"What is this ye laggard spirits?
What negligence, what standing still is this?
Run to the mountain to strip off the slough
That lets not God be manifest to you."
(II, 117.)
At the foot of the mountain the poets meet a troop of spirits who, though excommunicated, died contrite. For their delay in submitting to the Church for absolution they must wait thirty times as long as the period of their excommunication. One of them, King Manfred, Chief of the Ghibellines, son of Emperor Frederick II, tells of his last moment conversion and also how the Bishop of Cosenza at the word of Pope Clement IV, enforcing the penalty of excommunication against the corpse of the king, had it removed from the Papal realm and thrown into the river Verde.
In narrating how a Christian may be saved even if he died under the ban of the Church, Dante is only expressing what every Catholic knows as to the effect of excommunication. This ecclesiastical censure incurred by a contumacious member of the Church, a censure entailing forfeiture of all rights and privileges common to a Christian, such as the right to the sacraments,—a right restored through the confessor, however, whenever there is danger of death—the right to public service and prayers, the right to jurisdiction, and to benefices, the right to the canonical forum, to social intercourse and to Christian burial, this censure of excommunication does not in the mind of the Church carry with it exclusion from Purgatory or Heaven.
According to a principle of canon law applied to censures, Ecclesia de internis non judicat, the Church in the matter of crime does not concern itself with interior dispositions, excommunication far from being a sentence of damnation in the next world, is a penalty pertaining to the external forum of the Church in this life. Even if the penalty follows the corpse so far as to exclude it from Christian burial, even here the purpose of the Church is not to pronounce a verdict of the loss of the contumacious soul in the Hereafter, but to stigmatize among the living, the memory of the person and so to inspire in them a hatred of the evil condemned and a respect for law. The story of Manfred now follows:
"And one of them began: 'Whoe'er thou art,
Thus going turn thine eyes, consider well
If e'er thou saw me in the other world'
I turned me tow'rds him, and looked at him closely;
Blond was he, beautiful, and of noble aspect,
But one of his eyebrows had a blow divided.
When with humility I had disclaimed
E'er having seen him, 'Now behold,' he said.
And showed me high upon his breast a wound.
Then said he with a smile: 'I am Manfredi,
The grandson of the Empress Costanza;
Therefore, when thou returnest, I beseech thee
Go to my daughter beautiful, the mother
Of Sicily's honor and of Aragon's,
And the truth tell her, if aught else be told.
After I had my body lacerated
By these two mortal stabs, I gave myself
Weeping to Him, who willingly doth pardon.
Horrible my iniquities had been;
But Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms,
That it receives whatever turns to it,
Had but Cosenza's pastor, who in chase
Of me was sent by Clement at that time,
In God read understandingly this page,
The bones of my dead body still would be
At the bridge-head, near unto Benevento,
Under the safeguard of the heavy cairn.
Now the rain bathes and moveth them the wind,
Beyond the realm, almost beside the Verde,
Where he transported them with tapers quenched.
By malison of theirs is not so lost
Eternal Love, that it cannot return,
So long as hope has anything of green.'"
(III, 105.)
Following the directions given by Manfred and his companions our travelers continue their way upward until they reach a broad ledge cut out in the side of the mountain. While resting here Dante sees a spirit whom he recognizes as Balaqua, a maker of musical instruments, whose laziness was a byword in Florence. Our poet who knew the man intimately had often upbraided him for his indolence. It is said that to excuse himself in the days of his mortal life, Balaqua quoted a line of Aristotle: "By sitting down and resting the soul is rendered wise," to which Dante retorted: "Certainly if one becomes wise by sitting down none was ever so wise as thou." Now in Purgatory there is amused indulgence upon Dante's part as he addresses his former fellow citizen "sitting and clasping his knees, holding his face down between them, lazier than if sloth were his very sister" (IV, 10).
"His sluggish attitude and his curt words
A little unto laughter moved my lips
Then I began: 'Balaqua I grieve not
For thee henceforth; but tell me wherefore seated
In this place art thou? Waitest thou an escort?
Or has thy usual habit seized upon thee?'
And he: 'O brother, what's the use of climbing?
Since to my torment would not let me go
The angel of the Lord who sitteth at the gate.
First heaven must needs so long revolve me round
Outside thereof, as in my life it did,
Since the good sighs I to the end postponed,
Unless e'er that some prayer may bring me aid
Which rises from a heart that lives in grace."
(IV, 120.)
Unless assisted by the prayer of the sinless faithful upon earth, Balaqua and his class must stay in Outer-Purgatory, each for a term equal to the period of his natural life. The third and the fourth classes in Outer-Purgatory, viz., those who died of violence, deferring their repentance to the last hour, and kings and princes who because of temporal concerns of state put off their conversion to the last—all those also must remain in Outer-Purgatory for a period equal to that of their lives upon earth, unless the time be shortened by intercessory prayer. It is to be noted that the souls of the violently slain press so closely and so insistently about Dante in their eagerness to obtain his good offices in favor of prayerful intercession for them by their friends upon earth that he has great difficulty in getting away from these souls. He succeeds by making promises to execute their desires—comparing his difficulty of advancing to the trouble a winner at dice experiences when bystanders crowd about him in obstructive congratulations and make his way impracticable until he gives some of his winnings to this one, and some to that one.
"When from their game of dice men separate
He who hath lost remains in sadness fix'd,
Revolving in his mind what luckless throws
He cast; but meanwhile all the company
Go with the other; one before him runs,
And one behind his mantle twitches, one
Fast by his side bids him remember him,
He stops not, and each one to whom his hand
Is stretch'd, well knows he bids him stand aside,
And thus he from the crowd defends himself.
E'en such was I in that close-crowding throng;
And turning so my face around to all,
And promising, I 'scaped from it with pains."
(VI, 1.)
Higher up the mountain occurs a touching instance of love of country. Virgil draws near a spirit "praying that it would show us the best ascent"; and that spirit answered not his demand but of our country and of our life did ask us. And the sweet Leader (Virgil) began "Mantua ..." And the shade all rapt in self leaped toward him saying, "O Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy city. And one embraced the other" (VI, 67). This episode gives to Dante the opportunity to contrast on the one hand the love of those two fellow citizens drawn together by no other bond than affection for their native place and on the other hand hatred with which living contemporaries rend one another.