Dante, having just emerged from his journey through Hell, arrives in Purgatory at dawn on Easter Sunday. With Virgil, his guide through the afterlife, he meets the soul of Cato, a pagan political leader who died in the first century B.C.E. Cato grants the two men entrance into Purgatory, and in preparation for the journey, Virgil cleanses Dante’s tear-stained face with dew and girds him with a reed belt, a symbol of humility.
Dante and Virgil watch a ship filled with singing souls arrive in Purgatory. Among them is an old friend of Dante’s, Casella, who sings a song to soothe his weariness. Soon, Cato returns and scolds the enthralled souls for lingering—it’s time for everyone to get on with their journey.
On the lowest terraces of Mount Purgatory, Dante and Virgil talk with some repentant excommunicate souls; souls who simply delayed repentance for their earthly sins until the last moment; and others who, because they died violently, had no opportunity to repent. All of these souls either willfully separated themselves from the Catholic Church while living or failed to attend to their spiritual condition in a timely manner. Because of this, these souls must patiently wait for long years in Purgatory before starting their penitential climb.
As Virgil and Dante continue their climb, they encounter Sordello, an Italian poet who lived a little before Dante’s time. Sordello questions Virgil, his literary hero, about life in Limbo, which is the level of Hell where virtuous yet unbaptized people dwell. He also explains the nighttime law of Purgatory, whereby no one can climb in the sun’s absence.
The next morning, Dante awakens to find that he has been carried to Purgatory’s gate; he and Virgil are then admitted by an angel. Before letting them in, the angel marks seven “P”s on Dante’s forehead with the point of his sword; the “P”s stand for the seven capital sins that souls in Purgatory strive to cleanse. The scars will be erased from Dante’s forehead as he progresses through Purgatory.
On the first level of Purgatory proper, Dante sees souls doing penance for the sin of pride. Marble carvings represent pride’s opposing virtue, humility. The penitential souls bear heavy rocks that drag them earthward. They pray the Our Father, emphasizing their submission to God’s will and praying for those souls still on earth. After Dante and Virgil complete their journey through this level, an angel erases the first of the seven “P”s from Dante’s brow, and Dante notices that his steps are already growing lighter.
On the next level, Dante finds souls wearing sackcloth. Their eyes are sewn shut with wires, because they are doing penance for envy and accordingly must learn the virtue of generosity. On this level, Dante criticizes Italians’ capacity for self-seeking corruption. Before they progress to the next level, Virgil offers a discourse on love, explaining that sharing should increase people’s joy, not detract from it.
Next, Dante encounters souls who were wrathful and are now being purged by the virtue of meekness. These souls do penance by fighting through an all-enveloping cloud of smoke. Dante meets a man named Marco Lombardo, who talks with Dante about the cause of human sin. Lombardo rejects the notion that human behavior is solely governed by external influences (the “stars”), explaining that humans are also given the gift of rational discernment and free will to choose between good and bad. Lombardo also says that, ideally, good governance helps curb people’s behavior, but that earthly and church power have become entangled, resulting in corruption.
As they halt their climb that night, Virgil explains that sin ultimately derives from distortions of love. In particular, people sin when their love is wrongly aimed (as in the case of pride, envy, and wrath), when their love lacks vigor (sloth), and when their love is too vigorous (avarice, gluttony, and lust). Virgil further explains that love is drawn by something external to a human being, and that a person’s free will enables him or her to distinguish between greater and lesser loves and to direct desire accordingly.
Next, Dante arrives on the level where sloth is purged. Running souls urge one another onward in greater haste and zeal to make up for their former idleness. Before he and Virgil progress higher, Dante dreams of a siren, a symbol of the projection of desire (the siren is ugly, yet the projection of the malformed will makes her appear attractive).
Reaching the upper levels of Purgatory, Dante finds souls stretched prostrate on the ground. One of these is a former pope, Adrian, who explains that he is doing penance for avarice, or greed—during life, he failed to look heavenward, so in Purgatory, he and his fellow penitents remain bound to the earth.
As they continue their climb, Dante and Virgil are startled by a sudden earthquake. The soul of the ancient poet Statius catches up with them and explains that the tremor signaled his own release from Purgatory—his will has finally been cleansed and freed to desire Heaven. He accompanies the pair for the remainder of their journey.
Statius, Virgil, and Dante next visit the level of Purgatory devoted to gluttony, where souls are emaciated from fasting. Dante’s old friend Forese explains that the fruit and water in Purgatory aren’t quenching or satiating; instead, they elicit constant yearning in these souls as they’re taught to hunger and thirst for God. These souls’ starved appearance prompts Dante to ask Virgil how souls, which don’t require physical sustenance, can become so thin. Statius then delivers a philosophical discourse on the formation of the body in the womb, God’s creation of individual souls, and the connection between these souls and the spiritual bodies visible in Purgatory.
On the highest level of upper Purgatory, souls are being purified for lust—they must pass through fire. In fact, all souls must pass through this cleansing fire in order to exit Purgatory. Though Dante is frightened, Virgil reassures him that the fire won’t harm him. Virgil also declares that, having brought Dante this far, he won’t lead Dante astray now, when his beloved Beatrice—whose prayers made this journey possible—is so near. When they successfully pass through the flames, Dante, Virgil, and Statius settle down for their last night together in Purgatory, and Dante dreams of the biblical Rachel and Leah in an allegory of the practical and spiritually contemplative lifestyles. The next morning, Virgil announces that Dante no longer needs his guidance—Dante’s cleansed and renewed free will is now capable of leading him heavenward.
Dante ascends a stairway and enters a beautiful forest. On the opposite bank of a brook, a woman named Matilda is singing. Matilda explains that Dante is in the Earthly Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, in which human beings were originally created and lived in innocence. Matilda leads Dante through the forest and shows him an elaborate pageant, in which white-robed figures sing and marvelous winged creatures surround a chariot, which is drawn by a gryphon. Seven figures, variously described as nymphs, ladies, Virtues, and Graces, dance along. Seven elders (the authors of the New Testament), garlanded with flowers, follow.
This procession stops in front of Dante, and he trembles at the sight of a magnificent veiled lady—Beatrice, who has always symbolized God’s love to Dante. Undone by Beatrice’s stern glance, Dante begins to weep. Beatrice explains to the watching angels that, during their earthly lives, Dante followed Beatrice on the path to holiness. After she died, however, Dante wandered into sin, and Beatrice arranged for Dante’s journey through the afterlife as a last resort to summon him back to goodness. Tearfully, Dante confesses that Beatrice is right and, overcome by her reproof, he faints.
Matilda draws Dante into the stream, whose waters wash away Dante’s memories of his sin. Then the dancing ladies lead him to Beatrice, in whose eyes the gryphon is reflected, alternately as eagle and as lion, symbolizing Christ’s divine and human natures. The procession makes its way to a bare tree—the one whose fruit tempted Adam to fall—and the Gryphon attaches the pole of Beatrice’s chariot to it, which causes the tree to burst into new blossom.
Beatrice later shows Dante a vision of the Church’s fate, in which an eagle (symbolizing empire), a fox (heresy), and a dragon (the devil) persecute and damage the Church. In turn, a whore (symbolizing the corrupt papacy) and a giant (worldly power) represent the unholy union of earthly and spiritual power that has plagued the Church in recent centuries. Beatrice prophesies that a ruler is coming who will purify the Church; she tells Dante to write down what he’s seen to warn and encourage those still living on earth. Matilda then draws Dante into the river Eunoe, whose sweet waters restore his memory of the past. Dante is renewed and “prepared to rise towards the stars,” towards Heaven.
