The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  19-24. A graciously turned devotion. The thought is complex yet sweetly balanced. Sense: “Could the reader begin to imagine how sweet it was to feast my eyes (like lambs in blessed pasture) on the beatitude of Beatrice’s face, then he might understand how sweet it was to obey even her command to turn away from such bliss to find another.”

  25-27. the crystal: The Sphere of Saturn. It bears around the world the name of Saturn, who was the world’s king in the Golden Age of man before sin had appeared among mankind.

  28-42. THE VISION OF THE HEAVENLY LADDER. “And he dreamed, and beheld a ladder set up on earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.” So Genesis, xxviii, 12, describes Jacob’s ladder. Here, however, Dante adapts it to his own purposes, placing it within the crystal of the Sphere of Saturn, describing it as being made of blazing gold (to signify the worth of the contemplative soul? as the height of the ladder signifies that soul’s ascent to the top of heaven?).

  The normal course of the contemplative soul would, of course, be to ascend rather than to descend the ladder. Love, however, remains a first principle, and to welcome Dante and Beatrice in purest love, these souls descend joyously, though forever rising again, to return to their natural height of bliss.

  42-45. a certain rung: Dante offers no further specifications. The rung seems simply to fix a point below which these souls (whose natural impulse is to rise) choose not to descend at first, though one spirit does draw closer (as, later, all do). This first spirit indicates, by the increase of his radiance, the love it feels for Dante, and its readiness to offer him any service, though protesting that its love is no greater than that of any other soul of this host.

  43. And one: St. Peter Damiano (1007-1072), as he will later identify himself. He was never officially canonized though he was venerated in Ravenna. He was, however, officially pronounced a Doctor of the Church. His many writings enjoin strict monastic rules and mortification of the flesh.

  Born in Ravenna, he became a Benedictine and entered the Camaldolese house at Fonte Avellana in 1035, became prior about 1043, and Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia in 1057 or 1058, accepting his elevation, as all reports agree, against his own inclination, and continuing in every high office a life of monastic severity.

  46-51. Beatrice’s allegorical role as Divine Revelation is especially relevant here. Looking into the vision of all-seeing God, she sees Dante’s yearning and gives him permission to speak to the waiting soul.

  52-60. DANTE’S QUESTIONS. With Beatrice’s permission, Dante asks the spirit, first, why it was chosen to come closer than the others, and, second, why there is no heavenly harmony to be heard in this Sphere, since all the Spheres below ring with joyous singing. The second question, being the more important, is answered first (lines 61-63), and then the first (lines 64-72).

  67-69. The reply may, perhaps, best be taken as an example of heavenly modesty. At the same time, however, it is partly a statement of fact: all souls in heaven are glorious with love (as the radiances about the poet make clear), and since Peter Damiano is not the foremost soul in Heaven, there are those whose souls will shine more brightly than does his.

  70-72. These lines are, in effect, Dante’s way of introducing the theme of predestination, which will be discussed later. If the language is difficult, the difficulty lies not in the language itself but in the fact that the concept is unusual and necessarily abstruse. Peter Damiano explains that he descended farther than the other souls because he was predestined to by the will of God. In so saying, he makes clear that every action of all these souls, as each goes up and down the ladder, is similarly predestined. Every heavenly soul, in the grace of love that is granted to it, is a glad servant of the Divine will that assigns the fate of each.

  And here, certainly, is the extension of what Virgil foresaw dimly in Purgatorio, XXVII, 140-143, in telling Dante he was free to follow his own inner impulse. “Here,” Virgil says, “your will is upright, free, and whole.” At the Paradisal level, however, glorified by revelation, Dante makes it clear that it is not a matter of the individual will but of joyous identification with the service for which God has predestined each soul. (Cf. III, 85: “In His will is our peace.” See also XX, 130 ff.)

  74. this court: The court of Heaven.

  75. Eternal Providence: It may be well, in this discussion of predestination, to remind some readers that “providence” derives from Latin pro, before, and videre, to see. Note also that the heavenly souls need not be commanded to follow God’s foreseeing and predestined will: this glad love suffices to move them in concord with God.

  79-81. Before I finished speaking: Before the last three words of line 78. It is at the sound of the word “predestination” that the soul of Peter Damiano begins to spin for joy. Dante does not specifically say that it went on spinning as it talked, but he does describe the soul as beginning to spin, and he does not say that it stopped. The spinning seems an aptly Dantean way to indicate great joy. The soul, moreover, goes into a trance in which it has a direct vision of God; and the spinning might well serve as an established symbol of the trancelike state (cf. “whirling dervish”). There is also the thematic precedent of the grackles in whirling flight, whereby the act of spinning becomes a motif of this Canto. Allegorically, too, it may be said that the contemplative soul revolves around its own center (which is, of course, love).

  For all these reasons, I think the soul of Peter Damiano should be visualized as spinning on through the rest of the Canto, whirled round and round in a glorious vision of God.

