The spirit, Statius by name, who has just obtained his release from Purgatorial confinement to ascend to Heaven, states that the earthquake was not due to natural causes, such as strong dry vapors producing wind, but was caused by spiritual elements operative upon a soul's completing the penance and term assigned.
"It quakes here when some soul feeleth herself cleansed, so that she may rise up or set forth, to mount on high, and such a shout follows her. Of the cleansing the will alone gives proof, which fills the soul, all free to change her cloister, and avails her to will.... And I who have lainunder this torment five hundred years and more, only now felt free will for a better threshold. Therefore didst thou feel the earthquake and hear the pious spirits about the mount give praises to the Lord."
This Statius was a Roman poet who died in the year 96. His term in Purgatory therefore has lasted a little more than eleven centuries. The next longest period mentioned by Dante is that of Duke Hugh Capet who has been in Purgatory over 350 years with his purification still incomplete. Statius by Dante's poetic invention is represented first as saved through the influence of Virgil's poems and then is shown to be a Christian, having been led to embrace Christianity both from the heroic example of the martyrs and from his meditation on Virgil's prophecy of the Cumæan Sibyl interpreted in the Middle Ages to refer to Christ. In the Divina Commedia Statius pays a glowing tribute to the Æneid and its author, wholly ignorant that he is addressing Virgil himself. "Of the Æneid I speak which was a mother to me and was to me a nurse in poesy ... and to have lived yonder when Virgil was alive, I would consent to one sun more than I need perform." Dante is all aquiver to surprise Statius with the information that Virgil is at hand, "but Virgil turned to me with a look that silently said, 'be silent.'"
"But the power which willsBears not supreme control: laughter and tearsFollow so closely on the passion prompts them,They wait not for the motions of the willIn nature most sincere. I did but smile,As one who winks; and thereupon the shadeBroke off, and peer'd into mine eyes, where bestOur looks interpret. 'So to good eventMayst thou conduct such great emprize,' he cried,'Say, why across thy visage beam'd, but now,The lightning of a smile.' On either partNow am I straiten'd; one conjures me speak,The other to silence binds me; whence a sighI utter, and the sigh is heard. 'Speak on,'The teacher cried 'and do not fear to speak:But tell him what so earnestly he asks.'Whereon I thus: 'Perchance, O ancient spiritThou marvel'st at my smiling. There is roomFor yet more wonder. He, who guides my kenOn high, he is that Mantuan, led by whomThou didst presume of men and gods to sing.If other cause thou deem'dst for which I smiled,Leave it as not the true one: and believeThose words, thou spakest of him, indeed the cause.'Now down he bent to embrace my teacher's feet;But he forbade him: 'Brother! do it not:Thou art a shadow, and behold'st a shade.'He, rising, answer'd thus: 'Now hast thou provedThe force and ardor of the love I bear thee,When I forget we are but things of air,And, as a substance, treat an empty shade.'"(XXI, 106.)
On the sixth terrace Dante with five P's removed, accompanied by Virgil sees the souls of those who sinned by gluttony. They are an emaciated crowd obliged to pass and repass before a fruit-laden tree bedewed with clear water from a fountain, without being able to satisfy their hunger or quench their thirst. Voices from this tree proclaim examples of temperance; voices from another tree equally tantalizing, declare examples of gluttony.
"People I saw beneath it (the tree) lift their handsAnd cry I know not what towards the leaves,Like little children eager and deluded,Who pray, and he they pray to doth not answerBut, to make very keen their appetiteHolds their desire aloft and hides it not.Then they departed as if undeceived."(XXIV, 106.)
Here Dante recognizes among the gaunt attenuated figures of the penitents, Forese Donati, hisintimate friend and kinsman of his wife Gemma. Our poet was surprised to find him so soon after his death on one of the terraces of Purgatory, the assumption being that because of his delay of conversion to the end of his life Forese would be in Outer Purgatory for a term equal in duration to the length of his life on earth. But the reason he had come so quickly to Purgatory is to be found in the efficacy of the prayers of his widow for the repose of his soul.
"Then answered he: 'That now I wander reapingThe bitter sweat of all this punishmentMy Nella gained for me, her vigil keepingIn prayer devout and infinite lament.Thus, here, beyond that shore of waiting sent,I landed, from the lower circles freed.And that more dear to God omnipotentLives on my little widow, is the meedOf the lone life she spends in many a saintly deed.'"(XXXIII, 85.)
Before ascending to the seventh and last terrace Dante describes how the angel of abstinence removed the sixth P.
"And as the harbinger of early dawn,The air of May doth move and breathe out fragranceImpregnate all with herbage and with flowers,So did I feel a breeze strike in the midstMy front, and felt the moving of the plumesThat breathed around an odor of ambrosia;And heard it said; Blessed are they whom graceSo much illumines that the love of tasteExcites not in their breasts too great desire,Hungering at all times so far as is just."(XXIV, 145.)
And now our penitent as he reaches the seventh terrace, where sins against the virtue of purity are expiated, enters upon the last stage of his purification. Here the spirits pass and repass through the midst of intensely hot flames, proclaiming examples of chastity. It is worthy of note that this terrace is the only place in Dante's Purgatory where fire is the punitive agent—a conception of our poet all the more remarkable because it runs counter to the view commonly held by the churchmen in the West, including St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, who teach that fire is the cleansing element of all Purgatory. That indeed is only a theological opinion. The Church itself, as the Greeks were assured at the Council of Florence, has never put forth any dogmatic decree on the subject.
Bidden by the angel to enter the fire, Dantedraws back paralysed with fear. Scenes of burning at the stake come with horror to his mind. He probably recalls also that Florence had condemned him to be burned alive. So, for the first time in Purgatory he recoils at the penance he must perform. Impassionately Virgil exhorts him. The stubborn pupil yields only at the utterance of Beatrice's name. For love of her he will endure the flame.
