How to Examine Our Conscience
(Purgatorio, Canto XXXIII): St. Augustine, Eunoe, and the end of Purgatory
When our vices quit us, we flatter ourselves with the belief that it is we who quit them
~ LaRochefoucauld
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-third and final Canto of the Purgatorio, Dante completes his journey and is cleansed to ascend to Paradise. 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 ⭕️
The seven Virtues lament the corruption of the church - They walk on, the Virtues, Beatrice, Dante, Statius, and Matilda - Beatrice prophecies about the church and explains the nature of the scenes they have witnessed - Dante’s attempts to understand divine ways - The source of the Lethe and Eunoë - Matilda leads them to drink - Dante has reached the constraints of the second book of his poem - Dante is reborn and ready for the stars.
Canto XXXIII Summary:
With sweet melancholy, we embark on the final canto of the Purgatorio.
The seven virtues sang the notes of the Psalm lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem, the two groups taking turns back and forth between them. The last scenes of the tableau of the history and prophecy of the Church had closed, and the Psalm was fitting in response to the imagery of the giant—the temporal powers—stealing away the monstrous chariot—the weakened and transformed form of the church: Deus venerunt gentes:
O god, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.
Psalm 79:1
Beatrice listened sorrowfully, and when their song was complete, stood with a countenance of flame. Her words were in contrast to her handmaidens—as though they were the chorus in a Greek tragedy describing the scene they had just witnessed and all its implications—by using the words of Christ foretelling his death and resurrection to speak for the church and its prophesied return to Rome from the Avignon papacy set in France: ‘Modicum, et non videbitis me et iterum,’— A little while, and now you shall not see me. ‘Modicum, et vos videbitis me’— and again a little while, and you shall see me:
A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.
John 16:16
Beatrice, as Wisdom, let her seven handmaids walk before her and beckoned for Dante, Matilda, and Statius to follow behind. She turned to speak to Dante with kind eyes; she asked him to keep step with her, and with familiar address, calling him ‘brother,’ asked why he did not question her, as surely there must have been so many thoughts swirling round his mind. Her kindness was in sharp contrast to her first encounter with him.
Like those who, speaking to superiors
too reverently do not speak distinctly,
not drawing their clear voice up to their teeth-
so did I speak with sound too incomplete
when I began: ‘Lady, you know my need
to know, and know how it can be appeased.’
xxxiii.25-30
With these words began Dante’s theological education, according to the early commentator Benvenuto; just as Virgil always knew what Dante needed or feared before he expressed it, so would Beatrice be able to explain to him the steps of this theological journey from here throughout the levels of Paradiso. Even having learned so much, he was still the humble student.
And she to me: “I’d have you disentangle
yourself, from this point on, from fear and shame,
that you no longer speak like one who dreams.”
xxxiii.31-33
She began to explain the events they had witnessed in the seven tribulations of the church, but exhorted him to clear his own mind from faulty perception, as one viewing events through the veil of a dream—and think just how dreamlike this experience, and all that he had witnessed, must have seemed. The clarity of the celestial realms was soon to be his.
Beatrice explained the meaning behind the dragon and the chariot. While the external form of the church existed both in theory and materiality, the spirit of it had been crushed and was as if dead, as was shown in the tableau of the giant dragging the chariot into the woods. The wrong would be righted, as the works of God feared no impediment to its justice.
The beast that thou sawest was, and is not. Revelation 17:8
Thus the words return us to the vision, in the Apocalypse, of the woman on the scarlet beast, the great harlot, to the equivalent point in that scriptural context where the angel begins to declare the mystery of what has been witnessed there.1
Some translations use the word ‘sop’ rather than ‘hindrance’ in line 36, with interesting, but disputed, references:
This refers to the ancient Florentine belief that if an assassin could contrive, within nine days after the murder, to eat a sop of bread and wine on the grave of his victim, he would be safe from the vengeance of the family (to prevent this evasion of justice a watch was kept over the grave). Beatrice warns the author of the crime against the Church that God’s vengeance is not so easily evaded.2
Beatrice continued to explain that the eagle—the Roman Empire—that had shed golden feathers on the chariot—the church, first transformed into a monstrous state, then into prey—would someday have again a noble heir, the signs for this prophecy already predicted in the stars. This would be, ideally, a righteous ruler who would restore the papacy back to Rome, its rightful home.
