Part 4 (1/2)

The next canto (xxviii) introduces us to one of Dante's hastly conceptions The ninth pit is peopled by those who have on earth caused strife and divisions a mankind They are not, as often stated, schismatics in the technical sense of the word Mahorounds however, but as having brought about a great breach between divisions of the huh Fra Dolcino, who is introduced as it were by anticipation, was a religious schismatic, it was no doubt his social heterodoxy which earned him a commemoration in this place The punishment of these sinners is appropriate They are constantly being slashed to pieces by deain before they complete the circuit Curio, who as Lucan narrates, spoke the words which finally decided Caesar to enter upon civil war, Mosca de' Laator of the crime which first imported especial bitterness into the strife of factions at Florence, and one Peter of Medicina, who see party-spirit alive in Ro his own head like a lantern, is Bertrand of Born, the fa proland and his son It is worth noting that at this point we get the first definite indication of the dimensions which Dante assumes for the present division of hell We are told that this ninth pit of Malebolge has a circumference of twenty-two miles From the next canto we learn that the last or innermost pit has half this measure; and from this basis it has been found possible to draw an accurate plan of Malebolge, and to conjecture, with an approach to certainty, the conception forenerally[31]

In the last pit (Cantos xxix and xxx) are found those who have been guilty of personation with cri the coinage or pretending to transthe pit, a quarrel between two of the sinners attracts Dante's attention il thinks seemly; and a sharp reprimand follows

Dante's penitence however earns speedy forgiveness

We are noing near the lowest pit; and through the di forward, they find that the final descent, which appears to be a sheer drop of about thirty-five feet, is guarded by a ring of giants Those of them who are seen are Nimrod, and the classical Ephialtes and Antaeus; but we learn that others fa addressed by Virgil in courteous words, lifts the poets down the wall and lands them on the lowest floor of hell This (Canto xxxii) is of ice, and must be conceived as a circular plain, perhaps about two uilty of any treachery towards those to whom they were bound by special ties of kindred, fellow-citizenshi+p, friendshi+p, or gratitude Each of these various grades of cried concentrically, with no very definite boundaries between the different classes At the same time each division has its appropriate name, formed from some famous malefactor who had specially exe is Caina; the second, Antenora, froend, had betrayed Troy to the Greeks; the third, Toommea, from that Ptolemy, son of Abubus, who treacherously slew the Maccabees at a feast; the last, in which Lucifer himself abides, is Giudecca No distinction appears to exist between the penalties inflicted on the two first classes; all are alike plunged up to the shoulders in the ice, the head being free Dante speaks with ed to the Ghibeline party; though in the case of one, Bocca degli Abati, the treachery had been committed to the detriment of the Guelfs[32] The mention of Bocca and Dante's behaviour to him, may remind us that the whole question of Dante's demeanour towards the persons who For some he is full of pity, towards some he is even respectful; occasionally he is neutral; while in so as here to positive cruelty The expressions of pity, it will be observed, practically cease froe, the ”nether the City of Dis, the tone of Virgil towards the guardians of the damned, which up to that point has been peremptory, becomes almost suppliant The reason for this is indeed somewhat obscure: one does not at once see why the formula ”So it is willed there, where will is power,” should not be as good for the Furies or for Malacoda as it has proved for Charon and Minos Perhaps the clue is to be found in the fact that the sins punished _inside_ the walls of the city (sins which, it will be seen, are not represented in Purgatory at all) are to be regarded as the result of a will obstinately set against the will of God; while the sins arising froht judge, before it is too late, what the will of God is This, however, is a different question, and we must not here pursue it too far To revert to that of Dante's various demeanour, it will be seen that, with the limitation indicated above, his sympathy with the sinner does not vary with the comparative heinousness of the sin Almost his bitterest scorn, indeed, is directed towards soood or bad One infers that he would almost rather wander in a flao the noble coent, Francesca or Ciacco, he has pity in abundance; Farinata, Brunetto, and the other famous men who share the fates of these, ory In such cases as these, while he has not a word to say against the justice of God, he has no desire to add ”the wrath of e where he shows any sy so) it is for the soothsayers, whose sin would not necessarily involve the hurt of others But his conduct is very different to those whose sin has been priainst kindly hugering ruffian Filippo Argenti, who seems to have been in Florentine society the most notable example of a class now happily extinct in civilised countries, at all events ah practical jokes, prouided sense of hu his spite One can sympathise, even after six hundred years, in Dante's pious satisfaction when he saw the one in bodily fear, become in his turn the object of persecution It is, however, after Malebolge is reached, and Dante is a the sinners who have by dishonest practices weakened the bond of confidence which should bind huether, that he lets his wrath and scorn have full play

