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Explore Dante's innovative vision of Purgatory, distinct from Hell and Paradise, influenced by scriptural texts and visionary literature. Witness sins purged in Ante-Purgatory and terraces like Pride, Wrath, and more, leading to the Terrestrial Paradise and Dante's unique Paradise spheres. Unravel the profound symbolism with key insights from influential commentators of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
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The Birth of Dante’s Purgatory • Though Dante’s topography for the realms of Hell and Paradise are influenced by existing scriptural and visionary texts, his topographical vision of Purgatory is largely original. • There are no specific Scriptural references to such a place as Purgatory, though there are references to the idea of prayer as intercession and the purging of the soul.
Scriptural references / Church doctrine • Scriptural antecedent for prayer: • “[It is] a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.” (2 Maccabees 12:46) • Scriptural antecedent for purgation by fire: • “Though has proved my heart and visited it by night, thou hast tried me by fire: and iniquity hath not been found in me.” (Psalm 16:3) • “If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:10-15) • The concept of Purgatory (Purgatorium) did not become official church doctrine until 1274. (Second Council of Lyons)
Visionary literature pre-Purgatorio • Drythelm’s Vision by the Venerable Bede (7th C) refers to an intermediate region between heaven and hell where there are flames that punish souls. It also portrays the power of prayer to help souls be received into Heaven. • Saint Patrick’s Purgatory by Marie de France (mid-12th C) describes purgation for souls so that they might go to the Earthly Paradise. • Monk of Evesham (end of 12th C) • Thurkill’s Vision (1206) refers to a large purging fire.
“The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry” (Book of Hours, 1410)
Sins punished in Dante’s Hell • We encountered the following sins in Hell: • Lust (5), Gluttony (6), Avarice (7), Wrath (7-8), Violence (12-17), Blasphemy (14), Fraud (18-30), and Treachery (32-34). • These sins are different from those considered to be “capital sins.”
Capital/mortal sin • Gregory the Great (7th C) first defined the seven deadly sins in his work Moralia on Job (esp. XXXI.45). Capital sin requires penance in Hell. • Capital sin is graver than venial sin, which can be forgiven through confession. Pope Gregory's list of Seven Deadly Sins was different from the one found today, and his ranking of the sins' seriousness was based on the degree that they offended against love. • From least serious to most, were: lust, gluttony, sadness, avarice, anger, envy, and pride. Sadness would later be replaced by acedia (sloth), putting off or failing to do what God asks of you.
Dream visions: The eagle (Purg.9.19-63) “When I, who bore something of Adam with me, feeling the need for sleep…” (10-11)
Dante’s Paradise • Concentric spheres that revolve around a fixed, immobile earth. • The first eight spheres carry one heavenly body (not just “planets”): the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Fixed Stars. • The ninth sphere is the Primum Mobile: the crystalline sphere. • Beyond the ninth sphere is the Empyrean, which is immaterial and motionless. This is where the divine mind exists, as well as all of the blessed.
Sphere of Jupiter: Just Rulers (18-20) “And like the rapid change that one can see in a pale woman’s face when it has freed itself from bearing bashful modesty, such change I, turning, saw: the red of Marswas gone – and now the temperate sixth star’s white heaven welcomed me into itself.” (18.64-69)
Writers began to “comment” upon, or “gloss,” the Comedy as early as the century in which he was born. The earliest commentators, we believe, were his sons, Jacopo and Pietro, but they also include Pietro della Lana and Cristoforo Landino, whose commentary was copied into several editions (see upcoming slide). Writing a commentary involves “explaining” (or “explicating”) the poem for readers. It is the act of decoding the text, or making it more comprehensible for its readership. It is the same as paraphrasing. Commenting upon a poem is not a passive or indifferent process. Commentators are powerful insofar as their reading of the poem can possibly “distort” the original meaning of the poem. Over the centuries, many commentators of Dante’s poem have disagreed on how to read many passages. What is a commentary?
Allegory, or, why we need commentaries • We need commentaries for several reasons -- to understand historical references, for example, but also because the Comedy is a lyric poem that is meant to be ready as an allegory. • An allegory can be thought of as an extended metaphor. It literally means to “talk about something else” (allos - Greek for “other” / allogorien - “to talk about something else”). • Take, for example, the following: The plane soared into the sky like an eagle.(simile) It soared, an eagle, into the sky. (metaphor, context implies it is a plane) The second sentence uses a symbol to describe the way that the plane soared into the sky. We can infer through context that the author is drawing a comparison to a plane. This can also be thought of as an analogy.
