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Communal and Economic Implications of Blood in Dante

This article investigates two of the varied and diverse implications of blood in Dante’s works (Fiore, Rime, Vita nova, Convivio, Commedia, Monarchia, Epistole, and Egloghe) where the term and its derivations appear: the ‘communal’ and the ‘economic’. By ‘communal’, I mean that Dante emphasizes the generative, formative, nourishing and charitable implications of blood: as the parts of a body are joined together through the blood they share, members of various communities — the city, the Church, the Roman Empire, the family, humankind — are joined together through blood. By ‘economic’, I understand that Dante compares blood to money and highlights its ability to balance members of a group or elements of a body, enabling him to use the substance to delimit a series of poetic and ethical economies: of vice and virtue, waste and value, sensation and cognition, sin and punishment, original sin and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

tended to focus on blood's roles in the vernacular works, 3 particularly the Comedy, 4 or on specific scientific implications of the substance; 5 and much more attention has been focused on issues closely-related, but not exclusive to, blood -for instance on the heart. 6 Substantial philological, theological and metaliterary questions remain to be addressed; and the task of situating Dante's treatment of blood within his cultural context deserves consideration -especially in light of the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary scholarship treating the substance's varied roles in medieval culture more generally. 7 Recognizing, however, that all of blood's implications in Dante's works can only be dealt with in monographic form, this article limits itself to exploring two particular and overlapping dimensions: what I am calling the 'communal' and 'economic' dimensions of blood, which Dante consistently highlights throughout his works. By 'communal', I mean that blood is often shared, either among parts of a body or between members of a community. As the parts of a body are joined together through the blood they share, so too members of various communities -the city, the Church, the Roman Empire, the family, humankind -are joined together in shared blood. In a related manner, Dante calls attention to what I term the 'charitable' implications of blood (in the sense of relating to caritas) in three main ways: in a physiological sense, blood plays a role in the experience of the passions, including love and feelings of affection; in a political sense, it links individuals to each other through communities; and in a theological sense, it links humanity with God through Christ's blood which was shed at the Crucifixion and is shared through the Eucharist.
By 'economic', I mean that Dante often compares blood to money and to other means of exchange and consumption in a way that calls attention to blood's ability to balance members of a group or elements of a body. Blood helps to regulate and facilitate various processes within the body; and Dante uses blood to delimit a series of poetic and ethical economies: of vice and virtue, waste and value, sensation and cognition, sin and punishment, original sin and Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Interestingly, the 'communal' and 'economic' implications often overlap in Dante's treatment of blood, as this article will demonstrate.
The 'communal' and 'economic' dimensions of blood's implications are not entirely original to Dante, but the poet's emphasis on these connotations stands in contrast to the way in which many recent works of scholarship have tended to characterize blood in medieval culture, particularly in terms of defining -and articulating fears about -otherness. Fears about the female other were often expressed in medieval medical writings with recourse to the porosity of the female body -its propensity to bleed during menstruation and childbirth -in contrast with the male body, which was considered more bounded and controlled. 8 Blood was used as a tool for defining otherness and societal exclusion in the early modern period, particularly in witchcraft trials and representations of monstrosity. 9 In addition, a large body of work investigates the blood libel, in which Jews were accused of killing Christian babies to steal their blood -a narrative that reveals not only fear of the other, but also the deeply unsettling idea, which had horrific consequences in the twentieth century, that the value of a person's life can be decided according to their race. 10 Dante, however, does not use blood to express fears about women or prejudice against groups with ethnic or religious backgrounds different from his own. (Although of course this is not to say that he never expresses fear of women or prejudice against other religious groups. 11 ) Rather, the poet uses the substance in a way that acknowledges blood's potential both to connote difference and to bring people together. In Inferno VII, in as much 8   as Fortuna 'permutasse a tempo li ben vani/ di gente in gente e d'uno in altro sangue,/ oltre la difension d'i senni umani' (79-81), Dante implies that groups of people can be distinguished from each other by virtue of their blood. Yet, the full sense of the passage is to emphasize Fortuna's ability to level the playing field: however different we think we are from another person or from a different community, we are all caught in the wheel of chance. We are all human, and we all have blood. Two additional ways in which the poet's treatment of blood diverges from his cultural context deserve mention (and may help to explain the issue's relative neglect in Dante scholarship). First, while blood in the late Middle Ages played an increasingly conspicuous role in religious iconography (representations of the Crucifixion, depictions of Hell) and practices of devotion (the Eucharistic ritual, miracles, mystics' visions, etc.), 12 Dante neglects to dramatize the Crucifixion, discuss the Eucharist explicitly, or mention miracles. 13 Second, in allusions to the classical epics, Dante often elides mention of the violence, which frequently includes blood, that is present in his source-texts. 14 However, despite these elisions, Dante does not neglect to associate blood with violence, nor to exploit blood's soteriological and Eucharistic implications. In fact, it is particularly the investigation of communal, charitable and economic implications of blood that provides us with a useful perspective from which to approach soteriological and other issues in Dante's works, as this article will argue.
Five sections inform the structure of my argument. In the first section, I explore examples, mainly from the Commedia, in which Dante characterizes blood as 'communal' -in so much as it joins parents to their children literally through the process of reproduction -, and 'economic' -in so much as it regulates the balance of various elements within the body (including those responsible for governing emotions). As an extension of the idea that blood from each parent is mixed together to form the foetus, Dante conceives of families as literally joined together through shared blood -examples of which I discuss in the second section. One of the implications of this idea is the question of what is transmitted through blood to the child. Dante's opinion on this issue is slightly ambiguous and highly nuanced, as I demonstrate. There is some indication that the stain of original sin, as well as propensities for vices and for certain emotions and behaviours might be transmitted through blood; at the very least, vice and sin are strongly associated with blood in the Commedia. Nobility, however, in Dante's treatment of it in Convivio, may not be inherited.
