ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Well here we are at the end of another week of Shed Hell, we have four days left to get the last of the stuff out of the shed (and have of course left the hardest stuff till last) and I haven’t written my review of Robin Jenkins The Cone Gatherers or Geoffrey Dutton’s The Eye Opener.  Dante, however, must not be deferred because I am determined to do the last one next week.  So onward!

Following on from my previous posts about the Purgatorio; the Inferno; and the Paradiso, we now continue the Paradiso using Volume 3 of Mark Musa’s excellent translation and notes.

Canto XVII

Canto XVII is prophetic, more than Dante the Poet knew or may have hoped for.

Beatrice tells Dante the Pilgrim to release the flame of his consuming wish and so he asks his illustrious ancestor Cacciaguida about what his own fate will be.  He explains that

While I was still in Virgil’s company,
climbing the mountain where the souls are healed,
descending through the kingdom of the dead

ominous words about my future life
were said to me… (Canto XVII, Lines 19-22)

And his great-grandfather tells him what lies in store: betrayal, injustice and exile.

As Hippolytus was forced to flee from Athens
by his devious and merciless stepmother,
just so you too shall have to leave your Florence.

So it is willed, so it is being planned,
and shall be done soon by the one who plots
it there where daily Christ is up for sale.

The public will, as always, blame the party
that has been wronged; vengeance that Truth demands,
although shall yet bear witness to the truth.

You shall be forced to leave behind those things
you love most dearly, and this is the first
arrow the bow of your exile will shoot.

And you will know how salty* is the taste
of others’ bread, how hard the road that takes
you down and up the stairs of others’ homes.

But what will weigh you down the most will be
the despicable, senseless company
whom you shall have to bear in that sad vale;

and all ungrateful, all completely mad
and vicious, they shall turn on you, but soon
their cheeks, not yours, will have to blush from shame.

Proof of their bestiality will show
through their own deeds! It will be to your honour
to have become a party of your own. (Canto XVII, Lines 46-69)

* Here’s a little snippet that Musa doesn’t mention in the Notes.  He does, of course, explain that Dante will know the sadness of depending on others for food and lodging, and that is true.  But it’s also a reference to the fact, established in the Middle Ages, that after a tax dispute with Pisa, Tuscans did not (and still don’t) put salt in their bread.  So these words in the prophecy alert Dante the Pilgrim and all those who read or heard The Divine Comedy in its day, to the sad reality that Dante the Poet is destined to be homeless far beyond his native Tuscany, where even the bread — the staff of life — will be alien to him.

These poignant words seem more like a curse than a prophecy, but Cacciaguida goes on with some words of comfort.  He tells the Pilgrim that his first host will be the great Lombard, who is identified by Musa as Bartolommeo della Scala of Verona, and Dante will not need to beg from him:

and he will hold you in such high regard
that in your give and take relationship
the one will give before the other asks. (Canto XVII, Lines 73-75)

And not only that, Dante can expect good things from the Lord’s son who will affect the fate of many men, rich men and beggars changing their estate. Cacciaguida goes on to say that Dante will have a future that will outlast them all:

No envy to your neighbours should you bear,
for you will have a future that endures
far longer than their crime and punishment. (Canto XVII, Lines 97-99)

Dante, Beatrice & Cacciaguida by Francesco Scaramuzza

And that is certainly true.  Dante did, literally, outlive his nemesis Pope Boniface VIII, but his fame has lasted for centuries.

Canto XVIII

Dante is pondering the bittersweet fate that lies in store, when Beatrice commands him to look at her eyes filled with Divine Love and think other thoughts.  As he does so, he is transported from the rosy glow of the fifth sphere of Mars to the silvery sixth sphere of Jupiter.

What does C S Lewis have to say about the medieval view of the planet Jupiter?

Jupiter, the King, produces in the earth, rather disappointingly, tin; this shining metal said different things to the imagination before the canning industry came in. The character he produces in men would now be very imperfectly expressed by the word ‘jovial’, and is not very easy to grasp; it is no longer, like the saturnine character, one of our archetypes. We may say it is Kingly; but we must think of a King at peace, enthroned, taking his leisure, serene. The Jovial character is cheerful, festive yet temperate, tranquil, magnanimous. When this planet dominates we may expect halcyon days and prosperity. In Dante wise and just princes go to his sphere when they die. He is the best planet, and is called The Greater Fortune, Fortuna Major. C S Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (pp. 91-92). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.)

It seems to me that Dante focuses more on justice than joviality, and that he is interested in a somewhat muscular version of justice, but we shall see…

Soldier-souls cast their light to spell the words: Diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram. These words mean ‘Love justice, you who judge the earth’ and they come from The Book of Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha. More lights descend, singing, and they form the neck and head of an eagle. (Ok, the artist who created the image below for an illuminated manuscript used blue instead of silver, but if he took the opportunity to use the most expensive paint for his wealthy patron, why not?)

Dante and Beatrice ascending to the Heaven of Jupiter

From Line 120 Dante addresses his bitter thoughts about the Pope, who has forgotten the words of Saints Peter and Paul who died/to save the vineyard you despoil. 

Canto XIX

Ah, ok, the Eagle has some discouraging news: man is weak, but not so weak that he doesn’t see that its own Principle/is far beyond what our eyes can perceive.

And so the vision granted to your world
can no more fathom Justice Everlasting
than eyes can see down to the ocean floor:

while you can see the bottom near the shore,
you cannot out at sea; but nonetheless
it is still there, concealed by depths too deep. (Canto XIX, Lines 58-63)

So no, he’s not going to answer Dante’s enduring question: what justice is there in damning a good soul who, through no fault of his own, has not heard of Christ and has not been baptised?  Indeed, the eagle gets quite cranky and — dare I say it of a heavenly creature? — rather abusive towards poor old Dante, who is, after all, only asking a question which has bothered theologians and ordinary believers for centuries.

Now who are you to sit in judgement’s seat
and pass on things a thousand miles away,
when you can hardly see beyond your nose?

The man who would argue fine points with me,
if holy Scripture were not there to guide us,
surely would have serious grounds for doubt.

O earthbound creatures! O thick-headed men!
The Primal Will, which of Itself is good,
never moves from Itself, the Good Supreme. (Canto XIX, Lines 79-87)

There is more of this, but you get the drift.  Don’t ask impertinent questions.

Dante and Beatrice before the Eagle of Justice

Canto XX

Ah, here we get Champions of Justice on earth:

• King David
• the Emperor Trajan
• Hezekiah
• the Emperor Constantine a.k.a. Constantine the Great
• King William II of Naples and Sicily
• the Trojan Ripheus (who gets a mention in Virgil’s Aeneid)

Did you notice?  There’s a couple of pagans in that list, and Dante has the temerity to ask ‘how come’? The eagle delivers another (not quite so mocking) putdown:

‘I see you believe these things are true
because I say them, but you see not how;
thus, though they are believed, their truth is hid.

You do as one who apprehends a thing
by name, but cannot see its quiddity
unless someone explains it for his sake.