The art of exegesis • Reading “allegorically” was the original practice of the Church Fathers (such as St. Augustine) in explicating Scripture. This was especially true for the books of the Old Testament, which were read allegorically to “prefigure” the events of the New Testament. This is known as exegesis. • Dante himself provides an example, his letter to Can Grande (thanks, Dante!): Psalm 114 (113 in the Vulgate), begins "In exitu Israel de Aegypto" [When Israel went out of Egypt] (2.46-8). “Now if we look at the letter alone, what is signified to us is the departure of the sons of Israel from Egypt during the time of Moses; if at the allegory, what is signified to us is our redemption through Christ; if at the moral sense, what is signified to us is the conversion of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to the state of grace; if at the anagogical, what is signified to us is the departure of the sanctified soul from bondage to the corruption of this world into the freedom of eternal glory. And although these mystical senses are called by various names, they may all be called allegorical, since they are all different from the literal or historical.”
Littera gesta docet, Quod credas allegoria. Moralia quod agas, Quo tendas anagogia. The literal sense teaches what happened, The allegorical what you believe. The moral what you should do, The anagogical where you are going. A medieval “ditty”
What does the Comedy mean as a whole? “The subject of the whole work, then, taken literally, is the state of souls after death, understood in a simple sense; for the movement of the whole work turns upon this and about this. If on the other hand the work is taken allegorically, the subject is man, in the exercise of his free will, earning or becoming liable to the rewards or punishments of justice.” – Dante, “Letter to Can Grande”
Inferno 1: Beginning in the middle of things • Reading of Inferno 1. 1-27 • “The 'now' is the link of time, as has been said (for it connects past and future time), and it is a limit of time (for it is the beginning of the one and the end of the other).” (Aristotle’s Physics, 4.13) • “journey of our life” – Inferno 1.1 • Leo Spitzer: “the possessive of human solidarity.” This is not just Dante’s journey, this is OUR journey. We can identify more with it given the ambiguity of the prologue scene. • A journey in peril, in the region of unlikeness (“regiodissimilitudinis”, Augustine)
The dark forest • Dante, Convivio 4.25: “Thus the adolescent, who enters into the erroneous forest of this life, would not know how to keep the right way if he were not guided by his elders.” (selvaerronea) • Proverbs 2:13, “Who leave the right way, and walk by dark ways” • 2 Peter 2:15, “Leaving the right way that have gone astray” • Augustine’s Confessions 7.10: in this forest so immense and full of snares and dangers • Plato’s Timaeus: the “silvaPlatonis” • Synethesia (mixing of senses): Inferno 1.60: “where the sun is silent”
The three beats • John I 2:16: “the concupiscence of the flesh, the pride of life, and the concupiscence of the eyes, cupidity, greed, and avarice” • Jeremiah 5:6: “Wherefore a lion out of the wood hath slain them, a wolf in the evening hath spoiled them, a leopard watcheth for their cities: every one that shall go out thence shall be taken, because their transgressions are multiplied, their rebellions are strengthened.” • Leopard = ? • Lion = ? • She-wolf = ?
Vergil (70-19 BC) • Vergil lived during the time of Julius Caesar. • Authored the Aeneid, which was unfinished at the time of his death. • The Aeneidtells the story of Aeneas, the fictive Roman ancestor. • In book 6 of the Aeneid, Aeneas travels through the underworld to seek his father’s guidance. His father is named Anchises. • Vergil was also thought by the medievals to prophesize the coming of Christ in his fourth Eclogue.
Inferno 2: From a divided to an unified will • Inferno 2.32: “I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul” • 2 Corinthians 12:2-4: Paul “heard secret words which it is not granted to man to utter” in heaven • Paul = Christianity, and specifically the Papacy • Aeneas = the Roman Empire • Augustine says that the will cannot be divided (“not to turn and toss, this way and that, a maimed and half-divided will, struggling, with one part sinking as another rose.”) • Dante ends Inferno 2 with a unified will: “a single will fills both of us: / you are my guide, my governor, my master” (vv.139-140)
The Gate of Hell (Inf.3.1-9) Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way to the eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my high artificer; My maker was divine authority, The highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things Were made, and I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, who enter here.
Inferno 3: The cowardly “But because though art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth,” Revelation 3:16
The contrapasso • The literary device of the contrapasso is the literalization of a metaphor. • How is the contrapasso of the cowardly a fitting punishment?
