Perhaps it is the result of the only necessary relative absence of narrative in Paradiso, but the opening passages of many of its cantos show contorted construction and convoluted phrasing, an authorial self-consciousness that is more present than it had been in the first two cantiche. Narrative has its own excuse for being; theology at least seems to require justification, perhaps nowhere more so than in a poem. These two tercets are among those least afflicted, but still are not exactly easy. A possible paraphrase is: “The will that would perform good deeds and that always reveals itself in well-purposed love (as does evil will in a love of the things of this world) silenced the singing that God Himself makes harmonious.” That is, the dancing choir of saints (see Par. XIV.109-123) grew quiet (and ceased moving) in order to welcome Dante to this heaven and to invite his questions. Their “harmony” is, in Dante's metaphor, the result of God's “hand” having tuned the “strings” of the “instrument” that their voices represent.

The themes of love and will may remind us of the discourse in the middle cantos of Purgatorio, Marco Lombardo's lofty praise of the (free) will.

A question here involves the verb, whether it is a form of liquare (to liquify) or liquere (to be manifest). Most choose the latter alternative, believing Dante treated the second-conjugation Latin verb as though it were among those of the first conjugation and also made it reflexive. Since it occupies the rhyme position, thus preparing the reader to grant the poet a perhaps larger amount of license, it is difficult to fault this view, and we have followed it in our translation. See, however, Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso, copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001], p. 64) for several related arguments in favor of the minority view, among which are: (1) the conceptually related words liquor (Purg. XXII.137 and Par. XXI.115) and liquefatta (Purg. XXX.88) establish a context that supports the less popular reading; (2) since at the beginning of cantos Dante tends to cite other texts, the sense of “liquefy” would then point to the Song of Soloman (Cant.5.6: “anima mea liquefacta est”); (3) the good love that St. Augustine identifies as the love of God (DcD XII.ix.2) is what Dante is speaking of here. Some of these arguments are less trenchant than others, but his views are worth study.

Singleton (comm. to Par. XV.1) once again has one thing in his commentary (“manifests itself”) and another in the translation it accompanies (“resolves itself”). See the note to Paradiso XIV.108.

For the recent deployment of a similar image (of a stringed instrument that has been tuned), see Paradiso XIV.118-120.

Resembling an indirect address to the reader, this passage begins with a rhetorical question (vv. 7-9) and ends in an apothegm. The courtesy of these saved souls in ceasing their joyful celebrative behavior in order to attend to a still-mortal being is adduced as evidence for the efficacy of prayer and as a rebuke to all on earth who think present pleasures exceed in value such exalted ones as these.

The word sustanze here, like sussistenze in the last canto (see Par. XIV.73), does not refer to angels but to saved souls. See the note to Paradiso XIII.59.

This is the third time the word amor (love) appears in these verses: see also verses 2 and 11. After Inferno V, with ten appearances in 68 lines (and two “triplets” at vv. 61-69 and 100-106, occurring in nine and seven lines, respectively), this is one of the densest groupings of the word in the poem, with three occurrences in eleven lines (but see the identical phenomenon in Purg. XVII.104-114 and the even more compact threesome in Par. V.1-10 and the “champion,” Par. XXI.67-82, with three occurrences in eight lines and four in sixteen). And see the note to Paradiso XXVI.18-62.

Only the first nine verses of this passage formally constitute a simile. From the first (e.g., Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 13-18]), commentators have insisted that the celestial phenomena are not falling stars, but ignited vapors, referring to Aristotle's Meteora as their authority. Beginning with Daniello (comm. to vv. 13-15), later commentators have sought a classical poetic source for this “shooting star” in one of three places: in Ovid (Metam. II.319-322 [Phaeton]) or in Virgil (Georg. I.365-367 [stars falling from the skies] and Aen. II.692-703 [the portentous shooting star or – more likely – comet that appears to Anchises' request for an omen of Jupiter's approval of his flight from Troy]). Since the neighboring tercet's context (vv. 25-27) aligns Anchises with Cacciaguida, that has seemed to some the more likely source. However, it is only in Ovid that we find words that seem to be mirrored in Dante's description of the celestial phenomenon: the star has not in fact fallen, if it seemed to have fallen (“etsi non cecidit, potuit cecidisse videri”).

That is, in its approach before its descent, this “star” follows the right angle made by the “arm” and the “stem” of the cross. For Dante's earlier treatment of the cross of Mars, see Convivio II.xiii.22: “This is also why in Florence, at the beginning of its ruin, there was seen in the sky in the shape of a cross a great quantity of these vapors which accompany the star of Mars” (tr. R. Lansing).

The apsidal chapel dedicated to the local martyr of Ravenna, St. Apollinaris, in the church dedicated to his memory, S. Apollinare in Classe, displays over the altar a mosaic cross that has jewels depicted as being embedded in it, with Christ's face as the central jewel, located at the transverse of its two elements. Is it possible that Dante was thinking of that particular cross? We do not know whether he visited Ravenna before he moved there, ca. 1317-19, nor when he composed these cantos (but see the last paragraph of the note to Par. IX.29-30, reporting on the possibility that that canto reflected the pressure of the recent past, the years 1314-1315). Petrocchi's dating of the composition of the last cantica would have it begun ca. 1317. And so it is at least possible that the greater portion of Paradiso was composed in Ravenna. At any rate, Jeffrey Schnapp (The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante's “Paradise” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], pp. 171-203) offers detailed arguments that locate various architectural features of Ravenna in the texts of the central cantos of Paradiso, including the mosaic found in this chapel, with its jeweled cross (pp. 180-85). And see Giovannella Desideri (“Riscontri iconografici nell'Epistola a Cangrande,” Critica del testo 4 [2001]: 575-78) for another effort to document the influence of Veronese artifacts on Dante.

