Paradiso, Canto 22

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Summary

Dante turns in terror to Beatrice who reassures him and bids him look round again towards the souls in Saturn. One who draws close reveals himself to be St Benedict, the founder of the monastery at Monte Cassino. Like St Peter Damian, he too rebukes the laxity and corruption of monastic life, and predicts the coming of a time of regeneration. Rising to the heaven of the fixed stars, Dante finds he has entered his native sign of Gemini. Bending his gaze downwards, he is able to contemplate all seven planets beneath him and to discern the inhabited portion of the globe. Filled with a serene sense of the latter’s insignificance, he turns once more to gaze into the lovely eyes of Beatrice.

The Prepatory Lecture

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Questions for Reflection

• Dante meetings St. Benedict in this canto. Who was St. Benedict and what for of contemplation does he represent to Dante? What should be the fruit of contemplation?
• Both Peter Damian and Benedict were monastics. By giving us monastics as the chief images of contemplation, is Dante restricting the contemplative life to those who take religious vows? Is contemplation unfeasible for secular Christians? Could Dante the Pilgrim’s journey through the Comedy be a form of contemplation for non-religion (non-monastic) Christians?
• What does Benedict mean when he says that few Christians in Dante’s day raise their feet to step on even the lowest rung of the ladder (22.73ff)? Is this similar or different from our own day?
• What constellation does Dante enter as he ascends to the realm of the fixed stars (22.110-117)? Why might this be personally important to Dante (recall Brunetto Latini’s advice in Inferno 15).?
• What does Dante see as he turns back to contemplate the distance he has traveled since leaving the dark wood (22.124-147)? How does this change in physical perspective yield a change in Dante’s intellectual understanding (22.133ff)? Why does Dante smile?

Paradiso, Canto 22 © Jan Hearn

The Images

The Heaven of Saturn: see Canto xxi, under Images.

Dante’s bewilderment at the great cry of the contemplatives: At the conclusion of St Peter Damian’s words, a great cry of wrath goes forth from all the other souls. Dante, bewildered and terrified, turns to Beatrice for reassurance. Allegorically, his bewilderment signifies his (and possibly our) misunderstanding of the contemplative life. He had not expected that these souls would voice such vehement concern about the corruption of the monastic ideal on earth; but absorption in the vision of God does not detach the soul from zealous care for the life of the Church Militant.

​The Heaven of the Fixed Stars: In the story, as Dante and Beatrice rise beyond the seventh and outermost of the planets, they enter the firmament or heaven of the fixed stars. This is the eighth and last of the astronomical spheres. The part of it which Dante enters is, appropriately, that which is constellated by Gemini, the stars under whose sign he was born. At this point, he retraces with his gaze (for it is endowed with supernatural acuity and power) the course he has taken through the seven planetary spheres, until it rests at last upon the puny semblance of our little globe. Allegorically, it is after passing through a period of spiritual contemplation (the Heaven of Saturn) that man can see the world in its true proportions.

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