Dante's Purgatorio: Canto III - Manfred the Excommunicate

At the end of Canto II one of Dante's friends had entertained the souls with a love song.  Until, that is, Cato (the guardian of the mountain) urges them to leave such things, beautiful though they are, and get on with the business at hand.  And so as Dante and Virgil continue their journey, Dante notices that Virgil "looked as though he suffered from remorse" (III.6).  When grace begins to work on reason, reason itself should stir the "dignity of conscience" (II.8), and so cooperate, rather than repel, the workings of grace.

As Dante climbs he sees his own shadow on the mountain, the sun rising at his back.  In a sudden panic he thinks that Virgil has left him, as there is no second shadow from his companion.

I quickly turned around, seized by the fear
that I had been abandoned, for I saw
the ground was dark only in front of me;

and then my Comfort turned to me and said:
"Why are you so uneasy- do you think
that I am not here with you, guiding you?"

III.19-24

Virgil, the figure of human reason, can now help guide Dante because of his humility, and the remorse he felt in conscience.  If we saw the limits of human reason in the previous canto, here we get a hint of what reason "redeemed" can do.  Only reason which is guided by divine morality (conscience) and approaching God in repentance ("remorse") can itself act as a guide to the pilgrim soul.  For Dante, the rational part of our being is not of itself "pure" in a spiritual sense.  He follows Augustine's views of the limits of human reason as affected by "the Fall".  Yet it would be a mistake to think that the ascent of the soul to God does not involve the redemption of our rationality.  On a pure tangent, I am reminded of Mark Noll's book;  "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind".  The mind is not left behind in redemption;  indeed as St Paul reminds the Romans, one is transformed by the renewing of the mind.

At any rate, the event gives Virgil a chance to explain a bit to Dante about the state of the "souls" who have come here.  Virgil casts no shadow because he has no physical body.  Rather, says Virgil he and the other souls do have a sort of spiritual body which is "sensitive to pain and cold and heat - willed by the Power which wills its secret not to be revealed." (III.40ff)  Virgil gives an example - which will be crucial for understanding the Paradiso - of how the "spheres" do not block the light from passing one from the other.  Try to imagine how two "ghosts" (yes, it's not the right way to phrase it!!) passing through each other.  Such is the existence of the souls after death.  The important thing to ponder is this:  how can two things occupy the same place at the same time?  This is an impossibility from the standpoint of Aristotle's logic; it's somewhere in your standard first year philosophy course.  You can look up the reference yourself & see the law of non contradiction.  But this impossibility is what one needs to ponder (or at least believe) if one is to reach the end of the journey.  The greatest example of all is the Trinity:

madness it is to hope that human minds
can ever understand the Infinite
that comprehends Three Persons in One Being

III.34-36

Virgil then continues his address, lamenting that such great souls as Plato and Aristotle ("the king of men who know") are back in Limbo.  They could not simply accept the quia (37ff)  - that something is - and instead now they are in a way tormented by questions which their reason can never understand.  They are filled with a "hopeless longing";  hopeless because outside of grace, even the highest powers of human reason will be unsatisfied.  Remember it was Aristotle who told us at the beginning of the Metaphysics that "all men by nature desire to know".

The redemption of reason begins as Virgil relies not solely on his own power for guidance along the way, but instead calls out to some penitent souls and asks for help.  The ones who have repented are the ones who know the way, and human reason must follow the lead of the humble heart.

O you elect who ended well your lives,
Virgil began, I ask you, in the name
of that same peace I know awaits you all,

to tell us where the mountain slopes enough
for us to start our climb...
III.73-77

In a few moments they are among the Excommunicate, and they come across Manfred, son of Frederick II.  Somewhere I have a complicated lineage chart.  I will not subject you to the lines of royalty in the world of medieval politics;  after all, this is purgatory, not hell.  Manfred is here because he was excommunicated by at least 2 popes:  Alexander IV and Urban IV.  Yet why is he here and not in the Inferno?  Surely the sentence of excommunication carries weight, does it not?  Manfred was interred with little dignity outside church grounds.  Yet he is here on his way to paradise, and he answers Dante's wonder.

As I lay there, my body torn by these
two mortal wounds, weeping, I gave my soul
to Him Who grants forgiveness willingly

Horrible was the nature of my sins,
but boundless mercy stretches out its arms
to any man who comes in search of it...

The church's curse is not the final word,
for Everlasting Love may still return,
if hope reveals even the slightest hint of green.

III.118 ff

Here at the height of Christendom and the temporal power of the Church, we have the great reminder that the church is not the Head, but the Body, of Christ.  It is a wonderful image of the redemptive God.  Manfred has what we might term a "deathbed conversion".  And so he too is received by the "boundless mercy".  The canto ends with Manfred appealing for prayer, a theme which will continue to be part of the journey to paradise.