Trajan

Musa explains that there was a legend that Pope Gregory prayed so hard for Trajan to be redeemed because he consoled a grieving mother (see Purgatorio, Canto X, Lines 73-93) that he was brought back to life, baptised pronto and was therefore redeemed.

For Ripheus, let’s quote from Wikipedia here (footnotes and unnecessary links removed):

In his Divine Comedy, Dante placed Ripheus in Heaven, in the sixth sphere of Jupiter, the realm of those who personified justice.

Here, he provides an interesting foil to Virgil himself—whom Dante places in the first circle of Hell, with the pagans and the unbaptized—even though Virgil is a major character in the Commedia and for much of it remains Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory. Although Ripheus would historically have been a pagan, in Dante’s work he is portrayed as having been given a vision of Jesus over a thousand years before Christ’s first coming, and was thus converted to Christianity in the midst of the Trojan War.

So Ripheus gets a leave pass a thousand years before Christ, while Virgil is left among the pagans in Hell. Some justice, eh? I do not believe that Dante the poet-philosopher was satisfied with this, and chose these examples to show just how random Divine Justice appeared to be.

Let’s have some music.  Gustav Holst was more interested in Jupiter as the planet bringing jollity.

Canto  XXI

Gosh, this is one of those sudden transitions.  We’re in the Sphere of Saturn, which is the transition point between the six lower spheres (see the diagram of the hierarchy of the heavens here) and those above: we’re nearly at the Sphere of the Fixed Stars and after that it’s the Primum Mobile!

Again I turn to C S Lewis:

Saturn. In the earth his influence produces lead; in men, the melancholy complexion; in history, disastrous events. In Dante his sphere is the Heaven of contemplatives. He is connected with sickness and old age. Our traditional picture of Father Time with the scythe is derived from earlier pictures of Saturn. A good account of his activities in promoting fatal accidents, pestilence, treacheries, and ill luck in general, occurs in [Chaucer’s] The Knight’s Tale (A 2463 sq.). He is the most terrible of the seven and is sometimes called The Greater Infortune, Infortuna Major.  (ibid p. 91). 

Beatrice’s beauty is now so radiant that if she were to smile at Dante he would become like Semele because mortals cannot look upon the gods and he would be burned to a heap of ashes. As Musa says, Beatrice is both regal and threatening.  (Isn’t it a bit sacrilegious to portray her as a goddess??)

Here Dante gets another warning not to be presumptuous.  He wants to know why there is no music in this sphere (I’d like to know that too); why can’t Beatrice smile without inflicting disaster; and why is it this soul (who turns out to be Peter Damien) that welcomes him and not some other. The souls whirl about him but there is no explanation other than that humans are too mortal to bear such magnificence, and Dante should not ask.

Yet even heaven’s most illumined soul,
that Seraph who sees God with keenest eye,
could not explain what you have asked to know.

The truth you seek to fathom lies so deep
in the abyss of the eternal law,
it is cut off from every creature’s sight.

And tell the moral world when you return
what I told, so that no man presume
to try to reach a goal as high as this. (Canto XXI, Lines 94-99)

This warning not to seek to know for fear of Divine punishment held back Christian thought for centuries.  It led to ‘witches’, great thinkers and inventors being burnt at the stake.  This impression is reinforced by an overwhelming shout at the end of the canto.

Arvo Pärt‘s Te Deum (1984) seems to suit this stern invocation of perils in store for the unwary Dante.

Beatrice reverts to her ‘motherly’ role and reassures Dante that the deafening shout, had he been able to understand it, was about the just vengeance about to befall the corrupt clergy in his own lifetime. And now Saint Benedict, the founder of monasticism (who has a great deal to say about the corruption of his ideals) arrives to escort them up the ladder to the next sphere: the sphere of the fixed stars.

Here they are in an image I found at Facebook on the page of Gruppo Panini Cultura. It is annotated:

Dante and Beatrice are in the Eighth Sphere of the Fixed Stars so there are stars all around them. Dante is in the constellation of Gemini, his own zodiac sign. Above you can see the sign of Taurus and below that of Cancer. Beatrice shows Dante the long path he has travelled:

“Rimira in giù, e vedi quanto mondo / sotto li piedi già esser ti fei”
“Look down and see what a universe I have / Already contrived to put beneath your feet,”
(Canto XXII, 128-129)

Canto XXIII

And now, the arrival of the Church Triumphant! The light of Christ shines down and now Dante can look upon Beatrice — though once again he has to leave it undescribed:

If at this moment all the tongues of verse,
which Polyhymnia and her sisters nourished
with their sweet milk, sang to assist my art,

their singing would not come to one one-thousandth
part of the truth about her sacred smile
nor how it set her holy face aglow;

so I find that my consecrated poem
describing Paradise will have to make
a leap, like one who finds his road is blocked.

Now bear in mind the weight of my poem’s theme,
think of the mortal shoulders it rests on.
and do not blame me if I stagger here:

this stretch of sea my vessel’s prow now dares
to cut is not place for a little boat
nor for a captain who would spare himself. (Canto XXIII, Lines 55-69)

And lo! now he can also look upon the brightest of the remaining lights, the Virgin Mary.

…who is crowned by a torch borne by an angel who circles the Virgin summoning her to follow her Son to the highest sphere.  They ascend while all the souls of the Church, their arms stretched towards the heaves, begin to sing with unforgettable beauty the hymn Regina celi. (Musa, p.271)

Here’s a lovely rendition of Regina Caeli (Queen of Heaven):

Canto XXIV

Have you ever wondered how St Peter decides who to let in at the Gates of Heaven? This canto tells us.  When Beatrice asks him to test Dante on his faith (not because it’s necessary but so that he can glorify it), St Peter asks him to define Faith, and Dante answers, also pointing out that it is the nature of mortal men not to have everything revealed to them:

Faith is the substance of those hoped-for things
and argument for things we have not seen.
And this I take to be its quiddity.  [essential nature] (Canto XXIV, Lines 64-66)

Then he is asked if he possesses faith:

he added: ‘Now that you have thoroughly
examined both this coin’s alloy and weight,

tell me, do you have such coin in your purse?’
I answered, ‘Yes I do, so bright and round,
I have no doubt as to its quality.’ (Canto XXIV, Lines 83-87)

So then St Peter asks about the source of that faith and how he knows it is valid, to which Dante replies:

…’The bountiful
rain of the Holy Spirit showering
the parchments, Old and New, is to my mind

unquestionable certainty of Faith,
so accurate that any other proof
compared to it would sound most unconvincing.’ (Canto XXIV, Lines 91-96

And he goes on to say that he knows The Old and New Testaments is proven by the works that followed them: Nature’s hand/ could never heat or forge that kind of iron.’ 

Since Dante gets all the answers correct, the souls sing Te Deum Laudamus while St Peter blesses him.

Next week, Cantos 17-24, i.e.  the Primum Mobile and the Empyreum! 

