Paradise, page 41
From subtle thoughts which twine thee round about.
52 In this wide kingdom no contingency
Can find a place in the minutest fact,
No more than sadness, hunger, thirst can be.
55 For here eternal law doth so enact
All thou beholdest, that the measurements
Between the ring and finger are exact.
58 Swift-sped to the true life, this child-folk, hence,
Not sine causa in this Rose reside
In varying degrees of excellence.
61 The King, within whose kingdom we abide
Content in love and blissfulness so great
No will has dared to long for more beside,
64 All minds in His glad semblance doth create;
His grace thereon is variously conferred.
Thou seest the effect: let that be adequate.
67 Plainly in Holy Scripture ye have heard
This lesson in the story of the twins
Who in the womb to enmity were stirred.
70 Since grace so early has her origins,
So, as men’s hair of divers shades doth grow,
God’s crown of light for every brow she wins.
73 Not, then, by merit, do these spirits go
To dwell in varying degrees of bliss;
Grace-given is the sight which grades them so.
76 In mankind’s earliest ages true it is
That innocent children came to Paradise,
The faith of parents being enough for this.
79 Later it was required to circumcise
Male infants, that their innocent wings might gain
The power to bear them upward to these skies.
82 But since the time of grace such things were vain;
For then, without true baptism in Christ
Such innocence in Limbo must remain.
85 Now to that race which most resembles Christ
Lift up thy gaze; its radiance alone
Can grant to thee the power to look on Christ.”
88 I looked, and on that countenance there shone
Such bliss, bestowed by sacred minds who soar
(For this created) through that lofty zone,
91 That nothing I had looked on heretofore
Had held me breathless in such wonderment,
Or unto God so close a likeness bore.
94 The angel who first thither made descent,
Before her, sang “Hail, Mary, full of grace”,
His wings spread wide unto their full extent.
97 Response to the divine canticle of praise
Was sung by all that court so blissfully,
Still more serenely joyful was each face.
100 “O holy father, who dost bear for me
To stay below, quitting thine own dear site
To which thou’rt destined in eternity,
103 Which angel is it who in such delight
Looks in Our Lady’s eyes with love so burning
That like a fire he seems, so radiant bright?”
106 Thus I deferred once more to the discerning
Of one whom Mary’s loveliness arrayed
Even as the rising sun the star of morning.
109 “All joy and excellence that dwell”, he said,
“In soul or angel (and ’tis rightly so)
In him is at its most sublime displayed;
112 For this is he who brought the palm below
To Mary when the Son of God on high
Bearing our fleshly burden willed to go.
115 But follow with thine eyes once more as I
Continue, and the great patricians note
Of this most just and pious sovereignty.
118 Those two on high, who, as thou canst make out,
Being nearest to Augusta, are most blest,
Of this our Rose are as a double root.
121 Upon her left is he, of all the rest
The father, whose bold taste cost him so dear,
Bequeathing to mankind such bitter taste.
124 Upon her right behold that reverend peer,
Father of Holy Church, who holds the keys
Of all the roseate joy assembled here.
127 And he who saw before his own decease
All the sad seasons of the lovely bride
Whom Christ with lance and nails had claimed as His,
130 Sits next to him; by Adam is the guide
Whose people, nurtured by the Lord on manna,
Were ingrate, fickle, mutinous beside.
133 Diagonal to Peter there see Anna,
Gazing upon her daughter in such content
Her look ne’er falters while she sings Hosanna.
136 And facing Adam sitteth she who sent
Thy Beatrice to save thee from the path
Where headlong to thy ruin thou wert bent.
139 But since the time of thy entrancement doth
Grow short, like the good tailor spoken of,
We’ll cut our coat according to our cloth,
142 And here will stop, to turn our eyes above
That thou, as far as may be, with thy gaze,
Mayst penetrate into the Primal Love.
