Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio

Introduction

Opening Passage:

O'er better waves to speed her rapid course
The light bark of my genius lifts the sail,
Well pleas'd to leave so cruel sea behind;
And of that second region will I sing,
In which the human spirit from sinful blot
Is purg'd, and for ascent to Heaven prepares.

Here, O ye hallow'd Nine! for in your train
I follow, here the deadened strain revive;
Nor let Calliope refuse to sound
A somewhat higher song, of that loud tone,
Which when the wretched birds of chattering note
Had heard, they of forgiveness lost all hope.

Summary: In writing a poem about Purgatory, Dante faced a number of significant challenges. Purgatory is, as it were, the Holy Saturday of the afterlife; it is not that it is unimportant, but by its very nature it is preparatory to, and therefore dwarfed by, something infinitely more important. That there is some kind of purification in the afterlife is implicit in intercession for the dead, but the theology of it is not particularly precise or developed, and was less so in Dante's day. Thomas Aquinas, who is Dante's usual go-to for theological guidance, says almost nothing about it, and what he does say is both minimal and early. Fewer artistic conventions had been developed for it than for Hell or Heaven; Dante cannot draw from any sort of extensive ready-made iconography. The tradition yielded very little more than general principles: it is purification, a penitential state but of satispassion and not (as our penitential practices are) satisfaction, the patient Church receiving our prayers and waiting to be made pure for Heaven. The Council of Florence had not yet clarified the relation between Latin and Greek doctrines. St. Catherine of Genoa had not yet written her visions.

Thus Dante's imagining of Purgatory gets a great deal of credit for originality; he was starting almost from scratch and trying to write a poem fit to stand with poems about Hell and Heaven, which had superabundant materials on which to draw. But as is often the case with real artistic originality -- and as Dante himself would certainly have thought -- the originality and novelty all has to stem from faithfulness to the root ideas. Dante is original not so much in the sense of making things up as in the sense of working systematically and rationally through a territory that had hardly been scored before. And I think we can identify fairly easily the basic principle on which he worked, although one might argue about the precise formulation of it. It is, I suggest, something along these lines: Purgatory is the completion of the penitential work of the Church as we know it. In a sense, the entire mountain of Purgatory is a church created by God to serve as the sacred space for the liturgy that prepares souls for the Communion of which Eucharistic communion is just a sign.

Purgatory is on earth, in the antipodes, and Dante emphasizes this a lot. It serves as a sort of mirror image of the work of the Church in the world on our mortal side of the globe; except that this image is intended to describe something more perfect than our failure-ridden and flawed work can attain. But, although the penitential life of Purgatory is more perfect, it is not fundamentally different. Everything achieved in Purgatory by patiently enduring, could have been achieved in life by active penitential practice. Purgatory is just a matter of finishing what we, foolish mortals with bad priorities, left unfinished; it is a matter of coming to live the life of the Beatitudes, which we were already called to do in mortal life.

Commentators often remark on the originality of what they call 'Ante-Purgatory', the area that is not quite Purgatory in which the excommunicated and the lately repentance congregate and wait before being allowed in. It makes sense as a reflection of the Church: in life, those delaying penitence tried to linger outside due to desires for other things, deferring repentance as long as possible; in Purgatory, they must endure an equivalent lingering-outside before fulfilling their desire to continue inward, thereby sharpening their desire for the repentance they must undergo.

It is also noticeable that Purgatory is filled with art. Dante as he goes his way through the Divine Comedy tends to pay special attention to the arts, especially his own field of poetry, but to a very remarkable degree it is a primary focus of the Purgatorio, perhaps second only to repentance itself. We are met with hymns from the very beginning. On the first terrace, in which the twisted love of pride is untwisted, we see engravings on the wall so perfect that they seem life-like, depicting examples of humility, and similar engravings on the floor depicting examples of pride. On the second terrace, devoted to envy, we have voices proclaiming fragments of stories. On the third terrace, dramatic visions before the imagination give examples of gentleness and wrath. On the fourth terrace, we have more shouted stories, concerning sloth and envy, and recitations of prayers reflecting on the fifth, reflecting on examples of avarice and prodigality. The fruit trees on the sixth terrace speak of gluttony; the penitents themselves allude to examples of lust as they walk the fires of the seventh terrace. What meets Dante in the earthly paradise is an elaborate and lush mix of tableau, pageant, and mystery play.

But art is not only pervasive, it is central. From Canto XXI, in which Dante and Vergil meet Statius, to Canto XXVI, when they meet Arnaut Daniel, there is a sort of convention of poets going on, discussing issues relevant to poetry. Statius praises Vergil and then, of course, is delighted to meet him; opponents of the 'sweet new style' concede Dante's excellence in it; Dante meets his influences. But I think there is even more going on here. The central cantos speak of free will and love. Love, of course, is the ultimate creative force in the Comedy, and precisely the distinction between Hell and Purgatory is that love in Hell is fake, and all love in Purgatory is genuine. The damned get what they desire, and shriek because it is sterile agony; the patient endure penalties as severe, and yet they sing, because they love justice, and, perhaps, even more, they love love. All vices are love twisted; all virtues are love rightly ordered. And, of course, the free creativity of love is the foundation of the self-discipline of art as well as the self-discipline of repentance; and the purpose of art, for Dante the ultimate love poet, is to uphold true and genuine love.

