Dante's Paradiso: Canto XXV
The Laurel Crown. St. James examines Dante on Hope. Dante’s Blindness.
If e'er it happen that the Poem Sacred,
To which both heaven and earth have set their hand,
So that it many a year hath made me lean,
O'ercome the cruelty that bars me out
From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered, 5
An enemy to the wolves that war upon it,
With other voice forthwith, with other fleece
Poet will I return, and at my font
Baptismal will I take the laurel crown;
Because into the Faith that maketh known 10
All souls to God there entered I, and then
Peter for her sake thus my brow encircled.
Thereafterward towards us moved a light
Out of that band whence issued the first-fruits
Which of his vicars Christ behind him left, 15
And then my Lady, full of ecstasy,
Said unto me: "Look, look! behold the Baron
For whom below Galicia is frequented."
In the same way as, when a dove alights
Near his companion, both of them pour forth, 20
Circling about and murmuring, their affection,
So one beheld I by the other grand
Prince glorified to be with welcome greeted,
Lauding the food that there above is eaten.
But when their gratulations were complete, 25
Silently 'coram me' each one stood still,
So incandescent it o'ercame my sight.
Smiling thereafterwards, said Beatrice:
"Illustrious life, by whom the benefactions
Of our Basilica have been described, 30
Make Hope resound within this altitude;
Thou knowest as oft thou dost personify it
As Jesus to the three gave greater clearness."--
"Lift up thy head, and make thyself assured;
For what comes hither from the mortal world 35
Must needs be ripened in our radiance."
This comfort came to me from the second fire;
Wherefore mine eyes I lifted to the hills,
Which bent them down before with too great weight.
"Since, through his grace, our Emperor wills that thou 40
Shouldst find thee face to face, before thy death,
In the most secret chamber, with his Counts,
So that, the truth beholden of this court,
Hope, which below there rightfully enamours,
Thereby thou strengthen in thyself and others, 45
Say what it is, and how is flowering with it
Thy mind, and say from whence it came to thee."
Thus did the second light again continue.
And the Compassionate, who piloted
The plumage of my wings in such high flight, 50
Did in reply anticipate me thus:
"No child whatever the Church Militant
Of greater hope possesses, as is written
In that Sun which irradiates all our band;
Therefore it is conceded him from Egypt 55
To come into Jerusalem to see,
Or ever yet his warfare be completed.
The two remaining points, that not for knowledge
Have been demanded, but that he report
How much this virtue unto thee is pleasing, 60
To him I leave; for hard he will not find them,
Nor of self-praise; and let him answer them;
And may the grace of God in this assist him!"
As a disciple, who his teacher follows,
Ready and willing, where he is expert, 65
That his proficiency may be displayed,
"Hope," said I, "is the certain expectation
Of future glory, which is the effect
Of grace divine and merit precedent.
From many stars this light comes unto me; 70
But he instilled it first into my heart
Who was chief singer unto the chief captain.
'Sperent in te,' in the high Theody
He sayeth, 'those who know thy name;' and who
Knoweth it not, if he my faith possess? 75
Thou didst instil me, then, with his instilling
In the Epistle, so that I am full,
And upon others rain again your rain."
While I was speaking, in the living bosom
Of that combustion quivered an effulgence, 80
Sudden and frequent, in the guise of lightning;
Then breathed: "The love wherewith I am inflamed
Towards the virtue still which followed me
Unto the palm and issue of the field,
Wills that I breathe to thee that thou delight 85
In her; and grateful to me is thy telling
Whatever things Hope promises to thee."
And I: "The ancient Scriptures and the new
The mark establish, and this shows it me,
Of all the souls whom God hath made his friends. 90
Isaiah saith, that each one garmented
In his own land shall be with twofold garments,
And his own land is this delightful life.
Thy brother, too, far more explicitly,
There where he treateth of the robes of white, 95
This revelation manifests to us."
And first, and near the ending of these words,
"Sperent in te" from over us was heard,
To which responsive answered all the carols.
Thereafterward a light among them brightened, 100
So that, if Cancer one such crystal had,
Winter would have a month of one sole day.
And as uprises, goes, and enters the dance
A winsome maiden, only to do honour
To the new bride, and not from any failing, 105
Even thus did I behold the brightened splendour
Approach the two, who in a wheel revolved
As was beseeming to their ardent love.
Into the song and music there it entered;
And fixed on them my Lady kept her look, 110
Even as a bride silent and motionless.
"This is the one who lay upon the breast
Of him our Pelican; and this is he
To the great office from the cross elected."
