Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  31. Cunizza’s formulation, once we consider that one sibling is seen by Dante in Hell while the other addresses him from this planet, is surely meant to remind us of the remark of Charles Martel about the differing natures of members of the same family (Esau and Jacob) in the last canto (VIII.130–131). [return to English / Italian]

  34–36. Cunizza is saying that she no longer begrudges herself her sins because she neither feels the impulse that led to them nor the remorse that followed them (both in the world and in Purgatory), which were washed away by Lethe. See the similar view of Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 25–36), dealing with the notion that Dante is contradicting himself when he presents Cunizza as remembering her sins. Folco will state the proposition a little more clearly than she does in vv. 103–104: “Here we don’t repent, but smile instead, / not at our fault, which comes not back to mind” but at God’s Providence, that foresaw the sin and its redemption. The “common herd” will not understand that she is not wracked by penitential thoughts of her sins. [return to English / Italian]

  37. Cunizza indicates Folco di Marsiglia, who will follow her in speaking to Dante at verse 82. [return to English / Italian]

  38–42. Dante would seem to hold to two positions, one “orthodox” in its condemnation of vainglory (see Purg. XI.100–102, where fame in the world is but a “gust of wind,” variable and of short durance) and one less so, if still more or less acceptable in a Christian universe, renowned for the performance of good deeds. While the commentators are not of one opinion, it does not seem likely that Dante here is talking about the vain sort of fame, but of the second sort. See the even stronger positive evaluation of such renown in Paradiso XVIII.31–33, that enjoyed by the last souls whom Dante observes in the heaven of Mars, those who in the world made such a mark “that any poet’s page would be enriched” by containing their names. [return to English / Italian]

  40. Most readers take this line as we do, that is, this century marker shall occur five more times before Folco’s fame dies down. There was apparently a tradition, if it is referred to derisively by St. Augustine (Enarr. Ps. 6.1), that the history of humankind, from Adam until Judgment Day, would last 7,000 years. That would, according to Dante’s time line, make human history on this earth extend roughly to the year 1800, since 6,498 years have passed since God formed Adam (see Par. XXVI.118–123). [return to English / Italian]

  41. Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 39, contrasts this use of the word eccellente with the eccellenza of Purgatorio XI.87, where it has the clear sense of a need to excel based on pride. Here (if not all the commentators are in accord with this view), it clearly refers to extraordinary goodness, which lives on after one has died, forming a model for others to follow. St. Francis, for example, had exactly this effect on the world, galvanizing countless people to set their lives to doing good. [return to English / Italian]

  43–45. The current inhabitants of the Marca Trivigiana, its confines traced (to the west) by the Tagliamento and (to the east) by the Adige, although they have been “scourged” by the various tyrants of the region, Ezzelino, his brother Alberigo, and others, have not, according to Cunizza, learned their lesson. [return to English / Italian]

  46–48. But they shall learn that lesson, one of obedience to Cangrande, insisting on his role as imperial vicar even after the death of Henry VII. Cunizza first foretells the disastrous defeat of the Guelph Paduan army in the fall of 1314 in Vicenza, a Ghibelline city that it had retaken the day before, only to be completely routed in a surprise attack by a small imperial force led by Cangrande. For more on this battle, and the role of Albertino Mussato in it, see the note to vv. 29–30. [return to English / Italian]

  49–51. Next Cunizza prophesies the brutal death of Rizzardo da Camino, ruler of Treviso (1306–12), murdered in his own palace while playing chess by a peasant wielding a pruning hook. He was married to a daughter of Nino Visconti (see Purg. VIII.53) in 1308. Thus Dante would have probably looked with special disfavor on his notorious philandering, which may have been the motivating cause for his murder. As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out, Dante nods here in the present tenses of the verbs in vv. 50–51: Rizzardo was not ruling the city in 1300, nor was the plot to kill him being hatched in that year.

