Paradiso · Canto IX ·
Paradiso IX — Cunizza Speaks
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 76 of 100 · Paradiso, Canto IX
Before reading
This is the second canto of Venus and the cantica's most surprising small lineup. Three souls speak: a thirteenth-century noblewoman famous in her own time for a series of public love-affairs (Cunizza da Romano); a Provençal troubadour-turned-bishop who composed some of the most erotic poetry of his age before renouncing the world (Folquet of Marseille); and a Canaanite prostitute from the Book of Joshua (Rahab). All three are in heaven. All three are in the sphere of love. The canto is the Commedia's most concentrated statement of one of its most radical propositions: that the love that disorders an earthly life can be the same love, redirected, that exalts a saved one.
Where the canto sits
Venus is the third heaven, the last of the three lowest spheres whose souls bear, in any visible way, the trace of earthly attachment. From the Sun upward (canto X onward), the blessed will be those whose love was wholly of God. The three figures of canto IX are in Venus because their love had been of created things and persons — but the canto is at pains to show that this is not a category of lesser souls in any morally embarrassing sense. Each of the three is praised. Cunizza, in particular, will deliver a serene speech that includes a quiet prophecy of disaster for her own native region — without rancour, without anger, with the calm of one who has long ago stopped needing the world she was once at the centre of.
What it helps to know
Cunizza da Romano (c. 1198–c. 1279) was the sister of the most feared Ghibelline warlord of north-eastern Italy, Ezzelino III da Romano — Ezzelino the Cruel, who is plunged to his neck in the river of boiling blood in Inferno XII. Cunizza was married five times by her brothers for political alliance, and she conducted at least two famous public love affairs alongside her marriages: with the troubadour Sordello (who appears with great honour in Purgatorio VI–VII, the canto of "Ahi serva Italia") and with a knight named Bonio. She freed her family's slaves on her deathbed in Florence — a gesture that may explain her placement among the blessed. The contrast with her brother is the canto's quietest jolt: Ezzelino in the river of blood; Cunizza in the dance of light.
Folquet of Marseille (c. 1150–1231) was one of the great Provençal troubadours, composing some of the most accomplished love-poetry of the late twelfth century. In middle age he renounced his life, entered the Cistercian order, and rose to become Bishop of Toulouse. As bishop, he was one of the chief preachers of the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) against the Cathars of Languedoc — a brutal church-sponsored war that destroyed Provençal civilisation and is one of the most morally complicated episodes in Dante's lineup of saved souls. The canto says nothing of the Crusade. It places him in Venus as a former lover who became a man of God.
Rahab is the Canaanite prostitute of the Book of Joshua (Joshua 2 and 6), who hid the Israelite spies in her house in Jericho and was spared, with her family, when the city fell. In the medieval Christian tradition she was read as a figura of the Church gathered from the gentiles and was famously cited by St Paul (Hebrews 11:31) as an example of saving faith. The canto names her as the first soul taken up to the heaven of Venus from the harrowing of Hell.
Folquet's mouth, near the canto's close, will deliver one of the cantica's most savage indictments of contemporary Church corruption — the bishops who studied the Decretals (canon law) and ignored the Gospels, the accursed flower (the florin, Florence's gold coin) that had bought the Church's pastors. The reader should be ready: a canto that begins in love-affairs ends in a prophecy of clerical doom.
What to read for
Notice the canto's three voices and their order. Cunizza speaks first — calm, retrospective, with a quiet prophecy. Folquet speaks second — at greater length, more reflective, with a famous self-comparison to ancient lovers. Rahab does not speak at all; she is named by Folquet, as the first soul of the harrowing. The three figures form a quiet ascending hierarchy of articulation: the most personal speaks first, the most theological speaks last, and the silent figure who anchors the doctrine does not need to say a word.
Notice Cunizza's serenity. The Marca Trevigiana — her homeland — is about to be torn apart by war, and she knows it. She prophesies the disaster without sorrow. His will is our peace is being lived in her speech, even though she does not quote it.
Listen for Folquet's catalogue of ancient lovers — Dido, Phyllis, Hercules and Iole — and notice that he places himself among them. The naming is generous and self-implicating.
