Purgatorio XXXIII — The Prophecy

Before reading

The last canto of Purgatorio. The whore and the giant are gone with the chariot; Beatrice has been left alone at the foot of the abandoned tree, ringed by the seven nymphs. She rises and begins to walk. The pilgrim, Statius, and Matelda follow. Beatrice will give one prophecy, one rebuke, one explanation; the pilgrim will be brought to the second river of the garden and made to drink. The cantica ends on the same word Inferno ended on — stelle, stars.

Where the canto sits

This is the final canto of the Purgatorio and the last canto before the Paradiso. The pilgrim has been on the mountain for three and a half days; the journey has covered seven cornices, the angel-stair, the Earthly Paradise, the great central pageant, the confession, the political vision. He is about to leave Purgatory. The structure of the canto is fast — three movements in 145 lines. The whole cantica is being closed.

What it helps to know

The canto opens on the procession's response to what canto XXXII showed. The seven nymphs sing Deus, venerunt gentes — Psalm 79, opening: O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled. The psalm is the standard medieval lament over a desecrated Jerusalem; the nymphs apply it to the Avignon-captive Church. Beatrice answers them by quoting Christ in John 16:16 — Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum, modicum, et vos videbitis me: a little while, and ye shall not see me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see me. In the gospel Christ is preparing the disciples for his death and resurrection. In the canto Beatrice is preparing the seven nymphs for a longer absence — the Church's exile and eventual restoration.

Then Beatrice prophesies, more or less directly. She names a Five-hundred, Ten, and Five — in Latin numerals DXV — sent from God, who shall slay the thievish woman and that same giant who is sinning with her. The cipher has been read for seven centuries. The standard readings:

• DXV rearranged is DVX — Dux, Leader. Beatrice is naming a coming political leader.
• The leader is Henry VII of Luxembourg (1275–1313), Holy Roman Emperor 1308–1313, whose Italian campaign Dante invested in passionately as the restorer of imperial authority over the renegade French papacy. Henry died at Buonconvento in 1313, having achieved very little; Dante's letters to him and to the Italian princes of those years are the prose record of the hope this canto translates into prophecy.
• The leader is Christ himself in a second coming. A more theological reading; the prophecy is then a parallel to the Greyhound of Inferno I.
• The leader is the Greyhound prophesied by Virgil in Inferno I. The two prophecies are then deliberately echoes of each other — the Veltro and the Cinquecento Diece e Cinque, both political-messianic figures cast in deliberate obscurity.

The poem does not choose. The point of the cipher is that it is a cipher — peradventure my dark utterance, like Themis and the Sphinx, may less persuade thee, since, in their mode, it clouds the intellect. Beatrice acknowledges the obscurity and says the facts will be the Naiades who solve it. In Dante's version of the Theban legend (drawn from a corrupted reading of Ovid), the Naiads solved the riddle of the Sphinx. Beatrice is saying: the riddle will be solved when the events happen, not before.

The second drinking is the last act of Purgatory. The pilgrim has drunk of Lethe — the river that takes away the memory of sin. He must now drink of Eunoë — the river that restores the memory of every good deed done. Matelda leads him to it. He drinks. The cantica closes.

A small note on Statius. He has been with the pilgrim since canto XXI. He drinks of Eunoë with Dante and is therefore present at the foot of the angel-stair to Paradise. He will not be named again in the Commedia, but he is in the garden at the end.

What to read for

Listen for Beatrice's tone-shift. She has been the prosecutor for two cantos; in this one she is the teacher. She calls Dante brother and asks why he does not now venture to question her. The severity of canto XXXI gives way, in 145 lines, to a tenderness the canto barely insists on.

Listen for the prophecy. I see, and hence narrate it, the stars already near to bring the time, from every hindrance safe, and every bar. Beatrice claims to see the time of the prophecy directly. The cipher DXV arrives wrapped in the rhetoric of certainty: the leader is already on his way.

