The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  More than a thousand years before the grace of baptism was known, those maids you saw at the right wheel, stood for him in its place.

  Predestination! Oh how deep your source is rooted past the reach of every vision that cannot plumb the whole of the First Cause!

  Mortals, be slow to judge! Not even we who look on God in Heaven know, as yet, how many He will choose for ecstasy.

  And sweet it is to lack this knowledge still, for in this good is our own good refined, willing whatever God Himself may will.”

  In these words the blest emblem of that sphere gave me these gentle curatives of love with which my clouded vision was made clear.

  And as the skillful harpist, string by string, makes every cord attend on a good singer, adding a greater pleasure to the singing;

  so, I recall, that as it spoke to me these paradisal words, the holy lights of Trajan and Ripheus in sweet harmony,

  as if they blinked their eyes with one accord, made their flames pulse in time with every word.

  NOTES

  1-12. THE DAY AND NIGHT IMAGE AND THE HEAVENLY EAGLE. The metaphor is subtle but its essence simple. The symbolic eagle (as a unity projected by many blessed wills) stops speaking through its bill as a single entity and a hymn rings forth not from the eagle, but from the many lustrous beings who compose it. Each of these beings is now giving voice to its joy not through the symbol but from itself.

  This change Dante compares to the twin faces of the heavens: by day there is the one direct light of the Sun (a unity, as with the Eagle); by night there is the shining of many heavenly bodies, all of which (according to Dante’s astronomy) glow not from within themselves but by reflecting the light of the Sun (as these souls glow by reflecting God’s ray). our hemisphere: The land mass of the world, all of it north of the equator, and all contained in an arc of 180° from India to Spain. Thus, when the sun is 90° west of Spain it lights only the waters on the other side of the earth and all the land mass is dark.

  31. that part: The eye. The Eagle is once again speaking as a unified entity. The ancients believed that the eagle could look straight into the sun. Note that only one eye is mentioned. The symbolic eagle must be conceived as appearing in heraldic profile, despite the fact that it flew a circle around Dante’s head in the previous Canto.

  38. the sweet psalmist: David. See Inferno, IV, 58.

  40-42. The first thought here, a simple one, is that the measure of his present bliss (the reward being proportionate to the act) lets David know the true worth of his psalms. That thought is complicated by the parenthetical “insofar, etc.” Since the Holy Ghost moved in David, Dante seems to be saying, some of his psalms sprang from It, and his present bliss cannot be repayment to him for an act of the Holy Ghost. As Dante pointed out in VI, 118-120, part of the delight of each heavenly soul consists in knowing that his bliss is exactly equal to his merits.

  43. the one: Trajan. See Purgatorio, X, 70-90.

  48. he has known the bitter way: Trajan had been long in Limbo. See note to 106 ff., below.

  49-54. Hezekiah, offering a true repentance on his death bed, was allowed to live for fifteen more years (II Kings, xx, 1-11; II Chron., xxxii, 24-26; Isaiah, xxxviii, 1-7). now he knows: To what extent prayer may vary the preordained divine plan without altering it. These lines are best understood by referring to Purgatorio, VI, 28-51. Few readers will have remembered the point Dante left open in those lines, but Dante seems never to forget. To read him is to experience mind in extraordinary order.

  55-60. The Emperor Constantine. With the purest of intentions (so Dante’s version of it) Constantine ceded the Western Empire to the Church (the Shepherd) and moved his seat of Empire to Greece, bearing with him Roman law and “me” (the Roman Eagle). See Purgatorio, XXXII, 124-129; Inferno, XIX, 109-111, and notes.

  Constantine learns in Heaven that the evil consequences of a good action (or the good consequences of an evil action) do not change the nature of the original action—a point made by Aquinas in his Summa.

  62. William: William II (the Good), king of the Two Sicilies from 1166 to 1189. He was the last of the house of Tancred. In Dante’s time, the kingdom of Naples passed to Charles the Lame (XIX, 127) and the Kingdom of Sicily to Frederick II (XIX, 131). Sicily mourns its present evil as it mourns the passing of its happiness with the death of William.

  65. as he makes apparent: The degree of brilliance flashed forth by each soul is the measure of its relative bliss. William, by shining more brightly than most there, shows that he is more blest than most.

  68. Ripheus: Virgil mentioned him once (Aeneid, II, 426 ff.) as the one most just man among the Trojans and as the one who most loved the right. No more is known of him, and Dante is thus free (see below) to invent a pre-Christian conversion for him. sixth: Dante says “fifth” among those who make up the eyebrow. Beginning with David as the eyeball, such a count would rank Ripheus sixth among the souls of this sphere; and, rhyme dictating, I have so rendered the passage.

  89. see how: See how these things can be true.

  92. quiddity: I.e., “thingness” or “whatness.” In Scholastic terminology: “that which causes a thing to be what it is.”

  94-99. These paradoxes are, of course, the language of the mystery: God is unmovable but God is love and as love moves Him, He yields gladly to it, conquering by His act of love.

