Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  28–30. The Sun is seen as redirecting God’s beneficial gifts (e.g., the warmth that causes vegetative growth) down to earth, as well as, while everlasting itself, giving us, who live here, our main means of telling time. [return to English / Italian]

  31. This “point,” to which the poet has referred (in verse 9), is in the constellation Aries. [return to English / Italian]

  32–33. For this motion, see Dante’s description of the diurnal movement of the Sun in Convivio III.v.14, “rising upward like the screw of a[n olive] press” (tr. R. Lansing). The spring ushers in the lengthening sunlight of early summer (March 21 to June 21), which begins to subside only after the summer solstice. [return to English / Italian]

  35–36. Grandgent (comm. to vv. 35–36) cites A. Fazzi (GSLI, vol. 73, p. 112), making the distinction between an uncaused, spontaneous thought, which is what Dante is describing here, and the sort of thought he had referred to earlier (Inf. XXIII.10: “Just as one thought issues from another, / so, from the first, another now was born”). [return to English / Italian]

  37–39. Beatrice is described in terms that recall Convivio I.ii.14, describing the life of St. Augustine: “the progress of his life, which proceeded from bad to good, good to better, and better to best” (tr. R. Lansing). [return to English / Italian]

  40–42. Placella (Plac.1987.1), p. 222, follows Petrocchi in thinking that this effulgence is not that emanating from Beatrice (as most early commentators believed, perhaps encouraged by her presence in the preceding terzina), but of the souls in the Sun, who are so bright that they outshine even that brightest of all celestial bodies. For a fairly early instance (ca. 1791) of the current majority sense of this tercet, see Lombardi (comm. to vv. 40–45), citing the prophet Daniel, whose final vision (Daniel 12:3) portrays the wise as shining with the brightness of the sun. [return to English / Italian]

  43–48. The brightness that Dante saw in these souls, which made them stand out from the Sun, not by being a different color, but by being even brighter than the brightest thing known to our mortal vision, simply cannot be described by the poet, outdone by God’s art, as it were. For discussion of this contrast in these lines between Dante’s limited ability as artist in comparison to God’s, see Barolini (Baro.1992.1), pp. 196–97. [return to English / Italian]

  49–51. Dante refers to those who show themselves in the Sun, the fourth of the planets, as the “fourth family”; God makes them happy by demonstrating his other two Trinitarian aspects, Wisdom (manifest in the Son) and Love (present in the Holy Spirit). See the opening of this canto, vv. 1–3.

  If the preceding six verses described Dante’s inability to portray the brightness of God’s creatures, this tercet proclaims God’s “art” in demonstrating His triune nature. [return to English / Italian]

  52–54. Beatrice plays with one of the most present medieval metaphors, the Sun as representing God (see Conv. III.xii.7), the “sun” of the angels, his “planets” in the Empyrean, who has raised Dante to the height of this heaven, home of the physical sun. [return to English / Italian]

  59–60. Discussing these lines, Curti (Curt.2002.1), pp. 150–52, paraphrases them as follows: “… my mind, so concentrated on God that Beatrice was eclipsed and forgotten, divided His splendor into many things, so that I saw many splendors sparkling” (p. 151). As opposed to his “forgetting” of Beatrice while he was still on earth, looked back upon with horror in Purgatorio XXX and XXXI, this forgetful behavior is laudable, as, in the next tercet, Beatrice’s own reaction indicates. [return to English / Italian]

  61–63. Beatrice’s delighted smile at being forgotten in favor of God brings Dante’s attention back to her and, surely we are meant to understand, to the souls in the Sun. [return to English / Italian]

  64–69. The souls in the Sun make Beatrice and Dante the center of their circle (“crown”) just as the halo around the Moon (dwelling of the former huntress, Diana) is formed by the vapor in our atmosphere that attaches “cloth” to the “belt” of Latona’s daughter. [return to English / Italian]

  70–75. In the Empyrean (la corte del cielo), whence Dante has returned, there are jewels (the saints and/or the angels?) so precious that they may not be removed from the kingdom (resolved from metaphor, be described here on earth), and it was of them that these souls in the Sun sang. In this canto we are given less indication than in any we have read (in which the souls are making musical tribute) about what exactly the souls were singing; eventually we learn that the conjoined choruses of the two groups of twelve theologians are singing of the Incarnation (Par. XIII.27) and of the Trinity (Par. XIII.26; XIV.28–31), as Carroll has pointed out (comm. to vv. 70–93). One who does not put wings on himself (Icarus-like?), as Dante has, to fly up to see these “jewels” might as well await word about them from the dumb. One has to see for oneself, apparently (since not even Dante is telling), that is, take the trip through the heavens that, as far as we learn, only Paul and Dante were privileged to enjoy while still in this life.

