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Mary Alexander Watt,
The Cross that Dante Bears: Pilgrimage, Crusade, and the Cruciform Church in the Divine Comedy
256 pages. University Press of Florida. £45.50 ($59.95)
ISBN: 0813028760
The Cross that Dante Bears: Pilgrimage, Crusade, and the Cruciform Church in the Divine Comedy
256 pages. University Press of Florida. £45.50 ($59.95)
ISBN: 0813028760
By the thirteenth century the potency and polysemous capacity of the cross was so prevalent as to inform the work of cartographers, architects and artists. It lent its form to the maps of the Christian world that guided both pilgrims and Christian soldiers to the Holy Land, representing the known world in a cruciform shape, with East uppermost and Jerusalem at the centre. Churches followed the same pattern, orientated eastwards with a cruciform layout, recreating symbolically the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, thus linking the trip to the altar with the journey to Jerusalem. The cruciform map and church were types of each other, as were the journeys they traced; but, more importantly, they were types of the cross, so that by travelling to Jerusalem or the altar the individual was taking up his cross in imitation of Christ.
The image of the cross within the Divine Comedy has frequently been noted. However, in her book, The Cross that Dante Bears, Mary Alexander Watt proposes that Dante does more than include references to this symbol of redemption; rather, these are textual clues to the underlying structure that gives form and meaning to the entire work. The journey to the Promised Land, which is variously figured as the journey to paradise, a pilgrimage, and the story of Exodus, has long been acknowledged as the fundamental structure of the Comedy. Watt demonstrates convincingly that the journey of the pilgrim can be plotted onto both the medieval cruciform map and onto the architectural form of the church. According to her, the poem starts at the centre, Jerusalem. From there, the pilgrim travels into the receding circles of the inferno, which represents a westward motion on the map, away from Jerusalem and the altar. The Purgatorio represents a re-orientation towards Eden and the East, and cleanses him for the eventual ascent to the heavenly Jerusalem, the City of God, which also corresponds to the trip eastwards, realigning him with the altar, the apse and the rose window. Thus, she argues, the poem produces a metatext in the shape of a cross. But the question is whether this metatext is the product of authorial design or Watt’s own schema.
Having articulated such a bold claim concerning the overarching structure of the Comedy in her introduction (starting with the ‘big picture’ as it were), Watt proceeds to substantiate this claim by enumerating the individual allusions to place, space, and direction that plot the cross. Watt’s analysis is rooted in the text, but she interprets the fictional landscape in terms of signposts that point outside the text to real-world locations and the experience of pilgrimage, and makes extended use of medieval art, architecture, and cartography (including black and white photographs of Isidore of Seville’s tripartite world map, and architectural details from churches in Ravenna, Florence and Verona amongst others). It is such an attitude of inclusivity that makes Watt’s thesis relevant not only to Dante scholars, but also to those studying medieval literature more generally, as well as historians, and art historians. For example Watt argues that when the pilgrim and Virgil make their way along the narrow passage that Dante calls ‘that needle’s eye’ (Purg. 10:16), the reference recalls a common ritual in the pilgrimage to Rome during which pilgrims tried to squeeze through a hole, ‘the eye of the needle’ at the base of the obelisk that stood in front of St. Peter’s at the time of the Jubilee of 1300, in the belief that to do so would bring them to salvation (pp. 53-4).
Watt also argues for an anti-pilgrimage in the Inferno, which draws on architectural sign-posts for ironic effect. Thus she asserts that the inscribed gate at the entrance to hell ‘recalls the many great porte encountered by the medieval pilgrim on the way to Jerusalem’ (p. 19). However, this section is not always as convincing as it could be, for, while the individuals damned to walk with their heads the wrong way round emphasise the westward journey, not every perversion necessarily emphasises a directional impetus. For example, in the episode of Count Ugolino, which narrates how his sons offer their flesh in a ghoulish perversion of the sedar dinner, Watt cites this as an example of an anti-Jerusalem (p. 36). This conclusion is not as obvious as Watt seems to think it is, and it could have been made more convincingly if she had emphasised that this sacrament was defined by its association with the altar, so that the perversion implicates an anti-altar. This seems to be one example of Watt’s (possibly overzealous) desire to exhibit how each passage can be plotted onto the map or blueprint of the medieval church. In the great majority of cases, this technique is very effective, and Watt’s findings persuasive. However, on occasion her readings run the risk of becoming schematised.
Watt’s thesis, concerning the Comedy’s cruciform structure, serves to emphasise the salvific potential of Dante’s great poem. Her epilogue makes one final claim for the significance of the cruciform structure of the poem, one personal for Dante. The poem, she argues, represents a ‘travelogue’ of Dante’s own journey: his own trip along the naves of countless churches; of his exile and pilgrimage to the Promised Land (p. 6). Thus the redemptive path that the poem traces gives meaning and value to Dante’s life. Yet, while there is evidence that Dante was drawing on sights gleaned from his personal travels, such claims for biographical significance can only ever be speculative. This is equally true of the claim that the cruciform structure is the product of authorial design; the most that can be claimed for the thesis is that the structure provides the same kind of enrichment for the Comedy that Watt claims for Dante’s life. Near the end she notes that the narrative consists of one hundred individual cantos and ‘thousands of discrete moments fused together [...] like the medallions of a medieval cross’ (p. 166). The greatest quality of Watt’s book is that, when she concerns herself with the ‘medallions’, she distinguishes their significance both as isolated moments and as components within the cross.
