felix hominum

Dante's Purgatory: Canto XX; avarice, poverty, generosity

Dante & Virgil continue to weave their way through the souls of those whose sin was excessive love of worldly things - avarice.  The poet summarizes the process of repentance on the mountain with a wonderfully simple image:

the mass of souls whose eyes were, drop by drop,
shedding the sin which occupies our world
XX.7-8

How is sin overcome?  By sheer willpower to do good? By an abrupt turning (conversion) to what is good and virtuous?  Well, at least in this canto, Dante gives us the image of the relationship between the sorrow of repentance and the progress toward virtue.  Perhaps we live in age when the idea of actually being sorry for one's faults is a bit gauche.  Not-the-sort-of-thing-we-do, at least at our church.

Mount Purgatory reminds us that there is, for most of us, no shortcut to virtue.  Mind you, those of us who are notoriously fault-ful will find that many of our closest companions wish that we would at least try to hurry along the path.  Nevertheless, I suspect that the tears of repentance are a form of mourning or grieving, as one "dies to sin", to borrow New Testament language.

The souls who are on this level sing a two-fold song.  During the day they recite examples of the humilty of Mary who gave birth in a lowly stable, and the generosity of Nicholas (yes, the original Santa Claus).  But as night falls they cry out examples of avarice and greed.  Thus Dante and Virgil see virtue and vice juxtaposed as day and night, and the reader can easily grasp what the poet is conveying.

Toward the end of the canto Dante feels the mountain shake and tremble, accompanied by a shout so loud that it startles him.  This prompts Virgil to draw closer to him and reassure him with the words "You need not fear  while I am still your guide". (XX.135)  In the story of the poem, we learn that the exuberant shout of Gloria in excelsis comes as the mountain releases the soul of a penitent who is ready to "move up".  While Dante does not immediately understand what is happening in the mystery of grace, the presence of Natural Reason (in the figure of Virgil) should be enough to keep him from fear.

"Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it."

Dante's Puragatory Canto XIX - exposing the Siren

"You saw," he said, "that ageless sorceress
for whom alone the souls above must weep;
you also saw how men escape from her."

XIX 58-60

Previously we learned that Dante had encounted a Siren in his dreams.  The dream ended as Virgil, under the direction of a "saintly lady", tears apart the outward garment of the siren and exposes for what she is on the inside.  We are told the name of this saintly lady who initiated exposing the Siren - she is perhaps a type of all the saintly ladies of Dante's world:  Mary, Beatrice, Lucy.  Likewise the Siren does not have a specific name given - she is as well a type of all deception which has an outwardly attractive appearance but inwardly is corrupt. 

How is it that we are capable of being so deceived, and how is it that we can escape from such deception?  The Siren herself tells Dante that "whoever dwells with me seldom departs/ I satisfy so well" (XIX. 24). 

LIke all self-deceptions, it is difficult to see the truth except by persuasion from outside oneself.  In Dante's dream it was a figure of grace (the sainlty lady) who begins the process.  Human reason (the figure of Virgil) is able to complete the task of realizing the truth of self-deception, but because it is bound by the falsehood which the human will has embraced, it cannot begin the process unaided. 

This is a pattern for the spiritual life, and for the purgation of the sins of Avarice, Gluttony and Lust which will be addressed by Dante.  Each has an outwardly attractive power which binds human will power, but each has an inward corruption which in the end not only fails to satisfy, but ultimately destroys.  The movement out of self-deception begins not with ourselves, but with divine grace.

My Christmas Wish List: part 1

Yes, I know all you folks are thinking to yourselves:  "What shall we get felix hominum for Christmas this year?"  Let me make your shopping experience easier:  red-hot cinnamon candies, straight from Dante's Inferno:

 

courtesy the good folks at Archie McPhee, where there is lots more for that special stocking stuffer.

Dante's Purgatory: Canto XIX: The Dream of the Siren

There came into my dream a woman, stuttering,
cross-eyed, stumbling along on her maimed feet,
with ugly yellow skin and hands deformed.

I stared at her.  And as the sun revives
a body numbed by the night's cold, just so
my eyes upon her worked to free her tongue

and straighten our all her deformities,
gradually suffusing her wan face
with just the color Love would have desired.

And once her tonge was loosened by my gaze
she started singing, and the way she sang
captured my mind -- it could not free itself.

Purgatory XIX. 7-18

During the night Dante dreams of a Siren.  What is fascinating (and frightening) is the way in which she is tranformed before his eyes from repulsive to desirable.  Musa (207) points us to Carroll (p.247) and concludes that perhaps what is happening is the gradual change from being repelled by vice to acquiescence, and finally to embrace.

What exaclty is this dream about?  It is about Dante's ability to transform the horror of the Siren into something desirable, merely by the force of his own gaze.  This is not a tranformation she makes of her own power.  The human soul, looking at sin square in the face, should recognize its "ugliness".  But then the change begins.  Sin does not in itself become less ugly;  we make it so.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I have a recollection of ancient theories of the power of sight - a sort of projecting of the power of sight outward to the object seen.  There may be something of that notion to this episode in Purgatory.  But since I'm too slothful to look it up, I'll leave the analogy from ancient medical theory for the time being.

What is significant is that the Siren would not have the power over Dante's mind ("it could not free itself") had he not in some sense given that power to the Siren.  It is he who "projects" on her the aspect of desire - "just the color Love would have desired".  It is he who gives her this pleasing appearance, and in the end he is trapped by her.  He has transformed her by his gaze, and in the end he cannot escape from hers.  It is an image of the way in which we gloss over sin, at first perhaps tolerating it, and in the end denying it to be sin at all.  We come to think it beautiful.  Once we have given it this pretense of good and beauty, we are then powerless to escape it.

Dante's Purgatory, XVIII: "As much as reason sees"

Dante packs a lot into this Canto.  We are going to have to attack this rather like I attack a buffet:  go for what is familiar first, and then fill up the edges with the other stuff.  Virgil is attempting to explain to Dante the nature of love.  Think love with a capital L, and not in the Hollywood sense.  This is love in its biggest sense, as the force which keeps the universe going.  This is love as an inward movement of the soul.  Love is something like gravity - it is the thing which (as the 60's song says) "makes the world go 'round". 

So here we are, beings who are created to love.  We begin by desiring things which please us.  This is the first stirring of love.  Since we are created in order to love, how can we then be blamed for loving wrongly?  And how is loving "wrongly" even possible?  As Dante puts it to Virgil:  "how can you praise or blame it for its love of good or bad?"  In other words, isn't there a kind of determinism about the whole thing?  How can there be ethical judgment about love?  Virgil begins his reply:

I can explain to you
as much as reason sees; for the rest, wait
for Beatrice - it is the work of faith.
Purgatory XVIII. 46

Here again Virgil recognizes the limits of human reason in understanding these things.  For love is not a human construct;  it is divine.  it is both an attribute of and a gift from, God.  Even, we might say with the author of John's letter, it is the nature of God himself.  So neither you nor I will understand the true nature of love without Beatrice - without the divine aid of faith.

While reason has its limits, it also has its role in directing our natural inclinations, our natural "loves".  We need not consent to every inclination which arises within us.  And it is the faculty of reason which is charged with this task, transforming natural inclinations into 'rational' love.

you have the innate faculty of reason,
which should defend the threshold of consent...

Let us assume that every love that burns
in you arises through necessity:
you still have the power to restrain such love.
Purgatory XVIII. 63 ff

Here I think we need to turn to another poet - John Donne - who articulates something of the same sentiment in Holy Sonnet XIV. Look it up and read it through a few times.  Seriously.

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Here Virgil tells Dante that reason, exercising its ability to restrain and direct our desires, finds its expression as the "noble power Beatrice knows as Freedom of the Will" (73).  And in fact the whole of purgatory is about reclaiming the freedom of will which was lost through sin.

Dante's Purgatory: Canto XVIII: What is Love? (part 2)

Some years ago I was hiking with a group of students in Mount Robson Park.  As fate would have it, there had been a flash flood the previous evening.  The natural consequence of such an event is, of course, that the bridge over which I had hoped to cross was completely washed out.

One of the rules I follow in the mountain backcountry is akin to that of Sam Gamgee - rope.  Never travel without rope.  It is not only useful for vertical movement, but for horizontal as well.  It is much easier to ford a mountain river with rope than without.  Trust me on this.  Or if not, try it both ways and then let me know the outcome.

At any rate, this is where we are today.  There is no easy bridge at this point in the poem.  The questions don't get any deeper than this:  what is love?  If I manage to get across this particular section without being swept away, it is only because others will keep me grounded and anchored.  There are points in this section where I have to admit that any answer I give, or any attempt at interpretation will be completely inadequate.  Nontheless, onward ho!

It should be clear to you by now how blind
to truth those people are who make the claims
that every love is, in itself, good love.

They think this, for love's substance, probably,
seems always good, but thought wax is good
the impression made upon it may be bad.

Purgatory XVIII 33ff

We are created to love, and love appears to be a force which is unavoidable.  We have attractions and desires upon which we act.  So how can it be that love can be either good or bad, Dante asks Virgil.  Love is not, in Virgil's explanation, something which we as human beings create out of ourselves, it is (as we will see later in Paradise) the very thing which allows the entire universe to exist.  The soul is created to move toward that which pleases it (20 ff.).  It is completely "natural" in one sense of the word.  So how can any "love", any genuine movement of the soul toward that which it loves, be the subject of ethical judgement?  Can love be either good or bad?  Dante addresses Virgil:

if love comes from a source outside of us,
the soul having no choice, how can you praise
or blame it for its love of good or bad?

