The Tomb, The Tower and the Pit Dante's Satan

The Tomb, the Tower and the Pit: Dante's SatanAuthor(s): Anthony K. CassellSource: Italica, Vol. 56, No. 4, Dante (Winter, 1979), pp. 331-351Published by: American Association of Teachers of ItalianStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/478662 .Accessed: 28/09/2011 18:07

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THE TOMB, THE TOWER AND THE PIT:

DANTE'S SATAN

In the last lines of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil come forth from Hell through a narrow passage carved by the waters which descend from Mount Purgatory to the lowest

depths. Their arising from the prison and grave of the damned on Easter Morning and the initial verbs of Purgatorio I (" sa- lire," " resurga," " surga ") reflect Christ's Resurrection after His descensus ad inferos.' For the Wayfarer, the words com-

plete the pattern of descent before ascent; in the journey made in imitation of Christ, the exit from Hell completes the first stage. The Poet metaphorically unites the crowded tomb of the damned with the empty tomb of Christ, continuing by this equation the parodic picture of Satan described in Inferno XXXIV as being in all ways the inverse of the Three Persons of the Trinity. In the following pages I hope to show how the Poet's image of Dis and the " pozzo " of Nether Hell, as Satan's infernal Jerusalem and grave, parody, particularly, the image of Christ's Sepulchre as it figures in biblical and

apocryphal accounts, pilgrim descriptions, patristics, depictions in the figurative arts and in the liturgical drama of the descensus ad inferos and visitatio sepulcri.

Not only does the Wayfarer's journey spiritually reflect Christ's descent and ascent, but, as John Demaray has recently shown, it reflects physically and topologically the journey of medieval pilgrims performing the Great Circle route from Venice, Ostia, Pisa, Genoa, or Bari, by way, perhaps, of Can- dia, Crete, to Damietta, Egypt, along the stations of the Exodus to the shrines of Jerusalem.2 Pilgrimage was the great cultural

phenomenon of tourism and devotion in the Middle Ages, and reports both written and oral were attended with the same avidity as perhaps first journeys to the moon receive in our own day. Italian ports were the bustling centers of trade and navigation from where European pilgrims obtained

provisions and passage and, most important, the points to which

they returned. Even those who did not or could not make

331

332 ANTHONY K. CASSELL

the journey could be well informed of the details by returning Palmers, or, could substitute for the arduous voyage a visit to Rome or to any one of the replicas of the Holy Sepulchre in Italy such as the (( Nuova Gerusalemme ) of Santo Stefano in Bologna and, later, that of San Pancrazio constructed by Alberti in Florence. These pious copies claimed to follow exact measurement and scale so that none of the faithful need be ignorant of the shape and configuration of the original. Critics have noted that in Florence and elsewhere the Knights Templar constructed their courtyards and buildings according to the dimensions of the holy shrine.3 Thus, though Dante made no pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he would have had at hand precise knowledge of Christ's Sepulchre." Professor De-

maray has explored some of the major aspects of pilgrim reports and their parallels in the Prologue cantos of the Inferno and in the Purgatorio, but the aspects of Dante's infernal

" anti-pilgrimage " need further study. Indeed the Wayfarer's negative journey to the grave of Satan can also be viewed as the inverse of the Palmers' journey to the Tomb of the Redeemer.

In Dante's day as in our own, the sunken grave of Christ lay in the inner sanctum of the Sepulchre; it was entered by a cave, now no longer extant, the victim of despoliation by the faithful and infidel alike.5 As early as ca. 330 A.D. the Christians had leveled the whole area around the tomb and left it as a kind of chamber with walls and a covering of rock;6 this was pro- vided with outer portal and gates. Enclosing the whole stood the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: first the unroofed Anastasis of Constantine, then the vaulted and domed Crusader Church of the twelfth century which still stands, though altered, today. In the fourteenth century the Mamelukes used the walls and

gates of the Church both to forbid entrance to Christian pilgrims and, when entrance was permitted through the payment of a heavy poll tax, to incarcerate them with their guardian monks for twenty-four hours.7 Ironically, a visit to Christ's Tomb was thus literally a visit to a " prison." Returning pilgrims recorded the smoke and stench, the darkness and the narrowness of the Tomb's cave through which they crawled to

SATAN'S TOMB 333

enter and leave. Even after the Anastasis had been demolished in 1009 and little remained of the Tomb, the entrance cave was reconstructed in masonry on the original site and pilgrims continued to record their discomfort.8 The Russian Abbot Daniel describes the grave ca. 1106-1107:

Voici la description du Saint Sepulcre. C'est une petite grotte taillie dans le roc, ayant une entree si basse qu'un homme peut a peine y penetrer a genoux et en se courbant.9

In Dante's lifetime pilgrims attest to a similar experience. Writing before the Fall of Acre, Burchard of Mount Sion wrote in 1280:

The doorway into this cave.., is very low and small... the Tomb of the

Holy Sepulchre... is closed on every side. No light from without can be had inside... but nine lamps hang above the Lord's sepulchre which

give it light inside.'o

In 1321, the year of Dante's death, the Venetian, Marino Sa- nuto, remembered:

The door of the Sepulchre is very low and small... It is a cave without

any opening so that there is no way light can enter it.11

At the time of the Dominican Felix Faber's visit in the 1480's,

pilgrims still crawled through the extremely narrow hole without windows or light; Faber complains of the " fumus et foetor " and notes " Ostiolum autem speluncae per quod ingressus patet habet in altitudine IIII palmos et dimidium, et III digitos.""2 The copy of the Holy Tomb in Santo Stefano, Bologna, most

probably known to Dante, likewise has a small, low entrance, scarcely two feet high, through which one is forced to crawl in order to enter and exit.'3

In the Commedia the two Poets take their leave of the

" tomb " of Hell " per lo foro d'un sasso " (Inferno XXXIV,

85), " per la buca d'un sasso " (v. 131), " per un pertugio tondo " (v. 138). Indeed, the passage is known not by sight but by sound alone (vv. 129-130): " Luogo e... / che non per vista, ma per suono ~ noto." The Poet's picture of the " carcere


cieco," particularly of lower Hell, with its " puzzo " and

" fummo, " its hindering " infidel, " a " tomba " entered by a

" secreto calle " to the inner graves of the heretics and left

via a dark narrow hole, thus bears striking parallels to literary accounts concerning medieval conditions at the Holy Sepulchre.'4

