In the perfect concord of its component spirits the Eagle, speaking with one voice, discourses upon the immutability and absolute justice of the Divine Will, which is inscrutable and incomprehensible to mortals (Par. xix.). Having rebuked the wickedness of all the kings and princes then reigning, from the Emperor-elect (Albert of Austria in 1300) to the King of Cyprus, it sets forth in contrast to them the example of just and righteous monarchs and rulers of olden time, the six noblest of whom now form its eye—David, Trajan, Hezekiah, Constantine, the Norman William II. of Sicily, and Rhipeus the Trojan (Par. xx.). Three exquisite lines (73-75)—introduced as a mere image—render the flight and song of the skylark with a beauty and fidelity to nature which even Shelley was not to surpass. The salvation of Trajan, through the prayers of St. Gregory, and Rhipeus, by internal inspiration concerning the Redeemer to come, unveils yet more wondrous mysteries in the treasury of Divine Justice, which suffers itself to be overcome by hope and love. Rhipeus, the justest among the Trojans and the strictest observer of right (Virgil, Aen. ii. 426, 427; cf. Acts x. 35), by his presence solves Dante’s doubt concerning the fate of the just heathen who die without baptism, and indicates that the race which gave the ancestors to the Roman people was not without Divine light.
Heaven of Saturn.—The last of the seven heavens of the planets is the sphere of Saturn, over which the Thrones preside. According to Dionysius, the Thrones are associated with steadfastness, supermundane tendency towards and reception of the Divine. They represent, according to St. Bernard, supreme tranquillity, most calm serenity, peace which surpasses all understanding; and upon them God sits as judge (cf. Par. ix. 61, 62). In Saturn appear the contemplative saints, and the monks who kept firm and steadfast in the cloister. They pass up and down the celestial Ladder of Contemplation (Par. xxi. and xxii.), the stairway by which the soul mystically ascends to the consideration of the impenetrable mysteries of God which transcend all reason. In this high stage of progress towards the suprasensible Beatrice does not smile, for Dante’s human intellect could not yet sustain it, and the sweet symphonies of Paradise are silent. St. Peter Damian discourses upon the impenetrable mysteries of Divine predestination, and rebukes the vicious and luxurious lives of the great prelate and cardinals. St. Benedict describes the foundation of his own great order, and laments the shameless corruption of contemporary Benedictines. Thus in this, and, above all, in the cry like thunder which bursts from the contemplatives at the conclusion of Peter Damian’s words, threatening the Divine vengeance which is to fall upon the corrupt pastors of the Church, the saints of the seventh sphere unite themselves with the celestial Thrones, whose office is purification, and who are the mirrors of the terrible judgments of God.
The Gemini.—At Beatrice’s bidding, Dante follows the contemplatives up the celestial ladder, entering the Firmament at the sign of the Gemini or Twins, beneath which he was born (Par. xxii. 112-123). To his natal stars, and thus to the Cherubim with whose virtue they are animated, he appeals for power to complete the work for which they have inspired him. In a momentary vision, with the capacity of his inward soul enlarged, he looks down upon the whole Universe, and estimates aright the relative value of all things in heaven and earth, now that he is prepared to witness the true glories of Paradise.
The Stellar Heaven.—The Firmament or stellar heaven, the eighth sphere, is ruled by the Cherubim, who represent the Divine Wisdom; it is the celestial counterpart of the Garden of Eden. Here the fruit of man’s redemption is mystically shown in a vision of the triumph of Christ, the new Adam, surrounded by myriads of shining lights which draw their light from Him and represent the souls of the blessed whom He has sanctified (Par. xxiii.). After Christ has ascended from this celestial garden, where Mary is the rose and the Apostles the lilies, the Archangel Gabriel descends with ineffable melody and attends upon the new Eve, “the living garden of delight, wherein the condemnation was annulled and the tree of life planted,”[40] in her Assumption.
