Dante's Paradiso

A brief review of what's going on in the purgatory would wrap up there and then get to the Paradise of the Pediso. Dante is traveling up Mount purgatory and he is witnessing various punishments for the seven deadly sins that souls had repented of but still had some attachment to. And along the way there are many lessons that he's learning, lectures that he's listening to. And I think I summarized one or two of those.

He left off right before he's getting to the Terrace of the Lost World, this is the seventh Terrace. And what Dante means here by last is something that might include what we would think of it but maybe more broadly and that is the excessive love of a secondary good that's on the chart that I handed out last week. So the excessive love of a secondary good, the secondary good in this case is the person rather than food or drink for instance. And so we might liken it to a kind of idolatry.

So his love of a person is too much. That person becomes his God or in the case of Beatrice, the goddess and all of his life is poured into that. So it's not limited to a modern understanding of that. Again it's broader and maybe more spiritually astute.

These souls, and this is one of those realms that Dante suffers and he suffers a little bit in the pride because he bends over the talk to the souls that are being weighted down by the large stones or weights that are carrying. This is the one that he suffers through the most and you could infer then that this is the sin that Dante is accusing himself of being most guilty of. The souls here are in a kind of fire. One of the souls when they encounter him say he seems to have a body of real flesh which is the kind of thing that they would say guilty of the sin.

And so just like those that were in VH you might recall the in VH we're talking about Dante because I was in a shot that they were talking about him and almost sounded like gossip and so they were still attached to envy. These souls naturally since they're still on this level purgatory are still attached to that. Here the souls are shouting out about various characters both those guilty of the sin of the Sodom and what we might term as a kind of natural lust as well. So Dante separated the lustful palim francesca in hell from those in the realm of the violent against nature of many levels down but in purgatory they're found in the same section.

Yes Dante will have to pass through this fire and at one point he says that he would gladly jump into boiling glass for relief from the heat as he has to pass through. So it's pretty hot and painful I would think if you'd rather be in boiling glass I was thinking about that that would be pretty hot and painful. So he passes through that successfully as you might imagine. He will reach the top of purgatory and which is the earthly paradise which is really the Garden of Eden and I mentioned to you at the end of last week this strange pageant that he witnesses.

It's very symbolic the symbols are fairly clear in the pageantry. There are characters that represent the Old Testament, the New Testament, the four Gospels, the virtues, the theological virtues. So there's a lot built into this image that you could study further. What is most interesting to me and what Dorothy Seder's comments on in her edition is that under the canopy there's a kind of canopy that's formed.

Under the canopy is Beatrice. Now if the procession is reminiscent or even symbolic of a Corpus Christi procession which it very well might be then in place of the Blessed Sacrament under the canopy we find Beatrice. Now this is striking on a number of levels it might seem sacrilegious. He's just passed through the terrace of the lost blood and then purged to that.

So he can look at Beatrice you might say in a new light. I just said a few minutes ago that lust is a kind of idolatry and now we see what looks like possibly a symbol of idolatry for Dante that Beatrice replaced the Blessed Sacrament in the image. I think Dorothy Seder says something to the effect. I think it's really Seder's that Beatrice is for Dante a Eucharistic image and what I ask my students to consider.

If we take into account seriously the notion of the body of Christ and those baptized Christians being members of the body of Christ then we have potentially our own Beatrice's and these are people for us in the body of Christ who lead us to further and further to God and that's what Beatrice is for Dante. In perfectly so before he passed through the realm of the lost blood so he loves her improperly but once he can love her properly all of our objects of our loves if they're in the proper order then there means to loving God as well to be primary good. So the secondary goods can lead us to the primary good. So she can be a Eucharistic image for him insofar as she becomes a means of grace for Dante and can lead him to God.

Otherwise it's very odd in any case but I think that's one way of looking at it. So Dante has this encounter with Beatrice here and there's several of the things that go on. Dante encounters another woman called Matilda. He undergoes a kind of baptism into of the rivers there in the early paradise one which erases his memory and another that restores his memory of his good deeds.

So what we would have in our sins being purged from us the purgatory is no longer it seems the possibility of memory of our sins bringing us guilt again. Those are erased. Not that Dante believes necessarily they would be literally erased but they form the spiritual function of their being erased. We're no longer attached to the memories of our sins.

So Dante then rises to the early paradise and he is prepared now to ascend into the heavenly paradise. There's a picture of Dante and Beatrice there and I'm never sure what my slideshow ends. Oh 18 and 18 so it's over. So that brings us Dante being purged and ready to go forward.

Any questions about purgatory? Oh this is my notes and then my handout. Yes. Someone complimented my handout from last week so I decided to make more handouts.

This one is copied from a book. You like that too. The divine comedy is the kind of work that lends itself to people making charts and graphs. So that's something now.

If I can figure out. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Well let me look at my notes because I haven't answered that. The question is one of the symbols from what I can tell has been pretty much agreed upon and so that I don't get it wrong.

Let me review. Okay the two keys. Yes the angel uses two keys of absolution open the gate. One silver that is the loosening the entanglement of sin in the human heart and the gold one the divine authority to remit sin.

The gold key is more precious. It's the divine authority remit sin. The silver one needs skill and wisdom because we need the wisdom to know how to loosen the entanglement of our sin and that will be for each person that would be different to the means for that. Right so it takes wisdom about when the general principle applied to one's particular circumstance and then the authority remit sin is universal and it's applied in the same way through confession every time regardless of the wisdom of the individual penitent.