While blood joins people together literally through reproduction and through family ties (as demonstrated in the first and section sections of the article, respectively), it also joins people together figuratively through membership in communities -the city, the Church, and the empire -as demonstrated in the third section, via examples from the 12 Dante -in sharp contrast to contemporary (and near-contemporary) iconography -avoids a bloody dramatization of the Crucifixion. One reason for this might have to do with a distinction posited by Bynum, Monarchia, the Epistole, Convivio and the Commedia. In passages concerning the formation and sustenance of the Church (particularly in Paradiso XIII, XXVII and XXIX), Dante associates blood with money (further exploiting its 'economic' associations), at that same time that he emphasizes blood's 'charitable' dimensions. In so doing, it becomes apparent that -despite elision of explicit discussion of the Eucharist or dramatization of the Crucifixion -the poet does not shy away from soteriological issues. In addition, by foregrounding blood's violent and generative implications, the poet articulates a political point: blood may literally help to form communities, but it also represents the potential for the violence that might tear a community apart, or indeed, upon which many communities are founded. The fourth section takes the via negativa. While blood's communal and economic capacities play constructive roles in the formation of families and of political and religious communities (detailed in the previous sections, respectively), the converse also holds true. In Inferno, Dante exploits blood's communal and economic implications to demonstrate what happens when blood is wasted, or when bodies or communities (religious, political or familial) are torn apart. In this way, blood plays a key role in the parodic use of ideas about community that we see throughout Inferno.
In addition to associating blood with economic concerns (as demonstrated in the first four sections of the article), Dante also utilizes blood with rhetorical economy, as the concluding section argues. Using blood to implicate contrasting elements -original sin and Christ's sacrifice on the cross, human fallibility and the potential for reunion with God -, Dante balances and highlights the very tensions that exist between these polarities.

Regulation and reproduction
In Dante's representation, blood joins people together through the process of reproduction, and it also unites the various members of an individual body. In Purgatorio XXV, Statius explains to the pilgrim how blood from the father and the mother mix together in the womb to form the foetus and to create new life, the father's blood 'oozing' over the mother's (l. 44): Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beve da l'assetate vene, e si rimane quasi alimento che di mensa leve, prende nel core a tutte membra umane virtute informativa, come quello ch'a farsi quelle per le vene vane. Ancor digesto, scende ov' è più bello tacer che dire; e quindi poscia geme sovr' altrui sangue in natural vasello. Ivi s'accoglie l'uno e l'altro insieme, l'un disposto a patire, e l'altro a fare per lo perfetto loco onde si preme; e, giunto lui, comincia ad operare coagulando prima, e poi avviva ciò che per sua matera fé constare. (Purg. XXV, 37-51) Dante suggests in this passage that the 'matter' (the foetus's flesh, limbs, bones and organs) develops from the mixture of blood from both parents (l. 51) in a way that seems to gloss over what was a tremendously complex issue in medieval discourse: the question of which parts of the foetus come from which parent's blood, that was accompanied by a wide range of philosophical positions on the interrelations between matter and non-matter, male and female, and the role and generated features of the foetus. 15 I do not mean to suggest that Dante did not have an opinion on this thorny question. In fact, by referring to female blood as that which is disposed to 'patire' and male blood as that which is disposed to 'fare' (47), one might argue that Dante ascribed to the Aristotelian notion that female blood provides the material for the foetus, while male blood provides its form. 16 Furthermore, Dante acknowledges differences between the two forms of sangue by using the word 'altrui' in line 45, and by distinguishing between their composition (43) and function (47). Nonetheless, Dante uses the same word -sangue -to refer to both the female and the male forms of reproductive fluid. This he does in contrast with many of his contemporaries who use different words to describe them: 'menstruum' for female reproductive fluid; 'sperma' or 'semen' for male blood. 17 Whether intentionally or as the result of terminological imprecision, Dante appears to emphasize what the two types of blood have in common in addition to how they might differ. In the space of a few lines, Dante uses four verbs to describe the process whereby the female and the male fluids join together: gemere (44), accogliere (46), giungere (49), and coagulare (50). Thus, while acknowledging differences between male and female generative fluids, Dante's special emphasis is on how they interact with each other. While male and female forms of blood unify to produce a new human being, male blood is also characterized as the product of a spiritual unity inherent in the father's body: 'sangue perfetto [. . .] prende nel core a tutte membra umane/ virtute informativa' (Purg. XXV 37-41). The male blood also facilitates the process whereby the foetus's body develops its own integrity: 'Or si spiega, figliuolo, or si distende/ la virtù ch'è dal core del generante,/ dove natura a tutte membra intende' (58-60). Statius then explains how the three capacities of the soul (vegetative, sensitive and rational) are united into 'un'alma sola' (74), through the animating breath of God. Although, as scholars have shown, Statius's lectio raises a range of complex issues, 18 my point here is that Dante attributes to blood a range of unifying qualities, including how the various parts of the body relate to one another, the integrity of the parent's body, and the formation of the child's body.
Indeed, once the foetus develops into a fully formed human being, blood serves as an agent within the body for the interaction between various physical processes, and herein is another example of blood's 'economic' and regulatory capacities. In addition to nourishing the body, as we have seen, the substance's composition -specifically the balance of the four humours within the blood -affects the health of the body. For instance, Maestro Adamo's punishment for falsifying coins is to suffer from dropsy -an imbalance of blood -due to 'l'omor che mal converte' (Inf. XXX 53). In other words, Dante implies that blood plays a balancing role within the body. In addition, since an imbalance of blood is represented as punishment for the crime of falsifying currency, we can also intuit blood's associations with money and economic concerns, to which I shall return.
