The last canto of Purgatorio begins, like those of Inferno and Paradiso, with poetry (see Inf. XXXIV.1 and Par. XXXIII.1-39). In all three cases, the poem cited is in another voice than Dante's. In the first two cases this voice is Latin, first that of Venantius Fortunatus (his hymn of the cross), now that of David (his hymn for the desolation of Jerusalem, Psalm 78 [79], which begins, 'O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance'). Thus do the seven virtues respond to the present culminating moment in the history of the Church Militant. As Benvenuto explains (comm. to these verses), just as the various gentile nations had invaded and oppressed the Holy Land because of the sins of the Jews, so now has God again allowed foreigners, in this case the French, to take possession of holy Church because of the sins of the latter-day 'Romans.'

How much of the Psalm is sung is not discernible, but probably more than the first few words, since we are told that the weeping ladies sing alternating verses. Singleton (comm. to verse 1) suggests that the first eight verses would have been appropriate. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 1) point out that, beginning with its ninth verse, the Psalm is more optimistic, asking for God's help and hoping for His intervention. For a similar question regarding the singing of a Psalm, see the note to Purgatorio XXX.82-84.

Beatrice's first response to the singing of the Psalm is to join in its sense of desolation. Her sadness is such that even Mary's grief at the foot of the cross for her dead son was only slightly more profound. Mary grieves for the death of Jesus, Beatrice for the desolation of his mystical body, the Church.

The words that Beatrice sings reflect closely Jesus's words to his disciples (John 16:16), 'A little while and you shall not see me; and again a little while and you shall see me, because I go to the Father.' Since the disciples are puzzled by these words, Jesus explains them: Now they may weep, but their sorrow will be turned to joy (John 16:20). The disciples are finally won over, finally believe that Jesus comes from God (John 16:30). Jesus ends his remarks by promising them peace after their tribulation and concludes, 'I have overcome the world' (John 16:33). Thus do these twelve opening verses of the last canto of Purgatorio move from a tragic sense of loss to a celebratory and comic vision of the eventual triumph of Christ and his Church.

Beatrice's words also have a particular and local meaning for Dante, who wept at her death and thought he had lost her forever; she has come back into his life.

This tercet reminds the reader exactly who is present in this scene (see the note to Purg. XXXII.88), Beatrice, her handmaids (the seven virtues), Dante, Matelda, and Statius. Not only is the Church Triumphant no longer in sight, the Church Militant has been dragged off to France.

The way in which Statius is referred to ('the sage who had remained') reminds the reader, yet again, of the absence of Virgil, denied this moment.

Those that allegorize the nine steps taken by Beatrice argue that they represent the years between the accession of Pope Clement V in 1305, who agreed to King Philip's desire to move the papacy to France (which he did in 1309), and the deaths of Clement and Philip in 1314, thus possibly allowing the tenth step to point to the advent of the new leader in 1315. About such things there can be little or no certainty, but the hypothesis is attractive. Nonetheless, one should probably be aware that, except for a rather contorted effort by Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 16-30), none of the early commentators, generally so fond of allegorizing, offers anything more than a literal reading of the detail. The allegorical reading of the ten steps as ten years is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century discovery, e.g., as it is found in Carroll (comm. to vv. 16-45).

This is the first time Beatrice addresses Dante as 'brother.' (She will do so on only three later occasions: Par. IV.100; Par. VII.58; Par. VII.130). For the importance and distribution of the word frate in the three cantiche, see the note to Purgatorio IV.127. One senses, again, that her desire to rebuke Dante is (temporarily) suspended. But see vv. 85-90.

Beatrice for the first time, and in keeping with the spirit of her citation of John 16:16 in vv. 10-12, turns her attention to the future, and to Dante's future, now that the world's and his own sinful past have been dealt with.

Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 25-30) compares Dante to a student in the presence of his teacher, and indeed this is the opening moment in what might be called Dante's education in theology, which will last for another thirty cantos.

Before she presents her prophecy, Beatrice charges Dante with the responsibility for reporting it precisely, not in the mode of a man who is talking in his sleep. Almost all the commentators take the passage literally and as applying in some general way. But Beatrice's words are very hard on poor Dante, since she makes it clear that, at least in her (infallible) opinion, his actual words, uttered at some previous time, have indeed been correctly characterized in this way. But when? Perhaps the later passage in this canto (vv. 85-90) that is devoted to his previous intellectual meanderings may shed some light on exactly what she means. For now the subject is left unexplored.

The importance of the rebuke, which passes mainly unobserved in the commentaries, is underlined by its difference from a similar rebuke. Mattalia (comm. to verse 33) is alone in thinking of that one (if he draws no conclusion from his notice of it): Purgatorio XV.120-123, when Virgil believes that Dante, beholding an ecstatic vision, is merely drunk or asleep. Now Beatrice reverses the situation: when Dante has considered himself 'awake' and eloquent, he has been, in fact, 'talking in his sleep.'

The language, referring to the destruction of the Church as detailed in the preceding canto, is distinctly reflective of the Apocalypse (Apoc. 17:8, 'The beast that you saw was, and is not'). For clear discussions of the terms 'apocalypticism' and 'millenarianism' and the differences between them, see Richard Emmerson (“The Secret,” American Historical Review 104 [1999]), pp. 1610-13.

The word suppe (here translated 'hindrance' only to make sense in its context) has been variously understood. Many of the early commentators believed it referred to the cakes left on the tomb of a murderer's victim in a Greek custom reborn in Florence; if the murderer came to the tomb and ate of these cakes for nine consecutive days, he would then be safe from the offended family's vengeance (and for that reason the families of the slain person would keep watch over the tomb). See Portirelli (comm. to these verses) for a restatement of this interpretation, which is at least as old as the commentary of Jacopo della Lana. Others think the reference is to the bread soaked in wine on which an oath is sworn between vassal and lord; still others of the offal which the veltro will despise (see Inf. I.103), and which is related to the 'sop' to Cerberus of Aeneid VI.420. None of these 'sops', however, would seem to offer a cause for fear, and are thus difficult to rationalize in this context.

The opening verses of Beatrice's extended prophecy seem clearly to indicate that the one who will come is related to the eagle of empire, i.e., that beneficent Roman empire that had begun so well under Augustus and then had become corrupt. It seems difficult to believe that this, as some maintain, is not an imperial prophecy.

This enigmatic passage has drawn an extraordinary amount of contradictory opinion. For a review of the entire question, see Pietro Mazzamuto, “Cinquecento diece e cinque” (ED.1970.2), pp. 10b-14b. It is also helpful to consult Charles Davis's similar review of the first and similar prophecy in the poem, the veltro (hound) of Inferno I.101 (“veltro” [ED.1976.5], pp. 908a-912b). Most now argue, whether or not they believe that the number, if expressed by the Roman numerals DXV, is an anagram of DUX (or 'leader' [the Roman 'V' and 'U' being equivalent letters]), that the context of the passage makes it apparent that Beatrice is here indicating the advent of a temporal leader, one who will deal with the excesses of the King of France and the delinquent Church. Further, if the canto is taken as having been written before his death in August of 1313, many believe that the prophecy points to Henry VII. Some also believe that if the first reference is to a political leader, it also points beyond him to the second coming of Christ, the final emperor. See Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), pp. 184-90, and the note to Inferno I.100-105. A standard and useful treatment of the problem remains that of Moore (Studies in Dante, Third Series: Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 (1903)]), pp. 253-83.

For a brief history of the ancient Hebrew 'science' of gematria, the fitting of numbers to letters in a schematic way, as it comes into such writers as Dante, see Cherchi (“Isopsefi e profezia,” in his L'alambicco in biblioteca: distillati rari, ed. F. Guardiani & E. Speciale [Ravenna: Longo, 2000], pp. 329-42). He offers an example from a sixteenth-century Italian dialogue (pp. 337-38) that is usefully indicative of the sort of procedure at work in such calculations:

A = 1
B = 2
C = 3
D = 4
E = 5
F = 6
G = 7
H = 8
I = 9
K = 10
L = 20
M = 30
N = 40
O = 50
P = 60
Q = 70
R = 80
S = 90
T = 100
V = 200
X = 300
Y = 400
Z = 500

If one sets the equivalence of the Latin alphabet to numbers in this way, and if one is willing to play a bit fast and loose with the actual spellings of the names of important personages, one can contrive (find?) the following sort of result:

M A R T I N L U T E R A
30 1 80 100 9 40 20 200 100 5 80 1 = 666

Distinct from numerological studies of Dante's work are those that study his numerical composition. Thomas Hart's mathematical and geometrical studies of the Commedia are of this second kind, and are rich and challenging. See a later one (“'Per misurar lo cerchio' [Par. XXXIII 134] and Archimedes' De mensura circuli: Some Thoughts on Approximations to the Value of Pi,” in Dante e la scienza, ed. P. Boyde and V. Russo [Ravenna: Longo, 1995], pp. 265-335), which picks up strands from his several earlier pieces and serves to summarize his long campaign to bring this sort of analysis to bear on Dante. See also, for a much different kind of numerological study of Dante's texts, Manfred Hardt (Die Zahl in der “Divina Commedia” [Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1973]) and “I numeri nella poetria di Dante,” Studi Danteschi 61 [1989], pp. 1-27). And see G. R. Sarolli, “numero” (ED.1973.4), pp. 87-96, and his monograph on the subject (Analitica della “Divina Commedia” [Bari: Adriatica, 1974]). For bibliography see Corrado Bologna (Il ritorno di Beatrice: Simmetrie dantesche fra “Vita nova,” “petrose” e “Commedia” [Rome: Salerno, 1998]), pp. 120-22. A recent attempt to reformulate Dante's numerology is found in Wilhelm Pötters ('Ella era uno nove': Rapporti geometrici fra la Vita Nova e la Commedia, Letteratura italiana antica 2 [2001], pp. 27-60 and “'La spera che più larga gira': Spazio della poesia e disegno del cosmo,” Letteratura italiana antica 3 [2002], pp. 461-505), reopening the question of Beatrice's 'nineness' in the first study and attempting to measure Dante's cosmos in the second. Insofar as his thesis depends on Beatrice being the sixty-first beautiful woman of Florence recorded in the sirventese described in VN VI (“Ella era uno nove,” p. 36) and on the letters DIL in Par. XVIII.78 being read as 549 (and not 551 – p. 41]), it is in some difficulty. In the first case Beatrice already seems to be indicated as one among the sixty 'belle donne,' the ninth (and not the sixty-first; there is no sixty-first); in the second, there is at least as much reason to believe, if there is any compelling reason to count these letters as numbers in the first place, that DIL = DLI as to believe that it resolves, as Pötters is forced to insist, to DXLIX (DIL as an 'unorthodox' version of DXLIX). Numerological arguments that ask one to surrender that much normal obstinacy (common sense?) possess a limited capacity to sway their judges. For an interesting attempt to approach the problem of overarching structural concerns from the other side, as it were, the possibility of casual explanations for poetic phenomena in the poem, in this instance involving a study of repeating rhyme words in a canto, see Federico Turelli (“Il ruolo della casualità nelle ripetizioni di rima della Commedia,” Letteratura italiana antica 3 [2002], pp. 507-23).

Two studies, completed independently of one another, by Robert Kaske (“Dante's 'DXV' and 'Veltro,'” Traditio 17 [1961], pp. 185-254) and Gian Roberto Sarolli (Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971]), pp. 259-88, link the DXV to the ligated initials of the liturgical formula 'Vere dignum est,' involving the capital letters 'V' and 'D,' joined in such a way that the right-hand stroke of the 'V' and the left-hand one of the 'D' form a capital 'X' (the sign of the cross). Because both of these densely supported presentations tend to overlook the obvious political dimensions of the prophecy in favor of its Christological significance, they have failed to generate a groundswell of support, while they both remain a part of the continuing discussion. For an attempt to show that Dante was referring to a division number in Gratian's Decretals (precisely to Distinction XV (i.e., D[istinction).XV] in Part I), see Richard Kay (“Dante's Razor and Gratian's D.XV,” Dante Studies 97 [1979], pp. 65-95). John Stark (“Once Again, Dante's Five Hundred, Ten and Five,” Romance Quarterly 44 [1997], pp. 99-106) has argued, in a way that is similar to Kay's, for a reference to line numbers within another work, in this case Aeneid I.500, I.10, and I.5. Neither of these two highly ingenious solutions of the enigma has received significant support from other students of the problem.

If it is true, as some argue, that Dante's number represents the number of years between great imperial events, e.g., the years between Charlemagne's coronation on Christmas Day, 800, and the hoped-for victory of Henry VII in 1315, then it seems at least possible that he had in mind as its model one of the most important prophetic passages in the Aeneid (I.260-277), in which the time between Aeneas's war to win new Troy and the establishment of Rome under Romulus is carefully measured out as 333 years. For development of this thesis, see Robert Hollander and Heather Russo (“Purgatorio 33.43: Dante's 515 and Virgil's 333,” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [March 2003]).

