Purgatorio XXXII — The Tree Renewed

Before reading

The personal scene is over. The pageant moves. The chariot turns; the procession reverses; the whole company crosses the garden to the foot of a tall bare tree, where the Griffin binds the chariot's pole and the tree blossoms. Then a sequence of attacks begins. The canto ends in one of the most unrelenting allegorical pictures in the Commedia: a whore seated on the chariot and a giant standing beside her, dragging the whole apparatus into the forest.

Where the canto sits

This is the fifth of the six cantos of the Earthly Paradise. Cantos XXX and XXXI handled the personal centre of the Commedia — the arrival of Beatrice, the disappearance of Virgil, the confession, the crossing. Cantos XXXII and XXXIII handle the political one — the history of the Church and the prophecy of its renewal. The chariot of the Church is about to be put through its history in figures.

What it helps to know

The tree the procession reaches is the tree of Eden — the tree of which Eve ate, named in canto XXIV — its branches now bare, despoiled of blooms and other leafage on each bough. The Griffin binds the chariot's pole to this tree, the widowed bough, and the tree at once blossoms into colours less than rose and more than violet. The image is doctrinal. Christ (the Griffin) re-attaches the Church (the chariot) to the tree (the Law, both natural and revealed) that human sin had stripped. The fruit of the Law that Adam lost is renewed when the Church is bound to it.

The sequence of attacks that follows is the Commedia's allegory of the history of the Church. Each attack maps to a historical event:

• The eagle of Jove descends through the tree, rending away the bark, as well as blossoms and the foliage new, and smites the chariot — the early Roman persecutions of the Church under the pagan emperors (Nero, Domitian, Diocletian).
• A fox leaps into the chariot's body — the early heresies (Arianism, Manichaeism) that crept in from within and were driven out by Beatrice, who scolds the fox until it flees as swift as such a fleshless skeleton could bear.
• The eagle descends again and leaves the chariot feathered with his plumes — the Donation of Constantine, the (forged) document by which Emperor Constantine was supposed to have given temporal authority over the western provinces to Pope Sylvester I. Dante regarded the Donation as the most catastrophic event in Christian history — the moment the Church accepted political power and was permanently disfigured by it. A voice from heaven laments: My little bark, how badly art thou freighted.
• A dragon erupts from below and tears out part of the chariot's floor with its barbed tail — read variously as the rise of Islam, or as the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western churches.
• The chariot regrows feathers everywhere from the eagle's old plumes and sprouts seven heads — the seven deadly sins, now lodged in the body of the corrupted Church; three on the pole and one at either corner, the three horned like oxen (representing sins against the neighbour) and the four single-horned (sins against the self).
• A whore appears seated on the chariot, with a giant standing beside her, kissing her: the whore is the corrupt papacy (perhaps Boniface VIII, perhaps Clement V), the giant is the French monarchy (the Capetian kings Philip IV the Fair and his son), and the kissing-and-jealousy is the Avignon Captivity — the move of the papacy from Rome to Avignon (1309–1377) under French control.
• The giant drags the whore and the chariot into the forest — the final image of the canto, and the Commedia's most condensed picture of what Dante regarded as the worst political disaster of his own century.

The whore-and-giant scene is a deliberate echo of the Whore of Babylon from Revelation 17. Dante's reading is severer than most medieval glosses: the Commedia identifies the institutional Church under French domination as itself the Whore of Babylon prophesied by the Apocalypse.

What to read for

Listen for the moment Beatrice gives Dante his commission. For that world's good which liveth ill, fix on the car thine eyes, and what thou seest, having returned to earth, take heed thou write. Beatrice is sending Dante back to earth as a scribe of what he is about to see. The political allegory of the chariot's transformation is being commissioned by Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise. The whole Commedia will, by its own self-account, be the writing-down of what was seen here.

