Dante's ten heavens : a study of the Paradiso

Front matter

A FEW PRESS OPINIONS

"As a help to the minuter study not of Dante only, but of what has always been regarded as the most obscure part of Dante's writings, it is hardly too much to say that no more valuable work has appeared in English." — Athenceuni,

"The very careful and admirable study which Mr. Gardner has made of the Paradiso is peculiarly welcome. We have read it with the deepest interest, and we believe that it will be found most helpful by all students of the immortal Tuscan poet." — Spectator.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I Dante's Paradise 1

II Within Earth's Shadow 53

Preface to the Second Edition

THESE seven Essays are intended to serve as an Introduction to the study of Dante's Paradiso ; six of them deal directly with the Paradiso itself, while the seventh touches upon certain of Dante's Letters, which illustrate his frame of mind in that epoch of his life during which the Divina Coinmedia was composed, or, at least, took final shape.

They were originally partly based upon the mediaeval commentaries of the author of the Ottimo Commento (1334), and Benvenuto da Imola (1379) ; and upon the modern works of Scartazzini, Lubin, and Cornoldi. They are also largely indebted to Mr. A. J. Butler's edition of the Paradiso ; Hettinger's Scope and Value of the Divina CoTntnedia, edited by Father H. S. Bowden ; the Rev. J. S. Lupton's Joannes Coletus super Opera Dionysii ; Longfellow's translation of the Divina Commedia ; Fraticelli's and Giuliani's editions of Dante's Minor Works ; Mr. F. J. Church's translation of the De Monarchia ; Father J. Rickaby's Aquinas Ethicus ; Cornoldi's Physical System of St. Thomas, translated by Mr. E. H. Dering. In this second edition I am also much indebted to Dr. Moore's invaluable Oxford Dante. Were I now to rewrite my book, I should most cer-

ix

PEEFACE

tainly have to acknowledge an additional debt to Professor T. Casini's edition of the Divina .Commedia and to Mr. Paget Toynbee's Dante Dictionary, I was not acquainted with the former work when these essays were written, and the Dante Dictionary has only appeared since.

In this second edition portions have been largely revised, but the work as a whole remains the same. I have mainly followed Witte's text of the Divina CoTumedia, though not invariably. The Minor Works, with the exception of one or two passages from the Canzoni, are quoted from the Oxford Dante. The translation of the De Monarchia quoted is always Mr. Church's ; that of the Divina Commedia is for the most part Longfellow's, excepting where no name is appended. The Convivio is my own, though it owes much to Miss Hillard's version, which I had adopted in the first edition. For the Second Part of the Summa Theologica I have frequently availed myself of the abbreviated version in Aquinas Ethicus. The appended list of books is not a complete bibliography, but merely represents the works more frequently consulted or found more helpful.

I have modified my standpoint in one or two matters with reference to the Letters. And, notwithstanding Professor Michele Barbi's publication of the text of the Provision of June 2nd, 1316, I have felt compelled, on mature consideration, to partly abandon my scepticism with respect to the authenticity of the famous Letter to a Florentine Friend. In Chapter vii. I am indebted to various recent writers upon the subject of the Letters in the Bullettino della Societa Dantesca Italiana.

My grateful thanks are due to the Rev. George Tyrrell, S. J., who kindly read through the proofs of

X

Preface

the first edition of this book, and aided me with his suggestions and criticism ; and to the Rev. P. H. Wicksteed, M.A., for many valuable suggestions upon the first two chapters, which were either incorporated in the text or have led me to modify my judgments upon special points in question. In this second edition I have the further pleasant duty of thanking my generous critics and reviewers, who have enabled me to correct not a few errors and inaccuracies which would otherwise have escaped my notice.

E. G. G.

Florence

December Sth, 1899

XI

List of Works Chiefly Used and Consulted

S. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, 6 vols., Eome, 1886. S. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa contra Gentiles^ Rome, 1888. Agnelli, G-., Topocronografia del Viaggio Dantesco, Milan, 1891. d'Ancona, Alessandro, La Vita Nuova illustrata con note, etc.,

Pisa, 1884.

