by Dante
18. The phrase li angelici squilli is probably not to be understood as the “song of the angels” (Bosco/Reggio [comm. to this verse]), but as the “angelic songs” of the blessed. [return to English / Italian]
19–21. If Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet) is correct, these lines reflect both a passage in the Georgics (I.108–110) and one in the Aeneid (XI.296–299). The passage in Virgil’s epic describes the rumor of the many voices of the native Italians being quieted by King Latinus’s voiced decision to make peace with the invading future Romans. Chiarenza (Chia.1995.3), p. 302, makes the point that this decision is thus in accord “with the unchangeable will of Providence.” [return to English / Italian]
22–29. This double simile, reflecting the fingering of two kinds of musical instruments in order to produce varying sounds (along the neck of a lute or at the vents of a bagpipe), describes the sound produced from within the Eagle’s neck, eventually issuing from his beak as a series of notes (or words).
Landino (comm. to vv. 25–29) expresses his admiration for Dante’s ability, plainly visible here, to “make the impossible seem believable” and compares him to Ovid in this respect. [return to English / Italian]
30. The Eagle uttered words that Dante, once more reverting to the image of his scribal role, wrote down upon his heart. See the notes to Purgatorio XXIV.55–63; Paradiso V.85, X.27, and X.109–114. [return to English / Italian]
31–33. The Eagle’s invitation to Dante to gaze upon its eye revisits a bit of lore already placed in evidence. We learned that mortal eagles are able to look into the sun without harm from Paradiso I.46–48; see the accompanying note, referring to possible sources in Aristotle and in Brunetto Latini. [return to English / Italian]
31. Returning to speech from song, the Eagle now again speaks as a single voice. We will hear it switch back again to the first-person plural in its final words (see verse 134). [return to English / Italian]
34–36. The Eagle now reports that the souls that form its eye (we only see one of the two, if it in fact happens to possess more in the way of orbs of sight than its profiled appearance as the emblem of empire requires—a dubious eventuality) are the greatest among the many that give its form an aquiline shape. [return to English / Italian]
37–72. The Eagle’s thirty-six verses in six segments, each of six lines, and each involving use of anaphora (the phrase ora conosce), identify the six “chiefs” of justice: David, Trajan, Hezekiah, Constantine, William the Good, and Ripheus (their fame is at first insisted on when the first four of them are named only by circumlocution; the last two understandably require more assistance). It seems possible that the poet wanted us to reflect that the thirty-six lines in praise of these half dozen dead rulers mirror, if adversely, the twenty-seven verses, also marked by anaphora, describing the dozen defective living rulers in the preceding canto, Paradiso XIX.115–141.
The number of these just rulers (six) may also be meant to put us in mind of the six “world-historical” emperors presented in Paradiso VI: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Titus, Justinian, and Charlemagne. Those seemed to have been significant primarily for the events over which they presided; these, for their personal justness. That distinction may or may not explain their appearing here (only temporarily, we at times may struggle to remember) in a higher heaven. Dante never gives us the grounds on which to establish the relative advancement of the blessed in the Empyrean, except for the eighteen souls whom we are allowed to see in Paradiso XXXII; and none of these saved rulers is seen among them. [return to English / Italian]
37–39. The first of these most just among just rulers is David, in the Commedia most honored as the singer of the Holy Spirit (as are also all his companions in the Eagle: see Par. XIX.101). (David is prominently mentioned in Purg. X.65 [and see the appended note]; Par. XXV.71–72 and XXXII.11–12). He is, in fact, the figure from the Old Testament most present in Dante’s work, referred to perhaps fifty times in all.
For his service to the Lord in transporting the Ark of the Covenant, see Purgatorio X.55–69. [return to English / Italian]
40–42. Some think the words suo consiglio (his own thought) refer to the “thought” of the Holy Spirit; most, to that of David (as is reflected in our translation).
