parad 2

St Peter, Beatrice and Dante

From Paradiso xxv:

Toward us mov'd a light, at view whereof
My Lady, full of gladness, spake to me:
"Lo! lo! behold the peer of mickle might,
That makes Falicia throng'd with visitants!"

As when the ring-dove by his mate alights,
In circles each about the other wheels,
And murmuring cooes his fondness; thus saw I
One, of the other great and glorious prince,
With kindly greeting hail'd, extolling both
Their heavenly banqueting; but when an end
Was to their gratulation, silent, each,
Before me sat they down, so burning bright,
I could not look upon them.  Smiling then,
Beatrice spake: "O life in glory shrin'd!"
Who didst the largess of our kingly court
Set down with faithful pen! let now thy voice
Of hope the praises in this height resound.
For thou, who figur'st them in shapes, as clear,
As Jesus stood before thee, well can'st speak them."

"Lift up thy head, and be thou strong in trust:
For that, which hither from the mortal world
Arriveth, must be ripen'd in our beam."

Such cheering accents from the second flame
Assur'd me; and mine eyes I lifted up
Unto the mountains that had bow'd them late
With over-heavy burden.  "Sith our Liege
Wills of his grace that thou, or ere thy death,
In the most secret council, with his lords
Shouldst be confronted, so that having view'd
The glories of our court, thou mayst therewith
Thyself, and all who hear, invigorate
With hope, that leads to blissful end; declare,
What is that hope, how it doth flourish in thee,
And whence thou hadst it?"  Thus proceeding still,
The second light: and she, whose gentle love
My soaring pennons in that lofty flight
Escorted, thus preventing me, rejoin'd:
Among her sons, not one more full of hope,
Hath the church militant: so 't is of him
Recorded in the sun, whose liberal orb
Enlighteneth all our tribe: and ere his term
Of warfare, hence permitted he is come,
From Egypt to Jerusalem, to see.

I turn'd, but ah! how trembled in my thought,
When, looking at my side again to see
Beatrice, I descried her not, although
Not distant, on the happy coast she stood.

St Peter Beatrice and Dante with St. James also
Blake Illustrations of Dante

Eighth Sphere (The Fixed Stars: Faith, Hope, and Love)[edit]

The sphere of the Fixed Stars is the sphere of the church triumphant.^[34] From here (in fact, from the constellation Gemini, under which he was born), Dante looks back on the seven spheres he has visited, and on the Earth (Canto XXII):

"My eyes returned through all the seven spheres
and saw this globe in such a way that I
smiled at its scrawny image: I approve

that judgment as the best, which holds this earth
to be the least; and he whose thoughts are set
elsewhere, can truly be called virtuous."^[35]

Here, Dante sees the Virgin Mary and other saints (Canto XXIII). St. Peter tests Dante on faith, asking what it is, and whether Dante has it. In response to Dante's reply, St. Peter asks Dante how he knows that the Bible is true, and (in an argument attributed to Augustine^[36]) Dante cites the miracle of the Church's growth from such humble beginnings (Canto XXIV):

"Say, who assures you that those works were real?
came the reply. The very thing that needs
proof no thing else attests these works to you.

	Dante Alighieri`s Paradiso MENU 0:00 Alessandro Sorrentino reads the XXXIII chant of Dante's Paradise
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I said: If without miracles the world
was turned to Christianity, that is
so great a miracle that, all the rest

are not its hundredth part: for you were poor
and hungry when you found the field and sowed
the good plant once a vine and now a thorn."^[37]

St. James, who questions Dante on hope (painting byRembrandt), Canto 25.

St. James^[38] questions Dante on hope, and Beatrice vouches for his possession of it (Canto XXV):

"There is no child of the Church Militant
who has more hope than he has, as is written
within the Sun whose rays reach all our ranks:

thus it is granted him to come from Egypt
into Jerusalem that he have vision
of it, before his term of warring ends."^[39]

Finally, St. John questions Dante on love. In his reply, Dante refers back to the concept of "twisted love" discussed in the Purgatorio^[40] (Canto XXVI):

"Thus I began again: My charity
results from all those things whose bite can bring
the heart to turn to God; the world's existence

and mine, the death that He sustained that I
might live, and that which is the hope of all
believers, as it is my hope, together

with living knowledge I have spoken of
these drew me from the sea of twisted love
and set me on the shore of the right love.

The leaves enleaving all the garden of
the Everlasting Gardener, I love
according to the good He gave to them."^[41]

St. Peter then denounces Pope Boniface VIII in very strong terms, and says that, in his eyes, the Papal See stands empty (Canto XXVII).

Dante and Beatrice see God as a point of light surrounded by angels (illustration by Gustave Doré), Canto 28.