1

scious of a taint of it in himself? Probably the explanation is, in part, 'that in the thirteenth century unnatural crimes were so exceedingly prevalent, that men guilty of them did not incur that loathing and horror which they would inspire in modern times; and that Dante, though obliged, from the theological point of view, to brand them as sinners punished for deadly sins, yet would not look upon them, from the human point of view, as men so dishonoured, that he should shrink from consorting with them on terms of friendship.' Doubtless there is some truth in this, but it is by no means the whole truth, and we shall miss the deepest lesson of this part of the poem if we explain everything by a difference in the moral standard of the thirteenth century. In reality, Dante has no mercy on this sin. It is a vice, he says, which banishes a man from human nature. But what touches him with a pity which is half-terror is the fact that this degrading and unnatural vice can and does co-exist with the highest gifts of intellect and valour. This union in the same breast of elements so incongruous and incompatible, is a new and dreadful touch of unnaturalness added to all the rest. We feel this unnaturalness when Brunetto denounces the Florentines as 'a people avaricious, envious, proud'; and when the souls of the 'wheel' bewail the decay of 'valour and courtesy' in their native city: it is like Satan reproving sin. And just this is, to Dante's mind, the horror and the pity of it-this unnatural combination in the same man of high intellect and 1 Vernon's Readings, i. 504.

CANTOS XIV.-XVII 78

XIV.-XVII. 78

CANTOS many virtues with a vice which banishes him from human nature. In these days when it is half expected that education will make the whole world virtuous, our first instinctive thought is that a highly intellectual man is, as a matter of course, raised above so low and degrading a vice as that which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; yet Dante seems to hint that men of intellect and education lie peculiarly open to this particular sin. Probably, as Plumptre says, his knowledge of several university cities to which he wandered amply justified all he here writes: Roger Bacon speaks of its prevalence in Paris, noting by the way that Louis IX. had banished many foreign teachers as guilty of it. It was the prominent charge brought against the Templars by Philip le Bel. Purvey, in the preface to what is known as Wyklif's Bible, mourns over its prevalence at Oxford.' The plain truth seems to be what Dante here insists on-that the highest and the lowest elements of human nature, the intellect of a god and the passions of the brute, lie close together, and that frequently the passions are so violent that they break through every restraint of education and culture. The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. No learning or genius, no valour, or courtesy, or patriotic virtue, can ward off the infernal effects of unnatural passions, once they are allowed to gain the mastery. Dante and Reason personified in Virgil say all they can for these souls: they were scholars, statesmen, soldiers,-kindly, wise, brave, courteous,public-spirited citizens and lovers of their country; yet, reverence and love them as they may, they are

in no doubt of the inevitable issue of such sins as they have been guilty of: they change the soul into a waste of barren sand, they rain down upon it a fiery pain, they scorch its countenance and limbs almost beyond recognition, and they drive their victims on in an unrest which knows no respite. How serious was Dante's view of this sin will be apparent if we compare its punishment with that of Sensuality in the Second Circle. There the souls are tormented with the same restlessness of their own passions, but there are great and significant differences. The agent of their punishment is wind, not fire; they float on the hurricane instead of toiling across a burning sand which slips beneath their feet; and their souls remain undisfigured. The obvious reason for this vast difference in the punishments is that in the one case the sin is natural, and in the other unnatural. A sin which violates Nature must produce a far greater disfigurement of soul and a more burning restlessness, than one which is only the excess of a natural power and appetite.

CANTOS XIV.-XVII. 78

CANTOS

XVI. 91

CHAPTER XV

CIRCLE VII.—THE VIOLENT AGAINST ART, AND THE
CASTING AWAY OF THE CORD

WE have seen the punishments of two classes of the XVII. 78 Violent-against God and against Nature; we come now to those inflicted on the Violent against Art. against Art: As explained in a previous chapter, Art means human

The Violent

Usurers.

Work. Dante's view is that man in his Art or Work should follow Nature, as Nature follows God; to sin against Art, therefore, is indirectly to sin against God Himself. The chief sinners in this respect are Usurers, who evade the law of work laid down by God at the beginning, and 'take another way.' After parting with Rusticucci and his companions in the 'wheel,' the two pilgrims pursue their journey along the stone wall, and in a little the thunder of the cataract of Phlegethon as it plunges into the abyss of Fraud so deafens their ears that speech is almost impossible. Having reached the edge and called up the Guardian of the abyss, they see the Usurers sitting on the sand at the very verge of the precipice; and in order that Dante may carry away full knowledge of the Circle he is leaving, Virgil tells him to go and have a look at them, warning him, however, to let his conversation with them be brief. It is obvious that in Dante's moral scheme Usurers,

CANTOS
XVI. 91-

XVII. 78

the Violent against Art, are worse than either Blasphemers or Sodomites, the Violent against God and Nature. This is indicated by the position in which he has set them; they are at the very centre of the innermost Ring of the Circle, clustered round the mouth of the abyss that falls to the Circle of Fraud, and almost dropping into its depths. Crossing over to where they sit, Dante finds them enduring the punishments common to all the inhabitants of this Punishments : Ring: the sandy desert over which they bend their heads is the symbol of their own barren lives, empty Barrenness of all honest fruitful work; and the fire of Heaven's vengeance keeps their hands busy flinging it off:

Not otherwise in summer do the dogs,

Now with the foot, now with the muzzle, when,

By fleas, or flies, or gadflies, they are bitten.1

and Fire.

Gold lives on.

But they have also punishments peculiar to them- Passion for selves. As in the old earthly days, so now they sit crouching over their money-bags, which are hung in scorn about their necks. On these bags their eyes feed hungrily; the ruling passion is strong, not in death alone but beyond it, and where the treasure is, there the heart is also. Or rather, where the treasure, alas, is not, for their money-bags are as empty now as once they were full; and even had they been overflowing, the constant rain of fire would have given their hands no leisure to indulge in the old delight of fingering the coins. In short, the passion lives on to torture, when all that created and gratified it has passed away.

1 Inf. xvii. 49-51. His comparison of them to dogs, and to dogs thus engaged, reveals Dante's contempt of Usurers: comp. lines 74, 75.