Blood is also a key substance in facilitating various emotional and cognitive processes within the body, and thereby may be said to affect an individual's emotional and mental balance. Fear consists in the trembling of one's veins: at the beginning of the Comedy, Dante seeks Virgil's help against the she-wolf, 'ch'ella mi fa tremar le vene e i polsi' (Inf. I 90). 19 Even the memory of fear or disgust can curdle the poet's blood. For instance, when Dante recounts seeing the snakes in the canto of the thieves, he claims that the memory of the experience still haunts him: 'e vidivi entro terribile stipa/ di serpenti, e di sì diversa mena/ che la memoria il sangue ancor mi scipa' (Inf. XXIV 82-84). 20 Excitement or the feeling of being overwhelmed by the sight of one's lover is described as blood fleeing away from the limbs towards the heart (Rime CIII.45-47). Lust stains the world with blood: Francesca refers to her companions in Hell as 'noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno' (Inf. V 90). Shame is often described with recourse to the reddening of a person's cheeks, which implies the movement of blood to the face (Par. XXVII 28-36 and 54); and blood, as lineage, is associated with shame (in Purg. XX 61-63). In addition, Dante describes the experience of feeling love and recognition in terms of the trembling of his blood. For instance, when he sees Beatrice in Purgatorio for the first time since her death, he tells Virgil: 'Men che dramma/ di sangue m'è rimaso che non tremi:/ conosco i segni de l'antica fiamma' (Purg.  the same time that it is also emotional: Dante's blood trembles as he recognizes Beatrice, and as he remembers his love for her; 21 thus, we see evidence of what I am calling blood's 'charitable' implications. Imbalances of temperament or emotion can also be blamed on blood. Indeed, medieval philosophers recommended various ways of venting excess emotions, or regulating one's passions, through phlebotomy. 22 In sum, Dante attributes to blood a key function in maintaining physical, cognitive and emotional balance within the individual -an example of what I am calling the substance's 'economic' implications. In addition, in so much as blood is involved in the functioning of emotions, including love, we might say that it plays a central role in how humans respond to the world and interact with others, and in this sense we see further evidence of blood's 'communal' and specifically 'charitable' implications.

Family ties
While blood helps to facilitate how individuals communicate with and respond to one another, it also physically connects individuals to each another. As we have seen above, the foetus's body shares the blood of both its parents, and constitutes the evidence and expression of the parents' union. Thus, not only is the child connected to her parents physically through their shared blood, but also the parents are connected to each other through their child. In this way, blood facilitates the formation of the family. Indeed, blood regularly serves as a synonym for familial relations in Dante's works. 23 When the pilgrim thinks he sees one of his relatives in Hell, he says to Virgil: 'credo ch' un spirto del mio sangue pianga' (Inf. XXIX 20). Dante's ancestor Cacciaguida addresses the pilgrim in the Heaven of the Sun as 'sanguis meus' (Par. XV 28), and as 'mio seme'. 24 In Epistola V[4].11, Dante refers to familial relations in terms of blood and seed: 'Pone, sanguis Longobardorum, coadductam barbariem; et si quid de Troyanorum Latinorumque semine superest, illi cede'. 25 By extension, various traits could also be passed down through blood. Indeed, we find among many of Dante's sources several types of traits considered inheritable through blood, including propensities for vices, emotions 26 and behaviours, as well as the stain of original sin and nobility (although the nature of the transmission of these last two was contested). Dante's own position on which of these traits were transmittable through blood is nuanced, at times ambiguous, and in some cases less explicit than his sources, as I shall briefly demonstrate. 21 Aristotle associates memory specifically with blood when he claims that a person trying to remember something (and failing) is more prone to feeling discomfort afterwards if he is melancholic and has 'moisture' around his heart ( In a general sense, Dante implies that certain traits can be inherited through blood. For instance, in the Rime, he uses sangue not only as a metonym for the family ties of the Bicci clan, but also to refer to the characteristics they share: Di Bicci e de' fratei posso contare che, per lo sangue lor, del malacquisto sanno a lor donne buon' cognati stare. (Rime LXXVII.12-14) More specifically, Dante associates the vices, which are tendencies towards sinful behaviour (and often include emotions), with blood, and in several instances, he implies that they can be inherited. For instance, on the terrace of pride, Omberto takes pride in the blood of his ancestors: 'L'antico sangue e l'opere leggiadre/ d'i miei maggior mi fer sì arrogante,/ che, non pensando a la comune madre,/ ogn' uomo ebbi in despetto tanto avante,/ ch'io ne mori' (Purg. XI 61-65). Here, ironically, it is blood that makes Omberto forget what all humans share: 'la comune madre'. 27 While Omberto's words might suggest that he believes that he has literally inherited the vice of pride from his ancestors through blood, he might alternatively be suggesting a more metaphorical association between pride and blood. As Dante tell us in the Convivio (and as we will discuss in more detail below), some people subscribe to the notion (false, in Dante's opinion) that nobility can be inherited through blood; thus, Omberto's pride might stem from a mistaken belief that his ancestors have imparted their nobility to him, rather than from a belief that pride itself can be inherited.
