This is a more difficult tercet than it may seem. The standard view in the first commentators is that Cacciaguida was delighting in what he had said to his great-great-grandson, while the protagonist was sharing in that joy. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 1) disentangles the tortuous skein of debate over this line, pointing out that the text suggests that each of the two participants contemplates different “words.” He acknowledges Venturi and Lombardi, the first moderns to anticipate his solution (a form of which is perhaps first found in Francesco da Buti), and then proceeds to give what has become the standard modern view: The word verbo must here be understood as a translation of the Scholastic Latin term verbum (e.g., as defined by Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 34, a. 1), meaning “concept of the inner mind.” Thus, we at least may conjecture, Cacciaguida was enjoying his understanding, beyond these contingent events, of a higher form of being, in the light of Eternity, while Dante was seeing, sub specie humanitatis, the harmonious relation of his exile to his eventual happiness. This would mark an improvement in his cognition (seeing eventual concord where he was expecting only grief), which, nonetheless, remained limited by his mortal aspirations. To mark the differences in their levels of experience, as Torraca (comm. to this tercet) observes, Dante uses very different verbs: Cacciaguida savors (godeva) completely his inner concept of deity, while the protagonist has but a first taste (gustava) of his own higher awareness.

See Denise Heilbronn-Gaines (“Paradiso XVIII,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 266) for the notion that Cacciaguida was (as was also the protagonist) taking pleasure in his inward rapture over Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. As she points out, Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 1-12) was the first to make this point, but she does not go on to say that he offers the standard gloss first, with this explanation as possible alternative, nor that he doesn't carry that possible understanding over to include the protagonist's joy, as she (perhaps incorrectly) does. For a more recent review of the problem, including reference to Pézard's previous attempt to locate this verbo in a theological semantic field, see Giacalone (comm. to vv. 1-2). Scartazzini (comm. to verse 1) cites Cesari, who may in fact have been the first modern to suggest that verbo here refers to the Word.

Few commentators point out the obvious (but see at least Carroll [comm. to vv. 1-18]): The third verse reflects Cacciaguida's promise (Par. XVII.43-45) of an eventual harmonious resolution of the problems inherent in Dante's exile. The protagonist is now capable of a larger and wider view of the impending events in his life, knowing that they are a part of the divine plan, one that includes his writing this text and that corroborates the rightness of his political decisions in the greater scheme of things. Unlike Cacciaguida, however, he is not yet capable of seeing essences without their contingent trappings.

Beatrice, perhaps having tuned in on the inner thoughts of both Cacciaguida and Dante, reminds her charge that God takes away any sense of loss in earthly circumstances that the saved may feel, according to Dante's current understanding. Once saved, a soul is in patria, not in exile any longer.

Beatrice, who has been uncharacteristically silent in Mars (to make room for the poet's “Cacciaguida voice,” which is expansive), now speaks for only the second time in this heaven. She has smiled twice (Par. XV.71 and XVI.14) and spoken once (Par. XVII.7-12); she will speak once more (vv. 20-21), as briefly as she does now.

The insistent presence of first-person pronouns and pronominal adjectives in this passage (io is heard four times, the rhyming mio, three) is striking. It reminds us that, from the beginning, we have had to consider the strategic difference between the writing agent and the behaving protagonist, the first seeing all things in the light of his final vision of God, the second experiencing them cumulatively. In fact, this simple bipartite division has caused a certain confusion. Most current discussants, some without referring to the critic who first in the twentieth century deployed the word agens (lit., “agent,” the one who acts), simply appropriate without credit Francesco Mazzoni's questionable interpretation of the Epistle to Cangrande (Epist. XIII.38): “The author [agens], then, of the whole and of the part is the person mentioned above, who is seen to be such throughout” (tr. P. Toynbee). Mazzoni wants agens to refer to Dante-protagonist, not Dante-poet. (See Mazzoni, “L'Epistola a Cangrande,” Rendiconti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei [Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche] Ser. 8, 10 [1955]: 174-78. Hollander [Dante's Epistle to Cangrande {Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993}, pp. 21-22] for reasons to doubt that hypothesis.)

Recently Picone (“Leggere la Commedia di Dante,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Inferno, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2000], pp. 18-21) has argued that there are visible in the poem “three Dantes,” the protagonist, the narrator, and the author. Giuseppe Ledda's remarks in response (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 13-17) bring the problem sharply into focus. Taking his cue from Gérard Genette (Figures III [Paris: Seuil, 1972]), distinguishing among these three figures as they may be found in Proust's vast novel (where the distinctions surely work better than they do in the Commedia), Ledda presents for examination Picone's assertion that we must learn to distinguish not only between Dante the protagonist in the action narrated and the Dante who narrates that action (Dantes 1 and 2), but must distinguish also between that second Dante and a third one, the “author.” One might simplify Picone's case as follows: the narrator merely narrates, while the poet adds the elements that make the work a poem and not a mere prose narrative. However, if we know that the poem was written over many years (see Par. XXV.3), do we ever sense inside the boundaries of the poem any change of heart or mind within the speaking voice? In other words, are not the “narrator” and the “poet” (Dante number 2 and putative number 3), within our experience as readers, one and the same? One simple key we can use to resolve this question is to ask whether, within the text of the poem, the poet ever tells us something that the narrator does not know. That, it is probably fair to say, would be the pre-condition to make any such argument as Picone's convincing. Thus the author of Paradiso never lets on that he indeed knows things that the author of Inferno did not know; the protagonist develops, changes, while the narrator does not. At least that is the given of the poem. Someone named Dante (Purg. XXX.55), perhaps thirty-five years old (Inf. I.1), took a journey to the afterworld in late March or early April of the year 1300 (Inf. XXI.113), and was away almost precisely one week (Par. XXVII.79-87). Sometime after that, a poet, the very same person, wrote the record of that journey in verse. When did he do that? Sometime between 1300 and his death. We can resort to history if we have to, and most of us might agree to the following extrapolation: between 1306 and 1321. However, it is more accurate to say that the poem was written over “many years,” as the text (Par. XXV.3) tells us, and all that we can say for certain is that these years were sometime after 1300, before 1321, and of indeterminate duration. In the course of them nothing happened that changed the narrative in any way – or such is the poem's unexpressed but nonetheless clear given.

