DANTE

DANTE – The three circles of the Trinity and the Eagle according to Gioacchino da Fiore (cod. Vat. lat. 3822 – 13th century). The first figure is explained in the *Exposition in Apocalipsim* (Biblioteca Antoniana, Padua, ff. 33-38). From it derive the description of the Trinity (Par., XXXIII) and the idea that the very language of Adam indicated the Divinity (Par., XVI, 123 ff.). From the second figure, which in the Reggiano codex is rendered more clearly by an inverted lily, derives the description of the Eagle (Par., XVIII-XX).

With suggestion, yet respect for the dignity of others, the poet is so far from the notion of detracting in any way from his concept that he calmly concludes the treatise by reaffirming that the emperor was placed over the governance of the world *ab illo solo... qui est omnium spiritualium et temporalium gubernator*.

From the *Convivio* to the *Monarchia*, the poet’s stance has changed considerably. The philosophical treatise ignores the pope and acknowledges no other authority than that of the emperor and reason; the political treatise grants the papal authority first place alongside the imperial.

VI. EPISTLES

Only twelve are extant; the one to Cangrande is to be considered spurious. All are important, but not all to the same degree; the three written for the enterprise of Henry are of the greatest value, as is the one sent between June and July 1314 to the Italian cardinals assembled in conclave, and that to a Florentine friend, with the magnanimous cry: “This is not, O father, the way to return to the fatherland,” which is almost certainly from 1315, when D. already knew he had a right to a glorious return.

VII. ECLLOGUES

Toward the end of 1319, when the *Inferno* and *Purgatorio* were already known, D. received from Giovanni del Virgilio, a master of Latinity at the Studium in Bologna, an eclogue urging him to set aside the vernacular and sing in Latin on themes he himself suggested, so that he might present himself to the Ginnasi crowned with laurel. D. replied in polished Latin verses, demonstrating his familiarity with the learned tongue, but did not accept the invitation. Del Virgilio responded with another eclogue, but D. remained unmoved. In Bologna there was the cave of Polyphemus, that is, one who held command there—perhaps Fulcieri da Calboli, who in the *Purgatorio* slays, like a beast habituated to slaughter, the wolves of the sorrowful wood that had become Florence; and in D.’s reply he is described as *assuetum rictus humano sanguine tingui*.

VIII. “QUAESTIO DE AQUA ET TERRA.” – On 19 January 1320, with the bishop’s permission, D. discussed at Verona in the little church of S. Elena the then-current question of whether the level of the waters is higher than that of the dry land, or the fourth habitable region. To the five arguments most worthy of attention he opposed five proofs to demonstrate the contrary. Doubt has been cast on whether it is his work, but the order, clarity, and especially certain modes of thought and expression peculiar to him assure us that it belongs to him.

III. THE COMEDY.

I. ORIGIN AND DATE OF COMPOSITION

Nothing better serves the full understanding of the poem than to study its genesis. Now, if the cantos of the Styx are compared with Epistles V, VI, and VII, they incontestably demonstrate that D. drew the inspiration for those dramatically vivid scenes from the events occasioned by the Florentines’ resistance to Henry; hence the composition of the *Commedia* must be placed after 1313. The same situation, the same details, even the same images recur, so that in the light of those epistles everything in Cantos VIII, IX, and X becomes clear—even the verses the poet himself called “strange.” Without this, the legend of the first seven cantos having been written before the exile would revive, along with many other debates about the incomprehensibility of the poet’s cruel and vengeful attitude toward the Argenti.

In a frame of mind akin to that in which the *Commedia* was conceived, D. had found himself once before because of the slowness with which his new Moses was conducting the campaign. Fearful that delays might cause the enterprise to fail, he asked with the words of the Forerunner: *Tu es, qui venturus es, an alium expectamus?* The certainty that the restoration of the Empire and the consequent rebirth from universal misery was inevitable already suggested to him that, should Henry fail to announce the new age of which he would be the prophet, a hand invisible had written at the beginning of the book of his memory the rubric: *Incipit vita nova*; and it explains how he had received the revelation that one day he would descend to Hell and tell the damned that he had seen the hope of both angels and the lost (*Vita Nuova*, XIX, 8); now he understands why he had been granted to taste the beatitude of his greeting (*ibid.*, XI), to admire the ascent of that blessed soul to heaven (*ibid.*, XXIII, 26), and to rise with his pilgrim spirit even to the empyrean to contemplate the glory (*Oltre la spera*, *ibid.*, XLI, 10). Only now does the hidden meaning of those visions fully reveal itself to him.

When he wrote the “amorous little book,” he did not foresee that Beatrice would lead him back to her forever. To make the account true to life, he had to resume, modify, and continue II. And so he took it up again, breaking off the narrative at the point where “the most gentle” reappearing to him shattered his second love and again took possession of his mind. Thereafter he devoted himself body and soul to the work to which God had destined him. From this conviction and an unparalleled thirst for justice the *Commedia* was born.

II. THE INFERNO

On what foundations the immense edifice would rise he already knew. The idea that the right path had been lost to all had occurred to others as well (*Conv.*, IV, 1); but after the deception of the Guasco (*Par.*, XVII, 82), no one could doubt that the evil by which the world had been destroyed anew had its root in avarice, which had once more corrupted the earth since the day of Constantine’s donation. Unwittingly, by dividing the Empire, he had “with a deed of blasphemy” stripped and robbed a second time the plant of the terrestrial paradise (*Purg.*, XXXIII, 52 ff.; *Par.*, XX, 55-60); and “the fraud by which every conscience is bitten” naturally returned to men.

And since the same causes produce the same effects, behold the earth has been turned into a “deep wood,” bristling with “thorns and briers” (*Gen.* 3:18), like that from which our first parent was exiled. And just as then human creatures were insufficient to raise themselves within their bounds, so now. Hell has opened its jaws wider (*Is.* 5:14) and dispatched its satellites into the world, so that even if one takes the step “that no living person ever took before” and “from the wood alone,” he is still not able to ascend to the summit of the mountain where man is happy. The powers of evil stand in his way, remaining one yet assuming ever graver forms, and opposing him now as a *lonza* (incontinence), now as a *leone* (violence), and finally as a *lupa* (fraud), the invincible beast that allows no one to pass “by her way” and so destroys him. There remains only to trust in heavenly aid and invoke it: the mighty one, endowed with the power to free the earth from the lupa, will surely come. D. is certain of this, as he is of the truths of first principles in reason. Indeed, Mary has already shattered the “harsh judgment” weighing upon men, obtaining that the world be redeemed anew from the new original sin.

As for the manner in which this would be accomplished, there could be no mistake: given the immutability of the divine decrees, the new liberation from human guilt would certainly be modeled on the lofty and magnificent process of the ancient. Then the three divine Persons acted “in closest union” (*Conv.*, IV, 3); now

Here the three women of Paradise are united, mirrors of the three virtues par excellence. And just as then God ordained two peoples, that of piety, of which He made the Church the minister, and that of justice, of which He made the Empire the minister; so in this liberation, obtained by Mary (Inf., II, 93-96), both piety, personified in Beatrice, and justice, personified in Lucy, concur.

So that her proper office might not be misunderstood, she descends in the Ante-Purgatory like an eagle, bears in her name the same root as the lesser light (Lucina), and chooses as her representative Virgil, friend of silence and faint of voice. Reason and faith, human and divine truth, cross and eagle, Church and Empire—all these powers of good together shall defeat those of evil, and the she-wolf shall be cast back into Hell.

Yet this is not enough. As Paul and Aeneas went to immortal life—Paul for the comfort of faith, Aeneas to prepare the way for Rome and the Empire—so now, by divine decree “for the sake of the world that lives in sin,” Dante goes to resume the mission of both, since both institutions, remedies against sin, have fallen. It is an end to which the poet felt himself called even from the time of the Convivio, and to which he had already applied himself, though with inadequate means (Conv., IV, 1, 9).

