§ 2. Purgatory.
After the invocation to the Muses, a curious survival of classical imagery with which in one form or another each division of the poem begins, Dante relates how, on emerging from the lower world, as Easter Day was dawning the poets found themselves on an island with the first gleam of day just visible on the distant sea. Venus is shining in the eastern heaven; and four stars, “never seen save by the earliest of mankind,” are visible to the south. No doubt some tradition or report of the Southern Cross had reached men’s ears in Europe; but the symbolical meaning is more important, and there can be no doubt that the stars denote the four “cardinal” or natural or active virtues of fortitude, temperance, justice, and prudence. In the evening, as we shall see later on, their place is taken by three other stars, which symbolise the theological or Christian or contemplative virtues—faith, hope, charity.
On turning again Dante sees close at hand an old man of venerable countenance, who questions them by what right they had come. Virgil recognises him for Cato of Utica, the Roman Republican patriot. His position here, as warder of the mount of purification, is very curious, and has never been thoroughly explained. Among other things it is probable that Dante was influenced by the Virgilian line in which Cato is introduced as the lawgiver of good men in the after-world. Being satisfied with the explanation given, Cato directs them to the shore, where Virgil is to wash the grime of Hell from Dante’s face, and gird him with a rush, as an emblem of humility. When this has been done and as the sun is rising (Canto ii.) a light is seen approaching over the water. As it draws near, it is seen to be an angel. His wings form the sails to a boat which comes to the shore, freighted with more than a hundred souls on their way to Purgatory. They are chanting the Easter Psalm In exitu Israel; at the sign of the cross made by the angel they come ashore, and begin by inquiring the way of Virgil. While he is explaining that he is no less strange to the country than they are, some of them perceive that Dante is a living man, and all crowd around him. Among them he recognises a friend, the musician Casella, who, after some affectionate words have passed between them, begins at Dante’s request to sing one of the poet’s own odes; and the crowd listen intently. But Cato comes up, and bidding them delay no longer, drives them like a flock of frightened pigeons towards the mountain.
Even Virgil is somewhat abashed on account of his participation in the delay (Canto iii.); but soon recovers his equanimity, and resumes his usual dignified pace. Dante for the first time observes that his companion casts no shadow on the ground, and Virgil explaining that the spiritual form, while capable of feeling pain, has not the property of intercepting light, takes occasion to point out that there are mysteries for which the human reason is unable to account, and that this very inability forms the chief unhappiness of the great thinkers whom they saw among the virtuous heathen on the border of Hell. With this they reach the foot of the mountain of Purgatory. As is explained elsewhere, this occupies a position exactly opposite to the conical pit of Hell; being indeed formed of that portion of the earth which fled at the approach of Satan when he fell from Heaven. Some of its features are no doubt borrowed from the legendary accounts which Pliny and others have preserved of a great mountain seen by navigators to the west of the Straits of Gibraltar; these accounts being probably based on imperfect descriptions of Atlas or Teneriffe, or both confused together. Its summit is exactly at the Antipodes of Jerusalem, a point which must be carefully borne in mind if the various astronomical indications of time given in the course of the journey are to be rightly understood.
The mountain-side, which Dante compares to the steepest and most rugged parts of the Genoese Riviera, appears at first, quite inaccessible; but before long they meet a company of spirits, who, after recovering from their first astonishment at seeing from Dante’s shadow that he is not one of themselves, indicate to them the point at which the cliff may be attacked. Before they proceed further, one of the shades addressing Dante makes himself known as Manfred, son to the Emperor Frederick II., and gives an account of his end, explaining that excommunication—for he had died under the ban of the Church—is powerless to do more than protract the interval between the soul’s admission to Purgatory. After this (Canto iv.) they enter a steep and narrow cleft in the rock, from which they emerge upon a ledge on the mountain face, and a further climb up this lands them about noon on a broader terrace. Hitherto they have been mounting from the eastward, and on looking back in that direction, Dante is surprised to find the sun on his left hand. Virgil explains the topography; and is saying, in order to encourage Dante, that the labour of climbing will diminish as they get higher, when a bantering voice interrupts with the assurance that he will need plenty of sitting yet. The poet recognises in the speaker a Florentine friend. Another playful sarcasm on his thirst for information makes Dante address the shade and inquire as to his state. He, like Manfred, is debarred from entering Purgatory, but on the ground that he had led an easy life, and taken no thought of serious matters till his end drew near. In the following cantos (v. and vi.) we meet with many spirits who are from various causes in a similar position. First come those who have been cut off in the midst of their sins, but have sought for mercy at the last. The most noteworthy of these is Buonconte of Montefeltro, son of that Count Guy whom we met in the eighth pit of Malebolge. He was slain fighting against the Florentines at the battle of Campaldino (1289), in which Dante himself may possibly have borne arms.[34] Four lines at the end of this canto are among the most famous in the poem. In a few words they commemorate one of the domestic tragedies which were only too familiar in mediæval Italy. Passing through the crowd, they fall in, as evening is drawing on, with a solitary shade, who replies to Virgil’s inquiry for the best road by asking whence they come. At the answer, “Mantua,” the shade springs up, and reveals himself as the famous warrior-poet of that city, Sordello. The affectionate greeting which follows between the fellow-citizens moves Dante to a splendid denunciation of the internecine quarrels then raging throughout Italy, and of the neglect on the part of the divinely ordained monarch, the Roman Emperor, which has allowed matters to come to such a pass. Lastly he directs his invective especially against his own city, Florence, and in words of bitter sarcasm upbraids her with the perpetual revolutions which hinder all good government.