Alabaster is a creamy white stone, softly translucent, so that it could, when hollowed in such a way as to contain wax and a wick, be used as a light (particularly for votive purposes). Dante goes existing technology one better, imagining the cross of Mars as hollow and somehow having moving lights within that space.

All are in agreement about the Virgilian provenance of this simile. Itself representing paternal affection, it is perhaps the most obvious and filial affection shown by the poet to his poetic father, Virgil, since he left the poem in the earthly paradise (Purg. XXX). See Aeneid VI.684-686, a description of the shade of Anchises welcoming his living son to the Elysian Fields. (See the note to Purg. II.79-81.) What exactly we are to make of the reference is a matter of some dispute and more than a little complexity.

On this passage see Schnapp (“'Sì pïa l'ombra d'Anchise si porse': Paradiso 15.25,” in Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds., The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's “Commedia” [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991], pp. 145-56, 279-80). And, for his earlier consideration of it, see Schnapp (The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante's “Paradise” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], pp. 203-15). He had in that earlier study (p. 69) discussed the cross-pollination of “the Virgilian thematics of epic sacrifice” and Dante's “new epic of Christ and of His cross” (see also pp. 143-49, 215-31).

Surprisingly, this may be the first obvious citation of Virgil's text (Aen. VI.684-686) in quite some time, and it is surely the most vibrant one so far in Paradiso. While there have been several at least generally Virgilian contaminations, this is the first pellucidly precise one since Paradiso VIII.9. Before that, the last great Virgilian flowering occurred in Purgatorio XXX (vv. 21, 48, 49-51, 52, 59-60 – see Hollander [“Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia di Dante,” in Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci {Ravenna: Longo, 1993}], pp. 317-18). From the beginning of the Paradiso it may have seemed that Virgil had been left behind as the main classical source in favor of Ovid (see the last paragraph of the note to Par. I.68). For discussion see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], pp. 134-35).

See Giorgio Brugnoli (“Dante e l'interpretatio Vergiliana,” Critica del testo 5 [2002]: 471-76) for his most recent (and, unhappily, final) insistence that Dante's Virgil needs to be read through the filter of intervening lenses. In this case Brugnoli is discussing the erroneous translation of Virgil (Aen. VI.664-666) found in Convivio (II.v.13-14), observed as being possibly caused by the versions found in Servius and Proba's cento.

Anchises' affectionate gesture of welcome to his son, a visitor in the Elysian Fields (Aen. VI.684-686), is clearly recalled here. Less clear is the validity of the Schnappian claim (The Transfiguration of History at the Center of Dante's “Paradise” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], pp. 203-6) that the gesture is taken by Dante to be an unconscious Virgilian representation of the Christian posture of prayer, the so-called “orant pose” (both hands raised, open toward one stationed in front of the figure) as seen in Saint Apollinaris beneath the mosaic of the bejewelled cross in the apsidal chapel of his church in Ravenna (see the note to vv. 22-24). Schnapp's thesis is appealing; however, Anchises holds his hands out toward his son, not upwards with palms raised, as far as we can tell from Virgil's text.

It is a commonplace in the commentaries to say that “musa” here means “poet.” See, among others, Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 25-27): “qui major musa, idest poeta, latinorum est” (who was the greatest muse, that is, poet, among the Romans). And see Convivio IV.xxvi.8, where Dante refers to Virgil as “lo maggiore nostro poeta,” and Monarchia II.iii.6, where the Latin master is “divinus poeta noster Virgilius.” However, Bosco/Reggio (comm. to Par. XVIII.33) offer strong reasons for taking musa to mean the text of the Aeneid rather than its author.

The first commentator apparently even to sense the possible condescension toward Virgil in this verse was Carlo Steiner (comm. to vv. 26-27), who attempts to downplay its significance. That it took seven hundred years for a reader to say that this compliment might even seem to be backhanded is, one might say, remarkable. Dante could easily have avoided introducing this concern about how much faith we should give to Virgil's poem as a record of event. Merely to lodge the doubt is enough to identify Dante's motive, which is to call into question Virgil's final authority when faced with the certainties of the world of Revelation, in which the protagonist now finds himself. (Of course, we can turn the same question back onto Dante, whose poem also may not merit our belief, either; it is a dangerous game that he has chosen to play. And he knows that.) Mattalia (comm. to verse 26) is a good deal more firm than Steiner, and sees the point of Dante's insistence on the fictitious nature of Virgil's account, but goes on to claim that Dante believed in the historicity of the events he narrates (a difficult position to accept as soon as one asks the inevitable question, “Do the events narrated as taking place in the Elysian Fields have any verifiable reality outside Virgil's text?”). The firmest sense of the failing being lodged against Virgil found in contemporary commentaries is perhaps that of Singleton (comm. to this verse), sending the reader to his earlier comment (to Inf. II.13). And see the note to Inferno II.28. Nonetheless, the first clear statement of the problematic aspects of these dubiety-creating references to the Aeneid is probably Grandgent's (Inf. II [Nota]): “It is worth noting that in introducing the example of Aeneas, Dante begins with 'tu dici che ... ,' and a few lines further on he uses the phrase 'questa andata onde gli dai tu vanto'; so in Par. XV, 26, referring to the same episode, he adds 'se fede merta nostra maggior Musa,' meaning Virgil. These expressions seem to imply a mental reservation with regard to the literal veracity of Aeneas's adventure.” And see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], pp. 135-36).

This is the only tercet in the poem entirely in Latin: “O blood of mine, O grace of God poured down from above, to whom, as to you, shall the gates of heaven have ever been opened twice.” Indeed, only St. Paul is, alongside of Dante, in such glorious company, as far as we (or Dante) can know.