Indeed, nowhere else in Dante's works have I been able to find an explicit discussion of vices being transmitted literally through blood. However, blood is mentioned in connection with nearly all of the vices in Purgatorio, 28 with the exception of those in which we find souls doing penance for sloth and anger (although anger is elsewhere associated with blood 29 ); thus, the possibility of an implicit suggestion about vice and transmission should not be entirely ruled out. On the terrace of envy, blood is mentioned twice -the first time to connote violence ('Sanguinoso esce de la trista selva', Purg. XIV, 64) and the second to describe the vice of envy itself: 'Fu il sangue mio d'invidia sì rïarso,/ che se veduto avesse uom farsi lieto,/ visto m'avresti di livore sparso' (Purg. XIV 82-84). Avarice is repeatedly associated with blood. On the terrace of avarice, Dante figures the vice as a she-wolf (in Purg. XX 10-12) -an animal which he specifically associates with greed and blood 30 in the Fiore (XCVII.5). 31 More explicitly, blood is associated with greed in 27 Dante also associates blood with pride and lineage in others works; for instance in Ep.VI [3].11 28 Dante's systematic association of blood with (almost each of) the vices is neither entirely unique nor entirely conventional, as an article I am currently writing will suggest. His treatment would seem to fall somewhere between the two positions: while Aquinas only rarely mentions blood in connection with the vices (although a few times he mentions the nearly synonymous 'humours', for instance in Summa theologiae, ed. and trans.  30 In Paradiso XXVII Dante again associates avarice with wolves by presenting the greedy clergy as 'lupi rapaci' (55).
On the terrace of gluttony, Statius explains blood's role in human conception. Indeed, his speech is elicited by a question posed by the pilgrim regarding the need for nourishment in the afterlife: 'Come si può far magro/ là dove l'uopo di nodrir non tocca?' (Purg. XXV 20-21). Since blood both forms the flesh of the body during conception and nourishes the fully formed individual (Purg. XXV 37-60), it is fitting that Dante should characterize the veins as thirsty for blood ('Sangue perfetto, che poi non si beve/ da l'assetate vene', Purg. XXV 37-38). However, the line between appetite and excess is a thin one: one must learn to balance between the antipodes of greed (exemplified by the wolf in the Fiore, XCVII 5) and need (as exemplified by the veins in Purg. XXV 37). On the terrace of lust, blood is mentioned in association with vitality rather than with lust itself (Purg. . 32 Yet, the sin of lust in Inferno is explicitly associated with the spilling of blood as we saw above in Francesca's characterization of the sinners in her circle ('noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno', Inf. V 90).
Thus, while Dante's precise position on the issue of a literal transmission of vice through reproductive blood is difficult to establish, it is clear that Dante associates the vices with blood. I would posit three potential explanations for the association. First, as noted above, since medieval philosophers believed that the process of bleeding helped the body purge itself of (spiritual, emotional, temperamental and physical) imbalances, it makes sense that Dante should consistently remind the reader of the role of blood throughout the journey through Purgatory: the vices can be purged, just as blood can be purged, making the body balanced and healthy again. Second, it is well established that Dante categorizes the vices in terms of disordered love, 33 and, as I have argued above, Dante consistently sees blood in terms of its charitable implications. Thus, reminding the reader of blood throughout the terraces of Purgatory might reinforce the overarching salvific principle of the canticle: the vices, caused by disordered love, can be corrected, just as impurities within the blood can be balanced. Third, Dante associates blood with an individual's propensity for doing good when he refers to the virtues and their provenance: 'Larghezza e Temperanza e l'altre nate/ del nostro sangue mendicando vanno' (Rime CIV.63-64). Thus, the poet again emphasizes blood's balancing capacities, and thereby what I am calling its 'economic' implications: on the one hand, blood can transmit a tendency towards a particular vice, but on the other hand, it gives birth to the capacity for certain virtues. A related question pertaining to what can be transmitted through blood concerns the issue of original sin. 34 By referring to humanity as 'il mal seme d'Adamo' (Inf. III 115), Dante seems to suggest that the stain of original sin is passed down literally through seminal fluid. Indeed, Christiana Purdy Moudarres has argued in a recent article that Dante's treatment of Guido da Montefeltro adheres to what she calls the 'bio-theological' notion that it is possible to inherit a 'generally sinful disposition from Adam', as well as a more specific weakness to succumb to particular sins passed down from one's more immediate forebears. 35 The issue of Dante's precise views on the transmission of original sin is of the utmost complexity (of which Dante is acutely aware), which nonetheless reveals blood's communal implications. Regardless of how exactly original sin is transmitted, and regardless of whether Dante's characterization of humanity as 'il male seme d'Adamo' is figurative or literal, it is clear that blood is a defining characteristic of what it means to be human -of what we all have in common: sin and a debt to God.
