Paradiso (101 page)

75.
   The so-called
Vespri siciliani
were begun at the hour of Vespers on Easter Monday of 1282 in Palermo. The uprising resulted in the French losing control, eventually of all Sicily, which ended up being ruled by Spain.
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76–78.
   The debate over the most likely interpretation of these lines goes back to the fourteenth century, one school of interpretation insisting that the phrase “l’avara povertà di Catalogna” (the greedy poverty of Catalonia) refers to the Spanish courtiers who will accompany Charles’s brother Robert to Italy once he is “put on” (in 1309), the other, that it is Robert’s own avarice that is worthy of a Spaniard. The first interpretation currently is the most favored, but counterarguments are presented by Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) and Picone (Pico.2002.3), pp. 128–29. Picone (p. 128n.) argues that
antivedere
does not here have its usual meaning (“see in advance”), but refers to a past event (a necessary choice if one believes that the event referred to does not lie in Robert’s future). However, see the note to vv. 79–84. And see Barolini (Baro.1984.1), p. 65n., documenting the three other appearances of the verb in the poem (
Inf
. XXVIII.78;
Purg
. XXIII.109;
Purg
. XXIV.46). In all four contexts the prediction of future occurrences is the subject.

Charles’s brother was a great enemy to Henry VII. Less than a year after Henry’s death, on 15 March 1314, Pope Clement V announced Robert’s appointment as imperial vicar, a position that Henry had held. Robert reigned as king of Naples until 1343, long enough, that is, to place the laurel wreath on Petrarch’s head on 6 April 1341. Dante was spared knowledge of that coronation. If Canto VI is about the triumphs of Rome, this canto is concerned with political defeats, those suffered by Charles and by Dante: Charles’s death brought his brother to the throne and into collaboration with Clement.
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79–84.
   Robert and his “ship of state” (the kingdom of Naples) are already so heavily burdened with difficulties that it is in greater danger of
foundering if it is loaded with still more deadweight. Since Robert’s avarice is already “on board,” that comes close to ruling out the second interpretation of verse 77 (see the note to vv. 76–78), leaving the avarice of his Spanish followers as the better reading. For
barca
with this sense (“ship of state”), see
Paradiso
XVI.96.
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82.
   This verse has long been the cause of dispute: To whom precisely does the phrase “worthy stock” refer? Since Charles’s following discourse centers on the differing virtues of fathers and sons (with fathers generally getting the better of the comparisons), some suggest that the reference here is to the otherwise despised Charles II of Anjou, Charles Martel’s father (see, e.g., Lombardi, comm. to vv. 82–84, for this view). Tozer (comm. to vv. 82–84) finds justification in such a reading in
Paradiso
XIX.128, where the elder Charles is granted a single virtue (and thus a certain native liberality). As uncomfortable as it may leave one feeling, that is perhaps the best available gloss.
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83.
   This also is currently a disputed verse. What is the reference of the noun
milizia
? It was only in the twentieth century, with Torraca’s complex and interesting gloss (comm. to vv. 82–84), that the possibility that the word might refer to soldiers is even broached. All who have a previous opinion are certain that the word refers to administrators, government officials, or the like. We have accepted their view for our translation. It allows, by the way, the understanding that the members of Robert’s Spanish entourage may be included in the group, which perhaps accounts for Bosco/Reggio’s insistence that the word refers to “mercenary soldiers” (comm. to this verse), a reading in which they are the first.
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85–90.
   Dante tells Charles that he is glad on two counts, first that his royal friend knows of Dante’s gladness without his needing to express it; second, that he knows of it in God, because he is saved.
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91–93.
   Dante continues by wondering, on the basis of vv. 82–83, how a good father can have a bad son. See Picone (Pico.2002.3), pp. 129–31, for a clarifying discussion of this passage and the rest of the canto, which, he argues, relies for its basic point on a biblical text, the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3–23).
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94–96.
   For the insistent presence of this image in the canto, see the note to verse 136.
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97–111.
   
Tozer (comm. to these verses) summarizes Charles’s thoughts: “The argument is as follows: God, in creating the universe, provided not only for the existence of things, but for their working in the most perfect manner; and the instrumentality which He appointed for that purpose was the stellar influences, which are directed by the angels or Intelligences who preside over them: Were it not for these, chaos and not order would prevail.”
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97–99.
   God sets the mark of his Providence upon his creatures, not through his direct creation (which is reserved for the individual human soul), but indirectly, through the stars and planets associated with the eight lowest celestial spheres. This arrangement maintains human freedom of the will and yet allows God the role of ordering his Creation, thus avoiding chaos (see verse 108).
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100–102.
   God foresees not only the nature of the composite human soul (not only the part that he makes directly, the rational soul, but the animal and vegetative souls, that he helps shape indirectly, by agency of the celestial bodies), but its ultimate perfection as it prepares to leave its body. The word
salute
, as readers of the
Vita nuova
(where it also puns on
saluto
[salutation]) will recall, is utilized by Dante in such ways as to run the gamut from physical “health” to more generalized “well-being” to Christian “salvation,” and it probably has polyvalent significance here.
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103–105.
   The image of an arrow striking its mark once again meets the reader’s eyes (see
Par
. I.119 and V.91). If one had to pick one passage in the poem that might lead a reader to believe that Dante’s view of predestination verges on determinism, this tercet might be a popular selection. Yet, once we reflect on the way Dante has held back, avoiding dangerous formulations in the previous tercet, we can sense that he is both aware of the pitfall and determined to avoid it. For the wider meaning in Dante’s use of the verb
disporre
(verse 104), see the note to
Paradiso
XXX.138.
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106–108.
   As he concludes his “lecture” on predestination, Charles makes it clear why he has had to come so close to the shoals of determinism, where, after Augustine, many Christian thinkers have come close to sinking: If God does not order the universe, it would not have any order at all. Nature, left to its own, would produce only chaos, as King Lear discovered. Insistence on God’s control of so much of the field of human action might seem to whittle away the uses of free will to a point approaching
nullity. Yet Dante, through Beatrice (see
Par
. V.19–24), has already insisted on the efficacy of God’s greatest gift to humankind.
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109–111.
   Charles ends his exposition by an argument from impossibles. For God and his informed angels to produce chaos, they would have to be deficient, and that is impossible.
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112–114.
   This brief exchange may remind readers of the similar sort of question-and-answer drill performed by Socrates and one of his “student” interlocutors (whose response is the deferential “yes, Socrates” that still strikes readers as comical) in Platonic dialogues. As Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. to verse 114), Dante is here citing an Aristotelian maxim, “Nature never fails to provide the things that are necessary,” which he also cites in
Convivio
IV.xxiv.10,
Monarchia
I.x.1, and
Questio
44.
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115–117.
   Aristotle again sets Charles’s agenda; see the opening of the
Politics
: “Man is by nature a political animal” (the Latin Aristotle in fact said that he is a
civile
[civic] one, thus accounting for Dante’s
cive
, which we have translated as “social”).
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118–120.
   To the next proposition (that diversity among humankind is desirable [see Aristotle,
Politics
I.i.2]), Charles himself supplies Dante’s agreement (the poet having in fact already done so in
Conv
. IV.iv.5, when he speaks not only of the social needs of human life, but of the need for diversity of occupation among the members of the community).
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121.
   The poet now characterizes Charles’s method of argumentation as “deductive,” reminding the reader of the Scholastic style of his conversation.
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122–126.
   And so, Charles concludes, your natural dispositions to take up one thing or something else must differ one from another. It results that, in order to have leading practitioners of various necessary human tasks, one of you becomes Solon (a legislator), another Xerxes (a general), still another Melchizedech (a priest), and finally Daedalus (an artisan). These four “orders” of society include the most necessary activities.

Why Dante chose to identify Daedalus by the tragic flight of his son, Icarus, is not clear, unless we are to understand the reference as blending with the next topic (as some commentators do), the differences between members of the same family.
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127–129.
   
See Tozer’s paraphrase and interpretation of these lines: “ ‘[T]he nature of the revolving spheres, which, like a seal on wax, imprints itself on mankind, exercises its art well, but does not distinguish one house from another.’ In other words: The stellar influences produce individuality of character in men, but do not favour one family more than another by perpetuating excellence in it. Dante is returning to the question, How can a bad son proceed from a good father?”
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127.
   The word
natura
is focal to this discussion. Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 37, points out that its seven appearances in this canto represent the heaviest concentration of the word in the poem. That is about one-eleventh of its roughly seventy-seven occurrences.
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130–132.
   Quirinus was the name given to Romulus, Rome’s first king, posthumously, when he was celebrated as a god. His mother, Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin (in some versions of the story), gave birth to twins and claimed that Mars had lain with her. Daniello (comm. to this tercet) may have been the first to refer, in this context, to Virgil (
Aen
. I.292–293). But see Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet), who “adjusts” the Virgilian passage to the more appropriate verse 274, where, according to Virgil, Ilia (another name for Rhea Silvia?), a priestess, bears to Mars her twin offspring, Romulus and Remus. (It is striking that neither here nor anywhere in this or in his other works does Dante mention Remus, Romulus’s twin, especially here, given the facts that he has just considered Jacob and Esau and that their story has obvious similarities to that of this pair of emulous fraternal twins, one of whom [Romulus] eventually killed the other.) And thus Dante’s view (and the standard view in the commentaries) is at some variance from Virgil’s presentation of the immortal bloodlines of the founder of Rome. See, for example, Umberto Cosmo (Cosm.1936.1), p. 78, referring to the fact that: “…  il figlio di un ignoto plebeo può accogliere in sé la virtù di fondare una città come Roma, e salire tanto alto nella riputazione universale da esser ritenuto per disceso da un Dio” (… the son of an unknown commoner may harbor the potency exhibited in founding a city like Rome, in making his way to the pinnacle of general approbation so as to be considered descended from a god [Mars]). In the instance of Jacob and Esau, Dante would seem to be interested only in making the point that twins may differ from one another, while in that of Romulus and his unnamed plebeian father, the difference involves father and son. But the reader, as Dante must have known, will also consider Remus as a Roman Esau.
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