THE "COMMEDIA"
So many good summaries of the _Commedia_ exist that to give another may
appear superfluous. At the same time, experience shows not only that
such a summary is found by most readers to be the best of all helps to
the study of the poem, but also that every fresh summariser treats it
from a somewhat different point of view. It is therefore possible that
in the following pages answers, or at least suggestions of answers, may
be found to some questions which previous writers, in England at all
events, have passed over; and that they may serve in some measure as a
supplement to the works which will be mentioned in the appendix.
Section 1. HELL.
The first eleven cantos of the _Hell_ form a very distinct subdivision
of the poem. They embrace, first, the introduction contained in Canto
i.; secondly, the description of the place of punishment up to a point
at which a marked change in the character of the sins punished is
indicated. In one sense, no doubt, an important stage in the journey is
completed when the City of Dis is reached, in Canto viii.; but it will
be observed, when we reach that point, that the class of sinners who are
met with immediately within the walls of the City, the Epicureans or, as
we should now say, the Materialists, bear really a much stronger
affinity to those who are outside the walls, those whose sin has been
lack of self-restraint in one form or another, than they do to the worse
criminals who have "offended of malicious wickedness," and who lie at
and below the foot of the steep guarded by the Minotaur. The former
class at all events have been, to use a common phrase, "their own worst
enemies;" their sins have not been, at any rate in their essence, like
those of the latter, of the kind which break up the fabric of society,
and with them the heretics may most naturally be considered. It can
hardly be doubted that some such view as this led Dante to make the
first great break of level in his scheme of the lower world at a point
which would leave the freethinkers and materialists actually nearer to
the sinners of whom he holds that their sin "men Dio offende," even
though theological exigencies compel him to place them within the walls
of the "red-hot city." We may thus conveniently take these eleven cantos
for consideration as a group by themselves.
In the earlier cantos, as indeed throughout the poem, the main
difficulties with which we meet depend far more on interpretation than
on the mere "construing" of the words; and even if it were otherwise,
all purely linguistic difficulties have been so fully dealt with over
and over again in commentaries and translations that it would, as has
been said, be quite superfluous to enter here upon any discussion of
them. The opening canto, as every reader will at once perceive, is
symbolism and allegory from beginning to end, from the "dark wood" in
which the action of the poem begins to the "hound" who is to free Italy.
These, more especially the latter, have given as much trouble to the
interpreter as anything in the whole poem; indeed it may be said that in
the matter of the _Veltro_ we have not made much advance on Boccaccio,
who frankly admitted that he could not tell what was meant. But between
these two points we have some hundred lines in nearly every one of
which, beside its obvious and literal interpretation, we must look for
all the others enumerated by Dante in the famous passage of his letter
to Can Grande. The second canto is of much the same character, in some
respects almost in more need of close study. The significance of the
three beasts who hinder Dante is easier to make out than that of the
three heavenly ladies who assist him. Meantime, if we are content to
read the poem as narrative merely, there is no great difficulty to be
overcome. The language is straightforward on the whole, almost the only
_crux_ being ii. 108, which has not yet been satisfactorily explained,
nor is the imagery other than simple.
With Canto iii. and the arrival within the actual portal of Hell (though
hardly in Hell properly so called) we enter upon a fresh subdivision of
the poem; and are very soon brought up by the first, and one of the most
perplexing, of the allusions to contemporary history with which it
abounds. The elucidation of these would constantly offer almost
hopeless difficulties, were it not for the early commentators, who are
often able to explain them from personal knowledge. Now and then,
however, it happens that they differ, and then the modern student is at
a loss. This has been in some measure the case with the famous "gran
rifiuto," iii. 60; so that while we may with a high degree of
probability accept the more usual view that the allusion is to the
abdication of Celestine V., we cannot without further evidence feel so
certain about it as we could wish. The whole conception of this canto
seems to be due to Dante's own invention; only to a nature like his,
keenly alive to the eternal distinction between right and wrong, and
burning with zeal in the cause of right, could it have occurred to mark
off for special ignominy people whose sole fault seems to have been that
they "took things too easily." When, in Canto iv., we pass the river of
Acheron, and find ourselves for the first time actually on the border of
Hell itself, we are conscious at first of an alleviation. Melancholy
there is, but it is a dignified melancholy, as different from the sordid
misery of the wretches we have just left, as the "noble city" and the
green sward enclosed by it are different from the murky air and the
foul mud among which they have to dwell. Both in this and in the second
circle we have punishment indeed but without degradation, even with some
mitigation. Virgil at least enjoys the converse of the sages and great
men of old and, in so far as non-Christians go, of recent times; while
Francesca is solaced by the perpetual companionship of him for whose
sake she has lost her soul. Even the penalty which she suffers, of being
whirled for ever on the storm, is not exactly humiliating. From this
point, however, we are conscious of a change. The gluttons seated or
lying on putrid earth and exposed to lashing rain; the misusers of
wealth, with all human lineaments effaced, and engaged in a foolish and
wearisome scuffle; the ill-tempered, floating on the surface of the foul
marsh of Styx or lying submerged in it according as their disposition
was to fierce wrath or sullen brooding--all these are not merely
tormented but degraded as well.
After crossing the Styx (Canto viii.) we find a further change. Thus far
the sins punished have differed only in degree from those which we shall
find being expiated in Purgatory. They are indeed the simpler forms, so
to speak, of the defects common to all animal nature. They are the same
which, in one of their interpretations, the three symbolical beasts of
Canto i. denote. Henceforth we find sins which are only possible to the
higher intelligence of humanity. It will be observed, too, that at this
point what may be called pictorial description begins. Hitherto we have
had merely a general impression of murky air and miry soil, sloping
perhaps a little toward the centre, and intersected now and again by a
stream. Now the City of Dis with minarets and towers rises in front of
us, and, as we shall see in future cantos, from this time onwards the
character of the scenery is indicated with great preciseness, even to
its smallest details. Here, too, actual devils, beings whose will, as
Aquinas says, is obstinately set upon evil, appear for the first time,
as distinct from the personages of classical mythology, who act as
warders of the various circles. Virgil, or human reason, is no longer
sufficient of himself to secure a passage. Both at the gates of the
fiery city and on subsequent occasions he is as helpless, without
superior aid, as his disciple and follower.