And so, while we have suspicions so strong that they are equivalent to knowledge that there are in fact “three Dantes,” the poet himself has excised one of these, making his narrator and that poetic self utterly indivisible, with the result that, in theory, that is, within the givens of the poem, there are but two Dantes. Even that many Dantes has caused enough difficulty over the centuries to make us want to try to avoid adding still another. The fact is that the “real” author obviously knew a great many things that were at odds with what he knew when he began writing the poem (e.g., the emergence into importance and the death of both Pope Clement and of Henry VII). We can sense that this is so, but never because he tells us. That he spends as much effort as he does in maintaining the fiction of a single narrator/author should be evidence enough for us. On the other hand, he surely knew that we would understand, extradiegetically, that is, outside the parameters of the fiction, that the narrator and the poet are two, not one, that the narrator is himself a construct of the poet. This is not to surrender in any way to the force of the arguments of those who would propose that we acknowledge “three Dantes,” but to recontextualize the question so that we can have, as readers of the text, a clearer and more certain relationship to the writing voice that we attend to. As theoreticians of literature we are free to indulge our appetites for such imaginative post-Proustian sprees as freely as we like – but only if we begin by acknowledging that the poet goes out of his way to deny the validity of that sort of consideration of the question. In life there were three Dantes (and more if we want to consider the other works of this changeful writer); in his poem there are but two.

This passage reflects the earlier one at Paradiso I.5-9, which similarly insists on the poet's incapacity to retell what he has experienced and forgotten, since his memory was not up to containing so momentous an experience.

The word conforto, used as a noun to describe another human being (e.g., “that person was my comfort”), has been employed three times before now (Inf. IV.18; Purg. III.22, IX.43), on each occasion assigned to Virgil; here, for the first (and last) time referring to anyone else, it obviously refers to Beatrice. For the possibility that Dante is here reacting to Cino's “Consolatoria” in response to the death of Beatrice, see Hollander (“Dante and Cino da Pistoia,” Dante Studies 110 [1992], p. 217): Cino's poem has Amor calling out for conforto on Dante's behalf. Perhaps his text is responsible for Dante's referring to Beatrice here as he does.

Bruno Nardi (“Perché 'dietro la memoria non può ire' [Paradiso, I, 9],” in his “Lecturae” e altri studi danteschi, ed. Rudy Abardo [Florence: Le Lettere, 1990 {1960}], pp. 267-68) argues that mente here means “intellect” and not “memory,” an interpretation crucial to his reinterpretation of Par. I.9 (see the note to that passage), but not easily acceded to.

Beatrice's beauty is now understood to mirror the greatest beauty of all, that of God. See the note to Purgatorio XXXI.47-54 for a discussion of the verbal noun piacere, denoting the aesthetic aspect of divinity. For Aquinas on God's aesthetic dimension, see ST I, q. 39, a. 8, where he argues that “the highest form and paradigm of beauty is the splendor of God as manifested through Christ, to whom... the name 'Beauty' is most fittingly attributed” (Franco Masciandaro [“Paradiso XXIII,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics {Lectura Dantis [virginiana], 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995}], p. 329).

See Took (L'etterno piacer: Aesthetic Ideas in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1984], pp. 10-22) on this tercet (and Par. XXVII.91-96) in relation to the problem of Dante's “idealist” (Platonic) or “immanentist” (Aristotelian) sense of beauty, that is, whether God is the only and direct source of any beauty or whether things in the world have their own independent beauty. While in these passages Took rightly argues that Dante is in the first camp (that of the Pseudo-Dionysius, among Dante's probable authorities), in many another, as Took demonstrates, he is in the second (that of Thomas Aquinas). In this respect also (one thinks of such binomes as papacy and empire, Latin and vernacular, of which Dante embraces both terms, refusing to settle for an either/or formulation) Dante often has things both ways.

Beatrice “conquers” Dante's will by compelling him to look away from her eyes in order to turn his attention a final time to the words of his great-great-grandfather. This is the last smile she will direct at Dante for quite some time. See the note to Paradiso XXIII.46-48.

This simile compares a particularly affection-bearing glance, perceived on earth, to the visibly increased flame of Cacciaguida's desire to speak again to his descendant.

Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 13-15) call our attention to Dante's equation of the soul and its affections in Convivio (III.iii.14).

Apparently having finished his performance, Cacciaguida, like Solomon (Par. XIV.37-60), returns for an encore. And, like Solomon's, his has ramifications for our understanding of the genre of his poem. Solomon's was a hymn to the Resurrection; his is a piece from a Christian martial epic. For this last as a Dantean genre, see Hollander (“Dante and the Martial Epic,” Mediaevalia 12 [1989]: 62-91), arguing that, after an initial series of rebuffs to martial epic in Inferno, eventually in Paradiso the poet begins to associate himself, through Cacciaguida, with a Christian poetry of crusade, surely a martial subject.

The image of the tree that is nourished from its topmost tip, that is, the “tree” of the saved in the Empyrean by God Himself, may reflect, as Battaglia Ricci suggests (“Con parole e segni. Lettura del XVIII del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995], p. 11), biblical language in general or perhaps Matthew 13:22 and/or Ezechiel 47:12.

See the note to Paradiso IX.38-42 for the sort of fame that is praiseworthy, even in a Christian context.

For the word musa as meaning “poet” (or, as seems more likely, “poem,” according to Bosco/Reggio [comm. to this verse]), see the note to Paradiso XV.26. For the meaning “poem,” Bosco/Reggio cite Virgil, Eclogues III.84 and VIII.5; Horace, Epistles I.xix.28; Satires II.vi.17.

