The Divine Comedy

  49-51. Rizzardo da Cammino, Lord of Treviso (“where the Sile and Cagnano join”), was treacherously murdered in 1312 while playing chess. He was the son of “the good Gherardo” (Purgatorio, XVI, 124 and 138), the son-in-law of Judge Nin (Purgatorio, VIII, 53 ff.), and the husband of “my Giovanna” (Purgatorio, VIII, 71).

  52-60. The Malta here referred to was a papal prison near Lake Bolsena. The worst of its criminals had yet to commit a crime as foul as the one that would be committed by Alessandro Novella, Bishop of Feltro, who accepted a group of Ghibelline refugees from Ferrara as his guests, and then (in July of 1314) turned them over to Pino della Tosa, one of the Spanish agents of Robert of Naples, to be beheaded. Thus the Bishop fell to his place in Ptolemea among those who were treacherous against their guests. (Sinners in that category, bear in mind, did not await their death to begin their damnation, but fell instantly into the ice of Cocytus, their earthly bodies being assumed by fiends.)

  The blood of the Ferrarans would fill a great urn, but this generous priest (an irony) will give it gladly in duty to his party (Guelph), and be it said (another and a savage irony) such gifts of blood will suit the way the people of Marca Trivigiana live.

  61. Thrones: There is no established creed concerning the hierarchy of the angels but Dante sets forth their orders. Cunizza’s words indicate that Dante conceives the informing spirits of Venus (and probably of each of the spheres) to be Thrones. See also VIII, 35-37, note.

  62-63. so enlightened: It is in the full illumination of God’s judgment and wisdom that Cunizza has thought well to utter her prophecy. Clearly, however, she is the spokesman for all the spirits of this sphere.

  64-66. To understand these lines, one should refer to VIII, 16-27 and 34-36, in which Dante describes how these souls dance their eternal delight in God.

  67. That other bliss: Folquet. Dante does not yet know who he is, except as Cunizza referred to him in line 37 as “this bright and precious jewel.”

  70-71. Up there: In Heaven. as here: On earth.

  73-81. Since the Heavenly Soul is one with God, it shares God’s omniscience and no thought or wish may hide from it. Folquet, therefore, knows instantly what Dante is yearning to ask. Why then does he not speak at once? Had Dante the gift of Paradisal omniscience, he declares, he would not have waited so long to gratify whatever wish Folquet may have. Dante’s wish, of course, is to know the spirit’s identity. those Blest Flames . . . six wings: The Seraphim. “Each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly” (Isaiah, vi, 2).

  82-87. the greatest basin . . . aside from the sea that girdles all: The Mediterranean. Folquet conceives it as if he were standing in Spain; hence it extends against the course of the sun, from west to east. In common with most of his contemporaries Dante believed that the Mediterranean extended through 90° of latitude (it actually covers 42°): thus the sun at zenith over Jerusalem would have Gibraltar as its horizon, and moving west, would be at zenith over what was at first its horizon.

  88-92. the Ebro: The Spanish river. the Magra: Runs south into the Mediterranean for a bit over 40 miles (its short course) between Tuscany and Liguria (whose capital city is Genoa). Marseilles lies about halfway between the two rivers and is in almost the same latitude as Bougiah (or Bougie) in Algeria (5° E.). Thus the two cities would see the sun rise and set at almost the same time.

  92-93. blood flowed . . . when Caesar came: In 49 B.C., when Caesar left Brutus to defeat the forces of Pompey at Marseilles while he himself “swooped down on Spain.” (Purgatorio, XVIII, 102).

  94. to such as knew it: Cunizza introduced (the unidentified) Folquet (38-39) as one who “left great fame behind him.” Folquet is careful to speak of himself in far more modest terms.

  95-96. my ray marks all this sphere: Folquet is now one with God. His radiance, therefore, is impressed upon Venus (influencing it) as powerfully as the influence of Venus impressed itself upon him at his birth.

  97-99. Dido: See Inferno, V, 61-62, and note. Having conceived so violent a passion for Aeneas that she killed herself when he left, she wronged both Sichaeus, her dead husband, and Creusa, Aeneas’s dead wife.

  100-102. she of Rhodopè . . . Demophoön: Phyllis, daughter of King Sithon of Thrace (wherein rises Mount Rhodopè) was to marry Demophoön. When he did not arrive on the wedding day, she hanged herself and was changed into an almond tree. Demophoön (Ovid, Heroides, 2) narrates how the bridegroom arrived after a painful delay only to find that Phyllis had gone out on a limb.

  101-102. Hercules . . . Iole: See Inferno, XII, 67, note. Folquet’s three references are all to mythic figures who died painfully for love.

