“Ante Purgatory” Guy P. Raffa Cato. Cantos 1.31-108, 2.118-23 A stern, father-like figure, Cato of Utica (95-46 B.C.E.) was a Roman military leader and statesman. Dante describes Cato as having a long grizzled beard and graying hair falling down over his chest in two tresses; his face is illuminated by starlight (as if he were facing the sun). As the warden or guardian of the mountain of Purgatory, Cato performs a role somewhat similar to that of Charon in Hell. Dante seems to have assigned this prominent role to Cato because he so valued freedom that he gave his life for it (1.71-2): the historical Cato chose suicide over submission to tyranny after he was defeated (along with Pompey) in the civil war against Julius Caesar. Classical authors, including Cicero, Seneca, and Lucan, considered Cato the embodiment of moral and political rectitude. Virgil, for instance, presents Cato as one who gives laws to the righteous (Aen. 8.670). Based on this reputation, Cato was thought to possess in full the four cardinal (moral) virtues, symbolized here by the four "holy" stars lighting his face (1.37-9). Dante follows this legacy of praise for Cato, despite his status as a pagan suicide who opposed Caesar, by calling him in an earlier work the human being best suited to represent God (Convivio 4.28.15) and by now imagining his spiritual salvation (freed from Limbo at Christ's Harrowing of Hell) and divinely-ordained function in the afterlife. Angel. Canto 2.13-51 A beautiful white angel ("divine bird") pilots a boat carrying the souls to the island-mountain of Purgatory. The angel stands toward the back of the boat (a low vessel swiftly cutting through the water) with his bright white wings, powering the boat, rising up toward heaven. The angel's overwhelming luminosity renders invisible his other features. The appearance and actions of this angel, typical of other "officials" whom the travelers will meet in Purgatory (2.30), invite comparison with the characteristics and roles of Charon and Phlegyas, both assigned to water transport in Hell, as well as the heavenly messenger who assists Dante and Virgil at the gates of Dis. Casella. Canto 2.76-114 A dear friend of Dante, Casella was a singer and composer from Florence (or perhaps the nearby town of Pistoia). He set lyric poems to music and performed these arrangements, as he does here on the shores of Purgatory with Dante's canzone, "Love that speaks within my mind" (2.112) (audio). Casella died sometime before Easter Sunday 1300 (when Dante arrives in Purgatory) and after July 13, 1282, the date of a document from Siena Source URL: http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/purgatory/01antepurgatory.html Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/courses/engl409 © Guy P. Raffa Saylor.org Used under academic permission. Page 1 of 7 Page 1 of 7 “Ante Purgatory” Guy P. Raffa reporting that he was fined for wandering about the city at night. Casella's own arrival now, after having previously been refused passage to Purgatory, is a result of the plenary indulgence granted by Pope Boniface VIII on Christmas 1299 for the Jubilee year (1300). He smiles, showing both affection and bemusement, when Dante tries futilely to embrace his soul- body (2.76-84), a scene recalling how Aeneas sought to clasp the shade of his father, Anchises, in the underworld of Virgil's Aeneid (6.700-2). Manfred. Canto 3.103-45 A handsome, warrior-like nobleman, Manfred (c. 1232-66) is the illegitimate son of the emperor Frederick II, who is listed among the heretics in Inferno 10. Raised in the cosmopolitan Hohenstaufen court in Sicily, Manfred knew several languages (including Hebrew and Arabic) and was a poet and musician as well as a patron of arts and letters (e.g., the "Sicilian School" of poetry). Dante praises both him and Frederick as exemplary rulers for their noble, refined character (De vulgari eloquentia 1.12.4). Manfred also authored a document, "Manifesto to the Roman People" (May 24, 1265), that advances a political philosophy not unlike Dante's. Following the death of his father, and later his half-brother (Conrad IV), Manfred assumed power and had himself crowned King of Sicily in 1258. His political successes were perhaps not unrelated to the "horrible sins" to which he now alludes (3.121) (audio): he was alleged by some to have murdered his father, half-brother, and two nephews, and to have tried to assassinate the heir to the throne (his nephew Conradin). Allied with the ghibelline cause (he helped defeat the guelphs at Montaperti in 1260), Manfred was certainly no friend of the papacy: he was twice excommunicated, first by Alexander IV in 1258 