Paradiso (117 page)
Authors: Dante
101–102.
See Euclid,
Geometria
III.31: All triangles inscribed in a circle, if the line bisecting that circle is used as their base, will have a right angle at their apex.
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103–105.
And so, rounding off his oratory, Thomas insists that kingly prudence is to be valued more highly than speculative philosophy (a position that coincides with that put forth in the
Epistle to Cangrande
[
Epist
. XIII.40–41], where Dante says that the branch of philosophy that the
Comedy
embraces is ethics, since the project of the poem is not speculation, but action).
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106–108.
For Dante (or Thomas) to insist that what was said of Solomon earlier (
Par.
X.114) corresponds to what is said now strains credulity, and not a little. If Dante had offered something to the effect that neither Adam nor Christ had to “rise,” since they were made differently from all other mortals (except for Eve, conveniently lost from sight in all discussions of this passage), since they were directly produced by God, without intermediation (a tactic attempted by both the Ottimo [comm. to vv. 103–108] and Benvenuto [comm. to vv. 103–108]), then we might see the problem as resolved. However, the text rather pointedly fails to offer any such limitation.
If one examines the commentaries to
Paradiso
X.114, hardly anyone before the twentieth century thinks that the reference is to Solomon as king. For one who did, see Benvenuto (comm. to
Par.
X.109–114), who
says that the phrase means that he has “no equal among kings.” Benvenuto, perhaps the most competent reader of poetic text among all the earlier students of Dante, had likely remembered the addition found in this later passage, even if he does not refer to it. Scartazzini (comm. to
Par.
X.114) also makes this point, referring to the later passage and interpreting it in Thomas’s way. But this may be said of few others before 1900 (twentieth-century readers of
Paradiso
X nearly all do look ahead to this passage). In fact, the biblical text that lies behind both passages (III Kings 3:12) does not qualify Solomon’s excellence by reference to a “peer group,” that is, that text represents him as the wisest among all humans, not only kings. Thus we once again have a sense that the text of
Paradiso
, in comparison with its predecessors, was left in a relatively unfinished condition at Dante’s death; he could have handled the issue better when he introduced it.
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109–111.
With the distinction added in the preceding tercet (Dante’s wording almost gives away the fact that no such distinction was intended in his first utterance on the subject), the protagonist can understand how Solomon was first among the wise kings without infringing upon the primacy of either Adam (the “first father”) or of Jesus (the “One we love”).
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112–142.
The final thirty-one lines of this canto, a text that has, on the authority of none other than Thomas Aquinas, just established Solomon’s kingly wisdom as a defining part of Dante’s theocratic view of the world’s affairs, nonetheless offer a warning to all of us who tend to rush to judgment, whether in relation to matters philosophical or theological. As we shall see (vv. 133–138), there is an autobiographical component to this plea.
For Dante to have used so much poetic space on so apparently simple, even banal, a topic tells his readers how keenly he felt involved in the problem. Once again we sense how, as he looks back over his intellectual development from the vantage point of the making of this great work, he realizes how self-centered some of his earlier attitudes were (see Hollander [Holl.2003.2]).
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112–114.
We have seen how slowly the hypocrites made their way forward in
Inferno
XXIII, in their leaden capes. Just so should we approach affirming or denying the truth of matters we have not fully examined.
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115–120.
A rush to judgment is, unsurprisingly, condemned. In the last verse, Dante’s genial understanding of the way we humans tend to fall in
love with whatever opinion we contrive to form rescues the passage from banality. If there is one passage in the last four cantos in which the voice of Thomas, usually so fully “captured” by the poet and so distinct from his own, seems to be indistinguishable from Dante’s, it is found in these six lines.
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121–127.
The metaphor for the search for truth moves to fishing. We hear first of three Greek philosophers of the fifth century b.c., then of two heretical thinkers of the early Christian era. Each of these groups is represented as standing for many another thinker who also lacks rigor.
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121–123.
Within the metaphor, the fisherman without the necessary skills of his craft not only returns home without a catch, but tired (or worse) from the voyage; outside of it, the thinker who lacks the proper intellectual tools not only fails to arrive at the truth, but enmeshes himself in failure.
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125.
The founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy and his pupil, Parmenides and Melissus, are both mentioned in
Monarchia
III.iv.4 as, according to Aristotle, using false premises and invalid syllogisms. Bryson, a less-known figure living in the same fifth century, was criticized by Aristotle for using invalid methods in his attempts to square the circle.
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127.
Sabellius and Arius, Christians of the third and fourth centuries, respectively. Longfellow characterizes them as follows: “Sabellius was by birth an African, and flourished as Presbyter of Ptolemais, in the third century. He denied the three persons in the Godhead, maintaining that the Son and Holy Ghost were only temporary manifestations of God in creation, redemption, and sanctification, and would finally return to the Father.
“Arius was a Presbyter of Alexandria in the fourth century. He believed the Son to be equal in power with the Father, but of a different essence or nature, a doctrine which gave rise to the famous Heterousian and Homoiousian controversy, that distracted the Church for three hundred years.”
Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 59, points out that both of these thinkers were confused about the relationships among God’s
substance
and his
persons
, and suggest that Dante may have been led to his thought by a sentence attributed to Athanasius by Alain de Lille (
PL
CCX.749): “Neque confundentes personas, ut Sabellius, neque substantiam separantes, ut
Arius” (Neither confounding the Persons, as did Sabellius, nor putting asunder His substance, as did Arius).
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128–129.
Sabellius, Arius, and their ilk are compared to swords in which human faces are reflected in distorted ways; just so were they to Scripture distorting mirrors of revealed truth. This comparison has disturbed many recent readers, to whom it seems either forced or unintelligible. The early commentators, however, were apparently more at ease with it, as though they thought of faces reflected on the irregular surfaces of shiny sword blades as a matter of course. Lombardi (comm. to these verses) at the close of the eighteenth century loses control of himself when confronting Venturi’s continuance of that tradition. Swords, he shouts, were metaphorically the instruments of heretics who mutilated Scripture to make it accord with their nefarious purposes. For a while his intervention ruled in Italy (at Harvard, Longfellow just mentioned the two interpretations and took no side). Then Scartazzini (comm. to these verses) took Lombardi’s argument apart (e.g., the language in the passage really does speak of mirroring rather than destruction), as did Poletto (comm. to vv. 127–129). Still, the debate continues into our own day, with the older position holding the edge, but not without challenge.
Strangely enough, hardly anyone has turned his attention to the Bible as a potential source, since the reference is to it. (It is not surprising that the single exception is Scartazzini [comm. to these vv.], if his two passages in the Psalms [56:5 and 63:4] are not exactly germane.) No one has apparently adduced the Scriptural passage containing one of the Bible’s surprisingly few references to mirrors (as was pointed out by Carolyn Calvert Phipps in a graduate seminar on the
Paradiso
in 1980): the Epistle of James 1:23–24: “For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass; for he beholds himself, and goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was.” That is not a perfect fit, either, but it does at least share the basic context of these verses.
Carroll (comm. to vv. 121–128) reminds the reader that Thomas (who is, after all, the speaker here) had refuted both these heresies (Sabellius on the Trinity, Arius on the nonconsubstantiality of the Son with the Father). See
Summa contra Gentiles
IV.5–8.
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130–132.
We find a shift in the object of Thomas’s measured scorn, from the schooled (philosophers and theologians) to the unschooled, ordinary folk (
Donna Berta e ser Martino
), as well as in the subject in which their misprision
functions, from thoughts about the nature of things to the afterlife of one’s neighbors.
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133–138.
The two examples, in reverse order, reminded John Carroll (comm. to vv. 129–142) of the father and son, Guido and Buonconte da Montefeltro. Guido, according to Dante in
Convivio
(IV.xxviii.8), was saved, but then was registered as one of the damned in
Inferno
XXVII, his story presented in both texts as a sea voyage; his son, Buonconte, although suffering a cruel death, in his agony spoke the name of Mary, the “rose,” and was saved (
Purg.
V). Trucchi (comm. to vv. 139–142) makes the same point, but with less effect. And see Pézard (Peza.1965.1), ad loc., for an attempt to locate both the rose and the ship of this passage in
Convivio
IV.xxvii.7 and IV.xxviii.8.
For readers of
Convivio
, Dante has placed his former writing self among the Berthas and Martins (see verse 139) of the world. Perhaps recognizing ourselves described in vv. 118–120, we may share that sense.
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135.
For the phrase “la rosa in su la cima” (the bloom of roses at its tip), see
Purgatorio
XI.92.
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136–138.
For this tercet as referring to Ulysses and his ill-conceived final voyage, see Cahill (Cahi.1996.1), pp. 254–55. Trucchi (comm. to vv. 133–138) seems to have been her only precursor, if his mention of Ulysses (and Manfred) is only in passing.
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139.
The foolish “donna Berta e ser Martino” remind Carlo Grabher (comm. to vv. 34–142) of what Dante says in
Convivio
(IV.v.9) about those vile beasts who desire to know what is known only to God. A woman named Bertha had already enjoyed a role in Dante’s displeasure with less-than-sophisticated writing; see
De vulgari eloquentia
II.vi.5: “Petrus amat multum dominam Bertam” (Peter loves Mistress Bertha a lot).
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140–142.
These verses have made many a reader uncomfortable with Dante’s behavior in them. Is not
he
one who claims to have knowledge of divine wisdom? Furthermore, the concealed reference to his failed judgment of such things in
Convivio
(see the note to vv. 133–138) reads back at him in upsetting ways. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 112–142) point out that this entire passage needs to be read in the context of the medieval dispute over the damnation/salvation of Solomon (see the note to
Par.
X.109–114). We remember that such great figures as Jerome (who thought
Solomon was saved) and Augustine (who thought he was not) disagreed over this matter. It is clear that Dante is willing to risk considerable intellectual capital in the presentation of his case for Solomon. Sarolli has done a great deal to explain the choice of the other Old Testament figure, Nathan, for inclusion here (see the note to
Par.
XII.136). As a “type” of Dante the prophet, he joins Solomon, the overwhelmingly important figure among twenty-four “stars” of theological and religious importance, as agents of explanation of Dante’s function in his own poem, as prophet, as poet, as supporter of the imperial monarchy.
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