Quando ambedue li figli di Latona,
coperti del Montone e de la Libra,
fanno de l'orizzonte insieme zona,
quant' è dal punto che 'l cenìt inlibra
infin che l'uno e l'altro da quel cinto,
cambiando l'emisperio, si dilibra,
tanto, col volto di riso dipinto,
si tacque Bëatrice, riguardando
fiso nel punto che m'avëa vinto.
Poi cominciò: “Io dico, e non dimando,
quel che tu vuoli udir, perch' io l'ho visto
là 've s'appunta ogne ubi e ogne quando.
Non per aver a sé di bene acquisto,
ch'esser non può, ma perché suo splendore
potesse, risplendendo, dir 'Subsisto,'
in sua etternità di tempo fore,
fuor d'ogne altro comprender, come i piacque,
s'aperse in nuovi amor l'etterno amore.
Né prima quasi torpente si giacque;
ché né prima né poscia procedette
lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest' acque.
Forma e materia, congiunte e purette,
usciro ad esser che non avia fallo,
come d'arco tricordo tre saette.
E come in vetro, in ambra o in cristallo
raggio resplende sì, che dal venire
a l'esser tutto non è intervallo,
così 'l triforme effetto del suo sire
ne l'esser suo raggiò insieme tutto
sanza distinzïone in essordire.
Concreato fu ordine e costrutto
a le sustanze; e quelle furon cima
nel mondo in che puro atto fu produtto;
pura potenza tenne la parte ima;
nel mezzo strinse potenza con atto
tal vime, che già mai non si divima.
Ieronimo vi scrisse lungo tratto
di secoli de li angeli creati
anzi che l'altro mondo fosse fatto;
ma questo vero è scritto in molti lati
da li scrittor de lo Spirito Santo,
e tu te n'avvedrai se bene agguati;
e anche la ragione il vede alquanto,
che non concederebbe che ' motori
sanza sua perfezion fosser cotanto.
Or sai tu dove e quando questi amori
furon creati e come: sì che spenti
nel tuo disïo già son tre ardori.
Né giugneriesi, numerando, al venti
sì tosto, come de li angeli parte
turbò il suggetto d'i vostri alimenti.
L'altra rimase, e cominciò quest' arte
che tu discerni, con tanto diletto,
che mai da circüir non si diparte.
Principio del cader fu il maladetto
superbir di colui che tu vedesti
da tutti i pesi del mondo costretto.
Quelli che vedi qui furon modesti
a riconoscer sé da la bontate
che li avea fatti a tanto intender presti:
per che le viste lor furo essaltate
con grazia illuminante e con lor merto,
sì c'hanno ferma e piena volontate;
e non voglio che dubbi, ma sia certo,
che ricever la grazia è meritorio
secondo che l'affetto l'è aperto.
Omai dintorno a questo consistorio
puoi contemplare assai, se le parole
mie son ricolte, sanz' altro aiutorio.
Ma perché 'n terra per le vostre scole
si legge che l'angelica natura
è tal, che 'ntende e si ricorda e vole,
ancor dirò, perché tu veggi pura
la verità che là giù si confonde,
equivocando in sì fatta lettura.
Queste sustanze, poi che fur gioconde
de la faccia di Dio, non volser viso
da essa, da cui nulla si nasconde:
però non hanno vedere interciso
da novo obietto, e però non bisogna
rememorar per concetto diviso;
sì che la giù, non dormendo, si sogna,
credendo e non credendo dicer vero;
ma ne l'uno è più colpa e più vergogna.
Voi non andate giù per un sentiero
filosofando: tanto vi trasporta
l'amor de l'apparenza e 'l suo pensiero!
E ancor questo qua sù si comporta
con men disdegno che quando è posposta
la divina Scrittura o quando è torta.
Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa
seminarla nel mondo e quanto piace
chi umilmente con essa s'accosta.
Per apparer ciascun s'ingegna e face
sue invenzioni; e quelle son trascorse
da' predicanti e 'l Vangelio si tace.
Un dice che la luna si ritorse
ne la passion di Cristo e s'interpuose,
per che 'l lume del sol giù non si porse;
e mente, ché la luce si nascose
da sé: però a li Spani e a l'Indi
come a' Giudei tale eclissi rispuose.
Non ha Fiorenza tanti Lapi e Bindi
quante sì fatte favole per anno
in pergamo si gridan quinci e quindi:
sì che le pecorelle, che non sanno,
tornan del pasco pasciute di vento,
e non le scusa non veder lo danno.
Non disse Cristo al suo primo convento:
'Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance';
ma diede lor verace fondamento;
e quel tanto sonò ne le sue guance,
sì ch'a pugnar per accender la fede
de l'Evangelio fero scudo e lance.
Ora si va con motti e con iscede
a predicare, e pur che ben si rida,
gonfia il cappuccio e più non si richiede.
Ma tale uccel nel becchetto s'annida,
che se 'l vulgo il vedesse, vederebbe
la perdonanza di ch'el si confida:
per cui tanta stoltezza in terra crebbe,
che, sanza prova d'alcun testimonio,
ad ogne promession si correrebbe.
Di questo ingrassa il porco sant' Antonio,
e altri assai che sono ancor più porci,
pagando di moneta sanza conio.
Ma perché siam digressi assai, ritorci
li occhi oramai verso la dritta strada,
sì che la via col tempo si raccorci.
Questa natura sì oltre s'ingrada
in numero, che mai non fu loquela
né concetto mortal che tanto vada;
e se tu guardi quel che si revela
per Danïel, vedrai che 'n sue migliaia
determinato numero si cela.
La prima luce, che tutta la raia,
per tanti modi in essa si recepe,
quanti son li splendori a chi s'appaia.
Onde, però che a l'atto che concepe
segue l'affetto, d'amar la dolcezza
diversamente in essa ferve e tepe.
Vedi l'eccelso omai e la larghezza
de l'etterno valor, poscia che tanti
speculi fatti s'ha in che si spezza,
uno manendo in sé come davanti.”
At what time both the children of Latona,
Surmounted by the Ram and by the Scales,
Together make a zone of the horizon,
As long as from the time the zenith holds them
In equipoise, till from that girdle both
Changing their hemisphere disturb the balance,
So long, her face depicted with a smile,
Did Beatrice keep silence while she gazed
Fixedly at the point which had o'ercome me.
Then she began: "I say, and I ask not
What thou dost wish to hear, for I have seen it
Where centres every When and every 'Ubi.'
Not to acquire some good unto himself,
Which is impossible, but that his splendour
In its resplendency may say, 'Subsisto,'
In his eternity outside of time,
Outside all other limits, as it pleased him,
Into new Loves the Eternal Love unfolded.
Nor as if torpid did he lie before;
For neither after nor before proceeded
The going forth of God upon these waters.
Matter and Form unmingled and conjoined
Came into being that had no defect,
E'en as three arrows from a three-stringed bow.
And as in glass, in amber, or in crystal
A sunbeam flashes so, that from its coming
To its full being is no interval,
So from its Lord did the triform effect
Ray forth into its being all together,
Without discrimination of beginning.
Order was con-created and constructed
In substances, and summit of the world
Were those wherein the pure act was produced.
Pure potentiality held the lowest part;
Midway bound potentiality with act
Such bond that it shall never be unbound.
Jerome has written unto you of angels
Created a long lapse of centuries
Or ever yet the other world was made;
But written is this truth in many places
By writers of the Holy Ghost, and thou
Shalt see it, if thou lookest well thereat.
And even reason seeth it somewhat,
For it would not concede that for so long
Could be the motors without their perfection.
Now dost thou know both where and when these Loves
Created were, and how; so that extinct
In thy desire already are three fires.
Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty
So swiftly, as a portion of these angels
Disturbed the subject of your elements.
The rest remained, and they began this art
Which thou discernest, with so great delight
That never from their circling do they cease.
The occasion of the fall was the accursed
Presumption of that One, whom thou hast seen
By all the burden of the world constrained.
Those whom thou here beholdest modest were
To recognise themselves as of that goodness
Which made them apt for so much understanding;
On which account their vision was exalted
By the enlightening grace and their own merit,
So that they have a full and steadfast will.
I would not have thee doubt, but certain be,
'Tis meritorious to receive this grace,
According as the affection opens to it.
Now round about in this consistory
Much mayst thou contemplate, if these my words
Be gathered up, without all further aid.
But since upon the earth, throughout your schools,
They teach that such is the angelic nature
That it doth hear, and recollect, and will,
More will I say, that thou mayst see unmixed
The truth that is confounded there below,
Equivocating in such like prelections.
These substances, since in God's countenance
They jocund were, turned not away their sight
From that wherefrom not anything is hidden;
Hence they have not their vision intercepted
By object new, and hence they do not need
To recollect, through interrupted thought.
So that below, not sleeping, people dream,
Believing they speak truth, and not believing;
And in the last is greater sin and shame.
Below you do not journey by one path
Philosophising; so transporteth you
Love of appearance and the thought thereof.
And even this above here is endured
With less disdain, than when is set aside
The Holy Writ, or when it is distorted.
They think not there how much of blood it costs
To sow it in the world, and how he pleases
Who in humility keeps close to it.
Each striveth for appearance, and doth make
His own inventions; and these treated are
By preachers, and the Evangel holds its peace.
One sayeth that the moon did backward turn,
In the Passion of Christ, and interpose herself
So that the sunlight reached not down below;
And lies; for of its own accord the light
Hid itself; whence to Spaniards and to Indians,
As to the Jews, did such eclipse respond.
Florence has not so many Lapi and Bindi
As fables such as these, that every year
Are shouted from the pulpit back and forth,
In such wise that the lambs, who do not know,
Come back from pasture fed upon the wind,
And not to see the harm doth not excuse them.
Christ did not to his first disciples say,
'Go forth, and to the world preach idle tales,'
But unto them a true foundation gave;
And this so loudly sounded from their lips,
That, in the warfare to enkindle Faith,
They made of the Evangel shields and lances.
Now men go forth with jests and drolleries
To preach, and if but well the people laugh,
The hood puffs out, and nothing more is asked.
But in the cowl there nestles such a bird,
That, if the common people were to see it,
They would perceive what pardons they confide in,
For which so great on earth has grown the folly,
That, without proof of any testimony,
To each indulgence they would flock together.
By this Saint Anthony his pig doth fatten,
And many others, who are worse than pigs,
Paying in money without mark of coinage.
But since we have digressed abundantly,
Turn back thine eyes forthwith to the right path,
So that the way be shortened with the time.
This nature doth so multiply itself
In numbers, that there never yet was speech
Nor mortal fancy that can go so far.
And if thou notest that which is revealed
By Daniel, thou wilt see that in his thousands
Number determinate is kept concealed.
The primal light, that all irradiates it,
By modes as many is received therein,
As are the splendours wherewith it is mated.
Hence, inasmuch as on the act conceptive
The affection followeth, of love the sweetness
Therein diversely fervid is or tepid.
The height behold now and the amplitude
Of the eternal power, since it hath made
Itself so many mirrors, where 'tis broken,
One in itself remaining as before."
Alison Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 1-28.[repr. in Reading Dante's Stars {New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000}, pp. 119-41]) has furnished a bravura performance on this opening simile, connecting its consideration of a single moment separating two very different states (balance/imbalance) to the moment separating God's creation of the angels from that of their first choices. See also Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 151-60).
Cornish begins her treatment of this moment with the following observation: “We have no way of knowing whether the planetary configuration that opens [this canto] describes dawn or dusk” (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 1). In the first three centuries it was a rare commentator (but, for exceptions, see Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 1-12] and Vellutello [comm. to vv. 1-9]) who did not assume that Dante presented the Sun as being in Aries, the Moon in Libra. After Vellutello, there is a period in which everyone gets this “right”; in fact, among the Italians it is only in the twentieth century with Steiner (comm. to verse 2) that the old error returns (and is repeated by several, most notably Momigliano [comm. to vv. 1-9] and Sapegno [comm. to vv. 1-9] until Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 1-9] restore the better reading; but see Chiavacci Leonardi [Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. {Milan: Mondadori, 1997}, p. 797], who reverts to the discredited interpretation). Among Dante's English-writing commentators, however, only Oelsner (comm. to these verses) understood that Dante leaves it absolutely opaque as to whether it is the Sun or Moon that is in Aries (the Ram) or in Libra (the Scales). The reference to the Sun's being in Aries at the Creation in the first canto of the poem (Inf. I.39-40) has, understandably perhaps, been the controlling factor for such readers.
For discussion of Latona's role in the poem (she is also named at Purg. XX.131, Par. X.67, and XXII.139), see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 141-42, suggesting that her maternal role may have seemed to Dante reminiscent of Mary (in particular in her having given birth to Apollo, treated several times as Christ [see the notes to Par. I.13-15, 13, 19, 25-27]). He continues by suggesting that Dante also was drawn to the figure of Latona by her exilic condition, particularly as this was presented by Ovid (Metam. VI.186-191), and by her eventual stability, shared by the former wandering isle, Delos, in a sort of pagan version of eternal peace and light.
The Sun and the Moon are described as being momentarily balanced (an instant immeasurably brief because both are always in their orbital motion); their being “out of balance” is recognized after a certain duration, when both are perceived as having changed position, moving away from (the one above, the other below) the horizon. Strangely, Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 7) believes that Manfredi Porena was of the opinion that this instant also corresponds to that of a total lunar eclipse. Porena, in fact, first in his earlier article (“Noterelle dantesche,” Studi romanzi 20 [1930]: 201-6) and then in his commentary (to vv. 4-6), “dismisses the eclipse as an accident” (the words are John Kleiner's [Mismapping the Underworld: Daring and Error in Dante's “Comedy” {Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994}, p. 166, n. 14]). Porena is in polemic against those of Dante's commentators who take his scientific lore too seriously. He points out that, were all the conditions of Dante's celestial moment to be fulfilled in actuality, there would be a total eclipse of the Moon (with the result, one might conclude, that we would not be able to see much of that disk move at all). Porena continues: “The vision that Dante presents to us is thus merely hypothetical.” And he concludes: “It is to employ an entirely erroneous method when one writes commentary on Dante always presupposing in his astronomical gestures true scientific rigor, even when he purposefully does not wish to make himself a teacher of science; he is above all else a poet.” That not only escaped Cornish's attention, it (having caught his) failed to convince Kleiner (ibid.), who, although he understands that “[b]ecause the orbits of sun and moon are not strictly coplanar, it is possible for the sun and moon to occupy opposite positions in the zodiac without an eclipse occurring. (If this were not the case, every 'full moon' would be eclipsed.)” That would be where some readers (and obviously Porena) would stop. In other words, there is absolutely no reason to suppose Dante is here thinking of an eclipse (he clearly is in vv. 97-102, in an altogether different context). Kleiner, however, continues as follows (ibid.): “What makes the balancing act an eclipse is Dante's insistence that the planets balance themselves perfectly - i.e., are exactly opposite one another in the sky and on the horizon” (emphasis Kleiner's). Of course, they may only be balanced “perfectly” and be aligned “exactly opposite” in Kleiner's imagination; Dante does not make any such further qualification. It is perhaps a bit disconcerting that Kleiner continues by discussing at some length (pp. 100-107) the three-mirrors experiment. Following some questionable advice, he simply assumes that Dante sets the experiment up in such a way that we are meant to understand that it simply cannot be performed – a most dubious view. (See discussion in the notes to Par. II.94-105 and XXVIII.4-9.)
Some (incorrectly) believe that what is described as being of immeasurably short duration is Beatrice's smile (see Rodney Payton [“Paradiso XXIX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics {Lectura Dantis [virginiana], 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995}, p. 439]): “The longer it is thought about, the smaller the exact instant is.... How long did Beatrice smile? How brief a moment can you conceive?” Payton has not digested Cornish's explanation (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 6-7), not of Beatrice's smile, but of her silence, which is the issue here: “For Aristotle an instant (or the 'now,' as he called it) is the temporal equivalent of a point on a line; yet time is no more made up of these 'nows' than a line is composed of geometrical points” (p. 7). She points out that Porena before her had correctly characterized the temporal nature of Beatrice's silence (see his comm. to vv. 4-6) as indeed having measurable duration. Porena suggests that the amount of time for half the rising or setting Sun or Moon to rise completely above or to sink completely below the horizon is a little more than a minute, certainly a measurable time. Cornish might have observed that Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 1-9) had supported Porena's thesis.
