Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  140. The phrase fissi e attenti (fixed and intent) is repeated here for the third time. We heard it first in Purgatorio II.118, used in malo, for Dante and the newly arrived souls who are seduced by Casella’s song and require Cato’s reprimand in order to get back on their path toward God. It then appears in Purgatorio XXXII.1, where it describes Dante’s gaze, fixed on Beatrice, trying to slake his ten-year “thirst” for her presence. That repetition was perhaps intended to counter the first instance, the context of which was the song that Dante had composed in favor of Beatrice’s rival, the Lady Philosophy (her identity at least according to the Convivio [first at II.xii.9]). Now it is used a second time in bono, here referring to Dante’s new “lady,” the Virgin. Unlike the last one, this ocular gesture does not reflect the rejection of one lady in favor of another. In Heaven there may be no marrying, but there is no limit to the number of objects of one’s affection. [return to English / Italian]

  PARADISO XXXII

  * * *

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

  Perhaps the most compelling gloss to this opening word of the canto is found in Aversano’s commentary (Aver.2000.2), p. 165. He, as did several modern commentators before him (e.g., Mestica and Mattalia [comms. to this verse]), traces the source of affetto to the past participle of the verb afficere, with the resulting sense of being affixed, or conjoined. Aversano attributes this sense of the word to St. Bernard on two occasions (PL CLXXXIII.1297, CLXXXIII.1384). [return to English / Italian]

  2–3. Porena (comm. to vv. 1–2) suggests that Bernard does not interrupt his personal adoration of Mary in order to carry out his new responsibility, as doctor (teacher), but names the inhabitants of the Rose from memory. This task, along with allied concerns, will occupy vv. 4–87 of the canto.

  As Aversano points out, the adjective santo (holy) occurs more often in this canto than in any other. In fact, it occurs here seven times. [return to English / Italian]

  4–18. For discussion of Dante’s choice of the Hebrew women he included in the Rose, see Di Scipio (Disc.1983.2). See also the remarks of Carroll (comm. to vv. 8–10). [return to English / Italian]

  4–6. Dante’s use of the trope hysteron proteron is widely noticed. It offers an “instant replay” run backward, undoing the universal effect of the wound of Original Sin, incurred by Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit, when Mary gave birth to Jesus. Mary’s position in the Rose, seated with Eve at her feet, reinforces that understanding. [return to English / Italian]

  8. Jacob’s first and second wives, Leah and Rachel, as we saw in Purgatorio XXVII.100–108, represent (as they were traditionally understood as doing) the active and the contemplative life, respectively. Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 166, points out that, according to Richard of St. Victor, in his Benjamin major (PL CXCVI.62), Rachel, as the first stage of contemplation, dilatatio (expansion), an identity she shares with Beatrice, yields to the second stage, represented by the son she died giving birth to, Benjamin, or sublevatio (i.e., being raised up), who has a counterpart in the poem, of course, in Bernard, Dante’s Benjamin. That state in turn yields to alienatio (ecstasy), the passing beyond human limits to experience things as they are in themselves, absolute reality. Aversano also cites PL CXCVI.52 and CXCVI.170. [return to English / Italian]

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

  It does not seem to have caught the attention of any commentator that Beatrice’s name appears in the ninth verse of the canto, that is, accompanied by her identifying (and trinitarian) number. Beatrice is named here for the sixty-second time. (For the last, see Par. XXXIII.38. Her name thus occurs over a span of ninety-nine cantos [her first nominal appearance is in Inf. II.70].) See the note to Purgatorio XV.77.

