Paradiso

Canto XIV

The Fifth Heaven, or that of Mars, where are seen the spirits of martyrs, and of crusaders who died fighting for the true faith—The Celestial Cross.

From centre unto rim, from rim to centre,¹In a round vase the water moves itself,²As from without ’tis struck or from within.Into my mind upon a sudden droppedWhat I am saying, at the moment whenSilent became the glorious life of Thomas,³Because of the resemblance that was bornOf his discourse and that of Beatrice,Whom, after him, it pleased thus to begin:“This man has need (and does not tell you so,Nor with the voice, nor even in his thought)Of going to the root of one truth more.Declare unto him if the light wherewithBlossoms your substance shall remain with youEternally the same that it is now;And if it do remain, say in what manner,After ye are again made visible,It can be that it injure not your sight.”As by a greater gladness urged and drawnThey who are dancing in a ring sometimesUplift their voices and their motions quicken;So, at that orison devout and prompt,The holy circles a new joy displayedIn their revolving and their wondrous song.Whoso lamenteth him that here we dieThat we may live above, has never thereSeen the refreshment of the eternal rain.The One and Two and Three who ever liveth,⁴And reigneth ever in Three and Two and One,Not circumscribed and all things circumscribing,Three several times was chanted by each oneAmong those spirits, with such melodyThat for all merit it were just reward;And, in the lustre most divine of allThe lesser ring, I heard a modest voice,⁵Such as perhaps the Angel’s was to Mary,Answer: “As long as the festivityOf Paradise shall be, so long our loveShall radiate round about us such a vesture.Its brightness is proportioned to the ardor,The ardor to the vision; and the visionEquals what grace it has above its worth.When, glorious and sanctified, our fleshIs reassumed, then shall our persons beMore pleasing by their being all complete;For will increase whate’er bestows on usOf light gratuitous the Good Supreme,Light which enables us to look on Him;Therefore the vision must perforce increase,Increase the ardor which from that is kindled,Increase the radiance which from this proceeds.But even as a coal that sends forth flame,And by its vivid whiteness overpowers itSo that its own appearance it maintains,Thus the effulgence that surrounds us nowShall be o’erpowered in aspect by the flesh,Which still today the earth doth cover up;Nor can so great a splendor weary us,For strong will be the organs of the bodyTo everything which hath the power to please us.”So sudden and alert appeared to meBoth one and the other choir to say Amen,That well they showed desire for their dead bodies;Nor sole for them perhaps, but for the mothers,The fathers, and the rest who had been dearOr ever they became eternal flames.And lo! all round about of equal brightnessArose a lustre over what was there,Like an horizon that is clearing up.And as at rise of early eve beginAlong the welkin new appearances,So that the sight seems real and unreal,It seemed to me that new subsistences⁶Began there to be seen, and make a circleOutside the other two circumferences.O very sparkling of the Holy Spirit,How sudden and incandescent it becameUnto mine eyes, that vanquished bore it not!But Beatrice so beautiful and smilingAppeared to me, that with the other sightsThat followed not my memory I must leave her.Then to uplift themselves mine eyes resumedThe power, and I beheld myself translatedTo higher salvation with my Lady only.Well was I ware that I was more upliftedBy the enkindled smiling of the star,⁷That seemed to me more ruddy than its wont.⁸With all my heart, and in that dialect⁹Which is the same in all, such holocaustTo God I made as the new grace beseemed;And not yet from my bosom was exhaustedThe ardor of sacrifice, before I knewThis offering was accepted and auspicious;For with so great a lustre and so redSplendors appeared to me in twofold rays,I said: “O Helios who dost so adorn them!”¹⁰Even as distinct with less and greater lightsGlimmers between the two poles of the worldThe Galaxy that maketh wise men doubt,¹¹Thus constellated in the depths of Mars,Those rays described the venerable sign¹²That quadrants joining in a circle make.Here doth my memory overcome my genius;For on that cross as levin gleamed forth Christ,¹³So that I cannot find ensample worthy;But he who takes his cross and follows ChristAgain will pardon me what I omit,Seeing in that aurora lighten Christ.From horn to horn, and ’twixt the top and base,¹⁴Lights were in motion, brightly scintillatingAs they together met and passed each other;Thus level and aslant and swift and slow¹⁵We here behold, renewing still the sight,The particles of bodies long and short,Across the sunbeam move, wherewith is listedSometimes the shade, which for their own defencePeople with cunning and with art contrive.And as a lute and harp, accordant strungWith many strings, a dulcet tinkling makeTo him by whom the notes are not distinguished,So from the lights that there to me appearedUpgathered through the cross a melody,Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn.Well was I ware it was of lofty laud,Because there came to me, “Arise and conquer!”