For the poet's contrastive inner reference to Francesca's words (Inf. V.132, “ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse” [still, it was a single instant overcame us]), here and in Paradiso XXX.11, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7-8, nn. 18-19), citing Contini (Un' idea di Dante [Turin: Einaudi, 1976], p. 206) as having preceded him in pointing out this parallel. But see also James Chiampi (Shadowy Prefaces [Ravenna: Longo, 1981], p. 66). And now see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 157). Moevs, like Swing and Hollander, relates the moment of Francesca's “conversion” to lust to the moment of St. Augustine's quite different conversion, as recorded in Confessiones VIII.12. See the note to Inferno V.138.
By now a most familiar claim of Beatrice's: She reads Dante's thoughts in the point (God) where all space (Latin for “where”: ubi) and time (Latin for “when”: quando) most purely and truly exist.
We are in the highest part of God's creation in time, a mixture of form and matter, the heavens. This sphere, we remember, is governed by the Seraphim, the highest order of angels, dedicated to loving God. Dante has asked a most difficult theological question: If God is self-sufficient, if He has no “needs,” why did He bother to create anything at all? The answer that Beatrice offers is simplicity itself: He created because He loves and wanted the angels to enjoy His love in their being, loving Him in return.
For consideration of Dante's reflections on the Creation, see Patrick Boyde (Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], pp. 235-47). On the canto as a whole, see Bruno Nardi's lectura (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso,” in his “Lecturae” e altri studi danteschi, ed. Rudy Abardo [Florence: Le Lettere, 1990 {1960}], pp. 193-201). For Dante's recasting in it of the relatively anthropomorphic view of creation found in Genesis for a more abstract and philosophical one, see Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 87-103). Boitani further maintains (p. 95) that Dante's rescripting of Genesis goes far beyond what is authorized by the Bible in portraying the creation of the angels, a subject about which Scripture is silent.
The Latin verb form subsisto is used here, as Bosco/Reggio point out, voluntarily (Dante had used the Italian form of the noun substantia [sussistenza] at Paradiso XIII.59 and easily could have used sussisto here, which rhymes perfectly with visto and acquisto). And so we may conclude that he wanted the Scholastic flavor that the Latin term affords. See verse 12, where the parallelism with the Latin word ubi causes the reader to realize that a perfectly usual Italian word quando is there a Latin word.
The Italian dative pronoun “i” (gli in modern Italian) is used some eight times in the poem, but this is the only time it refers to God after Adam informs us that “I” was the first name that human speakers used to address Him, and that Adam was the first to use it. See the note to Paradiso XXVI.134.
Two major issues are touched on here. If our sense of the history of the world begins with Creation (i.e., Genesis 1:1), what was God doing before then? (Attributed to St. Augustine is the retort, “preparing a Hell for the inquisitive” [see Carroll, comm. to vv. 19-30].) Dante's point is that whatever He was doing, He was not lazing about, even if there was, strictly speaking, no time before the Creation.
The second problem is of a different order. What exactly does “God moved upon these waters” mean? Precisely what “waters” are referred to? The obvious reference is to Genesis 1:2. The first commentator (but hardly the last) to point to the work of Bruno Nardi was Porena (comm. to this tercet). Nardi had shown (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,” 1944], pp. 307-13) that one traditional medieval interpretation of this biblical text was that these waters are above the rest of the heavens (the Primum Mobile was also referred to as the “acqueous sphere”). As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out, Dante's use of the demonstrative adjective “queste” (these) makes that solution even more attractive, since Dante and Beatrice are currently in the Primum Mobile.
Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 446) adduces Paradiso VII.64-66, with its sense of God's creation being motivated by love, as lying behind this passage. For the distinctions between forma and atto and between materia and potenza, see Stephen Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983]) and Zygmunt Baranski's rejoinder (“Dante tra dei pagani e angeli cristiani,” Filologia e critica 9 [1984]: 298-99).
From the fourteenth century onward, commentators (e.g., the author of the notes to the Commedia found in the Codice Cassinese [comm. to verse 22]) have entered into the question of what exactly Dante envisioned when he thought of “pure matter.” The author of that early commentary resorts to Plato's term ylem [“hyle”], for primordial matter without form, the “stuff” of the four elements to which God would give shape in creating the physical world. See David O'Keeffe (“Dante's Theory of Creation,” Revue néoscolastique de philosophie 26 [1924], pp. 56-57) for why this is not the same as the “prime matter” of Averroës. And, for a recent discussion in English, taking issue with Nardi's various pronouncements that would make Dante less orthodox than even he probably wanted to be perceived, see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 40-45). For instance, Moevs believes that Dante's ideas about materia puretta accord with Thomas's views.
For the three entities “shot” by this “three-stringed bow,” see the note to vv. 31-36.
Dante insists on the simultaneity of all parts of God's instantaneous creation, heavenly and sublunar. The three elements of that creation (pure form, mixed form and matter, and pure matter) obviously are in hierarchical relation to one another; but their creation occurred in the same instant.
According to Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 196, n. 1), this is the only time in all his works that Dante refers to the notion in medieval physics that light traveled at infinite velocity.
The standard gloss is found in Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who say that the angels, “pure act” (i.e., pure form or substance, unmodified by accidents), were created in the Empyrean; that “pure matter” (unformed matter before God created the universe) was the condition of the earth before the event recorded in Genesis 1:1-2; that the nine heavens, between the Empyrean and earth, were created out of a mixture of form and matter (“act” [atto] and “potential” [potenza]). However, for a nuanced and more complex discussion of Dante's unique integration of elements from many sources in this passage, orthodox (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) and unorthodox (e.g., Averroës), see Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 198-200).
There is a persistent counterview, one that understands the second aspect of the Creation differently, as humankind. But see Poletto's stern remonstrance (comm. to vv. 22-24).
On these lines, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003]: 45): “Order and structure were created together in the substances [= angels].”
Singleton (comm. to vv. 8-9) makes the following observation: “For a reader unfamiliar with the standard procedure of a summa of theology, it should perhaps be pointed out that the poem is proceeding thematically in the opposite direction to that of a summa: the journey moves ever upwards, toward God, and here comes to a treatise on angels, in these two cantos so near the end, whereas a summa begins with God, in its first section of questions, and then passes to the creation or procession of creatures from God (cf. Summa theol. I of Thomas Aquinas as it passes from question 43 to question 44), beginning with the highest creatures, which are the angels.”
As Scripture (e.g., Genesis 1:1, Ecclesiasticus 18:1, Psalms 101:26 [102:25]) and reason (for Dante's own contribution under this heading, see vv. 43-45) attest, God created the angels, not as St. Jerome asseverated (in his commentary on Paul's Epistle to Titus 1:2), many, many centuries before He created the heavens and the earth, but simultaneously with them. Dante's disagreement with Jerome is confrontational and dismissive, all the more so since it issues from the mouth of Beatrice, and we cannot lay the blame on a somewhat intemperate protagonist. (For the text of Thomas's far more conciliatory packaging of his own dissent [ST I, q. 61, a. 3], see Singleton [comm. to vv. 37-39]).
Beatrice's point is that, were Jerome to have been correct, the angels would have had nothing to do for all those centuries, since their only task is governing the heavens.
This is the last appearance of the noun ragione (reason), used thirty-one times in the poem, as though words for logical discourse had to be absent once it entered the Empyrean.
Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 194) locates this part of Beatrice's discourse in Peter Lombard's discussion of the angels (Sententiae I.ii.2), where he sets out the problems to be resolved exactly as they are represented here: “Concerning the angelic nature the following must first be considered: when it was created, and where, and how; then what the result was of the defection of certain of them and of the adhesion of certain others.” Cf. Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 452) for the same citation.
In good Scholastic style, Beatrice summarizes the first three elements in her exposition. See the note to vv. 46-63.
No one seems to have found a reason or a source for this segment of time that Dante decides it took the angels to fall from the Empyrean into Hell. In fact, normal gravitational force, applied to normal objects, would have left them falling a far longer time. Their sin, self-loving rebellion against God, occurred the moment of/after their creation, for all intents and purposes, instantaneously. Their fall, traversing the entire universe to its core, took less than half a minute.
For Bonaventure's views on the fall of the angels, see Barbara Faes de Mottoni (“Bonaventura e la caduta degli angeli,” Doctor seraphicus 38 [1991]: 97-113). Her treatment makes no reference to Dante, but offers a survey, centered in Bonaventure, of medieval views of angelic free will.
See Convivio II.v.12 for Dante's previous handling of the question of the fallen angels: It was about one-tenth of the whole group who sinned and fell; God was moved to create humankind as a kind of replacement for these (“alla quale restaurare fue l'umana natura poi creata”).
For Augustine's absolute unwillingness to consider that God created the eventually fallen angels anything less than completely good, see Alison Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 10-14). On the other hand, he clearly thought that angelic nature would have come into being making choices. And so Augustine, caught between two very strong theological imperatives (God never created evil; Satan never enjoyed the bliss of loving God), invented an amorphous mora (delay) between his creation and his fall. According to Cornish, for Augustine “the devil was not created sinful, yet his sin was not deferred even for a split-second. He makes the distinction that by nature the devil was good, by choice he became evil, so that the beginning of Lucifer's being and the beginning of his sin occurred at two separate moments. Whether these are logical or chronological moments is not clear” (p. 11). Dante's view, while never clearly stated, is probably not very different.
For suggetto, see Stephen Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983], pp. 197-201), siding with the majority; the word refers to “terra” (earth). See, for instance, Lombardi's gloss (comm. to vv. 49-51), saying that earth is subject to (i.e., lies beneath) the other three elements, water, air, and fire. But see Mazzoni (Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. II [Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979 {Intro. to Questio}], pp. 712-32) and Baranski (“Dante tra dei pagani e angeli cristiani,” Filologia e critica 9 [1984]: 300), both of whom suggest that we are meant to realize that what is under discussion is “prime matter” (la materia prima). And see Gary Cestaro (Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003], p. 248, n. 87): “Dante alludes here to the common Scholastic notion of a subiectum elementorum, the primal elemental material prior to the definition of four distinct elements, akin to Plato's silva ['hyle']....” A hedged bet is found in Oelsner's notes (comm. to vv. 49-51): “Il suggetto dei vostri elementi is usually (and perhaps rightly) taken to mean 'that one of your elements that underlies the rest,' i.e., earth. Compare Inf. XXXIV.121-126. But if we take this passage on its own merits it seems better to understand the substrate of the elements to mean the prima materia (compare [Par.] II.106-108; VII.133-136, and lines 22-24 of this canto); the elaboration of the elements being the subsequent work of the Angels and the heavens.” The strongest case against this second interpretation was made by Porena (comm. to vv. 49-51), pointing out that Inferno XXXIV.122-126 reveals that Dante thought that, by the time Satan had penetrated our globe, water and earth had already been separated. However, Chimenz (comm. to vv. 49-51) countered that argument as follows: The words inscribed over the gate of Hell (Inf. III.7-8) would seem to suggest that before the creation of Hell (and, Chimenz insists, the contemporary creation of the angels), nothing existed except eternal things, and thus Satan fell into unformed matter. Nonetheless, it is certainly possible that we are meant to understand that earth was formed while Satan was falling and (at least in part) in order to receive him and his partners in rebellion.
The verb circuir does not suggest that the remaining (loyal) angels are flying around the heavens freestyle, but that they form nine angelic circlings around God, as opposed to the fallen angels, who, along with their leader, Lucifer, are imprisoned in Hell. The text (vv. 56-57) specifically reminds readers of their vision of Satan at the center of the universe (Inferno XXXIV.110-111).
The good angels, unlike the prideful members of their cohort, are portrayed as “modesti” (humble), possessing the virtue opposite to their brethren's vice of pride.
See Singleton's gloss (comm. to this tercet): “The angels who waited for the bestowal of the higher light, the light of glory, received that light (here termed 'grazia illuminante'). Their merit (merto) was precisely that humility and their waiting upon the Lord to bestow that higher light. With that bestowal they were forever confirmed in this highest grace, and accordingly they are now bound thereby to the good and to do the good. They have fullness of vision and of will, and they cannot sin. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theol. I, q. 62, a. 8, resp.: 'The beatified angels cannot sin. The reason for this is, because their beatitude consists in seeing God through His essence. Now, God's essence is the very essence of goodness. Consequently the angel beholding God is disposed towards God in the same way as anyone else not seeing God is to the common form of goodness. Now it is impossible for any man either to will or to do anything except aiming at what is good; or for him to wish to turn away from good precisely as such. Therefore the beatified angel can neither will nor act, except as aiming towards God. Now, whoever wills or acts in this manner cannot sin. Consequently the beatified angel cannot sin.'”
Dante, Beatrice divines, may be wondering what the angels actually did in order to merit illuminating grace.
See Singleton (comm. to these verses), citing Aquinas (ST I, q. 62, a. 5): “As the angel is of his nature inclined to natural perfection, so is he by merit inclined to glory. Hence instantly after merit the angel secured beatitude. Now the merit of beatitude in angel and man alike can be from merely one act; because man merits beatitude by every act informed by charity. Hence it remains that an angel was beatified straightway after one act of charity.”
Dante's corrosive attack on bad preaching reveals heartfelt annoyance, probably reflecting extensive personal experience. Tasked with the representation of the Word, preachers should control their desires for recognition of their powers of speaking. On the other hand, Beatrice is here presented as a most effective teacher. Perhaps we are meant to think critically of Paul's strictures on women; see Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004], p. 181), citing I Cor. 14:34-35 for the instruction that “it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
Discussing the questions pertaining to the natures of angelic language (see De vulgari eloquentia I.ii.3) and memory, see Barbara Faes de Mottoni (“Il linguaggio e la memoria dell'angelo in Dante,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], pp. 237-53). Her discussion of this passage, found on pp. 243-53, concludes (p. 253) with the assertion, difficult to fault, that the angels, knowing everything in God, have, at least in Dante's possibly heterodox opinions (potentially opposed to those of Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas), need of neither language nor memory. However, see the further distinction offered by Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 205-8), who suggests that, while a passage in Monarchia (I.iii.7) clearly seems to require that we conceive that Dante there denies that the angels have memories, here the poet only seems to assert that they do not need to make use of them.
See the observation of Hawkins (Dante's Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999], p. 192): With the exception of Purgatorio XXXII.79, “where 'scuola' describes the Old Testament precursors of Christ,... [the word] always denotes what is pagan or in some sense defective....”
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) allow that possibly Dante believes that, projecting human experience onto the terms “intellect,” “will,” and “memory” (see verse 72), some earthly judges distort the nature of the angelic versions of these capacities. That would “save” Dante from opposing some pretty potent authorities (see the note to vv. 70-81).
See Ruedi Imbach (Dante, la philosophie et les laïcs [Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1996], p. 147), averring that Dante embraces at least one heretical position of Siger de Brabant when, in these lines, he argues, against the authorities mentioned in the note to verses 70-81, that the angels have no memory. For discussion, see Luca Curti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 161-62). It seems likely that Dante wants, as is often the case, to formulate his own position on an issue, one that accords with elements found in several other authorities.
The explanation seems clear enough (and is found in many early commentaries): There are those on earth who are totally confused (i.e., they “dream” even while they are not sleeping) in believing that the angels have need of memory, while others, those who maintain such a view while knowing it to be false, are guilty not of ignorance but of fraud. These Christian sophists care more about making a splash than seeking the truth.
Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 451) is effective in joining two responses that are rarely seen together in the commentary tradition when he understands (1) that the focus of Beatrice's anger is completely on the question of angelic memory (and does not spill over into the sins of bad preachers, which dominate the following verses [91-126], as so many allow their discussion to do) and (2) that the zeal behind her (Dante's) insistence is passionate and fully conscious of the famous feathers that will be ruffled thereby, those of Saints Jerome, Augustine, and Thomas, for starters. However, he perhaps goes too far in asserting that Dante denies that angels have memory; the text only asserts (vv. 80-81) that they have no need of memory, which may imply either that they have or do not have this capacity. Dante is obviously outraged at the notion of angels requiring (and actually using) memory, since they live in the eternal present. However, whether he goes as far as Averroës (and Siger) in denying that they have this capacity, that question he leaves us to wonder about. He could not have left the issue more ambiguous, as he obviously desired to - which may imply that he did in fact buy into Siger's argument.
