17. face: As he often does, Dante uses aspetto (“face”) to mean “eyes.”
25. the holy ray: Cacciaguida.
34. Look at the arms of the cross: Cacciaguida is speaking from within the base of the cross. He wants Dante to look up to the arms.
38 ff. THE GREAT WARRIORS OF GOD. Joshua, succeeding Moses, led Israel into the promised land. Judas Maccabaeus freed Israel from the Syrian tyranny. Charlemagne, in driving the Moors out of Europe, restored the Empire and freed the Spanish church. Roland (Orlando in Italian) was the nephew of Charlemagne and his greatest knight. (See Inferno, XXXI, 17, note.) William of Orange, hero of various medieval French romances, was the ideal of the Christian knight and was said to have died a monk. Rinoardo Rainouart served under William as his chief lieutenant. He was reputed to have been a convert from paganism and to have died in holy orders but he, like William, is largely a legendary figure. Godfrey or Gottfried of Bouillon was the leader of the first crusade and became the first Christian king of Jerusalem. He died in 1100. Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred d’Hauteville, a Norman war leader, joined with his brothers in 1046 to war against the Saracens in southern Italy, becoming duke of Puglia and of Calabria. He died in 1085.
39. nor did the saying reach me before the sight: I.e., the naming and the flashing of these souls take place in the same instant.
49-63. THE ASCENT TO JUPITER. As usual the transition to the next sphere is rapid. Cacciaguida returns to his place in the right arm of the cross and joins with the choir when it resumes its singing. (Cf. XV, 7-12, and note.) Beatrice becomes still more beautiful and still more radiant and Dante senses that he has entered the next Heaven.
57. including even the last: The phrasing is unusual but unusually exact. Beatrice grows more beautiful and more radiant with each new ascent. Now, entering the sixth Heaven, her new beauty exceeds not only her accustomed beauty, but even its own last manifestation (see lines 7-12) which Dante lacked power to describe.
61. that Miracle: Beatrice.
63. through a greater arc: It is unlikely that such a change of motion would register on merely human senses, but each ascending sphere must, necessarily, revolve through a greater arc than the last, being farther from the center.
64-69. Dante has just passed from the redness of Mars to the whiteness of Jupiter, and in about the time it takes a fair-skinned lady to grow pale again when she recovers from a blush of shame, his eyes adjust to the new radiance. Whatever Dante understood of the ability of ladies to recover from a sense of shame, his intent is clear, and the mood of the image is appropriate if the reader will visualize one of those quick flushes of innocence and maiden modesty much admired in the courtly tradition, though rare in ours.
68. the temperate star: Ptolemy described Jupiter as a temperate mean between hot Mars and cold Saturn. Appropriately, it serves as the Heaven of the wise and just—souls who were the models of proportioned and temperate being.
70. jovial: The other name of Jupiter is, of course, Jove. Dante is punning, intending both “Jove” and “jovial.”
72. our means of speech: The alphabet.
70 ff. DANTE’S VISION OF THE WISE AND JUST. Dante’s conception here was unprecedented in his times, but the modern reader can grasp it easily by conceiving the vision as a huge moving electric sign of the sort called “spectaculars.” The lights of the sign are the radiances of the spirits themselves. Those lights first spell out a message, one letter at a time. The last word of the message is then transformed into an eagle, which is then ornamented by further recombinations of the lights. In the Canto that follows the eagle will move its beak and speak, and then, taking flight, circle around Dante.
78-99. THE ALPHABET MESSAGE. The message formed by the lights, beginning with the letters D, and I, and L running to thirty-five letters, is: DILIGITE IUSTITIAM QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM—“Love righteousness, ye that are judges of the earth.”
82. Pegasean: The Muses drink from the spring called Hippocrene that sprang from the earth where Pegasus struck it with his hoof. The nine Muses together may properly be called Pegaseans. Dante uses the singular form, perhaps to invoke the Muses generally.
88-90. five times seven: The thirty-five letters of the spelled-out message. they: The souls within their sheaths of light. as if those lights had given it utterance: I do not know why hearing a letter spoken should make it more “graspable” than seeing it flash across the sky, but Dante, a primitive art critic at best, was always filled with awe by the sort of visual representation that seemed to make the viewer hear what he was seeing. (Cf. Purgatorio, X, 52-60.)
95-96. silvery Jupiter: Jupiter was reputed to have a silvery sheen that set it apart from other white stars. The souls, however, are encased in sheaths of golden light.
102. prophesy: By asking a question (for example, “How many years shall I live?”), then poking the fire, and counting the sparks to get an answer.