Purgatory XVIII 43ff

I'll see if I can find the answer after lunch, and before tonight's study group...

 

 

 

Dante's Purgatory: Canto XVIII: What is Love? (part 1)

Master, the light you shed has made
my sight so keen that now I clearly see
all that your words mean or what they imply.

So I beseech you, father, kind and dear,
define love for me, please, which is, you say,
the source of every virtue, every vice.

Purgatory XVIII.10 ff

 

In the last Canto Virgil began his discourse on the nature of love.  Here Dante gets right to the point:  "define love for me".  Easier said than done, one may think.   So Virgil leads Dante through several steps in order to explain more fully the nature of love.   Cast aside Hollywood and Hallmark if you wish to follow Virgil at this point.  Love in its infancy is the soul's movement toward that which pleases it.  There is in humaniy an "apprehensive power" (22) which forces the mind to be "attentive" to the thing it desires.  And if the mind is attentive, the mind inclines toward the object it desires: "that inclination is love" (26) Virgil tells Dante.  So we begin with an inward image of the thing we wish to love, and then we incline toward the thing itself.

This first movement of the soul is what Dante will call "natural";  we are created to love.  The example given by Virgil here is of fire moving upward to its natural place: "inspired by its own nature to ascend, seeking to be in its own element". (28)  Language here might be a problem for us.  We contemporary westerners tend to use the word "natural" in different senses that what Dante means.  Sometimes "natural" means "what I want".  For Dante, humanity is created by God with certain characteristics and certain purposes, so what is "natural" really means according to our nature as intended and created by God.  "Natural", then, is not necessarily what I want, but what God intended for me at my creation.

It is with this in mind that Virgil says to Dante:

It should be clear to you by now how blind
to truth those people are who make the claims
that every love is, in itself, good love.

(34-36)

Next up:  what then is "good love", and what distinguishes it from "bad love"?

 

Dante's Purgatory Canto XVII - the Center of the Center is Love

The center of the center is love.  Readers of Dante have long noticed that this Canto falls in the middle of the Purgatorio, which is itself the middle of the poem as a whole.  And that in this Canto Virgil begins his speech on the nature of love.  Love, then, is the very center of Divine Comedy.  Virgil will begin to tell Dante that all sin is a distorted attempt at love.  We either love too little, or we love the wrong things, or we love lesser things too much.  What Purgatory does is realign, purify and redirect our love.  It is love which gives rise to all our actions, and indeed (as Dante quotes Boethius at the end of the Paradiso) it is love "which moves the sun and the other stars".

In order to walk with Dante and Virgil in this and the following Cantos, it might be necessary for us to put aside our own definitions of the word "love", and try to grasp what the poet means when he uses the word.  This is no easy task.  We use the word almost too freely.  Our contemporary definitions or ideas about "love" may be quite foreign to Dante's world.  But at least trying to grasp what Dante means is needed in order to climb further up the Mountain, and come closer to the entrance to the Paradiso.

In the story of the poem, Dante and Virgil emerge from the smoky fog of the Wrathful, and the sun begins to set.  They can climb no further on Mount Purgatory:  without the Sun (God), there is no ascent.  Just as the sun begins its descent, Dante experiences 3 visions of wrath.  These visions are internal.  Dante tells the reader that he sees these things "in my imagination" (XVII.19); "into my soaring fantasy" (.25); "in my imagination" (.34).  Now it may also be the case that we need to rethink what is meant by "imagination".  Dante, who draws heavily on some of Augustine's themes of journey and pilgrimage from the Confessions, may well have in mind Augustine's use of the term imagination from book X of that work.  Imagination is not merely "daydreaming", nor is it restricted to "creativity".  Rather, for Augustine, imagination is that power of the mind to think, or in some sense even be (ok, let's go for Aristotle here) pure potentiality.  It is a greater power and scope of the human mind than what we normally think of when we use the term "imagination".  Again, it is worth noting that these visions, these images, are within Dante.  They are not external to him.  The movement is from outward things to inward things.

Once they have been forced to stop by the setting sun, Dante asks Virgil about the next level (the Slothful) which they are just reaching.  This gives Virgil an opportunity to begin his speech on the nature of love, which will continue into Canto XVIII.

Neither Creator nor his creatures ever
my son, lacked love.  There are, as you well know
two kinds: the natural love, the rational.

Natural love may never be at fault;
the other may: by choosing the wrong goal,
by insufficient or excessive zeal.

While it is fixed on the Eternal Good,
and observes temperance loving worldly goods,
it cannot be the cause of sinful joys;

but when it turns toward evil or pursues
some good with not enough or too much zeal-
the creature turns on his Creator then.

XVII.91ff

What else is sin but a failure, or misdirection, of love?  Our problem, explains Virgil, is found in the structure of the Purgatorio.  There are sins which are the result of loving the wrong things (the lower levels); sins of loving too little (the middle levels); and then sins of loving  too much, or to put it another way, loving good things out of proportion to our love for God.  The Slothful, whom they will encounter next, are an example of those who "love too little";  the Lustful, whom they will meet later on, are an example of those who "love too much", so to speak. 

Dante's Purgatory, Canto XVI: free will, & the confusion of church & state

As Dante and Virgil enter the cornice of the Wrathful, they are enveloped in a dark cloud of smoke, a "foul and acrid air" which chokes the senses.  It might be worth comparing the images used in Purgatory with those used in the Inferno for similar sins.  Dante had gone into more detail and description of the nature of sin in Hell;  here in Purgatory he will give us simpler images.  These are, after all, the souls of the Penitent, and so the effects of sin have not fully consumed them.  Instead, what we have seen so far is a pattern of contrast:  examples of vice and virtue placed before the readers' eyes.  We see the contrast not only in the historical examples which are given on each cornice, but also in the particular prayers which are chanted or sung by the Penitents.  On this cornice Dante hears the souls singing the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).  Our attention therefore is not to be fixed on the negative (the vice or sin being purged) but on the opposite virtue which is being held forth as an example to imitate.  The Agnus Dei is an apt choice for this part of Purgatory, since it brings forth the image of Jesus who returns the wrath of his accusers and executioners with a plea for forgiveness and the meekness of the "lamb who is still before his shearers".  And in comparison to the discord he encountered among the inhabitants of the Inferno, in this place Dante hears the souls singing in perfect harmony (XVI.21).

In the midst of one of Dante's conversations we have what might be a beautiful summary image of the work of purgation.  Dante is beginning to answer Marco the Lombard's question, and he addresses Marco:

O you, creature, who purge your soul
in order to give it back to God...
XVI 30-31

This is the goal of the whole process:  being cleansed in order to give one's soul back to God, from Whom the soul had its origin in the first place.  This idea then allows Dante to introduce the topic of free will and destiny.  If indeed "grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it", then part of that perfection involves the human faculty of choice.  The relationship between grace and free will is either more simple (not more simplistic) or more complex than what Dante presents in this isolated canto.  Yet it is a question which is with us perpetually.  First, his new conversation partner is quick to dismiss some popular (then and now) "causes" of human action.  Dante asks Marco about this, commenting that some people see cause, destiny, "in the stars" and others see it "on the earth" (63).  Marco tells Dante that the "spheres" do not control destiny, for if this were so, then free will would be destroyed (68-71).  No, he says, if the world has gone downhill, then the "cause is in yourself and only there".  This, too, is then tied to the notion of justice:  unless we are free agents in doing good or evil, then there is no justice in reward or restraint.

Dante gives us a brief overview of the development of human free will agency in the individual and in society.  Since we are born with the capacity for free will, but not with the wisdom to make the right choices, we need to be guided by the restraint of law.  And if the world has gone to hell in a handbasket, (as every generation believes it has) then the fault is in the evil will of the leaders who are organizing either the religious or secular society, it is "not Nature that has grown corrupt in you" (Musa's trans, XVI.105).

This then leads to Dante's last point in the canto.  The confused and inappropriate blending of secular and sacred powers by the church of Rome has put Pope Boniface VIII into the Inferno. 

Dante's Purgatorio Canto XV

At the beginning of Canto XV there Dante encounters a “light far brighter” than any he has encountered so far.  He tells us that his “mind was stunned by what it did not know” (XV.12).  To explain the intensity of the light, Dante uses the image of a ray of light reflecting from a surface.

 

A ray leaps from water or from glass,
Reflecting back the other other way as it
Ascends in the same way it first came down,

Forming an angle with the plummet line
Exactly equal to the incidence –
As theory and experiment both show (16-21)

 Dante’s physics are correct, though Mark Musa comments (p 167) that how this description serves to explain Dante’s experience “is none too clear”.  The description does however remind me of a similar description in Virgil’s Aeneid.  In comparing Aeneas with Turnus, Virgil also uses an image of reflecting light.  Unfortunately I have misplaced my Aeneid in the mounds of books which create a second wall of insulation in my basement.  I’ll find it and update the post later.  The gist of the comparison is this:  it is about the source of power and motivation for the two men.  The light which guides Aeneas is reflected from above – it is a divine thing.  Here perhaps Dante is alluding to that passage in (book 8, if I recall) the Aeneid where Virgil introduces this idea.  The image used of Turnus is that of a boiling cauldron – which fits one for the next cornice:  the wrathful.  Be all that as it may, and we’ll patch it up as needed.  The question is this:  does one’s direction come from above (reflecting the Divine), or from below?

