Purgatory, Canto 3

The Text of Purgatory Canto 3 (Open PDF)

Summary

The Poets climb the lower slopes of the Mountain, where Dante’s solitary shadow, cast by the rising sun, poignantly brings home to him the fact that Virgil is only a shade. At the foot of a steep cliff they encounter the souls of the Excommunicate, detained upon this First Terrace of Ante-Purgatory, and converse with Manfred, who explains to them the law of the Terrace.​

The Prepatory Lecture

Click here if video doesn't appear.

Questions for Reflection

• Why is Virgil so upset with himself (3.7-9)? Have we seen Virgil acting in this way before? Why might Dante choose to present Virgil in this way here at the beginning of Purgatorio? How might his self-recrimination at the beginning of the canto be related to his later disquietude (3.37-45) or his ignorance of the path (3.61ff)?
• The pilgrim fails to see Virgil’s shadow walking alongside his own and fears that he has been abandoned. How might this anticipate a scene in canto 30? Why might Dante draw such attention to the difference between the pilgrim’s body and that of Virgil?
• Who is Manfred and how does Dante recognize him (3.103-114)? Are there any suggestive biblical allusions in this scene?
• Manfred has been excommunicated by the Church and yet is nevertheless saved. What account of mercy and grace is Dante developing here through his character? What relationship does Dante seem to see between God’s pardoning of sin and that of the Church?
• BONUS: Read the encounter with Manfred in light of Pope Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctum, published the same year as Dante’s exile: 1302. How might Manfred be read as a Dantean rejoinder to Unam Sanctum?

Purgatory, Canto 3 © Jan Hearn

The Images

The Excommunicate: Those who have incurred excommunication, and have thus been cut off from the sacraments, guidance, and fellowship of the Church, are condemned to wander “as sheep that have no shepherd” thirty times as long as their contumacy lasted upon earth. Although they repented in their last hour (otherwise they would never have reached Purgatory) they left themselves no time for formal reconciliation, and no opportunity to make satisfaction; satisfaction must therefore be made here, and their punishment (like all other penal inflictions in the Comedy) is simply the sin itself: the old self-banishment and the old delay. But, unlike the impenitent in Hell, they endure their suffering in hope and patience. No prayer is allotted to the Excommunicate — doubtless because of their severance from the Church.

Mark Vernon's Lecture