old that in exchange for seven years of work he would be given Rachel for a wife. Instead he was given her older sister, Leah, and had to work seven additional years before winning Rachel as well. In medieval scriptural exegesis, Leah and Rachel were regularly considered symbolic of the active and contemplative life, an interpretation perhaps relevant to what happens in Purgatory. Dante has labored up seven cornices expecting to find Beatrice, only to find a woman subsequently identified as Matilda. Whoever Matilda may be, she is found picking flowers, an active rather than contemplative preoccupation. As Dante makes his own transition from the corporeal climb to the ethereal ascent, the two heavenly ladies reinforce the shift. It would not be fruitful in this essay to examine in detail each of the seven cornices that make up the longest portion of Purgatorio; however, a few general points are worth our while. First of all, the kinds of exempla chosen for the whips and bridles is carefully systematized. The first example of each whip of virtue is taken from the life of the Virgin Mary, who was believed to have been the most virtuous human who has ever lived. Other examples alternate between episodes from the Bible or from church tradition and episodes from pre-Christian Roman literature. As with his inclusion of pagans in Limbo and with his insistence that he was saved by reading Virgil, Dante again emphasizes the ability of classical literature to act as a guide to virtue. Furthermore, the manner in which the whip and bridle are presented is ingeniously adapted to the mode of suffering which the souls endure on each terrace. The proud, while hauling enormous rocks on their backs, are bent double staring at the floor. There, sculpted into the rocky floor, are plaques, reminiscent of the kinds of funerary monuments common in medieval churches, depicting the evil effects of the vice of Pride. The envious, however, with their eyes sewn shu...
