Dante’s Purgatorio – Canto 13

Right away, it’s clear from Dante’s observations, that this ledge is completely different from the one below it. There is really nothing to be seen in terms of landscape or geographical features. It’s all of the same bare, livid-colored rock. Definitely no carvings. The color “livid” seems to have many definitions from pale and ashen to reddish to black and blue. The Latin livious curiously, includes all these definitions. The Latin verb livere means to be bluish, and the word livius or lividus can mean “jealous,” or “envious.” The best image is that of a bruise, and we will soon see why this color is appropriate for this terrace.

Virgil’s impatience obviously stems from their not seeing any souls from whom they can ask directions, and from there being nothing outstanding to draw their attention to. However, several significant things stem from this impatience of his. He looks up at the sun (which always represents God) and gets his bearings. As a result, he turns right–always the right direction to turn in Purgatory. Recall from the previous canto that when he and Dante first encountered the Angel of Humility it was noontime, so we are not too far past that mid-day point. And then Virgil the pagan actually prays for guidance. Remember that he has not been to Purgatory before this. Also, this is the only time in the poem that Virgil prays. But, is he actually praying to the Christian God, or to the sun itself, or to reason, wisdom, light, love, or virtue? Over the centuries, commentators have wrestled over this and offered different interpretations. Some have suggested that since the sun represents God, Virgil follows God’s (the sun’s) guidance. Or, Virgil offers a prayer to the Christian God for guidance and grace. Some suggest that Virgil uses the sun as a metaphor for light and guidance–particularly since he, like Dante, has not been in Purgatory before. Some opine that the sun represents Reason and Virgil’s moving to follow the sun is his (and Dante’s) following the light of reason. And some suggest that the sun is simply the sun, and that Virgil is being pragmatic and following it’s movement. Throughout Purgatory, light plays an important part–certainly the light of God’s grace, which empowers the repenting souls to persevere in the work of their purgation. Light enables movement. In the dark, there is no movement.

As for the prayer itself, note that before Virgil asks for the sun’s guidance, he expresses the fact that he already trusts it to lead him and Dante on their way. Notice that he says the road is “new to us,” not “me.” The truism–“You bring light and warmth to our world…”–is almost unnecessary, except that he seems to want to make the broadest possible prayer by then including room for some unspoken reason(s) why the sun (God?) might not want to light and warm us. Some would say that makes no sense because, as Virgil concludes, the light of the sun (whether spiritual or literal) is always there should we need it. In the end, he has already made a right turn–the right turn to make–and his hope is that, in this barren place seemingly devoid of any sign of life, the light (physical or spiritual) will enable to see what they need to see here. And “seeing,” we will soon discover, is what this canto is all about.

“Vinum non habent”: “They have no wine.” First of all, a reminder that part of the structure of the seven terraces is that the first whip is always an event that involves Jesus’ mother, Mary. So we recall from the terrace below that the first of the great carvings on the wall was a scene of the Annunciation. The scene evoked here is from the Gospel of St. John and the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee (2:1-10). Jesus and his mother are at a wedding party and the wine runs out. Mary quietly brings this to Jesus’ attention and he changes the water into wine. It is the Virgin Mary’s loving charity and concern for their happiness that saves the hosts from embarrassment, and this is the example for the sinners here.

“I am Orestes”: As the first voice flies past the Pilgrims and trails off, they hear another one. This one evokes a story of a great friendship where the friends are willing to die that the other might live. Dante probably came across this story in Cicero’s De amicitia (VII, 24) or his De finibus (V, xxii, 63). It’s the story of Orestes (son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) and his friend Pylades and their exchange of identities. (There are variants of this story in Greek literature.) Orestes killed his mother to avenge the death of his father, whom she murdered. He was condemned to death, but Pylades claimed that he was Orestes. But Orestes could not allow his friend to make such a sacrifice and came forward with his true identity. Although this is a story from pagan literature, Dante most likely has in mind the statement of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel (15:12f): “My commandment is this: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The whip is clear. For the envious, the ultimate act of virtue would be to die for a friend, to give up what one holds most dear.

Hearing these two invisible exclamations one after the other, and before Virgil can answer Dante’s question about them, a third voice flies overhead calling out a statement of Jesus recorded in St. Matthew’s Gospel (5:43f): “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

John Ciardi brings the message of the three voices together in his commentary here: “So, the third lesson in love, not only to love others, and to love friends, but to love those who offer injury.” Love others: “They have no wine.” Love friends: “I am Orestes.” Love those who would harm you: “Love your enemies.” And only now does Virgil reveal that this terrace is where the sin of envy is purged–but with a whip made from cords of love. And at the same time, he informs his pupil that they will hear opposite statements (the rein of envy) just before they leave this terrace.

As the two get closer, Dante hears the envious praying the long and beautiful Litany of the Saints (Dante gives only a few lines here). Even though these were, to varying degrees, grave sinners, here they pray to the Saints for help. In Hell, they would be shrieking curses. The fact that they pray is both evidence of and a sign of their spiritual progress. And, of course, those to whom they pray were not tainted by the sin of envy. Again, notice that Mary is the first Saint invoked. We observed earlier how orderly and harmonious was the singing in Purgatory. Note how the Litany here is inclusive as was the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of Canto 10. The sinners pray “for us,” not “for me.”

