Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  52–54. The protagonist allows that he has interpreted (correctly) his temporary companions’ increased brightness as an expression of their affection for him. [return to English / Italian]

  58–60. Benedict is awarded the role of Dante’s penultimate “father” in this poem, with only St. Bernard to come (for the others, see the note to Par. XVI.16).

  He also has the honor of preceding St. John (see Par. XXV.122–129) in causing Dante to ask questions about the fleshly aspect of the condition of the blessed. There also circulated a medieval legend that St. John, for his particular closeness to Jesus, was unique among the rest of the blessed (Jesus and Mary being the sole other exceptions) in having his resurrected body in Heaven before the general resurrection (see Jacoff [Jaco.1999.1]). Dante’s curiosity about Benedict’s actual appearance, however, has no ascertainable “source,” at least none supported by Dante’s commentators. In the case of Benedict, the protagonist’s question (and his desire) is somewhat different. He would like to see Benedict now as he shall be when he is found again, seated in Heaven (Par. XXXII.35), that is, with his sheathing flame removed so that his face’s features will be utterly plain to a beholder. Once in the Empyrean, Dante will see all the blessed as though they had already been given back their fleshly selves (Par. XXX.43–45), that is, even before the general resurrection. Thus he will there experience the reality of Benedict and of John (and of all the other saints) in identical ways.

  Why, the commentators are left to ask, does Dante introduce this concern here, one that seems to have no historical footing? The least that one can hazard is that, given his “fatherhood” and this exceptional request, Benedict played a more vital role in Dante’s intellectual and spiritual development than has been ascertained, if in what precise ways remains unknown.

  Brownlee points out (Brow.1991.2), pp. 227–28, that Dante’s desire to see Benedict in his flesh uncomfortably parallels Semele’s request to Jove, but that he will see Benedict as though resurrected in the flesh in Paradiso XXXII.35. His story, unlike hers, has a happy ending. [return to English / Italian]

  61–72. At some length Benedict corrects the supposition that lay behind Dante’s desire to see him in his true human resemblance. His conclusion, with its reference to Jacob’s Ladder and its function as the connecting point between the rest of the timebound universe and the unchanging Empyrean, brings his attention back to his monks, last heard of at verse 51. [return to English / Italian]

  61. This represents the last use of the word “brother” (frate) as a term of address in the poem. See the note to Purgatorio IV.127.

  See Carroll (comm. to vv. 61–63) for the notion that Benedict is gently reproving Dante for having called him “father” (verse 58) by insisting that they are better considered brothers in Christ. Compare the desire of Pope Adrian V not to have Dante kneel before him in obeisance, since they enjoy a similar brotherhood (Purg. XIX.133–135). [return to English / Italian]

  64. Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 101, points out that, rather than redundant through some failing on the poet’s part, as some commentators hold, these three adjectives reproduce a phrase in an apostolic epistle (James 1:4): “And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (perfecti et integri, in nullo deficientes). [return to English / Italian]

  67. The Empyrean non s’impola (does not turn on poles), as does the terrestrial globe and as do the planets, but is the place that T. S. Eliot might have described as “the still point of the turning world” (the phrase occurs once in the second section of “Burnt Norton,” the first of the Four Quartets, and once again in the fourth). [return to English / Italian]

  68–69. This ladder “mounts right up to it,” that is, to the Empyrean, which is why Dante cannot yet see its terminus. [return to English / Italian]

  70–72. The tercet puts into play, in case we have missed it, the reference to Genesis 28:12: “And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” [return to English / Italian]

  73–87. Beginning with the foot of Jacob’s Ladder, as it were, Benedict now rounds on the current members of his order. Their degeneracy is reflected in the crumbling physical plant of the monastery; in the attempt to find some use for the cowls of the monks (since apparently those who wear them are few) as bags for flour; in the flagrant usury employed by them (quel frutto, the disgraceful “harvest” of their misguided lavoro). On this last charge, see Tozer (comm. to vv. 79–84), describing it as “covetousness in misappropriating the revenues of the Church, which rightfully belong to God’s poor, to the purposes of nepotism and licentiousness. This in the sight of God is a worse sin than usury.”