Art and penitential practice are thus allied, or, rather, intermingled, in Purgatory, as they are (albeit less perfectly) in the sacred art of the Church Militant. But it is not simply sacred art that is in view. Dante's devotion to Vergil is, if anything, even more intense in Purgatory than it was in Hell; and, more than this, we see in the meeting with Statius the essential idea that Vergil, by his excellence in poetry, prepared the way for the salvation of Statius's soul. The penitential Church presented by Dante is a thoroughly artistic Church; and it draws from all the art in the universe to turn it to its rightful end, the Love that moves the stars. Repentance is a restoration of love to its proper character; but love is inherently creative. A repentant Church is an artistic Church. It could not even stop itself from being so. And, likewise, art that has not been turned aside, but expresses well and clearly that love which creates, is morally good for us, an aid to repentance. The penitent face their sufferings singing; they are upheld and aided in their self-discipline by the visual arts; they re-learn what they should be through story.

One other striking thing about the Purgatorio is that Dante engages in self-critique. His forehead is carved with all of the vices. He regards himself as one of the greatest poets of all time, but he recognizes that this is a possible problem of pride that requires repentance. And, of course, when he gets to the terrestrial paradise and sees the splendid Beatrice, he is treated to a sharp and unrelenting lecture on his bad priorities -- and indeed, she as much as says at one point that he was so far gone that she got permission to have him see hell in the hope of saving him. Dante in Hell is an observer; Dante in Purgatory must do as the penitent must, and undo his disorders before he can see Heaven.

Favorite Passage: There are a number of good ones, but this, the prayer of the penitent proud from Canto XI, is particularly memorable:

"O thou Almighty Father, who dost make
The heavens thy dwelling, not in bounds confin'd,
But that with love intenser there thou view'st
Thy primal effluence, hallow'd be thy name:
Join each created being to extol
Thy might, for worthy humblest thanks and praise
Is thy blest Spirit. May thy kingdom's peace
Come unto us; for we, unless it come,
With all our striving thither tend in vain.
As of their will the angels unto thee
Tender meet sacrifice, circling thy throne
With loud hosannas, so of theirs be done
By saintly men on earth. Grant us this day
Our daily manna, without which he roams
Through this rough desert retrograde, who most
Toils to advance his steps. As we to each
Pardon the evil done us, pardon thou
Benign, and of our merit take no count.
'Gainst the old adversary prove thou not
Our virtue easily subdu'd; but free
From his incitements and defeat his wiles.
This last petition, dearest Lord! is made
Not for ourselves, since that were needless now,
But for their sakes who after us remain."

Recommendation: Well, obviously, Highly Recommended. If you pace yourself, I think it actually moves more smoothly than the Inferno or the Paradiso -- it lacks the sheer flood of name and story in the other two poems, and likewise the complicated schemes integrating massive numbers of themes.

Sanctify Thy Woe

Penance
by John Henry Newman

Mortal! if e'er thy spirits faint,
By grief or pain opprest,
Seek not vain hope, or sour complaint,
To cheer or ease thy breast;

But view thy bitterest pangs as sent
A shadow of that doom,
Which is the soul's just punishment
In its own guilt's true home.

Be thine own judge: hate thy proud heart;
And while the sad drops flow,
E'en let thy will attend the smart,
And sanctify thy woe.

Music on My Mind

BLQ, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross".

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
by Isaac Watts

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then I am dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Pretty much everybody skips the fourth stanza; that's a bit unfortunate, as it plays a structural role bridging between the third and the fifth.

Statistics and Aesthetics

Rosmini has an interesting passage in the Theodicy in which he comments on what we might call the statistical character of some kinds of perception of the beautiful (sect. 277):

If you put into a bag 90 little balls of ivory, all of the same size, one sixth of them yellow, two sixths red, and three sixths black, and then draw them out one at a time at haphazard, there is no certainty that one colour will come out first rather than another, but there is probability in the proportions of one half for the black, one third for the red, and one sixth for the yellow. Whichever colour you happen to extract is always an irregularity, because that colour had not, so to speak, an entire right to come out, but only half a right, or a third, or a sixth part. But if, replacing the ball after each extraction, you go on repeating the same operation a very great number of times, you will find that the number of balls for each colour comes nearer and nearer to the relative proportions in respect of the colours. And the longer you continue, the more will the irregularity diminish, and the normal design become more apparent; thus clearly showing you, that the law which inclines the colours to regularize themselves, although accidentally disturbed in its action, would entirely prevail if you were to prolong the extractions to an indefinite length of time.