Bambaglioli, Graziolo de', Commento alV Inferno, edited by

A. FiAMMAZZO, Udine, 1892.

Barelli, v., VAllegoria delta Divina Commedia di Dante Ali-

ghieri, Florence, 1864.

Bartoli, a., Storia delta Letteratura Italiana, Florence, 1878-84. Benvenuti de Rambaldis de Imola, Comentum super Dantis

1887.

S. Bernardi opera omnia, ed. Migne, Paris, 1854.

Breviarium Bomanum,, translated by the Marquess of Bute, Edinburgh and London, 1879.

S. Bona VENTURA, Vita di S. Francesco d'' Assisi, ed. Amoni, Rome,

Bullettino delta Societd Dantesca Italiana, diretto da M. Barbi, Florence.

Butler, A. J., Dante's Paradise, edited with translation and notes, London, 1885.

Butler, A. J., A Coinpanion to Dante, from the German of G. A. ScARTAZziNi, London, 1893.

Capponi, G., Storia delta Repuhhlica di Firenze, vol. I., Florence,

Casini, T., La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri, con introduzione e commento, Florence, 1896.

Church, R. W., Dante, with a translation of the De Monarchia by F. C. Church, London, 1878.

• • •

Xlll

LIST OF WORKS

CoRNOLDi, G. M., La Divina Commedia con commento, Eome, 1887.

CoRNOLDi, Gr. M., The Physical System of St. Thomas, translated

by E. H. Dering, London, 1893.

DoLLiNGER, Studies in European History, translated by M.

Warre, London, 1890.

Fraticelli, p., La Divina Commedia con commento, Florence,

1860, etc.

Fraticelli, P., Opere Minori di Dante Alighieri, 3 vols., Florence,

Giuliani. G., Le Opere Latine di Dante Alighieri, 2 vols, Florence, 1878^82.

Giuliani, G., Metodo di commentare la Cmnmedia, Florence, 1861.

St. Gregory the Great, The Dialogues, an old English version

edited by H. J. Coleridge, London, 1874. Hettinger, Dante^s Divina Commedia, its Scope and Value,

edited by H. S. Bowden, London, 1887. HiLLARD, K., The Banquet of Dante Alighieri, London, 1889. S. IsiDORi Hispalensis episcopi opera, ed. Migne, Paris, 1850. Latham, C. S., Dante's Letters, translated with notes, etc., Boston

and New York, 1891.

Longfellow, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.

Lubin, a., Commedia di Dante Alighieri, preceduta dalla vita, etc., Padua, 1881.

LuNGO, I. DEL, Dlno Compagni e la sua Cronica, Florence, 1879, etc.

LuNGO, I. DEL, DelV Esilio di Dante, Florence, 1881.

LuPTON, J. H., Joannes Coletus super opera Dionysii, London, 1869.

Moore, E., Tutte le Opere di Dante Alighieri, nuovamente rivedute nel testo, Oxford, 1895, etc.

Moore, E., Time References in the Divina Commedia, Oxford, 1887.

Moore, E., Studies in Dante, series I. and II., Oxford, 1896-99.

VOttimo Commento delta Divina Commedia, testo inedito d\in contemporaneo di Dante, 3 vols., Pisa, 1827-29.

Pastor, L., History of the Popes from the close of the Middle Ages, vol. I., edited by F. L. Antrobus, London, 1891.

Perez, P., Delle Fragranze onde V Alighieri profuma il Purgatorio e il Paradiso, Intra, 1867 (Eeprinted with I sette cerchi del Purgatorio, Milan, 1896).

xiv

LIST OF WORKS

Commentarium, Florence, 1845.

Plumptre, E. H., The Commedia and Canzoniere of Dante

Alighiei'i, vol. II., London, 1892. RiCHARDi A Sancto Victore, opera omnia, ed. Migne, Paris,

1855.

