[In the following essay, Kaske interprets the images found in Cantos XXXII and XXXIII as the “figurative celebration of the beginning of Christianity.”]

I suppose it is no great news that during the past few decades, scholarship and criticism in the immense field of medieval literature have been moving with unusual speed. Within this general awakening, it is worth asking what has been the effect, if any, on interpretation of Dante's Commedia. Surely no one can accuse past Dante scholars of a failure to explore unfrequented corners of medieval knowledge; and even allowing for the preoccupation of earlier generations with Dante's political message, it is obvious that the recent revival of interest in the theological allegory of the Middle Ages cannot have come to Dantists as the complete surprise that it often did to others. If there is truth in these rather easy generalizations, it may well be asked whether contemporary scholarship can find anything new and important to add to our understanding of the Commedia; and if so, how we are to go about finding it.

I would suggest that the most important innovation of contemporary Dante scholars is a new degree of rigour in their concentration on the text to be explained, even when the explanation involves extended use of external documents. In itself, this observation will hardly strike anyone as a fresh discovery—the less so since it could probably be applied about equally well to contemporary scholarship on any other literature, medieval or otherwise. When the subject is so learned and admittedly philosophical a poet as Dante, however, the change brings with it some important implications. I suppose it is obvious that in trying to illuminate a highly intellectual literary text by the aid of external documents, one can move between two extremes. At the one extreme, he can let himself be guided by the content of the external documents, and depend on it to explain as much of the literary text as it is able to; at the other, he can let himself be guided entirely by the features of the literary text before him, consult as wide a variety of external documents as may be necessary to help him explain it closely and convincingly, and use these documents in as piecemeal or even chaotic a way as a detailed explanation of the text may require. He can, for example, either read a given passage of the Commedia from the philosophical position of Albertus Magnus, assuming that Dante's thought will somehow correspond to that of Albertus and noting his departures from it as departures; or he can make Dante's passage his absolute criterion of relevance, and explain it as closely as possible with the help of (let us say) two concepts adapted from Albertus, the medieval exegesis of a verse in Exodus, a detail from Ovid and its medieval moralization, a fact of Florentine history, a significance from an Italian bestiary, and an echo from the liturgy, along with two apparently original ideas. At the one extreme, he fragments the literary text and preserves the integrity of the external document; at the other, he fragments the external documents in order to demonstrate the unity of the literary text. The distinction itself is by no means a profound one, and I have of course been oversimplifying it greatly; but it does seem to me that the trend away from the first of these methods, and toward a rigorous application of the second, is of peculiar importance in current Dante scholarship—as illustrated preeminently, for example, in the work of my friend John Freccero.

A worthy object for such analysis would seem to be the series of cryptic images and actions crowded into Purgatorio XXXII and XXXIII, after the Heavenly Procession has come to rest in an alta selva (‘lofty forest’) clearly recalling the Garden of Eden (XXXII 31-6): the description of the great bare tree, its refoliation, and the events that follow (37-108); the series of assaults on the car and its usurpation by the whore and the giant (109-60); and in the following canto, Beatrice's prophecy concerning the arrival of a mysterious cinquecento diece e cinque (‘five hundred, ten, and five’), or, in terms of its equivalent in Roman numerals, D, X, and V (XXXIII, 31ff.). I have suggested elsewhere that this notorious puzzle is in fact a reference to the second coming of Christ, by way of a monogram which appears consistently in medieval missals and sacramentaries.¹ Since we will need this information to understand what follows, let me recapitulate my argument here as briefly as possible.

Figure 1 is a sketch of the monogram itself, which stands for the Latin words Vere dignum (‘It is truly meet’) in the Preface of the Mass; it consists of the capital letters V and D, joined and embellished by a cross at their centre.² The central part of this monogram may easily be thought of as suggesting a common type of medieval x, in which the point of juncture appears vertically elongated. Illuminated specimens provide further opportunity for recognizing some sort of X between the V and the D. For example, the ornamentation itself very frequently produces a distinct visual X. … Again, the cross at the centre of the monogram can easily be thought of as a figurative ‘X’, in accord with a popular medieval association between Christ's Cross and the letter X. And finally, the centre of the monogram is very often occupied by a strongly Apocalyptic picture of Christ Himself, holding a book and surrounded by the four Gospel Beasts. … Throughout the Middle Ages, Christ is commonly designated by a Greek chi or a Latin X. … A recognition of any of these kinds of X between the V and the D of the monogram would of course give us the letters V-X-D, a symmetrical reversal of Dante's DXV.

Now among liturgists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Vere dignum monogram itself is regularly interpreted as a symbol of Christ, with the V representing His human nature and the D His divine. (By a rather striking coincidence, the V and D correspond also to the initial letters of the Italian words Uomo or Vomo, ‘man,’ and Dio, ‘God.’) It seems reasonable to suppose, then, that Dante is using this familiar liturgical device as a deliberately enigmatic symbol of Christ's second coming near the end of time. The reversal from V-X-D to D-X-V can be accounted for plausibly enough in various ways. For example, medieval liturgists sometimes conceive of the monogram as ‘heralding’ a real reenactment of Christ's historical first coming, in the sacrifice of the Mass; if in these terms we can allow ourselves to conceive of the monogrammatic V-X-D as an anticipation of the first coming, with the precedence of V signifying the greater outward prominence of Christ's humanity, Dante's symmetrical reversal of the three letters may be seen as a dramatic heralding of the divinity which according to medieval tradition will shine forth at Christ's second coming, represented by the precedence of the letter D.

This interpretation of Dante's DXV as the second coming is strongly supported by the Apocalyptic imagery with which it is surrounded in this part of the poem. For example, the whore who sits on the car (XXXII 148ff.) is obviously a reflection of the meretrix magna or ‘great whore’ in Apocalypse 17, evidently bearing her common exegetical significance as the ecclesia carnalis or ‘carnal church’—in broad terms, the multitude of the wicked within the Church. The giant who is her lover (151ff.), and who will be killed along with her by the DXV (XXXIII 43-5), is clearly the Antichrist, who appears prominently as a giant in almost all medieval commentary on the famous number 666 in Apocalypse 13:18. The role of the Antichrist in medieval eschatology as both seducer and persecutor of the great whore seems reflected in Purgatorio XXXII 151-6, by the giant's first kissing the whore and then beating her. The Antichrist is very frequently portrayed as sitting above or upon the corrupted Church, here represented by the transformed and damaged car on which the giant sits (130-47, 152). And in the final time of the world the Antichrist will be killed—like the giant in the Purgatorio—by Christ Himself, in accord with a familiar interpretation of II Thessalonians 2:8, ‘Et tunc revelabitur ille iniquus, quem Dominus Jesus interficiet spiritu oris sui, et destruet illustratione adventus sui eum. …’ (‘And then shall be revealed that iniquitous one, whom the Lord Jesus shall kill with the spirit of His mouth, and He shall destroy him with the brightness of His coming. …’)

