Dante: His Times and His Work

by Arthur John Butler

The first point which will strike the reader on entering upon the third division of the poem is the sudden change in the conditions under which the action is carried on. Hitherto Dante has been moving on solid earth, subject to the usual limitations which are enforced by physical laws upon all human action. Henceforth, as he tells us (Par., xxx. 123), God operates directly, and physical laws have no longer any place. “It is Beatrice,” he elsewhere says, “who leads on so swiftly from one stage of blessedness to a higher;” and we shall notice that the transference from sphere to sphere is effected by Dante’s fixing his eyes on hers, while she gazes upwards.

A word as to the various spheres may not be out of place here. According to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, as adapted to the requirements of mediæval belief, the earth was at the centre, and concentric with it were ten hollow spheres. In the first eight of these were placed consecutively the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars. In order to explain the irregular movements of the planets, “epicycles” or smaller spheres borne by the principal spheres, and bearing the planets, were devised, but these need not be considered here. Outside of the fixed stars came the primum mobile, which gave the diurnal revolution of the heavens, and beyond this the Empyrean, or fixed heaven, in which was the special abode of God, and in which all the blessed had their places. Between the earth and the innermost sphere, that of the Moon, lie the regions of water, air, and fire. The Mountain of Purgatory, on the summit of which Dante at the conclusion of the second Cantica was standing, lifts its head as far as the third of these. Through this accordingly, Beatrice and Dante have to rise in order to reach the first step in the celestial ascent. It must be noted that there is no reason to suppose that in every case the actual planet is visited. The “heaven” of the planet embraces the whole “sphere” in which it is set, and its characteristics may be conceived as extending to the whole of that sphere.

The fact of rising without apparent motive force through a medium lighter than his own body, at once forms a subject for enquiry on Dante’s part; and Beatrice, as she has frequently to do in the course of their journey, resolves his doubt. Those who are reading the poem for the first time will probably pass lightly over these difficult metaphysical passages. They must be read sooner or later by any one who wishes thoroughly to understand Dante’s place in the history of speculative thought; but in the first instance it will probably be better to “take them as read” and endeavour to get a clear notion of the general arrangement. There are obvious reasons why this portion of the poem should consist as largely as it does of these subtle disquisitions. There is far less room, in the first place, for variety of description. In a region where there are no shadows, it is impossible to give a detailed picture; and terms indicative of simple brightness are limited. Nor, again, is it easy where all are perfect to depict individual character. Consequently two great elements of interest in the first two parts of the poem are far less available here; and their place must be filled by other matter. What this matter should be is suggested by the natural division of speculative science into Ethics, or the study of man’s conduct as a moral being; Politics, or the science relating to his behaviour in regard to the social order; and Metaphysics, which for Dante is synonymous with theology, the investigation of all that concerns his spiritual part, as well as the Divine order generally. With the first two we have dealt in the Hell and the Purgatory respectively; the third is reserved for the Paradise. Once or twice indeed Dante touches on matters that would seem more fitly to belong to the others; as, for instance, the magnificent passage in Canto vi., where Justinian, after sketching the triumphant course of the Roman Eagle, inveighs against the party feuds of the time; or Carlo Martello’s reference to the Sicilian Vespers, and the misdeeds of his brother Robert. But of these the first leads up to an elaborate exposition of the scheme of Redemption, the second seems intended directly to introduce a dissertation on matters lying at the very root of human nature.

To the same difficulty in varying the methods (to use a phrase of Ginguéné’s) must be attributed the occurrence of a good many conceptions which to our taste appear somewhat grotesque. Yet the better we know the poem the more we shall feel that in this third part the author’s genius rises to its sublimest efforts, and agree with the late Dean of St. Paul’s, that it is the true pierre de touche of the student of Dante.

To go briefly through the various stages. The heaven of the Moon is that in which appear the spirits of those who having taken vows have under compulsion or persuasion abandoned them; Mercury contains statesmen and men of affairs; Venus those who have been over-much swayed by indulgence in earthly love. It must be observed that, according to the astronomy of the time, the shadow of the Earth, cast into space by the Sun, extended as far as the orbit of Venus. The spirits in these three spheres therefore form a group by themselves: being distinguished by the fact that they had allowed earthly cares and pleasures to obtain too strong hold of them, to the injury of their spiritual development. In these three spheres respectively the representative speakers are Piccarda Donati, sister of Dante’s friend Forese, and of Corso, the leader of the “Black Guelfs;” the Emperor Justinian; and Carlo Martello, the titular king of Hungary, son of Charles II., king of Naples, who is followed by Cunizza, sister of the Ghibeline chief, Ezzelino da Romano, and Folco of Marseilles, who began as a troubadour and became bishop of his native city.

Although in one sense the inhabitants of the three lower spheres may be said to have attained a less perfect blessedness than those to whom the rest of heaven is assigned, it must not be supposed that they are conscious of any lack. All have their places in the highest or Empyrean heaven, and all sense of sorrow for past imperfections is at an end. We must indeed suppose that, as with Dante himself, the imperfections have been effaced by the discipline of Purgatory, and their remembrance washed away by the water of Lethe.

With the sphere of the Sun, however, we arrive for the first time in the presence of those who have lived so as to earn the full honour of sanctity, and find ourselves amongst canonised saints. Even here Dante has shown himself, as usual, independent of conventional or official restrictions. In his introduction of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventura he merely anticipates the formal decision of the Church; but in “Peter of Spain,” that is Pope John XXI. (the only historical Pope whom he places in Paradise), he selects for special honour a man who was by no means free from grave suspicion of heresy, and who has never been canonised. As Dante never did anything without a reason we must suppose that some now forgotten merit earned for the Spanish logician a place beside Nathan, Chrysostom, and Anselm. It is by these and such men as these, great teachers and thinkers, that the heaven of the Sun is occupied; the reason no doubt being that as the Sun is the source of light and the promoter of growth in the physical world, so are these in the spiritual.

The tenth canto is specially notable as bringing Dante into the presence of the greatest exponent of the Scholastic philosophy, and the master whom he followed more closely than any other, St. Thomas Aquinas. In the eleventh, the illustrious Dominican recounts the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the rival order. This is one of the most notable passages in the whole poem, rising as it does to a sustained magnificence of diction which especially characterises those portions of the Paradise where the poet allows full play to his genius. Justinian’s roll-call of the Roman achievements in Canto vi. is another. Nothing at all like them is found in the two former divisions of the poem; and it is to them that students who wish to feel the attraction which the Paradise undoubtedly exercises over those who know it well, should first turn.

The sphere of the Sun, in which we now are, is, it should be noted, one of the two regions of Heaven in which Dante makes the longest stay, the other being that of the Fixed Stars. The passage to it marks a distinct stage in his progress. Looking back to the end of Canto ix. we see that it forms a kind of peroration; while the first twenty-seven lines of Canto x. are, as it were, the introduction to a fresh division of the poem, and recall certain phrases which occurred in the opening canto. It is difficult to say why these two spheres should be made of so much more importance than the rest. Mars is the only one which approaches them; but this is selected by Dante as the scene of his interview with his ancestor Cacciaguida, which gives the occasion for the magnificent contrast between the old days of Florence and its present state, and the prophecy of his own exile; subjects which might well occupy a considerable space. On the other hand, the eulogy of St. Francis, already referred to, which St. Thomas Aquinas delivers, and that of St. Dominic, with which St. Bonaventura, “vying with the courtesy of so mighty a paladin,” responds to it, fine as they are, do not appear indispensable in the scheme of the poem. But the whole plan of the Paradise is, so far as can be seen, arranged with much less of obvious symmetry than is to be found in the two former Cantiche. No doubt the plan is there; but just as “time-indications” for the most part fail us, or can be extracted only by elaborate and somewhat uncertain calculations, so it would seem as if the poet, no longer hampered by the necessities of time and space, had wished to show how he could work with no self-made restrictions.

After his discourse in praise of the founder of the rival order, immediately followed by its counterpart—an eloquent summary of the career of St. Dominic, put into the mouth of the Franciscan Bonaventura—St. Thomas speaks again (Canto xiii.), in order to explain an apparent over-estimate of Solomon’s greatness among mankind which an expression used by him in naming the spirits present with him might have seemed to imply. As happens more than once in this division of the poem, a piece of what at first sight looks rather like logical quibbling is made the introduction to some profound teaching in reference to the workings of the human mind—teaching which is at least as needful in the present day as it ever was in Dante’s own time. Solomon himself then speaks, answering a question put by Beatrice on Dante’s behalf as to the nature of the glorified body; and then Dante, having looked upon the countenance of Beatrice, and being by this means (as in every other case) raised “to a higher salvation,” finds by the ruddy light which surrounds him that he has entered the sphere of Mars.