SOURCE: “Pilgrim Text Models for Dante's Purgatorio,” Studies in Philology, Vol. LXVI, No. 1, January, 1969, pp. 1-24.

[In the following essay, Demaray demonstrates how, in the Purgatorio, Dante drew from tales of actual Holy Land pilgrimages.]

The theological virtue of hope, so Beatrice declares before St. James, enabled Dante Alighieri to make the journey from Egypt to Jerusalem to see the Church Militant (Par. XXV, 52-7).¹

A long and perhaps wearisome familiarity with Dante's epistle to Can Grande della Scala has taught us the kind of multifold interpretation that the author of the Commedia intended be applied to such a spiritual pilgrimage. Yet for a full appreciation of the Commedia, the poet's words to Can Grande must be taken most seriously. The Exodus from Egypt to the Holy Land, as Dante explained by reference to Psalm 114 (Ps.113 in the Vulgate),² need not be understood simply as a literal journey. In an allegorical sense, the Exodus signifies the redemption of man by Christ; in a moral sense, the conversion of the soul from sin to the state of grace; and in an anagogical sense, the departure of the soul from the imprisonment of mortal corruption to the liberty of eternal glory.³

Dante's spiritual pilgrimage from the sinful Egypt of this world to the holy Jerusalem of the earthly paradise is allegorically depicted in the poet's ascent of Mt. Purgatory; all souls on the mountain are pilgrims making a religious journey like that of the Israelites.⁴ Once again it may be observed that, while in Hell and Heaven both damned and saved are eternally fixed in categories required by God's justice and Love, the souls in Purgatorio ascend spiritually through a midway region based solidly in the world yet rising beyond earthly time and climatic change toward immutable Heaven. In Purgatorio, as upon earth, man in fellowship and song, repentance and hope, is able to confess and be forgiven his sins while progressing up the steep path to salvation.

More than has been realized, Dante Alighieri drew upon the oral and written materials of the Holy Land pilgrimage tradition in creating Purgatorio and infusing this part of the Commedia with a body of “real” experience recognizable to readers of his period. For the pilgrimage of Dante and the souls in Purgatorio is a reflection of actual pilgrimages made by palmers along the route of the Exodus past traditional “stations” that linked worldly Egypt to holy Jerusalem. Mt. Purgatory is in part modeled upon accounts of an existing mount of purgation that palmers climbed to visit a very special “ring” of stations as part of their Exodus pilgrimage.⁵ And Dante's letter to Can Grande is a sophisticated restatement of the customary allegorical interpretation given to passages in Psalm 114, Exodus, and popular pilgrim literature referring to the Egypt-to-Jerusalem journey of the Israelites and their fellow “true Hebrews.” “The significance of these stations [of the Exodus], and a catalogue of them I have arranged so as to mention them in my work,” writes Fetellus in a pilgrim guide book of the twelfth century still in use in the seventeenth, “through them the true Hebrew who hastens to pass from earth to heaven must run his race, and, leaving the Egypt of the world, must enter the land of promise, i. e., the heavenly fatherland.”⁶ Anonymous Pilgrim VI (Pseudo Beda) repeats the words of Fetellus writing, also in the twelfth century, about “the meaning of the stations … ; it is through them that the true Hebrew who is eager to make his way from earth to heaven must pass, and leaving behind the Egypt of this world, enter into the land of promise and his heavenly home.”⁷

Carrying guide books, Breviaries, and copies of the Bible,⁸ many “true Hebrews” of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries took what might be termed the famous six-month to four-year “Venetian tour,” usually boarding ship before the Doge's Palace off St. Mark's Square and debarking at Alexandria on the Egyptian delta, proceeding south along the River Nile to Babylon (Old Cairo), turning east in the approximate path of the Exodus to the Red Sea, then under the leadership of pagan guides riding by camel across the deserts of the Sinai peninsula toward Mt. Sinai and the Holy City,⁹ places where either Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic priests attended the palmers.¹⁰ All along the Stations-of-the-Exodus route from Egypt to Jerusalem, the written accounts reveal, the pilgrims on the great journey of their lives were often swept by intense emotion as they prepared themselves spiritually for entrance to the Holy City. They sang and wept, confessed and repented; they reflected on the sins and good actions of their past lives, read appropriate Biblical passages at venerated sites, listened to the edifying exempla of their guides, and prayed before holy icons, often arranged in story-groups, depicting Biblical events—their literal and spiritual experiences paralleling those of souls in Purgatorio. They believed, moreover, that through confession and repentence of sin and the gaining of special Holy Land indulgences remitting the temporal punishments of Purgatory, they were in fact spiritually ascending toward Heaven as they trudged the lonely sand tracks, supposedly up-hill over the globe, to a Holy City considered to be a pole of the world.

Exactly what official Roman Catholic indulgences they were gaining is still something of an ecclesiastical and scholarly puzzle.¹¹ But in 1346-50 when Fra Niccolò of Poggibonsi compiled the first, complete, unofficial list made by a pilgrim, he noted some twenty-six partial indulgences granting the full remission of all temporal punishment, and ninety-two partial indulgences granting a limited remission of temporal punishment. Undoubtedly not all of these indulgences were recognized by the Roman Church. In a very human way the palmers tended to exaggerate colossally the supposed benefits of the indulgences until in the fourteenth century references appear to indulgences remitting every sin, presumably past, present, and future (A Voyage, p. xxiii). Yet the palmers who made the long pilgrimage to gain all possible indulgences, whatever they might be, were those fortunate few who could say that before death they had truly been, not only to the Holy City, but also “once to Sinai.”

Dante was in a position to know much about the travels of the palmers. The poet, one should recall, wrote at length about and may have studied under the Franciscan fathers,¹² those guardians of Mt. Sion who from the early thirteenth century to the present day have considered it their duty to maintain houses in the Holy Land and to care for Holy Land pilgrims.¹³ Dante refers in Paradiso to the thirteenth-century debate between St. Francis and the Sultan of Egypt which resulted, according to tradition, in St. Francis' being granted permission to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Par. XI, 100-3). During Dante's own frequent sojourns over a twenty-year period on the roads between Florence, Ravenna, Verona, Padua, Bologna, Rome, and Venice, the poet could have talked directly to pilgrims on their way to or from the Holy Land. And it seems most likely that a poet who wrote so luminously of his own spiritual pilgrimage would have been at least somewhat aware of one or more works from a voluminous body of popular and devotional pilgrimage literature which includes St. Jerome's The Pilgrimage of Holy Paula (cir. 382 a.d.), Theodosius' On the Topography of the Holy Land (530 a.d.), and the Venerable Bede's On the Holy Places (cir. 700 a.d.).¹⁴

Even in the event that Dante had no direct contact with pilgrims or Franciscans and no direct knowledge of pilgrimage literature—a most unlikely supposition—the poet could have learned of Holy Land pilgrimages from a more general oral tradition of extreme antiquity fostered by pilgrims passing through Italy. By the fourteenth century the Italian cities of Venice, Genoa, and Naples had for one thousand years been the principle ports of embarcation and debarcation for pilgrims traveling between Europe and the Holy Land. At first the number of pilgrims was small, but in the twelfth century successive waves of Crusaders with pilgrims in their wake crossed and recrossed Italy spreading tales of that venerated “land beyond the sea.” In the manner of modern tourists, many persons must have talked more than they wrote about their journeys.

The surviving writings dating from the fourth to the fourteenth century which afford insight into the tradition reveal a remarkable resemblance in structure, content, and tone because palmers generally recorded the same basic reactions to the same places in the same order. During a tour of the Holy Land in 326 a.d., the Byzantine Empress Helena, displaying a unique talent for allegedly divining the exact sites on which numerous Old and New Testament events occurred, fixed most of the place stops along the pilgrimage route. St. Silvia in cir. 382 a.d. confirmed and added to the established stops while traveling along and writing of the Exodus route. Guide books and other pilgrim accounts of the twelfth century categorized the stops into the Stations of the Exodus.¹⁵ While certain pilgrim texts written shortly after Dante's death will be quoted for their detailed information, one can be assured that these writings describe no new experiences or new places; they simply give more elaborate accounts of the familiar old ones.

In Jerusalem a separate series of stops along the Holy Circle path of venerated places eventually became known as the Stations of the Cross after Franciscans, leading palmers to the places beginning in the fourteenth century, established a regular pattern of worship centering on the theme of Christ's death and resurrection.¹⁶ Priests and palmers from the Holy Land introduced the ritual of worshiping at Stations of the Cross into Europe where it was adopted by the Roman Church, but the less organized observances at the desert Stations of the Exodus, concentrating generally on the purgation of sin before entrance to the Holy City, were practiced by fewer persons and were forgotten.

In briefly tracing the pilgrimage theme in Purgatorio, one notes that the ante-Purgatorio section of the poem contains allusions to the opening stages and general direction of the pilgrimage. Dante in Canto 11 suggests that he and Virgil are “come gente che pensa a suo cammino,/ Che va col cuore e col corpo dimora” (11-2). Other figures are soon mentioned as travelers. “Ma noi siam peregrin come voi siete,” says Virgil when meeting the souls arriving by angelically-propelled boat from the Tiber's mouth near Rome, souls apparently dying within the fold of the Roman Church (63). These figures are likened to pilgrims about to follow in the path of the Exodus, for the souls chant the first of many songs to be heard in Purgatorio, the familiar Psalm 114, “In exitu Israel de Aegypto”: “con quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto” (46, 48). The Psalm, traditionally recited at the time of death, contains references to places along the route of the Exodus actually visited by pilgrims in Dante's time: the supposed locales where the Red Sea parted, where Moses struck a fountain from the rock, where the River Jordan stopped flowing before the tribes of Israel. Still, Dante's journey up the mountain proper has not yet begun. Twilight in ante-Purgatorio reminds the poet of that hour when “lo novo peregrin,” sadly leaving his loved ones, starts on his trip (VIII, 4). The pilgrimage begins in earnest the next morning from the far side of the gate at the entrance to the seven terraces of Purgatory proper. Dante alludes in this section to “peregrin” passing one another on the road (XXIII, 16-21) and to the “cotidiana manna” needed as food while moving across the “aspro deserto” of life (XI, 13-4). The pilgrimage is over once the Jerusalem of the earthly paradise has been reached on the summit of Mt. Purgatory. There Dante sees a number of visions of the Church Militant, and Beatrice admonishes Dante to carry within him at least pictures of all that he has seen “che ’l te ne porti dentro a te, per quello/ Che si reca il bordon di palma cinto” (XXXIII, 77-8). The poet is now like those contemporaneous pilgrims who, after having arrived at the Holy City from Egypt, return home bearing staffs wrapped with palms. And so it is appropriate that the pilgrimage theme concludes when Dante, following Beatrice's example, lifts his eyes from Eden to the sun, his eye-beams racing swiftly upward “pur come pellegrin che tornar vuole …” (Par. I, 51). As Beatrice later assets, Dante has made the pilgrimage from Egypt to Jerusalem (Par. XXV, 52-7), and by implication this journey has been allegorically related to the spiritual pilgrimage of the Israelites of the Exodus, of the palmers in contemporaneous times, and of all Christian men seeking salvation.

The trip from the world to the earthly paradise is made up a mountain standing at the antipodes opposite Jerusalem with a summit lifted close to the sphere of the moon. Mt. Purgatory rises with terraces for each of the seven deadly sins from a surrounding sea in which Ulysses and his crew once drowned (Inferno XXVI, 133-42). It is a construct of steep cliffs (Purg. III, 46-8), winding paths and ridges (VII, 70-4), narrow clefts in the rock (IX, 74-8; XII, 97), and low, craggy rocks so large that the poet, bent on the lower slopes under the weight of sin, must clamber up using both hands and feet (IV, 46-51). The summit is always out of sight behind sharply-angled slopes (IV, 40-3). Dante, ascending by day-light and resting at night, gradually straightens to an upright posture (XXIII, 3) as he is healed of his sins (XIII, 3). After having a vision of angels from Mary (VIII, 22-39) and kneeling before the guardian at the gate of Purgatory (IX, 109-11), the poet climbs with ever-increasing ease up steps alternating with terraces. Attention is focused upon individual objects and souls along the way and not only the mountain as a whole. Dante reaches the Garden of Eden on the summit only after passing through a wall of fire at the top of the stairs (XXVIII, 7-18). In the garden the poet sees trees, grass, flowers, and a fountain from which flow the rivers of Lethe and Eunoe (XXVIII, 22 ff.).

Mt. Sinai, in the various editions of Fetellus' Guide Book and in the account of Anonymous Pilgrim VI, is interpreted as meaning “bramble” and is listed twelfth among forty-two Stations of the Exodus extending from the Egyptian city of “Ramsesses,” said to mean “commotion” or “thundering,” to the Holy Land site of “Galgala” on the plains of Moab, a station said to mean “revelation” or “rolling.” The mountain stood toward the end of those worldly stations on the Exodus route representing such ideas as “bitterness” (station five), “hatred” (station eight), “discontent” (station ten), and “desolation of the brave” (station eleven). Past Sinai were Holy Land stations representing such ideas as “bridle” (station eighteen), “Christ” (station nineteen), “miracle” (station twenty-one), “in the assembly” (station twenty-two), and so on to “revelation” (station forty-two).¹⁷ The rational meanings given to those stations that had them—some did not—derived from fanciful etymologies or Biblical events and together have no clear relationship to ideas about the seven deadly sins or to formal theological or philosophical thought. Sometimes the interpretations and numbers of the stations varied in differing accounts: Anonymous Pilgrim VI, in contrast to Fetellus, reverses the order of stations four and five and gives certain stations slightly different interpretations; John of Wurzburg (1160-70 a.d.) mentions only “forty halting-places” instead of forty-two.¹⁸ It is sufficient to realize, however, that to pilgrims in Dante's time Mt. Sinai served as a station in a haphazard chain of conceptions linking ideas of evil and confusion, associated with worldly Egypt, to ideas of religion and order, associated with the Holy Land.

