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The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso]

by Dante Aligheri

Translated by Charles Eliot Norton




PARADISE


CONTENTS

CANTO I. Proem.--Invocation.--Beatrice and Dante ascend to the
Sphere of Fire.--Beatrice explains the cause of their ascent.

CANTO II. Proem.--Ascent to the Moon.--The cause of Spots on the
Moon.--Influence of the Heavens.

CANTO III. The Heaven of the Moon.--Spirits whose vows had been
broken.--Piccarda Donati.--The Empress Constance.

CANTO IV. Doubts of Dante, respecting the justice of Heaven and
the abode of the blessed, solved by Beatrice.--Question of Dante
as to the possibility of reparation for broken vows.

CANTO V. The sanctity of vows, and the seriousness with which
they are to be made or changed.--Ascent to the Heaven of
Mercury.--The shade of Justinian.

CANTO VI. Justinian tells of his own life.--The story of the
Roman Eagle.--Spirits in the planet Mercury.--Romeo.

CANTO VII. Discourse of Beatrice.--The Fall of Man.--The scheme
of his Redemption.

CANTO VIII. Ascent to the Heaven of Venus.--Spirits of Lovers,
Source of the order and the varieties in mortal things.

CANTO IX. The Heaven of Venus.--Conversation of Dante with
Cunizza da Romano,--With Folco of Marseilles.--Rahab.--Avarice of
the Papal Court.

CANTO X. Ascent to the Sun.--Spirits of the wise, and the learned
in theology.--St. Thomas Aquinas.--He names to Dante those who
surround him.

CANTO XI. The Vanity of worldly desires,--St. Thomas Aquinas
undertakes to solve two doubts perplexing Dante.--He narrates the
life of St. Francis of Assisi.

CANTO XII. Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men,
doctors of the Church and teachers.--St. Bonaventura narrates the
life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the
circle with him.

CANTO XIII. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks again, and explains the
relation of the wisdom of Solomon to that of Adam and of Christ,
and declares the vanity of human judgment.
CANTO XIV. At the prayer of Beatrice, Solomon tells of the
glorified body of the blessed after the Last Judgment.--Ascent to
the Heaven of Mars.--Souls of the Soldiery of Christ in the form
of a Cross with the figure of Christ thereon.--Hymn of the
Spirits.

CANTO XV. Dante is welcomed by his ancestor, Cacciaguida.--
Cacciaguida tells of his family, and of the simple life of
Florence in the old days.

CANTO XVI. The boast of blood.--Cacciaguida continues his
discourse concerning the old and the new Florence.

CANTO XVII. Dante questions Cacciaguida as to his fortunes.--
Cacciaguida replies, foretelling the exile of Dante, and the
renown of his Poem.

CANTO XVIII. The Spirits in the Cross of Mars.--Ascent to the
Heaven of Jupiter.--Words shaped in light upon the planet by the
Spirits.--Denunciation of the avarice of the Popes.

CANTO XIX. The voice of the Eagle.--It speaks of the mysteries of
Divine justice; of the necessity of Faith for salvation; of the
sins of certain kings.

CANTO XX. The Song of the Just.--Princes who have loved
righteousness, in the eye of the Eagle.--Spirits, once Pagans, in
bliss.--Faith and Salvation.--Predestination.

CANTO XXI. Ascent to the Heaven of Saturn.--Spirits of those who
had given themselves to devout contemplation.--The Golden
Stairway.--St. Peter Damian.--Predestination.--The luxury of
modern Prelates.

CANTO XXII. Beatrice reassures Dante.--St. Benedict appears.--He
tells of the founding of his Order, and of the falling away of
its brethren. Beatrice and Dante ascend to the Starry Heaven.--
The constellation of the Twins.--Sight of the Earth.

CANTO XXIII. The Triumph of Christ.

CANTO XXIV. St. Peter examines Dante concerning Faith, and
approves his answer.

CANTO XXV. St. James examines Dante concerning Hope.--St. John
appears,with a brightness so dazzling as to deprive Dante, for
the time, of sight.

CANTO XXVI. St. John examines Dante concerning Love.--Dante's
sight restored.--Adam appears, and answers questions put to him
by Dante.

CANTO XXVII. Denunciation by St. Peter of his degenerate
successors.--Dante gazes upon the Earth.--Ascent of Beatrice and
Dante to the Crystalline Heaven.--Its nature.--Beatrice rebukes
the covetousness of mortals.

CANTO XXVIII. The Heavenly Hierarchy.

CANTO XXIX. Discourse of Beatrice concerning the creation and
nature of the Angels.--She reproves the presumption and
foolishness of preachers.