Lombardi (comm. to this tercet) was perhaps the first modern glossator (1791) to insist that this understanding is incorrect. Countering those who would have Dante here denying the angels memory, he argues that Albertus Magnus says that they indeed have such capacity, but that it is very different from ours. Thus, according to Lombardi, Dante, in agreement with Albertus, has the first category of errant thinkers asserting that angelic memory is exactly like the human kind, while the second, in his view, makes an even graver error by denying the angels a faculty enjoyed by humans. This explanation does not deal with the deliberate wrongness of these thinkers.
Dante does not seem to be denying that the angels possess a memory, rather that they lack the need to use it, since they know everything in the eternal present. It is thus not clear that Dante has succumbed to the Siren song of Siger of Brabant (who denied that angels possessed memories [see the note to Par. X.133-138]).
These two tercets form the pivot on which Beatrice's argument turns from heavenly theology (involving the nature of angelic mind) to religious concerns of a lower intellectual order, from the disputes of theologians to the fables told by preachers – and Dante almost certainly has in mind itinerant friars.
The “cost” of the benefits of Scripture in blood (of Jesus, the martyred apostles, and the other martyrs [see Pasquini/Quaglio, comm. to this tercet, for these three references]) is not taken into account.
Poletto (comm. to this tercet) at least reacts to the curious present tense of the verb costa (costs), and “translates” it as costò (cost). Grabher (comm. to this tercet) does take the present tense as meaningful, believing that Dante is not speaking literally of the blood of martyrs, but metaphorically – of the inner sacrifice made by all Christians. This does not seem a convincing gloss. And thus, while the constraints of rhyme may be all the explanation one requires for the presence of the form, the reader is forced to wonder. Did Dante think of the past sacrifices of the heroes of the Church as occurring in the vivid present tense, or is his point that such sacrifices are being made even now, in his day? His opinions on the current condition of the City of Man, expressed volubly throughout the poem (most recently at Par. XXVII.121-141), would seem to gainsay this second possible explanation.
Silvio Pasquazi (“Canto XXIX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1031) begins his lectura with this invective against preachers, which is a frequent cause of complaint among less stern readers of the last canticle. His view is that it should be dealt with, not as aberrant, but as of a piece with the texture and purpose of the canto. Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 209) is of a similar opinion. For discussion of a similar discomfort among the commentators with Beatrice's last words in the poem in the following canto, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 31-33).
Preaching as preening now becomes Beatrice's subject. Her insistence on the fictitious nature of this sort of public utterance is underlined by the word invenzioni (inventing new ideas) here and favole (tales) at verse 104, ciance (idle nonsense) at verse 110, motti and iscede (buffoonery and jokes) at verse 115. Cf. Giovanni Boccaccio's portrait of a fiction-dealing friar, Fra Cipolla (Decameron VI.x), which probably owes more than a certain debt to this passage. (See Longfellow [comm. to verse 115] and Hollander [Boccaccio's Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire {Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997}], pp. 41-45).
For the “darkness at noon” that overspread the world during the Crucifixion of Jesus, see Luke 23:44: “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.” (See also Matthew 27:45 and Mark 15:33). And see Grandgent (comm. to these verses): “To explain this darkness at the Crucifixion, some said that the moon left its course to make an eclipse, others that the sun hid its own rays. Dionysius (Par. XXVIII.130) favored the first explanation, St. Jerome the second. Both are recorded by St. Thomas in Summa Theologiae III, q. 44, a. 2. The second theory has the advantage of accounting for an obscuration 'over all the land,' whereas an ordinary eclipse would darken only a part of it.”
This line has caused scandal. Does Dante really want to say that those who say that the Moon retroceded six constellations in the Zodiac in order to blot out the Sun (and, according to Scartazzini [comm. to this verse] and Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 97-102], some fairly illustrious authorities, including Dionysius the Areopagite, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, took this explanation seriously) are liars? Those are strong words. Scartazzini was the first to point out that Dante had a precursor in such a harsh view, Petrus Comestor (PL CXCVIII.1631), who says that those who uphold such tales “have lied” (mentiti sunt). Eventually Nardi (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,” 1944], pp. 375-76) would also turn to this source and argue that, despite the commentators' discomfort, both the manuscript tradition and Petrus's harsh words underline the fact that Dante meant exactly what he said. We should remember the poet's harsh treatment of Jerome, specifically mentioned as totally incorrect (Dante could have been less direct!) in this very canto (verses 37-45); on that occasion, concerning the dating of the creation of the angels, St. Thomas was right (if Dante doesn't say so specifically). And now it is his turn to be told off, if indirectly. Bosco/Reggio try to diminish the force of the verb mentire in Dante's day (i.e., rather than lying, it meant something more like “does not tell the truth”). However, ask any Dante scholar whether he or she enjoys being told that a firmly held opinion is erroneous. It is the price of doing one's intellectual work in public; and we all must be prepared to pay that price. Nonetheless, it is plain enough that Dante is belittling an opinion that is to be thought of as having the same merit as the idle tales told by not-very-well-educated friars. And if Dionysius, Albert, or Thomas chooses to align himself with such drivel, he gets only what he deserves - that seems to be the poet's attitude.
Dante disposes of this “scientific” account of the miracle recorded in three Gospels on truly experimental grounds. If it were true, then the resulting eclipse would have been only partial. And so we are forced to follow Jerome, whose miraculous “self-eclipse” of the Sun indeed was visible in all the world, and not merely in the area around Jerusalem.
This picture of religious ceremony in the Florence of Dante's day has its kinship with that found in the series of (often hilarious) representations of preaching found in the Decameron. All over the city, in parish after parish, all through the year (for this understanding of per anno, see Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 94-108]), the leaders of the flock trade in “wind,” notions that are clearly estranged from truth. Such intellectual vagrancy, however, does not excuse the individual sheep, who should realize that what they listen to so avidly has nothing to do with the Bible or with the fundamental truths of their religion. In other words, they are not innocent because they are stupid.
Daniello (comm. to this verse) was the first glossator to identify the source of the nickname Lapo as Jacopo. That Bindo derived from Ildebrando was first noted by Fanfani (in his Vocabulary of Tuscan Usage), according to Andreoli (comm. to this verse).
Dante's verb gridare tells all one needs to know about the quality of mind that lies behind these “shouted” sermons.
For a sermon of St. Bernard that may be reflected in this passage, see Rodney Payton (“Paradiso XXIX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 448-49).
Christ's first “congregation” was comprised of the apostles.
The “verace fondamento” (true foundation), that is, Jesus's teachings as found in the Gospels (see Mark 16:15).
Some think that the phrase “le sue guance” (lit. “cheeks” [a choice forced by rhyme?] understood as metonymic for “lips”) refers to the lips of Jesus rather than to those of the apostles. If we choose this second alternative, as we probably should, we follow Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) and the large majority of the commentators. However, the estimable Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-117) begins the tradition of treating the utterances as coming from Christ's mouth, and has had a narrow but fairly distinguished band of adherents (Landino, Costa, Tommaseo, Andreoli, etc.).
The cappuccio (cowl) worn by friars balloons figuratively with their pride. Literally, a large and well-tailored cowl was the sign of wealth of the Order and/or importance of an individual. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 115-117) point out that the only other cappuccio found in this poem is worn by the hypocrites in Malebolge, Inferno XXIII.61. They are attired in leaden costume that mimics the garb of Cluniac monks.
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that Satan was often, in medieval iconography, represented as a black crow (in contrast to the white dove that represented the Holy Spirit) and that Dante has spoken (Inf. XXXIV.47) of Lucifer as an uccello (bird).
Believing in the truthfulness of pardons (and pardoners) is the height of credulity. It is hard to blame the trickster when his victims almost insist on being gulled.
See Tozer's gloss on this tercet: “'[O]n this (credulity) St. Antony fattens his pig.' The hog which appears in pictures at the feet of St. Antony, the Egyptian hermit [ca. 250-355], represents the demon of sensuality which he conquered. In the middle ages the swine of the monks of St. Antony were allowed to feed in the streets of cities, and were fed by devout persons (Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, pp. 750, 751); this is what Dante refers to.” The obvious reversal in the values of the Antonines, who became the representatives of the vice that their founder had conquered, is apparent.
The friars of Antony's order are “repaying” the contributions of their foolish flocks with counterfeit coin: meaningless pieces of paper on which is written their forgiven sins.
Beatrice concludes her tirade with an ironic verbal gesture, making it a mere digression. Now let us return, she says, to the true way, the path chosen by the loyal angels, a subject turned aside from in verse 94 for her savage attack upon friars, difficult to accept as a mere digression.
The numbers of the angels increases the higher they are found. Dante's coinage, the verb ingradarsi, is found in slightly altered form (digradarsi) in Paradiso XXX.125. In both cases it seems to have the meaning “to increase step-by-step.” Thus, the higher the eyes of an observer mount, the more angels they are able to take in. And that number is both beyond human vocabulary and mortal conception.
Discussing this passage, Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 297-98) points out that Daniel's numeration of the angels (Daniel 7:10), “a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times one hundred thousand stood before him” [according to the Vulgate]), while incalculable for most human beings, was probably a finite number in Dante's opinion. Similarly, the wording of verse 135, “a particular number lies concealed” (determinato numero si cela) would clearly seem to indicate a very large but determinable number. Most commentators think the poet is saying something quite different, namely that the number of angels cannot be represented by any finite number. However, Dante's sense for mathematics may be more sophisticated than that of his commentators; apparently he knows the distinction between “numberless” (i.e., beyond counting because of limited human capacity) and “infinite,” a concept of which he knew at least from the extended discussion in Aristotle's Physics (III.iv-viii).
Behind this passage, according to Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 210-11), there lies a dispute between “Aristotelians” (who propose a limited number of angels) and the Bible (e.g., Daniel 7:10, Apoc. 5:11). However, see Thomas Aquinas (ST I, q. 112, a. 4), as cited by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 135): “The multitude of the angels transcends any material multitude.” It is clear what position Dante does not share, that of the “Aristotelians,” who argue for a strictly limited number (as few as sixty). However, whether he believes that the angels are infinite or numbered is not entirely clear, although verse 135 may be more specific than it is generally understood as being. Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 148, supports the second opinion, citing Gregory's gloss on Job 25:3 from the Moralia: “And if the number of angels is finite to the eye of God [Dante's 'particular number'?], in the human view it is infinite [Dante's 'lies concealed'?]” (PL LXXV.542).
God's brilliance irradiates the angelic nature in such ways that it is received by these creatures (splendori because they reflect the divine light [for Dante's “light physics” see the note to Par. XXIII.82-84]) variously, each in accord with its capacity to absorb and return God's love.
Seemingly infinite in its application, God's love for the highest creatures that He made nonetheless still issues from the single entity that made them.
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Quando ambedue li figli di Latona,
coperti del Montone e de la Libra,
fanno de l'orizzonte insieme zona,
quant' è dal punto che 'l cenìt inlibra
infin che l'uno e l'altro da quel cinto,
cambiando l'emisperio, si dilibra,
tanto, col volto di riso dipinto,
si tacque Bëatrice, riguardando
fiso nel punto che m'avëa vinto.
Poi cominciò: “Io dico, e non dimando,
quel che tu vuoli udir, perch' io l'ho visto
là 've s'appunta ogne ubi e ogne quando.
Non per aver a sé di bene acquisto,
ch'esser non può, ma perché suo splendore
potesse, risplendendo, dir 'Subsisto,'
in sua etternità di tempo fore,
fuor d'ogne altro comprender, come i piacque,
s'aperse in nuovi amor l'etterno amore.
Né prima quasi torpente si giacque;
ché né prima né poscia procedette
lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest' acque.
Forma e materia, congiunte e purette,
usciro ad esser che non avia fallo,
come d'arco tricordo tre saette.
E come in vetro, in ambra o in cristallo
raggio resplende sì, che dal venire
a l'esser tutto non è intervallo,
così 'l triforme effetto del suo sire
ne l'esser suo raggiò insieme tutto
sanza distinzïone in essordire.
Concreato fu ordine e costrutto
a le sustanze; e quelle furon cima
nel mondo in che puro atto fu produtto;
pura potenza tenne la parte ima;
nel mezzo strinse potenza con atto
tal vime, che già mai non si divima.
Ieronimo vi scrisse lungo tratto
di secoli de li angeli creati
anzi che l'altro mondo fosse fatto;
ma questo vero è scritto in molti lati
da li scrittor de lo Spirito Santo,
e tu te n'avvedrai se bene agguati;
e anche la ragione il vede alquanto,
che non concederebbe che ' motori
sanza sua perfezion fosser cotanto.
Or sai tu dove e quando questi amori
furon creati e come: sì che spenti
nel tuo disïo già son tre ardori.
Né giugneriesi, numerando, al venti
sì tosto, come de li angeli parte
turbò il suggetto d'i vostri alimenti.
L'altra rimase, e cominciò quest' arte
che tu discerni, con tanto diletto,
che mai da circüir non si diparte.
Principio del cader fu il maladetto
superbir di colui che tu vedesti
da tutti i pesi del mondo costretto.
Quelli che vedi qui furon modesti
a riconoscer sé da la bontate
che li avea fatti a tanto intender presti:
per che le viste lor furo essaltate
con grazia illuminante e con lor merto,
sì c'hanno ferma e piena volontate;
e non voglio che dubbi, ma sia certo,
che ricever la grazia è meritorio
secondo che l'affetto l'è aperto.
Omai dintorno a questo consistorio
puoi contemplare assai, se le parole
mie son ricolte, sanz' altro aiutorio.
Ma perché 'n terra per le vostre scole
si legge che l'angelica natura
è tal, che 'ntende e si ricorda e vole,
ancor dirò, perché tu veggi pura
la verità che là giù si confonde,
equivocando in sì fatta lettura.
Queste sustanze, poi che fur gioconde
de la faccia di Dio, non volser viso
da essa, da cui nulla si nasconde:
però non hanno vedere interciso
da novo obietto, e però non bisogna
rememorar per concetto diviso;
sì che la giù, non dormendo, si sogna,
credendo e non credendo dicer vero;
ma ne l'uno è più colpa e più vergogna.
Voi non andate giù per un sentiero
filosofando: tanto vi trasporta
l'amor de l'apparenza e 'l suo pensiero!
E ancor questo qua sù si comporta
con men disdegno che quando è posposta
la divina Scrittura o quando è torta.
Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa
seminarla nel mondo e quanto piace
chi umilmente con essa s'accosta.
Per apparer ciascun s'ingegna e face
sue invenzioni; e quelle son trascorse
da' predicanti e 'l Vangelio si tace.
Un dice che la luna si ritorse
ne la passion di Cristo e s'interpuose,
per che 'l lume del sol giù non si porse;
e mente, ché la luce si nascose
da sé: però a li Spani e a l'Indi
come a' Giudei tale eclissi rispuose.
Non ha Fiorenza tanti Lapi e Bindi
quante sì fatte favole per anno
in pergamo si gridan quinci e quindi:
sì che le pecorelle, che non sanno,
tornan del pasco pasciute di vento,
e non le scusa non veder lo danno.
Non disse Cristo al suo primo convento:
'Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance';
ma diede lor verace fondamento;
e quel tanto sonò ne le sue guance,
sì ch'a pugnar per accender la fede
de l'Evangelio fero scudo e lance.
Ora si va con motti e con iscede
a predicare, e pur che ben si rida,
gonfia il cappuccio e più non si richiede.
Ma tale uccel nel becchetto s'annida,
che se 'l vulgo il vedesse, vederebbe
la perdonanza di ch'el si confida:
per cui tanta stoltezza in terra crebbe,
che, sanza prova d'alcun testimonio,
ad ogne promession si correrebbe.
Di questo ingrassa il porco sant' Antonio,
e altri assai che sono ancor più porci,
pagando di moneta sanza conio.
Ma perché siam digressi assai, ritorci
li occhi oramai verso la dritta strada,
sì che la via col tempo si raccorci.
Questa natura sì oltre s'ingrada
in numero, che mai non fu loquela
né concetto mortal che tanto vada;
e se tu guardi quel che si revela
per Danïel, vedrai che 'n sue migliaia
determinato numero si cela.
La prima luce, che tutta la raia,
per tanti modi in essa si recepe,
quanti son li splendori a chi s'appaia.
