If the punctuation here is as Dante left it, this is the longest single-sentence canto-opening in the poem. See the note to Paradiso VIII.1-12 for other cantos marked by lengthy openings. This is also the longest address to the reader in the entire poem, if it is an indirect one (marked by the thrice-uttered hortatory subjunctive “imagini” [let him imagine] in vv. 1, 7, and 10). (In its triple exhortation it mirrors the third address to the reader at Par. X.7-15. See the note thereto.) And thus here we have another (cf. Par. XI.1-3) “pseudo-apostrophe” beginning a canto in the heaven of the Sun. [This part of this note revised 24 August 2013; see the revised note to Par. IX.10-12.]

See Alison Cornish (“I miti biblici, la sapienza di Salomone e le arti magiche,” in Dante: mito e poesia. Atti del secondo Seminario dantesco internazionale, ed. M. Picone and T. Crivelli [Florence: Cesati, 1999], pp. 391-403) on this passage and its relation to Solomon's association with the “magical arts”; see also her related study (Reading Dante's Stars [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000]), pp. 93-107.

Dante's reconstruction of two perfect twelve-studded circles (each of which he has already seen and described in the immediately preceding cantos [Par. X.64-69; XII.1-21]) into apparently fanciful constituent groupings has, understandably, drawn some perplexed attention. (It is perhaps difficult not to think of the role that the poet assumes as being analogous to that of the geomancers, Purg. XIX.4-6, who similarly construct their “Fortuna Major” out of existing constellations.) What is the reason, we might wonder, for the numbering of the three sub-groups as fifteen, seven, and two to equal twenty-four? For Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), this is a rare case of Dante's taste for arid preciosity (un preziosismo tutto intellettualistico). On the other hand, we may see in it a playful emblem for what Dante flirts with admitting he is up to: building a synthetic poetic universe, parallel to the real one, but expressible in new terms. In any case, the fifteen brightest stars found in the eighth heaven are to be imagined as being conjoined with all the seven that make up the Big Dipper and with two from the Little Dipper (see the note to vv. 13-15), thus representing the twenty-four “stars” to whom we have already been introduced. In order to formulate a reason for the fifteen in the first group, Francesco da Buti points out (comm. to vv. 1-21) that Alfraganus, in the nineteenth chapter of his Elementa astronomica, says that in the eighth sphere there are precisely fifteen stars of the first magnitude (i.e., in brightness and size). Niccolò Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 4-6) cites Ptolemy's Almagest for the same information (first referred to in this context by Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 1-6]), adding the detail that these fifteen may be found situated variously in either hemisphere. However, that there should be nine in the last two groupings, both of which are associated with locating the position of the North Star, may reveal the design of a plan. As we have seen (Par. II.7-9), the Pole Star stands in for divine guidance; thus here the twin circles of Christian sapience are associated both with divine intellectual purpose and with the number that represents Beatrice, who is more clearly associated with the Wisdom of God, Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, than with anything else.

For a probably over-ingenious attempt to “allegorize” the details of Dante's three groups of stars into nine “Italian” theologians and fifteen of “European” birth, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 1-27).

This self-conscious literary gesture seeks to involve us as co-conspirators in manufacturing a substitute solar system. We, as “secondary artists,” are asked to collaborate, making ourselves responsible for literalizing the details of Dante's vision and keeping them in memory. It is really a quite extraordinary request, even in a poem that perhaps asks for more involvement on the part of its reader than any fictive work in Western literary history before Don Quijote.

The Wain is Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, close enough to the Pole Star never to leave the Northern Hemisphere.

See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses) for the following explanation of what is surely the most convoluted element in an already convoluted passage: Dante asks us to imagine two stars of the Little Dipper farthest from its tip as the bell of a trumpet for which the Pole Star (at that tip) is the mouthpiece. This last point intersects, according to Dante (forcing the issue to his own purpose, according to Porena [comm. to vv. 10-12]), with the Primum Mobile. The universe is thus conceived as a gigantic wheel, with a diameter running between our earth and the Crystalline Sphere (even if, as Porena points out, the situation of the North Star in the eighth sphere precludes its having contact with the ninth).

