SOURCE: Gardner, Edmund G. “The Science of Love.” In Dante and the Mystics, pp. 298-323. Reprint. 1913. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1968.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1913, Gardner examines mystical symbolism and concepts in the Paradiso in the context of medieval Catholic theological writings.]

I

“Man,” writes Aquinas, “has three kinds of knowledge of divine things. The first of these is according as man, by the natural light of reason, ascends through creatures into the knowledge of God; the second is in so far as the divine truth, exceeding human understanding, descends to us by way of revelation, not however as though demonstrated to our sight, but as set forth in words to be believed; the third is according as the human mind is elevated to the perfect intuition of the things that are revealed.”¹

We have something analogous to these three kinds of knowledge of divine things in the Divina Commedia: Dante is led by the natural light of reason in Vergil through the Inferno and the Purgatorio, thus ascending to the knowledge of God through creatures; the divine truth descends to him in the Earthly Paradise by way of revelation in Beatrice, and is set forth in the allegorical pageants; then, in the Paradiso, his mind is uplifted by stages to the perfect intuition of the things revealed.

Thus, too, Bonaventura writes of the soul's ascent to God:—

This is the three days' journey into the wilderness (that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, Exod. iii. 18); this is the threefold illumination of one day, whereof the first is as evening, the second as morning, the third as noon; this represents the threefold existence of things, to wit, in matter, in intelligence, and in eternal act; as it is said: Let there be, he made, and it was so (Gen. i.); this likewise represents the threefold substance in Christ, who is our ladder: to wit, bodily, spiritual, and divine.²

It is noon in the Earthly Paradise when Dante drinks of the waters of Eunoë:—

“E più corrusco, e con più lenti passi,
          Teneva il sole il cerchio di merigge”;(3)

and, where he stands, the southern hemisphere is tutto bianco, all illuminated by the midday rays, when Beatrice turns to gaze upon the sun, and Dante is uplifted with her into Heaven.⁴ His ascent is thus at noon, not merely because that hour, as he tells us in the Convivio, “is the most noble of all the day and has the most virtue”;⁵ but also because noon has a special significance for the mystics, as representing celestial desire, or divine illumination, or eternity.

We read in the book of Genesis (xviii. 1-2) that the Lord appeared unto Abraham, as he sat in the tent-door in the heat of the day; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent-door. Commenting upon this passage, Richard of St. Victor says:—

If by the tent we understand the habitation of the human mind, what is that going out, through which he ran to meet the Lord, save the excess of the human mind, through which it is rapt above itself into the mysteries of divine contemplation? … What, I ask, is that midday heat, save the heat of burning desire? What is it, save fervid love of truth, desire of the true and supreme Good? … Two things, therefore, combined to furnish the occasion of that going out: the excess of spiritual heat and the wonder of the vision. In this wise doth it often happen in the mind of man, that, whilst it burns in the surpassing fire of celestial desire, it merits to behold something from the divine revelation, whereby it is aided to those contemplative excesses.⁶

The Bride cries in the Song of Solomon: Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon; or, as the Vulgate has it: where thou liest in the midday (Cant. i. 6). This noon, according to Bernard, is the revelation of the glory of God, the noon of a day which dawned when the Sun of Justice, announced on earth by Gabriel and born of a Virgin, lived obscured in the world; a day of which the women found the sun already risen, when they came to the sepulchre (the Vulgate reads orto jam sole in Mark xvi. 2); a day which knows not an evening:—

Verily, from then the Sun had risen, and at length, sensibly diffusing its rays over the earth, it began gradually to appear everywhere more brightly and to be felt more fervidly. But however it may wax in heat and in power, may multiply and dilate its rays through all the course of this our mortality (for He will be with us alway, even to the end of the world), the Light will nevertheless not come to the meridian, nor be seen yet in that its own fulness, in which it is to be seen afterwards, by those at least to whom He will be vouchsafed in this vision. O very noon, fulness of fervour and of light, abiding of sun, extermination of shadows, drying up of wet places, expulsion of imperfection! O perennial solstice, when day will no longer wear to evening! O noon-day light, O spring mildness, O summer beauty, O autumn richness; yea, too, O winter rest and quiet! Or, if thou likest it better, then only the winter is past and gone (Cant. ii. 11). Tell me, I say, where is this place of so great brightness and peace and fulness; that even as Jacob, while still in the body, saw God face to face, and his life was preserved (Gen. xxxii. 30); or surely as Moses saw Him, not through figures and darkly, nor in dreams, like the other prophets, but in a fashion excelling and unexperienced by others, known to himself and to God; or even as Paul was caught up into Paradise and heard unspeakable words, and saw the Lord Jesus Christ with his own eyes: so may I, too, merit through excess of mind to contemplate Thee in Thy light and in Thy beauty, feeding more copiously, resting more securely. For here, too, Thou feedest, but not in saturity, nor may one lie, but needs must abide and watch on account of the fears of the night. Alas! neither clear light, nor full refection, nor safe dwelling; and therefore tell me where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday.⁷

Similarly, St. John of the Cross interprets this noon, meridies, as “the midday which is Eternity, where the Father is ever begetting, and the Son ever begotten.”⁸

It is noteworthy that Dante's mysticism, especially in the latter cantos of the Paradiso, at several points anticipates, or, at least, is illustrated by, that of this great Spanish mystic of the sixteenth century.

