Dante's Hidden God

By Paul Priest

This book proposes that though Hell seems a God-forsaken place, every scene, character and major image in Dantes Divine Comedy Hell, Purgatory and Paradise is associated with one of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as it were lurking in the shadows. Thus every one of the hundred cantos has a dedication to a Person, and the cantos form overarching groups which are also so dedicated, making the whole poem like a vast symbolic cathedral, where every action has a secret divine dimension.
These presences make it very doubtful that Dante really thinks God tortures people for eternity!
For readers who may be unfamiliar with Dante, the author has made a translation, abridged, in prose and verse, thus hoping to provide an introduction to Dante for those who do not know him and a new way of reading him for those who do.

The result of decades of reflection on Dante and the Trinity, Dantes Hidden God offers a fresh and challenging vision of the Commedia. Offered as an invitation to read Dante, this inventive presentation of Dantes masterpiece will intrigue readers and gives an accessible account of Paul Priests highly original ideas about the sacrato poema.
Dr Matthew Treherne, Senior Lecturer in Italian, University of Leeds

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481783859

Paul Priest

My grandmother and I were great pals, since I was very small, up to her death when I was 27. She lived in Toronto and my family went to see her every summer; later she came to live with us in Charlottesville, VA, for about half of each year. But I have hardly written this book -- mostly assembled it from her own writings, with a minimum of connective tissue between. My mother helped gather the materials, and did a little of the writing, but she was growing old, and the organization of the project is mine. For most of my working life I have been a teacher at college level, and most of that in England, where I moved in 1972 with my English wife, whom I met in North Carolina where she was studying. I taught English literature at a teacher training college under the University of Leeds, which has since become independent. Now retired, I live in Leeds alone, my three children and their small children being spread over the country.

Book preview

DANTE’S

HIDDEN

GOD

9781481783859.pdf

PAUL PRIEST

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© 2013 Paul Priest. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 5/23/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8383-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8384-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8385-9 (e)

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CONTENTS

A Page Of Thanks

Preface

Potted Biography

Micro-Divine Comedy

Dante’s First Draft

Inferno

Interlude: The Palette

Interlude: A Word About Allegory

Introductory Note To Purgatorio

Purgatorio

Interlude: How Did Dante Think Of The Trinity?

Introductory Note To Paradiso

Paradiso

Select Bibliography

The Trinitarian Architecture In Overview

About The Author

For COLIN and JOYCE

sometime colleagues, eternal friends

Nobody else so finely understands

Both truthfully and kindly to employ

Support and criticism’s equal hands.

A PAGE OF THANKS

To Francesco Mazzoni and the late Gianfranco Contini, at the dawn of this vision in Florence over forty years ago, who thought there might be something in it;

To David Higgins of Bristol for the same;

To Colin Hardie of Oxford, to Kenelm Foster of Cambridge, to Robert Hollander of Princeton, to Thomas Seung of Austen — for sustained correspondence, probing interest, friendly doubt;

To Giorgio Padoan of Venice, Paolo Cerchi of Chicago, Giuseppe Billanovich of Milan, for encouraging notes when my first book appeared;

To Heloise Frame, Peter Shepherd, Susan Roegiers, Chip Tucker, Robert Ibberson, latterly Matthew Treherne, and particularly Colin Wood and Joyce Simpson, for perceptive and corrective reading in various stages

To Diane Priest Webb and the late Helen Priest for patience.

PREFACE

Some forty years ago an astonishing hidden presence of the Trinity in Dante’s Divine Comedy emerged into visibility for me.

I should say at the outset that the initial stimulus for the quest came from Thomas Seung (Swing)’s The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl (Baltimore, Westminster, 1965), though our paths have diverged.

I started at the end, where the poem culminates in a vision of the Trinity. Then at the low point, the three-headed Satan parodies the Trinity negatively. What of the beginning, where Dante is turned back by three beasts, but helped by three blessed ladies? These also look like trinities, negative and positive respectively.

Then in the third canto, the inscription over Hell Gate tells us that Hell was made by divine power, highest wisdom, and primal love (Inf. 3.5-6). These are traditional attributes of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity made Hell!

On the large scale we have the three realms of the after-life, generating the three great cantiche; and on the small scale we have the terza rima, the triple rhyme that makes the lines march always three by three.

Between the realms and the rhymes stand the hundred cantos. I began to see some of them organized in sets of three.