Onde, però che a l'atto che concepe
segue l'affetto, d'amar la dolcezza
diversamente in essa ferve e tepe.
Vedi l'eccelso omai e la larghezza
de l'etterno valor, poscia che tanti
speculi fatti s'ha in che si spezza,
uno manendo in sé come davanti.”
At what time both the children of Latona,
Surmounted by the Ram and by the Scales,
Together make a zone of the horizon,
As long as from the time the zenith holds them
In equipoise, till from that girdle both
Changing their hemisphere disturb the balance,
So long, her face depicted with a smile,
Did Beatrice keep silence while she gazed
Fixedly at the point which had o'ercome me.
Then she began: "I say, and I ask not
What thou dost wish to hear, for I have seen it
Where centres every When and every 'Ubi.'
Not to acquire some good unto himself,
Which is impossible, but that his splendour
In its resplendency may say, 'Subsisto,'
In his eternity outside of time,
Outside all other limits, as it pleased him,
Into new Loves the Eternal Love unfolded.
Nor as if torpid did he lie before;
For neither after nor before proceeded
The going forth of God upon these waters.
Matter and Form unmingled and conjoined
Came into being that had no defect,
E'en as three arrows from a three-stringed bow.
And as in glass, in amber, or in crystal
A sunbeam flashes so, that from its coming
To its full being is no interval,
So from its Lord did the triform effect
Ray forth into its being all together,
Without discrimination of beginning.
Order was con-created and constructed
In substances, and summit of the world
Were those wherein the pure act was produced.
Pure potentiality held the lowest part;
Midway bound potentiality with act
Such bond that it shall never be unbound.
Jerome has written unto you of angels
Created a long lapse of centuries
Or ever yet the other world was made;
But written is this truth in many places
By writers of the Holy Ghost, and thou
Shalt see it, if thou lookest well thereat.
And even reason seeth it somewhat,
For it would not concede that for so long
Could be the motors without their perfection.
Now dost thou know both where and when these Loves
Created were, and how; so that extinct
In thy desire already are three fires.
Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty
So swiftly, as a portion of these angels
Disturbed the subject of your elements.
The rest remained, and they began this art
Which thou discernest, with so great delight
That never from their circling do they cease.
The occasion of the fall was the accursed
Presumption of that One, whom thou hast seen
By all the burden of the world constrained.
Those whom thou here beholdest modest were
To recognise themselves as of that goodness
Which made them apt for so much understanding;
On which account their vision was exalted
By the enlightening grace and their own merit,
So that they have a full and steadfast will.
I would not have thee doubt, but certain be,
'Tis meritorious to receive this grace,
According as the affection opens to it.
Now round about in this consistory
Much mayst thou contemplate, if these my words
Be gathered up, without all further aid.
But since upon the earth, throughout your schools,
They teach that such is the angelic nature
That it doth hear, and recollect, and will,
More will I say, that thou mayst see unmixed
The truth that is confounded there below,
Equivocating in such like prelections.
These substances, since in God's countenance
They jocund were, turned not away their sight
From that wherefrom not anything is hidden;
Hence they have not their vision intercepted
By object new, and hence they do not need
To recollect, through interrupted thought.
So that below, not sleeping, people dream,
Believing they speak truth, and not believing;
And in the last is greater sin and shame.
Below you do not journey by one path
Philosophising; so transporteth you
Love of appearance and the thought thereof.
And even this above here is endured
With less disdain, than when is set aside
The Holy Writ, or when it is distorted.
They think not there how much of blood it costs
To sow it in the world, and how he pleases
Who in humility keeps close to it.
Each striveth for appearance, and doth make
His own inventions; and these treated are
By preachers, and the Evangel holds its peace.
One sayeth that the moon did backward turn,
In the Passion of Christ, and interpose herself
So that the sunlight reached not down below;
And lies; for of its own accord the light
Hid itself; whence to Spaniards and to Indians,
As to the Jews, did such eclipse respond.
Florence has not so many Lapi and Bindi
As fables such as these, that every year
Are shouted from the pulpit back and forth,
In such wise that the lambs, who do not know,
Come back from pasture fed upon the wind,
And not to see the harm doth not excuse them.
Christ did not to his first disciples say,
'Go forth, and to the world preach idle tales,'
But unto them a true foundation gave;
And this so loudly sounded from their lips,
That, in the warfare to enkindle Faith,
They made of the Evangel shields and lances.
Now men go forth with jests and drolleries
To preach, and if but well the people laugh,
The hood puffs out, and nothing more is asked.
But in the cowl there nestles such a bird,
That, if the common people were to see it,
They would perceive what pardons they confide in,
For which so great on earth has grown the folly,
That, without proof of any testimony,
To each indulgence they would flock together.
By this Saint Anthony his pig doth fatten,
And many others, who are worse than pigs,
Paying in money without mark of coinage.
But since we have digressed abundantly,
Turn back thine eyes forthwith to the right path,
So that the way be shortened with the time.
This nature doth so multiply itself
In numbers, that there never yet was speech
Nor mortal fancy that can go so far.
And if thou notest that which is revealed
By Daniel, thou wilt see that in his thousands
Number determinate is kept concealed.
The primal light, that all irradiates it,
By modes as many is received therein,
As are the splendours wherewith it is mated.
Hence, inasmuch as on the act conceptive
The affection followeth, of love the sweetness
Therein diversely fervid is or tepid.
The height behold now and the amplitude
Of the eternal power, since it hath made
Itself so many mirrors, where 'tis broken,
One in itself remaining as before."
Alison Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 1-28.[repr. in Reading Dante's Stars {New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000}, pp. 119-41]) has furnished a bravura performance on this opening simile, connecting its consideration of a single moment separating two very different states (balance/imbalance) to the moment separating God's creation of the angels from that of their first choices. See also Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 151-60).
Cornish begins her treatment of this moment with the following observation: “We have no way of knowing whether the planetary configuration that opens [this canto] describes dawn or dusk” (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 1). In the first three centuries it was a rare commentator (but, for exceptions, see Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 1-12] and Vellutello [comm. to vv. 1-9]) who did not assume that Dante presented the Sun as being in Aries, the Moon in Libra. After Vellutello, there is a period in which everyone gets this “right”; in fact, among the Italians it is only in the twentieth century with Steiner (comm. to verse 2) that the old error returns (and is repeated by several, most notably Momigliano [comm. to vv. 1-9] and Sapegno [comm. to vv. 1-9] until Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 1-9] restore the better reading; but see Chiavacci Leonardi [Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. {Milan: Mondadori, 1997}, p. 797], who reverts to the discredited interpretation). Among Dante's English-writing commentators, however, only Oelsner (comm. to these verses) understood that Dante leaves it absolutely opaque as to whether it is the Sun or Moon that is in Aries (the Ram) or in Libra (the Scales). The reference to the Sun's being in Aries at the Creation in the first canto of the poem (Inf. I.39-40) has, understandably perhaps, been the controlling factor for such readers.
For discussion of Latona's role in the poem (she is also named at Purg. XX.131, Par. X.67, and XXII.139), see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 141-42, suggesting that her maternal role may have seemed to Dante reminiscent of Mary (in particular in her having given birth to Apollo, treated several times as Christ [see the notes to Par. I.13-15, 13, 19, 25-27]). He continues by suggesting that Dante also was drawn to the figure of Latona by her exilic condition, particularly as this was presented by Ovid (Metam. VI.186-191), and by her eventual stability, shared by the former wandering isle, Delos, in a sort of pagan version of eternal peace and light.
The Sun and the Moon are described as being momentarily balanced (an instant immeasurably brief because both are always in their orbital motion); their being “out of balance” is recognized after a certain duration, when both are perceived as having changed position, moving away from (the one above, the other below) the horizon. Strangely, Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 7) believes that Manfredi Porena was of the opinion that this instant also corresponds to that of a total lunar eclipse. Porena, in fact, first in his earlier article (“Noterelle dantesche,” Studi romanzi 20 [1930]: 201-6) and then in his commentary (to vv. 4-6), “dismisses the eclipse as an accident” (the words are John Kleiner's [Mismapping the Underworld: Daring and Error in Dante's “Comedy” {Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994}, p. 166, n. 14]). Porena is in polemic against those of Dante's commentators who take his scientific lore too seriously. He points out that, were all the conditions of Dante's celestial moment to be fulfilled in actuality, there would be a total eclipse of the Moon (with the result, one might conclude, that we would not be able to see much of that disk move at all). Porena continues: “The vision that Dante presents to us is thus merely hypothetical.” And he concludes: “It is to employ an entirely erroneous method when one writes commentary on Dante always presupposing in his astronomical gestures true scientific rigor, even when he purposefully does not wish to make himself a teacher of science; he is above all else a poet.” That not only escaped Cornish's attention, it (having caught his) failed to convince Kleiner (ibid.), who, although he understands that “[b]ecause the orbits of sun and moon are not strictly coplanar, it is possible for the sun and moon to occupy opposite positions in the zodiac without an eclipse occurring. (If this were not the case, every 'full moon' would be eclipsed.)” That would be where some readers (and obviously Porena) would stop. In other words, there is absolutely no reason to suppose Dante is here thinking of an eclipse (he clearly is in vv. 97-102, in an altogether different context). Kleiner, however, continues as follows (ibid.): “What makes the balancing act an eclipse is Dante's insistence that the planets balance themselves perfectly - i.e., are exactly opposite one another in the sky and on the horizon” (emphasis Kleiner's). Of course, they may only be balanced “perfectly” and be aligned “exactly opposite” in Kleiner's imagination; Dante does not make any such further qualification. It is perhaps a bit disconcerting that Kleiner continues by discussing at some length (pp. 100-107) the three-mirrors experiment. Following some questionable advice, he simply assumes that Dante sets the experiment up in such a way that we are meant to understand that it simply cannot be performed – a most dubious view. (See discussion in the notes to Par. II.94-105 and XXVIII.4-9.)
Some (incorrectly) believe that what is described as being of immeasurably short duration is Beatrice's smile (see Rodney Payton [“Paradiso XXIX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics {Lectura Dantis [virginiana], 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995}, p. 439]): “The longer it is thought about, the smaller the exact instant is.... How long did Beatrice smile? How brief a moment can you conceive?” Payton has not digested Cornish's explanation (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 6-7), not of Beatrice's smile, but of her silence, which is the issue here: “For Aristotle an instant (or the 'now,' as he called it) is the temporal equivalent of a point on a line; yet time is no more made up of these 'nows' than a line is composed of geometrical points” (p. 7). She points out that Porena before her had correctly characterized the temporal nature of Beatrice's silence (see his comm. to vv. 4-6) as indeed having measurable duration. Porena suggests that the amount of time for half the rising or setting Sun or Moon to rise completely above or to sink completely below the horizon is a little more than a minute, certainly a measurable time. Cornish might have observed that Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 1-9) had supported Porena's thesis.
For the poet's contrastive inner reference to Francesca's words (Inf. V.132, “ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse” [still, it was a single instant overcame us]), here and in Paradiso XXX.11, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7-8, nn. 18-19), citing Contini (Un' idea di Dante [Turin: Einaudi, 1976], p. 206) as having preceded him in pointing out this parallel. But see also James Chiampi (Shadowy Prefaces [Ravenna: Longo, 1981], p. 66). And now see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 157). Moevs, like Swing and Hollander, relates the moment of Francesca's “conversion” to lust to the moment of St. Augustine's quite different conversion, as recorded in Confessiones VIII.12. See the note to Inferno V.138.
By now a most familiar claim of Beatrice's: She reads Dante's thoughts in the point (God) where all space (Latin for “where”: ubi) and time (Latin for “when”: quando) most purely and truly exist.
We are in the highest part of God's creation in time, a mixture of form and matter, the heavens. This sphere, we remember, is governed by the Seraphim, the highest order of angels, dedicated to loving God. Dante has asked a most difficult theological question: If God is self-sufficient, if He has no “needs,” why did He bother to create anything at all? The answer that Beatrice offers is simplicity itself: He created because He loves and wanted the angels to enjoy His love in their being, loving Him in return.
For consideration of Dante's reflections on the Creation, see Patrick Boyde (Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], pp. 235-47). On the canto as a whole, see Bruno Nardi's lectura (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso,” in his “Lecturae” e altri studi danteschi, ed. Rudy Abardo [Florence: Le Lettere, 1990 {1960}], pp. 193-201). For Dante's recasting in it of the relatively anthropomorphic view of creation found in Genesis for a more abstract and philosophical one, see Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 87-103). Boitani further maintains (p. 95) that Dante's rescripting of Genesis goes far beyond what is authorized by the Bible in portraying the creation of the angels, a subject about which Scripture is silent.
The Latin verb form subsisto is used here, as Bosco/Reggio point out, voluntarily (Dante had used the Italian form of the noun substantia [sussistenza] at Paradiso XIII.59 and easily could have used sussisto here, which rhymes perfectly with visto and acquisto). And so we may conclude that he wanted the Scholastic flavor that the Latin term affords. See verse 12, where the parallelism with the Latin word ubi causes the reader to realize that a perfectly usual Italian word quando is there a Latin word.
The Italian dative pronoun “i” (gli in modern Italian) is used some eight times in the poem, but this is the only time it refers to God after Adam informs us that “I” was the first name that human speakers used to address Him, and that Adam was the first to use it. See the note to Paradiso XXVI.134.
Two major issues are touched on here. If our sense of the history of the world begins with Creation (i.e., Genesis 1:1), what was God doing before then? (Attributed to St. Augustine is the retort, “preparing a Hell for the inquisitive” [see Carroll, comm. to vv. 19-30].) Dante's point is that whatever He was doing, He was not lazing about, even if there was, strictly speaking, no time before the Creation.
The second problem is of a different order. What exactly does “God moved upon these waters” mean? Precisely what “waters” are referred to? The obvious reference is to Genesis 1:2. The first commentator (but hardly the last) to point to the work of Bruno Nardi was Porena (comm. to this tercet). Nardi had shown (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,” 1944], pp. 307-13) that one traditional medieval interpretation of this biblical text was that these waters are above the rest of the heavens (the Primum Mobile was also referred to as the “acqueous sphere”). As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out, Dante's use of the demonstrative adjective “queste” (these) makes that solution even more attractive, since Dante and Beatrice are currently in the Primum Mobile.
Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 446) adduces Paradiso VII.64-66, with its sense of God's creation being motivated by love, as lying behind this passage. For the distinctions between forma and atto and between materia and potenza, see Stephen Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983]) and Zygmunt Baranski's rejoinder (“Dante tra dei pagani e angeli cristiani,” Filologia e critica 9 [1984]: 298-99).
From the fourteenth century onward, commentators (e.g., the author of the notes to the Commedia found in the Codice Cassinese [comm. to verse 22]) have entered into the question of what exactly Dante envisioned when he thought of “pure matter.” The author of that early commentary resorts to Plato's term ylem [“hyle”], for primordial matter without form, the “stuff” of the four elements to which God would give shape in creating the physical world. See David O'Keeffe (“Dante's Theory of Creation,” Revue néoscolastique de philosophie 26 [1924], pp. 56-57) for why this is not the same as the “prime matter” of Averroës. And, for a recent discussion in English, taking issue with Nardi's various pronouncements that would make Dante less orthodox than even he probably wanted to be perceived, see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 40-45). For instance, Moevs believes that Dante's ideas about materia puretta accord with Thomas's views.
For the three entities “shot” by this “three-stringed bow,” see the note to vv. 31-36.
Dante insists on the simultaneity of all parts of God's instantaneous creation, heavenly and sublunar. The three elements of that creation (pure form, mixed form and matter, and pure matter) obviously are in hierarchical relation to one another; but their creation occurred in the same instant.
According to Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 196, n. 1), this is the only time in all his works that Dante refers to the notion in medieval physics that light traveled at infinite velocity.
The standard gloss is found in Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who say that the angels, “pure act” (i.e., pure form or substance, unmodified by accidents), were created in the Empyrean; that “pure matter” (unformed matter before God created the universe) was the condition of the earth before the event recorded in Genesis 1:1-2; that the nine heavens, between the Empyrean and earth, were created out of a mixture of form and matter (“act” [atto] and “potential” [potenza]). However, for a nuanced and more complex discussion of Dante's unique integration of elements from many sources in this passage, orthodox (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) and unorthodox (e.g., Averroës), see Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 198-200).
