If we are to remain alert to the call to retrospection set up in the reader's own memory, then we will need to take account of a remarkable number and range of intercanto echoes. Pluto's nonsense language in the opening line of *Inferno* vii is strongly recalled in the Giant Nimrod's gibberish in *Inferno* xxxi. 66, and his lack of clarity has a counterpoint in the lucidity of Arnaut Daniel's Occitan in *Purgatorio* xxvi. Pluto's swollen, impotent rage can be related to that of the Theban Capaneus in *Inferno* xiv (here we find the same rhyme-set 'rabbia – labbia – abbia', applied in lines 65-69).21 The outcry against avarice that targets the 'maladetto lupo' in *Inferno* vii. 8 sends us back to the she-wolf in *Inferno* i. 94-102 and is modulated further in the terrace of avarice and prodigality in *Purgatorio* xx. 10, where the 'lupa' is named again. The tendency to connect avarice with the clergy (all the sinners of avarice and prodigality in *Inferno* vii are tonsured [ll. 38-39, 46-48]) is emphasized monumentally and memorably in *Inferno* xix, in *Purgatorio* xix, and then again in *Paradiso*, especially ix. 127-42 and xxviii. 55, where the pursuit of lucre is linked to the ravenous, rapacious wolves that are the leaders of the Church. Virgil's discussion of 'Fortuna' needs to be situated in relation to *Purgatorio* xx, where, in lines 13-15, the rotation of the heavens is mentioned in the context of a plea for the deity to put an end to the rapacious dominion of the she-wolf we have already mentioned. But the Virgilian discourse should also be positioned in relation to *Inferno* xv. 95-96 and *Paradiso* xvi. 82-84, lines in which Fortune is explicitly associated with heavenly motion. And of course Virgil's unusual presentation of Fortune in *Inferno* vii as an angelic minister of God's providential design, one which operates as a special motive force in the heavens to cause the change of fortunes on Earth, should be located against the discussion of angelic operations in the cosmos in relation to divine order and providence in the opening lines of *Paradiso* i, as well as to Beatrice's first doctrinal discourse in this canto and in cantos ii, viii, ix and xxviii.

As for *Purgatorio* vii, the canto is – as many critics have noted – strongly bound up with the previous one (in the second *cantica* the political material flows into the following canto in a way that does not happen in Hell). However, the discussion of Virgil's plight also sends us back to his status as unwitting rebel in *Inferno* i, and his place in Limbo in *Inferno* iv. Martinez and Michelangelo Picone have noted how the description of the Valley in which eight Princes are encountered establishes a series of recalls – shadow, sighs, isolated place, limitations of human action without faith – that take us back to Limbo.22 The intense natural beauty of the valley is outdone by

21 See note 16.

22 See Martinez, *The Divine Commedy: Purgatorio*, pp. 124-25; Michelangelo Picone, '*Purgatorio* vii', in *Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio*, ed. by Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Cesati, 2001), esp. pp. 97-98. The recall is already found in part in Benvenuto da Imola; see *Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam*, ed. by J. P. Lacaita, 5 vols (Florence: Barbèra, 1887), III, 204 (*Purg*., vii. 73-81 *ad loc*.). I am grateful to George Corbett for this reference.

the supernatural beauty of the engravings on the first terrace of Purgatory. The pairing of former enemies amongst the princes in the second half of the canto gains further light from the more epistemological perspective of former 'intellectual' enemies harmoniously reconciled in the Heaven of the Sun (*Par*., x-xiv). And the celebrated apostrophe to human probity rarely being an inherited virtue is re-examined at greater length in relation to human talents and their providential distribution in *Paradiso* viii.

As regards *Paradiso* vii, one notes again the very close interconnections with the previous canto; indeed Beatrice's extended discourse on resurrection is nominally at least a response to terminology used in the previous canto. *Paradiso* vii with its attention to the heavens, questions of order and metaphysics, and theological discussion of sin, atonement, redemption and resurrection needs to be related to all the earlier disquisitions by Beatrice in *Paradiso*. The role of divine providence is progressively refined both in the following two cantos and in *Paradiso* xix. 22-36. As for other kinds of situational parallels, thematic correspondences, and echoing of specific motifs and words that are notable in *Paradiso* vii, one might offer the following: the idea that Beatrice's smile would make one happy in fire (*Par*., vii. 17-18) is a strategic recall of *Purgatorio* xxvii. 46-54 (but also of the *Vita nova* and the *canzone* 'Lo doloroso amor che mi conduce') and *Inferno* i. 119; the idea of 'freno', or rein on human will, can be related to *Purgatorio* vi. 88; the idea of distinction between creation and generation is first adumbrated in *Purgatorio* xxv. 37-78; the metaphor of divine power imprinting itself on the wax of celestial matter (recalled twice in the canto) is developed earlier in *Paradiso* i. 40-42 and later in cantos viii. 127-29 and xiii. 67-75; the words 'follia' and 'cortesia', paired in rhyme, need unpacking against other usages of the terms in the poem; the image of the divine creation of the human soul enamoured with its maker (*Par*., vii. 143-44) sends us back again to such passages as *Purgatorio* xvi. 85-90 and xxv. 70-72; the closing argumentation regarding the resurrection of the body should send us scurrying away to all the other passages that deal with such teachings and themes across the poem; and the grandiloquent lines on divine goodness shining in all things but with different reflections (*Par*., vii. 74-75, 81) can be related to the theme of varied intensity and reception of light in the early cantos of *Paradiso* (*Par*., i. 1-3; ii passim, esp. 142-48; v. 7-12).

If, however, we restrict ourselves only to the laboratory of verticality, and test out the thematic overlaps amongst the Sevens then one might identify the following as regards shared thematic or imagistic fields: (i) questions related to the nature of language and the human voice; (ii) motifs related to imagery of dance, and especially of wheeling or going up and down; (iii) parallels that turn on the progressive refinement of perspective involving questions of fortune and providence, of heavenly power and human will, the interrelationships between justice, sin, and suffering, and treatment of the human body in each of the three cantos. As far as formal parallels are concerned, there are three main areas: (i) the invented language with which both *Inferno* vii and *Paradiso* vii open; (ii) correspondences or partial ones in rhyme series; and (iii) marked repetition of several key words such as 'colpa', 'pene', 'giustizia', 'seme', 'vendetta'.

Let us begin with the most suggestive formal parallelism offered up by a partial vertical reading, that is, the one provided by the respective openings of *Inferno* vii and *Paradiso* vii:

> '*Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!*' cominciò Pluto con la voce chioccia; e quel savio gentil, che tutto seppe, disse per confortarmi: 'Non ti noccia la tua paura; ché, poder ch'elli abbia, non ci torrà lo scender questa roccia.  (*Par*., vii, 1-7)

['*Osanna, sanctus Deus sabaòth, superillustrans claritate tua felices ignes horum malacòth!*' Thus, revolving to his notes, this substance seemed to me to sing, on whom double light is twinned, and he and the others moved in their dance.]

Although the parallelism between the passages has received relatively little comment, one could not wish for a better example of the suggestiveness and potency of vertical reading, or at least of partial vertical reading. We have two examples of invented language that are balanced symmetrically at the opening of the respective cantos. What is more, in each canto the invented language elicits a wider response to that vocal utterance. The audible but unintelligible utterance shrieked out by Pluto, '*Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!*' in a 'voce chioccia' [clucking voice] (line 2) has deceived many commentators and critics who have attempted to trace the words to Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, French or English, various Italian dialects such as Modenese and Genoese, and even to Maltese dialect. The words do not make sense. What Dante is doing here is inventing artificial, nonsense language from a bricolage of pseudo-words and phonemes from other languages (including Latin and Hebrew) in what is, as Robert Hollander has shown, a parodic inversion of the five words of clear speech called for by St Paul in I Corinthians 14:19, a passage concerned with the overreliance of the faithful on speaking in tongues.23 Pluto's words bear directly upon the theme of language and its failure, both in the segment of the poem that extends from *Inferno* iii to ix (where in iii, v and vi, Virgil had reaffirmed the preordained nature of Dante's journey in clashes with other demons), and, more narrowly, within canto vii itself, where Virgil's words are juxtaposed with the impotent garbling of the demonic guardian. The opposition between linguistic efficacy and garrulous verbal utterance is foregrounded throughout the canto: first by the encounter with Pluto, then by the doctrinal disquisition in the middle of the canto (ll. 70-99), and finally at the end of canto itself which also involves, like Pluto's pseudowords, failed speech, as the souls submerged in the slime of the Stygian marsh gurgle audible, but unintelligible, bubbles of sound from beneath its muddy depths. Still broader and fundamental implications inform the connections between language and ethics, in particular the way that moral and spiritual failings are reflected not only in deviant applications of language, but also in distortions of vocal utterance: this is a major theme

23 See Robert Hollander, *Dante and Paul's Five Words with Understanding* (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992). For further discussion of the opening line(s) and bibliography, see Simon A. Gilson, '"Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe!" (*Inferno* 7:1) in Dante's commentators, 1322-1570', in *Nonsense and Other Senses: Regulated Absurdity in Literature*, ed. by Elisabetta Tarantino (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009), pp. 25-54.

of Hell, of course, but it is especially prominent within *Inferno* vii, with the barking of souls in line 43 and the lack of 'parola integra' in line 126.24

The extent of the deviance, the lack of clarity and the ethical failings do not emerge fully, however, until we compare oppositionally, and through vertical reading, Pluto's utterance with the equally mixed and invented language which Dante strategically places at the opening of *Paradiso* vii. Here, the words are those of the Emperor Justinian in his hymn of praise to the deity, and – as in *Inferno* vii. 1 – Dante uses Latin and Hebrew words, most of which are found in the Vulgate Bible ('Osanna', 'sabaòth', 'malacòth').25 The opening of *Paradiso* vii is more inventive at the phonetic and lexical level: the rare *superillustrans* is a Latin neologism coined on the basis of pseudo-Dionysian concepts and related terminology. More important still, though, is the way the conscious alignment of two examples of invented language in parallel cantos encourages us to compare and to take account of the profound oppositional tension between both openings. Unlike Pluto's animalesque phonemes, Justinian's mellifluous hymn of praise to God (with its Biblical and liturgical echoes) has both morphology and syntax. Justinian's words refocus our attention on how Pluto's vocal utterance lacks any semantically organizing structures, and this in turn helps us to appreciate more clearly the context of that earlier encounter, the nature of the speaker and the utterance itself, an utterance that may contain some of the physical attributes of speech but cannot be articulated into a meaningful sequence.26

The oppositional nature of the two passages viewed along the vertical axis informs too the narrative sequences that then follow:

> Poi si rivolse a quella 'nfiata labbia, E disse: 'Taci, maladetto lupo! […]

24 On the degradation of language in the canto, see (in addition to Pluto) *Inf*., vii. 26: 'grand' urli'; 'gridando' [great cries; crying] (ll. 26, 30); 'gridandosi anche loro ontoso metro' [shouting at each other their shameful meter] (l. 33); 'Assai la voce loro chiaro l'abbaia' [Very clearly do their voices bay it out] (l. 43); 'che sotto l'acqua è gente che sospira / e fanno pullular quest'acqua al summo' [that under the water are people who are sighing, / making the water bubble at the surface] (ll. 118-19); 'Quest'inno si gorgoliano ne la strozza / che dir nol posson con parola integra' [This hymn / they gurgle in their throats, for they cannot fully / form the words] (ll. 125-26).

25 On 'malacòth', see Jerome's preface to Vulgate; for the Hebrew words 'Hosanna' and 'saboath', see Matt. 21:9 and 1; James 5:4.

26 See esp. Steven Botterill, 'Dante's Poetics of the Sacred Word', *Philosophy and Literature* 20:1 (1996), 54-62.

quali dal vento le gonfiate vele caggiono avvolte, poi che l'alber fiacca, tal cadde a terra la fiera crudele. (*Inf*., vii. 7-8, 13-15)

[Then he turned back to that swollen face and said: 'Silence, cursed wolf! […] As when sails swollen by the wind fall tangled, when the mast gives way: so did that cruel beast fall to earth.]

Io dubitava e dicea 'Dille, dille!' fra me, 'dille' dicea 'a la mia donna che mi diseta con le dolci stille'. […] Poco sofferse me cotal Beatrice e cominciò, raggiandomi d'un riso tal, che nel foco faria l'uom felice.  […] Beatrice suffered me so but a little while, and she began, shining on me with a smile that would make one happy in the fire.]

Here we should contrast Beatrice's luminosity and ethereal smile with the gross physicality of Pluto's swollen 'labbia', the sweetness of her drops of wisdom (sweetness is of course a key element of poetry) with the 'voce chioccia' of the *monstrum*. And one notes, too, the attention Dante pays to the syllables of Beatrice's name and their power over him – causing him to pass out – and its contrast with the inability of syllables to mean anything in Pluto's utterance and their lack of 'poder' [power].27

A further oppositional element between the opening sequences of the first and the third *cantica* is found in the motif of dance. Dante's bitter presentation of the 'enforced' semi-circular dancing of avaricious and prodigal souls in *Inferno* vii. 24 forms a sharp contrast with the harmonious 'danza' of souls marked up in *Paradiso* vii. 7 (as we have noted, this is a

27 There is a conscious revocation here of style features and thematic patterning in the *Vita nova*: 'dille' and the emphasis on Beatrice's name and dreaming. See also the *canzone* 'Lo doloroso amor', in particular ll. 8-9, 14-15, 27-28: 'foco / che mi ha tratto di gioco [...] "Per quella moro c'ha nome Beatrice". / Quel dolce nome, che mi fa il cor agro [...] dolce viso / a che niente pare lo paradiso' [that fire which has drawn me away from happiness […] 'Through her I die, whose name is Beatrice'. That sweet name which embitters my heart […] the sweet face to which Paradise seems nothing in comparison], translation from *Dante's Lyric Poetry*, trans. by Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967).

motif that begins here and extends out into *Paradiso*, especially the Heaven of the Sun). The dance motif is, in fact, part of a broader – and more significant – set of patterned concerns with circling and wheeling across the Sevens which are explicitly highlighted with the reference to Fortune's wheel in *Inferno* vii (l. 96: 'volve sua spera' [turns her sphere]), and the semicircular movements around one another of the avaricious and prodigal.28 The idea of Fortune as providential wheeling is recast in a later passage on wheeling movement in *Purgatorio* vii. Here, we learn that, with nightfall on the Mountain, it is impossible to ascend without divine grace ('ir suso'), even though one can 'tornare in giuso':

> ché la notturna tenebra, ad ir suso; quella col nonpoder la voglia intriga. Ben si poria con lei tornare in giuso e passeggiar la costa intorno errando, mentre che l'orizzonte il dì tien chiuso. (*Purg*., vii. 56-60)

[[…] the darkness of night, which shackles the will with inability. One could of course descend and walk wandering along the shore, while the horizon holds the day closed up.]