Such parallels may enhance the reader's appreciation of

the irony of the episode at the Gate of Dis which inaugurates the Wayfarer's passage through the pit of Nether Hell. Charles

Singleton's observation that Hell is an inversion of the Heav-

enly Jerusalem is most useful here.'" The " cittia dolente " of

all Hell is re-evoked by the " terra sconsolata " (Inferno VIII,

77) of " basso inferno." Dante, in describing this crowded pit, echoes Jeremiah's lament on the earthly Jerusalem (Lamen- tations 1:1): " Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo! facta

est vidua domina gentium." The fiery mosques of Dis which

are seen burning within with eternal flames and the flares

atop towers (Inferno VIII, 2-4) all continue the poetic strategy of hellish reversal. These " meschite " not only reflect moslem

Egypt, as Demaray has noted,'" but they more especially reflect

the gilded domes of those which dominated the skyline of the

earthly Jerusalem of Dante's time. When after 1187 the Ma-

meluke Turks recaptured the Holy City, they began the con-

struction of new gates, mosques and minarets; they added at

least four new houses of prayer immediately after.17 Even with

the return of the city to the Crusaders in 1229, mosques remain-

ed to gall the Christian zealot; under a treaty negotiated by Frederick II, the Moslems retained the Dome of the Rock and

the Mosque El-Aksa. The City of Dis can thus be seen as both

an inversion of what the Holy City should be ideally and a

parallel of what contemporary Jerusalem was in reality; a city of Turks and Saracens, a city of the " infidel " and of unbelief.

Dante's visit to the " citta del fuoco " at Eastertime may bear an even closer parallel to pilgrim experiences at Jerusa-

lem and to conventional lore concerning Christ's tomb. From

actual pilgrim accounts and from sources treated as such, we

learn that the Holy, City shone with the fire of candle and torch

light during Easter. The fifth-century pilgrim Saint Egeria

(variously known as " Silvia " or " Etherea "), in a manuscript

SATAN'S TOMB 335

discovered in Arezzo toward the end of the last century, described night processions from the gate of Jerusalem to the

Martyrium. Golgotha, joined then as today with the Holy Sepulchre in one enclosure, was all aglow with candle-fire

during her sojourn there.1" The tomb itself, deprived of daylight bore ever-burning lamps within and without through the centuries. Both literary texts and artistic depictions, fanciful and

authentic, bear witness to the " eternal " flame at the Sep- ulchre. In his Liber de locis sanctis, the Venerable Bede follows Adamnanus and Arculfus in his account: " Die noc-

tuque XII lampades ardent, quattuor intra supulchrum, octo

supra in margine dextro."19 In the third quarter of the fourteenth

century, the Anglo-Norman writer of " Sir John Mandeville's

,Travels," also, perhaps selecting his sources from other widely divulged accounts, describes the illumination of the tomb and the Easter Ceremony of the Holy Fire:

In that tabernacle are no windows but it is all made light with lamps wich hang before the sepulchre which burns bright; and on Good

Friday it goes out by itself, and lights again by itself at the hour that our Lord rose from the dead.20

Niccolk di Poggibonsi visiting the Sepulchre on Good Friday, 1346, relates that " a great light appeared in the Holy Sep- ulchre " which then was used to light torches and candles " so that the Church really seems afire from the great glow."21

Although the Roman Church had repudiated the ceremony after the Moslem occupation of the Holy City in 1244, the miraculous rekindling of the flame in Jerusalem was so highly regarded in contemporary Florence that a flame from it was

dutifully brought home by Pazzino de' Pazzi in 1305; a special cart was made for its transportation, and, for its preservation, the church of San Biagio was constructed with ballast stones

brought (it is believed) from the Holy Land.22 To this day the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates the ceremony of the Holy Fire at the Holy Sepulchre, and its continued importance to the

city of Florence is attested by the use of a copy of Pazzino's cart in the ecclesiastical ceremony of the Scoppio del Carro


celebrated on Easter morning before the doors of the present cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore.

In a recent essay exploring possible Marian implications of the events and symbols surrounding the entrance into Dis, De- nise Heilbronn saw the " torre " of Inferno VII and VIII as an

image of the Blessed Virgin:

In both Latin and Greek interpretations, the images of the tower, the

castle, and the wall are often used to suggest the virgin birth and

Mary's role in the Incarnation: " haec est turris, quam vallavit

incorrupta deitas, haec castellum, quod intravit sola verbis veritas."

Surely, the walled City of Dis with its gate-tower is a perfect stage setting for an allegory of Christ's First Coming.23

Heilbronn makes a noteworthy analogy but she makes no direct connections with the Holy Sepulchre, and her opinion of the

degree in which Marian symbolism is uppermost in the Poet's

metaphors concerning Dis needs tempering. Allusions to the Blessed Virgin are not the center of poetic attention here.24 In the context of these cantos, one must see the term " torre " first and foremost for its place not in Mariolatry but in Christo-

logy, and most particularly, for its use in reference to the tomb of Christ. The word " turris " was in fact a common medieval term applied to the Holy Sepulchre. Though this archi- tectural configuration was contrary to the Gospel accounts, it reflected the form of the Holy Sepulchre in most of its various alterations through the centuries. The Tomb had such a form in Dante's time, and most returning pilgrims both lettered and unlettered reported this fact, as did Willibald who visited there in 722:

And near at hand is the garden in which was the sepulchre of our

Saviour, which was cut in the rock. That rock is now above ground,

square at the bottom, but tapering above, with a cross at the summit.25

The Russian Abbot, Daniel, writing ca. 1125 describes the

Sepulchre as being surmounted by a beautiful " tourelle "

resting on pillars.26 Later, but consistently, Felix Schmidt,

SATAN'S TOMB 337

" Frater Felix Faber," visiting the shrine twice in the 1480's wrote " Monumentum Domini ab exteriori apparet primo aspectu quasi quaedam turris bassa, non alta.""27 The humble tower of the Sepulchre receives its poetic opposite in the " alta torre " of Dis and in the " torri " of the Giants in Inferno XXXI.

