Beauty and the Soul: How Dante Teaches Us to Look

(Purgatorio, Canto XXXII): History of the church in 50 verses

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

~ Marcus Aurelius

Welcome to Dante Read-Along! ✨

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Welcome to Dante Book Club, where you and I descend into Hell and Purgatory to be able to ascend to Paradise. Our guide is the great Roman poet Virgil and in this Thirty-second Canto of the Purgatorio, we see the tableau of the history of the church. You can find the main page of the read-along right here, reading schedule here, and the list of chat threads here.

In each post you can find a brief summary of the canto, philosophical exercises that you can draw from it, themes, character, and symbolism explanations.

All the wonderful illustrations are done specially for the Dante Read-Along by the one and only Luana Montebello.

This Week’s Circle ⭕️

Beatrice unveiled - Dante is blinded - The pageant and host have left the scene - Beatrice descends the chariot before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, stripped bare - The griffin attaches the chariot pole to the tree trunk - The tree blooms - Beatrice sits beneath the tree - She directs Dante to write what he is about to see - The seven tableau of the history of the church.

Canto XXXII Summary:

Dante was finally able, after ten years of longing, to fully gaze upon Beatrice. His entire attention was absorbed to the point of losing track of time, his “eyes were walled in by / indifference to all else” (4-5).

The three theological virtues—Faith, Hope, and Charity—stood to his left and commented on Dante’s fixed stare at Beatrice; while some commentators say that Dante should not gaze too long because of the brightness of her aspect, others say it indicated that Dante was giving his attention over to the external image of her, entranced by the beauty he fell in love with all those years ago. This brightness of her aspect, combined with Dante being forced to look away by the warning of the virtues, suggests that the brightness overwhelmed him; he was blinded by the light emanating from her, as one would be who stared directly at the sun.

The Graces warn Dante against too intense and exclusive a concentration on Beatrice. This may be because his sight is not yet strong enough to bear her unveiled light (as we see, he is momentarily blinded); but it is rather, I think, a reminder that Beatrice, though a true image, is not the only nor the ultimate Image.¹

As his eyes adjusted back to the scene before him, and its ‘lesser’ light, he saw the procession shifting its position, facing the bright sun of the late morning in the eastern sky. They moved with military precision around the chariot:

Just as, protected by its shields, a squadron
will wheel, to save itself, around its standard
until all of its men have changed direction;

so here all troops of the celestial kingdom
within the vanguard passed in front of us
before the chariot swung around the pole-shaft.
xxxii.19-24

The virtues were in their places by the wheels as they had been in the pageant, and the griffin moved forward, pulling the ‘blessed burden’ of the chariot—representation of the Church—with Beatrice still standing within it. The pole-shaft was the wood that had been the cross upon which the crucifixion took place. The griffin’s feathers did not ruffle with this movement, indicating, symbolically, that:

Christ sets the Church in motion again, by means of the Cross, without disturbing in any way His divine (eagle) part.²

Statius was still with them, although he had not been mentioned in the past proceedings; he and Dante and Matilda moved along with the chariot's movement next to the right wheel, that of the inside of the arc the chariot was making, next to the theological virtues.

Throughout these last three cantos, Dante has an air of forgetting Statius, only throwing in a casual reference now and again, to show that he is still there. We infer from l.28 that he has crossed Lethe, and we are told (xxxiii.133-34) that he drinks of Eunoë; but he is excluded altogether from the interview with Beatrice…He is doubtless here to show that the drinking of the two waters is part of the regular purgation of all spirits.³

As they walked through the divine forest to the celestial sounds of angelic song, Dante noted that it was empty, and had been since the fall of Adam and Eve. When they had gone a certain distance—the length of three shots of an arrow—Beatrice left the chariot, thus signaling the true end of the celebratory pageant.

National Gallery London @ Vashik

Here began a series of tableau, or staged moments—in this case, laced with profound meaning—creating a new scene, as if scenes in a play. The events contained in lines 37-60 point to the history of the Church.