The four spheres of the higher planets had set forth a celestial realisation of the four cardinal virtues, Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance, with perfect man according to the capacity of human nature; now, in this sphere of the Cherubim whose name indicates plenitude of the knowledge of God, Dante is examined upon the three theological virtues, which have God for their object as He transcends the knowledge of our reason, and which put man on the way to supernatural happiness. “If we would enter Paradise and the fruition of Truth,” writes St. Bonaventura, “the image of our mind must be clothed with the three theological virtues, whereby the mind is purified, illumined, and rendered perfect, and thus the image is reformed and made fit for the Jerusalem which is above.” Dante’s answers to St. Peter upon Faith (Par. xxiv.), to St. James upon Hope (Par. xxv.), to St. John upon Charity (Par. xxvi.), contain the essence of the devout wisdom of the schoolmen upon those three divine gifts, whereby man participates in the Deity, and “we ascend to philosophise in that celestial Athens, where Stoics and Peripatetics and Epicureans, by the art of the eternal Truth, harmoniously concur in one will” (Conv. iii. 14). For the object of Faith and Love alike Dante, even in Paradise, can appeal to the Metaphysics of Aristotle (Par. xxiv. 130-132, xxvi. 37-39); and all the celestial music cannot quite drown the poet’s sigh for that fair Florentine sheepfold, from which he is still barred out, though Hell and Heaven have opened for him their eternal gates (Par. xxv. 1-12). Within a fourth light the soul of Adam appears, to instruct Dante upon the proper cause of his fall and upon his life in the Earthly Paradise, now that the poet has seen the triumph and ascent of the new Adam. Adam, in whom was directly infused all the light lawful to human nature to have (Par. xiii. 43), is the last soul that appears to Dante until the consummation of the vision in the Empyrean. On the close of his discourse, a hymn of glory to the Blessed Trinity resounds through Paradise, a laugh of the Universe in joy of the mystery of Redemption (Par. xxvii. 1-9). Then, while all Heaven blushes and there is a celestial eclipse as at the Crucifixion, St. Peter utters a terrible denunciation of the scandals and corruption in the Papacy and the Church, wherein Dante, as in the Epistle to the Italian Cardinals, takes his stand as the Jeremiah of Roman Catholicity.
The Ninth Heaven.—When the saints have returned to their places in the Empyrean, Dante, after a last look to earth, passes up with his lady into the ninth sphere, the Crystalline heaven. Beatrice discourses upon the order of the heavens and the want of government upon earth, prophesying that, before very long, deliverance and reformation will come, even as St. Peter had announced in the sphere below. Here, where nature begins, Dante has a preparatory manifestation of the nine angelic orders, the ministers of Divine Providence, who ordain and dispose all things by moving the spheres. They appear as nine circles of flame, revolving round an atomic Point of surpassing brilliancy, which symbolises the supreme unity of God, the poet again having recourse to the Metaphysics of Aristotle: “From that Point depends heaven and all nature” (Par. xxviii. 41, 42). Each angelic circle is swifter and more brilliant as it is nearer to the centre, each hierarchy striving after the utmost possible assimilation to God and union with Him. Swiftest and brightest of all are the Seraphim, who move this ninth sphere; the angelic order that, representing the Divine Love, loves most and knows most. “In the Angels,” says Colet on Dionysius, “an intensity of knowledge is love; a less intense love is knowledge.” The relation of the Seraphim to the Cherubim is that of fire to light; their special office is perfecting, as that of the Cherubim is illumination. All the orders contemplate God, and manifest Him to creatures to draw them to Him. Receiving from God the Divine light and love that makes them like to Him, the higher orders reflect this to the lower, like mirrors reflecting the Divine rays; and these lower orders reflect it to men, so rendering all things, as far as possible to each nature, like to God and in union with Him. After distinguishing between the different orders according to Dionysius, Beatrice speaks of their creation as especially illustrating the Divine Love, which the Seraphim represent (Par. xxix.), and their place in the order of the Universe, the fall of the rebellious, the reward of the faithful, and their immeasurable number. Each Angel belongs to a different species, and each differs from every other in its reception of Divine light and love.