The final parallel canto, *Paradiso* vii, develops the idea of circularity not only through the dance of the blessed but also in theological and metaphysical terms, by showing that man could not obtain satisfaction for original sin through acts of humility because his disobedience had led him to prideful overreaching, to 'ir suso':

> Non potea l'uomo ne' termini suoi mai sodisfar, per non potere ir giuso con umilitate obedïendo poi, quanto disobediendo intese ir suso; […] per far l'uom sufficiente a rilevarsi. (*Par*., vii. 97-100, 116)

[man could not, within his limits, ever atone, since he could not descend with obedient humility afterwards as far as in his disobedience he earlier intended to rise up; […] in order to make mankind sufficient to raise itself up.]

28 Note also the stars which circle around created matter (l. 138), and the 'moto de le luci santi' [the motion of the holy lights] (l. 141).

Thus, we see how, across both *Purgatorio* vii and *Paradiso* vii, motion up and down is governed by divine liberality and how this works in relation to human will and power: 'giuso', 'suso' and 'chiuso' form an identical rhyme series that binds together the two cantos, refining the relationship between Fortune, humankind, grace and divine liberality.

The third set of thematic parallels again concerns progressive refinement of levels of understanding through enlargement of perspective. The words 'giustizia' and 'pena' that we first meet in the poet's apostrophe to divine judgement in *Inferno* vii. 19-21, though sidestepped by Virgil in his repeated insistence on his non-culpability in *Purgatorio* vii, receive fuller explanation in the light of the divine justice of the Redemption and its more global explanation of justice, sin and punishment. Similar strategies may govern the use of human will across all cantos, and also allusions to the resurrection of the body (*Inf*., vii. 55-57; *Par*., vii. passim, but esp. 142-48). It is perhaps tempting to examine the varying treatment of the body across all the Sevens, especially given the associations carried by the number itself. Bodily parts certainly provide a remarkably rich set of lexical items in all three cantos. *Paradiso* vii, for example, closes by arguing that the divinely created nature of the 'umana carne' [human flesh] (l. 147) of the 'uom che non nacque' [the man who was not born] (l. 26), that is, Adam's body, demonstrates the doctrine of resurrection; the gallery of princes presented in *Purgatorio* vii is strongly physiognomic; and, though unrecognizable, the bodily parts of the avaricious and the prodigal and the 'accidiosi' are repeatedly named in degrading and violent contexts in *Inferno* vii.29 One risk in such an enterprise is that we might end up privileging echoes that are not necessarily patterned or significant but rather simply what happens in lengthy, highly fashioned literary works, especially when major themes are considered, as is the case here.30

29 On bodily parts in *Inferno* vii, see lines 7 ('labbia' [face]), 27 ('poppa' [chests]), 47 ('capo' [heads]), 57 ('pugno chiuso […] crin mozzi' [closed fists […] hair cut short]), 69 ('branche' [clutches]), 112 ('mano' [hands]), 113 ('con la testa e col petto e coi piedi' [with head and breast and feet]), 114 ('denti' [teeth]), 125 ('strozza' [throats]). On the pronounced physiognomical interest in *Purgatorio* vii, see Christoper Kleinhenz, 'A Nose for Art (*Purgatorio* vii): Notes on Dante's Iconographical Sense', *Italica* 52 (1975), 372-79.

30 On the dangers of vertical reading drawing attention to the obvious, see the discussion in Zygmunt G. Barański, '"Without any Violence"', in this volume, and 'Reading the *Commedia*'s IXs "Vertically": From Addresses to the Reader to *crucesignati* and the *Ecloga Theoduli*', *L'Alighieri* 42 (2014), 5-36. It might be interesting to work comparatively here, reflecting for heuristic purposes on the ways that episodes connect with other episodes in such works as Boccaccio's *Decameron* (though here the symmetrical patterning and cult of number are in part Dantean concerns), but perhaps also works such as *Don Quixote*, *The Brothers Karamazov*, and *À la recherche du temps perdu*.

Let us conclude with some further commentary on the treatment of Fortune, providence and angels across the Sevens. It is well known that Virgil's lecture is built on Boethius' *Consolation of Philosophy*: the lament, the explanation of a providential power, the imperscrutability, the speed of moments, the way Fortune is cursed by men, the emptiness of things assigned to Fortune, the image of the wheel, the idea of Fortune as ruler – all these are Boethian elements. Perhaps the most un-Boethian feature of the discourse is the way Dante conceives Fortune as forming part of the cosmological order, as a separate, divinely willed angelic mover controlling the distribution of goods in the sublunar world. Cosmological and angelological emphases are picked up, and refined, in both the later Sevens, above all in *Paradiso* vii, where the creation of the angelic hierarchies is presented more broadly as part of the providential order, and the angels are seen to control all processes in the sublunar realm. The wealth of Boethian references in *Inferno* vii (in particular the echoes of *Consolation* II. i. 60-62; II. ii. 1-14; IV. vi), is well known, but it is interesting that the parallel cantos also contain prominent Boethian reminiscences. In *Purgatorio* vii. 121-23, human virtue is attributed not to parental intervention but to divine origin: 'Rade volte resurge per li rami / l'umana probitate; e questo vole / quei che la dà, perché da lui si chiama' [Seldom does human probity rise up through the / branches, and this is willed by him who gives it, / that it may be attributed to him]. It seems likely that these lines contain an echo of *Cons*., III, m. 6. 7-8.31 And in Beatrice's discourse in *Paradiso* vii, especially lines 64-66 ('La bontà divina che da sé sperne / ogne livore, ardendo in sé, sfavilla / sì che dispiega le bellezze etterne' [God's goodness, which spurns all envy, / aflame within itself, flashes forth unfolding the / eternal beauties]), one finds a markedly Christianized reworking of the celebrated Boethian hymn from Book III, metre 9, one which, as Luca Lombardo has recently shown, bears the traces of William of Conches' own Christianizing exegesis.32 The three Boethian

31 *Consolation of Philosophy*, III. vi. 13-18: 'Quid genus est proavos strepitis? Si primordia vestra / Auctoremque deum spectes, nullus degener exstat / Ni vitiis peiora fovens proprium desertat ortum' [why boast of your stock since none is counted base, if you consider God the author of your race, other than he who with foul vice deserts his own birth].

32 *Consolation of Philosophy*, III. ix. 5-7: '[…] verum insita summi / forma boni livore carens, tu cuncta spero / ducis ab exemplo, pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse' [the indwelling form of the highest good free from envy: You drive all things from the eternal example: most beautiful]. But for Conches' mediation, see Luca Lombardo, *Boezio in Dante. La 'Consolatio Philosophiae' nello scrittoio del poeta* (Venice: Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2014), p. 226, with reference to William of Conches, *Glosae super Boethium*, ed. by Lodi Nauta (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), p. 160: 'Divina bonitas merito dicitur forma boni, quia ab eo omne bonum

citations are quite well known but a vertical reading of them suggests the possibility that they might form part of a conscious system of recalls in which Dante recasts the Boethian echoes so that they become ever more Christianizing and Platonizing. With such a perspective in mind, we might view the citations as moving us from Virgil's at times theologically suspect discourse, where Fortune 'persegue / suo regno come il loro gli altri dei' [carries out her rule as the other gods do theirs] and 'necessità la fa esser veloce' [necessity makes her swift] (*Inf*., vii. 86-7 and 89), to Beatrice's presentation of how the divine goodness lovingly and freely irradiates all things, unfolding the eternal beauties of the heavens.33

The observations provided above help to indicate the potential of vertical reading for illuminating and reconsidering connections – above all in precise verbal echoing, image patterns, situational parallels and perhaps even prominent intertexts – between sets of numerically corresponding cantos. In line with our opening reflections, we have nonetheless seen how circumspection needs to be exercised in the claims that might be made for vertical reading. The Sevens offer some rich and interesting material at the level of verbal, situational and imagistic patterning, but we have seen that any such correspondences are often found only in two of the three cantos. We have noted, too, some of the dangers of a thematizing reading of groups of three cantos: such thematization needs to take account of the poem's capacity for retrospection at multiple points outside the vertical line that might intersect three cantos with the same number.

formatum est et habet esse' [Divine goodness is rightly called the form of the good, for from it every good is formed and has its being].

33 In this respect, it may be worth recalling that some critics regard Virgil's perspective in *Purgatorio* vii as indicating his limitation; see Margherita Frankel, 'La similitudine della zara (*Purg*., vi. 1-12) e il rapporto fra Dante e Virgilio nell'Antipurgatorio', in *Studi americani su Dante*, ed. by Gian Carlo Alessio and Robert Hollander (Milan: F. Angeli, 1989), pp. 113-44. On the Boethian echoes and their development between *Inferno* vii and *Paradiso* vii, see Giuseppe Mazzotta, *Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 319-28 (p. 326).

# 8. *Civitas* and Love: Looking Backward from *Paradiso* viii1

## *Brenda Deen Schildgen*

'Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano e sarai meco sanza fine cive di quella Roma onde Cristo e romano'. (*Purg*., xxxii. 100-03)2

['Here shall you be short time a forester, and you shall be with me forever a citizen of that Rome whereof Christ is Roman'.]

'sarebbe il peggio per l'omo in terra, se non fosse cive?' (*Par*., viii. 115-16)

['Would it be worse for man on earth if he were not a citizen?']

#### Introduction

In assuming the role of *scriba dei*, 3 Dante makes the *Commedia* a progressive revelation4 of his understanding of divine providence as he comes closer to the 'truth' of the universe and the unfolding of eternal love ('suo etterno amore' (*Par*., vii. 33)). Beatrice's explanation in *Paradiso* vii of how divine love, a love that renews the world, inspired the Incarnation radically alters the terms by which humans might understand the destiny of history and

1 The video of this lecture is available at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy website, https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1522404

2 All citations and translations from the *Commedia* are from *The Divine Comedy*, trans. and commentary by Charles S. Singleton. Bollingen Series 80 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970-76).

3 G. R. Sarolli, 'Dante, *Scriba Dei*', *Convivium* 4-6 (1963), 385-422, 513-44, and 641-71.

4 See Christian Moevs, *The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 5; also central is Giuseppe Mazzotta, *Dante, Poet of the Desert* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); also close to my reading is Silvio Pasquazi, *All'Eterno dal Tempo: Studi Danteschi* (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985, 1st edn 1966).

their purpose in it. This motif of love continues into *Paradiso* viii, the first canto in the Heaven of Venus, appears in *Purgatorio* viii and flickers in *Inferno* viii. Thus, there is symmetry among these cantos, in the vertical reading of the poem, but there is also a narrative or conceptual progression.5 The pilgrim's increasing knowledge and understanding alongside the poet's self-revelation constitutes the hermeneutical principle for exploring these three cantos as interrelated.

Focusing on the eighth cantos of the *Commedia*, this essay begins with *Paradiso* viii and retrospectively connects its concerns, persons and intellectual inquiries to those of *Purgatorio* viii and *Inferno* viii.6 *Paradiso* viii occupies itself with the core issues of the poem and highlights the poem's

5 I am grateful to Giuseppe Mazzotta for this formulation.

6 Monica Keane, PhD in Comparative Literature, UC Davis (2014) tracked down the endless single canto discussions and produced the bibliography for this project, for which I am deeply grateful. Here I will just note those works that I cite directly in the order in which they appear in this article: Ettore Paratore, 'Il canto VIII del *Paradiso*', *L'Alighieri: Rassegna Bibliografica Dantesca* 26:2 (1985), 33-52; E. Ragni, 'Il canto VIII del *Paradiso*', in *Lectura Dantis Metelliana, I primi undici canti del Paradiso*, ed. by A. Mellone (Rome: Bulzoni, 1992), pp. 155-75; Rachel Jacoff, 'The Post-Palinodic Smile: *Paradiso* VIII and IX', *Dante Studies* 98 (1980), 111-22; Emilio Bigi, 'Moralità e retorica nel canto VIII dell' *Inferno*', *Giornale storico della letteratura italiana*, 154 (1977), 346-67; Vincenzo Cioffari, 'Lectura Dantis: *Paradiso* VIII', *Dante Studies* 90 (1972), 93-108; H. A. Mason, 'Filthy Rage v. Righteous Indignation—Canto VIII', *The Cambridge Quarterly* 17:2 (1988), 141- 55; Georges Güntert, 'Canto VIII', *Purgatorio, Lectura Dantis Turicensis*, ed. by Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2001), pp. 109-20; Giovanni Pischedda, 'Motivi provinciali nel canto VIII dell' *Inferno*', in *Dante e la tematica medioevale*  (Aquila: Japadre, 1967), pp. 35-40; Lloyd Howard, 'The blindness of Virgil in *Inferno* 8-9, *Purgatorio* 15-16, and *Purgatorio* 22-23', in *Virgil the Blind Guide: Marking the Way through the Divine Comedy* (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010); Giuseppe Acciani, 'L'ingresso di Dante nella città di Dite', *L'Alighieri* 19 (1978), 45-58; Victor Castellani, 'Vergilius Ultor: Revenge and Pagan Morality in the *Inferno*', *Lectura Dantis* 9 (1991), 3-10; Peter Hawkins, 'Virgilio cita le Scritture', in *Dante e la Bibbia*, Atti del Convegno internazionale promosso da 'Bibbia', ed. by Giovanni Barblan (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1986), pp. 351-59; André Pézard, *Il Canto VIII del 'Paradiso'* (Bologna: L. Cappelli, 1953); Giovanni Fallani and Alighieri Dante *Il Canto VIII Del Paradiso* (Turin: Società editrice internazionale, 1964); Ettore Paratore, 'Il canto VIII del *Paradiso*', *L'Alighieri: Rassegna Bibliografica Dantesca* 26:2 (1985), 33-52; Giovanni Fallani, 'Il canto VIII del *Purgatorio*', *Nuove letture dantesche* IV (Florence: Le Monnier, 1970), 19-33; Edward Peters, 'Human Diversity and Civil Society in *Paradiso* VIII', *Dante Studies* 109 (1991): 51-70; Sonia Gentili, 'L'Arco di Cupido e la freccia di Aristotele' in *Esperimenti Danteschi Paradiso 2010*, ed. by Tommaso Montorfano (Genoa and Milan: Marietti, 1820, 2010), pp. 87-112; Michelangelo Picone, 'Canto VIII', in *Paradiso*, ed. by Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2002), pp. 119-32; Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, 'The Wrath of Dante', *Speculum* 13 (1938), 183-93; Daniel J. Donno, 'Dante's Argenti: Episode and Function', *Speculum* 40 (1965), 611-25; Umberto Bosco, *Il canto VIII dell' Inferno* (Rome: Signorelli, 1951); Ettore Romagnoli, 'Il canto VIII dell' *Inferno*', in *Letture dantesche*, ed. by Giovanni Getto (Florence: Sansoni, 1955), pp. 133-50; Marino Szombathely, *Il canto VIII dell'Inferno* (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1959).

ideological unity as it probes the source of human corruption and love7 and the connection of these to *civitas*, that is, to citizenship, membership in a community and the freedom of citizens.8 As such, it offers a stark contrast with the civil rancor that enters the poem vehemently in *Inferno* viii, although the ideals of friendship featured in *Purgatorio* vii and viii hint at the benefits of civic amity that *Paradiso* viii celebrates. But before delving into the heart of this discussion, let me briefly review how these cantos parallel one another and how they differ.