Early and late medieval carvings, sculptures and paintings also show the tomb of Christ as a tower. The Trivulzio ivory of the fifth century preserved in Milan 28 shows Christ's tomb

as a tall brick structure with open gates; upon the roof

above stand armed soldiers while below stand the two women

and a seated angel with a scroll wand. Similar ivories of the

Visitation to the Tomb with an angel bearing a rod or cross-

shaped wand, are a fifth-century piece in Munich, a ninth-

century carving in Florence, and a tenth-century ivory book

cover now in the British Museum.29 In many paintings of the

Holy Sepulchre such as that in a miniature in the Codex of

Meister Bertolt from St. Peter's Monastery, Salzburg, the

structure has twin towers with battlements on either side of

a gate left wide open to show the Marys, the angel on the

familiar flying or suspended lid, and the open grave within.30 The Noli me tangere panel of the bronze doors at Hildesheim

(1015 A. D.) show Christ's sepulchre as a tower surrounded

by flying crows.3' The Tesoro del Duomo in Milan displays a very small

eleventh-century pyx or ciborium labelled " torre eucaristi-

ca," for liturgically, " turris " is one of the terms and the

forms used for the sacramental housing of the Bread of the

Eucharist.32 As the tower of the Sepulchre holds the body of

Christ, so the tower of the pyx holds the consecrated Host,

the living body of Christ. The usage is ancient. The Expositio brevis antiquae liturgiae gallicanae, for example, makes clear

the intimate and ancient connection of the Host preserver with the Tomb of the Redeemer:

Corpus vero Domini ideo defertur in turribus, quia monumentum

Domini in similitudinem turris fuit scissum in petra et intus lectum ubi

pausavit corpus dominicum, unde surrexit Rex gloriae in triumphum."3


St. Gregory the Great employs the same term in the De gloria

martyrum (ch. 86):

Acceptaque turre, diaconus, in qua mysterium Dominici corporis habebatur, ferre coepit ad ostium; ingressusque templum, ut eam

altari superponeret... (my emphasis).34

A notable medieval embellishment to the " turris " of the pyx were the decorative crenellations which gave it the look of

a fortified castle. Rohault de Fleury notes and provides illus-

trations of a number of important examples of such ciboria

preserved in the Louvre.35 The tower of the Holy Sepulchre, its gates and its angel and the fortified tower of its sacra-

mental image, the pyx, find their hellish counterpart in In-

ferno VII-IX, at the outer " gate " of Satan's " tomba." The " verghetta " or wand with which the messo opens

the gates of Dis has aroused much speculation and puzzle- ment, yet its significance is clearly given by parallels in the

visual arts. Auerbach identified it with the rod of Aaron, al-

though, unfortunately, he did not expatiate on his reasons.36 Denise Heilbronn, seeking a Marian allusion, compares it to

the scepter of the Angel of the Annunciation and, accepting Erich Auerbach's identification without elaboration, points also

to the denomination of the Blessed Virgin as the " rod of

Jesse." ,7 As Auerbach merely hints, there exists, in actual fact, a more direct and obvious parallel in the Christian tradition:

the " verghetta," too, is intimately and simply bound to the

iconography of Christ's Harrowing. In Christian art Christ

always carries a cruciform wand as He leads the souls of the

prophets and patriarchs from Hell to Heaven. The angel in

the Inferno, repeating Christ's opening of a Hellgate, fittingly bears the same typical insignia of angelic authority. Further

associations also unite the imagery of the descensus and the

Visitation of the Tomb to the gate and wand. As in the case

of the tower and soldiered battlements, Dante's episode of the

Gate of Dis bears striking parallels with depictions of the

Marys and the Apostles with the angel at the Sepulchre. The

ampullae of Queen Theodolinda (d. 625), preserved in the

SATAN'S TOMB 339

Treasure of the Collegiale in Monza, and similar specimens in Bobbio, once used to bring back sacred oil from the shrines of the Holy Land, are stamped with the scene: before the Gates of the Holy Sepulchre, while the women stand observing, the angel points through the gaping portal of the empty tomb with his wand.38 The theme is repeated in countless paintings, frescoes, and mosaics.39

The " dramatic " quality of the scene before Dis, noted and examined stylistically by Mark Musa,4" is most probably due to the fact that in the medieval Church the descensus was a common part of the extra-liturgical drama at Easter time. The church door, or the gate of an especially erected sepulcrum, represented the gate of Hell. While an elder cleric spoke the lines of Christ, the younger deacons, novices or others

represented the devils who denied Him entry.4" The bishop or priest rapped with a wand three times upon the door or

gate, and, while the performers recited a text based on Psalm 23 [Vulgate] and the Gospel of Nicodemus, the gates fell

open. Though the ceremonial details differed, many European Churches performed (and continue to perform) the extra-litur-

gical depositio on Good Friday in which the cross, crucifix, and, or, the Host, are placed in an Easter Sepulchre. On Easter

Sunday came the elevatio, the removal of the Host or symbol, and the succeeding visitatio sepulcri in which the clergy enacted the roles of the Marys and of Peter and John at the tomb.42 The liturgy of the visitatio thus became combined with the re-enactment of the Harrowing. The doors of the sepulcrum where the cross or Host was figuratively " buried " became both spiritually and practically identified with the Gates of Second Death. The Gates of Christ's Tomb were one with the

gates of death and the gates of Hell. Indeed in the historic narrative sequence of crucifixion, death, burial and descensus, the bearing of Christ's body through the entrance of the cave of the sepulchre was an outward sign of His journey for man's

redemption. While the Redeemer's body lay in the grave, His soul harrowed Hell spiritually. As St. Augustine states in his

Epistola CLXXXVII, De praesentia Dei, " In inferno secundum

animum, in sepulcro autem secundum carnem." 4


Important for the image of Dis as an Augustinian " Earthly City " of the damned is the fact that the Fathers of the Church also linked metaphorically the gates of Christ's tomb and the

gates of Jerusalem. St. Gregory the Great renders Christ's

triumphal entry into Jerusalem's city gates on Palm Sunday a

typological unity with His Harrowing of Hell.44 Dante Wayfarer's entrance into Dis has similar typological resonances. Demaray has noted the importance of medieval mappaemundi in relation to the Purgatorio, but the pattern of Dis as an inverted Jeru- salem holds also in the geography and topography of Dante's

pit of Nether Hell. It lies directly and centrally beneath the

Holy City, which was the very center of the world as the Bible declared and as medieval maps, such as those of Isidore, Henry of Mainz, and Richard of Haldingham, made clear.5 Like the grave of the Redeemer at the spiritual center of the