The general sense of this passage is clear: future events will make plain the terms of the cloudy prophecy, which is compared to those made by Themis (Ovid, Metam. I.375-394) and by the Sphinx. Both of these monstrous females later appear in the same passage in Ovid (Metam. VII.759-765), where their hatred of humans is, as here, described in terms of the loss of human and animal life in the countryside. The key lines in the modern text of Ovid run as follows: 'Carmina Laïades non intellecta priorum / solverat ingeniis...' (The son of Laius [Oedipus] solved the riddles which had baffled the intellects of all before him). We are close to being absolutely sure, however, that the text as Dante knew it substituted 'Naïades' for 'Laïades' and showed a plural form of the verb (solverant). And so Dante believed that it was the Naiads, water nymphs, who had solved the riddle of the Sphinx. This was the cruel monster who cast herself down from her rock, whence she had been killing clueless Thebans, once Oedipus realized that the variously footed creature in her riddle was man (the story that we know from Sophocles' Oedipus, unknown, like nearly all of Greek letters, to Dante).

Dante does not 'nod' often, but this is one of the most egregious errors in the Comedy, even if it has some reasonable excuse behind it. In fact, all of the early commentators accept Dante's reading, thus indicating that their texts also had 'Naiads' where they should have had Laius's son. The better reading had to wait for Nikolaes Heinsius (1620-81), the Dutch Latin poet and scholar, one of the great Renaissance textual editors of the Latin classics. His edition (Florence, 1646) of the Metamorphoses restored the reading Laïades. It is thus only with the commentary of Venturi (comm. to vv. 49-50) that the better reading is made known to the world of Dante's commentators, and even then some of them try to object to it, seeking a way to understand the Naiads as interpreters of prophetic utterance. Fausto Ghisalberti (“L'enigma delle Naiadi,” Studi Danteschi 16 [1932], pp. 105-25) offers a comprehensive discussion of the problem.

Beatrice's use of the verb notare here may remind us of its last use with this sense (setting something down as a text) in Dante's self-description as inspired poet, one who only records what he hears from the 'dictator' (Purg. XXIV.53).

Dante's often admired phrase, describing life as a 'correre alla morte' (race to death) reflects St. Augustine (DcD XIII.10): 'Our time for this life is nothing other than a race to death (cursus ad mortem),' as was perhaps first suggested by Mattalia in 1960 (comm. to this verse) and has become a familiar observation in contemporary commentaries. See also Selene Sarteschi (“Sant'Agostino in Dante e nell'età di Dante,” in her Per la “Commedia” e non per essa soltanto [Rome: Bulzoni, 2002 (1999)]), p. 176.

As her scribe, Dante is instructed by Beatrice not to conceal from his eventual readers the condition of the tree, now robbed of its possessions twice. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 57) review the divided opinions of the early commentators, who variously believe that the reference is to Adam and the giant, to Adam and the eagle, or to the eagle and the giant. In their view, all three seem plausible glosses. However, it has seemed to others that, since, from Beatrice's words we gather that Dante has witnessed these two devastations (and not that of Adam, which is referred to in a following tercet [vv. 61-63]), it is the first and last attacks upon the tree that are referred to here: its defoliation by the eagle (the imperial persecutions of Purg. XXXII.112-114) and its having the chariot disattached from it by the giant (the removal to Avignon, referred to in Purg. XXXII.158). Such an understanding accords with Michele Barbi (Con Dante e coi suoi interpreti [Florence: Le Monnier, 1941]), pp. 62-63, and opposes Bruno Nardi (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura”], 1944), pp. 153-57, who proposed Adam's theft of the fruit in the garden of Eden and the Donation of Constantine as the two thefts. The comment found in Bosco/Reggio offers good reasons for not accepting Nardi's view.

Beatrice's accusation now widens, blaming Adam as the first despoiler of the tree and praising Christ for redeeming him. For the calculation of the length of Adam's life (930 years) and of his punishment in Limbo (4302 years) see Paradiso XXVI.118-120 and the note to that passage. After 25 March the year 1300 is the 6499th year since the creation of Adam. See the note to Inferno I.1.

For the downward-pointing branches of the tree, set at an angle that makes climbing it difficult or impossible, see Purgatorio XXXII.40-42.

For a paraphrase of this somewhat contorted utterance see the Outline of this canto.

The river Elsa in Tuscany, because of its high concentration of minerals, was known for the crusting overlay it would leave on objects immersed in it.

For Pyramus, Thisbe, and the mulberry tree, see the note to Purgatorio XXVII.37-42.