The first set I saw was Purgatorio 2-4. Canto 2 features a love song, sung by Dante’s friend, the musician Casella, but sternly interrupted by the guardian, Cato. Canto 3 tells of Virgil’s difficulty in knowing the way up the mountain, and understanding the nature of disembodied souls, the mysteries of salvation, and the Trinity! Canto 4 shows Dante and Virgil in strenuous efforts to climb up the rocks, only to be told by the lazy-looking Belacqua that many souls have to wait. Do not these cantos respectively show inadequate natural love, inadequate natural wisdom, inadequate natural power? — imperfect human approaches to the three great attributes.

Then other cantos also began to look ‘dedicated’ to the Father, the Son or the Spirit. Inferno 5-7 present the lustful, the gluttons, the avaricious: abuse of love, of conviviality (i.e. of conversation, where ‘wisdom’ grows), and of money-power. Others were not so clear. But for the most part, that a canto was Father, Son, or Spirit seemed to leap from the page. Now forty years later, most of them still seem as they did then, though with many more small confirmations, variations, and implicit questions.

But if these cantos fell into groups of three, might each of these groups be also so dedicated? That seemed to be the case. And might these groups combine into super-groups, which in turn would form Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso? But that would yield only 27 cantos per cantica, and of course there are 33 (setting aside Canto 1 as introductory). But it gradually became clear that Dante had artfully varied the numbers in the groups (groups of two, four, five or seven) to make up the total.

So I finally found myself standing before an intricate architecture of cantos and sets of cantos, overarching one another as in a cathedral. Every canto has its place in the total shape. And this shape organizes much of the poem’s meaning.

I thought I could present my findings in an article, but even while writing it (Looking Back from the Vision, Dante Studies XCVI, 1973,) there was so much to say about each canto that I knew it would have to be a book, which eventually appeared as Dante’s Incarnation of the Trinity, Ravenna, Longo, 1982. Of course this ‘incarnation’ was poetical rather than theological; still, the effect was to give ‘a local habitation and a name’ to each of the Persons.

The book made no great stir. There were two reviews, by Stephen Bemrose in Italian Studies (XXXIX, 1984, 115-17) and by Joan Ferrante in Romance Philology (XXXVIII, 1984, 114-16), both perceptively and generously critical. Though finding points of light as well as errors of detail, both thought I had overplayed my hand. A professor in England said, ‘If this were true, it would have been discovered long ago.’ Professor David Higgins of Bristol University, as well as Gianfranco Contini and Francesco Mazzoni, whom I met in Florence, thought I might be on to something.

But why am I returning to the charge?

I have more to say. For one thing, I have a major correction about the assignment of Par. 27-33. More fundamentally, the style of each episode is affected by the underlying Persons. Therefore the task of commentary is not simply to note the symbols but to register if possible the atmosphere the different Persons generate, which also affects the meaning. My earlier book was cluttered with detail; here I hope to be both simpler and deeper.

Also my first book assumed familiarity with the Comedy, so was sometimes hard to read for non-specialists. This one invites readers who have never read Dante. For them I have made an abridged translation, roughly two-thirds the length of the original. Sometimes I simplify Dante’s rhetoric, or leave out some of his rich historical detail (saying so). On rare occasions when information seems indispensable for understanding the text, I insert it, in italics, within square brackets. Other information comes in the commentary which follows each canto, where I try to give the canto a Trinitarian ‘assignment’ and explore how this perspective might affect our reading of it.

So I hope this book may provide an introduction to Dante for those who do not know him, and a new way of reading him for those who do.

At first I translated in prose, but as I went on, many passages seemed to demand some shadow of the original poetry, and since I couldn’t manage terza rima, I tried out different modes that seemed somehow to fit particular passages. Straight narration or exposition usually seemed comfortable in prose, while more lyrical parts wanted some sort of metric form, something like arias in opera. I hope the resulting variety may give the reader pleasure rather than annoyance. Since Dante’s form is out of reach, there are many ways of falling short.

Dante did not call his Comedy divine (his editor did that), but he did claim that it was a poema sacro. The Trinitarian structure shows how fully this is so, for it sees God everywhere: a God who through the Incarnation of the second Person is permanently joined to humankind.

Again I launch my little boat. Gentle be the wind, tranquil be the waves.