  The presence of Rizzardo here is perhaps intended to remind the reader of the high praise lavished upon his father, captain-general of Treviso (1283–1306), “il buon Gherardo” of Purgatorio XVI.124. See also Convivio IV.xiv.12, with its praise of Gherardo and mention of the rivers Sile and Cagnano. Thus we have here another of the examples, so dear to Dante, of the unpredictability of nobility’s being passed on through the seed of a noble father. “Good wombs have borne bad sons” is King Lear’s version of this reflection. [return to English / Italian]

  52–60. Finally, Cunizza turns her prophetic attention to Feltro (Feltre; see Inf. I.105). Alessandro Novello, a Trevisan, was bishop of Feltre (1298–1320). In 1314 he gave three Ferrarese brothers, Ghibellines, refuge in the city, but then turned them over to the Guelphs of Ferrara, who cut their heads off. [return to English / Italian]

  54. The word malta has caused difficulty. Before Petrocchi, most texts capitalized it. (There were at least six prisons in Italy that bore the name Malta.) But it is also possible that Dante meant what Petrocchi thought he did (a generalized sense of “prison”). If, however, he was referring to a particular place, most recent discussants prefer the choice of the prison for ecclesiastics situated in Lake Bolsena. [return to English / Italian]

  61–63. Cunizza concludes her speech by reminding Dante of the actual location of the angelic order of Thrones, “above,” that is, just below the Cherubim (and thus third from the highest rank, occupied by the Seraphim). For the implicit rebuke to Dante, both here and there, see the note to Paradiso VIII.34–39. Edward Peters (Pete.1991.1) points out that Thomas Aquinas associates the order of the Thrones with theologically correct human governance. [return to English / Italian]

  63. Cunizza is aware that to mortals her three prophecies (vv. 43–60), all of them detailing the just punishment of her “countrymen” from the Marca Trivigiana, may seem cruel, while to the saved they are a cause for further celebration of God’s justice. [return to English / Italian]

  64–66. As soon as she breaks off her words to Dante (and she has been speaking quite a while, vv. 25–63), she joins her companions in dance and, like them, contemplates God. [return to English / Italian]

  67–68. Dante “knew” the next soul from Cunizza’s words at vv. 37–42. [return to English / Italian]

  69. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 67–69) report that the balasso is a ruby found in Asia, in Balascam (today Badakhshan, a region including northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan [see Eric Ormsby, “A mind emparadised,” The New Criterion 26 {Nov. 2007}: 73f.]), according to the thirty-fifth chapter of Marco Polo’s II milione. [return to English / Italian]

  70–72. The meaning is fairly clear: Here in Paradise (là sù) a living soul, grown more joyful, becomes more refulgent; on earth (qui), a person, made happier, smiles; in Hell (giù), a damned soul, caused to feel greater sadness, darkens in its outer aspect. We never actually see such change in Inferno. This is another example (cf. Inf. XVI.106–108; Inf. XX.127–129) of Dante adding details to his descriptions of earlier scenes. [return to English / Italian]

  73–81. The protagonist’s nine verses indulge in rhetorical flights and playful reproof. For “fancy” rhetoric, consider Dante’s three coinages (vv. 73 and 81), which spectacularly turn pronouns into verbs (“to in-him,” “to in-you,” “to in-me”) at either end of his address to Folco. And then there is his mock impatience with his interlocutor for holding his tongue when Folco can surely see, in God, Dante’s eagerness to know his story. Is this the most “literary” pose we have as yet watched and heard the protagonist assume? Whatever its degree of novelty, it is a delight to observe.

  When we look back from Paradiso XIV.96, we realize that these were the last words spoken by
the protagonist until then. This is by far the longest stretch in the poem in which he remains silent, from here near the end of his stay in Venus, right through his time in the Sun, until just after his arrival in Mars. [return to English / Italian]

  77–78. It is probably no accident that Dante speaks here of the Seraphim, the highest order of angels and associated with the highest form of affection, spiritual love. Folco was, after all, a poet of carnal love, but one who transformed himself into a better kind of lover when he took orders and then when he became God’s flail for heresy. Starting with Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 73–79) and the Ottimo (comm. to vv. 73–78), the early commentators found biblical sources of the six wings of the Seraphim either in the Apocalypse or in Ezechiel. However, beginning with Lombardi (comm. to vv. 77–78), the consensus had moved to Isaiah 6:2, the only passage specifically naming them in the Bible: “And above [the Lord’s throne] stood the seraphim; each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly.” [return to English / Italian]