While it has pronouncedly Virgilian and biblical elements, the tercet is also Dante's brief answer to an unspoken challenge (until Giovanni del Virgilio, around 1320, had the dubious taste to offer him a chance at the laurel from Bologna in exchange for a truly worthy poem, a political one cast, more nobly than was this lowly Comedy, in Latin [see the note to Par. IX.29-30]). He undoubtedly earlier had come into contact with others who thought that he should have eschewed the vernacular to write his poem in Latin, in the tradition of classical poetry. That, after all, is what Albertino Mussato had done.

For an overview of the situation of Latin writing in relation to the formation and development of the European vernaculars, see Marc Van Uytfanghe (“Le latin et les langues vernaculaires au Moyen Age: un aperçu panoramique,” in The Dawn of the Written Vernacular in Western Europe, ed. M. Goyens and W. Verbeke, in Mediaevalia Lovaniensia [2003], Series 1, Studia 33, pp. 1-38).

The Virgilian elements in the tercet include the words sanguis meus, widely recognized as a citation of the Aeneid (Aen. VI.835). Anchises is addressing Julius Caesar and asking him to cast away his sword (rather than put it to use in bloody civil war): “proice tela manu, sanguis meus!” That speech ends with Anchises's fervid hope that Rome will spare the defeated and bring down the prideful (Aen. VI.853: “parcere subiectis et debellare superbos”). If that was her mission, Virgil knows how badly she failed in it. But there is a much less frequently cited possible second citation, in verse 30, a reference to the Sibyl's admonition; if Aeneas is so eager for his perilous journey, she will guide him. She expresses the danger awaiting him in two examples of passage into the land of the dead and back (Aen. VI.134-135), twice crossing the Styx, twice seeing black Tartarus (“bis Stygios innare lacus, bis nigra videre / Tartara”). It can certainly be argued that what Dante has done here is to take the fairly glum passage in Virgil and brighten the context considerably, the futile challenge to civil discord in Rome become the crusader's welcome to his “son,” Aeneas's journey through Hell become this son's unique voyage to salvation.

See Hollander (Dante and Paul's “five words with understanding,” Occasional Papers, No. 1, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts and Studies [Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992], pp. 36-39) for the possibility that this tercet involves an elaborate response to Paul's concern with our speaking “five words with understanding” (I Cor. 14:19) rather than “ten thousand in tongues.” All three Latin verses contain five words, and are pronouncedly not the nonsense that we heard in the five words shouted by Plutus and Nimrod (see the note to Inf. VII.1).

That Cacciaguida's first words are in Latin, both biblical (at least generically) and Virgilian, accomplishes one of Dante's aims. It establishes his ancestor as speaker of the doubly significant “grammatical” tongue, that of God and man, Church and empire. As Dante's spiritual and fleshly father, he is perfectly fitted to meet his son's needs.

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso, copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001], p. 66) points out that the protagonist has himself once used sangue in this precise sense (i.e., to denote bloodline), referring to Geri del Bello (Inf. XXIX.20). And now his ancestor uses the word, in Latin, to identify Dante as his seed. All but ten of the forty-seven occurrences of the noun sangue in the poem in fact refer to blood in its physical sense. In all, five speakers other than the protagonist refer to this definition of family with the word sangue: Virgil speaks of families in general (Inf. VII.80); Dante the poet speaks of the ruling house of Thebes (Inf. XXX.2); the poet curses the bloodline of “Alberto tedesco” (Purg. VI.101); Omberto Aldobrandesco speaks of his family line (Purg. XI.61); Pope Adrian V refers to his (Purg. XIX.102); Hugh Capet twice refers to his dynasty with the word (Purg. XX.62 and Purg. XX.83); the poet reflects on the paltry nobility conferred by bloodlines (Par. XVI.1).

Aversano also gives biblical passages establishing the meaning here as “pour down from above.”

Some readers have reflected that this verse would seem to put Dante in a class by himself, since Paul claims (II Corinthians 12:2) a celestial ascent only as far as the third heaven. But see the note to Paradiso I.73 for notice that traditional understanding of the passage identified Paul's “third heaven” with the Empyrean.

Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 28-30) says that this, Dante's first visit to the realms of Paradise, is made in the flesh, while the next one will not be (i.e., Dante's soul will fly up without his body after his death). Of course, he is destined to get that body back at the general resurrection.

While this “light” does not choose to identify himself until verse 135, it is perhaps good to have some sense of Dante's great-great-grandfather, who is speaking in this scene, “of whose life nothing is known beyond what Dante himself tells us; viz. that he was born in Florence (Par. XV.130-133) in the Sesto di Porta san Piero (Par. XVI.40-42) about the year 1090 (Par. XVI.34-39); that he belonged (possibly) to the Elisei, one of the old Florentine families which boasted Roman descent (Par. XV.136; Par. XVI.40); that he was baptized in the baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence (Par. XV.134-135); that he had two brothers, Moronto and Eliseo (Par. XV.136); that his wife came from the valley of the Po, and that from her, through his son, Dante got his surname of Alighieri (Par. XV.91-94, Par. XV.137-138); that he followed the Emperor Conrad III on the Second Crusade, and was knighted by him (Par. XV.139-144), and finally that he fell fighting against the infidel about the year 1147 (Par. XV.145-148)” (Toynbee, “Cacciaguida” [Concise Dante Dictionary])

The protagonist makes up for his previous “failure” to look at Beatrice in the last canto (XIV.127-132).

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso, copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001], p. 66) claims that stupefaction is experienced only twice in the Bible, both times in the responses of those who beheld a holy event, citing Mark 9:14 (regarding the populace after the Transfiguration) and Acts 9:6-7 (regarding those who witness what is to them strange behavior on the part of Saul on the road to Damascus). But see also Acts 2:7-12, which perhaps contains a more relevant context than those two passages. After the apostles found they were able to “translate” words spoken in tongues into their own language, they were amazed. This is the first use of the word stupefatto in the poem. It will twice be used again (Par. XXVI.80 and Par. XXXI.35). On the last of these it will refer to the reaction of the pilgrim approaching Rome who sees the city for the first time.

