Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  Only months more than ten years after Dante’s death in 1321, his old nemesis, Pope John XXII, preached a series of sermons of which a central point was that, until the soul was reclad in its flesh, it would not see God, setting off a horrified reaction within the Church, the eventual result of which was that the next pope, Benedict XII, restored the earlier disposition of the matter, namely, that the saved soul immediately experiences both the highest bliss in and the fullest knowledge of God of which it is capable.

  Dante might have been amused to find that John XXII, whom he despised (see the note to Par. XXVII.136–138), was in disagreement with him on this important and divisive issue as well as on more pressing “political” concerns. [return to English / Italian]

  130–148. For a global discussion of this final passage, see Hainsworth (Hain.1997.1), arguing that it not only fails to destroy the harmony or unity of this canto (a position shared by many—see p. 154n. for a concise bibliography of the question), but that it is part of its integrity. See the similar opinion of Salsano (Sals.1974.1), pp. 232–34, and of Hollander (Holl.1993.5), pp. 31–33.

  For an attempt to “save” this passage despite itself, see Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who concede that Dante probably should not have turned aside from contemplating things eternal and divine for such a feverish concern with mere contingency, compounding that “fault” by putting this earth-centered speech in the mouth of holy Beatrice, and as her last utterance at that. One can hear awareness of centuries of complaint behind their words. To be just, one must admit that this concern with earthly things seems inconsistent with the usual sort of piety. No one ever said (or should have) that Dante is “usual” in any respect at all. [return to English / Italian]

  130–132. There are only two possible considerations of the significance of the few places left in the Rose: Either there are very few good people alive (or who will be born before the end of time), or the end is coming faster than we think. That we should combine these two responses seems prudent. However, for Dante’s possible sense that there are some fifteen hundred years left to run in history, see the note to Paradiso IX.40. [return to English / Italian]

  133–138. Silverstein (Silv.1939.1) deals with the surprise that most readers exhibit at the empty throne of the emperor being the first object that the protagonist sees in the Empyrean by reminding us of the far more ample medieval tradition that displayed vacant seats in heaven awaiting “humble friars and simple monks” (pp. 116–17) rather than emperors. He thus sees the salvation of Henry VII not in terms of his imperial mission (failed as it was), but as an “accolade of kingly righteousness” (p. 129), showing that, in passages in the Gospels and one in the Vision of Tundale (see p. 124 and n. 19), Dante had available testimony to the personal justness of those kings who, rather than merely ruling them, truly served their people. (He might have referred to Dante’s praise of William the Good; see the note on Par. XX.61–66.) However, it is probably a mistake to accept, as Silverstein does (p. 128), the notion that, with Henry’s failure to establish lasting imperial rule in Italy “died all of Dante’s hope on earth.” For a view, apparently shaped in part by Silverstein’s, that Dante had essentially given up his hopes for an imperial resurgence because of the derelictions of the fourteenth-century papacy, see Peters (Pete.1972.1), who goes further than Silverstein in seeing Dante as having modified his imperial hopes. But see Goudet (Goud.1974.1) and Rossi (Ross.1981.1), pp. 43–50 (with a rejoinder to Peters on p. 49) for a more convincing sense of Dante’s continuing imperial hopes.

  For Dante’s fifth Epistula (addressed to the princes and peoples of Italy) as rechanneling biblical and liturgical reflections of Christ’s majesty onto Henry VII, see Rigo (Rigo.1980.1).

  For Henry VII as the seventh divinely selected emperor treated in the poem, see the last paragraph of the note to Paradiso VI.82–91. [return to English / Italian]

  134. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that it is difficult to be certain just what Dante means. Is the crown (a) leaning against the throne? (b) a part of the design on its back? (c) suspended over it? This reader confesses that he has always assumed the third option was the right one. [return to English / Italian]

  135. The word nozze (wedding feast) drew Mattalia’s attention (comm. to this verse) to Dante’s Epistle to the Italian Princes (Epist. V.5): “Rejoice, therefore, O Italy, thou that art now an object of pity even to the Saracens, for soon shalt thou be the envy of the whole world, seeing that thy bridegroom, the comfort of the nations, and the glory of thy people, even the most clement Henry, Elect of God and Augustus and Caesar, is hastening to the wedding (ad nuptias properat)” (tr. P. Toynbee). This attribution is also found in Rossi (Ross.1981.1), p. 50. [return to English / Italian]