Dante's Purgatorio: Cantos XIII-XIV: Envy and Generosity

In Canto XIII Dante and Virgil come to another ledge, and climb higher up, into the cornice of the Envious.  It might be worth noting that while we have these terms in English, for Dante and his readers there are other connotations for the words he uses to enumerate the 7 deadly sins.  Pride is not what we might ordinarliry think of as pride in common usage:  it is more of a perverse self-love, a placing of oneself as the center of all things, and hence playing at God.  So too when we come to Envy, it is not merely  "being jealous" of what someone else has or is.  It is a bitter, resentful attitude at those things.  Envy is not simply wishing you had your neighbour's "ox or ass", as the last commandment declares of covetousness.  It is a resentfulness that your neighbour even has those things in the first place.  So Envy involves a deep-seated, almost angry, attitude towards one's fellow man.  If Pride was a sin which involved looking too much at one's own self, then envy involves looking too much at one's neighbour.

As they come up, there are no carvings of the scenes as there was in the last Canto.  The reason is this:  at the beginning stage of repentance, the soul learns by example.  So at the first cornice we had examples of both Pride and Humility:  we begin by simply avoiding the one and imitating the other.  It is of no use for the beginner to try to understand a "theology of virtue" if he or she does not actually begin to practice it.  And it might even be said that one will never understand a theology of virtue unless one practices it.

There is no guide here to tell the pilgrims where to go, and so Dante plots his course by "looking up, staring at the sun" (XIII.13).  As a poetic image, the sun has long been a representation of spiritual and intellectual illumination, and as the image was baptized by Christian writers, has now come to represent the light of Christ, or the grace of God. Remember it was Lucia (light) who carried Dante up the slope earlier.  So without the help from other guides, Dante now takes his direction from "the sun".

Those who are repenting of the sin of Envy are found huddled against the cliff side.  Dante and Virgil come to see that this group has their eyes sewn shut with iron thread.  I think the imagery serves two purposes.  First, it is obvious from that this sin is particularly associated with sight, with looking at one's neighbour more than one should.  And so the image of repentance addresses the physical "source" of that sin.  In addition, have one's eyes sewn shut with iron thread indicates that the removal of the temptation, the removal of the habit of sin, is something which must be "forced" upon us;  we have lost the ability to "not sin".  This is detox for the soul:  they cannot look upon others, even if they wanted to.  This is both an inward and outward image.  Yes, the image is physical, but Dante knows, and will tell us later, that the true sources of sin are internal, they are the false or distorted ways in which we love ourselves, our neighbours, or the things in this world.  Sin has an inward source, but it is manifested outwardly in the physical world.

Since the souls in this cornice have no sight, there are no carven examples of Envy and Generosity.  Instead they use their voices to shout out examples.  This is also worth considering:  the examples ( the the knowledge of the difference between) Envy and Generosity are not written in stone (as with Pride and Humility), but come by voice.  The examples of Generosity are spoken by the penitents, but the examples of Envy are not; they are rather spoken by other voices (eg, the voice of Cain, who, envious of his brother Abel, slew him - XIV.132 ff).  This example of Envy, at the end of Canto XIV, helps set up the transition to the next cornice - the place of the Wrathful.  It shows in the person of Cain how one sin naturally leads into another related sin.

Dante's Purgatorio: Cantos IX-XII: ascending to the cornice of the Proud

Dante is now ready to leave Antepurgatory and enter Purgatory "proper".  In Canto IX the day has come to an end, and he lays down to sleep.  This is his first night on Mount Purgatory, and it is filled with dream.   Dante comments that he dreams during the hours close to dawn,

...when our mind, far straying from the flesh
less tangled in the network of its own thoughts
becomes somehow prophetic in its dreams.
IX.16-18

His dream is a dream of God's power (in the dream it is an eagle - the bird of Jove) carrying him further up to a "sphere of fire" (IX.30).  The "heat" was so intense that it woke Dante from his slumbers.  A few things are worth noting in this passage.  First we have Dante's comment about dreams.  Apart from being consistent with medieval dream-theory (see Mark Musa 101ff.) the dream episode speaks to us of being disentangled from our own thoughts, our preoccupation with ourselves.  Indeed, perhaps we are so self centred that God can barely get a word in edgewise while we are awake.  Therefor God will speak in dreams when He cannot get our attention in waking life:  to many things distract us from being attentive to the voice of God.

Second, as Dante awakes he finds that he is further up the Mountain than when he fell asleep.  Virgil explains to him (IX. 52 ff) that Lucia (St Lucy, a figure of Light & divine illumination) has come and carried him further up.  We need not be conscious of God's operations in our lives in order for them to be effective.  Dante has found that he has been carried up without his knowledge.  It is a wonderful image of the hidden ways in which God works in our lives, even without us being aware of that it is happening.

Third, in the dream Dante is borne up to a "sphere of fire" - the images in this Canto are sensual. It is, after all, about love.  For Dante (following Augustine) sin is about disordered or defective love.  Love is ultimately the force that rules the universe.  Our problem is that we love some things too much, or other things not enough, or that our love is misdirected.  The goal is to reach the sphere of fire - the place of love purified and ordered aright.

Dante comes to the 3 steps which lead to the narrow entrance to Purgatory proper.  There are various interpretations of these 3 steps, but I will take the one which speaks of the 3 stages of repentance: self-examination; contrition (being sorry for our sin); and penance.  The colors of the 3 steps are white, black, and red. It is a poetic image which is not limited to what I have presented here.  As he comes to the gate of Purgatory, the angelic guardian of the entrance tells him to make sure he is "cleansed of these wounds" (IX.112).  Dante discovers that upon his forehead are inscribed seven "P"'s.  These seven letters (from the latin peccata- sin) are the symbols of the 7 deadly sins, each of which must be washed away and purified as he ascends the mountain.  In a final image of mercy, the angelic guardian, holding the 2 keys to the gate, tells him that was told by St Peter "Admit too many, rather than too few, if they but cast themselves before your feet" (IX.129).  While the "gate is narrow", we might also hear Dante proclaiming with the hymnwriters that there is a wideness in God's mercy.

My latte order is up, so I shall return shortly...  update:

Well, if you are keeping track, that was a long latte - almost 2 days.  By now Dante and Virgil are among the souls whose sin was Pride.  As they make their way, they see elaborate carvings in the stone of examples of great humility:  first we see Mary, with the words ecce ancilla Dei carved below;  King David dancing before the Ark (X.64 ff);  and the Emperor Trajan stopping to help a poor widow (X.76 ff).  As they continue along, and Dante is about to tell us about the various forms of penance, he gives the reader both warning and encouragement,

But, Reader, when I tell you how God wills
His penitents should pay their debts, do not
abandon your intention to repent.

You must not think about the punishment,
think but of what will come of it - at worst
it cannot last beyond the Final Day.
X.106-111

As we come to Canto XI, they meet Omberto, who tells them how his pride ruined not only his own life, but that of his.  We may think sin is a private matter, but it always involves more than just the self.  As the effects of virtue ripples outward, so also do the effects of sin.  We see that the form of penance is suitable to the particular sin.  The souls of the proud are weighed down by heavy rocks.  They are stooped low, their "stiff neck" bent in a constant posture of humility. 

Coming to Canto XII, Dante now sees examples of pride carved into the rock. These examples can be understood for what they really are, and the pilgrim is ready to have the first 'P' removed from his brow.  Dante meets the angel of humility, who invites Dante to come closer and discover that "henceforth, climbing will be easier" (XII.93).  He hears the penitent souls sing out "Blessed are the poor in spirit", and himself "seemed to feel to myself much lighter now than I had been on level ground" (XII.117).  To climb without pride is to remove a great spiritual burden.  Pride actually weighs down the soul, even while we tend to "hold ourselves high".

Dante's Purgatorio: Cantos VI-IX: Reaching the Gate

After he hears the pleas of the souls asking for prayer, Dante turns again to his guide Virgil.  Dante is confused for a few moments, as he had heard from Virgil (Aeneid VI, 373ff) that it is vain to think that heaven is actually moved by the prayers of those on earth.  For some brief background, see this post in my series on Virgil's Aeneid: pt 10: Aeneas descends to the underworld.  Remembering this, Dante asks:

It seems to me that somewhere in your verse
you, O my Light, deny explicitly
the power of prayer to bend the laws of Heaven;

yet these souls ask precisely for such prayers.
Does this, then, mean their hopes are all in vain?
Or have I failed to understand your words?
Purgatorio VI. 28-36

Since it is divine justice that has placed these souls in these various stations of purgatory, how would it be possible ("just") that their state could be changed by prayer?  Virgil anticipates Dante's concern and gives him a reply:

..."What I once wrote means what it says;
yet, if you think about it carefully,
you must see that their hopes are not deceived.

High justice would in no way be debased
if ardent love should cancel instantly
the debt these penitents must satisfy.

These words of mine you cite apply alone
to those whose sins could not be purged by prayer,
because their prayers had no access to God.

Do not try to resolve so deep a doubt
wait until she shall make it clearer - she,
the light between truth and intelligence.

You understand me:  I mean Beatrice..
Purgatorio VI. 37-46

The problem here is about the relationship between justice and mercy. Virgil begins by reaffirming what he himself wrote.  Only, here is the qualifier:  Virgil wrote of pagans' inability to access Heaven because their prayers were not uttered from a state of grace.  As a side note, this does not mean for Dante that pagans are beyond God's redemptive power - we will see this later.  The problem here is how to reconcile God's absolute justice with the canceling of "debt" for the penitents.  Now I must add that perhaps in modernity there is no such problem, but for all the wrong reasons.  We tend to think of divine justice in a different way (as all our views of God's character are limited).  Justice is often seen more in terms of "righting wrongs" than in punishing evil or evildoers.  I have sometimes heard that it is impossible that a "loving God" could in any way participate in the "punishment" of evildoers.  To some people, it seems a contradiction.  To answer this from Dante's perspective, one must go back to the Inferno.  God does not force anyone into hell;  it is by our own free choices that we land there.  So the idea of an irrational and arbitrary "vengeful" God is really just a poor caricature.  Second, it raises the question;  on what basis do we deem it appropriate that the state can enforce punitive sentences?  Surely we cannot say that God is not allowed to "punish" offenders; that such an action is really only in our domain and power? 