  Benedict’s remarks come to momentary cessation in the image of human sinfulness quickly undoing even fresh and worthy initiatives, snuffed out soon after inception. [return to English / Italian]

  77. Christ, driving the moneychangers from the temple (Matthew 21:12–13), portrays them as turning His “house of prayer” into a “den of thieves” (speluncam latronum), as was noted by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 76–78). Dante’s spelonche nearly certainly reflects that passage. [return to English / Italian]

  85–87. Oaks take a while to grow mature enough to produce acorns—twenty years, according to Jacopo della Lana (comm. to this tercet) and Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 73–87). However, Dante seems to be underlining the relative brevity of their acornless state. Sapegno (comm. to this tercet) looks forward to a similar sense of the brief durance, there of innocence among us humans, at Paradiso XXVII.121–138. [return to English / Italian]

  88–96. In the first of these three tercets, Benedict reviews high points in the establishments of communities within the Church: the apostle Peter’s first “papacy” (first century); the founding of his own order (sixth century); the founding of Francis’s (twelfth century). The reader has a clear sense that Benedict does not expect any major renewal in the Church. And yet his speech ends with a curiously optimistic (and typically Dantean) reversal, in the promise of better days, with which his harangue comes to its close. If bodies of water could have been halted in their flow to let the Hebrews cross to safety, as Psalm 113:3 (114:5) attests, that would still seem a greater miracle than if God were to intervene in the world now. In short, as unlikely as that possibility seems, its odds are shorter than they were for the miracles of Jordan and of the Red Sea. In Dante’s scheme of things, there is always room for hope, a view that we will find again in Paradiso XXVII.142–148, in a passage that similarly surmounts a decidedly pessimistic view of human sinfulness with hopes for a better world in the near future. [return to English / Italian]

  88. See the relevant passage in Acts 3:6: “Petrus autem dicit: Argentum et aurum non est mihi” (But Peter said, “Silver and gold have I none”), its relevance first suggested in the Chiose ambrosiane (comm. to this verse). [return to English / Italian]

  89. A possible arrière pensée of Ugolino (Inf. XXXIII.75), who knew digiuno (fasting) all too well, but prayer too little. See the note to Inferno XXXIII.49. [return to English / Italian]

  93. See Paradiso XXVII.136 for a similar description of a thing changed into its opposite, in that case, innocence into sinfulness. [return to English / Italian]

  94–96. God’s miracles (Joshua 3:14–17), Jordan turned back and (Exodus 14:21–29) the crossing of the Red Sea (both remembered in Psalm 113:3 [114:5]), will have accustomed the eventual witnesses of His vengeance against these prelates to see that such relatively minor miracles are also signs of His power. [return to English / Italian]

  97–99. The departure of Benedict and his fellow monastics, headed back “home,” to the Empyrean at the upper end of Jacob’s Ladder, where, we may assume, they will no longer think of the world’s many corruptions, is accompanied by a whirlwind, sign of God’s power and of His love for these saints. [return to English / Italian]

  1
00–111. In their wake, Beatrice leads Dante up the “ladder,” but not yet to Benedict’s companions’ goal, the Empyrean, but to the eighth of the nine heavenly spheres, that of the Fixed Stars. The ascent is brief and briefly described, but the point of arrival will be treated at greater length. [return to English / Italian]

  102. Andreoli (comm. to this verse) paraphrases as follows: “the natural gravity of my body.” Is this an admission that Dante indeed visited the heavens in the body? However, it could suggest that the protagonist thinks of himself in corporeal terms out of habit. But see the note to Paradiso I.73. [return to English / Italian]

  106–111. Dante apostrophizes us (for the distribution of the addresses to the reader throughout the poem, see the note to Inf. VIII.94–96) for the final time in the poem (as Tommaseo noted). Are we to think it a coincidence that this last occurrence falls just before the first of the final triad of invocations, now to higher powers directly (God’s creative powers in the stars and then the Deity Itself in Par. XXX and XXXIII)? It is as though the poet is underlining the distance between human and divine experience by leaving us behind. After Dante looks down through the planets, the next sight he will see is the Church Triumphant, which we will see again in the penultimate canto of the poem. For all of the next canto, for the last third of the thirtieth, and for all the final three we are seeing “face-to-face.”

