Canto 33

Canto 33

We are not familiar, as dante and his contemporaries were, with the night sky in its beauty and its brilliance. In the modern world light pollution is ubiquitous in all inhabited areas of the globe. To see the sky as Dante saw it, one must go to places remote from civilisation, like the far outback in Australia, or parts of Africa or the Arctic circle. On a cloudless night in these places the stars are starthngly bright, large and close. They induce a sense of awe and wonder. The patterns they form, the signs of the zodiac and the constellations, are instantly recognisable. Dante could count on his readers’ familiarity with the bodies in the night sky, and with the fact that some move in relation to one another (the planets) and others don’t (the signs of the zodiac). Astronomy provides the structural framework of the narrative of the Paradiso—the geography of space, so to speak. His early readers could take the astronomy for granted in a way that most of us today can’t. But he always tells us what we need to get our bearings.

As we know, Dante’s is a geocentric cosmos. The earth, at its centre, is surrounded by seven circling planets: the moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Enclosing the earth and the planets is an eighth outer sphere, the “fixed” stars, or stelle fisse. The stars, like the planets, circle the earth but, unlike the planets, they do not move in relation to one another (hence “fixed”). We can all observe these heavenly bodies and their motions in the night sky over the course of a year, an enduring object of fascination to human beings since the beginning of human history.

Beyond the fixed stars, Dante and his contemporaries believed, there is a ninth crystalline sphere which encloses all the others. This transparent sphere, invisible to us, was hypothesised by early astronomers to account for the movements of all the other heavenly bodies. It is called the primum mobile, the first mover; it sets the whole system of wheeling heavens in motion.

Planetary movements had been tracked since Babylonian times and theorised by Ptolemy in the second century ad. He gave the world this Ptolemaic model of the universe, which endured for more than a millennium. Nearly fourteen hundred years passed before Copernicus put the sun at the centre of the solar system, two centuries after Dante’s death. The outer planets of the solar system (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) were not discovered until the invention of powerful modern telescopes.

Dante’s map of the heavens may seem fanciful to us, quaint in its symmetry and finiteness. But it is worth emphasising that it is based on the best model of the cosmos that medieval science had to offer. Dante himself was a serious student of astronomy, on which he wrote at some length in his prose treatise Convivio, where he grappled with technical questions like the epicycle of the planets. The theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has warned us against dismissing Dante’s science too easily, noting in a recent essay that “Dante’s unbridled poetic imagination and extraordinary intelligence anticipated by centuries a brilliant intuition of Einstein’s on the shape that our universe might have.” When Dante’s passion for science and understanding the cosmos cross-fertilises with his creative imagination, he produces the masterpiece which is the Paradiso.

Beyond the primum mobile, outside the created universe—outside time—is heaven or paradise, the Empyrean, where God is. It is God who gives the primum mobile its motion. With God are the angels and the blessed, those few human beings who lived a perfect life on earth, and the many who sinned but repented and have done their time in purgatory. In the poem, these saved souls appear as though seated in an amphitheatre, whose floor is a sea of light; or, as Dante puts it with incomparable poetic force, they are the petals of a rose, whose centre is that light.

In the Paradiso Dante describes his journey, in the company of Beatrice, through the heavens to Heaven, through the planetary spheres to the primum mobile and beyond: from time to eternity. How do they travel? Their motion is self-propelled. Dante gazes into Beatrice’s eyes and together they soar upwards. How this is possible is one of the first things she explains to him, satisfying the pilgrim’s curiosity along with the reader’s. The sense of effortless soaring motion is unlike anything experienced earlier in the poem, and, as it happens, entirely in keeping with the laws of physics as they were understood in Dante’s time.

The blessed are in heaven with God. Logically we should not meet them until the journey through the heavens is complete, when we reach the rose. But this would make for a dull narrative. Instead, as Dante and Beatrice travel through the heavens, they meet souls in each planetary sphere whose temperament was marked by the influence of that planet. These souls are a kind of advance welcoming party who greet the travellers on their way, and mark out the stages of the journey.

Though Dante firmly rejected the notion of astrological determinism—human beings have free will and are masters of their own destiny—he did, like all his contemporaries, believe that the stars influenced human character and aptitudes. The star sign you were born under predisposed you to certain strengths and weaknesses. Dante, born under Gemini, was cut out for study and for writing. The planet with which the star sign was in conjunction at the time of your birth influenced your temperament. Those born under Mars were likely to have a bellicose or quarrelsome disposition. These astral influences determine the groupings of souls in the afterlife, and their position in the celestial hierarchy.

Some of the correlations between planet and temperament are self-explanatory: Venus, loving spirits; Mars, those who fought for the faith; the sun, wise spirits. Some are less so: the moon, those who failed to keep their vows; Mercury, those who pursued earthly glory. These correlations and their implications fall into place as the story progresses.

But now, as he travels, Dante is approaching, and finally seeing, the divinity. God, its creator, is the key to understanding the cosmos and how it operates, from the circling of the heavens to the justice of human fates after death. This final part of the story is, supremely, the record of an intellectual as well as a spiritual quest, a journey in knowledge and understanding that leads, in the final cantos of the poem, to a visionary experience. Dante is a keen student, eagerly questioning a patient instructor, Beatrice. The subjects they touch on include whether a broken vow can be made good, whether there are degrees of blessedness, free will, the nature of time, the origin and structure of the universe.

But alongside doctrinal elucidation—often majestic in its formulation, only occasionally genuinely arcane—we find the same richness of human character and lived human lives as we did in the first two realms of the afterlife. There is less narrative, more talk; less drama, more laying out of argument, in physics or ethics or theology (areas of speculative enquiry that often overlap). More than half the lines in Paradiso are dialogue. Firmly at the centre there are still questions about society, about how the world should be governed, about what it means to be a member of the human community. And always, of course, there are questions about human conduct.

How can Rahab, the Whore of Jericho, a pagan and a prostitute, have a place in heaven? And the scandalous noblewoman Cunizza da Romano, with her long list of husbands and lovers? How did people behave in Florence in its golden age, two hundred years before Dante’s time? How will Dante react on learning of his impending exile, when he meets his great-great-grandfather, an encounter often considered the high point of the whole Commedia? What do we make of a saint with a keen eye for the ridiculous who paints a savagely satirical picture of clerics so obese they require three attendants to get them up onto their horses? Or of Saint Peter, who sounds off in such strong language when denouncing the papacy, the institution he himself had founded (cloaca del sangue e de la puzza: “a sewer of blood and stench”)? Paradise is full of thought-provoking characters. As Ezra Pound succinctly put it: “Dante wrote his poems to make people think.”

One challenge Dante faced in writing the Paradiso was that of representing light in infinitely varied degrees of intensity, quality and shape. The souls of the blessed appear as lights, splendours, sparks; they shine more or less brightly, with a greater degree of radiance the closer they are to God. They dance and spin and whirl about; they form shapes, patterns, emblems (a garland, a cross, an eagle). One might unthinkingly assume that the light show which is paradise would perforce be doomed to repetitiveness and predictability.

But this is countered by Dante’s fertility of invention and his unfailing capacity to make us see. The pyrotechnics are anchored in familiar experiences from our world. Just as the vast throng of the lustful borne on the wind in Inferno 5 was instantly visualisable as a murmuration of starlings, here the souls that rise up from and settle back on the rungs of Jacob’s ladder are like a flock of jackdaws as they fly up from a tree and circle around, some of them then returning to the branch they were on, while others continue to fly—a sight familiar to any bird lover who has walked in the Tuscan countryside, yet a delightful surprise in this unexpected context.

Fig. 5 Nine spheres circle the earth: the seven planetary spheres, the eighth sphere of the “fixed” stars (including the constellations of the zodiac), and the outermost ninth sphere, or primum mobile, which imparts motion to the other spheres nested inside it. The nine orders of angels correspond to the nine spheres.

When in a magical moment Dante arrives in Gemini, his birth sign, and looks back at the earth, this aiuola (“threshing floor” or tiny patch of earth), we know exactly where he is in relation to the whole heavenly system as he sees it wheeling below and around him. The astronauts who first saw the earth from space knew by virtue of the nasa team and their onboard navigational instruments precisely where they were in relation to the other heavenly bodies. They gazed in wonder back at earth, the “blue marble” caught in a famous photograph. Seven hundred years earlier Dante had created the same scene, using not the marvels of modern technology, but only his own imagination and his incomparable words.

Did Dante really have a vision of God? Or is he simply a poet of unrivalled imaginative power and verbal gifts who wrote as if he had? We will never know. Distinguished scholars and dantisti are divided on the matter, probably by temperament. But what they all agree on is that the poem he wrote about this experience is one of the supreme poetic masterpieces produced by the human imagination.

A solid body should not be able to rise spontaneously through the air. How can Dante, a living man with a physical body, travel effortlessly upwards through space? This is the first conundrum the Paradiso presents us with, and the first canto will give us the explanation. As readers, we need to know that the narrative is not a capricious invention by the poet (in modern terms, science fiction). It is, rather, grounded in the laws of physics as they were understood by Dante and Christian thinkers in his time. An understanding of those laws of motion is a first crucial step towards understanding the way the universe works. Dante is interested in not just what we today would narrowly define as personal, spiritual questions. In his eyes those questions are inseparable from the way the universe works—what we call science.

The laws of motion reflect the relationship of the Creator to his creation. The motive force that lies behind all action, all movement, is love, and that love is directed from and to the Creator. As Aquinas, an authority on both science and spirituality, said: omnia agunt, qualunque agunt, a quoque amore (“All agents perform all acts whatsoever out of some kind of love”). “Agents” here includes not just beings who have minds (men and angels), but every part of the created universe, including plants and inanimate minerals. Physics and theology prove to be one and the same thing. Modern astrophysicists who are Christians would no doubt agree.

The canto opens with a sublimely simple tercet that describes the relationship of God to the created universe. This truth, which we have seen embodied concretely in the fates of the dead in hell and purgatory, will be explained and explored in detail in this final section of the poem. The explanation encompasses the creation of the cosmos, and the rules that govern it. That explanation will account for Dante’s ability to fly upwards through space.

La gloria di colui che tutto moveper l’universo penetra, e risplende

3in una parte più e meno altrove.

The glory of Him who moves all things

penetrates through the universe, and shines

3in some parts more and less in others.

Different parts of the universe vary in their receptivity to the light of God. But there is a double difficulty for the poet, which he must declare at the outset. Because of the limitations of human memory and language, he may not be able to give a full account of what he experienced. The failure of memory is compounded by a failure of language to do justice even to what he does remember. These twin difficulties will be emphasised at many points in the Paradiso. He will do his best.

Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prendefu’ io, e vidi cose che ridire

6né sa né può chi di là sù discende;

perché appressando sé al suo disire,nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,

9che dietro la memoria non può ire.

Veramente quant’ io del regno santone la mia mente potei far tesoro,

12sarà ora materia del mio canto.

I was in the heaven which receives most of his light,

and I saw things that someone who comes back from up there

6has neither the knowledge nor the skill to retell;

because as it grows closer to its desire,

our intellect becomes so profound

9that memory cannot follow behind it.

Truly as much of the holy kingdom

as I was able to store up in my mind

12will now be the subject of my song.

After a heartfelt appeal to the Muses for help with his difficult subject, the narrative begins. It is noon at the spring equinox in purgatory. Beatrice gazes into the sun, which is at its zenith.

Beatrice tutta ne l’etterne rotefissa con li occhi stava; e io in lei

66le luci fissi, di là sù rimote.

Beatrice’s eyes were wholly intent

on gazing at the eternal spheres; and I

66stopped looking at them, and fixed my eyes on her.

The effect on Dante of gazing at Beatrice is transformative. He is briefly able to gaze directly at the sun. He becomes aware of an extraordinary brightness and feels himself become godlike, just like the fisherman Glaucus, whose story is narrated by Ovid in Metamorphoses XIII, 898–968. Glaucus, on eating a certain herb, was changed miraculously into a sea-god.

Nel suo aspetto tal dentro mi fei,qual si fé Glauco nel gustar de l’erba

69che ’l fé consorto in mar de li altri dèi.

Gazing at her I felt myself becoming

what Glaucus became when he tasted the herb

69that made him a comrade of the other sea gods.

Trasumanar significar per verbanon si poria; però l’essemplo basti

72a cui esperïenza grazia serba.

Going beyond the human condition cannot be described

in words; so let the example suffice for those

72for whom God’s grace holds this experience in store.

The key word here is trasumanar, “to go beyond the human.” It is a double going beyond: beyond the confines of the sublunary world, into space; and beyond the limitations of human speech.

Typically, Dante the character immediately has questions. The narrative will be driven by his eagerness to understand, and his willingness to say when he doesn’t. There will be a great deal of explaining and questioning as we go. Just as Inferno and Purgatorio had done, Paradiso proceeds on parallel trajectories: the physical journey, meeting and talking to souls of the dead on the way; and the mental journey, in knowledge and understanding. These twin themes are launched and entwined in canto 1.

Dante’s first question: Where is he? Beatrice explains that he is not on earth, but is soaring heavenwards. Immediately he has another question: How can he pass through air and fire? The circles of air and fire enclose the terrestrial globe, so liftoff from planet earth means passing through air and fire to the aether.

Beatrice offers a magisterial explanation which lays out the perfect order in cosmic space. These lines have the lucidity and profundity of a perfectly understandable principle. They describe the universe in its relationship to its creator, God.

e cominciò: «Le cose tutte quantehanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma

105che l’universo a Dio fa simigliante.

and she began: “All things whatsoever

have order among themselves, and this is the form

105which makes the universe resemble God.

The universe is an image of God; it is ordered, not random. This is true of every aspect of the created world:

Ne l’ordine ch’io dico sono acclinetutte nature, per diverse sorti,

111più al principio loro e men vicine;

onde si muovono a diversi portiper lo gran mar de l’essere, e ciascuna

114con istinto a lei dato che la porti.

In the order I’m speaking of all natures

are inclined, by different destinies,

111some closer to their source, and some less close;

and so they move to different ports

over the great sea of being, and each one

114has an instinct given to it that carries it.

It is this instinct which explains not just inanimate movement (fire rises, earth falls), but all human action as well.

Questi ne porta il foco inver’ la luna;questi ne’ cor mortali è permotore;

117questi la terra in sé stringe e aduna;

This instinct carries fire up towards the moon;

this is the motive force in mortal hearts;

117this instinct compresses and compacts the earth;

The whole of creation, from angels at the top to base minerals at the bottom, shares this same instinct. Now that he is freed from the inclination to sin after his immersion in the two rivers in the earthly paradise, Dante should be no more amazed at his rising upwards from earth towards heaven than he would be at water falling down a mountain to the bottom.

Non dei più ammirar, se bene stimo,lo tuo salir, se non come d’un rivo

138se d’alto monte scende giuso ad imo.

Maraviglia sarebbe in te se, privod’impedimento, giù ti fossi assiso,

141com’ a terra quïete in foco vivo».

Quinci rivolse inver’ lo cielo il viso.

You should no more be amazed at your rising,

if I judge aright, than at a stream

138that from a high mountain flows down to the bottom.

It would be a cause for wonder if, with nothing

to hold you back, you remained down below,

141just as for a living flame to stay still on earth.”

Then she turned her gaze back to the heavens.

This final line gives us the pattern for the journey. Beatrice gazes heavenwards, Dante gazes at her, and they rise effortlessly through space. By the end of this first canto Dante has escaped from our material world and is heading for the moon. As he passes out of the earth’s atmosphere, he hears the music of the spheres, a mysterious harmony produced by the spheres as they turn. He has grasped how space travel is possible without benefit of rockets or technology. He has learned the fundamental principle of cosmic order: it is an image of God. As so often in Paradiso, the person who explains is Beatrice, his travelling companion and teacher. And the poet has given us one of his most majestic formulations for life in the cosmos: the great sea of being, on which all created beings move towards the port which is their ultimate destination. For human beings, that destination is God.

Dante starts the new canto with a warning to his readers: if they do not have the stamina, the mental toughness, to follow, they should turn back. They should stop reading now. The image of the hazardous sea crossing reprises the image used so brilliantly at the beginning of Purgatorio (la navicella del mio ingegno: “the little ship of my genius”), whose poetic power in its turn depended on its echo of the doomed sea voyage of Ulysses near the end of Inferno.

O voi che siete in piccioletta barca,desiderosi d’ascoltar, seguiti

3dietro al mio legno che cantando varca,

tornate a riveder li vostri liti:non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse,

6perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti.

Oh you who are in a little boat,

eager to listen, you who’ve followed

3my ship as it goes singing on its way,

turn back to gaze on your own shores:

do not set out on the open sea, for perhaps,

6losing me, you would be quite lost.

These are uncharted waters. The poet is aided by Minerva, goddess of wisdom, who blows wind in the sails of his boat; by Apollo, god of poetry, who steers it; and by the Muses, who show him the stars to navigate by—the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Great Bear and the Little Bear. They respectively fill the sails and steer and navigate the little ship.

L’acqua ch’io prendo già mai non si corse;Minerva spira, e conducemi Appollo,

9e nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse.

The waters I sail have never been crossed before;

Minerva inspires me, and Apollo guides me,

9and nine Muses show me the Bears.

Only few, fit readers, those who have an appetite for knowledge, will be up to following him. The others should turn back to shore. We have been warned—and, obviously, stimulated to find out more.

Voialtri pochi che drizzaste il colloper tempo al pan de li angeli, del quale

12vivesi qui ma non sen vien satollo,

metter potete ben per l’alto salevostro navigio, servando mio solco

15dinanzi a l’acqua che ritorna equale.

You other few who early craned your necks

for the bread of angels, on which we live here,

12but without ever being satisfied,

you can set your ship to cross the deep salt sea,

following in the furrow of my wake,

15ahead of the water that flattens out behind.

After these timely words of warning, back to the action. The thirst for God, another way of referring to the instinct described so precisely in the previous canto, impels them upwards extraordinarily fast.

La concreata e perpetüa setedel deïforme regno cen portava

21veloci quasi come ’l ciel vedete.

Beatrice in suso, e io in lei guardava;e forse in tanto in quanto un quadrel posa

24e vola e da la noce si dischiava,

giunto mi vidi ove mirabil cosami torse il viso a sé; e però quella

27cui non potea mia cura essere ascosa,

The innate and everlasting thirst

for God’s kingdom was carrying us up

21almost as swiftly as the heavens turn.

Beatrice gazed upwards, and I gazed at her;

and perhaps in the time it takes for an arrow

24to hit its target and fly and leave the bow,

I saw I had reached a place where a wondrous thing

made me turn my face towards it; and so she,

27from whom my curiosity could not be hidden,

volta ver’ me, sì lieta come bella,«Drizza la mente in Dio grata», mi disse,

30«che n’ha congiunti con la prima stella».

turned towards me, joyous as she was beautiful:

“Turn your mind to God in gratitude,” she said to me,

30“for he has brought us to the first star.”

With astonishing speed, they have reached the moon, the first of the heavenly bodies. The arrow (or more precisely the bolt shot from a crossbow), which seems to have hit its target even before it has been aimed and released, is the first of many powerful images of speed. And we should bear in mind the distance they have travelled, even though Dante doesn’t spell this out. His authority for stellar distances was the ninth-century Arab astronomer Alfraganus, his source for much of the astronomical detail in the poem. Alfraganus held that the distance from the earth to the moon was nearly 159,000 miles: not quite the 240,000 miles we now know it to be, but still a very long way. The rocket fuel that propels them upwards with such speed is thirst for God’s kingdom. Thirst is another word for the instinct of which Beatrice spoke in the previous canto. Yet another word for it is desire. Instinct, thirst, desire: these power the ascent through the heavens towards God.

And now they have arrived. Dante takes in the lunar landscape.

Parev’ a me che nube ne coprisselucida, spessa, solida e pulita,

33quasi adamante che lo sol ferisse.

Per entro sé l’etterna margaritane ricevette, com’ acqua recepe

36raggio di luce permanendo unita.

It seemed to me that a cloud covered us,

luminous, dense, solid and polished,

33like a diamond struck by the sun.

The eternal pearl took us into itself,

as water receives

36a ray of light without being split by it.

They are not on the moon, but in it, having been received into its dense aether, in the same way that light enters water. They are seeing it from the inside. Dante is curious about the dark markings on the lunar surface as they appear to people on earth, and he asks Beatrice what causes them. The remainder of the canto deals with this question. It takes one hundred–odd lines for Beatrice to explain. The passage is notoriously taxing.

But this episode is a telling and touching example of one aspect of the historical Dante’s psychology that is easily overlooked: his willingness to listen to the evidence on difficult subjects, and to change his mind if he decides he was wrong. It offers a concrete demonstration of the process by which one seeks to arrive at the truth on a contentious topic: argument, counter-argument, reflection, experiment if need be.

Dante is far from being a rigid and inflexible thinker, as one might unthinkingly assume. Here we see him changing his mind, when he learns the true explanation for the markings on the surface of the moon, which is not what he had once thought it to be. What he had formerly believed, as he explained in Convivio II, xiii, 9, and as he now explains to Beatrice, was that the substance of the moon is of different densities. Beatrice shows the error in his reasoning, the validity of her counter-argument, and even invites him to perform an experiment that supports her account. She explains that it is the power of the divine and angelic intelligences, in conjunction with the stars, that produces the dark and light markings on the moon’s surface. Her argument is not easy, but it is an important small piece in the theological discourse which unfolds over the cantica. It parallels the lines in canto 1 about instinct: just as love of God draws all created things upwards towards him, so his love rains down its influence on the created world through the operations of the intelligences that govern the heavenly spheres. (This conception of the cosmos as emanating from and returning to God is Neoplatonic; it was Christianised by Saint Augustine in the fifth century.)

Dante more than once in the course of his life changed his mind on issues central to his thinking. He changed his mind about the significance of Roman history; he changed his mind about the nature of language. Both rethinkings had profound consequences for his view of the world.

He had once believed the Romans achieved their imperial lordship over the world by force of arms, as no less an authority than Saint Augustine had taught. But he came to see, he tells us in his political treatise Monarchia, that this was not a true understanding of history, and that, on the contrary, Roman imperial authority was directly willed by providence. This change of view determined his take on the political world he lived in, and the active role he sought to play in it. One of the great cantos in the Paradiso will give us an account of the history of the Roman Empire seen from this providential perspective.

Dante’s change of mind about the nature of language had equally far-reaching consequences. He had once believed that human language was God-given, and that, until the time of the Tower of Babel, it had been immutable. But here too he came to see that he was wrong. On the contrary, language had been unstable and changeable from the very beginning, made by man himself, not by God. He will learn this near the end of Paradiso, in his encounter with no less an authority than Adam, the first speaker. The Commedia itself is unthinkable without this radical rethinking.

There is nothing ossified about Dante’s thinking. His beliefs are not a static block of accepted medieval Catholic doctrine, as we might easily assume. He was a committed intellectual open to debate and reconsideration. His change of mind about the dark patches on the moon is a striking, if arcane, and—it has to be admitted—not especially poetic case in point.

Dante is about to acknowledge the force of beatrice’s arguments, but he is so struck by what he now sees that he forgets to do so.

Quel sol che pria d’amor mi scaldò ’l petto,di bella verità m’avea scoverto,

3provando e riprovando, il dolce aspetto;

e io, per confessar corretto e certome stesso, tanto quanto si convene

6leva’ il capo a proferer più erto;

That sun which first made my breast warm with love

had, by demonstrating and refuting,

3revealed to me the sweet aspect of fair truth;

and to declare myself corrected of my error

and convinced, I raised my head

6just high enough to speak;

ma visïone apparve che ritennea sé me tanto stretto, per vedersi,

9che di mia confession non mi sovvenne.

but a sight appeared that so held

my attention, when I saw it,

9that I didn’t remember what I was going to confess.

He sees pale faces that look like reflections in a mirror or on water.

Quali per vetri trasparenti e tersi,o ver per acque nitide e tranquille,

12non sì profonde che i fondi sien persi,

tornan d’i nostri visi le postilledebili sì, che perla in bianca fronte

15non vien men forte a le nostre pupille;

tali vid’ io più facce a parlar pronte;per ch’io dentro a l’error contrario corsi

18a quel ch’accese amor tra l’omo e ’l fonte.

As in transparent and polished glass,

or in waters that are clear and calm,

12not so deep that the bottom isn’t visible,

the features of our faces are reflected back to us

so faintly that a pearl on a pale brow

15is made out just as easily by our eyes;

I saw several such faces eager to speak;

so that I made the opposite mistake

18of the one that kindled love between man and fountain.

Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in the water of a fountain, mistaking his reflection for a real person. Dante makes the opposite mistake. He turns to look at the people of whom he thinks these are reflections, but sees nothing.

Sùbito sì com’ io di lor m’accorsi,quelle stimando specchiati sembianti,

21per veder di cui fosser, li occhi torsi;

e nulla vidi, e ritorsili avantidritti nel lume de la dolce guida,

24che, sorridendo, ardea ne li occhi santi.

As soon as I became aware of them,

thinking them to be reflected likenesses,

21I turned my eyes to see who they were;

and I saw nothing, and I turned them back again

into the luminous gaze of my sweet guide

24who, smiling, was afire in her holy eyes.

Beatrice explains that these are not reflections, they are real people. They are here, in the lowest sphere of heaven, because they failed to keep vows they had made. She encourages him to speak to them. He addresses the soul who seems most eager to talk to him, asking her name and her fate. She says that she is someone he once knew: he has failed to recognise her, so transformed is she by her luminousness, the joyous light of beatitude.

I’ fui nel mondo vergine sorella;e se la mente tua ben sé riguarda,

48non mi ti celerà l’esser più bella,

ma riconoscerai ch’i’ son Piccarda,che, posta qui con questi altri beati,

51beata sono in la spera più tarda.

In the world I was a virgin sister;

and if you search your memory carefully,

48my being more beautiful won’t hide me from you,

but you will recognise that I’m Piccarda;

placed here with these other blessed souls,

51I’m blessed here in the slowest sphere.

Piccarda was the sister of Dante’s friend Forese Donati, whom we met in Purgatorio 23. Dante had asked him there about the fate of Forese’s sister, a familiar figure from his circle of friends in Dante’s youth and young manhood in Florence. He now recognises her in spite of or through her radiance.

Dante’s next question is prompted by her being in the slowest-turning circle: Does she want to be higher up? A perfectly natural question, we might think, but it reveals how far Dante is from understanding the nature of beatitude.

Ma dimmi: voi che siete qui felici,disiderate voi più alto loco

66per più vedere e per più farvi amici?».

But tell me: you who are happy here,

do you wish for a higher place,

66to see more and to have more of God’s love?”

Her long speech in reply explains that all the souls of the blessed in heaven are content with the place they have been assigned.

«Frate, la nostra volontà quïetavirtù di carità, che fa volerne

72sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta.

“Brother, the power of love

satisfies our will, and makes us want

72only what we have, and thirst for nothing else.

If they desired to be higher, their will would not be in accord with God’s will. It is the essence of beatitude to be in accord with the divine will.

Anzi è formale ad esto beato essetenersi dentro a la divina voglia,

81per ch’una fansi nostre voglie stesse;

sì che, come noi sem di soglia in sogliaper questo regno, a tutto il regno piace

84com’ a lo re che ’n suo voler ne ’nvoglia.

Rather, it’s the essence of this blessèd state,

that we remain within the divine will,

81so that our own wills are one with his;

so that, the way we are placed from rank to rank

throughout this kingdom, pleases the whole kingdom,

84as it does the king who wills us to his will.

There follows the most famous line in the whole of Paradiso, “words which even those who know no Dante know,” as T. S. Eliot said. The powerful sea-of-being image is reprised from canto 1.

E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace:ell’ è quel mare al qual tutto si move

87ciò ch’ella crïa o che natura face».

Chiaro mi fu allor come ogne dovein cielo è paradiso, etsila grazia

90del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove.

And in his will is our peace;

that is the sea to which all things move

87that his will creates or that nature makes.”

Then it was clear to me how everywhere

in heaven is paradise, even if the grace of the supreme

90good does not rain down on it in equal measure.

Piccarda has defined a fundamental theological reality, the state of being of the blessed in paradise: perfect peace comes from total submission of one’s own will to the will of God. Her answer satisfies Dante, but he has another question. What was the vow she failed to keep? Piccarda tells her story. Inspired by Saint Clare, she joined the Franciscan order of the Poor Clares and withdrew from the world for a life of meditation and prayer.

Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinettafuggi’mi, e nel suo abito mi chiusi

105e promisi la via de la sua setta.

To follow her, as a young girl I fled

from the world, and I enclosed myself in her habit

105and promised myself to the rules of her order.

Uomini poi, a mal più ch’a bene usi,fuor mi rapiron de la dolce chiostra:

108Iddio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi.

Then men, more used to evil than to good,

carried me off from the sweet cloister:

108God knows what my life was then like.

She was abducted from the cloister and forced to marry, breaking her religious vows. The men who abducted her, referred to so obliquely, included her own brother, Corso Donati, the third of the Donati siblings, leader of the Black Guelphs in Florence, and Dante’s bête noire. His motive for this violence inflicted on his sister was to make a politically advantageous alliance. Piccarda’s reticence calls to mind Pia de’ Tolomei in Purgatorio 5, another victim of ruthless male violence.

Two things are especially interesting here. Dante has chosen a woman to define the essential state of blessedness, the reality of love in paradise; and that woman is not a theologian or saint, but a figure from Dante’s past, his early years in Florence. Dante’s own earthly existence forms a central strand in the story of his journey to the afterlife, alongside the theological complexities of beatitude and the stories of those he meets.

In the final lines of the canto Piccarda points out the soul of the Empress Constance, who was also abducted from a convent. She then disappears singing, in a lovely line, come per acqua cupa cosa grave (“like a heavy thing through dark water”). Dante turns back to Beatrice.

The opening lines of paradiso 4 present a quintessentially Dantean moment. The poet explains that, eager to know the answer to two equally pressing questions, his will was paralysed by the twin pressures exerted on it, and he said nothing. He illustrates this moment of paralysis—which, characteristically, embodies a law of physics about forces of attraction and repulsion—with a brief series of instances which make the abstract point concrete: the hungry man, the frightened lamb, the eager hound.

Intra due cibi, distanti e moventid’un modo, prima si morria di fame,

3che liber’ omo l’un recasse ai denti;

sì si starebbe un agno intra due bramedi fieri lupi, igualmente temendo;

6sì si starebbe un cane intra due dame:

per che, s’i’ mi tacea, me non riprendo,da li miei dubbi d’un modo sospinto,

9poi ch’era necessario, né commendo.

Between two foods, at an equal distance from him

and equally tasty, a free man would die of hunger

3before he took a bite from either one;

just so a lamb would stand stock-still between

two ravenous wolves, fearing them equally;

6just so a hound would stand between two does:

so that, if I was silent, I neither reproach

nor commend myself, driven by my doubts

9in equal measure, since it was necessarily so.

The psychological state of being torn equally between two attractions, or terrified by two things you fear, induces paralysis. The same law operates in human beings and in animals, whether the motive is fear or desire. Dante is frozen; he can’t decide which question to ask first. Beatrice can read his mind, and formulates the questions for him. The first:

Tu argomenti: “Se ’l buon voler dura,la vïolenza altrui per qual ragione

21di meritar mi scema la misura?”.

You’re thinking: ‘If my will for good endures,

why does someone else’s violence

21diminish the measure of my just deserts?’

The second: Do our saved souls return to our birth star, as Plato says? Beatrice deals with this second question first, as it is the more dangerous (it implicitly calls into question the direct creation of human beings by God). No, souls do not return to their birth star. But although Plato’s doctrine is rejected as theory, something like it is used by Dante as a narrative device. All the souls of the blessed live in the Empyrean, differing only in their degree of love. The souls he meets here in the moon have come down from the Empyrean to welcome him, as will happen in each sphere, where the welcoming souls are those whose lives were marked by the influence of that sphere. Thus the scale of blessedness is made perceptible to human minds by this imaginative adaptation of Plato’s doctrine.

Beatrice makes an important point about the need to adapt language to human understanding. Human beings learn from the information given to them by their senses of sight, hearing, smell and touch. They then process this information to form thoughts. All our human knowledge must begin in the experience of the senses. That is why the scriptures use words like “hands” and “feet” of God; that is why angels are depicted with human faces. (There will be no such compromise, however, when Dante later describes the angels in canto 31. There they are described, magnificently, purely in terms of light.)

Così parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno,però che solo da sensato apprende

42ciò che fa poscia d’intelletto degno.

Per questo la Scrittura condescendea vostra facultate, e piedi e mano

45attribuisce a Dio e altro intende;

e Santa Chiesa con aspetto umanoGabrïel e Michel vi rappresenta,

48e l’altro che Tobia rifece sano.

It is necessary to speak in this way to your understanding,

for it learns only from sense perceptions

42what then becomes worthy of intellection.

For this reason Scripture condescends

to your capacity, and attributes feet and hands

45to God, while meaning something else;

and Holy Church portrays Gabriel and

Michael to you with human faces,

48and the other angel who healed Tobias.

Beatrice moves on to the other question, one that many readers will ask: If these souls were forced to break their vows, how can they be held responsible?

Se vïolenza è quando quel che patenïente conferisce a quel che sforza,

75non fuor quest’ alme per essa scusate:

ché volontà, se non vuol, non s’ammorza,ma fa come natura face in foco,

78se mille volte vïolenza il torza.

If violence is when the one who suffers it

consents in no way to the perpetrator,

75these souls are not on that account excused:

for the will, if it does not will, does not succumb,

but it does as nature does in fire,

78though violence force it down a thousand times.

Examples from biblical and Roman history illustrate the point: Saint Lawrence burning on his grate, and Mucius Scaevola holding his hand in the fire without flinching to show Lars Porsenna the firmness of Roman resolve.

Per che, s’ella si piega assai o poco,segue la forza; e così queste fero

81possendo rifuggir nel santo loco.

Se fosse stato lor volere intero,come tenne Lorenzo in su la grada,

84e fece Muzio a la sua man severo,

così l’avria ripinte per la stradaond’ eran tratte, come fuoro sciolte;

87ma così salda voglia è troppo rada.

and so, if it yields a little or a lot,

it condones the force; and so these souls did,

81for they could have taken refuge in the cloister.

If their will had been unbroken,

like the will that held Lawrence on his grate,

84and made Mucius harsh to his own hand,

it would have thrust them back, once they were free,

back on the path from which they had been drawn;

87but a will as firm as this is all too rare.

These central tercets in the canto celebrate the unconquerable force of human will. Beatrice has answered Dante’s questions, but it is natural that doubts spring up a guisa di rampollo, like fresh shoots on a healthy plant. This is the essence of intellectual inquiry, the way the mind works when pursuing the truth of a subject: when one question is answered, another perforce springs up.

Nasce per quello, a guisa di rampollo,a piè del vero il dubbio; ed è natura

132ch’al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo.

Because of that, doubt springs up like a new shoot

at the foot of truth; and it is nature

132which urges us on to the summit from peak to peak.

So a third question follows, directly connected with the story of Piccarda we have just heard. Can broken vows be made good by offering something else instead, in place of what had been promised? We will learn the answer to this question in the next canto.

Can one compensate for an unfulfilled vow? beatrice’s answer tackles a central philosophical problem, that of free will. Only human beings and angels have intellect; only they have free will. Free will is sacrificed when a vow is made. It is an act of free will to renounce free will by making a vow.

«Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezzafesse creando, e a la sua bontate

21più conformato, e quel ch’e’ più apprezza,

fu de la volontà la libertate;di che le creature intelligenti,

24e tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate.

Or ti parrà, se tu quinci argomenti,l’alto valor del voto, s’è sì fatto

27che Dio consenta quando tu consenti;

ché, nel fermar tra Dio e l’omo il patto,vittima fassi di questo tesoro,

30tal quale io dico; e fassi col suo atto.

“The greatest gift that God in his generosity

made in creating, and the one most attuned

21to his goodness, and the one he values most,

was freedom of the will;

a gift with which all creatures with intellect,

24and they alone, were and are endowed.

Now, reasoning from this, the great value

of a vow will be apparent to you, provided

27that God consents to it when you consent;

for, when a pact is made between God and man,

this treasure, exactly as I describe it,

30is sacrificed; and it’s done by its own act.

A vow is a freely made sacrifice of one’s own free will (the most precious of God’s gifts): hence the importance of vows being freely made and not imposed or exacted. Dante’s emphasis here on a vow as the offer of one’s free will, rather than of what is promised, is unusual and entirely characteristic of him. There are two components in a vow: the substance of the vow (what is promised) and the pact itself. The second can never be cancelled; the first can be substituted, under two conditions: the permission of the church and the offer of something greater in value than the original vow. Vows should never be made lightly:

Siate, Cristiani, a muovervi più gravi:non siate come penna ad ogne vento,

75e non crediate ch’ogne acqua vi lavi.

Avete il novo e ’l vecchio Testamento,e ’l pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida;

78questo vi basti a vostro salvamento.

Christians, be slower to make vows:

do not be like feathers in every wind,

75don’t think that every water washes clean.

You have the New and the Old Testament,

and the pastor of the Church who guides you;

78let this suffice for your salvation.

Dante has new questions to ponder, but the change in Beatrice’s appearance, her increased radiance, stops him from articulating them. She looks up, as they ascend at extraordinary speed into the next sphere, Mercury.

Lo suo tacere e ’l trasmutar sembiantepuoser silenzio al mio cupido ingegno,

90che già nuove questioni avea davante;

e sì come saetta che nel segnopercuote pria che sia la corda queta,

93così corremmo nel secondo regno.

Her falling silent and the change in her appearance,

imposed silence on my eager mind,

90which already had new questions to ponder;

and like an arrow that strikes its target

before the bowstring stops vibrating,

93just so we sped into the second realm.

Another arresting image to convey the speed of their ascent: the arrow hits its target before the bowstring stops vibrating.

Like fish in a pond that come to the surface in the hope of being fed, more than a thousand shining lights approach:

Come ’n peschiera ch’è tranquilla e puratraggonsi i pesci a ciò che vien di fori

102per modo che lo stimin lor pastura,

sì vid’ io ben più di mille splendoritrarsi ver’ noi, e in ciascun s’udia:

105«Ecco chi crescerà li nostri amori».

Just as in a fishpond that is calm and clear

the fish draw close to what comes from outside

102because they think it is their food,

so I saw more than a thousand splendours

coming towards us, and in each one could be heard:

105“Lo, here is someone who’ll increase our loves.”

Dante is anxious to learn about them, as he knows the reader will be:

Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s’inizianon procedesse, come tu avresti

111di più savere angosciosa carizia;

e per te vederai come da questim’era in disio d’udir lor condizioni,

114sì come a li occhi mi fur manifesti.

Just think, reader, if the story begun here

were to go no further, how you would feel

111an anguished craving to know more;

and you will see for yourself how eager I was

to hear from them of their condition,

114as soon as they appeared before my eyes.

There are countless lights; Dante sees vague bodily shapes; faces are no longer recognisable. In the higher spheres neither faces nor bodily shapes will be discernible through the brilliance of the light with which the souls shine. Their brilliance reflects the ardour of their love for God.

One of the souls welcomes Dante, who asks him two questions: Who is he? Why does he enjoy this degree of beatitude? The shade’s eloquent answer will fill the whole of the next canto.

This is the only canto in the poem spoken by a single voice. The soul, whose name will be revealed in the course of his story, speaks without interruption, answering Dante’s first question at great length, giving an account of the history of the Roman Empire, personified in its emblem, the eagle standard. The providential function of the empire, to guide men in history in accordance with justice, is the central plank in Dante’s political thinking. It is here expounded with great authority and passion by someone who played a key role in its history. Whereas Inferno 6 had dealt with the political theme in relation to Florence, and Purgatorio 6 had developed it in relation to Italy, now here in Paradiso 6 the panorama has extended to the whole of Europe.

The allusive opening lines remind us that Constantine, emperor in the fourth century, had moved the seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium (ad 324); the city was renamed Constantinople in his honour. In Dante’s lines, it is the eagle itself, symbol of imperial authority, that flies eastwards “against the course of heaven,” that is, counter to the westward course of the sun, and settles on the far edge of Europe. The unnamed antico (“ancient one”) in l. 3 is Aeneas, who had fled westwards after the Trojan War from Troy to Italy, and founded Rome. The eagle’s flight reverses that historic path: Constantinople is not far from the mountains near Troy where Aeneas’s journey had begun. The lines are compressed but majestic in their evocation of the empire’s destined course.

«Poscia che Costantin l’aquila volsecontr’ al corso del ciel, ch’ella seguio

3dietro a l’antico che Lavina tolse,

cento e cent’ anni e più l’uccel di Dione lo stremo d’Europa si ritenne,

6vicino a’ monti de’ quai prima uscìo;

e sotto l’ombra de le sacre pennegovernò ’l mondo lì di mano in mano,

9e, sì cangiando, in su la mia pervenne.

“Once Constantine reversed the eagle’s flight

against the course of heaven it had followed

3behind the ancient one who wed Lavinia,

for two hundred years and more the bird of God

stayed at the outer edge of Europe’s borders,

6close to the mountains from which it first came forth;

and beneath the shadow of its sacred wings

it ruled the world, passing from hand to hand,

9and, passed on in this way, it came to mine.

These lines take in at a glance the geography of Europe, and a turning point in the empire’s history. They form a fitting prelude to the identification of the speaker.

Cesare fui e son Iustinïano,che, per voler del primo amor ch’i’ sento,

12d’entro le leggi trassi il troppo e ’l vano.

Emperor I was, and I am Justinian,

who, by will of the primal love I feel,

12pruned from the laws the redundant and the useless.

Justinian, whose very name connects him with justice, was emperor of the eastern Roman Empire, centred on Constantinople, in the sixth century (ad 527–65). Early in his rule he had adhered to the Monophysite heresy of believing Christ to have only one nature (his divine nature), but he was cured of this by Pope Agapetus. From then on he entrusted practical imperial matters to his military general, Belisarius, and devoted himself to the task of reforming Roman law. The Codex Justiniani (ad 529) collected the valid edicts of the Roman emperors since Hadrian, which were revised to remove repetitious and pointless material (il troppo e ’l vano), creating the Institutes and the Digest, which remained the basis of civil law in the West throughout the Middle Ages and into modern times. (Justinian’s work as a lawgiver has already been celebrated by Dante in Purgatorio 6, 88–89.)

Justinian launches into a condensed account of the history of Roman authority, represented by the eagle standard, from its long stay in Alba Longa, where Aeneas had settled after his victory over the Latini, through key moments in its early history: the legendary fight between the three Curiatii and the three Horatii brothers; the rape of the Sabines; the seven kings; the violation of Lucretia. The text, like the eagle, flies across times and places.

Tu sai ch’el fece in Alba sua dimoraper trecento anni e oltre, infino al fine

39che i tre a’ tre pugnar per lui ancora.

E sai ch’el fé dal mal de le Sabineal dolor di Lucrezia in sette regi,

42vincendo intorno le genti vicine.

You know that it made its home in Alba

for three hundred years and more, until at last

39three fought with three to make it theirs.

And you know what it did under seven kings,

from the rape of the Sabines to the grief of Lucretia,

42conquering the nearby peoples around.

Roman republican history is reviewed in a roll call of famous names: Cincinnatus, the Decii, the Fabii, all famous for putting public service ahead of personal interest or profit. The eagle standard defeated Hannibal when he crossed the Alps (the Arabs of l. 49 are, anachronistically, the Carthaginians).

Esso atterrò l’orgoglio de li Aràbiche di retro ad Anibale passaro

51l’alpestre rocce, Po, di che tu labi.

Sott’ esso giovanetti trïunfaroScipïone e Pompeo; e a quel colle

54sotto ’l qual tu nascesti parve amaro.

It cast down the pride of the Arabs,

who following Hannibal crossed the rocky Alps,

51from which you, river Po, flow down.

Beneath it as young men Scipio and Pompey

triumphed; and it seemed bitter

54to that hill at the foot of which you were born.

The victory of Scipio and Pompey was bitter to Fiesole, at whose foot Florence lies, because Fiesole was destroyed in the fighting against Catiline in the civil war.

And now we come to the empire: for Dante, Julius Caesar was the first emperor. Justinian describes Caesar’s military triumphs from the rivers of Gaul, to his crossing the Rubicon in northern Italy and the march on Rome, followed by his attack on the republican forces in Spain, the Battle of Pharsalia with the death of Cato and the flight of Pompey to Egypt, and the deposition of Ptolemy.

Poi, presso al tempo che tutto ’l ciel volleredur lo mondo a suo modo sereno,

57Cesare per voler di Roma il tolle.

E quel che fé da Varo infino a Reno,Isara vide ed Era e vide Senna

60e ogne valle onde Rodano è pieno.

Quel che fé poi ch’elli uscì di Ravennae saltò Rubicon, fu di tal volo,

63che nol seguiteria lingua né penna.

Inver’ la Spagna rivolse lo stuolo,poi ver’ Durazzo, e Farsalia percosse

66sì ch’al Nil caldo si sentì del duolo.

Then, close to the time that the whole of heaven wanted

to bring the world to its own state of peace,

57Caesar took it, by the will of Rome.

And what it did from the Var as far as the Rhine,

the Isère saw, and the Loire and the Seine saw,

60and every valley whose waters feed the Rhône.

What it did then, when it went forth from Ravenna

and crossed the Rubicon, was so swift a flight

63that neither tongue nor pen could follow it.

It turned its army towards Spain,

then towards Durazzo, and smote Pharsalia,

66so the pain was felt as far as the hot Nile.

Dante’s source for much of this is Lucan’s epic poem Pharsalia, a text he greatly admired, though there are significant differences of emphasis. The one who next carried the standard, not named, was Octavian, later known as Augustus Caesar (l. 73). He was responsible for sending Brutus and Cassius to hell. There is a notable brief portrait of Cleopatra.

Di quel che fé col baiulo seguente,Bruto con Cassio ne l’ inferno latra,

75e Modena e Perugia fu dolente.

Piangene ancor la trista Cleopatra,che, fuggendoli innanzi, dal colubro

78la morte prese subitana e atra.

Con costui corse infino al lito rubrocon costui puose il mondo in tanta pace,

81che fu serrato a Giano il suo delubro.

For what it did with the man who bore it next,

Brutus and Cassius howl in hell,

75and Modena and Perugia grieved.

Wretched Cleopatra still weeps because of it,

she who, fleeing ahead of it, took

78her sudden dark death from the asp.

With him it raced as far as the Red Sea shore;

with him it brought the world such peace

81that Janus’s temple doors were locked.

Augustus Caesar finally brought peace. The temple doors to the shrine of Janus in Rome could at last be locked (their opening signified war). The two Caesars, instruments of divine providence, had engaged in just wars at a crucial moment in human history. The Pax Romana which brought peace to the world was ordained by providence. This is the point at which Christ entered human history.

Both the birth of Christ and his crucifixion, necessary to save mankind, happened under legitimate Roman jurisdiction (Augustus Caesar, followed by Tiberius). Here Dante’s source is the fourth-century historian Orosius, a contemporary of Saint Augustine, whose Seven Books of History Against the Pagans had emphasised the significance of the coinciding of Christ’s birth with the peaceful reign of Augustus. If Roman imperial authority had not been legitimate, the crucifixion would not have been a true punishment in Christ’s person for the sin of Adam, and humanity would not have been redeemed.

But (and modern readers will find this surprising) even Augustus’s achievement cannot compare with what the emperors Tiberius and Titus did.

Or qui t’ammira in ciò ch’io ti replìco:poscia con Tito a far vendetta corse

93de la vendetta del peccato antico.

Now marvel here at what I lay out for you:

later it raced with Titus to avenge

93the vengeance taken on the ancient sin.

How can there be a just vengeance taken on an action that was itself a just revenge for an earlier wrong? The vital significance of Titus’s action will be explained in the next canto.

A seven-hundred-year jump takes us from Titus (ad 70) to Charlemagne (ad 770). The Holy Roman Empire Charlemagne presided over was a legitimate continuation of the Roman Empire; his imperial authority is its natural heir. His reign initiates the modern era, the historical circumstances in which Dante lives.

E quando il dente longobardo morsela Santa Chiesa, sotto le sue ali

96Carlo Magno, vincendo, la soccorse.

And when the Lombard tooth bit into

Holy Church, beneath its wings

96Charlemagne came to her aid, in victory.

In recent times there has been a sad degeneration. The tone changes from celebration to bitter recrimination. The eagle standard has been misused for factional reasons, commandeered by the Ghibellines, the pro-imperial party, and attacked by the Guelphs, their enemies, under Charles of Anjou.

Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor artesott’ altro segno, ché mal segue quello

105sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte;

e non l’abbatta esto Carlo novellocoi Guelfi suoi, ma tema de li artigh

108ch’a più alto leon trasser lo vello.

Let the Ghibellines practise their tricks under a different

banner, for those who separate it from justice

105are always bad followers of the eagle;

and let this new Charles not tear it down

with his Guelfs, but let him fear its claws

108that have torn the hide from mightier lions.

Now we come to the answer to Dante’s second question. In the sphere of Mercury are the souls of those who pursued fame and earthly glory, not in itself a bad thing, but liable to distract from God and be a source of pride. But, just like Piccarda, these souls are happy with their degree of blessedness, as it exactly accords with their merits.

Diverse voci fanno dolci note;così diversi scanni in nostra vita

126rendon dolce armonia tra queste rote.

Different voices make sweet notes;

just so in our life differing ranks

126produce sweet harmony among these spheres.

E dentro a la presente margaritaluce la luce di Romeo, di cui

129fu l’ovra grande e bella mal gradita.

And within the present pearl

shines the light of Romeo,

129whose great, fine work was ill rewarded.

Justinian winds up his long account of the Roman Empire with a cameo from modern life. He introduces another soul, who has been mistreated on earth in spite of his integrity and his good works. He is Romeo of Villeneuve, who served as chief steward in the court of Raymond Berenger, last of the counts of Provence.

Romeo served his master well, managing the finances and supplies for the court, and finding good husbands for all four of the count’s daughters. They all married advantageously—two of them to kings (Louis IX of France and Henry III of England), two of them to powerful nobles—alliances which were politically advantageous to the count. Romeo achieved all this although he himself was of humble birth. But rivals at court, jealous of the esteem in which he was held, made false accusations of pilfering against him. This honest man was forced to leave the court and go begging for bread, his loyal service and integrity counting for nothing, obliterated by malice and envy.

Quattro figlie ebbe, e ciascuna reina,Ramondo Beringhiere, e ciò li fece

135Romeo, persona umìle e peregrina.

E poi il mosser le parole biecea dimandar ragione a questo giusto,

138che li assegnò sette e cinque per diece,

indi partissi povero e vetusto;e se ’l mondo sapesse il cor ch’elli ebbe

141mendicando sua vita a frusto a frusto,

assai lo loda, e più lo loderebbe».

Raymond Berenger had four daughters,

each one a queen, and Romeo did that for him,

135a man of modest standing and a stranger.

And when malicious words moved him

to ask this just man to go over the accounts,

138he who had rendered him seven and five for ten,

he went away from there poor and old;

and if the world knew the heart he had,

141begging his livelihood from crust to crust,

though it praise him much, it would praise him even more.”

A position in a court was precarious. There were always rivalries and envy, as we know from the fate of Pier delle Vigne in Inferno 13. Here we have a perfect cameo of worthy service counting for nothing, discounted and ill rewarded because of malicious interference from lesser men in positions of power. The bitterness expressed here surely reflects Dante’s feelings about his own experience of being defamed and sent into exile.

What links Justinian’s epic account of the Roman Empire and this brief, moving story is the theme of justice. This is a recurring narrative strategy used by Dante to great effect: a brief personal history condensed into a few lines at the end of a canto. We think back to Pia de’ Tolomei in Purgatorio 5, her life story encapsulated in just seven lines.

Justinian sings a hymn, and he and the other souls speed off. Picking up on a point raised in the previous canto, Beatrice offers to explain how a just vengeance, the killing of Jesus, was justly avenged by Titus, with the destruction of Jerusalem. How can these radically conflicting events both embody the principle of justice? The answer takes us deep into theology, which will occupy the whole canto.

A few short lines summarise the two key facts of human history from a Christian perspective. The sin of Adam (“the man who was not born,” l. 26) damned humanity; reparation was made for that by Christ’s incarnation.

Per non soffrire a la virtù che volefreno a suo prode, quell’ uom che non nacque,

27dannando sé, dannò tutta sua prole;

onde l’umana specie inferma giacquegiù per secoli molti in grande errore,

30fin ch’al Verbo di Dio discender piacque

By not tolerating a curb on his will,

for his own good, the man who was not born,

27damning himself, damned all his progeny;

and so the human race lay stricken

for many centuries in great error,

30until the Word of God chose to descend

u’ la natura, che dal suo fattores’era allungata, unì a sé in persona

33con l’atto sol del suo etterno amore.

to where he joined himself to our human nature

(which had become estranged from its maker),

33just by the act of his eternal love.

The crucifixion was both a just punishment and an unjust one, depending on whether one views it in relation to the human nature of Christ or his divine nature. In relation to his human nature, it punishes the sin of Adam, so it is just; in relation to his divine nature, it is monstrously unjust.

Or drizza il viso a quel ch’or si ragiona:questa natura al suo fattore unita,

36qual fu creata, fu sincera e buona;

ma per sé stessa pur fu ella sbanditadi paradiso, però che si torse

39da via di verità e da sua vita.

La pena dunque che la croce porses’a la natura assunta si misura,

42nulla già mai sì giustamente morse;

e così nulla fu di tanta ingiura,guardando a la persona che sofferse,

45in che era contratta tal natura.

Però d’un atto uscir cose diverse:ch’a Dio e a’ Giudei piacque una morte;

48per lei tremò la terra e ’l ciel s’aperse.

Now pay attention to what I’m about to say:

this (human) nature, joined to its maker,

36as it was created, was pure and good;

but just by its own doing it was banished

from paradise, because it turned away

39from the path of truth and from the true life.

As for the punishment the cross imposed,

if it’s measured against the nature he assumed,

42no other was ever so justly inflicted;

and equally none was ever so unjust,

considering the person who suffered it,

45by whom that nature had been taken on.

And so one action had two different outcomes:

a single death pleased God and pleased the Jews;

48because of it earth quaked and heaven opened.

The earth quaked at the crucifixion, in horror; heaven opened to redeemed humanity. The colloquial vigour of this final tercet is memorable: theology has become poetry. So the conundrum is resolved: a just vengeance (the crucifixion) was itself justly avenged by Titus (with the destruction of Jerusalem).

But Dante is still confused: Why did God choose this particular way (the crucifixion) to save humankind? A question many thinking people will have asked themselves over the ages. The answer: because it was both just and merciful. It was just, because Adam’s transgression was justly punished, and so his sin is atoned for. It was merciful, because God sacrificed his Son to redeem humanity, an act far more merciful than a simple act of gratuitous remission would have been. The incarnation was necessary to serve justice, as this tercet summarises:

e tutti li altri modi erano scarsia la giustizia, se ’l Figliuol di Dio

120non fosse umilïato ad incarnarsi.

and all other means would have fallen short

of justice, if the Son of God had not

120humbled himself to take on mortal flesh.

Beatrice anticipates a third doubt Dante may have: How can primary elements, created directly by God, be corruptible? Surely they should be eternal and imperishable (“safe from decay,” l. 129).

Tu dici: “Io veggio l’acqua, io veggio il foco,l’aere e la terra e tutte lor misture

126venire a corruzione, e durar poco;

e queste cose pur furon creature;per che, se ciò ch’è detto è stato vero,

129esser dovrien da corruzion sicure”.

You say: ‘I see water, I see fire,

air and earth and all their combinations,

126are subject to decay, and don’t last long;

and yet these things were God’s creation,

so that, if what was said was true,

129they should be safe from decay.’

She explains that angels and the heavens were fully formed by God; as for animals and plants, God created the matter of which they are made, but their particular form is determined by secondary causes. She reminds Dante that, by contrast, life is breathed into human beings directly by God, hence they are immortal.

L’anima d’ogne bruto e de le piantedi complession potenzïata tira

141lo raggio e ’l moto de le luci sante;

The soul of every animal and of plants

is drawn from a potentiated mixture

141by the ray and motion of the holy lights;

ma vostra vita sanza mezzo spirala somma beninanza, e la innamora

144di sé sì che poi sempre la disira.

E quinci puoi argomentare ancoravostra resurrezion, se tu ripensi

147come l’ umana carne fessi allora

che li primi parenti intrambo fensi».

but the supreme goodness breathes your life

without mediation, and enamours it of itself

144so that afterwards it forever desires it.

And from this you can deduce

your resurrection, if you think back on

147how human flesh was made

when our first parents were both made.”

From this crucial distinction between lower life forms (corruptible) and human beings (created directly by God, incorruptible), Beatrice deduces the fact of the resurrection of bodies after death. Briefly touched on here, this will become a major theme later in the cantica (canto 14). The central theological issues examined in this canto—redemption, the incarnation, the crucifixion, resurrection—all arise naturally from the providential role of the Roman Empire in human history as set out by Justinian in canto 6. His account in effect amounted to a theology of history.

Dante finds himself in a new star, venus. he knows he has arrived because he sees that Beatrice is more beautiful, though he is not sure how he got there. We are now in the third heavenly sphere. The blessed appear from this point on not as faces or shadowy figures, but as pure lights or flames, and for the first time they dance. Dante makes out other lights revolving within the light of Venus, moving at different speeds, those speeds reflecting their inner vision of God.

Io non m’accorsi del salire in ella;ma d’esservi entro mi fé assai fede

15la donna mia ch’i’ vidi far più bella.

I wasn’t aware of rising up into it;

but I was confident that I was in it,

15seeing my lady become more beautiful.

E come in fiamma favilla si vede,e come in voce voce si discerne,

18quand’ una è ferma e altra va e riede,

vid’ io in essa luce altre lucernemuoversi in giro più e men correnti,

21al modo, credo, di lor viste interne.

And as one sees a spark within a flame,

and one voice can be picked out from another,

18when one holds a note and the other rises and falls,

I saw other lights revolving within that light,

more swiftly or more slowly,

21I think, in accordance with their inner vision.

They come down to him, and one of them, who recognises Dante, quotes the first line of his poem, Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete (“You who move the third heaven by intellection”), addressed to the intelligences that govern this sphere. With Beatrice’s permission, Dante asks who he is, and the soul speaks. Though he is never named, this is Charles Martel, eldest son of Charles II of Anjou, king of Naples, and Mary of Hungary, and brother of Robert of Anjou, who succeeded his father as king of Naples. Dante had met Charles Martel when he visited Florence in 1294, and evidently they struck up a warm friendship.

Charles presents himself here as someone whose early death (in 1295, at the age of twenty-four) deprived Europe of a good ruler and allowed those who came to power in his absence (including his own avaricious brother) to behave badly. His death must have disappointed Dante’s hopes for his own political future. Charles confirms that he would indeed have helped Dante if he had had more time: their relationship would have borne not just leaves but fruits, had it matured.

Assai m’amasti, e avesti ben onde;che s’io fossi giù stato, io ti mostrava

57di mio amor più oltre che le fronde.

You loved me dearly, and you had good reason to;

for had I remained on earth, I would have shown you

57more than the first leaves of my love.

He surveys the kingdoms where, but for his early death, he would have been able to provide good guidance: Provence, the kingdom of Naples, Sicily and Hungary. He was already king of Hungary when he died.

Fulgeami già in fronte la coronadi quella terra che ’l Danubio riga

66poi che le ripe tedesche abbandona.

Already my brow bore the resplendent crown

of that land the Danube furrows

66when it leaves behind its German riverbanks.

He castigates his brother Robert for the evils of his future rule. Robert of Anjou was an enemy to Henry VII, and after Henry’s death, as an ally of pope Clement V, replaced Henry as imperial vicar. Charles’s fulminations against his brother prompt Dante to wonder how a good father can have a bad son, introducing the theme of the heritability of moral traits.

Charles asks Dante a question: Is it valuable for human beings to be members of a community, to be social beings? Dante agrees without hesitation.

Ond’ elli ancora: «Or dì: sarebbe il peggioper l’omo in terra, se non fosse cive?».

117«Sì», rispuos’ io; «e qui ragion non cheggio».

And he went on: “Now tell me: would it be worse

for man on earth, if he were not a citizen?”

117“Yes,” I replied, “and here I ask no proof.”

And would it be possible for there to be a community if people didn’t fulfil different roles in life? He answers his own question, en passant citing Aristotle (“your master”) as an authority. Aristotle’s Politics, well known to Dante, was the key text about the need for diversity of occupation among members of a community. His conclusion: if the world is to function and people are to live well, they need to have different natural aptitudes (“roots,” l. 123); more importantly, they must be allowed to follow those aptitudes in leading their lives.

«E puot’ elli esser, se giù non si vivediversamente per diversi offici?

120Non, se ’l maestro vostro ben vi scrive».

Sì venne deducendo infino a quici;poscia conchiuse: «Dunque esser diverse

123convien di vostri effetti le radici:

“And can that be, if on earth people do not live

in different ways, fulfilling different roles?

120No, if your master writes correctly about this.”

So he brought his reasoning to this point;

then he concluded: “So of necessity

123the roots of your activities must be diverse:

per ch’un nasce Solone e altro Serse,altro Melchisedèch e altro quello

126che, volando per l’aere, il figlio perse.

so one is born Solon and another Xerxes,

one is Melchizedek, and another is he

126who flew up through the air, and lost his son.