“Adam,” I heard all of them murmuring,
and then they drew around a tree whose every
branch had been stripped of flowers and leaves.
xxxii.37-39

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree from which Adam and Eve ate in the garden of Eden, was barren and without foliage; the host of the pageant formed a circle around the tree as they intoned Adam’s name. The tree itself had its counterpart in the sixth terrace of Gluttony:

Then we drew close to that imposing tree,
which was impervious to prayers and tears.

‘Pass on. Do not come closer. Higher up,
there is a tree which gave its fruit to Eve,
and this plant is an offshoot of its root.’
Purgatorio xxiv.113-117

The mention of Adam and the tree stripped of its leaves and fruits brings us straightway to the center of meaning in this new enactment. And the tree will remain at the center.⁴

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That this tree is stripped of all its leaves, its flower, and its fruits clearly registers the consequences of Adam’s sin in human nature generally and symbolizes the wounds that are now borne by mankind in consequence.⁵

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The murmur of the heavenly company has further identified the Tree, in its bare and ruined state, as an image of Adam in his fallen nature. We shall thus have no difficulty in identifying the Chariot-pole (Cross, or ‘Tree of Glory’) as an image of Christ, the Second Adam, in His unfallen Humanity-each Adam being figured, that is, by his particular Tree.⁶

The assembled host sang to the griffin, and with its cryptic blessing, said that it, in representing Christ, was symbolic of unfallen man who does not taste of the sweet but poisonous nature of sin:

Blessed are you, whose beak does not, o griffin,
pluck the sweet-tasting fruit that is forbidden
and then afflicts the belly that has eaten!
xxxii.43-45

The griffin spoke a single line, confirming its representation of Christ in the tableau, “Thus is the seed of every righteous man preserved.” (47-48); this is the joining of the two Adams, the fallen and unfallen man. In the action of joining the pole of the chariot—the cross—with the trunk of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—the representation of the fallen state of humanity—it was the joining of the two natures.

The griffin draws out the pole from the chariot and binds it to the tree, from the wood of which it originally came. The legend that the Cross was made from the wood of the Forbidden Tree in the Garden of Eden seems clearly recognized by allusion in Purg. xxxii.51. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find any other satisfactory explanation for these words. If it be accepted, it establishes beyond doubt that the pole of the car with the Crossbar symbolizes the Cross.⁷

The Procession Returns to the Forest – Luigi Ademollo

Thus the tradition, in one form or another, was so generally familiar that Dante would be safe in referring to it in this passing and allusive manner. The following strange medley is derived from the Aurea Legenda. Seth is said to have planted an offshoot from the Tree of Knowledge on Adam’s grave. By the time of Solomon it had grown to a very large tree. This he cut down, and employed either for one of his palaces, or as a bridge to cross a pool. The Queen of Sheba, to whom it was miraculously revealed that the Saviour of the world should one day hang upon this wood, refused to set foot on it, and warned Solomon of the revelation she had received. Solomon, hoping to avert such an evil prophecy, caused the beam to be buried at a great depth in the earth. At the spot was afterwards dug the Pool of Bethesda whose healing properties were due to the presence of this wood. Shortly before the Passion, the wood came to the surface, and was employed to form the Cross.⁸

Once joined, that tree that had been bare burst into life with swelling buds and blooming flowers, just as if it had been the spring that arrived in the constellation Aries as it followed Pisces, the ‘celestial Fishes.’ Yet this blooming came, not in a month, ‘before the sun has yoked its steeds beneath another constellation’ (56-57) of Taurus, but in an instant. Its color was the shade of purple in between red and violet symbolic of Christ’s passion upon the cross.

With this ‘interlude of the tree’ in the midst of canto xxxii, the history of the church up to the crucifixion is concluded, which began during the pageant of Beatrice; the various symbols that appear in the rest of this canto are historical in time leading from that crucifixion up until Dante’s day. These are presented as a series of chronological tribulations that have tried the foundations of the established church and had threatened the fabric of it through time.

After the interlude of the tree, Dante was lulled to sleep, just as the eyes of Argus were lulled by Mercury’s tale of Syrinx and the origin of Pan’s pipes. In the legend, as Syrinx fled the pursuit of Pan, she prayed to be changed into reeds at a marshes edge; when Pan reached out to grasp her, in his hand he held instead a bunch of uneven hollow reeds. When he sighed at the loss of her, the pipes turned his breath into song.

Now Mercury was ready to continue
until he saw that Argus had succumbed,
for all his eyes had been closed down by sleep.
He silences himself and waves his wand
above those languid orbs to fix the spell.
Ovid, Metamorphoses i.986-990

Dante awoke to Matilda’s voice calling to him “Rise up: what are you doing?” reminiscent of the apostles who, after witnessing the transfiguration of Jesus, in company of Moses and Elias, had fallen to their faces out of fear:

Even as Peter, John and James, when brought
to see the blossoms of the apple tree-
whose fruit abets the angels’ hungering,

providing endless wedding-feasts in Heaven-
were overwhelmed by what they saw, but then,
hearing the word that shattered deeper sleeps,

arose and saw their fellowship was smaller-
since Moses and Elijah now had left-
and saw a difference in their Teacher’s dress;
xxxii.73-81

The apple blossom was symbolic of Christ himself, and the endless wedding-feast was the "marriage supper of the Lamb” in heaven.⁹ They heard the ‘word that shattered deeper sleeps’ in the call to ‘arise,’ just as Jesus had spoken to Lazarus when he performed the miracle of raising him from the dead. In the scene of the Transfiguration, what they witnessed was his person enveloped in an overwhelming and transformative light; hence, the ‘difference in their Teacher’s dress’ when it became as ‘white as light.’

And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.
Matthew 17:2

Just as those events had led to the apostles rising up, so Matilda called Dante out of his sleep. When he fearfully searched for Beatrice, Matilda pointed her out beneath the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Beatrice sat on the roots, the spot of reunion with the pole and trunk of the tree that the griffin had placed there, under the newly leafed and flowered branches. She was renewed, in this deliberate pose, just as Christ was renewed by his transfiguration.

When Dante wakes up, he sees her very much changed in raiment, so to speak, seated on the bare ground-changed, that is, from the aspect she had in her triumph…but we learn of an even greater event now: the whole scene is changed, for the griffin, symbolizing Christ, and all the figures in the procession (except the virtues and the chariot itself) have risen to Heaven or are in that moment rising. This, in the chronological sequence, signifies the Ascension of Christ, and Beatrice is now left behind as Revelation and as Wisdom.¹⁰

The Virtues Dancing Near the Chariot – Vittorio Alinari, ed., Florence

Beatrice sat with the empty chariot, and her seven handmaids circled round her, holding those seven candlesticks from the procession that could not be affected by the strongest of winds. Beatrice spoke:

Here you shall be—awhile—a visitor;
but you shall be with me—and without end—
Rome’s citizen, the Rome in which Christ is

Roman; and thus, to profit that world which
lives badly, watch the chariot steadfastly
and, when you have returned beyond, transcribe

what you have seen.
xxxii.100-106

Dante’s time remaining on earth would seem but a moment—a visit—before he would be reunited for eternity with Beatrice as a citizen of the heavenly realms, called here ‘the Rome in which Christ is Roman.’ This imagery is directly from St. Augustine in his de Civitate Dei, City of God:

Location has, symbolically, undergone a change, and Augustine’s earthly and heavenly cities have emerged as central to the meaning. His heavenly city could not be more clearly indicated than by the famous vs. 102; his earthly city is ambiguous or equivocal, even as in the famous de Civitate Dei, for there are two earthly cities, one made up of the righteous, those who are justified, and one made up of the wicked, those who live in sin.¹¹

Beatrice then tasked Dante to record what he was about to see, just as the apostle John had been tasked to put down his visions in the book of Revelation. What followed was a pageant of church and empire, Dante’s version of an apocalyptic vision; we have taken that word, in contemporary usage, to indicate the end times, or the violent destruction. Yet in the visionary sense, ‘apocalypse’ is closer in meaning to ‘revelation’ or ‘uncovering’; that these visions often had to do with an end time, revealing them prophetically, has combined these meanings into one.

