Purgatorio · Canto XII ·
Purgatorio XII — The Pavement of Pride
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 46 of 100 · Purgatorio, Canto XII
Before reading
This is the canto in which the terrace of pride closes. The pilgrim has been bent double for three cantos, walking beside the souls who carry the weights of their own former arrogance crushed onto their backs. Here the burden is lifted. The first of the seven P's that an angel cut into his forehead at the gate is wiped away. The poem teaches him, and the reader, what penance is for.
Where the canto sits
Purgatory is a mountain of seven terraces, one for each of the deadly sins, climbed in order from the heaviest to the lightest — pride at the bottom, lust at the top. Each terrace runs the same threefold pattern: examples of the virtue opposite the sin, the punishment of the sin, examples of the sin defeated. Canto X gave the examples of humility carved into the inner wall. Canto XI walked the pilgrim among the burdened proud and gave him three of them by name. Canto XII gives the third panel: thirteen scenes of pride defeated, carved this time not into a wall but into the pavement under the pilgrim's feet. He has been told to look down — the orientation of every proud soul on this terrace is forcibly into the dust.
What it helps to know
The thirteen pavement reliefs run in a fixed order: four from scripture, four from classical myth and four more from a mixture, with the last reserved for Troy as the great civic figure. Lucifer falling, the giant Briareus, the war of the gods against the giants, Nimrod at Babel, Niobe, Saul, Arachne, Rehoboam, Eriphyle (Alcmaeon's mother), Sennacherib, Cyrus, Holofernes, Troy. Twelve named falls and one city.
The reliefs are organised by an acrostic that the Italian text makes visible and the English cannot. The first four tercets begin with Vedea — I saw — each starting with V. The next four begin with O — O Niobe! O Saul! O mad Arachne! O Rehoboam! The last four begin with Mostrava — Displayed — each starting with M. The thirteenth tercet, on Troy, begins with all three letters in three successive lines: Vedeva, O Ilïon, Mostrava. V O M — vom, the Italian root of vomit and the sound of falling. The whole catalogue of pride defeated spells, in its own first letters, the act of being thrown down.
At the close of the terrace stands an angel. He is the first angel of the Purgatorio's seven, one for each terrace gate. He will sing a phrase from the Beatitudes and beat his wing across the pilgrim's brow. Pay attention to which Beatitude. Each terrace's angel sings the Beatitude that corrects its sin; the seven beatitudes are the structural keystone of the mountain.
What to read for
Notice that the angel's wing erases not one but, in some sense, all the P's at once — the others fade with the first. Pride is the root sin; once it is purged, every other purgation runs lighter. Watch Dante report the lightening of his own step before he knows what has happened to his forehead. The poem stages grace as a fact felt in the legs before it is understood in the head.
Notice the geometry. The proud walked stooped; the angel makes the pilgrim upright; the stair rises. The body's posture is the canto's theology.
The canto is short. It is also the most formally constructed in the Commedia — a piece of medieval cathedral carving in verse. Read it slowly enough to feel the rhythm of I saw, I saw, I saw against O Niobe! O Saul! O Arachne! against Displayed, Displayed, Displayed. The repetition is the canto's argument.
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 closed the terrace of pride with the most formally constructed catalogue in the Commedia. Thirteen carved reliefs unrolled under the pilgrim's bent gaze — Lucifer falling from heaven, Briareus pierced by the celestial bolt, the giants scattered round their father, Nimrod at Babel, Niobe with her fourteen slain, Saul on Gilboa, Arachne half-spider, Rehoboam fleeing in his chariot, Eriphyle and the fatal necklace, Sennacherib in the temple, Tomyris drowning Cyrus in blood, the rout of Holofernes, Troy in ashes — and the canto then walked the pilgrim to a stair, sent an angel down the cleft, and lifted his bowed body upright with one stroke of a wing. The first of the seven P's was erased from his forehead and the others, by some mechanism the poem reports without explaining, immediately lightened. The body felt the lightening before the mind understood it. The whole canto is a piece of medieval cathedral floor in language — the most carved, the most patterned, the most ordered passage Dante ever wrote — and its argument is the argument of all penance: that what is fixed in stone can be lifted off the back of a living man.
The VOM acrostic and what the carving says about itself
The thirteen reliefs are arranged as four tercets that begin with Vedea (I saw), four that begin with O (vocative), and four that begin with Mostrava (Displayed). The thirteenth and final tercet, on Troy, runs all three letters in three successive lines — Vedea Troia, O Ilïon, Mostrava il segno. The first letters spell V O M, the Italian root of vomito, vomit, and the deeper root of the verb of being expelled, thrown out, cast down. The catalogue of pride defeated spells, in its own first letters, the act it depicts. The acrostic is invisible in any translation, including Longfellow's, but the formal triplicity — the three groups of four, the climactic thirteenth that contains all three — comes through on the English page if the reader looks for it. Dante is not only carving these falls into a fictional pavement; he is carving them into his own poem's spelling.
What it means that the proud must look down
For three cantos the pilgrim has walked beside the souls whose backs were bent to the ground under stones of their own former arrogance. In canto X the carved reliefs of humility were on the inner wall and the proud souls had to lift their heads, with great effort, to read them. In canto XII the reliefs of pride defeated are on the pavement, and the proud souls cannot avoid them — their bent posture has been redirected into instruction. The geometry is the doctrine. Penance in Dante's mountain is not punishment with a moral attached; it is the moral, enacted as posture. To be proud is to refuse to look down; to be cured of pride is to be made to look down until what is down has been read. The angel at the stair restores upright posture only after the reading has been done.
The angel, the Beatitude, the body
Each of Purgatory's seven terraces has its angel at the gate of the next, and each angel sings a Beatitude that corrects the sin just purged. The angel of this terrace sings Beati pauperes spiritu — blessed are the poor in spirit — the Beatitude that answers pride with the conscious renunciation of inflated selfhood. The angel beats his wing across the pilgrim's brow and the first P is gone. The mechanism is not explained. What the canto explains, instead, is what the body reports: the climb, which a moment before had felt heavy, is suddenly easy, and the pilgrim does not know why until Virgil tells him. My feet are so vanquished by good will. Grace, in the Purgatorio's scheme, is something the legs feel before the head understands. The poem stages the doctrine of unearned help as a sensation in muscle.
There is a second detail worth noticing. When Virgil explains what has happened, he tells Dante that the other P's almost obliterate will also be erased, terrace by terrace, but that they are already fainter because the first is gone. Pride is the root of every sin; once the root is cut, the others wither in advance. The mountain is built so that the climb gets easier the further it goes — the opposite, exactly, of the way Hell got harder the deeper it went. The body's experience of the Purgatorio and the body's experience of the Inferno run in opposite directions.
Famous and meaningful passages
The opening — the two poets walking yoked.
Abreast, like oxen going in a yoke, I with that heavy-laden soul went on, As long as the sweet pedagogue permitted. (Purg. XII.1–3)
The first image is of equality under labour. The pilgrim, walking bent beside a soul carrying a stone, has been yoked to penance even though he himself is not bound to its full duration. The sweet pedagogue is Virgil — the schoolmaster of the climb.
The fall of Lucifer.
I saw that one who was created noble More than all other creatures, down from heaven Flaming with lightnings fall upon one side. (Purg. XII.25–27)
The first relief, the first I saw. The greatest of created beings begins the catalogue of falls. Pride's fullest example is angelic, not human.
Niobe with her dead.
O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced, Between thy seven and seven children slain! (Purg. XII.37–39)
Niobe boasted that her fourteen children made her greater than Latona, mother only of two; Apollo and Artemis killed all fourteen. The line between thy seven and seven freezes her on the pavement at the exact moment of doubled bereavement.
Saul on Gilboa.
O Saul! how fallen upon thy proper sword Didst thou appear there lifeless in Gilboa, That felt thereafter neither rain nor dew! (Purg. XII.40–42)
Israel's first king kills himself with his own weapon on the mountain whose grass, by David's curse, would never grow again. The proud sword cuts itself.
Arachne mid-transformation.
O mad Arachne! so I thee beheld E'en then half spider, sad upon the shreds Of fabric wrought in evil hour for thee! (Purg. XII.43–45)
The Lydian weaver who challenged Athena and was changed for the boast. The carving catches her in mid-metamorphosis — half spider, sad upon the shreds — the most chilling small image in the canto.
Tomyris and Cyrus.
Displayed the ruin and the cruel carnage That Tomyris wrought, when she to Cyrus said, Blood didst thou thirst for, and with blood I glut thee! (Purg. XII.55–57)
The Scythian queen drowned the head of the Persian king in a skin full of blood. The line is delivered as her direct speech, the only voice quoted in the entire catalogue.
The keystone tercet — Troy.
I saw there Troy in ashes and in caverns; O Ilion! thee, how abject and debased, Displayed the image that is there discerned! (Purg. XII.61–63)
The thirteenth relief. Three lines, beginning with I saw, O, and Displayed — the entire acrostic of the catalogue condensed into one tercet. The greatest city of the classical imagination is the canto's last figure of pride brought low, and it is delivered with the full formal apparatus turned on at once.
The angel.
Towards us came the being beautiful Vested in white, and in his countenance Such as appears the tremulous morning star. (Purg. XII.88–90)
The first angel of the Purgatorio's seven, introduced with the morning-star simile. The angels of Purgatory are not the messengers of Inferno; they are the agents of grace stationed at each gate.
The wing on the brow.
He led us on to where the rock was cleft; There smote upon my forehead with his wings, Then a safe passage promised unto me. (Purg. XII.97–99)
The erasure is not gentle. Smote — the angel strikes the forehead. Grace, in this poem, is delivered as a blow.
The body's report.
Whence I: My Master, say, what heavy thing Has been uplifted from me, so that hardly Aught of fatigue is felt by me in walking? (Purg. XII.118–120)
The pilgrim climbs more easily and asks Virgil what has changed. The body has felt the lightening before the mind has caught up. This is one of the Commedia's purest small pictures of how unmerited help is actually experienced.
Virgil on the P's.
He answered: When the P's which have remained Still on thy face almost obliterate Shall wholly, as the first is, be erased, Thy feet will be so vanquished by good will, That not alone they shall not feel fatigue, But urging up will be to them delight. (Purg. XII.121–126)
The others are almost obliterate already. The mountain is built so that each purgation makes the next easier — the inverse curve of Hell's descent. Urging up will be to them delight is the canto's promise of what the climb will eventually feel like.
What to watch for
Watch the angels. There will be seven, one at each terrace gate, each striking off a P with a wing and each singing a different Beatitude. The catalogue of the seven is the structural backbone of the Purgatorio. The poor in spirit go first.
Watch the direction of difficulty. Inferno got harder the deeper it went; Purgatory gets easier the higher it goes. The next canto opens the terrace of envy, where the souls have their eyelids sewn shut with iron wire — and the pilgrim, lighter on his feet, will not feel quite the same gravity bearing on him that he felt down here.
Watch the formal experiment end. Canto XII is the only canto in the Commedia organised by acrostic. The poem will not try this trick again. Dante built it once, perfectly, and walked off the terrace.
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.