The one who is to come will come by way of propitious stellar influence, which in itself suggests that he will be a temporal ruler. Compare the prophecy of the ‘veltro’ in Inferno i.105, which seems to speak of the birth of such a one as being in the sign of Gemini, the Twins, and thus to relate his coming to the stars.3
Her continued cryptic prophecy about the timing of this ruler— ‘a Five Hundred and Ten and Five’—is one of the most debated and examined passages in the whole Divine Comedy; in speculating upon the number that Dante quotes here, along with their Roman numeral equivalent, is determining who he pointed to as being destined to restore order, one who would kill both the giant and the whore.
A saviour, God’s avenger, who will be an heir of the eagle (the Empire). As in Virgil’s prophecy of the coming reform of Italy by a ‘Greyhound’, this prophecy also is deliberately enigmatic. The identity of the deliverer is encoded in number symbolism: he will be a 515 (in Roman numerals DXV, and anagram of DUX, ‘leader’), the enemy of 666, the number of the beast. No theory has managed to match this number convincingly to a specific person.4
Critical ingenuity has exhausted itself over this numerical cipher, with no great success.5
Most now argue, whether or not they believe that the number, if expressed by the Roman numerals DXV, is an anagram of DUX, that the context of the passage makes it apparent that Beatrice is here indicating the advent of a temporal leader, one who will deal with the excesses of the king of France and the delinquent Church.6
Beatrice’s obscure words were shrouded in the same mystery as the riddle of the Sphinx, who killed all who could not answer her riddle, until her encounter with Oedipus:
The son of Laius, Oedipus, had solved
the riddle of the Sphinx, which none before him
had ever done; straightway, the dark prophet
leapt headfirst from the summit of a cliff,
heedless of her own ambiguities.
Ovid Metamorphoses vii.1087-1091
Directly after Oedipus solved this riddle, Themis, prophetess of the oracle at Delphi—known for ambiguous speech—in her anger at the outcome, sent a plague (some translations say monster rather than plague) to Thebes to destroy their fields and flocks. Yet, Beatrice assured him that clarity would come as events unfolded, and without the same kind of destruction put forth by Themis.
And what I tell, as dark as Sphinx and Themis,
may leave you less convinced because—like these—
it tires the intellect with quandaries;
but soon events themselves will be the Naiads7
that clarify this obstinate enigma-
but without injury to grain or herds.
xxxiii.46-51
Beatrice exhorted Dante to faithfully share her words and her prophecy to those ‘who live the life that is a race to death’; or, those on earth, still in their mortal bodies.
For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death…for whatever time we live is deducted from our whole term of life, and that which remains is daily becoming less and less; so that our whole life is nothing but a race towards death, in which no one is allowed to stand still for a little space, or to go somewhat more slowly, but all are driven forwards with an impartial movement, and with equal rapidity.
St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei xiii.10
She continued her request, that Dante explain the sorrowful state of the twice spoiled tree—once by the eagle, the other by the giant—and pointed out the blasphemy of those actions. Dante here made use of the timing of Eusebius’ dating of the creation of the world in having Adam pining for 5,000 for the redemption of Christ
5,000 years is a round number. According to Genesis v.5, Adam was 930 years old when he died; and in Paradiso xxvi.118, Dante makes him say that he spent 4302 years in Limbo before Christ came to release him. This makes 5232 years in all. Dante is using the chronology of Eusebius, which puts the birth of Christ 5200 years, and His crucifixion 5232 years, after the Creation.8
With powerful imagery of an encrusted mind unable to grasp deeper truths, Beatrice continued:
And if, like waters of the Elsa, your
vain thoughts did not encrust your mind; if your
delight in them were not like Pyramus
staining the mulberry, you’d recognize
in that tree’s form and height the moral sense
God’s justice had when He forbade trespass.
xxxiii.67-72
Beatrice had used a number of ways to elaborate the shift in perception necessary for Dante to fully comprehend the nature of the mysteries that she was placing before him. She had compared his mind to one dreaming, as one full of shame and guilt, like one asleep, and now, as one that is petrified, as were items submerged in the calcifying waters of the Elsa River near Florence. Additionally, that his thoughts had stained his mind just as the blood of Pyramus had stained the white mulberries red in the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe,9 or even further, where she called his mind cloudy and as one turned to stone; the brilliance behind her words and their higher meaning was being lost on him. She desired that he relate her ideas to those on earth, and if not the very words, at least the images and form of them. Dante recognized his lack of understanding:
Even as wax the seal’s impressed,
where there’s no alteration in the form,
so does my brain now bear what you have stamped.
