The canto begins with the protagonist's forward and upward propulsion but quickly reverses its sense of moral direction when Dante glances back, hearing the voice of one of the negligent behind him.

Singleton (comm. to vv. 5-6) argues that, because when Dante approached these late-repentant souls in the previous canto the sun was before him (Purg. IV.101), his shadow now fell behind him and, for this reason (or because, as Grabher [comm. to vv. 1-9] noted, in the shade of the boulder he was out of the sun), was not observed by the onlookers until now when, moving away from them, he cast a shadow at an oblique angle. The sun was to Dante's left when he turned back toward the east (Purg. IV.52-57); now as he heads west it is to his right, casting his shadow to his left. (For the various moments in this cantica in which Dante's shadow is remarked upon, see the note to Purg. III.16-18.)

Dante does not stop, but he does slow his pace as he looks back, as Virgil's words will make clear (Purg. V.11).

How is the reader meant to take the poet's remembrance of his feelings at being recognized as a living soul? Was he guilty of the sin of pride? Some unknown early readers believed so, as we know because Benvenuto tacitly but strongly rebukes them (comm. to vv. 7-9). In his view Dante's excitement is not that of self-congratulation, but rather of joy in his having been chosen by God for this experience, exactly that feeling expressed by Paul when he said 'thanks be to God I am what I am' (I Corinthians 15:10). Benvenuto's disciple, John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 7-12), however, does indeed see the taint of vainglory in Dante's memory of the intense gaze of the penitent souls.

The astonished souls who whisper to one another about Dante's extraordinary status are perhaps reminiscent of earthly neighbors whose secret gossip is generally motivated by less kind concerns.

Discussing this passage, Frankel (“La similitudine della zara [Purg. VI, 1-12] ed il rapporto fra Dante e Virgilio nell'Antepurgatorio,” in Studi Americani su Dante, ed. G. C. Alessio and R. Hollander [Milan: F. Angeli, 1989], pp. 127-30, points out that Virgil's urgency in trying to get Dante to resume his forward movement is not found in Virgil himself when he encounters Sordello in Purgatorio VII and much enjoys his fellow Mantuan's interest and praise. And, while there have been other commentators who find Virgil's scolding excessive, the fact remains that the protagonist takes it most seriously (see Purg. V.19-21). Further, all that Virgil rebukes in Dante is his allowing his attention to wander, distracted by his admirers, from the prime purpose of the journey, i.e., he is acting to some degree like these negligent souls who were active Christians only near the end of their lives.

There has been a small industry, begun (as is so often the case) by the classicizing Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 13-15), which has tried to find a particular Virgilian text (at least four have been offered) or a passage from Seneca as 'source' for these lines. That no classical source was proposed by any of the medieval or Renaissance commentators, however, makes the claim less attractive than it might be, as does the fact that the context of the passage cited most often (Aen. X.693-696) involves a simile that compares Mezentius, about to begin his final heroic assaults on the Trojan foe which will end in his death at the hands of Aeneas, with a cliff jutting out into the sea, and not a 'tower.' Thus the context is hardly propitious and the comparison not particularly similar.

Dante's blush of shame clearly justifies Virgil's indignation: the protagonist has been thinking of himself too much. And with this detail, indeed, the poem resumes its forward thrust, begun at Purgatorio V.1-2, but interrupted for seventeen lines.

The new penitents enter singing the Psalm (50:1) that furnished the protagonist's own first word in the poem (Inf. I.65), Miserere, the first word of David's song of penance. Unlike the last group of late-repentant souls, lounging in the shade of their rock, these are moving in the same rightward direction that Virgil has urged Dante to follow.