  82-90. PETER DAMIANO’S VISION OF GOD. Speaking in a trance of bliss, spinning for joy in the rapture of its vision, yet moved by heavenly Love to share its joy with Dante, the soul explains that it is experiencing a vision of God, who focuses His ray into the ray in which the soul hides. (Dante says “in which I embowel myself,” i.e., embody myself, and I have been unable to render this felicity.) As has been explained in XIV, 40-42, this is God’s grant of grace, and the soul shines brighter to the extent that grace enables it to reflect God’s ray.

  96. created vision: The vision of which any created thing is capable. Only God’s un-created vision can plumb the mystery of predestination. And if the truth is beyond the highest soul in Heaven—as Peter Damiano goes on to say—how can the feeble mind of man think to reach to it? For this reason, he charges Dante, upon his return to the world, to warn men away from presuming to know the unknowable (for such a presumption would involve the sin of pride).

  99. to move his feet: As a hunter does.

  104-105. so limited, was content: The question of the soul’s identity is not a trivial one. In due observance of fit proportion, however, it has to be recognized as a lesser matter than the abysmal mystery of predestination.

  109. Catria: Lies between Gubbio and Pergola. Below it (the “holy hermitage”) stands the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana of the Camaldolese rule (established at Camaldoli about 1012 by St. Romualdo). This rule minimized the community organization of the monastery but established a particularly severe rule for the individual monks.

  115-118. lenten olive-food: Olive oil being common in Italy, and butter and lard (like all animal products) being expensive, and therefore luxurious, lenten food (“cibi di liquor di’ulivi”) was prepared in nothing but olive oil. Here we should probably understand a diet of simple crusts dipped in olive oil. Even at that, Peter Damiano seems to be suggesting that he ate high on the ecclesiastical hog: Rohrbacher’s “Ecclesiastical History” (cited by Scartazzini) gives the diet of the order as plain bread and water for four days of each week, with a few greens added on other days, and with such feasting regularly interrupted by days of fasting. both heat and cold: the rule required the monks to go barefoot.

  120. as . . . righteous punishment shall make clear: As everyone in Heaven seems to do, Peter mourns for the good old days when Fonte Avellana sent whole harvests of monks to heaven (and particularly, one may infer, to Saturn, which
is the kingdom of the contemplative). Now, however, the saintly rule has been corrupted, and since God’s justice will not long tolerate such a state of affairs, that corruption shall be made manifest by the punishment God shall, soon now, send down upon it.

  121-123. This tercet has been a scholar’s battleground and reputations have fought and died over the question of its proper punctuation and of its relevance to the historical record, such as it is. Civilian readers need only know that Peter went by both names, adopting the second as an act of piety (he had adopted the first in gratitude to his brother, who had made possible his education), and that he went to Ravenna (“by the Adriatic”) as a papal emissary. He lived there for two years in the monastery of Santa Maria Pomposa.

  124. little was left me of my mortal course: Peter became a cardinal in 1057 or 1058. He died in 1072.

  125-126. the hat: Of a cardinal. In passing from one wearer to another, it seems forever to go from a bad man to a worse—another lament for the corruption of the times.

  127. Cephas: The name Christ gave to Simon, who became Peter. The word means “rock” in Hebrew, as “pietra” does in Italian. “Pietro” being the masculine form of the word used as a man’s name. Cf. “founded on a rock.” the great ark of the Holy Ghost: St. Paul.

  130. pastors: Can only mean “Popes” here—those who fill the offices once held by the pastors Peter and Paul. The parish priests of Dante’s time may have eaten better than did Peter Damiano, but they did not move about with a great retinue, a warder out in front to clear the way, servants and officials on either side to press back the throng, and a trainbearer following to carry the trailing skirts of their opulent robes.

  136-138. yearning . . . and grow more radiant: So moved by their renewed joy in the justice of Peter Damiano’s denunciation; for their love of what is good and their righteous indignation at what is evil are a conjoined impulse in them. They proceed to cry out like thunder against the evils Peter Damiano has condemned, their cry so loud that Dante’s senses reel at the thunderous sound and are unable to make out the words of the cry. Heaven has no other voice in which to speak of evil. Such, on the Paradisal level, is righteous indignation. Cf. Inferno, VIII, 43 and note.

  Canto XXII

  THE SEVENTH SPHERE: SATURN

  The Contemplative:

  St. Benedict

  ASCENT TO THE SPHERE OF THE FIXED STARS

  THE EIGHTH SPHERE: THE FIXED STARS

  Dante Looks Back

  at the Universe Below

  DANTE’S SENSES STILL REELING, he turns to Beatrice, who reassures him, and prophesies that he will live to see GOD’S VENGEANCE DESCEND ON THE CORRUPTORS OF THE CHURCH. She then calls his attention to the other souls of this sphere. Looking up, Dante sees A HUNDRED RADIANT GLOBES, one of which draws near and identifies itself as the heavenly splendor that had been ST. BENEDICT.

