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Chapter Title: ‘Without Any Violence’

Chapter Author(s): Zygmunt G. Barański

Book Title: Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy

Book Subtitle: Volume 1
Book Editor(s): George Corbett and Heather Webb
Published by: Open Book Publishers

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 9. ‘Without Any Violence’ 1

Zygmunt G. Barański

Introduction: reflecting (‘vertically’)

I was about to start preparing the written version of my ‘reading’ of the
Nines, when two things happened that helped me give better order to my
reflections. Among the PhD applications I was reviewing, I came across a
powerful defence of interpreting the Commedia ‘vertically’. A few days later,
after giving a lecture based on the current chapter at a prestigious North
American department of Italian, the idea that Dante’s masterpiece might
be read ‘vertically’ was received with a degree of skepticism. Indeed, one
colleague launched into an attack that was in every way as forceful as the
aspiring doctoral student’s justification. I found the conflicting reactions
fascinating: the young Dantist enthused by a new way of approaching the
Commedia; the established scholar unconvinced and deeply committed to
exegetical methods that have stood the test of time and seem to have been
legitimated by Dante himself. My own position, ever since I was kindly
invited to examine possible interconnections between the Nines, has been
closer to that of the older Dantist – I would not say skeptical, but certainly

1 The video of this lecture is available at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s
Comedy website, https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1625418
My aim in this chapter is to recapture something of the range and energy of my spoken
presentation. In order to do this and keep to the assigned word-limit, I am not able
to document fully some of my claims. For a broader and better-documented ‘vertical
reading’ of the Nines – approximately double the length of this one – see my ‘Reading
the Commedia’s IXs “Vertically”: From Addresses to the Reader to crucesignati and the
Ecloga Theoduli’, L’Alighieri 44 (2014), 5-36.

© Zygmunt G. Barański, CC BY 4.0 http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0066.10

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182 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

wary. Indeed, as my research developed, two questions constantly

accompanied my efforts to gauge the efficacy of a ‘vertical’ investigation
of the Commedia. First, to what degree did Dante actually want his poem
to be read in this manner? Second, how might examining three cantos
belonging to different canticles yet sharing the same number illuminate
our understanding of both the canti and the poem – and we can at least be
certain that Dante did want us to take cognizance of the cantos’ numbering:
‘al ventesimo canto / de la prima canzon’ [the twentieth canto / of the first
canzone] (Inf., xx. 2-3)?2
The evidence that, in line with medieval ideas about the divinely
created universe as numerically harmonious, Dante wished the Commedia
to be considered in its totality and in the interplay of its parts is of course
overwhelming. However, to maintain this does not also necessarily imply
that a privileged relationship unites cantos distinguished by the same
number, and hence that this relationship needs to be examined in itself
and as a unique determining feature of the whole. In fact, the explicit
indications in this regard are at best scant. They seem to be limited to the
opening proemial cantos, to the political Sixes, to the closing canti (but one
of these has a unique numbering…), and to a few other triads.3 Rather than
forcing our readerly attention upwards and ‘vertically’, Dante normally
encourages us to reflect and to look backwards: ‘Ricorditi, ricorditi!’
[Remember, remember!] (Purg., xxvii. 22). In my view, Charles Singleton’s
work on what he termed the Commedia’s ‘vistas in retrospect’ is just about
definitive on this point.4 Equally, it is generally accepted that the poet
regularly established meaningful links between different moments of his
poem, and that these associations are rarely dictated by numeration. As
regards our three cantos, it is enough to remember the evident bonds that
tie Inferno ix to the pair of cantos that precede it and the pair that follow it;
that, through the figure of St Lucy, connect Purgatorio ix to Inferno ii and
Paradiso xxxii; and finally, that join Paradiso ix to Inferno v and Purgatorio xxvi
(lust), as well as to Inferno xii (Ezzelino da Romano). Indeed, as Amilcare
Iannucci demonstrated, this form of organization recalls the Scriptural

2 All translations are my own. My aim is syntactic and semantic accuracy rather than
elegance.
3 For an excellent discussion of the tradition of reading the Commedia ‘vertically’, see, in
this collection, Simon A. Gilson, ‘The Wheeling Sevens’.
4 See Charles S. Singleton, ‘The Vistas in Retrospect’, Modern Language Notes 81:1 (1966),
55-80.

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 183

exegetical device of the ‘parallel passage’, which not infrequently had

recapitulatory functions.5 Yet, as scholars have also noted, interconnections
of setting do unite the Nines. Thus, both Inferno ix and Purgatorio ix are
set in liminal indeterminate hinterlands where distinct largescale regions
of the afterlife meet, where otherworldly guardians protect the gates and
walls that separate the different areas, and where celestial messengers
come to the pilgrim’s aid. Dante’s aim is obvious: to underscore the
differences between the realm of damnation and that of purgation, and
to highlight the progress that the viator has made since his panic-stricken
confusion outside Dis. Paradiso ix, too, brings to a close a major discrete
section of the Ptolemaic universe, the heavens lying in the shadow of the
earth. However, given the marvellous concord and unity of the cosmos,
issues of partition, transition, and entry, with their attendant corollaries
of uncertain liminality, of obstacles, and of miraculous intervention, are
quite alien to the effortless harmony of paradisiacal reality. Thus, unlike
the other two cantos, Paradiso ix is set in a specific location, the Heaven of
Venus, and is structured according to the Commedia’s standard narrative
model of the encounter between Dante-personaggio and exemplary
inhabitants of that subdivision of the afterlife. In this respect, considering
the Nines simultaneously, the effect is to highlight the singularity of the
third realm. However, there is nothing exceptional about the contrasts and
parallelisms conjoining our three cantos. Throughout the Commedia, Dante
employs similar associative techniques to stress the same general points
about the nature of the hereafter as emerge from the ‘vertical’ assessment of
the Nines. We are dealing with a commonplace, whose one variation in this
instance is that it is the product of a rapprochement between three cantos
bearing the same number.
This is the danger, I believe, inherent in the ‘vertical’ reading: it can
grant priority to what is obvious—and if there is one writer who is rarely
obvious, that writer is Dante Alighieri. Thus, despite what might be
presumed in light of the basic narrative similarities uniting Inferno ix and
Purgatorio ix, the poet appears to have actually been more interested in
yoking together Inferno ix and Paradiso ix. Unlike Inferno ix and Purgatiorio
ix, whose connections are externally narratological, those between Inferno ix
and Paradiso ix are calculatedly formal. The two cantos share several rhymes

5 See Amilcare A. Iannucci, ‘Autoesegesi dantesca: la tecnica dell’“episodio parallelo”’,

Lettere italiane 33 (1981), 305-28.