On the poet's arrival in the seventh sphere, the sphere in which the contemplatives descend the celestial ladder to meet him, the sweet harmony of Paradise, that had hitherto increased in melody from heaven to heaven, is silent, and Beatrice does not smile:—

“Già eran gli occhi miei rifissi al volto
          Della mia donna, e l'animo con essi,
          E da ogni altro intento s'era tolto;
E quella non ridea, ma: ‘S'io ridessi,’
          Mi cominciò, ‘tu ti faresti quale
          Fu Semelè, quando di cener fêssi;
Chè la bellezza mia, che per le scale
          Dell'eterno palazzo più s'accende,
          Com' hai veduto, quanto più si sale,
Se non si temperasse, tanto splende,
          Che il tuo mortal potere al suo fulgore
          Sarebbe fronda che tuono scoscende.’”(9)

Benvenuto da Imola aptly refers to the Vulgate version of Proverbs (xxv. 27): He that is a searcher of majesty, shall be overwhelmed by glory. According to John of the Cross, there is a stage in the mystic's upward progress in which the body is said to be unable to bear as yet any further revelation of the Divine. Thus the Bride in the Song of Solomon: Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me; or, as the Vulgate has it: for they have made me flee away (Cant. vi. 5, or 4):—

Amid fervent affections of love, the Beloved is wont to visit His bride, tenderly, lovingly, and with great strength of love. … And, as the soul has so anxiously longed for the divine eyes, the Beloved reveals to her some glimpses of His Majesty and Godhead, according to her desires. These divine rays strike the soul so profoundly and so vividly, that it is rapt into an ecstasy, which in the beginning is attended with great suffering and natural fear. … For such is the wretchedness of our mortal nature, that we cannot bear, even when it is offered to us, but at the cost of our life, that which is the very life of the soul, and the object of her earnest desires, namely the knowledge of the Beloved. Thus the soul is compelled to say, with regard to the eyes so earnestly, so anxiously sought for, and in so many ways, when they become visible: Turn them away. So great, at times, is the suffering of the soul during these ecstatic visitations that, were it not for the special interference of God, death would ensue.¹⁰

We have, too, in John of the Cross, the mystical interpretation of the ladder that Dante now sees in this sphere of Saturn:—

“Dentro al cristallo, che il vocabol porta,
          Cerchiando il mondo, del suo chiaro duce,
          Sotto cui giacque ogni malizia morta,
Di color d'oro in che raggio traluce,
          Vid'io uno scaleo eretto in suso
          Tanto, che nol seguiva la mia luce.
Vidi anche per li gradi scender giuso
          Tanti splendor, ch'io pensai ch'ogni lume
          Che par nel ciel quindi fosse diffuso.”(11)

John of the Cross shows how secret contemplation is a ladder by which, without knowing how, the soul ascends, and mounts upward to the knowledge and possession of the goods and treasures of Heaven. “We may also call it a ladder,” he says, “for as the steps of one and the same ladder serve to descend as well as to ascend by, so, too, those very communications, which the soul receives in secret contemplation, raise her up to God and make her humble.” And again: “The chief reason why it is called a ladder is that contemplation is the science of love, which is an infused loving knowledge of God, and which enlightens the soul, and at the same time kindles within her the fire of love, till she shall ascend upwards step by step unto God, her Creator; for it is love only that unites the soul and God.”¹²

It is thus by this “science of love” that Beatrice impels Dante to follow the contemplatives upward to the eighth heaven:—

“La dolce donna dietro a lor mi pinse
          Con un sol cenno su per quella scala,
          Sì sua virtù la mia natura vinse;
Nè mai quaggiù, dove si monta e cala
          Naturalmente, fu sì ratto moto,
          Ch'agguagliar si potesse alla mia ala.”(13)

Aquinas teaches that the human mind is divinely caught up to contemplate divine truth in three ways: first, that it may contemplate it by kinds of likenesses in the imagination; secondly, that it may contemplate it through effects apprehended by the understanding; thirdly, that it may contemplate it in its essence. To contemplate divine truth in this last fashion, St. Paul was caught up to the third heaven. In one sense, this third heaven may be taken as meaning the Empyrean Heaven, “the spiritual heaven where Angels and holy souls enjoy the contemplation of God”; it is called “the third heaven,” with respect to the aerial heaven and the stellar heaven, or with respect to the crystalline; Paul's being caught up into it signifying “that God showed him the life in which He is to be seen in Eternity.” In another way, by the third heaven can be understood some supermundane vision; whether “according to the order of the cognitive powers,” in which the first heaven is the supermundane corporeal vision which is received through sense, the second heaven is an imaginary vision, and the third heaven is intellectual vision; or “according to the order of things knowable,” in which the first heaven means the knowledge of celestial bodies, the second heaven, knowledge of celestial spirits, and the third heaven, knowledge of God Himself.¹⁴

