference is taken by nearly all the early commentators to refer to Guccio de’ Tarlati di Pietramala, a Ghibelline of Arezzo, who was in an attacking party against the Bostoli, Aretine Guelphs in exile at the fortified castle of Rondine. Some assert that, when the forces of the Bostoli counterattacked, Guccio galloped, on a runaway horse, into the Arno, where he drowned. Others say that his death occurred while he was in pursuit of the enemy at that encounter. (The text would allow either interpretation.) Still others claim that his death occurred during the rout of Campaldino, shortly before the presence of the war party at Rondine, in 1289; but see the next note. [return to English / Italian]

  16–18. Federico Novello, son of Guido Novello of the Conti Guidi of Romena, in the Casentino (see note to Inf. XXX.58–61), died when he came to the aid of the Tarlati, besieging the Bostoli (see preceding note), ca. 1291. It would seem likely that Dante thought of both men as dying in the same effort.

  The Pisan whom Dante observes is consistently identified as the son of Marzucco degli Scornigiani, a widely known and respected judge of Pisa until the time of Ugolino’s joint rulership (with Archbishop Ruggieri—see note to Inf. XXXIII.1–3) in 1287. That Ugolino himself was involved in the political murder of Marzucco’s son is attested by various early commentators. Whether the execution (by decapitation) was carried out under Ugolino’s direct orders or not, it occurred in 1287 when Ugolino had returned to Pisa as its coruler, and necessarily would have, at the very least, suggested, in Dante’s view, Ugolino’s complicity.