Authors: Dante
79–84.
This simple comparison, less developed than a “classical” simile, makes the heavy question within Dante evident to the souls configuring the Eagle. Despite knowing that, he nonetheless bursts out in amazement and perplexity. We may need to remind ourselves that for eighty-five cantos the protagonist has resisted the notion that virtuous pagans should be condemned to Hell. Then the Eagle insisted on that harsh truth in Canto XIX. And now that same Eagle tells Dante that two of the greatest souls that produce his shape are saved pagans. It is small wonder the protagonist is both amazed and perplexed.
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79–81.
Tozer (comm. to this tercet) explains the passage as follows: “The metaphor is from coloured glass, the reference being to ‘coated’ glass, i.e. white glass coated with a coloured film on one side only. As this colour could be clearly seen through the glass, so the spirits could look through Dante’s mind, and see the doubt within it.”
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85–90.
The Eagle, its eye more ardent, acknowledges the protagonist’s confusion and prepares to explain its causes.
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91–93.
Commentators, beginning with Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 91–92), suggest the trace here of Aquinas’s distinction between
cognitio sensitiva
and
cognitio intellectiva
(
ST
II–II, q. 8, a. 1), that is, between knowledge based on sense perception and that based on reason, penetrating to the true meaning of phenomena.
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93.
Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 91–92) deals with the Latinism
prome
as meaning “extract,” “draw out,” that is, as one grasps the essence of a concept.
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94–96.
See Matthew 11:12: “
Regnum caelorum
vim patitur, et violenti rapiunt illud” (the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away [italics added])—in these cases at the behest of the hopeful prayers of Pope Gregory and the ardent affection of Ripheus. As we will see (vv. 108, 121), the virtues of Hope and Love will be specifically aligned with the salvations of Trajan and of Ripheus, respectively.
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97.
Rhyme may have forced Dante to use a Provençalism,
sobranza
(overcomes, conquers), but he seems to welcome the excuse, as his project for the language of the
Commedia
is inclusive rather than exclusive.
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98–99.
The chiasmus (
vince, vinta; vinta, vince
) underlines the power of the paradox: God wills to be conquered and thus conquers.
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103–105.
This tercet is built on still another chiasmus: Trajan, Ripheus; Christ to come, Christ come.
As opposed to a more comfortable understanding, in other words, that Trajan and (more pointedly) Ripheus had been won to the God of the Christians through implicit faith (see Aquinas,
ST
II–II, q. 2, a. 7), Dante insists that he believes that we believe that they believed explicitly in Christ, in Trajan’s case (less difficult to accept, but involving a major miracle [see vv. 106–117], after the fact; in Ripheus’s, before [see vv. 118–129]). And so they died, not as unbelievers, but as full-fledged Christians. The trick here is to add a disclaimer for Trajan (he died a Christian only when he died a
second time
) and to swallow hard at the claim made on behalf of Ripheus.
The feet of Jesus, transfixed to the Cross by a single spike, offered one of the most piteous physical images drawn from the Passion. See, for example, Bonvesin de la Riva’s
De scriptura rubra
in his
Libro de le tre scritture
, vv. 153–170 (cited by Gragnolati [Grag.2005.1], pp. 95–96; and see p. 231, n. 57), where, in eighteen verses, the word
pei
(Milanese dialect for “feet”) occurs six times in Bonvesin’s bloody account of the Crucifixion.
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106–117.
The somewhat grudging authority of St. Thomas (
ST
, Suppl., q. 71, a. 5) sustains the widely disseminated tale that Trajan was resuscitated by agency of Gregory’s accepted prayers, believed in Christ, was baptized, died a second time, and was received in Heaven (see the note to
Purg.
X.73–93). Thomas, however, seems in fact to have been drawn to the story of Gregory’s intervention on Trajan’s behalf, referring to it in some six
loci
in his other works. See the indispensable online
Corpus Thomisticum
(
www.corpusthomisticum.org
), the project in which Father Roberto Busa convinced IBM to become his partner in 1946.
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108.
What is perhaps most surprising about Trajan’s reward is that it was won not by
his
hope, but by that of Pope Gregory. We are reminded of the fate of those in Limbo (where, we assume, Trajan was first lodged), who exist (according to
Inf.
IV.42) longing for a better lot, if without hope for it (
sanza speme
). Gregory’s hope “conquered” God on Trajan’s behalf; the emperor himself, the evidence that we gather from Limbo would seem to assert, was hopeless.
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118–129.
Some early commentators (e.g., Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, comm. to these verses], John of Serravalle [comm. to vv. 31–36 and 127–129]) speak of the “baptism of fire” in those inspired by the Holy Spirit to love God perfectly. For Dante, Virgil’s single word,
iustissimus
, seems to have been the key for this incredible invention. (For the centrality of justice to Dante’s design, see the note to
Inferno
III.4.)
To Ripheus Virgil has dedicated a total of only five lines in the
Aeneid
; Dante doubles that (and then some) in this passage alone.
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121.
The word
drittura
is a hapax in the poem, but has a Dantean history before it puts in its appearance here, first in
Convivio
(IV.xvii.6), where, as rectitude, it is an attribute of the eleventh and final of Aristotle’s moral virtues, Justice.
Drittura
also appears in the exilic
canzone
, “Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute” (
Rime
CIV.35), where she seems as much a despised exile from Florence as does the poet.
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126.