That it may be known that this journey now begins from other principles and proceeds with the aid of far other virtues, he first feigns to have readily and willingly yielded to Virgil’s invitation, under the supposition that Virgil, as he had believed during the time of the gentle lady, possessed all that was needed to save him from the she-wolf, the “loathsome death” to which he was hastening and from which philosophy then delivered him. But now his thought has changed; so that, along the path through the deserted shore, assailed by doubt that his undertaking is a folly “that undoes what it willed,” he perseveres in the enterprise to which he had so promptly resolved. He returns to his purpose only after learning that Virgil comes to him sent by the three blessed ladies. To undertake so solemn a mission without a special grace from above would have been to attempt to fly without wings. He will go, then, but by the merit of a gentle lady, far different from her in whom he had erred, and assisted by another truly full of pity (Inf., II, 94, 133). Later, when the marvelous vision has ceased, he will faithfully recount it to men, and they will learn from it that without which all knowledge is vain: wherein consists evil, wherein good, and how from the one, while yet alive, one may rise and return to the other—not according to his own, but according to the eternal and unchanging judgment.

In the first two cantos there is an autobiographical page in which the broad outlines of the great design are sketched. Yet to employ an architecture that seemed the fruit of his fancy could not suffice: the “sacred poem” would have produced only the emotion that beauty gives; it had to induce men to recognize their error and take up the right path again. The ordering principle of those worlds had to spring from a rigorous conception of the law given by God to men for the attainment of temporal happiness and the eternal, toward which they aspire. From the manner in which the divine commandment is observed or despised will depend the quality of rewards and punishments.

To err in so weighty a matter, in teaching drawn from the sacred Scriptures, which affirm that evil entered into men with Adam for not enduring to remain subject to the law with which God had restrained his will. Seduced by cupidity, he violated the interdiction and became impious and unjust (Par., VII). Now since from him all faults derive, these will naturally be daughters of impiety and injustice, as is repeated in the Epistle to the Cardinals of Italy: Cupiditatem unusquisque sibi duxit in uxorem quemadmodum et vos, quae numquam pietatis et equitatis, ut caritas, sed semper impietatis et iniquitatis est genetrix (Ep., XI, 14). From this simple concept of good as arising from right love, and of evil as twisted love, that is, cupidity,

offends the proud of the Styx and the most vile of the vestibule? There seems to be no other way to know this, save by uncovering the doctrine hidden “under the veil of strange verses” (IX, 63). It is perhaps the least understood passage of the Comedy; but since this poem is so conceived that, once a part of greater import is clarified, such as Cantos VIII, IX, and X of the Inferno, the rest is clarified as well, an attempt will be made to explain it, in the hope of placing in the hands of scholars the guiding thread for orienting themselves in the interpretation of the allegories. Once the difficulties that, in the opinion of many, these present are removed, each will be able to savor the beauty of the work for himself; for expositions of the Comedy are more than enough.

Up to the Styx the poets’ path has been through the realm of the she-wolf, and thus not difficult to overcome; but once they reach the shores of the fifth circle, matters begin to look bad. It is clear that Hell is on the watch and preparing for fiercer resistance. We draw near to the Hell of the lion and the she-wolf. At the “signals of castles,” given on the summits of the towers, swifter than an arrow, Phlegyas comes running with a resolutely hostile attitude. Yet Virgil makes him swallow his rage and forces him to receive them in his boat. As they glide over “the dead marsh,” on whose banks, it is well to note, are dogs and swine (Inf. VIII, 42, 50), as on those of the Arno (Purg. XIV, 43, 52), one of those furious spirits tries to plunge Dante “into that broth,” but Virgil, quick, thrusts him back into the mire; and then, in a burst of emotion, embraces and kisses the indignant pupil, exclaiming: “Blessed be she who bore you in her womb.”

The expression seems made on purpose to recall the greeting of the Hebrew women to Jesus: Beatus venter qui te portavit (Lk. 11, 27); so much so that some have even taken offense. And not without reason, if the poet, so reticent about speaking of himself and his own, had truly meant to bless Madonna Bella, his mother.

Fortunately Dante himself has provided the explanation in the episode of Ser Brunetto. As the “beasts of Fiesole,” who must make themselves a prey, have their precise counterpart in Argenti, who “wanted to tear himself apart with his teeth,” so the Florentine dung heap has its counterpart in the mire of the marsh, and the plant not to be touched, because in it revives “the holy seed of Rome,” in the poet himself. After Epistles V, VI, and VII, it should not have been difficult in the “poor great madman” of the Styx to see portrayed the Florentine Blacks, adversaries of the imperial idea, and in Dante the Florentine faithful to Mother Rome.

The memory of having run the risk of falling beneath the claws of the Florentine Blacks, who had condemned him to be burned alive, the poet has entrusted, and in a more suggestive form, to another episode, that of the pursuit by the devils in the Malebolge of the barrators, conceived in such a way that the reader, willing or not, in the image of Virgil sees reflected that of a mother who, suddenly awakened, sees the flames burning near and, without delay, embraces “her son and flees without stopping.” Picture to yourselves the master, who, as Dante “rests upon his breast like a son”—note well, “not as a companion”—slides supine down the slope of the sixth bolgia, and you will agree that it renders the figure of a mother, heavy with her burden.

It is not known when or where D. was at the point of being seized by his enemies; but one can be certain that he attributed his salvation to the intervention of his ideal mother, mindful of preserving for the world the holy seed of Rome. It is a piece of information to be added to his biography, but here it is especially important to note that, should the discourse of ser Brunetto not make it evident how in the mad gesture of Filippo Argenti one is to see an attempt to drown in that mire the champion of the imperial idea, and in the proud spirits of the Styx the Florentines, blinded by the smoke of cupidity and stirred against Henry VII, the analysis of the following scenes would lead us to the same conclusion.

By virtue of the law he imposed upon himself—that perfect harmony must run between the parts of the poem—once he had finished describing the realm of the she-wolf, which extends to the walls of Dis, it was natural that the poet should proceed to develop the motifs of the assault of the lion and the she-wolf. Instead of drawing everything from his own imagination, he preferred to make use of the elements furnished by the fierce resistance of Florence to the Emperor, adapting them to his own ends. In reading, no one would suppose that, beyond adorning his artistic design, he could have had any other thought in mind. And he relived the most agitated and anguished hours of his life. Every phrase can be commented upon with the corresponding passages from the *Epistles*.

Those more than a thousand devils, who rushed to the gate of Dis to bar his way, resemble the Florentines, “almost standing at the threshold of the prison and pitying anyone who might, perchance, free the captives... thrusting them back” (*Ep., VI, 21*); as on the day when they sent back with “proud and dishonest words” the ambassadors of the Luxemburger, saying “that never for any lord would the Florentines bow their horns” (*D. Compagni, XXXV, 111*). What the devils replied to Virgil we do not know. It is known only that D., seeing him with “his eyes upon the ground and his brows lowered,” loses all boldness and would at once turn back, as when, assailed by the she-wolf, he “bows his brows to ruin” (*Par., XXXII, 138*). But the good guide, who a little earlier had not been able to conceal his dismay, has a vision of a great one descending the slope, and revives him with the announcement of the near arrival of the Messenger. On the “malignant slopes” of the marsh he does the same as on the “desert slope” of the prologue: “He will come who will drive this beast back into the hell of envy whence it first sprang forth”—he said then, and: “He will come who will open this gate”—he says now. But the mighty one delays, and Virgil again begins to doubt (*Ep., VII, 7*). When three Furies, personifications of the three sins punished in the last three circles, appear on the burning summit of the tower. They are the *satellitium saevi tyranni* (*Ep., VII, 10*), whom Henry would have had to disperse. The poets show that they do not fear them. Then those creatures cry out: “Let Medusa come.” At this threat Virgil immediately orders D. to close his eyes, turns him around, and, not content that he has covered his eyes with his own hands, closes them with his own. It represented the gravest danger to which the poet had once been exposed (*Pur., XXXIII, 67 ff.*). But the passionate lover of the “gentle lady” this time deliberately renounces seeing, does not yield to the temptation to fix his gaze upon that head severed from its trunk, a clear symbol of thought divorced from its principle; that is, he dies to the pride of the intellect; and behold, the awaited one arrives, like a wind (and the wind of Soave is also called Emperor Henry VI; *Par., III, 19*), “impetuous through opposing fires” (*Hac obice*, he wrote to the Florentines, *iusti regi adventus inflammabitur amplius: Ep., VI, 13*), “who will lay waste the forest” (the Italian *silva*: *De Vulgar. Eloq.,* XV), and against whom no one can resist (*quid vallo sepissae, quid propugnaculis et pinnis urbem armasse iuvabit, cum advolaverit aquila in auro terribilis? Ep., VI, 12*), “he breaks and hurls to the ground the branches” (*Non etenim ad arbores extirpandas valet ipsa malorum inciso quin iterum multiplicius virulenter ramificent, quodque radices incolumes fuerint; Ep., VII, 21*), “drives the beasts to flight” (especially the she-wolf that barred his path, as at the gate of Dis the devils, her true sons) “and the shepherds” (those, probably, whom St. Peter sees in all the pastures “clothed as shepherds in the guise of ravening wolves”: *Par., XXVII, 55*).

