Purgatorio (80 page)
Authors: Dante
37.
The
quia
is a term deriving from Scholastic discourse. Benvenuto da Imola’s paraphrase nicely conveys both that style and precisely what is meant here: “sufficiat vobis credere quia sic est, et non quaerere propter quid est” (let it suffice you to believe that something is so, without seeking to know why it is so), i.e., to accept things as they are, without attempting to understand their causes.
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38–39.
Some commentators (e.g., Benvenuto) are of the opinion that these lines indicate that had humankind been able to know the final mysteries, Adam and Eve would not have fallen and Christ would not have been needed to save us. It seems far more likely that Dante’s thought is more logically connected than such an analysis would indicate: had we known all, there would have been no need for Christ to come to bring us the final truth of things. The focus here is not moral so much as it is intellectual.
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40–45.
Perhaps there is no passage in the poem that more clearly delineates the tragedy of Virgil, now studied by its protagonist himself. His own fourth
Eclogue
, which spoke of a virgin who would give birth to a son, but did not mean Mary and did not mean Jesus, is symptomatic of how near he came and thus how great was his failure, a result here addressed in an unspoken gesture—his lowering his head while holding back his tears. In the last canto, the newly arrived pilgrims looked up with hope (“la nova gente
alzò la fronte
” [the new people raised their faces]). The words describing Virgil’s silence echo key words from that passage in a contrastive spirit (as noted by Holl.1990.1, p. 36): “e qui
chinò la fronte
, / e più non disse, e rimase turbato” (and here he lowered his brow, said nothing more, and seemed disturbed). As Benvenuto would have it, it is as though Virgil were saying: “And woe is me, I was among their number.”
The words in rhyme position in these two tercets underline their message:
One way leads up through faith to Christian truth, mediated by the mortal woman who gave birth to God in the flesh, the other down from this potential happiness, through rational attempts to know the rationally unknowable, to everlasting unhappiness. Mary and Plato are here the very emblems of the choices that we humans face.
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46–48.
There is a sharp dividing line between the elegiac passage devoted to Virgil’s consideration of his failure (vv. 22–45) and the scene that begins here, with the description of the sheer wall of the mountain and the first attempt at an ascent. For an appreciation of the nonetheless unitary nature of this canto as a whole, see Binni (Binn.1955.1), p. 9.
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49–51.
Lerici and Turbia are settlements at either end of the Ligurian coast, to either side of Genoa, a region marked by rugged mountains sloping to the sea and, in Dante’s roadless day, difficult of access.
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52–57.
Virgil’s question and attitude reveal a guide who has not taken
this
trip previously, as he had in
Inferno
. Further, while he falls back on the resource of his reason, the futility of which in certain situations has just been explored by the guide himself, his pupil, like the arriving penitents in the last canto (see note to vv. 40–45, above), does the intuitive and hopeful thing: he looks up.
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58–60.
Having begun their attempt to ascend, Virgil and Dante begin moving leftward out of habit, we must assume. (They will only learn what direction they should be moving in at verse 101.) Our first glimpse of the souls of ante-purgatory marks them as unexcited and slow-moving, attributes that will gain in meaning when we learn more about them.
For helpful references to classical discussions of the morally charged nature of the directions of human movement (right, up, and ahead are all “good”; left, down, and behind are all “bad”) see Stabile (Stab.1983.1), pp. 145–49.
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61–63.
Underlining the difference between the guide’s and the protagonist’s ways of proceeding, Dante’s remark, urging Virgil to look up, intrinsically reveals a reversal of roles, as was noted by Margherita Frankel (Fran.1989.1), pp. 120–21. It is not the master who is giving instructions but the pupil; throughout the little scene that follows, one can sense Virgil’s effort to regain his attenuated authority.
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72.
The souls are puzzled by what they see, two figures moving in the wrong direction (to the left) on this holy mountain, as Benvenuto da Imola was perhaps first to suggest. Not only are they going in the wrong direction, they are also moving quickly, not at the reverential and thoughtful pace of penitence.
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73–78.
