Dante’s Purgatorio – Canto 6

There are other points of view, however. Hollander notes Frankel’s view that since Dante focuses on the loser first, is he, perhaps, thinking of Virgil who, through no fault of his own, was born before the Christian era and, in spite of his good life, is consigned to Limbo for all eternity? I’m not inclined to agree with this interpretation or any interpretation that names the loser here as Virgil because I think it’s reading of too much into the text. Virgil is a sobering figure, but that’s also his role. The fact that he hasn’t been to Purgatory is definitely a handicap, and yet he still plays well the role of Dante’s guide and mentor. We haven’t come that far yet from the Inferno which is filled with losers who feed for eternity on their guilt and remorse, “sadly replaying their throws,” but never “learning from their mistakes”? The eternal sighing of the souls in Limbo also comes to mind.

I think we have to be careful not to go too far from the game of chance–in which there are always winners and losers. After all that Dante (and Virgil) has seen in Hell and so far in Purgatory, it has to strike him rather soberly, as it should us the readers, that life itself is a gamble. Musa pursues this point of view in his commentary. There seem to be chance happenings that have led Dante and Virgil to where they are at the moment. He points to the seemingly chance meeting with Cato when they arrive; the chance meeting with the souls who point the way up the mountain; and, perhaps most fascinating is what seems to be the “seemingly haphazard design of divine justice.” He writes: “…surely the reader must have shared the Pilgrim’s wonder at the seemingly chance distribution of God’s grace to the souls in Ante-purgatory. Are Manfred, Buonconte, and the others long in sinning but brief in repenting here by anything more compelling than a throw of the dice? As for Virgil, who lived a moral life that lacked only faith through no fault of his own, he lived virtuously yet died to Limbo, while the souls he sees here lived sinfully and at the last moment won eternal life.”

I wonder, however, if the real loser here is Italy. It won’t be too much of a “spoiler” to note for the first-time reader that in a moment Dante is going to launch into a ranting apostrophe against Italy–as a matter of fact it consume most of this canto. Dante is such a wonderful artist that he never gives us a clue here that he’s going to do this. Yet in hindsight it seems to make perfect sense.

The first of these six is Benincasa da Laterina, the Aretine judge murdered by Ghino di Tacco of Siena. Benincasa passed a sentence of death on Ghino’s brother for highway robbery, and soon after this he was appointed as a judge at the Papal court of Boniface VIII in Rome. Ghino followed him there, burst into the court room, attacked him, beheaded him, and escaped. According to Bocaccio (Decameron X,ii),Ghino, who had been exiled from Siena and became a highwayman himself, later changed his life and became a noble character.

The second reference here is not named, but most commentators identify him by moving backward from his drowning in the Arno. Apparently he was Guccio de’Tarlati di Pietramala. According to Hollander, he was a Ghibelline from Arezzo, and was either part of a group that attacked the Bostoli Guelfs at their castle in Arezzo, or he was fleeing from a counterattack by the Bostoli – the text can be read both ways. One way or another, it seems that his horse ran uncontrolled into the Arno where he was drowned. Some suggest he may have drowned following either the battles of Campaldino or Montaperti.

The third soul is Federigo Novello, son of Guido Novello of the famous Conti Guidi of Romea (see Inf. 30:58ff). He was a Ghibelline, killed while helping the Aretine Tarlati in the attack by the Bostoli (see Guccio de’Tarlati just above).

The fourth is Farinata, a respected Pisan lawyer or judge and son of Marzucco degli Scornigiani. He was involved in many affairs of state within and out of Pisa until the rise of Count Ugolino da Gherardesca and Archbishop Ruggieri (see Inf. 33). By this time, Farinata had left civic life and joined the Franciscans. Either Ugolino or one of his sons murdered Farinata’s son. As a Franciscan monk, his noble civic reputation was enhanced by his peaceful and forgiving request to Ugolino for the body of his son, which Ugolino granted. Later, Farinata is said to have moved to the monastery of Santa Croce in Florence where Dante may have known him.

The fifth soul is Count Orso degli Alberti della Cerbaia. He is sadly memorable as being the unlike his father, Napoleone, and his uncle Alessandro, two notorious sinners buried in the ice of the traitors at the bottom of Hell. These two brothers killed each other in a fight over their inheritance. Count Orso was killed by his cousin, Alberto, son of Alessandro degli Alberti–possibly as a continuation of the feud between their fathers. Benvenuto says that the Count was murdered by being mauled by a bear at the hands of Alberto.

The sixth and final soul is Pierre de la Brosse (obviously not an Italian), chamberlain of Philip III of France, and falsely accused of treason by Queen Mary of Brabant. King Philip’s son and heir to the throne, Louis, died suddenly, and accusations were made that the queen was to blame because she wanted her son, the future Philip the Fair, to succeed to the throne. It seems that Pierre de la Brosse was among the accusers. He was soon arrested, imprisoned, tried, and hanged . There was considerable upset about the speed and secrecy surrounding the reasons for the execution. Some said Pierre took advantage of the queen’s virtue, others that he was in secret communication (letters apparently forged by the Queen) with Alphonso X, King of Castile. He and Philip were at war. Commentators note that Mary of Brabant died just a few months before Dante. Notice Dante’s warning at the end. One wonders whether she read his Purgatorio.

