Dante's Paradiso: Canto XXVII
St. Peter’s reproof of bad Popes. The Ascent to the Ninth Heaven, the ‘Primum Mobile.’
"Glory be to the Father, to the Son,
And Holy Ghost!" all Paradise began,
So that the melody inebriate made me.
What I beheld seemed unto me a smile
Of the universe; for my inebriation 5
Found entrance through the hearing and the sight.
O joy! O gladness inexpressible!
O perfect life of love and peacefulness!
O riches without hankering secure!
Before mine eyes were standing the four torches 10
Enkindled, and the one that first had come
Began to make itself more luminous;
And even such in semblance it became
As Jupiter would become, if he and Mars
Were birds, and they should interchange their feathers. 15
That Providence, which here distributeth
Season and service, in the blessed choir
Had silence upon every side imposed.
When I heard say: "If I my colour change,
Marvel not at it; for while I am speaking 20
Thou shalt behold all these their colour change.
He who usurps upon the earth my place,
My place, my place, which vacant has become
Before the presence of the Son of God,
Has of my cemetery made a sewer 25
Of blood and stench, whereby the Perverse One,
Who fell from here, below there is appeased!"
With the same colour which, through sun adverse,
Painteth the clouds at evening or at morn,
Beheld I then the whole of heaven suffused. 30
And as a modest woman, who abides
Sure of herself, and at another's failing,
From listening only, timorous becomes,
Even thus did Beatrice change countenance;
And I believe in heaven was such eclipse, 35
When suffered the supreme Omnipotence;
Thereafterward proceeded forth his words
With voice so much transmuted from itself,
The very countenance was not more changed.
"The spouse of Christ has never nurtured been 40
On blood of mine, of Linus and of Cletus,
To be made use of in acquest of gold;
But in acquest of this delightful life
Sixtus and Pius, Urban and Calixtus,
After much lamentation, shed their blood. 45
Our purpose was not, that on the right hand
Of our successors should in part be seated
The Christian folk, in part upon the other;
Nor that the keys which were to me confided
Should e'er become the escutcheon on a banner, 50
That should wage war on those who are baptized;
Nor I be made the figure of a seal
To privileges venal and mendacious,
Whereat I often redden and flash with fire.
In garb of shepherds the rapacious wolves 55
Are seen from here above o'er all the pastures!
O wrath of God, why dost thou slumber still?
To drink our blood the Caorsines and Gascons
Are making ready. O thou good beginning,
Unto how vile an end must thou needs fall! 60
But the high Providence, that with Scipio
At Rome the glory of the world defended,
Will speedily bring aid, as I conceive;
And thou, my son, who by thy mortal weight
Shalt down return again, open thy mouth; 65
What I conceal not, do not thou conceal."
As with its frozen vapours downward falls
In flakes our atmosphere, what time the horn
Of the celestial Goat doth touch the sun,
Upward in such array saw I the ether 70
Become, and flaked with the triumphant vapours,
Which there together with us had remained.
My sight was following up their semblances,
And followed till the medium, by excess,
The passing farther onward took from it; 75
Whereat the Lady, who beheld me freed
From gazing upward, said to me: "Cast down
Thy sight, and see how far thou art turned round."
Since the first time that I had downward looked,
I saw that I had moved through the whole arc 80
Which the first climate makes from midst to end;
So that I saw the mad track of Ulysses
Past Gades, and this side, well nigh the shore
Whereon became Europa a sweet burden.
And of this threshing-floor the site to me 85
Were more unveiled, but the sun was proceeding
Under my feet, a sign and more removed.
My mind enamoured, which is dallying
At all times with my Lady, to bring back
To her mine eyes was more than ever ardent. 90
And if or Art or Nature has made bait
To catch the eyes and so possess the mind,
In human flesh or in its portraiture,
All joined together would appear as nought
To the divine delight which shone upon me 95
When to her smiling face I turned me round.
The virtue that her look endowed me with
From the fair nest of Leda tore me forth,
And up into the swiftest heaven impelled me.
Its parts exceeding full of life and lofty 100
Are all so uniform, I cannot say
Which Beatrice selected for my place.
But she, who was aware of my desire,
Began, the while she smiled so joyously
That God seemed in her countenance to rejoice: 105
"The nature of that motion, which keeps quiet
The centre and all the rest about it moves,
From hence begins as from its starting point.
And in this heaven there is no other Where
Than in the Mind Divine, wherein is kindled 110
The love that turns it, and the power it rains.
Within a circle light and love embrace it,
Even as this doth the others, and that precinct
He who encircles it alone controls.
Its motion is not by another meted, 115
But all the others measured are by this,
As ten is by the half and by the fifth.
And in what manner time in such a pot
May have its roots, and in the rest its leaves,
Now unto thee can manifest be made. 120
O Covetousness, that mortals dost ingulf
Beneath thee so, that no one hath the power
Of drawing back his eyes from out thy waves!
Full fairly blossoms in mankind the will;
But the uninterrupted rain converts 125
Into abortive wildings the true plums.
Fidelity and innocence are found
Only in children; afterwards they both
Take flight or e'er the cheeks with down are covered.
