Paradiso (169 page)
Authors: Dante
138.
See Hainsworth (Hain.1997.1), p. 160, on the two main and opposing senses of the notion of “disposition” in Dante (the verb
disporre
in various forms). The word often refers to human choices (sometimes mistaken ones), but also to divine election. Here, Hainsworth argues, that Italy was not “disposed” when she should have been does not mean that she will not welcome her next opportunity to embrace a rightful ruler.
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139–141.
Florence as an ill-willed baby boy, who turns from his nurse’s breast even as he feels the pangs of hunger, is reminiscent of the two good young boys who will turn bad quickly enough in
Paradiso
XXVII.130–135. The political context and the word
cupidigia
are other common elements in the two passages.
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139.
See, for a different tonality but similar formulations, Dante’s earlier utterance, issued from exile, addressed to his fellow citizens when they were resisting the efforts of Henry VII to take control of Florence (
Epistula
VI.22): “Nec advertitis dominantem
cupidinem
, quia
ceci
estis, venenoso susurrio blandientem, minis frustatoriis cohibentem, nec non captivantem vos in lege peccati, ac sacratissimis legibus que iustitie naturalis imitantur ymaginem, parere vetantem; observantia quarum, si leta, si libera, non tantum non servitus esse probatur, quin ymo perspicaciter intuenti liquet ut est ipsa summa libertas” (Nor are ye ware in your
blindness
of the overmastering
greed
which beguiles you with venomous whispers, and with cheating threats constrains you, yea, and has brought you into captivity to the law of sin, and forbidden you to obey the most sacred laws; those laws made in the likeness of natural justice, the observance whereof, if it be joyous, if it be free, is not only no servitude, but to him who observes with understanding is manifestly in itself the most perfect liberty—tr. P. Toynbee [italics added]).
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142–148.
This concluding passage, with its rancor against the ecclesiastical enemies of the imperial idea, has disturbed many, who find it entirely
inappropriate as Beatrice’s last utterance in a theologically determined poem. One must admit that it may seem out of place in a Christian poem, with its necessary message of the unimportance of the things of the world coupled with Jesus’ insistence that we forgive our enemies. Such a sensible view, however, disregards the thoroughgoing political concern of the poem and does not deal with Dante’s stubborn insistence on the rectitude of his vision of the world order (see Hollander [Holl.1993.5], pp. 32–33).
The thirtieth cantos of the final
cantiche
are united, as Claudio Varese noted (Vare.1953.1), p. 25, in at least two major respects: They are cantos of departure for both beloved guides; they also are both “cantos of Beatrice,” the first of arrival, the second of return (to the point of her departure, her seat in Heaven, as described in
Inferno
II.71, 101–102).
If we can remember our first reading of the poem, we will perhaps recall our eventual and retrospective surprise upon discovering that these were the last words spoken by Beatrice in the
Divine Comedy
. We, like the protagonist, have gotten used to her guidance. Unlike Virgil’s departure, which is prepared for even as he enters the poem (
Inf.
I.121–126), Beatrice’s departure is a total surprise (see the note to
Par.
XXXI.102).
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142–144.
This tercet undoubtedly is a last nasty glance at Pope Clement V, who made a show of welcoming Henry VII to Italy but then worked assiduously behind the scenes to defeat the emperor’s efforts to unite her cities under his rule (see the note to
Par.
XVII.82–84).
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145–146.
Henry died 24 August 1313; Clement, 20 April 1314, soon enough after Henry for Dante to consider his death God’s punishment for his treacherous opposition to the emperor and to his cause—even if Clement had been seriously ill a very long time. See the note to
Inferno
XIX.79–87.
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147.
Simon Magus gave the “naming opportunity” to Dante for the third of the
Malebolge
(see
Inf.
XXIX.1), where the simoniac popes and other clerics who traded in the goods and services of the Church are found, and where Dante so memorably is mistaken by Pope Nicholas III for Pope Boniface VIII (
Inf.
XIX.53).
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148.
The phrase “that fellow from Anagni” is Dante’s own version of the false and slangy familiarity of the corrupt clergy (see the note to
Par.
XVIII.130–136). The reference, of course, is to Pope Boniface VIII, seen as forced deeper into his hole (that of the simoniac popes) by the advent of Clement, who now will be the topmost, and thus able to wave his burning
soles about in Hell. Dante didn’t know it, but Clement’s time would exceed that of Boniface, who waved his feet from 1303 to 1314. In the unwritten continuation of this poem, Clement would have twenty years in the relatively open air of the
bolgia
, since John XXII did not die until 1334 (surely Dante felt he was destined for eternal damnation, and would have continued to do so, especially had he learned of John’s unenlightened views on the resurrection of the flesh [see the note to verse 129]).
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1–3.
For the resemblance of Dante’s
candida rosa
to the rose-wheel windows of medieval cathedrals, see Leyerle (Leye.1977.1). He argues for the double significance of this design: the wheel of Fortune, symbol of the fleetingness of earthly success, and the rose, symbol of a higher and more ordered affection (one particularly related to the Blessed Virgin). He then goes on to suggest that Dante has this design in mind both in his depiction of Fortune’s wheel (
Inf.
