Dante

by Edmund G. Gardner

4. The “Paradiso”

Structure.—Dante’s Paradise consists of the nine moving heavens, according to Ptolemaic astronomy, crowned by the tenth motionless and divinest Empyrean heaven, “according to what Holy Church teacheth, who cannot lie” (Conv. ii. 3, 4). The nine moving spheres revolve round our globe, the fixed centre of the Universe, each of the lower eight being enclosed in the sphere above itself. The seven lowest are the heavens of the planets: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The eighth or stellar heaven, the sphere of the Fixed Stars or Firmament, is the highest visible region of the celestial world, and to some extent corresponds to the Earthly Paradise in the lower realms. Above this visible firmament, the ninth or Crystalline heaven, the Primum Mobile, directs with its movements the daily revolution of all the others. In it nature starts; from it proceed time and motion, with all celestial influence for the government of the world (Par. xxvii. 106-120). It is “the royal mantle of all the volumes of the world, which is most fervent and most living in God’s breath, and in His ways” (Par. xxiii. 112-114); and it communicates in different degrees some participation in this quickening breath of God to the other sphere which it encloses, and to all the Universe. It moves swiftest of all, from the fervent desire of all its parts to be united to the Empyrean, the spaceless and motionless ocean of Divine love, where God beatifies the saints and Angels in the vision of His Essence. This Empyrean is the true intellectual Paradise, for which the lower heavens are merely sensible preparations. “This is the sovereign edifice of the world, in which all the world is included, and outside of which is nothing; and it is not in space, but was formed only in the First Mind” (Conv. ii. 4); “The heaven that is pure light; light intellectual full of love, love of true good full of joy, joy that transcendeth every sweetness” (Par. xxx. 39-42).

Gradations.—Each of the nine lower spheres represents a step higher in knowledge, in love, in blessedness, until in the true Paradise the soul attains to perfect knowledge, supreme love, and infinite blessedness in union with the First Cause, in the Beatific Vision of the Divine Essence. The ascent is marked by the increased loveliness of Beatrice, as she guides Dante upwards from heaven to heaven; it is marked, too, by gradations in the brilliancy of the blessed spirits themselves, by their ever increasing ardour of charity towards the poet, and by the growing spirituality of the matters discussed in each sphere—veil after veil being drawn aside from the mysteries of the Divine treasure-house.

The Saints.—“To show forth the glory of beatitude in those souls,” says the letter to Can Grande, “from them, as from those who see all truth, many things will be sought which have great utility and delight” (Epist. x. 33). All the saints without exception have their home and glorious seats with Mary and the Angels in that Empyrean heaven, where they are finally seen as glorified spirit likenesses of what they were on earth. But into each preparatory sphere, excepting the ninth, these citizens of eternal life descend to meet Dante as, with Beatrice, he approaches the gates of the celestial city—like the noble soul returning home to God in the fourth and last part of life:

“And even as its citizens come forth to meet him who returns from a long journey, before he enters the gate of the city, so to the noble soul come forth, as is fitting, those citizens of eternal life. And thus they do because of her good works and contemplations; for, being now rendered to God and abstracted from worldly things and thoughts, she seems to see those whom she believes to be with God” (Conv. iv. 28).

In all these spheres, excepting the first, and to some extent the second, the spirits of the blessed appear clothed in dazzling light, which hides their proper semblances from Dante’s gaze, making them appear as brilliant stars or flaming splendours. In the tenth Heaven of Heavens he is supernaturally illumined, and enabled thereby to behold them in their glorified spirit forms “with countenance unveiled” (Par. xxii. 60, xxx. 96, xxxi. 49).

In the three lower heavens, to which earth’s shadow was supposed to extend (Par. ix. 118, 119), appear the souls whose lives were marred by inconstancy in their vows, who were moved by vain glory, or yielded to sensual love. They descend into these lower spheres to give Dante a sensible sign of the lesser degree of the perfection of their beatitude in the Empyrean. Domus est una, sed diversitas est ibi mansionum; “The house is one, but there is a diversity of mansions there.” There are different mansions of beatitude in God’s house, proceeding from inequality in the soul’s capacity of the Divine Charity; but in that house all are fulfilled with the Vision of the Divine Essence, and each perfectly beatified according to his own capacity of love and knowledge. In the spheres of the four higher planets appear the souls of great teachers and doctors, of Jewish warriors and Christian knights, of just rulers, of ascetic monks and hermits; they appear as types of lives perfected in action or in contemplation, as a sign of the different ways in which perfection may be reached on earth and beatitude attained in Paradise. These successive manifestations in the seven spheres of the planets obviate what might otherwise have proved the monotony of a single heaven, and suggest that, although each soul partakes supremely according to its individual capacity of the Beatific Vision, which is essentially one and the same in all, yet there are not only grades but subtle differences in the possession of it, in which the life on earth was a factor. In the eighth, the Stellar Heaven, still under sensible figures and allegorical veils, Dante sees “the host of the triumph of Christ, and all the fruit gathered by the circling of these spheres” (Par. xxiii. 19-21), representing the Church in which these various modes and degrees of life are brought into unison. In the ninth, the Crystalline, the angelic hierarchies are manifested with imagery symbolical of their office towards God and man, representing the principle of Divine Order, the overruling and disposition of Divine Providence in which the celestial intelligences are the agents and instruments. The Empyrean Heaven depicts the soul in patria, with all the capacities of love and knowledge actualised in the fruition of the Ultimate Reality, the supreme and universal truth which is the object of the understanding, the supreme and universal good which is the object of the will.