  Costa (Cost.1996.1), p. 70, makes a telling point: Beatrice’s presence in the Rose scotches any attempt to conclude that her status in the poem is merely “allegorical.” [return to English / Italian]

  10. Sarah, Rebecca, and Judith were among the Old Testament heroines harrowed by Christ. Sarah was the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac; Rebecca, the wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob; Judith, the savior of the Jews from Assyrian captivity when she murdered Holofernes (see Purg. XII.58–60). [return to English / Italian]

  11–12. Ruth is identified only by periphrasis and in her role as the great-grandmother of David, also indicated by periphrasis. He is represented by his sins of adultery and murder (Bathsheba and Uriah), the setting for Psalm 50 (51), Miserere mei (Have mercy on me), which served as the text of Dante’s first spoken words as character in the poem (Inf. I.65). For the meaning of David for Dante, see the notes to Purgatorio X.65 and Paradiso XX.37–39. And see Carroll’s discussion of a common theme behind at least most of Dante’s choices (comm. to vv. 1–48), which offers another reason for the reference to David: “[T]hey were all regarded as types of the Church, and they are for the most part ancestresses of Christ according to the flesh (Rachel and Judith alone are not in the direct line of our Lord’s ancestry. Judah, through whom the descent flows, was a son of Leah; and Judith had no children [Judith 16:22]): Ruth, for example, is described as the bisava, the great grandmother, of David, for the purpose, apparently, of indicating the descent of the Virgin, and therefore of her Son, from that king. The manner in which David is referred to—‘the singer who for sorrow of his sin said Miserere Mei’ (Ps. 51 [50]:1)—while apparently irrelevant to the question of descent, is in reality closely connected with it. Matthew 1:6 states plainly that ‘David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias.’ The reference therefore to David’s repentance for his great sin, so far from being irrelevant, suggests in the most delicate way the continuation of the descent through Solomon.” [return to English / Italian]

  13–15. Bernard indicates many more saints than we actually hear him name; therefore, we probably assume, the poet’s selection of the eighteen who are named is not casually arrived at. [return to English / Italian]

  16–21. These Hebrew women, the seven whom we have just heard referred to by name or by periphrasis, are only the beginning of a long line down the Rose (until we would come to the first Hebrew female child, we assume) that separates pre-Christian and Christian saints. As Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 166, points out, neither Eve (obviously not a descendant of Abraham) nor Ruth (who was from Moab) can properly be considered Hebrews, despite Dante’s insistence.

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

  25–33. Dante once again insists on the absence of some saints-to-be in the Christian half of the Rose (the only place for which he specifies th
e eventual tenant is the throne destined for Henry VII [see the conclusion of Par. XXX]). He also refers to semicircles in order to alert us to the fact that there will be a matching descending line, one composed entirely of males, beneath John the Baptist. To Mary’s left and John’s right sit the Hebrew saints; to her right and to his left, the Christian ones. It is not stated, but seems clear, that we are to picture two different semicircles, with the midpoint of their arcs located at Mary and John, containing male saints (beneath Mary) and female saints (beneath John), except for the bisecting line, which is gendered as is each of them. See the chart in the note to vv. 37–39. [return to English / Italian]

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

  32–33. For John’s holiness, see Luke 1:15: “and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb”; for his martyrdom, see Matthew 14:3–12, Herod’s beheading of John; for his period in Limbo before he was harrowed, see Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 31–33), being more precise: “between twenty and twenty-one months.” [return to English / Italian]

  34–36. If Dante’s treatment of Augustine remains one of the most puzzling aspects of his poem, he himself is to blame; he seems deliberately to conceal his debt to Augustine (see the note to Par. XII.130). Once Dante studies became more “scientific,” in the nineteenth century, we might have expected that a great “detective” of Dante’s reading habits, Edward Moore, would have started to set things right in this respect. However, when he takes up this subject in Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante (Moor.1896.1), pp. 291–94, he is both tentative and hesitant, lest he overstate the importance of Augustine to Dante. Here are his concluding words (p. 294): “I must confess, in conclusion, that I have not been able as yet to investigate the question of Dante’s probable acquaintance with the works of St. Augustine nearly as fully as the subject seems to deserve. I am continually coming on fresh points of resemblance. There is, however, always this element of uncertainty, that many of his theories or arguments are reproduced by Aquinas, …” One does not want to blame Moore for the general underappreciation of Augustine’s importance for Dante. Nonetheless, the great scholar’s hesitance undoubtedly affected others, who felt excused thereby from studying the problem as carefully as it “seems to deserve.” For better appreciations, if not the central study that is still badly needed, see Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), passim; Newman (Newm.1967.1); Fallani (Fall.1976.1); Freccero (Frec.1986.1), especially pp. 1–15; Mazzotta (Mazz.1979.1), esp. pp. 147–91; Wingell (Wing. 1981.1); Took (Took.1990.1); Hawkins (Hawk.1991.2). Like Hawkins, Sarteschi (Sart.1999.1) believes that there is a widespread and often unacknowledged interaction between the texts of Augustine and those of Dante.

