holders of the chair of Peter acquire still greater
force, when heard amidst the eternal glories of Para-
dise.
Until the final consummation of the vision,
Beatrice is Dante's sole guide throughout the Para-
diso. In the allegorical sense, for most of the early
commentators, she represents Sacred Theology or the
Divine Science ; for others again she is a symbol of
Revelation, for others of co-operating Grace or even
of Contemplation. Dr. Dollinger in his lecture on
Dante as a Prophet says, " Beatrice signifies Theology,
not in its abstract meaning as the letter of religious
science, but as the living daughter of heaven, the
blessed knowledge of God and of holy things, the
highest divine gift of grace, enabling us to behold
* Nor the Ecclesiastical Authority either, if the letter of the De
Monarchia is applied strictly to the Paradiso.
10
A STUDY OF THE PARADISO
here, as in a glass, that which we shall hereafter gaze
on face to face." On the other hand, Dr. Scartazzini
regards her as the symbol of the Ecclesiastical
Authority, " the symbol of Ecclesiastical Authority
in so far as it is in the possession of Divine Revela-
tion." This is that ideal spiritual power of the De
Monarchia, whose function is to lead mankind ac-
cording to revelation (even as Beatrice guides Dante
in his poem) unto " the blessedness of the life eternal,
which consists in the fruition of the sight of God's
countenance, and to which man of his natural powers
cannot rise, if he be not aided by the divine light "
{Mon. iii. 16). And she seems, indeed, to play some
such part in her first appearance in the glorious
pageant in the garden of Eden. But, since Dante
expressly tells us elsewhere in the saine treatise
{Mon. iii. 4) that, if he had remained in the state of
innocence in which he had been created by God, man
would have no need of either Imperial or Ecclesias-
tical Authority, it would seem that this part of
Beatrice's symbolism could only apply to certain
episodes and passages in the Paradiso, when once the
Earthly Paradise has been fully regained — to certain
episodes and passages understood in the moral or
tropological sense. As we are told in the Letter to
Can Grande that the poem is poly sensuous, we should
perhaps best regard the symbolism of Beatrice as
manifold ; and sum up her attributes under the com-
prehensive phrase Divine Wisdom or Heavenly .Wis-
dom, understanding clearly by Divine Wisdom, not
the Wisdom of God (which would almost be to
identify her with the Word), but, as Barelli puts it,
'* all the wisdom divinely revealed to man to raise
him above earthly things and bring him near to God."
This would include the spiritual j)ower or Ecclesiasti-
11
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
cal Authority, as far as it can apply in the Paradiso,
and Revelation and the Divine Science of Theology.
But the literal aspect of Beatrice, the glorified
woman of the poet's heart and his poetical ideal of
womanhood, cannot be lost sight of, and is recog-
nised by Benvenuto da Imola and other early com-
mentators. It can hardly be doubted that the
Paradiso is the apotheosis of a real woman, though
invested with all the Church's power and all Theo-
logy's authority ; she cannot be identified with any
one of these symbolical meanings, because it is her
function to include and transcend them all.
In the literal sense — the essential Paradise — no
allegorical meaning can well be assigned to Beatrice ;
for in Paradise ecclesiastical authority is meaningless,
and things are not known to the saints by theology
but by intuition. Still throughout the Paradiso,
until the final and true vision, it is mainly the alle-
gorical Beatrice presented to us, although here and
there we have those lyrical passages that can only
refer to the real woman, seeming to break in, as it
were, into the allegorical narrative, like the wedding
music into the story of the Ancient Mariner, giving
an air of reality and truth to the whole. In the
final consummation of the vision, when the last alti-
tude of blessedness is reached, when the spiritual
guide has done her work and her place is taken by
St. Bernard, all allegory practically ceases, and the
real woman is enthroned in the glory she has
merited, praying now to the Madonna for her lover's
final perseverance : —
YecTi Beatrice con quanti beati
Per li miei preghi ti chmdon le mani.*
^ See, Beatrice with all the blessed are clasping their hands to
thee in support of my prayers. Par. xxxiii. 38.
12
A STUDY OF THE PARADISO
This wondrous combination of the real with the
symboHcal is exquisitely illustrated in three famous
lines from Rossetti's House of Life —
Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
Thy soul I know not from thy bodj', nor
Thee from mj'self, neither our love from God.