Virgil’s
captatio benevolentiae
(the attempt to capture the goodwill of one’s auditors) here, like the one he addressed to Cato in the first canto (
Purg
. I.70–84), reveals, as Frankel has been perhaps alone in arguing (Fran.1989.1, pp. 122–24), another example of his not understanding his own limitations. His epigrammatic concluding utterance, though taken
in bono
by commentator after commentator (and perhaps most pleasingly by Benvenuto, who goes on to claim that Dante himself was most prudent in using his time, so that he managed to get his
Commedia
finished before he died), shows him once again getting things a bit garbled. The self-assured turn of phrase, “The more we know, the more we hate time’s waste,” indicates that he is still without understanding of the positive aspects of
not
knowing, of
not
hurrying—two aspects of the saved souls whom he addresses that, as the following simile will make unmistakably clear, are praiseworthy in the Christian context of this scene.
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79–87.
The sole extended comparison of the canto centers attention on the need for faith untroubled by reason. These sheep, following and imitating their bellwether, are presented positively for their humility and faithfulness. See Lansing (Lans.1977.1), pp. 47–53, for a discussion of this simile, contrasting the humility exemplified here in Manfred (whom we shall soon come to understand is the “bellwether” in the simile), whose life was marked by the opposite vice, presumption, in his opposition to the Church. In one of his typical outbursts against his intellectual enemies in
Convivio
, Dante calls them stupid and compares them to sheep (I.xi.9–10), those sheep that follow their leader in jumping into a ravine a mile deep (is that phrasing, “mille passi,” remembered in the same phrase at verse 68, above? Frankel [Fran.1989.1], p. 124, is of that opinion). Citation of this passage in
Convivio
was perhaps first brought into play by Daniello (1568), but it is only recently that readers have begun to understand that the ovine images in this simile work against the assertion found in the Convivial outburst. Its prideful, even presumptuous, tone is here countermanded by the poet’s better understanding of the virtues of sheep, as the arrogance of prideful philosophizing gives way to Christian piety.
In his commentary to this passage, Singleton notes the appropriateness of the 77th Psalm (Psalm 77 [78]:52), recapitulating the Exodus with these words: “But [God] made his own people go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.” It seems clear that such traditional Judeo-Christian images of the flock of the just govern this simile.
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93.
If we had not sensed the importance of humble acts committed by those “not knowing why” in verse 84, the fact that the souls, now described directly, repeat what had been done within the simile reinforces the importance of the point.
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101–102.
The saved souls now express their concern: Dante and Virgil are heading in the wrong direction (see Fran.1989.1, pp. 121–22). They are thus aesthetically and morally disturbing as newcomers to purgatory.
The gesture that they make is puzzling to American readers, who give the sign for “Stop!” or “Go back!” by extending their palms outward. As Lombardi (1791) calmly points out, “The gesture referred to here by the poet is exactly the one with which we signal to others that they should turn and retrace their steps.” Experience on Tuscan streets and paths even today will verify this.
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103–105.
Manfred died (February 1266) some eight or nine months after Dante was born. His question is thus groundless, notwithstanding the exertions of commentators like Tommaseo (1837), Andreoli (1856), and Poletto (1894), who argue that Dante, as a deeply thoughtful man, looked old for his age. The utterly human perception that lies behind the poet’s lending Manfred this question is that the great and famous are used to being recognized, and often assume that everybody has seen them, even if they themselves tend to have small recollection of the many whom they have encountered. On the other hand, his question may also be a hopeful one, i.e., if this living soul happens to recognize him, Manfred hopes that he will cause others to pray for him—see
Purgatorio
V.49–50, where other late-repentant souls make similar requests.
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107–108.
The “realism” of the detail of this scarred eyebrow has drawn much admiration. Singleton’s comment (1973) cites Augustine,
De civ. Dei
XXII.xix.3: “For, in the martyrs, such wounds will not be a deformity; they will have a dignity and loveliness all their own; and, though this radiance will be spiritual and not physical, it will, in some way, beam from their bodies.” He goes on to suggest that Manfred, though excommunicated by the Church, nonetheless is treated here as a sort of martyr, “persecuted” by that very Church.
