(Sayers, 62)

Marco Lombardo
Omberto Aldobrandeschi
Oderisi da Gubbio
Provenzan Salvani
Sordello
La Pia.
Buonconte da Montefeltro
Belacqua
Manfred
Casella
Cato of Utica
Guido del Duca
Rinieri da Calboli
Sapia of Siena
Pierre de la Brosse
German Albert
Rudolph

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• CANTO X – XII
• Summary -- Carved into the side of the mountain on the first terrace are exemplary images of humility.
– from the Gospels (Luke 1:26-38). The angel Gabriel (sent by God to Nazareth) announces to Mary, a young woman engaged to Joseph, that she will give birth to a son, to be named Jesus, who "shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High" (Luke 1:32). When Mary asks how she, a virgin, will conceive, Gabriel explains: the "Holy Ghost shall come upon thee" (Luke 1:35). Declaring herself the "handmaid of the Lord" (10.44; Luke 1:38),
– 2 Kings 6:1-23, portrays David, king of Israel and "humble psalmist," dancing uninhibitedly before the ark of God as it is brought into Jerusalem (10.55-69). Michol accuses David of sullying his regal status by celebrating uncovered before even the "handmaids of his servants," to which David responds: "And I will be little in my own eyes: and with the handmaids of whom thou speakest, I shall appear more glorious" (2 Kings 6:20-22).
– The third and final example is the Roman emperor Trajan (10.73-93), who fulfilled the duties of justice and mercy by delaying a military campaign to avenge the murder of a poor widow's son.
• Notorious examples of pride, serving to rein in the sinful disposition of the shades, are carved into the floor of the terrace (12.13-69),
– Lucifer, the giant Briareus, Nimrod, Saul, Rehoboam, Sennacherib, and Holofernes; and (from classical sources) other giants, Niobe, Arachne, Eriphyle, and Cyrus of Persia. The entire series concludes with an image of Troy, the ancient city which Dante, echoing Virgil (Aen. 3.2-3), elsewhere calls "proud Ilium" (Inf. 1.75).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Read Psalm 6 -Psalm 6:1-10 NAS Psalm 6:1 For the choir director; with stringed instruments, upon an eight-string lyre. A
Psalm of David . O Lord, do not rebuke me in Thine anger, Nor chasten me in Thy wrath. 2 Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am pining away; Heal me, O LORD, for my bones are dismayed. 3 And my soul is greatly dismayed; But Thou, O LORD-- how long? 4
Return, O LORD, rescue my soul; Save me because of Thy lovingkindness. 5 For there is no mention of Thee in death; In Sheol who will give Thee thanks? 6 I am weary with my sighing; Every night I make my bed swim, I dissolve my couch with my tears. 7 My eye has wasted away with grief; It has become old because of all my adversaries. 8 Depart from me, all you who do iniquity, For the
LORD has heard the voice of my weeping. 9 The LORD has heard my supplication, The LORD receives my prayer. 10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly dismayed; They shall turn back, they shall suddenly be ashamed.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Commentaries
• X:16: “needle’s eye” Matthew 19:24 (NASB95)
24
“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
•
X:34 We come now to the 'scourge' or 'whip' of Pride -- the great examples of Humility which urge the penitents on in pursuit of that virtue. As on every Terrace, the first and supreme example is drawn from the life of the Virgin Mary, who represents the highest reach and perfection of human virtue. . . The scene which meets Dante the moment he emerges from the needle's eye is the Annunciation, carved on the wall of the embankment so livingly that Gabriel seemed to be saying Ave , and Ecce ancilla Dei [behold the handmaid of God, Lk. 1:38] was impressed on the Virgin's attitude as plainly as a seal on wax. . .. It is not, however, the personal humility of the Virgin alone of which Dante is thinking: the thought beneath is the profounder humility of the Incarnation. In other words, the great rebuke of human pride is the humility of God in becoming man. The first thing the
Proud have to learn is that it is this Divine lowliness which makes their salvation possible.
Hence Gabriel who announced the Incarnation is called
The Angel who came to earth with the decree
Of the many years wept for peace,
Which opened Heaven from its long interdict; and Mary, through whose humility the Divine Humility became incarnate, is she 'who turned the key to open the high love.‘ (Carroll)

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
X:56 David and Michal (2 Sam. vi. 14)
•
X:57 Uzzah and the Ark (2 Sam vi. 6-7)
• X: 74 “ the great Roman prince” Of those whom Dante depicts as being saved to whom all or most Christians would deny, or at least question, that status (Cato [ Purg .
I.75], Statius [ Purg . XXII.73], Trajan [ Par . XX.44], and Ripheus [ Par . XX.68]), only for
Trajan does there exist a tradition that considered him saved. This result of St.
Gregory's prayers is even allowed as possible by St. Thomas, in what seems an unusually latitudinarian gesture, recorded in the Summa theologica (as was perhaps first noted by Lombardi [1791], comm. to vv. 74-75): ST III, Suppl., quaest. 71, art. 5, obj. 5 [for the text in English see Singleton's note to verse 75]). That what seems to modern ears an unbelievable story should have had the support of so rigorous a thinker as Thomas still astounds readers. Yet, if one looks closely, one sees that
Thomas does hedge his bet: Trajan's salvation by Gregory's intervention is 'probable'
( potest probabiliter aestimari ); further, according to Thomas, 'as others say'
( secundum quosdam ), Trajan may have only had his punishment put back until
Judgment Day. Dante betrays no such hesitation: the salvation of Trajan is Gregory's
'great victory' (verse 75). Dante is in an enviable position, both possessing Thomas's support and being able to outdo him in enthusiasm (Hollander, notes).
• X: 93: reverence: Dante's word is pieta - not here, I think, "pity", as it is usually translated, but "piety" (Lat. pietas) : the religious reverence which dictates a sense of duty. The line is thus an echo of Cicero's phrase, "pietas et justitia”.
notes

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
THE IMAGES (XI).
1-24: Our Father,

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
.XI. 79: Oderisi: of Gubbio (or Agobbio) in Umbria: a celebrated illuminator of manuscripts. Notes
•
XI: 90: while power to sin was mine: i.e. "while I was still alive and well". Had he delayed repentance till his death-bed, he "would not yet be here", but would have been detained in Ante-Purgatory.
•
XI:. 97: Guido from Guido: The two poets who are thus said to contest the glory of the
Italian tongue are usually thought to be Guido Guinicelli of Bologna (c. 1230-c. 1276), whom we shall presently meet on the 7th Cornice (Purg. xxvi. 16 sqq.), and Dante's friend, Guido Cavalcanti (mentioned in Inf. x. 63 and Glossary) of Florence (c. 1256-
1300). Some, however, identify the first Guido with Guittone d'Arezzo (see Canto xxvi. 124 and note) and the second with Guinicelli (Sayers,156).
•
XI:108: Heaven's tardiest sphere: the outermost sphere, that of the Fixed Stars; "the almost imperceptible movement which it makes from west to east, at the rate of a degree in a hundred years" - Dante, Convivio, ii. 15. (Note that in its daily motion from east to west the outermost sphere is, of course, the swiftest; but in its proper motion from west to east, the slowest. The motion of the Primum Mobile is incalculable, and the Empyrean, being beyond space, cannot be said to have motion at all.) (See
Dante's Universe, Inf. p. 292. see notes below) notes

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• XI. 121: Provenzan (o) Salvani: a powerful Sienese nobleman, leader of the Tuscan Ghibellines after Montaperti, when he was one of those who urged the destruction of Florence (see Inf. x. 92 and note). He was killed in 1269, when the Sienese were defeated at
Colle di Valterra (see Canto xiii. 115-19).
• XI. 127: the soul who takes no care: Dante, knowing (no doubt from public report) that Provenzan had remained arrogant to the day of his death, asks how it is that he has been in Purgatory, "ever since he died", and was not detained with the other Late Repentant on the
Terrace below. Oderisi tells him how one heroic act of humility done for a friend's sake availed to "undo the ban". This is Dante's only instance of a sinner's being released from the "place of waiting" as a consequence of his own conduct - in every other case he has to depend upon the charity of others. Charity is the operative word: the tune is redeemed only by charity, bestowed or received (cf. vi. 37).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• XII: I: so, step for step: In xi. 78 Dante mentions that in order to converse with the burdened spirits he "paced with them, bent double toward the ground", and he continues to share their stooping posture until summoned by Virgil to desist (1. 7). Only on three of the Cornices does Dante thus associate himself with the punishment of the spirits, viz. on those of Pride, Wrath, and Lust. Since these are precisely the three failings of which Dante has always been accused, one may perhaps infer that he knew his own weaknesses as well as anybody. He says himself (xiii. 133-8) that though he dreads the punishment of Pride, he believes himself fairly free from the sin of Envy; we know from Boccaccio that he was an abstemious man and not given to Gluttony; Avarice he particularly hates, and nothing in his history suggests that he was either a hoarder or a spendthrift; and the last sin anybody would lay to his charge is Sloth; on these four Cornices he remains, therefore, merely a spectator (Sayers, 162).
• XII: 25-63: Mine eyes beheld, etc.: The images carved upon the pavement constitute the "Bridle" of Pride (see Introduction, pp. 67-8), and, like the "Whip", are drawn partly from sacred and partly from classical sources. They are divided into three groups of four examples (each group providing a contrast to the corresponding image in the "Whip"), followed by a concluding example.
• Each example occupies one terzain; each terzain of the first group begins with the word Vedea I saw; each terzain of the second group begins with the word: 0; and each terzain of the third group begins with the word Mostrava showed; while the three lines of the final terzain begin with Vedea,
0, Mostrava respectively. Thus the initial letters of the three groups, as also of the concluding terzain, if read as an acrostic, display the word VOM or (since V and U in medieval script are the same letter) UOM, which is the Italian for MAN. This may, of course, be an accident; but such an acrostic would be entirely in the taste of the period, and the probability is that the poet did it deliberately. Sayers, 162, see 159).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• XII: 37-48: Ah!
: The second group, which contrasts with David's joyful humility in the presence of the Ark of God, shows that arrogance in the face of Heaven which in Greek is called hubris, and in
English presumption or over-weening.
• XII: 55-7Cyrus the Persian tyrant (56o-529 B.C.) murdered the son of Tomyris Queen of Scythia; she defeated and slew him, and throwing his head into a vessel of blood said mockingly: "Drink thy fill of the blood for which thou hast insatiably thirsted these thirty years."
• 11. 58-60: Holofernes , captain of the army of Nebuchadnezzar, was contemptuous of the Jews and of their God, and, disregarding the advice of Achior, went up to besiege them at Bethulia. But he was outwitted and slain by the beautiful widow Judith, who cut off his head and had it displayed on the walls of the town ("the grisly relics of his slaying" : Judith vi, viii-xiv).
• 11. 61-3 : Troy Town: the series is summed up in the image of Troy ("proud Ilium" Aen. iii. 2-3), whose ruin was the great classical example of the fall of pride.
• 1. 79: the angel: this is the Angel of Humility. This virtue is so little prized to-day, and interpreted in so negative a sense, that to understand the shimmering radiance of its angel one needs to study all the contexts in which Dante uses the words umile, umilta, especially, perhaps, in the Vita
Nuova. "[When I beheld Beatrice] there smote into me a flame of charity [so that] if anyone had asked me about anything whatsoever, my reply would have been simply, Love, with a countenance clothed in umiltà" (V.N. xi). "She bore about her so true an umiltà, that she seemed to say, I am in peace" (V.N. xxiii). "She goes upon her way, hearing herself praised, benignly clothed with umiltà, and seems a thing come from heaven to earth to show forth a miracle" (V.N. xxvi). "Therefore, when [love] so deprives me of power that my spirits seem to desert me, my frail soul tastes such sweetness that my cheeks grow pale. Then [my sighs beseech] my lady to grant me yet further salute (salutation, salvation). This happens every time she looks upon me, and is a thing so umil that it passes belief" (V.N. xxviii). The connotation is always of peace, sweetness, and a kind of suspension of the heart in a delighted tranquillity.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• XII:110: Beati pauperes spiritu: "Blessed are the poor in spirit": This, taken from the Beatitudes, Matt. v. 3, is the Benediction of the First
Cornice.
• Pride -- note the rebellion of the most beautiful angel (Lucifer), disobedience of the first human beings (Adam and Eve), overreaching of the mighty Nimrod (Tower of Babel)--the biblical history of pride more than warrants its identification in Ecclesiasticus as "the beginning of all sin" (10:15). This dubious distinction is repeated and reinforced throughout the Middle Ages. For Gregory the Great, pride is the "queen of vices" ( Moralia in Job 31.45), while
Thomas Aquinas declares that "the mark of human sin is that it flows from pride" ( Summa Theologiae 3a.1.5); he variously discusses pride in relation to other sins as the "gravest," the "first," and the most "sovereign" (2a2ae.162.6-8).

