(Paradiso 30–33)
The Final Garden
In Paradiso 30–33, Dante enters into the ultimate place of rest, the empyrean heaven, the real garden, as opposed to the temporary garden, Eden. This, the tenth heaven, was for medieval scholars a realm of paradox and mystery, at the outermost recesses of the universe but also most interior to the cosmos, a place that is really no place at all. It is as if Dante goes through a magical door on the edge of heaven and then finds that he has entered back inside into its center. It is a space where the bodies of Christ and Mary dwell, and where all the bodies of the saints will one day be, but it is not a place in time, and it is not a place of extension of space. The best the medieval scholars could do was to call it a place in which bodies are made up of pure intellectual light. It is this paradoxical place where God retains his human body and where human beings become God.
That last sentence rings out so boldly that it almost seems like heresy, but the truth is, it’s just Christian orthodoxy. It’s worth quoting Christian Moevs on this point: when we encounter medieval thought in a more accurate form, he says, we often “do not recognize it as medieval” because “it seems too daring, too sophisticated, too ideologically unfettered, too nonmedieval. It can even, to those who understand it, come to seem at least as compelling as our own examined or unexamined assumptions about the world.”1 Note that Saint Athanasius, a fourth-century church father, famously declared, “God become man so that man might become God.” And this is exactly what we find in the last canto of Paradiso: a human being brought so far beyond his natural capacity that he is afraid of being destroyed. As Dante looks at God, he finds that his mind is so rocked by that oceanic and tempestuous power that, paradoxically, if he turned away from that vision, he would surely die. He has become God, in a certain sense, because it is only God who sustains him:
I believe that, given the brightness I endured, issued by
that living ray, I would have been lost,
if my eyes had been turned from it.
And I remember that I was emboldened still
to endure: such that I joined
my gaze with the infinite worth. (Par. 33.76–81)
Later, he adds that it was only because a lightning bolt irrupted in his mind that he was able to see at all:
But my wings were not suited for this,
had not my mind been struck
by a bolt of lightning in which what it desired came. (Par. 33.140–42)
How can mere human beings enjoy this kind of vision? Dante’s answer is: they can’t. It is too great, too far beyond, too bright, too real, too terrifying. It comes only as a gift, a gift for which you constantly feel yourself unworthy, and a gift you have to be made worthy to receive. Here, as Dante looks, he feels the perilous state of his mortal humanity, as if he is about to come unglued, and yet at each instant he notes how God sustains his power so that he is not dissolved but rather is given light in which he can continue to look. Dante shares this idea with Aquinas: the idea that although our minds cannot comprehend God’s essence, God is yet willing to provide a gift of understanding, a sort of eye on loan, through which we can see his divine essence. Or, to bring it closer to Aquinas’s metaphor, God’s light is so bright that it blinds our feeble eyes, but he will give us the gift of a light in which we can see his blinding darkness. In this way, Aquinas provides a lovely interpretation of the psalm text “In thy light shall we see light” (Ps. 36:9). This gift of light needed to see God’s light is called “the light of glory,” or lumen gloriae.2
These final canti, as the title of this chapter suggests, are not only canti of paradox but also canti of surprise, and the greatest surprise is that the pilgrim can enjoy this vision without falling to pieces. But there are three more surprises: in these canti Dante is surprised by (1) humans in the heavenly rose, (2) an old man, and (3) the face of God.
Surprised by Humans
In each of the heavens he passed through, Dante met representative souls who acted as the spokespeople for that realm and its virtues. As Beatrice explains in Paradiso 4, the souls don’t actually occupy these posts but rather reveal themselves to Dante in those places in order to help the pilgrim understand their differing capacities to receive God, as well as the various and complementary ways in which they do so. In the empyrean heaven, Dante finally gets to see them all together, assembled into one great community. And the way Dante describes them assembled is scintillating: now as the members of a vast, ordered, and cosmopolitan city; now as marching in rank and file, like soldiers in an army; now as plants in a garden; now as sparks in a river of fire; and finally as if they were the petals of a flower (Par. 30–31). It is this shifting use of imagery—as if the poet were looking through a kaleidoscope—that gives these final canti such a dreamlike intensity: “The river and the topazes . . . / and the laughter of the grass / are shadowy prefaces of their truth” (30.76–78). As Dante gazes, he witnesses once again the convergence of unity and plurality in the heavenly community: at times the saints make up one body, like that of a river or a flower; at the same time, they appear as individual gems, sparks, or plants in a garden. Gazing at the garden/rose is the pilgrim’s final stage of preparation for the vision of God, and it is testimony to the extraordinary role Dante assigns to human beings: the human community is necessary for the vision of God. And it is this human element that sets Dante’s poem apart from other medieval writings.
Dante wasn’t the first medieval writer to imagine a journey that went all the way up into the empyrean. One author by the name of Bernard Silvestris (early twelfth century), upon whose work C. S. Lewis based Out of the Silent Planet, wrote a bizarre story in which an allegorical figure, Nature, travels up into space to find Urania, a personification of heavenly wisdom. Together these two go into what Bernard describes as the “realm of pure and uncontaminated light, far removed and wholly distinct from the physical world.”3 This is, of course, similar to how Beatrice leads Dante into the empyrean heaven:
“We have exited out of
the largest body to the heaven that is pure light,
“intellectual light, full of love,
love of true good, full of delight,
delight that transcends every sweetness.” (Par. 30.38–42)
A few decades after Bernard, another poet and theologian, Alan of Lille, reworked some of the major themes of his predecessor in another allegorical story of space travel. In his Anticlaudianus, the lead character, Prudence, ascends through the heavens and has conversations with powerful cosmic forces. At one point, she meets Theology, who warns Prudence that she will have to abandon the chariot of Reason to proceed farther (5.243–55). Theology then leads Prudence beyond the starry realm, where she comes into the empyrean, which Alan says has the form of waters of fire (5.307–400). Over the course of one hundred lines, Alan luxuriously describes the empyrean as a crystal of fire, as ice that is not cold and does not melt when warmed. He says it is “purer than purity, clearer than clarity, brighter than gold . . . a harmless fire, lacking in heat but abounding in radiance.” It is here that Prudence sees “the gleam of a brimming fountain spreading forth an abundant flow of water . . . which then flows back into the fountain” (6.240–50). The Trinity, then, is the source of this liquid light that pools up in the empyrean and forms the brilliant glory in which the angels and saints dwell.4
In Dante, though, the pilgrim doesn’t have conversations with cosmic forces or allegorical personifications but rather is continuously surprised by human beings who lived in time and history; human beings who rush down to meet him, surround him, and draw him up; human beings who condescend, like Cacciaguida, to speak to him in a baby talk he can understand. This is what comes as a surprise: that, as Dante nears the end of his book, heaven gets more and more social! Human beings become more and more important for realizing a vision of God. Dante assigns an extraordinary role to human relationships; they are not incidental to my relationship with God. Bernard and Alan had personifications (Nature or Prudence) led by cosmological forces (Urania or Theology) into the heaven of pure light, but our poet has a human pilgrim led by Beatrice, and this came as a tremendous surprise for Dante’s first readers: How could he cast a simple Florentine girl as the lead actress in this great poem of learning?
As Dante moves into the highest heaven, he is surprised by humans yet again. When he comes into the empyrean heaven, he is overwhelmed by its brilliance. He then looks and sees
light that took the shape of a river,
dazzling in its radiance. It rested between two banks, each of which were
painted with the miracles of spring.
From that rushing river living sparks came out
and, on either side, they settled themselves onto the flowers,
like rubies circumscribed in gold.
Then, as though inebriated by the odors,
they plunged themselves in the depths of the marvelous rapids once again,
and as one dove in, another came forth. (Par. 30.61–69)
At this point, Dante’s reader would have recognized that he is rewriting Bernard or Alan, faithfully following them as his guides and predecessors in constructing his own poetic description of the river of light. Then comes Dante’s surprise: the sparks that leap from the river and become the flowers on the banks turn out to be . . . the souls of people:
Then, like people who have been behind masks,
then seem other than they were before, once they remove
their unnatural semblances in which they were disguised,
thus the flowers and the sparks changed for me into a greater festival
so that I saw both
courts of heaven made manifest. (Par. 30.91–96)
Alan’s river of fire has become Dante’s river of flowers and sparks, which are now individual saints. Alan’s river is a geographical location; Dante’s river is made of human eyes and faces.
This “humanization” of the cosmic forces of space has extraordinary theological implications. Beatrice bids Dante to “drink” in this sight and says that he must do so before his “great thirst” can be satisfied (Par. 30.74). Bernard of Clairvaux later says, “Fly with your eyes through this garden, / since looking at it will help season your gaze” (31.97–98). In other words, the lumen gloriae of Aquinas—the light that is given so that we may see God’s blinding light—is reinterpreted in Dante as the spiritual radioactivity of the loving communion of saints. We now see that all of that dynamic warmth and radiance we read about in an earlier chapter is the light in which they see Love! We also remember that Dante borrowed from the vernacular lyric tradition to construct a dynamic vision of lovers trying to enkindle the flame of love in one another. This helps us see that the heavenly rose is eternally growing in luminescence! As the members of the community increasingly fall in love with one another, the lumen gloriae in which God is seen also grows. The lumen gloriae of heaven increases on account of the ever-abounding love of the saints, and in this light they are able to see more of God’s essence. Knowing more of God’s beauty fills them with the hopeful expectation of what is in store for their neighbor, and that ardent desire in turn makes them better lovers. And so, in this dynamic circle, the light of heaven grows, to borrow an image from Dante, like a lightning bolt that flashes but doesn’t go out. It just keeps adding to its brightness, eternally growing in its luminescence. In this way, for Dante, human beings are not superfluous additions to your private enjoyment of God. Rather, their love is the light in which you see Love.
The Surprise of the Old Man
At a certain point in Purgatorio, Dante turned around to ask Virgil for an explanation, only to find that his guide had disappeared (Purg. 30.50–52). Now, here in paradise, Dante turns around to share a moment of joy with Beatrice, only to find that she has disappeared. Standing in her place is an old man with a beard! Needless to say, Dante intends the reader to experience a great shock:
I turned around with a will, freshly enkindled,
to question my lady on many things
which kept my mind in suspense.
I expected one thing but was answered by another:
I was expecting to see Beatrice, but I saw an old man
clothed like the people of glory.
A beneficent cheer suffused his eyes and cheeks
and a reverent manner
such as is fitting for a gentle father.
And “Where is she?” I asked at once,
and he: “To bring an end to your desire
Beatrice moved me from my place.
“If you direct your gaze to the third ring
from the highest step, you will see her again,
now on the throne her merits have made her lot.” (Par. 31.55–69)
How surprising for the love poet! He turns around to share a happy smile with the girl he has loved from his youth and finds an old man, with glowing cheeks, looking back at him. This is, of course, the Cistercian theologian Bernard of Clairvaux. It is rather like a megalomaniac Italian director removing the lead actress in the season finale of his blockbuster show. This surprising removal of Beatrice and substitution of Bernard raises all kinds of questions: Why couldn’t Beatrice take Dante all the way home? Why is the old guy needed? Whatever happened to the poet of love? Is beauty insufficient for completing the journey? Dante hints at answers to those questions in his description of Bernard, to which we now turn.
At the end of canto 32, Bernard, noting that Dante’s allotted time is running short, asks him to do one last thing to prepare himself for his ultimate vision:
“Let us direct our eyes to the first love,
so that, looking toward him, you penetrate,
as much as is possible, into his effulgence.
“But in truth, lest you fall back
though moving your wings, all the while thinking you move forward,
grace, by praying, is needed, and this comes by asking for
“grace from her who can aid you.
And you shall follow me with affection,
so much so that your heart does not stray from my speech.”
He then began this holy prayer. (Par. 32.142–51)
These are the very last words of the penultimate canto, pointing forward to the final and ultimate moment. Significantly, then, Bernard tells Dante that he can’t just fly his way home alone; he can’t even make himself use his eyes or mind or intellect in the right way to get what he wants. All he can do is turn toward the center of the universe—which is yet invisible to him—wait, long, and look into that black hole . . . and ask Mary for help. And then, as a gift, whatever is there, if it wishes, will come forth from its invisibility, surround him, seize him, embrace him, and make him its own. For this to happen, Bernard says, Dante will need the assistance of her who sees more deeply into this black hole than any other, because, given her complete and absolute humility, she doesn’t obstruct at all the light of God that flows through her. And so Dante and Bernard turn to Mary and utter this prayer:
“Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son,
humbler and higher than any creature,
fixed point of the eternal plan,
“you are the one who made human nature
noble, so much so that its maker
did not disdain to make himself through what he made.
“In your womb, love was rekindled,
through whose heat in the eternal peace
this flower sprouted from the seed.
“Here you are for us the noonday torch
of charity, and there below, among mortals,
you are the living fountain of hope.
“Lady, you are so great and of such worth
that the one who desires grace but does not run to you
is one whose desire would fly without wings.” (Par. 33.1–15)
Bernard’s prayer is full of paradoxes and extraordinary praise: the mother is the daughter of her son; humble but exalted; a torch that burns at noon; the fulcrum of the whole universal plan of history. At the same time, Bernard calls her merciful, clement, compassionate, generous, the one in whom all human virtues are found (Par. 33.19–21). The whole prayer here uttered by Bernard is written with courtly overtones. For instance, Bernard calls Mary Donna, “my lady” (33.13), similar to how a troubadour poet would address his beloved. When Bernard introduces himself a few canti earlier, he says, “And the queen of heaven, for whom I burn / all over with love, will bring down for us every grace, / since I am her faithful Bernard” (31.100–102). The old Cistercian mystic turns out to be even better than the hot young lover! Bernard of Clairvaux, in life, spent years preaching through the Song of Songs and only got through the first three chapters because he kept digressing so much, trying to explain the spiritual value of the language of “embrace,” “kiss,” and courtship to understand the soul’s relationship to God. Bernard was, then, the theologian of love par excellence. Bernard’s knightly devotion to Mary parallels Dante’s devotion to Beatrice. He utters praise about Mary, just as Dante wrote about his beloved.
Bernard’s tutorial comes at a crucial moment in which Dante’s poetry takes a turn: Dante had spent his whole life talking about his love, but now he must begin to turn toward love itself, and it is soon after praying to Mary and looking upon her brightness, which is greater than that of any other creature, that Dante finds himself, effortlessly and naturally, lifting his gaze to look at the center point of the universe.
The Final Surprise
This leads us to our third surprise. When Dante finally does turn to look deep down into the black hole at the center of the universe, he does, of course, enjoy a vision of God, which emerges out of the depths in which it lies hidden. At first Dante sees just the “universal form”: “In its depths I saw what it held within, / bound by love into a single volume, / that which is scattered in leaves throughout the universe” (Par. 33.85–87). Imagine that all the moments of time and all the different creatures in the universe are like pages pulled from a notebook and then thrown up into the wind, scattered all over the world.5 In each one of those pages, the handwriting of God is discernible; that is, in each historical fragment and each historical creature, some aspect of God was fleetingly revealed. Here Dante, in looking at the source, sees “the universal form”—that is, the sap that runs through the veins of the whole world of creatures. Dante sees the deep unity and life that lives in each of them, as if every creature is seen now reflected in that which gave it birth. Dante sees the love that is the secret source of desire and movement in the world.
But for Dante, God is not just a cosmic force; he’s not just the ultimate law of physics or the Logos of the Stoics. No, Dante’s vision deepens as more of the vision of God emerges. And so, from the midst of this cosmic love, the secret source of vitality for the universe, Dante then sees three circles of different colors come forth. They all stand exactly on top of one another, and yet they can be seen as perfectly distinct. Obviously, this is a dynamic image for the unity and diversity of the Trinity; it is an image you can think but could never see.
Then—what is an even greater surprise—as Dante is looking at these overlapping rings, something else comes forth: an image, “painted with our likeness,” looking out from within. “I longed,” he tells us, “to see how it was possible / that the image fit the circle and how it took its place there” (Par. 33.138–39). In other words, Dante sees a human face. His vision of the Trinity has turned into a revelation of the incarnation. These stages of revelation come to Dante a little like how you keep taking off the outer shell of a Russian nesting doll. The pilgrim first sees the secret source of life for the universe; he then looks deeper and sees the rings; but then, as he continues to look, he sees God’s human face. And God’s eyes look deeply into his.
Dante drew near to mystery, expecting to look down into an abyss or chasm, but then sees that it is actually a person who has been waiting for him. Dante is again surprised by a human, surprised that the cosmic force that turns the universe looks at him and through him and into him, as if it only existed for him. And so Dante has a devastatingly personal revelation, in which he is seen through and known so perfectly that nothing is left out or behind.
Now we can understand the role of Bernard, the old Cistercian mystic who wrote love poetry to Mary. He teaches Dante about the ultimate beloved, the Virgin. Thus, at the apex of heaven, Dante the love poet has to stop writing about and for Beatrice, stop being the lover, and now become the beloved himself, become like Mary who was wooed by the Godhead. It’s a gigantic role reversal, and it happens all at once. Dante spent his whole life seeking, striving, working, laboring, pursuing; and what he discovers in the end is that he is the beloved, that he has been wooed by the divine lover who now emerges out of his darkness to seek him in embrace.
This is the last surprise of the Comedy. And the final beautiful verses convey that rapture, that yielding, and that rest. For a brief moment, Dante has the energy of a lightning bolt poured into his mind to sustain this vision of gratitude for being loved, and for a fleeting second he turns in peaceful motion with the source of everything that is. Or as he puts it:
But mine were not wings fitted for that,
except that my mind was struck
by a bolt of lightning, and through this what it longed for came.
And now, even for my high imagination, all power failed.
Already my desire and my will were being turned,
just like a wheel that moves in balance, by
the love that moves the sun and other stars. (Par. 33.139–45)