Trajan Surrenders his Will

How is it that a Roman emperor is here not only in purgatory, but as a model of virtue alongside Mary and David?  (Purgatorio 10)

There are many thoughts that I have when trying to reconcile the pre-modern Dante with my own inherited worldview. One of the reasons to read Dante is to step outside of this framework. It is hard. A redeemed Cato, a reconciliation for the excommunicated. All of these elements interfere with my own private and shriveled sense of justice. I want justice to fit within my own understanding. What is evil gets punished and what is good gets rewarded. I think what I learn from the New Testament is that no one would survive that test. We are all sinners and have fall short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23), so we rely on grace. 

So, Trajan is clearly a noble ruler. He built infrastructure, he created grain programs for the poor and expanded the Alimenta for orphaned children, he expanded his empire. All of these works are great amid the normal temptations of power. Is this enough to be compared with David and with Mary? 

I think what we are supposed to take away here as a few important parts. First, Dante is again using classical images to invoke a sense of universalism. God's law is written in his creation. Second, Dante places an incredible emphasis on the will. 

There the high glory of the Roman prince was retold whose worth moved Gregory to intercession, and to great victory: I speak of the Emperor Trajan: and at his bridle was a poor widow, in the attitude of tearfulness and grief. A crowd, of horsemen, trampling, appeared round him, and the gold eagles, above him, moved visibly in the wind. The poor woman, among all these, seemed to say: ‘My lord, give me vengeance for my son who was killed, at which my heart is pierced.’ And Trajan seemed to answer her: ‘Now, wait, till I return.’ And she, like a person, urgent with sorrow: ‘My lord, what if you do not return?’ And he: ‘One who will be in place of me will do it.’ And she: ‘What merit will another’s good deed be to you, if you forget your own?’ At which he said: ‘Now be comforted, since I must fulfill my duty before I go: justice wills it, and pity holds me here.’ (Translation here)

On the question of universal appeals, or moral realism, we see Dante reminding us that St. Gregory the Great (540-604) had issued a prayer for Trajan as an exemplar of dead pagans. Dante has already told us that the power of the church to bend laws is not absolute, so St. Gregory here discovers something about Trajan that Dante thinks is true in God's law. The church got this one right. 

Second, we are told that Trajan was on his way to a battle and was not inclined to stop and respond to this widow. Her persistence is like the widow in Luke 18 who persists in seeking justice with an unjust and uncompasionate judge. Luke's story is meant to teach something about prayer. Our persistence in prayer for just causes must work both because God is just, unlike the judge, and because our persistence wanes in the presence of an unjust request. Penitential prayer is conforming to the will of God. It can work both on the penitent and on the one that grants the judgement. 

Formal similarity:  There are elements of this story that fit as analogies to Mary's story. 

• a) Trajan's will -- an inferior, but related idea to Mary's fiat (Luke 1:38)
• b) A son who is killed and a heart that is pierced -- Mary's son was crucified and her heart was pierced (Luke 2:35)
• c) A question as to the procedure -- Trajan offers to return later, but the persistence results in immediate action (Compare Luke 1:18 with 1:34). 

With regard to a), Trajan's will succumbs to the persistence with the argument that by leaving the question to another he loses his own duty and the resulting merit from fulfilling duty. Dante is clearly working with a theology where duty ties people together in the here and now and to transgress against these face-to-face interactions is to fail at one's duty. We can compare this to Francesca's betrayal of her duty to her husband in Inferno VI. 

With regard to b) Dante's inclusion of the detail here is a heavy-handed reference to Mary, leaving little room for interpretation. 

With regard to c) Perhaps this, if we want to stretch it, could be related to John ch. 2:3-5, the wedding of Cana where Mary initiates the miracle of water turning to wine. It certainly can give us some insight into the procedural questions of how will is united to God's plan. Mary does it well. Zechariah does it poorly and loses his ability to speak. 

Seeing Trajan as a Mary figure is a bit too mundane for me, at least until I frame it as bringing Trajan down to my level as someone trying to learn the lessons of Mary's fiat. Trajan has the power to ignore the widow's request, but he surrenders his will to what he knows is the duty of a king to establish justice in the realm. This is almost Arthurian in resonance. The Arthurian moral is Might for Right as opposed to might is right. This is the king's fiat. If kings also submit their will to God's justice, we seem to be told, they become exemplars of virtue. We see this in David's willingness to surrender his pride. We see this in the most excellent form that is represented by Mary. The temptation for us is to think of the individual king as having power rather than as someone who God works through. 

I like to think of these statues as cartoon or animatronics replaying the story, but that is not as reverent as thinking of them as really good stain-glass windows in a church. I can imagine these scenes in Dante as little alcoves built into the mountain for a vast outdoor spiritual area of prayer like a garden with the stations of the cross. It helps me build out the analogy of Purgatory as representing what goes on in our churches here on earth. We are surrounded by sinners and all are making progress, yet we all remain imperfect in this space.