Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  140–141. Joachim of Flora “appears to have enjoyed in his own day, and long afterwards, a reputation for prophetic power”; hence Bonaventure speaks of him as “di spirito profetico dotato,” words which are said to be taken verbatim from the anthem still chanted on the Festival of St. Joachim in the churches of Calabria.

  “Joachim was born c. 1145 at Celico, about 4 miles NE. of Cosenza in Calabria. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and on his return to Italy became a monk, entering (c. 1158) the Cistercian monastery of Sambucina. In 1177 he was made abbot of Corazzo in Calabria. In 1185, Pope Urban III appointed a deputy abbot in order that Joachim might have leisure to devote himself to his writings. In 1189 Joachim founded a monastery, San Giovanni in Fiore in the forest of the Sila among the mountains of Calabria, whence he was named ‘de Floris.’ From this institution, the rule of which was sanctioned by Celestine III in 1196, ultimately sprang the so-called Ordo Florensis (absorbed by the Cistercians, 1505). Joachim died c. 1202” (T).

  On Dante’s relationships with Joachim’s work and various of its followers, see Calvet (Calv.2001.1). And see Nardi (Nard.1965.1).

  Veglia (Vegl.2000.1), p. 71, points out that Averroës (Inf. IV.144), Siger (Par. X.136), and Joachim is each the last figure in a group (fortieth, twelfth, and twelfth, respectively); they have in common the surprise generated by their presence in these groups.

  Rather than attempting, as some do, to “Franciscanize” this second circle in the Sun (while “Dominicanizing” the first in Canto X), Botterill (Bott.1995.1), p. 184, speaks of (and he is also referring to the first circle, seen in Par. X) the “images of celebration, reconciliation, and harmony” that typify this entire heaven. [return to English / Italian]

  142. There has been dispute over the reference of paladino, but most today seem content to believe that it refers to Dominic, rather than to Francis, Thomas, or Joachim. See Scotti (Scot.1987.1), p. 257n.

  On the verb inveggiar, see Singleton (comm. to this verse): “The most plausible interpretation would seem to be that inveggiar, deriving from invidiare, to envy, would mean (as does its Provençal equivalent envejar) to envy in a good sense, hence to praise.” [return to English / Italian]

  143–145. It has long been observed that Dante constructed these two cantos so as to make them reflect one another in a thoroughgoing way. See the chart offered by Bosco/Reggio (who at times seem to be forcing the details to fit) for the parallel elements in Cantos XI and XII (numbers in parentheses refer to the number of terzine dedicated to each subject; square brackets contain one element not included in their table):

  Canto XI Canto XII

  General introduction: 28–36 (3) 37–45 (3)

  Actions performed by the two saints: 40–42 (1) 34–36 (1)

  Place of birth: 43–51 (3) 46–54 (3)

  Birth: 49–51 (1) 55–57 (1)

  [Saint’s Life: 55–117 (21) 58–105 (16)]

  Transition from biography to condemnation: 118–123 (2) 106–111 (2)

  Condemnation of his own Order: 124–129 (2) 112–117 (2)

  Faithful friars: 130–132 (1) 121–123 (1)

  [return to English / Italian]

  143. See Fassò (Fass.1998.1) for the several elements that inform Dante’s notion of courtesy. [return to English / Italian]

  144. Ettore Bonora (Bono.1987.1), pp. 281–83, discusses the phrase describing Aquinas’s speech as “discreto latin” and says that it is obvious that Thomas is not speaking Latin, but using Latin stylistic devices (in the lingua franca of the poem, Italian) that ennoble speech. (And it should be pointed out that Dante several times uses the word latino to indicate either the Italian language or “Italy” itself. See the note to Inf. XXII.64–66, the passage in which it first appears; and see the note to Par. XVII.34–35, its last appearance in the poem.) [return to English / Italian]

