Paradiso

Canto XIX

The eagle discourses of salvation by faith.

Appeared before me with its wings outspread¹The beautiful image that in sweet fruitionMade jubilant the interwoven souls;Appeared a little ruby each, whereinRay of the sun was burning so enkindledThat each into mine eyes refracted it.And what it now behoves me to retraceNor voice has e’er reported, nor ink written,Nor was by fantasy e’er comprehended;For speak I saw, and likewise heard, the beak,And utter with its voice both I and My,When in conception it was We and Our.²And it began: “Being just and mercifulAm I exalted here unto that gloryWhich cannot be exceeded by desire;And upon earth I left my memorySuch, that the evil-minded people thereCommend it, but continue not the story.”So doth a single heat from many embersMake itself felt, even as from many lovesIssued a single sound from out that image.Whence I thereafter: “O perpetual flowersOf the eternal joy, that only oneMake me perceive your odors manifold,Exhaling, break within me the great fastWhich a long season has in hunger held me,Not finding for it any food on earth.Well do I know, that if in heaven its mirror³Justice Divine another realm doth make,Yours apprehends it not through any veil.You know how I attentively address meTo listen; and you know what is the doubt⁴That is in me so very old a fast.”Even as a falcon, issuing from his hood,Doth move his head, and with his wings applaud him,Showing desire, and making himself fine,Saw I become that standard, which of lauds⁵Was interwoven of the grace divine,With such songs as he knows who there rejoices.Then it began: “He who a compass turned⁶On the world’s outer verge, and who within itDevised so much occult and manifest,Could not the impress of his power so makeOn all the universe, as that his Word⁷Should not remain in infinite excess.And this makes certain that the first proud being,Who was the paragon of every creature,By not awaiting light fell immature.⁸And hence appears it, that each minor nature⁹Is scant receptacle unto that goodWhich has no end, and by itself is measured.In consequence our vision, which perforceMust be some ray of that intelligenceWith which all things whatever are replete,¹⁰Cannot in its own nature be so potent,¹¹That it shall not its origin discernFar beyond that which is apparent to it.Therefore into the justice sempiternalThe power of vision that your world receives,As eye into the ocean, penetrates;Which, though it see the bottom near the shore,Upon the deep perceives it not, and yet’Tis there, but it is hidden by the depth.There is no light but comes from the sereneThat never is o’ercast, nay, it is darkness¹²Or shadow of the flesh, or else its poison.Amply to thee is opened now the cavernWhich has concealed from thee the living justiceOf which thou mad’st such frequent questioning.For saidst thou: ‘Born a man is on the shoreOf Indus, and is none who there can speakOf Christ, nor who can read, nor who can write;And all his inclinations and his actionsAre good, so far as human reason sees,Without a sin in life or in discourse:He dieth unbaptised and without faith;Where is this justice that condemneth him?Where is his fault, if he do not believe?’Now who art thou, that on the bench wouldst sitIn judgment at a thousand miles away,With the short vision of a single span?Truly to him who with me subtilizes,If so the Scripture were not over you,For doubting there were marvellous occasion.O animals terrene, O stolid minds,The primal will, that in itself is good,Ne’er from itself, the Good Supreme, has moved.So much is just as is accordant with it;No good created draws it to itself,But it, by raying forth, occasions that.”Even as above her nest goes circling roundThe stork when she has fed her little ones,And he who has been fed looks up at her,So lifted I my brows, and even suchBecame the blessed image, which its wingsWas moving, by so many counsels urged.Circling around it sang, and said: “As areMy notes to thee, who dost not comprehend them,Such is the eternal judgment to you mortals.”Those lucent splendors of the Holy SpiritGrew quiet then, but still within the standardThat made the Romans reverend to the world.It recommenced: “Unto this kingdom neverAscended one who had not faith in Christ,¹³Before or since he to the tree was nailed.But look thou, many crying are, ‘Christ, Christ!’¹⁴Who at the judgment shall be far less nearTo him than some shall be who knew not Christ.¹⁵Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn,¹⁶When the two companies shall be divided,¹⁷The one forever rich, the other poor.What to your kings may not the Persians say,When they that volume opened shall behold¹⁸In which are written down all their dispraises?There shall be seen, among the deeds of Albert,¹⁹That which ere long shall set the pen in motion,For which the realm of Prague shall be deserted.There shall be seen the woe that on the SeineHe brings by falsifying of the coin,Who by the blow of a wild boar shall die.