illegitimate son of the emperor Frederick II, who is listed among the heretics in Inferno 10

Noble, Refined Character

King of Sicily-alleged to murder father, brother...

Excommunicated from the church twice

Shows Dante Battle Scars

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).

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).

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. A motive for the murder may have been Nello's desire to marry his neighbor, a widowed countess.

•Pia's concern for Dante's well being and her request to be remembered perhaps recall the courtesy displayed by another woman, Francesca, in the fifth canto of the Inferno.

The region rising from the shore at the mountain's base to the gate of Purgatory proper at the limit of the earth's atmosphere.

This area is populated by souls who:

–were excommunicated by the Church;
–who for various reasons delayed repentance to the end of their lives

a poet from Mantua (a city in northern Italy) from the Middle Ages (13th century, a generation or two before Dante).

Sordello wrote poems in Provençal, including one on courtly virtue and another contrasting the good qualities of a dead nobleman with the deficiencies of contemporary European rulers.

Virgil and Dante see Sordello seated off by himself, like a lion at rest attentively eyeing the travelers as they approach.

He is proud and dignified but very affectionate with Virgil when he learns they are from the same city.

•The love shown between Sordello and Virgil because of their common homeland triggers a long authorial diatribe against the violence, corruption, and lack of effective leadership up and down the Italian peninsula in Dante's time (6.76-151)

• Sordello accompanies Dante and Virgil to the Valley of Rulers in the Ante-Purgatory

This angel, overwhelmingly bright, is seated above three steps leading to the entrance-way (a gate) to the first terrace of Purgatory proper.

•His role is similar to that often associated with Saint Peter in the popular imagination.

•In one hand the angel holds a sword, which he uses to carve seven P's--one for each of the seven deadly sins, peccatum (or possibly the punishments, poenae, for these sins)--in Dante's forehead.

•The angel wears an ash-colored robe, from which he draws the two keys, one gold and one silver, he received from Peter to unlock the gate.

•These are the "keys of the kingdom of heaven" given to Peter by Jesus (Matt. 16:18-19).

 three stages of penance:

•recognition of one's sins
•heartfelt contrition
•satisfaction

The angel's feet are planted on the top step, which is bright red (like blood)

the middle step is cracked and dark in color

the bottom step is made of white marble, so pure that it reflects images.

Dante singles out three individuals among the proud penitents carrying heavy rocks on their backs.
The weight forces them to walk slowly, their bodies bent low to the ground.

Dante compares the suffering, hunched souls to the human figures (with knees to their chest and pained expressions) used in architecture to support a ceiling or roof (10.130-5).

On the next terrace, of envy, (13.37-42; 14.143-4), Virgil describes the role of these instructive examples in equestrian terms:

–the virtuous examples are "whips" meant to guide the penitent to moral righteousness

– the examples of the vice are the "bridle" (or "bit") used to curb the spirit's sinful tendencies.

Carved into the side of the mountain on the first terrace are exemplary images of humility.

•So real to life are the sculpted scenes that Dante wonders if he doesn't actually hear the words and smell the odors suggested in what he sees (10.40, 59-63).

•The first scene depicted (10.34-45) is drawn from the Gospels (Luke 1:26-38). The angel Gabriel (sent by God to Nazareth) announces to Mary, a young woman engaged to Joseph, that she will give birth to a son, to be named Jesus, who "shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High" (Luke 1:32). When Mary asks how she, a virgin, will conceive, Gabriel explains: the "Holy Ghost shall come upon thee" (Luke 1:35). Declaring herself the "handmaid of the Lord" (10.44; Luke 1:38), Mary humbly accepts her role.

•This "annunciation" scene is a favorite subject of medieval and early modern art, as seen in works by, among many others, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto, Simone Martini, Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, and Botticelli.

honors the Roman emperor Trajan (10.73-93), who fulfilled the duties of justice and mercy by delaying a military campaign to avenge the murder of a poor widow's son

•Rather than delegating the woman's request to a subordinate or successor, Trajan decided that the responsibility of his high office compelled him to attend personally to this seemingly low-level matter.

Giotto, the most renowned artist of the so-called Proto-Renaissance

Breaking with the iconographic conventions of Byzantine painting, Giotto created scenes with a heightened sense of naturalness and physical reality (through the illusion of weight and three-dimensional space).