For this reason, it ought not come as a surprise that Dante should associate blood with punishments or repayment for particular sins. Indeed, the neutrals' punishment involves weeping bloody tears which are eaten by worms (Inf. III 67); the lustful describe themselves as staining the world with blood (Inf. V 90); the violent against others boil in a river of blood (Inf. XII 47-48); the violent against themselves vent bloody words when they are wounded (Inf. XIII 31-45); some of the usurers wear blood-colored bags around their necks (Inf. XVII 61-63). Violence is also connoted through reference to blood in the lower regions of Hell: Vanni Fucci, who is being punished for fraud, is '[un] omo di sangue e di crucci' (Inf. XXIV 129); Cacus formed a lake of blood (Inf. XXV 27); Maestro Adamo (Inferno XXX) is punished for falsifying coins by enduring dropsy, which is a perversion of the process of digestio that takes place in the humours; '[i] seminator di scisma' in Inf. XXVIII display bloody wounds and endure bodily fragmentation as punishment for having torn apart communities or relationships. Bloody drool drips from Lucifer's mouths in the pit of Hell: 'per tre menti/ gocciava 'l pianto e sanguinosa bava' (Inf. . Although some of these references to blood are brief, their frequency is noteworthy. While some of Dante's sources mention blood in their representations of Hell and Purgatory (and in some cases contain a significantly higher number of references to blood and in greater concentration 36 ), the poet's representations of the otherworld treat blood systematically. Not only does Dante associate the substance with almost each of the sins and each of the vices, he also does so within the context of a widespread thematic characterization of blood as a balancing device. 37 Thus, we again note a strong emphasis on blood's 'economic' implications: not only is it associated with vices and virtues, but also with sins and their punishments. A final question pertaining to what can be transmitted through blood concerns the quality of human nobility. 38 Dante appears somewhat to contradict himself on this issue. In the Monarchia, Pyrrhus is referred to as 'noble of blood' (Mon.II.ix.8), perhaps suggesting that one can inherit nobility through ancestry. However, in the Convivio, Dante devotes most of Book IV to discrediting such an idea: 'l'errore de l'umana bontade in quanto in noi è da la natura seminata e che "nobilitade" chiamare si dee' (IV.i.7). 39 Instead, the capacity for developing nobility is a gift from God which descends from the heavens into the rational soul like a seed falling into soil (Cv.IV.xx.5-6); it is the responsibility of the individual to develop the capacity for nobility into nobility itself -a process figured as a seed being nurtured to develop into a healthy shoot (Cv.IV.xxi.13-14). In this way, Dante suggests that it is the responsibility of the individual to make the right choices despite any weaknesses he or she may inherit through blood.
While much has been (and remains to be) said about Dante's treatment of nobility, I would like to highlight, for the purposes of this study, that Dante relies both on the nuanced distinctions between blood and seed, as well as on their similarities, to make his argument about free will. When 'seed' refers to blood that has been refined into reproductive fluid, it is synonymous with blood, and Dante implies that it may literally transmit propensities toward sinful behaviour from a parent to his child. However, when Dante uses 'seme' metaphorically to figure the divine gift of the capacity for developing virtue, sangue and seme are not synonyms. Rather, Dante's point hinges precisely on the highly nuanced yet crucial difference between literal blood and figurative seed.
Similarly, Dante exploits tensions between blood and seed imagery in his treatment of sin and redemption. As we have seen above, Dante refers to the stain of original sin with recourse to the image of the seed (humans are the 'mal seme d'Adamo'). Yet, the possibility of redemption from sin is also figured with recourse to seed and blood-related imagery. When discussing the human capacity for nobility, which descends, divinelyinfused, into the human soul as a seed descends into soil, Dante describes Christ descending to earth to re-unite God with humanity: Volendo la 'nmensurabile bontà divina l'umana creatura a sé riconformare, che per lo peccato de la prevaricazione del primo uomo da Dio era partita e disformata, eletto fu in quello altissimo e congiuntissimo consistorio de la Trinitade che 'l Figliuolo di Dio in terra discendesse a fare questa concordia. E però che ne la sua venuta nel mondo, non solamente lo cielo ma la terra, convenia essere in ottima disposizione; e la ottima disposizione de la terra sia quando ella è monarchia, cioè tutta ad uno principe, come detto è di sopra; ordinate fu per lo divino provedimento quello popolo e quella cittade che ciò dovea compiere, cioè la gloriosa Roma. (Cv.IV.v.3-4) 38  Thus, Dante uses a number of seed and blood related images to describe the polarities of the human condition: original sin and the potential for redemption; inherited traits that might dispose us toward vices, and the capacity for virtues which we must nurture ourselves; biological weaknesses and personal responsibility; particular sins and their punishments in Hell. In addition, in so much as Christ's presence (associated with the image of a seed in Convivio) and His sacrifice (described in terms of His liberating veins in Purgatorio) make possible the re-establishment of 'concordia' between humanity and God, we see further evidence of the harmonizing capacities that Dante attributes to blood throughout his works. In sum, if the traits relating to the vices may be passed down through blood, then blood helps to connect the parent to the child not only physically, cognitively, temperamentally and emotionally, but also in ways that transcend even temporal boundaries, in the sense that after a parent has died, one might still feel inclined to act in ways determined by the blood that one inherited from him or her. Yet, while blood's transmission of personality traits results from a connection between two individuals, nobility, according to Dante's view in the Convivio, does not. Rather, it results from each person's connection with God, and is a sign of the fact that we are made in the likeness of God. Blood therefore plays an important role not only in the way Dante conceives of and represents an individual's proper relationship with other people, but also with God. With recourse to the image of blood, Dante reminds his readers of what lies beyond their control -of what they inherit, of what is determined by physical limitations or by external circumstances. With recourse to the image of the seed, which is sometimes but not always a synonym for blood, Dante insists upon the idea of free will and personal responsibility.
