Canto XVII -- The Fourth Cornice, The Angel of Meekness

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

As we cross onto the right side of God in this 51st canto, we notice that Virgil explains the entire structure and layout of Purgatory in a way that makes it very clear that the first three cornices are deficits of love while the last three cornices are excesses of love and the middle cornice is a slowness to love. As such, we find it patterned after Aristotle's idea that too much of an extreme in either direction is bad and that the proper focus of humanity should be on moderation of vice and virtue. This does not discount, however, that all seven capital sins are vices that are addressed by their corresponding virtues. The mountain is still geared towards filling these deficits of the penitent as they circle their cornices. Notice, though, that we start our journey on a ledge at which we find ourselves "stuck fast on the topmost step/ like a vessel half drawn up upon the shore" (77-8), mirroring in canto 51 what we saw in canto 1 when we met Dante lost in a dark wood unable to decide upon a course of action. Here, though, while his feet fail him, his spirit does not, and he yearns for an understanding of the ledge and of the power it has to hold him in place. The next few steps that we take will require of us an exercise in our spiritual zeal, and as human persons still trapped in sin, we may find this harder than we expected. Otherwise, welcome to the top of the cosmic divide.



Prior to this explanation of the structure of the seven capital sins, we witness the rein of wrath -- three scenes of sinful activity taken up by a desire for revenge -- and one wonders about Geri del Bello in the 9th bolgia of the 8th circle of hell, who is quite irate with Dante for not having avenged his death. The testament of these reins is to shock the wrathful into losing their desire for aggression against others and to see the fruitlessness in harboring enmity towards those who are a part of the greater community in which they live. We are all sons of God, so we are also one another's brothers and sisters, bound by the ties of consanguinity on this orb to the extent that what we do to others in wrath we are actually doing to ourselves. To be wrathful, then, is to put ourselves in a state of being that is inconducive to the sweetness and light of God's shared communion with us (and this is a different kind of self-mortification that St. John Joseph of the Cross practiced -- for his was done in the spirit and love of community -- for the value of righteous indignation, I refer you to Fr. Morris, our angel of meekness); this is why those who close themselves off from others cannot emerge from the River Styx and must spend eternity ripping each other apart. Those who follow God's light out of their wrath -- open the doors to community that they would otherwise have shut -- are eligible for redemption even if it takes seven times seventy years for them to purge themselves of the black smoke that blinds them from seeing the value of love. As Dante extols Beatrice by writing in his Vita, "anger and pride are forced to flee from her," we find that the angel of meekness has appeared to wipe away the last vestige of each from Dante's brow (for wrath and pride are indelibly twined). As Ciardi notes, we're entering a transition into another category of capital sin with our stepping foot on the ledge of sloth. Beyond this, we're in the category of the pursuit of the good of this world rather than the pursuit of self-good.

Enough for now -- spiritual torpor awaits and lays to sluggardness what neither time nor space abates. It's the will alone that must carry us through, and, by God's light above, we must see ourselves through. And if the next 49 cantos seem too much for thee, what will your eschatological reality be? "See! and confess, one comfort still must rise,/ 'Tis this: Though man's a fool, yet God is wise" ("Essay on Man," II, 6, 293-4).

S.