  Benedict explains that the Golden Ladder, like the contemplative life, soars to the summit of God’s glory, and he laments that so few of his Benedictine monks remain eager to put the world behind them and begin the ascent, for they are lost in the degeneracy of bad days. Yet God has worked greater wonders than would be required to restore the purity of the Church.

  So saying, Benedict is gathered into his heavenly choir of radiances, and the whole company ascends to the top of the sky and out of sight.

  Beatrice then makes a sign and Dante feels himself making the ASCENT TO THE EIGHTH SPHERE, THE SPHERE OF THE FIXED STARS. But before the souls of that Sphere are revealed to him, Beatrice bids him look back to see how far she has raised him. Dante looks down through the Seven Spheres in their glory, seeing all the heavens at a glance, and the earth as an insignificant speck far below. Then turning from it as from a puny thing, he turns his eyes back to the eyes of Beatrice.

  My sense reeled, and as a child in doubt runs always to the one it trusts the most, I turned to my guide, still shaken by that shout;

  and she, like a mother, ever prompt to calm her pale and breathless son with kindly words, the sound of which is his accustomed balm,

  said: “Do you not know you are in the skies of Heaven itself? that all is holy here? that all things spring from love in Paradise?

  Their one cry shakes your senses: you can now see what would have happened to you had they sung, or had I smiled in my new ecstasy.

  Had you understood the prayer within their cry you would know now what vengeance they called down, though you shall witness it before you die.

  The sword of Heaven is not too soon dyed red, nor yet too late—except as its vengeance seems to those who wait for it in hope or dread.

  But look now to the others. Turn as I say and you shall see among this company many great souls of the Eternal Ray.”

  I did as she commanded. Before my eyes a hundred shining globes entwined their beams, soul adding grace to soul in Paradise.

  I stood there between longing and diffidence and fought my longing back, afraid to speak for fear my questioning might give offense.

  And the largest and most glowing globe among the wreath of pearls came forward of its own prompting to grant the wish I had not given tongue.

  These words came from within it: “Could you see, as I do, with what love our spirits burn to give you joy, your tongue would have been free.

  To cause you no delay on the high track to the great goal, I shall address myself to none but the single question you hold back.

  The summit of that mountain on whose side Cassino lies, once served an ill-inclined and misted people in their pagan pride.

  And I am he who first bore to that slope the holy name of Him who came on earth to bring mankind the truth that is our hope.

  Such grace shone down on me that men gave heed through all that countryside and were won over from the seductions of that impious creed.

  These other souls were all contemplatives, fired by that warmth of soul that summons up the holy flowers and fruits of blessèd lives.

  Here is Romualdus, and Maccarius, too. Here are my brothers who kept within the cloister and, never straying, kept hearts sound and true.”

  And I to him: “The love you have made clear in speaking as you have, and the good intent I see in all the glories of this sphere, have opened all my confidence: it grows and spreads wide on your warmth, rejoicing in it as does, in the Sun’s heat, a full-blown rose.

  I therefore beg you, Father: can I rise to such a height of grace that I may see your unveiled image with my mortal eyes?”

  And he then: “Brother, this shall be made known in the last sphere. Your wish will be answered there where every other is, including my own.

  There, every wish is perfect, ripe, and whole. For there, and there alone, is every part where it has always been; for it has no pole,

  not being in space. It is to that very height the golden ladder mounts; and thus you see why it outsoars the last reach of your sight.

  The patriarch Jacob saw it, saw it mount to lean on that very sill, that time he dreamed it covered with angels beyond all mortal count.

  To climb it now, however, none makes haste to lift his feet from earth. My rule lives on only to fill the parchments it lays waste.

  The walls that were retreats in their good hour are dens for beasts now; what were holy cowls are gunny sacks stuffed full of evil flour.

  But even compound usury strikes less against God’s will and pleasure, than does that fruit whose poison fills the hearts of monks with madness.

  For all the goods of the Church, tithes and donations, are for the poor of God, not to make fat the families of monks—and worse relations.

  The flesh of mortals is so weak down there that a good beginning is not reason enough to think the seedling tree will live to bear.

  Peter began with neither silver nor gold; I, with prayer and fasting. And Brother Francis in humble poverty gathered souls to his fold.

  And if you look at the origins of each one, then look again at what it has become, you will see that what was white has changed to
dun.

  Yet Jordan flowing backward, and the sea parting as God willed, were more wondrous sights than God’s help to His stricken church would be.”

  So did he speak; then faded from my eye into his company, which closed about him, and then, like a whirlwind, spun away on high.

  And my sweet lady with a simple sign raised me along that ladder after them, conquering my nature with her power divine.

  There never was known down here, where everything rises or falls as natural law determines, a speed to equal the motion of my wing.

  Reader, so may I hope once more to stand in that holy Triumph, for which I weep my sins and beat my breast—you could not draw your hand out of a tongue of flame and thrust it back sooner than I sighted and had entered the sign that follows Taurus on Heaven’s track.

  O glorious constellation! O lamp imbued with great powers, to whose influence I ascribe all my genius, however it may be viewed!