The guide for the answers covering Cornice VII,81-86 of
Quine,

Terrace of Envy

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• CANTO XIII – XV
• Cornice II
• The Sinners of Envy whipped by cords of love
– The first of two spoken allusions to envy, "whoever captures me will kill me"
(14.133), repeats the lament of Cain to God (Genesis 4:14) after God has cast him out as a "fugitive and vagabond" for having killed his brother, Abel.
– "Caina," derived from Cain's name, designates the area of the ninth circle of Hell in which traitors to family are punished.
– The second voice, crying "I am Aglauros who became stone" (14.138), belongs to one of the daughters of Cecrops, an Athenian ruler. Aglauros, according to
Ovid's account, crosses Minerva when she disobeys the goddess and opens a chest concealing a baby ( Met.
2.552-61). After Mercury falls in love with
Aglauros' beautiful sister Herse, Minerva exacts revenge by calling on Envy to make Aglauros sick with jealousy over her sister's good fortune. When Mercury comes to visit Herse, Aglauros attempts to bar the entrance to the god, who promptly transforms her into a mute, lifeless statue ( Met.
2.708-832).
• The Pena nce Generosity and eyes blind-folded, plain clothes

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• The Meditation Mary informs her son Jesus, present with his disciples at a wedding celebration in Cana, that there is no wine for the guests, vinum non habent ("they have no wine") (13.28-30).
Performing his first miracle, Jesus then changes into wine the water contained in six large pots (John 2:1-11).
• The second echoing voice, "I am Orestes" (13.31-3), alludes to a double act of love from the classical tradition: condemned to death for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra (who had killed his father,
Agamemnon), Orestes insists on revealing his true identity (and accepting the consequences) after Pylades tried to spare Orestes' life by dying in his place; each friend proclaimed "I am Orestes" to save the life of the other (Cicero, On Friendship 7.24).
• The Prayer Mary pray for us sinners, Litany of the Saints

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
The Benediction blessed are the merciful Matt. 5:7; Rev 2:7 see allusion to Matt
5:44, XV:82.
•
The Angel of generosity
•
Read Psalm 32 1 A Psalm of David. A Maskil. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the
Lord does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit! 3 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long.4 For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.Selah.5 I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”; And You forgave the guilt of my sin.Selah.6 Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found; Surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him.7
You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance.Selah.
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.9 Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check,
Otherwise they will not come near to you.
10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked, But he who trusts in the Lord, lovingkindness shall surround him.11 Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones; And shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

Stephen

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• CANTO XV-XVII
• Cornice III
• The Sinners wrathful
• The Pena nce – a thick cloud of darkness covers the third terrace.
The instructive cases of the virtue contrary to wrath (gentleness, forbearance) and the vice itself are experienced by the spirits--and now by Dante--as "ecstatic visions" (15.85-6), "non false errors"
(15.117) insofar as they convey truth even though they occur only in the mind of the person seeing them. It is not perceived by Virgil, as these things are matters of faith.
• The Meditation In the first example of gentleness (15.85-93), Mary displays remarkable restraint upon finding Jesus, her twelve-year old son, in the temple of Jerusalem conversing with learned adults.
(Luke 2:41-8). In response to Mary's gentle rebuke, cited verbatim by Dante ("Why have you done this to us?"), the young Jesus asks,
"How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?" (Luke 2:49).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Dante's second case of gentleness (15.94-105), from the classical tradition, is recounted by Valerius Maximus (Factorum et dictorum memorabilium 5.1.2): Pisistratus, a tyrannical ruler of ancient Athens
(560-527 B.C.E.), counters his wife's wish for vengeance with a calm, accepting attitude toward the young man who, in love, had kissed their daughter in public. If they kill those who love them,
Pisistratus asks, what should they do to their enemies?
• Stephen, whose martyrdom is recounted in the Bible (Acts 6-7), causes a stir with his preaching in the name of Jesus and is brought before the council to defend himself against charges of blasphemy.
He concludes a long speech by accusing the council members of betraying and murdering the "Just One," much as, he claims, their fathers persecuted the prophets (Acts 7:52). Enraged, they cast
Stephen out of the city and stone him to death; as he dies, Stephen asks the Lord to "lay not this sin to their charge" (Acts 7:57-9), the scene Dante now includes as the final instance of exemplary gentleness (15.106-14

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Procne, Dante's first example of wrath (17.19-21), kills her small son Itys and feeds his cooked flesh to her husband Tereus, King of Thrace, upon learning that he raped Philomela (Procne's sister) and cut out her tongue to prevent her from telling what had happened. Philomela ingeniously managed to inform Procne of the crime by weaving a tapestry that told the story in pictures. Dante here singles out the cruel vengeance wrought by Procne
(with help from her sister). Made aware that he has eaten his son, an enraged Tereus, his sword drawn, chases the two sisters but before he can catch them all three are transformed into birds: Tereus into a hoopoe (a crested bird with a long beak), Procne into a nightingale, and Philomela into a swallow (in some versions Philomela is the nightingale and Procne the swallow). The gruesome story is told by Ovid (Met. 6.424-674).
• Dante chooses as his second example of wrath (17.25-30) the biblical figure Haman, whose cruelty is recounted in the Book of Esther. The most favored prince of King Assuerus, ruler of an empire stretching from Ethiopia to India,
Haman takes offense at Mordecai, a Jew who refuses to bow down to him. Haman's anger is such that he calls for the killing of not only Mordecai but all Jews throughout the kingdom, "both young and old, little children and women, in one day . . . and to make a spoil of their goods" (Esther 3.13). Haman's genocidal plan turns against him when Mordecai, called "just" by Dante (17.29), convinces Queen Esther to intervene. Esther, herself a Jew who is also the niece and adopted daughter of Mordecai, reveals Haman's plot to King Assuerus (he was previously unaware of his wife's background); Assuerus promptly has Haman hanged on the same gallows he
(Haman) had prepared for Mordecai. (Haman is "crucified" instead of "hanged" in Purgatorio 17.26 because the gallows are described as a cross, "crux," in the Vulgate, the Latin Bible familiar to Dante [Esther 5:14; 8:7].) The king also reverses Haman's orders, so that the Jews in his realm are spared and their persecutors killed instead, and he elevates Mordecai (already honored for having foiled a plot to assassinate Assuerus) to a position of power.
• Queen Amata, whose story is told in Virgil's Aeneid (7.45-106, 249-73, 341-405; 12.1-80, 593-611), inspires the third and final vision of wrath on the third terrace of Purgatory (17.34-9). Wife of King Latinus, Amata sought the marriage of her daughter Lavinia to Turnus (ruler of the Rutulians, Italian allies), but Latinus accepted the oracle's demand that she marry a foreigner, namely, the Trojan hero Aeneas. While, due to machinations of the gods, resolution of this matter is delayed and war rages, Amata mistakenly believes Turnus has been killed in battle
(Aeneas will kill him at a later point). Acting on her furious despair, the queen takes her own life, thus depriving
Lavinia of her mother (UT).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

Arnaut Daniel
Guido Guinizzelli
Bonagiunta da Lucca
Forese Donati
Pope Adrian V
Statius
Abbot in San Zero
Marco Lombardo
Guido del Duca
Rinieri da Calboli
Sapia of Siena
Omberto Aldobrandeschi
Oderisi da Gubbio
Provenzan Salvani