  82–93. The poet, through the words of Folco, locates the Mediterranean, the second largest sea on the earth’s surface after Oceanus (verse 84), which surrounds all the land on our globe, on the map of Europe. Moving from west to east, Folco makes the Mediterranean extend 90 degrees in latitude, more than twice its length in modern cartography. Folco places his birthplace, the as-yet-unnamed Marseilles, between the Ebro’s mouth in Spain and that of the Magra, in Italy, which separates Liguria from Tuscany. Nearly sharing the time of both sunrise and sunset, Folco continues, his native city and Bougie (on the North African coast) thus nearly share the same meridian of longitude. This rebus leads a patient reader to his city’s name. Carroll (comm. to vv. 82–92), at least in part to excuse the twelve-verse periphrasis for “I was born in Marseilles,” insists that Folco is looking down, from the epicycle of Venus, with an astronaut’s view of the Mediterranean, and describing what he sees. [return to English / Italian]

  85. For the context offered by the citation of Aeneid IV.622–629, see Balfour (Balf.1995.1), p. 137. He points out that IV.628, “litora litoribus contraria” (shore with opposing shore), recognized by some as the source of Dante’s “tra ’ discordanti liti” (between its opposing shores) is drawn from Dido’s penultimate utterance, her curse on Aeneas and his offspring. “Dante’s allusion to Dido’s curse, therefore, underlines the far-reaching consequences of Aeneas’s illicit love, for the conflict between Islamic East and Christian West is, for Dante, a continuation of the enmity between Carthage and Rome.” [return to English / Italian]

  93. For the citation of Lucan here (Phars. III.453), see the notes to Purgatorio XVIII.101–102 and Paradiso VI.55–72. [return to English / Italian]

  94. Folchetto di Marsiglia was born circa 1160 and died in 1231. His poems, written in Provençal roughly between 1180 and 1195, were known to Dante, who praises them highly (if the only one referred to is his canzone “Tan m’abellis l’amoros pensamen” [So greatly does the thought of love please me]), naming him by his more familiar name as poet (Folchetus in Latin, which would yield Folchetto in Italian, as many indeed do refer to him) in De vulgari eloquentia II.vi.6. Dante “recycles” the opening of the first line of that canzone in the first line he gives to Arnaut Daniel (Purg. XXVI.140, “Tan m’abellis vostre cortes deman” [So greatly does your courteous question please me]). At least several years before 1200, Folchetto left the life of the world behind (including a wife and two sons), becoming first a friar, then abbot of Torronet in Toulon, and finally bishop of Toulouse in 1205. He was deeply involved in a leadership role in the bloody and infamous Albigensian Crusade (1208–29). As Longfellow has it (comm. to this verse), “The old nightingale became a bird of prey.”

  One wonders if Dante’s use of Folco (rather than Folchetto) for him in this canto mirrors his sense of the “new man” that eventuated once he turned from love and amorous poetry to the religious life. For a perhaps similar appreciation, if it is not clearly stated, see Bertoldi (Bert.1913.1), p. 27, noting that St. Dominic was at Rome in 1216 “in compagnia del vescovo Folco, l’amoroso Folchetto di Marsiglia.…” On Dante’s sense of Folco’s two-part “career,” see Barolini (Baro.1984.1), pp. 114–22. [return to English / Italian]

  95–96. Folco’s meaning is that the heaven of Venus has its light increased by the presence of his soul, now wrapped in a sheath of light because he is saved, just as it once stamped his nature with an amorous disposition. [return to English / Italian]

  96. While Folchetto’s status as poet seems not to be alluded to here at all, many deal with it as part of the context of his presence, understandably assuming that Dante is centrally interested in that. Among those involved in examining the possible Old French and Provençal sources of Dante’s poems, Michelangelo Picone has been particularly active. Opposing the views advanced by Picone (Pico.1980.1 and Pico.1983.1) and Rossi (Ross.1989.1) and reaffirmed by Antonelli (Anto.1995.2), p. 347, Pietro Beltrami (Belt.2004.1), p. 33n., argues that Folco is not to be taken as the highest exponent of Troubadour lyrics found in the poem, but rather as a poet who has given over poetry for religion and is saved for that reason alone. That is, Folco’s distinction in Paradise lies in his rejection of poetry, not in his continued embrace of it. Compare the similar opinion of Luca Curti (Curt.2002.1), p. 146: “… but now [we hear not the troubadour] but only the bishop Folco, in whose discourse poetry has not even a marginal presence.…” [return to English / Italian]