But why does your desired word ascend
so high above my understanding that
the more I try, the more am I denied?
xxxiii.79-84
She had a purpose in her explanations, and that was to contrast the clarity of divine understanding with the limited perception possible to the heights of earthly understanding; even the most learned on earth in all realms of every philosophical school—as Dante had attempted, replacing theology with philosophy in his studies—could not approach the ideas that she introduced. In fact, even the highest thoughts on earth were still as far from the realms of the divine—the Primum Mobile, the highest heaven of the ninth circle—as was possible to be.
The effect of Dante’s submersion in the river Lethe became evident in his response, for he could not remember a time that he was not of one understanding with her; yet just that gap in memory was proof that it had certainly once existed.
Inasmuch as Lethe removes only the memory of sin, the fact that he has now forgotten his recreancy to Beatrice—which he remembered just before drinking of the stream—proves that this estrangement was sinful.10
Beatrice promised, as they walked on, that from this point on, her words will be clear, clear enough for his ‘still-crude sight’ to comprehend, that he may write it as she bade him.
It was noon, and the sun was high above them as the seven virtues stopped in their place ahead of Beatrice and Dante before a shadowy stream. Two distinct streams flowed from a single source before parting ways and becoming two separate currents; he envisioned them as the Tigris and Euphrates, mentioned in the book of Genesis as flowing through Eden, but in his geography of the afterlife, these were the headwaters of the Lethe and the Eunoë. Dante asked Beatrice to explain, and she referred him to Matilda, who was finally named for the first and last time in Purgatory.
The function of Matilda is now clearer to us: the handmaid of Beatrice, and of all that Beatrice signifies, she welcomes the soul, instructs it, cleanses it, and brings it, thus prepared, into the presence of the sacramental mystery.11
Matilda pointed out that she had already explained the function of the rivers and their source to Dante, and that the memory of it should not have washed away with the cleansing waters of Lethe.
Remorse for his sin had made Dante forget the promise of good; now the recollection of sin has been removed by Lethe, and the memory of the good that is his due must be revived by Eunoë.12
Beatrice directed Matilda to do the duty that belonged to her and to revive Dante in the waters of Eunoë; she guided him, and called to Statius to follow.
If, reader, I had ampler space in which
to write, I’d sing—though incompletely—that
sweet draught for which my thirst was limitless;
but since all of the pages pre-disposed
for this, the second canticle, are full,
the curb of art will not let me continue.
xxxiii.136-141
Within the limits of the construct of his poem, the time had come for Dante the poet to close the final lines of his journey through Purgatory.
The poet ends his second cantica with an address to the reader, claiming a certain limit of art, as though only so many pages and no more could be allotted to this cantica. ‘Ordite’ draws on the metaphor of weaving—the pattern pre-established, the design is such. Art requires it.13
We can be sure that the sweetness of that drink was beyond what mortal senses can imagine! And for such goodness, the desire for more could not harm. This was reserved not only for him, but for Statius as well, and all souls that were fortunate to travel so far;
Statius’ presence here is a precious guide to the reader, since what Statius does at the summit of the mountain is a sure indication of what all souls must do when liberated from Purgatory. Thus, though it is not explicitly stated, Statius must have passed through Lethe, even as Dante did, and must have drunk of its water…and now we see indeed that Statius must pass through and taste of Eunoë to become, like Dante, pure and ready to ascend to his reward. We hear no more of him. Presumably, he, like every soul who is thus liberated from Purgatory, rises directly to the Empyrean and to his eternal beatitude, there being a seat reserved for him in the great amphitheater of the elect which we are to see at the end.14
And here, at the summit of Mount Purgatory, the labor is finished. The work has been accomplished. The time has come to reap the rewards of the long and arduous journey that we have undertaken, together. We encounter the fully cleansed and reborn Dante:
I was pure and prepared to climb unto the stars.
xxxiii.144-45
💭 Philosophical Exercises
Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.
~ St. Augustine
It is almost unbelievable, but we have reached the final canto of Purgatory: the last step of purification. Unbelievable, because as I have noted before, many readers stop at Inferno; others begin Purgatorio but never finish it; and only a few follow Dante all the way to the end of The Divine Comedy.
To stop at Inferno is like going to a doctor, receiving a diagnosis, and then refusing treatment, choosing to remain ill. But what does it mean to read Purgatorio and stop before Paradiso?
