Commentary Purg XXXII 148-160

Strictly speaking, this seventh and final calamity is a vision, since the Church only moved to Avignon in 1309 after the election to the papacy of Clement V in 1305.  We have now surveyed, in 52 verses, nearly thirteen centuries of the history of the Church. For the importance of Avignon to Dante, despite the fact that the city is never mentioned by name in the poem, see Picone (Pico.2002.1), pp. 5-14.

      The harlot and the giant, the whore of Babylon 'with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication' (Apoc. 17:2) and Philip IV of France, bring the terrible history to its conclusion.  The chariot no longer has to do with Beatrice, replaced by this wanton spirit that gives herself to all and any, and is now controlled by France.  Dante's reaction to the 'Avignonian captivity' is proof, if any is needed, that he is not the Protestant avant la lettre that some have tried to find in him.  Indeed, the last and only potentially (if fleeting) hopeful sign we find in the gradually darkening anti-triumph of the Church Militant is that the whore gazes on Dante, thus gaining for her a beating from her gigantic paramour.  What does Dante represent now?  Is he the embodiment of the truly faithful Christians who hope that their Church will be cleansed? of the Italian faithful left back on this side of the Alps? or is he Dante himself?  This penultimate detail of a difficult and encompassing allegorical pageant has left many readers perplexed.  Its final one is clear in its pessimism.  The giant responds to his lover's wayward glance by releasing the chariot from its binding to the tree and dragging it deeper into the forest, which now looks less like Eden than it resembles France. Now see the revisionist and convincing arguments of Bognini (Bogn.2007.1), referred to in C.Par.XII.55: The whore is Ezechiel’s Jerusalem and thus Dante’s Florence, while the giant reflects Goliath as Robert of Anjou, the king of Naples and the Guelph leader in Italy, prime enemy of Henry VII.