104-105. greater . . . lesser . . . to the place the Sun that lit it chose: See once more XIV, 40-42. It is the Sun (God) who decrees the pattern of the eagle, assigning to each soul its place in the pattern according to the amount of grace It rays forth to each.
109-11. The general meaning of this passage is clear enough: God is the creator whose creation is guided by no other, Himself being the guide. The last line, however, is in Dante’s densest style. “Essential form” is a Scholastic term equivalent to “form” in the Platonic sense. “Nest,” I think, must be taken as a lovely symbol of the way in which God’s art fills His creation. Birds, though they know nothing about architecture, draw from God the skill (the virtue) that enables them to build intricate and beautiful nests. So, by extension, are all the arts of this world derived from the guidance of the Unguided.
112. The other sparks: “Innumerable sparks” shot up from the vision and “more than a thousand of them” rose to form the head and shoulders of the eagle. The other sparks first wove lilies around the M; then, moving a little, completed the body of the eagle by filling out the body of the original M. If the letter is visualized in the rounded form common in medieval manuscripts and much like our lower case “m,” and if the head and shoulders of an eagle are drawn in above the “m,” it takes little imagination to visualize how the “m” could form the eagle’s body. In the figure below, the dotted lines suggest the manner of the change.
113. lilies: Could not fail to suggest the French monarchy, as the Eagle could not fail to suggest the Empire. Dante may very well mean that, were wisdom and justice to rule, France should adorn the Empire in union with it instead of following its own divisive course.
115-117. O lovely star: Jupiter. Earthly justice is an effect of its influence upon men. It is the ideal of earthly justice the souls have been expressing in their flashing message and in the symbolism of the eagle and of the lilies.
122. the temple: The Church. Dante, at sight of the Imperial Eagle of justice, is moved to inveigh against papal avarice and corruption. “M,” as various commentators have pointed out, is the first letter of Monarchia. In De Monarchia, I, 11, Dante had argued: “Justice is possible only under a [good] monarchy.” If this inference from the M is valid (and Dante was, in fact, much given to such devices) we are once more on the theme of a spiritual church within a strong temporal empire as the one hope of Europe.
123. blood: If the original text reads “sangue.” Some texts read “segni” (“signs,” of which the English rendering would be “signs/portents/miracles/prophecies”).
126. bad example: Of papal corruption.
128-129. now, by denying . . . the bread: The bread of God’s grace, particularly as received through the sacraments. By denying the sacraments through excommunications and interdictions, the papacy wages war against peace and justice, forcing men and states to buy back the sacraments that should rightfully be theirs.
130. you: Dante uses the singular form “tu.” He must, therefore, be referring to a single evil Pope. If he is speaking as of 1300 that Pope would, of course, be Bonif
ace VIII. scribble only to scratch out: Instead of preparing bulls that will clarify God’s intent to all time, the evil Popes merely scribble excommunications, interdictions, and denials of justice in order to cancel them again for a fee.
134. the image of the saint: John the Baptist. But in a bitter irony, Dante portrays the corrupt Popes as having their hearts set not on the saint but on his image, for it was stamped on the Florentine gold florin. Thus their love of St. John is the love of money. who lived alone: In the desert. (See Luke, i, 80.)
135-136. his head in forfeit . . . favor at a ball: The daughter of Herodias so pleased Herod with her dancing that he offered her “whatsoever she would ask.” She asked for the head of John the Baptist on a charger, and against his own inclination Herod kept his word (Matthew, xiv, 1-11; Mark, vi, 21-28).
137. the Fisherman: St. Peter. Used here as a familiar and contemptuous term. old Paul: St. Paul. Again the form of address shows lack of respect.
Canto XIX
THE SIXTH SPHERE: JUPITER
The Just and Temperate
Rulers
The Eagle
THE EAGLE made up of the many souls of the Just and Temperate Rulers moves its beak and speaks as if it were a single entity, announcing that it is the chosen symbol of DIVINE JUSTICE. Dante is afire to understand the nature of the Divine Justice and begs the Eagle to explain it, but he is told that the infinity of God’s excellence must forever exceed his creation, and that none may fathom His will, whereby it is presumptuous of any creature to question the Divine Justice. Man must be content with the guidance of Scripture and with the sure knowledge that God is perfect, good, and just.
Dante had once pondered the justice of denying salvation to virtuous pagans. The Eagle tells him it is not for him to sit in judgment on God’s intent. It affirms that except as he believes in Christ no soul may ascend to Heaven, yet it adds that the virtuous pagan shall sit nearer Christ than many another who takes Christ’s name in vain.
The Eagle concludes with a DENUNCIATION OF THE BESTIALIZED KINGS OF CHRISTENDOM in 1300.
