Of the three Canticas of the Commedia the hardest for a non-Catholic to understand is the Purgatorio; because the entire conception of purgatory is foreign to his mind. Hence we find even devout men like H. F. Cary, who has general sympathy with Dante’s teaching, misunderstand him here. For example, upon the well-known lines (x. 106-in, which shall be quoted from his own translation):

‘Reader! I would not that amazed thou miss Of thy good purpose, hearing how just God Decrees our debts be cancel’d. Pander not The form of suffering. Think on what succeeds :
Think that, at worst, beyond the mighty doom It cannot pass.’

Cary’s comment is : ‘This is, in truth, an unanswerable objection to the doctrine of Purgatory. It is difficult to conceive how the best can meet death without horror, if they believe it must be followed by immediate and intense suffering.’ And Leigh Hunt, in his Italian Poets, refers to this comment with approval, after his own manner, that is to say, in less refined language.

‘The purpose of this article is to show how Dante himself, on the contrary, represents the attitude of the Holy Souls towards their own sufferings in Purgatory.

The resurrection of a language and the revival of a whole literature, which took place in the middle of the last century, are among the most curious events in the history of letters. After a sleep of six centuries the dead plant put out leaves, and in the course of twenty years shot up to its full growth. This statement must not be taken too literally. During the six hundred years there were doubtless connecting links.

Putting aside the revival at King René’s court, there can be no question but that various forms of the langue d’oc were continuously in use for common speech amongst the people of the South; but as a language, with grammar and fixity of form, Provençal had ceased to exist. Provençal is mysterious throughout : there is no known connecting link between the idiom of the Troubadours and the last semi-classical writers of Southern Gaul.

It would seem that at all times the literary form of Provengal differs rather widely from the spoken tongue. A charge of artificiality is sometimes brought against the writers of the revival. Certainly the language of Mistral and others is not identical with the Provençal of the Bouches du Rhône, such as may be heard in the markets or on the quays; but it is no more artificial than the style of an eminent English or French writer, who does not make use of the language and grammar of a London or Paris porter.

It is a little disconcerting that Catholic apologetics and Biblical exegesis, on the whole, have not yet grasped the full value of the organic treatment of the Gospels; especially in the matter of the Petrine privilege. Apologists and Biblical exegetes still largely appraise the gospel data by what may almost be called ‘a show of hands.’ We have no wish to discourage this method of valuation; which, indeed, is often demanded by the literary character of the exegesis. But if there is a higher and truer method it will be found that ‘the best is the foe of the good.’

Let us exemplify this by studying some of the lesser ways in which the Gospel of St. Luke witnesses to the primacy of St. Peter. We will pass over the classical passage (Lk. xxii, 25-32) with its clear assertion of St. Peter’s power over the other apostles. To the present writer this passage has always seemed to be of even greater importance than St. Matthew’s witness ‘Thou art Peter, etc.’ (Mt. xvi, 18-19).

In order to appreciate St. Luke’s witness to St. Peter it should be borne in mind and used as an exegetical principle that roughly speaking what St. Mark was to St. Peter—that was St. Luke to St. Paul. His devotion to a master who made many demands on his tact and patience seems never to have flagged. It is seen in many details of his two great works, his Gospel of Jesus Christ and his Acts of the Apostles. Even in such a supreme matter as the institution of the Blessed Sacrament he left the tradition of St. Matthew and St. Mark for the tradition of St. Paul.

What traveller abroad does not know the Central Station at Milan? All the railroads of Europe would seem to lead there. And what a journey back it is to France over the Simplon route—even in its beginnings ! At Arona we come to the first hills rising on the northern limits of the plain of Lombardy. We skirt the shores of Lago Maggiore past Stresa, past Baveno. Isola Bella and her sister isles are sleeping in all their magical loveliness on the blue waters of the lake. There beyond them is Pallanza! At Feriolo we pass from the lake into the Toce valley and into the mountains. At Vogogna we are not a dozen miles from Domodossola and the tunnel beyond. But as we are pilgrims and not tourists we climb down from our train and set out on foot across the valley, that is to say, across a mile and more of the turbulent Toce’s wide-strewn debris to Pie di Mulera. Here the Anza flows in adding its tribute of glacier waters to the main stream. It is up the Val Anzasca we walk the ten miles to Vanzone, where we spend our first night among the Italian Alps.

Before dawn on July 29th, 1889, two young Milanese priests who had also spent the night at Vanzone, set off up the same valley on a great adventure. The scene of it rose majestically before their eyes as they approached Prequatero four miles on. It was Monte Rosa—’ a spectacle of incomparable beauty.’ Around us was the fresh green of the meadows and the woods; above us the canopy of heaven, fringed with the most beautiful blue that was ever seen . . . and in front towered the Alpine giant, inviting or defying—I hardly know which—with the immense extent of its snow and ice, with the mighty crown of its ten peaks . . . sparkling and flaming in the rosy rays of the rising sun.