The opening verse of this canto has caused considerable difficulty. Without reviewing the various responses (for which see Scartazzini [comm. to this verse]), we should say that we have followed fairly freely Scartazzini's basic understanding, which takes “affetto” as being, here, a Latinism, formed out of the past participle (adfectus) of the deponent verb adficior (influence), and thus, loosely here, “intent upon” or “absorbed by.” As for the noun piacer, we take it here not as “beauty” but as Bernard's “delight” in Mary. See also Tozer (comm. to vv. 1-2). But see Porena (comm. to vv. 1-2) for strong objections to the first of these solutions, arguing that affetto means “troubled,” an unlikely reading.

Perhaps the most compelling gloss to this opening word of the canto is found in Aversano's commentary (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 165. He, as did several modern commentators before him (e.g., Mestica and Mattalia [comms. to this verse]), the latter acknowledging the lone identical early notice on the part of Francesco da Buti [comm. to Par. I.1-15], who, however, while pointing to the deponent verb, doesn't accept that interpretation, preferring the “affective” solution) traces the source of affetto to the past participle of the verb afficere, with the resulting sense of being affixed, or conjoined. Aversano attributes this sense of the word to St. Bernard on two occasions (PL CLXXXIII.1297, CLXXXIII.1384).

Porena (comm. to vv. 1-2) suggests that Bernard does not interrupt his personal adoration of Mary in order to carry out his new responsibility, as doctor (teacher), but names the inhabitants of the Rose from memory (thus indicating the existence of multitasking at the end of the thirteenth century). This task, along with allied concerns, will occupy vv. 4-87 of the canto.

As Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 165, points out, the adjective santo (holy) occurs more often in this canto than in any other (he even undercounts its frequency by one). In fact, it occurs here seven times. There are only three cantos in Paradiso in which it does not occur even once: VIII, XXVIII, and (somewhat surprisingly) XXXIII.

For discussion of Dante's choice of the Hebrew women he included in the Rose, see Giuseppe Di Scipio (“The Hebrew Women in Dante's Symbolic Rose,” Dante Studies 101 [1983]: 111-21). See also the remarks of Carroll (comm. to vv. 8-10).

Dante's use of the trope hysteron proteron is widely noticed. It offers an “instant replay” run backward, undoing the universal effect of the wound of Original Sin, incurred by Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit, when Mary gave birth to Jesus. Mary's position in the Rose, seated with Eve at her feet, reinforces that understanding.

Jacob's first and second wives, Leah and Rachel, as we saw in Purgatorio XXVII.100-108, represent (as they were traditionally understood as doing) the active and the contemplative life, respectively. Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 166, points out that, according to Richard of St. Victor, in his Benjamin major (PL CXCVI.62), Rachel, as the first stage of contemplation, dilatatio (expansion), an identity she shares with Beatrice, yields to the second stage, represented by the son she died giving birth to, Benjamin, or sublevatio (i.e., being raised up), who has a counterpart in the poem, of course, in Bernard, Dante's Benjamin. That state in turn yields to alienatio (ecstasy), the passing beyond human limits to experience things as they are in themselves, absolute reality. Aversano also cites PL CXCVI.52 and CXCVI.170.

Beatrice is “out of pattern” with the crossing vertical and horizontal elements. This perhaps indicates that such an idiosyncratic pattern is meant to reflect the individual identity of the beholder. It thus results that Dante is like everyone else in being uniquely unlike everyone else, an only apparently paradoxical insight later developed centrally by Michel de Montaigne.

It does not seem to have caught the attention of any commentator that Beatrice's name appears in the ninth verse of the canto, that is, accompanied by her identifying (and trinitarian) number. Carroll (comm. to vv. 8-10) comes close. He, however, dwells on Beatrice's presence in the third row, next to Rachel, and then he adverts to the passage in the Vita nuova (XXIX.3) that explains the meaning of Beatrice's “nineness” in terms of nine being the product of the square of three. Beatrice is named here for the sixty-second time. (There will be one other – see Par. XXXIII.38; her name thus occurs over a span of 99 cantos [her first nominal appearance is in Inf. II.70].) See the note to Purgatorio XV.77.

Gustavo Costa (“Il canto XXXI del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 70) makes a telling point: Beatrice's presence in the Rose scotches any attempt to conclude that her status in the poem is merely “allegorical.”

Sarah, Rebecca, and Judith were among the Old Testament heroines harrowed by Christ. Sarah was the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac; Rebecca, the wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob; Judith, the savior of the Jews from Assyrian captivity when she murdered Holofernes (see Purg. XII.58-60).

Ruth is identified only by periphrasis and in her role as the great-grandmother of David, also indicated by periphrasis. He is represented by his sins of adultery and murder (Bathsheba and Uriah), the setting for Psalm 50 (51), Miserere mei (Have mercy on me), which served as the text of Dante's first spoken words as character in the poem (Inf. I.65). For the meaning of David for Dante, see the notes to Purgatorio X.65 and Paradiso XX.37-39. And see Carroll's discussion of a common theme behind at least most of Dante's choices (comm. to vv. 1-48), which offers another reason for the reference to David: “[T]hey were all regarded as types of the Church, and they are for the most part ancestresses of Christ according to the flesh (Rachel and Judith alone are not in the direct line of our Lord's ancestry. Judah, through whom the descent flows, was a son of Leah; and Judith had no children [Judith 16:22]): Ruth, for example, is described as the bisava, the great grandmother, of David, for the purpose, apparently, of indicating the descent of the Virgin, and therefore of her Son, from that king. The manner in which David is referred to – 'the singer who for sorrow of his sin said Miserere Mei' (Ps. 51 [50]:1) – while apparently irrelevant to the question of descent, is in reality closely connected with it. Matthew 1:6 states plainly that 'David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias.' The reference therefore to David's repentance for his great sin, so far from being irrelevant, suggests in the most delicate way the continuation of the descent through Solomon.”

