Dante's Paradiso: Canto VIII

Ascent to the Third Heaven, Venus: Lovers. Charles Martel. Discourse on diverse Natures.

The world used in its peril to believe
   That the fair Cypria delirious love
   Rayed out, in the third epicycle turning;

Wherefore not only unto her paid honour
   Of sacrifices and of votive cry 5
   The ancient nations in the ancient error,

But both Dione honoured they and Cupid,
   That as her mother, this one as her son,
   And said that he had sat in Dido's lap;

And they from her, whence I beginning take, 10
   Took the denomination of the star
   That woos the sun, now following, now in front.

I was not ware of our ascending to it;
   But of our being in it gave full faith
   My Lady whom I saw more beauteous grow. 15

And as within a flame a spark is seen,
   And as within a voice a voice discerned,
   When one is steadfast, and one comes and goes,

Within that light beheld I other lamps
   Move in a circle, speeding more and less, 20
   Methinks in measure of their inward vision.

From a cold cloud descended never winds,
   Or visible or not, so rapidly
   They would not laggard and impeded seem

To any one who had those lights divine 25
   Seen come towards us, leaving the gyration
   Begun at first in the high Seraphim.

And behind those that most in front appeared
   Sounded "Osanna!" so that never since
   To hear again was I without desire. 30

Then unto us more nearly one approached,
   And it alone began: "We all are ready
   Unto thy pleasure, that thou joy in us.

We turn around with the celestial Princes,
   One gyre and one gyration and one thirst, 35
   To whom thou in the world of old didst say,

'Ye who, intelligent, the third heaven are moving;'
   And are so full of love, to pleasure thee
   A little quiet will not be less sweet."

After these eyes of mine themselves had offered 40
   Unto my Lady reverently, and she
   Content and certain of herself had made them,

Back to the light they turned, which so great promise
   Made of itself, and "Say, who art thou?" was
   My voice, imprinted with a great affection. 45

O how and how much I beheld it grow
   With the new joy that superadded was
   Unto its joys, as soon as I had spoken!

Thus changed, it said to me: "The world possessed me
   Short time below; and, if it had been more, 50
   Much evil will be which would not have been.

My gladness keepeth me concealed from thee,
   Which rayeth round about me, and doth hide me
   Like as a creature swathed in its own silk.

Much didst thou love me, and thou hadst good reason; 55
   For had I been below, I should have shown thee
   Somewhat beyond the foliage of my love.

That left-hand margin, which doth bathe itself
   In Rhone, when it is mingled with the Sorgue,
   Me for its lord awaited in due time, 60

And that horn of Ausonia, which is towned
   With Bari, with Gaeta and Catona,
   Whence Tronto and Verde in the sea disgorge.

Already flashed upon my brow the crown
   Of that dominion which the Danube waters 65
   After the German borders it abandons;

And beautiful Trinacria, that is murky
   'Twixt Pachino and Peloro, (on the gulf
   Which greatest scath from Eurus doth receive,)

Not through Typhoeus, but through nascent sulphur, 70
   Would have awaited her own monarchs still,
   Through me from Charles descended and from Rudolph,

If evil lordship, that exasperates ever
   The subject populations, had not moved
   Palermo to the outcry of 'Death! death!' 75

And if my brother could but this foresee,
   The greedy poverty of Catalonia
   Straight would he flee, that it might not molest him;

For verily 'tis needful to provide,
   Through him or other, so that on his bark 80
   Already freighted no more freight be placed.

His nature, which from liberal covetous
   Descended, such a soldiery would need
   As should not care for hoarding in a chest."

"Because I do believe the lofty joy 85
   Thy speech infuses into me, my Lord,
   Where every good thing doth begin and end

Thou seest as I see it, the more grateful
   Is it to me; and this too hold I dear,
   That gazing upon God thou dost discern it. 90

Glad hast thou made me; so make clear to me,
   Since speaking thou hast stirred me up to doubt,
   How from sweet seed can bitter issue forth."

This I to him; and he to me: "If I
   Can show to thee a truth, to what thou askest 95
   Thy face thou'lt hold as thou dost hold thy back.

The Good which all the realm thou art ascending
   Turns and contents, maketh its providence
   To be a power within these bodies vast;

And not alone the natures are foreseen 100
   Within the mind that in itself is perfect,
   But they together with their preservation.

For whatsoever thing this bow shoots forth
   Falls foreordained unto an end foreseen,
   Even as a shaft directed to its mark. 105

If that were not, the heaven which thou dost walk
   Would in such manner its effects produce,
   That they no longer would be arts, but ruins.

This cannot be, if the Intelligences
   That keep these stars in motion are not maimed, 110
   And maimed the First that has not made them perfect.

