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‘Inferno’ XXX: Dante's Counterfeit Adam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2017

Sally A. Mussetter
Sally A. Mussetter*
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
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Extract

One of the last shades whom the pilgrim Dante encounters in Hell is the pitifully nostalgic and vengeful Master Adam. By his own admission, the lute-shaped grotesque has been burnt at the stake for counterfeiting the gold florin and rained into the tenth bolgia along with the swinish impersonators, the reeking liars, and the leprous alchemists stacked against each other like pans. Although various historical models for the now immobile, water-logged sinner have been suggested, he is most commonly identified as the shade of Adam of Brescia, a false coiner employed by the Counts of Romena to debase the monetary standard of the Florentines. This deduction corresponds well with the evidence of the text, for Master Adam both names the wretched souls for whose sake he has left his body burnt and locates the place where he sinned amid the cool green hills of the Casentino. Yet Dante's portrayal of the hydroptic contains elements which seem to allude to a context larger than that defined by the historical Adam of Brescia whose counterfeiting of coins led him to the stake. For as probable as the historical and geographical identification may be, it does not fully account for the counterfeiter's metamorphosis into a water-filled lute, for his nostalgic fixation on his pleasant homeland, or even for his eternal confinement with the deformed shades of the falsifiers of the body, the word, and the goods of nature. When these and other details of the passage are studied against the bodies of extra-literary knowledge available to Dante, however, they reveal that the Master Adam encountered by the pilgrim is not only the shade of an historical counterfeiter, but also a type of the unredeemed and unredeemable Old Adam.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 34 , 1978 , pp. 427 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 New York, Fordham University Press 

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References

1 The text of Inferno 30.46–148 used in this paper is that edited by Petrocchi, Giorgio, La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata (Milan 1966–67) II 512–24.Google Scholar

2 The best alternatives to the traditional identification have been suggested by Livi, Giovanni, ‘Un personaggio dantesco,’ Giornale Dantesco 24 (1921) 265–70; and by Contini, Gianfranco, ‘Sul XXX dell’Inferno,' Paragone 44 (1953) 3–13.Google Scholar

3 The allusion to Lamentations 1.12 has been pointed out by Bosco, Umberto, ‘I due stili della decima bolgia dantesca,’ Romanic Review 62 (1971) 177: and by Contini, Gianfranco, ‘Canto XXX dell'Inferno,’ Letture Dantesche , ed. Getto, Giovanni (Florence 1955–61) I 590.Google Scholar

4 The physiological accuracy of Dante's hydroptic is discussed by Contini, ‘Canto XXX’ 589–92; and by Bigi, Emilio, ‘Il Canto XXX dell'Inferno,’ Lectura Dantis Scaligera (Florence 1963) 16. Other readings of various points have been offered by Vinciguerra, Mario, ‘Il Canto XXX dell'Inferno,’ Lectura Dantis Romana (Rome 1959); and by Vettori, Vittorio, ‘Il canto di Maestro Adamo,’ Lectura Dantis internazionale (Milan 1963) I 256–73.Google Scholar

5 According to medieval physiology, the conversion or digestion of humors is to begin in the stomach and continue in the belly, whence the nutrients are absorbed by the members; see da Pisa, Guido, Expositiones el glose super Comediam Dantis, ed. Cioffari, Vincenzo (Albany 1974) 619 20. The harmonious circulation was influenced by the stars and, therefore, analogous to the music of the spheres. For Dante's understanding of the circulating spirit of locomotion, see Freecero, John, ‘Dante's Firm Foot and the Journey without a Guide,’ Harvard Theological Review 52 (1959) 252–64.Google Scholar

6 A collection of retorts and furnaces used in the distillation or ‘digestion’ process appears in Thompson, C. J. S., The Lure and Romance of Alchemy (London 1932) 110–119. Although the single–arm alembic is common, several specialized forms illustrated by Thompson have more than one tube.Google Scholar

7 The process is described in Berthelot, M., La chimie au moyen âge (Paris 1893) I 151.Google Scholar

8 Although the prefiguration of Adam's alembic by the alchemists' pans seems not to have been noted, the importance of alchemy to the understanding of this canto has been discussed by Mayer, Sharon E., ‘Dante's Alchemists,’ Italian Quarterly 12 (1969) 185–200. Further remarks on the imagery of disease in the tenth bolgia have been made by Bosco, ‘I due stili.’ The historical association between alchemy and coining which might have accounted for elements of Dante's portrayal of Master Adam is outlined by Bolton, Henry Carrington, Contributions of Alchemy to Numismatics (New York 1890); and the story of Raymond Lull, master coiner/alchemist, is told by Mark Graubard in Astrology and Alchemy: Two Fossil Sciences (New York 1953) 283–87.Google Scholar

9 Atwood, M. A., Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy: A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (rev. ed.; New York 1960) 26 of the introduction by Wilmshurst, Walter L. According to Wilmshurst, alchemists believed that, since the germ of the divine principle exists in the human soul despite the Fall, it can be generated when separated from ‘gross nature’ and purified — as the Old Adam can be resurrected with Christ.Google Scholar

10 The mystical dimensions of alchemy have attracted both Jung, Carl G., Psychologie und Alchemie (Zurich 1944), and Eliade, Mircea, Forgerons et alchimistes (Paris 1956). For more ‘historical’ treatments of the religious mystery one should consult Atwood (n. 9); Ganzenmüller, W., Die Alchemie im Mittelalter (Hildesheim 1967) 221ff., noting that he quotes Bacon's belief that the ‘body’ to be sublimated is Adam (232); and Hutin, Serge, L'Alchimie (Paris 1966).Google Scholar