It has recently been argued that Dante's three grades of knowledge of heavenly things in the Paradiso are based upon this distinction of the three heavens by Aquinas; the eight lower spheres representing the first heaven, supermundane corporeal vision, the knowledge of the celestial bodies; the ninth sphere, the crystalline or primum mobile, corresponding to the second heaven, imaginary vision, the knowledge of the celestial spirits; and the Empyrean being the third heaven, intellectual vision, the knowledge of God Himself.¹⁵ After being rapt up the sacred ladder of contemplation, Dante completes his knowledge of the celestial bodies, when, at Beatrice's bidding, he looks down upon the universe, turning back with his sight “through all and each of the seven spheres,” and all the seven are displayed to him, “how great they are, and how swift they are, and how far apart they are in orbits”;¹⁶ he perfects this knowledge, when he realises the spiritual nature of their work, beholding “the hosts of Christ's triumph, and all the fruit gathered by the circling of these spheres.”¹⁷ In this eighth sphere, corporeal vision may be said to end, as it is the highest visible part of the heavens. Then, in the ninth sphere, which is invisible, he gains by imaginary vision the knowledge of the angelic hierarchies. Finally, in the Empyrean, the knowledge of God Himself in His essence is vouchsafed to his intellectual vision.

II

Dante's examination on Faith, Hope, and Charity, in the Stellar Heaven, is an essential part of his mystical system. “By these three virtues,” he says, “we ascend to philosophise in that celestial Athens, where Stoics and Peripatetics and Epicureans, by the art of the eternal Truth, harmoniously concur in one will.”¹⁸ And, again, he states that to the blessedness of eternal life, which consists in the fruition of the countenance of God, man can only arrive by spiritual teaching transcending human reason, to be followed in accordance with Faith, Hope, and Charity.¹⁹ These virtues are a gift of God, involving a certain participation in the Deity, to put man on the way to the happiness which exceeds his nature, but for which he is nevertheless made.²⁰

But there is a fuller mystical significance in the poet's examination as the necessary preparation for the fruition of God: especially in this eighth sphere, which is the celestial counterpart of the Earthly Paradise,²¹ and in which he has just seen the first vision of Christ as the Sun from which the saints receive their light. Thus Bonaventura:—

It is necessary, if we would enter Paradise and the fruition of the Truth, that we should advance by Faith, Hope, and Charity respecting the mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ, who is as the tree of life in the midst of paradise (Gen. ii. 9, Prov. iii. 18). The image of our mind must therefore be clothed with the three theological virtues, whereby the mind is purified, illumined, and rendered perfect, and thus the image is reformed and made fitted for the Jerusalem which is above, and a part of the Church militant, which is the child, according to the Apostle, of the heavenly Jerusalem. For he says: Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all (Gal. iv. 26).

And the Seraphical Doctor continues that, when the soul believes in, hopes in, and loves Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life (John xiv. 6), she recovers all her spiritual senses: spiritual hearing and sight, by Faith; spiritual smell, by Hope; spiritual taste and touch, by Charity; and so attains the bliss of that degree of contemplation, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it (Rev. ii. 17).²²

The interaction of the three powers of the soul in contemplation is emphasised by the mystics. Thus St. Catherine of Siena:—

Love harmonises the three powers of our soul, and binds them together. The will, with ineffable love, follows what the eye of the understanding has beheld; and, with its strong hand, it stores up in the memory the treasure that it draws from this love.²³

And again, she represents God speaking to the soul of the after-effects of the momentary divine union:—

Then is the memory found full of nought but Me; the understanding uplifted to contemplate My truth as object; the will, that follows the understanding, loves and unites itself to what the eye of the understanding sees.²⁴

Now St. John of the Cross teaches that, for this divine union, the three powers of the soul—understanding, memory, and will—must be rendered empty by the three theological virtues, each in its own power; Faith in the understanding, Hope in the memory, and Charity in the will:—

It is necessary for the soul, if she will travel securely along the spiritual road, to journey in the dark night, leaning on these three virtues, which make her empty of all things and blind. For the soul is not united to God in this life by the understanding or feeling or imagination, or any other sense whatever; but only by Faith, in the understanding; by Hope, which may be referred to the memory, in so far as Hope relates to that emptiness and forgetfulness of every temporal and perishable thing which it causes, the soul preserving herself entire for the Supreme Good for which she hopes; and by Love, in the will. These three virtues render empty all the powers of the soul; Faith makes the understanding empty and blind; Hope takes everything away from the memory; and Charity detaches the will from every pleasure and affection which is not God.²⁵

