Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Through all these circles Dante is led by Virgil, and here as in Hell he meets and converses with spirits of the departed. He displays the same unrivalled power and the same relentless use of it, the same passionate indignation, the same yearning pity, which take the soul captive in the earlier poem. In the description of Corso Donati's charger dragging his mangled body towards the gorge of Hell in ever fiercer flight; in the indignant protest against the factious spirit of Italy and the passionate appeal to the Empire; in the description of the impotent rage of the fiend who is cheated by 'one wretched tear' of the soul of Buonconte; in the scathing denunciations of the cities of the Arno;[69] in these and in many another passage the poet of the Purgatory shows that he is still the poet of the Hell; but it is rather to the richness of the new thoughts and feelings than to the unabated vigour and passion of the old ones, that we naturally direct our attention in speaking of the Purgatory. And these we have by no means exhausted.

When Dante first entered the gate of Purgatory he heard 'voices mingled with sweet strains' chanting the Te Deum, and they raised in his heart such images as when we hear voices singing to the organ and 'partly catch and partly miss the words.'[70] And this sweet music, only to find its fullest and distinctest utterance in the Paradise, pervades almost the whole of the Purgatory, filling it with a reposeful longing that prepares for the fruition it does not give.

There is a tender and touching simplicity in the records of their earthly lives which the gentle souls in Purgatory give to our poet. Take as an example, the story of Pope Adrian V., whom Dante finds amongst the avaricious: 'A month and little more I felt the weight with which the Papal mantle presses on his shoulders who would keep it from the mire. All other burdens seem like feathers to it. Ah me! but late was my conversion; yet when I became Rome's Shepherd then I saw the hollow cozenage of life; for my heart found no repose in that high dignity, and yonder life on earth gave it no room to aim yet higher; wherefore the love of this life rose within me. Till then was I a wretched soul severed from God, enslaved to avarice, for which, thou seest, I now bear the pain.'[71]

Most touching too are the entreaties of the souls in Purgatory for the prayers of those on earth, or their confession that they have already been lifted up by them. 'Tell my Giovanna to cry for me where the innocent are heard,' says Nino to Dante;[72] and when the poet meets his friend Forese, who had been dead but five years, in the highest circle but one of Purgatory, whereas he would have expected him still to be in exile at the mountain's base, he asks him to explain the reason why he is there, and Forese answers, 'It is my Nella's broken sobs that have brought me so soon to drink the sweet wormwood of torment. Her devout prayers and sighs have drawn me from the place of lingering, and freed me from the lower circles. My little widow, whom I greatly loved, is all the dearer and more pleasing to God because her goodness stands alone amid surrounding vice.'[73]

Surely it is a deep and holy truth, under whatever varying forms succeeding ages may embody it, that the faithful love of a pure soul does more than any other earthly power to hasten the passage of the penitent through Purgatory. When under the load of self-reproach and shame that weighs down our souls, we dare not look up to Heaven, dare not look into our own hearts, dare not meet God, then the faithful love of a pure soul can raise us up and teach us not to despair of ourselves, can lift us on the wings of its prayer, can waft us on the breath of its sobs, swiftly through the purifying anguish into the blissful presence of God.

* * * * *

A feature of special beauty in the Purgatory is formed by the allegorical or typical sculptures on the wall and floor of some of the terraces, by the voices of warning or encouragement that sweep round the mountain, and by the visions that from time to time visit the poet himself. Let one of these visions suffice. Dante is about to enter the circles in which the inordinate love of earthly things, with all vain and vicious indulgence, is punished. 'In dream there came to me,' he says, 'a woman with a stuttering tongue, and with distorted eyes, all twisted on her feet, maimed in her hands, and sallow in her hue. I gazed at her, and as the sun comforts the chilled limbs by the night oppressed, so did my look give ease unto her speech, and straightway righted her in every limb, and with love's colours touched her haggard face. And when her speech was liberated thus, she sang so sweetly it were dire pain to wrest attention from her. "I," she sang, "am that sweet siren who lead astray the sailors in mid sea, so full am I of sweetness to the ear. 'Twas I that drew Ulysses from his way with longing for my song; and he on whom the custom of my voice has grown, full rarely leaves me, so do I content him."' In the end this false siren is exposed in all her foulness, and Dante turns from her in loathing.[74]

Throughout Purgatory Dante is still led and instructed by Virgil. I think there is nothing in the whole Comedy so pathetic as the passages in which the fate of Virgil, to be cut off for ever from the light of God, is contrasted with the hope of the souls in Purgatory. The sweetness and beauty of Virgil's character as conceived by Dante grow steadily upon us throughout this poem, until they make the contemplation of his fate and the patient sadness with which he speaks of it more heartrending than anything that we have heard or seen in Hell. After this we hardly need to hear from Dante the direct expression he subsequently gives of his passionate thirst to know the meaning of so mysterious a decree as that which barred Heaven against the unbaptised.