POTTED BIOGRAPHY

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in May, 1265. He won early fame for very pure, spiritual love lyrics, especially La Vita Nuova (the new life), about Beatrice Portinari, whom he saw, he says, when he was nine and she was eight, and was overpowered by worshipful love. When she was older she would pass him on the Ponte Vecchio and give him her greeting, salute (which also means salvation). We do not know if they ever said anything to each other beyond a simple greeting. She later withdrew even this after she heard Dante had embarrassed another lady by making poems about her. This devastated him, especially as he had pretended to pay court to the other lady so as not to embarrass Beatrice. But he came to realize he could write poems about her of pure praise, which sought no personal reward. Then came two further blows: she married, and not long afterward, still young, died. Dante vowed he would make a poetic monument for her such as had never been made for any woman.

Dante’s other great passion was his native city. The Guelph party (who supported the Pope, as the Ghibellines did the Emperor) ruled Florence, but were further divided into Whites and Blacks. The Whites had the ascendancy, and Dante was one of their leaders. In 1301 they sent him on an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII. When the other emissaries returned home, the Pope kept Dante in Rome; and while he was there the Blacks gained power in Florence, and condemned Dante to be burned alive if he ever returned. So Dante always suspected the Pope of plotting his exile. Later he was allowed back if he would confess his grave crimes against the city, which he never would do. He wrote most of the Commedia in exile, as the guest of patrons like Cangrande della Scala. He had great hope that the young Emperor Henry VII, who marched into Italy in 1310, might bring Imperial order, but Henry died suddenly. Dante died in Ravenna in 1321. He never saw Florence again.

His other works include Il Convivio (The Banquet), an introduction to philosophy, unfinished, and two Latin treatises: De Vulgare Eloquentia, justifying poetry in the vernacular, and De Monarchia, arguing that the Pope should rule in spiritual affairs and the Emperor in secular ones, neither trespassing on the other’s domain. In other words, the Church should get out of politics. This book was put on the Index.

He conceived his journey to the other world as starting on Good Friday, 1300, a Jubilee year when pardons were plentiful, and he, as it happened, was just thirty-five years old, half way to the biblical threescore and ten. ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita’…

MICRO-DIVINE COMEDY

On life’s road halfway on, I found I stood

Amidst a dark and deadly wilderness,

And yet much evil there turned out for good.

Virgil came and explained I could progress

To smoother pathways only through the rougher,

And come to wholeness only through distress.

I saw imprisoned souls who had to suffer

Projections of their weak or ill intent.

As we went lower, so the pains got tougher.

In Purgatory, though, the pains were meant

More to develop inner energy,

And so grew easier with our ascent.

On top, dear Beatrice scolded me

For having fooled myself with silly stories,

Forsaking her divine sublimity

And courting others, real or allegories.

I wept; she smiled: ‘Enough; you’re now in tune

To rise with me to paradisal glories.’

She gazed on high, as I on her; and soon

(Whether in body or mind, I can’t declare it)

Entered the misty substance of the Moon,

Where I encountered souls of humblest merit.

But when I asked one if she would prefer

A more exalted place, the happy spirit

Replied, she did most passionately concur,

Because her peace lay in his will alone,

To dwell exactly where God settled her.

Of all of Paradise that was the tone.

Everyone lived in a shared ecstasy,

Gazing on God. At length to me was shown

An unimaginable image of the Trinity.

DANTE’S FIRST DRAFT

This Trinitarian scheme of mine may seem a novel idea, but actually it is present in germ in a brief passage of the Convivio (2.5.7-11), where Dante observes that the nine orders of angels who govern the nine heavenly spheres (the Seraphim ruling the Primum Mobile, the Cherubim the sphere of the fixed stars, the Powers that of Saturn, and so on down) were created nine in number to help them contemplate the Trinity. Thus the first three orders contemplate ‘the supreme power of the Father’, the next three ‘the supreme wisdom of the Son’, and the last three ‘the supreme and most fervent charity of the Holy Spirit’. Moreover, each Person can be contemplated in three ways: in himself, and in relation to each of the others. Therefore in the first ‘hierarchy’ of three orders, the Seraphim contemplate the Father in himself, the Cherubim in relation to the Son, and the Powers in relation to ‘the way the Holy Spirit proceeds from him, departing from him and uniting with him. …And in this way (per questo modo) we can speculate about the Son and the Spirit.’ Unfortunately, Dante does not tell us whether the first order in the second hierarchy contemplates the Son in himself or in relation to the Father (scholars have taken it either way), or similarly how the third hierarchy divide the contemplation of the Spirit.