I can answer that without my notes. Anything else? Okay. I was going to try to figure out how to get to the next.

Okay. Nope that's not it. I think if I get out of key note and get back in key note this is the, I tap on the screen all over the place and I can't, at least these two. Ah, I won't remember that though.

I'll do this routine every time. Ah, okay. Now to paradise. Did I do what?

No I didn't do any of the art. I combine these two pieces of art though. Don't think it'd be interesting and this is again the division of the universe so we have the earth at the center, the sphere of earth and water and then air and then fire and then the heavenly spheres, oh the purgatory sorry, and then go to the side of the spheres until it gets up to the imperial and then on the way the mystic rose or the celestial rose and then that's Dantian. Was there a question over here?

In as well as our piece was the, one of the lines that Dantae hears early on, one of the characters. And so Dantae takes that from Augustine. Pissed on twist to it. Okay.

So in the period, Dantae is going to rise through these various spheres which Dantae would have taken to be physical spheres and as I might have mentioned that earlier. So he will know at a certain point the fact that he is flying through what otherwise should be solid so he's able to do that by the grace of God. As he is soaring through the skies with the heavens, he's approaching the Imperium which is the true heaven where God is beyond the created order. So he is flying away from the earth which is the furthest point from God and approaching God.

So as he approaches God, his intensity of the grace in his heart will increase. And so he becomes closer and closer and closer to God until he has a vision at the very end. So it's actually quite spectacular and a handout that we'll look at. I copied off the last 80 lines or so that we'll read.

It's a spoiler alert here. But it represents some of the thought and beauty of Dantae's vision of heaven. And this is just one part. There's a lot here in the period so.

So that the period so is the most beautiful of the three canticles I would say. The inferno is the most exciting in a way. There are a lot of characters and the punishment is very vivid. The purgatory is very human.

It's very ordered as well. There aren't the exceptions you find there. The period so is very lofty, literally and figuratively. So if you read it carefully and consider what Dantae is writing, I think you'll find it the most beautiful and most inspiring of the three, which it should be.

So also we have here is Dantae is taken by Beatrice most of the way. It's almost the very end when Saint Bernard of Clervot takes over. And Dantae often is looking at Beatrice and he can barely stand how beautiful she is. And then he's blinded once or twice by the beauty, especially of Beatrice.

She restores his sight. He sees things in her eyes, reflected. So she is typically interpreted as a symbol of grace that is further penetrating Dantae's soul as he ascends toward the final heavens. So that happens.

I'm not going to point out every time that happens, but it's a calm hill. He can't express the beauty of Beatrice. Now this is maybe one reason it's important for him to pass the way that he does through the circle, the seventh circle, or the circle, or the circle of the lost. So that we can be convinced that his love of her is pure.

And on the sabbatical level it is the grace being poured into his heart that he is returning through his vision to God. Okay, so I'll start off with Dantae when they're starting to ascend. He sees Beatrice directly at the sun and he imitates her as he should. This is actually the top of the purgatory thing before they begin to ascend into the first realm.

And Dantae's eyes are drawn to Beatrice and Dantae feels transhumanized. It's a word that apparently Dantae made up, transhumanizing. Here's a guy who was transformed into a seagod. And from Greek mythology he says no words can explain this experience.

What's interesting to me here is the use of this word has come back, transhumans, the notion today of a kind of evolutionary step that people are taking willfully or willingly to combine their own human selves with technology, with computer technology. So this idea of the transhuman, beyond human. That's not what Dantae means here, right? Because the transhuman, for Dantae he's being transhumanized, he's being transformed more and more into the likeness of God into Christ.

And one of the last things he writes about which is in the hand that he gave you is how that is possible for Christ for God to take on human nature. And that enables us then to participate in the divine nature. Anyway, so this transhumanizing is not what you can read about. I was about to say in the newspaper these days, but I don't know if those exist anymore.

Okay, so he's going to rise there with Beatrice, Dantae and Beatrice then in the second canta. They speed upward, propelled by their innate, never-ending thirst for heaven. So the thirst for heaven is like an arrow being shot to a target that's not going to miss. It's heading there and it can't be stopped.

So they're going to move into the first realm. Oops, is that wrong? Does that go backwards? How do I go backwards?

Can I do this? Nope, I'm not going forward. Nope, there you go. Into the purpose.

I'm afraid to touch anything now. Okay. All right, Dantae's going to move up very quickly, he's beating basically at the speed of light and he's going to go through each of the realms. There'll be lessons that he learns.

I'm not going to go through all the lessons, characters that he meets. What's interesting is he passes through the first three of the realms, the moon, Mercury, and Venus, which have characters who failed. The first in the moon, he finds faith blinished by inconsensity. Of course, the moon represents that because the moon is always changing.

So the moon represents inconsensity and I don't know if I should say this, but it represents the feminine as well. So in medieval imagery, poetry, et cetera. From the man's point of view, the woman is inconsensity. So these are characters whose faith was blinished by inconsensity, but they died, of course, with faith and their sin seems very excusable.

So for instance, Picard, who's there, she's the one who says the end as well as our peace, she was dragged out of the convent and forced to marry and against her will. But she is in constant because, and Dottie asked about this, because she says the will aids the force when it gives in even a little so that she could have suffered death in St. Lawrence's Mention and did not. So even though it was against her will, in some way she cooperated.

Now, I don't know if we want to take this to literally use the case of a literal person, but I think his point is how weak our faith might be. In this case, it seems excusable, but she doesn't excuse herself. So ending meets the Empress Constance as well, similar story. One thing we find out as well is that all the characters he meets along the way in the various realms are not actually there.

