by Dante
81. The Jew (introduced to this subject at verse 49) living among Christians knows the Law, and therefore the rules regarding the making and keeping of vows, as well as they do; he is thus uniquely, among non-Christians, capable of recognizing their hypocrisy. [return to English / Italian]
85. Here the poet presents himself as the “scribe” of Beatrice. (Mestica [comm. on this verse] looks back to two moments in the earthly paradise in which his lady requires such duty of him, Purg. XXXII.104–5 and XXXIII.52–54.) What, however, is lacking in some such comments, those that tend to emphasize Dante’s loyalty to his beloved guide, is the force of the gesture, which reinforces his pose, one that makes him not the inventor of a fiction but the reporter of a series of actual encounters. In Paradiso X.27, Dante will again refer to himself as a scribe (scriba), only setting down (and not inventing) what has been revealed to him. This verse anticipates that gesture, presenting him as scriba Beatricis, seventy lines ago herself presented as the “author” of this canto (see verse 16). For the influential and groundbreaking study of the poet’s self-presentation as “scriba Dei,” see Sarolli (Saro.1971.1), esp. pp. 215–16, 233–43, 335–36. [return to English / Italian]
87. There is surprisingly much debate about the exact location of this brightness upon which Beatrice fastens her gaze. Suffice it to say that, since they are still beneath the Sun, that is a possible terminus; but where the universe is brightest is where God is, the Empyrean. Compare the similar view expressed by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 85–87). [return to English / Italian]
88–99. The ascent to the second heaven, that of Mercury, is, like all of the ascents from sphere to sphere, instantaneous, God drawing Dante and Beatrice up another level toward Him. [return to English / Italian]
90. The nature of Dante’s unasked questions, which some have attempted to puzzle out, is never made known. It is probably best simply to understand that he, naturally enough, has many of them. [return to English / Italian]
94–99. Beatrice’s increased joy at being, with Dante, closer to God makes even the immutable planet glow more brightly. If this is so, we are asked to imagine how much changed was mortal and transmutable Dante himself. [return to English / Italian]
100–104. This simile immediately reminds the reader of the similar formal comparison that preceded the exchange between Dante and the souls who appeared to him in the Moon (Par. III.10–18), in a position parallel, that is, to this one’s. There Dante believes that the forms he sees as though they were under water or glass are reflections of himself and of Beatrice. He avoids such Narcissistic error here, where he understands at once that these are souls that welcome him with love. We can see that, having experienced a single heaven, he has learned much about heavenly love. [return to English / Italian]
105. Their loves are for one another in God. How will Dante help increase these? This line has been variously interpreted. It seems first of all true that these saved souls, finding a mortal in the heavens, know that they will help him become more holy by answering his questions and preparing him for Paradise, thus increasing the objects of their affection by one and the heat of their affection for one another. It also seems at least possible that they refer to a second future increase in their affections, for one another and for him, when he joins them after his death, one more to love and be loved in God. [return to English / Italian]
107. This marks the last (of three occurrences) in this final cantica of the word ombra (shade), perhaps surprisingly used to indicate a saved soul. See the note to Paradiso III.34. [return to English / Italian]
109–114. The second address to the reader in Paradiso underlines the importance of the scene that will follow. Once we realize that we are about to encounter Justinian, we have some sense of heightened expectation; first-time readers are merely encouraged to pay close attention. [return to English / Italian]
115. The speaker, as we shall learn in the next canto (verse 10), is the shade of the Roman emperor Justinian. His reference to Dante as “bene nato” (born for bliss) has Virgilian (and thus imperial?) resonance, in that in the Aeneid the hero is referred to as natus (meaning “son”) some three dozen times (see Hollander [Holl.1989.1], p. 90, n. 28). He greets Dante, then, as the new Aeneas. [return to English / Italian]
116–117. Justinian’s words for triumph and warfare reflect his imperial background and concerns; here they have a modified sense, the triumph over death found in Christ and the Christian sense of militancy reflected, for example, in Job 7:1, “Life is a warfare,” cited by Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 24. [return to English / Italian]
118. The light to which Justinian refers is the light of God’s love for his creatures. [return to English / Italian]
122–123. The poetic playfulness of the canto, so evident near its beginning and at its end (see the second part of the note to vv. 16–18), is present here as well, both in the rima composta “Dì, dì” (Say, say) and in the rapidly repeated sounds of di in these verses (“Dì, dì … credi come a dii … t’annidi”). Beatrice excitedly urges Dante (whose name happens to begin with that sound) on in his increasing hunger for knowledge of heavenly things. (For an even more exhilarated passage, see Paradiso VII. 10–12.)
