Purgatorio (83 page)

9.
   How is the reader meant to take the poet’s remembrance of his feelings at being recognized as a living soul? Was he guilty of the sin of pride? Some unknown early readers believed so, as we know because Benvenuto tacitly but strongly rebukes them. In his view Dante’s excitement is not that of self-congratulation, but rather of joy in his having been chosen by God for this experience, exactly that feeling expressed by Paul when he said “thanks be to God I am what I am” (I Corinthians 15:10). Benvenuto’s disciple, John of Serravalle (1416), however, does indeed see the taint of vainglory in Dante’s memory of the intense gaze of the penitent souls.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

10–18.
   Discussing this passage, Frankel (Fran.1989.1), pp. 127–30, points out that Virgil’s urgency in trying to get Dante to resume his forward movement is not found in Virgil himself when he encounters Sordello in
Purgatorio
VII and much enjoys his fellow Mantuan’s interest and praise. And while, beginning perhaps with Tommaseo (1837), there have been other commentators who find Virgil’s scolding excessive, the fact remains that the protagonist takes it most seriously (see vv. 19–21). Further, all that Virgil rebukes in Dante is his allowing his attention to wander, distracted by his admirers, from the prime purpose of the journey, i.e., he is acting to some degree like these negligent souls who were active Christians only near the end of their lives.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

19–21.
   Dante’s blush of shame clearly justifies Virgil’s indignation: the protagonist has been thinking of himself too much. And with this detail, indeed, the poem resumes its forward thrust, begun at vv. 1–2, but interrupted for seventeen lines.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

23–24.
   The new penitents enter singing the Psalm (50:1) that furnished the protagonist’s own first word in the poem (
Inf
. I.65),
Miserere
, the first word of David’s song of penance. Unlike the last group of late-repentant souls, lounging in the shade of their rock, these are moving in the same rightward direction that Virgil has urged Dante to follow.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

25–27.
   It is noteworthy that these penitents behave precisely as did the negligent, showing their astonishment and curiosity at Dante’s embodied presence in the sacred precinct of the saved. It is also striking that this time Virgil will offer no rebuke to Dante for his interest in them, which will slow his forward movement. If one reflects that this encounter is part of the protagonist’s “education” on the mountainside, the apparent contradiction begins to resolve itself. Dante’s previous interest was in the negligent souls’ reaction to him, not in what he could learn from them.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

28–30.
   Unlike other characters who enter the action of the poem unnamed but are later identified, these two messengers, seeking information about Dante’s condition, will remain anonymous.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

31–36.
   For all the asperity of Virgil’s response to the “messengers,” it is clear that he is aware of and in favor of Dante’s ability to help speed the progress toward purgation of these and other souls in ante-purgatory (verse 36).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

37–40.
   The similetic comparison may find its roots in Virgil’s description of shooting stars in his
Georgics
(I.365–367), according to Tommaseo (1837) and, more recently, to Hermann Gmelin (Gmel.1955.1).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

45.
   Once again Virgil underlines the propriety of Dante’s favorable response to requests for his intervention on behalf of the penitents as long as he continues his way up the mountain while he does so.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

53.
   As Chiavacci Leonardi (Chia.1994.1), pp. 143–44, points out, the phrase “sinners to the final hour” is probably meant to recall Matthew 20:1–16, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, where even those who are summoned to work at the eleventh hour were paid the same as those who labored all the day: “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few are chosen” (20:16).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

55.
   It is noteworthy that salvation was possible for these sinners only after their own belated penitence
and
their forgiveness of those who had caused their deaths.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

58–63.
   Dante’s acquiescence in being willing to bring news of their salvations pointedly includes those whom he does not know, encouraging them to make a request that might, to them, have seemed too bold. The words he uses for these souls, “spiriti ben nati” (spirits born for bliss) contrast sharply with the formulation for those who were described as “mal nati” in
Inferno
(V.7; XVIII.76; XXX.48).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

64.
   The speaker, never identified by name, either in his own speech of twenty-one lines (vv. 64–84) or by the narrator, is Jacopo del Cassero, born ca. 1260. “He was among the Guelf leaders who joined the Florentines in their expedition against Arezzo in 1288. He incurred the enmity of Azzo VIII of Este by his opposition to the designs of the latter upon Bologna, of which city Jacopo was Podestà in 1296. In revenge Azzo had him assassinated at Oriaco, between Venice and Padua, while he was on his way (in 1298) to assume the office of Podestà at Milan at the invitation of Maffeo Visconti. He appears to have gone by sea from Fano to Venice, and thence to have proceeded towards Milan by way of Padua; but while he was still among the lagoons, only about eight miles from Venice, he was waylaid and stabbed”
(T).
Clearly Dante knew that he could count on Jacopo’s renown and on his readers’ fairly wide acquaintance with the details of his life and death.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

69.
   Jacopo refers to the Marches, the area between Romagna, to the north, and the kingdom of Naples, governed by Charles of Anjou in 1300, to the south.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

71.
   Should Dante ever find himself in Fano, in the March of Ancona, where Jacopo’s relatives and friends survive, his news of Jacopo’s salvation may, by causing them to pray for him, serve to shorten his time in ante-purgatory.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

74.
   Jacopo’s blood, of which we shall hear more in his final lines, the seat of the soul (see
Purg.
XXV.37–45), left his body through the wounds caused by the murderous Paduans who waylaid him in 1298. Padua was founded by Antenor, according to Virgil (
Aen.
I.242–249). Servius’s comment on these verses added the detail that Antenor, before he escaped from Troy, had given the Greeks the Palladium, thus connecting him with betrayal of one’s country (and suggesting to Dante a name, Antenora, for the second region of the ninth Circle of hell,
Inf.
XXXII.88).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

77–78.
   Azzo VIII d’Este became marquis of Este in 1293. Jacopo here would seem to be suggesting that the Paduans who killed him were in cahoots with Azzo, the ringleader of the plot. Dante’s own former opinion of Azzo was negative (see
Dve
I.xii.5, II.vi.4). Here Jacopo admits a certain culpability in having aroused Azzo’s wrath, reminding us that he has had to forgive his slayer in order to have been saved. The commentator Jacopo della Lana, in his gloss to vv. 70–72, gives some of the reasons for Azzo’s hatred of Jacopo. When Azzo wanted to make himself ruler of Bologna, the Bolognesi called on Jacopo to be
podestà
of their city. In opposing Azzo he, according to the fourteenth-century commentator, was unceasing in his vilifications of his enemy, claiming, for instance, that he had slept with his stepmother and was in fact the son of a washerwoman.