"The Mantuan spake: 'My son,Here torment thou mayst feel, but canst not death.Remember thee, remember thee, if ISafe e'en on Geryon brought thee; now I comeMore near to God, wilt thou not trust me now?Of this be sure; though in its womb that flameA thousand years contain'd thee, from thy headNo hair should perish. If thou doubt my truth,Approach; and with thy hands thy vesture's hemStretch forth, and for thyself confirm belief.Lay now all fear, oh! lay all fear aside.Turn hither, and come onward undismay'd.'I still, though conscience urged, no step advanced.When still he saw me fix'd and obstinate,Somewhat disturb'd he cried: 'Mark now, my son,From Beatrice thou art by this wallDivided.' As at Thisbe's name the eyeOf Pyramus was open'd (when life ebb'dFast from his veins) and took one parting glance,While vermeil dyed the mulberry; thus I turnedTo my sage guide, relenting, when I heardThe name that springs for ever in my breast.He shook his forehead; and, 'How long,' he said,'Linger we now'? then smiled, as one would smileUpon a child that eyes the fruit and yields.Into the fire before me then he walk'd;And Statius, who erewhile no little spaceHad parted us, he pray'd to come behind,I would have cast me into molten glassTo cool me, when I entered; so intenseRaged the conflagrant mass. The sire beloved,To comfort me, as he proceeded, stillOf Beatrice talk'd. 'Her eyes,' saith he,'E'en now I seem to view.' From the other sideA voice, that sang did guide us; and the voiceFollowing, with heedful ear, we issued forth,There where the path led upward. 'Come,' we heard,'Come blessed of my Father.'"(Canto, XXVII, 20.)
On emerging from the fire and on the very threshold of the Garden of Eden, Dante is addressedby Virgil, no longer competent to guide him higher. The Mantuan in touching words tells his disciple that having passed through Purgatory he needs no other guide than his own will, upright and sound, until he passes under the tutelage of Beatrice.
"The temporal fire and the eternalSon, thou hast seen, and to a place art comeWhere of myself no farther I discern.By intellect and art I here have brought thee;Take thine own pleasure for thy guide henceforth;Beyond the steep ways and the narrow art thou.Expect no more or word or sign from me;Free and upright and sound is thy free will,And error were it not to do its biddingThee o'er thyself I therefore crown and mitre."(XXVII, 127.)
Brother Azarias gives us the mystical sense of this passage. "The soul has conquered; therefore Virgil leaves the poet free from the dominion of his passions; more than free, a king crowned triumphant over himself; more than a king, a mitred priest, ruling the cloister of his heart, his thoughts and his affections and mediator and intercessor before Divine Mercy for himself andthose commending themselves to his prayers."
So crowned and mitred over himself Dante now enters the Garden of Eden.
"Here did the parents of mankind dwell in innocence; here is there perpetual spring and every fruit."
In the forest of Eden is a pure stream with two currents, Lethe and Eunoe, "the first has the power of all past sins the memory to erase, the other can restore remembrance of good deeds and pious days." On the banks of this stream the poet sees Matilda, who represents the Active Life.
"There appeared to me a lady all alone who went along singing and selecting from among the flowers wherewith all her path was enamelled" ... suddenly "the lady turned completely round towards me, saying, 'My Brother, look and listen'" (XXIX, 15). A solemn chant is heard, a wonderful light is seen. It is a pageant representing the return of mankind to Eden through membership in the Church.
First come, shedding heavenly light, the seven mystical candlesticks, symbolic of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost or the seven sacraments of the Church. Next follow twenty-four ancients representating the books of the Old Testament. Then are seen the four prophetic animals symbolizing the four Evangelists. Christ drawing a chariot representing the Church, thecentral figure of the pageant, advances under the form of the fabulous griffin, half eagle and half lion, typifying the two-fold nature of our Lord. On the right side of the chariot, dancing are three nymphs, the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity. On the left side are four other nymphs—the cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. Next come two old men, dignified and grave, St. Paul and St. Luke, who are followed by four others representing other books of the New Testament viz., the Epistles of St. James, St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude. The rear guard is an aged Solitary symbolic of the Apocalypse.
"And when the chariot was opposite to me" writes Dante, "a clap of thunder was heard; and those worthy folk seemed to have their further march forbidden, and halted there with the first ensign" (XXIX, 153).
What is the meaning of this symbolic procession so common to Dante's day, so alien to ours? We have already said that it is a dramatic representation of the human race finding happiness, finding its Eden in its membership in the Church. But it, also, is a symbolic lesson for the individual. Dante, the type of humanity having done penance for his sins, is about to be received through the sacrament of penance into the soul of the Church i.e. into the full communion of grace. It is fitting,therefore, that the Church should advance to meet him, the repentant sinner, and should reveal itself to him before receiving him into its bosom.
If objection be made that Dante already has been absolved from sin and in Purgatory has made expiation for his offences, the answer is given by Ozanam; "At the term of the expiatory course, as at its beginning, to quit it as well as to enter upon it, we must render submission to a religious authority and fulfill the conditions without which God does not treat with us—confession for oblivion, fears for consolation and shame for definitive rehabilitation." When the pageant comes to a halt the participants group themselves about the Griffin and the Chariot, by that act declaring that the goal and object of their desires are centered in Christ and His Church. Then one of the company by divine command calls aloud three times to a heavenly being, the spouse of the Church, to appear and the cry is repeated by the whole company. From the Chariot arise, as will arise the dead from their graves, a hundred angels scattering flowers over and around the Chariot and also raising their voices in the call for the Heavenly Bride. They first sing the words of the Canticle of Palm Sunday.Benedictus qui venis(Blessed art thou who comest) and then the beautiful line from the Aeneid:Manibus o date lilia plenis(Oh! give lilies with full hands).Then comes from the clouds through the midst of the flowers showering down again within and without the Chariot, arrayed in the colors of the three theological virtues, the object of the invocation.
"Crowned with olive over a white veil a Lady appeared to me, vestured in hue of living flame under a green mantle." It is Beatrice, Dante's beloved, now apotheosized in the personification of Revelation. What other poet ever dreamed of so glorifying his beloved that for her coming the natural virtues prepare the way, the supernatural virtues, as handmaids accompany her to assist us to the understanding of her doctrine, the angels sing her laudation and she herself in the role both of unveiler of the Scriptures of the Prophets and the Apostles and the mystical Bride of the Canticles is worthy to be called "O Light, O Glory of the human race?"