The daughter of Minos here referred to is Ariadne. Her “crown” refers to the garland taken from her head by Bacchus after she died, having been abandoned by Theseus. Bacchus placed it in the heavens, where it is known as the Corona Borealis (see Ovid, Metam. VIII.174-182). Dante compares it, a single thing, to a double rainbow. That the poet refers to Ariadne as herself being translated to the heavens, and not only her garland of flowers, has troubled some commentators. However, in a sort of reverse metonymy, Dante has given the whole for the part; he clearly wants us to think of Ariadne's garland as representing a circle of saints - twice. In the last canto (Par. XII.12), Juno's handmaid (the unnamed Iris) is doubled in the sky, just as here Minos's daughter (the unnamed Ariadne) is.

For a discussion of the several possible Ovidian sources of these verses, see Ronald L. Martinez (“Ovid's Crown of Stars [Paradiso XIII.1-27],” in Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality, ed. Madison U. Sowell [Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991], pp. 123-38): Ars I.525-564; Metam. VIII.174-182; Fasti III.459-516. That the canto eventually finds its fullest expression of its central theme in Daedalus's trembling hand (see discussion in the note to vv. 67-78), an object that probably has its source in the next episode in Ovid (Metam. VIII.183-235), tends to strengthen the case for the aptness of the citation from that same locus here.

Still another troubled tercet. The first difficulty that it presents is fairly easy to resolve: Does the second circle extend beyond the first or does it stand within it? Most commentators sensibly take the first view, since the third circle clearly is wider than the second (Par. XIV.74-75), which at least implies that the second is wider than the first and, indeed, contains it. The really obdurate problem, on the other hand, is how to construe verse 18. If one says “one went first and then the other followed” (as we translate the line), the meaning is that one of the circles only begins to move after the other does (and probably the first is followed by the second). This hypothesis is seconded by the rhyme position of the word poi, used for the only time in the poem as a substantive, a usage that pretty clearly is forced by rhyme. What would Dante have said had he been writing parole sciolte (words not bound by meter – see Inf. XXVIII.1), and not been constrained by the need to rhyme? A good case can be made for “secondo” (i.e., next). And for this reason, we have translated the line as we have. See also Remo Fasani (“Canto XIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 194), buttressing this position with the early gloss of Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 1-21). Nevertheless, a strong and continuing tradition (including such worthies as Cristoforo Landino [comm. to verse 18] and Alessandro Vellutello [comm. to vv. 16-21]) sees the verse as meaning that the circles move in opposite directions. Countering this position, Trifon Gabriele (comm. to verse 18), maintains that the line refers to the sequence of movements, as does Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet), who refers to the similar locution found at Convivio IV.ii.6:.“Lo tempo... è 'numero di movimento secondo prima e poi'” (Time... is “number and motion with respect to before and after” [Dante is citing Aristotle, Physics IV], tr. R. Lansing). Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) reviews the various shadings of the two major construings and throws up his hands, leaving the matter unresolved and passing on to other things. In the next thirty-five years most who dealt with the problem followed Landino's solution. Then, after centuries of inconclusive debate, refusing to choose between the two established and conflicting views, Trucchi (comm. to this tercet) came up with a new hypothesis: Since the two concentric circles move so that the rays sent out by each reflect one another perfectly (he was thinking of facing pairs, Thomas and Bonaventure, Siger and Joachim, etc.), the circles, since they are of different extent, to maintain this unwavering relationship between themselves, must move at different speeds. Giacalone (comm. to this tercet) shares Trucchi's view, but credits Buti's less clear statement (comm. to vv. 1-21) with having prepared the way.

What Dante asks the reader to be aware of seeing is l'ombra de la vera / costellazione (the “shadow of the real constellation” – cf. the similar phrases: “l'ombra del beato regno” [the shadow of the blessèd kingdom] – Par. I.23; “di lor vero umbriferi prefazi” [shadowy prefaces of their truth] – Par. XXX.78). Here the reference to the vera costellazione has a similar typological rhythm: What Dante saw yields to its realer version, the two circles of moving, singing saints in their “double dance” (a phrase forced into service by some modern commentators in order to argue that the two circles are moving in opposite directions, while it does not necessarily contain any such meaning).

Now the purpose of our “imagining” along with Dante that starry construct becomes clear: the reality to which it corresponds is as far beyond our conceiving as the circling of the Primum Mobile exceeds in speed the movement of the Chiana, a sluggish stream in Tuscany that turned to marsh in some places, probably referred to, without being named, in Inferno XXIX.46-49.

In those two circles the souls were celebrating the triune God and, in the Person of Christ, His human nature as well (a song beyond our mortal understanding), not Bacchus or Apollo (songs all too understandable to us). The word Peana may either refer to cries of praise to Apollo or, as seems more likely here, to the god himself.