When, in the field of literature, Oderisi says that one "Guido" has supplanted another (11.97-9), he alludes to the poets Guido Cavalcanti and Guido Guinizzelli.

laments the arrogance that was common in his family, powerful ghibellines who controlled territory in the coastal region of Tuscany (11.58-69).

The Aldobrandeschi boasted, according to early commentators, that their holdings were so vast they could spend each day of the year in a different castle. Omberto's pride caught up with him in 1259 when he took on a large contingent of Sienese troops.

a prominent ghibelline general from Siena who helped lead his forces to victory over the Florentine guelphs at Montaperti in 1260.

Following this battle, Provenzan's desire (and that of other ghibelline leaders) to see Florence completely destroyed was magnanimously opposed by Farinata degli Uberti.

Some years later, Provenzan was taken prisoner and killed by the Florentines, who raised his severed head high in the air in fulfillment of the misleading prophecy that this head would be held highest on the battlefield.

Here in Purgatory the proud man has avoided a life-sentence in Ante-Purgatory for late repentance by virtue of a single act of humility: he literally begged his fellow citizens for ransom money to win the life of an imprisoned friend; Dante, Oderisi prophesies, will soon come to understand such humiliation first hand (11.127-42).

On the terrace of envy, Dante admits that he already feels the weight of rocks used to flatten the pride of penitents on the first terrace (13.138), and he perhaps confirms the likely realization of this fear when he remarks that his name is not yet well known (14.21).

Such frank self-awareness encourages us to consider possible illustrations of Dante's pride thus far in the poem / journey:

his self-inclusion among the great poets in Limbo, "so that I was sixth among such intellect" (4.102);

his claim to superiority over the classical authors Lucan and Ovid in the presentation of the thieves;

his close identification with the Greek hero Ulysses.

, kills her small son Itys and feeds his cooked flesh to her husband Tereus, King of Thrace, upon learning that he raped Philomela (Procne's sister) and cut out her tongue to prevent her from telling what had happened. Philomela ingeniously managed to inform Procne of the crime by weaving a tapestry that told the story in pictures.

Dante here singles out the cruel vengeance wrought by Procne (with help from her sister). Made aware that he has eaten his son, an enraged Tereus, his sword drawn, chases the two sisters but before he can catch them all three are transformed into birds: Tereus into a hoopoe (a crested bird with a long beak), Procne into a nightingale, and Philomela into a swallow (in some versions Philomela is the nightingale and Procne the swallow). The gruesome story is told by Ovid (Met. 6.424-674).

Dante's placement of a discussion of free will at the center of the Purgatorio, and therefore at the center of the entire Divine Comedy, accords with the importance of this notion not only for medieval theological debate but for Dante's fundamental premise of the poem: as stated in the Letter to Can Grande, an individual becomes "liable to the rewards or punishments of justice" through the exercise of free will.

Marco Lombardo explains that while the heavens exert influence over human desires, individuals (because they have free will) are responsible for their actions (16.67-78). He focuses on the socio-political implications of human responsibility insofar as guidance--in the form of laws and leadership--is required to direct individual souls to proper ends.

On the next terrace, discusses free will in relation to love and the process of making judgments for which the individual is fully accountable.

Human will is an "inborn freedom," a "noble power" that counsels the individual to actions subject to praise or blame (18.61-75).

Free will for Dante, as for the theologian Thomas Aquinas, amounts to freedom of judgment, the choice of pursuing or avoiding what is apprehended and then judged to be good or bad according to the dictates of reason.

Marco Lombardo articulates Dante's view of the Empire and Papacy as separate, autonomous institutions.

Rome used to possess "two suns," he says, one showing the world's path and the other God's path; but over time these two lights have extinguished one another, and, switching metaphors, the sword and the shepherd's staff are now joined, much to the detriment of humanity (16.106-11).

challenges the medieval Christian notion of the pope as "sun" and the emperor as "moon"

Dante states that even the sun-moon analogy fails to prove papal dominion over temporal matters because the two spheres possess their own powers, including (Dante believed) their own light (3.16).

Although he concedes that the emperor must show reverence to the pope, like a son to a father, Dante believes strongly in their independence as divinely sanctioned guides for humanity: "one is the Supreme Pontiff, to lead humankind to eternal life, according to the things revealed to us; and the other is the Emperor, to guide humankind to happiness in this world, in accordance with the teaching of philosophy" (Monarchia 3.16).