RiCKABY, Joseph, Aquinas Ethicus, 2 vols., London, 1892. RossETTi, Dante Gabriel, Dante and his Circle, London, 1861

etc.

RossETTi, F. M., A Shadow of Dante, London, 1871, etc. Scartazzini, Gr. A., La Divina Commedia, 3 vols, Leipzig

1874-90.

Scartazzini, G. A., Prolegomeni, Leipzig, 1890. Scartazzini, G. A., La Divina Commedia, edizione minore,

Milan, 1893 and 1896.

Selmi, F., II Convito, sua cronologia, etc., Turin, 1865. ToYNBEE, Paget, A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable

Matters in the Works of Dante, Oxford, 1898. Vaccheri & Bertacchi, La Visione considerata nello spazio e

net tempo, Turin, 1881.

Vaughan, R. B., 77ie Life and Labours of St. Thomas of Aquin,

London, 1872, 2 vols'.

Vernon, W. W., Readings on the Inferno, chiefly based on tlie

Commentarj'- of Benvenuto da Imola, 2 vols., London, 1894.

ViLLANi, Istorie Fiorentine, Milan, 1802-03.

ViLLANi, Selections from the first nine books of the Croniche Fiorentine, translated by R. E. Selfb, and edited by P. H. Wicksteed, Westminster, 1896.

ViLLARi, Pasquale, The First Two Centuries of Florentine History, translated by Linda Villari, 2 vols., London, 1894 and 1895.

Wicksteed, P. H., ^ provisional translation of the Early Lives of Dante, and of his poetical correspondence with Giovanni del Virgilio.

Witte, K., La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri : Berlin, 1862 ; Milan, 1864.

Witth, K., Essays on Dante. Selected, translated, and edited [from tbe Dante- For schungen], with Introduction, Notes and Appendices, by C. M. Lawrence and P. H. Wicksteed, London, 1898.

XV

Chapter I Dante's Paradise Anima Justi

dicit : Caelum mihi sedes est." St. Bernard, Liber de

BENVENUTO DA IMOLA commences his commentary on the Paradiso by quoting a sentence of the Arabian philosopher Averrhoes : Bonuvi est crihrare inodium sabuli ut quis inveniat unarn margaritam, — it is good to sift a measure of sand to find a pearl. And Benvenuto goes on in his quaint mediaeval fashion to explain how Dante, this curiosisshnus indagator, performs this operation in his divine poem. The first measure of sand, the Inferno, gave him the disposition of escaping from endless woe ; a second measure, the Purgatorio, showed him the true and arduous way to come to this pearl of great price ; and now, finally, he sifts a third measure of sand, the Paradiso^ and here he finds that most precious pearl, the reward of all his labours, eternal glory in the fruition of God.

The description of this eternal glory and the mediaeval conception of Paradise, as the mystical union of the soul with the First Cause in vision, love and enjoyment, and the comprehension of the most sublime and secret things of the celestial mysteries — this is what we seek and find in Dante's Paradiso. It is, i)erhaps, still the least popular, the least generally intelligible part of the Divine Comedy. Ruskin has somewhere spoken of the difficulty of having " nobility enough in one's own thoughts to forgive the failure of any other human soul to speak clearly what it has felt of the most divine." Perhaps in the Inferno the dramatic side of Dante's genius is more obvious, in those clear and terrible pictures of human passion and suffering against a background of lurid flame. In the Purgatorio Dante seems more the spokesman and poet of all humanity ; his teaching in that second canticle, even for non-Catholics who reject the doctrine of Purgatory, seems to be of more general and universal application, corresponding to something in the heart and conscience of man. In the Paradiso Dante appears as essentially the man of the Middle Ages. Here, perhaps more than in any other part of the poem, does Dante show himself in thorough sympathy with his age, its doctrines and rudimentary science, its yearning for knowledge, its delight in the beauty of intellectual satisfaction. It is such works as the Paradiso that enable us to realise what were the noblest thoughts and aspirations of those ages, whose exceeding light has so dazzled weak modern eyesight that they have sometimes been called dark ; for in them —