Located geographically in the southern corner of the triangular Sinai peninsula between the two lands, Sinai like Mt. Purgatory visably and symbolically united Heaven to earth; by tradition it was on Sinai that Moses received the Law, Elijah saw God, and “heavenly angels” descended (Fetellus, p. 15). “It is not possible,” comments Procopius in a work circulating about 560 a.d., “for a man to pass the night upon the peak, because at night continuous thunderings and other yet more terrible manifestations take place, which overpower men's strength and reason.”¹⁹ Therefore, the lower areas of the mountain and the monastery of St. Catherine at its base were said to be inhabited by only the most holy monks: “so illustrious their reputation,” writes Fetellus, “that from the confines of Ethiopia to the utmost bounds of the Persians, they are venerated by every Eastern tongue. … They are so reverenced that no one presumes to offend them in anything, and if one should happen to touch them in any way, it is heavily avenged by God” (pp. 15-6). Legends about the miraculous protection of the monks by heavenly powers have continued to circulate to the present day throughout the Sinai peninsula and have recently been recorded by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.²⁰

In making an ascent reminiscent of that of Dante and Virgil up Mt. Purgatory, pilgrims climbed Sinai to its summit using paths alternating with about 3,400 stone steps set or carved into the mountain; the paths and steps are still in use today. In two places the steps pass beneath stone arches, also still in existence, constructed at the end of narrow, rock passageways. Just as a garden sat at the gate of Mt. Purgatory to receive penitent souls, so too at various times beginning at least in the sixth century monks sat at the archways, now called the Gates of Confession and of St. Steven, refusing pilgrims permission to ascend until they had confessed their sins.²¹

The myth-making potential of stories related to the steps and arches can be noted in the accounts of certain pilgrims. Fetellus in the twelfth century emphasized the enormous height of Sinai by citing the number of steps at “three thousand five hundred” (p. 15). Leonardo Frescobaldi of Florence in his account (cir. 1386) stretches the number to “fourteen thousand” (Visit, p. 61). Giorgio Gucci, who before his pilgrimage was a Prior of Florence and an ambassador from Florence to Rome, enunciates a sounder poetic truth by avowing (cir. 1389) that in “climbing them [the steps], they were infinite” (Visit, pp. 3, 117). This same pilgrim learned that the first archway, “or rather a gate, because it was like a gate,” was so old that it was “from the hands of Moses”; the second gate was “from the hands of Elias [Elijah]” (pp. 116-7). Reading the details of Gucci's climb, one almost suspects him of having accompanied Virgil and Dante up Mt. Purgatory: “There are three miles of very quick ascent, and you go by a way that is very narrow, and in several places most narrow, with great valleys on either side so that in fear and peril you go, and not otherwise than on foot, and that with fatigue can you go. You find a stairway, on which you ascend the said mount and which was by hand and force made, which stairway several times you leave again and retake …” (p. 117). In stressing the perils of the climb, Florentine Simone Sigoli mentions (cir. 1389) the “many places on the said mountain to which one must cling with hands and feet in order to ascend …,” and he writes of the “very big crags in height a stone's throw, and up these crags you must climb, … and in this there is very great danger, because from one crag to another there are many and deep clefts” (Visit, p. 196).

The climb up this most reverenced mountain, like that up Dante's mountain, was thought spiritually healing to those burdened with sin. In the fourth century St. Silvia writes of ascending Sinai in a manner that even then appears to have been traditional. She and her group started up the mountain, which from a distance seemed “to be single, in the form of a ring,”²² accompanied by a “priest and monks who lived there”; along the way the pilgrims “were encouraged by the prayers of the holy men …” (Silvia, p. 13). Pausing on a narrow ridge near “the cave where holy Elijah hid” and “the church which is there,” the group offered an oblation and an earnest prayer, and the passage from the book of Kings was read; for we always especially desired that when we came to any place the corresponding passage from the book should be read” (p. 15). Close to the summit at the traditional spot where Moses is said to have received the Law, St. Silvia states that “the book of Moses was read, and one psalm said which was appropriate to the place …” (p. 16). She adds that “on the very summit of the central mountain no one lives permanently; nothing is there but the church and the cave where holy Moses was. Here the whole passage having been read from the book of Moses, and the oblation made in due order, we communicated; and as I was passing out of the church the priests gave us gifts of blessing from the place …”(p. 14).

Procopius mentions in the sixth century that pilgrims gain blessings by mounting first to a spot below the Cave of Elijah where stands a small church “dedicated to the Virgin” which “the Emperor Justinian built.” Then the pilgrims move on to the summit and find a church of such “venerable dignity” “that none dare to enter it, or even to ascend the mountain unless they have first rendered themselves acceptable by fasting and prayers” (Procopius, p. 147). Niccolò of Poggibonsi tells how pilgrims gain a “big indulgence” at the Virgin's Church, a “plenary indulgence” on the summit of Sinai, and another “plenary indulgence” on the summit of neighboring Horeb, often identified as Jebel Catherine (A Voyage, pp. 110-3). Thus were the temporal punishments of Purgatory remitted.

Clearly the “processional method” of spiritual education so peculiar to the Commedia and later to be formalized in Stations-of-the-Cross worship was in use at Sinai from early times; one or more persons are led by a guide from one instructive place to another and encouraged to stop, look, and listen. The separate series of places stops on Sinai (Jebel Moussa), a part of the same pilgrimage pattern that included the Stations-of-the-Cross circle of the place stops at the end of the route, were fully established by the sixth century and are in use even today.

At the first stop near the foot of the mountain, pilgrims joyfully gazed on Mt. Sinai, sang songs, and embraced the monks in a way reminiscent of the souls meeting Dante and Virgil at the base of Mt. Purgatory (II, 37-87). In the fourth century St. Silvia, when she first saw Mt. Sinai from a distance, was told by guides that “‘It is the custom that a prayer be offered by those who come hither, when first from this place the Mount of God is seen.’ So then we did” (Silvia, p. 11). About one thousand years later Niccolò writes of a group of pilgrims at this same place: “from afar we beheld the precious Mt. Sinai, and out of great joy we fell to the ground on our knees, with many tears, chanting: Salve Regina” (A Voyage, p. 103). The same hymn, sung by souls in Purgatorio (VII, 82-3), is later chanted by Niccolò's group along with a prayer on the summit of Mt. St. Catherine (A Voyage, p. 113).