Be that as it may, Virgil points to another principle:  only in grace (Beatrice) can things which appear to human reason as contradictions be understood and resolved.  Virgil himself, as a figure of human reason, cannot plumb the depths of the mind of God.  Dante must wait for divine illumination.  The canto ends with a rebuke and lament over the state of Italy, which has strayed so far from justice that Dante asks:

O Jove Supreme, crucified here on earth
for all mankind, have I the right to ask
if Your just eyes no longer look on us?
Purgatorio VI. 118-120

It is interesting to note that the name of "Christ" is only uttered by poet in the Paradiso.  Here, as elsewhere, Dante will refer to Christ using other imagery and language.  There is also no mistake about Dante's views on the divinity of Christ. 

In Canto VII the two poets continue their conversation with one Sordello, who is much impressed with meeting a fellow Mantuan (Virgil).  But there is a simple sadness in Virgil's answer to Sordello's enquiry. 

I am Virgil. The reason I lost Heaven
was through no other fault than lack of faith.
This was the answer my guide gave that shade.
Purgatorio VII. 7-9

The two poets learn from Sordello that it is impossible to climb Mount Purgatory after dark ("at night it is forbidden to ascend" VII.44).  The reason for this is evident from the consideration of what repentance involves.  They are able to climb when the sun is shining.  That is, when God's power and grace are upon them, they can move up the mountain. While the ascent involves an effort of their own will, such an effort will prove fruitless unless it is guided and empowered by grace.  Once the sun has set, the symbol of God's grace and power is absent from the mountain, and no further progress is possible during the night.  Sordello explains it this way:  "the darkness of the shadows...afflicts the will with impotence" (VII.37).  Not only is human reason incapable of ascending on its own, but human willpower is incapable as well.

As they continue along their journey, two more songs have been heard:  the Salve Regina (being sung by the "negligent rulers") and then as we come to Canto VIII we hear the strains of the Te Lucis Ante (traditionally a late evening hymn for protection against the darkness, VIII.13).  As night approaches, they will discover another feature of antepurgatory:  the serpent.  It is an interesting feature of this section of Mount Purgatory that the figure of a serpent should be able to roam into the regions at night.  As an image, it reminds us that the path of repentance is not without temptation.  The pilgrims are not in such a state of grace that they cannot fall and sin.  Such a state will come, but only much later.  However, as the serpent makes its way into their presence, two angelic beings come to drive it away. We may be tempted, but with the aid of grace, even in our "night", we may be preserved from sin.  Thus Dante and Virgil wil begin to take their rest, until we see them emerge in Canto IX ready to pass through the gate through which there is no looking back.  This is a wonderful pairing with the entrance to the Inferno, where we might also say there is "no looking back".

Dante's Purgatorio: Cantos IV-VI: the Late Repentants

As Dante and Virgil move on from their encounter with Manfred, they find that the mountain proper is difficult to climb.  It is of course particularly so for Dante, who is still has with him his physical body.  He must strain onward, "climbing with hands and knees" (IV.50), and at one point is almost overwhelmed by the sheer size of the mountain which he must ascend.  He wonders aloud to Virgil, "how much more climbing we must do;  this peak soars higher than my eyes can see" (IV.86-87).   This then is the work of repentance at the outset.  It is arduous, it involves an effort of the whole self ("hands and knees").  The goal of repentance is so lofty that one cannot see it from where one starts.  The summit is beyond the reach of Dante's vision.  We often do not realize or know what it is we shall find when we begin the journey of repentance.  We can only trust that it is worth the climb. 

Virgil gives Dante some encouragement about the nature of the ascent:

This Mount is not like others, at the start
it is most difficult to climb, but then
the more one climbs the easier it becomes,

and when the slope feels gentle to the point
that climbing up would be as effortless
as floating down a river in a boat -

well then, you have arrived at the road's end,
and there you can expect, at last, to rest...
IV.88-95

There we have part of the mystery of grace and repentace:  "the more one climbs the easier it becomes".  It is always the initial effort, the initial turning, which is most difficult.  As they continue, they come across one of Dante's friends - Belacqua - who is described as quite lazy.  The laziness which caused him to put off so much in life is what brought him to this section of Purgatory;  it is reserved for those whose laziness caused them to put off repentance until the last moment.  Now they must wait here for as long as they put off repentance on earth, although we are reminded again that prayer can shorten the penitent's time in Purgatory.  Belacqua points out to Dante that it is not merely the saying of prayers which is accepted by God, but it is "prayers from a heart that lives in grace" (IV.135) which are heard in Heaven.

As we move into Canto V, we meet souls chanting the Miserere (I'll have to look up a link to my favorite version).  It is a Psalm of repentance.  It is worth noting not only that the souls here seem to pray through music, but also (noted by Mark Musa in his edition) the first two friends of Dante in the Purgatorio were in real life a musician and a maker of musical instruments.  (Take note.)  We will return to that later.  For now Dante and Virgil meet a second group of "late repenters" - those who died suddenly and violently, but managed to repent just before death.  While Dante hears the murmurs of this group behind him, Virgil reminds him that time is precious, and not to stop to listen to their voices:  "What do you care, if they are whispering?" (V.12).  I am reminded of a saying of (I think) Augustine, that God will always give us forgiveness when we repent, but we should not presume on being granted time to repent.  Or something to that effect.  I'm sure an erudite reader will give me the reference before I have to look it up.  The point is made clear by Virgil:

the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside
by one thing or another will lose sight
of his true goal, his mind sapped of its strength
V.16-18

One must not be distracted from the goal of grace; everything else must take second place.  As they continue on in Canto VI, Dante is again asked by the souls in purgatory for prayers.  This of course raises for him a question:  can prayer really change things? 

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.

Dante's Purgatorio: Canto II: Virgil & Dante in Antepurgatory

Where were we?  Ah, yes, the two poets have arrived on the shores of Mt Pugatory - an immense mountain at the bottom of the world.  The geography of the place is such that Purgatory proper does not begin for another couple of cantos  (higher up the mountain);  here at the bottom we have a region known as Antepurgatory.  It is a sort of holding zone for those who are not yet able to ascend the mountain of repentance.  It is a place reserved for all newcomers, and for those who were either excommunicated (but later repented), or those who held off their repentance until near death.  Sort of sneaking in under the deadline. 

It is interesting that of the 3 parts of the Comedy, it appears that only Purgatory has time.  Dante comments on how it is night in Jerusalem (II.3) and we will learn that Mt Purgatory and Jerusalem share a common horizon.  Inferno and Paradiso are both outside time;  perhaps this is Dante's way of reminding us that repentance is something that requires time in this life, and action in this life. 

In contrast to the entrance to the Inferno ("abandon all hope, you that go in by me), the opening of the Purgatorio is marked by hope.  Three times in Canto II Dante speaks of hope:  "3 times I saw... a light, I hop to see it come again? (II.16);  "I make this journey...hoping one day to come back here again" (92); teh newly arrived pilgrims are eagerly running to the mountain, "rushing to find a place they hoped was there" (132).  The road of repentance is not one of despair, but of hope.  In the story, Dante of course is still alive and has yet to die, therefore he says that he hopes to return again (after his own death). 

The souls of those who are destined for redemption arrive in this place ferried by an angel in a "boat so swift and light upon the wave" (II.41).  It is a stark contrast with the ferry man of the underworld - Cheron and his ghastly crew.  As the new souls arrive, Dante hears them chanting: In exitu Israel de Aegypto.(II.46)  The quote is the beginning of Psalm 113 - "When Israel came out of Egypt."  This is one of Dante's great themes.  Mt Purgatory represents that process by which the will comes out of bondage and into liberty.  Throughout the poem we will hear more songs at various stages;  each song will give us a hint as to what the poet is pointing to in that section of the story.  The Psalm which they are chanting now is not a Psalm of coronation or arrival, but rather a Psalm which recalls the beginning of redemption, and so Dante places it here in his work.

The newly arrived souls

seemed strangers to this place
they roamed about, while looking all around
endeavouring to understand new things  (II.52-54)

This is new territory - no one has grasped or known the mystery of redemption, and so for these souls the place is strange and new.  They do not know there way around by their own powers.  The ferrying angel leaves his passengers and then returns back to the "Tiber's mouth".  Apparently Rome is the place where the redeemed depart in order to reach this place.  In a way Dante is saying that Rome - the place of the Church - is part of our journey to redemption.  Dante will remind us though, that the "Church" is not by any means above the dictates of God; either of his mercy or his judgment.

Those who have followed Virgil through the Inferno will recognize a shift here in the Purgatorio.  No longer is it assumed that Virgil (the figure of human reason) is able to guide Dante at every step.  Human reason may have a grasp on sin, but it does not have a grasp on grace.  When some newly arrived souls ask Virgil and Dante for direction, Virgil humbly answers:  "we, like you, are all pilgrims here" (II.63).  Human reason is not the supreme faculty in the realm of grace;  it too is only a pilgrim, itself in need of redemption.  Virgil, though, as a character in the poem, is both wise and humble enough to recognize the limits of his powers here on the shores of grace.

