INFERNO XI
INFERNO XI
3. The word stipa (“throng”—from the verb stipare or stivare) in Dante (see Inf. VII.19; XXIV.82) seems to refer to animals or people crowded together as in a pen or in the hold of a ship (cf. the English “steerage”). Here the term refers to those crowded together in the more restricted area of the narrowing lower three circles of hell, i.e., the subject of Virgil’s discourse throughout this canto, the shortest (along with Inf. VI, which also has but 115 lines) of the poem. [return to English / Italian]
6. This lid of a second funerary monument is similarly not fully described. Are these lids suspended in air or do they rest on the ground, tilted against the sides of the tombs? See note to Inferno X.8–9. [return to English / Italian]
8–9. Dante may have confused Pope Anastasius II (496–98) with the emperor Anastasius I (491–518). In the commentaries there is also a question as to whether Dante’s Photinus was a deacon of Thessalonica or the bishop of Sirmium. Further, the grammatical structure of the passage would allow us to understand either that Photinus misled Anastasius into heresy or was himself thus misled by the pope. A passage in Isidore of Seville, if it happens to be Dante’s direct or indirect source, resolves two of these three issues. Isidore is speaking of the various kinds of heresy (Etymologiae VIII.v.37). According to him, the Photinians are named after Photinus the bishop of Sirmium, who followed the Ebionite heresy (see Etym. VIII.v.36) in promulgating the notion that Jesus was born from the natural union of Joseph and Mary. And thus it was Photinus who misled the pope, since this very heresy is named after him. The more usual view in the commentaries is that the Photinus in question was the deacon of Thessalonica, a follower of Acacius, but this is probably not the better interpretation. [return to English / Italian]
10–15. Dante, as though speaking through Virgil to his reader, would seem to be admitting that this canto is not nearly as exciting as those that have gone before (and those that will come after), since it involves nothing but pedantic lecturing. In his little joke the excuse for his reader-unfriendly behavior is that the protagonist’s olfactory powers required a rest so that they might become accustomed to the stench of lower hell. No experiential learning being possible, the class had to retire to the schoolroom. Virgil’s discourse is thus presented as little more than filler—even if the reader realizes that the canto has no lesser purpose than that of establishing a system for the organization of the sins of humankind. [return to English / Italian]
22–27. Perhaps the key passage for our understanding of the organization of lower hell. All sins punished therein are sins of malizia, malice, in the sense that these sinners all willfully desire to do harm (the incontinent may indeed end up doing harm to others or to themselves, but their desire is for another kind of gratification altogether). Heresy, because it lies within the iron walls of Dis, and is thus also punished as a sin of the will rather than of the appetite (surely it seems closer to malice than to appetite), is perhaps less readily considered a desire to harm others (even though it assuredly, to Dante’s mind, does so). Ingiuria has thus both its Latin meaning, injustice, acting in opposition to the law (iniuria), and its other meaning, the doing of harm. As Mazzoni (Mazz.1985.1, p. 14) points out, Daniello was the first commentator explicitly to link this passage with its almost certain source in Cicero (De officiis I.xiii.41), a passage that defines iniuria as having two modes, force or fraud, with fraud meriting the greater hatred.
Here malice is divided into two subgroups, force (violence) and fraud. Fraud itself will shortly be divided into two subgroups (see note to vv. 61–66); but for now Dante has only divided the sins of violence (Cantos XII–XVII) and fraud (Cantos XVIII–XXXIV) into these two large groups. On malizia see Mazzoni, pp. 10–14; he demonstrates that for Dante, following St. Thomas, malice reflects voluntas nocendi, the will to do harm. For a revisionist view of the entire question see Cogan (Coga.1999.1). [return to English / Italian]
28–33. Virgil divides the sins of violence (synonymous with those of force) into three subsidiary “rings” (gironi). These are, in order of their gravity, violence against God (Cantos XIV–XVII), against one’s self (Canto XIII), and against one’s neighbor (Canto XII). [return to English / Italian]
34–39. Now, in the order in which we witness them, Virgil describes the three categories of the sin of violence more fully, here violence against others, whether directed against their persons or their property (Canto XII). [return to English / Italian]
40–45. Those violent against themselves or their own property are in the second ring (Canto XIII). [return to English / Italian]
46–51. The third ring encloses those who are violent against God by blaspheming him (Canto XIV); “violent” against nature in the commission of unnatural sexual acts (sodomy, identified by the reference to Sodom, punished in Canto XV—see the confirmation at Purg. XXVI.79, where the penitent homosexuals cry out “Soddoma” against their past sins); violent against “art,” exemplified in the reference to Cahors, the town in southern France which, in the Middle Ages, had become synonymous with usury (see Virgil’s further explanation at vv. 97–111). [return to English / Italian]