If Inferno is the diagnosis of our sickness, then Purgatorio is the hospital where the cure begins. Here the souls are purified of the vices they repented for; here Dante himself undergoes treatment. The seven P’s marked upon his forehead fade one by one, like symptoms disappearing under a doctor’s careful watch, until at last he is ready to leave the ward of healing and step into the light of Paradise.
More often than not, the ailments of the body begin in the habits of the mind. We have undergone the cure; the symptoms have been healed. Virgil, our doctor, has left us. But now a new task awaits: not merely to be cured, but to learn how to live again. Our intellect must be clarified, our vision of life renewed, so that health does not simply restore us to where we were, but elevates us to where we have never yet been.
I.
Leo Tolstoy, in his book called Life, gives the example of a miller whose bread nourished his entire village. One day, the man wondered: “How exactly does my water mill work?”
He paused his baking to study the mechanism that ground the grain. A day turned into two, then three, then a week. Meanwhile, the village starved. The miller, once the source of their sustenance, now sat idle by the riverbank, lost in contemplation of the water that once turned the cogs of his mill, while no bread reached the hungry mouths of his people.
Our journey through Inferno and Purgatory resembles the path of Tolstoy’s miller, but in reverse. In the dark forest we first had to reassemble the broken cogs of our inner mechanism so it could even turn. In Purgatory, we refined the process, ensuring that the flour of our will was ground finely enough to become bread worthy of baking.
Now, in Paradise, we must learn—not only learn, but understand—the recipe of pure intellect, the art of baking a bread that truly nourishes. Anyone who cooks or bakes knows: following the recipe is necessary, but not enough. One must have a discerning palate to sense what was added in excess, what is missing, and what requires measure. That sense of proportion, Aristotelian misura, was restored in Purgatory. But here lies the final challenge: if you have never tasted truly good bread, how can you know what you are aiming for?
This, I believe, is the purpose of our journey through Paradise: to taste the bread of wisdom, so that once we descend again to our earthly lives, we know what it means to nourish both ourselves and others.
II.
The last canto of Purgatory begins with “a dance” between the maidens who sing “Deus, venerunt gentes” (a psalm of desecration) and Beatrice who listens and the repeats the words of Christ “Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum… et vos videbitis me.” offering hope of renewal and rejuvenation.
The maidens represent the seven virtues: cardinal (prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude) and theological (charity, hope and faith). The witnessing of the scene from the previous canto, of how the chariot that represented the church was “torn apart” by the empire made these maidens lament the state of affairs. In the same way we see how corrupt our modern world has become, and that neither cardinal nor theological virtues are valued anymore.
Beatrice’s words to Dante are obscure and she begins by demanding from Dante:
And she to me: “I’d have you disentangle yourself, from this point on, from fear and shame, that you no longer speak like one who dreams. ~ lines 31-33
Dante is transformed here from a visionary into a scribe. From this moment on, he must record what he sees as it is, and “no longer speak like one who dreams.” For us, readers of a secular century, these words strike even more profoundly. Through Beatrice’s lips, Dante the poet tells us that what unfolds in Paradiso is not dream, nor allegory, but the most real vision of the entire poem.
Her prophecy is veiled in riddles so much so that commentators have debated them for centuries. Even Dante the pilgrim admits he does not fully grasp Beatrice’s words. Yet what she makes clear is that time itself, history itself, will be the ultimate interpreter of her prophecy.
What is certain, however, is that the Edenic Tree and the divine boundaries placed upon it are not relics of the past. They remain active, alive, and binding even now. And we, who still walk this earth, retain the power to plunder or desecrate the tree, just as those before us did.
III.
The philosophical exercises section is largely inspired by the French philosopher Pierre Hadot, who believed that philosophy can act as medicine for the soul, and literature at its highest is also such medicine. Here, in this canto, in Dante’s struggle to understand Beatrice’s words we see such medicine, for Dante says:
And I: “Even as wax the seal’s impressed, where there’s no alteration in the form, so does my brain now bear what you have stamped.” But why does your desired word ascend so high above my understanding that the more I try, the more am I denied?” ---- And I replied to her: “I don’t remember making myself a stranger to you, nor does conscience gnaw at me because of that.” “And if you can’t remember that,” she answered, smiling, “then call to mind how you—today— have drunk of Lethe; and if smoke is proof of fire, then it is clear: we can conclude from this forgetfulness, that in your will there was a fault—your will had turned elsewhere.