So in Dante's poem we sometimes know not love for
the allegorical Beatrice from love for the real Beatrice,
nor either from love for the poet's Faith, until all
three at last are transfigured, fused and blended in
that supreme Love —
L'Amor che move il sole e I'altre stelle.^
The general arrangement of Dante's Paradise is
based upon the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the '
theological doctrine of the Mansions of Beatitude,
and the theories of the supposed Dionysius the
Areopagite (followed by Aquinas) and of St. Bernard
concerning the angelic Hierarchies.
Around our globe, the fixed centre of the Universe,
move the nine spheres, each of the lower eight en-
closed by the sphere above it. Dante's passage, as
he ascends from heaven to heaven, is a preparation
for the true Paradise. Above these nine moving-
heavens and enclosing them around is the spaceless
Empyrean Heaven of rest and divine peace, the true
Paradise, the abode of God and His Angels and
saints ; a spaceless motionless ocean, glowing with the
spiritual fire of Love. Although all the blessed
without exception have their final seat and home in
this Empyrean Heaven, certain groups of saints de-
scend from their thrones into each of the lower
spheres to greet Dante in his ascent. For Dante is
as the soul that he describes in Book iv. of the
^ The Love that moves the sun and all the stars. Par. xxxiii. lib.
1.3
\
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
Convivio, that, in the fourth and last part of her
life, " returns to God as to the port whence she set out
■when she first entered upon the sea of this life " : —
" E siccome a colui die viene di lungo cammino,
anzi ch' entri nella porta della sua citta, gli si fanno
incontro i cittadini di quella ; cosi alia nobile aninia
si fanno incontro quelli cittadini della eterna vita. E
cosi fanno per le sue buone operazioni e conteni-
plazioni ; die, gia essendo a Dio renduta e astrattasi
dalle mondane cose e cogitazioni, vedere le pare coloro
che appresso di Dio crede che sieno." ^
They satisfy the poet's intellectual and spiritual
needs, and then return to their jjlaces in the
Empyrean. " To make manifest the glory of beati-
tude in these souls," says the Letter to Can Grande,
"from them, as from those that behold all truth,
many things will be asked which have great utility
and delight." Also their temporary ai)parition in the
lower heavens serves Dante as a sensible sign of a
suprasensible mystery, the wondrous mystery of the
Mansions of Beatitude : there are different grades of
the glory of beatitude in that Empyrean Heaven
where all those blessed ones dwell, yet each is per-
fectly blessed according to his own capacity. The
inequality of perfection in beatitude arises from the
different degrees of their knowledge and love, since
one intellect sees God more perfectly than another.
Domus ergo est una, id est, denarius est units ; sed
^ Conv. iv. 28. " And as his fellow-citizens come forth to meet
him who returns from a long journej', even before he enters the
gates of his city ; so to the noble soul come forth the citizens of
the Eternal Life. And thus do thej' by reason of her good works
and contemplations ; for, being now rendered to God and abstracted
from worldly things and thoughts, she seems to see those whom
she believes are with God."
14
A STUDY OF THE PARADISO
diversitas est ibi mansionum, id est, differentia clarita-
tis ; quia uniim est et suinmum bonum, beatitudo et
vita omnium, id est Deus ipse.^ The spirits that ap-
pear in the three lower heavens have the lowest^'
grades of beatitude in the Empyrean. They appear
as a sensible sign of this invisible mystery that can
only be apprehended by the intellect.
Dante does not behold the saints who appear in the
eight lower heavens in their true form. In the
lowest sphere of all, the spirits are seen like faint
yet most beautiful reflections of the human form ;
in the heaven of Mercury, those which have the next
lowest place are at first just seen in the midst of light
which hides them from his ^-iew as their joy (their
accidental joy, to be quite accurate) gets greater ; in
the third heaven they are completely swathed in con-
cealing light ; and, in the higher heavens still, they
appear as stars or dazzling splendours. In the
seventh heaven St. Benedict tells him that in the
Empyrean he \Ndll see them with countenance un-
veiled, and it follows clearly from the way Dante asks
the question that the deficiency is in his own powers of
\'ision ; his eyes can more easily distinguish the lower
grades of spirits within reach of Earth's shadow : —
Pero ti prego, e tu, padre, ra'accerta
S'io posso prender tanta grazia, ch.'io
Ti veggia con imagine scoperta.
Par. xxii. 58.'^
* " The house is one, that is, the penny is one ; but there is a
diversity of mansions there, that is, difference in brightness ; for
the supreme Good, l^eatitude and life of all, G-od Himself, is also
one." Peter the Lombard, Sentences iv. (list. 49. " All the
elect," he says, " will have the same penny which the householder
gave to all the labourers in his vineyard."