  A question remains unanswered in the commentaries. Are the singing souls, clearly presented as being situated in the Sun, distinguished from the “jewels,” about whom they are singing and who are in the Empyrean, or are they counted among their companions here in the Sun? While many commentators cite Inferno II.125 for the phrase corte del cielo, no one seems to be bothered by the fact that it there clearly refers to the Empyrean, specifically referring to Mary, Lucy, Rachel, and Beatrice. It seems necessary to understand that the twelve theologians are singing of exalted “colleagues” whom they have temporarily left behind them in the Empyrean, for instance, the Virgin Mary, possibly St. Francis himself, and other “stars” of the afterlife, too precious to be sent below for Dante’s instruction or to be identified by their descending colleagues in beatitude.

  To explain the mercantile reference in this passage, Torraca (comm. to vv. 70–73) refers to Marco Polo’s II milione (XXV, LXXIX), where the traveler reports that the Great Khan would not allow rubies (see Par. IX.69 and note), in the first case, or pearls, in the second, to leave his kingdom in order to protect their value, not letting them become common by allowing their export. For Portirelli’s views on Dante’s knowledge of Marco Polo’s voyage, see the note to Purgatorio I.22–24. [return to English / Italian]

  76–81. After the “suns” in the Sun had circled Dante and Beatrice three times, like the stars that circle the poles, they seemed to Dante to resemble ladies in the dance who pause, awaiting the resumption of singing in order to continue with their dance steps. See the description of the practice of ladies who danced to the singing of ballate in Dante’s time in Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 79).

  For a meditation on this canto that takes its departure from these lines, see Freccero, “The Dance of the Stars” (1968), in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (Frec.1986.1), pp. 221–44. [return to English / Italian]

  82–99. Thomas’s first word, “Quando,” is matched by only one other speaker’s first word similarly occupying the last place in its line, that uttered by Ulysses (Inf. XXVI.90). Where Ulysses has epic pretensions in his self-narrative (see the note to Inf. XXVI.90–93), Thomas, another kind of “hero,” one who indeed vigorously pursued virtue and knowledge (and not merely in what we might regard as an advertisement for himself) is a foil to prideful Ulysses. The Greek adventurer’s pride is matched by Thomas’s humility. (His name occurs only after he finishes the eighteen-line introductory portion of his speech, and then only after he has named his teacher. Can anyone imagine Ulysses referring to someone who had been his teacher?) His first self-description (vv. 94–96) intrinsically suggests that he is dramatically different from Ulysses, who in his pursuit of knowledge had companions whom he treated as the mere instruments of his own adventure and whom he destroyed along with himself; Thomas, on the other hand, “was a lamb among the holy flock / led by Dominic along the road / where sheep are fattened if they do not stray.” That last word (vaneggia) surely has a kinship with Ulysses, whose wandering brings
him under the spell of the Siren (at least according to Dante: See Purg. XIX.19–24). What Ulysses did, Thomas chose not to do. [return to English / Italian]

  86–96. It is interesting that this portion of the first utterance of St. Thomas, the great opponent of poetry for its seductive figurative quality, beautiful but simply untrue, contains several metaphors: the “stair” (the ascent of the heavens toward God) that Dante is on; the “wine” (knowledge) that Thomas will share with Dante; the “plants” (souls) that surround Beatrice and him; the “lambs” (friars) who were Thomas and his fellow Dominicans on earth; the “path” (the way to God) that led to his salvation; the “fattening” (knowledge of God’s truth) found in the nourishment of the Word. One can only imagine Thomas’s objection had he been able to read those words, put by Dante into his mouth. The last metaphor will have its second moment in the next canto (Par. XI.25), and then its last and triumphal appearance in the final verse of that canto (XI.139). [return to English / Italian]

  87. The “stair” that is climbed only twice is the pathway to Heaven negotiated by a living soul in grace, who is thus promised a return trip (we again think of St. Paul, Dante’s only known precursor, though unreported miraculous journeys are not ruled out). Grandgent (comm. to this verse) notes that this is a clear prediction of Dante’s ultimate salvation, and refers the reader to a similar earlier gesture in Purgatorio II.91–92 (and see, of course, Purg. XXXII.100–102). [return to English / Italian]

