Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  45. Dante’s affection responds to the fondness the anonymous speaker has shown him (see vv. 32–33, 38–39). [return to English / Italian]

  46–48. Dante’s presence in the heavens has already been presented as increasing the paradisiac joy of the blessèd (see, for example, Par. V.105). [return to English / Italian]

  49–51. Charles presents himself as the good ruler, whose early death deprived Europe of his many virtues, but also unleashed the evil of others who came to power in his absence from the scene. “Charles Martel, eldest son of Charles II of Naples and Anjou and Mary, daughter of Stephen IV (V) of Hungary; he was born in 1271; and in 1291 he married Clemence of Habsburg, daughter of the Emperor Rudolf I, by whom he had three children, Charles Robert (Carobert) (afterwards king of Hungary), Clemence (married Louis X of France), and Beatrice; he died at Naples in 1295 at the age of 24” (T). He died, narrowly predeceasing his wife, Clemenza, of the plague, although some were of the opinion that he had been poisoned. Dante’s other great hope, for his own political ends as well as his idealistic sense of the imperial role of Italy, Henry VII, had died recently (24 August 1313). That event, dashing even Dante’s unrealistic hopes for the triumph of the principle of restored imperial leadership, probably colored his reflections about the untimely death of Charles eighteen years earlier. [return to English / Italian]

  52–54. Carroll (comm. to these verses) has this to say about this tercet: “It is a mistake to say, as is sometimes done, that this is a mere temporary concealment due to the sudden increase of joy caused by this meeting with his friend. Doubtless there was this increase of joy, and therefore of light, for Dante expressly says so (Par. VIII.46–48); but from the very first he describes them as ‘lamps’ and ‘sparks’ within a flame [see the note to verse 19]. There is no indication that at any time he saw them in their own proper forms.” [return to English / Italian]

  55–57. Whatever fantasy Dante may have had of a better (nonexilic) existence had Charles remained alive and a power on the peninsula, his use of the verb amare and the noun amore in this tercet, spoken by Charles in Venus, shows how the poet has reconceptualized the nature of love from Dido’s kind to spiritual friendship (see the note to Inf. II.61). For an essay on the two Venuses, see Landino’s proem to this canto. Pertile (Pert.2001.1), p. 60, is not alone in objecting that Charles does not seem to be present here in the role of lover, if Cunizza, Folchetto, and Rahab (found in the next canto) all do. Indeed, his lengthy self-presentation (vv. 49–84) is exclusively political in nature. For an attempt to link Charles and Venus, see Boyde (Boyd.1993.1), p. 285: “Perhaps we are meant to infer that the rays of Venus may dispose a ‘gentle heart’ to disinterested friendship, as well as to luxuria.” That is a reasonable response to Dante’s situation of Charles in this planet. Nonetheless, Benvenuto da Imola portrays Charles as a “son of Venus” (comm. to vv. 31–39): “fuit vere filius Veneris quia amorosus, gratiosus, vagus, habens in se quinque invitantia hominem ad amorem, scilicet, sanitatem, pulcritudinem, opulentiam, otium, et juventutem” (… he was indeed a son of Venus, amorous, graceful, eager, possessing five qualities that promote a man’s disposition to love, i.e., good health, physical attractiveness, wealth, leisure, and youth).

  Ragni (Ragn.1989.2), pp. 145–52, shows that Dante’s presentation of Charles Martel accords with his presentation of the ideal ruler in Monarchia (I.xi.6–18).

  See Arnaldi (Arna.1992.1), pp. 55–56 (cited by Picone [Pico.2002.3], p. 124) for the appealing notion that, when Charles visited Florence in 1294, he and Dante met in the environment of S. Maria Novella, where at this period visiting heads of state were customarily lodged and where Dante may have also been involved. See his own words: “I began to go where she [Philosophy] was truly revealed, namely to the schools of the religious orders [Dominicans at S. Maria Novella, Franciscans at S. Croce] and to the disputations held by the philosophers” (Conv. II.xii.7—tr. R. Lansing). Thus the context of Dante’s new “love” (for the Lady Philosophy) is understandably referred to. It must have permeated his and Charles’s discussions at the time, as may be evidenced by Charles’s reference to the first ode of the Convivio, usually dated to around this time (ca. 1293–94). [return to English / Italian]

  58–63. The familiar technique of locating territories by their watery limits is employed here to identify Provence, part of the dowry (see Purg. XX.61) of Beatrice, daughter of Raymond Berenger, wife of Charles I of Anjou, and grandmother of Charles Martel. Upon the death of his father, Charles II (who in fact survived him by fourteen years, dying in 1309), he would have inherited the titles to lordship as Count of Provence.