Membership and modes of exchange in communities: city, church, empire While reference to families sharing blood is for the most part literal, Dante also implies membership in other types of communities by referring to shared blood in ways that are essentially figurative. For example, he uses blood as a metonym to indicate people that come from the same city. At the opening of Inferno XXX, Dante begins to recount the tale of Athamas's murder of his own children with reference to Juno's anger against the Theban people: 'Nel tempo che Iunone era crucciata/ per Semelè contra 'l sangue tebano,/ come mostrò; una e altra fïata' (Inf . XXX 1-3). And, in the Heaven of Venus Cunizza utters her third prophecy: The passage mentions not only blood's ability to define a group (in this case, the citizens of Ferrara), but also its value (it can be weighed or measured, 57 and given, 58); thus it highlights both of the main qualities of blood -the 'communal' and the 'economic'on which this article focuses. More generally, when Dante refers to 'sangue troiano', he implies not only membership in the city of Troy, but also membership in the Latin race, which he considered divinely-ordained to establish the Roman Empire: in the Convivio, Dante claims that God chose the Latin race ('l'alto sangue troiano') for the exercise of rule (IV.iv.10). When Dante describes the consecration of the Roman Empire through the sprinkling of the blood of Peter and Paul, he uses the image of blood to endow his political convictions with theological authority: In the Old and New Testament, the sprinkling of blood is required for legitimizing rituals: for the sealing of covenants, and for acts of consecration. 40 Perhaps partly for this reason, Dante suggests in Epistola XI that the Roman Empire was established through blood: literally, through the blood which is shed in the act of war, and ritually, through the consecration of its soil with the blood of the Apostles. Similarly, in the Monarchia, Dante justifies the legitimacy of Aeneas as the founder of the Roman Empire with recourse to what he calls the 'double confluence of blood' that flowed into the hero from two sources: his lineage, and his marriage to Lavinia (Mon.II.iii.17). Thus, Aeneas's marriage to Lavinia constituted an exchange that brought about the sharing of their blood, which had significant political consequences for the Roman Empire. Dante also associates marriage with the sharing of blood in his treatment of several ecclesiastical issues. For instance, in the Heaven of the Sun, when Thomas describes how Dominic and Francis were ordained by Providence to guide the Church, he characterizes the marriage of Christ to the Church as bloody: La provedenza, che governa il mondo con quel consiglio nel quale ogne aspetto creato è vinto pria che vada al fondo, però che andasse ver' lo sui diletto la sposa di colui ch'ad alte grida disposò lei col sangue benedetto, in sé sicura e anche a lui più fida, due principi ordinò in suo favore, che quinci e quindi le fosser per guida. (Par. XI 28-36) If a marriage results in procreation, the man and the woman are joined physically to their offspring through shared blood. But the association between marriage and blood goes further: it was common in medieval exegesis of Genesis to describe marriage as the joining of man and wife into one flesh, and to use this association as a metaphor for the Church's marriage to Christ, as Augustine claims in Contra Faustum: 'Fit uiro dormienti coniux de latere: fit Christo moirenti Ecclesia de sacramento sanguinis, qui de latere mortui profluxit'. 41 Augustine goes on to explain that all of Genesis is a prophecy of Christ and the Church, and that Christ's relationship to the Church is a marriage because man and wife are of one flesh, as are the Church and Christ. Thus, marriage unites the couple in flesh even before they procreate (and even if a marriage fails to produce children). In addition, by having recourse to bloody imagery, as well as alluding to Christ's last words on the cross, 42 Dante's Thomas superimposes a reference to the Crucifixion upon his description of the marriage of Christ to the Church -a juxtaposition which was a medieval commonplace. 43 Thus, the passage exploits the sacrificial and generative implications of Christ's blood, and in so doing emphasizes blood's collaborative capacities: through an act of violence perpetrated against Christ, humanity is reunited with God. Furthermore, Paola Nasti, glossing this passage along with several other references to the Church as the Bride of Christ in the Heaven of the Sun, 44 demonstrates that caritas is central to Dante's conception of the Church. Not only does caritas 'bind the ecclesiastical community to God' (in Bonaventure's formulation, 45 an idea with which Dante concurs), but caritas also joins members of the Church to each other, thus forming a community. While Nasti's argument does not focus particularly on blood, it relies on the passage cited above in which Thomas describes the Church's marriage to Christ, the central image of which is bloody. Thus, we see further evidence of blood's 'charitable' implications: along with caritas, blood joins people together within the community of the Church, as well as joining the Church to Christ.
Later in Paradiso, Dante describes the marriage between the 'santa milizia' and Christ as bloody: 'In forma dunque di candida rosa/ mi si mostrava la milizia santa/ che nel suo sangue Cristo fece sposa', Par. XXXI 1-3), exploiting a commonplace of medieval theological thought which represents the Church as the body of Christ, and members of the Church as the parts of Christ's body. By extension, it would make sense that the faithful should share in Christ's blood -not only by drinking it through the Eucharistic ritual, but also because they are members of His body. Indeed, on several occasions, Dante represents the community of the Church as sharing in and drinking the blood either of Christ or of the early Christian martyrs. For instance, in Paradiso XXVII, Peter characterizes the Church as raised and nourished by the blood of the first martyred Popes: The tension here between money and sacrificial blood is of central importance: while Christ's blood pays the ultimate price, blood itself should not be bought or sold. Peter continues to emphasize this distinction throughout the rest of his speech: It was not Peter's intention to become the image imprinted on a seal to be sold (52)(53). Nor does he approve of the avarice of the clergy (figured as 'lupi rapaci', 55); nor of the two French Popes (the Caorsini and Guaschi) who are thirsty to 'drink' the blood of the martyrs on which the Church was founded. In addition to the frequency with which Dante mentions blood explicitly in this canto ('sangue' occurs four times -the highest number of times in a canto; Inferno XII and XIII also mention blood four times each), he refers to blood implicitly: the bloodthirsty wolf is associated with avarice here and elsewhere in Dante, as we have seen. Blood, like money, can be desired inappropriately, but, despite its literal and physical associations with waste, it should not be wasted on a greedy few: it is of