For the Ovidian resonances in this passage, so marked by classical motif (the poem as voyage across a sea, the poet as inspired by gods and/or muses) and allusion (Jason and the voyage of the Argonauts), see Picone (“Dante argonauta: la ricezione dei miti ovidiani nella Commedia,” in M. Picone and B. Zimmermann, eds., Ovidius redivivus: von Ovid zu Dante [Stuttgart: M&P Verlag, 1994], pp. 191-200). The baptismal and related gnoseological resonances of the network of images in the opening of this canto are closely studied by Giorgio Stabile (“Il Canto II del Paradiso,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 35-42, 55-77).

The canto begins apparently by discouraging the “average reader” from attempting to understand it. As we shall shortly discover, only some of us are welcomed to the attempt (vv. 10-18). We may be put in mind of the similar gesture near the beginning of Convivio (I.i.2-6). That passage continues (I.i.7): “Blessed are the few who sit at the table where the bread of the angels is eaten, and most unfortunate those who share the food of sheep” (tr. R. Lansing). See William J. O'Brien (“'The Bread of Angels' in Paradiso II: A Liturgical Note,” Dante Studies 97 [1979]: 97-106) for a strong differentiation of the references to the “bread of angels” in these two passages, the first accommodating secular knowing, this one based on faith and the Scriptures. For the differing audiences sought for Convivio and Paradiso, see Vincenzo Placella (“Il pubblico del Convivio e quello del Paradiso,” in Miscellanea di studi in onore di Raffaele Sirri, a cura di M. Palumbo and V. Placella [Naples: Federico e Ardia, 1995], pp. 365-73). With regard to Dante's program for popularizing Aristotle as established in Convivio, see Sonia Gentili (“Il fondamento aristotelico del programma divulgativo dantesco [Conv. I],” in Le culture di Dante. Atti del quarto Seminario dantesco internazionale, ed. Michelangelo Picone et al. [Florence: Cesati, 2004], pp. 179-97).

Despite the distraction of an address to the reader, we realize that, beginning with the opening of this canto, we are in the sphere of the Moon. There is only one other occasion in the ten heavens when the entrance to a celestial realm coincides with the beginning of a canto: Paradiso XXI (Saturn). Those who are overwhelmed by the organized quality of Dante's mind might like to be aware of its “disorderly” side as well.

The “little bark” inevitably reminds readers of the “small bark” (navicella – Purg. I.2) that represents Dante's intellect at the beginning of Purgatorio. His capacities, we may infer, have increased in accord with his nearness to God; his ship, we understand by implication, is now a mighty craft; ours is the “little bark.”

For only the second time in the poem (see Inf. XXII.118), Dante addresses his readers as listeners, as Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001, p. 10), points out. Since these potential customers are urged not to read the poem, Aversano goes on to speculate, they are not referred to as readers (in the previous passage the reader was both lettore and auditor).

The phrase “ship that singing makes its way” once again capitalizes on the equation ship = poem (see Purg. I.2). The word legno as metaphoric expression, the material of construction being referred to as the thing itself, has a classical heritage and a heavy Dantean presence. While in Purgatorio it appears four times without once having this meaning, in Inferno it had appeared ten times, in fully seven of which it denotes “ship” or “boat.” Now in the last cantica it is used six times, twice (here and in Canto XIII.136) with the meaning “ship.”

The self-consciously “literary” language continues that strain from the first thirty-six verses of the opening canto in less lengthy but similar behavior in the first eighteen of this one. And see Paola Allegretti (“Argo: 'Dietro al mio legno che cantando varca' [Par. II 3],” Studi Danteschi 69 [2004]: 185-209) for a consideration of the opening passage of this canto (II.1-15) as the centerpiece between two other important passages involving ships, Purgatorio II.10-51 and Paradiso XXXIII.94-96, with ample consideration of classical sources, in a revisitation of Curtius's often-cited essay, “The Ship of the Argonauts” (in his Essays on European Literature, tr. M. Kowal [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 {1950}], pp. 465-96).

