Purgatorio XXV — The Stairway and the Question

Before reading

The three poets climb the stairway from gluttony to the seventh and last cornice. On the way, the pilgrim asks the question that has been waiting since canto XXIII: how can a shade, which has no body, look so wasted? The question gets the longest sustained piece of doctrinal lecture in the Purgatorio. Virgil tries to start; admits he can only get partway; and hands the question to Statius. Statius, silent for four cantos, now answers.

Where the canto sits

The poem is now within sight of the summit. The seventh cornice — lust — is the last before the angel-stair to the Earthly Paradise. Before we arrive, the Commedia pauses to settle an Aristotelian-Thomist problem the previous terrace forced into view. Gluttony was about the body; if there is no body, what was being purged? The canto answers the question the only way a poem can — by reciting a piece of scholastic doctrine in verse.

What it helps to know

The doctrine being recited is the formation of the rational soul, drawn principally from Aristotle's De anima and De generatione animalium and from St Thomas Aquinas's Summa and Quaestiones disputatae. The sequence is technical. A simplified version of what Statius will say:

Generation. The father's seed carries an active virtue — a forming power — which works on the mother's blood (the passive matter) and shapes it into the embryo.
Vegetative soul. The embryo first lives as a plant.
Sensitive soul. It becomes capable of sensation, like a sea-fungus, then organs form.
Rational soul. When the brain is complete, God himself breathes in a new spirit — a rational soul, infused directly, not produced by the father. This soul takes up the vegetative and sensitive faculties already present and unifies them into one.
After death. When the soul leaves the body, it carries with it its memory, intellect, and will. Around the soul, the surrounding air organises itself into a shade-body that mimics the lost flesh well enough that the soul can use it — speak, weep, hunger — exactly as it once used the body.

The detail to hold onto is the direct infusion of the rational soul by God. This is the move that solves the embryological problem the canto names — how from animal it man becomes thou dost not see as yet — and the move that the canto identifies as the error of the great philosopher who made the soul from possible intellect separate. That philosopher is Averroes, the twelfth-century Andalusian Aristotelian whom medieval Christendom called the Commentator. Averroes had argued that the intellect is a single shared substance, separate from the individual person; Aquinas had argued, against him, that each person's rational soul is individually infused and individually immortal. The canto sides with Aquinas in a single tercet.

Two other small notes. Meleager, mentioned early in the canto, was the hero of Calydon whose life was bound to a brand burning on the hearth; when his mother burnt it, he died. The mention is one of the canto's two analogies for how a body's state can depend on something other than its food. The second is the mirror — trembles within a mirror your own image. Both analogies argue that the body need not be the only matter on which suffering inscribes itself.

What to read for

Notice how careful Virgil is to admit what he cannot answer. If I unfold to him the eternal vengeance, says Statius before answering, where thou present art, be my excuse that I can naught deny thee. Virgil cannot speak the doctrine because Virgil could not have known it. Statius can speak it because Statius is, by the Commedia's fiction, a secret Christian. The canto is making the same theological point with its narrative structure that it makes with its content.

Notice the seventh cornice when it arrives. The whole terrace is a wall of fire and the souls walk through it, singing. They have to walk in single file along a narrow ledge between the fire and a drop. The image is severe and the poem treats it with restraint; the great encounters here belong to the next canto.

Listen for the hymn the souls sing. Summae Deus clementiae — God of supreme mercy — and then the cry Virum non cognosco — I know not a man, the words of Mary to Gabriel at the Annunciation, which the terrace uses as its example of chastity. The penance is being sung in Latin.

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 pilgrim asked, on the stair between two cornices, how a shade can be wasted by hunger. Virgil began the answer, admitted the limit of what he could say, and handed the question to Statius. Statius gave the longest single piece of scholastic exposition in the Purgatorio — a tour through the formation of the soul from seed to shade — and the three then stepped onto the seventh cornice, where the wall of fire of lust waited. The canto is structurally unlike its neighbours: it is mostly talk, mostly doctrine, and mostly Statius. It is also the canto in which the Commedia permits itself, openly, to be a poem of school philosophy. The reader who is impatient with Aquinas in tercets will be impatient here.

