Charley Crissman
In the course of the world’s history, there have lived a few great men whose just deeds and solid morals have made the world simultaneously wonder at their perfection and scoff at the possibility of such purity. To many, it seems that man alone cannot achieve such perfection, that, without divine aid, man is doomed to fall short of goodness. However, according to Dante, this is not the case. In his Divina Commedia, Dante presents a vision of man as a perfectible being whose free will is capable of being its own just lord and master without the assistance of the divine. The tragic example he uses to demonstrate this is none other than the great Latin poet, Virgil. Dante uses Virgil both as an example of man’s ability to attain moral perfection without supernatural aid and as a demonstration that such perfection alone is insufficient for ascent into Paradise.
In order to understand Virgil as a symbol of moral perfection, it is first necessary to examine Dante’s view of free will, love, good, and evil. As Marco Lombardo explains in the Purgatorio, the cause of evil on Earth comes not from Heaven, but from man. If Earth’s evils had their source in Heaven, then “free will would be / destroyed, and there would be no equity / in joy for doing good, in grief for evil” (Purg. XVI: 70-72). Thus, the evil things perpetrated on Earth have their cause in the people of Earth (Purg. XVI: 83). Man is born with both knowledge of good and evil and a “free wanting” (Purg. XVI: 76). The newly created soul is “like a child who weeps and laughs in sport”—it is uneducated but joyful and seeking things that will bring it joy (Purg. XVI: 90). Because it is simple, it seeks this joy wherever it can find it—initially in the “trivial goods” of Earth (Purg. XVI: 91). To turn toward a thing, to move to it, to desire it, is love (Purg. XVIII: 26). Love of earthly goods in moderation is okay, but too much love of earthly objects is bad, for it does not truly satisfy a soul, and instead turns it away from the true good which it should love (Purg. XVII: 133). In order to show a soul the true good, God’s love, a teacher, a guide, is needed (Purg. XVI: 94-96). Man’s free will acts upon his “mental love,” which he can turn toward objects as he sees fit (Purg. XVII: 94-96). Good comes when our free will directs love to God first and to secondary goods only in proper measure (Purg. XVII: 97-99). Evil arises when love twists toward evil things, or loves secondary goods too much, or loves all things too little (Purg. XVII: 100-102). In this way, love, acting through free will, is the source both of all human good and all human evil (Purg. XVII: 103-105). Man, then, has within his own power the ability to choose good over evil. This proper power of the will is manifested in Virgil.
Virgil exemplifies the ability of man, unaided by the supernatural, to perfect his will. Virgil lived entirely free from sin (Inf. IV: 34-39). He knew and followed the ways of the cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance (Purg. VII: 34-36). As Christopher Ryan puts it, “What the appearance of Virgil immediately suggests, through his being appointed (more precisely, requested) by Beatrice to guide Dante through the realms of sin (Inf. II: 49-117), is that Virgil is aware of what constitutes those sins, and is not blinded to their nature by having been tainted by them” (Ryan 141). Now, if evil, and more particularly, sin, is, at its source, a fault of the will, then sinless Virgil must indeed have had a perfect will. Robert Hollander notes in the Dante Encyclopedia that if Virgil is a symbol of “Reason,” then the Divina Commedia appears to be a work in which the pilgrim’s appetites for secondary goods are tempered by Virgil’s perfect reason (Hollander 863). If this is the case, then Virgil is demonstrating his perfect will, his mastery of reason over the appetite. Singleton likewise comments that “Virgil leads his charge to a kind of justice, which is right order in the will, and which implies the dominion of the will over the faculties which are properly subject to it” (Singleton 67). Virgil’s will is in perfect order, having regaled secondary desires to their proper positions and placed God’s love before them. Then, as noted by Ryan, “The choice of Virgil as guide signifies, then, that what God requires first for happiness on Earth and happiness in eternity is the living out of the moral virtues, and that with or without the aid of grace moral perfection lies within human reach” (Ryan 142). Virgil, without divine aid, has made his will proper master over his desires. It is this ideal power of the will that Virgil demonstrates to Dante and guides him to understand.