Her smile shows that Beatrice recognizes that Dante has understood his identity better than ever before, biologically, but more importantly in terms of his family's heritage, and, still more importantly, as a “Roman” and a Christian, assured of his salvation.

For a recent disagreement with Petrocchi's support for the less-favored variant “gloria” (rather than the more usual “grazia”), see Lodovico Cardellino (“La gloria è 'lo fondo de la ... grazia' [Par. 15.35-36],” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [July 2007]). While Cardellino is probably correct in criticizing Petrocchi for believing that “gloria” is difficilior, his argument for “grazia” (as is that of the precursors whom he names) is possibly based on a misprision of what the verse refers to. For those of us who follow Petrocchi in this detail, the text refers precisely to Dante's sense of “prelibating” his future bliss. This seems a perfectly reasonable interpretation, even the more natural one. Those who argue that one can only sense the force of God's glory in the afterlife, in other words, fail to understand that Dante is conflating his present bliss with that which he expects to feel in the afterlife – and, indeed, in a very few hours, when, as Beatrice has promised him, he will experience “l'ultima salute” (Par. XXII.124) in his flesh (when Christ and his Church descend in Canto XXIII). Sometimes philological correctness is hyper-correct.

This is Cacciaguida's second kind of speech, one that the protagonist is unable to understand. For some reason André Pézard (“Les trois langues de Cacciaguida,” Revue des études italiennes 16 [1967]: 217-38) does not include this passage in his consideration of the “tongues” spoken by Cacciaguida (he deals with items 1, 3, and 4 in the listing below). This list is found in Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], pp. 125-27 (for some further consideration, see Hollander [Dante and Paul's “five words with understanding,” Occasional Papers, No. 1, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts and Studies {Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992}, pp. 38-39, n. 57]). However, it seems clear that the reader must consider four languages as spoken by Cacciaguida: (1) vv. 28-30, Latin; (2) 37-42, speech that the protagonist could not recognize; (3) vv. 47-48, the Italian of Dante's time; (4) Paradiso XVI.34-36, the vernacular of Cacciaguida's day. For support for this view, see Claire Honess (“Communication and Participation in Dante's Commedia,” in In amicizia: Essays in Honour of Giulio Lepschy, ed. Z.G. Baranski and L. Pertile [The Italianist 17 {1997 – special supplement}], p. 130).

Poletto (comm. to vv. 37-39) seems to have been the first commentator to notice the closeness of this line to the tenth verse of the last poem of the Vita nuova (XLI.12): “io non lo intendo, sì parla sottile” (I cannot understand the subtle words it [his pilgrim spirit, having visited Paradise and seen Beatrice] speaks [tr. M. Musa]). Benvenuto explains (comm. to vv. 37-42) that Cacciaguida was speaking of pure mental constructs (conceptiones mentales) that transcend mere humans' ability to understand. (See the note to Par. XIV.88.) On the other hand, Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 37-48) and Cristoforo Landino (comm. to vv. 37-39) both think the context of his first words in Latin, regarding Dante's status as one of the elect (vv. 28-30), point to the issue of predestination, a position that Sapegno (comm. to vv. 37-42) brings back into consideration, as several others do also. Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], pp. 115-29) is of the opinion that this linguistic behavior on the part of Dante's ancestor may reflect either Adamic vernacular or the apostles' speaking in tongues. There is, in short, no consensus about how to read this verse. But see the note to vv. 43-48.

Benvenuto's hypothesis (see the note to verse 39) concerning “mental constructs” would seem to be certified by these lines, which tell us that Cacciaguida was not trying to hide his words from Dante but that the language he employed simply overshot its human target, that is, Cacciaguida had momentarily forgotten that Dante was not yet “immortal,” that, in other words, his intelligence still was limited by his humanity.

The word concetto represents an important element in Dante's vocabulary of consciousness. Used as a singular noun for the first time in Inferno XXXII.4 (where it refers to the mental construct Dante has in his brain of the lowest landscape of Hell), it does not reappear until here (for the rest of its “career” in the poem, see the note to Par. XXXIII.127).

These six lines perhaps offer some clarification of the nature of Cacciaguida's ununderstandable utterance (vv. 37-42). First, he seems to have been addressing God, and certainly not Dante; second, if the words he speaks now flow from the ones he uttered then, they, too, were words of thanksgiving for God's grace to his descendant.

See Tobias Leuker (“Sfoghi e sospiri in Dante,” L'Alighieri 20 [2002]: 121-22), arguing that the word (sfogato) here means “deprived of energy, weakened, exhausted.”

This is the last appearance in the poem of the adjective cortese (literally, “courtly” [i.e., of the court], and hence “courteous” [i.e., behaving as a courtier does – or should do]). It transforms the usual sense of the word, which often associates it with “courtly love,” into heavenly affection, a rather pronounced Nietzschean “transvaluation of values.” Dante had already availed himself of a similar strategic displacement at the end of the Vita nuova, when he refers to God as the “sire de la cortesia” (the Lord of graciousness [tr. M. Musa]). The first time we hear the noun for “court” in Inferno (II.125), it is used to indicate “la corte del cielo” (the court of Heaven); human courts are characterized (Inf. XIII.66), on the other hand, by invidia (envy), the “whore” found, according to Pier della Vigna, at courts. The “court of heaven” is referred to three times in Purgatorio (XVI.41; XXI.17; XXXI.41) and nine times in Paradiso (III.45; VII.51; X.70; XXI.74; XXIV.112; XXV.43; XXVI.16; XXX.96; XXXII.98).

