the italianist 26 · 2006 · 177-196

Ekphrasis and Eucharist: The poetics of

seeing God’s art in Purgatorio X*
Matthew Treherne

1 Introduction

Dante’s descriptions of the carvings on the Terrace of Pride in cantos X and XII of
the Purgatorio are among the most celebrated passages of the cantica, and often
held up as a ground-breaking example of ekphrasis, a genre soon to undergo one of
its periodic flowerings in the Renaissance. But the passages’ position within the
tradition of this literary mode of writing should not obscure their significance within
the theological framework of the Purgatorio as a whole. For Dante-character’s
experience of the carvings marks a moment in which the eternal speaks to him,
through this encounter with art created directly and ex nihilo by God; as such, the
carvings are bewildering and novel [‘novello’] to the human viewer and reader:

Colui che mai non vide cosa nova

produsse esto visibile parlare,
novello a noi perché qui non si trova. (Purg. X, 94-97)1

The theological charge of this formulation, and its significance for Dante-
character’s experience as viewer of the art, is considerable. It raises, at a moment
of transition in the pilgrim’s journey as he and Virgil enter ‘dentro al soglio de la
porta’ (Purg. X, 1) of Purgatory-proper, the question of his own embodied,
temporal experience of divine creation. This article aims to show that the ekphrasis
of canto X develops a poetic response to this experience by drawing on a singular
model within medieval Christian practice and theory, one which is in many ways
replicated by the sensory and theological difficulty of viewing the carvings: that of
the Eucharist, which medieval theologians considered to be the most important of
the sacraments. First, the psychological disposition of the viewer of the art has
striking affinities with the model of mental outlook proposed by medieval writings
on the experience of the Eucharist. Secondly, the scenes depicted in the carvings
have strong thematic associations in medieval culture with the Eucharist. The
presence of the Eucharistic model and of strong Eucharistic associations in
Purgatorio X sheds new light on the ways in which this moment in Dante’s narrative
incorporates into its very poetic texture an engagement with the key theological
178 the italianist 26 · 2006

concept of Incarnation – a concept which is central to the Commedia. It also

suggests ways in which the Eucharist might play a more important part in Dante’s
poem than modern scholarship has tended to acknowledge.2
Scholarship on the ekphrasis of cantos X-XII of the Purgatorio gives little
indication that the Eucharist might be important to the particular experience of
viewing the art of the Terrace of Pride. Most criticism assumes that the poet uses
the most impressive and evocative language possible. This descriptive language
aims to convey, with maximum force, the message to be derived from the reliefs,
whether by the pilgrim, the penitent souls, or the reader. The extraordinary realism
of the carvings is presumed further to reinforce this impression.3 Carlo Delcorno
argues that, like the exempla used by medieval preachers, the sculptures have a
‘carattere prammatico’. The sensory experience of viewing the images is
emphasized because the art ‘non si limita a proporre un modello di comportamento,
ma stimola all’azione’.4 For Piermario Vescovo, that sensory experience is a means
of imprinting the images’ content on the mind of the viewer: ‘l’interiorizzazione
della forma dell’immagine si fa, per appello sensoriale, rievocazione del
“contenuto” dell’immagine’. Dante’s bravura performance, so the argument goes,
enables the reader of the Purgatorio to experience the same intense realism as the
penitent souls and the pilgrim do. The image itself, for Vescovo, and the sensory
experience of seeing it, are of value only insofar as they convey and reinforce the
message of the carving: ‘È il contenuto dell’immagine, non l’immagine stessa, ad
importare’ (Vescovo, p. 348).
For Teodolinda Barolini, Dante included his descriptions of these carvings,
which surpass all earthly art, in order to reinforce his own writerly authority. By
emphasising the astonishing realism of the sculptures, Dante sets up a contest
between their divine artistry, and his own poetic art. ‘Why’, Barolini asks, ‘does
Dante choose to use the conceit of God as artist precisely in these cantos? Most
crucially, why does he choose to posit a kind of supreme realism that is God’s art,
deliberately putting himself in the position of having to re-present God’s realism
with his own?’6 The answer, Barolini proposes, is that the conceit enables Dante to
imply that his own writing is equal to this extraordinary artistry. The fact that
much of the description is carried by an imagined dialogue can also be explained
in this way: for ‘speech is a verbal medium, and – whereas the poet cannot even
attempt to recreate God’s incense for the reader – he can at least try to recreate
God’s speech’ (pp. 123-24).
Barolini insists that her analysis of the episode pays radically new attention
to what the poet ‘does’, rather than what he ‘says’ (p. 123). Such an emphasis is
indeed welcome. But her reading shares one fundamental assumption with the
critical work on the Terrace of Pride from which she wishes to distance herself:
namely, that Dante’s ekphrasis attempts to create the illusion that word and object
have been elided; and that poetic language has in some sense triumphed over visual
 Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 179

art. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the tenor of much recent theoretical work
on ekphrasis, in which the idea of a contest between word and image is central. For
instance, in an influential work, W. J. T. Mitchell argues that the relationship
between word and image is fundamentally confrontational, a struggle by each for
dominance over the other: ‘words and images seem inevitably to become implicated
in a “war of signs” […] in which the stakes are things like nature, truth, reality and
the human spirit’.7 Murray Krieger, one of the topic’s most influential theorists,
argues that ekphrasis aspires to create the ‘illusion of the natural sign’. In other
words, in describing a work of visual art, a writer aims to disguise the arbitrariness
of the linguistic sign, in order to give the impression that the reader can actually ‘see’
what is being described. Language in ekphrasis tends towards spatialization: it
attempts to hide its own temporality, in order to resemble its static referent. It is ‘the
most extreme and telling example of the visual and spatial potential of the literary
medium’, and works especially well for an author trying to create the impression
of freezing time: ‘if he would briefly impose a sense of being, borrowed from the
plastic arts, in the midst of his shifting world of verbal becoming, the already frozen
pictorial representation would seem to be a preferred object’.8 What Krieger terms
the ‘ekphrastic aspiration’ is the desire to eliminate the difference between words
and their visual objects.
Similarly, James Heffernan’s major survey of the representation of art in
poetry retains this view that the visual and the verbal are in contest with each other.
Dante has a central place in the history of this contest: Heffernan considers the
descriptions of the art on the Terrace of Pride to be a moment when poetry
vanquishes art. By making words rival, and ultimately dominate God’s art, in those
passages, ‘the image is finally mastered by the word’.9
Such readings invite us to see in Purgatorio X an attempt by the poet to
overcome the visual arts through writing. But there are two major reasons to
question any such interpretation. The first, which section 2 of this article will
address, is textual. Purgatorio X does not present an unambiguous relationship
between the experience of seeing, and the objects which are seen; the description
of the art therefore cannot be a straightforward mastery of the visual by the verbal,
but instead is shaped by the difficult sensory experience of the viewer. The second,
which will be the focus of the remainder of the article, derives from broader
reflection on the nature of Dante-character’s experience. Since the art Dante
describes is created by an eternal God, and therefore sharply distinguished in
medieval culture from art created by humans, then it must raise questions about the
ability of the human being to perceive it – complex questions which were central
to medieval theology. The assumption that the poet’s concern is to vanquish the
image therefore sits uncomfortably with the text itself, and ignores the full
theological charge of the poet’s description of Dante-character’s experience of the
visual art.
180 the italianist 26 · 2006

2 Modes of ekphrasis

The pilgrim’s sensory experience of the art on the Terrace of Pride as described in
canto X is marked throughout by a complex interaction of clarity and confusion.
Even before it reaches the descriptions of the sculptures, the canto opens with visual
uncertainty: the cleft in the rock through which Dante and Virgil climb seems to
move from side to side, ‘sì come l’onda che fugge e s’appressa’ (Purg. X, 9). The
canto ends as the pilgrim attempts to make out the forms of the penitent proud, and
appeals to Virgil with the explanation that he cannot tell what they are, ‘sì nel veder
vaneggio’ (Purg. X, 114). These are not moments of mastery over visual experience,
but instances of confusion, and reminders of the fallibility of sight.
Turning to the descriptions of the sculptures themselves, there is one obvious
reason to be sceptical about the presence of Krieger’s ‘ekphrastic aspiration’ in
Purgatorio X. Dante’s description of the art emphasizes the relationship between
the newness of the experience of seeing, and the timelessness of the sculptures:

Colui che mai non vide cosa nova

produsse esto visible parlare,
novello a noi perché qui non si trova. (Purg. X, 94-96).