  102. and gift of Christ: Not in Dante’s text but necessary for the line and clearly implicit in what the Eagle is saying. Trajan and Ripheus, having been pagans, would not have had the gift of Christ’s redemption. It is for this reason that Dante marvels at finding them in Heaven.

  103-105. Ripheus and Trajan, as the Eagle will explain, did not “leave their bodies” as pagans but as Christians and firm believers, one (Trajan) in the pierced feet (the Crucifixion) that had already taken place; the other (Ripheus) in the Crucifixion yet to come.

  106-117. THE RESURRECTION AND CONVERSION OF TRAJAN. Dante follows a legend that Gregory I (Pope from 590 to 604 and later St. Gregory) prayed so ardently for the salvation of Trajan that God’s voice replied “I grant pardon to Trajan.” Since God so granted, it was, of course, predestined that he should so grant. Trajan, therefore, could never have been truly damned, for no prayer can help the damned. But since none may go from Hell to Heaven (with the exception of those souls Christ took with him in the Harrowing of Hell), it was necessary to restore Trajan to the flesh long enough to permit his conversion to Christ.

  108. living hope: Of Gregory.

  120. created eyes: Nothing God has created can plumb the mystery of its creator. Compare lines 130-132 below.

  121-129. THE CONVERSION OF RIPHEUS. Unhampered by any historical record, Dante creates a legend of Ripheus as a Christian before the fact. Granted a vision of Christ to come, he believed utterly and was saved. In place of baptism (over a thousand years before baptism came into being) the three maids who stood at the right wheel of the Chariot of the Church in the Pageant of the Terrestrial Paradise (i.e., the Three Theological Virtues) stood as his godmothers in some equivalent ritual. (V. Purgatorio, XXIX, 121 ff.)

  132. that cannot plumb: As, certainly, no human vision can. As even the chosen souls of Heaven cannot.

  135. how many He will choose: Had Dante cared to, he could have made a rather accurate guess as to God’s intention when he reached the Empyrean. In XXX, 128-132, he tells us that few seats are left open in Paradise (Judgment Day will take place when the last throne of Heaven is filled). And in XXXII, 25-27, he has St. Bernard point out the empty thrones, the number of which Dante might reasonably have guessed, though had he done so he would have found himself prophesying the end of the world within fairly tight limits, a prophecy Dante wisely chose not to utter. Poetry is, among other things, the art of knowing what to leave out.

  Canto XXI

  ASCENT TO SATURN

  THE SEVENTH SPHERE: SATURN

  The Contemplative:

  Peter Damiano

  BEATRICE AND DANTE ENTER the Sphere
of Saturn. BEATRICE DOES NOT SMILE in her new bliss to announce their arrival, for her radiance would then be such that Dante’s mortal senses would be consumed, as Semele was consumed by the Godhead of Jupiter. Rather, Beatrice announces that they are there and commands Dante to look into the crystalline substance of that Heaven for the vision he will see of the SOULS OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE.

  Dante turns and beholds a vision of a GOLDEN LADDER on which countless Splendors arise and descend wheeling like birds in flight. That host of the blessed descends only as far as a given rung, but one radiance among them draws closer to Dante and indicates by its radiance that it is eager to bring him joy. It is the soul of PETER DAMIANO, a Doctor of the Church, renowned for a severely ascetic life even in high Church office. Peter Damiano explains to Dante that THE MYSTERY OF PREDESTINATION is beyond the reach of all but God, and that men should not presume to grasp it. He concludes with a DENUNCIATION OF PAPAL CORRUPTION, and at his words, all the souls of Saturn fly down to form a ring around him and thunder forth HEAVEN’S RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION at evildoers. So loud is their cry that Dante cannot make out their words, his senses reeling at that thunderclap of sound.

  My eyes were fixed once more on my lady’s face; and with my eyes, my soul, from which all thought, except of her, had fled without a trace.

  She did not smile. “Were I to smile,” she said, “You would be turned to ash, as Semele was when she saw Jupiter in his full Godhead;

  because my beauty, which, as it goes higher from step to step of the eternal palace, burns, as you know, with ever brighter fire;

  and if it is not tempered in its brightening, its radiance would consume your mortal powers as a bough is shattered by a bolt of lightning.

  We have soared to the Seventh Splendor, which is now beneath the Lion’s blazing breast, and rays its influence, joined with his, to the world below.

  Now make your eyes the mirror of the vision this mirror will reveal to you, and fix your mind behind your eyes in strict attention.”

  Could any man conceive what blessed pasture my eyes found in her face when I turned away, at her command, to find another nurture—

  then would he know with what a rush of bliss I obeyed my heavenly escort, balancing one side and the other, that joy against this.

  Within the crystal that bears round the world the name of its great king in that golden age when evil’s flag had not yet been unfurled,

  like polished gold ablaze in full sunlight, I saw a ladder rise so far above me it soared beyond the reaches of my sight.

  And I saw so many splendors make their way down its bright rungs, I thought that every lamp in all of heaven was pouring forth its ray.

