Purgatory and the Heavenward Journey
Purgatorio, the second part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, describes the poet’s vision of journeying through Purgatory, the place where Christian souls (though destined for Heaven) are cleansed of the sins they committed during their earthly lives. The logic of Purgatory, according to medieval Roman Catholic doctrine, was that after souls were cleansed of the guilt of original (inherited) sin through baptism, they still had to purge the effects of sins committed throughout…
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Love, Sin, and God
A key to understanding Dante’s perspective in Purgatorio is that, in his view, all sins are in some way a distortion of love. If a soul contained nothing of love, it would never have reached Purgatory (the part of the afterlife where Christian souls are cleansed of sin) to begin with. But before reaching Heaven, a person’s capacity for love must be purified, stirred up, or redirected so that it’s rightly aimed toward God…
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Free Will
A recurrent subject in Purgatorio is the role of the human will in sin. Dante doesn’t assume that his readers will understand this notion: by including a discussion of the subject between himself and Virgil, he suggests that attributing human sin to “the stars,” or to nature, was not uncommon in his day. Early in the poem, however, Virgil rejects the idea that nature, or any form of abstract determinism (the idea that…
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Spiritual Power vs. Earthly Power
One of the more challenging aspects of Purgatorio is that the poem is replete with figures from Dante’s native Florence, Italy—both historical figures and people that Dante himself knew. While most of these figures remain obscure to modern readers, they provide real-world examples of how pervasive sin is and how necessary purgation (cleansing from sin) is for corrupt individuals and societies. In other words, though allegorical, Purgatorio was certainly intended as a contemporary critique…
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Time
In one sense, the souls in Purgatory (the place where souls are cleansed of their sin) have all the time in the world. Having made it to Purgatory, these souls are guaranteed to attain Heaven sooner or later—it’s just a matter of how quickly they progress through the various levels of purification on Mount Purgatory. Yet the poem is suffused with a sense of urgency: even as time in Purgatory seems to correspond in some…
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