  104. not at the sin—that never comes to mind: When the purified soul reaches the Terrestrial Paradise it is bathed in the waters of Lethe and the very memory of sin is taken from it (Purgatorio, XXXI, 91-102). Yet both Cunizza (30-36) and Folquet make the point that they do not regret their amorous natures, which once led them into carnality, because the same impulse later led them to the True Love. (See also Purgatorio, XXXIII, 91-102, and note.) There, Dante newly washed in Lethe, forgets that he was ever estranged from Beatrice, and she proves the sinfulness of his estrangement by the very fact that Lethe washed its memory from him.

  One might argue that the pure soul forgets sin in what might be called the active sense, recalling its existence only in a passive and conceptual way that has no power upon it. After every subtlety, however, there remains an unresolvable contradiction in Dante’s handling of this point, and the contradiction arises directly from the narrator’s necessity. In whatever way these souls are conceived, Dante has to give them something to talk about, and the narrator has never existed who can sustain a conversation about mankind without bringing sin into it.

  109-112. Folquet is mind-reading here, as directed to in lines 73-81. He has satisfied Dante’s unspoken question about his identity and his place in Heaven. He now continues by answering Dante’s next unspoken question. Note that he does not promise to explain the total mysteries of the Third Heaven but only to satisfy all the questions that arise in Dante’s mind (which is yet incapable of conceiving the ultimate mystery).

  115. Rahab: When Joshua sent spies before him into Jericho, Rahab, a harlot of that city, hid them from the king’s men and helped them to escape. Thus she helped the people of Israel to regain the promised land, and immediately following the crucifixion her soul (which must have been in Limbo) was summoned by the Third Heaven, the first of its elected.

  119-120. shadow . . . rests the point of its long cone: Some scholars of Dante’s time believed that the cone of the earth’s shadow came to a point in the third sphere.

  121-126. as a palm: As a trophy. two palms: Of Christ when he was nailed to the cross. It is fitting that Rahab should be the heavenly trophy of Christ’s victory for she had helped Israel win its promised land. It is a pity, Dante has Folquet say, that the Pope cares so little for the Holy Land (he had done nothing to reestablish Christianity there after Acre, the last Christian stronghold, fell to the Saracens in 1291).

  127. the One: Satan was, of course, the first to turn on God, and it was Mars who founded Florence but Dante’s invective has a firm foundation in those Church Fathers who held that Mars and all the pagan gods were fiends.

  130-132. the accursed flower of gold: The Florentine florin, a gold coin stamped with a lily. Dante’s figure of a tree that bears magically evil flowers begins with “planted” in line 127. The power of gold transforms the shepherd (the Church, the Papacy in general, and Boniface VIII in particular) so that he preys on the sheep he should lead and guard.

  132-135. Great Doctors: The Church Fathers, givers of doctrine. the Decretals: The volumes of canon law. Gregory IX ordered the compilation of the first five volumes in 1234 and Boniface VIII had a sixth added. The margins of the Decretals testify (by being worn and covered with annotations) how seriously they were studied, for they covered the temporal rights and priv
ileges of the Church’s vast power and wealth, and a knowledge of canon law could make a shyster’s fortune.

  138. where . . . Gabriel opened wide his wings: At the Annunciation.

  Canto X

  ASCENT TO THE SUN

  THE FOURTH SPHERE: THE SUN

  Doctors of the Church

  The First Garland of Souls:

  Aquinas

  DANTE REVELS in the joy of God’s creation and especially in the art shown by the placement of THE EQUINOCTIAL POINT. So rejoicing, he enters the SPHERE OF THE SUN, unaware of his approach until he has arrived.

  A GARLAND OF TWELVE SOULS immediately surrounds him and Beatrice, the glory of each soul shining so brilliantly that it is visible even against the background of the Sun itself. These are TWELVE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH, philosophers and theologians whose writings have guided the Church in creed and canon law. Their spokesman, appropriately, is THOMAS AQUINAS. He identifies the souls in order around the ring.

  When Aquinas has finished, the souls dance around Dante and Beatrice, raising their voices in harmonies unknown except to Heaven itself.

  Contemplating His Son with that Third Essence

  of Love breathed forth forever by Them both,

  the omnipotent and ineffable First Presence

  created all that moves in mind and space

  with such perfection that to look upon it

  is to be seized by love of the Maker’s grace.

  Therefore, reader, raise your eyes across

  the starry sphere. Turn with me to that point

  at which one motion and another cross,

  and there begin to savor your delight

  in the Creator’s art, which he so loves

  that it is fixed forever in His sight.

  Note how the wheel on which the planets ride

  branches from there obliquely: only thus

  may the earth that calls to them be satisfied.

