SOURCE: “The Poem's Center (Purgatorio XII-XVIII)” in Dante's Political Purgatory, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, pp. 144-57.

[In the following essay, Scott emphasizes the elements of Cantos XII to XVII that show Dante's political hopes and beliefs, particularly the idea that both political and spiritual spheres can harmoniously coexist on earth.]

Pride is at the root of all sin (Eccles. 10. 15), and the Pilgrim will soon declare how heavily this sin weighs down his soul (Purg. XIII. 136-38). Once more, the number three is in evidence, when Dante encounters Omberto Aldobrandeschi, Oderisi da Gubbio, and Provenzano Salvani in Canto XI. The first is an exemplum of overweening pride, typical of the feudal aristocracy. Omberto belonged to the powerful Aldobrandeschi clan, Counts of Santafiora and lords of the Sienese Maremma (cf. Purg. VI. 111). His hubris led to his death, when he took on an invincible number of adversaries:

          “L’antico sangue e l’opere
leggiadre
d’i miei maggior mi fer sí arrogante,
che, non pensando a la comune madre,
          ogn’ uomo ebbi in despetto tanto avante,
ch’io ne mori’, come i Sanesi sanno,
e sallo in Campagnatico ogne fante.”(1)

In fact, the same terrible sin stains the whole family and has led it to disaster (ll. 68-69)—a corollary added by the poet of the Comedy to his discussion of the true nature of nobility in Book IV of the Convivio. Pride in one's ancestral nobility (Omberto); pride in one's artistic genius (Oderisi); and pride in political success leading to humiliation and annihilation (Provenzano): such is the scope of the exempla chosen by the poet. Provenzano Salvani, after the Sienese victory of Montaperti (1260), had become the most powerful person in Siena: “he governed the whole city, and all the Ghibelline party in Tuscany was under his leadership, and he was full of presumption” (Villani, Cronica VIII. 31). His pride and ambition made him aspire to become Signore or dictator of Siena (ll. 122-23):

          “ed è qui perche fu presuntüoso
a recar Siena tutta a le sue mani.”(2)

The epithet “presuntuoso” stands for an excess of magnanimitas or ambition that spurs men on to attempt the impossible, bringing about their fall. At the same time, the exemplum of Provenzano's fate—his defeat and decapitation by the Florentines at the battle of Colle Val d’Elsa in 1269—should serve as a deterrent to those who would attempt to seize dictatorial power in the Tuscan communes.³

The political theme returns in Cantos XIV and XVI, the center not merely of the Purgatorio but of the whole poem. In Canto XIV Dante comes across two spirits on the Terrace of Envy. The pilgrim introduces himself as having been born on the banks of the River Arno, but the way he appears to conceal the river's name leads one of the souls (Guido del Duca: ll. 29-66) to launch into a fierce denunciation of the corruption that has taken hold of all the inhabitants of the Arno Valley. They behave as though they had been turned into beasts by the witch Circe. This initiates what is at first a regional lament (Canto XIV), but which soon broadens into a discourse on universal corruption in the contemporary world (Canto XVI).

Circe was known to Dante especially through the lines in Virgil's epic (Aen. VII. 19-20), where the sorceress was credited with the power of turning her former lovers into animals. The metamorphoses of the inhabitants of the Arno Valley are certainly inspired by Dante's outburst in the Convivio (II. vii. 3-4), where bestiality (“the mad bestiality” of Inf. XI. 82-83) is denounced as the condition encompassing men and women who abandon rational living: “when it is said that a man lives, this must be understood to mean that he uses his reason, which is the life specific to him and the activity of the noblest part of his being. Therefore, anyone who abandons reason and uses only his sensitive part, does not live as a man but as a beast; as that most excellent Boethius says: ‘He lives the life of an ass’” (my emphasis). Dante refers to a passage in Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae (IV. iii. 63-64), which contains the phrase Asinum vivit, applied, however, to those who are slow and stupid. In the same section (56-66), we read something close to the poet's purpose in Purgatorio XIV:

You cannot consider anyone transformed by vices to be a man. Does Avarice carry away the violent robber of other men's goods? You may say he is like a wolf [Lupi similem dixeris:: cf. Purg. XX. 10]. Is the angry and unquiet man [Ferox atque inquies] always quarrelling? You may compare him to a dog. Does the traitor rejoice at the success of his hidden intrigues? He is no better than a fox. … Is he immersed in filthy and unclean lusts? He is entangled in the pleasure of a stinking sow.⁴

Dante's readers must be struck by the fact that these are the beasts chosen by the poet to designate the inhabitants of the Casentino in the Upper Arno (Purg. XIV. 43-45: “foul swine”), Arezzo (ll. 46-48: “curs”), Florence (ll. 49-51: “wolves,” cf. Par. XXV. 6), and Pisa (ll. 53-54: “foxes”). We may note in passing that Dante has rearranged Boethius' list—possibly in order to remind his readers of the moral order of his Inferno (Lust-Violence-Fraud). Even the River Arno takes on bestial characteristics in the line: “and it scornfully turns away its snout from them” (l. 48). Thus the “royal river” of Purg. V. 122 has been supplanted by the “accursed and ill-fated ditch” of Purg. XIV. 51: the heart of Tuscany has been turned into a ditch of iniquity and corruption. Its inhabitants are truly like wild beasts in their rejection of a society organized on the basis of Justice and reason. The same imagery is evident at the close of the Monarchia (III. xv. 9), where we are told that God has instituted two goals for the human race; nevertheless, “human greed would cast them behind, if men—like horses—led astray by their own brutishness, were not held to the right path by ‘bit and rein.’ ”⁵ The absence of imperial authority in Italy is alluded to yet again in the lack of all peace and Justice, which spawns the prevailing wickedness that has brought down so many Italians to a bestial level.⁶