She's not actually in the moon. She's actually in the highest heaven of God. She's making a cameo appearance in the moon, for Dontay's sake. And the moon, because of its inconstancy, is the most logical place for her to present herself to him.

Okay, so they're not actually there. There are projections of these people. Okay, so that is part of the most important one there, I think for Dontay's sake. The next realm, Mercury, we have Hope marred by ambition.

The emperor Justinian here is representative. So we have faith, hope and charity over the three theological virtues in the first three realms that are exercised imperfectly. So Hope marred by ambition. Of course, this would be political ambition.

And in the course of conversation with Justinian, we learn that Titus avenged Jerusalem, who suffers for killing Christ. And this is called, let's see, vengeance justly avenged. There we go, vengeance justly avenged. That's what Justinian describes, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

And Dontay wonders about this, how can vengeance be justly avenged? This is one of the lessons, I'm going to give you a couple of lessons that Dontay learns, see if we can follow this. This is Beatrice's response, this is in Canto 7. Adam damned his progeny in damning himself, so those who followed him.

The human race lay sick and error until the incarnation. Man's nature joined to God had been pure and good before the fall. Having abandoned truth, he was chased from Eden. Therefore the crucifixion can be judged as the punishment of human nature.

So Christ is taking on the punishment of human nature. So the punishment is both just, that is regarding Adam's sin, and unjust at the same time regarding Christ's sinlessness. That's the first part of the argument, it continues from that's too difficult. Dontay wonders to himself, often Dontay, it happens early, but especially in the Paradiso, he doesn't ask a question, the characters just answer the question because they can see his mind by gazing upon God, in God's mind.

Dontay wonders to himself, why God did not choose another way to redeem mankind. And this is a common question. Either God in his mercy could give remission, or man could atone for the sin, those are the possibilities. But man given his limits could not atone because the limit, the sin was greater than he could atone for, but the sin is against an infinite God.

Thus it remained for God to restore integrity to man. Because the better the heart of the doer, the greater the gratification, God was pleased to use all of his means to redeem man. God gave more to man than he would by simply canceling man's debt. Any other means would not have been just, thus God has shown justice and mercy.

So by allowing man to cooperate in his redemption, God does something greater for man because man himself has done something greater. I don't think I was actually clear on the vengeance just the avenged, actually I was thinking about this. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem is the vengeance against the unjust crucifixion of Christ. So I love that step out, I believe.

Okay, so that's the lesson that God could have chosen some other way to redeem man, but he chooses the way that's greatest for man himself as a cooperator in this. Okay, so that's one of the lessons that he learns. Again, they're speeding through this and through these very spheres. And once they're finished with one sphere, Dante sees himself in the next sphere.

So it doesn't take him any time really, it seems he doesn't express any time as he traveling through space. Charles Martell is a representative, this is a lot of support by Lasse, I spent some time on being cured earlier. And the lesson that he learns here is about the fact that you don't inherit all your virtues from your forefathers and it's good to learn what your own strengths and weaknesses are. So it's a pretty simple lesson that he learns from Charles Martell.

The next realm, he's entering into the cardinal virtues, prudence being the first one here. Aquinas is the representative character. Aquinas speaks quite a bit and also Saint Bonaventure. These are wise teachers, theologians, scholars, et cetera.

And I want to spend a little bit of time on this because this has some potential controversial theological implications as you might expect with theologians here. So as they're rising here, Dante and Beatrice are surrounded by these lights. So we're spinning around Dante and Beatrice and a kind of a dance. And so you can imagine Thomas Quain is dancing at one point where he stops and is kind of a pirouette and maybe there's some humor here to imagine Thomas doing that.

So they dance and they pause in order to speak to Dante and Virgil. Aquinas spends most of his time praising Saint Francis. And the Franciscan will spend time praising a Dominican. So this is what's happening.

The Dominican is praising Franciscan, Franciscan, and these are two that annoys me eye to eye on everything in the Middle Ages. In the circle of theologians in this first circle, there'll be a second circle that surrounds them. Dante names all the theologians surrounding him and the one next to Saint Thomas is Cijer of Babbal, who was contemporary of Thomas's, who debated Thomas and who was clearly held heretical positions. The most important one being holding something equivalent to, if not exactly, the doctrine of the two truths, which is that there could be something true in philosophy and something true in theology that didn't agree, but they could both be true.

And this was a position being staked out actually in Islamic philosophy, but Cijer of Babbal, Rambant, entertained that. And of course Aquinas, opposed that, all truth is one, truth can't contradict itself, but he's got Cijer of Babbal there in heaven. So that's actually quite extraordinary that Dante has raised Cijer of Babbal to that height. We might expect him if he was redeemed in the end, it still will be in purgatory.

So Cijer has done something at the end to repent and to merit heaven. We know that because what we know that Dante is saying that because he's there. What I think is important is that he is on Thomas's left. So when you read around and describe all the characters, he's the last one, he's on Thomas's left, and the left side signifies error.

So I think when you look at what Dante does, very carefully you see that he does things like that. So Cijer of Babbal, yes, but Thomas is the one who's the right one, right? He's the right of Cijer, so he's there to the left of Thomas. So his redemption is in spite of his error.

It might be that, oh, I can't believe that that. Does that make sense? So Thomas praises Francis, especially for the poverty here, of course, and Dante, of course, is always bothered by the averageest ambition of those in church offices. They stop and the conversation comes to an end, another set of likes, calm and circle, and Bonaventure speaks this time.