Marco Lombardo, the terrace of the wrathful

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• CANTO XV-XVII
• Dante’s view on worldly powers
• Dante's model of "two suns," each deriving its authority directly from God, challenges the medieval Christian notion of the pope as "sun" and the emperor as "moon" (based on Genesis 1:16), with the lesser sphere wholly dependent on the greater sphere for its authority and influence. Dante later writes a treatise dealing specifically with this issue of spiritual and political power: he argues in Monarchia that even the sun-moon analogy fails to prove papal dominion over temporal matters because the two spheres possess their own powers, including (Dante believed) their own light (3.16). Although he concedes that the emperor must show reverence to the pope, like a son to a father, Dante believes strongly in their independence as divinely sanctioned guides for humanity: "one is the Supreme Pontiff, to lead humankind to eternal life, according to the things revealed to us; and the other is the
Emperor, to guide humankind to happiness in this world, in accordance with the teaching of philosophy"
( Monarchia 3.16). A measure of the daring (and risk) in Dante's political philosophy is readily seen from a comparison of his ideas with sentiments expressed by Pope Boniface VIII in a papal bull of 1302 ("Unam
Sanctam"). Adopting the common metaphor of "two swords," one each for spiritual and temporal authority,
Boniface declares that they both "are in the power of the Church" and "one sword ought to be under the other and the temporal authority subject to the spiritual power." He continues by proclaiming a sort of papal infallibility, a highly ironic notion in light of Dante's treatment of the papacy, particularly under Boniface, in the Divine Comedy :
"Therefore, if the earthly power errs, it shall be judged by the spiritual power, if a lesser spiritual power errs it shall be judged by its superior, but if the supreme spiritual power errs it can be judged only by God not by man." Later
Church leaders evidently felt much as Boniface did, for they condemned Dante's contrary ideas as heretical and repeatedly censored his Monarchia : in 1329 a prominent cardinal ordered all copies of the work to be burned, and in the sixteenth century the book was included in the Church's Index of banned books. It wasn't until 1881 that
Dante's book was removed from the list.
Dante views Marco's condemnation of the Church's claim to both worldly and spiritual authority as a modern confirmation of the biblical injunction to Levi's sons (16.130-2): God instructs Aaron that he and his descendents
(of the tribe of Levi), chosen to perform priestly functions in the tabernacle, have rights to only what is required for
"for their uses and necessities" and "shall not possess any other thing" (Numbers 18:20-4) (UT).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Summary of a key section
•
Robert Hollander (2000-2007), Purgatorio 16.67-129
•
Marco's speech, the only object of possible attention in the darkness, twenty-one terzine of moral philosophy, may be paraphrased as follows: If the heavens moved all things, there would be no free will; even if they did, you would still have the power to resist and conquer (67-78); to a greater power and better nature than the celestial heavens you, free, are subject, and that creates the mind [the rational soul] in you, which has nothing to do with those revolving spheres (79-83); let me expand: God lovingly created the (rational) soul in each of you; at its birth, since it was made by
Him, even if it is a tabula rasa , it loves; and it loves anything at all if it is not guided or restrained; therefore, a leader and laws are necessary (84-96); laws exist, but who administers them? no one, because the pope is involved in temporal affairs and thus gives the wrong example that is much imitated (97-102); thus you can see that bad guidance and not corrupt human nature accounts for the wickedness of the world;
Rome, which once made the world good, used then to have two suns which lit each path, secular and sacred (103-108); now, since the regal and pastoral functions have been conjoined, ill ensues -- by their fruits shall you know them (109-114); in northern
Italy, which once was the home of courtesy and valor before the Church opposed
Frederick II, there are now but three good men, all of them old (115-126); thus you must make it known that the Church of Rome is befouled and befouling, arrogating unto itself both governments (127-129).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Thoughts on Freewill
• Boëthius,
Cons. Phil.
, V. Prosa 3, Ridpath's Tr.:--
“But I shall now endeavor to demonstrate, that, in whatever way the chain of causes is disposed, the event of things which are foreseen is necessary; although prescience may not appear to be the necessitating cause of their befalling. For example, if a person sits, the opinion formed of him that he is seated is of necessity true; but by inverting the phrase, if the opinion is true that he is seated, he must necessarily sit. In both cases, then, there is a necessity; in the latter, that the person sits; in the former, that the opinion concerning him is true: but the person doth not sit, because the opinion of his sitting is true, but the opinion is rather true because the action of his being seated was antecedent in time. Thus, though the truth of the opinion may be the effect of the person taking a seat, there is, nevertheless, a necessity common to both. The same method of reasoning, I think, should be employed with regard to the prescience of
God, and future contingencies; for, allowing it to be true that events are foreseen because they are to happen, and that they do not befall because they are foreseen, it is still necessary that what is to happen must be foreseen by God, and that what is foreseen must take place. This then is of itself sufficient to destroy all idea of human liberty.”
• Dante later again picks up the freewill discussion in XVIII:43-9, and states that if everything is moved by love, either to good or bad results, then how does one reconcile freewill. How is it not blind determinism? This is a matter of Faith.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Thoughts on the Soul
• John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio 16.82-93The cause, then, of the general corruption is not in the heavens but in men themselves, and Marco proceeds to trace it specifically to the evil guidance of the Papacy. He begins with a passage of great beauty descriptive of the innocent joy with which the human soul passes direct from God into the earthly life:Forth from the hand of Him who with joy beholds it Before it is, in fashion of a little maid Weeping and laughing in her childish sport, Issues the simple soul, that nothing knows, Save that, set in motion by a joyous Maker,
Willingly it turns to that which gives it Pleasure.' Never, surely, was the doctrine of the human soul expressed with greater beauty. It reminds us of Vaughan's 'angell-infancy' with its 'white celestiall thoughts,' and Wordsworth's'trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.' The simple unknowing joy of the unborn soul is the joy of its Maker. Before its creation it exists in the
Divine idea, and there God contemplates it with delight. When it passes forth from His hand into the earthly existence, His joy goes with it and makes it turn willingly to whatever gives it pleasure.
But in its childish ignorance it runs after every trivial and delusive good, the object of desire ever changing as life passes from stage to stage. 'Whence,' as he says in the Convito , 'we see little children desire above all things an apple; and then, proceeding further on, desire a little bird; and then, further on, desire a beautiful garment; and then a horse, and then a wife; and then riches, not great, then great, and then very great' ( Conv.
iv. 12. For the joy and happiness of God in
Himself and in all good, see Aquinas, Contra Gentiles , Bk. i, chaps. 90, 100- 102. The doctrine of the soul here advocated is that of Creationism [its direct creation by the hand of God], against
Traducianism [its transmission by natural generation]. Dante follows Aquinas [ Summa , i, q. xc;
Contra Gentiles , ii. 87-89]: see Purg.
XXV. 61-78; Par.
VII. 142-144.)

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Charles S. Singleton (1970-75), Purgatorio 16.88
• che sa nulla : I.e., the mind is tabula rasa.
See Thomas Aquinas
( Summa theol.
I, q. 79, a. 2, resp.), who, quoting Aristotle's De anima , says:
• But the human intellect, which is the lowest in the order of intelligence and most remote from the perfection of the Divine intellect, is in potentiality with regard to things intelligible, and is at first like a clean tablet on which nothing is written , as the
Philosopher says ( De Anima iii. 4[429b-430a]). This is made clear from the fact that at first we are only in potentiality to understand, and afterwards we are made to understand actually. And so it is evident that with us to understand is in a way to be passive ; taking passion in the third sense. And consequently the intellect is a passive power.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
The divisions of Purgatory
– Sayers
•
No one really hates himself or God, so there remains (restat) only the love of harm to one's neighbour. This is the object of Love Perverted, and the only means by which
"the work can seek to work against the Workman"
— i.e. by "the harming of an image or images given to one for due love" (Charles Williams, op. cit. p. 164).
•
The lower part of Purgatory is made up of sins against your neighbor
– Pride: the intolerance of any rivalry.
– Envy: the fear of loss through competition.
– Wrath: the love of revenge for injury.
• Virgil explains Mid-Purgatory (4 th Cornice) as one of defect -- There is a true and satisfying Good (which "the heart may rest on"), of which everybody has at least some kind of nostalgic glimmering. This is the love of God; failure to pursue it with one's whole will is called Sloth (Accidia).
•
There is a love which though good as far as it goes, cannot of itself bring one to
Heaven (it "is not bliss") because it is not the love of God (the essential Good and source of all contingent goods). This love is threefold, and purged on the three
Cornices of Upper Purgatory.
– Covetous
– Gluttonous
– Lustful

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• CANTO XVII-XIX
• Cornice IV
• The Sinners Slothful
• The Pena nce – hurried pace
• The Meditation -Mary rushes to the mountain village of Judah, home to
Elizabeth and Zachary. Elizabeth is herself pregnant, this conception at an advanced age also having been announced by Gabriel, and her child, the future John the Baptist, leaps in his mother's womb as she is greeted by
Mary (Luke 1:39-42). Julius Caesar is the second figure praised here for his fervor: eager to move on to the next battle, Caesar accelerates his progress westward into Spain (Ilerda, today known as Lérida, in Catalonia) by leaving behind forces under Brutus' command to complete the military operations in Marseille (Lucan, Pharsalia 3.453-5). Lucan, whose poem recounts the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, compares Caesar to a thunderbolt (1.151-4). As seen in his damnation of Caesar's assassins,
Dante clearly approves of Caesar's military campaigns and eventual dictatorship as part of providential history (UT).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
The balancing examples of sloth, or insufficient commitment and determination, are announced by two penitents at the back of the pack (18.130-8). They first lament that many of Moses' followers , beneficiaries of divine intervention in their exodus from Egypt (e.g., parting the waters of the Red
Sea: Exodus 14:21-31), nonetheless later perish at God's hand and thus fail to reach the promised land due to various manifestations of incredulity, resistance, and transgression (Exodus
32:7-35; Numbers 14, 16, 20-1). Moses, who summarizes many of these instances in
Deuteronomy 1:26-46, is himself shown by God the final destination but also prevented from arriving there (Deut. 34:1-5).
• The second example of sloth is recounted in Virgil's Aeneid (5.700-54): Trojans who stayed behind in Sicily, to settle there and found a city, rather than endure additional hardships with
Aeneas on his fated voyage to Italy, where he will lay the foundation for the Roman empire. On the counsel of his aged friend Nautes and the spirit of Anchises, his dead father, Aeneas allows those who have lost their ships, men and women weary of the journey, and others weak and afraid of new dangers to put an end to their wandering (seven years since the fall of Troy). Dante here concurs with Virgil's judgment that these individuals lack the will and courage required to achieve fame and glory ( Aen.
5.751; Purg.
18.138).
• The Prayer none
• The Benediction Matt 5:5, blessed are they that morn
• The Angel of zeal
• Read Psalm 51

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio 19.37-69 Freewilll
• The qui lugent refers, of course, to the Vulgate of the Beatitude, 'Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted' (Matt. v. 4, 'Beati qui lugent, quoniam ipsi consolabuntur'). At first glance, this Beatitude seems to have almost no moral appropriateness to this Terrace; but on looking closer the connection is found to be peculiarly deep and intimate. Sloth, we have seen, involves a profound element of sadness , -- 'sadness,' as Aquinas says, 'at spiritual good, inasmuch as it is divine good' ( Summa , ii-ii, q. xxxv, a. 3). It is that low-spirited state of soul which shrinks away sorrowfully from the pain and exertion which the struggle to attain spiritual good involves. And the
Beatitude is, -- Blessed are they that mourn over this sadness which makes divine good seem not worthy of the effort to gain it. We shall miss much of the meaning if we fail to see that it is just this blessed sorrow which was bending Dante himself into 'the half arch of a bridge,' as his conversation with Virgil, when they have passed the Angel, proves. Virgil asks what ails him that he gazes only at the ground; and Dante replies that the strange vision he has had is bending him to itself and filling him with a misgiving of fear -- fear, evidently, that he will never be strong enough to cast off the power of the Siren, to break the spell of fleshly sin. It is just as he comes forward bending languidly under the load of this misgiving that the Angel meets him with the declaration that such sorrow is blessed, because it carries in its bosom treasures of consolation. What those treasures are, Dante discovers almost immediately. Virgil asks him if he had seen how man is set loose from 'that ancient witch.' The meaning is that, in his dream, he found no release from her until the grace of heaven intervened. To teach him this was the very purpose of the vision, -- that a lower love can be conquered only by a higher, the Siren by 'a lady holy and alert,' the flesh by the
Spirit, earth by heaven. This, therefore, is the comfort promised in the Beatitude -- that, as the attraction of the heavens above lays hold of him, that of the earth beneath is broken, and he can tread it underfoot:

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• 'Suffice it thee, and strike on earth thy heels,
Thine eyes turn back to the lure, which whirleth
The King Eternal with the mighty wheels.‘
Even as the falcon, which at his feet first gazes,
Then turns to the call, and stretches forward
Through the desire of the food which draws him there,
Such I made me, and such, as far as is cleft
The rock to give a way to him who mounts,
I went, even to the point where circling is begun.‘
• ( Purg.
XIX. 61-69. For the same allurement of the Heavens, compare Canto XIV. 148-150.) The whole figure is very striking. Falconry is the sport of kings ('Falcons and hawks were allotted to degrees and orders of men according to rank and station, -- for instance, to royalty the jerfalcons, to an earl the peregrine, to a yeoman the goshawk, to a priest the sparrowhawk, and to a knave or servant the useless kestrel' [ Encyclopaedia Britannica , Art. 'Falconry']), and the great Falconer is the King Eternal. As the human falconer gives his peculiar call, and swings his 'lure' in the air -- a contrivance of birds' feathers and food at the end of a long thong -- even so God whirls above man's life the lure of 'the mighty wheels,' the vast circlings of the Nine Heavens, that he may draw the soul to Himself by hunger for its proper food, the bread of angels. Dante confesses that he is not yet ready for the vast flight. He compares himself to a falcon which hears its master's cry, and first looks down at its feet which are restrained by the jesses. So Dante looks down at the earth which forms his jesses, and feels that all he can meantime do is to turn to the great Falconer's call, and stretch himself towards the heavenly lure -- not, as Ruskin thinks, the 'Fortuna Major' of the geomants, but of God. It is not much perhaps, but it is at least the beginning of the comfort promised by the Beatitude: it carries him with uplifted head up the entire length of the passage between the two walls of hard rock which at last open out upon the Fifth Cornice.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• CANTO XIX-XXI I
• Cornice V
• The Sinners The Covetous
• The Pena nce Prostration
• The Meditation The penitents on the fifth terrace, Hugh Capet explains, recite examples of avarice during the night and examples of the contrary virtue (poverty, contentment with little) during the day (20.97-102). Because
Dante and Virgil arrive on the terrace in the morning, they first hear the exemplary cases of poverty, beginning as always with a biblical scene from the life of Mary (20.19-24). Her poverty is evident, the spirits proclaim, from the extremely modest circumstances in which she gave birth to Jesus, as described in Luke 2:7: "And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." " Good Fabricius ," a classical figure, is the second virtuous example (20.25-7). Gaius
Fabricius Luscinus was a prominent Roman leader--he served the Republic twice as consul (282 and 278 B.C.E.) and once as censor (275)--legendary for his integrity and contempt for material wealth. So strong was Fabricius' loyalty to the state that he could not be bought off with lavish gifts, preferring instead "to remain in poverty as an ordinary citizen" (Augustine, City of God 5.18). Dante elsewhere presents Fabricius as a model of Roman civic virtue based on this impressive austerity ( Convivio 4.5.13; Monarchia 2.5.11), which Virgil succinctly praises in the
Aeneid : "Fabricius, strong with so little" (6.843-4). Nicholas , whose generosity enabled the young women to maintain honor (20.31-3), is the third individual praised on the terrace of avarice. St. Nicholas, venerated by both the Greek and Roman Churches, was the fourth-century bishop of Myra (in Asia Minor) whose remains were brought to Bari, Italy in the eleventh century (he is also known as Nicholas of Bari). The episode recited by the penitents was well known from The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints , compiled by Jacobus de Voragine in the thirteenth century. Born to a wealthy family, Nicholas resolved to distribute his riches "not to the praising of the world but to the honor and glory of God." He acted on this promise upon learning that a neighbor, an impoverished nobleman, intended to keep the family afloat by prostituting his three daughters. Nicholas, horrified by this proposition, stealthily threw a bundle of gold into the man's house during the night. Thanking God, the neighbor used the gold to marry his oldest daughter. Nicholas repeated the procedure two more times, thus providing a dowry for all three daughters. The patron saint of sailors, virgins, merchants, and thieves (among others), Nicholas is most widely recognized as Santa Claus, patron saint of children.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• During the night, the penitents recite, in rapid succession, seven infamous cases of avarice
(20.103-17). Pygmalion , a traitor, thief, and parricide (20.103-5), was King of Tyre and brother of
Dido. "Blinded by his love of gold" ( Aen.
1.349), he brutally murdered Dido's wealthy husband
Sychaeus (who was Pygmalion's uncle) and tried to keep the crime from his sister. Dido learned of the murder from Sychaeus' spirit, who also revealed the location of gold and silver to his sister and warned her to flee their homeland at once. Dido and her companions escaped with the treasure of rapacious Pygmalion, and they eventually founded a new city, Carthage ( Aen.
1.335-
68). Midas , a Phrygian king, was granted a wish by Bacchus for having returned the satyr Silenus to the god; he asked that whatever he touched be turned to gold. This was indeed an unwise choice, for now Midas could neither eat nor drink: even the solids and liquids that passed his lips turn to metal. Bacchus answered Midas' plea for forgiveness and cancelled the unwelcome gift
(Ovid, Met . 11.85-145).
• The next three examples are biblical. Achan was stoned to death, his family and possessions consumed by fire, for having disobeyed Joshua's command that the treasures of the conquered city of Jericho be consecrated to God (Jos. 6:18-19). Because Achan took precious items from the spoils for himself, the Israelites were defeated and they suffered heavy losses in a subsequent battle; God's wrath was averted with the punishment of Achan's crime (Jos. 7:1-26). The avarice of two early Christian followers, Sapphira and her husband Ananias , was also punished by death. While other members of the community sold their property and gave all proceeds to the apostles for distribution according to need, Ananias (with the complicity of Sapphira) kept part of the sale for himself. Confronted by Peter for the fraud, first Ananias and then Sapphira immediately dropped dead (Acts 4:32-7; 5:1-10). King Seleucus of Asia sent Heliodorus to the temple in Jerusalem to bring back money, which the king, acting on false information, believed was his. The temple members, because the funds actually belonged to them and were used for charity, were distraught until their prayers were answered: as Heliodorus prepared to take away the money, there appeared a knight in golden armor whose horse delivered the kicks now praised by the penitents in Purgatory (20.113; 2 Mach. 3:25).
http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/purgatory/07avarice.html

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Two classical figures round out the exemplary cases of avarice. Polymnestor lives in infamy all around the mountain (20.114-15). The king of Thrace, he was entrusted with the safety of
Polydorus, youngest son of Priam and Hecuba. Driven by his insatiable greed, Polymnestor instead killed Polydorus to take for himself the considerable wealth the boy brought for safe keeping from the besieged city of Troy ( Aen.
3.19-68; Met.
13.429-38). Hecuba avenges this crime: pretending to believe that Polydorus is still alive, she tells Polymnestor that she has a secret store of gold for him to give her son; when the murderer, greedier than ever, asks for the gold and promises to fulfill Hecuba's request, she grabs him and, assisted by other Trojan women, gouges out his eyes and--through the empty sockets--his brain as well ( Met.
13.527-64). Marcus
Licinius Crassus , part of the triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey (60 B.C.E.) and twice consul with Pompey (70, 55 B.C.E.), also suffers a gruesome death due to his avarice. Nicknamed Dives
("the wealthy one": Cicero, On Duties 2.57), Crassus comes to know the taste of gold, as the avaricious spirits mockingly put it (20.117), when greed leads to his death--and the massacre of eleven Roman legions--at the hands of the Parthians. Crassus' head and right hand are brought before the Parthian king, who has melted gold poured into the open mouth so that "as the living man burned with lust for gold, now even his dead body feels the heat of gold" (Florus, Epitoma
1.46). (See Sayers’ note p. 232-3)
• The Prayer – Ps. 119:25 “my soul cleaveth to the dust”
• The Benediction Matt 5:6 “hunger for righteousness”
• The Angel of Liberality
• Read Psalm 102

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• The souls on the fifth terrace purify themselves of their vice (avarice or its sinful opposite, prodigality) by lying face-down on the hard rock floor.
Weeping and praying, they themselves call out the examples of greed and its opposing virtue (generosity). Pope Adrian V, who lived only a little more than a month after his election to the papacy in 1276 (19.103-5), explains how this prostrate position is fitting punishment for their neglect of spiritual matters and excessive attachment to worldly goods. This pope, the first saved pope encountered by the journeying Dante, tells his visitor not to kneel because they are now equals before God (19.133-5).
• 137: Neque nubent = "They neither marry [nor are given in marriage"] (Matt. xxii. 23-30; Mark xii. 18-25; Luke xx. 27-35): Every bishop, including the
Pope, is ceremonially wedded to his see (which is why he wears a ring and changes his name to that of his diocese). But this marriage, like any earthly marriage, is dissolved in Heaven, together with all legal and official ties and all earthly rank and privilege (cf. v. 88 and note). This holds good, despite the sacramental nature of the ties of marriage, orders, and unction: for in
Heaven there is no longer any need of sacraments (Sayers).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio 19.127-138 Popes
•
If one form of Avarice is as dust and another as mire, there is a third of which Dante chooses the rock as symbol. It is in the Moat of the Simoniacs in the Eighth Circle of
Hell; and his attitude here as he stoops over this prostrate Pope cannot but recall his form as he bends lower still over another who is worse than prostrate. For if common
Avarice casts a man to the ground, Simony sinks him into it, buries him alive in the hard rock of his own merciless greed. As Dante stoops over Nicholas III. and the long non-apostolic succession of simoniacal Popes in the rock beneath him, he regards them as assassins of the Church, and breaks into a passion of indignant denunciation
( Inf.
XIX. 31- 133). Here, on the contrary, before a Pope who, whatever his sins, strove at least to save 'the great mantle' from the mire of base avarice, he cannot refrain from sinking on his knees in reverence. So far as it is reverence for himself as
Pope, it is rebuked by Adrian the moment he discovers by the nearness of Dante's voice that he is kneeling:
'Make straight thy legs, and rise up, brother,‘
He answered; 'err not; fellowservant am I
With thee and with the others to one Power.
If thous didst ever that holy Gospel sound
Which sayeth Neque nubent understand,
Well canst thou see why I thus speak.'

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• The use of the word 'brother' instead of 'son,' indicates the renunciation of his superiority as spiritual Father. 'I am thy fellow-servant ,' taken from Rev. xix. 10 and xxii. 9, has a double edge: it repudiates at once the exaggerated humility of the ' Servus servorum ,' Servant of servants, which, since Gregory the Great, was one of the official styles of the Popes (in Inf.
XV. 112, the title is used sarcastically of Boniface VIII); and that Papal grasping at spiritual and temporal power which sought to make all men serve it. This Pope has learnt that there is a higher world of equality of service of the one same Power. The 'holy Gospel sound,' ' Neque nubent ,' is Christ's statement that the bond of marriage is dissolved in the world to come: 'In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage' (Matt. xxii. 30; for the figure of the Pope as the Church's spouse, see
Inf.
XIX. 56, and Purg.
XXIV. 22). The first reference is to the ties of flesh and blood, and Dante here extends it to the Pope as the spouse of the Church. It is uncertain whether he meant it to cover holy orders. These, according to the Church, impress a 'character,' which is defined as 'a certain spiritual and indelible sign,' and it might be argued that this being indelible, a priest is a priest for ever, in the next world as in this. As a matter of fact, Adrian, as already stated, was never ordained to the priesthood, and therefore the question does not arise. What Dante really wishes to do is to bring the office of Pope into line in this matter with that of Emperor. Both offices are ordained by God for certain earthly ends, and therefore lapse with the earthly life. 'Caesar I was , and am Justinian,' says the great Emperor in Paradise ( Par.
VI. 10). It is a law which holds good of every earthly rank: the Count of Montefeltro, for example, disclaims his title: 'I was of Montefeltro, I am Buonconte.' Pope, Emperor, Count -- all at death lapse back into the primal manhood, the naked personality, in which all men are equal before God.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Robert Hollander (2000-2007), Purgatorio 21.16-18
• Virgil's wish for Statius is touching, in part because it has been accomplished, since Statius is already substantially one of the blessed, only awaiting a change in his accidental state, which will be accomplished in less than a day. While the poem does not show him there, its givens make it plain that, had Dante chosen to do so, Statius could have been observed seated in the rose in Paradiso XXXII; he is there by the time Dante ascends into the heavens at the beginning of the next cantica, or so we may assume.
• Virgil's insistence on his own eternal home is a moving reminder of his tragic situation in this comic poem. Statius's salvation comes closer than anyone else's in showing how near Virgil himself came to eternal blessedness, as the next canto will make clear. And, once we learn (Purg. XXII.67-73) that it was Virgil who was responsible, by means of his fourth Eclogue, for the conversion of Statius, we consider these lines with a still more troubled heart. For remarks in a similar vein see Stephany (“Biblical Allusions to Conversion in
Purgatorio XXI,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]), p. 158n.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
Statius, a Roman poet from the first century (45-96 C.E.), is the author of two epic Latin poems, the Thebaid (treating the fratricidal war for the city of
Thebes) and the Achilleid (about the Greek hero Achilles), which was left incomplete upon the poet's death. Dante and Virgil meet Statius soon after he has completed his time on the fifth terrace, an achievement that triggers the trembling of the mountain and the celebratory shouting of the spirits
(20.124-41; 21.58-72). Statius spent over five hundred years on the fifth terrace (not for avarice but for its symmetrical vice, prodigality), after having raced around the fourth terrace (sloth) for over four hundred years
(22.92-3). The reverence Statius shows for Virgil reflects how much he owes to his Roman precursor: Statius drew poetic inspiration from Virgil's
Aeneid (calling it a "divine flame" in 21.95), and he credits Virgil's fourth eclogue with his turn to Christianity (22.64-73); Statius also credits a line from the Aeneid with teaching him to curb his free spending ways, thus enabling him to avoid the eternal punishment of rolling boulders with the avaricious and prodigal sinners in Hell (22.37-45). Freed of his purgatorial trials, Statius will accompany Dante and Virgil the rest of the way up the mountain.