The warning sounds “elitist,” even scornful (and see the note to vv. 13-15). But if we think about what is at stake, nothing less than our salvation, its exclusionary nature seems only necessary. Did Dante really mean that those of us who have no Christian upbringing either cannot be saved or at least cannot be saved by reading Dante's poem? The latter is what the passage apparently asserts, for if we lose track of him, we may lose track of God. It is perhaps necessary to remind ourselves that the voice we hear belongs to an unsuccessful, exiled Florentine, with one completed work longer than a single canzone (Vita nuova, some twenty years behind him), who has banked all that he is and has on this text that he will barely manage to finish before his death. The intervening centuries have allowed Dante an authority only doubtfully accorded him by his early commentators, who by and large manage to avoid paying sufficient attention to this amazing claim, with possibly the single exception of Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 5-6), perhaps the sole interpreter to put the potential failure of Dante's readership in specifically Christian terms: “quia cum vestro parvo ingenio non possetis intelligere meam profundam materiam, et possetis errare a via rectae fidei” (lest, with your limited understanding, you fail to understand the depth of my material, and wander from the path of the true faith [italics added]). Benvenuto goes on to cite Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, not the Consolation of Philosophy, but the specifically Christian treatise, The Trinity Is One God, Not Three Gods.

For the interesting and convincing view that Dante's sending his unready enthusiasts home safely is meant to reflect correctively on Ulysses' encouragement of his wearied men to take an even more dangerous voyage in his company (Inf. XXVI.121-123), see Margherita Frankel, “The Context of Dante's Ulysses: the Similes in Inferno XXVI,” Dante Studies 104 (1986): 106-7.

For a discussion of the triune God, see Canto I, note 13. And for the “triune Apollo,” see Giuseppe Di Scipio (The Presence of Pauline Thought in the Works of Dante [Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995)], pp. 258-59), who offers a passage in Alain de Lille's Anticlaudianus as a potential source for Dante's Christianized Apollo. For the presence of a text of Alanus in another context, the river of light in Paradiso XXX, see the note to Par. XXX.61-69.

Familiar by now (e.g., Inf. I.22-24, Purg. I.1-3) is a watery expression for non-aqueous spaces. The assertion that the poet is the first to report his travel over such “seas” is essentially true; for an exhaustive discussion of the topos of novelty in the Commedia, see Giuseppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002)], pp. 57-86).

Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 7-9) thinks that Dante's “nove,” not only indicating the number “nine,” is more subtly construed as a form of the adjective nuovo (new) and believes that the poet felt the need for new muses since he was writing of the Christian God, not the pagan divinities. While that argument probably needs to be more accommodating (since the phrase “nine Muses” is bypassed only with considerable difficulty), it should have alerted readers to the unlikely presence of pagan goddesses at this point in the poem's development. Suffice it to say that such concerns were expressed from time to time in the commentary tradition, but have never won the day, so that there results a certain unsureness of exactly how to deal with this verse. Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) has a useful review of such puzzlement, but does not attempt to solve the riddle himself. However, possibly the most compelling gloss to this verse was written by Giovan Battista Gelli halfway into the sixteenth century, and not in response to this verse, but to Inferno II.7-9: “Ma perchè io mi persuado che il Poeta nostro, per trattar di quelle cose divine, le quali son veramente divine, e non fabulose come quelle delle quali trattano quasi tutti gli altri poeti, abbia in tutte le cose ancor concetti molto più alti e più profondi di loro, dico ancora io (ascendendo con lo intelletto più alto, ...) che le Muse, propiamente e divinamente parlando, significano quelle intelligenze, o sieno anime o sieno motori, che muovono e guidano le nove sfere celesti, cioè quelle de' sette pianeti, quella del cielo stellato e quella del primo mobile” (However, since I am persuaded that our poet, in order to treat of things divine – indeed truly divine, not the stuff of fable, such as almost all other poets deal with, had in all things ideas both more lofty and more profound than they do; and I say further, ascending higher with my intellect, that the Muses, properly and divinely speaking, signify those intelligences, whether they be souls or movers, that move and direct the nine heavenly spheres, that is those of the seven planets, that of the Starry Sphere, and that of the Primum Mobile). See Dante's own earlier references to these movitori in Convivio (II.iv.13, II.vi.1, II.xiii.5). See Hollander (“Dante and his Commentators,” in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. R. Jacoff [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], p. 227), for a highly similar solution without, however, reference to Gelli. If the verse is read in this way, the discomfort of Benvenuto is addressed without twisting the literal sense of the line. It is the nine heavens that are referred to as “muses”; they are the sign of God's creating power and lead Dante's mind to port. (Several commentators, beginning with Vellutello, refer to the Muses in this context as Dante's bussola [compass], but only one [Campi, comm. to vv. 7-9] sees that metaphor within a Christian conceptual frame, i.e., that these are not the classical Muses.)