For volume, see the note to Paradiso XII.122. To what “volume” does Cacciaguida refer? Where today commentators are unanimous in their opinion, it is amusing to read Jacopo della Lana on the problem. According to him (comm. to vv. 49-50) and to perhaps one other (the Anonimo Fiorentino [comm. to vv. 49-51]), it is the Aeneid. The Codice cassinese (comm. to this verse) is perhaps the first to deliver the standard gloss: the mind of God. With few exceptions, this is the common opinion during seven hundred years of commentary. Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 49-51) suggests that the reference may also be to the Apocalypse (3:3), the Book of Life, in which the names of all the saved are recorded. Insofar as we are supposed to think of God's mind as containing this book (and, since it contains infinity, it must), we realize that Cacciaguida has read in it Dante's salvation.

Cacciaguida is using lofty diction to say that Dante's arrival has satisfied the long craving he has experienced (dating, we assume, from his arrival in the Empyrean ca. 1147) to see his descendant's arrival in the heavens, about which he read in God's mind, credit for which he gives to Beatrice.

That is to say, the words in this “book” are unchanging, unlike those in human manuscripts, where scribes variously blot, erase, add to, and cross out previous texts. Cf. Paradiso XVII.37-39. And see Torraca (comm. to vv. 49-51) for a reflection of this verse in the opening line of Dante's first Eclogue to Giovanni del Virgilio: “Vidimus in nigris albo patiente lituris...” (In letters black, upon receptive white, I saw...).

It is not difficult to believe that Dante is here revisiting a theme dear to him, the ill-fated flight of Icarus (see Inf. XVII.109-111 and XXIX.113-116; Par. VIII.125-126), but now starring Beatrice as a better-artificing Daedalus and Dante as non-falling wonderboy. See the note to verse 72.

“Cacciaguida tells Dante that he understands the reason why he does not inquire his name and the cause of his interest in him, which is, that he (Dante) is aware that the denizens of Heaven see the thoughts of others through the medium of the mind of God which reflects them in every detail; and consequently that it is unnecessary for him to state in words what he wishes to be told him, because his wishes are already fully known to Cacciaguida. Still, he encourages Dante to speak, because his (Cacciaguida's) love will be increased by complying with his request” (Tozer, comm. to these verses).

See Grandgent (comm. to verse 56): “Raia, 'radiates.' Unity is the beginning of number, as God is the beginning of thought; from the conception of unity is derived the conception of all numbers, and in the divine mind all thought is contained.” In support of his remark he refers to the work of Helen Flanders Dunbar (Symbolism in Medieval Thought and Its Consummation in the “Divine Comedy” [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929]), p. 336. Cf. De vulgari I.xvi.2.

Will and desire are the hallmarks of the soul's affective knowing and wise loving in Paradise. As Tommaseo pointed out long ago (comm. to vv. 67-69), the cantica will conclude with these two spiritual movements in Dante operating harmoniously (Par. XXXIII.143).

Dante apparently could not resist a second reference to Beatrice as Daedalus (see the note to verse 54). And see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], p. 135n.), pointing out that there seems to be a “Daedalus program” in this part of the poem: Paradiso VIII.125, X.74-75, XIII.77-78, and here, representing, according to him (p. 136n.), something bordering on the obsessive.

This tortured preamble to a simple question (“what's your name?”) is paraphrased by Tozer (comm. to these verses) as follows: “Dante here excuses himself for being unable to thank Cacciaguida as he would wish to do for his benevolence. The ground of his excuse is that, whereas in Heaven a feeling (affetto) is accompanied by an equivalent power of thought (senno), through which that feeling can find expression, this is not the case with mortal men, for in them the means (argomento) of expressing feeling fall short of the wish to do so (voglia).”

The term equalità, a hapax, has considerable theological weight. Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso, copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001], p. 68) cites Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate VI.xxi: “Quid summa aequalitas sit in illa Trinitate, ubi oportet omnes aeque perfectos esse” [What very great equality there must be in that Trinity, in which it is necessary for all the elements to be equally perfect]. And see, Aversano goes on, St. Bernard (PL CLXXXIII.646). See also Apoc. 21:16, where the new Jerusalem is described in the following terms: “The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.” Aversano continues by adducing the gloss of Alain de Lille (PL CCX.445) to his fourth regula theologica: “in Patre unitas, in Figlio [sic] aequalitas, in Spiritu sancto unitatis aequalitatisque connexio” [in the Father, uniqueness; in the Son, likeness; in the Holy Spirit, the link between uniqueness and likeness]. Aversano also cites Richard of St. Victor, quoting Augustine, on this relation between the first two Persons in his De Tribus appropriatis personis in Trinitate (PL CXCVI.992).

If one thinks about the “aesthetics” of the Christian religion (and of Dante's poem), one has a sense of the centrality of both uniqueness and of likeness. This is nowhere more readily apparent than in the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, a uniquely human being (because he is also the immortal God) and yet a commonly human being (because He was also mortal). And, it is perhaps fair to suggest, this theme has nowhere before in the poem been quite so evident or so important as it has become in this canto.

The phrase “pennuti in ali” (feathered wings) picks up (from verse 54 [“vestì le piume”] and verse 72 [“crescer l'ali”]) to make this one of the densest insistences on Dante's heavenly flight in the poem. See Hugh Shankland's two studies (“Dante 'Aliger,'” Modern Language Review 70 [1975]: 764-85; “Dante 'Aliger' and Ulysses,” Italian Studies 32 [1977]: 21-40) for discussion of the pun on the poet's surname (Alighieri) available in the Latin adjective for “winged,” aliger.