My Lady thus; but therefore none the more 115
Did move her sight from its attentive gaze
Before or afterward these words of hers.
Even as a man who gazes, and endeavours
To see the eclipsing of the sun a little,
And who, by seeing, sightless doth become, 120
So I became before that latest fire,
While it was said, "Why dost thou daze thyself
To see a thing which here hath no existence?
Earth in the earth my body is, and shall be
With all the others there, until our number 125
With the eternal proposition tallies.
With the two garments in the blessed cloister
Are the two lights alone that have ascended:
And this shalt thou take back into your world."
And at this utterance the flaming circle 130
Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling
Of sound that by the trinal breath was made,
As to escape from danger or fatigue
The oars that erst were in the water beaten
Are all suspended at a whistle's sound. 135
Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed,
When I turned round to look on Beatrice,
That her I could not see, although I was
Close at her side and in the Happy World!
NOTES
1 - 1
The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. St. James examines Dante on Hope.
5 - 5
Florence the Fair, Fiorenza la bella. In one of his Canzoni Dante says: –
“O mountain song of mine, thou goest thy way;
Florence my town thou shalt perchance behold,
Which bars me from itself,
Devoid of love and naked of compassion.
7 - 7
In one of Dante's Eclogues, written at Ravenna and addressed to Giovanni del Virgilio of Bologna, who had invited him to that city to receive the poet's crown, he says: ”Were it not better, on the banks of my native Arno, if ever I should return thither, to adorn and hide beneath the interwoven leaves my triumphal gray hairs, which once were golden?... When the bodies that wander round the earth, and the dwellers among the stars, shall be revealed in my song, as the infernal realm has been, then it will delight me to encircle my head with ivy and with laurel.“
It would seem from this extract that Dante's hair had once been light, and not black, as Boccaccio describes it.
See also the Extract from the Convito, and Dante's Letter to a Friend, among the Illustrations in Vol. I.
8 - 8
This allusion to the church of San Giovanni, where Dante was baptized, and which in Inf., XIX, 17 he calls ”il mio bel San Giovanni“, is a fitting prelude to the canto in which St. John is to appear.
12 - 12
As described in Canto XXIV, 152: –
”So, giving me its benediction, singing,
Three times encircled me, when I was
silent,
The apostolic light.“
14 - 14
The band or carol in which St. Peter was. James, i, 18: ”That we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.“
17 - 17
St. James, to whose tomb at Compostella, in Galicia, pilgrimages were and are still made. The legend says that the body of St. James was put on board a ship and abandoned to the sea; but the ship, being guided by an angel, landed safely in Galicia. There the body was buried; but in the course of time the place of its burial was forgotten, and not discovered again till the year 800, when it was miraculously revealed to a friar.
Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, I, 211, says: ”Then they caused the body of the saint to be transported to Compostella; and in consequence of the surprising miracles which graced his shrine, he was honored not merely in Galicia, but throughout all Spain. He became the patron saint of the Spaniards, and Compostella, as a place of pilgrimage, was renowned throughout Europe. From all countries bands of pilgrims resorted there, so that sometimes there were no less than a hundred thousand in one year. The military order of Saint Jago, enrolled by Don Alphonso for their protection, became one of the greatest and richest in Spain.
“Now, if I should proceed to recount all the wonderful deeds enacted by Santiago in behalf of his chosen people, they would fill a volume. The Spanish historians number thirty-eight visible apparitions, in which this glorious saint descended from heaven in person, and took the command of their armies against the Moors.”
26 - 26
Before me.
29 - 29
James, i, 5 and 17: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him... Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
In this line, intead of largezza, some editions read allegrezza; but as James describes the bounties of heaven, and not its joys, the former reading is undoubtedly the correct one.
32 - 32
St. Peter personifies Faith; St. James, Hope; and St. John, Charity. These three were distinguished above the other Apostles by clearer manisfestations of their Master's favor, as, for example, their being present at the Transfiguration.
34 - 34
These words are addressed by St. James to Dante.
36 - 36
In the radiance of the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity.
38 - 38
To the three Apostles luminous above him and overwhelming him with their light. Psalm, cxxi, 1: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
42 - 42
With the most august spirits of the celestial city. See Canto XXIV, Note 115.
49 - 49
Beatrice.
54 - 54
In God, or, as Dante says in Canto XXIV, 42: –
“There where depicted everything is seen.”
And again, Canto XXVI, 106: –
“For I behold it in the truthful mirror,
That of Himself all things parhelion makes,
And none makes Him parhelion of itself.”
58 - 58
“Say what it is”, and “whence it came to be.”
62 - 62
The answer to these two questions involves no self-praise, as the answer to the other would have done, if it had come from Dante's lips.
