However, already in *Inferno* ix, Dante had delicately evoked the crusades and the liberation of Jerusalem, an event that is prefigured in the canto both by means of hints to earlier sieges of Jerusalem and through the *viator*'s and Virgil's entry into Dis, which is presented as a Muslim stronghold (*Inf*., viii. 70-73).39 The infernal city is a grotesque parody of the contemporary earthly Jerusalem, a distortion that hints at the latter's perverted state under Islamic rule. Inside its walls, there is no trace of the Holy Sepulchre; instead the 'great plain' ('grande campagna') (l. 110) is full of 'sepulchres' ('sepulcri) (l. 115) housing the souls of heretics who denied the Resurrection, one of whom, in addition, appears as an abnormal embodiment of the dead Christ standing in the tomb, the so-called *Imago pietatis* (*Inf*., x. 32-33). By 'entering' (''ntrammo') (*Inf*., ix. 106) the 'fortress' ('fortezza') (l. 108) thanks to God's grace, the pilgrim and Virgil can be viewed as symbolizing crusaders who have successfully achieved their goal – and it ought to be noted here that it was another commonplace to present fighting in the Holy Land as a *peregrinatio* rather than as an act of war.40 The crusaders were the *crucesignati*, those who were 'signed with the cross', and their sacred endorsement was supported by two Scriptural *auctoritates*, Ezekiel 9. 3-11

33 Rahab: James of Vitry, *Sermo* ii. 5 (p. 102); Gilbert of Tournai, *Sermo* i. 20 (p. 188). Joshua: Eudes of Châteauroux, *Sermo* ii. 10 (p. 150); Bertrand de la Tour, *Sermo* iii (pp. 244-46). On Joshua see also Smith, *War and the Making*, pp. 12, 14, 17; Warner, 'Dante's Ulysses', p. 82.

34 Eudes of Châteauroux, *Sermo* v. 11, 13 (pp. 172-74). See also, tellingly, Folchetto's crusade song: 'Singing becomes painful for me' (25-60), in *Le poesie di Folchetto di Marsiglia*, ed. by Paolo Squillacioti (Pisa: Pacini, 1999), pp. 328-30; Peire Cardenal, 'Even if I have no joy or pleasure' (45-48), in Vatteroni, p. 661. See also Guida, 'Le canzoni', p. 418.

35 Eudes of Châteauroux, *Sermo* iv. 14 (p. 164). See also Guida, 'Le canzoni', pp. 422, 439.

36 James of Vitry, *Sermo* i. 8 (p. 88). See also Folchetto's 'From now on I don't know a reason', in Squillacioti, pp. 370-75, esp. ll. 1-33 (pp. 370-73).

37 See, for instance, Humbert of Romans, *Sermo* i. 3 (p. 222); Huon de Saint-Quentin, 'Jerusalem weeps' (12-20), in Arié Serper, *Huon de Saint-Quentin: Poète satirique et lyrique. Étude historique et édition des textes* (Potomac, Studia Humanitatis, 1983), pp. 84-85; Peire Cardenal, 'Clerics pretend to be shepherds' (1-12), in Vatteroni, I, pp. 472-73.

38 James of Vitry, *Sermo* ii. 6 (p. 104), 14 (p. 110). See also Gilbert of Tournai, *Sermo* iii. 7 (p. 200).

39 See Barański, '"E cominciare stormo"', p. 183; Warner, 'Dante's Ulysses', p. 65.

40 See Cole, *The Preaching*, pp. 2-4 and passim. See also Picone, '*Paradiso* IX', p. 80.

and Revelation 7. 2-3, 9.41 Significantly, the same two Biblical passages are the principal sources behind the pilgrim's own 'signing':

> Sette P ne la fronte mi descrisse col punton de la spada, e 'Fa' che lavi, quando sè dentro, queste piaghe' disse.

[Seven Ps on my forehead he inscribed with the tip of his sword, and 'Ensure you wash, when you are inside, these wounds' he said.] (*Purg*., ix. 112-14)

*Purgatorio* ix thus intertextually confirms Dante-*personaggio*'s status as a 'crusader',42 which the poet had first adumbrated in *Inferno* ix, although it is not until *Paradiso* ix that he referred to the crusades more directly. This set of 'vertical' correspondences is unquestionably striking, and cannot but require that I partially modify my earlier position as regards the validity of undertaking a 'vertical' reading of the Nines. While I remain convinced that Dante did not intend the cantos to be read 'vertically', it does nonetheless seem to be the case that he introduced into each of them references to the crusades – a coherent and consistent structure whose full meaning is best appreciated when the three cantos are examined together. Thus, on the basis of the evidence offered by the Nines, I should like to suggest that, if a 'vertical' reading at the macro level of the canto does not seem to be authorially endorsed, on the other hand, such a reading does seem to be authorized by Dante at the micro level of the theme of the crusades. In fact, the events at the gate of Purgatory bring to mind another important crusader motif. The Church promised soldiers who died fighting to free the Holy Sepulchre that the *portae Paradisi* would be miraculously opened to them without their having to confess their sins and undergo purgation.43 In contrast, Dante affirms the need for his unarmed living 'crusader' to pass through the 'sacred door' ('porta sacrata') (*Purg*., ix. 130) of Purgatory, and so fully repent his sins and purge his sinful dispositions, before being permitted to proceed to Heaven. The question thus arises whether the poet's juxtaposing treatment implies a veiled criticism of the Church's

41 James of Vitry, *Sermo* i. 5, 6 (p. 86), 9 (p. 88), 13 (p. 92); Eudes of Châteauroux, *Sermo* v. 1, 2, 3, 4 (pp. 166-68), 7, 8 (p. 170), 11 (p. 172); Gilbert of Tournai, *Sermo* i. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (pp. 176-78), 10 (p. 180), 25 (p. 190), ii. 1 (p. 192), iii. 1, 2 (p. 198), 7 (p. 200).

42 See also Schildgen, *Dante*, pp. 81-82; Schnapp, *The Transfiguration*, p. 103; Watt, *The Cross*.

43 James of Vitry, *Sermo* ii. 18-19 (p. 112); Gilbert of Tournai, *Sermo* i. 20 (p. 188). See Cole, *The Preaching*, p. 208.

use of indulgences to convince people to fight on its behalf. In light of his normal reservations regarding violence – as with other acts of war, Dante's treatment of the crusades in the Nines is typically understated and cursory –, such a censure would not be out of place. Once again, the contradictions inherent in late-medieval Christianity's approach to violence leave their 'sign' on the fabric of the *Commedia*.

#### Conclusion

'Without any violence' ('sanz'alcuna guerra') (*Inf*., ix. 106), the expression with which Dante fixed the manner of the *viator* and Virgil's miraculous entry into the 'fortress' (l. 108) of Dis, effectively captures the principal drift of my argument as regards the poet's attitude to violence, which the Nines, helpfully though not systematically, illustrate. What the phrase cannot do, naturally, is cast light on the efficacy of reading the *Commedia* 'vertically'. I remain unconvinced that Dante intended the three canti to be assessed 'vertically', or that he judged this a hermeneutic approach normally appropriate for his poem. Nonetheless, as far as the crusades are concerned, I do think that the poet deemed our cantos' allusions to these as constituting a single system. This would imply that Dante may have deliberately introduced partial 'vertical' interconnections between canti distinguished by the same number. Mine is nothing more than a tentative suggestion; although I hope that some of the other essays in this and future volumes of *Vertical Readings in Dante's 'Comedy'* may provide corroborating evidence for my proposal. In some ways, what I found most fruitful about evaluating the Nines 'vertically' was the unexpected insights this mode of reading offered into Dante's compositional practices which, otherwise, I would undoubtedly have missed. Thus, while the repetition of *palma*, *-e* in *Inferno* ix – 'battiensi a palme' [struck themselves with their palms] (l. 50) – and in *Paradiso* ix – 'con l'una e l'altra palma' [one and the other palm] (l. 123) – seems calculated to establish a vivid contrast between the Furies and Christ, as well as their respective military prowess, a thin, almost invisible thread also connects the term to *Purgatorio* ix. As commentators observe, the dream of the eagle with its evocation of Ganymede (ll. 19-27) finds its precedent both in *Aeneid* v. 254-57 and in *Metamorphoses* x. 155-61. Virgil's vignette includes the detail that 'his aged guardians in vain stretch out their palms to the stars' (ll. 256-57). Treating the cantos 'vertically', the upraised *palmae* of the 'guardians' are eye-catching. Do their 'palms' offer a clue as to how, as Dante composed a canto, other canti characterized by the same number could, at a deep structure, exert an influence on his formal choices? Indeed, since Dante's verses are closer to Virgil's than to Ovid's, could 'le feroci Erine' [the fierce Erinyes] (*Inf*., ix. 45) have exercised some sort of pull on his opting for the former? It is for this and the other unexpected and highly alluring glimpses44 into how Dante may have woven the fabric of the *Commedia* that I am most grateful to have been granted the opportunity to read the Nines 'vertically'.

44 See Barański, 'Reading', pp. 5-35.

# 10. Humility and the (P)arts of Art1

*K P Clarke*

'Poetry is Vertical'2

No reader can fail to feel the constant pull of the vertical and horizontal axes in Dante's *Comedìa*. A cycle of readings alive to the vertical, then, is as welcome as it is stimulating. The poem's comic trajectory moves upwards, from *asperitas* to *prosperitas*, from a beginning that is *horribilis et fetida*, to an end that is *prospera, desiderabilis et grata*. 3 The figure of Dante in the *Comedìa* is continually in a state of opposing tensions between his corporeal *downwardness* and his (spiritually and morally) striving *upwardness*. Verticality exerts itself powerfully upon the imagination, both poetic and philosophical. Aristotle, in Book Four of the *Physics*, emphasized the importance of above (ἄνω) and below (κάτω), *up* being 'where fire and what is light are carried' [τὸ πῦρ καὶ τὸ κοῦφον], while *down* is 'where what has weight and what is made of earth are carried' [τὰ βάροσ καὶ τὰ γεηρά].4 The vertical axis is deeply imbricated even in the simplest 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/1628853

2 Thus the title of a manifesto published in *transition* 21 (March 1932), pp. 148-49, signed by Hans Arp, Samuel Beckett, Carl Einstein, Eugène Jolas, Thomas McGreevy, Georges Pelorson, Theo Rutra, James J. Sweeney and Ronald Symond; see Eugène Jolas, *Critical Writings, 1924-1951*, ed. by Klaus H. Kiefer and Rainer Rumold (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2009), pp. 266-67.

3 *Epistola* XIII, 29 and 31.

4 Aristotle, *Physics*, Book 4, 1 (208b19-22), citing Hardie and Gaye's translation in *The Complete Works of Aristotle*, The Revised Oxford Translation, gen. ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 1, p. 355. See too Edward S. Casey, *Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World*, 2nd edn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 76-82.

most quotidien words: 'up' and 'down' are counted amongst those essential 'orientational' *Metaphors We Live By* studied by Lakoff and Johnson.5 The privileging of the vertical axis is also felt in the philological lexicon of textual recension: one manuscript will find itself placed *higher* on a given stemma than another, while the (often lost) 'original' is placed at its apex. A text is said to be transmitted 'vertically' or 'horizontally': horizontal transmission is the more common phenomenon, but a good deal messier; the vertical, on the other hand, is a rarer but much more textually faithful axis.6

The vertical and horizontal axes at work in the *Comedìa* were perhaps most famously discussed by the Russian literary critic Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, in his account of forms of time and what he calls the 'chronotope' [Хронотоп] in the novel. When illustrating the handling of fictional time and space in the later Middle Ages, he points to the ways in which Dante, with 'the consistency and force of genius', stretches out the historical world along a vertical axis, a world, he says, 'structured according to a pure verticality'. He goes on: 'The temporal logic of this vertical world consists in the sheer simultaneity of all that occurs (or "the coexistence of everything in eternity")'. Bakhtin sees this vertical axis as presenting a challenge to the historicity of the characters, who act on a horizontal plane, or rather, as 'horizontal time-saturated branches at right angles to the extratemporal vertical of the Dantesque world'.7

The *Comedìa* is a vertical poem. This is not just written into its narrative and moral trajectory, but is intimately inscribed in the pronounced verticality of the poem's material form. The manuscript layout of the

5 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, *Metaphors We Live By* (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 14-21.

6 See Gianfranco Contini's seminal essay 'Filologia', in *Breviario di ecdotica* (Milan: R. Ricciardi, 1986), pp. 21-22 and also ibid., *Filologia*, ed. by Lino Leonardi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014), pp. 27-28 and Leonardi's commentary on pp. 86-88; for 'vertical' and 'horizontal' transmission, see Giorgio Pasquali, *Storia della tradizione e critica del testo* (Florence: Le Monnier, 2nd edn 1962), p. 141.

7 M. M. Bakhtin, 'Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Towards a Historical Poetics' [1937-1938], in *The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays*, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 157-58. See also Julia Kristeva's formulation of dialogue and intertextuality, itself heavily influenced by Bakhtin: 'Le statut du mot se définit alors *a) horizontalement*: le mot dans le texte appartient à la fois au sujet de l'écriture et au destinataire, et *b) verticalement*: le mot dans le texte est orienté vers le corpus littéraire antérieur ou synchronique' (Julia Kristeva, *Σημειωτικὴ*: *Recherches pour une sémanalyse* (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969), p. 145).

poem is invariably in columns, single or double, in which the line endings are rendered clearly visible.8 While this is the norm for copying romance narrative verse, *chanson de geste*, it is in marked contrast to the *mise en page* of lyric verse in the late Duecento and throughout the Trecento, which was almost always copied out horizontally, or as prose (*a mo' di prosa*).9 Lino Leonardi, in an important and, in the present context, richly resonant essay, 'Le origini della poesia verticale', argues for the influence of the *Comedìa* – though of course not just the *Comedìa* – on the development of vertical layouts for vernacular poetry.10

A crucial aspect of the verticality of the *Comedìa* is its metre and verse form: hendecasyllabic *terza rima*. 11 If a horizontal pull draws the reader to the end of the line, the rhyme word creates a vertical drop, connecting that word with those rhyme words that follow it. The word 'vertical' is etymologically related to 'vortex' and 'vertere', suggesting a turning, which gives rise to the word 'verse' for a line of poetry, the line-ending being the point of (re)turning.12 Rhyme and the vertical are thus intrinsically related. Since *terza rima* is a concatenated rhyme, the rhyme words are constantly reaching beyond the three-line unit of the *terzina* itself. It has

8 See Marcella Roddewig, Dante Alighieri, *Die göttliche Komödie: vergleichende Bestandsaufnahme der Commedia-Handschriften* (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1984); Marisa Boschi Rotiroti, *Codicologia trecentesca della Commedia: entro e oltre l'antica vulgata* (Rome: Viella, 2004); Gabriella Pomaro, 'Forme editoriali nella Commedia', in *Intorno al testo: tipologie del corredo esegetico e soluzioni editoriali. Atti del convegno di Urbino, 1-3 ottobre 2001* (Rome: Salerno, 2003), pp. 283-319.

