Paradiso (89 page)

29–30.
   Moses, Samuel, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, and Mary are all to be found in that same placeless place known as the Empyrean. When we read
Paradiso
XXXII, we will find all of these but Samuel represented as having been seen by the protagonist among the eighteen souls actually pointed out there by St. Bernard. Beatrice’s little list is “ecumenical,” involving two Hebrews (Moses and Samuel in the role of the first and last “great jurists” of Israel, as it were), one “Hebrew-Christian” (the Baptist), and two Christians (John and Mary). Since all four whom we do eventually see in the Rose are in its highest tier, we may assume that Samuel is at that level also. (Why Dante has chosen Samuel, rather than Abraham, Solomon, David, or still another, is not immediately clear; see the discussion in the note to verse 29.) It would also seem likely that Dante is paralleling elements in his angelic and human populations of the Rose, referring only to the highest rank of each, thus distinguished from all who are at lower levels.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

29.
   The meaning of Beatrice’s remark is not difficult to grasp. The angels (she refers to the highest order, the Seraphim, but from the context we know that she means all nine orders) and all the blessed are found, and found only, in the Empyrean. From
Par
. XXXII we know that four of the five saints referred to here are in the highest rank of the stadium-rose: Moses (vv. 131–132), John the Baptist (vv. 31–33), John the Evangelist (vv. 127–128), Mary (vv. 88–93). Samuel is not among the eighteen saints referred to in that canto, but since all four who have been, like their Seraphic counterparts, elevated to the topmost rank, we are probably meant to understand that Samuel has been also; that is, we are to understand that he is there, even if we do not see him.

But why Dante singles him out here (and why he passes him over in silence in
Par
. XXXII) are questions rarely formed and perhaps never answered. Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 28–30) was perhaps the first to refer to the fact that Moses and Samuel were referred to only once in the same passage of Scripture, Jeremiah 15:1: “Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth.” G. R. Sarolli, “Samuele,”
ED
IV (1973), does improve upon the relatively sorry record of
the commentators, who just do not seem to realize that this sudden appearance of Samuel in the poem calls for study. Why, for instance, if Dante wants to pick a pair of Old Testament “heroes,” does he not couple Moses with his favorite Hebrew figure, David? Perhaps, since Samuel was the last of the Judges of Israel, in Dante’s mind he balances the first Hebrew “law-giver,” Moses (see
Inf
. IV.57). Sarolli points to Samuel’s position among the exegetes as
typus Christi
as well as a figure of John the Baptist and to his role in transferring the kingly power from Saul to David as clues to Dante’s reasons for his lofty placement in the
Commedia
. (But why, we wonder, was not that lofty placement confirmed, as it was for his four fellow nominees, in
Par
. XXXII?) Toynbee had already made the point that the rest of Dante’s references to Samuel by name (
Mon
. II.vii.8; III.vi.1–6;
Epist
. VII.19) have to do with Samuel’s intervention that resulted in the termination of Saul’s kingship. (This last passage is a casuistic argument, in which Dante insists that Samuel had the power to depose Saul
not
because he was God’s vicar, which the hierocrats insisted was indeed true [thus buttressing their case for papal intervention in imperial affairs], but because God selected him as an “angelic” messenger, His direct emissary.) Such is dramatically true of Dante’s second epistle to Henry VII (
Epist
. VII.19), in which he compares Henry to Saul, about to be dethroned by Samuel (I Samuel 15), and in which his accusations put Dante unmistakably in Samuel’s place. If the order of composition of these Samuel-Saul passages is
Epistle
VII (late 1311),
Paradiso
IV,
Monarchia
II and III, the last three likely written within only a few months of one another in circa 1314, we may begin to have an inkling of why Samuel, so long absent from Dante’s pages, should suddenly have sprung to life in them. Henry’s foundering kingship shows the need for a new Samuel to hector the struggling king, a role that Dante, no stranger to answering an elevated call to action, tries to take on. For Henry’s increasing similarity to Saul, see the article referred to by Filippo Bognini (Bogn.2007.1), p. 93 (n. 54). By the time Dante is writing
Paradiso
XXXII, Henry is dead, and thus well beyond useful hectoring.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

31–32.
   Piccarda and Constance, we are told, are in the same space as that occupied by these glorious figures. Thinking of it this way, we can understand why they are not in the least disturbed by their lower rank within the Rose (
Par
. III.70–87). Exactly where in the celestial rose they are seated is never revealed to us; we know only that they are fairly low in it (but at least halfway up, above the innocent babes [see
Par
. XXXII.37–48] and yet beneath the height attained by St. Clare [see
Par
. III.98–99], whatever that may be).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

33.
   
The souls in Plato’s
Timaeus
are said to remain longer periods in their stars in accord with their greater goodness, a bit of doctrine slapped aside in this single verse. The slap also hits the cheek of Dante himself: See the text of
Convivio
IV.xxi.2, cited in the note to verse 25, above.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

34.
   Rhyme apparently forces Dante into a self-contradiction. The Empyrean is not a
giro
(circle), like the revolving physical heavens, but a point, both infinitely large (
Par
. XXXIII.85–93) and infinitely small (
Par
. XXVIII.16–21). Nonetheless, here he says it is a
giro
.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

35.
   The phrase
dolce vita
(sweet life), here used for the first time to indicate the life of the blessed in God’s eternal presence (see also
Par
. XX.48, XXV.93), has a biting resonance in Federico Fellini’s Dante-haunted film of 1960,
La dolce vita
.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

36.
   The relative beatitude of the blessed is defined as the result of their greater or lesser ability to respond to the breath of the Holy Spirit. Normal human competitiveness makes it hard to imagine human beings, even fairly selfless and generous ones, taking joy in their lesser ability to respond to God’s love. On the other hand, our experience of some artists, musicians, and athletes reveals that there are indeed professionals who gladly admire the greater ability of their betters and enjoy participation in the same activity in which these “stars” excel. Unfortunately, there is probably less such admirable conduct than one might hope.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

37.
   This verse seals Beatrice’s presentation of the temporary nature of the souls’ presence in the Moon, as she uses a past definite (
si mostraro
[put themselves on view here]) to indicate that they no longer do so—their time in the Moon is over. See the similar use of the past definite in verse 32,
appariro
(appeared), which probably also indicates that they are no longer present.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

39.
   Beatrice’s words have given rise to a series of misreadings. What Dante says is that Piccarda and her companions in the Moon occupy a less exalted rank in Heaven; commentators (and translators) tend to say that they occupy
the least
(i.e., the very lowest) of the heavenly ranks. However, the comparative adverb
meno
(less) is never used in the
Commedia
as a superlative. The reason for this attempt to turn Dante’s vague placement of them into something far more definite is perhaps found in an assumption that, if these women are here encountered in the lowest heaven, they must
then be in the lowest rank of Heaven. The poem does not permit any such certainty. See the note to vv. 31–32.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

40–42.
   The need to speak to the human intellect in terms reflecting the experience of the senses will be more fully explored in the next two tercets, the corollary, as it were, to what has just been said here. And here Dante presents familiar Thomistic insistence on the priority (and usefulness) of sense data, an Aristotelian position and most certainly a counter-Platonic one.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

40.
   For a study of the word
ingegno
in the
Commedia
(a word introduced at
Inf
. II.7 and then found some eighteen times, with a last appearance in
Par
. XXIV.81), taking this passage as his point of departure, see Dumol (Dumo.1998.1), pp. 1–13, 177–95. And for the source of Dante’s concept in Aristotle (
Ethics
VI.1), as commented upon and developed by Aquinas, see pp. 95–124. This is the faculty called “racionativum,” the
vis cogitativa
, that is, practical or scientific knowledge.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

43–48.
   The phenomenon referred to by Beatrice, of ancient Christian lineage, is known as accommodative metaphor. Put simply (and Dante’s text does this admirably), it is the metaphoric presentation of higher things and higher beings that ordinary mortals simply have not the experiential background to understand. (For the closeness of Dante’s presentation of it here to the exposition made by St. Thomas, see Hollander [Holl.1969.1], p. 192, and Dumol [Dumo.1998.1], pp. 5–6.) For example, angels are pure being (or, as Dante would say, “pure act” [see
Par
. XXIX.33]) and have no visible aspect. So that we may better conceive them, we are allowed to think of them as having wings, faces, voices, and other attributes. Similarly, God Himself is beyond any anthropomorphic human imagining, but Scripture allows us to think of Him as having hands and feet and so on.

In an important sense, almost all of Dante’s experience of the afterworld in the first thirty cantos of this canticle is metaphoric, that is, what he sees in the stars is there only temporarily, and for illustrative purposes. For similar understandings, see Freccero, “
Paradiso
X: The Dance of the Stars” (Frec.1986.1 [1968]), pp. 221–26; Hollander (Holl.1969.1), pp. 192–201; Chiarenza (Chia.1972.1); Mazzotta (Mazz.1979.1), pp. 246–47; Barolini (Baro.1992.1), pp. 143–65; and Moevs (Moev.1999.1). And see the appreciation of a Harvard freshman, Chris Hampson, in a seminar in the autumn of 2005: “The whole point is that this is
not
what it’s really like.”
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

46–48.
   
As examples of ways in which we may have a graphic sense of exactly what the phrase “accommodative metaphor” signifies, church windows to this day represent angels with human features, while even seven hundred years ago Dante knew that angels were disembodied, were “pure act” (
Par
. XXIX.33). Humans are allowed to conceive of such higher realities in more concrete and familiar terms. Unnamed, Raphael joins periphrastically his two fellow Archangels, the ones most frequently referred to in literature and life. Indeed, only Gabriel and Michael enjoy a presence in the standard Bible, while Raphael’s is limited to the Book of Tobit (see the note to verse 48).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

48.
   Raphael is generally accounted one of the seven angels “who stand before the Lord” (Apocalypse 8:2). The apocryphal book of Enoch (chapter 21) furnishes the names of the four others, of whom only Uriel is much known today (and then mainly through his presence in Milton’s
Paradise Lost
). The story of how this Archangel allowed Tobias to cure the blindness of his father, Tobit, is told in the now apocryphal Book of Tobias (11:2–15). That Dante elected to use this particular circumlocutory detail to identify Raphael may seem puzzling. However, it was one of the few concrete details associated with this Archangel known to him. And consult
Paradiso
XXVI.12 for another brief reference to a miraculous cure for blindness, that conferred by the laying on of hands by Ananias. For a substantial recounting, one nearly as controlled and entertaining as a
novella
by Boccaccio, of the startling biblical narrative concerning Tobias and Raphael, see the commentary of Jacopo della Lana to vv. 40–48.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

49–54.
   The
Timaeus
argues that the souls of the dead return to the stars that gave them birth. This is heresy,
tout court
, if it is meant literally. Beatrice’s correction of Dante’s error, concocted in the previous canto as a recapitulation of the error he had in fact first made in the
Convivio
, should end our own confusion as to the presence of the souls in the spheres. They appear in a sort of cosmic accommodative metaphor, thus suggesting that all the last canticle up to its thirtieth canto (with a brief hiatus in the twenty-third—see the note to
Par
. XXIII.61–63) is a vast metaphoric preparation for the seeing face-to-face that will occur in the Empyrean. Further, such an understanding reminds us how “historical,” how “real” everything described and seen in the first two canticles has seemed in comparison.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]