Bernard indicates many more saints than we actually hear him name; therefore, we probably assume, the poet's selection of the eighteen who are named is not casually arrived at. It is Beatrice, who is “idiosyncratic” (that is, extraneous to the regular and balanced pattern of the seventeen others who are named), who brings the total to eighteen, or 2x9; the canto is also composed of two nines: it is the ninety-ninth canto of the poem.

These Hebrew women, the seven whom we have just heard referred to by name or by periphrasis, are only the beginning of a long line down the Rose (until we would come to the first Hebrew female child, we assume) that separates pre-Christian and Christian saints. As Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 166, points out, neither Eve (obviously not a descendant of Abraham) nor Ruth (who was from Moab) can properly be considered Hebrews, despite Dante's insistence.

Singleton (comm. to vv. 40-42) believes that Dante intends us to believe that the dividing “walls” of Hebrew women and Christian men reach all the way to the “floor” of the Rose, and that thus the lower half of them are surrounded by babies. That seems a dubious notion, although Dante does not clearly portray the situation. If “neatness counts,” he may have expected us to imagine a line of smiling Hebrew female babies looking across the Rose at equally happy Christian male babies, while spreading out to either side of those two lines are babies of the other gender, the first half of them of their own religion, the second group of the other. (See the third item in the note to vv. 37-39.)

Dante once again insists on the absence of some saints-to-be in the Christian half of the Rose (the only place for which he specifies the eventual tenant is the throne destined for Henry VII [see the conclusion of Par. XXX]). He also refers to semicircles in order to alert us to the fact that there will be a matching descending line, one composed entirely of males, beneath John the Baptist. To Mary's left and John's right sit the Hebrew saints; to her right and to his left, the Christian ones. It is not stated, but seems clear, that we are to picture two different semicircles, with the midpoint of their arcs located at Mary and John, containing male saints (beneath Mary) and female saints (beneath John), except for the bisecting line, which is gendered as is each of them. See the chart in the note to verses 37-39.

John's epithet gran (exalted) reflects, in the opinion of a great number of commentators, beginning with Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), Matthew 11:11: “[A]mong those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.”

For John's holiness, see Luke 1:15: “and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb”; for his martyrdom, see Matthew 14:3-12, Herod's beheading of John; for his period in Limbo before he was harrowed, see Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 31-33), being more precise: “between twenty and twenty-one months.”

If Dante's treatment of Augustine remains one of the most puzzling aspects of his poem, he himself is to blame; he seems deliberately to conceal his debt to Augustine (see the note to Par. XII.130). Once Dante studies became more “scientific,” in the nineteenth century, we might have expected that a great “detective” of Dante's reading habits, Edward Moore, would have started to set things right in this respect. However, when he takes up this subject in Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante (Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 {1896}], pp. 291-94), he is both tentative and hesitant, lest he overstate the importance of Augustine to Dante. Here are his concluding words (p. 294): “I must confess, in conclusion, that I have not been able as yet to investigate the question of Dante's probable acquaintance with the works of St. Augustine nearly as fully as the subject seems to deserve. I am continually coming on fresh points of resemblance. There is, however, always this element of uncertainty, that many of his theories or arguments are reproduced by Aquinas,...” One does not want to blame Moore for the general under-appreciation of Augustine's importance for Dante. Nonetheless, the great scholar's hesitance undoubtedly affected others, who felt excused thereby from studying the problem as carefully as it “seems to deserve.” For better appreciations, if not the central study that is still badly needed, see Francesco Mazzoni (Saggio di un nuovo commento alla “Divina Commedia”: “Inferno” – Canti I-III [Florence: Sansoni, 1967], passim; F.X. Newman (“St. Augustine's Three Visions and the Structure of the Commedia,” Modern Language Notes 82 [1967]: 56-78); Giovanni Fallani (“Dante e S. Agostino,” in his L'esperienza teologica di Dante [Lecce: Milella, 1976], pp. 185-203); John Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986], esp. pp. 1-15); Giuseppe Mazzotta (Dante, Poet of the Desert [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979], esp. pp. 147-91; Albert Wingell (“The Forested Mountaintop in Augustine and Dante,” Dante Studies 99 [1981]: 9-48); John Took (“'Diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram': Justice and the Just Ruler in Dante,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 137-51); Peter Hawkins (“Divide and Conquer: Augustine in the Divine Comedy,” PMLA 106 [1991]: 471-82). Like Hawkins, Selene Sarteschi (“Sant'Agostino in Dante e nell'età di Dante,” in her Per la “Commedia” e non per essa soltanto [Rome: Bulzoni, 2002 {1999}], pp. 171-94) believes that there is a widespread and often unacknowledged interaction between the texts of Augustine and those of Dante. Her method may at times seem suspect, in that she on occasion finds familiar Christian topoi in St. Augustine and then argues for their direct influence on Dante, when any number of sources and intermediaries may have shaped the poet's texts. This is not to disagree with the basic purpose of her study, which is to put Augustine more into play as a source than he is sometimes allowed to be. However, it should also be said that, with the exceptions of Mazzoni and Freccero, she has not referred to the work of any of the scholars cited above.