One, while he prattles still, observes the fasts, 130
Who, when his tongue is loosed, forthwith devours
Whatever food under whatever moon;
Another, while he prattles, loves and listens
Unto his mother, who when speech is perfect
Forthwith desires to see her in her grave. 135
Even thus is swarthy made the skin so white
In its first aspect of the daughter fair
Of him who brings the morn, and leaves the night.
Thou, that it may not be a marvel to thee,
Think that on earth there is no one who governs; 140
Whence goes astray the human family.
Ere January be unwintered wholly
By the centesimal on earth neglected,
Shall these supernal circles roar so loud
The tempest that has been so long awaited 145
Shall whirl the poops about where are the prows;
So that the fleet shall run its course direct,
And the true fruit shall follow on the flower."
NOTES
1 - 1
The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. The anger of St. Peter; and the ascent to the Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven.
Dante, Convito, II, 15, makes this Crystalline Heaven the symbol of Moral Philosophy. He says: “The Crystalline Heaven, which has previously been called the Primum Mobile, has a very manifest resemblance to Moral Philosophy; for Moral Philosophy, as Thomas says in treating of the second book of the Ethics, directs us to the other sciences. For, as the Philosopher says in the fifth of the Ethics, legal justice directs us to learn the sciences, and orders them to be learned and mastered, so that they may not be abandoned; so this heaven directs with its movement the daily revolutions of all the others, by which daily they all receive here below the virtue of all their parts. For if its revolution did not thus direct, little of their virtues would reach here below, and little of their sight. Hence, supposing it were possible for this ninth heaven to stand still, the third part of heaven would not be seen in each part of the earth; and Saturn would be hidden from each part of the earth fourteen years and a half; and Jupiter, six years; and Mars, almost a year; and the Sun, one hundred and eighty-two days and fourteen hours (I say days, that is, so much time as so many days would measure); and Venus and Mercury would conceal and show themselves nearly as the Sun; and the Moon would be hidden from all people for the space of fourteen days and a half. Truly there would be here below no production, nor life of animals, nor plants; there would he neither night, nor day, nor week, nor month, nor year; but the whole universe would be deranged, and the movement of the stars in vain. And not otherwise, were Moral Philosophy to cease, the other sciences would be for a time concealed, and there would be no production, nor life of felicity, and in vain would be the writings or discoveries of antiquity. Wherefore it is very manifest that this heaven bears a resemblance to Moral Philosophy.”
9 - 9
Without desire for more.
10 - 10
St. Peter, St. James, St. John, and Adam.
14 - 14
If the white planet Jupiter should become as red as Mars.
22 - 22
Pope Boniface VIII, who won his way to the Popedom by intrigue. See Inf. III, Note 59, and XIX, Note 53.
25 - 25
The Vatican hill, to which the body of St. Peter was transferred from the catacombs.
36 - 36
Luke, xxiii, 44: “And there was darkness over all the earth... And the sun was darkened.”
41 - 41
Linus was the immediate successor of St. Peter as Bishop of Rome, and Cletus of Linus. They were both martyrs of the first age of the Church.
44 - 44
Sixtus and Pius were Popes and martyrs of the second age of the Church; Calixtus and Urban, of the third.
47 - 47
On the right hand of the Pope the favored Guelfs, and on the left the persecuted Ghibellines.
50 - 50
The Papal banner, on which are the keys of St. Peter.
51 - 51
The wars against the Ghibellines in general, and particularly that waged against the Colonna family, ending in the destruction of Palestrina. Inf., XXVII, 85: –
“But he, the Prince of the new Pharisees,
Having a war unto Lateran,
And not with Saracens nor with the Jews,
For each one of his enemies was Christian,
And none of them had been to conquer
Acre,
Nor merchandising in the Sultan's land.”
53 - 53
The sale of indulgences, stamped with the Papal seal, bearing the head of St. Peter.
55 - 55
Matthew, vii, 15: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
57 - 57
Psalm, xliv, 23: “Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?”
58 - 58
Clement V of Gascony, made Pope in 1305, and John XXII of Cahors in France, in 1316. Buti makes the allusion more general: “They of Cahors and Gascony are preparing to drink the blood of the martyrs, because they were preparing to be Popes, cardinals, archbishops and bishops, and prelates in the Church of God, that is built with the blood of the martyrs.”
61 - 61
Dante alludes elsewhere to this intervention of Providence to save the Roman Empire by the hand of Scipio. Convito, IV, 5, he says: “Is not the hand of God visible, when in the war with Hannibal, having lost so many citizens, that three bushels of rings were carried to Africa, the Romans would have abandoned the land, if that blessed youth Scipio had not undertaken the expedition to Africa, to secure its freedom?”
68 - 68
Boccaccio, Ninfale d'Ameto, describing a battle between two flocks of swans, says the spectators “saw the air full of feathers, as when the nurse of Jove [Amalthaea, the Goat] holds Apollo, the white snow is seen to fall in flakes.”
And Whittier, Snow-Bound: –
“Unwarmed by any sunset light,
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the wingéd snow.”