- Therefore I praj^, and do thou, father, assure me, if I can re-
ceive so much grace that I may see thee with countenance un-
veiled.
15
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
the grace, that is, to see spiritual substances with
immediate intuition. In the Empyrean he drinks of
the river of light which makes the intellect in a
measure god-like, and then he can see these blessed
beings in their spirit forms, as glorified resemblances
of what they were on earth. For it must always be
borne in mind that these lower heavens are merely
preparations for the vision of the true Paradise,
allegories of how man can mount upward step by
step in knowledge and love and enjoyment, till he
attain to that perfect knowledge, that supreme love,
that ineffable enjoyment Avhich is Beatitude in union
with the First Cause : —
Still climbing after knowledge infinite
And alwaj's moving as the restless spheres,
Until we reach, the ripest friiit of all.
There are three main divisions of the Paradiso ;
and of the signs which mark these divisions the first
is a sensihle sign connected with the material Uni-
verse — the termination of the earth's shadow ; the
second a suprasensible, a purely spiritual and mysti-
cal sign — the shining ladder of gold. For such is the
nature of Dante's ascent and intellectual progress,
from the things of sense to the mysteries that are
above and beyond sense.
In the first two divisions, Dante describes the seven
spheres of the seven planets and the seven classes of
glorified spirits that appear to him therein. The
first division is that of the three heavens to which
the earth's shadow was supposed to extend, and
which may therefore be regarded as lying still within
the shadow of the earth ; the spheres of the Moon,
of Mercury, and of Venus. The termination of the
earth's shadow in the sphere of Venus, the highest
16
I
A STUDY OF THE PARADISO
of these heavens, is indicated in Canto ix. 118-
119:—
Questo cielo, in cui I'ombra s'appunta,
Che il vostro mondo face:
" This heaven, in which the shadow, that your
world makes, comes to a point." After this there
is a distinct pause, and the poet, as it were, starts
afresh in the next Canto. The shadow indicates
the shade of earth in the lives of the blessed
spirits that appear in these three heavens, spirits
whose lives were marred by earthly failings and
who have attained a lower degree of beatitude in
the Empyrean : the inconstant in their vows, the
vainglorious, the lovers. Piccarda and Constance
had in part yielded to the violence of others and so
broken the monastic vow, the solemn vow of per-
petual chastity ; desire for fame, rather than love of
God, had moved Justinian and Romeo to noble deeds ;
Cunizza and her companions had fallen for love. On
earth the lives of these souls had been marred
through yielding to the temptations and snares of
the world — inconstancy, vainglory, unlawful love re-
pented of and expiated in time ; now in Paradise they
appear still within earth's shadow, and their perfec-
tion of love and knowledge is diminished.
Beyond reach of the earth's shadow is the second
division, the four higher spheres of the Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn. Into these heavens four classes
of glorious saints descend to greet Dante ; spirits
who followed lives of perfection in action or contem-
plation : the teacher of philosophic truth, the Chris-
tian warrior, the just ruler, the rapt ascetic monk or
hermit. They appear in these four heavens, not so
much to give Dante a sign of the inequality of their
17 c
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
merit, and hence the inequahty of the perfection of
their beatitude (as was the case with the spirits seen
in the thi-ee lower heavens) ; but rather as a sign of
V the different ways in which perfection may be reached
and God be served, and thus this beatitude attained.
^i Dante would hardly have ^vished to represent the
Angelical Doctor or St. Anselm as enjoying a less
deep vision and less intense love of God than Robert
Guiscard or the Emperor Constantine.^ Now that
the earth's shadow has been left behind, the perfec-
tion of action and contemplation can be seen and
comprehended in relation to Man and to God. The
spirits of great teachers, warriors and rulers repre-
sent different forms of the glorified active life ; the
philosopher's pen, the sword of the knight, the
sceptre of the monarch are instruments of perfection
in the service of God, for His chosen people of the
old law or for His Bride, the Church of the new law.