Additional notes
5 th Cornice
•
•
•

The
Gluttonous

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• CANTO XXII-XXIV
• Cornice VI
• The Sinners the gluttonous
• The Pena nce starvation
• The Meditation Two remarkable trees rise up from different locations on the sixth terrace to excite desire in the spirits for food and drink only to frustrate this craving, for the souls here expiate the sin of gluttony. From the branches and leaves of each tree resounds an anonymous voice summarizing famous examples of temperance, in one case, and exemplary instances of gluttony, in the other.
• Dante once again refers to the biblical scene of the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1-5), in which Mary tells her son Jesus "they have no wine" (see "Examples of Love"), this time to underscore Mary's concern not for herself but for the welfare of the guests (22.142-4).
• The second example, praising the Roman women for being satisfied with water (22.145-6), is likely based on the claim of Thomas Aquinas, quoting Valerius Maximus, that "among the ancient Romans women drank no wine" ( Summa Theologiae 2a2ae.149.4). Valerius says such abstemious behavior kept them from inadvertently doing something shameful ( Factorum et dictorum memorabilium 2.1.5).
• Daniel , who was granted understanding of visions and dreams as well as "knowledge and understanding in every book and wisdom" (Daniel 1:17), serves as the next example of virtuous selfcontrol (22.146-7). Taken from Jerusalem to Babylon, Daniel grows stronger and wiser when he abstains from the king's meat and wine (Daniel 1:8-20).
• Also admired for their temperance are those who lived in the Golden Age (22.148-50)--a mythical time of social harmony, pristine beauty, and an abundant supply of nature's gifts--when the human race was
"content with foods that grew without cultivation" (Ovid, Met.
1.89-112).
• John the Baptist wore a garment of camel's hair and subsisted on locusts and wild honey (Matt. 3:1-4).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Within the branches of the second tree emerges a mysterious voice that first identifies the tree as an offshoot of yet another tree, located higher up, whose fruit was eaten by Eve (24.116-17) and then recalls two noteworthy episodes of gluttony or self-indulgence (24.121-6). The cursed creatures (born of the clouds) with double chests are the Centaurs , horse-men well known for their bouts of debauchery. One such episode occurred at a wedding celebration when Eurytus, the fiercest Centaur, became drunk and the wedding feast was thrown into confusion. The new bride was violently dragged off by the hair. Eurytus seized Hippodame, and others carried off whichever girl they fancied, or whichever one they could" (Ovid, Met.
12.222-5). Among the men present,
Theseus was the first to react: he freed the bride from the Centaurs, and, when Eurytus attacked, he killed the horse-man ( Met.
12.227-40). An all-out battle ensued in which Theseus sent numerous other Centaurs to their death ( Met.
12.341-54).
• The second example, from the Bible, refers to the vast majority of Gideon's men who lapped water with their tongues, as dogs do, when God decided which men would accompany Gideon into battle against Midian to deliver the Israelites from oppression. Of the ten thousand men with
Gideon at the time, only the three hundred who drank by bowing down and bringing water to their mouth with their hands were chosen for the mission (Judges 7:4-7).
• The Prayer – Psalm 51:15 “O Lord, open my lips, That my mouth may declare Thy praise. “
• The Benediction Matt 5:6
• The Angel of temperance
• Read Psalm
"Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano"
(22.73) through you I became a poet, through you a Christian Click

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
By having Statius credit Virgil's fourth eclogue with his turn to Christianity (22.67-73), Dante follows the medieval tradition of creatively interpreting the Latin poem (written c. 42-39 B.C.E.) as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus.
While Virgil likely placed his prophetic hopes on the future child of one of Rome's leading couples (perhaps Antony and Octavia), the poem's theme of messianic renewal, combined with references to a virgin and child, well served the purposes of those, like Dante, who wished to view the great Roman poet as a prophet of Christianity.
Now the last age of Cumae's prophecy has come;
The great succession of centuries is born afresh.
Now too returns the Virgin, Saturn's rule returns;
A new begetting now descends from heaven's height.
O chaste Lucina, look with blessing on the boy
Whose birth will end the iron race at last and raise
A golden through the world: now your Apollo rules.
And, Pollio, this glory enters time with you;
Your consulship begins the march of the great months;
With you to guide, if traces of our sin remain,
They, nullified, will free the lands from lasting fear.
He will receive the life divine, and see the gods
Mingling with heroes, and himself be seen of them,
And rule a world made peaceful by his father's virtues.
(Eclogue 4.4-17)
( The Eclogues , trans. Guy Lee [Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1984], 57)
The appearance of the "messianic" eclogue at this point in the poem is part of a larger cluster of Christ-centered references in and around the presentation of Statius on the fifth terrace. These include biblical allusions to the birth of Jesus (20.136-41; Luke 2:8-14), his encounter with the Samaritan woman (21.1-4; John 4:4-29), the passion and crucifixion (20.73-4, 85-93; Matt. 26:46-9, 27:22-38), and the resurrection (21.7-13; Luke 24:13-36). Not coincidentally, the name Christ (Cristo) appears for the very first time in the Divine Comedy in this episode
(20.87)(UT).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• CANTO XXV-XXVII
• Cornice VII
• The Sinners lustful
• The Penance fire
• The Meditation – For the heterosexual Mary is the first example of chastitiy at the "annunciation" when she asks how, not having sexual relations with a man ( virum non cognosco [I know not man]), she will give birth to Jesus (25.127-8; Luke 1:34).
• Next, praise of the virgin goddess Diana, who upheld the virtue of chastity by expelling one of her nymphs upon learning she was pregnant (25.130-2) (see notes).
• Those individuals who desired partners of the same sex, yell "Sodom and Gomorrah" (26.40), the biblical cities destroyed by fire and brimstone for the transgressions of their inhabitants, including sinful sexual relations between men (Gen. 13:13; 18:20-1; 19:1-28).
• The other shades meanwhile recall a bestial episode of opposite-sex lust from the classical tradition (26.412): Pasiphaë, wife of King Minos of Crete, the result was the Minotaur (Ovid, Met.
8.131-7; Art of Love 1.289-326).
• The Prayer “God of supreme clemency”
• The Benediction Matt 5:8 “blessed are the pure in heart”
• The Angel of chastity
• Read Psalm 133

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio 25.34-78 The Soul
• The explanation begins with the Aristotelian doctrine of generation. Since man sums up in himself all the worlds of life beneath him in a higher unity, the embryo in its growth passes through three soul-forms. First comes the vegetable soul, which differs from a plant in this, that it possesses the power of further development. This further development carries it on to the animal soul, first in its simplest form, so 'that now it moves and feels like a sea-fungus,' and then in the formation of the organs necessary for the various animal powers. The next stage is the rational soul; and Statius warns Dante that this is the point at which he must be careful not to go astray. The passage is so important that it will be well to have it before us:
'How from an animal it becometh human
Thou seest not yet; this is such a point
That one more wise than thou it once made err,
So that by his teaching he made separate
From the soul the possible intellect,
Because by it he saw no organ taken up.
Open thy breast unto the coming truth,
And know that so soon as in the embryo
The articulation of the brain is perfect,
The First Mover turns himself to it, with joy
Over so great an art of nature, and doth breathe
A spirit new with power all replete,
Which whatso it finds active there draws
Into its own substance, and makes itself one soul,
That lives, and feels, and itself within itself turns back.'

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• ( Purg.
xxv. 61-75; compare Aquinas, Contra Gent.
Book II. chaps. lxxxviii-lxxxix.: 'The vegetative soul, therefore, which is first in the embryo, while it lives the life of a plant, is destroyed, and there succeeds a more perfect soul, which is at once nutrient and sentient, and for that time the embryo lives the life of an animal: upon the destruction of this, there succeeds the rational soul, infused from without' -i.e.
by God direct [Father Rickaby's Of God and His Creatures , p. 168]). The wiser man than Dante who fell into error on this subject is generally believed to be Averroës, though some think Aristotle is meant. 'On many grounds,' as Dr. Moore says, 'the former seems more probable... partly because even if Dante were conscious that Aristotle himself fell into this error, he would be more likely to keep this in the background, especially when he had a scapegoat ready to hand in the person of Averroës.' Still more decisive for this view is the fact that Aquinas, whom
Dante here follows closely, had written a special treatise in refutation of the teaching of the great
Arabian sceptic on this very subject. The difficulty gathers round the words 'possible intellect.'
Following Aristotle ( De An.
III. iv. 3), scholastic philosophy drew a distinction between the 'possible intellect' and the 'active intellect.' The former is viewed as a mere potentiality -- an original and innate capability of universal ideas. But this 'potential intellect' is made actual only by the operation on it of the 'active intellect.' This 'active intellect' is regarded by Averroës as the one transcendent, universal, and eternal intellect, bearing the same relation to the 'possible intellect' as the sun does to the eye; and his error, to which Dante here refers, is that of limiting the individual existence of the human intellect to this present life, and recognizing the eternity only of the one universal 'active intellect.' He was led to this view because he saw no special organ set apart for the intellect, as the eye is for vision. Obviously, such a doctrine left no room for personal immortality. The individual intellect was only a passing form which the universal acted on for a moment, and then absorbed into itself (see Ueberweg's History of Philosophy , ii. 415, 416;
Aquinas, Summa , i, q. lxxvi, a. 1; lxxix, a. 2, 3; Contra Gentiles , ii. 59 [the notes on pp. 122-124 of
Father Rickaby's translation are clear and valuable]).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Statius, of course, cannot admit a doctrine which explains himself and his fellow-penitents out of existence. The above passage is a kind of quintessence of the entire doctrine of Aquinas upon the Soul, and every clause may be said to be a fence erected to shut out some heresy. First, the
Platonic pre-existence of the soul is denied, perhaps with special reference to its form in
Origen's teaching, namely that the entrance of the soul into the body is a penalty inflicted on it for its sin in a previous life -- a species of incarceration in matter. Against this, Statius, or rather
Aquinas, holds that the soul is not produced before the body. The psychological moment, if the phrase may be allowed, is when 'in the embryo the articulation of the brain is perfect.' This is why the soul is called in line 72 a ' new spirit' -- it is an absolutely new creation , neither coming from another existence, nor created along with all other souls at the beginning of the world, and, as it were, waiting its turn to be born in the flesh, but direct from the hand of God (Origen, De Prin.
i. 7;
Aquinas, Summa , i, q. xlvii, a. 2; q. xc, a. 2-4; q. cxviii, a. 3; Contra Gentiles , ii. 44). This brings us to a second heresy which is repudiated. Traducianism denies that the human soul is the immediate creation of God, and traces it to the same laws of generation by which the body is produced. In this passage, as elsewhere, Dante follows Aquinas in accepting the counter doctrine of Creationism. The First Mover, rejoicing to find such 'an art of Nature' as the human brain in the embryo, breathes into it 'a new spirit filled with virtue' ( Summa , i, q. xc, a. 2; q. cxviii, a. 2, etc.;
Contra Gentiles , ii. 87-89). It is difficult to say what precisely is meant by 'virtue.' We get a perfectly good meaning, however, if we take the word in the sense Aquinas gave it, as covering all the powers contained in the rational soul -- the intellectual and moral virtues.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
The soul, when God breathes it into the brain of the embryo, is filled with these virtues, not in actuality, but in potency. The great difficulty of theologians has been to harmonize this theory of Creationism with the doctrine of original sin . If God infuses a soul 'filled with virtue,' how comes it to be infected with the sin of Adam?
The answer of Aquinas seems to be that it is corrupted and disordered by the flesh with which it is united ( Summa , i-ii, q. lxxxiii, a. 1; Contra Gentiles , iv. 52. 'The body inflicts no physical damage on the soul, but merely entangles it in the guiltiness of the seed of Adam. The flesh, disordered by the loss of original justice, being the recipient of the soul, the soul is received in a disordered manner, and becomes guilty by implication or infection' [ Manual of Cath. Theology , by Wilhelm and Scannell, ii. 32]).
Into this question, however, Dante does not here enter, but passes on to the unity of the human soul. This unity has been frequently denied. If there exists a threefold soul in man -- vegetable, animal, intellectual -- then, it is argued, man is in reality three separate souls. Against this Dante asserts that the 'new spirit' draws into its own substance the active powers of the two lower souls so completely that they form one single indivisible soul, which performs the functions of all three -- living, feeling, reflection or selfconsciousness. This meets the difficulty of Averroës, that he saw no organ set apart for the intellectual soul: instead of requiring a separate organ, it is itself, so to speak, the spiritual organ of the vegetable and sensitive souls. The union of the human and divine is as close and indivisible as that of the sun's heat with the juice of the grape, when it is changed into wine (vv. 67-78; Summa , i, q. lxxv, a. 2; q. lxxvi, a. 3. Comp. {comm. to} Canto iv.
1-16).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Canto XXVIII - XXXIII
•
The Earthly Paradise: The scenery of Dante's Earthly Paradise is said to have been taken from the Pineta (pine-wood) of Classe (Chiassi), near Ravenna on the Adriatic, where the last cantos of the Purgatory were written. . .
Dante's insistence on speaking always of "the sacred Forest", "the ancient Forest", and never [employs] the more usual and traditional image of a garden. We can scarcely doubt that he is deliberately making a parallel and contrast with the "dark Wood", the "rough and stubborn Forest", from which he set out upon his journey In the allegory, the Earthly
Paradise is the state of innocence. It is from here that Man, if he had never fallen, would have set out upon his journey to the Celestial Paradise which is his ultimate destination; but because of sin, his setting-out is from that other Forest which is the degraded and horrifying parody of this one. His whole journey through Hell and
Purgatory is thus a return journey in search of his true starting-place - the return to original innocence. Natural innocence is not an end in itself, but the necessary condition of beginning: it was never intended that fallen Adam should remain static, but that he should progress from natural to supernatural perfection. I think it is therefore a mistake to suppose, as many have done, that Dante's Earthly Paradise stands for the perfect Empire, the perfection of the Active. Life, the ".felicity of this life", or even for the perfection of the Natural Life, [Eden was meant to be a starting place for man.] (Sayers, Purg. 293)