9 The best known manuscripts of lyric poetry of this period are: Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Rediano 9; Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 217, ex Palatino 418; Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3793. For facsimiles, and a volume of critical studies, see Lino Leonardi (ed.), *I canzonieri della lirica italiana delle origini*, 4 vols (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001).

10 Lino Leonardi, 'Le origini della poesia verticale', in *Translatar i transferir: la transmissió dels textos i el saber (1200-1500)*, ed. by Anna Alberni, Lola Badia and Lluís Cabré (Santa Coloma de Queralt: Obrador Edèndum – Publicacions URV, 2010), pp. 267-316. My gratitude is warmly extended to Prof. Leonardi for graciously furnishing me with a copy of this article, as well as generously reading this *lectura* in draft.

11 On *terza rima*, see: David Robey, 'Terza rima', in *The Dante Encyclopedia*, ed. by Richard Lansing (New York and London: Garland, 2000), pp. 808-10; Ignazio Baldelli, 'terzina', in *Enciclopedia dantesca*, ed. by Umberto Bosco, 6 vols (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 2nd edn 1984), vol. 5, pp. 583-94 and his entry 'rima', vol. 4, pp. 930-49; Pietro G. Beltrami, *La metrica italiana* (Bologna: Il Mulino, 5th edn 2011), §226-227, pp. 310-13. On rhyme, see Aldo Menichetti, *Metrica italiana: fondamenti metrici, prosodia, rima* (Padova: Antenore, 1993), pp. 506-90.

12 See the beautiful reflections of Giorgio Agamben, 'La fine del poema', in *Categorie italiane: studi di poetica e di letteratura* (Bari: Laterza, revised edn 2010), pp. 138-44.

often been observed that the pronounced verticality of *terza rima* lends itself to a reading on a kind of 'parallel slope', with the rhyme words telling their own story, but in fast-forward. Dante maintains a remarkable control over the rhyme words so that they work in an allusive polychromy. The deployment, reuse and repetition of a rhyme word offers the reader a point of privileged intratextual access, acting like a lightning rod that runs vertically along the entire length of the poem.13

A reading of the Tens along a vertical, alive to the verticality of *terza rima*, immediately presents a striking example of a richly allusive reuse and repetition of three rhyming words of a *terzina*, a *Reimbildung*, in the term used by Giorgio Brugnoli. These words are *parte*: *parte*: *arte*, appearing in: *Inf*., x. 47, 49, 51; *Purg*., x. 8, 10, 12; and *Par*., x. 8, 10, 12. The structural parallelism is deliberate and artfully constructed, with two of these instances even occurring in the same line numbers.14 The *Reimbildung* is constructed on what has been termed an 'inclusive rhyme', that is, *arte* is contained in the word *parte*. But it is further distinguished by the fact that the word *parte* is used in *rima equivoca*. 15 It is the only example in the *Comedìa* of such a repetition occuring across three parallel *canti*. These recurrences have been noted rarely, and discussed even less.16 This 'vertical' *lectura* will not attempt a synthetic or general reading of all three cantos but aims instead at something delimited and modest in scope: it will focus on the *Reimbildung* as a locus of hermeneutic value in engaging with the Tens, taking a cue from Dante's own 'technical' intratextual connecting of these cantos.

13 On intratextuality, see Alison Sharrock, 'Intratextuality: Texts, Parts, and (W)holes in Theory', in *Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations*, ed. by Alison Sharrock and Helen Morales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 1-39.

14 The rhyme words *parte*: *parte*: *arte* also recur in *Purg*., iv 80, 82, 84, and *Par*., xiii 119, 121, 123, but these will not be discussed here.

15 On 'inclusive rhyme' see Beltrami, *La metrica italiana*, §155, p. 215; Corrado Bologna, *La macchina del Furioso. Lettura dell' "Orlando" e delle "Satire"* (Turin: Einaudi, 1998), pp. 136-37 (previously published in *Letteratura italiana. Le opere*, gen. ed. Alberto Asor Rosa, 4 vols [Turin: Einaudi, 1992-1996], vol. 2 [1993], p. 283); on *rima equivoca*, see Beltrami, *La metrica italiana*, §156, pp. 215-16.

16 The sheer scale of Dante criticism makes it rather imprudent to refer to something as never having been discussed; I have, however, been unable to track down thus far any extended discussion of this *Reimbildung* or of its parallel placement in the Tens. (An insightful but brief mention of repeated rhymes, including *arte*: *arte*: *parte*, can be found in Arianna Punzi, *Rimario*, p. 41 and n. 79; see n. 19 below.)

### *Rimanti* and *Reimbildungen*

It is Roberto Antonelli who has done the most to elucidate and explore the rich rhyme landscape of Duecento vernacular Italian lyric.17 He has argued that the rhyme is a point on the line swollen with both poetic and hermeneutic force, powered by a tension between sound and sense. In an eloquent assertion, Antonelli has stated that:

La rima e i rimanti contengono insomma organicamente un discorso altro e comportano pertanto un potere di intensificazione linguistica, una pluralità di senso che può agire, per il produttore e per l'utente, sia a livello conscio che inconscio o subliminale (così come le ripetizioni e i giochi fonici interni al verso, ma certamente ad un livello maggiore di formalizzazione e comunicazione).18

[Rhyme and rhyme words contain, then, a different discourse and bring with them a linguistic heightening, a plurality of sense which, for both the writer and the reader, can act on different levels, both consciously and unconsciously (such as repetitions, and playing on sounds within the line, but certainly at a level more than simply of formalization and communication).]

That is, rhyme words can and do work rather hard on the line. Not only that, but certain rhyme words tend to gather other words around them: they have, in the fortunate formulation of Cesare Segre, a certain 'stickiness'.19 It is also true that Dante and Petrarch exert a considerable and transformative

17 Roberto Antonelli, 'Rima equivoca e tradizione rimica nella poesia di Giacomo da Lentini. 1. Le canzoni', *Bollettino del Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani* 13 (1977), 20-126; 'Ripetizione di rime, "neutralizzazione" di rimemi?', *Medioevo romanzo* V (1978), 169-206; 'Equivocatio e repetitio nella lirica trobadorica', in *Seminario romanzo* (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979), pp. 111-54; 'Metrica e testo', *Metrica* 4 (1986), 37-66; 'Tempo testuale e tempo rimico: costruzione del testo e critica nella poesia rimata', *Critica del testo* 1/1 (1998), 177-201, not to mention his *Repertorio metrico della scuola poetica siciliana* (Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani, 1984). See too the three volumes dedicated to 'Dante, oggi', edited by Roberto Antonelli, Annalisa Landolfi and Arianna Punzi, of the journal *Critica del testo* XIV, 1-3 (2011), with numerous articles bearing the imprint of Antonelli's concerns; specifically, see his 'Come (e perché) Dante ha scritto la *Divina Commedia*?', in the opening volume, pp. 3-23.

18 Antonelli, 'Tempo testuale e tempo rimico', p. 193.

19 For Segre's 'legge di vischiosità', see his *Esperienze ariostesche* (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1966), pp. 51-83 (p. 57). The rhyme words *Troia*: *noia*: *gioia*: *croia* are a good example. See Annalisa Comes, 'Troia, Elena e Paride: un mito per le rime', *Studi mediolatini e volgari* 44 (1998), 195-212 (pp. 197-203). This is so powerful that it can even exert itself upon English; cf. the opening lines of Chaucer's great poem *Troilus and Criseyde*, constructed around the rhyme words *Troie*: *joie*: *fro ye*.

force on the deployment of certain rhymes throughout the Trecento, and the works of Arianna Punzi and Carlo Pulsoni are especially important in showing how this happens.20 Both the variety and particular kind of rhymes that Dante and Petrarch use can be considered in themselves a subtle poetic processing of the Duecento's lyric tradition.21

The repetition of only certain rhyme words in the *Comedìa* has received critical attention, such as *Cristo*: *Cristo*: *Cristo* in *Par* xii, xiv, xix and xxxii, or the way that *diserto*: *esperto* (*Purg*., i. 130, 132) recalls those same rhyme words used by Ulysses in *Inf*., xxvi. 98, 102.22 Many other repetitions are rarely discussed. For example, *Silvestro*: *maestro*: *capestro* in *Par*., xi. 83, 85, 87, is repeated in *Inf*., xxvii 95, 97, 92. Speaking as a tongue of flame, and with almost unbearable sarcasm, the fraudulent Guido da Montefeltro describes how Pope Boniface VIII had no concern for Guido's status as a Franciscan (*capestro*), and like the emperor Constantine calling Pope Silvester (*Silvestro*) in order to be baptised and healed from a fever, so too was Guido called as doctor (*maestro*) to heal Boniface of his own proud fever. The rhyme words 'capestro', 'Silvestro' and 'maestro' each refer here to Guido himself. Their use in *Par*., xi to describe St Francis represents a polemical counterpoint, with each rhyme word 'answering' its previous appearance in *Inf*., xxvii, healed of their fraudulent use by Guido. If, in Guido's account, the *capestro*  no longer fitted around the increasing waistlines of the Franciscans

20 Arianna Punzi, *Rimario della Commedia di Dante Alighieri* (Rome: Bagatto libri, 2001) and see also ead., *Appunti sulle rime della Commedia* (Rome: Bagatto libri, 1995); Carlo Pulsoni, *La tecnica compositiva nei 'Rerum vulgarium fragmenta'*. *Riuso metrico e lettura autoriale* (Rome: Bagatto libri, 1998). My thanks to Prof. Punzi for her insightful and generous reading of this article in draft.

21 See Andrea Afribo, 'Sequenze e sistemi di rime nella lirica del secondo Duecento e del Trecento', *Stilistica e metrica italiana* 2 (2002), 3-46; idem, '*A Rebours*. Il Duecento visto dalla rima', in *Da Guido Guinizzelli a Dante: nuove prospettive sulla lirica del Duecento. Atti del Convegno di studi, Padova-Monselice, 10-12 maggio 2002*, ed. by Furio Brugnolo and Gianfelice Peron (Padova: Il poligrafo, 2004), pp. 227-37. See too Giovanna Santini, *Tradurre la rima. Sulle origini del lessico rimico nella poesia italiana del Duecento* (Rome: Bagatto Libri, 2007) and her, 'Rima e memoria', *Rivista di filologia cognitiva* 3 (2005). Still of value is Leandro Biadene, 'La rima nella canzone italiana dei secoli XIII e XIV', in *Raccolta di studi critici dedicata ad Alessandro D'Ancona festeggiandosi il XL anniversario del suo insegnamento* (Florence: Tipografia di G. Barbera, 1901), pp. 719-39 (pp. 730-36 on *rima equivoca*).

22 On repetition see Lloyd Howard, *Formulas of Repetition in Dante's Commedia: Signposted Journeys across Textual Space* (Montreal and London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001); on repeated rhyme, see Guglielmo Gorni, 'Rime ripetute: in canzoni di Dante e in uno stesso canto della *Commedia*', *Filologia e critica* 20 (1995), 191-99. A very stimulating treatment is Dante Bianchi, 'Rima e verso nella "Divina Commedia"', *Rendiconti dell'Istituto Lombardo, Accademia di Scienze e Lettere* 95 (1961), 127-40 (pp. 134-40).

(echoing the critical use of the key verb *impinguare*, to fatten, in *Par*., x. 96 and xi. 25, 139), then for Francis the cincture is, properly speaking, the symbol of his humility. Guido's *Silvestro* is a weak pope (ab)used by the emperor Constantine, while for Francis, Silvester is amongst the first to divest himself of his worldly possessions and follow the saint in his life of poverty.

The words that form the *parte*: *parte*: *arte Reimbildung* might be described as low-key; it is perhaps for this reason that they have escaped the notice of critics for so long. The *rimanti parte*: *arte* is not unusual in Duecento vernacular verse nor in the *Comedìa*, displaying much of that 'stickiness' described by Segre. Indeed, as Allan Gilbert has pointed out, in all but one occurrence of the rhyme word *parte* in the *Comedìa*, it appears with the word *arte*. He concludes that this constitutes an example of 'rime for rime's sake', a point that echoes Contini's sense in Dante of a subordination of meaning to an aestheticising of sound and repetition ('il preponderare del significante sul significato').23 But while these are not amongst Dante's most flamboyant rhymes, they are not empty words, nor is this *Reimbildung* a meaningless repetition or empty patterning of rhyme. Dante protects this *Reimbildung* from the risk of monotony by using the rhetorical figure of *rima equivoca*, with each occurrence marked by an emotional tension and a stylistic heightening.24

Even if the words *parte* and *arte* appear relatively often in rhyme position in the lyric poetry of the Duecento and in Dante, they are somewhat rarer in rhyme combination, as *rimanti*. 25 Instances of the word *parte* in *rima equivoca*

23 Allan H. Gilbert, 'Dante's *Rimario*', *Italica* 44 (1967), 409-24 (p. 412); Gianfranco Contini, 'Un'interpretazione di Dante' [1965], in *Un'idea di Dante: saggi danteschi* (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), p. 87.