So the scheme would work out like this:

But in the Commedia he changed the order of the middle ranks of the angels, putting the Thrones in third place, the Dominions in fourth, the Virtues staying in fifth, but the Powers going to sixth and the Principalities to seventh. In Par. 28.135 he is told that Pope Gregory laughed at himself for disagreeing with Dionysus about this. Gregory is Dante of course, who followed Gregory in the Convivio, but in the Commedia switched to Dionysus, who after all had heard it from Paul, who was there (1 Cor. 12.2-4). This quiet self-correction invites us to think there were more.

And indeed I believe the crucial change he made, amounting to a stroke of genius (I owe this insight to Giovanni Pascoli) was to assign the Sun’s sphere to the contemplation of the whole Trinity. This shows us Paradise as organized in three main regions or divisions: the three planets below the Sun, the three above, and beyond these the three ‘supreme’ spheres: Fixed Stars, Primum Mobile, and finally the Empyrean, the mind of God. This last was not included under the old system, but now Dante’s threefold structure takes in the summit of all being.

But this threw the angelic-contemplative system out of whack.The Sun no longer fits into it. The Empyrean doesn’t either, not being a sphere. So Dante seems to have abandoned it. We would expect to find it, if anywhere, when Beatrice calls the roll of the angelic orders in Par. 28. Yet there is not a word of it here or anywhere else.

And yet its essence is restored by another, even greater stroke of genius, which is to transfer its structure from spheres to cantos!

Each of the heavens or spheres (all are spheres but the Empyrean), three of which make up each of Paradiso’s three main divisions, is in turn more or less covered by three cantos, so that the Trinitarian aspect of a given division, diversified in its three spheres, can now be further diversified in the cantos. And if the canto is now the basic unit, a triad or ‘group’ of cantos need not be strictly bound to a sphere. Each canto will have a threefold ‘label’ (e.g. Son canto of Son group of Father division). The whole system of cantos, groups and divisions can now be transferred to Inferno and Purgatorio – with occasional variations of the numbers of cantos to make up the hundred.

When I first began to explore the Trinity in Dante I saw it in individual cantos, later in groups, finally in divisions; the last thing I saw was the structure of a whole realm – what Dante started with.

What he saw ‘from above’, we must gradually discover ‘from below’. So let us rejoin Dante in the dark wood.

INFERNO

CANTO 1

Midway on life’s road, I found myself in a dark wood, having lost my way. What a hard thing was this savage wood [selva selvaggia, 5], harsh and cruel: the very thought renews my fear. Yet I will tell you of good I found there.

I cannot say how I entered it – I was so sleepy when I left the right path. But when I came to the foot of a hill, at the end of that fearful valley, I looked up and saw sunlight on its slopes, which somewhat calmed the fear I had had all night; and as an exhausted swimmer, scrambling up on shore, turns back and gazes at the perilous waves, so my fugitive soul turned to look at the passage which no one has ever left alive.

When I had rested a little, I set off again up the deserted hill.

And see, as I approached a steeper place,

A light, quick leopardess with spotted fur

So blocked me, keeping always in my face,

I almost turned back to be rid of her.

The time was early morning, and the sun

Was rising in that very constellation

That turned with him when Love had first begun

To circulate this beautiful creation.

This gave me hope against the merry pard,

But could not stop me quaking at the sight

Of a lion! He came straight at me, roaring hard

With raging hunger, head at its full height:

The very air seemed to be taking fright.

And a she-wolf, that in her scrawniness

Seemed loaded down with all the world’s desire,

And many has caused to live in great distress:

Her terror gave me such a heaviness,

I lost all hope of going any higher.

And as a winning gambler goes all gloomy

Soon as the hour when he must lose is come,

The she-wolf, stepping ever closer to me,

Drove me back down to where the sun is dumb.

As I was retreating ever lower, a figure appeared before me who looked as if he had been silent so long, he was hoarse. ‘Have pity on me,’ I cried out, ‘whatever you are, ghost or man!’

‘Not a man – I was one, in Rome, under good Augustus. A poet I was, and sang of that righteous man who came out of burning Troy. But you, why do you sink into this noxious place? Why don’t you climb the joyful mountain?’