Notes

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• The Pageant of the Sacrament -I have called it so because this description agrees best with its formal presentation, but what it shows is something still greater: the whole revelation of the indwelling of Christ in His creation through the union of His two natures, Divine and Human (technically known as the "Hypostatic
Union"). Of this union, the Sacrament of the Altar is at once the divinely ordained symbol, and the means by which Christians participate in that union; and in the Masque, Beatrice - Dante's own particular "God-bearing Image" - plays the part of the Sacrament. It is at this point that masque and reality become inextricably welded into a single dominating Image; for the historical Beatrice is, for
Dante, what she represents, just as, after a higher and universal manner, the Sacrament is what it represents, and - after a manner more absolute still - Christ is what He represents.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Beatrice appears “
Beatrice appears before Dante in the chariot drawn by the Griffin in the Terrestrial Paradise. Since the journey takes place in the year 1300, Dante last saw her ten years ago: she died in 1290 at age 24. We know little of Beatrice's life outside her presence in Dante's Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy . Early commentators identify her as the daughter of Folco Portinari, a leading Florentine citizen, and the wife of Simone dei Bardi, who belonged to one of the city's major banking families.
Beatrice came down from Heaven to Limbo, Virgil told Dante before they set out on the journey ( Inf . 2.52-126), as one of "three blessed women" who intervened on
Dante's behalf. Beatrice will guide Dante in various ways for nearly the rest of his journey, but she initially takes a harsh approach (she is compared to an admiral in
30.58-66) as the judge of Dante's past transgressions. Her appearance in this biblical location, the site of humankind's fall from innocence, contains multiple layers of symbolism. Donning the colors of the three holy virtues (white veil for faith, green cape for hope, and red dress for love: 30.31-3), Beatrice is greeted by her angelic companions with words echoing those used to announce Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem
(30.19). After extracting a painful confession from Dante (31.31-90), she presides over an allegorical display of providential history and finally offers an enigmatic prophecy of future salvation (33.40-5).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• If, throughout the whole course of the poem, our minds had not been insistently prepared for the coming of Beatrice, the whole symbolism of the Masque, and particularly the chanting of the
Benedictus, would lead us to expect the appearance upon the car of the Holy Host Itself. And both expectations are quite right. What appears is indeed Beatrice, as we had been led to suppose: the unmistakable Beatrice whom Dante had loved in Florence. But she is also, in the allegory of the
Masque, the Image of the Host. In this august and moving moment, Dante brings together all the
"signification?' of Beatrice, showing her as the particular type and figure of that whole sacramental principle of which the Host Itself is the greater Image. Bearing in mind the four levels (see Inf
Introduction, pp. 14-15) at which Dante meant his poem to be interpreted, we see that she is here:
– literally: the Florentine woman whom Dante loved.
– morally (i.e. as regards the way of salvation of the individual soul): the type of whatever is, for each of us, the "God- bearing image" which manifests the glory of God in His creation, and becomes a personal sacramental experience.
– historically (i.e. in the world of human society) : the Sacrament of the Altar. (And those who say that Beatrice here represents the Church are not wrong : for Dante has in mind that ancient and apostolic conception of the Eucharist which looks upon it, not only as the commemoration of God's single act in time, but as the perpetual presentation to God in Christ of Christ's true Body the Church — the verum corpus — which is made in the offertory of the bread and wine; so that, as St Augustine says, "being joined to His Body and made His members, we may be what we receive".
– mystically (i.e. as regards the way of the soul's union with God) : the whole principle of Affirmation, whereby that union is effected in and through all the images.
• Having said thus much, we may admire the poetic tact with which Dante leaves the whole weight of this allegorical structure to be carried on the framework of the Masque, so that he is free to conduct the interview between Dante and Beatrice throughout in those human and personal terms which make the story dramatically effective (Sayers, 311-12).

The allegory of the Church: the chariot (Church) is turn into the
Beast of Rev
17:3; the papcy is the harlot and the giant is
Phillip the fare of
France

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Pageant of Church -The Chariot and the Tree: According to tradition, the
Cross of Christ was made from the wood of the Forbidden Tree. This legend supplies the richly allusive allegory of 32: 37-60. As soon as we see the
Tree, we recognize it, from its peculiar shape (I. 40) as the "stock" from which the "scions" on Cornice vi were taken: i.e. as the Tree of Knowledge
(xxiv. 114-16). The key to the whole passage is thus seen to be 1. 51: " And what came from it he left bound to it", which gives us to understand that the pole of the Church's chariot is the Cross itself. The murmur of the heavenly company (1. 37) has further identified the Tree, in its bare and ruined state, as an image of Adam in his fallen nature. We shall thus have no difficulty in identifying the Chariot-pole (Cross, or "Tree of Glory") as an image of Christ, the Second Adam, in His =fallen Humanity - each Adam being figured, that is, by his particular Tree.
• These identifications made, the interpretation is quite straightforward.
When, by means of the Incarnation (the Gryphon), the Second Adam (the
Chariot-pole) is united (bound) to the First Adam (the Tree) of whose race
He came (1. 51) but whose fall He did not share (11. 43-5), Man's ruined nature is redeemed and receives new life from the perfect Nature of Christ
(the dry Tree breaks into blossom).

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Pageant of Empire -As the first Masque showed the history of the
Church up to and including the Incarnation, so the second Masque shows her history from Apostolic times to Dante's own day. The Tree now represents Man in his redeemed nature: in other words, it has become the image of Christendom, and, in an especial sense, of
Rome, the spiritual and temporal centre of Christendom. Its condition is thus tragically affected by the relations between Church and Empire. The various episodes of the Masque will be best considered in the Notes, as they occur.,
• Matilda Dante's Matilda, whose name is withheld until Beatrice refers to her in 33.118-19, embodies the pure beauty and innocence of this terrestrial paradise, which was the home of Adam and Eve before they disobeyed God and were cast out. Matelda sings as she gathers colorful flowers, like Leah of the dream, and she moves like a graceful dancer as she approaches the bank of the river across from where Dante observes her. Her shining eyes and dazzling smile are almost too much for Dante to bear.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Additional notes
•
32:64-6: hearing Syrinx sung: Argus (see xxix. 95 and note) was sent by Juno to keep watch on Io whom, out of jealousy, she had turned into a cow. Argus could
"watch so long", because he could rest some of his hundred eyes in turn while the others kept open. Mercury, however, being sent by Jove to Io's assistance, lulled all the monster's eyes to sleep at once, by singing to him the story of the nymph Syrinx and then cut off his head.
•
32.95: as though left guardian: Beatrice (the earthly image of the Divine Wisdom) is left alone by the Tree of Christendom to guard the Church. It must be remembered that for Dante (as he says very plainly in Para. xxvii. 23-4), the Chair of Peter was
"vacant in the sight of the Son of God", because of the usurpation of Boniface VIII and the corruption of his successors. Moreover, at the time when he was writing the
Purgatorio, the Popes had actually left Rome for Avignon; so that the See was
"vacant" in a double sense.
•
32. 112-17: the bird of Jove, etc.: Jove's bird (the Eagle) here represents the Roman
Empire of which it is the emblem. This passage figures the persecution of the Church by the heathen Emperors from Nero to Diocletian (A.D. 64-314). The persecution does damage, not only to the Church, but to Rome itself, maiming its new spiritual energy, and cutting off some of its best citizens from the life of the community.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• 32. 118-23: next ... I saw .., a fox: the Fox represents the various heresies which troubled the early Church.
• 32. 124-9: once again ... I saw the eagle, etc.: the next tribulation is the wellmeaning (11. 137-8) munificence of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, who endowed the Church with the riches which led to her corruption (see
Inf. xix. 115 and note); A voice from heaven: i.e. that of St Peter, the
Fisherman; his "little keel" is the Church.
• 32. 13o-5: then ... out came a dragon, etc.: the dragon is variously interpreted as: (z) Anti-Christ; (2) the Devil; (3) the spirit of Cupidity; (4) the schism brought about in the sixth century by Mohammed. The reference in xxxiii. 34-5 seems rather to favour interpretation (2) or (3). The fact, however, that all the other episodes of the Masque allude to historical events is an argument in favour of interpretation (4), Mohammed being thus classed (as in Inf. xxvii. 31 sqq.) as a Christian schismatic who detached part of the Church from its allegiance ("pulled away bits of floor"). The image of the dragon is perhaps derived from Rev. xii. 3: "his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to earth (Sayers).“
• 32:136-47 – Church becomes the Beast
• 32:148 the corrupt Papacy