Lenten series: Dante's Purgatorio; pt 2: on the shores of Mt Purgatory

"The subject of the work", wrote Dante in his letter to Can Grande del Scala, "if taken literally, is the state of the souls after death; but if taken allegorically, its subject is how man by the exercise of his free will justly merits reward or punishment."  Here at the beginning of the Purgatorio, the two poets (Dante and Virgil) have emerged from the Inferno, where each punishment was simply an expression of the sinful self-will of the one condemned.  The road which is before them is one of purgation of the will - of turning the will away from the slavery to habit and sin, and introducing it to true freedom. 

At the beginning of their journey they meet Cato, the guardian of Purgatory, so to speak.  Virgil assents to Cato's demand for information:  how did these two escape from Hell and come to these shores?

"Not on my behalf
have I come here; a lady sent from Heaven
asked me to guide this man along his way.

But since it is your will that we reveal
the circumstances of our presence here,
how can my will deny yours what it asks?" (I.52 ff)

It is worth noting the contrast with the Inferno:  rather than "self will" we have the desire to put the will of another first.  It is only by grace (the lady sent from Heaven) that Dante has emerged from knowledge of sin to this place of repentance and purification.  One of the great themes of purgatory is freedom;  only the soul which is purged of sin is truly free.  The human will (contrary to what we may think) is actually in bondage.  A life of merely "doing what I want" results in less, not more, freedom.  And so we have the figure of Cato, Roman statesman, whom Virgil addresses with this theme:

May it please you to welcome him - he goes
in search of freedom, and how dear that is,
the man who gives up life for it well knows.

You know, you found death sweet in Utica
for freedom's sake; there you put off that robe
which will be radiant on the Great Day  (I.70 ff)

The images in this canto are of light and the colour of a new dawn.  In Dante's elaborate system of astronomy, it is to be understood that the day is April 10 - the dawn of Easter day.  The canto gives us a picture of the "tender tint of orient sapphire" (as the sky lightens) and we are told that "the rising sun will show you where to climb" (108). 

lenten series: Dante's Purgatorio; pt 1

   Per correr miglior acque alza le vele                        1    To run its course through smoother water
                            
omai la navicella del mio ingegno,                              2    the small bark of my wit now hoists its sail,
                             
che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele;                          3    leaving that cruel sea behind.
                             
    e canterò di quel secondo regno                             4    Now I shall sing the second kingdom,
                             
dove l'umano spirito si purga                                      5    there where the soul of man is cleansed,
                             
e di salire al ciel diventa degno.                                  6    made worthy to ascend to Heaven.
                            
    Ma qui la morta poesì resurga,                                7    Here from the dead let poetry rise up,
                             
o sante Muse, poi che vostro sono;                             8    O sacred Muses, since I am yours.
                             
e qui Calïopè alquanto surga,                                      9    Here let Calliope arise
                             
    seguitando il mio canto con quel suono                  10    to accompany my song with those same chords
                             
di cui le Piche misere sentiro                                      11    whose force so struck the miserable magpies    

lo colpo tal, che disperar perdono.                             12    that, hearing it, they lost all hope of pardon.

"The joys of heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, an acquired taste" C.S. Lewis.

Lewis, I think, sums up what may be the essence of Dante's vision of "purgatory".  When we left Dante last spring, he had just finished his course through the Inferno and was emerging again from the underworld.  This year's lenten blogging text will be Dante's Purgatorio.  Over the next 6 weeks we will join him in the next stage of his pilgrimage, through this "second kingdom" - the ascent of Mount Purgatory.  Out goal is one with Dante himself in the poem - to be "made worthy to ascend to Heaven".  To that end, I propose that we follow much the same course as we did with the Inferno:  to read the poem as a spiritual guide and commentary on the life of the soul.  And as Lent is a season of self-examination, I plan to use the poem as a guide in reflecting upon sin and grace, hope and holiness, ascent and pilgrimage.  So eat up your Shrove Tuesday pancakes, & prepare to be purged of gluttony!

As is my wont, I will mostly be reading along with the poet.  Secondary works will be invoked from time to time, but the great writers are meant to be read.  And no, my Italian is not that good, so we will be sticking with English.  The above is from the Princeton Dante Project (an invaluable resource).  There are several English translations available (I haven't decided which one to use, but will probably end up with the Penguin, as it is most easily available for those who wish to read along with me.

So do not give up "all hope of pardon", we have left the "cruel sea" of the Inferno behind us.  And let us begin the "light burden" of Lent.

lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 12: descending to the center of Hell

While I had not planned it to be so, I find myself blogging of Dante's final descent into the center of Hell on Holy Saturday.  There is a timeline in the poem:  Dante's journey with Virgil in the underworld takes place over several days in holy week.  In the story of the poem, it is on Holy Saturday that he makes the final descent to the very presence of Satan at the center of Hades.  And so, fittingly, here we are.

In Canto XXXI Dante and Virgil make their descent from the malbowges of Circle VIII into the depths of the Well (Circle IX) with the aid of the Giants.  These are the great primordial figures of ancient myth.  These are the ones who rebelled against the gods, and by showing such uprising against the divine, are now at the entrance to the final geography of Hell.  Virgil points out one of the giants to Dante:

"So proud a spirit was this", my leader said
"He dared to match his strength against high Jove
And in this fashion his reward is paid."

XXXI, 91-93

The giant is compelled to lower them to the Xth and final Circle of Hell - the frozen lake of Cocytus.  Here Dante and Virgil encounter the Treacherous:  those who were traitors to their family, their country, their guests, and finally, those who were traitors to their lords.  At the center of Hell is Satan, who was the first Traitor to his Lord.

Both Sayers' and Charles Williams' notes capture the essence of the frozen center of Hell:

Beneath the clamour, beneath the monotonous circlings, beneath the fires of Hell, here at the centre of the lost soul and the lost city, lie the silence and the rigidity and the eternal frozen cold.  It is perhaps the greatest image in the whole Inferno.  "Dante", says Charles Williams, "scatters phrases on the difference of the place.  It is treachery, but it is also... cruelty; the traitor is cruel." (The Figure of Beatrice, 143).  A cold and cruel egocism, gradually striking inward till even the lingering passions of hatred and destruction are frozen into immobility - that is the final state of sin. (Sayers, 275)

In Canto XXXiii we see that even the traitors' tears are frozen.  They cannot even express that most basic of human expressions.  All that is human has died - frozen forever.

At the very center of Hell we find Dis (the classical name for Satan), the Devil, devouring the shades of three traitors to their Lords - Judas, Brutus and Cassius.  Perhaps we will better understand the placement of traitors to their Lords at the bottom is we understand that the whole medieval society was based upon some form of allegiance to one's lord.

To understand more fully the placement of Satan at the bottom of Hell, we need also remember that Dante knew that the earth is a sphere.  In constructing his vision of Hell, he places Satan at the center of the earth - a place where there would be no gravity.  And here we might understand Hell more fully if we consider the famous lines from Augustine's Confessions - "my love is my weight".  At the center of the earth, at the bottom of hell, there is no weight, hence there is no love.  It is a masterful image, drawing on Augustine's well known text to inform the reader.

At another level, while we might think we have escaped the condemnation of the upper regions of Hell, we have all been Traitor to our Lord.  For every sin is a treachery against Christ.  And so each one of us must, like Dante, descend to that place:  we must see what it is to betray (like Judas) our Lord.  It is to be devoured by Satan.

(We have just returned from celebrating the Great Vigil of Easter)

As they climb over the huge body of Satan at the center of the earth, a marvellous thing happens:  Virgil instructs Dante that as they finish climbing down, there will come a point where they must (at the center of the earth) turn themselves wholly upside down, at which point they will begin to ascend out the other side of Hell.  It is an image of the repentance of the soul - that point of descent and then wholly turning its orientation.

Gustave Dore's image of Dante and Virgil walking on the frozen center of the Inferno.

view entire post series: Dante's Divine Comedy

lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 11: sowers of schism and discord

In unrelated news, there was a recent item from the National Post, based on an essay by Canadian Anglican Paul Gibson entitled "Why I am not afraid of schism".  The comments after the essay are worth a look for those so inclined. The headline on the Nat'l Post article is Anglican schism not 'catastrophic': theologian.

Not only that, but in keeping with Good Friday tradition, the church is in court once again.  I thought one trial was enough for holy week.

Well, settle in for a Good Friday special on the place of the sowers of schism and discord in the Inferno!  What better way to spend a Good Friday evening than perusing the torments of those who seek to tear once again, the flesh of Christ. We'll bring you up to speed after a latte. 

To begin Canto XXVIII, Dante bids the reader recall the fiercest battles and wars, with all their carnage, and the multitude of wounded and torn bodies, and then:

If each should show his bleeding limbs unhealed,
Pieced, lopt and maimed, 'twere nothing, nothing whatever
To that ghast sight in the ninth bowge revealed

XXVIII, 19-21

The shades of those who are in this section of hell are subject to a recurring punishment:  they are hacked and split by a demon with a sword, only to have their 'bodies' made whole again, and then hacked once more by the demonic sword.  Dante is told:

All these whom thou beholdest in the pit
Were sowers of scandal, sowers of schism abroad
While they yet lived, therefore they now go split.

Back yonder stands a fiend, by whom we're scored
Thus cruelly; and over and over again
He puts us to the edge of the sharp sword

XXVIII, 34-39

As they had no qualms about fostering division while on earth, these souls are now condemned to be themselves forever "divided".  They are subject to the very principle they espoused while on earth.  They divided the body of Christ, and now their own body will be divided and torn apart.