Outside the monastery at Mt. Sinai following a dangerous eight-day passage of the Sinai deserts, Antonius Martyr records (cir. 560 a.d.) an emotional meeting with monks and hermits: “singing psalms, they came to meet us, and falling upon the ground, they did reverence to us. We also did likewise, shedding tears.”²³ And just as Dante moved to greet Casella with an embrace (II, 80-2), so too did Niccolò and his group greet the “Greek monks, many of whom came out to see us; and when we were in their midst, we all embraced with great love …” (A Voyage, p. 104).

Near the monastery several days later Niccolò met other pilgrims, “full forty Latin Franks,” who clustered about him like those souls seeking news from Dante and Virgil at Mt. Purgatory's base (II, 70-3). “For long we talked together,” writes Niccolò, “they asking us about our journey, and we about theirs, and if it were safe; and so we asked the news of the west, and especially of Italy, if there had been anything new: and we enquired about many other things” (A Voyage, p. 116).

The second stop at the valley and Church of St. Mary of the Apparition just below the gates of Sinai corresponds to that valley below the gate of Mt. Purgatory where Dante and Virgil make their first prolonged stop for the night and where two angels from Mary appear. Niccolò describes the climb to the valley over the typical Purgatorical terrain of Mt. Sinai: “The mount is rough with a steep grade, and very stony; and ever you climb vertically as if mounting a ladder: and it is a climb of a good two miles. Arriving at the middle of the mount, you find on the way a beautiful church, which stands in a small valley; and this church is called St. Mary of the Apparition, because here was wrought a beautiful miracle, as you shall hear” (p. 109).

In a similar valley on Mt. Purgatory, Dante is aware that it is the hour that pierces “no novo peregrin d’amore” (VIII, 4). And the poet hears sung the evening hymns Salve Regina followed by Te lucis ante, the last a prayer to the Creator for protection against dreams and phantoms. The prayer is answered when two angels in green garments come “del grembo di Maria” to beat back but not kill a serpent (VIII, 37).

On Mt. Sinai pilgrims such as Niccolò were told that the Virgin appeared with St. Catherine in the valley before the assembled monks and gave evidence of her love for their monastery by miraculously ridding it of “rats and other nasty little beasts” and arranging for its provision (A Voyage, pp. 109-10). Pilgrims then worshiped in and around the Church of St. Mary of the Apparition, perhaps again singing Salve Regina.

The third stop on Mt. Sinai, the two gates before the plain of Elijah, is similar to the gate at the entrance to Mt. Purgatory. “Proceeding on the said mount,” writes Niccolò, “you meet to the west two gates, a bowshot apart: and these gates are strong and narrow, vaulted and well fixed into the mountain. Arriving at the gates you find a monastery called St. Elias, the prophet” (p. 110). Niccolò mentions no warders sitting by the gates on the day of his climb, though at various times the monk St. Stephen and other monks were said to have lived on the plateau of Elijah to be near their posts at the gates (Eckenstein, p. 112).

Dante also observes a gate fixed close to a mountain: “Noi ci appressammo, ed eravamo in parte,/ Che là dove pareami prima rotto/ Pur come un fesso che muro disparte,/ Vidi una porta …” (IX, 73-6). And as a monk might question a palmer at a gate on Sinai, the poet is questioned by a porter who sits at the gate carrying the sword of God's Word in one hand and the keys of pardon and understanding in the other: “Dite costinci, che volete voi?’/ Cominciò elli a dire: ‘Ov’è la scorta?/ Guardate che’l venir su non vi noi!’” (IX, 85-7).

Though on the barren, rocky summit of Mt. Sinai pilgrims certainly found no earthly paradise, they did see “speaking pictures” which, allegorically interpreted like Psalm 114, reminded “true Hebrews” of the soul's passage to Heaven. Niccolò viewed in the summit chapel of Moses an exemplum in the form of a “painted board” depicting many of the events with which the palmer now felt intimately familiar: “how Moses divided the Red Sea with rod in hand, and how the people of Israel passed over, and how Pharaoh's army was drowned in the Red Sea; and at the very place on the Red Sea I have been, which is five days from Babylon; in this church is represented in order all the history of Moses” (A Voyage, p. 111).

Fatigued and thirsty, pilgrims regularly rested near the end of the circle beside a church in a garden of repentance, the single patch of green in the brown valley between Sinai and Mt. St. Catherine. It is here that Frescobaldi and his companions “were honoured: and so they [the monks] do to each one who ascends the … mount” (Visit, p. 64). Of the twelve tribes of Israel, writes Frescobaldi, “that part which repented withdrew to this place, leaving their relatives, who were about three miles from this place; and for the forgiveness God made them, it [the church] is called St. Mary of Mercy.” Outside the church Frescobaldi found “a very beautiful garden well planted with the thickest olive trees I have ever seen; and there are date-trees and figs of Pharaoh, cedars, oranges, and very fine grapes. And in this garden there are three very fine fountains with a great supply of water …” (p. 62). Niccolò too mentions the “beautiful garden, with many varieties of apple trees; a stream of running water, in season, crosses the garden.” Niccolò notes that there the monks allowed them “to eat and drink and sleep …” (A Voyage, pp. 112-13).

Admittedly, the garden is very different from the idealized Eden in which Dante sees “un rio” and a “selva antica,” and parallels need not be pressed. But to the “honored,” though exhausted, pilgrims the garden was a beautiful haven associated with repentance and mercy and no doubt would have been long remembered.

It is worth noting that the pilgrims regularly received communion early the next morning, before departing, in the main monastery Church of the Transfiguration where Christ reigned with two figures at his side sometimes identified as ladies. “In the apse is a picture of the Saviour,” writes Niccolò referring to the dominating seventh-century mosaic on the rear ceiling and wall, “on the right is St. Mary, on the left St. Catherine” (A Voyage, p. 106). In the center of the mosaic, which still exists, the Saviour soars toward Heaven; Moses, Elijah, St. John, St. James, and St. Peter are depicted in various postures below and around Christ; the frame is composed of round portraits of prophets, apostles, and saints. In the arch of the apse are two adjoining medallion figures which Niccolò mentions as being on the right and left of Christ.²⁴

At the conclusion of a spiritual pilgrimage paralleling that of the palmers, Dante, meeting Beatrice who serves under Mary, receives spiritual nourishment in Eden as he prepares to gaze into Beatrice's eyes to see reflected in them the two natures of Christ symbolized by a Gryphon. “L’anima mia,” he writes, “gustava di quel cibo …” (XXXI, 128). The poet can take this food because with God's help he has assured his own spiritual transfiguration. After witnessing a series of visions, Dante sleeps but soon awakes in a manner likened to the spiritual awakening of St. Peter, St. John, St. James, Moses, and Elijah at Christ's Transfiguration (XXXII, 70-80). Dante in Paradise later sees a vision of Christ Transfigured and lifted into Heaven accompanied by the souls of prophets and apostles (Par. XXIII, 16-138). During the questioning of Dante by three persons at the event—St. Peter, St. James, and St. John—Beatrice asserts that the poet shared the same hope given to the three by the Transfiguration and so was permitted to make the journey from Egypt to Jerusalem (Par. XXV, 55). And Dante soon after insists that God makes His Love plain by revealing it through prophets such as Moses (Par. XXV, 40).