According to Krieger’s theory, the ‘ekphrastic aspiration’ would have led Dante to
elide this difference, approximating language to the stasis of the image. Instead, the
viewing of the images is presented throughout as a narrative encounter, taking place
in time. Only temporal beings – as Dante reminds us here – can know something as
‘novello’. This ekphrasis is articulated out of an avowedly human experience of time.
Time is therefore not frozen in the way Krieger’s theory would lead us to
anticipate. A brief comparison will make the point. Immediately before the
descriptions of the carvings of canto X, echoes of ekphrasis from the Aeneid suggest
that Dante is deliberately inviting comparison with Virgilian techniques of
description.10 Let us take the first example of ekphrasis in the Aeneid: the section
in Book I, where Aeneas views the murals decorating Dido’s temple to Juno. Aeneas
has arrived in Carthage, and is awaiting Dido. The examination of the murals
represents a pause in the narrative: ‘primum Aeneas sperare salutem/ausus et
adflictis melius confidere rebus’ (ll. 451-52). In this moment of stasis, Virgil provides
an overview of what the art depicts:

namque sub ingenti lustrat dum singula templo,

eginam opperiens, dum, quae fortuna sit urbi,
artificumque manus inter se operumque laborem
miratur, videt Iliacas ex ordine pugnas
bellaque iam fama totum vulgata per orbem,
Atridas Priamumque et saevum ambobus Achillem. (ll. 453-58)
 Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 181

This holds the narration still, and provides a framework within which the rest of
the description can enrich this initial outline. Details are then accumulated, piece
by piece. Take for instance the opening description:

namque videbat, uti bellantes Pergama circum

hac fugerent Grai, premeret Troiana iuventus,
hac Phryges, instaret curru cristatus Achilles. (ll. 466-68)

The repetition of ‘hac’ serves to re-emphasize that this is an accumulation of

elements, and strengthens the sense that the language is attempting to imitate the
stasis of visual representation. Aeneas is staring at the images in one fixed gaze,
and his stasis is contrasted with Dido’s motion, which breaks the static moment of
ekphrasis (‘Haec dum Dardanio Aeneae miranda videntur,/dum stupet obtutuque
haeret defixus in uno,/regina ad templum, forma pulcherrima Dido,/incessit’
(ll. 494-97; emphasis added)). Of course there is much more to be said about this
instance of ekphrasis on its own terms – such as the way Virgil inserts Aeneas’s
own feelings about the art in lines 459-63; the order in which the details are added;
the scene’s function in the overall narrative of the Aeneid. But this example
nonetheless offers a revealing model of how a writer might attempt to imitate the
visual arts in writing. The necessary pre-condition would be stasis – perhaps, as in
the Aeneid, enabled by a break in the narrative – as the viewer observes the art. This
permits the author to build up the details of the image outside the sequential flow
of narrative. The reader is left with the impression of having seen the image, or at
least of having been provided with enough information to recreate it mentally,
rather than having read a narrative about it. The art, one might say in keeping with
the theorists of ekphrasis, is passive and ‘mastered’ by the descriptive language.
If we compare Virgil’s ekphrasis in Aeneid I with Dante’s descriptions of art
in Purgatorio X, some striking differences emerge. The carvings on the Terrace of
Pride depict three scenes: the Annunciation (Purg. X, 34-45); David and the
transport of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem (Purg. X, 55-69); and the
Emperor Trajan and the widow (Purg. X, 73-93). There is a political subtext to
the carvings – the transport of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem being the event
which sealed the union of northern and southern tribes under a single monarchy,
an event which Dante saw as parallel with the founding of Rome. Alongside the
political meaning, the carvings can also be seen to be organized according to the
logic of Incarnation. The Annunciation was the beginning of this logic; the
following scenes present an event viewed as a figure for Christ’s humiliation and
sacrifice on the cross (David’s humility in dancing before the Ark of the Covenant),
and an event (as Dante makes clear in his opening of the description) which led to
the resurrection of the Emperor Trajan through the intercessionary prayer of
Gregory the Great (Trajan is described by Dante as the ‘roman principato, il cui
valore/mosse Gregorio a la sua gran vittoria’; Purg. X, 74-75).
182 the italianist 26 · 2006

Three related features of Dante’s ekphrasis are worth highlighting here. First,
the descriptive language does not aim to freeze time, to approximate itself to space,
as theorists such as Krieger suggest. Instead, the description represents a complex
interaction of different experiences of time. The act of viewing is not portrayed as
a break in the narrative, but in fact Dante-character is repeatedly moving as he
views them, with Virgil’s encouragement (Purg. X, 46-48; 70-72; 97-105).
Moreover, the descriptions of the carvings present them as being, in turn, narratives.
In each case the description of what could be seen – that is, of a static, unchanging
image which exists independently of any individual viewing – coincides with the
temporal emergence of each element within the narratives depicted. For instance,
in the first carving, the angel ‘pareva’ (Purg. X, 37): the image of him was
permanently there, to be seen by any observer of the art. But the angel was also in
the process of appearing, in a moment of narrative time, to the Virgin. The
description then switches to the Virgin’s response, following the sequence of events
(Purg. X, 43-45).
Secondly, the embodied experience of the art by Dante-character is repeatedly
emphasized through references to his position. In lines 70-72, for instance, the
physical position of the pilgrim is emphasized, as he needs to move physically in
order better to see the carvings. Finally, that embodied experience is also conveyed
through the confusion of the senses. The eyes of the pilgrim believe that they are
seeing real speech occur (Purg. X, 40-42), that they can hear real songs being sung
(Purg. X, 58-60), and that they are seeing real incense being burned (Purg. X, 61-
63). The passage in the Commedia does not offer a timeless description of the
carvings, but rather presents an account, in narrative, of the physical experience of
seeing them. The account is not solely spatialized; rather, it fuses the spatial visual
images, the temporal narrative that the images depict, and the temporal, bodily
experience of viewing them.

