|
S i d e b a r
Citizens of One True City
|
This Rock
Volume 20, Number 8
 November-December 2009 
|
|
|
The souls on the mount of purgatory are eager to give spiritual instruction. When Dante asks if any of them hails from Italy—implicitly promising them to bring back news of them, that their kinsmen and friends may pray for their souls—Sapia, a noblewoman from Siena, answers:
My brother, each man is a citizen
of one true city. What you mean to say
is, "who once lived a pilgrim in that land." (13.94-96)
The point is not that Sienese should not love Siena, but that all human communities, Siena included, are so by their participation in, and their foreshadowing of, the "one true city," the heavenly Jerusalem, towards which all men must walk in pilgrimage.
In life, though, Sapia was of no use to her native city or to her kin. Her folly consisted in the community-destroying sin of envy:
Though I was called
Sapia, I was never sapient, for
another’s harm made me far happier than
My own good fortune. Trust me, it’s no lie!
Listen to me, see if I was not mad—
And when my years were sloping down to die! (109-114)
Her countrymen, led by one of her own kin, were engaged in combat with the enemy, when Sapia prayed for the other side —I will refrain from drawing any analogies to contemporary Americans here—and rejoiced to see the Sienese routed, rejoiced with such savage abandon that she shook her fist at God and cried, "Why should I fear you now!" (122), as if neither the joys of heaven nor the pains of hell could count for more than to watch her people being mowed down. At a stroke, her envy severs her from family, Siena, and God.
Sapia did not die in that alienating sin. As she lay dying, she wanted peace with God. She repented at the latest hour, and by the laws of purgatory she should be lingering still at the base of the mountain, one year for every year of her life. But she was speeded on her pilgrimage by a simple man who never envied her:
And penitence
would have diminished nothing of my debt
If Pete the Comb Man in his holy prayers
had not remembered me, for when I died
he felt the pitying warmth of charity. (125-29)
She is grateful to him—grateful to that poor fellow who was her spiritual superior. So her heart goes out also to Dante, when she learns that he has been given the privilege of ascending purgatory while yet in the flesh:
"Oh! This is such a wondrous thing to hear,"
said she, "it’s a great sign that God must love you!
So please, assist me sometimes by your prayer." (146-48)
|
Catholic Answers