These historical figures exemplify different professions. Solon was a lawgiver, Xerxes a general, Melchisedek a priest, Dedalus (so well known he didn’t need to be named) an artisan. Dedalus lost his son, Icarus, who flew too close to the sun using wax wings made by his father.

Some qualities or aptitudes will arise in different people in different families, in accordance with the natural process of generation and procreation. But through natural generation children would always resemble parents (the begotten, natura generata, would resemble the begetters, generanti), if providence did not intervene. La circular natura (l. 127) is the circling heavens; natura generata (l. 133) is what is generated.

La circular natura, ch’è suggelloa la cera mortal, fa ben sua arte,

129ma non distingue l’un da l’altro ostello.

Quinci addivien ch’Esaù si diparteper seme da Iacòb; e vien Quirino

132da sì vil padre, che si rende a Marte.

Natura generata il suo camminosimil farebbe sempre a’ generanti,

135se non vincesse il proveder divino.

Circling nature, which stamps its seal

on mortal wax, does its work skilfully,

129but doesn’t distinguish one house from another.

So it happens that Esau is different

in his seed from Jacob; and Romulus is born

132of so humble a father men say he’s a son of Mars.

Nature would take its course,

always making offspring resemble their parents,

135if divine providence didn’t intervene.

The role played by providence is crucial. Esau and Jacob are twins who fought in the womb, as we know from the biblical story. Romulus (here called Quirinus, as he often was) was so great that it seemed unlikely he could have a humble father, so a story circulated that he was a son of Mars. The image of wax stamped by a seal is one Dante uses often when describing the relationship between the natural world we live in and the influence of the circling heavens on it.

Charles adds a pertinent corollary. If natural aptitude is at odds with fortune—that is, with the role and circumstances of an individual’s life—things will turn out badly. People should not be forced into careers unsuited to their temperament and inclinations. If fundamental character and aptitude (the fondamento of l. 143) were respected, the world would be a better place.

Sempre natura, se fortuna trovadiscorde a sé, com’ ogne altra semente

141fuor di sua regïon, fa mala prova.

E se ’l mondo là giù ponesse menteal fondamento che natura pone,

144seguendo lui, avria buona la gente.

Ma voi torcete a la religïonetal che fia nato a cignersi la spada,

147e fate re di tal ch’è da sermone;

onde la traccia vostra è fuor di strada».

Nature always turns out badly if it finds

fortune hostile to it, like any other seed

141on unsuitable terrain.

But if the world down there paid heed

to the foundation that nature lays down,

144and built on that, people would turn out well.

But you force into the religious life

one who is born to buckle on a sword,

147and you make a king of one who’s made for preaching;

and so humanity goes astray.”

These final lines may have a personal resonance. Robert of Anjou, the speaker’s brother, was just such a king who temperamentally would have been better suited to a life in the church.

We are still in the sphere of venus, a planet whose influence can be negative as well as positive. In Charles Martel we saw its positive side in the picture of the ideal courtly prince whose relationship with Dante was one of loving friendship, courtesy and solicitude. We are about to meet souls whose lives reflect the negative side, a dedication to sensual eros.

Another splendore comes towards Dante. This is Cunizza da Romano, a noblewoman from the March of Treviso in northern Italy, who introduces herself through her firebrand brother, the infamous Ezzelino da Romano. Ezzelino was a prominent Ghibelline described by a contemporary historian as the “most cruel and feared tyrant who ever existed among Christians”—Dante saw him in Inferno 12 among the tyrants. Like Esau and Jacob, and Charles Martel and his brother Robert of Anjou, these are two very different siblings born of the same parents. Cunizza explains that she was overcome by the light of Venus—notoriously, she had four husbands and many lovers, one of whom was the poet Sordello—but this is not a matter of regret to her. She comments that some people on earth might find this lack of regret difficult to understand.

Ed ecco un altro di quelli splendoriver’ me si fece, e ’l suo voler piacermi

15significava nel chiarir di fori.

. . .

«In quella parte de la terra pravaitalica che siede tra Rïalto

27e le fontane di Brenta e di Piava,

si leva un colle, e non surge molt’ alto,là onde scese già una facella

30che fece a la contrada un grande assalto.

D’una radice nacqui e io ed ella:Cunizza fui chiamata, e qui refulgo

33perché mi vinse il lume d’esta stella;

ma lietamente a me medesma indulgola cagion di mia sorte, e non mi noia;

36che parria forse forte al vostro vulgo.

And now another of those shining lights

came towards me, and showed its desire to please me

15by becoming brighter on the outside.

. . .

“In that part of the wicked land

of Italy that lies between the Rialto

27and the sources of the Brenta and the Piave,

there rises a hill, of no great height,

from where there hurtled down a flaming firebrand

30that made a fierce assault on the countryside.

He and I were born of a single root:

Cunizza was my name, and I shine here

33because the light of this star overcame me;

but I happily forgive myself

the cause of my fate, and I’m not troubled by it;

36that would perhaps seem puzzling to the common herd.

Cunizza describes her disposition to love with notable brevity (“the light of this star overcame me”). There is no prurient dwelling on the details of her amply documented love life. Some commentators are incredulous that Dante has included her among the blessed. One scandalised early commentator calls her recte filia Veneris (“indeed a daughter of Venus”) and, even more bluntly, famosa meretrix (“a famous whore”). Another tells us that she was so generous with her love that she thought it very discourteous to deny it to anyone if they asked politely. Equally shocking to narrow-minded bien-pensants is her being so untroubled by the loving disposition that lay at the root of her life. (Is l. 36 directed at us, the poem’s readers? we may wonder.) She shows no remorse for her sins, no regrets for her transgressions. The same loving disposition which caused her to sin is the cause of her beatitude. As Dante’s son Pietro points out in his commentary, Dante may expect us to remember Christ’s words about Mary Magdalene: “Many sins are forgiven her, for she hath loved much” (Luke 7:47).

Cunizza points to another soul without naming him, comments bitterly on the turbulent political situation in the March of Treviso, and returns to the dance. The soul she has pointed out tells Dante that he too was influenced by the sphere of Venus.

Folco mi disse quella gente a cuifu noto il nome mio; e questo cielo

96di me s’imprenta, com’ io fe’ di lui;

I was called Folco by those

who knew my name; and this heaven

96is marked by me as I was marked by it.

This is Folco of Marseilles, a famous troubadour poet who lived in the last quarter of the twelfth century. As troubadour poets did, he wrote love poems celebrating his unrequited love for the wife of his feudal lord. When the lady died, he entered a religious order and became bishop of Toulouse, leading the Albigensian Crusade against heresy in Provence. The passage from eros to caritas, from romantic to Christian love, had a certain affinity with Dante’s own life experience, as recounted in the Vita Nuova, and this perhaps explains why he is the only love poet in paradise.

Folco points out Rahab, the Whore of Jericho—another surprising presence in paradise—and explains that she is with them here because, as related in the Old Testament, she helped the people of Israel regain the promised land, by protecting Joshua’s spies when they came to Jericho. She was liberated by Christ at the harrowing of hell, and indeed was the first of those so liberated to ascend to heaven. Here is another sexually active woman, not just promiscuous but a prostitute, among the saved in heaven. We can say with some certainty that Dante is not sanctimonious, preachy or puritanical about sex. As with Cunizza, the same loving disposition which caused Rahab to sin is the cause of her beatitude. The fate of these two women reflects Dante’s belief that the strength and intensity of the capacity to love given by nature, even when acted out in life as promiscuity or prostitution, is transformed, after repentance, into the highest and most ardent love of God.

In the final lines of the canto, Folco mounts a fierce attack on Florence and its obsession with the florin. The maladetto fiore, “accursed flower,” is the lily; this emblem of the city was imprinted on one side of the coin. The decretals are papal letters issuing judicial decisions, collected into books, which became the basis of canon law. Their margins are well thumbed because popes and cardinals seek to enrich themselves by studying the ins and outs of canon law, abandoning the Gospels and the fathers of the church.

La tua città, che di colui è piantache pria volse le spalle al suo fattore

129e di cui è la ’nvidia tanto pianta,

produce e spande il maladetto fiorec’ha disvïate le pecore e li agni,

132però che fatto ha lupo del pastore.

Per questo l’Evangelio e i dottor magnison derelitti, e solo ai Decretali

135si studia, sì che pare a’ lor vivagni.

A questo intende il papa e ’ cardinali;non vanno i lor pensieri a Nazarette,

138là dove Gabrïello aperse l’ali.

Your city, which was planted by him

who first turned his back on his maker,

129and whose envy has been the cause of so much woe,

mints and circulates the accursed flower

that has led both sheep and lambs astray,

132because it has turned the shepherd into a wolf.

For this the Gospel and the fathers of the church

are abandoned, and only the decretals

135are studied, as their worn margins show.

It’s this the pope and cardinals set their sights on;

their thoughts don’t go to Nazareth,

138where Gabriel spread his wings.

Ma Vaticano e l’altre parti elettedi Roma che son state cimitero

141a la milizia che Pietro seguette,

tosto libere fien de l’avoltero».

But the Vatican and the other sacred sites

in Rome, that were the burial ground

141of the hosts who followed Peter,

will soon be freed of this adultery.”

Folco’s final prophecy is obscure, since at the time of writing Dante could not know what form the longed-for liberation would take.

What is remarkable about the sphere of Venus (aside from the cast list) is that love—the obvious theme for the planet—is interwoven so inextricably with politics and poetry, the twin passions of Dante’s life. All three protagonists (Charles Martel, Cunizza, Folco) comment bitterly and at length on the current political state of the world. Two of them have strong connections with poetry. The interlinking of these themes constitutes one of Dante’s most original and unorthodox moves. Just as striking as the linking of love to politics and poetry is the stark contrast between love as erotic impulse (ultimately transformable into love of God) and love of money, which is unredeemable.

Just as in inferno and purgatorio canto 10 had marked a sharp break from what had gone before—entry into the city of Dis, entry into purgatory proper—so here we enter a new section of paradise. The souls we have met in the first three heavens are marked by some negative quality, reflecting the fact that, in astronomical terms, the shadow of the earth falls on the spheres they inhabit. From now on, we are free of the earth’s shadow, and the souls we meet reflect positive qualities. They are, in turn, wise spirits (the Sun), those who fought for the faith (Mars), just rulers (Jupiter) and contemplatives (Saturn), and they present themselves to Dante in more elaborate and structured shapes. Here, in the heaven of the Sun, that shape is a circle, described variously as a garland, a wreath, a crown, and, when the souls move, a wheel and a joyous dance. The circle, the most perfect geometric figure, traditionally a symbol of perfection and divinity, was considered the only shape that could correspond to the idea that the human mind could make of God. (It will famously recur in the final canto of the poem.) It is characteristic of the blessed that they express their state of beatitude through song and movement.

We are about to meet the sapienti, or wise spirits. They include the great thinkers of the Middle Ages and two saints who founded religious orders. Most of the names of the thinkers are no longer familiar to us: to put them in perspective, an equivalent list of eminent thinkers for the modern age might include the names of Descartes, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Einstein and Wittgenstein. The saints, by contrast—Francis and Dominic—are still widely venerated today by the faithful.

The canto starts with a cosmological prelude in praise of the perfection of the Creator’s design of the cosmos—the first passage in the poem that is explicitly trinitarian, mentioning the three persons of the Christian God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). This is followed by Dante’s invitation to the reader to look up with him at the stars. Anyone who gazes up at the heavens will “savour” God, gustar di lui. The lines are dense but rewarding.

The first tercet refers to the three persons of the Trinity: in l. 1 the Son and the Holy Spirit (Amore), in l. 3 God the Father. The things that revolve in space are the heavenly spheres; those that revolve in mind are the angelic intelligences. No one gazing at the perfection of the divine order of the cosmos can fail to feel the presence of divine reality.

Guardando nel suo Figlio con l’Amoreche l’uno e l’altro etternalmente spira,

3lo primo e ineffabile Valore

quanto per mente e per loco si giracon tant’ ordine fé, ch’esser non puote

6sanza gustar di lui chi ciò rimira.

Gazing on his Son with the Love

that each of them eternally breathes forth,

3the primal and ineffable Power

made all things that revolve, in mind and space,

with such perfect order, that it cannot be

6that whoever gazes at it fails to feel his presence.

So, the poet says, look up with me; specifically, look at the point where the circles of the celestial equator and the ecliptic—l’un moto e l’altro (l. 9)—intersect. The celestial equator is an imaginary great circle described on the celestial sphere in the same plane as the terrestrial equator. The ecliptic is the path traced by the zodiac as the stars circle the earth. It intersects with the celestial equator at two points. In the poem we are at the spring equinox, and the point of intersection is overhead.

Leva dunque, lettore, a l’alte rotemeco la vista, dritto a quella parte

9dove l’un moto e l’altro si percuote;

e lì comincia a vagheggiar ne l’artedi quel maestro che dentro a sé l’ama,

12tanto che mai da lei l’occhio non parte.

So then, reader, raise your eyes with me

to the lofty wheels, and look straight at that point

9where one motion and the other intersect;

and there begin to contemplate lovingly

the art of that master who loves it within himself,

12so much that he never turns his eye from it.

The equator and the ecliptic do not coincide exactly, one being slightly at an angle to the other. It is precisely this slight mismatch which gives the world its seasons, and hence its fruitfulness, its capacity to sustain life.

Vedi come da indi si diramal’oblico cerchio che i pianeti porta,

15per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama.

Che se la strada lor non fosse torta,molta virtù nel ciel sarebbe in vano,

18e quasi ogne potenza qua giù morta;

e se dal dritto più o men lontanofosse ’l partire, assai sarebbe manco

21e giù e sù de l’ordine mondano.

See how, from there, there branches off

the oblique circle that carries the planets,

15to satisfy the world that calls on them.

For if their path were not aslant,

much of heaven’s influence would be vain,

18and almost all potentiality dead down here;

and if its divergence from the straight path

were greater or less, much of the earthly order

21would be unfulfilled, both below and above it.

Dante’s basic lesson in astronomy has shown the perfection of the divine design as it affects our world. If the path of the ecliptic and the equator coincided, if the ecliptic’s path were not oblico (“oblique”), torta (“aslant”), much of the influence of the heavenly bodies would be in vain. Their influence in both hemispheres (giù e sù: below and above the equator, in the southern and northern hemispheres) would be annulled; it would have no effect. There would be no seasons, no fruitful crops. Life on earth as we know it, for humans, animals and plants, would not be possible. (Today we know that the earth spins on its own axis, with a slight wobble, as it moves around the sun, and this wobble is what causes the misalignment of equator and ecliptic and hence the seasons.)

Now, Dante tells the reader, you think about this. You have to do the work, I have the pressing job of writing this poem.

Or ti riman, lettor, sovra ’l tuo banco,dietro pensando a ciò che si preliba,

24s’esser vuoi lieto assai prima che stanco.

Messo t’ho innanzi: omai per te ti ciba;ché a sé torce tutta la mia cura

27quella materia ond’ io son fatto scriba.

Now remain, reader, seated on your bench,

reflecting on what I’ve given you a taste of,

24if you want to feel full of joy and never tire.

I’ve put food in front of you: now feed yourself;

for that subject matter of which I’m become the scribe

27demands all my concentration for itself.

Dante is now rising into the heaven of the Sun (“Nature’s greatest minister,” l. 28), which is “wheeling through the spirals.” It is both turning on its own axis and circling around the earth: as it passes the spring equinox, the days become longer. But Dante is not aware of his ascent.

Lo ministro maggior de la natura,che del valor del ciel lo mondo imprenta

30e col suo lume il tempo ne misura,

con quella parte che sù si rammentacongiunto, si girava per le spire

33in che più tosto ognora s’appresenta;

e io era con lui; ma del salirenon m’accors’ io, se non com’ uom s’accorge,

36anzi ’l primo pensier, del suo venire.

Nature’s greatest minister,

that imprints the power of heaven on the world,

30and with its light measures time for us,

in conjunction with the place mentioned above,

was wheeling through the spirals

33in which it rises earlier every day;

and I was with it; but I was no more aware

of my ascending than one is aware

36of the coming of a thought before thinking it.

Can one be aware of a thought before thinking it? Not really. Here is another arresting way of describing motion that is or seems to be instantaneous.

The souls who inhabit the sphere of the Sun are those who devoted their lives to studying and seeking the truth, whether in theology or in secular areas (law, history, logic, grammar)—all the most important branches of learning. Most of them are what we would call intellectuals. But practical as distinct from theoretical wisdom is also celebrated, as we shall see. The lights form a circle around Dante and Beatrice; they sing, and circle around them three times. One soul introduces himself: he was a Dominican friar.

Io fui de li agni de la santa greggiache Domenico mena per cammino

96u’ ben s’impingua se non si vaneggia.

Questi che m’è a destra più vicino,frate e maestro fummi, ed esso Alberto

99è di Cologna, e io Thomas d’Aquino.

I was one of the lambs of the holy flock

which Dominic leads along a path

96where there’s good nourishment if one doesn’t stray.

This spirit closest to me on my right

was my brother and teacher, and he is Albert

99of Cologne, and I am Thomas Aquinas.

Albert “of Cologne” is Albert the Great (1193–1280). He and Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) were two of the greatest thinkers and theologians of the Middle Ages, not quite Dante’s contemporaries, but both still alive and active during his early lifetime.

Aquinas was the author of the Summa theologica, an exposition of the teachings of the church in the light of Aristotelian philosophy, and of the Summa contra Gentiles, a summary of Christian faith for the refutation of unbelief. (Dante seems to have believed that he was murdered by Charles of Anjou, as we saw in Purgatorio 20, 69.) His comment in l. 96, that if Dominic’s teachings are adhered to they provide plentiful spiritual food, will be picked up in the next canto when he laments how degraded the Dominican order has become.

Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) was also a Dominican, and was Aquinas’s teacher. He wrote commentaries on and paraphrases of all the works of Aristotle. His extensive writings included scientific treatises as well as theological works.

Follow my words closely, Aquinas says. He now names the rest of the twelve who form the circle, a roll call of honour of some of the great minds of the medieval world. Inviting Dante to follow as he moves in order around the “garland,” he first points out Gratian, a Benedictine monk from the early twelfth century, the originator of the science of canon law (the “two tribunals” of l. 104 are the courts of canon and civil law).

Se sì di tutti li altri esser vuo’ certo,di retro al mio parlar ten vien col viso

102girando su per lo beato serto.

Quell’ altro fiammeggiare esce del risodi Grazïan, che l’uno e l’altro foro

105aiutò sì che piace in paradiso.

If you would like to know about all the others,

follow my words with your gaze

102circling up along the blessed garland.

That other flaming light comes from the smile

of Gratian, who so helped the two tribunals

105that paradise is pleased.

The Decretum Gratiani (1140–50) is a vast compilation of authoritative voices from sacred and secular sources, aimed at reconciling the laws of the secular and ecclesiastical courts, showing harmony between the two bodies of law.

Next is Peter Lombard, another twelfth-century figure, known as the Master of the Sentences for his book Sententiarum libri quatuor, in which the sayings of the Church Fathers are arranged under headings (creation, the sacraments, and so on). In the preface he self-deprecatingly declares himself to be emulating the biblical widow offering her mite (Mark 12:42), suggesting that his book is modest compared with what others can give. In fact it became an immensely successful textbook in the theological schools.

The fifth light is Solomon, the only Old Testament figure in the circle, author of four books of the Bible. He is not named: his wisdom was legendary; the description is self-explanatory. His fate—whether he was saved or not—was a matter of controversy, hence the eagerness of the living to know where he ended up in the afterlife.

La quinta luce, ch’è tra noi più bella,spira di tale amor, che tutto ’l mondo

111là giù ne gola di saper novella:

entro v’è l’alta mente u’ sì profondosaver fu messo, che, se ’l vero è vero,

114a veder tanto non surse il secondo.

The fifth light, the most beautiful among us,

breathes forth such love that the whole world

111down below hungers to know his fate:

within it is the lofty mind where such profound

wisdom was instilled that, if truth is true,

114no other ever rose who saw so much.

We move on around the circle, but we will return to Solomon and the claim that his wisdom surpassed that of all others.

There follows Dionysius the Areopagite, an Athenian converted by Saint Paul, who was an authority on the nature and function of angels and their order. It is his authority that Dante follows in Paradiso.

Then comes Orosius, a fifth-century Spanish disciple of Saint Augustine. He was the author of Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, a key source for Dante’s knowledge of history, directly cited by him a number of times. Dante did not know the classical historians, apart from Livy; he cites Livy more often than Orosius, but the real source of his information seems often to have been Orosius. As we have seen, Orosius’s account of the birth and death of Christ under the Roman Empire in the age of Augustus and Tiberius, seen as validating the authority and necessity of the empire from a providential point of view, was crucial for shaping Dante’s view of world history.

The eighth light is Boethius (480–526), author of the Consolatio philosophie (Consolation of Philosophy), a text Dante took great comfort in reading after the death of Beatrice. Boethius was a Roman philosopher and statesman, a mediator between classical and Christian culture. He was imprisoned on false charges of treachery, and eventually executed, by the Ostrogoth king Theodoric (a follower of the Arian heresy) in ad 526. While in prison, he wrote the Consolatio, a mixture of prose and poetry, in which he tells how Lady Philosophy came to his prison cell and taught him to rise above his misfortunes, and to see those misfortunes as having a different meaning when they are considered in the context of the divine plan. The Consolatio became one of the bestsellers of the Middle Ages: some nine hundred manuscripts of it survive. Its profound influence on the Paradiso is detectable whenever the theme of a benevolent, all-seeing providence is expressed—wherever the temptation to question divine wisdom is rejected in favour of trust in God’s will. Dante clearly felt a special closeness to Boethius, a fellow victim of false accusations, a poet, and an inspiration to turn bitterness to a greater, more positive goal. The lines in which Aquinas describes his death are especially resonant.

Or se tu l’ occhio de la mente tranidi luce in luce dietro a le mie lode,

123già de l’ ottava con sete rimani.

Now if your mind’s eye tracks, following

from light to light my words of praise,

123you are still eager to know about the eighth.

Per vedere ogne ben dentro vi godel’ anima santa che ’l mondo fallace

126fa manifesto a chi di lei ben ode.

Lo corpo ond’ ella fu cacciata giacegiuso in Cieldauro; ed essa da martiro

129e da essilio venne a questa pace.

Within it there rejoices, seeing all goodness,

the sainted soul who makes quite clear

126the world’s deceit to those who listen well.

The body from which it was driven out

lies down there in Cieldauro; and he came

129from martyrdom and exile to this peace.

Boethius’s body is buried in the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia, where Saint Augustine is also buried.

Next Aquinas names three figures in a single line (l. 131): Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, and Richard of St. Victor. Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) was the author of many works, among them the Etymologiae, an influential encyclopedia of knowledge, covering a vast array of subjects—a medieval equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The Venerable Bede (c. 673–735) was the great Anglo-Saxon historian, author among other things of the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, a foundational text for the history of early Britain. Richard of St. Victor (1123–73) was a famous twelfth-century contemplative and the author of doctrinal and mystical tracts, including De contemplatione, a work often quoted by Aquinas.

Finally, we come to Siger of Brabant (c. 1225–c. 1283), the controversial thirteenth-century thinker and theologian who insisted on the autonomy of philosophy from theology. His lectures at the University of Paris had prompted a refutation by Aquinas himself. Siger was a follower of the great Arab philosopher Averroes. (We met him in limbo; and we’ve seen Dante explicitly correct a misconception of his about the soul in Purgatorio 25, ls. 61–66.) In 1277 (within Dante’s own lifetime), 219 propositions taken from Siger’s teachings were condemned as heretical by Étienne Tempier, bishop of Paris. Dante may have put him in paradise to show incontrovertibly that he was wrong about the immortality of the soul, which he denied.

essa è la luce etterna di Sigieri,che, leggendo nel Vico de li Strami,

138silogizzò invidïosi veri».

it is the eternal light of Siger,

who, lecturing in Straw Street,

138demonstrated invidious truths.”

It is striking that Aquinas and Siger, fierce intellectual adversaries in life, are side by side here in heaven, showing respect for each other. Dante seems deliberately to have constructed his circles of thinkers in a spirit of conciliation and harmony, showing divergent schools of thought reconciled and joyously coexisting in heaven. Having Aquinas celebrate Siger is as daring a move on Dante’s part as his placing in heaven of Cunizza, the noblewoman with her many lovers. The souls circle and sing, like a mechanical clock calling monks to matins. (Mechanical clocks, with multiple wheels, had only recently been invented. This is one of the earliest references to them.)

This canto with its celebration of the thinkers Dante revered prompts us to think again about his education. As already noted, we know very little. That he was a voracious reader and a profound and tenacious thinker is clear. The range and variety of texts he assimilated is remarkable. The authors he mentions here in Paradiso might be thought of as constituting an ideal reading list or syllabus for an aspiring intellectual of his day, including as it does both classics and the leading thinkers of his own time.

Dante, rejoicing in being in paradise, reflects how worldly concerns distract people, keeping their thoughts and aspirations firmly fixed on earth instead of heaven. He lists the professions that distract them: law, medicine, the priesthood, politics, civic affairs; and other, less honourable activities: robbery, sex, idleness. He rejoices that here in heaven he is free of these preoccupations. The circling spirits stop when they get back to the point where they started.

O insensata cura de’ mortali,quanto son difettivi silogismi

3quei che ti fanno in basso batter l’ali!

Chi dietro a iura e chi ad amforismisen giva, e chi seguendo sacerdozio,

6e chi regnar per forza o per sofismi,

O senseless cares of mortal men,

how flawed are the arguments

3that make you flap your wings down close to earth!

Some pursued law, and others medicine,

yet others were in training for the priesthood,

6some sought to rule by violence or sophistry,

e chi rubare e chi civil negozio,chi nel diletto de la carne involto

9s’affaticava e chi si dava a l’ozio,

quando, da tutte queste cose sciolto,con Bëatrice m’era suso in cielo

12cotanto glorïosamente accolto.

Poi che ciascuno fu tornato ne lopunto del cerchio in che avanti s’era,

15fermossi, come a candellier candelo.

some were bent on thieving or public office,

or caught up in the pleasures of the flesh,

9others were given over to idleness,

while I, set free from all these things,

was high up there in heaven with Beatrice,

12welcomed so gloriously.

When each of them had returned to the

point in the circle where he had been before,

15he came to a halt, like a candle on its sconce.

Aquinas talks again. He will tell the story of the first of two “princes” ordained by providence as spiritual guides to humanity. One of them was seraphic in his ardour (that is, he burned with love like a seraph, the highest order of angels); the other was cherubic in his wisdom (cherubim being the second-highest order).

L’un fu tutto serafico in ardore;l’altro per sapïenza in terra fue

39di cherubica luce uno splendore.

The one was all seraphic in his ardour;

the other for his wisdom was on earth

39a shining light of cherubic radiance.

They are Saint Francis and Saint Dominic, founders of the two great mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans. They had been granted papal approval to found their orders as recently as 1209 and 1216, not much more than fifty years before Dante was born. Their founding had a profoundly transformative effect on medieval society and the history of the church. Mendicant friars lived and preached in the world, unlike secluded monastic orders. Francis was renowned for embracing poverty, rejecting his inheritance from a wealthy merchant father; Dominic for his intellectual brilliance and his zealous pursuit of heresy.

Clearly we can’t meet the saints in person: telling their own extraordinary stories might sound like hubris. Instead we have twin narratives, the life of Francis recounted by a Dominican, the life of Dominic by a Franciscan: a pair of parallel and complementary narratives, one canto each.

There is nothing formulaic about the way their lives are described. There are no bland pieties. These were heroic, strenuous lives. Many of us are familiar with the episode from Francis’s life when he preached to the birds, so charmingly portrayed in the frescoes attributed to Giotto in the basilica at Assisi. There is no mention of this in Aquinas’s account, nor of his authorship of the Cantico di Frate Sole, the earliest Italian poem, a song of gratitude for the variety and beauty of the natural world. Rather, the emphasis is on the steeliness of his dura intenzione (l. 91), his resoluteness and indifference to the contempt of others.

Aquinas starts with the geography of Gubbio. Assisi, Francis’s birthplace, should be called Orient (meaning “sunrise”), such is his radiance.

Di questa costa, là dov’ ella frangepiù sua rattezza, nacque al mondo un sole,

51come fa questo talvolta di Gange.

Però chi d’esso loco fa parole,non dica Ascesi, ché direbbe corto,

54ma Orïente, se proprio dir vuole.

From this slope, where its steepness

levels out, a sun was born to the world,

51as our sun sometimes rises from the Ganges.

And so, let whoever speaks of this place,

not say Assisi, for he would say too little,

54but Orient, if he wants a fitting name.

Francis gave early evidence of his exceptional character. While still a young man he resisted parental pressure in order to take an extraordinary step.

Non era ancor molto lontan da l’orto,ch’el cominciò a far sentir la terra

57de la sua gran virtute alcun conforto;

ché per tal donna, giovinetto, in guerradel padre corse, a cui, come a la morte,

60la porta del piacer nessun diserra;

e dinanzi a la sua spirital corteet coram patre le si fece unito;

63poscia di dì in dì l’amò più forte.

Not much time had passed since he was born,

when he began to give the earth

57some comfort from his great power;

for, still a youth, he did battle with his father,

for a lady to whom, as though she were death,

60no one unlocks the door of his pleasure;

and before the bishop’s court

et coram patre* he wedded her;

63then with every passing day he loved her more.

* and in the presence of his father

And now Aquinas clarifies this somewhat enigmatic account: Francis’s bride was Lady Poverty.

Ma perch’ io non proceda troppo chiuso,Francesco e Povertà per questi amanti

75prendi oramai nel mio parlar diffuso.

But so that I may make my meaning plain,

understand now that Francis and Poverty

75are these lovers in my long account.

Francis quickly attracted devoted followers, who cast off their shoes in their eagerness to embrace poverty and follow him. His small group of disciples (quella famiglia, l. 86) are already distinguished by their wearing of the rope girdle around their waists.

Oh ignota ricchezza! oh ben ferace!Scalzasi Egidio, scalzasi Silvestro

84dietro a lo sposo, sì la sposa piace.

Indi sen va quel padre e quel maestrocon la sua donna e con quella famiglia

87che già legava l’umile capestro.

O unknown riches! o fruitful good!

Egidius goes barefoot, Silvester goes barefoot too,

84following the groom, so pleasing is the bride.

Then that father and teacher

goes off with his lady and with his followers,

87who were already girdled by the humble cord.

Indifferent to the derision he encountered and firmly fixed on his purpose, Francis requested of the pope that he be allowed to found an order. The seal of his order was given to him by Pope Innocent III.

Né li gravò viltà di cuor le cigliaper esser fi’ di Pietro Bernardone,

90né per parer dispetto a maraviglia;

ma regalmente sua dura intenzionead Innocenzio aperse, e da lui ebbe

93primo sigillo a sua religïone.

