Paradiso · Canto XXVII ·
Paradiso XXVII — The Reddening Heaven
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 94 of 100 · Paradiso, Canto XXVII
Before reading
The viva is over. Heaven sings a Gloria. The pilgrim is, for a moment, in pure joy — what I beheld seemed unto me a smile of the universe. And then Peter, the apostle who has just blessed him for Faith, begins to speak in his own voice, and the canto turns on a single uttered name — he who usurps upon the earth my place — into the fiercest political denunciation in Paradiso. The reader should expect a sudden change of weather. The brightest joy in Heaven and the most violent indictment of the Pope occupy the same canto.
Where the canto sits
We are still in the sphere of the Fixed Stars at the canto's opening, with Adam and the three apostles still present. By the end of the canto, the pilgrim and Beatrice will have risen into the Primum Mobile — the ninth and highest of the moving heavens, the first moved, the great outer sphere whose rotation transmits motion to every other heaven below it. Above the Primum Mobile is only the Empyrean, which is not a moving heaven but the dwelling place of God. The canto is therefore a threshold canto: we are passing the last moving sphere. After this, only the motionless can come.
What it helps to know
Peter's denunciation is aimed at Pope Boniface VIII — the same Boniface whose interference in Florentine politics caused Dante's exile in 1302. Boniface had died in October 1303, the year after Dante's exile began, and the Commedia was being written under his successors. Peter speaks as if Boniface were still alive and currently holding the chair — he who usurps upon the earth my place — because Peter is speaking from outside time. The denunciation extends to all the recent Popes who made of the cemetery a sewer of blood and stench. Peter names by contrast the worthy ones: Linus, Cletus, Sixtus, Pius, Urban, Calixtus — early bishops of Rome, all martyrs. The legitimate Church is the Church of the catacombs; the corrupted Church is the Church of the present.
The Gascons and the Caorsines Peter names are the contemporary French and Cahors money-lender Popes that Dante saw coming after Boniface: Clement V (a Gascon, the first pope to reside at Avignon) and John XXII (from Cahors, notorious for the wealth of his pontificate). Peter looks forward to them as further degraders of the seat.
The Primum Mobile, into which Dante ascends at the canto's end, is a theologically remarkable place. It is the only sphere whose location is given not in space but in the mind of God. Beatrice will explain that this heaven is the source of all motion, of all time, of every measure — and that it has no where outside itself, because its where is the Divine Mind.
What to read for
Read the opening five tercets as the brightest patch of joy in Paradiso so far. The whole heaven sings Gloria Patri; the pilgrim describes it as a smile of the universe; he is, in his own words, inebriated. The intensity of the joy is what makes the swing into Peter's anger work.
Notice Peter's threefold uttering of the word place. He who usurps upon the earth my place, / my place, my place, which vacant has become. The triplet is not rhetorical decoration. The chair is empty before God even though it is occupied by a body on earth — and Peter says so three times because the offence is triple, against the past, the present, and the future of the Church.
Notice how the canto ends with Beatrice giving Dante a political sermon disguised as cosmology. She describes the Primum Mobile, then immediately moves to Covetousness, the great wave that drowns mankind, and the prophecy that the tempest that has been so long awaited shall whirl the poops about where are the prows. The pivot is one of the canto's most beautiful structural moves: the highest heaven and the lowest political indictment delivered in the same breath.
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 staged the most violent denunciation in Paradiso and the entry into the highest moving heaven, both in the same hundred and forty-eight lines. It opened on a Gloria Patri sung by the whole of Heaven; the pilgrim called the sound a smile of the universe; for five lines Paradiso was in pure ecstasy. Then Peter, the apostle who had just blessed the pilgrim for Faith three cantos earlier, began to speak in his own voice. He who usurps upon the earth my place, / my place, my place, which vacant has become. The reddening of the heaven that followed (the colour of sun adverse) was the entire firmament turning the colour of shame at what its first chair-holder had to say about his successors. The denunciation runs for the canto's central forty lines. When it is done, Peter and the apostles rise upward like flakes of snow falling in reverse, and the pilgrim and Beatrice ascend into the Primum Mobile — the last moving heaven, the source of motion and time. There Beatrice gives a second sermon, this one against Covetousness, the great wave that drowns mankind. Two denunciations bookend the entry into the highest cosmos. The canto is asking, with deliberate weight: how do you ascend toward the still point while the human world below grows more corrupt by the year?
The triple place
Peter says the word place three times in two lines, and what is staged in the repetition is the shape of his rage. He who usurps upon the earth my place, / my place, my place, which vacant has become / Before the presence of the Son of God. The chair on earth is occupied; the chair before God is empty. The two are not the same chair, and Boniface VIII's occupancy of the first does not entail anything about the second. Peter's triplet says, in three uses of one word, that the legitimate Petrine office has been vacated by its present holder. The legal language of vacancy is being used as a theological language of judgment. To call the Pope's seat vacant before God is to deny the present Pope's spiritual authority while granting his juridical position. It is one of the most precise formulations of medieval anti-papalism, given here by the first Pope in person.
The catacomb Popes
Peter's defence of the legitimate Church is structured as a roll-call of names: Linus, Cletus, Sixtus, Pius, Urban, Calixtus — early bishops of Rome, all of whom were martyred. The legitimate Church is the Church that bled. Notice what Peter does not name: any Pope of the last several hundred years. His list stops in the late fourth century. The Church of the catacombs is the standard against which the Church of the present is being measured, and the present is being found, by name, wanting.
Gascons and Caorsines
Peter looks beyond the present into the future. The reference is to Clement V, the Gascon who moved the papal court to Avignon in 1309, and John XXII, the Cahors-born pope who reigned 1316–1334 and was notorious for the wealth and politics of his pontificate. Both were still in office or recent when Dante wrote. The denunciation Peter delivers is, in the literal sense, prophetic: the apostle in Heaven foresees the further corruption of his seat by the French line of popes that has just begun. Dante's politics, here as elsewhere, is the politics of the Holy Roman Emperor against the papacy — he was an imperialist, who believed the separation of temporal and spiritual power was the precondition of Christendom's health. Peter, in this canto, becomes Dante's mouthpiece. The first apostle and the exiled Florentine are arguing the same case.
The structural pivot — from cosmology to covetousness
The canto's second half is structurally remarkable. Beatrice describes the Primum Mobile in a few of the most beautiful tercets in Paradiso — the nature of that motion which keeps quiet / the centre and all the rest about it moves, / from hence begins as from its starting point. The whole physics of the cosmos is given in a sentence. And then, in the very next breath, Beatrice opens her own polemic: O Covetousness, that mortals dost ingulf. The pivot is the canto's most beautiful structural decision. The highest cosmos and the lowest human vice are placed in consecutive tercets. The whole motion of the universe begins in one sentence; the whole drowning of the human will begins in the next. Dante is staging the absolute inseparability of cosmology and ethics. The same canto that names the source of all motion names what prevents humans from moving toward it.
The prophecy at the close
The canto ends with Beatrice's prophecy of a coming reform: the tempest that has been so long awaited / shall whirl the poops about where are the prows; / so that the fleet shall run its course direct. The image is nautical and apocalyptic at once — the ships are presently sailing stern-first; the storm will turn them right; the true fruit shall follow on the flower. Seven hundred years of commentators have argued over whether this prophesies a specific person (an emperor, a saviour, a new pope) or simply the providential turn of history. Like the Greyhound prophecy of Inferno I, the canto leaves the prophecy deliberately open. What is fixed is the architecture: from inside the highest moving heaven, the corrupted Church on earth is given a date and a tempest. The whole poem will return to this prophecy in canto XXX, where Beatrice will name an empty seat in the white rose reserved for the soul of noble Henry — the Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg, whose attempted reconquest of Italy in 1310–1313 had been Dante's last political hope.
