The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  100. German Albert: Albert of Austria, born 1248, Emperor 1298, assassinated 1308. He was, therefore, Emperor at the purported time of Dante’s journey.

  At that time Italy was a part of the Holy Roman Empire though torn by internal strife between the Ghibellines (nominally the party of the Emperor though the party lines were blurred by local urgencies) and the Guelphs (nominally for independence and more often for anarchy). Many of the warring lords were, moreover, lieges of the Emperor. Dante’s lament for Italy is always for her bloody internal wars, which he attributed, logically enough, to the lack of a central authority. The Emperor had that authority and could easily have brought unification and peace to Italy. But Albert and his father Rudolph (see VII, 91-96, and note) concerned themselves with affairs to the north and neither ever so much as visited Italy. Because of their negligence, Italy had all but slipped out of the Empire and the many Italian robber-barons warred on unceasingly at the very time that the northern kingdoms of the Empire were enjoying a long era of peace.

  Dante goes on to specify the charges against Albert and his father more fully. They have allowed the Ghibelline lords to fall into ruinous feuds which could have been stopped by a word from the Emperor since the feuding parties were all lieges of the Emperor. Dante cites two such feuding Ghibelline pairs. The Montagues and the Capulets are the same Veronese families made familiar by Romeo and Juliet. The Monaldi and the Filippeschi were of Orvieto. All should have served as pillars of Empire in Italy, and all ruined themselves in their feuds.

  The Emperor has, moreover, allowed robber barons to destroy the peace of the land. Dante’s reference to the district of Santafiora in the Sienese Maremma is ironic: Santafiora was a robber’s roost that afforded no security whatever.

  The Emperor has, further, allowed Rome, the seat and glory of his Empire, to fall into decay by withholding his authority (the strong hand of Caesar).

  By such neglect (lines 118-120) he has destroyed his own people (“united in love” is a bitter irony) and his own good name.

  121. Supreme Jove: The usage must seem strange to modern ears, but there can be no doubt that Dante is referring here to God. In Dante’s view the pagan names Zeus and Jove referred always to the Christian God as (dimly) perceived by the ancients who lacked Christ’s clarifying word.

  129. Marcellus: Marcellus opposed Caesar and was forgiven by him. Dante may, therefore, mean that anyone who calls himself a local partisan may safely oppose Caesar-Emperor and win support by doing so.

  130-155. INVECTIVE AGAINST FLORENCE. (Cf. Inferno, XXVI, 1-12.) Having bewailed the anarchy of Italy under Imperial neglect, Dante now turns to another of his invectives against his own city as the type of the bloodily self-divided and corrupt state. His praises are, of course, ironic and every semblance of a good quality ascribed to Florence should be understood to imply the opposite.

  133. Others have Justice at heart . . . : Sense: Others have justice sincerely at heart and are ready to defend the right by arms, but they deliberate carefully, as wise men should, and are slow to draw the bow. You, Florence, have the word “justice” forever on your tongue and are forever ready to fire, but it is only the word you shoot, and from the tongue only, the deed never fulfilling the word.

  136-137. Others, offered public office, shun the cares of service: They refuse out of conscientious misgivings because they take duty seriously, or perhaps because they are lazy, but your greedy politicians, Florence, are forever exclaiming their pious readiness to sacrifice themselves, even before they are asked—but they have no other aim than to raid the till.

  140. your wealth, your peacefulness, and your good sense: The last two have already expired from Florence, and Dante seems to imply that the first will not last long as things are going.

  145-146. But all time shall remember the subtlety: A mocking comparison between the stability of Athenian and Spartan law, one of the foundations of Western civilization, and the “more advanced” Florentine way of doing things in which nothing—not coinage, nor custom, nor law, nor office, nor pledged word—lives out the month.

  152. that sick woman: Though she lies in luxury (on a feather bed) she can find no relief from what is wrong with her but flails about as if she were fencing with her pain and grief, seeking to overcome it by outmaneuvering it. The last line (155) is not in the original. It is my own addition, forced upon me by the need to rhyme.

  Canto VII

  ANTE-PURGATORY:

  THE SECOND LEDGE

  THE FLOWERING VALLEY

  The Late-Repentant

  Class Four: The Negligent

  Rulers

  Sordello, discovering Virgil’s identity, pays homage to him and offers to guide the Poets as far as Peter’s Gate. It is nearly sunset, however, and Sordello explains that by THE LAW OF THE ASCENT no one may go upward after sundown. He suggests that they spend the night in the nearby FLOWERING VALLEY in which the souls of THE NEGLIGENT RULERS wait to begin their purification. The three together climb in the failing light to the edge of the valley. In it, they observe, among others: RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG, OTTOCAR OF BOHEMIA, PHILIP THE BOLD OF FRANCE, HENRY OF NAVARRE, PEDRO III OF ARAGON, CHARLES I OF ANJOU, HENRY III OF ENGLAND, and WILLIAM VII, MARQUIS OF MONFERRATO.

