Purgatory: Canto 1 -- Ante-Purgatory: The Shore of the Island

Hail, Pilgrims, well met! The last of you, I think, has climbed out of hell and assembled, covered with hell-ash and charcoal from head to foot, onto the surface of the earth again having just walked with Dante through its entire core in only a day and a half. You'll spend a few days longer in Purgatory, and you'll get to rest with Dante three times (allegorically, not really -- we are still going to plunge through at one canto a day in order to reach heaven by Easter Sunday. In Dante's time, it's already Easter Sunday of the year 1300, and he stands on the slope of Mount Purgatory confronted by the shore's guardian, Cato of Utica).


The Death of Cato of Utica,
oil on canvas, 114 x 144.5
BOUCHET Louis-André-Gabriel
1797, Grand Prix de Rome in history painting
Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts, Paris

Cato is an interesting character because he's a suicide who killed himself for the love of liberty rather than subject himself to slavery under Julius Caesar, whom he opposed when Caesar and Pompey came to war against one another. The question to answer is what is the difference between killing oneself for the principle of human freedom and killing oneself for love. Sean provided us with a good answer today in that an excess love of the creation takes away from the proper love with which the creator should be held in esteem. An excess love of liberty, however, is a reflection of divine image in which man was created, perhaps. This sets a precedent, though, that people who take their own lives might have extenuating circumstances that prevent their damnation. In Cato's case, we learn from Ciardi that he might not be able to see heaven -- he's not in Purgatory, exactly, but in an ante-Purgatory and set there on purpose to guard it from the hell-hole and, likely, to ensure new arrivals are placed up the mountain. Later, we'll find penitents who were guilty of far worse but repented at the last moment -- an example that nothing can prevent a soul's going to heaven if it sincerely desires to do so.

In that capacity, he is the first to accost and then to welcome the two pilgrims who've stepped onto the slope. Virgil instructs Dante to humble himself before Cato before explaining to this guardian (in much more deferential language than he used with the infernal guardians, notice) his mission. He points out another interesting twist in the afterlife, which is that spouses separated from one another by the divide of salvation and damnation are lost to one another forever. When Virgil explains that Marcia still prays to Cato, Cato explains, "Now that she lies/ beyond the evil river [which could be any of those we've passed in hell or Lethe, which is trickling into hell at the poets' feet], no word or prayer/ of hers may move me" (87-9). He still knows her, but she is dead to him even though word of her conscious intellect resonates from Virgil's lips. For that reason, too, then, neither can Virgil's prayers move Cato since he also lives beyond that river. It would take the word of a heavenly lady, which Virgil has provided -- meaning that human reason has lost its power and that grace alone is what is needed. Henceforth, Virgil becomes as Dante -- a pilgrim like him, both climbing up uncharted terrain.

Cato gives Virgil permission to lead Dante up the slope, but only after he washes the ash and brimstone off in the dew on the shore of the island -- and to "bind a smooth green reed about his waist" -- Fr. Earl will be pleased with this -- we have Dante the Franciscan back with us, with a cord the color of hope -- a hope so enduring and powerful, in fact, that it creates its own miracle, for no sooner is the reed plucked but a new one springs back in its place. Hope, then, springs eternal, but we won't need it once we get to paradise. Purgatory is the only place in this cosmology where hope is useful -- in hell, we were instructed to abandon all hope, and in heaven, we know we've already achieved the beatific vision (so hope turns into reality). Here, then, we are greeted by the antithesis of the admonition to abandon all hope, and in a handful of cantos, we'll be greeted by the antithesis of the infernal gate, the gate into Purgatory proper and thus entrance into paradise (minus the climb through the seven vices).

Enough of this just yet -- the rest, I leave to you, my fellow pilgrims, to reconcile to yourselves the marvels we've seen on this slope. What's more, all sufferers you find for the next 32 cantos are happily suffering because they have what Pandora's box refused to release the first time it opened. What, we might ask, is hope? and how might we use it as a tool in our own salvation?

S.