52–60. Turning at last to fraud, Virgil now divides it into two kinds, depending on whether or not it is practiced against those who trust in one or not. He first describes the second and lesser kind, “simple fraud,” as it were, committed by those who are punished in the eighth Circle, which we shall learn (Inf. XVIII.1) is called “Malebolge” after the ten “evil pockets” that contain them (Cantos XVIII–XXX). Here the poet for whatever reason (to keep his readers on their toes?) allows Virgil to name the sins in no discernible order, while also omitting two of them: (6) hypocrisy, (2) flattery, (4) divination, (10) counterfeiting, (7) thievery, (3) simony, (1) pandering [and seducing, not mentioned here], (5) barratry (the purchase or sale of political office); totally omitted from mention are (8) false counsel and (9) schismatic acts. [return to English / Italian]
61–66. The second form of fraud, that which severs not only the tie of affection that is natural to humans but that even more sacred one which binds human beings in special relationships of trust, is referred to as treachery (v. 66). Such sinners occupy the ninth Circle (Cantos XXXI–XXXIV). [return to English / Italian]
67–75. Having told Virgil that his discourse has been clear and convincing, the protagonist nonetheless reveals that he has not quite got it; why, he asks, are not the angry and sullen (Canto VIII), the lustful (Canto V), the gluttonous (Canto VI), and the avaricious and prodigal (Canto VII) punished inside the City of Dis if God holds them in his righteous anger? And if He doesn’t, why are they in the state of affliction they are in? Dante has set up his reader with this inattentive question. The protagonist thinks that Virgil’s analysis of God’s wrath at v. 22 makes God hate only malizia, and does not understand the relationship between that form of sin and incontinence. [return to English / Italian]
76–90. After chastising Dante for his foolishness, Virgil clarifies the situation. Aristotle, he says, in the seventh book of the Ethics treats the three dispositions of the soul that Heaven opposes. These are incontinence, malice (the malizia of v. 22), and “mad brutishness” (matta bestialitade). The clarity of this statement should not have left so much vexation in its wake, but it has. (For a thorough review of the debate and a solution of the problems that caused it see Francesco Mazzoni’s lengthy gloss to these verses, Mazz.1985.1, pp. 25–45.) “Malice,” just as it did when it was first used, identifies violence and simple fraud; “mad brutishness” refers to treachery. As Mazzoni demonstrates, both in Aristotle and in Thomas’s commentary on the Ethics (and elsewhere in his work), “bestiality” is one step beyond malice, just as it is here in Dante; in Thomas’s words it is a “magnum augmentum Malitiae,” i.e., a similar but worse kind of sin. Nonetheless, there are those who argue that, since malizia eventually comes to encompass both kinds of fraud (those punished in both the eighth and ninth Circles), matta bestialitade cannot refer to treachery. Nonetheless, if they were to consider the way in which Dante has handled his various definitions they might realize that he has done here just what he has done at vv. 22–24: he identifies “malice” with violence and fraud and then (at vv. 61–66) adds a third category (and second category of fraud), treachery, just as he does here. For a strong and helpful summary (in English) of the debate, with arguments similar to and conclusions identical with Mazzoni’s, see Triolo (Trio.1998.1), whose own initial work on the subject dates to 1968 (see his bibliographical note). [return to English / Italian]
91–96. Now fully cognizant of the grand design of hell, Dante (like some of his readers?) admits he is having difficulty with one particular: usury. How does it “offend God’s goodness” (v. 48)? [return to English / Italian]
97–111. Weaving strands of Aristotle and St. Thomas, Virgil demonstrates that nature takes her course from the divine mind, and that “art” then follows nature. Humankind, fallen into sin, as is recorded in Genesis (3:17), must earn its bread in the sweat of its brow, precisely by following the rules of nature and whatever craft it practices. And for this reason usurers are understood as sinning against nature, God’s child, and her child, “art” (in the sense of “craft”), thus the “grandchild” of God and all the more vulnerable to human transgression. [return to English / Italian]
112–115. Telling time by the stars he cannot see but remembers (here the constellation Pisces [“the Fishes”] in the east and the Big Dipper [“the Wain”], lying to the northwest [Caurus, the northwest wind]), Virgil tells Dante it is time to continue the journey, since it is already ca. 4 AM in Italy. They have been descending for ten hours, and have only fourteen left to them, since the entire trip down will take exactly twenty-four hours, 6 PM Friday evening until 6 PM Saturday (Jerusalem time). [return to English / Italian]