Listen for the rebuke about the school. That thou mayst recognize the school which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far its doctrine follows after my discourse. Beatrice is correcting the pilgrim's philosophy — the school of human reason whose distance from divine discourse is as far as separated is from earth the heaven that highest hastens on. The line is one of the Commedia's severest judgments on natural philosophy, and it is delivered to a pilgrim who has spent the last sixty cantos in the company of a pagan poet.

Listen for the closing tercet. It is the most quoted ending in Italian literature after the last line of Paradiso. The pilgrim emerges from the waters of Eunoë regenerate, in the manner of new trees that are renewed with a new foliage, pure and disposed to mount unto the stars. The same word — stelle — closes Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Listen for it.

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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 cantica closed. Beatrice walked away from the despoiled tree, with the seven nymphs in front of her and the pilgrim with Matelda and Statius behind. She gave the Veltro-cipher prophecy — a Five-hundred, Ten, and Five, one sent from God — to slay the whore and the giant; rebuked the pilgrim for the Water of Elsa in his understanding; named the school he had followed and how far it was from her discourse; named for the first time the lady who had brought him through the garden (Matelda); led him to the source of the two rivers; had him drink of Eunoë; and then the cantica ended on the same word the Inferno had ended on. Stelle. Stars.

The canto is fast and the canto is dense and the canto is the last word the Commedia will speak before the Paradiso takes over. Three things are accomplished: the prophecy, the commission, and the second drinking. The poem leaves Purgatory cleansed of memory of sin (by Lethe at canto XXXI) and restored to memory of good (by Eunoë here).

The opening: psalm and gospel

The seven nymphs begin the canto by singing Deus, venerunt gentes — Psalm 79:1. O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled. The psalm was the standard medieval text for liturgical lament over a desecrated city; Jerusalem after the Babylonian sacks, Constantinople after the Latin sack of 1204. The seven nymphs apply it here to the Avignon desecration of the chariot they have just watched dragged into the forest. The liturgical register is being deliberately invoked.

Beatrice answers with John 16:16 in the Vulgate Latin: Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum, modicum, et vos videbitis me: A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see me. In the gospel Christ is preparing the disciples for his death and resurrection. In the canto Beatrice is using the same words to console the seven nymphs over the Church's coming captivity and eventual restoration. The substitution maps the historical Avignon Captivity onto the passion-resurrection template. The Church will be away from Rome; the Church will return.

The prophecy

Then comes the cipher. Within which a Five-hundred, Ten, and Five, one sent from God, shall slay the thievish woman and that same giant who is sinning with her. DXV. The most-glossed three Latin numerals in literature.

The standard reading: DXV rearranged spells DVX — Dux, Leader. Beatrice is naming a coming political leader. The leader has been read as Henry VII of Luxembourg (Holy Roman Emperor 1308–1313), whose Italian campaign of 1310–1313 Dante invested his political hope in as the restorer of imperial authority over the runaway French papacy. Henry died at Buonconvento in August 1313 with very little to show for the campaign. The Commedia was being completed in the years immediately after that death; the prophecy is therefore either pre-Henry (Dante composing the canto before he knew Henry would fail) or post-Henry (Dante composing it after, projecting onto an unknown future the figure Henry had failed to be). The dating is uncertain; the prophecy is meaningful on either dating.

Other readings have flourished. The leader is Christ in a second coming: the cipher is then a theological prophecy, not a political one. The leader is the Greyhound of Inferno I: the two prophecies — the Veltro and the Cinquecento Diece e Cinque — are deliberately twinned, the same figure named twice in coded forms at the centre of each cantica. The leader is some other emperor Dante does not name: an unspecified future ruler whose office is to do what Henry could not do. The poem permits all of them. The point of the cipher is precisely the cipher — peradventure my dark utterance, like Themis and the Sphinx, may less persuade thee, since, in their mode, it clouds the intellect; but soon the facts shall be the Naiades who shall this difficult enigma solve, without destruction of the flocks and harvests. Beatrice acknowledges the obscurity and refers the solution to events. The prophecy is to be solved by the world that fulfils it, not by the reader who decodes it.

