Jacques Maritain Center:
Dante and the Blessed Virgin / by Ralph McInernyIn the final cantica of the Commedia, Beatrice and Dante fall upward, as it were. The highest good draws them magnetically -- gravitas defies gravity -- because of Beatrice’s sanctity and the purging of Dante that has taken place as he clambered up Mount Purgatory.
How could any poet depict in words and their accompanying images what escapes all sensible representation? Dante seems to have assigned himself an impossible task. One solution is to call attention to the difficulty and, by addressing it, resolve it if only obliquely. But how does one express the ineffable except by words? Even “inexpressible” is a word. And our language comes trailing its origins in our sense experience. Take any word that is applied to an immaterial reality, let alone to God: it has been drawn from its native habitat, the realm of things proportionate to our knowledge, and made to serve a higher purpose than thinking and talking about the changeable things of this world. Soul? Its original meaning is breath, wind. Father, good, one, intelligent, powerful, actual -- the entire vocabulary of the theologian is anchored, one way or another, in the sensible world. This extrapolation of words, this extension of their meaning, is justified because the sensible world is a sign of and a means of knowing its cause. In this sense, the very means that Dante uses, namely language, contains the solution of his dilemma.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Dante employs the planets of our system to represent degrees of beatitude. Beatrice will fly him to the moon and then to Mercury and all the rest, until, beyond these wheeling spheres, they reach the celestial empyrean, which is wholly immaterial and thus not a place. On the upward journey, during layovers on the various planets, Dante encounters the souls of the blessed, first those of the least degree and then upward through more intense participation in the divine goodness. No soul regards its measure of happiness as inadequate; even if it is aware of the greater beatitude of other souls, it has no desire for more. We can compare this to glasses of different capacity, each full to the brim. But although the various spheres and their differing proximity from the fixed stars provide a means for Dante to represent degrees of beatitude, we should not conclude that some blessed souls are caught up in the lunar sphere, others in the sphere of Mercury, Venus, and so on. The physical hierarchy of planets represents a spiritual hierarchy.
The ascending scale of blessedness is as follows: represented on the moon -- although all the blessed are actually in the celestial rose -- are those who were inconstant in vows; on Mercury, those who were ambitious in the active life; on Venus, the great lovers; on the Sun, the great theologians and other teachers; on Mars, the warriors; on Jupiter, the just; on Saturn, the contemplatives; in the heaven of the fixed stars, Dante will witness the triumph of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and will meet Adam and saints Peter, James, and John. In the ninth heaven Dante has a vision of the angelic hierarchy and then, in the tenth heaven, the empyrean, a vision of the celestial rose, the dwelling place of all the blessed, which is presided over by Mary, the Queen of Heaven. Only by images and words whose origins are in our common experience could Dante put before our eyes what cannot be seen and utter the ineffable.
The reader is permitted to think of this ascension, this astral journey, in more or less literal terms. After all, Dante still has a body, even if he needs no space suit or other provisions for an atmosphere different from the terrestrial. But we are given two precious downward glimpses as Dante and his beloved soar upward, first in Paradiso 22:
Col viso ritornal per tutte quante
le sette spere, e vidi questo globo
tal, ch’io sorrisi del sup vil sembiante;
e quell consiglio per migliore approbo
che l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa
chiamar si puote veramente probo.
(Par. 22.133-138)
My eyes returned through all those seven spheres and I saw this globe in such a way that I smiled at its sorry appearance; I endorse that judgment as best which holds it least, and one whose thoughts Go elsewhere can truly be called virtuous.
The second downward look, in canto 27, also conveys the modesty of earth among the swirling planets. If the earth is the center in this view of the planets, if geocentrism holds, yet that centrality does not grant it prominence. A reader who has been struck by the prescience of the air flight to Rome in Robert Hugh Benson’s 1903 novel Lord of the World will be all the more awed by Dante’s anticipation of today’s marvelous photographs of earth taken from outer space. Such a small thing. And yet it is central in another way: earth is where men live and where the drama of their salvation was enacted. Dante’s reader can never be so starstruck as to forget this.
Il nome del bel fior ch’io sempre invoco
e mane e sera, tutto mi ristrinse
l’animo ad avvisar lo maggior foco.
(Par. 23.88-90)
The name of that beautiful flower that every morning and evening I invoke, drew my entire soul and reminded me of the greater focus.
This passage is not the sole instance of Dante’s devotion and piety.{1} In a narrow sense of the term “autobiographical,” this is the only explicitly autobiographical reference to Dante’s spiritual life in the Comedy. But to suggest that only here can we discern Dante’s personal devotion to Mary would be akin to concluding that since Dante is addressed by name only once, by Beatrice in canto 30 of the Purgatorio, we are in some doubt as to the identity of the narrator of the poem. For all that, this explicit reference to daily Marian devotions is a charming revelation; we think of Dante at dawn and dusk, e mane e sera, invoking Mary’s protection during his day and night. Did he perhaps recite the Angelus?{2} It is appealing to think so, since that prayer lingers over the words spoken by Gabriel and Mary at the Annunciation. We should not overrate the significance of e mane et sera, but we should not underrate it, either. It is a memorable statement of Dante’s devotion to the Blessed Mother.
After Paradiso 23 we come to the three cantos where Dante will confess his faith, express his hope, and declare his love. But first, let us consider the setting of canto 23. Dante and Beatrice have come up through the seven spheres of the planets and have arrived at the eighth heaven, the sphere of the fixed stars. There are two heavens above this realm, but they, unlike the planetary spheres and the heaven of the fixed stars, are invisible. In short, with the heaven of the fixed stars we have reached the boundary between the visible and invisible. Along the way, Dante and Beatrice have met with representatives of the enormous number of the blessed, whose true “location” is the celestial empyrean, heaven proper, which is beyond any reference to astronomical place. Almost immediately, Dante notices the expression of intense expectancy on Beatrice’s face. The opening lines of canto 23 liken her attitude to that of a mother bird just before daylight.
Come l’augello, intra l’amate fronde,
posato al nido de’suoi doci nati
la note che le cose ci nasconde,
che, per veder li aspetti disïati
e per trovar lo cibo onde li pasca,
in che gravi labor li sono aggrati,
previene il tempo in su aperta frasca,
e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
fiso guardando pur che l’alba nasca;
cosi la donna mïa stave eretta
e attemta . . .
(Par. 23.1-11)Like a mother bird who has rested with her dear little ones among the branches during the night that hides all things, eager to see her longed-for chicks again and find food with which to feed them, a heavy task that pleases her, she awaits the sun with ardent love, waiting for dawn to break -- so did my lady stand tall and watchful.
Beatrice tells Dante that what appears before them are the troops of the triumphant Christ. A description of Beatrice’s expectant face continues, but then the sun appears, brighter than a thousand lamps that draw their light from that sun. Dante is beholding the Wisdom and Power, the one who opened the longed-for path between earth and heaven. The canto continues with Dante’s description of his defective memory of this moment, and of the continuing difficulty of describing such indescribable things: “And thus, in representing Paradise, the sacred poem has to jump across, as does a man who finds his path cut off” (Par. 23.61-62). Dante is recalled from such ruminations by Beatrice.
“Perché la faccia mia si t’innamora,
che tu non ti rivolgi al bel giardino
che sotto I raggi di Cristo s’infiora?
Quivi è la rosa in che ‘l verbo divino
carne si fece; quivi son li gigli
al cui odor si prese il buon cammino.”
(Par. 23.70-75)
“Why are you so fascinated with my face that you do not turn and look at the beautiful garden flourishing under the sun of Christ! There is the rose in which the divine word became flesh, and the scent of lilies that enable men to find the right path.”
Christ’s entry into the poem is accompanied by that of His Mother. The blessed are depicted as a garden irradiated by the light of Christ, and chief among those flowers is Mary, the mystical rose, the mother of God. She is the celestial rose. Now Dante sees a torch-like light descend and form a crown like a ring, a garland revolving around Mary. It is an angel, the angel of the Annunciation.
“Io sono amore angelico, che giro
l’alta letizia che spira nel ventre
che fu albergo del nostro disiro;
e gireommi, donna del ciel, mentre
che seguirai tuo figlio, e farai dia
più la spera supprema perché li entre.”
(Par. 23.103-108)
I am the angelic love who turns about that exalted happiness that breathes from the womb where dwelt our Desire; so shall I circle, Lady of Heaven, until, following your Son, you have made that sphere yet more divine by entering it.