His irotesque, at times even a foul aspect He was not one to oes straight to his aie and deed Above Malebolge, at all events till the usurers are reached, a certain dignity of speech and action is the rule Noe find flippant expressions and vulgar gestures Nothing is oive a notion, not merely of the sinfulness, but of the sordidness of dishonesty Curiously enough, the one denizen of this region who is thoroughly dignified and even pathetic, is the pagan Ulysses; and to hiil to hold all comolino are presented in such a way as to enlist, in soree, the sympathy of the reader; and it may further be noted that in each case a representative of the fah Dante, while bound to condemn the elder men, had held the houses in such estee a better fate to their successors

The opening of Canto xxxiii brings us to the faolino, which shares with the earlier one of Francesca da Rie in the whole poem It is curious, by the way, that the structure of the two shows many marked parallelisms; only the tender pity which characterises Dante's treat in the latter There is no need to dwell on so well-known a story; but it h a Guelf leader, and condeues with the Ghibeline Archbishop Roger, came of a Ghibeline family, and thus forms only a partial exception to the rule stated above The only genuine Guelf who is named in this division is Tesauro de' Beccheria, the Abbot of Vallombrosa

This will perhaps be the best point at which to say a feords on a subject about which much misconception has prevailed It has often been supposed that Dante was just a Ghibeline partisan, and distributed his characters in the next world according to political sympathies The truth is, that under no circun to any one his place on political grounds--that is, reat parties which then divided Italy He hied to neither His political ideal was a united world subeneral direction of the Emperor in temporal matters, of the Pope in spiritual On the other hand, he would have had national forht up as he had been, the citizen and afterwards the official of a Guelf republic, there is no reason to suppose that a republican forovernment was in any way distasteful to him, provided that it was honestly administered It was not until the more powerful faction in the Guelf party called in the aid of an external power, unconnected with Italy, and hostile, or, as he would doubtless hold, rebellious, to the E with the more ”constitutional” branch of the Guelfs, threw in his lot with the long-banished Ghibelines But neither then nor at any ti to the Ghibeline party So far from it, that he takes that party (in _Par_, vi 105) as the exa way, and ure in the whole history of the Ghibelines, the reat as Dante's ohen he had by his prowess in arms recovered it for the Empire, stood resolutely between it and the destruction which in the opinion of his comrades it had merited, is condemned to share with a Pope and an Emperor the penalty of speculative heterodoxy On the other hand, we find Charles of Anjou, the foreign intruder, the bitter foe of the Empire and pitiless exterminator of the imperial race, a man in whom later historians, free from personal or patriotic bias, have seen hardly any virtue to redeem the sombre cruelty of his career, placed, not indeed in Paradise, but in Purgatory, and waiting in sure and certain hope of ultimate salvation, as one who in spite of ate and self-indulgent age It would be interesting to know, if Dante had atorial circles he would have placed hi hi hily on this point, since even so acco with Dante's reference to the Eets that all the saints in Paradise have their allotted seat in the Rose of the highest heaven, and speaks as though Dante had honoured Henry above all but the greatest saints and foretold his ”direct flight from the earth to the Empyrean” Of course there is not a word of this

All that we are entitled to say is that Dante held Henry to be an E his duty, and would earn his reward like any other Christian and before Dante himself It will be observed that he sees no other E, is in, or rather just outside of, Purgatory; one, the great Frederick II, in hell Of the Popes one only, and he a Pope who in his life lay under grievous suspicion of heterodoxy, and moreover only occupied the Papal See for a few months, is placed in Heaven This is ”Peter of Spain,”

Pope John XXI Two are in Purgatory; one of the apartisan of Charles of Anjou, ht be supposed to have been specially obnoxious to Dante No doubt Popes appear in what uilty souls below; but even for this distribution Dante could probably have pleaded orthodox authority and certainly scriptural support ”To whoiven, of the same shall much be required” It is true, as Professor Bartoli points out, that Dante's ”reverence for the supreme keys” was compatible with a very low estimate of their holders; but is not this exactly e should expect froh ideals and intolerant of failure in proportion to the dignity of the aim? His treatment of Pope Celestine, the one Pope of his ti other than political partisanshi+pput his hand to the plough had looked back, is sufficient to indicate his attitude in this matter