#### Structural and Rhetorical Parallels

The ninth cantos have been considered thresholds to the 'domains proper' of the respective canticles of the *Commedia*. Certainly, *Inferno* ix dramatizes the entrance to Dis, that is, Hell proper, and *Purgatory* ix, the entrance to Purgatory.9 We have gates to cities here and someone has to open them (*Inf*., viii. 15; *Inf*., ix. 88-90; *Purg*., ix. 73-129). But the eighth cantos, so carefully and tightly linked by themes, events, politics and philosophical issues with both the seventh and the ninth cantos, might well be considered the first phases of these thresholds. In fact, the threshold to Dis does indeed occur in *Inferno* viii, when Virgil and Dante are barred from entering, as 'Chiuser le porte que' nostri avversari' [These our adversaries shut the gates] (*Inf*., viii. 115). *Purgatorio* viii, on the other hand, opens with a magnificent sixline simile, expressing nostalgia and likening the time of day to the sailor yearning for home and to the pilgrim who hears the bells of his town from afar as they mourn the passing of the day. The simile informs us that the first day in Purgatory is reaching nightfall, and thereby anticipates the first dream of the poem (in the following canto) in which the pilgrim will be transported to the gates of Purgatory. In *Paradiso* viii, rising into the third Heaven is so natural for Dante that he would not even notice the transition but for the fact that Beatrice's increasing beauty causes him to realize that he has entered the Heaven of Venus (*Par*., viii. 13-15).

Structurally and rhetorically, cantos seven, eight and nine are linked by a form of enjambment: the beginning flows from the previous canto

7 This is the central argument of Paratore, 'Il Canto VIII del *Paradiso*', 33-52.

8 As Ragni writes of *Paradiso* viii, 'è coerentissimo, stringente in ogni sua articolazione, e altrettanto stringentemente e coerentemente si collega, ancora una volta, con l'intero poema' [it is most coherent, linked in every articulation, and equally it connects deeply and coherently, once more, with the entire poem] (Ragni, 'Il canto VIII del *Paradiso*', 175).

9 Jacoff, 'The Post-Palinodic Smile: *Paradiso* VIII and IX', 119.

and the end into the following canto. For example, *Inferno* viii has the enigmatic opening, 'Io dico seguitando' [I say continuing] (*Inf*., viii. 1), that led Boccaccio to the theory that Dante had written the first seven cantos before his exile from Florence and was now returning to the poem. When the Fallen Angels rebuff Virgil at the end of *Inferno* viii, the canto does not conclude but continues into *Inferno* ix, where Virgil turns back towards the pilgrim.10 *Purgatorio* vii ends with Sordello's long speech describing all the residents of the Valley of Princes; *Purgatorio* viii tells us the time (dusk), 'Era già l'ora' [It was now the hour] (*Purg*., viii. 1), and ends with Currado's prophecy of Dante's exile; while *Purgatorio* ix begins by telling us that in Purgatory it was nearly three hours after sunset (*Purg*., ix. 7-9). This kind of rhetorical enjambment is not apparent between *Paradiso* vii and viii, although the theme of *Paradiso* vii, 'divine love', most definitely continues. Enjambment does, however, make *Paradiso* viii run into ix, which continues the exchange between Carlo Martello and the pilgrim (*Par*., ix. 1-9). These three cantos in *Paradiso* thereby form a triptych that deals specifically with love, free will and divine providence.

In terms of dramaturgy, the Sevens are essentially static. The question and answer of philosophical discourse dominate in *Inferno* vii, despite its howling voices. In *Paradiso* vii, Beatrice alone speaks for most of the canto. The Garden of Repose in *Purgatorio* vii is an unchanging *locus amoenus* for princes rather than for philosophers and poets (with the exception of Sordello, Dante and Virgil, of course). The Eights, on the other hand, are replete with action and movement. *Inferno* viii features Phlegias's boat running swiftly through the air like an arrow (*Inf*., viii. 13-15); his angry shouting (*Inf*., viii.18, 81); Filippo Argenti rancorously trying to pull Dante into the muddy waters with him (*Inf*., viii. 40); Virgil and Dante both expressing rage against Filippo (*Inf*., viii. 37-39, 41-42); the other sinners attacking Filippo (*Inf*., viii. 61); the jeering Fallen Angels scorning Dante and sending him on his way (*Inf*., viii. 82-93); and the dramatic moment of crisis before the closed gates of Dis in which the pilgrim loses trust in his

10 For Boccaccio's idea that the *Commedia* had its beginnings in Florence, see Marcello Ciccuto, 'Minima boccacciana sulla forma della *Comedia*', *Textual Cultures* 1 (2006): 137- 42; see also Giorgio Padoan, *Il lungo cammino del 'poema sacro': Studi Danteschi* (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1993). For Boccaccio's use of "Io dico seguitando" to build a literary history of the poem's composition, see Martin Eisner, *Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature: Dante, Petrarch, Cavalcanti, and the Authority of the Vernacular* (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 48; for the observation about enjambment between *Inf*., vii, viii, and ix, see Bigi, 'Moralità'.

guide's reliability, 'io rimango in forse, / che sì e no nel capo mi tenciona' [I remain in doubt, as yes and no contend within my head] (*Inf*., viii. 110- 11). The canto ends with the devils slamming the city gates in Virgil's face, while Virgil 'rase / d'ogne baldanza' [shorn of all boldness] (*Inf*., viii. 118- 19) awaits divine intervention.11 This canto, on the threshold of the city of disorder that is Hell, stresses the rancour that rules a failed and corrupt society, however efficiently such a society achieves its ends. *Purgatorio* viii has a similar range of action. The canto first observes a praying spirit, who sings the *Te lucis ante* and is joined by all the other souls (*Purg*., viii. 8-18), and then follows the group of five (Virgil, Dante, Sordello, Nino and Currado) as they watch two angels descend from Heaven to guard the valley (*Purg*., viii. 25-39); the pilgrim's subsequent exchanges with Judge Nino (*Purg*., viii. 53-81) and Currado Malaspina (*Purg*., viii. 109-39) are interrupted by a liturgical drama, or 'sacred representation'.12 *Paradiso* viii is less theatrical than its parallel cantos in *Inferno* and *Purgatorio*. Nonetheless, it brings together Beatrice's increasing beauty; the glittering, dancing, singing lights (*Par*., viii. 19-30); the joyful singing of Hosanna; and the generous greeting spoken by Carlo Martello for everyone, 'Tutti sem presti' (*Par*., viii. 32). Carlo's exchange with Dante expresses a copious emotional range from loving recognition, to nostalgia and regret, to an indictment of his family, and finally to philosophical discourse. As Benedetto Croce noted, together these details make the canto one of the most dramatic in the entire canticle.13

#### Thematic Parallels

Now to explore the themes of these cantos vertically. First, all three deal with contemporary historical persons and events, and with some aspect of Dante's personal, local and, dare I say, provincial Florentine history. *Inferno* viii presents Filippo Argenti, 'il fiorentino spirito bizzarro' [the irascible Florentine spirit] (*Inf*., viii. 62), a Florentine of the Adimari family condemned by Cacciaguida (*Par*., xvi. 115-20), who allegedly benefited from Dante's

11 On the issue of static versus dramatic, *Inf*., vii versus *Inf*., viii, see Mason, 'Filthy Rage', 141-55.

12 See Güntert, 'Canto VIII', in *Purgatorio*, pp. 109-20.

13 Benedetto Croce, *La Poesia di Dante* (Bari: Laterza, 1921), p. 137, where he writes of Carlo Martello, 'la malinconia di una magnifica e benefica regalità, spezzata prima che ottenuta' (the melancholy of a magnificent and charitable majesty, broken before obtained), and places him alongside Piccarda, Romeo, Cunizza and St. Bernard as one of the few lively figures in *Paradiso*.

exile.14 *Purgatorio* viii brings Florentines together with fellow Tuscans and pan-European figures. Guelphs and Ghibellines find companionship with the appearance of Nino Visconti (*Purg*., viii. 53) and Conrad Malaspina (*Purg*., viii. 65). Nino was a staunch member of the Guelph party, even supporting the Florentine Guelphs against his Ghibelline-ruled city of Pisa. He was the grandson of Count Ugolino (*Inf*., xxxiii. 13), who had betrayed Nino in his struggle for power in Pisa. Conrad, according to Boccaccio (*Decameron* 2.6), was a Ghibelline whose family would help Dante in exile.15

Finally, Carlo Martello (1271-1295), the central figure of *Paradiso* viii (though he is not named), was in Florence in 1294 for a visit which, according to G. Villani, lasted twenty days and in which 'gli fu fatto grande onore' [he was treated with great honor].16 During this time, we are led to believe, he and Dante met (*Par*., viii. 31, 37). Carlo Martello was married to Clemence of Hungary (*Par*., ix. 1-2), daughter of Emperor Rudolf I, whom Sordello names among the negligent rulers (*Purg*., vii. 94). There are close links between this branch of the Angevin dynasty and Florence's history. The oldest son of Maria of Hungary and Charles II, the Angevin king whose rule Sordello claims Apulia and Provence lamented (*Purg*., vii. 126), Carlo was crowned king of Hungary in 1292. He was heir to Provence and to the kingdom of Naples that, until the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, had extended to Sicily. Sicily had been lost due to his grandfather Charles I of Anjou (d. 1285), a Guelf who is also among the negligent rulers named by Sordello (*Purg*., vii. 113, 125). Charles I had defeated Manfred, become king of Sicily and Naples and, as Imperial Vicar in Italy, was Podestà of Florence for twelve years, creating a set of alliances that united most of the Italian peninsula.17 Sordello says of his son, Charles II, the father of Carlo Martello, 'Tant'è del seme suo minor la pianta' [as much is the plant inferior to its seed] (*Purg*., vii. 127). Thus, Dante presents a genealogy of kings that goes

14 Pischedda, 'Motivi provinciali nel canto VIII dell' *Inferno*', in *Dante e la tematica medioevale*, pp. 35-40; see also Bigi, 'Moralità', 346-67.

15 See notes to Singleton, *Purgatorio*, pp. 172-73.

16 Giovanni Villani, *Cronica* (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1969), VIII, 13; for Dante and Carlo Martello, see Vincenzo Mazzei, *Dante e i suoi amici nella Divina Commedia* (Milan: Editrice nuovi autori, 1987), pp. 125-38.

17 For details on this history, see Raoul Manselli, 'Carlo Martello', in *Enciclopedia dantesca* I (Rome: Istituto dell' Enciclopedia Italiana, 1996), pp. 841-43; John A. Scott, 'The Sordello Episode: *Purgatorio* VI-VIII', in *Dante's Political Purgatory* (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 5, 96-127; Cioffari, 'Lectura Dantis: *Paradiso* VIII', 98-99.

from the modestly good (Carlo I) to the bad (Carlo II) to the potentially ideal (Carlo Martello).18

Connected to this issue of local and pan-European history is a concern, both implicit and explicit in all three cantos, with civic life, politics and friendships. The bellicose atmosphere of *Inferno* viii vividly displays civil strife, one of the consequences of the rage punished in the muddy waters of the Styx. Virgil and Sordello's demonstration of civic amity across thirteen hundred years (celebrated in *Purg*., vi. 70-75, 79-81 and *Purg*., vii. 1-21) foreshadows the friendly encounters of *Purgatorio* viii and contrasts with the diatribe against Italy in *Purgatorio* vi. With Virgil and Sordello keeping company for the three cantos (vi-viii), we see fraternal love and solicitude, virtues that can unite citizens;19 in *Purgatorio* viii, we witness contemporary examples of civic friendship: Dante, Nino Visconti (*Purg*., viii. 53-54) and Conrad Malaspina. Carlo Martello's much commented-on greeting to Dante in *Paradiso* viii, as the first of a wave of joyous souls to follow, provides spirited evidence of civil society: 'Tutti sem presti / al tuo piacer, perché di noi ti gioi' [We are all ready at your pleasure, that you may have joy of us] (*Par*., viii. 32-33). His greeting contrasts radically with the slammed doors of *Inferno* viii. Partially because of the attention paid to public figures of Florence's recent history, all three cantos also raise the question of kinship, and whether and why virtue does or does not run in families. This leads to a doubt, a 'dubbio', that Dante implicitly raises throughout the poem: how is it that good parents can bear bad children or bad parents good children? Carlo Martello, with his own genealogy a demonstration of this unpredictable pattern, addresses the question.

