They also have no last laugh in that Provence lost a good manager of the realm.

CANTO VII

THE SECOND SPHERE: MERCURY

Seekers of Honor: Justinian

ASCENT TO THE THIRD SPHERE

Beatrice Discourses

JUSTINIAN AND HIS COMPANIONS break into a HYMN TO THE GOD OF BATTLES and, dancing, disappear into the distance. Dante, torn by doubt, longs to ask how a just vengeance may justly be avenged, but dares not speak. Beatrice, sensing his confusion, answers his question before he can ask it.

She explains the DOUBLE NATURE OF THE CRUCIFIXION, and why the Jews, though blameless in the crucifixion of the man, were still guilty of sacrilege against the God. She then explains why God chose this means of redemption, and why that choice was THE GREATEST ACT OF ALL ETERNITY.

She then explains the difference between DIRECT AND INDIRECT CREATION and concludes by proving WHY THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH IS CERTAIN.

“Osanna sanctus Deus Sabaoth
superillustrans claritate tua
felices ignes horum malachoth!”

—So, giving itself to its own harmony,
the substance of that being, over which
two lights were joined as one, appeared to me.

And all those souls joined in a holy dance,
and then, like shooting sparks, gone instantly,
they disappeared behind the veil of distance.

I stood, torn by my doubts. “Speak up. Speak up,”
I said inside myself. “Ask the sweet lady
who slakes your every thirst from the sweet cup.”

But the awe that holds my being in its sway
even at the sound of BEA or of TRICE
kept my head bent as if I dozed away.

But she soon soothed my warring doubt and dread,
for with a smile whose ray could have rejoiced
the soul of a man tied to the stake, she said:

“I know by my infallible insight
you do not understand how a just vengeance
can justly be avenged. To set you right

I shall resolve your mind’s ambivalence.
Listen and learn, for what I shall now say
will be a gift of lofty consequence.

Because he would not, for his own good, take
God’s bit and rein, the man who was not bom,
damning himself, damned mankind for his sake.

Therefore, for many centuries, men lay
in their sick error, till the Word of God
chose to descend into the mortal clay.

There, moved by His Eternal Love alone,
he joined in His own person that other nature
that had wandered from its Maker and been cast down.

Now heed my reasoning: so joined again
to its First Cause, this nature (as it had been
at its creation) was good and without stain.

But by its own action, when it turned its face
from the road of truth that was its road of life,
it was driven from the garden of God’s grace.

If the agony on the cross, considering this,
was a punishment of the nature thus assumed,
no verdict ever bit with greater justice;

Just so, no crime to match this can be cited
when we consider the Person who endured it
in whom that other nature was united.

Thus, various sequels flow from one event:
God and the Jews concurred in the same death;
for it the earth shook and the heavens were rent.

You should no longer find it hard to see
what is meant in saying that just vengeance taken
was afterwards avenged by just decree.

I see now that your mind, thought upon thought,
is all entangled, and that it awaits
most eagerly the untying of the knot

You think: ‘I grasp the truth of what I hear.
But why God chose this means for our redemption—
this and no other—I cannot make clear.’

No one may grasp the hidden meaning of
this edict, brother, till his inborn senses
have been made whole in the sweet fire of love.

Truly, therefore, since so many sight,
and so few hit, this target, I shall now
explain exactly why this means was right.

That Good, which from Itself spurns every trace
of envy, in Itself sends out such sparks
as manifest the everlasting grace.

Whatever is uttered by Its direct expression
thereafter is eternal; His seal once stamped,
nothing can ever wipe out the impression.

Whatever is poured directly from Its spring
is wholly free; so made, it is not subject
to the power of any secondary thing.

The Sacred Fire that rays through all creation
burns with most joy in what is most like It;
the more alike, the greater Its elation.

All of these attributes endow the nature
of humanldnd; and if it fail in one,
it cannot help but lose its noble stature.

Sin is the one power that can take away
its freedom and its likeness to True Good,
whereby it shines less brightly in Its ray.

Its innate worth, so lost, it can regain
only by pouring back what guilt has spilled,
repaying evil pleasure with just pain.

