“S'io ti fiammeggio nel caldo d'amore
di là dal modo che 'n terra si vede,
sì che del viso tuo vinco il valore,
non ti maravigliar, ché ciò procede
da perfetto veder, che, come apprende,
così nel bene appreso move il piede.
Io veggio ben sì come già resplende
ne l'intelletto tuo l'etterna luce,
che, vista, sola e sempre amore accende;
e s'altra cosa vostro amor seduce,
non è se non di quella alcun vestigio,
mal conosciuto, che quivi traluce.
Tu vuo' saper se con altro servigio,
per manco voto, si può render tanto
che l'anima sicuri di letigio.”
Sì cominciò Beatrice questo canto;
e sì com' uom che suo parlar non spezza,
continüò così 'l processo santo:
“Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza
fesse creando, e a la sua bontate
più conformato, e quel ch'e' più apprezza,
fu de la volontà la libertate;
di che le creature intelligenti,
e tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate.
Or ti parrà, se tu quinci argomenti,
l'alto valor del voto, s'è sì fatto
che Dio consenta quando tu consenti;
ché, nel fermar tra Dio e l'omo il patto,
vittima fassi di questo tesoro,
tal quale io dico; e fassi col suo atto.
Dunque che render puossi per ristoro?
Se credi bene usar quel c'hai offerto,
di maltolletto vuo' far buon lavoro.
Tu se' omai del maggior punto certo;
ma perché Santa Chiesa in ciò dispensa,
che par contra lo ver ch'i' t'ho scoverto,
convienti ancor sedere un poco a mensa,
però che 'l cibo rigido c'hai preso,
richiede ancora aiuto a tua dispensa.
Apri la mente a quel ch'io ti paleso
e fermalvi entro; ché non fa scïenza,
sanza lo ritenere, avere inteso.
Due cose si convegnono a l'essenza
di questo sacrificio: l'una è quella
di che si fa; l'altr' è la convenenza.
Quest' ultima già mai non si cancella
se non servata; e intorno di lei
sì preciso di sopra si favella:
però necessitato fu a li Ebrei
pur l'offerere, ancor ch'alcuna offerta
si permutasse, come saver dei.
L'altra, che per materia t'è aperta,
puote ben esser tal, che non si falla
se con altra materia si converta.
Ma non trasmuti carco a la sua spalla
per suo arbitrio alcun, sanza la volta
e de la chiave bianca e de la gialla;
e ogne permutanza credi stolta,
se la cosa dimessa in la sorpresa
come 'l quattro nel sei non è raccolta.
Però qualunque cosa tanto pesa
per suo valor che tragga ogne bilancia,
sodisfar non si può con altra spesa.
Non prendan li mortali il voto a ciancia;
siate fedeli, e a ciò far non bieci,
come Ieptè a la sua prima mancia;
cui più si convenia dicer 'Mal feci,'
che, servando, far peggio; e così stolto
ritrovar puoi il gran duca de' Greci,
onde pianse Efigènia il suo bel volto,
e fé pianger di sé i folli e i savi
ch'udir parlar di così fatto cólto.
Siate, Cristiani, a muovervi più gravi:
non siate come penna ad ogne vento,
e non crediate ch'ogne acqua vi lavi.
Avete il novo e 'l vecchio Testamento,
e 'l pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida;
questo vi basti a vostro salvamento.
Se mala cupidigia altro vi grida,
uomini siate, e non pecore matte,
sì che 'l Giudeo di voi tra voi non rida!
Non fate com' agnel che lascia il latte
de la sua madre, e semplice e lascivo
seco medesmo a suo piacer combatte!”
Così Beatrice a me com'ïo scrivo;
poi si rivolse tutta disïante
a quella parte ove 'l mondo è più vivo.
Lo suo tacere e 'l trasmutar sembiante
puoser silenzio al mio cupido ingegno,
che già nuove questioni avea davante;
e sì come saetta che nel segno
percuote pria che sia la corda queta,
così corremmo nel secondo regno.
Quivi la donna mia vid' io sì lieta,
come nel lume di quel ciel si mise,
che più lucente se ne fé 'l pianeta.
E se la stella si cambiò e rise,
qual mi fec' io che pur da mia natura
trasmutabile son per tutte guise!
Come 'n peschiera ch'è tranquilla e pura
traggonsi i pesci a ciò che vien di fori
per modo che lo stimin lor pastura,
sì vid' io ben più di mille splendori
trarsi ver' noi, e in ciascun s'udia:
“Ecco chi crescerà li nostri amori.”
E sì come ciascuno a noi venìa,
vedeasi l'ombra piena di letizia
nel folgór chiaro che di lei uscia.
Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s'inizia
non procedesse, come tu avresti
di più savere angosciosa carizia;
e per te vederai come da questi
m'era in disio d'udir lor condizioni,
sì come a li occhi mi fur manifesti.
“O bene nato a cui veder li troni
del trïunfo etternal concede grazia
prima che la milizia s'abbandoni,
del lume che per tutto il ciel si spazia
noi semo accesi; e però, se disii
di noi chiarirti, a tuo piacer ti sazia.”
Così da un di quelli spirti pii
detto mi fu; e da Beatrice: “Dì, dì
sicuramente, e credi come a dii.”
“Io veggio ben sì come tu t'annidi
nel proprio lume, e che de li occhi il traggi,
perch' e' corusca sì come tu ridi;
ma non so chi tu se', né perché aggi,
anima degna, il grado de la spera
che si vela a' mortai con altrui raggi.”
Questo diss' io diritto a la lumera
che pria m'avea parlato; ond' ella fessi
lucente più assai di quel ch'ell' era.
Sì come il sol che si cela elli stessi
per troppa luce, come 'l caldo ha róse
le temperanze d'i vapori spessi,
per più letizia sì mi si nascose
dentro al suo raggio la figura santa;
e così chiusa chiusa mi rispuose
nel modo che 'l seguente canto canta.
"If in the heat of love I flame upon thee
Beyond the measure that on earth is seen,
So that the valour of thine eyes I vanquish,
Marvel thou not thereat; for this proceeds
From perfect sight, which as it apprehends
To the good apprehended moves its feet.
Well I perceive how is already shining
Into thine intellect the eternal light,
That only seen enkindles always love;
And if some other thing your love seduce,
'Tis nothing but a vestige of the same,
Ill understood, which there is shining through.
Thou fain wouldst know if with another service
For broken vow can such return be made
As to secure the soul from further claim."
This Canto thus did Beatrice begin;
And, as a man who breaks not off his speech,
Continued thus her holy argument:
"The greatest gift that in his largess God
Creating made, and unto his own goodness
Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize
Most highly, is the freedom of the will,
Wherewith the creatures of intelligence
Both all and only were and are endowed.
Now wilt thou see, if thence thou reasonest,
The high worth of a vow, if it he made
So that when thou consentest God consents:
For, closing between God and man the compact,
A sacrifice is of this treasure made,
Such as I say, and made by its own act.
What can be rendered then as compensation?
Think'st thou to make good use of what thou'st offered,
With gains ill gotten thou wouldst do good deed.
Now art thou certain of the greater point;
But because Holy Church in this dispenses,
Which seems against the truth which I have shown thee,
Behoves thee still to sit awhile at table,
Because the solid food which thou hast taken
Requireth further aid for thy digestion.
Open thy mind to that which I reveal,
And fix it there within; for 'tis not knowledge,
The having heard without retaining it.
In the essence of this sacrifice two things
Convene together; and the one is that
Of which 'tis made, the other is the agreement.
This last for evermore is cancelled not
Unless complied with, and concerning this
With such precision has above been spoken.
Therefore it was enjoined upon the Hebrews
To offer still, though sometimes what was offered
Might be commuted, as thou ought'st to know.
The other, which is known to thee as matter,
May well indeed be such that one errs not
If it for other matter be exchanged.
But let none shift the burden on his shoulder
At his arbitrament, without the turning
Both of the white and of the yellow key;
And every permutation deem as foolish,
If in the substitute the thing relinquished,
As the four is in six, be not contained.
Therefore whatever thing has so great weight
In value that it drags down every balance,
Cannot be satisfied with other spending.
Let mortals never take a vow in jest;
Be faithful and not blind in doing that,
As Jephthah was in his first offering,
Whom more beseemed to say, 'I have done wrong,
Than to do worse by keeping; and as foolish
Thou the great leader of the Greeks wilt find,
Whence wept Iphigenia her fair face,
And made for her both wise and simple weep,
Who heard such kind of worship spoken of.'
Christians, be ye more serious in your movements;
Be ye not like a feather at each wind,
And think not every water washes you.
Ye have the Old and the New Testament,
And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you
Let this suffice you unto your salvation.
If evil appetite cry aught else to you,
Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep,
So that the Jew among you may not mock you.
Be ye not as the lamb that doth abandon
Its mother's milk, and frolicsome and simple
Combats at its own pleasure with itself."
Thus Beatrice to me even as I write it;
Then all desireful turned herself again
To that part where the world is most alive.
Her silence and her change of countenance
Silence imposed upon my eager mind,
That had already in advance new questions;
And as an arrow that upon the mark
Strikes ere the bowstring quiet hath become,
So did we speed into the second realm.
My Lady there so joyful I beheld,
As into the brightness of that heaven she entered,
More luminous thereat the planet grew;
And if the star itself was changed and smiled,
What became I, who by my nature am
Exceeding mutable in every guise!
As, in a fish-pond which is pure and tranquil,
The fishes draw to that which from without
Comes in such fashion that their food they deem it;
So I beheld more than a thousand splendours
Drawing towards us, and in each was heard:
"Lo, this is she who shall increase our love."
And as each one was coming unto us,
Full of beatitude the shade was seen,
By the effulgence clear that issued from it.
Think, Reader, if what here is just beginning
No farther should proceed, how thou wouldst have
An agonizing need of knowing more;
And of thyself thou'lt see how I from these
Was in desire of hearing their conditions,
As they unto mine eyes were manifest.
"O thou well-born, unto whom Grace concedes
To see the thrones of the eternal triumph,
Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned
With light that through the whole of heaven is spread
Kindled are we, and hence if thou desirest
To know of us, at thine own pleasure sate thee."
Thus by some one among those holy spirits
Was spoken, and by Beatrice: "Speak, speak
Securely, and believe them even as Gods."
"Well I perceive how thou dost nest thyself
In thine own light, and drawest it from thine eyes,
Because they coruscate when thou dost smile,
But know not who thou art, nor why thou hast,
Spirit august, thy station in the sphere
That veils itself to men in alien rays."
This said I in direction of the light
Which first had spoken to me; whence it became
By far more lucent than it was before.
Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself
By too much light, when heat has worn away
The tempering influence of the vapours dense,
By greater rapture thus concealed itself
In its own radiance the figure saintly,
And thus close, close enfolded answered me
In fashion as the following Canto sings.
Beatrice explains that she has flamed more brightly into Dante's eyes, temporarily blinding him at the end of the last canto (vv. 141-142), because she enjoys perfect vision in God. Further, she sees (vv. 7-9) that the process that leads to such sight has now begun in Dante as well. In him it is at its earliest stage, since he interprets what he knows of God in human terms, as is reflected in his recently expressed desire (Par. IV.136-138) to know the “economics” of divine forgiveness.
For a presentation of the status questionis of a problem that has bothered many readers of these verses, see Giuseppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 263-64). Whose sight (veder, verse 5) is perfect (perfetto), Beatrice's or Dante's? And what exactly does the word perfetto here mean? If it is used to describe Beatrice's vision, it nearly certainly means what we have translated it to mean, “perfect,” i.e., the ultimate sort of seeing, possible only in a saved soul (for this sense of the word see Par. VIII.111); however, if it refers to Dante, it would not be translatable in that literal way (cf. Inf. VI.107, where we learn that a thing may be “più perfetta,” i.e., having reached a better stage, but not yet at its ultimate development; and, for a related instance, see Convivio IV.xi.5: “For it is not incongruous for one thing to be both perfect and imperfect when it is perceived from different perspectives” [tr. R. Lansing].). As Alessandro Niccoli points out in his article “perfetto” (ED IV [1973], p. 413a), Dante found this “relative” sense of perfection in Aristotle, for whom each stage of development in a process is “perfect” in itself. Plausible cases can be (and have been) made for each alternative. As is evident from our translation, we are inclined to side with those who think that the improved sight is Beatrice's, as her apprehension of the divine Essence draws her farther into God's sight, thus also causing her to shine with greater effulgence. But see the early gloss of Francesco da Buti to vv. 1-18; in our own time Leonella Coglievina (“Strutture narrative e 'vera sentenza' nel Paradiso dantesco: l'esempio del V canto,” Studi Danteschi 58 [1986 {1990}]: 50); Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 85); and Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], comm. to vv. 4-6), all have worked on this passage; all of them believe that the more perfect vision mentioned by Beatrice belongs to Dante. Their case is made more difficult by the fact that currently the protagonist is having a very hard time seeing anything at all. And while majority vote is probably not a valid procedure for disentangling knotted skeins of Dante's text, we are in accord with the wider opinion, given summarizing voice by Niccoli (ED IV [1973]), ibidem. The most imposing criticism of Beatrice's candidacy is based on verse 6: how can her will be described as being in motion toward God? Is she not already there? And the answer to that is found in the several expressions of eagerness on her part to get her peripatetic instruction of Dante completed so that she can get back “home,” first as she enters the poem (Inf. II.71); then in the earthly paradise when she makes clear that the temporary nature of their stay even in that most agreeable place is preferable to a permanent one (Purg. XXXII.100-102; XXXIII.10-12); and finally, when she asks Dante to look back down the “ladder” he has climbed up through the heavens in order to reach the “ultima salute” (Par. XXII.124-132).
The “heat of love” with which Beatrice is aflame may remind the reader of the kind of affection found in a previous fifth canto, that presenting Francesca in Inferno; it is, however, better understood, as it was by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 1-6) specifically as the love breathed into Beatrice by the Holy Spirit. For a consideration of some of the shared themes found in these cantos, see Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 76-81).
This first occurrence of a character's speaking the opening verse of a canto in Paradiso may make a reader wonder how unusual it is to find the first verse(s) of a canto spoken by a person other than the narrator. In fact, this is not that unusual a phenomenon, occurring thirteen times in all: Inf. III.1 (the gate of Hell “speaks”), Inf. VII.1 (Plutus), Inf. XVII.1 (Virgil), Inf. XXXIV.1 (Virgil); Purg. XI.1 (the penitents in Pride), Purg. XXXI.1 (Beatrice), Purg. XXXIII.1 (the seven virtues who accompany Beatrice); Par. V.1 (Beatrice), Par. VI.1 and Par. VII.1 (Justinian), Par. XXIV.1 (Beatrice), Par. XXVII.1 (the heavenly host), Par. XXXIII.1 (St. Bernard). For a study of the nature of Dante's exordia, see Luigi Blasucci (“Discorso teologico e visione sensibile nel canto XIV del Paradiso,” La parola del testo 4 [2000]: 17-46).
For the image of the soul as having a foot, see, as Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], ad loc.) points out, Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. IX.15: “pes animae recte intelligitur amor” (the foot of the soul is rightly construed as love). The history of citation of this passage is interesting. It was first noticed in connection with the piè fermo of Inferno I.30, a citation widely known in our own time through John Freccero's essay, “Dante's Firm Foot and the Journey without a Guide” (1959, repr. in The Poetics of Conversion, pp. 38-39). Consultation of the DDP reveals that Freccero apparently had only a single precursor in this ascription, Pietro di Dante (in all three versions of his commentary to Inf. I.30). The same Augustinian passage then resurfaces in several commentators, but never in reference to the same passage, as follows: Guido da Pisa (Inf. XXVI.18 – if without attribution to any particular source); the Codice Cassinese (Purg. XVIII.Nota); Nicola Fosca (Par. XVII.136-139). And see the note to Inferno I.30 for Filippo Villani's contribution to this interpretation. The expression explicitly derives from Gregory the Great, according to Villani, but is treated by his editor, Bellomo, as Augustinian (which it surely is: “pes vero superior [...] amorem significat” reflecting Augustine's “pes animae recte intelligitur amor”). However, the only early commentator to affix the provenance precisely and to connect it to the puzzling formulation of Inferno I.30 was Pietro di Dante, who did so not once, not twice, but three times; he has hardly received the credit he is due. An exception is found in Chiavacci Leonardi (Inferno, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1991], ad loc.)
Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 72) cites Cesare Garboli's notice (“Il canto V del Paradiso,” Paragone 22 [1971]: 7) of the highly probable dependence of Dante's verse “Io veggio ben sì come già resplende” (I see clearly how, reflected in your mind) on Guido Cavalcanti's line “Io veggio che negli occhi suoi risplende” (I see that, shining from her eyes...), verse 11 of his Rime XXV, “Posso degli occhi miei novella dire.” She goes on to discuss the contrastive use to which the verse is put, since Guido's amor (“fundamentally unknowable and therefore conducive to error”) has a quite different valence, and since the love that Beatrice teaches (and represents) “is knowledge and leads to salvation.” De Fazio, hardly alone in doing so, contrives to believe that Cavalcanti's idea of amor is “stilnovistic”; for the probably better notion that Dante, at least in his own opinion, was alone responsible for the development of the dolce stil novo and that it represents precisely the sort of love that Beatrice is effulgent in now, see the note to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63.
See Tozer's paraphrase of these verses and his comment on them: “'and if aught else leads men's... desires astray, this is nothing but a faint trace of that eternal light, misunderstood, which makes itself seen in the object of desire.' The view here stated is the same which is found in Purg. XVII.103-5 and 127-9, viz. that both virtue and vice in man proceed from love, or the desire of what is good, only in the case of vice the desire is misled by a false appearance of good.”
As for the word vestigio, Poletto was apparently the first commentator (comm. to vv. 7-12) to cite Monarchia I.viii.2: “cum totum universum nichil aliud sit quam vestigium quoddam divine bonitatis” (since the whole universe is simply an imprint of divine goodness [tr. P. Shaw]). The word is a “triple hapax,” i.e., a word that appears exactly once in each cantica (cf. also Inf. XXIV.50 and Purg. XXVI.106; and, for occurrences of this phenomenon in general, see Hollander [“An Index of Hapax Legomena in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 106 {1988}: Appendix]).
Beatrice repeats the burden of Dante's third question (Par. IV.136-138). It is fair to say that it is urged by a single concern, but one that has both objective and personal focus for him (for the latter, see Par. IV.19-21 and note): If one has not fulfilled one's vow, is there anything that may be offered in its place in order to make it good? Obviously there is, we may think, since Piccarda and Constance are both found in Paradise. The problem is, nonetheless, worked out painstakingly in the following seventy verses.
On the concept of the vow (voto), see Sebastiano Aglianò (ED V [1976], pp. 1150a-1152b); for Dante's barely hidden polemic here against the Decretalist position on how broken vows may be amended (and thus finally become acceptable to God), see Manlio Pastore Stocchi (“Il canto V del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. V [Florence: Le Monnier, 1972], pp. 16-18); and see the study of the three canti devoted to the question (III, IV, V) in Giuseppe Mazzotta (Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], pp. 34-55).
Beatrice's lengthy intervention (vv. 1-15 and 19-84) brings the second-longest visit to any planetary heaven in Paradiso to its conclusion (I.73-V.85); only the space devoted to the Sun is greater (as is of course the longest heavenly episode, that of the Fixed Stars, which extends nearly five cantos). (The figures are as follows: Mercury V.86-VII.148; Venus VIII.1-X.27; Sun X.28-XIV.81; Mars XIV.82-XVIII.51; Jupiter XVIII.52-XX.148; Saturn XXI.1-XXII.99; Fixed Stars XXII.100-XXVII.87; Primum Mobile XXVII.88-XXX.33; Empyrean XXX.34-XXXIII.145). Had the poet not interrupted her here, her 81-verse speech would have would have been the longest uninterrupted speech in the poem until this point (see the note to Purg. XVII.91-139), surpassing Ugolino's 72 verses (Inf. XXXIII.4-75), Marco the Lombard's 65 (Purg. XVI.65-129), Sordello's 50 (Purg. VII.87-136), and Virgil's 49 (Purg. XVII.91-139). Reading the poem a second time, we probably anticipate the fact that Justinian will have the honor of having the longest uninterrupted speaking part in the Commedia, 145 verses (all of the next canto and the first three of VII).
It is as though Dante were playing with the conventions of his art. This self-conscious introduction, naming the intermediate unit of division (between cantica and verse) of the poem (canto – see Zygmunt Baranski [“The Poetics of Meter: Terza rima, 'canto,' 'canzon,' 'cantica,'” in Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies, ed. Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. {Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995}, pp. 3-41] for an appropriately theoretical consideration of this term) for the first time since Inferno XX.2 and XXXIII.90, makes Beatrice, as it were, the “author” of this canto (see De Fazio [“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics {Lectura Dantis [virginiana], 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995}], pp. 74-75) and then, while interrupting her speech (and thus depriving her of her “record”), compares her to one who does not interrupt his or her speech. Such playfulness will be found again in the last verse of the canto, once more deploying the word canto in a self-conscious way.
Promised by Virgil (at Purg. XVIII.73-75), here begins Beatrice's disquisition on the freedom of the will, the property of, among all things in God's creation, angels and humans alone.
It is this passage that a virtual unanimity of contemporary Dante scholars believes is referred to in the famous tag “sicut in Paradiso Comoedie iam dixi” (as I have already said in the Paradiso of the Comedy [Mon. I.xii.6, tr. P. Shaw]), referring to God's gift of free will to humankind. After the work of Ricci, Mazzoni, and Shaw (see Hollander, Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], pp. 150-51), not to mention Scott (Dante's Political Purgatory [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996], pp. 51-52) and Kay (Dante's “Monarchia,” translated, with a commentary, by Richard Kay [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998], pp. xxiv-xxxi), giving probable cause for a date after 31 March 1317), there can be little doubt as to the genuineness of this passage, which probably dates the theologically minded political treatise as contemporary with the composition of the early cantos of Paradiso, and no earlier than 1314 (Mazzoni's estimate) and almost surely not as late as Padoan's choice of 1320. Mineo (“Canto VI,” in “Paradiso”: Lectura Dantis Neapolitana, dir. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1987}], pp. 90-92nn.), dates the composition of Canto VI to the second half of 1316. If he is correct, then a date of 1317 for Monarchia would be reasonable. This is a complex and vexed problem, one that cannot be said to be entirely resolved; however, whenever the treatise was written, it was almost certainly written between 1314 and 1321 (and nearly certainly – pace Padoan [Il lungo cammino del “Poema sacro”: studi danteschi {Florence: Olschki, 1993}, p. 116] – earlier between these poles rather than later), despite the recent claims of Palma di Cesnola (Questioni dantesche: “Fiore”, “Monarchia”, “Commedia” [Ravenna: Longo, 2003], pp. 43-46), for as early as 1313. In any case, neither set of previous arguments for an earlier composition, whether for a date preceding Henry VII's stay in Italy (1307 [Nardi]) or during it (1310-1313 [Macarrone, Vinay]), seems viable any longer.
For the most recent discussion of the dates of composition of the Commedia, with a helpful summary of the modern debate, begun by Francesco Egidi in 1927, see Enrico Fenzi (“Ancora a proposito dell'argomento barberiniano [una possibile eco del Purgatorio nei Documenti d'Amore di Francesco da Barberino],” Tenzone 6 [2005]: 97-119).
One wonders whether, without the account of the one-tenth of the angelic host who chose to rebel against their maker (for Dante's version of the event, see Par. XXIX.49-51), Dante would have felt the need even to discuss the attribution of free will to angelic intelligences.
Given the special status of the freedom of our will and given the nature of a vow to God, made freely (no other kind is acceptable), the free will itself becomes part of what is pledged, i.e., one sacrifices the right to will any differently in the future without forfeiting the vow. In a real sense it is a pledge to will no farther – at least with respect to the matter of a particular vow. The result is that one is not free to make substitution for what is originally promised, since that would be to replace the original sacrifice with something of less value, or simply to attempt to use again what had already been surrendered.
According to Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 26-27), Dante's rigorism with respect to the conditions for the substitution of that which was vowed is in polemic with the laxity in this respect of practitioners of canon law. Aglianò (“voto,” ED [V 1976], p. 1152a) tentatively suggests the possible influence of the Spiritual Franciscans on this notably overstated position, far in excess, as Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. to verse 54), of what was allowed by Aquinas (ST II-II, q. 88, a. 10-12).
The point of the argument, for which Beatrice prepares Dante with a certain urgency, is that there is no possible substitution for a vow, but that “Holy Church” (the sarcasm is stinging) does in fact allow such substitution.
These verses contain the core of Beatrice's position. Here is a portion of Carroll's discussion of them: “She draws a distinction between the matter of a vow, and the compact or agreement itself, the latter of which, as the previous discourse showed, could never be cancelled, save by being fulfilled. Even the Hebrews had still to offer, though sometimes the thing offered was allowed to be changed. Among Christians the surrender of the will in a vow must still be made, but in certain cases the 'matter' of the vow may be exchanged for something else. This commutation, however, is to take place under the strictest conditions. First of all, no man is at liberty to shift the burden at his own pleasure: since the vow is to God, only God's representative can alter it – 'both the white key and the yellow' [verse 57] must turn in the lock, the knowledge and the authority of the Church. Even the Church, in the second place, ought not to commute the 'matter' of a vow save for something else of greater value. In the Mosaic law, the increase of value was assessed at one-fifth; Dante raises it to one-half – the proportion is to be as four to six. It follows from this, in the next place, that there are some things of such supreme value that this exchange of a half more is impossible; and in this case there can be no commutation, far less dispensation. It is commonly assumed that Dante is here referring to the vow of chastity, which 'draws down every scale,' and can have no equivalent. The question is carefully discussed by Aquinas, who holds that even the Papal authority has no power to cancel this vow.”
Beatrice's discussion of the two elements of a vow now begins to modulate, and seems to mirror her earlier discussion of absolute and conditional will (see Par. IV.109-114 and note). Vows have two components, the vow itself (equivalent to the sacrifice of free will), like the absolute will, in that it may never acceptably be relinquished; and the thing vowed. We now realize that Beatrice has been hiding, in her urgent rebuttal of those clergy who want to keep their “customers” happy, the fact that there is a loophole in the laws regarding the second component of a vow, the beloved thing itself that is freely sacrificed.
The vow itself, the sacrifice of free will, may never be withdrawn except by being finally adhered to; this position is what results, Beatrice says, from her previous argument.
The last book of Leviticus repeatedly (27:13; 27:15; 27:19; 27:27; 27:31) sets the official rate of exchange: Whatever is put forth in substitution must be of twenty percent greater value.
Here we, for the first time, have an example of an acceptable substitution for something vowed, even if exactly what may be substituted is less than immediately clear, while its worth seems nitpickingly precise (120%). Reading these verses, Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 40-51) found himself reminded of Genesis 22:13, where Abraham substitutes a ram for Isaac as his sacrifice to his Lord: “sicut filius Abrae in arietem.” It is difficult to understand how a ram might be worth 120% of one's beloved son (unless we were to turn to some specific sons, as perhaps are found in the Princeton class of 1991), much less the 150% to which Beatrice will later raise the ante (verse 60). But such are the ways of God, not easily interpreted by us mere humans, whether we are by trade commentators or not.
Beatrice means that Dante should know these conditions from his knowledge of Leviticus.
And now Beatrice makes plain the rules governing allowable substitution in the “matter” of the vow: The new pledge's worth must be 150% (6 to 4) of what was first offered. This seems a nearly impossible condition to fulfill (and is even harsher than the condition imposed in Leviticus 27, as we have seen [see the note to vv. 49-51]) without trivializing the nature of the initial vow. It is probably fair to say that this is exactly Beatrice's (and Dante's!) point, for she wants essentially to ban all negotiations with God on the part of scheming prelates and, for that matter, of those selfish members of their flocks.
The two keys refer to mercy and justice (see the note to Purg. IX.117-126 and see Bosco/Reggio [comm. to Purg. IX.117-129]), as these are administered by the Church, through the power vested in its priests. One may not, in other words, take it upon oneself to decide exactly what is of greater value than the object first offered.
Beatrice now adds a sort of corollary to her previous instruction, warning us in indirect address (“Let not mortals take vows lightly”) not to make foolish vows that are better broken than kept. This constitutes a special case; it is clear that we are meant to consider most vows as being both wise and well intentioned.
Jephthah's keeping of his vow is joined with Agamemnon's equally disastrous pledge with regard to Iphigenia. Dante pairs a scriptural and a pagan source (cf. the similar proceeding at Par. IV.82-83, linking St. Lawrence and Mucius Scaevola) to underline his point. See Judges 11:30-40 and Cicero, De officiis III.25 (according to Moore [Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante {Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 [1896]}, p. 263]). But see also, as various commentators point out, Virgil (Aen. II.116-117) and Ovid (Metam. XII.27-38). Both Jephthah and Agamemnon make unexamined vows that result in the deaths of their daughters.
The reader may remember another family drama with similar result, the death, not of a daughter, but a mother (Eriphyle), killed by her son (Alcmaeon) out of filial piety: see Par. IV.100-108 and note.
This is the seventh and final occurrence of the word voto (vow) in Cantos III through V. For the first six see Par. III.30; Par. III.57; Par. III.101; Par. IV.137; Par.V.14; Par.V.26. Underlining how heavily it dominates the discourse in these cantos, its presence is found in only two other places in the rest of the poem (Inf. XXVIII.90; Par. XXXI.44).
For the troublesome word mancia, which, in modern Italian, usually refers to the gratuity left for someone who performs a service, see its only other use in the poem at Inferno XXXI.6, where it also would seem to mean “offering” or “gift.” Not all agree that this is what the word means in Dante. One alternative reading is based on the Old French word manche, with the meaning “assault,” “(military) encounter,” as Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 66) point out. They also remind us that St. Thomas, too, presents Jephthah as an exemplary maker of a foolish vow (ST II-II, q. 88, a. 2); Thomas cites St. Jerome: “He was only being foolish when he made such a vow, but he turned impious when he kept it.”
Iphigenia had to mourn her beauty because Agamemnon, her father, had promised to sacrifice the most beautiful thing to be born in his realm that year if Diana would grant favoring winds so that the Greek fleet might set sail from Aulis for Troy. From Dante's point of view, the vow itself is tinctured with worse things than foolishness, since Troy was the sacred birthplace of what becomes, after its destruction at the hands of perfidious Greeks, Rome. For an earlier and less frontal encounter with this classical matter, see Inferno XX.110-111.
For Dante's transposition of the tears of Jephthah's daughter, weeping for her lost youth in the mountains of her sorrow (Judges 11:37-38), to Iphigenia's cheeks, see Torraca (comm. to vv. 70-72).
Beatrice joins a second (and now direct address) to her last one (vv. 64-72), now specifically referring to Christians, who are ipso facto more guilty than the rest of humankind if they make foolish vows.
There is a continuing debate (if not one of particular consequence) about the precise meaning of this “water.” Some take it in the wider sense, i.e., Christians are warned not to take vows lightly in the hopes that they will “cleanse” them of guilt; others stay closer to the literal, seeing in acqua the cleansing holy water of easy absolution granted by an all-too-human priestly intercessor for an ill-considered vow. The following tercet would seem to support this second line of interpretation, which informs our translation, by implicitly calling into question the authority of such inept priests.