24 On the 'monotony' of Duecento rhymes, see Afribo, 'Sequenze e sistemi di rime'.

25 See Dante, *Rime*, 5. 13, 15; 6. 95, 96; 82. 5, 8 – a response to Dante da Maiano's poem 'Amor mi fa sì fedelmente amare'. For *parte*: *parte* see *Vita nova* 4. 9-12 [IX], vv. 10, 13 and *Vn* 20. 8-17 [XXXI], vv. 50, 53. It is worth noting (without entering the debate about authenticity) that both the *Fiore* and *Il Detto d'Amore*, so heavily constructed on *rime ricche* and *equivoche*, are copied vertically in Montpellier, Bibliothèque Universitaire, Section Médicine, H.438 and Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Ashb. 1234 *bis*; cf. Leonardi, 'Le origini', pp. 281-82, and more specifically on the manuscripts see Teresa De Robertis Boniforti, 'Nota sul codice e la sua scrittura', in *The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany*, ed. by Zygmunt G. Barański and Patrick Boyde (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), pp. 49-72. For *parte*: *parte*: *carte*: *parte*, see *Fiore* XLI, 1, 4, 5, 8 (which Contini notes as being in 'rima equivoca' (*Il Fiore*, ed. by Gianfranco Contini, in *Opere minori*, I, pt. I, p. 605; cf. *Il Fiore e il Detto d'amore*, ed. by Gianfranco Contini [Milan: A Mondadori, 1984], pp. 84-85); see too *Fiore* LXII, 1, 4, 5, 8 for *arte*: *parte*: *parte*: *carte* and CC, 1, 4, 5, 8 for *diparte*: *parte*: *parte*: *arte*; see *Detto*, ll. 53-54 (*parte*: *part'è*); ll. 97-98 (*parte*: *parte*); ll. 449-450 (*parte*: *parte*).

are neither rare nor frequent, with the bulk of examples occurring in the works of poets who are associated with such rhyme, such as Giacomo da Lentini, Guittone d'Arezzo, Monte Andrea and Chiaro Davanzati. 26 Amongst the most notable examples is Monte Andrea's poem 'Eo saccio bene che volontà di partte', which is constructed upon two rhyme words, *parte* and *passo*, with *parte* occurring in the first ten lines (more precisely: ll. 1, 2, 5-10, with ll. 3 and 4 containing *spartte* and *compartte*).27 If the survey is widened to include all the words of the *Reimbildung* in question, namely, *parte*: *parte*: *arte*, the results are unexpectedly meagre, furnishing only three examples.28 The first is Arrigo Testa, 'Vostra orgogliosa cera', ll. 18, 19, 22 (*parte*: *parte*: *arte*), and with l. 23 having *parte* in *rima identica*. 29 The second is a text described by Contini as 'il più antico testo misogino in volgare italiano', known as the 'Proverbia que dicuntur super natura feminarum', ll. 737, 738, 739, 740 (*arte*: *parte*: *carte*: *parte*).30 The final example occurs in a sonnet by Guittone d'Arezzo, 'Ai Deo, chi vidde donna visiata', ll. 2, 4,

26 See D'Arco Silvio Avalle (ed.) *Concordanze della lingua poetica italiana delle origini (CLPIO)*, vol. 1 (Milan: R. Ricciardi, 1992), pp. 622-23, #161.1, 3 18 and 20. Reference should also be made to the database *LirIO. Corpus della lirica italiana delle origini. 2. Dagli inizi al 1400*, ed. by Lino Leonardi e di Alessio Decaria, Pär Larson, Giuseppe Marrani, Paolo Squillacioti (Florence: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013).

27 Cf. *CLPIO* V 888; see too Monte Andrea da Firenze, *Le rime*, ed. by Francesco Filippo Minetti (Florence: L'Accademia della Crusca, 1979), pp. 252-53. See too the sonnet 'Bene m' à messo Amore in gran partte' (*CLPIO* V 684; Minetti, p. 187), which, in a very tonguein-cheek manner, rhymes the words *partte* and *monte* in the octet, answering *per le rime* the sonnet by Terino da Castelfiorentino, 'Non t' à donato Amore piciola partte' (*CLPIO* V 683; Minetti, pp. 186-87). The 'afterlife' of *parte* in *rima equivoca* will remain outside the scope of this essay, but one extraordinary example cannot go unnoted: Petrarch's sonnet 'Quand'io son tutto vòlto in quella parte' (*Rvf* 18), with *parte*, *luce*, *morte*, *desio* and *sole* used as the ABCDE rhymes, respectively.

28 Not counting but nevertheless noting the example of Panuccio del Bagno, 'La dolorosa noia', vv. 6, 12, 28, 29, 77, 78 (*parte*: *parte*: *parte*: *disparte*: *parte*: *arte*), where the relevant rhyme words occur (in the context of a complex and innovative rhyme scheme: abbCcD, aeeFfD, GgHhIiLL, and double congedo ABbCcA, ABbCcDdA), but not close enough to form a *Reimbildung parte*: *parte*: *arte*. Cf. *CLPIO* L 95; Contini, *Poeti del Duecento*, I, 304- 308; Panuccio del Bagno, *Le rime*, ed. by Franca Brambilla Ageno (Florence: l'Accademia della Crusca, 1977), pp. 72-78, and see too Mark Musa, *The Poetry of Panuccio del Bagno* (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), No. IV, pp. 30-37, notes on pp. 119-20, and commentary on pp. 149-53.

29 See *CLPIO*, V 35, L 61, P 62; and see the edition of Corrado Calenda, in *I poeti della Scuola Siciliana*, II, *Poeti della corte di Federico II*, gen. ed. Costanzo Di Girolamo (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), pp. 235-45. Calenda, on p. 235, notes the rhymes as *equivoche* and *identiche*. See too his entry 'Arrigo Testa' in *Enciclopedia Fridericiana*, gen. ed. Ortensio Zecchino, 3 vols (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2005-2008), I, pp. 102-03.

30 See *CLPIO* S Prov, pp. 73-79; see too Gianfranco Contini, *Poeti del Duecento*, 2 vols (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1960), I, pp. 521-55.

6 (*arte*: *par te*: *parte*).31 This is a particularly interesting example because Guittone has drawn attention to the rhyme by splitting the word at the end of the line: 'E' veggio che del gioco non ài par te'. The word *parte* is now a kind of 'broken' rhyme or 'falsified' *rima equivoca*, emphasizing its own *equivocatio* and the parts of *parte*. 32

#### *Rima equivoca*

Critics have not been much concerned with Dante's use of *rima equivoca*. 33 This is perhaps influenced by Dante himself: in the context of a brief discussion in *De vulgari eloquentia* on the over-use of rhyme and repetition, he expresses reservations about the use of *rima equivoca* for a poet in the high style. Its abuse, Dante asserts, results in it being *inutilis*, 'que semper sententie quicquam derogare videtur' [which always seems to detract to some extent from meaning] (*DVE*., II. xiii. 13).34 Though the passage has often been read as an example of Dante censuring his own petrine sestina 'Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna',35 what is important to recognize here is the clear connection being established between 'sententia' and rhyme: the rhyme, that is, must be handled with sufficient dexterity and care in order for the poem's *sententia* to be expressed and not obscured.36 Rhyme, in other words, *is* meaning, and so is *rima equivoca*. For Dante, it has, in the formulation of Luigi Tassoni, 'una funzione determinante ai fini della

31 Cf. *CLPIO*, L 209; see too *Le rime di Guittone d'Arezzo*, ed. by Francesco Egidi (Bari: Laterza, 1940), No. 85, p. 181; Contini, *Poeti del Duecento*, I, p. 253; and Guittone d'Arezzo, *Canzoniere: i sonetti d'amore del Codice Laurenziano*, ed. by Lino Leonardi (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), No. 85, pp. 254-56.

32 For *rima franta*, see Contini; for *rima equivoca contrafatta*, Leonardi, and see too his note *ad loc*., on p. 254.

33 The figure has been studied in relation to the Provençal traditions; specifically on *rima equivoca* in Galician-Portuguese literature, for example, see Simone Marcenaro, *L'equivocatio nella lirica galego-portoghese medievale* (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2010); several essays are available on Marcenaro's page at http://www.academia.edu

34 Citing Mengaldo's text and *De vulgari eloquentia*, ed. and trans. by Steven Botterill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 87. On the value of 'inutilis', see the perspicacious note in *De vulgari eloquentia*, ed. by Mirko Tavoni, in *Opere*, gen. ed. Marco Santagata, vol. 1: *Rime, Vita Nova, De vulgari eloquentia*, ed. by Claudio Giunta, Guglielmo Gorni and Mirko Tavoni (Milan: A. Mondadori, 2011), pp. 1542-43 *ad loc*.

35 The sestina has a particular role in the history of vertical layouts for lyric poetry; for the importance of a vertical layout of the *sestine* in Petrarch's autograph of the *Rerum vulgarium fragmenta* (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3195), and its importance in reading the rhymes, see Leonardi, 'Le origini', pp. 287-88 and nn. 49-50.

36 See *De vulgari eloquentia*, ed. by Enrico Fenzi, with the collaboration of Luciano Formisano and Francesco Montuori (Rome: Salerno editrice, 2012), pp. 236-37, *ad loc*.

produzione del Senso'.37 In a rich discussion of rhyme in Dante, Ignazio Baldelli pointed out that *rima equivoca* is often clustered together with other rhetorical and poetic techniques.38 Joan Ferrante has discussed the subtle but precise patterning of repeated *rime equivoche* across the three *cantiche*, highlighting how there are only *three* such rhymes repeated in the *Comedìa*: the words *volto*, *porta* and *parte*. 39 The word *parte* lends itself to *rima equivoca*  because of its frequency, its semantic range and homophony with the thirdperson singular of the present indicative of the verb *partire*. 40

*Rima equivoca* provokes an *aporia* in the reader, in which the graphic and phonic sameness is in tension with the difference in meaning, necessitating retrospection and a re-reading of the *terzina*. This re-reading activates the two directions of verticality, up and down. *Aequivocatio* is experienced on the threshold of meaning, a passing over from meaning, which is then compromised by doubt, and in turn restored. The meaning restored is inflected by the paired equivocal term: it no longer signifies on its own, but interacts with the rhyme unit. As such, it is a figure working on and powered by a *limen*, nourished not just by transition, but also by potentiality.41

#### The Cantos Ten

The Tens are connected at several thematic levels, facilitating a 'vertical reading'. Ronald L. Martinez has referred to the Tens as 'threshold' cantos, each representing an important point of transition.42 Both *Inferno* x and *Purgatorio* x are marked by gates, each leading respectively into Hell and Purgatory proper; *Paradiso* x is the first to be free of the shadow of the earth. While there is no shortage of studies pointing out the connections between the Tens, it is to George Corbett that we owe a 'vertical' reading, an axis that distinguishes itself in *Inferno* x's interest in the Resurrection of the Body (that

37 Luigi Tassoni, '*Aequivocatio* e statuto del senso in Dante', *Verbum: Analecta neolatina* 3/1 (2001), 131-41 (p. 131).

38 See Ignazio Baldelli, 'rima', in *Enciclopedia Dantesca*, IV, pp. 930-49 (p. 932).

39 Joan Ferrante, 'A Poetics of Chaos and Harmony', in *The Cambridge Companion to Dante*, ed. by Rachel Jacoff, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 181- 200 (p. 190).

40 See Antonietta Bufano, 'parte', in *Enciclopedia Dantesca*, vol. 4, pp. 323-28 (p. 328).

41 Victor Turner and Edith Turner, *Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives* (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 2, for liminality not just as *transition* but *potentiality*.

42 Dante Alighieri, *The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri*, ed. by Robert M. Durling, 3 vols (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996-2011), vol. 3, pp. 726-30.

is, the end of time), echoed and nuanced with *Purgatorio* x's emphasis on the Incarnation (God's entry into time), and *Paradiso* x's interest in Creation (the beginning of time): the 'vertical axis therefore sets into relief God's creation of (*Par*., x), entry into (*Purg*., x), and consummation of (*Inf*., x) the history of mankind'.43 Guido Cavalcanti is at the heart of Alison Cornish's beautiful reading of the 'vertical' axis of the Tens, and her succinct but deep reading of the cantos is an essential reference point for the reflections that follow.44 Even though both Corbett and Cornish have convincingly connected the three cantos, neither has noted the repeated use of the *parte*: *parte*: *arte Reimbildung* across the Tens. In each case, the *rima equivoca* rhetorically signals a moment of emotional heightening and stylistic enhancement; in each case the thematic context is richly suggestive, strictly in the service of (in the words of Tassoni, cited above) 'la produzione del Senso'.

Attending to the 'vertical' intratextuality and thematic convergences between the Tens renders evident some further resonances, in particular a shared concern with the 'arch-vice' pride, the sin that gives rise to all other sins (*quoniam initium peccati omnis superbia*; Ecclesiasticus 10. 15).45 Pride and humility may be described as operating on a vertical axis, those that place themselves above (*super*) all others are eventually laid low; the most humble are exalted. In *Inf*., x, close to the surface of Farinata's characterization as *magnanimo* (l. 73), lies the sin of *superbia*. 46 He is repeatedly described as emphatically proud: he is 'sdegnoso' (l. 41), has Hell in 'gran dispitto' [great

43 George Corbett, *Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment*  (Oxford: Legenda, 2013), p. 82. The Bakhtinian chronotope might well be considered in light of these observations; as Gillian C. Price asserted, in a paper delivered at a conference entitled '*Vertical' Time and Space in Literature* held in the University of Durham's Department of Theology and Literature in July 1995, 'For the theologian, the vertical can thus be understood as a divine chronotope, where the horizontal chronotope is recognizably human. The place at which the two intersect is therefore the chronotopic moment of incarnation'; see the paper at https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ theology.religion/research/projects/verticaltimeandspace/XHoban%20-%20Heir%20 to%20Bakhtinian%20Vertical.pdf On verticality and theology, see Anthony J. Steinbock, *Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience* (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007); see too Antoine Vergote, 'The Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions in Symbolic Language about God', in *In Search of a Philosophical Anthropology: A Compilation of Essays*, trans. M. S. Muldoon (Leuven and Amsterdam: Leuven University Press and Rodopi, 1996), pp. 217-42.

44 Alison Cornish, 'Sons and Lovers: Guido in Paradise', *MLN* 124/5 Suppl (2009), S51-S69.

45 On pride, see Patrick Boyde, *Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's Comedy* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 174-97.

46 See John A. Scott, *Dante magnanimo: studi sulla Commedia* (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1977), Ch. 1, "Inferno" X: Farinata 'magnanimo', pp. 9-45 (which had previously appeared as '*Inferno*, X: Farinata as *Magnanimo*', *Romance Philology* 15 [1962], 395-411).

disdain] (l. 36) and even his gestures towards Dante reveal his pride, 'ei levò le ciglia un poco in suso' [he raised his brows a little upwards] (l. 45). Scott describes him as a figure symbolizing 'partisan pride'.47 Cavalcante, too, is filled with pride in his son and his intellectual abilities, asking Dante if he travels through the realm of *Inferno* 'per altezza d'ingegno' [because of your high genius] (l. 59). Guido's *disdegno* finds a parallel, then, in Farinata's own *dispitto*. At the heart of *Purgatorio* x is its representation of humility in the figures of the Virgin Mary, King David before the Ark and the Emperor Trajan responding to the supplication of the poor widow for justice. The humility of each is realized on the vertical axis, in their respective acts of lowering themselves. In *Paradiso* x, Dante presents himself humbly as the canto's mere *scriba*, acutely aware that such a height (*tanta altezza*) presents an almost insurmountable challenge for the lowness of his imagination (*se le fantasie nostre son basse*, ll. 46-47). Thomas Aquinas, from the peaks of wisdom, describes himself in humble terms as one of Dominic's flock ('Io fui de li agni de la santa greggia / che Domenico mena per cammino' ['I was among the lambs of the holy flock that Dominic leads by a path'] (ll. 94-95), and it is Thomas who will, in the following canto, present a memorable account of the life of Saint Francis, 'il poverel di Dio' [God's pauper] (*Par*., xiii. 33), the Heaven of the Sun's figure of humility *par excellence*.