A reading the canto allows but does not insist on: Beatrice's prophecy is the Commedia's confession of its own political failure. By the time the Paradiso was completed Henry was dead, the French papacy was secure in Avignon, and no Dux of any kind had appeared. The prophecy stands in the poem as a commitment the world failed to keep. The cipher is therefore both prophecy and elegy. The promise of the Dux is the poem's way of refusing to surrender hope; the obscurity of the cipher is the poem's quiet acknowledgement that the hope may be unmet.

The rebuke about the school

Beatrice rebukes the pilgrim a second time, more lightly than in canto XXXI but more pointedly philosophically. That thou mayst recognize the school which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far its doctrine follows after my discourse, and mayst behold your path from the divine distant as far as separated is from earth the heaven that highest hastens on. The school the pilgrim followed is named only by which thou hast followed — read by most commentators as the school of human philosophy, especially the Aristotelian-Averroistic synthesis Dante had practised in the Convivio. Beatrice is correcting it in the sharpest terms the Commedia applies to natural philosophy: as far from divine discourse as earth is from the primum mobile, the swiftest of the heavens.

The pilgrim's defence is the classical one: I do not remember that ever I estranged myself from you, nor have I conscience of it that reproves me. Beatrice's smiling reply is the canto's small theological joke. Recollect thee now that thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe; and if from smoke a fire may be inferred, such an oblivion clearly demonstrates some error in thy will elsewhere intent. The pilgrim cannot remember his sin against her because the river of forgetfulness has done its work; the inability to remember is therefore the proof that there was something to forget. The waters of Lethe convict by the very fact of their cleansing.

The Beatrice of canto XXXI was a prosecutor; the Beatrice of canto XXXIII is a teacher who has caught her pupil out and is permitted to smile.

Matelda named

At the canto's close, Beatrice names Matelda for the first time. Twas said unto me, Pray Matilda that she tell thee. Three full cantos after Matelda's appearance, the poem finally gives her the name the reader has been waiting for. The naming is offhand — the canto does not pause on it. Matelda has been the gardener; the pilgrim has met her; she has dragged him through Lethe; she has waited at the source of the two rivers; only now is she named. The Commedia uses the name as a casual confirmation, not as a revelation. The mystery of who Matelda is remains in the poem because the canto does not solve it; only the name is given.

The drinking and the stars

Matelda taketh hold of the pilgrim and leads him to Eunoë. She speaks to Statius — Come with him — and Statius joins. The canto records the drinking in three tercets and then permits itself one last apostrophe to the reader.

If, Reader, I possessed a longer space for writing it, I yet would sing in part of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me; but inasmuch as full are all the leaves made ready for this second canticle, the curb of art no farther lets me go.

The poem says aloud what its form requires. The cantica is exactly thirty-three cantos long; the page count is fixed; the poet must stop. The curb of art — l'art — sets the limit. The Commedia's formal architecture is being acknowledged as itself a discipline. The poet would say more; the poet cannot; the poem ends.

The closing tercet has the same shape as the closing tercets of the other two cantiche.

From the most holy water I returned regenerate, in the manner of new trees that are renewed with a new foliage, pure and disposed to mount unto the stars.

The pilgrim emerges from Eunoë regenerate — born again. The simile is botanical: new trees that are renewed with a new foliage. The image picks up the tree of canto XXXII that was renewed when the chariot was bound to it. The pilgrim is now in the same condition as that tree at the moment of renewal — bare branches put on new leaves. Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars. The cantica closes on the word stelle.

Inferno ended e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle — and thence we issued out to see again the stars. Purgatorio ends puro e disposto a salire alle stelle. Paradiso will end l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle — the love which moves the sun and the other stars. The same word three times. The three cantiche are a single arc whose terminus is always the same — stars; light; the heavens that the Commedia keeps returning to as its true subject.

What the canto does not do

The canto does not allow Beatrice to unveil her mouth. The smile prayed for at the end of canto XXXI is still withheld. The pilgrim leaves the Earthly Paradise still without the second beauty. The unveiling will be completed only in the Paradiso, in instalments — the smile of Beatrice will return at canto III, IV, X, XV, XXIII, XXVII, XXXI of the Paradiso. The reader who comes to this last canto of Purgatorio expecting the full restoration of Beatrice's face is left waiting.