City, and at the " omphalos " or navel of the World, the eternal grave of Satan also has a type of " portal," is equipped with yet another peculiar set of proud " towers," and sits at the very physical center of the damned. The Wayfarer's approach to the dreadful pit gradually reveals its shape and central location. In Inferno XVIII, 5-8 we learn that the " pozzo "

yawns open " nel dritto mezzo del campo maligno," in the center of the Malebolge. Later, echoing the Gate of Hell and the Gate of Dis, the Poet employs portal imagery for the third time. The entrance to the pit itself has a metaphorical gate: all the Malebolge incline toward " la porta del bassissimo

pozzo " (Inferno XXIV, 38). Later in Inferno XXXI, the towers of Satan's ramparts reveal themselves for what they are: the Giants' torsos atop the pit viewed from the navel up. Virgil must explain:

sappi che non son torri, ma giganti, e son nel pozzo intorno da la ripa da l'umbilico in giuso tutti quanti.

(vv. 31-33)

Satan's " gate " and " towers " prove chimeric, the first is

merely a gaping hole, and his " towers " are illusions, exposed as symbols of pride. At the center deep within, the Prince of

SATAN'S TOMB 341

Darkness stands in his " tristo buco " in all ways the negation of the Godhead. His materiality reverses the Divine Substance; his imprisonment in locality mocks his desire for infinity. As

the Triune God, his hideous heads reflect absurdly the Three

Persons bound in One.46 As God the Father his impotence is

the inverse of power. As the Son, the Logos, Truth becomes

ignorance; as the Word Made Flesh his cruciform figure drip-

ping tears and bloody foam apes the Passion. Like his minions

whom we have seen before, and who partake in and herald

his unimposing satanic quality-Farinata seen " da la cintola

in su," and the Giants " da l'ombelico in giuso "-Satan looms

in his " pozzo " protruding " da mezzo '1 petto " (Inferno XXXIV, 29). His hulking figure in frozen water is a blatant

perversion of baptism. Dante uses immersion, especially to the

waist or chest, as a continuing sign of God's judgment over

evil throughout the Inferno.47 In this, the doctrines and typo-

logies of Christian Baptism are at once parodied and fulfilled.

In Hell the sacrament can appear only in its initial aspect as

a death and burial; Christ speaks of His Crucifixion and Death

as a Baptism in Luke 12:50; and in Romans 6:4, St. Paul

calls the rite a burial: " For we are buried together with Him

by baptism into death." Through its Old Testament typologies, the Flood and the Crossing of the Red Sea, the sacrament was

interpreted in the Church Fathers as the vengeance of God

upon antediluvian disobedience, and thus the judgment of God

upon sin, and as the death of iniquity. Baptism represented the defeat of Pharoah, the Devil.48 Particularly, theologians divided the " immersion " of the sacrament from the " emer-

sion." 4 " Immersion," or descent into the baptismal pool,

imitated Christ's descensus ad inferos and signified the death

of the " old man," the " vetus homo," that is an end to the

former life and sinful acts of the catechumen (Romans 6:3-4). " Emersion " or emergence signified rebirth in the "novus

homo," Jesus Christ.50 Those in Hell are forever fixed in

" immersion "; that is in Baptism's aspect as the wrath and

judgment of God. Indeed to be " buried in death " is a biblical

synonym for eternal damnation (Luke 16:22). After the Last

Judgment, the heretics will lie buried in their tombs; the


simonist popes, before their complete burial by their successors, are first half-submerged head-down in their " fonts " in a cu-

rious and just anticipation of Baptism by fire at the Last Judg- ment (Matthew 3:11; Luke 12:49).5 Satan's stance in the

impure waters of Cocytus surrounded by the suspended souls

of the damned,

ii dove l'ombre tutte eran coperte, e trasparien come festuca in vetro.

Altre sono a giacere; altre stanno erte, quella col capo e quella con le piante; altra, com'arco, il volto a' pie rinverte.

(Inferno XXXIV, 11-15)

imitates conventional artistic depictions of Christ at His Baptism immersed in the waters of the river Jordan with the submerged

spirit or spirits of the river. In some versions portraying the

Jordan as the " waters of death," Christ's descent into the river

becomes a figure of His descent into Hell and of His victory over Satan's hosts; Christ is shown surrounded by the souls

or forms of the damned.52 A very striking example is a Byzan- tine fresco in the Church of Peribleptos in which the position of several souls beneath the waves closely parallels Dante's

description of the shades in Cocytus.53 In a drawing of the

Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg (ca. 1170), Christ

descends into the Jordan with the conventional spirit of the

river beneath the waters at His feet.54 Among the scores of

Italian examples one could cite are the depiction of the Baptism in the Pala d'Oro of Saint Mark's in Venice, and the tympanal stone relief (1221) above the Portal of Sta. Maria della Pieve

in Arezzo which shows Christ in the waters similarly attended

by the submerged spirit of the river.5" Dante's image of Satan

immersed in Cocytus is an inversion of the iconography of the

Baptism of the Redeemer. Charles Singleton's profound observation that Satan's blasts

parody the " spiration " and " procession " of the Holy Spirit (Inferno XXXIV, 4) deserves expansion." In fact the Prince of Darkness spirates forth in local movement the icy wind of

SATAN'S TOMB 343

hate in precisely the manner of " spiration " and " procession " which St. Thomas Aquinas denies of the true Godhead; Satan's is not an " intelligible emanation " which remains in the intel-

ligent agent but a physical " cause proceeding forth to its exterior effect " just as " heat proceeds from the agent to the

thing made hot." 5 In fact the parody is a double reversal: Satan blasts forth three freezing winds down to the waters and souls of Cocytus:

... quelle [penne] svolazzava, si che tre venti si movean da ello:

quindi Cocito tutto s'aggelava.

(Inferno XXXIV, 50-52)

The frozen water is the very antithesis of the tradition which had it that flames descended upon the Jordan at Christ's

baptism." Satan's icy " spiration " is the complete reverse of

epiclesis, the consecration of the baptismal water through the descent of Divine Love, the Holy Spirit, by Which they gain cleansing efficacy in the Sacrament of Initiation into the Faith.59 Far from being washed clean, the souls in Cocytus appear as mere debris or unwanted impurities - straws in glass (Inferno XXXIV, 12).