3 Sensory confusion in Purgatorio X

All of this should in itself put paid to any notion that the ekphrasis of Purgatorio
X forms part of a broad battle between word and image, in which the word
attempts to create the illusion that it is outside of time and purely referential. What
we have instead is the word conspiring to make the experience of viewing the
images appear more, not less temporal. But there is a further reason to be suspicious
of the critical consensus. The descriptions of the images are based on doubt, not
certainty: the sensory perceptions on which the ekphrasis depends are undecided,
and indeed the senses turn against each other. So convincing are the images that,
when looking at the Archangel Gabriel in the first image, ‘[g]iurato si saria ch’el
dicesse “Ave!” ’ (Purg. X, 40); in the second image, the people, divided into
 Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 183

choruses, ‘a’ due mie’ sensi/faceva dir l’un “No”, l’altro, “Sì, canta” ’ (Purg. X,
59-60); in the same image,

[s]imilmente al fummo de li ’ncensi

che v’era imaginato, li occhi e ’l naso
e al sì e al no discordi fensi. (Purg. X, 61-63)

What is the effect of Dante’s use of these particular turns of phrase? Dante
scholarship has tended to view this confusion of the senses as a reinforcement of the
power of the images.11 Patrick Boyde gives an account of what he calls ‘the
teamwork of the senses’ in the Commedia, and notes that the confusion caused by
the carvings on the Terrace of Pride represents a breakdown of that ‘teamwork’.12
But while Boyde acknowledges Dante’s ‘evident fascination’ with the breakdown,
he does not address the question of why this phenomenon should occur at this
moment. This is surprising: after all, the episode is one of moral significance, rather
than a dangerous confusion. Georges Güntert relates the carvings to medieval
exempla, a mode of communication which he says ‘presume un apprendimento
basato sull’evidenza del sensibile.’13 But (contrary to Güntert’s intentions) that
observation simply highlights the problem of perception. For the crucial point in
Purgatorio X is that the ‘evidenza del sensibile’ is thrown into confusion. These are
clearly no ordinary exempla; this is no plain ‘apprendimento’. Far from resolving the
problem, Boyde’s and Güntert’s comments leave it all the more starkly revealed.
If we step back from the problem, and phrase the question slightly differently,
the issues at stake become clearer. Dante’s account of how he found his senses
perplexed by this divine creation, precisely at a moment in which the art is supposed
to have imparted knowledge to him, highlights the problem of the relationship
between human sensory experience and knowledge when faced with the work of
an eternal God.14 It is immediately clear that this question is not raised by forms
of ekphrasis such as that which we found in Aeneid I. But it is fundamental to
Dante-character’s experience of art on the Terrace of Pride; and that experience is
bound together with questions central to medieval theology. One specific area
particularly sharpened the issue of the relationship between human sensory
perception and the divine: nowhere was it more intensely debated than in
discussions of the Eucharist.
It is the aim of the remainder of this article to show how there are striking
parallels between Dante’s descriptions of the carvings and the Eucharist. To draw
this link may be surprising. Vincent Truijen, in his entry on ‘Sacramento’ in the
Enciclopedia Dantesca, noted that there was no evidence of Dante having reflected
on the sacraments in the Commedia; this is a cause for surprise for Truijen, who
notes that this would make Dante most unusual within medieval thought, which
was heavily preoccupied with the nature of the sacraments and of the Eucharist in
particular.15 But not only was the Eucharist central in medieval thought; it was also
184 the italianist 26 · 2006

central in liturgical practice. It has long been recognized that the Purgatorio is
marked by liturgy, and indeed the presence of the liturgy in the Commedia is
beginning to receive attention in Dante scholarship.16 In a liturgically informed
work such as the Purgatorio, it would perhaps be surprising for such a major part
of the liturgy to be absent.17 In fact, even though discussion of the Eucharist has
remained entirely absent from scholarship on Purgatorio X, there are significant
links between the sculptures on the walls of the Terrace of Pride, and medieval
ideas about the Eucharist. The next two sections of this article will spell out these
links. As we will see in this section, the descriptions of how the carvings divide the
senses echo medieval accounts of the experience of the Eucharist. As section 4 will
show, the subjects depicted in the carvings, in particular the Annunciation, were
closely related to the Eucharist in medieval theology and liturgical practice.
This association of the ekphrasis of Purgatorio X and the Eucharist moves
us into one of the most complex areas of medieval thought. The problem posed to
medieval theology by the notion of the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in
the Eucharist was immense, although by the time Dante was writing his poem the
issue was less hotly contested than it had been in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
There was general agreement that the Eucharist, in common with all sacraments,
communicated grace – the virtus sacramenti, as Augustine had put it.18 The formula
attributed to Augustine that the sacrament was an invisible grace in a visible form,
was also widely accepted (De Ghellinck, p. 1233). But what was the precise nature
of the change in the material objects of the host brought about in the Eucharist –
to use the Aristotelian terms which came to inform the debate, was the change
accidental or substantial? If the Eucharist raised complex questions, such questions
could hardly be avoided: in his liturgical commentary Rupert of Deutz, for instance,
wrote of the Eucharist as ‘the treasure-chest of the supreme sacrament’.19 The
difficulties therefore provoked medieval theologians into thinking of considerable
complexity and sophistication.20 The description of Purgatorio X contains
significant echoes of that thinking.
That the Eucharist was, like the carvings in Purgatorio X, experienced as a
meeting point of time and eternity, is reflected in the Eucharistic prayer in the
liturgy: ‘Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine, para mente capiamus; et de munere
temporali fiat nobis remedium sempiternum’.21 The meeting of time and eternity
in the carvings is emphasized in the description of the maker of the images, ‘Colui
che mai non vide cosa nova’ (Purg. X, 94), contrasting with the newness of the
encounter, in time, of the traveller, who, as a temporal being, must experience the
art as ‘novello a noi’ (Purg. X, 96). The temporal experience of viewing the reliefs
is therefore broadly parallel to that of receiving the Eucharist, taking place in time
but meeting an eternal reality.
In itself, this temporal dynamic is perhaps not enough to justify linking the
description of the pilgrim’s experience with the Eucharist. But a more striking
 Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 185

parallel between Dante-character’s experience in Purgatorio X and the worshipper’s

experience of the Eucharist is to be found in the representation of the role of the
senses in the canto. A useful way to begin to understand how medieval theologians
perceived the relationship between sensory perception and the Eucharist is through
their responses to the writing of the eleventh-century heretic Berengar of Tours.22
Berengar argued that the Eucharist did not contain the real presence of the blood
and body of Christ, but was rather a symbol of them; for what the senses perceived
must be fundamental to the substance of the Eucharist.23 If the senses perceived
bread and wine, then bread and wine was what the Eucharist must be, regardless
of whatever truth they might represent.
As orthodox theologians responded to Berengar, they turned the very
thorniness of the problem into part of its solution. The very difficulty for the senses
of the words ‘hoc est corpus meum’, the way in which they were so counter-
intuitive, came to be considered part of the Eucharist’s salvific function.24 Two very
different thirteenth-century writers, a Dominican and a Franciscan, show how that
difficulty was conceived in terms which are strikingly similar to the ‘breakdown of
the senses’ of Purgatorio X. First, Aquinas in his prayer Adoro te devoto, wrote of
the Eucharist that:

Visus, tactus, gustus, in te fallitur

sed auditu solo tute creditur
credo quicquid dixit dei filius
nichil veritates verbo venius.25

The prayer describes how the experience of receiving the Eucharist breaks up the
senses, pitting sight, touch and taste against hearing. Whilst the words of the priest
inform the faithful that this is the body and blood of Christ, and therefore hearing
provides the truth, the other senses fall short of this. The incoherence of the senses
is therefore presented as a reason for faith.
Dante’s phrasing in Purgatorio X echoes even more strongly Jacopone da
Todi’s Lauda 28, which describes the experience of the Eucharist:

Coll’occhi c’aio nel capo, la luce del dì medïante,

a me representa denante cosa corporeata.
Coll’occhi c’aio nel capo veio ’l divin sacramento;
lo preite ’l me mustra a l’altare, pare sè è en suo vedemento;
la luce ch’è de la fede altro me fa mustramento
a l’occhi mei c’aio drento, en mente ragïonata.
Li quatro sensi si dicono: ‘Questo sì è vero pane!’
(Solo l’audito résistelo, ciascheun de lor for remane).
So queste vesebele forme Cristo ocultato ce stane;
cusì a l’alme se dirne, en questa mesterïata.26
186 the italianist 26 · 2006

The senses divide against themselves: sight, taste, touch and smell give one
impression, whilst hearing gives another. For Jacopone, the Eucharist throws the
self’s sensory certainties into confusion, and enacts the humbling of human reason
before divine power: ‘L’alta potenzia devina summettarite a rasone?/Piaqueli cello
creare e nulla ne fo questione’ (ll. 12-13). The Eucharist does this by making four
of the senses say ‘sì’, and making hearing resist: just as the carvings make Dante’s
eyes say ‘sì’ and his ears say ‘no’. For Jacopone and Aquinas, the experience of
confusion is in itself valuable, because of the mental conditions it creates. The link
to the carvings of Purgatorio X is clear. In Dante’s ekphrasis, the images do not
simply inform the viewer of the importance of humility: humility, a state
approximate to that created by the Eucharist, becomes the psychological condition
within which the images are viewed.

4 Mary, David, Gregory, and the Eucharist

It is not only Dante’s description of the experience of viewing the art which recalls
the Eucharist. The very content of the images also invites us to draw a link between
them and the ‘summum sacramentum’. Indeed, it is worth emphasising that the
virtue of humility – the theme which all the carvings have in common – was in any
case strongly associated with the person of Christ himself. In the early Church,
‘humility rapidly became a specifically Christological concept’;27 as Augustine put
it, in the Incarnation ‘Deus factus est humilis’.28 And in Paradiso VII, Beatrice talks
of the Incarnation as an act of humility on Christ’s part.29 In the liturgy, at the Mass
of the Passion, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians was quoted, associating humility
more specifically with the Crucifixion: ‘humiliavit semetipsum Domines Jesus
Christus usque ad mortem, mortem autem cruces: propter quod et Deus exaltavit
illum, et donavit illi nomen, quod est super omne nomen’ (2, 8). Before we explore
the more specific links between the content of the carvings and the Eucharist, it is
worth recalling this strongly Christological understanding of the virtue of humility:
the thematic association of the virtue of humility, the person of Christ, and the
Passion, would therefore have been evident to medieval readers.
There are, however, more specific links between the ekphrasis of Purgatorio
X and the Eucharist. This is most clear in the subject of the first carving, Mary’s
humility at the Annunciation (Purg. X, 34-45).30 The moment depicted in the
sculpture was the moment of Christ’s Incarnation in Mary’s womb: the beginning
of the narrative of Incarnation, which was most fully represented in the liturgical
practice of the Church in the Eucharist. Depictions of the Annunciation were a
common decoration on tabernacles, drawing a link between the conception of
Christ and the elements of bread and wine in the Eucharistic host (Ellington,
p. 134). In liturgical drama, the moment of the Annunciation was represented by
 Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 187

the altar being incensed; the same action would be performed directly before the
Eucharist.31 The link between the Eucharist and the Annunciation would therefore
have been familiar from the practices of the Church.
The link was so strong that the salvation brought through the Eucharist was
itself often related in medieval theology to the Virgin. The Marian prayer, ‘O
intemerata’, probably written in the twelfth century, makes the point clear:

Qui digne manducaverit habet vitam eternam; qui autem indigne, iudicium
sibi manducat et bibit: sicut pluries feci, mea culpa […] Qui autem non
manducaverit, non habet vitam eternam; et propterea merito dicimus quia
per te post deum totus vivit orbis terrarum.32

Peter Damian’s sermons on the birth of Mary also reinforced this link between
Mary and the Eucharist:

Illum siquidem corpus Christi, quod beatissima Virgo genuit, quod in gremio
fouit, quod fasciis cinxit, quod materna cura nutriuit, illud inquam, absque
ulla dubietate, non aliud, nunc de sacro altari percipimus, et eius sanguinem
in sacramentum nostrae redemptionis haurimus.33

The notion had long been present in the Christian tradition: Ambrose, in De
mysteriis, had said that in taking the Eucharist, ‘corpus quod conficimus ex Virgine
est’;34 Bruno of Segni also insisted that ‘ita et panis iste coetestis benedictione
mutatur in carnem Christi, non in aliam quidem, quia non habet aliam, nisi illam,
quam de Virgine matre suscepit’.35
Some contemporary texts drew a link between the priest performing the
Eucharist, holding Christ’s corporeal presence in his hands, and the Virgin who
carried Christ in her womb; the moment in which Christ became present in the
Eucharist was compared to the moment of the Annunciation. In an essay on
priesthood in the twelfth century, Yves Congar quotes from an anonymous, but
‘souvent cité’ twelfth-century text: ‘O veneranda sacerdotum dignitas in quorum
manibus Dei Filius, velut in utero Virginis incarnatur’.36 A prayer in the Corpus
Christi liturgy reiterated the idea: ‘Verbum caro panem verum/verbo carnem
efficit/fitque sanguis Christi merum’.37 The word of God was made Christ, both in
the Annunciation to Mary, and in what was seen to be the Incarnation’s ongoing
manifestation in the Eucharist.
The second image Dante-character sees, depicting David dancing before the
Ark of the Covenant (Purg. X, 55-69), also has associations with the Eucharist.38
In general terms, medieval biblical exegesis considered David to be a type for
Christ.39 And Dante in the Convivio had described him as ‘David, del qual nasce
la baldezza e l’onore de l’umana generazione, cioè Maria’ (IV, v, 5). More
specifically, David’s humiliation also prefigures Christ’s crucifixion: the early
Trecento Speculum humanae salvationis compares the humiliation of David with
188 the italianist 26 · 2006

Christ’s humbling on the Cross (Güntert, p. 148). Moreover, the description of the
dancing in Dante alters that in the Old Testament to give the scene a more liturgical
emphasis. For where the account in II Samuel 6, 13-16 describes David dancing
before the Ark of the Covenant, it does not mention incense; yet in Purgatorio X,
the smell of incense was one of the bewilderingly powerful impressions the carving
gave the pilgrim, thereby enhancing the scene’s liturgical character.40 In common
with all Old Testament sacrifices, that which was made by David on arrival in
Jerusalem (‘obtulit David holocausta et pacifica coram Domino’; II Samuel 6, 17)
was viewed as a type for the Eucharist. As Rupert of Deutz put it, the Old Testament
sacrifices were fulfilled when ‘uerum Dei Filium sancta ecclesia catholica offert
creatori suo credens corde et ore confitens pariterque minibus panem et uinum,
sicut sibi tradidit ipse saluator offerens’.41
In the case of the third relief, the story of Trajan and the widow (Purg. X, 73-
93) the link to the Eucharist is less obvious. But the description is preceded by a
reference to Gregory the Great, who was associated by a widespread miracle tale
with the Eucharist, and with the real presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharist
in particular. According to the Legenda Aurea, a woman had baked the bread to
be used in the Eucharist at a Mass officiated by Gregory; when the words ‘Corpus
domini nostri Ihesu Christi custodiat te in uitam eternam’ were spoken, she burst
out laughing, exclaiming that she knew very well that the bread was not the body
of Christ, since she had baked the loaf herself. A fingernail appeared in the bread,
and the woman repented immediately.42
All three images are therefore linked, more or less directly, through their
content to the Eucharist. Dante’s initial description of the power of the carvings also
echoes a Eucharistic topos. This was the idea that the Eucharist, like the conception
of Christ by a Virgin, overturned the rules of nature: for the Eucharist was, as Hugh
of Breteuil argued, created directly by God.43 In the same way, the image (also
created directly by God) which depicts the Annunciation overcomes nature: for
the sculptures are ‘addorno/d’intagli sì, che non pur Policleto,/ma la natura lì
avrebbe scorno’ (Purg. X, 31-33; emphasis added). The art therefore demands a
language which is appropriate.
The links between the description of the carvings in canto X and the
Eucharist can therefore be summarized: they both represent a meeting of time and
eternity; they both divide the senses against each other; the carvings depict scenes
which were associated with the Eucharist, in particular the Annunciation; the
carvings, and the narrative of the Virgin birth alluded to in the first of them,
overcome nature, as did the Eucharist.
 Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 189

