Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  There are some seventy-five Latin words or passages incorporated in this insistently vernacular work, more than half of them in its most “churchly” cantica, Purgatorio, as is not surprising. [return to English / Italian]

  28–39. Beatrice’s refutation is in three main parts:

  (1) Scriptural justification for God’s showing saved souls in the stars, vv. 28–39.

  (1a) why such ways of presenting divine truth are necessary, vv. 40–48.

  (2) Plato’s possible error in the Timaeus, vv. 49–54.

  (3) Plato’s potential agreement with Christian doctrine, vv. 55–63.

  The first part refutes not only what Dante has shown himself to believe in the previous canto, namely that the souls in the Moon are there permanently (see the note to Par. III.29–30), but resolves what Piccarda and even Beatrice (depending on how one reads verse 30 of Par. III) had left an open question. Now we are told by Beatrice, definitively, that no soul of Paradise is present in any star, except for the occasion of Dante’s visit to the spheres. Thus if, while reading the ending of the last canto, we may (quite reasonably) have thought that Piccarda and Constance were heading back into the matter of the Moon, we now probably have to understand that they have returned to their home in the Empyrean. [return to English / Italian]

  28. Indicating only the highest rank of angels, the Seraphim, Beatrice reminds Dante that all the nine ranks of angels are in the Empyrean and are the beings closest to God. Here the poet resolves a potential problem, similar to that caused by the appearance of the souls in the spheres, in that readers might eventually assume that the angelic order most associated with a certain heaven actually dwells in that heaven. This verse cancels that potential reading before it can be applied. [return to English / Italian]

  29–30. Moses, Samuel, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, and Mary are all to be found in that same placeless place known as the Empyrean. When we read Paradiso XXXII, we will find all of these but Samuel represented as having been seen by the protagonist among the eighteen souls actually pointed out there by St. Bernard. Beatrice’s little list is “ecumenical,” involving two Hebrews (Moses and Samuel in the role of the first and last “great jurists” of Israel, as it were), one “Hebrew-Christian” (the Baptist), and two Christians (John and Mary). Since all four whom we do eventually see in the Rose are in its highest tier, we may assume that Samuel is at that level also. (Why Dante has chosen Samuel, rather than Abraham, Solomon, David, or still another, is not immediately clear; see the discussion in the note to verse 29.) It would also seem likely that Dante is paralleling elements in his angelic and human populations of the Rose, referring only to the highest rank of each, thus distinguished from all who are at lower levels. [return to English / Italian]

  29. The meaning of Beatrice’s remark is not difficult to grasp. The angels (she refers to the highest order, the Seraphim, but from the context we know that she means all nine orders) and all the blessed are found, and found only, in the Empyrean. From Par. XXXII we know that four of the five saints referred to here are in the highest rank of the stadium-rose: Moses (vv. 131–132), John the Baptist (vv. 31–33), John the Evangelist (vv. 127–128), Mary (vv. 88–93). Samuel is not among the eighteen saints referred to in that canto, but since all four who have been, like their Seraphic counterparts, elevated to the topmost rank, we are probably meant to understand that Samuel has been also; that is, we are to understand that he is there, even if we do not see him.