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Purgatorio 32.109-160
• The part of the allegorical vision which here commences relates the principal crises in the history of the Church. The historical sequence of the events referred to affords some help towards the interpretation. The following is a summary of them, according to the explanation which is given below. (1) The persecution of the Church by the Roman emperors, ll. 109-17. (2) The early heresies, and especially that of Arius, ll. 118-23. (3) The Donation of Constantine, ll. 124-9. (4) The rise of Mahometanism, ll. 130-5. (5) The gifts of land bestowed on the Church by Pepin and Charles the Great, and their effects, ll. 136-47. (6) The relations of the Papacy and the
French Monarchy, especially in the time of Boniface VIII, ll. 148-56.
(7) The removal of the Papal See to Avignon, ll. 157-60.
• The Rev. H.F. Tozer (1901),

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Five Hundred and Ten and Five. Canto 33.43-5
Various explanations have been given for this enigmatic prophecy of a "five hundred and ten and five" sent by God to slay the prostitute and giant. One method involves changing the Hindu-Arabic number (515) to its Roman equivalent (500=D, 10=X, 5=V). By reversing the order of the last two letters, we then obtain the Latin word DUX ( u and v are the same), meaning "leader" in a politicalmilitary sense. Specific candidates for the prophesied savior include the emperor Henry VII and
Can Grande della Scala, two men in whom Dante placed great hope for effective secular leadership. Can Grande ("big dog") has also been posited as a solution to the greyhound prophecy announced by Virgil in the dark wood. Others argue that Dante intended the Roman letters DXV to indicate, in reverse, a well known abbreviation for a prayer: the initial letters of the opening Latin words (V from Vere ; D from dignum ) were joined with a horizontal line passing through the center, thus producing a small cross-like X between the V and D. This figure was sometimes interpreted in the Middle Ages as a symbol of Christ's union of divine and human natures (D = Dio = "God"; V = U = Uomo = "Man"). Some commentators use the kabalistic technique of gematria, based on the assignment of numerical values to letters of the Hebrew alphabet, to solve Dante's riddle: the number 515 could produce a version of Henry VII's name
("Arrico") or a word whose sound might suggest the blast of the angel Gabriel's trumpet at the
Last Judgment. Still others, based on some version of these various methods, believe the prophecy refers to a future pope, a specific date (e.g., 1315, five hundred and fifteen years after the coronation of Charlemagne), or even to Dante himself (UT).

"Guardaci ben! Ben son, ben son Beatrice" (30.73)
Look closely here! it's really me, it's really Beatrice
Beatrice and the Muses

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
GO

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• According to the Catholic Catechism Purgatory is the Final Purification: "All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven" (1030).
• When a person becomes a Christian, what does the Bible say about his purification, righteousness, and holiness? What does it mean to be 'in
Christ' and "Christ in Us"? Make a list of words describing the spiritual position of all true believers.
– Romans 5:16-18 (NASB95)
16 The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.
17 For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
18 So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
– Romans 6 (NASB95)
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;
7 for he who has died is freed from sin.
8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,
13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
19 I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
21 Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.
22 But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Romans 5:8 (NASB95)
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
• 1 Corinthians 1:30 (NASB95)
30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,
• 1 Corinthians 6:11 (NASB95)
11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Ephesians 1:1-14 (NASB95)
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love
5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,
6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace
8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight
9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him
10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him
11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,
12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation —having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,
14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Philippians 3:9-16 (NASB95)
9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,
10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;
11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by
Christ Jesus.
13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ Jesus.
15 Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you;
16 however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Colossians 1:24 (NASB95)
24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.
• Colossians 1:27 (NASB95)
27 to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
• Colossians 2:9-14 (NASB95)
9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,
10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;
11 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;
12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
• Titus 2:14 (NASB95)
14 who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Hebrews 9 (NASB95)
1 Now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary.
2 For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread; this is called the holy place.
3 Behind the second veil there was a tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies,
4 having a golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod which budded, and the tables of the covenant;
5 and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat; but of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
6 Now when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship,
7 but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.
8 The Holy Spirit is signifying this, that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing,
9 which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience,
10 since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.
11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;
12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,
14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
15 For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
16 For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it.
17 For a covenant is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives.
18 Therefore even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood.
19 For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the Law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people,
20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you.”
21 And in the same way he sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with the blood.
22 And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
23 Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24 For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;
25 nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.
26 Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
27 And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,
28 so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• Hebrews 10 (NASB95)
1 For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.
2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?
3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year.
4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
5
Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, But a body You have prepared for Me;
6 In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure.
7
“Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come (In the scroll of the book it is written of Me) To do Your will, O God.’ ”
8 After saying above, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have not desired, nor have You taken pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the Law),
9 then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second.
10 By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins;
12 but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God,
13 waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.
14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,
16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, And on their mind I will write them,” He then says,
17 “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
18 Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.
19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
24 and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.
28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
30 For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.”
31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
32 But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings,
33 partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.
34 For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.
35 Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.
36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
37 For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay.
38 But My righteous one shall live by faith; And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.
39 But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
OLD

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
• WHAT DO THESE PASSAGES EXPLAIN ABOUT OUR PURIFICATION, RIGHTEOUSNESS &
HOLINESS?
• Psalm 65:3 (NASB95)
3 Iniquities prevail against me; As for our transgressions, You forgive them.
• Isaiah 1:18 (NASB95)
18 “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.
• Ezekiel 36:25 (NASB95)
25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.
• Zechariah 13:1 (NASB95)
1 “In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity.
• Malachi 3:3 (NASB95)
3 “He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness.
• Ephesians 5:25 (NASB95)
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,

THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PURGATORY
•
Ephesians 5:26 (NASB95)
26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
•
Titus 3:5 (NASB95)
5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
• Hebrews 9:14-15 (NASB95)
14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
15 For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
•
Hebrews 9:26 (NASB95)
26 Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
• 1 John 1:7 (NASB95)
7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of
Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
•
Revelation 1:5 (NASB95)
5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To
Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood —

John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.61-84
Continued next slide

John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.61-84
• (1) The Hugh Capet here says he was 'the son of a butcher of Paris.' This was the generally received tradition in Dante's day [Villani, iv. 4], and doubtless he was not sorry to humble the pride of the house by recalling it. But the tradition refers not to Hugh the King, but to his father Hugh the
Great, who was in reality a descendant of the Counts of Paris.
• (2) The speaker says he grasped the reins of power at the time when 'the ancient kings' came to an end, with the exception of one who 'gave himself to grey garments,' i .
e . became a monk. This reference to a monk shows that Dante has confused the Carlovingian Kings with the Merovingian.
The last Merovingian King was Childeric III., who was deposed by Pepin in 752, and compelled to retire to the monastery of Sithien at St. Omer where he died three years later. Then came the
Carlovingian dynasty, which lasted down to 987. The last of this line was Charles, Duke of
Lorraine, whom France refused to accept as king because he was a vassal of the German
Emperor. It was at this point Hugh Capet seized the throne [his father, Hugh the Great, had died more than thirty years before]. This Charles of Lorraine is obviously the last of 'the ancient kings' referred to, but, since he never became a monk, it is evident that he is confused with the last of the Merovingians, Childeric III., who died more than two hundred years earlier.
• (3) The speaker says his son's head received 'the widowed crown' of France. It is difficult to understand this. The speaker cannot be, except by confusion, Hugh the Great, since he was dead for more than thirty years when his son became king. If the speaker is Hugh the King, then it was to his own head 'the widowed crown' was first promoted. The difficulty is not quite removed by the fact that he associated his son Robert with him in the government, and had him crowned in the year 988.)
Continued next slide

John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.61-84
•
The passage is as follows:
• 'So long as the great dowry of Provence Out of my blood took not the sense of shame, 'Twas little worth, but still it did no evil. There began with both force and falsehood Its rapine; and thereafter, for amends, Ponthieu and
Normandy it seized, and Gascony. Charles came to Italy, and, for amends, A victim made of Conradin, and then
Thrust Thomas back to heaven, for amends. A time I see, not very distant now, Which draws another Charles forth from France, The better to make known both him and his. Without arms he issues thence alone, and with the lance That Judas jousted with; and that he thrusts So that he makes the paunch of Florence burst. He thence not land, but sin and shame Shall win, for himself so much more grievous, As the more light he counts such wrong.
The other, who late went forth a captive from a ship, See I his daughter sell, and haggle over her, As do the corsairs with the other women-slaves. O Avarice, what more canst thou do to us, Since thou my blood to thee hast drawn so It careth not for its own proper flesh?'
• Never was there a more bitter indictment of a royal house. Its ruling passion was Avarice; its dark shadow lay across the Christian world, cutting off God's sunlight, and dooming it to barrenness. The beginning of its career of rapine was 'the great Provencal dowry,' -- the reference being to the marriage of Louis IX. and his brother, Charles of Anjou, to Margaret and Beatrice, daughters of the Court of Provence. Dante traces to this alliance all the disastrous intrusions of France into the affairs of Italy. Villani expressly says that the invasion of Apulia by Charles of Anjou was due to the determination of his wife Beatrice to be a queen like her three elder sisters ( Chronicle , vi.
89; see Purg.
VII. 128 and {comm. to Purg.
7.91-136). The reference to Ponthieu, Normandy, and Gascony relates to the struggle between France and England for possession of those provinces. There is probably some chronological confusion; but, as Dr. Oelsner says, Dante is 'right in all the essential facts, which held good, as stated by him, for many years. Thus, Villani says that Edward III., when on the point of invading France in 1346, told his barons that the French King “was wrongfully occupying Gascony, and the county of Ponthieu, which came to him (Edward) with the dowry of his mother, and that he was holding Normandy by fraud” (xii. 63)' (
Purgatorio ,
Temple Classics, p. 253). Dante plainly took the same view many years earlier.
Continued next slide

John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.61-84
•
The reference to Charles of Anjou in ll. 67-69 has a peculiar bitterness of sarcasm. The threefold repetition of the words 'for amends' at once arrests attention. The irony is obvious, but its precise point is not quite so easily seen.
It consists in the fact that a greater sin throws a lesser into insignificance, and thereby makes a species of
'amends' for it. Dante gives two examples elsewhere. In Caïna, Camicion de' Pazzi says he is 'waiting for Carlino to excuse him.' What he means is that his kinsman Carlino de' Pazzi would do a still darker deed of treachery, which would make his own sin appear a mere trifle ( Inf.
XXXII. 69). The other instance is a few lines further on in the present Canto. Hugh Capet narrates the outrage on Boniface VIII., -- 'in order that the future evil and the past may seem less {v. 85}. That outrage was the crowning sin of the wicked dynasty: it threw all past crimes into the shade, and nothing the future might contain could ever equal it. This is the special point of irony in the words 'for amends': it is the making of one sin seem small by the stock of a greater. The French Kings began their rapine in
Provence, and turned this into a mere trifle by their seizure of Ponthieu, Normandy, and Gascony. Charles of Anjou invaded Italy, and, 'for amends, made a victim of Conradin': the cold-blooded execution of the last of the
Hohenstaufens, a mere boy in years, gave the invasion almost the hue of virtue by comparison. This heartless murder was in its turn 'excused' by a worse: 'he then thrust Thomas back to heaven, for amends.' The reference is to the death of St. Thomas Aquinas, which was then commonly attributed to Charles. The story was that when
Thomas was summoned by Gregory X. to the Council of Lyons in 1274, Charles asked him before he left Naples what he would reply if the Pope asked about him. 'I shall tell the truth,' said Thomas: an answer which so alarmed the king that he had him poisoned by one of his physicians at the Cistercian monastery of Fossa Nuova, near
Terracina, on the borders of Campania and Latium. It is only fair to Charles to say that the story is now entirely discredited; but Dante, to whom it was true, regarded the murder of the great theologian and saint as throwing even that of the poor boy Conradin into comparative insignificance. We must remember that it is this same Charles whom we saw singing in the Valley of the Princes below. Dante firmly believed he had commited these crimes, yet on the strength of a story that he had repented on his death-bed, he sets him there on his way to Paradise. So omnipotent did he believe the power of repentance to be, and so wide the arms of God's grace. It also shows that
Dante did not, as is too commonly believed, consign men to Heaven or Hell according to his personal loves and hatreds; had he done so, nothing could have been easier than to have swept aside the story of his death-bed repentance, and plunged Charles up to the neck in the River of Blood in the Inferno.
Continued next slide