5 The ‘sacramentalism’ of Purgatorio X

At the same time as being a display of literary skill, then, Dante’s ekphrasis also
draws on structures of thought that turn out to be far from being a plain exercise
of verbal power such as that which we witnessed in Virgil, or that which modern
theorists of ekphrasis would lead us to expect. His use of a Eucharistic model of
perception shows that, faced with these carvings, and God’s artistry, the
relationship between language and human experience cannot be one in which the
object is describable, but instead requires an experience of doubt. Once again, the
borrowing from Eucharistic language is telling: as many medieval writers on the
Eucharist emphasized, the inability of human reason to make sense of the Eucharist
is a fundamental part of the faith it inculcates. Gregory the Great’s commentary on
Job had argued that the Eucharist was a model for the submission of the spirit
before the miracle, and the way to prevent human pride and reason from
obstructing the truth.44 Remigius of Auxerre’s liturgical commentary asserted that
the Eucharist – in common with the other sacraments – was not something to be
understood by the human mind, but was rather a test of faith.45 Hugh of Breteuil
used the counter-intuitive nature of the Eucharist to argue that faith was required
to understand the mystery of the Incarnation.46
It is revealing, however, that the Eucharist is never mentioned explicitly. This
is the case throughout the Terrace of Pride: in the re-writing of the Pater Noster –
which would have been said before the Eucharist – of canto XI, the reference to the
daily bread is removed: the phrase ‘panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie’
(Matthew 6, 11) becomes, in Dante’s version, ‘[d]à oggi a noi la cotidiana manna’
(Purg. XI, 13; emphasis added). In so doing, Dante removes the direct Eucharistic
associations of the prayer but instead retains the notion of divine grace. Dante’s use
of a Eucharistic model therefore extends the possibility of the ‘sacramental’ from
the sacraments themselves which had, from around the mid-twelfth century, been
increasingly strictly defined and limited to seven in number (Pelikan, The Growth
of Medieval Theology, p. 209). In contrast to that stricter understanding, Dante is
borrowing a model found in the Eucharist, and extending it to this encounter with
divine creative power.
One important consequence of this is that the sacramental efficacy of the
Eucharist is being adapted here by Dante in a way which very strongly associates
God’s grace with the moral change undergone by the souls – as is indeed the case
throughout the Terrace of Pride, and indeed Purgatory-proper as a whole. Souls
progress in Purgatory through a combination of God’s aid, and the conversion of
their own will; and the experience of viewing the carvings draws together the two
notions. God’s grace – represented and manifested by the Incarnation, the
‘decreto/de la molt’anni lagrimata pace,/ch’aperse il ciel del suo lungo divieto’
(Purg. X, 34-36), and the Eucharist’s own sacramental efficacy, which is an ongoing
190 the italianist 26 · 2006

fulfilment of that grace – is inseparable from humility. Humility is not only an

example presented in the carvings, but it is also an attitude imposed upon the viewer
by the extreme realism of the carvings. For what takes place in the experience of
viewing these carvings is a humbling of the senses, an emphasis of the limitation of
the human person when faced with this art – which not even the greatest of human
artists could match (Purg. X, 32-33). In Jacopone’s Lauda 28, cited earlier, the
confusion engendered by the Eucharist is an important corrective to the hubris of
claiming to understand God; this logic seems fitting here, on the Terrace of Pride.
The Eucharistic echo in Purgatorio X thus binds together the idea of grace, and
the penitential souls’ need for moral change.
It is worth noting that in canto XII, the emphasis of the descriptions of pride
punished is very different. The same divine artist produced these reliefs as produced
those of canto X, but where the images of canto X made the viewer humble by
confusing the senses, and the images suggested a link with the Eucharist, in canto
XII the images are much more straightforwardly didactic; rather than depicting
sacred events in which the viewer must participate, they show aberrations from
the sacred.47 Dante refers to the way tomb slabs resemble the images of those who
are buried; here in Purgatory

sì vid’io lì, ma di miglior sembianza

secondo l’artificio, figurato
quanto per via di fuor del monte avanza. (Purg. XII, 22-24)

There is hardly the same sense of wonder, or confusion, that we find in canto X. The
extreme realism is kept in its place, and there is no doubt that these are indeed
representations: ‘Morti li morti e i vivi parean vivi:/non vide mei di me chi vide il
vero,/quant’io calcai, fin che chinato givi’ (Purg. XII, 67-69; emphasis added). The
emphasis is very different: the scenes depicted are focused on human error, rather
than on human participation in divine goodness (witness the acrostic ‘VOM’ which
emerges five times in lines 25-69), and so there is no need for the near-Eucharistic
experience we found in canto X. More significantly, the penitent souls who are able
to view this art are at an earlier stage in their purgation, bowed down under the
weight of the stones they must carry, and as yet unable to participate in the
incarnational logic put forward by the carvings on the walls of the terrace.
Accordingly, the language of description has significantly different emphases.
In canto X, the fact that humility is presented to the pilgrim and the penitent
souls through a Eucharistic encounter makes of the virtue, as presented in the
experience of seeing the carvings, not merely the absence of the vice of Pride, but an
ongoing assimilation to Christ. This is a recurrent feature of the penitence of the
Purgatorio, culminating most forcefully in Forese’s statement in canto XXIII that the
desire of the penitents to embrace their suffering is the same desire which had led
Christ on the cross to cry out ‘Elì’ (Purg. XXIII, 74). It is in view of this that we can
 Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 191

