Dante’s Cato: <em>Libertà</em> and the Dialectic of Empires in the <em>Purgatorio</em>

Abstract

In Paradiso, the third canticle of Dante's Commedia, Dante the pilgrim meets the shade of the Roman emperor Justinian upon reaching the second heavenly sphere of Mercury. Justinian, serving as Dante's guide to the history of Italy throughout Canto 6, presents two paradoxical models of imperial history. The invocation of Aeneas, "l'antico che Lavina tolse," calls forth the Virgilian paradigm, in which the secular, linear movement of translatio imperii unfolds and legitimizes the heroic foundation of temporal empire (Par. 6.3). 1 The allusion to Justinian's codification of the law and the reference to the Eagle, the symbol of the Roman Empire that ruled "sotto l'ombra de le sacre penne," both indicate Dante's vision of a just and divinely-ordained imperial history (Par. 6.7). However, this canto also introduces the Augustinian philosophy of empire, which fiercely critiques the historiography of the Aeneid by representing empire as a site of violence and turbulence. References to the crimes that caused the "mal de le Sabine" and the "dolor di Lucrezia" (Par. 6.40-41) recall Augustine's catalog of charges against the earthly empire in his polemic The City of God, particularly in Books 1 and 2. 2 The ambivalent and contradictory notion of empire in this canto of Paradiso exemplifies the tension Dante perceives between two major authorities of his historical imagination throughout the entirety of the Commedia.Dante constructs the dialectic of Virgilian and Augustinian imperial models by negotiating the vices of Italian politics and the virtues of his ideal temporal government long before his poetic persona reaches Paradise. The intermediate realm of Purgatorio demonstrates the sense of urgency with which the poet believes the empire-extending beyond the local commune of Florence and Italy itself, "serva Italia" (Purg. 6.76)-must be purged of injustice, as if the rivers of Lethe and Eunoe, which Dante's pilgrim finds in the Garden of Eden between purgation and paradise, could cleanse the empire itself. John A. Scott argues that Purgatorio responds to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII's effort to reinvigorate imperial power in Italy in the early years of the fourteenth century. 3 While Henry VII's mission ultimately failed as a result of his death in 1313, for Dante the effort itself reflected the potential for an ideal imperial model to become a reality within his lifetime. Dante's revisionary history, wherein the poet imagines the actualization of this ideal empire, culminates in Beatrice's recognition of the