  136. The adjective agosta (imperial) still honors Henry’s “Augustan” mission, which was to unite the Italians into a nation, as Aeneas had set out to do. Augustus had presided over its flowering, bringing the world to peace under Rome’s authority. [return to English / Italian]

  137. For Henry’s first naming, see Paradiso XVII.82, where his betrayal by Pope Clement is clearly referred to. This second (and final) reference to him by name places his coming as “Augustus” in the future, thus reflecting Dante’s willed optimism that the future harbors a “new Henry” even after this one has failed. [return to English / Italian]

  138. See Hainsworth (Hain.1997.1), p. 160, on the two main and opposing senses of the notion of “disposition” in Dante (the verb disporre in various forms). The word often refers to human choices (sometimes mistaken ones), but also to divine election. Here, Hainsworth argues, that Italy was not “disposed” when she should have been does not mean that she will not welcome her next opportunity to embrace a rightful ruler. [return to English / Italian]

  139–141. Florence as an ill-willed baby boy, who turns from his nurse’s breast even as he feels the pangs of hunger, is reminiscent of the two good young boys who will turn bad quickly enough in Paradiso XXVII.130–135. The political context and the word cupidigia are other common elements in the two passages. [return to English / Italian]

  139. See, for a different tonality but similar formulations, Dante’s earlier utterance, issued from exile, addressed to his fellow citizens when they were resisting the efforts of Henry VII to take control of Florence (Epistula VI.22): “Nec advertitis dominantem cupidinem, quia ceci estis, venenoso susurrio blandientem, minis frustatoriis cohibentem, nec non captivantem vos in lege peccati, ac sacratissimis legibus que iustitie naturalis imitantur ymaginem, parere vetantem; observantia quarum, si leta, si libera, non tantum non servitus esse probatur, quin ymo perspicaciter intuenti liquet ut est ipsa summa libertas” (Nor are ye ware in your blindness of the overmastering greed which beguiles you with venomous whispers, and with cheating threats constrains you, yea, and has brought you into captivity to the law of sin, and forbidden you to obey the most sacred laws; those laws made in the likeness of natural justice, the observance whereof, if it be joyous, if it be free, is not only no servitude, but to him who observes with understanding is manifestly in itself the most perfect liberty—tr. P. Toynbee [italics added]). [return to English / Italian]

  142–148. This concluding passage, with its rancor against the ecclesiastical enemies of the imperial idea, has disturbed many, who find it entirely inappropriate as Beatrice’s last utterance in a theologically determined poem. One must admit that it may seem out of place in a Christian poem, with its necessary message of the unimportance of the things of the world coupled with Jesus’ insistence that we forgive our enemies. Such a sensible view, however, disregards the thoroughgoing political concern of the poem and does not deal with Dante’s stubborn insistence on the rectitude of his vision of the world order (see Hollander [Holl.1993.5], pp. 32–33).

  The thirtieth cantos of the final cantiche are united, as Claudio Varese noted (Vare.1953.1), p. 25, in at least two major respects: They are cantos of departure for both beloved guides; they also are both “cantos of B
eatrice,” the first of arrival, the second of return (to the point of her departure, her seat in Heaven, as described in Inferno II.71, 101–102).

  If we can remember our first reading of the poem, we will perhaps recall our eventual and retrospective surprise upon discovering that these were the last words spoken by Beatrice in the Divine Comedy. We, like the protagonist, have gotten used to her guidance. Unlike Virgil’s departure, which is prepared for even as he enters the poem (Inf. I.121–126), Beatrice’s departure is a total surprise (see the note to Par. XXXI.102). [return to English / Italian]

  142–144. This tercet undoubtedly is a last nasty glance at Pope Clement V, who made a show of welcoming Henry VII to Italy but then worked assiduously behind the scenes to defeat the emperor’s efforts to unite her cities under his rule (see the note to Par. XVII.82–84). [return to English / Italian]

  145–146. Henry died 24 August 1313; Clement, 20 April 1314, soon enough after Henry for Dante to consider his death God’s punishment for his treacherous opposition to the emperor and to his cause—even if Clement had been seriously ill a very long time. See the note to Inferno XIX.79–87. [return to English / Italian]

  147. Simon Magus gave the “naming opportunity” to Dante for the third of the Malebolge (see Inf. XXIX.1), where the simoniac popes and other clerics who traded in the goods and services of the Church are found, and where Dante so memorably is mistaken by Pope Nicholas III for Pope Boniface VIII (Inf. XIX.53). [return to English / Italian]