In such a reading the two verses thus would have a chronological relation: Christians should (1) be hesitant before reaching out for God's help by taking vows without due consideration of their ensuing indebtedness and then (2), once having made that initial mistake, not be so sure that all priestly intervention will work to release them from their lightly considered (but nonetheless binding) vows. This does seem to be the more likely meaning. If it seems that such a reading blurs the traditional Catholic view, one that protects the individual believer from the captious behavior of his or her priest, it should be remembered that a vow is a pact (see verse 28, above, and Par. XII.17) made directly by the individual with God Himself.
This tercet, if understood as a general statement, would badly undercut the role of the clergy in the human search for salvation, as a sort of Catholic version of each believer praying in his or her closet (albeit guided by the pope). The word “salvamento” occurs only here in the poem, and in final-rhyme position (where the poet's imagination is most forced, one admits, to find ingenious rhymes). Could it be used with a more limited sense? I.e., does it mean “solution” to a particular problem involving vows? This would be a difficult argument to sustain. Among the earliest commentators (e.g., Jacopo della Lana to these verses, interpreting “'l pastor de la Chiesa” as follows: “le predicazioni che vi fanno li pastori della Chiesa” [the preaching that the priests of the Church make for you]), the reading “'l pastor” was plural [“i pastor”]. However, Benvenuto's text was as ours, and he nevertheless interprets the singlular as a plural (comm. to vv. 73-78): “praelatos praedicantes et dirigentes vos” (prelates offering you direction in their preaching). Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 73-84) is the first to understand that this means the pope (and only the pope), but he seems totally comfortable with that meaning. In any case, and as Carroll suggests (comm. to vv. 64-84), what Dante, through Beatrice, is really saying is that vows are not necessary to salvation, that we should enter into them only with due consideration. Porena (comm. to this tercet) puts the matter with admirable concision: “Per salvare l'anima basta, invece, osservare i comandamenti di Dio, i precetti di Cristo nel Vangelo e i precetti della Chiesa guidata dal papa” (To save one's soul, on the other hand, it is sufficient to follow God's commandments, Christ's precepts, and those of His Church, guided by the pope).
See Carroll's gloss on this tercet (contained in his comm. to vv. 64-84): “Dante appeals to Christians to be on their guard against the wicked greed which will tell them that the Old and the New Testament and the Shepherd of the Church are not sufficient to salvation, and induces them to take vows under promise of an easy absolution for the breaking of them.”
The Jew (introduced to this subject at verse 49) living among Christians knows the Law, and therefore the rules regarding the making and keeping of vows, as well as they do; he is thus uniquely, among non-Christians, capable of recognizing their hypocrisy.
Here the poet presents himself as the “scribe” of Beatrice. (Mestica [comm. on this verse] looks back to two moments in the earthly paradise in which his lady requires such duty of him, Purg. XXXII.104-105 and XXXIII.52-54.) What, however, is lacking in some such comments, those which tend to emphasize Dante's loyalty to his beloved guide, is the force of the gesture, which reinforces his pose, one that makes him, not the inventor of a fiction, but the reporter of a series of actual encounters. In Paradiso X.27 Dante will again refer to himself as a scribe (scriba), only setting down (and not inventing) what has been revealed to him. This verse anticipates that gesture, presenting him as scriba Beatricis, seventy lines ago herself presented as the “author” of this canto (see verse 16). For the influential and ground-breaking study of the poet's self-presentation as “scriba Dei,” see Sarolli (Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], esp. pp. 215-16, 233-43, 335-36).
There is surprisingly much debate about the exact location of this brightness upon which Beatrice fastens her gaze. Suffice it to say that, since they are still beneath the Sun, that is a possible terminus; but where the universe is brightest is where God is, the Empyrean. Cf. the similar view expressed by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 85-87).
The ascent to the second heaven, that of Mercury, is, like all of the ascents from sphere to sphere, instantaneous, God drawing Dante and Beatrice up another level toward Him, as the use of the figure hysteron proteron at vv. 91-92 makes clear.
The nature of Dante's unasked questions, which some have attempted to puzzle out, is never made known. It is probably best simply to understand that he, naturally enough, has many of them.
Beatrice's increased joy at being, with Dante, closer to God makes even the immutable planet glow more brightly. If this is so, we are asked to imagine how much changed was mortal and transmutable Dante himself.
For the commentator Cristoforo Landino's sneaking admiration for the outlaw “science” of astrology, see Simon Gilson (“Tradition and innovation in Cristoforo Landino's glosses on astrology in his Comento sopra la Comedia [1481],” Italian Studies 58 [2003]: 48-74). He points out (pp. 68-70) that, in his commentary to this passage (vv. 94-96), Landino exhorts us to believe that Christians, more than those associated with any other religion, believe most earnestly in Mercury's planetary influence (because of the planet's association with the birth of Christ).
This simile immediately reminds the reader of the similar formal comparison that preceded the exchange between Dante and the souls who appeared to him in the Moon (Par. III.10-18), in a position parallel, that is, to this one's. There Dante believes that the forms he sees as though they were under water or glass are reflections of himself and of Beatrice. He avoids such Narcissistic error here, where he understands at once that these are souls that welcome him with love. We can see that, having experienced a single heaven, he has learned much about heavenly love.
Their loves are for one another in God. How will Dante help increase these? This line has been variously interpreted. It seems first of all true that these saved souls, finding a mortal in the heavens, know that they will help him become more holy by answering his questions and preparing him for Paradise, thus increasing the objects of their affection by one and the heat of their affection for one another. It also seems at least possible that they refer to a second future increase in their affections, for one another and for him, when he joins them after his death, one more to love and be loved in God.
This marks the last occurrence (of three) in this final cantica of the word ombra (shade), perhaps surprisingly used to indicate a saved soul. See the note to Paradiso III.34. Manuele Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005], pp. 84-86), discusses this verse as containing the last use of the word ombra to indicate a soul in the poem. From here on up, and beginning with Justinian, in a few lines (vv. 130-137), whose presence is so bright it erases his human features, it will be dispensed with.
The second address to the reader in Paradiso underlines the importance of the scene that will follow. Once we realize that we are about to encounter Justinian, we have some sense of heightened expectation; first-time readers are merely encouraged to pay close attention.
The speaker, as we shall learn in the next canto (verse 10), is the shade of the Roman emperor Justinian. His reference to Dante as “bene nato” (born for bliss) has Virgilian (and thus imperial?) resonance, in that in the Aeneid the hero is referred to as natus (meaning “son”) some three dozen times (see Hollander [“Dante and the Martial Epic,” Mediaevalia 12 {1989}]: 90 [n. 28]). He greets Dante, then, as the new Aeneas. See Andrea Robiglio (“Dante 'bene nato': Guido Cavalcanti e Margherita Porete in Par. V, 115,” L'Alighieri 26 [2005]: 45-62), surveying at length some classical and many medieval examples of the phrase, without mention of Virgil.
Justinian's words for triumph and warfare reflect his imperial background and concerns; here they have a modified sense, the triumph over death found in Christ and the Christian sense of militancy reflected, for example, in Job 7:1, “Life is a warfare,” cited by Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001, p. 24).
The light to which Justinian refers is the light of God's love for his creatures.
The poetic playfulness of the canto, so evident near its beginning and at its end (see the second part of the note to vv. 16-18), is present here as well, both in the rima composta “Dì, dì” (Say, say) and in the rapidly repeated sounds of di in these verses (“Dì, dì... credi come a dii... t'annidi”). Beatrice excitedly urges Dante (whose name happens to begin with that sound) on in his increasing hunger for knowledge of heavenly things. (For an even more exhilarated passage, see Paradiso VII.10-12.)
Why all these repetitions in the concluding verses of the canto? Here dì dì (pronounced, in order to rhyme with annidi and ridi, “dìdi”), and then in verse 138: chiusa chiusa, and in 139: canto canta? Does the device of anaphora (repetition) have a thematic purpose, mirroring things that can be represented only by themselves (as is the case with vows)? And we may also note that every rhyme word in vv. 121-127 ends in “i”; for the same phenomenon, see also Inf. XIII.55-61; Inf. XVIII.13-19; and Inf. XXIV.136-142, etc.
Whereas Dante could eventually make out the facial features of Piccarda (Par. III.58-63), as his ascent continues he is able to make out less of such detail in this next sub-solar heaven; then, in the last of them, in Venus, Charles Martel (whom he knew on earth as he did Piccarda [at least within the claims made in the poem]) is, unlike Piccarda, not recognizable, and makes it clear that he is simply not visible as himself to Dante's mortal sight (Par. VIII.52-54). Occupying a middle ground, as it were, Justinian's former facial features are all, with the exception of his eyes, elided by his joy. This may reflect a “program” for the gradual effacement of the signs of human personality in Dante's first three heavenly spheres.
Dante's two questions addressed to Justinian will be answered in the next canto at verses 1-27 and 112-126. His second question reflects his similar one to Piccarda (Par. III.64-66). Why is this spirit in so relatively low a sphere? Dante may have forgotten Beatrice's instruction in the last canto (Par. IV.28-36), which makes it plain that such heavenly gradation is only temporary. Or he may have grasped the point that temporary presence in a planet is part of God's universal plan for his instruction and wants to know more.
It was perhaps more than ten years earlier that Dante had compared the planet Mercury to the branch of knowledge known as dialectic (Conv. II.xiii.11): “The heaven of Mercury may be compared to Dialectics because of two properties: for Mercury is the smallest star of heaven, because the magnitude of its diameter is not more than 232 miles...; the other property is that in its passage it is veiled by the rays of the sun more than any other star” (tr. R. Lansing).
When the Sun finally overwhelms the cool temperatures that yield a mist through which we at times can look at its disk through that mediating layer, it burns that away, with the consequence that we now cannot look at this unveiled star, which seems wrapped in its own effulgence. Just so, Dante tells us, Justinian, the love he feels increased by Dante's affection for him and by his own for Dante, was swathed increasingly in his own light so that he, too, becoming brighter, became less visible as a human semblance. See the note to Paradiso V.107.
If anaphora has the result of intensifying the effect of what is said, here we confront two lines, each of which contains a repeated pair of words, chiusa chiusa and canto canta, a configuration that is perhaps unique in the poem. Justinian's dramatic appearance on the scene has been carefully prepared for (see the note to vv. 122-123).
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“S'io ti fiammeggio nel caldo d'amore
di là dal modo che 'n terra si vede,
sì che del viso tuo vinco il valore,
non ti maravigliar, ché ciò procede
da perfetto veder, che, come apprende,
così nel bene appreso move il piede.
Io veggio ben sì come già resplende
ne l'intelletto tuo l'etterna luce,
che, vista, sola e sempre amore accende;
e s'altra cosa vostro amor seduce,
non è se non di quella alcun vestigio,
mal conosciuto, che quivi traluce.
Tu vuo' saper se con altro servigio,
per manco voto, si può render tanto
che l'anima sicuri di letigio.”
Sì cominciò Beatrice questo canto;
e sì com' uom che suo parlar non spezza,
continüò così 'l processo santo:
“Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza
fesse creando, e a la sua bontate
più conformato, e quel ch'e' più apprezza,
fu de la volontà la libertate;
di che le creature intelligenti,
e tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate.
Or ti parrà, se tu quinci argomenti,
l'alto valor del voto, s'è sì fatto
che Dio consenta quando tu consenti;
ché, nel fermar tra Dio e l'omo il patto,
vittima fassi di questo tesoro,
tal quale io dico; e fassi col suo atto.
Dunque che render puossi per ristoro?
Se credi bene usar quel c'hai offerto,
di maltolletto vuo' far buon lavoro.
Tu se' omai del maggior punto certo;
ma perché Santa Chiesa in ciò dispensa,
che par contra lo ver ch'i' t'ho scoverto,
convienti ancor sedere un poco a mensa,
però che 'l cibo rigido c'hai preso,
richiede ancora aiuto a tua dispensa.
Apri la mente a quel ch'io ti paleso
e fermalvi entro; ché non fa scïenza,
sanza lo ritenere, avere inteso.
Due cose si convegnono a l'essenza
di questo sacrificio: l'una è quella
di che si fa; l'altr' è la convenenza.
Quest' ultima già mai non si cancella
se non servata; e intorno di lei
sì preciso di sopra si favella:
però necessitato fu a li Ebrei
pur l'offerere, ancor ch'alcuna offerta
si permutasse, come saver dei.
L'altra, che per materia t'è aperta,
puote ben esser tal, che non si falla
se con altra materia si converta.
Ma non trasmuti carco a la sua spalla
per suo arbitrio alcun, sanza la volta
e de la chiave bianca e de la gialla;
e ogne permutanza credi stolta,
se la cosa dimessa in la sorpresa
come 'l quattro nel sei non è raccolta.
Però qualunque cosa tanto pesa
per suo valor che tragga ogne bilancia,
sodisfar non si può con altra spesa.
Non prendan li mortali il voto a ciancia;
siate fedeli, e a ciò far non bieci,
come Ieptè a la sua prima mancia;
cui più si convenia dicer 'Mal feci,'
che, servando, far peggio; e così stolto
ritrovar puoi il gran duca de' Greci,
onde pianse Efigènia il suo bel volto,
e fé pianger di sé i folli e i savi
ch'udir parlar di così fatto cólto.
Siate, Cristiani, a muovervi più gravi:
non siate come penna ad ogne vento,
e non crediate ch'ogne acqua vi lavi.
Avete il novo e 'l vecchio Testamento,
e 'l pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida;
questo vi basti a vostro salvamento.
Se mala cupidigia altro vi grida,
uomini siate, e non pecore matte,
sì che 'l Giudeo di voi tra voi non rida!
Non fate com' agnel che lascia il latte
de la sua madre, e semplice e lascivo
seco medesmo a suo piacer combatte!”
Così Beatrice a me com'ïo scrivo;
poi si rivolse tutta disïante
a quella parte ove 'l mondo è più vivo.
Lo suo tacere e 'l trasmutar sembiante
puoser silenzio al mio cupido ingegno,
che già nuove questioni avea davante;
e sì come saetta che nel segno
percuote pria che sia la corda queta,
così corremmo nel secondo regno.
Quivi la donna mia vid' io sì lieta,
come nel lume di quel ciel si mise,
che più lucente se ne fé 'l pianeta.
E se la stella si cambiò e rise,
qual mi fec' io che pur da mia natura
trasmutabile son per tutte guise!
Come 'n peschiera ch'è tranquilla e pura
traggonsi i pesci a ciò che vien di fori
per modo che lo stimin lor pastura,
sì vid' io ben più di mille splendori
trarsi ver' noi, e in ciascun s'udia:
“Ecco chi crescerà li nostri amori.”
E sì come ciascuno a noi venìa,
vedeasi l'ombra piena di letizia
nel folgór chiaro che di lei uscia.
Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s'inizia
non procedesse, come tu avresti
di più savere angosciosa carizia;
e per te vederai come da questi
m'era in disio d'udir lor condizioni,
sì come a li occhi mi fur manifesti.
“O bene nato a cui veder li troni
del trïunfo etternal concede grazia
prima che la milizia s'abbandoni,
del lume che per tutto il ciel si spazia
noi semo accesi; e però, se disii
di noi chiarirti, a tuo piacer ti sazia.”
Così da un di quelli spirti pii
detto mi fu; e da Beatrice: “Dì, dì
sicuramente, e credi come a dii.”
“Io veggio ben sì come tu t'annidi
nel proprio lume, e che de li occhi il traggi,
perch' e' corusca sì come tu ridi;
ma non so chi tu se', né perché aggi,
anima degna, il grado de la spera
che si vela a' mortai con altrui raggi.”