Sordello is an example of those whom constant occupation in affairs of state had caused to defer any thought for spiritual things, and who are expiating the delay in the region outside the proper entrance to Purgatory. In Canto vii., after explaining that they will not be able to stir a step after sunset (“the night cometh when no man can work”), he leads the poets to a spot where they may pass the night. This is a flowery dell on the hillside, occupied by the spirits of those who in life had been sovereign princes and rulers. There they see the Emperor Rudolf and his adversary, Ottocar of Bohemia; Charles of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, Philip III. of France, Peter III. of Aragon, Henry III. of England, and many other famous men of the last generation. Sordello, in pointing them out, takes occasion to enlarge on the degeneracy of their sons, making a special exception in favour of Edward, son of Henry.
The sun sets (Canto viii.) and the shades join in the Compline hymn. At its conclusion, two angels clad in green robes descend, and take up their position on either side of the little valley. Dante, with his companions, goes down to join the “mighty shades,” and is met by one whom he at once recognises as an old friend, the Pisan noble Giovanni, or Nino de’ Visconti, “judge” or governor of the Sardinian province called Gallura, nephew of Count Ugolino. After some talk Dante notices the three stars spoken of above, and at the same moment Sordello draws Virgil’s attention to an “adversary.” They see a serpent making its way through the grass; and immediately the angels start in pursuit, putting it to flight. After this episode another shade announces himself as Conrad Malaspina, of the house with whom Dante was to find shelter during a part of his exile.
The night wears on, and Dante falls asleep (Canto ix.). He dreams that he is being carried by an eagle up to the empyrean heaven. On awaking he finds that the sun has risen some time, and learns from Virgil that at daybreak St. Lucy (who has already come under notice as taking an interest in his welfare) had appeared and borne him to the place where they now are, in front of the gate of Purgatory. This is approached by three steps of variously-coloured stone. The first is white marble, the second a dark and rough rock, the third blood-red porphyry, indicating probably the three stages of the soul’s progress to freedom through confession, contrition, and penance. On the topmost step sits an angel, who having marked seven P’s (peccata sins) on Dante’s forehead, admits them within the gate.
Thus far, except in the passage, Canto viii. 19 sqq., to which Dante himself draws the reader’s attention, the allegorical interpretation has not afforded any very great difficulty. With this particular passage readers will do well to compare Inf., ix. 37 sqq., where a very similar indication is given of an underlying allegory, and draw their own conclusions. But on the whole, the main interest of the first nine cantos of the Purgatory is more of a personal nature. Sordello alone may give an excuse for a good deal of historical research. For example, no one has yet explained Dante’s reasons for so distinguishing a person who, from all the records that we have, does not seem to have made any great figure in the eyes of his contemporaries.
It will hardly be necessary to follow Dante step by step through the stages of the mountain of purification. We shall probably do best to consider the general plan on which Purgatory is arranged, the nature of the various penances, with their adaptation to the offences which they expiate, and the light thrown in this division of the poem on Dante’s opinions about the elements of political and moral science.