145 But (lest perchance thy wings should seem to raise
Thee when they downward ply) ’tis well for thee
That prayer should first be offered for thy grace,
148 Grace from Our Lady who can ever be
Thy help in need; now follow as anon
I pray, so that thy heart stray not from me.”
151 And he began this holy orison.
THE IMAGES. The Saints in the Empyrean: Before beholding the Divine Essence, Dante must first prepare himself by contemplating the saints in glory. Those whom St Bernard indicates, beginning with the Virgin Mary, are all, in one way or another, connected with the story of the Redemption. In the almost rigid precision and symmetry of the ranks of the blessed, the perfection of the divine order is conveyed. God’s plan for mankind, His heavenly kingdom, are as satisfying to the intellect as a geometrical design.
NOTES. ll. 4–6: “The wound which Mary tended and assuaged” etc.: The wound healed by Mary is the sin of man, redeemed by the Incarnation; the “surrender so ill-gauged” is the yielding by Eve to the serpent which led to the Fall; the “beauteous person” at Mary’s feet is Eve.
l. 7: “… the thrones of the third order”: i.e. the thrones in the third horizontal rank, counting from the top (cf. Diagram, p. 323).
l. 9: “Thy Beatrice in the adjacent seat”: In the Limbo, Beatrice told Virgil that she was sitting by Rachel when the Virgin Mary sent Lucia to her, drawing her attention to the plight of Dante (cf. Inf. ii. 100–102). Rachel was the second wife of the Patriarch Jacob and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin (cf. Gen. xxix). She is mentioned in Inf. iv. (l. 60) as being among those released from Limbo on the descent of Christ into Hell, and is mentioned also to Dante in a dream in Purg. xxvi where she symbolizes the contemplative life. The Virgin Mary, Rachel, Lucia, Beatrice, and Virgil represent for Dante the stages of intervening grace which saves him from himself. Dante had, as it were, sunk beneath the Christian level and it was Virgil himself, to whose voice he was still responsive, who was able to show Dante the limitations of the Virgilian view of life.
ll. 10–12: “Sarah, Rebekah, Judith, and then she, the ancestress of him” etc.: Sarah was the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. Rebekah was the wife of Isaac and the mother of Esau and Jacob. Judith, the daughter of Merari, murdered Holofernes while he slept, thereby saving Bethulia, which the Assyrians were besieging. In the apocryphal book which bears her name, Judith is represented as the ideal type of piety. “The ancestress of him who cried in grief at his wrong doing Miserere mei” is Ruth, the great-grandmother of David, the author of the penitential psalm beginning “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for thy great goodness” (Psalm 1). The “wrong doing” of which he thus repents is his adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite. Bathsheba conceived a child by David and in order that he might marry her, David contrived that Uriah should be killed in battle. Bathsheba then became his wife and bore a son, who was Solomon (cf. II Sam. xi).
ll. 16–18: “As downwards to the seventh, so below”: St Bernard says that the line of thrones extending downwards from Mary is occupied by Hebrew women. The seven whom he has named are: Mary, Eve, Rachel, Sarah, Rebekah, Judith, and Ruth. The inclusion of Eve among “women of the Hebrew race” would seem to be justified inasmuch as she is the mother of all mankind and, in consequence, the ancestral mother also of Christ in His kinship with humanity. All the women named, with the exception of Judith, are wives of members of the House of David (of which Adam may be regarded as the ancestor). Rachel, the second wife of Jacob, is not in the direct line, for David was descended from Judas the son of Leah, Jacob’s first wife. Rachel’s importance, however, as the symbol of the contemplative life (cf. Purg. xxvii and Images) would seem to account for her being placed above Sarah, Rebekah, and Ruth. Between Sarah and David are the first fourteen generations mentioned by St Matthew (i. 1–17); and, according to the chronology indicated by Adam in Canto xxvi (ll. 118–23), the span of years from Eve until the birth of Christ is 5198.