Agreeably to this, he who can only consider particular cases, is not in a position to be able to realize to himself the marvellous beauty of this universe; nay, in noticing the irregularities which are inevitable in it, he must take them as so many evidences of deformity; whereas he who considers a long series of events will see therein an admirably regular and symmetrical order.

In his example, if you look at a fine piece of embroidery, in which there is an immense amount going on, and you only look at a few threads, you will not see what is happening with the whole embroidery -- you will see a bit of color, then a bit of another color, and the like, and miss the whole picture to which each of the threads contributes.

The analogy is closer than it might appear. While we don't usually think of statistics as concerned with the beautiful, it is about the discovery of patterns and symmetries in a population, and thus connects directly to matters of beauty, which are also concerned with patterns and symmetries. If one can simply see the pattern or symmetry, one can perhaps simply see the beauty of something, but there are inevitably things whose full beauty is too big to catch at a glance, and in those cases the size and quality of your samplings can matter greatly, because fully seeing the beauty requires getting a sense of what is happening as a whole. But, of course, sampling alone is not enough, in statistical or aesthetic matters; one must have a way to make sense of the result.

Lent XXXVIII

Thy plants are a paradise of pomegranates with the fruits of the orchard, cypress with spikenard. (Song of Songs 4:13)

The pomegranate tree, before its pomegranates are ripe, brings no enjoyment to those who eat; it is encased with thorns. So also is everyone who becomes God's garden and paradise in this life; first he must live with difficulty, with hunger and thirst and striving and exertion, and whatever other sufferings there are for virtue. Thus he constrains himself, and whatever trials come upon him involuntarily, whether caused by companions or by Satan, all of this he patiently and voluntarily bears for love of God. Afterwards, there will be appetizing fruit for God, like the pomegranate, which grows among thorns until it is ripe.

[Gregory of Narek, The Blessing of Blessings, Ervine, tr. Cistercian Publications (Kalamazoo, MI: 2007) p. 133.]

And that's a wrap.

Lent XXXVII

But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earth: and some indeed unto honour, but some unto dishonour. (2 Timothy 2:20)

For the gold and the silver are the good men, but the gold are the better men and silver the less good men. In the same way the wood and the earth are the wicked men, but he earth are the worse men while the wood are the less evil men.

Consequently he designates a diversity regarding use, so that the good are vessels of honor, as it were deputed for honorable use; the evil are earth and wood, as it were deputed for dishonor, that is, vile use. In the same way among men, some, namely the saints, are as it were precious vessels....But some are useless vessels, namely the evil.

[Thomas Aquinas, Commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Baer, tr. St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, IN: 2007) p. 121.]

Gerdil on the Possibility of an Actual Infinite Multitude

An interesting passage from Gerdil's Recueil de dissertations sur quelques principes de philosophie & de religion (1760); it is one part of an argument against the eternity of matter. The translation, which is mine, is just a rough first draft.

One can, it seems to me, give a demonstration of the impossibility of an actual infinite in quantity by a series of clear and incontestable principles.

(1) Every multitude, every collection composed of an infinity of terms contains as many ones as it has terms. For it is evident that in a collection each term is counted by a one.

(2) The natural series of numbers stands in place of every collection that has ones; because it is evident that in this assemblage one can designate one, then two, then three, and so in series, until one has gone through all the terms or ones.

(3) As to suppose a collection infinite in terms is nothing other than to suppose an infinite multitude of ones, it is evident that the natural series will be applicable to this collection, or at least that this infinite collection of ones will not possess infinity in another way than the natural series of numbers.

(4) In every progression of the natural series continued to infinity, the succeeding number never rises more than one unit above the preceding number; so there can be no leap from one number to the other, and one cannot reach one from the other, save by continual addition of one and one.

(5) In the natural progression the series of numbers increasing from 1 by the continual addition of unity to unity, and this without end, it follows that there is no assignable term in this series which is not preceded and followed by other terms, from which it differs only by one.

(6) Therefore, since this progression must always continue to infinity, it is impossible for the sequence of terms to arrive at a point where, after any finite state, it does not follow another finite term, and which is not only superior to it by a unit. The passage from the finite to the infinite is therefore not only obscure and incomprehensible, which alone would not be sufficient reason to reject it, but absolutely impossible. This must be demonstrated with the utmost accuracy.

I say, then, that in the natural series of numbers the passage from finite to infinite is impossible. If this passage is possible, there would then be a finite number after which follows the infinite number. This is borne out by the idea of ​​the passage from one to the other, for the natural series beginning with one, and rising by finite numbers, if it reaches infinity, necessarily there is a finite number one at which one passes to infinity. Now, in the natural series, it is impossible for an infinite number to succeed any finite number; for this infinite number must exceed the finite to which it succeeds by one alone, or an indeterminate number of units. If it exceeds by one only, then it is finite, since it has a finite relation to a finite number. If it exceeds it by an indeterminate number of ones, then it is not what immediately follows in the natural progression, contrary to what was supposed; and the natural series always rising by the continual addition of this indeterminate number of ones, in the resulting terms it will always be equally impossible to find the term that ceases to be finite.