Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  72. The phrase nostra favella has caused minor difficulty among those who (rightly) understand the noun usually to refer to vernacular speech and who therefore wonder why Dante uses this term for words that are Latin, and not Italian. The rhyme position obviously forced Dante’s hand a little here. Most readers understand, along with Steiner (comm. to this verse) and, even more pointedly, Momigliano (comm. to vv. 70–72), that we should take the phrase more broadly and as referring to human speech in general. [return to English / Italian]

  73–78. Poletto (comm. to these verses) seems to have been the first to link them to Purgatorio XXIV.64–69. And Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 73–78) the first to see that this image is derived from Lucan (Phars. V.711–716).

  Picone (Pico.2002.5), p. 274, points out that, while the avian “skywriting” observed by Lucan is aleatory and quickly obliterated, Dante’s is lasting, by virtue of its inscription here in his pages. [return to English / Italian]

  73. Carroll (comm. to vv. 70–81) succinctly ties together the avian imagery that, beginning here, is so present in Jupiter: “It is to be noted that in this Heaven of the Eagle nearly all the similes are taken from bird-life (e.g., in addition to the Eagle and the present passage: XVIII.111, the mysterious reference to nests; XIX.34, the falcon issuing from its hood; XIX.91, the comparison of the Eagle to the stork hovering over its young; XX.73, the lark pausing, content with ‘the last sweetness’ of its song. See the chap. on ‘The Birds of Dante’ in Christopher Hare’s Dante the Wayfarer).” [return to English / Italian]

  74. Cf. the doves, also at their pastura (feeding), in an earlier simile: Purgatorio II.124–125, as Torraca (comm. to vv. 73–75) suggests. These birds seem of better purpose. While those earlier “doves,” temporarily seduced by an ode from Dante’s Convivio, failed to distinguish between wheat and tares (see the note to Purg. II.124–132), these “cranes” are singing God’s song to Dante. [return to English / Italian]

  76. These “holy creatures” (sante creature) will later (Par. XIX.100–101) be identified as “lucenti incendi / de lo Spirito Santo” (the Holy Spirit’s fiery lights). [return to English / Italian]

  82–87. This is the sixth invocation of the poem and second in Paradiso. What the Muse is asked to perform, the inspiration of Dante so that he may give long life to cities and kingdoms, might seem to require that Clio, the Muse of history, is called upon here. However, only one commentator even mentions her as a possibility (Momigliano [comm. to verse 82]), and he says only that the imperial context most fits Calliope or Clio.

  The words ingegno (Inf. II.7; here; Par. XXII.114) and concetto (Inf. XXXII.4; here; Par. XXXIII.68) are both twice elsewhere present in passages containing invocations. [return to English / Italian]

  82. The winged horse Pegasus struck the ground on Mt. Helicon with his hoof. There sprang forth Hippocrene, the fountain sacred to the Muses. Which one of them does the poet invoke here? The most popular choices (given in historical order) are (1) Minerva, “Wisdom,” as a sort of “super muse” (first suggested by Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 82–87]); (2) a nonspecific, “generic” muse (first, Benvenuto [comm. to vv. 82–87]); (3) invoked for the second time in the poem (see Purg. I.9), Calliope, the Muse of epic (first, Vellutello [comm. to vv. 82–84], and the “majority candidate”); (4) also invoked for the second time (see Purg. XXIX.41), Urania, the heavenly Muse (first, Andreoli [comm. to this verse]). This is a vexed question, with four fairly popular solutions (and a few others, e.g., Euterpe [Torraca, comm. to vv. 82–84] and Clio [Momigliano, comm. to this verse]) and no clear consensus. All one can say is that the poet really seems to have a particular Muse in mind, since he addresses her with the singular “tu” in verse 87. [return to English / Italian]

  88–96. Perhaps the single most self-conscious, “artificial” passage in a poem that hardly lacks aesthetic exertion, the sort of thing Romantic readers, in the wake of De Sanctis and Croce, despise in the Commedia. However, for the view that this sort of calculated performance is a sign of the poet’s “bello stile,” see Parodi (Paro.1915.1). [return to English / Italian]

  88–89. For the poet to have counted his letters (there are 13 different ones in all), 35 instances of vowels (18, with “i” dominant [occurring 10 times]) and consonants (17, with “t” dominant [occurring 5 times]), tells us that he was making a point that he considered central to his purpose. [return to English / Italian]