At this, all the blessed sing out the name of Mary as Christ and His mother rise triumphantly, and Dante is made aware of the deep affection all of them have for Mary. The blessed then burst into the song “Regina coeli,” the antiphon of Eastertide:
Regina coeli, laetare, alleluia!
Quia quem meruisti portare
Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia!{3}
Queen of heaven, rejoice, alleluia! Because He whom you merited to bear has risen as he said he would, alleluia!{3}
The tenderness of the song, Dante tells us, was such that the memory of it never left him.
The ascension of Christ and Mary is preparation for what is to come, a foretaste of the culminating vision that will be granted later to Dante when he is taken up to the ninth and tenth heavens by Beatrice, But first he must undergo an examination in the theological virtues. Meanwhile, his appetite has been whetted by his vision of the triumphant. Christ.
Quivi trïunfa, sotto l’alto Filio
di Dio e di Maria, di sua vittoria,
e con l’antico e col novo concilio,
colui che tien le chiavi di tal gloria.
(Par. 23.136-139)
Here, just below the high Son of God and Mary, he who is the keeper of the keys to glory triumphs in his victory together with the ancient and new councils.
This concluding reference to St. Peter, keeper of the keys, draws attention to the fact that the assembly of the blessed represents the Church Triumphant under the leadership of Peter. St. Peter will play a central role in the next canto.
If we look back on the opening lines of canto 23, the description of the mother bird anxious about her young, we see an inescapable reference to Mary. It is bracketed by the closing image of the throng of the blessed, lifting their arms longingly to her as she ascends. Dante compares them to an infant who, just after having been fed, extends its arms to its mother. The deep affection of all the blessed for Mary is filial.
In canto 24, Beatrice presents Dante to the assembled spirits. She notes that he is still in an earthly condition but is to be given a foretaste of the banquet that is their eternal sustenance. At this, a spirit detaches himself from the rest, and Beatrice identifies him as St. Peter. Beatrice asks Peter to test Dante’s faith.
This canto and the two following it have often been compared to an academic examination and are called the doctrinal cantos. St. Peter examines Dante on the theology of faith, St. James on the theology of hope, and St. John on the theology of love. But what we are given is both like and unlike an exchange between master and pupil, at least if this is understood as an abstract and impersonal presentation of a subject matter. What we witness, and what is elicited from Dante by his three apostolic interlocutors, are professions of faith, of hope, and of love. Here Dante lays bare what governs his life, the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity that are peculiar to Christianity and beyond the ken of pagan morality. They are the conditions for enjoying the beatific vision. Of course, the tendency to read the doctrinal cantos as a series of objective presentations is prompted by Dante’s own words: “Just as the bachelor candidate must arm himself and does not speak until the master asks the question for discussion -- or approval, not to conclude it -- so while she spoke I armed myself with all my arguments, preparing for such a questioner and such professing” (Par. 27,46-51). And the first question put to him by St. Peter is, What is faith? No doubt there is an initial similarity to a scholarly examination, but that should not obscure the truly remarkable person profession of this “candidate.” Imagine him speaking thus in an ordinary academic oral exam -- the difference leaps out at us.
Earlier, Peter had been identified as keeper of the keys, the head of the Church, but here, reference is made to his response to Jesus when he got out of the boat and tried to walk on water (Matt.14.28-31). That is, Peter here is not the glorified saint but the Peter whose faith faltered as he walked upon the water, causing him to sink, and the Peter who denied Christ. Here, Peter is addressing a Dante who is still in the condition that the saint was on earth.
The examinations began with the question, What is faith? Dante proceeds to quote St. Paul from Hebrews. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”{4} That, Dante says in perfect Scholastic mode, is the quiddity of faith. “Why substance?” Peter then asks, and “Why evidence?” Dante’s reply to the first is, “The profound things that bestow their image on me here are hidden from sight below, so that what they are lies in faith alone, and the highest hope is based on that faith; and so it is that faith is called a substance” (Par. 24.70-74). And what of “evidence”?
E da questa credenza et convene
silogizzar, sanz’ avere altra vista:
però intenza d’argomento tene.
(Par 24.75-78)
From this faith it is meet that we begin to reason, although seeing no more; so faith is called an evidence.
So far, we seem indeed to be listening to a degree candidate being examined in a purely academic way. That what Dante is engaged in here is more a confession of faith than an account of it, however, is clear when we look at a thoroughly magisterial treatment of the subject, such as that of Thomas Aquinas.
In his commentary on Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the existence of things that are not seen,” Thomas states that this definition of faith is complete but obscure.{5} In the Disputed Questions on Truth (De ver.), q. 14, a.2, he puts in it in this way: This expression is the most perfect and complete definition of faith, but it is not expressed in the proper form of a definition. The proper form is to give the genus into which the nature of the thing in question fits, and its specific difference from other generically similar things. But, Thomas adds, it is easy to put this definition into the proper form -- and that is what he goes about doing. Everything that is needed for a formal definition is provided in Paul’s remark. There are three indications that this is so.
First, all the principles on which the essence of faith depends are given in the statement from Hebrews. Earlier, Thomas had stressed the crucial role of will in the act of faith; but will is moved by its object, which is the known desirable good, the end. For faith, two things are needed: the good moving the will; and that to which the intellect assents.
“There is a twofold ultimate good of man which first moves the will as its ultimate end” (De ver., q.14,a.2).{6} Two ultimate goods act as our ultimate end. One is proportioned to our nature and can be attained by natural efforts, namely, the happiness of which philosophers speak, whether contemplative or practical. The other is a good that exceeds human nature, for the attaining of which natural powers are insufficient. But we cannot be ordered to an end unless there is in us some proportion to that end; that is, the loved is always similar to the lover.
With respect to the first ultimate good, we have a certain inchoative grasp of it, namely, in the first self-evident principles that are the seeds of theoretical and practical reasoning, as well as a natural desire for this good. There must be something analogous in the case of the ultimate good that exceeds our nature. The ultimate happiness, according to the philosophers, consists of such knowledge of God as we can attain by our natural powers. This is knowledge of God from His effects. But in the supernatural order we are called to a complete knowledge of God: “This is eternal life, that they might know thee, the one true God” (John 17:3). Faith is the name of that beginning in us of the complete knowledge of God. But in anything that has parts, the most fundamental part, the beginning of the whole is called its substance. Thus faith, insofar as it is the beginning of eternal life, which we hope for on the basis of the divine promise, is called “the substance of things hoped for.”
The assent of intellect to what is proposed to it -- here, the articles of faith -- is dependent on a movement of will, because the object in this case is not obviously true. In the usual case of assent, the mind grasps what is clear to it, proportioned to its natural powers, and goes on to argue from that truth to other truths. Similarly, the obscure things assented to in the act of faith are the basis on which arguments are formed. Hence, faith is the "argument for things which do not appear.”
Thomas sums up: we are given the matter or object of faith, which is unseen (non apparentium); its act, in that it is an argument argumentum); and the order to the end, in that it is the substance of things hoped for substantia rerum sperandarum). The genus is given by its act, namely, a habit that is known from its act, and by its subject, mind -- and that suffices. “Thus from what we are given it is easy to construct a well-formed definition of it; ‘faith is a habit of mind by which eternal life begins in us and which causes the intellect to assent to what is not obvious’” (De ver., q. 14, a. 2).
In his commentary on Hebrews, Thomas compares intellectual assent in natural learning with the assent of faith.{7} It is true that the mind normally assents to something because it sees it is so, and the process of arriving at this assent begins with a desire to know what a discipline promises. Any student must begin with a desire to know what is promised by the discipline and of which, of course, he or she is still ignorant. What is promised is thus seen as a good, something desirable, and the student’s desire drives the intellect toward the acquisition of knowledge. Hence the adage oportet addiscentem credere: the learner must believe. But the belief invoked in this example is human faith, that is, our trust in the teacher, and it is the start of a process that should end in our knowing on our own.{8} But although this likens divine faith to the trust and hope that is involved in any intellectual inquiry, the difference between the two is vast. Supernatural faith lasts as long as life does; it is only beyond our earthly life that the promised full knowledge will be obtained. Meanwhile we see as in a glass darkly. In his commentary on Hebrews, just as in the Disputed Questions on Truth, Thomas also points out that divine faith differs from every other kind of mental act -- from scientific knowledge, human faith, opinion, doubt, and conjecture.{9}
Once Peter has been assured that Dante can provide the quiddity, or the definition, of faith and can explain what enters into that definition, the exchange alters profoundly. “Do you have it in your purse?” Peter asks. That is to say, All right, you know what faith is, you have just explained it, but do you have it? The exchange may have continued for a time before being kicked into a first-person confessional form, but we sense that Peter and Dante are not discussing some interesting abstraction. Faith comes from the word of God and from miracles attesting to its veracity.