L'occliio si smarria Come virtu die al troppo si confonda.^

There is a sublime passage in the SuTnma Theologica Avhich gives a key to the comprehension of this

^ Purg. viii. 35. The eye is bewildered as faculty that is confounded by excess.

boundless yearning, boundless but confident, for the satisfaction of the intellect. Aquinas is discussing the question concerning the essence of beatitude : Does the beatitude of man consist in the vision of the Divine Essence ? And he answers it thus : —

" The last and perfect happiness of man cannot be otherwise than in the vision of the Divine Essence. In evidence of this statement two points are to be considered : first, that man is not perfectly happy so long as there remains anything for him to desire and seek ; secondly, that the perfection of every power is determined by the nature of its object. Now the object of the intellect is the essence of a thing : hence the intellect attains to perfection so far as it knows the essence of what is before it. And therefore, when a man knows an effect, and knows that it has a cause, there is in him an outstanding natural desire of knomng the essence of the cause. If therefore a human intellect knows the essence of a created effect without knowing aught of God beyond the fact of His existence, the perfection of that intellect does not yet adequately reach the First Cause, but the intellect has an outstanding natural desire of searching into the said Cause : hence it is not yet perfectly happy. For perfect happiness, therefore, it is necessary that the intellect shall reach as far as the very essence of the First Cause." ^

Thus, he adds, the intellect will have its perfection through being united to God, as to the object in which alone the beatitude of man consists. United to the source of all good in this vision of the Divine

^ Summa, I — 2. q. 3. a. 8. (Rickaby, Aquinas Ethicus),

Essence, the soul is filled with all good things. This beatitude of man belongs therefore to the intellectual faculty, since by no activity of sense can man be united to this uncreated Good. And so Dante's Paradise is the beatitude of the intellect in joyful possession of absolute Truth, the supreme bliss which is reached in the Empyrean Heaven of pure light —

Luce intellettual plena d'amore, Amor di vero ben pien di letizia, Letizia die trascende ogni dolzore.*

Notwithstanding its essentially mediaeval character, the closest students of Dante are usually agreed in ranking the Paradiso highest of the three parts of the Divine Comedy. "It is a perpetual hymn of everlasting love," wrote Shelley in his Defence of Poetry : " Dante's apotheosis of Beatrice and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns himself to have ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry." No less beautiful and true is Shelley's characterisation of Dante as poet of the Paradiso in his own unfinished masterpiece, The Triumph of Life, where he speaks again —

Of him who from the lowest depths of hell Through every paradise and through all glory Love led serene, and who returned to tell

the wondrous story

How all things are transfigured except Love.

Knowledge and love are the two supreme and inseparable themes of Dante's Pa^^adiso : the love of

* Light intellectual full of love, love of true good full of joy, joy that transcendeth all sweetness. Par. xxx. 40.

the Vita Nuova and the philosophical devotion of the Convivio are here united and rendered perfect in knowledge and love of the Supreme and Uncreated Good.

The Divine Comedy is at once a vision and an allegory ; a vision of the unseen world beyond the grave, and, based upon that vision, an allegory of the nature of vice and of virtue, of the guidance of human wisdom and celestial wisdom, reason and revelation, and of the duties of man towards the Empire and the Church. It is a vision of the state of souls after death ; it is an allegory of how man, whilst still in this life, may use his free will for good or for evil, and so incur reward or punishment.