‘What, you’re never Virgil! That fountain that pours out such a broad river of speech? How I have studied, how I have loved your works! You are my master, my author. You taught me how to write as well as I do. Great sage, help me now! Look at that beast that makes me tremble in all my veins!’

‘You need to go a different way. For this beast lets no one escape; she kills everybody. And she is so evil, she is never satisfied, but after eating is hungrier than before. With many animals she mates, and will do, until the Greyhound comes, who will destroy her. He will not feed on either earth or riches, but on wisdom, love and virtue; and he will be born between felt sheets. He will bring salvation to humble Italy, and chase that wolf back to Hell.

‘Therefore if you will follow me, I will lead you through eternal places. You will hear the desperate screams of spirits who suffer the second death. You will see those who are content in the fire, because they hope, whenever it may be, to join the blessed. But if you wish to rise to them, I’ll leave you with a soul more worthy than I. The Emperor who reigns up there, because I was rebellious to his law, does not want me in his city. Blessed are they whom he chooses to dwell there!’

‘Poet, I pray you by that God whom you have not known, take me where you say.’

So he moved off, and I followed.

43985.jpg

The three wild animals have been interpreted morally (lust, pride, avarice) or politically (Florence, France, Rome) or as regions of Hell (incontinence, violence, fraud); but since the vision of the Trinity is this journey’s goal, and Satan’s negation of the same its nadir, is it not reasonable to ask whether these three animals might be related to the three Persons? Dante seems to see only one of them at a time, and later complains to Virgil only of the wolf, who has superseded the others. They seem to be one beast in three forms.

How might they fit the Persons? The leopardess is light, swift, graceful. Her fur is ornamented with attractive ‘gay’ spots, yet these ‘maculae’ (pel macchiato) may also suggest moral stains. She does not bother Dante enough to stop him enjoying the beauty around him, which puts him in mind of divine Love. The old reading of ‘lust’ is not far from seeing her as an opponent or counterfeit of the Spirit, whose attribute is love. She seems faintly erotic. She also may truly have some of the beauty and grace of the Spirit.

The lion is a scriptural symbol of Christ, ‘the lion of the tribe of Judah’ (Rev. 3.3), but also of the devil, who ‘walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour’ (I Peter 5.8). This lion is majestic, strong, vigorous, and very hungry. But his hunger soon passes to the scrawny wolf, emblem of not avarice only perhaps but of all greedy desire, the cupidity which is the root of all evil, as the Father is the root of the whole Trinity. As the Father creates all things, so the she-wolf sucks them in, a terrifying image of anti-Deity.

I am not the first to see these beasts as an anti-Trinity; Giovanni Pascoli and Helen Flanders Dunbar did so in ca. 1900 and 1929 respectively. Luigi Pietrobono wrote in 1915 that each animal, being a particular form of evil, implicitly contains what is explicit in the other two. ‘Leopard lion and wolf are the triple spiration of evil [la trina spirazione del male].’ He further observes that the animals’ names have a single root, leo: the leopard, lonza, is leonza; the wolf, lupa, is leopede [Il poema sacro, 184]. Pietrobono also believed that the animals stood for the divisions of Hell. If they do, it is most easily done via the Trinitarian reading, which also has room for the moral and political interpretations. (For further discussion see Incarnation, 23-28.)

Nobody knows for certain whom Dante intends by the Greyhound, though at the time he wrote this canto he had high hopes for Henry of Luxembourg, who was about to march to Italy. The line about felt sheets is ambiguous and much disputed, and may mean the man is of humble origin, or could refer to Feltro or Montefeltro. But the statement that he will feed on wisdom, love and virtue does seem to make him an agent of that Trinity which the beasts oppose. The Son’s attribute, unusually, comes first, perhaps hinting at whom the Greyhound will primarily represent. Being a human agent, he will be an ‘incarnation’.

CANTO 2

The daylight was departing, the darkening air relieving mortals from their toil; and I alone was preparing my struggle with the rough road and the piteous sights. Oh muses, and my own understanding, help me worthily to display what is written in my memory.

I said to my guide, ‘Are you sure my courage is sufficient for this? You tell me that Silvio’s father visited the next world while still in his mortal flesh, and there heard words which led to his victory and his founding of Rome, leading to the rule of Emperor and Pope. Later the chosen vessel went there, to bring back encouragement for that faith which is the way of salvation. But why should I go? I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul. Neither I nor anyone else thinks me worthy of such a thing. If I give myself up to this journey, I fear it will be folly. You are wise; you know what I’m trying to say.’