#### *Inferno* x

With the magnificent character of the Ghibilline Farinata degli Uberti, *Inferno*  x is a canto deeply concerned with division, with political factionalism and the tensions threatening to break apart the communal structure of the city of Florence. This rending was not just political but also social, resulting in the exile of members of now one family, now another. The desire for power, influence and control is set above wider comunal concerns. Farinata nicely betrays this in *Inf*., x. 46-47, '"Fieramente furo avversi / a me e a miei primi e a mia parte"'['Fiercely were they opposed to me and to my ancestors and to my party'], where the insistence on *me* is of a piece with the political *parte*. If Farinata gets the first use of 'parte', Dante keeps the second for himself. He responds to Farinata's account of the exile of the Guelphs from Florence with the assertion that, crucially, the Guelphs, unlike Farinata's family, at least managed to return to the city:

47 Scott, '*Inferno*, X', p. 410 [*Dante magnanimo*, p. 42].

'S'ei fur cacciati, ei tornar d'ogne parte', rispuos'io lui, 'l'una e l'altra fiata; ma i vostri non appreser ben quell'arte'. (*Inf*., x. 49-51)

['If they were driven out, they returned from every side', I replied, 'the first time and the second; but your people did not learn that art well'.]

Here the word 'parte' indicates *locus*, the many places where the Guelphs were scattered. The emphatic oneness of Farinata's *parte* contrasts with the multiplicity of *ogne parte*, and yet that multiplicity is being remedied in their *return* to the oneness of Florence. Dante's response here is fierce, in the tradition of *improperium*. The dynamic of Dante's *rinfaccio* (reproach) is repetition, repeating the words of Farinata but on his own terms, and he uses the structure of the *terzina*'s rhyme to emphasize the gap between them. Thus, Farinata's use of the word *fiate* in l. 48 is answered by Dante in l. 50, who brings the word into rhyme position, stretching the line (he turns Farinata's *due fiate* into 'l'una e l'altra fiata') and emphasizing that *each* time the Guelphs were expelled, they returned. It builds pressure on the third line of the *terzina*, l. 51, the climax of the *improperium*, in pointing out the failure of Farinata's family to return. The possessive adjective *vostri*  critically answers the 'a me e a miei primi e a mia parte' of l. 47, expressing a distance between them, a pushing away of Farinata. (The possessive adjective reappears sharply later on in one of the canto's most famous lines, l. 63, 'forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno' [perhaps to one your Guido had in disdain]). This first part of the encounter between Farinata and Dante—about to be interrupted by Cavalcante—is left hanging on the word *arte*.

The word 'arte' refers to the art of politics and politicking (as in *Par*., vi. 103, 'Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte / sott'altro segno' [Let the Ghibellines, then, let them work their arts under some other emblem]; *arte* rhymes with *parte*: *diparte*). It is also the art of returning, of ending one's exile. The word, used in this sense, will ricochet in Farinata's mouth when he reveals that the inability of his descendents to learn the art of return torments him more than Hell itself (ll. 77-78), and hints darkly that Dante, too, will know the pain of this failure (l. 81). It is no surprise that in such a rhetorically charged moment as Farinata's prophecy, another highly evocative *rima equivoca* is deployed, with the word 'regge' in ll. 80 and 82, meaning 'to rule' in l. 80 (from *reggere*) and 'to return' in l. 82 (from the Latin *redeas*). An example of *rima identica* (a figure used relatively rarely by Dante, where the same word, in both form and meaning, is repeated) occurs with 'mosso' in ll. 88 and 90.48 The emotional heightening being signalled here on the theme of exile, the failure of the art of returning, alerts the reader to the long shadow it casts over the whole poem. Dante's exile profoundly inflects many of the poem's crucial themes, not least of which is the politics of *Inferno* x.49

#### *Purgatorio* x

The opening lines of *Purgatorio* x signal the transition to Purgatory proper, with Dante and Virgil crossing its threshold, the door loudly creaking shut behind them. The description of the rocky terrace, dedicated to those guilty of pride, is anxiously vague: critics have strongly divergent interpretations of the *pietra fessa* that 'moves' one way and another, like a wave rushing out and then back in again. Both occurrences of the word *parte* are in the service of expressing vividly an elaborate 'this-way-and-that-way' movement. Just as the rock moves 'e d'una e d'altra parte' [from side to side] (l. 8), so too must the pilgrim negotiate the rock 'in accostarsi / or quinci, or quindi al lato che si parte' [clinging to the side that recedes, now here, now there] (l. 12). For a canto that is all about representation, mimesis, similitude, artistry, the lack of precision in these lines is striking, drawing attention to the act of representation.50 The deployment of a *rima equivoca* functions as a key part of this ambiguity. The description of the *pietra fessa* (broken rock) is built upon a *rima equivoca*, a technique that depends upon breaking meaning apart, and only emphasized in the use of the word *parte*, itself a word that is all about separation and the lack of wholeness. When Virgil says 'Qui si conviene usare un poco d'arte' [Here we must use a little skill] (l. 10), the

48 On the reading of *mosso* in l. 88 there has been some philological discussion; see Dante Alighieri, *La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata*, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, 2nd edn, 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994), I, p. 175, as well as the note *ad loc*.; see too Dante Alighieri, *Commedia*, ed. by Anna M. Chiavacci Leonardi, 3 vols (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1991-1997), I, p. 323 *ad loc*.

49 On exile in Dante, see Catherine Keen, 'The Language of Exile in Dante', *Reading Medieval Studies* 27 (2001), 79-102; see, too, the entry 'exile', by George Andrew Trone in *The Dante Encyclopedia*, ed. by Richard Lansing (New York and London: Garland, 2000), pp. 362-65, with bibliography.

50 Particularly good on this is Paul Spillenger, 'Dante's *Arte* and the Ambivalence of Retrospection', *Stanford Italian Review* X (1991), 241-68; see too Matthew Treherne, 'Ekphrasis and Eucharist: The Poetics of Seeing God's Art in *Purgatorio* X', *The Italianist* 26 (2006), 177-96.

challenge is not just for the pilgrims in navigating the rocky terrain but also for readers in navigating the ambiguity of the passage.

At the centre of the *rima equivoca* on 'parte' is the rhyme word 'arte', a word that will come to have significant resonance throughout the canto and, indeed, the rest of *Purgatorio*. 51 As numerous critics have pointed out, the canto explores the nature of art and the problems of representation. The artistry found in *Purgatorio* x is extraordinary.52 The artist's hand, responsible for *bas-reliefs* that are more real than Nature, is the hand of God. But the centre of the problem here is that this representation is *not*  divine, but Dante's own. Teodolinda Barolini has rightly asserted that the boundary is blurred between 'the divine mimesis and the text that is charged with reproducing it'.53 If the 'arte' in l. 10 is one of navigation and negotiation, making one's way safely through the obstacle course that is the terrace, then this is also a navigation of meaning, of the artfulness of Dante's poem: an art, in sum, that candidly implicates the reader.

Hermeneutics, the art of meaning, lies at the heart of *Purgatorio* x, since the whole canto comprises an act of reading on Dante's part. In this canto he does not meet any specific, named individuals guilty of pride (he will in the following canto); rather, he reads a series of images representing humility, the counter-examples to pride, images comprising the Virgin Mary, David before the Ark and the Emperor Trajan. Indeed, the protagonist of *Purgatorio* x is surely the sculpted reliefs of the terrace. Dante describes himself shifting position in an effort to get a better view of these reliefs, to read them more clearly: 'per ch'io varcai Virgilio, e fe'mi presso, / acciò che fosse a li occhi miei disposta' [therefore I crossed beyond Virgil and drew near it, so that it would be wholly before my eyes] (ll. 53-54); 'I' mossi i piè del loco dov'io stava, / per avvisar da presso un'altra istoria, / che di dietro a Micòl mi biancheggiava' [I moved my feet from the place where I was standing, so as to see up close another story that shone white for me

51 For a recent (though brief) treatment of the occurrences of the word in the *Comedìa* see Jennifer Petrie, 'Art, *Arte*, Artistry and the Artist', in *Nature and Art in Dante: Literary and Theological Essays*, ed. by Daragh O'Connell and Jennifer Petrie (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 11-24.

52 For a short bibliography, see Georges Güntert, 'Canto X', in *Purgatorio*, ed. by Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone, *Lectura Dantis Turicensis* (Florence: F. Cesati, 2001), pp. 139-55 (p. 155).

53 Teodolinda Barolini, *The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 126 (the chapter had previously appeared as 'Re-Presenting What God Presented: The Arachnean Art of Dante's Terrace of Pride', *Dante Studies* 105 [1987], 43-62).

from behind Michal] (ll. 70-72). Virgil's word *arte*, then, is a key term for the drama of reading that unfolds on this terrace, a co-ordinated effort of both mental and physical skill.

#### *Paradiso* x

*Paradiso* x is the first canto of the fourth sphere, the Heaven of the Sun; it is thus the first to be completely free of the shadow of the earth. The canto opens with six lines of exquisite contemplation of the Trinity. The three persons of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Ghost – are described in terms of a contemplative mutuality, with the *primo e ineffabile Valore*, the Father, watching, looking into, contemplating – the gerund *guardando*, the first word of the canto, holds the whole six lines together – the Son with Love (the Holy Spirit) which *inspires* (in-spire, 'breathes between') both eternally. The order and perfection created by the Trinity mean that anyone who looks at or contemplates it cannot but taste Him (God). These first two *terzine* end with the word 'rimira', a verb which echoes and reflects the opening gerund 'guardando'. We look (*mirare*) at the Trinity, which is itself the Father looking (*guardare*) at the Son and, by looking, we taste. These opening lines of *Paradiso* x echo, then, the remarkable synaesthesia of *Purgatorio* x, with Dante delighting in looking at God's work, hearing the images in dialogue and smelling the scenes before him.

This pair of *terzine* opens the canto and is followed by a long direct address to the reader, 'Leva dunque, lettore' (l. 7), lasting for seven *terzine* (up to l. 27).54 Within this address appears the *parte*: *arte*: *parte Reimbildung*, precisely mirroring their position in *Purg*., x, that is, lines 8, 10 and 12. The rhetorical heightening is clearly signalled, with the reader urged to attend to the vertical, to raise her eyes upwards in contemplation of the heavens. Another *rima equivoca* will be used at the close of the canto, where the harmony produced by the circling *corona* ('in dolcezza ch'esser non pò nota' [with sweetness that cannot be known] (l. 147) is likened to the chimes of a divine clock, 'tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota' [sounding *tin tin*  with so sweet a note] (l. 143)).55 The *Reimbildung* is accommodated in two *terzine* that express the harmony of this sphere of the Sun and the beauty of

54 See Alison Cornish, *Reading Dante's Stars* (New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 23-25.

55 See, on this, the masterful treatment by Christian Moevs, 'Miraculous Syllogism: Clocks, Faith and Reason in *Paradiso* 10 and 24', *Dante Studies* 117 (1999), 59-84.

the art of the Creator. The rhyme words are used in a way similar to their occurrences in *Inferno* and *Purgatorio*, that is, with 'parte' meaning 'place' or 'spot' in line 8, and the third-person singular of the present indicative verb 'partire' meaning 'divide from', 'separate from', in line 12.

The three words, however, have undergone a transformation in their use in *Paradiso*, subjected to a vertical fulfillment. While 'arte' in *Inf*., x. 51 and *Purg*., x. 10 means (human) 'skill', 'technical know-how', here in line 10, the word suggests divine art, the Creator's harmony. Dante directs the reader's attention to 'quella parte', that place where the contrary motions of the heavens result in the Spring equinox (this will be clarified in ll. 28 ff., and the locution *quella parte* will recur in l. 31). But the contrary motions of the sphere are a phenomenon that does not have a 'place', and what we see no longer happens in time and space. Likewise, the use of the verb *partire* indicates a gaze that never breaks away, that remains forever fixed on its object: 'mai da lei l'occhio non parte' [he never moves his eye away from it] (l. 12). A word that meant division and separateness now means wholeness, oneness.

A *Reimbildung* built upon *equivocatio* draws attention to shifts in meaning, including shifts in the meaning of the 'stable' term *arte*. The reader's encounter with the word, as it occurs in the Tens, is primed by its occurrence in (as well as out of) rhyme position in the cantos immediately preceding and immediately following. This echoing is further reinforced by the fact that in all of these instances, the word *arte* is in rhyme with *parte*. 56 Though a fuller treatment lies outside the immediate scope of this essay, it is necessary nonetheless to point out how the only two other uses of the *Reimbildung* enter into a rich and allusive intratextuality with the Tens. The occurrence of *arte*: *parte*: *parte* in *Purg*., x recalls the appearance of those same rhyme words in *Purg*., iv. 80, 82, 84. Indeed, these rhyme words at the opening of *Purg*., x describe a difficult and arduous climb through broken rocks, with a wording ('Noi salavam per una pietra fessa' [We were climbing up through a broken rock] (l. 7)) that precisely mirrors the difficult negotiation of the ascent of Mount Purgatory ('Noi salavam per entro 'l sasso rotto' [We were climbing within the broken rock] (*Purg*., iv. 31)).57

56 See *Inf*., ix. 120; *Inf*., x. 77, 81 (not in rhyme); *Inf*., xi. 100, and, not in rhyme at 103, 105; *Purg*., ix. 71, and, not in rhyme at 125; *Purg*., xi 80; *Par*., ix. 106 (not in rhyme); *Par*., x. 43 (not in rhyme); *Par*., xii. 138 (not in rhyme).

57 The echo has been noted in the commentaries of recent critics such as Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, Pasquini and Quaglio, and Bosco and Reggio.

Repeating the *Reimbildung* within the same cantica – in this case *Purgatorio* – feels sufficiently marked that it be noticed by readers; repeating it within the same sphere in *Paradiso* is a much more startling and intense kind of repetition. The Heaven of the Sun accommodates two occurrences of *parte*: *parte*: *arte* – in *Par*., x, and again in *Par*., xiii. 19, 121, 123.58 Canto xiii has Thomas Aquinas warn against rushing to judgment or being convinced of one's opinions too quickly and taking easy comfort in such conviction. The injunction alerts the reader to the skill required for the art of making acute and meaningful distinctions.59 Reading a *rima equivoca*, similarly, requires an act of distinction. Art is figured again in Thomas's explication of the perfection and wisdom of Adam and Christ, perfect because made directly by God Himself and in contrast to corruptible earthly existence. The perfection of divine ideas must be counter-distinguished from Nature, 'similemente operando a l'artista / ch'a l'abito de l'arte ha man che trema' [working like the artist who has the habit of art but a hand that trembles] (*Par*., xiii. 77-78).60 The artist, whose trembling hand imperfectly renders the ideal image in his mind, is a figure which implicates Dante the poet, whose abilities are always expressing imperfectly the (vertical) extremes of his experiences in the otherworld.

