Paradiso X — The Trinity and the World

Before reading

This is the canto in which the pilgrim leaves the three lower spheres behind and enters the heaven of the Sun — the fourth of the seven planetary heavens, and the threshold of Paradiso's second movement. From here on, the souls he meets bear no trace of earthly attachment. The heaven of the Sun is the cantica's heaven of theologians — the great teachers of Christian wisdom, who have known God by mind. They appear to the pilgrim in a particular arrangement that will become one of the cantica's signatures: a dance — a slow circling of lights that opens and closes itself in choreographed figures. In this canto, twelve of them form a single crown around the pilgrim and his guide.

Where the canto sits

In the medieval cosmos the Sun was not just one heavenly body among others but the image of God in the visible universe — the source of light, life, and warmth for the earth, the centre of the visible world even though not its physical centre. The cantica has placed in this sphere the souls whose lives were given to understanding the divine — the great theologians, philosophers, and teachers of the Christian tradition. The choreography is a dance of the wise. It is also one of the Commedia's most extraordinary pieces of intellectual generosity: the lineup of twelve will include Christians and near-Christians, Latins and Greeks, the orthodox and the awkward, all dancing together in a single ring.

The principal voice of the canto is St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the great Dominican theologian whose Summa Theologiae was the most ambitious synthesis of philosophy and theology ever attempted in medieval Europe. Aquinas had been canonised in 1323 — just before Dante finished the Commedia — and was already the central authority of the schools. In canto X he will name himself last, after first naming his eleven companions in the dance.

What it helps to know

The canto's structure is unusual. It opens with one of the cantica's longest single direct addresses to the reader — a thirty-line preface in which the poet asks the reader to lift his sight with him to the visible cosmos and contemplate the order by which the Father binds Son and Spirit. The preface is more than scene-setting. It is the cantica's clearest single argument that the act of careful looking at the natural world is, properly understood, an act of theological contemplation. Lift then thy view: the line is the Commedia's invitation to a discipline.

A second piece of context matters. The twelve souls Aquinas will name are not all whom one might expect a Dominican to praise. The list includes:

Albertus Magnus (Aquinas's own teacher; a German Dominican; the man who first integrated Aristotle systematically into Christian theology)
Gratian (the twelfth-century canonist whose Decretum organised canon law — the very Decretals Folquet had cursed in canto IX, here praised in their original honest form)
Peter Lombard (the twelfth-century Sententiae-author whose Sentences were the standard medieval theology textbook)
Solomon (whose presence Aquinas will discuss at length in canto XIII)
Dionysius the Areopagite (the Greek mystic believed to be the Athenian convert of St Paul)
Orosius (the fifth-century historian whose Histories Against the Pagans defended providential history; sometimes identified with this fifth light)
Boethius (the sixth-century Roman senator, author of The Consolation of Philosophy, executed by Theodoric — the most influential consolatory text of the Middle Ages)
Isidore of Seville (the seventh-century encyclopaedist)
The Venerable Bede (the eighth-century English historian and biblical commentator)
Richard of St Victor (the twelfth-century mystic)
Siger of Brabant (the controversial thirteenth-century Latin Averroist philosopher who had been condemned by ecclesiastical authority — placed in heaven here by a Dominican who had personally argued against him in life)

The Siger placement is one of the cantica's most charged moves. A reader who knows the schools will feel it; the canto trusts the reader to feel it without explanation.

What to read for

Notice the opening thirty lines. They are not narrative. They are the cantica's most concentrated single piece of theology-as-natural-observation: look at the order of the heavens; look at the angle of the ecliptic; if it were the slightest degree different, all life would fail. The argument is precise. The order of the world is the visible argument for the goodness of its source.

Notice the rhythm of Aquinas's naming. He names his companions one by one, each with a brief identifying phrase — like a master of ceremonies introducing a circle of dancers. The naming is Paradiso's alternative to portraiture: each soul is a name and an attribute, drawn in light rather than in face.