In Purgatory, Virgil and Dante meet the emancipated soul of the Roman poet Statius, freed at last after many centuries of purifying pain, and ready now to ascend to Heaven. Virgil asks him how he became a Christian, and Statius refers him to his own words in one of the Eclogues, regarded in those days as containing a prophecy of Christ. 'Thou,' says Statius, 'didst first guide me to Parnassus to drink in its grottoes, and afterwards thou first didst light me unto God. When thou didst sing, "The season is renewed, justice returns, and the first age of man, and a new progeny descends from Heaven," thou wast as one who, marching through the darkness of the night, carries the light behind him, aiding not himself, but teaching those who follow him the way. Through thee was I a poet, and through thee a Christian.' Not a shade of envy, not a thought of resentment or rebellion, passes over Virgil's heart as he hears that while saving others he could not save himself.[75]

But now, without dwelling further on the episodes of the poem, we must hasten to consider the most beautiful and profoundest of its closing scenes.

Under Virgil's guidance Dante had traversed all the successive circles of the mount of Purgatory. He stood at its summit, in the earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden which Eve had lost. There amid fairest sights and sounds he was to meet the glorified Beatrice, and she was to be his guide in Heaven as Virgil had been his guide in Hell and Purgatory.

In any degree to understand what follows we must try to realise the intimate blending of lofty abstract conceptions and passionate personal emotions and reminiscences in Dante's thoughts of Beatrice.

This sweet and gentle type of womanhood, round whose earthly life the genius and devotion of Dante have twined a wreath of the tenderest poetry, the most romantic love, that ever rose from heart of man, had been to him in life and death the vehicle and messenger of God's highest grace. Round her memory clustered all the noblest purposes and purest motives of his life, and in her spirit seemed to be reflected the divinest truth, the loftiest wisdom, that the human soul could comprehend. And so, making her objectively and in the scheme of the universe what she had really been and was to him subjectively, he came to regard her as the symbol of Divine philosophy as Virgil was the symbol of human virtue and wisdom.

Touched by the glow of an ideal love, Dante had reached a deeper knowledge, a fuller grace, than the wisdom of this world could teach or gain. The doctors of the Church, the sweet singers, the mighty heroes, the profound philosophers, who had instructed and supported him, had none of them touched his life so deeply, had none of them led him so far into the secret place of truth, had none of them brought him so near to God, as that sweet child, that lovely maid, that pure woman, who had given him his first and noblest ideal.

Now to Dante and to his age it was far from unnatural to erect concrete human beings into abstract types or personifications. Leah and Rachel are the active and the contemplative life respectively. Virgil, we have seen, is human philosophy. Cato of Utica represents the triumph over the carnal nature and the passions. And it is not only the Old Testament and classical antiquity that furnish these types. The celebrated Countess Matilda, who lived only about two centuries before Dante himself, becomes in his poem, according to the generally received interpretation, one of the attributes of God personified. And so Beatrice became the personification of that heavenly wisdom, that true knowledge of God, of which she had been the vehicle to Dante.

But to the poet and to the age in which he lived, it was impossible to separate this heavenly wisdom in its simple, spiritual essence, from the form which its exposition had received at the hands of the great teachers of the Church. To them true spiritual wisdom, personal experience and knowledge of God, were inseparable from _theology_. The two united in the conception of Divine philosophy. Thus by a strange but intelligible gradation Dante blended in his conception of Beatrice two elements which seem to us the very extreme of incompatibility. She is in the first place the personification of scholastic theology, with all its subtle intricacy of pedantic method; she is in the second place the maiden to whom Dante sang his songs of love in Florence, and whose early death he wept disconsolate. And in the closing scenes of the Purgatory these two conceptions are more intimately blended, perhaps, than anywhere else in Dante's writings.

After wandering, as it were, in the forest of a bewildered life, the poet is led through Hell and Purgatory until he stands face to face at last with his own purest and loftiest ideal; and the fierceness of his own self-accusation when thus confronted with Beatrice he expresses under the form of reproaches which he lays upon _her_ lips, but which we must retranslate into the reproachful utterances of his own tortured heart, if we are to retain our gentle thoughts of Beatrice.

