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Paradise · Cantos XIII to XVI

The Sun and Mars

Home, Exile, and ReturnFaithGod and the DivineKnowledge and Wisdom

Summary of the cantos

These four cantos close the heaven of the wise and open that of the soldiers, and in both the question is the same: what is seen and who can judge. In the Sun, Thomas Aquinas resolves a doubt about Solomon by separating knowledge from kingly prudence, and ends with a warning against hasty judgment, in which he orders the pilgrim to put lead on his feet. Beatrice asks, in Canto XIV, the question Dante did not ask about the resurrection of the bodies, and a voice answers that glorified flesh completes the vision instead of dazzling it; in Mars, the cross of lights flashes Christ, and Dante excuses himself for having placed it above her eyes. In the two cantos that follow, his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida receives his grandson with words in Latin and describes old Florence through absences and through names, until he makes the fall of houses a theme of pride and of time. The center of the part is judgment: what Thomas forbids, the poet does next through the mouth of another, and the question is whether the warning of Canto XIII and the catalogue of Canto XVI can fit in the same poem.

Canto XIII: Thomas and the Measure of Solomon

God and the DivineJustice and LawKnowledge and Wisdom

Summary of the canto

The canto opens with an order to the reader: whoever wants to understand what Dante saw should imagine fifteen stars, the brightest in the sky, plus the seven of the Wain and the two at the mouth of the Horn of the Little Bear, tracing two signs like the crown of Ariadne, daughter of Minos, with the two turns spinning in opposite directions. That will be only the shadow of the true constellation, as far beyond custom as the swifter heaven is beyond the movement of the Chiana, the river that hardly runs. These are the twenty-four lights of the two crowns, and what they sing is said by negation:

Analysis

Lì si cantò non Bacco, non Peana, / ma tre persone in divina natura, / e in una persona essa e l’umana, there was sung not Bacchus, not Paean, but three persons in the divine nature, and in one person both the divine and the human.

Dante says what the wheel sings by what it does not sing: not the gods of wine and of Apollo, whom ancient poetry hymned, but the Trinity and the two natures of Christ in one person. The negation corrects the repertoire that the poem uses in other cantos and fixes the object of the praise. Two readings: a correction of pagan usage, or only a mark that the office of that wheel is another.

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Canto XIV: The Resurrection and the Cross of Mars

LoveFaithGod and the Divine

Summary of the canto

As water in a round vessel moves from the center to the rim and from the rim to the center as it is struck from outside or from within, so there arose in Dante's mind the likeness between the voice of Thomas, who had just fallen silent, and that of Beatrice, which continues it from the center of the circle. She speaks for him, without his saying it:

Analysis

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Canto XV: Cacciaguida and Old Florence

Home, Exile, and Return

Summary of the canto

The good will in which the love that blows straight is always melted, as greed is in the wicked, puts silence on the sweet lyre and quiets the holy strings that the right hand of heaven loosens and tightens. Dante concludes that the souls fell silent to give him the will to ask, and adds that it is just for whoever, for love of a thing that does not last, strips himself of eternal love to be given without end. Then a star runs from the right arm to the foot of the cross, like a sudden fire in a serene sky, without leaving the luminous ribbon, and like fire behind alabaster:

Analysis

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Canto XVI: Old Florence and Its Families

Home, Exile, and Return

Summary of the canto

The canto opens with the vanity of Dante, who says he is not surprised that men boast of blood down here, because he himself boasted of it in heaven:

Analysis

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Reading of the block of cantos

Analysis

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