CANTO XXX. Ascent to the Empyrean.--The River of Light.--The
celestial Rose.--The seat of Henry VII.--The last words of
Beatrice.

CANTO XXXI. The Rose of Paradise.--St. Bernard.--Prayer to
Beatrice.--The glory of the Blessed Virgin.

CANTO XXXII. St. Bernard describes the order of the Rose, and
points out many of the Saints.--The children in Paradise.--The
angelic festival.--The patricians of the Court of Heaven.

CANTO XXXIII. Prayer to the Virgin.--The Beatific Vision.--The
Ultimate Salvation.




PARADISE

CANTO I. Proem.--Invocation.--Beatrice and Dante ascend to the
Sphere of Fire.--Beatrice explains the cause of their ascent.

The glory of Him who moves everything penetrates through the
universe, and shines in one part more and in another less. In the
heaven that receives most of its light I have been, and have seen
things which he who descends from thereabove neither knows how
nor is able to recount; because, drawing near to its own
desire,[1] our understanding enters so deep, that the memory
cannot follow. Truly whatever of the Holy Realm I could treasure
up in my mind shall now be the theme of my song.

[1] The innate desire of the soul is to attain the vision of
God.


O good Apollo, for this last labor make me such a vessel of thy
power as thou demandest for the gift of the loved laurel.[1] Thus
far one summit of Parnassus has been enough for me, but now with
both[2] I need to enter the remaining, arena. Enter into my
breast, and breathe thou in such wise as when thou drewest
Marsyas from out the sheath of his limbs. O divine Power, if thou
lend thyself to me so that I may make manifest the image of the
Blessed Realm imprinted within my head, thou shalt see me come to
thy chosen tree, and crown myself then with those leaves of which
the theme and thou will make me worthy. So rarely, Father, are
they gathered for triumph or of Caesar or of poet (fault and
shame of the human wills), that the Peneian leaf[3] should bring
forth joy unto the joyous Delphic deity, whenever it makes any
one to long for it. Great flame follows a little spark: perhaps
after me prayer shall be made with better voices, whereto
Cyrrha[4] may respond.

[1] So inspire me in this labor that I may deserve the gift of
the laurel.

[2] The Muses were fabled to dwell on one peak of Parnassus,
Apollo on the other. At the opening of the preceding parts of his
poem Dante has invoked the Muses only.

[3] Daphne, who was changed to the laurel, was the daughter of
Peneus.

[4] Cyrrha, a city sacred to Apollo, not far from the foot of
Parnassus, and here used for the name of the god himself.



The lamp of the world rises to mortals through different
passages, but from that which joins four circles with three
crosses it issues with better course and conjoined with a better
star, and it tempers and seals the mundane wax more after its own
fashion[1] Almost such a passage had made morning there and
evening here;[2] and there all that hemisphere was white, and the
other part black, when I saw Beatrice turned upon the left side,
and looking into the sun: never did eagle so fix himself upon it.
And even as a second ray is wont to issue from the first, and
mount upward again, like a pilgrim who wishes to return; thus of
her action, infused through the eyes into my imagination, mine
was made, and I fixed my eyes upon the sun beyond our use. Much
is allowed there which here is not allowed to our faculties,
thanks to the place made for the human race as its proper,
abode.[3] Not long did I endure it, nor so little that I did not
see it sparkling round about, like iron that issues boiling from
the fire. And on a sudden,[4] day seemed to be added to day, as
if He who is able had adorned
the heaven with another sun.

[1] In the spring the sun rises from a point on the horizon,
where the four great circles, namely, the horizon, the zodiac,
theequator, and the equinoctial colure, meet, and, cutting each
other, form three crosses. The sun is in the sign of Aries, "a
better star," because the influence of this constellation was
supposed to be benignant, and under it the earth reclothes
itself. It was the season assigned to the Creation, and to the
Annunciation.

[2] There, in the Earthly Paradise; here, on earth. It is the
morning of Thursday, April 123. The hours from the mid-day
preceding to this dawn are undescribed.

[3] The Earthly Paradise, made for man in his original
excellence.

[4] So rapid was his ascent to the sphere of fire, drawn upward
by the eyes of Beatrice.


Beatrice was standing with her eyes wholly fixed on the eternal
wheels, and on her I fixed my eyes from thereabove removed.
Looking at her I inwardly became such as Glaucus[1] became on
tasting of the herb which made him consort in the sea of the
other gods. Transhumanizing cannot be signified in words;
therefore let the example[2] suffice for him to whom grace
reserves experience. If I was only what of me thou didst the last
create,[3] O Love that governest the heavens, Thou knowest, who
with Thy light didst lift me. When the revolution which Thou,
being desired, makest eternal,[4] made me attent unto itself with
the harmony which Thou attunest and modulatest, so much of the
heaven then seemed to me enkindled by the flame of the sun, that
rain or river never made so broad a lake.

