Dante Part 4

Another of the lessons taught by the Inferno is, that no plea, however moving, can avail the sinner, or take away the sinfulness of sin, that no position can place him above punishment, that no authority can shield him from it.

The guilty love of Francesca and Paolo, so strong, so deathless in that it was love, has sunk them to h.e.l.l instead of raising them to Heaven in that it was guilty. Stronger to make them one than h.e.l.l to sever them, it is powerless to redeem the sin to which it has allied itself, and its tenderness has but swelled the eternal anguish of those whom it still joins together, because it has suffered the sanctuary of life, which love is set to guard, to be polluted and betrayed. Sung in those strains of deathless tenderness and pity where 'tears seem to drop from the very words,' the story of this guilty love reveals the fatalest of all mischoice, and tells us that no pa.s.sion, however wild in its intensity, however innocent in its beginnings, however unpremeditated in its lawless outburst, however overmastering in its pleas, however loyal to itself in time and in eternity, may dare to raise itself above the laws of G.o.d and man, or claim immunity from its wretched consequences for those who are its slaves. How infinite the pity and the waste, how irreparable the loss, when the love that might have been an ornament to Heaven, adds to the unmeasured guilt and anguish of h.e.l.l a wail of more piercing sorrow than rings through all its lower depths!

Nor could any height of place claim exemption from the moral law. Dante was a Catholic, and his reverence for the Papal Chair was deep. But against the faithless Popes he cherished a fiery indignation proportioned to his high estimate of the sacred office they abused. In one of the most fearful pa.s.sages of the Inferno he describes, in terms that gain a terrible significance from one of the forms of criminal execution practised in his day, how he stood by a round hole in one of the circles of h.e.l.l, in which Pope Nicholas III. was thrust head foremost--stood like the confessor hearing the a.s.sa.s.sin's final words, and heard the guilty story of Pope Nicholas.[50]

It is characteristic of Dante that he tells us here, as if quite incidentally, that these holes were about the size of the baptising stands or fonts in the Church of San Giovanni, 'one of which,' says he, 'I broke not many years ago to save one who was drowning in it. Let this suffice to disabuse all men.' Evidently he had been taxed with sacrilege for saving the life of the drowning child at the expense of the sacred vessel, and it can hardly be an accident that he recalls this circ.u.mstance in the h.e.l.l of the sacrilegious Popes and Churchmen.

These men, who had despised their sacred trust and turned it to basest trafficking, were the representatives of that hard system of soulless officialism that would pollute the holiest functions of the Church, while reverencing with superst.i.tious scruple their outward symbols and instruments.

And if the Papal office could not rescue the sinner that held it, neither could the Papal authority shield the sins of others. It is said that Catholics have not the keeping of their own consciences. Dante at least thought they had. In the h.e.l.l of fraudulent counsellors, wrapped in a sheet of eternal flame one comes to him and cries, 'Grudge not to stay and speak with me a while. Behold, I grudge it not, although I burn.' It is Guido da Montefeltro, whose fame in council and in war had gone forth to the ends of the earth. All wiles and covert ways he knew, and there had ever been more of the fox than of the lion in him. But when he saw himself arriving at that age when every man should lower sails and gather in his ropes, then did he repent of all that once had pleased him, and girding him with the cord of St. Francis he became a monk. Alas! his penitence would have availed him well but for the Prince of the new Pharisees, Pope Boniface VIII., who was waging war with Christians that should have been his friends, hard by the Lateran.

'He demanded counsel of me,' continues Guido, 'but I kept silence, for his words seemed drunken. Then he said to me, "Let not thy heart mis...o...b..: henceforth do I absolve thee, but do thou teach me so to act that I may cast Prenestina to the ground. Heaven I can shut and open, as thou knowest." ... Then the weighty arguments impelled me to think silence worse than speech; and so I said, "Father, since thou dost cleanse me from that guilt wherein I now must fall, long promise and performance short will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat." Then when I died St. Francis came for me, but one of the black cherubim said to him: "Do me no wrong, nor take thou him away. He must come down amongst my menials, e'en for the fraudulent advice he gave, since when I have kept close upon his hair. He who repents not cannot be absolved, nor can one will the same thing he repents, the contradiction not permitting it." Ah wretched me! how did I shudder then, for he laid hold of me, and with the cry, "Haply thou knew'st not I was a logician?" bore me to judgment.'[51]

Who can fail to recognise the utter truth of Dante's teaching here?