  148. The phrase “that fellow from Anagni” is Dante’s own version of the false and slangy familiarity of the corrupt clergy (see the note to Par. XVIII.130–136). The reference, of course, is to Pope Boniface VIII, seen as forced deeper into his hole (that of the simoniac popes) by the advent of Clement, who now will be the topmost, and thus able to wave his burning soles about in Hell. Dante didn’t know it, but Clement’s time would exceed that of Boniface, who waved his feet from 1303 to 1314. In the unwritten continuation of this poem, Clement would have twenty years in the relatively open air of the bolgia, since John XXII did not die until 1334 (surely Dante felt he was destined for eternal damnation, and would have continued to do so, especially had he learned of John’s unenlightened views on the resurrection of the flesh [see the note to verse 129]). [return to English / Italian]

  PARADISO XXXI

  * * *

  1–3. For the resemblance of Dante’s candida rosa to the rose-wheel windows of medieval cathedrals, see Leyerle (Leye.1977.1). He argues for the double significance of this design: the wheel of Fortune, symbol of the fleetingness of earthly success, and the rose, symbol of a higher and more ordered affection (one particularly related to the Blessed Virgin). He then goes on to suggest that Dante has this design in mind both in his depiction of Fortune’s wheel (Inf. VII) and of the Rose found here in the Empyrean. Leyerle also believes that a particular rose-wheel window was in Dante’s mind, the one that was completed in the façade of the basilica of S. Zeno in Verona at least by 1300. On the exterior of S. Zeno, carvings of human figures, all four of whom are either falling or rising, strengthen his first case; the lovely tracing of the light on the inner spaces of the cathedral are at least not unlike the design found in Dante’s Rose. However, see Scott (Scot.2002.1), p. 477, citing Barnes (Barn.1986.1, pp. 25 and 31, n. 30) for the argument that the term for “rose window” only begins to appear in the European vernaculars, first in France, in the very late seventeenth century. This is hardly conclusive evidence that Dante did not think of one of these round, large, beautiful, and many-hued glass structures, piercing stone and splashing the interior space with colored light, as the model for his Rose. (In fact, Migliorini-Fissi’s lectura of the canto [Migl.1989.1], pp. 609–11, certainly lends credence to Leyerle’s argument; while she does not mention his article, but does note two later treatments found in Di Scipio’s fifth chapter [Disc.1984.1] and in Demaray [Dema.1987.1], she points out that the idea was first broached in 1870 by Ozanam.) The term may be anachronistic, but nothing in Leyerle’s case depends upon the availability of the term. And if one were to select a particular window, Leyerle has chosen well. Verona was, at least for two lengthy periods in both decades of the fourteenth century in which Dante lived, the focal point of his life as an exile, at least until his removal to Ravenna probably in the final third of the second decade. San Zeno was (and is) an astoundingly beautiful church. [return to English / Italian]

  1. Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 1–3) sees that the adverb dunque (then) is pointing to a previous discussion (Beatrice’s first description of the Rose, in Par. XXX.124–132, “interrupted” by the “digression” [XXX.133–145] of her bitter words about Henry’s death and the corrupt recent popes Boniface and Clement). With “dunque” the poet announces his return to her prior subject. The word’s casual, “vernacular-sounding” nature caught the attention of Scaglione (Scag.1967.2), as is reported by Scott (Scot.2002.1), p. 476. Both of them refer to the term brought to bear in Dante studies by Auerbach (Auer.1958.1), sermo humilis, for the low style, in their classification of this linguistic gesture. Scott admires the juxtaposition of dunque with candida rosa (luminous white rose) as the expression of Dante’s union of the low with the sublime.

  Vellutello (comm. to vv. 1–3) was apparently the first commentator, in a long tradition, to link the “bianche stole” (white robes) last heard of in Paradiso XXX.129 with the adjective candida (luminous white) modifying rosa. Grandgent (comm. to this verse) is one of only two in the DDP to suggest a source in Albertus Magnus (De laudibus beatae Mariae Virginis [XII.iv.33]): “Et nota, quod Christus rosa, Maria rosa, Ecclesia rosa, fidelis anima rosa,” equating Jesus, Mary, the Church, and the faithful soul of a believer with the rose.

  For the fullest bibliography for this canto available in print, see Costa (Cost.1996.1), pp. 78–85. [return to English / Italian]

  2–3. The protagonist gazes at the milizia (soldiery) that fought on for the Church that Christ “adquisivit sanguine suo” (obtained with His own blood—Acts 20:28, first cited by Tommaseo [comm. to vv. 1–3]). And see the note to verse 127. Dante never stops seeing the Church as an army, even in its peaceful triumph. [return to English / Italian]

  4–6. The other host, the angels, now take the poet’s attention, flying up to the “hive” while contemplating and singing Its glory. [return to English / Italian]

  5. The first five words of Paradiso I.1 are present here, verbatim. [return to English / Italian]

  7–12. The angelic host is given similetic expression. At first, by Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 7–9) and Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 4–12), these bees were seen as deriving from Aeneid I.430–431. However, from Vellutello (comm. to vv. 4–12) onward, commentators have heard the more relevant echo of the simile at Aeneid VI.703–709 (for that text, see the note to Paradiso XXX.64–66).

  The conclusion of Rossi’s study (Ross.1989.2), pp. 313–24, accounts for the disparities in the two similes by showing that the situation in the Aeneid, from a Christian perspective, is less propitious than it first may seem. As a central case in point, Aeneas discovers that all these happy shades are about to be (from Dante’s perspective) “reincarnated.” We can hardly imagine the joy felt by the hero of this “epic” when he sees the souls in the Rose as they will look when they are resurrected. Surely we are meant to remember Aeneas’s quite different reaction, when he learns from Anchises about the flesh that these souls in the Elysian Fields will bear with them as they return to the world and its toils. Indeed, Aeneas laments their return to the world of flesh (Aen. VI.719–721). In the post-Platonic Aeneid, the world of flesh has nothing to do with spiritual perfection; in Dante’s poem the beatified spirit has only a single unfulfilled desire: to be granted the return of its flesh. Thus, if Dante allows Virgilian text a renewed presence in his poem, he is not without the ironic distance that we have found present in even the first moments of the poem (for example, see the notes to Inf. II.28 and II.56–57).

  For other possible sources for
this passage, e.g., in St. Anselm and St. Bernard, see Scott (Scot.2002.1), p. 478. For several different passages in Bernard, see the following: Carroll (comm. to vv. 1–12), Torraca (comm. to these verses), Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 7), and Trucchi (comm. to vv. 4–12), who also cites Anselm. A few later commentators also make gestures in both these directions, if without furnishing texts.

  A discussion of the elaborate structural play in this simile is found in Lansing (Lans.1977.1), p. 37. The vehicle and tenor of the simile each mirrors both moments in the movement of the bees/angels, first down to the flowers/souls, then back up to the hive/God. [return to English / Italian]

  7. As we have seen (note to Par. XXX.64–66), Virgil’s verb (insidere) for what the bees do at least suggests that, more than settling on the blossoms, they enter them. Thus Dante here follows Virgil faithfully, if others seem to believe he does not (see Bosco/Reggio [comm. to this verse]). [return to English / Italian]

  9. The word laboro is obviously a deliberate Latinism, since lavoro, Italian for “labor,” is metrically the same, and Dante’s hand was not forced by rhyme. Why does he choose this linguistic tactic here? Perhaps to underline his borrowing from Virgil. [return to English / Italian]

  12. We are given a clue as to the separate “dwelling” of God. Fallani (comm. to vv. 40–42) discusses the fact that among the Scholastics there was a tradition of a second “heaven” in the Empyrean, the coelum Trinitatis (the heaven of the Trinity), a “place” distinct from the Empyrean, where dwelt the triune God, separated from the blessed souls. In Fallani’s opinion, Dante accepts that tradition. It is, however, not clear that he does. Perhaps he both honors and abrogates it, for his God is not in an “eleventh zone” of the heavens, but in the one He shares with the saints—if in a higher and thus different locus from them (the distance between the “floor” and the top tier of the Rose is greater than that between the lowest place in the sea and the highest place beneath the Moon [see the note to vv. 73–78]; the distance between that point in the Rose and God would seem to be infinite). And thus Dante can have things both ways: Is God separate from the saints? Yes and no. He is infinitely farther aloft than they, but that does not require that He “inhabits” another “place,” especially since His “habitation” is everywhere and nowhere. It seems clear that Dante intends to avoid this issue, of which he must have been aware. For the presence of the phrase coelum Trinitatis, in a context that is related, see Thomas Aquinas, Super Evangelium S. Matthaei lectura (51.2, referring to Psalm 36:11 [37:11] and Matthew 5:5, “The meek shall inherit the earth”; Aquinas explains that the terra [earth] promised them is the Empyrean). It is not entirely clear, but he seems to think of the Empyrean and the coelum Trinitatis as though they might be considered one and the same. [return to English / Italian]