understand the sequence of the carvings. In the light of the Incarnation, summed up
by the Annunciation carving, the carvings suggest birth (in the Annunciation), death
(in the humility of the Crucifixion, prefigured by David’s dance), and resurrection
(suggested by the final carving, which inspired Gregory to ‘l’alta vittoria’). These
scenes do not represent a chronological sequence of events in linear history. Instead,
the salvation narrative is dispersed beyond the strict chronology of biblical events.
The Eucharistic link, alongside the logic of the sequence of carvings, suggests that
the humility engendered by the images requires a Christ-like submission; but it also
suggests that such submission can lead to rebirth. The scenes are part of a dynamic
which was not bound to any one moment in time, but which also recurred
throughout time. As Robert Durling argues, the whole of the Terrace of Pride is
marked by a broad distinction between the ‘flesh’ – which ‘hinders the soul in its
ascent’ of Purgatory (p. 183), and the body, conceived more positively.48 The
Eucharistic nature of the ekphrasis suggests that shift from the flesh, experienced (as
Durling suggests) through the leaving behind of the stones which weigh down the
penitent souls, is a move into the Christic body, enacted through the very experience
of viewing the carvings – not just through what they depict, but in the singular
sensory difficulty provoked by the skill with which they are depicted.
Importantly, Dante-character’s response to the art on the Terrace of Pride is
one of a number of moments in the text when the problem of interpreting signs,
especially those pertaining to divine truth, is raised. The importance of the
intellectual limitations of the human interpreter of such signs is emphasized in
particular at other moments of transition. A very early example in the poem comes
in Inferno III, when the pilgrim reads the words inscribed on the gate of Hell. This
gate, and the words on it, are created directly by God, and will last forever (‘dinanzi
a me non fuor cose create/se non etterne, e io etterno duro’; Inf. III, 7-8). Dante-
character’s reaction, ‘Maestro, il senso lor m’è duro’ (Inf. III, 12), is answered by
Virgil in terms of the need to abandon cowardice. What Virgil cannot recognize is
the Biblical echo in Dante-character’s words, which recall those spoken by the
disciples when Christ instituted the Eucharist (‘durus est hoc sermo’; John 6, 61).
The difficulty the pilgrim experiences at this stage is related allusively and figurally
to the bewilderment of the first humans to encounter the notion of Eucharist; like
the disciples in John 6, he is not yet able fully to understand the import of his
experience, or to relate it to the unfolding of redemptive history.49 This encounter
stands in contrast to another gateway: that which opens into Purgatory proper.
Regardless of their specific signification, or indeed of whether we ought to seek a
single interpretation of them, the steps leading to the door (described in Purgatorio
IX, 94-105) reflect the changing dynamic as the pilgrim moves into Purgatory
proper. For the transition of the colours of the steps – from white to black to red to
white – is consonant with the broad sweep of salvation history, moving through the
Incarnation from the fall of man to redemption: a move from innocence to sin, and
192 the italianist 26 · 2006

back to innocence via a colour which is explicitly likened by the poet to blood
violently spilled.50 And by the time Dante-character reaches Purgatory proper, the
meaning of the ‘difficulty’ of this Eucharistic experience is more fully elaborated.
Purgatorio XXXIII provides a further example of the difficulty of the sign
raising the inadequacy of the pilgrim, once again in a major point of transition in
the poem, when Beatrice explains in dense and difficult terms the passage of
universal history. Her justification for her obtuse language is that it is intended
precisely to emphasize his own limitations:

e veggi vostra via da la divina

distar cotanto quanto si discorda
da terra il ciel che più alto festina (Purg. XXXIII, 88-90)

(Comparison with Purgatorio X is invited by Dante-character’s words directly

preceding Beatrice’s explanation-admonishment: ‘sí come cera da suggello,/che la
figura impressa non trasmuta,/segnato è or da voi lo mio cervello’; Purg. XXXIII,
79-81; see Purg. X, 44-45.) In other words, Dante-character’s experience of a
representation points towards his own limitation in understanding that
representation.51 Shortly afterwards, in Paradiso II, when the poet differentiates
between those ‘in piccioletta barca’ (Par. II, 1), who ought not to try to follow him,
and those who are capable of reading on, he draws on an image for divine
knowledge which links that knowledge with Christ, and indeed the Eucharist. Like
those penitents on the Terrace of Pride, who have been able to raise their heads to
experience the Eucharist-like carvings, the worthy followers of Dante are those
‘pochi che drizzaste il collo/per tempo al pan de li angeli’ (Par. II, 10-11).52 For
those who have not partaken of the bread of angels, reading the text will be
dangerous and foolhardy.53
The Eucharistic model which Dante uses in Purgatorio X is therefore one in
a series of instances in the Commedia in which the difficulty of interpretation of
signs is raised as part of the pilgrim’s progress towards God, and it is by no means
unique in referring to the Eucharist. But it appears to be unique in engaging such
a full and developed sense of the sacramental in that encounter with signs. There
is a sense in which the whole of Purgatory might be considered to be marked by
‘sacramental’ moments: as Durling points out, the singing of the Beatitudes and the
erasing of the ‘P’s inscribed on Dante-character’s forehead appear to correspond to
a moment of priestly absolution in the Confession (p. 184). But the ekphrasis of
canto X perhaps shows Dante’s use of the sacramental at its most daring and
syncretistic. For it sets, within the literary practice of ekphrasis, models of thought
drawn from theology and liturgical practice. The sensory experience of the
individual, and the narrative of Incarnation which embraces all of human time;
literary and liturgical models of thought; the conversion of the will to humility and

divine grace – all of these are drawn together within the very poetic texture of the
ekphrasis of Purgatorio X.
Notes
* I am grateful to Robin Kirkpatrick, Vittorio Montemaggi,
Ben King, Zygmunt Barański, Claire Honess, and Victoria
Treherne for commenting on earlier versions of this article.
1 Throughout this article, citations from the Commedia are
taken from Dante, La Commedia, edited by G. Petrocchi,
4 vols (Milan, Mondadori, 1966-67).
2 For recent studies of the notion of Incarnation in the
Commedia, see for example G. P. Raffa, Divine Dialectic:
Dante's Incarnational Poetry (Toronto, University of Toronto
Press, 2000), and J. Took, ‘Dante’s Incarnationalism: An
Essay in Theological Wisdom’, Italian Studies 61, i (2006),
3-17. Neither work considers the Eucharist to be a
significant part of Dante’s presentation of Incarnation in
the Commedia: Took reasons that in the Commedia ‘there
is no discussion of the Eucharist either in its scriptural
origins or in respect of the metaphysical issues upon which
it rests and to which it gives rise’ (p. 15, n. 28).
3 See G. Fallani: ‘i superbi vedono e leggono gli episodi. Per
loro la rappresentazione è didascalica’ (Dante e la cultura
figurativa medievale (Bergamo, Minerva Italica, 1971),
p. 87).
4 ‘Dante e l’exemplum medievale’, Lettere Italiane, 35, i
(1983), 3-28 (p. 8 and p. 9).
5 ‘Ecfrasi con spettatore (Dante, Purgatorio, X-XVII)’,
Lettere italiane, 45, iii (1993), 335-60 (p. 348).
6 The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 123.
7 Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1980), p. 47.
8 Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore,
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 6 and p. 8,
emphasis in original.
9 Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer
to Ashbery (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993),
p. 39.
10 Dante’s dream of ascending to Purgatory (Purg. IX, 19-
44) recalls the description of the gold cloak given to the
captain of a winning boat in the race Aeneas holds in Sicily
(Aeneid V, 254-55). The threshold of the gate of Purgatory
Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 193
recalls Virgil’s description of Aeneas’s shield, which
culminates with Augustus sitting on the threshold of the
temple (Heffernan, p. 39).
11 For example: G. K. Fiero writes that ‘by relating both sight
and sound, Dante conveys to the reader the realistic impact
of the scene [...] and underlines the didactic significance of
the representation’ (‘Dante’s Ledge of Pride: Literary
Pictorialism and the Visual Arts’, Journal of European
Studies, 5 (1975), 1-17 (p. 3)); P. Giannantonio claims that
the introduction of different senses here ‘ci induce a
considerare come tutte le reazioni sensorie del poeta siano
assorbite dalla volontà di riflettere’ (‘Il canto X del
Purgatorio’, Critica letteraria, 5 (1977), 3-29 (p. 14));
T. R. Toscano writes that the multiple sensory reaction
emphasizes the art’s ‘profonda efficacia didattica,
legandola alla veracità dello stile’ (‘Il Canto X del
Purgatorio’, Critica letteraria, 12 (1984), 419-39 (p. 435)).
12 Perception and Passion in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 102-6.
13 ‘Canto X’, Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio
(Florence, Franco Cesati, 2001), p. 152.
14 The verb used to describe the act of creating the
sculptures, ‘produrre’, is synonymous in the Commedia
both with the divine act of creation ex nihilo, available only
to God, and generation, an act which can be performed by
created things, and which depends on other, already
existing things. In Paradiso XXIX, Beatrice uses the verb as
equivalent to ‘creare’ in explaining the creation of the
angelic intelligences (‘concreato fu ordine e costrutto/a le
sustanze; e quelle furon cima/nel mondo in che puro atto fu
produtto’ (Par. XXIX, 31-33); elsewhere it is used as
synonymous with ‘generare’: as by St Thomas in Paradiso
XIII: ‘e queste contingenze essere intendo/le cose generate,
che produce/con seme e senza seme il ciel movendo’ (Par.
XIII, 64-66). In Purgatorio X Dante emphasises the fact that
the carvings are created by God, who is ‘Colui che mai non
vide cosa nova’ (Purg. X, 94), and thus we should assume
that these carvings were made ex nihilo. On the distinction
between creation and generation in late medieval thought
in general, and in the Commedia in particular, see
194 the italianist 26 · 2006
C. Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dante’s ‘Comedy’ (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 119-24.
15 Enciclopedia Dantesca, edited by U. Bosco, 5 vols +
appendix (Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1970-
78), IV, 1065-66.
16 On the liturgy in the Purgatorio as a whole, see L. M. La
Favia, ‘ “…Ché quivi per canti…” (Purg. XII, 113): Dante’s
Programmatic Use of Psalms and Hymns in the Purgatorio’,
Studies in Iconography, 9 (1984-86), 53-65; J. C. Barnes,
‘Vestiges of the Liturgy in Dante’s Commedia’, in Dante and
the Middle Ages: Literary and Historical Essays, edited by
J. C. Barnes and C. Ó Cuilleanáin (Dublin, Irish Academic
Press, 1995), pp. 231-70. Neither essay addresses the
question of the sacraments’ role in Dante’s Purgatory.
17 P. Armour makes perhaps the most cogent argument
against the presence of the sacraments in the Commedia in
The Door of Purgatory: A Study of Multiple Symbolism in
Dante’s ‘Purgatorio’ (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 4.
Armour argues that medieval theology held the sacraments
to be relevant solely to man’s life on earth, and therefore to
have no place in the afterlife. This is a salutary observation,
as it warns us against a simplistic identification of the
sacraments in the Commedia. It is, however, less conclusive
than it might seem. What Armour reminds us that late
medieval theology held to be true of the sacraments in the
afterlife – that the souls in Purgatory in particular do not,
and could not possibly, need them – was also believed to
be the case about the act of prayer itself. Aquinas, for
instance, claimed that the souls in Purgatory do not pray at
all, but instead are in need of our prayers (‘non eunt in
statu orandi, sed magis ut oretur pro eis’; Summa
theologiae 2a.2ae.83, art. 11, resp. 3), a view which Dante
clearly felt able to disregard.
18 See J. de Ghellinck, ‘Eucharistie’, Dictionnaire de
théologie catholique, edited by A. Vacant and E. Mangenot,
15 vols (Paris, Letouzey et Ané, 1915-50), V, 989-1367
(p. 1017).
19 ‘[I]am nunc ad thesaurum summi sacramenti’, De divinis
officiis, in Corpus christianorum. Continuatio medievalis
(Turnhoult, Brepols, 1966- ), VII, 15. All further references to
this series will be abbreviated to CCCM.
20 The literature on this subject is vast. For useful accounts
of the debate, see de Ghellinck; J. Pelikan, The Christian
Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 4 vols
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978), III: The
Growth of Medieval Theology, pp. 204-15; C. Bynum
Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance
of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
University of California Press, 1987), pp. 48-72; M. Rubin,
Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991), especially
pp. 12-163.
21 Sources of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Ordinals by
Haymo of Faversham and Related Documents (1243-
1307), edited by S. J. P. van Dijk, 2 vols (Leiden, E. J. Brill,
1963), II, 14, 233, 245.
22 Berengar of Tours’s intricate thought on the Eucharist
must largely be pieced together through the summaries of
his arguments contained in the writings of his opponents,
for most of his books were destroyed during his lifetime.
One important text to survive is De sacra coena adversus
Lanfrancum, a response to Lanfranc, one of his fiercest
critics, available in an edition by W. H. Beekenkamp (The
Hague, Kerkhistorische studien behamenden bij het
nederlandsch Archief noor Keskgeschiednis, 1941). On
Berengar and the response to his ideas, see C. M. Radding
and F. Newton, Theology, Rhetoric and Politics in the
Eucharistic Controversy, 1078-1079 (New York, Columbia
University Press, 2003).
23 De sacra coena, pp. 51-55. The argument ran that when
Christ said the words ‘hoc est corpus meum’, what he
actually meant was ‘hic panis sensualis est corpus meum’
(p. 53). Because the physical attributes of the bread were
included in Christ’s declaration, it was therefore logical that
he was effecting a symbolic change, rather than a real
change. The sensory perception of the worshipper – that
this was indeed bread which was being eaten – was
therefore not, for Berengar, incorrect.
24 For example, Baldwin of Ford, in his Tractatus de
sacramento altaris, suggested that the fact that the senses
could not piece together the Eucharist led to true vision,
because the inability of the eyes to see the true nature of
the Eucharist led the worshipper to stronger faith: ‘Fides
autem hujus verbi aut ipsa eadem fides est invisibilis facti,
aut non separatur a fide facti […] quanto obscurius factum
est, tanto clarius dictum est [...]. Nunc autem inter
obscuritatem facti et declarationem verbi aedificata est
fides; ut in verbo Christi, quod creditur esse verbum Dei,
videator per fidem invisibile factum, quod in se videri non

potest. In tantum autem videtur, in quantum creditur’ (Il
sacramento dell’altare, edited by Giorgio Maschio (Milan,
Jaca Book, 1984), pp. 287-88).
25 The most recent critical version of the prayer can be
found in R. Wielockx, ‘Poetry and Theology in the Adoro te
devoto’, in Christ among the Medieval Dominicans:
Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the
Order of Preachers, edited by K. Emery and J. P. Wawrykow
(Notre Dame, Notre Dame University Press, 1998), p. 172.
26 Laude, edited by F. Mancini (Laterza, Bari, 1974), 28,
1-10.
27 D. F. Winslow, ‘Humility’, in Encyclopedia of Early
Christianity, edited by E. Ferguson (New York and London,
Garland Publishing, 1997), pp. 547-48 (p. 547).
28 Enarrationes in Psalmos, in Patrologiae Cursus
Completus, Series Latina, edited by J. P. Migne, 221 vols
(Paris, Vrin, 1844-64), XXXVIII, 276. All further references
to this series will be abbreviated to PL.
29 ‘E tutti li altri modi erano scarsi/a la giustizia, se ’l Figliuol
di Dio/non fosse umilïato ad incarnarsi’ (Par. VII, 118-20).
30 On Mary in medieval culture, see M. Warner, Alone of All
her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (London,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976); J. Pelikan, Mary through
the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New
Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1996); D. Spivey
Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul:
Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Europe (Washington DC, Catholic University of America
Press, 2001).
31 K. Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1932), II, 227.
32 Quoted in A. Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots
du moyen âge latin: Études d’histoire littéraire (Paris,
Études Augustiniennes, 1971), pp. 493-94.
33 Sermones, in CCCM, LVII, 267.
34 Sources chrétiennes (Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1940- ),
XXV, ii, 187-88.
35 Sententiae, in PL, CLXV, 1006.
36 Y. Congar, ‘Modèle monastique et modèle sacerdotal en
Occident de Grégoire VII (1073-1085) à Innocent III
(1198)’, Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe-XIIe siècles):
Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labande (Poitiers,
CESCM, 1973), p. 159. The notion was deep-rooted and
Treherne · Ekphrasis and the Eucharist 195
recurred later in the sermons of the fifteenth-century
Florentine theologian Sant’Antonio, who wrote of the
importance of images of the Virgin over the altar that ‘hoc
autem salubritur institutem est, ut dum sacerdos divina
sacramenta pertractat, Mariam intuens, penset qualis fuit,
cui creditum est solo verbo verbum carnem efficere; et
qualis debet esse sacerdos, qui debet ex verbo suo (vel
potius Christi a se prolato) corpus Christi et sanguinem
efficere ex substantia et vini’, quoted in J. Shearman, Only
Connect…: Art and the Spectator in the Italian
Renaissance (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992),
p. 72.
37 ‘Pange, lingua’, in The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin
Verse, edited by S. Gaselee (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1928), pp. 143-44. See also van Dijk (pp. 78, 158, 243) for
uses of the hymn outside the Feast of Corpus Christi.
38 For a general account of how the episode was viewed in
medieval culture, see S. Pietrini, ‘La santa danza di David e il
ballo peccaminoso di Salomé: due figure esemplari
dell’immaginario biblico medievale’, Quaderni medievali 50
(December 2000), 45-73 (especially pp. 45-62).
39 V. Truijen, ‘David’, in Enciclopedia Dantesca, II, 322.
40 See J. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins
and Development (Westminster, Christian Classics, 1986),
pp. 318-19, for an account of the various uses of incense in
medieval liturgy.
41 De divinis officiis, in CCCM, VII, 33.
42 I. da Varazze, Legenda Aurea, edited by G. P. Maggioni
(Florence, SISMEL, 1998), p. 299. Different accounts of the
miracle were current: one included the appearance of the
whole of Christ’s body on the altar (Rubin, pp. 308-10).
43 ‘Desiste ergo fore erroris mites, desiste impugnare
coeteste mysterium, perpende quod Dei volutas, et verbum
omni naturae supereminet, et, qui in facturis potens est,
potentem transformare credas, sicut scriptum est: “Mutabis
ea, et mutabuntur” ’ (De corpore et sanguine Christi, in PL,
CXLII, 1328). Lanfranc also developed a similar argument
in refuting Berengar. He cites Ambrose: ‘Et ne naturam
potentiae divinae praeponeres, quasi non potuit Deus cujus
libet nei mutare naturam, occurrit dicens: “Quid hic quaeris
naturae ordinem in Christi corpore, cum praeter naturam sit
ipse Dominus Jesus partus ex Virgine?” ’ (quoted in
Radding and Newton, p. 22). Paschasius’s De corpore et
sanguine domini reiterated the theme: ‘ut sicut de uirgine
196 the italianist 26 · 2006
per Spiritum uera caro sine coitu creatur, ita per eundem ex
substantia panis ac uini mystice idem Christi corpus et
sanguis consecretur’ (in CCCM, XVI, 28).
44 Moralia in Job, in PL, LXXV, 739.
45 De celebratione missae, in PL, CI, 1262.
46 ‘Sicut enim non capis quomodo Verbum caro factum sit,
sic non potes capere quomodo panis iste mutetur in
carnem, et vinum in sanguinem transformetur, nise te
docuerit omnipotentiae fides’ (De corpore et sanguine
Christi, in PL, CILII, 1328).
47 On the depictions of pride punished in Purgatorio XII, see
E. Parodi, Poesia e storia nella ‘Divina Commedia’, edited
by G. Folena and P. V. Mengaldo (Vicenza, N. Pozza, 1965),
pp. 146-61; G. Marzot, ‘Canto XII’, in Lectura Dantis
Scaligera: Purgatorio (Florence, Le Monnier, 1968),
pp. 405-33; P. Mazzamuto, ‘Canto XII’, in Lectura Dantis
Neapolitana: Purgatorio (Naples, Loffredo, 1980),
pp. 247-67.
48 ‘The Body and the Flesh in the Purgatorio’, in Dante for
the New Millenium, edited by T. Barolini and H. W. Storey
(New York, Fordham University Press, 2003), pp. 183-91
(p. 183).
49 There are instances in which souls in Hell appear to turn
away from a Eucharistic logic; perhaps the richest example
is provided by the figure of Ugolino in Canto XXXIII (see for
example V. Montemaggi’s essay, ‘ “Padre mio, ché non
m’aiuti?”: Ugolino and the poetics of the Commedia’,
forthcoming in Dante and the Ethical Use of Poetry, edited
by C. E. Honess, supplement to The Italianist).
50 The most detailed account of this passage is Armour,
pp. 16-34; Armour counters the traditional view in Dante
scholarship that the steps ‘represent’ the sacrament of
confession by arguing that the sacraments were too tightly
defined by late medieval theology to allow such a reading.
Please address correspondence to: Matthew Treherne, Department of Italian, University of
Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
© Department of Italian Studies, University of Reading and Department of Italian, University of Cambridge
10.1179/026143406X151773
Indeed, he refers to the absence of the Eucharist in
Purgatorio to justify his rejection of such an interpretation:
‘if an important episode in the Purgatorio is a re-enactment
of one of the Sacraments, one would certainly expect some
allusion to the most conspicuous and regular of all the
Sacraments, the Eucharist […]. Yet the Eucharist is
nowhere [in the Commedia] mentioned or used as a
symbol’ (p. 4). Armour also argues that, were the
sacraments present, they would necessarily have to be
separated from moral change. Although I concur with
Armour’s argument that the episode should not be read
straightforwardly as ‘a hollow enactment of a sacramental
rite’ (p. 11), my reading of Purgatorio X suggests that
Dante’s poem presents a more creative and syncretistic
attitude to the notion of sacrament than his
contemporaries held, and that we therefore should not
discount the possibility that the steps leading to the door of
Purgatory have a ‘sacramental’ aspect.
51 On signs as a whole in Dante, see Z. G. Barański, ‘Dante’s
Signs: An Introduction to Medieval Semiotics and Dante’, in
Barnes and Ó Cuilleanáin, pp. 139-80 (a discussion of this
passage in Purgatorio XXXIII is on p. 143).
52 On the image of the bread of angels in Paradiso and in
the Convivio, see D. J. Ransom, ‘Panis angelorum: A
Palinode in the Paradiso’, Dante Studies, 95 (1977), 81-94.
On the liturgical allusions made by this image, see
W. J. O’Brien, ‘ “The Bread of Angels” in Paradiso II: A
liturgical note’, Dante Studies 97 (1979), 97-106.
53 For Armour, the fact that Dante uses the image of panis
angelorum in a way that signifies divine knowledge is
further evidence for the lack of a sacramental presence in
the Commedia. However, the point remains that the image
reintroduces a Christological, and indeed Eucharistic,
element to his conception both of knowledge of God, and
of the individual human’s fitness to attain that knowledge.