and then by Urban IV in 1261. So abhorrent was Manfred to popes of the period (they considered him a "Saracen" and "infidel") that they declared a crusade and sent an army under the command of Charles I of Anjou to defeat him. His troops vastly outnumbered, Manfred was betrayed by some of his own men and killed in battle at Benevento (southern Italy) on February 26, 1266. He now shows Dante his battle scars (an eye-brow split by a sword-stroke and a wound on his chest) and relates the fate of his poor body. An excommunicate, Manfred was refused burial in sacred ground and left on the battlefield, but, the legend goes, each enemy soldier as he passed by placed a stone on the grave. Later, according to Dante's version, the Archbishop of Cosenza, at the behest of Pope Clement IV, had Manfred's bones disinterred and cast outside the kingdom onto the banks of the river Verde (3.124-32). The excommunicates, Manfred informs Dante, must wait in Ante-Purgatory thirty times the length of their period of excommunication, unless the sentence is shortened by prayers of the living (3.136-41). Source URL: http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/purgatory/01antepurgatory.html Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/courses/engl409 © Guy P. Raffa Saylor.org Used under academic permission. Page 2 of 7 Page 2 of 7 “Ante Purgatory” Guy P. Raffa Belacqua. Canto 4.97-135 Sitting in the shade of a large boulder, with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head lowered, Belacqua epitomizes the lazy spirits who waited until the last minute before repenting and turning to God. These souls must now wait in Ante-Purgatory for as long as they negligently delayed their repentance on earth: that is, the length of their mortal lives. Aware of this rule, Belacqua, true to character, is in no rush to begin the arduous climb up the mountain. "Belacqua" is most likely the nickname of Duccio di Bonavia, a Florentine musician and instrument maker with whom Dante appears to have had a warm friendship characterized by comical, witty teasing. Since Belacqua was still alive in 1299, it's plausible that he died shortly before Dante's arrival in Purgatory in 1300. One early commentator, calling Belacqua the laziest man who ever lived, repeats the gossip that from the moment Belacqua arrived in his shop in the morning and sat down, he never got up except to eat and sleep. Buonconte da Montefeltro. Canto 5.85-129 Buonconte da Montefeltro (born c. 1250) was, like his father Guido, a formidable leader of ghibelline forces in Tuscany. He played a prominent role in the expulsion of the guelphs from Arezzo (1287) and the defeat of Sienese troops a year later. Buonconte did not fare so well as captain of the ghibelline army that was soundly defeated by the Florentine guelphs at Campaldino on June 11, 1289. Dante, who fought alongside his fellow Florentines, now provides a dramatic answer to a lingering question from the clash: what happened to Buonconte's body, which was not found on the battlefield? We learn that Buonconte, mortally wounded in the throat, fled the plain and arrived at the bank of a river (Archiano), where he died with Mary's name on his lips. The subsequent struggle for Buonconte's soul then repeats, with opposite results, the tussle between Saint Francis and the devil for the soul of Buonconte's father (Inf. 27.112-23). Here the good angel "wins" the soul for heaven, thus leaving the evil angel to punish Buonconte's corpse by bringing flooding rains that sweep the body downstream into the Arno, where it is buried in the riverbed (5.109-29). The slain soldier now appears in Ante-Purgatory among those who sinned right up until the moment they died a violent death; only then did they repent and forgive, thereby leaving the world in peace with God (5.52-7). La Pia. Canto 5.130-6 Source URL: http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/purgatory/01antepurgatory.html Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/courses/engl409 © Guy P. Raffa Saylor.org Used under academic permission. Page 3 of 7 Page 3 of 7 “Ante Purgatory” Guy P. Raffa "Siena made me, Maremma unmade me" (5.134). This chillingly concise phrase tells us that the speaker here is Pia Tolomei: born to a noble family of Siena, this woman was allegedly killed in 1295 on the orders of her husband, Paganello de' Pannocchieschi. "Nello," a Tuscan leader of the guelphs, owned a castle in the Maremma (the coastal region near Siena). While some say the murder took place with such secrecy that its manner was never known, others claim Nello ordered a servant to take Pia by the feet and drop her from the castle window.