Quando colui che tutto 'l mondo alluma
de l'emisperio nostro sì discende,
che 'l giorno d'ogne parte si consuma,
lo ciel, che sol di lui prima s'accende,
subitamente si rifà parvente
per molte luci, in che una risplende;
e questo atto del ciel mi venne a mente,
come 'l segno del mondo e de' suoi duci
nel benedetto rostro fu tacente;
però che tutte quelle vive luci,
vie più lucendo, cominciaron canti
da mia memoria labili e caduci.
O dolce amor che di riso t'ammanti,
quanto parevi ardente in que' flailli,
ch'avieno spirto sol di pensier santi!
Poscia che i cari e lucidi lapilli
ond' io vidi ingemmato il sesto lume
puoser silenzio a li angelici squilli,
udir mi parve un mormorar di fiume
che scende chiaro giù di pietra in pietra,
mostrando l'ubertà del suo cacume.
E come suono al collo de la cetra
prende sua forma, e sì com' al pertugio
de la sampogna vento che penètra,
così, rimosso d'aspettare indugio,
quel mormorar de l'aguglia salissi
su per lo collo, come fosse bugio.
Fecesi voce quivi, e quindi uscissi
per lo suo becco in forma di parole,
quali aspettava il core ov' io le scrissi.
“La parte in me che vede e pate il sole
ne l'aguglie mortali,” incominciommi,
“or fisamente riguardar si vole,
perché d'i fuochi ond' io figura fommi,
quelli onde l'occhio in testa mi scintilla,
e' di tutti lor gradi son li sommi.
Colui che luce in mezzo per pupilla,
fu il cantor de lo Spirito Santo,
che l'arca traslatò di villa in villa:
ora conosce il merto del suo canto,
in quanto effetto fu del suo consiglio,
per lo remunerar ch'è altrettanto.
Dei cinque che mi fan cerchio per ciglio,
colui che più al becco mi s'accosta,
la vedovella consolò del figlio:
ora conosce quanto caro costa
non seguir Cristo, per l'esperïenza
di questa dolce vita e de l'opposta.
E quel che segue in la circunferenza
di che ragiono, per l'arco superno,
morte indugiò per vera penitenza:
ora conosce che 'l giudicio etterno
non si trasmuta, quando degno preco
fa crastino là giù de l'odïerno.
L'altro che segue, con le leggi e meco,
sotto buona intenzion che fé mal frutto,
per cedere al pastor si fece greco:
ora conosce come il mal dedutto
dal suo bene operar non li è nocivo,
avvegna che sia 'l mondo indi distrutto.
E quel che vedi ne l'arco declivo,
Guiglielmo fu, cui quella terra plora
che piagne Carlo e Federigo vivo:
ora conosce come s'innamora
lo ciel del giusto rege, e al sembiante
del suo fulgore il fa vedere ancora.
Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante
che Rifëo Troiano in questo tondo
fosse la quinta de le luci sante?
Ora conosce assai di quel che 'l mondo
veder non può de la divina grazia,
ben che sua vista non discerna il fondo.”
Quale allodetta che 'n aere si spazia
prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
de l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia,
tal mi sembiò l'imago de la 'mprenta
de l'etterno piacere, al cui disio
ciascuna cosa qual ell' è diventa.
E avvegna ch'io fossi al dubbiar mio
lì quasi vetro a lo color ch'el veste,
tempo aspettar tacendo non patio,
ma de la bocca, “Che cose son queste?”
mi pinse con la forza del suo peso:
per ch'io di coruscar vidi gran feste.
Poi appresso, con l'occhio più acceso,
lo benedetto segno mi rispuose
per non tenermi in ammirar sospeso:
“Io veggio che tu credi queste cose
perch' io le dico, ma non vedi come;
si che, se son credute, sono ascose.
Fai come quei che la cosa per nome
apprende ben, ma la sua quiditate
veder non può se altri non la prome.
Regnum celorum vïolenza pate
da caldo amore e da viva speranza,
che vince la divina volontate:
non a guisa che l'omo a l'om sobranza,
ma vince lei perché vuole esser vinta,
e, vinta, vince con sua beninanza.
La prima vita del ciglio e la quinta
ti fa maravigliar, perché ne vedi
la regïon de li angeli dipinta.
D'i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi,
Gentili, ma Cristiani, in ferma fede
quel d'i passuri e quel d'i passi piedi.
Ché l'una de lo 'nferno, u' non si riede
già mai a buon voler, tornò a l'ossa;
e ciò di viva spene fu mercede:
di viva spene, che mise la possa
ne' prieghi fatti a Dio per suscitarla,
sì che potesse sua voglia esser mossa.
L'anima glorïosa onde si parla,
tornata ne la carne, in che fu poco,
credette in lui che potëa aiutarla;
e credendo s'accese in tanto foco
di vero amor, ch'a la morte seconda
fu degna di venire a questo gioco.
L'altra, per grazia che da sì profonda
fontana stilla, che mai creatura
non pinse l'occhio infino a la prima onda,
tutto suo amor là giù pose a drittura:
per che, di grazia in grazia, Dio li aperse
l'occhio a la nostra redenzion futura;
ond' ei credette in quella, e non sofferse
da indi il puzzo più del paganesmo;
e riprendiene le genti perverse.
Quelle tre donne li fur per battesmo
che tu vedesti da la destra rota,
dinanzi al battezzar più d'un millesmo.
O predestinazion, quanto remota
è la radice tua da quelli aspetti
che la prima cagion non veggion tota!
E voi, mortali, tenetevi stretti
a giudicar: ché noi, che Dio vedemo,
non conosciamo ancor tutti li eletti;
ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo,
perché il ben nostro in questo ben s'affina,
che quel che vole Iddio, e noi volemo.”
Così da quella imagine divina,
per farmi chiara la mia corta vista,
data mi fu soave medicina.
E come a buon cantor buon citarista
fa seguitar lo guizzo de la corda,
in che più di piacer lo canto acquista,
sì, mentre ch'e' parlò, sì mi ricorda
ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
con le parole mover le fiammette.
When he who all the world illuminates
Out of our hemisphere so far descends
That on all sides the daylight is consumed,
The heaven, that erst by him alone was kindled,
Doth suddenly reveal itself again
By many lights, wherein is one resplendent.
And came into my mind this act of heaven,
When the ensign of the world and of its leaders
Had silent in the blessed beak become;
Because those living luminaries all,
By far more luminous, did songs begin
Lapsing and falling from my memory.
O gentle Love, that with a smile dost cloak thee,
How ardent in those sparks didst thou appear,
That had the breath alone of holy thoughts!
After the precious and pellucid crystals,
With which begemmed the sixth light I beheld,
Silence imposed on the angelic bells,
I seemed to hear the murmuring of a river
That clear descendeth down from rock to rock,
Showing the affluence of its mountain-top.
And as the sound upon the cithern's neck
Taketh its form, and as upon the vent
Of rustic pipe the wind that enters it,
Even thus, relieved from the delay of waiting,
That murmuring of the eagle mounted up
Along its neck, as if it had been hollow.
There it became a voice, and issued thence
From out its beak, in such a form of words
As the heart waited for wherein I wrote them.
"The part in me which sees and bears the sun
In mortal eagles," it began to me,
"Now fixedly must needs be looked upon;
For of the fires of which I make my figure,
Those whence the eye doth sparkle in my head
Of all their orders the supremest are.
He who is shining in the midst as pupil
Was once the singer of the Holy Spirit,
Who bore the ark from city unto city;
Now knoweth he the merit of his song,
In so far as effect of his own counsel,
By the reward which is commensurate.
Of five, that make a circle for my brow,
He that approacheth nearest to my beak
Did the poor widow for her son console;
Now knoweth he how dearly it doth cost
Not following Christ, by the experience
Of this sweet life and of its opposite.
He who comes next in the circumference
Of which I speak, upon its highest arc,
Did death postpone by penitence sincere;
Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment
Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer
Maketh below to-morrow of to-day.
The next who follows, with the laws and me,
Under the good intent that bore bad fruit
Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor;
Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced
From his good action is not harmful to him,
Although the world thereby may be destroyed.
And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest,
Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores
That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive;
Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is
With a just king; and in the outward show
Of his effulgence he reveals it still.
Who would believe, down in the errant world,
That e'er the Trojan Ripheus in this round
Could be the fifth one of the holy lights?
Now knoweth he enough of what the world
Has not the power to see of grace divine,
Although his sight may not discern the bottom."
Like as a lark that in the air expatiates,
First singing and then silent with content
Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her,
Such seemed to me the image of the imprint
Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will
Doth everything become the thing it is.
And notwithstanding to my doubt I was
As glass is to the colour that invests it,
To wait the time in silence it endured not,
But forth from out my mouth, "What things are these?"
Extorted with the force of its own weight;
Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation.
Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled
The blessed standard made to me reply,
To keep me not in wonderment suspended:
"I see that thou believest in these things
Because I say them, but thou seest not how;
So that, although believed in, they are hidden.
Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name
Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity
Cannot perceive, unless another show it.
'Regnum coelorum' suffereth violence
From fervent love, and from that living hope
That overcometh the Divine volition;
Not in the guise that man o'ercometh man,
But conquers it because it will be conquered,
And conquered conquers by benignity.
The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth
Cause thee astonishment, because with them
Thou seest the region of the angels painted.
They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest,
Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith
Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered.
For one from Hell, where no one e'er turns back
Unto good will, returned unto his bones,
And that of living hope was the reward,—
Of living hope, that placed its efficacy
In prayers to God made to resuscitate him,
So that 'twere possible to move his will.
The glorious soul concerning which I speak,
Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay,
Believed in Him who had the power to aid it;
And, in believing, kindled to such fire
Of genuine love, that at the second death
Worthy it was to come unto this joy.
The other one, through grace, that from so deep
A fountain wells that never hath the eye
Of any creature reached its primal wave,
Set all his love below on righteousness;
Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose
His eye to our redemption yet to be,
Whence he believed therein, and suffered not
From that day forth the stench of paganism,
And he reproved therefor the folk perverse.
Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel
Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism
More than a thousand years before baptizing.
O thou predestination, how remote
Thy root is from the aspect of all those
Who the First Cause do not behold entire!
And you, O mortals! hold yourselves restrained
In judging; for ourselves, who look on God,
We do not know as yet all the elect;
And sweet to us is such a deprivation,
Because our good in this good is made perfect,
That whatsoe'er God wills, we also will."
After this manner by that shape divine,
To make clear in me my short-sightedness,
Was given to me a pleasant medicine;
And as good singer a good lutanist
Accompanies with vibrations of the chords,
Whereby more pleasantness the song acquires,
So, while it spake, do I remember me
That I beheld both of those blessed lights,
Even as the winking of the eyes concords,
Moving unto the words their little flames.
Any aesthetic performance is likely, at moments, to leave its observer wondering as to the motives of the performer. For example, here one might inquire why Dante did not decide to make this already highly wrought passage a perfectly turned simile. It has all the requisite elements, lacking only the initial Come (Just as) and the pivotal così (so) at the beginning of the seventh verse. As has been pointed out several times now, Dante seems to like to employ rigid categories loosely, as though exploring the boundaries of established forms. For instance, we may find ourselves wondering whether the presence of the designative terms of compared likeness is necessary to establish the trope. With regard to the classical simile, it almost seems as though he had decided to ring the changes on an established form as frequently as he could. See the notes to Purgatorio XXVII.76-87; Paradiso XIV.19-24 and XIV.118-123.
The Eagle has stopped speaking as a corporate entity. That allows the individual voices of this particular collective of the saved to speak as themselves. Had their actual words been recorded here, it probably would have been clear, as it is when they speak as themselves at the end of the canto, that their descriptor for themselves is “we” (verse 134) and not “I” (verse 31). In simile, they are like the shining of the stars after the sun has left the sky (in Dante's further comparison, once the Eagle's beak has gone silent).
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 1-6) point out that this is one of fourteen cantos in the poem that begin with astronomical detailing (Inf. XXIV.1-3; Purg. II.1-9, IX.1-9, XV.1-9, XIX.1-6, XXV.1-3, XXVII.1-6, XXX.1-6; Par. VIII.1-3, X.1-21, XIII.1-24, here, XXIX.1-6, XXX.1-9).
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 88-89, while making a quite different point, helps one to observe a curious phenomenon: the poet has not mentioned the Sun by its name since the protagonist first entered it (Par. X.41 and Par. X.48). Now he uses paraphrase or reference (colui [verse 1], lui [verse 4], una [stella] [verse 6]) to refer to the Sun (while, Aversano might have gone on to point out, he does use the letters that spell “sun,” sol, as the adverb “only” in verse 4 [and again in verse 15]). On this last point see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 47).
According to Dante's astronomy, stars did not glow with their own energy, but derived their light from the Sun (see Conv. III.xii.7): “... il sole. Lo quale di sensibile luce sé prima e poi tutte le corpora celestiali e [le] elementali allumina” (the Sun, which illuminates with perceptible light first itself and then all the celestial and elemental bodies [tr. R. Lansing]).
The “emblem of the world” is the Eagle, symbol of universal empire, the ideal that Dante embraced so warmly in his Monarchia.
The poet apostrophizes the love emanating from these spirits, wreathed in “smiles”: How ardent did this love appear in those “pipes” (or in those “flames” [there is much debate in the commentaries over this choice]) that were so full of holy thoughts! As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 14) point out, the word flaillo is an absolute hapax, meaning that this is its unique appearance, not only in the Commedia, not only in all the works of Dante, but in the history of the Italian language. In their opinion, there is no way to decide between the two possible meanings, “flute” (see French flavel) or “flame” (from O Fr. flael), since both find resonance in the surrounding context. However, Benvenuto states unambiguously that the reference is to sound. And his opinion is given further weight by the musical reference of the simile in vv. 22-27. For an English response in this vein, see Tozer (comm. to vv. 13-14): “flailli: 'flutes,' i.e. melodious voices. This word, which is not found elsewhere, is derived from Lat. flare, flatus, through the Low Lat. flauta, 'flute,' from which came the diminutives flautol, flaujol in Provençal, and flajol in OF, to which flaillo closely approximates; OF flajol, flageolet is a further diminutive.” Others (notably, according to Petrocchi [Dante Alighieri: La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. G. Petrocchi {Florence: Le Lettere, 1994 [1967]}, p. 328], Antonino Pagliaro [Ulisse: ricerche semantiche sulla “Divina Commedia” {Messina-Florence: D'Anna, 1967}, p. 579]) argue for a derivation, through OF, from Lat. flacellum, “torch.” Forced to chose (and one is), this reader has opted for the former, since it seems clear that song is the pre-eminent element here. However, for an attempt to undermine the view of E.G. Parodi (Lingua e letteratura, ed. G. Folena [Venice: Neri Pozza, 1957], pp. 273, 394), who opts for OF flavel (flute), see Ettore Paratore (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], pp. 691-92n.). And, for a more recent opposing argument, see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 50-51).
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 89, because the flute is not a “noble” instrument, as is plain from its association with Marsyas (but see the note to Par. I.20-21), denies that the word is likely to be flailli, preferring flavilli (from the Latin flavus, which means, he says, “piece of gold”); however, this is a variant reading unknown in the textual history of the verse.
The silence of the souls, having left off their singing (which Dante could not hold in mind [verse 12]), begun when the Eagle had ceased its speech, gives way to what seems to be the rumbling sound of a river, giving evidence of the profusion of its lofty source (it will be the voice of the Eagle, rumbling like an organ pipe filling with new air). This tercet marks the beginning of the first of the two central elements of the canto, a presentation of the souls that make up the eye of the Eagle (vv. 16-78); the second, the Eagle's explanation of the presence in Paradise of those who certainly appear to be pagans, runs through vv. 79-129.
The phrase li angelici squilli is probably not to be understood as the “song of the angels” (Bosco/Reggio [comm. to this verse]), but as the “angelic songs” of the blessed.
If Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet) is correct, these lines reflect both a passage in the Georgics (I.108-110) and one in the Aeneid (XI.296-299). The passage in Virgil's epic describes the rumor of the many voices of the native Italians being quieted by King Latinus's voiced decision to make peace with the invading future Romans. Marguerite Chiarenza (“Paradiso XX,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 16-17 [1995], p. 302) makes the point that this decision is thus in accord “with the unchangeable will of Providence.”
This double simile, reflecting the fingering of two kinds of musical instruments in order to produce varying sounds (along the neck of a lute or at the vents of a bagpipe), describes the sound produced from within the Eagle's neck, eventually issuing from his beak as a series of notes (or words).
Landino (comm. to vv. 25-29) expresses his admiration for Dante's ability, plainly visible here, to “make the impossible seem believable” and compares him to Ovid in this respect.
The Eagle uttered words that Dante, once more reverting to the image of his scribal role, wrote down upon his heart. See the notes to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63; Paradiso V.85, X.27, and X.109-114; and see Par. XVIII.85-86).
The Eagle's invitation to Dante to gaze upon its eye revisits a bit of lore already placed in evidence. We learned that mortal eagles are able to look into the sun without harm from Paradiso I.46-48; see the accompanying note, referring to possible sources in Aristotle and in Brunetto Latini.
Returning to speech from song, the Eagle now again speaks as a single voice. We will hear it switch back again to the first-person plural in its final words (see verse 134).
The Eagle now reports that the souls that form its eye (we only see one of the two, if it in fact happens to possess more in the way of orbs of sight than its profiled appearance as the emblem of empire requires – a dubious eventuality) are the greatest among the many that give its form an aquiline shape.
The Eagle's thirty-six verses in six segments, each of six lines, and each involving use of anaphora (the phrase ora conosce), identify the six “chiefs” of justice: David, Trajan, Hezekiah, Constantine, William the Good, and Ripheus (their fame is at first insisted on when the first four of them are named only by circumlocution; the last two understandably require more assistance). It seems possible that the poet wanted us to reflect that the thirty-six lines in praise of these half dozen dead rulers mirror, if adversely, the twenty-seven verses, also marked by anaphora, describing the dozen defective living rulers in the preceding canto, Paradiso XIX.115-141.
The number of these just rulers [six] may also be meant to put us in mind of the six “world-historical” emperors presented in Par. VI: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Titus, Justinian, and Charlemagne. Those seemed to have been significant primarily for the events over which they presided; these, for their personal justness. That distinction may or may not explain their appearing here (only temporarily, we at times may struggle to remember) in a higher heaven. Dante never gives us the grounds on which to establish the relative advancement of the blessed in the Empyrean, except for the eighteen souls whom we are allowed to see in Paradiso XXXII; and none of these saved rulers is seen among them.
The first of these most just among just rulers is David, in the Commedia most honored as the singer of the Holy Spirit (as are also all his companions in the Eagle: see Par. XIX.101). (David is prominently mentioned in Purg. X.65 [and see the appended note]; Par. XXV.71-72 and XXXII.11-12). He is, in fact, the figure from the Old Testament most present in Dante's work, (Toynbee, Concise Dante Dictionary, “David”), referred to perhaps fifty times in all. For his service to the Lord in transporting the Ark of the Covenant, see Purgatorio X.55-69.
Some think the words suo consiglio (his own thought) refer to the “thought” of the Holy Spirit; most, to that of David (as is reflected in our translation).
The question of the “merit” of David's song disturbs some readers. See, for instance, Tozer (comm. to vv. 40-42), pointing out that David could benefit only insofar as his song proceeded from his own free will (and thus was not the effect of inspiration, in which case it would not, as the text suggests, in itself make him worthy of salvation). However, is David's worthiness not similar to the unexpressed claim for his own “merit” that Dante might have considered most convincing? He presents himself as the “new David” from the outset (see Inf. I.65), that is, as a man directly inspired by God to lift his eyes from worldly distraction. In Dante's mind, there does not seem to be any limitation on the freedom of his will imposed thereby.
Trajan, the Roman emperor (A.D. 98-117), is closest to the Eagle's beak in the semicircle that describes the “eyebrow,” as it were, above David, located as the pupil of the eye. For his humble service to the widow and the tradition of his salvation, see Purgatorio X.73-93 and the appended note. For some of the twists and turns in the history of the accounts of the salvation of Trajan, see Picone (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 313-19).
Now Trajan appreciates, both by now being here with God and by having been in Limbo, the cost of not following Christ.
For the phrase dolce vita (sweet life), see the note to Paradiso IV.35.
Hezekiah, a king of Judah in the seventh century B.C., was a just monarch, according to the Bible, at least in his own accountancy (see II Kings 20:3 [IV Kings in the Vulgate]).
His tears (but were they shed in penitence?) are found in Isaiah 38:3, as was first noted by Jacopo della Lana (comm. to verse 51). Here is the pertinent passage (38:1-5): “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, 'Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.' Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, 'Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.' And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: 'Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life'” (italics added). Hezekiah in fact here does not weep out of penitence, as Dante says he did, but the detail that God saw his tears and then remitted his sentence of death was perhaps enough to suggest to the poet that the king was contrite for his sins, and not merely brokenhearted and afraid. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 51) was apparently the first (and not Porena, whom Bosco/Reggio [comm. to verse 51] credit for the observation) to deal with the fact that this passage does not record his penitence, which is, however, found in II Chronicles 32:24-26 (II Par. in the Vulgate], a version of the narrative from a later perspective: “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death, and he prayed to the Lord, and He answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem. But Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah” (italics added). If Dante were not thinking of the better known text concerning Hezekiah in Isaiah, but of this one, then he is more or less in keeping with at least that Scriptural view. However, for the view that Hezekiah's penitence is conveyed to Dante less by the text of the Bible than by a passage in Hugh of St. Cher's Postilla, see Paola Rigo (“Tra 'maligno' e 'sanguigno,'” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994], pp. 80-81).
Now Hezekiah knows that answered prayers are part of God's plan, rather than representing a change in it (cf. Purg. VI.28-42, where the same question is raised about Virgil's views on this matter). Carroll (comm. to vv. 49-54) puts this well: “In short, what Hezekiah now knows in Heaven is the mystery of how prayer harmonizes with and fulfils 'the eternal judgment,' instead of being, as it seems, an alteration of it.”
For Hezekiah as “type” of Dante, see A.C. Charity (Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966], p. 230) and the note to Inferno I.1.
Tozer (comm. to this tercet) paraphrases and interprets this passage as follows: “'when a worthy prayer causes that which was ordained for the present time to be postponed to a future time'; this was what happened in Hezekiah's case through the postponement of his death. The meaning of the entire passage here is, that what God has ordained is not changed in answer to prayer, because God has already provided for it.”