²⁰There shall be seen the pride that causes thirst,Which makes the Scot and Englishman so mad²¹That they within their boundaries cannot rest;Be seen the luxury and effeminate lifeOf him of Spain, and the Bohemian,²²Who valor never knew and never wished;Be seen the Cripple of Jerusalem,²³His goodness represented by an I,While the reverse an m shall represent;Be seen the avarice and poltrooneryOf him who guards the Island of the Fire,²⁴Wherein Anchises finished his long life;²⁵And to declare how pitiful he isShall be his record in contracted letters²⁶Which shall make note of much in little space.And shall appear to each one the foul deedsOf uncle and of brother who a nation²⁷So famous have dishonored, and two crowns.And he of Portugal and he of Norway²⁸Shall there be known, and he of Rascia too,²⁹Who saw in evil hour the coin of Venice.³⁰O happy Hungary, if she let herself³¹Be wronged no farther! and Navarre the happy,If with the hills that gird her she be armed!³²And each one may believe that now, as hansel³³Thereof, do Nicosia and Famagosta³⁴Lament and rage because of their own beast,Who from the others’ flank departeth not.”³⁵

The Heaven of Jupiter continued. ↩
The eagle speaks as one person, though composed of a multitude of spirits. Here Dante’s idea of unity under the Empire finds expression. ↩
This mirror of Divine Justice is the planet Saturn, to which Dante alludes in Canto IX 61, where, speaking of the Intelligences of Saturn, he says:— “Above us there are mirrors, Thrones you call them, / From which shines out on us God Judicant.” ↩
Whether a good life outside the pale of the holy Catholic faith could lead to Paradise. ↩
Dante here calls the blessed spirits lauds, or “praises of the grace divine,” as in Inferno II 103 he calls Beatrice “the true praise of God.” ↩
Mr. Gary quotes, Proverbs 8:27:— “When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass upon the face of the depth, … then I was by him.” And Milton, Paradise Lost, VII 224:— “And in his hand / He took the golden compasses, prepared / In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe / This Universe, and all created things. / One foot he centred, and the other turned / Round through the vast profundity obscure, / And said: lt; ‘Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, / This be thy just circumference, O World!’ ” ↩
The Word or Wisdom of the Deity far exceeds any manifestation of it in the creation. ↩
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, III 2:— “Fling away ambition, / By that sin fell the angels.” ↩
Dryden, “Religio Laici,” 39:— “How can the less the greater comprehend? / Or finite reason reach infinity? / For what could fathom God is more than He.” ↩
Milton, Paradise Lost, VII 168:— “Boundless the deep, because I Am, who fill / Infinitude, nor vacuous the space.” ↩
The human mind can never be so powerful but that it will perceive the Divine Mind to be infinitely beyond its comprehension; or, as Buti interprets—reading gli è parvente, which reading I have followed—“much greater than what appears to the human mind, and what the human intellect sees.” ↩
Milton, Paradise Lost, I 63:— “No light, but rather darkness visible.” ↩
Galatians 3:23:— “But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.” ↩
Matthew 7:21:— “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” ↩
Dryden, “Religio Laici,” 208:— “Then those who followed Reason’s dictates right, / Lived up, and lifted high her natural light, / With Socrates may see their Maker’s face, / While thousand rubric martyrs want a place.” ↩
Matthew 12:41:— “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it.” ↩
The righteous and the unrighteous at the day of judgment. ↩
Revelation 20:12:— “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” ↩
This is the “German Albert” of Purgatorio VI 97:— “O German Albert, who abandonest her / That has grown savage and indomitable, / And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow, / May a just judgment from the stars down fall / Upon thy blood, and be it new and open / That thy successor may have fear thereof; / Because thy father and thyself have suffered, / By greed of those transalpine lands distrained, / The garden of the empire to be waste.” The deed which was so soon to move the pen of the Recording Angel was the invasion of Bohemia in 1303. ↩
Philip the Fair of France, who, after his defeat at Courtray in 1302, falsified the coin of the realm, with which he paid his troops. He was killed in 1314 by a fall from his horse, caused by the attack of a wild boar. Dante uses the word cotenna, the skin of the wild boar, for the boar itself. ↩
The allusion here is to the border wars between John Baliol of Scotland, and Edward I of England. ↩
Most of the commentators say that this king of Spain was one of the Alphonsos, but do not agree as to which one. Tommaseo says it was Ferdinand IV (1295–1312), and he is probably right. It was this monarch, or rather his generals, who took Gibraltar from the Moors. In 1312 he put to death unjustly the brothers Carvajal, who on the scaffold summoned him to appear before the judgment seat of God within thirty days; and before the time had expired he was found dead upon his sofa. From this event he received the surname of El Emplazado, the Summoned. It is said that his death was caused by intemperance. The Bohemian is Winceslaus II, son of Ottocar. He is mentioned, Purgatorio VII 101, as one “who feeds in luxury and ease.” ↩