The protagonist addresses his ancestor as “topaz.” The gemological term, in the plural, will be used only once more (Par. XXX.76), and then to refer to the angels. Aversano points out (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso, copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001], p. 68) that the ninth of the twelve foundations of the walls of the new Jerusalem (Apoc. 21:19-20), which is characterized by its equalitas (see the note to verse 74), was constructed out of topaz. Alain de Lille, cited by Aversano, ibid., says that there are two colors of topaz, sky-blue and golden. Aversano goes on to argue that the latter color is reflected again when Cacciaguida is referred to (Par. XVII.123) as a golden mirror.

We perhaps have already forgotten the elaborate preparation for this simple question. Cacciaguida says that he already knows what Dante wants to ask but wants him to ask it anyway, to bring him greater pleasure (vv. 55-69); and then Dante spends nearly as much poetic space (vv. 73-84) explaining why he cannot express his gratitude for Cacciaguida's welcome. That the inquiry about Cacciaguida's identity took so long to make it from Dante's lips is, perhaps, amusing, a sort of Scholastic joke, the sort of thing that would offer Rabelais, two centuries later, endless opportunity for spirited (and antagonistic) amusement at the expense of medieval modes of expression. However, Dante may have felt that the reader (even the fourteenth-century reader) may have needed to be reminded of the gulf that separates souls that have come to God, enjoying an eternal and quasi-angelic spiritual existence, and even ultimately favored mortals, like Dante Alighieri. When we consider this aspect of the third cantica, we probably all agree that the poet manages to present himself as feeling proper humility at finding himself prematurely among the blessed, something that is not perhaps as often observed as it might be. For a useful presentation of what is known about Cacciaguida, see Fiorenzo Forti, “Cacciaguida,” ED I (1970).

For the perhaps surprising presence of so many virtuous women representing “the good old days” (for this phrase see Davis, who, in an article entitled “Il buon tempo antico” [in Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. N. Rubenstein {Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1968}, pp. 45-69, republished in Dante's Italy and Other Essays {Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984}], takes that nostalgic American phrase and recasts it in Italian so that some American readers wrongly assume, as Davis was pleased to recount in informal conversation, that it is in fact found in the poem) in Florence, see Claire Honess (“Feminine Virtues and Florentine Vices: Citizenship and Morality in Paradiso XV-XVII,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], esp. pp. 108-14).

Cacciaguida's presentation of a genealogical “tree” (Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 88-90] point to the presence of the image of the family tree in Purg. VII.121, Purg. XX.43, and Par. IX.31) of Dante's family, of which he declares himself the root, begins his wider exploration of the history of Florence, the subject of some forty verses (88-129). Beginning with Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 88-90), there has been appreciation of the fact that Cacciaguida's words remember those attributed to God the Father (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22): “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Schnapp (“'Sì pïa l'ombra d'Anchise si porse': Paradiso 15.25,” in Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds., The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's “Commedia” [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991], p. 150) argues for a reflection of Anchises' greeting of Aeneas in these verses (Aen. VI.687-688).

Cacciaguida refers to his son Alighiero (Dante's great-grandfather) as the source of the poet's surname (since Alighiero's own son, Dante's grandfather, was known as Bellincione degli Alighieri). Alighiero was perhaps given a Christian name reflecting his mother's maiden name, Alaghieri (see the note to vv. 137-138). We know from documentary evidence that he was alive in 1201, which means that Dante was misinformed as to the date of his death, since the poet has Cacciaguida represent him as having spent more than one hundred years in Purgatory purging his pridefulness (there results a certain family resemblance [see Purg. XIII.136-138]) and the calendar in the poem stands at 1300.

The news of Alighiero's presence on the terrace of Pride comes with an admonition of Dante's family duty, to pray for the deliverance of his soul from torment. There is a parallel moment in Inferno (Inf. XXIX.18-36), Dante's discovery of his ancestor, Geri del Bello, a cousin of his father, among the sowers of discord, an apparition that causes him to feel guilty for not having avenged a relative's violent death. For another similar distribution of a family, consider the case of the Donati (Corso in Hell, Forese in Purgatory, and Piccarda in Heaven [see the note to Purg. XXIII.42-48]; but there are several other examples as well).

See the note to Paradiso I.35-36 for the understanding that the purpose of the poem is to affect its readers' prayers. Here is an internal example of precisely that effect.

“The old line of walls dated from 1078 A.D. (Villani, iv. 8); it was now 'old,' because the wall of Dante's time was commenced in 1284.... The Badia [the church of S. Stefano in Badìa], the chimes of which are here referred to, stood just within the ancient walls; the Florentines took their time from these.... The factions and civil dissensions in Florence did not commence until 1177” (Tozer, comm. to this tercet).

In his commentary to these lines, Benvenuto, discussing the three enclosing structures of walls, says that within the first one stands the church of S. Stefano in Badia, wherefrom once came regular chimes telling the hours, but which is now in ill repair, as he knows from personal experience, because it was there that he listened to the lectures on Dante's poem given by his teacher, Giovanni Boccaccio.

Dante, in Cacciaguida's voice, has harnessed his wagon of complaint about a typical target of medieval moralizers, luxurious living, to a misogynistic diatribe against costly female overdecoration (for a cry against related but opposite behavior in Florentine women, see Purg. XXIII.98-105).

The tirade now turns toward marriage contracts, with their two related ills, the lowering age at which fathers feel forced to “sell” their daughters to a man and the rising cost of doing so, represented by the dowry the girl's family had to put up. The two details manage to make the Florentine institution of marriage sound more like sexual bondage than matrimony.

The line has caused difficulty. The early commentators thought it referred to thirteenth-century Florentine luxurious housing, the early Renaissance equivalent of McMansions, showier houses than family life required; later ones believed that Dante was referring to marriages that were only for show, allowing the couple to lead dissolute lives. Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), reviewing the dispute, sides with the older view, because it better accords with the context, which is unnecessary luxury, as the following two lines demonstrate.

