by Dante
It was only with Scartazzini (1900), however, that the most likely source for this tercet, the fourteenth chapter of the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which Scartazzini claims is also the source of the lengthy paraphrase found in the gloss to the passage by Francesco da Buti (1385), came to light. Any number of medieval legends were developed from this text (see Longfellow [1867]). In it, Adam’s noncanonical son Seth visits the gates of the garden of Eden, now a wasteland, in search of some oil to ease Adam’s aching head (Adam has been in Limbo for nearly five thousand years). Seth is not allowed to enter by the guardian angel, but does see a very tall tree, denuded of its leaves. The angel gives him a branch from the tree (it is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) which he brings back to Adam, who has died before Seth returns to Limbo with the branch. Planted, it soon supplied the wood that would serve for the crucifixion of Jesus.
For a brief discussion of the “Legend of the Wood of the Cross” as being applicable to Dante’s phrasing here see Moore (Moor.1903.1), pp. 219–20. For these legends see Mussafia (Muss.1869.1). It is remarkable that the Gospel of Nicodemus has not made its way into other commentaries to this tercet, since it has been a staple of commentators since Torraca (1905 [to Inf. IV.54]) as a probable source for Dante’s sense of the harrowing of hell, witnessed by Virgil, as it is described in Inferno IV.52–63. [return to English / Italian]
52–60. The rays referred to are those of the sun when it moves from Pisces into Aries, i.e., at the first buds of springtime, and before the sun moves on and into Taurus. Our natural season of blossoming is compared, in this simile, to the miraculous and instantaneous flowering of the tree that had so long been dead, the color of its blossoms reminiscent of Christ’s blood. [return to English / Italian]
61–62. Dante leaves us with another of his little mysteries. What was the “hymn” that he heard sung but could not understand, except to know that it is not sung on earth? Dante tells us as much and, as a result, the Ottimo (1333) reasons, we cannot identify it. However, is there a hymn, known to be sung in Heaven, that we on earth have never heard?
The word inno (hymn) occurs six times in the poem in five passages (Inf. VII.125; Purg. VIII.17; XXV.127 & 129; here; Par. XIV.123). In the occurrences previous to this one the word has been used once antiphrastically, to denigrate Plutus’s unintelligible shout, and then, in its next two appearances, to refer to the hymns “Te lucis ante” and “Summae Deus clementiae,” respectively. In other words, until now inno has either been used antiphrastically and thus in a general sense (i.e., “an utterance not like a hymn”) or with exactitude to indicate a particular Christian hymn. (For the final appearance of inno see the note to Par. XIV.118–126.) Are we supposed to be able to identify this song? It would be unusual for Dante to have introduced a riddle without offering us the grounds for solving it. We are looking for a song with two characteristics: it must be unknown on earth and it almost certainly must be in celebration of Jesus’ victory over death. Is there such a song? John of Serravalle (1416) thought so: the last book of the Bible speaks of a canticum novum (new song) that is sung before the throne of God (Apocalypse 14:3), a citation found, surprisingly enough, only once again in the commentary tradition (Steiner [1921] and then possibly again, referred to glancingly but not definitively by Trucchi [1936]). Kaske (Kask.1974.1), pp. 206–7, however, while unaware that he had at least two precursors, also sees a reference here to the canticum novum of Revelation. Kaske cites Apocalypse 5:9, which is also apposite, if the similar passage at 14:3 has a certain priority, as we shall see. In Revelation 5, Christ comes as a slain lamb (Apocalypse 5:6) to judge humankind, at which the twenty-four elders and the four Gospel beasts lower themselves before the king (5:8) and sing a “new song” (canticum novum): “You are worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; for you were slain and have redeemed us to God.…” (5:9, italics added). The related passage (Apocalypse 14:3) deepens the resonances with Purgatorio XXXII: “And they sang as it were a new song [canticum novum] before the throne, and before the four beasts and the elders; and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, who were redeemed from earth” (italics added). It seems clear both what the song was and why it is not sung on earth. For the number of those in the procession as 144, the number of the 144,000 of the Church Triumphant, see the note to Purg. XXIX.145–150. [return to English / Italian]