  For if these two great motions never crossed,

  the influence of the heavens would be weakened

  and most of its power upon the earth be lost.

  For if its deviation were to be

  increased or lessened, much would then be wanting,

  both north and south, from the earth’s harmony.

  Stay on at table, reader, and meditate

  upon this foretaste if you wish to dine

  on joy itself before it is too late.

  I set out food, but you yourself must feed!

  For the great matters I record demand

  all my attention and I must proceed.

  Nature’s majestic minister, the Sun,

  who writes the will of Heaven on the earth

  and with his light measures the hours that run,

  now in conjunction (as I have implied)

  with Aries, rode those spirals whose course brings him

  ever earlier from the eastern side.

  And I was with the Sun; but no more aware

  of my ascent than a man is of a thought

  that comes to mind, until he finds it there.

  It is Beatrice, she it is who leads our climb

  from good to better, so instantaneously

  that her action does not spread itself through time.

  How radiant in its essence that must be

  which in the Sun (where I now was) shows forth

  not by its color but its radiancy.

  Though genius, art, and usage stored my mind,

  I still could not make visible what I saw;

  but yet may you believe and seek to find!

  And if our powers fall short of such a height,

  why should that be surprising, since the Sun

  is as much as any eye has known of light?

  Such, there, was the fourth family of splendors

  of the High Father who fills their souls with bliss,

  showing them how He breathes forth and engenders.

  “Give thanks!” my lady said. “With all devotion

  give thanks to the Sun of Angels, by whose grace

  you have been lifted to this physical one!”

  The heart of mortal never could so move

  to its devotion, nor so willingly

  offer itself to God in thankful love,

  as mine did when these words had passed her lips.

  So wholly did I give my love to Him

  that she sank to oblivion in eclipse.

  Nothing displeased, she laughed so that the blaze

  of her glad eyes pierced my mind’s singleness

  and once again divided it several ways.

  Splendors of living and transcendent light

  circle us now and make a glowing crown,

  sweeter in voice than radiant in sight.

  Latona’s daughter sometimes seems to us

  so banded when the vaporous air weaves round her

  the thread that makes her girdle luminous.

  In Heaven’s courts, from which height I have come,

  are many gems so precious and so lovely

  that they cannot be taken from the kingdom.

  Of such those splendors sang. Who does not grow

  wings that will fly him there, must learn these things

  from the tidings of the tongueless here below.

  When, so singing, those Sun-surpassing souls

  had three times turned their blazing circuit round us,

  like stars that circle close to the fixed poles,

  they stood like dancers still caught in the pleasure

  of the last round, who pause in place and listen

  till they have caught the beat of the new measure.

  And from within its blaze I heard one start:

  “Since the ray of grace from which true love is kindled—

  and then by loving, in the loving heart

  grows and multiplies—among all men

  so shines on you to lead you up these stairs

  that none descend except to climb again;

  whoever refused your soul, it being thirsty,

  wine from his flask, would be no freer to act

  than water blocked from flowing to the sea.

  You wish to know what flowering plants are woven

  into this garland that looks lovingly

  on the lovely lady who strengthens you for Heaven.

  I was a lamb among the holy flock

  Dominic leads to where all plenty is,

  unless the lamb itself stray to bare rock.

  This spirit on my right, once of Cologne,

  was my teacher and brother. Albert was his name,

  and Thomas, of Aquinas, was my own.

  If you wish, similarly, to know the rest

  let your eyes follow where my words shall lead

  circling through all this garland of the blest.

  The next flame springs from the glad smile of Gratian

  who so assisted one court and the other

  that in him Heaven found good cause for elation.

  The next to adorn our chorus of the glad

  was the good Peter who, like the poor widow,

  offered to Holy Church all that he had.

  The fifth light, and the loveliest here, shines forth

  from so magnificent a love that men

  hunger for any news of it on earth;

  within it is that mind to which were shone

  such depths of wisdom that, if truth be true,

  no mortal ever rose to equal this one.

  See next the taper whose flame, when formerly

  it burned in mortal flesh, saw most profoundly

  the nature of angels and their ministry.

  Within the lesser lamp next on my right

  shines the defender of the Christian Age

  whose treatise led Augustine toward the light.

  Now if your mind has followed on my praise

  from light to light, you are already eager

  to know what spirit shines in the eighth blaze.


  In it, for having seen the sum of good,

  there sings a soul that showed the world’s deceit

  to any who would heed. The bones and blood

  from which it was cruelly driven have their tomb

  down there in Cieldauro: to this peace

  it came from exile and from martyrdom.

  See next the flames breathed forth by Isidore,

  by Bede, and by that Richard whose ‘Contemplations’

  saw all that a mere man can see, and more.