Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  94. The gente poverella (his followers, sworn to poverty) are to be distinguished from “ordinary” povera gente (poor people): Francis and his followers chose poverty, not necessarily having been born to it. [return to English / Italian]

  96. There are three basic constructions of the possible meaning of this contested line: Francis’s life (1) is only to be praised for the greater glory of God, (2) were better sung in Heaven than by his (corrupt?) followers down there on earth, (3) were better sung in the Empyrean than (by me [Thomas]?) here in the Sun. Sapegno argues (comm. to this verse) briefly and cogently against the first two hypotheses and makes a convincing case for the third, giving it its first complete statement: “The life of Francis is more worthy of being sung in the Empyrean by choruses of angels and of souls in bliss than it is of being described in pedestrian ways by me alone.” Thus, in this canto based on praise for Francis’s humility, Thomas displays his own as well. [return to English / Italian]

  99. The word archimandrita, a word formed out of a Greek ecclesiastical term meaning “chief shepherd” (from arch + mandra [“sheepfold”]), and thus the head of more than one monastic community, a hapax in the poem (but which appears, denoting the apostle Peter, in Mon. III.ix.17; it also is present, referring to the pope, in Epist. XI.13). This word is not, as some might expect, a Dantean coinage, but may have been found by him in the Magnae derivationes of Uguccione da Pisa, as Grandgent (comm. to vv. 97–99) seems to have been the first commentator to suggest. [return to English / Italian]

  100–105. Drawn by his hope for martyrdom, in imitation of Christ, Francis, accompanied by twelve of his followers (a number obviously meant to recall Jesus’ twelve disciples) went to Egypt during a crusade. He insisted, at great risk to all of their lives, on trying to convert the Sultan, Malik al-Kamil, and preached before him to no avail. The Mohammedan, showing great restraint (and perhaps some political astuteness), sent Francis and his fellows back to the Christian army. Francis, seeing his plans for martyrdom during crusade foiled by his gracious adversary, returned to Italy.

  Dante presents this episode out of sequence, since the Egyptian journey occurred in 1219, four years before his second trip to Rome, presented in vv. 94–99. [return to English / Italian]

  106–108. A year after his receiving the second seal from the pope, Francis receives his third and final seal on Mt. Alvernia directly from Christ, the five stigmata that marked his body as they had marked His. [return to English / Italian]

  109–117. Francis’s death receives more poetic space than any other element in Thomas’s biography. His soul flies back to its Maker. (This is one of the few specific notices we have that some of the saved bypass purgation in order to proceed directly to Heaven. See the note to Paradiso X.121–129.)

  The merchant in him, now totally redefined, does what all merchants are sure to do: make a will in favor of their surviving family or friends. Thus does Francis leave his “treasure” to his “family,” commending them to love his “wife,” Poverty, and commending his body to the dust, whence we all came. In good Franciscan fashion, he does not even want a plain coffin, only the earth itself.

  Thomas’s narrative has moved first along a vertical axis, beginning in the mountains above Assisi (vv. 43–45) and descending from there; then along a horizontal axis, as Francis moves around Italy and the Near East; and finally ending, once more on a mountain (Alvernia, verse 106), with his soul moving up still higher, to Heaven, while his body’s latent movement is down, back into nothingness, without a containing bier (bara, the last word in Thomas’s narrative), in the earth. He was canonized within two years of his death (1228). [return to English / Italian]

  111. Veglia (Vegl.2000.1), pp. 94–95, points out that there is a Franciscan sort of magnanimity that is seen by Dante precisely as pusillo (meek), as St. Thomas also believed (ST II–II, q. 129, a. 3). [return to English / Italian]

  118–123. Now our archimandrita, Francis (verse 99) is placed in relation to Thomas, a patrïarca. It is probably not accidental that Peter, referred to as archimandrita in Monarchia (see the note to verse 99), is mentioned here, as Dante obviously sees the first archimandrita and the second (Francis) as well as the new patrïarca (Dominic) as all playing a major role in the shaping of the Church, past and present, when the weakness and corruption in the papacy made the mendicant orders especially necessary in his eyes.