He's the Franciscan who speaks in praise of Dominic. The Bonaventure, one of the characters in the Bonaventure is Joachim Fiore, who originated the idea of the three historical dispensations, Father representing by the Old Testament, the Son represented in the New Testament, and the Holy Spirit representing a new age of peace which has no need of the church. So this was clearly problematical. So he is there as well.

Now the age of the spirit, which he was prophesying, was called also, or was inhabited by the order of the just and governed the church action, the order of the just was later identified with the Franciscans. But you would have here would be direct through the Holy Spirit direct relationship to God without the mediation of the church. So this sounds a little familiar, doesn't it, to what comes later. So Joachim of Fiore anticipates through his teaching, you could say some elements of Protestantism.

Now someone asked me before if Dante is ever, ever makes theological errors or deuterosy, some scholars believe that Dante subscribed to this vision, that of the third age of the spirit that was to come. It's hard to tell. Dante earlier in the Inferno, defends the office of the papacy. He defends the office while at the same time criticizing the holder of the keys.

But Dante placing Joachim here in this realm is certainly provocative. It's hard to know what Dante thought this was going to happen. Dante himself makes these obscure prophecies that the wicked in the church, those who are especially apparitious and have political ambitions, they will get their comeuppance in the near future. Whether or not he means it will be the age of the spirit, I think is probably impossible to tell.

It's at least possible that he believed in this kind of thing. He certainly didn't believe he was in the age of the spirit. Okay. Well, we could tell, I believe that we have not entered the age of the spirit either.

We'd have entered that age of perfect peace and harmony. Okay, so maybe that's not going to happen. Okay, so a couple of characters that are very important in that realm. It's also interesting that as we're rising, if we look at the structure purgatory and hell, certainly those are ordered in a way from in hell worst, I'm sorry, that's the worst, and purgatory the sins from worst the best.

I don't know that we can say that the heaven is necessarily populated this way, so that Aquinas, that would put Aquinas at a too far down in the realms would be so low just in the middle point. But all the souls, regardless, all the souls in heaven are perfectly happy. Okay, we get to the realm of Mars, which is the virtue of courage. Katcha Guida is a character that speaks a lot.

This is Dante's great-great-grandfather who reminds Dante or tells Dante about everything he was perfect in the old days when he was in Florence. The wives could go out and didn't have to check up on and children could play in the streets. And it was idyllic, kind of like a darnabyedan. Maybe Katcha Guida's using a little bit of hyperbole here, but it's a story that we all hear and we tell our children ourselves the good old days.

So Katcha Guida speaks for a long time. He may have the third most lines in the divine comedy characters that are, there's Virgil who speaks Beatrice and Katcha Guida, even though he's only in the one scene, he speaks a lot. So about Florence, he tells Dante that Dante's works, or actually his things, it's literally things, our translation that I use as works, but it's cosé, things, will die. All of Dante's things will die, his works, everything that he's done will die, but that fact is hidden because they outlive you.

So he's speaking to the illusion that we have, or that Dante might have, that his works will not die if he's a famous poet because he can look to Virgil and Homer and other famous poets whose works seem to be eternal, he more rarely had died. So there's that temptation that he recognizes in Dante or in poets to believe that, but they will die as well. They will die as well. And to prove that, he lists a bunch of Florentines that nobody remembers anymore.

They were once famous. You know how it is, you take an old history book from the 19th century and you compare that to modern history book and they've had to pick a few people out. They don't consider it worthy of remembrance in his laundry. Catchety Gouda prophesies Dante's exile, this actually happens two or three times in Divine Comedy.

He tells me he will leave behind, but he loves most, Florence and his family. He'll be forced to depend on others, which is exactly what happens, and Dante knows this. And he will bear the senseless company of those who will turn against him so that he will become a party of one. And what happened was after the exile, Dante joined up with some members of his party, the white gelfs, and for a while they were considering trying to overthrow the ruling party that had exiled them and Dante got put up with them and abandoned that project.

And that's part of Dante's spiritual awakening that the solution to the problems are not political. Okay. So, he's rising very, very, very quickly. He comes to Jupiter, the realm of justice, so we have the third of the carnal virtues.

And here we have one of the most important regions because we find in it the righteous rulers among whom are Trajan and Rifius. Now Trajan lived in the Christian era, but was not Christian. Rifius is a character from the Trojan War, so he lived before Christ. So we have two pagans here.

And this is the exception to that. Well, it's not even an exception to the rule that you baptized exactly because of the way that Dante handles the story. So Dante, when he sees that there are these unbaptized pagans, he has a question in his mind which is answered. It's answered by this eagle.

The saints have formed this picture of an eagle because that's the Roman symbol and this is the realm of justice. Dante asked this question in his mind. Consider that man born along the Indus where you will not find a soul who speaks or reads or writes a Christ and all of his desires, all of his acts are good as far as human reason sees. Not ever having sinned, indeed a word he dies on baptized, dies without the faith.

What is this justice that condemns his soul? What is his guilt if he does not believe? So Dante seems to have not dealt explicitly with that question in the inferno where we meet the unbaptized. It's hinted at with Keito in the purgatory because he was a pagan and perhaps he's a member of purgatory to say.

But now we have actual souls that were saved. This is the answer, part of the answer which is basically who are you to sit in the judgment seat, in the judgment seat and pass on things, pass judgment on things a thousand miles away when you can hardly see beyond your own nose? Who are you to judge? He's talking about the pagan in India who hasn't heard of Christ, what fault is it of his?