What thou seest, write in a book. Revelation 1:11

At the Tree of Knowledge, Dante Slumbering – Christopher Dall’ Acqua

Here begins the [silent] show or series of tableaux enacted around the tree of justice which prove to represent seven principal calamities that have successively befallen the Church and are an offense to God’s justice as represented by the tree.¹²

The first tableau was of the bird of Jove, an eagle. Quick as lightning, it attacked the tree and sheared it of its new leaf and blossom; moving to the chariot in similar fashion, it struck with great force. The eagle was the Roman Empire, which, beginning with Emperors such as Nero and Diocletian, worked to persecute the church and Christianity.

These emperors offend God’s tree by way of doing violence to the Church. It should not be forgotten that now this tree has purple flowers in its restored state, through Christ’s atonement, and therefore the offense is even more blasphemous.¹³

The second tableau saw a lean fox jumping into the chariot before Beatrice chased it away, accusing it of ‘squalid sins’ (121). The fox symbolized heretical doctrines that lacked ‘all honest nourishment’ and were ‘stripped of flesh,’ indicating that they were not full of truth—many early commentators point to the Gnostic movements as the source of these heresies:

Next, the Car is invaded by a lean and hungry fox. But Beatrice herself speedily drives it away. This clearly refers to the early heresies, which were overcome and suppressed by the authority of the Church herself, and so she purged herself of them.¹⁴

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Insidious foxes, more than anything else, signify heretics; treacherous, fraudulent.
St. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms lxxx.14

Third, the eagle returned and shed its golden feathers within the chariot which, remember, signified the church itself. The voice of St. Peter, the first pope, was heard lamenting the cargo placed within the chariot. The feathers symbolized the power given to the Church from the Empire, temporal power given where it did not belong.

The third great calamity is the acquisition of temporal possessions through the ‘Donation of Constantine.” The eagle descends once more, and leaves the Car covered with its own feathers. This exactly describes the position maintained by Dante in the de Monarchia. It is of the very ‘form’ or essence of the Church that she should have no such possessions.¹⁵

The fourth tableau was of a dragon emerging from the ground beneath the chariot, piercing its tail through the chariot, back out again, and into it for yet another strike, rending and tearing at its foundation.

This imagery has gained a number of interpretations, mainly regarding schisms within the church. Many agree on the rise of Islam in the seventh century as the schism represented, especially considering Dante’s placement of Muhammed in the ninth bolgia of the eighth circle of the Inferno reserved for schismatics.¹⁶ Due to the dragon's presence in the book of Revelation, it has also been alternately read as an anti-Christ figure, Satan, or the sin of Cupidity and greed.

Dante’s Awakening Between Beatrice and Matelda – M. A. Schiavonio. Venezia, Ed. Zatta

The fifth image continued the idea of the church accumulating worldly possessions as the eagle's golden plumage was now covering the ground around the chariot.

The fifth vicissitude is a further accession of temporal possessions represented in the additional plumage by which the whole Car is now entirely smothered and overgrown, wheels and pole and all. …These possessions had now become so vast as to alter the whole aspect of the Church, and to bring about a complete transformation of its original character.¹⁷

In the sixth tableau, further transformation of the nature of the church became grotesque parodies of its faults, as the chariot grew seven monstrous heads: three horned heads from the pole itself, and four from the corners, indicating the terrible evolution that was taking place as chronologically, the period of time came closer to Dante’s time:

The earliest, and still most common, explanation is that he refers to the seven capital or deadly sins, all of which now disfigured the hopelessly corrupted Church.¹⁸

The last and most disturbing imagery is contained in the seventh and final tableau. Seated within the chariot as if in a fortress, was a loosely dressed whore—representing the pope and the church—with a giant protectively standing at her side; that giant was the temporal power, the kings, who had engaged in relations with the figure of the church. The two embraced repeatedly as she turned her gaze upon Dante, which sent the giant into fits of jealous rage; the giant untied the chariot—which had been turned into a monster—from the tree, and dragged it away, in a chilling end to Dante’s vision, which had shifted in this scene from history to prophecy.