The subject, therefore, of the Paradiso in the literal sense is the state of the souls of the blessed after death ; and in the allegory it may be taken as '* the beauty of virtue as shown by the greatness of the reward," which is practically a deduction from the words in the Letter to Can Grande : " Man, in so far as, by meritorious use of free will, he is subject to the justice that rewards." ^ If the Purgatorio is an allegory of the real life of man upon earth, the Paradiso represents the ideal life whether passed in action or contemplation. Some of the early commentators express this twofold meaning by their distinction between the essential Paradise of blessed souls after death, and the moral or spiritual Paradise of virtuous and contemplative spirits still united to their bodies in this w^orld. Yet the work can never sink to the cold level of a

mere allegory. In the complicated mediaeval system of fourfold interpretation of the Scriptures, the old law is the figure of the new law, and the new law, in the anagogical sense, is the figure of future glory ; and similarly Jerusalem, in the literal or historical sense the city of the Jews, admits of a threefold interpretation as the Church, the spiritual life, and anagogically our heavenly city of Paradise. The anagogical sense is the signification of those things which are in eternal glory, it indicates the object of hope and the goal of yearning upward effort — the quid speres or quo tendas of the doggerel verses of the schoolmen.^ From the nature itself of the subject matter it is impossible in Dante's Paradiso to separate this supreme mystical sense from the literal meaning and the allegory, since Paradise itself is the reward of a righteous use of man's free will —

Ma chi prende sua croce e segue Cristo Ancor mi scusera di quel cli'io lasso, Yedendo in quell' albor balenar Cristo.

Thus this supreme mystical sense, this sohria ehrietas of anagogy, is seldom wholly absent throughout the Paradiso ; but rests upon and crowns the literal sense and the allegory, as delight sits upon activity. It is no mere poetical fiction that is signified by the

^ Of the three si^iritual meanings in which the Scriptures are to be understood, the moral or tropological sense is that in which examples are set for us to follow : Morales quid agas. This sense exists in the Paradiso too; but is usually left for the reader to draw for himself: "This moral sense," Dante says in the Convivio, " readers should carefullj^ gather from all writings for the benefit of themselves and their descendants."

^ But he who takes his Cross and follows Christ will j^et excuse me for what I leave, when he shall see Christ lighten in that dawn.

letter ; Dante believed in the truth of what he sang^ and, though necessarily concealed for a while and expressed under veils of sensible images, the literal Paradise of the concluding cantos of his poem is indeed the consummation of his labours and the reward he hoped for and strove towards — the signification of the things beyond sense, the supernal things of eternal glory. This is expressed by the poet himself in his exclamation in Canto xxii. — •

S'io torni mai, lettore, a quel devoto Trionfo, per lo quale io piango spesso Le mie peccata, e il petto mi percoto.

Far. xxii. lOG.^

Without entering into the question of how far the political allegories really penetrate the divine poem, it may safely be concluded that, from the nature of Dante's views, they cannot hold much place in the Paradiso. The Emperor himself, the supreme political power and temporal authority, he who has to care for the world and to secure that in this areola of earth belonging to mortal man — L'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci ^ — life may pass in freedom and with peace, can but guide man in accordance with the teachings of Philosophy to "the blessedness of this life, which consists in the exercise of his natural powers and which is prefigured in the Earthly Paradise " {De Monarchia iii. 16). With the attainment of the Earthly Paradise under the guidance of Human Wisdom (reason and philosophy and the Imperial Power), and then the resignation by Virgil of his leadership, whatever political allegory there was

^ As may I ever return, reader, to that devout triumph, for which I often bewail my sins and strike my breast.

^ The little space that maketh us so fierce. Par. xxii. 151. Aiuola is sometimes translated threshing -floor »

must in the main have been completed. Such a political regeneration of Christendom indicated in the attainment of the Earthly Paradise, and in the lessons inculcated from the history of the Church and Empire represented in those splendid visionary pageants that close the Purgatorio, is however regarded by Dante as a means and stepping stone to the moral regeneration and eternal happiness of mankind as is shown in the Paradiso. Man, having regained his innocence in the Earthly Paradise and attained to such an ideal life as that represented by the seven lower spheres of Paradise, would no longer need the Imperial Authority " to restrain him in his course by bit and bridle."^ Though the main political part of the allegory is completed, the poet's political doctrines are still proclaimed as each suitable occasion arises, and his declaration of the sanctity of the Empire and his denunciation of the unworthy holders of the chair of Peter acquire still greater force, when heard amidst the eternal glories of Paradise.

