Paradiso XXXII — The Seating Chart

Before reading

The canto in which Bernard reads out the seating chart of the white rose. The whole architecture of the redeemed is here named with the patience of a sacristan pointing out the chapels: Mary at the top, Eve below her, the Hebrew matriarchs descending in one line, the great Christian women descending in another, the patriarchs and apostles ranged around them, the infants in the lower rows. Read the canto slowly. It is the most static of all the Paradiso cantos — almost no action, only the slow naming — and that stillness is its argument. The rose is its arrangement.

Where the canto sits

We are in the Empyrean, at the foot of the rose. Bernard is Dante's guide; Beatrice is in her seat. The previous canto turned the pilgrim's gaze toward Mary. This canto teaches him who else is there before the final canto turns him from Mary toward God. Read XXXII as the anatomy lesson between two visions.

What it helps to know

Mary sits at the rose's top centre. Below her, in descending order along one vertical line, sit the Hebrew matriarchs — Eve (whose Fall Mary undid), Rachel (the contemplative life), Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and the ancestress of the Singer (Ruth, great-grandmother of David, the Singer of the Psalms). Beatrice sits beside Rachel in this line. The vertical column of women is one of the canto's most quietly remarkable structural decisions: the great line of named individuals in the rose is matriarchal.

Opposite this vertical line, on the other side of the rose, sits John the Baptist — the prophet who endured desert and martyrdom and then two years in Hell (Limbo) before being harvested by Christ at the Harrowing. Beneath John, by the same descending principle, sit the great Christian male saints: Francis, Benedict, Augustine, and so on downward.

The rose is then divided into two great halves by an equator. The upper half (everyone above a horizontal mid-line) are adults who reached the rose by their own merit. The lower half are the infants — those who died before they could exercise personal choice. The infants are saved by another's merit. Bernard explains the three historical eras of their salvation: before circumcision (saved by their parents' faith); after circumcision and before Christ (saved by circumcision); after Christ (saved only by baptism). The disciplined exposition of the limbo of the unbaptised is one of the canto's harder moments for the modern reader. The poem holds the doctrine.

Two patriarchal ancestors face each other across the rose at the base of each vertical line: Adam, on the left, the father by whose audacious taste / the human species so much bitter tastes; and opposite him St Peter, that ancient father of Holy Church, into whose keeping Christ / the keys committed of this lovely flower. The fall and the keys, facing each other in the same rose. Beside Adam: Moses. Beside Peter: St John the Evangelist (now distinct from John the Baptist). Opposite Adam: Anna, Mary's mother. Opposite Peter: Lucia — the saint who began the chain of three women in Inferno II, who has been there in the rose all along.

The canto closes with Bernard announcing that time presses. The pilgrim must now turn from the architecture to the centre. Bernard will pray to Mary in the next canto; Mary will pray for Dante's sight to be strengthened; the Beatific Vision will follow.

What to read for

Read the seating chart as architecture. The rose is symmetrical: a vertical line of Hebrew women on one side and a vertical line of Christian male saints on the other; two patriarchs at the base; Mary at the top. Hold the picture as a building before holding it as a list.

Notice the women. Every named saint on the female axis is a Hebrew woman — Eve, Rachel, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth — and the only Christian woman named in this line is Beatrice. The Hebrew matriarchs are not prefigurations of the Christian women; they are fully the structural counterpart of Peter, Augustine, and Francis. The poem makes a quiet feminist statement of an old-testament kind.

Notice the long passage on infants. Modern readers struggle with the medieval theology of the unbaptised, but the Commedia lays the doctrine out with calm precision. Read the passage for the care of the exposition rather than for the comfort of the conclusion. The poem refuses to soften its received teaching.

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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.

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After reading

What the canto did

The canto is the anatomy of the rose. Bernard, the new guide, spent its hundred and fifty-one lines reading out the seating chart of the redeemed with the slow patience of a sacristan pointing out the chapels of his church. Mary at the top centre; Eve immediately below her; Rachel, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth descending in one straight line; Beatrice among them; John the Baptist opposite, and below him Francis, Benedict, Augustine, descending in the second line; Adam and Peter facing each other at the base of the two lines; Moses, John the Evangelist, Anna, and Lucia at named positions around them; and the infants in the lower half, with their salvation theology carefully explained. Almost nothing happens in the canto. Its argument is its stillness. The rose is its arrangement. To know who is seated where is to know how grace works.

The architecture, briefly

The rose has two principles of division. It is split vertically by two great chains: the matriarchal line on one side (with Mary at the apex, ending at Adam at the base) and the patriarchal line on the other (with John the Baptist at the top, ending at Peter at the base). It is split horizontally by an equator. Above the equator: adults who reached the rose by their own merit. Below the equator: infants who were saved by another's merit. The two divisions cross at the rose's centre. Every seat is determined by which quadrant a soul occupies and how high within its column.

The asymmetry between the two halves of the rose's upper portion is the canto's most beautiful structural decision. The upper-left quadrant (the matriarchal side, the Hebrew side) has fully filled seats — the great line of women who believed in Christ to come. The upper-right quadrant (the patriarchal side, the Christian side) still has empty seats — few people wanting remain to fill them, as Beatrice said in canto XXX. The first half of history is full; the second half is closing. The rose is the cosmos's clock. When the right side is full, history ends.

The line of women

The single most quietly striking thing about the rose is that its principal axis of named individual saints is female. Eve, Rachel, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth, and Beatrice. Beside this column are clustered the matriarchs of the Old Covenant, who believed in Christ to come. There are great male Old Testament patriarchs in the rose, but they are not on the principal vertical axis — they are clustered around it. The female line is the line that touches Mary. Beatrice is the only Christian-era woman named in this list, and she is placed among the Hebrew matriarchs, with Rachel as her immediate neighbour. The intellectual statement is large. The line of grace, in Dante's rose, runs from Eve down through the female saints of the Hebrew tradition into Beatrice, parallel to but distinct from the line of male apostles, patriarchs, and Christian saints. The two lines balance the rose between them.

The infants and the three eras

The lower half of the rose is given to the infants — those who died too young to make a personal choice. Bernard explains the theology with characteristic medieval precision. In the earliest age (before the institution of any rite), the faith of parents sufficed; their infants were saved by another's merit attached to fixed conditions. After circumcision was instituted, the males required circumcision to add virtue to their innocent wings. After Christ, only baptism saves. The infant who dies unbaptised in the Christian era is not in the rose. The doctrine is one of the harder things in medieval theology for the modern reader. The poem holds it without softening; what it offers in compensation is the visible fact that the infants who are in the rose are given seats for their inborn nature alone — they are more or less excellent among themselves because of differences in first acuteness, the original brightness of the soul as God created it. The seating chart is determined not by works (which the infants had no time to perform) but by grace freely diversified — the canto cites the biblical example of Jacob and Esau, twins differently disposed in their mother's womb. The doctrine is austere; its image is the colour of hair.

Gabriel, and the Ave Maria

The action of the canto, brief as it is, is the descent of Gabriel — Angelic Love — toward Mary, singing Ave Maria, gratia plena. The whole court answers in chorus. The annunciation that happened once in time is being re-enacted continuously in the rose. The reader is given the gentlest small lesson in Marian devotion: the words of the angel's salutation are the centre of the rose's continuous worship. The Ave Maria and the Hail Mary of the medieval liturgy are founded on this scene.

Adam and Peter at the base

The two roots of the rose — the two patriarchal pillars at the base of the two vertical chains — are Adam and Peter, facing each other. Adam: the father, by whose audacious taste / the human species so much bitter tastes. Peter: that ancient father of Holy Church, into whose keeping Christ / the keys committed. The whole Christian narrative is encoded in the symmetry: the Fall and the Keys face each other, the two ends of the same redemptive arc. Beside Adam sits Moses, that leader under whom on manna lived / the people ingrate, fickle, and stiff-necked; beside Peter sits John the Evangelist, he who all the evil days beheld (the Apocalypse). Opposite Adam, Anna sits content to look upon her daughter, Mary. Opposite Peter, Lucia — she who thy Lady moved / when to rush downward thou didst bend thy brows — the same Lucia who began the chain of three women in Inferno II, ninety-eight cantos ago. The canto's last named saint is the woman who started the journey.