What does a verso a verso mean? The earliest commentator to deal with the phrase, Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 22-30), suggests that it means the group was divided into two 'choruses' and sang the verses responsively. There is no indication in the text that this is so. Still, this early commentator's authority is great enough so that, with only a few divergences (e.g., Vellutello [comm. to vv. 22-24], Trucchi [comm. to vv. 22-24] , almost all repeat this formulation, including Singleton (comm. to verse 24), even though he translates the line as we do. Chimenz (comm. to vv. 22-24), however, offers good reasons not to accept this formulation: (1) the text makes no mention of any such grouping; (2) when they utter their amazed 'Oh!' the entire group has apparently been singing as one; (3) all the other prayers spoken by groups in purgatory are spoken in unison. After Chimenz there has been a certain change of opinion among some commentators – as seems only sensible.

It is noteworthy that these penitents behave precisely as did the negligent, showing their astonishment and curiosity at Dante's embodied presence in the sacred precinct of the saved. It is also striking that this time Virgil will offer no rebuke to Dante for his interest in them, which will slow his forward movement. If one reflects that this encounter is part of the protagonist's 'education' on the mountainside, the apparent contradiction begins to resolve itself. Dante's previous interest was in the negligent souls' reaction to him, not in what he could learn from them.

Unlike other characters who enter the action of the poem unnamed but are later identified, these two messengers, seeking information about Dante's condition, will remain anonymous.

For all the asperity of Virgil's response to the 'messengers,' it is clear that he is aware of and in favor of Dante's ability to help speed the progress toward purgation of these and other souls in ante-purgatory (verse 36).

The similetic comparison may find its roots in Virgil's description of shooting stars in his Georgics (I.365-367), according to Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 37-39) and, more recently, to Hermann Gmelin (Kommentar: der Läuterungsberg [Stuttgart: Klett, 1955]), ad loc.

Once again Virgil underlines the propriety of Dante's favorable response to requests for his intervention on behalf of the penitents as long as he continues his way up the mountain while he does so.

Rejoined by its two 'messengers,' the group as a whole now speaks to Dante, asking his help for those whom he may recognize.

As Chiavacci Leonardi (Purgatorio, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1994]), pp. 143-44, points out, the phrase 'sinners to the final hour' is probably meant to recall Matthew 20:1-16, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, where even those who are summoned to work at the eleventh hour were paid the same as those who labored all the day: 'So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few are chosen' (20:16).

It is noteworthy that salvation was possible for these sinners only after their own belated penitence and their forgiveness of those who had caused their deaths.

Dante's acquiescence in being willing to bring news of their salvations pointedly includes those whom he does not know, encouraging them to make a request that might, to them, have seemed too bold. The words he uses for these souls, 'spiriti ben nati' (spirits born for bliss) contrast sharply with the formulation for those who were described as 'mal nati' (Inf. V.7; Inf. XVIII.76; Inf. XXX.48).

The speaker, never identified by name, either in his own speech of 21 lines (Purg. V.64-84) or by the narrator, is Jacopo del Cassero, born ca. 1260. 'He was among the Guelf leaders who joined the Florentines in their expedition against Arezzo in 1288. He incurred the enmity of Azzo VIII of Este by his opposition to the designs of the latter upon Bologna, of which city Jacopo was Podestà in 1296. In revenge Azzo had him assassinated at Oriaco, between Venice and Padua, while he was on his way (in 1298) to assume the office of Podestà at Milan at the invitation of Maffeo Visconti. He appears to have gone by sea from Fano to Venice, and thence to have proceeded towards Milan by way of Padua; but while he was still among the lagoons, only about eight miles from Venice, he was waylaid and stabbed' (Toynbee, “Cassero, Jacopo del” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). Clearly Dante knew that he could count on Jacopo's renown and on his readers' fairly wide acquaintance with the details of his life and death.

Jacopo refers to the Marches, the area between Romagna, to the north, and the kingdom of Naples, governed by Charles of Anjou in 1300, to the south.

Should Dante ever find himself in Fano, in the March of Ancona, where Jacopo's relatives and friends survive, his news of Jacopo's salvation may, by causing them to pray for him, serve to shorten his time in ante-purgatory.