 Progress so far:

• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 2013 edition translated by Clive James, with help from Jason M Baxter #1 Getting Started
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 2013 edition translated by Clive James, #2 Introduction, Cantos 1-2
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #3 Cantos 3-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #4 Cantos 9-17
• The Divine Comedy by  Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #5. Cantos 18-26
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #6 Inferno, Cantos 27-34
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #7 Purgatory, Introduction
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #8 Purgatory, Cantos 1-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #9 Purgatory, Cantos 9-16
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #10 Purgatory, Cantos 17-23
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #11 Purgatory, Cantos 24-29
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #12 Purgatory, Cantos 30-33
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #13 Paradiso, Cantos 1-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #14 Paradiso, Cantos 9-16
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #15 Paradiso, Cantos 17-24

See also

• Botticelli and the Divine Comedy
• The Discarded Image, An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C S Lewis (1964)
• The women who appear in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ are finally getting their due, 700 years later

References:

• The Divine Comedy: Translation, Notes and Commentary by Mark Musa,
  • Vol 1, Inferno, 2003 new edition of the 1984 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1971 by Indiana University Press, ISBN 9780142437223
  • Vol 2, Purgatory, 1985 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1981 by Indiana University Press, ISBN: 9780140444421
  • Vol 3, Paradise, 1986 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1984, by Indiana University Press ISBN 9780140444438. The illustration on the front over is from William Blake’s ‘St Peter and St James with Dante and Beatrice’, illustration for Canto 25, held at the NGV in Melbourne.
• The Divine Comedy translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with illustrations by Gustave Doré and an Introduction by Melinda Corey; Barnes and Noble edition 2008, ISBN: 9781435103849
• The Divine Comedy translated and with an Introduction by Clive James, Picador Poetry edition, 2013, ISBN 9781447244219
• A Beginners Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy by Jason M Baxter, Baker Academic, 2018, ISBN: 9781493413102, Kindle edition  ASIN: B0752RVZ6R
• The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C S Lewis, Kindle edition ASIN B08TCJZP5N
• The Sleepwalkers, by Arthur Koestler, The Danube Edition, Hutchinson, 1968 first published 1959 ISN: 090502515
• The Essential Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, The Softback Preview, 1999, first published in this translation in 1871, ISBN: 9781582880129
• The Dante Course, a series of lectures presented by Prof. Teodolinda Barolini, Lorenzo da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University, 2015-6 online

Image credits:

• Dante, Beatrice & Cacciaguida by Francesco Scaramuzza: https://www.meisterdrucke.ie/fine-art-prints/Unbekannter-K%C3%BCnstler/1490065/In-the-Sphere-of-Mars,-Dante-meets-the-spirit-of-his-ancestor-Cacciaguida.-Illustration-of-the-Canto-XV-of-Paradiso-of-The-Divine-Comedy-of-Dante-Alighieri.-Work-of-Francesco-Scaramuzza-dedicated-to-the-Municipality-of-Florence.html
• Dante and Beatrice ascending to the Heaven of Jupiter (Public Domain Image Archive, British Library): https://pdimagearchive.org/images/1fac5747-7648-4312-b7ea-4af743cf9318/
• Dante and Beatrice before the Eagle of Justice: (Public Domain Image Archive, British Library) https://pdimagearchive.org/images/d9f8f8a0-5702-4f91-ace0-2925012d634e/
• Bust of Trajan: By Unknown artist – This image has been extracted from another file, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92490685
• Dante and Beatrice are in the Eighth Sphere of the Fixed Stars: at Facebook on the page of Gruppo Panini Cultura.

It’s been a quiet week on the blog due to a domestic crisis involving the drinks fridge.  For the benefit of readers overseas, the Australian drinks fridge is a small fridge that supplements the one in the kitchen.  It lives outdoors in a shed or similar, and is used only when entertaining or dealing with the overflow of comestibles during the Festive Season or other celebratory occasions.

Ours, alas, developed a leak.  A leak unnoticed till we noticed a certain ‘sponginess’ in the shed’s flooring.  A sponginess verging on rot in places hidden by Miscellaneous Stuff for which garden sheds are designed i.e. tools, a workbench used mainly for putting things on or under, canvas outdoor chairs that don’t like to be outdoors, paint tins, spare bathroom tiles, packets of nourishing stuff for the plants, two filing cabinets holding musical arrangements, a didgeridoo, bits of kinked garden hose in case we need them, and fishing rods that have not been used for over a decade (or ever caught a fish when they were).  The floor therefore has developed a certain level of peril for the unwary, necessitating the de- and then re-construction of the entire shed, including replacement of the flooring. And a very hefty hit to the bank balance.

All this has involved removing Everything that’s in the shed to Somewhere Else i.e. the garden, with tarps over it all, because Melbourne’s weather is guaranteed to bring heavy rain at some stage.  Even as the job is as yet unfinished on account of this week’s extreme heat (42°C) which has limited outdoor activity to the very early hours of the morning.

I am not complaining. I know how lucky I am to have this First World Problem.  Bushfire season is upon us and our hearts are with those who have lost everything. As I write, three people are still missing, and our hearts are with their loved ones too.  However I am tired, because my ageing heart is not very good at what needs to be done, and thus #Understatement my reading has been desultory.  Today’s TDC is a welcome break from it all…

Following on from my previous posts about the Purgatorio; the Inferno ; and the Paradiso, we now continue the Paradiso using Volume 3 of Mark Musa’s excellent translation and notes.

Canto IX

Where are we?  Having refreshed my memory of Dante’s Ptolemaic astronomy with the diagram in my previous post, we can see that we are still in the sphere of Venus, the sphere of Heaven for souls who capitulated to immoderate passion, but

Having possessed ardent and magnanimous natures, however, they did not become lost in carnality, but performed beneficent works and never turned from God.  (p.99)

Charles Martel (see Canto VIII) whose successors look to be in for a bad time, has departed, but Clemence, his wife,  doesn’t know about this prophecy and Dante the Pilgrim has been asked not to tell her.

Fair Clemence, once your Charles had said these words
for my enlightenment, he then informed me
of future plots against his progeny,

but said, ‘Say nothing, let the years go by,’
and for this reason I can only say
that those who do you wrong will pay with tears.  (Canto IX, lines 1-6)

There’s holy light emanating from these souls but we are in the dark about why she can’t be told.

Next up is Cunizza da Romano, sister of Ezzelino the Tyrant. Below, you can see her with Folquet of Marseille, denouncing the corruption of the church to Beatrice and Dante. According to Wikipedia, Cunizza was a formidable woman, who freed her father’s slaves when the opportunity arose, but also had a legendary string of marriages (four) and liaisons (two) behind her, including a love affair with a troubadour called Sordello who abducted her to prevent her being taken hostage in some political shenanigans. She makes some predictions too, foreshadowing that Paduan blood/ and soon, will stain the waters of Vincenza/ because the people shunned their duty there. 

Folquet, it seems, was a bit of a lad, but repented and became Bishop of Toulouse.  Like Beatrice, he can read the Pilgrim’s mind, and Musa explains why and how in the Notes…

Since the souls in heaven are one with God, they share His omniscience, their vision becoming fused with His.  It is therefore possible for them to penetrate Dante’s thoughts. (p.114)

Folquet identifies a nearby soul as Rahab, the Whore of Babylon, and explains that she’s in the Sphere of Venus because she too repented, joined a religious order and impressed her seal upon it at the highest rank. 