The closing instruction

The canto ends with Bernard telling Dante that time presses — the moments of thy vision fly. The pilgrim must now turn from the architecture to the centre. We will turn our eyes to the first Love. Bernard then announces the prayer to Mary that will fill the first twenty-one lines of the final canto: by prayer behoves it that grace be obtained. The last instruction of the next-to-last canto is the instruction to pray. The vision is not earned by the seer. It is granted in response to the intercessor. The whole of canto XXXIII is being set up here.

Famous and meaningful passages

The wound and the closing.

The wound that Mary closed up and anointed, She at her feet who is so beautiful, She is the one who opened it and pierced it. (Par. XXXII.4–6)

Eve opened the wound; Mary closed it. The two women's symmetry across the Fall is the canto's structural seed.

The matriarchal line.

Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and her who was Ancestress of the Singer, who for dole Of the misdeed said, 'Miserere mei,' Canst thou behold from seat to seat descending Down in gradation, as with each one's name I through the Rose go down from leaf to leaf. (Par. XXXII.10–15)

The great line of women descending. Miserere mei — David's Have mercy on me, Psalm 51. The Singer is named by his most penitential psalm.

The two halves of faith.

Upon this side, where perfect is the flower With each one of its petals, seated are Those who believed in Christ who was to come. Upon the other side, where intersected With vacant spaces are the semicircles, Are those who looked to Christ already come. (Par. XXXII.22–27)

The two halves of history. The Old Testament side full; the New Testament side still filling.

John the Baptist opposite Mary.

So opposite doth that of the great John, Who, ever holy, desert and martyrdom Endured, and afterwards two years in Hell. (Par. XXXII.31–33)

John the Baptist at the head of the patriarchal line. Two years in Limbo before the Harrowing.

The infants and the doctrine of grace.

Without, then, any merit of their deeds, Stationed are they in different gradations, Differing only in their first acuteness. (Par. XXXII.73–75)

The doctrine of differentiated grace. Infants are seated by the original brightness of their soul, not by their works.

The Annunciation re-enacted.

And the same Love that first descended there, 'Ave Maria, gratia plena,' singing, In front of her his wings expanded wide. Unto the canticle divine responded From every part the court beatified, So that each sight became serener for it. (Par. XXXII.94–99)

The angel of the Annunciation singing his salutation, the whole court answering. The originating scene of Marian devotion played out in the rose forever.

The two roots.

Those two that sit above there most enrapture As being very near unto Augusta, Are as it were the two roots of this Rose. He who upon the left is near her placed The father is, by whose audacious taste The human species so much bitter tastes. Upon the right thou seest that ancient father Of Holy Church, into whose keeping Christ The keys committed of this lovely flower. (Par. XXXII.118–126)

Adam and Peter. Fall and Keys. The two ends of the redemptive arc facing each other in the same flower.

Lucia returns.

And opposite the eldest household father Lucia sits, she who thy Lady moved When to rush downward thou didst bend thy brows. (Par. XXXII.136–138)

The chain of three women from Inferno II made visible again. Mary at the top of the rose, Beatrice in her seat, Lucia opposite Peter. The whole chain is here.

The instruction to pray.

Truly, lest peradventure thou recede, Moving thy wings believing to advance, By prayer behoves it that grace be obtained; Grace from that one who has the power to aid thee; (Par. XXXII.145–148)

The vision is reached by prayer, not by motion. Bernard sets up the canto to come.

The line into XXXIII.

And he began this holy orison. (Par. XXXII.151)

The single-line bridge into the final canto. Bernard begins to pray. The whole Commedia turns on what follows.

What to watch for

Watch the prayer. Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio. The first tercet of canto XXXIII is the most famous prayer in Italian literature, and it begins immediately after this canto's closing line.

Watch the gaze. The pilgrim has now been turned, by Bernard, toward Mary. Mary will turn his gaze toward God. The whole movement from here to the end is the transmission of the gaze from one centre to a higher one.

Watch the closing of the loop. Lucia has just been named again. Mary will be addressed again. Beatrice has returned to her seat. The chain of three women that began the journey in Inferno II is physically present in the same room at the end of the journey. The poem is teaching the reader, by quietly returning every named figure to her place, that the architecture has always been the same.

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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.