Purgatorio (The Divine Comedy series Book 2)

by Dante

  34–35. In Dante’s “Surgi e vieni” (Arise and come), Mattalia (1960) seems to have been the first commentator (and few have subsequently joined him) to hear what is clearly a biblical echo, even if his hearing is a little dull. He cites Matthew 9:5–6, where Jesus urges the paralyzed man to walk; perhaps more applicable is Matthew 26:36–46, where Jesus three times leaves his disciples in Gethsemane in order to pray in a place apart and three times comes back to find them sleeping, finally arousing them with “Surgite, eamus” (Rise, let us be going), for His betrayal (by Judas) is at hand. The rhythm of those three disheartening visits to those who should have been awake is preserved in Dante’s “Three times at least I’ve called you,” as was suggested in 1969 by two undergraduate students at Princeton, John Adams and Christopher McElroy. Lost in his dream, Dante is like the disciples who sleep while their Lord suffers alone. [return to English / Italian]

  37–42. Dante has slept late, unsurprisingly, given his late-night activities on the terrace of Sloth (Purg. XVIII.76–78), and now finds the sun, at his back, risen above the horizon. [return to English / Italian]

  43–45. The Angel of Zeal’s words (“Come, here is the passage”) may not be like any heard here on earth, but they do resemble those spoken by Beatrice when she was described by Virgil as being “soave e piana” (gentle and clear) in her speech (Inf. II.56), as Poletto (1894) suggested. [return to English / Italian]

  49–51. The nine verses devoted to the presence of the angel here represent the briefest scene yet devoted to the interplay between angel and mortal (but see note to Purg. XXII.1–6). The Beatitude referred to, Matthew 5:4 (5:5 in the Vulgate), “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,” has caused some to wonder what specific relevance these words have to those formerly guilty of Sloth. Federigo Tollemache, “beatitudini evangeliche,” ED I (1970), p. 540b, explains that, given Thomas Aquinas’s definition (ST II.ii.35.2) of accidia as tristitia de spirituali bono (dejection over one’s spiritual health), the phrase “qui lugent” (those who mourn) is relevant. For the program of the Beatitudes in this cantica see the note to Purgatorio XII.110. [return to English / Italian]

  52–60. The exchange clearly reflects that between Virgil and Dante in Purgatorio XV.120–126. Once again Virgil begins by asking Dante “che hai?” (what’s wrong?), not at first understanding his charge’s removal from present reality. Once again Dante insists on his other-mindedness. In the first instance Virgil quickly understood that Dante was having a visionary experience; now he becomes aware that Dante has been having a dream of what his guide’s words had prepared him for, coming to grips with the “good that fails to make men happy” (Purg. XVII.133).

  Virgil’s formulation causes a problem for those who would argue that the holy lady is Beatrice, since it generalizes the nature of the lady who opposes the femmina balba and makes Dante’s dream applicable to all sinners, no others of whom, we may assume, are lovers of Beatrice. For this reason Parenti’s understanding (Pare.1996.1), pp. 62–63 (resuscitating Torraca’s opinion [1905]), that the holy lady equates with Charity, seems the most adequate solution, good love that operates against the forces of “the good that fails to make men happy” (Purg. XVII.133). Charity may well be the general meaning of the lady in the dream; for Dante, however, that theological virtue is the core of the meaning of Beatrice. [return to English / Italian]

  63–69. Virgil’s metaphoric expression and the poet’s following simile return to falconry (see note to Inf. XVII.127–136), now in as central an image of the basic movement of the entire poem as may be found. Mortals look down, consumed by their own concerns, while God, the falconer, wheels his lure (the celestial heavens) around his “head,” thus drawing us back to Him. Dante had been looking at the earth (verse 52) and Virgil urges him to push off against it in order to move on (verse 61); in the simile the falcon, too, looks down, perhaps to see if he is still bound to the falconer’s wrist now that his hood has been removed (or merely in his habitual attitude, his head inclined downward, resting on his breast). Both bird and Dante, urged on, look up and travel upward, in Dante’s case by climbing through the passageway in the rock so that he may resume his circling of the mountain on his approach to God.

