Purgatorio · Canto V ·
Purgatorio V — Jacopo in the Marsh
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 39 of 100 · Purgatorio, Canto V
Before reading
The pilgrim and Virgil have left Belacqua's rock behind and are climbing again. They meet a second group of late-repentant souls — those who died violently and confessed only in the last instant of life. Where canto IV met the indolent, canto V meets the murdered. Three named figures speak, each in turn, and each in fewer lines than the last. The canto is built like an accelerating series: the long speech, the shorter speech, the very brief speech. The third is one of the most quoted in all the Commedia.
Where the canto sits
You are still in Ante-Purgatory, still on the slope below the gate. The category being introduced is the morti per forza — the souls who died by violence, unshriven, with no priest at the deathbed and no time for any sacrament — and who, in the gap between the death-blow and the actual end of consciousness, turned their hearts to God. The cantica's doctrine, already laid down with Manfred, is being repeated and extended: God's mercy is wider than the world's verdict. Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms. The category here is the riskiest version of that mercy — the saints of the last second.
What it helps to know
Three named souls speak, all northern Italian, all caught up in the violence of late-thirteenth-century communal politics. A short word on each will help the canto land.
Jacopo del Cassero (c. 1260–1298) was a Guelph noble of Fano, on the Adriatic coast. As podestà of Bologna he had made enemies of the Marquis of Ferrara, Azzo VIII d'Este; while travelling, he was ambushed by the Marquis's men near the Paduan marshes, on a road through what was then called the bosco degli Antenori (the wood of the Antenori, near Padua). He bled out trying to flee through the mud. He asks the pilgrim to carry word back to Fano so the people there will pray for him.
Buonconte da Montefeltro was the son of Guido da Montefeltro — the Ghibelline strategist whom Dante consigns to the eighth circle of Hell (Inferno XXVII) for fraudulent counsel. The poem's authorial irony is precise: the father is in Hell, the son is on the mountain. Buonconte commanded the Ghibelline cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino on 11 June 1289 — a battle in which the young Dante himself fought, on the Florentine Guelph side. Buonconte's body was never found; the canto invents an answer to the mystery. His account ends with one of the cantica's most theologically loaded sentences.
La Pia is the most enigmatic of the three. The early commentators identify her as Pia de' Tolomei, a Sienese noblewoman, married first to one man and then to Nello d'Inghiramo dei Pannocchieschi, lord of the Maremma — the malarial coastal region of southern Tuscany. The tradition is that her second husband had her killed there, either by throwing her from a tower or by leaving her to die of malarial fever. Her speech is the canto's last and shortest: three lines, perhaps four. Almost nothing in those four lines is given as fact. Most of what is "known" about her comes from later poets and from Italian opera. Dante leaves her to speak for herself, and stops.
What to read for
Notice the canto's opening reprise of the shadow motif. The souls of canto V notice the shadow even faster than the souls of canto III did. The cantica is building a recognition system around Dante's body, and the system is by now familiar to the reader.
Notice the speeds of the three speeches. Jacopo speaks at length and asks for prayer; Buonconte speaks at greater intensity and shorter compass, and his speech is interrupted by the most dramatic single image in the early Purgatorio; La Pia speaks last, briefest, and refuses to accuse her killer by name. The compression is the canto's argument about grief: the more deeply the soul has been wronged, the less the soul says.
Listen for Buonconte's for one little tear. The whole doctrine of the cantica is in those four words. Listen for La Pia's he knoweth it. The whole code of feminine restraint in medieval Italian poetry is in those three.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto introduced the second great category of late-repentant souls — the morti per forza, the violently dead — and laid out, in a compressed accelerating sequence of three speeches, the cantica's most dramatic illustration of the doctrine first stated by Manfred. Where canto III made the case in royal-political register and canto IV made it in civic-comic register, canto V makes it in tragic register. Three people who died unshriven, two of them murdered, all of them with no time for any sacrament except an interior turning, are on the slope and on the way up. The canto's argument is the same as the previous two; its tone is the cantica's first true elegy.
The shadow scene returned
The canto opens by reprising the shadow motif of canto III. A new crowd of souls notices, with astonishment, that the sunshine on the left of him below is broken. But me, but me, and the light which was broken! The repetition is structural — the cantica is establishing, by triple iteration over three cantos, that the missing-shadow rule is universal and that every group of shades the pilgrim meets reacts to it the same way. By canto IX, when the angel-gatekeeper does not react this way, the contrast will be felt.
Jacopo, Buonconte, La Pia — three speeds of grief
The three speeches accelerate. Jacopo del Cassero gets the longest. He places himself geographically (Fano, on the Adriatic), names his killer obliquely (the Marquis d'Este of Ferrara), describes his death in detail (caught in the marshes near Padua, bleeding out trying to flee through the reeds), and asks for prayers. The speech is the longest because Jacopo had the most time to think about what he was about to lose; he had been hunted, knew he was hunted, and tried until the last to escape.
Buonconte da Montefeltro gets the middle-length speech and the most dramatic content. He was the son of Guido da Montefeltro — the Ghibelline captain consigned by Dante to the eighth circle of Hell for fraudulent counsel (Inferno XXVII). The poem's authorial irony is exact: father in Hell, son on the mountain. Buonconte commanded the Ghibelline cavalry at Campaldino on 11 June 1289 — the battle in which the twenty-four-year-old Dante himself fought, on the Florentine Guelph side. The historical mystery the canto answers is that Buonconte's body was never found. Buonconte's afterlife testimony is that he fell pierced through the throat at the bank of the river Archiano, and there my sight lost I, and my utterance / ceased in the name of Mary, and thereat I fell. An angel of God seized his soul; the devil, cheated, took out his revenge on the body, summoning a storm-flood down the river that washed the corpse to the Arno and undid the soldierly cross his arms had made in death. The detail is the cantica's most baroque single image of the dispute over a soul, and it carries the doctrine in its sharpest form.
La Pia gets four lines. She does not name her killer. She does not describe her death. She does not ask for prayer. Siena made me, unmade me Maremma; he knoweth it, who had encircled first, espousing me, my finger with his gem. The killer is named only by his ring. The whole convention of feminine restraint in medieval Italian poetry, the whole pressure of the donna gentile ideal, the whole dignity of the wronged wife who refuses to incriminate her husband — every one of these is packed into the he knoweth it. The canto's most quoted figure is the one who says the least.
The angel and the devil, and the doctrine in its sharpest form
The image at the centre of Buonconte's speech — the angel who seized the soul and the devil who shouted thou bearest away the eternal part of him, for one poor little tear, that takes him from me — is the cantica's most explicit visualisation of how Purgatorial salvation works. The doctrine is precise: the smallest interior gesture of contrition is sufficient. One poor little tear — per una lagrimetta. The diminutive is decisive. The cantica's economy is not graded; the threshold is qualitative, not quantitative. A genuine turning at the last instant is, by canon law in Dante's hand, salvific.
The image's other implication is darker. The devil's complaint is that he has been cheated by the timing — he had counted on Buonconte, would have counted on him correctly given the visible life, and was caught out by the interior tear. The cantica is committing itself, here, to the proposition that no observer — not even Hell's accountants — can correctly predict who is saved. The corollary is uncomfortable: nor can the Church's. Manfred's case was the political version of this principle; Buonconte's is the metaphysical one.
La Pia and the canto's refusal to fill the silence
The most extraordinary thing about La Pia's four lines is what they do not contain. The early commentators identify her as Pia de' Tolomei, a Sienese noblewoman married to Nello d'Inghiramo dei Pannocchieschi, lord of one of the Maremma's malarial castles; the tradition is that her husband had her killed there. Almost everything later poets and operas have written about her is not in Dante. What Dante gives her is: a name, a city, a region, a wedding ring, and the phrase he knoweth it. The poem's refusal to elaborate is the canto's most authored gesture. La Pia keeps the privacy of her death even from the man who will write her into world literature. The cantica respects that privacy. The reader is left with the small bright image of the ring she is turning and with nothing else.
Famous and meaningful passages
The shadow noticed.
I had already from those shades departed, And followed in the footsteps of my Guide, When from behind, pointing his finger at me, One shouted: See, it seems as if shone not The sunshine on the left of him below, And like one living seems he to conduct him. Mine eyes I turned at utterance of these words, And saw them watching with astonishment But me, but me, and the light which was broken! (Purg. V.1–9)
The shadow motif made into a small theatre piece. But me, but me — pur me, pur me — the soul's astonishment doubled in the verb.
Jacopo del Cassero asks for prayer.
Pray thee, if ever thou dost see the land That 'twixt Romagna lies and that of Charles, Thou be so courteous to me of thy prayers In Fano, that they pray for me devoutly, That I may purge away my grave offences. (Purg. V.68–72, approx.)
The same request Manfred made: carry word to my people, that they may pray for me. The cantica's economy in its most matter-of-fact register.
Jacopo's death in the marsh.
From thence was I; but the deep wounds, through which Issued the blood wherein I had my seat, Were dealt me in bosom of the Antenori. (Purg. V.73–75, approx.)
The blood wherein I had my seat — il sangue dov' io avea mia sedia — a Stoic-Aristotelian commonplace (the soul seated in the blood) deployed here with great elegance.
Buonconte at the Archiano.
At Casentino's foot A river crosses named Archiano, born Above the Hermitage in Apennine. There where the name thereof becometh void Did I arrive, pierced through and through the throat, Fleeing on foot, and bloodying the plain; There my sight lost I, and my utterance Ceased in the name of Mary, and thereat I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained. (Purg. V.94–102, approx.)
The geography is exact: the Archiano joins the Arno just below the monastery of Camaldoli, at which point it loses its name. Ceased in the name of Mary. The final word of the dying man's life is the canto's hinge.
The angel and the devil.
God's Angel took me up, and he of hell Shouted: O thou from heaven, why dost thou rob me? Thou bearest away the eternal part of him, For one poor little tear, that takes him from me; But with the rest I'll deal in other fashion! (Purg. V.104–108, approx.)
Per una lagrimetta. The diminutive carries the cantica's doctrine. One small tear of genuine contrition is the threshold. The devil's complaint is, theologically, the poem's confirmation.
La Pia's four lines.
Do thou remember me who am the Pia; Siena made me, unmade me Maremma; He knoweth it, who had encircled first, Espousing me, my finger with his gem. (Purg. V.133–136)
The most quoted brief speech in the cantica. Ricorditi di me — remember me. The killer is named only as he who. The wedding ring is the only physical detail. The canto stops.
What to watch for
Watch the prayers from the living for the dead. Jacopo asks for them by city; Manfred had asked for them by daughter. Every named soul on this slope is asking the reader, through the pilgrim, for the same favour. By the time you reach the gate in canto IX, you will have been asked four or five times.
Watch the Buonconte image. The angel-versus-devil dispute over a single soul is rare in the Commedia; Dante usually allows the doctrine of immediate post-mortem judgment to be invisible. Here he stages it. The staging is for the doctrine's hardest case.
Watch what is not said. La Pia's silence about her husband is the cantica's first lesson in what restraint sounds like. Later, on the terrace of pride (canto XI), the great Sienese name Provenzano Salvani will be remembered for an act of public self-abasement; the contrast between Sienese pride and Pia of Siena's reticence is part of the cantica's slow argument about Tuscan cities.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.