  PARADISO XIII

  * * *

  1–24. If the punctuation here is as Dante left it, this is the longest single-sentence canto-opening in the poem. See the note to Paradiso VIII.1–12 for other cantos marked by lengthy openings. This is also the longest address to the reader in the entire poem, if it is an indirect one (marked by the thrice-uttered hortatory subjunctive “imagini” [let him imagine] in vv. 1, 7, and 10). And thus here we have another (cf. Par. XI.1–3) “pseudo-apostrophe” beginning a canto in the heaven of the Sun. [return to English / Italian]

  1–18. Dante’s reconstruction of two perfect twelve-studded circles (each of which he has already seen and described in the immediately preceding cantos [Par. X.64–69; XII.1–21]) into apparently fanciful constituent groupings has, understandably, drawn some perplexed attention. (It is perhaps difficult not to think of the role that the poet assumes as being analogous to that of the geomancers, Purg. XIX.4–6, who similarly construct their “Fortuna Major” out of existing constellations.) What is the reason, we might wonder, for the numbering of the three subgroups as fifteen, seven, and two to equal twenty-four? For Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), this is a rare case of Dante’s taste for arid preciosity (un preziosismo tutto intellettualistico). In any case, the fifteen brightest stars found in the eighth heaven are to be imagined as being conjoined with all the seven that make up the Big Dipper and with two from the Little Dipper (see the note to vv. 13–15), thus representing the twenty-four “stars” to whom we have already been introduced. In order to formulate a reason for the fifteen in the first group, Francesco da Buti points out (comm. to vv. 1–21) that Alfraganus, in the nineteenth chapter of his Elementa astronomica, says that in the eighth sphere there are precisely fifteen stars of the first magnitude (i.e., in brightness and size). Niccolò Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 4–6) cites Ptolemy’s Almagest for the same information (first referred to in this context by Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 1–6]), adding the detail that these fifteen may be found situated variously in either hemisphere. However, that there should be nine in the last two groupings, both of which are associated with locating the position of the North Star, may reveal the design of a plan. As we have seen (Par. II.7–9), the Pole Star stands in for divine guidance; thus here the twin circles of Christian sapience are associated both with divine intellectual purpose and with the number that represents Beatrice, who is more clearly associated with the Wisdom of God, Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, than with anything else. [return to English / Italian]

  2–3. This self-conscious literary gesture seeks to involve us as coconspirators in manufacturing a substitute solar system. We, as “secondary artists,” are asked to collaborate, making ourselves responsible for literalizing the details of Dante’s vision and keeping them in memory. It is really a quite extraordinary request, even in a poem that perhaps asks for more involvement on the part of its reader than any fictive work in Western literary history before Don Quijote. [return to English / Italian]

  7–8. The Wain is Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, close enough to the Pole Star never to leave the Northern Hemisphere. [return to English / Italian]

  10–12. See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses) for the following explanation of what is surely the most convoluted element in an already convoluted passage: Dante asks us to imagine two stars of the Little Dipper farthest from its tip as the bell of a trumpet for which the Pole Star (at that tip) is the mouthpiece. This last point intersects, according to Dante (forcing the issue to his own purpose, according to Porena [comm. to vv. 10–12]), with the Primum Mobile. The universe is thus conceived of as a gigantic wheel, with a diameter running between our earth and the Crystalline sphere (even if, as Porena points out, the situation of the North Star in the eighth sphere precludes its having contact with the ninth). [return to English / Italian]

  13–15. The daughter of Minos here referred to is Ariadne. Her “crown” refers to the garland taken from her head by Bacchus after she died, having been abandoned by Theseus. Bacchus placed it in the heavens, where it is known as the Corona Borealis (see Ovid, Metam. VIII.174–182). Dante compares it, a single thing, to a double ra
inbow. (That Dante refers to Ariadne as herself being translated to the heavens, and not only her garland of flowers, has troubled some commentators. However, in a sort of reverse metonymy, Dante has given the whole for the part; he clearly wants us to think of Ariadne’s garland as representing a circle of saints—twice. In the last canto (Par. XII.12) Juno’s handmaid (the unnamed Iris) is doubled in the sky, just as here Minos’s daughter (the unnamed Ariadne) is.