  The whole metaphorical passage is developed in nautical terms, in which Peter is the first captain, followed by Francis and Dominic as cocaptains, of the Church. She is portrayed as a merchant ship (surprisingly, perhaps, until one thinks of the commercial metaphors that are present in some of Jesus’ parables), with a precious cargo in its hold, the true believers who (we must assume) will be numbered among the saved. [return to English / Italian]

  124–132. And now a switch in metaphor: Dominic’s “sheep” are so hungry for new food that they have become widely scattered; the farther afield they go, the less milk they produce (i.e., the less their lives give evidence of having taken in the lessons of life under the Dominican Rule) when they finally return. And, if a few keep close to the shepherd, it does not take much cloth to have enough for their cowls. Thus does Thomas follow his praise of Francis with a denunciation of his own Order, as Bonaventure will do for his fellow Franciscans in the next canto (Par. XII.112–126).

  For a consideration of the identical elements in these obviously paired cantos, see the note to Paradiso XII.142–145. [return to English / Italian]

  133–135. Heavily rhetorical (three “if” clauses in as many lines), the opening tercet of Thomas’s conclusion draws Dante’s attention back to his words in the previous canto (see the note to verse 139). Note that Thomas does not say, in the final clause, “what I said,” but “what was said,” in a painstakingly modest way of avoiding the use of the first person. [return to English / Italian]

  136–139. Thomas reminds Dante that he has been answering the first of his unvoiced “doubts” (see vv. 22–25), caused by Thomas’s phrasing in the last canto (Par. X.96). [return to English / Italian]

  137. The word “plant” (pianta) introduces still another metaphor, that of Dominic’s Order as despoiled plant, the reason for which defoliation Thomas has just made plain (vv. 124–132). [return to English / Italian]

  138. A dispute found in the commentaries involves the understanding of the word corregger, whether it is a noun (correggér), formed from the noun correggia, the Dominican equivalent of the Franciscan capestro (see the note to verse 87), and meaning “he who wears the Dominican cincture” and thus, here, Thomas (a formulation first proposed by Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 133–139], who, however, believed the noun referred to Dominic, not Thomas). Most today, following the self-styled “first modern commentator,” Pompeo Venturi, who, in the eighteenth century, found an equivalent for the word corregger in “reprensione” (rebuke), think it is either a verb or an infinitive used as a verbal noun, meaning, in the first case, “correction” (we have translated it “rebuke”) and, in the second, “guidance.” And see Lombardi (comm. to vv. 138–139) for a return to Buti’s interpretation. For his customary lengthy review (and also a return to Buti), see Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 138–139). However, see the nearly equally lengthy treatment offered by Campi (comm. to vv. 136–139), opting for Venturi’s solution, which is much as our own. Since then, the basic disagreement lies between followers of Buti/Scartazzini and Venturi/Campi, with most who deal with the problem falling in behind Venturi/Campi. [return to English / Italian]

  139. Thomas, in good Thomistic fashion, rounds off his “gloss” on Paradiso X.96 by repeating the entire line here.

  It is amusing to think that Dante’s revenge on his major intellectual rival in the debate over the truth-telling capacity of poetry comes from making Thomas a commentator on Dante’s poetry, a role that he himself, perhaps prodded by Thomas’s attacks on his profession, felt called upon to play in his Epistle to Cangrande. [return to English / Italian]

&nbs
p; PARADISO XII

  * * *

  1. The action of this canto begins, if we take its first line literally, before the preceding one ends, that is, before Thomas utters the last syllables (or syllable) of vaneggia. That seems fitting, since these two cantos are, perhaps more than any other pair in the work, mirror images of one another. See Bertoldi (Bert.1903.1), referring to them, despite their differing subjects and feelings, as “twin cantos.” See also the note to vv. 142–145. [return to English / Italian]

  3. Dante had earlier resorted to the image of the millstone (mola) to refer to the rotation of the Sun, seen from either pole, around the earth (Conv. III.v.14). [return to English / Italian]