For the program of song in the last cantica, see the note to Paradiso XXI.58-60.

This part of the canto comes to a close with the souls turning their attention from their celebration of their Trinitarian God, in dance and song, to dealing with Dante's doubts, a process that also brings them pleasure. They shift their attention from Dante's first question (rephrased at Par. XI.25), now answered, to his second (see Par. XIII.89).

This whole section has the characteristics of being an epitome of Dante's primary task as an artist, to mediate between the divine and the human. God's immediate creation is gradually revealing itself to him, and he is putting it into art that we can understand, even if it is not precisely as His, but an approximation.

Thomas, who is identified as the one who had narrated the life of Francis, as circumlocutory as ever, refers to his having answered Dante's first question (see Par. X.91-93) and now prepares (finally) to deal with the second.

The word numi, a hapax and a Latinism (from numen), here means “divinities” (translated as “holy souls”). It seems to owe its presence to the exigencies of rhyme.

Thomas's agricultural metaphor combines pedantic heaviness with one perhaps surprising touch: affection.

The word paglia (straw) occurs once in each cantica, Inferno XXIII.66, Purgatorio XVIII.93, and here.

Thomas corrects Dante's misprision of what he had told him about Solomon in Canto X. Reduced to its core, this is what he conveys to the protagonist: “You believe that God, when he created Adam and (the human part of) Christ, gave each of them as much intellect as it was possible to create in a human being; if that is so, you wonder, how can I have said that Solomon's intelligence never was bettered by another's? I will now clear up your confusion.”

Metonymic periphrasis abounds in these lines about Adam and Eve and Jesus, respectively identified by his rib cage, her pretty face and fatal appetite, and His rib cage. Dante treats the “wound” in Adam's side from which God formed Eve and that in Christ's side as corresponding, for the sin of the first parents was atoned for by the latter wound.

Exactly what is referred to by these words is much debated. See the summarizing treatment offered by Giacalone (comm. to vv. 37-45), which offers the following sense of the matter in dispute. Christ redeemed, with his death on the cross, sins committed either (1) in the past or in the future; or (2) before His life on earth and after it; or (3) before His flesh was pierced on the cross and after the Crucifixion. While it seems that the third of these alternatives is the most appealing (because it builds on the parallel structure of the entire passage, moving from Adam's rib to Christ's wounded side), it is also true that all three interpretations cause similar reflection: Christ died for our sins.

According to Willy Schwarz (“Si trovano in Dante echi delle opinioni teologiche di Pietro Olivi? – Dante e i Templari,” in Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi danteschi, vol. II [Florence: Sansoni, 1966], pp. 147-48), these lines reflect the opinion of Peter Olivi (against the account found in John 19:30) that Jesus was pierced by the lance while he was still alive. Schwarz believes that Paradiso XXXII.128 reflects the same understanding. For the view that Dante was deeply aware of Olivi's work and essentially agreed with it, but never mentions his name because the Franciscan was being vigorously attacked by Church officials in Provence, who managed to have his Lectura super Apocalypsim condemned, see Manselli, “francescanesimo,” ED III (1971), p. 16.

God the Father made the corporeal natures of Adam and Christ directly. Eve is not mentioned here, perhaps for obvious reasons, since Dante restricts his attention to the sinless Adam and Christ. It is also true that Eve was made a bit differently than they were, representing a “secondary primary” creation, as it were, since God fashioned her out of a single rib of his direct creation, Adam. All other human bodies are formed with the influence of intermediating agencies (i.e., the angels and the stars). And thus, in Dante's view, Thomas's statement of Solomon's singular intellectual gifts (Par. X.112-114) does indeed require further explanation, to which a goodly portion of the rest of the canto (vv. 49-111) will be devoted.

This tercet perhaps exemplifies the “unpoetic” quality of this canto (representing the sort of “philosophic discourse” that Benedetto Croce so often inveighed against [e.g., La poesia di Dante, 2nd ed. {Bari: Laterza, 1921}]), the cause of its being denigrated even by those to whose lot it fell to write lecturae dedicated to it. For documentation, see Courtney Cahill (“The Limitations of Difference in Paradiso XIII's Two Arts: Reason and Poetry,” Dante Studies 114 [1996]), p. 245 and note 1 (p. 266).

Thomas's figure of speech, insisting that Dante's view of Adam's and Christ's knowledge and his own championing of Solomon's not only do not contradict one another, but are equally close to the truth as are two points coinciding at the center of a circle.