¹⁶As unto him who hears and comprehends not.So much enamoured I became therewith,That until then there was not anythingThat e’er had fettered me with such sweet bonds.Perhaps my word appears somewhat too bold,Postponing the delight of those fair eyes,Into which gazing my desire has rest;But who bethinks him that the living seals¹⁷Of every beauty grow in power ascending,And that I there had not turned round to those,¹⁸Can me excuse, if I myself accuseTo excuse myself, and see that I speak truly:For here the holy joy is not disclosed,Because ascending it becomes more pure.¹⁹

The ascent to the planet Mars, where are seen the spirits of Martyrs, and Crusaders who died fighting for the Faith. ↩
In this similitude Dante describes the effect of the alternate voices of St. Thomas Aquinas in the circumference of the circle, and of Beatrice in the centre. ↩
Life is here used, as before, in the sense of spirit. ↩
Chaucer, Troil. and Cres., the last stanza:— “Thou One, and Two, and Thre! eterne on live, / That raignest aie in Thre, and Two, and One, / Uncircumscript, and all maist circumscrive!” Also Milton, Paradise Lost, III 372:— “Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent, / Immutable, Immortal, Infinite, / Eternal King; thee, Author of all being, / Fountain of light, thyself invisible / Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt’st / Throned inaccessible; but when thou shadest / The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud / Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine, / Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, / Yet dazzle heaven; that brightest seraphim / Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes. / Thee next they sang of all creation first, / Begotten Son, Divine Similitude, / In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud / Made visible, the Almighty Father shines, / Whom else no creature can behold: on thee / Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides; / Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.” ↩
The voice of Solomon. ↩
According to Buti, “Spirits newly arrived”; or Angels, such being the interpretation given by the Schoolmen to the word Subsistences. See note 1541. ↩
The planet Mars. Of this planet Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I iii 3, says:— “Mars is hot and warlike and evil, and is called the God of Battles.” Of its symbolism Dante, Convito, II 14, says:— “The Heaven of Mars may be compared to Music, for two properties. The first is its very beautiful relation [to the others]; for, enumerating the movable heavens, from whichsoever you begin, whether from the lowest or the highest, the Heaven of Mars is the fifth; it is the centre of all. … The other is, that Mars dries up and burns things, because its heat is like to that of the fire; and this is the reason why it appears fiery in color, sometimes more, and sometimes less, according to the density and rarity of the vapors which follow it, which sometimes take fire of themselves, as is declared in the first book of Meteors. (And therefore Albumasar says, that the ignition of these vapors signifies death of kings, and change of empires, being effects of the dominion of Mars. And accordingly Seneca says that at the death of the Emperor Augustus a ball of fire was seen in the heavens. And in Florence, at the beginning of its downfall, a great quantity of these vapors, which follow Mars, were seen in the air in the form of a cross.) And these two properties are in Music, which is wholly relative, as may be seen in harmonized words, and in songs, in which the more beautiful the relation, the sweeter the harmony, since such is chiefly its intent. Also Music attracts to itself the spirits of men, which are principally as it were vapors of the heart, so that they almost cease from any operation; so entire is the soul when it listens, and the power of all as it were runs to the sensible spirit that hears the sounds.” Of the influences of Mars, Buti, as usual following Albumasar, writes:— “Its nature is hot, igneous, dry, choleric, of a bitter savor, and it signifies youth, strength, and acuteness of mind; heats, fires, and burnings, and every sudden event; powerful kings, consuls, dukes, and knights, and companies of soldiery; desire of praise and memory of one’s name; strategies and instruments of battle; robberies and machinations, and scattering of relations by plunderings