Guido del Duca, whose eyelids are sewn up on the Terrace of Envy, now employs the prophetic “I see” (Purg. XIV. 58) in his foretelling of the doom that is about to strike Florence—a bitterly ironic touch underlining his claim that what he says is revealed to him by none other than God Himself (l. 57, the “true spirit” corresponds to St. John's description of the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of truth”: John 16. 13). It would be difficult to find more striking proof that the poet is concerned above all with the message he must impart “for the sake of the world that lives wickedly” (Purg. XXXII. 103), rather than a theological game in which his truths are reserved for Paradise. This latter view has gained ground recently especially in American Dante scholarship. Critics tend at times to turn the author of the Comedy into a medieval fundamentalist, such that everything placed in the mouth of a sinner in Hell (and even of the souls found in Purgatory) must be definition be erroneous. Professor Iliescu provides an example of this critical stance in claiming that all the souls in both the Inferno and the Purgatorio “reflect, in part or completely, only the worldly level of understanding. Even the answers given by Virgil are often partial and at times completely unsatisfactory.”⁷ Instead, as we have seen in line 57, the poet claims that it is the Holy Spirit, God Himself, that allows the blinded soul to see the truth of what is about to be enacted on earth.

What Guido “sees” is the actions of Fulcieri dei Calboli, who, as Podestà of Florence in 1303, persecuted the White Guelfs on behalf of the Blacks. Fulcieri is here portrayed as a ferocious hunter of the wolves inhabiting the “evil wood,” reminiscent of the “savage wood” of Inf. I. 1-7, where the pilgrim had found himself in mortal danger, thus indicating that Florence has been transformed into an infernal city.⁸ Fulcieri sells his victims' living flesh before butchering them, staining his own and his family's honor, and causing such an ecological disaster that the Florentine wood will not recover for a thousand years or more (ll. 61-66). As so often, Dante's personal experience as an exile is the basis for his proclamation of universal truths.

Guido del Duca's companion grieves at this prophecy. He is introduced in lines 88-90 as Rinieri dei Calboli, a leading Guelf from Romagna (Podestà of Faenza in 1247, of Parma in 1252, and of Ravenna in 1265), who was killed in battle in 1296. Rinieri had taken an active part in the struggles that plagued Romagna in the second half of the thirteenth century, and he had been defeated by Guido da Montefeltro in his first attempt to take possession of his native city of Forlí. Typical of the atmosphere of reconciliation in Purgatory—and the author's standpoint above both parties—is the neighborly concern shown for the sorrows afflicting Rinieri and his Guelf family by Guido, who had belonged to a noble Ghibelline family from Ravenna and who now weeps for the decadence of the “men of Romagna turned to bastards!” (l. 99). The topos Ubi sunt?, repeated over some twenty-seven lines, hammers home the theme that nowhere in Romagna are citizens of virtue to be found in 1300. Even a man who had opposed Frederick II's attempts to assert imperial authority over Faenza, Bernardin di Fosco, is praised as a “noble offshoot of a lowly plant” (l. 102)—although, as so often, we cannot be sure of the extent to which Dante was aware of the biographical details regarding this minor character.

On the other hand, the poet is merciless in his condemnation of the usurpation of Romagna by the Popes. Indeed, the praise of past virtue as exemplified in the lines that inspired Ariosto (ll. 109-10: “the ladies and the knight, the toils and the pastimes of old to which love and courtesy urged us”) emphasizes above all the corruption of the present, “where hearts have become so evil” (l. 111), thus anticipating the denunciation of papal temporal rule in Purgatorio XVI. The demarcation line is clear: it is set by the cession of the imperial territories to papal claims by Rudolph of Habsburg in 1278. This marked a cataclysmic change for the poet, who found living proof of the moral degeneration of his age in the betrayal of the traditional loyalties to the Empire, a betrayal that had brought about the bastardization of the whole region. Romagna, governed by tyrants with papal support, symbolizes the corruption of the two supreme spiritual and political authorities after the Popes extended their temporal power northward to the River Po.⁹

The coupling of “love and courtesy” in the virtuous Romagna of old is to be placed alongside the “valor and courtesy” traditionally found in northern Italy before the terrible conflict between the papacy and Frederick II, “before Frederick encountered opposition” (Purg. XVI. 115-17). Some recent critics have questioned the value of such terms as “honor” and “courtesy” in the context of the Comedy. They are in fact positive criteria for the appraisal of the contemporary scene, set off against the glorious and virtuous past. In the Vita Nuova (XLII. 3), God is Lord of Courtesy. In the Convivio, the word's etymology (from the virtuous courts of former times) is exploited in order to highlight society's corruption and decadence:

Courtesy and honesty are one and the same thing; and since the virtues and fine behavior were practiced at court in former times, just as their opposites rule there nowadays, this word was derived from the courts, and courtesy signified behavior at court. If this word were to be derived from present-day courts, especially those in Italy, it would signify nothing but baseness.¹⁰

Courtesy is thus synonymous with honesty, which in its turn is defined as the pursuit of truth and justice (Conv. IV. vi. 9).