Dante before seeing her face, recognizes her by some mysterious instinct of love, recognizes her after a lapse according to fiction of ten years, but in reality of twenty-four years since her death.
To Virgil, Dante turns to tell the joyous news but Virgil has gone and tears course down the face of his disciple.
"Dante," says Beatrice, "weep not that Virgil leaves thee, nay weep thou not yet, for thou wilt have to weep for another wound." Awed by herappearance, he is taken back by her greeting. The mere thought of her loveliness uplifted him in the world. The hope of seeing her carried him through the horrors of Hell and the penance of Purgatory. Crowned and mitred over himself he came to Eden to meet her. And she has only reproaches for him. Particularly to the angels does she tell the story of his defection from the high ideals which she inspired in him. "This man was such in his new life potentially that every good talent would have made wondrous increase in him—(but) so low sank he that all means for his salvation were already short save showing him the lost people. For this I visited the portal of the dead and to him who has guided him up hither, weeping my prayers were borne. God's high decree would be broken if Lethe were passed and such viands were tasted, without some sort of penitence that may shed tears."
To her lover she turns for confirmation of the truth of her words: "Say, say if this is true; to such accusation thy confession must be joined."
"Confusion and fear together mingled, drove forth from my mouth a 'Yea,'" a monosyllable of confession which showed the depth of his shame.
But it is the sight of the superhuman beauty of Beatrice which completes his contrition and resuscitateshis love so as to fit him to pass through the waters of the Lethe.
"My eyes beheld Beatrice, turned toward the animal (the Griffin) that is One Person only (Christ) in twofold nature (i.e. God and man). Under her veil and on the far side of the stream she seemed to me to surpass more her ancient self, than she surpassed the others here when she was with us. So much remorse gnawed at my heart that I fell vanquished and what I then became she knoweth who gave me the cause." (XXXI, 82.)
When he recovers consciousness he finds his immersion in the Lethe in progress by Matilda. Then he is led to Beatrice by the four nymphs (the cardinal virtues) and at the request of the three nymphs who typify the theological virtues she smiles upon him.
"The fair lady (Matilda) dipped me where I must needs swallow of the water, then drew me forth and led me, bathed, within the dance of the four fair ones, and each did cover me with her arm. 'Here we are nymphs and in heaven are stars. Ere Beatrice descended to the world, we were ordained for her handmaids: we will lead thee to her eyes: but the three on the other side who deeper gaze will sharpen thine eyes to the joyous light that is within."
Beholding the glorified beauty of Beatricewholly inexpressible, Dante is in such rapture that he is oblivious of everything else.
"Mine eyes with such an eager covetingWere bent to rid them of their ten years' thirstNo other sense was waking; and e'en theyWere fenced on either side from heed of aught:So tangled, in its custom'd toils, that smileOf saintly brightness drew it to itself."
When our poet comes out of his rapture, the Chariot and the mystical company are moving to a tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which according to a beautiful tradition has become the Cross of Christ, the tree of salvation. To that tree is attached the Chariot which Christ (the Griffin) now leaves to enter Heaven again with the ancients and the angels. Beatrice remains with the seven nymphs to guard the Chariot (the Church). Up to this point the picture of the Church has been one of peace and happiness. Now with prophetic eye the poet beholds the tribulations which the Church will suffer from without and within. The description of the vision and the explanation of the symbolism are so well set forth by Ozanam that I quote his words unable to improve upon them, as I also share hisview as to the unwarranted severity here of Dante's censures of the Church.
"An eagle falls like lightning upon the tree, from which he tears the bark, and upon the car, which bends beneath his weight. Then comes a fox which finds its way within, and then a portion is torn off by a dragon that issues from the gaping earth. Thus far it is easy to recognize the persecutions of the Roman emperors which so harried the Church, the heresies by which it was desolated, and the schisms by which it was torn. Soon, the eagle reappeared, less menacing but not less dangerous; he shook his plumes above the sacred car, which speedily underwent a monstrous transformation. From divers parts of it arose seven heads armed with ten horns; a courtesan was seated in the midst; a giant stood at her side, exchanging with her impure caresses which he interrupted to scourge her cruelly. Then, cutting loose the metamorphosed car, he bears it away, and is lost with it in the depths of the forest.
"Is not this again the Church, enriched, by the gifts of princes who have become her protectors, sadly marred in appearance, sundry of her members defiled by the taint of the seven capital sins, and herself ruled over by unworthy pontiffs? Is not this the court of Rome, exchanging criminal flatteries with the temporal power, which flatteries are to be followed by cruel injuries, when theHoly See, torn from the foot of the cross of the Vatican, is transferred to a distant land, on the banks of a foreign river? But these ills will not be without end nor without retribution. The tree that lost and that saved the world cannot be touched with impunity, and if the Church has been made militant here below, it is with the liability of suffering from passing reverses, but also with the assurance of final victory."
Dante's own eternal victory is now assured, Beatrice directs Matilda to lead him to the Eunoe, whose waters will regenerate him and fit him to ascend to Paradise. "Behold, Eunoe which gushes forth yonder, lead him thereto and as thou art wont, revive in him again his fainting powers."
The poem closes with an address to the reader:
"If, Reader, I possessed a longer spaceFor writing it, I yet would sing in partOf the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me;But inasmuch as full are all the leavesMade ready for this second canticle,The curb of art no farther lets me go.From the most holy water I returnedRegenerate, in the manner of new treesThat are renewed with a new foliage,Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars."(Purg., XXXIII, 136.)
Of Dante's trilogy the Paradiso is truly his "medieval miracle of song," the supreme achievement of his genius. Here the poetry of the sublime reaches its highest point—the summit on which Dante is a lonely and unchallenged figure. "No uninspired hand," says Cardinal Manning, "has ever written thoughts so high in words, so resplendent, as the last stanza of the Divina Commedia." It was said of St. Thomas: "Post Summam Thomæ nihil restat nisi lumen gloriæ." It may be said of Dante: "Post Dantis Paradisum nihil restat nisi visio Dei." ("After Dante's Paradiso nothing remains but the vision of God.")
Shelley's tribute to the supremacy of Dante's Heaven is no less beautiful: "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."
