[In the following essay, Carroll explains why Dante's markedly atypical conception of Purgatory, including locating it on a mountain instead of underground, was essential to the symbolism used in the Purgatorio.]

Protestant readers, unable to accept a threefold division of the world to come, may be excused if they approach the Purgatorio with the feeling that its chief ethical interest and value must be confined to members of Dante's own Church. Fortunately it is not necessary for our present purpose to entangle ourselves in the polemics of the subject, for the simple reason that Dante assures us that the whole poem has a meaning for this world as well as for the next. In his Epistle to Can Grande he writes: ‘The subject, then, of the whole work, taken according to the letter alone, is simply a consideration of the state of souls after death; for from and around this the action of the whole work turneth. But if the work is considered according to its allegorical meaning, the subject is man, liable to the reward or punishment of justice, according as through the freedom of the will he is deserving or undeserving.’¹ This allegorical or moral sense manifestly covers both worlds: as indeed is implied in the fact that Dante himself climbed the Mountain, and underwent its purifying discipline, while still clothed in ‘the flesh of Adam.’² Nor is this a mere poetic fiction forced upon him by the exigencies of the work; on the contrary, it is in accordance with the teaching of the Church that the cleansing pain of Purgatory in another world is rendered necessary because sinners shrink from it in this. On the First Terrace, for example, one of the penitents confesses his sin of Pride, and adds:

‘And here must I this burden bear for it
Till God be satisfied, since I did not
Among the living, here among the
dead.’(3)

The meaning is clear. Since the cleansing discipline ought to be undergone here and now, we are justified in reading the Purgatorio, according to Dante's allegorical sense, as the process by which the soul may purify itself while still in the flesh. This, as Dean Church says, brings this division of the poem much nearer our common experience than either the Inferno or the Paradiso: ‘The Purgatorio is a great parable of the discipline on earth of moral agents, of the variety of their failures and needs, of the variety of their remedies. We understand the behaviour of those who are undergoing their figurative processes of purification. They labour as men do who feel the influence of the Spirit of God striving with their evil tendencies and lifting them up to purer and nobler things. We understand their resignation, their thankful submission to the chastisement which is to be the annealing to strength and peace. We understand their acquiescence and faith in the justice which appoints and measures their “majestic pains.” We understand the aim and purpose which sustain them, the high-hearted courage which endures, the steady hope which knows that all is well. There is nothing transcendental in all this; nothing but what experience helps us easily to imagine; nothing but what good men, always on the way to be better, have gone through on the scene of life.’⁴ In short, on any theory of the future world, the struggle against the Seven Deadly Sins is not a thing which it is safe to postpone; and the process by which a great poet, a great theologian, and a great penitent like Dante believed they could be finally vanquished, ought surely to be a subject of the utmost interest to every man who knows he sins and longs for purity.

In form, plan, and situation, Dante's conception of Purgatory stands in striking contrast to that current in his day. He departs entirely from the teaching of his master in theology, St. Thomas Aquinas. According to the great schoolman, neither Reason nor Scripture gives material for determining the place of Purgatory; but the probability is that it is divided into two parts: one, ‘according to common law,’ where ordinary cases are purged in an underground prison, which, though not actually in Hell, is so closely connected with it that the same fires burn in both; another, ‘according to dispensation,’ where special cases are punished in divers places, ‘either for the instruction of the living or the relief of the dead.’⁵ Speaking generally, some such conception as this prevails in the visions of Purgatory in which the Middle Ages were so prolific. Alberic, Tundal, Owain, the Monk of Evesham, Thurcill, and many others, profess to have received revelations of a dark and awful Purgatory of ice, fire, and demonic tortures, so terrifying that not unnaturally they often mistook it for a worse place.⁶ This gloomy underground conception Dante deliberately set aside, lifting his Purgatory serenely into the sunlight and the blue sky in the form of a great Mountain, the highest under heaven, and the direct antipodes of Mount Calvary. This bold open-air treatment is no caprice; it is essential to his whole conception of the object to be accomplished. That object is to undo the Fall, to bring man back to the original state of natural righteousness, consisting of the four cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude. These natural virtues must be regained before the soul can pass on and up to the supernatural virtues, Faith, Hope, Love, without which the Beatific Vision is impossible. It is for this reason that Dante sets the Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden, on the lofty summit of Mount Purgatory; and the long and arduous ascent from Terrace to Terrace is simply the undoing of the Fall, the human soul climbing its painful way back to the fourfold virtue on which the natural life turns as on a hinge.