The first part of Dante’s question to Virgil opens the issue to greater clarity. “Do all these souls here hope in vain…?” Well, of course not! Hope is the great foundation of Purgatory. Without it, Purgatory would cease to exist–particularly because the hope of Purgatory is based on the promise of eternal life in Paradise. The lowest soul in Purgatory is guaranteed that promise. I believe that Dante has raised this question simply to remind us of this fact. He’s clearly spent all this time with otherwise hopeless sinners who are now heirs of this promise to make sure that we understand that salvation is freely offered no matter if we’re ready or not.

I wonder if the second part of his question, “…or do I fail to understand what you wrote?”, is really a tongue-in-cheek “hook” intended to give him (through Virgil) an opportunity to show off that he understands the Aeneid perfectly well. Virgil knows this, but plays along as the Master reminding his literate student that the text is the final authority. It means what it reads. But, so as not to dampen his student’s enthusiasm in having asked the question–he’s a good teacher!–he urges Dante to think a little more deeply about his question and the answer will make itself clear. Obviously, the justice of God is not lessened by answering positively prayers that stem from love. One might consider the problem this way: the souls here in Purgatory, to one extent or another, allowed sin to blind them to God’s love. A debt (punishment? purgation?) is owed. But fervent, loving prayers offered on behalf of the sinners, cancels part of this debt. Perhaps what is being suggested for us to consider is that love is greater than justice? Or that justice might bend in the face of fervent love? These, I think, are the kinds of questions that Dante has to wait for Beatrice (who represents divine Revelation and the transcendent love of God) to answer. What Dante needs to be clear about now–and our sympathies for Virgil should be heightened here–is that Virgil, who by now clearly understands a great deal about the Christian tradition, tells Dante that he was referring to souls in Hell (ouch: like himself) whose prayers (if they were able to pray) cannot reach God. When Virgil wrote the Aeneid, of course, there was a very different conception of the afterlife, and it certainly did not include a Purgatory, though Elysium was a kind of heaven.

In the end, Dorothy Sayers has a wonderful way of making all this clear in her commentary: “Virgil explains that (a) when one person assumes another’s debt of restitution and pays it all off in one moment of burning charity, the divine Justice is not diminished, since all its demands are fulfilled: but that (b) in the case of Palinurus and Aeneas, who were heathens, neither the petitioner nor the mediator was qualified to utter that ‘prayer from a soul in grace’ which alone is effective. The delay in Ante-Purgatory being purely penal, it can be remitted when satisfaction is made by another.”

All during the previous canto, the sun has continued to move without notice. Now that there seems to be a moment of calm, Dante observes the mountain’s mid-afternoon shadow growing. As a matter of fact, if they’re climbing on the eastern side of the mountain, the sun is moving to their right (north), they’re already in the shade, and Dante no longer casts a shadow. Virgil, probably reading Dante’s mind, sees that he’s thinking they don’t have much farther to go–this amplified by the mention of Beatrice. When he tells Dante that things are not what they seem, we needn’t expect a solution to some mystery. He’s simply telling him that the summit is at least another day away–Dante the Poet’s way of suggesting that the path of repentance and purgation is neither quick nor easy. The shadow, in fact, clouds Dante’s thinking. That said, however, a mystery soon confronts them in the person of a lone soul sitting not too far away and watching them. Remembering how the group of souls at the bottom of the Mountain showed them the way to start climbing, Virgil anticipates this soul will show them the way to continue upward.

Sordello was born at Goito, a few miles to the north of Mantua around the year 1200. He was a poet, became the most famous of the Italian troubadours, and was held in high regard by Dante. He lived a complex and adventurous life, and nowadays one might have read of him in society gossip columns or seen his face among the racks of sensational tabloids that populate check-out counters in supermarkets. The fact that he appears by himself suggests that he is not one of the late-repentant souls in this part of Ante-Purgatory who died a violent death, though he may have been simply a late-repentant. It is said that he died in Provence, and he is last mentioned in a document from 1269. What we will soon see, however, is that he will accompany Dante and Virgil through the next two cantos as an informative guide.

To say that Sordello had a checkered past is an understatement. And, perhaps, for this reason he fits here among the unrepentant. There were a few delicious scandals with women that he was involved in–some quite dangerous. There is a secret marriage with a lady of the Strasso family near Treviso which necessitated their fleeing that area. For a time after this he was attached to the notorious tyrant, Ezzelino III da Romano, whom Dante consigns to the river of boiling blood in Canto 12 of the Inferno. And it should not seem strange that Sordello formed an attachment with Ezzelino’s sister. Cunizza, which necessitated his flight from Treviso altogether. Cunizza, not to be outdone by her scandalous life with several husbands and lovers, will be found saved and sainted in Canto 9 of the Paradiso!