ll. 19–21: “Since faith from two directions turned her gaze” etc.: St Bernard refers here to the distinctions between the saints of the Old and the saints of the New Covenant, those who believed in Christ to come and those who believed in Him as already come. The line of Old Testament women is at once the demarcation and the link between the two. The Virgin Mary is included among them since she had faith in Christ before His conception. (Cf. Canto xix. 103–5 and Canto xx. 103–5.)
ll. 22–3: “…this section of the Rose, where all the petals are mature”: The thrones of the Old Covenant are all occupied, for the number of the elect of the Old Testament is complete.
ll. 25–7: “On yonder side… dwell, parted by empty spaces here and there” etc.: Among the thrones of the New Testament are a few vacant places (one of them awaits the soul of the Emperor Henry VII; cf. Canto xxx. 133–8). “Those who believed in Christ Emmanuel”: i.e. those who believed in Christ already come (“Emmanuel”, God-with-us).
l. 31: “So, facing her”: The line of thrones headed by St John the Baptist is opposite that which is occupied by the women of the Old Testament. (Cf. Diagram, p. 323.)
ll. 32–3: “Who endured the desert and a martyr’s death and Hell, until two years were gone”: St John the Baptist was beheaded two years before the Crucifixion and thus was in Limbo for that length of time until Christ came to release him (cf. Inf. iv. 52–63 and note).
l. 35: “… Francis, Benedict, Augustine”: i.e. St Francis of Assisi, St Benedict, and St Augustine of Hippo. Next to the Precursor of Christ comes His most perfect imitator. The exalted longing which Dante had expressed to see St Benedict (cf. Canto xxii. 58–63) is now fulfilled, according to the saint’s promise. Note that St Benedict is placed opposite Rachel, the symbol of contemplation. St Augustine, the greatest of the Latin fathers of the Church, is the author of the City of God, a treatise in vindication of Christianity and the Christian Church.
ll. 38–9: “Both aspects of the faith will, when complete, in equal measure in the garden stand”: It is not known whence Dante derived this notion that the elect of the New Covenant would be equal in number to those of the Old. Some commentators attribute it to Dante’s love of symmetry; others see in it an indication that Dante believed the end of the world to be near at hand.
ll. 40–42: “Know that to here from where the petals meet” etc.: A line cuts horizontally across the two descending lines (“partitions”). Below this are the souls of children. (Cf. Diagram, p. 323.)
l. 43: “… by Another’s, under fixed conditions”: The souls of infants and children are saved, not through grace and the individual’s choice between good and evil (as is the case with adults), but through the merits of Christ alone.
l. 45: “Ere they had reached control of their volitions”: The children had died before reaching the age of reason, at which stage alone true choice is possible.
l. 48: “Their infant faces and their childish mien”: Dante here departs from the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas, according to whom all the blessed will be as they were or would have been in youth. Dante, on the contrary, implies that the souls in Heaven show themselves to be of the same age and aspect which they possessed when they died; thus, children appear as children and adults as adults of varying ages.
l. 49: “Since now thou art perplexed by silent doubt”: The doubt which here perplexes Dante is the old one concerning election and predestination. St Bernard has indicated that the children are placed some higher, some lower (“under fixed conditions”, l. 43), among the ranks of the blessed. Why, if they were all saved by equal merit (i.e. that of Christ), do they enjoy different degrees of bliss? This is the question which St Bernard proceeds to answer (ll. 52–84).
ll. 52–4: “In this wide kingdom no contingency” etc.: Nothing in Heaven is to be assigned to chance; everything is in accordance with the will of God, and whatever God wills is justice (cf. Canto xix. 85–90 and note).
ll. 56–7: “… the measurements between the ring and finger are exact”: God’s grace is more or less, in proportion to the greater or lesser merit of the soul that receives it. This does not mean that the soul earns grace by its merit, but that the relationship between grace and merit is such as to accord perfectly with divine justice, which is the will of God. This is so difficult a concept for mortal minds that it is not surprising that, even at the very culmination of his sublime vision, Dante is still in need of illumination concerning it.