  The second tercet points to southern Italy, where Charles would have inherited kingship over the kingdom of Naples (as a result of the Vespri Siciliani [1282], no longer of Sicily as well): “The kingdom of Apulia in Ausonia, or Lower Italy, embracing Bari on the Adriatic, Gaeta in the Terra di Lavoro on the Mediterranean, and C[a]tona in Calabria; a region bounded on the north by the Tronto emptying into the Adriatic, and the Verde (or Garigliano) emptying into the Mediterranean” (Longfellow’s comm. to verse 61). [return to English / Italian]

  64–66. Charles inherited the kingship of Hungary through his mother. Crowned in absentia (1292), in Aix, he never exercised his rights to rulership, a king in title only. Hungary is farther along the Danube, past Austrian lands (“its German banks”), to the east and south. [return to English / Italian]

  67–75. The fourth realm, which might have been Charles’s to lose by his untimely death had not it already been lost because of the Sicilian Vespers (1282), was actually referred to in Dante’s time by its classical name “Trinacria” (see Bosco/Reggio, comm. to vv. 67–70), possibly to avoid reminding people that the kingdom of Sicily (currently an independent entity, under the control of the House of Aragon) used to contain the territories of Naples.

  Picone (Pico.2002.3), p. 127, following Arnaldi’s suggestion (Arna. 1992.1, pp. 51, 57), thinks that Dante may here be imagining a second cultural “golden age” in Sicily if Charles and his heirs had only governed the island. [return to English / Italian]

  68–69. Pachynus and Pelorus are the ancient names for Capes Passero and Faro, which form “arms” that stretch out at either end of the eastern shore of Sicily (the present-day Gulf of Catania). For Pelorus, see the note to Purgatorio XIV.31–42. [return to English / Italian]

  70. Tifeo (Typhon [or Typhoeus]), also referred to by the variant Tifo (Inf. XXXI.124), was a hundred-headed monster who attempted to acquire power over all creatures. Jupiter struck him down with his thunderbolt and buried him in Tartarus under Mt. Aetna, the eruptions of which were supposedly due to his exertions to escape (see Ovid, Metamorphoses V.346–358, where Typhon’s two hands are said to be pilloried by Pelorus and Pachynus). Dante dispenses with “classical erudition” in the name of “modern science”: The clouds of smoke hanging over the area are not the result of Typhon’s struggles to escape, but of sulphur burning in the earth. For this explanation, Tozer (comm. to verse 72) suggests that Dante found a source in Isidore of Seville (Etym. XIV.8). [return to English / Italian]

  75. The so-called Vespri siciliani were begun at the hour of Vespers on Easter Monday of 1282 in Palermo. The uprising resulted in the French losing control, eventually of all Sicily, which ended up being ruled by Spain. [return to English / Italian]

  76–78. The debate over the most likely interpretation of these lines goes back to the fourteenth century, one school of interpretation insisting that the phrase “l’avara povertà di Catalogna” (the greedy poverty of Catalonia) refers to the Spanish courtiers who will accompany Charles’s brother Robert to Italy once he is “put on” (in 1309), the other, that it is Robert’s own avarice that is worthy of a Spaniard. The first interpretation currently is the most favored, but counterarguments are presented by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) and Picone (Pico.2002.3), pp. 128–29. Picone (p. 128n.) argues that antivedere does not here have its usual meaning (“see in advance”), but refers to
a past event (a necessary choice if one believes that the event referred to does not lie in Robert’s future). However, see the note to vv. 79–84. And see Barolini (Baro.1984.1), p. 65n., documenting the three other appearances of the verb in the poem (Inf. XXVIII.78; Purg. XXIII.109; Purg. XXIV.46). In all four contexts the prediction of future occurrences is the subject.