The canto ends in invective so sharp that the reader may forget for a moment that Paradiso is meant to be the cantica of joy. The cantica's anger is at home in heaven.
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 presented three saved souls whose lineup is, by any measure, surprising. Cunizza da Romano, sister of Ezzelino the Cruel (in the river of blood of Inferno XII), the woman of many public love-affairs, freer of slaves on her deathbed — in Venus. Folquet of Marseille, troubadour of the fin'amor tradition and bishop who preached the Albigensian Crusade — in Venus. Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute who hid the Israelite spies — the first soul taken up to this heaven from the harrowing of Hell. The lineup is the cantica's most concentrated statement of one of its most radical propositions: that the love which disorders an earthly life is the same love which, redirected, saves it. The cantica does not condemn the original orientation. It records the redirection. Then it ends in invective so sharp that the reader may forget for a moment what cantica it is in. Heaven, in canto IX, is angry about the Church.
Cunizza and Ezzelino
The canto opens with the soul who has come forward at the end of canto VIII and names herself.
Cunizza was I called, and here I shine Because the splendour of this star o'ercame me. (Par. IX.32–33)
The splendour of this star — Venus's — overcame me. The line is the canto's most honest single statement of the doctrine the sphere of Venus is built on. The soul does not deny what overcame her on earth; she names it. Her brother Ezzelino is plunged in the boiling blood of Inferno XII. She is in the dance of light. The contrast is the cantica's most concentrated single piece of authored grace. Same family; same century; same northern Italy. The poet who composed both placements does not editorialise. He lets the two cantos sit, hundreds of pages apart, and trusts the reader to feel them as a single contrast.
Cunizza then prophesies. Without anger, without grief, she tells the pilgrim what is going to happen in her native Marca Trevigiana — the wars and treacheries that within Dante's writing-life will tear the region apart. She delivers the prophecy with the calm of someone whose attachment to the world she once moved in has been wholly resolved. His will is our peace is being practised in the speaking. She does not need to quote Piccarda; the cantica's central proposition is now ambient.
Folquet and the catalogue of lovers
The second soul comes forward and identifies himself with a tercet that, like Charles Martel's quotation of Dante's canzone, is a piece of literary self-consciousness.
Folco that people called me unto whom My name was known; and now with me this heaven Imprints itself, as I did once with it (Par. IX.94–96)
As I did once with it — Folquet had once imprinted Venus's influence on his Provençal love-poems; now the heaven imprints itself on him. The reciprocity is the canto's quiet thesis. The same erotic faculty that produced the canzoni of his troubadour years is the faculty by which, redirected, he received episcopal vocation.
He then catalogues himself among the great unfortunate lovers of antiquity. Belus' daughter, wronging both Sichaeus and Creusa, did not so flame as I. The naming is Dido — Belus's daughter, who in loving Aeneas wronged both her dead husband Sichaeus and Aeneas's wife Creusa. Nor that Rhodopeian maid — Phyllis, who hanged herself when Demophoön did not return. Nor Alcides when his heart was prisoned to Iole — Hercules in his last and most consuming love for Iole. Folquet places his own earthly love in this lineage, says it flamed as theirs did, and then says — without embarrassment, without retraction — that the same love, redirected, is the love by which he now shines. The boldness of the move is hard to overstate. Dido is in Inferno V; her tragedy is one of the Commedia's deepest sources of pity. Folquet is in Paradise. The canto does not explain why; it lets the contrast stand.
Rahab — and what she is doing in Venus
Folquet then names the soul beside him.
Into this heaven, where ends the shadowy cone Cast by your world, before all other souls First of Christ's triumph was she taken up. (Par. IX.118–120)
The reference is to the medieval doctrine of the harrowing of Hell — that Christ, between his death and resurrection, descended to Limbo and led out the righteous of the Old Covenant. Where ends the shadowy cone cast by your world is precise medieval astronomy: the earth's shadow extends, at most, to the sphere of Venus and there is cut off; beyond Venus the cosmos is in unbroken light. Venus is the last heaven that touches earth's shadow. Rahab is the first soul to have been lifted past that shadow on Christ's triumph.