The handful of Christian readers who will be able to navigate the third canticle are marked by long devotion to the study of religious truth (not necessarily demonstrating, as several commentators urge, a more general philosophical interest). For the distinction, see Attilio Mellone, “Pane degli angeli,” ED (IV [1973]), p. 266, contrasting what is conveyed by the expression “bread of angels” when it is used in Convivio (I.i.7) to its meaning here; there it covers all kinds of knowing, but here only revealed truth.

The opening tercet looks to the Bible and to Dante's Convivio, as Singleton points out (comms. Par. I.1-6 and I.10-11). While the biblical phrase (Psalms 77 [78]:25, Wisdom 16:20) is clearly theological in meaning, the passage from Convivio (I.i.7) is not: “Blessed are the few who sit at the table where the bread of the angels is eaten, and most unfortunate those who share the food of sheep!” It seems likely that the author of the Comedy would look back upon these words with a shudder, noting this hostility to the most Christian of images, the faithful as a flock to which Jesus is shepherd.

“Voi altri pochi” (you other few): This is the fifteenth address to the reader in the poem. See the note to Inferno VIII.94-96; and see Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 117-58), for a full discussion of Dante's addresses to the reader (nineteen in all, according to him [pp. 119-21]), as part of the poet's larger authorial strategies.

For the meaning of the Eucharist in the liturgy for the Wednesday after Easter as informing this scene (which just happens to take place on the Wednesday after Easter, the day that Beatrice ascends with the protagonist), see William O'Brien (“'The Bread of Angels' in Paradiso II: A Liturgical Note,” Dante Studies 97 [1979], pp. 99-100). The offertory verse from the mass for that day, O'Brien reports, quoting the Roman Missal, contains the phrase “the bread of angels” in the following exalted context: “The Lord God opened the gates of Heaven and rained down manna upon them (the disciples in company of the risen Jesus) so that they might eat; He gave them heavenly bread; and, hallelujah, man ate the bread of angels (panem Angelorum manducavit homo).”

Christians on earth will never be able to attain angelic understanding of the doctrine that nourishes them; for that they must await their afterlife in Paradise.

We are warned that even a Christian reader, losing track of the ship that is Paradiso, may get lost in these precincts. The daring of these lines, far beyond approaching what in Yiddish is referred to as chutzpah, is perhaps not imaginable in any other poet.

The “famous men” are the Argonauts who accompanied Jason on the first voyage made on a ship, in the thirteenth century B.C., to Colchis, a voyage already referred to (Inf. XVIII.86-87) and which will furnish the matter for the ultimate “historical” reference in the poem (Par. XXXIII.95-96), a final look at the voyage of the Argo. Dante refers to Colchis by the singular form of the adjectival noun of place, “colco.”

In order to gain the Golden Fleece, Jason, aided by Medea's herbal concoctions, performs wondrous deeds in Colchis (Metam. VII.100-158). In Ovid, however, it is not Jason's shipmates who stand amazed at what they witness of Jason's astounding feats (e.g., plowing a field by means of the iron-tipped horns of two bulls, turned upside down and serving as Jason's plow, and seeding it with serpents' teeth, with a resulting harvest of soldiers), but the onlooking Colchians (“mirantur Colchi” [Metam. VII.120]). Dante is here not nodding, but “rewriting” the classical text in order to make it more worthy of bearing a Christian message, as Picone is aware (“Canto II,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 47).

Picone, pp. 42-47, expands on the importance of the Ovidian motif of the voyage beyond normal human experience exemplified in Jason and the voyage of the Argonauts (Metam. VII.100-120); unlike most who have worked with this material and who deal with only its final reflection in the Commedia (Par. XXXIII.94-96), the voyage of the Argo, Picone does include the central passage (Par. XXV.1-9) in which, if the reference is more delicate, the relationship between these two “sailors” has its strongest moment. But see the similar treatment in Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 220-232).

The narrative continues with Dante and Beatrice being drawn heavenward by their desire for God, she with her eyes fixed on Heaven, he with his fixed on hers, which serve as his mirrors. This is the first of the formulaic ascents that will precede the arrival and description of each new heaven. For a listing of them all, see the “map” of Paradise in the introductory lecture to this cantica.