Perhaps Paul Gibson is right.  Perhaps one need not be afraid of schism.  He might be right on that one.  After all, a person might find himself, through no intention of his own, in the middle of such a situation.  But perhaps Mr Gibson would be wise to avoid being a sower of schism, a counselor of such things.

Dante gives us examples of sowers of discord in several categories:  church, society and family.

Sayers' notes on this section are an interesting read for those who have followed (as a perpetual penitence) the various goings-on in the Anglican world: the Sowers of Discord appear "in the Circle of Fraud  because their sin is primarily of the intellect.  They are the fanatics of party, seeing the world in a false perspective, and ready to rip up the whole fabric..." (Sayers trans, Inferno, pg 250)

Just to round things out, the series of 10 bowges ends with the "Falsifiers".  These are grouped according to the kinds of things they falsified. Cantos XXIX-XXX deal with those who have used their human intellect in order to falsify nature (the Alchemists); to falsify human personality (impersonators); to falsify language (perjerers) and to falsify civic commerce and interaction (counterfeiters). Again, Dante places them quite low in the circles of hell because more of our "human capacity" - our reason and intellect - is needed in order to commit these kinds of sins.  These souls have committed their falsehoods while knowing perfectly well what they were doing, and the consequences their actions would have on others.  Each one of these kinds of sins necessarily involves an offense against others.

For Holy Saturday we will descend into the pit and see the Traitors, and finally Satan himself at the center of Hell.

Have a miserable Good Friday!

view entire post series: Dante's Divine Comedy

lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 10: hypocites, thieves and fraudsters

Once they have escaped the demons, Dante and Virgil find themselves in Bowge vi of Circle VIII.  Here they come across a sad company of souls

Who trod their circling way with tear and groan
And slow, slow steps, seeming subdued and faint

They all word cloaks, with deep hood forward thrown
Over their eyes, and shaped in fashion quite
Like the great cowls the monks wear at Cologne;

Outwardly they were gilded dazzling bright,
But all within was lead, and weighed thereby,
King Frederick's copes would have seemed feather light.

Canto XXIII, 59-66

These are the Hypocrites - they intentionally and knowingly deceived others about who they were.  All gilded on the outside, but really something quite different on the inside.  And so their punishment fits their sin:  they wear beautiful cloaks which cover their eyes (they deceived other mens' eyes) but the cloaks are really a heavy lead, and they must trudge in their true garment forever. 

In a most striking scene, Dante and Virgil come across the figure of Caiaphas, the high priest who counseled that it was better "for one man to die for the nation."  Caiaphas is seen crucified upon the ground.  Over his crucified soul the rest of the hypocrites trudge.  Virgil in particular is said to "marvel at him, thus racked forever on the shameful cross" (XXIII,124).  Apart from the shocking image this presents in and of itself, Virgil - the figure of human reason - still marvels at the cross.  In Dante's poem Virgil is said to have made a journey through hell once before, and now in his cecond journey through hell Virgil sees the things which have taken place since Christ came into the world.  At another leve, I wonder if this is not also meant to convey that the cross, in any appearance, is still a "folly" to human reason and wisdom.

In Cantos XXIV-XXVI they meet the Thieves.  As we noted earlier, property was considered an extension of one's personhood in Roman and subsequent medieval times.  Hence to damage or steal another man's material goods was to do "injury" to that man himself. The thieves' punishment is rather grotesque:  they are changed into different forms, intermingling their human and brute forms with one another.  Sayers adds a helpful explanatory note. "In this canto we see ow the Thieves, who made no distinction between meum and tuum - between mine and thine - cannot call their forms or their personalities their own".  Since they did not recognize the distinction between what is mine and what is yours on earth, they are denied the ability to have those distinctions in the afterlife.  They cannot hold even their own bodily shapes.

More properly, what we see here is not, again, a punishment imposed upon the Thieves, but merely the logical extension of what it means to be a Thief.  Having this in mind is the key to understanding the "punishments" of the Inferno.  The principles by which one engages in Thievery - taking what is not yours - is simply brought to its logical conclusion. 

In Canto XXVI we run across the figure of Ulysses, who not only was a thief himself, but also counseled others to commit fraudulent acts.  Thus we have the "Counselors of Fraud" - men who encouraged and manipulated others into committing a fraudulent act.  These are a more notorious form of thief, and so are placed lower down.

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lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 9: the barrators and the dissolution of civic life

In Cantos XXI and XXII Dante and Virgil come across the barrators - those who have disrupted civic life though buying and selling public office. 

We see one of the demons busily dispatching a barrator to his alloted fate:

On high hunched shoulders he was carrying
A wretched sinner, hoist by haunch and hip
Clutching each ankle by the sinew string

Bridge Ho! he bawled, Our own Hellrakership
Here's an alderman of St Zita's coming down
Go souse him, while I make another trip

For more; they're barrators all in that good town
Except Bonturo, hey? - I've packed it stiff
With fellows who'd swear black is white for half a crown!

XXI, 34-43

Readers may wonder why he places these kinds of folk further down than the simoniacs.  The simoniacs, you remember, are those who bought and sold the "things of God"; sellers of religious office and sacraments. Why should the barrators be more offensive to God? In addition, in these two Cantos we see much more dialogue and banter among the demons who are set to guard and prod the damned.

On one level, the corruption of the church affects, well, only the church.  But the corruption of civic life affects everyone.  We should also remember that the vision of heaven is that of a city - the New Jerusalem.  Civic life is the proper form of human community.  What the barrators do is wreak havoc upon that most basic form of human community.  The ancient Greeks had a definition of humanity - zoon logon politikon:  the animal that speaks and lives in cities.  So to wreak havoc upon civic life in the form of barratry is devasting to the very fabric of human community, even more so that wreaking having upon the church in the form of simony.

The punishment of the barrators is to be plunged under burning pitch.  If they try to get out of it, a demon thrusts them back down.  In the midst of all this, one of the souls decides to play a trick upon his demon overseers.  The demons fall for the trick, having been outwitted by the clever barrator.  As they realize they've been tricked, they start fighting among themselves.  While Dante presents the episode with some humour, the message is clear:  Satan's kingdom (the civic life of evil) is divided, and it falls into fighting and quarrelling.  The demons, further enraged, fighting and floundering among themselves, are united in purpose again onoy when it dawns upon them to chase after Dante and Virgil, whom they chase all the way into Canto XXIII.

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lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 8: the Circle of Fraud and Malice

Dante and Virgil now descend to a new region of Hell:  the 10 malbowges of the Eight Circle.  These are a series of steep ridges which descend into the bottom of the pit.  In this section of Hell we will see a deeper kind of sin.  Here we will find those who had to use all their human powers to commit their sins.  These sins are no "accidents" or mere impulsive sins.  These are sins which require us to use our specifically human powers:  intellect, speech and persuasion, knowledge and so forth.  To use the extreme example from criminal law, think of the difference between a "crime of passion" and premeditated murder.  These are the sins in which we abuse the very gifts which make us human.

In Canto XVIII Dante encounters the panders and seducers.  These are the people who have either exploited the sexual appetites of others, or who "pimped", and then those who used to deceit to satisfy their own sexual appetites.  Remember that the lustful were much higher up in Hell.  Here the difference is that the other person is merely seen as an object for one's own material prosperity, or simply as an object to satisfy one's own desire.  This is what makes then different from the merely lustful.  They are exploiters of others. Just where would Dante place certain people of the internet age - both the users and providers? Just as the lustful ran to and fro endlessly, so the panders and seducers are forced to run - in opposite directions.

Two things about their running:  they are sparked onward by demons who encourage them with whips, and they are running counter one another.  First, we see the appearance of demons.  These sins have something of the demonic about them.  They are not merely "animal-like" sins; they are more deeply spiritual than that.  And so they are accompanied by teh presence of demons to signal their severity. 

Second, the running in opposite directions is a bit of a theme which will be seen again.  In these malbowges we find people who turn things into their opposites:  flatterers who use words for profit or deception, instead of using words for their God-intended purpose;  Simoniacs who sell the things of God - sacraments and offices:

O Simon Magus! O disciples of his!
Miserable pimps and hucksters, that have sold
The things of God, troth plight to righteousness,

Into adultery for silver and gold.

XIX, 1-4

The Simoniacs are buried upside down into the living rock.  They turned the things of God upside down, and now they themselves are turned upside down.  In antithesis to the "blessed feet which bring good news", the feet of the Simonicas are covered in fire.  Interestingly, Dante comments on the donation of Constantine, lamenting the place of greed, money and temporal power in the Church:

Ah, Constantine, what ills were gendered there,
No, not from they conversion, but the dower
The first rich Pope received from thee as heir

XIX, 112-114

Going from opposite directions, then to upside down, next we have the Sorcerers, whose bodies are twisted backward.  There heads have been turned 180 degrees,

And backwards each must needs creep with their feet,
All power of looking forward being denied.

XX, 12

Here we meet some of the famous pagan seers of old - those who had sought to look into the future.  Dante condemns here all those who seek the powers of God for their own purposes.  And now, those who sought to look forward into the future for their own gain, are now forced to forever look backward.

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lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 7: violence against God

In Canto XIV Dante and Virgil meet the souls of those who were – and still are – “violent against God.”  First they meet the blasphemers, who lie on a vast ring of burning sand.  They lay on their backs facing heaven;  it was God they blasphemed while living on earth, and now in death they are made to face the throne of the One they detested.  Dante’s meeting with Capeaneus tells us much about the state of the soul which riles against God:

Who is that shade that lies, mighty of limb,
Contorted and contemptuous, scorning the flame,
So that the rain seems not to ripen him?