Wilt thou this truth have clearer made to thee?"
   And I: "Not so; for 'tis impossible
   That nature tire, I see, in what is needful."

Whence he again: "Now say, would it be worse 115
   For men on earth were they not citizens?"
   "Yes," I replied; "and here I ask no reason."

"And can they be so, if below they live not
   Diversely unto offices diverse?
   No, if your master writeth well for you." 120

So came he with deductions to this point;
   Then he concluded: "Therefore it behoves
   The roots of your effects to be diverse.

Hence one is Solon born, another Xerxes,
   Another Melchisedec, and another he 125
   Who, flying through the air, his son did lose.

Revolving Nature, which a signet is
   To mortal wax, doth practise well her art,
   But not one inn distinguish from another;

Thence happens it that Esau differeth 130
   In seed from Jacob; and Quirinus comes
   From sire so vile that he is given to Mars.

A generated nature its own way
   Would always make like its progenitors,
   If Providence divine were not triumphant. 135

Now that which was behind thee is before thee;
   But that thou know that I with thee am pleased,
   With a corollary will I mantle thee.

Evermore nature, if it fortune find
   Discordant to it, like each other seed 140
   Out of its region, maketh evil thrift;

And if the world below would fix its mind
   On the foundation which is laid by nature,
   Pursuing that, 'twould have the people good.

But you unto religion wrench aside 145
   Him who was born to gird him with the sword,
   And make a king of him who is for sermons;

Therefore your footsteps wander from the road."

NOTES

1 - 1

The ascent to the Third Heaven, or that of Venus, where are seen the spirits of Lovers. Of this Heaven Dante says, Convito, II. 14: –

“The Heaven of Venus may be compared to Rhetoric for two
properties; the first is the brightness of its aspect, which
is most sweet to look upon, more than any other star; the
second is its appearance, now in the morning, now in the
evening. And these two properties are in Rhetoric, the
sweetest of all the sciences, for that is principally its
intention. It appears in the morning when the rhetorician
speaks before the face of his audience; it appears in the
evening, that is, retrograde, when the letter in part remote
speaks for the rhetorician.”

For the influences of Venus, see Canto IX. Note 33.

2 - 2

In the days of “the false and lying gods,” when the world was in peril of damnation for misbelief. Cypria, or Cyprigna, was a title of Venus, from the place of her birth, Cyprus.

3 - 3

The third Epicycle, or that of Venus, the third planet, was its supposed motion from west to east, while the whole heavens were swept onward from east to west by the motion of the Primum Mobile.

In the Convito, II. 4, Dante says: “Upon the back of this circle (the Equatorial) in the Heaven of Venus, of which we are now treating, is a little sphere, which revolves of itself in this heaven, and whose orbit the astrologers call Epicycle.” And again, II. 7: “All this heaven moves and revolves with its Epicycle from east to west, once every natural day; but whether this movement be by any Intelligence, or by the sweep of the Primum Mobile, God knoweth; in me it would be presumptuous to judge.”

Milton, Par. Lost, VIII. 72: –

“From man or angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire; or, if they list to try
Conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes; perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model heaven
And calculate the stars; how they will wield
The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive,
To save appearances; how grid the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.”

See also Nichol, Solar System, p. 7: “Nothing in later times ought to obscure the glory of Hipparchus, and, as some think, the still greater Ptolemy. Amid the bewilderment of these planetary motions, what could they say, except that the 'gods never act without design'; and thereon resolve to discern it? The motion of the Earth was concealed from them: nor was aught intelligible or explicable concerning the wanderings of the planets, except the grand revolution of the sky around the Earth. That Earth, small to us, they therefore, on the ground of phenomena, considered the centre of the Universe, – thinking, perhaps, not more confinedly than persons in repute in modern days. Around that centre all motion seemed to pass in order the most regular; and if a few bodies appeared to interrupt the regularity of that order, why not conceive the existence of some arrangement by which they might be reconciled whith it? It was a strange, but most ingenious idea. They could not tell how, by any simple system of circular and uniform motion, the ascertained courses of the planets, as directly observed, were to be accounted for; but they made a most artificial scheme, that still saved the immobility of the Earth. Suppose a person passing around a room holding a lamp, and all the while turning on his heel. If he turned round uniformly, there would be no actual interruption of the uniform circular motion both of the carrier and the carried; but the light, as seen by an observer in the interior, would make strange gyrations. Unable to account otherwise for the irregularities of the planets, they mounted them in this manner, on small circles, whose centres only revolved regularly around the Earth, but which, during their revolutionary motion, also revolved around their own centres. Styling these cycles and epicycles, the ancient learned men framed that grand system of the Heavens concerning which Ptolemy composed his 'Syntax.'”

7 - 7

Shakespeare, Love's Labor Lost, III. 1: –

“This wimpled, whining, purblind wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents.”

9 - 9

Cupid in the semblance of Ascanius. AEneid, I. 718, Davidson's Tr.: “She clings to him with her eyes, her whole soul, and sometimes fondles him in her lap, Dido no thinking what a powerful god is settling on her, hapless one. Meanwhile he, mindful of his Acidalian mother, begins insensibly to efface the memory of Sichaeus, and with a living flame tries to prepossess her languid affections, and her heart, chilled by long disuse.”

10 - 10

Venus, with whose name this canto begins.

12 - 12

Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I. Ch. 3, says that Venus “always follows the sun, and is beautiful and gentle, and is called the Goddess of Love.”

Dante says, it plays with or caresses the sun, “now behind, and now in front.” When it follows, it is Hesperus, the Evening Star; when it precedes, it is Phosphor, the Morning Star.

21 - 21

The rapidity of the motion of the spirits, as well as their brightness, is in proportion to their vision of God. Compare Canto XIV. 40: –

“Its brightness is proportioned to the ardor,
The ardor to the vision; and the vision
Equals what grace it has above its worth.”

23 - 23

Made visible by mist and cloudrack.

27 - 27

Their motion originates in the Primum Mobile, whose Regents, or Intelligences, are the Seraphim.

34 - 34

The Regents, or Intelligences, of Venus are the Principalities.

37 - 37

This is the first line of the first canzone in the Convito, and in his commentary upon it, II. 5, Dante says: “In the first place, then, be it known, that the movers of this heaven are substances separate from matter, that is, Intelligences, which the common people call Angels.” And farther on, II. 6: “It is reasonable to believe that the motors of the Heaven of the Moon are of the order of the Angels; and those of Mercury are the Archangels; and those of Venus are the Thrones.” It will be observed, however, that in line 34 he alludes to the Principalities as the Regents of Venus; and in Canto IX. 61, speaks of the Thrones as reflecting the justice of God: –

“Above us there are mirrors, Thrones you call them,
From which shines out on us God Judicant”;

thus referring the Thrones to a higher heaven than that of Venus.

40 - 40

After he had by looks asked and gained assent from Beatrice.

46 - 46

The spirit shows its increase of joy by increase of brightness. As Picarda in Canto III. 67: –

“First with those other shades she smiled a little;
Thereafter answered me so joyously,
She seemed to burn in the first fire of love.”

and Justinian, in Canto V. 133:

“Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself
By too much light, when heat has worn away
The tempering influence of the vapors dense,
By greater rapture thus concealed itself
In its own radiance the figure saintly.”

49 - 49

The spirit who speaks is Charles Martel of Hungary, the friend and benefactor of Dante. He was the eldest son of Charles the Lame (Charles II. of Naples) and of Mary of Hungary. He was born in 1272, and in 1291 married the “beautiful Clemence,” daughter of Rudolph of Hapsburg, Emperor of Germany. He died in 1295, at the age of twenty-three, to which he alludes in the words,

“The world possessed me
Short time below.”

58 - 58

That part of Provence, embracing Avignon, Aix, Arles, and Marseilles, of which his father was lord, and which he would have inherited had he lived. This is “the great dowry of Provence,” which the daughter of Raymond Berenger brought to Charles of Anjou in marriage, and which is mentioned in Purg. XX. 61, as taking the sense of shame out of the blood of the Capets.

61 - 61

The kingdom of Apulia in Ausonia, or Lower Italy, embracing Bari on the Adriatic, Gaeta in the Terra di Lavoro on the Mediterranean, and Crotona in Calabria; a region bounded on the north by the Tronto emptying into the Adriatic, and the Verde (or Garigliano) emptying into the Mediterranean.

65 - 65

The kingdom of Hungary.

67 - 67

Sicily, called of old Trinacria, from its three promotories Peloro, Pachino, and Lilibeo.

68 - 68

Pachino is the southeastern promontory of Sicily, and Peloro the nort-eastern. Between them lies the Gulf of Catania, receiving with open arms the east wind. Horace speaks of Eurus as “riding the Sicilian seas.”

70 - 70

Both Pindar and Ovid speak of the giant Typhoeus, as struck by Jove's thunderbolt, and lying buried under AEtna. Virgil says it is Enceladus, a brother of Typhoeus. Charles Martel here gives the philosophical, not the poetical, cause of the murky atmosphere of the bay.

72 - 72

Through him from his grandfather Charles of Anjou, and his father-in-law the Emperor Rudolph.