Why the question is being asked

The previous terrace gave us shades so emaciated that their faces had wasted to bone. The poem's reader is allowed to ask: how, if these shades have no real bodies, can they look starved? The same question stands behind every physical event in the Commedia — Francesca weeping, Marco Lombardo in a smoke that stings the eyes, Belacqua sitting in shadow. The canto stops the action to settle it once. The answer it gives will hold for the rest of the poem.

The two starts and the handing-over

Virgil starts the answer with two cautious analogies — Meleager's brand, which burned away the hero's life by burning away its hearth-token; and the image in the mirror, which trembles when the body trembles. Both are arguments that a body's state can depend on something outside itself. Virgil offers them as a sketch and admits he is not equal to the rest: Lo Statius here; and him I call and pray he now will be the healer of thy wounds. The handing-over is one of the Commedia's small dramatic gifts. Virgil, who has lectured on every terrace before this, here yields the lectern to the Christian poet for the first time. Watch how often, between this canto and the disappearance at canto XXX, Virgil gives way without being asked.

What Statius actually says

The exposition has a clean shape. The perfect blood — what the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition called the seed — is the residue of nutrition that has not been used by the body. In the male, it carries an active virtue: the power to form. In the act of generation, this seed drops on another's blood in natural vase — that is, into the woman's blood, which is the passive matter. The seed's active virtue shapes the matter into an embryo, first making it a vegetative soul (like a plant), then a sensitive soul (like a sea-fungus), then beginning to organise the powers of the body.

But at this point the doctrine has a problem. The vegetative and sensitive faculties can be produced by the parents' contribution alone, because vegetable and animal life can be produced by natural causes. The rational soul — the soul that thinks and is immortal — cannot be produced by any natural cause, because it is not a material thing. The question is: where does the rational soul come from?

Statius answers it with the doctrine the canto is built around. Just as soon as in the foetus the articulation of the brain is perfect, the primal Motor turns to it well pleased at so great art of nature, and inspires a spirit new with virtue all replete. God himself infuses the rational soul directly. The new spirit attracts into its substance the vegetative and sensitive powers already there, and the result is one soul, which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves. The single human soul thus has three faculties — plant, animal, rational — but one substance, infused at the moment the brain is complete.

The detail that the canto pauses on is the separate intellect error. This is a point which made a wiser man than thou once err so far, that in his doctrine separate he made the soul from possible intellect. The wiser man is Averroes, the great Andalusian commentator on Aristotle. Averroes had argued that the intellect is a single substance shared by all human beings, separate from the individual person — which would make personal immortality impossible. Aquinas spent the bulk of his career arguing against this position; the Commedia states the Thomist alternative in three tercets and moves on.

What happens at death

When Lachesis — the Fate who measures the thread — runs out of thread, the soul separates from the flesh, and virtually bears with itself the human and divine. The senses are gone. The memory, the intelligence, and the will in action far more vigorous than before. The soul travels of its own accord to one of two shores — the mouth of Acheron for the damned, the mouth of Tiber for the saved (canto II of Purgatorio recounted the latter). Once arrived, the soul's informative virtue shapes the surrounding air into a shade-body — a body of air, but a body all the same, with all the organs of sense, including sight. Thence is it that we speak, and thence we laugh; thence is it that we form the tears and sighs that on the mountain thou mayhap hast heard.

The doctrine retroactively makes sense of everything the reader has seen so far. Francesca had a body of air, with eyes that wept; Forese had a body of air, with bones that showed; the angels have bodies of air, with mouths that sing. The Commedia is now licensed to depict the otherworld in physical terms while having already, here, defined the metaphysics by which the depiction is possible.