So it looks as if a ‘lively’ love life is ok, as long as repentance is timely enough…

BTW The artist who did this gorgeous illuminated manuscript (1444–50, held in the British Library) is Giovanni di Paolo of the C15th Sienese School. It must have been done for a very wealthy client because all that colour blue must have cost a fortune.  I’m guessing that the presence of Satan bribing a bishop is not meant to imply that he is there in Heaven too; I think this is a case of the medieval artistic mindset depicting two different events taking place at different times and places, as if (to our modern eyes) the events were contemporaneous with each other.

Canto X

I am bit miffed by this canto.  Dante has progressed to the Sphere of the Sun where there is much singing and dancing.  No more souls with negative characteristics, this canto is bristling with theologians and thinkers who have only positive influences to show off.  But there isn’t any music.  Here’s Dante in the the realms of the Blest with the Souls of the Wise, and pfft! Dante’s excuse for my disappointment is feeble IMO:

In heaven’s court from where I have returned
there are some jewels too precious and too rich
to be brought back to Earth from out that realm,

and one such gem — the song those splendours sang:
who does not grow the wings to fly up there,
awaits these tidings from the tongueless here. (Canto X, Lines 70-75

So the music of Heaven is too sublime for him to name it, eh?

An academic called William T Mahr has made a study of music in the Paradiso, and has this to say:

Unlike the Inferno and Purgatorio, the Paradiso seems to be suffused with continuous music, one that is inherent in the unending motions of the heavens. In the Paradiso, however, there is also much mention of the absence of sound. There are at least fifteen instances that describe a person or a group suddenly falling into silence, either as a natural conclusion of a speech, or unexpectedly as a momentary interruption of music.
[…] the purpose of these sudden and unexpected cessations of music is that they are types of the greatest antitype of the poem, the silence of God—the only entity transcending the two fundamental conditions of any music: time and motion.

Well, whatever about that, I have found a ballata, by the 14th century composer and poet Francesco Landini, which Musa thinks is what Dante had in mind with his burning suns which circle round him and Beatrice:

Canto XI

Oh, no, now even the dance is ended! The dancing circle of souls comes to a standstill when St Thomas turns up to explain about the mendicant orders of the medieval age, i.e. orders which take a vow of poverty as did their founders St Francis and St Dominic.  First he tells the love story of St Francis and Lady Poverty, but concludes with a denunciation of his own order for their degeneracy.

St. Francis Weds Lady Poverty by Giotto, Basilica of Assisi.

Musa’s notes explain that some of the poetry is glorious (in Italian, that is) and maybe that was Dante’s intention, to make his readers and listeners focus on the beauty of words.

But we can’t do without music to accompany my reading of the Paradiso, so here’s some modern day Dominican friars singing Salve Regina:

And some Franciscans with Gregorian chants…

Canto XII

Canto XII begins with two concentric circles of light, the spirits reflecting each other in harmony.  The outer circle represents the wisdom of the Dominicans and the inner circle the love for which Franciscans were known. This canto is a parallel version of the previous canto.  St Bonaventure — the prominent Italian Catholic Franciscan who held high office as a bishop and a cardinal, and was a theologian and a philosopher who thought the existence of God could be proven with logic — repays St Thomas’s courtesy with the story of St Dominic.

St Bonaventure himself may not have taken the vow of poverty entirely to heart if this painting is anything to go by. The colour red symbolises a lot of things but poverty isn’t among them.

#PiecesOfTrivia

• #1: The name Dominic is the Latin genitive (possessive) of ‘Dominus’ meaning Lord, so Dominic means belonging to the Lord.
• #2 St Bonaventure is the patron saint of bowel disorders.
• #3: There are dozens of religious institutions named after St Bonaventure, including one in Australia not listed at Wikipedia, it’s St Bonaventure’s College in Brisbane.

The Whore of Babylon (C14th, France)

#Digression: On the subject of ‘red’ and its symbolism, this depiction of the Whore of Babylon, for a 14th century illuminated manuscript of the Book of Revelation shows her in a demure blue dress, but her undergarment is red, and so is her steed.  Likewise, she’s wearing a red cloak and headdress in Giovanni di Paolo’s illustration for an illuminated manuscript, and her corrupt companion, the bishop collecting a bribe, also has a red cloak, see above.   But the angel’s wings are red in the French illustration, so what does that signify??

PS On p156, Musa builds on a diagram from p.129, to depict the double circle of souls so that all the Souls of the Wise and Learned are identified:

• The examples of great love are listed in the inner circle: St Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Gratian, Peter Lombard, Solomon, Dionysius the Areopagite, Orosius, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Richard of St Vitor and Siger of Brabant;
• The wise are listed in the outer circle: St Bonaventure, Illuminato, Augustine, High of St Victor, Peter Mangiador, Peter of Spain, Nathan, St Chrystostom, St Anselm, Donatus, Rabanus, and Joachim.

Canto XIII

This canto begins with eleven laudatory tercets about the magnificence of the constellations.  There’s singing, but Dante (again) doesn’t tell us which hymn it is, only that they are exalting the Holy Trinity.

No Bacchic hymn or Paean did they sing,
but of three Persons in one God they sang,
and in One Person human and divine. (Canto XIII, Lines 25-27.)

Well, obviously we need a Medieval Drinking Song for Bacchus, so that we know what they were not singing, right?

A-hem. Let’s get back on track…

St Thomas speaks up again, this time to clarify that when he referenced Solomon, it was about God giving the most wisdom ever to a king, not to a man, because God gave the most wisdom ever to Adam and Christ when he created them. [#FeministTwitchOfAntennae: Eve not mentioned!] He goes on to warn against making hasty judgements and not to try to second-guess God’s decisions.

Opinions formed in haste will oftentimes
lead in a wrong direction, and man’s pride
then intervenes to bind his intellect.

Worse then useless is to leave the shore
to fish for truth unless you have the skill;
you will return worse off than when you left. (Canto XIII, Lines, 118-120)

Dante couldn’t have been thinking of the Google searches that conspiracy theorists do, but it apples all the same, eh?

Canto XIV

More concentric circles!  There’s mathematics going on throughout the Paradiso, but that doesn’t interest me much.  I’m more interested in the reappearance of Beatrice (who’s been there, presumably, but quiet for a while), and in Dante rising to the Sphere of Mars.

Dante and Beatrice ascending into the Sphere of Mars by Gustave Doré (colourised)

(I am undecided about colourised versions of Doré’s etchings.  My instinct is that one ought not interfere with an artist’s work.  But it does make it easier to see what’s going on in the picture. Feel free to comment!)

Ok, Beatrice first.  She asks, on Dante’s behalf, will the brilliant light of these souls remain with them after the resurrection of the body.  The answer is yes.

Next, how is Dante going to tackle the Sphere of Mars?

What was it that CS Lewis had to say about Mars in The Discarded Image?