75 - 75

The Sicilian Vespers and revolt of Palermo, in 1282. Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VI. 155: “It was at a festival on Easter Tuesday that a multitude of the inhabitants of Palermo and the neighborhood had thronged to a church, about half a mile out of the town, dedicated to the Holy Ghost. The religious service was over, the merriment begun; tables were spread, the amusements of all sorts, games, dances under the trees, were going gayly on; when the harmony was suddenly interrupted and the joyousness chilled by the appearance of a body of French soldiery, under the pretext of keeping the peace. The French mingled familiarly with the people, paid court, not in the most respectful manner, to the women; the young men made sullen remonstrances, and told them to go their way. The Frenchmen began to draw together. 'These rebellious Paterins must have arms, or they would not venture on such insolence.' They began to seach some of them for arms. The two parties were already glaring at each other in angry hostility. At that moment the beautiful daughter of Roger Mastrangelo, a maiden of exquisite loveliness and modesty, with her bridegroom, approached the church. A Frenchman named Drouet, either in wantonness or insult, came up to her, and under the pretence of searching for arms, thrust his hand into her bosom. The girl fainted in her bridegroom's arms. He uttered in his agony the fatal cry, 'Death to the French!' A youth rushed forward, stabbed Drouet to the heart with his own sword, was himself struck down. The cry, the shriek, ran through the crowd, 'Death to the French!' Many Sicilians fell, but, of two hundred on the spot, not one Frenchman escaped. The cry spread to the city: Manstrangelo took the lead; every house was stormed, every hole and corner searched; their dress, their speech, their persons, their manners, denounced the French. The palace was forced; the Justiciary, being luckily wounded in the face, and rolled in the dust, and so undetected, mounted a horse, and fled with two followers. Two thousand French were slain. They denied them decent burial, heaped them together in a great pit. The horrors of the scene were indescribable; the insurgents broke into the convents, the churchs. The friars, especial objects of hatred, were massacred; they slew the French monks, the French priests. Neither old age, nor sex, nor infancy was spared.”

76 - 76

Robert, Duke of Calabria, third son of Charles II. and younger brother of Charles Martel. He was King of Sicily from 1309 to 1343. He brought with him from Catalonia a band of needy adventurers, whom he put into high offices of state, “and like so many leeches,” says Biagioli, “they filled themselves with the blood of that poor people, not dropping off so long as there remained a drop to suck.”

80 - 80

Sicily already heavily laden with taxes of all kinds.

82 - 82

Born of generous ancestors, he was himself avaricious.

84 - 84

Namely, ministers and officials who were not greedy of gain.

87 - 87

In God, where all things are reflected as in a mirror. Rev. xxi. 6: “I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end.” Buti interprets thus: “Because I believe that thou seest my joy in God, even as I see it, I am pleased; and this also is dear to me, that thou seest in God, that I believe it.”

97 - 97

Convito, III. 14: “The first agent, that is, God, sends his influence into some things by means of direct rays, and into others by means of reflected splendor. Hence into the Intelligences the divine light rays out immediately; in others it is reflected from these Intelligences first illuminated. But as mention is here made of light and splendor, in order to a perfect understanding, I will show the difference of these words, according to Avicenna. I say, the custom of the philosophers is to call the Heaven light, in reference to its existence in its fountain-head; to call it ray, in reference to its passing from the fountain-head to the first body, in which it is arrested; to call it splendor, in reference to its reflection upon some other part illuminated.”

116 - 116

If men lived isolated from each other, and not in communities.

120 - 120

Aristotle, whom Dante in the Convito, III. 5, calls “that glorious philosopher to whom Nature most laid open her secrets”; and in Inf. IV. 131, “the master of those who know.”

124 - 124

The Jurist, the Warrior, the Priest, and the Artisan are her typified in Solon, Xerxes, Melchisedec, and Daedalus.

129 - 129

Nature like death, makes no disinction between palace and hovel. Her gentlemen are born alike in each, and so her churls.

130 - 130

Esau and Jacob, though twin brothers, differed in character, Esau being warlike and Jacob peaceable. Genesis xxv. 27: “And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.”

131 - 131

Romulus, called Quirinus, because he always carried a spear (quiris), was of such obscure birth, that the Romans, to dignify their origin, pretended he was born in Mars.

141 - 141

Convito, III. 3: “Animate plants have a very manifest affection for certain places, according to their character; and therefore we see certain plants rooting themselves by the water-side, and others upon mountainous places, and others on the slopes and at the foot of the mountains, which, if they are transplanted, either wholly perish, or live a kind of melancholy life, as things separated from what is friendly to them.”

145 - 145

Another allusion to King Robert of Sicily. Villani, XII. 9, says of him: “This King Robert was the wisest king that had been known among Christians for five hundred years, both in natural ability and in knowledge, being a very great master in theology, and a consummate philosopher.” And the Postillatore of the Monte Cassino Codex: “This King Robert delighted in preaching and studying, and would have made a better monk than king.”