He's talking about the fact that he's not there to guide us, surely would have serious grounds for doubts. Earth-bound creatures, this is the eagle speaking, thick headed men, the primal will, which of itself is good, this is God's will. The good never moves from itself, the good supreme, so it's perfect in itself. Only that which accords with it is just.

It is not drawn to when he finds that good, but sitting forth, its race creates that good. So he says that the justice in a certain sense is perfect, not a certain sense is perfect and impenetrable by human mind. And then he goes on to catalog of condemned Christians. So this is still in response to the question about the unpacked pagan.

First it's who are you, the judge, God? So that's a bit arrogant, but he's still going to answer the question. And secondly, look at all these Christians that are condemned. He says, there are those who cry Christ Christ and at the judgment day will be less close to them than will be those who know not Christ.

So we can see that even in the structure of hell because limbo is closer to heaven than Christians who are further down and limbo is reserved to those who have been baptized. First Christians shall the Ethiopian condemned, the day those who simply separate one rich, the other poor forever more. So he seems to have the Ethiopian who he's considered to be a pagan judge the Christians who cried Christ Christ, but on judgment day will be said to their judgment in hell. So the Ethiopian seems to be the judge of that person.

So he goes through a list of various Christians that will be condemned. And then he returns to this question of Trajan and Riphias. Trajan is say because Gregory I, Gregory I, Gregory is a great, great. He's purported to have had Trajan unburied and baptized.

So unburied Trajan is raised from the dead and in baptized. And so that's the solution that he was baptized. The story about Riphias though is a bit more complicated. Trajan has the advantage of being raised from the dead.

But Riphias were told the Trojan was devoted to God who opened his eyes to redemption. Riphias were told believed in Christ and was baptized more than a thousand years before baptism was by faith, hope and charity, which are infused in the soul at baptism. So the gifts of faith, hope and charity which come with baptism are the things that baptized Riphias. So Dottis has their baptism and faith, hope and charity being all of one thing.

Okay. So there's some miraculous way in which Riphias is eyes are open to the gospel before the incarnation and his baptized faith, hope and charity. So Dottis doesn't give us any more detail, but he holds out the possibility of the righteous pagan. But what he has is the righteous pagan having the explicit faith in Christ at the same time, which goes beyond what you might read for instance in the modern catechism.

The church doesn't say there's this vision that you have of Christ that you didn't accept, although I don't think the church would say that's not what's going to happen, we just don't know. That's what Dontte presents though, an actual revelation. And apparently Riphias chastises the other pagan worshipers and tell them what they're doing is wrong, but who's going to listen to him. Okay.

So both are baptized, both have explicit faith. Okay. So that's the solution to that problem. They're sending Beatrice to becoming more beautiful because she's a mirror of God's grace.

She tells Dontte at one point to turn his gaze away from her. Stop looking at me. And he does, but the turning away gives him joy, so joy in his obedience. At one point he turns back to her like a frightened little boy turns to his mother.

And Dontte does this with Virgil and Beatrice, meaning what he does is he changes the language that he uses applied to those two characters. So Virgil becomes, he's a master, but he ends up as a father figure as well. Dontte refers to him as a father. Here this is Dontte's beloved, or the one that he loves, now becomes his mother.

Okay. So we can see the further example, the purification of his heart. We see globes of fire, the largest and the brightest one approaches the Dontte at St. Benedict.

And St. Benedict is important as a reformer in the church. I think that's why you have here with the contemplatives. And we'll move on.

You know, the temperance. Well, I'll just pause here why this show how these things work together. St. Bernard, I'm sorry, St.

Benedict. Bernard comes out of St. Benedict. He is representative of reform, which Dontte is interested in, and what is needed, and it's the contemplative spirits, so that represents the con verde of the monastery.

But what they need is temperance. That's what they have lacked. And in fact, in the rule of St. Benedict, I think it's the wisdom in it is that there is the denial of the self, but it's not excessive.

It's temperate. Okay, so he's going to encounter St. Benedict. He is towards the ends, flying through the heavens.

And occasionally he will look down to what's below him. And we can get a certain sense of this because of the pictures from the spaceships we sent up and those that come back and the earth and the whole spacecraft. So we can get a certain sense of what Dontte might be looking at. It's all in his imagination at this point.

But what he sees below him seems so paltry that he looks down at the earth because he's speeding so far away from it. The earth seems very small and invogly that's important because he's moving away from temptations of the world towards God. So he's moving to the sphere of the fixed stars. This is the church triumphant.

And beyond that, we've got the premium mobility and then finally the imperion. In the sphere of the fixed stars, Dontte's mind is expanding. In fact, he says like a fire expands within a cloud and explodes because it has no space until it breaks its bounds and what became of it does not know, kind of like lightning. Dontte at this point is now ready to bear the beauty of Beatrice's space.

So at some point he has to turn away from her. Now we can look at it again. Then Beatrice tells him to turn to the lovely garden, flowering in the rations of Christ, the rose in which the word of God took on the flesh. This is the blessed virgin.

Dontte is drawn to the flame of flames, the greatest of the saints, the blessed virgin Mary. Another light descends and spins about her like a crown. This is Gabriel. So now he's having a vision as he's seeing the church triumphant of the blessed virgin, all the saints sing.

And then before he can progress, he's interviewed, he's questioned by Peter, James, and John. He's given three sets of questions. One about faith, one about hope, and then a series of questions about love. And so Saint Peter questions him about faith, asks about faith, and Dontte gives kind of catechism answers.

Then Saint James approaches these lights, and he quizzes Dontte about hope. Then next, and at the end of this actually the light of Saint John is so bright that Dontte temporarily blinded, and he's asked about questions about love. It's interesting that in faith and hope he's asked to define, but he's not asked to define love for some reason. He is, he gives a catechism answer to faith and hope, but he's not asked what love is.

And why might that be? I just throw that out. Why is that question skipped? Anyone want to propose a solution to that?

He's asked questions about love. What is your soul set upon? What is the cause of your desire? Are there other ties that draw you to God?

But why not ask for a definition of love itself? Yes. I think that's it. It's almost too obvious.

God is love. Can't be defined. So as I say, now we define it for ourselves right in the human way of love is obedience to God, or love is choosing the good for another, loving God a neighbor as herself. But when he's getting to love as the being, God is beyond catechism definition.

Anyway, it's curious that he doesn't tell us why he leaves us out. OK, he leaves it out. But then you think about why he's leaving it out. He's broken his pattern of questioning, and there might be an answer there.

What is your soul set upon? Love he says, what is the cause of your desire? The good, this is what he says. The good, this is what causes his desire.

The good perceived is good in kindle's love. And makes that love more bright the more that we can comprehend the good which it contains. I'll interpret this in a minute. So toward that essence where such goodness rests that any goodness found outside of it is only a reflection of its ray, the mind of man in love is bound to move more than toward any other, once it sees the truth on which this loving proof is based.

OK, it's hard to hear if you read it. It's a little easier. So goodness draws out love and man. This is goodness that we see in secondary goods.

But once he sees the source of the good, which is God, who is God, he is bound in to love this essence of the good which is God himself. And the dot that goes on, does that make sense? So we see the good, once we recognize the source of the good, then we love the source. But it's not inevitable.

And so the souls in hell, they love things, but they never saw the source of the thing. But they love. The dot that goes on to express his debt to philosophy and to revelation. That's how he knows this, philosophy and revelation.

And he's asked, is there anything else that draws you to God besides philosophy and revelation? And he says this, which has another dantism, like transhumanized. I love each leaf with which, inleaved, that's the new word, is all the garden of the eternal gardener in measure of the light he sheds on each. It's kind of difficult.

This is actually very tokenized. I should say token is very dantesque in some of his writings. So the inleaving, so the leaf is inleaved. It has the nature of the leaf.

And so with Dante saying that he's drawn to God by loving the created order in the proper measure belonging to it. So he's loving the leaf as a leaf ought to be loved. And that leaf they're standing for all of creation. And so we saw earlier problems people had with excessive loves of secondary goods.

But a proper love of the secondary good can also draw you to God. Now whether or not this true is true for Dante or whether or not he realizes it ought to be true for him. I'm not sure. Because he's having this revelation now.

He sees Adam. Adam is up there. And asked a couple of questions, like when were you created? How old is the earth?

And Adam answers these questions. What was the true reason for God's wrath? Why did God punish you? The transgression of God's bounds, not the tasting of the tree.

So it's not the actual sin, but it could have been anything, but it was the disobedience. So Dante is full of joy. He's learning more and more. He's getting closer to God.

Peter is glowing brighter and brighter. And then he goes off about the pope himself. So he asks him what the original language was. Because in the Middle Ages, and this happened actually later as well, fairly recently I think in history, where there was the idea of the primal language that was spoken.

So scholars studying the independent language in the modern era can go back very, very far and positive words of language as they have no evidence of. Because they can trace a pattern to say well before this, before that, and then we go far and up back, we get to what is the root words in a proposed original language. So the question was what was the original language? Because in the Bible, of course, the man's tongues are many tongues are created when they're scattered after the power of Babel is built.

So he's really asking in this question what was the primal language that you spoke? And the answer to that question is well, it is natural, language is natural in and of itself. So man by nature is a language maker. But nature allows the manner of speech to change.

So he doesn't answer that directly, but he does say before he died, God was called I, and then afterwards L. So as an Elohim and various names of God in the Old Testament, the I is the I am. So the name of God changed, but he seems to say that's okay. But whatever effort there is to recover the original language is not necessary.

I think maybe somebody's getting it. But it is a question about what was the first language. Adam doesn't really say any more than well I spoke and died out. He's speaking to him in the language he can understand.

So it doesn't have to be one language. I think they could see it that way. They are rising up to the primal mobility, which is the sphere that's first set in the motion. And we're told that Beatrice holds Dante's mind in paradise.

That's another one of his neologisms. Dante turns and looks at Beatrice's eyes and he sees in the reflection of her eyes the premium mobility. And through that he sees inner eyes a small but piercingly bright light. So small that the smallest star seen from here would appear to be a moon next to it.

So the stars here, right when you go to the sky the stars are very, very small. If you place that next to this star that he sees it all of a sudden like the moon. So that's how small it is, but piercingly bright. He is describing, now he's setting a vision through the eyes up through grace because Beatrice represents grace, God himself.

Around this point, this part is fascinating what he comes up with here. Around this point spins a ring of fire faster than the sphere that spins fastest around the earth. And the sphere that spins faster around the earth is actually the premium mobility. It's the largest sphere because it's outward, but it's spinning the fastest because it's making the same rotation, one rotation, I think this is the idea, makes one rotation when all the spheres rotate around one.

So it has to be spinning faster to make the rotation, right? So it is spinning faster than that. So the inner ring is spinning faster than the outer ring around it. This is the vision that he has of this piercingly bright light.