  As the space travelers near their eventual goal, the time taken for the ascent from sphere to sphere decreases, since the “gravitational pull” of the Empyrean naturally increases as one nears it. [return to English / Italian]

  109–111. The poet allows us to learn, inferentially, where his visit to the Starry Sphere has been situated by Providence, in “the sign following the Bull” (Taurus), and thus in Gemini, the sign under which, in 1265, he was born and which shaped whatever genius he possesses. With Gemini the Sun rose and set the day Dante was born in Tuscany; and now he comes to this heaven in this constellation. (Singleton [comm. to vv. 127–154] cites an interesting observation of Grandgent’s: “Thus, in a spiritual sense, [Dante] returns, like Plato’s departed, to his native star: cf. Par. IV.52–57.”) From the stars of Gemini the poet invokes aid in acquiring the necessary capacity to tell of the final things of Heaven, beginning in the next canto with the appearance of the “hosts of Christ’s triumph” (Par. XXIII.20–21). [return to English / Italian]

  109–110. The by-now fairly familiar trope hysteron proteron is used to describe the speed of their upward movement and attainment of the next sphere. See the note to Paradiso I.23–26. [return to English / Italian]

  112–123. Adding to the reader’s sense of the poet’s self-consciousness at this moment in his creation, this seventh invocation also underlines the importance of the visit to the stars that shaped his human abilities. In Inferno II.7, when Dante invoked alto ingegno for aid, it is at least possible that he was invoking God’s power to help him make his poem (see the notes to Inf. II.7–9 and Par. XXV.2). Here, especially in light of the equation between God’s powers and that of the heavenly spheres suggested by Paradiso II.9, Dante would seem to be aligning his own powers as a poet with those specifically allotted him by God through the agency of the alignment of the stars at his birth, when the Sun (“he who is father to all mortal life”) was under the sign of Gemini. [return to English / Italian]

  121–123. The actual invocation occurs only now, as the first three tercets of the passage define the power of these stars and give the nature and history of Dante’s relationship with them. What is the specific “daunting task” for which the poet seeks heavenly aid? Most commentators are content to see this as a general appeal, called for by the heightening of the poem’s subject, rising above the realms in which Dante and we are allowed to see the temporarily present souls of saved mortals and looking forward to the final vision in the poem’s final canto. This seems a sensible view. (For a review of the varied [and rather vague or general] interpretations offered through the nineteenth century, see Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 122–123].) Del Lungo (comm. to this tercet) offers a stronger reading, arguing that the specific appeal is made for a specific reason: Dante in the next canto must describe the triumph presided over by Christ and Mary. Indeed, in Canto XXIII the protagonist will be seeing “face-to-face.” And what he will see is the ultimate destination of the justified portion of our race, the Church Triumphant, which will descend from the Empyrean in order to make itself visible to a mortal (for the first [and only!] time in human history, we may embarrassedly consider). And thus this invocation is “special” for that reason. Having made it, the poet reports first on his downward glance, as he readies himself to see better things; the passage describing that vision will complete this canto. In the next, the intricate opening simile leads directly into the vision of the Church Triumphant, the first thing above him that Dante will describe after the invocation (see Par. XXIII. 19–21, Beatrice’s words, “Now look upon the hosts / of Christ in triumph, all the fruit / gathered from the wheeling of these spheres!”). It is with this immediate destination in mind that one might want to understand the “clue” to such an understanding found in Beatrice’s earlier statement, a few lines farther on in this canto, at verse 124 (“You are so near the final blessedness”), as a reference not to his eventual destination in the Empyrean, as most imagine it to be, but in fact to this immediately proximate vision of the citizenry of that place in the next canto. In fact, the vast majority of commentators believe the passage looks forward only to the last canto, drawn by the phrase ultima salute, for God, in Paradiso XXXIII.27. Only Trucchi (comm. to vv. 124–126) resists this “easy” solution, seeing that the presence of Christ in the next one is what is at stake.