A second symbolism springs from this. These natural virtues imply society, and society in that free, ordered, and happy state which nothing but righteous government can secure. To Dante, as his De Monarchia shows, this meant a universal Empire under one head; and of this, the Earthly Paradise on the Mountain-top is the symbol. This in its turn was but the prelude to the Celestial Paradise; hence the great Procession of Revelation must meet the penitent soul to add the supernatural virtues to the natural, and thus prepare it for the final blessedness. It is obvious that this scheme of symbolism would be quite impossible in some dark world underground, next door to Hell, and scorched by its flames.

This, then, is the leading idea, and it lends itself easily to the carrying out of the symbolism of purification in many other directions. The origin of the Mountain itself is probably an allegory. When Satan fell on the southern side of the earth, the land there fled to the other hemisphere, and the waters rushed in to fill the vacant space. The soil displaced as he tore his way to the centre of the earth, was flung up behind him by the shock, and formed this Mountain.⁷ In other words, the fall of Satan which ruined Eden, threw up, by a kind of moral recoil, a pathway of return to the lost Garden, and so far the great Adversary defeated himself. It represents perhaps that mysterious ‘soul of goodness in things evil’ in virtue of which even sin bears within its bosom something of its own cure. Further, the Mountain-form made it possible so to arrange upon its sides the Seven Deadly Sins as to indicate at once their relative distances from God and the order in which they must be faced and conquered. The precipices at the base, with their close tortuous clefts, are natural symbols of the strait gate and narrow way at the beginning of the new life; while the lessening of the pain and toil as Terrace after Terrace is won, represents the increasing ease and joy of right living which every self-conquest brings. Still further, by this open-air treatment Dante gained the aid of the healing powers of Nature, powers which grow purer and more Divine as the soul climbs higher and higher out of evil. Above all, he was able to invest the entire Mountain from base to summit with the sunshine and atmosphere of Hope, in contrast to the dark inscription of Despair above the Gate of the Inferno. The penitents are, indeed, prisoners, but ‘Prisoners of Hope,’ who know that in due time the long exile will be past, and they will stand, each in his appointed place, in the Eternal Fatherland. To say, as a recent commentator does,⁸ that this open-air situation of Purgatory is due to the ‘demands of poetic treatment’ for the sake of a contrast to the gloom of the Inferno, is totally inadequate. Doubtless the poetic beauty of the work is greatly increased by this contrast; but the far deeper and truer reason is that it is inherent in Dante's entire conception of the moral ends to be accomplished and of the whole process of purification.

We come now to the moral and physical structure, which it will be well to have clearly before our minds from the outset, even at the risk of some repetition when we reach the detailed exposition. The following statement should be compared carefully with the Diagram of the Mount which faces the title-page.

The Mountain is divided into three great sections, each of which represents a distinct stage of the purgatorial discipline: Ante-Purgatory, Purgatory Proper, and the Earthly Paradise.

I. Ante-Purgatory

This division consists of the base of the Mountain, which is occupied by souls that postponed repentance till the eleventh hour. The long delay has created a semi-paralysis of will-power, which renders them morally incapable of beginning their self-purification at once. They can only starve their evil habits into weakness by abstaining from those acts which nourished them for a lifetime. Four classes are distinguished.

I. The Excommunicate.

Their defiance of the Church to the eleventh hour has produced in these souls a moral paralysis which detains them thirty times the period of their contumacy, setting them at the very base of the Mountain, farthest from God, and with the longest distance to climb.

II. The Indolent.

These are not to be confounded with the Slothful on the Fourth Terrace, who pursued goodness, but pursued it slackly. The Indolent simply ignored the claims of goodness to the end of life through sheer laziness of nature. Having died a natural death, they received the full period of repentance. Their indolence still clings round them, detaining them for the period of their life on earth.