Questo diss' io diritto a la lumera
che pria m'avea parlato; ond' ella fessi
lucente più assai di quel ch'ell' era.
Sì come il sol che si cela elli stessi
per troppa luce, come 'l caldo ha róse
le temperanze d'i vapori spessi,
per più letizia sì mi si nascose
dentro al suo raggio la figura santa;
e così chiusa chiusa mi rispuose
nel modo che 'l seguente canto canta.
"If in the heat of love I flame upon thee
Beyond the measure that on earth is seen,
So that the valour of thine eyes I vanquish,
Marvel thou not thereat; for this proceeds
From perfect sight, which as it apprehends
To the good apprehended moves its feet.
Well I perceive how is already shining
Into thine intellect the eternal light,
That only seen enkindles always love;
And if some other thing your love seduce,
'Tis nothing but a vestige of the same,
Ill understood, which there is shining through.
Thou fain wouldst know if with another service
For broken vow can such return be made
As to secure the soul from further claim."
This Canto thus did Beatrice begin;
And, as a man who breaks not off his speech,
Continued thus her holy argument:
"The greatest gift that in his largess God
Creating made, and unto his own goodness
Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize
Most highly, is the freedom of the will,
Wherewith the creatures of intelligence
Both all and only were and are endowed.
Now wilt thou see, if thence thou reasonest,
The high worth of a vow, if it he made
So that when thou consentest God consents:
For, closing between God and man the compact,
A sacrifice is of this treasure made,
Such as I say, and made by its own act.
What can be rendered then as compensation?
Think'st thou to make good use of what thou'st offered,
With gains ill gotten thou wouldst do good deed.
Now art thou certain of the greater point;
But because Holy Church in this dispenses,
Which seems against the truth which I have shown thee,
Behoves thee still to sit awhile at table,
Because the solid food which thou hast taken
Requireth further aid for thy digestion.
Open thy mind to that which I reveal,
And fix it there within; for 'tis not knowledge,
The having heard without retaining it.
In the essence of this sacrifice two things
Convene together; and the one is that
Of which 'tis made, the other is the agreement.
This last for evermore is cancelled not
Unless complied with, and concerning this
With such precision has above been spoken.
Therefore it was enjoined upon the Hebrews
To offer still, though sometimes what was offered
Might be commuted, as thou ought'st to know.
The other, which is known to thee as matter,
May well indeed be such that one errs not
If it for other matter be exchanged.
But let none shift the burden on his shoulder
At his arbitrament, without the turning
Both of the white and of the yellow key;
And every permutation deem as foolish,
If in the substitute the thing relinquished,
As the four is in six, be not contained.
Therefore whatever thing has so great weight
In value that it drags down every balance,
Cannot be satisfied with other spending.
Let mortals never take a vow in jest;
Be faithful and not blind in doing that,
As Jephthah was in his first offering,
Whom more beseemed to say, 'I have done wrong,
Than to do worse by keeping; and as foolish
Thou the great leader of the Greeks wilt find,
Whence wept Iphigenia her fair face,
And made for her both wise and simple weep,
Who heard such kind of worship spoken of.'
Christians, be ye more serious in your movements;
Be ye not like a feather at each wind,
And think not every water washes you.
Ye have the Old and the New Testament,
And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you
Let this suffice you unto your salvation.
If evil appetite cry aught else to you,
Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep,
So that the Jew among you may not mock you.
Be ye not as the lamb that doth abandon
Its mother's milk, and frolicsome and simple
Combats at its own pleasure with itself."
Thus Beatrice to me even as I write it;
Then all desireful turned herself again
To that part where the world is most alive.
Her silence and her change of countenance
Silence imposed upon my eager mind,
That had already in advance new questions;
And as an arrow that upon the mark
Strikes ere the bowstring quiet hath become,
So did we speed into the second realm.
My Lady there so joyful I beheld,
As into the brightness of that heaven she entered,
More luminous thereat the planet grew;
And if the star itself was changed and smiled,
What became I, who by my nature am
Exceeding mutable in every guise!
As, in a fish-pond which is pure and tranquil,
The fishes draw to that which from without
Comes in such fashion that their food they deem it;
So I beheld more than a thousand splendours
Drawing towards us, and in each was heard:
"Lo, this is she who shall increase our love."
And as each one was coming unto us,
Full of beatitude the shade was seen,
By the effulgence clear that issued from it.
Think, Reader, if what here is just beginning
No farther should proceed, how thou wouldst have
An agonizing need of knowing more;
And of thyself thou'lt see how I from these
Was in desire of hearing their conditions,
As they unto mine eyes were manifest.
"O thou well-born, unto whom Grace concedes
To see the thrones of the eternal triumph,
Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned
With light that through the whole of heaven is spread
Kindled are we, and hence if thou desirest
To know of us, at thine own pleasure sate thee."
Thus by some one among those holy spirits
Was spoken, and by Beatrice: "Speak, speak
Securely, and believe them even as Gods."
"Well I perceive how thou dost nest thyself
In thine own light, and drawest it from thine eyes,
Because they coruscate when thou dost smile,
But know not who thou art, nor why thou hast,
Spirit august, thy station in the sphere
That veils itself to men in alien rays."
This said I in direction of the light
Which first had spoken to me; whence it became
By far more lucent than it was before.
Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself
By too much light, when heat has worn away
The tempering influence of the vapours dense,
By greater rapture thus concealed itself
In its own radiance the figure saintly,
And thus close, close enfolded answered me
In fashion as the following Canto sings.
Beatrice explains that she has flamed more brightly into Dante's eyes, temporarily blinding him at the end of the last canto (vv. 141-142), because she enjoys perfect vision in God. Further, she sees (vv. 7-9) that the process that leads to such sight has now begun in Dante as well. In him it is at its earliest stage, since he interprets what he knows of God in human terms, as is reflected in his recently expressed desire (Par. IV.136-138) to know the “economics” of divine forgiveness.
For a presentation of the status questionis of a problem that has bothered many readers of these verses, see Giuseppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 263-64). Whose sight (veder, verse 5) is perfect (perfetto), Beatrice's or Dante's? And what exactly does the word perfetto here mean? If it is used to describe Beatrice's vision, it nearly certainly means what we have translated it to mean, “perfect,” i.e., the ultimate sort of seeing, possible only in a saved soul (for this sense of the word see Par. VIII.111); however, if it refers to Dante, it would not be translatable in that literal way (cf. Inf. VI.107, where we learn that a thing may be “più perfetta,” i.e., having reached a better stage, but not yet at its ultimate development; and, for a related instance, see Convivio IV.xi.5: “For it is not incongruous for one thing to be both perfect and imperfect when it is perceived from different perspectives” [tr. R. Lansing].). As Alessandro Niccoli points out in his article “perfetto” (ED IV [1973], p. 413a), Dante found this “relative” sense of perfection in Aristotle, for whom each stage of development in a process is “perfect” in itself. Plausible cases can be (and have been) made for each alternative. As is evident from our translation, we are inclined to side with those who think that the improved sight is Beatrice's, as her apprehension of the divine Essence draws her farther into God's sight, thus also causing her to shine with greater effulgence. But see the early gloss of Francesco da Buti to vv. 1-18; in our own time Leonella Coglievina (“Strutture narrative e 'vera sentenza' nel Paradiso dantesco: l'esempio del V canto,” Studi Danteschi 58 [1986 {1990}]: 50); Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 85); and Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], comm. to vv. 4-6), all have worked on this passage; all of them believe that the more perfect vision mentioned by Beatrice belongs to Dante. Their case is made more difficult by the fact that currently the protagonist is having a very hard time seeing anything at all. And while majority vote is probably not a valid procedure for disentangling knotted skeins of Dante's text, we are in accord with the wider opinion, given summarizing voice by Niccoli (ED IV [1973]), ibidem. The most imposing criticism of Beatrice's candidacy is based on verse 6: how can her will be described as being in motion toward God? Is she not already there? And the answer to that is found in the several expressions of eagerness on her part to get her peripatetic instruction of Dante completed so that she can get back “home,” first as she enters the poem (Inf. II.71); then in the earthly paradise when she makes clear that the temporary nature of their stay even in that most agreeable place is preferable to a permanent one (Purg. XXXII.100-102; XXXIII.10-12); and finally, when she asks Dante to look back down the “ladder” he has climbed up through the heavens in order to reach the “ultima salute” (Par. XXII.124-132).
The “heat of love” with which Beatrice is aflame may remind the reader of the kind of affection found in a previous fifth canto, that presenting Francesca in Inferno; it is, however, better understood, as it was by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 1-6) specifically as the love breathed into Beatrice by the Holy Spirit. For a consideration of some of the shared themes found in these cantos, see Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 76-81).
This first occurrence of a character's speaking the opening verse of a canto in Paradiso may make a reader wonder how unusual it is to find the first verse(s) of a canto spoken by a person other than the narrator. In fact, this is not that unusual a phenomenon, occurring thirteen times in all: Inf. III.1 (the gate of Hell “speaks”), Inf. VII.1 (Plutus), Inf. XVII.1 (Virgil), Inf. XXXIV.1 (Virgil); Purg. XI.1 (the penitents in Pride), Purg. XXXI.1 (Beatrice), Purg. XXXIII.1 (the seven virtues who accompany Beatrice); Par. V.1 (Beatrice), Par. VI.1 and Par. VII.1 (Justinian), Par. XXIV.1 (Beatrice), Par. XXVII.1 (the heavenly host), Par. XXXIII.1 (St. Bernard). For a study of the nature of Dante's exordia, see Luigi Blasucci (“Discorso teologico e visione sensibile nel canto XIV del Paradiso,” La parola del testo 4 [2000]: 17-46).
For the image of the soul as having a foot, see, as Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], ad loc.) points out, Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. IX.15: “pes animae recte intelligitur amor” (the foot of the soul is rightly construed as love). The history of citation of this passage is interesting. It was first noticed in connection with the piè fermo of Inferno I.30, a citation widely known in our own time through John Freccero's essay, “Dante's Firm Foot and the Journey without a Guide” (1959, repr. in The Poetics of Conversion, pp. 38-39). Consultation of the DDP reveals that Freccero apparently had only a single precursor in this ascription, Pietro di Dante (in all three versions of his commentary to Inf. I.30). The same Augustinian passage then resurfaces in several commentators, but never in reference to the same passage, as follows: Guido da Pisa (Inf. XXVI.18 – if without attribution to any particular source); the Codice Cassinese (Purg. XVIII.Nota); Nicola Fosca (Par. XVII.136-139). And see the note to Inferno I.30 for Filippo Villani's contribution to this interpretation. The expression explicitly derives from Gregory the Great, according to Villani, but is treated by his editor, Bellomo, as Augustinian (which it surely is: “pes vero superior [...] amorem significat” reflecting Augustine's “pes animae recte intelligitur amor”). However, the only early commentator to affix the provenance precisely and to connect it to the puzzling formulation of Inferno I.30 was Pietro di Dante, who did so not once, not twice, but three times; he has hardly received the credit he is due. An exception is found in Chiavacci Leonardi (Inferno, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1991], ad loc.)
Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 72) cites Cesare Garboli's notice (“Il canto V del Paradiso,” Paragone 22 [1971]: 7) of the highly probable dependence of Dante's verse “Io veggio ben sì come già resplende” (I see clearly how, reflected in your mind) on Guido Cavalcanti's line “Io veggio che negli occhi suoi risplende” (I see that, shining from her eyes...), verse 11 of his Rime XXV, “Posso degli occhi miei novella dire.” She goes on to discuss the contrastive use to which the verse is put, since Guido's amor (“fundamentally unknowable and therefore conducive to error”) has a quite different valence, and since the love that Beatrice teaches (and represents) “is knowledge and leads to salvation.” De Fazio, hardly alone in doing so, contrives to believe that Cavalcanti's idea of amor is “stilnovistic”; for the probably better notion that Dante, at least in his own opinion, was alone responsible for the development of the dolce stil novo and that it represents precisely the sort of love that Beatrice is effulgent in now, see the note to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63.
See Tozer's paraphrase of these verses and his comment on them: “'and if aught else leads men's... desires astray, this is nothing but a faint trace of that eternal light, misunderstood, which makes itself seen in the object of desire.' The view here stated is the same which is found in Purg. XVII.103-5 and 127-9, viz. that both virtue and vice in man proceed from love, or the desire of what is good, only in the case of vice the desire is misled by a false appearance of good.”
As for the word vestigio, Poletto was apparently the first commentator (comm. to vv. 7-12) to cite Monarchia I.viii.2: “cum totum universum nichil aliud sit quam vestigium quoddam divine bonitatis” (since the whole universe is simply an imprint of divine goodness [tr. P. Shaw]). The word is a “triple hapax,” i.e., a word that appears exactly once in each cantica (cf. also Inf. XXIV.50 and Purg. XXVI.106; and, for occurrences of this phenomenon in general, see Hollander [“An Index of Hapax Legomena in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 106 {1988}: Appendix]).
Beatrice repeats the burden of Dante's third question (Par. IV.136-138). It is fair to say that it is urged by a single concern, but one that has both objective and personal focus for him (for the latter, see Par. IV.19-21 and note): If one has not fulfilled one's vow, is there anything that may be offered in its place in order to make it good? Obviously there is, we may think, since Piccarda and Constance are both found in Paradise. The problem is, nonetheless, worked out painstakingly in the following seventy verses.
On the concept of the vow (voto), see Sebastiano Aglianò (ED V [1976], pp. 1150a-1152b); for Dante's barely hidden polemic here against the Decretalist position on how broken vows may be amended (and thus finally become acceptable to God), see Manlio Pastore Stocchi (“Il canto V del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. V [Florence: Le Monnier, 1972], pp. 16-18); and see the study of the three canti devoted to the question (III, IV, V) in Giuseppe Mazzotta (Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], pp. 34-55).
Beatrice's lengthy intervention (vv. 1-15 and 19-84) brings the second-longest visit to any planetary heaven in Paradiso to its conclusion (I.73-V.85); only the space devoted to the Sun is greater (as is of course the longest heavenly episode, that of the Fixed Stars, which extends nearly five cantos). (The figures are as follows: Mercury V.86-VII.148; Venus VIII.1-X.27; Sun X.28-XIV.81; Mars XIV.82-XVIII.51; Jupiter XVIII.52-XX.148; Saturn XXI.1-XXII.99; Fixed Stars XXII.100-XXVII.87; Primum Mobile XXVII.88-XXX.33; Empyrean XXX.34-XXXIII.145). Had the poet not interrupted her here, her 81-verse speech would have would have been the longest uninterrupted speech in the poem until this point (see the note to Purg. XVII.91-139), surpassing Ugolino's 72 verses (Inf. XXXIII.4-75), Marco the Lombard's 65 (Purg. XVI.65-129), Sordello's 50 (Purg. VII.87-136), and Virgil's 49 (Purg. XVII.91-139). Reading the poem a second time, we probably anticipate the fact that Justinian will have the honor of having the longest uninterrupted speaking part in the Commedia, 145 verses (all of the next canto and the first three of VII).
It is as though Dante were playing with the conventions of his art. This self-conscious introduction, naming the intermediate unit of division (between cantica and verse) of the poem (canto – see Zygmunt Baranski [“The Poetics of Meter: Terza rima, 'canto,' 'canzon,' 'cantica,'” in Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies, ed. Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. {Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995}, pp. 3-41] for an appropriately theoretical consideration of this term) for the first time since Inferno XX.2 and XXXIII.90, makes Beatrice, as it were, the “author” of this canto (see De Fazio [“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics {Lectura Dantis [virginiana], 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995}], pp. 74-75) and then, while interrupting her speech (and thus depriving her of her “record”), compares her to one who does not interrupt his or her speech. Such playfulness will be found again in the last verse of the canto, once more deploying the word canto in a self-conscious way.