One final aspect that all three cantos share is the significant presence of angels. Dante, following Gregory the Great's 'functional approach' to angels, assigns them a 'structural role', in which they aid, accompany, guard, guide or teach the souls.20 In *Inferno* viii, the Fallen Angels become the first to halt the progress of Dante and Virgil's journey forward. Virgil – who stuns all the figures from his own epic pagan past: Charon (*Inf*., iii. 91-129), Minos (*Inf*., v. 7-24), Cerberus (*Inf*., vi. 22-33), Plutus (*Inf*., vii. 1-8) and even Phlegias (*Inf*., viii. 16-24) – proves impotent against the Fallen Angels (*Inf*.,

18 For these lineages, see Scott, 'The Sordello Episode', pp. 96-127.

19 See Scott, *Dante's Political Purgatory*, p. 127.

20 Susanna Barsella, *In the Light of Angels: Angelology and Cosmology in Dante's Divina Commedia* (Florence: Leo. S. Olschi Editore, 2010), p. 34

viii. 82-93) and is stopped at the gates of Hell. Many commentators have addressed Virgil's inadequacy here on the spiritual journey.21 Opening the gates requires an act of grace in the form of an angel (*Inf*., viii. 128- 30).22 For Dante-pilgrim at this point, there is no possible return except in a recidivist spiral backward, for the pilgrim must descend to the depths. The Fallen Angels, the first intelligences to create discord in the universe, are corrupt guardians over the disordered city of Dis. They constitute a threat not just to the pilgrim's advance forward, but hover as essences of civic envy, enmity and cosmic rupture. By contrast, in *Purgatorio* viii, two angels, coloured green like the environment as the sign of hope and carrying blunt swords, appear at nighttime to safeguard the princely penitents, who are singing the *Te lucis ante terminum* (*Purg*., viii. 13), a prayer that asks the creator to protect them at night. Addressing the reader, Dante reminds us to sharpen our eyes, although it should be easy to see beyond the veil (*Purg*., viii. 18-20). The angels' presence proves necessary when a countermasque or sacred representation of the events that first brought rupture to the world in Eden threatens the peaceful environment: 'una biscia, / forse qual diede ad Eva il cibo amaro, / Tra l'erba e' fior venìa la mala striscia' [a snake, perhaps such as gave Eve the bitter food. Through the grass and the flowers came the evil streak] (*Purg*., viii. 98-100). The angels chase ''l nostro avversaro' away, the masque or sacred representation constituting a performance of the prayer and a vivid demonstration of the power of the theological virtue of hope.23

In *Paradiso* viii, the souls, Carlo Martello tells us, circle with a cluster of angels. Where in the *Convivio* (II. v. 13), Dante affirms that the angelic order of Thrones moves the Heaven of Venus, here – in Dante's depiction of the Heaven of Venus itself – the heavenly Principalities (the 'principi celesti' (*Par*., viii. 34) assume this role.24 As the Heaven of Rhetoric (*Conv*., II. xiii. 13-14), Venus is associated with political order, just as the Principalities are in the order of angels. That Dante changes the angels who move the Heaven of Venus from his earlier work reinforces the political theme of

21 Castellani, 'Vergilius Ultor: Revenge and Pagan Morality in the *Inferno*', 3-10; Hawkins, 'Virgilio cita le Scritture', pp. 351-59; Howard, 'The blindness of Virgil in *Inferno* 8-9, *Purgatorio* 15-16, and *Purgatorio* 22-23'.

22 Acciani, 'L'ingresso di Dante nella città di Dite', 51; see also Hawkins, 'Virgilio cita le Scritture', in *Dante e la Bibbia*, pp. 43-45.

23 Güntert, 'Canto VIII', 110.

24 Dante Alighieri, *Il Convivio*, ed. by G. Busnelli and G. Vandelli, 2 vols (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1954).

*Paradiso* viii, which is here also connected to the issue of inclinations.25 Let us take a look at what Pseudo-Dionysus, whom Thomas Aquinas follows in this matter in the *Summa Contra Gentiles* (III. 80),26 writes of this order of angels in the *Celestial Hierarchy*:

It remains now to contemplate that final rank in the hierarchy of angels, I mean the godlike principalities, archangels, and angels... The term 'heavenly principalities' refers to those who possess a godlike and princely hegemony, with a sacred order most suited to princely powers, the ability to be returned completely toward the principle which is above all principles and to lead others to him like a prince, the power to receive to the full the mark of the Principle of principles, and by their harmonious exercise of princely powers, to make manifest this transcendent principle of all order. (*Celestial Hierarchy*, IX. 257B)27

Thomas Aquinas specifically states that this third angelic order, the Principalities, commands human hierarchies because in 'human affairs there is a common good which is, in fact, the good of the state or a people. It falls to this order of angels to instruct leaders among men'.28 Not counting Henry VII, whose presence in Heaven is promised in *Paradiso* xxxi, Carlo Martello is the only ruler of Dante's life-time whom the poet includes in *Paradiso*. Speaking as 'noi', in other words, as a community, Carlo informs Dante-pilgrim immediately that he travels with these celestial Principalities. Dante-poet thereby makes Carlo Martello a *figura* of the ideal ruler, a prince most suited to the 'harmonious exercise of princely powers'.

### *Paradiso* viii: A Retrospective Vista on *Purgatorio* viii and *Inferno* viii

With these broad structural and thematic parallels in mind, let us now turn again to *Paradiso* viii. It opens with a twelve-line description and history of 'la bella Ciprigna', 'il terzo epiciclo', the goddess-named planet that

25 See Barsella, *In the Light of Angels*, pp. 115-17.

26 Thomas Aquinas, *Providence*, in *On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles*, trans., intro. and notes by Vernon J. Bourke (New York: Doubleday, 1956), pp. 264-72.

27 Pseudo-Dionysius, 'Celestial Hierarchy', in *Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works*, trans. by Colm Luibhéid, with intro. by Jaroslav Pelikan, Jean Leclerq and Karlfried Froehlich (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 143-91 (p. 170). See Diego Sbacchi, *La Presenza di Dionigi Areopagita nel Paradiso di Dante* (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2006), for Dante's use of Dionysius the Areopagite in *Paradiso*.

28 Thomas Aquinas, *Providence*, in *On the Truth of the Catholic Faith*, p. 271; see also Paratore, '*Paradiso* VIII', 51-53.

was honoured by 'le genti antiche ne l'antico errore' [the ancient people in their ancient error] (ll. 2, 3, 6). This exordium introduces the dichotomy that structures Charles Martel's speech: love that destroys versus love that creates civic unity and order. It addresses the ancient error that assumes 'folle amore' is caused by Venus and her blind son, and it provides a retrospective lens through which to re-read *Inferno* and *Purgatorio* viii:

> Solea creder lo mondo in suo periclo che la bella Ciprigna il folle amore raggiasse, volta nel terzo epiciclo; per che non pur a lei faceano onore di sacrificio e di votivo grido le genti antiche ne l'antico errore; ma Dïone onoravano e Cupido, quella per madre sua, questo per figlio, e dicean ch'el sedette in grembo a Dido; e da costei ond' io principio piglio pigliavano il vocabol de la stella che' l sol vagheggia or da coppa or da ciglio. (*Par*., viii. 1-12).

[The world was wont to believe, to its peril, that the fair Cyprian, wheeling in the third epicycle, rayed down mad love; wherefore the ancient people in their ancient error not only to her did honor with sacrifice and votive cry, but they honored Dione and Cupid, the one as mother, the other as her son, and they told that he had sat in Dido's lap; and from her with whom I take my start they took the name of the star which the sun woos, now behind her, now before.]

Initially, one might think these lines are merely meant to introduce the Heaven of Venus, the star that the Sun, or the source of love, woos; in fact, what Dante achieves here is an indictment of certain beliefs that he associates with the pagan world. While adopting Latinisms ('periclo') and echoes of ancient poetry (Ovid. *Metam*., x. 270 and Virgil *Aen*., i. 685, 718 for la 'bella Ciprigna', or Cupid on the lap of Dido) to characterize 'le genti antiche', he rhymes 'Dido' with 'Cupido' and 'grido' to highlight the error both in the Virgilian narrative of the mad love of Dido and in the perilous belief that humans have no freedom.

Dante-pilgrim had also raised the issue of the role of stars as suggested by Plato's *Timaeus* in *Paradiso* iv,29 only to be roundly chastised by Beatrice,

29 See Pézard, *Il Canto VIII del Paradiso*, 4.

who showed him the defects in both Platonic and Averroistic thinking on this point.30 In *Paradiso* viii, the problem of the influence of the stars appears again; as G. Fallani notes, 'the theme of the planets and their influence on human affairs constitutes the argument that disciplines the discussion'.31 Dante here detaches the planet Venus from its ancient lore, and in so doing reminds us of Virgil's limitations, made evident in *Inferno* viii when the Fallen Angels bar his passage. Similarly in *Purgatorio* viii, it is not Virgil who can protect the pilgrim at night, but the angels who guard the valley, and in the following canto (*Purgatorio* ix), it is Lucy, not Virgil, who lifts the pilgrim to Purgatory proper. In these instances, we have Christian grace and free will pitted against ancient fatalism, a redeemed Venus triumphant over the Venus of disorderly desire. By putting all his verbs in the past tense, except 'piglio' [I take], which Dante contrasts with 'pigliavano' [they took], the poet condemns the ancient error. But he takes Venus' name to contrast this dangerous, pagan view of love as 'folle amore' [mad desire] (*Par*., viii. 2) with the life-giving love that rules the heavens ('l'amor che 'ciel governi') (*Par*., i. 74) and that moves the sun and the other stars ('l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle') (*Par*., xxxiii. 145).32

This introduces a critical concern of the Heaven of Venus which has already been discussed as the reason for the Incarnation in *Paradiso* vii and explored in both *Paradiso* viii and ix. *Paradiso* viii addresses, that is, the natural order of the universe, the nature of human diversity, providence and the love between Creator and creatures as the motor that moves the universe. This love binds citizens together in contrast to the immoderate desires of individuals who shatter the common good.33

As the 'lumi divini' [divine lights] (*Par*., viii. 25) approach in a polyphonic luminescent splash of unity, one of them ('solo') welcomes Dante. He informs him that they all travel with the Principalities, addressing him with the first line of the first canzone of the *Convivio*:

30 See Brenda Deen Schildgen, 'Philosophers, Theologians, and the Islamic Legacy: *Inferno* 4 versus *Paradiso* 4', *Dante Studies* 125 (2007), 113-32.

31 'il tema dei pianeti e della loro influenza sulle vicende dell'uomo costituisce la trama che disciplina il racconto'. See Giovanni Fallani and Alighieri Dante, *Il Canto VIII Del Paradiso*, 5; see also Paratore, 'Il canto VIII del *Paradiso*', 33-52.

32 See Ragni, 'Il Canto VIII of *Paradiso*', 159-62; Cioffari, 'Lectura Dantis: *Paradiso* VIII', 94-97.

33 See Peters, 'Human Diversity and Civil Society', esp. 59-68; also Gentili, 'L'arco di Cupido e la freccia di Aristotele', 87.

#### *172 Vertical Readings in Dante's 'Comedy'*

Noi ci volgiam coi principi celesti D'un giro e d'un girare e d'una sete, Ai quali tu del mondo già dicesti: '*Voi che' ntendendo il terzo ciel movete.'* (*Par*., viii. 34-37)

[With one circle, with one circling and with one thirst we revolve with the celestial Princes to whom you in the world once did say, 'You move the third heaven by intellection.']

Two separate palinodes of Dante's earlier work occur here. First, as pointed out above, in the *Convivio*, he attributed the movement of Venus to the Thrones, whereas here it is attributed to the Principalities.34 Second, in this canzone Dante had stated that Venus, 'il terzo ciel', was responsible for the state in which he found himself: 'El ciel che segue lo vostro valore /… mi tragge ne lo stato ov' io mi trovo' [The heaven that follows your power ... drags me into the state where I am] (*Convivio*, II. Canzone Prima. 4, 6). However, the speaker in *Paradiso* viii, Carlo Martello, while quoting from Dante's poem, specifically declares that humans, and not the stars, are in charge of human affairs. Furthermore, as the third and final instance of Dante's self-citation in the *Commedia* (*Purg*., ii. 112; *Purg*., xxiv. 51), the quotation serves as a palinodic reference to some of the false assumptions of the *Convivio*. 35 All three citations of Dante's own lyric poetry concern love and divine truth, and this third citation introduces the Venus that Dante adopts in Carlo Martello's discourse. This is not the Venus of selfish love, the sensual love or cupidity that had destroyed Dido and Francesca, but the Venus, as Carlo Martello puts it, of 'mio amor più oltre che le fronde' [my love more than the leaves] (*Par*., viii. 57). This love creates unity and harmony with the power to receive to the full the mark of the Principle of

34 Jacoff writes: 'When Charles says that Dante's poem had been addressed to the Principalities as the angelic intelligences of the sphere of Venus, he is correcting Dante's claim in the *Convivio* that the Thrones were the appropriate angelic intelligences of their sphere. This correction is so understated that none of the early commentators even remark it. Dante's revision of his position on the angelic hierarchy is dealt with more directly in *Paradiso* 28 when he specifically privileges the scheme of the Pseudo-Dionysius over that of Gregory. In *Paradiso* 8 the correction calls no attention to itself, but once we see it we can attend to the larger ways in which Dante is palinodic toward the *Convivio* in this episode' (Jacoff, 'The Post-Palinodic Smile: *Paradiso* VIII and IX', *Dante Studies*, 114).

35 See Jacoff, 'The Post-Palinodic Smile', 111-22; Picone, 'Canto VIII', pp. 122-23.

principles, and by their harmonious exercise of princely powers, to make manifest this transcendent principle of all order.