It is the first grand variation to which D. lets us witness of the motif set forth in vv. 88–111 of the prologue, and it represents the victory of the justice of the Empire over all the forces of evil combined. We are at the ninth canto of the first canticle, that is, at the canto that bears the number of the miracle. In order that heaven might intervene, Virgil had exhorted his pupil not to despair, but rather to nourish and strengthen his spirit “with good hope” (*Inf., VIII, 106*); and he, instead of trusting in reason, turns to his heart for that heroic hope, and prevails (*Par., XXV, 52*). In reward for this faith in the inevitable fulfillment of the divine plan, he is granted a glimpse of the near adversaries of his great dream. The Messenger from heaven who opens the gate of Dis and scatters the wolves fiercely arrayed against the two faithful champions of the imperial idea, in similitude to the Florentines who took up arms against Henry, and drives them back whence envy had sent them forth—outside of which proper devils are not encountered—fulfills precisely the mission of the Hound; it is the confirmation of its near advent.

What would have happened to Florence on that day, had it persisted in its rebellion? *Videbitis aedificia vestra... tam ariete ruere, quam igne cremari* (*Ep., VI, 75*), the poet warned. They enter, in fact, into the “city of fire,” which burns entirely, and is likewise a sepulcher, in the midst of which a voice resounds, high and solemn, that of Farinata, to remind them that the hatreds have lasted too long, to the great harm of the parties. Every tomb encloses the followers of a particular heresy, and there are many. A city more “divided” (*Inf., VI, 61*) it would be impossible to imagine. If among the many heretical sects of his time D. recalls only two, this is explained. By calling attention to the Epicureans and the Monophysites, equally hindered by their doctrines from conceiving the theological virtue of hope, he supposed that one would understand that without this virtue, consisting in “a certain waiting for future glory” (*Par., XXV, 67*), that gate would not open. Precisely because they are devoid of it, the heretics are in a “blind prison” (*Inf., X, 58*); and “in the first circle of the blind prison” (*Pur., XXII, 103*) dwell the inhabitants of Limbo, for not having had faith. After the passage of Acheron, those without faith; after that of Styx, accompanied also by an earthquake (*Inf., IX, 66*), those without hope. Suspended, the one and suspended likewise the other, not only by the lids of the tombs (*Inf., IX, 121*), but in every respect. The suspension marks the rhythm of the tenth canto.

From what has been said and from much that might be added, it is gathered with certainty that in the region of Styx, before the closed gate of Dis, are the encounters with the irascible, who rush forward like rabid dogs against the faithful of the Empire; within, but a little lower down, those lacking in hope. Similarly, on a plane slightly inclined toward the center, in the last circle, lies the ice of Cocytus, divided into four main parts by a step of death, invisible to the eye, and yet more terrifying than all the rest (*Inf., XXXIII, 127*). To betray, as

Friar Alberigo, and to undo that deed down there are one and the same thing. The upturned face of the damned, characteristic of the envious, the memory of the “fruit of the evil garden,” his insistence that they open his eyes—even the serpent had promised Eve that their eyes would be opened: *aperientur oculi vestri* (Gen. 3:5)—the name of the zone, taken from that Ptolemy who betrayed Pompey, all make it clear that he violated the universal law of human civil society, which ordains that all should sit at a single table, which must be one of love (Purg., XIII, 27).

Another sin equally grave as that of Judas, and subjected to the same punishment: “And it was then, after that mouthful, that Satan took possession of him” (Jn. 13:27). Therefore, “in the depth of every guilty one,” in the first two circles, we encounter sinners against justice, which is the foundation of family and country; in the last two, those who violated divine justice, which is realized in the Empire, and charity, on which the Church is founded: both virtues necessary, both divine, both deriving equally from the same source (Monarchia, I, XI, 14). And then, if in the level region of the ante-Inferno, after the pass of Acheron, are those without faith, what virtue can be said to have guided those most vile, who lived like beasts *quibus non est intellectus*, and thus entirely devoid of the virtues from which the others, both human and divine, arise? Extremes meet. It is clear indeed that they knew neither justice nor piety; and it is natural that they should be scorned at the same time by mercy and by justice (III, 50). For they are envious “of every other lot,” even the worst of all.

A simple glance at the descending circles of Hell will show that from the second, of the lustful, to the fifth, of the wrathful and slothful, are sinners against the human virtue of temperance; in the seventh, of evil or mad bestiality, against fortitude; in the eighth, of the fraudulent, against justice. It may be objected that those who lacked prudence are missing—the virtue that sees the present, the past, and the future, and guides the others (Purg., XXIX, 130). But precisely because of this, the most authentic deniers of it must be sought among the “squint-eyed” of the vestibule, cast to run, neither dead nor alive, eternally in vain after a banner. Consider their condition, and you will find that for them it would be just as well to remain perpetually motionless. They are so distant, and yet the closest, morally, to the traitors of Judecca, where Dante sees the banners of the king of Hell, at whose sight he recounts that he did not remain alive and did not die (XXXIV, 1, 25).

Dante’s imagination, inexhaustible in translating his concepts into images, thus succeeds, through correspondences, in creating a poem of marvelous unity and variety. Once it is established, for example, that the ninth circle is the “depth of every guilty one,” the matrix of all evil, he places the individual zones of it in intimate relation with the individual parts into which the abyss is divided: Cocytus with the marsh of the Styx, which in turn is the depth of the Inferno of incontinence; Antenora with that of mad bestiality (XXXII, 133); Ptolemy’s with the Inferno of envy, that is, with Malebolge, and Judecca with the cemetery of Dis. The resemblance between these last two is striking. In Cocytus, life gradually fades as one advances; and the same thing happens, in due proportion, up in the sixth circle, from Farinata to Cavalcante, to Pope Anastasius. In the face of Cavalcante, who falls back supine, one sees that of the traitors of Ptolemy encased in ice; Pope Anastasius foreshadows Judas, and the entire sepulcher after the final judgment will render the image of Judecca, with the difference, if it is one, that the former are eternally consumed by fire, the latter by ice. But this that is realized in Cocytus and in the “city of fire” is observed everywhere. Little by little as one descends, evil is encircled, and from a degree of movement one passes to a more or less pronounced immobility: from the she-wolf “light and swift” to the she-wolf that offers heaviness. The law is even carved in that enormous mass of matter that is Dis.

Moreover, at the beginning of the ninth circle are the two Mangona brothers who butt each other like two goats; at the beginning of the eighth, Venedico who prostitutes his sister; at the beginning of the seventh, Obizzo da Este, slain by his stepson; at the beginning of the sixth, Farinata, who is not moved in the least by the fate of Guido, his son-in-law; at the beginning of the high Inferno, Francesca and Paolo, slain by Gianciotto; if it is not fitting to add that at the beginning of Purgatory one encounters Pia, finished by her husband’s hand, and at the beginning of Paradise, Piccarda, torn away from the cloister by her brother. Corruption has even tainted the institution of the family. The carnal sinners, recalled by Virgil in the fifth canto, have all offended conjugal faith; then comes Ciacco, who has such bitter words about the city, to whose actions he seems to attribute the primary cause of his condemnation; then follow the avaricious and the prodigal, living image of the perpetual struggles in which the world is embroiled for the acquisition of earthly splendor; and finally, in the Styx, the scorner of justice and piety. From the family to the city, to the Empire, and to the Church, as in Cocytus.