Nor did baseness of heart bow down his head

for being the son of Pietro Bernardone,

90nor for seeming an object of amazed contempt;

but in the manner of a king he declared

his stern resolve to Innocent, and from him

93received the first seal of his order.

Eager to spread the faith, he visited the Sultan in 1219, hoping to convert Muslims by preaching Christ and the apostles. When that failed, he returned to Italy, and on La Verna in the Tuscan Apennines he received the stigmata (l’ultimo sigillo, l. 107)—the wounds inflicted on Christ’s body by the nails hammered into his hands and feet on the cross.

E poi che, per la sete del martiro,ne la presenza del Soldan superba

102predicò Cristo e li altri che ’l seguiro,

e per trovare a conversione acerbatroppo la gente e per non stare indarno,

105redissi al frutto de l’italica erba,

nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arnoda Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo,

108che le sue membra due anni portarno.

And when, thirsting for martyrdom,

in the proud presence of the Sultan,

102he preached Christ and the others who followed him,

and finding the people too unripe for conversion,

and in order not to stay there pointlessly,

105he returned to fruitful Italian soil,

on the bare rock between the Tiber and the Arno,

he received the final seal from Christ,

108which his limbs bore for two years.

On his death, when God chose to call him to heaven, he commended Lady Poverty to his brothers. He died in the tiny church of the Porziuncola near Assisi, having asked to be laid on the bare earth, where he was buried with no coffin.

Quando a colui ch’a tanto ben sortillopiacque di trarlo suso a la mercede

111ch’el meritò nel suo farsi pusillo,

a’ frati suoi, sì com’ a giuste rede,raccomandò la donna sua più cara,

114e comandò che l’amassero a fede;

e del suo grembo l’anima preclaramover si volle, tornando al suo regno,

117e al suo corpo non volle altra bara.

When the one who’d chosen him for so much good

was pleased to take him up to the reward

111that he had earned for his humility,

he commended his dearest lady

to his brothers, as to his rightful heirs,

114and he ordered them to love her faithfully;

and from the lap of poverty that bright soul

chose to depart, returning to its kingdom,

117and he wanted no other bier for his body.

Aquinas concludes that Dominic was a worthy companion to Francis, but that the Dominican order (his own order) has gone badly astray. In the next canto, where a Franciscan celebrates Dominic, he will make a similar complaint about his order and its corruption. A pair of parallel cantos celebrate the exemplary lives of two outstanding men, and deplore the current woeful degeneration of the legacy they left behind.

More souls arrive and form a second circle around the first, matching their movement and song, like concentric rainbows. Dante’s attention is drawn to a voice that speaks from this second circle. The voice, not yet identified, says he will talk of Dominic.

He starts with Dominic’s birthplace, Calaroga in western Spain, in the kingdom of Castile and León, not far from the Atlantic coasthne. There is a notable freshness in the description of the geographical setting: the mild western wind heralding the arrival of spring, the waves pounding on the Atlantic coast, the sun setting in the west behind them.

In quella parte ove surge ad aprireZefiro dolce le novelle fronde

48di che si vede Europa rivestire

non molto lungi al percuoter de l’ondedietro a le quali, per la lunga foga,

51lo sol talvolta ad ogne uom si nasconde,

siede la fortunata Calarogasotto la protezion del grande scudo

54in che soggiace il leone e soggioga:

In that region where gentle Zephyr

rises to open the fresh new leaves

48with which Europe sees herself reclothed,

not very far from the pounding of the waves

behind which, in its long course,

51the sun sometimes disappears from view,

lies fortunate Calaroga

under the protection of the great shield on which

54one lion is below and one above:

In its arms the kingdom of Castile and León quartered the lions of León and the towers of Castile: on one side the lion is below the tower, on the other it is above.

He continues with an account of Dominic’s birth, his pregnant mother’s prophetic dream, and the choosing of his name. At the baptismal font, his godmother foresaw the great future that lay in store for him, and an inspiration from heaven caused her to give him a name (Dominic) that reflected his belonging to the Lord (dominus). His pregnant mother had dreamed of a dog with a torch in its mouth that set the world afire. This was a prophecy of (and pun on) both her child’s name (domini canis: “the Lord’s dog”) and the Dominican order, the Dominicani. As Francis took Poverty as his bride, Dominic took Faith.

Fig. 6 coat of arms of the kingdom of Castile and León

dentro vi nacque l’amoroso drudode la fede cristiana, il santo atleta

57benigno a’ suoi e a’ nemici crudo;

e come fu creata, fu repletesì la sua mente di viva vertute

60che, ne la madre, lei fece profeta.

Poi che le sponsalizie fuor compiuteal sacro fonte intra lui e la Fede,

63u’ si dotar di mutüa salute,

la donna che per lui l’assenso diede,vide nel sonno il mirabile frutto

66ch’uscir dovea di lui e de le rede;

e perché fosse qual era in costrutto,quinci si mosse spirito a nomarlo

69del possessivo di cui era tutto.

therein was born the ardent lover

of the Christian faith, the holy athlete,

57kind to his own and harsh to his enemies;

and his mind as it was created was so full

of living power that, while in his mother’s womb,

60it made a prophet of her.

Once the nuptials between him and Faith

were celebrated at the sacred font,

63where each gave the other salvation as a dowry,

the lady who acted as his godmother,

saw in a dream the wondrous fruit

66that was to come forth from him and from his heirs;

and so that he might be in name what he was in fact,

an inspiration went from here to name him

69for the one to whom he belonged entirely.

Domenico fu detto; e io ne parlosì come de l’agricola che Cristo

72elesse a l’orto suo per aiutarlo.

He was called Dominic; and I speak of him

as the labourer Christ chose

72to help him in his garden.

His role was to be the keeper of Christ’s garden, the church. The horticultural imagery—fruit, garden, vineyard, thickets, seed, irrigation, spring water, saplings—dominates the account of his life and work.

Spurning studies directed to material success in the professions, he loved heavenly wisdom, the “true manna.” Taddeo Alderotto was a Florentine physician who taught medicine at Bologna; Ostiense was a famous canon lawyer (l. 83). Both were authors of texts studied in universities; they stand here for study undertaken solely for status and financial gain.

Non per lo mondo, per cui mo s’affannadi retro ad Ostïense e a Taddeo,

84ma per amor de la verace manna

in picciol tempo gran dottor si feo;tal che si mise a circüir la vigna

87che tosto imbianca, se ’l vignaio è reo.

Not for worldly gain, for which people now strive,

studying medicine and canon law,

84but for love of the true manna,

in a short time he became a great teacher;

such that he set to tending the vineyard,

87which quickly withers, if the keeper’s wicked.

He requested Papal permission to fight heresy in defence of the faith, having no interest in preferment within the church, nor in enriching himself through dishonest managing of church revenues, nor in holding on to the tithes that rightfully belong to the poor. The sedia (“See”) of l. 88 is the Papal court.

E a la sedia che fu già benignapiù a’ poveri giusti, non per lei,

90ma per colui che siede, che traligna,

And from the See, which once had been more kindly

to the honest poor—through no fault of its own,

90but the fault of him who sits there, who’s degenerate—

non dispensare o due o tre per sei,non la fortuna di prima vacante,

93non decimas, quae sunt pauperum Dei,

addimandò, ma contro al mondo errantelicenza di combatter per lo seme

96del qual ti fascian ventiquattro piante.

he asked not to pay out two or three for six,

nor to be granted the first vacancy,

93nor for the decimas, quae sunt pauperum Dei,*

* the tithes, which belong to God’s poor

but for permission to fight the erring world,

in defence of the seed from which sprang

96the twenty-four plants that encircle you.

He was zealous against heretics, especially in Provence, where heresy flourished. His fruitful influence irrigates the catholic garden.

Poi, con dottrina e con volere insieme,con l’officio appostolico si mosse

99quasi torrente ch’alta vena preme;

e ne li sterpi eretici percossel’impeto suo, più vivamente quivi

102dove le resistenze eran più grosse.

Di lui si fecer poi diversi rivionde l’orto catolico si riga,

105sì che i suoi arbuscelli stan più vivi.

Then, with his learning together with his zeal,

he went forth with his mandate from the pope,

99like a torrent that gushes up from a deep spring;

and he directed his force against

the thickets of heresy, most actively

102where the resistance was strongest.

From him there then flowed different streams

by which the catholic garden is watered,

105so that its saplings grow more vigorously.

The speaker now talks of the current degeneracy of his own order, the Franciscans, who have split into two opposing groups, riven by faction. These, though not named, are the Spirituals and the Conventuals, the first group favouring a strict interpretation of Francis’s injunction to poverty, the second concentrating on accruing power and influence in ecclesiastical circles.

At the end of this long account, the speaker names himself. He is Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, an eminent Franciscan who became general of the Franciscan order in 1257 and was canonised in 1482.

Io son la vita di Bonaventurada Bagnoregio, che ne’ grandi office

129sempre pospuosi la sinistra cura.

I am the living soul of Bonaventure

of Bagnoregio, who in the great offices

129always put worldly matters last.

Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum (The Mind’s Journey to God) analyses the seven steps or stages towards mystical enlightenment. The title is sometimes used as a shorthand way of describing the subject of Dante’s poem, but a text less like the Commedia it would be difficult to imagine. There is no direct textual evidence that Dante knew it, though he may have. Bonaventure names other members of the second circle, including Peter of Spain, author of a seminal work on logic, the Summule logicales, which Dante certainly knew and which he refers to here as the dodici libelli (“the twelve little books”). Peter of Spain was briefly pope until the ceiling of the papal palace in Viterbo fell in and killed him in 1277.

Last in the circle, alongside Bonaventure himself, is Joachim of Flora, a twelfth-century preacher and prophet from Calabria in southern Italy, who was understood to have prophesied the foundation of the mendicant orders. His prophetic announcement of a renewal of the church guided by new spiritual leaders chimes with Dante’s portrayal of Frances and Dominic as a direct intervention by providence in the history of time. It is striking that, just as he had done with Siger, Dante places Joachim alongside Bonaventure, someone who in life had opposed him fiercely.

The parallel eulogies of Aquinas and Bonaventure are an eloquent example of harmony in the church, uninfluenced by partisan rivalries and conflict. Both were at the peak of their activity in the early and middle thirteenth century, and were still alive and active when Dante was born in 1265. Bonaventure, like Aquinas, died in 1274.

The two garlands of souls in their doppia danza (“double dance”) are likened to an imaginary new constellation composed of the brightest stars in the sky, circling around Dante and Beatrice. The souls sing the praise of the Trinity.

Lì si cantò non Bacco, non Peana,ma tre persone in divina natura,

27e in una persona essa e l’ umana.

There they sang not Bacchus, not Apollo,

but three persons in the divine nature,

27and in one person the human and the divine.

When they have finished, they turn their attention back to Dante and Beatrice.

Aquinas had noticed that Dante was amazed when he said that Solomon’s wisdom had no equal. How can Solomon’s wisdom be greater than that of Adam and Christ, who had no equal in terms of the perfection of human nature, created as they were directly by God? There is no contradiction here, Aquinas assures him.

Or apri li occhi a quel ch’io ti rispondo,e vedräi il tuo credere e ’l mio dire

51nel vero farsi come centro in tondo.

Now open your eyes to the answer that I give you

and you’ll see that what you believe and what I say

51coincide in the truth like the centre of a circle.

His explanation starts with an account of the creation of the universe. Creation is seen as an irradiation of divine light descending through the heavens down to the lowest creatures. The account is both Neoplatonic and strongly trinitarian. The “Idea” of l. 53 is the Son; the “Light” of l. 55 is the Father, the “Love” of l. 57 is the Holy Spirit; the “nine subsistences” of l. 59 are the angelic orders, which are created by the Trinity. The first line—“the things that die and those that cannot die,” corruptible and incorruptible things—encompasses the whole of creation. Note the typically Dantean invented verb s’intrea (based on tre, three) for what binds the Trinity in its three-in-oneness. Theological paradoxes are always a spur to Dante’s verbal inventiveness.

Ciò che non more e ciò che può morirenon è se non splendor di quella idea

54che partorisce, amando, il nostro Sire;

The things that die and those that cannot die

are nothing but the radiance of that Idea

54our Lord begets by the very act of loving;

ché quella viva luce che sì meadal suo lucente, che non si disuna

57da lui né da l’amor ch’a lor s’intrea,

per sua bontate il suo raggiare aduna,quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze,

60etternalmente rimanendosi una.

Quindi discende a l’ultime potenzegiù d’atto in atto, tanto divenendo,

63che più non fa che brevi contingenze;

e queste contingenze essere intendole cose generate, che produce

66con seme e sanza seme il ciel movendo.

for that living Light that so streams forth

from its radiant Source, that it does not part from it

57nor from the Love which is en-threed with them,

in its own goodness gathers its own rays,

as though reflected, in nine subsistences,

60itself eternally remaining one.

From there it descends to the lowest elements,

passing down from heaven to heaven, becoming

63such that it makes only fleeting contingencies;

and by these ‘contingencies’ I mean

generated things, which the heavens produce,

66from seed or not from seed, as they turn.

The lowest elements are prime matter. The “fleeting contingencies” are contingent creatures that last only a short time (so the natural world on planet earth, not eternal or imperishable); they are produced by the heavens either from seed (animals and plants) or not from seed (minerals). Both prime matter and the shaping influence of the heavens are variable, and thus we have variety in the natural world even between things of the same species. The image of the wax and seal we have already encountered, which has a long tradition stretching back to Plato, is developed here at greater length.

La cera di costoro e chi la ducenon sta d’un modo; e però sotto ’l segno

69idëale poi più e men traluce.

Ond’ elli avvien ch’un medesimo legnosecondo specie, meglio e peggio frutta;

72e voi nascete con diverso ingegno.

Their wax and that which moulds it vary;

and therefore, beneath the imprint

69of the Idea, the light shines more or less.

And so it happens that trees of the same species

bear better and worse fruit;

72and you are born with differing aptitudes.

Se fosse a punto la cera deduttae fosse il cielo in sua virtù supprema,

75la luce del suggel parrebbe tutta;

ma la natura la dà sempre scema,similemente operando a l’artista

78ch’a l’abito de l’arte ha man che trema.

If the wax were perfectly receptive

and the heaven were at the height of its influence,

75the light of the seal would be revealed in full;

but nature always offers it defective,

working like the artist

78who in the practice of his craft has an unsteady hand.

Dante is right in thinking that there are only two examples of perfection in a living creature: Adam (l. 83) and Christ (l. 84), both of whom were created directly by God.

Così fu fatta già la terra degnadi tutta l’animal perfezïone;

84così fu fatta la Vergine pregna;

sì ch’io commendo tua oppinïone,che l’umana natura mai non fue

87né fia qual fu in quelle due persone.

Thus earth was once made worthy

of all perfection in a living creature;

84thus the Virgin came to be with child;

so I commend your opinion,

that human nature never was,

87nor will be, what it was in those two people.

Aquinas explains that, when talking of Solomon’s wisdom, he was talking only about what Solomon needed to know in order to be a good king. He slips into Latin to suggest the kinds of questions Solomon didn’t need to know the answers to (questions in philosophy or logic or geometry). The wisdom necessary to be a good king doesn’t require academic knowledge. What Solomon had asked God for was practical wisdom: “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people” (1 Kings 3:9).

Non ho parlato sì, che tu non posseben veder ch’el fu re, che chiese senno

96acciò che re sufficïente fosse;

I haven’t spoken in such a way that you can’t

clearly see that he was a king, who asked for wisdom

96so that he might be a worthy king;

non per sapere il numero in che ennoli motor di qua sù, o se necesse

99con contingente mai necesse fenno;

non si est dare primum motum esse,o se del mezzo cerchio far si puote

102trïangol sì ch’un retto non avesse.

Onde, se ciò ch’io dissi e questo note,regal prudenza è quel vedere impari

105in che lo stral di mia intenzion percuote;

e se al ‘surse’ drizzi li occhi chiari,vedrai aver solamente rispetto

108ai regi, che son molti, e ’ buon son rari.

he didn’t ask to know how many angels

there are up here, nor if a necessary premise

99and a contingent one ever produce a necessary conclusion;

nor si est dare primum motum esse,*

nor if in a semicircle one can draw

102a triangle that does not have a right angle.

* if it can be granted that there is a first motion

And so, if you consider this, and what I said,

kingly wisdom is that unequalled seeing

105on which the arrow of my intention strikes;

and if you raise your clear eyes to the word ‘arose,’

you’ll see that it was referring only

108to kings, of whom there are many, but good ones are rare.

Solomon didn’t need to be an intellectual. Aquinas concludes by emphasising the need for making careful distinctions when discussing difficult subjects, and urges people to be slow in making judgments. To rush in overconfidently leaves one worse off than before one started.

Vie più che ’ndarno da riva si parte,perché non torna tal qual e’ si move,

123chi pesca per lo vero e non ha l’arte.

The man who fishes for the truth, without the skill,

casts off from the shore far worse than uselessly,

123for he returns worse off than he set out.

There are many examples from history of people who went astray like this. Don’t be too quick to judge, he concludes, giving concrete examples from daily life of things that turn out differently from what one might have expected.

Non sien le genti, ancor, troppo sicurea giudicar, sì come quei che stima

132le biade in campo pria che sien mature;

ch’i’ ho veduto tutto ’l verno primalo prun mostrarsi rigido e feroce,

135poscia portar la rosa in su la cima;

e legno vidi già dritto e velocecorrer lo mar per tutto suo cammino,

138perire al fine a l’intrar de la foce.

Let people not be too sure

in passing judgment, like someone valuing

132the crops in the field before they are ripe;

for I have seen a briar show itself

harsh and thorny all the winter through,

135later carry a rose upon its summit;

and I once saw a ship sail across the sea

straight and swift for its whole voyage,

138go down at the end as it came into harbour.

He concludes with a final disparaging twist: let “lady” Berta and “mister” Martin not be too sure that they can foresee people’s fates in the afterlife. The names Berta and Martin are commonplace. The titles used with them suggest misplaced self-importance.

Non creda donna Berta e ser Martino,per vedere un furare, altro offerere,

141vederli dentro al consiglio divino;

ché quel può surgere, e quel può cadere».

Let lady Berta and mister Martin not think,

on seeing one man steal, one giving alms,

141that they are seeing them as God judges them;

for the former may rise up, and the latter fall.”

These lines encapsulate a major theme of the Commedia: the unexpected fates in the afterlife of people judged too hastily by the living. We think back to Guido da Montefeltro damned in Inferno 27, and to Manfred saved in Purgatorio 3.

Beatrice intuits that dante still has questions.

«A costui fa mestieri, e nol vi dicené con la voce né pensando ancora,

12d’un altro vero andare a la radice.

“This man still needs—and he’s not telling you,

either in words or even yet thinking it—

12to get to the root of yet another truth.

Will the light with which the souls now shine be with them for eternity? If so, will the eyes of their resurrected bodies be able to see through that enveloping light? The souls are eager to reply.

Come, da più letizia pinti e tratti,a la fïata quei che vanno a rota

21levan la voce e rallegrano li atti,

così, a l’orazion pronta e divota,li santi cerchi mostrar nova gioia

24nel torneare e ne la mira nota.

Just as, urged on and drawn by greater gladness,

from time to time those dancing in a ring

21raise their voices and quicken their steps,

just so, at her eager and devout request,

the holy circles showed new joyousness

24in their wheeling and their wondrous song.

They dance and again sing the Trinity. Solomon himself now speaks to answer Dante’s question, his voice modest. He explains that the radiance of individual souls reflects the soul’s ardour, which in turn reflects its vision, its seeing of God. This is a crucial point, and he makes it twice for emphasis (ls. 40–42, and again ls. 49–51). When reunited with their bodies, they will be even more pleasing to God, because body will be joined to soul. The resurrected body added to their luminousness will be like a glowing coal within a flame.

E io udi’ ne la luce più diadel minor cerchio una voce modesta,

36forse qual fu da l’angelo a Maria,

risponder: «Quanto fia lunga la festadi paradiso, tanto il nostro amore

39si raggerà dintorno cotal vesta.

La sua chiarezza séguita l’ardore;l’ardor la visïone, e quella è tanta,

42quant’ ha di grazia sovra suo valore.

And I heard in the most luminous light

of the smaller circle a modest voice,

36perhaps like that of the angel to Mary,

reply: “As long as the festival

of paradise lasts, so long our love

39will clothe us in this shining radiance.

Its brightness is a consequence of ardour;

ardour reflects vision, and how much it sees

42reflects how much grace it has beyond its merit.

Come la carne glorïosa e santafia rivestita, la nostra persona

45più grata fia per esser tutta quanta;

per che s’accrescerà ciò che ne donadi gratüito lume il sommo bene,

48lume ch’a lui veder ne condiziona;

onde la visïon crescer convene,crescer l’ardor che di quella s’accende,

51crescer lo raggio che da esso vene.

Ma sì come carbon che fiamma rende,e per vivo candor quella soverchia,

54sì che la sua parvenza si difende;

così questo folgór che già ne cerchiafia vinto in apparenza da la carne

57che tutto dì la terra ricoperchia;

né potrà tanta luce affaticarne:ché li organi del corpo saran forti

60a tutto ciò che potrà dilettarne».

When our glorified and holy flesh

clothes us again, our person

45will be more pleasing because it will be complete;

so that the light freely granted us

by the supreme Good will grow,

48light that enables us to see Him;

and so the seeing must increase,

the ardour kindled by the seeing must increase,

51the ray that comes from that ardour must increase.

But like a burning coal that produces a flame,

and outdoes it in its incandescent brightness,

54so that it still remains visible;

just so this radiance which now enfolds us,

will be surpassed in brilliance by the flesh

57that all day long still lies beneath the ground;

nor will so great a light be troublesome:

for our bodily organs will be strong enough

60for all that can cause us joy.”

The souls’ eagerness to endorse Solomon’s words reveals their desire for their dead bodies. In a humanising touch that goes beyond the bounds of strict theology, Dante speculates that perhaps their eagerness reflects the fact that these are the bodies their families and loved ones knew and were fond of in their earthly lives. The emphasis shifts momentarily (and perhaps surprisingly) from the primary significance of resurrected bodies (the greater perfection of soul united with body, compared with soul on its own) to something more relatable and human: the blessed will see the faces of the people they loved. The word mamme (l. 64), rather than the more formal madri, is especially touching, thrown into relief in the rhyme position. It suggests affection, closeness, intimacy, without the childish connotations of English “mums,” “mommies” or “moms.”

Tanto mi parver sùbiti e accortie l’uno e l’altro coro a dicer «Amme!»,

63che ben mostrar disio d’i corpi morti:

forse non pur per lor, ma per le mamme,per li padri e per li altri che fuor cari

66anzi che fosser sempiterne fiamme.

Both of the choirs seemed to me

so quick and eager to say “Amen!”

63that they clearly showed their desire for their dead bodies:

perhaps not just for themselves, but for their mothers,

for their fathers and for the others they held dear

66before they became eternal flaming spirits.

The theme of the body buried in the earth that will one day be resplendent in heaven is movingly celebrated here.

A new, third circle (another trinitarian image) becomes visible around the other two, like faint stars as evening draws on. Momentarily Dante cannot see. But looking at Beatrice, he realises that they have risen up into the next sphere, Mars (then as now known as the red planet), because the light is redder.

Ben m’accors’ io ch’io era più levato,per l’affocato riso de la stella,

87che mi parea più roggio che l’usato.

I realised clearly that I had risen higher,

because of the fiery smiling of the star,

87which seemed to me redder than usual.

In gratitude for his reception in Mars, Dante offers himself entirely to God. That his offer is acknowledged and welcome is reflected by what he now sees: souls in the shape of an enormous Greek cross (“quadrants in a circle,” l. 102), two diameters of one circle intersecting at right angles. On it, for a brief moment, the image of Christ flashes forth.

Come distinta da minori e maggilumi biancheggia tra ’ poli del mondo

99Galassia sì, che fa dubbiar ben saggi;

Just as the Milky Way, made up of stars small and large,

glows white between the earthly poles,

99so that it leaves even wise men wondering;

sì costellati facean nel profondoMarte quei raggi il venerabil segno

102che fan giunture di quadranti in tondo.

Qui vince la memoria mia lo ’ngegno;ché quella croce lampeggiava Cristo,

105sì ch’io non so trovare essempro degno;

ma chi prende sua croce e segue Cristo,ancor mi scuserà di quel ch’io lasso,

108vedendo in quell’ albor balenar Cristo.

thus constellated in the depths of Mars

those rays formed the venerable sign

102that is marked out by quadrants in a circle.

Here my memory outstrips my skill;

because that cross so flamed forth Christ,

105that I can find no fit comparison;

but he who takes his cross and follows Christ,

will yet forgive me what I leave unsaid,

108beholding in that whiteness Christ blaze forth.

The word “Christ,” used in rhyme, rhymes only with itself. No other word is worthy to rhyme with the name of the saviour. (This will happen four times in the Paradiso.) This reverence makes reparation for the younger Dante’s nonchalant use of Christ as a rhyme word in a deeply offensive way in the poetic exchange with Forese Donati (see Purgatorio 23).

Lights move along the arms of the cross like motes in a sunbeam. A melody comes from the cross, but though Dante can pick out single words, he doesn’t understand what the souls are singing.

Di corno in corno e tra la cima e ’l bassosi movien lumi, scintillando forte

111nel congiugnersi insieme e nel trapasso:

così si veggion qui diritte e torte,veloci e tarde, rinovando vista,

114le minuzie d’i corpi, lunghe e corte,

moversi per lo raggio onde si listatalvolta l’ombra che, per sua difesa,

117la gente con ingegno e arte acquista.

E come giga e arpa, in tempra tesadi molte corde, fa dolce tintinno

120a tal da cui la nota non è intesa,

From one arm to the other and from top to base

lights were moving, scintillating brightly

111as they came together and passed one another by:

so here on earth we see, straight and aslant,

swift and slow, their appearance changing,

114miniscule particles, long and short,

moving in a sunbeam that sometimes streaks

the shade that people for their own protection

117devise with ingenuity and skill.

And as a viol and a harp make a sweet concert,

their many strings stretched taut in harmony,

120even to those who can’t pick out the notes,

così da’ lumi che lì m’apparinnos’accogliea per la croce una melode

123che mi rapiva, sanza intender l’inno.

Ben m’ accors’ io ch’ elli era d’ alte lode,però ch’ a me venìa «Resurgi» e «Vinci»

126come a colui che non intende e ode.

Ïo m’innamorava tanto quinci,che ’nfino a lì non fu alcuna cosa

129che mi legasse con sì dolci vinci.

so from the lights that there appeared to me

a melody came from the cross

123that entranced me, though I couldn’t make out the hymn.

I was aware that it was of high praise,

for the words “Arise” and “Conquer” came to me,

126as to one who hears but doesn’t understand.

I was so enraptured by it,

that up to that point nothing had ever

129bound me with such sweet chains.

Dante is so captivated by the melody that momentarily it has eclipsed the thought of Beatrice’s eyes in his mind.

This is the first canto of a group of three, placed at the very centre of the Paradiso, in which the future course of Dante’s life is revealed to him. His destiny is foretold: the pain of exile, his future poetic glory. The relationship between time and eternity takes on an acutely personal dimension. Dante is trying to make sense of his own life and suffering.

The souls stop singing so that Dante may speak. What looks like a shooting star (a “star that changes place,” l. 16) proves to be a soul who has come down to greet him.

Quale per li seren tranquilli e puridiscorre ad ora ad or sùbito foco,

15movendo li occhi che stavan sicuri,

e pare stella che tramuti loco,se non che da la parte ond’ e’ s’accende

18nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco:

As through a cloudless, calm, pure evening sky

from time to time a sudden fire will dart,

15causing eyes that were still to follow it,

and it seems to be a star that changes place,

except that, from the place where it flared up,

18nothing is missing, and it doesn’t last long:

tale dal corno che ’n destro si stendea piè di quella croce corse un astro

21de la costellazion che lì resplende;

né si partì la gemma dal suo nastro,ma per la lista radïal trascorse

24che parve foco dietro ad alabastro.

so from the arm extending to the right

there sped down to the foot of that cross a star

21from the constellation that shines there;

nor did the jewel leave its ribbon,

but it ran along the strip formed by the rays,

24so that it looked like a flame behind alabaster.

The soul is like Anchises greeting Aeneas in the underworld, as related by Virgil in the Aeneid.

Sì pïa l’ombra d’Anchise si porse,se fede merta nostra maggior musa,

27quando in Eliso del figlio s’accorse.

«O sanguis meus, o superinfusagratïa Deï, sicut tibi cui

30bis unquam celi ianüa reclusa?».

With just such affection the shade of Anchises reached out,

if our greatest muse is to be believed,

27when in Elysium he beheld his son.

“O sanguis meus, o superinfusa

gratïa Deï, sicut tibi cui

30bis unquam celi ianüa reclusa?”

“O blood of mine, o grace of God poured down from above, to whom, as to you, have the gates of heaven ever been opened twice?”

We have seen words and fragments of Latin in the poem before, most recently in the mouth of Aquinas explaining the things Solomon as a king didn’t need to know. This is the only complete Latin tercet in the poem: the use of Latin marks the solemnity of the encounter. The verbatim quotation underlines that Dante is a new Aeneas.

Dante turns to Beatrice, whose smiling eyes make his own eyes feel they touch the utmost depth of beatitude. The newcomer now speaks words Dante cannot comprehend, for they go beyond the limits of mortal understanding. When the soul’s speech becomes intelligible, he thanks God for showing such favour to Dante.

Indi, a udire e a veder giocondo,giunse lo spirto al suo principio cose,

39ch’io non lo ’ntesi, sì parlò profondo;

Then, a joy to hear and a joy to see,

the spirit added to those earlier words, things

39I did not understand, he spoke so deeply;

né per elezïon mi si nascose,ma per necessità, ché ’l suo concetto

42al segno d’i mortal si soprapuose.

E quando l’arco de l’ardente affettofu sì sfogato, che ’l parlar discese

45inver’ lo segno del nostro intelletto,

la prima cosa che per me s’intese,«Benedetto sia tu», fu, «trino e uno,

48che nel mio seme se’ tanto cortese!».

nor did he hide his thoughts from me by choice,

but of necessity, for his meaning

42was far beyond the mark of mortals.

And when the bow of his ardent love

had released itself, so that his speech came down

45towards the level of our understanding,

the first thing I understood was

“May you be blessed, Triune and One,

48who show such favour to my seed.”

Dante, with Beatrice’s consent, asks the soul’s name; the soul reveals that he is Dante’s great-great-grandfather. In words of notable simplicity and directness, full of concrete detail, he evokes the Florence of his time, almost two hundred years earlier, when the city was at peace. Within the circle of the old city walls, the days were marked out by the ringing of the bells striking the hours (“tierce” and “nones” are three and nine o’clock). Citizens dressed decorously: no flashy jewellery, no showy clothes. Fathers were not fearful at having daughters, as they now are because of the large dowries that are expected and the extreme youthfulness at which girls are pledged in marriage.