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184 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

and rhyme words6 – a sophisticated technique that medieval vernacular

poets employed to suggest affinities between texts, and which Dante used
with some regularity in the Commedia.7 In addition, the cantos share several
other features that distinguish them from Purgatorio ix. Specifically, both
make reference to heresy, to cemeteries, to sieges, and, most visibly, to sinful
cities. What is thus striking is that rather than present the Nines as a triad,
Dante was concerned to organize them into two distinct pairs – on the one
hand, Inferno ix and Purgatorio ix; on the other, Inferno ix and Paradiso ix.
Other hermeneutic perils attend the ‘vertical’ critical engagement with
the Commedia. In general, the need to avoid flattening out differences
between the canti, and so ensuring that each canto’s distinctiveness is
maintained, is paramount. Yet, the essential associative nature of the
‘vertical’ approach, with its resultant emphasis on (common) structural,
thematic, and ideological concerns, militates against this. For the method to
gain currency, it needs also to demonstrate that it can cast light on matters
of style and, more vitally, that it contributes to the poem’s sophisticated
metaliterary system. Finally, when treating a trio of canti, the temptation
ought to be resisted to equate ‘verticality’ with numerology. The latter
was unquestionably important in medieval culture; however, its impact
on Dante was circumscribed. Indeed, I believe this to be the case even
as regards the cantos marked with a nine, the number indicating the
miraculous, divine intervention, and the power of God, and whose sacred
symbolic valences the poet himself underlined in the Vita nova (xxix. 3).
As embodiments of the nine, our cantos fittingly affirm and dramatize
the ‘marvellous’ workings of the ‘Trinity’. However, and this is the point,
there is nothing extraordinary about this. Every canto of the Commedia, in
recounting a unique providentially sanctioned experience, does exactly the
same. The spectre of the ‘obvious’ once again looms large.
My methodological words of caution are not meant to undermine
the possibility that a ‘vertical’ reading is valid and authorized by Dante
himself. Thus, to test out the validity of the approach, it becomes necessary
to establish whether elements exist that might confirm a deliberately
constructed system of correspondences uniting the Nines. However, it

6 See ‘pianto’/‘tanto’ (Inf., ix. 44, 48 and Par., ix. 5, 9); ‘alto’/‘assalto’ (Inf., ix. 50, 54 and Par., ix.
28, 30); ‘sembiante’/‘davante’ (Inf., ix. 101, 103 and Par., ix. 64, 66); ‘bagna’ (Inf., ix. 114 and
Par., ix. 47); ‘cruda’ (Inf., ix 23) and ‘crude’ (Par., ix. 48); ‘chiuso’ (Inf., ix. 55), ‘chiudessi’ (Inf.,
ix. 60) and ‘richiude’ (Par., ix. 44); ‘disio’ (Inf., ix. 107) and ‘disii’ (Par., ix. 79).
7 See Roberto Antonelli, ‘Tempo testuale e tempo rimico. Costruzione del testo e critica
nella poesia rimata’, Critica del testo 1 (1998), 177-201.

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 185

is difficult to find clear textual evidence that permits us to extend such a

rapport beyond a few basic narrative motifs at the service of reinforcing
a few of the Commedia’s standard fixed points: most notably, the glory
and variety of divine creation, whose constituent parts are providentially
ordered and unified. In any case, Paradiso ix twice explicitly draws
attention to these matters, thereby reminding us just how unexceptional
is the ‘vertically’ established relationship between the Nines. Contrasting
his earthly to his celestial love, Folchetto describes the divinely ‘ordered’
interplay between this world, Purgatory, the Earthly Paradise, the heavens,
and the Empyrean (Par., ix. 103-08). A few tercets earlier, when introducing
the Occitan poet, Dante observes: ‘Per letiziar là sù fulgor s’acquista, / sì
come riso qui; ma giù s’abbuia / l’ombra di fuor, come la mente è trista’
[By rejoicing up there brightness is gained, as laughter is here; but down
there the shade grows dark on the outside, as the mind is sad] (Par., ix.
70-72). Once again, the interconnections and disparities between Paradise,
our world, and Hell are made clear. As he does throughout the Commedia,
Dante also implies that his own artistic practices are modelled on those of
the Deus artifex. Outlining the external signs of emotion that characterize
human beings on earth, in Heaven, and in Hell, Dante introduces a new
piece of information about the state of the damned which he had not
revealed in Inferno: the shades ‘grow dark’ – abbuiare – on feeling sadness
(ll. 71-72). Like the ‘worth’ (valor; 105), the poet too carefully organizes the
unfolding of his poem, forging meaningful links between its parts. The
subtlety of Dante’s presentation is noteworthy. With exemplary concision,
he adds to our knowledge of Hell, of the workings of the universe, and
of his authorial status. The understated, yet richly connotative intricacy
of Paradiso ix. 71-72 stands in contrast to the mechanistic repetition of
narrative motifs that unites the Nines. If Dante had indeed intended our
cantos to be read ‘vertically’, one cannot but wonder whether he would not
have made this apparent in that refined and economical manner that marks
his recourse to abbuiare.

Appealing to the reader

Although I am reluctant to grant special importance to the repetition of
narrative elements across the canti, nevertheless, there is another feature,
common to the Nines, which makes me hesitate before turning my back
on the possibility that Dante composed the three cantos in such a way
so as to encourage their ‘vertical’ reading. Addresses to the reader are a

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186 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

significant trait of the Commedia. The poet introduces them judiciously,

normally for ethical and metaliterary ends, and always at key moments
in the text, thereby highlighting their structuring functions. It is precisely
this last characteristic of the Dantean address that explains my hesitation,
given that each of the Nines includes an appeal to the reader. Even more
suggestively, our triad of same-number canti is the only one in the poem
that is distinguished in this manner. In Dante, such instances of repetition
are rarely without consequence:

O voi ch’avete l’intelletti sani,

mirate la dottrina che s’asconde
sotto ’l velame de li versi strani.

[Oh you who have healthy intellects,

look at the doctrine that is concealed
under the veil of the unusual verses.] (Inf., ix. 61-63)

Lettor, tu vedi ben com’io innalzo

la mia matera, e però con più arte
non ti maravigliar s’io la rincalzo.

[Reader, you see well how I elevate

my subject-matter, and therefore don’t be surprised
if I sustain it with greater art.] (Purg., ix. 70-72)

Ahi anime ingannate e fatture empie,

che da sì fatto ben torcete i cuori,
drizzando in vanità le vostre tempie!