This portion of Thomas's speech is one of the most “philosophical” in the entire poem. It may serve as a pretext for answering the protagonist's concern about Solomon's relative perfection as knower; at the same time, we sense that the poet simply wanted to posit his view of primary and secondary creation. Does the passage reveal Dante's notion of creation to be neoplatonizing or “orthodox”? In James Simpson's view (“Poetry as Knowledge: Dante's Paradiso XIII,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 25 [1989]: 329-56) it is orthodox. See Courtney Cahill's discussion (“The Limitations of Difference in Paradiso XIII's Two Arts: Reason and Poetry,” Dante Studies 114 [1996], p. 251), citing Simpson's argument to that effect (pp. 339-40).

For a straightforward explanation, in simplified terms, of the passage, see Tozer (comm. to these verses): “What is created directly by God is perfect, whereas that which is created indirectly by Him through intermediate agencies and materials is imperfect; and therefore Dante is right in thinking that Adam, and Christ in His human nature, who belong to the former class, must have been superior in wisdom to all men, and therefore to Solomon.”

“That which does not die” resolves into God, the angels, the heavens, prime matter, and the human soul; “that which must [die]” refers to all corruptible things (see Par. VII.133-141 and the note to vv. 124-138).

All that God makes, eternal and bound by time, is made radiant by reflecting the Word (Christ as Logos) made by the Father (Power) in his Love (the Holy Spirit). Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 121) describes this process: “All things, mortal and immortal, are the (apparently self-subsistent) reflection (splendore) of the idea (the Word-Son-Christ) born from Intellect-Being (our Father, il nostro Sire) through an act of love (the Holy Spirit, amando). Since form is not a thing, but both the principle of being itself and the principle through which all things participate in being, metaphysically it corresponds to the Son or Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. Finite form arises through love (the Third Person); it is the power of self-subsistent awareness or being (the First Person) to experience itself as, or give itself to, finite attribute and identity.”

The first step in this procession of God into His universe is for the Trinity to be reflected in the nine orders of angels (see the note to verse 59). See Christian Moevs on these six verses: “The Trinity evoked in the [preceding] tercet is evoked again [in this one]: the Word-Son is a living light ... which flows from the source of light (... the Father), but is not other than ... its source: both are a power of love, ... which 'en-threes' itself with them” (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 121).

Dante's coinage intrearsi (literally, “to inthree oneself”) represents a form of linguistic boldness to which the reader has perhaps become accustomed. See, for example, the verb incinquarsi (literally, “to infive oneself”) in Paradiso IX.40.

This is the first appearance (see Par. XXXIII.115; and see Par. XXIX.15 for the shining angelic substance announcing itself in the Latin verb subsistere [to exist]) of the Scholastic-flavored noun “subsistence,” i.e., existence as purely related to God's nature as is possible, here, in the nine orders of angels. Cf. Paradiso XIV.73 and the note thereto. And see Alfonso Maierù, “sussistenza,” ED V (1976), pp. 493a-94b, who cites Boethius, in De duabus naturis, referring to “a being, which, in order to be able itself to exist, has no need of any other being.” See also Tozer (comm. to vv. 58-59): “These are called 'subsistences,' because this is the Scholastic term for that which exists by itself, and not in anything else; cp. Aquinas [ST I, q. 29, a. 2].” Among the earliest commentators there is a certain hesitation in choosing between angels and heavens (e.g., Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 55-60]). Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 55-60), however, is definitive in seeing the angels here (“idest in novem ordines angelorum”). The dispute meandered along until Scartazzini's magisterial review (comm. to this verse) of that errancy and his interpretation fixed the identification (Benvenuto's) for nearly all later discussants: the nine orders of angels. Scartazzini invokes passages in Dante's own texts: Epistle XIII, Convivio II.v and III.xiv, and most particularly Paradiso XXIX.142-145. Today one cannot find a discussant who has not benefited from Scartazzini's gloss, whether directly or indirectly; at the same time one can find no commentator (at least not among those included in the DDP) who even mentions him, although Singleton (comm. to this verse) does cite two of the Dantean passages that he cited.

The presence of Christ, Itself three-personed but unitary, is reflected by myriads of angels in nine groups.