Notice that the canto begins with the eyes of Beatrice the pilgrim has been allowed to see, and that he has been staring at them in decennial thirst — the ten-year thirst of a man who has not seen Beatrice since she died in 1290. The unveiling has reached the first beauty, the eyes. The canto withholds the second (the smile) until the procession has moved.

Notice the strange sleep in the middle of the canto. Dante falls asleep at the foot of the tree and wakes to find the chariot already at its tree-bound station and Beatrice seated alone on the ground beside it. The sleep is not a third dream — it is a gap the canto inserts to mark the transition from the personal scene to the political one. The poem is telling the reader that the change of register requires unconsciousness to bridge.

Listen for the voice from heaven at the moment of the Donation. My little bark, how badly art thou freighted. The Church called a little bark (navicella) is the apostolic image of Peter's boat. The lament is for what the boat now carries.

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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.

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After reading

What the canto did

The personal scene was put away and the political one began. The procession moved; the Griffin tied the chariot to a tall bare tree; the tree blossomed. Then the chariot was attacked, in sequence, by an eagle, a fox, an eagle returning to deposit feathers, a dragon, a sprouting of seven beast-heads, a seated whore and a standing giant. The giant dragged the whole thing into the forest. The canto closes there. Read at the level of moral fable the chariot is the Church and the attacks are its history; read at the level of political prophecy the canto is the Commedia's most condensed indictment of the institution Dante held responsible for his exile. Both readings are correct.

The tree, the Griffin, and the restoration

The procession reaches a tall tree that the canto identifies as the tree of which Eve ate — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Its branches are bare. The Griffin binds the chariot's pole to this tree, the widowed bough, and the tree blossoms at once into a colour less than rose and more than violet. The image is the Commedia's most condensed picture of the doctrine of salvation. The tree is the Law (natural and revealed) that Adam stripped by his sin. Christ (the Griffin) re-attaches the Church (the chariot) to the Law and the Law renews itself. Thus is preserved the seed of all the just, the Griffin says. The whole tree of the human Law is alive again because the Church it generated is bound to its root.

The detail of the Griffin's not eating the fruit matters. Blessed art thou, O Griffin, who dost not pluck with thy beak these branches sweet to taste, since appetite by this was turned to evil. The Griffin restrains the appetite that ruined Eden. The doctrine — that Christ honoured the Law he came to fulfil — is rendered as an animal not eating.

The renewal-image had a long medieval afterlife. The crucifix tradition that represented the Cross as a living tree with leaves and blossoms (the lignum vitae of the Franciscan iconography) is partly the heir of this scene. The poem is doing in figures what the Franciscan illuminators did in paint.

The sleep that breaks the canto

In the middle of the canto, Dante falls asleep at the foot of the tree. The poem refuses to describe the sleep — Had I the power to paint how fell asleep those eyes compassionless, of Syrinx hearing, those eyes to which more watching cost so dear, even as a painter who from model paints I would portray how I was lulled asleep; he may, who well can picture drowsihood. The reference is to Argus, the hundred-eyed watcher whom Mercury (Hermes) lulled to sleep with the story of the nymph Syrinx and the god Pan, and then beheaded. The simile is doing work the poem will not say aloud: Dante has just described his eyes' attention to Beatrice as decennial thirst — a thirst of ten years — and now those same eyes are being lulled asleep. The canto's silence about how the sleep came is the silence Mercury required to behead Argus. Something in the pilgrim is being put down before the political vision can be raised.

He wakes to a splendour and a voice — Rise, what dost thou? — and to a comparison drawn from the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (Matthew 17). Peter, James and John fell asleep on the mountain and woke to find Christ alone, Moses and Elijah gone. So Dante wakes to find Matelda standing over him, the procession dispersed, and Beatrice seated alone on the ground beside the tree. Where's Beatrice? the pilgrim asks. The whole structure of the wake is the structure of the apostles' wake after the Transfiguration. The political vision the canto is about to give will therefore be read against the apocalyptic register of the gospels.

The history of the Church in figures

What follows is the Commedia's allegorical history of the Church, given in seven images.