The canto does not stage a farewell to Statius. The Christian poet who appeared in canto XXI, who lectured on the soul in canto XXV, who has walked through six cantos in silence, drinks of Eunoë and disappears from the poem without further notice. He will not be in Paradiso. The Commedia lets him go the way Virgil was let go, but without a name and without a tercet.

The canto does not show the ascent to Paradise. The pilgrim is disposto — disposed, prepared — to ascend, but the ascent is the work of the next cantica. The Purgatorio ends at the threshold.

Famous and meaningful passages

The opening lament.

Deus venerunt gentes, alternating Now three, now four, melodious psalmody The maidens in the midst of tears began… (Purg. XXXIII.1–3)

Psalm 79 sung by the seven virtues over the chariot dragged into the forest. The Avignon Captivity registered as a desecration of the Temple.

The prophecy.

For verily I see, and hence narrate it, The stars already near to bring the time, From every hindrance safe, and every bar, Within which a Five-hundred, Ten, and Five, One sent from God, shall slay the thievish woman And that same giant who is sinning with her. (Purg. XXXIII.40–45)

The DXV cipher. The most-glossed three numerals in literature.

The acknowledgment of obscurity.

And peradventure my dark utterance, Like Themis and the Sphinx, may less persuade thee, Since, in their mode, it clouds the intellect; But soon the facts shall be the Naiades Who shall this difficult enigma solve, Without destruction of the flocks and harvests. (Purg. XXXIII.46–51)

Beatrice names her own obscurity and refers its resolution to events. The prophecy is to be solved by what happens.

The commission to write.

Note thou; and even as by me are uttered These words, so teach them unto those who live That life which is a running unto death; And bear in mind, whene'er thou writest them, Not to conceal what thou hast seen the plant, That twice already has been pillaged here. (Purg. XXXIII.52–57)

The commission of canto XXXII repeated. Whene'er thou writest them — the poem describing in advance the act of its own composition.

The rebuke of the school.

That thou mayst recognize, she said, the school Which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far Its doctrine follows after my discourse, And mayst behold your path from the divine Distant as far as separated is From earth the heaven that highest hastens on. (Purg. XXXIII.85–90)

Natural philosophy convicted of being as far from divine discourse as earth is from the primum mobile.

Lethe as evidence.

And if thou art not able to remember, Smiling she answered, recollect thee now That thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe; And if from smoke a fire may be inferred, Such an oblivion clearly demonstrates Some error in thy will elsewhere intent. (Purg. XXXIII.94–99)

The doctrine of the river used as evidence in the courtroom of Beatrice's smile. The inability to remember the sin proves the sin.

The naming of Matelda.

For such a prayer, 'twas said unto me, Pray Matilda that she tell thee; and here answered, As one does who doth free himself from blame, The beautiful lady… (Purg. XXXIII.118–121)

The first naming, in the Commedia, of the gardener of the Earthly Paradise. Three cantos after her appearance.

The poet's limit.

If, Reader, I possessed a longer space For writing it, I yet would sing in part Of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me; But inasmuch as full are all the leaves Made ready for this second canticle, The curb of art no farther lets me go. (Purg. XXXIII.136–141)

The Commedia's formal architecture acknowledged as its own discipline. The poet would say more; the cantica is full.

The closing tercet.

From the most holy water I returned Regenerate, in the manner of new trees That are renewed with a new foliage, Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars. (Purg. XXXIII.142–145)

The end of the cantica. The pilgrim regenerate, the trees renewed, the soul disposed. The word stelle closes the second cantica as it closed the first and will close the third.

What to watch for

Watch the verb salire. The pilgrim is disposto a salire — prepared to mount. Paradiso I opens with the act of mounting. The cantica change is the activation of the verb.

Watch the unveiling. The smile of Beatrice will be granted in Paradiso III. The pilgrim has earned the eyes; he has not yet earned the mouth.

Watch the stelle. The same word at the end of each cantica is the poem's structural promise. Paradiso will rewrite the word one last time as the love which moves the sun and the other stars — and the Commedia will be done.

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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.