The ninth canto contains a piece of allegory, that involved in the
introduction of Medusa and the Furies, which has earned perhaps a
greater reputation for obscurity than it deserves, from the fact that
Dante himself calls special attention to it.
Cantos x. and xi. are both very important, the former for its bearing on
the history of Florence. Those who have read the sketch of that history
in the preceding chapters will understand the full force of Farinata's
discourse with Dante. We have had a brief passage of the same kind in
Canto vi., but here the subject is treated at greater length, and with
some marvellous dramatic touches.
Canto xi. must be thoroughly mastered if Dante's scheme of ethics is to
be understood. It forms, indeed, a summary of and key to the arrangement
of the penalties, and a thorough comprehension and retention of it in
the memory will be found a wonderful help to a recollection of the whole
Cantica.
At the conclusion of the discourse in which Dante, speaking by the mouth
of Virgil, has set forth this ethical system, the poets move forward
along the brink of the pit until they arrive at a spot where they can
reach the lower level. The descent is rendered possible by a steep and
broken slope of loose rock, which Dante compares to the great landslip
between Trent and Verona, known as the Slavino di Marco.[28] Virgil
explains that this was due to the "rending of the rocks" at the time of
the Crucifixion. The descent is guarded by the legendary Minotaur, the
Cretan monster, part bull, part man. In this connection it may be
noticed that the beings suggested by classical mythology, who are met
with in the division of Hell which lies between the wall of the City of
Dis and the brink of Malebolge, the Minotaur, the Centaurs, the Harpies,
and Geryon (as Dante conceives him), all belong to the semi-bestial
class. In spite of the opinion held by some of the most eminent
Dante-scholars, that Dante in his classification of sins does not follow
Aristotle's grouping of them into incontinent, malicious, and brutal,
but recognises the first two only, it seems difficult not to see in
this, especially when it is taken in connection with expressions
scattered throughout his writings, an indication that in the sins of
the seventh circle he found the equivalent of the Greek philosopher's
[Greek: theriotes]--the result of giving a free range to the brutal, as
distinct from the common animal, impulses.
In this seventh circle, too, we first meet with _fire_ as an instrument
of Divine wrath. Indeed, with the single exception of the suicides, for
whom a specially significant chastisement is devised, all the sinners in
this group, from the heretics in their red-hot tombs to the usurers
tormented on one side by the fiery rain, and on the other by the
exhalations from the deeper pit, are punished by means of heat. At the
foot of the slope is a great circular plain, ringed with a river of
boiling blood in which spoilers, robbers, and murderers, some famous,
some obscure, are plunged more or less deeply in proportion to the
heinousness of their crimes; for, like earthly streams, this has its
deep and shallow. At the latter point they cross, on the back of Nessus
the Centaur, and at once enter (Canto xiii.) a wood of gnarled and sere
trees, in which the Harpies have their dwelling. These trees have sprung
from the souls of suicides, and retain the power of speech and
sensation. From one of these, who in life had been the famous statesman
Peter de Vineis, Dante learns that at the judgement they will recover
their bodies, like others, but will not be allowed to reassume them. The
body will be hung on the tree to which it belongs. Here, as in the case
of the avaricious and the wrathful, the spirits of other sinners take a
part in the infliction of the punishment. The wood is inhabited by the
souls of those who had wasted their substance in life, and these are
constantly chased through it by hounds, with much destruction of leaves
and twigs.
On issuing from the wood (Canto xiv.), they find themselves at the edge
of a great circular plain of sand, upon which flakes of fire are
ceaselessly dropping. Skirting the wood for some distance they reach the
bank of the stream of blood which, having circled all round the outer
margin of the wood, now comes flowing through it, and crosses the sandy
plain in a channel carefully built of shaped stone. Virgil takes
occasion to explain the origin of the rivers of Hell. Thick fumes rise
from it which quench the falling flames, so that along its bank, and
there only, can a way be found. As they proceed they find sinners lying
prone or running under the fiery shower. These are they who had done
violence to God, either directly by open blasphemy, or indirectly by
violating the divinely appointed natural order whereby both the race of
mankind and its possessions should increase and multiply. Many famous
Florentines are among these sinners (Cantos xv. and xvi.); and Dante
talks long with the famous statesman and philosopher, Brunetto Latini,
who had been his early friend and adviser, and with sundry great
captains and men of renown. After this they reach the point where the
river falls with a mighty roar down to the next level. There is no
natural means of descent here available; and Dante hands to Virgil a
cord with which he is girt. The meaning of this cord is very obscure. He
says: "I once thought to capture the leopard with it;" and if the
leopard denotes the factions of Florence, the cord may perhaps symbolise
justice or equity. When Virgil has thrown it down they wait a short
time, and presently a monster appears whose name we find to be Geryon,
and who symbolises fraud or treachery. It is perhaps not unnatural that
when the power to enforce justice has been cast away, treachery should
raise its head. This monster draws near the brink (Canto xvii.), but
before they mount on him, Virgil allows Dante to walk a few paces to the
right, in order that he may take note of the last class of "violent"
sinners, namely, the usurers. These hold an intermediate position
between the violent and the treacherous; just as the heretics did
between the incontinent and the violent. Here again are many
Florentines. Like the other misusers of money in Canto vii. their
features are unrecognisable, and they are only to be known by the arms
embroidered on their money bags. After hearing a few words from one of
them, Dante returns to Virgil, and both take their place on the croup of
Geryon, who bears them downwards to the eighth circle. This (Canto
xviii.), from its configuration, is known as Malebolge, or Evilpits. It
is divided into ten concentric rings, or circular trenches, separated by
a tract of rocky ground. From various indications we gather that each
trench is half a mile across, and the intervening ground a mile and a
quarter. The trenches are spanned by rocky ribs, forming bridges by
which the central cavity can be reached. Here we find for the first time
devils, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, employed as tormentors.