And this ring of fire is encircled by eight more rings, each revolving more slowly than the preceding one. Beatrice explains that the fastest ring spins so fast because love, fire burns it in motion. It's the closest to the point and so it's closest to the love and so it's going faster and faster. Okay, then Dante realizes now that he is seeing a picture of the universe which is opposite of what he's just experienced.

Okay, so the model, which is the small point he's seeing now with the fastest circle being the closest one, is the opposite of what he's just experienced with the earth in the center and the fastest circle being the one on the outside and the slow circle being the one closest. So he's got the opposite views of the universe he's seeing. So we say that the earth is literally at the center of the universe in their physical understanding of the universe, the earth is at the center and God is on the outside but spiritually, see God is at the center of the universe. He's that point with things around him.

So heaven, then his vision of heaven is the opposite of what he's led to believe about the physical universe. I don't know if that makes sense. But anyway, it's very interesting when you're reading it and piecing these things together. Okay, they're shouting in single zanna.

Their state of bliss were told is based upon the act of seeing God. This is actually a very important idea. Their state of bliss of happiness is based upon the act of seeing God not loving him which is the second step. The measure of their vision is their worth born of his grace and of their own good will.

For this their ranks proceed from great to great. So we have saints that are closer to God and for the all of them they're all happy, right? But we have some that are greater than others. Those that are the greatest or the closest circle to the spinning around the light.

The important thing here is that it's the vision and the act of seeing God and knowing God first prior to loving him. Okay, and that's actually a question for our day too, right? Which is primary. We tend to go the other way.

The most important thing is to love God. But here he's following Aquinas in that the man's highest faculty being an intellect and the highest thing he can do is to contemplate God. And in the love follows. He loves what he knows.

Okay, but that's, okay. Peter's a silent as he gazes upon the point and of course Dante imitates her in his silence. Okay, so I'm gonna get up to you further. Let's see.

Okay, intellect. Light of love. Okay, that's pretty clear. When we get to the Imperium, find what we get to, I've got a couple of these lights out of order because he's seeing into the Imperium.

And then there is this white rose that he sees. The white rose is this, there are a couple of images. He sees the first is this flowing river of light and then these beings coming from the out of the river and onto the bank of the river and to these flowers and the, the lights represent angels and the flowers and the human beings being aided by the angels. He sees that and it turns into a circle spinning around so it's this psychedelic show that he's having.

And he sees the, the, the saints and the angels unmask in a way sees them for who they are. So this is kind of unmasking. And then the image turns into this white rose, this vast white rose with these petals and on the petals it's actually on the back of the, I'm gonna give you that on the handout, sorry. On the, in the pedal of the very saints.

So he sees the very saints there. At this point he turns around and as he's looking at the white rose, the, the, the, the mystic rose, the Celeste rose and Beatrice is gone and St. Bernard is there in her place. And he asks where she is, where's Beatrice?

And he points to the rose and the rose is this, actually I'm gonna show you what the right rose looks like. So there's the rose and it's many tiered and without going through all the structure of it we've got New Testament and Old Testament saints facing each other. He mentions several saints, he doesn't fill in the whole rose but the blessed virgin is at the top. This is the, represents, she's the queen here and so this is the best place to be.

She's the greatest saint. This is the, this position is the most honored. On the Beatrice is actually two rows down and one over. So when you look at the structure of the rose, she's very, very close to the blessed virgin.

So she has a place of the great honor in the Celeste's rose. Okay. And these are the, again, various saints are going to go through all the names but you would actually recognize all of them. They're famous Old Testament characters, male and female.

We also have in this young children, both baptized and unbaptized apparently. And then he's told by Bernard to look at the face which resembles Christ the most, but only in its radiance will you be made ready to look on Christ. So he's engaged finally upon the face of the blessed virgin. And another interesting thing is the virgin's face which most resembles Christ is both literal and spiritually true, literally true and spiritually true.

So it's literally true because she's the, his mother and so she resembles her and it's spiritually true because she is the greatest of the saints so she's most like Christ. So both of these things. My wife went it out to me a few years ago and I think this is almost always true. I try to verify whenever I can and occasionally it's not true but it's true more than it's not.

She told me that the oldest daughter favor tends to favor the father, resemble the father and the oldest son tends to resemble the mother. And I thought, okay, I'm going to start looking and it's my meat people and I do the comparison. It's almost always true. I've been surprised by it.

It's not a hundred percent but it's very, very common. And if that's true then physically Jesus resembles Mary. He would look like her. Okay.

But then there's a spiritual on this one. All right. So there's the rose and then burned praise to the virgin that she granted Dante the power to see the final blessedness, to have the son of joy revealed before his eyes. He also prays that Dante upon his return to earth that his affections will remain sound.

Okay. And so we have the final prayer that Dante's vision will move beyond that point of light. He's seen that point of light almost blinding but to be you could say bathe in the light itself. And this we get to the last section that I copied for you.

So I'm going to read part of this and comment on a few of these things as we go. It's a little long here but I wanted to spend a little bit of time because this is remarkably beautiful especially in the context of the rest. Okay. So Dante is speaking here.

This is all Dante at the end. Ojaius light, you raised so far above the minds of mortals to my memory. You raised so far above the minds of mortals to my memory give back something of your epiphany and make my tongue so powerful that I may leave to people the future one gleam of the glory that is yours. For by returning somewhat to my memory and not going a while within these lines your victory will be more understood.