The Angels.—Each of the nine moving spheres is assigned to the care of one of the nine angelic orders: Angels, Archangels, Principalities; Powers, Virtues, Dominations; Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. And the character of the blessed spirits that appear to Dante in each heaven, and the subjects discussed, seem in almost every case to correspond more or less closely with the functions assigned by mystical theologians, especially Dionysius, St. Gregory and St. Bernard, to the special angelic order which presides over the sphere in question. There are two fundamental principles in the life of the soul: nature and grace. The one is represented in the Paradiso by the astronomical order of the heavens and their influence upon individual disposition, furnishing man with a natural aptitude for the moral and intellectual virtues; the other by the bounty of Divine Grace, which reveals itself in the perfecting of the natural and the infusion of the supernatural virtues, whereby souls become assimilated to the angelic orders.[37] It is through these Angels (the name is applied generally to all, as well as to the lowest order) that God disposes the visible world; in the hands of the celestial intelligences the heavens are as hammers, to stamp the Divine ideas upon material creation and carry out the Divine plan in the government of the Universe (cf. Par. ii. 127-129). And, by means of the influence of the stars, these Angels have impressed certain men with their own characteristics; perhaps to fill up the vacant places in their ranks left by the fall of Lucifer’s followers, certainly to co-operate on earth in their work. Dante himself was born beneath the constellation of the Gemini, the glorious stars impregnated with the virtue of the Cherubim who rule the eighth sphere (Par. xxii. 112-123). The Cherubim represent the Divine Wisdom; their name signifies plenitude of knowledge. According to St. Bernard, they “draw from the very fountain of wisdom, the mouth of the Most High, and pour out the streams of knowledge upon all His citizens.” Their special prerogatives are fullness of Divine light, and contemplation of the beauty of the Divine order of things; they see most into the profound mysteries of the hidden things of God, and spread the knowledge of Him upon all beneath them. By their inspiration Dante co-operated in this cherubical work by writing the Divina Commedia. The Seraphim especially represent the Divine Love. No soul appears in the ninth heaven which they guide and in which the angelic hierarchies are manifested; Beatrice is the sole interpreter between the poet and the Angels, as she had been the revealer to him on earth of Love’s “possible divinities and celestial prophecies.”

Time in Paradise.—The action of the Paradiso begins at noon, immediately after Dante’s return from Eunoë; that is, noon on Wednesday in Easter week in the Earthly Paradise and (the following) midnight at Jerusalem (Par. i. 37-45). The time-references in this third Cantica are rather doubtful (Par. xxii. 151-153, xxvii. 77-87), but it seems probable that Dante takes twenty-four hours to ascend through the nine material heavens to the Empyrean, which is beyond time and space, where “the natural law in nought is relevant” (Par. xxx. 123). When Dante woke from his “mighty trance” to the “sound of the importunate earth,” it was perhaps about dawn on the morning of Friday in Easter week in our world, thus completing the seven days of his ecstatic pilgrimage, which had begun at about the same hour on Good Friday.

Canto I.—In a lyrical prologue of stately music (Par. i. 1-36), the poet sings of the glory of the First Mover, and prays for light and inspiration to complete this third most arduous portion of his divine poem. Then, in the noblest season of the year and noblest hour of the day, as Beatrice gazes upon the sun and Dante upon her, his mind becomes godlike, and he ascends to Heaven swifter than lightning. To explain his ascent, Beatrice discourses upon the form and order of God’s visible image, the Universe; and on His Eternal Law, the sovereign plan of government existing in the Divine Mind, to which all movements and actions of nature are subject (ibid. 103-141). To all created things God has given an instinct, or principle of inclination, by which, in different ways according to their nature, He draws them all back to Himself over the great sea of being. Rational beings alone can resist the order of the Universe and defeat the Eternal Law by sin, which is expiated by temporary or eternal suffering, as Dante has seen in the lower realms; but the purified soul, in accordance with this order and law, inevitably mounts up to find its rest in union with the First Cause. It is the doctrine of spiritual gravitation (derived from St. Augustine), according to which the soul is moved by love as bodies are by their weight, and all things find their rest in order.