The sinners in this circle are those who have been guilty in any way of
leading others into sin, deceiving or cheating them, without any
aggravating circumstances of ingratitude or breach of natural ties. In
the first pit are those who have led women astray; these are scourged by
fiends. In the next lie flatterers immersed in the most loathsome filth.
In each Dante notes two examples: one of recent times--indeed, in both
cases an acquaintance of his own,--and one taken from ancient history or
legend. Jason, for his desertion of Hypsipyle and Medea, is the
classical example of the first offence. Of this use of mythological
persons we have many examples, but the typical flatterer of old time is
a more curious selection, being a character in a play, whom Dante has
borrowed from Cicero.
In the next, or third pit (Canto xix.), we again find fire as the
instrument with which the sinners are punished. Those who have made
money by misuse of sacred offices are buried head downwards in holes
with their feet projecting, and fire plays about their soles. Naturally
an opportunity is here presented for some strong invective against the
recent unworthy occupants of the See of Rome.
Canto xx. brings us to the fourth pit, in which those who have professed
to foretell the future march in a dismal procession with their heads
turned round so that they look down their own backs. The sight of Manto,
daughter of Tiresias, suggests a description of the origin of the city
of Mantua. The last lines of this canto contain one of the most
important indications of time which Dante gives in this part of the
poem.
The sinners of the fifth pit correspond in some degree with those of the
third, except that in their case the traffic which is punished has to do
with secular offices. Canto xxi. opens with the famous description of
the work in the arsenal of Venice, which is introduced in order to
afford an image of the boiling pitch in which sinners of this class are
immersed. For some reason, which is not very clear, Dante devotes two
whole cantos to this subdivision of the subject. There is no doubt that
_baratteria_, peculation or jobbery, was rampant throughout Southern
Europe at the time, and, as has been said, it was one of the charges
brought against the poet himself at the time of his banishment.[29] We
find here again one of "the torments of heat;" with one exception, that
of the evil counsellors in Canto xxv., the last instance in which heat
plays a part. It would be interesting, by comparison of the various sins
into the punishment of which it enters, to see if any ground can be
suggested for its employment in their case.
Cantos xxi. and xxii. are also noteworthy as bringing into prominence
the agency of devils, and showing them actually at work. Ten are
introduced and named; and some indication is given of their
organisation. Dante's skill is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the
way in which he has surmounted the difficulty of depicting beings in
whom there is no touch of any good quality. They are plausible; and
their leader, Malacoda, appears at first sight almost friendly. It is
not until later that his apparent friendliness turns out to be a
deliberate attempt to mislead.
At the opening of Canto xxiii. we find the poets exactly half-way
through Malebolge, on the rocky table-land, so to call it, which
separates the fifth and sixth pits. They are quite solitary, for the
first time in the course of their journey out of sight and hearing of
any other beings; but still in fear of pursuit from the fiends whom they
have just left. These do not, however, come up until just as the poets
have begun the descent into the sixth pit, and here their power is at an
end.
In this pit are punished the hypocrites, who go in slow procession clad
in cowls of gilded lead. Contrary to the usual practice the poets have
in this case to descend to the bottom of the pit, the bridges being all
broken away. Malacoda, the leader of the fiends in the last _bolgia_,
had mentioned one, but (falsely) assured them that they would find a
sound one further on. He also informed them that the destruction of the
bridges had taken place 1266 years ago on the previous day, but five
hours later than the time of speaking. This gives an important
"time-reference." There can be no doubt that the allusion is to the
rending of the rocks at the moment of Our Lord's death (_cf._ xii.
31-45), which took place at 3 P.M., so that we have 10 A.M. on Easter
Eve fixed as the hour at which the poets meet with the devils of the
fifth pit. Among the hypocrites Dante talks with two men who had jointly
held the office of _Podesta_, or chief magistrate, at Florence in the
year after his birth.[30] They belonged to opposite parties, and the
double appointment had been one of the many expedients devised to
restore peace; but it had not answered, and the two were suspected of
having sunk their own differences of opinion, not to conciliate the
factions, but to enrich themselves at the expense of the State. While
talking to them Dante sees a figure fastened to the ground with three
stakes, as though crucified. This, it is explained, is Caiaphas; Annas
being similarly placed at another point of the circle. Dante and Virgil
have to leave this pit as they entered it, by climbing over the rocks
(Canto xxiv.); and from the minuteness with which this process is
described (even to so characteristic a touch as "I talked as I went, to
show that my wind was good,") it has been thought that Dante was not
without experience in mountain-craft.
The seventh pit is appointed for the punishment of thieves. Serpents and
dragons are here introduced. In some cases the body is reduced to ashes
in consequence of the bite, and presently recovers its shape; in others
man and serpent blend; in others, again, they exchange natures, the
sinners themselves being transmuted into the reptiles, and becoming the
instruments of torment to their fellows. A kind of reckless and brutal
joviality seems to characterise the malefactors whom we meet with in
this region. Among them are many Florentines, a fact which prompts Dante
to an apostrophe full of bitter irony, with which Canto xxvi. opens. In
the following pit a curious change of tone is manifest. The image chosen
to illustrate the scene is an agreeable one--fireflies flitting in
summer about a mountain valley; and the punishment though terrible is in
no way loathsome or degrading, like most of those which have hitherto
been described in the present circle. The sinners, too, who are
mentioned are men who on earth had played heroic parts; the manner of
their speech is dignified, and Dante treats them with respect. They are
those who have sinned by giving wicked counsel to others, and so
leading them to commit sin; and the two who are especially distinguished
and who relate their stories at length are Ulysses (Canto xxvi.) and
Count Guy of Montefeltro, a great Ghibeline leader (xxvii.). The former
probably owes his place here to Virgil's epithet _scelerum inventor_,
deviser of crimes. In a passage which has deservedly become famous, he
gratifies Dante's curiosity as to the manner of his end. The passage,
apart from its poetic beauty, is remarkable as being, so far as can be
traced, due entirely to the poet's own invention. At all events, beyond
two or three words in the _Odyssey_, nothing in either classical or
mediaeval legend is known which can have given the suggestion for it. In
the case of the Count of Montefeltro, who is alleged to have given
treacherous counsel to Boniface VIII., it also appears difficult to
understand how the facts, if facts they are, became known to Dante.