Fiorenza dentro da la cerchia antica,ond’ ella toglie ancora e terza e nona,

99si stava in pace, sobria e pudica.

Non avea catenella, non corona,non gonne contigiate, non cintura

102che fosse a veder più che la persona.

Non faceva, nascendo, ancor paurala figlia al padre, che ’l tempo e la dote

105non fuggien quinci e quindi la misura.

Florence within the ancient circle of its walls,

from which she still hears tierce and nones ring out,

99was at peace, sober and modest.

There were no gold chains, no tiaras,

no embroidered gowns, no sashes that were

102more striking to look at than the person wearing them.

A daughter, at her birth, did not yet make

her father fearful, for marriage age and dowry

105were not excessive, too low and too high.

Famous citizens were content to live modestly.

Bellincion Berti vid’ io andar cintodi cuoio e d’osso, e venir da lo specchio

114la donna sua sanza ’l viso dipinto;

e vidi quel d’i Nerli e quel del Vecchioesser contenti a la pelle scoperta,

117e le sue donne al fuso e al pennecchio.

I saw Bellincion Berti wearing a belt

of leather and bone, and his wife come from the mirror

114without makeup on her face;

and I saw a Nerli and a del Vecchio

content to wear plain leather,

117and their wives busy with spindle and with yarn.

Women did not have to worry about their husbands travelling abroad on business to France; their roles were the traditional ones of caring for children, weaving and spinning. They had a vital role as custodians of stories about the origins of the city, passed on within the family.

Oh fortunate! ciascuna era certade la sua sepultura, e ancor nulla

120era per Francia nel letto diserta.

L’una vegghiava a studio de la culla,e, consolando, usava l’idïoma

123che prima i padri e le madri trastulla;

l’altra, traendo a la rocca la chioma,favoleggiava con la sua famiglia

126d’i Troiani, di Fiesole e di Roma.

O fortunate women! each of them was sure

where she’d be buried, and none was as yet

120abandoned in her bed because of France.

One was awake watching over the cradle,

and soothing her child she used the baby talk

123that fathers and mothers love to use at first;

another, drawing the thread from the distaff,

told tales with her household servants

126of Trojans, of Fiesole and Rome.

Misbehaviour would have been a cause for wonder then, just as the behaviour of virtuous Roman men and women (Cincinnatus or Cornelia) would be in the Florence of today.

This was what Florence was like when he was born, baptised and given the name Cacciaguida. The Alighieri surname came from his wife’s family.

A così riposato, a così belloviver di cittadini, a così fida

132cittadinanza, a così dolce ostello,

Maria mi diè, chiamata in alte grida;e ne l’antico vostro Batisteo

135insieme fui cristiano e Cacciaguida.

Moronto fu mio frate ed Eliseo;mia donna venne a me di val di Pado,

138e quindi il sopranome tuo si feo.

To such a peaceful, such a fair

citizen life, to so loyal

132a citizen body, to so sweet a dwelling place,

Mary gave me, called on with loud cries;

and in your ancient Baptistery

135I was at once a Christian and Cacciaguida.

Moronto was my brother, and Eliseo;

my wife came from the valley of the Po,

138and from there your surname came.

He followed the emperor Conrad III on the Second Crusade (1147), fighting for the faith in the Holy Land, which by rights belonged to Christians. There he died as a martyr, as the memorable last line of the canto tells us.

Poi seguitai lo ’mperador Currado;ed el mi cinse de la sua milizia,

141tanto per bene ovrar li venni in grado.

Dietro li andai incontro a la nequiziadi quella legge il cui popolo usurpa,

144per colpa d’i pastor, vostra giustizia.

Quivi fu’ io da quella gente turpadisviluppato dal mondo fallace,

147lo cui amor molt’ anime deturpa;

e venni dal martiro a questa pace».

Then I followed the Emperor Conrad;

and he girded me in his knightly order,

141I won his favour so with my good deeds.

I followed him to fight the wickedness

of that creed whose people usurp,

144through the fault of your pastors, what is rightly yours.

There by that wicked people I was

disentangled from this deceiving world,

147the love of which corrupts so many souls;

and I came from martyrdom to this peace.”

The final line recalls the death of Boethius, who likewise went from martyrdom to the peace of heaven. The simple facts of Cacciaguida’s life—probably all that Dante knew of his ancestor—are recounted against the backdrop of the Florence of old, a model of civic and domestic virtues, when luxury, ambition and corruption had not blighted the city.

After a brief excursus on pride in ancestry, and his own susceptibility to it, Dante has four questions for his great-great-grandfather: Who were your ancestors? When did you live? How big was Florence then? Who were her most worthy citizens? The “sheepfold of Saint John” is Florence, whose patron saint was John the Baptist.

Ditemi dunque, cara mia primizia,quai fuor li vostri antichi e quai fuor li anni

24che si segnaro in vostra püerizia;

ditemi de l’ovil di San Giovanniquanto era allora, e chi eran le genti

27tra esso degne di più alti scanni».

Tell me then, first of my dear stock,

who were your ancestors and which were the years

24recorded in your childhood;

tell me about the sheepfold of Saint John,

how many lived there then, and who were the people

27worthy of its highest offices.

Cacciaguida, like a coal quickened into flame by a puff of wind, answers eagerly, not con questa moderna favella (“with this modern speech”), but in the vernacular of his time. The number of citizens was much smaller, but they were of pure stock. Immigration from the countryside, of people interested only in making money, is the cause of all the city’s present ills. A statue of Mars stood by the river at the Ponte Vecchio. The heart of the early medieval city lay between the river and the baptistery.

Tutti color ch’a quel tempo eran ivida poter arme tra Marte e ’l Batista,

48eran il quinto di quei ch’or son vivi.

Ma la cittadinanza, ch’è or mistadi Campi, di Certaldo e di Fegghine,

51pura vediesi ne l’ultimo artista.

All those who lived there then,

fit to bear arms, between Mars and the Baptist,

48numbered a fifth of those who live there now.

But the citizenry, which now is mixed

with those from Campi, Certaldo and Figline,

51was pure, down to the humblest artisan.

The responsibility for this malign influx is the Roman curia, which, by failing to support the empire, deprived the nobles in the countryside of protection.

Fig. 7 the two new sets of city walls constructed in the thirteenth century (1258 and 1284–1333) show the massive expansion in the size of Florence. The medieval walls of c. 1087 enclosed an area only slightly bigger than the original roman walls.

Now Cacciaguida turns to Dante’s fourth question: Who were the most worthy families in the city? The decline of once-great Florentine families should not surprise him. As tides ebb and flow, so does the fate of the city.

Le vostre cose tutte hanno lor morte,sì come voi; ma celasi in alcuna

81che dura molto, e le vite son corte.

E come ’l volger del ciel de la lunacuopre e discuopre i liti sanza posa,

84così fa di Fiorenza la Fortuna:

per che non dee parer mirabil cosaciò ch’io dirò de li alti Fiorentini

87onde è la fama nel tempo nascosa.

Your things all have their deaths,

just as you do; but in some of them that’s hidden,

81for they last a long time, and lives are short.

And as the turning of the lunar sphere

tirelessly covers and uncovers the seashores,

84so Fortune does with Florence:

so that you should not be surprised

by what I shall tell you of noble Florentines

87whose fame has faded with the passing of time.

There follows a roll call of honour: a long list of Florentine families, more than twenty of them, their surnames mostly ending in -i, as they still do today. These are the great families of Florence’s past: some were on the rise, some at the height of their influence, some already in decline. Again we see, as we did in Purgatorio 14, the evocative power of a list of names.

Io vidi li Ughi e vidi i Catellini,Filippi, Greci, Ormanni e Alberichi,

90già nel calare, illustri cittadini.

I saw the Ughi and I saw the Catellini,

the Filippi, Greci, Ormanni and Alberichi,

90illustrious citizens, already in decline.

The use of the word curule (the magistrates’ chairs in ancient Rome, l. 108) emphasises the continuity between Florence and Rome.

Lo ceppo di che nacquero i Calfucciera già grande, e già eran tratti

108a le curule Sizii e Arrigucci.

The stock from which the Calfucci were born

was already great, and the Sizii and Arrigucci

108were already called to the seats of power.

Families whose ancestors performed great deeds have descendants who think only of battening on church funds.

Così facieno i padri di coloroche, sempre che la vostra chiesa vaca,

114si fanno grassi stando a consistoro.

Such were the fathers of those who,

whenever there’s a vacant office in the church,

114grow fat, serving on the consistory board.

The list of names continues, a plangent litany of once-great families: Adimari, Caponsacchi, Guidi, Infangati, Gualterotti, Importuni. There is a final rueful reference to the pivotal moment in Florence’s history that initiated the feuds of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, having spurned his betrothed (an Amidei) for a Donati lady, rode into the city on Easter Sunday 1216, and was killed by his ex-fiancé’s outraged relatives, who left his body at the foot of the statue of Mars by the river. That was when it all went wrong. There has never been peace in the city since then.

In Cacciaguida’s time Florence was at peace. Her lily standard was not inverted on its lance in defeat, nor was it changed in colour. It was the custom for victors to take the enemy standard, turn it upside down and drag it through the muddy field of battle. The Ghibellines had done just this after the Battle of Montaperti. The Guelphs, after their victory over the Ghibellines in 1251, changed the colours of the flag from a white lily on a red background to red on white, the version that endures to this day.

Con queste genti, e con altre con esse,vid’ io Fiorenza in sì fatto riposo,

150che non avea cagione onde piangesse.

Con queste genti vid’io glorïosoe giusto il popol suo, tanto che ’l giglio

153non era ad asta mai posto a ritroso,

né per divisïon fatto vermiglio».

With these families, and with others with them,

I saw Florence in such a state of peace,

150that she had no cause to weep.

With these families I saw her people

so glorious and just, that the lily

153was never inverted on its lance,

nor because of factional conflict turned blood red.”

The final word of the canto, vermiglio, is the colour of the blood that symbolises the discord and self-destructiveness of the war-torn city.

This is the central canto of the paradiso. dante asks Cacciaguida to explain what lies in store for him. In the course of his journey, bad things have been predicted. He would like to be forewarned. Cacciaguida’s answer will reveal to him the meaning of his life and of his poetry.

mentre ch’io era a Virgilio congiuntosu per lo monte che l’anime cura

21e discendendo nel mondo defunto,

dette mi fuor di mia vita futuraparole gravi, avvegna ch’io mi senta

24ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura;

per che la voglia mia saria contentad’intender qual fortuna mi s’appressa:

27ché saetta previsa vien più lenta».

while I was still in Virgil’s company

climbing the mountain that restores our souls,

21and going down into the dead world,

grave words were said about my future life,

although I feel myself

24set foursquare against the blows of fortune;

and so my desire would be content

to hear what fate draws near to me:

27for an arrow that’s foreseen arrives more slowly.”

Cacciaguida gives him a clear answer, not a riddle or an enigma of the kind pagans use.

Né per ambage, in che la gente follegià s’inviscava pria che fosse anciso

33l’Agnel di Dio che le peccata tolle,

ma per chiare parole e con precisolatin rispuose quello amor paterno,

36chiuso e parvente del suo proprio riso:

Not in riddling words, in which foolish people

were once ensnared, before the Lamb of God

33was killed, who takes away our sins,

but in plain words and with clear

language that paternal love replied,

36concealed and yet revealed in his own smile:

He explains that, although he sees the future in the mind of God, foreknowledge does not imply necessity. This is not a limitation on human freedom of the will. In the mind of God, he can see what lies ahead for Dante.

«La contingenza, che fuor del quadernode la vostra matera non si stende,

39tutta è dipinta nel cospetto etterno;

necessità però quindi non prendese non come dal viso in che si specchia

42nave che per torrente giù discende.

Da indi, sì come viene ad orecchiadolce armonia da organo, mi viene

45a vista il tempo che ti s’apparecchia.

“Contingent things, which do not extend

beyond the domain of your material world,

39are all depicted in the eternal gaze;

but this does not imply necessity,

any more than a ship that floats downstream

42is moved by the eyes in which it is reflected.

From there, just as sweet harmony

comes to the ears from voices singing, I see

45what lies in store for you in times to come.

Dante will have to leave Florence. This is already being plotted by Pope Boniface, who in the Roman curia is pondering the city’s fate. A devastating line describes Rome, and more particularly the Papal See, as the place là dove Cristo tutto dì si merca (“where all day long Christ is bought and sold”). The offended party will be blamed, inevitably, but God’s vengeance will make his judgment clear.

Qual si partio Ipolito d’Ateneper la spietata e perfida noverca,

48tal di Fiorenza partir ti convene.

Questo si vuole e questo già si cerca,e tosto verrà fatto a chi ciò pensa

51là dove Cristo tutto dì si merca.

La colpa seguirà la parte offensain grido, come suol; ma la vendetta

54fia testimonio al ver che la dispensa.

Just as Hippolytus left Athens

because of his pitiless and treacherous stepmother,

48so you will have to flee from Florence.

This is willed and this is already plotted,

and soon it will be done by the one who plans it,

51where all day long Christ is bought and sold.

People will blame the injured party

in their talk, as they always do; but vengeance

54will bear witness to the truth that metes it out.

Dante will leave behind what he loves most, and he will know the pain of begging. Hardest of all to bear will be the company of his fellow-exiles. He will become a party on his own.

Tu lascerai ogne cosa dilettapiù caramente; e questo è quello strale

57che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta.

Tu proverai sì come sa di salelo pane altrui, e come è duro calle

60lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale.

E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia

63con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle;

che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empiasi farà contr’ a te; ma, poco appresso,

66ella, non tu, n’avrà rossa la tempia.

Di sua bestialitate il suo processofarà la prova; sì ch’a te fia bello

69averti fatta parte per te stesso.

You will leave behind every thing you love

most dearly; and this is the first arrow

57the bow of exile shoots forth.

You will experience how salty is the taste

of another man’s bread, and how hard a road it is

60to go up and down another man’s stairs.

And what will weigh most heavily on your shoulders

will be the wicked, witless company

63you keep when you fall down into this valley;

all ungrateful, all mad and vicious,

they’ll turn against you; but, before too long,

66their cheeks, not yours, will blush with shame.

The outcome will be proof of their brutishness;

so that it will be a cause of honour for you

69to have made a party of yourself alone.

(Florentine bread is made without salt, as it happens, but this is neither here nor there.)

Cacciaguida then talks of Dante’s life in exile. Abandoning the Whites who have been expelled from the city, he will be welcomed to Verona by “the great Lombard,” Bartolommeo della Scala, whose family crest was an eagle on a ladder.

Lo primo tuo refugio e ’l primo ostellosarà la cortesia del gran Lombardo

72che ’n su la scala porta il santo uccello;

ch’in te avrà sì benigno riguardo,che del fare e del chieder, tra voi due,

75fia primo quel che tra li altri è più tardo.

Your first refuge and first shelter

will be the liberality of the great Lombard,

72who bears the sacred eagle on a ladder;

he will hold you in such kind regard

that between you two, unlike with other people,

75his doing will precede your asking.

There is a veiled prophecy about Cangrande della Scala (Bartolommeo’s younger brother), now only nine years old, but destined to become a great figure in the political life of northern Italy (as well as in Dante’s own life, as his host in Verona). Cacciaguida concludes that Dante should not envy his fellow townsmen, since his poem guarantees a future life for him with posterity.

Poi giunse: «Figlio, queste son le chiosedi quel che ti fu detto; ecco le ’nsidie

96che dietro a pochi giri son nascose.

Non vo’ però ch’a’ tuoi vicini invidie,poscia che s’infutura la tua vita

99vie più là che ’l punir di lor perfidie».

Then he added: “Son, these are the glosses

on what you have been told; these are the snares

96hidden beyond a few revolving years.

But I don’t want you to envy your fellow townsmen,

since your life stretches into the future

99far beyond the punishment of their treacheries.”

When Cacciaguida falls silent, Dante voices a concern. He has seen much in the otherworld that will displease many people. Should he report these things or remain silent?

Giù per lo mondo sanza fine amaro,e per lo monte del cui bel cacume

114li occhi de la mia donna mi levaro,

e poscia per lo ciel, di lume in lume,ho io appreso quel che s’io ridico,

117a molti fia sapor di forte agrume;

e s’io al vero son timido amico,temo di perder viver tra coloro

120che questo tempo chiameranno antico».

Down through the world that is bitter without end,

and up round the mountain from whose lovely summit

114the eyes of my lady raised me,

and then up through the heavens, from light to light,

I have learned things that, if I repeat them,

117will have for many a very bitter taste;

and yet if I’m a timid friend to truth,

I fear my name will not live on among

120those who will call this time the distant past.”

Cacciaguida replies with notable colloquial vigour—one of the striking instances in the Paradiso of “low” language: tell the truth; let people scratch where the itch is.

Ma nondimen, rimossa ogne menzogna,tutta tua visïon fa manifesta;

129e lascia pur grattar dov’ è la rogna.

Ché se la voce tua sarà molestanel primo gusto, vital nodrimento

132lascerà poi, quando sarà digesta.

Questo tuo grido farà come vento,che le più alte cime più percuote;

135e ciò non fa d’onor poco argomento.

But nonetheless, putting aside all lies,

reveal all you have seen;

129and let them scratch where the itch is.

For if your voice is bitter at first taste,

it will leave vital nourishment

132later, when it’s digested.

This cry of yours will be like the wind

that strikes most fiercely on the highest peaks;

135and that is no small cause for honour.

He concludes that it is important to write about famous people, since readers are more likely to pay attention.

Cacciaguida points out renowned warrior spirits, including Joshua, Charlemagne and Roland, whose souls move along the arms of the Greek cross when they are named. Dante turns and sees that Beatrice is brighter than ever.

Io mi rivolsi dal mio destro latoper vedere in Beatrice il mio dovere,

54o per parlare o per atto, segnato;

e vidi le sue luci tanto mere,tanto gioconde, che la sua sembianza

57vinceva li altri e l’ultimo solere.

I turned to my right side

to see in Beatrice what I must do,

54signalled by word or gesture;

and I saw her eyes so shining,

so joyful, that her appearance

57was more beautiful than it had ever been.

He becomes aware that he is circling in a wider arc. He is in a new circle, the sixth. The red of Mars is replaced by the silvery white of Jupiter, like a blush draining from a pale face.

E qual è ’l trasmutare in picciol varcodi tempo in bianca donna, quando ’l volto

66suo si discarchi di vergogna il carco,

tal fu ne li occhi miei, quando fui vòlto,per lo candor de la temprata stella

69sesta, che dentro a sé m’avea ricolto.

And just like the change in colour that occurs

in a fair-complexioned woman in a moment,

66when her face is freed of the burden of shame,

so it was to my eyes, when I turned round,

because of the white radiance of the temperate star,

69the sixth, that had gathered me within itself.

The souls in Jupiter spell out five words. Like waterbirds rising from the banks of a river, they sing as they fly, first forming themselves into three letters.

Io vidi in quella giovïal facellalo sfavillar de l’amor che lì era

72segnare a li occhi miei nostra favella.

E come augelli surti di rivera,quasi congratulando a lor pasture,

75fanno di sé or tonda or altra schiera,

sì dentro ai lumi sante creaturevolitando cantavano, e faciensi

78or D, or I, or L in sue figure.

I saw in that bright torch of Jupiter

the sparkling of the love that was there in it

72trace out our human language for my eyes.

And like birds that rise up from the river banks,

almost rejoicing at their feeding,

75and flock in a circle or another shape,

just so within their lights the holy creatures

sang as they flew, and formed themselves

78into the shape of a D, then an I, then an L.

The souls fall silent, then go on to form more letters that spell out a sentence.

Mostrarsi dunque in cinque volte settevocali e consonanti; e io notai

90le parti sì, come mi parver dette.

Then they displayed themselves in five times seven

vowels and consonants; and I took note

90of the letters, as they seemed spelled out to me.

‘DILIGITE IUSTITIAM’, primaifur verbo e nome di tutto ’l dipinto;

93‘QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM’, fur sezzai.

“DILIGITE IUSTITIAM”* were the first verb and noun

of the whole phrase depicted there;

93“QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM”** were the last.

* “Love justice”

** “you who judge the earth”

These are the opening words of the biblical Wisdom of Solomon: “Love justice, you rulers of the earth.” Jupiter is the sphere of justice. Dante will confront here head on a question that had always troubled him: How can it be just to damn virtuous pagans who have never heard of Christ?

The souls come to rest in the shape of the final letter, M. Other souls fly down and settle on its highest point, changing it briefly into a heraldic lily. Then more than a thousand lights fly upwards and settle on it in the shape of an eagle, symbol of the empire, the political order preordained by God.

Poscia ne l’emme del vocabol quintorimasero ordinate; sì che Giove

96pareva argento lì d’oro distinto.

E vidi scendere altre luci doveera il colmo de l’emme, e lì quetarsi

99cantando, credo, il ben ch’a sé le move.

Poi, come nel percuoter d’i ciocchi arsisurgono innumerabili faville,

102onde li stolti sogliono agurarsi,

resurger parver quindi più di milleluci e salir, qual assai e qual poco,

105sì come ’l sol che l’accende sortille;

e quïetata ciascuna in suo loco,la testa e ’l collo d’un’aguglia vidi

108rappresentare a quel distinto foco.

Then they settled on the letter M

of the fifth word; so that Jupiter

96seemed silver picked out there with gold.

And I saw other lights come down to where

the high point of the M was, and rest there

99singing, I think, the Good that draws them to itself.

Then, as when burning logs are struck,

myriads of sparks fly up,

102from which fools practise reading auguries,

more than a thousand lights flew up from there,

and rose, some high, some less so,

105as the sun that warms them decreed;

and when each one was settled in its place,

I saw the head and neck of an eagle

108represented, all picked out in fire.

Fig. 8 three stages in the transformation of the M into an eagle

It is clear to Dante that earthly justice depends on the influence of this sphere of Jupiter. The eagle standard is the emblem of the Roman Empire in historical time; this heavenly eagle is the emblem of divine justice in eternity. The relationship between justice in our historical world and celestial justice in the world beyond history is at the heart of these cantos.

Dante calls on God, source of the justice that Jupiter rays down to earth, to punish papal corruption. The church once made war with swords, but now it uses other weapons (excommunication, withholding the Eucharist). Momentarily leaving the time zone of the poem, Dante directly addresses the current pope, John XXII (the “you” of l. 130), who writes “only to nullify.” Issuing excommunications and then charging a fee to rescind them was a source of income for the church. With fierce sarcasm Dante imagines the pope replying that his devotion is, indeed, not to Peter and Paul, who gave their lives as martyrs, but to John the Baptist (“him who chose to live alone,” l. 134), whose image was on the florin—the implication being that his devotion to the florin is a legitimate form of devotion to a saint. The mention of Peter and Paul in the final line, in words attributed to the pope, is dismissive, even contemptuous. The tone is as shocking as the casual disavowal of the two pillars on whom the church is founded. The church, founded on the blood of martyrs, has become a marketplace.

O milizia del ciel cu’ io contemplo,adora per color che sono in terra

126tutti svïati dietro al malo essemplo!

Già si solea con le spade far guerra;ma or si fa togliendo or qui or quivi

129lo pan che ’l pïo Padre a nessun serra.

Ma tu che sol per cancellare scrivi,pensa che Pietro e Paulo, che moriro

132per la vigna che guasti, ancor son vivi.

Ben puoi tu dire: «I’ ho fermo ’l disirosì a colui che volle viver solo

135e che per salti fu tratto al martiro,

ch’io non conosco il pescator né Polo».

O heavenly militia whom I contemplate,

pray for those who are on earth,

126all led astray by bad example!

Once war was made with swords;

but now it’s done by withholding, now here, now there,

129the bread that the holy Father denies to no one.

But you who write only to nullify,

think that Peter and Paul, who died

132for the vineyard you lay waste, still live.

You may well say: “My desires are so firmly fixed

on him who chose to live alone,

135and who was brought to martyrdom by a dance,

that I do not know the fisherman or Paul.”

The eagle speaks, its wings spread wide, the souls which form it shining like rubies. The souls are individuals, yet they speak through the eagle’s beak with a single voice.

E quel che mi convien ritrar testeso,non portò voce mai, né scrisse incostro,

9né fu per fantasia già mai compreso;

And what I must now describe

no voice ever told, nor ink wrote,

9nor did any imagination ever conceive it;

ch’io vidi e anche udi’ parlar lo rostro,e sonar ne la voce e «io» e «mio»,

12quand’ era nel concetto e ‘noi’ e ‘nostro’.

for I saw the beak, and I also heard it speak,

and sound out with its voice both “I” and “my,”

12when in my thinking it was we and our.

Though exalted in heaven for being just and merciful, on earth the eagle’s example of virtue is not followed.

E cominciò: «Per esser giusto e pioson io qui essaltato a quella gloria

15che non si lascia vincere a disio;

e in terra lasciai la mia memoriasì fatta, che le genti lì malvage

18commendan lei, ma non seguon la storia».

Così un sol calor di molte bragesi fa sentir, come di molti amori

21usciva solo un suon di quella image.

And it began: “For being just and merciful

I am here exalted to that glory

15that no desire could ever go beyond;

and on earth I left behind a memory

so fashioned that even wicked people there

18commend it, but they don’t follow its example.”

Just as many burning embers are felt

as a single source of heat, so from many loving souls

21there came forth from that image just one sound.

Dante voices the doubt he has long had: Are virtuous pagans who live in ignorance of Christ damned? If so, can this possibly be just? The eagle preens like a falcon.

Quasi falcone ch’esce del cappello,move la testa e con l’ali si plaude,

36voglia mostrando e faccendosi bello,

vid’ io farsi quel segno, che di laudede la divina grazia era contesto,

39con canti quai si sa chi là sù gaude.

Like a falcon that emerges from its hood

and moves its head and flaps its wings with pleasure,

36showing its eagerness, and preening,

just so I saw that emblem do, woven

of praise of divine grace,

39with songs known to those who rejoice up there.

The answer to Dante’s question about virtuous pagans comes from two different perspectives, the theological and the historical. First, the eagle reminds Dante of the limitations of human understanding. God’s wisdom exceeds that of his creations. If even Lucifer, the highest of the angels, failed to understand that, how can you, a human being, expect to?

Però ne la giustizia sempiternala vista che riceve il vostro mondo,

60com’ occhio per lo mare, entro s’interna;

che, ben che da la proda veggia il fondo,in pelago nol vede; e nondimeno

63èli, ma cela lui l’esser profondo.

And so the seeing granted to your world

penetrates into eternal justice

60only as deep as the eye does into the sea;

for, although it sees the bottom from the shore,

on the open sea it cannot see it; and yet

63it’s there, hidden from view by its depth.

The eagle now recapitulates Dante’s question. What justice is there in condemning a virtuous Indian who has never heard of Christ?

ché tu dicevi: “Un uom nasce a la rivade l’Indo, e quivi non è chi ragioni

72di Cristo né chi legga né chi scriva;

e tutti suoi voleri e atti buonisono, quanto ragione umana vede,

75sanza peccato in vita o in sermoni.

Muore non battezzato e sanza fede:ov’ è questa giustizia che ’l condanna?

78ov’ è la colpa sua, se ei non crede?”.

for you would say: ‘A man is born on the bank

of the Indus, and there’s no one there who talks

72of Christ or reads or writes about him;

and all his desires and his actions are good,

as far as human reason can see,

75without sin in his life or in his words.

He dies unbaptised and an unbeliever:

where is the justice in condemning him?

78where is his fault, if he does not believe?’

The eagle’s response: Who are you to question God’s justice? If men didn’t have the scriptures to guide them, there might be room for doubt. The coarse minds of men do not understand God’s goodness.

Or tu chi se’, che vuo’ sedere a scranna,per giudicar di lungi mille miglia

81con la veduta corta d’una spanna?

Now who are you, who wish to sit in judgment,

to act as judge from a thousand miles away

81with sight as short as the width of your own hand?

Certo a colui che meco s’assottiglia,se la Scrittura sovra voi non fosse,

84da dubitar sarebbe a maraviglia.

Oh terreni animali! oh menti grosse!La prima volontà, ch’è da sé buona,

87da sé, ch’è sommo ben, mai non si mosse.

Cotanto è giusto quanto a lei consuona:nullo creato bene a sé la tira,

90ma essa, radïando, lui cagiona».

To be sure, someone keen to argue fine points with me,

if the Scriptures were not set over you,

84would have good reason to doubt.

Oh earthbound creatures! oh coarse minds!

The primal Will, which in itself is good,

87has never moved from itself, the supreme Good.

Only what accords with it is just:

no created good draws it to itself,

90but, sending forth its rays, it creates that good.”

Dante looks up at the eagle as a chick does at its mother stork when it has been fed. As the stork circles over the nest, so the eagle does over Dante. The eagle in flight sings and summarises the argument.

Quale sovresso il nido si rigirapoi c’ha pasciuti la cicogna i figh,

93e come quel ch’è pasto la rimira;

cotal si fece, e sì leväi i cigh,la benedetta imagine, che l’ali

96movea sospinte da tanti consigh.

Roteando cantava, e dicea: «Qualison le mie note a te, che non le ’ntendi,

99tal è il giudicio etterno a voi mortali».

As a stork circles over her nest,

when she has fed her chicks,

93and as the chick that’s been fed looks up at her,

so the blessed image circled,

and I looked up, as it moved its wings

96borne up by so many wills.

Wheeling it sang, and it said: “As

my words are to you, who do not understand them,

99so is eternal judgment to you mortals.”

The souls fall silent, then start up again, reiterating the need for believing in Christ. The canto closes with a long list of contemporary Christian rulers, guilty of pride, lust and avarice, who govern without justice. The initial letters of nine consecutive tercets, in groups of three, spell out the letters LVE, Latin lues, meaning plague or pestilence.

When the eagle stops, the voices of the souls singing as individuals become audible. When they stop singing, the eagle itself again speaks, articulating speech by forcing air up through its neck.

Poscia che i cari e lucidi lapilliond’ io vidi ingemmato il sesto lume

18puoser silenzio a li angelici squilli,

udir mi parve un mormorar di fiumeche scende chiaro giù di pietra in pietra,

21mostrando l’ubertà del suo cacume.

E come suono al collo de la cetraprende sua forma, e sì com’ al pertugio

24de la sampogna vento che penètra,

così, rimosso d’aspettare indugio,quel mormorar de l’aguglia salissi

27su per lo collo, come fosse bugio.

Fecesi voce quivi, e quindi uscissiper lo suo becco in forma di parole,

30quali aspettava il core ov’ io le scrissi.

After the precious and shining gemstones,

with which I saw the sixth star bejewelled,

18brought their angelic pealing to a close,

I thought I heard the murmuring of a stream

that flows down limpidly from rock to rock,

21showing the abundance of its source on high.

And as sound takes form at the neck

of the lute, and breath does when blown through

24the aperture in pipes,

so, without delay by further waiting,

that murmuring of the eagle rose up

27through its neck, as though it were hollow.