This discussion has concentrated on the rather rare phenomenon of one particular *Reimbildung* being repeated across a set of cantos, in this case, the Tens. However, a 'vertical' reading of the *Comedìa* would also recognize the marked way in which Dante deploys an –*arte* rhyme across the cantos Thirty-One. These are: *parte*: *arte*: *Marte* (*Inf*., xxxi 47, 49, 51); *parte*: *arte*: *sparte* (*Purg*., xxxi 47, 49, 51); and *parte*: *sparte*: *arte* (*Par*., xxxi 128, 130, 132). Particularly striking is how the first two instances mirror each other's line numbers. This intratextual signposting across the cantos Thirty-One even presents connections to the Tens, where the other –*arte* rhyme series is found. It has been noted, for example, that the image of Farinata in *Inf*., x echoes the giants in *Inf*., xxxi standing waist-deep in the *pozzo*. 61 A more detailed investigation is needed of the 'vertical intratextuality' created by these rhyming patterns and lexical convergences.

58 Two examples of *rime equivoche* are also found in *Par*., xiii, at ll. 37, 39, on *costa*, and at ll. 89, 91, on *pare*.

59 See Courtney Cahill, 'The Limitations of Difference in *Paradiso* XIII's Two Arts: Reason and Poetry', *Dante Studies* 114 (1996), 245-69.

60 The word *artista* appears only four times in the *Comedìa*, all in rhyme position, and all in *Paradiso*: cf. xvi. 51; xviii. 51; xxx. 33.

61 See Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi's comment in her *Commedia*, vol. 1, p. 914.

### Conclusion

The vertical expresses itself not just thematically, in the narrative trajectory of the *Comedìa*, but also technically, in the handling of rhyme, the poem's most pronounced vertical dimension. This vertical articulation allows Dante to range up and down the whole length of the poem. An allusive intratextuality creates connections between themes, episodes and characters, joining up precise textual points in repeated *Reimbildungen*, the focus of which are distinctly the end of the poem. The verse (*verso*; *versus*) is fulfilled at the moment of turning, a crossing over between sound and sense. Rhyme, therefore, bears the weight of this turning, and Dante puts the pressure it creates to exquisite use in structuring the soundscape of the poem.62

62 For support towards this research, my gratitude is warmly extended to the Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, and the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF102ID).

# 11. The Art of Teaching and the Nature of Love1

*Paola Nasti*

### Numbers, Words, Themes and Genres: Bridging the Elevens

Lexical similarities, recurring rhyming patterns, thematic crossovers and narrative reverberations can be found in whichever way we direct our reading of Dante. Indeed, this is the genius of the *Commedia*, a poem that requires horizontal, vertical and, more often, diagonal, back-and-forth movements from its readers by intentionally creating links between cantos, groups of cantos and/or *terzine*. To prove that Dante deliberately created a vertical numerological structure, however, we would have to demonstrate that vertical structures are used consistently to advance or revise specific themes or arguments in more substantial ways than diagonal, horizontal or serendipitous ones. In other words, we would have to ascertain that strong vertical links exist and that they are a consistent and privileged method of creating meaning in the *Commedia*. Our challenge is to consider whether this

1 The video of this lecture is available at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy website, https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1631609 I would like to thank colleagues who have given me essential feedback on previous versions of this *lectura*: Zygmunt Barański, Anna Pegoretti, Claudia Tardelli and Virginia Campbell. The Bible quoted is the Approved King James translation.

kind of tie exists amongst the Elevens. In approaching a vertical reading, our point of entry is, of course, numerological in nature.

Numbers had symbolic meaning in medieval textual architectures like the *Commedia* on the basis of the biblical assumption that Wisdom 'arranged all things by measure and number and weight' (Wisd., 11:20). The number eleven had been described by both Saint Augustine in *De civitate Dei* and Hugh of St Victor in his *Exegetica de Scripturis et Scriptoribus Sacris* as the blazon of sin because it signified the transgression of law and measure represented by the number ten.2 The 'spiritual' meaning of our number perfectly suits *Inferno* xi. It is here, in fact, that Virgil offers a scholastic lecture on the strict correspondence between the Aristotelian classification of sin and the *Commedia*'s infernal geography. The long monologue logically organizes the topic of wrongdoing to help the pilgrim and the readers understand the moral significance of the story that is unfolding. Obviously, the vertical commentator's job is much harder when it comes to the Elevens of the second and third *cantiche*: there, no clear numerological correspondence seems to be in place. Nevertheless, the symbolism of the number eleven sheds some light on these two cantos when we consider that the interpretation of what constitutes sin and its opposite, virtue, is at the heart of both. To be precise, *Purg*., xi and *Par*., xi equally exalt humility and charity as remedies to the *aversio* that leads men to sin. My numerological interpretation is not a flight of the imagination. In discussing the significance of eleven, Augustine himself noted that, on the basis of *Exod*. xxv, 7, the number also signified the *cilicium* [sackcloth], which pertained to sin because, as Psalm 51 exemplified, it reminded humanity of

2 'Since, then, the law is symbolized by the number ten, whence that memorable Decalogue, there is no doubt that the number eleven, which goes beyond ten, symbolizes the transgression of the law, and consequently sin. For this reason, eleven veils of goat's skin were ordered to be hung in the tabernacle of the testimony, which served in the wanderings of God's people as an ambulatory temple. And in that haircloth there was a reminder of sins, because the goats were to be set on the left hand of the Judge; and therefore, when we confess our sins, we prostrate ourselves in haircloth, as if we were saying what is written in the psalm, 'My sin is ever before me.' The progeny of Adam, then, by Cain the murderer, is completed in the number eleven, which symbolizes sin; and this number itself is made up by a woman, as it was by the same sex that beginning was made of sin by which we all die' (St Augustine, *The City of God* , trans. by Marcus Dods, in *Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series*, ed. by Philip Schaff [Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887], II, Book XV, c. 20, 4-10). Hugh of St Victor, *Exegetica de Scripturis et Scriptoribus Sacris*, in *Patrologia Latina*, ed. by J. P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844-1855), 175, col. 22.

their sins in their daily practice of the virtuous life.3 From this perspective, it is possible that, following the model of Augustine's reasoning on Psalm 51, in *Purgatorio* xi and *Paradiso* xi, Dante might want to suggest that there can be no virtue which does not remind us of sin.

Numerology aside, at a macro-structural level there are other similarities that a vertical reading of our cantos reveals. All three cantos are more or less liminal; they mark a transition in the narrative to a different geographical or astronomical, and therefore ethical and spiritual, area in their respective realm. In *Inferno* xi we have just entered the City of Dis,4 or lower Hell; in *Purgatorio* xi the *agens* has arrived in Purgatory proper;5 and in *Paradiso* xi he has left behind the Heavens that still bear the shadowy presence of

3 See the reference to Psalm 51 in note n. 3. St Augustine's comment on Psalm 51 puts great emphasis on the need to consider David as a penitent: 'This Psalm then, while it maketh heedful those that have not believed, so doth not will them that have fallen to be despaired of. Whoever thou art that hast sinned, and hesitates to exercise penitence for thy sin, despairing of thy salvation, hear David groaning. To thee Nathan the prophet hath not been sent, David himself hath been sent to thee. Hear him crying, and with him cry: hear him groaning, and with him groan; hear him weeping, and mingle tears; hear him amended, and with him rejoice. If from thee sin could not be excluded, be not hope of pardon excluded' (St Augustine, 'Exposition on the Book of Psalms', in *Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers*, VIII, Psalm 51, 8).

4 The bibliography on *Inferno* xi is vast, and here I mention only some of the most relevant readings of the canto: Zygmunt G. Barański, 'Segni e struttura Canto XI', in his *Dante e i segni: saggi per una storia intellettuale di Dante Alighieri* (Naples: Loffredo, 2000), pp. 127-46; Theodore J. Cachey, 'Cartographic Dante', *Italica* 87:3 (2010), 325-54; Carlo Delcorno, 'Dare ordine al male (*Inferno* XI)', *Lettere Italiane* 63:2 (2011), 181-207; idem, 'Inferno XI', in *Lectura Dantis Bononiensis*, ed. by Carlo Galli and Emilio Pasquini (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2012), II, pp. 137-56; Francesco Mazzoni, 'Canto XI dell'*Inferno*', in *Lectura Dantis Neapolitana. Inferno*, ed. by Pompeo Giannantonio (Naples: Loffredo, 1986), pp. 167-209; Bruno Nardi, 'Il canto XI dell'*Inferno*'*,* in *Lecturae ed altri studi danteschi*, ed. by Rudy Abardo (Florence: Le Lettere, 1990), pp. 71-80; Cesare Vasoli, 'Il canto XI dell'*Inferno*', *L'Alighieri. Rassegna bibliografica dantesca* 33:2 (1992), 3-22.

5 For good general discussion on *Purg*., xi see: V. Stanley Benfell, '"Blessed Are They that Hunger after Justice": From Vice to Beatitude in Dante's *Purgatorio*', in *The Seven Deadly Sins. From Communities to Individuals*, ed. by Richard Newhauser (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 185-206; Giovanni Fallani, 'Il canto XI del *Purgatorio*', in *Purgatorio. Casa di Dante in Roma* (Rome: Salerno Editore, 1981), pp. 231-46; Mario Marti, 'Canto XI', in *Lectura Dantis Neapolitana. Purgatorio*, ed. by Pompeo Giannantonio (Naples: Loffredo, 1989), pp. 227-45; Anthony Oldcorn, 'Canto XI. Gone with the Wind', in *Lectura Dantis. Purgatorio*, ed. by Allen Mandelbaum, *Anthony Oldcorn*, and Charles Ross (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, *2008*), pp. 103-18; Michelangelo Picone, 'Dante nel girone dei superbi (*Purg*. X-XII)', in *L'Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca* 46 (2005), 97-110; Mirko Volpi, 'Dante tra superbia e invidia. Lettura del canto XIII del *Purgatorio*', *Rivista di Studi Danteschi* 12:2 (2012), 326-60.

planet Earth.6 As such, all cantos represent, to a certain extent, a sort of meditative pause on the theological and ethical meaning of the pilgrim's and the readers' voyage. Likewise, all three cantos stage the rehearsal of a major genre: a *quaestio disputata* in *Inferno*, 7 a liturgical prayer which is also a biblical *volgarizzamento* in *Purgatorio*, 8 and a hagiographical piece within a *lectio* in the last cantica.9 This, as we shall see, is no meaningless coincidence when we consider that a sustained reflection on different forms of art, knowledge and learning runs across our three cantos.

Links of a thematic nature can also be established, but mainly in binary combinations, between the Elevens of *Inferno* and *Paradiso* or the Elevens of *Purgatorio* and *Paradiso*. Such links mostly centre on notable semantic oppositions or couples: humility and pride; sin and repentance; family pride

6 On *Paradiso* xi : Erich Auerbach, 'Il canto XI del *Paradiso*', in *Letture dantesche: Paradiso*, ed. by Giovanni Getto (Florence: Sansoni, 1961), pp. 217-35; Umberto Bosco, *Lectura Dantis Scaligera: Il Paradiso, Canto XI* (Florence: Le Lettere, 1990), pp. 387-418; Andrea Mazzucchi, 'Per una genealogia della Sapienza. Lettura di *Paradiso*, XI', *Rivista di Studi Danteschi* 9:2 (2009), 225-62; Nicolo Mineo, 'Il canto XI del *Paradiso*', in *I primi undici canti del Paradiso: Lectura Dantis Metelliana*, ed. by Attilio Mellone (Rome: Bulzoni, 1992), pp. 221-320; Paola Nasti, '*Caritas* and ecclesiology in Dante's Heaven of Sun', in *Dante's 'Commedia': Theology as Poetry*, ed. by Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), pp. 210-44; Giuseppe Mazzotta, 'Dante's Franciscanism', in *Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the 'Commedia'*, ed. by Nick Havely (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 171-98; Mario Trovato, 'Canto XI', in *Dante's Divine Comedy: Introductory Readings: III. Paradiso*, ed. by Tibor Wlassics (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1995), pp. 156-71.

7 See for example Corrado Calenda, 'Lettura di *Inferno* XI', *Filologia e Critica* 20:2-3 (1995), 217-41.

8 As well as the *lecturae* on *Purg*., xi listed in n. 6, on Dante's *Pater noster* and the contamination of genres in this prayer see: Sergio Cristaldi, 'Il 'Padre nostro' dei superbi', in *Preghiera e liturgia nella Commedia*. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Ravenna, 12 novembre 2011, ed. by Giuseppe Ledda (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei Frati Minori Conventuali, 2013), pp. 67-88; Nicolò Maldina, 'L'*oratio super Pater Noster* di Dante tra esegesi e vocazione liturgica. Per *Purgatorio* XI, 1-24', *L'Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca* 53 (2012), 89-108.

9 See Lucia Battaglia Ricci, 'Figure di contraddizione: Letture dell'XI canto del *Paradiso*', in *Le varie fila: Studi di letteratura italiana in onore di Emilio Bigi*, ed. by Fabio Danelon, Hermann Grosser, and Cristina Zampese (Milan: Principato, 1997), pp. 34-50. On Dante's representation of St Francis see: Erich Auerbach, 'Francesco d'Assisi nella *Commedia*', in his *Studi su Dante* (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1990), pp. 227-40; Umberto Bosco, 'San Francesco', in his *Dante vicino: Contributi e letture* (Caltanissetta and Rome: Sciascia, 1966) pp. 316-41; Umberto Cosmo, 'Le mistiche nozze di Frate Francesco con Madonna Povertà', *Giornale dantesco* 6 (1898), 49-82 and 97-117; Kenelm Foster, 'Gli elogi danteschi di S. Francesco e di S. Domenico', in *Dante e il francescanesimo*, ed. by Agnello Baldi (Cava dei Tirreni: Avagliano, 1987), pp. 231-49; Roul Manselli, 'San Francesco e San Domenico nei canti del *Paradiso*', in *Da Gioacchino da Fiore a Cristoforo Colombo: Studi sul francescanesimo spirituale, sull'ecclesiologia e sull'escatologismo bassomedievali*, ed. by Raoul Manselli (Rome: Istituto Storico per il Medioevo, 1997), pp. 201-11.

and spiritual families; bad and good popes;10 true and false wealth; poverty and usury; time versus eternity; earthly fame versus glory in Heaven; teaching and learning; philosophy and Scripture. Where and when these themes are reprised, the *memoria dantesca* is at times active: tropes, words and rhymes are often repeated. Unsurprisingly, thematic or lexical repetition occur with some frequency especially across *Purgatorio* xi and *Paradiso* xi, where the themes of humility and *superbia* are dealt with (in *Paradiso* xi with specific reference to St Francis). The points of contact are less obvious between the cantos of *Inferno* and *Purgatorio*, a fact that does complicate the possibility of a vertical reading as much as suggest that the consideration that not all the actual reprises are significant, or exclusive to our three cantos.