Since the spatial arrangement of the inhabitants of the Eagle's semicircular eyebrow is not chronological, the fact that Constantine (274-337) is the middle figure in it, and thus the highest, takes us by surprise, given the number and vehemence of Dante's outbursts against the Donation (e.g., Inf. XIX.115-117, Purg. XXXII.124-129; and see Monarchia, which fairly seethes with them). In this passage Dante settles for Constantine's good intent in his governance of the Eastern empire. However, now this emperor knows that if the evil he unwittingly committed has not harmed him, it has nonetheless destroyed the world. Dante may allow him salvation, but makes him pay for it eternally and dearly with this permanent wound in his self-awareness. This does not efface the glory his good intention won him, but it does mar its beauty.
William the Good, king of (Naples and) Sicily (ruled 1166-1189), is presented as mourned by his subjects (he died young, at thirty-five), who now must suffer the misdeeds of his two successors, Charles of Anjou (who ruled Apulia) and Frederick II of Aragon (who ruled Sicily itself – see Par. XIX.127-135, where these two are the sixth and seventh unworthy rulers in that pestilential acrostic). Now William, who was widely celebrated in his lifetime for his lawful reign and his generosity, knows that God loves a just king.
Ripheus is unlike the first five identified rulers in not ever having been mentioned within a Christian context by anyone at all; he is also the only one of them not to have been a king or an emperor. Indeed, he is a sort of “extra,” a bit player (if a heroic and probably highborn one) in the Aeneid, barely mentioned but for his death fighting along with Aeneas (Aen. II.426-428; see also II.339, II.394). Dante does not refer to a particular good deed that he performed, insisting instead on the general fact of his justness. The not inconsiderable poetic space (vv. 118-129) devoted to “explaining” his Christian belief has never diminished readers' amazement at finding him here. That is not surprising, as even he is portrayed (in verse 72) as not knowing the reason for his being among the elect. Now he knows more of divine grace than mortals do, if not all that can be known (we probably wonder whether this inability is peculiar to Ripheus or is shared with all the saved).
For a recently discovered (it had been hiding in plain view for centuries) and probable source, or at least confirmation, of Dante's view of Ripheus, see John A. Scott (“Dante, Boezio e l'enigma di Rifeo [Par. 20],” Studi Danteschi 61 [1989 {1994}]: 190-92), pointing out that a passage in Boethius (Cons. Phil. IV.6[pr].127-131) offers several reasons to think it was in Dante's mind as he wrote this passage: (1) that Boethius is referring to the same passage that scholars habitually point to as Dante's source in Aeneid II seems highly likely; (2) the Boethian context is utterly appropriate, since it involves the surprising nature, in human eyes, of providence; (3) the passage includes a specific reference to Lucan's Cato of Utica (Phars. I.128), approving Cato's worth (even though he lost his war) against that of Caesar, though Julius (and not Cato) was victorious (see Dante's presentation of Cato in the first two cantos of Purgatorio). The text in question reads in part as follows (tr. W.V. Cooper, italics added): “For, to glance at the depth of God's works with so few words as human reason is capable of comprehending, I say that what you think to be most fair and most conducive to justice's preservation, that appears different to an all-seeing Providence. Has not our fellow-philosopher Lucan told us how 'the conquering cause did please the gods, but the conquered, Cato?'” One can only imagine how Dante felt, seeing that his own radical and dangerous ideas had some justification in no less an authority than Boethius. For an earlier, similar, but not quite as pointed recognition of the influence of the Consolatio (and particularly its fourth book) on Dante's thought here, see Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35). Scott's discovery should cause us to wonder at the scholarly procedures of all of us who practice the craft of explicating our poet's work. How is it that an important passage in a work with which we all know Dante was deeply conversant, e.g., the Bible, the Aeneid, or, in this case, the Consolatio, can avoid the attention, for nearly seven centuries, of precisely those who have volunteered themselves as the keepers of his flame? Excuses are ready to hand: We are, after all, only human, and there is so much to which we must pay attention; further, we sometimes rule out as unthinkable precisely what Dante happens to be thinking. Nonetheless, our record is far from impressive. One ruefully supposes that our having left so much to be redone (and done!) is, in the end, “good for business.”
On the other hand, one may be excused a certain dubiety concerning the genuineness of Dante's belief in the salvation of this pagan. Virgil has handed Dante the stick with which to beat him: After he calls Ripheus the most just of the Trojans (“iustissimus”), he concludes with the phrase “dis aliter visum” (to the gods it seemed otherwise [Aen. II.428]); the muffled meaning seems to be that the gods do not care about just humans, and “kill us for their sport” (as King Lear phrased it). Dante lands hard upon Virgil for this judgment: his Christian God reverses pagan justice. (For this view, see Hollander [Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” {Florence: Olschki, 1983}, p. 138]; for a more conciliatory one, Bosco/Reggio, comm. to verse 68.)
As far as one can tell, the first commentator to respond to this disturbing phrase (dis aliter visum) with a sense of its troublesome character for a Christian reader was Carroll (comm. to vv. 67-72). He concludes his remarks with the following: “The most important point in all this may be easily overlooked. It is, I think, the transference of the mystery from the justice of God to His grace in the salvation of the heathen.” Ettore Paratore (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 724) sees Dante's reference here as critical of Virgil. Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35) argues well (and with greater specificity) for Dante's deliberate attempt to discredit Virgil's view of fate. It seems clear that the Christian poet is motivated by a desire to save Ripheus against his pagan author's authority, to make him a bone of contention in his continuing brief against Virgil (and if we haven't gotten that point before, we surely must get it now). However, if his “seriousness” in insisting on Ripheus's presence among the Christian just is essentially tactical and anti-Virgilian, how serious is it strategically? For example, did Dante ever pray to the soul of Ripheus? Does the poet want us to? One is dubious, even to the degree of sensing that the scandalous salvation is a gleeful invention of a very naughty Dante Alighieri. Not even Giorgio Padoan attempted to locate the poet's view of Ripheus in some unknown and still undiscovered Christian apologist's interpretation of the Aeneid, despite the fact that Padoan was forever searching (in vain, it would usually seem) for such “justification” as might be lent by a “lost” Christian reading of one pagan text or another (e.g., “Il mito di Teseo e il cristianesimo di Stazio,” Lettere Italiane 11 [1959]: 432-57). In his entry “Rifeo” (ED IV [1973]), he only allows himself the mild hope (without offering any justification for it) that possibly Dante's text of Virgil's phrase “dis aliter visum” read differently from ours.
Ripheus brings into focus several questions that dominate the protagonist's concerns in this heaven: the justness of the condemnation of the virtuous, necessarily Christ-ignorant, pagans; the possibility that their ignorance was not total and thus not absolutely necessary; the inability of other humans to comprehend such things. God's justice is definitional, and Dante, in the preceding canto, was forced, by a very aggressive Eagle, to plead guilty to having tried to put God in the dock. We cannot know the grounds for God's judgment, only that whatever He has decided is just.
Marguerite Chiarenza (“Paradiso XX,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 16-17 [1995]), pp. 304-5) puts into intelligent focus the way so much of Paradiso XX reopens the “question of Virgil” in our minds: “Virgil's drama is based on the contingency that he died just nineteen years before the birth of Christ. If God could extend Hezekiah's life by fifteen years, why did He not extend Virgil's by little more? It was said that St. Paul, moved by the beauty and wisdom of Virgil's poetry, prayed at the poet's tomb for his salvation. (For this topic, she adverts to the work of Domenico Comparetti [Vergil in the Middle Ages, tr. E. F. M. Benecke {Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1966 [1872]}, p. 98]; Charles Till Davis [Dante and the Idea of Rome {Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957}, pp. 103-4]; and Nancy Vickers [”Seeing is Believing: Gregory, Trajan, and Dante's Art,“ Dante Studies 101 {1983}, p. 72].) If God could answer Gregory's prayers for Trajan, why did He reject the similar prayer of the great St. Paul? How could a minor figure in Virgil's poem have caught the attention of God, while Virgil himself failed to?” Whether we like it or not, we have heard the answer to our question in the last canto, when the Eagle came down hard upon Dante for his similar question (Par. XIX.79-90): We cannot weigh God's intent, only recognize it.
On the question of God's disposition of the virtuous pagans, see Giovanni Fallani, “salvezza dei pagani,” ED IV (1973) and Picone (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 311-13, and, with specific reference to Ripheus, pp. 317-20). For the interesting observation that Dante might have found an equally “salvable” pagan in the person of Galaesus, also referred to by Virgil as “iustissimus” (in Aeneid VII.536), see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 55-56), who sees Dante as observing this rather striking phenomenon and considering that the two “most just” pagans point only, again, to the inscrutable nature of God's justice – as well, we might want to add, as of Dante's.
Apparently first among the few to hear the echo here of the salvation of the Roman (and thus pagan) centurion Cornelius (see Acts 10:22-23; 34-35) was Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 68-69); most recently see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 91, building the evidence for his point better than his (unacknowledged) predecessors: Cornelius the centurion, “vir iustus et timens Deum” (a just and God-fearing man [Acts 10:22; Aversano's italics]). He concludes, “In patristic exegesis this centurion is the type of the gentiles saved by the grace of God”; Cornelius “because of his great faith and his justness, received the gift of the Holy Spirit before he was baptized” (Aversano is citing Rabanus Maurus for this judgment).
Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35) “argues that we can better understand the role of the Aeneid in the Comedy in the light of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae, especially Book IV. Virgil's stoic pessimism did not go unnoticed by Dante; Anchises cannot give Aeneas the consolation Cacciaguida gives Dante. Cacciaguida's prophecy is at once the supplanting and resolution not just of previous prophecies, but of Virgil's whole human perspective. The pilgrim's exile, as he fears it, is Fate in the Boethian sense, while Cacciaguida's interpretation of that exile is a reflection of the Boethian view of Providence. The central example of Fate in the Comedy is the Aeneid, which is reread providentially: thus, Dante chose to save Ripheus because of Virgil's fatalistic 'dis aliter visum' (Aen. II, 428). The corrections of the Aeneid in the Comedy are not so much Christian readings superimposed on a pagan text as Providence's readings superimposed on Fate.” (This digest of her argument is taken from the website of the Dante Society of America, reproducing the valuable work [attended to with so much care for so many years] of Anthony L. Pellegrini, when he was editor of its journal. See “American Dante Bibliography for 1983,” Dante Studies 102 [1984].)
Perhaps our poet was tempted to push his reading of Virgil past the point of no return. At any rate, that is what he has accomplished, making the condemned author of the Aeneid, alongside the similarly Limbo-bound hero of his epic, spend their eternities in the lower world of an afterlife they neither believed in nor deserved, while this “bit player” enjoys the fruits of Heaven. For him to be here, Ripheus necessarily had to welcome Christ into his life; again, one has a difficult time believing that Dante really thought so. But that is what he decided he thought.
Dante is aware that his treatment of Ripheus will astound at least some of his readers. That he wants them to couple it with his similarly contentious insistence on Solomon's salvation (despite the warmly contrary opinions of some “big guns” of Christian theology, none bigger or more negative about the possibility of Solomon's salvation than Augustine) is the opinion of Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Nolite iudicare: Dante and the Dilemma of Judgment,” in Writers Reading Writers: Intertextual Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature in Honor of Robert Hollander, ed. Janet Levarie Smarr [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007], p. 77). She points out that both Solomon (Par. X.109) and Ripheus are the fifth lights in the shapes that they and their colleagues have temporarily assumed in order to display themselves to Dante, a circle and the eyebrow of an eagle, and that both were spectacularly provocative selections for salvation. Here are her words: “Solomon and Ripheus have a good deal more in common than an acquaintance with them outside of Dante's text would suggest. Both appear in the Commedia as 'fifth lights.' Solomon is 'la quinta luce' (Par. X.109) of the twelve that make up the first circle of saved souls in the Sun, Ripheus is 'la quinta delle luci' (Par. XX.69) that together comprise the eye of the eagle in Jupiter. Even more important than this parallel numerical position, both are meant to surprise Dante's readership: Solomon because of the intense debate as to whether he was saved or damned, and Ripheus because he is a pagan without any patristic history of redemption who appears in the pages of the Commedia in the most Christian of places.”
The Eagle, delighted by its own report of the salvation of Ripheus (and by the fact that not even he understands why he was saved), is like a lark satisfied by its own song, silent in its flight, savoring that melody in memory. The ensuing description of the silent emblem is not easy to decode, but it seems to refer to the Eagle (l'imago) as stamped (de la 'mprenta) by the eternal Beauty that is God (l'etterno piacere), by whose will each thing becomes that which it is. In this case that last and rather puzzling general statement probably refers most directly to Ripheus's saved soul, as the context suggests.
This passage has understandably caused a certain amount of debate (for a summary, see Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 76-78]). Its key phrase (“la 'mprenta / de l'etterno piacere”) either means that the Eagle bears the imprint of God's will or is the imprint of His beauty. Most of the commentators, including Scartazzini, are of the first persuasion. However, when speaking of the etterno piacere of God, Dante elsewhere seems to refer to His everlasting beauty (see John Took [“L'etterno piacer”: Aesthetic Ideas in Dante {Oxford: Clarendon, 1984}, pp. 10-11, 17-22]; and see the note to Par. XVIII.16-18). The phrase also occurs in Purgatorio XXIX.32 and Paradiso XVIII.16. In addition, in Paradiso the word piacere, standing alone and referring to God, frequently seems to indicate His beauty (see Par. XXVII.95, XXXII.65, and XXXIII.33). And so we have translated the phrase, if gingerly, as we have. This is a possible reading, but not a certain one.
Beginning with Torraca (comm. to vv. 73-75), quite a few commentators have cited a Provençal source, a poem by Bernart de Ventadorn, Can vei la lauzeta mover (When I see the lark [beat its wings]); but see the furious reaction against such “incorrect pedantry” by Porena (comm. to vv. 73-75), insisting that the resemblances are only coincidental.
John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 73-78) is alert to the charming pun available in the name of the bird (allodetta, lark). He puts Latin words into its beak: “Surge, Deum lauda, iam lux est, cantat alauda” ('Arise, praise God, for it is light,' sings the lark [italics added, even though John's play on words is lost in English]).
This simple comparison, less developed than a “classical” simile, makes the heavy question within Dante evident to the souls configuring the Eagle. Despite knowing that, he nonetheless bursts out in amazement and perplexity. We may need to remind ourselves that for eighty-five cantos the protagonist has resisted the notion that virtuous pagans should be condemned to Hell. Then the Eagle insisted on that harsh truth in Canto XIX. And now that same Eagle tells Dante that two of the greatest souls that produce his shape are saved pagans. It is small wonder the protagonist is both amazed and perplexed.
Tozer (comm. to this tercet) explains the passage as follows: “The metaphor is from coloured glass, the reference being to 'coated' glass, i.e. white glass coated with a coloured film on one side only. As this colour could be clearly seen through the glass, so the spirits could look through Dante's mind, and see the doubt within it.”
The Eagle, its eye more ardent, acknowledges the protagonist's confusion and prepares to explain its causes.
Commentators, beginning with Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 91-92) - and none who follow him give him credit, as it so very often true – suggest the trace here of Aquinas's distinction between cognitio sensitiva and cognitio intellectiva (ST II-II, q. 8, a. 1), that is, between knowledge based on sense perception and that based on reason, penetrating to the true meaning of phenomena.
The word quiditate is a Scholastic term for “essence.”
Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 91-92) deals with the Latinism prome as meaning “extract,” “draw out,” that is, as one grasps the essence of a concept.
See Matthew 11:12: “Regnum caelorum vim patitur, et violenti rapiunt illud” (the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away [italics added]) – in these cases at the behest of the hopeful prayers of Pope Gregory and the ardent affection of Ripheus. As we will see (vv. 108, 121), the virtues of Hope and Love will be specifically aligned with the salvations of Trajan and of Ripheus, respectively.
Rhyme may have forced Dante to use a Provençalism, sobranza (overcomes, conquers), but he seems to welcome the excuse, as his project for the language of the Commedia is inclusive rather than exclusive. In De vulgari eloquentia (I.xi.6) he first uses the image of the sieve (it will recur three times in the work) for the filtering agent that accounts for a certain “purity” of the lofty style. Montaigne's “fricasee” set to simmering, into which he throws any and all tasty bits, seems the better image for this great poem, which excludes nothing except incompetence.
The chiasmus (vince, vinta; vinta, vince) underlines the power of the paradox: God wills to be conquered and thus conquers.
This tercet is built on still another chiasmus: Trajan, Ripheus; Christ to come, Christ come.
As opposed to a more comfortable understanding, in other words, that Trajan and (more pointedly) Ripheus had been won to the God of the Christians through implicit faith (see Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 2, a. 7), Dante insists that he believes that we believe that they believed explicitly in Christ, in Trajan's case (less difficult to accept, but involving a major miracle [see vv. 106-117], after the fact; in Ripheus's, before [see vv. 118-129]). And so they died, not as unbelievers, but as full-fledged Christians. The trick here is to add a disclaimer for Trajan (he died a Christian only when he died a second time) and to swallow hard at the claim made on behalf of Ripheus.
The feet of Jesus, transfixed to the cross by a single spike, offered one of the most piteous physical images drawn from the Passion. See, for example, Bonvesin de la Riva's De scriptura rubra in his Libro de le tre scritture, vv. 153-170 (cited by Manuele Gragnolati [Experiencing the Afterlife {Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005}], pp. 95-96; and see p. 231, n. 57), where, in eighteen verses, the word pei (Milanese dialect for “feet”) occurs six times in Bonvesin's bloody account of the Crucifixion.
The somewhat grudging authority of St. Thomas (ST Suppl., q. 71, a. 5) sustains the widely disseminated tale that Trajan was resuscitated by agency of Gregory's accepted prayers, believed in Christ, was baptized, died a second time, and was received in Heaven (see the note to Purg. X.73-93). Thomas, however, seems in fact to have been drawn to the story of Gregory's intervention on Trajan's behalf, referring to it in some six loci in his other works. See the indispensable online Corpus Thomisticum (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org), the project in which Father Roberto Busa convinced IBM to become his partner in 1946. Busa, who happens to be a modest person, would probably blush to hear himself described as “the father of computing for texts in the humanities,” but that is exactly what he is.
What is perhaps most surprising about Trajan's reward is that it was won not by his hope, but by that of Pope Gregory. We are reminded of the fate of those in Limbo (where, we assume, Trajan was first lodged), who exist (according to Inf. IV.42) longing for a better lot, if without hope for it (sanza speme). Gregory's hope “conquered” God on Trajan's behalf; the emperor himself, the evidence that we gather from Limbo would seem to assert, was hopeless.
Some early commentators (e.g., Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, comm. to these verses], John of Serravalle [comm. to vv. 31-36 and 127-129]) speak of the “baptism of fire” in those inspired by the Holy Spirit to love God perfectly. For Dante, Virgil's single word, iustissimus, seems to have been the key for this incredible invention. (For the centrality of justice to Dante's design, see the note to Inferno III.4.) Ripheus's conversion (brought on by his love of justice) also enjoys, in general but certainly not specifically, the potential authority of Thomas (ST II-II, q. 2, a. 7; III, q. 66, a. 11). But see André Pézard's perhaps over-ingenious bypassing of the many difficulties of finding justification for Dante's salvation of Virgil's dead warrior. For him (“Riphée ou la naissance d'un Mythe,” Revue des études italiennes 25 [1979]: 5-40) Ripheus represents a kind of answer to Adamic sinfulness, a form of Original Justice, as it were.
To Ripheus Virgil has dedicated a total of only five lines in the Aeneid; Dante doubles that (and then some) in this passage alone.
The word drittura is a hapax in the poem, but has a Dantean history before it puts in its appearance here, first in Convivio (IV.xvii.6), where, as rectitude, it is an attribute of the eleventh and final of Aristotle's moral virtues, Justice. For the hypothesis that Dante was planning to build the final eleven treatises of the unfinished Convivio in such a way as to reflect each of Aristotle's eleven moral virtues, see Hollander (Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], p. 49). (Mazzotta [“Dante and the Virtues of Exile,” Poetics Today 5 {1984}, p. 653] unaccountably makes the projected work one treatise shorter [fourteen] than Dante did [fifteen].) Drittura also appears in the exilic canzone, “Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute” (Rime CIV.35), where she seems as much a despised exile from Florence as does the poet.
As provocation, this detail is over the top. Nonetheless, the commentators are amazingly willing to accept what Dante says without protest. The whole story of Ripheus is nothing less than outrageous, and now the poet tops it off by turning him, as Poletto (comm. to vv. 124-126) had the strength of mind to observe, into a sort of Trojan St. Paul. “Why not?” Dante seems to have thought; if he became a Christian, he must have hated those shoddy pagan gods and the religious practices of his fellow pagans; doesn't that makes sense? And so Ripheus is presented as having preached against those practices. Is Dante having fun with us? And at Virgil's expense? Perhaps. (It would not be the only time.)
The three ladies are obviously the three theological virtues, whom we saw at the right wheel of the chariot of the Church Triumphant in Purgatorio XXIX.121-129. In what sense did they “serve to baptize” Ripheus? Since that ritual was not available to him, and since he was born with original sin upon him, he required something in its place. Somehow he acquired the three theological virtues and these brought him to Christ. Dante's text here may reflect a passage in St. Augustine's De doctrina christiana (I.xxxix.43): “Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them, does not need the Scriptures except for the instruction of others” (tr. D.W. Robertson, Jr.).
The date of the fall of Troy was given in at least one universal history (that of Petavius) as 1184 B.C.; citation of Petavius may be found in a number of commentaries, beginning with Lombardi (comm. to this tercet).