  91–93. These seven words (“Love justice, you who judge the earth”) constitute the opening sentence of the book of the Bible called “Sapientia” (Wisdom), attributed, by Dante at least, to Solomon. That attribution was a matter of some dispute for Christians, from the early Fathers on (e.g., in a fairly rare moment of concord, both Jerome and Augustine deny Solomon paternity [if both err in attributing it to Philo Judaeus]). For discussions of Dante’s knowledge of this text, see G. R. Sarolli, “Salomone” (ED IV [1973]) and the unsigned article (apparently by Alessandro Niccoli), “Sapientia, Libro della” (ED V [1976]). Sarolli shows that Dante, in one of his many references to the biblical king (Conv. IV.xvi.1), refers, by citing Wisdom 6:23, to Solomon as the author of that now-apocryphal book. This passage in Paradiso is treated by most (including Sarolli) as the only reference to Wisdom in the Commedia (but see the note to verse 101), if there are two references in the Epistle to Cangrande (Epist. XIII.6 and XIII.62).

  For the program of St. Paul’s “five words with understanding” in the poem and its possible relevance here, see Hollander (Holl.1992.1), pp. 39–43.

  It seems probable that this is the third passage in the poem to involve a phenomenon that might be described as “visible speech,” formally similar expressions that also prominently involve the idea of justice. This one joins the “visible speech” found in the writing over the gate of Hell (Inf. III.1–9) and the words “seen” in the intaglio presenting Trajan and the widow (Purg. X.73–96). See Hollander (Holl.1969.1), pp. 297–300; Pertile (Pert.1991.3), p. 38; and Martinelli (Mart.2002.1), p. 283. [return to English / Italian]

  91. It is not surprising that justice, most blatantly evident as a guiding concern for this poet in this canto (where it is literally spelled out in capital letters), has caught the attention of nearly all who deal with it. Giglio’s lectura (Gigl.1988.1) is little more than a meditation on Dante’s conception of justice. And see Chimenz (Chim.1956.1), p. 1735, supporting a definition of the Commedia as a “poem of justice, both human and divine.” In this vein, see also Scott (Scot. 1996.1), p. 55, citing Dante’s epistle (Epist. XII.7), where he refers to himself as a “preacher of justice” (vir predicans iustitiam).

  For a consideration of the centrality of justice to Cantos XVIII–XX and to the poem as a whole, see Took (Took.1997.1). Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 70–99) refers to two earlier passages that reveal Dante’s overwhelming respect for this ideal: “Thus, although every virtue in man is deserving of love, that is most deserving of love in him which is most human, and that is justice” (Conv. I.xii.9, tr. R. Lansing); “… Justice, which disposes us to love and conduct ourselves with rectitude in all things” (Conv. IV.xvii.6, tr. R. Lansing). [return to English / Italian]

  94. Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 94–108) says that the “m,” last letter of the word terram, stands for mondo (the world), a reading immediately supported by the meaning of the word itself in Wisdom 1:1. He continues by reading the souls making up the letter as being minor public officials and private citizens who have in common a love of justice; they will be the body politic for the emperor, figured in the eagle’s head into which the central stem of the letter will eventually be transformed at its top. It has become far more common, but only in the twentieth century, for interpreters to claim that the letter stands for monarchia. On the other hand, the early interpretation has the virtue of separating the human desire for justice from its expression in actual imperial rule, which would certainly correspond with Dante’s own experience, most of which was of a world that hoped for empire but was denied its presence. (See the note
to vv. 100–108.) [return to English / Italian]

  95–96. The planet itself is seen as a silver globe inlaid with ornamentation worked in gold, the mobile souls carrying out God’s artisanship for Dante’s pleasure and instruction. [return to English / Italian]

  97–99. Other souls, descending (from where we are not told, but it is difficult to imagine from anywhere else but the Empyrean), not those who had paused in their “skywriting,” appear to make a “cap” on the midpoint of the top of the “m,” which then resembles (as we learn in verse 113) a lily, as well as a capital “M” in Gothic script. [return to English / Italian]