Perhaps the two most noticeable lexical points of contact are the re-occurrence in all three cantos of two words: 'sasso' and 'amore'. In *Inferno*, 'sasso' clearly refers to the rocky landscape of the City of Dis, which is a symbol of spiritual loss and pain;11 in *Purgatorio*, the weighty rock is what bends down the penitent necks of the proud;12 in *Paradiso*, it alludes to the impervious mountain where the *penitens-in-viam* Francis received the miracle of the stigmata:

> nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arno da Cristo prese l'ultimo sigillo, che le sue membra due anni portarno. (*Par*., xi. 106-108)13

[on the bare rock between Tiber and Arno from Christ he then took the last seal, which his limbs bore for two years.]

10 In *Inferno* the reference is to Pope Anastasius ('Anastasio papa guardo, / lo qual trasse Fotin de la via dritta'. xi. 8-9); this has been the subject of a long controversy; for an interesting assessment see: Ronald L. Martinez, '"Anastasio papa guardo" (*Inferno* 11.8-9). The descent into Hell, and Dante's heretics', *Mediaevalia* 39:2 (2008), 15-30. In *Paradiso* Dante uses a papal 'attribute' for St Francis: 'di seconda corona redimita / fu per Onorio da l'Etterno Spiro / la santa voglia d'esto archimandrita' (xi. 97-99). Since we are reading vertically it might be interesting to note that Francis is presented here as a true archimandrite, i.e. pope, who chose 'terra' [soil] as the proper 'bara' [coffin] to his body, whereas in *Inferno* xi we encounter the first pope directly mentioned by Dante in a tomb that one day will be shut forever.

11 'Figliuol mio, dentro da cotesti sassi', / cominciò poi a dir, 'son tre cerchietti / di grado in grado, come que' che lassi' (*Inf*., xi. 16-18).

12 'E s' io non fossi impedito dal sasso / che la cervice mia superba doma, / onde portar convienmi il viso basso' (*Purg*., xi, 52-54). The *contrappasso* here is of course modeled on the myth of Sisyphus.

13 Note in this case also the reprisal of the image of the seal ('sigillo') in *Inferno* xi: 'e però lo minor giron suggella / del segno suo e Soddoma e Caorsa / e chi, spregiando Dio col cor, favella' (49-51), where the seal marks the irreversibility of the sinners' reclusion in Hell. For St Francis the 'sigillo' is instead the confirmation of his salvation and a mark of perfection.

Clearly the semantic metamorphosis of the rock mirrors the ascending moral and allegorical path from sin to salvation. The lexical reminiscence is therefore consistent with the cantos' trajectory from sin to virtue, one that we have already mentioned in relation to the significance of numbers.

The term 'amore' is of course one that liberally resonates across *Purgatorio* and *Paradiso*, but in the first cantica, with the obvious exception of canto v and the two introductory cantos, the term is rare.14 In *Inferno* xi, however, the term occurs twice when Virgil explains to Dante that the bond of love is broken by the sinners who turn their back on God and Nature (this is the core of the concept of aversion):

> Questo modo di retro par ch'incida pur lo vinco d'amor che fa natura; onde nel cerchio secondo s'annida. (*Inf*., xi. 55-57)

[This latter mode seems to cut solely into the bond of love that Nature makes; thus in the second circle find their nest.]

Per l' altro modo quell'amor s'oblia che fa natura, e quel ch'è poi aggiunto, di che la fede spezïal si cria (*Inf*., xi. 61-63)

[The former mode forgets the love that Nature makes and also that which is added to it, from which special trust is created.]

In *Purgatorio* xi 'amore' (in rhyming position with 'valore' and 'vapore') is acknowledged by the penitents as one of the gifts of the Trinity which make salvation possible:

> O Padre nostro, che ne' cieli stai, non circunscritto, ma per più amore ch'ai primi effetti di là sù tu hai (*Purg*., xi. 1-3)

[O our Father who are in the heavens, not circumscribed, but because of the greater love you bear those first effects up there.]

In *Paradiso* xi, which is in fact an extended allegory of love, the term finds several declinations (from 'diletto' and 'concordia', to 'amò', 'amasser' and

14 *Inf*., xiii. 40-42; xxvi. 94-96; xxx. 37-39.

'amanti') and describes the affection that ties Francis to his Lady, his friars to both of them and, by extension, the church militant to Christ:

> La lor concordia e i lor lieti sembianti, amore e maraviglia e dolce sguardo facieno esser cagion di pensier santi (*Par*., xi. 76-78)

[Love and admiration and joyful glances caused their harmony and their cheerful look to be the occasion of holy thoughts.]

It would appear, therefore, that in our cantos from *Inferno* to *Paradiso*, the term 'amore' is semantically stable like the God from which it emanates. Its relevance, however, is subject to the *habitus* of the human agent, who may choose to sway from it ('incida'), forget ('oblia') his divine origin or embrace it instead. The exceptional double occurrence of the term in *Inferno* xi, alongside the celebrations of love in the other two cantos, can be considered a strong index of verticality which reflects the importance of the concept of *caritas* in the Elevens.

Further thematic ties patently exist between our cantos. These rotate around the pivotal treatment of humanity's obsession with, or refusal of, earthly values such as wealth, fame, dominance and family. Whilst I shall subsequently analyse some of these issues at greater length, a consideration of a lexical reoccurrence related to the theme of family, the word 'padre', might offer a cogent introduction to Dante's argument on earthly values in the Elevens. As stated in *Convivio*, 15 following Aristotle, Dante considered family one of the pillars of society. As important as it might be, however, Dante is clear that family cannot lead the Christian to neglect the more important principles of humility and charity. In *Purgatorio* xi, Guglielmo Aldobrandesco suffers to expiate the pride he took in the noble past and present of his family by carrying around a rock which forces his eyes and his entire body downwards. This is not only a criticism of the traditional concept of nobility, but also a direct comment on the relative value of blood relations:16

15 The positive value of family is noted in *Conv* IV. iv. 2 and *Par*., xv. 125. Umberto Bosco, 'Gli affetti familiari di Dante nella *Commedia*', *L'Alighieri* 27:1 (1986), 3-15. On the theme of community in Dante, see Claire E. Honess, *From Florence to the Heavenly City: The Poetry of Citizenship in Dante* (London: Legenda, 2006).

16 For a comprehensive bibliography on the question of nobility in Dante, see Dante Alighieri, *Convivio*, ed. by Gianfranco Fioravanti (Milan: Mondadori, 2014). A recent

Io fui latino e nato d'un gran Tosco: Guiglielmo Aldobrandesco fu mio padre; non so se 'l nome suo già mai fu vosco. L'antico sangue e l'opere leggiadre d'i miei maggior mi fer sì arrogante, che, non pensando a la comune madre, ogn' uomo ebbi in despetto tanto avante. (*Purg*., xi. 58-64)

[I was Italian, born of a great Tuscan: Guglielmo Aldobrandesco was my father; I know not if his name was ever known to you. The ancient blood and noble works of my ancestors made me so arrogant that, forgetting our common mother, I looked down on every man.]

In *Paradiso* xi, on the contrary, familial affiliations are rejected by a young Francesco, who embraces the spiritual 'corte' of the Church and creates a new 'famiglia' which will bring fresh, holy blood to the community as a whole:

> ché per tal donna, giovinetto, in guerra del padre corse, a cui, come a la morte, la porta del piacer nessun diserra; e dinanzi a la sua spirital corte *et coram patre* le si fece unito (*Par*., xi. 58-62)

[when, still a youth, he had to do battle with his father for a lady to whom, as if she were death, no one unlocks the gate of pleasure, and before the bishop's court *et coram patre* he wedded her.]

Indi sen va quel padre e quel maestro con la sua donna e con quella famiglia che già legava l'umile capestro. (*Par*., xi. 85-87)

[So he goes on, that father, that master, with his lady and that family already girt with the humble rope.]

Dante was certainly aware of the fact that the motive behind Francis's refusal of his native family was modelled on a notorious precept preached by Christ in the synoptic Gospels:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mat. 10:37-39)

According to the traditional exegesis of this passage and its parallels, Christ's teaching did not disrupt the concept of family *per se*, but simply extended the term to include the Church as a whole.17 In *Purgatorio* xi, such a lesson is learned and preached by the penitents who in fact extend their prayer to all the living, the community of families left behind:

> Quest' ultima preghiera, segnor caro, già non si fa per noi, ché non bisogna, ma per color che dietro a noi restaro. (*Purg*., xi. 22-24)

[This last prayer, dear Lord, we do not make for ourselves, since there is no need, but for those who have stayed behind.]

### The Worth of Philosophical Teaching from Hell to Heaven (Tentative Verticality)

*Inferno* xi is the first sustained lecture in Hell from the 'maestro [della] filosofica famiglia' [master [of the] philosophical company] (*Inf*., iv. 131- 32). Centuries of commentary have proven that Virgil's lecture in this canto is based on Dante's perfect mastery of the style and mode of scholastic philosophical *quaestiones*. In this context, the highest degree of attention must be paid to the fact that the word 'filosofia' is cited here and never again in the whole *Commedia*:

> 'Filosofia', mi disse, 'a chi la 'ntende, nota, non pure in una sola parte, come natura lo suo corso prende'. (*Inf*., xi. 97-99)

['Philosophy', he said, 'to one who understands it, notes, and not merely in one place, how Nature takes its course'.]

17 See Thomas of Aquinas, 'Catena in Matheum', in *Catena aurea in quatuor Evangelia*, ed. by A. Guarenti (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953), ch. 10, *lectio* 14.

The same mark of exceptionality applies to the mention of the titles of two of Aristotle's works: 'Etica' (*Nichomachean Ethics*, line 80) and 'Fisica' (*Physics*, line 101). These *hapax legomena* suggest that the lecture that Virgil gives amongst the tombs of the heretics (this detail must also be significant) spells out very clearly, literally in fact, the intellectual paradigms from which Dante the pilgrim will mainly benefit whilst under the care of his pagan guide. The *quaestio de malo*, delivered by Virgil, is in fact a narrative pause of great theological and figural significance that allows the poet to discuss matters of doctrine. At first, at least, Virgil appears to be a wellorganised teacher, his language technically sound, his erudition vast but neatly arranged in precise *distinctiones*. The scholasticism of the maestro is not surprising, given that Dantists have long accustomed us to the notion that the classification of sin used to describe the geography of Hell is largely taken from Thomas Aquinas' commentary on the *Ethics* and other *loci* of his *oeuvre*. 18 Recently, however, Zygmunt Barański and Carlo Delcorno have observed several inconsistencies in Virgil's discourse: the speech not only mixes Aristotelian and Ciceronian theories, but also avoids giving a clear, exact account of the actual geography of lower Hell.19 It would be hard to prove whether or not this lack of consistency is due to the fact that the *Commedia*'s modes of transmission did not allow the poet to revise his work. To understand whether Dante in fact planned these irregularities, we must look for interpretative keys in the text itself. At the level of the narrative, Virgil's lecture on sin is not exhaustive; on the contrary, it focuses only on the sins that are committed *ex malitia*. This leads the pilgrim to ask Virgil a question about the nature of the sins punished in upper Hell:

> Ma dimmi: quei de la palude pingue, che mena il vento, e che batte la pioggia, e che s'incontran con sì aspre lingue,

18 On the structure of Hell as well as the above mentioned *lecturae* see: Marc Cogan, *The Design in the Wax: The Structure of the Divine Comedy and its Meaning* (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), pp. 1-75; Paolo Falzone, 'Dante e la nozione aristotelica di bestialità', in *Dante e il mondo animale*, ed. by Giuseppe Crimi and Luca Marcozzi (Rome: Carocci, 2013), pp. 62-78.

19 Barański, 'Segni e struttura Canto XI'; Delcorno, 'Dare ordine al male'. Raffaele Pinto tried to explain these inconsistencies in his 'Indizi del disegno primitivo dell'*Inferno* (e della *Commedia*): *Inf*. VII-XI', *Tenzone*. *Revista de la Asociación Complutense de Dantología* 12 (2011), 105-52.

perché non dentro da la città roggia sono ei puniti, se Dio li ha in ira? e se non li ha, perché sono a tal foggia? (*Inf*., xi. 70-75)

[But tell me: those of the greasy swamp, those driven by the wind and beaten by the rain, and those who collide with such harsh words, why are they not punished inside the ruddy city, if they are under God's wrath? and if not, why are they treated so?]

Questioning for the purpose of clarification was a common feature of medieval philosophical debates and Aquinas, the commentator followed in this canto, was a *virtuoso* of such mannerisms.20 One doubt, even the least plausible, was always discussed and reversed by the discussant in each Scholastic *quaestio*. Instead, in *Inferno* xi, in spite of his affected scholasticism, Virgil reacts rather brusquely to the learner's curiosity; he accuses him of losing his reason ('delirare') and forgetting the teaching of Aristotle's *Ethics*:

> Ed elli a me 'Perché tanto delira', disse, 'lo 'ngegno tuo da quel che sòle? o ver la mente dove altrove mira? Non ti rimembra di quelle parole con le quai la tua Etica pertratta le tre disposizion che 'l ciel non vole?' (*Inf*., xi. 76-81)

[And he to me: 'Why does your wit', he said, 'so wander from its usual course? or where does your mind gaze mistaken? Do you not remember the words with which your *Ethics* treats so fully the three dispositions that Heaven refuses?']

By means of this 'school drama', Dante clarifies for his reader the twofold division of Hell's upper and lower regions. He also informs his readers of his deep knowledge of fundamental philosophical *auctoritates*, showcased to support his *fictio poetica*'s claims of truth. These are not details of little importance, but there might be even more to unveil. However defensible, Virgil's fury remains an unresolved problem. The momentous nature of this narrative event is also underlined by the unusual vocabulary used by

20 On the genre: Brian Lawn, *The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic 'Quaestio Disputata': With Special Emphasis on its Use in the Teaching of Medicine and Science* (Leiden: Brill, 1993).

the guide to attack his follower. The verb 'delirare' spoken by Virgil here is used only once more in the whole of the *Commedia*, namely in an episode that should be clearly considered parallel to ours: *Paradiso* i.

Undoubtedly, the dynamic between teacher and learner in *Inferno* xi stands in stark contrast to the pious attitude of the blessed guide in *Paradiso*. Perhaps not coincidentally, pedagogical relationships are also at the centre of *Paradiso* xi where Thomas Aquinas, as teacher, is in fact as helpful and willing as Beatrice in canto i:

> Tu dubbi, e hai voler che si ricerna in sì aperta e 'n sì distesa lingua lo dicer mio, ch'al tuo sentir si sterna (*Par*., xi. 22-24)

[You are puzzled, and you wish my words to make clear, in such open and ample language as befits your hearing.]