St. Peter declares himself satisfied with Dante’s answers, “but now you must declare what you believe and what gave you the faith that you receive.” And so we come to Dante’s credo:
E io rispondo: lo credo in uno dio
solo ed etterno, che tutto ‘l ciel move,
non moto, con amore e con disio;
e a tal creder non ho io pur prove
fisice e metafisice, ma dalmi
anche la verità che quinci piove
per Moisè, per profeti e per salmi,
per l’Evangelio e per voi che scriveste
poi che l’ardente Spirto vi fé almi;
e credo in tre persone etterne, e queste
credo una essenza si una e sì trina,
che soffera congiunto ‘sono’ ed ‘este.’
De la profonda condizion divina
ch’io tocco mo, la mente mi sigilla
più volte l’evangelica dottrina.
I answer: I believe in one God -- sole,
eternal -- He who, motionless, moves all
the heavens with His love and His desire,
for this belief I have not only proofs
both physical and metaphysical;
I also have the truth that here rains down
through Moses and the prophets and the Psalms
and through the Gospels and through you who wrote
Words given to you by the Holy Ghost,
And I believe in three Eternal Persons,
and these I do believe to be one essence,
so single and threefold as to allow
both is and are.Of this profound condition
of God that I have touched on, Gospel teaching
has often set the imprint on my mind.
(Par. 24.130-144, trans. Mandelbaum)
The first five lines express Dante’s belief in God as the Prime Mover, about which doctrine he says he has physical and metaphysical proofs; then comes the assurance of Scripture. Personal as this testimony is, it also attests to Dante’s months of study in Florence, as he prepared himself for his great task.
The truths about God that can be discovered by natural reason -- that He exists, that He is one, that He is cause of all else, and the like -- are of course implicit in the articles of the Nicene Creed. But the “preambles of faith” are not articles of faith and therefore do not as such enter into the creed.{10} Dante’s profession of belief in the Trinity of Persons in God takes slightly over three lines, but his belief, unlike belief in God, rests entirely on the teaching of the Gospels.
Dante’s creed, when compared to the Athanasian Creed, to the Apostle’s Creed, or to the Nicene Creed, is pretty minimalist. There is a God, who is a Trinity of Persons. No mention is made of the things hoped for, of the Virgin Birth, or of the passion and death of Christ. Of course, Dante’s credo here does not exhaust his faith -- no creed is exhaustive -- but what he professes here can be supplemented from the poem as a whole.
No doubt it is fitting that a canto dedicated to the virtue of hope (canto 25) should begin with Dante’s wistful dream of returning to Florence, ending his long exile from his native city, and being granted the laurel crown for his sacred poem in the baptistry where his life of faith began. St. Peter himself has garlanded Dante’s brow after his confession of faith. Of course, Florence did not follow suit. The sacred poem is drawing to its end -- there are only a few cantos to go -- but Dante will continue to eat the bread of others and climb the stairs of houses not his own.
Se mai continga che ‘l poema sacro
al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,
si che m’ha fatto per molto anni macro,
vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra
del bello ovile ov’ io dormi’ agnello,
nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra;
con altra voce omai, con altro vello
ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte
del mio battesmo prenderò ‘l cappello;
però che ne la fede, che fa conte
l’anime a Dio, quivi intra’ io, e poi
Pietro per lei si mi girò la fronte.
(Par. 25.1-12)
Should this sacred poem, to which both heaven and earth have lent a hand and which over the years has left me lean, ever overcome the cruelty that keeps me from that fair fold in which as a lamb I slept, a lamb opposed by wolves that war on it, then with other voice and other fleece shall I return and at my baptismal font put on the laurel crown; there I first found entry to the faith that reconciles souls with God and for which Peter wreathed my brow.
After this melancholy prelude, the canto takes on its special meaning with the arrival of a flame, circling like a dove and then alighting. This is the soul of St. James, identified by reference to his burial place in Compostela, a major object of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages and now. As before, modo academic, Dante is asked by the apostle “to tell what hope is, tell how it has blossomed within your mind” (Par. 25.46-47). Again, a duality: Dante must give an account of the virtue itself and also how he personally acquired it. But before he can begin, Beatrice intervenes, assuring St. James that there is “no child of the Church Militant who has more hope than he has” (Par. 25.52-53). That said, she leaves to Dante the response to St. James’s two questions:
“Spene,” diss’ io, “è uno attender certo
de la gloria futura, il qual produce
grazia divina e precedente metro.”
(Par. 25.67-69)
I said, “Hope is a certain expectation of future glory, produced by grace and preceding merit.”
In response to this, James declares that he still burns with love “for the virtue that was mine until my martyrdom and departure from the field” (Par. 25.82-83). The sources of Dante’s hope are to be found in Holy Writ, as he explains, whereupon the blessed cry out “Sperent in te.” They hope in you. This verse from Psalm 9:11 has already been cited by Dante in speaking of the sources of his hope, and now it is echoed by the blessed.
Toward the end of the canto, St. John arrives on the scene, announced by Beatrice in a pithy tercet.
“Questi è colui che giacque sopra ‘l petto
del nostro pellicano, e questi fue
di su la croce al grande officio eletto.”
(Par. 25.112-114)
This is he who laid his head upon the breast of Christ our pelican and, from the cross, was chosen for a grand task.
What is the grande officio assigned to John by Jesus on the Cross? “Then when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold thy son,’ and then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold thy mother.’ And from that moment on the disciple took her into his household” (John 19:26-27). The care of the Blessed Virgin fell to John, and she was with him for the rest of her life. Mary thus enters obliquely into the discussion. There is more, however. John, noticing that Dante is peering at him as if to get a better look, makes it clear that his own body has been consigned to earth and will remain there until the dead are raised. Dante is here addressing a legend that John had been assumed both body and soul into heaven. Not so, says the one who would know. There are only two presently in heaven as both body and soul, and they are Jesus and His Blessed Mother.
Con le due stole nel beato chiostro
son le due luci sole che saliro;
e questo apporterai nel mondo vostro.
(Par. 25.127-129)
Only two lights have risen to our blessed choir with two robes: tell this to the world.
Dante thus affirms the assumption of Mary at a time when even St. Thomas considered it at most a possibility. Eventually, in 1950, the assumption of Mary was declared de fide, infallible dogma. The idea that it was fitting for the body of this most faithful one not to undergo corruption, much discussed before the declaration, thus became a settled truth of Catholic belief.{11}
Of the three theological virtues, only the third, charity, remains. After this life there is no further need for faith -- its enigmatic knowledge gives way to vision -- or of hope, since what was hoped for is now had. Dante’s condition is still mortal, so he must exhibit his possession of all three virtues before he can be taken up into the highest heaven, where he will be granted a brief and privileged glimpse of things to come.
When Dante is being examined by St. John on charity, he states that love is imprinted on him “by philosophic arguments and by authority,” and St. John repeats the phrase with obvious approval. Earlier, responding to St. Peter on faith, Dante had pointed to a syllogism that shows that faith is true (Par. 24.94). And in his credo, Dante insists that for beliefs in the first five lines, consisting of truths about God as Prime Mover, “I have not only proofs both physical and metaphysical” but revelation as well. St. John sums up Dante’s position thus:
E io udi’: “Per intelletto umano
e per autoritadi a lui concorde
d’i tuoi amori a Dio guarda il sovrano.”
(Par. 26.46-48)
And I heard, “By means of the human intellect and authority in concord with it, the highest of your loves to God will go.”
Such passages do not prepare us for Beatrice’s diatribe against the reasoning of the schools, which we find in canto 29. In the previous canto she had compared the theologies of (Pseudo-) Denis the Arepogite and Gregory the Great on the angelic hierarchies, indicating that Denis had it right and that when Gregory arrived in paradise, he smiled at his own earthly error. But this is only to point out that sometimes reasoning turns out well and sometimes it doesn’t. There is far more at issue in canto 29. The reasoning of the schools is characterized as confused and ambiguous. And worse.
Voi non andate giù per un sentiero
filosofando tanto vi trasporta
l’amor de l’apparenza e ‘l suo pensiero!
E ancor questo qua sù si comporta
con men disdegno che quando è pasposta
la divina Scrittura o quando è torta.
(Par. 29.85-90)
You do not follow a single path when you philosophize down there -- love of showing off and of your own thinking! Yet all that ostentation is disdained less here than when Sacred Scripture is distorted or subordinated.