The canto closes with one of the Commedia's loveliest single similes: the dance of the wise compared to a clock striking matins. The image — mechanical, devotional, exact — captures something the cantica will return to repeatedly. The choreographies of heaven are clockwork: precise, repeatable, full of joy.

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 cantica's second major movement — the ascent from the three lower spheres (Moon, Mercury, Venus) into the four higher (Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). From here on, the souls bear no trace of earthly attachment. The Sun is the heaven of theologians, the souls whose lives were given to understanding God by mind. The canto opened with one of the cantica's longest and most concentrated single direct addresses to the reader — a thirty-line preface that does theological work disguised as natural observation — and then unveiled the cantica's most stunning new structural device: the dance of the wise. Twelve theologians form a perfect crown around the pilgrim and his guide, and one of them, Aquinas, names the other eleven and himself in a careful order that is, by itself, a small literary canon. The canto closes with the cantica's loveliest single piece of mechanical-devotional simile: the dance compared to a fourteenth-century horologe striking matins.

The preface, and the discipline of looking

The canto's opening thirty lines are one of the Commedia's most beautiful sustained pieces of theology. The poet asks the reader to lift his sight with him and contemplate the order of the visible heavens.

Looking into his Son with all the Love Which each of them eternally breathes forth, The Primal and unutterable Power. (Par. X.1–3)

The opening tercet is the cantica's compressed Trinitarian theology: the Father gazes upon the Son in the Love (the Spirit) which they eternally breathe forth, and from this Trinitarian act all order in the visible universe is established. Then comes the move that is the canto's whole pedagogy. The poet asks the reader to look at the slant of the ecliptic — the angle by which the sun's path crosses the celestial equator — and consider how, if it were the slightest degree different, all life on earth would fail. The order is not blind necessity; it is the art of the source.

Remain now, Reader, still upon thy bench, In thought pursuing that which is foretasted, If thou wouldst jocund be instead of weary. (Par. X.22–24)

Remain now, Reader, still upon thy bench. The line is the cantica's most direct invitation to the reader's contemplation — not to the next paragraph, but to the same kind of attentive looking the canto is doing. The reader is asked to share the poet's discipline. Paradiso is the first European poem to ask its reader, by name, to pause and think.

The crown of twelve

The pilgrim and Beatrice arrive in the Sun without his noticing the transit — I was within him before I was aware. The blessed appear as twelve flames that array themselves in a perfect circle around the two visitors. The image is the crown — the cantica's first appearance of the dance-figure that will become its signature: souls in heaven move in choreographed light, and the choreography is the form their joy takes.

The principal voice is Aquinas, who introduces himself with characteristic Dominican plainness.

Of the lambs was I of the holy flock Which Dominic conducteth by a road Where well one fattens if he strayeth not. (Par. X.94–96)

Where well one fattens if he strayeth not — the Dominican Order is the well-stocked pasture; he who strays from it does not fatten. The line is a quiet rebuke aimed at contemporary Dominicans who have wandered from the founder's rule. The cantica is now placing in the mouths of saved theologians the kind of order-by-order criticism that Folquet had placed in the mouth of a saved bishop in canto IX. The pattern is that the canonised speak more sharply about the corruption of their own institutions than any outside critic could.

The eleven companions

Aquinas then names each light around him. The procedure is recital: he turns toward each in turn — he who is nearest to me on the right, next him, he whose smile is to my left — and gives each a brief identifier. The reader needs to follow the rhythm; the cantica is not pedantic about the historical identifications.

He who is nearest to me on the right My brother and master was; and he Albertus Is of Cologne, I Thomas of Aquinum. (Par. X.97–99)

The first name is Albertus Magnus, Aquinas's own teacher, the Dominican who first integrated Aristotle systematically into Christian theology. My brother and master: the precision of the address — brother (in the Order) and master (in the teaching) — is the cantica's habitual compression of relationships into a single tercet.