The question of the “merit” of David’s song disturbs some readers. See, for instance, Tozer (comm. to vv. 40–42), pointing out that David could benefit only insofar as his song proceeded from his own free will (and thus was not the effect of inspiration, in which case it would not, as the text suggests, in itself make him worthy of salvation). However, is David’s worthiness not similar to the unexpressed claim for his own “merit” that Dante might have considered most convincing? He presents himself as the “new David” from the outset (see Inf. I.65), that is, as a man directly inspired by God to lift his eyes from worldly distraction. In Dante’s mind, there does not seem to be any limitation on the freedom of his will imposed thereby. [return to English / Italian]
43–48. Trajan, the Roman emperor (a.d. 98–117), is closest to the Eagle’s beak in the semicircle that describes the “eyebrow,” as it were, above David, located as the pupil of the eye. For his humble service to the widow and the tradition of his salvation, see Purgatorio X.73–93 and the appended note. For some of the twists and turns in the history of the accounts of the salvation of Trajan, see Picone (Pico.2002.6), pp. 313–19.
Now Trajan appreciates, both by now being here with God and by having been in Limbo, the cost of not following Christ. [return to English / Italian]
48. For the phrase dolce vita (sweet life), see the note to Paradiso IV.35. [return to English / Italian]
49–51. Hezekiah, a king of Judah in the seventh century b.c., was a just monarch, according to the Bible, at least in his own accountancy (see II Kings 20:3).
His tears (but were they shed in penitence?) are found in Isaiah 38:3, as was first noted by Jacopo della Lana (comm. to verse 51). Here is the pertinent passage (38:1–5): “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.’ Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, ‘Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: ‘Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life’ ” (italics added). Hezekiah in fact here does not weep out of penitence, as Dante says he did, but the detail that God saw his tears and then remitted his sentence of death was perhaps enough to suggest to the poet that the king was contrite for his sins, and not merely brokenhearted and afraid.
Now Hezekiah knows that answered prayers are part of God’s plan, rather than representing a change in it (cf. Purg. VI.28–42, where the same question is raised about Virgil’s views on this matter). Carroll (comm. to vv. 49–54) puts this well: “In short, what Hezekiah now knows in Heaven is the mystery of how prayer harmonizes with and fulfils ‘the eternal judgment,’ instead of being, as it seems, an alteration of it.”
For Hezekiah as “type” of Dante, see Charity (Char.1966.1), p. 230, and the note to Inferno I.1. [return to English / Italian]
52–54. Tozer (comm. to this tercet) paraphrases and interprets this passage as follows: “ ‘when a worthy prayer causes that which was ordained for the present time to be postponed to a future time’; this was what happened in Hezekiah’s case through the postponement of his death. The meaning of the entire passage here is, that what God has ordained is not changed in answer to prayer, because God has already provided for it.” [return to English / Italian]
55–60. Since the spatial arrangement of the inhabitants of the Eagle’s semicircular eyebrow is not chronological, the fact that Constantine (274–337) is the middle figure in it, and
thus the highest, takes us by surprise, given the number and vehemence of Dante’s outbursts against the Donation (e.g., Inf. XIX.115–117, Purg. XXXII.124–129; and see Monarchia, which fairly seethes with them). In this passage Dante settles for Constantine’s good intent in his governance of the Eastern empire. However, now this emperor knows that if the evil he unwittingly committed has not harmed him, it has nonetheless destroyed the world. Dante may allow him salvation, but makes him pay for it eternally and dearly with this permanent wound in his self-awareness. This does not efface the glory his good intention won him, but it does mar its beauty. [return to English / Italian]
61–66. William the Good, king of (Naples and) Sicily (ruled 1166–89), is presented as mourned by his subjects (he died young, at thirty-five), who now must suffer the misdeeds of his two successors, Charles of Anjou (who ruled Apulia) and Frederick II of Aragon (who ruled Sicily itself—see Par. XIX.127–135, where these two are the sixth and seventh unworthy rulers in that pestilential acrostic). Now William, who was widely celebrated in his lifetime for his lawful reign and his generosity, knows that God loves a just king. [return to English / Italian]
67–72. Ripheus is unlike the first five identified rulers in not ever having been mentioned within a Christian context by anyone at all; he is also the only one of them not to have been a king or an emperor. Indeed, he is a sort of “extra,” a bit player (if a heroic and probably highborn one) in the Aeneid, barely mentioned but for his death fighting along with Aeneas (Aen. II.426–428; see also II.339, II.394). Dante does not refer to a particular good deed that he performed, insisting instead on the general fact of his justness. The not inconsiderable poetic space (vv. 118–129) devoted to “explaining” his Christian belief has never diminished readers’ amazement at finding him here. That is not surprising, as even he is portrayed (in verse 72) as not knowing the reason for his being among the elect.