Cacciaguida promises that, as he names each of these heroic figures, it will traverse the “arms” of the cross, looking like lightning flashing in a cloud (cf. the first description of these lights as flames glowing behind alabaster, Par. XV.22-24).

This verse is the last spoken by Cacciaguida. See the note to Paradiso XIV.52-57 for the similarly talkative Thomas Aquinas. Of the 628 verses in the heaven of the Sun, 287 are spoken by him (46%); of the 553 in Mars, 297 are spoken by Cacciaguida (54%).

For Dante's knowledge of the French tradition of the Neuf preus (Nine Worthies), see Hollander (“Dante and the Martial Epic,” Mediaevalia 12 [1989]: 83-85), citing Joan Ferrante (The Political Vision of the “Divine Comedy” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984], p. 277n.), and pointing to the first frontal study of Dante's eclectic treatment of this traditional subject, a then-forthcoming article by Lauren Scancarelli Seem. See also the discussion in Picone (“Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 268-71). Picone rightly notes that Seem's article (accepted by Forum Italicum around 1989) never appeared. See also Battaglia Ricci (“Con parole e segni. Lettura del XVIII del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995], pp. 13-14). Trucchi (comm. to vv. 34-36) observes only that the exemplary fighters are nine, “a symbolic and perfect number,” but is unaware, as is the entire commentary tradition, of the likely presence of a reference to the Nine Worthies. Seem, in her unpublished article, argues that Dante knew the tradition of these nine heroes, three Jewish, three pagan, three Christian, from either Les Voeux du paon, by Jacques de Longuyon (ca. 1298-1309), or from the earlier Latin and French tradition, dating from the eleventh century (with somewhat differing lists of heroes), that Jacques himself relied on.

The traditional list of the Nove prodi includes five not included in Dante's revised list (the right-hand column in the two lists below):

Joshua [1 in Dante also]
David Roland [4]
Judas Maccabeus [2 in Dante]
Hector William of Orange [5]
Alexander the Great Renouard [6]
Julius Caesar Robert Guiscard [8]
King Arthur Cacciaguida [9]
Charlemagne [3 in Dante]
Godfrey of Bouillon [7 in Dante]

It seems clear that Dante is taking a canonical list and recasting it to conform to his special purposes. He includes two of the first three and the last pair of names (Joshua, Judas Maccabeus; Charlemagne, Godfrey), dropping the middle four, and then adding five more recent “Christian heroes,” three drawn from fictional treatments, sometimes of historical characters (Roland and William of Orange, if not Renouard) and two from history itself (Robert Guiscard, Cacciaguida), and “updating” the list, which had ended with Duke Godfrey, leader of the first Crusade (1096), by adding last his own ancestor, who had perished, a martyr, in the second (1147). The lists themselves reveal something of their differing purposes. The “Neuf preus” include six “ancients” (three Hebrews, two Greeks, one Roman), and three “moderns” (one Briton and two Frenchmen); Dante's version of them skips David and the “ancient gentiles” and leaps from its two Hebrews to Charlemagne, who, as is each one of the rest, is Christian. All six who were active between 800 and 1100 are “French,” but the ninth and most recent among Dante's worthies is italianissimo. One might speculate that David is omitted from Dante's list because the poet preserves him to be his Old Testament alter ego, a lover and a singer and a just king rather than a fighter (he will appear soon enough, in his own right, in the eye of the Eagle, Par. XX.38); the three pagans do not require any more reason to be excused than their failure to be Christians; King Arthur may be the most surprising omission, until one considers (as Seem does) his guilt by association with the series of destructive love affairs at his court.

Joshua, successor of Moses as leader of the Israelites, was, in Dante's Christian eyes, the “first crusader” in that he conquered the Holy Land, restoring it to its rightful populace.

This line makes it clear that the protagonist hears the names of the heroes spoken by his ancestor, who thus becomes, for a moment, the “author” of this part of the poem, and thus of a crusading epic. See the note to verse 51. However, and as Giovanni Iorio (“Il Canto XVIII,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], p. 474) reminds us, there is not a word about their battles; this text presents them as they are, now and forever, in the sight of God, literally sub specie aeternitatis, with all that violence behind them.

Judas Maccabeus fought successfully against two kings of Syria, both of whom wanted to extirpate the Jewish religion. He eventually was killed by a third in 160 B.C., but his mission had been accomplished by then.

“It was joy that whipped that spinning top”: That is, joy “was the impulse which caused the rotation. The homely simile is borrowed from Virgil, Aeneid VII.378-384, where it is applied to Amata's wild excitement when under the influence of the Fury” (Tozer, comm. to vv. 40-42). In the days before mechanized toys, children used to keep their top spinning (once they had imparted energy to it by rapidly pulling a cord wrapped around it) by following it and “whipping” its sides with a long, thin stick, thus maintaining its rotating motion.

Charlemagne (742-814) fought against the Saracens in Spain. He is the only emperor in the group. Roland, while a historical figure (counted among the Christian dead at the battle of Roncesvalles), is better known from the Chanson de Roland and other medieval epic poems.

William, Duke of Orange (ca. 750-812), adviser of Charlemagne and leader in several military successes of the Christian forces, but still better known from the cycle of poems celebrating his valor. Renouard, while not a historical figure, was perhaps believed by Dante to be one. As Charlemagne and Roland were paired in one cycle of French chansons de geste, so were William and Renouard in another.

Godfrey of Bouillon (1058-1100) led the first Crusade, resulting in the conquest of Jerusalem.

Robert Guiscard (“Robert the Astute”), a historical figure (1015-1085), was also celebrated in a Latin poem, Gesta Roberti Wiscardi. Exactly why Dante wanted him included in his list is not clear, indeed is the subject of a certain scholarly puzzlement. Further, he violates the chronology established by the inclusion of Godfrey before him. Dante has previously mentioned him (Inf. XXVIII.13-14) as having defeated the Saracens in Puglia, and that may have been his single largest qualification in the poet's eyes.

