Commentary Inf XV 13-21

Another double comparison. As the poets move away from the wood of the suicides and down across the sand along their dike, they approach a group of the damned. Its members examine them as men look at one another under a new moon and as an aging tailor concentrates upon threading his needle. The first comparison may suggest the image of homosexual 'cruising' in the darkest of moonlit nights (it is difficult for modern readers to imagine how dark the night-time streets of medieval cities were); the second conveys the intensity of such gazing. For this way of reading many of the words and images of the canto see Pequigney (Pequ.1991.1).

There has been much recent debate about whether or not the sin punished here is in fact homosexuality. The principle negative findings are those advanced by André Pézard (Peza.1950.1), Richard Kay (Kay.1978.1), and Peter Armour (Armo.1983.1; Armo.1991.1). (Pézard's solution is that these sinners were guilty of blasphemy in deriding the mother tongue; Kay's, that they were guilty of denying the political supremacy of the empire; Armour's, that Brunetto was guilty of a Manichean heresy. For bibliography of other recent discussions see Contrada [Cont.1995.1]) One of the principle issues facing those who oppose these interesting arguments is that in purgatory homosexuality is regarded a sin of lust and thus of incontinence. If it is punished here in Violence, it would be in a different category than it occupies there. Had Dante thought of homosexuality as the sin against nature when he composed Inferno, with its basic organization taken from Aristotle and Cicero, and as a sin of lust when he composed the second cantica? If he did so, possibly he should not have. Despite the significant contradiction that results, most students of the problem remain convinced that the sin punished in cantos XV and XVI is in fact homosexuality, and are supported by the text itself. The sin punished here is surely what is referred to by the name of the city 'Soddoma' (Sodom) at [Inf XI 50]; in [Purg XXVI 40] the penitent homosexuals call out that word in self-identification and penitence (and report that they do so at [Purg XXVI 79]). If Dante had wanted us to separate the two sins, he made it awfully difficult for us to follow his logic in so doing.

For an attempt to rationalize the discrepancy see Pequ.1991.1, pp. 31-39. Pequigney argues that Dante had changed his mind about the moral turpitude of homosexuality between the time he wrote this canto and the composition of the Terrace of Lust in Purgatory, where the sin of the penitent (and saved) homosexuals is seen as roughly equal to that of the penitent (and saved) heterosexual lovers. Muresu (Mure.1999.1), drawing on his previous study (Mure.1998.1), counters Pequigney's arguments, first pointing to the tradition anchored in St. Thomas (ST I-II, xxxi, 7) that this sin against nature is indeed a form of violence. He argues, against Pequigney, that the reformed homosexuals on the mountain had not hardened their wills as had the homosexuals in hell, i.e., that their sins remained those of appetite, a sinful disposition or natural inclination, but not of calculated choice.