The fourth and final section of this canto addresses itself to a question that has always troubled Christians (as is focally shown in many of the writings of Augustine): predestination. Reiterating Thomas's criticism of our all-too-human desire to speculate upon the likely salvation or damnation of our neighbors (Par. XIII.139-142), the Eagle now portrays as cosmic the unknowing that surrounds God's purpose. Not even the immortal just souls in the Empyrean know all the Elect (see verse 72 for the less dramatic notice of the shortness of mortal vision in this regard). This comes as something of a surprise, as Torquato Tasso noted (comm. to vv. 133-135), since everything we have previously learned about this topic would clearly seem to indicate that the saved know, in God, all things that exist (see, inter alia, Par. V.4-6, VIII.85-90, IX.73-75, XV.49-51, XVII.13-18, and XIX.28-30, as well as the notes to Par. IV.16-18 and XIV.7-9); however, Dante's enthusiasm for the subject seems to have led him into at least a possible self-contradiction, since what is said here denies that even the blessed can have complete knowledge of what God has in His mind. Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005], passim) argues that after the general resurrection God's thought will be knowable by all the saved., since the poet has created no mechanism for latter-day salvations specifically set aside for virtuous non-Christians, though, of course, all things are possible in God (and thus one is free to intuit the salvation of one's favorite Martian or a particularly sympathetic Buddhist maiden aunt). On this vexed passage see Trottmann (“Communion des saints et jugement dernier dans les chants XIX-XX du Paradis,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], pp. 191-97) and Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife), pp. 162-63, arguing that the “surprises” include not only the identity of those not yet saved, but of some unbaptized pagans already saved. This argument is not on solid ground, at least not in its second instantiation, since we assume that both Trajan and Ripheus are known to all the blessed and that, as a result, all other “converted” pagans must be, too. As for its first part, Dante's apparent assertion that the blessed do not know the identities of those not yet saved, it certainly seems to violate the principle that whatever God knows the saved can read in His mind, as Tasso noted. From Paradiso XV.49-51 we have learned that Cacciaguida knew that Dante was inscribed in the Book of Life. And so we must wonder how thoroughly the poet held to this apparent revision of his earlier view, as much as we must honor it. Such self-contradictions are only to be expected, particularly in the work of a poet, since we can find even practitioners of supposedly systematic theology (or philosophy) at times contradicting themselves. If we allow even St. Thomas, a rigorist if ever there were one, an occasional fairly clamorous denial of a previous position, we should be aware that a poet is (or may feel himself to be) less constrained by such demands than is a theologian or a philosopher.
Venturi (comm. to verse 135) was apparently the first commentator to refer to part of the collecta (“collect” – originally a short prayer recited to Christians gathered [“collected”] for a service) known as “the Collect for the living and the dead”: “Deus, cui soli cognitus est numerus electorum in superna felicitate locandus” (God, to whom alone is known the number of the elect that is to be set in supernal bliss). This prayer, once it was cited by Venturi, had a certain afterlife in the commentators right through the nineteenth century, but for some reason has been allowed to vanish in our time. Nonetheless, while it does give us an official teaching of the Church regarding the limits of the knowledge of those in the Empyrean, it certainly is at odds with what the poem has led us to expect, as Tasso observed. As Carroll (comm. to vv. 130-132) pointed out, reference to this particular “collect” found its way to Thomas's greatest work: “In Summa, I, q. xxiii, a. 7, Aquinas says: 'Some say that out of mankind as many will be saved as angels fell; some, as many as angels remained; some as many as angels fell, and over and above, as many as the number of angels created. But it is better to say that to God alone is known the number of the elect who are to be set in supernal bliss' (as the Collecta pro vivis ac defunctis has it).” The teaching embedded in this prayer thus probably enjoyed a certain authority in Dante's eyes.
The Eagle once again, concluding its presence in the poem, speaks as a plural entity, in the collective voice of the individual souls of the just. It seems clear that a listener cannot tell from the quality of the speech whether the Eagle is speaking as a composite or as a gathering of individuals except from its first-person grammatical markers, singular or plural.
Thus were Dante's weak eyes strengthened by Justice (cf. the Eagle's very first words at Par. XIX.13, speaking in the first-person singular: “Per esser giusto e pio” [For being just and merciful]).
The phrase “soave medicina” (sweet medication) recalls the medicina of Inferno XXXI.3. It also probably refers to the “pestilence” the protagonist's eyes had encountered in the counterpoised object of vision to this briefer catalogue of the justly saved, the group of twelve damned rulers found in Canto XIX. As Marino Barchiesi (“Catarsi classica e 'medicina' dantesca, Dal canto XX dell'Inferno,” Letture classensi 4 [1973], pp. 73-74) realized, it also recalls the “disease” of sympathy for classical divination demonstrated by the protagonist in Inferno XX. And, in this vein, see Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], p. 199): “The disease which has been cured in Paradiso XX revealed its etiology in Inferno XX.”
This is the final simile of the canto and of this simile-filled heaven (there are twelve in Cantos XVIII-XX, four in each): As a lutenist accompanies a singer, Trajan and Ripheus move their flames, as though in accompaniment, to the Eagle's words.
The similes in the heaven of Jupiter are disposed as follows: Par. XVIII.58-63, XVIII.64-69, XVIII.73-78, XVIII.100-105; XIX.19-21, XIX.34-39, XIX.91-96, XIX.97-99; XX.1-12, XX.22-27, XX.73-78, XX.142-148.
Whatever Dante's intention, the fact that the two “eyes” blinking as one are the “Christians” Trajan and Ripheus turns these verses into one of the most notable authorial winks in all of literature. See Trottmann (“Communion des saints et jugement dernier dans les chants XIX-XX du Paradis,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], p. 197) for a similar suggestion.
This is perhaps the fitting context for a recognition of the extraordinary panoply of references to pagans in this canticle - two fewer than an even hundred. Here is, first, an alphabetical list of names of pagans in Paradiso (with reference only to first appearances):
IV.103 Alcmaeon
V.69 Agamemnon
IV.104 Amphiaraus
XI.68 Amyclas
XV.25 Anchises
I.13 Apollo
XXXI.33 Arcas
XIII.14 Ariadne
VIII.120 Aristotle
VI.73 Augustus
XXX.7 Aurora
XIII.25 Bacchus
IX.97 Belus
XXVIII.81 Boreas
VI.44 Brennus
VI.74 Brutus
XIII.125 Bryson
VI.74 Cassius
VI.46 Cincinnatus
VI.76 Cleopatra
XVII.1 Clymene
XV.129 Cornelia
IX.98 Creusa
VIII.7 Cupid
VIII.125 Daedalus
I.33 Daphne
VI.47 the Decii
IX.101 Demophoön
VI.94 Desiderius
X.67 Diana
VIII.9 Dido
VIII.7 Dïone
XII.14 Eco
IV.104 Eryphile
XXVII.84 Europa
VIII.69 Eurus
VI.47 the Fabii
I.68 Glaucus
VI.50 Hannibal
VI.68 Hector
XXXI.32 Helice
XIV.96 Helios
IX.101 Hercules
XI.4 Hippocrates
XVII.46 Hippolytus
XXII.142 Hyperion
VIII.126 Icarus
IX.102 Iole
V.70 Iphigenia
XII.12 Iris
VI.81 Janus
II.18 Jason
VI.70 Juba
VI.57 Julius Caesar
XII.12 Juno
IV.62 Jupiter
X.67 Latona
VI.3 Lavinia
XXVII.98 Leda
VI.41 Lucretia
XXII.144 Maia
IV.63 Mars
I.20 Marsyas
XIII.125 Melissus
IV.63 Mercury
II.8 Minerva
XIII.14 Minos
IV.84 Mucius Scaevola
XXIII.56 the Muses
III.18 Narcissus
XXXIII.96 Neptune
XIII.125 Parmenides
XVII.47 Phaedra
XVII.3 Phaeton
IX.100 Phyllis
IV.24 Plato
XXIII.56 Polyhymnia
VI.53 Pompey
VI.69 Ptolemy
VI.44 Pyrrhus
VIII.131 Romulus
XV.107 Sardanapalus
XXI.26 Saturn
VI.53 Scipio
XXI.6 Semele
VIII.124 Solon
XXXIII.66 the Sibyl
IX.98 Sychaeus
VI.86 Tiberius
IV.49 Timaeus
VI.92 Titus
VI.46 Torquatus
VIII.70 Typhon
XXVII.83 Ulysses
VIII.2 Venus
VIII.124 Xerxes
XII.47 Zephyr.
The second version of this material is a chronological listing of each pagan presence in Paradiso; multiple presences are represented after the first, as in the first instance below, Apollo:
canto.verse name text
I.13 Apollo O good Apollo, for this last labor
I.32 “ making the Delphic god rejoice
II.8 ” Apollo is my steersman
XIII.25 “ praises not of Bacchus nor of Paean
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
I.20 Marsyas when you drew out Marsyas
I.33 Daphne the Peneian bough
I.68 Glaucus I was changed within, / as Glaucus was
II.8 Minerva Minerva fills my sails
II.18 Jason saw Jason had become a ploughman
XXV.7 “ with another fleece
XXXIII.96 ” Neptune at the Argo's shadow stared
III.18 Narcissus which inflamed a man to love a fountain
IV.24 Plato in agreement with Platonic teaching
IV.49 Timaeus what Timaeus has to say about the souls
IV.62 Jupiter naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
XVIII.70 “ that torch of Jupiter
XXII.145 ” Jove between his father and his son
XXVII.14 “ if he and Mars were birds
IV.63 Mercury naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
IV.63 Mars naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
VIII.132 ” so rude a father he is ascribed to Mars
XVI.47 “ dwelling between Mars and the Baptist
XVI.145 ” that shattered stone
XXII.146 “ Jove between his father and his son
XXVII.14 ” if he and Mars were birds
IV.84 Mucius Scaevola made Mucius harsh to his own hand
IV.103 Alcmaeon as Alcmaeon, exhorted by his father
IV.104 Amphiaraus as Alcmaeon, exhorted by his father
IV.104 Eryphile slew his own mother
V.69 Agamemnon that great leader of the Greeks
V.70 Iphigenia who made Iphigenia lament
VI.3 Aeneas that ancient who took Lavinia to wife
XV.27 “ when in Elysium he knew his son
VI.3 Lavinia that ancient who took Lavinia to wife
VI.36 Pallas when Pallas gave his life
VI.39 the Horatii three made war on three
VI.39 the Curiatiia three made war on three
VI.41 Lucretia Sabine women to Lucretia's woes
VI.44 Brennus Romans against Brennus, against Pyrrhus
VI.44 Pyrrhus Romans against Brennus, against Pyrrhus
VI.46 Torquatus Torquatus
VI.46 Cincinnatus Quintius–named / for his unkempt locks
XV.129 ” as now would Cincinnatus or Cornelia
VI.47 the Decii the Decii
VI.47 the Fabii the Fabii
VI.50 Hannibal when Arabs / followed after Hannibal
VI.53 Scipio youthful Scipio
XXVII.61 “ the deeds of Scipio / preserved in Rome
VI.53 Pompey Pompey
VI.72 ” it heard the sound of Pompey's trumpet
VI.57 Julius Caesar Caesar, by the will of Rome, laid hold
XI.69 “ the voice of him
VI.68 Hector the place where Hector lies
VI.69 Ptolemy it roused itself–at Ptolemy's expense
VI.70 Juba it fell like lightning on Juba
VI.73 Augustus the one who bore it next
VI.74 Brutus Brutus and Cassius bark in Hell
VI.74 Cassius Brutus and Cassius bark in Hell
VI.76 Cleopatra wretched Cleopatra still weeps
VI.81 Janus the doors of Janus' shrine were locked
VI.86 Tiberius the third of the Caesars
VI.92 Titus it raced with Titus, doing vengeance
VI.94 Desiderius when Lombard tooth bit Holy Church
VIII.2 Venus the fair one of Cypress
VIII.7 Dïone honored Dïone, and Cupid too
XXII.144 ” saw how Maia and Dïone move
VIII.7 Cupid honored Dïone and Cupid too
VIII.9 Dido how once he sat in Dido's lap
IX.97 “ the daughter of Belus was no more aflame
VIII.69 Eurus the bay most vexed by the Sirocco
VIII.70 Typhon darkened not by Typhon
VIII.120 Aristotle not if your master is correct in this
VIII.124 Solon one is born a Solon and another Xerxes
VIII.124 Xerxes one is born a Solon and another Xerxes
VIII.125 Daedalus the man / who flew up through the air
VIII.126 Icarus and lost his son
VIII.131 Romulus Quirinus... ascribed to Mars
IX.97 Belus the daughter of Belus was no more aflame
IX.98 Sychaeus bringing grief to Sychaeus and to Creusa
IX.98 Creusa bringing grief to Sychaeus and to Creusa
IX.100 Phyllis she of Rhodope, who was deceived
IX.101 Demophoön deceived by Demophoön
IX.101 Hercules nor Alcides, when he embraced
IX.102 Iole when he embraced Iole in his heart
X.67 Diana Latona's daughter
XXII.139 ” I saw Latona's daughter shining bright
XXIII.26 “ Trivia smiles among the eternal nymphs
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
X.67 Latona we sometimes see Latona's daughter
XXII.139 “ the daughter of Latona
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
XI.4 Hippocrates another the Hippocratic Aphorisms
XI.68 Amyclas she stood / unmoved, with Amyclas
XII.2 Juno when Juno gives the order to her handmaid
XXVIII.32 “ the messenger of Juno, in full circle,
XII.2 Iris when Juno gives the order to her handmaid
XXVIII.32 ” the messenger of Juno, in full circle,
XXXIII.118 “ as rainbow is by rainbow
XII.14 Eco that wandering nymph
XII.47 Zephyr where gentle Zephyr's breath
XIII.14 Minos Minos' daughter when she felt the chill
XIII.14 Ariadne Minos' daughter when she felt the chill
XIII.25 Bacchus praises not of Bacchus nor of Paean
XIII.125 Parmenides Parmenides
XIII.125 Melissus Melissus
XIII.125 Bryson Bryson
XV.25 Anchises with such affection did Anchises' shade
XIX.132 ” where the long life of Anchises had its end
XV.26 Virgil if our greatest muse deserves belief
XVII.19 “ I was still in Virgil's company
XXVI.118 ” place from which your lady sent down Virgil
XV.107 Sardanapalus nor had Sardanapalus as yet arrived
XV.129 Cornelia as now would Cincinnatus or Cornelia
XVII.1 Clymene who came to Clymene to cast out doubt
XVII.3 Phaeton who... keeps fathers cautious with their sons
XXXI.125 “ the shaft of Phaeton's poorly guided car
XVII.46 Hippolytus as Hippolytus set forth from Athens
XVII.47 Phaedra his cruel and perfidious stepmother
XVIII.82 one of the Muses O divine Pegasean
XXIII.56 the Muses Polyhymnia and her sisters nurtured
XXI.6 Semele what Semele became when... turned to ashes
XXI.26 Saturn beneath whose rule all wickedness lay dead
XXII.146 ” Jove between his father and his son
XXII.142 Hyperion the visage of your son, Hyperion, I endured
XXII.144 Maia saw how Maia and Dïone move
XXIII.56 Polyhymnia Polyhymnia and her sisters nurtured
XXVII.83 Ulysses the mad track of Ulysses
XXVII.84 Europa where Europa made sweet burden of herself
XXVII.98 Leda the fair nest of Leda
XXVIII.81 Boreas when Boreas / blows from his gentler cheek
XXX.7 Aurora that brightest handmaid of the sun
XXXI.32 Helice which Helice covers every day
XXXI.33 Arcas wheeling with her son
XXXIII.66 the Sibyl the Sibyl's messages were lost
XXXIII.96 Neptune Neptune at the Argo's shadow stared
–-
And two who, we might insist, were in fact pagans but are Christians
in the poem:
XX.44 Trajan consoled the widow when she lost her son
XX.68 Ripheus that Trojan Ripheus should be the fifth
Commentary text is copyrighted and reproduced by permission.
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Quando colui che tutto 'l mondo alluma
de l'emisperio nostro sì discende,
che 'l giorno d'ogne parte si consuma,
lo ciel, che sol di lui prima s'accende,
subitamente si rifà parvente
per molte luci, in che una risplende;
e questo atto del ciel mi venne a mente,
come 'l segno del mondo e de' suoi duci
nel benedetto rostro fu tacente;
però che tutte quelle vive luci,
vie più lucendo, cominciaron canti
da mia memoria labili e caduci.
O dolce amor che di riso t'ammanti,
quanto parevi ardente in que' flailli,
ch'avieno spirto sol di pensier santi!
Poscia che i cari e lucidi lapilli
ond' io vidi ingemmato il sesto lume
puoser silenzio a li angelici squilli,
udir mi parve un mormorar di fiume
che scende chiaro giù di pietra in pietra,
mostrando l'ubertà del suo cacume.
E come suono al collo de la cetra
prende sua forma, e sì com' al pertugio
de la sampogna vento che penètra,
così, rimosso d'aspettare indugio,
quel mormorar de l'aguglia salissi
su per lo collo, come fosse bugio.
Fecesi voce quivi, e quindi uscissi
per lo suo becco in forma di parole,
quali aspettava il core ov' io le scrissi.
“La parte in me che vede e pate il sole
ne l'aguglie mortali,” incominciommi,
“or fisamente riguardar si vole,
perché d'i fuochi ond' io figura fommi,
quelli onde l'occhio in testa mi scintilla,
e' di tutti lor gradi son li sommi.
Colui che luce in mezzo per pupilla,
fu il cantor de lo Spirito Santo,
che l'arca traslatò di villa in villa:
ora conosce il merto del suo canto,
in quanto effetto fu del suo consiglio,
per lo remunerar ch'è altrettanto.
Dei cinque che mi fan cerchio per ciglio,
colui che più al becco mi s'accosta,
la vedovella consolò del figlio:
ora conosce quanto caro costa
non seguir Cristo, per l'esperïenza
di questa dolce vita e de l'opposta.
E quel che segue in la circunferenza
di che ragiono, per l'arco superno,
morte indugiò per vera penitenza:
ora conosce che 'l giudicio etterno
non si trasmuta, quando degno preco
fa crastino là giù de l'odïerno.
L'altro che segue, con le leggi e meco,
sotto buona intenzion che fé mal frutto,
per cedere al pastor si fece greco:
ora conosce come il mal dedutto
dal suo bene operar non li è nocivo,
avvegna che sia 'l mondo indi distrutto.
E quel che vedi ne l'arco declivo,
Guiglielmo fu, cui quella terra plora
che piagne Carlo e Federigo vivo:
ora conosce come s'innamora
lo ciel del giusto rege, e al sembiante
del suo fulgore il fa vedere ancora.
Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante
che Rifëo Troiano in questo tondo
fosse la quinta de le luci sante?
Ora conosce assai di quel che 'l mondo
veder non può de la divina grazia,
ben che sua vista non discerna il fondo.”
Quale allodetta che 'n aere si spazia
prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
de l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia,
tal mi sembiò l'imago de la 'mprenta
de l'etterno piacere, al cui disio
ciascuna cosa qual ell' è diventa.
E avvegna ch'io fossi al dubbiar mio
lì quasi vetro a lo color ch'el veste,
tempo aspettar tacendo non patio,
ma de la bocca, “Che cose son queste?”
mi pinse con la forza del suo peso:
per ch'io di coruscar vidi gran feste.
Poi appresso, con l'occhio più acceso,
lo benedetto segno mi rispuose
per non tenermi in ammirar sospeso:
“Io veggio che tu credi queste cose
perch' io le dico, ma non vedi come;
si che, se son credute, sono ascose.
Fai come quei che la cosa per nome
apprende ben, ma la sua quiditate
veder non può se altri non la prome.
Regnum celorum vïolenza pate
da caldo amore e da viva speranza,
che vince la divina volontate:
non a guisa che l'omo a l'om sobranza,
ma vince lei perché vuole esser vinta,
e, vinta, vince con sua beninanza.
La prima vita del ciglio e la quinta
ti fa maravigliar, perché ne vedi
la regïon de li angeli dipinta.
D'i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi,
Gentili, ma Cristiani, in ferma fede
quel d'i passuri e quel d'i passi piedi.
Ché l'una de lo 'nferno, u' non si riede
già mai a buon voler, tornò a l'ossa;
e ciò di viva spene fu mercede:
di viva spene, che mise la possa
ne' prieghi fatti a Dio per suscitarla,
sì che potesse sua voglia esser mossa.
L'anima glorïosa onde si parla,
tornata ne la carne, in che fu poco,
credette in lui che potëa aiutarla;
e credendo s'accese in tanto foco
di vero amor, ch'a la morte seconda
fu degna di venire a questo gioco.
L'altra, per grazia che da sì profonda
fontana stilla, che mai creatura
non pinse l'occhio infino a la prima onda,
tutto suo amor là giù pose a drittura:
per che, di grazia in grazia, Dio li aperse
l'occhio a la nostra redenzion futura;
ond' ei credette in quella, e non sofferse
da indi il puzzo più del paganesmo;
e riprendiene le genti perverse.
Quelle tre donne li fur per battesmo
che tu vedesti da la destra rota,
dinanzi al battezzar più d'un millesmo.
O predestinazion, quanto remota
è la radice tua da quelli aspetti
che la prima cagion non veggion tota!
E voi, mortali, tenetevi stretti
a giudicar: ché noi, che Dio vedemo,
non conosciamo ancor tutti li eletti;
ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo,
perché il ben nostro in questo ben s'affina,
che quel che vole Iddio, e noi volemo.”
Così da quella imagine divina,
per farmi chiara la mia corta vista,
data mi fu soave medicina.
E come a buon cantor buon citarista
fa seguitar lo guizzo de la corda,
in che più di piacer lo canto acquista,
sì, mentre ch'e' parlò, sì mi ricorda
ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
con le parole mover le fiammette.
When he who all the world illuminates
Out of our hemisphere so far descends
That on all sides the daylight is consumed,
The heaven, that erst by him alone was kindled,
Doth suddenly reveal itself again
By many lights, wherein is one resplendent.
And came into my mind this act of heaven,
When the ensign of the world and of its leaders
Had silent in the blessed beak become;
Because those living luminaries all,
By far more luminous, did songs begin
Lapsing and falling from my memory.
O gentle Love, that with a smile dost cloak thee,
How ardent in those sparks didst thou appear,
That had the breath alone of holy thoughts!
After the precious and pellucid crystals,
With which begemmed the sixth light I beheld,
Silence imposed on the angelic bells,
I seemed to hear the murmuring of a river
That clear descendeth down from rock to rock,
Showing the affluence of its mountain-top.
And as the sound upon the cithern's neck
Taketh its form, and as upon the vent
Of rustic pipe the wind that enters it,
Even thus, relieved from the delay of waiting,
That murmuring of the eagle mounted up
Along its neck, as if it had been hollow.
There it became a voice, and issued thence
From out its beak, in such a form of words
As the heart waited for wherein I wrote them.
"The part in me which sees and bears the sun
In mortal eagles," it began to me,
"Now fixedly must needs be looked upon;
For of the fires of which I make my figure,
Those whence the eye doth sparkle in my head
Of all their orders the supremest are.
He who is shining in the midst as pupil
Was once the singer of the Holy Spirit,
Who bore the ark from city unto city;
Now knoweth he the merit of his song,
In so far as effect of his own counsel,
By the reward which is commensurate.
Of five, that make a circle for my brow,
He that approacheth nearest to my beak
Did the poor widow for her son console;
Now knoweth he how dearly it doth cost
Not following Christ, by the experience
Of this sweet life and of its opposite.