Cacciaguida has rejoined the temporary residents of the cross and now he also streaks along its radial beam.

The word artista, as Hollander (“Dante and Cino da Pistoia,” Dante Studies 110 [1992], pp. 217-18) has argued, is perhaps used here for the first time in Italian with its modern sense, that is, not only as the practitioner of one of the liberal arts (in this case, music), but as a full-fledged “artist,” both composer and performer of his own work, performing his “mini-epic” of nine crusading spirits, his personal version of the Nine Worthies. Its second such use will be in Paradiso XXX.33, where Dante will join his great-great-grandfather as one of the only two “artists” so designated in the Commedia. See also Hollander (ibid.), p. 218, for the suggestion that Dante's sense of the word reflects its appearance in the sonnet of Cino da Pistoia attacking Guido Cavalcanti, “Qua' son le cose vostre ch'io vi tolgo.”

The musical reference of this canto, its concerns so often expressed in musical terms, is studied by Denise Heilbronn-Gaines (“Paradiso XVIII,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 266-76).

The ascent from Mars to Jupiter is accomplished during the course of a single action (Dante looks into Beatrice's eyes [vv. 52-57]), which is amplified by two similes (vv. 58-63, 64-69). The first combines awareness of the slowness of process with the suddenness of the realization that a change has finally occurred; the second presents a subtle change (the return of normal complexion) that follows a fairly dramatic event (a blush of modesty in response to some sort of embarrassment) that recedes perceptibly over a brief period. See the note to vv. 64-66. The first simile refers to the ascent from Mars and arrival in Jupiter in spatial terms, while the second reflects the colors of the two planets, respectively red and silvery white. Each refers to a subtle process, occurring over an indeterminate period of time, that is suddenly perceived as having involved fairly dramatic change.

As we may have suspected, Beatrice, in this her latest presence to Dante as they both ascend to a new realm, is even more beautiful than ever. See verses 7-21, the last time he looked upon his lady in the heaven of Mars.

Mattalia (comm. to this tercet) points out that this tercet reflects, along with other passages in the minor works and the Comedy (e.g., Purg. IV.85-95), a basic Aristotelian dictum: that any virtuous operation of the soul resulting in joy to the practitioner requires constant practice. Grandgent (comm. to this tercet) cites Aristotle's Ethics (II.iii.1).

Dante has become aware that the segment of the ideal circle traversed by his body in each sphere is increasing in circumference the higher he rises, a natural result of his progress up through the heavens.

Beatrice began her “career” as miracolo in Dante's life in Vita nuova: XXI.4, XXV.6, and XXIX.3.

Beginning with Scartazzini (comm. to verse 64) and Poletto (comm. to vv. 64-69), some readers have turned to Ovid for a source for this blush in Arachne's face (Metam. VI.45-49). The scene is a troubling one: Athena appears (first disguised as an old woman) to accept Arachne's challenge to a contest in weaving. When the goddess reveals herself, the other mortals present show reverence, except for Arachne, whose involuntary blush is only momentary, and quickly fades, like the red sky at dawn. For a similar blush on the part of Beatrice, see Par. XXVII.31-34. Picone (“Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 272) points out that the figuring element and the thing figured are reversed in Dante's use of the passage, reflecting an even more significant reversal, from a negative experience (Arachne's transformation into a spider) to a positive one (the letter M's transmutation into a lily and then an eagle).

For some resonances of this Ovidian moment, see, among others, Teodolonda Barolini (“Arachne, Argus, and St. John: Transgressive Art in Dante and Ovid,” Mediaevalia 13 [1987]: 207-26) and Pamela Royston Macfie (“Ovid, Arachne and the Poetics of Paradiso,” 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. 159-72).

Picone argues that this line marks the exact numerical midpoint of the canto (verse 68 of 136), as is underlined by the enjambed word sesta (sixth) at verse 69, marking the arrival in the next (the sixth) heaven, that of Jupiter.

For Jupiter as “temperate” planet, between two that are not, hot Mars and cold Saturn, see Convivio II.xiii.25.

As Poletto (comm. to vv. 70-72) points out, the word facella (from Latin fax, “torch”) has been used once before to mean “star”; see Purgatorio VIII.89.

The phrase nostra favella has caused minor difficulty among those who (rightly) understand the noun usually to refer to vernacular speech and who therefore wonder why Dante uses this term for words that are Latin, and not Italian. The rhyme position obviously forced Dante's hand a little here. Most readers understand, along with Steiner (comm. to this verse) and, even more pointedly, Momigliano (comm. to vv. 70-72), that we should take the phrase more broadly and as referring to human speech in general.

Poletto (comm. to these verses) seems to have been the first to link them to Purgatorio XXIV.64-69. And Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 73-78) the first to see that this image is derived from Lucan (Phars. V.711-716).

Picone (“Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 274) points out that, while the avian “skywriting” observed by Lucan is aleatory and quickly obliterated, Dante's is lasting, by virtue of its inscription here in his pages.

Carroll (comm. to vv. 70-81) succinctly ties together the avian imagery that, beginning here, is so present in Jupiter: “It is to be noted that in this Heaven of the Eagle nearly all the similes are taken from bird-life (e.g., in addition to the Eagle and the present passage: XVIII.111, the mysterious reference to nests; XIX.34, the falcon issuing from its hood; XIX.91, the comparison of the Eagle to the stork hovering over its young; XX.73, the lark pausing, content with 'the last sweetness' of its song. See the chap. on 'The Birds of Dante' in Christopher Hare's Dante the Wayfarer).”