The second stage of God's progression (for the first see the note to vv. 55-60) is into that part of the universe created out of the four elements and, not directly by God, but indirectly and by various agencies. Lombardi (comm. to vv. 55-63) refers the reader to Paradiso II.112-141 for an earlier exposition of this process. The light of the Word (verse 55) blends its creative power with the angelic presences in each heavenly sphere, moving downward “from act to act” and reaching the elements, until it finally interacts with the most short-lived perishable things, brevi contingenze (brief contingencies). According to Scholastic philosophy, contingent things have the potential either to be or not to be, depending on the presence or absence of a conjoined formal property. Those perishable things that are shaped by form are, if produced from seed, animal or vegetable; if not, mineral. (For Daniello [comm. to vv. 64-66], this category [things born without seed] includes only animals born from putrefaction.

To explain the principle of difference, the results of which are so noticeable to any observer of any species, Thomas, wanting to avoid imputing to God a causal relation with mortality, ugliness, and/or failure, puts the blame for such things on Great Creating Nature. Thus the angel-derived powers of the planetary spheres are seen as waxing and waning, and the resultant creations (e.g., human beings, horses, zucchini, and garnets) variable.

Courtney Cahill (“The Limitations of Difference in Paradiso XIII's Two Arts: Reason and Poetry,” Dante Studies 114 [1996], pp. 256-65) discusses this passage at some length (in a portion of her study subtitled “The Limitations of the artista in Thomas's Discourse on Creation”). Among other things, she puts forward the telling argument (p. 268, n. 25) that Thomas's initial presentation of Nature as perfect maker of God's creation is intentionally contradicted here, in order to account for the difference we find all around us in the world. She also finds that the image of the artist's trembling hand reflects that of Daedalus, as portrayed by Ovid (Metam. VIII.211), citing Hollander (“Dante and Cino da Pistoia,” Dante Studies 110 [1992], pp. 229-30) for an earlier and identical observation. See also Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], p. 135n.) for the suggestion that this passage may also reflect Aeneid VI.32-33, recounting Daedalus's double fatherly failure as artist to portray in gold his son's fall from the skies.

As opposed to her performance in God's direct creation, Nature, when she is working with the “wax” of secondary creation (i.e., not the first man, Adam, but his descendants; not the first apple, but the succeeding “generations” of the fruit, etc.), is always defective, coming up short of the archetype.

For the word artista and its four appearances in the poem (here and Par. XVI.51; XVIII.51; XXX.33), see Hollander (“Dante and Cino da Pistoia,” Dante Studies 110 [1992]), p. 217; Cahill (“The Limitations of Difference in Paradiso XIII's Two Arts: Reason and Poetry,” Dante Studies 114 [1996]), p. 257.

Once again the Trinity is referred to, Spirit, Son, Father (in that order), in order to distinguish between direct creation, under God's unshared auspices, as distinct from the natural secondary creation of which we have just heard. Thus twice in history human beings were made outside the natural process, with the creation of Adam (as well as Eve, now not referred to by Dante, perhaps, but we can hardly forget that she was indeed remembered in vv. 37-39) and of Jesus marking the limits of human perfection, well beyond the otherwise unmatchable king of Israel.

Without further explanation, Thomas says, Dante might still remain dubious; if he only considers who Solomon was and what moved him to ask for wisdom, he will understand. See III Kings (I Kings) 3:5-12, in which passage God appears to Solomon in a dream and promises to grant him whatever he asks for. Solomon responds by saying that God has made His servant into a king, but a king who has need of a knowing heart to judge his people. God, pleased by his answer, replies (in the passage quoted in Par. X.114 [and see the note to vv. 109-114]) “dedi tibi cor sapiens et intelligens, in tantum ut nullus ante te similis tui fuerit nec post te surrecturus sit” (I have given you a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like you before you, nor after you shall any arise who is like you [III Kings 3:12 – italics added]).

According to Giuseppe Toffanin (“Canto XIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968]), p. 453, Dante's veneration of Solomon the king is the high point of his Ghibellinism.

Thomas now contrasts practical kingly wisdom with typical Scholastic speculations, drawn from the following four fields: speculative theology (How many are the angels?), dialectic (Will a mixture of a necessary and a contingent premise ever yield a necessary conclusion?), natural science (Must we grant that motion had a beginning?), and geometry (Can a triangle be constructed in a semi-circle in such a way that it not contain a right angle?). (All four answers are negative, beginning with the fact that, according to Dante, the angels are not numerable.) In Dante's view, Solomon's practical wisdom trumps all such formal intelligence. However, for a far different appraisal of Solomon's kingly wisdom, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 88-111): “The real difficulty is that, history being the witness, all Solomon's wisdom did not make him 'sufficient as a king.' The outward brilliance of his reign was but a veil which hid for the moment the slow sapping of his people's strength and character through his luxury and licentiousness, his tyrannies, exactions, and idolatries. He sowed the wind, and his son reaped the whirlwind when the down-trodden people rent the greater part of the kingdom out of his hand. Whatever Dante may say, Solomon as a king was perhaps the wisest fool who ever lived. In saying this, I am quite aware that I may be incurring the censure on hasty judgments with which Canto XIII closes.”