VII) and of the Rose found here in the Empyrean. Leyerle also believes that a particular rose-wheel window was in Dante’s mind, the one that was completed in the façade of the basilica of S. Zeno in Verona at least by 1300. On the exterior of S. Zeno, carvings of human figures, all four of whom are either falling or rising, strengthen his first case; the lovely tracing of the light on the inner spaces of the cathedral are at least not unlike the design found in Dante’s Rose. However, see Scott (Scot.2002.1), p. 477, citing Barnes (Barn.1986.1, pp. 25 and 31, n. 30) for the argument that the term for “rose window” only begins to appear in the European vernaculars, first in France, in the very late seventeenth century. This is hardly conclusive evidence that Dante did not think of one of these round, large, beautiful, and many-hued glass structures, piercing stone and splashing the interior space with colored light, as the model for his Rose. (In fact, Migliorini-Fissi’s
lectura
of the canto [Migl.1989.1], pp. 609–11, certainly lends credence to Leyerle’s argument; while she does not mention his article, but does note two later treatments found in Di Scipio’s fifth chapter [Disc.1984.1] and in Demaray [Dema.1987.1], she points out that the idea was first broached in 1870 by Ozanam.) The term may be anachronistic, but nothing in Leyerle’s case depends upon the availability of the term. And if one were to select a particular window, Leyerle has chosen well. Verona was, at least for two lengthy periods in both decades of the fourteenth century in which Dante lived, the focal point of his life as an exile, at least until his removal to Ravenna probably in the final third of the second decade. San Zeno was (and is) an astoundingly beautiful church.
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1.
Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 1–3) sees that the adverb
dunque
(then) is pointing to a previous discussion (Beatrice’s first description of the Rose, in
Par.
XXX.124–132, “interrupted” by the “digression” [XXX.133–145] of her bitter words about Henry’s death and the corrupt recent popes Boniface and Clement). With “dunque” the poet announces his return to her prior subject. The word’s casual, “vernacular-sounding” nature caught the attention
of Scaglione (Scag.1967.2), as is reported by Scott (Scot.2002.1), p. 476. Both of them refer to the term brought to bear in Dante studies by Auerbach (Auer.1958.1),
sermo humilis
, for the low style, in their classification of this linguistic gesture. Scott admires the juxtaposition of
dunque
with
candida rosa
(luminous white rose) as the expression of Dante’s union of the low with the sublime.
Vellutello (comm. to vv. 1–3) was apparently the first commentator, in a long tradition, to link the “bianche stole” (white robes) last heard of in
Paradiso
XXX.129 with the adjective
candida
(luminous white) modifying
rosa
. Grandgent (comm. to this verse) is one of only two in the DDP to suggest a source in Albertus Magnus (
De laudibus beatae Mariae Virginis
[XII.iv.33]): “Et nota, quod Christus rosa, Maria rosa, Ecclesia rosa, fidelis anima rosa,” equating Jesus, Mary, the Church, and the faithful soul of a believer with the rose.
For the fullest bibliography for this canto available in print, see Costa (Cost.1996.1), pp. 78–85.
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2–3.
The protagonist gazes at the
milizia
(soldiery) that fought on for the Church that Christ “adquisivit sanguine suo” (obtained with His own blood—Acts 20:28, first cited by Tommaseo [comm. to vv. 1–3]). And see the note to verse 127. Dante never stops seeing the Church as an army, even in its peaceful triumph.
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4–6.
The other host, the angels, now take the poet’s attention, flying up to the “hive” while contemplating and singing Its glory.
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7–12.
The angelic host is given similetic expression. At first, by Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 7–9) and Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 4–12), these bees were seen as deriving from
Aeneid
I.430–431. However, from Vellutello (comm. to vv. 4–12) onward, commentators have heard the more relevant echo of the simile at
Aeneid
VI.703–709 (for that text, see the note to
Paradiso
XXX.64–66).
The conclusion of Rossi’s study (Ross.1989.2), pp. 313–24, accounts for the disparities in the two similes by showing that the situation in the
Aeneid
, from a Christian perspective, is less propitious than it first may seem. As a central case in point, Aeneas discovers that all these happy shades are about to be (from Dante’s perspective) “reincarnated.” We can hardly imagine the joy felt by the hero of this “epic” when he sees the
souls in the Rose as they will look when they are resurrected. Surely we are meant to remember Aeneas’s quite different reaction, when he learns from Anchises about the flesh that these souls in the Elysian Fields will bear with them as they return to the world and its toils. Indeed, Aeneas laments their return to the world of flesh (
Aen
. VI.719–721). In the post-Platonic
Aeneid
, the world of flesh has nothing to do with spiritual perfection; in Dante’s poem the beatified spirit has only a single unfulfilled desire: to be granted the return of its flesh. Thus, if Dante allows Virgilian text a renewed presence in his poem, he is not without the ironic distance that we have found present in even the first moments of the poem (for example, see the notes to
Inf.
II.28 and II.56–57).
For other possible sources for this passage, e.g., in St. Anselm and St. Bernard, see Scott (Scot.2002.1), p. 478. For several different passages in Bernard, see the following: Carroll (comm. to vv. 1–12), Torraca (comm. to these verses), Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 7), and Trucchi (comm. to vv. 4–12), who also cites Anselm. A few later commentators also make gestures in both these directions, if without furnishing texts.
A discussion of the elaborate structural play in this simile is found in Lansing (Lans.1977.1), p. 37. The vehicle and tenor of the simile each mirrors both moments in the movement of the bees/angels, first down to the flowers/souls, then back up to the hive/God.
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7.
As we have seen (note to
Par.
XXX.64–66), Virgil’s verb (
insidere
) for what the bees do at least suggests that, more than settling on the blossoms, they enter them. Thus Dante here follows Virgil faithfully, if others seem to believe he does not (see Bosco/Reggio [comm. to this verse]).
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