Promised by Virgil (at Purg. XVIII.73-75), here begins Beatrice's disquisition on the freedom of the will, the property of, among all things in God's creation, angels and humans alone.
It is this passage that a virtual unanimity of contemporary Dante scholars believes is referred to in the famous tag “sicut in Paradiso Comoedie iam dixi” (as I have already said in the Paradiso of the Comedy [Mon. I.xii.6, tr. P. Shaw]), referring to God's gift of free will to humankind. After the work of Ricci, Mazzoni, and Shaw (see Hollander, Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], pp. 150-51), not to mention Scott (Dante's Political Purgatory [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996], pp. 51-52) and Kay (Dante's “Monarchia,” translated, with a commentary, by Richard Kay [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998], pp. xxiv-xxxi), giving probable cause for a date after 31 March 1317), there can be little doubt as to the genuineness of this passage, which probably dates the theologically minded political treatise as contemporary with the composition of the early cantos of Paradiso, and no earlier than 1314 (Mazzoni's estimate) and almost surely not as late as Padoan's choice of 1320. Mineo (“Canto VI,” in “Paradiso”: Lectura Dantis Neapolitana, dir. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1987}], pp. 90-92nn.), dates the composition of Canto VI to the second half of 1316. If he is correct, then a date of 1317 for Monarchia would be reasonable. This is a complex and vexed problem, one that cannot be said to be entirely resolved; however, whenever the treatise was written, it was almost certainly written between 1314 and 1321 (and nearly certainly – pace Padoan [Il lungo cammino del “Poema sacro”: studi danteschi {Florence: Olschki, 1993}, p. 116] – earlier between these poles rather than later), despite the recent claims of Palma di Cesnola (Questioni dantesche: “Fiore”, “Monarchia”, “Commedia” [Ravenna: Longo, 2003], pp. 43-46), for as early as 1313. In any case, neither set of previous arguments for an earlier composition, whether for a date preceding Henry VII's stay in Italy (1307 [Nardi]) or during it (1310-1313 [Macarrone, Vinay]), seems viable any longer.
For the most recent discussion of the dates of composition of the Commedia, with a helpful summary of the modern debate, begun by Francesco Egidi in 1927, see Enrico Fenzi (“Ancora a proposito dell'argomento barberiniano [una possibile eco del Purgatorio nei Documenti d'Amore di Francesco da Barberino],” Tenzone 6 [2005]: 97-119).
One wonders whether, without the account of the one-tenth of the angelic host who chose to rebel against their maker (for Dante's version of the event, see Par. XXIX.49-51), Dante would have felt the need even to discuss the attribution of free will to angelic intelligences.
Given the special status of the freedom of our will and given the nature of a vow to God, made freely (no other kind is acceptable), the free will itself becomes part of what is pledged, i.e., one sacrifices the right to will any differently in the future without forfeiting the vow. In a real sense it is a pledge to will no farther – at least with respect to the matter of a particular vow. The result is that one is not free to make substitution for what is originally promised, since that would be to replace the original sacrifice with something of less value, or simply to attempt to use again what had already been surrendered.
According to Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 26-27), Dante's rigorism with respect to the conditions for the substitution of that which was vowed is in polemic with the laxity in this respect of practitioners of canon law. Aglianò (“voto,” ED [V 1976], p. 1152a) tentatively suggests the possible influence of the Spiritual Franciscans on this notably overstated position, far in excess, as Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. to verse 54), of what was allowed by Aquinas (ST II-II, q. 88, a. 10-12).
The point of the argument, for which Beatrice prepares Dante with a certain urgency, is that there is no possible substitution for a vow, but that “Holy Church” (the sarcasm is stinging) does in fact allow such substitution.
These verses contain the core of Beatrice's position. Here is a portion of Carroll's discussion of them: “She draws a distinction between the matter of a vow, and the compact or agreement itself, the latter of which, as the previous discourse showed, could never be cancelled, save by being fulfilled. Even the Hebrews had still to offer, though sometimes the thing offered was allowed to be changed. Among Christians the surrender of the will in a vow must still be made, but in certain cases the 'matter' of the vow may be exchanged for something else. This commutation, however, is to take place under the strictest conditions. First of all, no man is at liberty to shift the burden at his own pleasure: since the vow is to God, only God's representative can alter it – 'both the white key and the yellow' [verse 57] must turn in the lock, the knowledge and the authority of the Church. Even the Church, in the second place, ought not to commute the 'matter' of a vow save for something else of greater value. In the Mosaic law, the increase of value was assessed at one-fifth; Dante raises it to one-half – the proportion is to be as four to six. It follows from this, in the next place, that there are some things of such supreme value that this exchange of a half more is impossible; and in this case there can be no commutation, far less dispensation. It is commonly assumed that Dante is here referring to the vow of chastity, which 'draws down every scale,' and can have no equivalent. The question is carefully discussed by Aquinas, who holds that even the Papal authority has no power to cancel this vow.”
Beatrice's discussion of the two elements of a vow now begins to modulate, and seems to mirror her earlier discussion of absolute and conditional will (see Par. IV.109-114 and note). Vows have two components, the vow itself (equivalent to the sacrifice of free will), like the absolute will, in that it may never acceptably be relinquished; and the thing vowed. We now realize that Beatrice has been hiding, in her urgent rebuttal of those clergy who want to keep their “customers” happy, the fact that there is a loophole in the laws regarding the second component of a vow, the beloved thing itself that is freely sacrificed.
The vow itself, the sacrifice of free will, may never be withdrawn except by being finally adhered to; this position is what results, Beatrice says, from her previous argument.
The last book of Leviticus repeatedly (27:13; 27:15; 27:19; 27:27; 27:31) sets the official rate of exchange: Whatever is put forth in substitution must be of twenty percent greater value.
Here we, for the first time, have an example of an acceptable substitution for something vowed, even if exactly what may be substituted is less than immediately clear, while its worth seems nitpickingly precise (120%). Reading these verses, Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 40-51) found himself reminded of Genesis 22:13, where Abraham substitutes a ram for Isaac as his sacrifice to his Lord: “sicut filius Abrae in arietem.” It is difficult to understand how a ram might be worth 120% of one's beloved son (unless we were to turn to some specific sons, as perhaps are found in the Princeton class of 1991), much less the 150% to which Beatrice will later raise the ante (verse 60). But such are the ways of God, not easily interpreted by us mere humans, whether we are by trade commentators or not.
Beatrice means that Dante should know these conditions from his knowledge of Leviticus.
And now Beatrice makes plain the rules governing allowable substitution in the “matter” of the vow: The new pledge's worth must be 150% (6 to 4) of what was first offered. This seems a nearly impossible condition to fulfill (and is even harsher than the condition imposed in Leviticus 27, as we have seen [see the note to vv. 49-51]) without trivializing the nature of the initial vow. It is probably fair to say that this is exactly Beatrice's (and Dante's!) point, for she wants essentially to ban all negotiations with God on the part of scheming prelates and, for that matter, of those selfish members of their flocks.
The two keys refer to mercy and justice (see the note to Purg. IX.117-126 and see Bosco/Reggio [comm. to Purg. IX.117-129]), as these are administered by the Church, through the power vested in its priests. One may not, in other words, take it upon oneself to decide exactly what is of greater value than the object first offered.
Beatrice now adds a sort of corollary to her previous instruction, warning us in indirect address (“Let not mortals take vows lightly”) not to make foolish vows that are better broken than kept. This constitutes a special case; it is clear that we are meant to consider most vows as being both wise and well intentioned.
Jephthah's keeping of his vow is joined with Agamemnon's equally disastrous pledge with regard to Iphigenia. Dante pairs a scriptural and a pagan source (cf. the similar proceeding at Par. IV.82-83, linking St. Lawrence and Mucius Scaevola) to underline his point. See Judges 11:30-40 and Cicero, De officiis III.25 (according to Moore [Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante {Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 [1896]}, p. 263]). But see also, as various commentators point out, Virgil (Aen. II.116-117) and Ovid (Metam. XII.27-38). Both Jephthah and Agamemnon make unexamined vows that result in the deaths of their daughters.
The reader may remember another family drama with similar result, the death, not of a daughter, but a mother (Eriphyle), killed by her son (Alcmaeon) out of filial piety: see Par. IV.100-108 and note.
This is the seventh and final occurrence of the word voto (vow) in Cantos III through V. For the first six see Par. III.30; Par. III.57; Par. III.101; Par. IV.137; Par.V.14; Par.V.26. Underlining how heavily it dominates the discourse in these cantos, its presence is found in only two other places in the rest of the poem (Inf. XXVIII.90; Par. XXXI.44).
For the troublesome word mancia, which, in modern Italian, usually refers to the gratuity left for someone who performs a service, see its only other use in the poem at Inferno XXXI.6, where it also would seem to mean “offering” or “gift.” Not all agree that this is what the word means in Dante. One alternative reading is based on the Old French word manche, with the meaning “assault,” “(military) encounter,” as Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 66) point out. They also remind us that St. Thomas, too, presents Jephthah as an exemplary maker of a foolish vow (ST II-II, q. 88, a. 2); Thomas cites St. Jerome: “He was only being foolish when he made such a vow, but he turned impious when he kept it.”
Iphigenia had to mourn her beauty because Agamemnon, her father, had promised to sacrifice the most beautiful thing to be born in his realm that year if Diana would grant favoring winds so that the Greek fleet might set sail from Aulis for Troy. From Dante's point of view, the vow itself is tinctured with worse things than foolishness, since Troy was the sacred birthplace of what becomes, after its destruction at the hands of perfidious Greeks, Rome. For an earlier and less frontal encounter with this classical matter, see Inferno XX.110-111.
For Dante's transposition of the tears of Jephthah's daughter, weeping for her lost youth in the mountains of her sorrow (Judges 11:37-38), to Iphigenia's cheeks, see Torraca (comm. to vv. 70-72).
Beatrice joins a second (and now direct address) to her last one (vv. 64-72), now specifically referring to Christians, who are ipso facto more guilty than the rest of humankind if they make foolish vows.
There is a continuing debate (if not one of particular consequence) about the precise meaning of this “water.” Some take it in the wider sense, i.e., Christians are warned not to take vows lightly in the hopes that they will “cleanse” them of guilt; others stay closer to the literal, seeing in acqua the cleansing holy water of easy absolution granted by an all-too-human priestly intercessor for an ill-considered vow. The following tercet would seem to support this second line of interpretation, which informs our translation, by implicitly calling into question the authority of such inept priests.
In such a reading the two verses thus would have a chronological relation: Christians should (1) be hesitant before reaching out for God's help by taking vows without due consideration of their ensuing indebtedness and then (2), once having made that initial mistake, not be so sure that all priestly intervention will work to release them from their lightly considered (but nonetheless binding) vows. This does seem to be the more likely meaning. If it seems that such a reading blurs the traditional Catholic view, one that protects the individual believer from the captious behavior of his or her priest, it should be remembered that a vow is a pact (see verse 28, above, and Par. XII.17) made directly by the individual with God Himself.
This tercet, if understood as a general statement, would badly undercut the role of the clergy in the human search for salvation, as a sort of Catholic version of each believer praying in his or her closet (albeit guided by the pope). The word “salvamento” occurs only here in the poem, and in final-rhyme position (where the poet's imagination is most forced, one admits, to find ingenious rhymes). Could it be used with a more limited sense? I.e., does it mean “solution” to a particular problem involving vows? This would be a difficult argument to sustain. Among the earliest commentators (e.g., Jacopo della Lana to these verses, interpreting “'l pastor de la Chiesa” as follows: “le predicazioni che vi fanno li pastori della Chiesa” [the preaching that the priests of the Church make for you]), the reading “'l pastor” was plural [“i pastor”]. However, Benvenuto's text was as ours, and he nevertheless interprets the singlular as a plural (comm. to vv. 73-78): “praelatos praedicantes et dirigentes vos” (prelates offering you direction in their preaching). Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 73-84) is the first to understand that this means the pope (and only the pope), but he seems totally comfortable with that meaning. In any case, and as Carroll suggests (comm. to vv. 64-84), what Dante, through Beatrice, is really saying is that vows are not necessary to salvation, that we should enter into them only with due consideration. Porena (comm. to this tercet) puts the matter with admirable concision: “Per salvare l'anima basta, invece, osservare i comandamenti di Dio, i precetti di Cristo nel Vangelo e i precetti della Chiesa guidata dal papa” (To save one's soul, on the other hand, it is sufficient to follow God's commandments, Christ's precepts, and those of His Church, guided by the pope).
See Carroll's gloss on this tercet (contained in his comm. to vv. 64-84): “Dante appeals to Christians to be on their guard against the wicked greed which will tell them that the Old and the New Testament and the Shepherd of the Church are not sufficient to salvation, and induces them to take vows under promise of an easy absolution for the breaking of them.”
The Jew (introduced to this subject at verse 49) living among Christians knows the Law, and therefore the rules regarding the making and keeping of vows, as well as they do; he is thus uniquely, among non-Christians, capable of recognizing their hypocrisy.
Here the poet presents himself as the “scribe” of Beatrice. (Mestica [comm. on this verse] looks back to two moments in the earthly paradise in which his lady requires such duty of him, Purg. XXXII.104-105 and XXXIII.52-54.) What, however, is lacking in some such comments, those which tend to emphasize Dante's loyalty to his beloved guide, is the force of the gesture, which reinforces his pose, one that makes him, not the inventor of a fiction, but the reporter of a series of actual encounters. In Paradiso X.27 Dante will again refer to himself as a scribe (scriba), only setting down (and not inventing) what has been revealed to him. This verse anticipates that gesture, presenting him as scriba Beatricis, seventy lines ago herself presented as the “author” of this canto (see verse 16). For the influential and ground-breaking study of the poet's self-presentation as “scriba Dei,” see Sarolli (Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], esp. pp. 215-16, 233-43, 335-36).
There is surprisingly much debate about the exact location of this brightness upon which Beatrice fastens her gaze. Suffice it to say that, since they are still beneath the Sun, that is a possible terminus; but where the universe is brightest is where God is, the Empyrean. Cf. the similar view expressed by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 85-87).
The ascent to the second heaven, that of Mercury, is, like all of the ascents from sphere to sphere, instantaneous, God drawing Dante and Beatrice up another level toward Him, as the use of the figure hysteron proteron at vv. 91-92 makes clear.
The nature of Dante's unasked questions, which some have attempted to puzzle out, is never made known. It is probably best simply to understand that he, naturally enough, has many of them.
Beatrice's increased joy at being, with Dante, closer to God makes even the immutable planet glow more brightly. If this is so, we are asked to imagine how much changed was mortal and transmutable Dante himself.
For the commentator Cristoforo Landino's sneaking admiration for the outlaw “science” of astrology, see Simon Gilson (“Tradition and innovation in Cristoforo Landino's glosses on astrology in his Comento sopra la Comedia [1481],” Italian Studies 58 [2003]: 48-74). He points out (pp. 68-70) that, in his commentary to this passage (vv. 94-96), Landino exhorts us to believe that Christians, more than those associated with any other religion, believe most earnestly in Mercury's planetary influence (because of the planet's association with the birth of Christ).
This simile immediately reminds the reader of the similar formal comparison that preceded the exchange between Dante and the souls who appeared to him in the Moon (Par. III.10-18), in a position parallel, that is, to this one's. There Dante believes that the forms he sees as though they were under water or glass are reflections of himself and of Beatrice. He avoids such Narcissistic error here, where he understands at once that these are souls that welcome him with love. We can see that, having experienced a single heaven, he has learned much about heavenly love.