We find, then, seven cornices, or ledges, on the mountain, connected with each other by stairways cut in the rock. Each stairway is guarded by an angel, and each, as it would appear, is shorter and less steep than the previous one. Thus the passage from the first to the second circle takes a considerable time, enough at all events to allow of some conversation between Dante and Virgil between the moment of their passing the angel and that at which they reach the top of the stairway. On the other hand, when they come to the final ascent, from the seventh circle to the level of the Earthly Paradise which occupies the summit, a few steps are sufficient to bring them to their halting-place, which, as appears afterwards, is practically on the summit level. Each angel, as Dante passes, erases from his forehead one of the P’s which the warder of the first gate had inscribed there, and utters one of the Scriptural Beatitudes appropriate to the circle which they are quitting. Thus, “Blessed are the peacemakers” accompanies their departure from the circle of the wrathful; “Blessed are they that hunger after righteousness” is heard as they leave that where gluttony is expiated.
The ritual, so to speak, is very precise throughout. Besides the Beatitudes, which are recited by the angel-guards, and in some cases it would seem repeated by a chorus of voices, we find in each circle commemoration variously contrived of notable instances, both of the sins punished and of their “contrary virtues.” These are perhaps worth going through in detail. In the circle of Pride, where it is necessary to go in a stooping posture, the pavement is engraved with representations of humility. The first is the Annunciation, (and here it should be noted that in every group an event from the life of the Virgin holds the first place); next comes David dancing before the Ark; and lastly, Trajan yielding to the widow’s prayer that he would perform an act of justice before setting out with the pomp of a military expedition. Further on in the same circle are found examples of the punishment of pride, taken alternately from Scripture and from classical mythology. The next circle is that of Envy. Here the penalty consists of the sewing up of the eyes, so that pictured representations would be of no use; and, accordingly, the task of calling the examples to mind is discharged by voices flying through the air. Yet another method is adopted in the third circle, where the Angry are punished by means of a dense smoke. Here the pictures are conveyed to Dante’s mind by a kind of trance or vision, in which he sees the various scenes. We must suppose that the spirits pass through some similar experience. In the fourth circle, the examples of activity and warnings against Sloth are delivered by the souls themselves. As it is night while Dante is in this circle, he is himself unable to move; but the discipline being to run at speed, the souls pass him in their course. The fifth circle, of the Avaricious and Prodigal, follows much the same rule as the fourth, except that here the instances of virtue are recited in the day, those of sin at night, so that Dante does not actually hear the latter. In this case the souls lie prostrate. The Gluttonous, in the sixth circle, are punished by having to pass under trees laden with fruit, which they cannot reach; and the examples and warnings are conveyed by voices among the branches of these trees. The seventh circle follows the fashion of the fourth, except that the souls (who are punished by fire for having in life failed to hold in due restraint the flames of passion) seem to address the warning reminiscences to each other as they meet in the circuit. An instance of the system on which the examples are introduced has been given from the first circle. Perhaps that for the sixth is even more typical. On first entering this they come to a tree, among the branches of which a voice is heard recording the conduct of the Virgin at the feast in Cana, when “she thought more of the success of the banquet than of her own mouth;” the custom of drinking only water prevalent among the Roman women, and the abstemiousness of Daniel and the Baptist. Then, after passing through a portion of the circle, and holding converse with its inmates, they reach another tree, from which a second voice comes to them bidding them remember the trouble that came from the drunkenness of the Centaur at the wedding of Pirithous, and the rejection by Gideon of the men who had drunk immoderately. This coupling of a classical and Scriptural instance is quite invariable.
To pass on to the subject of the light thrown upon Dante’s speculative views in the Purgatory. It is not too much to say that from that point of view it is the most important division of the whole poem. This, perhaps, follows naturally from its subject. The Purgatorial existence bears more affinity to the life of this world than does that of those who have reached their eternal abode; and human affections and human interests still have much of their old power. This, then, would naturally be the division in which questions arising from the conditions of man’s life with men would be likely to suggest themselves.
In the Hell we had indeed a statement of Dante’s view of Ethics, so far as was necessary to explain his attitude towards breaches of the moral law and their punishment. In the Purgatory he goes more deeply into the question, and expounds in Cantos xvi., xvii., and xviii., a theory with regard to the origin of morals and knowledge. According to this the soul when created is a tabula rasa, but having certain capacities inherent in it in consequence of the nature of its Creator. The Creator being absolutely veracious, the information imparted by the senses is infallible. Further, the Creator being absolutely happy, the soul naturally seeks happiness, and is said to love that in which it expects to find happiness. So far there is no room for error. Where it can come in is in the inferences which the mind draws from the information which the senses give, and in either its choice of an object to love, or the vigour with which it pursues that object. It must be further noted that the soul is endowed at the outset with a knowledge of good and evil, i.e. conscience, and with free-will; though this latter has to struggle with the conditions which the influence of the heavenly bodies imposes on the individual. With due culture, however, it can ultimately prevail over these; but it must also be aided in its struggle by the check of law and the guidance which should be afforded by spiritual pastors. In order that these may have their full effect, it is desirable that the secular and spiritual authorities should be in different hands: and thus we are brought to the same conclusions as in the treatise De Monarchia.