[Ah deluded souls and impious creatures,

who from such created good twist away your hearts,
lifting towards vanities your temples!] (Par., ix. 10-12)

Each address poses substantial critical problems. Regarding the first,

scholars disagree as to what value to assign to the ‘unusual verses’. Do
these refer exclusively to the figures and events that appear in the second
part of the canto; or do they encompass the canto as a whole, or the entire
episode outside the walls of Dis, or even the Commedia in its totality? The
second appeal is equally allusive and perplexing. In what way is Dante
‘elevating’ his ‘subject-matter’; and again, to which aspects of the text

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 187

does ‘matera’ specifically refer? Furthermore, how precisely does the poet
elevate his ‘art’ to a ‘greater’ level and how does he ‘sustain’ it? Finally,
many Dantists dispute that Par., ix. 10-12 is an apostrophe directed at
the reader. Given the exegetical difficulties surrounding the addresses,
and in light of their possibile numerically sanctioned interconnection,
the obvious question arises whether the three invocationes ought to be
considered as one. Confirmation that this might be the correct approach
would depend on a ‘vertical’ reading casting light on some of the passages’
obscurities.
Bringing together Inf., ix. 61-63 and Par., ix. 10-12 quickly dispels any
doubts regarding the latter’s status as an apostrophe. Although Par., ix.
10-12 is an impassioned exclamation, the tercet is an outburst directed at a
particular group of readers, those who misuse their reason, just as Inf., ix.
61-63 is addressed to readers who behave in the opposite manner. It is only
Purg., ix. 70-72 that involves every reader of the poem. Moreover, putting
in contact the terzine from the first and last canticles raises interesting issues
relating to the interpretation of the Commedia. The ‘vanities’ towards which
the ‘impious’ ‘lift their temples’ are material wealth; and it is the same
avaricious desire that leads contemporary intellectuals to practice sinful
interpretation (Par., ix., 133-35). Faulty exegesis of canon law is contrasted
to the devoted clarification of sacred texts. This, and not the pursuit of
earthly advantage, is the proper activity for ‘healthy intellects’; and as a
‘sacrato poema’ [sacred poem] (Par., xxiii. 62), the Commedia too should
be studied with due respect and not left ‘derelitt[a]’ [derelict] (Par., ix.,
134). Dante regularly relates his poem to the creations of the Deus artifex
and to other divinely inspired texts, and Inf., ix. 61-63 and Par., ix. 10-12
essentially constitute another variatio on this theme. On the other hand, as a
metaliterary declaration, Purg., ix. 70-72, is rather richer than the other two
apostrophes. Similar to Inf., ix. 61-63, where he uses the typical vocabulary
of the allegoresis of literary texts (‘doctrine concealed under the veil’ of
the lictera of poetry), Dante makes use of conventional critical terminology
in Purgatorio ix: ‘subject-matter elevated by greater art’. Yet, in Inferno ix,
behind the humdrum language of medieval literary criticism, the poet
was intent on boldly establishing that the Commedia is not to be read, as
his choice of terms might at first sight be taken to imply, according to the
tenets of literary allegoria in verbis but those of providential allegoria in factis.
Equally, to grant terms such as innalzare, materia, and arte their normal

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188 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

medieval meanings, as Dante commentators tend to do, involves distorting

the key element of the poet’s radically innovative ‘comic’ poetics, namely,
his rejection of the genera dicendi and their artificial distinctions between
‘high’, ‘middle’ and ‘low’ subjects and styles.8
Since it is certain that the poem does not adhere to standard medieval
compositional norms, what does Dante mean when he talks about ‘artistic
elevation’? In straightforward stylistic terms, it is difficult to discern
any major change between the two parts of the canto separated by the
apostrophe. If anything, the first half, on account of its reliance on classical
elements, is conventionally closer to the ‘high’ than the second, which is
strongly Christian in character, and hence tied to the sermo humilis. It is
thus clear that when Dante alludes to a ‘higher’ materia he is not referring
to the conventions of the genera, but solely to matters of content and value,
to the transition to the salvific Christian environment of ‘mercy’ (l. 110).
Dante grants new vigour to the hackneyed vocabulary of the genera dicendi.
It is no longer a set of literary-critical clichés but is revived to connote
the inestimable worth of divinely ordained salvation. Yet, in light of our
present purpose, it is striking that Purg., ix. 70-72 achieves its effects without
needing to make recourse to the other two apostrophes. Indeed, it is difficult
to see how these might enrich its already elaborate system of reference. This
fact cannot but call into question the appropriateness of applying a ‘vertical’
interpretation to the Nines, given that their most obvious and unique formal
interconnecting feature does not seem to support a unified reading of the
apostrophes, and hence of the three canti and, by extension, of the Commedia.
At most, we might conclude that the addresses all have both local and broad
functions, illuminating the cantos in which they appear and the poem in
general. Thus, Inf., ix. 61-63 contrasts ‘healthy’ exegesis with the hermeneutic
errors of the heretics while indicating that the Commedia be read according
to the ‘allegory of theologians’; Purg., ix. 70-72 marks the shift between two
areas of the afterlife and highlights Dante’s rejection of established forms
of literary composition; finally, Par., ix. 10-12 adds to the condemnation of
contemporary greed while pointing to the divine attributes of the ‘sacred
poem’. In light of the apostrophes’ dual function, it is thus probable that
‘unusual verses’, like the address of which it is part, cannot be interpreted
narrowly but alludes both to the events around the gate of Dis and to the

8 See Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘Magister satiricus: Preliminary Notes on Dante, Horace and
the Middle Ages’, in Language and Style in Dante, ed. by John C. Barnes and Michelangelo
Zaccarello (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 13-61.

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 189

Commedia in its entirety.9 These are all insights of no little import; however,
as I have already noted, they are a constant of the poem.

Texts and violence

While I am convinced that Dante did not intend the Nines to be assessed
‘vertically’, and that, only occasionally, such as the conjuncture of the Sixes,
did he envisage the Commedia being read in such a manner, I nevertheless
also believe that there might be some advantage in considering together
cantos distinguished by the same number. I had better explain myself. If, in
philological terms, the evidence is against the ‘vertical’ reading, at the same
time, there may be non-philologically sanctioned reasons for associating
the Nines, and hence for extending such an approach to other triads of
canti too.
Reading the Nines together one cannot but be struck how certain broad
concerns connect them: divine power, the organization of the afterlife, the
feminine, angels, horror, paganism, the relationship between the classical
and the Christian. These are of course motifs that return consistently
throughout the Commedia, and that have been extensively explored by
Dante scholarship. There is nothing distinctive here. Nevertheless, there
is one theme that stretches across the three cantos – a theme that possibly
is more insistent than any of the other topics included in them, but which,
surprisingly, scholars studying the Nines have largely ignored. And yet,
when one isolates our cantos, it is a topic that is almost impossible to
disregard. I am thinking of violence – violence broadly understood as the
act of inflicting physical and emotional suffering.
It is remarkable that Dantists should have paid little attention to the
question of violence in the poet’s oeuvre.10 It is a problem that consistently

