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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Paradiso, Canto IX

Canto IX, and Dante remains in the sphere of Venus. We never find out what, precisely, were the sins of excessive love that earned these redeemed sinners their place in the heavenly hierarchy. By now, it doesn’t really matter. A woman named Cunizza tells Dante, “I gladly pardon in myself the reason for my lot, […]

Canto IX, and Dante remains in the sphere of Venus. We never find out what, precisely, were the sins of excessive love that earned these redeemed sinners their place in the heavenly hierarchy. By now, it doesn’t really matter. A woman named Cunizza tells Dante, “I gladly pardon in myself the reason for my lot, nor does it grieve me.” Dorothy Sayers called this one of the most joyous lines in the Paradiso, and it’s not hard to see why. She is so grateful for God’s mercy, and the redemption she was given through it, that she feels not the slightest grievance over her lesser place in Paradise.

For us, the living, this is yet another model of what it means to be humble and grateful. Recall Piccarda’s immortal lines:

“Brother, the power of love subdues our will

so that we long for only what we have

and thirst for nothing else.

… And in His will is our peace.”

We learn — we continue to learn — that the way to inner peace is through humility and gratitude. To dwell in blessedness is to be satisfied by one’s relationship with God, knowing that if one has Him, one has everything one needs. As Psalm 23 begins, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Could there be a more countercultural message to us than that?

Much of Canto IX is taken up with dire prophecies of judgment upon Italy. Cunizza reassures Dante not to be shaken by this:

“Above us are the mirrors you call Thrones.

From them the judging God shines down on us,

so that we think it good to say such things.”

In other words, the saints in Paradise, when they speak to Dante in this fashion, are acting as prophets. It’s important to remember that the joy of Heaven consists in dwelling perfectly within God’s will. If He wills judgment on portions of the earth, then that is good. In His will is our peace.

There’s a peculiar passage that’s both theologically instructive, and shows how Dante stretched the language to contain his vision. Read this, addressed to Folco, one of the blessed:

“God sees all, and your sight is so in-Himmed,

blessèd spirit,” I said, “that no wish of any kind

is able to conceal itself from you.

 

“Why then does your voice, which ever pleases Heaven,

together with the singing of those loving flames

that form their cowls from their six wings,

 

“not offer my desires their satisfaction?

I would not await your question

if I in-you’d me as you in-me’d you.”

Huh? Dante is being playful here, saying, in effect, “I know that you can read my thoughts, so why are you waiting for me to ask a question before answering it?” Notice the “in-Himmed,” the “in-you’d me,” the “in-me’d you.” The poet speaks here of theosis, and the foundational unity of all creatures who have been filled with the Holy Spirit to perfection. To be filled with God (that is, to be in-Himmed, to be in-Godded) is to have perfect vision, to see with God’s eyes. It is also to be perfectly united with all others in Heaven; they “in-you, in-me” each other. The neologisms Dante invented to express this mystical unity are much less clunky in Italian, I assure you. Still, we see here how inadequate language is to convey mystical reality, just as Dante has been telling us. I like Charles Williams’s commentary on this in his study The Figure Of Beatrice:

It is the very definition of all heaven, but especially of the heavens that are to follow; it is their mode of life. Something of this is known, on occasion, in the life of lovers; not, perhaps, in many; not, certainly, often. There is some kind of experience which can only be expressed by saying: ‘Love you? I am you.’ This is a natural thing; but then there is the moral duty. It is the moral duty of lovers, as they certainly at moments know, to plunge with love into each other’s life — bringing power: power to resist temptation, to reject, to affirm, to purify, to pray. ‘I will pray for you’ is a good saying; a better — ‘I will pray in you.’ This indeed is like the nature of the prayers for which the souls on the mountain terraces are asking. Those on earth fulfil the necessary task. And now it is more than ritual prayers; it is the life and inter-life of souls.

Can you imagine it? Loving others so much that you penetrate them wholly, in the spirit, and become them, as they become you, and you all become (so to speak) God? The most intimate physical union between mortal lovers is merely a shadow of what is to come.

Folco repeats Cunizza’s assertion about how the blessed regard their own past sins:

“Yet here we don’t repent, but smile instead,

not at our fault, which comes not back to mind,

but for that Power which ordered and foresaw.

 

“Here, we contemplate the craft that beautifies

such love, and here discern the good

with which the world above informs the one below.

Lovely, yes? From the perspective of Paradise, of the redeemed, sin is only regarded as the occasion for the inbreaking of God’s love on the world. Charles Williams, again, remarks:

This, now, is what seeing sin in God is. They remember the sin as occasion of love’s potency; this too is possible, for a moment, to lovers on earth without any thought of the supernatural. The fault between them is a cause of joy; so only that the fault has been put by, it is possible even here to be gay in recollecting it. This natural delight is already a flash of our most courteous lord, and the souls in heaven supernaturally return his courtesy in accepting it.

Note well, with reference to our conversation earlier this week about the assurance of salvation, that a soul can only relax in this way once she is in heaven. Our stance in this mortal life must be one of constant repentance.

Folco, remember, is in the sphere of Venus, indicating that his great sin in life was against Love. He tells the pilgrim that one of the brightest lights in that heaven is that of Rahab, the prostitute from the Hebrew Bible who helped Joshua and his army take the city of Jericho, and ultimately to come fully into the Promised Land. Folco says of her:

“Fitting it was indeed to leave her in one heaven,

a trophy of the lofty victory

He gained with both of His two palms…”

Consider that Rahab lowered the two spies out of her inn, on a rope passing through her palms. And consider Jesus’s palms, nailed to the Cross. Dante is telling us that Rahab played a role in salvation history; her faith that she was serving God’s purposes by betraying her own city (see the story here) is seen from the perspective of Heaven as part of God’s plan of redemption. In fact, the harlot’s redemption is one of the prizes of the Resurrection.

Folco compares Rahab, a harlot, favorably to the Pope, who thinks nothing of the Promised Land (remember, Dante wrote this at the end of the era of the Crusades), but only of making money. Folco blames wealthy Florence as the agent of so much corruption. It’s famed gold coin, the florin, on one side of which there is a flower (“the accursèd flower”), is all people care about today, Folco tells the pilgrim. “It has made a wolf out of its shepherd,” he says, referring to the Pope. More Folco:

“For it the Gospels and the lofty doctors

are neglected and the Decretals alone are studied,

as is readily apparent from their margins.”

The Decretals are canon law; legal commentaries were written in the margins of the books of Decretals. What the poet is saying to us is that the Church has become a massive bureaucracy that cares wholly about maintaining correct form, and manipulating it for the wealth of the Pope and the cardinals, and nothing about the substance of the faith, as revealed in the Gospels and in the Church Fathers. More to the point, given the role of the Roman church in civil life in Dante’s day, to be an expert in canon law, says John Ciardi, “could make a shyster’s fortune.” The Pope and the Curia, Dante says, are Pharisees — whitewashed sepulchres who prostitute themselves and Holy Church to money and power, while an actual prostitute who risked her own life to serve the Lord receives her reward in Paradise.

Truly, to see sin and sinners from a heavenly perspective is very, very different from what we mortals see. In our world, we look at high churchmen and see the glory of God made manifest, and regard a whore as filth. But God, who sees the heart, may see exactly the opposite, as Scripture tells us, and as Canto IX affirms, and instruct us always to strive to see with the eyes of God. As we know from Mary’s prayer at the Annunciation:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.

In both God’s mercy and His justice, is our peace.

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