Paradiso, Canto 8SummaryDante and Beatrice rise from Mercury to the planet Venus. So rapid is their ascent that Dante is aware only of the increased loveliness of Beatrice, which grows ever more radiant as they mount from sphere to sphere. They encounter now the souls of those who, horn of amorous temperament and ardent affections, yielded to the love that is a kind of madness. Now, chastened and disciplined, rejoicing in their place in Heaven, they sing a hymn so ravishingly sweet that Dante longs to hear its loveliness renewed. The soul of Charles Martel, a beloved friend, draws near and converses with Dante on the diversity of natural attributes.
The Prepatory LectureQuestions for Reflection
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Paradiso, Canto 8 © Jan Hearn
The ImagesThe planet Venus. In the third planet, Dante encounters souls whose ardent temperament had led them to surrender wantonly to the passion of love. In a Christian context, Venus, whose influence the ancients held to be irresistible, is a symbol or type of the natural propensities with which men are born but which the will is free to resist or use well. Her planet here symbolizes love as Virgil has expounded it in Purgatory and which Dante, like the souls he meets, has now set in order in his soul.
Charles Martel, the grandson of Charles I of Anjou, was born in 1271, the eldest son of Charles II and of Mary, the daughter of the King of Hungary. In 1291, he married Clemence of Hapsburg, daughter of Emperor Rudolph I, by whom he had three children, Charles Robert (Carobert), Clemence (who married Louis X of France) and Beatrice. In the Spring of 1294, he visited Florence, where he remained for over three weeks, awaiting the arrival of his father from France. The Florentines were overjoyed to welcome and fête the young royal whose grandfather, Charles I of Anjou, had been so powerful a champion of Guelf interests. Of Dante’s friendship with him we have no knowledge apart from the evidence afforded by this canto. The tender words alluding to their love seem to indicate that Dante was held in high regard by Charles, who here quotes the first line of one of Dante’s odes. In the story, Charles Martel is a link in the narrative between Dante of Paradise and Dante of Florence. At the time of their first meeting, it must have seemed to both young men that they had every reason to look confidently to the future. Dante, at the age of twenty-nine, had an established reputation as the leading poet among a notable group in Florence and was about to embark on a period of distinguished public service. Charles Martel, six years younger, had been crowned King of Hungary at the age of nineteen and was also heir to the Kingdom of Naples and the County of Provence (see Genealogical Tables, Kings of France, p. 398). Yet Dante’s destiny was exile and that of Charles Martel premature death from cholera the following year. Though their fates are so different, yet they are linked by friendship, by a shared experience of disappointed hopes, and by a common readiness to surrender to love. (See also note to l. 37.) In the wider implications of the story, that is, in history, Charles Martel is a representative of the House of Anjou, to whom Dante owed the defeat of his hopes, for not only had the daughter of Charles II married Charles of Valois (who engineered the defeat of the White Guelfs, an event which led to Dante’s exile) but the Angevins (especially Robert, King of Naples, the brother of Charles Martel) were strenuous opponents of the Emperor Henry VII. Yet, had Charles Martel lived to succeed his father as King of Naples, he might have followed a different policy. In himself, and in his descendants, the strife of Europe might have been reconciled, for the Emperor Rudolph (the leader of the Ghibellines) was his father-in-law and grandfather to his children, while his own grandfather, Charles I of Anjou, was remembered as the champion of the Guelfs. In the allegory, Charles Martel and the other souls encountered in Venus are symbols of the sensual man whose easy surrender to the temptations of the flesh is accompanied by an affectionate and generous ardour. Now, purged of their sin, they come, swifter than lightning, to meet and converse with Dante, showing a ready eagerness that recalls the response of Paolo and Francesca (cf. Inf. v). In himself, as a member of the Angevin dynasty, Charles Martel is an instance also of the diversity of human endowments. It is fitting, therefore, that he should have the task of discoursing to Dante on the operations of Providence. Tom LA Books |
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