Ruskin says: "Every line of the Paradiso is full of the most exquisite and spiritual expressions of Christian truths and the poem is only less readthan the Inferno because it requires far greater attention and perhaps, for its full enjoyment, a holier heart."
That Dante's Inferno is more popular reading than his Paradiso is due to the fact that evil and its consequences offer to the artist richer material for dramatic fascination and to the reader more lively interest in characters intensely human, than does the less sensational story of the Elects finding peace and happiness in a realm transcending the experiences of human nature. Dante's Purgatorio also finds a wider circle of readers because his penitents, suffering, struggling and aspiring, like people upon earth, have more human traits and exhibit more human interest than the saints confirmed in grace against human weakness.
Another reason for lesser interest manifested in this part of the Divina Commedia is the difficulty and obscurity of the Paradiso. It is not easy reading, because it requires study, repetition, concentration, meditation, qualities absent from the art of reading as it prevails today. If we ever have time to look at a book, the habit of skimming with inattentive rapidity so urges us onward that we find ourselves flitting from page to page, from chapter to chapter, panting and uninstructed. And if we belong to the bookless majority who have no time to read, we rush to the moving picture theatre to get our mental pabulum—often aseason's best seller—boiled down, served in rapid-fire order and bolted in the twinkling of an eye. For all such Dante's Paradiso is an intellectual as well as a spiritual impossibility and the poet begs such not to follow him on his voyage to the eternal kingdom.
"Oh ye who in some pretty little boatEager to listen, have been followingBehind my ship, that singing sails along,Turn back to look again upon your shores;In losing me, you might yourselves be lost.The sea I sail has never yet been passed.Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.Ye other few, who have the neck upliftedBetimes to th' bread of Angels upon whichOne liveth here and grows not sated by it,Well may you launch upon the deep salt-seaYour vessel, keeping still my wake before youUpon the water that grows smooth again.Those glorious ones who unto Colchos passedWere not so wonder-struck as you shall be,When Jason they beheld a ploughman made."(II, 1.)
The song which Dante sings in the Paradiso is the eternal happiness of man in vision, love andenjoyment united to his Creator. In preparation for this final consummation the poet, as he ascends to the Empyrean, gives a most beautiful epitome of the principal mysteries of religion and of some of the tenets of scholastic philosophy, treating especially the Fall of Man, Predestination, Free Will, the Redemption, the Immortality of the Soul and the theory of Human Knowledge. Allegorically considered, the poem is a veil, under which we see the ideal life of man upon earth, exercising virtue and gaining virtue's rewards.
To exhibit man's supreme, happiness in the next life, the Christian poet, insisting that his purpose is the inculcation of truth, both to save and to adorn the soul, must base his theme upon the doctrines of the Church. The definition of some of those dogmas Dante anticipated. All may be summed up in the following statement:
"It is of Catholic faith that the souls of the blessed see God directly and face to face and this vision is Supernatural; that there are degrees of this vision, corresponding to the merits of the elect; that to see God in His Essence, the intellect is supernaturally perfected; that the Beatific Vision is not deferred to the Day of Judgment, but is possessed at once after death but the Just, in whom there is no stain of sin or who have no temporal punishment to be expiated; and, furthermore,that all human beings at the end of the world will arise with their own bodies."
How will the poet bring home those incomprehensible truths to his readers? He has to treat a subject wholly transcendent and supernatural. Though his vision be celestial, his langauge must be terrestrial. He must visualize states of the soul which are alien to the eyes of the body and translate into terms of the senses things which are wholly non-sensuous. Dante is aware that no poet ever essayed that feat before: "The sea I sail has never yet been passed." (1, 8.) He knows, also, that shoals and rocks, seemingly impassable and a sea which may engulf his genius, are before him. "It is no coastwise voyage for a little barque, this sea through which the intrepid prow goes cleaving nor for a pilot who would spare himself." (XXIII, 67.)
And yet he will attempt the impossible, he will endeavor to sing not of the scenes but of the states of suprasensible spiritual joys—joys which Bishop Norris says "are without example, above experience and beyond imagination, for which the whole creation wants a comparison, we an apprehension and even the word of God, a revelation." Conscious of all that, Dante confesses the impotency of speech, the inadequacy of memory, the helplessness of imagination for the task to which he sets himself. He tells usthat the sublime songs of the elect "have lapsed and fallen out of my memory"—"that to represent and transhumanize in words impossible were." (I, 71.)
"And what was the sun wherein I entered,Apparent, not by color, but by lightI, though I call on genius, art and practiceCannot so tell that it could be imagined."(X, 41.)
So by the very nature of the subject visualization can be only partial—only "the shadow of the blessed realm," can be shown. But what human nature can do, even if its feat seems solitary and unique, Dante has accomplished in a failure which constitutes the most wonderful achievement in the domain of the sublime in literature, an achievement leaving us with a sense of his own ineffable bliss and of the inexpressible joys of the Elect—an achievement which came to pass, say some readers, because his poem is an account of a supernatural vision—and Dante hints that he thinks he was so favored, or because it is a work to which both heaven and earth have set their hand, showing him, as Emerson observes, "all imagination," or, as James Russell Lowell says, "The highest spiritual nature which has expressed itself in rhythmical form."
There are two methods of representing man's supreme happiness, relative and absolute: one is to depict nature at her best, untouched by sin, and to show man free from every defect and blemish, in the full perfection of his being. Naturally the imagery in this case is the imagery born of finite human experiences. The other method describes, as we said, not scenes of happiness but transcendent conditions of the soul as it is brought into ultimate communion with Supreme Goodness—the finite possessing and enjoying the Infinite. Here the human mind, let us repeat it, finds earthly images powerless to translate its thought, for it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive the glory of the spiritual world. These two methods Dante follows successively.
His Eden on the summit of Purgatory is literally the earthly Paradise of Adam and Eve. It is pictured in moving imagery as man's "native country of delights," a "lofty garden" of ineffable loveliness, high above all the physical and moral disturbances of earth, its waters, its winds, its flowers and its music all coming from supernatural sources, its bliss springing from the perfect harmony of man's animal, intellectual and spiritual powers in full and perfect accord with reason. It is Paradise Regained by man's climbing the mountain of Purgatory, and its significance is understood if we remember that Dante would teachus that the present life can be made dual, a life worth while in itself, full of service and godliness as well as a preparation for the unending life of Heaven.