There is a persistent counterview, one that understands the second aspect of the Creation differently, as humankind. But see Poletto's stern remonstrance (comm. to vv. 22-24).
On these lines, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003]: 45): “Order and structure were created together in the substances [= angels].”
Singleton (comm. to vv. 8-9) makes the following observation: “For a reader unfamiliar with the standard procedure of a summa of theology, it should perhaps be pointed out that the poem is proceeding thematically in the opposite direction to that of a summa: the journey moves ever upwards, toward God, and here comes to a treatise on angels, in these two cantos so near the end, whereas a summa begins with God, in its first section of questions, and then passes to the creation or procession of creatures from God (cf. Summa theol. I of Thomas Aquinas as it passes from question 43 to question 44), beginning with the highest creatures, which are the angels.”
As Scripture (e.g., Genesis 1:1, Ecclesiasticus 18:1, Psalms 101:26 [102:25]) and reason (for Dante's own contribution under this heading, see vv. 43-45) attest, God created the angels, not as St. Jerome asseverated (in his commentary on Paul's Epistle to Titus 1:2), many, many centuries before He created the heavens and the earth, but simultaneously with them. Dante's disagreement with Jerome is confrontational and dismissive, all the more so since it issues from the mouth of Beatrice, and we cannot lay the blame on a somewhat intemperate protagonist. (For the text of Thomas's far more conciliatory packaging of his own dissent [ST I, q. 61, a. 3], see Singleton [comm. to vv. 37-39]).
Beatrice's point is that, were Jerome to have been correct, the angels would have had nothing to do for all those centuries, since their only task is governing the heavens.
This is the last appearance of the noun ragione (reason), used thirty-one times in the poem, as though words for logical discourse had to be absent once it entered the Empyrean.
Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 194) locates this part of Beatrice's discourse in Peter Lombard's discussion of the angels (Sententiae I.ii.2), where he sets out the problems to be resolved exactly as they are represented here: “Concerning the angelic nature the following must first be considered: when it was created, and where, and how; then what the result was of the defection of certain of them and of the adhesion of certain others.” Cf. Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 452) for the same citation.
In good Scholastic style, Beatrice summarizes the first three elements in her exposition. See the note to vv. 46-63.
No one seems to have found a reason or a source for this segment of time that Dante decides it took the angels to fall from the Empyrean into Hell. In fact, normal gravitational force, applied to normal objects, would have left them falling a far longer time. Their sin, self-loving rebellion against God, occurred the moment of/after their creation, for all intents and purposes, instantaneously. Their fall, traversing the entire universe to its core, took less than half a minute.
For Bonaventure's views on the fall of the angels, see Barbara Faes de Mottoni (“Bonaventura e la caduta degli angeli,” Doctor seraphicus 38 [1991]: 97-113). Her treatment makes no reference to Dante, but offers a survey, centered in Bonaventure, of medieval views of angelic free will.
See Convivio II.v.12 for Dante's previous handling of the question of the fallen angels: It was about one-tenth of the whole group who sinned and fell; God was moved to create humankind as a kind of replacement for these (“alla quale restaurare fue l'umana natura poi creata”).
For Augustine's absolute unwillingness to consider that God created the eventually fallen angels anything less than completely good, see Alison Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 10-14). On the other hand, he clearly thought that angelic nature would have come into being making choices. And so Augustine, caught between two very strong theological imperatives (God never created evil; Satan never enjoyed the bliss of loving God), invented an amorphous mora (delay) between his creation and his fall. According to Cornish, for Augustine “the devil was not created sinful, yet his sin was not deferred even for a split-second. He makes the distinction that by nature the devil was good, by choice he became evil, so that the beginning of Lucifer's being and the beginning of his sin occurred at two separate moments. Whether these are logical or chronological moments is not clear” (p. 11). Dante's view, while never clearly stated, is probably not very different.
For suggetto, see Stephen Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983], pp. 197-201), siding with the majority; the word refers to “terra” (earth). See, for instance, Lombardi's gloss (comm. to vv. 49-51), saying that earth is subject to (i.e., lies beneath) the other three elements, water, air, and fire. But see Mazzoni (Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. II [Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979 {Intro. to Questio}], pp. 712-32) and Baranski (“Dante tra dei pagani e angeli cristiani,” Filologia e critica 9 [1984]: 300), both of whom suggest that we are meant to realize that what is under discussion is “prime matter” (la materia prima). And see Gary Cestaro (Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003], p. 248, n. 87): “Dante alludes here to the common Scholastic notion of a subiectum elementorum, the primal elemental material prior to the definition of four distinct elements, akin to Plato's silva ['hyle']....” A hedged bet is found in Oelsner's notes (comm. to vv. 49-51): “Il suggetto dei vostri elementi is usually (and perhaps rightly) taken to mean 'that one of your elements that underlies the rest,' i.e., earth. Compare Inf. XXXIV.121-126. But if we take this passage on its own merits it seems better to understand the substrate of the elements to mean the prima materia (compare [Par.] II.106-108; VII.133-136, and lines 22-24 of this canto); the elaboration of the elements being the subsequent work of the Angels and the heavens.” The strongest case against this second interpretation was made by Porena (comm. to vv. 49-51), pointing out that Inferno XXXIV.122-126 reveals that Dante thought that, by the time Satan had penetrated our globe, water and earth had already been separated. However, Chimenz (comm. to vv. 49-51) countered that argument as follows: The words inscribed over the gate of Hell (Inf. III.7-8) would seem to suggest that before the creation of Hell (and, Chimenz insists, the contemporary creation of the angels), nothing existed except eternal things, and thus Satan fell into unformed matter. Nonetheless, it is certainly possible that we are meant to understand that earth was formed while Satan was falling and (at least in part) in order to receive him and his partners in rebellion.
The verb circuir does not suggest that the remaining (loyal) angels are flying around the heavens freestyle, but that they form nine angelic circlings around God, as opposed to the fallen angels, who, along with their leader, Lucifer, are imprisoned in Hell. The text (vv. 56-57) specifically reminds readers of their vision of Satan at the center of the universe (Inferno XXXIV.110-111).
The good angels, unlike the prideful members of their cohort, are portrayed as “modesti” (humble), possessing the virtue opposite to their brethren's vice of pride.
See Singleton's gloss (comm. to this tercet): “The angels who waited for the bestowal of the higher light, the light of glory, received that light (here termed 'grazia illuminante'). Their merit (merto) was precisely that humility and their waiting upon the Lord to bestow that higher light. With that bestowal they were forever confirmed in this highest grace, and accordingly they are now bound thereby to the good and to do the good. They have fullness of vision and of will, and they cannot sin. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theol. I, q. 62, a. 8, resp.: 'The beatified angels cannot sin. The reason for this is, because their beatitude consists in seeing God through His essence. Now, God's essence is the very essence of goodness. Consequently the angel beholding God is disposed towards God in the same way as anyone else not seeing God is to the common form of goodness. Now it is impossible for any man either to will or to do anything except aiming at what is good; or for him to wish to turn away from good precisely as such. Therefore the beatified angel can neither will nor act, except as aiming towards God. Now, whoever wills or acts in this manner cannot sin. Consequently the beatified angel cannot sin.'”
Dante, Beatrice divines, may be wondering what the angels actually did in order to merit illuminating grace.
See Singleton (comm. to these verses), citing Aquinas (ST I, q. 62, a. 5): “As the angel is of his nature inclined to natural perfection, so is he by merit inclined to glory. Hence instantly after merit the angel secured beatitude. Now the merit of beatitude in angel and man alike can be from merely one act; because man merits beatitude by every act informed by charity. Hence it remains that an angel was beatified straightway after one act of charity.”
Dante's corrosive attack on bad preaching reveals heartfelt annoyance, probably reflecting extensive personal experience. Tasked with the representation of the Word, preachers should control their desires for recognition of their powers of speaking. On the other hand, Beatrice is here presented as a most effective teacher. Perhaps we are meant to think critically of Paul's strictures on women; see Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004], p. 181), citing I Cor. 14:34-35 for the instruction that “it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
Discussing the questions pertaining to the natures of angelic language (see De vulgari eloquentia I.ii.3) and memory, see Barbara Faes de Mottoni (“Il linguaggio e la memoria dell'angelo in Dante,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], pp. 237-53). Her discussion of this passage, found on pp. 243-53, concludes (p. 253) with the assertion, difficult to fault, that the angels, knowing everything in God, have, at least in Dante's possibly heterodox opinions (potentially opposed to those of Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas), need of neither language nor memory. However, see the further distinction offered by Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 205-8), who suggests that, while a passage in Monarchia (I.iii.7) clearly seems to require that we conceive that Dante there denies that the angels have memories, here the poet only seems to assert that they do not need to make use of them.
See the observation of Hawkins (Dante's Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999], p. 192): With the exception of Purgatorio XXXII.79, “where 'scuola' describes the Old Testament precursors of Christ,... [the word] always denotes what is pagan or in some sense defective....”
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) allow that possibly Dante believes that, projecting human experience onto the terms “intellect,” “will,” and “memory” (see verse 72), some earthly judges distort the nature of the angelic versions of these capacities. That would “save” Dante from opposing some pretty potent authorities (see the note to vv. 70-81).
See Ruedi Imbach (Dante, la philosophie et les laïcs [Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1996], p. 147), averring that Dante embraces at least one heretical position of Siger de Brabant when, in these lines, he argues, against the authorities mentioned in the note to verses 70-81, that the angels have no memory. For discussion, see Luca Curti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 161-62). It seems likely that Dante wants, as is often the case, to formulate his own position on an issue, one that accords with elements found in several other authorities.
The explanation seems clear enough (and is found in many early commentaries): There are those on earth who are totally confused (i.e., they “dream” even while they are not sleeping) in believing that the angels have need of memory, while others, those who maintain such a view while knowing it to be false, are guilty not of ignorance but of fraud. These Christian sophists care more about making a splash than seeking the truth.
Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 451) is effective in joining two responses that are rarely seen together in the commentary tradition when he understands (1) that the focus of Beatrice's anger is completely on the question of angelic memory (and does not spill over into the sins of bad preachers, which dominate the following verses [91-126], as so many allow their discussion to do) and (2) that the zeal behind her (Dante's) insistence is passionate and fully conscious of the famous feathers that will be ruffled thereby, those of Saints Jerome, Augustine, and Thomas, for starters. However, he perhaps goes too far in asserting that Dante denies that angels have memory; the text only asserts (vv. 80-81) that they have no need of memory, which may imply either that they have or do not have this capacity. Dante is obviously outraged at the notion of angels requiring (and actually using) memory, since they live in the eternal present. However, whether he goes as far as Averroës (and Siger) in denying that they have this capacity, that question he leaves us to wonder about. He could not have left the issue more ambiguous, as he obviously desired to - which may imply that he did in fact buy into Siger's argument.
Lombardi (comm. to this tercet) was perhaps the first modern glossator (1791) to insist that this understanding is incorrect. Countering those who would have Dante here denying the angels memory, he argues that Albertus Magnus says that they indeed have such capacity, but that it is very different from ours. Thus, according to Lombardi, Dante, in agreement with Albertus, has the first category of errant thinkers asserting that angelic memory is exactly like the human kind, while the second, in his view, makes an even graver error by denying the angels a faculty enjoyed by humans. This explanation does not deal with the deliberate wrongness of these thinkers.
Dante does not seem to be denying that the angels possess a memory, rather that they lack the need to use it, since they know everything in the eternal present. It is thus not clear that Dante has succumbed to the Siren song of Siger of Brabant (who denied that angels possessed memories [see the note to Par. X.133-138]).
These two tercets form the pivot on which Beatrice's argument turns from heavenly theology (involving the nature of angelic mind) to religious concerns of a lower intellectual order, from the disputes of theologians to the fables told by preachers – and Dante almost certainly has in mind itinerant friars.
The “cost” of the benefits of Scripture in blood (of Jesus, the martyred apostles, and the other martyrs [see Pasquini/Quaglio, comm. to this tercet, for these three references]) is not taken into account.
Poletto (comm. to this tercet) at least reacts to the curious present tense of the verb costa (costs), and “translates” it as costò (cost). Grabher (comm. to this tercet) does take the present tense as meaningful, believing that Dante is not speaking literally of the blood of martyrs, but metaphorically – of the inner sacrifice made by all Christians. This does not seem a convincing gloss. And thus, while the constraints of rhyme may be all the explanation one requires for the presence of the form, the reader is forced to wonder. Did Dante think of the past sacrifices of the heroes of the Church as occurring in the vivid present tense, or is his point that such sacrifices are being made even now, in his day? His opinions on the current condition of the City of Man, expressed volubly throughout the poem (most recently at Par. XXVII.121-141), would seem to gainsay this second possible explanation.
Silvio Pasquazi (“Canto XXIX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1031) begins his lectura with this invective against preachers, which is a frequent cause of complaint among less stern readers of the last canticle. His view is that it should be dealt with, not as aberrant, but as of a piece with the texture and purpose of the canto. Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 209) is of a similar opinion. For discussion of a similar discomfort among the commentators with Beatrice's last words in the poem in the following canto, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 31-33).
Preaching as preening now becomes Beatrice's subject. Her insistence on the fictitious nature of this sort of public utterance is underlined by the word invenzioni (inventing new ideas) here and favole (tales) at verse 104, ciance (idle nonsense) at verse 110, motti and iscede (buffoonery and jokes) at verse 115. Cf. Giovanni Boccaccio's portrait of a fiction-dealing friar, Fra Cipolla (Decameron VI.x), which probably owes more than a certain debt to this passage. (See Longfellow [comm. to verse 115] and Hollander [Boccaccio's Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire {Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997}], pp. 41-45).
For the “darkness at noon” that overspread the world during the Crucifixion of Jesus, see Luke 23:44: “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.” (See also Matthew 27:45 and Mark 15:33). And see Grandgent (comm. to these verses): “To explain this darkness at the Crucifixion, some said that the moon left its course to make an eclipse, others that the sun hid its own rays. Dionysius (Par. XXVIII.130) favored the first explanation, St. Jerome the second. Both are recorded by St. Thomas in Summa Theologiae III, q. 44, a. 2. The second theory has the advantage of accounting for an obscuration 'over all the land,' whereas an ordinary eclipse would darken only a part of it.”
This line has caused scandal. Does Dante really want to say that those who say that the Moon retroceded six constellations in the Zodiac in order to blot out the Sun (and, according to Scartazzini [comm. to this verse] and Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 97-102], some fairly illustrious authorities, including Dionysius the Areopagite, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, took this explanation seriously) are liars? Those are strong words. Scartazzini was the first to point out that Dante had a precursor in such a harsh view, Petrus Comestor (PL CXCVIII.1631), who says that those who uphold such tales “have lied” (mentiti sunt). Eventually Nardi (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,” 1944], pp. 375-76) would also turn to this source and argue that, despite the commentators' discomfort, both the manuscript tradition and Petrus's harsh words underline the fact that Dante meant exactly what he said. We should remember the poet's harsh treatment of Jerome, specifically mentioned as totally incorrect (Dante could have been less direct!) in this very canto (verses 37-45); on that occasion, concerning the dating of the creation of the angels, St. Thomas was right (if Dante doesn't say so specifically). And now it is his turn to be told off, if indirectly. Bosco/Reggio try to diminish the force of the verb mentire in Dante's day (i.e., rather than lying, it meant something more like “does not tell the truth”). However, ask any Dante scholar whether he or she enjoys being told that a firmly held opinion is erroneous. It is the price of doing one's intellectual work in public; and we all must be prepared to pay that price. Nonetheless, it is plain enough that Dante is belittling an opinion that is to be thought of as having the same merit as the idle tales told by not-very-well-educated friars. And if Dionysius, Albert, or Thomas chooses to align himself with such drivel, he gets only what he deserves - that seems to be the poet's attitude.
Dante disposes of this “scientific” account of the miracle recorded in three Gospels on truly experimental grounds. If it were true, then the resulting eclipse would have been only partial. And so we are forced to follow Jerome, whose miraculous “self-eclipse” of the Sun indeed was visible in all the world, and not merely in the area around Jerusalem.