69 - 69
When the sun is in Capricorn; that is, from the middle of December to the middle of January.
72 - 72
The spirits described in Canto XXII, 131, as
“The triumphant throng
That comes rejoicing through this rounded ether”,
and had remained behind when Christ and the Virgin Mary ascended.
74 - 74
Till his sight could follow them no more, on account of the exceeding vastness of the space between.
79 - 79
Canto XXII, 133.
81 - 81
The first climate is the torrid zone, the first from the equator. From midst to end, is from the meridian to the horizon. Dante had been, then, six hours in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars; for, as Milton says Par. Lost, V, 580: –
“Time, though in eternity, applied
To motion, measures all things durable
By present, past, and future.”
82 - 82
Being now in the meridian of the Straits of Gibraltar, Dante sees to the westward of Cadiz the sea Ulysses sailed, when he turned his stern unto the morning and made his oars wings for his mad flight, as described in Inf., XXVI.
83 - 83
Eastward he almost sees the Phoenician coast; almost, and not quite, because, say the commentators, it was already night there.
84 - 84
Europa, daughter of King Agenor, borne to the island of Crete on the back of Jupiter, who had taken the shape of a bull.
Ovid, Met., II, Addison's Tr.: –
“Agenor's royal daughter, as she played
Among the fields, the milk-white bull surveyed,
And viewed his spotless body with delight,
And at a distance kept him in her sight.
At length she plucked the rising flowers, and fed
The gentle beast, and fondly stroked his head.
Till now grown wanton and devoid of fear,
Not knowing that she pressed the Thunderer,
She placed herself upon his back, and rode
O'er fields and meadows, seated on the god.
”He gently marched along, and by degrees
Left the dry meadow, and approached the seas;
Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs,
Now plunges in, and carries off the prize.“
85 - 85
See Canto XXII, Note 151.
87 - 87
The sun was in Aries, two signs in advance of Gemini, in which Dante then was.
88 - 88
Donnea again. See Canto XXIV, Note 118.
91 - 91
Purg., XXXI, 49: –
”Never to thee presented art or nature
Pleasure so great as the fair limbs wherein
I was enclosed, which scattered are in earth.“
98 - 98
The Gemini, or Twins, are Castor and Pollux, the sons of Leda. And as Jupiter, their father, came to her in the shape of a swan, this sign of the zodiac is called the nest of Leda. Dante now mounts up from the Heaven of the Fixed Stars to the Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven.
103 - 103
Dante's desire to know in what part of this heaven he was.
109 - 109
All the other heavens have their Regents of Intelligences. See Canto II, Note 131. But the Primum Mobile has the Divine Mind alone.
113 - 113
By that precinct Dante means the Empyrean, which embraces the Primum Mobile, as that does all the other heavens below it.
117 - 117
The half of ten is five, and the fifth is two. The product of these, when multiplied together, is ten.
127 - 127
Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality: –
”Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day.“
137 - 137
Aurora, daughter of Hyperion, or the Sun. Purg., II, 7: –
”So that the white and the vermilion cheeks
Of beautiful Aurora, where I was,
By too great age were changing into
orange.“
140 - 140
Or, perhaps, to steer, and
”Over the high seas to keep
The barque of Peter to its proper bearings.“
143 - 143
This neglected centesimal was the omission of some inconsiderable fraction or centesimal part, in the computation of the year according to the Julian calendar, which was corrected in the Gregorian, some two centuries and a half after Dante's death. By this error, in a long lapse of time, the months would cease to correspond to the seasons, and January be no longer a winter, but a spring month.”
Sir John Herschel, Treatise on Astronomy, Ch. XIII, says: “The Julian rule made every fourth year, without exception, a bissextile. This is, in fact, an over-correction; it supposes the length of the tropical year to be 365 1/4 d., which is too great, and thereby induces an error of 7 days in 900 years, as will easily appear on trial. Accordingly, so early as the year 1414, it began to be perceived that the equinoxes were gradually creeping away from the 21st of March and September, where they ought to have always fallen had the Julian year been exact, and happening (as it appeared) too early. The necessity of a fresh and effectual reform in the calendar was from that time continually urged, and at length admitted. The change (which took place under the Popedom of Gregory XIII) consisted in the omission of ten nominal days after the 4th of October, 1582 (so that the next day was called the 15th, and the 5th), and the promulgation of the rule already explained for future regulation.”
It will appear from the verse of Dante, that this error and its consequences had been noticed a century earlier than the year mentioned by Herschel. Dante speaks ironically; naming a very long period, and meaning a very short one.
145 - 145
Dante here refers either to the reforms he expected from the Emperor Henry VII, or to those he as confidently looked for from Can Grande della Scala, the Veltro, or greyhound, of Inf., I, 101, who was to slay the she-wolf, and make her “perish in her pain”, and whom, he so warmly eulogizes in Canto XVII of the Paradiso. Alas for the vanity of human wishes! Patient Italy has waited more than five centuries for the fulfilment of this prophecy, but at length she has touched the bones of her prophet, and “is revived and stands upon her feet.”