We have to lead these three powers of the soul unto these three virtues; informing the understanding by Faith, stripping the memory of all that it possesses by Hope, and informing the will by Charity, detaching them from, and making them blind to, all that is beside these three virtues.²⁶

Thus, Dante represents himself as temporarily blinded during his examination: a blindness which he is bidden to compensate by discoursing upon love, and which the eyes of Beatrice have power to heal:—

“Quale è colui ch'adocchia, e s'argomenta
          Di vedere eclissar lo sole un poco,
          Che per veder non vedente diventa;
Tal mi fec'io a quell'ultimo foco.
.....Ahi quanto nella mente mi commossi,
          Quando mi volsi per veder Beatrice,
          Per non poter vedere, ben ch'io fossi
Presso di lei, e nel mondo felice!
.....Mentr'io dubbiava per lo viso spento,
          Della fulgida fiamma che lo spense
          Uscì un spiro che mi fece attento,
Dicendo: ‘In tanto che tu ti risense
          Della vista che hai in me consunta,
          Ben è che ragionando la compense.
Comincia dunque, e di' ove s'appunta
          L'anima tua, e fa' ragion che sia
          La vista in te smarrita e non defunta;
Perchè la donna, che per questa dia
          Region ti conduce, ha nello sguardo
          La virtù ch'ebbe la man d'Anania.’
Io dissi: ‘Al suo piacere e tosto e tardo
          Vegna rimedio agli occhi, che fûr porte,
          Quand'ella entrò col foco ond'io sempr'ardo.’”(27)

“To suffer darkness is the way to great light,” writes John of the Cross. “The soul draws nearer and nearer to the divine union in darkness. If the soul will see, she thereby becomes instantly more blind as to God than he who should attempt to gaze upon the sun shining in its strength.” This blindness of Dante corresponds with what the great Spanish mystic calls “the dark night through which the soul passes, on her way to the divine light of the perfect union of the love of God.” In this dark night of the soul, “God secretly teaches the soul and instructs her in the perfection of love, without efforts on her own part beyond a loving attention to God, listening to His voice and admitting the light He sends.”²⁸

As he enters the Empyrean, Dante, in preparation for the divine union, is again momentarily blinded by the divine light that shines round him and overpowers him with its glow:—

“Come subito lampo che discetti
          Gli spiriti visivi, sì che priva
          Dell'atto l'occhio di più forti obbietti;
Così mi circonfulse luce viva,
          E lasciommi fasciato di tal velo
          Del suo fulgor, che nulla m'appariva.
‘Sempre l'amor che queta questo cielo,
          Accoglie in sè con sì fatta salute,
          Per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo.’
Non fûr più tosto dentro a me venute
          Queste parole brevi, ch'io compresi
          Me sormentar di sopra a mia virtute;
E di novella vista mi raccesi,
          Tale che nulla luce è tanto mera,
          Che gli occhi miei non si fosser difesi.
E vidi lume in forma di riviera,
          Fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive
          Dipinte di mirabil primavera.”(29)

The image of a river or torrent is one employed by the mystics to represent the first apprehension of the Divine by the soul in the stage of union. Thus, John of the Cross makes the soul say that her Beloved is “the sonorous rivers.” The soul, he writes, “feels herself to be so overpowered with the torrent of the spirit of God, and so overwhelmingly possessed by it, that all the waters in the world seem to her to have surrounded her, and to have drowned all her former actions and passions. And, though overwhelming, yet there is nothing painful in it, for these rivers are rivers of peace, as God gives us to understand through Isaiah, saying: I will bring upon her as it were a river of peace, and glory as an overflowing torrent (lxvi. 12). Thus this divine overpowering, like sonorous rivers, fills the soul with peace and glory.”³⁰

III

In the Empyrean, Dante has reached the last, the tenth step of the mystical ladder according to John of the Cross, the step on which “the soul becomes wholly assimilated unto God because of the clear vision which she then enjoys; for having come in this life to the ninth step, she goeth forth out of the body. Love works in such souls—they are few and perfectly purified in this life—that which Purgatory works in others in the next.” In this state, he says, the soul not only becomes like unto God, but is, by participation, God.³¹

Discussing the question, “whether Paul, when caught up, saw the essence of God,” Aquinas says:—

The Divine Essence cannot be seen by a created intellect, save through the light of glory, concerning which it is said in the Psalm (xxxv. 10, or xxxvi. 9): In thy light shall we see light. This, however, can be participated in two ways: in the one, by way of it becoming the immanent form (of the intellect); and thus it makes the saints blessed in Paradise; in the other, by way of a certain passing passion, as we have said concerning the light of prophecy; and, in this latter way, that light was in Paul when he was caught up. And, therefore, by such a vision he was not blessed absolutely, so that it overflowed to his body, but only relatively; and therefore such a being caught up pertains in some sort to prophecy.³²