The word 'moralmente' was understood, even in some of the earliest commentators (e.g., Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 67-72]), as having a technical meaning here, i.e., 'con lo senso tropologico' (with the tropological [i.e, third] sense [of fourfold exegesis of the Bible]). Various later commentators are of the same opinion, e.g., Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 70-72), Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), Poletto (comm. to vv. 67-72). (See also Tozer, Torraca, Fallani, Mattalia, Bosco/Reggio.) What this signifies is that the meaning applies now to current history. God's original 'interdiction,' broken by Adam, whose sin was redeemed by the cross on which Christ sacrificed Himself, is now binding on us, as well, even though we are at least potentially saved. Even now we, new Adams, are not meant to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

That is, Dante, bringing back this message, will seem like a pilgrim returned from the Holy Land, his 'staff' decorated with the sign of the distant and holy place to which he has been.

These lines offer a fairly rare instance of a speaker in the poem expressing himself by use of a simile. Dante is saying that what Beatrice tells him seems to be completely clear, but that he really cannot understand what she means.

Beatrice is charging Dante with having attempted to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. As some commentators (e.g., the Ottimo [comm. to vv. 79-90], Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 79-102]) have understood, the point here seems to be that Dante turned from theology to philosophy in his effort to do that. The current majority view of the nature of Dante's aberration is well represented by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 85): Dante had, in the Convivio, set theology to one side in order to study philosophy, a decision he now deplores. For the notion that this fairly common view is incorrect, see John Scott (“Beatrice's Reproaches in Eden: Which 'School' Had Dante Followed?” Dante Studies 109 [1991], pp. 1-23). He argues that Dante's high regard for philosophy does not allow such an interpretation and that the 'school' in question is thus the Guelph and anti-imperial one that Dante had embraced in his political activities as a White Guelph in Florence before the exile. Scott shares with Dronke (Dante's Second Love: The Originality and the Contexts of the “Convivio” [Exeter: Society for Italian Studies, 1997]) an unwillingness to believe that Dante's special relationship with the donna gentile of the Vita nuova and, more to the point, the Lady Philosophy of the Convivio, somehow must be considered as anti-Beatricean. On the testimony of passages such as this, it seems likely that the poet expected us to accept exactly such a view.

Beatrice's response to Dante is worthy of the Inquisition. That he can no longer remember his sins (because he has drunk from Lethe, the river of oblivion) is proof that he had committed them.

Dante's phrasing, 'if from seeing smoke we argue there is fire,' might remind a reader of St. Augustine's discussion of signs in De doctrina christiana (II.i.1): 'A sign is a thing that causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes on the senses. Thus, if we see a track, we think of the animal that made the track; if we see smoke, we know that there is a fire that causes it' (translation adapted from that of D. W. Robertson, Jr., italics added). For a similar opinion see Baranski (Dante e i segni [Rome: Liguori, 2000]), pp. 41-42, and Marchesi (“A Rhetoric of Faith: Dante's Poetics in the Transition from De vulgari eloquentia to the Commedia” [Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 2002]), chapter 1, note 3.

Not only does Beatrice speak more plainly for the rest of this canto, but the poet does as well, allowing most of his verse to be more immediately understandable than is his custom.

The sun takes 'slower steps' the higher it is above us, moving quickest at dawn and dusk, slowest as it approaches and departs from noon. While the absolute position of the sun is not in doubt, the earthly observer will have a sense of the location of the meridian circle containing it that varies according to that observer's position.

Dante indicates to the reader that he knows very well that the rivers in the garden of Eden in fact (i.e., in Genesis 2:14) include Tigris and Euphrates (and not Lethe and Eunoe, which are here by his invention). See the note to Purgatorio XXVIII.127-132.

While it is only now that we hear Matelda's name, we have observed her actions so long that we may feel that we understand her function. See the notes to Purgatorio XXVIII.1 and 40-42.

For 'reverse-acrostic' readings of 'Matelda' as 'ad letam' (the letters m-a-t-e-l-d-a backward), that is, understanding her as one who leads 'toward the joyous one' (Latin 'laetam,' spelled with an 'e' standing for the dipthong 'ae' in medieval Latin) see Enrico Morpurgo (“Matelda,” Neophilologus 34 [1950]), p. 82, and Jacques Goudet (“Une nommée Matelda...,” Revue des études italiennes 1 [1954], pp. 20-60). For still another such retrogressive anagram, the name read now as the manuscript variant 'Metelda', meaning that she leads one to the river Lethe ('ad Letem'), see Ioli (“Con Matelda nel Maryland: a colloquio con Charles Singleton,” Letture classensi 18 [1989]), p. 160.

