Purgatorio XXIX — The Candlesticks and the Rainbow

Before reading

Matelda and Dante walk along the river on opposite banks. After a hundred steps the river curves, and into the garden comes a procession unlike anything in the previous twenty-eight cantos. Seven candlesticks, twenty-four elders, four living creatures, a chariot drawn by a Griffin, three ladies at one wheel, four at the other, two old men, four more men, an old man asleep. The canto is a sustained allegorical pageant on the model of the Apocalypse, and the Commedia does not pause to explain it.

Where the canto sits

This is the second canto of the Earthly Paradise. The pilgrim has now met Matelda, has heard the cosmology of the garden, and has been walking with her along the river. The arrival of the pageant fills the entire canto. Beatrice will descend onto the chariot in canto XXX; the political and ecclesiastical allegory of the chariot will unfold in cantos XXXII and XXXIII. This canto's office is to get the procession there. The visuals do all the work.

What it helps to know

The pageant is the Church Militant — the Church in history, as the Commedia sees it — moving in formal procession through the restored Eden. The figures, in order:

Seven candlesticks, flaming, leaving behind them in the air seven coloured streamers, like a rainbow. These are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2; cf. Revelation 1:12).
Twenty-four elders in white, crowned with lilies (flower-de-luce). The twenty-four books of the Old Testament canon as Dante counted them (the elders of Revelation 4 read as the inspired writers).
Four living creatures, each with six wings full of eyes. The four Evangelists, after Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4: traditionally Matthew the man, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, John the eagle.
A chariot on two wheels, drawn by a Griffin. The Griffin (eagle's head and wings; lion's body) is Christ — the two natures, divine and human, in one. The chariot is the Church.
Three ladies at the right wheel: red, green, snow-white. The three theological virtues — Charity (red), Hope (green), Faith (white).
Four ladies at the left wheel in purple, dancing to the lead of one with three eyes in her head. The four cardinal virtues — Prudence (with three eyes for past, present, future), Justice, Fortitude, Temperance.
Two old men, unlike in habit but alike in gait: a follower of Hippocrates (Luke the physician, who wrote Acts) and a man with a sword so shining and so sharp (Paul, who wrote the epistles). The two halves of the New Testament after the gospels.
Four men of humble aspect: the four minor epistles attributed to James, Peter, John, Jude.
An old man alone, walking in sleep, with countenance acute: the writer of the Apocalypse — John in his vision.

The whole procession is one allegorical reading of the Christian canon as a march of books — the seven gifts, the Old Testament, the gospels, Christ himself, the virtues, the rest of the New Testament. The Church is constituted by what it has written.

A small note. Eve is rebuked in passing by the canto, in language that has often struck commentators as severe. I sooner should have tasted those delights ineffable, and for a longer time. The garden was lost because the first woman could not endure to stay neath any veil. The veil-image will return at the climax of canto XXX when Beatrice arrives veiled.

What to read for

Notice that the canto begins with Matelda singing like unto an enamoured lady the words Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata — Blessed are they whose sins are covered. The hymn announces, before the pageant arrives, what the pageant is for: the covering of sin, which is the office of the institutional Church.

Notice the careful pace. Matelda and Dante walk a hundred steps before the river curves; then a sudden lustre shoots across the forest like lightning that does not die. Listen for the rhythm of seeing — first light, then sound, then small distant shapes that turn out to be candlesticks, then the elders, then the creatures, then the chariot. The reader is given the procession in the order the pilgrim sees it, not in the order of its theological importance.

Notice the candlesticks. They leave streamers of seven colours behind them as they advance, like a rainbow trailing the sky. The image is one of the most original in the Commedia and it is doing both visual and doctrinal work.

Listen for the invocation in the middle of the canto. O Virgins sacrosanct! Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me. The pageant's complexity needs all nine Muses; the poem says so out loud. The reader is being warned that what follows is not easy.