III. The Energetic.

This class differs from the last in two respects: (1) they died by violence, and therefore had not the full natural period for repentance; and (2) the very activity of their earthly life was the cause of their delay. It still detains them: they move with the swiftness of shooting stars and summer lightning.

IV. Negligent Worldly Princes.

These are seated in a Flowery Valley, secluded from vulgar eyes—symbolic of the earthly rank and pomp for which they neglected the welfare of their souls. They are set higher up the Mountain, perhaps because the greatness of their temptations forms some palliation of their delay.

The last three classes are detained as many years as they postponed repentance, unless the period is shortened by holy prayers. Hence Ante-Purgatory is described as the place

Where time by time restores itself.(9)II. Purgatory Proper

This division occupies the rest of the Mountain, with the exception of the table-land upon the summit. The only entrance is St. Peter's Gate, guarded by an Angel-Confessor. The three steps which lead up to it represent the three parts of the Sacrament of Penance—Confession, Contrition, Satisfaction. The Gate opens only to the golden key of authority and the silver key of knowledge.

Inside the Gate the Mountain is cut into Seven Terraces, on each of which one of the Seven Deadly Sins is purged away. Since Purgatory, unlike the Inferno, deals not with acts, but simply with evil dispositions remaining in the soul, all the sins are traced to some disorderment of Love, according to the following classification:

Terrace I. Pride.

Terrace II. Envy.

Terrace III. Anger.:

I. Love Distorted—the desire to inflict some injury on our neighbour.

Terrace IV. Accidia.:

II. Love Defective—a weak, indolent desire after the good.

Terrace V. Avarice.

Terrace VI. Gluttony.

Terrace VII. Sensuality.:

III. Love Excessive—the immoderate desire for things not positively wrong in themselves.

This classification of the Seven Deadly Sins and the discipline by which they are conquered will become clearer if we keep the following points in mind:

(1) Sins of the spirit—Pride, Envy, Anger—are set farthest down the Mountain, and sins of the flesh highest—Avarice, Gluttony, Sensuality: to indicate their relative distances from God. The central sin of Accidia, as partaking of the nature of both, is set as a transition vice between the two groups.

(2) On every Terrace, the penitents are represented as entangled in the residue of sinful habit: the Proud still need to have their haughty necks humbled; the Envious have their eyes sewed up; the Angry are enveloped in the smoke of their own blind passion; and so on.

(3) This residue of sin is wrought out of the soul by the constant practice of good deeds—a vice by its opposite virtue.

(4) On every Terrace, a twofold subject of meditation is set before the penitents: great examples of the virtue to be won, as a ‘whip’ to urge them on in pursuit of it; and great examples of the vice to be crushed, as a ‘bridle’ to hold them back from the spiritual ruin it creates.

(5) On every Terrace save one, Accidia, a prayer is given.

(6) All up the Mount, from base to summit, the penitents are aided by the Holy Scriptures and the Hymns and Offices of the Church. When a soul is freed from any sin, it is hailed with the Beatitude of the virtue won.

(7) The entire Mountain is under the guardianship of Angels. Each Terrace has its Angelic Warder, who represents the virtue to be won upon it. In this Dante departs entirely from the usual mediæval visions of Purgatory, which are rendered hideous by the presence of foul demons as tormentors of the penitents.

(8) On every Terrace, the souls accept joyfully ‘the sweet wormwood of the torments.’ The only sign of perfect purity is their own desire to depart. When any soul is finally purified, the Mountain shakes, and all the spirits chant the Gloria in excelsis for their brother's deliverance.