63. Dante’s mystic sleep closes his experience of the Church Triumphant. Once he awakens, it will have returned to Heaven (vv. 89–90). [return to English / Italian]
64–69. Dante is willing to live dangerously. What other medieval poet, in a serious moment of a serious poem, would turn to Ovid and to self-conscious literary humor in a moment like this? Dante has already (Purg. XXIX.94–96; and see the note to that tercet) referred to this Ovidian material (Metam. I.568–723) in these cantos dedicated to the recovery of Eden. He compares himself to Argus of the hundred eyes (Dante of the hundred cantos?), watching over Io at Juno’s behest so that Jove cannot get at his bovine girlfriend, set to drowsiness and slumber (disastrously for him) by Mercury’s tale of Syrinx and Pan. At what point does Argus fall asleep? Just when Mercury’s tale reports on the musical sound that issues from the reeds that were Syrinx, who had escaped Pan’s lustful pursuit and vanished. Music and a disappearance are features of Dante’s scene, as well. The parallel scene is done with witty aplomb but is dealt with by the commentators only as serious business. It is funny, as is Dante’s aside to us that, if he could portray the moment of falling asleep, he would do so. [return to English / Italian]
70–71. Dante’s sleep and awakening in the garden is verbally reminiscent of Ugolino’s description of his awakening from his dreadful dream (Inf. XXXIII.27), the phrase “squarciò il velame” (the veil was rent) remembered in “squarciò il velo” (broke my veil of sleep [these are the only two occurrences of that verb in the poem]). It also reminds us that each of the three previous days on the mountain have ended in sleep and dream. On this fourth day, which will conclude his experience of the earthly paradise at noon, instead he has this mystic sleep after he has had a final visionary experience of the griffin and his Church. [return to English / Italian]
72. Rather than a reference to the “Surgite, et nolite timere” of Matthew 17:7, frequently cited in the commentaries (first by Jacopo della Lana [1324]), Aversano (Aver.1988.1), p. 168, prefers to believe that Matelda refers to Paul’s words (Ephesians 5:14), “Surge qui dormis” (Rise, you who are sleeping). And see his remarks on Paul’s overall importance for Dante, pp. 185–88. Nonetheless, the passage in Matthew seems still closer to the context here, so much so that it is all but impossible not to see it as controlling this scene: “And Jesus came and touched them and said, ‘Arise [Surgite] and be not afraid.’ And when they had lifted up their eyes they saw no man, save Jesus only.” See the next note. [return to English / Italian]
73–84. In the scene of the transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:1–8) the three apostles Peter, James, and John ascend a mountain with Jesus, see him transformed in visage (it shines with light) and raiment (his clothes become white), then see him in the company of Moses and Elijah (who, representing the law and the prophets, respectively, both promised his advent), and then hear the voice of God from a cloud proclaim that Jesus is his Son, and finally find Moses and Elijah vanished. Just so, this simile insists, Dante thinks he finds himself (in the role of an apostle) in the company of Matelda alone. [return to English / Italian]
78. This verse also clearly refers to Christ’s resurrections of Jairus’s daughter and of Lazarus (Luke 8:54 and John 11:43). [return to English / Italian]
85. Dante’s phrase, “Where is Beatrice?” will be remembered when she leaves him for the final time at Paradiso XXXI.64 and he asks St. Bernard, “Ov’ è ella?” (Where is she?), as Poletto (1894) noted. [return to English / Italian]
86–87. Beatrice’s pose is one of humility, seated on the ground on a root of the newly reflorescent tree. Th
us she who, rather than Matelda, really corresponds to Christ in the biblical parallel is the one who is “transfigured,” “changed in raiment,” as we shall see in a moment. [return to English / Italian]
88. Those who remain behind in the garden with Beatrice are her “handmaids,” the seven virtues, and Matelda. And of course there is the chariot. Dante and Statius are the spectators of the show that is to follow. [return to English / Italian]
89–90. We learn that the Church Triumphant has now returned to the Empyrean, just as it will do after it descends for Dante’s sake a second time, in the sphere of the Fixed Stars (Par. XXIII.70–72). (For the logistics of the arrival and departure of the participants in this pageant, see the notes to Purg. XXX.16–18 and XXXI.77–78.) [return to English / Italian]