While some complicate the meaning of the comparison, it is perhaps better to see it in simple terms: The poet, who knows that the stars are actually moving rather rapidly in their orbits, compares their movement to the rapid upward movement of Beatrice and himself.

One of the most frequently discussed examples of Dante's employment of the device hysteron proteron, a rhetorical figure that, to denote speed and the resultant difficulty of knowing which event in a sequence preceded which other(s), reverses the normal order. As a speeding arrow (actually a bolt shot from a crossbow) is suddenly released from the catch (or “nut ”or “peg” [Tozer, comm. to Par. II.23-24]) on the bow, flies, and strikes its target, that is how quickly Dante finds himself within the surface of the Moon, so quickly indeed that the constituent moments of the ascent seem to have been experienced in reverse order. Gabriele (comm. Par. II.23-24) informs us that this iron “arrow” (the bolt) was usually four-sided.

Beatrice makes plain what we have probably fathomed: Dante is in the sphere of the Moon, within the body of this “star” itself. Dante's terms for the heavenly bodies are, from a modern point of view, both inconsistent and, at times, different from ours, as the reader has already probably noted. (Later on in this canto he will refer to the Moon as a planet [pianeto, verse 76] and not, as here, a “star.” He uses the terms interchangeably; for us the Moon is neither of the above.)

Dante's first impression of the physicality of the Moon tells us that its matter is less “material” than earth's: For all its rock-like qualities, it seems a cloud. As Singleton (comm. to verse 31) points out, Aristotle taught in De caelo that the Moon and all above is physically different from our material world. It is thus that Dante must describe it as “eternal,” since, unlike earth, it is imperishable. That Beatrice, pure form, penetrates the matter of the Moon is not surprising; that Dante also does so raises the question in his mind that we find referred to in vv. 37-39.

The poet is of the opinion that the Moon shines with its own light as well as reflects the light of the Sun (Mon. III.iv.17-18), as Singleton observes (comm. Par.II.32). In this canto Dante refers only to the second phenomenon (vv. 79-81).

For the possible resonance of a biblical text (Matthew 13.44-46) in Dante's “pearl,” see the note to Paradiso VI.127.

The poet raises the question once more (see Par. I.4-6, Par. I.73, Par. I.98-99) of his presence in the heavens with his flesh in such a way as to make us feel that he wants us to believe he was there in body (otherwise the “bonus” referred to in the tercet that concludes this passage will not apply).

Singleton (comm. Par. I.98-99) refers to St. Thomas's words that were clearly meant to calm fearful Christians, worried that at the general resurrection saved souls would be kept from approaching Heaven by the substance of the spheres. Here is Thomas's answer (Summa contra Gentiles IV.87): “Neither does this divine promise meet an impossibility in the assertion that celestial bodies are unbreakable so that the glorious bodies may not be elevated above them. For the divine power will bring it about that the glorious bodies can be simultaneously where the other bodies are; an indication of this was given in the body of Christ when He came to the disciples, 'the doors being shut' (John 20:26).”

See Picone (“Il corpo della/nella luna: sul canto II del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 15 [2000], pp. 7-12), for discussion of Dante's bodily assumption; and again (“Canto II,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 35-39), hammering home his essential observation, that Dante wants us to acknowledge his presence in paradise in the flesh, without, perhaps, paying sufficient attention to the deliberate coyness of his claim, only made indirectly (if clearly enough) some three-quarters of the way into the cantica (see the note to Par. I.73).

The double presence of the word corpo in a single verse is a sign of the poet's concern with materiality here; corpo (body) appears nine times in this canto, far more often than in any other (nearly one-sixth of its 55 appearances throughout the poem; Inferno XXXIII is the closest challenger, with five).

Having done what Beatrice exhorted him to do (Par. II.29-30), thank God for raising him from the earth to the Moon, Dante now asks the question the resolution of which will occupy the rest of the canto – the cause of the dark spots on the Moon.

The word “rimoto” picks up the same word in verse 66 of the preceding canto (Par. I.66).

For the legend that Cain was confined to the Moon and bore a bundle of thorns, see the note to Inf. XX.124-126. For a study of the question of these “lunar spots,” see at least Bruno Nardi (“Il canto delle macchie lunari [II Par.],” L'Alighieri 26 [1985]: 21-32) and Giorgio Stabile (“Il Canto II del Paradiso,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 47-55); according to the latter, p. 48, Dante puts forward “tre interpretazioni: del mago, del filosofo naturale e del teologo” (three interpretations, that of the magus, that of the “scientist,” and that of the theologian) only to destroy the first two in favor of the last.