Once realise that Dante was, like our own Milton, a ht to be, and an equally keen appreciation of the fact that things in his tiht to be, that he was fallen on evil days and evil tongues--an appreciation which doubtless reatest, have had at most periods of the world's history--and you have the key to much that no ordinary theory of party-spirit will explain Men of this temper care little for the party cries of everyday politics; and yet they cannot quite sit outside the world of affairs and watch the players, as we ine Shakespeare to have done, in calh-hewn ends was in other hands than ours No great historian of Shakespeare's time devoted a whole chapter to his memory, as did Villani to that of Dante; yet we can hardly doubt that in the education of the world Shakespeare has borne the more iher dignity of the ”contemplative life,” would be the first to own it

The third subdivision, known as Toloe” of receiving the souls of sinners while their bodies are yet alive on earth, animated by demons With this horrible conception we seehest mark of Dante's inventive power Only two names are mentioned, but one feels that if the owners of them ever came across the poem in which they had earned so sinister a commemoration, their sentiratitude[33] These are the last of his contenises In Giudecca (Canto xxxiv) the sinners are wholly sunk below the ice, and only show through like straws or other slass An exception is ards as having carried the sin of ingratitude to its highest point Lucifer, who, as has been said, is fixed at the lowest point, has three faces In the naws Judas Iscariot, while in the others are Brutus and Cassius

The journey to the upper world is begun by a cliy sides of the Archfiend hi his middle, which is also the centre of the earth, the position is reversed, and the ascent begins

For a short distance they clih a chi the course of a streah the earth, they reach the surface, and again coht of the stars

-- 2 PURGATORY

After the invocation to the Muses, a curious survival of classical iery hich in one forins, Dante relates how, on e the poets found thelea in the eastern heaven; and four stars, ”never seen save by the earliest of mankind,” are visible to the south No doubt some tradition or report of the Southern Cross had reachedis more important, and there can be no doubt that the stars denote the four ”cardinal” or natural or active virtues of fortitude, te, as we shall see later on, their place is taken by three other stars, which syical or Christian or conteain Dante sees close at hand an old ht they had conises him for Cato of Utica, the Roman Republican patriot His position here, as warder of the mount of purification, is very curious, and has never been thoroughly explained As it is probable that Dante was influenced by the Virgilian line in which Cato is introduced as the lawgiver of good iven, Cato directs theriird him with a rush, as an emblem of hu (Canto ii) a light is seen approaching over the water As it draws near, it is seen to be an angel His wings forhted with atory They are chanting the Easter Psalel they coil While he is explaining that he is no less strange to the country than they are, so nises a friend, the musician Casella, who, after soins at Dante's request to sing one of the poet's own odes; and the crowd listen intently But Cato coer, drives theeons towards the il is somewhat abashed on account of his participation in the delay (Canto iii); but soon recovers his equaninified pace Dante for the first tiround, and Virgil explaining that the spiritual for pain, has not the property of intercepting light, takes occasion to point out that there are mysteries for which the human reason is unable to account, and that this very inability forreat thinkers who the virtuous heathen on the border of hell With this they reach the foot of the atory As is explained elsewhere, this occupies a position exactly opposite to the conical pit of hell; being indeed formed of that portion of the earth which fled at the approach of Satan when he fell from Heaven Soendary accounts which Pliny and others have preserved of a great ators to the west of the Straits of Gibraltar; these accounts being probably based on imperfect descriptions of Atlas or Teneriffe, or both confused together Its summit is exactly at the Antipodes of Jerusalem, a point which must be carefully borne in iven in the course of the journey are to be rightly understood

The mountain-side, which Dante coed parts of the Genoese Riviera, appears at first, quite inaccessible; but before long theyfro from Dante's shadow that he is not one of themselves, indicate to them the point at which the cliff may be attacked Before they proceed further, one of the shades addressing Dante makes himself known as Manfred, son to the Eives an account of his end, explaining that excommunication--for he had died under the ban of the Church--is powerless to do more than protract the interval between the soul's adatory After this (Canto iv) they enter a steep and narrow cleft in the rock, froe on the mountain face, and a further climb up this lands them about noon on a broader terrace Hitherto they have beenback in that direction, Dante is surprised to find the sun on his left hand Virgil explains the topography; and is saying, in order to encourage Dante, that the labour of cli voice interrupts with the assurance that he will need plenty of sitting yet