9 See Dante Alighieri, Inferno, ed. by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez (New
York and London: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 150.
10 But see Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘“E cominciare stormo”: Notes on Dante’s Sieges’, in ‘Legato
con amore in un volume’. Essays in Honour of John A. Scott, ed. by John J. Kinder and Diana
Glenn (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2013), pp. 175-203; Roberto Gigliucci, Lo spettacolo della
morte. Estetica e ideologia del macabro nella letteratura medievale (Anzio: De Rubeis, 1994),
pp. 47-52, 171-79; Robert Hollander, ‘Dante and the Martial Epic’, Medievalia 12 (1986),
67-91; Anne C. Leone, ‘Sangue perfetto’: Scientific, Sacrificial and Semiotic Blood in Dante (PhD
dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2010), pp. 68-121; Luca Marcozzi, ‘“La guerra del
cammino”: metafore belliche nel viaggio dantesco’, in La metafora in Dante, ed. by Marco
Ariani (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2008), pp. 59-112; Jeffrey T. Schnapp, The Transfiguration
of History at the Center of Dante’s ‘Paradise’ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986),
pp. 14-69; War and Peace in Dante, ed. by John C. Barnes and Daragh O’Connell (Dublin:
Four Courts Press, 2015).

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190 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

returns across his works, and is at the core of his presentation of life on earth
and in eternity. Furthermore, as much recent scholarship on the Middle
Ages has argued, violence profoundly marked the medieval world.11 In
particular, from the late eleventh century on, violence became ever more a
feature of political, religious, intellectual, and artistic culture. Christianity,
traditionally a religion of peace, was especially affected by the increased
emphasis on violence.12 Although the language of violence is regularly
employed in the New Testament, this is normally for metaphorical ends.
Indeed, to guarantee the fundamental role of peace in Christianity,
exegetes had interpreted the historical books of the Old Testament not as
literal accounts of wars fought by the Jews, but as allegorical descriptions
of spiritual struggles against the devil and his hosts.13 However, with the
advent of the crusades and with the Church’s growing involvement in
secular affairs, the militarization of Christianity passed from being a matter
of symbolic representation to becoming a complex fact of life. In addition,
violence was a subject variously discussed by clerics: from discussions of
the legitimacy of the crusades, of the notion of just war, and of the limits of
papal authority to traditional Scripturally inspired defences of caritas and
pacifism. A fascination with violence was also ever more graphically visible
in religious art and literature, from bloody depictions of Christ’s passion
to the vividly evoked tortures of martyr narratives and of descriptions
of Hell and Purgatory.14 Such texts, of course, exerted an influence on

11 See, for instance, Christiane Raynaud, La Violence au moyen âge, XIIIe-XVe siècle (Paris:
Léopard d’Or, 1990); Hannah Skoda, Medieval Violence: Physical Brutality in Northern
France, 1270-1330 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. pp. 1-49; ‘A Great Effusion
of Blood’? Interpreting Medieval Violence, ed. by Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thierry, and
Oren Falk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); La Violence dans le monde médiévale
(Aix-en-Provence: CUER MA, Université de Provence, 1994). See also footnotes 12, 14,
and 20.
12 On Christianity and violence in the Middle Ages, see at least Caroline Walker Bynum,
‘Violent Imagery in Late Medieval Piety’, Bulletin of German Historical Institute 30
(2002), 1-36; Franco Cardini, “Introduzione”, in San Bernardino da Siena, La battaglia
e il saccheggio del Paradiso, cioè della Gerusalemme celeste, ed. by Franco Cardini (Siena:
Edizioni Cantagalli, 1979), pp. 5-62; Jean Flori, La Guerre sainte. La Formation de l’idée de
croisade dans l’Occident chrétien (Paris: Aubier, 2001); Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in
the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); ‘Militia Christi’ e Crociata
nei secoli XI-XIII (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1992).
13 See Réginald Grégoire, ‘Esegesi biblica e “militia Christi”’, in ‘Militia Christi’, pp.
21-45 (p. 25); Katherine Allen Smith, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture
(Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), pp. 11-13.
14 See, for instance, Jérôme Baschet, Les Justices de l’au-delà: Les Répresentations de l’enfer
en France et en Italie (XIIe-XVe siècle) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1993); Brigitte
Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 191

the Commedia; however, their influence pales before that of the classical
epic,15 although their importance for Dante is probably akin to that of the
vernacular chivalric tradition and of historical writing. However, what
unites all these traditions, whether pagan or Christian, Latin or vernacular,
is a persistent concern with violence. Dante’s sources are violent, as was
much of his culture, and yet, despite this, we continue to show little concern
for his views on the subject.
Each of the Nines repeatedly refers to acts of violence and to violent
events. In fact, the range of allusions is remarkable. Thus, without any
pretense at offering an exhaustive list, in Inferno ix, the confrontation
outside the walls of Dis is presented as a siege,16 and embodiments of
violence such as Erichtho, the Furies, and Medusa are evoked; in Purgatorio
ix, we find tales of abduction (Tithonus, Ganymede), of rape (Ganymede
again, Philomela), and of infanticide and cannibalism (Procne killing and
cooking her son Itys before feeding him to his father Tereus);17 finally, in
Paradiso ix, the contemporary world is depicted as dominated by violence:
Ezzelino III da Romano’s ‘great assault’ (l. 30), Can Grande’s cruel defeat
of the Paduan Guelphs in 1314 (ll. 46-48), Rizzardo da Camino’s murder in
1312 (ll. 49-51), and again in 1314 the beheading of four Ferrarese betrayed
by the Bishop of Feltre (ll. 52-60). Moreover, the canto’s sense of history
is one of neverending viciousness: Dido’s abandonment and suicide,
the crucifixion, the crusades in Palestine and in the Languedoc, and the
massacres that marked the siege of Marseille in 43 BCE (ll. 91-93) and that
of Jericho (ll. 124-25). From the examples just cited, there would seem to be
little doubt that Dante can be characterized as a writer drawn to violence
and that the Commedia is a catalogue of brutality. Be that as it may; however
what exactly was Dante’s attitude to violence? Specifically, what was his
intellectual position on violence, a major question in late medieval culture?

Century (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), pp. 43-61; Gigliucci,
Lo spettacolo, pp. 119-45; Sarah Kay, ‘The Sublime Body of the Martyr: Violence in Early
Romance Saints’ Lives’, in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. by Richard W. Kaeuper
(Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2000), pp. 3-20; Larissa Tracy, Torture and Brutality in
Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Brewer, 2012), pp. 31-69. On medieval attitudes to blood,
see Bettina Bildhauer, Medieval Blood (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006); Caroline
Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood. Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany
and Beyond (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
15 See Gigliucci, Lo spettacolo, pp. 15-35.
16 See Barański, ‘“E cominciare stormo”’, pp. 182-93.
17 See Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, ed. by Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 153.

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192 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

And what were his views as regards the representation of violence, namely,
as regards descriptions of violence, the use of the terminology of violence,
the treatment of figures and situations that the tradition categorized and
portrayed as violent?
Let us begin by considering Dante’s presentation of the crucifixion, the
event that, by the early-fourteenth century, had become symptomatic of his
world’s fascination with graphic depictions of bloody violence and acute
suffering:

[…] pria ch’altr’alma

del trïunfo di Cristo fu assunta.
Ben si convenne lei lasciar per palma
in alcun cielo de l’alta vittoria
che s’acquistò con l’una e l’altra palma.

[[…] before any other soul

of the triumph of Christ she [Rahab]was taken up.
It was apt indeed to leave her as a palm
in any heaven of the lofty victory
that was achieved with one and the other palm.] (Par., ix. 119-23)

In sharp contrast to the grisly detail of standard descriptions of Christ’s

passion,18 Dante’s treatment is brief, allusive, and bloodless. There is
no lingering here on the horrors and viciousness of Jesus’ torture and
death. Indeed, this aspect of Dante’s portrayal is made more striking as
it is accompanied by the martial imagery of the Christus triumphans, since
this too is used with discretion and without violent overtones: the focus
is entirely on the ‘lofty victory’ and its effects. Dante’s other references
to the crucifixion, whether in the Commedia or in his other works, are
equally restrained.19 It is clear that the poet was intent on distinguishing
his presentation of Jesus’ sufferings from those of his contemporaries – a
culturally significant fact that appears to have eluded Dante scholarship.

18 See, for instance, Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late
Medieval Writings (London: Routledge, 1993); Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘The Body of
Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg’, in her Fragmentation and
Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone
Books, 1992), pp. 79-117, and ‘The Blood of Christ in the Later Middle Ages’, Church
History, 71 (2002), 685-715; Gavin I. Langmuir, ‘The Tortures of the Body of Christ’, in
Christendom and its Discontents, ed. by Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 287-309.
19 See, for instance, Purg., vi. 118-19, xxiii. 74-75, xxxiii. 63; Par., xi. 32-33, xiii. 40-42, xx. 105,
xxxi. 2-3, xxxii. 128-29; Mon., ii. 11.

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 193

Furthermore, if we assess Dante’s treatment of blood in the Nines, we

discover additional evidence of the restraint with which he tackles matters
that involve the spilling of blood. Sangue appears four times in our canti:

tre furïe infernal’ di sangue tinte.

[three infernal furies stained with blood.] (Inf., ix. 38)

Lo terzo, che di sopra s’ammassiccia,

porfido mi parea, sì fiammeggiante
come sangue che fuor di vena spiccia.

[The third, which from above was amassed,

seemed to me of porphyry, as flaming
as blood that gushes from a vein.] (Purg., ix. 100-02)

Troppo sarebbe larga la bigoncia

che ricevesse il sangue ferrarese,
— e stanco chi ’l pesasse a oncia a oncia.

[Too broad would be the vat

that would receive the Ferrarese blood,
and tired he who would weigh it ounce by ounce.] (Par., ix. 55-57)

Ad un occaso quasi e ad un orto

Buggea siede e la terra ond’io fui,
che fé del sangue suo già caldo il porto.

[On one sunset almost and on one sunrise

Bougie sits and the land from which I was,
that once made warm with its blood its port.] (Par., ix. 91-93)

It is striking that Dante employed sangue literally only in the first of the
above passages, and that he should have done so without embellishment.
The other three occurrences are figurative. Sangue is used in a simile to
establish the precise hue of the ‘flaming’ colour of the third step; while the
remaining two instances are incorporated into short, yet highly allusive
periphrases to describe respectively the brutal decapitation of four Ferrarese
exiles and the blood-soaked horror of the sea battle that brought to an end
the siege of Massilia. The poet’s purpose in fashioning the circumlocutions
is clear: to avoid itemizing in literal terms the violent events that he was
recalling, and hence to curtail the dramatic force, sensationalism, and

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194 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

gruesome detail that frequently accompanied descriptions of brutality in

classical and medieval texts.20 The measured restraint of Dante’s approach
to representing violence is immediately obvious when Par., ix. 91-93 is
compared to its source in Book iii of Lucan’s Pharsalia: ‘That once made
warm with its blood its port’ tones down ‘Blood foamed deep upon the
wave, /and a crust of gore covered the sea’ (ll. 572-73). However, the real
difference lies in each poet’s individual treatment of the naval engagement:
Dante restricts it to one verse, Lucan extends it over 225 lines (ll. 538-762)
chock-full of mutilation, slaughter, a gallery of excruciating deaths and
bloodletting everywhere.
One might not unreasonably claim that I am not comparing like with
like: Lucan was writing a historical epic about an uncompromising civil
war; Dante, on the other hand, was recalling his providentially sanctioned
journey through the Christian other world. Putting to one side that it is
Dante himself who encourages us to compare his poem to Lucan’s (Inf.,
xxv. 94), what is rather more significant here is that the brevitas and reticentia
that characterize the four ‘bloody’ passages are typical of the manner in
which the poet handled violence. Thus, in Paradiso ix, he alluded to another
brutal event, Can Grande’s slaughter of the Paduan Guelphs near Vicenza,
by means of a periphrasis that makes no direct mention of even a single
drop of blood:

ma tosto fia che Padova al palude

cangerà l’acqua che Vincenza bagna,
per essere al dover le genti crude.

[But soon it will happen that Padua at the swamp

will change the water that bathes Vicenza,
because its people are resistant to their duty.] (Par., ix. 46-48)

20 See, for instance, Jody Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Gigliucci, Lo spettacolo; Kathryn Gravdal,
Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (Philadelphia, PA:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Leone, ‘Sangue perfetto’, pp. 80-88; Tracy, Torture
and Brutality: Violence Against Women in Medieval Texts, ed. by Anna Roberts (Gainesville,
FL: University of Florida Press, 1998); Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature: A Casebook,
ed. by Albrecht Classen (New York: Routledge, 2004); Writing War: Medieval Literary
Responses to Warfare, ed. by Corinne Saunders, Françoise Le Saux, and Neil Thomas
(Cambridge: Brewer, 2004).