“Sardanapalus, last legendary king of the Assyrian empire of Ninus, noted for his luxury, licentiousness, and effeminacy. He spent his days in his palace, unseen by any of his subjects, dressed in female apparel, and surrounded by concubines. The satrap of Media, having determined to renounce allegiance to such a worthless monarch, rebelled against him, and for two years besieged him in Nineveh, until Sardanapalus, unable to hold out any longer, collected all his treasures, wives, and concubines, and placed them on an immense funeral pile, to which he set fire destroying himself at the same time” (Toynbee, “Sardanapolo” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). The identity of Dante's source here is debated; those most commonly proposed are Juvenal (Sat. X.362), Cicero (Tuscul. V), Justinus (Hist. I.3), Orosius (Hist. contra paganos I.xix.1), and Aegidius Colonna (De regimine principum II.xvii), this last favored by Toynbee (in the entry from which the opening passage is cited) because it specifically refers to Sardanapalus's nefariously luxurious activity as being confined to a single room. For discussion of the likely sources of Dante's Sardanapalus, see Brugnoli (“Sardanapalo in camera,” Rivista internazionale di onomastica letteraria 1 [1999]: 55-76).

For a specifically scabrous interpretation of Sardanapalus's nefarious sexual activity, see Massimiliano Chiamenti (“Pietro Alighieri e il lessico della Commedia,” in The Dante Commentary Tradition: Critical Discourse in the Making, ed. Paola Nasti. [Oxford: Legenda, 2007 {in process}]), arguing that this passage backs up to that in Inferno XVI.45 (and see the note to Inf. XVI.28-42); it is his view that Florence is in Dante's day deprived of children because the citizens of the city had begun to practice birth-control by limiting themselves to anal intercourse. However, this view overrides the larger sense of effeminate living that Dante was likely to have been upset about.

The thought here is that Florence after Cacciaguida's day rapidly eclipsed Rome in urban splendor, but its fall from supremacy will be even more swift. In synecdoche, Monte Mario and Uccellatoio represent Rome and Florence respectively. Explaining these lines, Carroll has this to say (comm. to vv. 97-120): “Montemalo (now Monte Mario) is the hill on the way from Viterbo from which the splendour of the Eternal City is first seen; and Uccellatoio is the point on the road from Bologna from which the first flash of the greater splendour of Florence breaks on the traveller's view.”

Bellincion Berti is exemplary of the citizenry of “the good old days” of Florence. Giovanni Villani (Cronica IV.1) speaks of him in similar terms. He was father of the “good Gualdrada” of Inferno XVI.37. While males, with the exception of the effeminate Sardanapalus and the corrupt Lapo (see verse 128), are not used to exemplify improper municipal behavior, they surely are present in the rest of the canto as representatives of Florentine virtue.

A good woman, as we would expect in this context, eschews facial cosmetics.

The heads of noble Florentine families (the Nerli and the Vecchietti) are, like Bellincion Berti, content with simple clothing, without adornment; their wives exhibit their virtue by what they take pleasure in doing: household chores.

Two different sorts of ills befalling Florentine wives are referred to here: Some were taken along by their husbands when they were exiled and eventually died in foreign lands; others, married to men who took themselves off to a life of trade in France (cf. the first story in Boccaccio's Decameron), led lonely lives at home.

This vignette from “Scenes from Florentine Family Life, ca. 1125,” by Dante Alighieri, features babytalk (see Hollander [“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante {Ravenna: Longo, 1980}, p. 127]), a phenomenon that Dante is (perhaps surprisingly) most interested in. Florentine babies, goo-gooing in their cribs, are represented as teaching their mommies (and daddies, too) to speak in that “idiom.” That word, which first appears here and then will be used only once more in the poem (Par. XXVI.114), where it is used to delineate Adam's first speech, is unmistakably “vernacular” Hebrew (or, perhaps more accurately, pre-Hebrew). And thus the word idïoma, here, may offer an insight into Dante's theory of the history of language: Each infant recapitulates the primal linguistic moment, speaking a version of Adamic vernacular, until, in the push and pull of maternal and paternal instruction and the infant's response, that vernacular takes on a local flavor, in this case Florentine. See Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 121-126): “scilicet, maternum linguagium, scilicet, la ninna nanna.” Vellutello regularly uses the word idioma to refer to various Italian vernaculars. See his commentary to Inf. IX.78 (Florentine), Inf. XII.91-99 and Inf. XIV.28-30 (Lombard), Inf. XX.130 (Tuscan), Inf. XXVI.70-75 (Latin), Inf. XXVII.16-21 (Lombard), Inf. XXVIII.70-72 (Latin), Inf. XXXI.109-111, Purg. IV.67-72, and Purg. XXIV.61-63 (Florentine), Purg. XXVI.139-148 (Provençal).

A second female presence is probably the husband's mother, also doing useful chores, working at her loom.

This grandmother narrates for the children in the family (but heard by all) the pre-history of Florence, with its roots in Troy, Rome, and Fiesole. Torraca (comm. to vv. 121-126) explains the details, common to many chronicles of the time, as follows: “The Florentines told of the origins of their city in the following way. After the linguistic division made as a result of the attempt to construct the tower of Babel, Atlas built the first city, which thus fu sola [stood alone] and was therefore called Fiesole. Another of Atlas's sons, Dardanus, traveling in the East, built Troy there. From Troy Aeneas came to Italy. One of his descendants founded Rome. The Romans destroyed Fiesole. Romans and Fiesolans founded Florence.”