Their loves are for one another in God. How will Dante help increase these? This line has been variously interpreted. It seems first of all true that these saved souls, finding a mortal in the heavens, know that they will help him become more holy by answering his questions and preparing him for Paradise, thus increasing the objects of their affection by one and the heat of their affection for one another. It also seems at least possible that they refer to a second future increase in their affections, for one another and for him, when he joins them after his death, one more to love and be loved in God.
This marks the last occurrence (of three) in this final cantica of the word ombra (shade), perhaps surprisingly used to indicate a saved soul. See the note to Paradiso III.34. Manuele Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005], pp. 84-86), discusses this verse as containing the last use of the word ombra to indicate a soul in the poem. From here on up, and beginning with Justinian, in a few lines (vv. 130-137), whose presence is so bright it erases his human features, it will be dispensed with.
The second address to the reader in Paradiso underlines the importance of the scene that will follow. Once we realize that we are about to encounter Justinian, we have some sense of heightened expectation; first-time readers are merely encouraged to pay close attention.
The speaker, as we shall learn in the next canto (verse 10), is the shade of the Roman emperor Justinian. His reference to Dante as “bene nato” (born for bliss) has Virgilian (and thus imperial?) resonance, in that in the Aeneid the hero is referred to as natus (meaning “son”) some three dozen times (see Hollander [“Dante and the Martial Epic,” Mediaevalia 12 {1989}]: 90 [n. 28]). He greets Dante, then, as the new Aeneas. See Andrea Robiglio (“Dante 'bene nato': Guido Cavalcanti e Margherita Porete in Par. V, 115,” L'Alighieri 26 [2005]: 45-62), surveying at length some classical and many medieval examples of the phrase, without mention of Virgil.
Justinian's words for triumph and warfare reflect his imperial background and concerns; here they have a modified sense, the triumph over death found in Christ and the Christian sense of militancy reflected, for example, in Job 7:1, “Life is a warfare,” cited by Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001, p. 24).
The light to which Justinian refers is the light of God's love for his creatures.
The poetic playfulness of the canto, so evident near its beginning and at its end (see the second part of the note to vv. 16-18), is present here as well, both in the rima composta “Dì, dì” (Say, say) and in the rapidly repeated sounds of di in these verses (“Dì, dì... credi come a dii... t'annidi”). Beatrice excitedly urges Dante (whose name happens to begin with that sound) on in his increasing hunger for knowledge of heavenly things. (For an even more exhilarated passage, see Paradiso VII.10-12.)
Why all these repetitions in the concluding verses of the canto? Here dì dì (pronounced, in order to rhyme with annidi and ridi, “dìdi”), and then in verse 138: chiusa chiusa, and in 139: canto canta? Does the device of anaphora (repetition) have a thematic purpose, mirroring things that can be represented only by themselves (as is the case with vows)? And we may also note that every rhyme word in vv. 121-127 ends in “i”; for the same phenomenon, see also Inf. XIII.55-61; Inf. XVIII.13-19; and Inf. XXIV.136-142, etc.
Whereas Dante could eventually make out the facial features of Piccarda (Par. III.58-63), as his ascent continues he is able to make out less of such detail in this next sub-solar heaven; then, in the last of them, in Venus, Charles Martel (whom he knew on earth as he did Piccarda [at least within the claims made in the poem]) is, unlike Piccarda, not recognizable, and makes it clear that he is simply not visible as himself to Dante's mortal sight (Par. VIII.52-54). Occupying a middle ground, as it were, Justinian's former facial features are all, with the exception of his eyes, elided by his joy. This may reflect a “program” for the gradual effacement of the signs of human personality in Dante's first three heavenly spheres.
Dante's two questions addressed to Justinian will be answered in the next canto at verses 1-27 and 112-126. His second question reflects his similar one to Piccarda (Par. III.64-66). Why is this spirit in so relatively low a sphere? Dante may have forgotten Beatrice's instruction in the last canto (Par. IV.28-36), which makes it plain that such heavenly gradation is only temporary. Or he may have grasped the point that temporary presence in a planet is part of God's universal plan for his instruction and wants to know more.
It was perhaps more than ten years earlier that Dante had compared the planet Mercury to the branch of knowledge known as dialectic (Conv. II.xiii.11): “The heaven of Mercury may be compared to Dialectics because of two properties: for Mercury is the smallest star of heaven, because the magnitude of its diameter is not more than 232 miles...; the other property is that in its passage it is veiled by the rays of the sun more than any other star” (tr. R. Lansing).
When the Sun finally overwhelms the cool temperatures that yield a mist through which we at times can look at its disk through that mediating layer, it burns that away, with the consequence that we now cannot look at this unveiled star, which seems wrapped in its own effulgence. Just so, Dante tells us, Justinian, the love he feels increased by Dante's affection for him and by his own for Dante, was swathed increasingly in his own light so that he, too, becoming brighter, became less visible as a human semblance. See the note to Paradiso V.107.
If anaphora has the result of intensifying the effect of what is said, here we confront two lines, each of which contains a repeated pair of words, chiusa chiusa and canto canta, a configuration that is perhaps unique in the poem. Justinian's dramatic appearance on the scene has been carefully prepared for (see the note to vv. 122-123).
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“S'io ti fiammeggio nel caldo d'amore
di là dal modo che 'n terra si vede,
sì che del viso tuo vinco il valore,
non ti maravigliar, ché ciò procede
da perfetto veder, che, come apprende,
così nel bene appreso move il piede.
Io veggio ben sì come già resplende
ne l'intelletto tuo l'etterna luce,
che, vista, sola e sempre amore accende;
e s'altra cosa vostro amor seduce,
non è se non di quella alcun vestigio,
mal conosciuto, che quivi traluce.
Tu vuo' saper se con altro servigio,
per manco voto, si può render tanto
che l'anima sicuri di letigio.”
Sì cominciò Beatrice questo canto;
e sì com' uom che suo parlar non spezza,
continüò così 'l processo santo:
“Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza
fesse creando, e a la sua bontate
più conformato, e quel ch'e' più apprezza,
fu de la volontà la libertate;
di che le creature intelligenti,
e tutte e sole, fuoro e son dotate.
Or ti parrà, se tu quinci argomenti,
l'alto valor del voto, s'è sì fatto
che Dio consenta quando tu consenti;
ché, nel fermar tra Dio e l'omo il patto,
vittima fassi di questo tesoro,
tal quale io dico; e fassi col suo atto.
Dunque che render puossi per ristoro?
Se credi bene usar quel c'hai offerto,
di maltolletto vuo' far buon lavoro.
Tu se' omai del maggior punto certo;
ma perché Santa Chiesa in ciò dispensa,
che par contra lo ver ch'i' t'ho scoverto,
convienti ancor sedere un poco a mensa,
però che 'l cibo rigido c'hai preso,
richiede ancora aiuto a tua dispensa.
Apri la mente a quel ch'io ti paleso
e fermalvi entro; ché non fa scïenza,
sanza lo ritenere, avere inteso.
Due cose si convegnono a l'essenza
di questo sacrificio: l'una è quella
di che si fa; l'altr' è la convenenza.
Quest' ultima già mai non si cancella
se non servata; e intorno di lei
sì preciso di sopra si favella:
però necessitato fu a li Ebrei
pur l'offerere, ancor ch'alcuna offerta
si permutasse, come saver dei.
L'altra, che per materia t'è aperta,
puote ben esser tal, che non si falla
se con altra materia si converta.
Ma non trasmuti carco a la sua spalla
per suo arbitrio alcun, sanza la volta
e de la chiave bianca e de la gialla;
e ogne permutanza credi stolta,
se la cosa dimessa in la sorpresa
come 'l quattro nel sei non è raccolta.
Però qualunque cosa tanto pesa
per suo valor che tragga ogne bilancia,
sodisfar non si può con altra spesa.
Non prendan li mortali il voto a ciancia;
siate fedeli, e a ciò far non bieci,
come Ieptè a la sua prima mancia;
cui più si convenia dicer 'Mal feci,'
che, servando, far peggio; e così stolto
ritrovar puoi il gran duca de' Greci,
onde pianse Efigènia il suo bel volto,
e fé pianger di sé i folli e i savi
ch'udir parlar di così fatto cólto.
Siate, Cristiani, a muovervi più gravi:
non siate come penna ad ogne vento,
e non crediate ch'ogne acqua vi lavi.
Avete il novo e 'l vecchio Testamento,
e 'l pastor de la Chiesa che vi guida;
questo vi basti a vostro salvamento.
Se mala cupidigia altro vi grida,
uomini siate, e non pecore matte,
sì che 'l Giudeo di voi tra voi non rida!
Non fate com' agnel che lascia il latte
de la sua madre, e semplice e lascivo
seco medesmo a suo piacer combatte!”
Così Beatrice a me com'ïo scrivo;
poi si rivolse tutta disïante
a quella parte ove 'l mondo è più vivo.
Lo suo tacere e 'l trasmutar sembiante
puoser silenzio al mio cupido ingegno,
che già nuove questioni avea davante;
e sì come saetta che nel segno
percuote pria che sia la corda queta,
così corremmo nel secondo regno.
Quivi la donna mia vid' io sì lieta,
come nel lume di quel ciel si mise,
che più lucente se ne fé 'l pianeta.
E se la stella si cambiò e rise,
qual mi fec' io che pur da mia natura
trasmutabile son per tutte guise!
Come 'n peschiera ch'è tranquilla e pura
traggonsi i pesci a ciò che vien di fori
per modo che lo stimin lor pastura,
sì vid' io ben più di mille splendori
trarsi ver' noi, e in ciascun s'udia:
“Ecco chi crescerà li nostri amori.”
E sì come ciascuno a noi venìa,
vedeasi l'ombra piena di letizia
nel folgór chiaro che di lei uscia.
Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s'inizia
non procedesse, come tu avresti
di più savere angosciosa carizia;
e per te vederai come da questi
m'era in disio d'udir lor condizioni,
sì come a li occhi mi fur manifesti.
“O bene nato a cui veder li troni
del trïunfo etternal concede grazia
prima che la milizia s'abbandoni,
del lume che per tutto il ciel si spazia
noi semo accesi; e però, se disii
di noi chiarirti, a tuo piacer ti sazia.”
Così da un di quelli spirti pii
detto mi fu; e da Beatrice: “Dì, dì
sicuramente, e credi come a dii.”
“Io veggio ben sì come tu t'annidi
nel proprio lume, e che de li occhi il traggi,
perch' e' corusca sì come tu ridi;
ma non so chi tu se', né perché aggi,
anima degna, il grado de la spera
che si vela a' mortai con altrui raggi.”
Questo diss' io diritto a la lumera
che pria m'avea parlato; ond' ella fessi
lucente più assai di quel ch'ell' era.
Sì come il sol che si cela elli stessi
per troppa luce, come 'l caldo ha róse
le temperanze d'i vapori spessi,
per più letizia sì mi si nascose
dentro al suo raggio la figura santa;
e così chiusa chiusa mi rispuose
nel modo che 'l seguente canto canta.
"If in the heat of love I flame upon thee
Beyond the measure that on earth is seen,
So that the valour of thine eyes I vanquish,
Marvel thou not thereat; for this proceeds
From perfect sight, which as it apprehends
To the good apprehended moves its feet.
Well I perceive how is already shining
Into thine intellect the eternal light,
That only seen enkindles always love;
And if some other thing your love seduce,
'Tis nothing but a vestige of the same,
Ill understood, which there is shining through.
Thou fain wouldst know if with another service
For broken vow can such return be made
As to secure the soul from further claim."
This Canto thus did Beatrice begin;
And, as a man who breaks not off his speech,
Continued thus her holy argument:
"The greatest gift that in his largess God
Creating made, and unto his own goodness
Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize
Most highly, is the freedom of the will,
Wherewith the creatures of intelligence
Both all and only were and are endowed.
Now wilt thou see, if thence thou reasonest,
The high worth of a vow, if it he made
So that when thou consentest God consents:
For, closing between God and man the compact,
A sacrifice is of this treasure made,
Such as I say, and made by its own act.
What can be rendered then as compensation?
Think'st thou to make good use of what thou'st offered,
With gains ill gotten thou wouldst do good deed.
Now art thou certain of the greater point;
But because Holy Church in this dispenses,
Which seems against the truth which I have shown thee,
Behoves thee still to sit awhile at table,
Because the solid food which thou hast taken
Requireth further aid for thy digestion.
Open thy mind to that which I reveal,
And fix it there within; for 'tis not knowledge,
The having heard without retaining it.
In the essence of this sacrifice two things
Convene together; and the one is that
Of which 'tis made, the other is the agreement.
This last for evermore is cancelled not
Unless complied with, and concerning this
With such precision has above been spoken.
Therefore it was enjoined upon the Hebrews
To offer still, though sometimes what was offered
Might be commuted, as thou ought'st to know.
The other, which is known to thee as matter,
May well indeed be such that one errs not
If it for other matter be exchanged.
But let none shift the burden on his shoulder
At his arbitrament, without the turning
Both of the white and of the yellow key;
And every permutation deem as foolish,
If in the substitute the thing relinquished,
As the four is in six, be not contained.
Therefore whatever thing has so great weight
In value that it drags down every balance,
Cannot be satisfied with other spending.
Let mortals never take a vow in jest;
Be faithful and not blind in doing that,
As Jephthah was in his first offering,
Whom more beseemed to say, 'I have done wrong,
Than to do worse by keeping; and as foolish
Thou the great leader of the Greeks wilt find,
Whence wept Iphigenia her fair face,
And made for her both wise and simple weep,
Who heard such kind of worship spoken of.'
Christians, be ye more serious in your movements;
Be ye not like a feather at each wind,
And think not every water washes you.
Ye have the Old and the New Testament,
And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you
Let this suffice you unto your salvation.
If evil appetite cry aught else to you,
Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep,
So that the Jew among you may not mock you.
Be ye not as the lamb that doth abandon
Its mother's milk, and frolicsome and simple
Combats at its own pleasure with itself."
Thus Beatrice to me even as I write it;
Then all desireful turned herself again
To that part where the world is most alive.
Her silence and her change of countenance
Silence imposed upon my eager mind,
That had already in advance new questions;
And as an arrow that upon the mark
Strikes ere the bowstring quiet hath become,
So did we speed into the second realm.
My Lady there so joyful I beheld,
As into the brightness of that heaven she entered,
More luminous thereat the planet grew;
And if the star itself was changed and smiled,
What became I, who by my nature am
Exceeding mutable in every guise!
As, in a fish-pond which is pure and tranquil,
The fishes draw to that which from without
Comes in such fashion that their food they deem it;
So I beheld more than a thousand splendours
Drawing towards us, and in each was heard:
"Lo, this is she who shall increase our love."
And as each one was coming unto us,
Full of beatitude the shade was seen,
By the effulgence clear that issued from it.
Think, Reader, if what here is just beginning
No farther should proceed, how thou wouldst have
An agonizing need of knowing more;
And of thyself thou'lt see how I from these
Was in desire of hearing their conditions,
As they unto mine eyes were manifest.
"O thou well-born, unto whom Grace concedes
To see the thrones of the eternal triumph,
Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned
With light that through the whole of heaven is spread
Kindled are we, and hence if thou desirest
To know of us, at thine own pleasure sate thee."
Thus by some one among those holy spirits
Was spoken, and by Beatrice: "Speak, speak
Securely, and believe them even as Gods."
"Well I perceive how thou dost nest thyself
In thine own light, and drawest it from thine eyes,
Because they coruscate when thou dost smile,
But know not who thou art, nor why thou hast,
Spirit august, thy station in the sphere
That veils itself to men in alien rays."