He who comes next in the circumference
Of which I speak, upon its highest arc,
Did death postpone by penitence sincere;
Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment
Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer
Maketh below to-morrow of to-day.
The next who follows, with the laws and me,
Under the good intent that bore bad fruit
Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor;
Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced
From his good action is not harmful to him,
Although the world thereby may be destroyed.
And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest,
Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores
That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive;
Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is
With a just king; and in the outward show
Of his effulgence he reveals it still.
Who would believe, down in the errant world,
That e'er the Trojan Ripheus in this round
Could be the fifth one of the holy lights?
Now knoweth he enough of what the world
Has not the power to see of grace divine,
Although his sight may not discern the bottom."
Like as a lark that in the air expatiates,
First singing and then silent with content
Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her,
Such seemed to me the image of the imprint
Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will
Doth everything become the thing it is.
And notwithstanding to my doubt I was
As glass is to the colour that invests it,
To wait the time in silence it endured not,
But forth from out my mouth, "What things are these?"
Extorted with the force of its own weight;
Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation.
Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled
The blessed standard made to me reply,
To keep me not in wonderment suspended:
"I see that thou believest in these things
Because I say them, but thou seest not how;
So that, although believed in, they are hidden.
Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name
Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity
Cannot perceive, unless another show it.
'Regnum coelorum' suffereth violence
From fervent love, and from that living hope
That overcometh the Divine volition;
Not in the guise that man o'ercometh man,
But conquers it because it will be conquered,
And conquered conquers by benignity.
The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth
Cause thee astonishment, because with them
Thou seest the region of the angels painted.
They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest,
Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith
Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered.
For one from Hell, where no one e'er turns back
Unto good will, returned unto his bones,
And that of living hope was the reward,—
Of living hope, that placed its efficacy
In prayers to God made to resuscitate him,
So that 'twere possible to move his will.
The glorious soul concerning which I speak,
Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay,
Believed in Him who had the power to aid it;
And, in believing, kindled to such fire
Of genuine love, that at the second death
Worthy it was to come unto this joy.
The other one, through grace, that from so deep
A fountain wells that never hath the eye
Of any creature reached its primal wave,
Set all his love below on righteousness;
Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose
His eye to our redemption yet to be,
Whence he believed therein, and suffered not
From that day forth the stench of paganism,
And he reproved therefor the folk perverse.
Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel
Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism
More than a thousand years before baptizing.
O thou predestination, how remote
Thy root is from the aspect of all those
Who the First Cause do not behold entire!
And you, O mortals! hold yourselves restrained
In judging; for ourselves, who look on God,
We do not know as yet all the elect;
And sweet to us is such a deprivation,
Because our good in this good is made perfect,
That whatsoe'er God wills, we also will."
After this manner by that shape divine,
To make clear in me my short-sightedness,
Was given to me a pleasant medicine;
And as good singer a good lutanist
Accompanies with vibrations of the chords,
Whereby more pleasantness the song acquires,
So, while it spake, do I remember me
That I beheld both of those blessed lights,
Even as the winking of the eyes concords,
Moving unto the words their little flames.
Any aesthetic performance is likely, at moments, to leave its observer wondering as to the motives of the performer. For example, here one might inquire why Dante did not decide to make this already highly wrought passage a perfectly turned simile. It has all the requisite elements, lacking only the initial Come (Just as) and the pivotal così (so) at the beginning of the seventh verse. As has been pointed out several times now, Dante seems to like to employ rigid categories loosely, as though exploring the boundaries of established forms. For instance, we may find ourselves wondering whether the presence of the designative terms of compared likeness is necessary to establish the trope. With regard to the classical simile, it almost seems as though he had decided to ring the changes on an established form as frequently as he could. See the notes to Purgatorio XXVII.76-87; Paradiso XIV.19-24 and XIV.118-123.
The Eagle has stopped speaking as a corporate entity. That allows the individual voices of this particular collective of the saved to speak as themselves. Had their actual words been recorded here, it probably would have been clear, as it is when they speak as themselves at the end of the canto, that their descriptor for themselves is “we” (verse 134) and not “I” (verse 31). In simile, they are like the shining of the stars after the sun has left the sky (in Dante's further comparison, once the Eagle's beak has gone silent).
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 1-6) point out that this is one of fourteen cantos in the poem that begin with astronomical detailing (Inf. XXIV.1-3; Purg. II.1-9, IX.1-9, XV.1-9, XIX.1-6, XXV.1-3, XXVII.1-6, XXX.1-6; Par. VIII.1-3, X.1-21, XIII.1-24, here, XXIX.1-6, XXX.1-9).
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 88-89, while making a quite different point, helps one to observe a curious phenomenon: the poet has not mentioned the Sun by its name since the protagonist first entered it (Par. X.41 and Par. X.48). Now he uses paraphrase or reference (colui [verse 1], lui [verse 4], una [stella] [verse 6]) to refer to the Sun (while, Aversano might have gone on to point out, he does use the letters that spell “sun,” sol, as the adverb “only” in verse 4 [and again in verse 15]). On this last point see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 47).
According to Dante's astronomy, stars did not glow with their own energy, but derived their light from the Sun (see Conv. III.xii.7): “... il sole. Lo quale di sensibile luce sé prima e poi tutte le corpora celestiali e [le] elementali allumina” (the Sun, which illuminates with perceptible light first itself and then all the celestial and elemental bodies [tr. R. Lansing]).
The “emblem of the world” is the Eagle, symbol of universal empire, the ideal that Dante embraced so warmly in his Monarchia.
The poet apostrophizes the love emanating from these spirits, wreathed in “smiles”: How ardent did this love appear in those “pipes” (or in those “flames” [there is much debate in the commentaries over this choice]) that were so full of holy thoughts! As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 14) point out, the word flaillo is an absolute hapax, meaning that this is its unique appearance, not only in the Commedia, not only in all the works of Dante, but in the history of the Italian language. In their opinion, there is no way to decide between the two possible meanings, “flute” (see French flavel) or “flame” (from O Fr. flael), since both find resonance in the surrounding context. However, Benvenuto states unambiguously that the reference is to sound. And his opinion is given further weight by the musical reference of the simile in vv. 22-27. For an English response in this vein, see Tozer (comm. to vv. 13-14): “flailli: 'flutes,' i.e. melodious voices. This word, which is not found elsewhere, is derived from Lat. flare, flatus, through the Low Lat. flauta, 'flute,' from which came the diminutives flautol, flaujol in Provençal, and flajol in OF, to which flaillo closely approximates; OF flajol, flageolet is a further diminutive.” Others (notably, according to Petrocchi [Dante Alighieri: La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. G. Petrocchi {Florence: Le Lettere, 1994 [1967]}, p. 328], Antonino Pagliaro [Ulisse: ricerche semantiche sulla “Divina Commedia” {Messina-Florence: D'Anna, 1967}, p. 579]) argue for a derivation, through OF, from Lat. flacellum, “torch.” Forced to chose (and one is), this reader has opted for the former, since it seems clear that song is the pre-eminent element here. However, for an attempt to undermine the view of E.G. Parodi (Lingua e letteratura, ed. G. Folena [Venice: Neri Pozza, 1957], pp. 273, 394), who opts for OF flavel (flute), see Ettore Paratore (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], pp. 691-92n.). And, for a more recent opposing argument, see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 50-51).
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 89, because the flute is not a “noble” instrument, as is plain from its association with Marsyas (but see the note to Par. I.20-21), denies that the word is likely to be flailli, preferring flavilli (from the Latin flavus, which means, he says, “piece of gold”); however, this is a variant reading unknown in the textual history of the verse.
The silence of the souls, having left off their singing (which Dante could not hold in mind [verse 12]), begun when the Eagle had ceased its speech, gives way to what seems to be the rumbling sound of a river, giving evidence of the profusion of its lofty source (it will be the voice of the Eagle, rumbling like an organ pipe filling with new air). This tercet marks the beginning of the first of the two central elements of the canto, a presentation of the souls that make up the eye of the Eagle (vv. 16-78); the second, the Eagle's explanation of the presence in Paradise of those who certainly appear to be pagans, runs through vv. 79-129.
The phrase li angelici squilli is probably not to be understood as the “song of the angels” (Bosco/Reggio [comm. to this verse]), but as the “angelic songs” of the blessed.
If Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet) is correct, these lines reflect both a passage in the Georgics (I.108-110) and one in the Aeneid (XI.296-299). The passage in Virgil's epic describes the rumor of the many voices of the native Italians being quieted by King Latinus's voiced decision to make peace with the invading future Romans. Marguerite Chiarenza (“Paradiso XX,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 16-17 [1995], p. 302) makes the point that this decision is thus in accord “with the unchangeable will of Providence.”
This double simile, reflecting the fingering of two kinds of musical instruments in order to produce varying sounds (along the neck of a lute or at the vents of a bagpipe), describes the sound produced from within the Eagle's neck, eventually issuing from his beak as a series of notes (or words).
Landino (comm. to vv. 25-29) expresses his admiration for Dante's ability, plainly visible here, to “make the impossible seem believable” and compares him to Ovid in this respect.
The Eagle uttered words that Dante, once more reverting to the image of his scribal role, wrote down upon his heart. See the notes to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63; Paradiso V.85, X.27, and X.109-114; and see Par. XVIII.85-86).
The Eagle's invitation to Dante to gaze upon its eye revisits a bit of lore already placed in evidence. We learned that mortal eagles are able to look into the sun without harm from Paradiso I.46-48; see the accompanying note, referring to possible sources in Aristotle and in Brunetto Latini.
Returning to speech from song, the Eagle now again speaks as a single voice. We will hear it switch back again to the first-person plural in its final words (see verse 134).
The Eagle now reports that the souls that form its eye (we only see one of the two, if it in fact happens to possess more in the way of orbs of sight than its profiled appearance as the emblem of empire requires – a dubious eventuality) are the greatest among the many that give its form an aquiline shape.
The Eagle's thirty-six verses in six segments, each of six lines, and each involving use of anaphora (the phrase ora conosce), identify the six “chiefs” of justice: David, Trajan, Hezekiah, Constantine, William the Good, and Ripheus (their fame is at first insisted on when the first four of them are named only by circumlocution; the last two understandably require more assistance). It seems possible that the poet wanted us to reflect that the thirty-six lines in praise of these half dozen dead rulers mirror, if adversely, the twenty-seven verses, also marked by anaphora, describing the dozen defective living rulers in the preceding canto, Paradiso XIX.115-141.
The number of these just rulers [six] may also be meant to put us in mind of the six “world-historical” emperors presented in Par. VI: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Titus, Justinian, and Charlemagne. Those seemed to have been significant primarily for the events over which they presided; these, for their personal justness. That distinction may or may not explain their appearing here (only temporarily, we at times may struggle to remember) in a higher heaven. Dante never gives us the grounds on which to establish the relative advancement of the blessed in the Empyrean, except for the eighteen souls whom we are allowed to see in Paradiso XXXII; and none of these saved rulers is seen among them.
The first of these most just among just rulers is David, in the Commedia most honored as the singer of the Holy Spirit (as are also all his companions in the Eagle: see Par. XIX.101). (David is prominently mentioned in Purg. X.65 [and see the appended note]; Par. XXV.71-72 and XXXII.11-12). He is, in fact, the figure from the Old Testament most present in Dante's work, (Toynbee, Concise Dante Dictionary, “David”), referred to perhaps fifty times in all. For his service to the Lord in transporting the Ark of the Covenant, see Purgatorio X.55-69.
Some think the words suo consiglio (his own thought) refer to the “thought” of the Holy Spirit; most, to that of David (as is reflected in our translation).
The question of the “merit” of David's song disturbs some readers. See, for instance, Tozer (comm. to vv. 40-42), pointing out that David could benefit only insofar as his song proceeded from his own free will (and thus was not the effect of inspiration, in which case it would not, as the text suggests, in itself make him worthy of salvation). However, is David's worthiness not similar to the unexpressed claim for his own “merit” that Dante might have considered most convincing? He presents himself as the “new David” from the outset (see Inf. I.65), that is, as a man directly inspired by God to lift his eyes from worldly distraction. In Dante's mind, there does not seem to be any limitation on the freedom of his will imposed thereby.
Trajan, the Roman emperor (A.D. 98-117), is closest to the Eagle's beak in the semicircle that describes the “eyebrow,” as it were, above David, located as the pupil of the eye. For his humble service to the widow and the tradition of his salvation, see Purgatorio X.73-93 and the appended note. For some of the twists and turns in the history of the accounts of the salvation of Trajan, see Picone (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 313-19).
Now Trajan appreciates, both by now being here with God and by having been in Limbo, the cost of not following Christ.
For the phrase dolce vita (sweet life), see the note to Paradiso IV.35.
Hezekiah, a king of Judah in the seventh century B.C., was a just monarch, according to the Bible, at least in his own accountancy (see II Kings 20:3 [IV Kings in the Vulgate]).
His tears (but were they shed in penitence?) are found in Isaiah 38:3, as was first noted by Jacopo della Lana (comm. to verse 51). Here is the pertinent passage (38:1-5): “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, 'Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.' Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, 'Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.' And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: 'Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life'” (italics added). Hezekiah in fact here does not weep out of penitence, as Dante says he did, but the detail that God saw his tears and then remitted his sentence of death was perhaps enough to suggest to the poet that the king was contrite for his sins, and not merely brokenhearted and afraid. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 51) was apparently the first (and not Porena, whom Bosco/Reggio [comm. to verse 51] credit for the observation) to deal with the fact that this passage does not record his penitence, which is, however, found in II Chronicles 32:24-26 (II Par. in the Vulgate], a version of the narrative from a later perspective: “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death, and he prayed to the Lord, and He answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem. But Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah” (italics added). If Dante were not thinking of the better known text concerning Hezekiah in Isaiah, but of this one, then he is more or less in keeping with at least that Scriptural view. However, for the view that Hezekiah's penitence is conveyed to Dante less by the text of the Bible than by a passage in Hugh of St. Cher's Postilla, see Paola Rigo (“Tra 'maligno' e 'sanguigno,'” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994], pp. 80-81).
Now Hezekiah knows that answered prayers are part of God's plan, rather than representing a change in it (cf. Purg. VI.28-42, where the same question is raised about Virgil's views on this matter). Carroll (comm. to vv. 49-54) puts this well: “In short, what Hezekiah now knows in Heaven is the mystery of how prayer harmonizes with and fulfils 'the eternal judgment,' instead of being, as it seems, an alteration of it.”
For Hezekiah as “type” of Dante, see A.C. Charity (Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966], p. 230) and the note to Inferno I.1.
Tozer (comm. to this tercet) paraphrases and interprets this passage as follows: “'when a worthy prayer causes that which was ordained for the present time to be postponed to a future time'; this was what happened in Hezekiah's case through the postponement of his death. The meaning of the entire passage here is, that what God has ordained is not changed in answer to prayer, because God has already provided for it.”
Since the spatial arrangement of the inhabitants of the Eagle's semicircular eyebrow is not chronological, the fact that Constantine (274-337) is the middle figure in it, and thus the highest, takes us by surprise, given the number and vehemence of Dante's outbursts against the Donation (e.g., Inf. XIX.115-117, Purg. XXXII.124-129; and see Monarchia, which fairly seethes with them). In this passage Dante settles for Constantine's good intent in his governance of the Eastern empire. However, now this emperor knows that if the evil he unwittingly committed has not harmed him, it has nonetheless destroyed the world. Dante may allow him salvation, but makes him pay for it eternally and dearly with this permanent wound in his self-awareness. This does not efface the glory his good intention won him, but it does mar its beauty.
William the Good, king of (Naples and) Sicily (ruled 1166-1189), is presented as mourned by his subjects (he died young, at thirty-five), who now must suffer the misdeeds of his two successors, Charles of Anjou (who ruled Apulia) and Frederick II of Aragon (who ruled Sicily itself – see Par. XIX.127-135, where these two are the sixth and seventh unworthy rulers in that pestilential acrostic). Now William, who was widely celebrated in his lifetime for his lawful reign and his generosity, knows that God loves a just king.
Ripheus is unlike the first five identified rulers in not ever having been mentioned within a Christian context by anyone at all; he is also the only one of them not to have been a king or an emperor. Indeed, he is a sort of “extra,” a bit player (if a heroic and probably highborn one) in the Aeneid, barely mentioned but for his death fighting along with Aeneas (Aen. II.426-428; see also II.339, II.394). Dante does not refer to a particular good deed that he performed, insisting instead on the general fact of his justness. The not inconsiderable poetic space (vv. 118-129) devoted to “explaining” his Christian belief has never diminished readers' amazement at finding him here. That is not surprising, as even he is portrayed (in verse 72) as not knowing the reason for his being among the elect. Now he knows more of divine grace than mortals do, if not all that can be known (we probably wonder whether this inability is peculiar to Ripheus or is shared with all the saved).
For a recently discovered (it had been hiding in plain view for centuries) and probable source, or at least confirmation, of Dante's view of Ripheus, see John A. Scott (“Dante, Boezio e l'enigma di Rifeo [Par. 20],” Studi Danteschi 61 [1989 {1994}]: 190-92), pointing out that a passage in Boethius (Cons. Phil. IV.6[pr].127-131) offers several reasons to think it was in Dante's mind as he wrote this passage: (1) that Boethius is referring to the same passage that scholars habitually point to as Dante's source in Aeneid II seems highly likely; (2) the Boethian context is utterly appropriate, since it involves the surprising nature, in human eyes, of providence; (3) the passage includes a specific reference to Lucan's Cato of Utica (Phars. I.128), approving Cato's worth (even though he lost his war) against that of Caesar, though Julius (and not Cato) was victorious (see Dante's presentation of Cato in the first two cantos of Purgatorio). The text in question reads in part as follows (tr. W.V. Cooper, italics added): “For, to glance at the depth of God's works with so few words as human reason is capable of comprehending, I say that what you think to be most fair and most conducive to justice's preservation, that appears different to an all-seeing Providence. Has not our fellow-philosopher Lucan told us how 'the conquering cause did please the gods, but the conquered, Cato?'” One can only imagine how Dante felt, seeing that his own radical and dangerous ideas had some justification in no less an authority than Boethius. For an earlier, similar, but not quite as pointed recognition of the influence of the Consolatio (and particularly its fourth book) on Dante's thought here, see Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35). Scott's discovery should cause us to wonder at the scholarly procedures of all of us who practice the craft of explicating our poet's work. How is it that an important passage in a work with which we all know Dante was deeply conversant, e.g., the Bible, the Aeneid, or, in this case, the Consolatio, can avoid the attention, for nearly seven centuries, of precisely those who have volunteered themselves as the keepers of his flame? Excuses are ready to hand: We are, after all, only human, and there is so much to which we must pay attention; further, we sometimes rule out as unthinkable precisely what Dante happens to be thinking. Nonetheless, our record is far from impressive. One ruefully supposes that our having left so much to be redone (and done!) is, in the end, “good for business.”
On the other hand, one may be excused a certain dubiety concerning the genuineness of Dante's belief in the salvation of this pagan. Virgil has handed Dante the stick with which to beat him: After he calls Ripheus the most just of the Trojans (“iustissimus”), he concludes with the phrase “dis aliter visum” (to the gods it seemed otherwise [Aen. II.428]); the muffled meaning seems to be that the gods do not care about just humans, and “kill us for their sport” (as King Lear phrased it). Dante lands hard upon Virgil for this judgment: his Christian God reverses pagan justice. (For this view, see Hollander [Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” {Florence: Olschki, 1983}, p. 138]; for a more conciliatory one, Bosco/Reggio, comm. to verse 68.)
As far as one can tell, the first commentator to respond to this disturbing phrase (dis aliter visum) with a sense of its troublesome character for a Christian reader was Carroll (comm. to vv. 67-72). He concludes his remarks with the following: “The most important point in all this may be easily overlooked. It is, I think, the transference of the mystery from the justice of God to His grace in the salvation of the heathen.” Ettore Paratore (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 724) sees Dante's reference here as critical of Virgil. Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35) argues well (and with greater specificity) for Dante's deliberate attempt to discredit Virgil's view of fate. It seems clear that the Christian poet is motivated by a desire to save Ripheus against his pagan author's authority, to make him a bone of contention in his continuing brief against Virgil (and if we haven't gotten that point before, we surely must get it now). However, if his “seriousness” in insisting on Ripheus's presence among the Christian just is essentially tactical and anti-Virgilian, how serious is it strategically? For example, did Dante ever pray to the soul of Ripheus? Does the poet want us to? One is dubious, even to the degree of sensing that the scandalous salvation is a gleeful invention of a very naughty Dante Alighieri. Not even Giorgio Padoan attempted to locate the poet's view of Ripheus in some unknown and still undiscovered Christian apologist's interpretation of the Aeneid, despite the fact that Padoan was forever searching (in vain, it would usually seem) for such “justification” as might be lent by a “lost” Christian reading of one pagan text or another (e.g., “Il mito di Teseo e il cristianesimo di Stazio,” Lettere Italiane 11 [1959]: 432-57). In his entry “Rifeo” (ED IV [1973]), he only allows himself the mild hope (without offering any justification for it) that possibly Dante's text of Virgil's phrase “dis aliter visum” read differently from ours.
Ripheus brings into focus several questions that dominate the protagonist's concerns in this heaven: the justness of the condemnation of the virtuous, necessarily Christ-ignorant, pagans; the possibility that their ignorance was not total and thus not absolutely necessary; the inability of other humans to comprehend such things. God's justice is definitional, and Dante, in the preceding canto, was forced, by a very aggressive Eagle, to plead guilty to having tried to put God in the dock. We cannot know the grounds for God's judgment, only that whatever He has decided is just.
Marguerite Chiarenza (“Paradiso XX,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 16-17 [1995]), pp. 304-5) puts into intelligent focus the way so much of Paradiso XX reopens the “question of Virgil” in our minds: “Virgil's drama is based on the contingency that he died just nineteen years before the birth of Christ. If God could extend Hezekiah's life by fifteen years, why did He not extend Virgil's by little more? It was said that St. Paul, moved by the beauty and wisdom of Virgil's poetry, prayed at the poet's tomb for his salvation. (For this topic, she adverts to the work of Domenico Comparetti [Vergil in the Middle Ages, tr. E. F. M. Benecke {Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1966 [1872]}, p. 98]; Charles Till Davis [Dante and the Idea of Rome {Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957}, pp. 103-4]; and Nancy Vickers [”Seeing is Believing: Gregory, Trajan, and Dante's Art,“ Dante Studies 101 {1983}, p. 72].) If God could answer Gregory's prayers for Trajan, why did He reject the similar prayer of the great St. Paul? How could a minor figure in Virgil's poem have caught the attention of God, while Virgil himself failed to?” Whether we like it or not, we have heard the answer to our question in the last canto, when the Eagle came down hard upon Dante for his similar question (Par. XIX.79-90): We cannot weigh God's intent, only recognize it.