  Charles’s brother was a great enemy to Henry VII. Less than a year after Henry’s death, on 15 March 1314, Pope Clement V announced Robert’s appointment as imperial vicar, a position that Henry had held. Robert reigned as king of Naples until 1343, long enough, that is, to place the laurel wreath on Petrarch’s head on 6 April 1341. Dante was spared knowledge of that coronation. If Canto VI is about the triumphs of Rome, this canto is concerned with political defeats, those suffered by Charles and by Dante: Charles’s death brought his brother to the throne and into collaboration with Clement. [return to English / Italian]

  79–84. Robert and his “ship of state” (the kingdom of Naples) are already so heavily burdened with difficulties that it is in greater danger of foundering if it is loaded with still more deadweight. Since Robert’s avarice is already “on board,” that comes close to ruling out the second interpretation of verse 77 (see the note to vv. 76–78), leaving the avarice of his Spanish followers as the better reading. For barca with this sense (“ship of state”), see Paradiso XVI.96. [return to English / Italian]

  82. This verse has long been the cause of dispute: To whom precisely does the phrase “worthy stock” refer? Since Charles’s following discourse centers on the differing virtues of fathers and sons (with fathers generally getting the better of the comparisons), some suggest that the reference here is to the otherwise despised Charles II of Anjou, Charles Martel’s father (see, e.g., Lombardi, comm. to vv. 82–84, for this view). Tozer (comm. to vv. 82–84) finds justification in such a reading in Paradiso XIX.128, where the elder Charles is granted a single virtue (and thus a certain native liberality). As uncomfortable as it may leave one feeling, that is perhaps the best available gloss. [return to English / Italian]

  83. This also is currently a disputed verse. What is the reference of the noun milizia? It was only in the twentieth century, with Torraca’s complex and interesting gloss (comm. to vv. 82–84), that the possibility that the word might refer to soldiers is even broached. All who have a previous opinion are certain that the word refers to administrators, government officials, or the like. We have accepted their view for our translation. It allows, by the way, the understanding that the members of Robert’s Spanish entourage may be included in the group, which perhaps accounts for Bosco/Reggio’s insistence that the word refers to “mercenary soldiers” (comm. to this verse), a reading in which they are the first. [return to English / Italian]

  85–90. Dante tells Charles that he is glad on two counts, first that his royal friend knows of Dante’s gladness without his needing to express it; second, that he knows of it in God, because he is saved. [return to English / Italian]

  91–93. Dante continues by wondering, on the basis of vv. 82–83, how a good father can have a bad son. See Picone (Pico.2002.3), pp. 129–31, for a clarifying discussion of this passage and the rest of the canto, which, he argues, relies for its basic point on a biblical text, the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3–23). [return to English / Italian]

  94–96. For the insistent presence of this image in the canto, see the note to verse 136. [return to English / Italian]

  97–111. Tozer (comm. to these verses) summarizes Charles’s thoughts: “The argument is as follows: God, in creating the universe, provided not only for the existence of things, but for their working in the most perfect manner; and the instrumentality which He appointed for that purpose was the stellar influences, which are directed by the angels or Intelligences who preside over them: Were it not for these, chaos and not order would prevail.” [return to English / Italian]

  97–99. God sets the mark of his Providence upon his creatures, not through his direct creation (which is reserved for the individual human soul), but indirectly, through the stars and planets associated with the eight lowest celestial spheres. This arrangement maintains human freedom of the will and yet allows God the role of ordering his Creation, thus avoiding chaos (see verse 108). [return to English / Italian]

  100–102. God foresees not only the nature of the composite human soul (not only the part that he makes directly, the rational soul, but the animal and vegetative souls, that he helps shape indirectly, by agency of the celestial bodies), but its ultimate perfection as it prepares to leave its body. The word salute, as readers of the Vita nuova (where it also puns on saluto [salutation]) will recall, is utilized by Dante in such ways as to run the gamut from physical “health” to more generalized “well-being” to Christian “salvation,” and it probably has polyvalent significance here. [return to English / Italian]

  103–105. The image of an arrow striking its mark once again meets the reader’s eyes (see Par. I.119 and V.91). If one had to pick one passage in the poem that might lead a reader to believe that Dante’s view of predestination verges on determinism, this tercet might be a popular selection. Yet, once we reflect on the way Dante has held back, avoiding dangerous formulations in the previous tercet, we can sense that he is both aware of the pitfall and determined to avoid it. For the wider meaning in Dante’s use of the verb disporre (verse 104), see the note to Paradiso XXX.138. [return to English / Italian]

  106–108. As he concludes his “lecture” on predestination, Charles makes it clear why he has had to come so close to the shoals of determinism, where, after Augustine, many Christian thinkers have come close to sinking: If God does not order the universe, it would not have any order at all. Nature, left to its own, would produce only chaos, as King Lear discovered. Insistence on God’s control of so much of the field of human action might seem to whittle away the uses of free will to a point approaching nullity. Yet Dante, through Beatrice (see Par. V.19–24), has already insisted on the efficacy of God’s greatest gift to humankind. [return to English / Italian]

