Paradiso · Canto XXXI ·
Paradiso XXXI — The Swarm of Bees
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 98 of 100 · Paradiso, Canto XXXI
Before reading
The canto in which Beatrice returns to her seat in the white rose and is replaced as Dante's guide by St Bernard of Clairvaux. The substitution is the most painful structural moment in Paradiso for the reader who has loved Beatrice for ninety-eight cantos. Read the canto slowly; the farewell is given quickly and without ceremony, but its weight is enormous. The next two cantos will live with the consequence: Beatrice is no longer beside the pilgrim. From here to the end of the poem, the loved face is visible at distance in the rose, and the immediate guide is an older man who has spent his life in contemplation.
Where the canto sits
We are in the Empyrean. The white rose has been revealed in canto XXX as the assembly of the redeemed. This canto begins by widening the picture: not only the rose, but the angels who fly between the rose and the source of its light like a swarm of bees — descending into the flower, ascending again, carrying peace and ardour in the fanning of their wings. The whole double population of the Empyrean is given in the canto's first thirty lines: the saints in their seats, the angels in their flight.
What it helps to know
St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was the most influential contemplative theologian of the twelfth century — a Cistercian abbot, founder of dozens of monasteries, preacher of the Second Crusade, author of treatises on the Song of Songs and on the love of God, and above all the great medieval devotee of the Virgin Mary. The medieval Marian cult that produced the Salve Regina, the Memorare, and most of the lyric tradition of devotion to the Virgin owes more to Bernard than to any other single figure. Dante chooses him as the final guide because of his Marian devotion: the journey from the Empyrean's gate to the Beatific Vision will pass through Mary, and Bernard is the man Western Christianity has authorised to make that approach.
The reasons Bernard, not Beatrice, takes the pilgrim the last steps are several. Beatrice is in the rose — she is one of the redeemed and her place is her seat. The guide for the last approach to God must be a contemplative who has spent his whole life on the path the pilgrim is now finishing. The substitution also has a quiet structural symmetry: Inferno's first guide was the Roman poet Virgil; Purgatorio's was the same Virgil until the summit of the mountain; Paradiso's guide was the beloved Beatrice from the Earthly Paradise to the Empyrean; the very last steps are taken with a Marian contemplative. The poem maps the soul's ascent through three kinds of authority: pagan reason, redeemed love, monastic contemplation. The three correspond to the three cantiche.
The Veronica simile in the middle of the canto is one of the canto's most touching small images. The Veronica was a relic at St Peter's in Rome that pilgrims believed to be the cloth on which Christ's face had been impressed when he wiped it on the road to Calvary. Pilgrims travelled from Croatia and further to see it. Dante figures himself, gazing on Bernard, as the Croatian pilgrim seeing the Veronica for the first time and saying to himself: was your semblance made like unto this?
What to read for
Read the opening twenty-four lines as a crowd scene — the whole Empyrean given its full population. The saints in the rose; the angels coming and going. Even as a swarm of bees, that sinks in flowers / one moment, and the next returns again / to where its labour is to sweetness turned. The most domestic image possible — bees on garden flowers — for the most exalted moment of the poem.
Notice the small structural moment that signals the change of guides. The pilgrim turns to ask Beatrice a question, and turns instead to an old man. I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw / an Old Man habited like the glorious people. The substitution happens between one half-line and the next. The poem refuses to mark it as a tragedy. It simply has happened.
Read the pilgrim's farewell to Beatrice — three tercets that are some of the most quietly moving in the Commedia. Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom. Then watch what Beatrice does. She, so far away, / smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me; / then unto the eternal fountain turned. She does not reply in words. She turns back toward God. The last image the pilgrim has of her is her face turning away from him toward the source of her own 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 did three large things in a hundred and forty-two lines. It opened the full population of the Empyrean — saints in the rose, angels in flight between the rose and the source of its light, a swarm of bees between the flower and the sun. It performed the most painful substitution of the Commedia: Beatrice returned to her seat in the rose and was replaced as Dante's guide by St Bernard of Clairvaux. And it ended by turning the pilgrim's gaze, under Bernard's instruction, toward the central radiance of the rose — Mary herself, named by Bernard as the Queen to whom this realm is subject. The canto is the last introductory canto of the poem. After it, the only remaining action is the prayer, the vision, and the closing.