But he himself, soon as he heard me frame
This question to my guide about him, cried:
“That which in life I was, in death I am”.

XIV, 46ff

It is the last line which gives us the key to understanding the rest.  For the souls of the damned, the afterlife is merely a confirmation of the choices they have made in life.  What one is in life, God will allow to continue after death.  Only, you will then see the true form of that choice.  Here we see the blasphemer is still “contorted and contemptuous”.  As we look ahead, it is helpful to keep in mind this attitude in Hell, and compare it with the attitude of the repentant souls in Purgatory  The flames of God become for each of us either a punishment, a purging, or the fire of love.  It depends on how one chooses or rejects those flames.

After those who have been violent against God directly, they come across those who have been violent against those things directly arising from God’s creation:  the “violent against nature” and the “violent against art”.  Dante, holding to a theology of natural law, places in this section of the Inferno those who have offended against nature through homosexual activity.  In his view, they have sinned by reversing the course of nature which God intended in creation.  As a parallel, an earlier commentator noted that they are paired closely with the usurers.  The one group makes sterile and unfruitful that which God intended to be fruitful (against nature), and the latter group takes something which is sterile (money) and makes it artificially “multiply”.  It is this false “artifice” of the usurers which causes them to be in the circle of those who offend against “art” in the very broad sense of the word.

In Canto XVII there is a transition.  As if to signal that they are about to enter a new region of Hell, Dante and Virgil must make a bit of difficult crossing of a great barrier which divides the seventh from the eight circles of Hell.  To make the matter clearer, they are borne downward over the barrier by the monster Geryon.  Geryon is described as having the face of a just man, but a the body of a beast and a scorpion like sting in his tail.  Here then we will enter the circles of the more malicious sins – those sins which have a “just face”, but conceal poison underneath. 

It is this intentional deception in sin which we will now see.  These are the circles of fraud, malice, deceit and treason.  These are the kinds of sins which we need all our faculties in order to accomplish.  These are not the sins into which one merely falls as if by accident.  These are the intentional, 'sought-ought' sins - which we all share in one form or another.

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lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 6: the Circle of the Violent

Carrying on past the heretics, Dante and Virgil encounter the rest of the inhabitants of the circle of the Violent, or in Aristotle’s terms, the Bestial.  The violent are classified according to their “victims”:  violence against neighbour, violence against oneself (the suicides), and the violent against “God”.  This section of the Inferno:

…Holds violent men; but as threefold may be
Their victims, in three rings they are dispersed

God, self and neighbour – against all these three
Force may be used; either to injure them,
Or theirs, as I shall show convincingly.

While we may easily understand the first two, how does one commit violence against God?  Virgil continues:

Those men do violence to God, who curse
And in their hearts deny Him, or defame
His bounty and His Natural Universe.

In Canto XII they are greeted by the Minotaur and some Centaurs – proud and haughty and, well, a physical example of the combination of human and animal natures.  Half man and half beast.  One can choose to let the “animal nature” have the upper hand over the rational and human nature.  The results are seen in the physical images of the creatures from Classical mythology.  As a side note, I would be curious to know exactly what Dante would make of the Sphinx…but that is for another series.  Here they also meet the political tyrants - those who used force and violence against their neighbours.

In Canto XIII they meet the suicides – those who have committed violence against themselves.  Because they rejected the life of the physical body, they are deprived of human form in this circle.  They become the famous “bleeding trees”, an image which Dante borrowed from his companion Virgil (see Aeneid 3.22-68).  We see as well the “profligates” – those who wantonly allowed the destruction of their personal property.  Such property was, by Roman law, and extension of one’s own person, and so it was seen as a form of violence against the self. 

got to go for a few minutes...

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lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 5: the City of Dis

In Canto IX Dante and Virgil gain entrance to the "City of Dis", a community built on sin.  Perhaps it is not unlike some of our North American gated communities. But we will leave that thought alone for the time being.  At first they are denied entrance, and have to await a "heavenly messenger" who will gain access to the city for them.

Now why would the City of Dis deny entrance to them?  What has gone so wrong with the idea of a city, a community, that Dante and Virgil cannot enter?  On the one hand one might say that to travel safely through this place they need such heavenly aid (as Sayers and others point out).  That would be true enough.  But from the point of view of the inhabitants of the city, why not let them in, with the hope of ensnaring them?  Well, it may well be that such a disordered community, based on sin, has no place for reason (the figure of Virgil) or for real life (the living Dante, who is not a 'ghost' or 'shade').  A community based on sin cannot abide these two - it drives them out or seeks to prevent them from entering.

The first folk they meet in the City of Dis are the heretics.  They are encased in tombs made of iron (representing a set, obstinate and determined will) but with fire on the inside.  Charles Williams notes:

It is necessary to remember what Dante meant by heresy.  He meant an obduracy of the mind; a spiritual stae which defied, consciously, 'apower to which trust and obedience are due'; an intellectual obstinacy.  A heretic, strictly, was a man who knew what he was doing;  he accepted the Church, but at the same time he preferred his own judgment to that of the Church.  This would seem impossible, except that it is apt to happen in all of us after our manner."

The Figure of Beatrice, 125

The sense here is the choice between what one believes privately or locally, and the sense that the Church is truly catholic.  On another level, it is by heresy that one enters the lower circles...

As they progress toward the seventh circle, Virgil gives Dante a brief overview of how Hell is arranged.

Dost thou not mind the doctrine of thy school -
Those pages where the Ethics tells of three
Conditions contrary to Heaven's will and rule,

Incontinence, vice, and brute bestiality?
And how incontinence offends God less
Than the other two, and is less blameworthy?

Canto XI; 79-84

Here we have the three great divisions of the geography of Hell.  Remember the three beasts which Dante encountered at the very beginning of the Inferno?  There are, in this view, three basic types or kinds of sins, and all sins are varieties or expressions of these three types.

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lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 4: Inferno VI-VIII

Having enjoyed the company of those in Limbo and souls of the lustful in the first circle, we now join Dante and Virgil as they proceed further down into circles III, IV and V of Hell.  In these three circles we will meet the gluttons, the "hoarders and spendthrifts" and then the wrathful.  Each type is given its own circle, as each has its own particular kind of vice.  At the same time, it is worth considering:  why does Dante connect these sins in order? 

First Dante and Virgil see those whose sin was gluttony.  I might add that their sin still is gluttony - the soul continues in the state it has chosen.  Here we can begin to see why this sin is "lower" than the lustful.  At least the lustful attempted some sort of "mutuality" in their lust.  In the circle of the gluttons, the sin becomes more selfish.  Gluttony is not concerned with the wants or desires of another.  It is the beginning of the self centered sins.

(will be back again shortly...the great thing about blogging at my favorite cafe is that you can get in a game of chess with one of the regulars and the readers will never know...)

At the entrance to the circle of the gluttons, Dante and Virgil encounter Cerberus, the three-headed dog of the underworld.

I am now in Third Circle: that of rain
One ceaseless, heavey, cold, accursed quench,
Whose law and nature vary never a grain;

Huge hailstones, sleet and snow, and turbid drench
Of water sluice down through the darkened air,
And the soaked earth gives off a putrid stench.

Cerberus, the cruel, misshapen monster, there
Bays in his triple gullet and doglike growls
Over the wallowing shades; his eyeballs glare

Canto VI, 7-15

Gluttony is a cold state, unlike the hot winds of lust.  It is fitting that here they find Cerberus  ever hungry with three mouths. As a side note,  Cerberus is also the name of one of the largest capital investment groups in the world (they just bought Chrysler).  It is in this Canto that Virgil tells Dante a very important thing about the state of souls after the resurrection of the body:

Go to, said he, hast thou forgot thy learning
Which hath it:  The more perfect, the more keen,
Whether for pleasure or for pain's discerning

Our contemporary world often sees the afterlife as somehow "less" than this life.  But Virgil reminds Dante that in the state of the resurrected body, our senses will be more keen, thus more able to delight in the New Jerusalem, the new heavens and the new earth.  Likewise, the condemned will be more adept for "pain's discerning".

Next we have the hoarders and spendthrifts - two seemingly opposite kinds of people who are now grouped together.  Their sins are, in Dante's view, the same in this:  they were so small of mind that "in the handling of their wealth to use/ No moderation - none in either kind". (VII.41).  Here we can see that Dante is drawing on the ancient virtue of moderation in all things, expressed in Aristotle's Ethics.  Here these two "opposites" are really one and the same:  they fail to be moderate in their use of worldly wealth. In this circle, the souls rail against each other.  They have moved from simple selfishness to opposition to others.  Here as well Virgil warns Dante against "Luck" or "fortune":

For all the gold that is beneath the moon,
Or ever was, could not avail to buy
Repose for one of these weary souls, not one

Canto VII.64-66

Just before we leave this Canto, we have to distinct displeasure of meeting up with the "sullen" - those who "took no joy in the pleasant air, no joy of the good sun, our hearts smouldered with a sulky smoke" (VII. 121).  These are souls who simply refused to accept the naturally given joys of God and creation.  They simply bubble in a black mud, refusing all joy and all delight.  "Bah Humbug" might be their anthem.

The river Styx appears to them next - they are progressing downward in the geography of the underworld.  Throughout literature we can see the natural symbol of rivers as places of transition from one state to another.  Think of the positive parallel of the "River Jordan", and then think of what it's opposite must mean.  They are coming to a new level of Hell - the City of Dis.  Here they see the wrathful, and they encounter fierce opposition from the fallen angels who guard the city.  Virgil is bewildered at their opposition, and they must wait  for divine assistance to gain entrance.  Sayers' note is, I think, quite helpful:  "Humanism is always apt to underestimate, and to be baffled by, the deliberate will to evil."