  As grackles flock together at first light, obeying a natural impulse to move as one to warm their night-chilled feathers in glad flight;

  after which, some go off and do not come back, others return to the points from which they came, and others stay with the flock in its wheeling track;

  —just such an impulse seemed to work among those sparkling essences, for they flocked together the instant they had reached a certain rung.

  One that came nearest where we stood below then made itself so bright I said to myself: “I well know with what love for me you glow!”

  But she from whom I await the how and when of my speech and silence, was still; and despite my yearning I knew it was well to ask no questions then.

  She saw in the vision of Him who sees all things what silence held my eager tongue in check, and said to me: “Give your soul’s impulse wings!”

  “O blessed being hidden in the ray of your own bliss,” I said in reverence, “I am not worthy, but for her sake, I pray,

  who gives me leave to question, let me know why you, of all this sacred company, have placed yourself so near me, here below;

  and tell me why, when every lower sphere sounds the sweet symphony of Paradise in adoration, there is no music here.”

  “Your sight is mortal. Is not your hearing, too?” he said. “Our song is still for the same reason Beatrice holds back her smile—for love of you.

  Only that I might make your spirit gladder by what I say and by the light that robes me, have I come so far down the sacred ladder.

  Nor was it greater love that spurred me: here as much—and more—love burns in every soul, as the flaming of these radiances makes clear.

  But the high love that makes us prompt to serve the Judge who rules the world, decrees the fate of every soul among us, as you observe.”

  “O sacred lamp,” I said, “I understand that in this court glad love follows the will of Eternal Providence, needing no command; but the further point I cannot grasp is this: why, among all these blisses with whom you dwell, were you alone predestined to this office?”

  Before I finished speaking, that lamp of grace like a millstone at full speed, making an axle of its own center, began to spin in place.

  And then the Love within the lamp replied: “I feel the ray of God’s light focused on me. It strikes down through the ray in which I hide.

  Its power, joined to my own, so elevates my soul above itself, that I behold the Primal Source from which it emanates.

  My bliss flames only as that ray shines down. As much of glory as I am given to see my flame gives back in glory of its own.

  But in all Heaven, the soul granted most light, the Seraph that has God in closest view, could not explain what you have asked to know.

  The truth of this is hidden so far down in the abyss of the Eternal Law, it is cut off from all created vision.

  Report what I have said when you are back in the mortal world, that no man may presume to move his feet down so profound a track.

  On earth the mind is smoke; here, it is fire. How can it do there what it cannot do even when taken into heaven’s choir?”

  I left that question, his own words having thus prescribed me from it; and, so limited, was content to ask him humbly who he was.

  “Not far from your own birthplace, row on row between Italy’s two shores, peaks rise so high that on them thunder sounds from far below.

  A humpback ridge called Catria rises there. Beneath it stands a holy hermitage once given entirely to meditation and prayer.”

  So, for the third time now, that soul of grace began to speak, continuing: “I became so rooted in God’s service in that place,

  I lived on lenten olive-food alone and bore both heat and cold indifferently, rejoicing ever more in contemplation.

  Once that cloister sent here, sphere on sphere, harvests of souls. Now all its works are vain as, soon now, righteous punishment shall make clear.

  I was Peter Damiano there, and became Peter the Sinner by the Adriatic in the abbey sacred to Our Lady’s name.

  Little was left me of my mortal course when I was chosen and summoned to wear the hat that seems forever to pass from bad to worse.

  Cephas, and the great ark of the Holy Ghost once came among mankind barefoot and gaunt, eating by chance, with charity as their host.

  But now your pastors are so bloated and vain they go propped on either side, with a man before and another coming behind to bear the train.

  They cover even their mounts with the cloaks they wear so that two beasts move under a single hide. O Heavenly Patience, how long will you forbear!”

  As he spoke these words, I saw more ardors yearning downward in circling flight, from rung to rung; and grow more radiant with every turning.

  Round him they came to rest, and all burst forth in unison of love: a cry so loud the like of it has not been heard on earth.

  Nor could I understand it, for the peal of that ominous thunder made my senses reel.

  NOTES

  5. as Semele was: Semele loved Jupiter (Zeus) and Juno (Hera) tricked the girl into begging Jupiter to show himself to her in the full splendor of his godhead (as the other gods saw him). Semele was consumed to ash by that radiance. (See Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 253 ff., and Inferno, XXX, 1-2, note.)

  13-15. the Seventh Splen
dor: The Seventh Heaven (Saturn). Once again the arrival is instantaneous. For the reasons given, Beatrice does not manifest the new bliss by smiling, but simply announces that they have arrived. the Lion: The Constellation Leo. Dante describes Saturn as being in conjunction with Leo, as in fact it was in parts of March and April of 1300. Thus the influence of Leo is mixed with that of Saturn.

  17. this mirror: The Sphere of Saturn. All the spheres are, in one sense, crystalline reflectors of God’s light. In another sense, of course, they let the light through undiminished, but such differences are of the mystery. Dante uses the same figure for the sun in Purgatorio, IV, 62.