  That the canto eventually finds its fullest expression of its central theme in Daedalus’s trembling hand (see discussion in the note to vv. 67–78), an object that probably has its source in the next episode in Ovid (Metam. VIII.183–235), tends to strengthen the case for the aptness of the citation from that same locus here. [return to English / Italian]

  16–18. Still another troubled tercet. The first difficulty that it presents is fairly easy to resolve: Does the second circle extend beyond the first or does it stand within it? Most commentators sensibly take the first view, since the third circle clearly is wider than the second (Par. XIV.74–75), which at least implies that the second is wider than the first and, indeed, contains it. The really obdurate problem, on the other hand, is how to construe verse 18. If one says “one went first and then the other followed” (as we translate the line), the meaning is that one of the circles begins to move only after the other does (and probably the first is followed by the second). This hypothesis is seconded by the rhyme position of the word poi, used for the only time in the poem as a substantive, a usage that pretty clearly is forced by rhyme. What would Dante have said had he been writing parole sciolte (words not bound by meter—see Inf. XXVIII.1) and not been constrained by the need to rhyme? A good case can be made for “secondo” (i.e., next). And for this reason, we have translated the line as we have. See also Fasani (Fasa.2002.1), p. 194, buttressing this position with the early gloss of Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 1–21). After centuries of inconclusive debate, refusing to choose between the two established and conflicting views, Trucchi (comm. to this tercet) came up with a new hypothesis: Since the two concentric circles move so that the rays sent out by each reflect one another perfectly (he was thinking of facing pairs, Thomas and Bonaventure, Siger and Joachim, etc.), the circles, since they are of different extent, to maintain this unwavering relationship between themselves, must move at different speeds. Giacalone (comm. to this tercet) shares Trucchi’s view, but credits Buti’s less clear statement (comm. to vv. 1–21) for preparing the way. [return to English / Italian]

  19–21. What Dante asks the reader to be aware of seeing is l’ombra de la vera / costellazione (the “shadow of the real constellation”—cf. the similar phrases “l’ombra del beato regno” [the shadow of the blessèd kingdom]—Par. 1.23, “di lor vero umbriferi prefazi” [shadowy prefaces of their truth]—Par. XXX.78). Here the reference to the vera costellazione has a similar typological rhythm: What Dante saw yields to its realer version, the two circles of moving, singing saints in their “double dance.” [return to English / Italian]

  22–24. Now the purpose of our “imagining” along with Dante that starry construct becomes clear: The reality to which it corresponds is as far beyond our conceiving as the circling of the Primum Mobile exceeds in speed the movement of the Chiana, a sluggish stream in Tuscany that turned to marsh in some places, probably referred to, without being named, in Inferno XXIX.46–49. [return to English / Italian]

  25–27. In those two circles the souls were celebrating the triune God and, in the Person of Christ, His human nature as well (a song beyond our mortal understanding), not Bacchus or Apollo (songs all too understandable to us). The word Peana may refer either to cries of praise to Apollo or, as seems more likely here, to the god himself.

  For the program of song in the last cantica, see the note to Paradiso XXI.58–60. [return to English / Italian]

  28–30. This part of the canto comes to a close with the souls turning their attention from their celebration of their trinitarian God, in dance and song, to dealing with Dante’s doubts, a process that also brings them pleasure. They shift their attention from Dante’s first question (rephrased at Par. XI.25), now answered, to his second (see Par. XIII.89). [return to English / Italian]

  31–36. Thomas, who is identified as the one who had narrated the life of Francis, as circumlocutory as ever, refers to his having answered Dante’s first question (see Par. X.91–93) and now prepares (finally) to deal with the second. [return to English / Italian]