Carlo Martello's segment of the canto (*Par*., viii. 31-148) can be divided into two sections that include a 'corollario' (l. 138). In the first part (ll. 31-84), the Angevin prince introduces himself by recalling his meeting with Dante and his official role as bearer of the crown: 'di quella terra che 'l Danubia riga / poi che le ripe tedesche abbandona' [that land which the Danube waters after it has left its German banks] (ll. 65-67). The second part (ll. 85-138) responds to Dante's question about the stars and the limits of their influence on human behaviour with a specific corollary about how human freedom is contravened by human force (ll. 139-48).36

The exchange with Carlo Martello parallels those with Filippo Argenti in *Inferno* and with Nino Visconti and Corrado Malaspina in *Purgatorio*. As pointed out above, all three figures are associated with recent Florentine politics and with the historic Dante. Filippo is an example of unregulated and unjustified rage, an emotion matched by Dante's and Virgil's angry responses to him, on which scholars have spilled much ink.37 For my part, I find little purpose in discussing whether Dante-pilgrim's rage is justified or not. Collapsing the difference between pilgrim and poet, *Inferno* in its economy follows the *lex talionis* so common to Hebrew Scriptures. Dante, the poet, has clearly adopted the role of prophet and judge who reveal heinous wrongdoing and show how divine rage results in just punishment. More important perhaps for our vertical reading is the way in which Filippo embodies the individual rage that creates civic disorder, a rage so potent that it would symbolically draw everything into its stagnant waters, including Dante and Virgil. The only hint of the love that binds in *Inferno* viii is when Virgil displays his approbation of Dante,

> Lo collo poi con le braccia mi cinse basciommi 'l volto e disse: 'Alma sdegnosa, benedetta colei che 'n te s'incinse!' (*Inf*., viii. 43-45)

[Then he put his arms about my neck, kissed my face, and said 'Indignant soul, blessed is she who bore you!']

36 Picone, 'Canto 8', p. 120.

37 See, for example, Bigi, Borgese, Castellani, Donno, Bosco, Romagnoli, Szombathely, and Sapegno.

If Dante-poet confined himself to historical veracity, Virgil could not know that he was citing Luke 11. 27, 'benedetta colei che 'n te s'incinse', spoken by a woman in a crowd to Jesus, who then corrects her, saying 'beati qui audiunt verbum Dei et custodiunt' [Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it] (Luke 11. 28). Hawkins argues that the misappropriated citation itself demonstrates Virgil's limitations,38 which may be true, but the quotation, alongside Virgil's display of affection, also conveys the loving bond between the two poets, the only hint of unselfish love in the canto.

*Purgatorio* viii, in contrast to the examples of rage in *Inferno* viii, extends its one display of affection when Dante meets Nino Visconti. In an exchange which demonstrates civic amity and mutual pleasure, the pilgrim is joyful to find Nino, '...quanto mi piacque / quando ti vidi non esser tra' rei!' [How I rejoiced to see you there, and not among the damned] (*Purg*., viii. 53-54). And Nino, for his part, with 'Nullo bel salutar tra noi si tacque' [No fair salutation was silent between us] (*Purg*., viii. 55), greets the pilgrim: 'Quant' è che tu venisti / a piè del monte per le lontane acque' [How long is it since you came to the foot of the mountain over the far waters?] (*Purg*., viii. 56-57). As the grandson of Count Ugolino (punished with the traitors in *Inferno* xxxiii), Nino raises an implicit question about 'virtue in families', an inquiry that also applies to Carlo Martello's family. The pilgrim's second encounter in *Purgatorio* viii continues this theme of civic amity. Although Dante did not know Currado Malaspina, who died in 1294, he was a guest of the Malaspina family in 1306 and uses this occasion to praise the family known throughout Europe for its generosity and gallantry (*Purg*., viii. 121- 33).39 More particularly, Dante praises this family which 'sola va dritta e 'l mal cammin dispregia' [alone goes right and scorns the evil path] (*Purg*., viii. 132) even when 'il capo reo il mondo torca' [the wicked head turn the world awry] (*Purg*., viii. 131), themes that reoccur in *Paradiso* viii. Following the *laudatio*, Currado prophesies Dante's coming exile and, in contrast to Filippo Argenti, who is reputed to have despoiled Dante of what wealth he had possessed following the poet's exile, he promises that Dante's opinion of the family will be proven true (*Purg*., viii. 133-39).

Dante's meeting with Carlo Martello in *Paradiso* viii further develops these themes, with Dante's status as *exul inmeritus* linking Currado's prophecy with Carlo's spontaneous and regretful 's'io fossi giù stato, io ti

38 See Hawkins, 'Virgilio cita le Scritture', pp. 43-45.

39 See Singleton, Notes, *Purgatorio*, pp. 172-73.

mostrava / di mio amor più oltre che le fronde' [for had I remained below, I would have shown you of my love more than the leaves] (*Par*., viii. 56-57).40 The section of Carlo Martello's speech following his citation of *Convivio*'s 'Voi che 'ntendendo' (*Par*., viii. 31-84) states that he and the other souls are 'sì pien d'amor, che, per piacerti, / non fia men dolce un poco di quïete' [so full of love that, in order to please you, a little quiet will not be less sweet to us] (*Par*., viii. 38-39). Specific contrasts have been drawn between this wave of lovers, or 'lumi divini', who leave the circle of the Seraphim to stop and talk with Dante, and Paolo and Francesca's brief escape from 'la schiera ov è Dido' in *Inferno* v.41 This becomes yet another occasion to contrast the 'folle amore' of Venus that opens the canto with the divine love that Carlo Martello immediately declares to the pilgrim, of whom he says, 'Assai m'amasti' [Much did you love me] (*Par*., viii. 55). Like Virgil's reference to the early death of Marcellus in the *Aeneid* (*Aen*., vi. 890-92), what follows expresses a melancholic sense of the unfortunate and inexplicable loss of a young prince, whose generosity and talents might have unified much of southern Europe. Carlo's expression of regret about what might have been also conveys the ill that is still to follow:

> […] Il mondo m'ebbe Giù poco tempo; e se più fosse stato, Molto sarà di mal, che non sarebbe… (*Par*., viii. 49-51).

[The world held me below but little time, and had it been more much ill shall be that would not have been…]

Carlo's geographic description of the political realms that he would have inherited if he had not died so young includes a hint that he would have restored Sicily to the Kingdom of Naples. Such a political realm would have unified Hungary, Provence and the Kingdom of Naples. At the same time, Carlo chastises his brother, who inherited his place (*Par*., viii. 76-78), for avarice, thereby allowing Dante to further indict the Capetian and Angevin lineage, already so scathingly exposed for avarice by Sordello in *Purgatorio* vii and by Hugh Capet, the founder of the dynasty, in *Purgatorio* xx. 79-84. Carlo Martello emerges here as an *exemplum*, a *figura* of the monarch, the utopian monarch specifically described in the *Monarchia*:

40 Picone, '*Paradiso* VIII', p. 125.

41 See Ragni, 'Il canto VIII del *Paradiso*', 167-68.

iustitia potissima est in mundo quando volentissimo et potentissimo subiecto inest; huiusmodi solus Monarcha est: ergo soli Monarche insistens iustitia in mundo potissima est. (*Mon*., I. xi. 8)

[justice is at its strongest in the world when it resides in a subject who has in the highest degree possible the will and power to act: only the monarch is such a subject; therefore justice is at its strongest in the world when it is located in the monarch alone ]

#### Dante continues:

Preterea, quemadmodum cupiditas habitualem iustitiam quodammodo, quantumcunque pauca, obnubilat, sic karitas seu recta dilectio illam acuit atque dilucidat. Cui ergo maxime recta dilectio inesse potest, potissimum locum in illo potest habere iustitia; huiusmodi est Monarcha: ergo, eo existente, iustitia potissima est vel esse potest. (*Mon*., I. xi. 13)42

[Moreover just as greed, however slight, dulls the habit of justice in some way, so charity or rightly ordered love makes it sharper and brighter. So the man in whom rightly ordered love can be strongest is the one in whom justice can have its principal abode; the monarch is such a man; therefore justice is or can be at its strongest when he exists.]

Highlighting justice informed by *caritas* [charity] as the signature virtue of the ideal monarch and opposing it to *cupiditas* [greed], these passages from *Monarchia* appear to comment on Carlo Martello's career as represented in *Paradiso* viii. Furthermore, *cupiditas*, the trait identified in the *Monarchia* as the mark of an unjust ruler, connects the philosophical discussion to a concrete historical case: Carlo's great promise as a loving ruler is undone by his early death; he is succeeded by an avaricious brother. With the pitting of *caritas* against *cupiditas*, Dante adopts Augustinian language, but on the surface his point appears to differ radically from Augustine, who contrasts the excessive love of the earthly city leading to contempt of God, with the love of the heavenly city leading even to contempt of the world. However, Augustine contrasts those rulers driven by a lust for dominion (for which, of course, he condemns the Romans) with those rulers and citizens who serve one another in love (*caritas*) and, thereby, bring the City of God to

42 *Monarchy*, ed. and trans. by Prue Shaw. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also Ragni, 'Il canto VIII *Paradiso*', for the connection between Dante's description of the ideal monarch and Carlo Martello, pp. 168-75.

earth. This, Dante intimates, is what Carlo Martello would have attempted and what his early death prevented (*City of God* XIV. xxviii).43

This historical narrative spurs Dante to question 'com' esser può, di dolce seme, amaro' [how from sweet seed may come forth bitter] (*Par*., viii. 93), picking up the metaphor of plant and seed used by Sordello in *Purgatorio* vii about Carlo II, Carlo Martello's father. The second part of Carlo's speech (*Par*., viii. 94-138) answers this question with a corollary (ll. 139-48). Together, they address the main themes of the canto: love, providence, free will, fortune and their connection to citizenship.

Before proceeding, it is worth observing in parenthesis that Aquinas, following his discussion of the order of angels, explores the 'order among men'. Just as angels have an order, so 'divine providence', he writes, 'imposes order on all things'. Following Aristotle (*Politics* I. 4), Aquinas emphasizes that humans have a natural order: those with understanding are naturally suited to governance, while those with strong bodies are naturally fitted for service. But disorder occurs, he explains, in human government 'as a result of a man getting control, not because of the eminence of his understanding, but because either he usurps dominion for himself by bodily strength or because someone is set up as a ruler on the basis of sensual affection'.44 Aquinas's main point, it seems to me, is that divine providence, with the angels as agents, imposes order, but humans force this order awry.

Returning to Carlo Martello's explanation of why good seed produces bitter fruit, Carlo, who knows the truth directly from God, 'là 've ogne ben si termina e s'inizia' [there where every good ends and begins] (*Par*., viii. 87), is concerned to show the pilgrim that

> Lo ben che tutto il regno che tu scandi volge e contenta, fa esser virtute sua provedenza in questi corpi grandi. (*Par*., viii. 97-99)

[The Good which revolves and contents all the realm that you are climbing makes its providence become a power in these great bodies.]

43 Augustine, *De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos. Libri XI-XXII*, ed. by Bernard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, CCSL 48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955).

44 Thomas Aquinas, *Providence*, in *On the Truth of the Catholic Faith*, pp. 274-75. See Paratore, 'Il canto VIII del *Paradiso*', 50-52 for this suggestion.

Whatever the effects produced by these Heavens (infused as they are with the perfect Mind), they cannot be less than perfect because, if God were not directing this order, the result would be 'ruine' (*Par*., viii. 108). The pilgrim quickly agrees with this statement because to contradict it would make the divinity defective.45 But, in that case, whence does civil and moral disorder emanate? Rather than an immediate answer, we get Carlo Martello's question, one that goes back to the core concerns of the canto and is equally important for the entire ideological structure of the poem:

> '…sarebbe il peggio per l'omo in terra, se non fosse cive?' (*Par*., viii. 115-16)

[...would it be worse for man on earth if he were not a citizen?]

The pilgrim is certain that it would be worse and requires no proof. Man, of necessity, must be part of a larger society, not a party to himself. The Latinism *cive* is used only twice in the poem: in the first instance (*Purg*., xxxii. 101), it refers to Dante's ultimate destiny as a citizen of the City of God; here, it sanctions the earthly destiny of man.46 Carlo Martello affirms that divine providence orchestrates civil society so that men may have diverse duties, making one born Solon, another Xerxes, another Melchizedek and another Daedalus (*Par*., viii. 122-26). To create a city or *regnum*, in other words, requires diversity, and it is in this way that Nature disposes of human talents.

The problem still remains, however, that virtue does not run in families: hence Jacob and Esau, Romulus and his base father, Nino, and his treacherous grandfather Ugolino, or Carlo Martello and his father and brother. Carlo attributes this to the world down there ('il mondo là giù') which, not following the foundation of Nature that would make people good ('buona la gente'), instead makes ill proof ('mala prova') of itself (*Par*., viii. 139-44). Men twist nature by forcing those suited to religion to take up the sword and those suited to the sword and kingly rule into religion (*Par*., viii. 145-48). Carlo's point is exemplified by the Malaspina family, featured in *Purgatorio* viii and, according to Dante, privileged by nature to avoid the path of evil ('l mal cammin') (*Purg*., viii. 132). Civic and religious

45 See Peters, 'Human Diversity and Civil Society', 65-68.

46 See Pézard, *Il Canto VIII del Paradiso*, 19; see also Cioffari, 'Lectura Dantis: *Paradiso* VIII', 104-05.

failure – whether institutional or personal – results, in other words, from distorted will: when human arrogance, intransigence and temerity violate Nature and the divinely orchestrated providence that regulates it. In forcing people into professions unsuited to their natural talents, the world has lost its way (è fuor di strada') (*Par*., viii. 148). Carlo Martello's conclusion connects, thereby, the 'folle amore' of 'la bella Ciprigna' with the disordered politics and society of Dante's own benighted times.47 In his own person, by contrast, Carlo maintains hope in good government, while deploring bad, exhibits a sense of justice informed by love, and provides a voice of regal courtesy. He knows that divine providence and love would make the people good but equally recognizes that miscreants will work against this divine gift.48

In the Eights, Dante skillfully brings the affective together with the intellective: characters exhibit a range of emotions from the bitterness of wrathful hatred to the loving warmth of friendship. At the same time, a scholarly speculation on the cause of civil and personal wrongdoing in *Paradiso* viii ties the personal to the political, the civic to the moral, rationalism to faith, passion for civil order to divine providence, and human to transcendent love. Through the retrospective lens of *Paradiso* viii and the canto's central protagonist Carlo Martello, Dante nonetheless leaves us with a sense of melancholy about the elusiveness of what might have been achieved in the civic domain, so vulnerable as it is to the whims of Fortune and to the twisted desires of humans. This ideal of what might have been contrasts with what can still be – as witnessed in the show of friendship, camaraderie and hope in *Purgatorio* viii – and what unfortunately is, recreated for us by the angry, distorted and vitriolic figures at the gates of the city of Dis in *Inferno* viii.