[1] A fisherman changed to a sea-god. The story is in Ovid
(Metamorphoses, xiii.).

[2] Just cited, of Glauens.

[3] In the twenty-fifth Canto of Purgatory, Dante has said that
when the articulation of the brain is perfect God breathes into
it a new spirit, the living soul; and he means here that, like
St. Paul caught up into Paradise, he cannot tell "whether in the
body or Out of the body." (2 Corinthians, xii. 3).

[4] The desire to be united with God is the source of the eternal
revolution of the heavens. "The Empyrean . . . is the cause of
the most swift motion of the Primum Mobile. because of the most
ardent desire of every part of the latter to be conjoined with
every part of that most divine quiet heaven."--Convito, 14.


The novelty of the sound and the great light kindled in me a
desire concerning their cause, never before felt with such
acuteness. Whereupon she, who saw me as I see myself, to quiet my
perturbed mind opened her mouth, ere I mine to ask, and began,
"Thou thyself makest thyself dull with false imagining, so that
thou seest not what thou wouldst see, if thou hadst shaken it
off. Thou art not on earth, as thou believest; but lightning,
flying from its proper site, never ran as thou who thereunto[1]
returnest."

[1] To thine own proper site,--Heaven, the true home of the soul.


If I was divested of my first doubt by these brief little smiled-
out words, within a new one was I the more enmeshed. And I said,
"Already I rested content concerning a great wonder; but now I
wonder how I can transcend these light bodies." Whereupon she,
after a pitying sigh, directed her eyes toward me, with that look
which a mother turns on her delirious son, and she began, "All
things whatsoever have order among themselves; and this is the
form which makes the universe like to God. Here[1] the high
creatures[2] see the imprint of the eternal Goodness, which is
the end for which the aforesaid rule is made. In the order of
which I speak, all natures are arranged, by diverse lots, more or
less near to their source;[3] wherefore they are moved to diverse
ports through the great sea of being, and each one with an
instinct given to it which may bear it on. This bears the fire
upward toward the moon; this is the motive force in mortal
hearts; this binds together and unites the earth. Nor does this
bow shoot forth.[4] Only the created things which are outside
intelligence, but also those which have understanding and love.
The Providence that adjusts all this, with its own light makes
forever quiet the heaven[5] within which that revolves which hath
the greatest speed. And thither now, as to a site decreed, the
virtue of that cord bears us on which directs to a joyful mark
whatever it shoots. True is it, that as the form often accords
not to the intention of the art, because the material is deaf to
respond, so the creature sometimes deviates from this course; for
it has power, though thus impelled, to incline in another
direction (even as the fire of a cloud may be seen to fall[6]),
if the first impetus, bent aside by false pleasure, turn it
earthwards. Thou shouldst not, if I deem aright, wonder more at
thy ascent, than at a stream if from a high mountain it descends
to the base. A marvel it would be in thee, if, deprived of
hindrance, thou hadst sat below, even as quiet in living fire on
earth would be."

[1] In this order of the universe.

[2] The created beings endowed with souls,--angels and men.

[3] The source of their being, God.

[4] This instinct directs to their proper end animate as well as
inanimate things, as the bow shoots the arrow to its mark.

[5] The Empyrean, within which the Primum Mobile, the first
moving heaven, revolves.

[6] Contrary to its true nature.


Thereon she turned again toward heaven her face.



CANTO II. Proem.--Ascent to the Moon.--The cause of Spots on the
Moon.--Influence of the Heavens.

O ye, who are in a little bark, desirous to listen, following
behind my craft which singing passes on, turn to see again Your
shores; put not out upon the deep; for haply losing me, ye would
remain astray. The water that I sail was never crossed. Minerva
inspires, and Apollo guides me, and nine Muses point out to me
the Bears.

Ye other few, who have lifted tip your necks be. times to the
bread of the Angels, oil which one here subsists, but never
becomes sated of it, ye may well put forth your vessel over the
salt deep, keeping my wake before you on the water which turns
smooth again. Those glorious ones who passed over to Colchos
wondered not as ye shall do, when they saw Jason become a
ploughman.

