Purgatory, Canto 15

The Sayers Text of Purgatory Canto 15 (Open PDF)

A Prose translation of Canto 15 (by David Bruce)

Summary

THE Poets are met by the shining Angel of Generosity, who erases the second P from Dante’s forehead and directs them to the Pass leading to the Third Cornice. While they are climbing the stair, Virgil delivers his First Discourse on Love. At the entrance to the Cornice, Dante is shown in a vision examples of the Virtue of Meekness; and after walking a little further they are met and enveloped by a cloud of thick Smoke rolling along the Cornice.

The Prepatory Lecture

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Questions for Reflection

• In Purgatorio we begin seeing what Giuseppe Mazzotta calls Dante’s “ludic theology”: his theology of play. How does Dante depict the sun as a child at play? What does this tell us about Dante’s picture of the natural world?
• How does Virgil describe the economy of heaven in terms of envy and charity (15.49-57)? How does this way of characterizing heavenly community a reflection of the Goodness of God (15.61-75)?
• How can the Good increase the more that it is shared (15.61-82)?  Is goodness something that can be diminished by being shared? If not, how is envy a contradiction of divine goodness and charity? What are the political and economic consequences of Dante’s metaphysical claim about divine goodness?
• This canto includes both the terrace of envy and that of wrath. Why might Dante position these two vices in the same canto?
• What ecstatic visions does Dante have that reveal the character of  the virtue of meekness? Why does Dante lead with images of the exemplar virtue rather than with images of the vice being punished?  
• How are Dante’s  images of meekness “non-false errors” (15.117)? How can something be both an error and not false? Is there something about the nature of the Comedy itself that is captured in this line?

The Canticle in this Canto

Purgatory, Canto 15 © Jan Hearn

The Images

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

For the Penance of the Wrathful (the Smoke) see Images to Canto xvi

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