Dante is nonetheless so certain that God will redeem the earth from so much evil that, transformed almost into certainty by means of the Heavenly Messenger’s prophecy of the imminent advent of the Greyhound, upon reaching the Inferno of evil wrath, of which through the Donation of Constantine we have become sons again (Eph. 2:3), he has Virgil point out to him in that stream of horrifying redness the most notable thing of all the sights seen so far. It indeed gushes from the wounds of the Great Elder, symbol of the human race, which now, following the confusion of the two powers, proceeds lame, resting on its right foot of baked clay. Like the other rivers, it is an effect of sin, and like every sin, through pain, it contains within itself the principle of redemption; for which reason it extinguishes “all flames” above itself and thus opens a path through that universal fire. Remove this virtue from those waters, and no one will be able to reach salvation. With their vapors, they fulfill the office of the breaches, which are like so many openings made for the death of Christ in the kingdom of Satan, so that evil might be assailed within its fortress and vanquished.

It seems not, but another proof of the redemption of the world, and not only of the present world, is in the way in which the poets emerge to see the stars again. With Dante on his shoulders, Virgil clings to the shaggy flanks of Lucifer, descends, bent under the weight, to the thick of the great monster’s haunches, slowly turns himself around, bringing his head where his feet had been, and begins to climb up “with toil and anguish,” until he emerges through the hole.

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1. activates the work of ten years that is beautiful and humanly clear.
2. to what number do we save ourselves strongly.
3. and fallen like man with man.

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DANTE - Inf., III, 130-36. Manuscript with miniature of the Ferrarese school, 15th century - Vatican Library, Cod. Urb. lat. 365.

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BEGINS THE COMEDY OF DANTE, in which he treats of the punishments and torments of the damned and the rewards of the virtuous: Chapter One of the First Part of the Fifth Book of Logic calls it Inferno: in which the author sets forth the subject of the entire treatise of the book:

The man declaimed before a marvelous rose, and a dark felt hat that danced as if in love. And as he adhered to the fault, the felt hat fled to the meadow, and in his mind he recalled the purity that was so bitter that it could kill, but to bear fruit from the good that he had uttered, he said other things that I do not wish to force myself to repeat. I do not know how they entered, so much pity overwhelmed me, that the truth abandoned me. Then, when I reached the foot of a hill, I arrived where the sun’s rays diminished, which struck the pure heart. He looked up and saw the foliage of the trees that already reached the sky, which leads men along every path. Then the fear was a little less, for in the lake of the heart the knot that I had passed through endured, and pity remained.

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DANTE - Inf., I, 1-21. Ed. di Foligno 1472, corrected by Giovanni Andrea de' Bussi da Vigevano - Rome, copy from the Biblioteca Angelica.

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he places DANTE on a stone and makes him sit on its edge. He has conformed to the proud in Purgatory and has at least partly purged the stain that, by the fault of Adam, everyone carries within themselves from birth, so much so that the truths of faith begin to reveal themselves more openly to him. Soon we shall hear him confess the principal mysteries of Christianity, thus unknowingly taking a decisive step toward his liberation.

Thus, in the structure of Hell, the first proof is that Dante’s thought regarding the two authorities, ministers of the two virtues necessary for temporal and eternal life, fully accords with the law of God. Offenses against justice and piety in the terraces of the sorrowful kingdom, and in the other circles that arise from them or are borne above them, are offenses against the virtues that have their root or foundation in those.

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III. Purgatory

Through a "natural passage" the poets ascend in reverse along a "streamlet" that feeds the Cocitus, and they reach the foot of the mountain of Purgatory. At first glance, it seems that in the ordering of sins the "second kingdom" follows a different criterion; yet the nature of evil is one, and sins, though infinitely varied, always spring from the same root. Indeed, in the second kingdom the ordering principle appears more clearly.

The first figure encountered there is a true representative of the virtue of Rome, which, with Cato, attained such perfection as to nearly equal the splendor of the four cardinal virtues with that of the theological virtues symbolized in the sun (Purg., I, 37); for when, as taught in De Monarchia, a man lives in tranquillitate pacis and attends to his most truly human work, he performs an almost divine task (I, IV, 2). Soon after, we see a representative of spiritual authority, the angelic boatman who, without oars or sails, carries the souls gathered at the mouth of the Tiber to the world glimpsed by Ulysses—where the Greeks knew to seek happiness (De Monarchia, I, 1, 4). We are scarcely at the foot of the holy mountain when the poet recalls his dearest idea. Yet since clarity is never excessive, a little further on, still on the "lonely plain" surrounding Purgatory, he finds on one side souls who, through too great a love for earthly beauties, for art and philosophy—Virgil included—delayed in turning to God; on the other, Manfred, who through too great a love for the Empire rebelled against the Church. The weave varies, but the warp is that of the weeping circles of Hell: lack of justice and lack of piety.

Between the first and second pairs lies the episode of Casella, one of the most admirable and admired in the poem. It is commonly held that in it Dante wished to express the power of music over his soul. Now music certainly plays a part, but not alone. The greater seduction, for those spirits newly arrived on the shore of Purgatory, is exercised by the canzone "Amor che nella mente," whose content is entirely a praise so fervent of human reason that, hearing it, Virgil forgets all else and lends ear and soul to that song, as if from the dark roots of his being there arose again his ancient aspiration to know all things (Virgil, Georg., II, 490). At that moment he wishes only to listen intently; for those notes have again invaded his soul and made him forget the end for which he walks that path. But he is roused from that enchantment by Cato’s cry, which swiftly recalls him to self-awareness. He blushes, is confused, and in his agitation misinterprets a most natural gesture of Dante’s. Then: "Do you marvel," he says, "at these our bodies that cast no shadow, yet suffer torments of heat and cold? But there are, my son, far greater mysteries that it would be folly to hope to explain: 'Fool is he who hopes...' (III, 34)." And from idea to idea, with sincere humility, he proceeds to make his profession of faith in the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. It is one of the most beautiful pages of the Comedy; yet to savor it is not enough to take it as a display of skill; it arises instead from one of Dante’s most living and pressing needs: to open in some way the path to the redemption of the sweet master. The most human idea that informs it is prepared at length and appears, in embryo, in Virgil’s first words to Beatrice (Inf., II, 76-81), pulses in the architectural lines of the noble castle, which make it a miniature Purgatory, encircled by the waters of a river, with seven tiers of walls one above the other, with seven gates, and at the summit an open, luminous, and lofty place inhabited by great spirits; it astonishes us at the sight of the "fresh greenery" blooming in the seat of the hopeless; it appears fleetingly in the citation of Genesis; it forms the underlying meaning of the episode of Ulysses, recalled by contrast through the angel who comes from the mouth of the Tiber; it returns in the vague allusion to the man who "was born and lived without sin"; it inspires the episode of Casella, which ends in an open and candid profession of faith, only to resurface, in the circle of the "slow spirits," in the dream of the stammering woman who, under Dante’s gaze, is transformed into a siren. She sings more sweetly perhaps than the singer of songs, and declares herself to be the very one who turned "Ulysses from his wandering course," and thus the greatest temptation Dante could have faced. But Virgil, who elsewhere, even when his pupil was rapt in ecstatic vision (Purg., XV, 124 ff.), has read him through, now seems to feel the pull of that song and does not realize that the sirens make their final assault, until a "holy and swift woman," Lucia—of whom Cato is a representative—comes to rouse him from his drowsiness. A series of episodes in intimate correspondence with one another, all ordered toward those of the heaven of Jupiter, where the poet finally finds a solution to the doubt that had long gnawed at him.