There it became a voice, and issued forth

through its beak in the form of words

30my heart was waiting for, and there I wrote them down.

The eagle urges Dante to look at its eye, where its greatest souls are. The first of these is David, the psalmist (“singer of the Holy Spirit,” l. 38). The value of his song reflects “his own willing,” that is, his own contribution on top of the inspiration that came from God.

«La parte in me che vede e pate il solne l’aguglie mortali», incominciommi,

33«or fisamente riguardar si vole,

“The part of me that, in eagles on earth,

sees and endures the sun,” it began to tell me,

33“you must watch now with close attention,

perché d’i fuochi ond’ io figura fommi,quelli onde l’occhio in testa mi scintilla,

36e’ di tutti lor gradi son li sommi.

Colui che luce in mezzo per pupilla,fu il cantor de lo Spirito Santo,

39che l’arca traslatò di villa in villa:

ora conosce il merto del suo canto,in quanto effetto fu del suo consiglio,

42per lo remunerar ch’è altrettanto.

because, of the fires from which I form my shape,

the ones that cause the eye in my head to sparkle,

36those are the highest of all their ranks.

The one who shines in the middle, as the pupil,

was the singer of the Holy Spirit,

39who brought the ark from town to town:

now he knows the value of his song,

insofar as it derived from his own willing,

42by his reward that is commensurate with it.

Now the eagle lists the souls that form its eyebrow. The first is Trajan, whose consoling of the widow was recounted in the miraculous carvings in Purgatorio 10.

Dei cinque che mi fan cerchio per ciglio,colui che più al becco mi s’accosta,

45la vedovella consolò del figlio:

Of the five who make the curve of my eyebrow,

the one who is closest to my beak

45consoled the widow when she lost her son:

There follow Hezekiah, an Old Testament king of Judah; the Emperor Constantine; and King William the Good of Sicily. The fifth soul is a surprise.

Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo erranteche Rifëo Troiano in questo tondo

69fosse la quinta de le luci sante?

Ora conosce assai di quel che ’l mondoveder non può de la divina grazia,

72ben che sua vista non discerna il fondo».

Who would believe down in the erring world

that Ripheus the Trojan was the fifth

69of the holy lights along this curving brow?

Now he knows much that the world

cannot see about divine grace,

72although his sight does not fathom its depths.”

Ripheus the Trojan, though described in the Aeneid as iustissimus (“most just”), should not qualify for salvation since he was a pagan who lived a thousand years before Christ.

The eagle now falls silent like a skylark that is pleased with the song it has sung. Even though it knows what Dante wants, Dante himself still feels an urgent need to articulate it. How can there be pagans (Trajan and Ripheus) in paradise? (In a notoriously difficult tercet, the most plausible interpretation of etterno piacer at l. 77 [literally, “everlasting pleasure”] is “divine will”; the ’mprenta [“imprint”] of divine will is justice, the imago [“image”] of that imprint is the eagle which is its symbol.)

Quale allodetta che ’n aere si spaziaprima cantando, e poi tace contenta

75de l’ultima dolcezza che la sazia,

tal mi sembiò l’imago de la ’mprentade l’etterno piacere, al cui disio

78ciascuna cosa qual ell’ è diventa.

E avvegna ch’io fossi al dubbiar miolì quasi vetro a lo color ch’el veste,

81tempo aspettar tacendo non patio,

ma de la bocca, «Che cose son queste?»,mi pinse con la forza del suo peso:

84per ch’io di coruscar vidi gran feste.

Like a skylark that soars freely through the air,

singing at first, and then falls silent,

75content with the sweetness of its final notes,

so seemed to me the image of the imprint

of everlasting pleasure, at whose desire

78all things become that which they truly are.

And although my perplexity must have shown through

as colour shows through glass that covers it,

81it did not suffer waiting time in silence,

but from my mouth “What are these things?” burst forth,

such was the pressure of its urgency:

84for I saw a great festival of glittering lights.

The eagle replies that Dante understands the words, but he doesn’t really understand. He is like someone who knows the name of something, but not what it is. He understands that Trajan and Ripheus are in paradise, but not why, not how that came about.

«Io veggio che tu credi queste coseperch’ io le dico, ma non vedi come;

90sì che, se son credute, sono ascose.

“I see that you believe these things are so

because I say them, but you don’t see how;

90so though believed, they are not understood.

Fai come quei che la cosa per nomeapprende ben, ma la sua quiditate

93veder non può se altri non la prome.

You’re like someone who knows the name of something,

but can’t see what its essential nature is,

93unless someone else reveals it to him.

In spite of the fact that they were pagans, Trajan and Ripheus both died believing in Christ—in Christ to come, in the case of Ripheus, and in Christ already born, in the case of Trajan. This is the meaning of l. 105 (literally, but with notable concision, evoking the crucifixion): in the feet that would suffer and had suffered (by being nailed to the cross).

La prima vita del ciglio e la quintati fa maravigliar, perché ne vedi

102la regïon de li angeli dipinta.

D’i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi,Gentili, ma Cristiani, in ferma fede

105quel d’i passuri e quel d’i passi piedi.

The first soul in my eyebrow and the fifth

cause you amazement, at seeing

102the region of angels adorned by them.

They left their bodies, not as you believe,

pagans, but Christians, firm in their faith

105in the feet that were to suffer, and had suffered.

According to legend, Pope Gregory the Great, moved by the example of Trajan’s justice, prayed for the emperor’s release from limbo. Trajan’s soul came back to life briefly, allowing him to assent to belief in Christ and be saved. (We saw his justice enacted in the encounter with the widow carved as an example of humility on the rock face of the terrace of pride in Purgatorio 10.)

Ripheus is a more difficult case—“spectacularly provocative,” as one commentator puts it. He is mentioned in just two and a half lines in the Aeneid. We are told that, having intuited the future redemption of mankind, he scorned paganism, and tutto suo amor là giù pose a drittura (“on earth turned all his love to righteousness,” l. 121). More than a thousand years before the invention of baptism, the three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity, obtained by grace, somehow effected his baptism. Here is a virtuous pagan who has been saved, whose love of justice was rewarded by an act of grace. This is the second part of the eagle’s answer to Dante’s question about pagans and salvation: a historical example shows that God’s justice is unfathomable to human beings. Human beings cannot find an answer except in faith.

People should be slow to judge. Even we, the blessed in heaven, do not know who all the elect are.

O predestinazion, quanto remotaè la radice tua da quelli aspetti

132che la prima cagion non veggion tota!

E voi, mortali, tenetevi strettia giudicar: ché noi, che Dio vedemo,

135non conosciamo ancor tutti li eletti;

ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo,perché il ben nostro in questo ben s’affina,

138che quel che vole Iddio, e noi volemo».

O predestination, how remote is your root

from the gaze of those who cannot see

132the primal cause in its entirety!

And you, mortals, show some restraint

in judging: for we, who gaze on God,

135still do not know who all the chosen are;

and that deficiency is sweet to us,

for our good is perfected in this good,

138that whatsoever God wills, we will too.”

Trajan and Ripheus move in unison in time with the eagle’s words.

E come a buon cantor buon citaristafa seguitar lo guizzo de la corda,

144in che più di piacer lo canto acquista,

sì, mentre ch’e’ parlò, sì mi ricordach’io vidi le due luci benedette,

147pur come batter d’occhi si concorda,

con le parole mover le fiammette.

And as a good lute player makes the vibration

of the strings accompany a good singer,

144and thereby the song becomes more pleasing,

so, while it spoke, I remember

that I saw the two blessed lights,

147just like blinking eyes that move together,

move their flames in time with the words.

The simple answer to Dante’s question is that human reason can’t find the answer to the inscrutable nature of God’s justice except in faith.

Dante gazes at beatrice, but she is not smiling. she explains that they are now in Saturn (“the seventh splendour,” l. 13). Saturn is the sphere of the contemplative spirits, those who lived detached from the world in isolated monastic communities, where they worked the land and dedicated their lives to austerity and meditating on heavenly things. Contemplation is a higher form of human activity than knowledge, just warfare, and just rulership: it is a form of direct contact with divinity. This sphere is distinguished by its silence, typical of the cloistered life, and by the intensity of its light, a foretaste of God’s own light. It is the last of the planetary spheres in which we meet historical figures. Above this, we will see the church triumphant, the angelic hierarchies, the blessed and God.

At this time of year, the spring equinox, Saturn is in the constellation Leo. Beatrice urges Dante to pay attention to the shape he is about to see in this heavenly sphere, which is a mirror of divine light.

Noi sem levati al settimo splendore,che sotto ’l petto del Leone ardente

15raggia mo misto giù del suo valore.

Ficca di retro a li occhi tuoi la mente,e fa di quelli specchi a la figura

18che ’n questo specchio ti sarà parvente».

We have risen to the seventh splendour,

that now beneath the burning breast of Leo

15sends down its rays mingled with his power.

Make your mind follow your eyes closely,

and let them mirror the shape

18which will appear to you in this mirror.

The warmth of Leo tempers the coolness of Saturn, just as apostolic fervour tempers the coolness of contemplation. Dante sees a golden ladder in the sky. It rises up beyond his sight; countless lights descend and circle about it. The “crystal” (l. 25) is Saturn, where they now are. The planet is named for the pagan god who presided over a golden age of peace and harmony. There are so many souls on the ladder that Dante thinks all the souls in heaven must have come down.

Dentro al cristallo che ’l vocabol porta,cerchiando il mondo, del suo caro duce

27sotto cui giacque ogne malizia morta,

di color d’oro in che raggio tralucevid’ io uno scaleo eretto in suso

30tanto, che nol seguiva la mia luce.

Within the crystal, circling round the world,

that bears the name of its beloved king,

27under whose rule all wickedness lay dead,

I saw a ladder, the colour of gold

struck by the sun, rising up so high

30that my eyesight could not see the top of it.

Vidi anche per li gradi scender giusotanti splendor, ch’io pensai ch’ogne lume

33che par nel ciel, quindi fosse diffuso.

I also saw descending on its rungs

so many splendours that I thought every light

33that appears in the heavens was poured down from there.

The verticality of the ladder leading straight upwards contrasts strikingly with the circularity of the universe, the cosmos of nested spheres. The souls come down the ladder, then wheel and circle around it, like jackdaws that fly up from a tree: some of the birds fly off, some circle around the tree, some fly back and settle on the branches. Commentators tell us that the three different directions the birds fly in may symbolise the three different movements of contemplative thought, as theorised by Dionysius the Areopagite. If this is the meaning, Dante doesn’t spell it out. We take pleasure in the accuracy and freshness of the image from the natural world. This is exactly what jackdaws do.

E come, per lo natural costume,le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno,

36si movono a scaldar le fredde piume;

poi altre vanno via sanza ritorno,altre rivolgon sé onde son mosse,

39e altre roteando fan soggiorno;

tal modo parve me che quivi fossein quello sfavillar che ’nsieme venne,

42sì come in certo grado si percosse.

And as, in accordance with their natural habit,

jackdaws at break of day flock all together

36to warm their cold feathers;

then some of them fly off and don’t come back,

others return to where they started from,

39and others remain, continuing to circle;

it seemed to me that this was what they did,

that sparkling throng that came together,

42as they settled on one rung or on another.

The soul closest to them becomes extraordinarily bright, but Beatrice at first says nothing; then she gives Dante permission to speak. Dante asks two questions: Why has this soul come down to speak to him? And why is it quiet here? The answer to the second question is simple. The souls are not singing for the same reason Beatrice hasn’t smiled: the sound would overwhelm his mortal senses. The soul spins like a millstone, and explains that even though his clarity of vision and the joy it causes come from the divine light that focuses on him, nonetheless he cannot explain why was he chosen for this task. Not even a seraph could answer that question.

Quinci vien l’allegrezza ond’ io fiammeggio;per ch’a la vista mia, quant’ ella è chiara,

90la chiarità de la fiamma pareggio.

Ma quell’ alma nel ciel che più si schiara,quel serafin che ’n Dio più l’occhio ha fisso,

93a la dimanda tua non satisfara,

però che sì s’innoltra ne lo abissode l’etterno statuto quel che chiedi,

96che da ogne creata vista è scisso.

Thence comes the joy with which I am afire;

because the brightness of my flame

90equals in me my clarity of vision.

But that soul which is brightest in heaven,

that seraph with its eye fixed most on God,

93could not give an answer to your question,

because what you are asking goes so deep

into the abyss of the eternal law,

96that it’s cut off from the sight of every creature.

The mystery of predestination takes centre stage. On Dante’s return to earth he should try to dissuade people from wanting answers to questions like this. They should not presume to know what not even the blessed themselves in heaven can understand. Dante acquiesces, and asks: Who are you?

E al mondo mortal, quando tu riedi,questo rapporta, sì che non presumma

99a tanto segno più mover li piedi.

La mente, che qui luce, in terra fumma;onde riguarda come può là giùe

102quel che non pote perché ’l ciel l’assumma».

Sì mi prescrisser le parole sue,ch’io lasciai la quistione e mi ritrassi

105a dimandarla umilmente chi fue.

And to the mortal world, when you return,

relate this, so that it may no more presume

99to turn its steps towards such a lofty goal.

The mind, which shines here, is dulled by fog on earth;

and so just think how can it do down there,

102what it cannot do even when heaven lifts it up.”

His words so set a boundary for me,

that I abandoned the question, and limited myself

105to asking him humbly who he was.

The soul does not identify himself immediately, but starts in the familiar way, by sketching in a geographical setting. Catria is a mountain in the Apennines that rises five thousand feet above sea level, on the border between Umbria and the Marche, near the town of Gubbio.

«Tra ’ due liti d’Italia surgon sassi,e non molto distanti a la tua patria,

108tanto che ’ troni assai suonan più bassi,

e fanno un gibbo che si chiama Catria,di sotto al quale è consecrato un ermo,

111che suole esser disposto a sola latria».

“Between the two shores of Italy, crags rise

not very far from your own birthplace,

108so high that thunderclaps resound below them,

and they form a gibbous ridge called Catria,

on whose slopes there stands a holy hermitage,

111once dedicated solely to God’s worship.”

The hermitage is the Benedictine monastery of Fonte Avellana. The speaker describes his simple and contented existence there, living as a contemplative. But things have changed for the worse. Men are no longer drawn to the life of contemplation. Finally he reveals his identity.

Così ricominciommi il terzo sermo;e poi, continüando, disse: «Quivi

114al servigio di Dio mi fe’ sì fermo,

che pur con cibi di liquor d’ulivilievemente passava caldi e geli,

117contento ne’ pensier contemplativi.

Render solea quel chiostro a questi cielifertilemente; e ora è fatto vano,

120sì che tosto convien che si riveli.

In quel loco fu’ io Pietro Damiano,e Pietro Peccator fu’ ne la casa

123di Nostra Donna in sul lito adriano.

So his third speech to me began again;

and then, continuing, he said: “Here

114in the service of God I became so steadfast,

that I easily endured the heat and frost,

my simple food seasoned with olive oil,

117content in my contemplative thoughts.

That cloister used to yield a generous harvest

to these heavens; and now it’s become infertile,

120so that soon this must be apparent to all.

In that place I was Peter Damian,

and I was Peter the Sinner in the house

123of Our Lady on the Adriatic coast.

Peter Damian (1007–1072) was abbot of the monastery at Fonte Avellana. It used to have many monks, he says, but now has few. Very late in life, and much against his will, he was made a cardinal and bishop of Ostia. He says nothing here of this active life in the world. Though never formally canonised, he was venerated as a saint following his death.

Poca vita mortal m’era rimasa,quando fui chiesto e tratto a quel cappello,

126che pur di male in peggio si travasa.

Little of life on earth was left to me

when I was summoned and dragged to that hat

126that still is handed on from bad to worse.

(The distinctive red hat worn by cardinals was introduced in fact long after Peter Damian’s time, an anachronism on Dante’s part.) Now he launches into an attack on the clergy, giving us a sharply satirical portrait of clerical excess. Saints Peter and Paul were renowned for their simple attire and modest appetites. (Cefàs is Aramaic for “stone,” the equivalent of Latin pietra, hence Peter; and Paul is il gran vasello de lo Spirito Santo.) Modern pastors, by contrast, need three categories of servant to cope with their obesity: one to lift them onto their horse from behind, one on either side to prop them up, one to lead the horse.

Venne Cefàs e venne il gran vasellode lo Spirito Santo, magri e scalzi,

129prendendo il cibo da qualunque ostello.

Or voglion quinci e quindi chi rincalzili moderni pastori e chi li meni,

132tanto son gravi, e chi di rietro li alzi.

Cuopron d’i manti loro i palafreni,sì che due bestie van sott’ una pelle:

135oh pazïenza che tanto sostieni!».

Cephàs came, and the great vessel

of the Holy Spirit came, lean and barefoot,

129taking their food from any humble dwelling.

Now modern pastors, so fat have they become,

want servants to prop them up on either side,

132and lead them forward, and lift them from behind.

They cover their horses with their mantles,

so that two beasts go underneath one skin:

135oh patience, you bear a heavy burden!”

The grotesqueness of the sight is underlined by the harshness of the language (due bestie). With his sharp eye for the absurd, Peter Damian has thrown into comical relief the excesses of clerical greed and idleness, so sharply in contrast with the simple and austere life of a monk. The blessed souls react by descending and grouping around him, uttering a strange and thunderous cry, shattering the silence of Saturn. Dante finds the sound overwhelming.

A questa voce vid’ io più fiammelledi grado in grado scendere e girarsi,

138e ogne giro le facea più belle.

Dintorno a questa vennero e fermarsi,e fero un grido di sì alto suono,

141che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;

né io lo ’ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono.

At these words I saw many flickering lights

descend from rung to rung and spin around,

138becoming lovelier at every spin.

They came to a halt around the one who’d spoken,

and uttered a cry so loud,

141that nothing on earth could be compared to it;

nor did I understand it, its thunder so overwhelmed me.

Dante turns to beatrice for reassurance. she tells him that he should not be alarmed: nothing untoward can happen in heaven. Within the cry which so startled him were prayers which will bring revenge on corrupt clergy.

Oppresso di stupore, a la mia guidami volsi, come parvol che ricorre

3sempre colà dove più si confida;

e quella, come madre che soccorresùbito al figlio palido e anelo

6con la sua voce, che ’l suol ben disporre,

mi disse: «Non sai tu che tu se’ in cielo?e non sai tu che ’l cielo è tutto santo,

9e ciò che ci si fa vien da buon zelo?

Struck with amazement, I turned to my guide,

like a little boy who always runs

3back to the person he trusts most;

and she, like a mother quick to help

her pale and breathless child

6with her voice, which always reassures him,

said to me: “Don’t you know that you’re in heaven?

And don’t you know that all of heaven is holy,

9and that what is done here comes from righteous zeal?

Come t’avrebbe trasmutato il canto,e io ridendo, mo pensar lo puoi,

12poscia che ’l grido t’ha mosso cotanto;

nel qual, se ’nteso avessi i prieghi suoi,già ti sarebbe nota la vendetta

15che tu vedrai innanzi che tu muoi.

Now you can understand how their singing

would have perturbed you, and my smiling,

12since their cry so startled you;

if you had heard their prayers within their cry

you would already know the vengeance

15that you will see before you die.

He turns as she instructs to look at other spirits. He sees a crowd of joyous souls, one of whom comes forward. Dante represses the desire to ask who it is.

Come a lei piacque, li occhi ritornai,e vidi cento sperule che ’nsieme

24più s’abbellivan con mutüi rai.

Io stava come quei che ’n sé reprimela punta del disio, e non s’attenta

27di domandar, sì del troppo si teme;

e la maggiore e la più luculentadi quelle margherite innanzi fessi,

30per far di sé la mia voglia contenta.

As she wished, I turned my eyes to look,

and I saw a hundred little spheres

24whose reflected rays made each more beautiful.

I stood like one who represses

the intensity of his desire, and does not venture

27to ask, so fearful is he of asking too much;

and the largest and most lustrous

of those pearls came forward,

30to satisfy my wish to know who he was.

The soul tells his story, beginning with another mountain location, Monte Cassino. This identifies him as Saint Benedict (c. 480–c. 547), founder of the oldest monastic order in the West. When he first went there, he says, the inhabitants were pagans, but he was able to convert them.

Quel monte a cui Cassino è ne la costafu frequentato già in su la cima

39da la gente ingannata e mal disposta;

e quel son io che sù vi portai primalo nome di colui che ’n terra addusse

42la verità che tanto ci soblima;

That mountain on whose slope Cassino lies

was once inhabited, up on its summit,

39by people who were deluded and resistant;

and I am the one who first carried up there

the name of him who brought down to earth

42the truth that so uplifts us;

e tanta grazia sopra me relusse,ch’io ritrassi le ville circunstanti

45da l’empio cólto che ’l mondo sedusse.

and such grace shone on me

that I drew the neighbouring towns

45from the wicked cult that led the world astray.

He introduces other contemplative spirits, whose ardour produced holy thoughts (“flowers”) and deeds (“fruit”):

Questi altri fuochi tutti contemplantiuomini fuoro, accesi di quel caldo

48che fa nascere i fiori e ’ frutti santi.

Qui è Maccario, qui è Romoaldo,qui son li frati miei che dentro ai chiostri

51fermar li piedi e tennero il cor saldo».

These other fires were all contemplatives,

glowing with that ardent warmth

48that causes holy flowers and fruit to grow.

Here is Macarius, here is Romualdus,

here are my brothers whose feet did not stray

51beyond the cloisters; they kept a steadfast heart.”

Macarius (fourth century) and Romualdus (eleventh century) were the heads of Eastern and Western monasticism. Benedict’s order lived by an ideal of contemplative prayer and productive labour that produced the food they ate. Their motto was laborare est orare: to work is to pray.

Dante asks if he can see Benedict’s face revealed, without the dazzling veil of light that envelops him. He hasn’t asked to see the face of any other soul, and indeed hasn’t seen a face since the encounter with Piccarda in the sphere of the moon. His eagerness reflects the veneration he feels for the founder of Western monasticism. Benedict tells him that faces will be revealed only in the last sphere, the Empyrean. Jacob in the Old Testament saw this ladder stretching up to heaven, laden with angels (Genesis 28:12 ). Now no one on earth aspires to climb it.

Ond’ elli: «Frate, il tuo alto disios’adempierà in su l’ultima spera,

63ove s’adempion tutti li altri e ’l mio.

Ivi è perfetta, matura e interaciascuna disïanza; in quella sola

66è ogne parte là ove sempr’ era,

He replied: “Brother, your lofty desire

will be fulfilled in the last sphere,

63where all the other desires, and mine, are fulfilled.

There every desire is perfect, ripe and whole;

there alone every part

66is where it always was,

perché non è in loco e non s’impola;e nostra scala infino ad essa varca,

69onde così dal viso ti s’invola.

Infin là sù la vide il patriarcaIacobbe porger la superna parte,

72quando li apparve d’angeli sì carca.

Ma, per salirla, mo nessun diparteda terra i piedi, e la regola mia

75rimasa è per danno de le carte.

because it isn’t in space and turns round no pole;

and our ladder goes all the way up to it,

69and so the top is hidden from your sight.

The patriarch Jacob saw its topmost rungs

stretch right up there, when it appeared to him

72so laden with angels.

But now, to climb it, no one lifts

their feet from earth, and my rule

75is left as a waste of the paper it’s written on.

The ladder leads up to the Empyrean, which “isn’t in space and turns around no pole,” being outside the created world of the heavenly spheres. The ladder is the ladder of contemplation, which functions as a connection between timebound universe and unchanging eternal Empyrean.

Benedict denounces the degeneration of his order. Monasteries are derelict. Monks are corrupt. There is a clear biblical echo in l. 77 of the speluncam latronum (“den of thieves”) of Matthew 21:12–13. Usury is bad, but it is less bad than the appropriation and misuse of church revenues (“that fruit / that makes the hearts of monks go mad”). Money that should rightly go to the poor goes instead not just to the monks themselves, and their relatives, bad enough, but to “others uglier still”: their concubines or their illegitimate children.

Le mura che solieno esser badiafatte sono spelonche, e le cocolle

78sacca son piene di farina ria.

Ma grave usura tanto non si tollecontra ’l piacer di Dio, quanto quel frutto

81che fa il cor de’ monaci sì folle;

Walls that once were abbeys

have become thieves’ dens, and monks’ cowls

78are sacks full of rotten flour.

But extortionate usury at its worst

is less offensive to God’s will than that fruit

81that makes the hearts of monks go mad;

ché quantunque la Chiesa guarda, tuttoè de la gente che per Dio dimanda;

84non di parenti né d’altro più brutto.

for whatever the church has in its keeping, all of it

belongs to the people who ask for it in God’s name;

84not to their kin, or others uglier still.

Human beings start out well but quickly go astray. (A newly planted oak takes about twenty years to produce acorns.) Peter, Benedict and Francis began with very little, yet the institutions they founded are now corrupt.

La carne d’i mortali è tanto blanda,che giù non basta buon cominciamento

87dal nascer de la quercia al far la ghianda.

Pier cominciò sanz’ oro e sanz’ argento,e io con orazione e con digiuno,

90e Francesco umilmente il suo convento;

e se guardi ’l principio di ciascuno,poscia riguardi là dov’ è trascorso,

93tu vederai del bianco fatto bruno.

The flesh of mortals is so weak,

that down there a good beginning doesn’t last

87from planting an oak to its producing acorns.

Peter began with neither gold nor silver,

and I with prayer and fasting,

90and Francis set up his order with humility;

and if you look at where each one began,

and then consider where they’ve ended up,

93you’ll see that white has turned to dark.

These key luminaries in the history of the church—Peter (first century), Benedict (sixth century), Francis (twelfth and thirteenth centuries)—encompass its whole institutional, monastic and mendicant history. Their legacy is abandoned and corrupted in the modern church.

To right this wrong would require less of a miracle than the Old Testament miracles. The river Jordan turned back so that Joshua’s army could pass (Joshua 3:14–17); the Red Sea parted so that Moses and the Israelites could cross in their flight from Egypt (Exodus 14:21–29).

Veramente Iordan vòlto retrorsopiù fu, e ’l mar fuggir, quando Dio volse,

96mirabile a veder che qui ’l soccorso».

And yet it was a greater miracle to see

the Jordan turned back, and the sea withdraw,

96when God willed it, than the help needed here.”

Così mi disse, e indi si raccolseal suo collegio, e ’l collegio si strinse;

99poi, come turbo, in sù tutto s’avvolse.

So he said to me, and then he rejoined

his companions, and they drew closer together;

99and then, like a whirlwind, they all spiralled upwards.

Beatrice and Dante follow them with supernatural speed into the next heaven, that of the fixed stars, where they enter the constellation Gemini. Now for the last time in the poem Dante addresses the reader. How quickly he moved up the ladder and entered Gemini (“the sign that follows Taurus”)!

S’io torni mai, lettore, a quel divototrïunfo per lo quale io piango spesso

108le mie peccata e ’l petto mi percuoto,

tu non avresti in tanto tratto e messonel foco il dito, in quant’ io vidi ’l segno

111che segue il Tauro e fui dentro da esso.

So may I, reader, once again return,

to that devout triumph for whose sake I often

108weep for my sins and beat my breast,

in less time than you’d take to pull your finger

out of the fire and put it in, I saw

111the sign that follows Taurus, and I was inside it.

Another graphic image to suggest speed: pulling your finger out of a fire almost before you have inadvertently put it in. For the difficult next step on his journey, Dante calls for help on the stars of Gemini, with which the sun (padre d’ogne mortal vita: “father of all mortal life,” l. 116) rose and set when he was born.

O glorïose stelle, o lume pregnodi gran virtù, dal quale io riconosco

114tutto, qual che si sia, il mio ingegno,

con voi nasceva e s’ascondeva voscoquelli ch’è padre d’ogne mortal vita,

117quand’ io senti’ di prima l’aere tosco;

e poi, quando mi fu grazia largitad’entrar ne l’alta rota che vi gira,

120la vostra regïon mi fu sortita.

O glorious stars, o light full

of great power, from which I recognise that

114whatever talent I may have derives,

he who is father of all mortal life

rose with you and set with you,

117when I first breathed the Tuscan air;

and then, when I was granted the grace

of entering the lofty sphere that turns you,

120your region was my designated place.

A voi divotamente ora sospiral’anima mia, per acquistar virtute

123al passo forte che a sé la tira.

To you now, in devotion, my soul sighs,

in order to gain strength

123for the difficult step that draws it to itself.

The passo forte (“difficult step”) he confronts is to experience divine reality and to write about it. Beatrice invites him to look back down through the seven celestial spheres to see the distance he has travelled. This will put the world in its proper perspective.

«Tu se’ sì presso a l’ultima salute»,cominciò Bëatrice, «che tu dei

126aver le luci the chiare e acute;

e però, prima che tu più t’inlei,rimira in giù, e vedi quanto mondo

129sotto li piedi già esser ti fei;

sì che ’l tuo cor, quantunque può, giocondos’appresenti a la turba trïunfante

132che lieta vien per questo etera tondo».

“You are so close to final blessedness,”

Beatrice began, “that you must have

126eyes that are clear and sharp;

and so, before you go further into it,

look down, and see how much of the world

129I have already placed beneath your feet;

so that your heart, as joyfully as it can,

may greet the triumphant throng

132that gladly comes through this aetherial sphere.”

Dante looks back through the seven planetary spheres and sees the earth. He smiles at its paltriness. The altro (l. 137) to which the wise turn their attention is heaven.

Col viso ritornai per tutte quantele sette spere, e vidi questo globo

135tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante;

e quel consiglio per migliore approboche l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa

138chiamar si puote veramente probo.

With my gaze I looked back through all

the seven spheres, and I saw our earthly globe

135such that I smiled at its wretched appearance;

and I approve as best that opinion

that prizes it least; and whoever turns his thoughts

138to other things can truly be called upright.

He can see the moon (Latona’s daughter), with no dark patches on its surface. He can tolerate the light of the sun (Hyperion’s son, l. 142), and see Mercury and Venus (named for their mothers, Maia and Dione, l. 144) circling around it. As his eye scans through space, he can see Jupiter (Jove) between his father, Saturn, and his son, Mars. Calling the planets by the names and family relationships they have in classical mythology gives a notable energy and rhythm to these lines.

Vidi la figlia di Latona incensesanza quell’ ombra che mi fu cagione

141per che già la credetti rara e densa.

L’aspetto del tuo nato, Iperïone,quivi sostenni, e vidi com’ si move

144circa e vicino a lui Maia e Dïone.

Quindi m’apparve il temperar di Giovetra ’l padre e ’l figlio; e quindi mi fu chiaro

147il varïar che fanno di lor dove;

e tutti e sette mi si dimostraroquanto son grandi e quanto son veloci

150e come sono in distante riparo.

I saw the daughter of Latona afire,

without those shadows that once caused me

141to think her both rare and dense.