On the question of God's disposition of the virtuous pagans, see Giovanni Fallani, “salvezza dei pagani,” ED IV (1973) and Picone (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 311-13, and, with specific reference to Ripheus, pp. 317-20). For the interesting observation that Dante might have found an equally “salvable” pagan in the person of Galaesus, also referred to by Virgil as “iustissimus” (in Aeneid VII.536), see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 55-56), who sees Dante as observing this rather striking phenomenon and considering that the two “most just” pagans point only, again, to the inscrutable nature of God's justice – as well, we might want to add, as of Dante's.
Apparently first among the few to hear the echo here of the salvation of the Roman (and thus pagan) centurion Cornelius (see Acts 10:22-23; 34-35) was Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 68-69); most recently see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 91, building the evidence for his point better than his (unacknowledged) predecessors: Cornelius the centurion, “vir iustus et timens Deum” (a just and God-fearing man [Acts 10:22; Aversano's italics]). He concludes, “In patristic exegesis this centurion is the type of the gentiles saved by the grace of God”; Cornelius “because of his great faith and his justness, received the gift of the Holy Spirit before he was baptized” (Aversano is citing Rabanus Maurus for this judgment).
Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35) “argues that we can better understand the role of the Aeneid in the Comedy in the light of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae, especially Book IV. Virgil's stoic pessimism did not go unnoticed by Dante; Anchises cannot give Aeneas the consolation Cacciaguida gives Dante. Cacciaguida's prophecy is at once the supplanting and resolution not just of previous prophecies, but of Virgil's whole human perspective. The pilgrim's exile, as he fears it, is Fate in the Boethian sense, while Cacciaguida's interpretation of that exile is a reflection of the Boethian view of Providence. The central example of Fate in the Comedy is the Aeneid, which is reread providentially: thus, Dante chose to save Ripheus because of Virgil's fatalistic 'dis aliter visum' (Aen. II, 428). The corrections of the Aeneid in the Comedy are not so much Christian readings superimposed on a pagan text as Providence's readings superimposed on Fate.” (This digest of her argument is taken from the website of the Dante Society of America, reproducing the valuable work [attended to with so much care for so many years] of Anthony L. Pellegrini, when he was editor of its journal. See “American Dante Bibliography for 1983,” Dante Studies 102 [1984].)
Perhaps our poet was tempted to push his reading of Virgil past the point of no return. At any rate, that is what he has accomplished, making the condemned author of the Aeneid, alongside the similarly Limbo-bound hero of his epic, spend their eternities in the lower world of an afterlife they neither believed in nor deserved, while this “bit player” enjoys the fruits of Heaven. For him to be here, Ripheus necessarily had to welcome Christ into his life; again, one has a difficult time believing that Dante really thought so. But that is what he decided he thought.
Dante is aware that his treatment of Ripheus will astound at least some of his readers. That he wants them to couple it with his similarly contentious insistence on Solomon's salvation (despite the warmly contrary opinions of some “big guns” of Christian theology, none bigger or more negative about the possibility of Solomon's salvation than Augustine) is the opinion of Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Nolite iudicare: Dante and the Dilemma of Judgment,” in Writers Reading Writers: Intertextual Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature in Honor of Robert Hollander, ed. Janet Levarie Smarr [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007], p. 77). She points out that both Solomon (Par. X.109) and Ripheus are the fifth lights in the shapes that they and their colleagues have temporarily assumed in order to display themselves to Dante, a circle and the eyebrow of an eagle, and that both were spectacularly provocative selections for salvation. Here are her words: “Solomon and Ripheus have a good deal more in common than an acquaintance with them outside of Dante's text would suggest. Both appear in the Commedia as 'fifth lights.' Solomon is 'la quinta luce' (Par. X.109) of the twelve that make up the first circle of saved souls in the Sun, Ripheus is 'la quinta delle luci' (Par. XX.69) that together comprise the eye of the eagle in Jupiter. Even more important than this parallel numerical position, both are meant to surprise Dante's readership: Solomon because of the intense debate as to whether he was saved or damned, and Ripheus because he is a pagan without any patristic history of redemption who appears in the pages of the Commedia in the most Christian of places.”
The Eagle, delighted by its own report of the salvation of Ripheus (and by the fact that not even he understands why he was saved), is like a lark satisfied by its own song, silent in its flight, savoring that melody in memory. The ensuing description of the silent emblem is not easy to decode, but it seems to refer to the Eagle (l'imago) as stamped (de la 'mprenta) by the eternal Beauty that is God (l'etterno piacere), by whose will each thing becomes that which it is. In this case that last and rather puzzling general statement probably refers most directly to Ripheus's saved soul, as the context suggests.
This passage has understandably caused a certain amount of debate (for a summary, see Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 76-78]). Its key phrase (“la 'mprenta / de l'etterno piacere”) either means that the Eagle bears the imprint of God's will or is the imprint of His beauty. Most of the commentators, including Scartazzini, are of the first persuasion. However, when speaking of the etterno piacere of God, Dante elsewhere seems to refer to His everlasting beauty (see John Took [“L'etterno piacer”: Aesthetic Ideas in Dante {Oxford: Clarendon, 1984}, pp. 10-11, 17-22]; and see the note to Par. XVIII.16-18). The phrase also occurs in Purgatorio XXIX.32 and Paradiso XVIII.16. In addition, in Paradiso the word piacere, standing alone and referring to God, frequently seems to indicate His beauty (see Par. XXVII.95, XXXII.65, and XXXIII.33). And so we have translated the phrase, if gingerly, as we have. This is a possible reading, but not a certain one.
Beginning with Torraca (comm. to vv. 73-75), quite a few commentators have cited a Provençal source, a poem by Bernart de Ventadorn, Can vei la lauzeta mover (When I see the lark [beat its wings]); but see the furious reaction against such “incorrect pedantry” by Porena (comm. to vv. 73-75), insisting that the resemblances are only coincidental.
John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 73-78) is alert to the charming pun available in the name of the bird (allodetta, lark). He puts Latin words into its beak: “Surge, Deum lauda, iam lux est, cantat alauda” ('Arise, praise God, for it is light,' sings the lark [italics added, even though John's play on words is lost in English]).
This simple comparison, less developed than a “classical” simile, makes the heavy question within Dante evident to the souls configuring the Eagle. Despite knowing that, he nonetheless bursts out in amazement and perplexity. We may need to remind ourselves that for eighty-five cantos the protagonist has resisted the notion that virtuous pagans should be condemned to Hell. Then the Eagle insisted on that harsh truth in Canto XIX. And now that same Eagle tells Dante that two of the greatest souls that produce his shape are saved pagans. It is small wonder the protagonist is both amazed and perplexed.
Tozer (comm. to this tercet) explains the passage as follows: “The metaphor is from coloured glass, the reference being to 'coated' glass, i.e. white glass coated with a coloured film on one side only. As this colour could be clearly seen through the glass, so the spirits could look through Dante's mind, and see the doubt within it.”
The Eagle, its eye more ardent, acknowledges the protagonist's confusion and prepares to explain its causes.
Commentators, beginning with Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 91-92) - and none who follow him give him credit, as it so very often true – suggest the trace here of Aquinas's distinction between cognitio sensitiva and cognitio intellectiva (ST II-II, q. 8, a. 1), that is, between knowledge based on sense perception and that based on reason, penetrating to the true meaning of phenomena.
The word quiditate is a Scholastic term for “essence.”
Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 91-92) deals with the Latinism prome as meaning “extract,” “draw out,” that is, as one grasps the essence of a concept.
See Matthew 11:12: “Regnum caelorum vim patitur, et violenti rapiunt illud” (the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away [italics added]) – in these cases at the behest of the hopeful prayers of Pope Gregory and the ardent affection of Ripheus. As we will see (vv. 108, 121), the virtues of Hope and Love will be specifically aligned with the salvations of Trajan and of Ripheus, respectively.
Rhyme may have forced Dante to use a Provençalism, sobranza (overcomes, conquers), but he seems to welcome the excuse, as his project for the language of the Commedia is inclusive rather than exclusive. In De vulgari eloquentia (I.xi.6) he first uses the image of the sieve (it will recur three times in the work) for the filtering agent that accounts for a certain “purity” of the lofty style. Montaigne's “fricasee” set to simmering, into which he throws any and all tasty bits, seems the better image for this great poem, which excludes nothing except incompetence.
The chiasmus (vince, vinta; vinta, vince) underlines the power of the paradox: God wills to be conquered and thus conquers.
This tercet is built on still another chiasmus: Trajan, Ripheus; Christ to come, Christ come.
As opposed to a more comfortable understanding, in other words, that Trajan and (more pointedly) Ripheus had been won to the God of the Christians through implicit faith (see Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 2, a. 7), Dante insists that he believes that we believe that they believed explicitly in Christ, in Trajan's case (less difficult to accept, but involving a major miracle [see vv. 106-117], after the fact; in Ripheus's, before [see vv. 118-129]). And so they died, not as unbelievers, but as full-fledged Christians. The trick here is to add a disclaimer for Trajan (he died a Christian only when he died a second time) and to swallow hard at the claim made on behalf of Ripheus.
The feet of Jesus, transfixed to the cross by a single spike, offered one of the most piteous physical images drawn from the Passion. See, for example, Bonvesin de la Riva's De scriptura rubra in his Libro de le tre scritture, vv. 153-170 (cited by Manuele Gragnolati [Experiencing the Afterlife {Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005}], pp. 95-96; and see p. 231, n. 57), where, in eighteen verses, the word pei (Milanese dialect for “feet”) occurs six times in Bonvesin's bloody account of the Crucifixion.
The somewhat grudging authority of St. Thomas (ST Suppl., q. 71, a. 5) sustains the widely disseminated tale that Trajan was resuscitated by agency of Gregory's accepted prayers, believed in Christ, was baptized, died a second time, and was received in Heaven (see the note to Purg. X.73-93). Thomas, however, seems in fact to have been drawn to the story of Gregory's intervention on Trajan's behalf, referring to it in some six loci in his other works. See the indispensable online Corpus Thomisticum (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org), the project in which Father Roberto Busa convinced IBM to become his partner in 1946. Busa, who happens to be a modest person, would probably blush to hear himself described as “the father of computing for texts in the humanities,” but that is exactly what he is.
What is perhaps most surprising about Trajan's reward is that it was won not by his hope, but by that of Pope Gregory. We are reminded of the fate of those in Limbo (where, we assume, Trajan was first lodged), who exist (according to Inf. IV.42) longing for a better lot, if without hope for it (sanza speme). Gregory's hope “conquered” God on Trajan's behalf; the emperor himself, the evidence that we gather from Limbo would seem to assert, was hopeless.
Some early commentators (e.g., Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, comm. to these verses], John of Serravalle [comm. to vv. 31-36 and 127-129]) speak of the “baptism of fire” in those inspired by the Holy Spirit to love God perfectly. For Dante, Virgil's single word, iustissimus, seems to have been the key for this incredible invention. (For the centrality of justice to Dante's design, see the note to Inferno III.4.) Ripheus's conversion (brought on by his love of justice) also enjoys, in general but certainly not specifically, the potential authority of Thomas (ST II-II, q. 2, a. 7; III, q. 66, a. 11). But see André Pézard's perhaps over-ingenious bypassing of the many difficulties of finding justification for Dante's salvation of Virgil's dead warrior. For him (“Riphée ou la naissance d'un Mythe,” Revue des études italiennes 25 [1979]: 5-40) Ripheus represents a kind of answer to Adamic sinfulness, a form of Original Justice, as it were.
To Ripheus Virgil has dedicated a total of only five lines in the Aeneid; Dante doubles that (and then some) in this passage alone.
The word drittura is a hapax in the poem, but has a Dantean history before it puts in its appearance here, first in Convivio (IV.xvii.6), where, as rectitude, it is an attribute of the eleventh and final of Aristotle's moral virtues, Justice. For the hypothesis that Dante was planning to build the final eleven treatises of the unfinished Convivio in such a way as to reflect each of Aristotle's eleven moral virtues, see Hollander (Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], p. 49). (Mazzotta [“Dante and the Virtues of Exile,” Poetics Today 5 {1984}, p. 653] unaccountably makes the projected work one treatise shorter [fourteen] than Dante did [fifteen].) Drittura also appears in the exilic canzone, “Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute” (Rime CIV.35), where she seems as much a despised exile from Florence as does the poet.
As provocation, this detail is over the top. Nonetheless, the commentators are amazingly willing to accept what Dante says without protest. The whole story of Ripheus is nothing less than outrageous, and now the poet tops it off by turning him, as Poletto (comm. to vv. 124-126) had the strength of mind to observe, into a sort of Trojan St. Paul. “Why not?” Dante seems to have thought; if he became a Christian, he must have hated those shoddy pagan gods and the religious practices of his fellow pagans; doesn't that makes sense? And so Ripheus is presented as having preached against those practices. Is Dante having fun with us? And at Virgil's expense? Perhaps. (It would not be the only time.)
The three ladies are obviously the three theological virtues, whom we saw at the right wheel of the chariot of the Church Triumphant in Purgatorio XXIX.121-129. In what sense did they “serve to baptize” Ripheus? Since that ritual was not available to him, and since he was born with original sin upon him, he required something in its place. Somehow he acquired the three theological virtues and these brought him to Christ. Dante's text here may reflect a passage in St. Augustine's De doctrina christiana (I.xxxix.43): “Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them, does not need the Scriptures except for the instruction of others” (tr. D.W. Robertson, Jr.).
The date of the fall of Troy was given in at least one universal history (that of Petavius) as 1184 B.C.; citation of Petavius may be found in a number of commentaries, beginning with Lombardi (comm. to this tercet).
The fourth and final section of this canto addresses itself to a question that has always troubled Christians (as is focally shown in many of the writings of Augustine): predestination. Reiterating Thomas's criticism of our all-too-human desire to speculate upon the likely salvation or damnation of our neighbors (Par. XIII.139-142), the Eagle now portrays as cosmic the unknowing that surrounds God's purpose. Not even the immortal just souls in the Empyrean know all the Elect (see verse 72 for the less dramatic notice of the shortness of mortal vision in this regard). This comes as something of a surprise, as Torquato Tasso noted (comm. to vv. 133-135), since everything we have previously learned about this topic would clearly seem to indicate that the saved know, in God, all things that exist (see, inter alia, Par. V.4-6, VIII.85-90, IX.73-75, XV.49-51, XVII.13-18, and XIX.28-30, as well as the notes to Par. IV.16-18 and XIV.7-9); however, Dante's enthusiasm for the subject seems to have led him into at least a possible self-contradiction, since what is said here denies that even the blessed can have complete knowledge of what God has in His mind. Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005], passim) argues that after the general resurrection God's thought will be knowable by all the saved., since the poet has created no mechanism for latter-day salvations specifically set aside for virtuous non-Christians, though, of course, all things are possible in God (and thus one is free to intuit the salvation of one's favorite Martian or a particularly sympathetic Buddhist maiden aunt). On this vexed passage see Trottmann (“Communion des saints et jugement dernier dans les chants XIX-XX du Paradis,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], pp. 191-97) and Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife), pp. 162-63, arguing that the “surprises” include not only the identity of those not yet saved, but of some unbaptized pagans already saved. This argument is not on solid ground, at least not in its second instantiation, since we assume that both Trajan and Ripheus are known to all the blessed and that, as a result, all other “converted” pagans must be, too. As for its first part, Dante's apparent assertion that the blessed do not know the identities of those not yet saved, it certainly seems to violate the principle that whatever God knows the saved can read in His mind, as Tasso noted. From Paradiso XV.49-51 we have learned that Cacciaguida knew that Dante was inscribed in the Book of Life. And so we must wonder how thoroughly the poet held to this apparent revision of his earlier view, as much as we must honor it. Such self-contradictions are only to be expected, particularly in the work of a poet, since we can find even practitioners of supposedly systematic theology (or philosophy) at times contradicting themselves. If we allow even St. Thomas, a rigorist if ever there were one, an occasional fairly clamorous denial of a previous position, we should be aware that a poet is (or may feel himself to be) less constrained by such demands than is a theologian or a philosopher.
Venturi (comm. to verse 135) was apparently the first commentator to refer to part of the collecta (“collect” – originally a short prayer recited to Christians gathered [“collected”] for a service) known as “the Collect for the living and the dead”: “Deus, cui soli cognitus est numerus electorum in superna felicitate locandus” (God, to whom alone is known the number of the elect that is to be set in supernal bliss). This prayer, once it was cited by Venturi, had a certain afterlife in the commentators right through the nineteenth century, but for some reason has been allowed to vanish in our time. Nonetheless, while it does give us an official teaching of the Church regarding the limits of the knowledge of those in the Empyrean, it certainly is at odds with what the poem has led us to expect, as Tasso observed. As Carroll (comm. to vv. 130-132) pointed out, reference to this particular “collect” found its way to Thomas's greatest work: “In Summa, I, q. xxiii, a. 7, Aquinas says: 'Some say that out of mankind as many will be saved as angels fell; some, as many as angels remained; some as many as angels fell, and over and above, as many as the number of angels created. But it is better to say that to God alone is known the number of the elect who are to be set in supernal bliss' (as the Collecta pro vivis ac defunctis has it).” The teaching embedded in this prayer thus probably enjoyed a certain authority in Dante's eyes.
The Eagle once again, concluding its presence in the poem, speaks as a plural entity, in the collective voice of the individual souls of the just. It seems clear that a listener cannot tell from the quality of the speech whether the Eagle is speaking as a composite or as a gathering of individuals except from its first-person grammatical markers, singular or plural.
Thus were Dante's weak eyes strengthened by Justice (cf. the Eagle's very first words at Par. XIX.13, speaking in the first-person singular: “Per esser giusto e pio” [For being just and merciful]).
The phrase “soave medicina” (sweet medication) recalls the medicina of Inferno XXXI.3. It also probably refers to the “pestilence” the protagonist's eyes had encountered in the counterpoised object of vision to this briefer catalogue of the justly saved, the group of twelve damned rulers found in Canto XIX. As Marino Barchiesi (“Catarsi classica e 'medicina' dantesca, Dal canto XX dell'Inferno,” Letture classensi 4 [1973], pp. 73-74) realized, it also recalls the “disease” of sympathy for classical divination demonstrated by the protagonist in Inferno XX. And, in this vein, see Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], p. 199): “The disease which has been cured in Paradiso XX revealed its etiology in Inferno XX.”
This is the final simile of the canto and of this simile-filled heaven (there are twelve in Cantos XVIII-XX, four in each): As a lutenist accompanies a singer, Trajan and Ripheus move their flames, as though in accompaniment, to the Eagle's words.
The similes in the heaven of Jupiter are disposed as follows: Par. XVIII.58-63, XVIII.64-69, XVIII.73-78, XVIII.100-105; XIX.19-21, XIX.34-39, XIX.91-96, XIX.97-99; XX.1-12, XX.22-27, XX.73-78, XX.142-148.
Whatever Dante's intention, the fact that the two “eyes” blinking as one are the “Christians” Trajan and Ripheus turns these verses into one of the most notable authorial winks in all of literature. See Trottmann (“Communion des saints et jugement dernier dans les chants XIX-XX du Paradis,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], p. 197) for a similar suggestion.
This is perhaps the fitting context for a recognition of the extraordinary panoply of references to pagans in this canticle - two fewer than an even hundred. Here is, first, an alphabetical list of names of pagans in Paradiso (with reference only to first appearances):
IV.103 Alcmaeon
V.69 Agamemnon
IV.104 Amphiaraus
XI.68 Amyclas
XV.25 Anchises
I.13 Apollo
XXXI.33 Arcas
XIII.14 Ariadne
VIII.120 Aristotle
VI.73 Augustus
XXX.7 Aurora
XIII.25 Bacchus
IX.97 Belus
XXVIII.81 Boreas
VI.44 Brennus
VI.74 Brutus
XIII.125 Bryson
VI.74 Cassius
VI.46 Cincinnatus
VI.76 Cleopatra
XVII.1 Clymene
XV.129 Cornelia
IX.98 Creusa
VIII.7 Cupid
VIII.125 Daedalus
I.33 Daphne
VI.47 the Decii
IX.101 Demophoön
VI.94 Desiderius
X.67 Diana
VIII.9 Dido
VIII.7 Dïone
XII.14 Eco
IV.104 Eryphile
XXVII.84 Europa
VIII.69 Eurus
VI.47 the Fabii
I.68 Glaucus
VI.50 Hannibal
VI.68 Hector
XXXI.32 Helice
XIV.96 Helios
IX.101 Hercules
XI.4 Hippocrates
XVII.46 Hippolytus
XXII.142 Hyperion
VIII.126 Icarus
IX.102 Iole
V.70 Iphigenia
XII.12 Iris
VI.81 Janus
II.18 Jason
VI.70 Juba
VI.57 Julius Caesar
XII.12 Juno
IV.62 Jupiter
X.67 Latona
VI.3 Lavinia
XXVII.98 Leda
VI.41 Lucretia
XXII.144 Maia
IV.63 Mars
I.20 Marsyas
XIII.125 Melissus
IV.63 Mercury
II.8 Minerva
XIII.14 Minos
IV.84 Mucius Scaevola
XXIII.56 the Muses
III.18 Narcissus
XXXIII.96 Neptune
XIII.125 Parmenides
XVII.47 Phaedra
XVII.3 Phaeton
IX.100 Phyllis
IV.24 Plato
XXIII.56 Polyhymnia
VI.53 Pompey
VI.69 Ptolemy
VI.44 Pyrrhus
VIII.131 Romulus
XV.107 Sardanapalus
XXI.26 Saturn
VI.53 Scipio
XXI.6 Semele
VIII.124 Solon
XXXIII.66 the Sibyl
IX.98 Sychaeus
VI.86 Tiberius
IV.49 Timaeus
VI.92 Titus
VI.46 Torquatus
VIII.70 Typhon
XXVII.83 Ulysses
VIII.2 Venus
VIII.124 Xerxes
XII.47 Zephyr.
