After hearing from Charles Martel in the previous Canto, Dante’s attention here at the sphere of Venus is drawn to a new soul who comes to speak with him. This is Cunizza da Romano, who admits that in life she was overcome by the influence of this sphere. After introducing the soul next to her, she prophesies for Dante about the bloody future of her native place, but assures him that God’s judgment will prevail in the end. As she fades back among the dancing spirits, the soul she introduced – Folquet of Marseille – speaks with Dante through the rest of the Canto. After pointing out the luminous soul of Rahab, the Harlot of Jericho, Folquet speaks darkly of Florence – a city founded by Lucifer – and worldly Church leaders.
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Having been enlightened by your Charles, my dear Clemence, he proceeded to tell me about plots against his offspring that were yet to come, saying in the end, “Do not report what I have told you. Let time move onward.” Thus, all I can say is that those who do wrong to your family will weep for their crimes.[1]Immediately here we are presented with a problem. If these initial sentences seem somewhat out of place to the Reader, you are correct. We seem to have no idea who Dante is talking to, and the fact … Continue reading Then that glowing soul who spoke with me turned to face that Sun Who fills all of creation with His goodness. What a pity, you foolish souls who turn from the True Good. In your pride you raise your heads but see nothing worthwhile![2]Once again, recall that the Sun represents God. Having finished his conversation with Dante, and as though he were a magnificent luminous flower, Charles Martel turns toward God, the source of all … Continue reading
But almost immediately his place was taken by another radiant splendor moving close to me, and I could tell by its increasing brilliance how much it wished to speak. Looking at Beatrice again, I saw in her eyes the happy consent I sought and began thus: “O beautiful holy soul, show me that you can read in the mind of God the thoughts I wish to put into words with you.”[3]By its increasing brilliance, Dante intuits that a new soul approaching him is intent on speaking with him. And, as he often does, he looks to Beatrice who responds approvingly with her eyes. In the … Continue reading
Joyously the light of that glowing soul sang from within itself and answered me with sheer delight. “In that evil part of northern Italy between Venice and the Alps, where the Piave and the Brenta rivers rise, there is a hill down from which there came a torch that caused the ruin of all the countryside around it. He was my brother, Ezzolino, and I his sister, Cunizza.[4]The new speaker here is the soul of Cunizza da Romano (1198-1279). She was the sister of the notoriously wicked Ezzolino III da Romano, a ruthless Ghibelline who controlled the area she describes as … Continue reading Overcome by the light of this great sphere, I shine here now. Pardoned, I happily pardon within myself those faults that led me to stray away from Love in search of love. Here we have no regrets – which mortals will find strange.[5]This was a family of excesses. If Cunizza’s brother (Ezzolino) was drawn to savagery, she was drawn to excesses of love which, Robert Hollander reminds us, is a perfect example of what Charles … Continue reading
“This bright and gorgeous jewel shining here next to me in this place of splendor left behind him on earth fame that will last more than five hundred years. In his good life is a lesson: pursue excellence in your first life so that you might gain the second. Unfortunately, that foolish rabble who live between the Tagliamento and the Adige Rivers do not understand this, and even war does not lead them to repentance. But the time will come – and soon – when the blood of the defeated Paduans will redden the waters of nearby Vicenza. And even now, where the rivers Cagnano and Sile come together, there rules a tyrant whose days are numbered because of his outrages.[6]The soul shining like a jewel will soon identify himself as Folquet of Marseilles. But as Cunizza continues, she offers Dante some advice that, in hindsight, probably took her most of her life to … Continue reading
“Moreover, the region of Feltre will mourn for the terrible crime committed by her bishop against the men of Ferrara. No one has ever been imprisoned in the Malta for a treachery as foul as his! Indeed a great vat would be needed to hold his victims’ blood, sacrificed to prove his loyalty to the Guelfs. Such gifts are common in that place![7]The region of Feltre and the March of Treviso (described above) are generally the same. In 1314, the bishop of Feltre, Alessandro Novello of Treviso, committed a terrible crime. A group of about 30 … Continue reading
“In the highest heavens above are mirrors – you call them Thrones – through whom God’s judgments shine down on us, and in them we see that our harsh prophesies are justified.”[8]Although Beatrice will do this in Canto 28, and since Cunizza has done it here, let me digress for a moment on the role of the angels in the structure of Dante’s cosmos. While there is no specific … Continue reading
She became silent now, and turning her attention to some new thing, she rejoined the dancing spirits she left to speak with me. In her place came the other precious soul she had just described. He looked like a gorgeous ruby struck by the rays of the sun. Up in heaven, the joy of the souls makes them ever brighter. Here on earth joy makes us laugh; and in Hell the shades’ regret makes them darken.[9]With Cunizza’s departure, Dante now takes up with the soul she introduced above, Folquet of Marseilles. The red color of a brilliant ruby – the color of passion and love – is characteristic … Continue reading