Your nature, when it took sin to its seed,
sinned totally. It lost this innate worth,
and it lost Paradise by the same deed.

Nor could they be regained (if you heed my words
with scrupulous attention) by any road
that does not lead to one of these two fords:

either that God, by courtesy alone,
forgive his sin; or that the man himself,
by his own penitence and pain, atone.

Now fix your eye, unmoving, on the abyss
of the Eternal Wisdom, and your mind
on every word I say concerning this!

Limited man, by subsequent obedience,
could never make amends; he could not go
as low in his humility as once,

rebellious, he had sought to rise in pride.
Thus was he shut from every means himself
to meet God’s claim that He be satisfied.

Thus it was up to God, to Him alone
in His own ways—by one or both, I say—
to give man back his whole life and perfection.

But since a deed done is more prized the more
it manifests within itself the mark
of the loving heart and goodness of the doer,

the Everlasting Love, whose seal is plain
on all the wax of the world was pleased to move
in all His ways to raise you up again.

There was not, nor will be, from the first day
to the last night, an act so glorious
and so magnificent, on either way.

For God, in giving Himself that man might be
able to raise himself, gave even more
than if he had forgiven him in mercy.

All other means would have been short, I say,
of perfect justice, but that God’s own Son
humbled Himself to take on mortal clay.

And now, that every wish be granted you,
I turn back to explain a certain passage,
that you may understand it as I do.

You say: ‘I see the water, I see the fire,
the air, the earth; and all their combinations
last but a little while and then expire.

Yet all these were creations! Ought not they—
if what you said of them before is true—
to be forever proof against decay?”

Of angels and this pure kingdom of the soul
in which you are, it may be said they sprang
full-formed from their creation, their beings whole.

But the elements, and all things generated
by their various compoundings, take their form
from powers that had themselves to be created.

Created was the matter they contain.
Created, too, was the informing power
of the stars that circle them in Heaven’s main.

From the given potencies of these elements
the rays and motions of the sacred lamps
draw forth the souls of all brutes and all plants.

But the Supreme Beneficence inspires
your life directly, filling it with love
of what has made it, so that it desires

man’s flesh was given being like no other
when He made our first father and first mother.”

Notes

1-3. The hymn sung by these spirits as they depart is addressed to the God of triumphant armies (the God, as Dante believed, who led the Roman Eagle) and is compounded of Hebrew and Latin, the two languages of Heaven (though malachoth—“kingdoms”—should properly be mamlachoth) and may be rendered: “Hosannah, holy God of Sabaoth [of the armies], lighting from above with Your luster the blessed fires of these kingdoms!” The blessed fires (felices ignes) are the souls of heaven.

4-6. its own harmony: The harmony of the blessed voices. two lights: May stand, perhaps, for Justinian’s double glory as Emperor and Lawgiver. appeared to me: Note, throughout the Paradiso, how Dante’s phrasing suggests not that he saw the things of Heaven with his own senses, but that they were manifested to him by the blessed spirits as an act of love.

10 ff. DANTE’S DOUBT. Dante is torn between his thirst to know and his reluctance to ask. The question that fills him is “How can a just revenge be justly punished?” As usual, Beatrice (and her action in all such cases is certainly an allegory of her character as Divine Revelation) knows his wish before he can speak it and grants it before he can ask.

13-15. Intent of these lines: “But, as ever, the awe that overcomes my being if I hear so much as part of her name, made me unable to raise my head to speak and I kept it bent down like the head of a man who is dozing off while in an upright position”.

25-51. THE CRUCIFIXION. Beatrice argues that the death of Christ was just because he had taken upon Himself both the nature and guilt of mankind. His expiation was just because the sin of His human nature was great. But since He was also a God, the pain inflicted upon His divinity was a sacrilege and demanded punishment. So ran the Scholastic argument Dante follows here.

26. the man who was not born: Adam.

29. the Word of God: Christ.

31-33. Eternal Love: The Holy Ghost. His own person: Christ, the Son. that other nature: Man. Maker: God the Father.

40. considering this: Considering what I have just said of the guilt of human nature and of the fact that Christ willingly assumed that guilt in His own person.

48. earth shook...