Famous and meaningful passages
The Gloria.
Glory be to the Father, to the Son, And Holy Ghost! all Paradise began, So that the melody inebriate made me. (Par. XXVII.1–3)
The whole of Heaven sings the Gloria Patri. The brightest patch of joy in Paradiso so far — placed deliberately at the threshold of the canto's denunciation.
The smile of the universe.
What I beheld seemed unto me a smile Of the universe; for my inebriation Found entrance through the hearing and the sight. (Par. XXVII.4–6)
Riso de l'universo. One of the great compressed images of Paradiso. The universe smiles, and the pilgrim is drunk on the smile.
The denunciation.
He who usurps upon the earth my place, My place, my place, which vacant has become Before the presence of the Son of God, Has of my cemetery made a sewer Of blood and stench, whereby the Perverse One, Who fell from here, below there is appeased! (Par. XXVII.22–27)
The most savage tercet-pair in Paradiso. My place, my place, my place — three uses. Cemetery — the catacombs of Rome. Sewer of blood and stench — Boniface's church. The Perverse One — Satan, currently appeased below by what is happening on earth above.
The catacomb Popes.
The spouse of Christ has never nurtured been On blood of mine, of Linus and of Cletus, To be made use of in acquest of gold; But in acquest of this delightful life Sixtus and Pius, Urban and Calixtus, After much lamentation, shed their blood. (Par. XXVII.40–45)
The roll-call of the legitimate Church. The standard against which the present is measured.
The wolves in shepherds' garb.
In garb of shepherds the rapacious wolves Are seen from here above o'er all the pastures! O wrath of God, why dost thou slumber still? (Par. XXVII.55–57)
A direct echo of Christ's warning in Matthew 7. The wolves of Inferno I have become the shepherds of the present Church. The reversal is total.
The Gascons and Caorsines.
To drink our blood the Caorsines and Gascons Are making ready. O thou good beginning, Unto how vile an end must thou needs fall! (Par. XXVII.58–60)
The naming-by-region of the French Avignonese popes. The Church of the catacombs ends in vile corruption by foreigners.
The cosmology.
The nature of that motion, which keeps quiet The centre and all the rest about it moves, From hence begins as from its starting point. And in this heaven there is no other Where Than in the Mind Divine, wherein is kindled The love that turns it, and the power it rains. (Par. XXVII.106–111)
The physics of the highest moving heaven. In this heaven there is no other Where than in the Mind Divine. One of the most beautiful sentences in Paradiso, and one of the most accurate descriptions of medieval cosmology.
The pivot to covetousness.
O Covetousness, that mortals dost ingulf Beneath thee so, that no one hath the power Of drawing back his eyes from out thy waves! (Par. XXVII.121–123)
The same Beatrice who has just described the source of all motion immediately denounces what prevents the human soul from moving toward it. Cupidigia — the lower wave in which mortals are drowned.
The prophecy of the tempest.
Shall these supernal circles roar so loud The tempest that has been so long awaited Shall whirl the poops about where are the prows; So that the fleet shall run its course direct, And the true fruit shall follow on the flower. (Par. XXVII.142–146)
The closing prophecy. The fleet sailing stern-first will be turned right by the coming tempest. The true fruit shall follow on the flower — the right order of nature will be restored.
What to watch for
Watch the empty seat. Beatrice's prophecy of the coming saviour will be made literal in canto XXX, where she will name a specific empty throne in the white rose: the soul of noble Henry of Luxembourg, the Emperor whose Italian campaign failed in 1313. Dante's political hope had a name.
Watch the no other Where. The Primum Mobile's Where is the Mind of God. The Empyrean, which the pilgrim is about to enter, will have no Where at all. Paradiso is teaching the reader to think of place itself as a property only of motion.
Watch the increase of light. From here forward, every canto will be brighter than the last. The pilgrim's eyes will be fortified four more times before the closing tercet. The cosmos is preparing him to see what cannot be seen.
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.