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

A procession that has no precedent in the Inferno or in the previous twenty-eight cantos of the Purgatorio came into the garden. Seven candlesticks led; twenty-four elders followed in two ranks of twelve; four winged creatures whose plumage was full of eyes came after; a chariot drawn by a Griffin came next, with three dancers at one wheel and four at the other; two old men, four lesser figures and a sleeping old man closed the line. The whole procession halted at the bank opposite the pilgrim and the canto stopped on a thunderclap. Vidi e però ti scrivo, Beatrice will tell Dante a few cantos later — I saw and therefore I write to thee. This canto is the vidi. The però will come next.

The procession as the canon, walking

The pageant is the Church Militant — the Church in time, on the move through history. Its members are the books of the Christian canon as Dante's medieval scheme arranged them, with each figure standing for a part of scripture or for a virtue of the Christian life. The reading is iconographically explicit and the Commedia expects it to be recognised.

Seven candlesticks. The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11) — wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of the Lord. Their streamers in the air make the rainbow that the procession trails as it advances; the work of the Spirit is what colours the procession from above.
Twenty-four elders. The twenty-four books of the Old Testament as Dante counted them (the count varied in medieval Christianity; Dante used the count of twenty-four to match the elders of Revelation 4). Each is crowned with the lily — the fleur-de-lis of purity, perhaps also a nod to the French monarchy that Dante usually criticised but here permits to be a flower of innocence in passing.
Four living creatures. The four Evangelists, after Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4: the man (Matthew), the lion (Mark), the ox (Luke), the eagle (John). The Commedia describes them with the six wings of Revelation rather than the four of Ezekiel — and in this John is with me, and differeth from him — and refers the reader to Ezekiel for the rest. The poem allows itself to pause and cite a source in the middle of the pageant.
The chariot. The Church, of which the chariot is the standard medieval allegory. It has two wheels (variously read as the Old and New Testaments, or as the two missions of the Church) and an empty body — empty because the one who is to ride it has not yet descended.
The Griffin. Christ. The two natures — the divine (eagle's head, wings, chest) and the human (lion's body) — borne in a single body. The Griffin's wings rise so high they are lost to sight; the divine extends beyond what can be drawn. The detail that the Griffin's wings injure none by cleaving the rainbow is a small theological joke: Christ's divine nature passes through the gifts of the Spirit without dispersing them.
Three ladies at the right wheel. The three theological virtues — Charity (red, almost lost in fire), Hope (green, like emerald), Faith (white as snow). Charity leads, then Faith, then Hope alternately, now by the white, now by the red — Faith first when the Church is contemplating its doctrines, Charity first when the Church is acting.
Four ladies at the left wheel. The four cardinal virtues — Prudence (with three eyes for the three times, past, present, future), Justice, Fortitude, Temperance. They are robed in purple — royal — and they follow Prudence's lead.
Two old men. Luke the physician (a disciple of Hippocrates) and Paul (with a sword so shining and so sharp). The book of Acts and the Pauline epistles.
Four men of humble aspect. The minor New Testament epistles: James, Peter, John, Jude.
An old man alone, walking in sleep. John of Patmos, the author of the Apocalypse — the one who saw in sleep the visions that closed the New Testament.

The whole canon, as a procession. The Church as the sum of its written witnesses, moving in formal order through Eden.

Why the canto stops here

The pageant has arrived but its central figure has not. Beatrice will descend onto the chariot in canto XXX. The canto closes on a thunderclap, with the procession standing still — Dante's reader is held at the verge of the most-quoted Purgatorio canto for the space of a single line break. The poem is making the reader wait the way the pilgrim is waiting. And when the car was opposite to me thunder was heard. The canto stops one line after.

Eve, named in passing

A small detail of doctrine the canto inserts on its way to the pageant: the rebuke of Eve. For there where earth and heaven obedient were, the woman only, and but just created, could not endure to stay neath any veil; underneath which had she devoutly stayed, I sooner should have tasted those delights ineffable, and for a longer time. The garden was lost because Eve could not endure to stay neath any veil. The image of the veil — qualunque velo in the Italian, any veil — is being placed in the canto deliberately. Beatrice will arrive in canto XXX underneath the veil. The veil that Eve refused will be worn by the woman whose arrival the canto is preparing. The whole Earthly Paradise is being staged as Eden made right by a second woman who keeps what the first woman shed.