  But why Dante singles him out here (and why he passes him over in silence in Par. XXXII) are questions rarely formed and perhaps never answered. Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 28–30) was perhaps the first to refer to the fact that Moses and Samuel were referred to only once in the same passage of Scripture, Jeremiah 15:1: “Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth.” G. R. Sarolli, “Samuele,” ED IV (1973), does improve upon the relatively sorry record of the commentators, who just do not seem to realize that this sudden appearance of Samuel in the poem calls for study. Why, for instance, if Dante wants to pick a pair of Old Testament “heroes,” does he not couple Moses with his favorite Hebrew figure, David? Perhaps, since Samuel was the last of the Judges of Israel, in Dante’s mind he balances the first Hebrew “law-giver,” Moses (see Inf. IV.57). Sarolli points to Samuel’s position among the exegetes as typus Christi as well as a figure of John the Baptist and to his role in transferring the kingly power from Saul to David as clues to Dante’s reasons for his lofty placement in the Commedia. (But why, we wonder, was not that lofty placement confirmed, as it was for his four fellow nominees, in Par. XXXII?) Toynbee had already made the point that the rest of Dante’s references to Samuel by name (Mon. II.vii.8; III.vi.1–6; Epist. VII.19) have to do with Samuel’s intervention that resulted in the termination of Saul’s kingship. (This last passage is a casuistic argument, in which Dante insists that Samuel had the power to depose Saul not because he was God’s vicar, which the hierocrats insisted was indeed true [thus buttressing their case for papal intervention in imperial affairs], but because God selected him as an “angelic” messenger, His direct emissary.) Such is dramatically true of Dante’s second epistle to Henry VII (Epist. VII.19), in which he compares Henry to Saul, about to be dethroned by Samuel (I Samuel 15), and in which his accusations put Dante unmistakably in Samuel’s place. If the order of composition of these Samuel-Saul passages is Epistle VII (late 1311), Paradiso IV, Monarchia II and III, the last three likely written within only a few months of one another in circa 1314, we may begin to have an inkling of why Samuel, so long absent from Dante’s pages, should suddenly have sprung to life in them. Henry’s foundering kingship shows the need for a new Samuel to hector the struggling king, a role that Dante, no stranger to answering an elevated call to action, tries to take on. For Henry’s increasing similarity to Saul, see the article referred to by Filippo Bognini (Bogn.2007.1), p. 93 (n. 54). By the time Dante is writing Paradiso XXXII, Henry is dead, and thus well beyond useful hectoring. [return to English / Italian]

  31–32. Piccarda and Constance, we are told, are in the same space as that occupied by these glorious figures. Thinking of it this way, we can understand why they are not in the least disturbed by their lower rank within the Rose (Par. III.70–87). Exactly where in the celestial rose they are seated is never revealed to us; we know only that they are fairly low in it (but at least halfway up, above the innocent babes [see Par. XXXII.37–48] and yet beneath the height attained by St. Clare [see Par. III.98–99], whatever that may be). [return to English / Italian]

  33. The souls in Plato’s Timaeus are said to remain longer periods in their stars in accord with their greater goodness, a bit of doctrine slapped aside in this single verse. The slap also hits the cheek of Dante himself: See the text of Convivio IV.xxi.2, cited in the note to verse 25, above. [return to English / Italian]

  34. Rhyme apparently forces Dante into a self-contradiction. The Empyrean is not a giro (circle), like the revolving physical heavens, but a point, both infinitely large (Par. XXXIII.85–93) and infinitely small (Par. XXVIII.16–21). Nonetheless, here he says it is a giro. [return to English / Italian]

  35. The phrase dolce vita (sweet life), here used for the first time to indicate the life of the blessed in God’s eternal presence (see also Par. XX.48, XXV.93), has a biting resonance in Federico Fellini’s Dante-haunted film of 1960, La dolce vita. [return to English / Italian]

  36. The relative beatitude of the blessed is defined as the result of their greater or lesser ability to respond to the breath of the Holy Spirit. Normal human competitiveness makes it hard to imagine human beings, even fairly selfless and generous ones, taking joy in their lesser ability to respond to God’s love. On the other hand, our experience of some artists, musicians, and athletes reveals that there are indeed professionals who gladly admire the greater ability of their betters and enjoy participation in the same activity in which t
hese “stars” excel. Unfortunately, there is probably less such admirable conduct than one might hope. [return to English / Italian]

  37. This verse seals Beatrice’s presentation of the temporary nature of the souls’ presence in the Moon, as she uses a past definite (si mostraro [put themselves on view here]) to indicate that they no longer do so—their time in the Moon is over. See the similar use of the past definite in verse 32, appariro (appeared), which probably also indicates that they are no longer present. [return to English / Italian]

  39. Beatrice’s words have given rise to a series of misreadings. What Dante says is that Piccarda and her companions in the Moon occupy a less exalted rank in Heaven; commentators (and translators) tend to say that they occupy the least (i.e., the very lowest) of the heavenly ranks. However, the comparative adverb meno (less) is never used in the Commedia as a superlative. The reason for this attempt to turn Dante’s vague placement of them into something far more definite is perhaps found in an assumption that, if these women are here encountered in the lowest heaven, they must then be in the lowest rank of Heaven. The poem does not permit any such certainty. See the note to vv. 31–32. [return to English / Italian]