Cf. the doves, also at their pastura (feeding), in an earlier simile: Purgatorio II.124-125, as Torraca (comm. to vv. 73-75) suggests. These birds seem of better purpose. While those earlier “doves,” temporarily seduced by an ode from Dante's Convivio, failed to distinguish between wheat and tares (see the note to Purg. II.124-132), these “cranes” are singing God's song to Dante. For a more recent notice of the probable reference, 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], p. 42), if without notice of any precursor.

These “holy creatures” (sante creature) will later (Par. XIX.100-101) be identified as “lucenti incendi / de lo Spirito Santo” (the Holy Spirit's fiery lights).

A curiosity that may also represent a coincidence: the letters D, I, and L represent, in Roman numerals, the numbers 500, 1, and 50, or 551, possibly for Dante a scrambled version of his “515” (Purg. XXXIII.43), given that these numbers, too, are connected to questions of rulership. One hastens to say that, without confirming evidence, this remains the merest speculation.

This is the sixth invocation of the poem and second in Paradiso. In the first cantica the second invocation (Inf. XXXII.10-12) occurred thirty cantos after the first (Inf. II.7); in the second, the intervening interval was a bit shorter (Purg. I.7-12 to Purg. XXIX.37-42). This is the shortest interval yet (Par. I.13-21 to Par. XVIII.82-87). However, first-time readers may not yet know that there are still three to come (Par. XXII.112-123, Par. XXX.97-99, Par. XXXIII.67-75). What the Muse is asked to perform, the inspiration of Dante so that he may give long life to cities and kingdoms, might seem to require that Clio, the Muse of history, is called upon here. However, only one commentator even mentions her as a possibility (Momigliano [comm. to verse 82]), and he says only that the imperial context most fits Calliope or Clio.

The words ingegno (Inf. II.7; here; Par. XXII.114) and concetto (Inf. XXXII.4; here; Par. XXXIII.68) are both twice elsewhere present in passages containing invocations.

The winged horse Pegasus struck the ground on Mt. Helicon with his hoof. There sprang forth Hippocrene, the fountain sacred to the Muses. Which one of them does the poet invoke here? The most popular choices (given in historical order) are (1) Minerva, “Wisdom,” as a sort of “super muse” (first suggested by Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 82-87]); (2) a nonspecific, “generic” muse (first, Benvenuto [comm. to vv. 82-87]); (3) invoked for the second time in the poem (see Purg. I.9), Calliope, the Muse of epic (first, Vellutello [comm. to vv. 82-84], and the “majority candidate”); (4) also invoked for the second time (see Purg. XXIX.41), Urania, the heavenly Muse (first, Andreoli [comm. to this verse]). This is a vexed question, with four fairly popular solutions (and a few others, e.g., Euterpe [Torraca, comm. to vv. 82-84] and Clio [Momigliano, comm. to this verse]) and no clear consensus. All one can say is that the poet really seems to have a particular Muse in mind, since he addresses her with the singular “tu” in verse 87.

In apparent support of Minerva is the passage in Ovid (Metam. V.250-272) in which she is portrayed as visiting Mt. Helicon, where she is welcomed by the nine Muses. Then, unidentified, one of the Muses (almost certainly not Urania, the preceding speaker) addresses her, saying that, had she not been charged with greater tasks (V.269), she might have been free to join them. This probably ought to rule Minerva out (and Urania, as well), but we cannot be certain that Dante was thinking of those details when he wrote this passage.

On the verb rilevare, see the interesting discussion in Giuseppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002]), p. 82 and n.

Perhaps the single most self-conscious, “artificial” passage in a poem that hardly lacks aesthetic exertion, the sort of thing Romantic readers, in the wake of De Sanctis and Croce, despise in the Commedia. However, for the view that this sort of calculated performance is a sign of the poet's “bello stile,” see E.G. Parodi (“Gli esempi di superbia punita e il 'bello stile' di Dante,” in his Poesia e storia della “Divina Commedia,” ed. G. Folena and P.V. Mengaldo [Venice: Neri Pozza, 1965 {1915}], 149-61).

For the poet to have counted his letters (there are thirteen different ones in all), thirty-five instances of vowels (18, with “i” dominant [occurring 10 times]) and consonants (17, with “t” dominant [occurring 5 times]), tells us that he was making a point that he considered central to his purpose.

These five words (“Love justice, you who judge the earth”) constitute the opening sentence of the book of the Bible called “Sapientia” (Wisdom), attributed, by Dante at least, to Solomon. That attribution was a matter of some dispute for Christians, from the early Fathers on (e.g., in a fairly rare moment of concord, both Jerome and Augustine deny Solomon paternity [if both err in attributing it to Philo Judaeus]). For discussions of Dante's knowledge of this text, see G.R. Sarolli, “Salomone” (ED IV [1973]) and the unsigned article (apparently by Alessandro Niccoli), “Sapientia, Libro della” (ED V [1976]). Sarolli shows that Dante, in one of his many references to the biblical king (Conv. IV.xvi.1), refers, by citing Wisdom 6:23, to Solomon as the author of that now-apocryphal book. This passage in Paradiso is treated by most (including Sarolli) as the only reference to Wisdom in the Commedia (but see the note to verse 101), if there are two references in the Epistle to Cangrande (Epist. XIII.6 and XIII.62). A question arises regarding the differing sorts of wisdom that Dante has in mind in Convivio (where, as Niccoli says, Solomon's “Wisdom” is treated as the disembodied Sapience associated with the Lady Philosophy) and here (where it is associated with God's purpose in creating human community, in particular that of an imperial bent, on the model of Solomon's kingship [see the notes to Par. X.109-114, Par. XIII.97-102, and Par. XIII.140-142, inter alias]). Is this another example of Dante's distancing himself in the Commedia from an earlier and quite different view? For a dispute between friends about the palinodic nature of some of Dante's later references to Convivio, see Hollander (“Dante's Deployment of Convivio in the Comedy,” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [October 1996]) and Pertile (“Lettera aperta di Lino Pertile a Robert Hollander sui rapporti tra Commedia e Convivio,” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [October 1996]). The former's case may have received a measure of aid from Luca Azzetta (“La tradizione del Convivio negli antichi commenti alla Commedia: Andrea Lancia, l'Ottimo Commento, e Pietro Alighieri,” Rivista di Studi Danteschi 5 [2005]: 3-7), who demonstrates that the text of Convivio was known in extenso by Andrea Lancia (in addition to being known, perhaps less well, to the author of the Ottimo Commento, to Pietro di Dante, and to Giovanni Villani) no later than 1343.

