Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 1

by Leigh Hunt

At these words of the Apostle the whole face of Heaven was covered with a blush, red as dawn or sunset; and Beatrice changed colour, like a maiden that shrinks in alarm from the report of blame in another. The eclipse was like that which took place when the Supreme died upon the Cross.

Saint Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully changed than his appearance:

"Not for the purpose of being sold for money was the spouse of Christ fed and nourished with my blood, and with the blood of Linus,—the blood of Cletus. Sextus did not bleed for it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor Urban; men, for whose deaths all Christendom wept. They died that souls might be innocent and go to Heaven. Never was it intention of ours, that the sitters in the holy chair should divide one half of Christendom against the other; should turn my keys into ensigns of war against the faithful; and stamp my very image upon mercenary and lying documents, which make me, here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think of. Arm of God, why sleepest thou? Men out of Gascony and Cahors are even now making ready to drink our blood. O lofty beginning, to what vile conclusion must thou come! But the high Providence, which made Scipio the sustainer of the Roman sovereignty of the world, will fail not its timely succour. And thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal clothing must again descend to earth, see thou that thou openest thy mouth, and hidest not from others what has not been hidden from thyself."

As white and thick as the snows go streaming athwart the air when the sun is in Capricorn, so the angelical spirits that had been gathered in the air of Saturn streamed away after the Apostle, as he turned with the other saints to depart; and the eyes of Dante followed them till they became viewless.[49]

The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to herself; and at the same instant the two companions found themselves in the ninth Heaven or Primum Mobile, the last of the material Heavens, and the mover of those beneath it.

[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush, and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,—this scene altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy invective awful.

Here he had a glimpse of the divine essence, in likeness of a point of inconceivably sharp brightness enringed with the angelic hierarchies. All earth, and heaven, and nature, hung from it. Beatrice explained many mysteries to him connected with that sight; and then vehemently denounced the false and foolish teachers that quit the authority of the Bible for speculations of their own, and degrade the preaching of the gospel with ribald jests, and legends of Saint Anthony and his pig.[50]

Returning, however, to more celestial thoughts, her face became so full of beauty, that Dante declares he must cease to endeavour to speak of it, and that he doubts whether the sight can ever be thoroughly enjoyed by any save its Maker.[51] Her look carried him upward as before, and he was now in the Empyrean, or region of Pure Light;—of light made of intellect full of love; love of truth, full of joy; joy, transcendant above all sweetness.

Streams of living radiance came rushing and flashing round about him, swathing him with light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and dashes against the blinded eyes; but the light was love here, and instead of injuring, gave new power to the object it embraced.

With this new infusion of strength into his organs of vision, Dante looked, and saw a vast flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendours, and pouring down like a river between banks painted with the loveliest flowers. Fiery living sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched themselves into the cups of the flowers, where they remained awhile, like rubies set in gold; till inebriated with the odours, they recast themselves into the bosom of the flood; and ever as one returned, another leaped forth. Beatrice bade him dip his eyes into the light, that he might obtain power to see deeper into its nature; for the river, and the jewels that sprang out of it to and fro, and the laughing flowers on the banks, were themselves but shadows of the truth which they included; not, indeed, in their essential selves, but inasmuch as without further assistance the beholder's eyes could not see them as they were. Dante rushed to the stream as eagerly as the lips of an infant to the breast, when it has slept beyond its time; and his eyelashes had no sooner touched it, than the length of the river became a breadth and a circle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him, like a face when a mask is taken off. It was the whole two combined courts of Heaven, the angelical and the human, in circumference larger than would hold the sun, and all blazing beneath a light, which was reflected downwards in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mobile below it, the mover of the universe. And as a green cliff by the water's side seems to delight in seeing itself reflected from head to foot with all its verdure and its flowers; so, round about on all sides, upon thousands of thrones, the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat beholding themselves in the light. And yet even all these together formed but the lowest part of the spectacle, which ascended above them, tier upon tier, in the manner of an immeasurable rose,—all dilating itself, doubling still and doubling, and all odorous with the praises of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base of it, as into the yellow of the flower, with a dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Beatrice drew forward her companion, and said, "Behold the innumerable assemblage of the white garments! Behold our city, how large its circuit! Behold our seats, which are, nevertheless, so full, that few comers are wanted to fill them! On that lofty one at which thou art looking, surmounted with the crown, and which shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry, who would fain set Italy right before she is prepared for it.[52] The blind waywardness of which ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who, while he is dying of hunger, kicks away his nurse. And Rome is governed by one that cannot walk in the same path with such a man, whatever be the road.[53] But God will not long endure him. He will be thrust down into the pit with Simon Magus; and his feet, when he arrives there, will thrust down the man of Alagna still lower.[54]"