He urges all who love and revere the sweet father and feel themselves sons of Rome to strive toward heaven, which delights in being conquered "by ardent love and lively hope" (Par., XX, 94-99), thus yielding to the longing of the spirits of Limbo. Dante is a divine dreamer who is not content that the living be happy; he aspires to redeem those who, without fault, have passed beyond deprived of faith in Christ, yet who by their devotion to justice have merited well of humanity.

They have made it clear that they still feel the consequences of the slow love of seeing and acquiring God (Purg., XVII, 130). Sloth is always encountered on the shores. But Purgatory has a second shore (III, 35), which is reached by climbing through a fissure in the mountain, and where first of all are found the slothful who, illuminated at the last hour by Grace, repented and are saved. To which of the three beasts had they yielded? Undoubtedly to the leopard, which comes “at the beginning of the ascent” and extends its dominion down to the fifth circle of Hell, where those immersed in the mire of the Styx weep for having been sad “in the sweet air that is gladdened by the sun”: and, like these, the slothful saved at the last moment still suffer from the tendency to flee that light and remain motionless in the shade of a great rock. A little higher up, one sees the souls of those who died a violent death, victims of the lion, whose realm is in the Hell of wrath; and still higher up, souls who, through greed for their own greatness, neglected their duty and were victims of the she-wolf, that is to say of the serpent “that gave to Eve the bitter food.” Every evening, indeed, as it glides through the grass and flowers, it reappears before their eyes so that they may feel a more burning remorse for their fault.

But Dante, in the bosom of that “little valley,” full of green, has an unexpected joy. In Inf. IX he witnessed the action of the Messenger who breaks open the gates of Hell; here he witnesses a kind of mystery in which two angels, their garments and wings green, descending from the womb of Her who has shattered the “harsh judgment,” put to flight “the evil serpent” that seduced Eve and is seen among the grass and flowers. It is simply absurd to suppose that the serpent represents temptation. The two messengers from heaven are undoubtedly figures, one of temporal authority, the other of spiritual authority, and they clearly indicate that, acting thus in perfect concord with one another, the she-wolf will be forced to retreat into Hell. In all that representation, not a single detail fails to be explained by the *De Monarchia*. What in the parallel cantos of the *Inferno* is said in a somewhat enigmatic form is here openly declared. It is therefore only right that, after reading in those scenes, beneath a fairly transparent veil, how heaven prepares to redeem the earth from the evil that has corrupted it, the “sopor of tranquility” should descend to moisten the limbs of the poet, and he falls asleep secure upon the green enamel, symbol of his heroic hope. The *Comedy* is the marvelous unfolding of a single idea. Whoever still doubts the meaning to be given to Virgil’s exclamation, “Blessed be she,” need only read on.

At dawn Dante dreams of an eagle descending from on high and carrying him off to the region of fire. It is Lucia, the woman of divine justice, the same who, to save him, had made use of Virgil’s arms (Inf., VIII, 28 ff.; XXIII, 12 ff.), and at the gate of Dis had sent a Messenger to open II. Now, to help him overcome the evil “that occupies the whole world,” she intervenes directly; first she hovers around Dante (Inf. IX, 28), then takes him in her arms and, at the approach of the she-wolf that “allows no one to pass along her way,” she guides him “along her way,” leading him until, with a turn of her eyes, she points out to the good guide the gate of St. Peter, guarded by the angel of penance. The ministers of justice and of mercy always act in harmony, but it would seem with the understanding that, once their office is completed, as one approaches the other retreats. Lucia has reopened the gate of Dis; a representative of Beatrice will open that of Purgatory.

On the first cornice, that of the proud, three bas-reliefs are offered to the poet’s admiration, carved by the hand of God in a single block, “in the marble itself,” to make clear that they contain a single thought realized in three moments: the angel of the Annunciation, the holy ark that is restored to its place, and Trajan rendering justice to the widow. In their language they say the same thing that Dante believed he had read in the eternal council: that the world was and will be saved by a divine virtue through the united and distinct action, in Rome, of the two supreme authorities.

Yet it is precisely at the beginning of true Purgatory that Dante seems to abandon the three Aristotelian dispositions in order to adhere to the doctrine of the seven capital vices, according to which he recognizes that in them are confined the sinners driven to wrongdoing by these three vices. It would be irreverent to suppose that the poet, after relegating the unbaptized to Limbo, forgot to make room for those lacking in hope and charity, as if he had left the sinners of wrath, envy, and pride—firstborn daughters of evil—outside the abyss.

The moral ordering of Hell is a masterpiece of thought and feeling; and the lesson of Canto XII, given the end the poet aimed at, is not only opportune but reveals, if read with the poet’s soul, an unsuspected warmth. But to see this clearly, one must first reflect that, while Dante uses the language of his ethics to classify sins, it is no less true that as he descends into the remaining circles he employs all the means that art suggests to him, so that the reader, seeing in them signs and indications by which to recognize that those names (“mad bestiality, fraud against the trusting and fraud against the trusting”) are respectively the effects of wrath, envy, and pride, may render the due praise to our fathers who, on the science of good and evil, had long and openly blazed the path to Christian truth. Secondly, one must note the eagerness with which he awaits Virgil’s definition of the sins against which divine wrath is directed, to gather elements that will help him resolve the anguished problem of the fate of the righteous pagans. Finally, one must observe how, pressing the master to explain to him how usury can be violence against God, Virgil is led unwittingly to appeal to the principle of Genesis, that is, to make his knowledge a truth of that faith toward which he was oriented and would become ever more so along the path through Hell and Purgatory. Arriving in fact at the cornice of sloth, the wise guide resumes the discussion of the subject and completes it with the theory of love, to which “every good deed and its contrary” is reduced; so that, ascending higher, in the seventh circle of the holy mountain, he will say of himself that he feels “nearer to God” (XXVII, 24). It followed naturally from the concept that the new civilization is a product of the ancient. The episode of Statius arises from this same motive. “For you I was a poet, for you a Christian,” exclaims the singer of the *Thebaid* turned to the singer of the *Aeneid*. After God, the light that converted him came from Virgil; and to the work already prepared was added Grace. Thus is explained why Statius, even when other thoughts should occupy him, asks with affectionate urgency about the companions of the noble castle, as they stand on the threshold of the beatitude to which they are about to ascend. These are two worlds that, intimately united, seek one another and perhaps one day will be reunited.

V. ACCIDIA

V. LEONE

V. LUPUS

V. SERPENS

V. LUCIFER

V. LUCIFER

V. LUCIFER

But the entire second realm, in its structure, is a splendid variation on one of the thoughts most long pondered by D.: a thought that resurfaces at every leap, now in the angel’s invitation to ascend higher, not to one alone but to both poets, though one of them comes only with the virtues of pagan Rome; now in the examples to be contemplated; now in Statius, who is a second Virgil made Christian, rising from a pain lasting centuries and centuries, and accompanying our pilgrims, he provides them with an explanation of a phenomenon about which the Mantuan had never clearly seen the sign of liberation (Inf. XII, 31-45; XXI, 106-14; XXIII, 127 ff.); and now in Matilda, who comes from the East singing psalms, and, when asked by D., fully confirms the natural philosophy of Statius, and then, side by side with the three who came from the West—she on the right bank and they on the left—

DANTE - Woodcut illustrating the canto of the Inferno. Ed. by B. Stagnino, Venice 1512.

ascend the current of Lethe and witness a grand sacred representation, divided into three acts. In the first, which begins with D.’s encounter with Matilda, the process wrought by God in the redemption of humanity from original sin; in the second, the renewed violation of the interdiction, and the announcement of the resurrection in the third. Matilda unquestionably personifies the wisdom of the Old Testament, inspired in the chosen people to prepare for the advent of revealed truth and thus of piety, while the three poets represent the three principal ages in which Western civilization, guided by Rome, unfolded: the pagan age with Virgil, who begins to become Christian and indeed becomes so in a second moment with Statius, only to be fully revived and filled with promise in D., who, reconciling them, bears within him the new man, citizen of the city that is the “holy place” of both “suns.”

IV. THE PARADISE

The freedom the poet enjoyed in placing the realm of eternal pain within the dark bowels of the earth and that of purification upon the highest mountain, which rises from an immense sea, full of light, silence, and peace, toward the region of fire, was denied him for the seat of the blessed. All but compelled him to place it in the heavens, as he did; yet without thereby altering his design. Rather, he made the number, order, and influences of the planets serve this end, so that what in the previous canticles had been said in figure now finds its explanation in Paradise through the almost perfect fusion of moral sense into the literal.

In the vestibule of Hell are the souls of the most vile, like beasts in all things and thus deprived of the faculties by which man is man; in the Moon (which, according to Benvenuto, “inclinatis mulieres sua influentia ad urinitatem” and has here and there a defect of light), are the souls of nuns who chose the right path but lacked the strength to follow it to the end. They yielded indeed to the violence of others and thus showed they did not possess that will which was entirely lacking in those of the vestibule (IV, 76 ff.).

The glorification of the Empire, begun in Limbo with the review of the spirits of the magi who prepared its advent, finds its fulfillment in the heaven of Mercury (significant, in the poet’s view, of praise, smoke, poverty, and the like), in the hymn that Justinian raises to the eagle of Rome and to Romeo, a humble and pilgrim soul yet worthy, through his love of justice, to enjoy the same degree of beatitude. But since for many centuries the patriarchs of Israel were relegated to Limbo, having prepared the advent of piety; behold, before leaving that heaven, Beatrice extols the lofty and magnificent process wrought by God through the Incarnation and death of the Son. A song to the eagle and a song to the Cross, the signs by virtue of which we were redeemed from original guilt.

As D. approaches the circle of the lustful, he hears the roar of a tempest that whirls the spirits in its grasp; and, ascending to the heaven of Venus, he sees spirits moving in circles, swift or slow, speaks of winds that blow swiftly and then, as in the episode of Francesca, fall silent for a moment, and presents a series of souls who in life gave too much rein to the passion inspired by that star but freed themselves in time and turned all their love to God. To find some of these in Paradise must, it is true, surprise us a little. Yet when, at the end of the canto, we read the prophecy of Rome’s imminent liberation from the adulterer confirmed, then, recalling the ninth canto of the Inferno, in which the Messenger from Heaven drives the devils back into Malebolge, and the ninth of the Purgatorio, where Lucia, lifting D. in her arms, aids him “along his way,” we understand that with those names the poet meant to say: evil has no abyss from which God cannot redeem us. Just as those enslaved to the flesh now enjoy the “valor that ordains and provides” (IX, 105), so too shall men soon enjoy the new order that the Coming One will establish in the world.

In the heaven of Venus, the cone of the earth’s shadow is pointed out; and from the third heaven onward, we enter and are intoxicated in an ocean of light, in the Sun, studded with spirits “living and victorious” in the whiteness of its rays. These are souls for whom it was supremely sweet to quench the thirst “that never is sated” at the fountain of divine wisdom. “The refreshment of eternal rain” that bathes them and the language they so often and willingly employ (X, 88, 96, 111; XI, 124 ff.; XII, 84; XIII, 39) sufficiently declare that the poet thinks of them in contrast to the gluttons of the “circle of the rain,” eternal and accursed. Yet whoever does not fix his gaze on earthly things but lifts it “to the eternal wheels,” heeding the poet’s exhortation (X, 7-27), is not only redeemed from “the harmful guilt of gluttony.” Indeed, the souls who did not remain in human hunger but fed upon “the bread of angels” recite in their speech the praises of St. Francis, the spouse of Lady Poverty, glad not to possess aught for which the world strives; then those of St. Dominic, “who struck at heretical thorns,” defending the Faith with which he had “espoused” the baptismal font; they demonstrate how worthy of a royal crown was Solomon, who asked for wisdom “so that he might be a sufficient king,” while on earth many style themselves “great kings” who shall rend one another in the mire of the Styx; and finally they are swept up by a wave of joy mightier still at hearing Solomon himself invoke the day when “the glorious and holy flesh shall be reclothed.” In short, they touch upon all the principal themes offered to the reader’s meditation from the circle of Ciacco, where the Resurrection is first spoken of, to that of the heretics condemned in the sixth circle.

But the songs of the Sun also invite us to notice something else: first and foremost, that the center around which the three crowns of sages dance is Beatrice, the revealed truth, but also the poet (XII, 20): not, certainly, because he believed he was making himself one with his lady, but rather to make us understand that he had entirely conformed to her, was a reflection of her, just like the blessed who gaze upon her. The first garland takes its character from Aquinas, and represents the work of the School completed in favor of wisdom, the sun of truth that shines and gives more than the natural sun. To achieve such a lofty end, neither two nor three, no matter how great their genius, would have sufficed: it required the contribution of many who, under different aspects, according to a particular approach, illuminated the truth, united in keeping their gaze always fixed on “the fountain from which all truth flows” (IV, 116). They all aimed at the same goal: they deserve to be celebrated together (XI, 42; X, 133). Yet many are the paths to be trodden. The second crown, in fact, takes its tone from the Seraphic Doctor. The good friar Thomas delighted in philosophizing and theologizing in the footsteps of Aristotle; Bonaventure in those of Augustine. The beautiful host of sages of which he is the head, embracing the other in its orbit and at the same time completing it, is a sign that it turns more swiftly, sees more deeply into the divine essence, and loves more (XXIV, 18; XXVIII, 100). Now Dante prefers the method of the mystics to that of the scholastics, to which Beatrice had initiated him in his youth and to which he has definitively returned. But this does not mean that there is discord between the two glorious wheels. One inserts its rays into the other (XIII, 16), they share the same joy and blaze “with eyes aglow with joyous and gentle light.” While alive, they sometimes disagreed and fought; now they do not even recall the disputes they once waged. The true cult of wisdom has raised them to a sphere where perfect harmony reigns, by virtue of which they know that even in error a part of truth is concealed, and the discord between flesh and spirit, seemingly insurmountable at first glance, can also be considered overcome in the words, so full of longing, about the resurrection (XIV, 43 ff.): when echoes around

...of equal clarity, a splendor arises above what was there before, like a horizon that brightens (XIV, 67 ff.).

Beyond the first two garlands, Dante suddenly sees a third gleaming with such brilliance that he is dazzled. Who are they? “O true spark of the Holy Spirit,” exclaims the poet, without naming anyone. Sages, then, who drew or must draw their inspiration from eternal Love. Thus, after the scholastics and the mystics, he envisages for the world a host of philosophers and theologians who will resolve the truths conquered by those two into a higher truth. No other meaning can easily be attributed to this vision, which serves as a corollary to the figures appearing in the Sun, unless one prefers to pass over it, as if the poet, for once, had wanted to indulge in the pleasure of saying without saying anything.

With a dialectician of such depth, there is no longer any reason to debate whether his doctrines are to be found in one rather than another of the authors he studied, or whether in the *Comedy* he is a mystic or a scholastic. From the poem, one indisputably derives the exhortation to seek, starting from Revelation, the truth “with clear eye and pure affection,” to recognize it wherever it comes from, and not to condemn those who, in seeking it, err. To the salvation of the world, both Virgil and St. Bernard contribute.

In Mars, the god of war, it was natural that Dante should find the spirits of those who put the force, of which the damned of the seventh circle made use to harm their neighbor, themselves, and God, at the service of piety. One enters there through a kind of breach, opened in the infernal chasm at the death of Christ on the cross, and during the time Dante spends considering the effects of mad wrath, his master speaks to him of a stream as the most notable thing he has seen so far, inasmuch as it is only by virtue of the vapors it exhales that one can be freed from that evil. Here above,

he marvels to see Christ flashing in a great cross, which stretches its arms from one pole of the planet to the other. From the souls that adorn it comes to his ears a hymn, of which he catches only the main motif, which says: “Rise and conquer.” To whom are the words addressed? To the poet, or to men living as slaves to death? To both, for the *Comedy* announces the resurrection to all. Moreover, in the fifth heaven Dante has the fortune to encounter the triumph of Cacciaguida, who encourages him to bear manfully the blows of adverse fortune. Something similar he had heard from the “good and dear paternal image” of ser Brunetto. Here above, the praises of ancient Florence; there below, when asked about the present state of his city, he is forced by bitterness to lift his face and cry out: “The new people and sudden gains.” The reader can continue the comparisons on his own.