Why all these repetitions in the concluding verses of the canto? Here dì dì (pronounced, in order to rhyme with annidi and ridi, “dìdi”), and then in verse 138: chiusa chiusa, and in 139: canto canta? Does the device of anaphora (repetition) have a thematic purpose, mirroring things that can be represented only by themselves (as is the case with vows)? [return to English / Italian]
124–126. Whereas Dante could eventually make out the facial features of Piccarda (Par. III.58–63), as his ascent continues he is able to make out less of such detail in the next subsolar heaven; then, in the last of them, in Venus, Charles Martel (whom he knew on earth as he did Piccarda [at least within the claims made in the poem]) is, unlike Piccarda, not recognizable, and makes it clear that he is simply not visible as himself to Dante’s mortal sight (Par. VIII.52–54). Occupying a middle ground, as it were, Justinian’s former facial features are all, with the exception of his eyes, elided by his joy. This may reflect a “program” for the gradual effacement of the signs of human personality in Dante’s first three heavenly spheres. [return to English / Italian]
127–128. Dante’s two questions addressed to Justinian will be answered in the next canto at vv. 1–27 and 112–126. His second question reflects his similar one to Piccarda (Par. III.64–66): Why is this spirit in so relatively low a sphere? Dante may have forgotten Beatrice’s instruction in the last canto (Purg. IV.28–36), which makes it plain that such heavenly gradation is only temporary. Or he may have grasped the point that temporary presence in a planet is part of God’s universal plan for his instruction and wants to know more. [return to English / Italian]
129. It was perhaps more than ten years earlier that Dante had compared the planet Mercury to the branch of knowledge known as dialectic (Conv. II.xiii.11): “The heaven of Mercury may be compared to Dialectics because of two properties: for Mercury is the smallest star of heaven, because the magnitude of its diameter is not more than 232 miles …; the other property is that in its passage it is veiled by the rays of the sun more than any other star” (tr. R. Lansing). [return to English / Italian]
130–137. When the Sun finally overwhelms the cool temperatures that yield a mist through which we at times can look at its disk through that mediating layer, it burns that away, with the consequence that we now cannot look at this unveiled star, which seems wrapped in its own effulgence. Just so, Dante tells us, Justinian, the love he feels increased by Dante’s affection for him and by his own for Dante, was swathed increasingly in his own light so that he, too, becoming brighter, became less visible as a human semblance. [return to English / Italian]
138–139. If anaphora has the result of intensifying the effect of what is said, here we confront two lines, each of which contains a repeated pair of words, chiusa chiusa and canto canta, a co
nfiguration that is perhaps unique in the poem. Justinian’s dramatic appearance on the scene has been carefully prepared for (see the note to vv. 122–123). [return to English / Italian]
PARADISO VI
* * *
1–27. Justinian’s response to Dante’s first inquiry allows the poet to present his version of the biography of the emperor who codified Roman law. “Justinian I, surnamed the Great, emperor of Constantinople, a.d. 527–565. Justinian is best known for his legislation. He appointed a commission of jurists to draw up a complete body of law, which resulted in the compilation of two great works; one, called Digesta or Pandectae (533), in fifty books, contained all that was valuable in the works of preceding jurists; the other, called codex constitutionum, consisted of a collection of the imperial constitutions. To these two works was subsequently added an elementary treatise in four books, under the title of Institutiones (533); and at a later period Justinian published various new constitutions, to which he gave the name of Novellae constitutiones (534–65). These four works, under the general name of Corpus iuris civilis, form the Roman law as received in Europe” (T).