In the light of the 'teaching' theme that seems to runs from *Inferno* xi to *Paradiso* xi, the fury of Virgil in the circle of Hell singles him out as a bad pedagogue. This is further emphasized by the fact that in the infernal canto the readers are also reminded of Virgil's uneasy show of incompetence at the gates of the City of Dis in *Inferno* ix.21 From an exegetical perspective, the master's anxiety could be read as an index of Dante's views on the shortcomings of the philosophical knowledge that the ancient character flaunts at the pilgrim.

21 The most important observations on Dante's problematic representation of Virgil are still by Robert Hollander, 'Dante's Virgil: A Light that Failed', *Lectura Dantis* 4 (1989), 3-9; 'Dante's Misreadings of the *Aeneid* in *Inferno* 20', in *The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's Commedia*, ed. by Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 77-93.

This is even more apparent if we take into the account the possibility that Dante-character's questioning of Virgil's classification of sin might actually not be as delirious as the maestro suggests. Although in his *Ethics* Aristotle had made a distinction between malice and incontinence, the philosopher had also opposed incontinence to intemperance and considered the latter more serious. Yet in the commentary of Aquinas there remained no clear cut equation between *intemperantia* and malice. Thus, even in the referencebooks of the time, the taxonomy of sin was not as transparent as a student of philosophy might have hoped for. To complicate matters, as Aquinas explained, incontinence could also be considered simply a *habitus*, a *quasi*sin, because it was not unqualified badness:22

1428. […] although incontinence is not unqualified badness it is still vice in some sense, as previously stated (1379); it is then a quasi-vice, being but transitory. It is obviously not unqualified vice because incontinence sins without deliberate choice but real vice with deliberate choice. […]

1433. […] the incontinent are amenable and inclined to be penitent. He says that these people exceed the limits of right reason because of passion overcoming them to this extent that they do not act according to right reason, but […] such people continue in a right evaluation of the end after the cessation of passion, which passes quickly. Such is the incontinent person who in this respect is better than the intemperate person and not absolutely evil because he does preserve the highest principle, which is the correct evaluation of the end.23

If, as it appears, this was the *sententia* of Aristotle read by Aquinas, I would argue that Dante had the pilgrim ask whether the sinners of upper Hell fully attract God's wrath in order to mimic the doubts and arguments (*pro* and *contra*) of Aristotle's commentator over the difference between *habitus* and deliberate sin. If this was the case, and if we consider that Virgil is ultimately made to deliver a speech that combines, often confusingly, different ethical classifications, such as Cicero's and Aristotle's, the guide's violent reaction could be seen as an 'event' intentionally forged by Dante-poet to puzzle the reader and provoke him into critically judging Virgil's behaviour. It would

22 For a masterful discussion and an extensive bibliography on such a thorny question, see Lorenza Tromboni, '"Illud enim quod continemus in nostra potestate habemus". La dignità del continens dal *De malo* alla *Sententia libri Ethicorum* di Tommaso d'Aquino', *Memorie Domenicane* 42 (2011), 171-98.

23 Thomas Aquinas, *Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics*, trans. by C. I. Litzinger (Chicago, IL: Regnery, 1964), book VII, lect. 8, ch. 8.

be intriguing to see the humiliation of Dante the student, who is rightly curious about a doctrinal *crux*, as a negative comment on his teacher, on the philosopher who tries to offer clear definitions of wrongdoing but is, alas, left wanting. In other words, we could consider the difficult dialogue between teacher and learner not only as an intentional statement on the fine balance that exists between sin and reason but also on the question of the appropriate epistemology and sources.

Obviously, at the height of *Inferno* xi, the pilgrim does accept philosophy as the correct epistemology, and he is in fact moved by this belief to the highest possible praise of his pagan master:

> O sol che sani ogne vista turbata, tu mi contenti sì quando tu solvi, che, non men che saver, dubbiar m'aggrata. (*Inf*., xi. 91-93)

[O sun that heals every clouded sight, you content me so when you resolve questions, that doubting is no less pleasurable than knowing.]

No other historical character of the *Commedia* receives such an ovation, with the exception of Saint Francis in *Paradiso* xi:

> Di questa costa, là dov' ella frange più sua rattezza, nacque al mondo un sole, come fa questo talvolta di Gange. (*Par*., xi. 49-51)

[From this slope, where it most breaks its steepness, was born to the world a sun, as this one is born at times from Ganges.]

Given the uniqueness of this comparison, from our vertical perspective, we should probably not consider it a coincidence. From the height of *Paradiso*  xi, where the 'sole' ('sun') is one of the most perfect examples of Christian holiness, the attribution of the same praise to the philosophical teaching of a pagan poet in *Inferno* xi does not appear appropriate. The possibility that the later repetition of the word 'sole' is in fact a sort of commentary on the spiritual and intellectual limitations of Virgil as well as of the pilgrim who had fallen for his philosophical erudition in *Inferno* xi is very tempting. This hypothesis is even more alluring when we consider that the incipit of *Paradiso*  xi confirms the risks of philosophy as a sort of epistemological error when it condemns 'silogismi', the philosophical procedure *par excellence*, as defective:

O insensata cura de' mortali, quanto son difettivi silogismi quei che ti fanno in basso batter l'ali!

Interestingly, there are syllogisms mentioned in the *Commedia* that the pilgrim considers not as 'difettivi', obtuse, but as more perfect than any other philosophical 'dimostrazion'. These, as *Par*., xxiv. 91-96 shows, are the words of the Bible:24

> … 'La larga ploia de lo Spirito Santo, ch'è diffusa in su le vecchie e 'n su le nuove cuoia, è silogismo che la m'ha conchiusa acutamente sì, che 'nverso d'ella ogne dimostrazion mi pare ottusa'. (*Par*., xxiv. 91-96)

['The plentiful rain of the Holy Spirit, poured out on both the old and the new skins, is a syllogism that has concluded it for me so sharply that next to it every demonstration seems dulled'.]

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Bible as the 'foundation' of truth is also a further point of convergence between our three cantos.

### The Bible and the Value of Exegesis

If in *Inferno* xi criticism of the human art of philosophizing is subtle, *Paradiso* xi and *Purgatorio* xi challenge the value of human 'arts' more openly. In the first verses of St. Francis' canto, the reader is reminded that all human arts are at risk of being transient and fallacious. Likewise, *Purgatorio* xi demonstrates the intrinsic dangers of human belief in the absolute value of human production. As the stories of Oderisi da Gubbio and other artists mentioned on the terrace of the proud show, human art is not perfect; it might resemble the work of God the creator, but it is ultimately defective because the unconditional worth of man's achievements (practical,

24 See also *Par*., xxiv. 76-78.

mechanical or theoretical) is marred by their temporal nature.25 To believe in the perfection of one's accomplishments in the practice of art is a sinful *habitus*, one that can only be mocked by future generations and punished by God. In fact, looking at *Paradiso* xi. 10-12, the reader is reminded that true glory is ultimately not that experienced by Cimabue or Giotto, but that one enjoyed by Dante the pilgrim in Heaven where he is 'cotanto glorïosamente accolto' ['so gloriously received'] (*Par*., xi. 12).

Whilst human arts are bound to fail, our three cantos clearly confirm that the steadiest source of knowledge is, in fact, the Bible. The book of God takes centre-stage in *Purgatorio* xi, where the prayer of the penitent is, in fact, a translation of a Gospel passage. This is the longest prayer in the *Commedia*, and consequently the longest *volgarizzamento* of the Bible in the poem. The length of the biblical reenactment is, of course, proportional to the importance of the spiritual message that it announces and that reverberates throughout Purgatory: companionship, humility and compassion are essential to salvation. The prayer also confirms, theologically, the importance of the relationship between the world of the living and that of the dead, a fundamental and original addition to Dante's creation of this 'new' realm of the Afterlife. Last but not least, the *Pater noster* sung by the souls also establishes the epistemological paradigm chosen by those who will be saved. The penitents acknowledge the limitations of the human 'ingegno', even the most perfect ('tutto'), and ask for divine grace:

> Vegna ver' noi la pace del tuo regno, ché noi ad essa non potem da noi, s'ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno. (*Purg*., xi. 7-9)

[Let the peace of your kingdom come to us, for we cannot attain to it by ourselves, if it does not come, with all our wit.]

Dante the Christian knows, with 'his' souls in *Purgatorio*, that human reason and knowledge cannot fight evil; the 'antico avversario' can be avoided

25 On Dante's reflection on art in *Purgatorio* xi as well as the cited *lecturae* see: Giuseppe Mazzotta, 'The Book of Questions: Prayer and Poetry', *Dante Studies* 129 (2011), 25-46; Michelangelo Picone, 'Il cimento delle arti nella *Commedia*. Dante nel girone dei superbi (*Purgatorio* X-XII)', in *Dante e le arti visive*, ed. by M. M. Donato, L. Battaglia Ricci, M. Picone and G. Z. Zanichelli (Milan: Unicopli, 2006), pp. 81-107; Jeremy Tambling, 'The Art of Pride', in his *Dante in Purgatory: States of Affect* (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 81-101.

only thanks to the grace and love of God for man, and even repentance is ultimately a gift from God:

> Nostra virtù che di legger s'adona, non spermentar con l'antico avversaro, ma libera da lui che sì la sprona. (*Purg*., xi. 19-21)

[Our strength, which is easily subdued, do not tempt with the ancient adversary, but free it from him who spurs it so.]

The logical consequence of such discourse is straightforward: for the living, true knowledge can ultimately be found only in the Bible.26

The Bible also shapes *Paradiso* xi, where St Francis is celebrated as the greatest interpreter of God's love and the most sublime example of true wisdom. The narrator in this canto is, perhaps not coincidentally, Thomas Aquinas, the commentator of Aristotle employed by Dante in *Inferno* xi. At the start of my chapter, I classified this canto as homage to hagiography. *Paradiso* xi is, of course, many things at the same time: it is, for example, a panegyric, a *lectio* (more importantly) and a commentary to a phrase spoken by the character of Aquinas in the previous canto. As Thomas's words explain, this lecture/commentary, like so many others in the *Commedia*, takes off from a doubt sparked in the pilgrim's mind:

> Tu dubbi, e hai voler che si ricerna in sì aperta e 'n sì distesa lingua lo dicer mio, ch'al tuo sentir si sterna, ove dinanzi dissi: 'U' ben s'impingua', e là u' dissi: 'Non nacque il secondo'; e qui è uopo che ben si distingua. (*Par*., xi. 22-27)

[You are puzzled, and you wish my words to make clear, in such open and ample language as befits your hearing, where earlier I said: 'Where one fattens well', and where I said: 'The second had not been born'; and here one must distinguish well.]

26 As Francesco da Buti says at *Paradiso* xi. 16: 'et tucti girano intorno ad essa [scil. the Bible], andando con belle speculationi et invectioni et poi in lei si fermano'. The passage is quoted from Claudia Tardelli, *Francesco da Buti's commentary on Dante's 'Commedia'. New Critical Edition, Based on MS Nap. XIII C 1. 'Purgatorio', 'Paradiso'* (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, forthcoming in 2015).

In these lines, 'ricerna/sterna/distingua' are technical terms that belong to the field of rational enquiry; Dante uses them also for his scholastic interrogation of charity in *Paradiso* xxvi. This seems to suggest that, like Virgil in *Inferno* xi, Aquinas acts here as a pedagogue who describes the *vita Francisci* to explain the decadence of his mendicant order whilst, at the same time, confirming the values that should animate the Dominicans and the Church as whole.27 The hagiographical narrative is, therefore, the premise of a demonstrative argument.

In this 'scholastic' context, it is surprising that to express the real value of Francis's life, Thomas, as the mouthpiece of Dante, chooses a vocabulary and a *modus scribendi* that pertains to the Revelation – the *sermus biblicus*. Yet the use of a biblically fashioned *exemplum* is not necessarily common in the context of a rational demonstration; therefore, Dante's decision to operate such a modal shift requires a clear assessment. Clearly, the choice is partly motivated by the hagiographical tradition that used biblical models to exalt the Christian values of each and every saint.28 The modality also pertains to the tradition of preaching.29 If we look at the specific biblical models followed by the poet in this canto, the *vita* of St Francis is not written as a *historia* but as a *fabula*, a fiction with allegorical meaning. In particular, Francis and Poverty are transformed into *sponso* and *sponsa* like the protagonists of the *Song of Songs* attributed to Solomon. This biblical book had been interpreted for centuries as an allegory and *figura* of the love that unites God and Christ to the Church or the human soul.30 As I have written elsewhere, the allegory of the *brautmistik* is a biblical *topos* that Dante deploys here to show how, through the imitation of Christ, Francis incarnates the ideal of *caritas* which is at the centre of the Christian

27 Dante follows here a procedure that he employs also in the *Monarchia* to prove the truthfulness of Christ's teaching. For Dante, the conversion of the world to Christ is a miracle that proves the value of his doctrine, likewise the life of St Francis is a miracle that proves God's love for men.

28 René Aigrain, *L'hagiographie. Ses sources, ses méthodes, son histoire*, Subsidia Hagiographica 80 (Paris: Bloud and Gay, 1953; 2nd edn, with a supplement by Robert Godding (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 2000)). James W. Earl, 'Typology and Iconographic Style in Early Medieval Hagiography', *Studies in the Literary Imagination* 8 (1975), 15-46.

29 On Dante and preaching see: Carlo Delcorno, 'Dante e l'"exemplum" medievale', *Lettere Italiane* 35:1 (1983), 3-28; idem, 'Cadenze e figure della predicazione nel viaggio dantesco', *Lettere Italiane* 37:3 (1985), 299-320; idem, *Exemplum e letteratura. Tra Medioevo e Rinascimento* (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989).

30 On Dante and the *Song of Songs*, see Erich Auerbach, *Studi su Dante* (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1991), pp. 248-56 and 261-68; Johan Chydenius, *The Typological Problem in Dante* (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1960); Jean Leclercq, *Monks and Love in Twelfth-Century France* (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 137-44; Lino Pertile, *La puttana e il gigante. Dal Cantico dei cantici al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante* (Ravenna: Longo, 1998); Paola Nasti, *Favole d'amore e 'saver profondo'. La tradizione salomonica in Dante* (Ravenna: Longo, 2007).

message. In doing so, Dante chooses a hagiographical line that was not thoroughly dominant in the Franciscan tradition to call for a radical reform of the Church based on the value of love.31 However, there might also be another agenda.