We need not dwell even for a moment on the gorgeous pageantry with which Dante introduces and surrounds Beatrice. Suffice it to say that she comes in a mystic car, which represents the Church, surrounded by saints and angels.

No sooner does Dante see her, although closely veiled, than the might of the old passion sweeps upon him, and like a child that flees in terror to its mother, so does he turn to Virgil with the cry: 'Not one drop of blood but trembles in my veins! I recognise the tokens of the ancient flame.' But Virgil is gone. Dante has no refuge from his own offended and reproachful ideal. As he bursts into lamentations at the loss of Virgil's companionship, Beatrice sternly calls him back: 'Dante! weep not that Virgil has gone from thee. Thou hast a deeper wound for which to weep.'

As one who speaks, but holds back words more burning than he utters, so she stood. A clear stream flowed between her and Dante, and as she began to renew her reproaches he cast down his eyes in shame upon the water;--but there he saw himself! The angels sang a plaintive psalm, and Dante knew that they were pleading for him more clearly than if they had used directer words. Then the agony of shame and penitence that Beatrice's reproof had frozen in his bosom, as when the icy north wind freezes the snow amid the forests of the Apennine, was melted by the angels' plea for him as snow by the breezes of the south, and burst from him in a convulsion of sobs and tears.

How was it possible that he should have gone so far astray, have been so false to the promise and the purpose of his early life, have abused his own natural gifts and the superadded grace of heaven? How was it possible that he should have let all the richness of his life run wild? That after Beatrice had for a time sustained him and led him in the true path with her sweet eyes, he should have turned away from her in Heaven whom he had so loved on earth? How could he have followed the false semblances of good that never hold their word? His visions and his dreams of the ideal he was deserting had not sufficed, and so deep had he sunk that nothing short of visiting the region of the damned could save him from perdition. Why had he deserted his first purposes? What obstacle had baffled or appalled him? What new charm had those lower things of earth obtained to draw him to them? 'The false enticements of the present things,' he sobbed, 'had led his feet aside, soon as her countenance was hid.' But should not the decay of that fair form have been itself the means of weaning him from things of earth, that he might ne'er again be cheated by their beauty or drawn aside by them from the pursuit of heavenly wisdom and of heavenly love? When the fairest of all earthly things was mouldering in the dust, should he not have freed himself from the entanglements of the less beauteous things remaining?

To all these reproaches, urged by Beatrice, Dante had no reply. With eyes rooted to the ground, filled with unutterable shame, like a child repentant and confessing, longing to throw himself at his mother's feet, but afraid to meet her glance while her lips still utter the reproof, so Dante stood. From time to time a few broken words, which needed the eye more than the ear to interpret them, dropped from his lips like shafts from a bow that breaks with excess of strain as the arrow is delivered.

At last Beatrice commanded him to look up. The wind uproots the oak tree with less resistance than Dante felt ere he could turn his downcast face to hers; but when he saw her, transcending her former self more than her former self transcended others, his agony of self-reproach and penitence was more than he could bear, and he fell senseless to the ground.[76]

When he awoke he was already plunged in the waters of Lethe, which with the companion stream of Eunoe would wash from his memory the shame and misery of past unfaithfulness, would enable him, no longer crushed by self-reproach, to ascend with the divine wisdom and purity of his own ideal into the higher realms.

And here the Purgatory ends, the Paradise begins.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: _Purgatorio_, i. 1-6.]

[Footnote 55: _Purgatorio_, xix. 76, 77.]

[Footnote 56: _Ibid._ v. 55-57.]

[Footnote 57: _Purgatorio_, xxvi. 13-15, 81; xxvii. 49-51.]

[Footnote 58: _Purgatorio_, xii. 112, 113.]

[Footnote 59: Canzone xv. 'Amor, che nella mente.' See also _Convito_, trat. iii.]

[Footnote 60: _Purgatorio_, i. ii.]

[Footnote 61: _Ibid._ iv. 37-95.]

[Footnote 62: _Purgatorio_, iii. 112-145, iv. 127-135.]

[Footnote 63: _Purgatorio_, ix. 76-129.]

[Footnote 64: For the general scheme of Purgatory, see _Purgatorio_, xvii. 91-139.]

[Footnote 65: _Purgatorio_, x. 130-139.]

[Footnote 66: _Ibid._ xiii. 73, 74, 133-138.]

[Footnote 67: _Purgatorio_, xxiii. 31.]

[Footnote 68: _Purgatorio_, xx. 124-151, xxi. 34-78.]

[Footnote 69: _Purgatorio_, v. 85-129, vi. 76-151, xiv. 16-72, xxiv. 82-87.]

