Paradiso · Canto XXI ·
Paradiso XXI — The Golden Ladder
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 88 of 100 · Paradiso, Canto XXI
Before reading
This is the canto in which the Paradiso changes its register. The visual choreography of the lower heavens — the dancing wreaths of the Sun, the crucible of Mars, the spelt-out sentence and the assembling eagle of Jupiter — ends. Saturn is silent. Beatrice does not smile. The cantica enters the heaven of the contemplatives, and the form the canto chooses is the form contemplation itself prefers: a stair rising out of sight, a single voice descending it, a brief life and a sharp denunciation, a great wordless cry at the end.
Where the canto sits
The pilgrim has left Jupiter and risen with Beatrice into Saturn, the seventh heaven, the highest of the planetary spheres in Dante's cosmology. Saturn was, in the medieval astronomy, the cold and lead-coloured planet of melancholy and the contemplative temperament; the medieval astrology assigned to it the dispositions of solitude, study, prayer, and the long patient waiting that the monastic life made its work. The souls of this heaven are the great contemplatives — the men and women who in life withdrew from the busy world to the cells of hermitages and monasteries.
The canto opens with a small piece of stagecraft that is also a piece of doctrine. Beatrice does not smile. If I were to smile, she says, thou wouldst become like Semele — the Theban princess who asked her divine lover Zeus to show himself in his full glory and was burnt to ashes by the disclosure. The line is a warning: the pilgrim has risen high enough that even Beatrice's joy, if it were given freely, would destroy him. The withholding is the canto's first picture of what contemplative heaven is: the heaven so high that direct vision must be filtered.
What it helps to know
The canto's central image is the golden ladder of Saturn. A long ladder rising vertically into the heaven, coloured like gold on which the sunshine gleams, uplifted to such a height that mine eye pursued it not. Down the ladder come many splendours — the souls of the contemplatives, descending the way Jacob's angels descended in the dream at Bethel (Genesis 28). The figure is the cantica's third great ideogram: the cross of Mars for the warrior-blessed, the eagle of Jupiter for the just rulers, the ladder of Saturn for the contemplatives. Each higher heaven has its sign, and each sign is more abstract than the one below — from the cross (a figure of suffering bearing the body), to the eagle (a figure of one government extended over many), to the ladder (a figure of pure ascent, with no body to bear and no government to manage). The cantica is teaching the reader, by the geometry of its own emblems, what contemplation is.
The speaker who descends to meet the pilgrim is Peter Damian (c. 1007–1072), the great Italian Benedictine reformer, hermit of the abbey of Fonte Avellana in the Apennines on the slopes of Mount Catria, later cardinal-bishop of Ostia, doctor of the Church. He was one of the architects of the eleventh-century monastic and clerical reform, the man who wrote sharp tracts against simony, lay investiture, and clerical concubinage, and the man whose own life moved between the hermit's cell and the curia in a way that exemplified the tension the canto will name. He died in 1072.
The canto closes on a denunciation. Peter Damian, having named himself and his hermitage, turns to the contemporary Church — and specifically to the contemporary cardinals — and lets fly. The denunciation is the Paradiso's sharpest single attack on the clergy other than St Peter's own in canto XXVII. Modern shepherds need someone to support them on either side and someone to lead them, so heavy are they, and others to hold their trains. They cover up their palfreys with their cloaks, so that two beasts go underneath one skin. The cardinals' fattened ceremonial — the elaborate vestments, the supported processions, the ornamented mules whose embroidered cloth-of-state hangs down to cover the animal underneath — is named with a contempt the cantica has not let itself voice since the Inferno. Then the souls all cry out at once in a sound so loud the pilgrim is thunderstruck, and the canto ends.
What to read for
Notice the silence. Beatrice does not smile; no song is heard until the very end. The canto is the Paradiso's quietest. The cantica is teaching, by the absence of music, what the heaven of the contemplative is.
Notice the ladder. Read it as the canto's controlling image. Every other heaven has had its souls arranged in a dance or a formation — a wreath, a cross, an eagle. Saturn's souls are on a stair, the figure of pure ascent. The ascent is itself the heaven's content.
Notice the cry. The canto ends not on speech but on a thunder of sound that has no words — the wordless approval of the assembled contemplatives at Peter Damian's denunciation. The denunciation is so harsh that the saints of the cantica's quietest heaven respond not with measured assent but with a shout. The shout is the canto's last figure.
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 cantica changed register. Beatrice stopped smiling and warned the pilgrim that her smile, at this height, would burn him. A golden ladder rose out of the picture into invisibility, and down it came the souls of the contemplatives, in silence — no music, no song, no choreographed dance like the wreaths of the Sun or the alphabet of Jupiter. One of the descending souls stopped at the pilgrim's level; spoke; named himself as Peter Damian; described the hermitage of Catria where he had lived; and then, in the canto's structural turn, denounced the contemporary cardinals in some of the Commedia's sharpest single lines. The denunciation was answered by the assembled contemplatives with a wordless cry so loud the pilgrim was thunderstruck. The canto ended on the noise of the cry, the way Inferno III ended on the noise of the wind and the gate. The contemplatives' silence and the contemplatives' shout are the same heaven's two voices.
The withholding of Beatrice's smile
The canto's first move is a small piece of cosmology made personal. Beatrice has been smiling at the pilgrim through every canto of the Paradiso; her smile has been the Paradiso's constant small light. Here, abruptly, she does not. If I were to smile, thou wouldst become like Semele. The Theban princess Semele, in the Ovidian myth, asked her divine lover Jupiter to show himself to her in his full glory; she was burnt to ashes by the disclosure. Beatrice is telling the pilgrim that he has now risen so high that even her ordinary joy, if released, would destroy him. The pilgrim's vision is being graduated: he was not strong enough for direct divine seeing in the lower heavens; he is not yet strong enough for unfiltered Beatrice in Saturn; only in the very last canto of the cantica will he be capable of looking directly at God.
The figure is also doctrinal. The Paradiso teaches throughout that the blessed accommodate themselves to the pilgrim's capacity — that the heaven of the Moon, where the pilgrim first sees the blessed as faint reflections, is not where Piccarda and Constance are, but where they appear to him because his eyes can bear no more. The cantica's whole architecture is the slow training of the eye to see what was always there. Beatrice's withheld smile in canto XXI is the structural midpoint of that training.
The ladder and the silence
The ladder is the cantica's third great ideogram. The cross of Mars was a figure of bearing; the eagle of Jupiter was a figure of just government; the ladder of Saturn is a figure of pure ascent. There is no body to suffer, no realm to rule, no service to perform — only the movement upward, the only direction that matters. The picture is taken directly from Jacob's dream at Bethel (Genesis 28): behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. Dante quotes the figure without naming the source, the way medieval writing always quoted Scripture: the reader is assumed to recognise.
The contemplatives descend the ladder in silence. In every previous heaven the souls have been heard before they have been seen — singing in unison, or shouting Hosanna, or whispering a name. Saturn is silent. I in this place would render unto thee my voice attuned to dulce response, the speaker will say later in the canto, but that with which thou hast asked transcends so far thy seeing that the deeper search would be the fault. The silence is doctrine: contemplation has gone beyond music, because music is still discourse, and the contemplative has stopped discoursing.
Peter Damian and the cell at Catria
The single soul that descends to meet the pilgrim names himself. I in that place was Peter Damiano. The phrase is precise — was Peter Damian in the hermitage at Catria, then was Peter the Sinner in another house (Pietro Peccator) — distinguishing his lay-name from his religious one, marking the two stages of his obedience. He was, in life, perhaps the most distinguished churchman of the early eleventh century outside the papacy itself: hermit of Fonte Avellana, then abbot, then unwilling cardinal-bishop of Ostia (he begged repeatedly to be released back to the cell and was repeatedly refused), papal legate, doctor of the Church. He wrote some of the sharpest tracts of the early reform movement, particularly the Liber Gomorrhianus against clerical concubinage and the Liber Gratissimus against simony. He died at Faenza in 1072. The canto's choice of him as the Paradiso's great spokesman of the contemplative life is itself a piece of argument: even the deepest hermit was, at the papal command, dragged out of his cell into the active life of the curia, and he served and suffered the service. The canto's Damian speaks from both halves of that obedience.
The description of the hermitage at Catria is one of the cantica's most particular pieces of local geography. Mount Catria stands in the Apennines between Gubbio and Pergola, and the hermitage of Fonte Avellana sits on its slope at an altitude where snow lies through much of the year. The historical Damian's letters are full of complaints about the cold and the wind, and the canto's gentle praise of the place — consecrate a hermitage, the worship only — is part of its argument. The discipline of the cell was the school of the soul; the discipline produced the saint; the saint, when dragged into the curia, did not turn into a curial saint but remained the saint the cell had made.
The doctrine that the canto does not press
The pilgrim asks a question the canto is uneasy with. Why was it specifically you — Damian — that was assigned to meet me here? Why this particular soul rather than another? The question goes deeper than it sounds; it is the question of why anyone is in any particular place in the divine economy, which is the question of predestination itself. Damian's answer is the canto's most carefully restrained passage. Thy question goes too far for any of us to answer; it asks why a soul is loved by God in this way rather than that way; and the answer is hidden even from us who see most. The canto refuses to enter the speculation. The line carries the same restraint as Aquinas's lead at the feet in canto XIII and as the eagle's short sight of a single span in canto XIX. The Paradiso teaches throughout that the divine ordering of particulars is not for the human eye, even from inside Heaven, to read.
The denunciation
Then the canto turns. Damian — having spoken his cell, having refused the deep question, having registered the proper humility of the contemplative — looks across at the contemporary curia and lets fly.
Now some one to support them on each side The modern shepherds need, and some to lead them, So heavy are they, and to hold their trains. (Par. XXI.130–132)
The fattened cardinal needs a man on each side to hold him up, a man in front to lead his horse, and a man behind to carry the train of his cope. The image is exact and contemptuous. They cover up their palfreys with their cloaks, so that two beasts go underneath one skin. The embroidered cloth-of-state hangs to the ground and conceals the horse; the rider above is the second beast. O Patience, that dost tolerate so much! The denunciation has the same temperature as Peter's in canto XXVII, and the same temperature as the Inferno's denunciation of the simoniac popes. The cantica is consistent on this point throughout: the heaven of the blessed has no patience with the contemporary papal court.
Then the citation. Came Cephas, and the great Vessel of the Holy Spirit, meagre and barefooted, taking the food of any hostelry. Cephas is the Aramaic name of Peter — the apostle who held the keys of the kingdom and walked barefoot through the dust of Palestine begging his lunch. The great Vessel is Paul, vas electionis (Acts 9:15), who walked from Antioch to Jerusalem and from Asia Minor to Rome with the same lack of ceremony. The Apostles named are the original fathers of the see whose successors are now wrapped in the embroideries. The denunciation is structured as a contrast image — they walked; you ride covered — and the contrast is the canto's argument.
The thunder of the cry
Then the wordless ending. The assembled souls descend the ladder, gather around the speaker, and cry out together in a sound so loud the pilgrim is thunderstruck. The cry has no words. It is the contemplatives' assent to Damian's denunciation, registered in the only voice loud enough to be heard from Saturn's height. The canto ends mid-thunder; the pilgrim is overwhelmed; the cantica leaves the question of what was cried unresolved until the next canto.
The figure is exact. The heaven of silence ends on noise. The heaven of contemplation ends on wordless protest. The deepest withdrawal from the world ends with the deepest cry against the world's worst people. The canto is teaching that contemplation is not detachment from the world's evils but the place where the world's evils are most clearly seen.
Famous and meaningful passages
The withheld smile.
And she smiled not; but 'If I were to smile,' She unto me began, 'thou wouldst become Like Semele, when she was turned to ashes.' (Par. XXI.4–6)
The Theban princess who was burnt by direct divine glory. Beatrice's joy, at this height, would do the same.
The ladder.
Coloured like gold, on which the sunshine gleams, A stairway I beheld to such a height Uplifted, that mine eye pursued it not. (Par. XXI.28–30)
Color d'oro in che raggio traluce. The figure of Jacob's ladder repurposed as the heaven's permanent stair.
The souls descending.
And as accordant with their natural custom The rooks together at the break of day Bestir themselves to warm their feathers cold; (Par. XXI.34–36)
The descending souls compared to morning rooks rising from a roost. The cantica's most domestic small simile.
The hermitage.
'Neath which is consecrate a hermitage Wont to be dedicate to worship only.' Thus unto me the third speech recommenced, (Par. XXI.109–111)
The cell at Catria dedicate to worship only — al culto solo. The phrase is the canto's tribute to the contemplative life as the life that has only the one direction.
Damian names himself.
I in that place was Peter Damiano; And Peter the Sinner was I in the house Of Our Lady on the Adriatic shore. (Par. XXI.121–123)
The two names. The two houses. The two obediences.
The denunciation.
Now some one to support them on each side The modern shepherds need, and some to lead them, So heavy are they, and to hold their trains. (Par. XXI.130–132)
The contemporary cardinal: too fat to mount his horse without help.
The cope and the horse.
They cover up their palfreys with their cloaks, So that two beasts go underneath one skin; O Patience, that dost tolerate so much! (Par. XXI.133–135)
Due bestie van sott' una pelle. Two animals under one hide. The canto's most quoted compressed contempt.
Cephas and Paul.
Came Cephas, and the mighty Vessel came Of the Holy Spirit, meagre and barefooted, Taking the food of any hostelry. (Par. XXI.127–129)
The apostles walking barefoot in the dust, taking what hospitality they were offered. The contrast image that the denunciation is built against.
The closing thunder.
Round about this one came they and stood still, And a cry uttered of so loud a sound, It here could find no parallel, nor I Distinguished it, the thunder so o'ercame me. (Par. XXI.139–142)
Four lines where the canto's grammar expects three. The orphan-line ending again. The cry has no words and the pilgrim has no comparison for it; the canto closes inside the noise.
What to watch for
Watch the next canto. The cry of the assembled contemplatives at the end of XXI is the structural set-up for canto XXII, which will open by interpreting the cry through Beatrice and then introduce St Benedict himself, the founder of Western monasticism, who will both confirm Damian's denunciation and extend it. The two cantos together are the cantica's deepest reckoning with monastic life and its corruption.
Watch the figure of the barefoot. Cephas and Paul barefoot here, Francis barefoot in Paradiso XI, the apostles always meagre and barefooted — the cantica keeps returning to the same single image as its picture of authentic Christian leadership. The contrast with the modern covered palfreys is the canto's working contrast and one of the Paradiso's most consistent ones.
Watch the ascent. After Saturn the pilgrim leaves the planetary heavens entirely and rises into the sphere of the Fixed Stars — the eighth heaven, beyond the planets, where the cantica's argument shifts from the contemplative life into the Apostolic examination of his faith in the cantos that follow. Saturn is the last planet; XXII is the threshold between the planetary cantica and the apostolic one.
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.