See the note to Paradiso XII.130 for discussion of the appearance of Augustine's name (but not the saint) in Paradiso X and XII. And see Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Nolite iudicare: Dante and the Dilemma of Judgment,” in Writers Reading Writers: Intertextual Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature in Honor of Robert Hollander, ed. Janet Levarie Smarr [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007] p. 82), pointing out that these two nominal presences arouse our expectations, but when Augustine finally does appear (at Par. XXXII.35), he is only a word from hitting the cutting-room floor, as it were, to be included, unbeknownst to us, among the unnamed others (e altri) seated in the Rose. This close call (and Dante's playful tussle with the reader over Augustine's fate in the Dantean afterworld) may possibly be explained by the fact of Augustine's strenuous opposition to the imperial (and republican) Roman ideal. Thus the Augustinian tale of two cities, which extols the City of God and its embattled earthly precursor, the Church Militant, but has no room for the empire in its world view, is the work of an enemy. There is no question but that Dante knew Augustine's work and admired it deeply - as theology, but even as theology only up to a point. And the issue that divides these two thinkers is Rome.

Augustine knew that imperial Virgil had to be resisted publicly and spiritedly, and yet he makes his Confessions a sort of epic Mediterranean counter-voyage (see Hollander [Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” {Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969}], p. 12 and n.), in which the pivotal municipal moment occurs not in an imperial monument in Rome but in a church in Milan. And if the text is seemingly a-Virgilian, even anti-Virgilian, it is nonetheless studded with Virgilian references. If that sounds suggestive of Dante's later treatment of Virgil in his Christian epic, the differences are perhaps not so very great (e.g., the gaudy textual transformations of Monica, whom Augustine steals away from (in Book V.8) just as Aeneas abandons Dido (in Book IV of the Aeneid), but then who is described (in Book IX.9), as though in apology, in a Virgilian phrase (Aen. VII.57: “plenis annis nubilis”) used of Lavinia. When the late Arthur Hanson and Robert Hollander jointly taught a seminar on “Virgil in the Middle Ages” in the spring of 1973 at Princeton, Hanson, who entered the seminar an anti-Augustinian pagan-embracing classicist, ended up admiring Augustine, not least because, as one who knew Virgil really well, he recognized a kindred spirit. To be sure, Augustine refers to Virgil with increasing hostility, until, in De civitate Dei, the Roman poet is made the whipping boy for all that brought the imperial city low. At the same time, Hanson found that the Confessions (a work with a public stance that is clearly critical of Virgilian values) exhibits a cento-like tesselation of pieces of the Roman poet that serve no polemical anti-pagan purpose but are there, apparently, simply because Augustine just will not be without them. (The Virgilian aspect of Augustine mainly escapes the attention of James O'Donnell in his fine new biographical study [Augustine: A New Biography {New York: HarperCollins, 2005}].)

Dante's view of Augustine, as is his view of other major sources, is various. For him, Augustine has most of the important equations – the theological ones – right; he is desperately wrong about a single major issue: the relation of Roman imperium to God's plan for the world. Aquinas is better on that subject, but gets a failing grade for his hostility to poetry as a way to truth. Virgil got most things right except for the most important one: God. Francis understood the role of love in God's world perhaps better than anyone else, but failed to grasp the importance of reason (Thomas's bailiwick). Among the ancients, Aristotle understood the framework of the created universe perhaps better than anyone (at least before Thomas), but couldn't marry the concept of spirit to his otherwise flawless understanding. Plato and later platonizing thinkers, on the other hand, were admirable in that respect, but they failed utterly to comprehend the importance of this world and its progress through time. It is perhaps fair to say that Dante was possibly the first great synthesizer of the modern era (the Renaissance is generally seen as the period in which modern syncretism was born [the word apparently has its first post-classical appearance in the Adagia of Erasmus], what with such thinkers as Pico della Mirandola seeking to develop a system that reflected many others). If this is true, why have we not appreciated it before? (See, however, Par. X.99 for Baranski's use of the term.) Dante is frequently understood and often presented as the most “orthodox” of thinkers, the exponent of the medieval and theologized Christian sense of life. Such a view is not incorrect; that was precisely what Dante hoped he had accomplished. However, the formulation does not take into account the violence that he does to every system of thought that he incorporates in his own. As a result, any attempt to square Dante with a single school of thought (e.g., Busnelli's Thomist Dante) is eventually doomed to failure.

The word sincretismo is a late arrival to the commentary tradition (at least as it is represented by the holdings of the DDP). It is first found in Sapegno's commentary, where it occurs four times (at Inf. XIV.86, Inf. XXIV.25, Purg. XXX.21, Purg. XXXIII.49-51), always in the limited sense found in his phrase “consueto sincretismo di elementi classici e medievali” (usual syncretism of classical and medieval elements [cited from the last occurrence]). In other words, Sapegno is speaking of a “limited sincretism,” indicating only Dante's Christianizing treatment of pagan sources. As the term is more properly used, it has the following main characteristic, according to the entry in Wikipedia (online): “Religious syncretism exhibits the blending of two or more religious belief systems into a new system, or the incorporation into a religious tradition of beliefs from unrelated traditions.” Historically, the word has a brief but distinguished history, which is attested in many sources: “The Greek word occurs in Plutarch's (1st century AD) essay on 'Fraternal Love' in his Moralia (2.490b). He cites the example of the Cretans who reconciled their differences and came together in alliance when faced with external dangers. 'And that is their so-called Syncretism.' . . . Erasmus probably coined the modern usage of the Latin word (in his Adagia, published in the winter of 1517-1518) to designate the coherence of dissenters in spite of their differences in theological opinions. In a letter to Melancthon of April 22, 1519, Erasmus specifically adduced the Cretans of Plutarch as an example of his adage 'Concord is a mighty rampart').”