Until the final consummation of the vision, Beatrice is Dante's sole guide throughout the Paradiso, In the allegorical sense, for most of the early commentators, she represents Sacred Theology or the Divine Science ; for others again she is a symbol of Revelation, for others of co-operating Grace or even of Contemplation. Dr. DoUinger in his lecture on Dante as a Prophet says, *' Beatrice signifies Theology, not in its abstract meaning as the letter of religious science, but as the living daughter of heaven, the blessed knowledge of God and of holy things, the highest divine gift of grace, enabling us to behold

^ Nor the Ecclesiastical Authority either, if the letter of the De Monarchia is applied strictly to the Paradiso.

here, as in a glass, that which we shall hereafter gaze on face to face." On the other hand. Dr. Scartazzini regards her as the symbol of the Ecclesiastical Authority, *' the sjrmbol of Ecclesiastical Authority in so far as it is in the possession of Divine Revelation." This is that ideal spiritual power of the De Monarchia, whose function is to lead mankind according to revelation (even as Beatrice guides Dante in his poem) unto " the blessedness of the life eternal, which consists in the fruition of the sight of God's countenance, and to which man of his natural powers cannot rise, if he be not aided by the divine light " (Mon. iii. 16). And she seems, indeed, to play some such part in her first appearance in the glorious pageant in the garden of Eden. But, since Dante expressly tells us elsewhere in the same treatise (Mon. iii. 4) that, if he had remained in the state of innocence in which he had been created by God, man would have no need of either Imperial or Ecclesiastical Authority, it would seem that this part of Beatrice's symbolism could only apply to certain episodes and passages in the Paradiso, when once the Earthly Paradise has been fully regained — to certain episodes and passages understood in the moral or tropological sense. As we are told in the Letter to Can Grande that the poem is polysensuous, we should perhaps best regard the symbolism of Beatrice as manifold ; and sum up her attributes under the comprehensive phrase Divine Wisdom or Heavenly ,Wisdom, understanding clearly by Divine Wisdom, not the Wisdom of God (which would almost be to identify her with the Word), but, as Barelli puts it, *' all the wisdom divinely revealed to man to raise him above earthly things and bring him near to God." This would include the spiritual power or Ecclesiastical Authority, as far as it can apply in the ParadisOy and Revelation and the Divine Science of Theology.

But the literal aspect of Beatrice, the glorified woman of the poet's heart and his poetical ideal of womanhood, cannot be lost sight of, and is recognised by Benvenuto da Imola and other early commentators. It can hardly be doubted that the Paradiso is the apotheosis of a real woman, though invested with all the Church's power and all Theology's authority ; she cannot be identified with any one of these symbolical meanings, because it is her function to include and transcend them all.

In the literal sense — the essential Paradise — no allegorical meaning can well be assigned to Beatrice ; for in Paradise ecclesiastical authority is meaningless, and things are not known to the saints by theology but by intuition. Still throughout the Paradiso^ until the final and true vision, it is mainly the allegorical Beatrice presented to us, although here and there we have those lyrical passages that can only refer to the real woman, seeming to break in, as it were, into the allegorical narrative, like the wedding music into the story of the Ancient Mariner, giving an air of reality and truth to the whole. In the final consummation of the vision, when the last altitude of blessedness is reached, when the spiritual guide has done her work and her place is taken by St. Bernard, all allegory practically ceases, and the real woman is enthroned in the glory she has merited, praying now to the Madonna for her lover's final perseverance : —

Vedi Beatrice con quanti beati

Per li miei preghi ti cliiudon le mani.^

^ See, Beatrice with all the blessed are clasping their hands to thee in support of my prayers. Par. xxxiii. 38,

This wondrous combination of the real with the symboHcal is exquisitely illustrated in three famous lines from Rossetti's House of Life —

Lady, I fain would tell how evermore Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor Thee from mj^self, neither our love from God.