They ascend to Jupiter, the sweet star that mediates justice. To demonstrate that the souls descending into it are the opposite of those punished in Malebolge would be superfluous. Whoever is unaware of Dante’s passion for that virtue and his pre-existing cult of its symbol, the eagle of Rome, would not be surprised that he could smile at that kind of cinematography invented to describe the successive figures in which the spirits of the just arrange themselves. Poetry does not benefit from it; but for him, to contemplate with his own eyes, stamped in gold amidst the silver of the planet, the initial of his monarchy which soon after, with a slight movement, transforms into the sign “that made the Romans revered throughout the world,” and to hear it speak in such a way that from many voices one voice emerges, meant obtaining directly from God the seal of the idea that was his passion. Nor will the reflection that it was a fantasy disturb his joy. With its form, its lights, its movements, the eagle merely sanctioned the law by which God governs the world: eternal, immutable, real.

The problem of the salvation of the just pagans had its roots in the most delicate fibers of his heart; and one would have to be utterly devoid of feeling not to share in the emotion with which he formulates his doubt and follows every phrase, every accent of the eagle’s response. On earth, he confesses, he had found nothing to satisfy his hunger: he brought it all with him into the hereafter, and so keenly that, even at the beginning of his journey, having just learned which spirits inhabit Limbo, he bursts forth in the invocation: “Tell me, my master, tell me, my lord,” full of anxiety; and in the eighth bolgia, at the sight of the two-flamed fire where Ulysses and Diomedes are, having first confessed that he instinctively turned toward it with unparalleled ardor, he begs Virgil “that my prayer may avail a thousand prayers” and allow him to speak. For him, the Laertian represented all Greek wisdom. But the hero’s tale could only have sharpened his thirst. Only the eagle offers him a “gentle medicine.”

From Jupiter’s heaven one ascends to the “crystal” of Saturn, which, with its fixtures, disposes one to the life of contemplation, for it is the best of all. The beautiful ladder by which souls descend and ascend was not his invention, but he merits the credit for having discovered in it the luminous symbol of the spirits who come to meet him. Of love, as was inevitable, all the blessed speak; but in the seventh heaven they do so with greater insistence than elsewhere (XXI, 45, 67–69, 74, 82; XXII, 52). Love was and is their principal virtue, the one in which every commandment is fulfilled; in evident contrast to the traitors of Cocytus, who knew only hatred and violated the sum of all laws: “Love God and your neighbor as yourself.” In the ice of the ninth circle is the most terrifying ruin of all, a sign of death without redemption; and in Saturn a lofty cry that promises this redemption is near. By making the body of Lucifer a ladder, the poets emerge “to see the stars again”; and at a sign from Beatrice, Dante in an instant ascends that ladder and is in the starry heaven, that is, in the vestibule of the highest paradise.

From the poet’s perspective, therefore, as one follows “the tracks of the beloved footsteps,” the poem, judged one of the most obscure, becomes crystal clear; the interpretation of the symbols becomes almost a mathematical operation, so many are the parallel passages that determine them; riddles and enigmas are found not to exist, except insofar as one insists on knowing the name of the Greyhound, who, being unborn in 1300, had not yet been baptized. It is certainly surprising to think that the poet created so great a work of art by confining his imagination within the gates of a structure that is simple in its main lines yet exceedingly complex in its details. Yet the very aim of weaving the fabric of the poem so that the three canticles, both as a whole and in their parts, would correspond to one another—sending the reader from one place to another, from a circle of Hell to a ledge of Purgatory and from there to one of the heavens—though it sometimes led him to resort to somewhat material means and indulge in subtleties, in most cases has not harmed the beauty but perhaps enhanced it; for the passion with which he shaped it into a living organism is equally impressed upon its doctrinal parts as upon the others. It is the same passion found in his minor works, which drove him ever higher, toward God, and brought him safely from the open sea to the shore. He believes in the supreme values of the spirit as we believe in the sun. He thinks them, loves them, wills them, and lives by them. He is firmly convinced that only in them will men find peace and rest, and he never ceases to point others toward this desire. Certain that the kingdom of mercy and justice will inevitably come, sooner or later, he awaits it eagerly, sometimes impatiently. He longs to greet the dawn. Afterward, death will not weigh heavily upon him. Remove this faith and this hope from his breast, and you will no longer recognize him. They are so vivid that he does not notice how society has changed and embarked upon a new path. He cannot notice II. He is convinced that his vision is firmly grounded in Sacred Scripture and history, and he regards it as unshakable. He does not suspect how much of himself he has poured into the interpretation of events. The age of Empire, as he dreamed it, had long since passed, and that of the Church had yet to come. In one sense, he has placed his ideal in the past; in another, in a distant future; yet ancient and ever new is our need for justice and for God. Thus Dante’s ideal knows no setting sun; nor does the *Divine Comedy*, in which it shines forth in all its beauty.

— Vedi tavv. LXXX-LXXXI.