  The image of the star-filled heavens as God’s lures for us, his falcons, is central to the progress of the poem that concludes each of its cantiche with the word stelle (stars). [return to English / Italian]

  70–72. Dante’s arrival on the fifth terrace, that of Avarice and Prodigality, is immediately greeted by the sight of those who are purging themselves there, prostrate on the earth. This terrace is unique in that it is a stage for three increasingly lengthy conversations, first with a pope (Adrian V) in this canto, with a kingly figure (Hugh Capet) in the next, and finally with a poet (Statius) in XXI and XXII, a sample of callings that reflects Dante’s most pressing concerns: Church, empire, and letters. [return to English / Italian]

  73–75. The penitents’ cries, muffled because they lie facedown on the floor of the terrace and are uttering them through painful sighs, are “my soul cleaves to the earth” (Psalm 118 [119]:25). The Ottimo (1333) connects this confessional outpouring with Virgil’s earlier remark to Dante (“Press your heels / into the ground” [verse 61]), thus suggesting that the avaricious repent their longing for the things of the earth, exactly what Virgil is urging Dante to do. [return to English / Italian]

  76–77. The terms in which Virgil puts his request may remind us that his own condition in Limbo lacks precisely what these penitents enjoy: hope in the justice of God for eventual salvation. Virgil and the other inhabitants of Limbo long for that justice, but without any possible hope of achieving it (Inf. IV.42). [return to English / Italian]

  79. As Singleton (1973) observes, this is the first time we learn that some penitents do not have to spend penitential time on every terrace, since the nameless speaker (we will learn that he was a pope at verse 99) assumes, from Virgil’s request for help, that both of these newcomers are saved souls exempt from the sin of avarice (or of prodigality) who are ascending to a destination higher up the mountain without having to stay here. [return to English / Italian]

  84. Dante cannot make out the identity of the speaker, but is able to individuate the source of the words he has just heard; he seeks Virgil’s permission to question him. [return to English / Italian]

  92. Dante’s circumlocution, “that without which there is no return to God,” refers to the satisfaction each penitent must offer to God, showing that he or she is finally pure of the traces of the defiling sin purged on each terrace. [return to English / Italian]

  94–96. Dante’s three questions will be the basis for this penitent’s speech, which will fill most of the rest of the canto, vv. 97–126 and 142–145. He wants to know the identity of his interlocutor, the nature of the sin reflected in his prone posture, and, as is customary, what service he (as living soul) can perform back on earth for him. [return to English / Italian]

  99. The speaker, in good papal Latin (“Know that I was a successor of Peter”), informs Dante that he was once a pope, not boastfully, but humbly and ashamedly, as though to say “I, of all people, who should have known better.” Benvenuto (1380) makes a similar point; it is as though he said he was a successor of Peter “sed non pauper ut Petrus” (but not a poor man, as was Peter). [return to English / Italian]

  100–105. Geographical indications (two towns on the Ligurian coast and the stream taken by members of the Fieschi family for their title: they are “counts of Lavagna”) leave no doubt as to the identity of the pope who speaks: “Adrian V (Ottobuono de’ Fieschi of Genoa), elected Pope at Rome, in succession to Innocent V, July 11, 1276; died at Viterbo on Aug. 16 following, before he had been crowned” (T); thus Dante’s “a month and little more” to indicate Adrian’s term of office. Longfellow (1867) reports the following papal remark: “When his kindred came to congratulate him on his election, he said, ‘Would that ye came to a Cardinal in good health, and not to a dy
ing Pope.’ ” [return to English / Italian]

  104. See Purgatorio XVI.127–129 for Dante’s earlier view of the papacy’s descent into the “mud” of wrongful activity.

  Bosco (1979) draws attention to the parallels between the previous nineteenth canto and this one, both deeply involved with the papacy in both similar and opposed spirits. At least here we understand what the papacy might be if the pope were an Adrian V. It is perhaps by design that the first saved pope whom we meet in the poem (there will be more [see note to Inf. VII.38–39]) should be distinguished by having died shortly after his election and thus without having served “officially” at all. [return to English / Italian]