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 195

In fact, as if to ensure that his presentation of Can Grande’s actions is as

sober as possible, Dante constructs it out of a series of interconnecting
tropes: a mix of circumlocution, metonymy, and antonomasia. The poet
acknowledged the reality of human brutality; however, he was determined
to avoid doing so graphically.21 He consistently took the same approach,
relying heavily on metaphorical displacement, single words, or a single
qualifying epithet to refer to violent persons, acts of violence, and violent
events. This representational diminutio is especially obvious in Dante’s
treatment of one of the most macabre moments in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(vi. 412-676), the barbaric story of Procne and Philomela – a tale which
so fascinated the medieval imagination that it received elaborations that
went beyond even the viciousness of the original.22 Conversely, Dante
merely mentions Philomela’s existence as a ‘rondinella’ [swallow], the
transformation that allowed her to escape the horrors in which she had
become embroiled – horrors, which the poet distilled into the vaguest of
vague ‘primi guai’ [first woes] (Purg., ix. 13-15).23
There thus seems little doubt that Dante had strong reservations about
explicit and sustained descriptions of violence. There are two principal and
interconnected reasons for this, one literary, the other ideological. First,
as ever, he was keen to distinguish his Christian comedía from classical
tragedia and by extension, from the vernacular chivalric epic, contemporary
chronicles, and accounts of the afterlife. Consequently, Dante drew
attention to and called into question the frequently drawn-out, elaborate,
and excessive treatment of carnage typical of epic and historical writing.24
It is thus suggestive that the only Latin ‘tragedy’ that is unambiguously
remembered in each of the Nines – perhaps a new hint at their ‘vertical’
interconnectivity? – is the notoriously violent Pharsalia: Erichtho in Inferno

21 In this regard, it is striking that in the Nines the most sustained and striking descriptions
of violence all relate to natural phenomena: the storm (Inf., ix, 64-72), the ‘biscia’ (Inf., ix.
76-78), and the eagle (Purg., ix. 20-30).
22 See Mark Amsler, ‘Rape and Silence: Ovid’s Mythography and Medieval Readers’, in
Representations of Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. by Elizabeth Robertson
and Christine Rose (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 61-96; Jane E. Burns, Bodytalk: When
Women Speak in Old French Literature (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1993), pp. 115-50; Madeleine Jeay, ‘Consuming Passions: Variations on the Eaten Heart
Theme’, in Violence Against Women, pp. 75-96.
23 Dante’s treatment of the two sisters is equally understated elsewhere in the Commedia:
see Purg., xvii. 19-20.
24 Marcozzi examines ‘il rifiuto dantesco dell’ideale eroico della guerra e della
rappresentazione letteraria a essa legata’ (‘“La guerra”’, p. 81, and see also p. 82).

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196 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

ix, Caesar’s looting of the public treasury in Purgatorio ix, and the siege of
Massilia in Paradiso ix.25 Yet, Dante reworked Lucan in a radically contrastive
pianissimo and minor key. Furthermore, thanks to his obliquely restrained
allusion to the siege of Jericho – ‘la prima gloria / di Iosüè in su la Terra
Santa’ [the first glory of Joshua in the Holy Land] (Par., ix. 124-25) –, the poet
drew attention to the rather more tempered language of war characteristic
of the Old Testament (Joshua 6. 20-21). Nonetheless, as is evident fom
Par., ix. 124-25, when it came to violence, Dante felt the need to downplay
even the solutions of Scripture.26 In any case, his misgivings as regards the
validity of detailed evocations of cruelty and aggression were more than
just metaliterary in nature. He rejected them for time-honoured ideological
and moral reasons. In part, Dante seems to have been motivated by the
standard view that words are the precursors of actions: the representation of
violence, and especially the ‘tragic’ celebration of warfare and heroism, can
lead to real brutal behaviour.27 More substantially, his ideas were shaped
by his fundamental sense that God is Amore, and hence the antithesis of
violence, and all-powerful. The divine Will asserts itself effortlessly (Inf.,
ix. 95-96), as is evident from the token energy that the messo exerts to
defeat the massed infernal hordes defending Dis (ll. 89-90). Equally, the
‘lofty victory of Christ’s triumph’ is not presented as the result of a bloody
sacrifice involving every fibre of Jesus’ body and personality – a view
that had achieved considerable currency by the early fourteenth century
–, but as a feat that had involved merely ‘one and the other palm’ (Par.,
ix. 123). Ultimately, Dante was affirming his belief in Christ’s message
of love with its stress on charity, respect for others, and the sanctity of
human life. When Dante composed the Commedia, given the Church’s and
Christianity’s increasing involvement with and legitimation of violence, to
express reservations about this fraught rapprochement, even if subtlely,

25 On Lucan as the key model for medieval depictions of the horrors of war, see Jessie
Crosland, ‘Lucan in the Middle Ages: With Special Reference to the Old French Epic’, The
Modern Language Review 25 (1930), 32-51.
26 In doing this, Dante was not calling into question God’s actions but the manner in which
the scribae Dei had chosen to describe these. Since the twelfth century, it had become
increasingly recognized that, while God was the ‘author’ of the events recorded in, and
the senses of, Scripture, its human authors were responsible for the lictera, the form in
which these were granted expression. See Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship:
Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2nd revised edn 2010).
27 See Edwin D. Craun, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral
Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp.
51-52, 160-61. See also Marcozzi, ‘“La guerra”’, pp. 80-81.

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 197

was a matter of no small purport. It aligned Dante with contemporary

pacifist and minority opinion. At the same time, as his approval of Joshua’s
victory makes clear, the poet was not against aggression that was divinely
sanctioned, what the Old Testament termed ‘God’s wars’ (Numbers 21.14;
I Samuel 18. 17, 25. 28).28
Dante’s position hints at the tensions inherent in late-medieval
Christianity’s attitude to violence. Even if the Commedia’s primary emphasis
is on an ordered universe ruled by a loving Creator and on a vision of
earthly existence as ideally predicated on peace, Dante never ignored the
reality of violence. Indeed, he accepted it as part of divine and mortal being.
However, unlike the pagan deities, God’s use of force is a manifestation
not of willful cruelty and aggression but of power perfectly exercised as
love, wisdom, and justice (Inf., iii. 4-6). Divine violence is proportionate, as
evidenced by the faultlessly calibrated nature of otherworldly punishment,
a solution of last recourse, and executed at just the right moment (Par., xxii.
16-17). On the other hand, throughout the Commedia, human violence, like
that of the ancient gods, is portrayed as arbitrary, excessive, and unjust.
In particular, Paradiso ix provides ample evidence of this sad fact. Indeed,
the strong bonds with which Dante bound the canto to Inferno ix highlight
the infernal character of the contemporary world: the monstrous defenders
of Dis find their earthly counterparts in rulers and clerics selfishly and
bloodily safeguarding their own interests. Naturally, Dante acknowledged
that, as with the conquest of the Holy Land, there were circumstances
when violence was necessary; however, such acts of human violence are
normally depicted as either endorsed by God or in defence of His divine
order.29 Moreover, the quintessential miles Christi is a figure of peace,
like the pilgrim and Virgil who, unarmed yet protected by God, succeed
in besting an enemy that seems immeasurably superior. Indeed, as the
‘triumph of Christ’ established, those who belong to the celestial ‘militia’
achieve victory not through the exercise of violence but by having violence
inflicted on them (Par., ix. 139-41).

