Authors: Dante
139.
Thomas, in good Thomistic fashion, rounds off his “gloss” on
Paradiso
X.96 by repeating the entire line here.
It is amusing to think that Dante’s revenge on his major intellectual rival in the debate over the truth-telling capacity of poetry comes from making Thomas a commentator on Dante’s poetry, a role that he himself, perhaps prodded by Thomas’s attacks on his profession, felt called upon to play in his
Epistle to Cangrande.
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1.
The action of this canto begins, if we take its first line literally, before the preceding one ends, that is, before Thomas utters the last syllables (or syllable) of
vaneggia
. That seems fitting, since these two cantos are, perhaps more than any other pair in the work, mirror images of one another. See Bertoldi (Bert.1903.1), referring to them, despite their differing subjects and feelings, as “twin cantos.” See also the note to vv. 142–145.
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3.
Dante had earlier resorted to the image of the millstone (
mola
) to refer to the rotation of the Sun, seen from either pole, around the earth (
Conv
. III.v.14).
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4–6.
The matching circles of twelve saints, each moving in such a way as to match the other both in the eye and in the ear of the beholder, anticipates the final image of the poem (
Par.
XXXIII.143–145).
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4.
The first circle of saints was described (
Par.
XI.14) as having completed a first full rotation; now it is seen as being on the point of completing a second one.
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6.
The double repetition (
moto/moto
;
canto/canto
) underlines the matching quality of these two circles.
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7–8.
The previous tercet had divided the activity of the souls into circling movement and song; this one divides that song itself (repeating the word
canto
) into two components, words (
muse
) and melody (
sirene
). Dante had used the word
Muse
(capitalized by Petrocchi, if we have little idea of Dante’s actual practice with regard to capitalization) in
Inferno
1.7, in
Purgatorio
II.8 and XXII.102, then in
Paradiso
II.9, to indicate the Muses of classical antiquity. Beginning here, however, and then in two later passages (
Par.
XV.26 and XVIII.33), Petrocchi obviously believes that Dante uses the lower-case word
musa
metaphorically, here to refer to poets (the next use will refer to Virgil [or his poetry] as “nostra maggior musa” [our greatest muse], and finally [
Par.
XVIII.33], to poetry itself—or so most readers believe).
Torraca (comm. to vv. 7–9) seems to have been the first to remark on the similar conjoining of Sirens and Muses in Boethius (
Cons. Phil
. I.1[pr]).
These two verses contain four words relating to music:
canto
(song),
musa
(muse),
sirena
(siren),
tuba
(brass musical instrument [more precisely, “horn”]). For the echoing effect that results from the repetition of the first two, Dante may have had in mind the similar effect found in Ovid’s story of Echo and Narcissus, referred to in vv. 14–15. The next (and last) time we read the noun
tuba
(
Par.
XXX.35), it will be the metaphoric expression for Dante’s poetic voice, while here it refers to the voices of the singing saints.
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9.
The word
splendore
is, in Dante, always the result of light (
luce
), proceeding along its ray (
raggio
), and then reflected by an object. (For these interrelated terms, describing the three major aspects of light, see Dante’s earlier statement [
Conv
. III.xiv.5].) This verse makes clear Dante’s belief that a second reflection (e.g., as in a mirror) is less vivid than that original splendor (but cf.
Par.
II.94–105, which seems to contradict this understanding). As we have learned in Canto X (vv. 64–69), these crowns of dancing saints are presented as circles of musical lights. And in that earlier passage, a simile, the comparison is to the rainbow, as will also be true in the simile that begins in the next verse.
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10–21.
This simile, explicitly formal in its construction (
Come … così
) and, balanced in its content, containing one classical and one biblical reference (Iris and the rainbow that God offered as a sign to Noah), gives a sense of the identity of the two circles of saints, despite their evident differences.
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10.
Dante apparently thought of thin (and thus “translucent”) clouds as actually being constituted of a layer of water-soaked dust suspended in the atmosphere in which the rainbow appears.
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11–18.
There are a number of candidates for the classical source at work here, primarily texts in Virgil and Ovid. It seems likely that Dante would have had the reference (
Metam.
I.270–271) to Juno’s sending Iris (her “handmaid,” the rainbow) as a result of Jove’s huge storm, sent below in his attempt to extirpate, in a flood, the human race (typified in the first murderer, Lycaon [the wolf-man], and hence abandoned by piety and justice [
Metam.
I.149–150]). That would nicely balance these gestures toward “famous rainbows,” since the second of them is without doubt reflective of the rainbow that God sent as the sign of his covenant (Genesis 9:13) with Noah and the few other surviving members of humankind based on His promise never to send such a destructive flood again. (The first book of the
Metamorphoses
is, as it were, the pagan equivalent of Genesis.) We are also probably meant to compare the unchecked vengeful desires of the king of the pagan gods with the moderated sternness of God the Father.
Dante adds a second rainbow, as his context demands, not as he found in his sources, but as may at least occasionally be observed in Tuscany even today.
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13.
The second circle is, like the second rainbow, wider than the first. Dante’s science believed that the second rainbow was born from the first, not that it was part of a double refraction of light.
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14–15.
The reference is to the nymph Echo (
Metam.
