Authors: Dante
12.
We are given a clue as to the separate “dwelling” of God. Fallani (comm. to vv. 40–42) discusses the fact that among the Scholastics there was a tradition of a second “heaven” in the Empyrean, the
coelum Trinitatis
(the heaven of the Trinity), a “place” distinct from the Empyrean, where dwelt the triune God, separated from the blessed souls. In Fallani’s opinion, Dante accepts that tradition. It is, however, not clear that he does. Perhaps he both honors and abrogates it, for his God is not in an “eleventh zone” of the heavens, but in the one He shares with the saints—if in a
higher and thus different
locus
from them (the distance between the “floor” and the top tier of the Rose is greater than that between the lowest place in the sea and the highest place beneath the Moon [see the note to vv. 73–78]; the distance between that point in the Rose and God would seem to be infinite). And thus Dante can have things both ways: Is God separate from the saints? Yes and no. He is infinitely farther aloft than they, but that does not require that He “inhabits” another “place,” especially since His “habitation” is everywhere and nowhere. It seems clear that Dante intends to avoid this issue, of which he must have been aware. For the presence of the phrase
coelum Trinitatis
, in a context that is related, see Thomas Aquinas,
Super Evangelium S. Matthaei lectura
(51.2, referring to Psalm 36:11 [37:11] and Matthew 5:5, “The meek shall inherit the earth”; Aquinas explains that the
terra
[earth] promised them is the Empyrean). It is not entirely clear, but he seems to think of the Empyrean and the
coelum Trinitatis
as though they might be considered one and the same.
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13–15.
Dante’s description of the angels, flaming red faces, golden wings, and white “bodies,” is possibly based in biblical texts as well as popular iconography (as found, for instance, painted on church walls). Quite a few biblical sources have been a part of the indeterminate discussion down through the centuries. Perhaps the only sure citation (for the angels’ red faces) is Scartazzini’s (comm. to verse 13): Ezechiel 1:13: “their appearance was like burning coals of fire,” which has quantitatively the most support. A second at least likely attribution is Tommaseo’s (comm. to this tercet), who, for the white, cites Matthew 28:3: the angel who appears at the tomb of Jesus, his vestments “white as snow” (some later commentators join [or substitute] Matthew’s supposed “source,” Daniel 7:9). The gold has several suggestions based in Daniel 10:5, but this is not convincingly chosen, since the gold there described is that found on a belt, not on wings.
As for the “allegorical” meaning of the three colors, nearly all can agree that the red faces bespeak angelic love. However, the other two are the cause of disagreement. Some, unconvincingly, propose the Trinity (Love, Wisdom [?], and Power [??]); others select various abstractions, not much more convincingly. There is a general understanding that the angels and their colors are perfect in three respects: They love perfectly, fly on immortal pinions, and have “bodies” that are utterly pure. And that is probably enough.
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17–18.
In Dante’s lovely transposition, these bees, now having gathered the “pollen” (God’s love) from the hive, bring “honey”
back
from the hive
to the souls: a celestial variant on nature’s apiary artistry. These flowers have a second chance to enjoy their own (now enhanced) sweetness. Dante’s “honey,” like God’s love and their love for Him, is bidirectional.
As Augustine knew and taught, mortal love can never satisfy or be satisfied: “inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te” (restless is our heart until it finds rest in you—
Confessiones
I.1). These two words,
pace
and
ardore
(“peace” and “love”), can be found together only here in the Empyrean, never in Dante’s world below.
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19–27.
The numberless host of the angels, circling God in nine ranks (see the note to
Par.
XXVIII.25–27), do not hinder in any way either His ray from reaching the saints in the Rose or their ability to make out His splendor (which Aversano [Aver.2000.2], p. 159, particularizes as the Second Person, Christ, irradiated by the Father). Torraca (comm. to vv. 22–24) reminds us that, in
Convivio
(III.vii.5), Dante had in fact said that the angels were as though translucent (
diafani
). Indeed, all of them, those who believed in Christ to come and those who believed after the fact, are gazing lovingly on the triune God.
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22–23.
See
Paradiso
I.2 and the note to verse 5, above. Thus Dante, nearing his ending, reflects his beginning, a way of also signaling that the poem is approaching its conclusion.
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25–27.
We now see all the saints doing what, as we will learn in the next canto, they always do, looking up, fixing their gaze on God. There is no variety in Heaven, nor is it desired by the blessed.
We also learn, in that canto, what is intrinsic only to what we see here. There are more Jews in Heaven than Christians. This puzzled some commentators and infuriated others, the first group claiming that Dante could not possibly have meant this, the others believing him only too well. Pretty clearly Dante’s neat division of the Rose into two equal parts, with a few empty seats in the Christian half and none in the Jewish one, is meant to force that conclusion upon a reader. As far as we know, there are only a very few gentiles among the Hebrew group. In fact, we know only that there are two, Cato (there thus
should
be at least one empty place in the full half, as Cato is still minding Purgatory) and Ripheus (Statius and Trajan were both alive in Christian times). Dante’s point is clear: More Jews believed in Christ without the authority of His presence, as certified by the witness provided by the New Testament, than did Christians, even though they were given the answers before they took the exam.
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28–29.
In verse 27 the saints are said to aim their gaze at a single target. Now the poet speaks of that single essence as a “star,” but also as the Trinity, a “threefold Light,” bringing joy to all the blessed who behold it (and they all do). Some of the early commentators are less clear than they might be that this is not an “invocation” or part of the prayer that Dante will address to God in verse 30. This is an example of apostrophe, one of praise, and not part of a request.