On Solomon's song as leading to truthful (and not seductive, deceiving) love, see Marguerite Chiarenza (“Solomon's Song in the Divine Comedy,” in Sparks and Seeds: Medieval Literature and Its Afterlife [Essays in Honor of John Freccero], ed. Dana E. Stewart and Alison Cornish [Turnhout: Brepols, 2000], pp. 199-208).

For Dante's own thoughts on this question, see Convivio II.iv.3-15 and II.v.4-5, Paradiso XXVIII.92-93 and XXIX.130-135. The angels are “quasi innumerabili” (all but innumerable [Conv. II.v.5]).

For a helpful guide through the maze of medieval logical procedures, see Oelsner (comm. to vv. 97-102): “It is a general principle that no limitation that occurs in either of the premises can be escaped in the conclusion. Thus, if either of the premises is negative you cannot get a positive conclusion; if either of them is particular you cannot get a general conclusion; if either is contingent you cannot get a necessary conclusion. For instance, from 'The man on whom the lot falls must be sacrificed,' and 'The lot may fall on you,' you can infer: 'therefore you may be sacrificed,' but not 'therefore you must be sacrificed.' Ingenious attempts to get a necessary conclusion out of a necessary and a contingent premise are exposed by the logicians, e.g. 'Anyone who may run from the foe must be a coward; some of these troops may run from the foe, therefore some of them must be cowards.' The fallacy lies in the ambiguous use of 'may run from the foe.' In the first instance it means, 'is, as a matter of fact, capable of running away'; in the second, 'may, for anything I know, run away.' So that the two propositions do not hang together, and the conclusion is invalid.”

That is, whether one can accept the notion that there existed a first motion, preceding all other motion. Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 97-102), after saying that, according to Aristotle's Physics [VIII.1] motion is eternal, insists that theologians find that it, like the world, has a beginning, and goes on to cite Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth.” That was the First Mover's first motion; before that nothing moved.

See Euclid, Geometria III.31: All triangles inscribed in a circle, if the line bisecting that circle is used as their base, will have a right angle at their apex. And see Thomas Hart (“Geometric Metaphor and Proportional Design in Dante's Commedia,” in The “Divine Comedy” and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences: Acta of the International Dante Symposium, 13-16 November 1983, Hunter College, New York, ed. G. Di Scipio and A. Scaglione [Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1988], pp. 105-23), arguing for a structural relation between the elements in Euclid's theorem and the construction of the Commedia.

And so, rounding off his oratory, Thomas insists that kingly prudence is to be valued more highly than speculative philosophy (a position that coincides with that put forth in the Epistle to Cangrande [Epist. XIII.40-41], where Dante says that the branch of philosophy that the Comedy embraces is ethics, since the project of the poem is not speculation, but action). See the dispute over this point between Baranski and Hollander (Hollander, Dante's Epistle to Cangrande [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993]), pp. 90-91.

For Dante (or Thomas) to insist that what was said of Solomon earlier (Par. X.114) corresponds to what is said now strains credulity, and not a little. If Dante had offered something to the effect that neither Adam nor Christ had to “rise,” since they were made differently from all other mortals (except for Eve, conveniently lost from sight in all discussions of this passage), since they were directly produced by God, without intermediation (a tactic attempted by both the Ottimo [comm. to vv. 103-108] and Benvenuto [comm. to vv. 103-108]), then we might see the problem as resolved. However, the text rather pointedly fails to offer any such limitation.

If one examines the commentaries to Paradiso X.114, hardly anyone before the twentieth century thinks that the reference is to Solomon as king. For one who did, see Benvenuto (comm. to Par. X.109-114), who says that the phrase means that he has “no equal among kings.” Benvenuto, perhaps the most competent reader of poetic text among all the earlier students of Dante, had likely remembered the addition found in this later passage, even if he does not refer to it. Scartazzini (comm. to Par. X.114) also makes this point, referring to the later passage and interpreting it in Thomas's way. But this may be said of few others before 1900 (twentieth-century readers of Paradiso X nearly all do look ahead to this passage). In fact, the biblical text that lies behind both passages (III Kings 3:12) does not qualify Solomon's excellence by reference to a “peer group,” i.e., that text represents him as the wisest among all humans, not only kings. Thus we once again have a sense that the text of Paradiso, in comparison with its predecessors, was left in a relatively unfinished condition at Dante's death; he could have handled the issue better when he introduced it.