For Dante there must be, also, the Celestial Paradise where man's supernatural destiny will be realized in joys which the eye has not seen and in music which the ear has not heard. His Paradiso has been called the Ten Heavens, but in reality there is in his plan only one Heaven, the Empyrean, the abode of the angels, of the blessed spirits and of God. It is high above the planets and the stars, beyond time and space. The Church has never answered the question: Where is Heaven? Theologians, however, have put forth various opinions. "Some say," writes Father Honthein, that "Heaven is everywhere, as God is everywhere, the blessed being free to move freely in every part of the universe while still remaining with God and seeing Him everywhere." Others hold that Heaven is "a special place with definite limits. Naturally this place is held to exist, not within the earth, but in accordance with the expressions of Scripture, 'without and beyond its limits.'" (Cath. Encycl., VII, 170.)
According to Dante's conception, Heaven, being non-spatial and non-temporal, is not a place but a state of spiritual life. As an aid in depicting that state he makes use of a unique literarydevice. He poetically creates nine Heavens, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile or First Movement. These, according to the Ptolemaic system which our poet follows, are concentric with the earth, around which as their center they revolve, while the earth remains fixed and motionless. The motion of each of these nine spheres, originally coming from the Primum Mobile, is communicated to it by the love of the angelic guardians, a literal application of the common saying that "love makes the world go around."
As a poetic fiction necessary for him to enter finally the true Heaven Dante is required to pass through these nine spheres, the fiction being used by him as an artist to declare the glories of the heavens and as a teacher to inculcate doctrines for the instruction and edification of mankind. In each of the nine Heavens groups of the blessed are represented as coming to meet him "as he returns to God as to the port whence (he) set out when (he) first entered upon the sea of this life."
This peerless rhetorical figure is explained in the Banquet, where he says: "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." This apparition of the blessed spirits to greet the mystic traveller as hemounts from sphere to sphere has several advantages: "it peoples with hosts of spirits, the immense lonely spaces through which the journey lies"; it affords the poet the opportunity of asking them "many things which have great utility and delight"; it finally gives him a sensible sign of the degree of beatitude which they possess in that realm of many mansions where each is rewarded according to his merit and capacity, the capacity of each spirit being in proportion to its degree of knowledge and love. This is stressed by the poet's representing the apparitions first as faint yet beautiful outlines of human features, then as ascent is made to the other Heavens, the spirits make themselves known by increasing manifestations of light so dazzling finally that the splendor would blind Dante if his vision were not divinely adapted to its supernatural needs.
The inequalities of bliss are also symbolized by the sphere in which the spirits appear to him; those in the sphere of the moon, e.g., are less favored than those in the Heaven of Mercury. The inequality of merit, and therefore of reward, is also declared by the difference in both the quickness of the spirits' movement and their clearness of vision into the essence of God. The Empyrean, it is worth while repeating, is the only true Paradise, the nine Heavens being only myths or poetic devices. Ifspirits are seen there, they have come forth only from the Empyrean and will quickly return there after preparing the poet for the eternal Light of Light.
The materials out of which Dante constructs his Paradiso are not, as we are already aware, fantastic images such as he employed for the first two parts of the Divina Commedia, but are things of the spirit, viz., knowledge, beauty, faith, love, joy; and he is aided in making visible those invisible entities of the spiritual life by such intangible things as sound, motion and light.
Light, indeed, is one of the leading elements in the Paradiso. The poem begins with a reference to the light of God's glory, and its last line speaks of "the Love which moves the Sun and the other stars." And between this beginning and this end in thirty-three cantiche light is represented not only by degrees of increasing intensity and variety of unlocked for movements but as surrounding the spirits, living flames, and constituting, symbolically, the beatitude of Heaven.
Dean Church, in his classic essay on Dante, has a beautiful paragraph that here calls for quotation: "Light in general is his special and chosen source of poetic beauty. No poet that we know has shown such singular sensibility to its varied appearances.... Light everywhere—in the sky and earth and sea—in the stars, the flames, the lamp, the gems—broken in the water, reflectedfrom the mirror, transmitted through the glass, or colored through the edge of the fractured emerald—dimmed in the mist. The halo, the deep water—streaming through the rent cloud, glowing in the coal, quivering in the lightning, flashing in the topaz and the ruby, veiled behind the pure alabaster, mellowed and clouding itself in the pearl-light contrasted with shadow, shading off and copying itself in the double rainbow like voice and echo—light seen within light—light from every source and in all its shapes illuminates, irradiates, gives glory to the Commedia.... And when he (Dante) rises beyond the regions of earthly day, light, simple and unalloyed, unshadowed and eternal, lifts the creations of his thought above all affinity to time and matter; light never fails him, as the expression of the gradations of bliss; never reappears the same, never refuses the new shapes of his invention, never becomes confused or dim, though it is seldom thrown into distinct figure and still more seldom colored."
In making light such a central feature of Heaven and symbolically in identifying light with God and the angels and the blessed, Dante is only expressing—but expressing beautifully and supremely—the thought which pagan oracles proclaimed and Holy Writ and the Church made known. From the earliest ages the sun which vivifies and illuminates the world was regarded bymany nations as the symbol of the Deity—and by still other nations it was adored. The psalmist, addressing God, says: "Thou art clothed with light as with a garment." (Ps., CIII, 2.) St. Paul declares that the Lord of Lords "inhabiteth light inaccessible." (1 Tim., VI, 16.) The Seer of Patmos tells us that the heavenly Jerusalem has no need of the light of the sun and the moon to shine upon it, "for the glory of God hath enlightened it and the Lamb is the lamp thereof." (Apoc., XX, 23.) "I am the light of the world," declares Christ, and with that revelation ringing in his ears the Beloved Disciple does not hesitate to say: "and this is the declaration which we have heard—that God is light." (I John, I, 5.) In narrating his vision of Heaven, Ezechial compares the light emanating from and enveloping the Deity, to fire. "I saw the likeness as of the appearance of fire, as the appearance of brightness." (XXIV, 17.) Moses on the mountain saw the Lord in the midst of fire, and on another mountain Christ, "the brightness of his Father's glory was transfigured before his apostles and his face did shine as the Sun and his garments became shining or glittering." (Matt., XVII, 2.) Small wonder then that the Nicaean creed declares that Christ is "God of God, Light of light." Not only with God, but with His saints is the idea of visible lightintimately associated. The prophet Daniel tells us that "They that are learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that instruct many unto justice, as stars to all eternity." (XII, 3.) And it is Christ Himself who says: "Then shall the just shine as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father." (Matt., XIII, 43.)