Villani no doubt gives the story, but in language so similar to that of
the poem that a suspicion arises whether he may not be relying on it as
his authority.
The next canto (xxviii.) introduces us to one of Dante's most ghastly
conceptions. The ninth pit is peopled by those who have on earth caused
strife and divisions among mankind. They are not, as often stated,
schismatics in the technical sense of the word. Mahommed and Ali are
there, obviously not on religious grounds however, but as having brought
about a great breach between divisions of the human race; and though Fra
Dolcino, who is introduced as it were by anticipation, was a religious
schismatic, it was no doubt his social heterodoxy which earned him a
commemoration in this place. The punishment of these sinners is
appropriate. They are constantly being slashed to pieces by demons; the
wounds being closed again before they complete the circuit. Curio, who
as Lucan narrates, spoke the words which finally decided Caesar to enter
upon civil war, Mosca de' Lamberti, the instigator of the crime which
first imported especial bitterness into the strife of factions at
Florence, and one Peter of Medicina, who seems to have devoted himself
to keeping party-spirit alive in Romagna, are here. Last of all,
carrying his own head like a lantern, is Bertrand of Born, the famous
troubadour, who is charged with having promoted the quarrel between
Henry II. of England and his son. It is worth noting that at this point
we get the first definite indication of the dimensions which Dante
assumes for the present division of Hell. We are told that this ninth
pit of Malebolge has a circumference of twenty-two miles. From the next
canto we learn that the last or innermost pit has half this measure; and
from this basis it has been found possible to draw an accurate plan of
Malebolge, and to conjecture, with an approach to certainty, the
conception formed by Dante of Hell generally.[31]
In the last pit (Cantos xxix. and xxx.) are found those who have been
guilty of personation with criminal intent, or of bearing false witness,
or of debasing the coinage or pretending to transmute metals. These
suffer from leprosy, dropsy, raving madness, and other diseases. Before
leaving the pit, a quarrel between two of the sinners attracts Dante's
attention more than Virgil thinks seemly; and a sharp reprimand follows.
Dante's penitence however earns speedy forgiveness.
We are now drawing near the lowest pit; and through the dim air is heard
the sound of a great horn (Canto xxxi.) Going forward, they find that
the final descent, which appears to be a sheer drop of about thirty-five
feet, is guarded by a ring of giants. Those of them who are seen are
Nimrod, and the classical Ephialtes and Antaeus; but we learn that others
famous in Greek mythology are there also. Antaeus being addressed by
Virgil in courteous words, lifts the poets down the wall and lands them
on the lowest floor of Hell. This (Canto xxxii.) is of ice, and must be
conceived as a circular plain, perhaps about two miles in diameter. In
this are punished all who have been guilty of any treachery towards
those to whom they were bound by special ties of kindred,
fellow-citizenship, friendship, or gratitude. Each of these various
grades of crime has its own division, and these are arranged
concentrically, with no very definite boundaries between the different
classes. At the same time each division has its appropriate name, formed
from some famous malefactor who had specially exemplified that class of
crime. Thus the first ring is Caina; the second, Antenora, from Antenor,
who, according to a late version of the Trojan legend, had betrayed Troy
to the Greeks; the third, Toommea, from that Ptolemy, son of Abubus,
who treacherously slew the Maccabees at a feast; the last, in which
Lucifer himself abides, is Giudecca. No distinction appears to exist
between the penalties inflicted on the two first classes; all are alike
plunged up to the shoulders in the ice, the head being free. Dante
speaks with more than one, most of them persons who had belonged to the
Ghibeline party; though in the case of one, Bocca degli Abati, the
treachery had been committed to the detriment of the Guelfs.[32] The
mention of Bocca and Dante's behaviour to him, may remind us that the
whole question of Dante's demeanour towards the persons whom he meets in
the first part of the poem is interesting. For some he is full of pity,
towards some he is even respectful; occasionally he is neutral; while in
some cases he displays anger and scorn, amounting as here to positive
cruelty. The expressions of pity, it will be observed, practically cease
from the moment that Malebolge, the "nethermost Hell," is reached.