For a recently discovered (it had been hiding in plain view for centuries) and probable source, or at least confirmation, of Dante’s view of Ripheus, see Scott (Scot.1994.1), pp. 190–92, pointing out that a passage in Boethius (Cons. Phil. IV.6[pr].127–131) offers several reasons to think it was in Dante’s mind as he wrote this passage: (1) that Boethius is referring to the same passage that scholars habitually point to as Dante’s source in Aeneid II seems highly likely; (2) the Boethian context is utterly appropriate, since it involves the surprising nature, in human eyes, of providence; (3) the passage includes a specific reference to Lucan’s Cato of Utica (Phars. I.128), approving Cato’s worth (even though he lost his war) against that of Caesar, though Julius (and not Cato) was victorious (see Dante’s presentation of Cato in the first two cantos of Purgatorio). The text in question reads in part as follows (tr. W. V. Cooper, italics added): “For, to glance at the depth of God’s works with so few words as human reason is capable of comprehending, I say that what you think to be most fair and most conducive to justice’s preservation, that appears different to an all-seeing Providence. Has not our fellow-philosopher Lucan told us how ‘the conquering cause did please the gods, but the conquered, Cato?’ ” One can only imagine how Dante felt, seeing that his own radical and dangerous ideas had some justification in no less an authority than Boethius. For an earlier, similar, but not quite as pointed recognition of the influence of the Consolatio (and particularly its fourth book) on Dante’s thought here, see Chiarenza (Chia.1983.2).
On the other hand, one may be excused a certain dubiety concerning the genuineness of Dante’s belief in the salvation of this pagan. Virgil has handed Dante the stick with which to beat him: After he calls Ripheus the most just of the Trojans (“iustissimus”), he concludes with the phrase “dis aliter visum” (to the gods it seemed otherwise [Aen. II.428]); the muffled meaning seems to be that the gods do not care about just humans, and “kill us for their sport” (as King Lear phrased it). Dante lands hard upon Virgil for this judgment: His Christian God reverses pagan justice. (For this view, see Hollander [Holl.1983.1], p. 138; for a more conciliatory one, Bosco/Reggio, comm. to verse 68.)
Chiarenza (Chia.1995.3), pp. 304–5, puts into intelligent focus the way so much of Paradiso XX reopens the “question of Virgil” in our minds: “Virgil’s drama is based on the contingency that he died just nineteen years before the birth of Christ. If God could extend Hezekiah’s life by fifteen years, why did He not extend Virgil’s by little more? It was said that St. Paul, moved by the beauty and wisdom of Virgil’s poetry, prayed at the poet’s tomb for his salvation. (For this topic, she adverts to the work of Comparetti [Comp.1872.1], p. 98; Davis [Davi.1957.1], pp. 103–4; and Vickers [Vick.1983.1], p. 72.) If God could answer Gregory’s prayers for Trajan, why did He reject the similar prayer of the great St. Paul? How could a minor figure in Virgil’s poem have caught the attention of God, while Virgil himself failed to?” Whether we like it or not, we have heard the answer to our question in the last canto, when the Eagle came down hard upon Dante for his similar question (Par. XIX.79–90): We cannot weigh God’s intent, only recognize it.
On the question of God’s disposition of the virtuous pagans, see G. Fallani, “salvezza dei pagani,” ED IV (1973) and Picone (Pico.2002.6), pp. 311–13, and, with specific reference to Ripheus, pp. 317–20. For the interesting observation that Dante might have found an equally “salvable” pagan in the person of Galaesus, also referred to by Virgil as “iustissimus” (in Aeneid VII.536), see Camerino (Came.1995.1), pp. 55–56, who sees Dante as observing this rather striking phenomenon and considering that the two “most just” pagans point only, again, to the inscrutable nature of God’s justice—as well, we might want to add, as of Dante’s.