Statius and the limit of Virgil

The handing-over has a quiet theological meaning. Virgil is, in the Commedia's economy, the limit of natural reason. He can take the pilgrim to the top of Purgatory but no further into Heaven; he can answer most questions about the otherworld but he cannot answer this one. The reason is precise: the doctrine of the direct infusion of the rational soul by God is a Christian doctrine. Pagan philosophy — Aristotle on his own, Averroes after him — could not arrive at it. Virgil knows the embryology up to the sensitive soul; he does not know the moment God breathes the rational soul in. Statius, by the Commedia's fiction a secret Christian since the time of Domitian, can speak the part Virgil cannot. The structure of the canto is the doctrine.

Famous and meaningful passages

The little stork.

And as the little stork that lifts its wing With a desire to fly, and does not venture To leave the nest, and lets it downward droop, Even such was I, with the desire of asking Kindled and quenched, unto the motion coming He makes who doth address himself to speak. (Purg. XXV.10–15)

The pilgrim figured as a young bird unable to commit to its question. One of the Commedia's small zoological similes for moral hesitation.

The handing-over.

Lo Statius here; and him I call and pray He now will be the healer of thy wounds. (Purg. XXV.29–30)

Virgil names his own limit and yields to the Christian poet. The first of the cantica's several small abdications.

The Averroistic error.

But how from animal it man becomes Thou dost not see as yet; this is a point Which made a wiser man than thou once err So far, that in his doctrine separate He made the soul from possible intellect, For he no organ saw by this assumed. (Purg. XXV.61–66)

Averroes named in a single tercet. The separated intellect refuted in three lines.

The infusion of the soul.

Open thy breast unto the truth that's coming, And know that, just as soon as in the foetus The articulation of the brain is perfect, The primal Motor turns to it well pleased At so great art of nature, and inspires A spirit new with virtue all replete, Which what it finds there active doth attract Into its substance, and becomes one soul, Which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves. (Purg. XXV.67–75)

The doctrinal heart of the canto. God infuses the rational soul directly at the moment the brain is complete; the new soul absorbs the vegetative and sensitive faculties already present; the result is one substance with three faculties.

The shade-body.

And even as the air, when full of rain, By alien rays that are therein reflected, With divers colours shows itself adorned, So there the neighbouring air doth shape itself Into that form which doth impress upon it Virtually the soul that has stood still. ... Since afterwards it takes from this its semblance, It is called shade; and thence it organizes Thereafter every sense, even to the sight. Thence is it that we speak, and thence we laugh; Thence is it that we form the tears and sighs, That on the mountain thou mayhap hast heard. (Purg. XXV.91–96, 100–105)

The shade as a body of air, organised by the soul's informative virtue. The metaphysics of every face and tear in the Commedia stated in plain terms.

The cornice as climate.

There the embankment shoots forth flames of fire, And upward doth the cornice breathe a blast That drives them back, and from itself sequesters. Hence we must needs go on the open side, And one by one; and I did fear the fire On this side, and on that the falling down. (Purg. XXV.112–117)

The seventh cornice in mechanical terms. A wall of fire and a counter-wind and a narrow walkable ledge.

The hymn and the cry of chastity.

Summae Deus clementiae, in the bosom Of the great burning chanted then I heard, Which made me no less eager to turn round; And spirits saw I walking through the flame… After the close which to that hymn is made, Aloud they shouted, Virum non cognosco; Then recommenced the hymn with voices low. (Purg. XXV.121–124, 127–129)

The hymn of the supreme mercy of God and the cry I know not a man — Mary's words to Gabriel at the Annunciation, here the terrace's primary example of chastity.

What to watch for

Watch the file in the fire. The next canto will give us the two specific poets the pilgrim meets there — Guido Guinizelli and Arnaut Daniel — and the conversation will resume the dolce stil novo argument that XXIV opened.

Watch Statius. He has spoken his great lecture and will not speak again at length until after Virgil is gone. The canto has used him as Virgil's substitute; the next cantos will keep him in the background until the substitution becomes permanent.

Watch the shade-body doctrine come back. Every time hereafter that you see a soul weep, sing, embrace, or look starved, the canto you have just read is what permits the picture.

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.