Here I was able to tolerate the sight

of your son, Hyperion, and I saw how

144Maia and Dione circle close around him.

From there I saw the tempering light of Jove

between his father and his son; from there were clear to me

147the changes that they make in their positions;

and all seven planets revealed to me

how big they are and how swiftly they move,

150and how distant their positions are from one another.

He takes a final glance at the insignificant globe of the earth at the centre of the wheeling planets before turning back to Beatrice’s eyes.

L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci,volgendom’ io con li etterni Gemelli,

153tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci;

poscia rivolsi li occhi a li occhi belli.

The threshing floor that makes us so fierce,

as I was circling with the eternal Twins,

153from hills to river mouths I saw it all;

then I turned my eyes back to her lovely eyes.

The word aiuola, literally “threshing floor,” means a little patch of ground. It had been used by Boethius to describe the insignificance of the globe seen from space, no cause for vain human pride. Dante adds the words che ci fa tanto feroci (“that makes us so fierce”), underlining bitterly how much hatred and conflict that tiny space can generate among men.

We are now in the sphere of the fixed stars, the stelle fisse. Here Dante meets no human figures. He will witness the arrival of the Church Triumphant, the souls of the blessed in heaven saved by Christ. (The Church Militant, by contrast, is the church as it operates in the world of human history, an institution whose decadence and corruption have occasioned some of Dante’s most impassioned and sorrowful attacks.)

As the canto opens, Beatrice is gazing upwards, anxiously waiting for something to appear, like a mother bird awaiting dawn to feed her chicks. The extended image of the bird is deservedly famous for its sense of hopeful expectation, its intensity, its tenderness, a fitting prelude to what is to come. The sun (l. 12) seems to move more slowly at noon, when it is at its highest point in the sky.

Come l’augello, intra l’amate fronde,posato al nido de’ suoi dolci nati

3la notte che le cose ci nasconde,

che, per veder li aspetti disïatie per trovar lo cibo onde li pasca,

6in che gravi labor li sono aggrati,

previene il tempo in su aperta frasca,e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,

9fiso guardando pur che l’alba nasca;

così la donna mïa stava erettae attenta, rivolta inver’ la plaga

12sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:

Like a bird, among the leafy branches it loves,

perched on the nest of her sweet brood,

3all through the night that keeps things hidden from us,

which—to see their longed-for looks,

and find the food with which to nourish them,

6delighted to work hard at doing this—

on an open bough anticipates that time,

and with ardent love awaits the sunrise,

9watching intently for the dawn to break;

so stood my lady upright and alert,

turned towards that region of the sky

12where the sun seems to move more slowly:

sì che, veggendola io sospesa e vaga,fecimi qual è quei che disïando

15altro vorria, e sperando s’appaga.

so that I, seeing her absorbed and eager,

became like one desiring something more,

15who finds contentment in hoping.

Now the sky is brightening. Beatrice announces the arrival of the Church Triumphant.

Ma poco fu tra uno e altro quando,del mio attender, dico, e del vedere

18lo ciel venir più e più rischiarando;

e Bëatrice disse: «Ecco le schieredel trïunfo di Cristo e tutto ’l frutto

21ricolto del girar di queste spere!».

Pariemi che ’l suo viso ardesse tutto,e li occhi avea di letizia sì pieni,

24che passarmen convien sanza costrutto.

But not much time passed between one moment and the next,

I mean between my waiting and my seeing

18the sky becoming brighter and brighter;

and Beatrice said: “Behold the hosts

of Christ in triumph and all the fruit

21gathered up in the turning of these spheres!”

It seemed to me that her face was all aflame,

and her eyes so full of joy,

24that I must pass on without describing them.

Looking up, Dante sees the light of Christ shining on the whole assembly. This is his second sighting of Christ in Paradiso. (The first was his flaming forth on the Greek cross.) Again he is not able to gaze at him directly; his sight cannot tolerate the dazzling brightness. This “sun” (l. 29) lighting up all the souls who have come down is likened to the full moon (Trivia, also called Diana), surrounded by the stars (the “eternal nymphs,” l. 26).

Quale ne’ plenilunïi sereniTrivïa ride tra le ninfe etterne

27che dipingon lo ciel per tutti i seni,

vid’ i’ sopra migliaia di lucerneun sol che tutte quante l’accendea,

30come fa ’l nostro le viste superne;

As on clear, cloudless nights when the moon is full,

Trivia smiles among the eternal nymphs

27that paint the sky in all its regions,

above the many thousand lamps I saw

one sun that lit them all up, every one,

30as our sun does the stars above us;

e per la viva luce traspareala lucente sustanza tanto chiara

33nel viso mio, che non la sostenea.

Oh Bëatrice, dolce guida e cara!Ella mi disse: «Quel che ti sobranza

36è virtù da cui nulla si ripara.

Quivi è la sapïenza e la possanzach’aprì le strade tra ’l cielo e la terra,

39onde fu già sì lunga disïanza».

and through the living light there shone

a dazzling substance so brightly

33into my eyes, that I could not endure it.

O Beatrice, dear sweet guide!

She said to me: “The thing that overwhelms you

36is a force that nothing can resist.

Here is the Wisdom and the Power

that opened the roads that run from heaven to earth,

39which had so long been yearned for.”

Dante’s mind, feasting on the sight, goes out of itself, like lightning swelling in a cloud (the “fire” of l. 40), bursting out and plummeting to earth. The bare half line di sé stessa uscìo (l. 44) seems to describe a moment of mystical self-transcendence as he gazes on Christ.

Come foco di nube si diserraper dilatarsi sì che non vi cape,

42e fuor di sua natura in giù s’atterra,

la mente mia così, tra quelle dapefatta più grande, di sé stessa uscìo,

45e che si fesse rimembrar non sape.

As fire unleashes itself from a cloud,

swelling so that it can no longer be contained,

42and against its nature heads towards the earth,

so my mind, grown greater amidst that feast,

went forth from itself,

45and cannot remember what it became.

He is at last strong enough to look at Beatrice’s smile.

«Apri li occhi e riguarda qual son io;tu hai vedute cose, che possente

48se’ fatto a sostener lo riso mio».

Io era come quei che si risente

di visïone oblita e che s’ingegna

51indarno di ridurlasi a la mente,

“Open your eyes and see me as I am;

you have seen things that have made you

48strong enough to bear my smile.”

I was like someone who comes to,

after a vision that is already forgotten,

51and strives in vain to call it back to mind,

quand’ io udi’ questa proferta, degnadi tanto grato, che mai non si stingue

54del libro che ’l preterito rassegna.

when I heard this offer, worthy

of such gratitude that it will never be erased

54from the book that keeps a record of the past.

If all the greatest poets, those best nourished by the muses, were now to aid him, the result would not amount to much. Describing paradise, the poem must make a leap, like a man with an obstacle in his path. Polyhymnia is the Muse of sacred poetry.

Se mo sonasser tutte quelle lingueche Polimnïa con le suore fero

57del latte lor dolcissimo più pingue,

per aiutarmi, al millesmo del veronon si verria, cantando il santo riso

60e quanto il santo aspetto facea mero;

e così, figurando il paradiso,convien saltar lo sacrato poema,

63come chi trova suo cammin riciso.

If all those voices were now to resound

that Polyhymnia and her sister muses

57made richest with their sweetest milk,

to help me, it would not come to a thousandth part

of the truth, singing her holy smile,

60and how radiant it made her holy face;

and so, in representing paradise,

the sacred poem will have to make a leap,

63like someone who finds his path cut off.

The theme is weighty; the poet’s shoulder is mortal. This is no voyage for a little boat, but for a bold prow and a tireless helmsman.

Ma chi pensasse il ponderoso temae l’omero mortal che se ne carca,

66nol biasmerebbe se sott’ esso trema:

non è pareggio da picciola barcaquel che fendendo va l’ardita prora,

69né da nocchier ch’a sé medesmo parca.

But no one who considered the weighty theme,

and the mortal shoulder that takes on the burden,

66would blame it if it trembles beneath the load:

this is no journey for a little ship,

the stretch of sea the daring prow cuts through,

69nor for a helmsman who spares himself.

Beatrice asks Dante: Why do you look at me and not at the “garden” Christ’s light is shining on, with its rose (Mary, not yet named) and lilies (the apostles)?

«Perché la faccia mia sì t’innamora,che tu non ti rivolgi al bel giardino

72che sotto i raggi di Cristo s’infiora?

Quivi è la rosa in che ’l verbo divinocarne si fece; quivi son li gigh

75al cui odor si prese il buon cammino».

“Why does my face so arouse your love,

that you do not turn to the lovely garden

72that flowers beneath the rays of Christ?

Here is the rose in which the Word of God

was made flesh; here are the lilies

75whose perfume led mankind on the right path.”

Dante tries once again to look, but Christ has ascended. His light now shines on the souls from above. His withdrawal has made it possible for Dante to see the scene before him.

Così Beatrice; e io, che a’ suoi consightutto era pronto, ancora mi rendei

78a la battaglia de’ debili cigh.

Come a raggio di sol, che puro meiper fratta nube, già prato di fiori

81vider, coverti d’ombra, li occhi miei;

vid’ io così più turbe di splendori,folgorate di sù da raggi ardenti,

84sanza veder principio di folgóri.

O benigna vertù che sì li ’mprenti,sù t’essaltasti, per largirmi loco

87a li occhi lì che non t’eran possenti.

Thus Beatrice; and I, who was all eager

to follow her counsel, again readied myself

78for the battle of my weak brows.

Just as my eyes, protected by the shade,

have seen a meadow of flowers in the sunlight

81that streams down on them through a gap in the clouds;

so I saw many swirling throngs of souls,

struck from above by burning rays,

84without seeing where those rays were coming from.

O kindly Power that imprints them in this way,

you raised yourself on high to grant me space

87for my eyes, not yet strong enough for you.

Dante now looks at Mary, and the canto ends with her. She is the “greatest flame” of that host, and remains when Christ has gone, as she remained with the apostles after his ascension. A fiery light descends and wheels around her, “crowning” her with the torch it carries.

Il nome del bel fior ch’io sempre invocoe mane e sera, tutto mi ristrinse

90l’animo ad avvisar lo maggior foco;

e come ambo le luci mi dipinseil quale e il quanto de la viva stella

93che là sù vince come qua giù vinse,

per entro il cielo scese una facella,formata in cerchio a guisa di corona,

96e cinsela e girossi intorno ad ella.

The name of the fair flower I always call on,

morning and evening, gathered all

90my spirit to try to see the greatest flame;

and when both my eyes reflected

the splendour and the size of the living star

93who surpasses up above as she surpassed down here below,

within the heaven there came down a fiery light,

in the shape of a ring as though it were a crown,

96and it encircled her and wheeled around her.

This is the angel Gabriel, whose song makes the sweetest music on earth seem grating by comparison. He will circle Mary until she rejoins her Son in the Empyrean. At the end of his song, the host calls out Mary’s name.

Qualunque melodia più dolce suonaqua giù e più a sé l’anima tira,

99parrebbe nube che squarciata tona,

comparata al sonar di quella liraonde si coronava il bel zaffiro

102del quale il ciel più chiaro s’inzaffira.

«Io sono amore angelico, che girol’alta letizia che spira del ventre

105che fu albergo del nostro disiro;

e girerommi, donna del ciel, mentreche seguirai tuo figlio, e farai dia

108più la spera suprema perché lì entre».

Whatever melody sounds most sweetly

down here and draws the soul to it most strongly,

99would seem a cloud torn by a thunderclap,

compared to the sounding of that lyre

which crowned the fair sapphire

102with which the brightest heaven is ensapphired.

“I am angelic love, who circles around

the lofty joy that breathes from the womb

105that was the dwelling place of our desire;

and I will go on circling, heavenly lady,

until you follow your son, and make

108the highest sphere more luminous by your presence.”

Così la circulata melodiasi sigillava, e tutti li altri lumi

111facean sonare il nome di Maria.

Thus the circling melody

came to an end, and all the other lights

111made Mary’s name resound.

The inner surface of the primum mobile, the “royal mantle of all the turning spheres,” is too distant yet to be visible to Dante, as Mary rises after Christ.

Lo real manto di tutti i volumidel mondo, che più ferve e più s’avviva

114ne l’alito di Dio e nei costumi,

avea sopra di noi l’interna rivatanto distante, che la sua parvenza,

117là dov’ io era, ancor non appariva:

però non ebber li occhi miei potenzadi seguitar la coronata fiamma

120che si levò appresso sua semenza.

The royal mantle of all the turning spheres

of the universe, which burns most and quickens most

114in the breath of God and in his ways,

had its inner surface so far away

above us, that from where I was

117its aspect was still not visible:

so my eyes did not have the strength

to follow the crowned flame

120that rose up after her Son.

Just as an infant after suckling reaches up to its mother, so the souls extend themselves upwards towards Mary. They sing the hymn Regina celi (“Queen of Heaven”).

E come fantolin che ’nver’ la mammatende le braccia, poi che ’l latte prese,

123per l’animo che ’nfin di fuor s’infiamma;

ciascun di quei candori in sù si stesecon la sua cima, sì che l’alto affetto

126ch’elli avieno a Maria mi fu palese.

Indi rimaser lì nel mio cospetto,‘Regina celi’ cantando sì dolce,

129che mai da me non si partì ’l diletto.

And like an infant that holds up its arms

towards its mother, when it has drunk her milk,

123its inner impulse showing in its gestures;

each one of those incandescent lights

was reaching upwards with its tip, so that the deep

126affection they felt for Mary was clear to me.

Then they remained there in my sight,

singing Regina celi so sweetly,

129that my delight in it has never left me.

The souls of the blessed rejoice in the heavenly reward for their earthly sufferings, endured in exile, in Babylon. There in heaven, Peter with his keys triumphs with them.

This canto is unlike any that has preceded it. It is a foretaste of the final cantos of the poem, where we will see the heavenly host of the blessed in its true home, the Empyrean. Gabriel circling Mary reminds us of the annunciation, the central event in her life and, from a Christian perspective, in human history.

We are still in the constellation of gemini in the cielo stellato, and we will remain there for another four cantos. Dante will now be examined on the three theological virtues (faith, hope and love) by the three apostles who were closest to Jesus (Peter, James and John). In the fifth and final canto of the sequence, we return to the church—not to the Church Triumphant, whose splendour in heaven we have just seen, but to the Church Militant, the church we encounter every day in our terrestrial world. Its founder, Saint Peter, will deliver a damning tirade against its many failings, its falling away from the traditions of its founders. The three central cantos on the virtues, bookended by the two on the church in its heavenly and earthly manifestations, unfold not as abstract theological exposition, but as intense, personal, searching dialogue. Dante himself is centre stage, as he was in the encounter with Cacciaguida. For him this is not a scholastic debate. He is bearing witness to the profound meaning of his own life as a Christian. The cielo stellato is a frontier, marking the border between the visible universe and the invisible reality beyond it. After we leave it, we will not turn our gaze earthwards again.

Beatrice addresses the souls and asks them to satisfy Dante’s thirst for knowledge. They spin and dance for joy. Dante gauges their degree of blessedness, their spiritual “ricchezza,” by the speed with which they move.

Così Beatrice; e quelle anime lietesi fero spere sopra fissi poli,

12fiammando, a volte, a guisa di comete.

Thus Beatrice; and those joyful souls

became spheres spinning on fixed poles,

12flaming out like comets as they turned.

E come cerchi in tempra d’orïuolisi giran sì, che ’l primo a chi pon mente

15quïeto pare, e l’ultimo che voli;

così quelle carole, differente-mente danzando, de la sua ricchezza

18mi facieno stimar, veloci e lente.

And as wheels in the mechanism of clocks

turn, so that to an observer the first one

15seems to be motionless, and the last to fly;

just so those circles of whirling souls,

dancing at different speeds, fast and slow,

18allowed me to gauge their degree of blessedness.

From the brightest circling group, one soul comes forward in answer to Beatrice’s request. This is Saint Peter. He circles her three times, singing. Once again Dante says his pen must make a leap: human language cannot capture the nuances of his song.

Di quella ch’io notai di più carezzavid’ ïo uscire un foco sì felice,

21che nullo vi lasciò di più chiarezza;

e tre fïate intorno di Beatricesi volse con un canto tanto divo,

24che la mia fantasia nol mi ridice.

Però salta la penna e non lo scrivo:ché l’imagine nostra a cotai pieghe,

27non che ’l parlare, è troppo color vivo.

From the circle I judged to be most precious

I saw come forth a flame so happy

21that it left there none of greater brightness;

and three times it circled around Beatrice

with a song so sublime that

24my imagination can’t bring it back to me.

Therefore my pen skips and I don’t write it;

for not just our speech, but our imagining,

27has colours too bright for such fine folds.

An early commentator explains that painters need less-bright colours to paint pleats or folds in fabric. This seems to be a direct allusion to the new style of painting introduced by Giotto, with its subtlety in depicting folds in fabric, compared with the linear rigidities of his master Cimabue (see Purgatorio 11, 94–95). Dante is saying that human language is too unsubtle (troppo color vivo) to do justice to the delicate shadings and nuances of Saint Peter’s song. We are at the opposite extreme from the rime aspre e chiocce (“harsh and raucous rhymes”, Inferno 32, l. 1) needed to describe the bottom of hell: these two passages mark the outer limits of what human language can express.

Beatrice asks Peter to test Dante on the subject of faith. Though Peter can see the answer in God, it is nonetheless right that Dante be questioned.

Ed ella: «O luce etterna del gran viroa cui Nostro Segnor lasciò le chiavi,

36ch’ei portò giù, di questo gaudio miro,

tenta costui di punti lievi e gravi,come ti piace, intorno de la fede,

39per la qual tu su per lo mare andavi.

S’elli ama bene e bene spera e crede,non t’è occulto, perché ’l viso hai quivi

42dov’ ogne cosa dipinta si vede;

ma perché questo regno ha fatto civiper la verace fede, a glorïarla,

45di lei parlare è ben ch’a lui arrivi».

And she: “O eternal light of the great man

to whom Our Lord bequeathed the keys

36—which he brought down to earth—to this wondrous joy,

test this man on easy and difficult points,

as you see fit, concerning the faith,

39by which you walked upon the sea.

Whether he truly has love and hope and faith

is not concealed from you, because your sight

42is fixed there where all things are seen depicted;

but since this kingdom makes its citizens

because of their true faith, it’s fitting for him

45to speak of it, to render glory to it.”

Dante the exam candidate prepares himself.

Sì come il baccialier s’arma e non parlafin che ’l maestro la question propone,

48per approvarla, non per terminarla,

così m’armava io d’ogne ragionementre ch’ella dicea, per esser presto

51a tal querente e a tal professione.

As a candidate arms himself and doesn’t speak

while the professor is setting out the question,

48to test the proofs of it, not to resolve it,

so I armed myself with every argument

while she was speaking, in order to be ready

51for such an examiner and such a profession of faith.

Peter’s first question: What is faith?

«Dì, buon Cristiano, fatti manifesto:fede che è?». Ond’ io levai la fronte

51in quella luce onde spirava questo;

poi mi volsi a Beatrice, ed essa prontesembianze femmi perch’ ïo spandessi

54l’acqua di fuor del mio interno fonte.

“Speak, good Christian, show yourself to be one:

What is faith?” At that I raised my brow

51towards the light from which this question came;

then I turned to Beatrice, and she quickly

signalled to me with her glance that I should

54pour forth the water from the source within me.

Dante answers, citing the words of Saint Paul.

«La Grazia che mi dà ch’io mi confessi»,comincia’ io, «da l’alto primipilo,

60faccia li miei concetti bene espressi».

E seguitai: «Come ’l verace stilone scrisse, padre, del tuo caro frate

63che mise teco Roma nel buon filo,

fede è sustanza di cose speratee argomento de le non parventi;

66e questa pare a me sua quiditate».

“May the grace that allows me to confess my faith,”

I began, “to its first great champion,

60grant that my thoughts be well expressed.”

And I went on: “Father, as the truthful pen

of your dear brother wrote of it,

63he who with you set Rome on the right track,

faith is the substance of things hoped for,

and evidence of those we do not see;

66and this seems to me to be its quiddity.”

“Quiddity” (from Latin quid: “what”) is its essence, the essence of what it is. Dante in his reply is quoting verbatim Paul’s letter to the Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Peter approves, but invites Dante to continue. What did Paul mean by “substance” and then by “evidence”? Dante explains. (The precise meaning of lines 73–78, with their use of the technical terms “substance” and “evidence” from scholastic philosophy, is elusive, and much debated.)

Allora udi’: «Dirittamente senti,se bene intendi perché la ripuose

69tra le sustanze, e poi tra li argomenti».

E io appresso: «Le profonde coseche mi largiscon qui la lor parvenza,

72a li occhi di là giù son sì ascose,

che l’esser loro v’è in sola credenza,sopra la qual si fonda l’alta spene;

75e però di sustanza prende intenza.

E da questa credenza ci convenesilogizzar, sanz’ avere altra vista:

78però intenza d’argomento tene».

Then I heard: “You understand aright,

if you understand correctly why he classed it

69first as ‘substance,’ and then as ‘evidence.’ ”

And I went on: “The profound truths

that generously reveal themselves to me here,

72are so hidden to our eyes down below,

that there their existence is only a matter of faith,

upon which our lofty hope is based;

75and therefore it takes the designation substance.

And from this faith we must construct

sound arguments, without other visible proof:

78therefore it has the designation evidence.”

Heavenly mysteries cannot be known on earth, for there is no evidence for them in the material world of the senses. Only faith asserts their existence; it alone is the substance, or foundation, of them. Thus faith itself becomes an argument, or proof, and so it can be called evidence.

Using the metaphor of a coin, Peter says he is happy with the definition: Dante’s answer is sound, genuine currency. But does Dante himself actually have faith? Dante replies: Yes, I do.

Allora udi’: «Se quantunque s’acquistagiù per dottrina, fosse così ’nteso,

81non lì avria loco ingegno di sofista».

Così spirò di quello amore acceso;indi soggiunse: «Assai bene è trascorsa

84d’esta moneta già la lega e ’l peso;

Then I heard: “If whatever was learned on earth

through studying were so well understood,

81there would be no place there for sophistry.”

Thus a voice breathed forth from that burning love;

then it added: “This coin has been well

84examined, both its alloy and its weight;

ma dimmi se tu l’hai ne la tua borsa».Ond’ io: «Sì ho, sì lucida e sì tonda,

87che nel suo conio nulla mi s’inforsa».

but tell me if you have it in your purse.”

And I: “Indeed I do, so bright and round,

87that nothing gives me doubts about its minting.”

And where did Dante’s faith come from? It came firstly from the scriptures, the Old and New Testaments.

Appresso uscì de la luce profondache lì splendeva: «Questa cara gioia

90sopra la quale ogne virtù si fonda,

onde ti venne?». E io: «La larga ploiade lo Spirito Santo, ch’è diffusa

93in su le vecchie e ’n su le nuove cuoia,

è silogismo che la m’ha conchiusaacutamente sì, che ’nverso d’ella

96ogne dimostrazion mi pare ottusa».

Then there came forth from the lofty light

that was shining there: “This precious jewel,

90on which every virtue is based,

where did it come to you from?” And I:

“The abundant rain of the Holy Spirit,

93poured into parchment pages old and new,

is the argument that led me to this conclusion

with such great force, that, compared with it,

96all other proof seems unconvincing to me.”

But why does Dante have faith in the scriptures? How does he know they are divinely inspired? The proof, Dante says, is in miracles, which are outside the works of nature. But how do we know these miracles happened? Peter persists. Isn’t this a circular argument?

Io udi’ poi: «L’antica e la novellaproposizion che così ti conchiude,

99perché l’hai tu per divina favella?».

E io: «La prova che ’l ver mi dischiude,son l’opere seguite, a che natura

102non scalda ferro mai né batte incude».

Risposto fummi: «Dì, chi t’assicurache quell’ opere fosser? Quel medesmo

105che vuol provarsi, non altri, il ti giura».

Then I heard: “The Old and New

Testaments that lead you to this conclusion,

99why do you take them as the word of God?”

And I: “The proof that reveals the truth to me

are the works that followed, for which nature

102never heats iron nor smites the anvil.”

The answer came: “Tell me, who guarantees

that those things really happened? The very book

105requiring proof, no other, swears it’s true.”

Dante replies that the world’s turning to Christianity without miracles is the greatest miracle of all.

«Se ’l mondo si rivolse al cristianesmo»,diss’ io, «sanza miracoli, quest’ uno

108è tal, che li altri non sono il centesmo:

ché tu intrasti povero e digiunoin campo, a seminar la buona pianta

111che fu già vite e ora è fatta pruno».

“If the world turned to Christianity,”

I said, “without miracles, then this one miracle

108is such as to outdo others more than a hundredfold:

for you came poor and hungry

into the field, to sow the good plant

111that once was a vine, and now has become a thornbush.”

As a sign of their approval of his answers, all the souls sing out Te Deum laudamus in Italian. Peter again approves, and now asks Dante to confess what he personally believes, and to tell how he came to believe it. (In the biblical account the younger disciple, John, outran Peter to Christ’s tomb, but Peter because of his faith entered the tomb first: John 20:3–8.)

«O santo padre, e spirito che vediciò che credesti sì, che tu vincesti

126ver’ lo sepulcro più giovani piedi»,

comincia’ io, «tu vuo’ ch’io manifestila forma qui del pronto creder mio,

129e anche la cagion di lui chiedesti.

E io rispondo: Io credo in uno Diosolo ed etterno, che tutto ’l ciel move,

132non moto, con amore e con disio;

e a tal creder non ho io pur provefisice e metafisice, ma dalmi

135anche la verità che quinci piove

“O holy father, and spirit who now can see

what you believed with such conviction, that

126on the way to the tomb you outstripped younger feet,”

I began, “you want me to declare

the substance here of my ready faith,

129and you also asked about the reason for it.

And I reply: I believe in one God,

sole and eternal, who, himself unmoved,

132moves all the heavens, with love and with desire.

And for this belief I have not only proofs

physical and metaphysical, but also

135the truth that rains down from here gives it to me

per Moïsè, per profeti e per salmi,per l’Evangelio e per voi che scriveste

138poi che l’ardente Spirto vi fé almi;

e credo in tre persone etterne, e questecredo una essenza sì una e sì trina,

141che soffera congiunto ‘sono’ ed ‘este’.

De la profonda condizion divinach’io tocco mo, la mente mi sigilla

144più volte l’evangelica dottrina.

Quest’ è ’l principio, quest’ è la favillache si dilata in fiamma poi vivace,

147e come stella in cielo in me scintilla».

through Moses, and the prophets and the psalms,

the Gospels and through you who wrote

138when the burning Spirit made you holy.

And I believe in three eternal persons, and I believe them

to be an essence so one and so triune,

141that ‘are’ and ‘is’ can both be used of it.

This mysterious condition of divinity

that I now touch on is imprinted on my mind

144more than once by the Gospel teaching.

This is the beginning, this is the spark

that then expands into a living flame,

147and shines within me like a star in heaven.”

Interestingly, there is only a fleeting mention of the well-known “physical and metaphysical” proofs of the existence of God based on reason, as they were famously listed by Aquinas (ls. 133–34). Note the extreme concision of con amore e con disio (l. 132): the love is God’s, it is the circling heavens which desire; the apostles are voi che scriveste (l. 137). It is striking that the kernel of Dante’s answer (ls. 130–32) uses the key words move (“moves”), amore (“love”), disio (“desire”), which will recur in the final lines of the poem. Of interest also is Dante’s grammatical gloss on the Trinity (l. 141), of which, paradoxically, one can use both a singular and plural verb. This, it has to be said, seems very much the comment of an intellectual, not of a mystic.

Peter circles three times around Dante to signal that the grilling is over. The candidate has acquitted himself with distinction.

Come ’l segnor ch’ascolta quel che i piace,da indi abbraccia il servo, gratulando

150per la novella, tosto ch’el si tace;

Like the lord who listens to a welcome message,

and then, rejoicing in the news, embraces

150the servant as soon as he falls silent;

così, benedicendomi cantando,tre volte cinse me, sì com’ io tacqui,

153l’appostolico lume al cui commando

io avea detto: sì nel dir li piacqui!

so, blessing me in his song,

the light of the apostle at whose command

153I had spoken circled me three times

when I was silent: my words so pleased him!

The famous opening lines of this canto express the heartfelt hope that one day Dante may return to the baptistery in Florence and be crowned with the poet’s laurel wreath on the very spot where he was baptised into the faith. Here, movingly, for the first time Dante uses the word poeta (hitherto reserved for the great poets of antiquity) of himself. These lines encapsulate with unmatched intensity the double perspective of the Paradiso: life on earth set against life in heaven, the pain and disappointments of the one made good in the celestial fulfilment of the other. They form a perfect opening to a canto about hope, the virtue by which Dante must have lived out his life—the hope of returning to Florence and being welcomed there as a poet, the hope of beatitude in the afterlife. Here more than ever Dante is not a generic Christian, but his historical self. These lines are a last backward glance. After this, he will look only forward.

Se mai continga che ’l poema sacroal quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,

3sì che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro,

vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serradel bello ovile ov’ io dormi’ agnello,

6nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra;

Should it ever happen that the sacred poem

to which both heaven and earth have set their hand,

3so that for many years it’s made me lean,

should overcome the cruelty that locks me out

from the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb,

6a foe now to the wolves that war against it;

con altra voce omai, con altro velloritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte

9del mio battesmo prenderò ’l cappello;

però che ne la fede, che fa contel’anime a Dio, quivi intra’ io, e poi

12Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte.

with a different voice then, with a different mantle,

I shall return a poet, and at the font

9where I was baptised, take the laurel crown;

for there I entered the faith that makes

souls known to God, and later, because of it,

12Peter circled my brow as he did.

Another flame draws closer. This is Saint James, who will examine Dante on the second theological virtue, hope. His tomb at Compostela in Galicia in northern Spain was a major site of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages, attracting pilgrims from all over Europe; it is still visited today.

Indi si mosse un lume verso noidi quella spera ond’ uscì la primizia

15che lasciò Cristo d’i vicari suoi;

e la mia donna, piena di letizia,mi disse: «Mira, mira: ecco il barone

18per cui là giù si vicita Galizia».

Then a light moved towards us

from that circle from which had come

15the first of those Christ left us as his vicars;

and my lady, full of joy, said to me:

“Look, look: here is the nobleman

18on whose account pilgrims down there visit Galicia.”

Peter and James greet each other warmly. When they fall silent, Beatrice invites James to test Dante on hope, since he himself is a symbol of it.

Dante is asked the same three questions on hope that Peter had asked on faith: What is it? How does it blossom in your mind? Where did it come to you from? Beatrice intervenes on Dante’s behalf on the second question, leaving him to answer the first and third. Hope, Dante says, is the sure and certain expectation of the resurrection, produced by divine grace and by the individual’s preceding merit.