To return, however, to the moral question. All action, as has been said, is directed to an end, and (in the words of Aquinas, following Aristotle) the end for each individual is that which he desires and loves. If the end is rightly selected, and the love duly proportioned, the action does not incur blame. But it may happen that the end may be evil; in which case evil becomes the object of the love, or the love is turned to hatred. Now, no created being can hate its Creator, nor can any man hate himself; therefore the sins arising from this cause must be sins against fellow-men. These, so far as Purgatory is concerned, are pride, envy, anger, which, when carried into action, become the sins that are punished within the City of Dis, though in Purgatory they would appear on the whole to be regarded as the less grave offences.
When the object is good, but the love is lacking in due vigour, we have the sin of sloth, or, as our forefathers called it, “accidie.” This occupies a somewhat anomalous position. Those who have allowed it to grow to moodiness and given way to it past hope of repentance, lie in Hell at the bottom of the Stygian marsh, and nothing is seen of them but the bubbles which are formed by their sighs; while the wrathful or ill-tempered lie in the same marsh, but appear above the water. Both sins alike render the man full of hatred for his fellows, and make him insensible to the joy of life. In Purgatory, on the other hand, the anger which is punished seems rather to be the fault of hasty temper; while in the case of sloth, the souls who expiate it are represented as running at great speed, and proclaiming instances of conspicuous alertness. For our present purpose, then, it must be regarded as merely slothfulness or indolence.
Finally, we have the cases in which the object is natural, or even laudable. A fair share of this world’s goods, our daily food, the love between man and woman, all these are objects to which the desires may lawfully be directed, so long as they are duly restrained. When, however, they become the main aim, they are sinful, and lead to the sins for which the discipline of the three upper cornices is required; the most severe of all that is undergone in Purgatory. Yet these are the sins which in Hell “incur less blame,” as being sins involving rather the animal than the spiritual part of man. But there is not space here to discuss this aspect of the subject. Readers will find much interest in working it out for themselves.
The physiological sketch given by Statius in the twenty-fifth canto, introduced to account for the spiritual body, is in logical order an introduction to Dante’s ethics and psychology; and is remarkable both in its agreement with Aristotle and its divergence from him. The occasion for it is found in a question raised by Dante, and suggested to him by the appearance of the shades in the circle which they have just left: namely, how beings who have no need to go through the ordinary process of nutrition, can feel the desire for food (as Forese has explained that they do) and grow lean through the deprivation of it. In order to solve this difficulty, Statius sketches briefly the stages of the development of the human being, from his first conception until he has an independent existence, showing how the embryo progresses first to vegetative then to animal life, and how finally, when the brain is complete (this being the last stage in the organisation), the “First Mover” breathes the human soul into the frame. The soul, having thus an independent existence, when the frame decays sets itself loose therefrom, taking with it the senses and passions, as well as the mental faculties of memory, understanding, and will. The latter are still in full activity, but the former have only a potential existence until such time as the soul has found its place in the other world. Then it takes to itself a bodily shape, formed out of the surrounding air (as a flame is formed by the fire), and equips it with organs of sense; and thenceforward this shape is adapted to express all the natural emotions and desires, including of course those of hunger and thirst. This remarkable exposition is based on Aristotle’s theory of the generation of the body, and the introduction into it of the soul; but there is an important difference. The Greek philosopher, though his language is not very explicit, has apparently no idea of any survival of the personal identity after death. At all events, so he was interpreted by Averroes and later by Aquinas. With him the source of all movement is the father, from whom only (though here again Aristotle is not quite clear) comes the gift of a soul. Dante, on the contrary, refers these back to the Prime Mover, namely God, and conceives a special creative act as performed on behalf of every human being that is brought into the world. As will be easily seen, this conception is the necessary complement to Dante’s system of ethics, based on individual free-will, and postulating a newly-created soul, fresh from the Maker’s hand; a tabula rasa, with no attributes save the natural propension towards that which gives it pleasure.