What can stand between a man's own conscience and his duty? Though the very symbol and mouthpiece of the collective wisdom and piety of Christendom should hold the shield of authority before the culprit, yet it cannot ward off the judgment for one single deed done in violation of personal moral conviction. When once we have realised the meaning of this awful pa.s.sage, how can we ever urge again as an excuse for unfaithfulness to our own consciences, that the a.s.surance of those we loved and reverenced overcame our scruples? Here as everywhere Dante strips sin of every specious and distracting circ.u.mstance, and shows it to us where it ought to be--in h.e.l.l.

Contrast with the scene we have just looked upon the companion picture from the Purgatory; where Buonconte di Montefeltro tells how he fled on foot from the battle-field of Campaldino, his throat pierced with a mortal wound ensanguining the earth. Where Archiano falls into the Arno there darkness came upon him, and he fell crossing his arms upon his breast and calling on the name of Mary with his last breath. 'Then,' he continues, 'G.o.d's angel came and took me, and h.e.l.l's angel shrieked, "O thou of Heaven, wherefore dost thou rob me? Thou bear'st with thee the eternal part of him, all for one wretched tear which saves it from me.

But with the other part of him I'll deal in other fashion."' Upon which the infuriated demon swells the torrent with rain, sweeps the warrior's body from the bank, dashes away the hateful cross into which its arms are folded, and in impotent rage rolls it along the river bed and buries it in slime so that men never see it more; but the soul is meanwhile saved.[52]

Here we must pause. I have made no attempt to give a systematic account of the Inferno, still less to select the finest pa.s.sages from it. I have only tried to interpret some of the leading thoughts which run through it, some of the deep lessons which it can hardly fail to teach the reader.

Like all great works, the Inferno should be studied both in detail and as a whole in order to be rightly understood; and when we understand it, even partially, when we have been with Dante down through all the circles to that central lake of ice in which all humanity seems frozen out of the base traitors who showed no humanity on earth, when we have faced the icy breath of the eternal air winnowed by Satan's wings, and have been numbed to every thought and feeling except one--one which has been burned and frozen into our hearts through all those rounds of shame and woe--the thought of the pity, the misery, the hatefulness of sin; then, but then only, we shall be ready to understand the Purgatory, shall know something of what the last lines of the Inferno meant to Dante: 'We mounted up, he first and second I, until through a round opening I saw some of those beauteous things that Heaven bears; and thence we issued forth again to see the stars.'[53]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 31: Compare pp. 21-23.]

[Footnote 32: Epistola xi. -- 8.]

[Footnote 33: _Inferno_, ii. 1-6.]

[Footnote 34: _Inferno_, xxviii.]

[Footnote 35: _Ibid._ xxiii. 58 sqq.]

[Footnote 36: _Ibid._ xviii. 103-136.]

[Footnote 37: _Inferno_, xx. 27, 28: 'Qui vive la pieta quand' e ben morta.' The double force of pieta, 'pi[e]ty,' is lost in the translation.]

[Footnote 38: _Ibid._ xxiv. 112-xxv. 9 &c.]

[Footnote 39: _Ibid._ xiv. 43-66.]

[Footnote 40: _Inferno_, xviii. 82-96.]

[Footnote 41: _Ibid._ x. 22-93.]

[Footnote 42: _Ibid._ xiii. 55-78.]

[Footnote 43: _Inferno_, xvi. 64-85.]

[Footnote 44: _Inferno_, iii. 1-9.]

[Footnote 45: _Inferno_, iv. 23-45, 84.]

[Footnote 46: Compare e.g. _Purgatorio_, iii. 34-45, xxii. 67-73.]

[Footnote 47: _Inferno_, v. 88, 91, 92.]

[Footnote 48: _Inferno_, x.x.x. 64-67.]

[Footnote 49: _Inferno_, vii. 117-126.]

[Footnote 50: _Inferno_, xix.]

[Footnote 51: _Inferno_, xxvii.]

[Footnote 52: _Purgatorio_, v. 85-129.]

[Footnote 53: _Inferno_, x.x.xiv. 136-139.]

IV

PURGATORY

'Leaving behind her that so cruel sea, the bark of poesy now spreads her sails to speed o'er happier waters; and I sing of that mid kingdom where the soul of man is freed from stain, till worthy to ascend to Heaven.'[54] Such are the opening words of Dante's Purgatory, and they drop like balm upon our seared and wounded hearts when we have escaped from the dread abode of eternal ill-desert.

