Who He Is
Justinian is the soul hidden within its own ray in the sphere of Mercury, and he speaks the whole of canto VI without interruption from Dante, from Beatrice, or from any other soul. He introduces himself with two tenses of the verb: he was Caesar, he is Justinian. The title has stayed in the past, and what defines him now is the first love he feels and the office that this love made him fulfill, removing the superfluous and the vain from the laws. The poem gives the emperor's work a single line, and what fills the rest of the canto is the eagle: he tells the history of the sign of Rome, from Aeneas to Charlemagne, in order to judge who appropriates it and who opposes it. Above all he wants the pilgrim to see with how much reason both those who take it for a party and those who fight it move against the sign. He confesses that he erred in matters of faith (he believed in a single nature in Christ) and was corrected by Pope Agapetus, and only after that conversion did God inspire in him the lofty labor. Tradition reads him as the emperor of Byzantium and author of the Roman code; the poem identifies him by name, and the rest comes from the commentators.
Trajectory
The canto VI of Paradise begins with the sign, and only afterward comes the name:
Cesare fui e son Iustinïano, / che, per voler del primo amor ch’i’ sento, / d’entro le leggi trassi il troppo e ’l vano.I was Caesar and I am Justinian, the emperor who, by the will of the first love I feel, removed the superfluous and the vain from the laws, a reference to the compilation of the Corpus Iuris Civilis. From there he narrates the whole history of the Roman eagle, from Aeneas to Charlemagne, to sustain the poem's political thesis: imperial authority has a divine origin, just as the ecclesiastical does. It is the third term of a horizontal reading: city in Inferno, country in Purgatory, empire in Paradise, always in canto VI.
Before the work, faith: Justinian recounts the heresy and the correction, and gives the order of things the canto is going to follow.
E prima ch’io a l’ovra fossi attento, / una natura in Cristo esser, non piùe, / credea, e di tal fede era contento; / ma ’l benedetto Agapito, che fue / sommo pastore, a la fede sincera / mi dirizzò con le parole sue, and before I attended to the work, I believed that in Christ there was one nature, and no more, and I was content with such faith; but the blessed Agapetus, who was supreme pastor, directed me to the sincere faith with his words.
He hands the arms to Belisarius, to whom the right hand of heaven was joined, and passes to the reason for speaking of the sign: the list of deeds that follows is not a chronicle, it is an argument.
perché tu veggi con quanta ragione / si move contr’ al sacrosanto segno / e chi ’l s’appropria e chi a lui s’oppone, so that you may see with how much reason both those who appropriate the sacrosanct sign and those who oppose it move against it.
The course of the eagle goes from the death of Pallas to Charlemagne, passing through Caesar, through the next bearer (Augustus, in the common reading), through the third Caesar (Tiberius, in the common reading), and through Titus. What the poem draws from this is a judgment on the politics of its own time, and the accusation falls on both sides with the same symmetry:
L’uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli / oppone, e l’altro appropria quello a parte, / sì ch’è forte a veder chi più si falli, one opposes the yellow lilies to the public sign, and the other appropriates that sign for a party, so that it is hard to see which of them errs more.
Then he explains the heaven where he is: Mercury is the dwelling of those who acted so that honor and fame would follow them, and when desires climb that path the rays of true love rise less alive. The difference of rung is harmony:
Diverse voci fanno dolci note; / così diversi scanni in nostra vita / rendon dolce armonia tra queste rote, diverse voices make sweet notes; so diverse seats in our life make sweet harmony among these wheels.
The canto closes with Romeo, an ill-paid pilgrim who made the four daughters of Raymond Berenger queens and left poor:
indi partissi povero e vetusto; / e se ’l mondo sapesse il cor ch’elli ebbe, / mendicando sua vita a frusto a frusto, / assai lo loda, e più lo loderebbe, then he left, poor and old; and if the world knew the heart he had, begging his life crust by crust, it would praise him greatly, and would praise him even more.
In canto VII he sings a hymn in Latin and withdraws, dancing, with the other lights, and Beatrice speaks in his place.
Themes Embodied
Justinian embodies Justice and law as history: the law he organized takes up little of the canto, and the eagle, which he recounts from end to end, is what the poem weighs. What the canto proves is that imperial authority has a divine origin, and that whoever takes it for a party debases it. The faith that corrected him before the work makes the emperor an example of conversion, and the heaven of Mercury shows the price: the honor he sought on earth is what places him there.
The text sustains two readings of the office. In the first, Justinian is the lawgiver whom heaven rewards, and the canto is a defense of the empire against the political Church of Dante's time. In the second, he is the emperor the poem uses to say that the politics of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, on earth, betrayed the sign that each side claims to defend. He accuses both with the same force and closes with a just beggar, not with a triumph.
Relationships
- The eagle of justice: the sign he recounts and defends.
- Beatrice: who listens to him with Dante and speaks next, in canto VII.
- Dante: the listener who asks him who he is.
- Charles Martel: the prince of the next heaven, who also speaks of government and lineage.