Virgil says, is the "seed" of all human acts, both sinful and virtuous (17.103-5):

insufficient or lax love of the good

defines the sin of sloth purged on the current terrace;

love directed toward an evil object or goal

explains the suffering of spirits on the three terraces below (pride, envy, wrath)

Follows the model established by Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) and made canonical in the later Middle Ages by such authorities as Hugh of St. Victor and Thomas Aquinas.

The Middle Ages provides an (old) Italian acronym, siiaagl, for this arrangement of the seven sins: superbia (pride), invidia (envy), ira (wrath), accidia (sloth), avarizia (avarice), gola (gluttony), lussuria (lust).

They first lament that many of Moses' followers, beneficiaries of divine intervention in their exodus from Egypt (e.g., parting the waters of the Red Sea: Exodus 14:21-31), nonetheless later
perish at God's hand and thus fail to reach the promised land due to various manifestations of incredulity, resistance, and transgression (Exodus 32:7-35; Numbers 14, 16, 20-1). Moses, who summarizes many of these instances in Deuteronomy 1:26-46, is himself shown by God the final destination but also prevented from arriving there (Deut. 34:1-5).

(Aen. 5.751; Purg. 18.138).

Dante and Virgil meet Statius soon after he has completed his time on the fifth terrace, an achievement that triggers the trembling of the mountain and the celebratory shouting of the spirits

Statius spent over five hundred years on the fifth terrace (not for avarice but for its symmetrical vice, prodigality), after having raced around the fourth terrace (sloth) for over four hundred years (22.92-3). The reverence Statius shows for Virgil reflects how much he owes to his Roman precursor: Statius drew poetic inspiration from Virgil's Aeneid (calling it a "divine flame" in 21.95), and he credits Virgil's fourth eclogue with his turn to Christianity (22.64-73); Statius also credits a line from the Aeneid with teaching him to curb his free spending ways, thus enabling him to avoid the eternal punishment of rolling boulders with the avaricious and prodigal sinners in Hell (22.37-45).
Freed of his purgatorial trials, Statius will accompany Dante and Virgil the rest of the way up the mountain.

By having Statius credit Virgil's fourth eclogue with his turn to Christianity (22.67-73), Dante follows the medieval tradition of creatively interpreting the Latin poem (written c. 42-39 B.C.E.) as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus.

While Virgil likely placed his prophetic hopes on the future child of one of Rome's leading couples (perhaps Antony and Octavia), the poem's theme of messianic renewal, combined with references to a virgin and child, well served the purposes of those, like Dante, who wished to view the great Roman poet as a prophet of Christianity.

Forese Donati

(Gluttony)

Forese was a childhood friend of Dante in Florence and a relative of Dante's wife (Gemma Donati).
He died in 1296.

Dante now encounters Forese on the terrace of gluttony, where the emaciated spirits (their eyes sunk so far back into their sockets the face resembles the letter M) suffer excruciating hunger and thirst.

In the purgatorial spirit of repentance, Forese (along with Dante) looks back on his wild past with sorrow, and he credits the prayers of his good wife Nella for enabling him to advance so far up the mountain in a relatively short time (less than 5 years since his death).

Forese

Dante feels sorry for Forese's coughing wife (perpetually cold in bed)

1b. The morning after a coughing fit, Forese expects to find pearls and gold coins in a graveyard but instead comes upon an Alighieri--Dante's father?--tied in knots in a graveyard.

2a. Dante picks up on the knot motif to underscore Forese's dissolute ways and subsequent debt: "And mind you, even if you stopped your gluttony / it's now too late to pay back what you owe."

2b. Forese tosses back the poverty theme, countering that "if we're such beggars as you say, / why do you come back right here to beg?"

3a. To which Dante replies by linking Forese's gluttony with criminal behavior: "into your throat so much you have gulped down / you are now forced to steal what is not yours."

3b. Forese finally exploits the fact that Dante's father had financial problems of his own and may have been involved in some shady dealings. He knows Dante is Alighieri's son by the revenge Dante took "against the man who changed his money just the other night."

Bonagiunta da Lucca

(Gluttony)

Not held in particularly high regard by Dante as a poet, Bonagiunta mumbles a word--"Gentucca"-- generally thought to be the name of the woman he prophesies will aid Dante in exile.

Bonagiunta also heaps praise on Dante, first by citing the opening to one of Dante's most famous lyric poems (the canzone, included in the Vita Nuova, "Ladies who have understanding of love"), and then by distinguishing Dante's poetry (and perhaps that of a few others) from the poetry of earlier literary leaders and their followers

Dante considered Guido Guinizzelli (from Bologna) the founding father of the lyric poetry that Dante himself sought to emulate and perfect.
Inspired by an ennobling conception of love, such poetry--in Dante's view--was characterized by a beautiful, harmonious style worthy of its subject matter.

Guido, whose reputation was already noted by a penitent on the terrace of pride, appears here on the seventh and final terrace of Purgatory purging himself of lust within flames shooting out from the face of the mountain across the pathway.

In Dante's poem, this "better" vernacular poet is Arnaut Daniel, a Provençal poet (12th-13th century) praised by Dante for his love poetry and known also for his technical virtuosity (he invented the sestina, in which the same six rhyme words are used in each stanza according to a precise formula).

Arnaut's high poetic standing is reflected in the Purgatorio not only through the courtly content of his words but also by the language he uses: this is the only instance in the entire Divine Comedy in which a non Italian character speaks in his "mother tongue" (26.140-7).

The Italian word ombra in Dante's lexicon means both "shadow" (as in the shadow cast by a body) and "shade" (a term for the form of the soul in the afterlife).

On the terrace of lust, as Dante's very real body prepares for its most challenging test, the poet shows--via a lecture by Statius--how the two meanings of ombra combine to encapsulate the fundamental relationship between life and afterlife. When the soul leaves the body, Statius explains, it "impresses" the body's form on the surrounding air (as saturated air is adorned with colors of a rainbow), and the resulting "virtual" body follows the spirit just as a flame follows fire.

This new form therefore goes by the name of "shade" / "shadow" (ombra): as a "shadow" follows--and repeats the form of--a real body, so the "shade" takes on all bodily parts and functions (25.85-108).

The word ombra, by exemplifying the relationship between real bodies and their virtual representation after death, points to a basic premise of the Divine Comedy, the reciprocal bond between this world and the hereafter: individuals, through their actions, determine the state of their souls for eternity, while Dante's vision of the afterlife reflects and potentially shapes the world of time and history.

Please eat with sauce and glazed lemon

CARDINAL VIRTUES

ANGEL (boat)

Souls arriving to Purgatory

·         departure of Israel from Egypt during time of moses

·         Allegorical

·         Moral

·         Anagogical

Literally, Allegorically

Literally: the divine comedy tells of the state of souls after death

  Allegorically: free will of man, earning or becoming liable to receive the rewards or punishments of justice

Three stages of repentace:

White-recognition of sins

Green-Remorse

Red (blood)-Satisfaction

·         Whips: humility

Annunciation of the immaculate conception to Mary (accepts humbly)

   David dancing before the ark of God

   Emperor Trajan:

  Avenged murder of a poor widow’s son rather than high official matters

  (Took task that was beneath him)

·         Bridles: proud/arrogant

   Omberto Aldobandeschi: boast of riches

  Oderisi da Gubbio: artist

 (Shouldn’t strive for fame because it is transient  

  Brings up the guidos: think they’re so great and then get supplanted by the next gen. who’s better (ex. Of artists)

   Provenzan Salvani: taken prisoner and killed by florentines who raised his severed head high in the air in fulfillment of the misleading prophecy that his head would be held highest on the battlefield

  Avoided life sentence in ante-purgatory by begging fellow citizens for ransom money to win the life of an imprisoned friend.

Eyes sewn shut with iron wire. Etymology of envy is "invidia" (to see)

   Whips: Fraternal Love (envy’s opposite)

  Jesus turning water into wine (at disciple’s wedding in Cana)

  I am orestes: sacrifice for another

  Love those who have done harm to you: Jesus @ sermon on the mount

·         Sapia

envy

 Took pleasure in the misfortune of others

  Eyes sown shut because it comes from the latin word meaning not to see

Wrath (and gentleness)

·         

 Whips: gentleness

Mary: remarkable restraint when she finds Jesus in a cave conversing with adults at 12

Pisistratus: tyrannical ruler who counter his wife’s wish for vengance on a young boy who kissed their son saying: if they kill those who love them, what should they do to their enemises?

 Bridles

Procne: kills son and feeds it to husband (who raped her sister)

MARCO LOMBARDO

·         Dante asks him about the cause of human corruption

o   Heavens exert influence over human desires: but individuals have free will and are responsible for their actions

o   Human will is an inborn freedom/ noble power

§  To pursue or avoid what are judged to be good or bad

o   Marco condemns the church occupying both worldly and spiritual authority

§  Levi’s sons (god instructs levi’s sons to perform priestly functions for their uses and necessities”

Two Suns Theory

§  Both papacy and empire derive authority from God

ú  Rather than traditional idea of pop as sun and emperor as moon

·         Dante says still isn’t sufficient because both sun an moon posess their own powers, while the empire sould show reverence to papacy they are independent and divinely sanctioned guides for humanity

·         Boniface the 8^th: papal infallibility: only God can judge the papacy if it errs

Lombardo says people are born innocent but need guidance from rulers (and need one for spiritual and one for worldly life)

MORAL STRUCTURE OF PURGATORY

o   1. Love directed toward an evil object or goal à pride, envy, wrath (below)

o   2. Insufficient or lax love of good à sloth (middle)

o   3. Excessive love of what is inherently good à avarice, gluttony, lust (above)

Sloth (and counter…zeal- whip)

· 

       Run without taking a break

o   Whips: zeal

§  Shouted by two weeping spirits

ú  Mary rushes to villiage of juda where Elizabeth is pregnant with john the Baptist (who leaps in mothers womb when greeted by mary)

ú  Julius Caesar (dante likes him)

o   Bridles:

Avarice (and prodigality)

·         Dante dreams of the siren who tempts them: Virgil says that one must keep eye on heaven to avoid her allure (which caused the sins of the upper terraces)

o   Lay face down on the floor weeping, calling out the examples of greed and opp. generosity

o  

 POPE ADRIAN V:

neglected spiritual matters and were excessively attached to worldly goods.

§  First saved pope

§  Tells dante not to kneel because in purgatory they are all equals beneath GOD

o   When one completes the fifth terrace the mountain quakes (celebration)

STATIUS

·         Dante and virgil meet him after he completes cleansing at terrace 5 and the earth quakes

·         Inspired by Virgil

o   Credit’s his fourth eclogue to his turn to Christianity and the aneid to his changing his prodigal ways

o   à Christ-centered references in canto 20

·         accompanies them the rest of the way

Gluttony:

·         

Voices reciting examples of whips: temperance

o   Tantalized in hunger by fruit trees

§  Mouth as conveyor of words and food

ú  Forese Donati

·         

Dante’s old friend exchanged antagonistic sonnets called tenzone (glutton of words)

·         Spirits suffer from emaciation, hunger and thirst

·         Prayers from his wife helped him pass ante-purgatory so quickly

o   Prophesized that the person responsible for downfall of Florence will be killed violently and decend to hell shortly

ú  Bonagiunta da Lucca ** Look at slides

·         

Played impt. Role in Italian lyric poetry

·         Praises dante saying he has a “dolce stil novo” sweet new style that distinguishes Dante from himself and other poets – praising women’s divine qualities without anything to do with physicallity

o   Says that Dante writes what is dictated by the God of Love

Demonstration of Dante’s pride

Lust

·         Walk through flames (lustful shout examples of chastity)

o   Guido Guinizzelli

Founding father of the lyric poetry that dante emulates

§  Purged by flames from the mountain

o   Arnaut Daniel

§  

Better craftsman of the mother tongue

§  Invented the sestina (same six rhyme words are used in each stanza)

§  Only non-italian character who speaks in his “mother tongue”

Shades and Shadows

·         

Explains how they can starve… Lecture by Statius shows how ombra (shade/shadow) signifies relationship between life and afterlife

o   When the soul leaves the body it impresses its form on the air… this then follows the spirit

§  Called a shadow because it repeats the form of a real body and a shade because it takes on bodily functions

ú  OMBRA demonstrates the reciprocal relationship between this world and the hereafter

·         Man’s actions determine eternal fate of souls

·         Divine comedy reflects and shapes the world of time and history

Divine Forest: Terrestrial paradise

·         MATELDA: tells them that the fountain created of divine will has one source but flows in two directions

o   Baptized him and immerses him in the lethe (after he passes out and after Beatrice throws his sins at him)

§  Lethe to the left

§  Eunoe to the right

ú  Confuses them with tigris and Euphrates

ú  

Drink lethe and forget guilty memories of sin, and drink from eunoe and retain only good memories and recollections of good deeds

·         After drinking both he is cleansed and ready to rise to the stars

·         BEATRICE’s SPEECH

Theme: return of all things to god

§  Similes (1:103-141)** look up

ú  Imprint of god on the created

ú  Sea (ports) every being directed toward its own port?

ú  Bow and arrow (god is archer)

Lunar Sphere: inconstant

Piccarda Donati

·         Sister of foresee donati

·         In the lunar sphere: for those who did not maintain their religious vows

o   Forced to leave the convent and marry for political reasons (died soon after so went to the lunar sphere)

Constance

·         Mother of Fredrick II (grandmother of Manfred)

o   Forced to leav convent and entrer political marriage

o   Good example of “poetry of names” “interpretatio nominis”

§  Planet of inconstancy and virgin diana : constanza (constance) and picarda (virgin sister)

·         Dante places political content in the 6^th canto of each part of the comedia

Mercury: ambitious

JUSTINIAN ** READ CANTO 6

·         Talented orator driven to worldly achievment by desire for honor and fame

o   MERCURY: driven to do good by desire for fame: AMBITIOUS

·         Intentions aren’t pure

·         Name suggests justice:

Venus: The Passionate/Lovers

FOLCO: poet who was driven by intense amorous desire:

·         Compared with Dido in the infernal circle of Lust

·         Condemns failings of church leaders

Earth’s shadow:

·         

Shadow cast into heaven by earth (Folco tells Dante) comes to a point in the sphere of venus

·         Envelops moon, mercury,venus

·         Separates the first three spheres of paradise showing them as somewhat inferior

o   Aligned with certain moral defects: unfulfilled vows

Sun: the wise

·         

Here dante’s love for God surpasses his love for Beatrice

·         Cicled with dancers

Mars: warriors of the faith

·         

Cacciaguida: grandfather figure (his great grandfather) (like brunetto latini and marco Lombardo)

o   Provides most detailed prophecy : of Dante’s impending exile

o   Theme of societal decline in Florence

Jupiter: just rulers

·         Souls wheel through the air  like birds spelling out “love justice, o you who judge the earth”

·         Spirits form an emblem of an eagle and speak to dante about divine justice

Saturn: contemplative

fixed stars (faith, hope, love)

·       

Apostles on the three theological virtues:

o   Peter: Faith

§  Denied jesus? Spins around dante and Beatrice 3 times and gives a 3fold denunciation of pope Boniface 8th

o   James: Hope

o   John: Love

·         ADAM:

·         Peter gets angry in canto 27

about the divisive nature of the popes

o   Papl power used for waging war on fellow Christians and selling false privledges

§  Calls popes of dante’s day “wolves in shepherds clothing”

§  Prophesizes high intervention and exhorts dante to give voice to the truths that are being revealed to him

primum mobile:

THE EMPYREAN:

BERNARD:

·         New guide: directs Dante to the occupants of the rose

o   White rose:

§  Home of all the blessed is with God in the empyrean

§  Pure light beyond time and space

ú  Formed from  a ray of light reflected off the primum mobile

§  Queen of the rose is virgin mary

ú  Half the rose for those who believed in Christ to come

ú  Other half for those who believed in Christ already come

·         Gendered halves

·         Souls of children lower: no free will so determined by predestination (blessed)

·         EPHEMERA

: exceeds his power of recollection

o   Feels a pleasant sensation that it impressed on his heart

o   Like waking up from a pleasant dream and you can’t remember

Trinitarian Circles

·         

Within the divine light, perceives a geometric image of the Holy Trinity

o   Three circles with distinct colors

§  One seems to be a reflection of the other (father and son) and the third looks like fire breathed equally by the two (spirit)

o   Flash of divine grace gives dante his final challenge

§  Comprehend the per paradox of human and divine in a single person (Christ)

ú  Perfect fit between a human and the second circle in which it appears?

ú  Trying to square a circle (you can’t do it)

Apollo (associated with Laurel), Minerva (Roman goddess of wisdom), and all nine Muses are behind him for his audacious attempt to sail uncharted poetic waters (2.7-9).

He predicts that the wonder experienced by his readers during this journey will exceed the wonder felt by the Argonauts when they saw their leader Jason, aided by Medea's potent magic, yoke fire-breathing oxen to a plow (2.16-18), thereby overcoming one of the obstacles to gaining possession of the Golden Fleece

 a fisherman-turned-god

Glaucus chewed several blades of the grass; seized with an irresistible longing for the sea, he bid the earth farewell and dove into the water, where he was received by the sea gods and "deemed worthy to join their company."

Glaucus was then purified of his mortal elements and cleansed of sin (after reciting a charm nine times and immersing himself in one hundred rivers), thus becoming immortal himself

Sister of Forese Donati, Dante's Florentine friend expiating the vice of gluttony in purgatory, and the wicked Corso Donati, who (according to Forese in Purgatory) will suffer eternal damnation in hell (Purg. 24.82-7).

As a leader of the black guelphs, Corso is one of the political enemies responsible for Dante's exile from Florence. Forese also told Dante that Piccarda resides in Paradise.

Corso forced Piccarda to leave the convent of Santa Chiara at Monticelli (near Florence) and marry his henchman, RossellinodellaTosa, for self-serving political reasons

This "great Constance" (Costanza) was the empress Constance (1152-98), wife of Henry VI, mother of Frederick II (the last dominant Holy Roman Emperor of the Middle Ages), and grandmother of Manfred.

Here Dante exploits the traditional conception of the Moon as both the planet of Diana, the virgin goddess, and the planet of mutability or inconstancy. Piccarda, who was a "virgin sister" in the world (Par. 3.46), insists that though Costanza nominally broke her vows when she was forced to leave the convent, she nevertheless remained true to her promise--and thus to her name ("Constance")--in her heart

As they ascend into the heavens she stares at the sun. Dante is fixated on Beatrice and sees her get increasingly beautiful, signifying their entrance into a new level.

Imprint (106): of God on the created, the seal that makes the universe understandable, and I a way it makes God visible, too;

Political 666

Dante places political commentary in the 6th canto of each Canticle.

name suggests giustizia (justice), held an important place in the late medieval imagination not only as an illustrious bearer of the Roman empire's "sacred standard" (Par. 6.32) but also as one inspired by God to undertake a "high task" (6.23-4), the monumental codification of Roman law (Corpus IurisCivilis) in the early sixth century

his supposed belief that Christ was fully divine but not also fully human, and his subsequent turn to "true faith" through the intervention of Pope Agapetus I

The shadow cast into the heavens by the earth, Folco of Marseille informs Dante, comes to a point in the sphere of Venus (Par. 9.118-19).

By imagining a meeting with his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida in the central episode of the Paradiso, Dante elects a father-figure as his spokesman for several of the most significant ideas of the entire poem, much as he did with BrunettoLatini in the Inferno and Marco Lombardo in the Purgatorio.

 We calculate that he was born in 1091 (Par. 16.34-39), entered the Christian faith in the Florentine baptistery (Par. 15.134-35), lived in an old quarter of Florence when its population was a fifth of its size in 1300 (Par. 16.46-48), became a knight under the emperor Conrad III, and was killed in the disastrous Second Crusade (Par. 15.139-48), most likely in 1147 when Conrad lost the bulk of his army on the way to the Holy Land.

Cacciaguida not only provides the most detailed prophecy in the poem of Dante's impending exile and the difficult years to follow (Par. 17.46-99), but he also emphasizes the theme of societal decline by describing the pure and tranquil (if mythical) past of Florence (Par. 15.97-129) and then using this idealized past to lament the city's fall to its sordid state of affairs in the present (Par. 16.46-154)

The apostles Peter, James, and John appear before Dante in the sphere of the twelve constellations of the zodiac (known in Ptolemaic astronomy as the "fixed stars"), where they test the celestial traveler on the three theological virtues:

Peter on faith (canto 24)

James on hope (canto 25)

John on love (canto 26)

Dante's three sons were named after these apostles.

1)when Adam was created (and placed in Eden), that is, how old he is

2) how long he was allowed to enjoy Eden

3) the reason for God's anger

4) the specific language Adam made and used.