The eagle of Jove. I beheld the bird of Jove descend down through the tree, rending away the bark, as well as blossoms and the foliage new, and he with all his might the chariot smote. The Roman eagle, symbol of the pagan empire, attacks the Church from above. The reference is to the persecutions of the early Christians under Nero, Domitian, Decius, Diocletian — the period in which the Roman state and the Roman Church were enemies.

The fox. Thereafter saw I leap into the body of the triumphal vehicle a fox, that seemed unfed with any wholesome food. The early heresies — Arianism, Manichaeism, the Gnostic schools — that crept into the Church from within. Beatrice drives the fox out as such a fleshless skeleton could bear. The orthodox councils (Nicaea 325, Constantinople 381) corrected the doctrinal lapses and expelled the heretics.

The eagle's return. Then by the way that it before had come, into the chariot's chest I saw the eagle descend, and leave it feathered with his plumes. The most catastrophic image in the canto. The Roman eagle returns, no longer in persecution but in donation: the Emperor Constantine deposits the feathers — the temporal power of the western empire — into the chariot. The reference is to the so-called Donation of Constantine, the document by which (according to medieval tradition) Constantine, on being baptised, gave Pope Sylvester I temporal authority over Rome and the western provinces. The document was later shown to be a forgery (Lorenzo Valla, 1440), but in Dante's day it was widely believed. Dante regarded it as the worst event in Christian history. Inferno XIX had named it explicitly: Ah Constantine, of how much ill was mother, not thy conversion, but those rich domains that the first wealthy Father took from thee! Here in Purgatorio XXXII the image is more terrible because it is wordless: the eagle simply leaves the chariot feathered. The voice from heaven that follows is the closest the canto comes to commentary. My little bark, how badly art thou freighted. The boat of Peter — apostolic, small, light — is now weighed down by temporal possessions it was never built to carry.

The dragon. Methought, then, that the earth did yawn between both wheels, and I saw rise from it a dragon, who through the chariot upward fixed his tail. The dragon has been variously read — Muhammad and the rise of Islam (the seventh-century loss of the eastern Christian territories), the Great Schism between East and West (1054), or Satan operating directly. The poem permits all three. The dragon draws out the floor of the chariot, leaving a hole in it; the Church is now physically incomplete.

The seven beast-heads. Transfigured thus the holy edifice thrust forward heads upon the parts of it, three on the pole and one at either corner. The first were horned like oxen; but the four had but a single horn upon the forehead. The seven deadly sins now visibly grow out of the Church's body. The three two-horned heads (pride, envy, wrath — the sins against the neighbour) are at the pole because they are at the front of the apparatus's driving; the four single-horned heads (avarice, gluttony, lust, sloth — the sins against the self) are at the corners.

The whore and the giant. Firm as a rock upon a mountain high, seated upon it, there appeared to me a shameless whore, with eyes swift glancing round, and, as if not to have her taken from him, upright beside her I beheld a giant; and ever and anon they kissed each other. The whore is the Commedia's identification of the corrupted papacy with the Whore of Babylon of Revelation 17. The giant is the French monarchy — specifically Philip IV the Fair (king 1285–1314), whose conflict with Boniface VIII and whose support for the move of the papacy to Avignon under Clement V (1309) Dante regarded as the worst political event of his lifetime. The kissing is the alliance of papal and French power; the giant's jealousy when the whore glances at Dante is the French jealousy of any voice that would call the papacy back from Avignon. The final image — he loosed the monster, and across the forest dragged it so far — is the Avignon Captivity (1309–1377): the papacy literally moved out of Rome by the French king, into the forest of foreign captivity.

What the commission says

Halfway through the canto Beatrice gives Dante the commission that defines the Commedia. Therefore, for that world's good which liveth ill, fix on the car thine eyes, and what thou seest, having returned to earth, take heed thou write. The political allegory that follows is being commanded by Beatrice. The pilgrim, who has been the recipient of the vision, is here turned into its scribe. The whole Commedia is, by its own internal account, the writing-down of what Dante was commissioned to see in the Earthly Paradise.

The commission has a political theology of its own. The pilgrim is not commissioned to pray, or to fast, or to reform himself. He is commissioned to write what he sees for the benefit of that world's good which liveth ill. The reformation of Christendom is here delegated to literature. The Commedia is a poem that claims itself as an act of public political theology, commissioned by a woman in the garden of Eden, addressed to the world that is corrupting itself by following the whore and the giant.

The orthodox reading: Beatrice is a divine messenger, and the commission is therefore divinely sanctioned. The more searching reading: Dante is, in writing this canto, granting himself the commission by putting it in Beatrice's mouth — and the Commedia is, by its own poetic act, the strongest claim a layman ever made for the political authority of literature. Both readings hold. The canto does not separate them.

Famous and meaningful passages

The ten years' thirst.

So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes In satisfying their decennial thirst, That all my other senses were extinct… (Purg. XXXII.1–3)

The pilgrim staring at Beatrice's eyes after ten years (1290–1300) of not seeing her. The unveiling has reached its first beauty.

The Griffin who does not eat.

Blessed art thou, O Griffin, who dost not Pluck with thy beak these branches sweet to taste, Since appetite by this was turned to evil. (Purg. XXXII.43–45)

Christ honouring the Law he came to fulfil. The restraint that restores what appetite ruined.

The renewal.

Less than of rose and more than violet A hue disclosing, was renewed the tree That had erewhile its boughs so desolate. (Purg. XXXII.58–60)

The tree of Eden blossoms when the Church is bound to it. The colour is named in negatives because the renewal exceeds any single colour.

The Transfiguration analogy.

As to behold the apple-tree in blossom Which makes the Angels greedy for its fruit, And keeps perpetual bridals in the Heaven, Peter and John and James conducted were… (Purg. XXXII.73–76)

The waking from sleep figured as the disciples' waking after the Transfiguration. The political vision that follows is read against the apocalyptic register of the gospel.

The commission.

Therefore, for that world's good which liveth ill, Fix on the car thine eyes, and what thou seest, Having returned to earth, take heed thou write. (Purg. XXXII.103–105)

The Commedia's self-defining commission. The pilgrim is sent back to earth as the scribe of what he is about to see.

The voice from heaven.

And such as issues from a heart that mourns, A voice from Heaven there issued, and it said: My little bark, how badly art thou freighted! (Purg. XXXII.127–129)

The lament for the Donation of Constantine. The apostolic boat weighed down by the goods it was not built to carry.

The whore.

Firm as a rock upon a mountain high, Seated upon it, there appeared to me A shameless whore, with eyes swift glancing round, And, as if not to have her taken from him, Upright beside her I beheld a giant; And ever and anon they kissed each other. (Purg. XXXII.148–153)

The corrupted papacy and the French monarchy. The Whore of Babylon iconography applied to the institutional Church.

The dragging.

Then full of jealousy, and fierce with wrath, He loosed the monster, and across the forest Dragged it so far, he made of that alone A shield unto the whore and the strange beast. (Purg. XXXII.157–160)

The Avignon Captivity. The Church physically removed from its Roman seat by its French paramour.

What to watch for

Watch Beatrice's prophecy. The next canto opens with Beatrice's Vidi e però ti scrivo and immediately gives the famous Veltro-related prophecy of the Cinquecento Diece e Cinque — the Five Hundred, Ten, and Five that will come to slay the whore and the giant.

Watch Dante's drinking. The pilgrim has drunk of Lethe in the previous canto; he must still drink of Eunoë (which restores memory of the good) before leaving the garden. The last of the cantica is built around this second drinking.

Watch the verb write. Vidi e però ti scrivo — I saw and therefore I write. The Beatrice of canto XXXIII will use the verb deliberately as the Commedia's justification.

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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.