The bees
The image with which the canto opens is one of the most domestic in Paradiso. The angels are a swarm of bees moving between the rose and the source of its light, sinking into the flower and returning to where their labour is to sweetness turned. The whole double traffic of the Empyrean — the static rose, the moving angels — is figured by a single agricultural-rural image. The choice is deliberate. Paradiso, in its closing stretch, becomes increasingly plain in its imagery. The most exalted moment of the poem will be figured by the most ordinary scene the medieval reader knew. Bees on garden flowers in canto XXXI; infant at the breast in canto XXX; geometer struggling with a problem in canto XXXIII. The poet is making, by accumulation, the argument that what is highest is approached by what is most familiar.
The substitution
The moment of substitution is one of the most carefully written half-tercets in the Commedia. One thing I meant, another answered me; / I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw / an Old Man habited like the glorious people. The substitution happens between one verb and the next. Dante is teaching the reader the texture of the moment by syntax: the pilgrim turns his head expecting one face and finds another. There is no announcement, no farewell, no formal handing-over. The old man is simply there. Bernard's identification of himself — because that I her faithful Bernard am — is so quiet it can be missed on a first reading. The poem is enacting what loss feels like: the absence of the loved person registers a beat before the substitute is acknowledged.
Beatrice's farewell, and what she is
Dante's farewell to Beatrice is three tercets of the Commedia's most quietly felt language. O Lady, thou in whom my hope is strong, / and who for my salvation didst endure / in Hell to leave the imprint of thy feet. The medieval reader hears the whole journey in that one image: Beatrice, in canto II of Inferno, descended into Limbo to ask Virgil to save her lover. Her feet imprinted Hell. The pilgrim now ninety-eight cantos later thanks her for it. Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom / by all those ways, by all the expedients, / whereby thou hadst the power of doing it. Tu m'hai di servo tratto a libertate. From bondage to liberty. The line is one of the most quoted in the Commedia because it does so much in so few words: it names the political metaphor of the whole journey (slavery to freedom), it credits the agent (the loved woman, not God directly), and it does both in a register so personal that it could almost be a letter. Then the pilgrim asks her, in plain language, to preserve her care for him: so that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed, / pleasing to thee be loosened from the body. He is asking her, gently, to be near him at his death.
Beatrice's reply is the most striking detail. She does not reply in words. She smiles, looks once more at him, and turns to the eternal fountain. The most lyrically loved figure in any medieval poetry exits the poem by turning her face from her lover toward God. The image is precise about what the rose is. To be in the rose is to be turned, perpetually, toward the source. Beatrice, fully blessed, is turned exactly that way. Her last gift to the pilgrim is her example. He must turn the same way. The next canto and the next will accomplish that turn.
The Veronica
In the middle of the canto, Dante figures himself as a Croatian pilgrim seeing the Veronica — the cloth-relic at St Peter's in Rome on which Christ's face was believed to have been impressed. My Lord, Christ Jesus, God of very God, / now was your semblance made like unto this? The pilgrim, gazing at Bernard, is moved as the pilgrim from Croatia is moved gazing at the Veronica. The choice of simile is doubled: it figures the intensity of the gaze, and it prepares the canto's larger argument — Bernard is the man who has seen the face by contemplation, and the pilgrim is now looking at the face that has seen the face. The chain of seeing has tightened by one link.
Bernard's first instructions
The instructions Bernard gives are simple and theological. Do not look down here at the lowest seats. Mark the circles to the most remote, / until thou shalt behold enthroned the Queen / to whom this realm is subject and devoted. The pilgrim's last journey, after climbing nine heavens to reach the Empyrean, is to turn his gaze from where he is standing to the centre of the rose. The journey that remains is not motion but attention. Bernard's whole vocation as the great medieval Marian devotee is put to work in that single instruction.