11 Alchemical terminology could be, conversely, applied to morals. Bonaventure, for example, explains the fiery purification of the soul by analogy with the alchemical process: 'subtiliatio dicitur duplicitur: aut per dilatationem et rarefactionem, et tunc corpus subtiliatum occupat maiorem locum; aut per depurationem et separationem puri ab impuro, et hanc subtiliationem facit ignis, quando res purganda includitur in vase forti; quemadmodum faciunt opifices alchimiae, qui dicunt, quod totum potest ibi subtiliari et depurari, ut veniat ad naturam quinti corporis; et tunc faex tendit ad fundum, et subtile supernatat. Per hunc modum in proposito erit, quia caelum erit vas contentivum elementorum; et ideo depurabuntur, et faex elementorum ibit in infernum.' Sententiarum libri IV dist. 47 art. 2 quaest. 3 sol. opp. 3, Opera omnia (Quaracchi 1882–1902) IV 978.Google Scholar

12 Read, John, Prelude to Chemistry (London 1936) especially 11 and 94. Vincent of Beauvais devotes Book 8 of his Speculum naturale to alchemy, a summary of which may be found in Berthelot 280–83, along with epitomes and quotations from other alchemical treatises from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which Dante might have known.Google Scholar

13 In the main, alchemists of all ages concur that no operation can be performed unless ‘all be made water,’ Read 132. They are supported by Aquinas, Thomas, whose commentary on Aristotle's Meteorologica 3.9 summarizes the philosophical theories upon which rested the belief in the generation of gold from base metals which, in turn, were generated from the vaporous exhalations of the earth.Google Scholar

14 ‘Ita quod principium activum est virtus caelestis, quae dicitur virtus mineralis.’ Thomas on Aristotle's Meteorologica 3.9.2. For a discussion of Thomas' Christian adaptation of Aristotle, see Taylor, Frank S., The Alchemists, Founders of Modern Chemistry (New York 1949) 99.Google Scholar

15 The celestial lute is discussed by Spitzer, Leo, Classical and Medieval Ideas of World Harmony, ed. Hatcher, Anna Granville (Baltimore 1963) especially 19, 36, and 65. Dante's own understanding of the relationships between the musica mundana and the musica humana is the subject of Pirrotta's, Nino ‘Dante Musicus: Gothicism, Scholasticism and Music,’ Speculum 43 (1968) 245–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Dante's problematic calculations of the size of the bolgia might also be explained when his allusion to alchemy is identified. For if it is reconsidered as the spherical oven in which the alembic is buried, it may well measure half a mile across the open top and eleven miles around the bulbous circumference. Its heat and the projected length of Master Adam's submersion in it would certainly suffice in the process of transmutation, had this figure of the Old Adam the spirit to convert.Google Scholar

17 Matt. 22.21; Mk. 12.17; 20.25.Google Scholar

18 ‘Moneta Dei sumus, nummus a thesauro oberravimus. Errore detritum est quod in nobis fuerat impressum; venit qui reformet, quia ipse formaverat: quaerit et ipse nummum suum…. Tunc ergo exprimetur Veritas in nobis.’ Augustine, , Tractatus in Joannis Evangelium 40.9 (PL 35.1691).Google Scholar

19 Bernard of Clairvaux, De gratia et libero arbitrio 10.32 (Sancti Bernardi Opera , edd. Leclercq, J. and Rochais, H. [Rome 1970] III 188–89). Elsewhere Bernard writes a sermon De quinque negotiis, in which the exchange of coins figures the redemption — the buying back of mankind by Christ (Sermo 42 de diversis; Opera VI 1.255–61).Google Scholar

20 For the substitution of the mass penny for the bread, wine, and water offerings of the early Church, see Jungmann, Joseph-André, Missarum solemnia (Paris 1952) II.273ff. The dual symbolism of the penny appears in the commentary on the mass by Guilelmus Duranti: ‘Offerenda etiam sunt, quae Dei Deo, id est animae habentes similitudinem Dei impressam; deinde, quae sunt sacrificio necessaria, scilicet panem, vinum, et aquam, et alia sacrificio apta.’ Rationale divinorum officiorum 4.30.4 (Naples 1859) 220.Google Scholar

21 Dante's alchemists are of the fraudulent variety, not the true mystics, and it is for their fraud, not the practice of alchemy in itself, that he, like Thomas (Summa 2a2ae77.2.1) condemns them. If, like Thomas, Dante also credited their proper operation of the conversion of metals to the celestial spirit, he would have additional reason to condemn them for sinning against the Holy Spirit which ordains the course of nature.Google Scholar

22 Richard of St. Victor. De Trinitate, ed. Ribaillier, Jean (Textes philosophiques du moyen age; Paris 1958) 226–66. After ascertaining the nature of the divine relations and processions, Richard devotes Book 6 to their reflection in the human soul. Although it does not pertain directly to Dante's canto, one should note that Richard has redefined the attributes discovered by Augustine in his De Trinitate: memoria, intelligentia, voluntas sive amor. In doing so, Richard reflects the spirit of the twelfth-century renaissance, and his formulation is ultimately adopted by Thomas as the standard of the Church.Google Scholar

23 In the Convivio, Dante has earlier drawn together the concepts of the image of God and the journey of reform when he affirms that the image has a natural desire to return to the source and likens it to a pilgrim on a strange road stopping at many disappointing inns along the way until, at last, the truly desired end is attained (4.12.6). In one dimension, the Commedia narrates the process of the return of the imago Dei to its Trinitarian source.Google Scholar