The specific problem under consideration here is the number of the angels, but the criticism does not seem limited to that particular issue. And there is also Beatrice’s disdainful reference to Dante’s studies in Florence. What is Dante’s teaching on the relationship between faith and reason, between faith and desire to understand? Is there a division of opinion between him and Beatrice?
In the case of the first part of his credo, Dante has been taken to be referring to such proofs as the quinque viae of Thomas Aquinas, the five ways of proving the existence of God from premises that express truths about the world around us, truths available to any human person. This is, of course, an appeal to a theological work, the Summa theologiae. The question arises, what effect does the theological setting have on so-called natural reasoning? Thomas himself coined a phrase to name truths about God that can be established by “physical and metaphysical” reasoning. He called them preambula fidei, preambles of faith. He never provides an exhaustive list of these preambles, most often settling for such a list as “God exists,” “There is only one God,” and the like. Thomas found the proofs in Aristotle’s Physics (books 7 and 8) and Metaphysics (book 12) cogent and employed them in his Summa. But these, and all other truths about God, Thomas Aquinas, as a believer, would have held long before he was capable of formulating or assessing a philosophical proof of them. In short, the truths about God that philosophers can and have proved are included among the truths about God that have been revealed. Before the believer knows (by way of a philosophical proof) that God exists, he or she believes it. By calling such truths preambles of faith, Thomas is comparing them to faith, a comparison that only a theologian, not an ancient philosopher, would make. Does this render the relationship between the known and believed hopelessly ambiguous?
When Thomas says that there are two kinds of truth about God, those that can be known to be such and those that in this life can only be believed, he speaks of both of them as what “we profess.”{12} Dante is clearly influenced by Thomas’s claim that there are philosophical proofs of some of the truths about God that have been revealed. If philosophers of old could prove such truths, so can philosophers of any time, believers or not. We might wonder what interest believers would have in finding proofs for things they already hold to be true. We might further wonder, if we are like Thomas Aquinas, why God would include within revelation certain truths about Himself that can be known separately, and thus need not be believed on the basis of faith.{13}
The fact is that holding truths on the basis of faith is not a natural mode of the human mind. When we trust one another for some truth, this may be a mere expedient. I take your word that Beijing is a foggy city, and then I go there and know this to be true. The preambles of faith are like that. But what about all the other truths that have been revealed and are believed and that cannot in this life be known? Those are the mysteries of faith, the articles of faith. Do we just acknowledge that we cannot comprehend and fall silent?
St. Anselm’s maxim fides quaerens intellectum -- faith seeking understanding -- has often been taken as the charter for believers pondering the mysteries of faith. That effort is distinguished from philosophical efforts, since the latter issue in knowledge. But the mysteries of the faith -- the Incarnation, the Trinity, the forgiveness of sins, and so on -- however much we reflect on them, compare them to knowledge, and defend them against the charge of incoherence, nonetheless resist our efforts to comprehend them. So long as we are alive, the only basis for holding the mysteries to be true is because God has revealed them. They are something the Church teaches us. Unlike the theology of the philosophers, which is the culminating achievement of philosophy, the theology based on Sacred Scripture, on revelation, always remains in a sense a learned ignorance, a docta ignorantia.
No wonder, then, that Thomas welcomes the results of philosophical theology, which he dubs the preambles of faith. They suggest the following argument for the reasonableness of accepting as true what we cannot in this life know to be true. If some of the truths that have been revealed -- the preambles -- can be known to be true, this suggests that the whole of revelation consists of intelligible truths, truths that will be understood and grasped as true in the next world.
But why would the preambles be revealed? If they are knowable by our own efforts, why not simply trust people to learn them through natural reasoning and then go on to relate them to the mysteries of the faith? Despite his robust confidence in the range of reason, and despite his obvious admiration of Aristotle for having come to such knowledge of God as he could derive from his knowledge of the world, Thomas nonetheless holds that the human race would be in real trouble if those naturally knowable truths about God were not immediately available to all through revelation.{14} The theology of the philosophers is a difficult achievement; metaphysical proofs of God’s existence, however cogent, are subject to endless discussion.
Dante’s expression of confidence in the range of reason matches that of Thomas Aquinas. He is certainly not suggesting that the mysteries of faith can be established by philosophical argumentation, and his suggestion that even the truths that can be established by reason are corroborated by revelation is consistent with Thomas’s view. This little dispute, to the degree that it is one, calls attention to a premise essential to Dante and the Commedia, namely, the compatibility of the natural and the supernatural and the complementarity of the best of reason and the mysteries of the faith.
The three theological virtues have God for their object, the God in whom one believes, the God for whom one hopes, and the God with whom one is eternally united in love. “There remain then these three, faith, hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is charity.” With these words the magnificent chapter 13 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians ends. This being so, we might expect that St. John’s examination of Dante on charity would be the most thorough of all. Actually, it is the briefest. St. John makes his appearance in canto 25, where his brilliance blinds Dante, a condition in which Dante remains until the examination is over.
In his response to John, Dante gives credit to Beatrice for awakening love in him (Par. 26.15). The alpha and omega of sacred writings, he continues, links love and the good.
E io: “Per filosofici argomenti
e per autorità che quinci scende
cotale amor convien che in me si imprenti:
ché ‘l bene, in quanto ben, come s’intende,
cosi accende amore, e tanto maggio
quanto più di bontate in sé comprende.”
(Par. 26.25-30)
And I answered, “By means of philosophical arguments and by the authority that descends from here, that love was impressed upon me. For the good as such, once understood, thus enkindles love, and all the more the more goodness in itself is understood.”
We have already considered this blend of philosophical and authoritative (i.e., scriptural) bases for Dante’s conception of the primacy of love. The cosmos is an ordered whole, and each thing in it naturally seeks its good. A thing can be directed to a good only if knowledge of that good is had, and for most things in the cosmos the knowledge involved in their natural appetites is not their own but their maker’s. They fly to their assigned ends like an arrow to the target. Other cosmic entities have sense knowledge, and this is antecedent to their pursuit of pleasures and pains, the two being signs as to whether the thing sought is good or bad for the seeker. With humans a whole new realm opens up, involving intelligence and thus the capacity to grasp goodness as such and to direct ourselves to our true good.
We pointed out earlier that we are rational animals; that is, we have bodies and share many appetites and drives with brute animals, for that matter, we share properties with plants and even inanimate nature. We also have drives and appetites that follow more or less automatically on sense perception. But the human task is not to put one’s mind to the more efficient or satisfying attainment of food and drink and sexual pleasure. These undeniable goods are parts of the human good insofar as they are ordered by and amenable to rational direction to one’s overall good. The understood good, the object of intelligence, triggers that appetite we call will. Will is a natural appetite, to the extent that we cannot not will the good. Our task is to order other goods to that end, and here we may succeed or fail. Our animal appetites are at war with our pursuit of the rationally recognized good.
We naturally and necessarily want our comprehensive good, the end that is ultimate because, once obtained, there is nothing further to desire. In that sense, we can say that there is one single end for all human agents. But the drama arises from the fact that we identify that ultimate end with objects that can scarcely fulfill our expectations. Pleasure, wealth, power, fame -- these and other objects have been put forward as identical with our ultimate end. If this were merely an intellectual problem, a misidentification that can be dealt with by argument, life would be simpler. As it is, we reveal our identification of lesser and evanescent goods and the ultimate end in our actions far more than in our theories. And in action, our emotions and passions are involved; we become habituated to seek, say, sense pleasure. It takes more than a convincing argument if we are to change our ways. It involves a struggle, the schooling of our sense appetite to respond to the true good. This is a struggle in which we need the help of friends, the support of the community in which we live, and, above, all, God’s grace.
No one becomes good by studying philosophy, Aristotle wrote. He meant that pondering about the good at a level of abstraction can never as such alter the condition of our appetite. The good that we would, we do not, and the good that we would not, we pursue. The paradox of human action is contained in this maxim. It is possible for weak persons to recognize their true good and yet not have the strength to overcome their habitual pursuit of something at odds with their true good.
Dante by contrast seems rather sanguine about the power of knowledge.
Dunque a l’essenza ov’ è tanta avvantaggio,
che ciasun ben che fuor di lei si trova
altro non è ch’un lume di suo raggio,
più che in altra convien che si mova
la mente, amando, ciascun che cerne
il vero in che si fonda questa prova.