Mars makes iron. He gives men the martial temperament, ‘sturdy hardiness’, as the Wife of Bath calls it (D 612). But he is a bad planet, Infortuna Minor. He causes wars. His sphere, in Dante, is the Heaven of martyrs; partly for the obvious reason but partly, I suspect, because of a mistaken philological connection between martyr and Martem.  C S Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Chapter V, p. 92). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

He also says…

It may well be asked how, in that unfallen translunary world, there come to be such things as ‘bad’ or ‘malefical’ planets. But they are bad only in relation to us. On the psychological side this answer is implicit in Dante’s allocation of blessed souls to their various planets after death. The temperament derived from each planet can be turned either to a good or a bad use. Born under Saturn, you are qualified to become either a mope and a malcontent or a great contemplative; under Mars, either an Attila or a martyr. (ibid, p 101)

Dante chooses martyrs…

The first thing Dante sees is the Crucifixion, but he can’t describe it:

But who takes up his cross and follows Christ
will pardon me for what I leave unsaid
beholding Heaven’s whiteness glow with Christ. (Canto XIV, Lines 106-8)

There is a tantalising reminder that the Heavens are alive with music, but we cannot hear it since we weren’t there:

And as the viol and harp, their many strings
tuned into harmony, will ring out sweetly
even for the one who does not catch the tune

so from the spread of lights along the cross
there gathered in the air a melody
that held me in a trance, though I could not

tell what hymn it was— only that it sang
of highest praise: I heard ‘Arise’ and ‘Conquer’
as one who hears but does not understand.  (Canto XIV, Lines 118-126)

Canto XV

It has never occurred to me before, but I suppose for people of faith, there might be anxiety about the fate of one’s ancestors in the afterlife.  In this canto, Dante encounters his great-great grandfather Cacciaguida, who tells him that his great-grandfather Alighiero is on the first terrace of Purgatory, and that he must pray for him.

Indeed he must, because we remember that the first terrace is the Terrace of Pride, where Dante and Virgil met the soul of Omberto Aldobrandesco whose pride ruined his entire family. He cannot go wth them to the next terrace because he must be purged of his sin, and is prevented by this stone/ that curbs the movement of my haughty neck/ and makes me keep my face bent to the ground.

Once again Giovanni de Paolo shows us two different events taking place at different times, within the same frame.  On the left Cacciaguida in a circle of light, with Dante and Beatrice; and on the right, Cacciaguida’s prideful son Alighiero bent to the ground.

Dante and Cacciaguida by Giovanni de Paolo

Cacciaguida goes on with a lament for the old days of Florence, when things were simpler, when women did not wear lavish clothes and jewels, and houses too large to live in were not built.  People were content to wear plain leather, and their wives to handle flax and spindle all day long.  (I bet.)

Cacciaguida ended his days fighting the Saracen in the Second Crusade, which gave him automatic entry to this Sphere of Heaven as a martyr.  (We are still in Sphere of Mars, remember!)

Dante and Beatrice in the sphere of (a rather martial) Mars, by Giovanni di Paolo

Canto XVI

Dante is, unsurprisingly, proud of his ancestor and asks Cacciaguida to tell more about his own forefathers.

Tell me then, cherished source from which I spring,
about your own forefathers, who they were;
what years made history when you were young. (Canto XVI, Lines 21-24)

Cacciaguida does, and unsurprisingly, he lets forth on the corruption of Florence, noting that Dante himself has been a victim of it and those responsible for that were admired and honoured.

And we see a rare example of how Dante the poet admits to the pain of exile and the end of joy in his life:

The House that was the source of all your tears,
whose just resentment was the death of you
and put an end to all your joy of life

was highly honoured as were all its clan. (Canto XVI, Lines 136-139)

Cacciaguida concludes with a lament for the Florence ruined by the arrival of the Buondelmonti family whose feuding caused years of civil unrest, and marks how fitting that Buondelmonte was murdered at the foot of the statue of Mars at the Ponte Vecchio.  Mars was the first patron of Florence due to its founding as a Roman military colony and its warlike past.

At a blog called Beachcombing’s Bizarre History I learned that no one knows what this statue looked like because it was washed into the Arno in the flood of 1333.  But Giovanni Villani apparently described it:

‘Very noble and beautiful [the pagan Romans] built [the temple/baptistery] with eight sides, and when it had been built with great diligence, they dedicated it to the god Mars, who was the god of the Romans, and they had his effigy carved in marble in the likeness of an armed cavalier on horseback. They placed him on a marble pillar in the midst of that temple, and held him in great reverence, and adored him as their god so long as paganism continued in Florence.’

“War”, by Luigi Persico,

It took a Google image search to locate the statue that appears to be the god Mars that features in this article.  It’s one of a pair called “War” by the Italian sculptor Luigi Persico, installed on the East Front of the U.S. Capitol in 1835, and it’s not Mars at all, it’s an allegorical depiction of a Roman soldier.  Google tells me that the original marbles were eventually replaced with bronze copies and moved indoors for preservation.  

Update, the next day: I have learned more about the provenance of those expensive illuminated manuscripts that I’ve featured in this post.  This is from the British Library:

One of the most impressive attempts to render the verse into visuals comes to us in the form of the illuminations found in an Italian manuscript produced only 125 years or so after Dante completed his poem in 1320. Dated to between 1444 and 1450, the illuminations vary in style due to the fact that two separate artists worked on them, with the first two sections of Inferno and Purgatorio being drawn by the lesser known Priamo della Quercia (active 1426-1467), while the Paradiso section was illustrated by Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia (ca. 1403-1482) who contributed 61 illuminations in all. The work has belonged to Alfonso V, king of Aragon, Naples, and Sicily (1396 – 1458) and his great grandson Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria (1488 – 1550), who donated the manuscript to the convent of San Miguel in Valencia in 1538. It was later bought in 1901 by Henry Yates Thompson, a collector of illuminated manuscripts, and was donated to the British Museum in 1941.  (Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/15th-century-illuminations-for-dante-s-divine-comedy/)

 Progress so far:

• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 2013 edition translated by Clive James, with help from Jason M Baxter #1 Getting Started
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 2013 edition translated by Clive James, #2 Introduction, Cantos 1-2
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #3 Cantos 3-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #4 Cantos 9-17
• The Divine Comedy by  Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #5. Cantos 18-26
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #6 Inferno, Cantos 27-34
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #7 Purgatory, Introduction
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #8 Purgatory, Cantos 1-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #9 Purgatory, Cantos 9-16
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #10 Purgatory, Cantos 17-23
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #11 Purgatory, Cantos 24-29
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #12 Purgatory, Cantos 30-33
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #13 Paradiso, Cantos 1-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #14 Paradiso, Cantos 9-16
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #15 Paradiso, Cantos 17-24

See also

• Botticelli and the Divine Comedy
• The Discarded Image, An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C S Lewis (1964)
• The women who appear in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ are finally getting their due, 700 years later

References:

• The Divine Comedy: Translation, Notes and Commentary by Mark Musa,
  • Vol 1, Inferno, 2003 new edition of the 1984 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1971 by Indiana University Press, ISBN 9780142437223
  • Vol 2, Purgatory, 1985 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1981 by Indiana University Press, ISBN: 9780140444421
  • Vol 3, Paradise, 1986 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1984, by Indiana University Press ISBN 9780140444438. The illustration on the front over is from William Blake’s ‘St Peter and St James with Dante and Beatrice’, illustration for Canto 25, held at the NGV in Melbourne.
• The Divine Comedy translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with illustrations by Gustave Doré and an Introduction by Melinda Corey; Barnes and Noble edition 2008, ISBN: 9781435103849
• The Divine Comedy translated and with an Introduction by Clive James, Picador Poetry edition, 2013, ISBN 9781447244219
• A Beginners Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy by Jason M Baxter, Baker Academic, 2018, ISBN: 9781493413102, Kindle edition  ASIN: B0752RVZ6R
• The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C S Lewis, Kindle edition ASIN B08TCJZP5N
• The Sleepwalkers, by Arthur Koestler, The Danube Edition, Hutchinson, 1968 first published 1959 ISN: 090502515
• The Essential Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, The Softback Preview, 1999, first published in this translation in 1871, ISBN: 9781582880129
• The Dante Course, a series of lectures presented by Prof. Teodolinda Barolini, Lorenzo da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University, 2015-6 online

Image credits:

• Dante and Beatrice encounter Cunizza da Romano and Folco of Marseille in the heaven of Venus, Paradiso IX. By Giovanni di Paolo (1444–50), British Library: By Giovanni di Paolo – http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6468&CollID=58&NStart=36, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3915896 (Update the next day: though I copied it faithfully, this link doesn’t work, and what’s more, while Wikipedia says it’s at the British Museum, the link goes to the British Library. So far, I haven’t been able to find a replacement URL.)
• “St. Francis Weds Lady Poverty” by Giotto, Basilica of Assisi: https://nemoslibrary.com/2013/06/05/the-divine-comedy-xiv-st-francis-of-assisi-and-lady-poverty/
• Bonaventure receives the envoys of the Byzantine Emperor at the Second Council of Lyon, by the Spanish painter  Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664): By Francisco de Zurbarán – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=160344
• The Whore of Babylon, depicted in a 14th-century French illuminated manuscript: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red#/media/File:Whore_of_Babylon_(XIV).jpg
• Dante and Beatrice ascending into the Sphere of Mars: https://www.facebook.com/historyofartt/posts/dante-and-beatrice-ascending-into-the-sphere-of-mars-the-fifth-heaven-paradiso-c/1166873505649850/
• Dante and Cacciaguida by Giovanni di Paolo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giovanni_di_paolo,_paradiso_28_dante_e_cacciaguida.jpg
• Dante and Beatrice in the sphere of  Mars, by Giovanni di Paolo: https://pdimagearchive.org/images/1598b8c4-9c21-45a2-9f99-e902c02c0d67/

Following on from my previous posts about the Purgatorio, and the Inferno here, we now venture into the Paradiso in Volume 3 of Mark Musa’s excellent translation and notes.  I am expecting some joyful music because Mark Musa’s introduction tells me that since…

Dante cannot ground his Paradise in the concrete things of the living world as he did in the Inferno and Purgatory.  The souls of the Blest in Paradise will be lights, splendours, and sparks that whirl about; they will assume diverse shapes, and speak to the Pilgrim in symbols and signs.  The Poet will have to invent more words […] in order to articulate things that cannot possibly be seen by the human eye. (p.xiv)

… and he says that Canto 1 serves as the overture to the great musical which follows!

So how is Dante going to stretch out Dante’s experience of Heaven over 33 cantos?  The Introduction tells us that…

the main action of the Paradise is concerned with how man’s soul, as it contemplates the making of God’s universe, rises by stages in order to arrive at an understanding of the One creator of that universe.  To see the universe as One is the final goal of journey, and the movement of the journey is from fragmentation to unity. What the Pilgrim sees in the cantos of the lower heavens, in fact, is all in preparation for his vision in the highest heaven, the Empyrean where he will see the redeemed, united with their bodies, as they will be after the Last Judgement. The cantos of the lower heavens are the steps of knowledge leading to Perfect Vision and union with God. (p.ix)

So (apart from his guides Beatrice and Statius) who is he going to see there, I wonder?

Before we start, we need to refresh our understanding of Dante’s Ptolemaic astronomy. The earth is the static centre of the universe; the stars and planets (the ones they knew about) revolve around it; and the 9th sphere, the Primum Mobile, is the one that makes everything move, powered by the love of God. The largest sphere of all, the 10th one, the Empyrean, is a realm of pure spirit and perfect peace, spaceless and motionless, home of God and His angels.

Diagram of Paradise (FlorenceInferno.com)

The Introduction goes on to discuss the symbolic geometry of Dante’s poetry, mentions the difficulty the reader can expect to encounter because of Dante’s invented words (especially trasumanar/ transhumanise) and a whole lot of other complicated religious stuff which I will come back to if I need/want to.

However my eye did rest briefly on this paragraph:

Not everyone in Paradise is equally blessed.  God bestows his grace in different degrees according to his own pleasure, and blessedness is a matter of grace.  Depending on the amount of grace given through divine predestination, men’s visions of God will differ, but it is upon each soul’s vision of God that its happiness depends.  Though each soul enjoys a different degree of bliss, each is perfectly happy, since it knows it is enjoying bliss to its full capacity which has been ordained by the will of God.  The degree of bliss enjoyed by the soul in Heaven, then, is not dependent entirely on how one led his life on earth, but more on the mystery of predestination. This is the answer that the Pilgrim will hear from a number of the souls in Paradise. (p.xvii)

So, hmm, once again, there’s a hierarchy.  First class bliss, business class bliss, premium economy bliss and cattle class bliss…

Moving on…

The first three heavens correspond to the Antepurgatory (see here, under Structure) the Pilgrim meets some souls he knew IRL, with some who reveal themselves through

• shadows of inconstancy (the moon), with Beatrice doing the (long) explanation about the limits of human perception;
• worldly ambition (Mercury) with the Emperor Justinian who gives an uninterrupted history of the Roman empire; and Beatrice in the next canto explaining the meaning of Redemption.
• earthly love (Venus) with a soul called Charles Martel explaining the doctrine of heredity.

After the sphere of Venus the Pilgrim doesn’t meet anyone he knew in life. And he mostly lets others do the talking —some of the time because he doesn’t need to talk: Beatrice reads his mind!  So let’s get started.

Canto I

Reminding us that this poem is about Dante’s experience as a pilgrim, the canto begins by his modest appraisal of his ability to tell about what he has seen.  He calls on Apollo, God of Poetry, and the Muses to help him, and he hopes that a better voice will feel inspired by the one small spark he has voiced in his poem. And thus he launches into the moment when he and Beatrice stand in the dazzling light of the sun.

Here Dante uses that word ‘transhumanise’ to describe things that cannot be seen by the human eye.  The eyes that have been ‘transhumanised’ must learn to read a new and different language. (p.xiv) The Pilgrim is not sure whether it is his body or his soul that rises up into the heavens, but Beatrice is there to boss him about so that he doesn’t waste time puzzling about it.

Is there music? Yes there is, it’s the music of the spheres that fills Dante’s mind.  There are some very strange compositions for this concept, but this one by Danish composer Rued Langaard (1893-1952) seems just right to me.

Canto II

This canto begins with Dante warning his readers following him in a ‘little boat’ that they may well get lost because he is traversing waters never travelled. 