'Man, atoning for the misuse of his free will,' may be regarded as the subject of this poem. And it brings it in a sense nearer to us than either the h.e.l.l or the Paradise. Perhaps it ought not to surprise us that the Purgatory has not by any means taken such a hold of the general imagination as the h.e.l.l, and that its machinery and incidents are therefore far less widely known; for the power of the Purgatory does not overwhelm us like that of the Inferno whether we understand or no. There are pa.s.sages indeed in the poem which take the reader by storm and force themselves upon his memory, but as a whole it must be felt in its deeper spiritual meaning to be felt at all. Its gentleness is ultimately as strong as the relentless might of the h.e.l.l, but it works more slowly and takes time to sink into our hearts and diffuse its influence there. Nor again need we be surprised that the inner circle of Dante students often concentrate their fullest attention and admiration upon the Paradise, for it is the Paradise in which the poet is most absolutely unique and unapproached, and in it his admirers rightly find the supreme expression of his spirit.

And yet there is much in the Purgatory that seems to render it peculiarly fitted to support our spiritual life and help us in our daily conflict, much which we might reasonably have expected would give its images and allegories a permanent place in the devout heart of Christendom; for, as already hinted, it is nearer to us in our struggles and imperfections, in our aspirations and our conscious unworthiness, nearer to us in our love of purity and our knowledge that our own hearts are stained with sin, in our desire for the fullness of G.o.d's light, and our knowledge that we are not yet worthy or ready to receive it; it is nearer to us in its piercing appeals, driven home to the moral experience of every day and hour, nearer to us in its mingled longing and resignation, in its mingled consolations and sufferings, nearer to us in its deep unrest of unattained but unrelinquished ideals, than either the h.e.l.l in its ghastly harmony of impenitence and suffering, or the Paradise in its ineffable fruition.

Moreover, the allegorical appropriateness of the various punishments is far more obvious and simple, and the spiritual significance of the whole machinery clearer and more direct, in the Purgatory than in the h.e.l.l. In a word, the Purgatory is more obviously though not more truly, more directly though not more profoundly, moral and spiritual in its purport than the h.e.l.l.

Dante addresses some of the sufferers on the fifth circle of Purgatory as 'chosen ones of G.o.d whose pains are soothed by justice and by hope.'[55] And in truth the spirits in Purgatory are already utterly separated from their sins in heart and purpose, are already chosen ones of G.o.d. They are deeply sensible of the justice of their punishment, and they are fed by the certain hope that at last, when purifying pain has done its work, their past sins will no longer separate them from G.o.d, they will not only be parted in sympathy and emotion from their own sinful past, but will be so cut off from it as no longer to feel it as their own, no longer to recognise it as a part of themselves, no longer to be weighed down by it. Then they will rise away from it into G.o.d's presence. 'Repenting and forgiving,' says one of them, 'we pa.s.sed from life, at peace with G.o.d, who pierces our hearts with longing to see Him.'[56]

The souls in Purgatory, then, are already transformed by the thirst for the living water, already filled with the longing to see G.o.d, already at one with Him in will, already gladdened by the hope of entering into full communion with Him. But they do not wish to go into His presence yet. The sense of shame and the sense of justice forbid it. They feel that the unexpiated stains of former sin still cleave to them, making them unfit for Heaven, and they love the purifying torments which are burning those stains away. In the topmost circle of Purgatory, amongst the fierce flames from which Dante would have hurled himself into molten gla.s.s for coolness, he sees souls whose cheeks flush at the memory of their sin with a shame that adds a burning to the burning flame; whilst others, cl.u.s.tering at the edge that they may speak with him, yet take good heed to keep within the flame, lest for one moment they should have respite from the fierce pain which is purging away their sins and drawing them nearer to their desire.[57]

Sweet hymns of praise and supplication are the fitting solace of this purifying pain; and as Dante pa.s.ses through the first of the narrow ascents that lead from circle to circle of Purgatory, he may well contrast this place of torment with the one that he has left, may well exclaim, 'Ah me! how diverse are these straits from those of h.e.l.l!'[58]

Penitence, humility, and peace--though not the highest or the fullest peace--are the key-notes of the Purgatory.