(Par. 26.31-36)
Hence to that Essence where there is such eminence that any other good is merely a share of its light, any mind must be moved by love -- any mind that grasps the truth on which this proof is founded.
The good that engages the will initially and necessarily is the vague conception of what will wholly fulfill desire. On reflection, we might say with Aristotle that our good will be the perfection (virtue) of our distinctive activity, which is rational activity. But as pointed out in chapter 2, rational activity is not a single thing -- sometimes the phrase means the activity of reason as such, theoretical or practical, and sometimes it means activities other than reasoning which are directed by reason. There is a plurality of virtues perfecting each of these kinds of rational activity, a plurality of intellectual virtues and a plurality of moral virtues. From a purely philosophical point of view, one might say not only that the moral virtues have their specific objects, but that their acquisition removes obstacles to the perfection of mind as such, and the ultimate perfection of mind is the contemplation of eternal, divine things.
As we have discussed in earlier chapters, the ultimate end as understood by the Christian, and thus by Dante, is much, much more than this. We are called to eternal union with God in love. This is not something even dreamt of by philosophers. The philosophers of course know of our warring appetites -- how could they not? -- but as to why we are so divided against ourselves, they cannot say. The division is there, it constitutes our moral task, and that is enough. But if in reality human beings are called to an end that philosophers could not know, it would seem that philosophers cannot provide us with useful guidance for our lives.
One must be careful here. St. Augustine once said that the virtues of the philosophers are in reality vices. And certainly they would be vices, if we thought that virtues as the philosophers talk of them, virtues that we can with however strenuous an effort acquire, are the means of achieving what we now know is our true end, our beatific union with God. Nonetheless, the philosopher can achieve a true if imperfect identification of our ultimate end. The morality that we find in Plato and Aristotle may not be the whole story, but surely we would not dismiss what they say of justice and courage and temperance as wholly false. What Thomas Aquinas suggests is that we must distinguish between an imperfect, inadequate understanding of our end and a perfect understanding of it. The latter is what we accept of the basis of faith. The natural and supernatural orders are thus distinct but related; the one cannot do service for the other.
A question that theologians have asked over the years, among them Thomas Aquinas, is whether we have a natural desire for the supernatural end. If the beatific vision is indeed the end to which men are called, their desire for it might be thought of either as a gift along with the object desired -- thus a supernatural desire for a supernatural end -- or as a natural desire. Why would anyone want to say that we have natural desire for our supernatural end? Well, for one thing, the supernatural end is presented to us as the sum of all our desires. As Thomas noted, this amounts to the identification of our ultimate end with the beatific vision. But we desired our ultimate end before we knew it consisted in the beatific vision. What we naturally desire is what truly plays the role of our ultimate end. In that sense, we can be said naturally to desire the supernatural end.
But a supernatural end is by definition beyond our natural reach. Only with the aid of grace can we be turned toward our true end, toward God, through the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. St. Paul, referring to the altar of the Unknown God in Athens, could say that he has come to tell the Athenians of that God. So too, the preaching of the Good News is that this is our heart’s desire, in Augustine’s words, once again. “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” There is a continuity between the natural and supernatural, but it is an odd continuity, since one can achieve the supernatural only with the aid of grace. This is why Thomas calls the natural desire for a supernatural end an “obediential potency.” We have the capacity for the supernatural, but we do not have the wherewithal to achieve it. Only with the help of grace can our natural desire for an all-fulfilling good be raised to faith that this good is to be found in the beatific vision.
St. John, as we saw above, declared: “By means of the human intellect and authority in concord with it, the highest of your loves to God will go.” Is that all? Dante’s reply to this is moving.
Però ricominciai: “Tutti quei morsi
che posson far lo cor volgere a Dio,
a la mia caritate son concorsi:
ché l’essere del mondo e l’esser mio,
la morte ch’el sostenne perch’ io viva,
e quell che spera ogne fedel com’io,
con la predetta conoscenza viva,
tratto m’hanno del mar de l’amor torto,
e del diritto m’han posto a la riva.
(Par. 26.55-63)
So I began again. “My charity comes from all those things that turn the heart to God: the existence of the world and my own, the death that He suffered that I might live; that which is the hope of all believers and my own, along with the lived knowledge that I mentioned, have drawn me from a distorted love and put me onto the right path.”
Beatrice, as we know, has been Dante’s guide since their reunion in the Garden of Eden atop Mount Purgatory. Her scolding of him there served as a reminder of what underlies Dante’s pilgrimage. He had fallen into mortal sin, his salvation was jeopardized by his actions, he found himself in a dark wood, lost, bewildered. We can all too easily get ourselves into such a predicament, but getting out is beyond our powers. The Mother of Mercy painfully aware of Dante’s plight tells St. Lucy to speak to Beatrice about it. The importance of this sequence cannot be overstated. One’s beloved may forget, a saint who has been the object of one’s special devotion may need reminding, but the Blessed Virgin Mary is, so to speak the sleepless refuge of sinners. She answers prayers even before they have been made. Dante has reminded us that he began and ended each day with a prayer to Mary. Mary is the prime mover of the Commedia. Yet we also must not overlook the significance of all the intermediate causes in the chain. Bestirred by St. Lucy, Beatrice goes to work to save the man who loves her. She leaves her position in heaven, her location in the celestial rose, and goes down into hell, where, in Limbo, she enlists the aid of Virgil, who will lead Dante until he reaches the summit of Mount Purgatory and Beatrice can take over.
By now, Beatrice has guided Dante up through the celestial spheres, and in the heaven of the fixed stars he has witnessed the triumph of Jesus and Mary as they ascend into the ultimate heaven, the tenth, the celestial empyrean, where all reference to visible corporeal things is absent. Before Dante can be taken higher, he is subjected to examination on the theological virtues by saints Peter, James, and John, respectively. Only then can Beatrice take him up into the realm of the angels. Beyond is the celestial empyrean. Dante gazes on the scene before him, the blessed forming a rose-like company. At this point, Beatrice leaves him, returning to her appointed place in the rose, and Dante’s last guide takes over. He is St. Bernard of Clairvaux. His task is to obtain permission for Dante to glimpse, while still in his mortal body, God Himself, to have a foretaste of the beatific vision.
Consider the contrast with the beginning of the poem. Dante’s plight was so bad that only the shock treatment of seeing the souls in hell seemed likely to bring about a change of heart. The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. Masters of religious retreats once set the scene by preaching on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven. St. Francis de Sales does much the same thing in his Introduction to a Devout Life. James Joyce provides a powerful sample of such sermons in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Anyone who finds such an approach a demeaning use of scare tactics, a Jesuitical trick to get the simple faithful firmly under the clerical thumb, will have trouble appreciating the opening cantica of the Commedia. The description of the Inferno is Dante’s own, his imagination and poetic achievements, but hell for him is not a fiction. The little seers of Fatima were given a glimpse of hell that lasted seconds and yet stirred them to their depths. The great alternatives, heaven or hell, underwrite the seriousness of the actions we perform. It matters how we act. Every agent knows that. Every act is a conscious choice of a course to which there is an alternative, and we are answerable for the choices we make. We become our choice, so to speak. Our character is built up of them, and every future choice reinforces or weakens that character. Only if it did not, finally, really matter what we do could the question of ultimate answerability be set aside. We should keep in mind the allegorical meaning of the Commedia as Dante stated it in his letter to Can Grande della Scala. The poem puts before us the way in which human beings, by the use of their free will, determine their just eternal condition.
Dante has come a long way since he found himself in that dark wood. The lesson of hell and of eternal punishment had been taught him as he descended deeper and deeper into the realm peopled by those who failed to fulfill the very purpose of their lives, their reason for being. It is the realm of despair. We detect a growing awareness in Dante of what he has done, of the fate he has been risking. In the second cantica he scales Mount Purgatory, as a penitent among penitents. By the time of his reunion with Beatrice, all of the P’s representing the capital sins have been erased from his forehead, indicating that recompense for them has been made. His sins have been forgiven, and he has been purged of their lingering taint. The waters of Lethe will wash away the very memory of those sins, and the waters of Eunoe will prepare him for what lies ahead.
When he ascends into the celestial empyrean, Dante attempts to describe what he is seeing. Describing his own feelings is easier. Imagine a barbarian’s reaction on first seeing imperial Rome, and we will have some inkling of Dante’s response on seeing heaven.
ïo, che al divino da l’umano,
a l’etterno dal tempo era venuto,
e di Fiorenza in popo giusto e sano,
di che stupor dovea esser compiuto!
(Par. 31.37-40)
What a stupor I was in when I came to the divine from the human, to the eternal from time, to a people just and sane from Florence!
