Purgatory, Canto 16

The Sayers Text of Purgatory Canto 16 (Open PDF)

A Prose translation of Canto 16 (by David Bruce)

Summary

AS they stagger blindly through the Smoke, the Poets hear the prayer of the penitent Wrathful rising about them on all sides. Dante is addressed by the spirit of Marco Lombardo, who discourses with him on Determinism and Free Will, and on the misdirection of the Temporal Power. A thinning of the Smoke announces the imminent approach of the Angel of the Third Cornice.

The Prepatory Lecture

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Questions for Reflection

• Why does Dante depict wrath as a plague of darkness? 
• Juxtaposing the vice of wrath with the hymn Agnus Dei (taken from John 1:29: “Behold the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world”) is intriguing. What does Dante’s use of the crucifixion here tell us about the way he understands wrath and its countering virtue, mercy? (16.19-21).
• Why do you think Dante tells us that the wrathful penitents sing the Agnus Dei “with one voice and intonation” (16.20)?
• Why does Dante not believe in fate (16.67-76)? 
• What is the relationship between politics and the soul (16.100-114)?

The Canticle in this Canto

Purgatory, Canto 16 © Jan Hearn

The Images

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

The Penance of the Wrathful: the Smoke: the effect of Wrath is to blind the judgement and to suffocate the natural feelings and responses, so that a man does not know what he is doing. The penance of the Wrathful is therefore, once again, the endurance of the sin itself. Dante habitually connects Wrath with images of smoke and suffocation — cf. the Sullen Wrathful in the fifth circle of Hell (Inf. vii. 118-26), whose “hearts smouldered with a sulky smoke”, and whose punishment is to lie gurgling and choking in the muddy bed of Styx.
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Marco Lombardo: Dante here shows us only one image of the Wrathful — probably because he has already given sufficient space in the ferocious and sullen types in the Inferno. In Marco he offers a third, and more pleasing, variation: the open-hearted, generous man with a hot temper.

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