Jacopo's blood, of which we shall hear more in his final lines, the seat of the soul (see Purg. XXV.37-45), left his body through the wounds caused by the murderous Paduans who waylaid him in 1298. Padua was founded by Antenor, according to Virgil (Aen. I.242-249). Servius's comment on these verses added the detail that Antenor, before he escaped from Troy, had given the Greeks the Palladium, thus connecting him with betrayal of one's country (and suggesting to Dante a name, Antenora, for the second region of the ninth Circle of hell [Inf. XXXII.88]).

Azzo VIII d'Este became marquis of Este in 1293. Jacopo here would seem to be suggesting that the Paduans who killed him were in cahoots with Azzo, the ringleader of the plot. Dante's own former opinion of Azzo was negative (see De vulgari eloquentia I.xii.5; II.vi.4). Here Jacopo admits a certain culpability in having aroused Azzo's wrath, reminding us that he has had to forgive his slayer in order to have been saved. The commentator Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 70-72) gives some of the reasons for Azzo's hatred of Jacopo. When Azzo wanted to make himself ruler of Bologna, the Bolognesi called on Jacopo to be podestà of their city. In opposing Azzo he, according to the fourteenth-century commentator, was unceasing in his vilifications of his enemy, claiming, for instance, that he had slept with his stepmother and was in fact the son of a washerwoman.

For the sin of wrath, in its hardened form, as a sin of will and not of incontinence, see the notes to Inferno VII.109-114 and XII.16-21 (last paragraph). Because Azzo was alive in 1308, Dante could not place him in hell; it seems likely that he would have considered setting him down among the murderers in the company of his father, Obizzo, whom Azzo indeed, according to many commentators, strangled in 1293. See Inferno XII.111-112.

Jacopo, reconsidering his actions, realizes that he might have made good his escape had he proceeded west in the direction of Milano and headed for the town of La Mira, rather than stopping, off the main road, between Venice and Padua at Oriago. Benvenuto believes that he was on horseback (as seems reasonable) and thus could have made his escape along the good road to La Mira, while the swampy overgrowth made him easy prey for his attackers, stalking him on foot, when he turned back to hide himself but was seen and attacked.

Fallen (from his horse?) and apparently hacked to death by those who pursued him on foot, Jacopo watches his blood (and thus his soul) pass from his body.

Buonconte da Montefeltro (ca. 1250-1289) was the son of the great Ghibelline leader, Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII.19-132; and see the note to Inf. XXVII.4-6). 'In June 1287 Buonconte helped the Ghibellines to expel the Guelfs from Arezzo, an event which was the beginning of the war between Florence and Arezzo; in 1288 he was in command of the Aretines when they defeated the Sienese at Pieve del Toppo; and in 1289 he was appointed captain of the Aretines and led them against the Guelfs of Florence, by whom they were totally defeated (June 11) at Campaldino, among the slain being Buonconte himself, whose body, however, was never discovered on the field of battle' (Toynbee, “Buonconte” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). It is important to remember that Dante himself was present at this battle as a cavalryman (see the note to Inf. XII.75) in what was, for him and his fellow Florentine Guelphs, a great victory. Once again we sense his ability to identify with the loser (see the note to Inf. XXI.95). There is not a trace of triumphalism in his exchange with the fallen leader of his enemies.

Unlike Jacopo del Cassero, who hopes that his relatives and friends will pray for him (Purg. V.71), Buonconte realizes that his wife, Giovanna, and other family members have no concern for him. Unlike Jacopo and others of his band, he has been devoid of the hope that has urged the rest to petition Dante for his aid. Now he finds hope in this visitor from the world of the living. This poem, which summarizes its purpose as being to make the living pray better (Par. I.35-36), nowhere better indicates this purpose than in ante-purgatory in such scenes as these. It is undoubtedly the case that any number of people who read or heard the poem in the fourteenth century actually prayed for the souls of those whom Dante reports as needing such prayer.