Minerva fills my sails, Apollo steers,
and all nine Muses point the Bears to me.

Minerva is the Goddess of Wisdom, Apollo is the God of Poetry, and sailors used the constellations Ursa Major (Big Bear) and Ursa Minor (Little Bear) to steer by. Symbolically, this is true: no other poet had tried to invoke Paradise in poetry.

But if we readers choose to continue, we will be amazed.

But not surprised that Bossy Beatrice delivers another lecture.  Dante is puzzled by the spots on the moon, and (just like that awful teacher you had in secondary school) she asks him (knowing that he doesn’t know) for the answer.  Musa does his best to explain how in setting him straight she illuminates Divine Power in her answer but all I can say about this is that everything she says is bunkum because her cosmology has been superseded by modern science.

Canto III

Already I am tired of Beatrice.  Dante sees some pale faces, but when he turns around because he thinks they are reflections, he gets a lecture from his sweet guide.  Sweet? Hmpf. I prefer Virgil.

‘You should not be surprised to see me smile
at your naïve reaction,’ she announced,
you do not trust the evidence you see:

you turn away to stare at emptiness:
these are real substances that you behold,
appearing here because they broke their vows. ‘ (Canto III, Lines 25-30)

So, they are souls who made vows to God and did not keep them, i.e. shadows of inconstancy, and they are down at the farthest sphere from Heaven i.e. Cattle Class Bliss.  Here there is Piccarda Donati, a hapless nun who broke her vows when she married after being abducted for a political union.  But, hey, she is perfectly happy with where she is:

If we desired to be higher up,
then our desires would not be in accord
with His will Who assigns us to this sphere;

think carefully what love is and you’ll see
such discord has no place within these rounds,
since to be here is to exist in Love. (Canto III, Lines 73-78)

Raffaello Sorbi, The Abduction of Piccarda Donati from the Convent of Monticelli (1866) (Wikipedia)

Piccarda also relates the abduction of the Empress Constance, abducted to marry Henry VI in 1185, and then she departs, singing Ave Maria.  Who better to sing it than the inimitable Maria Callas?

Canto IV

Dante’s humanity makes him feel bothered by this treatment of ‘transgressors’.  (Interesting that they’re both women, eh?) Beatrice deals with it as by now we know she will.  No, Plato was wrong in stating that each soul returns to its star of origin.  Moreover:

These souls appeared here not because this sphere
has been allotted them, but as a sign
of their less great degree of blessedness. (Canto IV, Lines 37-39)

And (patronisingly)

I speak as one must to minds like yours
which apprehend only from sense perception
what later makes it fit for intellection. (Canto IV, Lines 40-42)

Beatrice distinguishes between the Absolute Will, which always longs for God, and the Conditioned Will, which bends according to circumstance.  I don’t doubt that many theologians have amused themselves in discussion over this but it’s a most unreasonable standard, IMO:

Now, if the one who suffers violence
contributes nothing to the violent act,
he cannot be excused on that account;

for will, it it will not, cannot be quenched
but does as nature does within a flame,
though violence force it down a thousand times.

The will abets the force when it gives in
even a little bit; this their will did,
for they could have gone back into the cloister.

Had they been able to maintain their will
intact, like that of [Saint] Lawrence on the grid,
and Mucius cruel to his own hand in fire—

it would have forced them back once they were free,
back to the path from which they had been drawn.
But such firm will as this is seldom found. (Canto IV, Lines 73-87)

St Lawrence refuses to reveal church treasures to looters

Mucius with no fear of being burnt alive

The idea is that it’s better to suffer torture and die a violent death, than to acquiesce in order to live.  I’m pleased to see that Dante the poet isn’t convinced any more than I am, and isn’t going to let it go…

would it be possible for those who break
their vows to compensate with love and burning so divine,
that they would not weigh short upon your scales? (Canto IV, Lines 139-141)

Canto V

Beatrice goes on to explain the God’s greatest gift to man is Free Will and the choices made should not be made lightly:

The greatest gift that our bounteous Lord
bestowed as the Creator, in creating
the gift He cherishes the most, the one

most like Himself, was freedom of the will.
all creatures with intelligence, and they
alone, were so endowed both then and now.

Such reasoning as this should make it clear
how sacred is the vow when it is made
with God consenting to your own consent. (Canto V, Lines 19-27)

There are only two conditions that enable a vow to be changed: the consent of the church, and that the substitution made be of greater value than the original promise. So, Beatrice says (and we can imagine her wagging her finger at Dante), vows should not be taken lightly and the Scripture and ecclesiastic authority should be used as guides.  This doesn’t seem like such good advice, considering Dante has, in the Inferno and the Purgatorio, enlightened us as to the corruption and venality of the church and popes in particular.

It will be a relief to get to Canto VI where the Emperor Justinian gets to have a say.  I am fond of Justinian, I studied his achievements as part of my BA major in classics.

Canto VI

Mosaic of Justinian I (Ravenna)

By the fourth tercet, we know that it is Justinian who is speaking.  In the 6th century, he was the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire (after the barbarians had wrecked the rest of it), and whatever about the ethics of colonisation, amongst his achievements are

• the partial recovery of some parts of the empire, conquering the Vandals in Africa; the Ostrogoths in Italy, recovering Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome; and part of the Iberian Peninsula thereby re-establishing order and stability to the western Mediterranean;
• the compilation of Roman Law into the Justinian Code — which is still the basis of civil law in many countries today;
• the emergence of Byzantine Christian religious art, including stunning mosaics, and
• a significant building program including the building of St Sophia (532–537) in Constantinople which was the largest cathedral in the world until the 1507 completion of the Seville Cathedral in Spain.

So here he is in the second sphere, the Heaven of Mercury, reserved for the souls of the Blest who are too concerned with their own fame and earthly glory, which as as result, lessened their degree of beatitude.  He is Dante’s choice to recount the entire history of Rome — the good and the bad —and like Piccarda, he is content with where he is because it’s in accord with his merit.

Canto VII

Justinian departs like a shooting spark, singing a hymn:

“Hosanna, sanctus Deus sabaoth
superillustrans claritate tua
felices ignes horum malacoth”

“Hosanna, holy God of hosts
superilluminating with your brightness
happy fires of these malacoth”

Dante’s original readers would have known this ancient hymn from the Latin Mass, but they would have been mystified by ‘malacoth’.  It’s Dante’s misspelling of ‘mamlacoth’ which means ‘kingdoms’ with connotations of sovereignty  Dante did not know Hebrew, and must have incorrectly copied the words from another source.

Beatrice, who can read Dante’s mind, discerns that he is mulling over a new dilemma: how can a just vengeance be justly avenged? Musa summarises her answer succinctly:

Since mankind sinned through Adam, Christ’s death on the cross was punishment insofar as Christ’s human nature is concerned; as far as His Divinity is concerned, the punishment was sacrilegious and unjust. (p.82)

And while she’s at it, she also explains why God chose this way to redeem mankind: Because it was the most worthy way.