[Footnote 70: _Ibid._ ix. 139-145.]

[Footnote 71: _Purgatorio_, xix. 103-114.]

[Footnote 72: _Purgatorio_, viii. 71, 72.]

[Footnote 73: _Ibid._ xxiii. 85-93.]

[Footnote 74: _Purgatorio_, xix. 7-33.]

[Footnote 75: _Purgatorio_, xxii. 55-73.]

[Footnote 76: _Purgatorio_, xxx. 22--xxxi. 90.]

V

HEAVEN

When Dante wrote the Paradise, he well knew that he was engaged in the supreme effort of his life, to which all else had led up. He well knew that he was engaged in no pastime, but with intensest concentration of matured power was delivering such a message from God to man as few indeed had ever been privileged or burdened to receive. He well knew that the words in which through long years of toil he had distilled the sweetness and the might of his vision were immortal, that to latest ages they would bear strength and purity of life, would teach the keen eye of the spirit to gaze into the uncreated light, and would flood the soul with a joy deeper than all unrest or sorrow, with a glory that no gloom could ever dispel. He knew moreover that this his last and greatest poem would speak to a few only in any generation, though speaking to those few with a voice of transforming power and grace.

'Oh, ye,' he cries almost at the beginning of the Paradise, 'who, desirous to hear, have followed in slight bark behind my keel, which sings upon its course, now turn you back and make for your own shores, trust not the open wave lest, losing me, ye should be left bewildered. As yet all untracked is the wave I sail. Minerva breathes, Apollo leads me on, and the nine Muses point me to the pole. Ye other few, who timely have lift up your heads for bread of angels fed by which man liveth but can never surfeit know, well may ye launch upon the ocean deep, keeping my furrow as ye cut your way through waters that return and equal lie.'[77]

In these last words, comparing the track he leaves to the watery furrow that at once subsides, Dante seems to indicate that he was well aware how easily the soul might drop out of his verses, how the things he had to say were essentially unutterable, so that his words could at best be only a suggestion of his meaning dependent for their effect upon the subtlest spiritual influences and adjustments, as well as upon the receptive sympathy of those to whom they were addressed. And if there are so many that fail to catch the spirit and feel the heavenly harmony of the music when it is Dante's own hand that touches the strings, how hopeless seems the task of transferring even its echo, by translated extracts, or descriptions, from which the soul has fled.

There is indeed much that is beautiful, much that is profound, in the Paradise which is capable of easy reproduction, but the divine aroma of the whole could only be translated or transferred by another Dante. Petal after petal of the rose of Paradise may be described or copied, but the heavenly perfume that they breathed is gone.

'His glory that moves all things,' so Dante begins the Paradise, 'pierces the universe; and is here more, here less resplendent. In that Heaven which of His light has most, was I. There I saw things which he who thence descends has not the knowledge or power to retell. For as it draws anigh to its desire, our intellect pierces so deep that memory cannot follow in its track. But of that sacred empire so much as I had power in my mind to store, shall now be matter of my poesy.'[78]

And again, almost at the close he sings, 'As is he who dreams, and when the dream is broke still feels the emotion stamped upon his heart though all he saw is fled beyond recall, e'en such am I; for, all the vision gone well-nigh without a trace, yet does the sweetness that was born of it still drop within my heart.'[79]

If so much as an echo of that echo, if so much as a dream of that dream, falls upon our ears and sinks into our hearts, then we are amongst those few for whom Dante wrote his last and his divinest poem.

* * * * *

Through the successive heavens of Paradise Dante is conducted by Beatrice; and here again the intimate blending in the divine guide of two distinct almost contradictory conceptions forms one of the great obstacles towards giving an intelligible account of the poem. This obstacle can only disappear when patient study guided by receptive sympathy has led us truly into the poet's thought.

In the Paradise, however, the allegorical and abstract element in the conception of Beatrice is generally the ruling one. She is the impersonation of Divine Philosophy, under whose guidance the spiritual discernment is so quickened and the moral perceptions so purified, that the intellect can thread its way through subtlest intricacies of casuistry and theology, and where the intellect fails the eye of faith still sees.