This picture of religious ceremony in the Florence of Dante's day has its kinship with that found in the series of (often hilarious) representations of preaching found in the Decameron. All over the city, in parish after parish, all through the year (for this understanding of per anno, see Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 94-108]), the leaders of the flock trade in “wind,” notions that are clearly estranged from truth. Such intellectual vagrancy, however, does not excuse the individual sheep, who should realize that what they listen to so avidly has nothing to do with the Bible or with the fundamental truths of their religion. In other words, they are not innocent because they are stupid.
Daniello (comm. to this verse) was the first glossator to identify the source of the nickname Lapo as Jacopo. That Bindo derived from Ildebrando was first noted by Fanfani (in his Vocabulary of Tuscan Usage), according to Andreoli (comm. to this verse).
Dante's verb gridare tells all one needs to know about the quality of mind that lies behind these “shouted” sermons.
For a sermon of St. Bernard that may be reflected in this passage, see Rodney Payton (“Paradiso XXIX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 448-49).
Christ's first “congregation” was comprised of the apostles.
The “verace fondamento” (true foundation), that is, Jesus's teachings as found in the Gospels (see Mark 16:15).
Some think that the phrase “le sue guance” (lit. “cheeks” [a choice forced by rhyme?] understood as metonymic for “lips”) refers to the lips of Jesus rather than to those of the apostles. If we choose this second alternative, as we probably should, we follow Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) and the large majority of the commentators. However, the estimable Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-117) begins the tradition of treating the utterances as coming from Christ's mouth, and has had a narrow but fairly distinguished band of adherents (Landino, Costa, Tommaseo, Andreoli, etc.).
The cappuccio (cowl) worn by friars balloons figuratively with their pride. Literally, a large and well-tailored cowl was the sign of wealth of the Order and/or importance of an individual. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 115-117) point out that the only other cappuccio found in this poem is worn by the hypocrites in Malebolge, Inferno XXIII.61. They are attired in leaden costume that mimics the garb of Cluniac monks.
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that Satan was often, in medieval iconography, represented as a black crow (in contrast to the white dove that represented the Holy Spirit) and that Dante has spoken (Inf. XXXIV.47) of Lucifer as an uccello (bird).
Believing in the truthfulness of pardons (and pardoners) is the height of credulity. It is hard to blame the trickster when his victims almost insist on being gulled.
See Tozer's gloss on this tercet: “'[O]n this (credulity) St. Antony fattens his pig.' The hog which appears in pictures at the feet of St. Antony, the Egyptian hermit [ca. 250-355], represents the demon of sensuality which he conquered. In the middle ages the swine of the monks of St. Antony were allowed to feed in the streets of cities, and were fed by devout persons (Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, pp. 750, 751); this is what Dante refers to.” The obvious reversal in the values of the Antonines, who became the representatives of the vice that their founder had conquered, is apparent.
The friars of Antony's order are “repaying” the contributions of their foolish flocks with counterfeit coin: meaningless pieces of paper on which is written their forgiven sins.
Beatrice concludes her tirade with an ironic verbal gesture, making it a mere digression. Now let us return, she says, to the true way, the path chosen by the loyal angels, a subject turned aside from in verse 94 for her savage attack upon friars, difficult to accept as a mere digression.
The numbers of the angels increases the higher they are found. Dante's coinage, the verb ingradarsi, is found in slightly altered form (digradarsi) in Paradiso XXX.125. In both cases it seems to have the meaning “to increase step-by-step.” Thus, the higher the eyes of an observer mount, the more angels they are able to take in. And that number is both beyond human vocabulary and mortal conception.
Discussing this passage, Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 297-98) points out that Daniel's numeration of the angels (Daniel 7:10), “a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times one hundred thousand stood before him” [according to the Vulgate]), while incalculable for most human beings, was probably a finite number in Dante's opinion. Similarly, the wording of verse 135, “a particular number lies concealed” (determinato numero si cela) would clearly seem to indicate a very large but determinable number. Most commentators think the poet is saying something quite different, namely that the number of angels cannot be represented by any finite number. However, Dante's sense for mathematics may be more sophisticated than that of his commentators; apparently he knows the distinction between “numberless” (i.e., beyond counting because of limited human capacity) and “infinite,” a concept of which he knew at least from the extended discussion in Aristotle's Physics (III.iv-viii).
Behind this passage, according to Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 210-11), there lies a dispute between “Aristotelians” (who propose a limited number of angels) and the Bible (e.g., Daniel 7:10, Apoc. 5:11). However, see Thomas Aquinas (ST I, q. 112, a. 4), as cited by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 135): “The multitude of the angels transcends any material multitude.” It is clear what position Dante does not share, that of the “Aristotelians,” who argue for a strictly limited number (as few as sixty). However, whether he believes that the angels are infinite or numbered is not entirely clear, although verse 135 may be more specific than it is generally understood as being. Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 148, supports the second opinion, citing Gregory's gloss on Job 25:3 from the Moralia: “And if the number of angels is finite to the eye of God [Dante's 'particular number'?], in the human view it is infinite [Dante's 'lies concealed'?]” (PL LXXV.542).
God's brilliance irradiates the angelic nature in such ways that it is received by these creatures (splendori because they reflect the divine light [for Dante's “light physics” see the note to Par. XXIII.82-84]) variously, each in accord with its capacity to absorb and return God's love.
Seemingly infinite in its application, God's love for the highest creatures that He made nonetheless still issues from the single entity that made them.
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Quando ambedue li figli di Latona,
coperti del Montone e de la Libra,
fanno de l'orizzonte insieme zona,
quant' è dal punto che 'l cenìt inlibra
infin che l'uno e l'altro da quel cinto,
cambiando l'emisperio, si dilibra,
tanto, col volto di riso dipinto,
si tacque Bëatrice, riguardando
fiso nel punto che m'avëa vinto.
Poi cominciò: “Io dico, e non dimando,
quel che tu vuoli udir, perch' io l'ho visto
là 've s'appunta ogne ubi e ogne quando.
Non per aver a sé di bene acquisto,
ch'esser non può, ma perché suo splendore
potesse, risplendendo, dir 'Subsisto,'
in sua etternità di tempo fore,
fuor d'ogne altro comprender, come i piacque,
s'aperse in nuovi amor l'etterno amore.
Né prima quasi torpente si giacque;
ché né prima né poscia procedette
lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest' acque.
Forma e materia, congiunte e purette,
usciro ad esser che non avia fallo,
come d'arco tricordo tre saette.
E come in vetro, in ambra o in cristallo
raggio resplende sì, che dal venire
a l'esser tutto non è intervallo,
così 'l triforme effetto del suo sire
ne l'esser suo raggiò insieme tutto
sanza distinzïone in essordire.
Concreato fu ordine e costrutto
a le sustanze; e quelle furon cima
nel mondo in che puro atto fu produtto;
pura potenza tenne la parte ima;
nel mezzo strinse potenza con atto
tal vime, che già mai non si divima.
Ieronimo vi scrisse lungo tratto
di secoli de li angeli creati
anzi che l'altro mondo fosse fatto;
ma questo vero è scritto in molti lati
da li scrittor de lo Spirito Santo,
e tu te n'avvedrai se bene agguati;
e anche la ragione il vede alquanto,
che non concederebbe che ' motori
sanza sua perfezion fosser cotanto.
Or sai tu dove e quando questi amori
furon creati e come: sì che spenti
nel tuo disïo già son tre ardori.
Né giugneriesi, numerando, al venti
sì tosto, come de li angeli parte
turbò il suggetto d'i vostri alimenti.
L'altra rimase, e cominciò quest' arte
che tu discerni, con tanto diletto,
che mai da circüir non si diparte.
Principio del cader fu il maladetto
superbir di colui che tu vedesti
da tutti i pesi del mondo costretto.
Quelli che vedi qui furon modesti
a riconoscer sé da la bontate
che li avea fatti a tanto intender presti:
per che le viste lor furo essaltate
con grazia illuminante e con lor merto,
sì c'hanno ferma e piena volontate;
e non voglio che dubbi, ma sia certo,
che ricever la grazia è meritorio
secondo che l'affetto l'è aperto.
Omai dintorno a questo consistorio
puoi contemplare assai, se le parole
mie son ricolte, sanz' altro aiutorio.
Ma perché 'n terra per le vostre scole
si legge che l'angelica natura
è tal, che 'ntende e si ricorda e vole,
ancor dirò, perché tu veggi pura
la verità che là giù si confonde,
equivocando in sì fatta lettura.
Queste sustanze, poi che fur gioconde
de la faccia di Dio, non volser viso
da essa, da cui nulla si nasconde:
però non hanno vedere interciso
da novo obietto, e però non bisogna
rememorar per concetto diviso;
sì che la giù, non dormendo, si sogna,
credendo e non credendo dicer vero;
ma ne l'uno è più colpa e più vergogna.
Voi non andate giù per un sentiero
filosofando: tanto vi trasporta
l'amor de l'apparenza e 'l suo pensiero!
E ancor questo qua sù si comporta
con men disdegno che quando è posposta
la divina Scrittura o quando è torta.
Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa
seminarla nel mondo e quanto piace
chi umilmente con essa s'accosta.
Per apparer ciascun s'ingegna e face
sue invenzioni; e quelle son trascorse
da' predicanti e 'l Vangelio si tace.
Un dice che la luna si ritorse
ne la passion di Cristo e s'interpuose,
per che 'l lume del sol giù non si porse;
e mente, ché la luce si nascose
da sé: però a li Spani e a l'Indi
come a' Giudei tale eclissi rispuose.
Non ha Fiorenza tanti Lapi e Bindi
quante sì fatte favole per anno
in pergamo si gridan quinci e quindi:
sì che le pecorelle, che non sanno,
tornan del pasco pasciute di vento,
e non le scusa non veder lo danno.
Non disse Cristo al suo primo convento:
'Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance';
ma diede lor verace fondamento;
e quel tanto sonò ne le sue guance,
sì ch'a pugnar per accender la fede
de l'Evangelio fero scudo e lance.
Ora si va con motti e con iscede
a predicare, e pur che ben si rida,
gonfia il cappuccio e più non si richiede.
Ma tale uccel nel becchetto s'annida,
che se 'l vulgo il vedesse, vederebbe
la perdonanza di ch'el si confida:
per cui tanta stoltezza in terra crebbe,
che, sanza prova d'alcun testimonio,
ad ogne promession si correrebbe.
Di questo ingrassa il porco sant' Antonio,
e altri assai che sono ancor più porci,
pagando di moneta sanza conio.
Ma perché siam digressi assai, ritorci
li occhi oramai verso la dritta strada,
sì che la via col tempo si raccorci.
Questa natura sì oltre s'ingrada
in numero, che mai non fu loquela
né concetto mortal che tanto vada;
e se tu guardi quel che si revela
per Danïel, vedrai che 'n sue migliaia
determinato numero si cela.
La prima luce, che tutta la raia,
per tanti modi in essa si recepe,
quanti son li splendori a chi s'appaia.
Onde, però che a l'atto che concepe
segue l'affetto, d'amar la dolcezza
diversamente in essa ferve e tepe.
Vedi l'eccelso omai e la larghezza
de l'etterno valor, poscia che tanti
speculi fatti s'ha in che si spezza,
uno manendo in sé come davanti.”
At what time both the children of Latona,
Surmounted by the Ram and by the Scales,
Together make a zone of the horizon,
As long as from the time the zenith holds them
In equipoise, till from that girdle both
Changing their hemisphere disturb the balance,
So long, her face depicted with a smile,
Did Beatrice keep silence while she gazed
Fixedly at the point which had o'ercome me.
Then she began: "I say, and I ask not
What thou dost wish to hear, for I have seen it
Where centres every When and every 'Ubi.'
Not to acquire some good unto himself,
Which is impossible, but that his splendour
In its resplendency may say, 'Subsisto,'
In his eternity outside of time,
Outside all other limits, as it pleased him,
Into new Loves the Eternal Love unfolded.
Nor as if torpid did he lie before;
For neither after nor before proceeded
The going forth of God upon these waters.
Matter and Form unmingled and conjoined
Came into being that had no defect,
E'en as three arrows from a three-stringed bow.
And as in glass, in amber, or in crystal
A sunbeam flashes so, that from its coming
To its full being is no interval,
So from its Lord did the triform effect
Ray forth into its being all together,
Without discrimination of beginning.
Order was con-created and constructed
In substances, and summit of the world
Were those wherein the pure act was produced.
Pure potentiality held the lowest part;
Midway bound potentiality with act
Such bond that it shall never be unbound.
Jerome has written unto you of angels
Created a long lapse of centuries
Or ever yet the other world was made;
But written is this truth in many places
By writers of the Holy Ghost, and thou
Shalt see it, if thou lookest well thereat.
And even reason seeth it somewhat,
For it would not concede that for so long
Could be the motors without their perfection.
Now dost thou know both where and when these Loves
Created were, and how; so that extinct
In thy desire already are three fires.
Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty
So swiftly, as a portion of these angels
Disturbed the subject of your elements.
The rest remained, and they began this art
Which thou discernest, with so great delight
That never from their circling do they cease.
The occasion of the fall was the accursed
Presumption of that One, whom thou hast seen
By all the burden of the world constrained.
Those whom thou here beholdest modest were
To recognise themselves as of that goodness
Which made them apt for so much understanding;
On which account their vision was exalted
By the enlightening grace and their own merit,
So that they have a full and steadfast will.
I would not have thee doubt, but certain be,
'Tis meritorious to receive this grace,
According as the affection opens to it.
Now round about in this consistory
Much mayst thou contemplate, if these my words
Be gathered up, without all further aid.
But since upon the earth, throughout your schools,
They teach that such is the angelic nature
That it doth hear, and recollect, and will,
More will I say, that thou mayst see unmixed
The truth that is confounded there below,
Equivocating in such like prelections.
These substances, since in God's countenance
They jocund were, turned not away their sight
From that wherefrom not anything is hidden;
Hence they have not their vision intercepted
By object new, and hence they do not need
To recollect, through interrupted thought.
So that below, not sleeping, people dream,
Believing they speak truth, and not believing;
And in the last is greater sin and shame.
Below you do not journey by one path
Philosophising; so transporteth you
Love of appearance and the thought thereof.
And even this above here is endured
With less disdain, than when is set aside
The Holy Writ, or when it is distorted.
They think not there how much of blood it costs
To sow it in the world, and how he pleases
Who in humility keeps close to it.
Each striveth for appearance, and doth make
His own inventions; and these treated are
By preachers, and the Evangel holds its peace.
One sayeth that the moon did backward turn,
In the Passion of Christ, and interpose herself
So that the sunlight reached not down below;
And lies; for of its own accord the light
Hid itself; whence to Spaniards and to Indians,
As to the Jews, did such eclipse respond.
Florence has not so many Lapi and Bindi
As fables such as these, that every year
Are shouted from the pulpit back and forth,
In such wise that the lambs, who do not know,
Come back from pasture fed upon the wind,
And not to see the harm doth not excuse them.
Christ did not to his first disciples say,
'Go forth, and to the world preach idle tales,'
But unto them a true foundation gave;
And this so loudly sounded from their lips,
That, in the warfare to enkindle Faith,
They made of the Evangel shields and lances.
Now men go forth with jests and drolleries
To preach, and if but well the people laugh,
The hood puffs out, and nothing more is asked.
But in the cowl there nestles such a bird,
That, if the common people were to see it,
They would perceive what pardons they confide in,
For which so great on earth has grown the folly,
That, without proof of any testimony,
To each indulgence they would flock together.
By this Saint Anthony his pig doth fatten,
And many others, who are worse than pigs,
Paying in money without mark of coinage.
But since we have digressed abundantly,
Turn back thine eyes forthwith to the right path,
So that the way be shortened with the time.
This nature doth so multiply itself
In numbers, that there never yet was speech
Nor mortal fancy that can go so far.
And if thou notest that which is revealed
By Daniel, thou wilt see that in his thousands
Number determinate is kept concealed.
The primal light, that all irradiates it,
By modes as many is received therein,
As are the splendours wherewith it is mated.
Hence, inasmuch as on the act conceptive
The affection followeth, of love the sweetness
Therein diversely fervid is or tepid.
The height behold now and the amplitude
Of the eternal power, since it hath made
Itself so many mirrors, where 'tis broken,
One in itself remaining as before."
Alison Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 1-28.[repr. in Reading Dante's Stars {New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000}, pp. 119-41]) has furnished a bravura performance on this opening simile, connecting its consideration of a single moment separating two very different states (balance/imbalance) to the moment separating God's creation of the angels from that of their first choices. See also Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 151-60).