Since it was the griffin who bound the pole of the chariot to the tree (and the griffin represents Christ), the act of disjoining that which He united is awesome and fraught with evil meaning…the dragging of the chariot, transformed into a monster, through the wood, so far as to hide it from Dante may be taken to signify the certain removal of the seat of the papacy to Avignon in 1309.¹⁹

Dante’s vision was at its end, and his time in Purgatory nearly complete.

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💭 Philosophical Exercises

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

~ John Keats

Dante Awakens and Tries to Remember His Dream – Francesco Scaramuzza

Introduction: a little bit about myself.

Dear reader,

In Canto XXXII we have crossed our own kind of Rubicon, fording not one but two decisive rivers. The very nature of our journey has changed.

Until now, the Philosophical Exercises have focused on understanding the nature of vice, its logic, and why it is harmful. But from this point forward, we move into deeper spheres. For once one has emerged from the storm, the task is no longer survival, but finding the right harbour toward which to set sail.

My dear reader, I feel it necessary to share a little of my background before we enter the Christian Paradise. For while everything in Dante is built on logic rather than dogma, it is worth noting that even those of us who consider ourselves secular, not religious, will still find his vision deeply meaningful. Despite this I find it important to tell you a bit about myself, since we are going to explore many themes related to Church, Christian morality, worldview etc.

I grew up in a country that, for seven decades, tried to erase organised religion and make atheism its state worldview. Yes, you are correct, I was born in the Soviet Union, just a year before its collapse. Today I live in the UK, and I often notice the contrast: here, schools, hospitals, and university colleges bear the names of saints, something unimaginable where I was raised.

There is, therefore, a strange division in my life. My parents are secular, and the country of my childhood was secular. And yet, by origin, I belong to the first nation in the world to recognise Christianity as its state religion. As an Armenian, this heritage has always formed a quiet but important part of my identity. The contradiction of my life is this: I grew up in a city where no street, no school, no building, bore the name of a saint, and now I write these words from a room that looks out upon a church dedicated to one.

This contradiction has been a gift of open-mindedness. Those who grow up surrounded by religion often grow weary of its institutional rigidity, while those raised in the world of scientific materialism sometimes become zealous converts and lose their reason. Living at the crossroads of the secular and the spiritual, of materialism and faith, has given me the ability not to fall entirely into either camp.

My explorations of Paradise will naturally carry the hues of a Christian worldview, philosophy, and symbolism. Yet, as someone raised in a secular environment, I approach them always with the intent to understand by reason so far as reason can reach.

Imagine me walking on a tightrope: to the left lies scientific materialism, to the right religious dogma. My task is not to fall into either abyss, for only by keeping balance might I hope to approach wisdom.

II.

In scarcely fifty lines, Dante manages to recount thirteen centuries of Church history. It proves the old saying true: brevity is the first mark of genius. The force of this canto lies in its symbolism, in how Dante speaks plainly exposing how the Church, once radiant, has strayed into corruption and lost its path.

The two key figures we have to keep our eyes fixed upon are Beatrice and the Chariot. For Beatrice, according to Hollander, represents the spirit of the Church, while the chariot symbolises its earthly existence.

The transformations of the Church in these fifty or so brief verses are remarkable. At first Dante tells us of the persecution of the Church by the Emperors, from Nero to Diocletian: the Jove-eagle, Dante’s standing emblem for empire, plummets on tree and chariot.

Then we see the starved fox who jumps into the chariot and is chased away by the Beatrice. During the formation of the Church many ideas that were considered heretical attempted to become the part of the Christian doctrine, and as we see according to Dante, the true spirit of the Church (Beatrice) chased them away.

Dante’s truly prophetic and insightful ability is visible in the next scene, which, according to Hollander, is focussed on the Donation of Constantine.