Beatrice gently chides those rationalists (including Dante) who analyze ineffectively, since they lack the principle that informs the phenomena that they observe, evidence found through the senses.

Beatrice's simple (if loaded) question brings forth ninety verses of response.

Dante restates (as Beatrice knew he would) his previous argument, found in Convivio II.xiii.9, that the dark places in the Moon are the result of rarer matter (which does not reflect the sun's rays as well as denser matter does) in the surface of the Moon. However, and as Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. vv. 59-60), the protagonist has here gone deeper into error by making this phenomenon more inclusive and even, perhaps, general, using the plural in line 60, corpi, and thus indicating other celestial bodies in addition to the Moon.

Where most critics believe Dante's source for this view is Averroës, André Pézard, as is duly reported by Sapegno in his introductory note to his commentary on this canto, believes it lies in the Roman de la Rose (vv. 16803-16850 [ed. Lecoy], vv. 16833-16880 [tr. Dahlberg]). And Vasoli (“Il canto II del Paradiso,” in Lectura Dantis Metelliana: I primi undici canti del “Paradiso” [Rome: Bulzoni, 1992 {1972}], p. 36) cites Pézard (André Pézard, ed., Dante Alighieri, Oeuvres complètes [Paris: Gallimard, 1965], pp. 1377-78) for Jean de Meun's passage with its view of the moonspots. What is most fascinating about Jean's words to the student of the Commedia is how clearly reflected they seem to be in Dante's. (And the closeness is all the more arresting because Il Fiore contains no similar passage; there can be no question of the Roman's direct influence on Dante here, no question that Dante is here citing a putative earlier self in Il Fiore.) In the Roman, Nature, confessing to Genius, resolves the question of the moon spots more or less precisely as Dante had in Convivio: “It seems to men that the moon (la lune) may indeed not be clean and pure (necte et pure), because in some places it shows up dark (obscure). But it is because of its double nature that it appears opaque and cloudy (espesse et trouble) in some places... because it is both clear and opaque (clere et espesse)....” Jean is arguing that the Moon has two kinds of matter, clear and opaque, and that the sun's beams pass right through the clear but are reflected by the opaque; and then, beginning at verse 16825 (16855 in Dahlberg's translation), Nature, like Beatrice, turns to experimental means of demonstration: “But if one took lead, or something dense (plom ou quelque chose espesse) that does not allow rays to pass through, and placed oneself on the side opposite to that from which the sun's rays come, the form would return immediately.” It is difficult to believe that Dante did not have this passage in mind when he developed his own discussion, also involving “experimental science,” if coming up with a very different solution, one that objects strenuously to the mere physicality of Nature's explanation, as we shall see. Thus, if Dante reveals his knowledge of the French text here, he does not reveal himself as an uncritical admirer.

This discussion touches on one of the great unresolved issues confronting readers of the Commedia: Dante's knowledge of the Old French masterpiece of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. To deal with the state of the unresolved issue briefly, we should be aware of at least three possible answers to the spiny question: (1) Il Fiore is indeed by Dante, and thus he knew the Roman from his youth (since the latter work is a sort of free translation of passages from the Old French work) and Contini – as do almost all who make the Fiore a part of Dante's bibliography – places it very early in Dante's career, in the 1280s or, at the latest, in the early 1290s [see Luciano Rossi (“Dante, la Rose e il Fiore,” in Studi sul canone letterario del Trecento: Per Michelangelo Picone, a cura di J. Bartuschat and L. Rossi [Ravenna: Longo, 2003], p. 20). (2) Il Fiore was indeed read by Dante, but someone else wrote it, which explains why he cites this Italian “translation” of the Rose (for some textual resonances of Il Fiore in the Commedia, see ED II [1970], pp. 898-900) but not the original; there is thus no direct relationship between the French work and Dante's. (3) Another view would hold that, beginning with this passage, Dante, who earlier had read (but not written) Il Fiore, reveals his recent reading of the Roman, a text that he encountered only after he had finished composing Purgatorio.

