CHAPTER X

CIRCLE VI.-THE CITY OF DIS: HERETICS

2. The Interpretation

LET us turn now from the narrative to the more CANTOS
VIII 65-X
difficult task of interpretation. As we saw, Dante
himself warns us that a mystic meaning under- Incontinence
lies it:

O ye who have undistempered intellects,
Observe the doctrine that conceals itself
Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses.1

of Intellect.

Circle: its

The first thing to mark, then, is that this City of A Transition Dis forms a transition Circle between upper and Relation to nether Hell, and therefore holds certain moral rela- Upper Hell. tions to both. Its relation to the upper Circles is that it is a form of Incontinence. We have seen various forms of lack of self-control-in body, in goods, in temper; in this Circle we reach its most spiritual form, in the intellect. Heresy is the refusal to bring 'every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ'; it is therefore the deepest, and, in Dante's view, the worst form of Incontinence. As Dr. Moore well points out, however, Dante seems to be thinking here of Heresy, not as a perversion of the intellect pure and simple, but rather as that special perversion of the intellect which flows from, 1 Inf. ix. 61-63.

CANTOS VIII. 65-X

and issues in, an evil life. The instances named,
with the one exception of Pope Anastasius, are not
heretics in our modern intellectual sense. Farinata,
'the Cardinal,' Frederick II. are 'Epicurean states-
men or churchmen, who, immersed in the pursuit
of the pleasures or ambitions of this world, give no
thought to another, until at last they openly adapt
their intellectual opinions to the desire of their
hearts, and the practice of their lives.' It is, then,
that species of heresy Dante is thinking of, which
has its source in evil living, as the very position of
the City of Dis seems to imply. For we must mark
carefully where it is set: in the midst of a foul fen
the waters of which flow down from the Circles
above, and form the path by which the soul is borne
to the City of Heresy. In other words, the sins of
those Circles drain down to this necropolis of infi-
delity: beginning with the flesh, Incontinence eats
further and further inward, until it corrupts the
intellect itself. A man leads a wild unregulated life,
and it is no wonder if all his thoughts concerning
religion are thereby thrown into confusion. In time
he comes to deny the future life and world because
he wishes there were none: his creed assumes the
shape and colour of his life. 'None deny there is a
God,' says Bacon, but those for whom it maketh
that there were no God.' This intimate connection
between heresy and evil-living is figured forth in
the draining down of the dark waters of sin from
the Circles above, to form the Stygian Fen, across
which the soul is floated to the City of Doubt.

1 Studies in Dante, second series, p. 178.

VIII. 65-X

Nether Hell.

The connection with the Circles beneath is, if any- CANTOS thing, closer. The name Dis was used by the Romans for Pluto, the King of Hades, and Dante uses it as a Its Relation to synonym for Satan, the Lord of Hell. But in this lost world the natural order of things is turned upside down: the Lord of Hell, instead of holding his state in the City above, is bound fast in the dungeons below. For this seems to be Dante's idea: the remaining Circles are, so to speak, the city dungeons, and the stair which leads down to them is the broken landslip which, as we shall see, descends like a shaft from the valley in the heart of the City. We may be sure that this dreadful construction of nether Hell as the underground dungeons of the City of Unfaith, had some symbolic meaning in Dante's mind, whether we can discover it or not. May it not be this, that Heresy forms the natural transition from sins against oneself to sins against others? For the sins in the upper Circles are mainly sins against some part of our own nature; whereas from this downward they are mainly against our neighbours-Violence, Fraud, Treachery. The path to these social sins lies through the City of Heresy. When a man has thrown off belief in judgment and the world to come, he is ready to descend to the deeper and darker sins: the natural fruit of unfaith in God is unfaithfulness to man. By the very construction of the Inferno, then, Dante seems to indicate the relation in which the various orders of sin stand to each other: the lighter sins of Incontinence lead to Unfaith, Unfaith in its turn leads to the deeper depths of Violence, Fraud, and Treachery to our fellow-men.

CANTOS VIII. 65-X

We turn now to a more important part of the allegory-Virgil's conflict with the guardians of the An Allegory of City. And here more than almost anywhere else in

Doubt and

Faith.

The Fortifications of the City.

the poem we must bear in mind what has been so frequently pointed out, that Virgil stands for human Reason, apart from any special Divine Revelation. His conflict here, therefore, represents the struggle of religious doubt through which Dante's own reason passed: as he himself says, referring to Virgil's parleying with the fiends,

Thus onward goes, and here abandons me

The sweet Father, and I remain in doubt,

For the Yes and the No within my head contend.1

In short, the question proposed is, How far can the unaided Reason of man penetrate into the mysteries of religion, or cope with doubt and infidelity?

The first thing to notice here is that the City of Unbelief is fortified and defended like a mediæval fortress. It has its deep moats, its walls of iron, and its garrison of fiends: all of which undoubtedly have some symbolic significance. The common interpretation regards them as indicative of the obstinacy and persistency of heresy, its determination to resist all efforts to convince it; and there is certainly much truth in this. According to Aquinas, obstinacy is a necessary element in heresy, for he says expressly that if a man 'is not pertinacious in his disbelief, he is in that case no heretic, but only a 1 Inf. viii. 109-111. In Par. xiii. 112-114 Dante is warned against overhaste in deciding between Yes and No in Philosophy and Theology:

And let this be ever lead unto thy feet,
To make thee move slowly like a weary man,
Both to the Yes and No thou seest not.

1

man in error.' The resistance of the fiends to the entrance of the pilgrims represents the unwillingness of unbelief to have its views explored and investigated. It is true, indeed, that men who have flung off their religious faith make a great profession of open-mindedness; nevertheless it is seldom more than a profession. As a rule, they are not open to conviction: they are very much what Dante pictures them, a garrison defending their heresy behind moats and walls and barred gates.

CANTOS VIII. 65-X

While this interpretation is true so far as the citizens are concerned, a further meaning is involved when we look at the City from the point of view of Dante and Virgil. To them the deep moats, the iron walls, and the garrison of fiends cannot but signify the vast danger and difficulty of penetrating the dark problems of the faith, of exploring the labyrinth of doubt. At first glance, it seems strange that Virgil is entirely unconscious of this difficulty and danger. He evidently expects an entrance at once, and he returns from his parley with the fiends crestfallen at his failure, and muttering angrily, 'Who has denied to me the dolesome houses?' Yet all this is perfectly natural and true to experience. In the omniscient days of youth no man dreams that his reason is not equal to all the problems of the universe. We imagine that at a word of Reason's logic the fiends of Unbelief must vanish, and the ✔ gates of the City of Doubt lie open for our victorious feet. It may take many a day and night of baffled weary searching to teach us, as his failure here

1 Summa, ii-ii. q. v. a. 3.