Come discente ch’a dottor secondapronto e libente in quel ch’elli è esperto,

66perché la sua bontà si disasconda,

As a student replies to his teacher,

ready and eager in what he knows well,

66so that his expertise may be revealed,

«Spene», diss’ io, «è uno attender certode la gloria futura, il qual produce

69grazia divina e precedente merto.

“Hope,” I said, “is the certain expectation

of future glory, produced by divine grace

69and by our own preceding merit.

The source of his hope is the scriptural texts (stelle, l. 70), and especially the psalms. It was David, their author, who instilled it in his heart. The epistle of Saint James himself was another source.

Da molte stelle mi vien questa luce;ma quei la distillò nel mio cor pria

72che fu sommo cantor del sommo duce.

‘Sperino in te’, ne la sua tëodiadice, ‘color che sanno il nome tuo’:

75e chi nol sa, s’elli ha la fede mia?

Tu mi stillasti, con lo stillar suo,ne la pistola poi; sì ch’io son pieno,

78e in altrui vostra pioggia repluo».

This light comes down to me from many stars;

but the one who first infused it in my heart

72was the exalted singer of our exalted Lord.

He says in his song of praise: ‘Let those

who know your name have hope in you’:

75And who does not know it, if he has my faith?

Along with his instilling, you instilled it in me

in your epistle then; so that I am replete,

78and what you rained on me I rain on others.”

There is a further question: What is the promise that hope makes to you? Dante refers to two scriptural texts, not commonly cited in this context: both Isaiah, and John in the Book of Revelation, talk not generically of beatitude, but explicitly of the glory of the resurrected body in paradise, where body and soul are reunited. The bianche stole (“white robes”) of l. 95 are those resurrected bodies.

E io: «Le nove e le scritture antichepongon lo segno, ed esso lo mi addita,

90de l’anime che Dio s’ha fatte amiche.

Dice Isaia che ciascuna vestitane la sua terra fia di doppia vesta:

93e la sua terra è questa dolce vita;

And I: “The new and the old Scriptures

define the goal, and that points me to the promise,

90for souls that God has made his friends.

Isaiah says that each in his own land

will be clothed in a double raiment;

93and ‘his own land’ is this sweet life;

e ’l tuo fratello assai vie più digesta,là dove tratta de le bianche stole,

96questa revelazion ci manifesta».

And your brother makes this revelation

a great deal clearer to us

96where he speaks of the white robes.”

Angels mark the end of his completed examination by singing Sperent in te (“Let them hope in you”). A third extraordinarily bright light joins Peter and James in their dance. Beatrice gazes at them and explains: this is John, the apostle loved by Christ.

E come surge e va ed entra in ballovergine lieta, sol per fare onore

105a la novizia, non per alcun fallo,

così vid’ io lo schiarato splendorevenire a’ due che si volgieno a nota

108qual conveniesi al loro ardente amore.

Misesi lì nel canto e ne la rota;e la mia donna in lor tenea l’aspetto,

111pur come sposa tacita e immota.

«Questi è colui che giacque sopra ’l pettodel nostro pellicano, e questi fue

114di su la croce al grande officio eletto».

And as a happy maiden rises and moves forward

and joins the dance, only to honour the bride,

105not for any reason worthy of blame,

so I saw that splendour grown more bright

come to the two who were spinning to their own song,

108just as befitted the ardour of their love.

He joined there in the song and in the dance;

and my lady kept her gaze fixed on them,

111like a bride who stands silent and motionless.

“This is the man who lay upon the breast

of our own pelican, and he is the one

114who from the cross was chosen for the great task.”

The pelican is a traditional image of Christ. Reputed to peck its own breast to draw blood to feed its young, it is a symbol of Christ’s self-sacrifice. John leaned on Jesus at the Last Supper, and was chosen by Christ on the cross to care for Mary (John 13:23; John 19:27). Dante looks hard, trying to make out John’s body. A legend had it that John’s body was taken to heaven with his soul. John explains that, on the contrary, his body has turned to dust on earth. Until the Day of Judgment only Christ and Mary possess both body and soul in heaven. Dante turns back to Beatrice and is shaken when, dazzled by John’s brightness, he cannot see her.

Ahi quanto ne la mente mi commossi,quando mi volsi per veder Beatrice,

138per non poter veder, benché io fossi

presso di lei, e nel mondo felice!

Ah, how troubled was I in my mind,

when I turned back to look at Beatrice,

138at not being able to see her, even though

I was near to her, and in the happy world!

Dante, temporarily blinded, hears john’s voice posing his first question: What is the final goal your soul aims at? This is in effect a request for a definition of love, paralleling the similar requests made about faith and hope. Then John offers reassurance that Beatrice will be able to restore his sight, since her glance has curative power.

Mentr’ io dubbiava per lo viso spento,de la fulgida fiamma che lo spense

3uscì un spiro che mi fece attento,

dicendo: «Intanto che tu ti risensede la vista che haï in me consunta,

6ben è che ragionando la compense.

Comincia dunque; e dì ove s’appuntal’anima tua, e fa ragion che sia

9la vista in te smarrita e non defunta:

perché la donna che per questa diaregïon ti conduce, ha ne lo sguardo

12la virtù ch’ebbe la man d’Anania».

While I was fearful at my loss of sight,

from the resplendent flame that blinded me

3there breathed a voice that captured my attention,

saying: “While you are recovering

your sense of sight that you consumed in me,

6it’s right that you make good its loss by talking.

Begin then; tell me what your soul is set on,

and be assured that your sight

9is confounded but it is not lost forever:

for the lady who guides you through

this holy region has in her glance

12the power the hand of Ananias had.”

Ananias, a disciple of Christ’s, had been sent to cure Saul of his blindness (Acts 9:10–18). Dante replies that his soul is set on God, the beginning and end of all his love.

Lo ben che fa contenta questa corte,Alfa e O è di quanta scrittura

18mi legge Amore o lievemente o forte».

The Good that makes this court content

is the Alpha and Omega of all the lessons

18Love teaches me, whether softly or loudly.”

But John says he wants a more fine-grained explanation: Who is responsible? Who made you aim at that target?

Quella medesma voce che pauratolta m’avea del sùbito abbarbaglio,

21di ragionare ancor mi mise in cura;

e disse: «Certo a più angusto vaglioti conviene schiarar: dicer convienti

24chi drizzò l’arco tuo a tal berzaglio».

That same voice that had taken away

my fear at my sudden blindness

21again gave me a desire to speak;

and said: “For sure, you must sift

with a finer sieve in explaining: you must say

24who aimed your bow at such a target.”

Dante refines his first response, citing both philosophical arguments from reason and authoritative texts. The argument from reason is that the greater good draws the greater love.

E io: «Per filosofici argomentie per autorità che quinci scende

27cotale amor convien che in me si ’mprenti:

ché ’l bene, in quanto ben, come s’intende,così accende amore, e tanto maggio

30quanto più di bontate in sé comprende.

Dunque a l’essenza ov’ è tanto avvantaggio,che ciascun ben che fuor di lei si trova

33altro non è ch’un lume di suo raggio,

And I: “By philosophical arguments

and by the authority that descends from here

27such love must needs imprint itself in me:

for the good, as soon as it’s known for what it is,

kindles love for itself, and all the more so,

30the more it contains of goodness in itself.

Therefore the essence that so surpasses all others

that every good outside it

33is nothing but a reflection of its radiance,

più che in altra convien che si movala mente, amando, di ciascun che cerne

36il vero in che si fonda questa prova.

must necessarily attract most love

in the mind of any man who discerns

36the truth on which this reasoning is based.

Dante then lists his authorities: Aristotle (ls. 37–39); God speaking to Moses (ls. 40–42); and finally John himself in the opening of his Gospel and in the Book of Revelation (ls. 43–45). Aristotle held that the heavens, governed by the intelligences, are moved by their love for the prime mover, which itself does not move.

Tal vero a l’intelletto mïo sternecolui che mi dimostra il primo amore

39di tutte le sustanze sempiterne.

Sternel la voce del verace autore,che dice a Moïsè, di sé parlando:

42‘Io ti farò vedere ogne valore’.

Sternilmi tu ancora, incominciandol’alto preconio che grida l’arcano

45di qui là giù sovra ogne altro bando».

The man who demonstrates the primal love

of all the everlasting substances

39proclaims this truth to my understanding.

The voice of the truthful Author proclaims it,

when he says to Moses, speaking of himself:

42‘I will make you see all goodness.’

You too proclaim it to me, when you begin

your lofty announcement that heralds the mystery

45of heaven, on earth, louder than any other.”

John accepts Dante’s answer, but wants more detail: What are the cords that draw you? The teeth of love that bite you?

E io udi’: «Per intelletto umanoe per autoritadi a lui concorde

48d’i tuoi amori a Dio guarda il sovrano.

Ma dì ancor se tu senti altre cordetirarti verso lui, sì che tu suone

51con quanti denti questo amor ti morde».

And then I heard: “Through human intellect

and through authorities that concur with it,

48the highest of your loves is turned to God.

But tell me as well if you feel any other cords

that draw you to him, so that you declare

51with how many teeth this love bites you.”

Dante understands where John is leading the argument. He elaborates on the striking notion of the “bites” with which love has made him turn to God. Arguments from reason and authoritative texts are not enough. The “cords” that drag him and the “bites” that urge him on are creation, redemption and the promise of eternal glory. These are the things that have drawn him from the sea of perverse love to the shore of good love. When he finishes, the whole assembly, along with Beatrice, sings the Sanctus in Italian.

Non fu latente la santa intenzionede l’aguglia di Cristo, anzi m’accorsi

54dove volea menar mia professione.

Però ricominciai: «Tutti quei morsiche posson far lo cor volgere a Dio,

57a la mia caritate son concorsi:

ché l’essere del mondo e l’esser mio,la morte ch’el sostenne perch’ io viva,

60e quel che spera ogne fedel com’ io,

con la predetta conoscenza viva,tratto m’hanno del mar de l’amor torto,

63e del diritto m’han posto a la riva.

Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’ortode l’ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto

66quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto».

Sì com’ io tacqui, un dolcissimo cantorisonò per lo cielo, e la mia donna

69dicea con li altri: «Santo, santo, santo!».

The holy intention of Christ’s eagle

was not hidden; rather, I realised

54where he wanted to lead my declaration.

So I began again: “All those bites

that can make the heart turn to God

57came together in arousing my love:

for the existence of the world and my own existence,

the death he suffered so that I might live,

60and that which every believer hopes for as I do,

along with the living knowledge of which I spoke,

have drawn me from the sea of twisted love,

63and placed me on the shore of the love that is straight.

As for the leaves with which the whole garden

of the eternal gardener is in leaf, I love them

66in proportion to the good borne from him to them.”

As I fell silent, a sweetest song

resounded through heaven, and my lady

69sang along with the others: “Holy, holy, holy!”

Dante’s sight is restored, now more powerful than ever, and he asks about a fourth light that has joined them. Beatrice tells him that this is Adam. The urgency of Dante’s eagerness to speak to Adam is reflected in his involuntary movement, like a tree in a gust of wind:

e quasi stupefatto domandai

81d’un quarto lume ch’io vidi tra noi.

E la mia donna: «Dentro da quei raivagheggia il suo fattor l’anima prima

84che la prima virtù creasse mai».

Come la fronda che flette la cimanel transito del vento, e poi si leva

87per la propria virtù che la soblima,

fec’ io in tanto in quant’ ella diceva,stupendo, e poi mi rifece sicuro

90un disio di parlare ond’ ïo ardeva.

and almost dazed with wonder I enquired

81about a fourth light that I saw among us.

And my lady: “Within those rays,

the first soul ever made by the first power

84gazes lovingly at his maker.”

Like a leafy branch that bends its tip

in a gust of wind, and then springs back

87as its natural resilience lifts it up,

so did I, in amazement, as she was talking,

and then a desire to speak that was burning in me

90restored my confidence.

And now he talks, with profound veneration, directly to Adam, the father of the human race.

E cominciai: «O pomo che maturosolo prodotto fosti, o padre antico

93a cui ciascuna sposa è figlia e nuro,

divoto quanto posso a te supplìcoperché mi parli: tu vedi mia voglia,

96e per udirti tosto non la dico».

And I began: “O only fruit produced

already ripe, O ancient father, to whom

93every bride is daughter and daughter-in-law,

as devoutly as I can, I beg you

to speak to me: you see what I want to know,

96and to hear you all the sooner, I’ll not say it.”

Adam has direct access to Dante’s thoughts in the mind of God, and formulates Dante’s questions for him: How long is it since he was in the earthly paradise? How long did he remain there? What was the cause of God’s anger? And what language did he speak?

Tu vuogh udir quant’ è che Dio mi puosene l’eccelso giardino, ove costei

111a così lunga scala ti dispuose,

e quanto fu diletto a li occhi miei,e la propria cagion del gran disdegno,

114e l’idïoma ch’usai e che fei.

You want to hear how long it is since God

placed me in the lofty garden, where this lady

111prepared you for this long ascent,

and how long did my eyes delight in it,

and the true cause of his great wrath,

114and the language that I used and that I made.

Adam first answers the third question, clarifying the exact nature of the transgression that caused God’s wrath and the banishment from Eden. It was not the eating of the apple, but the act of disobedience, of consciously going beyond the limit set by God, that was punished.

Or, figluol mio, non il gustar del legnofu per sé la cagion di tanto essilio,

117ma solamente il trapassar del segno.

Now, my son, the tasting of the tree

was not in itself the cause of such long exile,

117but only the going beyond the mark.

The answer to the first question (how long since he was in the earthly paradise) is a simple mathematical calculation, which Adam provides: he spent 4,302 years in limbo, and lived for 930 years. If we add to this the 1,266 years he has spent in heaven since the harrowing of hell, we get a total of 6,498 years.

And now Adam answers the fourth question, the one about language. This, revealingly, is the longest answer by far. He starts with a fact of history, follows with a philosophical generalisation about the nature of language and its relation to the passage of time, and finally gives some concrete detail to illustrate this point:

La lingua ch’io parlai fu tutta spentainnanzi che a l’ovra inconsummabile

126fosse la gente di Nembròt attenta:

ché nullo effetto mai razïonabile,per lo piacere uman che rinovella

129seguendo il cielo, sempre fu durabile.

The language that I spoke had all died out

before Nimrod’s people set their minds

126to the task that could never be completed:

for no product of human reason

lasts forever, because of human tastes

129that change as the heavens turn.

This is a key change of mind for Dante. He had believed, and argued at length in his treatise on the art of writing in the vernacular, De vulgari eloquentia, that language was God-given and immutable. Adam had been given not just the faculty of speech, but the structures and forms of the language he spoke. That language (Hebrew) had been spoken until the hubris of human beings led them to attempt to reach heaven by building the Tower of Babel. The punishment for that infraction was the confusion of tongues. The labourers working on the construction of the tower could no longer communicate with one another, and the enterprise foundered. The direct result of this is the multiplicity of vernaculars we have in the world.

But Dante now sees things differently. His new understanding is articulated by none other than Adam himself, the first speaker, better placed to know than any later philosopher or expert on linguistics. Adam explains that he was given the faculty of language, but the language he spoke was his own creation. Language change is a natural part of human life and history, its nature reflecting what human beings are and the way they live in the world. Like all other human institutions, language changes with time and place. He illustrates language change over time by a concrete example, the various names given to God over the generations.

Opera naturale è ch’uom favella;ma così o così, natura lascia

132poi fare a voi secondo che v’abbella.

Pria ch’i’ scendessi a l’infernale ambascia,I s’appellava in terra il sommo bene

135onde vien la letizia che mi fascia;

e El si chiamò poi: e ciò convene,ché l’uso d’i mortali è come fronda

138in ramo, che sen va e altra vene.

It is part of his nature that man speaks;

but whether this way or that, nature leaves to you,

132allowing you to follow your own pleasure.

Before I went down to the anguish of hell,

I was the name given on earth to the supreme Good,

135from whom comes the joy that enfolds me;

and later he was called El; and that is as it should be,

for the customs of mortals are like leaves

138on a branch, one falls and another takes its place.

In the final lines of the canto Adam answers the question about how long he remained in the earthly paradise before his expulsion. He tells Dante he was there for not more than seven hours, from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m.

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this scene. The exchange with Adam—the last human being Dante encounters in the afterlife—sets the seal on his new understanding of human language. It is the product of a lifetime’s reflection on the material of his craft—a lifetime of thinking about and using language in poetry. It underlies the poetic practice of the Commedia in two ways. It justifies the choice of what we call Italian, instead of Latin, for an ambitious work; and it justifies the variety of languages and linguistic levels exploited within the poem.

There is a story that Dante began writing the Commedia in Latin but then switched to the vernacular. Latin was the language of an educated elite. It was the language of all serious intellectual endeavour: philosophy, theology, science, even poetry. It was believed to be an artificially created language, formed in the aftermath of Babel to counter the instability of natural languages, and to guarantee some kind of permanence. It was only a hundred years after Dante died that the early Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini concluded what to us today seems obvious, that the Romance languages are descended from Latin.

Why did Dante choose to write the Commedia in the vernacular? He was well aware of the boldness of his choice. In his treatise Convivio he had listed the readers he hoped to find by writing prose on serious subjects in the vernacular. He was writing not just for the educated, he said, but for “princes, barons, knights, and many other noble people, not only men but women. . . . ” Reaching the widest possible audience had been his aim then, as it is now. The vernacular is accessible to everyone. As the dedicatory letter to the Paradiso says, even mulierculae (“womenfolk,” “lowly women”) use and understand it.

The vernacular is the language of prophecy and poetry. The prophet must speak to people in their own language if he is to be understood. In the very next canto, Saint Peter will set the seal on Dante’s prophetic mission, to tell the world about the wrongs of the papacy and the need for radical reform. To speak to the people the poet must use a language that all can understand, a language that is alive, not rule-bound like Latin, or God-given, like Hebrew. The use of the vernacular powers Dante’s creativity as a poet exploring all the expressive possibilities of human language.

Adam has given Dante the theoretical underpinning for writing the Commedia in his mother tongue. It is commonly said that Dante “invented” Italian. In a way, he did. Out of the multiplicity of vernacular forms spoken in Italy in the fourteenth century, he created the form that would become standard Italian. It became standard Italian because of the Commedia. Dante might well say, echoing Adam: la lingua ch’io usai e ch’io fei, “the language that I used and that I made.”

All the souls of the blessed sing the gloria to the Trinity, with such sweetness that it seems, in a memorable phrase, like a “smile of the universe” (ls. 4–5), as though the universe itself is smiling. Dante feels intoxicated at the sound and the sight.

‘Al Padre, al Figlio, a lo Spirito Santo’,cominciò, ‘gloria!’, tutto ’l paradiso,

3sì che m’inebrïava il dolce canto.

Ciò ch’io vedeva mi sembiava un risode l’universo; per che mia ebbrezza

6intrava per l’udire e per lo viso.

Oh gioia! oh ineffabile allegrezza!oh vita intègra d’amore e di pace!

9oh sanza brama sicura ricchezza!

“To the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit,

glory!” began the whole of paradise,

3so that the sweet song intoxicated me.

What I saw seemed to me to be

the universe smiling; so my intoxication

6came in through hearing and through sight.

O joy! o happiness beyond words!

o life made whole in love and peace!

9o riches unfailing, free of craving!

This moment of rapt contemplation is brief. Peter changes colour, growing red with indignation as he launches into a bitter invective denouncing the current Pope, Boniface VIII. As he talks, all the souls grow red, as does Beatrice; the sky darkens as it did at the moment of the crucifixion.

Peter’s words express outrage. Satan himself, at the centre of the earth in hell, feels satisfaction at the degenerate state of the papacy.

Quelli ch’usurpa in terra il luogo mio,il luogo mio, il luogo mio, che vaca

24ne la presenza del Figliuol di Dio,

fatt’ ha del cimitero mio cloacadel sangue e de la puzza; onde ’l perverso

27che cadde di qua sù, là giù si placa».

He who on earth usurps my place,

my place, my place which stands

24vacant in the eyes of the Son of God,

has made of my burial ground a sewer

of blood and stench; at which the evil one,

27who fell from up here, down there feels satisfaction.”

The emphatic repetition of il luogo mio calls to mind the three-times-repeated templum Domini of the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:8). Peter’s voice is now as changed as his colour as he continues: it was not his aim, nor that of his martyred successors, that the church should amass wealth; nor that the pope should split his flock into two warring parties; nor that the papal keys should become the emblem of a political faction; nor that popes should sell indulgences under the seal on which Peter’s own likeness appears. This is a devastating attack by its founder on every aspect of the papacy in the modern world—its naked greed and opportunism, its political divisiveness, the perversion of its founding principles.

«Non fu la sposa di Cristo allevatadel sangue mio, di Lin, di quel di Cleto,

42per essere ad acquisto d’oro usata;

ma per acquisto d’esto viver lietoe Sisto e Pïo e Calisto e Urbano

45sparser lo sangue dopo molto fleto.

Non fu nostra intenzion ch’a destra manod’i nostri successor parte sedesse,

48parte da l’altra del popol cristiano;

né che le chiavi che mi fuor concesse,divenisser signaculo in vessillo

51che contra battezzati combattesse;

“The bride of Christ was not nourished

on my blood, and that of Linus and of Cletus,

42to be used for the gaining of gold;

but for the gaining of this joyous life

Sixtus and Pius and Calixtus and Urban

45shed their blood after much weeping.

It was not our intention that one part

of the Christian flock should sit on the right hand

48of our successors, and one part on the left;

nor that the keys that were entrusted to me

should become an emblem on a banner

51that fought against the baptised;

né ch’io fossi figura di sigilloa privilegi venduti e mendaci,

54ond’ io sovente arrosso e disfavillo.

nor that I should be a figure on a seal

for privileges sold and falsified,

54so that I often blush with shame and rage.

Echoing scriptural texts, he continues: the clergy are no longer shepherds of their flock; they have become rapacious wolves (Matthew 7:15; Jeremiah 23:1). Why does God delay his vengeance? He foresees that two popes in the near future, both Frenchmen, will continue this shamelessly self-serving misconduct. Clement V (1305–14) was a native of Gascony; John XXII (1316–34) came from Cahors, in southern France. Clement transferred the papacy to Avignon. Cahors, we know, was a byword for usury.

In vesta di pastor lupi rapacisi veggion di qua sù per tutti i paschi:

57o difesa di Dio, perché pur giaci?

Del sangue nostro Caorsini e Guaschis’apparecchian di bere: o buon principio,

60a che vil fine convien che tu caschi!

Rapacious wolves in shepherds’ clothing

can be seen, from here above, in all the pastures:

57O God our defence, why do you still sleep?

Men from Cahors and Gascony

prepare to drink our blood: O good beginning,

60to what base end are you destined to fall!

But providence will come to their aid soon. Dante, who will return to earth, must speak out, and tell the truth about what he has seen. This is a solemn moment.

Beatrice in Purgatorio 32, l. 103 had told him that he must speak in pro del mondo che mal vive (“for the benefit of the world that lives badly”); Cacciaguida had told him to report truthfully on what he has seen in the afterlife, assuring him that his words will provide vital nodrimento (“vital nourishment,” canto 17, l. 131) to the erring world; now Saint Peter himself, with starthng directness (apri la bocca: “open your mouth,” l. 65), is saying the same thing.

A triad of souls beyond the grave has invested Dante with his mission as prophet to a world gone wrong. Like the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, commissioned by God to speak out against the abuses of their times, he will speak truth to the powerful and the corrupt. The opening lines of the Commedia had indeed echoed Isaiah’s words: in dimidio dierum meorum vadam ad portas inferi (“In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of hell,” Isaiah 38:10). Dante will fulfil his role as prophet through his poetry. His mortal pondo (l. 64) is his earthly body, the burden of his mortality.

Ma l’alta provedenza, che con Scipiodifese a Roma la gloria del mondo,

63soccorrà tosto, sì com’ io concipio;

e tu, figliuol, che per lo mortal pondoancor giù tornerai, apri la bocca,

66e non asconder quel ch’io non ascondo».

But lofty providence, that with Scipio

in Rome defended the glory of the world,

63will come to our aid soon, as I conceive;

and you, my son, who because of your mortal burden

will go back down there again,

66speak out, and do not hide what I don’t hide.”

Like a snowfall in reverse, all the souls now make their way back upwards to the Empyrean, from where they had come down in Paradiso 23, l. 19. Dante watches until they disappear from sight.

Beatrice now invites him to look downwards, to take on board the great arc he has covered as he has circled through the sky while he has been in the constellation of Gemini. This is a magical moment: he looks up to paradise, and then down to earth, taking in his destination and his departure point.

Onde la donna, che mi vide assoltode l’attendere in sù, mi disse: «Adima

78il viso e guarda come tu se’ vòlto».

Whereupon my lady, who saw me freed

from gazing upwards, said to me: “Cast your sight down,

78and see how great the arc that you have covered.”

This is Dante’s second look downwards into the revolving universe. When, at Beatrice’s invitation, he had last looked down, he had been over Jerusalem (canto 22, ls. 128–35); now he is over Cadiz. His trajectory has inscribed an arc through the skies, moving 90 degrees westwards. In one direction he can see out into the Atlantic. In the other, he can see nearly to the coast of Asia Minor (Europa, l. 84, had been carried off by the bull and deposited on Phoenicia, Metamorphoses II, 833–75). The sun is more than one sign of the zodiac ahead of Dante, in Aries, with Taurus in between them.

Da l’ora ch’ïo avea guardato primai’ vidi mosso me per tutto l’arco

81che fa dal mezzo al fine il primo clima;

sì ch’io vedea di là da Gade il varcofolle d’Ulisse, e di qua presso il lito

84nel qual si fece Europa dolce carco.

E più mi fora discoverto il sitodi questa aiuola; ma ’l sol procedea

87sotto i mie’ piedi un segno e più partito.

I saw that since the time I’d first looked down

I’d moved through the whole arc

81the first zone makes from its midpoint to its end;

so that beyond Cadiz I could see the mad path

of Ulysses, and on this side nearly to the coast

84on which Europa became a sweet burden.

And even more of this small patch of earth

would have been revealed to me; but the sun was moving on

87beneath my feet, one sign and more ahead of me.

These two downward glances enclose the whole episode of Dante’s testing on the three virtues and Peter’s invective. He sees the varco folle d’Ulisse, “the mad path of Ulysses”: a reminder of how badly wrong things could have gone. He turns back to look at Beatrice, who is more beautiful than ever. As he gazes at her, he is transported out of Gemini (“the lovely nest of Leda,” l. 98) in the sphere of the fixed stars, and into the primum mobile (“the swiftest heaven”). As always, it is gazing into her eyes that propels him.

La mente innamorata, che donneacon la mia donna sempre, di ridure

90ad essa li occhi più che mai ardea;

e se natura o arte fé pastureda pigliare occhi, per aver la mente,

93in carne umana o ne le sue pitture,

The mind in love, which always woos my

lady,

burned more than ever

90to look back on her;

and if nature or art ever created such baits,

in human flesh or in paintings of it,

93to lure the eyes, and so possess the mind,

tutte adunate, parrebber nïentever’ lo piacer divin che mi refulse,

96quando mi volsi al suo viso ridente.

E la virtù che lo sguardo m’indulse,del bel nido di Leda mi divelse,

99e nel ciel velocissimo m’impulse.

all these together would seem nothing

compared with the divine beauty that shone on me,

96when I turned back to her smiling face.

And the power that her gaze bestowed on me,

plucked me from the lovely nest of Leda,

99and thrust me into the swiftest heaven of all.

This is the point in the story at which he leaves time behind. There could be no better moment, then, for Beatrice to explain the nature of time. The primum mobile is moved directly by God and gives all the other spheres their movement. It is thus the source of time, which is marked out in our world by the movements of the spheres.

Ma ella, che vedëa ’l mio disire,incominciò, ridendo tanto lieta,

105che Dio parea nel suo volto gioire:

«La natura del mondo, che quïetail mezzo e tutto l’altro intorno move,

108quinci comincia come da sua meta;

e questo cielo non ha altro doveche la mente divina, in che s’accende

111l’amor che ’l volge e la virtù ch’ei piove.

Luce e amor d’un cerchio lui comprende,sì come questo li altri; e quel precinto

114colui che ’l cinge solamente intende.

Non è suo moto per altro distinto,ma li altri son mensurati da questo,

117sì come diece da mezzo e da quinto;

But she, who could see my desire,

began to speak, smiling so happily

105that God seemed to be rejoicing in her face:

“The nature of the world, which holds

its centre still and moves all the rest around it,

108begins from here as from its starting point;

and this heaven has no other where

than in the mind of God, in which is kindled

111the love that turns it and the power it rains down.

Light and love contain it in a circle,

as it contains the others; and only he

114who girds it understands that girding.

Its motion is not measured by another,

but other motions take their measure from it,

117as ten is measured by its half and fifth;

e come il tempo tegna in cotal testole sue radici e ne li altri le fronde,

120omai a te può esser manifesto.

and now it will be clear to you how

time has its roots in this vessel

120and its branches and leaves in the other heavens.

The primum mobile is in the mind of God. Time stretches out from the primum mobile through the universe. In Dante’s image it is an inverted tree, whose roots are in the primum mobile—testo (l. 118) is literally a flowerpot—and whose fronde, its branches and leaves (the years, months, days by which time is measured), are in the other spheres with their circling planets. The source for this arresting image is Aristotle’s Physics IV, 10–13, cited by Dante in Convivio IV, ii, 6.

But now Beatrice moves on from the philosophical question (what is time?) to a more pressing concern: human decline over time, a woefully concrete manifestation of its passing. Human beings are born with an innate disposition to will the good, but greed leads them astray. In another horticultural image, they make a good start, they produce promising-looking blossom, but they don’t go on to form sound, healthy fruit. Childhood innocence doesn’t last long, not even into adolescence.

Oh cupidigia che i mortali affondesì sotto te, che nessuno ha podere

123di trarre li occhi fuor de le the onde!

Ben fiorisce ne li uomini il volere;ma la pioggia continüa converte

126in bozzacchioni le sosine vere.

Fede e innocenza son repertesolo ne’ parvoletti; poi ciascuna

129pria fugge che le guance sian coperte.

Tale, balbuzïendo ancor, digiuna,che poi divora, con la lingua sciolta,

132qualunque cibo per qualunque luna;

O greed, you who plunge mortals

so deep beneath you, that none has the power

123to raise his eyes above your waves!

The will of human beings makes healthy blossom;

but continuous rain turns

126good plums into blighted ones.

Faith and innocence are found

only in little children; then both are gone,

129before their cheeks grow beards.

One child, still babbling, observes fast days;

later, when he can talk properly, he devours

132any food whatsoever in any month;

e tal, balbuzïendo, ama e ascoltala madre sua, che, con loquela intera,

135disïa poi di vederla sepolta.

another, still babbling, loves and heeds

his mother; later, when his speech is fluent,