47 Pézard, *Il Canto VIII del Paradiso*, 22-23.

48 Giorgio Cavallini, 'Canto VIII' in *Paradiso: Lectura Dantis Neapolitana*, ed. by Pompeo Giannatonio (Naples: Loffredo, 2000), pp. 163-85.

## 9. 'Without Any Violence'1

## *Zygmunt G. Barański*

### Introduction: reflecting ('vertically')

I was about to start preparing the written version of my 'reading' of the Nines, when two things happened that helped me give better order to my reflections. Among the PhD applications I was reviewing, I came across a powerful defence of interpreting the *Commedia* 'vertically'. A few days later, after giving a lecture based on the current chapter at a prestigious North American department of Italian, the idea that Dante's masterpiece might be read 'vertically' was received with a degree of skepticism. Indeed, one colleague launched into an attack that was in every way as forceful as the aspiring doctoral student's justification. I found the conflicting reactions fascinating: the young Dantist enthused by a new way of approaching the *Commedia*; the established scholar unconvinced and deeply committed to exegetical methods that have stood the test of time and seem to have been legitimated by Dante himself. My own position, ever since I was kindly invited to examine possible interconnections between the Nines, has been closer to that of the older Dantist – I would not say skeptical, but certainly

1 The video of this lecture is available at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy website, https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1625418 My aim in this chapter is to recapture something of the range and energy of my spoken presentation. In order to do this and keep to the assigned word-limit, I am not able to document fully some of my claims. For a broader and better-documented 'vertical reading' of the Nines – approximately double the length of this one – see my 'Reading the *Commedia*'s IXs "Vertically": From Addresses to the Reader to *crucesignati* and the *Ecloga Theoduli*', *L'Alighieri* 44 (2014), 5-36.

wary. Indeed, as my research developed, two questions constantly accompanied my efforts to gauge the efficacy of a 'vertical' investigation of the *Commedia*. First, to what degree did Dante actually want his poem to be read in this manner? Second, how might examining three cantos belonging to different canticles yet sharing the same number illuminate our understanding of both the *canti* and the poem – and we can at least be certain that Dante did want us to take cognizance of the cantos' numbering: 'al ventesimo canto / de la prima canzon' [the twentieth canto / of the first canzone] (*Inf*., xx. 2-3)?2

The evidence that, in line with medieval ideas about the divinely created universe as numerically harmonious, Dante wished the *Commedia* to be considered in its totality and in the interplay of its parts is of course overwhelming. However, to maintain this does not also necessarily imply that a privileged relationship unites cantos distinguished by the same number, and hence that this relationship needs to be examined in itself and as a unique determining feature of the whole. In fact, the explicit indications in this regard are at best scant. They seem to be limited to the opening proemial cantos, to the political Sixes, to the closing canti (but one of these has a unique numbering…), and to a few other triads.3 Rather than forcing our readerly attention upwards and 'vertically', Dante normally encourages us to reflect and to look backwards: 'Ricorditi, ricorditi!' [Remember, remember!] (*Purg*., xxvii. 22). In my view, Charles Singleton's work on what he termed the *Commedia*'s 'vistas in retrospect' is just about definitive on this point.4 Equally, it is generally accepted that the poet regularly established meaningful links between different moments of his poem, and that these associations are rarely dictated by numeration. As regards our three cantos, it is enough to remember the evident bonds that tie *Inferno* ix to the pair of cantos that precede it and the pair that follow it; that, through the figure of St Lucy, connect *Purgatorio* ix to *Inferno* ii and *Paradiso* xxxii; and finally, that join *Paradiso* ix to *Inferno* v and *Purgatorio* xxvi (lust), as well as to *Inferno* xii (Ezzelino da Romano). Indeed, as Amilcare Iannucci demonstrated, this form of organization recalls the Scriptural

2 All translations are my own. My aim is syntactic and semantic accuracy rather than elegance.

3 For an excellent discussion of the tradition of reading the *Commedia* 'vertically', see, in this collection, Simon A. Gilson, 'The Wheeling Sevens'.

4 See Charles S. Singleton, 'The Vistas in Retrospect', *Modern Language Notes* 81:1 (1966), 55-80.

exegetical device of the 'parallel passage', which not infrequently had recapitulatory functions.5 Yet, as scholars have also noted, interconnections of setting do unite the Nines. Thus, both *Inferno* ix and *Purgatorio* ix are set in liminal indeterminate hinterlands where distinct largescale regions of the afterlife meet, where otherworldly guardians protect the gates and walls that separate the different areas, and where celestial messengers come to the pilgrim's aid. Dante's aim is obvious: to underscore the differences between the realm of damnation and that of purgation, and to highlight the progress that the *viator* has made since his panic-stricken confusion outside Dis. *Paradiso* ix, too, brings to a close a major discrete section of the Ptolemaic universe, the heavens lying in the shadow of the earth. However, given the marvellous concord and unity of the cosmos, issues of partition, transition, and entry, with their attendant corollaries of uncertain liminality, of obstacles, and of miraculous intervention, are quite alien to the effortless harmony of paradisiacal reality. Thus, unlike the other two cantos, *Paradiso* ix is set in a specific location, the Heaven of Venus, and is structured according to the *Commedia*'s standard narrative model of the encounter between Dante-*personaggio* and exemplary inhabitants of that subdivision of the afterlife. In this respect, considering the Nines simultaneously, the effect is to highlight the singularity of the third realm. However, there is nothing exceptional about the contrasts and parallelisms conjoining our three cantos. Throughout the *Commedia*, Dante employs similar associative techniques to stress the same general points about the nature of the hereafter as emerge from the 'vertical' assessment of the Nines. We are dealing with a commonplace, whose one variation in this instance is that it is the product of a rapprochement between three cantos bearing the same number.

This is the danger, I believe, inherent in the 'vertical' reading: it can grant priority to what is obvious—and if there is one writer who is rarely obvious, that writer is Dante Alighieri. Thus, despite what might be presumed in light of the basic narrative similarities uniting *Inferno* ix and *Purgatorio* ix, the poet appears to have actually been more interested in yoking together *Inferno* ix and *Paradiso* ix. Unlike *Inferno* ix and *Purgatiorio* ix, whose connections are externally narratological, those between *Inferno* ix and *Paradiso* ix are calculatedly formal. The two cantos share several rhymes

5 See Amilcare A. Iannucci, 'Autoesegesi dantesca: la tecnica dell'"episodio parallelo"', *Lettere italiane* 33 (1981), 305-28.

and rhyme words6 – a sophisticated technique that medieval vernacular poets employed to suggest affinities between texts, and which Dante used with some regularity in the *Commedia*. 7 In addition, the cantos share several other features that distinguish them from *Purgatorio* ix. Specifically, both make reference to heresy, to cemeteries, to sieges, and, most visibly, to sinful cities. What is thus striking is that rather than present the Nines as a triad, Dante was concerned to organize them into two distinct pairs – on the one hand, *Inferno* ix and *Purgatorio* ix; on the other, *Inferno* ix and *Paradiso* ix.

Other hermeneutic perils attend the 'vertical' critical engagement with the *Commedia*. In general, the need to avoid flattening out differences between the *canti*, and so ensuring that each canto's distinctiveness is maintained, is paramount. Yet, the essential associative nature of the 'vertical' approach, with its resultant emphasis on (common) structural, thematic, and ideological concerns, militates against this. For the method to gain currency, it needs also to demonstrate that it can cast light on matters of style and, more vitally, that it contributes to the poem's sophisticated metaliterary system. Finally, when treating a trio of *canti*, the temptation ought to be resisted to equate 'verticality' with numerology. The latter was unquestionably important in medieval culture; however, its impact on Dante was circumscribed. Indeed, I believe this to be the case even as regards the cantos marked with a nine, the number indicating the miraculous, divine intervention, and the power of God, and whose sacred symbolic valences the poet himself underlined in the *Vita nova* (xxix. 3). As embodiments of the nine, our cantos fittingly affirm and dramatize the 'marvellous' workings of the 'Trinity'. However, and this is the point, there is nothing extraordinary about this. Every canto of the *Commedia*, in recounting a unique providentially sanctioned experience, does exactly the same. The spectre of the 'obvious' once again looms large.

My methodological words of caution are not meant to undermine the possibility that a 'vertical' reading is valid and authorized by Dante himself. Thus, to test out the validity of the approach, it becomes necessary to establish whether elements exist that might confirm a deliberately constructed system of correspondences uniting the Nines. However, it

6 See 'pianto'/'tanto' (*Inf*., ix. 44, 48 and *Par*., ix. 5, 9); 'alto'/'assalto' (*Inf*., ix. 50, 54 and *Par*., ix. 28, 30); 'sembiante'/'davante' (*Inf*., ix. 101, 103 and *Par*., ix. 64, 66); 'bagna' (*Inf*., ix. 114 and *Par*., ix. 47); 'cruda' (*Inf*., ix 23) and 'crude' (*Par*., ix. 48); 'chiuso' (*Inf*., ix. 55), 'chiudessi' (*Inf*., ix. 60) and 'richiude' (*Par*., ix. 44); 'disio' (*Inf*., ix. 107) and 'disii' (*Par*., ix. 79).

7 See Roberto Antonelli, 'Tempo testuale e tempo rimico. Costruzione del testo e critica nella poesia rimata', *Critica del testo* 1 (1998), 177-201.

is difficult to find clear textual evidence that permits us to extend such a rapport beyond a few basic narrative motifs at the service of reinforcing a few of the *Commedia*'s standard fixed points: most notably, the glory and variety of divine creation, whose constituent parts are providentially ordered and unified. In any case, *Paradiso* ix twice explicitly draws attention to these matters, thereby reminding us just how unexceptional is the 'vertically' established relationship between the Nines. Contrasting his earthly to his celestial love, Folchetto describes the divinely 'ordered' interplay between this world, Purgatory, the Earthly Paradise, the heavens, and the Empyrean (*Par*., ix. 103-08). A few tercets earlier, when introducing the Occitan poet, Dante observes: 'Per letiziar là sù fulgor s'acquista, / sì come riso qui; ma giù s'abbuia / l'ombra di fuor, come la mente è trista' [By rejoicing up there brightness is gained, as laughter is here; but down there the shade grows dark on the outside, as the mind is sad] (*Par*., ix. 70-72). Once again, the interconnections and disparities between Paradise, our world, and Hell are made clear. As he does throughout the *Commedia*, Dante also implies that his own artistic practices are modelled on those of the *Deus artifex*. Outlining the external signs of emotion that characterize human beings on earth, in Heaven, and in Hell, Dante introduces a new piece of information about the state of the damned which he had not revealed in *Inferno*: the shades 'grow dark' – *abbuiare* – on feeling sadness (ll. 71-72). Like the 'worth' (*valor*; 105), the poet too carefully organizes the unfolding of his poem, forging meaningful links between its parts. The subtlety of Dante's presentation is noteworthy. With exemplary concision, he adds to our knowledge of Hell, of the workings of the universe, and of his authorial status. The understated, yet richly connotative intricacy of *Paradiso* ix. 71-72 stands in contrast to the mechanistic repetition of narrative motifs that unites the Nines. If Dante had indeed intended our cantos to be read 'vertically', one cannot but wonder whether he would not have made this apparent in that refined and economical manner that marks his recourse to *abbuiare*.

#### Appealing to the reader

Although I am reluctant to grant special importance to the repetition of narrative elements across the *canti*, nevertheless, there is another feature, common to the Nines, which makes me hesitate before turning my back on the possibility that Dante composed the three cantos in such a way so as to encourage their 'vertical' reading. Addresses to the reader are a significant trait of the *Commedia*. The poet introduces them judiciously, normally for ethical and metaliterary ends, and always at key moments in the text, thereby highlighting their structuring functions. It is precisely this last characteristic of the Dantean address that explains my hesitation, given that each of the Nines includes an appeal to the reader. Even more suggestively, our triad of same-number canti is the only one in the poem that is distinguished in this manner. In Dante, such instances of repetition are rarely without consequence:

> O voi ch'avete l'intelletti sani, mirate la dottrina che s'asconde sotto 'l velame de li versi strani.

[Oh you who have healthy intellects, look at the doctrine that is concealed under the veil of the unusual verses.] (*Inf*., ix. 61-63)

Lettor, tu vedi ben com'io innalzo la mia matera, e però con più arte non ti maravigliar s'io la rincalzo.

[Reader, you see well how I elevate my subject-matter, and therefore don't be surprised if I sustain it with greater art.] (*Purg*., ix. 70-72)

Ahi anime ingannate e fatture empie, che da sì fatto ben torcete i cuori, drizzando in vanità le vostre tempie!

[Ah deluded souls and impious creatures, who from such created good twist away your hearts, lifting towards vanities your temples!] (*Par*., ix. 10-12)

Each address poses substantial critical problems. Regarding the first, scholars disagree as to what value to assign to the 'unusual verses'. Do these refer exclusively to the figures and events that appear in the second part of the canto; or do they encompass the canto as a whole, or the entire episode outside the walls of Dis, or even the *Commedia* in its totality? The second appeal is equally allusive and perplexing. In what way is Dante 'elevating' his 'subject-matter'; and again, to which aspects of the text does 'matera' specifically refer? Furthermore, how precisely does the poet elevate his 'art' to a 'greater' level and how does he 'sustain' it? Finally, many Dantists dispute that *Par*., ix. 10-12 is an apostrophe directed at the reader. Given the exegetical difficulties surrounding the addresses, and in light of their possibile numerically sanctioned interconnection, the obvious question arises whether the three *invocationes* ought to be considered as one. Confirmation that this might be the correct approach would depend on a 'vertical' reading casting light on some of the passages' obscurities.