“O holy spirit,” I said, “God sees all and you see through Him, so that none of my thoughts can hide themselves from your true sight. Your lovely voice joins those of the high Seraphim. Except to increase my longing, why do you wait to speak? As I wish to enter your depths, so now enter mine.”[10]Dante repeats here what we already know, that the souls in Heaven see into the mind of God and can therefore see his (Dante’s) own thoughts and desires. And his reference to the Seraphim, the … Continue reading
And thus he began: “The waters of the great Mediterranean, into which flow the waters of the world-encircling Atlantic, stretch so far between East and West that each end of this great sea makes a meridian and a horizon for each other.[11]In Dante’s time it was thought that there was one great continent, situated in the northern hemisphere (south to north from the equator to the Arctic circle, and east to west from the River Ganges … Continue reading Marseille was my home, the city Caesar took and stained the waters of its harbor with much blood. It lies along the shore of that sea midway between the rivers Ebro in Spain and the Magra in Italy. Across the sea, it shares the same dawn and sunset as Bougie.[12]Folquet was from Marseilles and he provides a historical reference and two fluvial markers for Dante. First, the historical reference: In 49 BC, Julius Caesar, chasing after Pompey, followed him to … Continue reading
“My name was Folquet, and just as this sphere influenced me from my birth, so now it bears my mark. In her passionate love for Aeneas, Dido offended the memory of both Sichaeus and Creusa. Until I became an old man, her amorous ways were nothing compared to mine or, for that matter, the love tragedies of Phyllis and Demophoön or Hercules and Iole! But here in heaven we do not repent for our old ways, instead we smile: not at our sins – which no longer come to mind – but at the infinite Power whose love orders and cares for all things. You see, here we look with awe upon the wondrous art of God’s love by which your world below returns to this one above.[13]Folchetto di Marsiglia (1160-1231) was a troubador and poet who wrote in Provençal and whose poems were known to and enjoyed by Dante. That there was some planetary “influence” on him (though … Continue reading
“But now let me satisfy all your desires born from within this great sphere. You want to know who this luminous soul is who stands next to me in splendor like crystalline beams reflected in water struck by sunlight. I tell you, within these glowing rays is the soul of Rahab, the harlot of Jericho. She occupies the highest place in this sphere where the shadow of your planet comes to an end.[14]Earlier, Dante had expressed some excited impatience with Folquet for not reading his mind quickly enough. But, since we humans are generally limited to linear thinking, unlike the souls in Heaven, … Continue reading When Christ triumphed over death, she was the first of the redeemed to come to this place.[15]This is a reference to what is known in theology as the Harrowing of Hell, breaking it up or open, as a farmer might harrow a field. It refers to the time between the death of Jesus and his … Continue reading It was she who made certain Joshua’s first victory in the Holy Land. Sadly, your Pope cares little about this! It was fitting that, as a trophy of that first victory, she was taken in by this sphere when the second, greatest victory, was won at the Crucifixion.[16]Since the kind act of Rahab in hiding the spies made Joshua’s victory over Jericho possible, thus enabling the wandering Israelites to reach their goal, she is honored (by this act of love) with … Continue reading
“Your city was planted by Lucifer himself as an evil seed, and his useless envy brought nothing but woe to the world. Your city mints and circulates that evil coin which changes the church’s shepherds into wolves who destroy the fold and let the lambs run off in every direction.[17]Folquet ends his conversation with a sharp denunciation against Florence and against the corruption of the Church hierarchy. As the reader will recall, we have seen several previous denunciations of … Continue reading In the mean time, the Gospel and the writings of the Church Fathers gather dust while Canon Law is studied the most. The Pope and his Cardinals pay attention to nothing else,[18]Like the Civil Code of Law, the Church’s laws are collected in the Code of Canon Law. The Canons are a set of standards or guidelines that govern virtually every aspect of how the Church is to be … Continue reading and they care nothing for Nazareth where the angel Gabriel made the great Annunciation. But mark my words, every place in Rome, including the Vatican, made sacred by the blood of martyrs who followed Saint Peter, will soon be cleansed from this adultery!”[19][Folquet ends by bracketing the evils of the papacy with the Annunciation on one side and the triumph of the Roman martyrs on the other. At Nazareth, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and … Continue reading
Notes & Commentary
