Paradiso, Canto 10

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Summary

Dante and Beatrice ascend to the heaven of the Sun, leaving below them the spheres which are tinged with the shadow cast by the earth. Outlined against the brightness of the sun are spirits characterized by the gift of wisdom. Forming a circle of twelve lights and revolving three times round Dante and Beatrice, they utter music so ineffable that it cannot be described on earth. A speaker, identifying himself as St Thomas Aquinas, tells Dante the names of the other eleven souls.

The Prepatory Lecture

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Questions for Reflection

• In the heaven of the sun, Dante is among the souls of the wise. He opens the first canto of this heaven by evoking the Trinity. What does this say about Dante’s understanding of the goal of wisdom? How is wisdom related to worship (10.55-57)?
• How does Dante connect “study” or “contemplation” with “taste” (10.4-6)? Why do you think Dante deploys so many physical—especially eating—metaphors in a poem where most of the characters are pure light?
• Where do human vision and divine vision meet (10.7-12)? How might this help us understand why Dante ends each part of the Comedy with the same word: stelle, stars?
• What is the relationship between God, Beatrice, and Dante’s love as the poet narrates it in lines 54-61? What does this indicate about Dante’s moral growth?
• What formation do the saints of the sun present themselves in? Why do you think Dante chose this image?How might this formation mirror the Trinity?
• How does Thomas Aquinas’ introduction to the population of this heaven (10.82ff) convey a sense of harmony, commonality, and peacefulness? What can we understand about the relationship between contemplative wisdom and peace from Dante’s depiction in this canto?

Paradiso, Canto 9 © Jan Hearn

The Images

The Sun: In the story, the sun, which in the Ptolemaic system was the fourth of the seven planets circling the earth, is the next stage in the ascent after Venus. In the allegory, the sun is the symbol of intellectual illumination and, ultimately, of God Himself, since the goal of wisdom is knowledge of the Divine Essence.

The Passage beyond Earth’s Shadow: In the story, the passage of Dante and Beatrice beyond the heaven which the “earth’s cast cone of shade just touches” (ix. 118–19) marks the completion of the first stage of their ascent. As in the Inferno and Purgatory, so now in Paradise, the tenth Canto constitutes the beginning of another section of the poem. To mark this division, there is a pause in the narrative, and what may be called a new prologue opens the Canto, recalling to our notice the ultimate theme of the whole work: the mystery of the Holy Trinity. In the allegory, the ascent beyond sense to the suprasensible symbolizes the progress of the soul in its advance towards knowledge of God, for it is by the illumination of the mind rather than by sense impressions that Dante comes ultimately to know Him.

The Circle of Twelve Lights: In the story, these arc the souls of twelve wise men. With the exception of Solomon, who represents kingly prudence, they are all exponents or doctors of learning, philosophy or theology, men through whom the Word of God was mediated in wisdom to the world. In the allegory, the garland of lights, gyrating in celestial dance and uttering music of a sweetness so ineffable it cannot be described on earth, symbolizes the order and harmony in which all the diverse manifestations of God’s truth are here conjoined.

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