  4–6. The matching circles of twelve saints, each moving in such a way as to match the other both in the eye and in the ear of the beholder, anticipates the final image of the poem (Par. XXXIII.143–145). [return to English / Italian]

  4. The first circle of saints was described (Par. XI.14) as having completed a first full rotation; now it is seen as being on the point of completing a second one. [return to English / Italian]

  6. The double repetition (moto/moto; canto/canto) underlines the matching quality of these two circles. [return to English / Italian]

  7–8. The previous tercet had divided the activity of the souls into circling movement and song; this one divides that song itself (repeating the word canto) into two components, words (muse) and melody (sirene). Dante had used the word Muse (capitalized by Petrocchi, if we have little idea of Dante’s actual practice with regard to capitalization) in Inferno 1.7, in Purgatorio II.8 and XXII.102, then in Paradiso II.9, to indicate the Muses of classical antiquity. Beginning here, however, and then in two later passages (Par. XV.26 and XVIII.33), Petrocchi obviously believes that Dante uses the lower-case word musa metaphorically, here to refer to poets (the next use will refer to Virgil [or his poetry] as “nostra maggior musa” [our greatest muse], and finally [Par. XVIII.33], to poetry itself—or so most readers believe).

  Torraca (comm. to vv. 7–9) seems to have been the first to remark on the similar conjoining of Sirens and Muses in Boethius (Cons. Phil. I.1[pr]).

  These two verses contain four words relating to music: canto (song), musa (muse), sirena (siren), tuba (brass musical instrument [more precisely, “horn”]). For the echoing effect that results from the repetition of the first two, Dante may have had in mind the similar effect found in Ovid’s story of Echo and Narcissus, referred to in vv. 14–15. The next (and last) time we read the noun tuba (Par. XXX.35), it will be the metaphoric expression for Dante’s poetic voice, while here it refers to the voices of the singing saints. [return to English / Italian]

  9. The word splendore is, in Dante, always the result of light (luce), proceeding along its ray (raggio), and then reflected by an object. (For these interrelated terms, describing the three major aspects of light, see Dante’s earlier statement [Conv. III.xiv.5].) This verse makes clear Dante’s belief that a second reflection (e.g., as in a mirror) is less vivid than that original splendor (but cf. Par. II.94–105, which seems to contradict this understanding). As we have learned in Canto X (vv. 64–69), these crowns of dancing saints are presented as circles of musical lights. And in that earlier passage, a simile, the comparison is to the rainbow, as will also be true in the simile that begins in the next verse. [return to English / Italian]

  10–21. This simile, explicitly formal in its construction (Come … così) and, balanced in its content, containing one classical and one biblical reference (Iris and the rainbow that God offered as a sign to Noah), gives a sense of the identity of the two circles of saints, despite their evident differences. [return to English / Italian]

  10. Dante apparently thought of thin (and thus “translucent”) clouds as actually being constituted of a layer of water-soaked dust suspended in the atmosphere in which the rainbow appears. [return to English / Italian]

  11–18. There are a number of candidates for the classical source at work here, primarily texts in Virgil and Ovid. It seems likely that Dante would have had the reference (Metam. I.270–271) to Juno’s sending Iris (her “handmaid,” the rainbow) as a result of Jove’s huge storm, sent below in his attempt to extirpate, in a flood, the human race (typified in the first murderer, Lycaon [the wolf-man], and hence abandoned by piety and justice [Metam. I.149–150]). That would nicely balance these gestures toward “famous rainbows,” since the second of them is without doubt reflective of the rainbow that God sent as the sign of his covenant (Genesis 9:13) with Noah and the few other surviving members of humankind based on His promise never to send such a destructive flood again. (The first book of the Metamorphoses is, as it were, the pagan equivalent of Genesis.) We are also probably meant to compare the unchecked vengeful desires of the king of the pagan gods with the moderated sternness of God the Father.

  Dante adds a second rainbow, as his context demands, not as he found in his sources, but as may at least occasionally be observed in Tuscany even today. [return to English / Italian]

  13. The second circle is, like the second rainbow, wider than the first. Dante’s science believed that the second rainbow was born from the first, not that it was part of a double refraction of light. [return to English / Italian]

  14–15. The reference is to the nymph Echo (Metam. III.356–510), who fell in love with Narcissus. She wasted away with unrequited passion until all that was left of her was a voice. This second simile, within the overarching simile that compares the two circles of saints to the double rainbow, replicates the form of such a rainbow. [return to English / Italian]

  18. As Tommaseo suggests (comm. to vv. 16–18), the present tense of the verb allagare (to flood) suggests the past, present, and future application of God’s covenant with humankind: This global flood has not recurred and will never do so. [return to English / Italian]

  22–25. Dante seemingly intuits the extraordinary effect made by large symphony orchestras when called upon to modulate huge sound suddenly into silence. If the reader imagines Beethoven as the background music to this scene, perhaps he or she will better experience what is projected by these verses. Of course, the miraculous sound has not so much to do with extraordinary musical abilities as it does with the result of living in God’s grace, in which all is harmonious, even sudden silence. [return to English / Italian]

  26–30. These similetic elements of this passage (vv. 22–30), two eyes opening or closing as one and Dante ineluctably being drawn to the voice of a new spirit (it will turn out to be Bonaventure), speak to the sense of the overpowering quality of the love and beauty that affects both the performers and their observer. Torraca (comm. to vv. 28–30) points out that the compass, invented only a short while before, had already become a familiar image in thirteenth-century Italian poetry, for example, in poems by Guido Guinizzelli and in Ristoro d’Arezzo. [return to English / Italian]

  31–33. St. Bonaventure is about to praise the leader of Thomas’s order, St. Dominic, in response to Thomas’s praise of Francis, the leader of his own. For information about the speaker, see the note to vv. 127–128. [return to English / Italian]

  34–36. In the previous canto (Par. XI.40–42) Thomas had gone out of his way to insist that praise of either Francis or Dominic is necessarily praise of the other; Bonaventure matches him. [return to English / Italian]

  35. While Dante has made every effort to “militarize” the sweetness of St. Francis, making both him and Dominic share the verb militaro (lit. “soldiered”), the following three tercets show that he is willing to associate himself with the traditional portrayal of Dominic as warlike, while the traditional depiction of Francis is decidedly not (see the note to Par. XI.91). On the other hand, it is again notable that he has included Francis within the construct of the Christian soldier. [return to English / Italian]

  37–45. These three tercets contain seven words that associate the two friars with militarism and imperial rule: essercito (army), riarmar (to rearm), insegna (battle standard), imperador (emperor),
regna (reigns), milizia (soldiers), campioni (“champions,” i.e., those who excel in single combat). [return to English / Italian]

  37–39. The “troops” obviously form the Church Militant, now led by the newly approved mendicant orders, expensive to rearm, since it took the blood of the apostles to accomplish that task (see Aversano [Aver.2000.2], p. 53, for reasons to prefer this gloss to that which insists the reference is to Christ’s blood, an interpretation unopposed since the earliest days of the commentary tradition; Aversano refers the reader to Par. XXVII.40–45 for confirming evidence). Despite that, the soldiers, apparently, still lack resolve. [return to English / Italian]

  38. The “standard” of this army is obviously the Cross. [return to English / Italian]

  40–45. The meaning is that God succored His “troops,” not because they were particularly worthy, but because He extended them His grace. For a clear summary of the two kinds of grace at work in Dante’s world, operating grace (which Dante received from God, through the agency of Beatrice, in Inferno II) and cooperating grace, see Scott (Scot.2004.2), pp. 187–90. Once a sinner is justified by the receipt of operating grace, which is gratuitous (i.e., cannot be earned), he or she must “cooperate” in order to merit eventual reward (salvation). Scott reviews the American discussion of this issue, which was dominated by the views of Charles Singleton, until Antonio Mastrobuono (Mast.1990.1) clarified the nature of the problem. [return to English / Italian]