  109–111. Charles ends his exposition by an argument from impossibles. For God and his informed angels to produce chaos, they would have to be deficient, and that is impossible. [return to English / Italian]

  112–114. This brief exchange may remind readers of the similar sort of question-and-answer drill performed by Socrates and one of his “student” interlocutors (whose response is the deferential “yes, Socrates” that still strikes readers as comical) in Platonic dialogues. As Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. to verse 114), Dante is here citing an Aristotelian maxim, “Nature never fails to provide the things that are necessary,” which he also cites in Convivio IV.xxiv.10, Monarchia I.x.1, and Questio 44. [return to English / Italian]

  115–117. Aristotle again sets Charles’s agenda; see the opening of the Politics: “Man is by nature a political animal” (the Latin Aristotle in fact said that he is a civile [civic] one, thus accounting for Dante’s cive, which we have translated as “social”). [return to English / Italian]

  118–120. To the next proposition (that diversity among humankind is desirable [see Aristotle, Politics I.i.2]), Charles himself supplies Dante’s agreement (the poet having in fact already done so in Conv. IV.iv.5, when he speaks not only of the social needs of human life, but of the need for diversity of occupation among the members of the community). [return to English / Italian]

  121. The poet now characterizes Charles’s method of argumentation as “deductive,” reminding the reader of the Scholastic style of his conversation. [return to English / Italian]

  122–126. And so, Charles concludes, your natural dispositions to take up one thing or something else must differ one from another. It results that, in order to have leading practitioners of various necessary human tasks, one of you becomes Solon (a legislator), another Xerxes (a general), still another Melchizedech (a priest), and finally Daedalus (an artisan). These four “orders” of society include the most necessary activiti
es.

  Why Dante chose to identify Daedalus by the tragic flight of his son, Icarus, is not clear, unless we are to understand the reference as blending with the next topic (as some commentators do), the differences between members of the same family. [return to English / Italian]

  127–129. See Tozer’s paraphrase and interpretation of these lines: “ ‘[T]he nature of the revolving spheres, which, like a seal on wax, imprints itself on mankind, exercises its art well, but does not distinguish one house from another.’ In other words: The stellar influences produce individuality of character in men, but do not favour one family more than another by perpetuating excellence in it. Dante is returning to the question, How can a bad son proceed from a good father?” [return to English / Italian]

  127. The word natura is focal to this discussion. Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 37, points out that its seven appearances in this canto represent the heaviest concentration of the word in the poem. That is about one-eleventh of its roughly seventy-seven occurrences. [return to English / Italian]

  130–132. Quirinus was the name given to Romulus, Rome’s first king, posthumously, when he was celebrated as a god. His mother, Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin (in some versions of the story), gave birth to twins and claimed that Mars had lain with her. Daniello (comm. to this tercet) may have been the first to refer, in this context, to Virgil (Aen. I.292–293). But see Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet), who “adjusts” the Virgilian passage to the more appropriate verse 274, where, according to Virgil, Ilia (another name for Rhea Silvia?), a priestess, bears to Mars her twin offspring, Romulus and Remus. (It is striking that neither here nor anywhere in this or in his other works does Dante mention Remus, Romulus’s twin, especially here, given the facts that he has just considered Jacob and Esau and that their story has obvious similarities to that of this pair of emulous fraternal twins, one of whom [Romulus] eventually killed the other.) And thus Dante’s view (and the standard view in the commentaries) is at some variance from Virgil’s presentation of the immortal bloodlines of the founder of Rome. See, for example, Umberto Cosmo (Cosm.1936.1), p. 78, referring to the fact that: “… il figlio di un ignoto plebeo può accogliere in sé la virtù di fondare una città come Roma, e salire tanto alto nella riputazione universale da esser ritenuto per disceso da un Dio” (… the son of an unknown commoner may harbor the potency exhibited in founding a city like Rome, in making his way to the pinnacle of general approbation so as to be considered descended from a god [Mars]). In the instance of Jacob and Esau, Dante would seem to be interested only in making the point that twins may differ from one another, while in that of Romulus and his unnamed plebeian father, the difference involves father and son. But the reader, as Dante must have known, will also consider Remus as a Roman Esau. [return to English / Italian]