The Empyrean.—Dante and Beatrice now issue forth of the last material sphere into the Empyrean, the true Paradise of vision, comprehension, and fruition, where man’s will is set at rest in union with universal Good, and his intellect in the possession of universal Truth. In preparation for this Divine union, Dante is momentarily blinded by the Divine light which overpowers him with its radiance—a blindness followed by a new celestial sight and new faculties for comprehending the essence of spiritual things. The first empyreal vision is still a foreshadowing preface: a river of light, the stream which makes the city of God joyful, the wondrous flowers of celestial spring, the living sparks of angelic fire. This river of Divine grace is the fountain of wisdom from which, according to Bernard, the Cherubim drink, to pour out the streams of knowledge upon all God’s citizens; and of this fountain Dante, too, drinks with his eyes, that he may more fully see the vision of God which he has to relate, to diffuse His knowledge upon earth as the Cherubim do from Heaven. By the light of glory his mind is rendered capable of seeing those spiritual things which the blessed behold with immediate intuition, and of ultimate union with the Divine Essence (Par. xxx. 100-102). The river seems to change to a circular ocean of light; the saints and Angels appear in their true forms, all united in the sempiternal Rose of Paradise. Even at this height of ecstatic alienation from terrestrial things, Dante can turn in thought to Pope and Emperor who should be leading men to beatitude; a throne is prepared for Henry in this convent of white stoles, while the hell of the simoniacs is gaping for Boniface and Clement.
Eternity, as defined by Boëthius, is “the complete and perfect simultaneous possession of unlimited life”; and Dante is one who has come from time to the eternal: a l’etterno dal tempo era venuto (Par. xxxi. 38).[41] Beatrice has returned to her throne, her allegorical mission ended; and for this supreme revelation of the Divine beauty in the mystical Rose, where there is no medium to impede the poet’s sight of the Divine light (for his is now that of a separated spirit), but blessed souls and flying Angels are absorbed in love and vision, St. Bernard completes her work, even as that of Virgil had been completed by Matelda in the Earthly Paradise. St. Bernard may represent the glorified contemplative life in our heavenly country, as Matelda may symbolise the glorified active life in the state of restored Eden; or, perhaps better, if Matelda is taken as the love rightly ordered to which the Purgatorio leads, Bernard represents the loving contemplation or contemplative love, attained by the mystic in brief moments here and now, in which the eternal and unchanging life of the soul in the hereafter consists. In an exquisite lyrical inter-breathing Dante addresses Beatrice for the last time, thanking her for having led him from servitude to liberty, praying to her for final perseverance (Par. xxxi. 79-90). Under the guidance of Bernard, he prepares himself for the vision of the Divine Essence, by disciplining his spiritual sight in contemplation of the glory of the saints and of the ineffable beauty of Mary, surrounded by her Angels, and clothed, as Bernard himself puts it elsewhere, in the Sun by whose fire the prophet’s lips were cleansed and the Cherubim kindled with love.
Throughout the Rose two descending lines divide the redeemed of the old law from the redeemed under the new. The one line passes down from Mary’s throne, composed of holy women, ancestresses of Christ or types of His Church: Eve, Rachel, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth (Par. xxxii.). With Rachel, in the third row, Beatrice is seated. The opposite line passes down from the seat of the Baptist, Christ’s precursor; and begins with St. Francis, His closest and most perfect imitator, St. Benedict (in the third row opposite to Rachel and Beatrice), St. Augustine. The lower sections of each half of the Rose are occupied by the little children who died before attaining use of reason; and who yet have different degrees of bliss, according to the inscrutable mysteries of predestination and Divine Justice, which willed to give grace differently to each. Another vision of Mary, the supreme of created things, “the face that is most like to Christ, whose beauty alone can dispose thee to see Christ” (Par. xxxii. 85-87), is the prelude to the vision of the Deity. Before her hovers her chosen knight, Gabriel, the “strength of God,” the pattern of celestial chivalry, leggiadria. Round her are Adam and St. Peter, Moses and St. John the Divine; opposite the two latter are St. Anne and St. Lucy. Thus the three Ladies who took pity upon Dante in the dark wood, when the mystical journey opened, have been seen in their glory at its close.
Mary and the Divine Essence.—And the poet turns finally to the Primal Love, by Mary’s grace and Bernard’s intercession, in the lyrical prayer that opens the wonderful closing canto of the Commedia: