Paradiso · Canto IV ·
Paradiso IV — Between Two Viands
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 71 of 100 · Paradiso, Canto IV
Before reading
This canto is a tutorial built around two questions that have been left hanging since the lunar encounter — and one famous opening simile that has nothing directly to do with either of them. The pilgrim has just heard Piccarda's his will is our peace and has not been able to ask his real questions. Canto IV is the canto in which the questions are named, and Beatrice answers them. By the end of it the Paradiso's entire metaphysical framework will have been put on the table.
Where the canto sits
Dante and Beatrice are still in the heaven of the Moon. They have not moved a step. The whole canto is conversation — one of the cantica's many sustained question-and-answer sequences. The pilgrim is silent with two questions at once and cannot decide which to ask first. Beatrice sees both, names both, and answers them in order. This procedure — the guide hearing the question the pilgrim has not yet spoken — will become Paradiso's most frequent narrative move.
What it helps to know
The two questions are these. First: if the souls in the Moon were taken from their cloisters against their will, how does any blame attach to them? Why are they in a lower sphere than the saints who never broke their vows? Second: did Plato have a point in the Timaeus when he said that human souls descend from stars at birth and return to them at death — that what looks like a placement of souls in spheres is actually a return of each soul to the particular star from which it came?
Both questions have to be dispatched, because together they would unravel the entire metaphysics the cantica has just begun to build. The first question, if not answered, makes God's justice arbitrary. The second question, if not answered, would replace the cantica's Christian cosmology with a Platonic one in which souls actually live in the spheres they appear in.
The doctrine Beatrice will introduce in answer is the most important single proposition in Paradiso and the reason the cantica looks the way it does. It is called by commentators the doctrine of accommodation. The proposition: all the blessed actually live in the Empyrean, in a single equal community of vision. The spheres in which they appear to Dante are not their dwellings. They are signs — pedagogical apparitions arranged for Dante's benefit, because a living human mind cannot apprehend the Empyrean directly and needs the graded language of the spheres in order to grasp degrees of beatitude. Scripture itself, Beatrice will say, uses the same procedure: it speaks of God as having hands and feet, not because he does, but because human language has no other way to mean what it has to mean.
The second question — the one about broken vows — will be answered through a scholastic distinction the reader should be ready for. There is the absolute will (what one wills without any pressure) and the conditional will (what one wills under duress, even when one's deeper will dissents). The blessed in the Moon kept their absolute will intact — they never agreed to leave the cloister — but their conditional wills wavered: when force came, they yielded to it instead of preferring martyrdom. Two of Paradiso's emblems of perfect will are named here as the counterexamples: St Lawrence, who is said to have lain on his gridiron taunting his executioners, and Mucius Scaevola, the legendary Roman who put his own hand into the fire when he had failed to kill an enemy. The reader does not need to weigh whether the distinction holds; the canto needs the reader to follow what it means.
What to read for
Notice the opening simile: a free man would die of hunger between two equally tempting foods, because he could not bring himself to choose. The image is the medieval prefiguration of what philosophers call Buridan's ass. The simile describes Dante's paralysis between two questions — but its real subject is the will, which is exactly the canto's subject. The image's choice is no accident.
Listen for Beatrice's all — every time she says that all the blessed dwell in the Empyrean, the cantica's whole spatial logic is being clarified. The spheres are a language, not a place.
The canto ends without giving the pilgrim what he needs next; instead, it sends him into a third question. Paradiso moves by question begetting question. The last tercet is a fresh hunger, not a closure.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto cleared two obstacles the cantica could not stand without clearing. The first obstacle: how can souls forcibly extracted from their cloisters be in any sense responsible for their broken vows? The second: were Plato right about souls descending from and returning to particular stars, the cantica's whole map of Paradiso would be a literal geography, not a signifying one. Beatrice dispatches both, and in dispatching the second she names the doctrine on which everything from canto III onward depends: the doctrine of accommodation. The souls do not really inhabit the spheres. They appear in them as signs adapted to the pilgrim's limited capacity to receive the truth. Once this is on the table, the rest of Paradiso can be read. Without it, the rest would be incoherent. The canto is a piece of metaphysical maintenance whose tools are the scholastic distinctions every educated reader of 1320 was expected to handle.
The Buridan-simile and the silence of the questioner
The canto's opening tercet is one of the Commedia's most often-cited similes.
Between two viands, equally removed And tempting, a free man would die of hunger Ere either he could bring unto his teeth. (Par. IV.1–3)
Two centuries later the same image will be attached to Jean Buridan's donkey and become a textbook of the will. Dante's version is more austere: not an ass, a free man. The image is the canto's whole frame. The pilgrim is silent because he is paralysed between two questions, each as urgent as the other. Beatrice sees the paralysis and intervenes. The canto is built to demonstrate that true freedom of will is not the inability to choose between two equal goods but the capacity to be moved by the higher when it appears. The simile diagnoses Dante; the rest of the canto repairs him.
The doctrine of accommodation
Beatrice names the doctrine without flourish, in a tercet that may be the most consequential single piece of Paradiso's machinery.
They showed themselves here, not because allotted This sphere has been to them, but to give sign Of the celestial which is least exalted. (Par. IV.37–39)
The blessed in the Moon are not allotted to the Moon. They are all in the Empyrean. They have shown themselves here to give Dante a sign — a visible language by which he can understand the gradations of beatitude that exist invisibly in the one true heaven. The cantica's map is a courtesy. Once Beatrice has said this, the next move is the move that makes the doctrine survive its own audacity: scripture itself, she says, does the same thing.
On this account the Scripture condescends Unto your faculties, and feet and hands To God attributes, and means something else. (Par. IV.43–45)
The Bible speaks of God's hands and feet not because God has hands and feet but because human language has no other way to mean what it has to mean. The Comedy's spheres are doing what scripture does. The poet is, very quietly, claiming for his own poem the same hermeneutic licence as the church accords sacred text. Read against this, the whole of Paradiso is legible — a graded language adapted downward to the only readers it can have.
Plato deflected, not dismissed
The question about Plato's Timaeus — souls descending from stars at birth and returning to them at death — is one Beatrice handles with a courtesy that has surprised every commentator since. She does not simply refute it.
If he doth mean that to these wheels return The honour of their influence and the blame, Perhaps his bow doth hit upon some truth. (Par. IV.58–60)
If Plato meant that the influence and the blame of human action return to the stars — that the spheres receive moral credit for what the souls beneath them do — then perhaps his bow hits some truth. The reading is generous. It allows the pagan philosopher to be partly correct on a Christian question. Dante's Plato is not a pagan to be dismissed but a near-believer to be corrected. The Commedia's habitual openness to pagan wisdom — Virgil in Limbo, Statius converted, Cato as guardian — extends here even to the most metaphysical of pagan philosophers. The cantica that will not let Greek tragedy speak will let Plato almost speak.
The two wills, and the answer to Piccarda's puzzle
The harder question — how the forcibly extracted nuns are in any sense culpable — is answered through the distinction between the absolute will and the conditional (or relative) will. The absolute will is what one wills without any external pressure. The conditional will is what one wills under duress, choosing the lesser harm. Beatrice's argument is precise: the nuns' absolute will held — they never agreed to leave — but their conditional will yielded to force when it could have chosen martyrdom. The lower sphere reflects the yielding.
If their will had been perfect, like to that Which Lawrence fast upon his gridiron held, And Mutius made severe to his own hand (Par. IV.82–84)
The two emblems — Lawrence on the iron, Mucius Scaevola burning his own hand to spite his failure — are the absolute will perfected even under torture. Note that the canto does not condemn Piccarda or Constance for falling short of these examples. It explains the small gap. The lower sphere is not punishment but pedagogy: even in heaven, gradation is real, and the gradation has causes.
The intellect at rest
Near the canto's close, Beatrice offers what amounts to the cantica's promise to its readers.
It rests therein, as wild beast in his lair, When it attains it; and it can attain it; If not, then each desire would frustrate be. (Par. IV.127–129)
The intellect attains truth and rests in it the way a wild beast attains its den. The proposition is not consoling; it is structural. If the intellect could not attain truth, every desire would be in vain — and the Commedia's entire premise is that no desire is in vain. The line is the cantica's defence of its own possibility. Paradiso is doing what it is doing because the intellect is able to do it. The cantica is a thirty-three-canto proof of the proposition.
The third question
The canto ends as it began: with the pilgrim about to ask. The questions answered birth a new question — about vows themselves, their gravity, what fulfils and what voids them — and the answer must wait for canto V.
Beatrice gazed upon me with her eyes Full of the sparks of love, and so divine, That, overcome my power, I turned my back (Par. IV.139–141)
The look itself is too much; the pilgrim cannot sustain it. This too is now a recurring move. Every great revelation in Paradiso will end with the pilgrim's senses overwhelmed and the next canto opening on his recovery.
Famous and meaningful passages
The opening simile.
Between two viands, equally removed And tempting, a free man would die of hunger Ere either he could bring unto his teeth. (Par. IV.1–3)
The medieval Buridan. The diagnosis of paralysis between two goods.
The doctrine of accommodation.
They showed themselves here, not because allotted This sphere has been to them, but to give sign Of the celestial which is least exalted. (Par. IV.37–39)
The most important single tercet of the cantica's first ten cantos. Paradiso's whole map is here revealed as a courtesy.
The hermeneutic move.
On this account the Scripture condescends Unto your faculties, and feet and hands To God attributes, and means something else. (Par. IV.43–45)
Scripture too uses accommodation. The poet quietly claims for his poem the same license.
Plato almost right.
If he doth mean that to these wheels return The honour of their influence and the blame, Perhaps his bow doth hit upon some truth. (Par. IV.58–60)
The cantica's courtesy to pagan philosophy.
The two wills.
If their will had been perfect, like to that Which Lawrence fast upon his gridiron held, And Mutius made severe to his own hand (Par. IV.82–84)
Piccarda is not condemned; she is differentiated from those whose absolute will held under torture.
The intellect at rest.
It rests therein, as wild beast in his lair, When it attains it; and it can attain it; If not, then each desire would frustrate be. (Par. IV.127–129)
Paradiso's defence of its own possibility, in three lines.
What to watch for
Watch the doctrine of accommodation everywhere it would apply. From canto V to canto XXX, every soul appearing in a sphere has come down to be seen; the apparition is the sign, not the dwelling. Hold the doctrine in mind.
Watch Beatrice's courtesy to Plato. The cantica will keep pagan wisdom in the conversation. By canto X, Aquinas will count both Christian and near-Christian thinkers in the dance of the wise.
Watch the canto's diagnostic move. The pilgrim cannot ask; the guide names the question; the question is answered before it is spoken. This procedure will repeat. Paradiso is structured by the unspoken question.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.