Throughout much of his life, Sordello was involved with political figures and their activities, and often his poetry reflected these associations. In Provence, Sordello became part of the court of Charles of Anjou and joined him when he took possession of the Kingdom of Sicily from Manfred, whom we have already met. Charles rewarded him with several fiefdoms. In his commentary, Singleton notes: “About the year 1240 he wrote a very fine planch (or song of lamentation) on the death of Blacatz, himself a poet and one of the barons of Count Raymond Berenger IV. In this poem the leading sovereigns and princes of Europe are exhorted to eat of the dead man’s heart, so that their courage may increase, and they be fired on to noble deeds. These verses may have indirectly inspired the patriotic outburst for which the appearance of Sordello is made the pretext…” Dorothy Sayers goes further in terms of placing Sordello in the Poem at this point. She writes: “Sordello in his lifetime was certainly no patriot: he was an expatriate, who had renounced even his own language and had fought against Italy under a French banner; this perhaps is why we find him so solitary and self-absorbed. The emotion stirred in him by the mere mention of his birthplace is for that very reason the more striking, and thus provokes Dante to his diatribe against Italy.”

In his commentary, Charles Singleton suggests that there had been considerable debate among scholars about this part of Dante’s apostrophe until 1935 when the proper historical perspective was laid out by the medieval historian Fausto Ghisalberti: “In fact, toward the end of the thirteenth century, the struggle that was tearing apart northern Italy had taken on a different aspect. The factions were finished as such, and their program could be considered a failure. Montecchi and Cappelletti were by now nothing more than the names of the vanquished. Both, when they started out, had excited the hopes of the people and of the merchant bourgeoisie, which in turn were the forces behind the liberty and autonomy of the commune. But in the course of events, they allowed themselves to be drawn into the sphere of aristocratic interests; and when they realized they had subjugated themselves, it was too late . . . . And so, in about the year 1300, Dante could easily consider the colors of those factions quite erased from the political map of Lombardy. Thus he could say to Alberto Tedesco: “Come, you that have no care, and see Montecchi and Cappelletti, Monaldi and Filippeschi, those already wretched and these in dread”–sarcastically inviting him to take a trip, to view the effects of his reprehensible absence.”

Santafiora was a small county in the Sienese Maremma (southern Tuscany). Until Dante’s time, it had been governed by the Aldobrandeschi, a family of powerful Ghibellines. But by 1300, it was ruled by the Sienese Guelfs.

The reference to Rome brings to mind the seat of the original empire, now long gone and squalid, but still the seat of Church and the papacy. Dante’s language here echoes the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible (1:1-2: “How solitary sits the city, once filled with people. She who was great among the nations is now like a widow. Once a princess among the provinces, now a toiling slave. She weeps incessantly in the night, her cheeks damp with tears. She has no one to comfort her from all her lovers; her friends have all betrayed her, and become her enemies.”

However, the mention of Marcellus here has led to divided opinions among commentators through the centuries. As it turns out, there were actually three consuls named Marcellus, all of whom were opponents of Caesar. Singleton lists them: (1) Marcus Claudius Marcellus, consul in 51 BC, who was pardoned by Caesar (46 BC) on the intercession of the senate, and was afterwards murdered by one of his own attendants in Greece; (2) Gaius Claudius Marcellus, brother of Marcus, consul in 49 BC, when the civil war broke out; and (3) Gaius Claudius Marcellus, first cousin of the preceding consul, who assumed the position in 50 BC. However, as Singleton notes, it is certainly to the first, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, that most commentators think Dante refers. In his Pharsalia (I, 313), Lucan mentions him, together with Cato and Pompey, as being among Caesar’s bitterest enemies. It seems that what Dante is suggesting here is that, because of lack of imperial control, Italian cities were filled with tyrants who usurped the emperor’s authority with impunity and, like fools, thought of themselves as a new Marcellus.

We can see here how Augustine ends on a magnificent note of hope that connects directly to the whole project of Dante’s Purgatorio. From a theological perspective, one is mindful here of the doctrine of the Incarnation, which states (pardon my over-simplification) that God became human in the person of Jesus, and by virtue of that act, nothing before or afterward is foreign to God who, from the beginning, created us in his image and likeness. What Dante wants us to see in his Poem is that we are all destined for glory if we but use our free will to choose it–even at the very last moment of our lives. In Canto 5 of the Paradiso, Beatrice will tell Dante: “The greatest gift that our bounteous Lord bestowed as the Creator, in creating, the gift He cherishes the most, the one most like Himself, was freedom of the will. All creatures with intelligence, and they alone, were so endowed both then and now” (Musa). The eternal tragedy of the Inferno faces us with those who used this gift badly; the hope that energizes the Purgatorio tells us that the gift of free will activates the promise of eternal salvation for anyone who chooses it, even at the end of a badly used life; and the face-to-face encounter with God in the Paradiso allows us to gaze with perfect vision upon the One we have always looked like.