ll. 59–60: “Not ‘sine causa’ in this Rose reside in varying degrees of excellence”: The Latin expression sine causa is a legalistic phrase, signifying “without cause”, and is appropriate to the judicial nature of the mediaeval theology of the redemption.
l. 66: “Thou seest the effect: let that be adequate”: The gift of grace, “variously conferred” (l. 65), is so inscrutable as to elude all created mind. Compare the similar pronouncements on predestination by the Eagle (Canto xx. 130–38) and by St Peter Damian (Canto xxi. 83–99).
ll. 68–9: “… the twins who in the womb to enmity were stirred”: St Bernard, to illustrate the inscrutable, unpredictable nature of grace, cites the case of Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Rebekah and Isaac (cf. Gen. xxv. 21–6 et sqq.). St Paul also comments on the pre-natal predispositions of Jacob and Esau in the Epistle to the Romans (ix. 10–15): “… when Rebekah also had conceived… (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith unto Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
l. 71: “… as men’s hair of divers shades doth grow”: The comparison of the diversity of grace with the diversity of the colour of hair was probably suggested to Dante by Esau’s having red hair (cf. Gen. xxv. 25: “And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.”).
ll. 76–81: “In mankind’s earliest ages true it is” etc.: The faith of parents in the coming Messiah was sufficient in the early ages of the world until the time of Abraham. After that, until the birth of Christ, circumcision was required for salvation.
l. 84: “Such innocence in Limbo must remain”: Here Dante causes St Bernard to contradict words which he had himself written on this question: “It is in God’s hands; not mine be it to set the limit.”
l. 85: “… that face which most resembles Christ”: i.e. the face of the Virgin.
l. 89: “… sacred minds”: i.e. angels who minister to the Virgin as others minister to the other souls (cf. Canto xxxi. 16–18).
l. 94: “The angel who first thither made descent”: i.e. the Angel Gabriel, who descended to Mary to make the Annunciation.
ll. 109–11: “All joy and excellence that dwell” etc.: Just as God wills greater grace to some men than to others, so He vouchsafes more grace to one angel than to another. In Heaven this is a source of joy, for the will of the saints accords with the will of God. (Compare the words of Piccarda in Canto iii. 70–87.)
l. 112:… “who brought the palm below”: In many representations of the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel is shown holding a palm as a sign of the triumph that is to come.
l. 119: “Augusta”: i.e. the Virgin.
ll. 121–2: “… he, of all the rest the father”: i.e. Adam.
ll. 124–6: “.. that reverend peer” etc.: i.e. St Peter.
ll. 127–9: “And he who saw before his own decease” etc.: i.e. St John the Evangelist, who, as author of the Apocalypse (as it was believed), foresaw the coming tribulations of the Church.
ll. 130–32: “the guide” etc.: i.e. Moses.
ll. 133–5: “Diagonal to Peter there see Anna” etc.: i.e. the mother of the Virgin (cf. Diagram, p. 323).
ll. 136–8: “… she who sent thy Beatrice” etc.; i.e. Lucia (cf. Inf. ii. 97–101 and note).
ll. 145–6: “… lest perchance thy wings should seem to raise thee” etc.: There can be no true progress without the grace of God, which the soul must ever pray to have accorded to it through the intercession of the Virgin.
The Celestial Rose – St Bernard’s Prayer
CANTO XXXIII
THE STORY. St Bernard addresses to the Virgin a prayer for intercession for Dante that grace may be granted him to behold God. Conveying her acceptance of the prayer, the Virgin turns her eyes above and Dante, doing likewise, is enabled to penetrate with his vision to the True Light of which all other is the radiance or reflection. Therein he beholds the unity of all creation and all time, the Three Persons (manifested as three spheres), and, finally, Christ, one with the eternal being of Godhead. Here his powers of representation failed him and all that remains is the remembrance of his will and love wholly surrendered to the love of God.