Dante confesses that he feels the full weight of Beatrice’s words, even if he cannot yet understand why they strike him as true. He has bathed in Lethe, and so the memory of his lost path has been washed away. And yet (even in forgetting) the lessons of his error remain inscribed upon him, like scars whose pain has passed but whose mark endures.
This may be the crucial moment of the entire poem. Beatrice tells us that forgetfulness itself is proof of fault within the will. We may no longer remember the precise moment when a bad habit took root, or when we first chose a crooked path, but the habit itself is evidence enough. Its very presence testifies that, at some point, our will consented to turn away from the good.
Dante must learn to read his own soul as evidence. This is what Pierre Hadot would have called examen conscientiae—the exercise of examining one’s conscience. The twin rivers, Lethe and Eunoe, function almost like an ancient mnemonic technique: Lethe erases the memories that would pull us back into vice, while Eunoe strengthens and trains the memory to hold fast to what is good, so that the soul can move forward unburdened.
IV.
We've had the diagnosis; we've taken the cure. The seven P's have fallen from our foreheads; Lethe has washed away what held us back; Eunoe has restored our taste for what's good. Virgil brought us to the threshold of wholeness. Now Beatrice asks us to actually live.
But stopping here would be like repairing the mill and never grinding grain. Purgatorio tuned the instrument, while Paradiso teaches us the song. There the mind grows clear, the palate learns to distinguish real nourishment from empty husks, so we can feed others, not just fill ourselves.
Beatrice warns against dreaming when we should be seeing. Being ready isn't the same as arriving. So upward then, into Paradiso—to let joy instruct the intellect, and to follow that Love which moves the sun and all the stars.
The changes make it flow more naturally while preserving your core insights about the transition from purgation to paradise, and the movement from personal healing to active love in the world.
This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭
(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)
I. St. Augustine on Life Giving you Signs
The smoke → fire in Beatrice is one of the most useful rules I know - our life gives us signs of its health. As a sedentary life soon shows itself in atrophied muscles, so our moral life reveals itself in small evasions, irritations, and compromises the smoke by which we know there’s a fire beneath.
Learn to read those signs (examen conscientiae): follow the smoke, find the fire, turn the will.
II. Ovid’s Misreading
Dante’s “Naiads” comes from a medieval copyist error in his Ovid: the correct reading is Laïades “Laius’ son,” i.e., Oedipus, who solved the Sphinx’s riddle. Early commentators followed Dante’s text until Heinsius (1646) restored Laïades (1732); Dante’s point still holds: like Themis/Sphinx, history itself will unlock the riddle.
III. Moralmente
When Beatrice says the Tree must be read moralmente (present), she’s using a technical cue from medieval exegesis: the moral/tropological sense (alongside the literal, allegorical, and anagogical). In plain terms: don’t archive Eden as myth: live it now.
The Tree isn’t museum lore, not an archaic event, but a living rule that orders our choices today. And the movement is teleological: once the moral sense is obeyed, the anagogical opens, Paradiso, where the same reality is read upward toward our final end.
Quotes 🖋️
(The ones I keep in my journal as reminders of eternal wisdom):
But since I see your intellect is made
of stone and, petrified, grown so opaque—
the light of what I say has left you dazed—
I’d also have you bear my words within you—
if not inscribed, at least outlined—just as
the pilgrim’s staff is brought back wreathed with palm”
~ lines 73-76, Purgatorio, Canto XXXIII
Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on Purgatorio 811
Dorothy L. Sayers, Purgatory 336
Singleton 813
Allen Mandelbaum, Purgatorio 704
Sayers 336
Robert Hollander, Purgatorio 754
Every translation makes a note of the error in textual transmission in Ovid’s Metamorphoses that led Dante to reading ‘Naiades,’ the sea nymphs, for ‘Laiades,’ father of Oedipus. It is not the Naiads who untied the riddle, but Oedipus, son of Laius.
Sayers 337
We saw this tale related in canto xxvii on the terrace of lust.
Singleton 821
Sayers 335
Singleton 823
Singleton 824
Singleton 823-24
Thank you Vasik! Your guidance through the Inferno and Purgatory has added so much depth and elucidation through my first read of The Divine Comedy. I'm looking forward to to leaning on your Substack shoulder through Paradise!
DC has always seemed so intimidating to me, but with your invaluable guidance I've made it up to the end of Purgatory! Time to move on to Paradise! Thank you!