Mattalia (com. to Inf. IV.130) refers to the syncretic nature of Scholasticism itself, weaving a unitary view out of many strands of diverse authorities. That passage is perhaps the only one found in the commentary tradition to modify the sense found in Sapegno of a more limited pagan-Christian “syncretism.” And Sapegno's is the sense active in the three uses of the word in Bosco/Reggio (comm. to Inf. XIV.68-70, to Purg. XXX.21, and to Par. II.8-9) – their first use of the word may reflect Sapegno's usage in the same passage in Inferno.

See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse): Dominic is not here only because his Order used the Augustinian Rule and the three others mentioned here, Augustine, Benedict, and Francis (to name them in chronological order), each composed the Rule for his Order. See the note to Par. XII.46-57. Others have tried to wrestle with the apparently slighting omission of reference to Dominic here, made all the more troublesome by the fact that in Convivio (IV.xxviii.9), Dante refers to Benedict, Augustine, Francis, and Dominic (in that order). There they are exemplars of the religious life. Among the early commentators, only Francesco da Buti apparently felt that the omission required comment. He revisits Thomas's insistence (Par. XI.40-42) that what is said in praise of one (Francis) is to be understood equally of the other (Dominic). The commentator's memory (or the pen of his scribe) is flawed; he places the remark in the following (twelfth) canto. The few others who tackle the problem do not suggest more convincing hypotheses than that offered by Bosco/Reggio.

The reverse chronological order of the presentation of the three names is also a bit puzzling; since Augustine is in rhyme position, that might explain the order; however, he is the first rhyme, and one usually assumes that this is chosen more freely.

From Bernard's remark at vv. 14-15, where he says that he will name many other saints in the line descending from Mary, we surely assume that this line beneath the Baptist, probably composed of other religious leaders, was also identified, but not reported. See the note to vv. 13-15.

John Carroll (comm. to vv. 1-48) was perhaps the first to claim that the arrangement of the named souls might have an iconographical effect: “It is not likely to be accidental that the Rose is thus blessed with the sign of the Cross on each side.” The design formed in the Rose by those who are named is possibly reminiscent of the T or tau, the emblem of the cross so important in the iconography of St. Francis, as John Fleming, among others, has demonstrated (From Bonaventure to Bellini: An Essay in Franciscan Exegesis [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982], pp. 99-128). Francis knew that Ezechiel (9:4) had said that the faithful would all be marked with the tau on their foreheads and took it as his particular version of the sign of the cross.

When we consider the saints in the order they are named (the numeration is provided in the diagram below), our sense of that is reinforced, since the poet first fills up the I-stem of the figure (plus the idiosyncratic adjunct of Beatrice, for which see the note to verse 9), then arranges the bar of the T in a chiasmus (15-14-13-16), and then finally adds its foot, chronologically ordered (Anne, then Lucy).

John Evang. (15) Peter (14) Mary (1) Adam (13) Moses (16)
 Eve (2) 
 Beatrice (4) Rachel (3) 
 Sarah (5)
 Rebecca (6)
 Judith (7)
 Ruth (8)

 Augustine (12)
 Benedict (11)
 Francis (10)
 Lucy (18) John Bapt. (9) Anne (17)

Fausto Montanari (“Il canto XXXII del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 256) points out the symmetries in the arrangement of this seating plan of Heaven; the stadium is divided into corresponding zones by the following six groups, further sorted into three pairs: Old Testament, New Testament; Men, Women (both of these groups on horizontal axes); Adults, Infants (on a vertical axis).

Since our subject is Dante, it will come as no surprise to the reader to learn that even this diagram (above) is controversial. While there is consensus among some, perhaps expressed in the clearest and briefest terms by Vincenzo Pernicone (“Il canto XXXII del Paradiso,” in his Studi danteschi e altri saggi, ed. M.D. Wanke [Genoa: Università degli Studi, 1984 {1965}], p. 109), there is a surprising amount of disagreement over what seems close to self-evident. Among the issues found variously among the discussants are the following: (1) Do the indications “left” and “right” (vv. 121-124) indicate directions from the protagonist's perspective or from (respectively) the Virgin's and John's? (2) Does Dante consider Lucy and Anne as figures who should be present in the “Christian” or “Jewish” section of the Rose, and has he botched his placement of them as a result? (3) How many rows are there in this celestial stadium?

(1) There are intensely held views on either side of this issue. For a discussion of these, see Antonio Russi (“Canto XXXII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], pp. 1176-87), who devotes a major portion of his lectura to a labored attempt at resolving the directional indications in the canto. Picone (“Canto XXXII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 494) is matter-of-fact in declaring that we are seeing them from the perspective of Dante's left and right. Such a view would require that the reader imagine the post-Advent saints as seated to Mary's left, and those pre-Advent to her right. It is true that the poet does not make their disposition clear, leaving us to deal with the question. On the other hand, placing the New Testament figures to Mary's left would seem an implausible choice. God would not be so rude a host to these heroes of Christianity in forming His Eternal Seating Plan.

(2) The question of the arrangement of the two souls on either side of John the Baptist (see vv. 133-138) has also been strangely controversial. Several commentators contrive to put Lucy to John's right, believing her a pre-Christian figure. Russi (“Canto XXXII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1187), accepting this arrangement, goes on to argue that she is not the historical Lucy, but a symbol of illuminating grace. (It is surprising how long it was until a commentator treated Lucy as historical, the third-century martyr from Syracuse; the first appears to have been Portirelli [comm. to vv. 136-141] in the early nineteenth century. Did his precursors really believe that Dante had granted an allegory a seat in Heaven, in which it would eventually wear its own flesh?) The situation barely improves in more recent times, when, even after Lucy of Syracuse has entered the commentary tradition, some moderns revert to the age-old error.