‘If I understand you correctly – your soul is afflicted with cowardice. Therefore let me tell you how I came to be here. I was among the suspended ones, when a lovely, blessed lady called to me. He eyes shone brighter than stars, and with angelic voice she said:

"Oh courteous soul of Mantua, whose sublime

Creations will endure as long as time,

My friend (not Fortune’s) on a desert track

Is so impeded, fear has turned him back,

And he may be by now so desolate

That I have come to his rescue too late.

Go then, with your amazing words, to teach

The way of escape to him, and comfort me.

I am Beatrice, who you beseech.

I come from where I long to be.

Love gave me motion, and inspired my speech."

"O lady of virtue, alone making us rise

Beyond these low encircling lunar skies,

This your commandment gratifies me so,

To do it instantly would be too slow.

But say, how can you leave your glorious sphere

To visit us in dismal Limbo here?"

And she to me, "God’s mercy sees to this.

Your misery cannot touch my bliss.

The gentle Queen of Heaven, in whom

The wanderer’s woe wakes pity so

She overturns eternal doom,

Called Lucy over to her side,

Saying, ‘I see your devotee

Has need of what you can provide.’

Then kindly Lucy quickly rose

And came where I was seated, by

Rachel’s contemplative repose.

‘Beatrice, true praise of God!

Rescue him who through love of you

First rose above the vulgar mob.

Do you not hear his cry, not see

The beast’s cruel claws and foaming jaws,

Gobbling more victims than the sea?’

Nobody swifter moved to their

Prospective gain or flight from pain

Than I did, leaping from my chair

And speeding for deliverance to

Your noble prose, ennobling those

Who hear it, as it honours you."

She turned; the tear was starting in her eye.

The readier to perform her will was I.

So now! Why do you falter and despair

When three blest heavenly ladies have you in their care?’

As little flowers, waiting for the dawn,

Closed and bent over on a frosty lawn,

Soon as the early sun caresses them,

Uncurl and stand, each on its upright stem,

So my dejected spirit felt renewing,

And such good boldness raced into my heart,

‘Bless her!’ I cried. ‘And bless you too, for doing

Her will so fast. You make me long to start.

Master, lord, guide, I follow where you please.’

So we moved through the high and shadowy trees.

43998.jpg

Clearly this canto belongs to Beatrice, and its theme is love, which is the Spirit. But who or what is Beatrice? Is she still the modest girl Dante knew in Florence, or has she become a heavenly power? Virgil calls her mistress (donna=dominatrix) of [that] virtue, alone through which humanity rises above all that is contained in the smallest heavenly sphere (76-78) – that of the moon. Later Lucy calls her ‘true praise of God’ (loda di Dio vera, 103), which suggests she could symbolize something like Theology or Revelation, as she is sometimes glossed. Clearly she has a divine aspect. But her tearful solicitude ought to belong to a human woman. When she tells Virgil that his misery does not touch her (la vostra miseria non mi tange, 92), she cannot mean that she has no feeling for it, though it cannot make her miserable. So she seems a human being who can still represent divinity, and perhaps the best we can say at this point is that she embodies the Holy Spirit of love.

Particularly, she takes the third place in the holy trinity of blessed ladies who come to counteract the three beasts, unlike them in the order ‘from above’, Father to Spirit: Mary the mother, Lucy the saint of light and protector of eyes, and Beatrice/love.

We might notice, near the beginning, the cluster of ‘power’, i.e. ‘Father’ themes: Silvio’s father, Aeneas, foundation of Rome, Emperor, Pope, authority, saving faith: all called up when Dante asks Virgil to examine his virtù (11). But the ‘mistress of virtù’ (76) renews his weary virtude (130). Love has given Dante virtue and power. Perfect love casts out fear.

CANTO 3

THROUGH ME YOU GO INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY.

THROUGH ME YOU GO INTO ETERNAL SORROW.

THROUGH ME YOU GO AMONG THE LOST PEOPLE.

JUSTICE INSPIRED MY EXALTED MAKER.

I WAS CREATED BY DIVINE POWER,

HIGHEST WISDOM, AND ORIGINAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME WERE NO BEINGS MADE EXCEPT

ETERNAL, AND ETERNAL I ABIDE.

ABANDON EVERY HOPE, YOU WHO COME IN.