  Augustine knew that imperial Virgil had to be resisted publicly and spiritedly, and yet he makes his Confessions a sort of epic Mediterranean countervoyage (see Hollander [Holl.1969.1], p. 12 and n.), in which the pivotal municipal moment occurs not in an imperial monument in Rome but in a church in Milan. And if the text is seemingly a-Virgilian, even anti-Virgilian, it is nonetheless studded with Virgilian references. If that sounds suggestive of Dante’s later treatment of Virgil in his Christian epic, the differences are perhaps not so very great.

  See the note to Paradiso XII.130 for discussion of the appearance of Augustine’s name (but not the saint) in Paradiso X and XII. And see Seem (Seem.2006.1), p. 82, pointing out that these two nominal presences arouse our expectations, but when Augustine finally does appear (Par. XXXII.35), he is only a word from hitting the cutting-room floor, as it were, to be included, unbeknownst to us, among the unnamed others (e altri) seated in the Rose. This close call (and Dante’s playful game with the reader over Augustine’s fate in the Dantean afterworld) may possibly be explained by the fact of Augustine’s strenuous opposition to the imperial (and republican) Roman ideal. Thus the Augustinian tale of two cities, which extols the City of God and its embattled earthly precursor, the Church Militant, but has no room for the empire in its worldview, is the work of an enemy. There is no question but that Dante knew Augustine’s work and admired it deeply—as theology, but even as theology only up to a point, for that theology permeates his historical vision, and vice versa. And the point that divides these two thinkers is Rome. [return to English / Italian]

  35. See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse): Dominic is not here only because his Order used the Augustinian Rule and the three others mentioned here, Augustine, Benedict, and Francis (to name them in chronological order), each composed the Rule for his Order. Others have tried to wrestle with the apparently slighting omission of reference to Dominic here, made all the more troublesome by the fact that in Convivio (IV.xxviii.9), Dante refers to Benedict, Augustine, Francis, and Dominic (in that order). There they are exemplars of the religious life. Among the early commentators, only Francesco da Buti apparently felt that the omission required comment. He revisits Thomas’s insistence (Par. XI.40–42) that what is said in praise of one (Francis) is to be understood equally of the other (Dominic). The few others who tackle the problem do not suggest more convincing hypotheses than that offered by Bosco/Reggio. [return to English / Italian]

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

  37–39. John Carroll (comm. to vv. 1–48) was perhaps the first to claim that the arrangement of the named souls might have an iconographical effect: “It is not likely to be accidental that the Rose is thus blessed with the sign of the Cross on each side.” The design formed in the Rose by those who are named is possibly reminiscent of the T or tau, the emblem of the cross so important in the iconography of St. Francis, as Fleming, among others, has demonstrated (Flem.1982.1), pp. 99–128. Francis knew that Ezechiel (9:4) had said that the faithful would all be marked with the tau on their foreheads and took it as his particular version of the sign of the cross.

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

  Montanari (Mont.1974.1), p. 256, points out the symmetries in the arrangement of this seating plan of Heaven; the stadium is divided into corresponding zones by the following six groups, further sorted into three pairs: Old Testament, New Testament; Men, Women (both of these groups on horizontal axes); Adults, Infants (on a vertical axis).