The ubiquity of the cross in medieval iconography can blind us to its individual significance in literary works. This book represents what is for the most part a convincing account of one text’s cruciform foundations, which may have fruitful implications for the study of a wider range of literature.
The image of the cross within the Divine Comedy has frequently been noted. However, in her book, The Cross that Dante Bears, Mary Alexander Watt proposes that Dante does more than include references to this symbol of redemption; rather, these are textual clues to the underlying structure that gives form and meaning to the entire work. The journey to the Promised Land, which is variously figured as the journey to paradise, a pilgrimage, and the story of Exodus, has long been acknowledged as the fundamental structure of the Comedy. Watt demonstrates convincingly that the journey of the pilgrim can be plotted onto both the medieval cruciform map and onto the architectural form of the church. According to her, the poem starts at the centre, Jerusalem. From there, the pilgrim travels into the receding circles of the inferno, which represents a westward motion on the map, away from Jerusalem and the altar. The Purgatorio represents a re-orientation towards Eden and the East, and cleanses him for the eventual ascent to the heavenly Jerusalem, the City of God, which also corresponds to the trip eastwards, realigning him with the altar, the apse and the rose window. Thus, she argues, the poem produces a metatext in the shape of a cross. But the question is whether this metatext is the product of authorial design or Watt’s own schema.
Having articulated such a bold claim concerning the overarching structure of the Comedy in her introduction (starting with the ‘big picture’ as it were), Watt proceeds to substantiate this claim by enumerating the individual allusions to place, space, and direction that plot the cross. Watt’s analysis is rooted in the text, but she interprets the fictional landscape in terms of signposts that point outside the text to real-world locations and the experience of pilgrimage, and makes extended use of medieval art, architecture, and cartography (including black and white photographs of Isidore of Seville’s tripartite world map, and architectural details from churches in Ravenna, Florence and Verona amongst others). It is such an attitude of inclusivity that makes Watt’s thesis relevant not only to Dante scholars, but also to those studying medieval literature more generally, as well as historians, and art historians. For example Watt argues that when the pilgrim and Virgil make their way along the narrow passage that Dante calls ‘that needle’s eye’ (Purg. 10:16), the reference recalls a common ritual in the pilgrimage to Rome during which pilgrims tried to squeeze through a hole, ‘the eye of the needle’ at the base of the obelisk that stood in front of St. Peter’s at the time of the Jubilee of 1300, in the belief that to do so would bring them to salvation (pp. 53-4).
Watt also argues for an anti-pilgrimage in the Inferno, which draws on architectural sign-posts for ironic effect. Thus she asserts that the inscribed gate at the entrance to hell ‘recalls the many great porte encountered by the medieval pilgrim on the way to Jerusalem’ (p. 19). However, this section is not always as convincing as it could be, for, while the individuals damned to walk with their heads the wrong way round emphasise the westward journey, not every perversion necessarily emphasises a directional impetus. For example, in the episode of Count Ugolino, which narrates how his sons offer their flesh in a ghoulish perversion of the sedar dinner, Watt cites this as an example of an anti-Jerusalem (p. 36). This conclusion is not as obvious as Watt seems to think it is, and it could have been made more convincingly if she had emphasised that this sacrament was defined by its association with the altar, so that the perversion implicates an anti-altar. This seems to be one example of Watt’s (possibly overzealous) desire to exhibit how each passage can be plotted onto the map or blueprint of the medieval church. In the great majority of cases, this technique is very effective, and Watt’s findings persuasive. However, on occasion her readings run the risk of becoming schematised.
Watt’s thesis, concerning the Comedy’s cruciform structure, serves to emphasise the salvific potential of Dante’s great poem. Her epilogue makes one final claim for the significance of the cruciform structure of the poem, one personal for Dante. The poem, she argues, represents a ‘travelogue’ of Dante’s own journey: his own trip along the naves of countless churches; of his exile and pilgrimage to the Promised Land (p. 6). Thus the redemptive path that the poem traces gives meaning and value to Dante’s life. Yet, while there is evidence that Dante was drawing on sights gleaned from his personal travels, such claims for biographical significance can only ever be speculative. This is equally true of the claim that the cruciform structure is the product of authorial design; the most that can be claimed for the thesis is that the structure provides the same kind of enrichment for the Comedy that Watt claims for Dante’s life. Near the end she notes that the narrative consists of one hundred individual cantos and ‘thousands of discrete moments fused together [...] like the medallions of a medieval cross’ (p. 166). The greatest quality of Watt’s book is that, when she concerns herself with the ‘medallions’, she distinguishes their significance both as isolated moments and as components within the cross.
The ubiquity of the cross in medieval iconography can blind us to its individual significance in literary works. This book represents what is for the most part a convincing account of one text’s cruciform foundations, which may have fruitful implications for the study of a wider range of literature.
Ruth Roberts, U. of Cambridge
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