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30.
The poet then addresses God, praying that He look down at the “storm” afflicting mortal lives on earth. Is there an implicit further request to be understood here? Most of the commentators think so. And all of them who are of this opinion believe that Dante is asking God to intervene on behalf of storm-tossed mortals. However, it seems at least as likely that he means no such thing. Rather, as the reference to Florence (verse 39) might also suggest, God ought to look down at the spectacle of human sin with grim recognition of the lostness of those living now on earth, almost all of them beyond redemption. Apparently the first to offer so point-blank a negative reading was Roffarè (Roff.1968.1), p. 1107. What stands in the way of accepting this pessimistic interpretation is the highly possible presence of a citation of a passage, first cited by Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 28–30), in Boethius’s
Consolatio
(I.m5.42–48): “O God, whoever you are, who joins [
sic
] all things in perfect harmony, look down upon this miserable earth! We men are no small part of Your great work, yet we wallow here in the stormy sea of fortune. Ruler of all things, calm the roiling waves and, as You rule the immense heavens, rule also the earth in stable concord” (tr. R. Green). Also germane is
Monarchia
I.xvi.4, first cited by Torraca (comm. to vv. 28–30): “O human race, how many storms and misfortunes and shipwrecks must toss you about while, transformed into a many-headed beast, you strive after conflicting things” (tr. P. Shaw). This last is part of the bitter conclusion of the first book of that treatise, and would not encourage one to believe that, if Dante were thinking of it here, he foresaw any sort of divine aid coming to the human race. On the other hand, see the prophecy concluding
Paradiso
XXVII, which does predict God’s positive intervention in the affairs of men (similarly presented as a storm at sea [
fortuna
]—see the note to
Par.
XXVII.142–148). It is thus difficult to decide what the author intended us to gather about the nature of his request for God’s attention.
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31–40.
In this lengthy simile the poet compares barbarians, probably coming, in times of peace, from northern Europe to Rome, seeing the
imperial buildings of the city before Constantine gave those buildings to the papacy just after his conversion in 312, to himself, moving in the opposite direction, “south” to “north,” from Florence to the New Jerusalem above the heavens.
The magnificent church of St. John Lateran was destroyed by fire in 1308. Making things worse, Henry VII, denied a coronation in St. Peter’s by Pope Clement, was crowned in the ruins of that church in 1312, nearly exactly one thousand years later, and died the next year (see note to
Paradiso
.XVII.82–84).
For a discussion of the various notions of what exactly Dante meant by the reference, see Costa (Cost.1996.1), pp. 65–66.
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32–33.
Callisto was exiled by Diana from the “nunnery” of chaste forest maidens for her affair with Jove, which resulted in her giving birth to Arcas. “The ‘zone’ that is always ‘covered by Helice’ is the North. The nymph Helice or Callisto was transformed into the constellation of the Great Bear, and her son Arcas or Boötes into the Little Bear:
Metam.
II.496–530, especially 515–517; cf.
Purg.
XXV.131. The Bears, or Dippers, are close to the North Star” (Grandgent, comm. to vv. 31–34).
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37–39.
The phrase “a people just and sane” is the third and last in a series of parallel pairs, with the parallelism inverted in the third term: good/bad, good/bad, bad/good. See
Paradiso
XVI.152, where Florentines in “the good old days” were portrayed in much more positive terms. Now things have changed, and Florentines are those left behind in order for Dante to associate with such people as they once were, now found only in Heaven.
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39.
This is the fifteenth and last time we hear the word
Fiorenza
in the poem; we first heard it in Farinata’s voice (
Inf.
X.92). While in fact Florence had replaced Rome as the greatest city of Italy, Dante here reverses that equation, making old Rome the type of the celestial city, while new Florence is portrayed as the city of the lost.
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43–48.
The second simile in a series of three dedicated to the theme of pilgrimage (see the note to vv. 103–111), this one presents Dante as a traveler to a shrine, a journey he has vowed to make. For the pilgrimage motif in the entire poem, see Holloway (Holl.1992.3).
While Dante leaves the particular shrine he may have had in mind shrouded in silence, the early commentators variously suggested the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, St. Peter’s in Rome, and St.
James of Compostella in Galicia (Spain), the three most important destinations for pilgrims in his day.
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48.
The Tuscan word for “now” (
mo
) was first heard at
Inferno
X.21 and leaves the poem after a dazzling three uses in a single line (and the twenty-third through twenty-fifth in all), perhaps underlining Dante’s desire to be considered a vernacularizing poet even at the sublime height of the Empyrean. The effect of the triple presence of the word accents the eager nature of his glance, unable to move quickly enough in taking in every aspect of the place he has so long desired to see, the goal of his pilgrimage. Verse 54 describes Dante’s similar hurried and eager glances cast around the Rose in the attempt to take it all in.
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49–51.
What the protagonist sees, faces, reminds us that it was only the first few souls whom he saw in the heavens whose human features he could make out (see the note to
Par.
III.58–63). Now he is seeing, as Beatrice promised he would (
Par.
XXX.44–45), the souls as they will look when they are reincarnate.
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51.
The word
onestade
has only two occurrences in the poem. The last time we heard it was in the poet’s description of Virgil when he was running up the slope of Mount Purgatory (
Purg.
III.11) after Cato chastised the souls who listened, charmed, to Casella’s song. There Virgil is seen as having lost his dignity; here the souls in the Rose are seen by the protagonist as having theirs.
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