Similarly, after reaching the City of Dis, the tone of Virgil towards
the guardians of the damned, which up to that point has been
peremptory, becomes almost suppliant. The reason for this is indeed
somewhat obscure: one does not at once see why the formula "So it is
willed there, where will is power," should not be as good for the Furies
or for Malacoda as it has proved for Charon and Minos. Perhaps the clue
is to be found in the fact that the sins punished _inside_ the walls of
the city (sins which, it will be seen, are not represented in Purgatory
at all) are to be regarded as the result of a will obstinately set
against the will of God; while the sins arising from the frailty of
human nature may be checked by the "right judgement" recalling, before
it is too late, what the will of God is. This, however, is a different
question, and we must not here pursue it too far. To revert to that of
Dante's various demeanour, it will be seen that, with the limitation
indicated above, his sympathy with the sinner does not vary with the
comparative heinousness of the sin. Almost his bitterest scorn, indeed,
is directed towards some whose chief sin is lack of any positive
qualities, good or bad. One infers that he would almost rather wander in
a flame with Ulysses, or lie in the ice with Ugolino, than undergo the
milder punishment of Celestine and his ignoble companions. For the
simply self-indulgent, Francesca or Ciacco, he has pity in abundance;
Farinata, Brunetto, and the other famous men who share the fates of
these, may probably come into the same category. In such cases as these,
while he has not a word to say against the justice of God, he has no
desire to add "the wrath of man" thereto. In the one instance in
Malebolge where he shows any sympathy (and is reproved by Virgil for
doing so) it is for the soothsayers, whose sin would not necessarily
involve the hurt of others. But his conduct is very different to those
whose sin has been primarily against their fellow-man, or against kindly
human intercourse. His first fierce outbreak is against the swaggering
ruffian Filippo Argenti, who seems to have been in Florentine society
the most notable example of a class now happily extinct in civilised
countries, at all events among adults; a kind of bully, or "Mohock,"
fond of rough practical jokes, prompted, not by a misguided sense of
humour, but by an irritable man's delight in venting his spite. One can
sympathise, even after six hundred years, in Dante's pious satisfaction
when he saw the man, of whom he may himself have once gone in bodily
fear, become in his turn the object of persecution. It is, however,
after Malebolge is reached, and Dante is among the sinners who have by
dishonest practices weakened the bond of confidence which should bind
human society together, that he lets his wrath and scorn have full play.
His imagery even takes on a grotesque, at times even a foul aspect. He
was not one to mince his words, and if he means to sicken his readers,
he goes straight to his aim.
It is to be noted, too, that the language and demeanour of the sinners
themselves have in many cases changed. Above Malebolge, at all events
till the usurers are reached, a certain dignity of speech and action is
the rule. Now we find flippant expressions and vulgar gestures. Nothing
is omitted which can give a notion, not merely of the sinfulness, but of
the sordidness of dishonesty. Curiously enough, the one denizen of this
region who is thoroughly dignified and even pathetic, is the pagan
Ulysses; and to him Dante does not himself speak, leaving the pagan
Virgil to hold all communication with him. Besides Ulysses, Guy of
Montfeltro and Ugolino are presented in such a way as to enlist, in
some degree, the sympathy of the reader; and it may further be noted
that in each case a representative of the family in the next generation
is placed in Purgatory; as though Dante, while bound to condemn the
elder men, had held the houses in such esteem that he wished to balance
the condemnation by assigning a better fate to their successors.
The opening of Canto xxxiii. brings us to the famous episode of Count
Ugolino, which shares with the earlier one of Francesca da Rimini the
widest renown of any passage in the whole poem. It is curious, by the
way, that the structure of the two shows many marked parallelisms; only
the tender pity which characterises Dante's treatment of the former is
wholly lacking in the latter. There is no need to dwell on so well-known
a story; but it may be noted that Ugolino, though a Guelf leader, and
condemned here no doubt for his intrigues with the Ghibeline Archbishop
Roger, came of a Ghibeline family, and thus forms only a partial
exception to the rule stated above. The only genuine Guelf who is named
in this division is Tesauro de' Beccheria, the Abbot of Vallombrosa.
This will perhaps be the best point at which to say a few words on a
subject about which much misconception has prevailed. It has often been
supposed that Dante was just a Ghibeline partisan, and distributed his
characters in the next world according to political sympathies. The
truth is, that under no circumstances, so far as we can see, does he
assign to any one his place on political grounds--that is, merely for
having belonged to one or other of the great parties which then divided
Italy. He himself, as we know, belonged to neither. His political ideal
was a united world submitting to the general direction of the Emperor in
temporal matters, of the Pope in spiritual. On the other hand, he would
have had national forms of government retained. Brought up as he had
been, the citizen and afterwards the official of a Guelf republic, there
is no reason to suppose that a republican form of government was in any
way distasteful to him, provided that it was honestly administered. It
was not until the more powerful faction in the Guelf party called in the
aid of an external power, unconnected with Italy, and hostile, or, as he
would doubtless hold, rebellious, to the Empire, that he, along with the
more "constitutional" branch of the Guelfs, threw in his lot with the
long-banished Ghibelines. But neither then nor at any time did he belong
to the Ghibeline party. So far from it, that he takes that party (in
_Par._, vi. 105) as the example of those who follow the imperial
standard in the wrong way, and make it a symbol of iniquity. The
greatest and most heroic figure in the whole history of the Ghibelines,
the man whose love for the rebellious city was as great as Dante's own,
who when he had by his prowess in arms recovered it for the Empire,
stood resolutely between it and the destruction which in the opinion of
his comrades it had merited, is condemned to share with a Pope and an
Emperor the penalty of speculative heterodoxy. On the other hand, we
find Charles of Anjou, the foreign intruder, the bitter foe of the
Empire and pitiless exterminator of the imperial race, a man in whom
later historians, free from personal or patriotic bias, have seen hardly
any virtue to redeem the sombre cruelty of his career, placed, not
indeed in Paradise, but in Purgatory, and waiting in sure and certain
hope of ultimate salvation, as one who in spite of many faults had led a
pure and ascetic life in a profligate and self-indulgent age. It would
be interesting to know, if Dante had met Charles somewhat later, in
which of the Purgatorial circles he would have placed him. He seems to
evade the difficulty of classifying him by finding him where he does.
It is necessary to insist rather strongly on this point, since even so
accomplished a scholar as the late Professor Bartoli, when dealing with
Dante's reference to the Emperor Henry VII. (in _Par._, xxx. 133, sqq.),
forgets that all the saints in Paradise have their allotted seat in the
Rose of the highest heaven, and speaks as though Dante had honoured
Henry above all but the greatest saints and foretold his "direct flight
from the earth to the Empyrean." Of course there is not a word of this.