For the sin of wrath, in its hardened form, as a sin of will and not of incontinence, see notes to
Inferno
VII.109–114 and XII.16–21 (last paragraph). Because Azzo was alive in 1308, Dante could not place him in hell; it seems likely that he would have considered setting him down among the murderers in the company of his father, Obizzo, whom Azzo indeed, according to many commentators, strangled in 1293. See
Inferno
XII.111–112.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

79–80.
   Jacopo, reconsidering his actions, realizes that he might have made good his escape had he proceeded west in the direction of Milano and headed for the town of La Mira, rather than stopping, off the main road, between Venice and Padua at Oriago. Benvenuto believes that he was on horseback (as seems reasonable) and thus could have made his escape along the good road to La Mira, while the swampy overgrowth made him easy prey for his attackers, stalking him on foot, when he turned back to hide himself but was seen and attacked.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

83–84.
   Fallen (from his horse?) and apparently hacked to death by those who pursued him on foot, Jacopo watches his blood (and thus his soul) pass from his body.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

88.
   Buonconte da Montefeltro (ca. 1250–89) was the son of the great Ghibelline leader, Guido da Montefeltro (
Inf
. XXVII.19–132; and see note to
Inf
. XXVII.4–6). “In June 1287 Buonconte helped the Ghibellines to expel the Guelfs from Arezzo, an event which was the beginning of the war between Florence and Arezzo; in 1288 he was in command of the Aretines when they defeated the Sienese at Pieve del Toppo; and in 1289 he was appointed captain of the Aretines and led them against the Guelfs of Florence, by whom they were totally defeated (June 11) at Campaldino, among the slain being Buonconte himself, whose body, however, was never discovered on the field of battle”
(T)
. It is important to remember that Dante himself was present at this battle as a cavalryman (see note to
Inf
. XII.75) in what was, for him and his fellow Florentine Guelphs, a great victory. Once again we sense his ability to identify with the loser (see note to
Inf
. XXI.95). There is not a trace of triumphalism in his exchange with the fallen leader of his enemies.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

89–90.
   Unlike Jacopo del Cassero, who hopes that his relatives and friends will pray for him (verse 71), Buonconte realizes that his wife, Giovanna, and other family members have no concern for him. Unlike Jacopo and others of his band, he has been devoid of the hope that has urged the rest to petition Dante for his aid. Now he finds hope in this visitor from the world of the living. This poem, which summarizes its purpose as being to make the living pray better (
Par.
I.35–36), nowhere better indicates this purpose than in ante-purgatory in such scenes as these. It is undoubtedly the case that any number of people who read or heard the poem in the fourteenth century actually prayed for the souls of those whom Dante reports as needing such prayer.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

91–93.
   Dante’s desire for knowledge of what happened to Buonconte’s body reflects the concern of others present at the battle of Campaldino. How could the body of so important a personage simply disappear? Several students of this passage have suggested that the poet here has in mind Virgil’s portrait of Palinurus, so deeply troubled by his unburied state, and consider the protagonist’s question a recasting of Aeneas’s question to Palinurus: “Which of the gods, Palinurus, tore you from us and submerged you in the open sea?” (
Aen
. VI.341–342). While the linguistic fit is not a perfect one, both the circumstance and the fact that Dante seems to have the Palinurus passage in mind at
Purgatorio
III.130—and surely does so at VI.28–30—makes the reference at least plausible. Chiavacci Leonardi (Chia.1983.1), p. 88n., noted it, as now have Cioffi (Ciof.1992.1) and Stefanini (Stef.1995.1). And for the view that Palinurus operates as a foil to Buonconte, see Picone (Pico.1999.2), pp. 78–80.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

94–99.
   The Casentino lies in the upper valley of the Arno. The torrent Archiano derives from sources above the valley near the monastery of Camaldoli, situated high in the mountains above the region. The battle of Campaldino took place on a plain below this higher valley and it is the place to which Dante imagines the wounded Buonconte to have made his way, just where the Archiano joins the Arno, several miles above the site of the battle.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

104–108.
   As commentators notice, the struggle of the good and wicked angel over the soul of Buonconte mirrors the similar scene that occurs at the death of his father, Guido da Montefeltro (
Inf
. XXVII.112–117), when St. Francis and a fallen Cherub struggle for the soul of Guido. Not even Francis can prevail against God’s judgment—if we can accept Guido’s narrative at face value.

A possible source for this scene is found in the Epistle of Jude (Iudae 9) in a passage that refers to the archangel Michael’s struggle with the devil for the body of Moses. The relevance of this text to Dante’s was perhaps first noted by Scartazzini in the 1870s. For discussion, see Pietropaolo (Piet.1984.1), who points out (p. 125) that, like Buonconte’s, the whereabouts of Moses’ actual burial place was not known (Deuteronomy 34:6).

Buonconte’s tear (verse 107) reminds us of the similarly plangent Manfred (
Purg
. III.120).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]