Discourse of Beatrice concerning the creation and nature of the Angels. — She reproves the presumption and foolishness of preachers.
When both the children of Latona, covered by the Ram and by the Scales, together make a zone of the horizon,1 as long as from the moment the zenith holds them in balance, till one and the other, changing their hemisphere, are unbalanced from that girdle, soloing, with her countenance painted with a smile, was Beatrice silent, looking fixedly upon the Point which had overcome me. Then she began: “I speak, and I ask not what thou wishest to hear, for I have seen it where every WHERE and every WHEN are centred. Not for the gain of good unto Himself, which cannot be, but that His splendor might, in resplendence, say, Subsisto; in His own eternity, outside of time, outside of every other limit, as pleased Him, the Eternal Love disclosed Himself in new loves. Nor before, as if inert, did He lie; for the going forth of God upon these waters had proceeded neither before nor after.2 Form and matter, conjoined and simple, came forth to existence which had no defect, as three arrows from a three-stringed bow; and as in glass, in amber, or in crystal a ray shines so that there is no interval between its coining and its complete existence, so the triform effect3 rayed forth from its Lord into its. existence all at once, without discrimination of beginning. Order was concreate, and established for the substances, and those were top of the world in which pure act was produced.4 Pure potency held the lowest part;5 in the middle such a bond unites potency with act, that it is never unbound.6 Jerome has written to you of the Angels, created a long tract of centuries before the rest of the world was made. But this truth7 is written on many pages by the writers of the that Holy Spirit: and thou wilt thyself discover it, if thou watchest well for it; and even the reason sees it somewhat, for it would not admit that the motors could be so long without their perfection.8 Now thou knowest where and when these loves were elected, and how; so that three flames of thy desire are already quenched.
1 When at the spring equinox, the sun being in the sign of Aries or the Ram, and the moon in that of Libra or the Scales, opposite to each other on the horizon, the one just rising and the other setting, they seem as if held for a moment in a balance which hangs from the zenith.
2 In eternity there is no before or after; time had no existence till the creation, and has relevancy only to created things.
3 Pure form, pure matter, and form conjoined with matter.
4 The substances created purely active, to exercise action upon others, were the angels.
5 The substances purely passive, capable potentially only of submitting to the action of others, are the material things without intelligence.
6 The substances in which potency and act are united are the creatures endowed with bodies and souls.
7 The truth here set forth (contrary to Jerome’s assertion), the creation of the Angels was contemporaneous with that of the creation of the rest of the Universe of which they were the Intelligences.
8 Without scope for their action as movers of the spheres.
One would not reach to twenty, in counting, so quickly as a part of the Angels disturbed the subject of your elements.1 The rest remained and began this art which thou beboldest, with such great delight that they never cease from circling. The origin of the fall was the accursed pride of him whom thou hast seen opprest by all the weights of the world. Those whom thou seest here were modest in grateful recognition of the goodness which had made them ready for intelligence so great; wherefore their vision was exalted with illuminant grace and with their merit, so that they have full and steadfast will. And I wish that thou doubt not, but be certain, that to receive grace is meritorious in proportion as the affection is open to it.
1 The earth.
“Henceforth, if my words have been harvested, thou canst contemplate sufficiently round about this consistory without other assistance. But because on earth it is taught in your schools that the angelic nature is such that it understands, and remembers, and wills, I will speak further, in order that thou mayest see the truth pure, which there below is mixed, through the equivocation in such like teaching. These substances, from the time that they were glad in the face of God, have not turned their sight from it, from which nothing is concealed. Therefore they have not their vision interrupted by a new object, and therefore do not need because of divided thought to recollect.1 So that there below men dream when not asleep, believing and not believing to speak truth; but in the one is more fault and more shame.2 Ye below go not along one path in philosophizing; so much do the love of appearance3 and the thought of it transport you; and yet this is endured hereabove with less indignation than when the divine Scripture is set aside, or when it is perverted. Men think not there how much blood it costs to sow it in the world, and how much he pleases who humbly keeps close to its side. Every one strives for appearance, and makes his own inventions, and those are discoursed of by the preachers, and the Gospel is silent. One says that the moon turned back at the passion of Christ and interposed herself, so that the light of the sun reached not down; and others that the light hid itself of its own accord, so that this eclipse answered for the Spaniards and for the Indians as well as for the Jews. Florence hath not so many Lapi and Bindi4 as there are fables such as these shouted the year long from the pulpits, on every side; so that the poor flocks, who have no knowledge, return from the pasture fed with wind; and not seeing the harm does not excuse them. Christ did not say to his first company, ‘Go, and preach idle stories to the world,’ but he gave to them the true foundation; and that alone sounded in their cheeks, so that in the battle for kindling of the faith they made shield and lance of the Gospel. Now men go forth to preach with jests and with buffooneries, and provided only there is a good laugh the cowl puffs up, and nothing more is required. But such a bird is nesting in the tail of the hood, that if the crowd should see it, they would see the pardon in which they confide; through which such great folly has grown on earth, that, without proof of any testimony, men would flock to every indulgence. On this the pig of St. Antony fattens, and others also, who are far more pigs, paying with money that has no stamp of coinage.
1 The angels, looking always upon God, to whom all things are present, have no need of memory.
2 Many of the doctrines of men on earth axe like dreams, because they have no foundation in truth; and while some honestly believe in them, there are others, who, though not believing, still teach these doctrines as truth.
3 Of making a good show.
4 Common nicknames in Florence; Lapo is from Jacopo, Bindo from Ildebrando.
“But because we have digressed enough, turn back thine eyes now toward the straight path, so that the way be shortened with the time. This nature1 so extends in number, that never was there speech or mortal concept that could go so far. And if thou considerest that which is revealed by Daniel thou wilt see that in his thousands2 a determinate number is concealed. The primal light that irradiates it all is received in it by as many modes as are the splendors with which the light pairs itself.3 Wherefore, since the affection follows upon the act4 that conceives, in this nature the sweetness of love diversely glows and warms. Behold now the height and the breadth of the Eternal Goodness, since it has made for itself so many mirrors on which it is broken, One in itself remaining as before.”
1 The Angels.
2 “Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.” — Daniel, vii. 10.
3 No two angels are precisely alike in their vision of God.
4 Since love follows on knowledge through vision.