  97–99. Thomas begins his “catalogue of saints,” twelve in number perhaps to remind us of the original apostles, with Albertus Magnus (1193–1280), often referred to as “Doctor Universalis” because of his extensive learning; he taught at Cologne, where Aquinas was one of his pupils. In some quarters it has become fashionable, after the exertions of Bruno Nardi, to argue for the actual preeminence in Dante’s thought of Albert over Thomas. But see Cogan (Coga.1999.1), pp. xxiii–xxiv: “Despite Nardi’s efforts to convince us that Albert the Great was Dante’s preferred philosophical source, it is Aquinas whom Dante chooses as the principal spokesman for theology in the Paradiso, not Albert or any other theologian.” For more detailed arguments that are in basic agreement with this position, see Dumol (Dumo.1998.1), especially pp. 139–66. [return to English / Italian]

  99. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), often referred to as “Doctor Angelicus,” was, in the minds of many, the greatest theologian of his time. It is perhaps fair to say that the position of those of Dante’s readers most interested in the question has swung from the strict Thomistic construction of Dante sponsored by Giovanni Busnelli to the far more concessive views (which perhaps yield too much of Dante’s allegiance to Thomism) of Casella (Case.1950.1) and of two of the leading non-Italian students of the poet’s theology, Étienne Gilson and Kenelm Foster. For an extensive treatment of Dante’s intellectual response to Aquinas, see Gilson’s classic study (Gils.1939.1); and see Foster’s entry “Tommaso d’Aquino,” ED V (1976), pp. 626–49, as well as his much briefer English essay (Fost.1977.1), pp. 56–65. Dante criticism is currently a good deal more “ecumenical,” a position that undergirds Amilcare Iannucci’s fine, brief treatment of this subject (“Theology” in Lansing [Lans.2000.1], pp. 811–15). It would not be going too far to say that Dante is a precursor of at least one aspect of Renaissance humanism, its pleasure in syncretism, a delight in putting together things that would prefer to be kept separate, making new concepts out of the ideas of the unsuspecting (and defenseless) great figures of the past, about some of which they would, had they a voice, surely bellow in complaint. For a cautionary note, indicating the complexity of the entire question of Dante’s various philosophic allegiances, see Simon Gilson (Gils.2001.2), passim. Indeed, while Dante may honor Thomas more than any other theologian, that does not mean that he always agrees with him—far from it. [return to English / Italian]

  103–105. Gratian, the twelfth-century collector and organizer of canon law, who in his Decretum, according to some of Dante’s commentators, tried to harmonize secular and ecclesiastical law, the two courts referred to in verse 104; others believe Dante is referring to two functions of the Church, the sacramental and the judgmental.

  After the slam Dante has put in Folco’s mouth against decretals (Par. IX.133–135), it seems strange to some that Gratian is so well rewarded. See Forti (Fort.1968.1), pp. 371–73, for the history of the dispute among the commentators caused by Dante’s inclusion of Gratian here. And see Adversi (Adve.1995.1). [return to English / Italian]

  106–108. An almost exact contemporary of Gratian, Peter Lombard, the “Master of the Sentences” (his major work was the compendium Sententiarum Libri, presenting an elaborate overview of dogmatic theology). He says, in his preface to that work, that, like the poor widow in Luke’s Gospel (21:1–4), he hopes to make his small contribution to God’s treasury. [return to English / Italian]

  109–114. Solomon, son of David and king of Israel, the question of whose salvation was much discussed during the Middle Ages (see the reference to the world’s hunger for news of him in vv. 110–111, along with its prime reasons for doubting that he was saved, his prodigious carnal affections in his old age, and his falling into idolatry as part of these amours [I Kings 11:1–9]; these missteps were compounded, for some, by his authorship of the Canticle of Canticles). However, if the Truth be true (i.e., if we are to believe what we read in the Bible), God specifically (I Kings 3:12) singles Solomon out for the highest praise: “I have given you a wise and understanding heart, so that there was none like you before you, neither after you shall any arise like you (nec post te surrecturus sit),” this last the source of Dante’s “non surse il secondo” (verse 114). This passage is probably remembered in Matthew 11:11, “Among them that are born of women there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist,” which was cited by Tommaseo (comm. to Par. X.112–114).