For the program of St. Paul's “five words with understanding” in the poem and its possible relevance here, 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. 39-43).

It seems probable that this is the third passage in the poem to involve a phenomenon that might be described as “visible speech,” formally similar expressions that also prominently involve the idea of justice. This one joins the “visible speech” found in the writing over the gate of Hell (Inf. III.1-9) and the words “seen” in the intaglio presenting Trajan and the widow (Purg. X.73-96). See Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 297-300); Gino Casagrande (“'Esto visibile parlare': A Synaesthetic Approach to Purgatorio 10.55-63,” Lectura Dantis Newberryana, ed. P. Cherchi and A. C. Mastrobuono, vol. II [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990], pp. 21-57), a meditation on the mimetic overload found in Purgatorio X.55-63; Kenneth Knoespel (“When the Sky Was Paper: Dante's Cranes and Reading as Migration,” Lectura Dantis Newberryana, ed. P. Cherchi and A. C. Mastrobuono, vol. II [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990], pp. 121-46), an independent but not dissimilar consideration of issues encountered in this passage; Pertile (“Paradiso XVIII tra autobiografia e scrittura sacra,” Dante Studies 109 [1991]): 38, seeing the common elements in the three passages much as did Hollander; and Bortolo Martinelli (“Canto XIX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 283).

It is not surprising that justice, most blatantly evident as a guiding concern for this poet in this canto (where it is literally spelled out in capital letters), has caught the attention of nearly all who deal with it. Raffaele Giglio's lectura (“Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Neapolitana: “Paradiso,” ed. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1988}], pp. 345-62) is little more than a meditation on Dante's conception of justice. And see Siro Chimenz (“Il canto XIX del Paradiso,” in Letture dantesche. III. “Paradiso,” ed. G. Getto [Florence: Sansoni, 1965 {1956}], p. 1735), supporting a definition of the Commedia as a “poem of justice, both human and divine.” In this vein, see also Scott (Dante's Political Purgatory [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996], p. 55), citing Dante's epistle (Epist. XII.7), where he refers to himself as a “preacher of justice” (vir predicans iustitiam). For consideration of Dante's sonnet “Se vedi gli occhi miei” as underlining his continuing concern for justice and as perhaps influencing Ambrogio Lorenzetti's allegory of Injustice (in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena), see Claudio Giunta (“Il sonetto dantesco 'Se vedi gli occhi miei' e le allegorie del malgoverno di Ambrogio Lorenzetti,” in his Saggi sulla poesia del Medioevo [Bologna: il Mulino, 2005], pp. 25-43).

For a consideration of the centrality of justice to Cantos XVIII-XX and to the poem as a whole, see John Took (“'Diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram': Justice and the Just Ruler in Dante,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 137-51). Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 70-99) refers to two earlier passages that reveal Dante's overwhelming respect for this ideal: “Thus, although every virtue in man is deserving of love, that is most deserving of love in him which is most human, and that is justice” (Conv. I.xii.9 – tr. R. Lansing); “... Justice, which disposes us to love and conduct ourselves with rectitude in all things” (Conv. IV.xvii.6 - tr. R. Lansing).

Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 94-108) says that the “m,” last letter of the word terram, stands for mondo (the world), a reading immediately supported by the meaning of the word itself in Wisdom 1:1. He continues by reading the souls making up the letter as being minor public officials and private citizens who have in common a love of justice; they will be the body politic for the emperor, figured in the eagle's head into which the central stem of the letter will eventually be transformed at its top. It has become far more common, but only in the twentieth century, for interpreters to claim that the letter stands for monarchia. On the other hand, the early interpretation has the virtue of separating the human desire for justice from its expression in actual imperial rule, which would certainly correspond with Dante's own experience, most of which was of a world that hoped for empire but was denied its presence. (See the note to vv. 100-108.)

Giovanni Iorio (“Il Canto XVIII,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 479-80) expresses perhaps justified exasperation with the theses of Joseph Chierici (L'aquila d'oro nel cielo di Giove: Canti XVII-XX del “Paradiso” [Rome: Istituto Grafico Tiberino, 1962]) – which perhaps had attracted more attention and support than Iorio would have wished – that made “Maria” the word the first letter of which is “spelled” by the emme and the eagle the emblem of Christ. Iorio's distraction is understandable in light of the obvious imperial reference of the entire passage.

The planet itself is seen as a silver globe inlaid with ornamentation worked in gold, the mobile souls carrying out God's artisanship for Dante's pleasure and instruction.

Other souls, descending (from where we are not told, but it is difficult to imagine from anywhere else but the Empyrean), not those who had paused in their “skywriting,” appear to make a “cap” on the midpoint of the top of the “m,” which then resembles (as we learn in verse 113) a lily, as well as a capital “M” in Gothic script.