The second version of this material is a chronological listing of each pagan presence in Paradiso; multiple presences are represented after the first, as in the first instance below, Apollo:
canto.verse name text
I.13 Apollo O good Apollo, for this last labor
I.32 “ making the Delphic god rejoice
II.8 ” Apollo is my steersman
XIII.25 “ praises not of Bacchus nor of Paean
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
I.20 Marsyas when you drew out Marsyas
I.33 Daphne the Peneian bough
I.68 Glaucus I was changed within, / as Glaucus was
II.8 Minerva Minerva fills my sails
II.18 Jason saw Jason had become a ploughman
XXV.7 “ with another fleece
XXXIII.96 ” Neptune at the Argo's shadow stared
III.18 Narcissus which inflamed a man to love a fountain
IV.24 Plato in agreement with Platonic teaching
IV.49 Timaeus what Timaeus has to say about the souls
IV.62 Jupiter naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
XVIII.70 “ that torch of Jupiter
XXII.145 ” Jove between his father and his son
XXVII.14 “ if he and Mars were birds
IV.63 Mercury naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
IV.63 Mars naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
VIII.132 ” so rude a father he is ascribed to Mars
XVI.47 “ dwelling between Mars and the Baptist
XVI.145 ” that shattered stone
XXII.146 “ Jove between his father and his son
XXVII.14 ” if he and Mars were birds
IV.84 Mucius Scaevola made Mucius harsh to his own hand
IV.103 Alcmaeon as Alcmaeon, exhorted by his father
IV.104 Amphiaraus as Alcmaeon, exhorted by his father
IV.104 Eryphile slew his own mother
V.69 Agamemnon that great leader of the Greeks
V.70 Iphigenia who made Iphigenia lament
VI.3 Aeneas that ancient who took Lavinia to wife
XV.27 “ when in Elysium he knew his son
VI.3 Lavinia that ancient who took Lavinia to wife
VI.36 Pallas when Pallas gave his life
VI.39 the Horatii three made war on three
VI.39 the Curiatiia three made war on three
VI.41 Lucretia Sabine women to Lucretia's woes
VI.44 Brennus Romans against Brennus, against Pyrrhus
VI.44 Pyrrhus Romans against Brennus, against Pyrrhus
VI.46 Torquatus Torquatus
VI.46 Cincinnatus Quintius–named / for his unkempt locks
XV.129 ” as now would Cincinnatus or Cornelia
VI.47 the Decii the Decii
VI.47 the Fabii the Fabii
VI.50 Hannibal when Arabs / followed after Hannibal
VI.53 Scipio youthful Scipio
XXVII.61 “ the deeds of Scipio / preserved in Rome
VI.53 Pompey Pompey
VI.72 ” it heard the sound of Pompey's trumpet
VI.57 Julius Caesar Caesar, by the will of Rome, laid hold
XI.69 “ the voice of him
VI.68 Hector the place where Hector lies
VI.69 Ptolemy it roused itself–at Ptolemy's expense
VI.70 Juba it fell like lightning on Juba
VI.73 Augustus the one who bore it next
VI.74 Brutus Brutus and Cassius bark in Hell
VI.74 Cassius Brutus and Cassius bark in Hell
VI.76 Cleopatra wretched Cleopatra still weeps
VI.81 Janus the doors of Janus' shrine were locked
VI.86 Tiberius the third of the Caesars
VI.92 Titus it raced with Titus, doing vengeance
VI.94 Desiderius when Lombard tooth bit Holy Church
VIII.2 Venus the fair one of Cypress
VIII.7 Dïone honored Dïone, and Cupid too
XXII.144 ” saw how Maia and Dïone move
VIII.7 Cupid honored Dïone and Cupid too
VIII.9 Dido how once he sat in Dido's lap
IX.97 “ the daughter of Belus was no more aflame
VIII.69 Eurus the bay most vexed by the Sirocco
VIII.70 Typhon darkened not by Typhon
VIII.120 Aristotle not if your master is correct in this
VIII.124 Solon one is born a Solon and another Xerxes
VIII.124 Xerxes one is born a Solon and another Xerxes
VIII.125 Daedalus the man / who flew up through the air
VIII.126 Icarus and lost his son
VIII.131 Romulus Quirinus... ascribed to Mars
IX.97 Belus the daughter of Belus was no more aflame
IX.98 Sychaeus bringing grief to Sychaeus and to Creusa
IX.98 Creusa bringing grief to Sychaeus and to Creusa
IX.100 Phyllis she of Rhodope, who was deceived
IX.101 Demophoön deceived by Demophoön
IX.101 Hercules nor Alcides, when he embraced
IX.102 Iole when he embraced Iole in his heart
X.67 Diana Latona's daughter
XXII.139 ” I saw Latona's daughter shining bright
XXIII.26 “ Trivia smiles among the eternal nymphs
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
X.67 Latona we sometimes see Latona's daughter
XXII.139 “ the daughter of Latona
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
XI.4 Hippocrates another the Hippocratic Aphorisms
XI.68 Amyclas she stood / unmoved, with Amyclas
XII.2 Juno when Juno gives the order to her handmaid
XXVIII.32 “ the messenger of Juno, in full circle,
XII.2 Iris when Juno gives the order to her handmaid
XXVIII.32 ” the messenger of Juno, in full circle,
XXXIII.118 “ as rainbow is by rainbow
XII.14 Eco that wandering nymph
XII.47 Zephyr where gentle Zephyr's breath
XIII.14 Minos Minos' daughter when she felt the chill
XIII.14 Ariadne Minos' daughter when she felt the chill
XIII.25 Bacchus praises not of Bacchus nor of Paean
XIII.125 Parmenides Parmenides
XIII.125 Melissus Melissus
XIII.125 Bryson Bryson
XV.25 Anchises with such affection did Anchises' shade
XIX.132 ” where the long life of Anchises had its end
XV.26 Virgil if our greatest muse deserves belief
XVII.19 “ I was still in Virgil's company
XXVI.118 ” place from which your lady sent down Virgil
XV.107 Sardanapalus nor had Sardanapalus as yet arrived
XV.129 Cornelia as now would Cincinnatus or Cornelia
XVII.1 Clymene who came to Clymene to cast out doubt
XVII.3 Phaeton who... keeps fathers cautious with their sons
XXXI.125 “ the shaft of Phaeton's poorly guided car
XVII.46 Hippolytus as Hippolytus set forth from Athens
XVII.47 Phaedra his cruel and perfidious stepmother
XVIII.82 one of the Muses O divine Pegasean
XXIII.56 the Muses Polyhymnia and her sisters nurtured
XXI.6 Semele what Semele became when... turned to ashes
XXI.26 Saturn beneath whose rule all wickedness lay dead
XXII.146 ” Jove between his father and his son
XXII.142 Hyperion the visage of your son, Hyperion, I endured
XXII.144 Maia saw how Maia and Dïone move
XXIII.56 Polyhymnia Polyhymnia and her sisters nurtured
XXVII.83 Ulysses the mad track of Ulysses
XXVII.84 Europa where Europa made sweet burden of herself
XXVII.98 Leda the fair nest of Leda
XXVIII.81 Boreas when Boreas / blows from his gentler cheek
XXX.7 Aurora that brightest handmaid of the sun
XXXI.32 Helice which Helice covers every day
XXXI.33 Arcas wheeling with her son
XXXIII.66 the Sibyl the Sibyl's messages were lost
XXXIII.96 Neptune Neptune at the Argo's shadow stared
–-
And two who, we might insist, were in fact pagans but are Christians
in the poem:
XX.44 Trajan consoled the widow when she lost her son
XX.68 Ripheus that Trojan Ripheus should be the fifth
Commentary text is copyrighted and reproduced by permission.
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Quando colui che tutto 'l mondo alluma
de l'emisperio nostro sì discende,
che 'l giorno d'ogne parte si consuma,
lo ciel, che sol di lui prima s'accende,
subitamente si rifà parvente
per molte luci, in che una risplende;
e questo atto del ciel mi venne a mente,
come 'l segno del mondo e de' suoi duci
nel benedetto rostro fu tacente;
però che tutte quelle vive luci,
vie più lucendo, cominciaron canti
da mia memoria labili e caduci.
O dolce amor che di riso t'ammanti,
quanto parevi ardente in que' flailli,
ch'avieno spirto sol di pensier santi!
Poscia che i cari e lucidi lapilli
ond' io vidi ingemmato il sesto lume
puoser silenzio a li angelici squilli,
udir mi parve un mormorar di fiume
che scende chiaro giù di pietra in pietra,
mostrando l'ubertà del suo cacume.
E come suono al collo de la cetra
prende sua forma, e sì com' al pertugio
de la sampogna vento che penètra,
così, rimosso d'aspettare indugio,
quel mormorar de l'aguglia salissi
su per lo collo, come fosse bugio.
Fecesi voce quivi, e quindi uscissi
per lo suo becco in forma di parole,
quali aspettava il core ov' io le scrissi.
“La parte in me che vede e pate il sole
ne l'aguglie mortali,” incominciommi,
“or fisamente riguardar si vole,
perché d'i fuochi ond' io figura fommi,
quelli onde l'occhio in testa mi scintilla,
e' di tutti lor gradi son li sommi.
Colui che luce in mezzo per pupilla,
fu il cantor de lo Spirito Santo,
che l'arca traslatò di villa in villa:
ora conosce il merto del suo canto,
in quanto effetto fu del suo consiglio,
per lo remunerar ch'è altrettanto.
Dei cinque che mi fan cerchio per ciglio,
colui che più al becco mi s'accosta,
la vedovella consolò del figlio:
ora conosce quanto caro costa
non seguir Cristo, per l'esperïenza
di questa dolce vita e de l'opposta.
E quel che segue in la circunferenza
di che ragiono, per l'arco superno,
morte indugiò per vera penitenza:
ora conosce che 'l giudicio etterno
non si trasmuta, quando degno preco
fa crastino là giù de l'odïerno.
L'altro che segue, con le leggi e meco,
sotto buona intenzion che fé mal frutto,
per cedere al pastor si fece greco:
ora conosce come il mal dedutto
dal suo bene operar non li è nocivo,
avvegna che sia 'l mondo indi distrutto.
E quel che vedi ne l'arco declivo,
Guiglielmo fu, cui quella terra plora
che piagne Carlo e Federigo vivo:
ora conosce come s'innamora
lo ciel del giusto rege, e al sembiante
del suo fulgore il fa vedere ancora.
Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante
che Rifëo Troiano in questo tondo
fosse la quinta de le luci sante?
Ora conosce assai di quel che 'l mondo
veder non può de la divina grazia,
ben che sua vista non discerna il fondo.”
Quale allodetta che 'n aere si spazia
prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
de l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia,
tal mi sembiò l'imago de la 'mprenta
de l'etterno piacere, al cui disio
ciascuna cosa qual ell' è diventa.
E avvegna ch'io fossi al dubbiar mio
lì quasi vetro a lo color ch'el veste,
tempo aspettar tacendo non patio,
ma de la bocca, “Che cose son queste?”
mi pinse con la forza del suo peso:
per ch'io di coruscar vidi gran feste.
Poi appresso, con l'occhio più acceso,
lo benedetto segno mi rispuose
per non tenermi in ammirar sospeso:
“Io veggio che tu credi queste cose
perch' io le dico, ma non vedi come;
si che, se son credute, sono ascose.
Fai come quei che la cosa per nome
apprende ben, ma la sua quiditate
veder non può se altri non la prome.
Regnum celorum vïolenza pate
da caldo amore e da viva speranza,
che vince la divina volontate:
non a guisa che l'omo a l'om sobranza,
ma vince lei perché vuole esser vinta,
e, vinta, vince con sua beninanza.
La prima vita del ciglio e la quinta
ti fa maravigliar, perché ne vedi
la regïon de li angeli dipinta.
D'i corpi suoi non uscir, come credi,
Gentili, ma Cristiani, in ferma fede
quel d'i passuri e quel d'i passi piedi.
Ché l'una de lo 'nferno, u' non si riede
già mai a buon voler, tornò a l'ossa;
e ciò di viva spene fu mercede:
di viva spene, che mise la possa
ne' prieghi fatti a Dio per suscitarla,
sì che potesse sua voglia esser mossa.
L'anima glorïosa onde si parla,
tornata ne la carne, in che fu poco,
credette in lui che potëa aiutarla;
e credendo s'accese in tanto foco
di vero amor, ch'a la morte seconda
fu degna di venire a questo gioco.
L'altra, per grazia che da sì profonda
fontana stilla, che mai creatura
non pinse l'occhio infino a la prima onda,
tutto suo amor là giù pose a drittura:
per che, di grazia in grazia, Dio li aperse
l'occhio a la nostra redenzion futura;
ond' ei credette in quella, e non sofferse
da indi il puzzo più del paganesmo;
e riprendiene le genti perverse.
Quelle tre donne li fur per battesmo
che tu vedesti da la destra rota,
dinanzi al battezzar più d'un millesmo.
O predestinazion, quanto remota
è la radice tua da quelli aspetti
che la prima cagion non veggion tota!
E voi, mortali, tenetevi stretti
a giudicar: ché noi, che Dio vedemo,
non conosciamo ancor tutti li eletti;
ed ènne dolce così fatto scemo,
perché il ben nostro in questo ben s'affina,
che quel che vole Iddio, e noi volemo.”
Così da quella imagine divina,
per farmi chiara la mia corta vista,
data mi fu soave medicina.
E come a buon cantor buon citarista
fa seguitar lo guizzo de la corda,
in che più di piacer lo canto acquista,
sì, mentre ch'e' parlò, sì mi ricorda
ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
con le parole mover le fiammette.
When he who all the world illuminates
Out of our hemisphere so far descends
That on all sides the daylight is consumed,
The heaven, that erst by him alone was kindled,
Doth suddenly reveal itself again
By many lights, wherein is one resplendent.
And came into my mind this act of heaven,
When the ensign of the world and of its leaders
Had silent in the blessed beak become;
Because those living luminaries all,
By far more luminous, did songs begin
Lapsing and falling from my memory.
O gentle Love, that with a smile dost cloak thee,
How ardent in those sparks didst thou appear,
That had the breath alone of holy thoughts!
After the precious and pellucid crystals,
With which begemmed the sixth light I beheld,
Silence imposed on the angelic bells,
I seemed to hear the murmuring of a river
That clear descendeth down from rock to rock,
Showing the affluence of its mountain-top.
And as the sound upon the cithern's neck
Taketh its form, and as upon the vent
Of rustic pipe the wind that enters it,
Even thus, relieved from the delay of waiting,
That murmuring of the eagle mounted up
Along its neck, as if it had been hollow.
There it became a voice, and issued thence
From out its beak, in such a form of words
As the heart waited for wherein I wrote them.
"The part in me which sees and bears the sun
In mortal eagles," it began to me,
"Now fixedly must needs be looked upon;
For of the fires of which I make my figure,
Those whence the eye doth sparkle in my head
Of all their orders the supremest are.
He who is shining in the midst as pupil
Was once the singer of the Holy Spirit,
Who bore the ark from city unto city;
Now knoweth he the merit of his song,
In so far as effect of his own counsel,
By the reward which is commensurate.
Of five, that make a circle for my brow,
He that approacheth nearest to my beak
Did the poor widow for her son console;
Now knoweth he how dearly it doth cost
Not following Christ, by the experience
Of this sweet life and of its opposite.
He who comes next in the circumference
Of which I speak, upon its highest arc,
Did death postpone by penitence sincere;
Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment
Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer
Maketh below to-morrow of to-day.
The next who follows, with the laws and me,
Under the good intent that bore bad fruit
Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor;
Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced
From his good action is not harmful to him,
Although the world thereby may be destroyed.
And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest,
Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores
That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive;
Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is
With a just king; and in the outward show
Of his effulgence he reveals it still.
Who would believe, down in the errant world,
That e'er the Trojan Ripheus in this round
Could be the fifth one of the holy lights?
Now knoweth he enough of what the world
Has not the power to see of grace divine,
Although his sight may not discern the bottom."
Like as a lark that in the air expatiates,
First singing and then silent with content
Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her,
Such seemed to me the image of the imprint
Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will
Doth everything become the thing it is.
And notwithstanding to my doubt I was
As glass is to the colour that invests it,
To wait the time in silence it endured not,
But forth from out my mouth, "What things are these?"
Extorted with the force of its own weight;
Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation.
Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled
The blessed standard made to me reply,
To keep me not in wonderment suspended:
"I see that thou believest in these things
Because I say them, but thou seest not how;
So that, although believed in, they are hidden.
Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name
Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity
Cannot perceive, unless another show it.
'Regnum coelorum' suffereth violence
From fervent love, and from that living hope
That overcometh the Divine volition;
Not in the guise that man o'ercometh man,
But conquers it because it will be conquered,
And conquered conquers by benignity.
The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth
Cause thee astonishment, because with them
Thou seest the region of the angels painted.
They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest,
Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith
Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered.
For one from Hell, where no one e'er turns back
Unto good will, returned unto his bones,
And that of living hope was the reward,—
Of living hope, that placed its efficacy
In prayers to God made to resuscitate him,
So that 'twere possible to move his will.
The glorious soul concerning which I speak,
Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay,
Believed in Him who had the power to aid it;
And, in believing, kindled to such fire
Of genuine love, that at the second death
Worthy it was to come unto this joy.
The other one, through grace, that from so deep
A fountain wells that never hath the eye
Of any creature reached its primal wave,
Set all his love below on righteousness;
Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose
His eye to our redemption yet to be,
Whence he believed therein, and suffered not
From that day forth the stench of paganism,
And he reproved therefor the folk perverse.
Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel
Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism
More than a thousand years before baptizing.
O thou predestination, how remote
Thy root is from the aspect of all those
Who the First Cause do not behold entire!
And you, O mortals! hold yourselves restrained
In judging; for ourselves, who look on God,
We do not know as yet all the elect;
And sweet to us is such a deprivation,
Because our good in this good is made perfect,
That whatsoe'er God wills, we also will."
After this manner by that shape divine,
To make clear in me my short-sightedness,
Was given to me a pleasant medicine;
And as good singer a good lutanist
Accompanies with vibrations of the chords,
Whereby more pleasantness the song acquires,
So, while it spake, do I remember me
That I beheld both of those blessed lights,
Even as the winking of the eyes concords,
Moving unto the words their little flames.
Any aesthetic performance is likely, at moments, to leave its observer wondering as to the motives of the performer. For example, here one might inquire why Dante did not decide to make this already highly wrought passage a perfectly turned simile. It has all the requisite elements, lacking only the initial Come (Just as) and the pivotal così (so) at the beginning of the seventh verse. As has been pointed out several times now, Dante seems to like to employ rigid categories loosely, as though exploring the boundaries of established forms. For instance, we may find ourselves wondering whether the presence of the designative terms of compared likeness is necessary to establish the trope. With regard to the classical simile, it almost seems as though he had decided to ring the changes on an established form as frequently as he could. See the notes to Purgatorio XXVII.76-87; Paradiso XIV.19-24 and XIV.118-123.
The Eagle has stopped speaking as a corporate entity. That allows the individual voices of this particular collective of the saved to speak as themselves. Had their actual words been recorded here, it probably would have been clear, as it is when they speak as themselves at the end of the canto, that their descriptor for themselves is “we” (verse 134) and not “I” (verse 31). In simile, they are like the shining of the stars after the sun has left the sky (in Dante's further comparison, once the Eagle's beak has gone silent).
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 1-6) point out that this is one of fourteen cantos in the poem that begin with astronomical detailing (Inf. XXIV.1-3; Purg. II.1-9, IX.1-9, XV.1-9, XIX.1-6, XXV.1-3, XXVII.1-6, XXX.1-6; Par. VIII.1-3, X.1-21, XIII.1-24, here, XXIX.1-6, XXX.1-9).
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 88-89, while making a quite different point, helps one to observe a curious phenomenon: the poet has not mentioned the Sun by its name since the protagonist first entered it (Par. X.41 and Par. X.48). Now he uses paraphrase or reference (colui [verse 1], lui [verse 4], una [stella] [verse 6]) to refer to the Sun (while, Aversano might have gone on to point out, he does use the letters that spell “sun,” sol, as the adverb “only” in verse 4 [and again in verse 15]). On this last point see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 47).
According to Dante's astronomy, stars did not glow with their own energy, but derived their light from the Sun (see Conv. III.xii.7): “... il sole. Lo quale di sensibile luce sé prima e poi tutte le corpora celestiali e [le] elementali allumina” (the Sun, which illuminates with perceptible light first itself and then all the celestial and elemental bodies [tr. R. Lansing]).
The “emblem of the world” is the Eagle, symbol of universal empire, the ideal that Dante embraced so warmly in his Monarchia.
The poet apostrophizes the love emanating from these spirits, wreathed in “smiles”: How ardent did this love appear in those “pipes” (or in those “flames” [there is much debate in the commentaries over this choice]) that were so full of holy thoughts! As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 14) point out, the word flaillo is an absolute hapax, meaning that this is its unique appearance, not only in the Commedia, not only in all the works of Dante, but in the history of the Italian language. In their opinion, there is no way to decide between the two possible meanings, “flute” (see French flavel) or “flame” (from O Fr. flael), since both find resonance in the surrounding context. However, Benvenuto states unambiguously that the reference is to sound. And his opinion is given further weight by the musical reference of the simile in vv. 22-27. For an English response in this vein, see Tozer (comm. to vv. 13-14): “flailli: 'flutes,' i.e. melodious voices. This word, which is not found elsewhere, is derived from Lat. flare, flatus, through the Low Lat. flauta, 'flute,' from which came the diminutives flautol, flaujol in Provençal, and flajol in OF, to which flaillo closely approximates; OF flajol, flageolet is a further diminutive.” Others (notably, according to Petrocchi [Dante Alighieri: La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. G. Petrocchi {Florence: Le Lettere, 1994 [1967]}, p. 328], Antonino Pagliaro [Ulisse: ricerche semantiche sulla “Divina Commedia” {Messina-Florence: D'Anna, 1967}, p. 579]) argue for a derivation, through OF, from Lat. flacellum, “torch.” Forced to chose (and one is), this reader has opted for the former, since it seems clear that song is the pre-eminent element here. However, for an attempt to undermine the view of E.G. Parodi (Lingua e letteratura, ed. G. Folena [Venice: Neri Pozza, 1957], pp. 273, 394), who opts for OF flavel (flute), see Ettore Paratore (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], pp. 691-92n.). And, for a more recent opposing argument, see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 50-51).
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 89, because the flute is not a “noble” instrument, as is plain from its association with Marsyas (but see the note to Par. I.20-21), denies that the word is likely to be flailli, preferring flavilli (from the Latin flavus, which means, he says, “piece of gold”); however, this is a variant reading unknown in the textual history of the verse.