We may now pass to the six cantos which conclude this division of the poem, and form a most important stage in the development of the whole plan. Dante has now proceeded as far as human reason, typified by Virgil, is able to guide him. He is on the threshold of Heaven; but before he can be admitted among the blessed, another conductor must be provided, to whom the way to the Divine Presence shall be freely open. This, of course, can only be knowledge informed by faith, or, as we may say for shortness, theology, not in the sense of a formal science, but in one approaching more nearly to what Aristotle calls Theoria, or contemplation. From certain expressions in the earliest cantos of the poem, it is clear that Dante looked upon the woman whom in his youth he had loved, and who had, at the supposed date of these events, been ten years dead, as symbolising this Theoria, and as being in some special way entrusted with the task of saving him from spiritual ruin. She accordingly appears, and takes up the duties which Virgil is surrendering. The manner of her appearance must be noticed—showing as it does the almost inextricable web in which Dante combines fact and allegory. That the “Beatrice” who is introduced is primarily none other than an actual woman of flesh and blood, whom hundreds of then living people had known, who had gone about Florence for twenty-four years and married a prominent citizen, and whom Dante had loved with the romantic passion of the Middle Ages, only the misplaced ingenuity of paradoxical critics can doubt.[35] Yet at her entry she is escorted by a procession, the members of which represent the books of the Bible, the seven virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit; while the car on which she is borne (which itself denotes the Church) is drawn by a mystical figure, in which we cannot fail to see a symbol of the second Person of the Trinity. If it be objected that the salvation of Dante is a small matter about which to set in motion so stupendous a machinery, we may answer that, in the first place, his own salvation does not seem unimportant to the man himself; and further, which is of more weight, that Dante himself is here no less symbolical than Beatrice, or Virgil, or the mystic Gryphon. He is the typical human soul; his experiences, his struggles, his efforts to shake himself free of the trammels of the world and the flesh, are familiar features in the spiritual history of the great majority of Christians. Thus the wonderful pageant described in this canto must be regarded as being displayed, not to him only, but to all Christendom in his person.
A few words with regard to this pageant may afford a little help to its comprehension. After the arrival of Beatrice, a scene follows in which she upbraids Dante for his forgetfulness of her, and receives an avowal of his fault. He is then bathed in the stream of Lethe—another curious employment of pagan mythology—and brought back to the presence of Beatrice. Hitherto she has been veiled; but now, at the special entreaty of her attendant nymphs (those nymphs who are also the four stars in heaven, and denote the cardinal virtues), she withdraws the veil, and discloses again the smile for which her “faithful one” had yearned during ten years.
Soon, however, his attention is called away to new and strange sights. The procession, of which Dante and his remaining companion Statius now form part, moves forward through the wood of the Earthly Paradise; the car is attached to a tree, identified with the “tree of knowledge,” which since Adam’s disobedience has been leafless and fruitless. After this Dante falls into a short sleep, and on waking finds that Beatrice with her attendants is alone left, as a guardian to the car. Then follow a series of strange transformations, the general plan of which is clearly suggested by the Apocalypse; but their interpretation is to be sought in the relations of the Church to the Empire, down to the time of the “Babylonish captivity,” or transference of the Papal See to Avignon. This is symbolised by the departure of the car, drawn this time by a giant (Philip the Fair of France), and occupied no longer by Beatrice, but by a harlot, to denote (again with allusion to the Apocalypse) the corrupt rule under which the Church had fallen.
In the final scene of all, Beatrice, in phrases hardly less obscure than the vision itself, indicates to Dante the lesson which he is to learn from it, and repeats in another form Virgil’s prediction of a champion who is to come and set the world to rights. Much has been written about the first of these, the Veltro; hardly less about the “five hundred, ten, and five,” or DXV. The usual interpretation takes these letters as intended merely to suggest Dux, a leader; but this seems a little weak. Elsewhere I have given reasons for thinking that Dante had a special motive for wrapping up his meaning in this numerical form.
Lastly, in a passage which, though ostensibly only one of Dante’s usual time-indications, seems intended to suggest repose after the labours through which he has brought his readers, and the agitation of the last canto, he tells us that at noon they reached the edge of the forest. Here he is made to drink of another stream, Eunoe, or “right mind,” after which he is ready for the upward journey.
It is too much to expect readers to work through the voluminous interpretations which have been offered of the very difficult and perplexing mysticism of these cantos. Some points are perhaps plainer to the student who considers them with a fair knowledge of the Bible and history, than to the commentator who wishes to establish a new and original theory. But they are so important (particularly Cantos xxx. and xxxi.) to any one who wishes to understand Dante’s whole position as man, poet, scholar, and politician, that they should not be passed over as mere futile mediæval fancies. It should be said, too, that they contain some passages which will never be out of date until the poetic taste of mankind has altogether changed.