| ↑1 | Immediately here we are presented with a problem. If these initial sentences seem somewhat out of place to the Reader, you are correct. We seem to have no idea who Dante is talking to, and the fact that Charles Martel’s wife and daughter are both named Clemence adds to the problem. For centuries commentators have been at their wits’ end to determine who this Clemence is. Martel’s wife, Clemence of Habsburg, was the daughter of the Emperor Rudolf I. She died in 1295. Martel’s daughter, Clemence of Anjou, was born in Naples in 1293. She was married to King Louis X of France in 1315, and lived until 1328. Again, we ask: is Dante talking with Charles’s wife, who was already dead at the time the Commedia was written, or is he talking with Charles’s daughter, who died several years after Dante? Fear not. We may be saved from this awkward situation by the pronouns! Charles Singleton, in his commentary here, writes: “The arguments for and against the one identification and the other are many….All things considered, and despite some serious objections to be reckoned with, Clemence of Habsburg, spouse of Charles, would seem the more likely candidate. A strong argument in favor of this choice is the address ‘tuo,’ which is more properly said to a wife than to a daughter, and ‘vostri’ (l. 6) likewise seems to point to husband and wife, rather than to father and daughter. However, no conclusive proof is available.” The lines in question are here (my apologies for the somewhat forced translation): 1 Da poi che Carlo tuo, bella Clemenza, Since your Charles, beautiful Clemence, 2 m’ebbe chiarito, mi narrò li ‘nganni made it clear to me, telling me about the deceptions 3 che ricever dovea la sua semenza; his progeny would undergo; 4 ma disse: “Taci e lascia muover li anni”; |
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| ↑2 | Once again, recall that the Sun represents God. Having finished his conversation with Dante, and as though he were a magnificent luminous flower, Charles Martel turns toward God, the source of all light and his own radiance. Most likely, he has literally turned his gaze toward the next sphere, that of the sun, which follows Venus. Looking upward, he may also be gazing toward the Empyrean. In his commentary, Ronald Martinez notes: “The sight of God completes the unfulfilled life of Charles Martel: he is finally a sun.” Seeing the beauty of this soul bathed in the light of God, Dante addresses the Reader briefly with a slightly different take on pride than he had in Canto 10 of the Purgatorio. There, the souls were bowed down by heavy weights so that they could not look up. Here, it seems, their pride has blinded them. They look up, but see nothing good. |
| ↑3 | By its increasing brilliance, Dante intuits that a new soul approaching him is intent on speaking with him. And, as he often does, he looks to Beatrice who responds approvingly with her eyes. In the joyful context of this new meeting, the Poet seems to test this new soul as though asking, “Show me what you can do.” |
| ↑4 | The new speaker here is the soul of Cunizza da Romano (1198-1279). She was the sister of the notoriously wicked Ezzolino III da Romano, a ruthless Ghibelline who controlled the area she describes as “that evil part of northern Italy” for over 30 years. We last met him in Canto 12 (110f) of the Inferno. As a matter of fact, the “torch” Cunizza refers to was Ezzolino, whose mother, shortly before his birth, dreamed that she gave birth to a burning torch! A bit of geography to get our bearings here. The area being described by Cunizza lies generally to the west and northwest of Venice between the Piave and Brenta Rivers. This area was known in Dante’s time as the March of Treviso (Marca Trevigiana), centering around the city of Treviso (about 25 miles north of Venice). In medieval Europe, a March was a kind of neutral buffer zone between kingdoms. On its south side, it would have bordered on the then Duchy of Venice. While there is no precise location for Cunniza’s description of it today, commentators suggest that it was probably in the area of Bassano, about 40 miles northwest of Venice. In time, all this area became part of the Republic of Venice. But in Dante’s time it was controlled by two powerful families: the Caminesi family (who were Guelfs) and the Ezzolini family (who were Ghibellines). Dante would have been familiar with this part of Italy later in his exile when he was the guest of Can Grande Della Scala in Verona. As for Ezzolino, Paget Toynbee, in his Dictionary writes this: “In 1255 Pope Alexander IV proclaimed a crusade against Ezzelino, styling him ‘a son of perdition, a man of blood, the most inhuman of the children of men, who, by his infamous torture of the nobles and massacre of the people, has broken every bond of human society, and violated every law of Christian liberty’. After a war of three years’ duration, in the course of which he committed the most terrible atrocities, Ezzelino was finally defeated (September 16, 1259) by the marquis of Este at Cassano, where he was desperately wounded and taken prisoner. Eleven days after, having torn open his wounds, he died in his prison at Soncino, at the age of 64, after a reign of thirty-four years. Benvenuto states that he is said to have been short of stature, hairy and swarthy ([Inf. xii. 109]), and that he had a long hair upon his nose, which stood upright when he was in a passion to the terror of all beholders. Several stories are told of him in the Cento novelle antiche in one of which it is stated that he killed himself by striking his head against the pole of the tent in which he was confined.” |
| ↑5 | This was a family of excesses. If Cunizza’s brother (Ezzolino) was drawn to savagery, she was drawn to excesses of love which, Robert Hollander reminds us, is a perfect example of what Charles Martel was discussing with Dante in the previous canto – that members of the same family can have very different natures. Cunizza seems to have had a scarlet reputation. Dante must have had a smirk when she told him that she was “overcome” by the light of Venus! She was married four times and had two lovers, one of which was Sordello whom we met in Canto 6 of the Purgatorio. In his commentary, and no disrespect is intended, Charles Singleton’s useful account of Cunizza’s life might make for delicious scandal-sheet reading in a modern supermarket tabloid. “In 1222 Cunizza was married, for political reasons, to the Guelph captain Count Riccardo di San Bonifazio of Verona. Shortly after her marriage she became enamored of the troubadour Sordello, by whom (ca. 1226), with the connivance of her brother, she was abducted from Verona and conveyed back to Ezzelino’s court. Her intrigue with Sordello did not last long (although it appears to have been renewed later at Treviso), and she then went to the court of her brother Alberico at Treviso, where she abandoned herself to a knight named Bonio, with whom, according to the old chronicler Rolandino (Cronica, I, 3, p. 18) she wandered about the world, leading a life of pleasure. After the death of Bonio, who was slain while defending Treviso on behalf of Alberico against his brother Ezzelino, Cunizza was married by the latter to Aimerio, count of Breganze; after his death, he having fallen a victim to a quarrel with Ezzelino, she married a gentleman of Verona; and subsequently she married a fourth husband in the person of Salione Buzzacarini of Padua, Ezzelino’s astrologer. In or about 1260, both Ezzelino and Alberico being dead, and the fortunes of her house being at a low ebb, Cunizza went to reside in Florence, where in 1265, in the house of Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, the father of Dante’s friend Guido, she executed a deed granting their freedom to her father’s and brothers’ slaves, with the exception of those who had been concerned in the betrayal of Alberico. In 1279, being then about eighty, she made her will, whereby she bequeathed her possessions to the sons of Count Alessandro degli Alberti of Mangona, her mother’s family. She probably died not long after this date, no further mention of her having been preserved.” In spite of all this, however, there is something utterly remarkable in her claim to Dante that she happily forgives herself for the way she lived her life and for the way her life turned out as a result. Both psychologically and spiritually, self-forgiveness is most important in the process of healing and the return to wholeness. Of course, when she tells us that she has no regrets we need to remember the workings of the Purgatorial rivers, Lethe and Eunoë. And, in a sense, like Dante’s straying from Beatrice after she died, Cunizza strayed from Love’s path in search of love. While we know a great deal about the “colorful” side of her life, we really don’t know precisely the circumstances of her conversion. The closest we might come is late in her life when she came to Florence, as we read above, and freed the slaves that belonged to her father and her brothers. There is something so wonderfully human in the search for love, and Dante shows us here what Christians call the workings of grace. One is reminded here of Manfred’s amazing claim in Purgatorio 3:121ff: “Horrible were my sins, but Infinite Goodness stretches its arms to anyone who comes in search of it.” Cunizza ultimately found her true Lover (Who, we need to believe, had never lost her, nor us!) John Ciardi writes in his commentary: “Cunizza’s amorous nature was the force of fate that shaped her lot. The crowd below (mortal men) may think it painful for her to recall her natural amorousness and the loose life to which it led her. Yet that same fire of passion, properly directed to the love of God, was also the source of her blessedness.” And Ronald Martinez, in his commentary, adds: “Cunizza forgives herself for the erotic inclination that in part shaped her fate. Her logic recalls that of Christ speaking about the woman identified in Christian exegetical tradition as Mary Magdalene (Luke 7.37-50): ‘Many sins are forgiven her, for she hath loved much.’” |
| ↑6 | The soul shining like a jewel will soon identify himself as Folquet of Marseilles. But as Cunizza continues, she offers Dante some advice that, in hindsight, probably took her most of her life to follow: While you’re alive, spend your time doing good and you will surely have it in the next. One is reminded of the injunction of Jesus in St. Matthew’s Gospel (6:19ff): “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This next part of Cunizza’s “prophecy” has to do in part with the evil unleashed on the March of Treviso, the area near Vicenza (40 miles west of Venice) where she lived and where her evil brother, Ezzolino, and others terrorized the inhabitants. The four rivers she names, plus the one unnamed, all border the area in question. But mainly, Cunizza is referring to an event that Dante would know well: the defeat in 1314 of the Guelfs of Padua near the city of Vicenza by Can Grande Della Scala, the imperial vicar and Dante’s host and patron. Dante dedicated the Paradiso to him. Cunizza’s mention of a tyrant whose days are numbered because of his savagery (like her brother, Ezzolino) is a reference to Riccardo da Cammino, son of Gherardo (Purg. 16). After his father’s death, he became the Lord of Treviso and was murdered by a local peasant. This prophecy notes an event that happened in 1312, but remember that the Commedia is set in 1300. Note how she speaks in the present tense. |
| ↑7 | The region of Feltre and the March of Treviso (described above) are generally the same. In 1314, the bishop of Feltre, Alessandro Novello of Treviso, committed a terrible crime. A group of about 30 Ghibellines in Ferrara had engaged in a failed conspiracy against Pino della Tosa, the vicar of King Robert of Naples. They fled north and sought sanctuary with Bishop Novello. He received them kindly but betrayed them back to della Tosa. The conspirators were taken back to Ferrara where they were beheaded. Their blood (and heads!), according to Cunizza, would have filled a large vat. She tells Dante that at the time, no one had ever been imprisoned for a worse crime at the Malta, a papal prison for criminal bishops at Lake Bolsena (north of Rome). For this treachery, Novello was roundly hated and forced to resign to a monastery where he died in 1320, apparently beaten to death with sandbags at the behest of Riccardo da Cammino, the tyrant noted above. For his crime, Dante places Bishop Alessandro Novello in the Inferno (Canto 33) in the frozen section near the bottom of Hell called Tolomea. This is the place reserved for those who betrayed their guests. To emphasize the gravity of their sin, Dante tells us that their souls drop to the bottom of Hell as soon as they commit their treachery and their bodies are possessed by a devil for the rest of their natural lives. |
| ↑8 | Although Beatrice will do this in Canto 28, and since Cunizza has done it here, let me digress for a moment on the role of the angels in the structure of Dante’s cosmos. While there is no specific Christian doctrine concerning the ordering of angels, the tradition has relied heavily on the writings of a fifth century mystical theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. In his text, De Coelesti Hierarchia (The Celestial Hierarchy), a work popular in the Middle Ages, he orders and discusses the hierarchy of angels in Heaven. Dionysius names nine orders of angels from highest to lowest: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. As the highest of God’s creations, the angels reflect the light of God everywhere, and are charged with the orderly functioning of the cosmos. Dante’s cosmos follows the structure of Claudius Ptolemy, the second century Alexandrian astronomer. It is a system of nine nested crystalline globes with the Earth at the center, followed upward by the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars (constellations, Zodiac, etc.), and the Primum Mobile. (The planets rotate along the outer edge of the sphere named for them.) Each of these nine spheres, starting with the Earth and Moon, is guided by one of the orders of angels: Earth/Moon = Angels; Mercury = Archangels; Venus = Principalities; Sun = Powers; Mars = Virtues; Jupiter = Dominations; Saturn = Thrones; Fixed Stars = Cherubim; Primum Mobile = Seraphim. Beyond this is the Empyrean, the abode of God. Dante, following Aristotle, calls these angelic ministers Intelligences. Cunizza tells Dante that beyond the sphere of Venus there are angels called Thrones (namely, at the sphere of Saturn), who, like mirrors, reflect the judgments of God down on the rest of the cosmos. Like those angels, she also perceives the harsh judgments of God that will fall upon the evildoers she has prophesied against. |
| ↑9 | With Cunizza’s departure, Dante now takes up with the soul she introduced above, Folquet of Marseilles. The red color of a brilliant ruby – the color of passion and love – is characteristic here at Venus. In the Italian, Dante describes this particular gem as qual fin balasso, “like a fine ruby.” Balasso refers to a particular kind of ruby, known as a balas ruby which, though it looks like a ruby, has a different chemical composition. Balas rubies came from the Balascam region of northeastern Afghanistan and were highly prized by royals. In his commentary, Mark Musa notes: “The balas ruby was thought to possess the power to repress vain and lascivious thoughts, a characteristic appropriate to this soul who renounced his earthly passions and now enjoys purity of heart as one of the Blest.” Observing the glowing brilliance of this soul he hasn’t yet been introduced to, Dante makes a kind of mental aside, noting the relationship between joy and brightness. The joy experienced by souls in Heaven makes them shine even brighter; joy on earth makes us laugh; and the absence of joy in the souls in Hell makes them dark. |
| ↑10 | Dante repeats here what we already know, that the souls in Heaven see into the mind of God and can therefore see his (Dante’s) own thoughts and desires. And his reference to the Seraphim, the highest order of angels, reinforces what we can already imagine of Paradise – that all the angels and saints (including Folquet) praise God continually. Writing here, Dante obviously had in mind the Book of Revelation (4:8): “The four living creatures, [a reference to the Seraphim] each of them with six wings, were covered with eyes inside and out. Day and night they do not stop exclaiming: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come.’” Then, teasingly impatient and ever curious, he chides Folquet to “get on with it” and read his mind. And from this point until the middle of Canto 14, Robert Hollander tells us, Dante will not say a word. His longest silence in the Poem. I cannot pass this spot without pointing the Reader to a fascinating example of Dante’s linguistic creativity. Back in Canto 1 he created the word “transhumanize” to explain the change he underwent as he and Beatrice rose from the top of Purgatory into Heaven. And here, he’s done it in nine lines (73-81 in translations with verse numbers, though not all translators actually capture this). This is the Hollander translation. Note the words in bold print: 73 “‘God sees all, and your sight is so in-Himmed, 74 blessèd spirit,’ I said, ‘that no wish of any kind 75 is able to conceal itself from you. 76 ‘Why then does your voice, which ever pleases Heaven, |
| ↑11 | In Dante’s time it was thought that there was one great continent, situated in the northern hemisphere (south to north from the equator to the Arctic circle, and east to west from the River Ganges to the Strait of Gibraltar), and that the rest of the globe was surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. (Recall Virgil’s explanation to Dante near the end of Canto 34 in the Inferno. Here, Folquet (yet unidentified) would be standing in Spain at the western end of the Mediterranean looking eastward toward its other end – so far that it would seem like the horizon. It was thought, since the time of Ptolemy of Alexandria, that this distance constituted 90̊ of longitude, but it’s actually about less than half of that. |
| ↑12 | Folquet was from Marseilles and he provides a historical reference and two fluvial markers for Dante. First, the historical reference: In 49 BC, Julius Caesar, chasing after Pompey, followed him to Spain, but not before slaughtering his followers at Marseilles. The Emperor Justinian made a brief reference to this in Canto 6:61ff. In the Pharsalia (3:567ff), the Roman epic poet Lucan describes the aftermath thusly: “No longer were weapons hurled from vigorous arms, no longer were the wounds of the hurtling steel inflicted at a distance; but men fought hand to hand. The sword played the chief part in that fight at sea. Each man leaned forward from the bulwark of his own ship to strike his foe, and none fell dead upon their own decks. Their blood foamed deep upon the wave, and a crust of gore covered the sea. The ships that were caught and dragged by the iron chains were prevented from coming close by the crowded corpses. Some sailors sank half alive into the bottomless deep and drank the brine mixed with their own blood.” Next come the fluvial references by which we can locate Folquet’s place of birth. Marseilles, as we know, is situated on the southern coast of France at what might seem like an equal distance (as the crow flies) from Italy to the east and Spain to the west. Actually, it is much closer to Italy. The Ebro River is the second longest river in Spain at almost 580 miles. It rises far to the west of northern Spain and winds across the country to empty into the Mediterranean at Amposta, about 150 miles southwest of Barcelona. The Magra River in Italy is only about 40 miles long. It empties into the Mediterranean at La Spezia (down the Italian coast from Genoa) and rises in the mountains to the east. Looking at a map of the western Mediterranean, one could locate La Spezia in the east and Amposta in the west and see Marseilles in the middle. Bougie is the present coastal city of Béjaïa in Algeria, directly south of Marseilles on the opposite side of the Mediterranean. And noting their shared horizons to the east and west, Folquet closes the loop of his several geographical references. |
| ↑13 | Folchetto di Marsiglia (1160-1231) was a troubador and poet who wrote in Provençal and whose poems were known to and enjoyed by Dante. That there was some planetary “influence” on him (though Dante rejected much of that theory of planets influencing human behavior) is obvious in the brief amorous résumé he gives the Poet – all of which is quite true. Furthermore, he seems to play here the male counterpart to the lusty Cunizza who introduced him earlier. Dante, being a classical scholar, must have smiled at Folquet’s boast that he was a better lover than the classical characters he mentions: Aeneas and Dido, Phyllis and Demophoön, Hercules and Iole. The seductive romantic interlude between Aeneas and Dido (widowed queen of Carthage) is recounted in Virgil’s Aeneid. Dido nearly derailed Aeneas’s destiny to found a new empire: Rome. When he resumed his voyage to Italy, she killed herself. (Creusa was Aeneas’s dead wife, and Sichaeus was Dido’s dead husband.) Phyllis and Demophoön and Hercules and Isole are characters in Ovid’s poems the Heroides (Heroines). Demophoön, a veteran of the Trojan War, stopped in Thrace afterward and married the princess Phyllis. The following day, he decided to continue on his voyage and promised to return. In the meantime, he forgot about his promise and became the King of Athens. Despairing of his ever returning to her, Phyllis hanged herself. The story of Hercules is a complicated one. Suffice it to say that he had hoped to marry Iole, daughter of King Eurytus of Oechalia in Thessaly after defeating the king in an archery contest. But Eurytus refused to give his daughter to Hercules. After this, Hercules went to Calydon, where he married Deianira, the daughter of King Oeneus. But he never forgot Iole. He later killed her father and took her as a concubine. Years earlier, Deianira had been raped by the centaur Nessus (see Inf. 12). Hercules killed him. But as he was dying he gave his blood-soaked coat to Deianira, telling her it had been dipped in a love potion. Actually, it was dipped in poison. Later, fearing that Iole would supplant her as Hercules’s wife, she gave him Nessus’s cloak, thinking he would forget Iole. Unwittingly, she poisoned him and later killed herself. These examples of love tragedies and romantic betrayal that Folquet refers to here are all suited to the ancient notion that the planet Venus was in some way responsible as the romantic influence on these and so many other literary figures overcome with passion (or romantic tragedy) throughout history. At the same time, we must keep in mind that Folquet was a troubadour, and his poems are filled with themes of wild love and romance, not to mention that he seems to have lived as he wrote. He inherited a great fortune from his merchant father and lived a rather wild life. He became a regular at royal courts and was patronized by the likes of Richard the Lion-Hearted, Alfonso VIII of Castile, Raymond V, count of Toulouse, and Barral de Baux, viscount of Marseilles and lord of the city. At some point, however, around the age of 35 (not “an old man” as he calls himself), he underwent a conversion, entering the strict Cistercian monastery of Thoronet in the southeast of France, and later became its abbot (his wife became a nun and his two sons monks). In 1205 he became the bishop of Toulouse and was later known for his fierce battles against heretics, particularly his involvement in the crusade against the Albigensians or Cathars (much too briefly, a heretical sect that believed in two Gods, one a good God and the other an evil one). All of this said, Folquet, like Cunizza earlier, makes an amazing statement: the souls in Heaven do not repent for their past misdeeds (read sins). As a matter of fact, they have no memory of them (recall the purpose of the two rivers at the top of Purgatory). Instead, he says, the souls actually laugh (in the Italian, Dante uses the word laugh, not smile). But they don’t laugh at the sins (which they don’t remember, anyway), they laugh with joy at the infinite power of God’s love that orders the entire universe – His work of art – and keeps it in existence. As John Ciardi puts it in his commentary: “Both Cunizza and Folquet make the point that they do not regret their amorous natures, which once led them into carnality, because the same impulse later led them to the True Love.” Human nature, Folquet tells Dante, is ultimately redeemed and meant to be here in Paradise. |
| ↑14 | Earlier, Dante had expressed some excited impatience with Folquet for not reading his mind quickly enough. But, since we humans are generally limited to linear thinking, unlike the souls in Heaven, Folquet has answered some of Dante’s “hidden” questions. Now he goes further by answering a question we did not hear Dante ask. There has appeared nearby another spirit arrayed in luminous splendor. Folquet identifies her as Rahab and notes her special significance as the highest soul in Venus. Her story in the Book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible is a wonderful one. After the Israelites had been freed from slavery in Egypt, they wandered in the wilderness for several years before entering what they called the Promised Land. But there was an unanticipated roadblock at the last moment, as it were. Namely, the fortified city of Jericho. Joshua, Moses’s right-hand man, sent two spies to scout out the city and determine its weaknesses. They were taken in and hidden by the prostitute Rahab (there was no hanky-panky!). Before they left, she made them promise, in light of her protecting them, that she and her entire family would be spared when the city was destroyed. The spies agreed, and they escaped back to the Israelite camp. When the city of Jericho was under siege, Rahab, her parents, and the rest of her family were given safe passage and were eventually absorbed into the community of Israel. Rahab apparently married a man named Salman of the Tribe of Judah. While this is not recorded in the Hebrew Bible, it is noted in Rabbinic tradition and literature. Even more fascinating is that, through her marriage, she became the great-great-grandmother of King David and eventually one of the ancestors of Jesus. This will be found in the genealogy at the beginning of St. Matthew’s Gospel (1:4ff). Once again, Dante forces the reader to consider standard theological points in a very different way. One thinks of the statements of Manfred in Canto 3(ll. 121f, 133f) of the Purgatorio (Musa translation): “121 Horrible was the nature of my sins, but boundless mercy stretches out its arms to any man who comes in search of it… 133 The church’s curse is not the final word, for Everlasting Love may still return, if hope reveals the slightest hint of green.” Earlier, Cunizza told Dante: “Overcome by the light of this great sphere, I shine here now. Pardoned, I happily pardon within myself those faults that led me to stray away from Love in search of love. Here we have no regrets – which mortals will find strange” In St. Luke’s Gospel (7:47) we read of a dinner party given by a hypocritical pharisee to which Jesus had been invited. During the meal, a sinful woman apparently “crashed” the party and knelt at Jesus’ feet, washing them with her tears, drying them with her long hair, and anointing them with expensive oil. To the shocked host, Jesus said: “I tell you: many sins are forgiven her, because she has loved much.” Note how Jesus links the act of kindness (love) to forgiveness. All three characters Dante meets in this canto were public sinners. Yet each one was transformed. How this came upon Cunizza and Folquet is a mystery. For Rahab, it was an act of kindness. The point Dante wants to make in his Poem is the same point Jesus makes in the Gospel: salvation is available to everyone. The Kingdom of God is among us. St. Paul is perhaps the most wonderfully shocking of all when, in his Letter to the Romans (8:38f), he states without reservation that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ! The key word here is nothing. The main characters in this canto are witnesses to this teaching. In his Letter to the Galatians (5:14), St. Paul is unambiguous: “The whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” And at the end of his First Letter to the Corinthians (13:13), he tells us that the greatest of the virtues is Love. A final and fascinating point: about Rahab, Folquet tells Dante: “She occupies the highest place in this sphere where the shadow of your planet comes to an end.” We’ve looked at the first part of this statement. She is so exalted because she is considered another “savior” of Israel, and an ancestress of the true Savior: Jesus Christ. But we can’t let the astronomical reference pass by without comment. The conical shadow of the earth cast by the sun comes to an end, or point, at Venus. On the one hand, this is a “fun fact” about Venus, almost not worth mentioning here. But on a deeper level it is significant. Venus is the last of the spheres where the souls were influenced or marked by earthly excesses. From now on, we will meet souls entirely focused on the realms of the spiritual. |
| ↑15 | This is a reference to what is known in theology as the Harrowing of Hell, breaking it up or open, as a farmer might harrow a field. It refers to the time between the death of Jesus and his resurrection, during which he is said to have gone to Limbo and released all who had died since the time of Adam and Eve and their original sin. It is mentioned in the Creed with the simple phrase “…He descended into Hell….” What Folquet is telling Dante about Rahab is that once the Harrowing had taken place Rahab’s soul was released with all the others and she came to the Sphere of Venus as its most exalted citizen (though, like all the souls we encounter in Heaven, they are firstly and always in the Empyrean). In its most basic sense, the Harrowing of Hell is a way of talking about Christ’s victory over death by his own death and resurrection which, Christians believe, is his promise to be fulfilled in all people. |
| ↑16 | Since the kind act of Rahab in hiding the spies made Joshua’s victory over Jericho possible, thus enabling the wandering Israelites to reach their goal, she is honored (by this act of love) with the first place in the sphere of love (always remembering that all the souls in Heaven are in the Empyrean, the abode of God. They appear to Dante in different places as signs to help him, still living, to comprehend the nature of Paradise). The two victories here refer, first, to the victory of Joshua over Jericho (aided by Rahab), and, second, the victory of Christ over sin and death by his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. That the Pope cares little about the Holy Land is a reference to the fact that after the fall of the city of Acre in 1291, there were, in Dante’s time, no further Christian attempts to recapture Palestine. When Dante was writing this, this would have been a slam against Pope Boniface VIII. Dorothy Sayers remarks here in her commentary that Bonifce was more interested in strengthening his position in Europe than rescuing the Holy Land from the Muslim invaders. And she reminds the reader of a stronger reproach made by Guido da Montefeltro in the Inferno (27:85ff): ‘But he, the Prince of the modern Pharisees, having a war to wage by Lateran – not against Jews, nor Moslem enemies, for every foe he had was Christian, not one had marched on Acre, none had bought or sold within the realm of the Soldan.’” |
| ↑17 | Folquet ends his conversation with a sharp denunciation against Florence and against the corruption of the Church hierarchy. As the reader will recall, we have seen several previous denunciations of Florence for its pride and avarice. The myth of the foundation of Florence goes back to the god Mars, but here Folquet goes back to Satan himself, who, he says, planted the city’s “evil seed.” In the Middle Ages, the gold florin of Florence was the major currency of Europe. On one side was stamped the image of St. John the Baptist, the city’s (Christian) patron. On the other was stamped the fleur de lis, the city’s symbol. Sadly, Folquet (Dante) states, the avaricious hierarchy of the Church, in their lust for money, have been changed from Gospel shepherds, in imitation of Jesus the Good Shepherd, into ravenous wolves who have scattered the faithful by their scandalous behavior. They have turned the lovely fleur de lis into an evil flower. Robert Hollander notes here: “The avarice of the clergy caused major complaint in the Middle Ages, even more so than the runners-up, sexual license and gluttony.” |
| ↑18 | Like the Civil Code of Law, the Church’s laws are collected in the Code of Canon Law. The Canons are a set of standards or guidelines that govern virtually every aspect of how the Church is to be run. Historically, Canon Law has developed over the centuries from rules governing small local jurisdictions or dioceses that gradually came to be codified for more universal use throughout the Church. Unfortunately, in Dante’s time, and one can see his complaint here clearly, the message of the Gospels and the writings of the Fathers of the Church (great Christian theologians and apologists of the first 3-4 centuries AD) were given much less attention than the growing body of Canon Law. As today, one might less than respectfully call lawyers “sharks,” the Church in Dante’s time had plenty of them – along with a growing bureaucracy of canonists! And, as the complaint here bespeaks, they focused on the acquisition of money and power more than on the Gospel. Alongside Canon Law at the time, there were a growing number of decretals (papal letters, decrees, and documents generated by questions regarding Church law. Mark Musa notes here in his commentary: “They provided the foundation of a large part of general church law. In 1234 Pope Gregory IX issued a compilation of them, with his own additions. It was reissued, with further additions, by Popes Boniface VIII and Clement V in 1298 and 1314, respectively. The papal decretals were promulgated as the great law of all Christendom, taking precedence over secular law. Dante’s reference to the enthusiastic study of canon law by popes and cardinals is intended as criticism, inasmuch as the decretals were studied for the purpose of financial gain.” |
| ↑19 | [Folquet ends by bracketing the evils of the papacy with the Annunciation on one side and the triumph of the Roman martyrs on the other. At Nazareth, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and “announced” to her that she had been chosen by God to be the mother of Jesus. From here, the Christian imagination moves rapidly into the future to the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and the formation of the Christian faith leading to an official Church. In Rome (and throughout the Roman world at the time), during the formation years of the Church, there were hundreds of Christians who were martyred for their faith in Jesus and whose bodies fill the catacombs on Vatican Hill and other sites in Rome to this day. How sad, Folquet implies, that the announcement of an angel and the witness of the martyrs should be smirched by the avarice of Church leaders who have become little less than wolves in sheep’s clothing. A closing note…We were accustomed to stern denunciations and the like in the Inferno and the Purgatorio, and as can be seen here, they will not be absent in the Paradiso. |