All that we are entitled to say is that Dante held Henry to be an
Emperor who was doing his duty, and would earn his reward like any other
Christian and before Dante himself. It will be observed that he sees no
other Emperor in Paradise, save Charlemagne; one, Rudolf of Hapsburg, is
in, or rather just outside of, Purgatory; one, the great Frederick II.,
in Hell. Of the Popes one only, and he a Pope who in his life lay under
grievous suspicion of heterodoxy, and moreover only occupied the Papal
See for a few months, is placed in Heaven. This is "Peter of Spain,"
Pope John XXI. Two are in Purgatory; one of them, Martin IV., being a
man who, as a Frenchman by birth, and a strong partisan of Charles of
Anjou, might be supposed to have been specially obnoxious to Dante. No
doubt Popes appear in what may seem an unfair proportion among the
guilty souls below; but even for this distribution Dante could probably
have pleaded orthodox authority and certainly scriptural support. "To
whom much is given, of the same shall much be required." It is true, as
Professor Bartoli points out, that Dante's "reverence for the supreme
keys" was compatible with a very low estimate of their holders; but is
not this exactly what we should expect from a man of high ideals and
intolerant of failure in proportion to the dignity of the aim? His
treatment of Pope Celestine, the one Pope of his time from whom, _prima
facie_, something other than political partisanship might have been
hoped, and who having put his hand to the plough had looked back, is
sufficient to indicate his attitude in this matter.
Once realise that Dante was, like our own Milton, a man with a keen
sense of what ought to be, and an equally keen appreciation of the fact
that things in his time were by no means as they ought to be, that he
was fallen on evil days and evil tongues--an appreciation which
doubtless most great souls, short of the few greatest, have had at most
periods of the world's history--and you have the key to much that no
ordinary theory of party-spirit will explain. Men of this temper care
little for the party cries of everyday politics; and yet they cannot
quite sit outside the world of affairs and watch the players, as we may
imagine Shakespeare to have done, in calm consciousness that the shaping
of our rough-hewn ends was in other hands than ours. No great historian
of Shakespeare's time devoted a whole chapter to his memory, as did
Villani to that of Dante; yet we can hardly doubt that in the education
of the world Shakespeare has borne the more important share, and Dante,
with his deep conviction of the higher dignity of the "contemplative
life," would be the first to own it.
The third subdivision, known as Tolommea, has, as one of its inmates
says, the "privilege" of receiving the souls of sinners while their
bodies are yet alive on earth, animated by demons. With this horrible
conception we seem to have reached the highest mark of Dante's inventive
power. Only two names are mentioned, but one feels that if the owners of
them ever came across the poem in which they had earned so sinister a
commemoration, their sentiment towards the poet would hardly be one of
gratitude.[33] These are the last of his contemporaries whom Dante
brands, the last, indeed, whom he recognises. In Giudecca (Canto xxxiv.)
the sinners are wholly sunk below the ice, and only show through like
straws or other small impurities in glass. An exception is made in the
case of the three persons whom Dante regards as having carried the sin
of ingratitude to its highest point. Lucifer, who, as has been said, is
fixed at the lowest point, has three faces. In the mouth of the central
one he for ever gnaws Judas Iscariot, while in the others are Brutus and
Cassius.
The journey to the upper world is begun by a climb down the shaggy sides
of the Archfiend himself. On reaching his middle, which is also the
centre of the earth, the position is reversed, and the ascent begins.
For a short distance they climb up by Lucifer's legs, then through a
chimney in the rock; lastly, it would appear, following the course of a
stream which winds spirally down through the earth, they reach the
surface, and again come in sight of the stars.
Section 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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.
Section 3. PARADISE.
The first point which will strike the reader on entering upon the third
division of the poem is the sudden change in the conditions under which
the action is carried on. Hitherto Dante has been moving on solid earth,
subject to the usual limitations which are enforced by physical laws
upon all human action. Henceforth, as he tells us (_Par._, xxx. 123),
God operates directly, and physical laws have no longer any place. "It
is Beatrice," he elsewhere says, "who leads on so swiftly from one stage
of blessedness to a higher;" and we shall notice that the transference
from sphere to sphere is effected by Dante's fixing his eyes on hers,
while she gazes upwards.
A word as to the various spheres may not be out of place here. According
to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, as adapted to the requirements of
mediaeval belief, the earth was at the centre, and concentric with it
were ten hollow spheres. In the first eight of these were placed
consecutively the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
and the fixed stars. In order to explain the irregular movements of the
planets, "epicycles" or smaller spheres borne by the principal spheres,
and bearing the planets, were devised, but these need not be considered
here. Outside of the fixed stars came the _primum mobile_, which gave
the diurnal revolution of the heavens, and beyond this the Empyrean, or
fixed heaven, in which was the special abode of God, and in which all
the blessed had their places. Between the earth and the innermost
sphere, that of the Moon, lie the regions of water, air, and fire. The
Mountain of Purgatory, on the summit of which Dante at the conclusion of
the second _Cantica_ was standing, lifts its head as far as the third of
these. Through this accordingly, Beatrice and Dante have to rise in
order to reach the first step in the celestial ascent. It must be noted
that there is no reason to suppose that in every case the actual planet
is visited. The "heaven" of the planet embraces the whole "sphere" in
which it is set, and its characteristics may be conceived as extending
to the whole of that sphere.
The fact of rising without apparent motive force through a medium
lighter than his own body, at once forms a subject for enquiry on
Dante's part; and Beatrice, as she has frequently to do in the course of
their journey, resolves his doubt. Those who are reading the poem for
the first time will probably pass lightly over these difficult
metaphysical passages. They must be read sooner or later by any one who
wishes thoroughly to understand Dante's place in the history of
speculative thought; but in the first instance it will probably be
better to "take them as read" and endeavour to get a clear notion of the
general arrangement. There are obvious reasons why this portion of the
poem should consist as largely as it does of these subtle disquisitions.
There is far less room, in the first place, for variety of description.
In a region where there are no shadows, it is impossible to give a
detailed picture; and terms indicative of simple brightness are limited.