(3) Picone (“Canto XXXII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 495), discussing verses 16-18, which enumerate the seven levels of the stadium down from Mary through Ruth, goes on to extrapolate from that passage an erroneous supposition, namely, that there are only that many rows in the upper half of the Rose. From that assumption he (only logically) calculates that the lower half (the kindergarten, as it were) must be comprised of the same number of rows (seven). However, what we know does not accord easily with his hypothesis. See, for the vast upward expanse of the Rose, Paradiso XXX.115-118 and XXXI.73-75 (where we learn that Beatrice, not even in the highest rank of the Rose, is at a distance even greater than that between the lowest point on earth and the farthest reach of its atmosphere). If we were to accept Picone's calculations, we would have to understand that a mere twelve rows of the Rose rose upward in that vast a space. (Not to be preferred are other attempts at numerical precision, even if they seem properly more grandiose. See, for instance, Russi [p. 1169], citing G. Barone as having calculated, in 1906, the rows as numbering 1,290.) Indeed, the text itself makes it quite clear that there are more Hebrew women beneath Ruth, forming the dividing line. (What it doesn't tell us is whether the line stops at the halfway mark [see the note to vv. 40-48] to be continued by female Hebrew babies, or whether, as at least Singleton believes, it goes all the way to the Rose's “floor” [see the note to vv. 16-21]). Further, if Dante accepted, at least as an approximate guide, the canonical 144,000 who make up the citizenry of the Empyrean (see the notes to Par. XXX.103-108 and Par. XXXI.115-117), Picone's fourteen rows would each need to seat more than ten thousand souls. To be fair, he was led to this view by his arguably possible interpretation of the word soglie (either “seats” or “tiers”; he chooses the former). That, however, is to neglect the clear significance of the word soglia at Paradiso XVIII.28, which clearly illuminates the next use of the word at verse 13 of this canto; in both these uses Dante is fairly obviously referring to “rows” and not individual “seats.” Perhaps the rhyme position helps explain the use he made of an expanded meaning of the word.

Other, if less noticed, problems about the population of the Rose are caused by the location of Beatrice's presence in it. This is obviously idiosyncratic to this particular viewer, since it is the only element not part of a balanced design. And, compounding that problem, her placement itself seems to be problematic, out of order. From what we are nearly forced to extrapolate from the arrangement seen in the top row, the center lines divide male from female on both sides of the Rose. Thus Beatrice should be next to a male (e.g., Benedict). Iconography apparently trumped the boy-girl ordering principle in Dante's mind. Further, he had boxed himself into this arrangement in Inferno II.102, where Beatrice says that Lucy came to her in Heaven where she was seated next to Rachel. In any case, there does not seem to be a way around the fact that in placing Beatrice next to Rachel, Dante has violated his own unstated but clearly formulated rules. The following arrangement is based on the left-right axis as provided for in item (1), above.

 TOP RIGHT QUADRANT He- TOP LEFT QUADRANT
 Christian males brew Hebrew males
 females
 ___________________________________________________________________
 He-
 Christian male infants? brew Hebrew male infants?
 female
 infants?
 ––––––––––––––––“FLOOR”––––––––––––––
 Chris-
 Christian female infants? tian Hebrew female infants?
 male
 ________________________________infants?_____________________________
 Chris-
 Christian females tian Hebrew females
 BOTTOM RIGHT QUADRANT males BOTTOM LEFT QUADRANT

All those commentators who believe that Dante “doesn't mean” what he indicates, that, in Heaven for the Last Judgment and general resurrection, there will be an equal number of Christians and Hebrews (the latter including only a few gentiles in their number, at least two [see the note to Par. XXXI.25-27] and only possibly more), should have to recite these lines aloud before saying anything about the issue.

Dante now draws another boundary line, this one dividing the “north-south” axis of the Rose into two portions of equal height (though of unequal volume). There are three classes of saved babies, all of whom, because they had not attained the age of reason, died only in their inherited sinfulness (i.e., without positive sin): (1) Jewish infants who somehow shared their parents' faith in Christ to come; (2) Jewish infants whose parents, once circumcision was instituted as a ritual by the Jews, had them circumcised (see the note to vv. 76-81); (3) Christian infants who had the better form of “circumcision,” baptism. In real terms, then, the rules for Christian infants were more stringent.

The “conditions” referred to indicate, of course, ritual circumcision.

Dante obviously enjoyed rewarding himself for his strict interpretation of the law of baptism in Inferno IV.30, when he agreed with St. Thomas that all unbaptized children will be found in Limbo. Now he sees a multitude of saved infants, and he dwells much longer on them.

See the note to Paradiso XXXI.59 for discussion of the presence of these babes, not as the adults they should become (according to the standard view), but as the babies they were, back in their sweet flesh. See Nardi (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura”], 1944), pp. 317-34, for the “age” of the babes in Heaven and other problems associated with their presence here.

Dante now chooses to deal, at some length, with a knotty problem: Do these sinless and saved innocents appear in the Rose in any meaningful pattern, as do the adults? This matter is set forth and resolved in three parts (vv. 49-60, 61-66, and 67-84).

Part I: Bernard has divined that Dante, observing that these infants seem to be ranked in some sort of preferential order, immediately counters that (true) perception with the perfectly sensible notion that they only seem to be ordered by their varying merit, but are in fact merely casually arranged (for how can one distinguish one infant's moral perfection from another's?). In response, he treats his pupil as though he were a balky schoolboy (the reader may understandably feel surprise; we are, after all, very near the final vision).

The Latin verb silere (to be silent) is the source of Dante's Latinism.