John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.61-84
•
We come now to a second Charles, to whom Dante owed his banishment. In 1300 the Priors of Florence, of whom the poet was one, found it necessary to crush the strife between the Black and White Guelphs by banishing their leaders. In response to the appeal of the Blacks, Boniface VIII. sent Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the
Fair, as 'peacemaker' to Florence the following year. His manner of 'peacemaking' was simple enough: he treacherously broke his oaths and pledges, armed his horsemen, flung open the gates to the Blacks, and gave up the city to rapine and bloodshed. This was 'the lance that Judas jousted with' -- not merely treachery, but treachery bought and paid for by priests. Even the Guelph Villani states that in banishing the Whites and Ghibellines and confiscating their property, Charles acted
'by commission of Pope Boniface' ( Chronicle , viii. 49). When we remember that Dante himself was one of the exiles, it is no wonder that he is bitter at the Judas who sold him, and more bitter at the priest who bought his treachery.
• A third Charles is held up to infamy as one who sold his own flesh and blood --
Charles II., son of Charles of Anjou. He is spoken of as one 'who late went forth a captive from a ship,' in reference to his capture in 1284, while still Prince of Salerno, by Roger di Loria, the Sicilian admiral of Peter III. of Aragon. In 1305 he sold his youngest daughter Beatrice to Azzo VIII., Marquis of Este, an old scoundrel, if Dante is to be believed -- traitor, parricide, libertine. The only evidence for the vile transaction is a passage in Dino Compagni (iii. 16) in which the cities of Modena and
Reggio are named as the price of the beautiful girl

John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.85-96
• As Hugh Capet thinks of his descendant haggling over his own flesh and blood, 'as corsairs do over the other women-slaves,' he almost defies
Avarice to sink his race lower. Yet there is 'in the lowest deep a lower deep' -
- the avarice of Philip the Fair, which outraged the very Church of Christ and
'crucified the Son of God afresh':
• 'That less may seem the future evil and the past, I see the fleur-de-lys
Alagna enter, And Christ in His own vicar captive made. I see Him yet another time derided; I see renewad the vinegar and the gall, And between living thieves I see Him slain. I see the new Pilate so relentless This doth not sate him, but without decree He bears his greedy sails into the Temple.
O my Lord! when shall I be joyful To see the vengeance, which, being hidden In thy secret counsel, makes thine anger sweet?' (The idea seems to be that there is a certain joy in the anger of God because his secret counsel has already ordained the vengeance for such wickedness. Man's anger, even when just, is often bitter, because it seems as if there were no Divine vengeance. Comp. Par.
XXII. 13-18. Alagna or Anagna is now Anagni.)
Continued next slide

John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.85-96
•
The outrage on Boniface VIII. in Anagni in 1303 was the final act of the great quarrel for supremacy which he had carried on for years with Philip the Fair. In justice to Philip, it must be confessed that he was but defending the rights of France as a nation. War was going on between France and England, and both countries refused the Pope's arbitration. Boniface, who believed himself master of all Christendom, retorted by the Bull Clericis laicos , in which he forbade the clergy to pay taxes to the secular power. Philip replied by forbidding money to be sent out of France, thus cutting off all contributions to Rome. The Pope was forced to yield for the moment, but a new storm broke out over the question of vacant benefices which were claimed by the crown. Philip threw the papal legate into prison; whereupon Boniface addressed another Bull to him, claiming absolute power over kings, and summoning the French clergy to a Council in Rome, to pass sentence on his conduct. The King burnt the Bull in public, and forbade the clergy to go. The outrage at Anagni was the tragic and dramatic ending of the struggle. Philip resolved to capture the old man and arraign him before a Council at Lyons. The plot was entrusted to the hands of William of Nogaret, a doctor of law. In company with Sciarra Colonna, a hereditary enemy of the Pope, Nogaret stormed his palace at
Anagni and burst into his audience chamber. The scene is vividly described by Gregorovius. 'They found themselves in the presence of an old man clad in pontifical vestments, the tiara on his head, seated upon a throne, and bowed over a gold cross which he held in his hands. He was resolved to die as Pope. His venerable age and his majestic silence disarmed the men for an instant, then with yells they demanded his degradation, declared that they would carry him in chains to Lyons to be deposed, and allowed themselves to descend to insults, which he bore with magnanimity. The wild Sciarra seized him by the arm, dragged him from the throne, and would have thrust his dagger in his breast. Nogaret held his companion back by force. The ferocity, the excitement, the terror and despair knew no bounds; moderation, however, finally triumphed over passion' ( Rome in the Middle Ages , v. 590 [English
Translation]). He was thrown into prison and his palace and the cathedral given over to plunder. After three days of imprisonment the citizens rose and set him free; but it was too late. The shock to the proud old man who believed himself the master of the world, seems to have upset his mind. Villani's account of the end has a touch of weirdness:
'Pope Boniface, seeing himself free, and his enemies driven away, did not therefore rejoice in any wise, forasmuch as the pain of his adversity had so entered into his heart and clotted there; wherefore he departed straightway from
Anagna with all his court, and came to Rome to S. Peter's to hold a council, purposing to take the heaviest vengeance for his injury and that of Holy Church against the King of France, and whosoever had offended him; but, as it pleased God, the grief which had hardened in the heart of Pope Boniface, by reason of the injury which he had received, produced in him, after he was come to Rome, a strange malady, so that he gnawed at himself as if he were mad, and in this state he passed from this life on the 12th day of October in the year of Christ 1303' ( Chronicle , viii.
63).
Continued next slide

John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.85-96
• It is characteristic of Dante that he should see in this outrage a repetition of the Crucifixion of
Christ. It may have been suggested, as Dr. Moore thinks, by the Pope's own words. Villani tells us that when Boniface found his palace taken, he said courageously: 'Since, like Jesus Christ, I am willing to be taken and needs must die by treachery, at the least I desire to die as Pope.' But the idea was natural to Dante apart from this. No matter how unworthy a Pope might be, he could never forget that, in virtue of his office, he was Christ's vicar, and therefore that any indignity offered to the office was an insult to Christ Himself. (It is true that to Dante Boniface was a mere usurper [ Par.
XXVII. 22-27]; but to Philip he was rightful Pope, and therefore his outrage was committed upon Christ's representative.) We know that he sternly consigned Boniface to the Moat of the Simoniacs in the Inferno; none the less did he regard this outrage with abhorrence. He knew it was not an attack on an individual but upon the Church; and the transference of the
Papacy to Avignon and the election of Clement V. to be Philip's creature and tool, are the natural and inevitable issues of the outrage. When he says he saw 'Christ in His own vicar captive made,' it is not the mere imprisonment of Boniface for three days he is thinking of: it is the degradation and enslavement of the Church by the State, of the spiritual power by the temporal. The man who thus delivered Christ to His enemies is called 'the new Pilate,' and William of Nogaret and Sciarra
Colonna are the ' living thieves' between whom Christ in His vicar is once more slain. The word
'living' indicates the contrast between the modern thieves and the ancient. The latter 'received the due reward of their deeds' in death; the former lived to enjoy the fruits of their robbery. (The variant nuovi ladroni [new thieves] misses the very point of Dante's contrast, which is that they are living [ vivi ] to enjoy their villany.)
Continued next slide

•
John S. Carroll (1904), Purgatorio
20.85-96
The second crime charged against Philip is his inhuman suppression of the great military Order of Knights Templars on the ground of heresy, sacrilege, and unnatural vices. Nothing was really proved against the Templars. In their confessions, wrung from them by torture, they were, as Milman says, 'wildly bidding for their lives.' 'It was inevitable,' writes Professor Lodge, 'that a Celibate society of warriors should give occasion for the belief that the vow of chastity was not always observed. It is credible that in their intercourse with the
Saracens many of the Knights may have been led into unbelief, or even to adopt a contemptuous and irreverent attitude towards
Christianity. But it is not credible that the whole Order was guilty of the obscenity, blasphemy, and irreligion charged against it.
Confessions extorted under horrible tortures and recanted when health and sanity were restored, do not constitute evidence from which any reasonable conclusions can be drawn' ( The Close of the Middle Ages , p. 55). When Dante charges Philip with having suppressed the
Order 'without decree,' he means something more definite than the absence of fair trial. In point of fact, Clement V. did issue a decree for its suppression, the Bull Vox in excelso , dated March 22, 1312. But from Dante's point of view Clement was not the rightful Pope, and therefore had no authority to issue decrees: in doing so, he was simply the tool of Philip's avarice, the wind that bore 'his greedy sails into the Temple.' (Compare Canto XXXIII. 34-35, where Beatrice declares that the Church 'was, and is not.' In calling Philip 'the new Pilate,'
Dante would remind us that the old Pilate also acted 'without decree.' For the Bull suppressing the Order, see Gregorovius, Rome in the
Middle Ages , vi. 96n. [English Translation].) The true reason for the suppression was the King's determination to fill his coffers with the
Templars' wealth. 'The King,' writes Villani (viii. 92), 'was moved by his avarice, and made secret arrangements with the Pope and caused him to promise to destroy the Order of the Templars, laying to their charge many articles of heresy; but it is said that it was more in hope of extracting great sums of money from them, and by reason of offence taken against the master of the Temple and the Order. The Pope, to be rid of the King of France, by reason of the request which he had made that he would condemn Pope Boniface, as we have said before, whether rightly or wrongly, to please the King promised that he would do this.' (The allusion to 'secret arrangements' refers to the six conditions imposed by Philip on Clement before he had him elected Pope: [1] The annulling of the sentence of excommunication passed on him by Boniface. [2] The absolution of Nogaret and all others concerned in the outrage at Anagni. [3] A tithe of their incomes to be paid to Philip by the clergy for five years. [4] The condemnation of the memory of Boniface. [5] The restoration of the two Colonnas excommunicated by Boniface to their estates and their ranks as cardinals. [6] A secret condition to be disclosed in its due time and place.
This is generally believed to have been the suppression of the Templars. Clement tried to escape from destroying the Order, but Philip held him to it by the threat of making him fulfil the fourth condition. The Templars were flung to the wolves in order to save the memory of
Boniface from dishonour. See Villani, viii. 80, 92; Milman, Latin Christianity , Bk. XII.; Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages , Bk. XI, ch. ii.)
The case dragged on from 1307 to 1314, when Jacques du Molay, the Master of the Order, was publicly burnt alive in the presence of the
King. So nobly did he bear himself that the popular imagination transfigured him into a martyr. The story rose that out of the flames the old man summoned Pope and King to meet him within forty days before the throne of the Most High. Its origin was probably the fact that both
Clement and Philip died in the following year, -- the latter at the early age of forty-six. The absence of any reference to their deaths in the passage before us may be taken as proof that it was written prior to 1314. Dante puts a prayer for vengeance into the mouth of Hugh
Capet; and if Pope and King had been already dead, he would certainly, as in other cases, have thrown it into the form of prophecy of the impending judgment of Heaven upon their almost unparalleled wickedness. (This is undoubtedly how their deaths were regarded by the world in general. See Villani's Chronicle , ix.
59, 66.)

Hermann Oelsner (1899),
Purgatorio 22.109-114
note