The rest of the recital includes Gratian (the canonist), Peter Lombard (the Sentences-author), Solomon (a placement Aquinas will defend at length in canto XIII), Dionysius the Areopagite (the Greek mystic), an unnamed fifth figure (traditionally Orosius the historian), Boethius, Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, Richard of St Victor, and — most surprisingly — Siger of Brabant. The naming is selective. It includes Greeks and Latins, lawyers and mystics, historians and the Old Testament's wisdom-king. It includes one figure (Siger) whose teaching had been condemned by ecclesiastical authority. It is a Dominican's intellectual canon, not the official one — and the inclusion of the controversial Siger, in particular, is the cantica's quietest single gesture of theological generosity.

Boethius

One of the named lights gets a slightly longer presentation than the others.

By seeing every good therein exults The sainted soul, which the fallacious world Makes manifest to him who listeneth well (Par. X., from the central naming)

The reference is to Boethius (c. 480–524 AD), the Roman senator-philosopher who, while awaiting execution by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, wrote the Consolation of Philosophy — the most influential consolatory text of the Middle Ages. The line is precise. Boethius's Consolation is in dialogue form: Lady Philosophy comes to him in his cell and teaches him to see the good in the universe even though the fallacious world (the political world that has condemned him) is collapsing around him. Dante, in 1300, was a man writing about a man condemned to death by political enemies — and one of his most cherished sources was the work of an earlier man condemned to death by political enemies. The intimacy of the placement is the cantica's quiet acknowledgement.

The matins simile

The canto closes on a simile that captures the cantica's whole new pictorial language.

Then, as a horologe that calleth us What time the Bride of God is rising up With matins to her Spouse that he may love her (Par. X., closing)

The horologe — the fourteenth-century mechanical clock — was, at the time of Dante's writing, the newest piece of European technology. The great monastic clocks were being built precisely in his lifetime; their function was to call the religious to the canonical hours of prayer. The simile is precise: the dance of the wise turns and chimes the way a horologe turns and chimes, and the Bride of God (the Church) is being called to matins (the dawn office of praise). The dance is mechanism and devotion at once. The cantica's heaven is clockwork, in the most exact medieval sense: precisely ordered, repeating, audible, full of joy.

Famous and meaningful passages

The opening tercet of the preface.

Looking into his Son with all the Love Which each of them eternally breathes forth, The Primal and unutterable Power. (Par. X.1–3)

The Trinitarian compression. The cantica's most elegant single statement of its source-doctrine.

The direct address to the reader.

Remain now, Reader, still upon thy bench, In thought pursuing that which is foretasted, If thou wouldst jocund be instead of weary. (Par. X.22–24)

The most direct invitation to contemplation the Commedia gives. Remain on your bench.

Aquinas's self-introduction.

Of the lambs was I of the holy flock Which Dominic conducteth by a road Where well one fattens if he strayeth not. (Par. X.94–96)

The Dominican naming, with its small rebuke of those who have strayed from the rule.

Albertus named.

He who is nearest to me on the right My brother and master was; and he Albertus Is of Cologne, I Thomas of Aquinum. (Par. X.97–99)

The compression of brother and master — Order and teaching, fused into one address.

The matins simile.

Then, as a horologe that calleth us What time the Bride of God is rising up With matins to her Spouse that he may love her (Par. X., closing)

The newest technology of 1300 made into the cantica's signature image for the dance of the blessed.

What to watch for

Watch the dance-figure. From canto X onward, the souls of the higher heavens appear in choreographed light — crowns, crosses, eagles, ladders. The crown of twelve is the first; canto XIV will give the cross of Mars; XVIII the eagle of Jupiter; XXI the ladder of Saturn. The choreographies are the cantica's new pictorial language.

Watch the Siger placement. Aquinas, who in life had argued against Latin Averroism, places Siger of Brabant — the principal Latin Averroist — in the same dance as himself. The cantica is making its quietest single argument for an intellectual canon broader than any institution's. Paradiso XIII will explore Aquinas's relationship to the wisdom of those his Order had condemned.

Watch the direct address. From here on, the poet will turn to the reader more often. The cantica is teaching its readers to contemplate, not merely to follow.

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.