The silence of the souls, having left off their singing (which Dante could not hold in mind [verse 12]), begun when the Eagle had ceased its speech, gives way to what seems to be the rumbling sound of a river, giving evidence of the profusion of its lofty source (it will be the voice of the Eagle, rumbling like an organ pipe filling with new air). This tercet marks the beginning of the first of the two central elements of the canto, a presentation of the souls that make up the eye of the Eagle (vv. 16-78); the second, the Eagle's explanation of the presence in Paradise of those who certainly appear to be pagans, runs through vv. 79-129.
The phrase li angelici squilli is probably not to be understood as the “song of the angels” (Bosco/Reggio [comm. to this verse]), but as the “angelic songs” of the blessed.
If Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet) is correct, these lines reflect both a passage in the Georgics (I.108-110) and one in the Aeneid (XI.296-299). The passage in Virgil's epic describes the rumor of the many voices of the native Italians being quieted by King Latinus's voiced decision to make peace with the invading future Romans. Marguerite Chiarenza (“Paradiso XX,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 16-17 [1995], p. 302) makes the point that this decision is thus in accord “with the unchangeable will of Providence.”
This double simile, reflecting the fingering of two kinds of musical instruments in order to produce varying sounds (along the neck of a lute or at the vents of a bagpipe), describes the sound produced from within the Eagle's neck, eventually issuing from his beak as a series of notes (or words).
Landino (comm. to vv. 25-29) expresses his admiration for Dante's ability, plainly visible here, to “make the impossible seem believable” and compares him to Ovid in this respect.
The Eagle uttered words that Dante, once more reverting to the image of his scribal role, wrote down upon his heart. See the notes to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63; Paradiso V.85, X.27, and X.109-114; and see Par. XVIII.85-86).
The Eagle's invitation to Dante to gaze upon its eye revisits a bit of lore already placed in evidence. We learned that mortal eagles are able to look into the sun without harm from Paradiso I.46-48; see the accompanying note, referring to possible sources in Aristotle and in Brunetto Latini.
Returning to speech from song, the Eagle now again speaks as a single voice. We will hear it switch back again to the first-person plural in its final words (see verse 134).
The Eagle now reports that the souls that form its eye (we only see one of the two, if it in fact happens to possess more in the way of orbs of sight than its profiled appearance as the emblem of empire requires – a dubious eventuality) are the greatest among the many that give its form an aquiline shape.
The Eagle's thirty-six verses in six segments, each of six lines, and each involving use of anaphora (the phrase ora conosce), identify the six “chiefs” of justice: David, Trajan, Hezekiah, Constantine, William the Good, and Ripheus (their fame is at first insisted on when the first four of them are named only by circumlocution; the last two understandably require more assistance). It seems possible that the poet wanted us to reflect that the thirty-six lines in praise of these half dozen dead rulers mirror, if adversely, the twenty-seven verses, also marked by anaphora, describing the dozen defective living rulers in the preceding canto, Paradiso XIX.115-141.
The number of these just rulers [six] may also be meant to put us in mind of the six “world-historical” emperors presented in Par. VI: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Titus, Justinian, and Charlemagne. Those seemed to have been significant primarily for the events over which they presided; these, for their personal justness. That distinction may or may not explain their appearing here (only temporarily, we at times may struggle to remember) in a higher heaven. Dante never gives us the grounds on which to establish the relative advancement of the blessed in the Empyrean, except for the eighteen souls whom we are allowed to see in Paradiso XXXII; and none of these saved rulers is seen among them.
The first of these most just among just rulers is David, in the Commedia most honored as the singer of the Holy Spirit (as are also all his companions in the Eagle: see Par. XIX.101). (David is prominently mentioned in Purg. X.65 [and see the appended note]; Par. XXV.71-72 and XXXII.11-12). He is, in fact, the figure from the Old Testament most present in Dante's work, (Toynbee, Concise Dante Dictionary, “David”), referred to perhaps fifty times in all. For his service to the Lord in transporting the Ark of the Covenant, see Purgatorio X.55-69.
Some think the words suo consiglio (his own thought) refer to the “thought” of the Holy Spirit; most, to that of David (as is reflected in our translation).
The question of the “merit” of David's song disturbs some readers. See, for instance, Tozer (comm. to vv. 40-42), pointing out that David could benefit only insofar as his song proceeded from his own free will (and thus was not the effect of inspiration, in which case it would not, as the text suggests, in itself make him worthy of salvation). However, is David's worthiness not similar to the unexpressed claim for his own “merit” that Dante might have considered most convincing? He presents himself as the “new David” from the outset (see Inf. I.65), that is, as a man directly inspired by God to lift his eyes from worldly distraction. In Dante's mind, there does not seem to be any limitation on the freedom of his will imposed thereby.
Trajan, the Roman emperor (A.D. 98-117), is closest to the Eagle's beak in the semicircle that describes the “eyebrow,” as it were, above David, located as the pupil of the eye. For his humble service to the widow and the tradition of his salvation, see Purgatorio X.73-93 and the appended note. For some of the twists and turns in the history of the accounts of the salvation of Trajan, see Picone (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 313-19).
Now Trajan appreciates, both by now being here with God and by having been in Limbo, the cost of not following Christ.
For the phrase dolce vita (sweet life), see the note to Paradiso IV.35.
Hezekiah, a king of Judah in the seventh century B.C., was a just monarch, according to the Bible, at least in his own accountancy (see II Kings 20:3 [IV Kings in the Vulgate]).
His tears (but were they shed in penitence?) are found in Isaiah 38:3, as was first noted by Jacopo della Lana (comm. to verse 51). Here is the pertinent passage (38:1-5): “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, 'Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.' Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, 'Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.' And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: 'Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life'” (italics added). Hezekiah in fact here does not weep out of penitence, as Dante says he did, but the detail that God saw his tears and then remitted his sentence of death was perhaps enough to suggest to the poet that the king was contrite for his sins, and not merely brokenhearted and afraid. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 51) was apparently the first (and not Porena, whom Bosco/Reggio [comm. to verse 51] credit for the observation) to deal with the fact that this passage does not record his penitence, which is, however, found in II Chronicles 32:24-26 (II Par. in the Vulgate], a version of the narrative from a later perspective: “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death, and he prayed to the Lord, and He answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem. But Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah” (italics added). If Dante were not thinking of the better known text concerning Hezekiah in Isaiah, but of this one, then he is more or less in keeping with at least that Scriptural view. However, for the view that Hezekiah's penitence is conveyed to Dante less by the text of the Bible than by a passage in Hugh of St. Cher's Postilla, see Paola Rigo (“Tra 'maligno' e 'sanguigno,'” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994], pp. 80-81).
Now Hezekiah knows that answered prayers are part of God's plan, rather than representing a change in it (cf. Purg. VI.28-42, where the same question is raised about Virgil's views on this matter). Carroll (comm. to vv. 49-54) puts this well: “In short, what Hezekiah now knows in Heaven is the mystery of how prayer harmonizes with and fulfils 'the eternal judgment,' instead of being, as it seems, an alteration of it.”
For Hezekiah as “type” of Dante, see A.C. Charity (Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966], p. 230) and the note to Inferno I.1.
Tozer (comm. to this tercet) paraphrases and interprets this passage as follows: “'when a worthy prayer causes that which was ordained for the present time to be postponed to a future time'; this was what happened in Hezekiah's case through the postponement of his death. The meaning of the entire passage here is, that what God has ordained is not changed in answer to prayer, because God has already provided for it.”
Since the spatial arrangement of the inhabitants of the Eagle's semicircular eyebrow is not chronological, the fact that Constantine (274-337) is the middle figure in it, and thus the highest, takes us by surprise, given the number and vehemence of Dante's outbursts against the Donation (e.g., Inf. XIX.115-117, Purg. XXXII.124-129; and see Monarchia, which fairly seethes with them). In this passage Dante settles for Constantine's good intent in his governance of the Eastern empire. However, now this emperor knows that if the evil he unwittingly committed has not harmed him, it has nonetheless destroyed the world. Dante may allow him salvation, but makes him pay for it eternally and dearly with this permanent wound in his self-awareness. This does not efface the glory his good intention won him, but it does mar its beauty.
William the Good, king of (Naples and) Sicily (ruled 1166-1189), is presented as mourned by his subjects (he died young, at thirty-five), who now must suffer the misdeeds of his two successors, Charles of Anjou (who ruled Apulia) and Frederick II of Aragon (who ruled Sicily itself – see Par. XIX.127-135, where these two are the sixth and seventh unworthy rulers in that pestilential acrostic). Now William, who was widely celebrated in his lifetime for his lawful reign and his generosity, knows that God loves a just king.
Ripheus is unlike the first five identified rulers in not ever having been mentioned within a Christian context by anyone at all; he is also the only one of them not to have been a king or an emperor. Indeed, he is a sort of “extra,” a bit player (if a heroic and probably highborn one) in the Aeneid, barely mentioned but for his death fighting along with Aeneas (Aen. II.426-428; see also II.339, II.394). Dante does not refer to a particular good deed that he performed, insisting instead on the general fact of his justness. The not inconsiderable poetic space (vv. 118-129) devoted to “explaining” his Christian belief has never diminished readers' amazement at finding him here. That is not surprising, as even he is portrayed (in verse 72) as not knowing the reason for his being among the elect. Now he knows more of divine grace than mortals do, if not all that can be known (we probably wonder whether this inability is peculiar to Ripheus or is shared with all the saved).
For a recently discovered (it had been hiding in plain view for centuries) and probable source, or at least confirmation, of Dante's view of Ripheus, see John A. Scott (“Dante, Boezio e l'enigma di Rifeo [Par. 20],” Studi Danteschi 61 [1989 {1994}]: 190-92), pointing out that a passage in Boethius (Cons. Phil. IV.6[pr].127-131) offers several reasons to think it was in Dante's mind as he wrote this passage: (1) that Boethius is referring to the same passage that scholars habitually point to as Dante's source in Aeneid II seems highly likely; (2) the Boethian context is utterly appropriate, since it involves the surprising nature, in human eyes, of providence; (3) the passage includes a specific reference to Lucan's Cato of Utica (Phars. I.128), approving Cato's worth (even though he lost his war) against that of Caesar, though Julius (and not Cato) was victorious (see Dante's presentation of Cato in the first two cantos of Purgatorio). The text in question reads in part as follows (tr. W.V. Cooper, italics added): “For, to glance at the depth of God's works with so few words as human reason is capable of comprehending, I say that what you think to be most fair and most conducive to justice's preservation, that appears different to an all-seeing Providence. Has not our fellow-philosopher Lucan told us how 'the conquering cause did please the gods, but the conquered, Cato?'” One can only imagine how Dante felt, seeing that his own radical and dangerous ideas had some justification in no less an authority than Boethius. For an earlier, similar, but not quite as pointed recognition of the influence of the Consolatio (and particularly its fourth book) on Dante's thought here, see Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35). Scott's discovery should cause us to wonder at the scholarly procedures of all of us who practice the craft of explicating our poet's work. How is it that an important passage in a work with which we all know Dante was deeply conversant, e.g., the Bible, the Aeneid, or, in this case, the Consolatio, can avoid the attention, for nearly seven centuries, of precisely those who have volunteered themselves as the keepers of his flame? Excuses are ready to hand: We are, after all, only human, and there is so much to which we must pay attention; further, we sometimes rule out as unthinkable precisely what Dante happens to be thinking. Nonetheless, our record is far from impressive. One ruefully supposes that our having left so much to be redone (and done!) is, in the end, “good for business.”
On the other hand, one may be excused a certain dubiety concerning the genuineness of Dante's belief in the salvation of this pagan. Virgil has handed Dante the stick with which to beat him: After he calls Ripheus the most just of the Trojans (“iustissimus”), he concludes with the phrase “dis aliter visum” (to the gods it seemed otherwise [Aen. II.428]); the muffled meaning seems to be that the gods do not care about just humans, and “kill us for their sport” (as King Lear phrased it). Dante lands hard upon Virgil for this judgment: his Christian God reverses pagan justice. (For this view, see Hollander [Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” {Florence: Olschki, 1983}, p. 138]; for a more conciliatory one, Bosco/Reggio, comm. to verse 68.)
As far as one can tell, the first commentator to respond to this disturbing phrase (dis aliter visum) with a sense of its troublesome character for a Christian reader was Carroll (comm. to vv. 67-72). He concludes his remarks with the following: “The most important point in all this may be easily overlooked. It is, I think, the transference of the mystery from the justice of God to His grace in the salvation of the heathen.” Ettore Paratore (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 724) sees Dante's reference here as critical of Virgil. Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35) argues well (and with greater specificity) for Dante's deliberate attempt to discredit Virgil's view of fate. It seems clear that the Christian poet is motivated by a desire to save Ripheus against his pagan author's authority, to make him a bone of contention in his continuing brief against Virgil (and if we haven't gotten that point before, we surely must get it now). However, if his “seriousness” in insisting on Ripheus's presence among the Christian just is essentially tactical and anti-Virgilian, how serious is it strategically? For example, did Dante ever pray to the soul of Ripheus? Does the poet want us to? One is dubious, even to the degree of sensing that the scandalous salvation is a gleeful invention of a very naughty Dante Alighieri. Not even Giorgio Padoan attempted to locate the poet's view of Ripheus in some unknown and still undiscovered Christian apologist's interpretation of the Aeneid, despite the fact that Padoan was forever searching (in vain, it would usually seem) for such “justification” as might be lent by a “lost” Christian reading of one pagan text or another (e.g., “Il mito di Teseo e il cristianesimo di Stazio,” Lettere Italiane 11 [1959]: 432-57). In his entry “Rifeo” (ED IV [1973]), he only allows himself the mild hope (without offering any justification for it) that possibly Dante's text of Virgil's phrase “dis aliter visum” read differently from ours.
Ripheus brings into focus several questions that dominate the protagonist's concerns in this heaven: the justness of the condemnation of the virtuous, necessarily Christ-ignorant, pagans; the possibility that their ignorance was not total and thus not absolutely necessary; the inability of other humans to comprehend such things. God's justice is definitional, and Dante, in the preceding canto, was forced, by a very aggressive Eagle, to plead guilty to having tried to put God in the dock. We cannot know the grounds for God's judgment, only that whatever He has decided is just.
Marguerite Chiarenza (“Paradiso XX,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 16-17 [1995]), pp. 304-5) puts into intelligent focus the way so much of Paradiso XX reopens the “question of Virgil” in our minds: “Virgil's drama is based on the contingency that he died just nineteen years before the birth of Christ. If God could extend Hezekiah's life by fifteen years, why did He not extend Virgil's by little more? It was said that St. Paul, moved by the beauty and wisdom of Virgil's poetry, prayed at the poet's tomb for his salvation. (For this topic, she adverts to the work of Domenico Comparetti [Vergil in the Middle Ages, tr. E. F. M. Benecke {Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1966 [1872]}, p. 98]; Charles Till Davis [Dante and the Idea of Rome {Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957}, pp. 103-4]; and Nancy Vickers [”Seeing is Believing: Gregory, Trajan, and Dante's Art,“ Dante Studies 101 {1983}, p. 72].) If God could answer Gregory's prayers for Trajan, why did He reject the similar prayer of the great St. Paul? How could a minor figure in Virgil's poem have caught the attention of God, while Virgil himself failed to?” Whether we like it or not, we have heard the answer to our question in the last canto, when the Eagle came down hard upon Dante for his similar question (Par. XIX.79-90): We cannot weigh God's intent, only recognize it.
On the question of God's disposition of the virtuous pagans, see Giovanni Fallani, “salvezza dei pagani,” ED IV (1973) and Picone (“Canto XX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 311-13, and, with specific reference to Ripheus, pp. 317-20). For the interesting observation that Dante might have found an equally “salvable” pagan in the person of Galaesus, also referred to by Virgil as “iustissimus” (in Aeneid VII.536), see Giuseppe Antonio Camerino (“Paradiso XX,” L'Alighieri 6 [1995]: 55-56), who sees Dante as observing this rather striking phenomenon and considering that the two “most just” pagans point only, again, to the inscrutable nature of God's justice – as well, we might want to add, as of Dante's.
Apparently first among the few to hear the echo here of the salvation of the Roman (and thus pagan) centurion Cornelius (see Acts 10:22-23; 34-35) was Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 68-69); most recently see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 91, building the evidence for his point better than his (unacknowledged) predecessors: Cornelius the centurion, “vir iustus et timens Deum” (a just and God-fearing man [Acts 10:22; Aversano's italics]). He concludes, “In patristic exegesis this centurion is the type of the gentiles saved by the grace of God”; Cornelius “because of his great faith and his justness, received the gift of the Holy Spirit before he was baptized” (Aversano is citing Rabanus Maurus for this judgment).
Marguerite Chiarenza (“Boethian Themes in Dante's Reading of Virgil,” Stanford Italian Review 3 [1983]: 25-35) “argues that we can better understand the role of the Aeneid in the Comedy in the light of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae, especially Book IV. Virgil's stoic pessimism did not go unnoticed by Dante; Anchises cannot give Aeneas the consolation Cacciaguida gives Dante. Cacciaguida's prophecy is at once the supplanting and resolution not just of previous prophecies, but of Virgil's whole human perspective. The pilgrim's exile, as he fears it, is Fate in the Boethian sense, while Cacciaguida's interpretation of that exile is a reflection of the Boethian view of Providence. The central example of Fate in the Comedy is the Aeneid, which is reread providentially: thus, Dante chose to save Ripheus because of Virgil's fatalistic 'dis aliter visum' (Aen. II, 428). The corrections of the Aeneid in the Comedy are not so much Christian readings superimposed on a pagan text as Providence's readings superimposed on Fate.” (This digest of her argument is taken from the website of the Dante Society of America, reproducing the valuable work [attended to with so much care for so many years] of Anthony L. Pellegrini, when he was editor of its journal. See “American Dante Bibliography for 1983,” Dante Studies 102 [1984].)
Perhaps our poet was tempted to push his reading of Virgil past the point of no return. At any rate, that is what he has accomplished, making the condemned author of the Aeneid, alongside the similarly Limbo-bound hero of his epic, spend their eternities in the lower world of an afterlife they neither believed in nor deserved, while this “bit player” enjoys the fruits of Heaven. For him to be here, Ripheus necessarily had to welcome Christ into his life; again, one has a difficult time believing that Dante really thought so. But that is what he decided he thought.
Dante is aware that his treatment of Ripheus will astound at least some of his readers. That he wants them to couple it with his similarly contentious insistence on Solomon's salvation (despite the warmly contrary opinions of some “big guns” of Christian theology, none bigger or more negative about the possibility of Solomon's salvation than Augustine) is the opinion of Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Nolite iudicare: Dante and the Dilemma of Judgment,” in Writers Reading Writers: Intertextual Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature in Honor of Robert Hollander, ed. Janet Levarie Smarr [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007], p. 77). She points out that both Solomon (Par. X.109) and Ripheus are the fifth lights in the shapes that they and their colleagues have temporarily assumed in order to display themselves to Dante, a circle and the eyebrow of an eagle, and that both were spectacularly provocative selections for salvation. Here are her words: “Solomon and Ripheus have a good deal more in common than an acquaintance with them outside of Dante's text would suggest. Both appear in the Commedia as 'fifth lights.' Solomon is 'la quinta luce' (Par. X.109) of the twelve that make up the first circle of saved souls in the Sun, Ripheus is 'la quinta delle luci' (Par. XX.69) that together comprise the eye of the eagle in Jupiter. Even more important than this parallel numerical position, both are meant to surprise Dante's readership: Solomon because of the intense debate as to whether he was saved or damned, and Ripheus because he is a pagan without any patristic history of redemption who appears in the pages of the Commedia in the most Christian of places.”
The Eagle, delighted by its own report of the salvation of Ripheus (and by the fact that not even he understands why he was saved), is like a lark satisfied by its own song, silent in its flight, savoring that melody in memory. The ensuing description of the silent emblem is not easy to decode, but it seems to refer to the Eagle (l'imago) as stamped (de la 'mprenta) by the eternal Beauty that is God (l'etterno piacere), by whose will each thing becomes that which it is. In this case that last and rather puzzling general statement probably refers most directly to Ripheus's saved soul, as the context suggests.
This passage has understandably caused a certain amount of debate (for a summary, see Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 76-78]). Its key phrase (“la 'mprenta / de l'etterno piacere”) either means that the Eagle bears the imprint of God's will or is the imprint of His beauty. Most of the commentators, including Scartazzini, are of the first persuasion. However, when speaking of the etterno piacere of God, Dante elsewhere seems to refer to His everlasting beauty (see John Took [“L'etterno piacer”: Aesthetic Ideas in Dante {Oxford: Clarendon, 1984}, pp. 10-11, 17-22]; and see the note to Par. XVIII.16-18). The phrase also occurs in Purgatorio XXIX.32 and Paradiso XVIII.16. In addition, in Paradiso the word piacere, standing alone and referring to God, frequently seems to indicate His beauty (see Par. XXVII.95, XXXII.65, and XXXIII.33). And so we have translated the phrase, if gingerly, as we have. This is a possible reading, but not a certain one.
Beginning with Torraca (comm. to vv. 73-75), quite a few commentators have cited a Provençal source, a poem by Bernart de Ventadorn, Can vei la lauzeta mover (When I see the lark [beat its wings]); but see the furious reaction against such “incorrect pedantry” by Porena (comm. to vv. 73-75), insisting that the resemblances are only coincidental.
John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 73-78) is alert to the charming pun available in the name of the bird (allodetta, lark). He puts Latin words into its beak: “Surge, Deum lauda, iam lux est, cantat alauda” ('Arise, praise God, for it is light,' sings the lark [italics added, even though John's play on words is lost in English]).
This simple comparison, less developed than a “classical” simile, makes the heavy question within Dante evident to the souls configuring the Eagle. Despite knowing that, he nonetheless bursts out in amazement and perplexity. We may need to remind ourselves that for eighty-five cantos the protagonist has resisted the notion that virtuous pagans should be condemned to Hell. Then the Eagle insisted on that harsh truth in Canto XIX. And now that same Eagle tells Dante that two of the greatest souls that produce his shape are saved pagans. It is small wonder the protagonist is both amazed and perplexed.
Tozer (comm. to this tercet) explains the passage as follows: “The metaphor is from coloured glass, the reference being to 'coated' glass, i.e. white glass coated with a coloured film on one side only. As this colour could be clearly seen through the glass, so the spirits could look through Dante's mind, and see the doubt within it.”
The Eagle, its eye more ardent, acknowledges the protagonist's confusion and prepares to explain its causes.