The rebuke is severe in tone — the woman only loses paradise — but the canto immediately compensates by making the woman who restores it also the woman who teaches doctrine, sings the psalm of covered sin, and walks unaccompanied through the garden as its native inhabitant. Matelda is here, and Eve is being judged with Matelda standing across the river. The judgment of Eve is by the standard of a woman the canto has just put in front of us.

The poem's pause for sources

In the middle of the procession the canto stops to tell the reader go read Ezekiel. Reader! to trace their forms no more I waste my rhymes; for other spendings press me so, that I in this cannot be prodigal. But read Ezekiel, who depicteth them. It is one of the few places in the Commedia where Dante addresses his reader and pushes him out of the poem and into a different book. The gesture is theological — the procession is scripture made visible, and the reader who wants more detail must go to the scripture. The poem is performing what its allegory says: the Church is constituted by its books, and the reader is reminded of this by being sent back to one of them.

Famous and meaningful passages

The hymn of Matelda.

Singing like unto an enamoured lady She, with the ending of her words, continued: Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata. (Purg. XXIX.1–3)

Psalm 32:1: Blessed are they whose sins are covered. The office of the institutional Church announced in a single chant before the institutional Church arrives.

The lightning that does not die.

And lo! a sudden lustre ran across On every side athwart the spacious forest, Such that it made me doubt if it were lightning. But since the lightning ceases as it comes, And that continuing brightened more and more, Within my thought I said, What thing is this? (Purg. XXIX.16–21)

The pageant arrives first as light, and as a light that does not fade. The reader is given the procession through the pilgrim's puzzled eyes.

The veiled veil.

For there where earth and heaven obedient were, The woman only, and but just created, Could not endure to stay neath any veil… (Purg. XXIX.25–27)

Eve rebuked in three lines. The veil set up to be carried by the woman of the next canto.

The invocation.

O Virgins sacrosanct! if ever hunger, Vigils, or cold for you I have endured, The occasion spurs me their reward to claim! Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me, And with her choir Urania must assist me, To put in verse things difficult to think. (Purg. XXIX.37–42)

The Muses invoked at the canto's middle for things difficult to think. The poem says aloud what the reader is being asked to follow.

The seven streamers.

So that it overhead remained distinct With sevenfold lists, all of them of the colours Whence the sun's bow is made, and Delia's girdle. (Purg. XXIX.76–78)

The rainbow trailed by the candlesticks. Delia's girdle — Diana's belt, the lunar halo. The Spirit colours the procession from above with all the colours the sun and the moon make.

The pause for the Apocalypse.

Reader! to trace their forms no more I waste My rhymes; for other spendings press me so, That I in this cannot be prodigal. But read Ezekiel, who depicteth them As he beheld them from the region cold Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire; And such as thou shalt find them in his pages, Such were they here; saving that in their plumage John is with me, and differeth from him. (Purg. XXIX.97–105)

The reader sent out of the poem to scripture, and the poem's choice between Ezekiel and the Apocalypse declared in passing.

The Griffin and the chariot.

The interval between these four contained A chariot triumphal on two wheels, Which by a Griffin's neck came drawn along; And upward he extended both his wings Between the middle list and three and three, So that he injured none by cleaving it. ... His limbs were gold, so far as he was bird, And white the others with vermilion mingled. (Purg. XXIX.106–111, 113–114)

The Church drawn by Christ — the two natures borne in a single body, the divine extending beyond what can be seen.

The thunderclap.

And when the car was opposite to me Thunder was heard; and all that folk august Seemed to have further progress interdicted, There with the vanward ensigns standing still. (Purg. XXIX.151–154)

The procession halts. The canto stops on the line of a held breath.

What to watch for

Watch the chariot's empty body. Beatrice descends onto it at the start of the next canto. The whole procession has been making space for her.

Watch the veil. Eve was rebuked for refusing one; Beatrice will arrive wearing one. The veil is the canto's quiet promise.

Watch what happens to the chariot after Beatrice descends. The Commedia's political allegory of the corruption of the Church is two cantos away. The chariot that is about to receive its rider will, by canto XXXII, be transformed by an eagle, a fox, a dragon, and a whore. The pageant is the Church as it should be; the chariot's fate will show it as it is.

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.