Bringing together *Inf*., ix. 61-63 and *Par*., ix. 10-12 quickly dispels any doubts regarding the latter's status as an apostrophe.  It is only *Purg*., ix. 70-72 that involves every reader of the poem. Moreover, putting in contact the *terzine* from the first and last canticles raises interesting issues relating to the interpretation of the *Commedia*. The 'vanities' towards which the 'impious' 'lift their temples' are material wealth; and it is the same avaricious desire that leads contemporary intellectuals to practice sinful interpretation (*Par*., ix., 133-35). Faulty exegesis of canon law is contrasted to the devoted clarification of sacred texts. This, and not the pursuit of earthly advantage, is the proper activity for 'healthy intellects'; and as a 'sacrato poema' [sacred poem] (*Par*., xxiii. 62), the *Commedia* too should be studied with due respect and not left 'derelitt[a]' [derelict] (*Par*., ix., 134). Dante regularly relates his poem to the creations of the *Deus artifex* and to other divinely inspired texts, and *Inf*., ix. 61-63 and *Par*., ix. 10-12 essentially constitute another *variatio* on this theme. On the other hand, as a metaliterary declaration, *Purg*., ix. 70-72, is rather richer than the other two apostrophes. Similar to *Inf*., ix. 61-63, where he uses the typical vocabulary of the allegoresis of literary texts ('doctrine concealed under the veil' of the *lictera* of poetry), Dante makes use of conventional critical terminology in *Purgatorio* ix: 'subject-matter elevated by greater art'. Yet, in *Inferno* ix, behind the humdrum language of medieval literary criticism, the poet was intent on boldly establishing that the *Commedia* is not to be read, as his choice of terms might at first sight be taken to imply, according to the tenets of literary *allegoria in verbis* but those of providential *allegoria in factis*. Equally, to grant terms such as *innalzare*, *materia*, and *arte* their normal medieval meanings, as Dante commentators tend to do, involves distorting the key element of the poet's radically innovative 'comic' poetics, namely, his rejection of the *genera dicendi* and their artificial distinctions between 'high', 'middle' and 'low' subjects and styles.8

Since it is certain that the poem does not adhere to standard medieval compositional norms, what does Dante mean when he talks about 'artistic elevation'? In straightforward stylistic terms, it is difficult to discern any major change between the two parts of the canto separated by the apostrophe. If anything, the first half, on account of its reliance on classical elements, is conventionally closer to the 'high' than the second, which is strongly Christian in character, and hence tied to the *sermo humilis*. It is thus clear that when Dante alludes to a 'higher' *materia* he is not referring to the conventions of the *genera*, but solely to matters of content and value, to the transition to the salvific Christian environment of 'mercy' (l. 110). Dante grants new vigour to the hackneyed vocabulary of the *genera dicendi*. It is no longer a set of literary-critical clichés but is revived to connote the inestimable worth of divinely ordained salvation. Yet, in light of our present purpose, it is striking that *Purg*., ix. 70-72 achieves its effects without needing to make recourse to the other two apostrophes. Indeed, it is difficult to see how these might enrich its already elaborate system of reference. This fact cannot but call into question the appropriateness of applying a 'vertical' interpretation to the Nines, given that their most obvious and unique formal interconnecting feature does not seem to support a unified reading of the apostrophes, and hence of the three *canti* and, by extension, of the *Commedia*. At most, we might conclude that the addresses all have both local and broad functions, illuminating the cantos in which they appear and the poem in general. Thus, *Inf*., ix. 61-63 contrasts 'healthy' exegesis with the hermeneutic errors of the heretics while indicating that the *Commedia* be read according to the 'allegory of theologians'; *Purg*., ix. 70-72 marks the shift between two areas of the afterlife and highlights Dante's rejection of established forms of literary composition; finally, *Par*., ix. 10-12 adds to the condemnation of contemporary greed while pointing to the divine attributes of the 'sacred poem'. In light of the apostrophes' dual function, it is thus probable that 'unusual verses', like the address of which it is part, cannot be interpreted narrowly but alludes both to the events around the gate of Dis and to the

8 See Zygmunt G. Barański, '*Magister satiricus*: Preliminary Notes on Dante, Horace and the Middle Ages', in *Language and Style in Dante*, ed. by John C. Barnes and Michelangelo Zaccarello (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 13-61.

*Commedia* in its entirety.9 These are all insights of no little import; however, as I have already noted, they are a constant of the poem.

#### Texts and violence

While I am convinced that Dante did not intend the Nines to be assessed 'vertically', and that, only occasionally, such as the conjuncture of the Sixes, did he envisage the *Commedia* being read in such a manner, I nevertheless also believe that there might be some advantage in considering together cantos distinguished by the same number. I had better explain myself. If, in philological terms, the evidence is against the 'vertical' reading, at the same time, there may be non-philologically sanctioned reasons for associating the Nines, and hence for extending such an approach to other triads of canti too.

Reading the Nines together one cannot but be struck how certain broad concerns connect them: divine power, the organization of the afterlife, the feminine, angels, horror, paganism, the relationship between the classical and the Christian. These are of course motifs that return consistently throughout the *Commedia*, and that have been extensively explored by Dante scholarship. There is nothing distinctive here. Nevertheless, there is one theme that stretches across the three cantos – a theme that possibly is more insistent than any of the other topics included in them, but which, surprisingly, scholars studying the Nines have largely ignored. And yet, when one isolates our cantos, it is a topic that is almost impossible to disregard. I am thinking of violence – violence broadly understood as the act of inflicting physical and emotional suffering.

It is remarkable that Dantists should have paid little attention to the question of violence in the poet's *oeuvre*. 10 It is a problem that consistently

9 See Dante Alighieri, *Inferno*, ed. by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 150.

10 But see Zygmunt G. Barański, '"E cominciare stormo": Notes on Dante's Sieges', in *'Legato con amore in un volume'. Essays in Honour of John A. Scott*, ed. by John J. Kinder and Diana Glenn (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2013), pp. 175-203; Roberto Gigliucci, *Lo spettacolo della morte. Estetica e ideologia del macabro nella letteratura medievale* (Anzio: De Rubeis, 1994), pp. 47-52, 171-79; Robert Hollander, 'Dante and the Martial Epic', *Medievalia* 12 (1986), 67-91; Anne C. Leone, *'Sangue perfetto': Scientific, Sacrificial and Semiotic Blood in Dante* (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2010), pp. 68-121; Luca Marcozzi, '"La guerra del cammino": metafore belliche nel viaggio dantesco', in *La metafora in Dante*, ed. by Marco Ariani (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2008), pp. 59-112; Jeffrey T. Schnapp, *The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante's 'Paradise'* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 14-69; *War and Peace in Dante*, ed. by John C. Barnes and Daragh O'Connell (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015).

returns across his works, and is at the core of his presentation of life on earth and in eternity. Furthermore, as much recent scholarship on the Middle Ages has argued, violence profoundly marked the medieval world.11 In particular, from the late eleventh century on, violence became ever more a feature of political, religious, intellectual, and artistic culture. Christianity, traditionally a religion of peace, was especially affected by the increased emphasis on violence.12 Although the language of violence is regularly employed in the New Testament, this is normally for metaphorical ends. Indeed, to guarantee the fundamental role of peace in Christianity, exegetes had interpreted the historical books of the Old Testament not as literal accounts of wars fought by the Jews, but as allegorical descriptions of spiritual struggles against the devil and his hosts.13 However, with the advent of the crusades and with the Church's growing involvement in secular affairs, the militarization of Christianity passed from being a matter of symbolic representation to becoming a complex fact of life. In addition, violence was a subject variously discussed by clerics: from discussions of the legitimacy of the crusades, of the notion of just war, and of the limits of papal authority to traditional Scripturally inspired defences of *caritas* and pacifism. A fascination with violence was also ever more graphically visible in religious art and literature, from bloody depictions of Christ's passion to the vividly evoked tortures of martyr narratives and of descriptions of Hell and Purgatory.14 Such texts, of course, exerted an influence on

11 See, for instance, Christiane Raynaud, *La Violence au moyen âge, XIIIe-XVe siècle* (Paris: Léopard d'Or, 1990); Hannah Skoda, *Medieval Violence: Physical Brutality in Northern France, 1270-1330* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. pp. 1-49; *'A Great Effusion of Blood'? Interpreting Medieval Violence*, ed. by Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thierry, and Oren Falk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); *La Violence dans le monde médiévale* (Aix-en-Provence: CUER MA, Université de Provence, 1994). See also footnotes 12, 14, and 20.

12 On Christianity and violence in the Middle Ages, see at least Caroline Walker Bynum, 'Violent Imagery in Late Medieval Piety', *Bulletin of German Historical Institute* 30 (2002), 1-36; Franco Cardini, "Introduzione", in San Bernardino da Siena, *La battaglia e il saccheggio del Paradiso, cioè della Gerusalemme celeste*, ed. by Franco Cardini (Siena: Edizioni Cantagalli, 1979), pp. 5-62; Jean Flori, *La Guerre sainte. La Formation de l'idée de croisade dans l'Occident chrétien* (Paris: Aubier, 2001); Frederick H. Russell, *The Just War in the Middle Ages* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); '*Militia Christi' e Crociata nei secoli XI-XIII* (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1992).

13 See Réginald Grégoire, 'Esegesi biblica e "militia Christi"', in *'Militia Christi'*, pp. 21-45 (p. 25); Katherine Allen Smith, *War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture* (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), pp. 11-13.

14 See, for instance, Jérôme Baschet, *Les Justices de l'au-delà: Les Répresentations de l'enfer en France et en Italie (XIIe-XVe siècle)* (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1993); Brigitte Cazelles, *The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth*

the *Commedia*; however, their influence pales before that of the classical epic,15 although their importance for Dante is probably akin to that of the vernacular chivalric tradition and of historical writing. However, what unites all these traditions, whether pagan or Christian, Latin or vernacular, is a persistent concern with violence. Dante's sources are violent, as was much of his culture, and yet, despite this, we continue to show little concern for his views on the subject.

Each of the Nines repeatedly refers to acts of violence and to violent events. In fact, the range of allusions is remarkable. Thus, without any pretense at offering an exhaustive list, in *Inferno* ix, the confrontation outside the walls of Dis is presented as a siege,16 and embodiments of violence such as Erichtho, the Furies, and Medusa are evoked; in *Purgatorio* ix, we find tales of abduction (Tithonus, Ganymede), of rape (Ganymede again, Philomela), and of infanticide and cannibalism (Procne killing and cooking her son Itys before feeding him to his father Tereus);17 finally, in *Paradiso* ix, the contemporary world is depicted as dominated by violence: Ezzelino III da Romano's 'great assault' (l. 30), Can Grande's cruel defeat of the Paduan Guelphs in 1314 (ll. 46-48), Rizzardo da Camino's murder in 1312 (ll. 49-51), and again in 1314 the beheading of four Ferrarese betrayed by the Bishop of Feltre (ll. 52-60). Moreover, the canto's sense of history is one of neverending viciousness: Dido's abandonment and suicide, the crucifixion, the crusades in Palestine and in the Languedoc, and the massacres that marked the siege of Marseille in 43 BCE (ll. 91-93) and that of Jericho (ll. 124-25). From the examples just cited, there would seem to be little doubt that Dante can be characterized as a writer drawn to violence and that the *Commedia* is a catalogue of brutality. Be that as it may; however what exactly was Dante's attitude to violence? Specifically, what was his intellectual position on violence, a major question in late medieval culture?

*Century* (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), pp. 43-61; Gigliucci, *Lo spettacolo*, pp. 119-45; Sarah Kay, 'The Sublime Body of the Martyr: Violence in Early Romance Saints' Lives', in *Violence in Medieval Society*, ed. by Richard W. Kaeuper (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2000), pp. 3-20; Larissa Tracy, *Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature* (Cambridge: Brewer, 2012), pp. 31-69. On medieval attitudes to blood, see Bettina Bildhauer, *Medieval Blood* (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006); Caroline Walker Bynum, *Wonderful Blood. Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond* (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

17 See Dante Alighieri, *Purgatorio*, ed. by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 153.

And what were his views as regards the representation of violence, namely, as regards descriptions of violence, the use of the terminology of violence, the treatment of figures and situations that the tradition categorized and portrayed as violent?

Let us begin by considering Dante's presentation of the crucifixion, the event that, by the early-fourteenth century, had become symptomatic of his world's fascination with graphic depictions of bloody violence and acute suffering:

> […] pria ch'altr'alma del trïunfo di Cristo fu assunta. Ben si convenne lei lasciar per palma in alcun cielo de l'alta vittoria che s'acquistò con l'una e l'altra palma.

[[…] before any other soul of the triumph of Christ she [Rahab]was taken up. It was apt indeed to leave her as a palm in any heaven of the lofty victory that was achieved with one and the other palm.] (*Par*., ix. 119-23)

In sharp contrast to the grisly detail of standard descriptions of Christ's passion,18 Dante's treatment is brief, allusive, and bloodless. There is no lingering here on the horrors and viciousness of Jesus' torture and death. Indeed, this aspect of Dante's portrayal is made more striking as it is accompanied by the martial imagery of the *Christus triumphans*, since this too is used with discretion and without violent overtones: the focus is entirely on the 'lofty victory' and its effects. Dante's other references to the crucifixion, whether in the *Commedia* or in his other works, are equally restrained.19 It is clear that the poet was intent on distinguishing his presentation of Jesus' sufferings from those of his contemporaries – a culturally significant fact that appears to have eluded Dante scholarship.

18 See, for instance, Sarah Beckwith, *Christ's Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings* (London: Routledge, 1993); Caroline Walker Bynum, 'The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg', in her *Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion* (New York: Zone Books, 1992), pp. 79-117, and 'The Blood of Christ in the Later Middle Ages', *Church History*, 71 (2002), 685-715; Gavin I. Langmuir, 'The Tortures of the Body of Christ', in *Christendom and its Discontents*, ed. by Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 287-309.

19 See, for instance, *Purg*., vi. 118-19, xxiii. 74-75, xxxiii. 63; *Par*., xi. 32-33, xiii. 40-42, xx. 105, xxxi. 2-3, xxxii. 128-29; *Mon*., ii. 11.

