Paradiso · Canto XXIX ·
Paradiso XXIX — The Balanced Horizons
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 96 of 100 · Paradiso, Canto XXIX
Before reading
This canto delivers, in one continuous speech by Beatrice, the entire cosmology of the Commedia: the instant of creation, the fall of Lucifer, the steadfastness of the loyal angels, and the number of angels. Then, halfway through, the speech pivots to a sharp denunciation of contemporary preachers — those who substitute jests and fables for the Gospel. The canto is built like the previous one: cosmic exposition followed by political polemic. The pattern is by now deliberate. Paradiso refuses to separate the eternal from the corrupted present.
Where the canto sits
We are still in the Primum Mobile. The pilgrim has just been shown the point of light and the nine rings of angels around it. The natural next question is when and how these angels came into being. Beatrice now answers it. By the canto's end, the pilgrim will be ready to ascend into the Empyrean — but that final ascent happens in canto XXX, not here. This canto is the doctrinal threshold; the next canto crosses it.
What it helps to know
The opening tercets give the canto's time of day: the sun is at the horizon, the moon is at the opposite horizon, the two perfectly balance one another. The image is one of the most beautiful astronomical openings in Paradiso. Beatrice falls silent during that perfectly poised moment — as long as from the time the zenith holds them / in equipoise — and then begins her speech. The silence is briefly weighed against the cosmos.
Beatrice will say that God did not create the angels for his own benefit — not to acquire some good unto himself, / which is impossible — but so that his splendour / in its resplendency might say, Subsisto. The Latin Subsisto — I am present — is a technical scholastic term. Creation is the act by which God's reflected light is allowed to subsist in something other than himself. This is one of the most concentrated statements of creation-as-overflow in medieval theology.
The angels were created outside of time — in his eternity outside of time, / outside all other limits, as it pleased him. Time begins with creation, not before it. Augustine had argued the same in Confessions XI: there is no before the creation of the world, because before presupposes time. Beatrice gives the position in three lines.
The fall of the rebel angels happened almost immediately after creation — nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty / so swiftly, as a portion of these angels / disturbed the subject of your elements. The fall took less than the time to count to twenty. Lucifer fell into the centre of the Earth, the elements were disturbed by his impact (the geography of Inferno was carved out by his fall), and the loyal angels began their unceasing circulation around the point.
What to read for
Notice the one cause of the angels' fall, named in a single line: the accursed presumption of Lucifer, who placed himself before God. Pride is the original sin, not in Eden but in the cosmos. The Fall of Adam in canto XXVI was a small later echo of this primal Fall.
Notice the doctrinal lucidity of the central section. Beatrice is delivering a complete theology in one speech: creation, time, angels, fall, vision, will. Read it slowly. The poem is asking the reader to register that the same Beatrice who is the poet's beloved is also the highest doctrinal authority in the cosmos.
Notice the swivel into polemic at line 85. The canto's mood changes. Below you do not journey by one path / philosophising. The same Beatrice who has just explained creation now mocks the contemporary preachers who go forth with jests and drolleries. The juxtaposition is the canto's argument. The truth is simple and available; the contemporary Church has been replacing it with theatre.
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
Beatrice's longest doctrinal speech in the entire Commedia. In one sustained address she gave the pilgrim the whole of cosmogony: the moment of creation (outside time, in a single divine act); the manner (matter and form together, as three arrows from a three-stringed bow); the fall of Lucifer (in less than the time to count to twenty); the steadfastness of the loyal angels (their will fixed by the grace that confirms it); the number of angels (greater than any mortal speech can count); the mode of their knowing (direct, without intermediaries, by continuous vision of God). Then, halfway through, the speech pivoted. The same Beatrice who has just laid out the structure of creation turned to what is wrong with the present. The contemporary preachers, she said, go forth with jests and drolleries. The Gospel is being replaced with theatre. Pardons are being sold without any mark of coinage. By Saint Anthony's pig the friars are fattening their kind. The canto fuses the highest cosmological exposition in Paradiso with the bitterest single passage on the contemporary Church. The fusion is the lesson.
The instant of creation
Beatrice's account of creation is one of the most precise in medieval poetry. Not as if torpid did he lie before; / for neither after nor before proceeded / the going forth of God upon these waters. There is no before the creation, because before is itself a creature of time. Matter and form unmingled and conjoined / came into being that had no defect, / e'en as three arrows from a three-stringed bow. Three things issued in the same instant: pure form (the angels), pure matter (the elements), and the conjoined matter-and-form (the corruptible bodies of the heavenly spheres). The image is military and instantaneous. The whole creation is one shot of one bow.
Order, hierarchy, and the Augustinian background
The canto is in continuous debate with Jerome and with the long-lapse tradition that held the angels were created long before the material world. Beatrice corrects Jerome on Dante's behalf, citing the writers of the Holy Ghost — Genesis and the Psalms. The orthodox position, which Beatrice gives, is that all things were created simultaneously. The pilgrim is being trained in the discipline of reading Scripture against authoritative commentators when the commentators have gone wrong. Notice that Dante puts the correction in Beatrice's mouth, not in any apostolic mouth. The poet's own theological work is being voiced through his beloved — the same voice that called him in Inferno II.
