Poscia che 'ncontro a la vita presente
d'i miseri mortali aperse 'l vero
quella che 'mparadisa la mia mente,
come in lo specchio fiamma di doppiero
vede colui che se n'alluma retro,
prima che l'abbia in vista o in pensiero,
e sé rivolge per veder se 'l vetro
li dice il vero, e vede ch'el s'accorda
con esso come nota con suo metro;
così la mia memoria si ricorda
ch'io feci riguardando ne' belli occhi
onde a pigliarmi fece Amor la corda.
E com' io mi rivolsi e furon tocchi
li miei da ciò che pare in quel volume,
quandunque nel suo giro ben s'adocchi,
un punto vidi che raggiava lume
acuto sì, che 'l viso ch'elli affoca
chiuder conviensi per lo forte acume;
e quale stella par quinci più poca,
parrebbe luna, locata con esso
come stella con stella si collòca.
Forse cotanto quanto pare appresso
alo cigner la luce che 'l dipigne
quando 'l vapor che 'l porta più è spesso,
distante intorno al punto un cerchio d'igne
si girava sì ratto, ch'avria vinto
quel moto che più tosto il mondo cigne;
e questo era d'un altro circumcinto,
e quel dal terzo, e 'l terzo poi dal quarto,
dal quinto il quarto, e poi dal sesto il quinto.
Sopra seguiva il settimo sì sparto
già di larghezza, che 'l messo di Iuno
intero a contenerlo sarebbe arto.
Così l'ottavo e 'l nono; e ciascheduno
più tardo si movea, secondo ch'era
in numero distante più da l'uno;
e quello avea la fiamma più sincera
cui men distava la favilla pura,
credo, però che più di lei s'invera.
La donna mia, che mi vedëa in cura
forte sospeso, disse: “Da quel punto
depende il cielo e tutta la natura.
Mira quel cerchio che più li è congiunto;
e sappi che 'l suo muovere è sì tosto
per l'affocato amore ond' elli è punto.”
E io a lei: “Se 'l mondo fosse posto
con l'ordine ch'io veggio in quelle rote,
sazio m'avrebbe ciò che m'è proposto;
ma nel mondo sensibile si puote
veder le volte tanto più divine,
quant' elle son dal centro più remote.
Onde, se 'l mio disir dee aver fine
in questo miro e angelico templo
che solo amore e luce ha per confine,
udir convienmi ancor come l'essemplo
e l'essemplare non vanno d'un modo,
ché io per me indarno a ciò contemplo.”
“Se li tuoi diti non sono a tal nodo
sufficïenti, non è maraviglia:
tanto, per non tentare, è fatto sodo!”
Così la donna mia; poi disse: “Piglia
quel ch'io ti dicerò, se vuo' saziarti;
e intorno da esso t'assottiglia.
Li cerchi corporai sono ampi e arti
secondo il più e 'l men de la virtute
che si distende per tutte lor parti.
Maggior bontà vuol far maggior salute;
maggior salute maggior corpo cape,
s'elli ha le parti igualmente compiute.
Dunque costui che tutto quanto rape
l'altro universo seco, corrisponde
al cerchio che più ama e che più sape:
per che, se tu a la virtù circonde
la tua misura, non a la parvenza
de le sustanze che t'appaion tonde,
tu vederai mirabil consequenza
di maggio a più e di minore a meno,
in ciascun cielo, a sua intelligenza.”
Come rimane splendido e sereno
l'emisperio de l'aere, quando soffia
Borea da quella guancia ond' è più leno,
per che si purga e risolve la roffia
che pria turbava, sì che 'l ciel ne ride
con le bellezze d'ogne sua paroffia;
così fec'ïo, poi che mi provide
la donna mia del suo risponder chiaro,
e come stella in cielo il ver si vide.
E poi che le parole sue restaro,
non altrimenti ferro disfavilla
che bolle, come i cerchi sfavillaro.
L'incendio suo seguiva ogne scintilla;
ed eran tante, che 'l numero loro
più che 'l doppiar de li scacchi s'inmilla.
Io sentiva osannar di coro in coro
al punto fisso che li tiene a li ubi,
e terrà sempre, ne' quai sempre fuoro.
E quella che vedëa i pensier dubi
ne la mia mente, disse: “I cerchi primi
t'hanno mostrato Serafi e Cherubi.
Così veloci seguono i suoi vimi,
per somigliarsi al punto quanto ponno;
e posson quanto a veder son soblimi.
Quelli altri amori che 'ntorno li vonno,
si chiaman Troni del divino aspetto,
per che 'l primo ternaro terminonno;
e dei saper che tutti hanno diletto
quanto la sua veduta si profonda
nel vero in che si queta ogne intelletto.
Quinci si può veder come si fonda
l'esser beato ne l'atto che vede,
non in quel ch'ama, che poscia seconda;
e del vedere è misura mercede,
che grazia partorisce e buona voglia:
così di grado in grado si procede.
L'altro ternaro, che così germoglia
in questa primavera sempiterna
che notturno Arïete non dispoglia,
perpetüalemente 'Osanna' sberna
con tre melode, che suonano in tree
ordini di letizia onde s'interna.
In essa gerarcia son l'altre dee:
prima Dominazioni, e poi Virtudi;
l'ordine terzo di Podestadi èe.
Poscia ne' due penultimi tripudi
Principati e Arcangeli si girano;
l'ultimo è tutto d'Angelici ludi.
Questi ordini di sù tutti s'ammirano,
e di giù vincon sì, che verso Dio
tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano.
E Dïonisio con tanto disio
a contemplar questi ordini si mise,
che li nomò e distinse com' io.
Ma Gregorio da lui poi si divise;
onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse
in questo ciel, di sé medesmo rise.
E se tanto secreto ver proferse
mortale in terra, non voglio ch'ammiri:
ché chi 'l vide qua sù gliel discoperse
con altro assai del ver di questi giri.”
After the truth against the present life
Of miserable mortals was unfolded
By her who doth imparadise my mind,
As in a looking-glass a taper's flame
He sees who from behind is lighted by it,
Before he has it in his sight or thought,
And turns him round to see if so the glass
Tell him the truth, and sees that it accords
Therewith as doth a music with its metre,
In similar wise my memory recollecteth
That I did, looking into those fair eyes,
Of which Love made the springes to ensnare me.
And as I turned me round, and mine were touched
By that which is apparent in that volume,
Whenever on its gyre we gaze intent,
A point beheld I, that was raying out
Light so acute, the sight which it enkindles
Must close perforce before such great acuteness.
And whatsoever star seems smallest here
Would seem to be a moon, if placed beside it.
As one star with another star is placed.
Perhaps at such a distance as appears
A halo cincturing the light that paints it,
When densest is the vapour that sustains it,
Thus distant round the point a circle of fire
So swiftly whirled, that it would have surpassed
Whatever motion soonest girds the world;
And this was by another circumcinct,
That by a third, the third then by a fourth,
By a fifth the fourth, and then by a sixth the fifth;
The seventh followed thereupon in width
So ample now, that Juno's messenger
Entire would be too narrow to contain it.
Even so the eighth and ninth; and every one
More slowly moved, according as it was
In number distant farther from the first.
And that one had its flame most crystalline
From which less distant was the stainless spark,
I think because more with its truth imbued.
My Lady, who in my anxiety
Beheld me much perplexed, said: "From that point
Dependent is the heaven and nature all.
Behold that circle most conjoined to it,
And know thou, that its motion is so swift
Through burning love whereby it is spurred on."
And I to her: "If the world were arranged
In the order which I see in yonder wheels,
What's set before me would have satisfied me;
But in the world of sense we can perceive
That evermore the circles are diviner
As they are from the centre more remote
Wherefore if my desire is to be ended
In this miraculous and angelic temple,
That has for confines only love and light,
To hear behoves me still how the example
And the exemplar go not in one fashion,
Since for myself in vain I contemplate it."
"If thine own fingers unto such a knot
Be insufficient, it is no great wonder,
So hard hath it become for want of trying."
My Lady thus; then said she: "Do thou take
What I shall tell thee, if thou wouldst be sated,
And exercise on that thy subtlety.
The circles corporal are wide and narrow
According to the more or less of virtue
Which is distributed through all their parts.
The greater goodness works the greater weal,
The greater weal the greater body holds,
If perfect equally are all its parts.
Therefore this one which sweeps along with it
The universe sublime, doth correspond
Unto the circle which most loves and knows.
On which account, if thou unto the virtue
Apply thy measure, not to the appearance
Of substances that unto thee seem round,
Thou wilt behold a marvellous agreement,
Of more to greater, and of less to smaller,
In every heaven, with its Intelligence."
Even as remaineth splendid and serene
The hemisphere of air, when Boreas
Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest,
Because is purified and resolved the rack
That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs
With all the beauties of its pageantry;
Thus did I likewise, after that my Lady
Had me provided with her clear response,
And like a star in heaven the truth was seen.
And soon as to a stop her words had come,
Not otherwise does iron scintillate
When molten, than those circles scintillated.
Their coruscation all the sparks repeated,
And they so many were, their number makes
More millions than the doubling of the chess.
I heard them sing hosanna choir by choir
To the fixed point which holds them at the 'Ubi,'
And ever will, where they have ever been.
And she, who saw the dubious meditations
Within my mind, "The primal circles," said,
"Have shown thee Seraphim and Cherubim.
Thus rapidly they follow their own bonds,
To be as like the point as most they can,
And can as far as they are high in vision.
Those other Loves, that round about them go,
Thrones of the countenance divine are called,
Because they terminate the primal Triad.
And thou shouldst know that they all have delight
As much as their own vision penetrates
The Truth, in which all intellect finds rest.
From this it may be seen how blessedness
Is founded in the faculty which sees,
And not in that which loves, and follows next;
And of this seeing merit is the measure,
Which is brought forth by grace, and by good will;
Thus on from grade to grade doth it proceed.
The second Triad, which is germinating
In such wise in this sempiternal spring,
That no nocturnal Aries despoils,
Perpetually hosanna warbles forth
With threefold melody, that sounds in three
Orders of joy, with which it is intrined.
The three Divine are in this hierarchy,
First the Dominions, and the Virtues next;
And the third order is that of the Powers.
Then in the dances twain penultimate
The Principalities and Archangels wheel;
The last is wholly of angelic sports.
These orders upward all of them are gazing,
And downward so prevail, that unto God
They all attracted are and all attract.
And Dionysius with so great desire
To contemplate these Orders set himself,
He named them and distinguished them as I do.
But Gregory afterwards dissented from him;
Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes
Within this heaven, he at himself did smile.
And if so much of secret truth a mortal
Proffered on earth, I would not have thee marvel,
For he who saw it here revealed it to him,
With much more of the truth about these circles."
This retrospective opening tercet reminds us that, if humanity is in parlous condition (cf. Par. XXVII.127-141, Beatrice's lament for our lost innocence), the protagonist's guide has prophesied better times to come (Par. XXVII.142-148). Dante's gaze, in this canto, will also reflect a double focus, first fixing on Beatrice's mirroring eyes, and then behind him on what they reflect, God and the angels, themselves as seen, we are perhaps to understand, reflected on the convex outer surface of the Crystalline Sphere (see the note to vv. 13-15).
Gianfranco Contini (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1002) insists on the importance of the word “vero” (true) and the concept of truthfulness to this canto; it is, in his opinion, its “parola chiave”; indeed a major portion of his lectura (pp. 1002-12) is a meditation in this vein.
See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse), who claim that we may read Beatrice here either allegorically (as “Theology”) or literally (as herself). They, doubtless wisely, prefer the second understanding; nonetheless, some readers may find it a bit disquieting to discover intelligent critics even raising the possibility, so near the final vision, of “poets' allegory” being used as an interpretive tool for what the poet presents as being both actual and experienced.
This return to the conditions of the experiment alluded to in the second canto (see the note to Par. II.94-105) shows how captious some readers are in their insistence that Dante deliberately presents that experiment as being literally impossible. Such a reader will once again object that, if the flame is behind the subject's back, it cannot be reflected in a mirror set directly in front of him. And once again a less positivistic reader will realize that, if the flame is, for instance, only a few centimeters above the observer's head (as it is in the reproduction of a fifteenth-century illustration of the experiment [see Patrick Boyde, “L'esegesi di Dante e la scienza,” in Dante e la scienza, ed. P. Boyde and V. Russo {Ravenna: Longo, 1995}, p. 15]), the result will be as Dante says. In any case, this is a poem and not a physics lab. And yet we should realize that Dante only says “behind” (dopo, retro) the observer, without in any way suggesting that the flame might not be visible from a point directly in front of him.
A doplerus was a torch formed by twisting two candles together. Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 433) adduces Guinizzelli's previous use (in the third stanza of his canzone “Al cor gentil,” well known to Dante) of a slightly different Italian form, doplero.
See Bosco/Reggio (comm. ad loc.). It is their suggestion that the only exact 'fit' in this comparison results from references to a nota that is sung and also heard in the instrumental accompaniment (metro). Aside from Gabriele (comm. v. 9), who shrugs the verse away as follows: «è bruttissima comparatione questa», most commentators struggle with these lines, until Porena (comm. ad loc.) sees that all previous attempts at suggesting resemblance (e.g., singing with its accompaniment, song with its meter, words with their music, and any others) are not as precise as the image to which this musical analogue is likened, the reflection of a thing in a mirror. The proposal of Bosco/Reggio, however, may have overcome his objection.
Regina Psaki (“Paradiso XXVIII,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 426) is eloquent defending Dante's right to present Beatrice's sexual being as somehow still being a part of her attraction for him. The problem with her argument is that this text is clearly past-oriented, the verb fece (past definite) in evident contrast with the present tense of Dante's coinage imparadisa (imparadises). The girl toward whom he had been drawn sexually had turned out to be valuable for other and (in this poem) better reasons. One wants to distance oneself both from the prudes who, as Psaki rightly notes, are offended at the clear sexual nature of his memory of his first affections, and from Psaki, who forgets that that was then and this is now.
For this use of the word corda (cord, here translated “snare”) as having only metaphorical valence as a “simbolo di virtù” (symbol of virtue), see Giorgio Padoan (“Il canto XXVIII del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 177n.). He says that this usage is found also at Inferno XVI.106 (the famous, or infamous, “cord” that holds Dante's garments together and is used by Virgil as an invitation and challenge to Geryon) and Purgatorio VII.114 (where Pedro III of Aragon is “girt with the cord of every virtue,” perhaps the only occurrence in which Padoan's formulation really works). However, it is not clear that the word in any of these appearances has only a metaphorical sense.
In the thirteen presences of the word corda in the poem, five times it refers to a bowstring; three times, to the strings of musical instruments; once, to the cords on a whip. That leaves one other form of corda that seems identical with (or at least highly similar to) Padoan's three: Paradiso XXVI.49, the cords (corde) of love that draw us after it. And that seems to be the same (or a closely related) meaning as is found here. For some reason, Padoan paid no attention to corde, the plural of corda, thus omitting four of its occurrences from his consideration.