Virgil’s primary role in the Divina Commedia is to guide the pilgrim to the perfection of the will, a step that will prepare him to receive the Sanctifying Grace. The pilgrim is the “charge” that Singleton refers to when he speaks of Virgil leading “his charge to… right order in the will” (Singleton 67). And, as Singleton notes of the pilgrim’s journey with Virgil, “To move with Virgil must mean to move within human limits and within proportion of man’s nature, as regards the light by which the movement takes place. But if this is true of light, i.e., the intellect in its movement, it much likewise be true of the movement of will” (Singleton 48). That is to say, the pilgrim’s journey with Virgil occurs within the first, “natural,” light, the light where one moves within human limits. Virgil guides the pilgrim to understand how to make his will, his intellect, master over his desires not through God, but through his own innate human power. This is why, when Virgil has helped the pilgrim to complete the ascension of Mount Purgatory, he tells him to “Await no further sign from me: / your will is free, erect, and whole—to act / against that will would be to err: therefore / I crown and miter you over yourself” (Purg. XXVII: 139-142). When the peak is reached, Virgil’s job is done, for the pilgrim’s will is perfected to the point that for him to stray from his current will would be sin. The pilgrim’s perfect will is such that he is now prepared to be his own proper lord, and has no need of such a guide as Virgil anymore. Singleton rightly views this perfection of the will as a preparatory step for something else:
Those two phases are, as we know 1) preparation to receive a form and 2) reception of the form. Now, the whole area of Virgil’s guidance is the area of preparation; and such an area, on the pattern of the three lights and three conversions, is precisely that of the first light in the one scheme and the first conversion in the other. We come to see that all these notions, “preparation,” “natural light,” “first conversion,” are exactly co-extensive. Movement under the first light extends also just so far. And Virgil’s words dismissing Dante from further guidance by him announce that preparation is completed. (Singleton 66)
Virgil leads the pilgrim to use his own innate power to perfect his will, but this perfection is a preparation for a second step. This must certainly be true, as it is clear that a perfect will is not enough to enter Paradise—were this the case, then the perfect-willed Virgil would reside there. So there must be a second step, and that second step is Beatrice. Virgil cannot take the pilgrim to Paradise—that is Beatrice’s job. Virgil actually spells this out for the pilgrim, saying “If you would ascend as high as [the souls in Purgatory], / a soul more worthy than I am will guide you; / I’ll leave you in her care when I depart, / because that Emperor who reigns above, / since I have been rebellious to His law, / will not allow me entry into His city” (Inf. I: 121-126). Now, if Virgil acts as guide to the perfection of the will, and this guidance will lead the pilgrim to Beatrice, then Virgil is acting as a preparation of the pilgrim for Beatrice. Singleton agrees, noting that “the justice to which Virgil leads is a preparation for the justice which is given with Beatrice” (Singleton 68). So, the preparation of the pilgrim’s will is a preparation for Beatrice, who in turn will take the pilgrim to Paradise. Then what is the “second justice” that Beatrice can give to the pilgrim? Certainly, it is supernatural, as, if it were not, then the “natural light” that Virgil is master of would be enough to reach Heaven. This divine power she imparts can be none other than the Sanctifying Grace, a Heavenly Grace that perfects the justice of the pilgrim’s soul and allows him entry into Paradise. Singleton notes that “a name which the second justice, given with Beatrice, may bear… is “justifying grace” (gratia justificans), which is only to say that Beatrice, as the completion towards which justification of the ungodly has moved, is Sanctifying Grace” (Singleton 68). So Virgil has prepared the pilgrim to receive the Sanctifying Grace of Beatrice, that is, he has prepared the pilgrim’s will to receive the form of Grace. Says Singleton, “It is the will which is made ready to receive the form” (Singleton 47). So Virgil embodies the first step of the journey to Paradise, perfection of the will, and he guides the pilgrim to take this first step. But the first step alone is not enough.
Virgil’s damnation is a stark demonstration of the insufficiency of a perfect will for ascent into Paradise. As already noted, Virgil’s perfect will alone was not enough to warrant salvation. Virgil did not receive the Sanctifying Grace that would have carried him unto Heaven. But why not? Virgil’s own words suggest that his merits were “not enough, because [he] lacked baptism” (Inf. IV: 35). Indeed, Amilcone A. Iannucci suggests of the adults in Limbo (of which Virgil is one) that, “Like the infants, [the adults of Limbo] are blameless, but they also died without baptism, which, as Dante reminds us, is an absolutely theological necessity for salvation” (Iannucci 568). Then, according to this commentary, Virgil was not allowed into Heaven simply because he lacked baptism, the portal to faith. This explanation, however, seems both hollow and inconsistent. For one, it is unsatisfying to think that a great man like Virgil is denied salvation simply because he did not take part in one particular ceremony. More importantly, though, one must consider the Harrowing of Hell—those others who were taken up into Heaven by Christ had not received baptism, for baptism was a practice that came into use as a direct result of Christ’s teachings. The first historical references to infant baptism appear circa 182 A.D., and adult baptism began during the life of Christ at the very earliest (Jones). Yet, even without baptism, the great patriarchs were nonetheless admitted unto Paradise. So, it cannot be baptism alone that holds Virgil out of Heaven. A better explanation is the one Virgil gives to Sordello: “I am Virgil, and I am deprived of Heaven / for no other fault than my lack of faith” (Purg. VII: 7-8). Virgil, being a pagan, did not have faith in God as a Christian or Jew would. As Iannucci puts it, “The virtuous pagans, for all their great personal merits, were left behind because they did not have faith; and the nobile castello, while certainly an expression of Dante’s humanism, nonetheless also reveals his painful awareness of the limits of humanism alone, and hence the tragic limits of pagan civilization” (Iannucci 568). The tragedy of Virgil, and of all the noble pagans, is that, despite their moral perfection, they lacked faith—and without faith, humanity has no hope of salvation. Man unaided cannot ascend to Heaven; he must have faith in God so that he may receive the Sanctifying Grace. To be saved, one must turn “faithful to the faith / without which righteous works do not suffice” (Purg. XXII: 59-60). Though Virgil guides the pilgrim (and others, such as Statius) to moral perfection, the first step toward their salvation, he was never able to make it beyond that step. For this reason, he is “as he who goes by night and carries / the lamp behind him—he is of no help / to his own self but teaches those who follow” (Purg. XXII: 67-69).
Virgil is perhaps the most tragic character in all of the Divina Commedia—a man whose great deeds and just morality aided only those who came after him. Yet, at the same time, Virgil is a vision of hope for the future. If man can truly master his will and transcend materiality, then maybe there is still hope for a world corrupted. If so, then there is some comfort in the thought that, while Virgil may not have saved himself, his torch will burn behind him “as long as the world lasts” (Inf. II: 60), providing guidance to those who find themselves far from the path of morality.
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