With the distinction added in the preceding tercet (Dante's wording almost gives away the fact that no such distinction was intended in his first utterance on the subject), the protagonist can understand how Solomon was first among the wise kings without infringing upon the primacy of either Adam (the “first father”) or of Jesus (the “One we love”).

The final 31 lines of this canto, a text that has, on the authority of none other than Thomas Aquinas, just established Solomon's kingly wisdom as a defining part of Dante's theocratic view of the world's affairs, nonetheless offer a warning to all of us who tend to rush to judgment, whether in relation to matters philosophical or theological. As we shall see (vv. 133-138), there is an autobiographical component to this plea.

For Dante to have used so much poetic space on so apparently simple, even banal, a topic tells his readers how keenly he felt involved in the problem. Once again we sense how, as he looks back over his intellectual development from the vantage point of the making of this great work, he realizes how self-centered some of his earlier attitudes were. (See Hollander [“Dante's Pride,” in Studi sul canone letterario del Trecento: Per Michelangelo Picone, a cura di J. Bartuschat and L. Rossi {Ravenna: Longo, 2003}, pp. 43-55].)

We have seen how slowly the hypocrites made their way forward in Inferno XXIII, in their leaden capes. Just so should we approach affirming or denying the truth of matters we have not fully examined.

A rush to judgment is, unsurprisingly, condemned. In the last verse, Dante's genial understanding of the way we humans tend to fall in love with whatever opinion we contrive to form rescues the passage from banality. If there is one passage in the last four cantos in which the voice of Thomas, usually so fully “captured” by the poet and so distinct from his own, seems to be indistinguishable from Dante's, it is found in these six lines.

The metaphor for the search for truth moves to fishing. We hear first of three Greek philosophers of the fifth century B.C., then of two heretical thinkers of the early Christian era . Each of these groups is represented as standing for many another thinker who also lacks rigor.

Within the metaphor, the fisherman without the necessary skills of his craft not only returns home without a catch, but tired (or worse) from the voyage; outside of it, the thinker who lacks the proper intellectual tools not only fails to arrive at the truth, but enmeshes himself in failure.

The founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy and his pupil, Parmenides and Melissus, are both mentioned in Monarchia III.iv.4 as, according to Aristotle, using false premises and invalid syllogisms. Bryson, a less-known figure living in the same fifth century, was criticized by Aristotle for using invalid methods in his attempts to square the circle.

Sabellius and Arius, Christians of the third and fourth centuries, respectively. Longfellow characterizes them as follows: “Sabellius was by birth an African, and flourished as Presbyter of Ptolemais, in the third century. He denied the three persons in the Godhead, maintaining that the Son and Holy Ghost were only temporary manifestations of God in creation, redemption, and sanctification, and would finally return to the Father. Arius was a Presbyter of Alexandria in the fourth century. He believed the Son to be equal in power with the Father, but of a different essence or nature, a doctrine which gave rise to the famous Heterousian and Homoiousian controversy, that distracted the Church for three hundred years.”

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 59, points out that both of these thinkers were confused about the relationships among God's substance and his persons, and suggests that Dante may have been led to his thought by a sentence attributed to Athanasius by Alain de Lille (PL CCX.749): “Neque confundentes personas, ut Sabellius, neque substantiam separantes, ut Arius” (Neither confounding the Persons, as did Sabellius, nor putting asunder His substance, as did Arius).

Sabellius, Arius, and their ilk are compared to swords in which human faces are reflected in distorted ways; just so were they to Scripture distorting mirrors of revealed truth. This comparison has disturbed many recent readers, to whom it seems either forced or unintelligible. The early commentators, however, were apparently more at ease with it, as though they thought of faces reflected on the irregular surfaces of shiny sword blades as a matter of course. Lombardi (comm. to these verses) at the close of the eighteenth century loses control of himself when confronting Venturi's continuance of that tradition. Swords, he shouts, were metaphorically the instruments of heretics who mutilated Scripture to make it accord with their nefarious purposes. For a while his intervention ruled in Italy (at Harvard, Longfellow just mentioned the two interpretations and took no side). Then Scartazzini (comm. to these verses) took Lombardi's argument apart (e.g., the language in the passage really does speak of mirroring rather than destruction), as did Poletto (comm. to vv. 127-129). Still, the debate continues into our own day, with the older position holding the edge, but not without challenge.