Seeing all of this, Dante is so moved to pity that he cries. Excusing himself, perhaps, he tells us that he can’t imagine anyone who would not feel pity. Of course, these sinners were people who weren’t given to pity. Recall how, in the Inferno, Dante gradually hardened in his reaction to the damned souls he encountered. Here, Dante’s pity is both good for him (us) and for the sinners. In addition to their uniform clothing, the envious sinners are all sitting with their backs against the mountainside, leaning against each other, heads on each other’s shoulders, looking like beggars gathered at church doors on feast days seeking alms–and, he notes, making a good show of it! But not here. The last thing an envious person would want is someone pitying them. And the image of support in their leaning on each other is quite the opposite of what these souls would have done when alive. Yet, even as they pray for each other, there is an uncharacteristically communal sense to what they’re doing. Yet all of this is wonderfully choreographed, or orchestrated, by Dante to heighten the reality of the Poem which, he assures us, is absolutely real!

Remarking on Dante’s observation about the “coarse sackcloth,” John Ciardi offers a realistic, and somewhat humorous, image of what is worn by the sinners which, in itself, must have been quite punishing:

“Even today peasants wear haircloth capes in heavy weather, but in the Middle Ages, and beyond, haircloth was worn against the skin as a penance, and to discipline the flesh. Such hair shirts were not only intolerably itchy; they actually rubbed the flesh open causing running sores. In an age, moreover, that was very slightly given to soap and water, such hair shirts offered an attractive habitat to all sorts of bodily vermin that were certain to increase the odor of sanctity, even to the point of the gangrenous. I am told, and have no wish to verify, that hair shirts are still worn today by some penitential and unventilated souls.”

In the Middle Ages, falconry (the use of birds of prey to hunt small animals) was a sport with ancient roots almost exclusive to royalty and the aristocracy. While there were other ways of taming and training the birds, what Dante refers to involves a baby falcon, hawk, or other bird of prey taken as a chick. A thread of delicate waxed silk was sown through its lower eyelids (apparently painless) and drawn back over the bird’s head and tied. During training, the thread was gradually loosened allowing the bird to see more and more until it was used to its trainer/handler. Then it was removed altogether. Dante makes this worse by substituting iron thread instead of silk. But like the falcons, however, these envious souls are being “trained” by the invisible voices, by their prayers, and by their beggar-like camaraderie. And because envy is a sin of the eyes, their blindness weans them away from seeing what others have that they want. It also forces them to look inward and focus on what is necessary for their purgation. Furthermore, blindness makes one vulnerable to so many things the sighted can avoid. Yet, while no harm will come to them here, they are somehow rendered “vulnerable” to the good that comes by way of their introspection and the prayers of others.

Finally, we are accustomed to Virgil knowing what Dante has in mind, and here is another of those places. The ever-curious Dante wants to speak with the sinners–perhaps as a way to excuse his self-accused rudeness at staring at them. Before he can ask, Virgil encourages him to engage the sinners–but not to spend too much time. This is the second time Virgil has been concerned about time in this canto (the first was at the beginning).

We also learn for the first time that these envious sinners are weeping. Dante wept bitter tears when he first saw them, and now up close he sees that they, too, weep. While not as obvious as his participation in the punishment of the proud below by his bending over to talk with them, here, his tears are matched by those of the sinners. Of course, they can’t see his tears as he can see theirs. That these sinners’ eyes are sewn shut with iron thread is gruesome enough; more so when the Pilgrim refers to them as “terrible seams.” We readers feel the Poet’s descriptions here and participate along with him.

Dante’s address to the sinners is what is called in rhetorical terms a captatio benevolentiae, a kind of preface to a speech designed to elicit the good will of the audience, to develop a relationship. It is elegant, graceful, compassionate, respectful, and filled with goodness. It may be a bit over the top, but it’s so very different from their earlier ways of thinking. He simply wants to know if there are any Italians among them, but his preface to that question is lovely. And he wants to know because he feels he might be able to help them–most likely with his prayers, or asking their living relatives to pray for them. We’ve learned earlier how much good the prayers of the living can assist those here in Purgatory. At the same time, we know something about Dante that the sinners don’t know: he’s alive and can, in fact, help them.

The prayer is also filled with hope because Dante addresses the sinners’ deepest hope–which they know will one day come to pass: they will see God in the face. His reference to the cleansing properties of grace to cleanse memories and facilitate clear-sightedness is a veiled reference to the classical river of the Underworld, the Lethe, which erased all memory from the souls of the dead. Dante would have been well aware of its references in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Virgil’s Aeneid. Some scholars suggest this was the stream that Dante and Virgil saw in the cave as they climbed up out of Hell. It will make its appearance again in a wonderful way later in the Poem.

“You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

Furthermore, calling Dante “brother” reinforces a sense of community among the sinners that includes Dante himself. And, as we will soon see, the soul responding to Dante knew quite a bit about politics and nationality–as did Dante himself–look where it got him!