The sixth canto in each cantica, as has often been appreciated, is devoted to an increasingly wide political focus: first to Florentine politics, then to Italian politics, and now to Dante’s theologically charged imperial politics. For a clear statement of what had become the standard view, see Brezzi (Brez.1968.1), p. 176. The three spokesmen for these three subjects are also of increasing distinction: Ciacco, Sordello, and Justinian; we get another clue as to Dante’s high esteem for Ciacco despite his deforming gluttony and resulting damnation.
The canto is divided into four parts, the first and third as direct responses to Dante’s preceding questions (Par. V.127–129). The second (vv. 28–111) is coyly characterized by Justinian himself, here serving as Dante’s stand-in, as a “digression” (alcuna giunta—verse 30). It is not only the longest but also clearly the central element in Justinian’s discourse. The final section (vv. 127–142) is devoted to a second spirit in Mercury, Romeo di Villanova. Mineo (Mine.1987.1), pp. 91–92, believes that the theme holding this canto together is earthly justice. And see Mazzoni (Mazz.1982.1), p. 159. We need look no farther than the first line of his Institutiones (I.i.1) to see how important that concept was to this man, who had the root of the word inscribed in his very name (iustus is Latin for “just”): “Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuens” (Justice is the constant and perpetual desire to render each his due). [return to English / Italian]
1. It has been suggested (Holl.2001.1, p. 140) that this canto, the only one in the poem spoken by a single voice, is a sort of Dantean version of a miniaturized Aeneid, become, in this handling, a theologized history of Rome. This first verse lends aid to such a view, as it rather dramatically opens this “mini-epic” in medias res, as indeed did the poem that contains it (see the note to Inferno I.1). The uniqueness of Justinian’s canto, the only one in the poem dedicated to a single speaker and to the longest single speech in the poem, reflects the phenomenon addressed in great detail by Wilkins (see the section “Style in Paradiso” in the introduction): The third cantica has fewer speakers, but these speak at greater length than do most of those found in the first two canticles. [return to English / Italian]
2–3. The Eagle, symbol of the Roman Empire, originally, with Aeneas, followed the course of the heavens, encircling the earth from east to west. Subsequently it moved from west (Italy) to east (Constantinople), where Constantine had transferred the seat of the empire in 330, and where Justinian governed from 527 until 565.
Aeneas’s taking Lavinia to wife, not recounted in the Aeneid, is the only Virgilian detail that is reprocessed in Justinian’s epic narrative. [return to English / Italian]
4–6. Dante’s chronology is different from that of most historians; he perhaps reflects one tradition found in some manuscripts of Brunetto Latini’s Tresor, which has it that the initial transfer took place in 333 (and not in 330) and that Justinian assumed the eastern throne only in 539 (and not in 527), some 206 years later, thus accounting for Dante’s error (in verse 4: “two hundred years and more”). For speculation regarding these dates in relation to Dante’s sense of imperial prophecy in the Aeneid, see Hollander and Russo (Holl.2003.1).
The mountains of the Troad, in Asia Minor, are presented as the site of Troy. [return to English / Italian]
4. For Dante’s phrase “the bird of God” (l’uccel di Dio), see its earlier presence in slightly different form: “l’uccel di Giove” (Purg. XXXII.112). [return to English / Italian]
7. Justinian’s words allow a reader to glimpse the heavily theologized nature of this history lesson. The citation (first noted by Baldassare Lombardi, in his comm. to this verse) of Psalm 16:8 (17:8), “sub umbra alarum tuarum” (beneath the shadow of your wings), building on the phrase “l’uccel di Dio” (the bird of God) in verse 4, invests the passage with a sense of divinity that is surely and specifically Christian. [return to English / Italian]
8–9. The succession of the emperors has, in Dante, much the same feeling as that of the popes. One feels in both the presence of divine selection. It is not even a paradox that in Dante a greater solemnity is associated with the emperors, seen as carrying out God’s work even before there were Christian emperors. [return to English / Italian]
10. This verse performs a perfectly balanced five-word chiasmus:
Cesare Giustiniano
fui son
e
Justinian was a ruler and is a citizen of Heaven.