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

The simile accounts for the rising of the souls (probably from the second group alone [i.e., that which had just formed the cap] and not from both groups, as some would understand) to represent the head and neck of an eagle. That physical detail remains a matter in question (i.e., whether the souls forming the eagle derived only from the new group or from both). Also a cause for debate is the more important question of what the three embodiments of the “m” represent. There are many solutions proposed. The more plausible explanations limit the possible choices to the following: (1) whether the “m” stands for monarchia or mondo, (2) whether the “M” (as lily) stands for France or Florence (its two most widely known identities), (3) whether the “M” (as eagle) stands for Christ or the empire. While arguments can and have been made for all these interpretations (and more), and in varying combinations, it does seem plausible to hold that the first image indicates the “world” of would-be imperial citizens, while the third indicates the empire once it is established (e.g., as Dante knew it briefly under Henry VII, 1310-1313, and hoped to know it again). As for the second stage in the transformation (the most difficult to interpret – if no element of this puzzle is easily resolved), those who argue that it indicates the ideal primitive Florence (i.e., as Cacciaguida has described it in Par. XVI), a template for the civic virtues necessary to develop a populace capable of being led to empire, are most in accord with what we know of Dante's predilections in these matters. On the other hand, to argue that the first “m” stands for monarchy and the third for empire seems a doomed solution, since in Dante's thought and language the two were synonymous; also, to argue that Dante wanted the lily to represent either France or the current Guelph party is not easily convincing, given what we know about his negative feelings about both these entities. See discussion in Lucia Battaglia Ricci (“Con parole e segni. Lettura del XVIII del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995], pp. 20-26).

For an interesting and idiosyncratic reading of the transformations of the “m,” see G.R. Sarolli (Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], pp. 291-98).

For the connection of this image, “corrective” of divination, with Dante's harsh views of that practice put forward in Inferno XX, see Hollander (“The Tragedy of Divination in Inferno XX,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], pp. 197-99).

Pertile (“Paradiso XVIII tra autobiografia e scrittura sacra,” Dante Studies 109 [1991]: 41) cites Wisdom 3:7: “Fulgebunt iusti, / Et tamquam scintillae in harundineto discurrent” (The just will shine forth, / And they will show themselves like sparks in the stubble), crediting Pietrobono (comm. to this verse) as being the only other reader to note this clear citation (but also see Fallani [comm. to vv. 100-102]).

This Sun is God and these arriving souls sing, apparently, of their desire to return to Him. It is of some interest that, forming the head of the Eagle, they are in fact moving up, and thus back toward Him.

Just as birds need no exemplar to design their nests, but follow some inner imprinting, so God needs no “model” for his creating. This simple paraphrase of the tercet would have come as a great surprise to almost all who either avoided dealing with it or who labored over it in order to find something “more profound” in it. Indeed, its first clear statement had to await Brunone Bianchi (comm. to this tercet) in 1868. However, it is perhaps prudent to observe that the main opposing argument (there are several to choose from) has it that not the nests but the creatures within them, referred to by synecdoche, are portrayed as developing in accord with their archetypal form. And this just may be what Dante had in mind. For more, see Andreoli's objection (comm. to this tercet) to previous glosses and his version of the formulation that begins this note. Scartazzini's lengthy comment (to verse 111) summarizes earlier efforts; he is surely on the path toward seeing not “nests” but “nestlings” (as Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 109-123] was the first to suggest) as the subject of Dante's consideration. See Tozer (comm. to this tercet) for a paraphrase in English that is much as ours would be.

It was Grandgent (comm. to this tercet) who was perhaps the first to point to Thomas Aquinas for a potential source (ST I, q. 19, a. 4). Perhaps still closer is the reference put forward by Christopher Becker (“Dante's Heretics,” unpublished typescript read in 1988) to Thomas's Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, XXIV, a. 1, resp. 3, which has it that “all swallows build their nests in the same way.”

The rest of the spirits who had at first seemed to be content to make up the “enlilying” cap of the “M,” now fill out the Eagle's shape (his wings?). This detail would argue against those who claim that some of the first group are drawn up into this further design. It would seem rather that they stay in the original “m.” See the note to vv. 100-108.

For a consideration of a range of possible significances of this figure, see G.R. Sarolli (Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], pp. 337-56). Picone (“Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 277-78) argues effectively for the fugitive vision that Dante has of the “M” as lily being the representation of the civic principles of Florence of the “buon tempo antico” as being consistent with the restoration of Roman imperial virtue in the city. He goes on to associate one of Dante's sonnets (Rime CV) with this passage, arguing that the papacy's repression of justice in the city stands in the way, not only of Dante's return from exile, but of the empire's coming into its natural ascendancy. Edoardo Fumagalli (“Par. XVIII, 88-114, l'enigma del giglio e la sapienza di re Salomone,” L'Alighieri 26 [2005]: 111-25) attempts to resuscitate the “French connection,” arguing that the passage (vv. 88-114) presents St. Louis (King Louis IX of France) in a better light than is customarily perceived. He admits that Enrico Fenzi (“Tra religione e politica: Dante, il mal di Francia e le 'sacrate ossa' dell'esecrato san Luigi [con un excursus su alcuni passi del Monarchia],” Studi Danteschi 69 [2004]: 23-117) has offered a strong argument against such a view, but presents it anyway.

The first of the apostrophes with which this canto concludes is addressed (as will be the second) to the positive forces in God's universal plan, first the tempering planet, just Jupiter. This tercet offers a clear example of Dante's belief in astral influence on earthly behaviors, with Jupiter conceived as the heavenly shaper of human embodiments of justice. See Paradiso VIII.97-99 and VIII.122-126 and the appended notes.

Nancy Lenkeith's chapter “Jupiter and Justice” (Dante and the Legend of Rome [London: Warburg Institute, 1952], pp. 73-131) concludes with a citation of this tercet. She offers an evaluation of Dante's debt to Cicero's Stoic statecraft (with which the poet is in accord except for a total disavowal of its Godless theory of politics) and his total disagreement with Augustine's theologically determined rejection of the state's ability to have anything to do with “real justice” altogether.

