Paradiso · Canto VIII ·
Paradiso VIII — Arrival in Venus
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 75 of 100 · Paradiso, Canto VIII
Before reading
This is the first canto of the third heaven, the sphere of Venus, and it is one of the Paradiso's most personal cantos. The principal soul who comes forward is a young king Dante knew personally — Charles Martel of Anjou, who visited Florence in 1294 and seems to have struck up a warm friendship with the poet. Charles died of plague the following year, aged twenty-four. Sixteen years later, Dante meets him in heaven. The encounter is the cantica's most affectionate single scene and one of its most politically pointed: the young king who should have ruled three kingdoms tells the pilgrim what could have been, and then turns to explain why providence has not made him another version of his unsuitable younger brother.
Where the canto sits
The sphere of Venus is the third of the seven planetary heavens and the last of the heavens whose souls bear, in any visible way, the diluting trace of earthly love. From the Sun upward (canto X onward), the blessed will appear without any such trace. Venus holds the souls of lovers — souls whose lives were marked by love that, even when virtuous, was not yet love wholly of God. The pagan-classical inheritance of Venus is the goddess of erotic love, daughter of Dione, mother of Cupid; the canto opens with three tercets that briefly summon and dismiss that pagan tradition.
The diagnostic is gentle. The souls in Venus are not the lustful of Inferno V (Francesca and the hurricane) — those who let love overrun them. They are souls whose love was real and right, but whose orientation toward God was, in measure, crowded by their attachment to created things and persons. They are in the third sphere because their love was the third best.
What it helps to know
Charles Martel (1271–1295) was the eldest son of King Charles II of Anjou (the "Lame", ruler of the Kingdom of Naples) and Mary of Hungary. By inheritance he was titular King of Hungary (through his mother), destined King of Naples (through his father), and titular King of the Provençal territories his line had inherited. In 1294 he led a Neapolitan diplomatic mission to Florence, where Dante seems to have met him and to have read him poems. He left a strong impression; sixteen years later, Dante grants him one of the cantica's longest single speeches.
A piece of dynastic background matters for what Charles will say at the canto's end. Charles's younger brother was Robert of Anjou, who eventually inherited the Neapolitan throne when Charles Martel's son Charobert was passed over by the family. Robert was, by Dante's lights, a poor king — avaricious, in the canto's term, where his elder brother had been liberal. The puzzle Charles will pose is the canto's central one: how can two sons of the same father differ so greatly in nature? Why does providence permit a son to be unlike his father?
The classical figures briefly invoked at the canto's opening are Cypria (Venus of Cyprus, the planet personified), Dione (Venus's mother in Greek myth), and Cupid, her son. The reference to the third epicycle is to the Ptolemaic mechanism by which the planet's apparent retrograde motion was explained — Venus has its own small circle of motion within the larger sphere.
What to read for
Notice the canto's opening tercet. The world used in its peril to believe that the fair Cypria delirious love rayed out. The opening used to believe signals that the canto is going to gather and bury the pagan inheritance of erotic love before it offers the Christian version of the sphere. The dismissal is light — almost affectionate — but it is a dismissal.
Notice how Charles greets Dante. He does not begin with self-introduction; he begins by quoting one of Dante's own poems — the canzone Voi che 'ntendendo il terzo ciel movete (You who by understanding move the third heaven), which Dante had written years earlier addressed precisely to the intelligences of the sphere of Venus. The friendship between living poet and dead king is registered in the dead king's memory of the poem.
Charles's speech runs through three movements: a brief greeting (with the quotation), a lament for what his early death prevented (the kingdoms he should have governed), and a long doctrinal exposition of providence and inheritance that ends in the canto's bitterest single line. Let the affection of the meeting set up the gravity of the doctrine, and let the doctrine land hard.
The canto closes with a question the next canto will answer in a different voice. Paradiso's spheres run on long, and one soul's speech often opens space for another's.
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 opened the heaven of Venus with a brief dismissal of the pagan goddess of love, brought forward a single soul Dante had known personally in life — Charles Martel of Anjou, dead aged twenty-four — and through Charles's mouth delivered one of the cantica's most important small doctrines: that providence ordains different natures for different roles in human society, and that the world goes wrong precisely when those natures are misallocated. The canto is also one of the cantica's most affectionate. The young king greets the poet by quoting one of the poet's own poems back to him — a canzone Dante had written years earlier to the intelligences of the very sphere they are now in. The encounter is the Commedia's most extended exchange between a living poet and a soul he loved on earth. And its closing tercets are among the bitterest lines in the cantica: a diagnosis of social derangement that Dante turns, without saying so, against his own Florence.
The canto's opening: the pagan goddess buried
The first three tercets gather and dismiss the classical Venus.
The world used in its peril to believe That the fair Cypria delirious love Rayed out, in the third epicycle turning (Par. VIII.1–3)
Cypria is Venus of Cyprus, the planet personified. The third epicycle is the Ptolemaic technical detail by which Venus's apparent retrograde motion was explained — Venus moves on its own small circle within the larger sphere. The opening word — used to — is the canto's whole posture toward the pagan inheritance. The world used to believe in this; it does so no longer. The canto names Dione (Venus's mother) and Cupid (her son) in the same opening tercets and buries them all before any blessed soul appears. Paradiso will keep classical mythology in the toolkit (Apollo at the cantica's opening; the Furies and Erinyes named in later cantos) but always as dismissed beauty — as figures held lovingly but firmly in the past.
Charles greets Dante with Dante's own poem
The blessed of Venus dance in spirals around the pilgrim, and one detaches and comes forward. He greets Dante not by introducing himself but by quoting back to him the opening line of a poem Dante had written years before:
Voi che 'ntendendo il terzo ciel movete (You who by your understanding move the third heaven)
The line is from one of the canzoni Dante wrote in his Convivio period, addressed precisely to the intelligences of Venus's sphere. The dead king has read the living poet's work and remembers it well enough to open with it. Sixteen years after Charles's death from plague in 1295, the cantica registers the friendship with the precise tenderness it deserves: not by sentiment, but by an exact quotation. I have read your poem. The cantica does not make this gesture for any other living writer Dante knew. Charles is the only soul in Paradiso who speaks to the poet as a reader.
Self-introduction, and what was lost
When Charles finally identifies himself, the introduction is grave.
The world possessed me Short time below; and, if it had been more, Much evil will be which would not have been. (Par. VIII.49–51)
Short time below — poco tempo. He died at twenty-four. Much evil will be — the future tense is precise: Charles is reading the present and future of his family from the Empyrean and seeing, not predicting, what has happened and what will happen in southern Italy because he was not there to rule. The next dozen lines enumerate what he would have governed: the lands from the Rhône to the Tronto (Provence and Naples), and through his Hungarian mother, also Hungary; and, by inheritance through his father, also Sicily — until the Sicilian Vespers of 1282 had torn Sicily from the Angevin crown. Three kingdoms gone with one young death.
The central doctrine: providence and inheritance
Charles then turns to the canto's hardest question. If providence ordains each person to a role, why does a son so often differ in nature from his father? How can virtue not run by inheritance? The pilgrim does not ask the question explicitly; Charles diagnoses it from his familial knowledge — his own younger brother Robert, who in time will inherit and squander what Charles would have governed.
The argument runs through three steps. First: the heavens, working as providence's instruments, impress on each new human soul a particular nature — a particular inclination to one virtue or activity. Second: this impression is not determined by parentage. The same heavens that make a great-souled father may, by their varying influences on the next conception, impress a small-souled son. Third: human society needs differing natures, because no city can survive on one kind of person alone. The diversity of natures is a gift of providence.
And can they be so, if below they live not Diversely unto offices diverse? No, if your master writeth well for you. (Par. VIII.118–120)
Your master is Aristotle (especially the Politics), to whom Dante constantly defers as the master of those who know. The canto is grounding its social argument in the classical philosophical inheritance — if Aristotle writes well for you, the diversity of offices requires the diversity of natures, and the diversity of natures requires that virtue not run by inheritance.
The bitter close
Then comes the diagnosis.
But you unto religion wrench aside 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. (Par. VIII.145–148)
The diagnosis is the cantica's bitterest single small judgment of medieval Italy. Society goes wrong when it forces into religious life those born for action, and into political rule those born for preaching. The two halves match: the soldier-monk is as wrong as the preacher-king. The result is footsteps wandering from the road. The closing line is also a quiet self-reading. Dante's own brother — Francesco — lived a quiet life; Dante was the one of his line forced into politics by a city that had no proper governance for him. The line cuts because the poet has lived inside the misallocation he diagnoses.
The cantica's third sphere closes on a darkness the cantica does not relieve. Charles is in heaven; his absence from his thrones has cost Italy. The blessed do not lament — his will is our peace — but the cantica does, on their behalf.
Famous and meaningful passages
The opening dismissal.
The world used in its peril to believe That the fair Cypria delirious love Rayed out, in the third epicycle turning (Par. VIII.1–3)
The pagan goddess buried with affection. Used to — the past tense is the whole judgment.
Charles names what was lost.
The world possessed me Short time below; and, if it had been more, Much evil will be which would not have been. (Par. VIII.49–51)
The conditional that haunts the canto. If it had been more: three kingdoms, well-governed, would have changed Italy.
The doctrine of diverse natures.
And can they be so, if below they live not Diversely unto offices diverse? No, if your master writeth well for you. (Par. VIII.118–120)
Providence works through nature, and nature is diverse. The diversity is the gift.
The bitter close.
But you unto religion wrench aside 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. (Par. VIII.145–148)
The cantica's clearest single small judgment of misallocated vocation. The line will be quoted against the policies of the medieval church for centuries.
What to watch for
Watch the doctrine of diverse natures. It will return in canto IX, where Folquet of Marseille — a troubadour turned bishop — will provide the positive case: the man whose true nature was found late. Charles's canto and Folquet's are paired studies of vocation rightly and wrongly assumed.
Watch the Voi che 'ntendendo quotation. Charles is the only soul in Paradiso who reads the poet's own work back to him. The intimacy of the gesture will not be repeated.
Watch what Charles does not condemn. He does not condemn his brother Robert. He does not condemn the heavens that impressed Robert's lesser nature. He condemns only the social arrangement that lets misallocation flourish. The cantica's politics in this canto are diagnostic, not vindictive.
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.