The poet recognises in the speaker a Florentine friend Another playful sarcasm on his thirst for information makes Dante address the shade and inquire as to his state He, like Manfred, is debarred froround that he had led an easy life, and taken no thought of seriouscantos (v and vi) we meet with many spirits who are from various causes in a similar position First come those who have been cut off in the ht for mercy at the last The most noteworthy of these is Buonconte of Montefeltro, son of that Count Guy e ainst the Florentines at the battle of Campaldino (1289), in which Dante himself may possibly have borne ar the most famous in the poeedies which were only too fah the crowd, they fall in, as evening is drawing on, with a solitary shade, who replies to Virgil's inquiry for the best road by asking whence they cos up, and reveals himself as the fareeting which follows between the fellow-citizens moves Dante to a splendid denunciation of the internecine quarrels then raging throughout Italy, and of the neglect on the part of the divinely ordained monarch, the Roman Emperor, which has allowed matters to come to such a pass Lastly he directs his invective especially against his own city, Florence, and in words of bitter sarcasm upbraids her with the perpetual revolutions which hinder all good government

Sordello is an example of those whom constant occupation in affairs of state had caused to defer any thought for spiritual things, and who are expiating the delay in the region outside the proper entrance to Purgatory In Canto vii, after explaining that they will not be able to stir a step after sunset (”the night cometh when no man can work”), he leads the poets to a spot where they ht This is a flowery dell on the hillside, occupied by the spirits of those who in life had been sovereign princes and rulers There they see the Emperor Rudolf and his adversary, Ottocar of Bohe of Naples and Sicily, Philip III of France, Peter III of Aragon, Henry III of England, and eneration

Sordello, in pointing theeneracy of their sons,a special exception in favour of Edward, son of Henry

The sun sets (Canto viii) and the shades join in the Coreen robes descend, and take up their position on either side of the little valley Dante, with his cohty shades,” and is nises as an old friend, the Pisan noble Giovanni, or Nino de' Visconti, ”judge” or governor of the Sardinian province called Gallura, nephew of Count Ugolino After some talk Dante notices the three stars spoken of above, and at the sail's attention to an ”adversary” They see a serpent els start in pursuit, putting it to flight After this episode another shade announces himself as Conrad Malaspina, of the house ho a part of his exile

The night wears on, and Dante falls asleep (Canto ix) He dreale up to the e he finds that the sun has risen soil that at daybreak St Lucy (who has already co an interest in his welfare) had appeared and borne hiate of Purgatory This is approached by three steps of variously-coloured stone The first is white h rock, the third blood-red porphyry, indicating probably the three stages of the soul's progress to freedoh confession, contrition, and penance On the top marked seven P's (_peccata_ sins) on Dante's forehead, adate

Thus far, except in the passage, Canto viii 19 sqq, to which Dante hiorical interpretation has not afforded any very great difficulty With this particular passage readers will do well to compare _Inf_, ix 37 sqq, where a very siory, and draw their own conclusions But on the whole, the atory_ is ive an excuse for a good deal of historical research For exauishi+ng a person who, from all the records that we have, does not seeure in the eyes of his contemporaries

It will hardly be necessary to follow Dante step by step through the stages of the mountain of purification We shall probably do best to consider the general plan on which Purgatory is arranged, the nature of the various penances, with their adaptation to the offences which they expiate, and the light thrown in this division of the poem on Dante's opinions about the elements of political and es, on the mountain, connected with each other by stairways cut in the rock Each stairway is guarded by an angel, and each, as it would appear, is shorter and less steep than the previous one Thus the passage from the first to the second circle takes a considerable tih at all events to allow of soil between the el and that at which they reach the top of the stairway

On the other hand, when they come to the final ascent, from the seventh circle to the level of the Earthly Paradise which occupies the su the-place, which, as appears afterwards, is practically on the suel, as Dante passes, erases froate had inscribed there, and utters one of the Scriptural Beatitudes appropriate to the circle which they are quitting Thus, ”Blessed are the peacemakers” accompanies their departure froer after righteousness” is heard as they leave that where gluttony is expiated