  97–102. Dido (“the daughter of Belus”) was no more aflame with love (bringing grief to Sychaeus [Dido’s dead husband; see Aen. IV.552 and Inf. V.62] and Creusa [Aeneas’s dead wife; see Aen. II.736–794 and the note to Purg. II.79–81]) than Folco was. (However, since the next two classical lovers are both apparently drawn from Ovid’s Heroides, Dante may be thinking of the portrait of Dido found there [Book VII].) Nor was Phyllis more in love with Demophoön, who betrayed her (see Ovid, Heroides II); nor was Hercules more in love with Iole (see Ovid, Heroides IX). Allegretti (Alle.2002.1), p. 142, suggests that Dante wants us to think of the Heroides in part because the work insists on the adulterous nature of most of the loves it recounts, using faithful Penelope as a counter exemplum to them. [return to English / Italian]

  103–105. The tercet clarifies the similar, but more occluded, statement of Cunizza (vv. 34–36). All the pain of sin is utterly erased from the memory of every saved soul. On this simile, see Jacoff (Jaco.1980.1). [return to English / Italian]

  106–108. A problematic passage. We have followed Bosco/Reggio’s reading of it (see their comm. to this tercet), in which a Florentine form of the verb torniare (to turn, as on a lathe) is seen as bringing the meaning into focus, as follows: “Here, in Paradise, we contemplate the craft revealed in the creation that God’s love makes beautiful; we also discern the goodness through which the heavens give form to the world below.”

  For a lengthy and unapologetic negative response to Dante’s saving of Folco, see the judgment of John S. Carroll (comm. to vv. 82–102), which concludes as follows: “It certainly gives us a shock to find a noble spirit like Dante’s so subdued to the colour and temper of its time that deeds which sink Ezzelino to perdition exalt Folco to Paradise, because done in the name of Christ and authority of His Vicar.”

  For the other appearance of the phrase “cotanto affetto,” see Inferno V.125, where it applies to carnal affections. Folco’s use of it now is very different, we may imagine, than it would have been in his flaming youth. [return to English / Italian]

  109–114. Having read Dante’s mind, Folco changes the subject from himself to the particularly dazzling light (“like a sunbeam gleaming on clear water”) about which he knows Dante is curious. Once we find out who it is, we understand why he has tried to create a sense of excited mystery around this being. [return to English / Italian]

  115–117. The enjambment in the second line of the tercet creates Dante’s desired effect: surprise. Not only does Rahab’s
name cause us (at least temporary) consternation, what Folco goes on to say of her does also. Not only is a whore among the saved, she is among the loftiest souls whom we see here.

  Among the first commentators, only the author of the Codice Cassinese (comm. to verse 117) said that by the “highest rank” Dante indicates the Empyrean, which is what he should have meant, since none of the Hebrew (and a very few other) souls saved in the Harrowing of Hell is anywhere recorded as going anywhere else, not even by Dante. That anonymous commentator would wait for nearly five and a half centuries for company (Torraca in 1905 [comm. to this tercet]). Torraca also believes the reference is to the Empyrean. The passage is, as many commentators protest, difficult to understand. Nonetheless, Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 115–117) seems quite certain that her highest “rank” pertains to the hierarchy of the souls gathered in Venus. Most of those after him who elect to identify her location also think the reference is to the planet. Only in the last one hundred years has the pendulum of scholarly opinion begun to swing, if only slightly, in the direction of the Empyrean. Allegretti (Alle.2002.1), pp. 143–44, makes a strong case for that resolution. The only problem is that in the entire passage, all other references are unquestionably to the sphere of Venus (vv. 113 [qui]; 115 [là]; 116 [di nostr’ ordine congiunta]; 118–120 [questo cielo … fu assunta]; 122 [in alcun cielo]). And so it would seem that this is yet another instance of an authorial slip (see the note to vv. 119–123). [return to English / Italian]