In recent years the dispute has intensified, even in Italy, where, while Contini, much of whose later life was devoted to demonstrating Dantean authorship, remained among the living, dissenting voices were not very often heard. The writer remembers vividly a taxi ride across Florence in the 1990s in which the widely respected and now deceased German dantista, Marcella Roddewig, asked, in a whisper, whether her taxi-sharer thought Dante was the author of Il Fiore; when he said that he did not think so, it was as though he had opened his attaché case, revealing a hand grenade to be hurled against a common foe. See the balanced volume, edited by Baranski and Boyde (The “Fiore” in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997]), devoted in part to the question of the work's authorship. See also Lino Leonardi (“'Langue' poetica e stile dantesco nel Fiore: per una verifica degli 'argomenti interni,'” in Studi di filologia medievale in onore di d'Arco Silvio Avalle [Milan: Ricciardi, 1996], pp. 237-91), who believes the work is authentic; Enzo Quaglio (“Per l'antica fortuna del Fiore,” Rivista di Studi Danteschi 1 [2001]: 120-127), who deals with the problem of a later citation (dating from 1375) that appears to be from another MS. than the unicum of Montpellier; Enrico Malato (Dante [Rome: Salerno, 1999], pp. 138-48), considering arguments pro et contra, and tending toward a negative view; and Emilio Pasquini (Dante e le figure del vero: La fabbrica della “Commedia” [Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2001], p. 43), denying Dantean authorship. For what had earlier become the standard view and the basic bibliography, see Gianfranco Contini, Fiore, Il (ED II [1970]), pp. 895-901; and for a listing of some more agnostic views, see Hollander (Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], pp. 182-83). More recently, we have Luciano Rossi's attempt to start the investigation over again (“Dante, la Rose e il Fiore,” in Studi sul canone letterario del Trecento: Per Michelangelo Picone, a cura di J. Bartuschat and L. Rossi [Ravenna: Longo, 2003], pp. 9-32), reminding us of his senior colleague's early attempt to accomplish a similar task: Picone's remarks on the problems of attribution (“Il Fiore: struttura profonda e problemi attributivi,” Vox romanica 33 [1974]: 145-56). The most recent discussion is found in an essay by Olivia Holmes (“Dante's Choice and Romance Narratives of Two Beloveds,” Dante Studies 121 [2003 {2006}]: 109-47).

Beatrice begins with a sweeping denunciation of Dante's position in a thoroughly Scholastic manner, making clear the nature of the thesis that she will set about to destroy (Dante's hypothesis regarding alternating layers of rarity and density). For this tercet as reflecting the poet's disavowal of his earlier Averroist views of the issue, see Cassell (The “Monarchia” Controversy: An Historical Study with Accompanying Translations of Dante Alighieri's “Monarchia,” Guido Vernani's “Refutation of the 'Monarchia' Composed by Dante,” and Pope John XXII's Bull “Si fratrum” [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004]), pp. 54-55.

See Russo (Esperienze e/di letture dantesche [tra il 1966 e il 1970] [Naples: Liguori, 1971], pp. 103-58, 161-208), for an impassioned defense of the poetic qualities of such lengthy and ostensibly “scientific” or “philosophical” passages as this one, which he links with the only slightly shorter lesson in embryology offered up by Statius (Purg. XXV.37-108). For a careful study of the central theological and scientific issues here and the history of their reception among Dante's critics, see Vasoli (“Il canto II del Paradiso,” in Lectura Dantis Metelliana: I primi undici canti del “Paradiso” [Rome: Bulzoni, 1992 {1972}], pp. 27-51). A summary of this lengthy argument may be found in Grandgent, as cited by Singleton (comm. Par. II.52-148). And for an immensely helpful basic bibliography on Dante in relation to the various sciences that make their presence felt in the poem, see the extended note by Simon Gilson (“Medieval Science in Dante's Commedia: Past Approaches and Future Directions,” Reading Medieval Studies 27 [2001]: 58-65). For a useful review of some current writing on Dante's knowledge and use of the sciences, with bibliography, see Ledda (“Poesia, scienza e critica dantesca,” L'Alighieri 18 [2001]: 99-113).

The first part of Beatrice's discourse attacks the notion (introduced by Dante in verse 60) that various stars in the Starry Sphere shine brighter or less bright and, indeed, have other distinguishing characteristics (e.g. color, size, shape), simply because they are more or less dense. This would make the differentiating power single, and would be at odds with what we know of the variety of God's formal principles. So much for the larger issue at stake here. For discussion of the passage, see Moore (Studies in Dante, Third Series: Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 {1903}], pp. 87-91).