This summary has provided only the barest hint of the intensive eschatological allusion which does in fact control every detail of these passages concerning the whore and the giant.³ But perhaps it has succeeded in showing that the closing passage of Canto XXXII portrays allegorically a time very late in human history, with the Antichrist firmly in control of the Church and its carnal members; and that Canto XXXIII foretells one of the climactic events in medieval eschatology, close to the end of time itself. These clear eschatological references, preceded by the well-defined series of allegorical attacks on the car representing the Church (XXXII, 109-47), lead one to ask whether the structure of this difficult bit of the Commedia may not depend in part on one of those schematized analyses of ecclesiastical history into a given number of periods, which do so much to shape the medieval historical outlook. The principal source of such historical schemes is medieval commentary on the Apocalypse; and one of the most popular of them all, derived primarily from the opening of the seven seals in Apocalypse 6-8, is that of the seven status ecclesiae or ‘ages of the Church.’ Though commentators are far from unanimous in their identification of these seven great periods, a sort of rough common denominator would identify the first age with the time of the Apostles; the second, with the time of the early persecutions; the third, with the time of the early heresies; the fourth, with the time of hypocrites and ‘false brothers’; the fifth, with a miscellany of alternatives showing little agreement (presumably because it represents the present); the sixth, with the future time of the Antichrist; and the seventh, with the time of peace following the death of the Antichrist.

Bypassing temporarily the question of the first age (the time of the Apostles) in Dante's series, let us begin by noticing that in XXXII, 109-17, the descent of the eagle to smite the car allegorizes with obvious appropriateness the second age (that of the persecutions), with the eagle itself as an inevitable symbol of the Roman Empire. In lines 118-23, the entry of the she-fox is equally appropriate as an allegory of the third age (that of the heresies); the fox as a figure of heresy or heretics is common in medieval Biblical commentary, particularly on Canticles 2:15, ‘Capite nobis vulpes parvulas quae demoliuntur vineas.’ (‘Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines.’) In lines 124-9, the second descent of the eagle and the gift of feathers allegorize the legendary Donation of Constantine and the resulting corruption of the Church—which, though not enumerated among the ‘ages’ of the Church, seem thematically to be a natural enough inclusion. In lines 130-5, the familiar significance of the dragon as cunning, malice, or hypocrisy would agree well enough with the dominant feature of the fourth age (that of hypocrites or ‘false brothers’); or the dragon might be conceived of as the devil himself, directly inspiring hypocrisy within the Church. In lines 136-47, the further corrupting effects of the eagle's gift might, I suppose, be thought of as absorbing the vaguely and inconsistently defined fifth age (the present), with emphasis on the theme of corruption so prominent in criticism of the contemporary Church. In lines 148-60, the picture of the whore and the giant Antichrist seated upon the deformed car of the Church, and the giant's dragging the car itself into the concealment of the wood, clearly allegorize the sixth age (the time of the Antichrist). And in XXXIII, 40-5, the advent of the DXV to slay the guilty pair corresponds precisely to the event that will usher in the seventh age (the time of peace after the death of the Antichrist).

This pattern of correspondences, though not perfect in all its details, seems to me to provide a fairly strong argument for interpreting our series of events in the Purgatorio as an allegory of the seven status ecclesiae.⁴ As to the significance of the seven heads which sprout from the corrupted car of the Church (XXXII, 142-7), with the related question of why three of them have two horns and the rest only one, I must confess to being not much wiser now than when I began being distressed over this passage some years ago:

          Trasformato così ’l dificio santo
mise fuor teste per le parti sue,
tre sovra ’l temo e una in ciascun canto.
          Le prime eran cornute come bue,
ma le quattro un sol corno avean per fronte:
simile mostro visto ancor non fue.(5)

(Thus transformed, the sacred structure put forth horns on its parts, three over the pole and one at every corner. The first were horned like an ox, but the four had a single horn at the forehead; such a monster never yet was seen.)

There can be no doubt that these heads and horns are somehow derived from the seven heads and ten horns of the beast in Apocalypse 13:1 and 17:3-16, and bear some sort of contrasting relationship to the seven heads and ten horns that are said to have once adorned the bella donna (‘lovely lady’) in Inferno XIX 109-11. Whatever the precise significance of the seven heads in our present passage, a hint concerning the distribution of their horns into three pairs and four singles may perhaps be found in the thirteenth-century commentary by Hugh of St Cher on the seven heads of the Apocalyptic beast, including also an emphatic reference to the material possessions that in the Purgatorio have brought about the corruption of the car of the Church:

capita septem, idest, septem Principes iniquitatis. Princeps primus Cain, qui Ecclesiam malignantium incepit, eique praefuit. Et recte incepit a possessione, quia Cain interpretatur ‘possessio,’ et terminatur in apertam Christi adversitatem, et contradictionem, scilicet in Antichristum, qui erit ultimum caput. Secundum caput fuit Nembrot. … Alia quatuor [capita] sunt quatuor regna, quae significantur per quatuor cornua, Zach. 1[:18: ‘Et levavi oculos meos et vidi; et ecce quatuor cornua.’]⁶

(seven heads, that is, seven princes of iniquity. The first prince is Cain, who began the church of the wicked and ruled over it. And appropriately did it take its origin from possessions, because the name Cain is translated as ‘possession’; and the church of the wicked finds its ending in open hostility and contradiction of Christ—that is to say, in the Antichrist, who will be the final head. The second head was Nemrod. … The other four heads are four kingdoms, which are signified by four horns, Zacharias 1[:18: ‘And I lifted up my eyes and saw; and lo, four horns.’])

These four single horns, associated with four of the Apocalyptic seven heads, bear what might be thought of as a promising resemblance to the four single-horned heads in line 146. Spiritual interpretation of Zacharias 1:18 identifies them with four perturbationes or passiones (‘emotions’/‘passions’)—aegritudo and gaudium, metus and cupiditas⁷ (‘grief’ and ‘joy,’ ‘fear’ and ‘desire’)—which are prominent among the emotions assigned to the sensitive appetite, particularly the concupiscible part.⁸

The pairs of horns on the other three heads in the Purgatorio can perhaps be explained by way of Apocalypse 13:11, where the second beast is described as having ‘cornua duo similia agni’ (‘two horns like those of a lamb’). Medieval commentators interpret these two horns of the second beast as signifying various virtues simulated by the Antichrist, in hypocritical imitation of the true virtues of the Apocalyptic Lamb, Christ—for example, knowledge of the two Testaments, preaching, innocence, true doctrine, the grace to perform miracles, and so on.⁹ If all this is relevant, it may suggest that in the Purgatorio the four single-horned heads are to be somehow understood as the symbol of a corruption resulting from the misuse of man's natural emotions, and that the three two-horned heads somehow represent the deeper corruption resulting from more deliberate evils like hypocrisy—a significance that might be ironically heightened by their position above the pole of the car, which is surely a symbol of the Cross. The entire image, I suppose, would then present the deformation of the Church as vessel of truth by two basic kinds of human corruption, paralleling respectively the incontinenza and malizia which play so important a part in the structure of the Inferno. Clearly, this interpretation cannot be described as overwhelmingly convincing; I offer it as a desperate attempt to mitigate the difficulty of what must remain a formidable crux.

