"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Saturday, September 15, 2018

Comments to Dante's Purgatorio, Cantos XII to XVII

Now that one has read a number of these cantos with the pilgrims going through the terraces of purgation, we can see several patterns.  Remember these terraces are for therapeutic conditioning of the soul toward virtue, so all things work toward that end.  When the pilgrims first enter the terrace, there is some form of positive proclamation presented in either an image or audio of the virtue.  Usually there are several but one will always be from the life of the Blessed Virgin.  The penitents on that terrace are usually singing or chanting a hymn, also selected to accentuate the virtue they need to learn.  Then undoubtedly the pilgrims meet the penitents, who are undergoing some form of mortification.  I think of it more as a mortification than a penance.  A penance implies one is trying to make up for something in the past; a mortification I would say implies a training to correct.  The penitents are usually in community, in groups helping each other.  In hell, souls were either solitary or when in groups in opposition or even antagonism with each other.  Souls undergoing the mortifications of these terraces usually ask for prayers.  Finally as the pilgrims leave the terrace, more images or audio are proclaimed, this time an example of a negative proclamation of the sin.  So the souls undergo both positive and negative reinforcement as they circle the terrace over and over.  Finally when Dante leaves the terrace, an angel responsible for that particular terrace removes one of the “P’s” on his forehead.  I don’t know if it’s actually said or not, but I believe all the souls have a “P’ removed when they have completed their temporal mortification, moving on to the next terrace.  Time on each terrace for the penitents depends on how engrained that sin is in their being.  Outside prayers seem to help along the process.

Let’s take one of the terraces and walk through these steps.  Let’s look at the Terrace of Envy which starts in Canto XIII and runs midway into Canto XV. 

The positive proclamations of the virtue—charity being the corresponding virtue to the sin of envy—are here in audio because the mortification for this terrace is that the souls have their eyes wired shut, and so can only hear.  We hear the Blessed Mother’s appeal to Christ at the wedding at Cana, “They have no wine.”  This is such a charitable appeal, putting herself in empathy with the celebrants.  A lesser person, such as myself, might scoff and say, “Ha!  I had plenty of wine at my wedding,” but the Blessed Mother with her Immaculate Heart feels for those in pain and perhaps more importantly tries to help remedy the situation.  We see an example from classical literature—Pylades saying he is Orestes to save his friend from execution—and Christ stating the beatitude, “Love him who has done you wrong.”  When Dante the character asks Virgil about these proclamations, Virgil describes them as “scourges,” and the voices act as a “cords of the scourge.”  That’s a fascinating metaphor.  I think it suggests mortification.

The hymn here is actually a chanted prayer, “Mary, pray for us,”/then “Michael,” “Peter,” and “All saints.”  It sounds like a Litany of All Saints, or some early version of it. 

The penitents in this terrace are actually the most touching to me.  Having their eyes sewn shut means they can only advance as the blind—literally the blind leading the blind.  I don’t know if you’ve ever had to help a blind person.  My father went blind from midlife on, and I’m so sensitive to it.  They need so much help in doing some of the very basic things we take for granted doing.  To walk in an unfamiliar area requires so much hesitation and consternation.  Each step is an unknown adventure wrought with anxiety, if not fear.  To move about the terrace requires coordination between the souls.  It forces them to act in charity with each other.  Dante the author emphasizes this by bringing political opposites, a Ghibelline and a Guelph, together as now cooperating friends.

The negative proclamations come from Cain, who murdered his brother in jealously, and from Aglaurus, the woman in classical mythology who was jealous of her sister’s relationship with the god Mercury.  Upon exiting, Dante is blinded but a light that turns out to be the angel.  I think it is the light that here wipes away the “P,” a fitting means since this terrace cures souls through blindness. 

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Let’s ponder the theological discussions in the last three cantos and I’ll touch on the upcoming one next time.  On the terrace of envy (Canto XV), we get a dissertation on how earthly things are limited and so are reduced as people share them, but divine things multiply the more one shares.  Love breeds love, for instance.  Virgil tries to explain it to Dante after he chastises him for thinking in a limited way:

And he to me: 'Because you still
have your mind fixed on earthly things,
you harvest darkness from the light itself.

