Darting along the arm of the Stellar Cross and coming to its foot is a splendor who greets Dante with warm affection. This is the spirit of his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, who sings the glory of ancient Florence the better to describe the deterioration of the city in Dante's day and to censure its people for their civil feuds, corruption and opposition to the Imperial Eagle. Then at Dante's request the crusader spirit interprets for his descendant the various predictions made to the latter during his passage through Hell and Purgatory. Evil days will come upon him (it must be remembered that this prophecy by Cacciaguida is supposed to occur a year or two before Dante's exile), he will be exiled from Florence and will become a homeless wanderer.
Let him, however, write his poem and declare his vision, no matter if offense will be taken by the high ones of the earth. He, having a prophet's work to do, must speak with all the boldness of a prophet without fear or dissimulation. The words, while assuring the poet of the sweetness of everlasting fame, bring to his mind, also, the bitterness of the injustice of his exile and suffering, and apparently he harbors the thought of vengeance upon his enemies. Beatrice, however, checks his resentment, assuring him that she, so near to God, will assist him—a most beautiful passage showing the relations between her and the poet, whether the words are taken literally as exhibiting her as his intercessor before the throne of the Most High, or allegorically considered as declaring that Revealed Truth takes from man the desire of vengeance and places his case in the hands of Him who has said: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." For Dante's spiritual perfection his lovely guide bids him not simply look into her her eyes (allegorically meaning not merely to contemplate theological truth) but follow the example of men sturdy of faith and valiant of deed. The passage here follows:
"Now was alone rejoicing in its word
That soul beatified, and I was tasting
My own, the bitter tempering with the sweet,
And the Lady who to God was leading me
Said: 'Change thy thought; consider that I am
Near unto Him who every wrong disburdens.'
Unto the loving accents of my comfort
I turned me round, and then what love I saw
Within those holy eyes I here relinquish
Not only that my language I distrust,
But that my mind cannot return so far
Above itself, unless another guide it.
Thus much upon that point can I repeat.
That, her again beholding, my affection
From every other longing was released.
While the eternal pleasure, which direct
Rayed upon Beatrice, from her fair face
Contented me with its reflected aspect,
Conquering me with the radiance of a smile
She said to me, 'Turn thee about and listen;
Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise.
Here are blessed spirits that below, ere yet
They came to Heaven, were of such great renown
That every Muse therewith would affluent be
Therefore look thou upon the cross' horns.'"
(XVIII, 4.)
Now rising to Jupiter, where appear the spirits of those who upon earth in a signal manner loved and rightly administered justice, Dante isgain made aware of his uplifting by the increased beauty of Beatrice, by the new light different from that of ruddy Mars, which envelopes him and by the perception of his own increase of virtue and power. Here the poet has recourse to a most ingenious system of symbols to give variety to his descriptions and doctrine, and so to sustain the interest of the reader. Many hundreds of the souls of the just appear as golden lights and so group themselves as to spell against the glowing white background of the light of the planet, the maxim from the Book of Wisdom: "Diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram" (Love justice ye who judge the earth.) Then fade away all the letters except the last one, the M of terram, M, symbol of Monarchy, and that M stands out in general outline somewhat like the Florentine lily, the armorial sign of Florence. And now other golden lights come from the Empyrean and transform the M into the figure of an eagle, the bird of Jove, with outstretched wings. But the marvel is only partly revealed, for soon the Eagle speaks and its voice, though made up of a thousand voices of the Just, comes forth a single sound, like a single heat that comes from many brands or the one odor that is exhaled from many flowers.
What a startling spectacle it must have been to the mind of the thirteenth century, used to candles as the ordinary means of illumination, to have visualized before it the blessed spirits in the light of Heaven, dancing, whirling, circling in perfect harmony and making more formal designs to express their bliss by the rapidity of their rhythmical movements! Even though exquisitely quaint as the picture may appear to us, it has been executed so reverently that criticism has rarely if ever attacked this conception of our poet. With light as his principal material to make known to us the joys of Heaven, he has to paint everything in high light, using no shadows and he solves his artistic problem by the variety of his "splendors" and by the deep symbolism of their action. His nine Heavens are not meant to be a picture true to reality of what the Souls in Heaven are doing. These nine Heavens, as we said before, are only myths to which from the Empyrean come forth the Elect in condescension to Dante's sense-bound faculties, in order to symbolize certain truths. So in this sixth sphere the poet would teach us that the Heaven of Jupiter represents justice on earth and on the screen of this sphere he would put forth by means of the Imperial Eagle the arguments he has already advanced in his Monarchia that the Roman Empire is divine in its origin—that only from such an institution can human justice proceed from civil government. He represents unity coming from the Roman Empire by his showing to us the unison with which all the splendors of the Eagle speak in a voice blended as one sound—clearly also an allegory for the Guelf forces to become an integral part of the Universal Monarchy.
Justice is the quality which this Heaven symbolizes and the Eagle reads in Dante's mind a doubt against the operation of justice and proceeds to dispel it.
"For saidst thou: 'Born a man is on the shore
Of Indus, and is none who there can speak
Of Christ, nor who can read, nor who can write;
And all his inclinations and his actions
Are good, so far as human reason sees,
Without a sin in life or in discourse:
He dieth unbaptized and without faith;
Where is this justice that condemneth him?
Where is his fault, if he do not believe?'"
(XIX, 70.)
The question is answered both directly and indirectly. The exclusion of the virtuous pagan from Heaven is assumed to be an act of injustice "but who art thou who wouldst set upon the seat to judge at a thousand miles away with the short sight that carries but a span?" (XIX, 79.) As our very idea of justice comes from God all just and all wise, that thought ought to assure us that not even the virtuous heathen will be excluded from Heaven. Faith indeed is required for salvation, but many having faith will be condemned, while many seemingly without it will be admitted into Heaven.
"But look thou, many crying are, 'Christ, Christ'!
Who at the judgment will be far less near
To him than some shall be who knew not Christ.
Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn
When the two companies shall be divided,
The one forever rich, the other poor."
(XIX, 106.)
The indirect answer to Dante's objection as to the exclusion of the virtuous heathen from Heaven is given by the poet speaking through the beak of the Eagle and showing in this Heaven as one of the lights of the Eagle itself, the soul of Rhipeus mentioned by Æneas "as above all others the most just among the Trojans and the strictest observer of right." "So now," says Benvenuto, the fourteenth century lecturer on Dante, "our author fitly introduces a pagan infidel in the person of Rhipeus, of whose salvation there would seem the very slightest chance of all; by reason of the time, so many centuries before the advent of Christ; by reason of the place, for he was of Troy where exceeding pride was then paramount; by reason of the sect, for he was a pagan and gentile, not a Jew. Briefly then our author wishes us to gather from this fiction—this conclusion,—that even such a pagan of whose salvation no one hoped, is capable of salvation."