But she, knowing what yearning burned in me, began thus—with so rapturous a smile God seemed to shine forth from her ecstasy:
“The order of the universe, whose nature holds firm the center and spins all else around it, takes from this heaven its first point of departure.
This heaven does not exist in any place but in God’s mind, where burns the love that turns it and the power that rains to it from all of space.
Light and Love contain it in one band as it does all the rest; and such containment only the Cunctitenant can understand.
Its own motion unfactored, all things derive their motions from this heaven as precisely as ten is factored into two and five.
So may you understand how time’s taproot is hidden in this sphere’s urn, while in the others we see its spreading foliage and its fruit.
O Greed that has drawn down all Adam’s blood so deep into its dark that none has strength to raise his eyes above its evil flood!
The will of man comes well to its first flower, but then the rain that sets in endlessly blights the good fruit and leaves it green and sour.
Faith and innocence are found nowhere except in little children; and both have fled before their cheeks have sprouted a first hair.
Still young enough to lisp, one fasts and prays; then, his tongue freed, devours all sorts of food even in Lent, even on fasting days.
Another will love his mother and behave while yet a lisper, who, with his freed speech will be impatient to see her in her grave.
So the fair daughter of Him who leaves us night and brings us morning, changes her complexion, and her white skin turns black in Heaven’s sight.
Consider, if you marvel at what I say, how there is none to govern on the earth, whereby the human family goes astray.
But before January falls in spring because of that odd day in each hundred years that all neglect down there, these spheres shall ring
so loud with portents of a season’s turn that the long awaited storm will sweep the fleet, blowing the bows around to dead astern
and set the true course straight. Then all shall see first blossom turn to good fruit on the tree.”
NOTES
10-11. the four great torches: Peter, James, John, and Adam. the one that had descended to me first: Peter.
13-15. Jupiter (white) and Mars (red) are conceived here as two firebirds who partially exchange their glowing plumage. The point is that the aura of St. Peter, without losing its essential white brilliance, begins to glow with a redder (more martial) light. The change indicates a change of mood: a fiercer St. Peter is about to denounce the corruption of the Papacy by his evil successors.
17. offices: Empowering appointments. Cf. “office of the mass.” services: the times each is called upon to perform his offices. Since all is preordained by God, each slightest action is from God’s will.
21. change theirs: Change their hues.
22. the usurper: Boniface VIII.
25. my sepulcher: Rome as the seat of papal authority. According to tradition, Peter was buried there.
26. the treacherous one: Satan.
35-36. “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.” Matthew, xxvii, 45. See also Mark, xv, 33, and Luke, xxiii, 44-45. The apostles report the eclipse as darkness and Dante treats it as a reddening. It seems unlikely it was so dark a red as to suggest night shadow. Perhaps Dante saw that flush of righteous indignation as showing like night on earth, but blush-red as seen from heaven’s height.
37-39. The quality of the reaction invites a speculation: men work themselves into moods and are carried away by them at times, but heavenly beings express instant recognition and total justice; they register instantly, therefore, the exactly right reaction to things.
41-44. All these here named were early bishops of Rome, Peter’s first successor being traditionally believed to be Linus, and his successor, Cletus (Anacletus). The others followed at various intervals: Sixtus 117-circa 127, Pius 142-circa 149, Calixtus 217-222, and Urban 222-230. Not all were martyred, as line 45 would seem to suggest, but all suffered in the flesh and in the spirit for the sins of mankind.
47-48. part on the right, part on the left: To indicate any warring parties of Christians, the bloody divisions of Dante’s time being first the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and then the Black and the White Guelfs, those divisions often incited or abetted by the corrupt Popes for purposes of their own politics.
49-51. keys: The papal keys, emblems of the Pope’s authority, were used on the banner of the Vatican States, which had often been carried into battle against Christians—a bloody perversion, in Dante’s view, of the papal mission.
52-53. my head . . . a seal: The papal seal, stamped on many documents whose intent was venial, bore the purported likeness of St. Peter.
58. Gascons and Cahorsines: Clement V was from Gascony; John XXII from Cahors. Both filled the Papal Court with greedy favorites from their native lands. And both, of course, were guilty of the further sin of being French in Italy.
61-63. God’s foreseeing provision, as Dante would have understood it, must have helped Scipio overthrow Hannibal, else Rome would not have remained the glory of the world and could not have become the proper seat of holy Church.
64-66. This charge, laid upon him by St. Peter himself, is, of course, Dante’s ultimate license to denounce papal corruption. Effectively enough, the very charge is itself the ultimate denunciation.
67-75. All the souls who remained below when Mary ascended now rise to the Empyrean like a reverse snowfall. The figure Dante chooses for their ascent is not his most felicitous in that the snow image cannot suggest either the radiance of the souls nor the necessary speed of their ascent. when the horn of heaven’s Goat is burnished by the Sun: The sun is in Capricorn (heaven’s Goat) at about mid-January, hence at the time when “frozen vaporings” come down as snow.
79 ff. The last (and first) time Dante looked down was as he entered the Sphere of the Fixed Stars (XXII, 127 ff.). Now, as he is about to leave this Sphere, he looks down again and sees he has revolved through 90°. He has, therefore, been in this heaven six hours, one quarter of a daily turn. 90° is the amount of arc equal to half the span of the first clime. Geographers of Dante’s time divided the northern hemisphere into seven habitable “climes” or “climates” running parallel to the equator. The southern hemisphere, of course, was taken to be water, the Mount of Purgatory excepted, and the northern landmass was taken to spread 180° from Spain to India.
The earthly point above which Dante is passing is about midway between Jerusalem and Spain. He can see the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and westward beyond Spain into the Atlantic. It would be allegorically pleasant to be able to say he was over Rome at this moment before ascending into the last sphere, and Dante may well have had that thought in mind, but nothing in the text permits more than a guess.
82-84. past Cadiz: The Atlantic. the mad route Ulysses took: See Inferno, XXVI, 90 ff. the shore from which Europa: Phoenicia on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Zeus appeared to Europa there as a bull and, taking her on his back, bore her to Crete. “Godly brute” is rhyme-forced: Dante says, literally, “the shore on which Europa became a sweet burden.”
85-87. threshing floor: The Earth. (See XXII, 127 ff.) more . . . would have been visible: Dante’s view is cut off by darkness because the Sun is ahead of him in Aries. He is in Gemini. The sign of Taurus lies between. A zodiacal sign covers 30°. The sun, therefore, is something more than two hours ahead of him and perhaps as much as four (if it is in the middle of Aries and he in the middle of Gemini). Part of the world below Dante must, therefore, lie in shadow.
98. Leda’s nest: Gemini, the sign of the twins, Castor and Pollux. Zeus appeared to Leda as a swan and, according to the most common legend, she bore him Castor and Pollux. “Nest” is a jeu d’esprit derived from Zeus’s traveling costume when he called on Leda.
100-102. ENTRANCE INTO THE PRIMUM MOBILE. Dante
knew he entered the Eighth Sphere at the point of heaven marked by Gemini (XXII, 152). The Ninth Sphere, however, is so uniform that he can make out no point of reference. Beatrice, of course, knows his confusion and hastens to explain to him the nature of the Ninth Sphere.
103. what yearning: To understand the nature of the new sphere.
106-108. The firmly held center is the Earth. In the nature of the Ptolemaic universe, whose originating motion is the Primum Mobile, all else is made to revolve around that center.
114. the Cunctitenant: God, the all-containing. He contains the Primum Mobile as it contains all else.
115-117. Ten is precisely determined as the product of the factors two and five. The Primum Mobile, itself unfactorable (i.e., defined and limited by nothing), imparts the factors that determine every other motion, setting the speed, regularity, and deviation of every other heavenly motion.
118-120. Time is measured by the motion of the heavenly bodies, but the source of time, like the root of a tree, is hidden in the urn (flowerpot) of the Primum Mobile, while the heavenly bodies show forth in the other spheres as the foliage and fruit of the hidden cause. So may you understand: By what I say.
131. his tongue freed: When he has grown out of his childish lisp. 132. I have translated what I take to be Dante’s intent rather than his words. Dante says simply “in whatever moon,” meaning both “in whatever month” (including Lent) and “at whatever time of the month” (including Fridays and other stated days of fasting).
136-138. Few of Dante’s tercets are open to so many interpretations. I follow Scartazzini-Vandelli in reading the passage as a denunciation of the corruption of the Church, the fair daughter of the Sun (it being always, in Dante, a symbol of God). The Sun, arriving, brings morning and, departing, leaves night. The fair daughter, once immaculately white (the color of innocence) and still apparently so in mortal manifestation, shows black (corrupt and evil) in the sight of Heaven.
140. none to govern: The Church being corrupt and the Emperor having abandoned Italy.
143. that odd day in each hundred years: The calendar as reformed under Julius Caesar fixed the year at 365 days and 6 hours, introducing an error of about 13 minutes, approximately one hundredth of a day. In each century, therefore, the calendar would move the months a day forward into the advancing season. In a millennium, January would have moved ten days nearer the spring. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar (developed under Pope Gregory XIII) substantially corrected this error.
Canto XXVIII
THE NINTH SPHERE: THE PRIMUM MOBILE
The Angel Hierarchy
DANTE TURNS from Beatrice and beholds a vision of GOD AS A NON-DIMENSIONAL POINT OF LIGHT ringed by NINE GLOWING SPHERES representing the ANGEL HIERARCHY.
Dante is puzzled because the vision seems to reverse the order of the Universe, the highest rank of the angels being at the center and represented by the smallest sphere. Beatrice explains the mystery to Dante’s satisfaction, if not to the reader’s, and goes on to catalogue the ORDERS OF THE ANGELS.
When she whose powers imparadise my mind had so denounced and laid bare the whole truth of the present state of miserable mankind;
just as a man before a glass can see a torch that burns behind him, and know it is there before he has seen or thought of it directly;
and turns to see if what the glass has shown is really there; and finds, as closely matched as words to music, the fact to its reflection;
just so, as I recall, did I first stare into the heaven of those precious eyes in which, to trap me, Love had set his snare;
then turned, and turning felt my senses reel as my own were struck by what shines in that heaven when we look closely at its turning wheel.
I saw a Point that radiated light of such intensity that the eye it strikes must close or ever after lose its sight.
The star that seems the smallest, seen from here, would seem a moon, were it placed next to this, as often we see star by star appear.
And at about the distance that a halo surrounds a heavenly radiance that paints it on the densest mist that will yet let it show;
so close around the Point, a ring of fire spun faster than the fastest of the spheres circles creation in its endless gyre.
Another surrounded this, and was surrounded by a third, the third by a fourth, the fourth by a fifth, and by a sixth the fifth, in turn, was bounded.
The seventh followed, already spread so wide that were Juno’s messenger to be made complete she could not stretch her arc from side to side.
And so the eighth and the ninth, and each ring spun with an ever slower motion as its number placed it the further out from the first one,
which gave forth the most brilliant incandescence because, I think, being nearest the Scintilla, it drew the fullest share of the true essence.
I was on tenterhooks, as my lady saw. To ease my mind she said: “From that one Point are hung the heavens and all nature’s law.
Look at the closest ring: I would have you know it spins so fast by virtue of Love’s fire, the ray of which pierces it through and through.”
And I to her: “Were the ordering we find in the universe like that of these bright wheels, what I have seen would satisfy my mind.
But in the sensible universe one can see the motions of the spheres become more godlike the nearer they are to the periphery.
If there is food for my soul’s appetite in this most glorious and angelic temple whose only boundaries are love and light,
you must explain why it has been so planned that the form and the exemplum are at odds; for by myself I cannot understand.”
“It is small wonder such a knot defies your fingers, for since none has ever tried it, the coils have set together like a vise.”
So spoke my lady, going on to say: “If you would understand, grasp what I tell you, and around it give your mind’s best powers full play.
The physical spheres are graduated in size according to the power that infuses each and fixes it to its station in the skies.
The greater good intends a greater grace. A greater body can hold more of good if all its parts are perfect, as in this case.
This sphere, then, that spins with it as it goes all of the universe, must correspond to the angel sphere that most loves and most knows.
If you will measure not by what appears but by the power inherent in these beings that manifest themselves to you as spheres,
you will observe a marvelous correspondence of greater power to larger, and lesser to smaller, between each Heaven and its Intelligence.”
As the airy hemisphere serenes and glows, cloudless and blue into its furthest reach, when from his gentler cheek Boreas blows,
purging and dissolving with that breeze the turbulent vapors, so that heaven smiles with the beauty of its every diocese;
so was it in my mind, once I was given my lady’s clear reply; and I saw the truth shining before me like a star in heaven.
And at her last word every angel sphere began to sparkle as iron, when it is melted in a crucible, is seen to do down here.
And every spark spun with its spinning ring: and they were numberless as the sum of grain on the last square of the chessboard of the king.
From choir to choir their hymn of praise rang free to the Fixed Point that holds them in fixed place, as ever was, as evermore shall be.
And she who felt uncertainty bedim my dazzled mind explained: “The first two circles have shown you the Seraphim and Cherubim.
Being led, they chase the reins in their eagerness to resemble the Point the more, and they can the more the more they look upon Its blessedness.