But the active life is a prelude and preparation to
the contemplative, the contemplative to the sight
of God. In the seventh heaven, that of Saturn, the
spirits of ascetics and hermits appear, contemplatives
who fled to the desert or the cell ; after which Dante
and Beatrice follow them up the Celestial Ladder
into the Firmament. This ladder, up and down
which the contemplatives i3ass, the ladder seen by
Jacob, stretches up to the last Heaven of all. In one
sense it doubtless signifies the heavenly contempla-
tion which is necessary in order to enter into the
lofty mysteries above, but it has another and far
more universal significance as well. In this universal
^ Each of these heavens represents a higher state of life than the
one below it; but, since there are degrees of bliss in each, it does
not follow that any individual spirit in the one should be enjoying
more perfect beatitude than another in the lower sphere.
18
A STUDY OF THE PARADISO
sense it is to be regarded only as the final rungs of ^
a ladder wliieli rejjresents the Universal Church ; a
ladder which we may perhaps imagine as reaching
up, mystically, from the shores of the mountain of
Purgatory to the supreme Heaven of Heavens.
St. Bernard, whom Dante follows a good deal in
the Paradlso, and who becomes his last teacher in
the final consunnnation of the vision, treats at some
length the symbolism of Jacob's Ladder : —
" On this ladder are placed all the j)redestined to
eternal life, and every one who looks for the king-
dom of Heaven has a place upon it. This ladder in
general is the Church, which partly is still militant
on earth and partly already reigns in the heavens.
Upon it are three orders of men — worldly, active,
contemplative. At the foot of the ladder are the
worldly, they who go round about the earth, who
seek and love earthly things ; in the middle of the
ladder are the active, they who cultivate the earth,
who sow the word of God in the ears of men ; on the
summit of the ladder are the contemplative, they
who despise earthly things and are already almost in
heaven since they dwell in thought amongst heavenly
things. These are as the Angels of God, ascending
and descending by the ladder, for they ascend through
contemplation to God and descend through compas-
sion to their neio^hbour."' ^
'o'
Although the ladder only becomes visible in the
seventh heaven, yet, just as Jacob's Ladder rests
upon the earth, so (metaphorically speaking) does
Dante's upon the shore of the mountain island of
Purgatory. When man in the person of Dante
* Liber de modo bene vivendi. 53. De activa et contemplativa
vita.
19
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
issues from the darkness of alienation from God
represented by the Inferno, he has this vast ladder
before him, tending through various degrees of per-
fection ever upwards. The contumacious and the
negligent without the gate, and the spirits in the
terraces of the Purgatorio, correspond to the worldly
and to the lower grades of the active in St. Bernard's
scheme. The terraces of Purgatory are, as it were,
the lowest rungs of the ladder. The spirits in the
six lower heavens correspond in varying degrees to
the active of St. Bernard, and then we have the
contemplative in both Dante and St. Bernard. To
this latter height man cannot attain without passing
through the others, for the active life is the neces-
sary prelude to the contemplative, since no man can
attain perfection in the latter unless he first be per-
fect in the active life. Therefore, throughout the
Purgatorio and the Paradiso, Dante is ascending this
ladder. Although it is only the topmost rungs that
are visible to him, yet in an earlier passage it is indi-
cated to him by Beatrice that it is a ladder he is
mounting, and that the lower heavens are merely
the stairway of the Eternal Palace : —
Che la bellezza mia, clie per le scale
Dell' eteruo palazzo piu s'accende,
Coin' liai veduto, quanto piu si sale.
Par. xxi. 7.^
There are still steps to be ascended in Dante's
Paradise after the seventh sphere, for man proceeds
upwards from truth to truth until he attains to the
knowledge in which his beatitude consists. Above
the celestial ladder is the thii^d division of Paradise,
in which, as Benvenuto puts it, " Dante describes the
^ My beauty along the stairs of the Eternal Palace gloweth the
more, as tliou hast seen, the higher we ascend.
20
STUDY OF THE PARADISO
three universal orbs of the heavens, that is, the
eighth sphere (the heaven of the Fixed Stars) which
is called the Firmament, and the ninth sphere (the
Crystalline) which is the Primum Mobile, and the
Empyrean Heaven which is called Paradise ; and in
these the poet describes the glorious city of God, the
Church Triumphant." The seven heavens of the
planets may be taken as representing the ideal life
of man ; the eighth and ninth spheres set forth the
work of his redemption and the influence of the
celestial intelligences upon the Universe ; the Empy-
rean is that blessed existence to which man finally
attains. It will be seen that, in the Firmament and
the Primum Mobile, Dante still beholds things under
sensible figures and allegorical veils, for these two
heavens are merely a further preparation to the true
Paradise and the vision of the Divine Essence. The
nine moving spheres form the golden stairway of
God's palace, but the Empyrean is His most glorious
presence-chamber.
Each group of saints that descends from the last
Heaven into the lower spheres, to greet Dante in his
ascent, has a special relation to the heaven in which
they appear, besides appearing therein to give Dante
a visible sign of their degree of bliss or of the
perfection of the state of life which they represent.
In the first place, they were influenced by these hea-
vens : impressed at their birth by the star, as Cac-
ciaguida says of Can Grande della Scala. Beatrice in
Pciradiso iv. admits some truth in the theory of good
and evil influences from the stars and the spheres —
Tornare a queste rote
L'onor dell' influenza e il biasmo.'
^ That the honour and the blame of their influence return unto
these wheels. Par. iv, 58.
21
V
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
Thus Cunizza da Romano, wlio appears in the third
heaven, following in a wrong direction the influence
of Venus, obtained a lower degree of beatitude ; and
Cacciaguida in the fifth sphere, by following rightly
the influence of Mars, acquired power and strength
to practise the virtues proper to a warrior of the
Cross, which earned him his place in Paradise. Yet
the celestial bodies have no power to deprive man of
moral freedom. One of our great Elizabethan poets
has said : —
I am a nobler substance than tbe stars :
And shall the baser over-rule the better?
Or are they better since they are the bigger?
I have a will and faculties of choice
To do or not to do ; and reason why
I do or not do this. The stars have none.
And Dante, through the mouth of Marco the Lom-
bard, reconciles the problem of stellar influences with
the doctrine of free will in a very similar way in
Purgatorio xvi. —
Voi che vivete, ogni cagion recate
Pur suso al ciel, cosi come se tutto
Movesse seco di necessitate.
Se cosi fosse, in voi fora distrutto
Libero arbitrio, e non fora giustizia,
Per ben letizia, e per male aver lutto.
Lo cielo i vostri movimenti inizia,
Non dico tutti : ma, posto ch'io il dica,
Lume v'e dato a bene ed a malizia,
E libero voler, che, se fatica
Nelle prime battaglie col ciel dura,
Poi vince tutto, se ben si nutrica.
A maggior forza ed a miglior natura
Liberi soggiacete, e quella cria
La mente in voi, che il ciel non ha in sua cura.
Furg. xvi. 67.^
^ Ye who are living every cause refer
Still upv;ard to the heavens, as if all things
They of necessity moved with themselves.
22
A STUDY OF THE PARADISO
Albertus Magnus holds that there is m man a two- ^
fold principle of action, nature and the will. Nature
indeed is governed by the stars, but the will is free.
Notwithstanding this freedom, however, the will will
be drawn and inclined by nature unless it steadfastly
resists ; and, since nature moves with the movements
of the stars, the will then, if it does not resist, com-
mences to be inclined by the movements of the stars.
Then, in the second place, each heaven is assigned
to the care of one of the nine orders of Angels, and
the spirits that appear in each, together with the
matters discussed, have probably a special relation
with these different angelic orders.^ The theory that
the nine lower heavens were ruled by the nine orders
of Angels, or celestial intelligences, was the usual
doctrine of the time ; but Dante in addition has as-
signed each individual sj)here to the charge of its
own special angelic order, — the heaven of the Moon ^^
to the Angels, Mercury to the Archangels, Venus to
the celestial Principalities ; the Sun to the Powers,
Mars to the Virtues, and Jupiter to the Domina-
tions ; the heaven of Saturn to the Thrones, the
If this were so, in you would be destroj-ed
Free will, nor auj' justice Avould there be
In having joy for good, or grief for evil.
The heavens your movements do initiate,
I say not all ; but granting that I say it,
Light has been given you for good and evil,
And free volition ; which if some fatigue
In the first battles with the heavens it suffers,
Afterwards conquers all, if well 'tis nurtured.
To greater force and to a better nature [the Divine]
Though free ye subject are, and that creates
The mind in you the heavens have not in charge.
Longfellow.
^ This is especially shown b}' Professor Lubiu in his commen-
tary.
2.3
DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS
Firmament to the Cherubim, and the Crystalline or
Primum Mobile to the Seraphim. Sometimes the
correspondence between the heaven itself and its
celestial movers is more obvious ; at other times the
doctrines explained seem more closely related ; and
the spirits of the saints that appear to Dante in each
heaven seem to be to some extent supplying the
places of the Angels, who fell from the special an-
gelical order to whom that particular heaven is as-