Now although, in the literal sense, the subject of the Paradiso is “the state of blessed souls after death,” status animarum beatarum post mortem,³³ the consummation of the poet's own vision, as far as he himself is concerned, is something different. His vision of the Divine Essence, through the light of glory, is what Aquinas calls “by way of a certain passing passion,” and “pertains in some sort to prophecy.” It does not represent the final condition of the soul in Paradise (in patria) awaiting the resurrection of the body, but the anticipation of the Beatific Vision mystically granted to contemplative spirits while still in the flesh on earth; a state in which the soul, in mystical fashion, through the purification wrought by love, is spoken of as going forth out of the body; a state to which she has been led by love alone; a state in which she has become so flooded and so utterly permeated by her realisation of the Divine, that, by an intellectual vision within herself, she becomes actually one with God, united to His Word in spiritual marriage or in the anticipation of the vision of His Essence.³⁴ Although we naturally speak of “ecstatic” contemplation in connection with the close of the poet's pilgrimage, it need not be supposed that he regards “ecstasy” as the normal state of souls who possess the Beatific Vision. When, in the course of the poem, we find Dante passing into what may be called the ecstatic condition, it is (in a way) the penalty of the flesh; it is a condition only applicable to the soul of the contemplative while he is still in this life. The complete absorption of the soul into God, in which is found the blessedness of Heaven, brings with it a consciousness of its own, in virtue of which the saints in the Paradiso, while possessing for ever that vision of the Divine Essence which, for a brief moment, will be Dante's at the close of the poem, are realising their own blessedness and the perfect fulfilment of their true nature, and are not for an instant turning their spiritual gaze from that Beatific Vision, albeit they speak with the poet and even descend to meet him in the lower spheres.³⁵ But with Dante himself it is necessarily different, by reason of lo mortal pondo, “the mortal weight through which thou shalt again return below.”³⁶ It is not by this complete absorption into God, attended by perfect spiritual consciousness, that he attains to “the end of all desires,” but by that supreme grade of contemplation described by Richard of St. Victor as alienation of mind, “when the memory of things present falls from the mind, and, being transfigured by the working of divine grace, the soul passes into a certain wondrous state inaccessible to human powers”:—

When the soul has begun through pure understanding to pass out of herself, and entirely to enter into that brightness of incorporeal light, and to draw some taste of intimate sweetness from what she sees in its depths, then, indeed, in this excess of mind that peace is found and obtained which is without disturbance or fear; and there is silence in heaven, as it were for half an hour; so that the soul of the contemplative may be disturbed by no tumult of discordant thoughts.³⁷

For this “flight of the alone to the Alone,” in this mystical “half-hour” of silence, this “moment of understanding,” guidance is no longer needed by the purified soul:—

“Ed io ch'al fine di tutti i disii
          M'appropinquava, sì com'io dovea,
          L'ardor del desiderio in me finii.
Bernardo m'accennava, e sorridea,
          Perch'io guardassi suso; ma io era
          Già per me stesso tal qual ei volea;
Chè la mia vista, venendo sincera,
          E più entrava per lo raggio
          Dell'alta luce, che da sè è vera.”(38)

The “end of all desires,” the realising of the soul's entire capacity of knowledge and of love, is attained in that moment when the poet can say of himself: Io giunsi l'aspetto mio col valor infinito, “I united my gaze with the infinite Worth”:—

“O abbondante grazia, ond'io presunsi
          Ficcar lo viso per la luce eterna
          Tanto, che la veduta vi consunsi!
Nel suo profondo vidi che s'interna,
          Legato con amore in un volume,
          Ciò che per l'universo si squaderna;
Sustanzia ed accidenti e lor costume,
          Quasi conflati insieme per tal modo,
          Che ciò ch'io dico è un semplice lume.
La forma universal di questo nodo
          Credo ch'io vidi, perchè più di largo,
          Dicendo questo, mi sento ch'io godo.
.....A quella luce cotal si diventa,
          Che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto
          È impossibil che mai si consenta;
Però che il ben, ch'è del volere obbietto,
          Tutto s'accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella
          È difettivo ciò che lì è perfetto.”(39)

Thus, in the Dionysian phrase, “ascending from obscure images to the Cause of all, and contemplating, with supermundane eyes, all things in the Cause of all,” this Cause itself, in a flash of supernatural intuition, becomes revealed as the Blessed Trinity, of which the second Person (the “reflected,” “understood,” light, that is, the begotten Word) took human flesh: the supreme mystery of the Catholic Faith:—

“Non perchè più ch'un semplice sembiante
          Fosse nel vivo lume ch'io mirava,
          Che tal è sempre qual era davante;
Ma per la vista che s'avvalorava
          In me guardando, una sola parvenza,
          Mutandom'io, a me si travagliava;
Nell profonda e chiara sussistenza
          Dell'alto lume parvemi tre giri
          Di tre colori e d'una continenza;
E l'un dall'altro, come Iri da Iri,
          Parea riflesso, e il terzo parea foco
          Che quinci e quindi egualmente si spiri.
O quanto è corto il dire, e come fioco
          Al mio concetto, e questo a quel ch'io vidi
          È tanto, che non basta a dicer poco!
O luce eterna, che sola in te sidi,
          Sola t'intendi, e, da te intelletta
          Ed intendente te, ami ed arridi!
Quella circulazion, che sì concetta
          Pareva in te come lume riflesso,
          Dagli occhi miei alquanto circonspetta,
Dentro da sè del suo colore stesso
          Mi parve pinta della nostra effige,
          Per che il mio viso in lei tutto era messo.
Qual è 'l geometra che tutto s'affige
          Per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova
          Pensando quel principio ond'egli indige;
Tale era io a quella vista nuova:
          Veder voleva, come si convenne
          L'imago al cerchio, e come vi s'indova;
Ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne,
          Se non che la mia mente fu percossa
          Da un fulgore, in che sua voglia venne.
All'alta fantasia qui mancò possa;
          Ma già volgeva il mio disiro e il velle,
          Sì come rota ch'egualmente è mossa,
L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.”(40)

The ultimate source of this image of the wheel, as picturing the soul's relations with God, is probably to be found in Ezekiel's vision of the four living creatures and the wheels of the divine chariot. Cumque ambularent animalia, ambulabant pariter et rotae juxta ea; et cum elevarentur animalia de terra, elevabantur simul et rotae. Quocumque ibat spiritus, illuc eunte spiritu, et rotae pariter elevabantur sequentes eum, spiritus enim vitae erat in rotis (Ezek. i. 19-20).⁴¹ With Dante, it symbolises the spiritual harmony attained in perfect correspondence with the working of divine grace, the absolute assimilation of the powers of the soul with the Divine Will. We have found a similar image in the book of Mechthild of Hackeborn; so, too, the later, fourteenth-century writer, Walter Hilton, mystically interprets the Prophet's words: “By wheels are understood the true lovers of Jesus, for they are round in virtue, without angle of frowardness; and lightly whirling through readiness of will after the stirrings of grace; for according as grace stirreth and teacheth, so they follow and work.”⁴²

Here is symbolism still, inevitably, with imagery in which fantasia, the imagination, still asserts its claim, though but as servant, upon the pure understanding. But never, before or since, in poetry has finite human language come so near to the adequate expression of the divine, the infinite, the eternal, as in this closing canto of the Paradiso. And yet, when all is said, the fact remains that, if (as has been assumed throughout these pages) the Letter to Can Grande is really his, Dante himself would lay less stress upon the mystical aspect of the poem than upon its direct bearing on life and conduct: non ad speculandum, sed ad opus incoeptum est totum; “not for speculation, but for practical effect was the whole work undertaken”—for “the end of the whole and of the part is to remove those living in this life from the state of misery, and to lead them to the state of felicity.”⁴³

With St. Catherine of Siena, the immediate object of the mystical life is spiritual virility; and “there can be no perfect virtue, none that bears fruit, unless it be exercised by means of our neighbour.”⁴⁴ Similarly, the aim of Dante's mysticism is to make spiritual experience a force for the reformation of mankind. Depicting man and nature in their eternal aspect, he would speak in their own language to those subjected to things of time on “the threshing-floor that maketh us so fierce,” l'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci, and assailed by “our tempest,” nostra procella, of succession;⁴⁵ he would interpret for them the meaning of that Eternity, of which the last of the Roman philosophers dreamed in his dungeon as “the complete and perfect simultaneous possession of unlimited life.”

Notes

1. Summa contra Gentiles, iv. 1.

2. Itinerarium, i. § 3.

3. “Both more resplendent, and with slower paces, the sun was holding the meridian circle.”—Purg. xxxiii. 103-104.

4. Par. i. 43-48.

5. Conv. iv. 23, 145-147.

6. Benjamin major, v. 8.

7. Sermones in Cantica Canticorum, xxxiii. §§ 6-7.

8. Cántico espiritual entre el Alma y Cristo, cancion i., declaracion (trans. David Lewis).

9. “Already were mine eyes fixed again upon the face of my lady, and my mind with them, and from all other intent was it withdrawn;

   And she smiled not, but: ‘If I smiled,’ she began, ‘thou wouldst become such as did Semele when she turned to ashes;

   For my beauty, which along the stairs of the eternal palace enkindles more, as thou hast seen, the more we ascend,

   If it were not tempered, gloweth so, that thy mortal power at its effulgence would be a leaf that thunder shatters.’”

   —Par. xxi. 1-12

10. Declaracion del Cántico espiritual, cancion xiii. (Lewis).

11. “Within the crystal, that bears the name, as it wheels round the world, of its famed ruler under whom all wickedness lay dead,

    Of colour of gold on which a ray is glowing, I saw a ladder uplifted on high, so far that my sight followed it not.

    I saw, too, descending downward by the steps so many splendours, that I thought that every star that shines in heaven had been thence diffused.”

    —Par. xxi. 25-33

12. Noche escura del Alma, lib. ii. cap. 18 (Lewis).

13. “The sweet lady impelled me after them with a single sign up by that stairway, so did her power surpass my nature;

    Nor ever here below, where one mounts and descends naturally, was so swift a motion that it could be equalled to my flight.”

    —Par. xxii. 100-105

14. Summa Theologica, II. ii., q. 175, a. 3, ad 1 and ad 4. Cf. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, xii. 28.

15. Cf. L. Filomusi-Guelfi, Studi su Dante, pp. 142 et seq.; Umberto Cosmo, in Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, vol. lviii., pp. 165-170.

16. Par. xxii. 133-150.

17. Par. xxiii. 19-21.

18. Conv. iii. 14, 136-141.

19. Mon. iii. 16, 48-52, 58-63.

20. Summa Theologica, I. ii., q. 62, a. 1.

21. Cf. my Dante's Ten Heavens, pp. 189 et seq.

22. Itinerarium, iv. §§ 2-3.

23. Letter 172.

24. Dialogo, cap. lxxix.

25. Subida del Monte Carmelo, lib. ii. cap. 6 (Lewis).

26. Ibid.

27. “As is he who fixes his eyes and strives to see the sun eclipsed a while, and by gazing becomes bereft of sight;

    Such became I at this last flame (St. John) …

    Ah, how much was I disturbed in mind, when I turned me to see Beatrice, for that I could not see her, albeit I was near unto her and in the blessed world! …

    Whilst I was in suspense because of my quenched sight, from the glowing flame that quenched it issued a breath that made me give heed,

    Saying: ‘Until thou dost regain the sense of sight that thou hast consumed in me, it is well that thou compensate it by discourse.

    ‘Begin then, and say to what thy soul doth tend, and be assured tht the sight in thee is confounded and not dead;

    ‘For the lady, who is leading thee through this divine realm, hath in her look the virtue that the hand of Ananias had.’

    I said: ‘At her pleasure, or soon or late, may healing come to the eyes, which were the gates, when she entered with the fire wherewith I ever burn.’”

    —Par. xxv. 118-121, 136-139, xxvi. 1-15

28. Carta i.; Subida del Monte Carmelo, lib. ii. cap. 4; Noche escura del Alma, lib. ii. cap. 5 (Lewis).

29. “As sudden lightning-flash that scatters the visual spirits, so that it deprives the eye of action towards the strongest objects;

    So shined round about me a living light, and left me swathed with such a veil of its effulgence, that nought appeared unto me.

    ‘Ever the Love that quieteth this heaven welcomes into itself with such a salutation, to make the candle apt unto its flame.’

    No sooner had these brief words entered in me, than I perceived that I was surpassing my own power;

    And with so new a faculty of sight was I enkindled, that no light is so resplendent that mine eyes could not have sustained it.

    And I saw light in form of a river, glowing with radiance, between two banks adorned with wondrous flowers of spring.”

    —Par. xxx. 46-63

30. Declaracion del Cántico espiritual, cancion xiv.

31. Noche escura del Alma, lib. ii. cap. 20.

32. Summa Theologica, II. ii., q. 175, a. 3, ad 2. Cf. q. 171, a. 2.

33. Epist. x. 11.

34. Cf. St. Teresa, El Castillo interior, Moradas sétimas, cap. ii.

35. Cf. Tyrrell, op. cit., pp. 306-309.

36. Par. xxvii. 64-65.

37. Benjamin major, v. 2; De exterminatione mali, iii. 18.

38. “And I who to the end of all desires was drawing near, even as I was bound, fulfilled the ardour of desire within me.

    Bernard signed to me, and smiled, that I should look above; but I was already of myself even as he did wish;

    For my sight, becoming pure, was entering more and more through the ray of that high Light, which in itself is true.”

    —Par. xxxiii. 46-54

39. “O grace abundant, by which I presumed to fix my gaze through the eternal Light so far that I consumed my power of vision therein!

    Within its depths I saw contained, bound by love into one volume, what is dispersed in leaves throughout the universe;

    Substance and accidents and their relation, as it were fused together in such fashion that what I speak of is one simple light.

    The universal form of this union I believe that I saw, because more copiously, in saying this, I feel that I rejoice. …

    At that light such doth one become that to turn from it, to behold ought else, it is impossible that ever one consent;

    Because the Good, which is object of the will, is all contained therein, and, outside of that, all is defective which there is perfect.”

    —Par. xxxiii. 82-93, 100-105

    The last two terzine are a poetical paraphrase of Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. ii., q. 5, a. 4.

40. “Not because more than one simple semblance was in the living Light upon which I gazed, which is ever such as it was before;

    But through my sight gaining strength in me as I looked, one sole appearance, even as I changed, was changing unto me;

    Within the deep and clear subsistence of the high Light appeared to me three circles, of three colours and of one dimension;

    And the one by the other, as rainbow by rainbow, seemed reflected, and the third seemed fire which from one and the other equally is breathed.

    O how scanty is my speech, and how feeble to my conception, and this to what I saw is such that it suffices not to call it little!

    O Light Eternal, that only in Thyself abidest, only understandest Thyself (begetting the Word), and, understood by Thyself (the Son) and understanding Thyself (the Father), dost love and smile (the Holy Ghost proceeding from both)!

    That circle, which seemed begotten in Thee as a reflected light, when contemplated by mine eyes a while,

    Within itself of its own colour appeared to me depicted with our likeness, wherefore my gaze was utterly fixed thereon.

    As is the geometrician who concentrates his mind to square the circle, and finds not in his thought that principle which he needs,

    Such was I at this new vision: fain would I see how the image (our humanity) was united to the circle (the divinity), and how it findeth place therein;

    But unequal to that were mine own wings, were it not that my mind was smitten by a flash, in which its will was fulfilled.

    To my high fantasy here power failed; but already my desire and my will were being turned, even as a wheel that is moved equally, by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

    —Par. xxxiii. 109-145

41. And when the living creatures went, the wheels also went together by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels also were lifted up with them. Whithersoever the spirit went, thither, as the spirit went, the wheels also were lifted up withal, and followed it; for the spirit of life was in the wheels (Vulgate).

42. The Ladder of Perfection, II. part iii. cap. 14. Cf. St. Gregory, Homiliarum in Ezechielem, i. 7.

43. Epist. x. 15-16.

44. Dialogo, cap. i.-cap. viii., cap. xi.

45. Par. xxii. 151, xxxi. 30.

Works and Editions Cited

St. Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia, 25 vols, Parma, 1852-72; Summa Theologica, 6 vols, Rome (ex typographia Forzani), 1886-87; Summa contra Gentiles, Rome (ibid.), 1894.

St. Augustine, Opera omnia, ed. Migne, Pat. Lat. tomm. xxxii.-xlvii.; Confessionum libri xiii, ed. Wangnereck, Turin, 1878.

St. Bernard, Opera omnia, ed. Migne, Pat. Lat. tomm. clxxxii.-clxxxv.; Sermones in Cantica Canticorum, ed. Hurter, Innsbruck, 1888; De Consideratione et tractatus de moribus et officio Episcoporum, ibid., 1885.

Benvenuto da Imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherii Comoediam, ed. W. W. Vernon and J. Lacaita, 5 vols, Florence, 1887.

Boëthius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. T. Obbarius, Jena, 1843.

St. Bonaventura, Opera omnia, 10 vols, ed. P. P. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, Quaracchi, 1882-1902; Legendae due de vita S. Francisci Seraphici, ibid., 1898; Tria opuscula (Breviloquium, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, et De reductione Artium ad Theologiam), ibid., 3rd. ed., 1911.

St. Catherine of Siena, Opere, ed. G. Gigli, 5 vols, Siena and Lucca, 1707-1754; Legenda (Fra Raimondo da Capua), Acta Sanctorum, April, tom. iii.

U. Cosmo, Le mistiche nozze di frate Francesco con madonna Povertà, in Giornale Dantesco, anno vi., Florence, 1898.

Dante Alighieri, Tutte le opere nuovamente rivedute nel testo, ed. E. Moore, 3rd ed., Oxford, 1904; La Divina Commedia con il commento di T. Casini, 5th ed., Florence, 1903; La Vita Nuova per cura di Michele Barbi, Florence, 1907.

L. Filomusi-Guelfi, Studi su Dante, Città di Castello, 1908.

E. G. Gardner, Dante's Ten Heavens, 2nd. ed., London, 1900; Saint Catherine of Siena, London, 1907; The Cell of Self-Knowledge, London, 1910.

St. Gregory the Great, Opera Omnia, ed. Migne, Pat. Lat. tomm. lxxv.-lxxix.

St. John of the Cross, Obras del beato padre san Juan de la Cruz, in Rivadeneyra, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, tomo xxvii, Madrid, 1853; The Complete Works translated by David Lewis, 2 vols, 2nd ed., London, 1889-90.

Mechthild of Hackeborn and Mechthild of Magdeburg, Sanctae Mechtildis liber specialis gratiae, accedit Sororis Mechtildis Lux Divinitatis, ed. the Benedictines of Solesmes, in Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, vol. ii., Paris, 1877.

Richard of St. Victor, Opera omnia, ed. Migne, Pat. Lat. tom. cxcvi.

George Tyrrell, The Faith of the Millions, first series, 2nd ed., London, 1902.