Continuing with the Dante seminar commentary…

The turning point for Dante in Hell, the moment when he begins to be less sympathetic to sin, is when he reaches the circle of those who practiced simony. (According to Dr. Cook…) Simon Magus, in the Bible, wanted the powers that the Apostles had from Jesus, and he offered to pay for them. This was heavily frowned upon although later it became a very sore issue in the church. 

What Dr. Cook mentioned about this episode is that there was a Middle Ages story about Simon Magus, that is not in the Bible. According to this apocrypha, Simon Magus and Simon Peter are brought up in front of the Roman emperor and told to perform. Simon Magus starts flying around the room. Peter falls to his knees and prays, asking God what he can do to counter this! (There are quite a few paintings of this story if you look.) God responds by causing Simon Magus to fall from the sky, and auger into the ground. Aha! This is why these sinners are head down into the ground. The fire on the soles of their feet is just an extra flourish. 

Dante, realizing that this is where (speaking within the story) Pope Boniface is going to end up, is suddenly convinced of the righteousness of the punishments around him. That is, when it affects him personally, he suddenly stops being so sympathetic to sinners. Although, Dr. Cook says, it still takes “the genius” time to fully assimilate this lesson. 

Next in hell is fraud, which is using your talents to destroy others. Ulysses did not get the sympathetic treatment from Doctor Cook, that many people offer. He destroyed his family and friends in search of new worlds and that is not okay. 

The image of Satan chewing on the three traitors, that Dante uses at the bottom of hell, comes straight from a mosaic in the baptistry in Florence which had been redone around 1260, just before Dante was born.

OUT OF HELL. I’m always glad.

When we got to Purgatory, there was some intense commentary on Cato, the pagan, being the first person encountered. If he’s in purgatory, then he surely will get to heaven. The question of Virgil being in Hell and Cato being in Purgatory is … complex. Dr. Cook mentioned that there are a lot of Florentines in Hell, but a lot of Siennese, traditional enemies of Florence, in Purgatory.

The absolute middle of the whole epic is also the middle of the Purgatory. It features a discussion of free will AND a discussion of the ideal earthly government to facilitate the exercise of man’s free will. Just so you know!

Next we had a general commentary on avarice which is the succeeding cornice in purgatory. Dr. Cook pointed out that avarice, as a deadly sin, is easier to commit when you have a money economy, a relatively new thing in Italy at the time. The Florentine coins were actually coin for a LOT of Europe during this period, and hoarding them, à la Silas Marner, was a renewed possibility. Also, as pointed out in Hell, there were terrible punishments, even in an earthly sense, for counterfeiting money. In a barter economy the kind of hoarding that involves counting all your ‘money’ is … difficult. Saint Nicolas as the patron of generosity was brought up, especially because he did throw around bags of coin, to buy freedom for some girls about to be sold into slavery.

In this same vein there are interesting things to note about the Franciscans and Dominicans in Cantos 11-15 in Paradise. The Benedictines had a rule of individual poverty; the Franciscans and Dominicans tried to have some kind of rule of institutional poverty, as well. Both were mendicant orders so, in some sense, where would they have kept material possessions? Further, these two orders, while trying to deal with personal poverty, were addressing different segments of society. The Franciscans were aimed at the poor while the Dominicans were aimed at the heretics. There’s a lot of crossover.  

The middle of Paradise is Cacciaguida’s visit with Dante. He is supposed to be an ancestor of Dante’s, who fought in the Crusades, and he’s been heaven-sent, to warn Dante about what is coming in his life. This is quite the literary conceit, in that Dante, the Poet, has already experienced, in reality, the miseries Cacciaguida is claiming to give advance notice of, to Dante the Pilgrim. Tuscan bread is not salted, so there is a exceptionally literal level of homesickness, in the passage about the saltiness of other people’s bread being hard to accept, as well as the difficulty proud people have in begging. And saltiness brings a connotation of tears for the metaphorical levels of reading. It’s a very melancholy passage. 

Notwithstanding the obvious misery depicted, there is a deeper question to be asked. What is the message that Dante must put forth, that will bring him long-lasting fame, but cause him trouble in his earthly life? It cannot be the general commentary on government which would be the ostensible target of Cacciaguida’s warning. Or perhaps I should say, it cannot only be that. By the time Dante wrote this he was near the end of his own life. Even though he didn’t know that malaria is going to get him quickly, he was fifty-six and way past any possible midpoint of life. He’s had the misery. What is the message that continues to drive him, to finish his poem? 

I’ve noticed that people really do have trouble reading about purgatory and heaven. It’s as though the direct condemnation of sin by the person who committed it is too hard to read about. People complain about heaven being harps and white clouds, but this really challenging picture of what heaven might be like is just too far in another direction for lots of people. It’s too different from a lot of the ways of thinking that are around us.

Because this seminar covered the whole Divine Comedy in five hours, I was directly faced with the star offered Dante in hell by Brunetto Latini, versus the stars that end each Canticle. Either follow your own star for earthly fame (sounds very modern…), or recognize that the stars and the heavens have a very different purpose, which is to bring you to union with God.