Leaving the heads and horns to their well-earned obscurity, then, let us turn to the extended and bewildering series of images in Purgatorio XXXII 37ff.:

          Io senti’ mormorare a tutti ‘Adamo’;
poi cerchiaro una pianta dispogliata
di foglie e d’altra fronda in ciascun ramo.
          La coma sua, che tanto si dilata
più quanto più è sù, fora da l’Indi
ne’ boschi lor per altezza ammirata.
          ‘Beato se’, grifon, che non discindi
col becco d’esto legno dolce al gusto,
poscia che mal si torce il ventre quindi.’
          Così dintorno a l’albero robusto
gridaron li altri; e l’animal binato:
‘Sì si conserva il seme d’ogne giusto.’
          E vòlto al temo ch’elli avea tirato,
trasselo al piè de la vedova frasca,
e quel di lei a lei lasciò legato.

(I heard all murmur ‘Adam!’; then they encircled a tree despoiled of flowers and other foliage on every bough. Its crowning branches, which spread wider as it rises, would be marvelled at by Indians in their woods, for their height. ‘Blessed art thou, Griffon, who dost not rend with thy beak from this tree sweet to the taste, since afterwards the belly writhes from it.’ Thus round the mighty tree the others shouted and the two-formed animal said, ‘Thus is preserved the seed of every just one.’ And turning to the pole he had drawn, he dragged it to the foot of the widowed bough, and what came from it he left bound to it.)

It is of course generally agreed that the Griffon (43)—a fabulous beast, half eagle and half lion—here represents Christ, the Deus-homo or ‘Godman’; and that the pole by which he fastens the car of the Church to the great tree (49-51) represents the Cross. The tree itself was generally explained by earlier scholars as the Empire; more recently, there has been a tendency to explain it as an inclusive symbol of what might be called ‘justness’ - embracing, for example, both the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as an emblem of law, and the condition of ‘original justice’ lost to mankind through Adam's fall and partially restored by the Atonement. Concerning other details of the passage, there seems to be little agreement.

I begin with the simile in lines 40-2, comparing the height of the tree to that of trees in India. Among the many gigantic trees of India, the fig-tree seems to have been particularly popular throughout the Middle Ages, sometimes with an additional reference to the expanding foliage at its top. Pliny, for example, reports that in India ‘superiores ejusdem [i.e., fici] rami in excelsum emicant silvosa multitudine, vasto matris corpore, ut sexaginta passus pleraeque orbe colligant, umbra vero bina stadia operiant.’¹⁰ (‘the upper branches of this same tree [i.e., the fig] stretch forth on high, forest-like in number, from the enormous trunk, so that they grow together in a circle of sixty paces or more, and indeed the shadow may cover two stadia.’) The likelihood that Dante's giant tree is to be recognized by implication as literally a fig-tree seems heightened by the remark about the sweetness of its fruit (44), corresponding to a familiar detail in medieval descriptions of the fig;¹¹ and the reference to the belly writhing from it (45) finds an additional parallel of sorts in a comment by Thomas of Cantimpré: ‘Est in India etiam [ficus] huic dulcior, sed extraneorum valitudini infesta.’¹² (‘There is also in India a sweeter [fig] than this, but dangerous to the health of strangers.’) The repeated emphasis on the bareness of the tree (38-9, 60) suggests inevitably the great medieval image of the arbor sicca or ‘dry tree’¹³—which, as it happens, bears also a natural relation to the fig-tree, by way of Christ's withering the fruitless fig-tree in Matthew 21:19 and Mark 11:13-21.¹⁴

Now in some versions of the popular medieval legend of Seth, the Tree of Knowledge appears as a ‘dry tree’; in the thirteenth-century scientific encyclopedia L’Image du monde, for example, Seth returns to the Garden of Eden and is shown a magnificent tree full of leaves and fruit, which suddenly withers to a lifeless trunk; the angel who is guiding him explains that this is the original Tree of Knowledge, dried up by the sin of Adam and Eve.¹⁵ The Tree of Knowledge is identified as a fig-tree in rabbinical literature as well as in the apocryphal Apocalypsis Moysis;¹⁶ more to our present point, it appears unmistakably as a fig-tree in a number of Italian sculptures and mosaics from the twelfth century through the fourteenth.¹⁷ On the other hand, both fig-tree and dry tree often signify fallen human nature itself, particularly in its unjustified condition between the Fall and the Redemption. Witness for example Garner of St Victor in his Gregorianum, a twelfth-century encyclopedia drawn from the works of Gregory the Great:

Fici nomine humana natura designatur, sicut in Evangelio Veritatis voce dicitur: ‘Arborem fici habebat quidam plantatam in vinea sua et venit, quaerens fructum et non invenit,’ etc. [Luke 13:6]. Quid enim arbor fici nisi humanam naturam signat? Quae bene quidem plantata est sicut ficus, sed in culpam propria sponte lapsa fructum non servat operationis. Ad peccatum quippe ex voluntate corruens, quia fructum obedientiae ferre noluit statum rectitudinis amisit.¹⁸

(Human nature is designated by the name of the fig, just as in the Gospel it is said by the voice of Truth, ‘A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vine-yard, and he came seeking fruit and did not find it,’ etc. [Luke 13:6]. For what does the fig-tree signify unless it is human nature? Indeed human nature, like the fig, was well planted; but having lapsed into guilt of its own accord, it does not preserve the fruit of well doing. Rushing into sin by its own will, because it would not bear the fruit of obedience it has lost the condition of rectitude.)

Ambrose expounds the dry tree in a way that seems relevant also to the tree's bursting into bloom in lines 58-60: ‘Lignum aridum factus eras in Adam; sed nunc per gratiam Christi pomiferae arbores pullulatis.’¹⁹ (‘You were made a dry tree in Adam; but now through the grace of Christ you sprout forth as fruit-bearing trees.’) The same concept is given clear visual expression in a famous fifteenth-century painting by Piero della Francesca, where the Resurrection is framed on the left by dry trees and on the right by trees in leaf.²⁰

In our passage from the Purgatorio, an interpretation of the tree as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is strongly implied in line 51, where the reference to the pole (that is, the Cross) as somehow derived from the tree recalls inevitably the legend of Seth, with its well-known derivation of the Cross from the Tree of Knowledge. On the other hand, an interpretation of the Tree as human nature itself seems just as strongly implied in line 50, by the Griffon's attaching the pole of the Cross to la vedova frasca (‘the widowed bough’)—an image surely echoing the commonplace that the Cross, by reuniting mankind to the divine Bridegroom, has ended its state of widowhood.²¹ And the application of the tree-image to mankind is hinted at unmistakably in the final tercet of Canto XXXIII, along with a parallel to the burgeoning of the great tree after it has been joined to the car of the Church:

          Io ritornai de la santissima onda
rifatto sì come piante novelle
rinovellate di novella fronda …

(I returned from the most holy waves refashioned, even as new trees renewed with new foliage …)

Following such leads, I would suggest that the tree in Canto XXXII is literally the desiccated Tree of Knowledge, signifying spiritually human nature itself deprived of original justice by Adam's fall. The essential connection between these two meanings seems to lie in the fact that both tree and mankind were originally adorned with God's ‘justice’—the total ordering of a thing to its proper nature, the condition of being as it ought to be. In despoiling the tree physically, Adam despoiled himself spiritually; under both aspects, his act was a violation of justice. A pattern of this kind seems compatible enough with Beatrice's final explanation of the tree (XXXIII, 55-72), ending with the explicit though not very revealing statement (71-2),

la giustizia di Dio, ne l’interdetto
conosceresti a l’arbor moralmente.

(thou wouldst recognize, in the moral sense, God's justice in the interdict on the tree.)

And the entire pattern finds some external support in a letter by Hildegard of Bingen, which approximates the exclamatory Adamo of line 37, refers to Adam's condition of original justice, and compares contemporary mankind to a dry tree by way of an apparent allusion to the Tree of Knowledge: ‘Oi, Oi, Adam novum testamentum omnis justitiae, et radix seminis hominum fuit. … Nunc arbor haec arida est. … Tempus enim istud, ad tempus istud respicit, quando prima mulier nutum primo viro in deceptione fecit.’²² (‘Alas, alas, Adam was the New Testament of all justice, and the root of the seed of men. … Now the tree is dry. … For this time looks back to that time when the first woman fashioned a command to the first man through deception.’)

In lines 43-5, the Griffon is praised for taking nothing from the tree with his beak. Since the eagle-half of the Griffon obviously represents Christ's divine nature and the lion-half His human nature (cf. Purgatorio XXIX 113-14), this specific reference to the beak suggests an allusion of some kind to His divinity. If so, and if the dry tree is to be understood as the Tree of Knowledge signifying man's fallen nature in the way that I have proposed, the point of lines 43-5 would seem to be that Christ, because of His divinity, does not partake of the ‘fruit’ of the Tree of Knowledge—that is, of the corruption in human nature resulting from the Fall.

In line 48, the Griffon's mysterious ‘Sì si conserva il seme d’ogne giusto’ (‘Thus is preserved the seed of every just one’) is apparently to be understood as a comment on his own immediate action of binding the car to the tree (49-51). The usual suggestion that this speech is an echo of Matthew 3:15, ‘Sic enim decet nos implere omnem justitiam’ (‘For thus it becomes us to fulfill all justice’), contributes no clarification that I can see. Instead, let us consider Sapientia (Wisdom) 10:4 and 14:6-7, alluding to the preservation of Noah and his family in the ark:

cum aqua deleret terram, sanavit iterum sapientia, per contemptibile lignum justum gubernans … [10:4]. Sed et ab initio … spes orbis terrarum ad ratem confugiens, remisit saeculo semen nativitatis … [14:6]. Benedictum est enim lignum per quod fit justitia [14:7].

(when water destroyed the earth, wisdom healed it again, directing the just man by contemptible wood … [10:4]. But also from the beginning … the hope of the world, fleeing to a vessel, left to the world seed of generation … [14:6]. For blessed is the wood through which justice is brought about [14:7].)

A common liturgical variant or gloss adds to 14:7, ‘quoniam regnavit a ligno Deus’ (‘because God ruled from a tree’). Throughout the Middle Ages, the standard interpretation of these verses from Sapientia presents Noah and his family as the ‘just men’ of their own generation, emphasizes their importance as the seed of all the just in future generations, and allegorizes the entire passage as the preservation of the souls of the just through the instrumentality of the Cross. If the pole by which the car of the Church is attached to the tree in the Purgatorio bears its generally recognized allegorical significance as the Cross, and if the tree can indeed be understood spiritually as man himself deprived of original justice, it seems highly probable that the Griffon's remark in line 48 alludes to the re-justification of mankind through the Cross, by way of these allegorically charged passages from Sapientia. When the Cross—and through it the Church—is applied by Christ to the desiccated tree of human nature, the tree bursts into the fresh bloom of re-justification, again becoming spiritually ‘the seed of every just one.’²³

This renewal of the tree is described immediately:

          Come le nostre piante, quando casca
giù la gran luce mischiata con quella
che raggia dietro a la celeste lasca,
          turgidi fansi, e poi si rinovella
di suo color ciascuna, pria che ’l sole
giunga li suoi corsier sotto altra stella;
          men che di rose e più che di vïole
colore aprendo, s’innovò la pianta,
che prima avea le ramora sì sole.

(As our trees, when the great light [of the sun] falls downward mingled with that which beams behind the celestial Carp [more precisely, Roach or Mullet], begin to swell and then renew themselves, each in its own colour, before the sun yokes his coursers under other stars, so, taking a colour less than of roses and more than of violets, the tree was renewed which before had its branches so bare.)

Postponing lines 52-7 for a moment, I proceed to the description of the tree renewing its foliage, taking a colour ‘men che di rose e più che di vïole’ (58). The concept of a colour less than red and more than violet seems calculated to defy a literal understanding, and so to demand some sort of allegorical explanation. If my analysis of the passage so far has been credible, one would expect this mysterious colour to signify the degree of human justification resulting from the Atonement—somewhat less than the state of original justice from which Adam fell, but of course much greater than it was in the time between Fall and Atonement. The encyclopedist Pierre Bersuire, writing some ten to fifteen years after Dante's death, makes the rose signify ‘vir justus & perfectus’²⁴ (‘the man just and perfect’); and the thirteenth-century liturgist William Durandus, for example, remarks that the Church uses violet at the feast of the Purification ‘pro eo quod officium illud est de anxia expectatione Simeonis, et sapit Vetus Testamentum’²⁵ (‘because that service is concerned with the anxious expectation of Simeon, and smacks of the Old Testament’). In this same connection, we may recall also the three steps at the entrance to Dante's Purgatory (Purgatorio IX 94-103), where the white step seems most satisfactorily explained as signifying man's condition before the Fall, the purple-black step his condition after the Fall, and the red step his condition after the Atonement. If so, the time between Fall and Redemption would be symbolized in both passages by approximately the same colour (violet or purple); but the time before the Fall would seem represented in Canto XXXII by red (the colour of roses) and in the description of the steps by white. Or, in view of this tantalizing correspondence itself along with the fact that the great rose of the Paradiso is a white rose (XXXI 1), can it be that the ‘colour of roses’ in our passage concerning the tree is to be understood as white?²⁶ However that may be, let us notice that Benvenuto da Imola, perhaps the most informed and intelligent of Dante's early commentators, explains the colour of the tree's renewed foliage in precisely the way I have suggested:

renovata fuerunt folia in planta ipsa, cum reconciliatum fuit genus humanum deitati; non tamen ita quod reduceretur ad primam gratiam, idest, ad statum innocentiae, sicut erat prius; ideo bene dicit, quod folia erant colorata non ut rosae, sed plusquam violae.²⁷

(the leaves were renewed in this plant when the human race was reconciled to the divine nature—not, however, in such a way that it might be restored to its original state of grace, that is, to a state of innocence, just as it had been at first; therefore he well says that the leaves were colored not as roses, but more than violets.)

This allegorical pattern seems reinforced by the immediately preceding lines (52-7), with their obvious reference to the Zodiac. In line 54, ‘la celeste lasca’ is of course the constellation Pisces (the Fishes), the last zodiacal sign in the astronomical year; the constellation that is said to shine behind Pisces is Aries (the Ram), the first sign in the new astronomical year. The beginning of the year, along with the season of spring that accompanies it and the creation of the world that it symbolizes, is also an inevitable symbol of the regeneration following the Atonement;²⁸ and no one needs to be reminded of the fish as a symbol of Christ. The function of this elaborate astronomical simile, I take it, is to allude thematically to the time of grace (represented by the sign of the Ram) which follows and results from the work of Christ (represented by the sign of the Fishes, with a significant adaptation from plural to singular).

The passage continues with an account of the hymn sung by the assembled company, the sleep into which it sends Dante, and his eventual awakening:

          Io non lo ’ntesi, né qui non
si canta
l’inno che quella gente allor cantaro,
né la nota soffersi tutta quanta.
          S’io potessi ritrar come assonnaro
li occhi spietati udendo di Siringa,
li occhi a cui pur vegghiar costò sì caro;
          come pintor che con essempro pinga,
disegnerei com’ io m’addormentai;
ma qual vuol sia che l’assonnar ben finga.
          Però trascorro a quando mi svegliai,
e dico ch’un splendor mi squarciò ’l velo
del sonno, e un chiamar: ‘Surgi: che fai?’.
          Quali a veder de’ fioretti del melo
che del suo pome li angeli fa ghiotti
e perpetüe nozze fa nel cielo,
          Pietro e Giovanni e Iacopo condotti
e vinti, ritornaro a la parola
de la qual furon maggior sonni rotti,
          e videro scemata loro scuola
così di Moïsè come d’Elia,
e al maestro suo cangiata stola;
          tal torna’ io, e vidi quella pia
sovra me starsi che conducitrice
fu de’ miei passi lungo ’l fiume pria.

(I did not understand, nor is it sung here, the hymn that company then intoned; nor did I endure the music to the end. If I could describe how the pitiless eyes fell asleep on hearing of Syrinx—the eyes whose long watching cost so dear—like a painter who paints from a model I would picture how I fell asleep; but whoever wishes [to do so], let him be one who can depict slumber well. Therefore I pass on to when I woke, and I say that a bright light rent for me the veil of sleep, and a call, ‘Arise, what dost thou?’ As, when to see some of the blossoms of the apple-tree that makes the angels greedy for its fruit and makes perpetual marriage-feast in heaven, Peter and John and James were brought, and, having been overcome, came to themselves again at the word by which deeper slumbers were broken, and saw their company diminished as well by Moses as by Elias, and their Master's raiment changed—so came I to myself, and saw standing over me that compassionate one [Matelda] who had been guide of my steps along the stream.)

The hymn (61-3) evidently reflects the canticum novum or ‘new song’ which appears several times in Scripture—most significantly in Apocalypse 5:9, where it is sung by the four Gospel Beasts and twenty-four elders who also constitute part of the Heavenly Procession in the Purgatorio, and so are presumably among the singers here. A standard medieval exegesis of this canticum novum makes it either a song of rejoicing at man's regeneration through the Atonement, or the New Testament which announces these joyful tidings; in either case it is sung by the Church, which, having put off the Old Man, now walks in newness of life.²⁹

Lines 64-6 allude to the Classical fable of Jupiter, Io, and Argus, along with the related tale of Pan and Syrinx, as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses (1568-721). Jupiter sets things in motion, so to speak, by raping Io. When Juno suspects what is afoot, he quickly changes Io into a heifer and presents her to Juno, who then sets Argus with his hundred eyes to guard her. Mercury is sent by Jupiter to kill Argus, and succeeds in doing so after lulling him to sleep with the tale of how Pan pursued the nymph Syrinx, and how at his touch she was transformed into a set of reed pipes. Medieval commentary on this rather awkward fable overlooks Jupiter's inaugural action, and makes Io a devout virgin who for a time is faithful to God (represented, surprisingly enough, by Jupiter), but then is seduced by the wicked world and its delights (represented by Argus). Mercury is either Christ or the good preacher, who rescues Io by putting to sleep and then killing her worldly attachments (that is, Argus).³⁰ Now Dante's own history, as told in the Commedia, has been one of straying from the ‘right way’ and being rescued by Beatrice—who not only preaches him what might fairly be called a sermon, but is herself analogous to Christ. The pattern underlying this allusion, then, seems to be a parallel between on the one hand Io afflicted by Argus and rescued by Mercury, and on the other Dante afflicted by worldly attachments and rescued by Beatrice. Line 65 emphasizes that the eyes of Argus were closed by hearing the tale of Syrinx—a tale explained in the Ovide moralisé as an allegory of the world (that is, Pan) pursuing vain delights (that is, Syrinx).³¹ Let us recall that in Canto XXXI of the Purgatorio, Dante has been reproached by Beatrice for listening to the Sirens (44-5) and especially for his attentions to a pargoletta, or ‘young girl’ (59)—both of whom there is reason for interpreting as approximate equivalents of this allegorized Syrinx. In line 65, then, are we to understand that the ‘Argus’ of worldly attachments in him has been put to sleep, partly by having heard from Beatrice what in these terms can be thought of as a ‘tale of Syrinx’?

If this interpretation of the Ovidian echoes is convincing in itself, there remains the question of its relationship to the larger theme of Fall and Redemption that I have been proposing in the rest of the passage. Very briefly, I would suggest that the character Dante here is himself a representative figure of Christian mankind; and that the parallelism I have proposed between Io afflicted by Argus and rescued by Mercury, and Dante afflicted by worldly attachments and rescued by Beatrice, is intended ultimately to evoke still another parallel pattern: mankind afflicted by the Fall and rescued by Christ.

This figurative correspondence between the fictional Dante and newly regenerate mankind at large can, I think, be detected also in the long simile of lines 73-82 comparing Dante's waking from his sleep to the waking of the three Apostles from their sleep at the Transfiguration. Hugh of St Cher, commenting on the Transfiguration in Luke 9:28-36, expounds the sleep of the Apostles in V. 32, ‘Item somnus est mors spiritualia qua homo moritur mundo, in quo anima evigilat per caelestem contemplationem.’³² (‘Likewise the sleep is the spiritual death by which man dies to the world, in which [sleep] the mind keeps watch through heavenly contemplation.’) Bonaventura, also commenting on the Transfiguration, explains that ‘ad contemplationem divinarum revelationum occurrunt duo quasi in principio, scilicet gravamen ex parte naturae et iuvamen ex parte gratiae; primum soporat, et secundum excitat.’³³ (‘toward the contemplation of things divinely revealed, two things occur, as it were, in the beginning—namely, oppression on the side of nature and assistance on the side of grace. The first puts to sleep, the second awakens.’) This ‘sleep’ of the senses corresponds, I take it, to Dante's sleep in line 68; and this ‘awakening’ of the spirit, to his subsequent awakening. In the context of our passage as a whole, however, the character Dante's experiencing this beginning of ‘the contemplation of things divinely revealed’ becomes recognizeable as a further figure of the regeneration of mankind at large by the advent of Christianity—a meaning strongly supported by medieval exegesis of the Transfiguration. For example, an eighth-century homily by Ambrosius Autpertus asks, with reference to the cloud that appeared at the Transfiguration, ‘Quid autem putamus, fratres, exprimi per nubem lucidam [Matthew 17:5], nisi Novi Testamenti gratiam. …’³⁴ (‘What shall we think, brothers, to be expressed by the bright cloud except the grace of the New Testament. …’) And Hugh of St Cher adds that ‘in hac transfiguratione significatur transfiguratio corporis mystici [Christi].’³⁵ (‘in this transfiguration is signified the transfiguration of the mystical body [of Christ].’)

In line 72, Matelda's command Surgi (‘Arise’) echoes Christ's command Surgite (‘Arise’), spoken to the Apostles in Matthew 17:7 immediately after the Transfiguration. A sermon by the twelfth-century Gottfried of Weingarten explains this command in the light of the change from Old Law to New:

‘Surgite,’ inquit, ‘et nolite timere.’ ‘Surgite,’ hoc est sursum corda erigite, de mea pietate amodo praesumite. Usque modo enim servili timore coacti laborastis, servitio medio die noctuque insudastis. Sed jam ‘nolite timere,’ me nunc ut patrem mitissimum diligite, quem prius ut Dominum et judicem severissimum studuistis timere. Sicut ante servire mihi cum tremore vobis placuit, ita nunc poenali formidine postposita in amore quaelibet bona perficere libeat opera.³⁶

(‘Arise,’ he says, ‘and fear not.’ ‘Arise,’ that is lift up your hearts on high, be confident henceforth in my mercy. For until now you have striven compelled by servile fear, at midday and at night you have sweated in servitude. But now ‘fear not,’ now love me as a most mild father, whom before you have been careful to fear as a most severe Lord and judge. Just as before it pleased you to serve me with fear, so now, with the fear of punishment set aside, let it please you to bring forth all good works in love.)

In lines 79-80, we are told that the three Apostles ‘videro scemata loro scuola / così di Moïsè come d’Elia’ (‘saw their company diminished as well by Moses as by Elias’). The thematic relevance of this detail, along with the oddity of introducing Moses and Elias only by way of their disappearance, seems again to be explained by medieval commentary on the Transfiguration - for example that of the twelfth-century Glossa ordinaria on Luke 9:36: ‘Ablata nube, euanescentibus Moyse & Elia, [Christus] solus cernitur, quia legis & prophetarum umbra discedente, uerum lumen coruscante Euangelij gratia reperitur. … Finis enim legis est Christus ad iusticiam omni credenti.’³⁷ (‘The cloud having been withdrawn, Moses and Elias having vanished, [Christ] is seen alone, because when the shadow of the Law and the prophets has departed, the true light is perceived by the flashing grace of the Gospel. … For the end of the Old Law is Christ, as justice to every believer.’)

Within this extended simile of the Transfiguration, Christ is called (73-5) the ‘melo / che del suo pome li angeli fa ghiotti / e perpetüe nozze fa nel cielo’ (the ‘apple-tree that makes the angels greedy for its fruit and makes perpetual marriage-feast in heaven’). The allusion here is to Canticles 2:3, ‘Sicut malus inter ligna silvarum, / sic dilectus meus inter filios’ (‘As the apple-tree among the trees of the woods, so my beloved among the sons’)—in which the apple-tree is universally understood to signify Christ. The references to the angels and to Christ's making perpetual marriage-feast in heaven seem directly dependent on medieval exegeses of this verse, which explain that Christ, through the Atonement, has benefited the angels in heaven as well as ourselves who are on earth, and present Christ also as the Tree of Life sustaining and delighting the blessed in heaven.³⁸ Of further interest for our passage is an interpretation exemplified by the twelfth-century Italian commentator Bruno of Asti:

Sicut enim malum inter ligna infructuose fructuosum est, ita et Christus inter Judaeos aliquando et Apostolos fuit. … Erant enim tunc temporis Apostoli sine fructu, cum multos in Judaea Christus daret fructus. Ad ejus autem comparationem non solum sine fructu, verum etiam sicci videbantur. Unde ipse ait: ‘Si in viridi ligno hoc faciunt, in arido quid fiet?’ [Luke 23:31].³⁹

(For just as the apple-tree is fruitful among unfruitful trees, so also was Christ at one time among the Jews and the Apostles. … For at that time the Apostles were without fruit, while Christ gave forth many fruits in Judaea. In comparison with Him they appeared not only without fruit, but even dry. Whence He Himself says: ‘If they do this in a green tree, what will happen in a dry?’)

Such exegeses, I take it, bring the figure of Christ as the fruitful apple-tree in line 73 into direct and significant contrast with that of fallen human nature as the dry and unfruitful fig-tree in lines 38ff.

After the ascension of the Griffon (Christ), Matelda says of Beatrice in lines 86-7, ‘Vedi lei sotto la fronda / nova sedere in su la sua radice.’ (‘Behold her under the new foliage, seated upon its root.’) A few lines later (94), she is described as sitting alone ‘in su la terra vera’ (‘upon the very earth’). Though I am not at all sure I understand what is going on here, I would offer the hesitant conjecture that the root may bear its traditional significance as preaching, and represent the preaching of the Church during the Apostolic time;⁴⁰ and that the earth may bear its equally traditional significance as the Gentiles, who were both the target of this preaching and the substance of the early Church.⁴¹ Beatrice, signifying something like Divine Revelation, would then be represented first as carried by the early preaching of the Church, and subsequently as residing in the Church of the Gentiles.

Obviously, even this laboured exegesis is still far from accounting for all the facts of this notoriously difficult passage. But let us call a merciful halt at this point and ask ourselves what pattern, if any, can be detected in this cryptic series of images so far as we have been able to interpret them. What emerges, I think, is an extended figurative elaboration of the event that in Christian terms is the undisputed center of human history: the spiritual regeneration of mankind through the Atonement, and the resulting joyful tidings of Christianity. It is this cataclysmic event that we have seen embellished in various ways by a really remarkable series of symbols, including the Scriptural and exegetical echo ‘Thus is preserved the seed of every just one’; the restoration of mankind to its divine Bridegroom; the zodiacal sign of Aries; the dry tree burgeoning into a hue less than of roses and greater than of violets; the canticum novum; the sleep of Argus; Christ as the apple-tree; and the Transfiguration. This whole figurative celebration of the beginning of Christianity is, of course, chronologically accurate as a prelude to the allegory of the seven ages of the Church, which begins a few lines later and occupies the remainder of the canto, reaching its climax with the prophecy of the DXV in Canto XXXIII. My conjecture about Beatrice's sitting on the root and on the ground, if it can be entertained, would fit neatly into place as our hitherto unaccounted-for first age, universally identified as the time of the Apostles and of Apostolic preaching.⁴²

A final question concerns the thematic relationship between this whole figurative survey of Christian history, and the earlier survey of human history that seems embodied in the procession of Sacred Scripture in Purgatorio XXIX 82ff. If Cantos XXXII and XXXIII do indeed contain the historical pattern I have suggested, why has Dante chosen to duplicate its theme, though in strikingly different imagery, in a part of the poem so closely preceding? I would suggest that what is being dramatized here is the distinction between ‘history’ as it exists in the mind of God, and history as it is allowed to work itself out in a material universe. The Procession of Scripture—unearthly, severely ordered, and using as its major symbols the Books that are themselves the word of God—is history seen, as it were, sub specie aeternitatis; the historical survey of Cantos XXXII and XXXIII, allegorical though it is, presents with greater liveliness and variety the vicissitudes and ultimate triumph of this divinely ordained drama when it is put into production on the imperfect stage of earth.

Notes

1. ‘Dante's “DXV” and “Veltro”,’ Traditio 17 (1961) 185-254, especially pp 187-98; abridged, though with some additions, as ‘Dante's DXV,’ in Dante: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. John Freccero (Twentieth Century Views; Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1965) 122-40, especially pp 123-8.

2. Seventeen examples of this monogram are reproduced in ‘Dante's “DXV” and “Veltro” ’ at p 188, with a bibliography of further examples on pp 252-4; an interesting addition to the list is cited in ‘Dante's DXV,’ 123 n1.

3. For a more detailed treatment and full documentation, see ‘Dante's “DXV” and “Veltro”,’ 193-221; abridged in ‘Dante's DXV,’ 127-37.

4. See also ‘Dante's “DXV” and “Veltro”,’ 220-1.

5. All quotations of the Purgatorio are from La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Le opere di Dante Alighieri, Edizione Nazionale a cura della Società Dantesca Italiana, 7; Milan, 1966-7), III.

6. Opera omnia in universum Vetus et Novum Testamentum, on Apocalypse 13:1 (Lyon 1645) VII fol. 403^v

7. Jerome, Comm. in Zachariam prophetam I (PL 25, col. 1429); repeated for example in Biblia cum glosis ordinarijs et interlinearibus … (Venice 1495) fol. 959^v, marginal gloss, and by Hugh of St Cher, Opera v fol. 214^r. This group of four basic emotions is found in Cicero, Tusc. Disp. IV, vi, 11 et passim, and Vergil, Aen. VI 733: ‘Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque …’ (‘Hence they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice …’). It is frequent in patristic literature, particularly in Jerome; see Harald Hagendahl, Latin Fathers and the Classics: A Study on the Apologists, Jerome and Other Christian Writers (Göteborg 1958) 331-46.

8. For example Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q. 23, a. 4, Opera omnia (Rome 1882-1948) VI 177: ‘Sic igitur patet quod in concupiscibili sunt tres coniugationes passionum: scilicet amor et odium, desiderium et fuga, gaudium et tristitia. Similiter in irascibili sunt tres: scilicet spes et desperatio, timor et audacia, et ira …’ (‘So therefore it is clear that in the concupiscible part there are three pairs of emotions: namely love and hate, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow. Likewise there are three groups in the irascible part: namely hope and despair, fear and daring, and anger …’) See also q. 23 a. 1 (VI 173); and q. 25 a. 4 (VI 187).

9. For example, Hugh of St Cher, Opera VII fol. 404^v; ps.-Albertus Magnus, In Apocalypsim B. Joannis, ed. A. Borgnet, B. Alberti Magni … opera omnia (Paris 1890-9) XXXVIII 671; and ps.-Aquinas, Expositio I in Apocalypsim, ed. S. Fretté and P. Maré, Thomae Aquinatis … opera omnia (Paris 1874-89) XXXI 632

10. Nat. hist. XII, V, 22, ed. Karl Mayhoff (Bibl. Teubneriana; Leipzig 1870-1906) II 284; repeated by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale XIV 13 (Nuremberg [c1480]), and by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De rerum proprietatibus XVII 61 (Frankfurt 1601) 838, who says that the upper branches of the fig-tree of India ‘in altum valde se extendunt’ (‘extend themselves to a very great height’). For further references, see Thomas Malvenda, De Paradiso voluptatis XVI (Rome 1605) 40-1.

11. For example Pliny, Nat. hist. XII, V, 23 (ed. cit. II 284); Vincent and Bartholomaeus, loc. cit.; and Thomas of Cantimpré, De naturis rerum V ‘De ficu,’ MS Paris, Bibl. nat. lat. 14720, fol. 130^v: ‘Fructum gignit coctum sole, predulci sapore. Harum [i.e., ficuum] cibo Indi sapientes vivunt, sed incomparabiliter dulciorum.’ (‘It bears fruit ripened by the sun, extremely sweet in taste. The wise men of India live by the nourishment of these [i.e., figs], but incomparably sweeter ones.’)

12. Ibid., fol. 130^v

13. For this concept generally, see the works cited in my article ‘ “Sì si conserva il seme d’ogne giusto” (Purg. XXXII 48),’ Dante Studies 89 (1971), 53 n3.

14. See for example Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos XXXI, ii, 9, on Psalm 31:1-2, ed. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, Opera (CCL 38; Turnhout 1956) X, i, 232. Note also Isaias 34:4, Joel 1:7, Habacuc 3:17, and their commentaries. For a possible connection between fig-tree and ‘dead tree’ in fifteenth-century Italian painting, see Oswald Goetz, Der Feigenbaum in der religiösen Kunst des Abendlandes (Berlin 1965) 81-6; I am indebted to John V. Fleming of Princeton University for this reference.

15. This passage, which apparently has never been printed, is paraphrased by Carl Fant, L’Image du monde: poème inédit du milieu du XIII^esiècle … (Diss., Uppsala 1886) 31-2. For other examples, see Esther Casier Quinn, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life (Chicago 1962) 110-14.

16. XX 4-5, ed. Wilhelm Meyer, Vita Adae et Evae, in Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Classe der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften XIV 3 (1878) 238; trans. L.S.A. Wells in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, ed. R.H. Charles (Oxford 1913) II 146. The Tree of Knowledge is a fig-tree also in the Old English prose Salomon and Saturnus 16, ed. John M. Kemble, The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus (London 1848) 182.

17. Lucca, sculpture on the façade of the cathedral, twelfth century (Goetz, Feigenbaum, Abb. 13 and p 39); Monreale, bronze door by Bonanno da Pisa, 1186 (ibid., Abb. 16 and p 40); Palermo, mosaic in the Capella Palatina, twelfth century (ibid., Abb. 14 and p 39); Venice, sculpture on the southwest corner of the Palace of the Doges, thirteenth century (ibid., Abb. 17 and p 40); Venice, mosaic in the vestibule of the cathedral of San Marco, thirteenth century (ibid., Abb. 15 and pp 39-40); Orvieto, sculpture by Lorenzo Maetani on the façade of the cathedral, early fourteenth century (ibid., Abb. 5 and pp 29-30).

18. IX 14 (PL 193, col. 341); from Gregory, Hom. in Evangelia II, xxxi, 2, on Luke 13:6 (PL 76, col. 1228). See also Gregory, Moralia in Iob VIII, xlviii, 82, on Job 8:17 (PL 75, cols. 852-3); and Rabanus Maurus, De universo XIX 5 (PL 111, cols. 508-9). In La Queste del Saint Graal, ed. Albert Pauphilet (Les classiques français du Moyen Age; Paris 1949) 61 and 69-70, the spiritual condition of Lancelot is repeatedly described as ‘plus nuz et plus despris [or despoilliez] que figuiers’ (‘more bare and more despoiled than the fig-tree’), with reference to Matthew 21:19 and Mark 11:13-21.

19. De sacramentis V, iii, 14 (PL 16, col. 450)

20. Municipio, Borgo San Sepolcro, repr. Roberto Longhi, Piero della Francesca (Florence 1963) pl. 145, 146, 151. See also Andrea Mantegna, ‘Agony in the Garden’ (London, National Gallery) and ‘Agony in the Garden’ (Tours, Museum), repr. Renata Cipriani and Paul Colacicchi, All the Paintings of Mantegna (New York 1963) pl. 45, 56; and the further examples cited by M.R. Bennett, ‘The Legend of the Green Tree and the Dry,’ Archaeological Journal 83 (1926), 21 n1.

21. For example the De cruce et latrone, a Latin abridgement of a homily by Chrysostom, traditionally attributed to Augustine (ps.-Augustinian sermon CLV, 1; PL 39, col. 2047): ‘Propter hanc [i.e., crucem] jam in viduitate non sumus; sponsum enim recepimus.’ (‘Because of this [i.e., the Cross] we are not now in widowhood; for we have regained our Bridegroom.’) A fuller Latin version of this homily circulated under the name of Chrysostom himself; see André Wilmart, ‘La collection des 38 homélies latines de Saint Jean Chrysostome,’ Journal of Theological Studies 19 (1917-18) 313-14.

22. Epistola XIII (PL 197, col. 167)

23. This interpretation of the Griffon's speech has been presented somewhat more fully, along with complete documentation, in my article ‘ “Sì si conserva il seme d’ogne giusto”’ (note 13 above), 51-2.

24. Reductorium morale XII 133, ‘De rosa,’ Petri Berchorii Pictaviensis … opera omnia (Cologne 1730-1) II 518. Ibid. 517: ‘verae rosae, id est, viri boni & justi …’ (‘true roses, that is, men good and just …’)

25. Rationale divinorum officiorum III, xviii, 9 (Naples 1859) 131

26. This possibility was suggested to me by John Freccero.

27. Benevenuti de Rambaldis de Imola comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, ed. Jacopo Philippo Lacaita (Florence 1887) IV 250

28. See Jean Daniélou SJ, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame 1956) 287-92.

29. For example, Haimo of Auxerre, Expositio in Apocalypsim (PL 117, col. 1020); Bruno of Asti, Expositio in Apocalypsim IV 14 (PL 165, cols 681-2); and ps.-Aquinas, Expositio II in Apocalypsim, in Opera omnia (Paris 1874-89) XXXII 166

30. The fullest version is that in the Ovide moralisé I 3905-4030, ed. C. de Boer et al., ‘Ovide moralisé: Poème du commencement du quatorzième siècle,’ 1, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Afdeeling Letterkunde, NR 15 (1915) 145-7. See also Arnulf of Orléans, Allegoriae super Ovidii Metamorphosin I 10-11, ed. Fausto Ghisalberti, ‘Arnolfo d’Orléans: Un cultore di Ovidio nel secolo XII,’ Memorie del R. Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, Classe di lettere, scienze morali e storiche, XXIV 4 (1932) 203; Giovanni del Virgilio, Allegorie librorum Ovidii Metamorphoseos … prosaice ac metrice compilate I 10, ed. Fausto Ghisalberti, ‘Giovanni del Vergilio espositore delle “Metamorfosi”,’ Giornale Dantesco 34, NS 4 (1931) 46; and Pierre Bersuire, Metamorphosis Ouidiana moraliter … explanata (Paris 1509) fols 21^v-22^v. The main elements of this interpretation appear more or less consistently in annotated texts of the Metamorphoses—for example MSS Vat. lat. 1593, fol. 8^v (twelfth century); Paris, Bibl. nat. lat. 14135, fol. 7^v (thirteenth century); Vat. Palat. lat. 1663, fols. 9^v, 10^v (thirteenth or fourteenth century); and Vat. lat. 1479, fol. 60^r (fourteenth century).

31. I 4043-98 (pp. 148-9). Bersuire (fol. 22^v) interprets Pan pursuing Syrinx as God pursuing the sinner; her metamorphosis is the effect of sin. Other interpretations are Rome pursuing the arts of Greece; the discovery of music; the pursuit of wisdom; knowledge pursuing study and through it the Seven Liberal Arts; and Pan looking for a syringe (syringa, ‘Syrinx’ or ‘syringe’) to relieve his bladder.

32. Opera VI fol. 187^r-v. See also Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam VII 17, on Luke 9:32 (PL 15, cols 1703-4); and Albertus Magnus, In Lucam expositio, in Opera XXII 662.

33. Expositio in Lucam, on Luke 9:32, Opera omnia (Quaracchi 1882-92) VII 235.

34. Homilia in Transfiguratione Domini 18 (PL 89, col. 1317)

35. Opera VI 59^r, on Matthew 17:2. See also Bonaventura, Dominica secunda in Quadragesima, sermo I, in Opera IX 218.

36. Homiliae Dominicales XXVIII, ‘In Sabbatum ante Dominicam II Quadragesimae prima’ (PL 174, cols 190-1)

37. Biblia cum glosis ordinarijs et interlinearibus, fol. 1118^v, marginal gloss; see also the comment on Matthew 17:8, fol. 1051^r, marginal gloss.

38. See especially Philip of Harvengt, Comm. in Cantica II 21 (PL 203, cols 285-9); and Hugh of St Cher, Opera III fol. 114^r-v.

39. Expositio in Canticum Canticorum (PL 164, col. 1244)

40. For example, Gregory, Moralia in Iob XII, v, 6, on Job 14:8-9 (PL 75, col. 989); the Clavis Scripturae VII, xxxii, 2, ed. J.-B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense (Paris 1852-8) II 385; Garner of St Victor, Gregorianum IX 16 (PL 193, col. 343); Alain de Lille, Distinctiones (PL 210, col. 920); the Allegoriae in universam Sacram Scripturam (PL 112, col. 1036); and Peter of Capua, Rosa alphabetica, ‘Radix,’ MS Paris, Bibl. Mazarine 1007: ‘Radix fidei predicatio, Job [14:8-9]’

41. For example, Gregory, Moralia in Iob II, xxxv, 57, on Job 1:20 (PL 75, col. 583); Clavis IV, i, 8 (Spicilegium II 120); Garner, Gregorianum VI 1 (PL 193, cols 242-3; Alain, Distinctiones (PL 210, col. 970); and Allegoriae (PL 112, col. 1065)

42. The seven status ecclesiae derived from the opening of the seven seals in Apocalypse 6-8 (above) are accompanied respectively by seven great ordines predicatorum (‘orders of preachers’), derived from the sounding of the seven trumpets in Apocalypse 8-10; the first of these periods of preaching, corresponding to the first status, is the preaching of the Apostles themselves. On the sounding of the first trumpet (Apocalypse 8:7), see for example Biblia cum glosis ordinarijs et interlinearibus, fol. 1380^r, marginal and interlinear glosses; and Hugh of St Cher, Opera VII fol. 391^v.

This paper was presented at the meeting of the Mediaeval Academy of America at Los Angeles, California, 15 April 1972; and at a seminar entitled ‘The æsthetics of Difficult Literature in the Middle Ages, Part II,’ sponsored by the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, 3 November 1973. My present documentation is intended to be suggestive rather than complete.