So he's praying for this inspiration to be able to write what he sees. Now early on way back in the Inferno he's called upon the Muses as you find in classical literature and he's done it again in the purgatory and now he's calling directly to the highest light which is God the Supreme Light. Okay. So he's passed me on the normal invocation of the Mus.

The living ray that I endured was so acute that I believe I should have gone astray had my eyes turned away from it. And of course he did go astray at the very beginning when his eyes turned away from God. Okay. So the law that I because of this was bolder and sustaining it until my vision reached the infinite goodness.

Oh grace abounding through which I presume to set my eyes on the eternal light so long that I spent all my sight on it. Now the medieval vision of eyesight is that it is active not receptive. So you're seeing something right you are projecting light to something rather than receptive. So the verb even I see something reflects the notion that there's an action being done rather than something was seen by me which may be more accurate.

Okay. So his light his powers being spent here in its profundity I saw in gathered and bound by love into one single volume what in the universe seems separate scattered. So truth is one so now he's having this revelation of what creation is substances accidents these are air sitillion terms and dispositions as if conjoined in such a way that what I tell is only rudimentary. I think I saw the universal shape which that not takes for speaking this I feel a joy that is more ample I think the universal shape here is sometimes translated as form which is a platonic idea.

I get any case seeing the universe for what it is and having a kind of angelic knowledge of the created order. That one moment brings more forgetfulness to me than 25 centuries abroad to the endeavor that startled Neptune with the Argos shadows he just said speaking about the first ship that's built that startled Neptune to have something right on top of that was centuries ago and think about how much has been forgotten about what really happened then I forgotten more than that. So was my mind completely wrapped intent steadfast and motionless gazing and grew ever more than kindled as it watched. Okay so the fire increases the fire of his heart and there was mine whoever sees that light is soon made such that it would be impossible for him to set that light aside for other sight and this answer that question answers it earlier as well but this answers the question why there's no sin in heaven.

People say well if you have free will can you sin in heaven it seems like you have sin but not he's answering this in part right he's gazing upon the light and it is impossible for him to set it aside and since there's nothing else to look at in heaven in a certain sense because the good the object of the will is fully gathered in that light it's perfected right the true freedom the true free will is free to love God. And now he's free to do that he's using those words but might come up outside that light what there is perfect is defective. So outside the light inside the light is perfect outside the light is defective. What little I recall is to be told from this point on in words more weak than those of one who's infant tongue still bays at the breast so he just doesn't have the words for this you know it's like they'd be babbling.

And not because more than one simple semblance wasn't that living light in which I gazed but it is always what it was before it's not that it's complicated too many things to remember right but through my sight which as I gazed stronger the soul appearance even as I altered seemed to be changing in the deep and bright essence of that exalted light three circles appeared to me so something is appearing to him the thing he's seeing is not changing right his eyes are seeing something they had three colors but all of them were of the same dimension of the trinity seeing the trinity as these three lights one circle seemed reflected by the second as rainbow is by rainbow is using light image of your light in color and the third scene bay seemed to fire breathe equally by these those two circles so we have the father the begotten son who's the reflection and the fire breathe that's the Holy Spirit proceeding from the father and the son. How incomplete is speech how weak when said against my thought and this to what I saw is such to call it little is too much eternal light you only dwell within yourself and only you know you self knowing self known your love you love and smile upon yourself this is Trinitarian language was trying to express his experience of the blessed trinity and this is what I tell my students a lot more time about Dante's inferno that when he's talking about heaven he's talking about presence in the presence of the blessed trinity which is beyond our imagination here but Dante's been a big job. So he's using the image of light to express the union in three that circle which begotten so appeared in you as light reflected when my eyes had watched it with attention for some time within itself and color like itself the missing painted with our effigy our picture so that my sight was set on it completely so he's looking at these lights and he sees within it the picture of mankind. So this is of course the speak about the incarnation right so God becomes man so that man can become God or gods.

So he's puzzling now about the incarnation and what it means for man to be drawn up into participate in the life of the trinity and participating in the life of the blessed trinity seems to be somehow more possible that's right we're putting it through the incarnation than otherwise would be. So we could be brought into the presence of God but we're brought into the presence of God himself has become man. So it seems that this is what Dante's experiencing at this point the trinity experienced in and through the incarnation. He's the geometry and certainly seeks to square the circle but he cannot reach the thought on thought the principle he needs.

It's possible. So I search that strange sight I wish to see the way in which our human effigy suited the circle and found place in it so that how can man how can God become take on human nature that's the squaring of the circle that seems impossible and my own wings were far too weak for that so these are his thoughts but within my mind was struck by light that flashed and with this light received what it had asked here force failed my high fantasy but my desire to this is beyond his imagination and a way beyond his comprehension that he knows what he can know but my desire and will will move already like a will revolving uniformly by the love that moves the sun and the other stars that's the very end okay so his will his desire united to his intellect which has a flash of momentary flash that's revealed to him which shows him what the incarnation means and at the same time what man's divinization means so it's not you know the angel on the clouds whatever people might believe I mean nobody that's just because it's beyond what we can say but the incarnation in the Trinity becomes it seems essential to Dante's intellectual his understanding and his vision of God so it's not it's physical it's the vision that he has of light it's personal because he's brought to it through this relationship with a Beatrice it is revelatory because it has to do with the incarnation and the Trinity so all those things wrapped up in a sign of vision of God anyway this I find this passage white fascinating and beautiful as Dante concludes with God as love and God being the one which keeps the universe in motion so that's the paradise in a nutshell or in a rose unless you close any questions infernal purgatory or paredeso