and highway robberies; boldness and anger; the unlawful for the lawful; torments and imprisonments; scourges and bonds; anguish, flight, thefts, pilfering of servants, fears, contentions, insults, acuteness of mind, impiety, inconstancy, want of foresight, celerity and anticipation in things, evil eloquence and ferocity of speech, foulness of words, incontinence of tongue, demonstrations of love, gay apparel, insolence and falseness of words, swiftness of reply and sudden penitence therefor, want of religion, unfaithfulness to promises, multitude of lies and whisperings, deceits and perjuries; machinations and evil deeds; want of means; waste of means; multitude of thoughts about things; instability and change of opinion in things, from one to another; haste to return; want of shame; multitude of toils and cares; peregrinations, solitary existence, bad company; … breaking open of tombs, and spoliations of the dead.” ↩
Buti interprets this, as redder than the Sun, to whose light Dante had become accustomed, and continues:— “Literally, it is true that the splendor of Mars is more fiery than that of the Sun, because it is red, and the Sun is yellow; but allegorically we are to understand, that a greater ardor of love, that is, more burning, is in those who fight and conquer the three enemies mentioned above [the world, the flesh, and the devil], than in those who exercise themselves with the Scriptures.” ↩
The silent language of the heart. ↩
In Hebrew, El, Eli, God, from which the Greeks made Helios, the Sun. As in St. Hildebert’s hymn “Ad Patrem”:— “Alpha et Omega, magne Deus, / Heli, Heli, Deus meus.” ↩
Dante, Convito, II 15, says:— “It must be known that philosophers have different opinions concerning this Galaxy. For the Pythagoreans said that the Sun once wandered out of his way, and passing through other regions not adapted to his heat, he burned the place through which he passed, and traces of the burning remained. I think they took this from the fable of Phaeton, which Ovid narrates in the beginning of the second book of the Metamorphoses. Others, and among them Anaxagoras and Democritus, that it was the light of the Sun reflected in that part. And these opinions they prove by demonstrative reasons. What Aristotle says of this we cannot well know; for his opinion is not the same in one translation as in the other. And I think this was an error of the translators; for in the new one he appears to say, that it was a gathering of vapors under the stars of that region, for they always attract them; and this does not appear to be the true reason. In the old, it says, that the Galaxy is only a multitude of fixed stars in that region, so small that they cannot be distinguished here below; but from them is apparent that whiteness which we call the Galaxy. And it may be that the heaven in that part is more dense, and therefore retains and reflects that light; and this opinion seems to have been entertained by Aristotle, Avicenna, and Ptolemy.” Milton, Paradise Lost, VII 577:— “A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold, / And pavement stars, as stars to thec appear, / Seen in the Galaxy, that Milky Way, / Which nightly, as a circling zone, thou seest / Powdered with stars.” ↩
The sign of the cross, drawn upon the planet Mars, as upon the breast of a crusader. The following Legend of the Cross, and its significance, is from Didron, Christian Iconography, Millington’s Tr., I 367:— “The cross is more than a mere figure of Christ; it is in Iconography either Christ himself or his symbol. A legend has, consequently, been invented, giving the history of the cross, as if it had been a living being. It has been made the theme and hero of an epic poem, the germ of which may be discovered in books of apocryphal tradition. This story is given at length in the Golden Legend, Legenda Aurea, and is detailed and completed in works of painting and sculpture from the fourteenth century down to the sixteenth. … After the death of Adam, Seth planted on the tomb of his father a shoot from the Tree of Life, which grew in the terrestrial Paradise. From it sprang three little trees, united by one single trunk. Moses thence gathered the rod with which he by his miracles astonished the people of Egypt, and the inhabitants of the desert. Solomon desired to convert that same tree, which had become gigantic in size, into a column for his palace; being either too short or too long, it was rejected, and served as a bridge over a torrent. The Queen of Sheba refused to pass over on that tree, declaring that it would one day occasion the destruction of the Jews. Solomon commanded that the predestined beam should be thrown into the probationary pool (Pool of Bethesda), and its virtues were immediately communicated to the waters. When Christ had been condemned to suffer the death of