Cornish begins her treatment of this moment with the following observation: “We have no way of knowing whether the planetary configuration that opens [this canto] describes dawn or dusk” (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 1). In the first three centuries it was a rare commentator (but, for exceptions, see Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 1-12] and Vellutello [comm. to vv. 1-9]) who did not assume that Dante presented the Sun as being in Aries, the Moon in Libra. After Vellutello, there is a period in which everyone gets this “right”; in fact, among the Italians it is only in the twentieth century with Steiner (comm. to verse 2) that the old error returns (and is repeated by several, most notably Momigliano [comm. to vv. 1-9] and Sapegno [comm. to vv. 1-9] until Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 1-9] restore the better reading; but see Chiavacci Leonardi [Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. {Milan: Mondadori, 1997}, p. 797], who reverts to the discredited interpretation). Among Dante's English-writing commentators, however, only Oelsner (comm. to these verses) understood that Dante leaves it absolutely opaque as to whether it is the Sun or Moon that is in Aries (the Ram) or in Libra (the Scales). The reference to the Sun's being in Aries at the Creation in the first canto of the poem (Inf. I.39-40) has, understandably perhaps, been the controlling factor for such readers.
For discussion of Latona's role in the poem (she is also named at Purg. XX.131, Par. X.67, and XXII.139), see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), pp. 141-42, suggesting that her maternal role may have seemed to Dante reminiscent of Mary (in particular in her having given birth to Apollo, treated several times as Christ [see the notes to Par. I.13-15, 13, 19, 25-27]). He continues by suggesting that Dante also was drawn to the figure of Latona by her exilic condition, particularly as this was presented by Ovid (Metam. VI.186-191), and by her eventual stability, shared by the former wandering isle, Delos, in a sort of pagan version of eternal peace and light.
The Sun and the Moon are described as being momentarily balanced (an instant immeasurably brief because both are always in their orbital motion); their being “out of balance” is recognized after a certain duration, when both are perceived as having changed position, moving away from (the one above, the other below) the horizon. Strangely, Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 7) believes that Manfredi Porena was of the opinion that this instant also corresponds to that of a total lunar eclipse. Porena, in fact, first in his earlier article (“Noterelle dantesche,” Studi romanzi 20 [1930]: 201-6) and then in his commentary (to vv. 4-6), “dismisses the eclipse as an accident” (the words are John Kleiner's [Mismapping the Underworld: Daring and Error in Dante's “Comedy” {Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994}, p. 166, n. 14]). Porena is in polemic against those of Dante's commentators who take his scientific lore too seriously. He points out that, were all the conditions of Dante's celestial moment to be fulfilled in actuality, there would be a total eclipse of the Moon (with the result, one might conclude, that we would not be able to see much of that disk move at all). Porena continues: “The vision that Dante presents to us is thus merely hypothetical.” And he concludes: “It is to employ an entirely erroneous method when one writes commentary on Dante always presupposing in his astronomical gestures true scientific rigor, even when he purposefully does not wish to make himself a teacher of science; he is above all else a poet.” That not only escaped Cornish's attention, it (having caught his) failed to convince Kleiner (ibid.), who, although he understands that “[b]ecause the orbits of sun and moon are not strictly coplanar, it is possible for the sun and moon to occupy opposite positions in the zodiac without an eclipse occurring. (If this were not the case, every 'full moon' would be eclipsed.)” That would be where some readers (and obviously Porena) would stop. In other words, there is absolutely no reason to suppose Dante is here thinking of an eclipse (he clearly is in vv. 97-102, in an altogether different context). Kleiner, however, continues as follows (ibid.): “What makes the balancing act an eclipse is Dante's insistence that the planets balance themselves perfectly - i.e., are exactly opposite one another in the sky and on the horizon” (emphasis Kleiner's). Of course, they may only be balanced “perfectly” and be aligned “exactly opposite” in Kleiner's imagination; Dante does not make any such further qualification. It is perhaps a bit disconcerting that Kleiner continues by discussing at some length (pp. 100-107) the three-mirrors experiment. Following some questionable advice, he simply assumes that Dante sets the experiment up in such a way that we are meant to understand that it simply cannot be performed – a most dubious view. (See discussion in the notes to Par. II.94-105 and XXVIII.4-9.)
Some (incorrectly) believe that what is described as being of immeasurably short duration is Beatrice's smile (see Rodney Payton [“Paradiso XXIX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics {Lectura Dantis [virginiana], 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995}, p. 439]): “The longer it is thought about, the smaller the exact instant is.... How long did Beatrice smile? How brief a moment can you conceive?” Payton has not digested Cornish's explanation (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 6-7), not of Beatrice's smile, but of her silence, which is the issue here: “For Aristotle an instant (or the 'now,' as he called it) is the temporal equivalent of a point on a line; yet time is no more made up of these 'nows' than a line is composed of geometrical points” (p. 7). She points out that Porena before her had correctly characterized the temporal nature of Beatrice's silence (see his comm. to vv. 4-6) as indeed having measurable duration. Porena suggests that the amount of time for half the rising or setting Sun or Moon to rise completely above or to sink completely below the horizon is a little more than a minute, certainly a measurable time. Cornish might have observed that Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 1-9) had supported Porena's thesis.
For the poet's contrastive inner reference to Francesca's words (Inf. V.132, “ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse” [still, it was a single instant overcame us]), here and in Paradiso XXX.11, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7-8, nn. 18-19), citing Contini (Un' idea di Dante [Turin: Einaudi, 1976], p. 206) as having preceded him in pointing out this parallel. But see also James Chiampi (Shadowy Prefaces [Ravenna: Longo, 1981], p. 66). And now see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 157). Moevs, like Swing and Hollander, relates the moment of Francesca's “conversion” to lust to the moment of St. Augustine's quite different conversion, as recorded in Confessiones VIII.12. See the note to Inferno V.138.
By now a most familiar claim of Beatrice's: She reads Dante's thoughts in the point (God) where all space (Latin for “where”: ubi) and time (Latin for “when”: quando) most purely and truly exist.
We are in the highest part of God's creation in time, a mixture of form and matter, the heavens. This sphere, we remember, is governed by the Seraphim, the highest order of angels, dedicated to loving God. Dante has asked a most difficult theological question: If God is self-sufficient, if He has no “needs,” why did He bother to create anything at all? The answer that Beatrice offers is simplicity itself: He created because He loves and wanted the angels to enjoy His love in their being, loving Him in return.
For consideration of Dante's reflections on the Creation, see Patrick Boyde (Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], pp. 235-47). On the canto as a whole, see Bruno Nardi's lectura (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso,” in his “Lecturae” e altri studi danteschi, ed. Rudy Abardo [Florence: Le Lettere, 1990 {1960}], pp. 193-201). For Dante's recasting in it of the relatively anthropomorphic view of creation found in Genesis for a more abstract and philosophical one, see Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 87-103). Boitani further maintains (p. 95) that Dante's rescripting of Genesis goes far beyond what is authorized by the Bible in portraying the creation of the angels, a subject about which Scripture is silent.
The Latin verb form subsisto is used here, as Bosco/Reggio point out, voluntarily (Dante had used the Italian form of the noun substantia [sussistenza] at Paradiso XIII.59 and easily could have used sussisto here, which rhymes perfectly with visto and acquisto). And so we may conclude that he wanted the Scholastic flavor that the Latin term affords. See verse 12, where the parallelism with the Latin word ubi causes the reader to realize that a perfectly usual Italian word quando is there a Latin word.
The Italian dative pronoun “i” (gli in modern Italian) is used some eight times in the poem, but this is the only time it refers to God after Adam informs us that “I” was the first name that human speakers used to address Him, and that Adam was the first to use it. See the note to Paradiso XXVI.134.
Two major issues are touched on here. If our sense of the history of the world begins with Creation (i.e., Genesis 1:1), what was God doing before then? (Attributed to St. Augustine is the retort, “preparing a Hell for the inquisitive” [see Carroll, comm. to vv. 19-30].) Dante's point is that whatever He was doing, He was not lazing about, even if there was, strictly speaking, no time before the Creation.
The second problem is of a different order. What exactly does “God moved upon these waters” mean? Precisely what “waters” are referred to? The obvious reference is to Genesis 1:2. The first commentator (but hardly the last) to point to the work of Bruno Nardi was Porena (comm. to this tercet). Nardi had shown (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,” 1944], pp. 307-13) that one traditional medieval interpretation of this biblical text was that these waters are above the rest of the heavens (the Primum Mobile was also referred to as the “acqueous sphere”). As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out, Dante's use of the demonstrative adjective “queste” (these) makes that solution even more attractive, since Dante and Beatrice are currently in the Primum Mobile.
Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 446) adduces Paradiso VII.64-66, with its sense of God's creation being motivated by love, as lying behind this passage. For the distinctions between forma and atto and between materia and potenza, see Stephen Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983]) and Zygmunt Baranski's rejoinder (“Dante tra dei pagani e angeli cristiani,” Filologia e critica 9 [1984]: 298-99).
From the fourteenth century onward, commentators (e.g., the author of the notes to the Commedia found in the Codice Cassinese [comm. to verse 22]) have entered into the question of what exactly Dante envisioned when he thought of “pure matter.” The author of that early commentary resorts to Plato's term ylem [“hyle”], for primordial matter without form, the “stuff” of the four elements to which God would give shape in creating the physical world. See David O'Keeffe (“Dante's Theory of Creation,” Revue néoscolastique de philosophie 26 [1924], pp. 56-57) for why this is not the same as the “prime matter” of Averroës. And, for a recent discussion in English, taking issue with Nardi's various pronouncements that would make Dante less orthodox than even he probably wanted to be perceived, see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 40-45). For instance, Moevs believes that Dante's ideas about materia puretta accord with Thomas's views.
For the three entities “shot” by this “three-stringed bow,” see the note to vv. 31-36.
Dante insists on the simultaneity of all parts of God's instantaneous creation, heavenly and sublunar. The three elements of that creation (pure form, mixed form and matter, and pure matter) obviously are in hierarchical relation to one another; but their creation occurred in the same instant.
According to Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 196, n. 1), this is the only time in all his works that Dante refers to the notion in medieval physics that light traveled at infinite velocity.
The standard gloss is found in Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who say that the angels, “pure act” (i.e., pure form or substance, unmodified by accidents), were created in the Empyrean; that “pure matter” (unformed matter before God created the universe) was the condition of the earth before the event recorded in Genesis 1:1-2; that the nine heavens, between the Empyrean and earth, were created out of a mixture of form and matter (“act” [atto] and “potential” [potenza]). However, for a nuanced and more complex discussion of Dante's unique integration of elements from many sources in this passage, orthodox (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) and unorthodox (e.g., Averroës), see Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 198-200).
There is a persistent counterview, one that understands the second aspect of the Creation differently, as humankind. But see Poletto's stern remonstrance (comm. to vv. 22-24).
On these lines, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003]: 45): “Order and structure were created together in the substances [= angels].”
Singleton (comm. to vv. 8-9) makes the following observation: “For a reader unfamiliar with the standard procedure of a summa of theology, it should perhaps be pointed out that the poem is proceeding thematically in the opposite direction to that of a summa: the journey moves ever upwards, toward God, and here comes to a treatise on angels, in these two cantos so near the end, whereas a summa begins with God, in its first section of questions, and then passes to the creation or procession of creatures from God (cf. Summa theol. I of Thomas Aquinas as it passes from question 43 to question 44), beginning with the highest creatures, which are the angels.”
As Scripture (e.g., Genesis 1:1, Ecclesiasticus 18:1, Psalms 101:26 [102:25]) and reason (for Dante's own contribution under this heading, see vv. 43-45) attest, God created the angels, not as St. Jerome asseverated (in his commentary on Paul's Epistle to Titus 1:2), many, many centuries before He created the heavens and the earth, but simultaneously with them. Dante's disagreement with Jerome is confrontational and dismissive, all the more so since it issues from the mouth of Beatrice, and we cannot lay the blame on a somewhat intemperate protagonist. (For the text of Thomas's far more conciliatory packaging of his own dissent [ST I, q. 61, a. 3], see Singleton [comm. to vv. 37-39]).
Beatrice's point is that, were Jerome to have been correct, the angels would have had nothing to do for all those centuries, since their only task is governing the heavens.
This is the last appearance of the noun ragione (reason), used thirty-one times in the poem, as though words for logical discourse had to be absent once it entered the Empyrean.
Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 194) locates this part of Beatrice's discourse in Peter Lombard's discussion of the angels (Sententiae I.ii.2), where he sets out the problems to be resolved exactly as they are represented here: “Concerning the angelic nature the following must first be considered: when it was created, and where, and how; then what the result was of the defection of certain of them and of the adhesion of certain others.” Cf. Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 452) for the same citation.
In good Scholastic style, Beatrice summarizes the first three elements in her exposition. See the note to vv. 46-63.
No one seems to have found a reason or a source for this segment of time that Dante decides it took the angels to fall from the Empyrean into Hell. In fact, normal gravitational force, applied to normal objects, would have left them falling a far longer time. Their sin, self-loving rebellion against God, occurred the moment of/after their creation, for all intents and purposes, instantaneously. Their fall, traversing the entire universe to its core, took less than half a minute.
For Bonaventure's views on the fall of the angels, see Barbara Faes de Mottoni (“Bonaventura e la caduta degli angeli,” Doctor seraphicus 38 [1991]: 97-113). Her treatment makes no reference to Dante, but offers a survey, centered in Bonaventure, of medieval views of angelic free will.
See Convivio II.v.12 for Dante's previous handling of the question of the fallen angels: It was about one-tenth of the whole group who sinned and fell; God was moved to create humankind as a kind of replacement for these (“alla quale restaurare fue l'umana natura poi creata”).
For Augustine's absolute unwillingness to consider that God created the eventually fallen angels anything less than completely good, see Alison Cornish (“Planets and Angels in Paradiso XXIX: The First Moment,” Dante Studies 108 [1990]: 10-14). On the other hand, he clearly thought that angelic nature would have come into being making choices. And so Augustine, caught between two very strong theological imperatives (God never created evil; Satan never enjoyed the bliss of loving God), invented an amorphous mora (delay) between his creation and his fall. According to Cornish, for Augustine “the devil was not created sinful, yet his sin was not deferred even for a split-second. He makes the distinction that by nature the devil was good, by choice he became evil, so that the beginning of Lucifer's being and the beginning of his sin occurred at two separate moments. Whether these are logical or chronological moments is not clear” (p. 11). Dante's view, while never clearly stated, is probably not very different.
For suggetto, see Stephen Bemrose (Dante's Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983], pp. 197-201), siding with the majority; the word refers to “terra” (earth). See, for instance, Lombardi's gloss (comm. to vv. 49-51), saying that earth is subject to (i.e., lies beneath) the other three elements, water, air, and fire. But see Mazzoni (Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. II [Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1979 {Intro. to Questio}], pp. 712-32) and Baranski (“Dante tra dei pagani e angeli cristiani,” Filologia e critica 9 [1984]: 300), both of whom suggest that we are meant to realize that what is under discussion is “prime matter” (la materia prima). And see Gary Cestaro (Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003], p. 248, n. 87): “Dante alludes here to the common Scholastic notion of a subiectum elementorum, the primal elemental material prior to the definition of four distinct elements, akin to Plato's silva ['hyle']....” A hedged bet is found in Oelsner's notes (comm. to vv. 49-51): “Il suggetto dei vostri elementi is usually (and perhaps rightly) taken to mean 'that one of your elements that underlies the rest,' i.e., earth. Compare Inf. XXXIV.121-126. But if we take this passage on its own merits it seems better to understand the substrate of the elements to mean the prima materia (compare [Par.] II.106-108; VII.133-136, and lines 22-24 of this canto); the elaboration of the elements being the subsequent work of the Angels and the heavens.” The strongest case against this second interpretation was made by Porena (comm. to vv. 49-51), pointing out that Inferno XXXIV.122-126 reveals that Dante thought that, by the time Satan had penetrated our globe, water and earth had already been separated. However, Chimenz (comm. to vv. 49-51) countered that argument as follows: The words inscribed over the gate of Hell (Inf. III.7-8) would seem to suggest that before the creation of Hell (and, Chimenz insists, the contemporary creation of the angels), nothing existed except eternal things, and thus Satan fell into unformed matter. Nonetheless, it is certainly possible that we are meant to understand that earth was formed while Satan was falling and (at least in part) in order to receive him and his partners in rebellion.