Furthermore, if we assess Dante's treatment of blood in the Nines, we discover additional evidence of the restraint with which he tackles matters that involve the spilling of blood. *Sangue* appears four times in our canti:

tre furïe infernal' di sangue tinte.

[three infernal furies stained with blood.] (*Inf*., ix. 38)

Lo terzo, che di sopra s'ammassiccia, porfido mi parea, sì fiammeggiante come sangue che fuor di vena spiccia.

[The third, which from above was amassed, seemed to me of porphyry, as flaming as blood that gushes from a vein.] (*Purg*., ix. 100-02)

Troppo sarebbe larga la bigoncia che ricevesse il sangue ferrarese, — e stanco chi 'l pesasse a oncia a oncia.

[Too broad would be the vat that would receive the Ferrarese blood, and tired he who would weigh it ounce by ounce.] (*Par*., ix. 55-57)

Ad un occaso quasi e ad un orto Buggea siede e la terra ond'io fui, che fé del sangue suo già caldo il porto.

[On one sunset almost and on one sunrise Bougie sits and the land from which I was, that once made warm with its blood its port.] (*Par*., ix. 91-93)

It is striking that Dante employed *sangue* literally only in the first of the above passages, and that he should have done so without embellishment. The other three occurrences are figurative. *Sangue* is used in a simile to establish the precise hue of the 'flaming' colour of the third step; while the remaining two instances are incorporated into short, yet highly allusive periphrases to describe respectively the brutal decapitation of four Ferrarese exiles and the blood-soaked horror of the sea battle that brought to an end the siege of Massilia. The poet's purpose in fashioning the circumlocutions is clear: to avoid itemizing in literal terms the violent events that he was recalling, and hence to curtail the dramatic force, sensationalism, and gruesome detail that frequently accompanied descriptions of brutality in classical and medieval texts.20 The measured restraint of Dante's approach to representing violence is immediately obvious when *Par*., ix. 91-93 is compared to its source in Book iii of Lucan's *Pharsalia*: 'That once made warm with its blood its port' tones down 'Blood foamed deep upon the wave, /and a crust of gore covered the sea' (ll. 572-73). However, the real difference lies in each poet's individual treatment of the naval engagement: Dante restricts it to one verse, Lucan extends it over 225 lines (ll. 538-762) chock-full of mutilation, slaughter, a gallery of excruciating deaths and bloodletting everywhere.

One might not unreasonably claim that I am not comparing like with like: Lucan was writing a historical epic about an uncompromising civil war; Dante, on the other hand, was recalling his providentially sanctioned journey through the Christian other world. Putting to one side that it is Dante himself who encourages us to compare his poem to Lucan's (*Inf*., xxv. 94), what is rather more significant here is that the *brevitas* and *reticentia* that characterize the four 'bloody' passages are typical of the manner in which the poet handled violence. Thus, in *Paradiso* ix, he alluded to another brutal event, Can Grande's slaughter of the Paduan Guelphs near Vicenza, by means of a periphrasis that makes no direct mention of even a single drop of blood:

> ma tosto fia che Padova al palude cangerà l'acqua che Vincenza bagna, per essere al dover le genti crude.

[But soon it will happen that Padua at the swamp will change the water that bathes Vicenza, because its people are resistant to their duty.] (*Par*., ix. 46-48)

20 See, for instance, Jody Enders, *The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence* (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Gigliucci, *Lo spettacolo*; Kathryn Gravdal, *Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law* (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Leone, *'Sangue perfetto'*, pp. 80-88; Tracy, *Torture and Brutality*: *Violence Against Women in Medieval Texts*, ed. by Anna Roberts (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1998); *Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature: A Casebook*, ed. by Albrecht Classen (New York: Routledge, 2004); *Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare*, ed. by Corinne Saunders, Françoise Le Saux, and Neil Thomas (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004).

In fact, as if to ensure that his presentation of Can Grande's actions is as sober as possible, Dante constructs it out of a series of interconnecting tropes: a mix of circumlocution, metonymy, and antonomasia. The poet acknowledged the reality of human brutality; however, he was determined to avoid doing so graphically.21 He consistently took the same approach, relying heavily on metaphorical displacement, single words, or a single qualifying epithet to refer to violent persons, acts of violence, and violent events. This representational *diminutio* is especially obvious in Dante's treatment of one of the most macabre moments in Ovid's *Metamorphoses*  (vi. 412-676), the barbaric story of Procne and Philomela – a tale which so fascinated the medieval imagination that it received elaborations that went beyond even the viciousness of the original.22 Conversely, Dante merely mentions Philomela's existence as a 'rondinella' [swallow], the transformation that allowed her to escape the horrors in which she had become embroiled – horrors, which the poet distilled into the vaguest of vague 'primi guai' [first woes] (*Purg*., ix. 13-15).23

There thus seems little doubt that Dante had strong reservations about explicit and sustained descriptions of violence. There are two principal and interconnected reasons for this, one literary, the other ideological. First, as ever, he was keen to distinguish his Christian *comedía* from classical *tragedia* and by extension, from the vernacular chivalric epic, contemporary chronicles, and accounts of the afterlife. Consequently, Dante drew attention to and called into question the frequently drawn-out, elaborate, and excessive treatment of carnage typical of epic and historical writing.24 It is thus suggestive that the only Latin 'tragedy' that is unambiguously remembered in each of the Nines – perhaps a new hint at their 'vertical' interconnectivity? – is the notoriously violent *Pharsalia*: Erichtho in *Inferno*

21 In this regard, it is striking that in the Nines the most sustained and striking descriptions of violence all relate to natural phenomena: the storm (*Inf*., ix, 64-72), the 'biscia' (*Inf*., ix. 76-78), and the eagle (*Purg*., ix. 20-30).

22 See Mark Amsler, 'Rape and Silence: Ovid's Mythography and Medieval Readers', in *Representations of Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature*, ed. by Elizabeth Robertson and Christine Rose (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 61-96; Jane E. Burns, *Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature* (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 115-50; Madeleine Jeay, 'Consuming Passions: Variations on the Eaten Heart Theme', in *Violence Against Women*, pp. 75-96.

23 Dante's treatment of the two sisters is equally understated elsewhere in the *Commedia*: see *Purg*., xvii. 19-20.

24 Marcozzi examines 'il rifiuto dantesco dell'ideale eroico della guerra e della rappresentazione letteraria a essa legata' ('"La guerra"', p. 81, and see also p. 82).

ix, Caesar's looting of the public treasury in *Purgatorio* ix, and the siege of Massilia in *Paradiso* ix.25 Yet, Dante reworked Lucan in a radically contrastive pianissimo and minor key. Furthermore, thanks to his obliquely restrained allusion to the siege of Jericho – 'la prima gloria / di Iosüè in su la Terra Santa' [the first glory of Joshua in the Holy Land] (*Par*., ix. 124-25) –, the poet drew attention to the rather more tempered language of war characteristic of the Old Testament (Joshua 6. 20-21). Nonetheless, as is evident fom *Par*., ix. 124-25, when it came to violence, Dante felt the need to downplay even the solutions of Scripture.26 In any case, his misgivings as regards the validity of detailed evocations of cruelty and aggression were more than just metaliterary in nature. He rejected them for time-honoured ideological and moral reasons. In part, Dante seems to have been motivated by the standard view that words are the precursors of actions: the representation of violence, and especially the 'tragic' celebration of warfare and heroism, can lead to real brutal behaviour.27 More substantially, his ideas were shaped by his fundamental sense that God is *Amore*, and hence the antithesis of violence, and all-powerful. The divine Will asserts itself effortlessly (*Inf*., ix. 95-96), as is evident from the token energy that the *messo* exerts to defeat the massed infernal hordes defending Dis (ll. 89-90). Equally, the 'lofty victory of Christ's triumph' is not presented as the result of a bloody sacrifice involving every fibre of Jesus' body and personality – a view that had achieved considerable currency by the early fourteenth century –, but as a feat that had involved merely 'one and the other palm' (*Par*., ix. 123). Ultimately, Dante was affirming his belief in Christ's message of love with its stress on charity, respect for others, and the sanctity of human life. When Dante composed the *Commedia*, given the Church's and Christianity's increasing involvement with and legitimation of violence, to express reservations about this fraught rapprochement, even if subtlely,

25 On Lucan as the key model for medieval depictions of the horrors of war, see Jessie Crosland, 'Lucan in the Middle Ages: With Special Reference to the Old French Epic', *The Modern Language Review* 25 (1930), 32-51.

26 In doing this, Dante was not calling into question God's actions but the manner in which the *scribae Dei* had chosen to describe these. Since the twelfth century, it had become increasingly recognized that, while God was the 'author' of the events recorded in, and the senses of, Scripture, its human authors were responsible for the *lictera*, the form in which these were granted expression. See Alastair Minnis, *Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages* (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2nd revised edn 2010).

27 See Edwin D. Craun, *Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 51-52, 160-61. See also Marcozzi, '"La guerra"', pp. 80-81.

was a matter of no small purport. It aligned Dante with contemporary pacifist and minority opinion. At the same time, as his approval of Joshua's victory makes clear, the poet was not against aggression that was divinely sanctioned, what the Old Testament termed 'God's wars' (Numbers 21.14; I Samuel 18. 17, 25. 28).28

Dante's position hints at the tensions inherent in late-medieval Christianity's attitude to violence. Even if the *Commedia*'s primary emphasis is on an ordered universe ruled by a loving Creator and on a vision of earthly existence as ideally predicated on peace, Dante never ignored the reality of violence. Indeed, he accepted it as part of divine and mortal being. However, unlike the pagan deities, God's use of force is a manifestation not of willful cruelty and aggression but of power perfectly exercised as love, wisdom, and justice (*Inf*., iii. 4-6). Divine violence is proportionate, as evidenced by the faultlessly calibrated nature of otherworldly punishment, a solution of last recourse, and executed at just the right moment (*Par*., xxii. 16-17). On the other hand, throughout the *Commedia*, human violence, like that of the ancient gods, is portrayed as arbitrary, excessive, and unjust. In particular, *Paradiso* ix provides ample evidence of this sad fact. Indeed, the strong bonds with which Dante bound the canto to *Inferno* ix highlight the infernal character of the contemporary world: the monstrous defenders of Dis find their earthly counterparts in rulers and clerics selfishly and bloodily safeguarding their own interests. Naturally, Dante acknowledged that, as with the conquest of the Holy Land, there were circumstances when violence was necessary; however, such acts of human violence are normally depicted as either endorsed by God or in defence of His divine order.29 Moreover, the quintessential *miles Christi* is a figure of peace, like the pilgrim and Virgil who, unarmed yet protected by God, succeed in besting an enemy that seems immeasurably superior. Indeed, as the 'triumph of Christ' established, those who belong to the celestial 'militia' achieve victory not through the exercise of violence but by having violence inflicted on them (*Par*., ix. 139-41).

28 On *Inferno* xxviii as constituting the limit case of Dante's representation of violence and bloodshed, as well as its moderate treatment of bloody warfare when compared to standard classical and medieval descriptions, see Barański, '"E cominciare stormo"', pp. 186-87.

29 On the pilgrim having recourse to violence against Pier delle Vigne and Bocca, see Barański, 'Reading', p. 25, n. 51.

#### *Crucesignati*

One of the most accessible marks of Dante's Christian pacificism, the point where poetics and ideology, form and ethics merge, is his reluctance to present directly even those acts of violence that have God's approval. Emblematic in this respect is his treatment of the crusades. In general, Dante pays relatively little direct attention to crusading;30 however, and this is suggestive in 'vertical' terms, references to the crusades, albeit highly allusive, appear in each of the Nines. Although not all scholars agree, it is hard to imagine that the repeated mention of the Church's neglect of the 'Holy Land, / which little touches the Pope's memory' ('la Terra Santa, / che poco tocca al papa la memoria') (*Par*., ix. 125-26), an accusation which is almost immediately reiterated (ll. 136-38), is not supposed to evoke the crusades of the past, while appealing to the Pope to call for a new military effort to liberate Jerusalem. Indeed, lines 124-26 and 136-41 recall commonplaces of crusader literature, in particular of sermons in support of the crusades and of Occitan poetry commenting on their failure.31 Thus, the correspondences between the close of *Paradiso* ix and Guiraut Riquier's bitter recrimination, 'Charity and love and faith', are noteworthy:

> It would have been recovered, if this had been desired, The place where Jesus Christ was born And lived and was raised on the cross, And the holy sepulchre, where he was placed. But the wealthy have turned it into a marketplace, Engaging only in operations for profit, So God has not helped them. (41-47)32

30 See Brenda Deen Schildgen, *Dante and the Orient* (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002), pp. 45-91; Lawrence Warner, 'Dante's Ulysses and the Erotics of Crusading', *Dante Studies* 116 (1998), 65-93; Mary Alexandra Watt, *The Cross that Dante Bears* (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2005).

31 On preaching and the crusades, see Christoph T. Maier, *Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; all references to crusade sermons are taken from this edition). On the troubadours, see Saverio Guida, 'Le canzoni di crociata francesi e provenzali', in *'Militia Christi'*, pp. 403-41.

32 Monica Longobardi, 'I *vers* del trovatore Guiraut Riquier', *Studi mediolatini e volgari* 29 (1982-83), 17-163 (p. 69). Compare too 'and the Sepulchre is completely forgotten/and the land where Jesus Christ was born' (49-50), in 'Even if I have no joy or pleasure', in *Il trovatore Peire Cardenal*, ed. by Sergio Vatteroni, 2 vols (Modena: Mucchi, 2013), II, p. 661. See also Elizabeth Siberry, *Criticism of Crusading, 1095-1274* (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

Equally, remembering Joshua and Rahab,33 attacking the greed of the powerful for the crusaders' lack of success,34 invoking St Peter, 35 condemning those who 'do not care about the Holy Land',36 alluding to abandoned flocks and 'shepherds' as 'wolves' (*Par*., ix. 131-32),37 and mentioning Christ's hands and victory through the cross38 are typical of the tropes employed by preachers (and poets) to build support for the crusades.