This said I in direction of the light
Which first had spoken to me; whence it became
By far more lucent than it was before.
Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself
By too much light, when heat has worn away
The tempering influence of the vapours dense,
By greater rapture thus concealed itself
In its own radiance the figure saintly,
And thus close, close enfolded answered me
In fashion as the following Canto sings.
Beatrice explains that she has flamed more brightly into Dante's eyes, temporarily blinding him at the end of the last canto (vv. 141-142), because she enjoys perfect vision in God. Further, she sees (vv. 7-9) that the process that leads to such sight has now begun in Dante as well. In him it is at its earliest stage, since he interprets what he knows of God in human terms, as is reflected in his recently expressed desire (Par. IV.136-138) to know the “economics” of divine forgiveness.
For a presentation of the status questionis of a problem that has bothered many readers of these verses, see Giuseppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 263-64). Whose sight (veder, verse 5) is perfect (perfetto), Beatrice's or Dante's? And what exactly does the word perfetto here mean? If it is used to describe Beatrice's vision, it nearly certainly means what we have translated it to mean, “perfect,” i.e., the ultimate sort of seeing, possible only in a saved soul (for this sense of the word see Par. VIII.111); however, if it refers to Dante, it would not be translatable in that literal way (cf. Inf. VI.107, where we learn that a thing may be “più perfetta,” i.e., having reached a better stage, but not yet at its ultimate development; and, for a related instance, see Convivio IV.xi.5: “For it is not incongruous for one thing to be both perfect and imperfect when it is perceived from different perspectives” [tr. R. Lansing].). As Alessandro Niccoli points out in his article “perfetto” (ED IV [1973], p. 413a), Dante found this “relative” sense of perfection in Aristotle, for whom each stage of development in a process is “perfect” in itself. Plausible cases can be (and have been) made for each alternative. As is evident from our translation, we are inclined to side with those who think that the improved sight is Beatrice's, as her apprehension of the divine Essence draws her farther into God's sight, thus also causing her to shine with greater effulgence. But see the early gloss of Francesco da Buti to vv. 1-18; in our own time Leonella Coglievina (“Strutture narrative e 'vera sentenza' nel Paradiso dantesco: l'esempio del V canto,” Studi Danteschi 58 [1986 {1990}]: 50); Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 85); and Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], comm. to vv. 4-6), all have worked on this passage; all of them believe that the more perfect vision mentioned by Beatrice belongs to Dante. Their case is made more difficult by the fact that currently the protagonist is having a very hard time seeing anything at all. And while majority vote is probably not a valid procedure for disentangling knotted skeins of Dante's text, we are in accord with the wider opinion, given summarizing voice by Niccoli (ED IV [1973]), ibidem. The most imposing criticism of Beatrice's candidacy is based on verse 6: how can her will be described as being in motion toward God? Is she not already there? And the answer to that is found in the several expressions of eagerness on her part to get her peripatetic instruction of Dante completed so that she can get back “home,” first as she enters the poem (Inf. II.71); then in the earthly paradise when she makes clear that the temporary nature of their stay even in that most agreeable place is preferable to a permanent one (Purg. XXXII.100-102; XXXIII.10-12); and finally, when she asks Dante to look back down the “ladder” he has climbed up through the heavens in order to reach the “ultima salute” (Par. XXII.124-132).
The “heat of love” with which Beatrice is aflame may remind the reader of the kind of affection found in a previous fifth canto, that presenting Francesca in Inferno; it is, however, better understood, as it was by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 1-6) specifically as the love breathed into Beatrice by the Holy Spirit. For a consideration of some of the shared themes found in these cantos, see Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 76-81).
This first occurrence of a character's speaking the opening verse of a canto in Paradiso may make a reader wonder how unusual it is to find the first verse(s) of a canto spoken by a person other than the narrator. In fact, this is not that unusual a phenomenon, occurring thirteen times in all: Inf. III.1 (the gate of Hell “speaks”), Inf. VII.1 (Plutus), Inf. XVII.1 (Virgil), Inf. XXXIV.1 (Virgil); Purg. XI.1 (the penitents in Pride), Purg. XXXI.1 (Beatrice), Purg. XXXIII.1 (the seven virtues who accompany Beatrice); Par. V.1 (Beatrice), Par. VI.1 and Par. VII.1 (Justinian), Par. XXIV.1 (Beatrice), Par. XXVII.1 (the heavenly host), Par. XXXIII.1 (St. Bernard). For a study of the nature of Dante's exordia, see Luigi Blasucci (“Discorso teologico e visione sensibile nel canto XIV del Paradiso,” La parola del testo 4 [2000]: 17-46).
For the image of the soul as having a foot, see, as Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], ad loc.) points out, Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. IX.15: “pes animae recte intelligitur amor” (the foot of the soul is rightly construed as love). The history of citation of this passage is interesting. It was first noticed in connection with the piè fermo of Inferno I.30, a citation widely known in our own time through John Freccero's essay, “Dante's Firm Foot and the Journey without a Guide” (1959, repr. in The Poetics of Conversion, pp. 38-39). Consultation of the DDP reveals that Freccero apparently had only a single precursor in this ascription, Pietro di Dante (in all three versions of his commentary to Inf. I.30). The same Augustinian passage then resurfaces in several commentators, but never in reference to the same passage, as follows: Guido da Pisa (Inf. XXVI.18 – if without attribution to any particular source); the Codice Cassinese (Purg. XVIII.Nota); Nicola Fosca (Par. XVII.136-139). And see the note to Inferno I.30 for Filippo Villani's contribution to this interpretation. The expression explicitly derives from Gregory the Great, according to Villani, but is treated by his editor, Bellomo, as Augustinian (which it surely is: “pes vero superior [...] amorem significat” reflecting Augustine's “pes animae recte intelligitur amor”). However, the only early commentator to affix the provenance precisely and to connect it to the puzzling formulation of Inferno I.30 was Pietro di Dante, who did so not once, not twice, but three times; he has hardly received the credit he is due. An exception is found in Chiavacci Leonardi (Inferno, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1991], ad loc.)
Marina De Fazio (“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], p. 72) cites Cesare Garboli's notice (“Il canto V del Paradiso,” Paragone 22 [1971]: 7) of the highly probable dependence of Dante's verse “Io veggio ben sì come già resplende” (I see clearly how, reflected in your mind) on Guido Cavalcanti's line “Io veggio che negli occhi suoi risplende” (I see that, shining from her eyes...), verse 11 of his Rime XXV, “Posso degli occhi miei novella dire.” She goes on to discuss the contrastive use to which the verse is put, since Guido's amor (“fundamentally unknowable and therefore conducive to error”) has a quite different valence, and since the love that Beatrice teaches (and represents) “is knowledge and leads to salvation.” De Fazio, hardly alone in doing so, contrives to believe that Cavalcanti's idea of amor is “stilnovistic”; for the probably better notion that Dante, at least in his own opinion, was alone responsible for the development of the dolce stil novo and that it represents precisely the sort of love that Beatrice is effulgent in now, see the note to Purgatorio XXIV.55-63.
See Tozer's paraphrase of these verses and his comment on them: “'and if aught else leads men's... desires astray, this is nothing but a faint trace of that eternal light, misunderstood, which makes itself seen in the object of desire.' The view here stated is the same which is found in Purg. XVII.103-5 and 127-9, viz. that both virtue and vice in man proceed from love, or the desire of what is good, only in the case of vice the desire is misled by a false appearance of good.”
As for the word vestigio, Poletto was apparently the first commentator (comm. to vv. 7-12) to cite Monarchia I.viii.2: “cum totum universum nichil aliud sit quam vestigium quoddam divine bonitatis” (since the whole universe is simply an imprint of divine goodness [tr. P. Shaw]). The word is a “triple hapax,” i.e., a word that appears exactly once in each cantica (cf. also Inf. XXIV.50 and Purg. XXVI.106; and, for occurrences of this phenomenon in general, see Hollander [“An Index of Hapax Legomena in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 106 {1988}: Appendix]).
Beatrice repeats the burden of Dante's third question (Par. IV.136-138). It is fair to say that it is urged by a single concern, but one that has both objective and personal focus for him (for the latter, see Par. IV.19-21 and note): If one has not fulfilled one's vow, is there anything that may be offered in its place in order to make it good? Obviously there is, we may think, since Piccarda and Constance are both found in Paradise. The problem is, nonetheless, worked out painstakingly in the following seventy verses.
On the concept of the vow (voto), see Sebastiano Aglianò (ED V [1976], pp. 1150a-1152b); for Dante's barely hidden polemic here against the Decretalist position on how broken vows may be amended (and thus finally become acceptable to God), see Manlio Pastore Stocchi (“Il canto V del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. V [Florence: Le Monnier, 1972], pp. 16-18); and see the study of the three canti devoted to the question (III, IV, V) in Giuseppe Mazzotta (Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], pp. 34-55).
Beatrice's lengthy intervention (vv. 1-15 and 19-84) brings the second-longest visit to any planetary heaven in Paradiso to its conclusion (I.73-V.85); only the space devoted to the Sun is greater (as is of course the longest heavenly episode, that of the Fixed Stars, which extends nearly five cantos). (The figures are as follows: Mercury V.86-VII.148; Venus VIII.1-X.27; Sun X.28-XIV.81; Mars XIV.82-XVIII.51; Jupiter XVIII.52-XX.148; Saturn XXI.1-XXII.99; Fixed Stars XXII.100-XXVII.87; Primum Mobile XXVII.88-XXX.33; Empyrean XXX.34-XXXIII.145). Had the poet not interrupted her here, her 81-verse speech would have would have been the longest uninterrupted speech in the poem until this point (see the note to Purg. XVII.91-139), surpassing Ugolino's 72 verses (Inf. XXXIII.4-75), Marco the Lombard's 65 (Purg. XVI.65-129), Sordello's 50 (Purg. VII.87-136), and Virgil's 49 (Purg. XVII.91-139). Reading the poem a second time, we probably anticipate the fact that Justinian will have the honor of having the longest uninterrupted speaking part in the Commedia, 145 verses (all of the next canto and the first three of VII).
It is as though Dante were playing with the conventions of his art. This self-conscious introduction, naming the intermediate unit of division (between cantica and verse) of the poem (canto – see Zygmunt Baranski [“The Poetics of Meter: Terza rima, 'canto,' 'canzon,' 'cantica,'” in Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies, ed. Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. {Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995}, pp. 3-41] for an appropriately theoretical consideration of this term) for the first time since Inferno XX.2 and XXXIII.90, makes Beatrice, as it were, the “author” of this canto (see De Fazio [“Paradiso V,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics {Lectura Dantis [virginiana], 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995}], pp. 74-75) and then, while interrupting her speech (and thus depriving her of her “record”), compares her to one who does not interrupt his or her speech. Such playfulness will be found again in the last verse of the canto, once more deploying the word canto in a self-conscious way.
Promised by Virgil (at Purg. XVIII.73-75), here begins Beatrice's disquisition on the freedom of the will, the property of, among all things in God's creation, angels and humans alone.
It is this passage that a virtual unanimity of contemporary Dante scholars believes is referred to in the famous tag “sicut in Paradiso Comoedie iam dixi” (as I have already said in the Paradiso of the Comedy [Mon. I.xii.6, tr. P. Shaw]), referring to God's gift of free will to humankind. After the work of Ricci, Mazzoni, and Shaw (see Hollander, Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], pp. 150-51), not to mention Scott (Dante's Political Purgatory [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996], pp. 51-52) and Kay (Dante's “Monarchia,” translated, with a commentary, by Richard Kay [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998], pp. xxiv-xxxi), giving probable cause for a date after 31 March 1317), there can be little doubt as to the genuineness of this passage, which probably dates the theologically minded political treatise as contemporary with the composition of the early cantos of Paradiso, and no earlier than 1314 (Mazzoni's estimate) and almost surely not as late as Padoan's choice of 1320. Mineo (“Canto VI,” in “Paradiso”: Lectura Dantis Neapolitana, dir. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1987}], pp. 90-92nn.), dates the composition of Canto VI to the second half of 1316. If he is correct, then a date of 1317 for Monarchia would be reasonable. This is a complex and vexed problem, one that cannot be said to be entirely resolved; however, whenever the treatise was written, it was almost certainly written between 1314 and 1321 (and nearly certainly – pace Padoan [Il lungo cammino del “Poema sacro”: studi danteschi {Florence: Olschki, 1993}, p. 116] – earlier between these poles rather than later), despite the recent claims of Palma di Cesnola (Questioni dantesche: “Fiore”, “Monarchia”, “Commedia” [Ravenna: Longo, 2003], pp. 43-46), for as early as 1313. In any case, neither set of previous arguments for an earlier composition, whether for a date preceding Henry VII's stay in Italy (1307 [Nardi]) or during it (1310-1313 [Macarrone, Vinay]), seems viable any longer.
For the most recent discussion of the dates of composition of the Commedia, with a helpful summary of the modern debate, begun by Francesco Egidi in 1927, see Enrico Fenzi (“Ancora a proposito dell'argomento barberiniano [una possibile eco del Purgatorio nei Documenti d'Amore di Francesco da Barberino],” Tenzone 6 [2005]: 97-119).
One wonders whether, without the account of the one-tenth of the angelic host who chose to rebel against their maker (for Dante's version of the event, see Par. XXIX.49-51), Dante would have felt the need even to discuss the attribution of free will to angelic intelligences.
Given the special status of the freedom of our will and given the nature of a vow to God, made freely (no other kind is acceptable), the free will itself becomes part of what is pledged, i.e., one sacrifices the right to will any differently in the future without forfeiting the vow. In a real sense it is a pledge to will no farther – at least with respect to the matter of a particular vow. The result is that one is not free to make substitution for what is originally promised, since that would be to replace the original sacrifice with something of less value, or simply to attempt to use again what had already been surrendered.
According to Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 26-27), Dante's rigorism with respect to the conditions for the substitution of that which was vowed is in polemic with the laxity in this respect of practitioners of canon law. Aglianò (“voto,” ED [V 1976], p. 1152a) tentatively suggests the possible influence of the Spiritual Franciscans on this notably overstated position, far in excess, as Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. to verse 54), of what was allowed by Aquinas (ST II-II, q. 88, a. 10-12).
The point of the argument, for which Beatrice prepares Dante with a certain urgency, is that there is no possible substitution for a vow, but that “Holy Church” (the sarcasm is stinging) does in fact allow such substitution.
These verses contain the core of Beatrice's position. Here is a portion of Carroll's discussion of them: “She draws a distinction between the matter of a vow, and the compact or agreement itself, the latter of which, as the previous discourse showed, could never be cancelled, save by being fulfilled. Even the Hebrews had still to offer, though sometimes the thing offered was allowed to be changed. Among Christians the surrender of the will in a vow must still be made, but in certain cases the 'matter' of the vow may be exchanged for something else. This commutation, however, is to take place under the strictest conditions. First of all, no man is at liberty to shift the burden at his own pleasure: since the vow is to God, only God's representative can alter it – 'both the white key and the yellow' [verse 57] must turn in the lock, the knowledge and the authority of the Church. Even the Church, in the second place, ought not to commute the 'matter' of a vow save for something else of greater value. In the Mosaic law, the increase of value was assessed at one-fifth; Dante raises it to one-half – the proportion is to be as four to six. It follows from this, in the next place, that there are some things of such supreme value that this exchange of a half more is impossible; and in this case there can be no commutation, far less dispensation. It is commonly assumed that Dante is here referring to the vow of chastity, which 'draws down every scale,' and can have no equivalent. The question is carefully discussed by Aquinas, who holds that even the Papal authority has no power to cancel this vow.”