Consciousness of his own sinfulness never dims Dante’s condemnation of political and ecclesiastical misbehavior. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican, can praise Francis of Assisi, and Bonaventure, a Franciscan, can praise Dominic, but both lament the decadence in their own religious orders, each not yet a century old. So too, St. Benedict will recount with sadness the laxness that has crept into the monastic life. The view from above provides a very somber picture of mankind. Beatrice, in turn, will decry the follies of men. Only by allowing oneself to be led out of the dark wood will remedies for these moral evils come.
St. Bernard is Dante’s final guide. Why Bernard?{15} Because of his profound devotion to Mary.
E la regina del cielo, ond’ ïo ardo
tutto d’amor, ne farà ogne grazia,
però ch’i’ son oil suo fedel Bernardo.
(Par. 31.100-102)
The Queen of Heaven, for whom I wholly burn with love, will grant us every grace, since I am her faithful Bernard.
Before Bernard takes over, however, but after Beatrice returns to her place in the celestial rose, Dante makes a moving and impassioned declaration of his debt to her. This can be read as the apotheosis of what we already discerned in the Vita Nuova. The literal love of a young man for a beautiful woman is allegorically transformed into the story of his salvation.{16}
“O donna in cui la mia speranza vige,
e che soffristi per la mia salute
in inferno lasciar le tue vestige,
di tanti cose quant’ i’ ho vedute,
dal tuo podere e da la tua bontate
riconosco la grazia e la virtute.
Tu m’hai di servo tratto a libertate
per tutte quelle vie, per tutt’ i modi
che di ciò fare avei la potestate.
La tua magnificenza in me custodi,
si che l’anima mia, che fatt’ hai sana,
piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi.”
(Par. 31.79-90)
O Lady, in whom my hope is strengthened and who for my salvation’s sake went down to Hell and left your footprints there, in all that I have seen I realize the grace and virtue of your power and goodness. You have drawn me from slavery to freedom by all the paths and ways that are in your power to do so. May your generosity keep my soul healthy so that you will find it pleasing when, freed from the body, it comes to you.
We were struck in reading the Vita Nuova by the way in which Beatrice seems to be a figure for the Blessed Virgin, so much so that she sometimes takes on traits and privileges of Mary. Now, in the Paradiso, this no longer surprises. Mary is the pattern of all virtues, as we have learned in the Purgatorio. She who is full of grace will function as a model for those whose grace is less but, as we shall see, has been dispensed through Mary’s hands. Now, in order for Dante to be granted a glimpse of God, the intercession of Mary is required, and Bernard has the credentials to address her. Mary is the queen to whom this realm is subject and devoted (Par. 31.117). At Bernard’s urging, Dante lifts his eyes to look at Mary. He can only describe her for us by indirection. Mary is looking at the angels swirling and singing around her.
Vidi a lor giochi quivi e a lor canti
ridere una bellezza, che letizia
era ne li occhi a tutti li altri santi.
I saw then a Loveliness smiling at their play and song so that there was delight in the eyes of the other saints.
Mary is a mother smiling at her children at play. Her love is a maternal tenderness rather than the aloofness that the title Queen of Heaven might lead us to expect. Dante has seen Mary triumphant earlier, when she ascended into the empyrean with Her Son, but with this glimpse we enter the final phase of the sacred poem. From now on it is overtly dominated by the Blessed Virgin. The canto ends with Dante’s description of the love with which Bernard looks to Mary.
In the final two cantos of the Paradiso, Dante attempts to describe a world beyond the visible and to convey to us experiences so surpassing earthly ones that his task seems impossible, as indeed he himself says again and again. St. Paul has told us that eye has not seen nor ear heard or has it entered into the heart of man to know what God has prepared for those who love Him. Yet Dante makes the attempt, and he succeeds because of the centrality of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Queen of the Angels. Her ultimate celestial role, taken by itself, may seem to heighten the problem that Dante faces -- until he writes one of the most delightful tercets of the entire poem.
Riguarda omai ne la faccia che a Cristo
più si somiglia, ché la sua chiarezza
sola ti può disporre a veder Cristo.
(Par. 32.85-87)
Look now on that face that most resembles that of Christ; its brightness alone can dispose you to see Christ.
This is a recurrent theme in Bernard’s sermons and other writings: Mary is the path by which we go to Christ, just as she was the means of His coming among us as the Incarnate God. In order to fulfill this providential role, Mary was accorded graces beyond measure -- gratia plena -- more than any other mere human being and more than any angel. In this realm of unimaginable bliss, where images and metaphors are of little help, we suddenly have the reminder that maryy, the Lady of Heaven on her throne of glory (Par. 32.29-30), is also the young woman who gave birth to Jesus in a Bethlehem stable. His mother! Of course the son will resemble the mother, and vice versa; what else does family resemblance mean? The virgin whose Fiat complements the Fiat of creation accepts the angel’s message and opens the way to salvation.
La piaga che Maria richiuse e unse,
quella ch’è tamto bella da’ suoi piedi
è colei che l’aperse e che la punse.
(Par. 32.4-6)
The wound that Mary healed and medicated, is that which Eve, now sitting all lovely at her feet, pierced open.
The uniqueness of Mary’s role in the providential plan explains her place in the celestial empyrean and the love and devotion shown to her by the blessed. If Mary had not accepted the angel’s message, none of them would be here.{17} Their salvation literally hung on her agreement, since without it there would have been no God Man whose sacrifice and death opened the gates of heaven. Other advocates we may have, other guides whose prompting and invocations help us on our way, But none of them approaches the primacy of Mary in this regard. In giving birth to the God Man, she becomes an integral part of the redemptive plan. She is full of grace. That is meant as a superlative; no other creature approaches her in holiness or is more intimately bound up with the life of God. Mary is not only the Mother of the Savior, she is the mother of those He saves. Her role is not exhausted by the biological fact that she carried Jesus in her womb for nine months. But even that period of waiting involved a unique closeness of creature and God, an intimacy no other creature could have: flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. In the Incarnation we see the fusing of the roles of natural mother and supernatural mother of those Jesus came to save.
Notice how Bernard moves easily from the reminder of the family resemblance between Mary and her son to the mediating role she plays. Look at her face, he urges Dante, the face so like the face of Christ, for “its brightness alone can dispose you to see Christ.”{18} Mary is the way to Jesus, to the beatific vision. Dante has Bernard suggest that there is no way anyone can bypass her and still come to God.
Earlier, an angel had been observed hovering over Mary. The angel now begins to sing “Ave Maria, gratia plena,” Hail, Mary, full of grace, and the whole heavenly court takes up the salutation. The angel is Gabriel, the angel of the Annunciation. Bernard explains:
Ed elli a me: “Baldezza e leggiadria
quant’ esser puote in angelo e in alma,
tutta è in lui; e si volem che sia,
perch’ elli è quelli che portò la palma
giuso a Maria, quando ‘l Figliuol di Dio
carcar si volse de la nosta salma.”
(Par. 32.109-114)
He said to me, “Whatever of gallantry and elegance can exist in any angel or soul is all in him, and rightly so in him who carried the palm to Mary below, when the Son of God took on the burden of our flesh.”
As if to underscore the human, flesh-and-blood relationship of mother and son, Bernard points out Anna, Mary’s mother, “so pleased to see her daughter that, as Anna sings hosanna, she does not move her eyes” (Par. 32.134-135). Anna is the grandmother of Jesus. Anna’s presence brings home the marvel of the Incarnate God, who is like us in everything save sin.
The survey of the blessed, arrayed rose-like before Dante and Bernard, would not be complete without mention of St. Lucy, “she who urged on your lady when you bent your brows downward, to your ruin” (Par. 137-138). This is the final allusion to the long pilgrimage Dante has taken and how and under what auspices it began. His destination has been reached. He has arrived in the empyrean, the tenth heaven, the destined home of the blessed. And they are blessed because they see God. In that vision human happiness is complete. Only one thing remains, and that is for Dante to be given an experience not accorded to mortal men. Only by the intercession of Mary will the special grace be granted him -- a taste of that beatifying vision. Earlier, Bernard had assured Dante that she “will grant us every grace” (Par. 31.101). Now, Bernard urges Dante to pray for the grace to penetrate the divine radiance “from that one who has the power to help you” (Par. 32.148). He is to do this by following along as Bernard prays. And thus the transition is made to the final canto.