In the Comedy, the epithet cortese (“courteous”) is applied first to God himself (Inf. II. 17), to Virgil and his solicitude for Dante's welfare (Inf. II. 134), and then, to the Angel at the Gate of Purgatory (Purg. IX. 92); only once is it used ironically (Par. IX. 58), but the last—like the first—occurrence in the poem refers to God's courtesy (Par. XV. 48). Just as significant is the fact that precisely in the canto under review, Heaven is alluded to as God's court:

          “E se Dio m’ha in sua grazia rinchiuso,
tanto che vuol ch’i’ veggia la sua corte
per modo tutto fuor del moderno uso,”(11)

At the very center of Hell, the pilgrim had been asked by a Florentine:

          “cortesia e
valor dí se dimora
ne la nostra città sí come suole,
o se del tutto se n’è gita fora;”(12)

Once again, we find the ascent from the particular to the universal: decadence in Florence at the center of Hell; halfway through Purgatory, decadence in central and northern Italy leading to the cause of universal corruption in 1300; and, in the middle of Paradiso, we find the exemplum of ancient Florence, the good city to whom the poet remained attached with every fiber of his being and which he held up as a glass mirroring contemporary vices and misgovernment.

In the sixteenth canto of Purgatorio, the two poets leave the Terrace of Envy and enter the terrace where the tendency to wrath and its effects are remedied. Unlike their discordant behavior on earth, the wrathful, although blinded by dense smog, are united and chant in total harmony the Agnus Dei (a symbol of Christ's mansuetude). The darkness makes it impossible for the spirits to see the pilgrim, a detail serving to emphasize the importance of speech in this whole episode: “our hearing will keep us united” (l. 36). Now, at the center of his poem, Dante meets a certain “Marco,” whom the early commentators identify merely as a well-known and virtuous courtier. Benvenuto da Imola was the first to indicate his native region as Lombardy (rather than Venice, as in Lana and L’Ottimo) from the statement “I was a Lombard” in line 46. In this and the next two lines, Marco tells us all we can possibly know about his life on earth, where he combined a knowledge of practical affairs with a love of virtue which no one now strives to achieve. Nevertheless, it seems likely that he was active at the court of Gherardo da Camino, de facto Lord of Treviso from 1283 to 1306—and one of the three old men in whom the virtuous past lives on as a reproof to the present (Purg. XVI. 121-40). In Convivio IV. xiv. 13 Dante had already praised Gherardo's nobility, although here the pilgrim asks who this “sage” was and thus seems almost to tempt Marco to anger.

Marco's praise of a leading Guelf, who was a colleague of the infamous Corso Donati, together with another Guelf noble, Corrado da Palazzo from Brescia (who had been Charles of Anjou's Podestà and Vicar in Florence in 1276 and Captain of the Guelf Party in 1277), should lead us to beware of attributing extreme Ghibellinism to Dante's Marco—as has been done, for example, by R. Montano, G. Giacalone, and N. Iliescu (the latter arraigning those “readers of the Comedy who still remain moved by the garrulity of the Ghibelline Marco Lombardo, in the infernal darkness of the terrace of anger”).¹³ For my part, I confess that I do not find Marco garrulous. On the contrary, I find his discourse extraordinarily concise and pungent, for in the space of half a canto (ll. 73-145) it deals with the most basic issues in Dante's Comedy: the importance of free ill; God's Justice in rewarding and punishing humanity; the creation of the human soul and its attractions to everything that reminds it of its origin in the source of all happiness and good; the consequent need for laws and a supreme temporal guide; the need for cooperation between the Empire and the Church; and the catastrophe that has ensued since “the one has extinguished the other” (l. 109) in combining temporal with spiritual power. Far from being garrulous, Marco covers an immense amount of ground in very few—about 500—words, and it would be difficult to find a better example of the poet's concision, or of his ability to combine politics (the need for humanity to be governed by the Emperor) with theology (the creation of the human soul directly by God).

Indeed, the idea that Dante in his Purgatorio set intellectual or doctrinal traps for his readers by creating characters who expressed falsehoods is a gross error of interpretation. Not only does it belittle the poet's purpose in writing his poem—the whole Comedy, not just the Paradiso—and his intention of opening his readers' eyes to the truth as willed by God, but it violates a fundamental law of Purgatory: namely, that souls are no longer capable of sinning (Purg. XXVI. 131-32; cf. XI. 19-24). The poet of the Comedy was above all concerned with stating the truth, a truth gradually and sequentially disclosed throughout the poem—as Virgil recognizes in Purg. XVIII. 46-48:

           … “Quanto ragion qui vede,
dir ti poss’io; da indi in là t’aspetta
pur a Beatrice, ch’è opra di fede.”(14)

The whole truth will only be learned in Paradise, but it will include the truths enunciated along the way; Marco Lombardo's message will be reiterated by none other than Beatrice herself:

          “Tu, perché non ti facci maraviglia,
pensa che ’n terra non è chi governi;
onde sí svïa l’umana famiglia.”(15)

Even so, as Hollander points out: “Numerically and doctrinally these three cantos [Purg. XVI-XVIII] are at the center of Purgatorio and of the entire Commedia.”¹⁶

Indeed, as Marco takes over for the nonce from Virgil as Dante's mentor, his diagnosis of contemporary ills (arguably made after papal opposition to Henry VII's attempts to restore imperial authority in Italy) offers a fascinating series of flashbacks to Convivio IV and to the Epistles addressed by Dante to Henry and the rebellious Florentines (VI-VII). It also anticipates the doctrine to be worked out more fully in the Monarchia. I shall therefore examine in some detail Marco's analysis, which is prompted by the pilgrim's puzzlement at the cause of so much corruption, his doubt whether the fault lies in the evil and overwhelming influence of the stars or in a total corruption of human nature.

Marco immediately rejects the idea of astral determinism, since this would remove all justification for the punishment and reward of human behavior, and destroy the idea of God's Justice (ll. 70-72). It is true that the heavens do exert an influence on men's and women's inclinations (cf. Aquinas, S.Th. 2.2.95.5). Nevertheless, human beings are endowed with the light of reason and free will, which is capable of withstanding all negative circumstances, if properly encouraged and nurtured. After denying that man's will was free within Love's “arena” in his sonnet to Cino, Io sono stato con Amore insieme, and in Epistle IV of c. 1307, Dante set out to redress the balance first at the beginning of the Comedy in his condemnation of Francesca (Inf. V), and then by placing this essential affirmation of the freedom of human will at the heart of his poem. The strongest recantation is to be found in the development of Marco's discourse on free will by Virgil in Purg. XVIII. 40-74. The political consequences of this conviction are illustrated not merely throughout the Comedy but also in the Epistle addressed to the Italian cardinals of 1314, in which the tragedy of the contemporary Church—its exile at Avignon and its subservience to the French crown—is not ascribed to “necessity,” as “certain astrologers and ignorant prophets declare,” but to the “ill use of your freedom of will.”¹⁷

Man is therefore responsible for the present state of the world gone astray; and Marco assures the pilgrim that he will be a faithful informer of the truth (l. 84). Following St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante asserts the creation of the human soul directly by God as a tabula rasa—except that, coming from the source of all happiness, it attempts to turn to whatever seems to offer pleasure and joy. From this theological disquisition (amplified in Purg. XXV. 37-78) the poet makes a surprising leap to the political consequences of the soul's instinctive attraction toward “secondary goods,” where it will become entangled “unless a guide or bridle rules its love” (l. 93).

No better example of the indissoluble link between the poet's theology and his political thought could be found than this passage, in which Dante deduces the need for laws applied by a universal Emperor:

          “Esce di mano a lui che la vagheggia
           … l’anima semplicetta che sa nulla,
salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore,
volontier torna a ciò che la trastulla.
          Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore;
quivi s’inganna, e dietro ad esso corre,
se guida o fren non torce suo amore.
          Onde convenne legge per fren porre;
convenne rege aver, che discernesse
de la vera cittade almen la torre.”(18)

The metaphor of the “bridle” standing for the laws that must be applied by the Emperor has already been encountered in Purg. VI. 88, and it returns (as we have already seen) at the end of the Monarchia, where we are told that cupiditas—the love of earthly things—would destroy humanity, “if men, like horses, carried away by their bestiality, were not held in check and guided ‘with the bit and the reins’ ” (Mon. III. xv. 9)

As in Purgatorio VI, the scandalous state of anarchy on earth is declared to be all the more shameful inasmuch as God—through Justinian—has provided humanity with just laws: “The laws exist, but who applies them now?” (l. 97). No one, in fact, for the Pope—who usurps the Emperor's divinely appointed task as the executor of the Laws—is not qualified to dispense temporal justice:

“Nullo, però che ’l pastor che procede,
rugumar può, ma non ha l’unghie fesse;”(19)

Clearly, that we are not only at the mathematical center but also at the political heart of Dante's Comedy. Everyone agrees that the deep structure is clear: the poet's message is that the Pope has no right to wield power in the temporal sphere or to usurp the Emperor's role as executor legis, the executor of the law. In order to appreciate the centrality of the Emperor's role (and the extent of the condemnation implicit in Dante's description of Pope Clement V as “a lawless shepherd” in Inf. XIX. 83), we should do well to remember the essential truth that “to the medieval mind the law meant much more than to the modern world, penetrating as it did all aspects and interests of human life.”²⁰ Moreover, the view of the Emperor as the sole lator legis et legis executor (Mon. I. xiii.7) may well be seen as Dante's response to Boniface VIII's supposed claim that he as supreme pontiff was well equipped to guard the laws of the empire.²¹

The biblical references and imagery of lines 98-99, however, are somewhat confusing. Commentators quote Leviticus 11. 3-8 and Deutoronomy 14. 7-8, referring to the law that declared that Jews were allowed to eat the flesh only of ruminants with a cloven hoof. Scholastic theologians offered allegorical interpretations of this non-Christian “law,” and St. Thomas explained that the cloven hoof signified among other things the ability to distinguish between good and evil (discretionem boni et mali), while ruminatio or chewing the cud was traditionally interpreted as the meditation on and correct interpretation of Holy Scripture.²² The former quality—to distinguish good from evil—would seem a strange omission in the qualifications for a Pope. However, Dante's son Pietro claimed that the cloven hoof (which the Pope does not possess) must be interpreted in the narrower sense of distinguishing and judging temporal as opposed to spiritual things. Benvenuto points out that the Pope in 1300, Boniface VIII, although an expert in scripture and Canon Law, confounded the spiritual and temporal realms.²³

This is the core of Dante's rebuttal of the hierocratic case, which he later amplified in the third book of his Monarchia. The hierocrats' case had been built up throughout the thirteenth century, replacing the Gelasian principle of coexistence between the two powers that had dominated the political theology of the Middle Ages. That dualism had been based, as always, both on practical grounds—even at the height of its claims, the papacy could not simply ignore the realities of temporal power—and on Christ's statements that his kingdom was not of this world, so that it was the duty of a Christian to give unto Caesar the things that belonged to the Emperor and unto God the things that are God's (John 18. 36; Matthew 22. 21, Mark 12. 17). In practice, however, it was impossible to separate the things of Caesar from spiritual concerns to the satisfaction of both parties, and it has been rightly observed that “wherever the line of distinction between spiritual and temporal matters might have been drawn, for papal governmental ideology the distinction had not operational value.”²⁴

In the decretal Novit (1204), a doctrinal floodgate had been opened by Innocent III's claim that the Pope had the right to judge in temporal affairs, ratione peccati, whenever and wherever sin was involved. At the end of the thirteenth century, the ideological struggle between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair inspired the hierocrats to produce a veritable phalanx of documents, all purporting to prove that (as Cardinal Matteo of Acquaparta told the ambassadors of the French king in June 1302) the Pope held “a plenitude of power” and was thus “lord of all things temporal and spiritual (cf. Psalm 2. 1) … the pope can judge in every temporal matter ratione peccati. … Thus temporal jurisdiction belongs of right to the pope, who is vicar of Christ and of Peter.”²⁵ This broadside prepared the way for Unam sanctam, promulgated by Boniface VIII on 18 November 1302, which (ironically enough, as events were soon to demonstrate) asserted that “the temporal authority [must be] subject to the spiritual power,” since “it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” This confusion of the temporal with the spiritual authority was for the world-judge of the Comedy the “evil behavior … the cause which has made the world wicked” (Purg. XVI. 103-4), since Christ's flock on earth is constantly led astray by the sight of its spiritual guide wholly eaten up with desire for the false goods of this world, wealth, power, and carnal delights, “which can never fulfill their promises” (Purg. XXX. 132).

Instead, the dualist principle is reformulated in the strongest possible terms in Marco's harking back to the creation of a just and peaceful Christian society:

          “Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo
feo,
due soli aver, che l’una e l’altra strada
facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.”(26)

The astronomical absurdity due soli flies in the face of all scientific knowledge; moreover, it had been decried as an impossibility, contrary to nature, by Dante himself in his apostrophe to the rebellious Florentines: “shall there be one polity of Florence, and another of Rome? And why should not the Apostolic government be the object of a similar envy, so that, if the one twin of Delos [the moon] has her double in the heavens, the other [the sun] should have his likewise?”²⁷ As in 1310 (Ep. V. x. 30), so in 1311 Dante still accepted the traditional interpretation (which had been used by Clement V in his letter to Henry VII of 26 July 1309) whereby the sun signified spiritual authority and the moon imperial power. That allegorical interpretation of God's creation of the two luminaria magna (Genesis 1. 16) Dante later rejected in Mon. III. iv. 16. By then, it had become all too obvious that such an interpretation readily lent itself to the hierocratic thesis “just as the moon … has no light save as she receives it from the sun, so neither has the temporal government any authority, except in so far as it receives this from the spiritual.”²⁸

From this evidence, it seems clear that, after 1311, Dante decided to reject the sun-moon analogy, and in Mon. III. i. 5 he uses the biblical term duo luminaria magna (“two great luminaries”) when referring to the Empire and the papacy. We shall probably never know the exact moment of composition of Purgatorio XVI and Monarchia III. iv. I would, however, argue that the evidence available points to the likelihood that both passages were a reaction to the Pope's betrayal of the Emperor in 1312-1313 (Par. XXX. 133-44) and to such claims as those made by the Curia that the Pope, as Christ's vicar, possessed a plenitude of power to “institute, depose, correct … bind and suspend the imperial and royal power.”²⁹ It is perhaps idle to speculate whether Dante was aware of the exaggerations to which the sun-moon analogy lent itself—for example, the nice calculations made by Hostiensis (Cardinal Henry of Susa) showing that “the sacerdotal dignity is seven thousand, six hundred and forty-four and a half times greater than the royal.”³⁰ Instead, in the teeth of all scientific evidence but with forceful poetic imagery (an unusual combination in Dante), the poet claims that two suns governed Rome when the “good world” or society was created, whereas Rome is now “destitute of both lights” (Ep. XI. x. 21). Papal claims to absolute supremacy, renewed with catastrophic results for Henry VII's and Dante's hopes for a restoration of imperial power in Italy, in fact led the poet to return to the image he had used in regard to Henry in April 1311, when he had designated the Emperor as “our sun” (sol noster)—even as Manfred had referred to Frederick II as the “sun of the world” and as the Christ-like “Sun of Justice”³¹—in order, as Francesco Buti says quite simply, “not to make one inferior to the other.”³² In other words, the poet of the Comedy placed at the center of his poem an astronomical absurdity intended to redress the balance of power and thus eliminate the inferiority of the Empire-moon implied by the traditional equation. Even more significant is the fact (not usually emphasized) that Dante claims that the two suns must light up two paths for humanity, “both paths … the path of the world and the pathway to God,” a duality foreshadowing the notorious dualism of the closing chapter of his treatise on the Empire.

We may well ask: when was this balanced society created and when did it exist for Dante? Answers have varied enormously; from before Constantine to the time of Charlemagne. The evidence of the Comedy, however, points to one ideal moment of collaboration that produced the most beneficial results, when the Emperor Justinian was converted to the true faith by the Pope; and only with the Pope's spiritual help was Justinian able to carry out his divinely inspired mission to prune and codify the Roman laws, thus providing the perfect instrument for humanity's temporal happiness:

          “E prima ch’io a l’ovra
fossi attento,
una natura in Cristo esser, non piúe,
credea, e di tal fede era contento;
          ma ’l benedetto Agapito, che fue
sommo pastore, a la fede sincera
mi dirizzò con le parole sue.
          Io li credetti …
          Tosto che con la Chiesa mossi i piedi,
a Dio per grazia piacque di spirarmi
l’alto lavoro, e tutto ’n lui mi diedi;”(33)

Admittedly, Justinian was not in Rome, as a result of Constantine's disastrous decision to move eastward “against Heaven's course” (Par. VI. 2), contrary to both the sun's diurnal movement westwards and to God's providential plan. Nevertheless, the just Emperor remained true to the ideal of Rome's imperial Justice.

In Purg. XVI. 109-14, the spiritual power has invaded the temporal realm and eclipsed the imperial sun, thus destroying the divinely instituted balance of power:

          “L’un l’altro ha spento;
ed è giunta la spada
col pasturale, e l’un con l’altro insieme
per viva forza mal convien che vada;
          però che, giunti, l’un l’altro
non teme:
se non mi credi, pon mente a la spiga,
ch’ogn’ erba si conosce per lo seme.”(34)

“Ye shall know them by their fruits … a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit” (Matthew 7. 16-7): northern Italy, which—before the internecine struggles of Frederick II with the papacy and the Communes—was the home of “valor and courtesy” (l. 116), has now in Purg. XVI. 127-29 become a den of thieves and scoundrels, an example of the universal corruption spread abroad by the Church of Rome:

          “Dí oggimai che la Chiesa di
Romna,
per confondere in sé due reggimenti,
cade nel fango, e sé brutta e la soma.”(35)

The pilgrim acknowledges the truth of what he has just heard in line 130, adding that he now understands (ll. 131-32) “why the sons of Levi were excluded from the inheritance,” yet further proof of the poet's belief that the Church of Christ should be wedded to evangelical poverty. As Professor Ferrante has noted, Marco Lombardo's fundamental message of the need for co-operation between the autonomous spheres of imperial and papal jurisdiction was not only placed by Dante at the very center of his poem, but it was also located “in the section of wrath, because … anger properly directed towards evil and corruption is the source of all reform.”³⁶ Moreover, as Edward Peters observes, we can now see that in the central canto of the Purgatorio (and of the whole poem) “The topic of earthly beatitude is … linked to the problem of human individuation and freedom in a remarkable discourse on political anthropology that has no equal anywhere else in medieval political thought.”³⁷ Nowhere do we find a more forceful rebuttal of the idea that the political element is alien or hostile to Dante's poetic genius.

Notes

1. Purg. XI. 61-66: “The ancient blood and the splendid deeds of my ancestors made me so arrogant that, forgetful of our common mother, I held all men in such excessive scorn that it brought about my death, as the people of Siena know and every child in Campagnatico knows.”

2. Purg. XI. 122-23: “and he is here because in his presumption he aimed at bringing all Siena under his rule.”

3. For the rise of despotism in the Italian Communes, see D. M. Bueno de Mesquita, “The Place of Despotism in Italian Politics,” in Europe in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1970), 301-31; J. Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante, 128-52; D. Waley, The Italian City-Republics (London, 1978), 128-40.

4. Boethius, The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1953), 319-21.

5. Mon. III. xv. 9: “Has igitur conclusiones et media … humana cupiditas postergaret nisi homines, tanquam equi, sua bestialitate vagantes ‘in camo et freno’ [Psalm 31. 9] compescerentur in via.” As E. Peters observes: “Throughout much of the Commedia, bestiality is associated with civil discord, probably from the frequency of the image in Aristotelian sources and commentaries” (“Pars, Parte,” 116).

6. “It was for the empire to supply this right ordering and governance. … To maintain peace and justice was its primary concern, as Frederick II had emphasized in 1235” (H. S. Offler, “Aspects of Government,” 226). For Dante, the essential link or bridge between society and politics is created by Justice: K. Hyde, “The Social and Political Ideal of the Comedy,” in Dante Readings, ed. E. Haywood (Dublin, 1987), 47-71.

7. N. Iliescu, “The Roman Emperors in the Divine Comedy,” in Lectura Dantis Newberryana, ed. P. Cherchi and A. C. Mastrobuono (Evanston, Ill., 1988), 1: 4 (my emphasis); cf., however, J. A. Mazzeo, Mediaeval Cultural Tradition, 8: “Gravest among these [risks] is the simplification of the moral vision of the mediaeval period in order to imply that the men of that time were insensitive to moral paradox, to the antimonies present in any life of choice.”

8. Since English translations mostly translate the trista selva of line 64 as “dismal wood,” “sad wood,” etc., I think it necessary to point out that trista in Dante can mean “evil, wicked” (as in Inf. XXX. 76-77: “l’anima trista / di Guido …”.). Bosco-Reggio (2: 244, n. 64) point to the ambiguity that is perforce lost in translation: “Il termine trista può voler dire ‘piena di malvagità’, ma anche ‘sventurata’ …”

9. See A. Vasina, “Romagna,” ED IV, 1018.

10. Conv. II. x. 8 (emphasis mine).

11. Purg. XVI. 40-42: “And if God has so gathered me into His grace that he desires that I should see his court in a manner quite unknown to modern times.”

12. Inf. XVI. 67-69: “tell [us] if courtesy and valor still dwell in our city as was their wont, or whether they have totally left it” (emphasis mine). Note the poet's use of the singular form and feminine agreement in the verbal clause, del tutto se n’è gita fora, to emphasize the fact that courtesy—cortesia—is the keyword.

13. N. Iliescu, “The Roman Emperors in the Divine Comedy,” 14 (emphasis mine). It is interesting to note that Villani (Cronica VIII. 121) makes Marco the mouthpiece for God's anger in his supposed encounter with Ugolino, then Lord of Pisa: “The wise man [Marco] immediately answered him: ‘You are more likely to be struck down by misfortune than to be lord of Italy.’ And the Count, fearing Marco's words, said: ‘Why?’ And Marco answered: ‘Because the only thing you lack is God's wrath.’ ” Cf. Cronica, XIII. 74.