  106–114. Adrian’s remarks have caused a certain puzzlement, since historical records give no sense of his involvement in avaricious behavior (nor, consequently, of his turning from that sin only once he was elected pope); as Scartazzini (1900) observed, such notice derives only from this passage in Dante’s poem and from his perhaps too gullible commentators. Bosco (Bosc.1942.1), pp. 136–43, followed by Sapegno (1955), argues that Dante thought that what he had read in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (VIII.xxiii.814) or, more likely, since Petrarch later also made the same mistake, in some (unknown) later source that created this error, about the twelfth-century pope Adrian IV, concerned instead his thirteenth-century namesake. [return to English / Italian]

  106. Conversion here signifies any turning to God. Even confirmed Christians are likely to experience a continuing need for “conversion.” See Singleton (Sing.1958.1), pp. 39–56. [return to English / Italian]

  115–126. Adrian here answers Dante’s second question, why these souls are in the posture Dante sees them in, by explaining their contrapasso: since they sought the things of earth energetically, they now are facedown on that earth and restrained, immobile, upon it. [return to English / Italian]

  127–132. Dante’s reverent kneeling before Adrian is apparent from his voice, which sounds louder because his face is now closer to the recumbent pope’s body. The interruption in Adrian’s answers allows this little exchange that offers a lesson in fellowship that trumps Dante’s gesture of respect. [return to English / Italian]

  131. Adrian earns one of Dante’s relatively few uses of the honorific “voi” (see note to Inf. X.49–51). In the first cantica only Farinata, Cavalcante, and Brunetto have this honor bestowed upon them. Adrian, the fourth of seven to share the honor, will be joined only by Guinizzelli (Purg. XXVI.112) and Beatrice (first at Purg. XXXI.36) in this cantica, and then by Cacciaguida (first at Par. XVI.10) in the next. [return to English / Italian]

  133. Adrian’s response is so urgent that he only gets to his fraternal salute, nearly always found, elsewhere in the poem, at the beginning of direct address and never at its end, last. His “frate,” rhyming with “dignitate,” is the answer to the hierarchy underlined by that second term and by Dante’s kneeling. In God’s kingdom there is no specialness, only brotherhood of the equally special. [return to English / Italian]

  134–135. From the time of Benvenuto (1380) it has been understood that this scene clearly replays a similar scene in the Bible: Apocalypse 19:9–10, where the angel addresses John, commanding him to write of the blessedness of those who share the marriage supper of the Lamb. When John falls before the feet of the angel to worship him, the angel says: “You must not do that; I am your fellow-servant (conservus).” Dante’s hapax, conservo, surely cements the relationship between the two texts. [return to English / Italian]

  136–138. The next biblical reference is to Matthew 22:23–30, “neque nubent” (nor do they marry), a passage in which Christ deals with the sardonic and hairsplitting Sadducees, who do not believe in resurrection and who wish, cynically, to know which of six brothers, who had in turn married an eldest brother’s widow, would be her resurrected husband. Jesus answers them by saying that after the Resurrection there will be no marrying in Heaven, where all will share, one might add, in the marriage supper of the Lamb as equals, where all are married to all and to none. Adrian’s insistence on the lack of hierarchical distinction is his version of Jesus’ saying. [return to English / Italian]

  141. “That of which you spoke” refers to Dante’s previous understanding (verse 92) of Adrian’s desire to complete his penance and thus achieve purification. [return to English / Italian]

  142–145. Answering the third element in Dante’s question, regarding what Dante might do for him, Adrian can supply only the name of a niece, Alagia, who might pray for him, thus suggesting that his avaricious former life had much in the way of familial bad company among all the rest of his relatives.

  Alagia was married to Moroello Malaspina, with whom Dante was on friendly terms, and thus his good words about her probably reflect a positive impression gained from personal knowledge and may also serve to express gratitude for the Malaspina family’s hospitality in Lunigiana in the early years of Dante’s exile. [return to English / Italian]

  PURGATORIO XX

  1–3. The metaphoric sponge (his knowledge of this pope’s experience) will not be as thoroughly saturated as the protagonist would have liked because he wishes no longer to distract Adrian, acceding instead to his clear desire to return to his penance. [return to English / Italian]