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

  100–108. The simile accounts for the rising of the souls (probably from the second group alone [i.e., that which had just formed the cap] and not from both groups, as some would understand) to represent the head and neck of an eagle. That physical detail remains a matter in question (i.e., whether the souls forming the eagle derived only from the new group or from both). Also a cause for debate is the more important question of what the three embodiments of the “m” represent. There are many solutions proposed. The more plausible explanations limit the possible choices to the following: (1) whether the “m” stands for monarchia or mondo, (2) whether the “M” (as lily) stands for France or Florence (its two most widely known identities), (3) whether the “M” (as eagle) stands for Christ or the empire. While arguments can and have been made for all these interpretations (and more), and in varying combinations, it does seem plausible to hold that the first image indicates the “world” of would-be imperial citizens, while the third indicates the empire once it is established (e.g., as Dante knew it briefly under Henry VII, 1310–13, and hoped to know it again). As for the second stage in the transformation (the most difficult to interpret—if no element of this puzzle is easily resolved), those who argue that it indicates the ideal primitive Florence (i.e., as Cacciaguida has described it in Par. XVI), a template for the civic virtues necessary to develop a populace capable of being led to empire, are most in accord with what we know of Dante’s predilections in these matters. [return to English / Italian]

  100. For the connection of this image, “corrective” of divination, with Dante’s harsh views of that practice put forward in Inferno XX, see Hollander (Holl.1980.1), pp. 197–99. [return to English / Italian]

  101. Pertile (Pert.1991.3), p. 41, cites Wisdom 3:7: “Fulgebunt iusti, / Et tamquam scintillae in harundineto discurrent” (The just will shine forth, / And they will show themselves like sparks in the stubble), crediting Pietrobono (comm. to this verse) as being the only other reader to note this clear citation (but also see Fallani [comm. to vv. 100–102]). [return to English / Italian]

  105. This Sun is God and these arriving souls sing, apparently, of their desire to return to Him. It is of some interest that, forming the head of the Eagle, they are in fact moving up, and thus back toward Him. [return to English / Italian]

  109–111. Just as birds need no exemplar to design their nests, but follow some inner imprinting, so God needs no “model” for his creating. This simple paraphrase of the tercet would have come as a great surprise to almost all who either avoided dealing with it or who labored over it in order to find something “more profound” in it. Indeed, its first clear statement had to await Brunone Bianchi (comm. to this tercet) in 1868. However, it is perhaps prudent to observe that the main opposing argument (there are several to choose from) has it that not the nests but the creatures within them, referred to by synecdoche, are portrayed as developing in accord with their archetypal form. And this just may be what Dante had in mind.

  It was Grandgent (comm. to this tercet) who was perhaps the first to point to Thomas Aquinas for a potential source (ST I, q. 19, a. 4). Perhaps still closer is the reference put forward by Becker (Beck.1988.1) to Thomas’s Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, XXIV, a. 1, resp. 3, which has it that “all swallows build their nests in the same way.” [return to English / Italian]

  112–114. The rest of the spirits who had at first seemed to be content to make up the “enlilying” cap of the “M” now fill out the Eagle’s shape (his wings?). This detail would argue against those who claim that some of the first group are drawn up into this further design. It would seem rather that they stay in the original “m.” See the note to vv. 100–108. [return to English / Italian]

  113. For a consideration of a range of possible significances of this figure, see Sarolli (Saro.1971.1), pp. 337–56. Picone (Pico.2002.5), pp. 277–78, argues effectively for the fugitive vision that Dante has of the “M” as lily being the representation of the civic principles of Florence of the “buon tempo antico” as being consistent with the restoration of Roman imperial virtue in the city. Fumagalli (Fuma.2005.1) attempts to resuscitate the “French connection,” arguing that the passage (vv. 88–114) presents St. Louis (King Louis IX of France) in a better light than is customarily perceived. He admits that Fenzi (Fenz.2004.1) has offered a strong argument against such a view, but presents it anyway. [return to English / Italian]

  115–117. The first of the apostrophes with which this canto concludes is addressed (as will be the second) to the positive forces in God’s universal plan, first the tempering planet, just Jupiter. This tercet offers a clear example of Dante’s belief in astral influence on earthly behaviors, with Jupiter conceived as the heavenly shaper of human embodiments of justice. See Paradiso VIII.97–99 and VIII.122–126 and the appended notes.