14. “What reason can see here, I can impart; beyond that you must wait for Beatrice, for it is a matter concerning the Faith.”

15. Par. XXVII. 139-41: “You—in order not to be amazed—must remember that on earth no one governs, and so the human family is led astray.”

16. R. Hollander, Allegory, 139, with particular reference to C. S. Singleton's classic study, “The Poet's Number at the Center,” Modern Language Notes 80 (1965), 1-10.

17. Ep. XI. iii. 4: “et, quod horribilius est, quod astronomi quidam et crude prophetantes necessarium asserunt quod, male usi libertate arbitrii, eligere maluistis.”

18. Purg. XVI. 85-96: “There comes forth from the hand of Him who loves it before it exists, like a child that sports, now in tears and now with laughter, the simple little soul that knows nothing, except that—created by a joyful Maker—it turns readily toward whatever attracts it. At first it savors trivial goods; and there it is beguiled and runs after them, unless a guide or bridle rules its love. Hence it was necessary to impose the laws as a bridle; it was necessary to have a ruler able to discern at least the tower of the true city.”

19. Purg. XVI. 98-99: “No one, because the shepherd who precedes his flock can chew the cud but does not have the cloven hoof.”

20. A. M. Stickler, “Concerning the Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists,” Traditio 7 (1949-1951), 450. Cf. E. Peters, “The Frowning Pages,” 290 and 302: “law and justice were for Dante metaphysical concepts, intimately linked to ethics, and thus, when applied rightly and equitably by the legitimate earthly law-giver, the emperor, they became … a para-sacrament … no Roman lawyer had ever precisely placed imperial law within a cosmological framework as spacious and detailed as Dante's.”

21. See M. Maccarrone, “La teoria ierocratica e il canto XVI del Purgatorio,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 4 (1950), 389, n. 114.

22. S. Th. 1.2.102.6.1.

23. Petri Allegherii super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comediam Commentarium (Florence, 1845), 414; Benvenuto, 3: 441. André Pézard has pointed to a text by St Gregory the Great (Moralia I. xxix), in which we read that [the camel, as an example to the Pope] “has not a cloven hoof … nevertheless, it chews the cud, because by the right dispensation of temporal things it hopes to attain unto heavenly things” (Pézard, 1232, note 99).

24. W. Ullmann, Medieval Political Thought, 105.

25. J. A. Watt, Introduction to his translation of John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power (Toronto, 1971), 25-26.

26. Purg. XVI. 106-8: “Rome, which made the world good, used to have two suns, which lit up the two paths, the world's path and the pathway to God.”

27. Ep. VI. ii. 8: “ut alia sit Florentina civilitas, alia sit Romana? Cur apostolice monarchie similiter invidere non libet, ut si Delia geminatur in celo, geminetur et Delius?” The idea of a monstrosity contra naturam was aided by the powerful reductionism of medieval thought (cf. Unam sanctam: “there is one body and one head of this one and only church, not two heads as though it were a monster”). Nevertheless, although Étienne Gilson states “no one had ever thought to say that God had created two suns” (Dante et la philosophie, 220), already in the eleventh century Cardinal Humbert had denounced those sycophants who, at times of imperial successes, set up “two suns” (B. Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 41).

28. Mon. III. iv. 3: “Deinde arguunt quod, quemadmodum luna, que est luminare minus, non habet lucem nisi prout recipit a sole, sic nec regnum temporale auctoritatem habet nisi prout recipit a spirituali regimine.” See the pertinent observations made by G. Di Scipio (“Dante and Politics,” 268), when he relates the disconcerting image of two suns to Conv. IV. xvii. 9: “This notion of the two ‘felicitadi,’ contemplative and active life, which interestingly enough Dante applies in determining the position of the Hebrew women in Paradiso XXXII, is at the root of the whole theory on the political system, and in the words of Marco Lombardo ‘due soli,’ the Empire and the Church. …”

29. “Christi vicarius habet plenitudinem potestatis … potestas pape Christi vicarii habet instituere, destituere, corrigere … ligare et suspendere potestatem imperialem et regalem. See J. Rivière, Le Problème de l’Église et de l’État au temps de Philippe le Bel (Louvain-Paris, 1926), 328-29, n. 2). For the significance and elaboration of the title vicarius Christi, see M. Maccarrone, “Vicarius Christi”: storia del titolo papale (Rome, 1952). For Dante's restrictions on the power of the Pope as vicarius Christi, see Mon. III. iii. 7 and vii. 4-6.

30. B. Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 156.

31. E. H. Kantorowicz, “Dante's ‘Two Suns’,” in Selected Studies (New York, 1965), 338: “Sol mundi is Frederick in the eyes of a South Italian poet [Orfinus of Lodi], whereas Manfred, Frederick's son, styles his father Sol mundi, auctor pacis, and even Sol Justitiae.”

32. Buti, 2: 381: “Due Soli aver; cioè due luci del mondo, come sono due luci in cielo; cioè lo papa e lo imperadore; ma notevilmente disse Soli, per non fare l’uno minore che l’altro …”

33. Par. VI. 13-24: “And before I was engaged on that task, I believed that there was only one nature in Christ and no more, and I was satisfied with that belief; but blessed Agapetus, who was the supreme pastor, directed me to the true faith by his words. I believed him. … As soon as I moved my steps along the Church's path, it pleased God, of His grace, to inspire me with the high task, and I gave myself entirely to it.” See F. Mazzoni's fundamental essay: “Il canto VI del Paradiso,” in Paradiso: Letture degli anni 1979-’81 (Rome, 1989), 167-222.