  All of the rulers, except Henry of England, were in one way or another connected with the Holy Roman Empire. Thus they were specially sanctified by the Divine Right of Kings and again sanctified for their place in the temporal hierarchy of Christ’s Empire. Dante signalizes this elevation by the beauty of the valley in which he places them, a flower-strewn green hollow of unearthly beauty and fragrance. The valley is certainly a counterpart of the Citadel of the Virtuous Pagans in Limbo, but it outshines that lower splendor by as much as Divine Love outshines Human Reason.

  Three or four times in brotherhood the two

  embraced and re-embraced, and then Sordello

  drew back and said: “Countryman, who are you?”

  “Before those spirits worthy to be blessed

  had yet been given leave to climb this mountain,

  Octavian had laid my bones to rest.

  I am Virgil, and I am lost to Heaven

  for no sin, but because I lacked the faith.”

  In these words was my Master’s answer given.

  Just as a man who suddenly confronts

  something too marvelous either to believe

  or disbelieve, and so does both at once—

  so did Sordello. Then his great head lowered,

  and, turning, he once more embraced my Master,

  but round the knees, as a menial does his lord.

  “Eternal Glory of the Latin race,

  through whom our tongue made all its greatness clear!

  Of my own land the deathless pride and praise!

  What grace or merit lets me see you plain?”

  he said. “And oh, if I am worthy, tell me

  if you come here from Hell, and from what pain.”

  “Through every valley of the painful kingdom

  I passed,” my Lord replied. “A power from Heaven

  marked me this road, and in that power I come.

  Not what I did but what I left undone,

  who learned too late, denies my right to share

  your hope of seeing the Eternal Sun.

  There is a place below where sorrow lies

  in untormented gloom. Its lamentations

  are not the shrieks of pain, but hopeless sighs.

  There do I dwell with souls of babes whom death

  bit off in their first innocence, before

  baptism washed them of their taint of earth.

  There do I dwell with those who were not dressed

  in the Three Sacred Virtues but, unstained,

  recognized and practiced all the rest.

  But if you know and are allowed to say,

  show us how we may reach the true beginning

  of Purgatory by the shortest way.”

  “We are not fixed in one
place,” he replied,

  “but roam at will up and around this slope

  far as the Gate, and I will be your guide.

  But the day is fading fast, and in no case

  may one ascend at night: we will do well

  to give some thought to a good resting place.

  Some souls are camped apart here on the right.

  If you permit, I will conduct you to them:

  I think you will find pleasure in the sight.”

  “What is it you say?” my Guide asked. “If one sought

  to climb at night, would others block his way?

  Or would he simply find that he could not?”

  “Once the Sun sets,” that noble soul replied,

  “you would not cross this line”—and ran his finger

  across the ground between him and my Guide.

  “Nor is there anything to block the ascent

  except the shades of night: they of themselves

  suffice to sap the will of the most fervent.

  One might, indeed, go down during the night

  and wander the whole slope, were he inclined to,

  while the horizon locks the day from sight.”

  I heard my Lord’s voice, touched with wonder, say:

  “Lead us to the place of which you spoke

  where we may win some pleasure from delay.”

  We had not traveled very far from there

  before I saw a hollow in the slope

  such as one often finds in mountains here.

  “There,” said that spirit, “where the mountain makes

  a lap among its folds: that is the place

  where we may wait until the new day breaks.”

  The dell’s rim sank away from left to right.

  A winding path, half-level and half-steep,

  led us to where the rim stood at mid-height.

  Indigo, phosphorescent wood self-lit,

  gold, fine silver, white-lead, cochineal,

  fresh emerald the moment it is split—

  all colors would seem lusterless as shade

  if placed beside the flowers and grassy banks

  that made a shining of that little glade.

  Nor has glad Nature only colored there,

  but of a thousand sweet scents made a single

  earthless, nameless fragrance of the air.

  Salve Regina!—from that green the hymn

  was raised to Heaven by a choir of souls

  hidden from outer view by the glade’s rim.

  “Sirs,” said that Mantuan, “do not request

  that I conduct you there while any light

  remains before the Sun sinks to its nest.

  You can observe them from this rise and follow

  their actions better, singly and en masse,

  than if you moved among them in the hollow.

  He who sits highest with the look of one

  ashamed to move his lips when others praise,

  in life left undone what he should have done.