communal value, and should be shared. When Peter denounces Pope Boniface VIII, he does so by accusing him of having made his tomb into a bloody and filthy sewer: 'Quelli ch'usurpa in terra il luogo mio [. . .] fatt' ha del cimitero mio cloaca/ del sangue e de la puzza' (Par. XXVII 22-26). His words reveal an awareness of contemporary medical opinion which considered blood the vehicle for the distribution of nutrients throughout the body, and hence also the vehicle for transporting out of the body its waste products. Thus, by referring to the physiological roles that blood plays within the body, Dante emphasizes a fundamental theological value of blood: it has the potential to nourish the body of the Church and its members; yet it can all too easily become waste if not used properly. Just as the veins of a body 'drink' blood for nourishment (as we saw above in Purg. XXV 37-38), so too do the members of the Church drink Christ's blood. Because Christ's blood is shared and of great value to the whole community, it is imperative that the amount of blood remains measured and balanced within the body of the Church. Thus, despite a seeming lack of explicit reference in Dante's works to the sacrament of communion or a vivid dramatization of the Crucifixion, the poet's treatment of blood certainly does not shy away from its soteriological or Eucharistic implications. While blood has the capacity to join together parts of the body, and individuals to each other within communities (political, familial, religious), Christ's blood has the capacity to re-unite humanity with God. The tension between blood and money that Dante emphasizes in Parardiso XXVII is part of a larger theological tradition, which on the one hand characterizes Christ's blood as the 'price' of redemption, 46 and on the other, condemns the selling of Christ's blood by Judas for money. 47 Dante again associates Christ's sacrifice with monetary value in Paradiso XIII, where Eve's 'palate' is described as costing the world a debt, which Christ repays by sacrificing himself: Tu credi che nel petto onde la costa si trasse per formar la bella guancia il cui palato a tutto 'l mondo costa, e in quel che, forato da la lancia, e prima e poscia tanto sodisfece, che d'ogne colpa vince la bilancia, quantunque a la natura umana lece aver di lume, tutto fosse infuso da quel valor che l'uno e l'altro fece. (Par. XIII 37-45) re-unite humanity with God. Interestingly, the cause of humanity's estrangement from God -original sin -is also referred to through a synonym for blood: the sinners waiting to cross the Styx in Hell are the 'mal seme d'Adamo' (Inf. III 115). Thus, Dante represents God's redemptive justice with recourse to what we might term a 'bloody symmetry': on the one hand, Dante represents sin, as seed, which is repeatedly transmitted from human to human through reproduction; on the other hand, there is Christ's blood, a death that is also a moment of rebirth, and the re-union of humanity with God. Blood is again associated with monetary value in Paradiso XXIX, where Beatrice warns against distorting the Scriptures and philosophizing in vain: E ancor questo qua sù si comporta con men disdegno che quando è posposta la divina Scrittura o quando è torta. Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa seminarla nel mondo e quanto piace chi umilmente con essa s'accosta. (Par. XXIX 88-93) By figuring the process whereby the truth of the gospels is spread as a kind of bloody sowing, Dante again exploits the tensions and the associations between seeds and blood. Blood shed in sacrifice may become the generative seed that will grow into the Church.
In sum, Dante's treatment of blood emphasizes its capacities to join together various members of a community into a whole, and to sustain and nourish that community. Just as one's limbs and organs are distinct yet at the same time parts of one body, so too are the members of Christ's body -which is the Church -one flesh. While the parts of the body share blood physiologically, the members of the Church share Christ's blood through the Eucharist. By partaking in the community of the Church, by sharing in the body of Christ, humanity is able to balance its relationship with God; and in this regard, we may see further evidence of how the economic and communal implications of blood in Dante's works are interrelated.
Violence, rupture and waste in Hell The contrapasso is clear: the substance of the river Phlegethon symbolizes (or perhaps even literally constitutes) the blood spilled by the tyrants' victims. 49 As in Purgatorio XXV 45, here too Dante uses the word 'altrui', calling attention to the issue of otherness (Inf. XII 48). And indeed, the perpetrator may well have been blinded by a similar kind of reductive and dualistic thinking, objectifying his victim and thinking of her as different from himself. Yet, the sinners are immersed in a river of the shared blood of their victims; thus, we as readers are reminded -through the image of blood -that all humankind is part of a community in God. Not only did Christ shed His blood to save us all, but also we are all part of the same body: the body of Christ. To harm another, outside of the context of Christian sacrificial economy, is to harm oneself and everyone else. In addition, the river of blood is one of four rivers that run through Hell and define its geography -the structure of which Durling suggests resembles a body, specifically Lucifer's. 50 In this sense, the river Phlegethon may be seen as a vein that runs through Satan's body, which is a parody of Christ's body. Thus, even when describing sinners that have cut themselves off from God's community and the possibility of redemption, Dante places them in a pool of shared blood that flows through the veins of a communal body. We might say that blood for Dante always connotes the potential for union or communion, even when it provides the evidence of an actual failed union. In this sense, it could be said to form part of the schema of the parodic use of ideas about community that we see throughout Inferno (for example particularly in cantos XXXII-III).
In Inferno XXVIII, Dante again uses the image of wasted or spilled blood to connote the failure of individuals and of groups (political and religious) to stay together. Here, the pilgrim and Virgil encounter the 'seminator di scandalo e di scisma' (l. 35)-souls guilty of separating groups or individuals with their words. As punishment for dividing individuals or groups, souls endure various forms of bodily fragmentation 51 -speaking through vermilion wounds to explain their punishment. 52 Dante uses the association between seeds and blood to emphasize the irony of the sinners' punishment in this canto. As we have seen above, seme is a form of generative blood -that which joins together the parents of a child and forms new life. But these sinners have used language -figured as a seed (l. 35) -to divide individuals, or groups of people, from each other. Thus, their bloodied fragmented bodies highlight the effects of their sin: blood is the evidence of a father's physical connection to his child, yet here it also signifies the violent rupture of that relationship.
A third example from Inferno serves to illustrate how Dante uses blood to emphasize the value of what is wasted when two entities -joined together by God -are separated. In Inferno XIII, sinners guilty of suicide suffer one of the bloodier punishments in the poem: the pilgrim, goaded by Virgil, breaks off a branch of a tree, causing words and blood to gush forth from the wound -an image that has been characterized as the closest the Comedy comes to dramatizing the Crucifixion (with the exception perhaps of the parodic image of Lucifer's body at the bottom of Hell). 53 The image of blood here serves parodic and ironic purposes. The soul and body of the suicide were joined together by God through blood during conception; by committing suicide, the sinner tore apart the synolon of body and soul that not only made whole his own person, but also connected him to God. Indeed, the suicides are the only sinners in the entire poem that -Dante, breaking with theological doctrine, 54 asserts -will be refused their bodies at the Resurrection. Just as blood represents both waste and generative potential within the human body, so too does blood in Inferno XIII represent the enormity of what the suicides wasted: their lives, their connection with God, the opportunity to be reunited with their bodies after the Last Judgment.
In sum, Dante demonstrates blood's communal and charitable values through positive and negative examples. Using blood to define personal as well as civic and religious ties, the poet implies that each type of community has the potential for acting as one body, for the harmonious exchange and the sharing of blood between its various members. But not all communities succeed. Cutting oneself off from one's community, or tearing apart the unity of one's own body, is a way of cutting oneself off from God, from the community of humanity born (again) from Christ's redemptive blood. Dante uses blood both to demonstrate evidence of violence -that a community or a body has been torn apart -, but also to emphasize the enormity of what is wasted when blood is spilled: the potential for new life, for reunion, for the formation of communities.

Blood that speaks
In both examples of blood's wasted communal potential in Inferno XIII and Inferno XXVIII, blood is also associated with language. Wounds speak in each of the cantos (as well as in several other instances 55 ): Pier da Medicina speaks through his wound (Inf. XXVIII 64-70); and Pier delle Vigne can only speak when he is wounded -either by the Harpies who gnaw on his leaves, giving him a 'window for his pain' or by Dantepersonaggio, who breaks his branch, thereby enabling a conflation of words and blood to issue forth together down his wooden frame ('usciva insieme/ parole e sangue', Inf. XIII 43-44). In addition, Inferno XXVIII opens with an inexpressibility topos: Ogne lingua per certo verria meno per lo nostro sermone e per la mente, c'hanno a tanto comprender poco seno. (Inf. XXVIII 1-6) As Dante suggests in these verses, there is something indescribable about blood. The horror it signifies in this canto eludes the power of language and comprehension. However, in this canto it is precisely blood that the poet employs in order to express the horrors of war. Blood's vividness -as a striking image and as a richly connotative concept with deep roots in medieval culture -is an apt device for catching the reader's attention, animating the reader's imagination, and doing just what the poet claims he cannot do: 'dicer a pieno' that which he sees. In this passage, blood is doubly ambivalent. It is both unsignifiable and an agent of signification; indeed, the very premise of this sentencethat blood signifies the unsignifiable -is itself a contradiction. Perhaps these ambiguous qualities of blood are precisely what made the substance so suitable for Dante's poetic purposes. While scholars in other disciplines have often debated which of blood's often contrasting implications are dominant -theologians for instance argue about whether blood in the Old and New Testament implicates life or death 56 -, Dante is a poet, and his treatment of blood can implicate both life and death, peace and violence, generosity and greed, while highlighting the very tensions that exist between those polarities. In this sense, the investigation of blood offers an especially rich (and neglected) field of associations which reveals the complexity of Dante's polysemous expression.
Dante uses blood, rhetorically, to establish poetic economies between contrasting elements within his works. It is possible for one to waste blood, but one should not do so. Blood should be shed only for the right reasons -shed willingly in acts of sacrifice, in imitation of Christ and the martyrs. Sacrificial blood has the capacity to become the generative seeds of a divine message -as Beatrice says of 'la divina Scrittura' in Par. XXIX 90-92: 'Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa/ seminarla nel mondo'. And it seems that Dante is trying to nourish this seed and disseminate its message. Perhaps this is part of the reason why Dante uses blood with such rhetorical economy. If there is in fact less explicit representation of violence and blood in Dante's works than in the classical epics, as Barański maintains, 57 then it is fitting that the poet's salvific message -written in words figured as blood -, must use both blood and language in a measured way.
In conclusion, while Dante uses blood to implicate tensions between contrasting elements, many of them relate to issues of community and economy. Blood is pollution, yet it can have expiatory or purgative functions. It constitutes life and signifies death. It consecrates rituals and communities whereby people are joined together: marriage, the Eucharist, the Church, families, cities, race; and it is one of the few elements that all humans share. Yet, Dante sometimes also uses blood to distinguish between groups. While blood helps to define the sensitive capacity of the soul, it also implicates the cognitive faculty of memory. Blood is what makes us human by connecting us with fellow humans, including our parents and broader communities and also with God/Christ. It nourishes not only the body of the individual, but also the community of the Church, figured as Christ's body. Yet, a perversion of the process of digestion in the individual 56 See Stibbs, Meaning of the Word 'Blood', for a discussion of the debate. 57 See note 14.
leads to illnesses such as dropsy, which distort the body's form; and the corruption of the Church is figured as pollution in its blood. Part of Judas's sin was that he sold Christ's blood, and Dante often associates the substance with avarice; yet, he also characterizes Christ's blood as the price of redemption, and as that which balances humanity's debt for original sin with God. Blood is associated with each of the vices in Purgatory, and most of the sins in Hell, yet Christ's blood redeems mankind. Throughout Dante's works, blood is associated with language, and made to speak; yet, it also, impossibly, points to something beyond itself which is inexpressible.