In using such a subtle, dazzling element as light so generally and in such countless varieties throughout his Paradiso, Dante is exposed to the danger of palling his readers with brightness and making them lose interest in things glorious and supernal. But the genius of the man saves the artist. By a conception of matchless beauty he binds the light of heaven to the human, making the smile in the eye of his beloved guide, Beatrice, express his own personal heaven, in the light that enters his mind and the ardor which quickens his heart. As he mounts with her the stairway of the heavens leading to the Eternal Palace and his motion is brought about simply by his gazing into her eyes, she makes known to him by her increasing brightness both his own mounting knowledge and his ascent nearer the Empyrean.
As Dante represents the increase of light and love deepening and expanding in him as he rises empyreanward all by the loved smile of his beloved Beatrice, it is well that we bear in mind the significance of the symbolism as expounded by thepoet in his Banquet. (III, 15.) Beatrice being Revelation or Wisdom made known to the world, "in her face appear things that tell of the pleasures of Paradise and ... the place wherein this appears is in her eyes and her smile. And here it should be known that the eyes of Wisdom are the two demonstrations by which is seen the truth most certainly; and her smile is her persuasion by which is shown forth the interior light of Wisdom under some veil; and in these two things is felt the highest pleasure of beatitude, which is the greatest good of Paradise."
Beatrice—Revealed Truth—remains the poet's guide until he comes to behold the Beatific Vision. Then, no longer needed, she withdraws in favor of the contemplative St. Bernard as guide, just as Virgil had withdrawn when he was powerless and when Beatrice was needed.
The question here presents itself: In what does Dante place the happiness of Heaven? Does he paint such a Heaven that it shows principally the rectifications of the inequalities of this life—a Heaven of such happiness, e.g., that the poor will love poverty or be resigned to it in the hope of possessing the riches of this Eternity? Is Dante's Heaven one in which happiness is so alluring that innocence will gladly submit to calumny and faith will lovingly welcome the sword or stake, in the certain confidence of gaining unendingglory or bliss? The Paradiso does reward poverty, crown innocence, glorify martyrdom, but it was never intended to be an account of what takes place in the real Heaven, or to be a description of the particular acts of goodness which win Heaven for the soul, or a rapturous picture appealing to the emotions of the believer and alluring him from earth.
Does Dante place the happiness of Heaven in the bliss and glorification of family reunion?
He is too good a theologian to place the essential happiness of Heaven merely in the joy of family reunion. He does not ignore that feature of eternity, but he does not stress it, because temperamentally he is moved less by sentiment of family and ties of friendship than by his curiosity for knowledge, by his yearnings to behold Eternal Wisdom. Only once does he mention Heaven as the state of reunion of families and friends, and that is when he comments upon the action of the twenty-three spirits in the Heaven of the Sun, in expressing their agreement with Soloman's discourse as to the participation which the human body will have, after the Resurrection in the glories of Paradise:
"So ready and so cordial an AmenFollow'd from either choir, as plainly spokeDesire of their dead bodies; yet perchanceNot for themselves, but for their kindred dear,Mothers and sires and those whom best they loved,Ere they were made imperishable flames."(XIV, 65.)
For Dante, Heaven must be the beatitude of the intellect and that primarily by the intellect's having an intuition full of joy in the Divine Essence, and secondly by its possessing full light on all those vexatious problems and mysteries which baffle us in this life.
"Well I perceive that never sated isOur intellect unless Truth illumines it,Beyond which nothing true expands itself.It rests therein, as wild beast in his lairWhen it attains it and it can attain it."(IV, 125.)
In insisting upon the power of the mind to know the truth and to find perfect happiness in the supernatural act of beholding God face to face, Dante is not in agreement with Pragmatism, Hegelianism and the "new Realist" theory—all which make truth elusive to the mind; but he is in full accord with the teaching of the Catholic Church, which defends the rights of reason holding, e.g., that "by the natural light of reason Godcan be known with certainty, by means of created things" (Vatican Council), and proclaiming that "all the saints in Heaven have seen and do see the Divine Essence by direct intuition and face to face in such wise that nothing created intervenes as an object of vision; ... that the Divine Essence presents itself to their immediate gaze, unveiled, clearly and openly; that in this vision they enjoy the Divine Essence, and in virtue of this vision and this enjoyment they are truly blessed and possess eternal life and eternal rest." (Benedict XII, Cath. Encycl., VII, 171.)
It is interesting to see how Dante's Master, St. Thomas Aquinas, demonstrates the proposition that the beatitude of man consists in the vision of the Divine Essence. With his usual lucidity of thought he writes: "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 outstandingnatural desire of knowing 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 necesary that the intellect shall reach as far as the very essence of the First Cause." (Rickaby, Aquinas Ethicus I, 2 q., 3 a, 8.)
This masterly exposition is after all only the philosophical development of what every Catholic child learns from one of the first questions of the little Catechism: "Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him forever in the next." With the satisfaction of the intellect's boundless yearning for knowledge attained by intuition of the Essence of God, a consummation that will somewhat deify us—"Who shall be made like to him, because we shall see him as he is" (I John, III, 2.), the happiness of man will be primarily intellectual, being as Dante beautifully says: "Light intellectual full of love, love of the true good, full of joy, joy that transcendeth all sweetness." (XXX, 40.)
His Heaven, then, is no Nirvana, for each spiritwill for eternity have its individuality, and its activity will be unremitting in seeing God face to face—a vision that will cause the spirit increasing wonder in an act that will have no flagging nor satiety. "What, after all, is Heaven," says Bulwer Lytton, "but a transition from dim guesses to the fullness of wisdom, from ignorance to knowledge, but knowledge of what order?" To that exclamation of the nineteenth century writer the medieval seer answers with conviction that thesummum bonumis to be found only in the intellect's attaining Truth.