There were two ways in which God could accomplish man’s redemption—by means of His Mercy or by means of His Justice.  God decided to employ both means, showing His Mercy by taking on the flesh and His Justice by His suffering and death on the cross.  (p.82)

For non believers like me, this is getting a bit tedious. And it’s unfortunate to see that some antisemitic commentary accompanies Dante’s interpretation of the role of the Jews in the crucifixion.  This reminded me of an important article that I read about this subject.  In ‘Reading The Divine Comedy as a non-Christian’, Carrie Ann acknowledges that TDC was of a different time and place and also that

Dante also questions why, if Christian doctrine says the Crucifixion was necessary, the Second Temple then had to be destroyed and the Jewish people forced into Diaspora.

but — it’s hard to not be bothered by the deicide charge in Paradiso VII.  

At the heart of the antisemitism which culminated in the Shoah was the deicide charge.

The deicide charge formed the basis of almost 2,000 years of horrific antisemitism in Europe, and that even those few seemingly off-handed comments were part of a much larger picture that really added up.

Carrie-Ann discusses other issues as well, so I do hope you will read her article.

Canto VIII

Oh! We’re in the sphere of Venus!  And here among the joyful lights and Beatrice becoming more beautiful, we venture into astrology when a soul explains the doctrine of heredity, and I am reminded of what CS Lewis had to say about medieval beliefs about it. Forewarned is forearmed, I thought, so I scrolled down to Part B, the Operations of the Universe, in my post about The Discarded Image Ch V to reproduce it here:

• Influences: a belief in astrology was inherited from antiquity and bequeathed to the Renaissance. Prof Barolini in The Dante Course Lecture 16 is insistent that this was a really contentious issue in the Middle Ages, not like now when it isn’t taken seriously.  There were influential people who gave it credence in the Medieval era but the clergy’s disapproval was unequivocal because of the harm caused by
  • lucrative and politically undesirable predictions;
  • astrological determinism when it excluded Free Will; and
  • practices that encouraged the pagan worship of planets.

Musa’s Notes tell us that this sphere of Heaven is for souls who capitulated to immoderate passion, but

Having possessed ardent and magnanimous natures, however, they did not become lost in carnality, but performed beneficent works and never turned from God.  (p.99)

The Notes also tell us that the speaker who is not named is identified as a friend of Dante’s, a minor royal called Charles Martel.  Referring to Martel’s brother Robert’s mean and avaricious nature, Dante asks ‘How can sweet seed produce sour fruit?’ and the answer (which is quite lengthy) is that it’s not heredity, but how Nature influences the predestination of the stars:

Charles Martel describes here the law of individuality, or differentiation, which Beatrice explained earlier.  (Par II, 127-48) The natures and characters of individuals are influenced by heavenly bodies, in a way and towards an end ordained by God.  God has foreseen not only what manifestations of individuality are necessary to fulfil His creation, but the proper fashions in which these manifestations should be exercised.  He created each of us to carry out particular goals. (p.103)

Attributes bestowed by God cannot be brought to fruition when subjected by men to unfavourable conditions.  (p.104)

We only have to think of the monsters of history to feel argumentative about this. What goals were in The Divine Plan for Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Hamas? Or those monsters of today who kill their wives and children out of petty jealousy?

To restore a sense of equanimity, here’s a lovely version of ‘Hosanna’, sung by the Tabernacle Choir to the accompaniment of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D’.

Next week, Cantos 9-16

 Progress so far:

• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 2013 edition translated by Clive James, with help from Jason M Baxter #1 Getting Started
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 2013 edition translated by Clive James, #2 Introduction, Cantos 1-2
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #3 Cantos 3-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #4 Cantos 9-17
• The Divine Comedy by  Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #5. Cantos 18-26
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1971 translation by Mark Musa, 2003 Penguin Edition, #6 Inferno, Cantos 27-34
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #7 Purgatory, Introduction
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #8 Purgatory, Cantos 1-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #9 Purgatory, Cantos 9-16
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #10 Purgatory, Cantos 17-23
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #11 Purgatory, Cantos 24-29
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1981 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #12 Purgatory, Cantos 30-33
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #13 Paradiso, Cantos 1-8
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #14 Paradiso, Cantos 9-16
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308-1321), 1984 translation by Mark Musa, 1985 Penguin Edition, #15 Paradiso, Cantos 17-24

See also

• Botticelli and the Divine Comedy
• The Discarded Image, An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C S Lewis (1964)
• The women who appear in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ are finally getting their due, 700 years later

References:

• The Divine Comedy: Translation, Notes and Commentary by Mark Musa,
  • Vol 1, Inferno, 2003 new edition of the 1984 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1971 by Indiana University Press, ISBN 9780142437223
  • Vol 2, Purgatory, 1985 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1981 by Indiana University Press, ISBN: 9780140444421
  • Vol 3, Paradise, 1986 Penguin Classics edition, first published 1984, by Indiana University Press ISBN 9780140444438. The illustration on the front over is from William Blake’s ‘St Peter and St James with Dante and Beatrice’, illustration for Canto 25, held at the NGV in Melbourne.
• The Divine Comedy translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with illustrations by Gustave Doré and an Introduction by Melinda Corey; Barnes and Noble edition 2008, ISBN: 9781435103849
• The Divine Comedy translated and with an Introduction by Clive James, Picador Poetry edition, 2013, ISBN 9781447244219
• A Beginners Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy by Jason M Baxter, Baker Academic, 2018, ISBN: 9781493413102, Kindle edition  ASIN: B0752RVZ6R
• The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C S Lewis, Kindle edition ASIN B08TCJZP5N
• The Sleepwalkers, by Arthur Koestler, The Danube Edition, Hutchinson, 1968 first published 1959 ISN: 090502515
• The Essential Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, The Softback Preview, 1999, first published in this translation in 1871, ISBN: 9781582880129
• The Dante Course, a series of lectures presented by Prof. Teodolinda Barolini, Lorenzo da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University, 2015-6 online

Image credits:

• Diagram of Paradise: https://www.florenceinferno.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Paradise-Dante-e1378981232655.gif, which credits its images to Wikimedia and ircamera.as.arizona.edu
• Beatrice and Dante Behold Paradise Canto 1 : https://dantecomedy.com/welcome/paradiso/paradiso-canto-1/
• Raffaello Sorbi, The Abduction of Piccarda Donati from the Convent of Monticelli (1866) (Wikipedia): http://firenze.repubblica.it/cronaca/2011/05/29/foto/quadri_libri_e_cortometraggi_tutto_dante-16896924/8/ – image, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32214997
• Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, by Palma il Giovane, in San Giacomo dall’Orio (Venice): By Didier Descouens – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67698228
• Mucius Scaevola before Lars Porsenna by Peter Paul Rubens, Pushkin Museum  – https://collection.pushkinmuseum.art/entity/OBJECT/77265?query=%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%81&index=8, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=156239808
• Mosaic of the Emperor Justinian in Ravenna: By Petar Milošević – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40035957
• The 6th-century Saint Sophia (532–537) built by Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great: By Wilhelm Salzenberg (* 20. Januar 1803 in Münster; † 23. Oktober 1887 in Vernex-Montreux, Schweiz)Edited by Verlag von Ernst & Korn Berlin, 1854 – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98552725