Apparently first among the few to hear the echo here of the salvation of the Roman (and thus pagan) centurion Cornelius (see Acts 10:22–23; 34–35) was Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 68–69); most recently see Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 91, building the evidence for his point better than his (unacknowledged) predecessors: Cornelius the centurion, “vir iustus et timens Deum” (a just and God-fearing man [Acts 10:22; Aversano’s italics]). He concludes, “In patristic exegesis this centurion is the type of the gentiles saved by the grace of God”; Cornelius “because of his great faith and his justness, received the gift of the Holy Spirit before he was baptized” (Aversano is citing Rabanus Maurus for this judgment).
Perhaps our poet was tempted to push his reading of Virgil past the point of no return. At any rate, that is what he has accomplished, making the condemned author of the Aeneid, alongside the similarly Limbo-bound hero of his epic, spend their eternities in the lower world of an afterlife they neither believed in nor deserved, while this “bit player” enjoys the fruits of Heaven. For him to be here, Ripheus necessarily had to welcome Christ into his life; again, one has a difficult time believing that Dante really thought so. But that is what he decided he thought. [return to English / Italian]
69. Dante is aware that his treatment of Ripheus will astound at least some of his readers. That he wants them to couple it with his similarly contentious insistence on Solomon’s salvation (despite the warmly contrary opinions of some “big guns” of Christian theology, none bigger or more negative about the possibility of Solomon’s salvation than Augustine) is the opinion of Lauren Seem (Seem.2006.1), p. 77. She points out that both Solomon (Par. X.109) and Ripheus are the fifth lights in the shapes that they and their colleagues have temporarily assumed in order to display themselves to Dante, a circle and the eyebrow of an eagle, and that both were spectacularly provocative selections for salvation. [return to English / Italian]
73–78. The Eagle, delighted by its own report of the salvation of Ripheus (and by the fact that not even he understands why he was saved), is like a lark satisfied by its own song, silent in its flight, savoring that melody in memory. The ensuing description of the silent emblem is not easy to decode, but it seems to refer to the Eagle (l’imago) as stamped (de la ’mprenta) by the eternal Beauty that is God (l’etterno piacere), by whose will each thing becomes that whi
ch it is. In this case that last and rather puzzling general statement probably refers most directly to Ripheus’s saved soul, as the context suggests.
This passage has understandably caused a certain amount of debate (for a summary, see Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 76–78]). Its key phrase (“la ’mprenta / de l’etterno piacere”) either means that the Eagle bears the imprint of God’s will or is the imprint of His beauty. Most of the commentators, including Scartazzini, are of the first persuasion. However, when speaking of the etterno piacere of God, Dante elsewhere seems to refer to His everlasting beauty (see Took [Took. 1984.1], pp. 10–11, 17–22). The phrase also occurs in Purgatorio XXIX.32 and Paradiso XVIII.16. In addition, in Paradiso the word piacere, standing alone and referring to God, frequently seems to indicate His beauty (see Par. XXVII.95, XXXII.65, and XXXIII.33). And so we have translated the phrase, if gingerly, as we have. This is a possible reading, but not a certain one. [return to English / Italian]
73. John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 73–78) is alert to the charming pun available in the name of the bird (allodetta, lark). He puts Latin words into its beak: “Surge, Deum lauda, iam lux est, cantat alauda” (‘Arise, praise God, for it is light,’ sings the lark [italics added, even though John’s play on words is lost in English]). [return to English / Italian]
79–84. This simple comparison, less developed than a “classical” simile, makes the heavy question within Dante evident to the souls configuring the Eagle. Despite knowing that, he nonetheless bursts out in amazement and perplexity. We may need to remind ourselves that for eighty-five cantos the protagonist has resisted the notion that virtuous pagans should be condemned to Hell. Then the Eagle insisted on that harsh truth in Canto XIX. And now that same Eagle tells Dante that two of the greatest souls that produce his shape are saved pagans. It is small wonder the protagonist is both amazed and perplexed. [return to English / Italian]