The text of the
Purgatorio
is that established by Petrocchi,
Dante Alighieri: La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata
, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994 [1966–67]), vol. III. (This later edition has five minor changes to the text of this
cantica
, which is thus essentially the same as the earlier text.) All references to other works are keyed to the List of Works Cited found at the back of this volume (e.g., Aust.1933.1), with the exception of references to commentaries contained in the online Dartmouth Dante Project. Informational notes derived from Paget Toynbee’s
Concise Dante Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1914) are followed by the siglum (T) . References to the
Enciclopedia dantesca
, 6 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970–78) are indicated by the abbreviation
ED
. Commentaries by Robert Hollander are (at times) shorter versions of materials found in both the Princeton and the Dartmouth Dante Projects.
INTRODUCTION
----
(1)
History of Purgatory.
It is important that a contemporary reader realize that the word “purgatory,” as it is used in Dante’s poem, while indicating a location in which suffering occurs, is used to denote the place in which every single soul is in progress toward salvation. Thus the current American slang use of the term to indicate an experience of harsh punishment—as though it were hell—is not a useful indicator of what the reader will find in the second part of Dante’s
Comedy
. In that world, to come to purgatory is to arrive at the threshold of heaven, and to arrive there in a state of grace.
The idea of purgation has a far longer history as a concept than as a name for a place. Le Goff 1 finds the first use of the noun
Purgatorium
in a sermon of Petrus Comestor written between 1170 and 1180. Several biblical texts, however, combine to make two notions central: II Maccabees 12:39–45 suggests the efficacy of prayer for the dead, while Matthew (5:25–26, as well as 12:31–32) and Paul (I Corinthians 3:10–17) present at least a general sense of expiation postmortem. 2 In Paul’s words (3:13), “Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” Thus the purgatorial refining fire lay ready for later Christian thinkers as a way of conceptualizing the salvation of souls after the death of the body. This process bridges the time between death and the Last Judgment, a period that essentially remains a lacuna in the Bible itself. By Dante’s time, theologians who attempted to deal with the lack of definition of the precise nature of “particular judgment,” that is God’s judgment of the individual soul upon the death of the body, realized that they needed to establish the nature of the divine decision that separated sinners from the saved immediately after death, since the Bible only posits the final judgment as described in the Book of Revelation. And once posthumous expiation and the prayers of the living became the crucial facts that clarify, for believers, both their own hopes and their responsibility with regard to their loved ones, it was almost inevitable that someone should invent a physical place in which this expiation of the souls of the dead might occur.
Adding to the store of images for the development of a place to be known as “purgatory” are a series of visions of the otherworld, studied by such scholars as Rajna, 3 Le Goff, and Morgan. 4 Le Goff demonstrates the lateness of the development of purgatory as a distinct place, beginning perhaps with Petrus Comestor and St. Bernard ca. 1170–80, 5 and underlines the major role of Dante in establishing the later sense of the place and of its function. 6 Cherchi 7 has shown that, among these writers, Gervase of Tillbury in particular presented a separate world of purgation that had a number
Purgatorio
is that established by Petrocchi,
Dante Alighieri: La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata
, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994 [1966–67]), vol. III. (This later edition has five minor changes to the text of this
cantica
, which is thus essentially the same as the earlier text.) All references to other works are keyed to the List of Works Cited found at the back of this volume (e.g., Aust.1933.1), with the exception of references to commentaries contained in the online Dartmouth Dante Project. Informational notes derived from Paget Toynbee’s
Concise Dante Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1914) are followed by the siglum (T) . References to the
Enciclopedia dantesca
, 6 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970–78) are indicated by the abbreviation
ED
. Commentaries by Robert Hollander are (at times) shorter versions of materials found in both the Princeton and the Dartmouth Dante Projects.
INTRODUCTION
----
(1)
History of Purgatory.
It is important that a contemporary reader realize that the word “purgatory,” as it is used in Dante’s poem, while indicating a location in which suffering occurs, is used to denote the place in which every single soul is in progress toward salvation. Thus the current American slang use of the term to indicate an experience of harsh punishment—as though it were hell—is not a useful indicator of what the reader will find in the second part of Dante’s
Comedy
. In that world, to come to purgatory is to arrive at the threshold of heaven, and to arrive there in a state of grace.
The idea of purgation has a far longer history as a concept than as a name for a place. Le Goff 1 finds the first use of the noun
Purgatorium
in a sermon of Petrus Comestor written between 1170 and 1180. Several biblical texts, however, combine to make two notions central: II Maccabees 12:39–45 suggests the efficacy of prayer for the dead, while Matthew (5:25–26, as well as 12:31–32) and Paul (I Corinthians 3:10–17) present at least a general sense of expiation postmortem. 2 In Paul’s words (3:13), “Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” Thus the purgatorial refining fire lay ready for later Christian thinkers as a way of conceptualizing the salvation of souls after the death of the body. This process bridges the time between death and the Last Judgment, a period that essentially remains a lacuna in the Bible itself. By Dante’s time, theologians who attempted to deal with the lack of definition of the precise nature of “particular judgment,” that is God’s judgment of the individual soul upon the death of the body, realized that they needed to establish the nature of the divine decision that separated sinners from the saved immediately after death, since the Bible only posits the final judgment as described in the Book of Revelation. And once posthumous expiation and the prayers of the living became the crucial facts that clarify, for believers, both their own hopes and their responsibility with regard to their loved ones, it was almost inevitable that someone should invent a physical place in which this expiation of the souls of the dead might occur.
Adding to the store of images for the development of a place to be known as “purgatory” are a series of visions of the otherworld, studied by such scholars as Rajna, 3 Le Goff, and Morgan. 4 Le Goff demonstrates the lateness of the development of purgatory as a distinct place, beginning perhaps with Petrus Comestor and St. Bernard ca. 1170–80, 5 and underlines the major role of Dante in establishing the later sense of the place and of its function. 6 Cherchi 7 has shown that, among these writers, Gervase of Tillbury in particular presented a separate world of purgation that had a number
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