The Donation of Constantine was an imperial decree by which the fourth-century emperor Constantine the Great transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope.

In Dante’s vision, no temporal ruler can licitly grant civil dominion authority to the Church. The Empire and the Church must stand distinct, they must be separate, any connection between the two reduced the authority of the Church to an earthly existence. In other words, who the hell is Constantine, even being an Emperor, to grant a power to the representative of the divine power on earth?

What makes Dante’s description prophetic is that, two centuries after his death, the Renaissance humanist Lorenzo Valla demonstrated that the decree supposedly issued by Constantine, granting earthly authority to the Church, was in fact a forgery. The precise circumstances of the forgery remain unknown, but what is certain is that this ‘document’ was used by corrupt churchmen to expand their power.

Dante did not need to know the decree was a forgery to condemn it. For him, the higher realms could never be legitimised by temporal claims. Whether the paper was genuine or false, it was still an abuse of divine truth.

(I have written more about Lorenzo Valla, and Renaissance humanism.)

Humanly Possible: 700 Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope by Sarah Bakewell (Book Review)

III.

At the start of the canto Dante’s gaze is fixed on the metaphorical beauty of Beatrice, and perhaps more than metaphorical. Yet he is told to turn his eyes from the spirit of the Church (Beatrice) to its history (the chariot).

The whole canto revolves around this act of separation: the ability to see things from distinct perspectives. The Church must be distinguished from the Empire, just as Dante must learn to see Beatrice as the soul of the Church apart from the earthly history of the chariot that bears her.

This moment resonates deeply with my own experience. In my youth, I often saw the corruption of certain church members and felt repelled by religion itself. Dante reminds us, however, to distinguish between the eternal spirit and its flawed human custodians the beauty of Beatrice from the battered chariot she rides in.

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This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭

(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)

Dante Awakens – Salvador Dali (

I. Seven Metamorphoses

The history of the Church Dante describes in seven events (metamorphoses): 1) Eagle wounds: persecutions (external pressure, form intact) 2) Fox enters, expelled: early heresies (internal attempt repelled) 3) Eagle feathers the car: Donation/temporal endowment (hinge; co-optation) 4) Dragon rips the floor: structural breach/schism (diabolic penetration). 5) Second plumage: Pepin/Charlemagne repeat the mis-ordering. 6) Seven heads/ten horns: apocalyptic deformation (systemic clerical corruption). 7) Harlot + Giant: Avignon captivity: unyoked and dragged into the wood (political enslavement).

II. Beauty’s Telos

It may be unfashionable to say in our times, but beauty matters. Beauty directs us toward higher realms. I have friends who call themselves irreligious, yet when they stand before a painting by Bellini or beneath the vault of a Gothic cathedral, they cannot help but contemplate the origin of the human soul and the order of the divine. This is precisely the role of Beatrice’s beauty in this canto: pure beauty, like that which radiates from a Renaissance canvas, does not trap us in ourselves, but lifts our gaze upward, toward something greater than ourselves.

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Quotes 🖋️

(The ones I keep in my journal as reminders of eternal wisdom):

My eyes were so insistent, so intent
on finding satisfaction for their ten-
year thirst that every other sense was spent.

And to each side, my eyes were walled in by
indifference to all else (with its old net,
the holy smile so drew them to itself),

when I was forced to turn my eyes leftward
by those three goddesses because I heard
them warning me: “You stare too fixedly.”
~ lines 1-9, Purgatorio, Canto XXXII 

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1. Dorothy L. Sayers, Purgatory 328

2. Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on the Purgatorio 783.

3. Sayers 327

4. Singleton 784

5. Singleton 785

6. Sayers 327

7. Singleton 788

8. Edward Moor, Studies on Dante, Third Series: Miscellaneous Essays. 219-220

9. Revelation 19:9

10. Singleton 793

11. Singleton 795-6

12. Singleton 797

13. Singleton 798

14. Moore 202

15. Moore 203

16. Inferno xxviii

17. Moore 205-6

18. Moore 206

19. Singleton 807