As previously discussed, Dante's understanding of Aristotle's work and concept of sin in *Inferno* xi is certainly dependent on the Thomist interpretation of the *Nichomachean Ethics*. The 'structural' reoccurrence of Aquinas in *Paradiso* xi could suggestively incline us to consider Francis's canto as a corrective reply to the exaltation of 'filosofia' pursued through the character of Virgil in *Inferno* xi. It is plausible that in the Heaven of the Sun, Dante should call Aquinas to testify and attribute to him a demonstration based on the sacred words of the Bible, perhaps reminding the reader that the real *auctoritas* on both virtue and vice is ultimately the book of God. After all, Dante's biblically fashioned Francis is as far as possible from the virtuous Aristotelian or Virgilian ideal man; his marital passion for Poverty and his love of God are so excessive that they can only be explained by and compared to the scandal of the crucifixion recalled in *Paradiso* xi. 31-33. If this suggestion is valid, it could provide a useful interpretative key: we could argue that through the story of the 'poverello di Dio', Dante demonstrates that one cannot define sin, like Virgil attempted to do in Hell, if one does not know, through the Word of God, what *ingiuria* or malice really mean. Perhaps with intent, the word 'ingiuria' is used in the *Commedia* only with reference to the evil of the crucifixion in *Par*., vii. 43-45 and *Purg*., xvii. 121- 23. In other words, the conclusion to which a vertical reading seems to lead us is that only in the light of grace and its manifestations in the world can philosophy make proper sense of the nature of sin and virtue, of damnation and salvation.32

31 See Nasti, '*Caritas*'. For the occurrence of this *topos* in other Franciscan texts, above all the *Sacrum Commercium*, see Umberto Cosmo, 'Il primo libro francescano', in his *Con Madonna Povertà: Studi francescani* (Bari: Laterza, 1940), pp. 3-58 (pp. 36-38, 56-57); Stanislao Da Campagnola, 'Le prime 'biografie' del Santo', in *Francesco d'Assisi: Storia e Arte*, ed. by Roberto Rusconi (Milan: Electa, 1982), pp. 36-52 (p. 40); Nicholas R. Havely, 'Poverty in Purgatory: From *Commercium* to *Commedia*', *Dante Studies* 114 (1996), 229-43.

32 The debate on the relationship between philosophy and revelation or theology in Dante's work is still one of great intensity. The bibliography on the issue is therefore too vast and complex to be quoted here in full. Just a few titles will suffice: *Il pensiero filosofico e teologico di Dante Alighieri*, ed. by Alessandro Ghisalberti (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2001). See also: Zygmunt G. Barański, 'L'iter ideologico di Dante', in *Dante e i segni*, pp. 9-39; Otto A. Bird, 'Dante the Thinker: Poetry and Philosophy', in *The Great Ideas Today* (Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1983), pp. 204-35; Ruedi Imbach, *Dante, la philosophie et le laïcs: initiation à la philosophie médièvale* (Paris: Fribourg, Editions du Cerf / Editions Universitaires de Fribourg, 1996), Bruno Nardi, *Dal 'Convivio' alla 'Commedia' (sei saggi danteschi)* (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1992).

If all of this brings home the Christological, mystic and affective dimensions of Dante's epistemology, there is no doubt that his representation of Aquinas also champions his teaching style and significantly contrasts it with Virgil's method in *Inferno* xi. True to his earthly loyalty to clarity in order to avoid the confusion that the allusive language of *fabulae* can cause, Thomas offers the pilgrim the necessary clues to interpret his poetical flurry:

> Ma perch'io non proceda troppo chiuso, Francesco e Povertà per questi amanti prendi oramai nel mio parlar diffuso. (*Par*., xi. 73-75)

[But that I may proceed not too obscurely, take Francis and Poverty for these two lovers now in my extended speech.]

Here, the insistence on clarity ('parlar diffuso') highlights how avoiding obscurity is a responsibility of the teacher, who must always prevent or welcome his pupils' doubts where and when he has been too allusive or 'chiuso'. If we read the Elevens vertically, from Hell to *Paradiso* xi, the reader is invited to consider how teaching and learning, as well as the virtuous life that avoids sin, are *moti amoris* [motions of love, caused by love]. From the perspective of Thomas's pedagogical excellence, Virgil's lack of modesty and patience towards the learner Dante in *Inferno* xi strikes us as an uncharitable mark of selfishness. Significantly for our exegetical exercise, clarity of exposition is also a concern in *Purgatorio* xi, where Dante rewords the *Pater noster* in order explain its value to the reader. As recently shown by Nicolò Maldina, the poet in fact rewrites the prayer by adopting features of the preaching genre to explain the theological and spiritual content of the liturgical text to his readers.33

The line of reading I have proposed is put to the test by an extraordinary event that takes place in *Inferno* xi. Virgil does something rather astonishing that seems to contradict my portrayal of him as a representative of rational and therefore 'limited' modes of thinking: the guide quotes directly from the Bible once and alludes to it a second time.34 The first reference is to

33 Maldina, 'L' *oratio super Pater Noster*'. Dante had clearly expressed the importance of teaching in *Mon*., I. i, 2.

34 Peter S. Hawkins, 'Virgilio cita le scritture', in *Dante e la Bibbia*. Atti del Convegno internazionale promosso da 'Biblia', Firenze, 26-28 settembre 1986, ed. by Giovanni Barblan (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1988).

Genesis and it occurs when the pilgrim requests a fundamental clarification regarding usury as a sin against nature. Virgil reminds him that philosophy, and Aristotle's *Physics* in particular, demonstrates how nature takes her course from the divine mind, and how, in turn, art follows nature like a student follows his master. Obviously, this latter reference to teaching and learning cannot be taken as coincidental in a canto that provides a display of teaching skills on Virgil's part. Moreover, we also realize that our infernal canto analyses in detail the close relationship between God's creation and man's art exactly as *Paradiso* xi and *Purgatorio* xi do; evidently, the reflection on the practice of any art, not only philosophy, teaching, preaching or painting, is a further vertical link between our cantos. Turning to the matter at hand, in *Inferno* xi, usury is also described as a human art and its nature is discussed following Aquinas's line of thought. In his argument, Thomas had followed Aristotle, who considered usury to be contrary to nature because 'it is in accordance with nature that money should increase from natural goods and not from money itself'.35 Confirming this interpretation in the *Commedia*, Virgil also quotes Genesis (3:17). The passage reminds men that after the fall, growth could only be achieved through work, that is to say art, even though God had created nature to help advance humankind (the reference is to the famous passage 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth': Gen., 1:28). We may note that whereas for his definition of malice and incontinence, Dante the author did not let the Roman quote the revelation, here, he is keen to deploy all possible biblical 'means'. Significantly he does so to demonstrate that the usurer uses his work neither to advance people, nor to produce goods; he hopes to earn money with money. To accentuate this point, Dante has Virgil quote the Bible a second time to describe the usurer as one whose hopes for returns on his money-lending contradicts Jesus's appeal to his followers to 'lend, expecting nothing in return' (Luke 6:35):

> 'Filosofia', mi disse, 'a chi la 'ntende, nota, non pure in una sola parte, come natura lo suo corso prende dal divino 'ntelletto e da sua arte; e se tu ben la tua Fisica note, tu troverai, non dopo molte carte,

35 Aristotle, *Politcs*, I, 8 134. On usury in Dante see at least Ovidio Capitani, 'Cupidigia, avarizia, *bonum commune* in Dante Alighieri e in Remigio de' Girolami', in *Da Dante a Bonifacio VIII* (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2007), pp. 95-111.

che l'arte vostra quella, quanto pote, segue, come 'l maestro fa 'l discente; sì che vostr'arte a Dio quasi è nepote. Da queste due, se tu ti rechi a mente lo Genesì dal principio, convene prender sua vita e avanzar la gente; e perché l'usuriere altra via tene, per sé natura e per la sua seguace dispregia, poi ch'in altro pon la spene'. (*Inf*., xi. 97-111)

['Philosophy', he said, 'to one who understands it, notes, and not merely in one place, how Nature takes its course from the divine intellect and art; and if you take good note of your *Physics*, you will see, after not many pages, that your art follows Nature as much as it can, as a disciple follows the master; so that your art is almost God's grandchild. From these two, if you bring to mind the beginning of Genesis, we must draw our life and advance our people; and because the usurer holds another way, he scorns Nature in herself and in her follower, since he puts his hope in something else'.]

At this point, considering the shortcomings of Virgil's discourse on sin, we might wonder why Dante has Virgil quote Genesis when, in this setting, Aristotle would have sufficed. Clearly we need to make sense of the extreme measures taken by Dante in the *explicit* of his complex canto.

#### The Fallen Arts and the Vertical Law of Charity

Whereas other philosophical and theological issues related to sin, virtue, repentance and grace are explained at length elsewhere in the poem, the matter of usury is solved in *Inferno* once and for all. As *Purgatorio* xi and *Paradiso* xi teach, only Scripture can offer the final seal to an argument; it is therefore possible that Virgil's biblical recital is necessary to close off the discussion on this mortal sin. It is also possible that other contingent reasons explain Dante's sense of urgency here. The discussion on usury was perhaps inspired by the fact that the issue had become more and more slippery at the hands of his contemporaries around the beginning of the 1300s.36 As studies on the history of economic practice and theory

36 On usury, the study of T. P. McLaughlin is still valid: 'The Teaching of the Canonists on Usury (XII, XIII and XIV Centuries)', *Mediaeval Studies* 1 (1939), 81-147 (pp. 97, 112- 25); but see above all, Giacomo Todeschini, *Il prezzo della salvezza: lessici medievali del pensiero economico* (Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1994), pp. 163-228; idem, *I mercanti*

have more recently demonstrated, the years in which Dante was alive and writing were years of profound change not only for the economy but also for the ways in which people started to understand and talk about economics.37 Historians are now convinced that these latter changes took place, paradoxically, within Franciscan circles, where the necessity to theorize poverty against the accumulation of wealth forced them to discuss money and wealth in abstract terms even more than before. Interestingly, some historians believe that the first notion of money as capital, the root of our modern economic system, was in fact introduced by the Franciscan John Peter Olivi. 38 Whereas money was generally taken at face value and considered as a tool for exchange, Olivi was the first to affirm in his famous treaty on usury, *Tractatus de emptionibus et venditionibus, de usuris, de restitutionibus*, written around 1295, that money can be considered as a seed from which further wealth can be derived:

The reason why [money of a certain kind] can be bought or exchanged for a price [more than itself] is because […] money […] possesses not only the qualities of money in its simple sense but beyond this a kind of seminal cause of profit within itself, which we commonly call "capital" (communiter capitale vocamus).39

On the basis of this and other passages, Giacomo Todeschini demonstrated how Olivi considered money as multipliable 'in infinitum' for any sort of

*e il tempio: la società cristiana e il circolo virtuoso della ricchezza fra Medioevo et Età Moderna* (Bologna: Il Mulino 2002).

37 Joel Kaye, 'Changing Definitions of Money, Nature, and Equality, c. 1140-1270, Reflected in Thomas Aquinas's Questions on Usury', *Credito e usura fra teologia, diritto, e amministrazione*, ed. by Diego Quaglioni, Giacomo Todeschini, and Gian Maria Varanini (Rome: École française de Rome, 2005), 25-55, http://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/ money\_equality\_and\_usury.pdf

38 Joel Kaye, *Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century*: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially pp. 116-33; idem, *A History of Balance, 1250-1375: The Emergence of a New Model of Equilibrium and its Impact on Thought* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 20-76; Cosimo Perrotta, *Consumption as an Investment* (New York: Routledge, 2004), especially pp. 75-81, Amleto Spicciani, 'Pietro di Giovanni Olivi: Indigatore della razionalità economica medioevale', in *Usure, compere e vendite. La scienza economica del XIII secolo*, ed. by Amleto Spicciani, Paolo Vian and Giancarlo Andenna (Milan: Jaca Book, 1998), pp. 21-72.

39 Giacomo Todeschini, *Un trattato di economia politica francescana: il 'De emptionibus et venditionibus, de usuris, de restitutionibus' di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi* (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1980), p. 85. The translation is found in Kaye, *A History of Balance*, p. 76.

business.40 We cannot be sure Dante knew this treatise, but quodlibetal debates and sermons on usury had become increasingly common around the end of the 13th century, and especially in Florence.41 It is not difficult to imagine theories of this kind being discussed in Florence during the essential years of Dante's intellectual formation, especially when we learn that Olivi was at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence in the same years in which his treaty was composed.42 Given Dante's fond interest for contemporary Franciscan discourses on ecclesial poverty, and given the fact that Dante's family had been accused of money lending (see *Purgatorio* xxii-xxiii), it would not be too farfetched to consider Virgil's biblical approach to the question as a radical, urgent criticism of those who, like Olivi, attempted to define poverty and defend it as an exclusive Franciscan charism, but inadvertently risked reversing the biblical principles that Dante (and Aquinas) considered natural and divine law, thus subverting the message of the Bible. To accept, like Olivi did, that money could generate money, was for Dante not only against the law of nature and creation, it was ultimately and above all against the charitable principle invoked by Christ and spoken by Virgil in *Inferno* xi: 'do not hope for returns for the help you have offered'.

I might be reading too much into Dante's text in the attempt to find connections between our cantos, but this interpretation seems to resonate with the final message conveyed by *Paradis*o xi. In this canto, there is no doubt that poverty is a focal point of the *vita* of St Francis: Lady Poverty is in fact the *sponsa* of a miraculous love story. However, Poverty is not

40 Giacomo Todeschini, 'Olivi e il "Mercator" Cristiano', in *Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248-1298). Pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société.* Actes du Colloque de Narbonne (mars 1998), ed. by Alain Boureau and Sylvain Piron (Paris: Vrin, 1999), pp. 412, 217-38, 226-27.

41 Of particular importance in this sense is the work of Remigio de' Girolami of Santa Maria Novella, who composed a treatise, a sermon and several *quodlibeta* on usury. Apart from his treatise, none of these other texts are published: Ovidio Capitani, 'Il *De peccato usure* di Remigio de Girolami', *Studi Medievali* 6 (3rd series) (1965), 537-662.

42 See Raoul Manselli, 'Firenze nel Trecento: Santa Croce e la cultura francescana', *Clio. Rivista trimestrale di studi storici* 9 (1973), 324-42. On Dante and Olivi: V. Stanley Benfell, 'Dante, Peter John Olivi, and the Franciscan Apocalypse', in *Dante and the Franciscans*, ed. by Santa Casciani (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), pp. 9-50; Giorgio Brugnoli, 'Tracce di Pierre de Jean Olieu nella *Divina Commedia*', in *San Francesco e il francescanesimo nella letteratura italiana dal XIII al XV secolo*. Atti del Convegno Nazionale, Assisi, 10-12 dicembre 1999, ed. by Stanislao Da Campagnola and Pasquale Tuscano (Assisi: Accademia Properziana del Subasio, 2001), pp. 139-68; Sergio Cristaldi, *Dante di fronte al gioachimismo*. *I. Dalla Vita Nova alla Monarchia* (Caltanissetta and Rome: Sciascia, 2000), pp. 223-392; Alberto Forni, 'Pietro di Giovanni Olivi e Dante, ovvero il panno e la gonna', in *Pierre de Jean Olivi* (1999), pp. 341-72.