Commentaries on the Divine Comedy. — For the information they provide and especially for knowledge of the language of the time, the earliest commentaries written a few years after the poet’s death or during the 14th century should be noted: those of Iacopo della Lana, an anonymous Florentine known as l’Ottimo, and Pietro, son of D. (Dante). Most important of all is the commentary on the first 17 cantos of the Inferno composed by G. Boccaccio. Notable also are those of Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola, who lectured on the Comedy in Bologna and wrote a commentary in Latin on all three canticles; Francesco da Buti, who expounded Dante in Pisa; and another anonymous Florentine who commented on the Inferno and half of the Purgatorio. On these see L. Rocca, Di alcuni commenti alla Divina Commedia composti nei primi venti anni dopo la morte di D., Firenze 1891. A commentary from 1900 is that of Cristoforo Landino. Important for those wishing to follow the history of interpretations of the poem are those of A. Vellutello and B. Daniello in the 16th century. In the 18th century there appeared those of Fr. Pompeo Venturi, a Jesuit, and Fr. Baldassarre Lombardi, a Conventual Minorite. A contribution to the understanding of Dante’s poetry is the defence by Gaspare Gozzi against the censures of Fr. Saverio Bettinelli, but the way was opened in regal fashion by Giambattista Vico with his Scienza Nuova. The 19th century abounds in commentaries, which began to broaden the interpretation of the poet and to study his times and all his works. It will suffice here to mention the Discorso sopra il testo della Divina Commedia by Ugo Foscolo, and among the commentaries those of Niccolò Tommaseo, Milano 1865; Brunone Bianchi, Firenze 1890; Raffaele Andreoli, ibid. 1886. A considerable step forward in Dante criticism was made thanks to the Storia della letteratura italiana by Francesco De Sanctis and the famous essays on the most beautiful episodes of the Inferno. Alongside him should be remembered: B. Croce, La poesia di D., Bari 1921; K. Vossler, Die Göttliche Komödie, Heidelberg 1925, Italian trans., Bari 1927; L. Russo, Problemi di metodo critico, ibid. 1929. A work intended to gather and discuss the centuries-old exegetical tradition of the Comedy is the greater commentary of G. A. Scartazzini, Leipzig 1874–82. This is continued and in part improved upon by La Divina Commedia nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare commento, by G. Biagi, E. Rostagno, G. L. Passerini, and, for the Paradiso, by U. Cosmo. For cultivated readers and for schools there are the commentaries of T. Casini, the minor commentary of G. A. Scartazzini, entirely reworked by G. Vandelli, and those of G. Poletto, F. Torraca, C. Steiner, L. Pietrobon, V. Rossi (continued by S. Frascino), G. A. Venturi, I. Del Lungo, F. Flamini and A. Pompili, Carlo Grabher, A. Momigliano, M. Porena, E. Rivalta, Dino Provenzal. For those wishing to deepen their study of the poet, the following may be cited: I. Del Lungo, D. nei tempi di D., Bologna 1888; P. X. Kraus, D. sein Leben und sein Werk, sein Verhältnis zur Kunst und Politik, Berlin 1897; F. D’Ovidio, Dal secolo e dal poema di D., Bologna 1888; G. Pascoli, Minerva oscura, Livorno 1898; id., Sotto il velame, Messina 1900, Bologna 1923; F. D’Ovidio, Studi sulla Divina Commedia, Palermo 1901; G. Pascoli, La mirabile visione, Messina 1902, Bologna 1913; F. D’Ovidio, Nuovi studi danteschi, Milano 1906–1907; G. Pascoli, Conferenze e studi danteschi, Bologna 1915; L. Pietrobon, Il poema sacro, 2 vols., ibid. 1915; M. Barbi, Studi sul canzoniere di D., Firenze 1915; E. Parodi, Poesia e storia della Divina Commedia, Napoli 1921; G. Panteli, La filosofia di D., in D. e l’Italia, Roma 1921; G. Busnelli, Cosmogonia e antropogenesi secondo D. e le sue fonti, ibid. 1922; L. Valli, L’allegoria di D. secondo G. Pascoli, Bologna 1922; id., Il segreto della Croce e dell’aquila nella Divina Commedia, ibid. 1922; Pietrobon, Dal centro al cerchio, Torino 1923; F. D’Ovidio, Nuovo volume di studi danteschi, Caserta 1926; id., L’ultimo volume dantesco, ibid. 1926; L. Valli, I fedeli d’amore, Roma 1928; B. Nardi, Saggi di filosofia dantesca, Milano 1930; N. Zingarelli, La vita, i tempi e le opere di D., ibid. 1931; M. Barbi, Problemi di critica dantesca, Firenze 1934; L. Valli, La struttura morale dell’universo dantesco, Roma 1935; L. Pietrobon, Saggi danteschi, ibid. 1936; U. Cosmo, L’ultima ascesa, Bari 1936; E. Gilson, D. e la philosophie, Paris 1939; M. Barbi, Nuovi problemi di critica dantesca, Firenze 1941; id., Con D. e i suoi interpreti, ibid. 1941; G. Mazzoni, Almae luces, malae cruces, Bologna 1941; B. Nardi, D. e la cultura medievale: Nuovi saggi di filosofia dantesca, Bari 1942; M. Rossi, Gusto filosofico e gusto poetico, ibid. 1943; B. Nardi, Nel mondo di D., Roma 1944; U. Cosmo, Guida a D., Torino 1947; E. Cerulli, Il «Libro della Scala» e la questione delle fonti arabo-spagnole della Div. Comm., Città del Vaticano 1949.

Life. — G. Salvadori, Sulla vita giovanile di D., Roma 1901; A. Solerti, Le vite di D. ecc. scritte fino al sec. XVII, Milano 1904; G. Boccaccio, Trattatello in laude di D., in the edition by D. Guerri (G. Boccaccio, Il commento alla Divina Commedia), Bari 1915; G. L. Passerini, La vita di D., Firenze 1920; U. Cosmo, Vita di D., Bari 1930; L. Fassò, D. La vita, 1935; T. Gallarati-Scotti, Vita di D., Milano 1939; M. Barbi, Vita opere e fortuna con due saggi su Francesca e Farinata, Firenze 1950.

Reference works. — G. Poletto, Dizionario dantesco, 7 vols. and 1 of appendix, Siena 1885–92; L'Alighieri, directed by F. Pasqualigo, Verona–Venice 1889–93; Bullettino della Soc. Dant. it., Firenze 1890–1921; G. A. Scartazzini, Enc. dantesca, 2 vols., Milano 1896–99; id., Dantologia, 1910–1916; M. Barbi, Studi danteschi, Firenze 1920–1921; Il giornale dantesco, directed by G. L. Passerini and from 1924 by L. Pietrobono up to vol. XIII, succeeded by L'annuario dantesco, vols. I–XIII; R. Piattoli, Codice diplomatico dantesco, Firenze 1951.

Translations of the Comedy. — For those prior to 1888 cf.: C. De Batines, Bibl. dantesca, 3 vols., Prato 1845–48, and the Giunte e correzioni alla medesima, published by G. Biagi, Firenze 1888; of those after that date the following may be noted, among others: French: M. Durand Fardel (Paris 1895), A. de Margerie (ibid. 1900), A. Pérard (ibid. 1927); English: C. E. Norton (Boston 1891–92), T. W. Parsons (ibid. 1893), W. Warren Vernon (London 1894–97), C. Langdon (Harvard 1918–21), J. Butler Fletcher (New York 1931), L. Lolkert (Princeton 1931, Inferno only), M. Best Anderson (Oxford 1932), L. Binyon (London 1933, Inferno only); Polish: E. Porębowicz (Warsaw 1899); Rumanian: G. Coșbuc (Bucharest 1925–32); Spanish: B. Mitre (Buenos Aires 1894), N. Verdaguer (Barcelona 1921); Swedish: E. Lidforss (Stockholm 1903), S. C. Bring (ibid. and Uppsala 1904–1906), A. Pipping (Helsingfors 1924); German: C. Bertrand (Heidelberg 1887–94), P. Pochammer (Leipzig 1901), L. Zuckermandel (Strasbourg 1914–22), K. Falke (Zurich 1921), R. Zoozmann (Leipzig, revised ed., ibid. 1921), St. Georg (Berlin 1925, Parisian ed.), R. Schöner (Rome 1929), R. Borchardt (Munich 1930), Fr. V. Falkenhausen (Leipzig 1937), K. Vossler (Berlin 1942); Hungarian: C. Szász (Budapest 1885–91), M. Babits (ibid. 1913–23).

Fortune of Dante abroad. — Cf.: M. Besso, *La fortuna di D. fuori d’Italia*, Firenze 1912; A. Farinelli, *D. in Spagna, Francia, Inghilterra, Germania*, Torino 1922. Also: for America: C. H. Grandgent, *Il contributo americano agli studi danteschi*, in *Giorn. dant.*, 18 (1910), pp. 45-52; T. N. Page, *D. and his influence*, Università di Virginia, 1922; for France: A. Farinelli, *D. e la Francia dall’età media al sec. di Voltaire*, 2 voll., Milano 1908; A. Counson, *Le réveil de D.*, in *Revue de littér. comparée*, 1 (1921), pp. 362-87; *D. Mélanges de critique et d’érudition française en Belgique*, 1921; published on the occasion of the VIth centenary of the poet’s death, Paris 1921; for Germany: G. Gabetti, *D. e la Germania*, in the volume *D.*, Milano 1921, pp. 281-314; K. Vossler, *D. in Germania*, in *La nuova Italia*, 13 (1942), pp. 121-26; for Japan: J. Kikichi Oga, *Bibl. dant. giapponese*, 2nd ed., Firenze 1930; for England: P. Toynbee, *D. in English literature from Chaucer to Cary*, London 1909; id., *The Oxford D. Society*, Oxford 1920; id., *Britain’s Tribute to D.*, in *Literature and art (1880-1920)*, London 1921; for the Netherlands: J. L. Cohen, *D. in de Nederlandsche Lett. verhand*, Haarlem 1929; for Poland: S. P. Koczarowski, *D. to Polsce*, Cracovia 1921; for Romania: G. Tagliavini, *La fortuna di D. in Romania*, in *L’Italia che scrive*, 4 (1921), pp. 221-222, and seven other articles by various authors on *La fortuna di D. nel mondo* (see also the bibliography by Gh. Cardas, in *Mișcarea literară*, 2 [1925], a special issue devoted to Dante); for Russia and the Slavic countries: E. L. Gatto, *Sulla fortuna di D. in Russia*, in *Saggi sulla cultura russa*, Napoli 1923; A. Cronia, *D. nella letteratura serbo-croata*, in *Milani* 1923.