Dante's desire for knowledge of what happened to Buonconte's body reflects the concern of others present at the battle of Campaldino. How could the body of so important a personage simply disappear? Several students of this passage have suggested that the poet here has in mind Virgil's portrait of Palinurus, so deeply troubled by his unburied state, and consider the protagonist's question a recasting of Aeneas's question to Palinurus: 'Which of the gods, Palinurus, tore you from us and submerged you in the open sea?' (Aen. VI.341-342). While the linguistic fit is not a perfect one, both the circumstance and the fact that Dante seems to have the Palinurus passage in mind at Purgatorio III.130 – and surely does so at VI.28-30 – makes the reference at least plausible. Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (“Dante e Virgilio,” Letture classensi 12 [1983]), p. 88n., noted it, as now have Carol Ann Cioffi (“Fame, Prayer, and Politics: Virgil's Palinurus in Purgatorio V and VI,” Dante Studies 110 [1992], pp. 179-200) and Ruggero Stefanini (“Buonconte and Palinurus: Dante's Re-Working of a Classical Source,” in Dante: Summa Medievalis, ed. C. Franco and L. Morgan [Stony Brook, N.Y.: Forum Italicum, 1995], pp. 100-11). And for the view that Palinurus operates as a foil to Buonconte, see Michelangelo Picone (“Canto V,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001 (1999)]), pp. 78-80.

The Casentino lies in the upper valley of the Arno. The torrent Archiano derives from sources above the valley near the monastery of Camaldoli, situated high in the mountains above the region. The battle of Campaldino took place on a plain below this higher valley and it is the place to which Dante imagines the wounded Buonconte to have made his way, just where the Archiano joins the Arno, several miles above the site of the battle.

Peter Armour (“Words and the Drama of Death in Purgatorio V,” in Word and Drama in Dante: Essays on the “Divina Commedia”, ed. John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993]), pp. 108-12, makes a strong case for punctuating the text differently than Petrocchi does, and we would have followed him, placing a comma after vista and dropping the semicolon in line 100 (as indeed a number of earlier texts also do), but for our editorial decision to follow Petrocchi. This emendation makes the sense of the passage both more clear and more dramatic, breaking it into four parallel elements, each of the final three beginning with 'and,' recapitulating Buonconte's final moments: loss of sight, final utterance, physical collapse, departure of the soul from the body.

As commentators notice, the struggle of the good and wicked angel over the soul of Buonconte mirrors the similar scene that occurs at the death of his father, Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII.112-117), when St. Francis and a fallen Cherub struggle for the soul of Guido. Not even Francis can prevail against God's judgment – if we can accept Guido's narrative at face value.

A possible source for this scene is found in the Epistle of Jude (Jude 9) in a passage that refers to the archangel Michael's struggle with the devil for the body of Moses. The relevance of this text to Dante's was perhaps first noted by Scartazzini in the 1870s (comm. to verse 104). For discussion, see Domenico Pietropaolo (“The Figural Context of Buonconte's Salvation,” Dante Studies 102 [1984], pp. 123-34), who points out (p. 125) that, like Buonconte's, the whereabouts of Moses' actual burial place was not known (Deuteronomy 34:6).

Buonconte's tear (verse 107) reminds us of the similarly plangent Manfred (Purg. III.120).

A number of recent commentators here note an echo of Virgil's first Georgic (Georg. I.322-324). For the view that this passage reflects the description of the storm that drives Aeneas's ships off course in the first book of the Aeneid see A.E. Carter (“An Unrecognized Virgilian Passage in Dante,” Italica 21 [1944], pp. 149-53).

Is Dante suggesting that evil forces have power only over the elements (and the dead bodies of humans – see Purg. V.108)?

The mountain ridge Pratomagno and the alpine protuberances referred to establish the confines of the Casentino at the southwest and northeast, respectively.