  Michele Scherillo (Sche.1896.1) reviews Solomon’s many “disqualifications” from being considered an author of Scripture and then his checkered career among the exegetes, the most authoritative of whom, from Dante’s own point of view (e.g., St. Augustine, Brunetto Latini), deny him salvation (if St. Jerome granted it). (For three twelfth-century theologians who differ [Philip of Harvengt, Peter Comestor, and Joachim of Flora], saying that Solomon was indeed saved, see Sarolli [Saro.1971.1], pp. 210–15.) Scherillo suggests that it was primarily his kingship that inspired Dante to consider him among the blessed, but does not overlook the force of the fact that Solomon was indeed, in Dante’s eyes (and, of course, not in his alone), the author of canonical texts: Proverbs (see, e.g., Conv. III.xi.12; Mon. III.1.3), Ecclesiastes (see, e.g., Conv. II.x.10), the Canticle of Canticles (see, e.g., Conv. II.v.5); though he never refers to Solomon’s authorship of the Book of Wisdom, he cites its first line in Paradiso XVIII.91–93. In other words, for Dante, Solomon is scriba Dei (a scribe of God). No matter how anyone might call into question his credentials, he has them. We may reflect that Dante shares both a “monarchical” and a “theological” identity with Solomon, poet of empire and of God, his new “Book of Wisdom” (replacing the previous and abandoned attempt, the Banquet) railing against the enemies of the true and God-centered empire. The more one thinks of Dante’s Solomon, the more he becomes a likely choice as precursor of this poet (perhaps even in the light of his sexual trespass, something that he, his father, David, and Dante Alighieri, by his own confession [Purg. XXX and XXXI], have in common).

  On Solomon’s auctoritas see Minnis (Minn.1984.1), pp. 94–96; 110–12. For the view of Solomon of early Christian exegetes, see Bose (Bose.1996.1). On the sense of the overwhelming importance, for Dante’s view of Solomon, of his authorship of the Book of Wisdom, see Pelikan (Peli.1997.1), p. 3: Wisdom “was the book that brought together the Timaeus and Genesis on the beginning of the world” (cited by Herzmann [Herz.2003.1], p. 330). For a study of Dante’s sense of identity with Solomon, see Seem (Seem.2006.1). [return to English / Italian]

  110. Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 43, points
out that this is the third appearance in this canto of a form of the verb spirare (so closely and often associated with the “spiration” of the Holy Spirit), the only one to contain so many occurrences (see also vv. 2 and 51). [return to English / Italian]

  115–117. Dionysius the Areopagite, converted by St. Paul at Athens (as mentioned by Luke in Acts 17:34) and martyred there in a.d. 95. He was erroneously assumed to be the author of the De caelesti hierarchia, a work particularly prized for its description of the orders of the angels and of their nature. (Dante makes wide use of it in the Paradiso.) The Celestial Hierarchy and three others of the reputed works of Dionysius were actually produced some five centuries later by Greek neoplatonists and were translated into Latin only in the ninth century. [return to English / Italian]

  118–120. Orosius, whose historical compendium, entitled Historiae adversus paganos, was written at the suggestion of St. Augustine, as a defense of the Christian religion’s beneficial role in human history. Augustine made use of it in writing his De civitate Dei, and it is frequently used by Dante. See Toynbee (Toyn.1902.1), “Dante’s obligations to the Ormista,” pp. 121–36, for the opinion that the reference is indeed to Orosius, which for a long time has been the view of the majority of the commentators. Alberto Pincherle, “Agostino,” ED I (1970), p. 82b, mentions the usual suspects (Orosius, Ambrose, Tertullian, Paulinus of Nola, and Lactantius), and settles on Marius Victorinus. For continued insistence that the avvocato de’ tempi cristiani is in fact Orosius, see Brugnoli (Brug.1998.1), pp. 491–92. The early commentators were divided, with the majority favoring St. Ambrose, but others backing Orosius. After them, the majority opinion has settled on Orosius by a wide margin, with many convinced by Venturi’s argument (comm. to this tercet) that Dante would never have spoken of the great St. Ambrose as a “piccioletta luce” (little light). Moore should still be consulted (Moor. 1889.1), pp. 457–60, for three strong arguments for the reference’s being to Orosius and not to Ambrose. But see Lieberknecht (Lieb.1996.1) for a thoughtful attempt to resuscitate Ambrose’s candidacy, even if the author ends by admitting that Orosius remains the front-runner. [return to English / Italian]