After noting similarities between the poet's fictitious and the palmers' actual pilgrimages, one can say with some assurance that those palmers who exultantly returned from their journey “once to Sinai” would have been far less convinced of Dante's originality in inventing Mt. Purgatory than many modern Dante scholars and critics. Spiritually transfigured after a passage over one of Christianity's most important Holy Circles, emotionally moved to song and tears through participation in a centuries-old, collective, religious experience, the palmers would have appreciated well the tone and content of Purgatorio remembering their own meeting with Christians at the base of a great purgatorial mountain, their confession of sins at the mountain's gates, and their final reception of Christ in the form of communion in the Church of the Transfiguration. Like Dante, they would have been led spiritually up the mountain to Christ through the influence of Mary, who was venerated in both the holiest chapel in the monastery and in the two churches flanking Sinai's summit.²⁵ In 808 a.d. the monastery was named after Mary (Visit, 112 n.). Later in the tenth century St. Catherine assumed an intermediary position between the Virgin Mary and the pilgrims, just as Beatrice assumed such a role for Dante. Niccolò records how during a visionary appearance the Virgin confirmed St. Catherine's spiritual position telling the monks to act “for love of me, who am the spiritual mother-in-law of this lady whom you serve. And turning to St. Catherine, she said: this is my daughter-in-law; and take it for certain that you shall not part so soon” (A Voyage, p. 110). With such a holy Lady as St. Catherine to serve, Niccolò might well write that when he and his group first saw her “glorious monastery,” “we felt as if we had arisen from the dead …” “Straightway we went to the precious tomb,” he continues, “wherein was that glorious and blessed body of St. Catherine. From great joy and devotion we all commenced to weep, as those who had found what they desired, and for long we had desired to come to this blessed body” (p. 104).

While for both physical and spiritual reasons Siani resembles Mt. Purgatory, the Mountain of Moses obviously lacks such features as a sheet of flame near the top of the stairs, a garden located on the summit, and streams in the garden flowing from a fountain. Yet these features can be found in charming, second-hand pilgrim tales of an earthly paradise on Mount Eden or Adam's Peak, tales of a kind Miguel Asín has cited as circulating in the thirteenth century and earlier in an oral and written tradition of Moslem legends.²⁶ Descriptions of the supposed earthly paradise survive, Asín has shown, in such works as the Rasail by Ilkhwan as-safa and Futuhat by Ibn Arabi. But Asín fails to record that there were pilgrims who, claiming to have heard stories of the paradise from persons living in the East, merged these tales with writings about the Stations-of-the-Exodus route and carried them back to Europe. Fetellus, for example, writes that, because “Mount Eden” is in a distant place somewhere beyond Mount Or, the thirty-fourth station, it is necessary to depend for information upon what “those who live more near to it assert” (Fetellus, p. 19). Fetellus relates only that the Mount “is situated in a sandy district. It is an inaccessible mountain, and of marvellous height, naturally erected like a tower, as if it had been cut away artificially. Its circuit is more than a day's march. On the sides of the mountain trees are rarely seen” (p. 19). Mount Eden and mountains near it are said to be “cut into from the summit downwards by arches, by caves, by crypts, by cells of diverse dwellings, in which they say that holy hermits and monks dwelt in ancient times” (p. 20). According to Fetellus, the higher parts of Mount Eden, where “eternal spring” is said to reign (p. 20), are characterized by “the serenity of the air, the redolence of the flowers, the odour of the spices, the variety of precious stones in the rivulets of the fountains, and the shining of the fountains, the affluence of the fruit-bearing trees and the beauty of the fruit, the chatterings and songs of the birds, the shady spaces and their greenness …” (p. 19).

Although this account of Mount Eden is quite vague, the author calling himself Sir John Maundeville, who less than a year after Dante's death claimed to have begun a Holy Land journey,²⁷ writes in some detail about the location and appearance of the earthly paradise. “I was not there,” Maundeville modestly admits. “It is far beyond; and I repent not going there, but I was not worthy. But as I have heard say of wise men beyond, I shall tell you with good will” (Early Travels, p. 276). Maundeville declares that “beyond the land,” beyond “more than five thousand isles,” beyond a dark region where “men find nothing but mountains and great rocks” lies the Terrestial Paradise “towards the east, at the beginning of the earth. But this is not the east that we call our east, on this half where the sun rises to us; for when the sun is east in those parts towards Terrestial Paradise, it is then midnight in our parts of this half, on account of the roundness of the earth …” (pp. 220, 276). Men always go around and down, Maundeville asserts, to reach Paradise; “in going from Scotland or from England, towards Jerusalem, men go always upwards …” “Jerusalem is in the middle of the world; and that may be proved and shown there by a spear which is fixed in the earth at the hour of midday, when it is equinoxial, which gives no shadow on any side” (pp. 220-1).

Maundeville's instructive account of Paradise is worth quoting entire:

Terrestial Paradise, as wise men say, is the highest place of the earth; and it is so high that it nearly touches the circle of the moon there, as the moon makes her turn. For it is so high that the flood of Noah might not come to it, that would have covered all the earth of the world all about, and above and beneath except Paradise. And this Paradise is enclosed all about with a wall, and men know not whereof it is; for the wall is covered all over with moss, as it seems; and it seems not that the wall is natural stone. And that wall stretches from the south to the north; and it has but one entry, which is closed with burning fire, so that no man that is mortal dare enter. And in the highest place of Paradise, exactly in the middle, is a well that casts out the four streams which run by divers lands.

(p. 276)

From this fountain the four streams, which later turn into the Nile, Ganges, Tigris, and Euphrates Rivers, “come down so outrageously from the high places” that they create in the waters below “tempests” and “great waves that no ship may row or sail against …” Maundeville adds that of the “many great lords” with “full great companies” who tried to sail to the Terrestial Paradise, some died from rowing, some became blind or deaf, and “some perished and were lost in the waves; so that no mortal man may approach to that place without special grace of God …” (p. 277). Maundeville's remarks about the drowning of great lords and their companies in waters near Mt. Purgatory thus parallels the account in the Inferno of Ulysses' death (XXVII, 91-142).

Although extensive studies of theological, philosophic, literary, and pseudo-scientific treatises have disclosed no entirely adequate visual model for Mount Purgatory, one finds that from combined elements relating to the Terrestial Paradise, Mt. Sinai, and the Egypt-to-Jerusalem journey—all in the basically oral pilgrimage tradition—there emerges the unmistakable outline of Dante's purgatorial mountain. The details are not always in complete harmony—Maundeville, for example, gives us four streams in Eden; Dante, two; the pilgrims mention two gates on a mount of purgation; Dante, one—yet the individualizing features of Mt. Purgatory are sharply defined in the tradition. From the pilgrim writings one gains a consciousness of pagan and Christian guides; a Terrestial Paradise on a mountain in the east opposite Jerusalem; a thundering Mount of Moses allegorically located between earth and Heaven; a summit renowned for divine manifestations and visitations; tempestuous waters in which great lords perish at the base of the mountain; barren slopes fringed by cliffs and characterized by large rocks, steep paths, and narrow clefts; a seemingly endless flight of stairs; gateways guarded by figures hovering over kneeling penitents; a sheet of flame before the entrance to Eden; a paradisal garden raised almost to the sphere of the moon; and a central fountain from which flow various rivers.