III.356–510), who fell in love with Narcissus. She wasted away with unrequited passion until all that was left of her was a voice. This second simile, within the overarching simile that compares the two circles of saints to the double rainbow, replicates the form of such a rainbow.
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18.
As Tommaseo suggests (comm. to vv. 16–18), the present tense of the verb
allagare
(to flood) suggests the past, present, and future application of God’s covenant with humankind: This global flood has not recurred and will never do so.
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22–25.
Dante seemingly intuits the extraordinary effect made by large symphony orchestras when called upon to modulate huge sound suddenly into silence. If the reader imagines Beethoven as the background music to this scene, perhaps he or she will better experience what is projected by these verses. Of course, the miraculous sound has not so much to do with extraordinary musical abilities as it does with the result of living in God’s grace, in which all is harmonious, even sudden silence.
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26–30.
These similetic elements of this passage (vv. 22–30), two eyes opening or closing as one and Dante ineluctably being drawn to the voice of a new spirit (it will turn out to be Bonaventure), speak to the sense of the overpowering quality of the love and beauty that affects both the performers and their observer. Torraca (comm. to vv. 28–30) points out that the compass, invented only a short while before, had already become a familiar image in thirteenth-century Italian poetry, for example, in poems by Guido Guinizzelli and in Ristoro d’Arezzo.
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31–33.
St. Bonaventure is about to praise the leader of Thomas’s order, St. Dominic, in response to Thomas’s praise of Francis, the leader of his own. For information about the speaker, see the note to vv. 127–128.
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34–36.
In the previous canto (
Par.
XI.40–42) Thomas had gone out of his way to insist that praise of either Francis or Dominic is necessarily praise of the other; Bonaventure matches him.
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35.
While Dante has made every effort to “militarize” the sweetness of St. Francis, making both him and Dominic share the verb
militaro
(lit. “soldiered”), the following three tercets show that he is willing to associate himself with the traditional portrayal of Dominic as warlike, while the traditional depiction of Francis is decidedly not (see the note to
Par.
XI.91). On the other hand, it is again notable that he has included Francis within the construct of the Christian soldier.
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37–45.
These three tercets contain seven words that associate the two friars with militarism and imperial rule:
essercito
(army),
riarmar
(to rearm),
insegna
(battle standard),
imperador
(emperor),
regna
(reigns),
milizia
(soldiers),
campioni
(“champions,” i.e., those who excel in single combat).
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37–39.
The “troops” obviously form the Church Militant, now led by the newly approved mendicant orders, expensive to rearm, since it took the blood of the apostles to accomplish that task (see Aversano [Aver.2000.2], p. 53, for reasons to prefer this gloss to that which insists the reference is to Christ’s blood, an interpretation unopposed since the earliest days of the commentary tradition; Aversano refers the reader to
Par.
XXVII.40–45 for confirming evidence). Despite that, the soldiers, apparently, still lack resolve.
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40–45.
The meaning is that God succored His “troops,” not because they were particularly worthy, but because He extended them His grace. For a clear summary of the two kinds of grace at work in Dante’s world, operating grace (which Dante received from God, through the agency of Beatrice, in
Inferno
II) and cooperating grace, see Scott (Scot.2004.2), pp. 187–90. Once a sinner is justified by the receipt of operating grace, which is gratuitous (i.e., cannot be earned), he or she must “cooperate” in order to merit eventual reward (salvation). Scott reviews the American discussion
of this issue, which was dominated by the views of Charles Singleton, until Antonio Mastrobuono (Mast.1990.1) clarified the nature of the problem.
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40.
That God is here referred to as “emperor” (as He is on only two other occasions:
Inf.
I.124 and
Par.
XXV.41) makes Dante’s comfort with imperial trappings clear, especially to his Guelph enemies. This term for God is not in itself unwarranted in Christian tradition, far from it. But Dante uses it here in an ecclesiastical context where it might seem, at least to some, improper.
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43.
The reference (“as was said”) is to
Paradiso
XI.31–36, where Thomas tells of God’s appointment of these two stalwarts to succor the bride of Christ, His Church.
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44.
Francis (typified by love) is best represented by his
deeds
, Dominic (typified by knowledge), by his
words
.
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46–57.
Dominic was “born 1170, in the village of Calaroga, in Old Castile; he is supposed to have belonged to the noble family of Guzmàn, his father’s name being Felix, his mother’s Joanna. The latter is said to have dreamed before he was born that she gave birth to a dog with a torch in its mouth, which set the world on fire. At the age of fourteen he went to the university of Palencia, where he studied theology for ten or twelve years. He was early noted for his self-denial and charity. In 1195 he became canon of the cathedral of Osma. In 1215 he accompanied Folquet, bishop of Toulouse, to the Lateran Council; and in the same year, on his return to Toulouse, he founded his order of Preaching Friars, which was formally recognized by Honorius III in 121[7]. He died in Aug. 1221 at Bologna, where he was buried. He was canonized soon after his death (in 1234) by Gregory IX”
(T)
. And see G. R. Sarolli, “Domenico, santo,”
ED
II (1970), pp. 546–51. Sarolli points out that, when Dominic, with six companions, arrived in Toulouse in 1215, on the verge of forming a more structured group, he associated with Folco di Marsiglia (whom we encountered in
Par.
IX.88–102), the newly appointed bishop of that city.
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