  31. The word numi, a hapax and a Latinism (from numen), here means “divinities” (translated as “holy souls”). It seems to owe its presence to the exigencies of rhyme. [return to English / Italian]

  34–36. Thomas’s agricultural metaphor combines pedantic heaviness with one perhaps surprising touch: affection. [return to English / Italian]

  37–51. Thomas corrects Dante’s misprision of what he had told him about Solomon in Canto X. Reduced to its core, this is what he conveys to the protagonist: “You believe that God, when he created Adam and (the human part of) Christ, gave each of them as much intellect as it was possible to create in a human being; if that is so, you wonder, how can I have said that Solomon’s intelligence never was bettered by another’s? I will now clear up your confusion.” [return to English / Italian]

  37–42. Metonymic periphrasis abounds in these lines about Adam and Eve and Jesus, respectively identified by his rib cage, her pretty face and fatal appetite, and His rib cage. Dante treats the “wound” in Adam’s side from which God formed Eve and that in Christ’s side as corresponding, for the sin of the first parents was atoned for by the latter wound. [return to English / Italian]

  40–41. Exactly what is referred to by these words is much debated. See the summarizing treatment offered by Giacalone (comm. to vv. 37–45), which offers the following sense of the matter in dispute. Christ redeemed, with his death on the Cross, sins committed either (1) in the past or in the future; or (2) before His life on earth and after it; or (3) before His flesh was pierced on the Cross and after the Crucifixion. While it seems that the third of these alternatives is the most appealing (because it builds on the parallel structure of the entire passage, moving from Adam’s rib to Christ’s wounded side), it is also true that all three interpretations cause similar reflection: Christ died for our sins.

  According to Schwarz (Schw.1966.1), pp. 147–48, these lines reflect the opinion of Peter Olivi (against the account found in John 19:30) that Jesus was pierced by the lance while he was still alive. Schwarz believes that Paradiso XXXII.128 reflects the same understanding. For the view that Dante was deeply aware of Olivi’s work and essentially agreed with it, but never mentions his name because the Franciscan was being vigorously attacked by Church officials in Provence, who managed to have his Lectura super Apocalypsim condemned, see Manselli, “francescanesimo,” ED III (1971), p. 16. [return to English / Italian]

  43–48. God the Father made the corporeal natures of Adam and Christ directly. All other human bodies are formed with the influence of intermediating agencies (i.e., the angels and the stars). And thus, in Dante’s view, Thomas’s statement of Solomon’s singular intellectual gifts (Par. X.112–114) does indeed require further explanation, to which a goodly portion of the rest of the canto (vv. 49–111) will be devoted. [return to English / Italian]

  49–51. This tercet perhaps exemplifies the “unpoetic” quality of this canto (representing the sort of “philosophic discourse” that Benedetto Croce so often inveighed against [e.g., Croc.1921.1]), the cause of its being denigrated even by those to whose lot it fell to write lecturae dedicated to it. For documentation, see Cahill (Cahi.1996.1), p. 245 and note 1 (p. 266). [return to English / Italian]

  50–51. Thomas’s figure of speech, insisting that Dante’s view of Adam’s and Christ’s knowledge and his own championing of Solomon’s not only do not contradict one another, but are equally close to the truth as are two points coinciding at the center of a circle. [return to English / Italian]

  52–87. T
his portion of Thomas’s speech is one of the most “philosophical” in the entire poem. It may serve as a pretext for answering the protagonist’s concern about Solomon’s relative perfection as knower; at the same time we sense that the poet simply wanted to posit his view of primary and secondary creation.

  For a straightforward explanation, in simplified terms, of the passage, see Tozer (comm. to these verses): “What is created directly by God is perfect, whereas that which is created indirectly by Him through intermediate agencies and materials is imperfect; and therefore Dante is right in thinking that Adam, and Christ in His human nature, who belong to the former class, must have been superior in wisdom to all men, and therefore to Solomon.” [return to English / Italian]