The concreate and perpetual thirst for the deiform realm was
bearing us on swift almost as ye see the heavens. Beatrice was
looking upward, and I upon her, and perhaps in such time as a
quarrel[1] rests, and flies, and from the notch is unlocked,[2] I
saw myself arrived where a wonderful thing drew my sight to
itself; and therefore she, from whom the working of my mind could
not be hid, turned toward me, glad as beautiful. "Uplift thy
grateful mind to God," she said to me, "who with the first
star[3] has conjoined us."

[1] The bolt for a cross-bow.

[2] The inverse order indicates the instantaneousness of the act.

[3] The moon.


It seemed to me that a cloud had covered us, lucid, dense, solid,
and polished, like a diamond which the sun had struck. Within
itself the eternal pearl had received us, even as water receives
a ray of light, remaining unbroken. If I was body (and here[1]
it is not conceivable how one dimension brooked another, which
needs must be if body enter body) the desire ought the more to
kindle us to see that Essence, in which is seen how our nature
and God were united. There will be seen that which we hold by
faith, not demonstrated, but it will be known of itself like the
first truth which man believes.[2]

[1] On earth, by mortal faculties.

[2] Not demonstrated by argument, but known by direct cognition,
like the intuitive perception of first principles, per se notu.


I replied, "My Lady, devoutly to the utmost that I can, do I
thank him who from the mortal world has removed me. But tell me
what are the dusky marks of this body, which there below on earth
make people fable about Cain?"[1]


[1] Fancying the dark spaces on the surface of the moon to
represent Cain carrying a thorn-bush for the fire of his
sacrifice.


She smiled somewhat, and then she said, "If the opinion of
mortals errs where the key of sense unlocks not, surely the
shafts of wonder ought not now to pierce thee, since thou seest
that the reason following the senses has short wings. But tell me
what thou thyself thinkest of it." And I, "That which here above
appears to us diverse, I believe is caused by rare and dense
bodies." And she, "Surely enough thou shalt see that thy belief
is submerged in error, if then listenest well to the argument
that I shall make against it. The eighth sphere[1] displays to
you many lights, which may be noted of different aspects in
quality and quantity. If rare and dense effected all this,[2] one
single virtue, more or less or equally distributed, would be in
all. Different virtues must needs be fruits of formal
principles;[3] and by thy reckoning, these, all but one, would
be destroyed. Further, if rarity were the cause of that darkness
of which you ask, either this planet would be thus deficient of
its matter through and through, or else as a body distributes the
fat and the loan, so this would interchange the leaves in its
volume. If the first were the case, it would be manifest in the
eclipses of the sun, by the shining through of the light, as when
it is poured out upon any other rare body. This is not so;
therefore we must look at the other, and if it happen that I
quash this other, thy opinion will be falsified. If it be that
this rare passes not through,[4] there needs must be a limit,
beyond which its contrary allows it not to pass further; and
thence the ray from another body is poured back, just as color
returns through a glass which hides lead behind itself. Now thou
wilt say that the ray shows itself dimmer there than in the other
parts, by being there reflected from further back. From this
objection experiment, which is wont to be the fountain to the
streams of your arts, may deliver thee, if ever thou try it. Thou
shalt take three mirrors, and set two of them at an equal
distance from thee, and let the other, further removed, meet
thine eyes between the first two. Turning toward them, cause a
light to be placed behind thy back, which may illumine the three
mirrors, and return to thee thrown back front all. Although the
more distant image reach thee not so great in quantity, thou wilt
then see how it cannot but be of equal brightness.

[1] The heaven of the fixed stars.

[2] If all this difference were caused merely by difference in
rarity and density.

[3] The stars exert various influences; hence their differences,
from which the variety of their influence proceeds, must be
caused by different formal principles or intrinsic causes.

[4] Extends not through the whole substance of the moon.


"Now, as beneath the blows of the warm rays that which lies under
the snow remains bare both of the former color[1] and the cold,
thee, thus remaining in thy intellect, will I inform with light
so living that it shall tremble in its aspect to thee.[2]

[1] The color of the snow.

[2[My argument has removed the error which covered thy mind, and
nov I will tell thee the true cause of the variety in the
surface of the moon.