Nor, again, is it easy where all are perfect to depict individual
character. Consequently two great elements of interest in the first two
parts of the poem are far less available here; and their place must be
filled by other matter. What this matter should be is suggested by the
natural division of speculative science into Ethics, or the study of
man's conduct as a moral being; Politics, or the science relating to his
behaviour in regard to the social order; and Metaphysics, which for
Dante is synonymous with theology, the investigation of all that
concerns his spiritual part, as well as the Divine order generally. With
the first two we have dealt in the _Hell_ and the _Purgatory_
respectively; the third is reserved for the _Paradise_. Once or twice
indeed Dante touches on matters that would seem more fitly to belong to
the others; as, for instance, the magnificent passage in Canto vi.,
where Justinian, after sketching the triumphant course of the Roman
Eagle, inveighs against the party feuds of the time; or Carlo Martello's
reference to the Sicilian Vespers, and the misdeeds of his brother
Robert. But of these the first leads up to an elaborate exposition of
the scheme of Redemption, the second seems intended directly to
introduce a dissertation on matters lying at the very root of human
nature.
To the same difficulty in varying the methods (to use a phrase of
Ginguene's) must be attributed the occurrence of a good many
conceptions which to our taste appear somewhat grotesque. Yet the better
we know the poem the more we shall feel that in this third part the
author's genius rises to its sublimest efforts, and agree with the late
Dean of St. Paul's, that it is the true _pierre de touche_ of the
student of Dante.
To go briefly through the various stages. The heaven of the Moon is that
in which appear the spirits of those who having taken vows have under
compulsion or persuasion abandoned them; Mercury contains statesmen and
men of affairs; Venus those who have been over-much swayed by indulgence
in earthly love. It must be observed that, according to the astronomy of
the time, the shadow of the Earth, cast into space by the Sun, extended
as far as the orbit of Venus. The spirits in these three spheres
therefore form a group by themselves: being distinguished by the fact
that they had allowed earthly cares and pleasures to obtain too strong
hold of them, to the injury of their spiritual development. In these
three spheres respectively the representative speakers are Piccarda
Donati, sister of Dante's friend Forese, and of Corso, the leader of
the "Black Guelfs;" the Emperor Justinian; and Carlo Martello, the
titular king of Hungary, son of Charles II., king of Naples, who is
followed by Cunizza, sister of the Ghibeline chief, Ezzelino da Romano,
and Folco of Marseilles, who began as a troubadour and became bishop of
his native city.
Although in one sense the inhabitants of the three lower spheres may be
said to have attained a less perfect blessedness than those to whom the
rest of heaven is assigned, it must not be supposed that they are
conscious of any lack. All have their places in the highest or Empyrean
heaven, and all sense of sorrow for past imperfections is at an end. We
must indeed suppose that, as with Dante himself, the imperfections have
been effaced by the discipline of Purgatory, and their remembrance
washed away by the water of Lethe.
With the sphere of the Sun, however, we arrive for the first time in the
presence of those who have lived so as to earn the full honour of
sanctity, and find ourselves amongst canonised saints. Even here Dante
has shown himself, as usual, independent of conventional or official
restrictions. In his introduction of St. Thomas Aquinas and St.
Bonaventura he merely anticipates the formal decision of the Church; but
in "Peter of Spain," that is Pope John XXI. (the only historical Pope
whom he places in Paradise), he selects for special honour a man who was
by no means free from grave suspicion of heresy, and who has never been
canonised. As Dante never did anything without a reason we must suppose
that some now forgotten merit earned for the Spanish logician a place
beside Nathan, Chrysostom, and Anselm. It is by these and such men as
these, great teachers and thinkers, that the heaven of the Sun is
occupied; the reason no doubt being that as the Sun is the source of
light and the promoter of growth in the physical world, so are these in
the spiritual.
The tenth canto is specially notable as bringing Dante into the presence
of the greatest exponent of the Scholastic philosophy, and the master
whom he followed more closely than any other, St. Thomas Aquinas. In the
eleventh, the illustrious Dominican recounts the life of St. Francis of
Assisi, the founder of the rival order. This is one of the most notable
passages in the whole poem, rising as it does to a sustained
magnificence of diction which especially characterises those portions of
the _Paradise_ where the poet allows full play to his genius.
Justinian's roll-call of the Roman achievements in Canto vi. is another.
Nothing at all like them is found in the two former divisions of the
poem; and it is to them that students who wish to feel the attraction
which the _Paradise_ undoubtedly exercises over those who know it well,
should first turn.
The sphere of the Sun, in which we now are, is, it should be noted, one
of the two regions of Heaven in which Dante makes the longest stay, the
other being that of the Fixed Stars. The passage to it marks a distinct
stage in his progress. Looking back to the end of Canto ix. we see that
it forms a kind of peroration; while the first twenty-seven lines of
Canto x. are, as it were, the introduction to a fresh division of the
poem, and recall certain phrases which occurred in the opening canto. It
is difficult to say why these two spheres should be made of so much more
importance than the rest. Mars is the only one which approaches them;
but this is selected by Dante as the scene of his interview with his
ancestor Cacciaguida, which gives the occasion for the magnificent
contrast between the old days of Florence and its present state, and the
prophecy of his own exile; subjects which might well occupy a
considerable space. On the other hand, the eulogy of St. Francis,
already referred to, which St. Thomas Aquinas delivers, and that of St.
Dominic, with which St. Bonaventura, "vying with the courtesy of so
mighty a paladin," responds to it, fine as they are, do not appear
indispensable in the scheme of the poem. But the whole plan of the
_Paradise_ is, so far as can be seen, arranged with much less of obvious
symmetry than is to be found in the two former _Cantiche_. No doubt the
plan is there; but just as "time-indications" for the most part fail us,
or can be extracted only by elaborate and somewhat uncertain
calculations, so it would seem as if the poet, no longer hampered by the
necessities of time and space, had wished to show how he could work with
no self-made restrictions.
After his discourse in praise of the founder of the rival order,
immediately followed by its counterpart--an eloquent summary of the
career of St. Dominic, put into the mouth of the Franciscan
Bonaventura--St. Thomas speaks again (Canto xiii.), in order to explain
an apparent over-estimate of Solomon's greatness among mankind which an
expression used by him in naming the spirits present with him might have
seemed to imply. As happens more than once in this division of the poem,
a piece of what at first sight looks rather like logical quibbling is
made the introduction to some profound teaching in reference to the
workings of the human mind--teaching which is at least as needful in the
present day as it ever was in Dante's own time. Solomon himself then
speaks, answering a question put by Beatrice on Dante's behalf as to the
nature of the glorified body; and then Dante, having looked upon the
countenance of Beatrice, and being by this means (as in every other
case) raised "to a higher salvation," finds by the ruddy light which
surrounds him that he has entered the sphere of Mars.
A new feature appears here. In each of the three planets exterior
(according to the astronomy of that age) to the Sun, we find some
special image displayed. In the case of Mars, it is a vast crucifix,
composed of spirits, who are darting in all directions within the
figure, like motes in a sunbeam. One of them glides from the arm to the
foot of the cross, and makes himself known to Dante as his
great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, probably (though this is not
certain) of the family of the Elisei.[36] He had been, like all the
other spirits, as it would seem, of this sphere, a soldier, and had died
in battle as a Crusader. The latter half of this, the fifteenth canto,
together with the two following, form what is probably the best-known
and most frequently quoted portion of the _Paradise_. First we have a
beautiful picture of the simple and kindly life of old Florence, before
party-spirit and luxury had entered and corrupted its citizens. The
picture is, of course, one of those which people in every age have drawn
of earlier times, supposed to have been free from the corruptions which
each man's experience teaches him are rife in his own day; but none the
less it is of value as showing Dante's ideal of social life.
The next canto continues to deal with the same topic; but enters more
into detail with regard to the various families, and the vicissitudes
in their fortunes. This leads up to the existing strife of parties, and
this again naturally to Dante's own share in it, and his exile. It must
be remembered that this did not actually come about till two years after
the date at which the action of the _Commedia_ is supposed to take
place; so that the whole is cast into a prophetic form. The language
used, however, must be taken as expressing the feeling with which Dante
looked back after an interval of nearly twenty years--for the _Paradise_
was probably completed very shortly before the poet's death--upon the
events in which he had borne a somewhat prominent part. Whether he was
ever a personage of the first importance in Florence we may be allowed
to doubt. No doubt he was a man of some consideration; but still the
office of Prior was one which nearly every eligible citizen must have
held;[37] and Villani, who devotes a chapter to his memory, does not
mention his name among the political leaders of an earlier period.
Probably he occupied among the exiles of 1302 a far less important place
in their own eyes and those of contemporaries than he does in ours; but
if not a leader, he was in the front rank, and must have been aware of
all that went on. The passages relating to his exile, to the
worthlessness of his companions, to his gratitude towards those who
helped him, gain immensely in force and pathos if we regard them as an
aging man's reminiscences of a long by-gone time.
With the passage to the sphere of Jupiter (Canto xviii.) the imagery
becomes yet more daring. This is the region specially devoted to the
spirits of the righteous; and these as they fly are forming letters,
which ultimately spell out the opening words of the Book of Wisdom:
"Diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram." When the final M is reached a
further transformation takes place; the letter is gradually modified
into the shape of the imperial eagle. Righteousness, or justice, is, it
should be remembered, in Dante's view (as indeed in that of most
moralists) the source and foundation of all that goes to establish human
society on a virtuous and duly ordered basis. Thus it is rightly
illustrated by the symbol of the Empire. The Eagle behaves as one single
individual, though composed of countless spirits; speaking with a
single voice, and in the singular number. A discourse on justice leads
up to a sharp rebuke of nearly every prince then ruling, on the score of
misgovernment in one or another form.
After this the Eagle proceeds to indicate whose are the spirits which
compose its eye. These with one exception are all great sovereigns of
ancient and recent times. The exception is remarkable. In Hell we found
several cases in which mythological or fictitious personages were
treated on a footing of absolute equality with those who had a perfect
historical claim to the distinction; but the appearance in the Christian
Heaven of a man whose very name is preserved merely in a single line of
the _Aeneid_ strikes us with astonishment. For being recorded by Virgil
as the most righteous man among the Trojans, Rhipeus takes his place
beside David, Hezekiah, Constantine, and the "good king" William II. of
Sicily.
When the time comes for the ascent to be resumed, Dante notices that
Beatrice smiles no longer. On the threshold, as she explains, of the
seventh heaven, the lustre of her smile would be more than his eyes
could endure. Here, in Saturn, a ladder is seen, reaching to the next
sphere. We learn that this is identical with the ladder seen by Jacob in
his vision; and down it are descending the spirits of such as in this
world had lived the contemplative life in full perfection. The chanting
which has been audible in the other spheres is here silent--no doubt in
order to symbolise the insensibility to outward impressions of the soul
rapt in contemplation. The speakers in this group are St. Peter Damian
and St. Benedict; both of whom have severe words to say as to the
corruption of the monastic orders.
The company of saints reascend (Canto xxii.): and Dante and Beatrice
follow them, mounting by the ladder, but, as it would appear, with no
perceptible lapse of time. The eighth heaven, that of the Fixed Stars,
is reached in the sign of the Twins; under which Dante himself had been
born. At this point Beatrice directs him, before entering on the final
blessedness of heaven, and doubtless with the ulterior view of leading
him to a just sense of the insignificance of earthly things, to look
back over the course which he has traversed.
A very distinct stage of the journey is here reached, and, as has been
already noticed, we are entering that one of the celestial spheres in
which Dante makes the longest stay.