67 - 67
This definition of Hope is from Peter Lombard's Lib. Sent., Book III, Dist. 26: “Est spes certa expectatio futurae beatitudinis, veniens ex Dei gratia, et meritis proecedentibus.
72 - 72
The Psalmist David.
73 - 73
In his divine songs, or songs of God. Psalm, ix, 10: ”And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee.“
78 - 78
Your rain; that is, of David and St. James.
84 - 84
According to the legend, St. James suffered martyrdom under Herod Agrippa.
89 - 89
”The mark of the high calling and election sure“, namely Paradise, which is the aim and object of all the ”friends of God“; or, as St. James expresses it in his Epistle, i, 12: ”Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.“
90 - 90
This expression is from the Epistle of James, ii, 23: ”And he was called the Friend of God.“
91 - 91
The spiritual body and the glorified earthly body. Isaiah, lxi, 7: ”Therefore in their land they shall possess the double; everlasting joy shall be unto them.“
95 - 95
St. John in Revelation, vii, 9: ”After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.“
100 - 100
St. John.
101 - 101
If Cancer, which in winter rises at sunset, had one star as bright as this, it would turn night into day.
105 - 105
Any failing, such as vanity, ostentation, or the like.
107 - 107
St. Peter and St. James.
113 - 113
This symbol or allegory of the Pelican, applied to Christ, was popular during the Middle Ages, and was seen not only in the songs of poets, but in sculpture on the portals of churches.
Thibaut, Roi de Navarre, Chanson LXV, says: –
”Diex est ensi comme li Pelicans,
Qui fait son nit el plus haut arbre sus,
Et li mauvais oseau, qui vient de jus
Ses oisellons ocist, tant est puans;
Li pere vient destrois et angosseux,
Dou bec s'ocist, de son sanc dolereus
Vivre refait tantost ses oisellons;
Diex fist autel, quant vint sa passions,
De son douc sanc racheta ses enfans
Dou Deauble, qui tant parest poissans.“
114 - 114
John, xix, 27: ”Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.“
121 - 121
St. John. Dante – bearing in mind the words of Christ, John, xxi, 22, ”If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?... Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die“ – looks to see if the spiritual body of the saint be in any way eclipsed by his earthly body. St. John, reading his unspoken thought, immediately undeceives him.
Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, I, 139, remarks: ”The legend which supposes St. John reserved alive has not been generally received in the Church, and as a subject of painting it is very uncommon. It occurs in the Menologium Graecum, where the grave into which St. John descends is, according to the legend, fossa in crucis figuram (in the form of a cross). In a series of the deaths of the Apostles, St. John is ascending from the grave; for, according to the Greek legend, St. John died without pain or change, and immediately rose again in bodily form, and ascended into heaven to rejoin Christ and the Virgin.“
126 - 126
Till the predestined number of the elect is complete. Revelation, vi, II: ”And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.“
127 - 127
The spiritual body and the glorified earthly body.
128 - 128
Christ and the Virgin Mary. Butler, Lives of the Saints, VIII, 173, says: ”It is a traditionary pious belief, that the body of the Blessed Virgin was raised by God soon after her death, and assumed to glory, by a singular privilege, before the general resurrection of the dead. This is mentioned by the learned Andrew of Crete in the East, in the seventh, and by St. Gregory of Tours in the West, in the sixth century... So great was the respect and veneration of the fathers towards this most holy and most exalted of all pure creatures, that St. Epiphanius durst not affirm that she ever died, because he had never found any mention of her death, and because she might have been preserved immortal, and translated to glory without dying.“
132 - 132
By the sacred trio of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John.
138 - 138
Because his eyes were so blinded by the splendor of the beloved disciple. Speaking of St. John, Claudius, the German poet, says: ”It delights me most of all to read in John: there is in him something so entirely wonderful, – twilight and night, and through it the swiftly darting lightning, – a soft evening cloud, and behind the cloud the broad full moon bodily; something so deeply, sadly pensive, so high, so full of anticipation, that one cannot have enough of it. In reading John it is always with me as though I saw him before me, laying on the bosom of his Master at the last supper: as though his angel were holding the light for me, and in certain passages would fall upon my neck and whisper something in mine ear. I am far from understanding all I read, but it often seems to me as if what John meant were floating before in the distance; and even when I look into a passage altogether dark, I have a foretaste of some great, glorious meaning, which I shall one day understand, and for this reason I grasp so eagerly after every new interpretation of the Gospel of John. Indeed, most of them only play upon the edge of the evening cloud, and the moon behind it has quiet rest.“