'That infinite and ineffable Good,
which dwells on high, speeds toward love
as a ray of sunlight to a shining body.

-'It returns the love it finds in equal measure,
so that, if more of ardor is extended,
eternal Goodness will augment Its own.

'And the more souls there are who love on high,
the more there is to love, the more of loving,
for like a mirror each returns it to the other.  (Purg. XV. 64-75)

The analogy is that as light through multiple mirrors augments, so does love.  It is not a coincidence that so much blinding light occurs in this canto, and it is contrasted against the sewn eyes of the penitents. 

In Canto XVI, the terrace of wrath, we get a dissertation on the nature of free will and how it perpetuates evil in the world.  Marco the Lombard explains:

To a greater power and a better nature you, free,
are subject, and these create the mind in you
the heavens have not in their charge.

'Therefore, if the world around you goes astray,
in you is the cause and in you let it be sought.
In this I will now be your informant. (XVI. 79-84)

The next couple of tercets explain why we perceive evil to come from heaven:

'From the hand of Him who looks on it with love
before it lives, comes forth, like a little girl
who weeps one moment and as quickly laughs,

'the simple infant soul that has no knowledge
but, moved by a joyous maker,
gladly turns to what delights it.

'At first it tastes the savor of a trifling good.
It is beguiled by that and follows in pursuit
if guide or rein do not deflect its love.  (XVI. 85-93)

A new soul being born in the midst of a world set in motion, does not perceive the evil that has been passed on to her day, and so identifies that evil to come from the metaphysical.  But that soul too enjoys the earthly things (“the savor of a trifling good”), pursues them, and is disordered by them, and through free will passes on the evil.  Notice how this part of the theology builds on the discussion of limited earthly goods from the previous canto.  Marco goes on to discuss why then civil authority is needed—to curb the bad choices made by our free will.

Then coming out of the fog, which is also a symbol for the wrath that swallows up those in that vice, Virgil explains the nature of love on which the whole divine order is based on.  First he explains how all things start from love:

'Neither Creator nor His creature, my dear son,
was ever without love, whether natural
or of the mind,' he began, 'and this you know. (XVII. 91-93)

So it starts with perfect love from the Creator (the natural love), and we humans take that natural love and have to filter it through our minds.  I think that’s what Dante is saying, though I admit it’s rather complicated and it’s possible I distorted the meaning.  But let’s go with that.  Virgil continues.

'The natural is always without error,
but the other may err in its chosen goal
or through excessive or deficient vigor.

While it is directed to the primal good,
knowing moderation in its lesser goals,
it cannot be the cause of wrongful pleasure.

'But when it bends to evil, or pursues the good
with more or less concern than needed,
then the creature works against his Maker. (XVII. 94-102)

So through the mind, man can either work toward the primal good with proper love or distort that love in opposition to the Divine in several ways.  Notice how here Dante is building upon the last canto’s discussion of free will.  I can’t say this enough, everything in the Divine Comedy is perfectly integrated and crafted.  Virgil explains then as I outlined in the summary of this canto, how this disordering can be a result of loving an improper thing, not loving enough of good things, or loving proper things in a distorted way.  I think you can see that without me spelling it out. 

But what’s important here is how these theological dissertations capture the nature of all that is physical and metaphysical.  Dante through his Christian understanding of the world has envisioned the totality of man and the universe.  Limited goods shape our earthly life; divine goods orient us toward God; free will requires curbing of our appetites through civil and theocratic authority; the use of our free will through our mental activity shapes our souls in either positive or negative ways.  And the way our souls are shaped leads to the structure of our afterlife.  Both purgatory and hell are shaped by the way we distort God’s natural love.  The sins shape the structure of hell in a descent, and shape the structure of purgatory in an ascent.  The difference is that those in hell have permanently distorted—twisted is a good way to think of it—their souls.  In purgatory, through repentance the process is to return to the soul you were meant to have, to untwist it into normalcy. 


The entire Divine Comedy is shaped by the theological underpinnings.  I find how Dante mirrors the intellectual underpinnings of his world view into this beautifully constructed epic to be of the utmost artistry.  I have said this is the greatest work in all of literature.  I hope I was able here to explain why.

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