While a number of antecedents for Manfred’s physical appearance have been proposed (e.g., David, Roland, Virgil’s Marcellus), one seems most likely to have been on Dante’s mind: the tragic figure of Deiphobus (
Aen
. VI.495–499), who attempts to
hide
his wounds from Aeneas, his mangled ears and his nose (“truncas inhonesto volnere naris” [his nostrils laid bare by a shameful wound—VI.498]). Deiphobus, desiring
not
to be recognized by his wounds, is, in this understanding, a foil to Manfred, eager to display the wound in his chest. Perhaps the first commentator to note this correspondence was Mattalia (1960); and see Hollander (Holl.1984.4), p. 119.
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111.
Manfred’s second wound (the poet will insist on the importance of the fact that he has
two
visible wounds in verse 119), perhaps reminiscent of the wound in Christ’s side (John 19:34; 20:25), causes the reader to consider the possible significances of these two marks on his body. Perhaps we are to understand that the first wound, in his brow, traditionally and in Dante the locus of pride (see
Inf
. X.45 and XXXIV.35 and notes), is the sign of his pride brought low, his mark of Cain, as it were, now made good in his gesture of revealing his other wound, his mark of Christ, the seal of his humility. Torraca (1905) is nearly alone in seeing the resemblance, antithetic though it be, between the gestures of self-revelation in displaying wounds found in Manfred here and in Mohammed (
Inf
. XXVIII.29–31).
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112.
Manfred’s smile is part of a “program” of smiling found in the two final
cantiche
(see note to
Purg
. II.83). His way of naming himself seems to be part of a program limited to the ante-purgatory, the only part of the poem in which characters name themselves using this formula (“io son” followed by their own name). Manfred’s smiling self-identification stands out from the evasive behavior in this regard exhibited by most of the sinners in hell. For the others who employ this formula see
Purgatorio
V.88 (Buonconte da Montefeltro), VI.34 (Sordello), VII.7 (Virgil). In the less personal exchanges in
Paradiso
only St. Bonaventure uses a version of it: “Io son la vita di Bonaventura.…” There the great Franciscan identifies himself as a living heavenly soul.
Born ca. 1231, Manfred was the illegitimate son of the emperor Frederick II and Bianca Lancia, and thus the natural grandson of Emperor Henry VI and Constance of Sicily. He was also the father, by his wife Beatrice of Savoy, of Constance, who married King Peter III of Aragon (see vv. 115–116). When Frederick died in 1250, Manfred was appointed regent of Sicily in the absence of his brother, Conrad IV, involved elsewhere. When Conrad died, in 1254, leaving the realm to his three-year-old son, Conradin, Manfred again became regent. At the rumors of the child’s death, in 1258 (he would in fact survive another ten years), Manfred was crowned king in Palermo. This did not sit well with the pope, and Alexander IV excommunicated him in 1258, as did Urban IV in 1261. Urban offered the vacated forfeited crown to Louis IX of France who, refusing it, opened the path to an invitation of Charles of Anjou, who accepted. Once Charles was crowned in Rome in January 1266, he set out to destroy Manfred, an aim that he accomplished the next month at the battle of Benevento. A lover of the “good life” at court, a fervent Ghibelline, a man charged (whether correctly or not) with a number of murders of his cofamiliars, supposedly undertaken to advance his political hopes, Manfred was not, at least not in Guelph eyes, a selection for salvation that could have been calculated to win sympathy to the work that contained such news. It is at least reasonable to believe that the first damned soul we see in hell is Celestine V (see note to
Inf.
III.58–60), a pope of saintly habits; here the first soul we find saved on the mountain is the excommunicated Manfred. Whatever else Dante enjoyed doing as he wrote this poem, he clearly delighted in shocking his readers—as though the salvation of Cato, with which the
cantica
begins, were not incredible enough for us.
On the problems raised for commentators by the salvation of the excommunicated Manfred see La Favia (LaFa.1973.1), who points out that a letter of Pope Innocent III dating from 1199 fully supports the notion that an excommunicate can eventually be saved, a position, as he demonstrates, that was not nearly as shocking to Dante’s earliest readers as it would later become. La Favia produces the key portion of that Latin text (pp. 87–88).
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