Most significant is the fact that these elements are already fused in the tradition by the underlying assumption that a Christian's longing to travel from Egypt to Jerusalem, to ascend the Mount of Moses, and to visit the Terrestial Paradise is analogous to the soul's longing to pass from earth to Heaven. This allegorical view is fortified idealogically by a series of stations along the pilgrimage route and spiritaully by a system of Holy Land indulgences granting remission of temporal punishment after death. The merged elements of the pilgrimage tradition, united by the central allegory, produce in rough outline a visual and allegorical model for Mt. Purgatory.

Dante, whatever the degree of his conscious borrowings, was an heir of this tradition; he gave its elements sophisticated form by dividing the mountain into terraces for each of the seven deadly sins, making the pilgrims known persons who serve in themselves as exemplum, and moulding the whole in accordance with selected philosophical and theological views.²⁸ The poet then adopted the “processional educational method” as a narrative technique, making himself the central figure and moving to and writing about terrace after terrace as a pilgrim might move to and write about holy station after holy station. In creating the general emotional tone of the successive episodes, Dante simply reflected the actual emotional mood of palmers progressing through the successive stages of a Holy Land pilgrimage. By abandoning his role as one among many emotional, penitential pilgrims on a purgatorial mountain, and by becoming a unique, spiritual traveler whose reactions varied according to his growing knowledge and his acceptance of God's Grace, Dante was able to add to his processional education in both Hell and Heaven.

The pilgrim texts, then, do far more than provide us with a model for the outward appearance of Mt. Purgatory; they are a further addition to materials which can be used to study Dante's development of the structure, content, tone, and narrative technique of Purgatorio and, indirectly, of the Commedia as a whole. And the texts can be referred to with confidence as the products of a Christian tradition unforgettably experienced by myriads of pilgrims whose footsteps through the centuries have worn hollows into Sinai's ancient, stone stairs. The pilgrims in their writings reveal that they knew well the world of Purgatorio. On a lofty mountain in a distant “land beyond the sea,” many may even have spoken to their guides in the manner of Arnaut Daniel to Dante:

Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor, e vau cantan.
Consiros vei la passada folor,
E vei jausen lo jorn qu’esper, denan.
Ara vos prec, per aquella valor
Que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
Sovegnha vos a temps de ma dolor!

(Purg. XXVI, 142-7)

Notes

1. La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri, ed. C. H. Grandgent, rev. ed. (Boston, 1933), p. 889. All other line references are to this edition of the Commedia.

2. See Grandgent's comments on the numbering of the psalm in Commedia, Purg. II, p. 335.

3. Edward Moore has shown in Studies in Dante: Third Series: Miscellaneous Essays (Oxford, 1903), pp. 284-374, that Dante's Epistle X to Can Grande seems a genuine document written by the poet, though in the past the authorship of the epistle has been disputed. H. Flanders Dunbar rightly points out in Symbolism in Medieval Thought (New York, 1961), pp. xi-xiii, that, whoever the author may have been, the allegorical interpretation of the Exodus in the epistle is traditional and would have been in accord with the thought of Dante and his educated readers. As the present article demonstrates, the contents of the epistle reflects interpretations found in the twelfth-century writings of Fetellus and Anonymous Pilgrim VI (Pseudo-Beda).

   Grateful acknowledgement is here made of a Fulbright-Hays Grant for 1965-66 which allowed me to pursue this and other Renaissance studies in Jerusalem and the Middle East.

4. Charles S. Singleton in Dante Studies I: Commedia: Elements of Structure (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 22-3, observes that the pilgrimage theme, which he does not relate to the Holy Land pilgrimage tradition, has obvious structural implications. In commenting on the arrival of the souls by boat at the foot of Mount Purgatory (Purg. II, 106-33), Singleton writes that “to the reader who has grasped the whole conceptual structure of the Purgatorio, the relevance of the passage is most evident. At the ultimate summit of the journey now begun by souls who have just landed here lies a city prepared for them, an heavenly one, which they all desire.” And he adds, “These souls have now left Egypt (which is the world, says Augustine) behind them. And the words which Virgil speaks to them place him and Dante within the figure: ‘We are pilgrims even as you are.’ It may be observed, moreover, that nowhere in the journey through Hell had the poem suggested that Dante and Virgil were pilgrims. … This is a Christian place, as Hell is not.” Souls must pass, therefore, up a structurally ordered Christian mountain to salvation. And Singleton suggests that “it is in the figure of those pilgrims that we are asked to find ourselves and our true condition as Christians. We, even as they, are involved in a journey.”

5. Karl Vossler in Mediaeval Culture: An Introduction to Dante and His Times, trans. William Cranston Lawton (London, 1929), II, 167, is correct to warn Dante scholars and critics against “silly positivist criticism” and “picture-postcard scholarship” that “strives to identify this or that Roman amphitheatre, this or that volcanic crater, as the model of the Dantesque Hell, and this or that cone-shaped mountain as the model for Purgatory.” In a work centered upon allegorical meaning, superficial scenic resemblances do seem insufficient to account for the outward form of Mt. Purgatory. However, Miguel Asín in Islam and the Divine Comedy, trans. Harold Sunderland (London, 1926), pp. 113-25, notes that Dante was generally influenced in his creation of Mt. Purgatory by Moslem legends about Adam's Peak and paradisal gardens. A more general study of the Oriental influence on the Commedia is E. Blochet's Les Sources Orientales de la Divine Comedie (Paris, 1901). Auturo Graf in Miti, leggende e supersitzioni del medio evo., (Turin, 1892), l, 5-61, examines legends about the earthly paradise and asserts that there were no precedents prior to Dante's time for placing the earthly paradise on top of a mountain. See also G. Busnelli's La concezione del Purgatorio dantesco and L’ordinamento morale del Purgatorio dantesco (Roma, 1906, 1908); R. Palgen's Das mittelalterliche Gesicht der Göttlichen Kommödie (Heidelberg, 1935).

   Because the similarities between Dante's Mt. Purgatory and the legends are of a general kind, it has usually been held that the over-all form and physical details of Dante's mountain, including the gateway, steps, terraces, and wall of fire, are the allegorical products of the poet's imagination, though Dante is said to have invented Mt. Purgatory introducing fleeting depictions of Italian landscape and placing the Mount within the framework of the Ptolemaic universe. See Bernard Stamber's Dante's Other World: The “Purgatorio” as a guide to the Divine Comedy (New York, 1957), pp. 8 ff.; Marjorie Hope Nicolson's Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (Ithaca, 1959), pp. 44-8; Singleton, Dante Studies I, pp. 22 ff.; and Vossler, II, 160 ff.