These words stood dark above a portal. I said, ‘Master, their sense is hard!’ He quickly replied, ‘Here we must leave behind all fear; all cowardice must now be dead. We have come where I told you, that you will see those who have lost the good of the mind.’ And putting his hand on mine, with a comforting smile, he led me inside the secret things.

Sighs, moans, loud yells, words of sorrow, accents of wrath, handclaps; all in darkness, round and round, like sand in a whirlwind. ‘Master, who are these?’

‘These lived without infamy and without praise. They did nothing particularly bad or good. Heaven and Hell both reject them. Let us not speak of them, but look and pass.’

I saw something like a flag or standard that skipped about as if too proud to pause, and after it such a long line of people! I had not thought death had undone so many. I recognized a few, then spotted him who through cowardice made the great refusal. Flies and wasps were biting them. Blood trickled down their sides; ugly worms licked it up.

Then I saw many on the bank of a river. ‘Master,’ I said, ‘why do they seem so eager to get across?’ ‘You’ll see when we come to sad Acheron.’ And a boat came toward us with a white-haired oarsman, crying, ‘Woe to you, depraved souls! No hope for you of seeing heaven! I’m here to take you across, to darkness, burning heat and freezing cold. You, live one! Get away from the dead.’

But when I didn’t move, he changed his tone. ‘You have to come to shore another way, not here. A lighter boat must carry you.’

And Virgil put in, ‘Now Charon, don’t get cross. This was willed where what is willed can be done, so no questions.’ The hairy cheeks went quiet, though the circles round his eyes flamed red.

But the souls went pale, gnashed their teeth, cursed God, their parents, their birth. Charon signalled them into the boat with his burning eyes. Anyone moving slowly he whacked with his oar. As autumn leaves fall down one after another, till the branch sees on the ground all its cast-off clothing, so the bad seed of Adam hurled themselves from that shore, one by one, like falcons to the lure.

‘You see,’ said Virgil, ‘fear changes to desire. No good soul ever comes this way. So if Charon complains of you, you must understand what this means.’

Suddenly the dark land trembled so violently, that even now the memory gives me a cold sweat. A rush of wind and a crimson flash stopped all my senses, and I fell in a dead faint.

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Here in the terrible inscription over Hell Gate the Trinity appears openly for the first time. Power, wisdom and love have created Hell!

Dante finds the words hard: ‘Il senso lor m’è duro’ (homonym of the rhyming duro, ‘I endure) – both difficult and hard-hearted – merciless, teeth-breaking. The cruel ‘abandon all hope’, sounds like a sign at the entrance to a Nazi concentration camp. Dante’s Hell has the indignity of a concentration camp. It is like a horrible circus, guarded by clownish monsters (think of judge Minos with his long tail) and joking demons. Are we really meant to take this as an image of divine justice? The gate declares that Hell was made by wisdom and love, yet this Hell is not administered by agents of wisdom and love, but by God’s enemies, who are damned themselves. Both staff and inmates, though enemies to each other, are united in enmity to God.

How then could the Trinity have made Hell? The very doctrine of the Trinity teaches that the second Person, through his Incarnation, is eternally united to humanity: all humanity (‘As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,’ 1 Cor. 15.22). How then shall any portion of humanity be eternally separated from God? As we shall see later, Dante imagined the Trinity as an irresistible spiritual tide that flows through all creation and brings it back to God. What then, does Dante proclaim universal salvation? We cannot say that! But poetically he explores the idea of Hell, apparently with a certain gusto as well as horror, and yet by imagining damned souls in their individual particularity he develops a lively sympathy with them for which Virgil has sometimes to rebuke him: does he think he is more merciful than God? The conflict between the two characters shows the tension in the poet, one he no doubt expects us to share. Let us not take it for granted that this tension has to be resolved on the side of the inscription over the gate.

(One voice raised against not only Dante’s Hell but the whole idea of retributive puinishment is that of the great critic I. A. Richards in his late book, Beyond (1974).)

People are said to incur damnation by freely choosing separation from God, but those here seem to have drifted through life without making any choices at all. They follow a meaningless standard that keeps moving without going anywhere, and end up by hurling themselves eagerly to damnation. At least it is something definite!

Sheep without a shepherd, they include one who could have formed them into a flock had he not refused through cowardice—identified by the earliest commentators as the hapless Pope Celestino V, who resigned the office not from cowardice but from saintly humility (as all the people believed, for he was