Commentators, beginning with Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 91-92) - and none who follow him give him credit, as it so very often true – suggest the trace here of Aquinas's distinction between cognitio sensitiva and cognitio intellectiva (ST II-II, q. 8, a. 1), that is, between knowledge based on sense perception and that based on reason, penetrating to the true meaning of phenomena.
The word quiditate is a Scholastic term for “essence.”
Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 91-92) deals with the Latinism prome as meaning “extract,” “draw out,” that is, as one grasps the essence of a concept.
See Matthew 11:12: “Regnum caelorum vim patitur, et violenti rapiunt illud” (the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away [italics added]) – in these cases at the behest of the hopeful prayers of Pope Gregory and the ardent affection of Ripheus. As we will see (vv. 108, 121), the virtues of Hope and Love will be specifically aligned with the salvations of Trajan and of Ripheus, respectively.
Rhyme may have forced Dante to use a Provençalism, sobranza (overcomes, conquers), but he seems to welcome the excuse, as his project for the language of the Commedia is inclusive rather than exclusive. In De vulgari eloquentia (I.xi.6) he first uses the image of the sieve (it will recur three times in the work) for the filtering agent that accounts for a certain “purity” of the lofty style. Montaigne's “fricasee” set to simmering, into which he throws any and all tasty bits, seems the better image for this great poem, which excludes nothing except incompetence.
The chiasmus (vince, vinta; vinta, vince) underlines the power of the paradox: God wills to be conquered and thus conquers.
This tercet is built on still another chiasmus: Trajan, Ripheus; Christ to come, Christ come.
As opposed to a more comfortable understanding, in other words, that Trajan and (more pointedly) Ripheus had been won to the God of the Christians through implicit faith (see Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 2, a. 7), Dante insists that he believes that we believe that they believed explicitly in Christ, in Trajan's case (less difficult to accept, but involving a major miracle [see vv. 106-117], after the fact; in Ripheus's, before [see vv. 118-129]). And so they died, not as unbelievers, but as full-fledged Christians. The trick here is to add a disclaimer for Trajan (he died a Christian only when he died a second time) and to swallow hard at the claim made on behalf of Ripheus.
The feet of Jesus, transfixed to the cross by a single spike, offered one of the most piteous physical images drawn from the Passion. See, for example, Bonvesin de la Riva's De scriptura rubra in his Libro de le tre scritture, vv. 153-170 (cited by Manuele Gragnolati [Experiencing the Afterlife {Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005}], pp. 95-96; and see p. 231, n. 57), where, in eighteen verses, the word pei (Milanese dialect for “feet”) occurs six times in Bonvesin's bloody account of the Crucifixion.
The somewhat grudging authority of St. Thomas (ST Suppl., q. 71, a. 5) sustains the widely disseminated tale that Trajan was resuscitated by agency of Gregory's accepted prayers, believed in Christ, was baptized, died a second time, and was received in Heaven (see the note to Purg. X.73-93). Thomas, however, seems in fact to have been drawn to the story of Gregory's intervention on Trajan's behalf, referring to it in some six loci in his other works. See the indispensable online Corpus Thomisticum (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org), the project in which Father Roberto Busa convinced IBM to become his partner in 1946. Busa, who happens to be a modest person, would probably blush to hear himself described as “the father of computing for texts in the humanities,” but that is exactly what he is.
What is perhaps most surprising about Trajan's reward is that it was won not by his hope, but by that of Pope Gregory. We are reminded of the fate of those in Limbo (where, we assume, Trajan was first lodged), who exist (according to Inf. IV.42) longing for a better lot, if without hope for it (sanza speme). Gregory's hope “conquered” God on Trajan's behalf; the emperor himself, the evidence that we gather from Limbo would seem to assert, was hopeless.
Some early commentators (e.g., Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, comm. to these verses], John of Serravalle [comm. to vv. 31-36 and 127-129]) speak of the “baptism of fire” in those inspired by the Holy Spirit to love God perfectly. For Dante, Virgil's single word, iustissimus, seems to have been the key for this incredible invention. (For the centrality of justice to Dante's design, see the note to Inferno III.4.) Ripheus's conversion (brought on by his love of justice) also enjoys, in general but certainly not specifically, the potential authority of Thomas (ST II-II, q. 2, a. 7; III, q. 66, a. 11). But see André Pézard's perhaps over-ingenious bypassing of the many difficulties of finding justification for Dante's salvation of Virgil's dead warrior. For him (“Riphée ou la naissance d'un Mythe,” Revue des études italiennes 25 [1979]: 5-40) Ripheus represents a kind of answer to Adamic sinfulness, a form of Original Justice, as it were.
To Ripheus Virgil has dedicated a total of only five lines in the Aeneid; Dante doubles that (and then some) in this passage alone.
The word drittura is a hapax in the poem, but has a Dantean history before it puts in its appearance here, first in Convivio (IV.xvii.6), where, as rectitude, it is an attribute of the eleventh and final of Aristotle's moral virtues, Justice. For the hypothesis that Dante was planning to build the final eleven treatises of the unfinished Convivio in such a way as to reflect each of Aristotle's eleven moral virtues, see Hollander (Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], p. 49). (Mazzotta [“Dante and the Virtues of Exile,” Poetics Today 5 {1984}, p. 653] unaccountably makes the projected work one treatise shorter [fourteen] than Dante did [fifteen].) Drittura also appears in the exilic canzone, “Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute” (Rime CIV.35), where she seems as much a despised exile from Florence as does the poet.
As provocation, this detail is over the top. Nonetheless, the commentators are amazingly willing to accept what Dante says without protest. The whole story of Ripheus is nothing less than outrageous, and now the poet tops it off by turning him, as Poletto (comm. to vv. 124-126) had the strength of mind to observe, into a sort of Trojan St. Paul. “Why not?” Dante seems to have thought; if he became a Christian, he must have hated those shoddy pagan gods and the religious practices of his fellow pagans; doesn't that makes sense? And so Ripheus is presented as having preached against those practices. Is Dante having fun with us? And at Virgil's expense? Perhaps. (It would not be the only time.)
The three ladies are obviously the three theological virtues, whom we saw at the right wheel of the chariot of the Church Triumphant in Purgatorio XXIX.121-129. In what sense did they “serve to baptize” Ripheus? Since that ritual was not available to him, and since he was born with original sin upon him, he required something in its place. Somehow he acquired the three theological virtues and these brought him to Christ. Dante's text here may reflect a passage in St. Augustine's De doctrina christiana (I.xxxix.43): “Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them, does not need the Scriptures except for the instruction of others” (tr. D.W. Robertson, Jr.).
The date of the fall of Troy was given in at least one universal history (that of Petavius) as 1184 B.C.; citation of Petavius may be found in a number of commentaries, beginning with Lombardi (comm. to this tercet).
The fourth and final section of this canto addresses itself to a question that has always troubled Christians (as is focally shown in many of the writings of Augustine): predestination. Reiterating Thomas's criticism of our all-too-human desire to speculate upon the likely salvation or damnation of our neighbors (Par. XIII.139-142), the Eagle now portrays as cosmic the unknowing that surrounds God's purpose. Not even the immortal just souls in the Empyrean know all the Elect (see verse 72 for the less dramatic notice of the shortness of mortal vision in this regard). This comes as something of a surprise, as Torquato Tasso noted (comm. to vv. 133-135), since everything we have previously learned about this topic would clearly seem to indicate that the saved know, in God, all things that exist (see, inter alia, Par. V.4-6, VIII.85-90, IX.73-75, XV.49-51, XVII.13-18, and XIX.28-30, as well as the notes to Par. IV.16-18 and XIV.7-9); however, Dante's enthusiasm for the subject seems to have led him into at least a possible self-contradiction, since what is said here denies that even the blessed can have complete knowledge of what God has in His mind. Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005], passim) argues that after the general resurrection God's thought will be knowable by all the saved., since the poet has created no mechanism for latter-day salvations specifically set aside for virtuous non-Christians, though, of course, all things are possible in God (and thus one is free to intuit the salvation of one's favorite Martian or a particularly sympathetic Buddhist maiden aunt). On this vexed passage see Trottmann (“Communion des saints et jugement dernier dans les chants XIX-XX du Paradis,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], pp. 191-97) and Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife), pp. 162-63, arguing that the “surprises” include not only the identity of those not yet saved, but of some unbaptized pagans already saved. This argument is not on solid ground, at least not in its second instantiation, since we assume that both Trajan and Ripheus are known to all the blessed and that, as a result, all other “converted” pagans must be, too. As for its first part, Dante's apparent assertion that the blessed do not know the identities of those not yet saved, it certainly seems to violate the principle that whatever God knows the saved can read in His mind, as Tasso noted. From Paradiso XV.49-51 we have learned that Cacciaguida knew that Dante was inscribed in the Book of Life. And so we must wonder how thoroughly the poet held to this apparent revision of his earlier view, as much as we must honor it. Such self-contradictions are only to be expected, particularly in the work of a poet, since we can find even practitioners of supposedly systematic theology (or philosophy) at times contradicting themselves. If we allow even St. Thomas, a rigorist if ever there were one, an occasional fairly clamorous denial of a previous position, we should be aware that a poet is (or may feel himself to be) less constrained by such demands than is a theologian or a philosopher.
Venturi (comm. to verse 135) was apparently the first commentator to refer to part of the collecta (“collect” – originally a short prayer recited to Christians gathered [“collected”] for a service) known as “the Collect for the living and the dead”: “Deus, cui soli cognitus est numerus electorum in superna felicitate locandus” (God, to whom alone is known the number of the elect that is to be set in supernal bliss). This prayer, once it was cited by Venturi, had a certain afterlife in the commentators right through the nineteenth century, but for some reason has been allowed to vanish in our time. Nonetheless, while it does give us an official teaching of the Church regarding the limits of the knowledge of those in the Empyrean, it certainly is at odds with what the poem has led us to expect, as Tasso observed. As Carroll (comm. to vv. 130-132) pointed out, reference to this particular “collect” found its way to Thomas's greatest work: “In Summa, I, q. xxiii, a. 7, Aquinas says: 'Some say that out of mankind as many will be saved as angels fell; some, as many as angels remained; some as many as angels fell, and over and above, as many as the number of angels created. But it is better to say that to God alone is known the number of the elect who are to be set in supernal bliss' (as the Collecta pro vivis ac defunctis has it).” The teaching embedded in this prayer thus probably enjoyed a certain authority in Dante's eyes.
The Eagle once again, concluding its presence in the poem, speaks as a plural entity, in the collective voice of the individual souls of the just. It seems clear that a listener cannot tell from the quality of the speech whether the Eagle is speaking as a composite or as a gathering of individuals except from its first-person grammatical markers, singular or plural.
Thus were Dante's weak eyes strengthened by Justice (cf. the Eagle's very first words at Par. XIX.13, speaking in the first-person singular: “Per esser giusto e pio” [For being just and merciful]).
The phrase “soave medicina” (sweet medication) recalls the medicina of Inferno XXXI.3. It also probably refers to the “pestilence” the protagonist's eyes had encountered in the counterpoised object of vision to this briefer catalogue of the justly saved, the group of twelve damned rulers found in Canto XIX. As Marino Barchiesi (“Catarsi classica e 'medicina' dantesca, Dal canto XX dell'Inferno,” Letture classensi 4 [1973], pp. 73-74) realized, it also recalls the “disease” of sympathy for classical divination demonstrated by the protagonist in Inferno XX. And, in this vein, see Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], p. 199): “The disease which has been cured in Paradiso XX revealed its etiology in Inferno XX.”
This is the final simile of the canto and of this simile-filled heaven (there are twelve in Cantos XVIII-XX, four in each): As a lutenist accompanies a singer, Trajan and Ripheus move their flames, as though in accompaniment, to the Eagle's words.
The similes in the heaven of Jupiter are disposed as follows: Par. XVIII.58-63, XVIII.64-69, XVIII.73-78, XVIII.100-105; XIX.19-21, XIX.34-39, XIX.91-96, XIX.97-99; XX.1-12, XX.22-27, XX.73-78, XX.142-148.
Whatever Dante's intention, the fact that the two “eyes” blinking as one are the “Christians” Trajan and Ripheus turns these verses into one of the most notable authorial winks in all of literature. See Trottmann (“Communion des saints et jugement dernier dans les chants XIX-XX du Paradis,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], p. 197) for a similar suggestion.
This is perhaps the fitting context for a recognition of the extraordinary panoply of references to pagans in this canticle - two fewer than an even hundred. Here is, first, an alphabetical list of names of pagans in Paradiso (with reference only to first appearances):
IV.103 Alcmaeon
V.69 Agamemnon
IV.104 Amphiaraus
XI.68 Amyclas
XV.25 Anchises
I.13 Apollo
XXXI.33 Arcas
XIII.14 Ariadne
VIII.120 Aristotle
VI.73 Augustus
XXX.7 Aurora
XIII.25 Bacchus
IX.97 Belus
XXVIII.81 Boreas
VI.44 Brennus
VI.74 Brutus
XIII.125 Bryson
VI.74 Cassius
VI.46 Cincinnatus
VI.76 Cleopatra
XVII.1 Clymene
XV.129 Cornelia
IX.98 Creusa
VIII.7 Cupid
VIII.125 Daedalus
I.33 Daphne
VI.47 the Decii
IX.101 Demophoön
VI.94 Desiderius
X.67 Diana
VIII.9 Dido
VIII.7 Dïone
XII.14 Eco
IV.104 Eryphile
XXVII.84 Europa
VIII.69 Eurus
VI.47 the Fabii
I.68 Glaucus
VI.50 Hannibal
VI.68 Hector
XXXI.32 Helice
XIV.96 Helios
IX.101 Hercules
XI.4 Hippocrates
XVII.46 Hippolytus
XXII.142 Hyperion
VIII.126 Icarus
IX.102 Iole
V.70 Iphigenia
XII.12 Iris
VI.81 Janus
II.18 Jason
VI.70 Juba
VI.57 Julius Caesar
XII.12 Juno
IV.62 Jupiter
X.67 Latona
VI.3 Lavinia
XXVII.98 Leda
VI.41 Lucretia
XXII.144 Maia
IV.63 Mars
I.20 Marsyas
XIII.125 Melissus
IV.63 Mercury
II.8 Minerva
XIII.14 Minos
IV.84 Mucius Scaevola
XXIII.56 the Muses
III.18 Narcissus
XXXIII.96 Neptune
XIII.125 Parmenides
XVII.47 Phaedra
XVII.3 Phaeton
IX.100 Phyllis
IV.24 Plato
XXIII.56 Polyhymnia
VI.53 Pompey
VI.69 Ptolemy
VI.44 Pyrrhus
VIII.131 Romulus
XV.107 Sardanapalus
XXI.26 Saturn
VI.53 Scipio
XXI.6 Semele
VIII.124 Solon
XXXIII.66 the Sibyl
IX.98 Sychaeus
VI.86 Tiberius
IV.49 Timaeus
VI.92 Titus
VI.46 Torquatus
VIII.70 Typhon
XXVII.83 Ulysses
VIII.2 Venus
VIII.124 Xerxes
XII.47 Zephyr.
The second version of this material is a chronological listing of each pagan presence in Paradiso; multiple presences are represented after the first, as in the first instance below, Apollo:
canto.verse name text
I.13 Apollo O good Apollo, for this last labor
I.32 “ making the Delphic god rejoice
II.8 ” Apollo is my steersman
XIII.25 “ praises not of Bacchus nor of Paean
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
I.20 Marsyas when you drew out Marsyas
I.33 Daphne the Peneian bough
I.68 Glaucus I was changed within, / as Glaucus was
II.8 Minerva Minerva fills my sails
II.18 Jason saw Jason had become a ploughman
XXV.7 “ with another fleece
XXXIII.96 ” Neptune at the Argo's shadow stared
III.18 Narcissus which inflamed a man to love a fountain
IV.24 Plato in agreement with Platonic teaching
IV.49 Timaeus what Timaeus has to say about the souls
IV.62 Jupiter naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
XVIII.70 “ that torch of Jupiter
XXII.145 ” Jove between his father and his son
XXVII.14 “ if he and Mars were birds
IV.63 Mercury naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
IV.63 Mars naming stars Jupiter, Mercury and Mars
VIII.132 ” so rude a father he is ascribed to Mars
XVI.47 “ dwelling between Mars and the Baptist
XVI.145 ” that shattered stone
XXII.146 “ Jove between his father and his son
XXVII.14 ” if he and Mars were birds
IV.84 Mucius Scaevola made Mucius harsh to his own hand
IV.103 Alcmaeon as Alcmaeon, exhorted by his father
IV.104 Amphiaraus as Alcmaeon, exhorted by his father
IV.104 Eryphile slew his own mother
V.69 Agamemnon that great leader of the Greeks
V.70 Iphigenia who made Iphigenia lament
VI.3 Aeneas that ancient who took Lavinia to wife
XV.27 “ when in Elysium he knew his son
VI.3 Lavinia that ancient who took Lavinia to wife
VI.36 Pallas when Pallas gave his life
VI.39 the Horatii three made war on three
VI.39 the Curiatiia three made war on three
VI.41 Lucretia Sabine women to Lucretia's woes
VI.44 Brennus Romans against Brennus, against Pyrrhus
VI.44 Pyrrhus Romans against Brennus, against Pyrrhus
VI.46 Torquatus Torquatus
VI.46 Cincinnatus Quintius–named / for his unkempt locks
XV.129 ” as now would Cincinnatus or Cornelia
VI.47 the Decii the Decii
VI.47 the Fabii the Fabii
VI.50 Hannibal when Arabs / followed after Hannibal
VI.53 Scipio youthful Scipio
XXVII.61 “ the deeds of Scipio / preserved in Rome
VI.53 Pompey Pompey
VI.72 ” it heard the sound of Pompey's trumpet
VI.57 Julius Caesar Caesar, by the will of Rome, laid hold
XI.69 “ the voice of him
VI.68 Hector the place where Hector lies
VI.69 Ptolemy it roused itself–at Ptolemy's expense
VI.70 Juba it fell like lightning on Juba
VI.73 Augustus the one who bore it next
VI.74 Brutus Brutus and Cassius bark in Hell
VI.74 Cassius Brutus and Cassius bark in Hell
VI.76 Cleopatra wretched Cleopatra still weeps
VI.81 Janus the doors of Janus' shrine were locked
VI.86 Tiberius the third of the Caesars
VI.92 Titus it raced with Titus, doing vengeance
VI.94 Desiderius when Lombard tooth bit Holy Church
VIII.2 Venus the fair one of Cypress
VIII.7 Dïone honored Dïone, and Cupid too
XXII.144 ” saw how Maia and Dïone move
VIII.7 Cupid honored Dïone and Cupid too
VIII.9 Dido how once he sat in Dido's lap
IX.97 “ the daughter of Belus was no more aflame
VIII.69 Eurus the bay most vexed by the Sirocco
VIII.70 Typhon darkened not by Typhon
VIII.120 Aristotle not if your master is correct in this
VIII.124 Solon one is born a Solon and another Xerxes
VIII.124 Xerxes one is born a Solon and another Xerxes
VIII.125 Daedalus the man / who flew up through the air
VIII.126 Icarus and lost his son
VIII.131 Romulus Quirinus... ascribed to Mars
IX.97 Belus the daughter of Belus was no more aflame
IX.98 Sychaeus bringing grief to Sychaeus and to Creusa
IX.98 Creusa bringing grief to Sychaeus and to Creusa
IX.100 Phyllis she of Rhodope, who was deceived
IX.101 Demophoön deceived by Demophoön
IX.101 Hercules nor Alcides, when he embraced
IX.102 Iole when he embraced Iole in his heart
X.67 Diana Latona's daughter
XXII.139 ” I saw Latona's daughter shining bright
XXIII.26 “ Trivia smiles among the eternal nymphs
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
X.67 Latona we sometimes see Latona's daughter
XXII.139 “ the daughter of Latona
XXIX.1 ” the two offspring of Latona
XI.4 Hippocrates another the Hippocratic Aphorisms
XI.68 Amyclas she stood / unmoved, with Amyclas
XII.2 Juno when Juno gives the order to her handmaid
XXVIII.32 “ the messenger of Juno, in full circle,
XII.2 Iris when Juno gives the order to her handmaid
XXVIII.32 ” the messenger of Juno, in full circle,
XXXIII.118 “ as rainbow is by rainbow
XII.14 Eco that wandering nymph
XII.47 Zephyr where gentle Zephyr's breath
XIII.14 Minos Minos' daughter when she felt the chill
XIII.14 Ariadne Minos' daughter when she felt the chill
XIII.25 Bacchus praises not of Bacchus nor of Paean
XIII.125 Parmenides Parmenides
XIII.125 Melissus Melissus
XIII.125 Bryson Bryson
XV.25 Anchises with such affection did Anchises' shade
XIX.132 ” where the long life of Anchises had its end
XV.26 Virgil if our greatest muse deserves belief
XVII.19 “ I was still in Virgil's company
XXVI.118 ” place from which your lady sent down Virgil
XV.107 Sardanapalus nor had Sardanapalus as yet arrived
XV.129 Cornelia as now would Cincinnatus or Cornelia
XVII.1 Clymene who came to Clymene to cast out doubt
XVII.3 Phaeton who... keeps fathers cautious with their sons
XXXI.125 “ the shaft of Phaeton's poorly guided car
XVII.46 Hippolytus as Hippolytus set forth from Athens
XVII.47 Phaedra his cruel and perfidious stepmother
XVIII.82 one of the Muses O divine Pegasean
XXIII.56 the Muses Polyhymnia and her sisters nurtured
XXI.6 Semele what Semele became when... turned to ashes
XXI.26 Saturn beneath whose rule all wickedness lay dead
XXII.146 ” Jove between his father and his son
XXII.142 Hyperion the visage of your son, Hyperion, I endured
XXII.144 Maia saw how Maia and Dïone move
XXIII.56 Polyhymnia Polyhymnia and her sisters nurtured
XXVII.83 Ulysses the mad track of Ulysses
XXVII.84 Europa where Europa made sweet burden of herself
XXVII.98 Leda the fair nest of Leda
XXVIII.81 Boreas when Boreas / blows from his gentler cheek
XXX.7 Aurora that brightest handmaid of the sun
XXXI.32 Helice which Helice covers every day
XXXI.33 Arcas wheeling with her son
XXXIII.66 the Sibyl the Sibyl's messages were lost
XXXIII.96 Neptune Neptune at the Argo's shadow stared
–-
And two who, we might insist, were in fact pagans but are Christians
in the poem:
XX.44 Trajan consoled the widow when she lost her son
XX.68 Ripheus that Trojan Ripheus should be the fifth
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