The fall of Lucifer, in arithmetic
The arithmetic of the fall is staggering in its specificity. Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty / so swiftly, as a portion of these angels / disturbed the subject of your elements. The fall took fewer than twenty seconds. The subject of your elements — the earth — was disturbed by Lucifer's impact: the geography of Inferno was carved out in that single fall. Compare to Inferno XXXIV, where the same fall was described from the other end, the impact crater that is the funnel of Hell. Here in the highest heaven, the same fall is described as the briefest moment in the history of the cosmos. The two cantos book-end each other across the entire Commedia.
The polemic against preaching
The middle of the canto turns from cosmology to the present-day pulpit. They think not there how much of blood it costs / to sow it in the world. The apostles preached at the cost of their lives. Now men go forth with jests and drolleries / to preach, and if but well the people laugh, / the hood puffs out, and nothing more is asked. The image is precise and unforgiving: the friar's cappuccio (hood, cowl) swells with vanity at the laughter of the crowd. The accusation extends to the trafficking in indulgences: paying in money without mark of coinage — uncertified pardons sold for cash. By this Saint Anthony his pig doth fatten, / and many others, who are worse than pigs. The Antonine friars, who kept pigs marked with the saint's tau-cross and let them roam freely fed on parish charity, are the canto's chosen image of clerical avarice. The pig is fed on the parish; the friars are worse than the pig. The denunciation of canto XXVII is being extended downward through the whole clerical class.
The number and the mirrors
The canto's closing image is one of the most beautiful in Paradiso. The angels are figured as mirrors that multiply the single light of God without dividing it. The primal light, that all irradiates it, / by modes as many is received therein, / as are the splendours wherewith it is mated. God is one in himself remaining as before; the angels are many, each catching the single light at a different angle, each reflecting the same source in a unique mode. The image solves, in a metaphor, the problem the whole canto has been working at: how one light can be many without dividing. Every angel is a mirror. The cosmos is the assembly of mirrors. The Empyrean, into which the pilgrim is about to ascend, will turn out to be the largest mirror of all — the white rose, in which every saint is also a face that catches the same light from a different angle.
Famous and meaningful passages
The opening equipoise.
So long, her face depicted with a smile, Did Beatrice keep silence while she gazed Fixedly at the point which had o'ercome me. (Par. XXIX.13–15)
The brief pause at the moment of cosmic balance. The whole canto's exposition begins out of that silence.
The motive of creation.
Not to acquire some good unto himself, Which is impossible, but that his splendour In its resplendency may say, Subsisto, (Par. XXIX.19–21)
God did not create the angels for his own benefit. He created them so his own light could subsist in something other than himself. One of the most concentrated statements of creation-as-overflow in medieval theology.
The instant of creation.
Matter and Form unmingled and conjoined Came into being that had no defect, E'en as three arrows from a three-stringed bow. (Par. XXIX.22–24)
The whole act of creation as a single shot. Matter and form together; the three arrows are the three things that issued.
The interval-less coming-to-be.
So from its Lord did the triform effect Ray forth into its being all together, Without discrimination of beginning. (Par. XXIX.28–30)
No interval between cause and effect. The light rays into existence the way a sunbeam rays into glass — instantaneous, indivisible.
The fall in seconds.
Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty So swiftly, as a portion of these angels Disturbed the subject of your elements. (Par. XXIX.49–51)
The arithmetic of Lucifer's fall. Less than the time to count to twenty.
The cause of the fall.
The occasion of the fall was the accursed Presumption of that One, whom thou hast seen By all the burden of the world constrained. (Par. XXIX.55–57)
L'accursed presumption — pride. Whom thou hast seen by all the burden of the world constrained — the Lucifer Dante saw frozen at the bottom of Inferno, with the whole weight of his fall and the whole weight of Hell pressing on him.
The contemporary preachers.
Christ did not to his first disciples say, Go forth, and to the world preach idle tales, But unto them a true foundation gave; (Par. XXIX.109–111)
The criterion: true foundation, not idle tales. The standard against which the present pulpit is measured and found wanting.
The cowl of vanity.
Now men go forth with jests and drolleries To preach, and if but well the people laugh, The hood puffs out, and nothing more is asked. (Par. XXIX.115–117)
The image of the swollen cappuccio. Vanity made visible.
Saint Anthony's pig.
By this Saint Anthony his pig doth fatten, And many others, who are worse than pigs, Paying in money without mark of coinage. (Par. XXIX.124–126)
The Antonine friars and the trafficking in uncertified pardons. The image is contemporary, local, and cruel.
The mirrors.
The height behold now and the amplitude Of the eternal power, since it hath made Itself so many mirrors, where 'tis broken, One in itself remaining as before. (Par. XXIX.142–145)
The closing tercet of the canto. God is one; the angels are many mirrors in which the same light is broken without being divided. The Empyrean's white rose is being prepared as the final and largest mirror.
What to watch for
Watch the mirror. The image of the mirror has now appeared as the figure of how God is known (canto XXVIII: through Beatrice's eyes), of how the cosmos contains him (canto XXIX: angels as mirrors), and is about to appear as the figure of how the redeemed contain him (canto XXX: the rose). The whole epistemology of Paradiso is mediated reflection.
Watch the river of light. The next canto opens with the pilgrim ascending into the Empyrean. The first thing he will see there is a river of light, and he will drink from it. The river will become the rose. The transformation is the Commedia's greatest single image after Christ's triumph.
Watch Beatrice's role. She has just finished her longest doctrinal speech. In the next canto she will hand the pilgrim over to the river; in canto XXXI she will return to her seat in the rose. The teacher is now actively withdrawing.
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.