Even in this allegorical character Beatrice is a veritable personality, as are Lucia, the Divine Grace, and the other attributes or agents of the Deity, who appear in the Comedy as personal beings with personal affections and feelings, though at the same time representing abstract ideas. Thus Beatrice, as Divine Philosophy impersonated, is at once an abstraction and a personality. 'The eyes of Philosophy,' says Dante elsewhere, 'are her demonstrations, the smile of Philosophy her persuasions.'[80] And this mystic significance must never be lost sight of when we read of Beatrice's eyes kindling with an ever brighter glow and her smile beaming through them with a diviner sweetness as she ascends through heaven after heaven ever nearer to the presence of God. The demonstrations of Divine Philosophy become more piercing, more joyous, more triumphant, her persuasions more soul-subduing and entrancing, as the spirit draws nearer to its source.

But though we shall never understand the Paradise unless we perceive the allegorical significance and appropriateness not only of the general conception of Beatrice, but also of many details in Dante's descriptions of her, yet we should be equally far from the truth if we imagined her a mere allegory. She is a glorified and as it were divine _personality_, and watches over and guides her pupil with the tenderness and love of a gentle and patient mother. The poet constantly likens himself to a wayward, a delirious, or a frightened child, as he flies for refuge to his blessed guide's maternal care.[81]

Again, they are in the eighth heaven, and Beatrice knows that a glorious manifestation of saints and angels is soon to be vouchsafed to Dante. Listen to his description of her as she stands waiting: 'E'en as a bird amongst the leaves she loves, brooding upon the nest of her sweet young throughout the night wherein all things are hid, foreruns the time to see their loved aspect and find them food, wherein her heavy toil is sweet to her, there on the open spray, waiting with yearning longing for the sun, fixedly gazing till the morn shall rise; so did she stand erect, her eyes intent on the meridian. And seeing her suspended in such longing I became as one who yearns for what he knows not, and who rests in hope.'[82]

* * * * *

Under Beatrice's guidance, then, Dante ascends through the nine heavens into the empyrean heights of Paradise. Here in reality are the souls of all the blessed, rejoicing in the immediate presence and light of God,[83] and here Dante sees them in the glorified forms which they will wear after the resurrection. But in order to bring home to his human understanding the varied grades of merit and beatitude in Paradise, he meets or appears to meet the souls of the departed in the successive heavens through which he passes, sweeping with the spheres in wider and ever wider arc, as he rises towards the eternal rest by which all other things are moved.

It is in these successive heavens that Dante converses with the souls of the blessed. In the lower spheres they appear to him in a kind of faint bodily form like the reflections cast by glass unsilvered; but in the higher spheres they are like gems of glowing light, like stars that blaze into sight or fade away in the depths of the sky; and these living topaz and ruby lights, like the morning stars that sing together in Job, break into strains of ineffable praise and joy as they glow upon their way in rhythmic measure both of voice and movement.

Thus in the fourth Heaven, the Heaven of the Sun, Dante meets the souls of the great doctors of the Church. Thomas Aquinas is there, and Albertus Magnus and the Venerable Bede and many more. A circle of these glorious lights is shining round Dante and Beatrice as Aquinas tells the poet who they were on earth. 'Then like the horologue, that summons us, what hour the spouse of God rises to sing her matins to her spouse, to win his love, wherein each part urges and draws its fellow, making a tinkling sound of so sweet note that the well-ordered spirit swells with love: so did I see the glorious wheel revolve, and render voice to voice in melody and sweetness such as ne'er could noted be save where joy stretches to eternity.

'Oh, senseless care of mortals! Ah, how false the thoughts that urge thee in thy downward flight! One was pursuing law, and medicine one, another hunting after priesthood, and a fourth would rule by force or fraud; one toiled in robbery, and one in civil business, and a third was moiling in the pleasures of the flesh all surfeit-weary, and a fourth surrendered him to sloth. And I the while, released from all these things, thus gloriously with Beatrice was received in Heaven.'[84]

When Beatrice fixes her eyes--remember their allegorical significance as the demonstrations of Divine philosophy--upon the light of God, and Dante gazes upon them, then quick as thought and without sense of motion, the two arise into a higher heaven, like the arrow that finds its mark while yet the bow-string trembles; and Dante knows by the kindling beauty that glows in his guardian's eyes that they are nearer to the presence of God and are sweeping Heaven in a wider arc.

The spirits in the higher heavens see God with clearer vision, and therefore love Him with more burning love, and rejoice with a fuller joy in His presence than those in the lower spheres. Yet these too rest in perfect peace and oneness with God's will.

