Purgatory, Canto 12

The Text of Purgatory Canto 12 (Open PDF)

Summary

AS he goes along, Dante sees graven upon the floor of the Cornice images representing the sin and fall of Pride. The Poets are met by the Angel of Humility, who erases the first P from Dante s forehead and, pronouncing the appropriate Beatitude, guides them up by the Pass of Pardon. Already, with the purging of Pride, the penitent’s feet move more lightly.

The Prepatory Lecture

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Questions for Reflection

• How does Dante come to share in the purgative effects of the Proud’s therapeutic punishment (12.7-8)? Why might Dante himself draw attention to the way that his participation in their purgation affects him in a way different from his self-presentation in Inferno?
• Dante sees carvings of mythic figures culminating in proud and fallen Troy. This catalogue of figures in lines 25-60 feature tercets that form an acrostic: V-O-M (for “man”). What connection does Dante see between pride and humanity? What might Dante be doing with this acrostic, which involves, as Christian Moevs describes it, “making images in texts”?
• How do we once again see the imagination being used for the sake of moral and spiritual growth?
• What role does the beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” play in this canto?
• How does the angel heal Dante’s vice of pride? And why would the healing of pride make the rest of the purgatorial journey easier (12.121-126)?

The Canticle in this Canto

Purgatory, Canto 12 © Jan Hearn

The Images

Lower Purgatory: Love Perverted.  (See below for the general summary of Lower Purgatory.)

The Pass of Pardon and the P of Pride: The passage from one Cornice to the next is by way of a staircase cut in the rock. Dante particularly emphasises that by these steps “the steep grade’s eased” and “the cliff made less sheer”, by contrast with the painful scramble up the Terraces and, particularly with the zigzag and difficult “needle’s eye” leading to the First Cornice. This is because when Pride, the root of all sin, is overcome, the conquest of the rest is easier. For the same reason he emphasizes the freedom and lightness which the pilgrim feels when the P of Pride has been rased out.

Lower Purgatory: Love Perverted: There is no actual existing person or thing that is not, in some degree, a proper object of love. The only wrong object of love is the love of harm, which results when love for object A is perverted into hatred for object B. Since God is the source of all good, to hate Him is a delusion and to harm Him is impossible; neither does anyone really hate or want to harm himself. In practice, therefore, Perverted Love is love of injury to one’s neighbour, springing from the evil fantasy that one can gain good for one’s self from others’ harm.

• Cornice 1: Pride (Superbia) (love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbour).
• Cornice 2: Envy (Invidia) (love of one’s own good perverted to the wish to deprive other men of theirs).
• Cornice 3: Wrath (Ira) (love of justice perverted to revenge and spite). Mid-Purgatory: Love Defective
• Cornice 4: Sloth or Accidie (Acedia) (the failure to love any good object in its proper measure, and, especially, to love God actively with all one has and is).

Mark Vernon's Lecture