Exactly what Dante sees reflected in Beatrice's eyes is a matter of considerable dispute, although some commentators have possibly begun to sever the Gordian knot. Torraca (comm. to this tercet) was perhaps the first to realize that God and his angels have not descended to this sphere from the Empyrean, if without specifying how it is exactly that they are seen here. Sapegno (comm. to vv. 13-16) improves that formulation, insisting that the protagonist sees God and the angels in the Empyrean through the perfectly transparent sphere of the Primum Mobile. This view has the benefit of keeping God and his angels where they belong (in the “tenth heaven”), but does not do very well by the poet's insistence that he saw them “in quel volume” (in [or “on”] that revolving sphere). The fullest and best discussion of the problem, one that is aware of the pitfalls into which all his precursors have slipped, is that of Siro Chimenz (comm. to this tercet). He gets all the details right, but in the end confesses that he simply cannot come up with a solution. Similarly, Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 434) gets to the nub of the issue, but then turns to an “allegorical” reading: This vision is the prefiguration of the one the protagonist will have in the Empyrean. True enough, but this solution ignores the physical reality on which the vision is based. See the note to the opening tercet of this canto for an attempt at a resolution: Dante portrays the surface of the Primum Mobile as where the highest realities of all, God and His angelic partners in creation, are visible. In support of this hypothesis, we might consider the fact that the introductory simile itself speaks of a reflection (in Beatrice's mirroring eyes). That, in turn, may be considered (if this hypothesis is correct) a reflection of a reflection. Possible confirmation is found in Paradiso XXX.106-108, where the Rose is presented as a self-reflection off the convex surface of the Primum Mobile.
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out that the commentators are confused by this apparently simple utterance. How can God and the angels be present in the Crystalline Sphere anytime one looks intently into it? It is not easy to see how or why they, Bosco/Reggio continue, would now or ever descend to this sphere (despite, they might have added, the descent of the Church Triumphant in Canto XXIII), nor how any other hypothesis might account for the apparition (e.g., a vision, an allegory, some sort of unusual perception). Our hypothesis is as follows: Dante looks from a mirror (Beatrice's eyes) into a second “mirror” (the convex surface of the Crystalline Sphere) where – first the Point and then the angelic circlings – are what he sees, painted, as it were, upon the surface of this Primum Mobile, the circling of which moves all the universe by its influence. Cf. Paradiso I.1-3: “La Gloria di colui che tutto move / per l'universo penetra, e risplende / in una parte più e meno altrove” (The glory of Him who moves all things / pervades the universe and shines / in one part more and in another less). God's glory is to be considered as completely penetrating and at the same time visible here, in the first and purest sphere (and reflected least clearly of all by earth, spiritually even “denser” than the Moon, itself a less than perfect mirror, as we learned in Paradiso II). Seeing this highest and purest “universe,” God and his angels, on the surface of the Crystalline Sphere, the protagonist experiences the “copy” as though it were actually present. For possible confirmation of this view, see the note to Paradiso XXX.103-108.
Attilio Mellone (“Il Canto XXVIII,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 733-34) demonstrates the congruence between the language of Alfragano (whose view is accepted and cited by Giovanni di Sacrobosco) and that of Dante here. Alfragano presents the earth as a tiny point in relation to even the smallest star that can be seen from earth. In Mellone's judgment, Dante has deliberately misapplied the astronomer's picture of our physical universe to God's spiritual one.
For the word volume, see the note to Paradiso XII.122. Here it evidently refers to the revolving sphere of the Primum Mobile itself, although that interpretation is not widely shared.
Mellone (“Il Canto XXVIII,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 734-35) politely but firmly (and correctly) dismisses those Dantists (most significantly Bruno Nardi) who believe that this giro is in fact found in (or simply is) the Empyrean, rather than referring to the Crystalline Sphere itself. In fact, we should probably understand that it is the Crystalline Sphere. It is true that Dante once refers to the Empyrean as a giro, but probably should not have (see the note to Par. IV.34).
The point is so terribly bright that whoever looks at it must close his eyes, so terribly small that the tiniest star in our sky would seem large as the Moon if placed beside it. On the relation between what Dante sees here and the earth-centered Aristotelian universe, see Alison Cornish (Reading Dante's Stars [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000]), pp. 108-18).
See the note to Paradiso III.51 for the apparent contradiction here, in that “the nine ranks of angels, each associated with one of the planetary spheres, rotat[e] around the point that represents the Godhead faster the nearer they are to that point,” while in the lower universe the spheres rotate more slowly the closer they are to their center. Beatrice determinedly resolves this issue at vv. 58-78.
Cf. Paradiso X.67-69, Dante's description of the Moon's halo.
In earth-centered astronomy, we learn that the Primum Mobile, the outermost sphere, rotates the fastest (see Par. XXVII.99). Now we learn that the first ring of angels, the Seraphim, rotates even more quickly. If we reflect only a moment, what seems an inverse relation between these two universes is in fact one of parallelism when considered from the perspective of the Empyrean's God-centered astronomy. In such a view, the closer a sphere is to God, the faster it rotates on its axis, no matter where that axis is.
Between vv. 99 and 126 we shall hear the names of the angelic bands in descending order, exactly as they are presented anonymously here. Looking back from there, we can add to the highest rank, the Seraphim, the names of Cherubim, Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, and Angels.
For mondo as meaning, not “world,” but “universe,” see (as Poletto [comm. to vv. 22-27] advises) Convivio III.v.3, where Dante rehearses the difference between these two meanings of the word.
Surely a highly competitive candidate in any annual “Worst Tercet in the Divine Comedy” contest, this terzina does possess the merit of a matter-of-fact tone that encourages the reader to take Dante's celestial reportage at face value by suggesting that a certain truth value lies in prosaic verse.
The seventh circle out from the Godhead is that of the Principalities, one of the orders that Dante had misplaced in the Convivio. See the note to Paradiso VIII.34-39. Were we able to see a rainbow as an entire circle, it still would not be large enough to contain the arc made by this angelic order. For the varying “size” of these angelic bands, see vv. 64-66. And for Dante's previous reference to Iris, see Paradiso XII.12 (and the note to Par. XII.11-18).
The eighth and ninth circles, containing respectively the Archangels and the Angels, round out the assemblage, each rotating still more slowly around the Point.
The Seraphim, associated with love, are here presented as associated with knowledge (they are “entruthed”). At verse 45, however, they will again be associated with love. And see the note to verse 72.
As was first pointed out by Daniello (comm. to vv. 40-45), this statement reflects a passage in Aristotle's Metaphysics. And see Singleton (comm. to these verses): “This clearly reflects Aristotle's statement in the Metaphysics summarizing his speculations on the unmoved mover as final cause and supreme good. In the Latin translation of Aristotle known to Thomas Aquinas this reads (Metaphys. XII, 7, 1072b): 'Ex tali igitur principio dependet caelum et natura.' (It is on such a principle, then, that the heavens and the natural world depend.) Aquinas, in his commentary on this point in the Metaphysics, states (Exp. Metaphys. XII, lect. 7, n. 2534): 'Hence it is on this principle, i.e., the first mover viewed as an end, that the heavens depend both for the eternality of their substance and the eternality of their motion. Consequently the whole of nature depends on such a principle, because all natural things depend on the heavens and on such motion as they possess.'”
See Cesare Vasoli (“Il canto II del Paradiso,” in Lectura Dantis Metelliana: I primi undici canti del “Paradiso” [Rome: Bulzoni, 1992 {1972}], pp. 44-50) for a discussion of the neoplatonizing elements in Dante's emanationist view of God's stellar creations and their effect on the lower world. This is, according to Vasoli, not really Aristotelian at all, but essentially and clearly neoplatonic, “closer to Avicenna's metaphysical imagination than to the texts of [Aristotle's] De caelo,...” (p. 47).
The point about this punto is that in the Empyrean it is both a mathematically unlocatable and tiny point, a speck, containing everything and/or an unimaginably large space in which everything that exists in the lower spheres – as a reflection of this point – truly exists. See Paradiso XXXIII.85-87.
Love may or may not “make the world go round,” but it certainly is the motive force of the universe. The Seraphim's love of God, Aristotle's unmoved mover, imparts motion to everything beneath Him. See Convivio II.iii.9.
These four tercets are the protagonist's only words in this sphere, and once again indicate that his intelligence is still earthbound. See Tozer's recapitulation (comm. to vv. 46-57): “Dante here states the difficulty which he feels, viz. that, whereas in the world of sense the spheres move more swiftly in proportion to their distance from the centre, i.e., the earth, the celestial circles which he is now contemplating move more swiftly in proportion to their nearness to the centre, i.e., God. As the latter of these systems is the pattern of the former, it would be natural that they should correspond.” That is to say, the physics of the highest heavens is counter to expectation; the smallest circle runs fastest, the most distant, slowest, the exact opposite of what the protagonist experienced as he moved upward and outward from the earth. As Beatrice will explain, that inverse ratio is puzzling only to an earthling; the spiritual physics that she explains is only (super)natural. See the note to vv. 25-27.
The protagonist refers to the Primum Mobile as a “temple” and to its “boundary,” the Empyrean, in terms of love and light, its two most notable characteristics, as we shall see.
See the note to Paradiso XXVII.109 for discussions of Dante's possible “anticipation” of modern cosmic theory, in particular, the hypersphere. He wants to know the relationship between the actual universe and the spiritual one.
Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 70-78) was the first among many to cite Boethius, Cons. Phil. (III.m9), already cited by Dante at Convivio III.ii.17; the last lines of this poem, a favorite during the Middle Ages, contain the phrase te cernere finis cited in the Epistle to Cangrande (Epist. XIII.89).
Dante, through Beatrice's characterization of his question, is revealed as not yet being capable of confronting the counter-intuitive relations between the physical universe and its spiritual substrate.
See Tozer's paraphrase (comm. to vv. 64-78): “The argument is as follows: – In the material universe the size of the spheres [i.e., their circumference] corresponds to the amount of divinely infused power (virtute) which they possess, and which is diffused by them throughout their whole range (per tutte lor parti), i.e., from sphere to sphere and to the earth (ll. 64-66). A larger amount of the benefits thus communicated and received below (maggior bontà) is the result of a larger amount of salutary influence (maggior salute), and the larger amount of salutary influence is contained in a larger body – supposing always that that body has complete receptive power throughout (ll. 67-69). Consequently, the ninth sphere, or Primum Mobile, which is the largest, is also the highest in its nature of all the spheres; and thus it corresponds to the first and highest circle of the angels, that of the Seraphim (ll. 70-72). Hence, if you estimate the angelic circles, not by their size, as you see them, but by the rank and relative power of the spirits which compose them, you will perceive that each material Heaven corresponds exactly to the Order of Intelligences that guides it, the wider sphere to the superior, the narrower to the inferior power.”
Those who believe that Dante is either “Franciscan,” privileging love over knowledge, or “Thomist,” placing knowledge higher than love, find here only one of several clear indications that he wants to combine intellect and will in a common activity, “loving-knowledge” or “knowing-love,” that bridges this divide. This has been apparent since we encountered a similar formulation lying behind the harmonious presentation of these two fraternal communities in the heaven of the Sun. And see the note to vv. 37-39.
The four main winds were, in Dante's day and for centuries after, portrayed as faces. Boreas, the north wind, blows straight ahead or from his left (from the northeast) or from his right (from the northwest). This last was considered the mildest of these three winds, swelling up his right cheek and clearing out the night sky. However, there is some disagreement on this point. Those who find Dante's source in the Tresor of Brunetto Latini (I.cvi.14) maintain that the passage refers to the northeast wind.
Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 79-81) locates a source in Boethius (Cons. Phil. I.m3.1-10).
A hapax in the poem, the noun roffia has caused perhaps unnecessary difficulty, since the context establishes the probable reference, the scudding clouds marring an unencumbered view of the heavens.
A rhyming hapax, paroffia is Dante's version of the term parrocchia (parish) and thus, more generally, a place.
Not so much a developed simile as a simple comparison, this verse equates Beatrice's fairly lengthy and complex explanation (vv. 61-78) and the clear light from a star (in a sky that has been rid of its obscuring clouds by the wind, if we remember the first simile, vv. 79-84). All that complexity - two dozen verses of it - yields to the simplest illustration of the protagonist's new comprehension.
Pleased with Beatrice's explanation, the angelic circles (in the Empyrean, we remember) throw out sparks (i.e., the angels themselves, each order keeping to its circle) like molten iron.
For Dante's previous use of this image, see Paradiso I.60.
See Longfellow (comm. to verse 93) for the reference: “The inventor of the game of chess brought it to a Persian king, who was so delighted with it, that he offered him in return whatever reward he might ask. The inventor said he wished only a grain of wheat, doubled as many times as there were squares on the chess-board; that is, one grain for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to sixty-four. This the king readily granted; but when the amount was reckoned up, he had not wheat enough in his whole kingdom to pay it.”
One commentator (Oelsner [comm. to verse 93]) reports that this number is greater than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000. The reader will want to remember that such an astoundingly high figure is the result of simple doubling; the result of squaring (unless one begins with one [what the king should at least have offered as his counter-proposal]) would be beyond astronomical.
This anecdote, deriving from the East, has several potential European intermediaries, as has been duly noted (e.g., among others, Peire Vidal, as reported by Torraca [comm. to these verses]; but see Giuseppe Ledda [La guerra della lingua {Ravenna: Longo, 2002}, p. 297n.] for fuller documentation). The question of Dante's direct knowledge of Arabic material has focused, in the last century, on the Libro della scala, the account of the Prophet's night journey to another world. Theodore Silverstein (“Dante and the Legend of the Mirāj: the Problem of Islamic Influence in the Christian Literature of the Otherworld,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 11 [1952]: 89-110; 187-97) for a while seemed to have silenced those who argued, encouraged by two books by Miguel Asín Palacios (La escatologia musulmana en la “Divina Comedia”: historia y crítica de una polémica [Madrid: Hiperión, 1984 {1919}]) and Dante y el Islam [Madrid: Edit. Voluntad, 1927]) that there was a direct relationship between the Arabic Libro della scala and the Commedia. Silversteín's book is still most valuable, although it has often been forgotten in the rekindled debate. He examined critically Asín's evidentiary procedures and found them deeply flawed, pointing out that more likely sources are to be found in familiar Jewish and Christian texts. However, a new stage in the debate was initiated by Cerulli (Il “Libro della scala” e la questione delle fonti arabo-spagnole della “Divina Commedia” [Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1949]), who produced a palliative argument in support of a basic relationship between Dante's poem and Arabic sources (see the discussion of Cerulli's book in Nardi's [Dal “Convivio” alla “Commedia”, con premessa alla ristampa di O. Capitani {Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1992 [1960]}, pp. 351-70]). More recently, as respected a critic as Maria Corti (“La Commedia di Dante e l'oltretomba islamico,” L'Alightieri 5 [1995]: 7-19) attempted to resuscitate Asín Palacios's thesis; but see Massimiliano Chiamenti (“Intertestualità Liber Scale Machometi-Commedia?” Semestrale di Studi [e Testi] italiani: 4 [1999]: 45-51. [See also http://www.disp.let.uniroma1.it/contents/?idPagina=95]) for an effective debunking of her effort. For more recent support of at least the thrust of Asín Palacios's views, see Brenda Deen Schildgen (Dante and the Orient [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002]). And for an enthusiastic return to most of the original positions of Asín, see Carlo Saccone (“Muhammad's Mi'raj: a Legend between East and West [Postface to Il Libro della Scala],” tr. E. Emery, paper presented at the conference on Arabic and Judaic Influences in and around Dante Alighieri [Venice, 11-12 Sept. 2002].)