  40–42. The need to speak to the human intellect in terms reflecting the experience of the senses will be more fully explored in the next two tercets, the corollary, as it were, to what has just been said here. And here Dante presents familiar Thomistic insistence on the priority (and usefulness) of sense data, an Aristotelian position and most certainly a counter-Platonic one. [return to English / Italian]

  40. For a study of the word ingegno in the Commedia (a word introduced at Inf. II.7 and then found some eighteen times, with a last appearance in Par. XXIV.81), taking this passage as his point of departure, see Dumol (Dumo.1998.1), pp. 1–13, 177–95. And for the source of Dante’s concept in Aristotle (Ethics VI.1), as commented upon and developed by Aquinas, see pp. 95–124. This is the faculty called “racionativum,” the vis cogitativa, that is, practical or scientific knowledge. [return to English / Italian]

  43–48. The phenomenon referred to by Beatrice, of ancient Christian lineage, is known as accommodative metaphor. Put simply (and Dante’s text does this admirably), it is the metaphoric presentation of higher things and higher beings that ordinary mortals simply have not the experiential background to understand. (For the closeness of Dante’s presentation of it here to the exposition made by St. Thomas, see Hollander [Holl.1969.1], p. 192, and Dumol [Dumo.1998.1], pp. 5–6.) For example, angels are pure being (or, as Dante would say, “pure act” [see Par. XXIX.33]) and have no visible aspect. So that we may better conceive them, we are allowed to think of them as having wings, faces, voices, and other attributes. Similarly, God Himself is beyond any anthropomorphic human imagining, but Scripture allows us to think of Him as having hands and feet and so on.

  In an important sense, almost all of Dante’s experience of the afterworld in the first thirty cantos of this canticle is metaphoric, that is, what he sees in the stars is there only temporarily, and for illustrative purposes. For similar understandings, see Freccero, “Paradiso X: The Dance of the Stars” (Frec.1986.1 [1968]), pp. 221–26; Hollander (Holl.1969.1), pp. 192–201; Chiarenza (Chia.1972.1); Mazzotta (Mazz.1979.1), pp. 246–47; Barolini (Baro.1992.1), pp. 143–65; and Moevs (Moev.1999.1). And see the appreciation of a Harvard freshman, Chris Hampson, in a seminar in the autumn of 2005: “The whole point is that this is not what it’s really like.” [return to English / Italian]

  46–48. As examples of ways in which we may have a graphic sense of exactly what the phrase “accommodative metaphor” signifies, church windows to this day represent angels with human features, while even seven hundred years ago Dante knew that angels were disembodied, were “pure act” (Par. XXIX.33). Humans are allowed to conceive of such higher realities in more concrete and familiar terms. Unnamed, Raphael joins periphrastically his two fellow Archangels, the ones most frequently referred to in literature and life. Indeed, only Gabriel and Michael enjoy a presence in the standard Bible, while Raphael’s is limited to the Book of Tobit (see the note to verse 48). [return to English / Italian]

  48. Raphael is generally accounted one of the seven angels “who stand before the Lord” (Apocalypse 8:2). The apocryphal book of Enoch (chapter 21) furnishes the names of the four others, of whom only Uriel is much known today (and then mainly through his presence in Milton’s Paradise Lost). The story of how this Archangel allowed Tobias to cure the blindness of his father, Tobit, is told in the now apocryphal Book of Tobias (11:2–15). That Dante elected to use this particular circumlocutory detail to identify Raphael may seem puzzling. However, it was one of the few concrete details associated with this Archangel known to him. And consult Paradiso XXVI.12 for another brief reference to a miraculous cure for blindness, that conferred by the laying on of hands by Ananias. For a substantial recounting, one nearly as controlled and entertaining as a novella by Boccaccio, of the startling biblical narrative concerning Tobias and Raphael, see the commentary of Jacopo della Lana to vv. 40–48. [return to English / Italian]