  Lenkeith’s chapter “Jupiter and Justice” (Lenk.1952.1, pp. 73–131) concludes with a citation of this tercet. She offers an evaluation of Dante’s debt to Cicero’s Stoic statecraft (with which the poet is in accord except for a total disavowal of its Godless theory of politics) and his total disagreement with Augustine’s theologically determined rejection of the state’s ability to have anything to do with “real justice” altogether. [return to English / Italian]

  118–136. The reader can hardly fail to notice the sudden and sustained shift in the tense of the verbs (from past definite in verse 116) to present, some eighteen verbs in all, from prego (I pray [118]) to conosco (I know [136]). The most dramatic is perhaps the resurrective “are alive” (son vivi) for Saints Peter and Paul in verse 132. But the ostensible reason for the shift in tenses is clear: Dante looks up from composing his text to see again the souls he had previously seen in this sphere (we will meet them only in Par. XX), first among them David, those of just rulers, to pray for their intervention with God to alleviate the civic distress of all on earth who have been led astray by corrupt clergy, presided over by a corrupt pope. For reasons to believe that Dante here is thinking specifically of the papacy and particularly of Pope John XXII, see the note to verse 130. [return to English / Italian]

  118–123. Now the poet turns his attention from this planetary home of justice, where he was suspended, to God the Father, who is the source of the justice that Jupiter rays down to earth, and prays that He will observe the “smoke” that extinguishes those just rays before they reach our world and will feel wrath at the offenders. [return to English / Italian]

  122–124. Each of these three verses is constructed from a different verse of the Bible. For the commerce in the temple, see Matthew 21:12; for the bloody cost of building the Church out of sacrifice and martyrdom, see Acts 20:28; for the heavenly militia, see Luke 2:13. [return to English / Italian]

  124. The second of the three concluding apostrophes is addressed to the souls of the just rulers, whom he contemplates, as he writes these words, in the Empyrean. Nowhere in this passage does the poet rise to a higher pitch of blissful contemplation than here, where he even now “holds in mind” those whom he has previously seen in this heaven. See the note to vv. 118–136. [return to English / Italian]

  126. Surely Dante does not mean that all on earth are misled by corrupt prelates; his negative enthusiasm runs away with him. But he clearly does mean to indicat
e the population of Italy (and of others as well) that is misgoverned by the Church. [return to English / Italian]

  127–129. The “bread” that God the Father bars to none is generally understood as the sacraments of the Church, and in this instance most particularly the sacrament of the Eucharist.

  Since it is the Church that “makes war” by denying the sacrament of communion (an inevitable consequence of excommunication), in a better age the Church (and not, as some commentators believe, ancient Roman warriors) must have been brave on the field of battle. Exactly what Dante means by this is perhaps as puzzling as the commentaries have allowed it to become. However, in this very canto we have heard about those worthies who battled against the soldiery of Mohammed in order to regain the Holy Land, the Crusaders. Is this an approving recollection of the Crusades? No commentator apparently thinks so, but that fact in itself seems surprising. (Commentators who do attempt to identify the objects of these Christian weapons are content with a general sense, heretics and/or pagans.) [return to English / Italian]

  130–136. The third and final apostrophe is hurled at the sitting pope, and perhaps explains Dante’s reasons for shifting out of the normal “time zone” of the poem to a “now” in which Pope John XXII is very much alive. See the note to verse 130.

  The rhythmn of the three apostrophes is noteworthy, the first two addressed to the temporary inhabitants of Jupiter and the permanent residents of the Empyrean (O dolce stella, … O milizia del ciel), lofty in tone; the last, brutally personal and in the casual intonation not far removed from that of the gutter (Ma tu …). This conclusion of the canto is meant to be scabrous, because it is concerned with scabrous deeds, the repeated selling of Christ for personal gain. These verses offer what may be considered an appendix to Inferno XIX (where we first met simoniac popes) in which we hear the sitting pontiff, his words lent him by the acid-tongued Signor Alighieri, sounding like a mobster in The Godfather or The Sopranos, speak of his dead “buddies,” one who was killed (John the Baptist, whose image, of course, adorns the florin) so that a political functionary could watch a striptease performed by his stepdaughter, and another two (whom we heard rightly named in the poet’s voice just now, Peter and Paul) disparagingly referred to as a fisherman and “Paulie”—to whom he greatly prefers the florin. [return to English / Italian]