Strangely enough, hardly anyone has turned his attention to the Bible as potential source, since the reference is to it. (It is not surprising that the single exception is Scartazzini [comm. to these vv.], if his two passages in the Psalms [56:5 and 63:4] are not exactly germane.) No one has apparently adduced the Scriptural passage containing one of the Bible's surprisingly few references to mirrors (as was pointed out by Carolyn Calvert Phipps in a graduate seminar on the Paradiso in 1980): the Epistle of James 1:23-24: “For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass; for he beholds himself, and goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was.” That is not a perfect fit, either, but it does at least share the basic context of these verses.

Carroll (comm. to vv. 121-128) reminds the reader that Thomas (who is, after all, the speaker here) had refuted both these heresies (Sabellius on the Trinity, Arius on the non-consubstantiality of the Son with the Father). See Summa contra Gentiles IV.5-8.

We find a shift in the object of Thomas's measured scorn, from the schooled (philosophers and theologians) to the unschooled, ordinary folk (Donna Berta e ser Martino), as well as in the subject in which their misprision functions, from thoughts about the nature of things to the afterlife of one's neighbors.

The two examples, in reverse order, reminded John Carroll (comm. to vv. 129-142) of the father and son, Guido and Buonconte da Montefeltro. Guido, according to Dante in Convivio (IV.xxviii.8), was saved, but then was registered as one of the damned in Inferno XXVII, his story presented in both texts as a sea voyage; his son, Buonconte, although suffering a cruel death, in his agony spoke the name of Mary, the “rose,” and was saved (Purg. V). Trucchi (comm. to vv. 139-142) makes the same point, but with less effect. And see André Pézard (Peza.1965.1), ad loc., for an attempt to locate both the rose and the ship of this passage in Convivio IV.xxvii.7 and IV.xxviii.8

For readers of Convivio, Dante has placed his former writing self among the Berthas and Martins (see verse 139) of the world. Perhaps recognizing ourselves described in vv. 118-120, we may share that sense.

For the phrase “la rosa in su la cima” (the bloom of roses at its tip), see Purgatorio XI.92.

For this tercet as referring to Ulysses and his ill-conceived final voyage, see Courtney Cahill (“The Limitations of Difference in Paradiso XIII's Two Arts: Reason and Poetry,” Dante Studies 114 [1996], pp. 254-55). Trucchi (comm. to vv. 133-138) seems to have been her only precursor, if his mention of Ulysses (and Manfred) is only in passing.

The foolish “donna Berta e ser Martino” remind Carlo Grabher (comm. to vv. 34-142) of what Dante says in Convivio (IV.v.9) about those vile beasts who desire to know what is known only to God. A woman named Bertha had already enjoyed a role in Dante's displeasure with less-than-sophisticated writing; see De vulgari eloquentia II.vi.5: “Petrus amat multum dominam Bertam” (Peter loves Mistress Bertha a lot).

These verses have made many a reader uncomfortable with Dante's behavior in them. Is not he one who claims to have knowledge of divine wisdom? Furthermore, the concealed reference to his failed judgment of such things in Convivio (see the note to vv. 133-138) reads back at him in upsetting ways. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 112-142) point out that this entire passage needs to be read in the context of the medieval dispute over the damnation/salvation of Solomon (see the note to Par. X.109-114). We remember that such great figures as Jerome (who thought Solomon was saved) and Augustine (who thought he was not) disagreed over this matter. It is clear that Dante is willing to risk considerable intellectual capital in the presentation of his case for Solomon. Sarolli has done a great deal to explain the choice of the other Old Testament figure, Nathan, for inclusion here (see the note to Par. XII.136). As a “type” of Dante the prophet, he joins Solomon, the overwhelmingly important figure among twenty-four “stars” of theological and religious importance, as agents of explanation of Dante's function in his own poem, as prophet, as poet, as supporter of the imperial monarchy.

As a coda to the Solomon theme, present on and off since Paradiso X.109 and that was almost immediately accompanied by its hallmark, the verb surgere (Par. X.114; X.140; XIII.106), the poet marks the conclusion of that thematic unit with its final presence.