  49–54. The Timaeus argues that the souls of the dead return to the stars that gave them birth. This is heresy, tout court, if it is meant literally. Beatrice’s correction of Dante’s error, concocted in the previous canto as a recapitulation of the error he had in fact first made in the Convivio, should end our own confusion as to the presence of the souls in the spheres. They appear in a sort of cosmic accommodative metaphor, thus suggesting that all the last canticle up to its thirtieth canto (with a brief hiatus in the twenty-third—see the note to Par. XXIII.61–63) is a vast metaphoric preparation for the seeing face-to-face that will occur in the Empyrean. Further, such an understanding reminds us how “historical,” how “real” everything described and seen in the first two canticles has seemed in comparison. [return to English / Italian]

  51. The verb par[e] (seems) begins to open the door to Dante’s attempt to hedge his attack on certain of Plato’s views in vv. 55–60. [return to English / Italian]

  54. The reference to “form” here indicates, in language reflective of Scholastic terminology, an individuated human soul that inhabits a specific body. [return to English / Italian]

  55–63. Dante opens the question of the potential truth to be found in Plato’s literally untrue teachings. Here again (see the note to vv. 13–15) the reader will want to turn to the Epistola a Cangrande, again near its conclusion (84): “For we perceive many things by the intellect for which language has no terms—a fact which Plato indicates plainly enough in his books by his employment of metaphors; for he perceived many things by the light of the intellect which his everyday language was inadequate to express” (tr. P. Toynbee).

  Dante’s view of Plato would seem to indicate great respect (if not as much as for Aristotle, given greater praise than his teacher in Inferno IV), a sense that some of his teaching was potentially or actually heretical, and a further sense of admiration, perhaps based principally on what in Plato he found most poetlike, his use of metaphor to express truth slantwise. In both major moments in which Dante discusses Plato, here and in the Epistle, the salient subject is, indeed, Plato’s use of metaphor. It is possible that Dante is fervently opposed to those who read Plato as a teller of literal truth (in which reading he is nothing short of a heretic avant-la-lettre, as are, on historical grounds, the neoplatonists, in Dante’s view). It seems possible, however, that Dante is willing to allow the philosopher himself a potential escape route; he may have seemed to him, in the end, more like a poet than a philosopher. Dante’s teacher, Thomas Aquinas, is cited by Oelsner (comm. to verse 51) as allowing for the possibility, just as we have seen Dante do here, of a possible metaphoric truth in some of Plato’s dicta that are literally untrue. [return to English / Italian]

  55–57. Bosco/Reggio, in their comment on this passage, point out that its source may lie in Albertus Magnus, De natura et origine animae (II.7), since that is a sure source for the embryology of Purgator
io XXV, as was established by Bruno Nardi (“L’origine dell’anima umana secondo Dante” [1931–32], repr. in Nard.1960.2). Should that be true (and, as they argue, it seems likely that it is, since there is little to suggest Dante really knew any Plato directly, even in Latin translation), it would deeply undercut the notion that Dante’s acquaintance with the Timaeus was firsthand. And this would also reveal that Dante had a noted precursor in trying at least to open the question of Plato’s possible acceptability to Christian thinkers, as one tradition has even no less a rigorist than Thomas Aquinas doing (see the last sentence of the note to vv. 55–63). [return to English / Italian]

  55. For the view that the meaning of sentenza here must be “intention,” see Sanguineti (Sang.1999.2). But Dante’s usual practice and the likely significance of this tercet point rather in the direction of “meaning,” as any number of commentators believe. And see, for a previous use of the word in this canto, verse 24, “secondo la sentenza di Platone” (in accord with Plato’s teaching). [return to English / Italian]

  58–60. The nature of Dante’s own “modified astrology” has already been made clear in Marco Lombardo’s discussion of free will and its relationship to astral influence, particularly in Purgatorio XVI.67–84. While any astrology at all seems mere foolishness to most modern readers, Dante’s position, which mirrors that of St. Augustine, is that whatever influence the stars have on us, it in no way reduces our ability to choose the good. Our birth stars may incline us in one direction or another (see Par. VIII.122–135), but we remain totally responsible for our choices, our actions. [return to English / Italian]