Turning to the phenomenon itself, Beatrice adduces two arguments to destroy Dante's position, the first involving two points (vv. 73-82), the second, a single one (vv. 83-105), building on the second point in the first argument, an extended disproof by imagined experiment.

If the dark spots on the Moon were the result of rarer matter, then matter rare and dense would be distributed either randomly or in strips, as meat and fat in creatures or pages in a book. For this second image, vv. 77-78, see Hatcher (“The Moon and Parchment: Paradiso II, 73-78,” Dante Studies 89 [1971]: 55-60). Were the first case true (i.e., were there “holes” without density in the Moon), we would verify that fact during eclipses of the Sun; and, since we cannot, Beatrice says, we must look to the second possible cause put forward by Dante.

For studies of the problem presented by the dark spots on the Moon, see Paget Toynbee, “Dante's Theories as to the Spots on the Moon” (in his Dante Studies and Researches [Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971 {1902}], pp. 78-86) for a discussion of possible sources and of some of the confusion caused by the passage. See also Manlio Pastore Stocchi (“Dante e la luna,” Lettere Italiane 33 [1981]: 153-74). And see Nardi (“Il canto delle macchie lunari [II Par.],” L'Alighieri 26 [1985]: 21-32), Stabile (“Il Canto II del Paradiso,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 47-55 & nn.), and Picone (“Il corpo della/nella luna: sul canto II del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 15 [2000]: 21-25).

If then, Beatrice reasons, there are no “holes” for the Sun's light to come through, we must hypothesize the presence of dense matter that will act as a mirror for whatever light has penetrated the rare matter beneath the Moon's surface.

Dante will object, Beatrice says, that the farther reflection, because of its greater distance, will seem dimmer, a proposition that she will spend four tercets tearing down.

In Aristotelian manner, Beatrice extols the virtue of experiment. In this “thought experiment” that she proposes for Dante to perform, the two equidistant mirrors (one of which is, strictly speaking, unnecessary) represent the surface of the Moon, while the one set farther back stands in for the indented portion, where the dense part begins. The three lights reflected in the mirror will show equal brightness, if not equal size. Thus, as Beatrice clearly means to instruct Dante, the quality of the light is not affected by distance; only the quantity is.

For a discussion of this passage and the significance of mirrors in Paradiso, see Miller (“Three Mirrors of Dante's Paradiso,” University of Toronto Quarterly 46 [1977]: 263-79). See also Tate (“The Symbolic Imagination: A Meditation on Dante's Three Mirrors,” in Discussions of the “Divine Comedy,” ed. Irma Brandeis [Boston: Heath, 1961], pp. 102-11), offering a first “Trinitarian” reading of the third experimentally unnecessary mirror. Boyde (“L'esegesi di Dante e la scienza,” in Dante e la scienza, ed. P. Boyde and V. Russo [Ravenna: Longo, 1995], pp. 14-16), actually performed a version of the experiment in order to test Dante's method (it passed his test). Simon Gilson (“Dante and the Science of 'Perspective': A Reappraisal,” Dante Studies 115 [1997]: 204-6), discusses various other similar “experiments” described by earlier writers (Pseudo-Thomas on the Meteorologica, Chalcidius on the Timaeus, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great on the De causis), concluding that, while Albert's is the closest to Dante's, in this (as in so much else) Dante simply cannot be pinned down. And now see Turelli (“'Dopo il dosso / ti stea un lume' [Par. II 97-105]: Beatrice, un progetto fisico sperimentale,” Letteratura italiana antica 5 [2004]: 321-24), in polemic against Kleiner (Mismapping the Underworld: Daring and Error in Dante's “Comedy” [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994], p. 105 (Kleiner believes that “dopo il dosso” means “directly behind your back,” thus making the experiment literally impossible). But see Landino's gloss to vv. 100-108; he simply (and understandably) assumes that the light is above the experimenter's head (“et sopra el capo tuo ti sia un lume”). In our own time, Turelli convincingly defends the experimental “correctness” of Beatrice's verbal demonstration; Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 115, however, accepts Kleiner's presupposition, arguing that in the thought experiment we must realize that Dante possesses – meaningfully, of course – a transparent body. On the other hand, see the second version of this “experiment” in the poem (at Par. XXVIII.4-9), where the same conditions pertain and the reader once again feels justified in making Landino's assumption.