Restoring a meaning offered in Benvenuto's commentary but perhaps never revisited and arguing against the scholarly exertions of others, Lino Pertile (“Bonconte e l'anafonesi [Purg., V 109-18],” Filologia e critica 21 [1996]), pp. 121-26, presents a strong case for the Tuscan form of the verb intingere's past participle, intinto in its regular form, but also found as intento (darkened). We have accepted Pertile's reading in our translation.

Dante's term for 'seaward stream' is fiume real, or 'royal river,' i.e., a river that ends in the sea.

The 'cross' that Buonconte had made of his arms perhaps expresses both the gesture of a man in the throes of mortal pain and the sign of his hope for redemption.

Buonconte's body finally came to rest on the Arno's bed, along with the detritus that the rushing torrent had borne along with it until it, too, settled to rest, mingled with the body of the man.

The six verses devoted to Pia's speech have made her one of Dante's most remembered and admired portraits – even though we do not really know who she was, to whom she was married (nor how many times, but perhaps twice), or who killed her, or how. For the complicated, necessarily hypothetical, and eventually unknowable status of Pia's identity and story and the possible knowledge that Dante had of them, see Armour (“Words and the Drama of Death in Purgatorio V,” in Word and Drama in Dante: Essays on the “Divina Commedia”, ed. John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993]), pp. 120-22. See also Giorgio Varanini, “Pia” (ED.1973.4), pp. 462-67.

Pia uses the 'polite imperative,' i.e., the impersonal subjunctive, to express her desire (i.e., 'may it be remembered by you'): she hopes to be remembered by Dante once he is back on earth so that he can pray for her, as Vellutello (comm. to vv. 130-136) suggests, or recall her to the minds of others for their prayers.

This line, celebrated for its brevity and power, has the lapidary quality of a headstone, perhaps because it represents one: the beginning of Virgil's epitaph, 'Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere....' (Mantua gave me birth, Calabria took me off), as Gmelin (Kommentar: der Läuterungsberg [Stuttgart: Klett, 1955], ad loc.) was among the many moderns to suggest. See the notes to Purgatorio III.27 and VI.72. And see Hollander (“Dante's 'Georgic' [Inferno XXIV, 1-18],” Dante Studies 102 [1984], p. 119, n. 7).

Peter Armour (“Words and the Drama of Death in Purgatorio V,” in Word and Drama in Dante: Essays on the “Divina Commedia”, ed. John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993]), p. 116, suggests that, if she was defenestrated by her husband (or one of his agents), as many early commentators claim, then the hard earth of the Maremma actually did 'undo' her, smashing her body when she hit it.

These final verses of the canto have drawn numerous attempts at a clear understanding. However, without knowing the precise nature of the facts to which Dante has decided to allude, we cannot be certain. Among the more interesting suggestions for a source is Hermann Gmelin's (Kommentar: der Läuterungsberg [Stuttgart: Klett, 1955], ad loc.): the verses reflect Dido's remark about her dead husband, Sichaeus, at Aeneid IV.28-29: 'ille meos, primus qui me sibi iunxit, amores / abstulit; ille habeat secum servetque sepulchro' (He, who first joined me to him, has sealed up my love; may he have it with him and keep it in his grave). The italicized phrase seems close enough to Dante's 'colui che 'nnanellata pria / disposando' to merit further thought, even if the contexts are not the same, a suffering wife and murderous husband replacing a loyal husband and a would-be loyal wife. Did Pia's husband himself give her a ring of betrothal before they married or, as Varanini suggests, did the man who eventually killed her, the representative of her husband (one Magliata di Pionpino), present the ring for him?

The three 'autobiographies' that make up the last and largest part of this canto are strikingly similar in their construction. Each character includes the following elements, in the same order, in his or her speech: (1) captatio benevolentiae; (2) thoughts of homeland and possibility of hope for prayer from there; (3) place and cause of death; (4) moment of death.