Let us now join Dante in his mystic journey to the Heavenly Kingdom. We left him after three days and three nights in Purgatory, standing with Beatrice on the summit of the mountain in the Earthly Paradise, where he remained six hours. At noon he begins his ascent through space, a feat accomplished by Beatrice's looking up to the Heavens and by Dante's fixing his eyes upon her. At once his human nature is supposed to take on agility, the supernatural quality which makes the body independent of space, and he begins to rise with incomprehensible velocity. Though they are travelling without conscious movement at the rate of 84,000 miles a second, there is time for Dante's mind to operate in desire to know how he can ascend counter to gravitation and for Beatrice to discourse uponthe law—Dante's invention—of universal (material and spiritual) gravitation.
"The newness of the sound and the great lightKindled in me a longing for their causeNever before with such acuteness felt.And she began: 'Thou makest thyself so dullWith false imagining, that thou sees notWhat thou wouldst see if thou hadst shaken it off.Thou are not upon earth as thou believest;But lightning, fleeing its appropriate site,Ne'er ran as thou, who thitherward returnest.'"(I, 88.)
She explains the order established by Providence by force of which created beings seek their natural habitat, earthly things being attracted downward, spiritual entities being drawn upward irresistibly if they do not oppose this innate inclination to good. "It is as natural for a man purged of all evil to ascend to God," she declares, "as it is for a stream from a mountain height to fall into a valley."
Very shortly after this, the first stage of the celestial journey is reached. "Direct thy mind to God in gratitude," she said, "who hath united us with the first star." "Me seemed a cloud enveloped us, shining dense, firm and polished likea diamond smitten by the sun. Within itself the eternal pearl received us, as water doth receive a ray of light, though still itself uncleft." This is the Heaven of the Moon, the planet farthest removed from the Empyrean and therefore the sphere where not only motion but also beatitude are least in the heavenly bodies. The sphere of the Moon, indeed with those of Mercury and of Venus, is held by Dante's cosmography to be within the shadow cast by the earth. Consequently, the spirits in those three lowest Heavens are represented as less perfect than those in the higher spheres, because in the moral sense the shadow of earth fell upon their lives making them imperfect through inconstancy, vain glory or unlawful love.
In the Heaven of the Moon a long disquisition is carried on by Beatrice in explanation of Dante's question as to why there are spots on the moon. It is very likely that this matter of apparent irrelevance in the heavenly realms is introduced here at the very first stage of the ascent to give the poet the opportunity of proclaiming that the first thing one must learn in his passage heavenward—even if this is to be understood in an allegorical sense—is that the laws of the laboratory are not therationaleof the heavenly world and that to employ them to explain the supernal is to violate the very science of theselaws, in an application of scope to which in their very nature they protest. This point of seeing natural causes for the unexplainable phenomenon of Heaven and especially of relying upon the testimony of the senses is soon brought out by Beatrice reproving Dante for thinking that the spirits whom he now sees are only reflections of the human face:
"Marvel thou not," she said to me, "becauseI smile at this thy puerile conceit,Since on the truth it trusts not yet its foot,But turns thee, as 'tis wont, on emptiness.True substances are these which thou beholdest,Here relegate for breaking of some vow.Therefore speak with them, listen and believe."(III, 25.)
So directed, the poet gazes again upon the faint forms appearing like reflections seen in a plate of glass or in a dark, shallow pool. These, the first spirits he meets, are apparitions in human form. In the other spheres all that he will see of the souls will be the light which envelopes them and which seemingly is identified with them, but here he sees beautiful women divinely glorious even in their dim outline, who as nuns had violated their vow of perpetual chastity. In the Inferno the poet, to lead the reprobate soul to speak to him,promised earthly fame; in Purgatorio there was the offer of intercessory prayer, here in the first Heaven there is only an appeal to the charity which inflames the spirit. All eagerness, Dante now addresses the spirit, who appears most desirous to converse with him. This is Piccarda, kinswoman of his wife and sister of his friend Forese (Purg. XXIII, 40), a Poor Clare nun, who was compelled by her brother, Corse, to leave her convent and marry Rossellino della Tosa in the expectation that the marriage would promote a political alliance. So sacrificed, the young virgin sister of lofty ideals and delicate spiritual sensibility, experienced unhappiness, the intensity of which is revealed by the ellipsis contained in the magic line: "And God doth know what my life became." Dante addresses Piccarda:
"'O well-created spirit, who in the raysOf life eternal dost the sweetness tasteWhich being untasted ne'er is comprehended,Grateful 'twill be to me, if thou content meBoth with thy name and with your destiny.'Whereat, she promptly and with laughing eyes:'Our charity doth never shut the doorsAgainst a just desire, except as sheWho wills that all her court be like herself.I was a virgin sister in the world;And if thy mind doth contemplate me well,The being more fair will not conceal me from thee,But thou shalt recognize I am Piccarda,Who, stationed here among these other blessed,Myself am blessed in the lowest sphere.All our affections, that alone inflamedAre in the pleasure of the Holy Ghost,Rejoice at being of his order formed;And this allotment, which appears so low,Therefore is given us, because our vowsHave been neglected and in some part void.'Whence I to her: 'In your miraculous aspectsThere shines I know not what of the divine,Which doth transform you from our first conceptions.Therefore I was not swift in my remembrance;But what thou tellest me now aids me so,That the refiguring is easier to me.'"(III, 37.)
Dante, you recall, had found the souls in Purgatory contented with their lot, though they were enduring great suffering; in Heaven he is eager to learn in the very beginning whether the Elect are satisfied with the decree which awards to them happiness in unequal measure. So he asks Piccarda whether she and the other spirits in this lowest sphere are not eager for a higher place. The answer is one of the most touching and beautifulpassages in the poem, summing up in language of radiant gladness the law of Heaven that in "God's will is our peace," words which Gladstone says "appear to have an unexpressible majesty of truth about them, to be almost as if they were spoken from the very mouth of God."