Sapia was from an important Sienese family, the Salvani. She was married to Ghinaldo Saracini and was the aunt of Provenzan Salvani, the great tyrant of Siena whom Oderisi spoke about in Canto 11. Her candor is refreshing as she plays on the Latin root of her name (sapiens = wisdom), suggesting that she wasn’t too smart during her lifetime, and her unabashed confession is breath-taking. We haven’t quite met a sinner like her who gives the details of her sins so strikingly. On the other hand, she knows that she’s saved and a detailed account of her treasonous envy will do her no harm. Ironically, in this place it’s actually rather good for her!

She loved nothing more than seeing others come to grief. Thinking, perhaps, that her candor is too much for Dante to believe, she offers a striking example. In 1269 (Dante would have been 4 years old) the Sienese Ghibellines fought the Florentine Guelphs at Colle (about 20 miles northwest of Siena). Siena lost the battle, and Sapia who, apparently, had no love for the Sienese, rejoiced when she saw her townsmen fleeing the battlefield in defeat. She actually prayed that they would lose! And then, looking up to Heaven, shouted to God that she no longer feared Him! We haven’t heard something like this since we encountered the blasphemous Capaneus in the 14th Canto of the Inferno, or the thief Vanni Fucci in the 25th Canto of the same. (Sayers suggests that she may have been banished from Siena and held a grudge, and that she was living in Colle and watched the battle from a tower.) Recall that her uncle, Provenzan, had been captured and beheaded during that battle, his head paraded around at the end of a pike! It may be, as Hollander suggests in his commentary: “Since her sin was envy, it seems clear that Dante wants us to understand that she resented his and/or other townsmen’s position and fame, that her involvement was personal, not political.” Furthermore, as she will say, she was like this until she was old. She grew old in this sin.

As for the foolish blackbird, Sapia was probably quoting a fable about the blackbird who, after a few days of mid-winter sunshine, foolishly thought spring had come and began to sing. The fact that she quotes this adage in reference to herself, however, shows that she is now humble enough to recognize the folly of her sin.

Early in his life, Pier Pettinaio (1189-1289) was a Sienese comb-seller (Pettinaio was not his family name, but his occupation. Pettine = comb). He was noted for his honesty and humility and later became a Franciscan monk, famous as a mystic and holy man who cared for the poor and the sick and worked many miracles among them. He was highly revered as a saint by the Sienese, who built a lovely tomb for him when he died. He was beatified in 1802.

Earlier, Sapia confessed to being less wise than she should have been, but in the end she’s definitely sharp enough to turn Dante’s earlier question back on him, suspecting that Dante is a visitor on this terrace, that he can see, and he can breathe. Ciardi’s comment here is fitting: “How the spirits managed to talk without breathing is a matter Dante would, of course, refer to God’s Will.”

His response to Sapia’s request is cleverly stated. She can’t see, but he says, “You see…” She presumed that he was alive, he confirms it. And with this affirmation that he is, in fact, alive, he returns to the offer of help he made when he and Virgil first encountered these envious souls–when he returns to the world of the living, not to the Terrace of Pride.

In addition to Dante’s prayers, Sapia’s realization of the special effect of grace that he represents leads her to task him with the restoration of her good name among her family. We have become used to sinners in both the Inferno and the Purgatorio being concerned about remembrances to the living. But this is extraordinary. Evidently, in spite of several works of charity in her later life, Sapia was not well-remembered.

The conclusion of this canto is an odd one. It seems that Sapia’s family were among the advocates of a Sienese public works project that would build a port for the Republic of Siena at the western city of Talamone on the Tyrrhenian Sea. This project would have greatly enhanced the economic prospects of the republic, which did not have a port, but it turned out to be more of a headache than a boon. Sapia’s request was most likely aimed at Dante steering her relatives away from such useless and foolish schemes. In a witty introduction to his commentary here, John Ciardi notes that this is “a complicated passage of local reference certainly put into Sapia’s mouth by Dante as a Florentine jibe at the ‘foolish’ Sienese. Dante (who fears the Ledge of Pride just below him) may have to carry his stone a bit further for his addiction to such touches, but his poem is certainly the livelier for them.”

As it turns out, the Sienese wanted to compete with the seafaring Republic of Genoa, and in 1303 they chose Talamone (about 80 miles south of Siena) as the place for their new port. In spite of considerable outlay for construction, the port might have become a reality except for the fact that, among other things, it was located in the area of a malarial swamp (the Maremma), and it kept silting up. The project was a fiasco like the other one Sapia mentions, the attempt to increase Siena’s water supply by digging for an underground river they named after the statue of Diana in the city’s marketplace. (Both projects came about as a result of an over-weaning civic pride, both ended on the rocks!)

Finally, Sapia’s mention of the losing “admirals” might be interpreted figuratively as those investors who spearheaded the failed projects, or more literally as port authorities, ship owners, or captains who lost their port. Robert Hollander’s commentary on this canto to a conclusion is worth considering: “…this sharp-tongued, witty, and self-understanding woman ends her words with charity for all who have chosen the true way, along with acerbic wit for those who are governed by foolishness and pride. If that sounds like a description of the poet who created her, so be it.”