The metaphor refers to the hypothesis that lies behind Dante's question. No, Bernard says, there is no possibility, in this realm, of what exists existing without a reason. Thus, if you see gradation, there is gradation, and there is a reason for it.

Part II: The second stage of Bernard's response to Dante's unvoiced question is a clear answer: Nothing happens casually here. The reason for His ordering the infants' places as He does is in the mind of God and it is futile to try to fathom His reasons; just accept them. (And it may be particularly difficult to accept the idea that God creates human souls with unequal degrees of ability to know Him.)

Part III: The third and final stage of his response is to give examples of God's other and similar behavior, which might have made it clear even to Dante that His preference for preference has always been manifest in the varying degrees of his grace.

Dante might have learned, for instance, from the Bible that God loves variously. See Malachi 1:2-3: “Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.” And this while they were still in the womb. Distinguishing them was not what they have done (they have not done anything), but as though the color of their hair (Esau; see Genesis 25:25). That is the uncomprehending human view. God sees what we do not, and knows what we do not: the inner sight of our fellow beings. Esau's red and Jacob's black here were only the outward manifestations of their inner differences, their abilities to know and love God.

Making clear what was latent in lines 40-48, Bernard now details the “history of grace” for babies, at first their parents' love for Christ to come, then circumcision, and finally (in the age of Christ) baptism.

For the first two of these, see St. Thomas (ST III, q. 70, a. 4), cited by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 76-78): “Ante institutionem circumcisionis fides Christi futuri iustificabat tam pueros quam adultos” (Before the institution of circumcision, faith in Christ to come justified both little children and adults). Bosco/Reggio go on to point out that Thomas (ST III, q. 70, a. 2) also holds that Original Sin is passed along through males alone (though it affects all, since our race cannot rely on matrilineal parthenogenesis), which accounts for the emphasis on male circumcision in the second tercet of this passage. However, the rules became more stringent once Christ came, with baptism now mandatory for the salvation of the innocent.

Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 79-81) understands that the “age of circumcision” began with Abraham. The author of the Codice Cassinese (comm. to this verse) was the first to understand the reference here as being to the first two ages, from Adam to the Flood, from the Flood to Abraham, some 3184 years according to him.

Allen Mandelbaum translates Dante's phrase “innocenti penne” as “his innocent member.” This unwarranted interpretation (“penis” is not etymologically related to “penna”) may have seemed plausible because of the reference to circumcision in verse 81. Daniello (comm. to vv. 79-81) is the first (and only) commentator to attempt this “exceedingly bizarre” interpretation (Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 80-81]). Scartazzini goes on to paraphrase the passage as follows: “In order to fly up to Heaven, it was necessary for male children to gain strength for their innocent wings through the ritual of circumcision.” Freudians will draw their obvious conclusions, but it is probably better to leave that implication to the reader.

Bernard's lecture ends with the fourth and concluding set of identical rhymes on Cristo. See the notes to Paradiso XII.71-75 and XIV.103-108.

This transitional tercet presents the face of Mary as preparation for the final vision of Christ's features in the next canto (verse 131), a stunning detail, suggesting a resemblance both physical for the human side of the Godhead and spiritual (Mary's perfect purity of soul as the only human worthy of bearing the Christ).

And now, as a sort of coda to the foregoing “lecture,” the angels radiate their pleasure in her down from above to Mary. Gabriel, who had before (see Par. XXIII.94-96) descended to reenact the Annunciation, does so once again, spreading his wings as the painters of this scene always show him doing, and singing her song.

Gabriel's praise of Mary is the last singing we hear in the poem. (For the program of song in the last cantica, see the note to Par. XXI.58-60.) If we recall the first parodic references to “hymns” (Inf. VII.125) or “songs” (Inf. XIX.118) or “psalms” (Inf. XXXI.69) to describe anti-melodic utterance in Hell, we realize the care with which Dante organized his plan for the “musical score” of the Commedia, beginning in bono with the first singing heard in Purgatorio (II.46-48), the “theme song” of the entire work, Psalm 113, In Isräel de Aegypto.

The assembled choirs of Heaven, angelic and human, share a moment of joy in Mary, both singing and beaming with love.

The word cantilena, a hapax, would seem to refer specifically to Gabriel's song (although some think it is more general in its reference). The singers would seem to include (although there is some uncertainty about this also) everyone on the scene, all the angels and all the saints, and their response, according to Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 94-99), is both spoken and sung: “cantantes et dicentes Dominus tecum etc.” (singing and saying “The Lord be with you,” etc.). Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 85-99) fills in the “etc.” by reciting the full response: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”

Cantilena (at least in Italian) seems to be a coinage of Dante's. It happens that the word is also a hapax in the Vulgate (as Aversano has noted [Dante daccapo {glosses to the Paradiso}, copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001], p. 169), occurring in the following passage of Ecclesiasticus (47:13-18): “Solomon reigned in days of peace, and God gave him rest on every side, that he might build a house for his name and prepare a sanctuary to stand for ever. / How wise you became in your youth! You overflowed like a river with understanding. / Your soul covered the earth, and you filled it with parables and riddles. / Your name reached to far-off islands, and you were loved for your peace. / For your songs [cantilenis] and proverbs and parables, and for your interpretations, the countries marveled at you. / In the name of the Lord God, who is called the God of Israel, you gathered gold like tin and amassed silver like lead.” Aversano reasonably enough believes that the word cantilenae here reflects the songs of Solomon gathered in the Cantica canticorum. Thus cantilena may have a certain affinity with the last coinage for a God-derived song, tëodia, that we heard in Paradiso XXV.73, as Mattalia (comm. to verse 97) suggests.

Dante's last address to Bernard sounds like a conflation of his farewells to Beatrice (Par. XXXI.79-81) and to Virgil (Purg. XXX.46-51), his first “padre” in the poem. (See the note to Par. XVI.16.)

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 169, observes that only St. Peter is also apostrophized with this exact phrase (“O santo padre” [Par. XXIV.124]). He goes on to suggest that we are thus meant to infer that Bernard is, like Peter, seated in the topmost tier of the Rose. However, some of Dante's hesitations about Peter's hesitations (see the note to Par. XXIV.124-126) may have eventually served to keep the poet mum about Peter's position in the Rose.

The protagonist does all of us who need assistance a favor by asking Bernard who that angelic presence was.

Mary is now presented as the morning star, Venus, a moment that certainly Nietzsche would have to agree is a pronounced “transvaluation of value,” even if he might not approve of the result.

Bernard identifies Gabriel as the angel who carried the palm of victory down to Mary at the Annunciation when Jesus decided to give His life for our salvation. Whose victory? Hers, for having been chosen; eventually ours, over death.

Is it possible that Dante is conflating two “annunciations” in this little scene? Professor Hugh Dawson suggested as much in an e-mail communication (January 2006). According to him the palm of victory is more suited to the second scene of a visitation of Gabriel to the Virgin (he refers to such medieval accounts as that found in the Legenda aurea of Jacopo da Varagine), when, as the time of her death approaches, he presents her with a palm-leaf as the sign of her coming victory over death, represented by her arriving in the Empyrean in the body. Dawson points out that the palm in the first visitation is more a sign of her “exceptionalism” (Dawson's word) than of her “victory” (to which one might respond that by giving birth to the Christ she is assuring humankind its victory over sin and death; further that Dante himself specifically links the palm to the first Annunciation). Nonetheless, his point is worthy of consideration. And it is not inconceivable that Dante hoped his readers would consider both visitations of Gabriel to Mary in response to this tercet. In support of his thesis, Dawson reports that in Duccio di Buoninsegna's “Maestà” of 1308 both Annunciations are represented. “The first is imagined in the predella panel now in the London National Gallery; there Gabriel carries a staff as his emblem of office. The Annunciation of the Virgin's Death is shown in the front pinnacle of the surviving 'Maestà' in Siena, and in that scene Gabriel carries a palm.”

For potential confirmation of Dawson's hypothesis, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 109-114): “Vernon is mistaken in saying that in most of the representations of the Annunciation Gabriel bears a palm. Sometimes he has a lily, a sceptre, a cross, an olive-branch, and sometimes nothing at all. It is difficult to translate leggiadria in line 109, but the dainty grace of Fra Angelico's Angel of the Annunciation seems to me to convey the idea.” However, as the text itself would seem to suggest, Dante himself seems to foreclose on this option, putting a palm leaf in Gabriel's hand when he first descended to Mary.

The three words at the beginning of this verse echo Virgil's similar urgings of Dante to come along in Inferno XX.124 and Purgatorio IV.137.

The language is that of imperial Rome (“patricians,” “empire”) “transvaluated” into Christian terms, or at least terms that are positive in either context: justice and piety, perhaps the values most readily translatable between, in many respects, two very different cultures.

The two “roots” of the Rose are Adam, “father” of all those who believed in Christ to come, and St. Peter, the first leader of His Church.

For a study in which the Rose is seen as the culmination of the vegetation motif in the poem, see Margherita Frankel (“Biblical Figurations in Dante's Reading of the Aeneid,” Dante Studies 100 [1982]: 13-23). Her article studies this motif, from the tree losing its leaves in the simile of Inferno III.112-116 through its culmination in the form of a repetaled rose, moving from Virgilian tragedy to Dantean comedy. See also Stefano Prandi (Il “Diletto legno”: Aridità e fioritura mistica nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1994] for a similar appreciation, if from a different perspective.

Calling the Queen of Heaven “Agosta” is a daring “imperializing” touch. The last time we heard the adjective it was in Beatrice's mouth (Par. XXX.136) and described a true emperor, Henry VII. This is perhaps as far as Dante can go in the vein initiated in Purgatorio XXXII.102, “that Rome where Christ Himself is Roman.”

Adam and St. Peter each receive a terzina, the former the author of our woe, the latter the agent of our redemption as the founder of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, which holds the keys to the Kingdom.

Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 121-126) says that this verb, aggiustarsi, translates the Latin appropinquare (to near, approach). It is yet another hapax occurring in rhyme position.

St. John the Evangelist, who, as author/scribe of the Apocalypse, saw the final tribulations of the Church in his visions on the Isle of Patmos. See Dante's “portrait” of him (Purg. XXIX.144), dormendo, con la faccia arguta (as though he slept, despite his keen expression). Is this a prefiguration of Dante's visionary experience that is being prepared for in these concluding verses of this canto? See the note to verse 139.

Three spaces past Peter and next to Adam sits Moses, who led the stiff-necked Israelites (first in Exodus 32:9) through the desert, feeding them on manna (Exodus 16:14-15).

Diametrically opposite St. Peter sits Anne, the mother of Mary. She is apparently the only occupant of the Rose allowed the special privilege of not looking up at God, but across the rim of the stadium at her daughter.

The “greatest father” is, of course, Adam. This is Saint Lucy's third appearance in the poem (see Inf. II.97 and Purg. IX.52-63). Bernard here reminds Dante of the first one, when he was “ruining” downward back toward death (Inf. I.61) when Virgil appeared to him, the result of the collaboration of the Virgin, Lucy, and Beatrice (seated at first where she is right now, next to Rachel [Inf. II.102]).

This verse has caused innumerable problems. Giacalone (comm. to vv. 139-144) compiles six differing attempts at interpretation; there are probably more, but one must admit it is hard to distinguish shadings of meaning from substantial differences. Most can agree that the verse refers to time and to sleep, but what exactly is time doing to the protagonist and what sort of sleep is involved? Further, and pivotal, is a distinction about when the dreaming referred to occurred or is occurring or will occur. The basic disagreements have, it is probably fair to say, their roots in the temporal relation of Dante's dreaming. (1) Either Dante has been “dreaming” from the beginning of this special experience, as might be indicated by Inferno I.11, where Dante admits he was full of sleep when he lost the true way, and/or (2) is “dreaming” now (in the sense that he is having a more than normal experience of the afterworld), or (3) will be “out of time” (in both senses of the phrase) when he has the final vision of the Trinity, for which Bernard will seek Mary's aid, in a few minutes. Teodolinda Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], pp. 144-51) carries on a long conversation with Barbi (Problemi di critica dantesca [Florence: Sansoni, 1934]), in which she unsuccessfully tries to undermine his sense of the issue, which stands waiting, blocking the path to her eventual position. Barolini wants to make the entire poem “visionary.” Barbi, on the other hand, wants to distinguish between the “experiential” feel of most of the narrated journey and “vision” properly speaking. And the fact that there are “real” dreams presented in the poem (e.g., in Purg. IX, XIX, and XXVII) certainly implies that the rest of the time Dante is having “normal” experience of the decidedly post-normal things he witnesses in the afterworld.

The crux of the issue found in this verse is to what precise (or for that matter general) dreaming the text refers. More than one hundred years ago, Torraca (comm. to vv. 139-141) read the verse as follows: “[P]erchè già cessa il tuo essere nel tempo, finisco, per non ritardare la tua partecipazione all'eternità, la tua visione suprema” (Because your presence in time already is ceasing, I finish speaking, so as not to delay your participation in eternity, your supreme vision). For a recent paper, not very distant from Torraca's finding, see Tony Cuzzilla (“Par. 32.139: 'Ma perche' 'l tempo fugge che t'assonna',” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [March 2003]), whose views influenced our reading of the verse. What he suggests is that the “sleep” is the mystic vision, already referred to in the picture of John “dreaming” in Purgatorio XXIX (see the note to vv. 127-129).

For some other discussions, see G.L. Passerini (La “Divina Commedia” di Dante Alighieri commentata da G.L. Passerini [Florence: Sansoni, 1918], ad loc.); Etienne Gilson (“La conclusion de la Divine Comédie et la mystique franciscaine,” Révue d'histoire franciscaine 1 [1924], pp. 62-63); Vincenzo Pernicone (“Il canto XXXII del Paradiso,” in his Studi danteschi e altri saggi, ed. M.D. Wanke [Genoa: Università degli Studi, 1984 {1965}], pp. 120-21). Gilson cites Canticle of Canticles 5:2, “Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat” (I sleep and my heart wakes), a passage that Bonaventure uses to indicate the state of ecstatic vision. And see Patrick Boyde (Perception and passion in Dante's “Comedy” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], pp. 130-39) for a discussion of somnia (dreams). See also the note to Paradiso XXVII.79-81.

The fact that there are dreams within the poem would seem effectively to close off the avenue that Barolini would like to keep open as a possible reading, that the poem is a vast dream vision. In this writer's view, Dante signals in Inferno I and Paradiso XXXII that he knows he should be writing such a work, but has dared to go beyond the usual allowable poetic convention. Perhaps nothing brings this point home quite as well as a reading of Boccaccio's Amorosa visione, so carefully modelled upon the Commedia and so very different from it; it is a pastiche of a dream vision; Dante's poem is its opposite, a historical narrative which culminates in a “real vision.”

Gian Carlo Alessio (“Un appunto su Paradiso XXXII.139-141,” Nozze Cociglio-Magnino [Verona: Valdonega, 1989], p. 12) finds a source for Dante's much-admired image in the conclusion of a treatise on epistolary rhetoric, Palma, by Buoncompagno da Signa. Advising his reader that he should measure out his epistolary space with care, so that his thoughts will all fit onto the amount of paper reserved for them, Buoncompagno continues his thought with a simile: “sicut providus sartor pannum, de quo camisiam disposuit facere vel gunnellam” (just as a tailor, having thought ahead, has prepared the cloth from which to make a shirt or else a skirt).

Bernard calls our attention to the fact that Dante's sight, improving, is moving up within the raggio (ray) that irradiates the Rose, eventually to penetrate its source. See the note to Paradiso XXXI.94-99.

Unlike Icarus (see the note to Par. XV.54), Dante will not trust his own wings, but will listen to Bernard, a more successful “father” than Daedalus, perhaps because he recognizes the necessity of the grace that Mary can help obtain.

The word ne is not a Latinism (ne in Italian is a pronominal particle meaning “of it” or “of them”), but a Latin conjunction meaning “lest.”

The neologism and hapax oltrarsi (move forward, advance), nearly certainly forced by the requirement of rhyme, will be echoed in the noun oltraggio in the next canto (verse 57).

Bernard uses the future tense as an imperative: “You shall follow me....” The implication is that Dante would not want to do anything else but internalize his words.

The poet puts what clearly might have served as the opening line of the next canto here, apparently to give Bernard an uninterrupted presence at center stage for his prayer. Momigliano (comm. to 149-151) describes this canto-ending as one of the most remarkable in the poem, “a long pause that sets apart, like a hush falling over the congregation, the prayer that will be raised in the holy atmosphere of the next canto.”