Matelda did indeed tell Dante the name of this river (Eunoe) at Purgatorio XXVIII.131. As opposed to his forgetting his sins in Lethe he is now forgetting the promise of that good resolution of his plight, so deeply, we may well imagine, has he been stung by Beatrice's accusations.

Only now, and in less than completely clear terms, do we learn about Matelda's function in the garden, which seems to be to serve as 'baptizer' of the souls as they finish their purification, first in Lethe (as she draws Dante through that river at Purg. XXXI.91-102) and finally in Eunoe. There is a dispute as to whether or not Matelda's role in the garden is Dante-specific (which it has been, from all that we have seen, until now) or 'universal' (see the note to Purg. XXVIII.40-42). Indeed, Gianfranco Contini has argued (Un' idea di Dante [Turin: Einaudi, 1976]), p. 174n., that the verb usa (as you are accustomed) in the present tense should be understood as a past definite (già praticasti [as once you used to]) and thus implies that Matelda had such a role in Dante's earlier life. This is a case of interpreting (or indeed revising) the text in order to create or preserve a desired interpretation. Contini's point would be worth considering except for a single, crucial, and indeed determinative final point, Matelda's last words in the poem, which are addressed to Statius (vv. 134-135): 'Now come with him.' Thus, and only at the very last moment, we learn that Matelda's function in the garden is not limited to ministrations on behalf of Dante alone (i.e., she deals either with all the saved souls who come through here or with some of them). (See Filippo Villani's similar view in Bellomo's edition of his commentary to Inf. I [Expositio seu comentum super “Comedia” Dantis Allegherii (Florence: Le Lettere, 1989)], p. 92, n. 90.) To be sure, Dante alone is mentioned as receiving her ministrations at the river Lethe (Purg. XXXI.91-105). From this later passage, however, we are probably forced to consent to the notion that she there presided over Statius's submersion as well as Dante's, a scene that, like much involving Statius's (and Virgil's) presence in the garden, is allowed to disappear from Dante's page. For this view see Singleton (Journey to Beatrice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967 (1958)]), p. 181, n. 17.

This seventh and last Purgatorial address to the reader opens a new subject that the poet will share with us, the formal requirements of his poem. If he had more space (another few lines? another canto?), he would tell us what Eunoe tasted like. The early commentators think that he means that he has run out of cantos (i.e., he cannot have a thirty-fourth as he did for Inferno). Tozer (comm. to vv. 139-140) was perhaps the first to think that it was the number of verses in each cantica (4720, 4755, 4758 respectively) that Dante refers to. That is a possible hypothesis, except that we note that he had just completed the longest canto in the entire work in the preceding one (XXXII is 160 lines long), and ostensibly thus had available at least fifteen more lines. Thomas Hart (“'Per misurar lo cerchio' [Par. XXXIII 134] and Archimedes' De mensura circuli: Some Thoughts on Approximations to the Value of Pi,” in Dante e la scienza, ed. P. Boyde and V. Russo [Ravenna: Longo, 1995], pp. 265-335) reviews his copious work that would have us believe, among other things, that all the canto lengths of the poem were decided by Dante early on. (For a rejoinder see the note to Inf. VI.28-32.)

Scartazzini (note to v. 139) was the first commentator (in 1900) included in the DDP to report that the poem contained in all 14,233 verses, noting that his predecessor editors, Blanc and Witte, erred when they reported the number of verses in the Commedia. Roberto Benigni has kindly pointed out that the same may be said of Vittorio Sermonti, in his presentation of/ /Inferno (B. Mondadori, 1966, p. xxxiv) and of Emilio Pasquini (comm. Inferno, Garzanti, 1987, p. lxxvii), both of whom unaccountably give the number of verses in the Commedia as 14,223. See the first words of the note to Inf. I.1.

The phrasing, with all its repeated 'ri' sounds, reminiscent of the resurrective surge at the opening of the cantica (Purg. I.18), underlines the reconstituted innocence of this Adamic being. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 144) suggests that here we should hear a resonance of St. Paul (Ephesians 4:23), 'And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.'

That the three cantiche all end with the word stelle (stars) is no longer a surprise. It is important to attempt to imagine the effect of this repetition on a reader who does not know that it is coming, who is suddenly jarred into realizing the pattern, into realizing the shaping force of divine beauty on this poem.