"Within the heaven of the divine peace revolves a body, in whose
virtue lies the being of all that it contains.[1] The following
heaven[2] which has so many sights, distributes that being
through divers essences[3] from it distinct, and by it
contained. The other spheres, by various differences, dispose the
distinctions which they have within themselves unto their ends
and their seeds.[4] These organs of the world thus proceed, as
thou now seest, from grade to grade; for they receivefrom above,
and operate below. Observe me well, how I advance through this
place to the truth which thou desirest, so that hereafter thou
mayest know to keep the ford alone. The motion and the virtue of
the holy spheres must needs be inspired by blessed motors, as the
work of the hammer by the smith. And the heaven, which so many
lights make beautiful, takes its image from the deep Mind which
revolves it, and makes thereof a seal. And as the soul within
your dust is diffused through different members, and conformed to
divers potencies, so the Intelligence[5] displays its own
goodness multiplied through the stars, itself circling upon its
own unity. Divers virtue makes divers alloy with the precious
body that it quickens, in which, even as life in you, it is
bound. Because of the glad nature whence, it flows, the virtue
mingled through the body shines,[6] as gladness through the
living pupil. From this,[7] comes whatso seems different between
light and light, not from dense and rare; this is the formal
principle which produces, conformed unto its goodness, the dark
and the bright."

[1] Within the motionless sphere of the Empyrean revolves that
of the Primum Mobile, from whose virtue, communicated to it from
the Empyrean, all the inferior spheres contained within it derive
their special mode of being.

[2] The heaven of the Fixed Stars.

[3] Through the planets, called essences because each has a
specific mode of being.

[4] "The rays of the heavens are the way by which their virtue
descends to the things below."--Convito, ii. 7.

[5] Which moves the heavens.

[6] The brightness of the stars comes from the joy which radiates
through them.

[7] From the divers virtue making divers alloy.



CANTO III. The Heaven of the Moon.--Spirits whose vows had been
broken.--Piccarda Donati.--The Empress Constance.

That sun which first had heated my breast with love, proving and
refuting, had uncovered to me the sweet aspect of fair truth; and
I, in order to confess myself corrected and assured so far as was
needful, raised my head more erect to speak. But a vision
appeared which held me to itself so close in order to be seen,
that of my confession I remembered not.

As through transparent and polished glasses, or through clear and
tranquil waters, not so deep that their bed be lost, the
lineaments of our faces return so feebly that a pearl on a white
brow comes not less readily to our eyes, so I saw many faces
eager to speak; wherefore I ran into the error contrary to that
which kindled love between the man and the fountain.[1] Suddenly,
even as I became aware of them, supposing them mirrored
semblances, I turned my eyes to see of whom they were; and I saw
nothing; and I turned them forward again, straight into the light
of the sweet guide who, smiling, was glowing in her holy eyes.
"Wonder not because I smile," she said to me, "at thy puerile
thought, since thy foot trusts itself not yet upon the truth, but
turns thee, as it is wont, to emptiness. True substances are
these which thou seest, here relegated through failure in their
vows. Therefore speak with them, and hear, and believe; for the
veracious light which satisfies them allows them not to turn
their feet from itself."

[1] Narcissus conceived the image to be a true face; Dante takes
the real faces to be mirrored semblances.


And I directed me to the shade that seemed most eager to speak,
and I began, even like a man whom too strong wish confuses, "O
well-created spirit, who in the rays of life eternal tastest the
sweetness, which untasted never is understood, it will be
gracious to me, if thou contentest me with thy name, and with
your destiny." Whereon she promptly, and with smiling eyes, "Our
charity locks not its door to a just wish, more than that which
wills that all its court be like itself. I was in the world a
virgin sister,[1] and if thy mind well regards, my being more
beautiful will not conceal me from thee; but thou wilt recognize
that I am Piccarda,[2] who, placed here with these other blessed
Ones, am blessed in the slowest sphere. Our affections, which are
inflamed only in the pleasure of the Holy Spirit, rejoice in
being formed according to His order;[3] and this allotment, which
appears so low, is forsooth given to us, because our vows
were neglected or void in some part." Whereon I to her, In your
marvellous aspects there shines I know not what divine which
transmutes you from our first conceptions; therefore I was not
swift in remembering; but now that which you say to
me assists me, so that refiguring is plainer to me. But tell
me, ye who are happy here, do ye desire a highher place, in
order to see more, or to make yourselves more friends?"
With those other shades she first smiled a little; then
answered me so glad, that she seemed to burn in the first
fire of love, "Brother, virtue of charity[4] quiets our will,
and makes us wish only for that which we have, and for
aught else makes us not thirsty. Should we desire to be
higher up, our desires would be discordant with the will of
Him who assigns us to this place, which thou wilt see is
not possible in these circles, if to be in charity is here
necesse,[5] and if its nature thou dost well consider. Nay, it is
essential to this blessed existence to hold ourselves within the
divine will, whereby our very wills are made one. So that as we
are, from stage to stage throughout this realm, to all the realm
is pleasing, as to the King who inwills us with His will. And His
will is our peace; it is that sea whereunto is moving all that
which It creates and which nature makes."

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