(9) The function of Virgil in the Purgatorio requires some special notice. As the Natural Reason he was able to guide Dante through Hell, for the natural intellect and conscience know sin and its inevitable issues. When the poet enters the Christian Purgatory, however, it might be thought that he would part company with his heathen guide. But he saw no reason for doing so. He regarded Virgil as a prophet of Christianity. In his Fourth Eclogue he was believed to have foretold the Advent of the Christ; and the passage in the Sixth of the æneid quoted at the beginning of this Introduction must have seemed to Dante almost a Divine revelation of the Purgatory of the Church:

‘Nay but, even when life with the last light has fled,
Not yet departeth every ill from the unhappy dead,
Nor yet are they quite quit of all the fleshly stains;
For deep within it needs must be that many a thing remains,
Long grown with the soul itself, in fashion wonderful.
Therefore are they plied with pains, and render back in full
The torments of their ancient sins. Some, hung up on high,
Are stretched out to the empty winds; some have sin's deep dye
Washed clean beneath a whirlpool vast, or by the fire out-brent.
We bear each one our ghostly weird: thereafter are we sent
Through wide Elysium, and, a few, the Happy Fields we roam.
Till the long day, the orb of Time running full circle home,
Has taken out the concrete stain, and left all pure and fair
The sense ethereal, and the fire of unpolluted air.’

Dante must have felt that the man who could thus anticipate the doctrine of the Church was not unworthy to be his guide to ‘the Happy Fields’ on the Mountain-top. At the same time, he recognizes that Virgil is far from being as familiar with the penitent life as with the world of the lost. At first he scarcely knows whether to turn to the right hand or to the left. Again and again he has to ask his way, and lean on the guidance of the penitents themselves. At different points, Sordello and Statius become his guides; on the summit Matelda supersedes him; and when Beatrice, symbol of Divine Revelation, descends, he suddenly vanishes before the higher wisdom.

III. The Earthly Paradise

This final division consists of a great table-land on the summit of the Mountain, covered with a ‘Divine forest,’ in obvious contrast to the dark and savage wood in which Dante lost himself at the beginning of the Commedia. We have seen that it represents the Garden of Eden, symbol of just government.

In the midst stands a great Tree, bare of leaves and flowers—the Tree of Empire, withered up and barren through the Fall. It must be kept in mind that almost the entire symbolism of this part of the Purgatorio gathers round the relations between Church and Empire. The narrative passes through four principal movements.

I. The Procession of the Spirit in Revelation—the Books of Scripture with the Chariot of the Church in the centre. The Chariot is drawn by a Gryphon, representing Christ; and on the Car descends Beatrice, as the Bride, the Spirit of Revelation.

II. The Judgment of Dante. Beatrice refuses to unveil and reveal her beauty till Dante makes full confession of his unfaithfulness to her. After confession, Matelda, the Active Life, draws him through Lethe, and he forgets his sins.

III. Seven Visions of the History of Church and Empire pass before his eyes, ending with the carrying away of the Papacy to Avignon in 1305.

IV. The Final Purification of Dante. He has now learnt from Beatrice the one great lesson of the Earthly Paradise—the true, ideal relations between Church and Empire, and must pass on to the higher revelations of the Celestial Paradise. For these, one thing is necessary: the quickening of his memory of good deeds. Matelda therefore makes him drink of Eunoë, which renews his soul and prepares him to mount among the stars.

One final remark. The first impression of a Protestant reader is, perhaps, that this long purifying discipline is carried out by man's own unaided strength, independently of Divine grace. Nothing could be farther from Dante's thought. The foundation on which the whole process is even possible, is the salvation wrought out by Christ. This is implied on the Terraces and lower slopes of the Mountain in the constant use of Scripture and of the Hymns and Offices of the Church; and it becomes explicit on the summit when the great Procession of Revelation appears in the form of the Cross, with the Chariot of the Church as its centre, drawn by Christ Himself in His twofold nature. Assuredly Dante had no idea that man has any natural ability to save himself: from first to last, he knew that ‘salvation belongeth unto the Lord.’

Notes

1. Epis. x. 8 (Latham's Translation).

2. Purg. xi. 44.

3. Purg. xi. 70-72.

4. Introduction to Vernon's Readings on the Purgatorio, p. xiii.

5. Summa, iii. App. to Suppl., De Purgatorio, a. 2.

6. See Forerunners of Dante by Marcus Dods, chap. vi.

7. Inf. xxxiv. 121-126.

8. An English Commentary by Rev. H. F. Tozer, M.A., p. 192.

9. Purg. xxiii. 84.