So in Dante's poem we sometimes know not love for the allegorical Beatrice from love for the real Beatrice, nor either from love for the poet's Faith, until all three at last are transfigured, fused and blended in that supreme Love —

L'Amor che move il sole e I'altre stelle.^

The general arrangement of Dante's Paradise is based upon the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the theological doctrine of the Mansions of Beatitude, and the theories of the supposed Dionysius the Areopagite (followed by Aquinas) and of St. Bernard concerning the angelic Hierarchies.

Around our globe, the fixed centre of the Universe, move the nine s^Dheres, each of the lower eight enclosed by the sphere above it. Dante's passage, as he ascends from heaven to heaven, is a preparation for the true Paradise. Above these nine moving heavens and enclosing them around is the spaceless Empyrean Heaven of rest and divine peace, the true Paradise, the abode of God and His Angels and saints ; a spaceless motionless ocean, glowing with the spiritual fire of Love. Although all the blessed without exception have their final seat and home in this Empyrean Heaven, certain groups of saints descend from their thrones into each of the lower spheres to greet Dante in his ascent. For Dante is as the soul that he describes in Book iv. of the

^ The Love that moves the sun and all the stars. Par. xxxiii. 145.

1.3

Convivio, that, in the fourth and last part of her life, " returns to God as to the port whence she set out when she first entered upon the sea of this life " : —

" E siceome a colui che viene di lungo cammino, anzi ch' entri nella porta della sua citta, gli si fanno incontro i cittadini di quella ; eosi alia nobile anima si fanno incontro quelli cittadini della eterna vita. E COS! fanno per le sue buone operazioni e conteniplazioni ; che, gia essendo a Dio renduta e astrattasi dalle mondane cose e cogitazioni, vedere le pare coloro che appresso di Dio crede che sieno." ^

They satisfy the poet's intellectual and spiritual needs, and then return to their places in the Empyrean. " To make manifest the glory of beatitude in these souls," says the Letter to Can Grande, "from them, as from those that behold all truth, many things will be asked which have great utility and delight." Also their temporary apparition in the lower heavens serves Dante as a sensible sign of a suprasensible mystery, the wondrous mystery of the Mansions of Beatitude : there are different grades of the glory of beatitude in that Empyrean Heaven where all those blessed ones dwell, yet each is perfectly blessed according to his own capacity. The inequality of perfection in beatitude arises from the different degrees of their knowledge and love, since one intellect sees God more perfectly than another. Domus ergo est una, id est, denarius est unus ; sed

^ Conv. iv. 28. " And as his fellow-citizens come forth to meet him who returns from a long journey, even before he enters the gates of his city ; so to the noble soul come forth the citizens of the Eternal Life. And thus do they by reason of her good works and contemplations ; for, being now rendered to God and abstracted from worldly things and thoughts, she seems to see those whom she believes are with Grod."

diversitas est ihl viansioiium, id estt differentia claritatis ; quia unum est et suviinuvi honuniy heatitudo et vita omniuin, id est Deus ipse.^ The spirits that ap~ pear in the three lower heavens have the lowest grades of beatitude in the Empyrean. They appear as a sensible sign of this invisible mystery that can only be apprehended by the intellect.

Dante does not behold the saints who appear in the eight lower heavens in their true form. In the lowest sphere of all, the spirits are seen like faint yet most beautiful reflections of the human form ; in the heaven of Mercury, those which have the next lowest place are at first just seen in the midst of light which hides them from his view as their joy (their accidental joy, to be quite accurate) gets greater ; in the third heaven they are completely swathed in concealing light ; and, in the higher heavens still, they appear as stars or dazzling splendours. In the seventh heaven St. Benedict tells him that in the Empyrean he will see them with countenance unveiled, and it follows clearly from the way Dante asks the question that the deficiency is in his own powers of I'ision ; his eyes can more easily distinguish the lower grades of spirits within reach of Earth's shadow : —