Beatrice turns to simile (one of the fairly infrequent occasions on which the poet puts the simile-forging power into the hands of a character [but cf. Inf. XXVII.94-97]): As the Sun's rays reduce snow to its underlying essence (water), stripping it of its accidental qualities (cold, whiteness), so Beatrice's mind will rid Dante's intellect of its improper qualities and return it to its original condition.

Going back, in thought, to the Beginning, the Empyrean, Beatrice turns her attention to the Primum Mobile, the ninth sphere, where nothing may be seen but where all the powers that course through the universe have their origins in space and time. See Convivio II.xiv.15: “For, as the Philosopher says in the fifth book of the Ethics, 'legal justice disposes the sciences for our learning, and commands that they be learned and taught in order that they not be forsaken'; so with its movement the aforesaid heaven governs the daily revolution of all the others, by which every day they all receive and transmit here below the virtue of all their parts” (tr. R. Lansing, italics added).

The sphere of the Fixed Stars is where the angelic powers, undifferentiated in the Primum Mobile, are differentiated among the stars. It is from here that they exercise their influence on earth.

Perhaps it is best to follow Bosco/Reggio's interpretation of this difficult tercet, which they understand in light of lines from Purgatorio XXX.109-110: “Not only by the working of the wheels above / that urge each seed to a certain end....” They argue that this tercet then means that the seven lower heavens (after the Primum Mobile and the Starry Sphere) dispose in diverse ways the various essences or powers that they receive from the Starry Sphere, adapting them to their own precise purposes.

These “organs” of the universe, resembling in their workings the effective parts of the human body, as Dante now understands, take their powers from the realms closest to God and disperse them below.

Beatrice's admonition prepares Dante to do his own reasoning (and do better than he has done so far). If he learns from this experience, he will not only understand the principle that explains the phenomenon of the moonspots, but other things as well.

Only now does Beatrice turn her attention to the angels (“the blessèd movers”), the artisans of all creation. Up to now we have heard her speak exclusively of the incorruptible material universe; now we find out what animates it.

And the Starry Sphere, into the stars of which the powers are distributed, receives that imprinting from the Intelligences (angels) in the Primum Mobile. There is a possible ambiguity here, as Dante uses the singular (mente profonda) either to indicate the Cherubim (the angels of knowledge) or all nine angelic orders, as the context would seem to demand.

The “dust” that in Genesis (3:19 [“pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris”]) is our flesh is seen here as activated in its various members by the angelic intelligences – unless we are once again to take the singular (intelligenza – verse 136) at face value (see the note to vv. 130-132), in which case Beatrice is speaking only of the Cherubim, which seems unlikely.

The undivided power of primal angelic intelligence (found in the ninth sphere), descending, makes a different union with each star that it animates, similar to the way in which it binds with human souls. For this notion, Pietrobono (comm. to this tercet) cites Convivio II.v.18: “These movers by their intellect alone produce the revolution in that proper subject which each one moves. The most noble form of heaven, which has in itself the principle of this passive nature, revolves at the touch of the motive power which understands it; and by touch I mean contact, though not in a bodily sense, with the virtue which is directed toward it” (tr. R. Lansing).

Fraccaroli (“Dante e il Timeo,” in Il Timeo, tr. Giuseppe Fraccaroli [Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1906], pp. 391-424) offers these verses as an example of Dante's frequent divergence from the text of Plato's Timaeus when it counters the opinions of Aristotle (Fraccaroli is among those scholars who believe that Dante actually knew the text of that work in Chalcidius's translation rather than from some other intermediary – see the note to Par. IV.24). In Plato, the stars are self-propelled.

The greater or lesser effulgence of a star results from the conjoined qualities that a particular star has in conjunction with the informing virtues, or powers, of its angelic informant. And this is the answer to Dante's quandary. He had attempted to analyze the moonspots in physical terms; Beatrice has just accounted for them in metaphysical ones (notably poetic though these are, comparing the relative brightness of/in a heavenly body to the relative brightness in a joyful eye, an ocular smile, as it were).

The difference between light and dark in heavenly bodies is not to be accounted for quantitatively, in terms of density/rarity, but qualitatively, by the amount of angelic potency found in a given body.