94. That Beatrice is described as seated “on the bare ground” associates her with humility in general and, perhaps more pointedly, with St. Francis, who raised humility to an art form. See the note to Purgatorio XI.135; and see the portrait of Francis in Paradiso XI. [return to English / Italian]
95. No longer the triumphant figure who came into the garden by descending to her chariot, Beatrice is now here to witness its devastation and, once, to protect that chariot; she is no longer in the role of conqueror. [return to English / Italian]
98–99. Since the nymphs are seven and since the “candles” leading the procession (last referred to at verse 18) are seven, and since Benvenuto (1380) lent the hypothesis his considerable authority, some commentators have believed that those candles are the lamps held by the seven virtues. Both because the seven candles seem a part of the procession of the Church Triumphant and because they are extremely large, this hypothesis has not convinced every reader. On the other hand, other suggestions are all minority opinions. Francesco da Buti (1385) believed they represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, but many find his argument overly subtle and unsupported by the text. Torraca (1905) suggested the seven sacraments ordained by Christ. Bosco/Reggio (1979), uncomfortable with all earlier identifications, thought the reference was to the lamps of the wise virgins in the parable (Matthew 25:1–13) of the ten wise and foolish virgins; but the wise ones number only five. Pertile (1998.2), p. 198n., points (via Alain de Lille) to the “seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God” (Apocalypse 4:5), thus giving support to Francesco da Buti’s view, which does seem the most palatable. For the biblical and postbiblical understanding of the winds from north (Aquilo) and south (Auster) as being the most destructive, see Pertile (Pert.1998.2), pp. 197–202. [return to English / Italian]
100–102. Beatrice’s words are clear in their promise. (Those who believe that she is speaking not of Dante’s next stay in the garden but of that time left him on earth cannot rationalize the disjunction caused by the fact that when Dante returns to earth he will be without Beatrice, who speaks here only of being with him in Heaven.) Most commentators now also agree that Beatrice is not alluding to the few minutes he will now be with her in the garden, but to the short stay he will have in his second visit to the earthly paradise, after his death and ascent. She then looks past his first and upcoming visit to paradise in order to fasten his attention on his final destination, when he, too, will be, with her, a citizen of the City of God, the new Jerusalem in which Christ is “Roman.” The “city of man” that is our militancy on earth is to become the heavenly Rome presided over by Christ as emperor, at least it will be for all those who will find themselves saved. [return to English / Italian]
103–105. Beatrice’s charge to Dante is reminiscent of God’s to John, author of the Revelation: “What you see, write in a book, and send it to the seven churches.…” (Apocalypse 1:11). [return to English / Italian]
109–160. The second pageant in the garden of Eden is both dramatically different from the first and exactly like it. In the first instance we were given a description of the Church Triumphant (which exists as an ideal out of time and can only be gathered once history is done) that comes in a temporal form, moving from Genesis to the Apocalypse before Dante’s eyes. Now he sees real history, from just after the founding of the Church until the present, unfolding as a series of events performed in a sort of “dumbshow” in a single place. However, both pageants are presented as allegories, reflecting history, to be sure, but experienced as though they were literally fictive (e.g., the books of the Bible, the griffin, the depredations of the Church), requiring the kind of critical procedure that we expect for what Dante himself referred to (Convivio II.i.4–5) as allegory as practiced by the poets.
The rest of the canto will present the history of the Church and of the empire as these two entities make their related voyages through history. [return to English / Italian]
109–117. The first tribulation of the new Church was to be persecuted by the emperors of Rome, beginning with Nero (54–68) while Peter was its first pope (and was crucified in the emperor’s persecution of Christians ca. A.D. 68), and extending to the reign of Diocletian (284–305).