Dante alludes to two of his Florentine contemporaries, first Cianghella, daughter of Arrigo della Tosa. She married a man from Imola, after whose death she returned to her birthplace and behaved in such fashion as customarily gave widows a very bad name (cf. Boccaccio's Corbaccio), leading a life marked by lust and luxury. The profile of Lapo Salterello sounds a good bit like that of Dante (to what must have been the poet's dismay). He was a jurist and poet who, in 1294, represented his city to the papacy, and was then elected prior of Florence; further, in 1300 he denounced several of his townsmen for collaborating with Pope Boniface VIII; in 1302 he, like Dante, was sent into exile (for fomenting discord and for barratry) by the victorious Black Guelphs. In chiastic order, Cianghella and Lapo are compared with two virtuous figures from the era of the Roman republic, Cincinnatus and Cornelia (see Inf. IV.128), the mother of the Gracchi. For Dante's overwhelming admiration of the Romans of those days, see Hollander and Rossi (“Dante's Republican Treasury,” Dante Studies 104 [1986]: 59-82). And for a revisionist (and convincing) analysis of the republican roots of Dante's imperialist views, see Peter Armour (“Dante and Popular Sovereignty,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 27-45).

See Diana Glenn (“Women in Limbo: Arbitrary Listings or Textual Referents? Mapping the Connections in Inferno IV and Purgatorio XXII,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]: 112) on Cornelia's presence in Inferno IV.

Cacciaguida's self-narrative, the longest in Paradiso, nonetheless seems brief when compared to some of the epic autobiographical performances of characters in Inferno, e.g., Ulysses (53 lines), Ugolino (72 lines). (The very length of their utterances should have warned Romantic readers to regard them with more skepticism than they apparently desired to bring to them.) For discussion of the nature of speeches in Paradiso, see the fourth section of the Introduction.

For a global study of these three canti dedicated to Dante's ancestor, see Fernando Figurelli (“I canti di Cacciaguida,” Cultura e scuola 4 [1965]: 634-61).

This terzina repeats a theme that we have encountered before (the “good old days”), but does so with such emphasis and fluidity (both lines are enjambed, so that the entire tercet has the feeling of a single line of thought, with four iterations of the adverb così upping the emotional effect), as to leave us in suspense, wondering about the subject and predicate that it introduces.

Dante's radical notion of the responsibility of the citizen, based on ethics more than on politics, may have been shaped by the “radical corporationalism” of Remigio dei Girolami; the characterization is that of Ernst Kantorowicz (The King's Two Bodies [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957], p. 478), cited by Claire Honess (“Feminine Virtues and Florentine Vices: Citizenship and Morality in Paradiso XV-XVII,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], p. 104). For an overview of the still under-investigated question of Remigio's possible influence on Dante, with bibliography (including three important essays in English by Charles Till Davis), see Ovidio Capitani, “Girolami, Remigio dei,” ED III (1971).

The first three words of the line offer subject, verb, and object: “Mary gave me.” The tercet is based on the moments of birth and baptism, the crusader's mother calling out for the aid of Mary in the pain of parturition, and the ceremonial pronouncing of the child's name at his baptism (in the Florentine Baptistry, where Dante himself would also receive his Christian identity and name); the last word of the tercet, reflecting its first word, also a name (Maria), is Cacciaguida. (He has delayed Dante's gratification for some time now; Dante asked to know who he was at verse 87.)

Cacciaguida now names his brothers, Moronto and Eliseo, of whom we know absolutely nothing. There has been some dispute over the years about the exact content of the line and some speculation that Dante means to associate himself with the great Florentine Ghibelline family, the Elisei, with no convincing result to the process.

Cacciaguida's wife came, he says, from the valley of the Po (over the years, Ferrara remains perhaps the favorite location among the discussants, but, since there is a lot at stake [as, for some Americans, there is with regard to George Washington's dining and sleeping habits], the debate goes on). It was from her, he continues, that Dante got his surname, Alaghieri or Alighieri. Since one of her and Cacciaguida's sons was named Alighiero, it seems more than likely that he was named for his mother.

He follows the emperor, Conrad III, on the (disastrous) Second Crusade (in 1147) against Islam, against which the popes even now in Dante's day fail to take up arms (not even preaching crusade, much less fighting one). There still remains some debate over the question of which emperor Dante really means, Conrad II or III. But see Carroll (comm. to vv. 130-148): “Some doubt has been thrown on the commonly accepted view that the Emperor whom Cacciaguida followed to the Crusades was Conrad III of Suabia, but without reason. Founding on a passage in Villani (IV.9), Cassini suggests Conrad II, the Salic, who was Emperor from 1024 to 1039. According to Villani, this Emperor (whom he calls Conrad I and misdates) visited Florence frequently and knighted many of its citizens. The only crusade he undertook was against the Saracens in Calabria, so that on this view Cacciaguida never was in the Holy Land, and his birth must be pushed back at least a century before the generally received time. It is obviously impossible that he could in that case be the father of the Alighiero whom he calls his son, who died more than a hundred and sixty years later. There is no reason for giving up the ordinary view that the Emperor referred to is Conrad III, who in 1147, with Louis VII of France, undertook the disastrous Second Crusade, so enthusiastically preached by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. (Bernard's defense for the failure of this Crusade which roused all Europe against him is that it was due to the sins of the Crusaders themselves. They fell as the Israelites fell in the wilderness, and from the same cause. His remedy is – faith and a third Crusade [De Consideratione, II.1]”.)

He died in the Holy Land and came from martyrdom to this peace (cf. the words for Boethius' similar journey [Par. X.128-29]). While some twentieth-century commentators seem to be open to the idea, no one before Chimenz (comm. to vv. 145-148) states clearly that the text surely accommodates the view of medieval clergy that those who died on crusade in the Holy Land went straight to Heaven, bypassing Purgatory.

Steven Botterill's entry “Martyrdom” (in R. Lansing, ed., Dante Encyclopedia [New York: Garland, 2000], p. 596) offers reflections on Dante's daring in making Cacciaguida one among the otherwise canonical martyrs of the Church.