28 On Inferno xxviii as constituting the limit case of Dante’s representation of violence
and bloodshed, as well as its moderate treatment of bloody warfare when compared to
standard classical and medieval descriptions, see Barański, ‘“E cominciare stormo”’, pp.
186-87.
29 On the pilgrim having recourse to violence against Pier delle Vigne and Bocca, see
Barański, ‘Reading’, p. 25, n. 51.

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198 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

Crucesignati
One of the most accessible marks of Dante’s Christian pacificism, the point
where poetics and ideology, form and ethics merge, is his reluctance to
present directly even those acts of violence that have God’s approval.
Emblematic in this respect is his treatment of the crusades. In general,
Dante pays relatively little direct attention to crusading;30 however, and
this is suggestive in ‘vertical’ terms, references to the crusades, albeit highly
allusive, appear in each of the Nines. Although not all scholars agree, it is
hard to imagine that the repeated mention of the Church’s neglect of the
‘Holy Land, / which little touches the Pope’s memory’ (‘la Terra Santa, / che
poco tocca al papa la memoria’) (Par., ix. 125-26), an accusation which
is almost immediately reiterated (ll. 136-38), is not supposed to evoke
the crusades of the past, while appealing to the Pope to call for a new
military effort to liberate Jerusalem. Indeed, lines 124-26 and 136-41 recall
commonplaces of crusader literature, in particular of sermons in support
of the crusades and of Occitan poetry commenting on their failure.31 Thus,
the correspondences between the close of Paradiso ix and Guiraut Riquier’s
bitter recrimination, ‘Charity and love and faith’, are noteworthy:

It would have been recovered, if this had been desired,

The place where Jesus Christ was born
And lived and was raised on the cross,
And the holy sepulchre, where he was placed.
But the wealthy have turned it into a marketplace,
Engaging only in operations for profit,
So God has not helped them. (41-47)32

30 See Brenda Deen Schildgen, Dante and the Orient (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University
of Illinois Press, 2002), pp. 45-91; Lawrence Warner, ‘Dante’s Ulysses and the Erotics of
Crusading’, Dante Studies 116 (1998), 65-93; Mary Alexandra Watt, The Cross that Dante
Bears (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2005).
31 On preaching and the crusades, see Christoph T. Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology:
Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000; all references to crusade sermons are taken from this edition). On the troubadours,
see Saverio Guida, ‘Le canzoni di crociata francesi e provenzali’, in ‘Militia Christi’, pp.
403-41.
32 Monica Longobardi, ‘I vers del trovatore Guiraut Riquier’, Studi mediolatini e volgari 29
(1982-83), 17-163 (p. 69). Compare too ‘and the Sepulchre is completely forgotten/and
the land where Jesus Christ was born’ (49-50), in ‘Even if I have no joy or pleasure’, in Il
trovatore Peire Cardenal, ed. by Sergio Vatteroni, 2 vols (Modena: Mucchi, 2013), II, p. 661.
See also Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 1095-1274 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1985).

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 199

Equally, remembering Joshua and Rahab,33 attacking the greed of the

powerful for the crusaders’ lack of success,34 invoking St Peter,35 condemning
those who ‘do not care about the Holy Land’,36 alluding to abandoned flocks
and ‘shepherds’ as ‘wolves’ (Par., ix. 131-32),37 and mentioning Christ’s
hands and victory through the cross38 are typical of the tropes employed by
preachers (and poets) to build support for the crusades.
However, already in Inferno ix, Dante had delicately evoked the crusades
and the liberation of Jerusalem, an event that is prefigured in the canto both
by means of hints to earlier sieges of Jerusalem and through the viator’s and
Virgil’s entry into Dis, which is presented as a Muslim stronghold (Inf., viii.
70-73).39 The infernal city is a grotesque parody of the contemporary earthly
Jerusalem, a distortion that hints at the latter’s perverted state under Islamic
rule. Inside its walls, there is no trace of the Holy Sepulchre; instead the
‘great plain’ (‘grande campagna’) (l. 110) is full of ‘sepulchres’ (‘sepulcri)
(l. 115) housing the souls of heretics who denied the Resurrection, one
of whom, in addition, appears as an abnormal embodiment of the dead
Christ standing in the tomb, the so-called Imago pietatis (Inf., x. 32-33).
By ‘entering’ (‘’ntrammo’) (Inf., ix. 106) the ‘fortress’ (‘fortezza’) (l. 108)
thanks to God’s grace, the pilgrim and Virgil can be viewed as symbolizing
crusaders who have successfully achieved their goal – and it ought to be
noted here that it was another commonplace to present fighting in the Holy
Land as a peregrinatio rather than as an act of war.40 The crusaders were
the crucesignati, those who were ‘signed with the cross’, and their sacred
endorsement was supported by two Scriptural auctoritates, Ezekiel 9. 3-11

33 Rahab: James of Vitry, Sermo ii. 5 (p. 102); Gilbert of Tournai, Sermo i. 20 (p. 188). Joshua:
Eudes of Châteauroux, Sermo ii. 10 (p. 150); Bertrand de la Tour, Sermo iii (pp. 244-46). On
Joshua see also Smith, War and the Making, pp. 12, 14, 17; Warner, ‘Dante’s Ulysses’, p. 82.
34 Eudes of Châteauroux, Sermo v. 11, 13 (pp. 172-74). See also, tellingly, Folchetto’s crusade
song: ‘Singing becomes painful for me’ (25-60), in Le poesie di Folchetto di Marsiglia, ed. by
Paolo Squillacioti (Pisa: Pacini, 1999), pp. 328-30; Peire Cardenal, ‘Even if I have no joy or
pleasure’ (45-48), in Vatteroni, p. 661. See also Guida, ‘Le canzoni’, p. 418.
35 Eudes of Châteauroux, Sermo iv. 14 (p. 164). See also Guida, ‘Le canzoni’, pp. 422, 439.
36 James of Vitry, Sermo i. 8 (p. 88). See also Folchetto’s ‘From now on I don’t know a
reason’, in Squillacioti, pp. 370-75, esp. ll. 1-33 (pp. 370-73).
37 See, for instance, Humbert of Romans, Sermo i. 3 (p. 222); Huon de Saint-Quentin,
‘Jerusalem weeps’ (12-20), in Arié Serper, Huon de Saint-Quentin: Poète satirique et lyrique.
Étude historique et édition des textes (Potomac, Studia Humanitatis, 1983), pp. 84-85; Peire
Cardenal, ‘Clerics pretend to be shepherds’ (1-12), in Vatteroni, I, pp. 472-73.
38 James of Vitry, Sermo ii. 6 (p. 104), 14 (p. 110). See also Gilbert of Tournai, Sermo iii. 7 (p.
200).
39 See Barański, ‘“E cominciare stormo”’, p. 183; Warner, ‘Dante’s Ulysses’, p. 65.
40 See Cole, The Preaching, pp. 2-4 and passim. See also Picone, ‘Paradiso IX’, p. 80.