Just as the final vision of Christian community is a city - the New Jerusalem - so also in Hell there is portrayed a perverted kind of anti-city.  It is here that Dante begins to understand and know the truth about sin: 

...Amid the weeping and the woe,
Accursed spirit, do thou remain and rot!
I know thee, filthy as thou art, I know.

It is not merely any soul which Dante encounters in the story, but allegorically, it is the sins in his own soul.  Here for the first time he comes to the point where he recognizes the hatefulness of sin.  It is really sin in himself of which he says "I know".

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lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 3: gates of hell, Limbo

Inferno, Canto III-IV

Backing up a bit from our Valentine special on the circle of the lustful, we have a few noteworthy episodes to consider. Many can remember the famous line “Lay down all hope, you that go in by me” over the entrance gate of hell in Canto III.  Yet while we may be drawn to the image of misery which this line evokes, it is only part of a larger text:

Justice moved my great maker; God eternal
Wrought me: the Power, and the unsearchable
High Wisdom, and the Primal Love Supernal.

We might at least understand that Dante imagines “justice” to be wrought in Hell.  But how are we to understand the idea that “Primal Love Supernal” had an equal part in making the gates of Hell?  Hell becomes simply the soul’s experience of the Love which it rejects.  Even Hell is held together, and owes its existence, to the Love Supernal.  Hell is simply a rejection of that love.  Hell depends on that Love for its very existence.

Some sins to consider: Virgil points Dante to the souls of those “whose lives knew neither praise nor infamy”.(III.36).  These are like the lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, who will be spit out of His mouth. Mingled with this “dismal company” are those

Who against God rebelled not, nor to Him
Were faithful, but to self alone were true.

This is an interesting image to consider.  In our culture we tend to value a certain kind of disposition we have come to call “integrity”.  So long as you are true to what you believe, you are accounted as having “integrity”.  However, to be true to self alone is to place oneself at the center.  Even the soul which tries to ignore God, neither rebelling nor faithful, cannot postpone the choice forever.  To refuse to follow does not mean one will not have an object of worship.  It will turn out to be the self.  And there will come a point when the soul will realize that it has in fact made a choice.

In Canto IV we meet the virtuous pagans and the souls of the unbaptized.  A word about the latter:  pretty high view of sacramental grace here.  Say no more, unless you are a Calvinist.  But back to the virtuous pagans.  They are placed in Limbo – a place neither of bliss nor torment.  “Perhaps in limbo the heroes enjoy some such compensation for their loss of the beatific vision” (Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited).   So who do we have here in Limbo?  We have the great poets and philosophers who predate Christ – those who did not have the opportunity to rebel or follow Him.  Contemporary ears grate against hearing of such souls in Limbo.  But let’s consider what Dante is saying, and indeed, what the great pagans themselves have said.

Aristotle, writing of the blessed and divine life, has this to say:

But such a life would be too high for man; for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him; and by so much as this is superior to our composite nature is its activity superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of excellence. If intellect is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything. This would seem, too, to be each man himself, since it is the authoritative and better part of him. It would be strange, then, if he were to choose not the life of himself but that of something else. And what we said before will apply now; that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to intellect is best and pleasantest, since intellect more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest.

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics X.7

What it boils down to is this:  the soul still gets what it asks for.  Dante calls Aristotle the “king of men who know”, and yet Aristotle is here in Limbo.  Why?  Because he failed in his imagination of the goodness of the divine toward humanity.  It is the failure of human reason that it cannot imagine such an afterlife and communion with God which the Christian religion speaks of.  “But such a life would be too high for man”.  And so the virtuous pagans receive the kind of afterlife which they imagined: the spirits of the virtuous pagans have the afterlife which they thought appropriate to humanity.  God gives the soul what it truly asks for.

Limbo shows us just how high pure reason, on its own, can be elevated...

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A Valentine Special: the circle of the lustful in Dante's Inferno!!

Yes, I know that there are a thousand mushy blog posts out there to celebrate the day of romance.  And Mrs Felix woke up to the fragrance of roses gently wafting through the room.

But you know, for those sitting home alone on such a holiday, thinking to themselves "no sugar tonight", I thought I would offer a bit of consolation.  I thought I would take a slight break from our usual progression and celebrate Valentine's day with a brief overview of Circle II - the circle of the lustful in Dante's Inferno.

Into this torment carnal sinners thrust,
so I was told - the sinners who make their reason
Bond thrall under the yoke of their lust.

Like as the starlings whell in the wintry season
In wide and clustering flocks wing borne, wind borne
Even so they go, the souls who did this treason

Hither and thither, and up and down, outworn,
Hopeless of any rest - rest did I say?
Of the least minishing of their pangs forlorn.

So if you find yourself dateless on this date, imagine only these verses of the poet on the cards accompanying the over priced roses - the flowers of romance and the thorns of lust!  Scoff at them!!  Or at least watch TV...

What Dante encounters in this circle of Hell are the souls of the lovers whose "love" was not governed and guided by "reason".  Don't get him wrong: love expressed in sexual form is part of the good of creation.  But like every good thing, it can be misused.  in this circle of Hell he encounters those who "make there reason bond thrall under the yoke of their lust".  What is the nature of lust in Dante?  It is to have our sexual appetites run wild and uncontrolled.  And so they are driven hither and thither by a hot howling wind.  It is the image of being subject to forces which seem to drive us arbitrarily.  It is an image of the soul losing control over itself.

It is worth noting that the "lustful" are pretty far up in Hell, not really far down.  Just so, their repentant counterparts are very high up on Mount Purgatory.  That is because lust is a flawed attempt at love.  It is not a sheer descent into hatred.  And at least in this sin, there is a desire for community and mutuality - it is not here a particularly "selfish" sin.  It seeks what is good - mutual love, but seeks it in the wrong way.  And to succumb to lust is to be blown about forever, at the whim of that hot wind.

Happy Valentine's Day.

post series: Dante's Divine Comedy

lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy 2

Canto I

In the midst of Canto I Dante spies a mountain, which he tries to scale but is unable.  The figure of the mountain is a familiar image from the Scriptures.  The Ark comes to rest on a mountain, the Law is given on a mountain, Christ is transfigured on a mountain.  By far the main images of mountain in Scripture have positive associations:  they are places where God meets us, or speaks, or is revealed in a special way.  But those are not the only associations;  after all, it was “on the top of a high mountain” that Satan showed Christ all the kingdoms of the world, and offered these in exchange for worship. 

So while the mountain is a place of encounter with God, it is also the place of temptation.  In particular,  it is the place where Christ faced temptation.  As Dante surveys the “mountain-side”,  he sees three beasts comes toward him:  a leopard, a lion and then a wolf.  Commentators have liked to identify these three beasts with three classes or types of sin (mostly based on Aristotle’s ethics). 

Perhaps there is some correlation intended with the three temptations of Christ in the wilderness, culminating (in Matthew’s Gospel) with the confrontation with Satan on the mountain top.  At any rate, Dante finds that these three beasts turn him back from ascending the mountain.  This brings to mind two things:  he cannot directly ascend to God, nor is he Christ-like to face temptations on the mountain and overcome them.  The beasts all turn him back, and upon seeing the Wolf, Dante is defeated:

The ancient cause of many men’s enslaving

She was the worst – at that dread sight a blank
Despair and whelming terror pinned me fast
Until all hope to scale the mountain sank

It is the midst of this frustrated attempt that Dante stumbles across Virgil, who tells him

“Nay, by another path thou needs must go
If thou wilt ever leave his waste”.

If the soul is to ascend to God, it must (at least in this case) do so by another route.  Dante is afraid of the beasts - his sins.  They will not let him pass.  Virgil tells him that he must descend into Hell - in essence, descend into himself, see the true nature of sin, and then he will be ready to begin the ascent to God, which begins with repentance.  Remember that Purgatory is also pictured as a mountain (Sayers argues that this is the "mountain-side") which Dante mentions. 

At this beginning point, fear which habitual sin, and the control it exercises over us, prevents the soul from repenting.  This fear and the control of sin are irrational, and so the figure of reason - Virgil - comes to Dante's aid.  But Dante is a Christian, and in the story even Virgil understands the limits of where he can guide Dante:

...a worthier spirit than I
Must lead they steps, if thou desire to come
With whom I'll leave thee then and say good-bye

For the Emperor of that high Imperium
Wills not that I, once rebel to his crown,
Into that city of His should lead men home.

Recall John Donne's Holy Sonnet  XIV:  "Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue."  In Donne's poem, reason is unable to help.  In Dante's, the ability of reason to lead the soul to God is strictly limited.  While Dante has a high view of human reason, he nonetheless recognizes that human reason is not only limited, but can even be "rebel to his crown".

So where then are we?  We still have enough power of reason to understand the nature of sin, and the destruction is brings.  Reason can lead to to understand the moral life, but it cannot of itself enable us to live it.  Put another way, human reason by itself can only convict us of law, it cannot bring us into grace.  But as preparation for the grace which is to come, the soul first needs to see the truth of its own sin.  And that is the nature of Hell.

As a piece of practical theology, we might ask what our "beasts" are, which prevent us from ascending to God.  Does a particular sin have such control over us that it prevents us progressing further?  And do we understand the true nature of sin?  We often see only the illusion which temptation presents - "You will be like God".  Dante wishes to show us the true face of sin.

post series: Dante's Divine Comedy