Dante's inspiration for the pit or " pozzo" of Nether Hell may have come from the conventional glosses on the word

" puteus " in the Bible. The pseudo-Rabanus Maurus' Allego- riae in Sacram Scripturam reads:

Puteus, profunditas vitiorum, ut in Psalmis [68:16]: " Neque urgeat super me puteus os suum," id est, dominetur mihi profunditas vitiorum, ut in Psalmis: " Deduces eos in puteum interitus," id est, demerges eos in profunditatem aeternae perditionis.60

Though perhaps equally important for the Poet's conception of the pit-like tomb of Dis is the fact that the grave of Christ within the Holy Sepulchre, laboriously visited and climbed into

by earthly Palmers, was termed the " poteus." 61 Other allied typologies of Christ are also evoked. Contem-

porary devotional painting and tomb sculpture depicted the


dead Christ as the imago pietatis or Man of Sorrows chest-up in his tomb; Dante's picture of Satan half-submerged in his

icy grave offers a trenchant parody.62 In the Church Fathers,

Joseph placed in. a well and betrayed by his brothers is a

prefiguration of the Redeemer. In De Joseph patriarcha St. Am-

brose discourses at length on the parallel." The Saint allies

Joseph's pit to the grave of Christ citing Psalm 87:7 (Vulgate): " The Lord says of Himself: 'They have laid me in the lower

pit: in the dark places, and in the shadow of death.' " "

In Christian art, Joseph depicted standing waist-up or being

placed in his round well or puteus is a figure of Christ's Death, Descensus, Resurrection, and of mankind's deliverance. In figurative representations, Joseph's well is also often indistinguish- able from the baptismal font. One could compare, for example, the thirteenth-century mosaic of St. Matthew baptizing in the

nave of St. Mark's in Venice, with its contemporary, the Joseph cycle in a cupola in the north atrium of that Basilica. The well and font of both these mosaics are in turn identical to the well in the Joseph panel of Maximinian's ivory chair in the

Episcopal Museum in Ravenna.") In Dante's circle of treachery the archtraitor fittingly stands in mocking imitation of Christ

both in His Old Testament prefiguration and in His New

Testament fulfillment. Satan thus not only parodies Christ iconographically,

historically, and theologically but, entombed within his tower-

gates and immersed in his pozzo, he is an inversion of the

Redeemer and the Holy Spirit in the major sacraments of

Christianity, the Eucharist and Baptism. He is indeed forever

" like " Him Whom he desired to replace in Heaven.

ANTHONY K. CASSELL

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

1 All citations to the Divina Commedia are .cited in the Petrocchi text republished in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. with comment, Charles S. Singleton, Bollingen Series, 80 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970-1975), 3 vols. The present author would like to acknowledge his debt to the studies of Dr. Singleton.

SATAN'S TOMB 345

All biblical quotations are from the Vulgate or Douay-Rheims version. 2 John G. Demaray, The Invention of Dante's Commedia (New

Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974). 3 Demaray, p. 6. George [H. Everett] Jeffery, A Brief Description

of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, and Other Christian Churches in the

Holy City with Some Account of the Medieval Copies of the Holy Sepulchre Surviving in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), pp. 195-219. Damiano Neri, II S. Sepolcro riprodotto in Occidente (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1971). "Bologna: Complesso di S. Ste- fano," a cura di Germana Aprato, in Stefano Bottari, Tesori d'Arte Cristiana, vol. 1 (Bologna: Officine Grafiche Poligrafici il Resto del Carlino, 1966), pp. 281-308.

4 Robert Ludwig John, Dante und Michelangelo: Das Paradiso Ter- restre und die Sixtinische Decke, Petrarca-Institut: Schriften und Vortrige (Cologne), 13 (Krefeld: Scherpe Verlag, 1959), pp. 18-21, 45-71. Demaray, pp. 169, n. 33; 170, n. 35. Manfred Hardt, Die Zahl in der Divina Com- media, Linguistica et Litteraria, 13 (Frankfurt: Athenium, 1973), pp. 12-13, et passim.

5 The shrine suffered destruction many times at the hands of the Persians, Saracens and Turks. The Russian Abbot Daniel, visiting the Tomb (ca. 1106-1107) writes: " Le gardien des clefs, voyant ma devotion pour le Saint Sepulchre, repoussa la dalle qui recouvre la sainte Tombe i l'endroit oii etait la tate [du Christ], detacha un petit morceau de cette pierre sacree, et me la donna comme benediction, en me conjurant de n'en parler i Jerusalem." (p. 82) The author of the eclectic Travels of Sir John Mandeville whether from his own experience or from others, knew on good authority that " Pilgrims that came thither labored to break the stone in pieces or in powder." (The Book of Sir John Maunde- ville in Thomas Wright, ed., Early Travels in Palestine [London: Henry G. Bohn, 1848], p. 166. See also Mandeville's Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour [London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1967]).

Legend has it that in 1603, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand I, arranged with the Bey Fakreddin (" Faccardino "), Emir of the I)ruses in Lebanon, to cut out the Holy Sepulchre from its location and transport it across the sea to the Medici Chapels in Florence. The noble scheme was halted by the " malice " of the Greek monks in Jerusalem who caught the enterprising Lebanese and Italians with pickaxes in hand (Jeffery, pp. 5, 215-216; Neri, II S. Sepolcro, pp. 88-93).

6 Jeffery, p. 10. 7 On the practice of incarcerating pilgrims see Fra Niccolo di Pog-

gibonsi (1346), A Voyage Beyond the Seas, trans. Fr. Theophilus Bellorini and Fr. Eugene Hoade, introd. Fr. Bellarmino Bagatti, Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, n. 2, pt. 2 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1954), pp. 16, 23; and Ludolph von Suchem (1350), De itinere Terrae Sanctae liber, ed. Ferdinand Deycks, Bibliothek des Literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, XXV (Stuttgart, 1851), p. 81; Ludolph von Suchem's Descrip- tion of the Holy Land, trans. Aubrey Stewart, Library of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, XII (London: 1895, p. 106). Canon Pietro Casola records the same treatment in 1494 (Viaggio di Pietro Casola a Gerusa- lemme [Milan: Carpano, 1855], pp. 70-71, 73-74); M. Margaret Newett,


Canon Pietro Casola's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 1907), pp. 258-259, 266. Jeffery, pp. 30-31. 8 Andre Parrot, Golgotha and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,

trans. Edwin Hudson, Studies in Biblical Archaeology, 6 (London: SCM Press, 1957), p. 77.