   It can be argued, nevertheless, that models for Dante's Mt. Purgatory can be found in a pilgrim text tradition that revealed the Holy Land, not in the clear light of realistic scenic description, but through a misty cloud of exemplum stories, allegorical stations, accounts of icons and mosaics, and curiously factual descriptions of individual places and objects.

6. Description of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, trans. James Rose Macpherson (London, 1892), p. 14. The translation is based mainly upon the Latin ms. (cir. 1130) now in the National Library of Paris (Imperial Library, Fonds Latin; No. 5, 129). This Latin version was copied many times and was even published as late as 1653 by Leon Allatius under the name of Eugesippus.

   Possibly the writings of Fetellus and other early Palestine pilgrims have been neglected by Dante scholars because many were published individually in the 1890's under the auspices of the British-controlled Palestine Exploration Fund; later the same fund financed the publication of fourteen volumes of the works as The Palestine Pilgrim Texts (London, 1890-1897). One would expect these texts to contain much geographic and scientific information; instead, such positivistic comment as one can find is highly colored by the pilgrims' excited accounts of a series of religious stops or stations. The texts really belong to the literature of “spiritual travel.”

7. A Holy Land Account, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London, 1894), p. 40. Stewart's translation is based upon the text published in Oesterreichischer Vierteljahresschrift für Katholische Theologie, notes V. Newmann (Vienna, 1868, 1870).

8. The types of books carried by the palmers are mentioned in the introductions to Niccolò of Poggibonsi's A Voyage Beyond the Seas, trans. Fr. T. Bellorini and Fr. E. Hoade, intro. Fr. Bellarmino Bagati (Jerusalem, 1945), pp. xi-xlviii, and Fetellus, A Short Description, pp. 1 ff. In addition to regular Breviaries in use, a special Breviary or Short Description of Jerusalem, anonymously written, was produced in the sixth century (cir. 530) for Holy Land pilgrims. See Breviary, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London, 1890), pp. 13-6; Fr. Eugene Hoade, Western Pilgrims (Jerusalem, 1952), p. 89.

9. For a discussion of the usual itineraries and activities of Holy Land pilgrims see Thomas Wright, Early Travels in Palestine (London, 1848), pp. i ff., 137-42; Lina Eckenstein, A History of Sinai (London, New York, 1921), pp. 154-64; Hoade, pp. i-viii; Niccolò's A Voyage, pp. vii-xlvii; and Leonardo Frescobaldi, Giorgio Gucci, and Simone Sigoli, Visit to the Holy Places, trans. Fr. Theophilus Bellorini and Fr. Eugene Hoade, preface and notes Fr. Bellarmino Bagatti (Jerusalem, 1948), pp. 1-28; Mahfouz Labib, Pèlerins et Voyageurs au Mont Sinai (Cairo, 1961), pp. 1-42; and Elinor A. Moore, The Ancient Churches of Old Jerusalem: The Evidence of the Pilgrims (Beirut, 1961), pp. 20-74.

10. Eckenstein, pp. 121-33; William Farid Bassili, Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine (Cairo, 1962), pp. 128-34. H. Rabino in Le monastère de Sainte Catherine du Mont Sinai (Cairo, 1938), pp. 33-84, notes that the Greek Orthodox monks in the monastery at Mt. Sinai did not think of themselves as separated from the Roman Church until after the Council of Ferrar (1438-1445) when they were considered as excommunicated. Bishop of Sinai Mark V went to Rome in 1378 to seek funds for the monastery, and in 1425 the Franciscan Fra Antonio da Fana celebrated mass before Greek Orthodox monks in the monastery Church of the Transfiguration. Roman Catholic pilgrims received communion from the Greek monks from the fourth through the fifteenth centuries.

11. See Fr. Bellarmino Bagati's exhaustive table of unofficial Holy Land indulgences as compiled from pilgrim texts and included in his introduction to A Voyage, pp. xl-xlviii. Fr. Bagati compares the unofficial indulgences with those which the Roman Church, as far as can be ascertained, officially recognized (pp. xxii-xxvii). A list of more or less official indulgences can be found in the Table of Indulgences of Acre reproduced in Itinéaries à Jérusalem, ed. Micheland and Raynaud (Geneve, 1882), pp. 235-6.

12. Michele Barbi, Life of Dante, trans. and ed. Paul G. Ruggiers (Berkeley, 1960), pp. 4-7.

13. Girolamo Golubovich, Serie cronologica dei Superiori di Terra Santa (Jerusalem, 1899), pp. 204-5. Golubovich notes that the Friars Minors had founded a convent at Rama (er-Ramieh) near modern Beirut in 1296. A Franciscan convent at Jaffa, in existence in 1257, was destroyed in 1267 and refounded in 1654. In the thirteenth century the Franciscans also founded convents at Nicosia and Famagusta as noted in Girolamo Golubovich's Biblioteca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente francescano (Quaracchi, 1927), II, 372-87, 525-34. The order seems not to have been firmly established in Jerusalem until 1335 (A Voyage, xvii). The coming of the Franciscans and early pilgrims to the Holy Land is discussed generally in Eckenstein, pp. 155 ff. Dante writes of the Franciscans in Par. XI, 37-139.

14. St. Jerome, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London, 1887), pp. 1-16; Theodosius, trans. J. H. Bernard (London, 1893), pp. 3-19; Bede, trans. James Rose Macpherson (London, 1895), pp. 67-87.

15. See Eckenstein, pp. 14-6; Labib, pp. 18-22; Bassili, pp. 59-61; and The Pilgrimage of St. Silvia of Aquitania to the Holy Places, Intro., notes, trans. John H. Bernard (London, 1891), pp. 1-148. The translation is based upon the Latin ms. discovered by G. F. Gamurrini in 1883 at Arezzo in Tuscany and published as S. Silviae Aquitanae Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta, 2nd ed., ed. G. F. Gamurrini (Rome, 1888). At various times during 1962-63 and 1965-66, I have traveled along the ancient pilgrimage route visiting traditional stops at Alexandria, Cairo, Mt. Sinai, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Damascus, Sednaya, and Beirut; and I can attest that modern visitors are still directed to many of the sites discovered by St. Helena and St. Silvia. On the Sinai peninsula, where there have been relatively few noticeable changes since Dante's time, travelers are driven between Suez and Mt. Sinai over sand tracks running along the ancient stations of the Exodus route. Among the religious sites pointed out along the way are many included in the Stations of the Exodus.

16. Fr. Bagatti in discussing the Holy Circle route includes a Table of the Major Stops compiled from the writings of pilgrims of the fourteenth century (A Voyage, pp. xvii-xix). See also Fr. H. Thurston, The Stations of the Cross (London, 1906), pp. 165 ff.; Michel Join-Lambert, Jerusalem, trans. Charlotte Haldane (London New York, 1958), pp. 219-21.