Before me, its great wings outspread, now shone the image of the eagle those bright souls had given form to in glad unison.
Each seemed a little ruby in the sky, and the sun’s ray struck each in such a way the light reflected straight into my eye.
What I must now call back from memory no voice has ever spoken, nor ink written. Nor has its like been known to fantasy.
For I saw and heard the beak move and declare in its own voice the pronouns “I” and “mine” when “we” and “our” were what conceived it there.
“For being just and pious in my time,” it said, “I am exalted here in glory to which, by wish alone, no one may climb;
and leave behind me, there upon the earth, a memory honored even by evildoers, though they shun the good example it sets forth.”
Just as the glow of many living coals issues a single heat, so from that image one sound declared the love of many souls.
At which I cried: “O everlasting blooms of the eternal bliss, who make one seeming upon my sense of all your many perfumes—
my soul has hungered long: breathe forth at last the words that will appease it. There on earth there is no food with which to break its fast.
I know that if God’s justice has constructed its holy mirror in some other realm, your kingdom’s view of it is not obstructed.
You know how eagerly I wait to hear; you know the what and wherefore of the doubt I have hungered to resolve for many a year.”
Much as a falcon freed of hood and jess stretches its head and neck and beats its wings, preening itself to show its readiness—
so moved the emblem that was all compounded of praises of God’s grace; and from it, then, a hymn they know who dwell in bliss resounded.
Then it began to speak: “The One who wheeled the compass round the limits of the world, and spread there what is hidden and what revealed,
could not so stamp his power and quality into his work but what the creating Word would still exceed creation infinitely.
And this explains why the first Prideful Power, highest of creatures, because he would not wait the power of the ripening sun, fell green and sour.
And thus we see that every lesser creature is much too small a vessel to hold the Good that has no end; Itself is Its one measure.
Therefore, you understand, our way of seeing, which must be only one ray of the Mind that permeates all matter and all being,
cannot, by its very nature, be so clear but what its Author’s eye sees far beyond the furthest limits that to us appear.
In the eternal justice, consequently, the understanding granted to mankind is lost as the eye is within the sea:
it can make out the bottom near the shore but not on the main deep; and still it is there, though at a depth your eye cannot explore.
There is no light but from that ever fresh and cloudless Halcyon; all else is darkness, the shadow and the poison of the flesh.
By now, much that was hidden from your view by the living Justice of which you used to ask so many questions, has been shown to you.
For you used to say, ‘A man is born in sight of Indus’ water, and there is none there to speak of Christ, and none to read or write.
And all he wills and does, we must concede, as far as human reason sees, is good; and he does not sin either in word or deed.
He dies unbaptized and cannot receive the saving faith. What justice is it damns him? Is it his fault that he does not believe?’
—But who are you to take the judgment seat and pass on things a thousand miles away, who cannot see the ground before your feet?
The man who would split hairs with me could find no end of grounds for questioning, had he not the Scriptures over him to guide his mind.
O earthbound animals! minds gross as wood! Itself good in Itself, the Primal Will does not move from Itself, the Supreme Good!
Only what sorts with It is just. It sways toward no created good, but of Itself creates all Good by sending forth Its rays.”
As a stork that has fed its young flies round and round above the nest, and as the chick it fed raises its head to stare at it, still nest-bound—
so did that blessed image circle there, its great wings moved in flight by many wills, and so did I lift up my head and stare.
Circling, it sang; then said: “As what I sing surpasses your understanding, so God’s justice surpasses the power of mortal reasoning.”
Those blazing glories of the Holy Ghost stopped, still formed in the sign that spread the honor of Rome across the world, to its last coast,
grew still, then said: “To this high empery none ever rose but through belief in Christ, either before or after his agony.
But see how many now cry out ‘Christ! Christ!’ who shall be farther from him at the Judgment than many who, on earth, did not know Christ.
Such Christians shall the Ethiopian scorn when the two bands are formed to right and left, one blest to all eternity, one forlorn.
What shall the Persians say to your kings there when the Great Book is opened and they see the sum of their depravities laid bare?
There shall be seen among the works of Albert, that deed the moving pen will soon record by which Bohemia shall become a desert.
There shall be seen the Seine’s grief for the sin of that debaser of the currency whose death is waiting for him in a pig’s skin.
There shall be seen the pride whose greed confounds the mad Scot and the foolish Englishman who cannot stay within their proper bounds.
There, the debaucheries and the vain show of the Spaniard and the Bohemian who knew nothing of valor, and chose not to know.
And there, the cripple of Jerusalem: a 1 put down to mark the good he did, and then, to mark his villainies, an M.