Charles II, king of Apulia, whose virtues may be represented by a unit and his vices by a thousand. He was called the “Cripple of Jerusalem,” on account of his lameness, and because as king of Apulia he also bore the title of King of Jerusalem. See note 922. ↩
Frederick, son of Peter of Aragon, and king, or in some form ruler of Sicily, called from Mount Etna the “Island of the Fire.” The Ottimo comments thus: “Peter of Aragon was liberal and magnanimous, and the author says that this man is avaricious and pusillanimous.” Perhaps his greatest crime in the eyes of Dante was his abandoning the cause of the Imperialists. ↩
According to Virgil, Anchises died in Sicily, “on the joyless coast of Drepanum.” Aeneid, III 708, Davidson’s Tr.:— “Here, alas! after being tossed by so many storms at sea, I lose my sire Anchises, my solace in every care and suffering. Here thou, best of fathers, whom in vain, alas! I saved from so great dangers, forsakest me, spent with toils.” ↩
In diminutive letters, and not in Roman capitals, like the Diligite Justitiam of Canto XVIII 91, and the record of the virtues and vices of the “Cripple of Jerusalem.” ↩
The uncle of Frederick of Sicily was James, king of the Balearic Islands. He joined Philip the Bold of France in his disastrous invasion of Catalonia; and in consequence lost his own crown. The brother of Frederick was James of Aragon, who, on becoming king of that realm, gave up Sicily, which his father had acquired. By these acts they dishonored their native land and the crowns they wore. ↩
Dionysius, king of Portugal, who reigned from 1279 to 1325. The Ottimo says that, “given up wholly to the acquisition of wealth, he led the life of a merchant, and had money dealings with all the great merchants of his reign; nothing regal, nothing magnificent, can be recorded of him.” Philalethes is disposed to vindicate the character of Dionysius against these aspersions, and to think them founded only in the fact that Dionysius loved the arts of peace better than the more shining art of war, joined in no crusade against the Moors, and was a patron of manufactures and commerce. The Ottimo’s note on this nameless Norwegian is curious:— “As his islands are situated at the uttermost extremities of the earth, so his life is on the extreme of reasonableness and civilization.” Benvenuto remarks only that:— “Norway is a cold northern region, where the days are very short, and whence come excellent falcons.” Buti is still more brief. He says:— “That is, the king of Norway.” Neither of these commentators, nor any of the later ones, suggest the name of this monarch, except the Germans, Philalethes and Witte, who think it may be Eric the Priest-hater, or Hakon Longshanks. ↩
Rascia or Ragusa is a city in Dalmatia, situated on the Adriatic, and capital of the kingdom of that name. The king here alluded to is Uroscius II, who married a daughter of the Emperor Michael Palaeologus, and counterfeited Venetian coin. ↩
In this line I have followed the reading male ha visto, instead of the more common one, male aggiustò. ↩
The Ottimo comments as follows:— “Here he reproves the vile and unseemly lives of the kings of Hungary, down to Andrea” (Dante’s contemporary), “whose life the Hungarians praised, and whose death they wept.” ↩
If it can make the Pyrenees a bulwark to protect it against the invasion of Philip the Fair of France. It was not till four centuries later that Louis XIV made his famous boast, “Il n’y a plus de Pyrénées.” ↩
In proof of this prediction the example of Cyprus is given. ↩
Nicosia and Famagosta are cities of Cyprus, here taken for the whole island, in 1300 badly governed by Henry II of the house of the Lusignani. “And well he may call him beast,” says the Ottimo, “for he was wholly given up to lust and sensuality, which should be far removed from every king.” ↩
Upon this line Benvenuto comments with unusual vehemence. “This king,” he says, “does not differ nor depart from the side of the other beasts; that is, of the other vicious kings. And of a truth, Cyprus with her people differeth not, nor is separated from the bestial life of the rest; rather it surpasseth and exceedeth all peoples and kings of the kingdoms of Christendom in superfluity of luxury, gluttony, effeminacy, and every kind of pleasure. But to attempt to describe the kinds, the sumptuousness, the variety, and the frequency of their banquets, would be disgusting to narrate, and tedious and harmful to write. Therefore men who live soberly and temperately should avert their eyes from beholding, and their ears from hearing, the meretricious, lewd, and fetid manners of that island, which, with God’s permission, the Genoese have now invaded, captured, and evil entreated and laid under contribution.” ↩