As provocation, this detail is over the top. Nonetheless, the commentators are amazingly willing to accept what Dante says without protest. The whole story of Ripheus is nothing less than outrageous, and now the poet tops it off by turning him, as Poletto (comm. to vv. 124–126) had the strength of mind to observe, into a sort of Trojan St. Paul. Why not? Dante seems to have thought; if he became a Christian, he must have hated those shoddy pagan gods and the religious practices of his fellow pagans, doesn’t that makes sense? And so he preached against those practices. Is Dante having fun with us? And at Virgil’s expense? Perhaps.
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127–129.
The three ladies are obviously the three theological virtues, whom we saw at the right wheel of the chariot of the Church Triumphant in
Purgatorio
XXIX.121–129. In what sense did they “serve to baptize” Ripheus? Since that ritual was not available to him, and since he was born with original sin upon him, he required something in its place. Somehow he acquired the three theological virtues and these brought him
to Christ. Dante’s text here may reflect a passage in St. Augustine’s
De doctrina christiana
(I.xxxix.43): “Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them, does not need the Scriptures except for the instruction of others” (tr. D. W. Robertson, Jr.).
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130–148.
The fourth and final section of this canto addresses itself to a question that has always troubled Christians (as is focally shown in many of the writings of Augustine): predestination. Reiterating Thomas’s criticism of our all-too-human desire to speculate upon the likely salvation or damnation of our neighbors (
Par.
XIII.139–142), the Eagle now portrays as cosmic the unknowing that surrounds God’s purpose. Not even the immortal just souls in the Empyrean know all the elect (see verse 72 for the less dramatic notice of the shortness of mortal vision in this regard). This comes as something of a surprise, as Torquato Tasso noted (comm. to vv. 133–135), since everything we have previously learned about this topic would clearly seem to indicate that the saved know, in God, all things that exist (see, inter alia,
Par.
V.4–6, VIII.85–90, IX.73–75, XV.49–51, XVII.13–18, and XIX.28–30, as well as the notes to
Par.
IV.16–18 and XIV.7–9); however, Dante’s enthusiasm for the subject seems to have led him into at least a possible self-contradiction, since what is said here denies that even the blessed can have complete knowledge of what God has in His mind. Gragnolati (Grag.2005.1, passim) argues that after the general resurrection God’s thought will be knowable by all the saved. Dante’s apparent assertion that the blessed do not know the identities of those not yet saved certainly seems to violate the principle that whatever God knows the saved are able to read in His mind, as Tasso noted. From
Paradiso
XV.49–51 we have learned that Cacciaguida
knew
that Dante was inscribed in the Book of Life. And so we must wonder how thoroughly the poet held to this apparent revision of his earlier view, as much as we must honor it.
Venturi (comm. to verse 135) was apparently the first commentator to refer to part of the
collecta
(“collect”—originally a short prayer recited to Christians gathered [“collected”] for a service) known as “the Collect for the living and the dead”: “Deus, cui soli cognitus est numerus electorum in superna felicitate locandus” (God, to whom alone is known the number of the elect that is to be set in supernal bliss). This prayer, once it was cited by Venturi, had a certain afterlife in the commentators right through the nineteenth century, but for some reason has been allowed to vanish in our time. Nonetheless, while it does give us an official teaching of the Church regarding the limits of the knowledge of those in the Empyrean, it certainly is at odds with what the poem has led us to expect, as Tasso observed.
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134.
The Eagle once again, concluding its presence in the poem, speaks as a plural entity, in the collective voice of the individual souls of the just.
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139–141.
Thus were Dante’s weak eyes strengthened by Justice (cf. the Eagle’s very first words at XIX.13, speaking in the first-person singular: “Per esser
giusto
e pio” [For being just and merciful]).
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141.
The phrase “soave medicina” (sweet medication) recalls the
medicina
of
Inferno
XXXI.3. It also probably refers to the “pestilence” the protagonist’s eyes had encountered in the counterpoised object of vision to this briefer catalogue of the justly saved, the group of twelve damned rulers found in Canto XIX. As Marino Barchiesi (Barc.1973.1), pp. 73–74, realized, it also recalls the “disease” of sympathy for classical divination demonstrated by the protagonist in
Inferno
XX. And, in this vein, see Hollander (Holl.1980.2), p. 199: “The disease which has been cured in
Paradiso
XX revealed its etiology in
Inferno
XX.”
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142–148.
This is the final simile of the canto and of this simile-filled heaven (there are twelve in Cantos XVIII–XX, four in each): As a lutenist accompanies a singer, Trajan and Ripheus move their flames, as though in accompaniment, to the Eagle’s words.
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1–4.
As has always been the case (
Par.
I.64–66 [Moon]; V.88–96 [Mercury]; VIII.14–15 [Venus]; X.37–39 [Sun]; XIV.79–84 [Mars]; XVIII.52–57 [Jupiter]; and in these verses), as he ascends to a new heaven, Dante fixes his eyes on Beatrice’s face so that nothing else can attract his attention. And it will be much the same in the three ascents still before him (
Par.
XXII.97–105 [Starry Sphere]; XXVII.88–96 [Crystalline Sphere]; XXX.14–27 [Empyrean]). In most of these moments, Beatrice is either explicitly or indirectly portrayed as smiling. This time, however, there is something quite different about the heavenly guide’s disposition, as we discover in the following tercet: For the first time in this situation, an ascent to the next celestial heaven, Beatrice is rather pointedly
not
smiling. The little mystery that this fact engenders is left for Peter Damian to resolve (see vv. 61–63).
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