17. Description of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, pp. 14-21. The following is a list of the stations and a condensed summary of their primary interpretations as found in Fetellus: 1. “Ramesses”: “commotion or thundering”; 2. “Socoth”: “Tabernacles or tents”; 3. “Ethan in the desert”: “fortitude or perfection”; 4. “Fyairoth”: “mouth of the nobles”; 5. “Mara”: “bitterness”; 6. “Helim”: no interpretation; 7. “The seventh station again at the Red Sea, some winding of it being met with”: no interpretation; 8. “The eighth station in the Wilderness of Sin, which extends as far as Mount Synai”: “bramble or hatred”; 9. “Depheca”: “pulsation”; 10. “Alus”: “discontent”; 11. “Raphidin”: “desolation of the brave or bringing back of hands”; 12. “Synai”: “bramble”; 13. “The Graves of Lust”: no interpretation; 14. “Asseroth”: “offense”; 15. “Rethma”: “sound or juniper”; 16. “Camoth”: “division of a pomegranate”; 17. “Lebna”: “in the side”; 18. “Retsa”: “bridle”; 19. “Celeta”: “church”; 20. “Mount Sepher”: “beauty, i. e., Christ”; 21. “Araba”: “miracle”; 22. “Maceloth”: “in the assembly, i. e., in the church”; 23. “Taath”: “fear”; 24. “Thare”: “for service or for pasture”; 25. “Methca”: “delight”; 26. “Asmona”: “haste”; 27. “Afferoth”: “bonds or discipline”; 28. “Baneiachan”: “sons of necessity or of crashing”; 29. “Gadgad”: “messenger, or sharpness, or circumcision”; 30. “Gabatath”: “goodness, i. e., Christ”; 31. “Erbrona”: “crossing”; 32. “Asiongaber”: “to the wood of man”; 33. “The Desert of Sin, which is Cades, or Cades Barne”: “holy”; 34. “Mount Or”; no interpretation; 35. “Selmona”: no interpretation; 36. “Fynon”: no interpretation; 37. “Hebar, on the confines of Moab”: “heaps of passers-by”; 38. “Oboth”: “Magi or Phitons”; 39. “Dibungat, in which Israel fought against Seon, King of the Amorites, and Og, King of Basan. Seon is interpreted temptation of the eyes; Og, conclusion; Basan, confusion”; 40. “Selmon Deblataim”: no interpretation; 41. “Mount Abarim”: no interpretation; 42. “The Plains of Moab” on which are located “Galgala”: “rolling” or “revelation.”

18. Description of the Holy Land by John of Wurzburg, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London, 1896), p. 61; A Holy Land Account, pp. 40 ff.

19. Of the Buildings of Justinian, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London, 1896), p. 147.

20. Sinai and Palestine in Connection with Their History (London, 1910), pp. 24-43. The monks of St. Catherine's monastery have fostered the legends to forestall attack by the large numbers of pagan and Moslim Beduin who inhabit the Sinai peninsula. Some of the Beduin believe, as Stanley notes, that the monks have the power to control the rainfall. Further to insure the safety of their monastery, the monks retain in their library a spurious firman of protection supposedly marked with the handprint of Mohammed and a genuine guarantee of protection signed by Napoleon Bonaparte. Both documents were shown to me in 1963 at the monastery.

    The legends about the monks' special and even supernatural relationship to God would have made them excellent mythic types which could have been transformed by poetic imagination into the guardians of the gate and terraces of Mt. Purgatory.

21. Eckenstein, p. 112; Bassili, pp. 164-7.

22. Silvia, p. 13. St. Silvia's statement about the appearance of Mt. Sinai is not entirely clear, although she seems to be suggesting that Sinai is in the middle of a ring of mountains: “when you enter the ring [of mountains?], there are several, the whole range being called the Mount of God” (p. 13). However, in 1695 a line drawing of Mt. Sinai and Mt. Catherine appearing in a French pilgrim book shows the two mountains as ringed with terraces which slope from the summits to the ground. See Monconys' Journal des Voyages de Monsieur de Monconys' Conseiller du Roy en ses Conseils d’Estat et Privé et Lieutenant Criminel au Siège Présidial de Lyon (Paris, 1695), I, p. 403: a reproduction of the drawing appears in Labib, pp. 94-5. The drawing is mentioned because it confirms my personal impression that Mt. Sinai, when viewed from the middle slopes of Mt. St. Catherine in the late afternoon sunlight, does appear as a lofty, triangular mountain ringed with sloping terraces, an existing visual model for Mt. Purgatory. After the ninth century when pilgrims in large numbers began to climb Mt. St. Catherine, they would have passed from three to four hours in the late afternoon facing Mt. Sinai during their descent.

23. Of the Holy Places Visited, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London, 1887), p. 29.

24. A photograph of the mosaic can be found in Bassili, p. 143. There is some confusion about the identity of the figures in the arch of the apse. Bassili names them as Moses and St. Catherine and asserts that the monks point them out as Justinian and Theodora (p. 142); Eckenstein states that they are said to be either Constantine and Helena or Justinian and Theodora (Eckenstein, p. 129); Niccolò gives the identification already quoted.

25. The churches on the sides of the mountain are, of course, St. Mary of the Apparition and St. Mary of Mercy. The holiest chapel in the monastery Church of the Transfiguration, the Chapel of the Burning Bush, is said by Sigoli to enclose the “exact place where Moses, being on the mount, saw a pillar of fire. … They say that the pillar of fire signifies the Holy Ghost descending from heaven to earth to take flesh of the Virgin Mary …” (Visit, p. 195). And Gucci comments upon the chapel “where God appeared to Moses in the bush, that is, in the fire; and in that it was preserved without ever being changed, signifies to us how the Virgin without stain should bring forth” (Visit, p. 112).

26. Islam and the Divine Comedy, pp. 113-25.

27. Dante died on 14 Sept. 1321. The writer calling himself Maundeville, according to his own account, set out from England in 1322, traveled through the Holy Land to the regions ruled by “Prester John,” and returned to the west in 1356. Shortly thereafter, The Book of Sir John Maundeville appeared in French, Latin, and English versions (Early Travels, pp. viii, 129).

    The book has long been recognized as a curious compendium of fact and fiction perhaps actually written by Jean de Bourgogne and Jean d’Outremeuse. A detailed analysis of the case for various authors, together with arguments suggesting that at least one of the authors really visited Palestine, can be found in The Buke of John Maundevill, ed. with French text, notes, and intro. by George F. Warner (London, 1889), pp. xv-xxii. For other discussions of the book and its authorship see C. Raymond Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography (Oxford, 1906), III, 319-24; Arthur Perceival Newton, Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages (New York, 1926), pp. 160-3; and George H. T. Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages (London, 1938), pp. 95-8.

28. See Etienne Gilson, Dante and Philosophy, trans. David Moore (New York, 1949).