The angelic choruses, responding to one another, sing glory to God while remaining fixed eternally in their circles.
For the program of song in the last cantica, see the note to Paradiso XXI.58-60.
Poletto (comm. to vv. 94-96) points out that Dante here uses the Scholastic Latin term ubi (“where,” with the sense of “place”), which he had three times previously “translated” into Italian (dove); see, among the forty appearances of that word in Paradiso, only those occurring at III.88, XII.30, XXII.147, and XXVII.109 (this fourth added by Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 95-96]).
Beatrice here details the order of the angelic hierarchy, an order at variance from the one Dante had presented in Convivio (II.v.7-11). For the source of that celestial plan, see the note to vv. 130-135 (and see the discussion in Silvio Pasquazi [All'eterno dal tempo. Studi danteschi {Florence: Le Monnier, 1972 [2nd ed.]}, pp. 375-78]).
While he substantially alters his ordering of the angelic hierarchy from his presentation in Convivio, Dante remains firmly in disagreement with St. Thomas about a crucial detail, as Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004]), p. 109) takes care to point out. In the Summa contra Gentiles (III.lxxx.11), Thomas said that the angelic order of the Virtues was alone responsible for the movement of all the heavenly spheres, while Dante, first in Convivio (II.v.6) and then here, carefully associates a particular order of angels with a particular sphere, and goes on to say that the various angelic orders are the causes of the movements of the corresponding heavenly spheres (Conv. II.v.13; Par. XXVIII.127-129).
The Seraphim and Cherubim, associated primarily with love and with knowledge, respectively, are seen as hurrying in their circling in order to resemble God more closely.
Four tercets are devoted to completing the discussion of the highest group of angels, adding one other to the Seraphim and Cherubim, the Thrones.
These other “loving spirits” (we note that both Seraphim and Cherubim are here associated, along with the Thrones, with loving [see the note to vv. 109-111]). This tercet is problematic. But see Torraca's solution (comm. to this tercet): The causal clause does not clarify the reason for the name “Thrones” (as most assume), but relates to God's having completed the first triad of angels when He created the Thrones. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 105) uneasily accept this saving understanding of what they consider an “infelice terzina” (infelicitous tercet).
The Thrones convey the judgments of God below, as Dante has explained in Paradiso IX.62. It seems possible that Dante thought of these first three orders as being particularly related to the Trinity, Love, Knowledge, and Divine Judgment, related to, in order, the Spirit, the Wisdom, and the Power of God. On the other hand, like the Trinity itself, each of the Persons (and each order of angels) has a triune identity along with its individual primary characteristic. There were in fact quite elaborate systems available relating each of the three main groups of angels to each of the three Persons of the Trinity.
Carroll (comm. to vv. 97-105) has a different understanding of the first three orders: “The Thrones are, as they are called elsewhere, 'mirrors' (Par. IX.61-63) by which the Divine judgments are flashed throughout the universe. These judgments, however, descend to the Thrones through the Seraphim and Cherubim, that is, through love and knowledge. The Thrones, therefore, are the terminus, so to speak, of the love and knowledge of God issuing in judgment. 'The Seraphim,' says Bonaventura, 'contemplate the goodness of God, the Cherubim the truth, the Thrones the equity' (Compend. Theol. Veritatis, II.12; St. Bernard, De Consideratione, V.4-5); and this equity contains the goodness and truth, the love and light, which flow down through the two higher Orders.”
The past definite tense of the verb terminare here is used in a dialectal form (as is vonno, with which it rhymes in verse 103). In De vulgari eloquentia (I.xiii.2), Dante had disparaged this (Pisan) dialectal form of the past definite ending (-onno), as commentators (beginning with Andreoli [comm. to vv. 104-105]) have taken pleasure in pointing out. While both these words are forced by rhyme with (the apocopated form of possono) ponno, it seems evident that Dante enjoyed being forced into this “ungrammatical” posture (i.e., presenting himself as employing a surprisingly low vernacular). See the note to Paradiso XVII.127-129.
Now all three comprising the highest angelic triad are identified, not with love for, but with knowledge of, God.
This tercet offers apparent aid and comfort to those who propose a “Dominican” Dante, one who values knowledge over love. However, here the poet is saying that knowledge precedes love temporally, not that it is better than it. Clearly, we are meant to understand that, in a Christian soul, they work together. If not, the poet would have found a way to present the Cherubim as the highest order of angels.
See Grandgent (comm. to verse 114): “These are the 'steps': Grace begets good will, Grace and good will constitute desert, desert determines the degree of sight, and sight is the source of love.” He goes on by referring the reader to Paradiso XXIX.61-66 and Thomas, ST I, q. 62, a. 4.
Where six tercets were lavished upon the first triad, the second two (Dominions, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels) receive only four altogether.
For a celebration of Dante's wildly innovative use of metaphor in this passage, see “Un esempio di poesia dantesca (il canto XXVIII del Paradiso),” in Gianfranco Contini (Un' idea di Dante [Turin: Einaudi, 1976]), p. 213). Robin Kirkpatrick (Dante's Paradiso and the Limitations of Modern Criticism [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978], p. 165) characterizes this language as “ornamental and manneristic” (p. 165), a description that causes Teodolinda Barolini (review of Kirkpatrick's book in Romance Philology 35 [1981]: 409-13) to come to Contini's defense.
Unlike earthly springtimes, condemned to experience the mortal cycle when Aries becomes a constellation of the night sky in autumn, signaling the end of fruitfulness for the agricultural year, this “spring” is everlasting.
John Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004], p. 384) cites Stanley Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983], p. 85, n. 20) for the observation that, as far as he has found, no one before Dante had apparently ever joined the nine ranks of angels to nine particular spheres.
The word sberna we have translated as “sings” because to do it justice would have taken several words. It has been used in the last canto (Par. XXVII.141) with a slightly different spelling and where it means “unwinters,” as it also does here, but with the further latent sense of “to sing like birds welcoming the springtime.”
The second triad, composed of orders that have feminine nouns representing them in Latin and in Italian (Dominions, Virtues, Powers) are referred to as dee (goddesses).
The third triad (Principalities, Archangels, Angels) terminates this catalogue.
All these angelic orders look up; nonetheless, they have their effects below, all created things being affected by them.
The first commentator to object to the standard understanding of the verb form vincon as being not from vincere (conquer) but from vincire (bind) was apparently Torraca (comm. to vv. 127-129). Most contemporary commentators, if not all, accept his reading, as do we.
Dante had perhaps followed Gregory (Moralia XXXII.48) indirectly by following the version (Seraphim, Cherubim, Powers, Principalities, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Archangels, Angels) found in Brunetto Latini, Tresor (I.xii.5). (Oelsner [to verse 133] was apparently the first commentator to discuss Dante's reliance here on Brunetto.) Gregory, in the Homiliae (XXXIV), had only two orders at variance from Dionysius's, the order Dante employs here. See Tozer (comm. to verse 130): “Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert of St. Paul at Athens (Acts 17:34), was the reputed author of the De Caelesti Hierarchia,... In reality that work seems to have been written in the fifth or sixth century. It was translated from the original Greek into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena (Cent. IX), and became the textbook of angelic lore in the middle ages. The names of the Orders were derived from Scripture, for five of them, viz. Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, and Principalities, occur in St. Paul's Epistles (cp. Romans 8:38 [Vulg.]; Ephesians 1:21; Colossians 1:16), and the remaining four, viz. Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels, and Angels, in other parts of the Bible; but the system which Dante here gives was due to the work just mentioned.” For Dante's own earlier version, which is probably much more on the poet's mind than Gregory's, see Convivio II.v.7-11. This is a large “oops!” that has Dante laughing at himself even more than Gregory might be imagined as doing.
For an essay in English on the importance of Dionysius for Dante, see E.G. Gardner (Dante and the Mystics [London: Dent, 1913], pp. 77-110). For the commentary to this canto that is fullest in terms of reference to the actual texts of Dionysius, see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 135-41.
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 138, points out that Dante's use of this term, contemplar, which surely has no need of any particular “source,” nonetheless reflects Dionsysius's frequent use of it as a “technical term” for the highest form of contemplation.
Lauren 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. 79) points out that Isidore, who appears conjointly with Solomon in the heaven of the Sun, must similarly be laughing at himself, for he had expressed the opinion that Solomon was damned (PL XLII, p. 459).
Has Dante forgotten himself again? (See the note to Par. IX.119-123.) Porena (comm. to vv. 130-135) thinks Dante has nodded here. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 134-135) deal with the problem by claiming, less than convincingly, that the poet really meant Heaven in general, and not the Primum Mobile. The only way around the obstacle is to insist that Gregory, passing through this heaven on his way to his seat in the Rose, saw the image of the nine angelic orders present on this sphere as Dante did (see the note to vv. 13-15); however, this seems a forced argument. Are we faced with another inconsistency that the poet would have cleared up had he lived long enough?
Beatrice concludes her lengthy speech, begun at verse 61. If, she advises Dante, it was a mortal, Dionysius, who informed humankind of these things, we earthlings should remember that he got his information from St. Paul (see Acts 17:34), who had himself been here. For the significance of Dante's preference for Dionysius over Gregory (the authority of Pauline direct experience as told to a truthful scriptor as opposed to later gatherings of an encyclopedic kind), see Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 437-38) and Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 162).
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Poscia che 'ncontro a la vita presente
d'i miseri mortali aperse 'l vero
quella che 'mparadisa la mia mente,
come in lo specchio fiamma di doppiero
vede colui che se n'alluma retro,
prima che l'abbia in vista o in pensiero,
e sé rivolge per veder se 'l vetro
li dice il vero, e vede ch'el s'accorda
con esso come nota con suo metro;
così la mia memoria si ricorda
ch'io feci riguardando ne' belli occhi
onde a pigliarmi fece Amor la corda.
E com' io mi rivolsi e furon tocchi
li miei da ciò che pare in quel volume,
quandunque nel suo giro ben s'adocchi,
un punto vidi che raggiava lume
acuto sì, che 'l viso ch'elli affoca
chiuder conviensi per lo forte acume;
e quale stella par quinci più poca,
parrebbe luna, locata con esso
come stella con stella si collòca.
Forse cotanto quanto pare appresso
alo cigner la luce che 'l dipigne
quando 'l vapor che 'l porta più è spesso,
distante intorno al punto un cerchio d'igne
si girava sì ratto, ch'avria vinto
quel moto che più tosto il mondo cigne;
e questo era d'un altro circumcinto,
e quel dal terzo, e 'l terzo poi dal quarto,
dal quinto il quarto, e poi dal sesto il quinto.
Sopra seguiva il settimo sì sparto
già di larghezza, che 'l messo di Iuno
intero a contenerlo sarebbe arto.
Così l'ottavo e 'l nono; e ciascheduno
più tardo si movea, secondo ch'era
in numero distante più da l'uno;
e quello avea la fiamma più sincera
cui men distava la favilla pura,
credo, però che più di lei s'invera.
La donna mia, che mi vedëa in cura
forte sospeso, disse: “Da quel punto
depende il cielo e tutta la natura.
Mira quel cerchio che più li è congiunto;
e sappi che 'l suo muovere è sì tosto
per l'affocato amore ond' elli è punto.”
E io a lei: “Se 'l mondo fosse posto
con l'ordine ch'io veggio in quelle rote,
sazio m'avrebbe ciò che m'è proposto;
ma nel mondo sensibile si puote
veder le volte tanto più divine,
quant' elle son dal centro più remote.
Onde, se 'l mio disir dee aver fine
in questo miro e angelico templo
che solo amore e luce ha per confine,
udir convienmi ancor come l'essemplo
e l'essemplare non vanno d'un modo,
ché io per me indarno a ciò contemplo.”
“Se li tuoi diti non sono a tal nodo
sufficïenti, non è maraviglia:
tanto, per non tentare, è fatto sodo!”
Così la donna mia; poi disse: “Piglia
quel ch'io ti dicerò, se vuo' saziarti;
e intorno da esso t'assottiglia.
Li cerchi corporai sono ampi e arti
secondo il più e 'l men de la virtute
che si distende per tutte lor parti.
Maggior bontà vuol far maggior salute;
maggior salute maggior corpo cape,
s'elli ha le parti igualmente compiute.
Dunque costui che tutto quanto rape
l'altro universo seco, corrisponde
al cerchio che più ama e che più sape:
per che, se tu a la virtù circonde
la tua misura, non a la parvenza
de le sustanze che t'appaion tonde,
tu vederai mirabil consequenza
di maggio a più e di minore a meno,
in ciascun cielo, a sua intelligenza.”
Come rimane splendido e sereno
l'emisperio de l'aere, quando soffia
Borea da quella guancia ond' è più leno,
per che si purga e risolve la roffia
che pria turbava, sì che 'l ciel ne ride
con le bellezze d'ogne sua paroffia;
così fec'ïo, poi che mi provide
la donna mia del suo risponder chiaro,
e come stella in cielo il ver si vide.
E poi che le parole sue restaro,
non altrimenti ferro disfavilla
che bolle, come i cerchi sfavillaro.
L'incendio suo seguiva ogne scintilla;
ed eran tante, che 'l numero loro
più che 'l doppiar de li scacchi s'inmilla.
Io sentiva osannar di coro in coro
al punto fisso che li tiene a li ubi,
e terrà sempre, ne' quai sempre fuoro.
E quella che vedëa i pensier dubi
ne la mia mente, disse: “I cerchi primi
t'hanno mostrato Serafi e Cherubi.
Così veloci seguono i suoi vimi,
per somigliarsi al punto quanto ponno;
e posson quanto a veder son soblimi.
Quelli altri amori che 'ntorno li vonno,
si chiaman Troni del divino aspetto,
per che 'l primo ternaro terminonno;
e dei saper che tutti hanno diletto
quanto la sua veduta si profonda
nel vero in che si queta ogne intelletto.
Quinci si può veder come si fonda
l'esser beato ne l'atto che vede,
non in quel ch'ama, che poscia seconda;
e del vedere è misura mercede,
che grazia partorisce e buona voglia:
così di grado in grado si procede.
L'altro ternaro, che così germoglia
in questa primavera sempiterna
che notturno Arïete non dispoglia,
perpetüalemente 'Osanna' sberna
con tre melode, che suonano in tree
ordini di letizia onde s'interna.