The reader can hardly fail to notice the sudden and sustained shift in the tense of the verbs (from past definite in verse 116) to present, some dozen and a half verbs in all, from prego (I pray [118]) to conosco (I know [136]). The most dramatic is perhaps the resurrective “are alive” (son vivi) for Saints Peter and Paul in verse 132. But the ostensible reason for the shift in tenses is clear: Dante looks up from composing his text to see again the souls he had previously seen in this sphere (we will meet them only in Par. XX), first among them David, those of just rulers, to pray for their intervention with God to alleviate the civic distress of all on earth who have been led astray by corrupt clergy, presided over by a corrupt pope. For reasons to believe that Dante here is thinking specifically of the papacy and particularly of Pope John XXII, see the note to verse 130. If there is a single moment that might disabuse those who manage to believe that, once he enters the heavenly realm, Dante forgets about such earthly concerns as politics, this might qualify as the most compelling.

Now the poet turns his attention from this planetary home of justice, where he was suspended, to God the Father, who is the source of the justice that Jupiter rays down to earth, and prays that He will observe the “smoke” that extinguishes those just rays before they reach our world and will feel wrath at the offenders.

Each of these three verses is constructed from a different verse of the Bible. For the commerce in the temple, see Matthew 21:12; for the bloody cost of building the Church out of sacrifice and martyrdom, see Acts 20:28; for the heavenly militia, see Luke 2:13.

The second of the three concluding apostrophes is addressed to the souls of the just rulers, whom he contemplates, as he writes these words, in the Empyrean. Nowhere in this passage does the poet rise to a higher pitch of blissful contemplation than here, where he even now “holds in mind” those whom he has previously seen in this heaven. See the note to vv. 118-136.

The word adora here does not have its more familiar meaning (“adore”) but means “address a prayer to.”

Surely Dante does not mean that all on earth are misled by corrupt prelates; his negative enthusiasm runs away with him. But he clearly does mean to indicate the population of Italy (and others as well?) that is misgoverned by the Church.

The “bread” that God the Father bars to none is generally understood as the sacraments of the Church, and in this instance most particularly the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Since it is the Church that “makes war” by denying the sacrament of communion (an inevitable consequence of excommunication), in a better age the Church (and not, as some commentators believe, ancient Roman warriors) must have been brave on the field of battle. Exactly what Dante means by this is perhaps as puzzling as the commentaries have allowed it to become. However, in this very canto we have heard about those worthies who battled against the soldiery of Mohammed in order to regain the Holy Land, the Crusaders. Is this an approving recollection of the Crusades? No commentator apparently thinks so, but that fact in itself seems surprising. (Commentators who do attempt to identify the objects of these Christian weapons are content with a general sense, heretics and/or pagans.)

The third and final apostrophe is hurled at the sitting pope, and perhaps explains Dante's reasons for shifting out of the normal “time zone” of the poem to a “now” in which Pope John XXII is very much alive. See the note to verse 130.

The rhythm of the three apostrophes is noteworthy, the first two addressed to the temporary inhabitants of Jupiter and the permanent residents of the Empyrean (O dolce stella,... O milizia del ciel), lofty in tone; the last, brutally personal and in the casual intonation not far removed from that of the gutter (Ma tu...). This conclusion of the canto is meant to be scabrous, because it is concerned with scabrous deeds, the repeated selling of Christ for personal gain. These verses offer what may be considered an appendix to Inferno XIX (where we first met simoniac popes) in which we hear the sitting pontiff, his words lent him by the acid-tongued Signor Alighieri, sounding like a mobster in The Godfather or The Sopranos, speak of his dead “buddies,” one who was killed (John the Baptist, whose image, of course, adorns the florin) so that a political functionary could watch a striptease performed by his stepdaughter, and another two (whom we heard rightly named in the poet's voice just now, Peter and Paul) disparagingly referred to as a fisherman and “Paulie” – to whom he greatly prefers the florin.

In a poem dedicated to the virtues of humility and to its vehicle of expression, the low style of comedy, we learn that there are limits to how low one should go. Here Pope John XXII is focally presented as being outrageously low in both his behaviors and his diction.

A probable reference to Pope John XXII, who acceded to the Holy See in 1316 (he would survive in it for thirteen years past Dante's death, until 1334). John was not only French, but he decided to keep the Church in France, in its Avignonian “captivity,” thus managing to draw Dante's ire. It has seemed to some that this diatribe against papal use of excommunication for political purpose is grounded in John's excommunication of the imperial vicar Cangrande in 1317. This was the opinion of Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 128) and of Steiner (comm. to this verse), possibly reprocessing the opinion of E.G. Parodi (BSDI 18 [1911], p. 73), cited by most of the fairly numerous later commentators who mention this event. Some try to date the writing of this canto to a time later than 1317, which is not problematic; others try to argue that this reference to Cangrande's excommunication requires that we understand Dante still to have been in Verona. That is altogether possible, but not necessary. Such an action would have caught Dante's irate attention anywhere.

The last pope who had a speaking part in the poem was Adrian V, on his way to Paradise, addressed by the protagonist with the honorific voi (Purg. XIX.131). Now, in the poem called Paradiso, we hear the protagonist speak to the sitting pope, using the familiar tu, in the most disparaging terms and tone of voice.

Dante's threat to Pope John is advanced in two lines hinged on the past tense of the verb “to die” (moriro[no]) and culminating in the triumphant assertion that the first keepers of the vineyard of the Church, who gave their lives for it as martyrs, are indeed alive (vivi). Peter and Paul (and John the Baptist, as we shall shortly hear), for the pope and his cofunctionaries, are dead indeed; but not for believers like Dante.

An extraordinarily helpful lectura of this canto, in English, has just been brought to its conclusion by John A. Scott (February 2006). Aimed at the English reader, it nonetheless deals with many of the crucial issues encountered in the Italian. It is scheduled to appear in the so-called “California Lectura Dantis”; however, if past experience is any guide, one may have to be very patient indeed. While the series was announced in 1980, the Inferno volume only appeared in 1998; Purgatorio was finally announced for 2004, but as of this writing has not appeared; and Paradiso lies open on the lap of the gods, but we mortals have no such access.