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200 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

and Revelation 7. 2-3, 9.41 Significantly, the same two Biblical passages are
the principal sources behind the pilgrim’s own ‘signing’:

Sette P ne la fronte mi descrisse

col punton de la spada, e ‘Fa’ che lavi,
quando sè dentro, queste piaghe’ disse.

[Seven Ps on my forehead he inscribed

with the tip of his sword, and ‘Ensure you wash,
when you are inside, these wounds’ he said.] (Purg., ix. 112-14)

Purgatorio ix thus intertextually confirms Dante-personaggio’s status as a

‘crusader’,42 which the poet had first adumbrated in Inferno ix, although it
is not until Paradiso ix that he referred to the crusades more directly. This
set of ‘vertical’ correspondences is unquestionably striking, and cannot but
require that I partially modify my earlier position as regards the validity of
undertaking a ‘vertical’ reading of the Nines. While I remain convinced that
Dante did not intend the cantos to be read ‘vertically’, it does nonetheless
seem to be the case that he introduced into each of them references to the
crusades – a coherent and consistent structure whose full meaning is best
appreciated when the three cantos are examined together. Thus, on the
basis of the evidence offered by the Nines, I should like to suggest that,
if a ‘vertical’ reading at the macro level of the canto does not seem to be
authorially endorsed, on the other hand, such a reading does seem to be
authorized by Dante at the micro level of the theme of the crusades. In
fact, the events at the gate of Purgatory bring to mind another important
crusader motif. The Church promised soldiers who died fighting to free
the Holy Sepulchre that the portae Paradisi would be miraculously opened
to them without their having to confess their sins and undergo purgation.43
In contrast, Dante affirms the need for his unarmed living ‘crusader’ to
pass through the ‘sacred door’ (‘porta sacrata’) (Purg., ix. 130) of Purgatory,
and so fully repent his sins and purge his sinful dispositions, before being
permitted to proceed to Heaven. The question thus arises whether the
poet’s juxtaposing treatment implies a veiled criticism of the Church’s

41 James of Vitry, Sermo i. 5, 6 (p. 86), 9 (p. 88), 13 (p. 92); Eudes of Châteauroux, Sermo v.
1, 2, 3, 4 (pp. 166-68), 7, 8 (p. 170), 11 (p. 172); Gilbert of Tournai, Sermo i. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (pp.
176-78), 10 (p. 180), 25 (p. 190), ii. 1 (p. 192), iii. 1, 2 (p. 198), 7 (p. 200).
42 See also Schildgen, Dante, pp. 81-82; Schnapp, The Transfiguration, p. 103; Watt, The Cross.
43 James of Vitry, Sermo ii. 18-19 (p. 112); Gilbert of Tournai, Sermo i. 20 (p. 188). See Cole,
The Preaching, p. 208.

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 ‘Without Any Violence’ 201

use of indulgences to convince people to fight on its behalf. In light of his

normal reservations regarding violence – as with other acts of war, Dante’s
treatment of the crusades in the Nines is typically understated and cursory
–, such a censure would not be out of place. Once again, the contradictions
inherent in late-medieval Christianity’s approach to violence leave their
‘sign’ on the fabric of the Commedia.

Conclusion
‘Without any violence’ (‘sanz’alcuna guerra’) (Inf., ix. 106), the expression
with which Dante fixed the manner of the viator and Virgil’s miraculous
entry into the ‘fortress’ (l. 108) of Dis, effectively captures the principal
drift of my argument as regards the poet’s attitude to violence, which the
Nines, helpfully though not systematically, illustrate. What the phrase
cannot do, naturally, is cast light on the efficacy of reading the Commedia
‘vertically’. I remain unconvinced that Dante intended the three canti to
be assessed ‘vertically’, or that he judged this a hermeneutic approach
normally appropriate for his poem. Nonetheless, as far as the crusades are
concerned, I do think that the poet deemed our cantos’ allusions to these
as constituting a single system. This would imply that Dante may have
deliberately introduced partial ‘vertical’ interconnections between canti
distinguished by the same number. Mine is nothing more than a tentative
suggestion; although I hope that some of the other essays in this and future
volumes of Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ may provide corroborating
evidence for my proposal. In some ways, what I found most fruitful about
evaluating the Nines ‘vertically’ was the unexpected insights this mode of
reading offered into Dante’s compositional practices which, otherwise, I
would undoubtedly have missed. Thus, while the repetition of palma, -e
in Inferno ix – ‘battiensi a palme’ [struck themselves with their palms] (l.
50) – and in Paradiso ix – ‘con l’una e l’altra palma’ [one and the other palm]
(l. 123) – seems calculated to establish a vivid contrast between the Furies
and Christ, as well as their respective military prowess, a thin, almost
invisible thread also connects the term to Purgatorio ix. As commentators
observe, the dream of the eagle with its evocation of Ganymede (ll. 19-27)
finds its precedent both in Aeneid v. 254-57 and in Metamorphoses x. 155-61.
Virgil’s vignette includes the detail that ‘his aged guardians in vain stretch
out their palms to the stars’ (ll. 256-57). Treating the cantos ‘vertically’, the
upraised palmae of the ‘guardians’ are eye-catching. Do their ‘palms’ offer

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202 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

a clue as to how, as Dante composed a canto, other canti characterized

by the same number could, at a deep structure, exert an influence on his
formal choices? Indeed, since Dante’s verses are closer to Virgil’s than to
Ovid’s, could ‘le feroci Erine’ [the fierce Erinyes] (Inf., ix. 45) have exercised
some sort of pull on his opting for the former? It is for this and the other
unexpected and highly alluring glimpses44 into how Dante may have woven
the fabric of the Commedia that I am most grateful to have been granted the
opportunity to read the Nines ‘vertically’.

44 See Barański, ‘Reading’, pp. 5-35.

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