  Of similar effect is Beatrice’s ensuing remark (vv. 131–132), encouraging Dante to look back to see how much heavenly territory he has already traversed, a journey that makes him ready to appear before “the triumphant throng / that comes rejoicing to this celestial sphere.” In light of such indications, it seems more than likely that the invocation is meant to be read as a preparation for that near-at-hand experience, not one some ten cantos distant. [return to English / Italian]

  123. The phrase “passo forte” (daunting task) caught Benvenuto’s attention (comm. to vv. 121–123). Why is it so? “Because,” Benvenuto says, “here is that which all things strive toward. In what follows [Dante] describes God’s Church in its triumph, with all the celestial court, including God.” [return to English / Italian]

  124–129. See Boyle (Boyl.2000.1), pp. 3–5, on Dante’s awareness of Thomas’s failure to complete his three-part Summa and consequent diminution in comparison with Dante’s tripartite poem. She continues by claiming that the Comedy uses both agricultural and navigational metaphors to demonstrate that poetry is more fitting than philosophy or theology to articulate “the ascent to divine contemplation.” While her sense of Dante’s hostility to Thomas is surely overblown, she is among those who realize that all is not peaches and cream in Dante’s presentation of his relations with Thomas. [return to English / Italian]

  124–126. Beatrice is not so much admonishing Dante to prepare his eyes for such exalted vision as insisting that, trained as they have been, they are now necessarily ready for that vision, and will be so for the duration of his visit to the rest of the heavens and to the Empyrean. This is to agree with Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet). For the sense in which Dante is at this moment near his “final blessedness,” see the note to vv. 121–123. [return to English / Italian]

  127. Dante’s neologism here is close to untranslatable. The coinage is possibly to be taken as a verb of the first conjugation, “inleiarsi,” to “in-it oneself,” that is, to make oneself one with something external to one’s being. [return to English / Italian]

  129. Beatrice’s reference to the great extent of the universe that Dante can now make out “beneath his feet” reminds us again that we are still not sure whether we are meant to understand that Dante is in Paradiso in the flesh. While somethin
g like certainty awaits us, as will be made clear in a few cantos, here we sense a certain coyness. Beatrice may be speaking figuratively, meaning “Look down beneath you, where your feet would be if you were here in the flesh.” Or she may simply be saying, “Look beneath your feet,” feet that are really there, dangling beneath him in the heaven of the Fixed Stars. [return to English / Italian]

  131–132. Once again Beatrice clearly alludes to what Dante will see next, in the verses early in the next canto (19ff.), the Church Triumphant, having left Heaven to appear to Dante in this heaven. [return to English / Italian]

  132. The word etera, literally translated, means “(a)ether,” in Aristotle’s sense of the “fifth element,” as understood by Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 130–132), that which composes the “stuff” of which a celestial sphere consists and in which other bodies (e.g., the stars) are contained. It is thus differentiated from both stars (and what we refer to as planets) and nothingness (what we used to refer to as “space”). [return to English / Italian]

  133–153. This remarkable passage is almost as interesting in its antecedence as in its immediate progeny. There are similar scenes in Boccaccio’s Filostrato and Teseida; Chaucer visits both of these, in the moment that is perhaps central to the understanding of his intentions for the ending of the Troilus; and both writers evidently pay close attention to Dante as well as to his and their classical precursors. While there continues to be debate about Dante’s firsthand knowledge of the portion of Cicero’s lost De re publica known as the “Dream of Scipio,” it really does seem to most that Dante knew this text (VI.xvi.16). On the other hand, there is and can be no debate about his knowledge of the similar passage in Boethius’s De consolatione (II.m7.1–6), if that seems less directly resemblant. (Singleton [comm. to vv. 127–154] presents both texts, with English translations.) In Cicero, Dante’s great Roman hero Scipio, appearing in a dream to his grandson after his death, speaks of this paltry world, seen from the heavens, in much the same tone as we find here; in Boethius, there is a vision of this narrow earth. [return to English / Italian]