34. “The one has extinguished the other; and the sword has joined the shepherd's crook, and, joined together by unnatural force, they must perform badly; because, so joined together, the one does not fear the other: if you do not believe me, look at the fruit, for every plant is known by what it seeds.” M. De Rosa, “Prima che Federigo avesse briga,” Esperienze letterarie 13 (1988), 79-88, argues for a reciprocally destructive action (quoting Benvenuto, Landino, and Nardi), while interpreting line 117 “as a reference to Frederick II's attack against the Communes of northern Italy, rather than to the struggle between the Emperor and the Popes” (80).

35. Purg. XVI. 127-29: “Proclaim henceforth that the Church of Rome, because she confounds two powers in herself, falls into the mire and befouls both herself and her burden.”

36. J. Ferrante, The Political Vision, 231. I may add that the greatest example of righteous anger was given by Christ's expulsion of the moneychangers from the Temple (Mark 11. 17: “Is it not written, ‘My House shall be called of all nations the House of Prayer’? but you have turned it into a den of thieves”). On virtuous anger in the Comedy, see P. Boyde, Perception and passion in Dante's “Comedy” (Cambridge, 1993), especially 268-9 and 274. We may also note that here in Purg. XVI. 127 we find the only occurrence in the Comedy of the appellation “the Church of Rome” (cf. the eight occurrences of “Holy Church”)—as if to hammer home the paradox that it is the Church of Rome (consecrated by the blood of Saints Peter and Paul: Ep. XI. ii. 3; cf. Par. IX. 139-41, XXVII. 40-60), now in shameful exile at Avignon and in radical opposition to “that Rome of which Christ is a Roman” (Purg. XXX. 102) that leads Christ's flock astray.

37. E. Peters, “Human Diversity and Civil Society in Paradiso VIII,” Dante Studies 109 (1991), 64.

Abbreviations

Aen.: Virgil. Aeneid. H. Rushton Fairclough, ed. Cambridge, Mass.-London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 2 vols., 1953.

Benvenuto: Benvenuti de Rambaldis de Imola. Comentum super Dantis Aldagherij Comoediam. G. F. Lacaita, ed. Florence: Barbèra, 5 vols., 1887.

Bosco-Reggio: Dante. La Divina Commedia. U. Bosco and G. Reggio, eds. Florence: Le Monnier, 3 vols., 1979.

Buti: Commento di Francesco da Buti sopra la Divina Commedia. C. Giannini, ed. Pisa: Nistri, 3 vols., 1858-1862.

Compagni, Cronica: Dino Compagni. Cronica. G. Luzzatto, ed. Turin: Einaudi, 1968.

CDD: Codice diplomatico dantesco. R. Piattoli, ed. Florence: Gonnelli, 1950.

City of God: Augustine of Hippo. The City of God Against the Pagans. G. E. McCracken et al., eds. and trans. Cambridge, Mass.-London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 1972.

Conv.: Dante. Convivio. In Opere minori, vol. 1: Part 2, 3-885. C. Vasoli, ed. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1988.

DVE: Dante. De Vulgari Eloquentia. In Opere minori, vol. 2, 26-237. P. V. Mengaldo, ed. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979.

Ecl.: Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio Egloghe. In Opere minori, vol. 2, 645-89. E. Cecchini, ed. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979.

ED: Enciclopedia Dantesca. U. Bosco et al., eds. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 6 vols., 1970-1978.

Ep.: Dante. Epistole. In Opere minori, vol. 2, 505-643. A. Frugoni and G. Brugnoli, eds. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979.

Giacalone: Dante. La Divina Commedia. G. Giacalone, ed. Rome: Signorelli, 3 vols., 1968-69.

Inf.: Dante. Inferno. G. Petrocchi, ed. Milan: Mondadori, 1966.

MGH: Monumenta Germaniae historica.

Mon.: Dante. Monarchia. In Opere minori, vol. 2, 280-503. B. Nardi, ed. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979.

Ottimo: L’Ottimo commento della Divina Commedia: testo inedito d’un contemporaneo di Dante [Andrea Lancia]. A. Torri, ed. 3 vols. Pisa: Capurro, 1827-1829.

Par.: Dante. Paradiso. G. Petrocchi, ed. Milan: Mondadori, 1967.

Pézard: Dante Alighieri. Oeuvres complètes. Traduction et commentaires par André Pézard. Paris: Gallimard, 1965.

Phar.: Lucan. The Civil War (“Pharsalia”). J. D. Duff, ed. Cambridge, Mass.-London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, 1977.

PL: Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina. J.-P. Migne, ed. 221 vols. Paris: Garnier, 1844-1864.

Purg.: Dante. Purgatorio. G. Petrocchi, ed. Milan: Mondadori, 1967.

Rime: Dante. Rime. In Opere minori, vol. 1: Part 2, 249-552. G. Contini, ed. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi. 1984.

Sapegno: Dante. La Divina Commedia. N. Sapegno, ed. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1957.

S. Th.: Aquinas, Summa Theologica. De Rubeis, Billuart et al., eds. Turin: Marinetti, 6 vols., 1932.

Villani, Cronica: Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica. G. Porta, ed. Parma: Ugo Guanda, 3 vols., 1990.

VN: Dante. Vita Nuova. In Opere minori, vol. 1: Part 1, 3-247. D. De Robertis, ed. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1984.

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