The oriflamme and the angels
The canto closes on the pacific oriflamme — the great horizontal banner of pacific light at the centre of the rose, brightest at the middle and falling away at the ends. Above the oriflamme more than a thousand angels hover with their wings extended. At its centre, a beauty smiling. The poem refuses to name the figure here; only the next two cantos will name her as Mary. The reader sees what the pilgrim sees: the radiant centre is clear before it is identified. Bernard's own gaze turning to her makes Dante's gaze burn brighter.
Famous and meaningful passages
The opening rose.
In fashion then as of a snow-white rose Displayed itself to me the saintly host, Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride, (Par. XXXI.1–3)
The rose as the bride of Christ purchased in his own blood. The whole soteriology of the Empyrean in one tercet.
The swarm of bees.
Even as a swarm of bees, that sinks in flowers One moment, and the next returns again To where its labour is to sweetness turned, Sank into the great flower, that is adorned With leaves so many, and thence reascended To where its love abideth evermore. (Par. XXXI.7–12)
The angels figured as bees in a garden flower. The most domestic image in Paradiso for its most exalted scene.
The substitution.
One thing I meant, another answered me; I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw An Old Man habited like the glorious people. (Par. XXXI.58–60)
The substitution between one verb and the next. Pensava di veder Beatrice, e vidi / un sene.
The farewell.
O Lady, thou in whom my hope is strong, And who for my salvation didst endure In Hell to leave the imprint of thy feet, Of whatsoever things I have beheld, As coming from thy power and from thy goodness I recognise the virtue and the grace. Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom, By all those ways, by all the expedients, Whereby thou hadst the power of doing it. (Par. XXXI.79–87)
Tu m'hai di servo tratto a libertate. From servitude to liberty. The whole hundred-canto journey thanked in three tercets.
Beatrice's reply.
Thus I implored; and she, so far away, Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me; Then unto the eternal fountain turned. (Par. XXXI.91–93)
She does not speak. She smiles, looks once, and turns toward God. The most loved figure in medieval poetry exits the Commedia by turning her face.
Bernard names himself.
And she, the Queen of Heaven, for whom I burn Wholly with love, will grant us every grace, Because that I her faithful Bernard am. (Par. XXXI.100–102)
Io son il suo fedel Bernardo. The new guide identified by his single defining devotion.
The Veronica simile.
As he who peradventure from Croatia Cometh to gaze at our Veronica, Who through its ancient fame is never sated, But says in thought, the while it is displayed, My Lord, Christ Jesus, God of very God, Now was your semblance made like unto this? (Par. XXXI.103–108)
The pilgrim from Croatia at the relic. The intensity of the pilgrim's own gaze figured as a long journey rewarded.
Bernard's instruction.
Thou son of grace, this jocund life, began he, Will not be known to thee by keeping ever Thine eyes below here on the lowest place; But mark the circles to the most remote, Until thou shalt behold enthroned the Queen To whom this realm is subject and devoted. (Par. XXXI.112–117)
The instruction that will govern the next two cantos. Look up. Turn the gaze. The journey that remains is the journey of attention.
The oriflamme.
So likewise that pacific oriflamme Gleamed brightest in the centre, and each side In equal measure did the flame abate. (Par. XXXI.127–129)
The pacific banner. Brightest at the centre. The figure of Mary not yet named, only seen.
What to watch for
Watch the gaze. The instruction Bernard has just given is the structural rule of the remaining two cantos. Look up. Look further. The Beatific Vision is reached by attention, not by motion.
Watch Mary. The next canto, XXXII, is the anatomy of the rose with Mary at its centre. Every seat will be named by Bernard, the great Marian preacher.
Watch Beatrice. She has returned to her seat in the third round / of the first rank. She is visible from where the pilgrim stands. He will not address her again in the poem. But she is there — looking, with all the other blessed, toward the same centre Dante is now turning to face.
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.