While the eagle of Jove may signify variously, there is no doubt that here and through the rest of the pageant of the persecution of the Church Militant it represents the empire. [return to English / Italian]
116. The phrase nave in fortuna (ship tossed in a tempest) will find its way to the final world prophecy in the poem (Par. XXVII.145). [return to English / Italian]
118–123. Beatrice, acting as the embodiment of the Church’s spirit (the chariot representing its physical being, as it were), is able to defeat the forces of heresy, the traditional interpretation of the fox. Portirelli (1804) identified the fox with the “vulpes insidiosos” (insidious foxes) of the Song of Solomon (Canticle 2:15). His adjective, however, is not found in the biblical text, where the foxes are described only as “little,” and the phrase in fact comes from St. Augustine, who identifies heresy and exactly such foxes in his Enarrationes in Ps. LXXX, as was noted by Tommaseo (1837). The temporal progression of these scenes would indicate that Dante is thinking of the early centuries of the Church’s history, after the first persecutions and before the Donation of Constantine (see the next note). [return to English / Italian]
124–129. All commentators agree that this invasion of the chariot by the eagle of empire represents the Donation of Constantine in the first third of the fourth century (see note to Inf. XIX.115–117). The Church was meant to operate independently of the empire (this is the essential theme of Dante’s Monarchia). Here, by being given the “feathers” that belong to empire alone, it is adulterated from its pure form. In this formulation Dante reverses his usual view, which involves seeing the empire’s rights and privileges as being curtailed by the Church. In a sense the point is even stronger expressed this way: the Church is harmed by exercising its authority in the civil realm.
Since the gloss of the Ottimo (1333), the voice from Heaven is generally taken to be that of St. Peter. From the time of the earliest commentators, however, there was an understanding that Dante’s voice from Heaven was a sort of calque on the story that, on the day of the Donation, a voice from Heaven was heard calling out: “Hodie diffusum est venenum in ecclesia Dei” (Today the church of God is suffused by poison). [return to English / Italian]
130–135. While there is some debate about the nature of this particular calamity, most commentators believe it refers to the “schism” in the Church brought about by Mohammed just after the middle years of the seventh century (see the note to Inf. XXVIII.22–31 for Dante’s understanding of the relation of Islam to Christianity). [return to English / Italian]
136–141. In a sort of replay of the second calamity (the Donation of Constantine), the chariot is once again covered in imperial feathers. The standard interpretation of these verses is that they refer to the grants of lands to the Church by two French kings, Pepin and Charlemagne, in the second half of the eighth century.
The “plumage,” which the poet suggests was “offered perhaps with kind and innocent intent,” represents once again
that which belonged to the empire by God’s intent, and legally, in Dante’s view, could not be surrendered to ecclesiastical authority, even though kings had chosen to do so. See Paradiso XX.55–57, where a similar expression is used to indicate that Constantine had sinned grievously, if without meaning to. [return to English / Italian]
142–147. The language and the imagery are clearly indebted to the Apocalypse (Apoc. 13:1) for the beast with seven heads and ten horns. Exactly what this symbolic transformation of the Church signifies is much discussed, with little resolution. In general, all can agree, we here see the corruption wrought by the clergy upon their own institution. In other words, in Dante’s view, the Church had weathered all attacks upon it from within and without until the time of Charlemagne. In the next five centuries she would do such harm to herself as to make those earlier wounds mortal. This period is marked by corruption from the papacy down to the most modestly avaricious friar; Christianity has no enemies as implacable as its own ecclesiastical institutions or its own clergy. [return to English / Italian]
148–160. Strictly speaking, this seventh and final calamity is a vision, since the Church only moved to Avignon in 1309 after the election to the papacy of Clement V in 1305. We have now surveyed, in 52 verses, nearly thirteen centuries of the history of the Church.