In essa gerarcia son l'altre dee:
prima Dominazioni, e poi Virtudi;
l'ordine terzo di Podestadi èe.
Poscia ne' due penultimi tripudi
Principati e Arcangeli si girano;
l'ultimo è tutto d'Angelici ludi.
Questi ordini di sù tutti s'ammirano,
e di giù vincon sì, che verso Dio
tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano.
E Dïonisio con tanto disio
a contemplar questi ordini si mise,
che li nomò e distinse com' io.
Ma Gregorio da lui poi si divise;
onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse
in questo ciel, di sé medesmo rise.
E se tanto secreto ver proferse
mortale in terra, non voglio ch'ammiri:
ché chi 'l vide qua sù gliel discoperse
con altro assai del ver di questi giri.”
After the truth against the present life
Of miserable mortals was unfolded
By her who doth imparadise my mind,
As in a looking-glass a taper's flame
He sees who from behind is lighted by it,
Before he has it in his sight or thought,
And turns him round to see if so the glass
Tell him the truth, and sees that it accords
Therewith as doth a music with its metre,
In similar wise my memory recollecteth
That I did, looking into those fair eyes,
Of which Love made the springes to ensnare me.
And as I turned me round, and mine were touched
By that which is apparent in that volume,
Whenever on its gyre we gaze intent,
A point beheld I, that was raying out
Light so acute, the sight which it enkindles
Must close perforce before such great acuteness.
And whatsoever star seems smallest here
Would seem to be a moon, if placed beside it.
As one star with another star is placed.
Perhaps at such a distance as appears
A halo cincturing the light that paints it,
When densest is the vapour that sustains it,
Thus distant round the point a circle of fire
So swiftly whirled, that it would have surpassed
Whatever motion soonest girds the world;
And this was by another circumcinct,
That by a third, the third then by a fourth,
By a fifth the fourth, and then by a sixth the fifth;
The seventh followed thereupon in width
So ample now, that Juno's messenger
Entire would be too narrow to contain it.
Even so the eighth and ninth; and every one
More slowly moved, according as it was
In number distant farther from the first.
And that one had its flame most crystalline
From which less distant was the stainless spark,
I think because more with its truth imbued.
My Lady, who in my anxiety
Beheld me much perplexed, said: "From that point
Dependent is the heaven and nature all.
Behold that circle most conjoined to it,
And know thou, that its motion is so swift
Through burning love whereby it is spurred on."
And I to her: "If the world were arranged
In the order which I see in yonder wheels,
What's set before me would have satisfied me;
But in the world of sense we can perceive
That evermore the circles are diviner
As they are from the centre more remote
Wherefore if my desire is to be ended
In this miraculous and angelic temple,
That has for confines only love and light,
To hear behoves me still how the example
And the exemplar go not in one fashion,
Since for myself in vain I contemplate it."
"If thine own fingers unto such a knot
Be insufficient, it is no great wonder,
So hard hath it become for want of trying."
My Lady thus; then said she: "Do thou take
What I shall tell thee, if thou wouldst be sated,
And exercise on that thy subtlety.
The circles corporal are wide and narrow
According to the more or less of virtue
Which is distributed through all their parts.
The greater goodness works the greater weal,
The greater weal the greater body holds,
If perfect equally are all its parts.
Therefore this one which sweeps along with it
The universe sublime, doth correspond
Unto the circle which most loves and knows.
On which account, if thou unto the virtue
Apply thy measure, not to the appearance
Of substances that unto thee seem round,
Thou wilt behold a marvellous agreement,
Of more to greater, and of less to smaller,
In every heaven, with its Intelligence."
Even as remaineth splendid and serene
The hemisphere of air, when Boreas
Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest,
Because is purified and resolved the rack
That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs
With all the beauties of its pageantry;
Thus did I likewise, after that my Lady
Had me provided with her clear response,
And like a star in heaven the truth was seen.
And soon as to a stop her words had come,
Not otherwise does iron scintillate
When molten, than those circles scintillated.
Their coruscation all the sparks repeated,
And they so many were, their number makes
More millions than the doubling of the chess.
I heard them sing hosanna choir by choir
To the fixed point which holds them at the 'Ubi,'
And ever will, where they have ever been.
And she, who saw the dubious meditations
Within my mind, "The primal circles," said,
"Have shown thee Seraphim and Cherubim.
Thus rapidly they follow their own bonds,
To be as like the point as most they can,
And can as far as they are high in vision.
Those other Loves, that round about them go,
Thrones of the countenance divine are called,
Because they terminate the primal Triad.
And thou shouldst know that they all have delight
As much as their own vision penetrates
The Truth, in which all intellect finds rest.
From this it may be seen how blessedness
Is founded in the faculty which sees,
And not in that which loves, and follows next;
And of this seeing merit is the measure,
Which is brought forth by grace, and by good will;
Thus on from grade to grade doth it proceed.
The second Triad, which is germinating
In such wise in this sempiternal spring,
That no nocturnal Aries despoils,
Perpetually hosanna warbles forth
With threefold melody, that sounds in three
Orders of joy, with which it is intrined.
The three Divine are in this hierarchy,
First the Dominions, and the Virtues next;
And the third order is that of the Powers.
Then in the dances twain penultimate
The Principalities and Archangels wheel;
The last is wholly of angelic sports.
These orders upward all of them are gazing,
And downward so prevail, that unto God
They all attracted are and all attract.
And Dionysius with so great desire
To contemplate these Orders set himself,
He named them and distinguished them as I do.
But Gregory afterwards dissented from him;
Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes
Within this heaven, he at himself did smile.
And if so much of secret truth a mortal
Proffered on earth, I would not have thee marvel,
For he who saw it here revealed it to him,
With much more of the truth about these circles."
This retrospective opening tercet reminds us that, if humanity is in parlous condition (cf. Par. XXVII.127-141, Beatrice's lament for our lost innocence), the protagonist's guide has prophesied better times to come (Par. XXVII.142-148). Dante's gaze, in this canto, will also reflect a double focus, first fixing on Beatrice's mirroring eyes, and then behind him on what they reflect, God and the angels, themselves as seen, we are perhaps to understand, reflected on the convex outer surface of the Crystalline Sphere (see the note to vv. 13-15).
Gianfranco Contini (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1002) insists on the importance of the word “vero” (true) and the concept of truthfulness to this canto; it is, in his opinion, its “parola chiave”; indeed a major portion of his lectura (pp. 1002-12) is a meditation in this vein.
See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse), who claim that we may read Beatrice here either allegorically (as “Theology”) or literally (as herself). They, doubtless wisely, prefer the second understanding; nonetheless, some readers may find it a bit disquieting to discover intelligent critics even raising the possibility, so near the final vision, of “poets' allegory” being used as an interpretive tool for what the poet presents as being both actual and experienced.
This return to the conditions of the experiment alluded to in the second canto (see the note to Par. II.94-105) shows how captious some readers are in their insistence that Dante deliberately presents that experiment as being literally impossible. Such a reader will once again object that, if the flame is behind the subject's back, it cannot be reflected in a mirror set directly in front of him. And once again a less positivistic reader will realize that, if the flame is, for instance, only a few centimeters above the observer's head (as it is in the reproduction of a fifteenth-century illustration of the experiment [see Patrick Boyde, “L'esegesi di Dante e la scienza,” in Dante e la scienza, ed. P. Boyde and V. Russo {Ravenna: Longo, 1995}, p. 15]), the result will be as Dante says. In any case, this is a poem and not a physics lab. And yet we should realize that Dante only says “behind” (dopo, retro) the observer, without in any way suggesting that the flame might not be visible from a point directly in front of him.
A doplerus was a torch formed by twisting two candles together. Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 433) adduces Guinizzelli's previous use (in the third stanza of his canzone “Al cor gentil,” well known to Dante) of a slightly different Italian form, doplero.
See Bosco/Reggio (comm. ad loc.). It is their suggestion that the only exact 'fit' in this comparison results from references to a nota that is sung and also heard in the instrumental accompaniment (metro). Aside from Gabriele (comm. v. 9), who shrugs the verse away as follows: «è bruttissima comparatione questa», most commentators struggle with these lines, until Porena (comm. ad loc.) sees that all previous attempts at suggesting resemblance (e.g., singing with its accompaniment, song with its meter, words with their music, and any others) are not as precise as the image to which this musical analogue is likened, the reflection of a thing in a mirror. The proposal of Bosco/Reggio, however, may have overcome his objection.
Regina Psaki (“Paradiso XXVIII,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 426) is eloquent defending Dante's right to present Beatrice's sexual being as somehow still being a part of her attraction for him. The problem with her argument is that this text is clearly past-oriented, the verb fece (past definite) in evident contrast with the present tense of Dante's coinage imparadisa (imparadises). The girl toward whom he had been drawn sexually had turned out to be valuable for other and (in this poem) better reasons. One wants to distance oneself both from the prudes who, as Psaki rightly notes, are offended at the clear sexual nature of his memory of his first affections, and from Psaki, who forgets that that was then and this is now.
For this use of the word corda (cord, here translated “snare”) as having only metaphorical valence as a “simbolo di virtù” (symbol of virtue), see Giorgio Padoan (“Il canto XXVIII del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 177n.). He says that this usage is found also at Inferno XVI.106 (the famous, or infamous, “cord” that holds Dante's garments together and is used by Virgil as an invitation and challenge to Geryon) and Purgatorio VII.114 (where Pedro III of Aragon is “girt with the cord of every virtue,” perhaps the only occurrence in which Padoan's formulation really works). However, it is not clear that the word in any of these appearances has only a metaphorical sense.
In the thirteen presences of the word corda in the poem, five times it refers to a bowstring; three times, to the strings of musical instruments; once, to the cords on a whip. That leaves one other form of corda that seems identical with (or at least highly similar to) Padoan's three: Paradiso XXVI.49, the cords (corde) of love that draw us after it. And that seems to be the same (or a closely related) meaning as is found here. For some reason, Padoan paid no attention to corde, the plural of corda, thus omitting four of its occurrences from his consideration.
Exactly what Dante sees reflected in Beatrice's eyes is a matter of considerable dispute, although some commentators have possibly begun to sever the Gordian knot. Torraca (comm. to this tercet) was perhaps the first to realize that God and his angels have not descended to this sphere from the Empyrean, if without specifying how it is exactly that they are seen here. Sapegno (comm. to vv. 13-16) improves that formulation, insisting that the protagonist sees God and the angels in the Empyrean through the perfectly transparent sphere of the Primum Mobile. This view has the benefit of keeping God and his angels where they belong (in the “tenth heaven”), but does not do very well by the poet's insistence that he saw them “in quel volume” (in [or “on”] that revolving sphere). The fullest and best discussion of the problem, one that is aware of the pitfalls into which all his precursors have slipped, is that of Siro Chimenz (comm. to this tercet). He gets all the details right, but in the end confesses that he simply cannot come up with a solution. Similarly, Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 434) gets to the nub of the issue, but then turns to an “allegorical” reading: This vision is the prefiguration of the one the protagonist will have in the Empyrean. True enough, but this solution ignores the physical reality on which the vision is based. See the note to the opening tercet of this canto for an attempt at a resolution: Dante portrays the surface of the Primum Mobile as where the highest realities of all, God and His angelic partners in creation, are visible. In support of this hypothesis, we might consider the fact that the introductory simile itself speaks of a reflection (in Beatrice's mirroring eyes). That, in turn, may be considered (if this hypothesis is correct) a reflection of a reflection. Possible confirmation is found in Paradiso XXX.106-108, where the Rose is presented as a self-reflection off the convex surface of the Primum Mobile.
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out that the commentators are confused by this apparently simple utterance. How can God and the angels be present in the Crystalline Sphere anytime one looks intently into it? It is not easy to see how or why they, Bosco/Reggio continue, would now or ever descend to this sphere (despite, they might have added, the descent of the Church Triumphant in Canto XXIII), nor how any other hypothesis might account for the apparition (e.g., a vision, an allegory, some sort of unusual perception). Our hypothesis is as follows: Dante looks from a mirror (Beatrice's eyes) into a second “mirror” (the convex surface of the Crystalline Sphere) where – first the Point and then the angelic circlings – are what he sees, painted, as it were, upon the surface of this Primum Mobile, the circling of which moves all the universe by its influence. Cf. Paradiso I.1-3: “La Gloria di colui che tutto move / per l'universo penetra, e risplende / in una parte più e meno altrove” (The glory of Him who moves all things / pervades the universe and shines / in one part more and in another less). God's glory is to be considered as completely penetrating and at the same time visible here, in the first and purest sphere (and reflected least clearly of all by earth, spiritually even “denser” than the Moon, itself a less than perfect mirror, as we learned in Paradiso II). Seeing this highest and purest “universe,” God and his angels, on the surface of the Crystalline Sphere, the protagonist experiences the “copy” as though it were actually present. For possible confirmation of this view, see the note to Paradiso XXX.103-108.
Attilio Mellone (“Il Canto XXVIII,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 733-34) demonstrates the congruence between the language of Alfragano (whose view is accepted and cited by Giovanni di Sacrobosco) and that of Dante here. Alfragano presents the earth as a tiny point in relation to even the smallest star that can be seen from earth. In Mellone's judgment, Dante has deliberately misapplied the astronomer's picture of our physical universe to God's spiritual one.
For the word volume, see the note to Paradiso XII.122. Here it evidently refers to the revolving sphere of the Primum Mobile itself, although that interpretation is not widely shared.
Mellone (“Il Canto XXVIII,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 734-35) politely but firmly (and correctly) dismisses those Dantists (most significantly Bruno Nardi) who believe that this giro is in fact found in (or simply is) the Empyrean, rather than referring to the Crystalline Sphere itself. In fact, we should probably understand that it is the Crystalline Sphere. It is true that Dante once refers to the Empyrean as a giro, but probably should not have (see the note to Par. IV.34).
The point is so terribly bright that whoever looks at it must close his eyes, so terribly small that the tiniest star in our sky would seem large as the Moon if placed beside it. On the relation between what Dante sees here and the earth-centered Aristotelian universe, see Alison Cornish (Reading Dante's Stars [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000]), pp. 108-18).
See the note to Paradiso III.51 for the apparent contradiction here, in that “the nine ranks of angels, each associated with one of the planetary spheres, rotat[e] around the point that represents the Godhead faster the nearer they are to that point,” while in the lower universe the spheres rotate more slowly the closer they are to their center. Beatrice determinedly resolves this issue at vv. 58-78.
Cf. Paradiso X.67-69, Dante's description of the Moon's halo.
In earth-centered astronomy, we learn that the Primum Mobile, the outermost sphere, rotates the fastest (see Par. XXVII.99). Now we learn that the first ring of angels, the Seraphim, rotates even more quickly. If we reflect only a moment, what seems an inverse relation between these two universes is in fact one of parallelism when considered from the perspective of the Empyrean's God-centered astronomy. In such a view, the closer a sphere is to God, the faster it rotates on its axis, no matter where that axis is.
Between vv. 99 and 126 we shall hear the names of the angelic bands in descending order, exactly as they are presented anonymously here. Looking back from there, we can add to the highest rank, the Seraphim, the names of Cherubim, Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, and Angels.
For mondo as meaning, not “world,” but “universe,” see (as Poletto [comm. to vv. 22-27] advises) Convivio III.v.3, where Dante rehearses the difference between these two meanings of the word.
Surely a highly competitive candidate in any annual “Worst Tercet in the Divine Comedy” contest, this terzina does possess the merit of a matter-of-fact tone that encourages the reader to take Dante's celestial reportage at face value by suggesting that a certain truth value lies in prosaic verse.
The seventh circle out from the Godhead is that of the Principalities, one of the orders that Dante had misplaced in the Convivio. See the note to Paradiso VIII.34-39. Were we able to see a rainbow as an entire circle, it still would not be large enough to contain the arc made by this angelic order. For the varying “size” of these angelic bands, see vv. 64-66. And for Dante's previous reference to Iris, see Paradiso XII.12 (and the note to Par. XII.11-18).
The eighth and ninth circles, containing respectively the Archangels and the Angels, round out the assemblage, each rotating still more slowly around the Point.
The Seraphim, associated with love, are here presented as associated with knowledge (they are “entruthed”). At verse 45, however, they will again be associated with love. And see the note to verse 72.
As was first pointed out by Daniello (comm. to vv. 40-45), this statement reflects a passage in Aristotle's Metaphysics. And see Singleton (comm. to these verses): “This clearly reflects Aristotle's statement in the Metaphysics summarizing his speculations on the unmoved mover as final cause and supreme good. In the Latin translation of Aristotle known to Thomas Aquinas this reads (Metaphys. XII, 7, 1072b): 'Ex tali igitur principio dependet caelum et natura.' (It is on such a principle, then, that the heavens and the natural world depend.) Aquinas, in his commentary on this point in the Metaphysics, states (Exp. Metaphys. XII, lect. 7, n. 2534): 'Hence it is on this principle, i.e., the first mover viewed as an end, that the heavens depend both for the eternality of their substance and the eternality of their motion. Consequently the whole of nature depends on such a principle, because all natural things depend on the heavens and on such motion as they possess.'”
See Cesare Vasoli (“Il canto II del Paradiso,” in Lectura Dantis Metelliana: I primi undici canti del “Paradiso” [Rome: Bulzoni, 1992 {1972}], pp. 44-50) for a discussion of the neoplatonizing elements in Dante's emanationist view of God's stellar creations and their effect on the lower world. This is, according to Vasoli, not really Aristotelian at all, but essentially and clearly neoplatonic, “closer to Avicenna's metaphysical imagination than to the texts of [Aristotle's] De caelo,...” (p. 47).
The point about this punto is that in the Empyrean it is both a mathematically unlocatable and tiny point, a speck, containing everything and/or an unimaginably large space in which everything that exists in the lower spheres – as a reflection of this point – truly exists. See Paradiso XXXIII.85-87.
Love may or may not “make the world go round,” but it certainly is the motive force of the universe. The Seraphim's love of God, Aristotle's unmoved mover, imparts motion to everything beneath Him. See Convivio II.iii.9.
These four tercets are the protagonist's only words in this sphere, and once again indicate that his intelligence is still earthbound. See Tozer's recapitulation (comm. to vv. 46-57): “Dante here states the difficulty which he feels, viz. that, whereas in the world of sense the spheres move more swiftly in proportion to their distance from the centre, i.e., the earth, the celestial circles which he is now contemplating move more swiftly in proportion to their nearness to the centre, i.e., God. As the latter of these systems is the pattern of the former, it would be natural that they should correspond.” That is to say, the physics of the highest heavens is counter to expectation; the smallest circle runs fastest, the most distant, slowest, the exact opposite of what the protagonist experienced as he moved upward and outward from the earth. As Beatrice will explain, that inverse ratio is puzzling only to an earthling; the spiritual physics that she explains is only (super)natural. See the note to vv. 25-27.
The protagonist refers to the Primum Mobile as a “temple” and to its “boundary,” the Empyrean, in terms of love and light, its two most notable characteristics, as we shall see.
See the note to Paradiso XXVII.109 for discussions of Dante's possible “anticipation” of modern cosmic theory, in particular, the hypersphere. He wants to know the relationship between the actual universe and the spiritual one.
Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 70-78) was the first among many to cite Boethius, Cons. Phil. (III.m9), already cited by Dante at Convivio III.ii.17; the last lines of this poem, a favorite during the Middle Ages, contain the phrase te cernere finis cited in the Epistle to Cangrande (Epist. XIII.89).
Dante, through Beatrice's characterization of his question, is revealed as not yet being capable of confronting the counter-intuitive relations between the physical universe and its spiritual substrate.
See Tozer's paraphrase (comm. to vv. 64-78): “The argument is as follows: – In the material universe the size of the spheres [i.e., their circumference] corresponds to the amount of divinely infused power (virtute) which they possess, and which is diffused by them throughout their whole range (per tutte lor parti), i.e., from sphere to sphere and to the earth (ll. 64-66). A larger amount of the benefits thus communicated and received below (maggior bontà) is the result of a larger amount of salutary influence (maggior salute), and the larger amount of salutary influence is contained in a larger body – supposing always that that body has complete receptive power throughout (ll. 67-69). Consequently, the ninth sphere, or Primum Mobile, which is the largest, is also the highest in its nature of all the spheres; and thus it corresponds to the first and highest circle of the angels, that of the Seraphim (ll. 70-72). Hence, if you estimate the angelic circles, not by their size, as you see them, but by the rank and relative power of the spirits which compose them, you will perceive that each material Heaven corresponds exactly to the Order of Intelligences that guides it, the wider sphere to the superior, the narrower to the inferior power.”
Those who believe that Dante is either “Franciscan,” privileging love over knowledge, or “Thomist,” placing knowledge higher than love, find here only one of several clear indications that he wants to combine intellect and will in a common activity, “loving-knowledge” or “knowing-love,” that bridges this divide. This has been apparent since we encountered a similar formulation lying behind the harmonious presentation of these two fraternal communities in the heaven of the Sun. And see the note to vv. 37-39.
The four main winds were, in Dante's day and for centuries after, portrayed as faces. Boreas, the north wind, blows straight ahead or from his left (from the northeast) or from his right (from the northwest). This last was considered the mildest of these three winds, swelling up his right cheek and clearing out the night sky. However, there is some disagreement on this point. Those who find Dante's source in the Tresor of Brunetto Latini (I.cvi.14) maintain that the passage refers to the northeast wind.
Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 79-81) locates a source in Boethius (Cons. Phil. I.m3.1-10).
A hapax in the poem, the noun roffia has caused perhaps unnecessary difficulty, since the context establishes the probable reference, the scudding clouds marring an unencumbered view of the heavens.
A rhyming hapax, paroffia is Dante's version of the term parrocchia (parish) and thus, more generally, a place.
Not so much a developed simile as a simple comparison, this verse equates Beatrice's fairly lengthy and complex explanation (vv. 61-78) and the clear light from a star (in a sky that has been rid of its obscuring clouds by the wind, if we remember the first simile, vv. 79-84). All that complexity - two dozen verses of it - yields to the simplest illustration of the protagonist's new comprehension.
Pleased with Beatrice's explanation, the angelic circles (in the Empyrean, we remember) throw out sparks (i.e., the angels themselves, each order keeping to its circle) like molten iron.
For Dante's previous use of this image, see Paradiso I.60.
See Longfellow (comm. to verse 93) for the reference: “The inventor of the game of chess brought it to a Persian king, who was so delighted with it, that he offered him in return whatever reward he might ask. The inventor said he wished only a grain of wheat, doubled as many times as there were squares on the chess-board; that is, one grain for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to sixty-four. This the king readily granted; but when the amount was reckoned up, he had not wheat enough in his whole kingdom to pay it.”
One commentator (Oelsner [comm. to verse 93]) reports that this number is greater than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000. The reader will want to remember that such an astoundingly high figure is the result of simple doubling; the result of squaring (unless one begins with one [what the king should at least have offered as his counter-proposal]) would be beyond astronomical.
This anecdote, deriving from the East, has several potential European intermediaries, as has been duly noted (e.g., among others, Peire Vidal, as reported by Torraca [comm. to these verses]; but see Giuseppe Ledda [La guerra della lingua {Ravenna: Longo, 2002}, p. 297n.] for fuller documentation). The question of Dante's direct knowledge of Arabic material has focused, in the last century, on the Libro della scala, the account of the Prophet's night journey to another world. Theodore Silverstein (“Dante and the Legend of the Mirāj: the Problem of Islamic Influence in the Christian Literature of the Otherworld,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 11 [1952]: 89-110; 187-97) for a while seemed to have silenced those who argued, encouraged by two books by Miguel Asín Palacios (La escatologia musulmana en la “Divina Comedia”: historia y crítica de una polémica [Madrid: Hiperión, 1984 {1919}]) and Dante y el Islam [Madrid: Edit. Voluntad, 1927]) that there was a direct relationship between the Arabic Libro della scala and the Commedia. Silversteín's book is still most valuable, although it has often been forgotten in the rekindled debate. He examined critically Asín's evidentiary procedures and found them deeply flawed, pointing out that more likely sources are to be found in familiar Jewish and Christian texts. However, a new stage in the debate was initiated by Cerulli (Il “Libro della scala” e la questione delle fonti arabo-spagnole della “Divina Commedia” [Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1949]), who produced a palliative argument in support of a basic relationship between Dante's poem and Arabic sources (see the discussion of Cerulli's book in Nardi's [Dal “Convivio” alla “Commedia”, con premessa alla ristampa di O. Capitani {Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1992 [1960]}, pp. 351-70]). More recently, as respected a critic as Maria Corti (“La Commedia di Dante e l'oltretomba islamico,” L'Alightieri 5 [1995]: 7-19) attempted to resuscitate Asín Palacios's thesis; but see Massimiliano Chiamenti (“Intertestualità Liber Scale Machometi-Commedia?” Semestrale di Studi [e Testi] italiani: 4 [1999]: 45-51. [See also http://www.disp.let.uniroma1.it/contents/?idPagina=95]) for an effective debunking of her effort. For more recent support of at least the thrust of Asín Palacios's views, see Brenda Deen Schildgen (Dante and the Orient [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002]). And for an enthusiastic return to most of the original positions of Asín, see Carlo Saccone (“Muhammad's Mi'raj: a Legend between East and West [Postface to Il Libro della Scala],” tr. E. Emery, paper presented at the conference on Arabic and Judaic Influences in and around Dante Alighieri [Venice, 11-12 Sept. 2002].)
The angelic choruses, responding to one another, sing glory to God while remaining fixed eternally in their circles.
For the program of song in the last cantica, see the note to Paradiso XXI.58-60.
Poletto (comm. to vv. 94-96) points out that Dante here uses the Scholastic Latin term ubi (“where,” with the sense of “place”), which he had three times previously “translated” into Italian (dove); see, among the forty appearances of that word in Paradiso, only those occurring at III.88, XII.30, XXII.147, and XXVII.109 (this fourth added by Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 95-96]).
Beatrice here details the order of the angelic hierarchy, an order at variance from the one Dante had presented in Convivio (II.v.7-11). For the source of that celestial plan, see the note to vv. 130-135 (and see the discussion in Silvio Pasquazi [All'eterno dal tempo. Studi danteschi {Florence: Le Monnier, 1972 [2nd ed.]}, pp. 375-78]).
While he substantially alters his ordering of the angelic hierarchy from his presentation in Convivio, Dante remains firmly in disagreement with St. Thomas about a crucial detail, as Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004]), p. 109) takes care to point out. In the Summa contra Gentiles (III.lxxx.11), Thomas said that the angelic order of the Virtues was alone responsible for the movement of all the heavenly spheres, while Dante, first in Convivio (II.v.6) and then here, carefully associates a particular order of angels with a particular sphere, and goes on to say that the various angelic orders are the causes of the movements of the corresponding heavenly spheres (Conv. II.v.13; Par. XXVIII.127-129).
The Seraphim and Cherubim, associated primarily with love and with knowledge, respectively, are seen as hurrying in their circling in order to resemble God more closely.
Four tercets are devoted to completing the discussion of the highest group of angels, adding one other to the Seraphim and Cherubim, the Thrones.
These other “loving spirits” (we note that both Seraphim and Cherubim are here associated, along with the Thrones, with loving [see the note to vv. 109-111]). This tercet is problematic. But see Torraca's solution (comm. to this tercet): The causal clause does not clarify the reason for the name “Thrones” (as most assume), but relates to God's having completed the first triad of angels when He created the Thrones. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 105) uneasily accept this saving understanding of what they consider an “infelice terzina” (infelicitous tercet).
The Thrones convey the judgments of God below, as Dante has explained in Paradiso IX.62. It seems possible that Dante thought of these first three orders as being particularly related to the Trinity, Love, Knowledge, and Divine Judgment, related to, in order, the Spirit, the Wisdom, and the Power of God. On the other hand, like the Trinity itself, each of the Persons (and each order of angels) has a triune identity along with its individual primary characteristic. There were in fact quite elaborate systems available relating each of the three main groups of angels to each of the three Persons of the Trinity.
Carroll (comm. to vv. 97-105) has a different understanding of the first three orders: “The Thrones are, as they are called elsewhere, 'mirrors' (Par. IX.61-63) by which the Divine judgments are flashed throughout the universe. These judgments, however, descend to the Thrones through the Seraphim and Cherubim, that is, through love and knowledge. The Thrones, therefore, are the terminus, so to speak, of the love and knowledge of God issuing in judgment. 'The Seraphim,' says Bonaventura, 'contemplate the goodness of God, the Cherubim the truth, the Thrones the equity' (Compend. Theol. Veritatis, II.12; St. Bernard, De Consideratione, V.4-5); and this equity contains the goodness and truth, the love and light, which flow down through the two higher Orders.”
The past definite tense of the verb terminare here is used in a dialectal form (as is vonno, with which it rhymes in verse 103). In De vulgari eloquentia (I.xiii.2), Dante had disparaged this (Pisan) dialectal form of the past definite ending (-onno), as commentators (beginning with Andreoli [comm. to vv. 104-105]) have taken pleasure in pointing out. While both these words are forced by rhyme with (the apocopated form of possono) ponno, it seems evident that Dante enjoyed being forced into this “ungrammatical” posture (i.e., presenting himself as employing a surprisingly low vernacular). See the note to Paradiso XVII.127-129.
Now all three comprising the highest angelic triad are identified, not with love for, but with knowledge of, God.
This tercet offers apparent aid and comfort to those who propose a “Dominican” Dante, one who values knowledge over love. However, here the poet is saying that knowledge precedes love temporally, not that it is better than it. Clearly, we are meant to understand that, in a Christian soul, they work together. If not, the poet would have found a way to present the Cherubim as the highest order of angels.
See Grandgent (comm. to verse 114): “These are the 'steps': Grace begets good will, Grace and good will constitute desert, desert determines the degree of sight, and sight is the source of love.” He goes on by referring the reader to Paradiso XXIX.61-66 and Thomas, ST I, q. 62, a. 4.
Where six tercets were lavished upon the first triad, the second two (Dominions, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels) receive only four altogether.
For a celebration of Dante's wildly innovative use of metaphor in this passage, see “Un esempio di poesia dantesca (il canto XXVIII del Paradiso),” in Gianfranco Contini (Un' idea di Dante [Turin: Einaudi, 1976]), p. 213). Robin Kirkpatrick (Dante's Paradiso and the Limitations of Modern Criticism [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978], p. 165) characterizes this language as “ornamental and manneristic” (p. 165), a description that causes Teodolinda Barolini (review of Kirkpatrick's book in Romance Philology 35 [1981]: 409-13) to come to Contini's defense.
Unlike earthly springtimes, condemned to experience the mortal cycle when Aries becomes a constellation of the night sky in autumn, signaling the end of fruitfulness for the agricultural year, this “spring” is everlasting.
John Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004], p. 384) cites Stanley Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983], p. 85, n. 20) for the observation that, as far as he has found, no one before Dante had apparently ever joined the nine ranks of angels to nine particular spheres.
The word sberna we have translated as “sings” because to do it justice would have taken several words. It has been used in the last canto (Par. XXVII.141) with a slightly different spelling and where it means “unwinters,” as it also does here, but with the further latent sense of “to sing like birds welcoming the springtime.”
The second triad, composed of orders that have feminine nouns representing them in Latin and in Italian (Dominions, Virtues, Powers) are referred to as dee (goddesses).
The third triad (Principalities, Archangels, Angels) terminates this catalogue.
All these angelic orders look up; nonetheless, they have their effects below, all created things being affected by them.
The first commentator to object to the standard understanding of the verb form vincon as being not from vincere (conquer) but from vincire (bind) was apparently Torraca (comm. to vv. 127-129). Most contemporary commentators, if not all, accept his reading, as do we.
Dante had perhaps followed Gregory (Moralia XXXII.48) indirectly by following the version (Seraphim, Cherubim, Powers, Principalities, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Archangels, Angels) found in Brunetto Latini, Tresor (I.xii.5). (Oelsner [to verse 133] was apparently the first commentator to discuss Dante's reliance here on Brunetto.) Gregory, in the Homiliae (XXXIV), had only two orders at variance from Dionysius's, the order Dante employs here. See Tozer (comm. to verse 130): “Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert of St. Paul at Athens (Acts 17:34), was the reputed author of the De Caelesti Hierarchia,... In reality that work seems to have been written in the fifth or sixth century. It was translated from the original Greek into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena (Cent. IX), and became the textbook of angelic lore in the middle ages. The names of the Orders were derived from Scripture, for five of them, viz. Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, and Principalities, occur in St. Paul's Epistles (cp. Romans 8:38 [Vulg.]; Ephesians 1:21; Colossians 1:16), and the remaining four, viz. Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels, and Angels, in other parts of the Bible; but the system which Dante here gives was due to the work just mentioned.” For Dante's own earlier version, which is probably much more on the poet's mind than Gregory's, see Convivio II.v.7-11. This is a large “oops!” that has Dante laughing at himself even more than Gregory might be imagined as doing.
For an essay in English on the importance of Dionysius for Dante, see E.G. Gardner (Dante and the Mystics [London: Dent, 1913], pp. 77-110). For the commentary to this canto that is fullest in terms of reference to the actual texts of Dionysius, see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 135-41.
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 138, points out that Dante's use of this term, contemplar, which surely has no need of any particular “source,” nonetheless reflects Dionsysius's frequent use of it as a “technical term” for the highest form of contemplation.
Lauren 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. 79) points out that Isidore, who appears conjointly with Solomon in the heaven of the Sun, must similarly be laughing at himself, for he had expressed the opinion that Solomon was damned (PL XLII, p. 459).
Has Dante forgotten himself again? (See the note to Par. IX.119-123.) Porena (comm. to vv. 130-135) thinks Dante has nodded here. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 134-135) deal with the problem by claiming, less than convincingly, that the poet really meant Heaven in general, and not the Primum Mobile. The only way around the obstacle is to insist that Gregory, passing through this heaven on his way to his seat in the Rose, saw the image of the nine angelic orders present on this sphere as Dante did (see the note to vv. 13-15); however, this seems a forced argument. Are we faced with another inconsistency that the poet would have cleared up had he lived long enough?
Beatrice concludes her lengthy speech, begun at verse 61. If, she advises Dante, it was a mortal, Dionysius, who informed humankind of these things, we earthlings should remember that he got his information from St. Paul (see Acts 17:34), who had himself been here. For the significance of Dante's preference for Dionysius over Gregory (the authority of Pauline direct experience as told to a truthful scriptor as opposed to later gatherings of an encyclopedic kind), see Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 437-38) and Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 162).
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Poscia che 'ncontro a la vita presente
d'i miseri mortali aperse 'l vero
quella che 'mparadisa la mia mente,
come in lo specchio fiamma di doppiero
vede colui che se n'alluma retro,
prima che l'abbia in vista o in pensiero,
e sé rivolge per veder se 'l vetro
li dice il vero, e vede ch'el s'accorda
con esso come nota con suo metro;
così la mia memoria si ricorda
ch'io feci riguardando ne' belli occhi
onde a pigliarmi fece Amor la corda.
E com' io mi rivolsi e furon tocchi
li miei da ciò che pare in quel volume,
quandunque nel suo giro ben s'adocchi,
un punto vidi che raggiava lume
acuto sì, che 'l viso ch'elli affoca
chiuder conviensi per lo forte acume;
e quale stella par quinci più poca,
parrebbe luna, locata con esso
come stella con stella si collòca.
Forse cotanto quanto pare appresso
alo cigner la luce che 'l dipigne
quando 'l vapor che 'l porta più è spesso,
distante intorno al punto un cerchio d'igne
si girava sì ratto, ch'avria vinto
quel moto che più tosto il mondo cigne;
e questo era d'un altro circumcinto,
e quel dal terzo, e 'l terzo poi dal quarto,
dal quinto il quarto, e poi dal sesto il quinto.
Sopra seguiva il settimo sì sparto
già di larghezza, che 'l messo di Iuno
intero a contenerlo sarebbe arto.
Così l'ottavo e 'l nono; e ciascheduno
più tardo si movea, secondo ch'era
in numero distante più da l'uno;
e quello avea la fiamma più sincera
cui men distava la favilla pura,
credo, però che più di lei s'invera.
La donna mia, che mi vedëa in cura
forte sospeso, disse: “Da quel punto
depende il cielo e tutta la natura.
Mira quel cerchio che più li è congiunto;
e sappi che 'l suo muovere è sì tosto
per l'affocato amore ond' elli è punto.”
E io a lei: “Se 'l mondo fosse posto
con l'ordine ch'io veggio in quelle rote,
sazio m'avrebbe ciò che m'è proposto;
ma nel mondo sensibile si puote
veder le volte tanto più divine,
quant' elle son dal centro più remote.
Onde, se 'l mio disir dee aver fine
in questo miro e angelico templo
che solo amore e luce ha per confine,
udir convienmi ancor come l'essemplo
e l'essemplare non vanno d'un modo,
ché io per me indarno a ciò contemplo.”
“Se li tuoi diti non sono a tal nodo
sufficïenti, non è maraviglia:
tanto, per non tentare, è fatto sodo!”
Così la donna mia; poi disse: “Piglia
quel ch'io ti dicerò, se vuo' saziarti;
e intorno da esso t'assottiglia.
Li cerchi corporai sono ampi e arti
secondo il più e 'l men de la virtute
che si distende per tutte lor parti.
Maggior bontà vuol far maggior salute;
maggior salute maggior corpo cape,
s'elli ha le parti igualmente compiute.
Dunque costui che tutto quanto rape
l'altro universo seco, corrisponde
al cerchio che più ama e che più sape:
per che, se tu a la virtù circonde
la tua misura, non a la parvenza
de le sustanze che t'appaion tonde,
tu vederai mirabil consequenza
di maggio a più e di minore a meno,
in ciascun cielo, a sua intelligenza.”
Come rimane splendido e sereno
l'emisperio de l'aere, quando soffia
Borea da quella guancia ond' è più leno,
per che si purga e risolve la roffia
che pria turbava, sì che 'l ciel ne ride
con le bellezze d'ogne sua paroffia;
così fec'ïo, poi che mi provide
la donna mia del suo risponder chiaro,
e come stella in cielo il ver si vide.
E poi che le parole sue restaro,
non altrimenti ferro disfavilla
che bolle, come i cerchi sfavillaro.
L'incendio suo seguiva ogne scintilla;
ed eran tante, che 'l numero loro
più che 'l doppiar de li scacchi s'inmilla.
Io sentiva osannar di coro in coro
al punto fisso che li tiene a li ubi,
e terrà sempre, ne' quai sempre fuoro.
E quella che vedëa i pensier dubi
ne la mia mente, disse: “I cerchi primi
t'hanno mostrato Serafi e Cherubi.
Così veloci seguono i suoi vimi,
per somigliarsi al punto quanto ponno;
e posson quanto a veder son soblimi.
Quelli altri amori che 'ntorno li vonno,
si chiaman Troni del divino aspetto,
per che 'l primo ternaro terminonno;
e dei saper che tutti hanno diletto
quanto la sua veduta si profonda
nel vero in che si queta ogne intelletto.
Quinci si può veder come si fonda
l'esser beato ne l'atto che vede,
non in quel ch'ama, che poscia seconda;
e del vedere è misura mercede,
che grazia partorisce e buona voglia:
così di grado in grado si procede.
L'altro ternaro, che così germoglia
in questa primavera sempiterna
che notturno Arïete non dispoglia,
perpetüalemente 'Osanna' sberna
con tre melode, che suonano in tree
ordini di letizia onde s'interna.
In essa gerarcia son l'altre dee:
prima Dominazioni, e poi Virtudi;
l'ordine terzo di Podestadi èe.
Poscia ne' due penultimi tripudi
Principati e Arcangeli si girano;
l'ultimo è tutto d'Angelici ludi.
Questi ordini di sù tutti s'ammirano,
e di giù vincon sì, che verso Dio
tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano.
E Dïonisio con tanto disio
a contemplar questi ordini si mise,
che li nomò e distinse com' io.
Ma Gregorio da lui poi si divise;
onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse
in questo ciel, di sé medesmo rise.
E se tanto secreto ver proferse
mortale in terra, non voglio ch'ammiri:
ché chi 'l vide qua sù gliel discoperse
con altro assai del ver di questi giri.”
After the truth against the present life
Of miserable mortals was unfolded
By her who doth imparadise my mind,
As in a looking-glass a taper's flame
He sees who from behind is lighted by it,
Before he has it in his sight or thought,
And turns him round to see if so the glass
Tell him the truth, and sees that it accords
Therewith as doth a music with its metre,
In similar wise my memory recollecteth
That I did, looking into those fair eyes,
Of which Love made the springes to ensnare me.
And as I turned me round, and mine were touched
By that which is apparent in that volume,
Whenever on its gyre we gaze intent,
A point beheld I, that was raying out
Light so acute, the sight which it enkindles
Must close perforce before such great acuteness.
And whatsoever star seems smallest here
Would seem to be a moon, if placed beside it.
As one star with another star is placed.
Perhaps at such a distance as appears
A halo cincturing the light that paints it,
When densest is the vapour that sustains it,
Thus distant round the point a circle of fire
So swiftly whirled, that it would have surpassed
Whatever motion soonest girds the world;
And this was by another circumcinct,
That by a third, the third then by a fourth,
By a fifth the fourth, and then by a sixth the fifth;
The seventh followed thereupon in width
So ample now, that Juno's messenger
Entire would be too narrow to contain it.
Even so the eighth and ninth; and every one
More slowly moved, according as it was
In number distant farther from the first.
And that one had its flame most crystalline
From which less distant was the stainless spark,
I think because more with its truth imbued.
My Lady, who in my anxiety
Beheld me much perplexed, said: "From that point
Dependent is the heaven and nature all.
Behold that circle most conjoined to it,
And know thou, that its motion is so swift
Through burning love whereby it is spurred on."
And I to her: "If the world were arranged
In the order which I see in yonder wheels,
What's set before me would have satisfied me;
But in the world of sense we can perceive
That evermore the circles are diviner
As they are from the centre more remote
Wherefore if my desire is to be ended
In this miraculous and angelic temple,
That has for confines only love and light,
To hear behoves me still how the example
And the exemplar go not in one fashion,
Since for myself in vain I contemplate it."
"If thine own fingers unto such a knot
Be insufficient, it is no great wonder,
So hard hath it become for want of trying."
My Lady thus; then said she: "Do thou take
What I shall tell thee, if thou wouldst be sated,
And exercise on that thy subtlety.
The circles corporal are wide and narrow
According to the more or less of virtue
Which is distributed through all their parts.
The greater goodness works the greater weal,
The greater weal the greater body holds,
If perfect equally are all its parts.
Therefore this one which sweeps along with it
The universe sublime, doth correspond
Unto the circle which most loves and knows.
On which account, if thou unto the virtue
Apply thy measure, not to the appearance
Of substances that unto thee seem round,
Thou wilt behold a marvellous agreement,
Of more to greater, and of less to smaller,
In every heaven, with its Intelligence."
Even as remaineth splendid and serene
The hemisphere of air, when Boreas
Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest,
Because is purified and resolved the rack
That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs
With all the beauties of its pageantry;
Thus did I likewise, after that my Lady
Had me provided with her clear response,
And like a star in heaven the truth was seen.
And soon as to a stop her words had come,
Not otherwise does iron scintillate
When molten, than those circles scintillated.
Their coruscation all the sparks repeated,
And they so many were, their number makes
More millions than the doubling of the chess.
I heard them sing hosanna choir by choir
To the fixed point which holds them at the 'Ubi,'
And ever will, where they have ever been.
And she, who saw the dubious meditations
Within my mind, "The primal circles," said,
"Have shown thee Seraphim and Cherubim.
Thus rapidly they follow their own bonds,
To be as like the point as most they can,
And can as far as they are high in vision.
Those other Loves, that round about them go,
Thrones of the countenance divine are called,
Because they terminate the primal Triad.
And thou shouldst know that they all have delight
As much as their own vision penetrates
The Truth, in which all intellect finds rest.
From this it may be seen how blessedness
Is founded in the faculty which sees,
And not in that which loves, and follows next;
And of this seeing merit is the measure,
Which is brought forth by grace, and by good will;
Thus on from grade to grade doth it proceed.
The second Triad, which is germinating
In such wise in this sempiternal spring,
That no nocturnal Aries despoils,
Perpetually hosanna warbles forth
With threefold melody, that sounds in three
Orders of joy, with which it is intrined.
The three Divine are in this hierarchy,
First the Dominions, and the Virtues next;
And the third order is that of the Powers.
Then in the dances twain penultimate
The Principalities and Archangels wheel;
The last is wholly of angelic sports.
These orders upward all of them are gazing,
And downward so prevail, that unto God
They all attracted are and all attract.
And Dionysius with so great desire
To contemplate these Orders set himself,
He named them and distinguished them as I do.
But Gregory afterwards dissented from him;
Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes
Within this heaven, he at himself did smile.
And if so much of secret truth a mortal
Proffered on earth, I would not have thee marvel,
For he who saw it here revealed it to him,
With much more of the truth about these circles."
This retrospective opening tercet reminds us that, if humanity is in parlous condition (cf. Par. XXVII.127-141, Beatrice's lament for our lost innocence), the protagonist's guide has prophesied better times to come (Par. XXVII.142-148). Dante's gaze, in this canto, will also reflect a double focus, first fixing on Beatrice's mirroring eyes, and then behind him on what they reflect, God and the angels, themselves as seen, we are perhaps to understand, reflected on the convex outer surface of the Crystalline Sphere (see the note to vv. 13-15).
Gianfranco Contini (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1002) insists on the importance of the word “vero” (true) and the concept of truthfulness to this canto; it is, in his opinion, its “parola chiave”; indeed a major portion of his lectura (pp. 1002-12) is a meditation in this vein.
See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse), who claim that we may read Beatrice here either allegorically (as “Theology”) or literally (as herself). They, doubtless wisely, prefer the second understanding; nonetheless, some readers may find it a bit disquieting to discover intelligent critics even raising the possibility, so near the final vision, of “poets' allegory” being used as an interpretive tool for what the poet presents as being both actual and experienced.
This return to the conditions of the experiment alluded to in the second canto (see the note to Par. II.94-105) shows how captious some readers are in their insistence that Dante deliberately presents that experiment as being literally impossible. Such a reader will once again object that, if the flame is behind the subject's back, it cannot be reflected in a mirror set directly in front of him. And once again a less positivistic reader will realize that, if the flame is, for instance, only a few centimeters above the observer's head (as it is in the reproduction of a fifteenth-century illustration of the experiment [see Patrick Boyde, “L'esegesi di Dante e la scienza,” in Dante e la scienza, ed. P. Boyde and V. Russo {Ravenna: Longo, 1995}, p. 15]), the result will be as Dante says. In any case, this is a poem and not a physics lab. And yet we should realize that Dante only says “behind” (dopo, retro) the observer, without in any way suggesting that the flame might not be visible from a point directly in front of him.
A doplerus was a torch formed by twisting two candles together. Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 433) adduces Guinizzelli's previous use (in the third stanza of his canzone “Al cor gentil,” well known to Dante) of a slightly different Italian form, doplero.
See Bosco/Reggio (comm. ad loc.). It is their suggestion that the only exact 'fit' in this comparison results from references to a nota that is sung and also heard in the instrumental accompaniment (metro). Aside from Gabriele (comm. v. 9), who shrugs the verse away as follows: «è bruttissima comparatione questa», most commentators struggle with these lines, until Porena (comm. ad loc.) sees that all previous attempts at suggesting resemblance (e.g., singing with its accompaniment, song with its meter, words with their music, and any others) are not as precise as the image to which this musical analogue is likened, the reflection of a thing in a mirror. The proposal of Bosco/Reggio, however, may have overcome his objection.
Regina Psaki (“Paradiso XXVIII,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 426) is eloquent defending Dante's right to present Beatrice's sexual being as somehow still being a part of her attraction for him. The problem with her argument is that this text is clearly past-oriented, the verb fece (past definite) in evident contrast with the present tense of Dante's coinage imparadisa (imparadises). The girl toward whom he had been drawn sexually had turned out to be valuable for other and (in this poem) better reasons. One wants to distance oneself both from the prudes who, as Psaki rightly notes, are offended at the clear sexual nature of his memory of his first affections, and from Psaki, who forgets that that was then and this is now.
For this use of the word corda (cord, here translated “snare”) as having only metaphorical valence as a “simbolo di virtù” (symbol of virtue), see Giorgio Padoan (“Il canto XXVIII del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 177n.). He says that this usage is found also at Inferno XVI.106 (the famous, or infamous, “cord” that holds Dante's garments together and is used by Virgil as an invitation and challenge to Geryon) and Purgatorio VII.114 (where Pedro III of Aragon is “girt with the cord of every virtue,” perhaps the only occurrence in which Padoan's formulation really works). However, it is not clear that the word in any of these appearances has only a metaphorical sense.
In the thirteen presences of the word corda in the poem, five times it refers to a bowstring; three times, to the strings of musical instruments; once, to the cords on a whip. That leaves one other form of corda that seems identical with (or at least highly similar to) Padoan's three: Paradiso XXVI.49, the cords (corde) of love that draw us after it. And that seems to be the same (or a closely related) meaning as is found here. For some reason, Padoan paid no attention to corde, the plural of corda, thus omitting four of its occurrences from his consideration.
Exactly what Dante sees reflected in Beatrice's eyes is a matter of considerable dispute, although some commentators have possibly begun to sever the Gordian knot. Torraca (comm. to this tercet) was perhaps the first to realize that God and his angels have not descended to this sphere from the Empyrean, if without specifying how it is exactly that they are seen here. Sapegno (comm. to vv. 13-16) improves that formulation, insisting that the protagonist sees God and the angels in the Empyrean through the perfectly transparent sphere of the Primum Mobile. This view has the benefit of keeping God and his angels where they belong (in the “tenth heaven”), but does not do very well by the poet's insistence that he saw them “in quel volume” (in [or “on”] that revolving sphere). The fullest and best discussion of the problem, one that is aware of the pitfalls into which all his precursors have slipped, is that of Siro Chimenz (comm. to this tercet). He gets all the details right, but in the end confesses that he simply cannot come up with a solution. Similarly, Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 434) gets to the nub of the issue, but then turns to an “allegorical” reading: This vision is the prefiguration of the one the protagonist will have in the Empyrean. True enough, but this solution ignores the physical reality on which the vision is based. See the note to the opening tercet of this canto for an attempt at a resolution: Dante portrays the surface of the Primum Mobile as where the highest realities of all, God and His angelic partners in creation, are visible. In support of this hypothesis, we might consider the fact that the introductory simile itself speaks of a reflection (in Beatrice's mirroring eyes). That, in turn, may be considered (if this hypothesis is correct) a reflection of a reflection. Possible confirmation is found in Paradiso XXX.106-108, where the Rose is presented as a self-reflection off the convex surface of the Primum Mobile.
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out that the commentators are confused by this apparently simple utterance. How can God and the angels be present in the Crystalline Sphere anytime one looks intently into it? It is not easy to see how or why they, Bosco/Reggio continue, would now or ever descend to this sphere (despite, they might have added, the descent of the Church Triumphant in Canto XXIII), nor how any other hypothesis might account for the apparition (e.g., a vision, an allegory, some sort of unusual perception). Our hypothesis is as follows: Dante looks from a mirror (Beatrice's eyes) into a second “mirror” (the convex surface of the Crystalline Sphere) where – first the Point and then the angelic circlings – are what he sees, painted, as it were, upon the surface of this Primum Mobile, the circling of which moves all the universe by its influence. Cf. Paradiso I.1-3: “La Gloria di colui che tutto move / per l'universo penetra, e risplende / in una parte più e meno altrove” (The glory of Him who moves all things / pervades the universe and shines / in one part more and in another less). God's glory is to be considered as completely penetrating and at the same time visible here, in the first and purest sphere (and reflected least clearly of all by earth, spiritually even “denser” than the Moon, itself a less than perfect mirror, as we learned in Paradiso II). Seeing this highest and purest “universe,” God and his angels, on the surface of the Crystalline Sphere, the protagonist experiences the “copy” as though it were actually present. For possible confirmation of this view, see the note to Paradiso XXX.103-108.
Attilio Mellone (“Il Canto XXVIII,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 733-34) demonstrates the congruence between the language of Alfragano (whose view is accepted and cited by Giovanni di Sacrobosco) and that of Dante here. Alfragano presents the earth as a tiny point in relation to even the smallest star that can be seen from earth. In Mellone's judgment, Dante has deliberately misapplied the astronomer's picture of our physical universe to God's spiritual one.
For the word volume, see the note to Paradiso XII.122. Here it evidently refers to the revolving sphere of the Primum Mobile itself, although that interpretation is not widely shared.
Mellone (“Il Canto XXVIII,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], pp. 734-35) politely but firmly (and correctly) dismisses those Dantists (most significantly Bruno Nardi) who believe that this giro is in fact found in (or simply is) the Empyrean, rather than referring to the Crystalline Sphere itself. In fact, we should probably understand that it is the Crystalline Sphere. It is true that Dante once refers to the Empyrean as a giro, but probably should not have (see the note to Par. IV.34).
The point is so terribly bright that whoever looks at it must close his eyes, so terribly small that the tiniest star in our sky would seem large as the Moon if placed beside it. On the relation between what Dante sees here and the earth-centered Aristotelian universe, see Alison Cornish (Reading Dante's Stars [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000]), pp. 108-18).
See the note to Paradiso III.51 for the apparent contradiction here, in that “the nine ranks of angels, each associated with one of the planetary spheres, rotat[e] around the point that represents the Godhead faster the nearer they are to that point,” while in the lower universe the spheres rotate more slowly the closer they are to their center. Beatrice determinedly resolves this issue at vv. 58-78.
Cf. Paradiso X.67-69, Dante's description of the Moon's halo.
In earth-centered astronomy, we learn that the Primum Mobile, the outermost sphere, rotates the fastest (see Par. XXVII.99). Now we learn that the first ring of angels, the Seraphim, rotates even more quickly. If we reflect only a moment, what seems an inverse relation between these two universes is in fact one of parallelism when considered from the perspective of the Empyrean's God-centered astronomy. In such a view, the closer a sphere is to God, the faster it rotates on its axis, no matter where that axis is.
Between vv. 99 and 126 we shall hear the names of the angelic bands in descending order, exactly as they are presented anonymously here. Looking back from there, we can add to the highest rank, the Seraphim, the names of Cherubim, Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, and Angels.
For mondo as meaning, not “world,” but “universe,” see (as Poletto [comm. to vv. 22-27] advises) Convivio III.v.3, where Dante rehearses the difference between these two meanings of the word.
Surely a highly competitive candidate in any annual “Worst Tercet in the Divine Comedy” contest, this terzina does possess the merit of a matter-of-fact tone that encourages the reader to take Dante's celestial reportage at face value by suggesting that a certain truth value lies in prosaic verse.
The seventh circle out from the Godhead is that of the Principalities, one of the orders that Dante had misplaced in the Convivio. See the note to Paradiso VIII.34-39. Were we able to see a rainbow as an entire circle, it still would not be large enough to contain the arc made by this angelic order. For the varying “size” of these angelic bands, see vv. 64-66. And for Dante's previous reference to Iris, see Paradiso XII.12 (and the note to Par. XII.11-18).
The eighth and ninth circles, containing respectively the Archangels and the Angels, round out the assemblage, each rotating still more slowly around the Point.
The Seraphim, associated with love, are here presented as associated with knowledge (they are “entruthed”). At verse 45, however, they will again be associated with love. And see the note to verse 72.
As was first pointed out by Daniello (comm. to vv. 40-45), this statement reflects a passage in Aristotle's Metaphysics. And see Singleton (comm. to these verses): “This clearly reflects Aristotle's statement in the Metaphysics summarizing his speculations on the unmoved mover as final cause and supreme good. In the Latin translation of Aristotle known to Thomas Aquinas this reads (Metaphys. XII, 7, 1072b): 'Ex tali igitur principio dependet caelum et natura.' (It is on such a principle, then, that the heavens and the natural world depend.) Aquinas, in his commentary on this point in the Metaphysics, states (Exp. Metaphys. XII, lect. 7, n. 2534): 'Hence it is on this principle, i.e., the first mover viewed as an end, that the heavens depend both for the eternality of their substance and the eternality of their motion. Consequently the whole of nature depends on such a principle, because all natural things depend on the heavens and on such motion as they possess.'”
See Cesare Vasoli (“Il canto II del Paradiso,” in Lectura Dantis Metelliana: I primi undici canti del “Paradiso” [Rome: Bulzoni, 1992 {1972}], pp. 44-50) for a discussion of the neoplatonizing elements in Dante's emanationist view of God's stellar creations and their effect on the lower world. This is, according to Vasoli, not really Aristotelian at all, but essentially and clearly neoplatonic, “closer to Avicenna's metaphysical imagination than to the texts of [Aristotle's] De caelo,...” (p. 47).
The point about this punto is that in the Empyrean it is both a mathematically unlocatable and tiny point, a speck, containing everything and/or an unimaginably large space in which everything that exists in the lower spheres – as a reflection of this point – truly exists. See Paradiso XXXIII.85-87.
Love may or may not “make the world go round,” but it certainly is the motive force of the universe. The Seraphim's love of God, Aristotle's unmoved mover, imparts motion to everything beneath Him. See Convivio II.iii.9.
These four tercets are the protagonist's only words in this sphere, and once again indicate that his intelligence is still earthbound. See Tozer's recapitulation (comm. to vv. 46-57): “Dante here states the difficulty which he feels, viz. that, whereas in the world of sense the spheres move more swiftly in proportion to their distance from the centre, i.e., the earth, the celestial circles which he is now contemplating move more swiftly in proportion to their nearness to the centre, i.e., God. As the latter of these systems is the pattern of the former, it would be natural that they should correspond.” That is to say, the physics of the highest heavens is counter to expectation; the smallest circle runs fastest, the most distant, slowest, the exact opposite of what the protagonist experienced as he moved upward and outward from the earth. As Beatrice will explain, that inverse ratio is puzzling only to an earthling; the spiritual physics that she explains is only (super)natural. See the note to vv. 25-27.
The protagonist refers to the Primum Mobile as a “temple” and to its “boundary,” the Empyrean, in terms of love and light, its two most notable characteristics, as we shall see.
See the note to Paradiso XXVII.109 for discussions of Dante's possible “anticipation” of modern cosmic theory, in particular, the hypersphere. He wants to know the relationship between the actual universe and the spiritual one.
Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 70-78) was the first among many to cite Boethius, Cons. Phil. (III.m9), already cited by Dante at Convivio III.ii.17; the last lines of this poem, a favorite during the Middle Ages, contain the phrase te cernere finis cited in the Epistle to Cangrande (Epist. XIII.89).
Dante, through Beatrice's characterization of his question, is revealed as not yet being capable of confronting the counter-intuitive relations between the physical universe and its spiritual substrate.
See Tozer's paraphrase (comm. to vv. 64-78): “The argument is as follows: – In the material universe the size of the spheres [i.e., their circumference] corresponds to the amount of divinely infused power (virtute) which they possess, and which is diffused by them throughout their whole range (per tutte lor parti), i.e., from sphere to sphere and to the earth (ll. 64-66). A larger amount of the benefits thus communicated and received below (maggior bontà) is the result of a larger amount of salutary influence (maggior salute), and the larger amount of salutary influence is contained in a larger body – supposing always that that body has complete receptive power throughout (ll. 67-69). Consequently, the ninth sphere, or Primum Mobile, which is the largest, is also the highest in its nature of all the spheres; and thus it corresponds to the first and highest circle of the angels, that of the Seraphim (ll. 70-72). Hence, if you estimate the angelic circles, not by their size, as you see them, but by the rank and relative power of the spirits which compose them, you will perceive that each material Heaven corresponds exactly to the Order of Intelligences that guides it, the wider sphere to the superior, the narrower to the inferior power.”
Those who believe that Dante is either “Franciscan,” privileging love over knowledge, or “Thomist,” placing knowledge higher than love, find here only one of several clear indications that he wants to combine intellect and will in a common activity, “loving-knowledge” or “knowing-love,” that bridges this divide. This has been apparent since we encountered a similar formulation lying behind the harmonious presentation of these two fraternal communities in the heaven of the Sun. And see the note to vv. 37-39.
The four main winds were, in Dante's day and for centuries after, portrayed as faces. Boreas, the north wind, blows straight ahead or from his left (from the northeast) or from his right (from the northwest). This last was considered the mildest of these three winds, swelling up his right cheek and clearing out the night sky. However, there is some disagreement on this point. Those who find Dante's source in the Tresor of Brunetto Latini (I.cvi.14) maintain that the passage refers to the northeast wind.
Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 79-81) locates a source in Boethius (Cons. Phil. I.m3.1-10).
A hapax in the poem, the noun roffia has caused perhaps unnecessary difficulty, since the context establishes the probable reference, the scudding clouds marring an unencumbered view of the heavens.
A rhyming hapax, paroffia is Dante's version of the term parrocchia (parish) and thus, more generally, a place.
Not so much a developed simile as a simple comparison, this verse equates Beatrice's fairly lengthy and complex explanation (vv. 61-78) and the clear light from a star (in a sky that has been rid of its obscuring clouds by the wind, if we remember the first simile, vv. 79-84). All that complexity - two dozen verses of it - yields to the simplest illustration of the protagonist's new comprehension.
Pleased with Beatrice's explanation, the angelic circles (in the Empyrean, we remember) throw out sparks (i.e., the angels themselves, each order keeping to its circle) like molten iron.
For Dante's previous use of this image, see Paradiso I.60.
See Longfellow (comm. to verse 93) for the reference: “The inventor of the game of chess brought it to a Persian king, who was so delighted with it, that he offered him in return whatever reward he might ask. The inventor said he wished only a grain of wheat, doubled as many times as there were squares on the chess-board; that is, one grain for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to sixty-four. This the king readily granted; but when the amount was reckoned up, he had not wheat enough in his whole kingdom to pay it.”
One commentator (Oelsner [comm. to verse 93]) reports that this number is greater than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000. The reader will want to remember that such an astoundingly high figure is the result of simple doubling; the result of squaring (unless one begins with one [what the king should at least have offered as his counter-proposal]) would be beyond astronomical.
This anecdote, deriving from the East, has several potential European intermediaries, as has been duly noted (e.g., among others, Peire Vidal, as reported by Torraca [comm. to these verses]; but see Giuseppe Ledda [La guerra della lingua {Ravenna: Longo, 2002}, p. 297n.] for fuller documentation). The question of Dante's direct knowledge of Arabic material has focused, in the last century, on the Libro della scala, the account of the Prophet's night journey to another world. Theodore Silverstein (“Dante and the Legend of the Mirāj: the Problem of Islamic Influence in the Christian Literature of the Otherworld,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 11 [1952]: 89-110; 187-97) for a while seemed to have silenced those who argued, encouraged by two books by Miguel Asín Palacios (La escatologia musulmana en la “Divina Comedia”: historia y crítica de una polémica [Madrid: Hiperión, 1984 {1919}]) and Dante y el Islam [Madrid: Edit. Voluntad, 1927]) that there was a direct relationship between the Arabic Libro della scala and the Commedia. Silversteín's book is still most valuable, although it has often been forgotten in the rekindled debate. He examined critically Asín's evidentiary procedures and found them deeply flawed, pointing out that more likely sources are to be found in familiar Jewish and Christian texts. However, a new stage in the debate was initiated by Cerulli (Il “Libro della scala” e la questione delle fonti arabo-spagnole della “Divina Commedia” [Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1949]), who produced a palliative argument in support of a basic relationship between Dante's poem and Arabic sources (see the discussion of Cerulli's book in Nardi's [Dal “Convivio” alla “Commedia”, con premessa alla ristampa di O. Capitani {Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1992 [1960]}, pp. 351-70]). More recently, as respected a critic as Maria Corti (“La Commedia di Dante e l'oltretomba islamico,” L'Alightieri 5 [1995]: 7-19) attempted to resuscitate Asín Palacios's thesis; but see Massimiliano Chiamenti (“Intertestualità Liber Scale Machometi-Commedia?” Semestrale di Studi [e Testi] italiani: 4 [1999]: 45-51. [See also http://www.disp.let.uniroma1.it/contents/?idPagina=95]) for an effective debunking of her effort. For more recent support of at least the thrust of Asín Palacios's views, see Brenda Deen Schildgen (Dante and the Orient [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002]). And for an enthusiastic return to most of the original positions of Asín, see Carlo Saccone (“Muhammad's Mi'raj: a Legend between East and West [Postface to Il Libro della Scala],” tr. E. Emery, paper presented at the conference on Arabic and Judaic Influences in and around Dante Alighieri [Venice, 11-12 Sept. 2002].)
The angelic choruses, responding to one another, sing glory to God while remaining fixed eternally in their circles.
For the program of song in the last cantica, see the note to Paradiso XXI.58-60.
Poletto (comm. to vv. 94-96) points out that Dante here uses the Scholastic Latin term ubi (“where,” with the sense of “place”), which he had three times previously “translated” into Italian (dove); see, among the forty appearances of that word in Paradiso, only those occurring at III.88, XII.30, XXII.147, and XXVII.109 (this fourth added by Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 95-96]).
Beatrice here details the order of the angelic hierarchy, an order at variance from the one Dante had presented in Convivio (II.v.7-11). For the source of that celestial plan, see the note to vv. 130-135 (and see the discussion in Silvio Pasquazi [All'eterno dal tempo. Studi danteschi {Florence: Le Monnier, 1972 [2nd ed.]}, pp. 375-78]).
While he substantially alters his ordering of the angelic hierarchy from his presentation in Convivio, Dante remains firmly in disagreement with St. Thomas about a crucial detail, as Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004]), p. 109) takes care to point out. In the Summa contra Gentiles (III.lxxx.11), Thomas said that the angelic order of the Virtues was alone responsible for the movement of all the heavenly spheres, while Dante, first in Convivio (II.v.6) and then here, carefully associates a particular order of angels with a particular sphere, and goes on to say that the various angelic orders are the causes of the movements of the corresponding heavenly spheres (Conv. II.v.13; Par. XXVIII.127-129).
The Seraphim and Cherubim, associated primarily with love and with knowledge, respectively, are seen as hurrying in their circling in order to resemble God more closely.
Four tercets are devoted to completing the discussion of the highest group of angels, adding one other to the Seraphim and Cherubim, the Thrones.
These other “loving spirits” (we note that both Seraphim and Cherubim are here associated, along with the Thrones, with loving [see the note to vv. 109-111]). This tercet is problematic. But see Torraca's solution (comm. to this tercet): The causal clause does not clarify the reason for the name “Thrones” (as most assume), but relates to God's having completed the first triad of angels when He created the Thrones. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 105) uneasily accept this saving understanding of what they consider an “infelice terzina” (infelicitous tercet).
The Thrones convey the judgments of God below, as Dante has explained in Paradiso IX.62. It seems possible that Dante thought of these first three orders as being particularly related to the Trinity, Love, Knowledge, and Divine Judgment, related to, in order, the Spirit, the Wisdom, and the Power of God. On the other hand, like the Trinity itself, each of the Persons (and each order of angels) has a triune identity along with its individual primary characteristic. There were in fact quite elaborate systems available relating each of the three main groups of angels to each of the three Persons of the Trinity.
Carroll (comm. to vv. 97-105) has a different understanding of the first three orders: “The Thrones are, as they are called elsewhere, 'mirrors' (Par. IX.61-63) by which the Divine judgments are flashed throughout the universe. These judgments, however, descend to the Thrones through the Seraphim and Cherubim, that is, through love and knowledge. The Thrones, therefore, are the terminus, so to speak, of the love and knowledge of God issuing in judgment. 'The Seraphim,' says Bonaventura, 'contemplate the goodness of God, the Cherubim the truth, the Thrones the equity' (Compend. Theol. Veritatis, II.12; St. Bernard, De Consideratione, V.4-5); and this equity contains the goodness and truth, the love and light, which flow down through the two higher Orders.”
The past definite tense of the verb terminare here is used in a dialectal form (as is vonno, with which it rhymes in verse 103). In De vulgari eloquentia (I.xiii.2), Dante had disparaged this (Pisan) dialectal form of the past definite ending (-onno), as commentators (beginning with Andreoli [comm. to vv. 104-105]) have taken pleasure in pointing out. While both these words are forced by rhyme with (the apocopated form of possono) ponno, it seems evident that Dante enjoyed being forced into this “ungrammatical” posture (i.e., presenting himself as employing a surprisingly low vernacular). See the note to Paradiso XVII.127-129.
Now all three comprising the highest angelic triad are identified, not with love for, but with knowledge of, God.
This tercet offers apparent aid and comfort to those who propose a “Dominican” Dante, one who values knowledge over love. However, here the poet is saying that knowledge precedes love temporally, not that it is better than it. Clearly, we are meant to understand that, in a Christian soul, they work together. If not, the poet would have found a way to present the Cherubim as the highest order of angels.
See Grandgent (comm. to verse 114): “These are the 'steps': Grace begets good will, Grace and good will constitute desert, desert determines the degree of sight, and sight is the source of love.” He goes on by referring the reader to Paradiso XXIX.61-66 and Thomas, ST I, q. 62, a. 4.
Where six tercets were lavished upon the first triad, the second two (Dominions, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels) receive only four altogether.
For a celebration of Dante's wildly innovative use of metaphor in this passage, see “Un esempio di poesia dantesca (il canto XXVIII del Paradiso),” in Gianfranco Contini (Un' idea di Dante [Turin: Einaudi, 1976]), p. 213). Robin Kirkpatrick (Dante's Paradiso and the Limitations of Modern Criticism [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978], p. 165) characterizes this language as “ornamental and manneristic” (p. 165), a description that causes Teodolinda Barolini (review of Kirkpatrick's book in Romance Philology 35 [1981]: 409-13) to come to Contini's defense.
Unlike earthly springtimes, condemned to experience the mortal cycle when Aries becomes a constellation of the night sky in autumn, signaling the end of fruitfulness for the agricultural year, this “spring” is everlasting.
John Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004], p. 384) cites Stanley Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983], p. 85, n. 20) for the observation that, as far as he has found, no one before Dante had apparently ever joined the nine ranks of angels to nine particular spheres.
The word sberna we have translated as “sings” because to do it justice would have taken several words. It has been used in the last canto (Par. XXVII.141) with a slightly different spelling and where it means “unwinters,” as it also does here, but with the further latent sense of “to sing like birds welcoming the springtime.”
The second triad, composed of orders that have feminine nouns representing them in Latin and in Italian (Dominions, Virtues, Powers) are referred to as dee (goddesses).
The third triad (Principalities, Archangels, Angels) terminates this catalogue.
All these angelic orders look up; nonetheless, they have their effects below, all created things being affected by them.
The first commentator to object to the standard understanding of the verb form vincon as being not from vincere (conquer) but from vincire (bind) was apparently Torraca (comm. to vv. 127-129). Most contemporary commentators, if not all, accept his reading, as do we.
Dante had perhaps followed Gregory (Moralia XXXII.48) indirectly by following the version (Seraphim, Cherubim, Powers, Principalities, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Archangels, Angels) found in Brunetto Latini, Tresor (I.xii.5). (Oelsner [to verse 133] was apparently the first commentator to discuss Dante's reliance here on Brunetto.) Gregory, in the Homiliae (XXXIV), had only two orders at variance from Dionysius's, the order Dante employs here. See Tozer (comm. to verse 130): “Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert of St. Paul at Athens (Acts 17:34), was the reputed author of the De Caelesti Hierarchia,... In reality that work seems to have been written in the fifth or sixth century. It was translated from the original Greek into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena (Cent. IX), and became the textbook of angelic lore in the middle ages. The names of the Orders were derived from Scripture, for five of them, viz. Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, and Principalities, occur in St. Paul's Epistles (cp. Romans 8:38 [Vulg.]; Ephesians 1:21; Colossians 1:16), and the remaining four, viz. Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels, and Angels, in other parts of the Bible; but the system which Dante here gives was due to the work just mentioned.” For Dante's own earlier version, which is probably much more on the poet's mind than Gregory's, see Convivio II.v.7-11. This is a large “oops!” that has Dante laughing at himself even more than Gregory might be imagined as doing.
For an essay in English on the importance of Dionysius for Dante, see E.G. Gardner (Dante and the Mystics [London: Dent, 1913], pp. 77-110). For the commentary to this canto that is fullest in terms of reference to the actual texts of Dionysius, see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 135-41.
Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 138, points out that Dante's use of this term, contemplar, which surely has no need of any particular “source,” nonetheless reflects Dionsysius's frequent use of it as a “technical term” for the highest form of contemplation.
Lauren 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. 79) points out that Isidore, who appears conjointly with Solomon in the heaven of the Sun, must similarly be laughing at himself, for he had expressed the opinion that Solomon was damned (PL XLII, p. 459).
Has Dante forgotten himself again? (See the note to Par. IX.119-123.) Porena (comm. to vv. 130-135) thinks Dante has nodded here. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 134-135) deal with the problem by claiming, less than convincingly, that the poet really meant Heaven in general, and not the Primum Mobile. The only way around the obstacle is to insist that Gregory, passing through this heaven on his way to his seat in the Rose, saw the image of the nine angelic orders present on this sphere as Dante did (see the note to vv. 13-15); however, this seems a forced argument. Are we faced with another inconsistency that the poet would have cleared up had he lived long enough?
Beatrice concludes her lengthy speech, begun at verse 61. If, she advises Dante, it was a mortal, Dionysius, who informed humankind of these things, we earthlings should remember that he got his information from St. Paul (see Acts 17:34), who had himself been here. For the significance of Dante's preference for Dionysius over Gregory (the authority of Pauline direct experience as told to a truthful scriptor as opposed to later gatherings of an encyclopedic kind), see Picone (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 437-38) and Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 162).
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