  4–9. Virgil and Dante move along close to the wall of the mountain, away from the shades of the penitents, so thickly strewn upon this terrace but mainly near the outer edge. That avarice has affected an enormous number of souls was also clear from Inferno VII.25. And while Pride is often accounted the “root sin,” another tradition gives Avarice that role. See Trucchi (1936) and Giacalone (1968), the latter citing the passage in I Timothy 6:10 (“Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas” [avarice is the root of all evil]) that helped form that tradition. [return to English / Italian]

  10–12. Virgil addresses Plutus, standing over the avaricious in the fourth Circle of hell, as “maladetto lupo” (accursèd wolf—Inf. VII.8); the she-wolf (lupa) who blocks Dante’s upward path in Inferno I.49–54 is widely understood to represent the sin of Avarice. Here there can be no doubt: the poet apostrophizes that sin as being the most widespread among mortals. [return to English / Italian]

  13–14. The poet’s second apostrophe seeks aid from above in the hope of defeating the scourge of avarice. Mattalia (1960) sees these astral influences as executors of the will of God. Woody (Wood.1977.1), p. 122, puts a finer point upon this view, arguing that Dante is here referring to the conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter every twenty years. One such had occurred in Dante’s birth year, 1265, in the constellation of Gemini (and thus in the period of Dante’s birth); the next was scheduled for 1325, also in Gemini. [return to English / Italian]

  15. Even from the very beginning of the exegetical tradition, commentators, e.g., the Anonymous Lombard (1322) and Jacopo della Lana (1324), believe that this opaque question refers to the veltro (hound) in Virgil’s prophecy at Inferno I.101, thus from this vantage point lending that passage a decidedly imperial caste. It is striking to find so much unanimity here, and so little there. However, if there the political figure was (as some believe) Cangrande della Scala, here it would seem to be an actual emperor, Henry VII, not merely a supporter of the Ghibelline position. Dante would have felt that Henry’s advent was still in the offing, as it was until the autumn of 1310, when the emperor announced his decision to come to Italy; or else, if the passage was written in the spring of 1311, the poet, as in the view of Trucchi (1936), was urging Henry to do what he had up to now failed to do, despite his presence in Italy: capture the city of Florence. In his seventh Epistle, Dante’s initial enthusiasm for the imperial enterprise has been reduced to overexcited and dubious hope. See notes to Purgatorio VI.97–102 and VII.95–96.

  These two apostrophes in the mouth of the poet (vv. 10–12 and 13–15) are suggestively coupled; the first deprecates avarice while the second calls for divine intervention in the form of an imperial presence. We have just met a pope, who conquered the avarice that thre
atened to ruin him, but who, despite his best intentions, left the papacy vulnerable to the depredations of the lupa of avarice; we are about to meet a just king (in Dante’s mind not in fact a king, but the father of a line of kings), whose France, in his wake, will do everything it can to collaborate with the corrupt papacy in its struggle against the forces of imperial righteousness. [return to English / Italian]

  19–24. The exemplars on this terrace are presented in an artistic medium that is parsimonious when compared to those we have been treated to on the first three terraces (see note to Purg. XVIII.99–138): here, a (temporarily) anonymous voice crying out the name and a single action of those who were noteworthy for their generosity of spirit. As usual, the first is Mary, here remembered for giving birth to the Son of God in a stable (Luke 2:7). [return to English / Italian]

  25–30. “Caius Fabricius, famous Roman hero, Consul B.C. 282, 278, Censor 275. During the invasion of Italy by Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, he was sent to the latter to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. Pyrrhus used every effort to gain him over, but Fabricius refused all his offers. On a later occasion he sent back to Pyrrhus the traitor who had offered to poison him, after which he succeeded in arranging terms for the evacuation of Italy by the former. He and his contemporary Curius Dentatus are lauded by Roman writers for their frugality, and probity in refusing the bribes of the enemy” (T). The protagonist’s special pleasure in hearing of him reflects some of the poet’s nearly constant enthusiasm for models of Roman republican virtue. (For the extraordinary importance of Roman republicanism to Dante see Davis [Davi.1984.1], pp. 224–89; and see Hollander and Rossi [Holl.1986.1], p. 75, for Fabricius’s presence in four of the five collections of republican heroes offered by Dante in Convivio, Commedia, and Monarchia.) [return to English / Italian]