Purgatory: Canto VIII -- Ante-Purgatory: The Negligent Rulers

Contrapasso is always at play in the Comedy, and our having reached this point in our climb makes it necessary to provide a reminder of it so that we're prepared for what we're about to see once we cross through Peter's Gate in the next canto. Take a look around here while you still have the chance, and you'll notice that between where you're standing and the shore are people reconciling their states of being for their negligence and indolence -- as they made God wait, they too wait to varying degrees depending upon the nature of their having put God off. It is contrapasso, then, that helps us understand the nature of reconciliation in the same way that it helped us understand the nature of sin.



To again provide a shield for his love of Beatrice, Dante takes Love's advice and engages another screen to the detriment of his relationship with Beatrice, for such are the rumors of his affection for this other woman that Beatrice denies him a greeting, of which, "[b]y now it should be most evident that in her salutation dwelt [his] bliss, a bliss which often exceeded [his] capacity to contain it" (XI, 4). Fr. Earl commented earlier that it would seem that Dante's overemphasis on Beatrice would be an example of the kind of damaging love of the creation in place of the creator. If we were to draw a clearer allegory from this private affection Dante has for Beatrice, it would also seem that his deliberate turning away from Beatrice to pursue a lesser good (twice) would be an appropriate demonatration of what it is like to turn away from God to pursue a lesser good. Dante, not yet 20, cannot help himself, for "[w]hat thin partitions sense from thought divide" (VII, 226) though his immaturity at that age starkly contrasts against the maturity of Blessed Luke Belludi, a Franciscan who assisted St. Anthony on his travels. It is at this point in the young Dante's career, two decades before he would begin work on the Comedy, that we find him clumsy and naive in his approach to love, someone who did not engage it head on like he does in the Comedy, someone who pursued the lesser good rather than the goal to which he was oriented.

At this point, we continue our discussion with Sordello, who is about to help us make camp after having explained to us that no one can move an inch up the mountain at night (though moving down is fine). The sun rises and sets on Mt. Purgatory because purgatory is fixed quite pointedly on earth and it is therefore subject to time in the same way hell is even though there are significant differences. In hell, there were no time barriers preventing the poets' descent -- just barriers in stench and geography. The dead in hell can see the future and remember the past, but they have no hold on the present while these souls engaged in reconciling with God seem to see everything -- they perceive the future, they remember the past, and they know who is still alive on earth who might pray for them (something Cavalcante did not know). The one exception to this seems to be Conrad, who asks Dante how things stand in his homeland.

When Dante sees the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love represented by the stars, Virgil explains the four bright stars, representing the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, have set in the southern hemisphere. The allegory is that the cardinal virtues were those that could have been found in limbo, but the theological virtues, which we see shining on us from above, can only be found here. It is faith, hope, and love that makes the difference for these penitent between their sojourn here and the residence of those in limbo. Even the evening is marked by a special theological significance, for those waiting here engage in an evening ritual for angelic protection against the serpent who remains at large even though Satan is frozen in the pit. This serpent, an allegory of temptation, is part of the ritual, and rituals, by their nature, are allegorical of something greater to which they point -- in this case, the reality of divine love interceding in historical time for the salvation of humanity. No angels guard limbo, but, then, there are no serpents there.

It is not until Dante mentions to Judge Nino that he hasn't died that Sordello takes any special notice of him, and Judge Nino is quick to ask Dante to seek prayers from his daughter, Giovanna, since his wife, having remarried, would be otherwise occupied. Such are the hazards of widows who remarry and do not, in their new lives, dote too much on their old. This is no theological argument against remarriage -- just the bemoaning of a reality about which the judge can do nothing. It is Judge Nino who summons Conrad, and it was Conrad whose family takes care of Dante in his exile, and this explains perhaps why Conrad would have asked Dante such a question -- for Dante indicates that he has never traveled to this man's lands though he's heard of the excessive liberality and largesse which this family bestows upon its guests (which at least keeps all of them out of the ninth circle of hell) -- Conrad replies with something akin to "just wait -- you'll get there." In this way, amidst abstract talk of life and prayer, we pass the veil of darkness that has descended upon our lair.

S.