In the Heaven of the Moon, for instance, the lowest of all, Dante meets Piccarda. She was the sister of Forese, whom we saw in the highest circle but one of Purgatory, raised so far by his widowed Nella's prayers. When Dante recognises her amongst her companions, in her transfigured beauty, he says, '"But tell me, ye whose blessedness is here, do ye desire a more lofty place, to see more and to be more loved by God?" She with those other shades first gently smiled, then answered me so joyous that she seemed to glow with love's first flame, "Brother, the power of love so lulls our will, it makes us long for nought but what we have, and feel no other thirst. If we should wish to be exalted more, our wish would be discordant with His will who here assigned us; and that may not be within these spheres, as thou thyself mayst see, knowing that here we needs must dwell in love, and thinking what love is. Nay, 'tis inherent in this blessedness to hold ourselves within the will Divine, whereby our wills are one. That we should be thus rank by rank throughout this realm ordained, rejoices all the realm e'en as its King, who draws our wills in His. And His decree is our peace. It is that sea to which all things are moved which it creates and all that nature forges." Then was it clear to me how every where in Heaven is Paradise, e'en though the grace distil not in one mode from that Chief Good.'[85]

So again in the second heaven, the Heaven of Mercury, the soul of Justinian tells the poet how that sphere is assigned to them whose lofty aims on earth were in some measure fed by love of fame and glory rather than inspired by the true love of God. Hence they are in this lower sphere. Yet part of their very joy consists in measuring the exact accord between the merits and the blessedness of the beatified. 'As diverse voices make sweet melody,' he continues, 'so do the diverse ranks of our life render sweet harmony amidst these spheres.'[86]

Indeed, one of the marvels of this marvellous poem is the extreme variety of character and even of incident which we find in Heaven as well as in Hell and Purgatory. In each of the three poems there is one key-note to which we are ever brought back, but in each there is infinite variety and delicacy of individual delineation too. The saints are no more uniform and characterless in their blessedness than are the unrepentant sinners in their tortures or the repentant in their contented pain.

Nor must we suppose that the Paradise is an unbroken succession of descriptions of heavenly bliss. Here too, as in Hell and Purgatory, the things of earth are from time to time discussed by Dante and the spirits that he meets. Here too the glow of a lofty indignation flushes the very spheres of Heaven. Thus Peter cries against Pope Boniface VIII: 'He who usurps upon the earth my place, _my place_, MY PLACE, which in the presence of the Son of God is vacant now, has made the city of my sepulture a sink of blood and filth, at which the rebel Satan, who erst fell from Heaven, rejoices down in Hell.' And at this the whole Heaven glows with red, and Beatrice's cheek flushes as at a tale of shame.[87]

Dante is still the same. The sluggish self-indulgence of the monks, the reckless and selfish ambition of the factious nobles and rulers, the venal infamy of the Court of Rome, cannot be banished from his mind even by the beatific visions of Heaven. Nay, the very contrast gives a depth of indignant sadness to the denunciations of the Paradise which makes them almost more terrible than those of Hell itself.

Interwoven too with the descriptions of the bliss of Heaven, is the discussion of so wide a range of moral and theological topics that the Paradise has been described as having 'summed up, as it were, and embodied for perpetuity ... the quintessence, the living substance, the ultimate conclusions of the scholastic theology;'[88] and it may well be true that to master the last cantica of the 'Divine Comedy' is to pierce more deeply into the heart of mediaeval religion and theology than any of the schoolmen and doctors of the Church can take us. At the touch of Dante's staff, the flintiest rock of metaphysical dogma yields the water of life, and in his mouth the subtlest discussion of casuistry becomes a lamp to our feet.

And beyond all this, such is the marvellous concentration of Dante's poetry, there is room in the Paradise for long digressions, biographical, antiquarian, and personal; whilst all these parts, apparently so heterogeneous, are welded into perfect symmetry in this one poem.

* * * * *

Amongst the most important of the episodes is the account of ancient Florence given to Dante by his ancestor Cacciaguida, who also predicts the poet's exile and wanderings, and in a strain of lofty enthusiasm urges him to pour out all the heart of his vision and brave the hatred and the persecution that it will surely bring upon him.

This Cacciaguida was a Crusader who fell in the Holy Land, and Dante meets him in the burning planet of Mars, amongst the mighty warriors of the Lord whose souls blaze there in a ruddy glow of glory. There is Joshua, there Judas Maccabaeus, and Charlemagne and Orlando and Godfrey and many more.

A red cross glows athwart the planet's orb, and from it beams in mystic guise the Christ; but how, the poet cannot say, for words and images are wanting to portray it. Yet he who takes his cross and follows Christ, will one day forgive the tongue that failed to tell what he shall see when to him also Christ shall flash through that glowing dawn of light.

Here the souls, like rubies that glow redder from the red-glowing cross as stars shine forth out of the Milky Way, pass and repass from horn to horn, from base to summit, and burst into a brighter radiance as they join and cross, while strains of lofty and victorious praise, unknown to mortal ears, gather upon the cross as though it were a harp of many strings, touched by the hand of God, and take captive the entranced, adoring soul.

There Cacciaguida hailed his descendant Dante, and long they conversed of the past, the present, and the future. Alas for our poor pride of birth! What wonder if men glory in it here? For even there in Heaven, where no base appetite distorts the will and judgment, even there did Dante glow with pride to call this man his ancestor.

At last their converse ended; Cacciaguida's soul again was sweeping the unseen strings of that heavenly harp, and Dante turned again to look for guidance from his guardian. Beatrice's eyes were fixed above; and quick as the blush passes from a fair cheek, so quick the ruddy glow of Mars was gone, and the white light of Jupiter shone clear and calm in the sixth heaven--the Heaven of the Just.

What a storm of passions and emotions swept through Dante's soul when he learnt where he was! 'O chivalry of Heaven!' he exclaimed in agony, 'pray for those who are led all astray on earth by foul example.' When would the Righteous One again be wroth, and purge His temple of the traffickers--His temple walled by miracles and martyrdoms? How long should the Pope be suffered to degrade his holy office by making the penalties of Church discipline the tools of selfish politics--how long should his devotion to St. John the Baptist, whose head was stamped upon the coins of Florence, make him neglect the fisherman and Paul?

Such were the first thoughts that rose in Dante's mind in the Heaven of the Just; but they soon gave way to others. Here surely, here if anywhere, God's justice must be manifest. Reflected in all Heaven, here must it shine without a veil. The spirits of the just could surely solve his torturing doubt. How long had his soul hungered and found no food on earth, and now how eagerly did he await the answer to his doubt! They knew his doubt, he need not tell it them; oh, let them solve it!

Yes, they knew what he would say: 'A man is born upon the bank of Indus, and there there is none to speak of Christ, or read or write of him. All this man's desires and acts are good, and without sin, as far as human eye can see, in deed or word. He dies unbaptised, without the faith. Where is that justice which condemns him? Where is his fault in not believing?' Yes, they knew his doubt, but could not solve it. Their answer is essentially the same as Paul's: 'Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?'

The Word of God, say the spirits of the just, could not be so expressed in all the universe but what it still remained in infinite excess. Nay, Lucifer, the highest of created beings, could not at once see all the light of God, and fell through his impatience. How then could a poor mortal hope to scan the ways of God? His ken was lost in His deep justice as the eye is lost in the ocean. We can see the shallow bottom of the shore, but we cannot see the bottom of the deep, which none the less is there. So God's unfathomable justice is too deep, too just, for us to comprehend. The Primal Will, all goodness in itself, moves not aside from justice and from good. Never indeed did man ascend to heaven who believed not in Christ, yet are there many who cry, Lord, Lord, and in the day of judgment shall be far more remote from Christ than many a one that knew him not.[89]

With this answer Dante must be content. He must return from Heaven with this thirst unslaked, this long hunger still unsatisfied. Ay, and with this answer must we too rest content. And yet not with this answer, for we do not ask this question. That awful load of doubt under which Dante bent is lifted from our souls, and for us there is no eternal Hell, there are no virtuous but rejected Heathen. Yet to us too the ocean of God's justice is too deep to pierce. And when we ask why every blessing, every chance of good, is taken from one child, while another is bathed from infancy in the light of love, and is taught sooner than it can walk to choose the good and to reject the evil, what answer can we have but Dante's? Rest in faith. You know God's justice, for you feel it with you in your heart when you are fighting for the cause of justice; you know God's justice, for you feel it in your heart like an avenging angel when you sin; you know God's justice--but you do not know it all.

* * * * *

There in the Heaven of the Just was David; now he knew how precious were his songs, since his reward was such. There too was Trajan, who by experience of the bliss of Heaven and pain of Hell knew how dear the cost of not obeying Christ. There were Constantine, and William of Sicily, and Ripheus, that just man of Troy. 'What things are these?' was the cry that dropped by its own weight from Dante's lips. The heathens Trajan and Ripheus here! No, not heathens. Ripheus had so given himself to justice when on earth, that God in His grace revealed to him the coming Christ, and he believed. Faith, Hope, and Charity were his baptism more than a thousand years ere baptism was known. And for Trajan, Gregory had wrestled in prayer for him, had taken the Kingdom of Heaven by storm with his warm love and living hope; and since no man repents in Hell, God at the prayer of Gregory had recalled the imperial soul back for a moment to its mouldering clay. There it believed in Christ, and once more dying, entered on his joy.[90]

Thus did Dante wrestle with his faith, and in the passion of his love of virtue and thirst for justice seek to escape the problem which he could not solve.

* * * * *

But we must hasten to the close. Dante and Beatrice have passed through all the heavens. The poet's sight is gradually strengthened and prepared for the supreme vision. He has already seen a kind of symbol of the Uncreated, surrounded by the angelic ministers. It was in the ninth heaven, the Heaven of the Primum Mobile, that he saw a single point of intensest light surrounded by iris rings, upon which point, said Beatrice, all Heaven and all nature hung.[91]

But now they have passed beyond all nine revolving heavens into the region of 'pure light, light intellectual full of love, love of the truth all full of joy, joy that transcends all sweetness.'[92] And here the poet sees that for which all else had been mere preparation.

But I will not strive to reproduce his imagery, with the mighty river of light inexhaustible, with the mystic flowers of heavenly perfume, with the sparks like rubies set in gold ever passing between the flowers and the river. Of this river Dante drank, and then the true forms of what had hitherto been shadowed forth in emblems only, rose before his eyes. Rank upon rank the petals of the mystic rose of Paradise stretched far away around and above him. There were the blessed souls of the holy ones, bathed in the light of God that streamed upon them from above, while the angels ever passed between it and them ministering peace and love.

There high up, far, far beyond the reach of mortal eye, had it been on earth, sat Beatrice, who had left the poet's side. But in Heaven, with no destroying medium to intervene, distance is no let to perfect sight. He spoke to her. He poured out his gratitude to her, for it was she who had made him a free man from a slave, she who had made him sane, she who had left her footprints in Hell for him, when she went to summon Virgil to his aid. Oh, that his life hereafter might be worthy of the grace and power that had so worked for him! Then from her distant place in Heaven, Beatrice looked at him and smiled, then turned her eyes upon the Uncreated Light.[93]

St. Bernard was at Dante's side, and prayed that the seer's vision might be strengthened to look on God. Then Dante turned his eyes to the light above. The unutterable glory of that light dazzled not his intent, love-guided gaze. Nay, rather did it draw it to itself and every moment strengthen it with keener sight and feed it with intenser love.

Deeper and deeper into that Divine Light the seer saw. Had he turned his eyes aside, then indeed he knew the piercing glory would have blinded them; but that could never be, for he who gazes on that light feels all desire centred there--in it are all things else. So for a time with kindling gaze the poet looked into the light of God, unchanging, yet to the strengthening sight revealing ever more. Mysteries that no human tongue can tell, no human mind conceive, were flashed upon him in the supreme moment, and then all was over--'The power of the lofty vision failed.'

* * * * *

Dante does not tell us where he found himself when the vision broke. He only tells us this: that as a wheel moves equally in all its parts, so his desire and will were, without strain or jar, revolved henceforth by that same Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.[94]

This was the end of all that Dante had thought and felt and lived through--a will that rolled in perfect oneness with the will of God. This was the end to which he would bring his readers, this was the purpose of his sacred poem, this was the meaning of his life.[95]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 77: _Paradiso_, ii. 1-15.]

[Footnote 78: _Paradiso_, i. 1-12.]

[Footnote 79: _Ibid._ xxxiii. 58-63.]

[Footnote 80: _Convito_, III. xv.]

[Footnote 81: _Purgatorio_, xxx. 79-81, xxxi. 64-67; _Paradiso_, i. 100-102, xxii. 1 sqq.]

[Footnote 82: _Paradiso_, xxiii. 1-15.]

[Footnote 83: _Ibid._ iv. 28-48.]

[Footnote 84: _Paradiso_, x. 139--xi. 12.]

[Footnote 85: _Paradiso_, iii. 64-90.]

[Footnote 86: _Paradiso_, vi. 112-126.]

[Footnote 87: _Paradiso_, xxvii, 22-34.]

[Footnote 88: Milman.]

[Footnote 89: _Paradiso_, xiv. 85--xix. 148.]

[Footnote 90: _Paradiso_, xx.]

[Footnote 91: _Ibid._ xxviii. 41, 42.]

[Footnote 92: _Ibid._ xxx. 40-42.]

[Footnote 93: _Paradiso_, xxxi. 52-93.]

[Footnote 94: _Paradiso_, xxxiii. 143-145.]

[Footnote 95: Compare Symonds, p. 183.]

APPENDIX

AN ATTEMPT TO STATE THE CENTRAL THOUGHT OF THE COMEDY