  He was the Emperor Rudolph whose high state

  could once have stayed the death of Italy.

  Now, though another try, ’t will be too late.

  That one who comforts him ruled formerly

  the land where rise the waters that flow down

  the Moldau to the Elbe to the sea.

  He was Ottocar, and more respected and feared

  while still in diapers than his dissipated

  son Wenceslaus is now with a full beard.

  That Snubnose there who talks with head close-pressed

  to the kindly looking one, died while in flight,

  dishonoring the Lily on his crest.

  Observe the way he beats his breast and cries.

  And how the other one has made his palm

  a bed to rest his cheek on while he sighs.

  They are father and father-in-law of The Plague of France.

  They know his dissolute and vicious ways,

  and hence their grief among these holy chants.

  The heavy-sinewed one beside that spirit

  with the manly nose, singing in harmony,

  bore in his life the seal of every merit.

  And if that younger one who sits in place

  behind him, had remained king after him,

  true merit would have passed from vase to vase.

  As it has not, alas, in their successors.

  Frederick and James possess the kingdoms now.

  Their father’s better heritage none possesses.

  Rare is the tree that lifts to every limb

  the sap of merit—He who gives, so wills

  that men may learn to beg their best from Him.

  And what I say goes for that bignosed one

  no less than for the other who sings with him.

  On his account Provence and Puglia mourn.

  By as much as Margaret and Beatrice

  must yield when Constance speaks her husband’s worth,

  that much less than the tree the seedling is.

  See Henry of England seated there alone,

  the monarch of the simple life: his branches

  came to good issue in a noble son.

  The other lone one seated on the ground

  below the rest and looking up to them

  was the Marquis William Longsword, he who found

  such grief in Allesandria, for whose pride

  both Monferrato and Canavese cried.”

  NOTES

  General Note: THE NEGLIGENT RULERS. The Negligent Rulers are the fourth and final class of the Late-Repentant. All of the Late-Repentant made God wait by putting off their surrender to His will until the end. Accordingly God now makes them wait before they may begin their ascent to Him through the purifying pains of Purgatory-proper. The Negligent Rulers, however, had special cause to be preoccupied by worldly affairs. Their responsibility for their subjects was not only a duty but a duty in some measure imposed upon them by God’s Will since kings were believed to be divinely selected. Just as those who died by violence are elevated a step above the merely indolent, so the Negligent Rulers are elevated above their negligent subjects because their special duties made it difficult for them to think about the welfare of their own souls.

  4-6. THE FIRST SALVATION. Before Christ’s redemption, the souls of the virtuous went to Limbo. In Inferno, IV, Dante refers to Christ’s apocryphal descent into Limbo in A.D. 33. The incident is known as The Harrowing of Hell, and in it Christ was said to have taken with him to Heaven the first souls to win salvation. (Adam and Eve were among those so elevated.) From the time of the Fall until A.D. 33, therefore, Purgatory existed but was not in use. Virgil died in A.D. 19 under the Emperor Octavian.

  19. What grace or merit: I.e., what special grace granted me by Heaven, or what merit of my own I know not of?

  33. taint of earth: Original sin. Unbaptized infants have not yet been taken to Christ and have not, accordingly, been cleaned of their part in Adam’s guilt. They must, therefore, share the fate of the virtuous pagans (Inferno, IV) whom they resemble in being sinless but lacking Christ’s sacrament. Infant damnation is one of the most vexed and least attractive tenets of dogmatic Christianity.

  35-36. The Three Sacred Virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity. These are the “revealed” or “theological” virtues. the rest: The Four Cardinal Virtues. They are Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. (See I, 23, and 31 ff., notes.)

  40-60. THE LAW OF THE ASCENT. No allegory, by its nature, is containable within a paraphrase. The center of the allegory here is clearly in the fact that the Sun symbolizes Divine Illumination. Note that Dante underlines this idea by referring to God in line 27 above as “the Eternal Sun.” Thus the primary meanings of the allegory may be clearly enough stated: first, that one cannot achieve true repentance and purification except in the sight of God (light of the Sun); second, that one has no difficulty in backsliding (going down the mountain) once he is out of God’s sig
ht (darkness); and third, that once out of sight of God/Sun one simply cannot find within himself the will to climb. See also note to lines 85-87, below.

  Once in Heaven, it should be noted, there is no night: one is constantly in the presence and light of God, the Sun. Here is another of those harmonies of concept that mark Dante’s structural power: in Heaven there is no darkness; in Hell there is no light (except the dimness of Human Reason unaided); in Purgatory—the Kingdom between—there is both light and darkness.