a malefactor, his cross was made of the wood of that very tree. It was buried on Golgotha, and afterwards discovered by St. Helena. It was carried into captivity by Chosroes, king of Persia, delivered, and brought back in triumph to Jerusalem, by the Emperor Heraclius. Being afterwards dispersed in a multitude of fragments throughout the Christian universe, countless miracles were performed by it; it restored the dead to life, and gave sight to the blind, cured the paralytic, cleansed lepers, put demons to flight, and dispelled various maladies with which whole nations were afflicted, extinguished conflagrations, and calmed the fury of the raging waves. “The wood of the cross was born with the world, in the terrestrial paradise; it will reappear in heaven at the end of time, borne in the arms of Christ or of his angels, when the Lord descends to judge the world at the last day. “After reading this history, some conception may be formed of the important place held by the cross in Christian Iconography. The cross, as has been said, is not merely the instrument of the punishment of Jesus Christ, but is also the figure and symbol of the Saviour. Jesus, to an Iconologist, is present in the cross as well as in the lamb, or in the lion. Chosroes flattered himself that, in possessing the cross, he possessed the Son of God, and he had it enthroned on his right hand, just as the Son is enthroned by God the Father. So also the earliest Christian artists, when making a representation of the Trinity, placed a cross beside the Father and the Holy Spirit; a cross only, without our crucified Lord. The cross did not only recall Christ to mind, but actually showed him. In Christian Iconography, Christ is actually present under the form and semblance of the cross. “The cross is our crucified Lord in person. Where the cross is, there is the martyr, says St. Paulinus. Consequently it works miracles, as does Jesus himself: and the list of wonders operated by its power is in truth immense. … “The world is in the form of a cross; for the east shines above our heads, the north is on the right, the south at the left, and the west stretches out beneath our feet. Birds, that they may rise in air, extend their wings in the form of a cross; men, when praying, or when beating aside the water while swimming, assume the form of a cross. Man differs from the inferior animals, in his power of standing erect, and extending his arms. “A vessel, to fly upon the seas, displays her yardarms in the form of a cross, and cannot cut the waves, unless her mast stands cross-like, erect in air; finally, the ground cannot be tilled without the sacred sign, and the tau, the cruciform letter, is the letter of salvation. “The cross, it is thus seen, has been the object of a worship and adoration resembling, if not equal to, that offered to Christ. That sacred tree is adored almost as if it were equal with God himself; a number of churches have been dedicated to it under the name of the Holy Cross. In addition to this, most of our churches, the greatest as well as the smallest, cathedrals as well as chapels, present in their ground plan the form of a cross.” ↩
Chaucer, Lament of Marie Magdaleine, 204:— “I, loking up unto that rufull rode, / Sawe first the visage pale of that figure; / But so pitous a sight spotted with blode / Sawe never, yet, no living creature; / So it exceded the boundes of mesure, / That mannes minde with al his wittes five / Is nothing able that paine to discrive.” ↩
From arm to arm of the cross, and from top to bottom. ↩
Mr. Gary here quotes Chaucer, “Wif of Bath’s Tale,” 6450:— “As thikke as motes in the sonnebeme.” And Milton, “Penseroso,” 8:— “As thick and numberless / As the gay motes that people the sunbeam.” To these Mr. Wright adds the following from Lucretius, II 113, which in Good’s Tr. runs as follows:— “Not unresembling, if aright I deem, / Those motes minute, that, when the obtrusive sun / Peeps through some crevice in the shuttered shade / The day-dark hall illuming, float amain / In his bright beam, and wage eternal war.” ↩
Words from a hymn in praise of Christ, say the commentators, but they do not say from what hymn. ↩
The living seals are the celestial spheres, which impress themselves on all beneath them, and increase in power as they are higher. ↩
That is, to the eyes of Beatrice, whose beauty he may seem to postpone, or regard as inferior to the splendors that surround him. He excuses himself by saying that he does not speak of them, well knowing that they have grown more beautiful in ascending. He describes them in line 33 of the next canto:— “For in her eyes was burning such a smile / That with mine own methought I touched the bottom / Both of my grace and of my Paradise!” ↩
Sincere in the sense of pure; as in Dryden’s line— “A joy which never was sincere till now.” ↩