The verb circuir does not suggest that the remaining (loyal) angels are flying around the heavens freestyle, but that they form nine angelic circlings around God, as opposed to the fallen angels, who, along with their leader, Lucifer, are imprisoned in Hell. The text (vv. 56-57) specifically reminds readers of their vision of Satan at the center of the universe (Inferno XXXIV.110-111).
The good angels, unlike the prideful members of their cohort, are portrayed as “modesti” (humble), possessing the virtue opposite to their brethren's vice of pride.
See Singleton's gloss (comm. to this tercet): “The angels who waited for the bestowal of the higher light, the light of glory, received that light (here termed 'grazia illuminante'). Their merit (merto) was precisely that humility and their waiting upon the Lord to bestow that higher light. With that bestowal they were forever confirmed in this highest grace, and accordingly they are now bound thereby to the good and to do the good. They have fullness of vision and of will, and they cannot sin. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theol. I, q. 62, a. 8, resp.: 'The beatified angels cannot sin. The reason for this is, because their beatitude consists in seeing God through His essence. Now, God's essence is the very essence of goodness. Consequently the angel beholding God is disposed towards God in the same way as anyone else not seeing God is to the common form of goodness. Now it is impossible for any man either to will or to do anything except aiming at what is good; or for him to wish to turn away from good precisely as such. Therefore the beatified angel can neither will nor act, except as aiming towards God. Now, whoever wills or acts in this manner cannot sin. Consequently the beatified angel cannot sin.'”
Dante, Beatrice divines, may be wondering what the angels actually did in order to merit illuminating grace.
See Singleton (comm. to these verses), citing Aquinas (ST I, q. 62, a. 5): “As the angel is of his nature inclined to natural perfection, so is he by merit inclined to glory. Hence instantly after merit the angel secured beatitude. Now the merit of beatitude in angel and man alike can be from merely one act; because man merits beatitude by every act informed by charity. Hence it remains that an angel was beatified straightway after one act of charity.”
Dante's corrosive attack on bad preaching reveals heartfelt annoyance, probably reflecting extensive personal experience. Tasked with the representation of the Word, preachers should control their desires for recognition of their powers of speaking. On the other hand, Beatrice is here presented as a most effective teacher. Perhaps we are meant to think critically of Paul's strictures on women; see Scott (Understanding Dante [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004], p. 181), citing I Cor. 14:34-35 for the instruction that “it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
Discussing the questions pertaining to the natures of angelic language (see De vulgari eloquentia I.ii.3) and memory, see Barbara Faes de Mottoni (“Il linguaggio e la memoria dell'angelo in Dante,” in Pour Dante: Dante et l'Apocalypse: Lectures humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard and Christian Trottmann [Paris: Champion, 2001], pp. 237-53). Her discussion of this passage, found on pp. 243-53, concludes (p. 253) with the assertion, difficult to fault, that the angels, knowing everything in God, have, at least in Dante's possibly heterodox opinions (potentially opposed to those of Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas), need of neither language nor memory. However, see the further distinction offered by Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 205-8), who suggests that, while a passage in Monarchia (I.iii.7) clearly seems to require that we conceive that Dante there denies that the angels have memories, here the poet only seems to assert that they do not need to make use of them.
See the observation of Hawkins (Dante's Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999], p. 192): With the exception of Purgatorio XXXII.79, “where 'scuola' describes the Old Testament precursors of Christ,... [the word] always denotes what is pagan or in some sense defective....”
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) allow that possibly Dante believes that, projecting human experience onto the terms “intellect,” “will,” and “memory” (see verse 72), some earthly judges distort the nature of the angelic versions of these capacities. That would “save” Dante from opposing some pretty potent authorities (see the note to vv. 70-81).
See Ruedi Imbach (Dante, la philosophie et les laïcs [Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1996], p. 147), averring that Dante embraces at least one heretical position of Siger de Brabant when, in these lines, he argues, against the authorities mentioned in the note to verses 70-81, that the angels have no memory. For discussion, see Luca Curti (“Canto X,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 161-62). It seems likely that Dante wants, as is often the case, to formulate his own position on an issue, one that accords with elements found in several other authorities.
The explanation seems clear enough (and is found in many early commentaries): There are those on earth who are totally confused (i.e., they “dream” even while they are not sleeping) in believing that the angels have need of memory, while others, those who maintain such a view while knowing it to be false, are guilty not of ignorance but of fraud. These Christian sophists care more about making a splash than seeking the truth.
Piero Boitani (“Creazione e cadute di Paradiso XXIX,” L'Alighieri 19 [2002]: 451) is effective in joining two responses that are rarely seen together in the commentary tradition when he understands (1) that the focus of Beatrice's anger is completely on the question of angelic memory (and does not spill over into the sins of bad preachers, which dominate the following verses [91-126], as so many allow their discussion to do) and (2) that the zeal behind her (Dante's) insistence is passionate and fully conscious of the famous feathers that will be ruffled thereby, those of Saints Jerome, Augustine, and Thomas, for starters. However, he perhaps goes too far in asserting that Dante denies that angels have memory; the text only asserts (vv. 80-81) that they have no need of memory, which may imply either that they have or do not have this capacity. Dante is obviously outraged at the notion of angels requiring (and actually using) memory, since they live in the eternal present. However, whether he goes as far as Averroës (and Siger) in denying that they have this capacity, that question he leaves us to wonder about. He could not have left the issue more ambiguous, as he obviously desired to - which may imply that he did in fact buy into Siger's argument.
Lombardi (comm. to this tercet) was perhaps the first modern glossator (1791) to insist that this understanding is incorrect. Countering those who would have Dante here denying the angels memory, he argues that Albertus Magnus says that they indeed have such capacity, but that it is very different from ours. Thus, according to Lombardi, Dante, in agreement with Albertus, has the first category of errant thinkers asserting that angelic memory is exactly like the human kind, while the second, in his view, makes an even graver error by denying the angels a faculty enjoyed by humans. This explanation does not deal with the deliberate wrongness of these thinkers.
Dante does not seem to be denying that the angels possess a memory, rather that they lack the need to use it, since they know everything in the eternal present. It is thus not clear that Dante has succumbed to the Siren song of Siger of Brabant (who denied that angels possessed memories [see the note to Par. X.133-138]).
These two tercets form the pivot on which Beatrice's argument turns from heavenly theology (involving the nature of angelic mind) to religious concerns of a lower intellectual order, from the disputes of theologians to the fables told by preachers – and Dante almost certainly has in mind itinerant friars.
The “cost” of the benefits of Scripture in blood (of Jesus, the martyred apostles, and the other martyrs [see Pasquini/Quaglio, comm. to this tercet, for these three references]) is not taken into account.
Poletto (comm. to this tercet) at least reacts to the curious present tense of the verb costa (costs), and “translates” it as costò (cost). Grabher (comm. to this tercet) does take the present tense as meaningful, believing that Dante is not speaking literally of the blood of martyrs, but metaphorically – of the inner sacrifice made by all Christians. This does not seem a convincing gloss. And thus, while the constraints of rhyme may be all the explanation one requires for the presence of the form, the reader is forced to wonder. Did Dante think of the past sacrifices of the heroes of the Church as occurring in the vivid present tense, or is his point that such sacrifices are being made even now, in his day? His opinions on the current condition of the City of Man, expressed volubly throughout the poem (most recently at Par. XXVII.121-141), would seem to gainsay this second possible explanation.
Silvio Pasquazi (“Canto XXIX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1031) begins his lectura with this invective against preachers, which is a frequent cause of complaint among less stern readers of the last canticle. His view is that it should be dealt with, not as aberrant, but as of a piece with the texture and purpose of the canto. Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 209) is of a similar opinion. For discussion of a similar discomfort among the commentators with Beatrice's last words in the poem in the following canto, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 31-33).
Preaching as preening now becomes Beatrice's subject. Her insistence on the fictitious nature of this sort of public utterance is underlined by the word invenzioni (inventing new ideas) here and favole (tales) at verse 104, ciance (idle nonsense) at verse 110, motti and iscede (buffoonery and jokes) at verse 115. Cf. Giovanni Boccaccio's portrait of a fiction-dealing friar, Fra Cipolla (Decameron VI.x), which probably owes more than a certain debt to this passage. (See Longfellow [comm. to verse 115] and Hollander [Boccaccio's Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire {Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997}], pp. 41-45).
For the “darkness at noon” that overspread the world during the Crucifixion of Jesus, see Luke 23:44: “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.” (See also Matthew 27:45 and Mark 15:33). And see Grandgent (comm. to these verses): “To explain this darkness at the Crucifixion, some said that the moon left its course to make an eclipse, others that the sun hid its own rays. Dionysius (Par. XXVIII.130) favored the first explanation, St. Jerome the second. Both are recorded by St. Thomas in Summa Theologiae III, q. 44, a. 2. The second theory has the advantage of accounting for an obscuration 'over all the land,' whereas an ordinary eclipse would darken only a part of it.”
This line has caused scandal. Does Dante really want to say that those who say that the Moon retroceded six constellations in the Zodiac in order to blot out the Sun (and, according to Scartazzini [comm. to this verse] and Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 97-102], some fairly illustrious authorities, including Dionysius the Areopagite, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, took this explanation seriously) are liars? Those are strong words. Scartazzini was the first to point out that Dante had a precursor in such a harsh view, Petrus Comestor (PL CXCVIII.1631), who says that those who uphold such tales “have lied” (mentiti sunt). Eventually Nardi (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura,” 1944], pp. 375-76) would also turn to this source and argue that, despite the commentators' discomfort, both the manuscript tradition and Petrus's harsh words underline the fact that Dante meant exactly what he said. We should remember the poet's harsh treatment of Jerome, specifically mentioned as totally incorrect (Dante could have been less direct!) in this very canto (verses 37-45); on that occasion, concerning the dating of the creation of the angels, St. Thomas was right (if Dante doesn't say so specifically). And now it is his turn to be told off, if indirectly. Bosco/Reggio try to diminish the force of the verb mentire in Dante's day (i.e., rather than lying, it meant something more like “does not tell the truth”). However, ask any Dante scholar whether he or she enjoys being told that a firmly held opinion is erroneous. It is the price of doing one's intellectual work in public; and we all must be prepared to pay that price. Nonetheless, it is plain enough that Dante is belittling an opinion that is to be thought of as having the same merit as the idle tales told by not-very-well-educated friars. And if Dionysius, Albert, or Thomas chooses to align himself with such drivel, he gets only what he deserves - that seems to be the poet's attitude.
Dante disposes of this “scientific” account of the miracle recorded in three Gospels on truly experimental grounds. If it were true, then the resulting eclipse would have been only partial. And so we are forced to follow Jerome, whose miraculous “self-eclipse” of the Sun indeed was visible in all the world, and not merely in the area around Jerusalem.
This picture of religious ceremony in the Florence of Dante's day has its kinship with that found in the series of (often hilarious) representations of preaching found in the Decameron. All over the city, in parish after parish, all through the year (for this understanding of per anno, see Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 94-108]), the leaders of the flock trade in “wind,” notions that are clearly estranged from truth. Such intellectual vagrancy, however, does not excuse the individual sheep, who should realize that what they listen to so avidly has nothing to do with the Bible or with the fundamental truths of their religion. In other words, they are not innocent because they are stupid.
Daniello (comm. to this verse) was the first glossator to identify the source of the nickname Lapo as Jacopo. That Bindo derived from Ildebrando was first noted by Fanfani (in his Vocabulary of Tuscan Usage), according to Andreoli (comm. to this verse).
Dante's verb gridare tells all one needs to know about the quality of mind that lies behind these “shouted” sermons.
For a sermon of St. Bernard that may be reflected in this passage, see Rodney Payton (“Paradiso XXIX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 448-49).
Christ's first “congregation” was comprised of the apostles.
The “verace fondamento” (true foundation), that is, Jesus's teachings as found in the Gospels (see Mark 16:15).
Some think that the phrase “le sue guance” (lit. “cheeks” [a choice forced by rhyme?] understood as metonymic for “lips”) refers to the lips of Jesus rather than to those of the apostles. If we choose this second alternative, as we probably should, we follow Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) and the large majority of the commentators. However, the estimable Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-117) begins the tradition of treating the utterances as coming from Christ's mouth, and has had a narrow but fairly distinguished band of adherents (Landino, Costa, Tommaseo, Andreoli, etc.).
The cappuccio (cowl) worn by friars balloons figuratively with their pride. Literally, a large and well-tailored cowl was the sign of wealth of the Order and/or importance of an individual. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 115-117) point out that the only other cappuccio found in this poem is worn by the hypocrites in Malebolge, Inferno XXIII.61. They are attired in leaden costume that mimics the garb of Cluniac monks.
Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that Satan was often, in medieval iconography, represented as a black crow (in contrast to the white dove that represented the Holy Spirit) and that Dante has spoken (Inf. XXXIV.47) of Lucifer as an uccello (bird).
Believing in the truthfulness of pardons (and pardoners) is the height of credulity. It is hard to blame the trickster when his victims almost insist on being gulled.
See Tozer's gloss on this tercet: “'[O]n this (credulity) St. Antony fattens his pig.' The hog which appears in pictures at the feet of St. Antony, the Egyptian hermit [ca. 250-355], represents the demon of sensuality which he conquered. In the middle ages the swine of the monks of St. Antony were allowed to feed in the streets of cities, and were fed by devout persons (Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, pp. 750, 751); this is what Dante refers to.” The obvious reversal in the values of the Antonines, who became the representatives of the vice that their founder had conquered, is apparent.
The friars of Antony's order are “repaying” the contributions of their foolish flocks with counterfeit coin: meaningless pieces of paper on which is written their forgiven sins.
Beatrice concludes her tirade with an ironic verbal gesture, making it a mere digression. Now let us return, she says, to the true way, the path chosen by the loyal angels, a subject turned aside from in verse 94 for her savage attack upon friars, difficult to accept as a mere digression.
The numbers of the angels increases the higher they are found. Dante's coinage, the verb ingradarsi, is found in slightly altered form (digradarsi) in Paradiso XXX.125. In both cases it seems to have the meaning “to increase step-by-step.” Thus, the higher the eyes of an observer mount, the more angels they are able to take in. And that number is both beyond human vocabulary and mortal conception.
Discussing this passage, Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 297-98) points out that Daniel's numeration of the angels (Daniel 7:10), “a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times one hundred thousand stood before him” [according to the Vulgate]), while incalculable for most human beings, was probably a finite number in Dante's opinion. Similarly, the wording of verse 135, “a particular number lies concealed” (determinato numero si cela) would clearly seem to indicate a very large but determinable number. Most commentators think the poet is saying something quite different, namely that the number of angels cannot be represented by any finite number. However, Dante's sense for mathematics may be more sophisticated than that of his commentators; apparently he knows the distinction between “numberless” (i.e., beyond counting because of limited human capacity) and “infinite,” a concept of which he knew at least from the extended discussion in Aristotle's Physics (III.iv-viii).
Behind this passage, according to Attilio Mellone (“Il canto XXIX del Paradiso [una lezione di angelologia],” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 210-11), there lies a dispute between “Aristotelians” (who propose a limited number of angels) and the Bible (e.g., Daniel 7:10, Apoc. 5:11). However, see Thomas Aquinas (ST I, q. 112, a. 4), as cited by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 135): “The multitude of the angels transcends any material multitude.” It is clear what position Dante does not share, that of the “Aristotelians,” who argue for a strictly limited number (as few as sixty). However, whether he believes that the angels are infinite or numbered is not entirely clear, although verse 135 may be more specific than it is generally understood as being. Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 148, supports the second opinion, citing Gregory's gloss on Job 25:3 from the Moralia: “And if the number of angels is finite to the eye of God [Dante's 'particular number'?], in the human view it is infinite [Dante's 'lies concealed'?]” (PL LXXV.542).
God's brilliance irradiates the angelic nature in such ways that it is received by these creatures (splendori because they reflect the divine light [for Dante's “light physics” see the note to Par. XXIII.82-84]) variously, each in accord with its capacity to absorb and return God's love.
Seemingly infinite in its application, God's love for the highest creatures that He made nonetheless still issues from the single entity that made them.
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