The final canto of the Paradiso, as well as the final canto of the Commedia, begins with Bernard’s magnificent prayer to the Blessed Virgin, in which he beseeches her to obtain for Dante the grace of a vision of God. That vision will be the culmination of Dante’s pilgrimage. It is the completion of the long journey from his initial state of sinfulness, through the underworld of Hell, where the seriousness of human life and the imperative to live it well are brought home to him by seeing those whose sins have cut them off forever from their very reason for being -- union with God. Like Dante, they preferred lesser goods to the greatest good, but unlike Dante and ourselves, all opportunity of conversion and change is gone for them. On then to Purgatory where Dante joins the souls who are destined for beatitude but must first undergo a period of penance to purge their souls of the effects of their forgiven sins. Having reached the summit of Mount Purgatory, he is reunited with Beatrice at last, and she takes over from Virgil to lead him on to the next realm, the heavenly paradise which makes up immeasurably for that earthly one and where he will see what God has in store for those who love Him. Up through the gradations of blessedness, represented by the Ptolemaic planets, they emerge into the highest heaven, the celestial empyrean, where all the blessed actually dwell. The vast throng is presented to him in the form of a rose in which the blessed are arranged hierarchically. And he lifts his eyes to see Mary, the Queen of Heaven. Suddenly Beatrice is no longer his guide; he finds himself with Bernard of Clairvaux, whose devotion to Mary was legendary. The only way Dante will be able to see, however briefly, God himself in the trinity of Persons is if Mary obtains for him the grace to do so. It is Bernard’s task to beg her to bestow the grace. And so he begins his prayer.
“Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio,
umile e alta più che creatura,
termine fisso d’etterno consiglio,
tu se’ colei che l’umana natura
nobilitasti si, che ‘l suo fattore
non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura.
Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore,
per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace
cosi è germinato questo fiore.
Qui se’ a noi merïdian face
di caritate, e giuso, intra ‘ mortali,
se’ di speranza fontana vivace.
Donna, se’ tanto grande e tanto vali,
che qual vuol grazia e a t non ricorre,
sua disïanza vuol volar sanz’ ali.
La tua benignità non pur soccorre
a chi domanda, ma molte fiate
liberamente al dimandar precorre.
In te misericordia, in te pietate,
in te magnificenza, in te s’aduna
quantunque in creatura è di bontate.”
(Par. 33.1-21)
In Mandelbaum’s translation of this canto,{19}
“Virgin mother, daughter of your Son,
more humble and sublime than any creature,
fixed good decreed from all eternity,
you are the one who gave to human nature
so much nobility that its Creator
did not disdain His being made its creature.
That love whose warmth allowed this flower to bloom
within the everlasting peace -- was love
rekindled in your womb; for us above,
you are the noonday torch of charity,
and there below, on earth, among the mortals,
you are a living spring of hope. Lady,
you are so high, you can so intercede,
that he who would have grace but does not seek
your aid, may long to fly but has no wings.
Your loving-kindness does not only answer
the one who asks, but it is often ready
to answer freely long before the asking.
In you compassion is, in you is pity,
in you is generosity, in you
is every goodness found in any creature.”
This first part of Bernard’s prayer consists of praise of Mary and is a veritable florilegium of her titles and privileges. At once virgin and mother, the virginity of Mary before and after the birth of Christ is a firm part of traditional belief. Her son being divine, Mary paradoxically becomes the daughter of her son, but of course her daughtership and his sonship are quite different relations of dependence. That a mere creature could give birth to God, to be quite truly designated as the Mother of God, is a paradox captured often in the liturgy: “Genuisti qui te fecit” (You have given birth to the one who created you); “Quem caeli capere non poterant, tuo gremio contulisti” (He whom the heavens cannot contain was contained in your womb). It is this that places a humble young woman at the very apex of creation, as part of a plan from all eternity. By her conduct she has so ennobled the race that the creator did not disdain becoming her son. It was Mary’s love, Bernard continues, that “allowed this flower to bloom,” that is, the whole company of the blessed. No wonder their voices rise in praise and gratitude to Mary. “Ave Maria, gratia plena.” She is the living torch to charity “above” and a living spring of hope for those “below.” Once more, Dante reminds us that of the theological virtues, only charity remains in heaven; hope and faith mark the condition of the church militant. All this is by way of preparation for an extraordinary acknowledgment in Bernard’s prayer of Mary’s continuing providential role. Grace comes to us only through the hands of Mary: she is the mediatrix of grace. Any attempt to bypass her is like a wingless bird attempting flight. This is not a role conferred on Mary by the blessed or by those who intercede with her. God chose to come to us through Mary, and we are to go to him through Mary. As has been mentioned long before, in the Purgatorio, Mary is ready to give grace even before it is asked. She is the compassionate one, the one who has pity on us and is correspondingly generous. In Mary is “every goodness found in any creature.” That is, Mary is the most perfect of God’s creatures, thanks to the grace she has received that exceeds that of any other creature. She is placed above the choirs of angels, although from a natural point of view, the lowest angel is higher than the most talented human. But we are in the supernatural order -- the divine plan formulated to redeem sinful mankind and calling us to a happiness far exceeding what Adam lost by his sin. We have seen the comparison of Eve and Mary: Eve is the mother of sinful mankind; Mary, the mother of God and of all those God has chosen to save.
No one can fail to sense the devotion throbbing in these verses. Their spokesman is at once a historical figure -- the saintly abbot of Clairvaux, advisor of popes, preacher of Crusades, foe of Abelard -- and the author of sermons and commentaries exhibiting his profound devotion to Mary. It is these works that Dante knew and on which he bases the lines he attributes to Bernard in the Paradiso. Every utterance in this prayer can be matched with passages from Bernard himself. When we consider all of the great saints and theologians who have appeared during the upward flight of Dante and Beatrice, we find some, St. Bonaventue, certainly, whose fervor in writing of Mary matches that of Bernard. Nevertheless, Dante’s selection of Bernard for this key role in the final canto both has historical grounding and doubtless reflects a personal preference as well. Bernard’s prayer continues.
“Or questi, che da l’infima lacuna
de l’universo infin qui ha vedute
le vite spiritali ad una ad una,
supplica a te, per grazia, di virtute
tanto, che possa con li occhi levarsi
più alto verso l’ultima salute.
E io, che mai per mio veder non arsi
più ch’i’ fo per lo suo, tutti miei prieghi
ti porgo, e priego che non sieno scarsi,
perché tu ogne nube li disleghi
di sua mortalità co’ prieghi tuoi,
si che ‘l sommo piacer li si dispieghi.”
(Par. 33.22-33)
“This man -- who from the deepest hollow in
the universe, up to this height, has seen
the lives of spirits, one by one -- now pleads
with you, through grace, to grant him so much virtue
that he may lift his vision higher still --
may lift it toward the ultimate salvation.
And I, who never burned for my own vision
more than I burn for his, do offer you
All of my prayers -- and pray that they may not
fall short -- that, with your prayers, you may disperse
all of the clouds of his mortality
so that the Highest Joy be his to see.”
In this part of his prayer, Bernard makes his petition: let this mortal who has been led up from the depths of hell be permitted, mortal though he is, to see the One who is the alpha and omega of all things, the telos of creation, our reason for being, possession of whom, if granted by his grace, will more than fulfill every desire of the human heart. We notice Bernard’s statement that he is as eager for Dante’s vision as he ever was for his own. Doubtless this is the symmetrical counterpart of Dante’s devotion to Bernard. Even so, it seems an extraordinary remark.{20} But Dante is surely not about to falter at this point in his continuing assumption that his own story, his own fate, and his own salvation possess cosmic importance. Now here he is, a mortal among the immortals, a welcome guest, waiting while one of the great mystics implores Mary to grant Dante a taste of the beatific vision. Is this hubris? Once more we have to consider the genesis of the pilgrimage: Mary summoned him and led him by means of intermediary guides to this point, where her faithful Bernard can ask Mary in effect to complete the pilgrimage she has instigated. We can never forget that the Commedia is the story of Dante’s salvation, and that he is now spiritually prepared for what is about to happen, thanks to the pleas of Bernard and the compassion of Mary.
“Ancor ti priego, regina, che puoi
ciò che tu vuoli, che conservi sani,
dopo tanto veder, li affetti suoi.
Vinca tua guardia i movimenti umani:
vedi Beatrice con quanti beati
per li miei prieghi ti chiudon le mani!”
(Par. 33.34-39)
“This too, o Queen, who can do what you would, I ask of you: that after such a vision, his sentiments preserve their perseverance. May your protection curb his mortal passions. See Beatrice -- how many saints with her! They join my prayers! They clasp their hands to you!
The prayer ends here, with Bernard’s hope that Dante, having been accorded a foretaste of eternity, will not lapse into the faults of old on returning to his still unfinished mortal life. This brings home yet again the central reminder of the poem. As long as we are alive we can repent and change our lives, or we can succumb to the passions and to sin. Call no man happy while he is yet alive, the ancients said (although they were thinking rather of one’s posthumous reputation). Dante’s point is that we can call no man definitively happy, or the reverse, until he is dead.
When Mary indicates her assent to Bernard’s request, it is with a smile, with the expression of her eyes. Dante would never put words of his in her mouth. Things happen rapidly now. The poet has difficulty describing what he was permitted to see. Bernard signals what Dante is to do, but there is no need of that. Dante has already lifted his purified sight to the ray of Light. Light is the element of the empyrean, a supernatural, spiritual light, and the light at which Dante now gazes is God. Of course, words fail him. The narrative now becomes a recollection of the experience, rather than a present report of it.
O somma luce che tanto ti levi
da’ concetti mortali, al a mia mente
ripresta un poco di quel che parevi,
e fa la lingua mia tanto possente,
ch’una favilla sol de la tua gloria
possa lasciare e la future gente;
ché, per tornare alquanto a mia memoria
e per sonare un poco in questi versi,
più si conceperà di tua vittoria.
(Par. 33.67-75)
O Highest Light, You, raised so far above
the minds of mortals, to my memory
give back something of Your epiphany,
and make my tongue so powerful that I
may leave to people of the future one
gleam of the glory that is Yours, for by
returning somewhat to my memory
and echoing awhile within these lines,
Your victory will be more understood.
Continuing to look into the ray of light, he felt that he would have gone astray if he dared turn his eyes away. His vision reaches the infinite Goodness.
Oh abbondante grazia ond’ io presunsi
ficcar lo viso per la luce etterna,
tanto che la veduta vi consunsi!
(Par. 33.82-84)
O grace abounding, through which I presumed
to set my eyes on the Eternal Light
so long that I spent all my sight on it!
And what does he see? In the depths of that Light, that Infinite Goodness, he sees everything that is scattered and separate in the universe -- substance and accidents, dispositions -- all as if united. He has gone beyond beings to the Being that contains the sum of all perfections, perfections merely participated in by creatures. However unsatisfying his description of it, Dante feels a keen joy in making the effort. The moment of his vision outweighs twenty-five centuries. Caught up in a mystic rapture, his mind was “intent, steadfast, and motionless -- gazing; and it grew ever more enkindled as it watched” (Par. 33.98-99)
A quella luce cotal si diventa,
Che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto
è impossibil che mai si consenta;;
però che ‘l ben, ch’è del volere obietto,
tutto s’accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella
è defettivo ciò ch’è li perfetto.
(Par. 33.100-105)
Whoever sees that Light is soon made such
that it would be impossible for him
to set that Light aside for other sight;
because the good, the object of the will,
is fully gathered in that Light; outside
that Light, what there is perfect is defective.
The Light is Goodness itself, and all created goods, however perfect of their kind, are by comparison imperfect. All the longing of the human heart is satisfied here; Goodness contains all and more than one had sought in lesser goods.
Dante continues to gaze on the Light that is God, and as he does his vision goes deeper still. The Trinity of Persons in the godhead becomes, as it were, visible as interpenetrating circles of light within the Light, of different colors as they move.
Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza
de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri
di tre colori e d’una contenenza;
e l’un da l’altro come iri da iri
parea reflesso, e ‘l terzo parea foco
che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri.
(Par. 33.115-120)
In the deep and bright
essence of that exalted Light, three circles
appeared to me; they had three different colors,
but all of them were of the same dimension;
one circle seemed reflected by the second,
as rainbow is by rainbow, and the third
seemed fire breathed equally by those two circles.
Because we are listening to a remembered experience, a first person narrative, we tend to forget that Dante Alighieri is attempting in human language to give expression to the ultimate mystery, the Trinity of Persons in the One God. Once more, he disarms us by exclaiming that his words are inadequate to the experience, but of course the experience is as artful as the words that express it. He is describing an imagined mystic experience. Poetic daring could scarcely go beyond this. Then Dante retreats to the comparative safety of theological expressions.
O luce eternal che sola in te sidi,
sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta
e intendente te ami e arridi!
(Par. 33.124-126)
Eternal Light, You only dwell within
Yourself, and only You know You. Self-knowing,
Self known, You love and smile upon Yourself!
Dante is describing Aristotle’s concept of Thought. Thinking Itself. Perhaps we sense relief in this appeal to another effort, a speculative effort, to express in human terms the nature of God. Does Dante also glimpse how we are made in the image of God? He wishes to know this, compares such an effort to squaring the circle, yet adds,
se non che la mia mente fu percossa
da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne.
(Par. 33.140-141)
But then my mind was struck by light that flashed and, with this light, received what it had asked.
Dante’s vision is now over, but his desire and will are moved, like a rotating wheel, by “l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle” -- “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (Par. 33.145).
{2} An indulgence for saying the Angelus morning and night was granted by Pope John XXII in 1318, which suggests that the practice was already common. Saying the Angelus at noon came later.
{3} During the Pascal season, this antiphon is substituted for the Angelus as the final prayer after Compline.
{4} Heb. 11:1. For Dante and St. Thomas, the Vulgate text read: “fides est substantia rerum sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium.”
{5} Thomas’s commentary on Hebrews can be found in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, ed. Raphaelis Cai, O.P., vol 2 (Turin: Marietti, 1953)
{6} Such remarks, frequent enough in Thomas, make efforts to drive a wedge between him and Dante on the matter unconvincing.
{7} Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 2, n. 557.
{8} Thomas’s De magistro (On the Teacher), prompted by Augustine’s work by the same name, can be found in his Disputed Questions on Truth (De ver.}, q. 11.
{9} See De ver. q. 14, a.1.
{10} See De ver., q. 14, a. 9, on the relation of known truths to believed truths. According to Thomas, “it should be said that the way God is demonstrated to be one is not called an article of faith, but is presupposed by the articles, for the knowledge of faith presupposes natural knowledge just as grace presupposes nature. But the unity of the divine essence, as this is held by the faithful, like providence and universal providence, and the like, which cannot be proved, constitute articles” (q. 14, a. 9, ad 8). More will be said of this later.
{11} See Charles De Koninck, La Piété du Fils: Etudes sur l’Assomption (Quebec: Les Presses Universitaires Laval, 1954).
{12} I Summa contra gentes, 3: “Among the things that we confess about God there are truths of two kinds” (emphasis added).
{13} The assumption is that one cannot know and believe the same truth at the same time and in the same respect. Knowledge follows on proof (or self-evidence), whereas belief reposes on someone’s say-so, on authority. The believer who proves the existence of God no longer believes that God exists in the manner that he has proved it. These are, of course, narrow senses of “know” and “believe.” Often we speak of what we believe as what we know and of what we know as our beliefs. But these broad senses of the terms do not deny the contrast resulting from their narrower senses.
{14} See I Summa contra gentes, 4: “If the only path to knowledge of God lay through reason, the human race would be left in the deepest shadows of ignorance.” Why? Because only a few can formulate cogent proofs of the preambles, and then with an admixture of error.
{15} See Alexander Masseron, “Dante et saint Bernard ‘fideles de la Reine du ciel,’” in Masseron, Dante et saint Bernard (Paris: Michel, 1953), pp. 71-143.
{16} “Constructed, with solemn scansion, of four serious tercets, which already have the note of a conclusion, this prayer summarizes both the external (vv. 80-84) and the inner (v. 85) story that is the object of the entire poem.”
{17} By his absolute power, as theologians say, God could have chosen any number of alternative ways to save us.
{18} We are reminded of a simile from the previous canto: Dante compares Bernard’s gaze at Mary to that of a Holy Year pilgrim come to Rome and seeing Veronica’s veil with which she wiped the face of Jesus when he was carrying the cross. “Just as one come, from Croatia perhaps, to visit our Veronica, one whose long hunger is now satisfied and who, as long as it is displayed, repeats in thought, ‘O my Lord Jesus Christ, true God, was your face then like this image that I now see?’”(Par. 31.102-108).
{19} All of the following English translations of canto 33 are from Mandelbaum’s edition (see chapter 3 notes).
{20} One could make the theological point that the only one we can love more than ourselves is God; we love our neighbor as ourselves, that is, called as we are to the beatific vision.