9 Vie et Pelerinage de Daniel Heigoumene russe 1106-1107, trans. B. de Khitrowo (i.e., S.P. Khitrovo). Publications de la Societe de l'Orient Latin, 5 (1889), p. 13.

10 Burchard of Mount Sion, trans. Aubrey Stewart, The Library of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, vol. XII (London: 1896), p. 76.

11 Part XIV of Book III of Marino Sanuto's Secrets for True Crusaders to Help Them to Recover the Holy Land, trans. Aubrey Stewart, The Library of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, vol. XII (London: 1896), p. 39. Compare Ludolph von Suchem: " From this first chapel one goes into another chapel, wherein is Christ's sepulchre, through a low and small doorway, arched semicircularly, and made so that one must enter in with a bent back." (p. 104)

12 Fratris Felicis Fabri, Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Egypti peregrinationem, ed. Conrad Dieter Hassler, Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 2 (1843), vol. 1, p. 328.

13 "

Bologna: Complesso di Santo Stefano," p. 289, pl. 4. 14 " L'orribile soperchio / del puzzo che '1 profondo abisso gitta"

(Inferno XI, 4-5). " I1 tristo fiato" (XI, 12). " Le ripe eran grommate d'una muffa, / per l'alito di gii che vi s'appasta, / che con li occhi e col naso facea zuffa " (XVIII, 106-108). " Per indi ove quel fummo e piji acerbo "

(IX, 75). For other references to the stench and smoke of Hell see:

Inferno VIII, 12; XV, 2, 117; XXIV, 51; XV, 93, 118, 135; Inferno IX, 31; XXIX, 50 et passim.

15 Inferno 2, Commentary, p. 40, n. 1. 16 Demaray, pp. 74-75. 17 Teddy Kollek and Moshe Pearlman, Pilgrims to the Holy Land:

The Story of Pilgrimage Through the Ages (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 121, 140. The sacking of Jerusalem by the Turks in 1244, and the loss of the Acre in 1291, the last Christian

stronghold in the East, smouldered in contemporary memory (Inferno XXVII, 89). Demaray does not deal with the parallel of Dis to Jerusalem in The Invention, compare, for example, pp. 74-75.

18 The Pilgrimage of Etheria, ed. M.L. McClure and C.L. Feltoe

(London and New York: Macmillan, 1919), p. 88. Egeria: Diary of a

Pilgrimage, trans. George E. Gingras, Ancient Christian Writers, 38 (New York: Newman Press, 1970), p. 120.

19 Baeda, Liber de locis sanctis in Itinera Hierosolymitana saeculi IIII-VIII, ed. Paul Geyer, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 39 (1898), p. 304. Adamnanus, De locis sanctis libri tres, ibid., p. 229; The Travels of Bishop Arculf... by Adamnan, Bishop of lona, in Wright, p. 2.

20 Wright, p. 166; Bennett makes the case that " Mandeville's" description of Jerusalem is factual, pp. 50-63. See also Demaray, p. 36. Karl Schmaltz, Mater ecclesiarum: Die Grabeskirche in Jerusalem, Studien zur Geschichte der kirchlichen Baukunst und Ikonographie in Antike und Mittelalter (Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz, 1918), pp. 68, 441 [the Holy Fire].

SATAN'S TOMB 347

21 A Voyage Beyond the Seas, pp. 23-24. Demaray notes Niccolo's text but does not refer it to Dis.

22 Jeffery, pp. 214-215. 23 Denise Heilbronn, " Dante's Gate of Dis and the Heavenly Jeru-

salem," Studies in Philology, 72 (1975), pp. 167-193, esp. p. 178. One might add that the tower of Dis reflects the allegorical sense

of the word given in the Allegoriae in Sacram Stripturam (Patrologia series latina, ed. J.P. Migne [Paris], vol. 112, col. 1070, hereafter cited as PL; the Series graeca is cited as PG): " Turris superbia mundi hujus, ut in Genesi: ' Et turrim ejus culmen pertingat,' [Gen. 11:4] id est, superbia cujus fama volet ad summum." For an excellent examination of the Giant " towers " as figures of pride see Christopher Kleinhenz, " Dante's

Towering Giants: Inferno XXXI," Romance Pfiilology, 27 (1974), pp. 269-285. For an interesting subjective view see Giovanni Cecchetti, " Dante's Giant- Towers and Tower-Giants," Forum Italicum, 8 (1974), pp. 200-222.

24 For the " womb " of Ecclesia (the font) as parallel to the Virgin's womb and to Christ's Sepulchre, see Rupert of Deutz, De Trinitate et

operibus eius. De S. Spiritu, III, 9 (PL, 167, col. 1648). Heilbronn, " Dante's Gate of Dis," p. 176 does not note this.

25 The Travels of Willibald, in Wright, p. 18. 26 Daniel, p. 13: " Elle est surmontee d'une belle tourelle [reposant]

sur des piliers et se terminant par une coupole." Later he describes this tower by which the cave to the tomb was entered: " Cette tourelle, qui se trouve juste sous la coupole decouverte, a trois portes ingenieusement travaillees en treillage croise; c'est par ces portes qu'on penietre dans le Saint Sepulcre " (p. 14).

27 Fabri, Evagatorium, vol. 1, p. 328. 28 Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, Band 3,

Die Auferstehung und Erhiohung Christi (Giitersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1971), pl. 11. For the structure of the Constantinian " tempietto " over the Holy Sepulchre as a model for Baptistries in Europe, see Paul A. Underwood, " The Fountain of Life," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 5 (1950), pp. 41-138.

29 Schiller, vol. 3, pl. 12, 13, 14. 3`1 Anthony K. Cassell, " Dante's Farinata and the Image of the

Arca," Yale Italian Studies, 1, n. 4 (1977), p. 346, Figure 1.

31 Schiller, vol. 3, pl. 281. 32 Charles Rohault de Fleury, La Messe: 1itudes arch&ologiques sur ses

monuments (Paris: Librairie des Imprimeries reunies, 1887), vol. 5, p. 62. The Milan torre is identical to those reproduced by Rohault de Fleury, plates 281-282.

S3 Expositio brevis antiquae liturgiae gallicanae ex MS. codice S. Mar- tini Augustodunensis in Edmond Marteine and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, 5 (Lutetiae Parisiorum: Sumptibus Florentini Dlelaulne et al., 1717, col. 95). Charles Du Fresne, sieur Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1954; reprint of 1883-1887 ed.), vol. 8, p. 216. Rohault de Fleury, vol. 5, p. 62. Neil C. Brooks, The Sepulchre of Christ in Art and Liturgy with Special Reference to the Liturgic Drama, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 7 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1921), p. 62. Yrjii Hirn, The Sacred Shrines: A Study of the Poetry and Art of the Catholic Church

(London: Macmillan, 1912), p. 161.


34 Martene, Thesaurus, vol. 5, col. 95; Du Cange, vol. 8, p. 216. 35 See illustrations in Rohault de Fleury, vol. 5, pl. ccclxxx. 36 Erich Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin

Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. Ralph Manheim (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 231, n. 43.

37 Heilbronn, p. 177. I am unconvinced that " The Tree of Jesse symbolisms are directly involved here. On this point the reader should consult Arthur Watson, The Early Iconography of the Tree of Jesse (London: Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, 1934), esp. " The

Virga in Literature," pp. 1-8. 38 Andre Grabar, Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza-Bobbio), Photos.

Denise Fourmont (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1958). Brooks, p. 15; pl. 1-4.

39 See the Plates in Schiller, vol. 3, pl. 99 to 176. 40 Mark Musa, Advent at the Gates (Bloomington and London:

Indiana University Press, 1974), p. 76. 41 Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford: The

Clarendon Press, 1933; reprint 1962), vol. 1, pp. 149-177. Neil C. Brooks, " The Sepulchrum, Christi and its Ceremonies in Late Medieval and Modern Times," The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 28 (1928), pp. 147-161.

42 Young, vol. 1, pp. 239-410.

43 Epistola CLXXXVII, cap. ii, 3-5. Epistolarum classis III, PL, 33, cols. 833-834. See also Eusebius, Vita Constantini (ca. 335 A.D.), lib. III, cap. 28 (PG, 20, cols. 1087-1090), " Manifestatio sanctissimi sepulcri." Eusebius describes St. Helena's rediscovery of the sacred tomb in Jerusa- lem as one with Christ's exit from Hell; his metaphors link the Holy Sepulchre and its cave intimately with Christ's descensus: " Postquam aliud solum, locus scilicet qui in imo erat, apparuit; tunc vero ipsum augustum sanctissimumque Dominicae resurrectionis monumentum praeter omnium spem refulsit, et spelunca illa quae sancta sanctorum vere dici

potest, resurrectionis Servatoris nostri quamdam expressit similitudinem, cum post situm ac tenebras quibus obtecta fuerat, rursus in lucem prodiit. et miraculorum quae ibi quondam gesta fuerant, historiam iis qui ad

spectandum confluxerant manifestissime videndam exhibuit, rebus ipsis quae omni voce clarius sonant, Servatoris nostri resurrectionem testata."

44 Homilia V; Homiliarum liber II; PL, 76, cols. 985-986. For the

City of Dis as the Earthly City, see Anthony K. Cassell, " Dante's

Farinata," pp. 335-370. 45 Ezekiel 5:5: " This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the midst of

the nations." Psalm 73:12 (Vulgate): " But God is our king before ages: he hath wrought salvation in the midst of the earth." See Charles S. Singleton, Dante Studies 2: Journey to Beatrice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958; reprint Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1978), pp. 145-146. Pilgrim accounts speak of " a compass " which was labeled as the omphalos, the center of the world. See Saewulf, in

Wright, p. 38: The Itine'raire de Londres it Jerusalem (ca. 1244) attributed to Matthew Paris asserts that in Jerusalem " la est le midliu du mund, cum li prophete [Ezekiel] Davi e plusurs autres avoient avant dit ke la nesteroit le Sauvere." (Itineraires a Jerusalem, ed. Henri Michelant and Gaston Raynaud, Publications de la Societe de l'Orient Latin, serie

geographique, III [Geneva: Imprimerie Jules-Guillaume Fick, 1882], p. 133);

SATAN'S TOMB 349

in the same volume see, for example, Le Pelerinaiges por aler en Iherusa- lem (ca. 1231), p. 93 and the Pelrinages et Pardouns de Acre (ca. 1280), p. 182. Sir John Maundetille, Wright, p. 167; Daniel, p. 14. For Jerusalem as the center of the world in medieval maps, see the mappaemundi in [Ricardus de Bello], The World Map by Richard of Haldingham in Hereford Cathedral, circa A.D. 1285, with memoire by Gerald Roe Crone (London: Royal Geographical Society, 1954). Demaray stresses the geographic importance only for Purgatorio, pp. 20-21, 32, 145.

46 See John Freccero, " The Sign of Satan," Modern Language Notes, 80 (1965), pp. 11-26.

47 The submersion of human reason into bestiality is figured by the centaurs in the circle of the tyrants. Charles Singleton observes that the centaurs' join, where the human waist meets the equine breast, receives triple emphasis in Inferno XII, 70, 84, 97. Inferno 2, Commentary, pp. 192-195.

For other recent essays connected with the concept of submersion to the waist see Kleinhenz, op. cit.; Mark Musa, " Aesthetic Structure in the Inferno, Canto XIX," Essays on Dante, ed. M. Musa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), p. 170; Mark Musa and Anna Granville Hatcher, " Lucifer's Legs," PMLA, 79 (1964), pp. 191-199. For the " fiu- mana " of Inferno II and its intimate connection to baptismal typology, see the thought-provoking essay by John Freccero, " The River of Death." Inferno II, 108, in The World of Dante, ed. S. Bernard Chandler and Julius A. Molinaro (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), pp. 25-42.

It is important for the concept of the contrapasso that the half-buried stance of the simonist popes and of Brutus inversely reflects the swallowing of Jonah head-first by the whale; this biblical story also appeared frequently in early Christian art, particularly on sarcophagi. It echoed Christ's identification of Himself as the " new Jonah." Jonah's three days in the whale prefigured Christ's Death and Resurrection, and Mankind's Salvation. See the many illustrations in Josef Wilpert, I Sarcofagi cristiani antichi (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1929-1936), 3 vols.; and Friedrich W. Deichmann, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1967).

48 Among the scores of references to the Pharoah as the Devil, see, for example, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo Cantica Canticorum, XXXIX, 5: " Et posequere modo mecum singula proportionis membra. Ibi populus eductus de Aegypto, hic homo de saeculo; ibi prosternitur Pharao, hic diabolus " (Sermones super Cantica Canticorum 36-86, ed. J. Leclerq et al., S. Bernardi Opera, vol. II [Rome: Editiones Cisterciensis, 1958], p. 21). For the Flood, see Hugh of St. Victor, De Sacramentis, II, 6, viii; On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, trans. Roy J. Deferrari (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1951), p. 296. Per Lundberg, La Typologie baptismale dans l'ancienne eglise, Acta Seminarii Neotesta- mentici Upsaliensis, 10 (Leipzig: Alfred Lorentz; Uppsala: A.-B. Lundquist, 1942). For a study of baptismal typology, see Jean Danielou, The Bible and Liturgy, ed. Michael A. Mathis, Liturgical Studies (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), esp. pp. 70-98. See also Freccero, " The River of Death," p. 34 and n. 22.

49 Danielou, pp. 37-39, 79, 89 et passim. 50 Such references in the Church Fathers are legion. See, for


example, Leo the Great's letter to the Bishops of Sicily: " Proprie tamen in morte crucifixi, et in resurrectione mortui, potentia baptismatis novam creaturam condit ex veteri: ut in renascentibus et mors Christi operetur... dum in baptismatis regula, et mors intervenit interfectione peccati, et sepulturam triduanam imitatur trina demersio, et ab aquis elevatio, resur- gentis instar est de sepulcro " (Epistola XVI, iii, Ad Universos Episcopos per Siciliam Constitutos; PL, 54, col. 698). St. Cyril, PG, 33, cols. 1077-1080; Gregory of Nyssa, PG, 44, col. 1003; PG, 46, col. 420. Danielou, p. 77.

51 Cf. Carl Martin Edsman, Le Bapteme de feu, Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsaliensis, 9 (Leipzig: Alfred Lorentz; Uppsala: A.-B. Lundquist, 1940).

S2 Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 1, trans. Janet Seligman (Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1971), pp. 136-137. Schiller gives the significance in malo, and she is undoubtedly correct; it is also the one most appropriate in the context of Satan in the

present essay. There is, however, the symbolic sense in bono which she omits. Christ as " ichthys " or " fish " was one of the earliest Christian

symbols; at baptism novices became " pisciculi," " little fishes " immersed in the waters, a tradition attested to as early as Tertullian: " But we, little

fishes, according to the example of our ichthus, Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety [salvation] in any other way than by remaining permanently in the water" (PL, 1, col. 1197). The Peribleptos fresco cited below shows both human forms and fish beneath the waves of the Jordan.

53 Schiller, vol. 1, pl. 363. 54 Schiller, vol. 1, pl. 364. SSchiller, vol. 1, pl. 375.

56 Charles S. Singleton, Dante Studies I: Commedia Elements of Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 39-42.

'7 Treatise on the Trinity, Summa Theologica I, qu. XXVI, art. 1: " Procession, therefore, is not to be understood from what it is in bodies, either according to local movement, or by way of a cause proceeding forth to its exterior effect; as, for instance, like heat proceeding from the agent to the thing made hot. Rather it is to be understood by way of an intelligible emanation, for example, of the intelligible word which proceeds from the speaker, yet remains in him. In that sense the Catholic Faith understands procession as existing in God " (ed. Anton C. Pegis, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas [New York: Random House, 1945], vol. I, p. 275).

8" ,, As Jesus went down into the water, fire kindled in the Jordan; and while He came out of the water, the Holy Spirit, like a dove, hovered over Him." Justin, Dialogus cum Tryphone Judaeo, 88 (PG, 6, col. 686). For the tradition see Carl Martin Edsman, Le Bapteme de feu, esp. pp. 182-186.

.59 Danielou, Bible und Liturgy, p. 107. The baptism of Christ fulfilled the sacrifice of Elias-Elijah in the Old Testament, in which fire descends upon the holocaust. On the Spirit descending at Christ's Baptism, see Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:29-34. On epiclesis, see Danielou, Bible and Liturgy, pp. 13, 107 et passim.

60 Allegoriae in Sacram Scripturam, PL, 112, col. 1035. Notable for Dante's collocation of the circle of the buried " eresiarche " within the

SATAN'S TOMB 351

walls of Dis is the fact that the gloss identifies " pit " also with the heretics and with our human mortality. That the " tower" of Dis is sepulchral demonstrates the intimate unity of the two episodes of the Gate of Dis and the Heretics.

61 The pilgrim Antonino of Piacenza wrote in 570: " Osculantes proni in terramin ingressi sumus in sanctam civitatem, in qua adorantes monumentum Domini. Quia monumento de petra est naturale excisus, et poteus ex ipsa petra excisus, ubi corpus domini Iesu Christi positum fuit." Antonino's Itinerarium is preserved in countless manuscripts; see August Heisenberg, Grabeskirche und Apostelkirche (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich, 1908), vol. 1, p. 122. Brooks (1921), pp. 10, n. 6; 15.

62 Christ, depicted as the Imago pietatis (Schmerzensmann), though taken down from the cross, was often shown standing with the cross behind him; the central column rose above his head with the transverse rod extending beyond His shoulders. It should be noted that in silhouette the figure does indeed have a windmill-like appearance. See Anthony K. Cassell, " Dante's Farinata," op. cit.

63 "Quis est ille quem parentes et fratres adoraverunt super terram, nisi Christus Jesus? " (De Joseph, 2:8; PL, 14, cols. 637-672).

64 "Et ut scias verum hoc esse mysterium, ipse de se lDominus ait: 'Posuerunt me in lacu inferiori et in umbra mortis' (Psalm 87:7)" (PL, 14, col. 644). St. Ambrose equates " puteus " with " lacus " and " piscina "; cf. PL, 14, col. 512.

The lake (" lago," Inferno XXXII, 23) of Cocytus thus also bears a close parallel (cf. Allegoriae in Sacram Scripturam, PL, 112, col. 978: " Lacus infernus est... ").

65 For Joseph in the well, see the early illustrations which can be found reproduced in Michael Gough, The Origins of Christian Art (New York and Washington: Praeger, 1973), p. 169, pl. 164; Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1969), pl. 61.

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The Tomb, The Tower and the Pit Dante's Satan