A Canaanite prostitute. From the Book of Joshua. The first soul of the harrowing. The cantica places her in Venus because her loyalty to the Israelite spies was an act of love directed where it should have been — toward the people of God's purpose — and that love saved her, her family, and (in the Christian typological reading) the Church gathered from the gentiles. She does not speak. She is named. The naming is the canto's quietest piece of authored canonisation.
Folquet's invective
The canto's last twenty lines turn from love to ecclesiastical fury. Folquet diagnoses the corruption of the medieval Church through one allegorical image: the accursed flower — the maledetto fiore, the gold florin of Florence, with the fleur-de-lys of the city stamped on its face. The coin has corrupted the pastors.
Brings forth and scatters the accursed flower Which both the sheep and lambs hath led astray Since it has turned the shepherd to a wolf. (Par. IX.130–132)
The wolf is the lupa of Inferno I, returned. The she-wolf of avarice has now taken up residence inside the institution that was supposed to oppose her. The shepherd has been turned to a wolf. Folquet then names the consequence:
For this the Evangel and the mighty Doctors Are derelict, and only the Decretals So studied that it shows upon their margins. (Par. IX.133–135)
The Decretals are the books of canon law — Gratian and his successors. The mighty Doctors are the Fathers of the Church (Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose, in the medieval canon). The diagnosis is sharp: the clergy of 1300 read the manuals of jurisdiction and ignore the Gospels and the Fathers. The greasy thumbprints on the margins of canon-law manuscripts (so studied that it shows upon their margins) is one of the cantica's bitterest small visual details.
The canto closes on the prophecy of papal corruption that the rest of the cantica will not let go: the Vatican and the other parts elect of Rome shall soon be freed from this adultery. The reader is left in no doubt as to who is being indicted. The cantica that opened on light and warning and ascent ends, in this sphere of love, with a curse against the buyers and sellers in the temple.
Famous and meaningful passages
Cunizza names herself.
Cunizza was I called, and here I shine Because the splendour of this star o'ercame me. (Par. IX.32–33)
The honest naming. I was overcome. No retraction; no embarrassment. The same love saved her.
Folquet names himself.
Folco that people called me unto whom My name was known; and now with me this heaven Imprints itself, as I did once with it (Par. IX.94–96)
The reciprocity of imprint. The faculty is the same; the orientation has been turned.
Rahab in the first cohort.
Into this heaven, where ends the shadowy cone Cast by your world, before all other souls First of Christ's triumph was she taken up. (Par. IX.118–120)
The Canaanite prostitute as the first soul of the harrowing. The cantica's quietest single act of canonisation.
The accursed flower.
Brings forth and scatters the accursed flower Which both the sheep and lambs hath led astray Since it has turned the shepherd to a wolf. (Par. IX.130–132)
The florin — Florence's gold coin — as the device by which the she-wolf entered the Church. The line is one of the most quoted single images of medieval ecclesiastical corruption.
The neglected Gospels.
For this the Evangel and the mighty Doctors Are derelict, and only the Decretals So studied that it shows upon their margins. (Par. IX.133–135)
The grease-stained canon-law books and the unopened Gospels. The cantica's most concentrated visual of clerical malpractice.
What to watch for
Watch the doctrine of the redirected love. From here on, the great encounters of Paradiso — the patriarchs, the warriors, the theologians, the contemplatives — will be soul after soul whose earthly love had a direction, and whose blessedness is that direction's perfection. The lovers of Venus were the earliest test case.
Watch the accursed flower. The florin will return — implicit but unmistakeable — in Aquinas's invective in canto XI, in the eagle-of-justice cantos XVIII–XIX, in Peter Damian's tirade in XXI, and in St Peter's apocalyptic denunciation in XXVII. Paradiso is not done with ecclesiastical money.
Watch Rahab's silence. Heaven has its own canonisations, the cantica is saying, and they do not require the canonised to defend themselves. The cantica's quietest figures are sometimes its most exalted.
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.