Beatrice's discussion of the two elements of a vow now begins to modulate, and seems to mirror her earlier discussion of absolute and conditional will (see Par. IV.109-114 and note). Vows have two components, the vow itself (equivalent to the sacrifice of free will), like the absolute will, in that it may never acceptably be relinquished; and the thing vowed. We now realize that Beatrice has been hiding, in her urgent rebuttal of those clergy who want to keep their “customers” happy, the fact that there is a loophole in the laws regarding the second component of a vow, the beloved thing itself that is freely sacrificed.
The vow itself, the sacrifice of free will, may never be withdrawn except by being finally adhered to; this position is what results, Beatrice says, from her previous argument.
The last book of Leviticus repeatedly (27:13; 27:15; 27:19; 27:27; 27:31) sets the official rate of exchange: Whatever is put forth in substitution must be of twenty percent greater value.
Here we, for the first time, have an example of an acceptable substitution for something vowed, even if exactly what may be substituted is less than immediately clear, while its worth seems nitpickingly precise (120%). Reading these verses, Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 40-51) found himself reminded of Genesis 22:13, where Abraham substitutes a ram for Isaac as his sacrifice to his Lord: “sicut filius Abrae in arietem.” It is difficult to understand how a ram might be worth 120% of one's beloved son (unless we were to turn to some specific sons, as perhaps are found in the Princeton class of 1991), much less the 150% to which Beatrice will later raise the ante (verse 60). But such are the ways of God, not easily interpreted by us mere humans, whether we are by trade commentators or not.
Beatrice means that Dante should know these conditions from his knowledge of Leviticus.
And now Beatrice makes plain the rules governing allowable substitution in the “matter” of the vow: The new pledge's worth must be 150% (6 to 4) of what was first offered. This seems a nearly impossible condition to fulfill (and is even harsher than the condition imposed in Leviticus 27, as we have seen [see the note to vv. 49-51]) without trivializing the nature of the initial vow. It is probably fair to say that this is exactly Beatrice's (and Dante's!) point, for she wants essentially to ban all negotiations with God on the part of scheming prelates and, for that matter, of those selfish members of their flocks.
The two keys refer to mercy and justice (see the note to Purg. IX.117-126 and see Bosco/Reggio [comm. to Purg. IX.117-129]), as these are administered by the Church, through the power vested in its priests. One may not, in other words, take it upon oneself to decide exactly what is of greater value than the object first offered.
Beatrice now adds a sort of corollary to her previous instruction, warning us in indirect address (“Let not mortals take vows lightly”) not to make foolish vows that are better broken than kept. This constitutes a special case; it is clear that we are meant to consider most vows as being both wise and well intentioned.
Jephthah's keeping of his vow is joined with Agamemnon's equally disastrous pledge with regard to Iphigenia. Dante pairs a scriptural and a pagan source (cf. the similar proceeding at Par. IV.82-83, linking St. Lawrence and Mucius Scaevola) to underline his point. See Judges 11:30-40 and Cicero, De officiis III.25 (according to Moore [Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante {Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 [1896]}, p. 263]). But see also, as various commentators point out, Virgil (Aen. II.116-117) and Ovid (Metam. XII.27-38). Both Jephthah and Agamemnon make unexamined vows that result in the deaths of their daughters.
The reader may remember another family drama with similar result, the death, not of a daughter, but a mother (Eriphyle), killed by her son (Alcmaeon) out of filial piety: see Par. IV.100-108 and note.
This is the seventh and final occurrence of the word voto (vow) in Cantos III through V. For the first six see Par. III.30; Par. III.57; Par. III.101; Par. IV.137; Par.V.14; Par.V.26. Underlining how heavily it dominates the discourse in these cantos, its presence is found in only two other places in the rest of the poem (Inf. XXVIII.90; Par. XXXI.44).
For the troublesome word mancia, which, in modern Italian, usually refers to the gratuity left for someone who performs a service, see its only other use in the poem at Inferno XXXI.6, where it also would seem to mean “offering” or “gift.” Not all agree that this is what the word means in Dante. One alternative reading is based on the Old French word manche, with the meaning “assault,” “(military) encounter,” as Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 66) point out. They also remind us that St. Thomas, too, presents Jephthah as an exemplary maker of a foolish vow (ST II-II, q. 88, a. 2); Thomas cites St. Jerome: “He was only being foolish when he made such a vow, but he turned impious when he kept it.”
Iphigenia had to mourn her beauty because Agamemnon, her father, had promised to sacrifice the most beautiful thing to be born in his realm that year if Diana would grant favoring winds so that the Greek fleet might set sail from Aulis for Troy. From Dante's point of view, the vow itself is tinctured with worse things than foolishness, since Troy was the sacred birthplace of what becomes, after its destruction at the hands of perfidious Greeks, Rome. For an earlier and less frontal encounter with this classical matter, see Inferno XX.110-111.
For Dante's transposition of the tears of Jephthah's daughter, weeping for her lost youth in the mountains of her sorrow (Judges 11:37-38), to Iphigenia's cheeks, see Torraca (comm. to vv. 70-72).
Beatrice joins a second (and now direct address) to her last one (vv. 64-72), now specifically referring to Christians, who are ipso facto more guilty than the rest of humankind if they make foolish vows.
There is a continuing debate (if not one of particular consequence) about the precise meaning of this “water.” Some take it in the wider sense, i.e., Christians are warned not to take vows lightly in the hopes that they will “cleanse” them of guilt; others stay closer to the literal, seeing in acqua the cleansing holy water of easy absolution granted by an all-too-human priestly intercessor for an ill-considered vow. The following tercet would seem to support this second line of interpretation, which informs our translation, by implicitly calling into question the authority of such inept priests.
In such a reading the two verses thus would have a chronological relation: Christians should (1) be hesitant before reaching out for God's help by taking vows without due consideration of their ensuing indebtedness and then (2), once having made that initial mistake, not be so sure that all priestly intervention will work to release them from their lightly considered (but nonetheless binding) vows. This does seem to be the more likely meaning. If it seems that such a reading blurs the traditional Catholic view, one that protects the individual believer from the captious behavior of his or her priest, it should be remembered that a vow is a pact (see verse 28, above, and Par. XII.17) made directly by the individual with God Himself.
This tercet, if understood as a general statement, would badly undercut the role of the clergy in the human search for salvation, as a sort of Catholic version of each believer praying in his or her closet (albeit guided by the pope). The word “salvamento” occurs only here in the poem, and in final-rhyme position (where the poet's imagination is most forced, one admits, to find ingenious rhymes). Could it be used with a more limited sense? I.e., does it mean “solution” to a particular problem involving vows? This would be a difficult argument to sustain. Among the earliest commentators (e.g., Jacopo della Lana to these verses, interpreting “'l pastor de la Chiesa” as follows: “le predicazioni che vi fanno li pastori della Chiesa” [the preaching that the priests of the Church make for you]), the reading “'l pastor” was plural [“i pastor”]. However, Benvenuto's text was as ours, and he nevertheless interprets the singlular as a plural (comm. to vv. 73-78): “praelatos praedicantes et dirigentes vos” (prelates offering you direction in their preaching). Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 73-84) is the first to understand that this means the pope (and only the pope), but he seems totally comfortable with that meaning. In any case, and as Carroll suggests (comm. to vv. 64-84), what Dante, through Beatrice, is really saying is that vows are not necessary to salvation, that we should enter into them only with due consideration. Porena (comm. to this tercet) puts the matter with admirable concision: “Per salvare l'anima basta, invece, osservare i comandamenti di Dio, i precetti di Cristo nel Vangelo e i precetti della Chiesa guidata dal papa” (To save one's soul, on the other hand, it is sufficient to follow God's commandments, Christ's precepts, and those of His Church, guided by the pope).
See Carroll's gloss on this tercet (contained in his comm. to vv. 64-84): “Dante appeals to Christians to be on their guard against the wicked greed which will tell them that the Old and the New Testament and the Shepherd of the Church are not sufficient to salvation, and induces them to take vows under promise of an easy absolution for the breaking of them.”
The Jew (introduced to this subject at verse 49) living among Christians knows the Law, and therefore the rules regarding the making and keeping of vows, as well as they do; he is thus uniquely, among non-Christians, capable of recognizing their hypocrisy.
Here the poet presents himself as the “scribe” of Beatrice. (Mestica [comm. on this verse] looks back to two moments in the earthly paradise in which his lady requires such duty of him, Purg. XXXII.104-105 and XXXIII.52-54.) What, however, is lacking in some such comments, those which tend to emphasize Dante's loyalty to his beloved guide, is the force of the gesture, which reinforces his pose, one that makes him, not the inventor of a fiction, but the reporter of a series of actual encounters. In Paradiso X.27 Dante will again refer to himself as a scribe (scriba), only setting down (and not inventing) what has been revealed to him. This verse anticipates that gesture, presenting him as scriba Beatricis, seventy lines ago herself presented as the “author” of this canto (see verse 16). For the influential and ground-breaking study of the poet's self-presentation as “scriba Dei,” see Sarolli (Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], esp. pp. 215-16, 233-43, 335-36).
There is surprisingly much debate about the exact location of this brightness upon which Beatrice fastens her gaze. Suffice it to say that, since they are still beneath the Sun, that is a possible terminus; but where the universe is brightest is where God is, the Empyrean. Cf. the similar view expressed by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 85-87).
The ascent to the second heaven, that of Mercury, is, like all of the ascents from sphere to sphere, instantaneous, God drawing Dante and Beatrice up another level toward Him, as the use of the figure hysteron proteron at vv. 91-92 makes clear.
The nature of Dante's unasked questions, which some have attempted to puzzle out, is never made known. It is probably best simply to understand that he, naturally enough, has many of them.
Beatrice's increased joy at being, with Dante, closer to God makes even the immutable planet glow more brightly. If this is so, we are asked to imagine how much changed was mortal and transmutable Dante himself.
For the commentator Cristoforo Landino's sneaking admiration for the outlaw “science” of astrology, see Simon Gilson (“Tradition and innovation in Cristoforo Landino's glosses on astrology in his Comento sopra la Comedia [1481],” Italian Studies 58 [2003]: 48-74). He points out (pp. 68-70) that, in his commentary to this passage (vv. 94-96), Landino exhorts us to believe that Christians, more than those associated with any other religion, believe most earnestly in Mercury's planetary influence (because of the planet's association with the birth of Christ).
This simile immediately reminds the reader of the similar formal comparison that preceded the exchange between Dante and the souls who appeared to him in the Moon (Par. III.10-18), in a position parallel, that is, to this one's. There Dante believes that the forms he sees as though they were under water or glass are reflections of himself and of Beatrice. He avoids such Narcissistic error here, where he understands at once that these are souls that welcome him with love. We can see that, having experienced a single heaven, he has learned much about heavenly love.
Their loves are for one another in God. How will Dante help increase these? This line has been variously interpreted. It seems first of all true that these saved souls, finding a mortal in the heavens, know that they will help him become more holy by answering his questions and preparing him for Paradise, thus increasing the objects of their affection by one and the heat of their affection for one another. It also seems at least possible that they refer to a second future increase in their affections, for one another and for him, when he joins them after his death, one more to love and be loved in God.
This marks the last occurrence (of three) in this final cantica of the word ombra (shade), perhaps surprisingly used to indicate a saved soul. See the note to Paradiso III.34. Manuele Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005], pp. 84-86), discusses this verse as containing the last use of the word ombra to indicate a soul in the poem. From here on up, and beginning with Justinian, in a few lines (vv. 130-137), whose presence is so bright it erases his human features, it will be dispensed with.
The second address to the reader in Paradiso underlines the importance of the scene that will follow. Once we realize that we are about to encounter Justinian, we have some sense of heightened expectation; first-time readers are merely encouraged to pay close attention.
The speaker, as we shall learn in the next canto (verse 10), is the shade of the Roman emperor Justinian. His reference to Dante as “bene nato” (born for bliss) has Virgilian (and thus imperial?) resonance, in that in the Aeneid the hero is referred to as natus (meaning “son”) some three dozen times (see Hollander [“Dante and the Martial Epic,” Mediaevalia 12 {1989}]: 90 [n. 28]). He greets Dante, then, as the new Aeneas. See Andrea Robiglio (“Dante 'bene nato': Guido Cavalcanti e Margherita Porete in Par. V, 115,” L'Alighieri 26 [2005]: 45-62), surveying at length some classical and many medieval examples of the phrase, without mention of Virgil.
Justinian's words for triumph and warfare reflect his imperial background and concerns; here they have a modified sense, the triumph over death found in Christ and the Christian sense of militancy reflected, for example, in Job 7:1, “Life is a warfare,” cited by Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001, p. 24).
The light to which Justinian refers is the light of God's love for his creatures.
The poetic playfulness of the canto, so evident near its beginning and at its end (see the second part of the note to vv. 16-18), is present here as well, both in the rima composta “Dì, dì” (Say, say) and in the rapidly repeated sounds of di in these verses (“Dì, dì... credi come a dii... t'annidi”). Beatrice excitedly urges Dante (whose name happens to begin with that sound) on in his increasing hunger for knowledge of heavenly things. (For an even more exhilarated passage, see Paradiso VII.10-12.)
Why all these repetitions in the concluding verses of the canto? Here dì dì (pronounced, in order to rhyme with annidi and ridi, “dìdi”), and then in verse 138: chiusa chiusa, and in 139: canto canta? Does the device of anaphora (repetition) have a thematic purpose, mirroring things that can be represented only by themselves (as is the case with vows)? And we may also note that every rhyme word in vv. 121-127 ends in “i”; for the same phenomenon, see also Inf. XIII.55-61; Inf. XVIII.13-19; and Inf. XXIV.136-142, etc.
Whereas Dante could eventually make out the facial features of Piccarda (Par. III.58-63), as his ascent continues he is able to make out less of such detail in this next sub-solar heaven; then, in the last of them, in Venus, Charles Martel (whom he knew on earth as he did Piccarda [at least within the claims made in the poem]) is, unlike Piccarda, not recognizable, and makes it clear that he is simply not visible as himself to Dante's mortal sight (Par. VIII.52-54). Occupying a middle ground, as it were, Justinian's former facial features are all, with the exception of his eyes, elided by his joy. This may reflect a “program” for the gradual effacement of the signs of human personality in Dante's first three heavenly spheres.
Dante's two questions addressed to Justinian will be answered in the next canto at verses 1-27 and 112-126. His second question reflects his similar one to Piccarda (Par. III.64-66). Why is this spirit in so relatively low a sphere? Dante may have forgotten Beatrice's instruction in the last canto (Par. IV.28-36), which makes it plain that such heavenly gradation is only temporary. Or he may have grasped the point that temporary presence in a planet is part of God's universal plan for his instruction and wants to know more.
It was perhaps more than ten years earlier that Dante had compared the planet Mercury to the branch of knowledge known as dialectic (Conv. II.xiii.11): “The heaven of Mercury may be compared to Dialectics because of two properties: for Mercury is the smallest star of heaven, because the magnitude of its diameter is not more than 232 miles...; the other property is that in its passage it is veiled by the rays of the sun more than any other star” (tr. R. Lansing).
When the Sun finally overwhelms the cool temperatures that yield a mist through which we at times can look at its disk through that mediating layer, it burns that away, with the consequence that we now cannot look at this unveiled star, which seems wrapped in its own effulgence. Just so, Dante tells us, Justinian, the love he feels increased by Dante's affection for him and by his own for Dante, was swathed increasingly in his own light so that he, too, becoming brighter, became less visible as a human semblance. See the note to Paradiso V.107.
If anaphora has the result of intensifying the effect of what is said, here we confront two lines, each of which contains a repeated pair of words, chiusa chiusa and canto canta, a configuration that is perhaps unique in the poem. Justinian's dramatic appearance on the scene has been carefully prepared for (see the note to vv. 122-123).
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