This verse makes a reader mindful of that classical (and modern) poetic convention in which the dead open a colloquy with passersby through the agency of the words inscribed on their tombstones; see Stefano Carrai (Carr.2002.1), pp. 99–105. [return to English / Italian]
11–12. One key element in Justinian’s self-presentation as inspired lawgiver is perhaps surprisingly similar to a key element in Dante’s self-description as inspired poet (see Purgatorio XXIV.52–54 and the note to that tercet). Hollander [Holl.1999.1], pp. 279–81, calls attention to the similarity in the presentations of Dante and Justinian as divinely inspired writers; see vv. 23–24, below: “it pleased God, in His grace, to grant me inspiration / in the noble task to which I wholly gave myself.”
It may seem odd that Dante thought of the Digesta, Justinian’s great winnowing of Roman law into fifty volumes, as having been inspired by the Holy Spirit—but not much more so than that he could have made the same claim for his own poetry. Moments like these make it difficult to deny the daring of the claims this poet makes for the veracity of his own fiction. He had to know how much discomfort this claim would cause, broadening, as it does, the range of those to whom the Spirit had chosen to speak beyond the wildest imagining. (See Mazzoni [Mazz.1982.1], pp. 139–40, for acknowledgment of this dimension of Dante’s strategy [which may seem surprising to those who wish to keep theology and politics separate], pointing to Kantorowicz’s previous and entirely similar understanding.)
The words “[il] primo amor ch’i’ sento” are potentially problematic. We have followed tradition in translating the verb sentire as meaning “feel.” However, it certainly could mean “hear.” The verb is used some 92 other times in the poem; some 32 of these mean “hear,” while some 60 indicate a more general sense of sense perception. See the clear examples of both meanings in a single verse: Purgatorio XXIV.38. Thus we have no reason to believe it could not mean “hear” here. And see the parallel with the phrase “ch’i’odo” at Purgatorio XXIV.57, pointed out by Hollander (Holl.1999.1), p. 279. [return to English / Italian]
13–18. Justinian confesses that he had believed in the monophysite heresy, embraced by Eutyches, which allowed Jesus only a divine nature, that is, denied His humanity. Credit for bringing his view into conformity with orthodoxy is conferred upon Pope Agapetus I (533–536). As Carroll points out (comm. to vv. 1–27), however, Dante has, whether innocently or not, twisted several facts in
order to manufacture his version of a Justinian cured of heresy before he did his inspired work on Roman law; for example, Agapetus came to Constantinople only after the books were finished, while Dante’s account (vv. 22–24) is quite different. Our poet simply must have a Christian compiler of the laws that were to govern Christian Europe; and so he manages to find (“create” might be the better word) him. [return to English / Italian]
19–21. Agapetus is given credit for arguing his case so convincingly that Justinian was persuaded, as would be a contemporary of Dante, by Aristotle’s “law of contradictories.” Tozer (comm. to this tercet) paraphrases as follows: “ ‘[Agapetus’s] article of faith (the two Natures in Christ) I now see clearly, in the same way as you see that of two contradictories one must be false, the other true’; i.e. not as a matter of opinion or inference, but with absolute certainty.” [return to English / Italian]
22–24. Justinian now makes still more specific the dependence of his legal writing on the Holy Spirit. See the note to vv. 11–12. Dante is insistent in establishing the emperor’s conversion as preceding his formulation of the laws, no matter what the facts may have been. [return to English / Italian]