  Since our subject is Dante, it will come as no surprise to the reader to learn that even this diagram (above) is controversial. While there is consensus among some, perhaps expressed in the clearest and briefest terms by Pernicone (Pern. 1965.1), p. 109, there is a surprising amount of disagreement over what seems close to self-evident. Among the issues found variously among the discussants are the following: (1) Do the indications “left” and “right” (vv. 121–124) indicate directions from the protagonist’s perspective or from (respectively) the Virgin’s and John’s? (2) Does Dante consider Lucy and Anne as figures who should be present in the “Christian” or “Jewish” section of the Rose, and has he botched his placement of them as a result? (3) How many rows are there in this celestial stadium?

  (1) There are intensely held views on either side of this issue. For a discussion of these, see Russi (Russ.1968.1), pp. 1176–87, who devotes a major portion of his lectura to a labored attempt at resolving the directional indications in the canto. Picone (Pico.2002.8), p. 494, is matter-of
-fact in declaring that we are seeing them from the perspective of Dante’s left and right. Such a view would require that the reader imagine the post-Advent saints as seated to Mary’s left, and those pre-Advent to her right. It is true that the poet does not make their disposition clear, leaving us to deal with the question. On the other hand, placing the New Testament figures to Mary’s left would seem an implausible choice. God would not be so rude a host to these heroes of Christianity in forming His Eternal Seating Plan.

  (2) The question of the arrangement of the two souls on either side of John the Baptist (see vv. 133–138) has also been strangely controversial. Several commentators contrive to put Lucy to John’s right, believing her a pre-Christian figure. Russi (Russ.1968.1), p. 1187, accepting this arrangement, goes on to argue that she is not the historical Lucy, but a symbol of illuminating grace. (It is surprising how long it was until a commentator treated Lucy as historical, the third-century martyr from Syracuse; the first appears to have been Portirelli [comm. to vv. 136–141] in the early nineteenth century. Did his precursors really believe that Dante had granted an allegory a seat in Heaven, in which it would eventually wear its own flesh?) The situation barely improves in more recent times, when, even after Lucy of Syracuse has entered the commentary tradition, some moderns revert to the age-old error.

  (3) Picone (Pico.2002.8), p. 495, discussing verses 16–18, which enumerate the seven levels of the stadium down from Mary through Ruth, goes on to extrapolate from that passage an erroneous supposition, namely, that there are only that many rows in the upper half of the Rose. From that assumption he (only logically) calculates that the lower half (the kindergarten, as it were) must be comprised of the same number of rows (seven). However, what we know does not accord easily with his hypothesis. See, for the vast upward expanse of the Rose, Paradiso XXX.115–118 and XXXI.73–75 (where we learn that Beatrice, not even in the highest rank of the Rose, is at a distance even greater than that between the lowest point on earth and the farthest reach of its atmosphere). If we were to accept Picone’s calculations, we would have to understand that a mere twelve rows of the Rose rose upward in that vast a space. (Not to be preferred are other attempts at numerical precision, even if they seem properly more grandiose. See, for instance, Russi, p. 1169, citing G. Barone in 1906 as having calculated the rows as numbering 1,290.) Indeed, the text itself makes it quite clear that there are more Hebrew women beneath Ruth, forming the dividing line. (What it doesn’t tell us is whether the line stops at the halfway mark [see the note to vv. 40–48] to be continued by female Hebrew babies, or whether, as at least Singleton believes, it goes all the way to the Rose’s “floor” [see the note to vv. 16–21]). Further, if Dante accepted, at least as an approximate guide, the canonical 144,000 who make up the citizenry of the Empyrean (see the notes to Par. XXX.103–108 and Par. XXXI.115–117), Picone’s fourteen rows would each need to seat more than ten thousand souls. To be fair, he was led to this view by his arguably possible interpretation of the word soglie (either “seats” or “tiers”; he chooses the former). That, however, is to neglect the clear significance of the word soglia at Paradiso XVIII.28, which clearly illuminates the next use of the word at verse 13 of this canto; in both these uses Dante is fairly obviously referring to “rows” and not individual “seats.” Perhaps the rhyme position helps explain the use he made of an expanded meaning of the word.