"'But tell me, ye who in this place are happy,Are you desirous of a higher place,To see more or to make yourselves more friends?'First, with those other shades, she smiled a little;Thereafter answered me so full of gladness,She seemed to burn in the first fire of love:'Brother, our will is quieted by virtueOf charity, that makes us wish aloneFor what we have, nor gives us thirst for more.If to be more exalted we aspired,Discordant would our aspirations beUnto the will of Him who here secludes us;Which thou-shalt see finds no place in these circles,If being in charity is needful here,And if thou lookest well into its nature;Nay 'tis essential to this blest existenceTo keep itself within the will divine,Whereby our very wishes are made one;So that, as we are station above stationThroughout this realm, to all the realm 'tis pleasing,As to the King, who makes His will our will.And His will is our peace; this is the seaTo which is moving onward whatsoeverIt doth create, and all that nature makes.'Then it was clear to me how everywhereIn Heaven is Paradise, although the graceOf good supreme there rain not in one measure."(III, 64.)
Piccarda then tells the moving story of her life, how as a girl she entered the order of St. Clare, only to be torn from the nunnery and given into marriage.
"A perfect life and merit high in HeavenA lady o'er us," said she, "by whose ruleDown in your world they vest and veil themselves,That until death they may both watch and sleepBeside that Spouse who every vow acceptsWhich charity conformeth to his pleasure.To follow her, in girlhood from the worldI fled, and in her habit shut myself,And pledged me to the pathway of her sect.Then men accustomed unto evil moreThan unto good, from the sweet cloister tore me;God knows what afterward my life became."(III, 97.)
Certain questions interesting to a seeker of truth grow out of Piccarda's statement and these Beatrice proceeds to solve for the edification of Dante. The first question asks whether in the assignment to the lowest sphere of souls who violated their vows, there is divine Justice; the second concerns Plato's teaching that souls really come from the stars and return thither; the third is about the loss of merit through coercion of the will, as exemplified in the case of Piccarda. The solution of these difficulties need not detain us if only we remember Dante's view that "the theories maintained by him in the Heaven of the Moon are intended to manifest," as Gardner and Scartazzini point out, "the moral freedom of man and to show that no external thing can interfere with the soul that is bent upon attaining the end for which God has destined it."
To the next Heaven, the sphere of Mercury, Beatrice and Dante soar more swiftly than an arrow attains its mark while the bow is still vibrating. Increasing in loveliness as she ascends, Beatrice, in the second realm, radiates such splendor that Mercury itself, apart from its own light, gains such glory from her that it seems to glitter or smile from very gladness.
"My lady there so joyful I beheldAs unto the brightness of that heaven she enteredMore luminous thereat the planet grew,And if the star itself was changed and smiledWhat became I who by my nature amExceeding mutable in every guise?"(V, 97.)
Greeting the travellers, more than a thousand spirits joyfully exclaim: "Lo, one who shall increase our loves!" The Saints in Mercury thus testify to their delight that one (Dante) has come to be the fresh object of their love, just as it is said that "there shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance." (Luke XV, 10.) These splendors in Mercury are the souls of those in whose virtue there was the alloy of ambition and vainglory—a combination, according to Dante, which makes "the rays of true love less vividly mount upwards." The poet is addressed by a spirit who bids him ask any question he will and Beatrice confirms the invitation. "Speak, speak with confidence and trust them even as gods." All eagerness for knowledge, Dante inquires of the friendly splendor who he is and why he is in this particular Heaven.
The story told by the spirit of Emperor Justinian is a brief sketch of his own life, with reference to his conversion from heresy by Pope Agapetus,to the victories of his general, Belisarius, and to his own great work of the codification of the Roman law. He then traces the history of Rome from the time of Æneas to the thirteenth century, bent upon showing that the Roman Empire, as a world-power over governments and peoples, is divine in its institution and providentially protected in its course. Two facts are adduced in crowning proof of this audacious statement, viz., Christ's choosing to be born and to be registered as a subject of Cæsar and His crucifixion under Tiberius, acting through Pontius Pilate as the divinely constituted instrument of eternal justice exercised by the Heavenly Father against His Son, at once the victim of sin and its atonement.
Dante enlarges on this point in his Monarchia. "If the Roman Empire did not exist by right, the sin of Adam was not punished in Christ.... If, therefore, Christ had not suffered by the sentence of a regular judge, the penalty would not have been properly punished; and none could be a regular judge who had not jurisdiction over all mankind, for all mankind was punished in the flesh of Christ, who 'hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows,' as said the prophet Isaias. And if the Roman Empire had not existed by right, Tiberius Cæsar, whose vicar was Pontius Pilate, would not have had jurisdictionover all mankind." To us both the argument and its conclusion are wholly indefensible. It seems indeed a mockery and a blasphemy to attribute to such a monster as Tiberius Cæsar glory because Christ was crucified in his reign. Dante's words, however, as spoken by Justinian, leave no room for doubt that the poet was convinced that all the ancient celebrity of Rome was insignificant as compared to the glory that would come to it because it would carry out the crucifixion of Christ.
"But what the standard that has made me speakAchieved before, and after should achieveThroughout the mortal realm that lies beneath,Becometh in appearance mean and dimIf in the hand of the third Cæsar seenWith an eye unclouded and affection pureBecause the living Justice that inspires meGranted it, in the hand of him I speak ofThe glory of doing vengence for its wrath."(VI, 82.)
Shining among the splendors of Mercury is a spirit who, though he was not a lawmaker like Justinian, attained earthly renown by arranging the marriages of four Kings. Known by the name of Romeo, a word meaning a pilgrim of Rome, this man came a stranger to the Court of RaymondBerenger, Court of Provence, multiplied the income without lessening the grandeur of his master and brought about the marriages to royalty of the four daughters of the household—Margaret to St. Louis of France, Eleanor to Henry III of England, Sanzia to Richard, Earl of Cornwall (brother of Henry III), elected King of the Romans, Beatrice to Charles of Anjou, later by Papal investiture, King of Naples. Charged by jealous barons with having wasted his master's goods, Romeo established his innocence and then departed as he came, on a mule and with a pilgrim's staff. From affluence he goes a-begging and this is so much like Dante's own case that the poet's sympathy goes out to the calumniated man, and he says with touching simplicity: