What It Is
The eagle is the sign of the Roman empire and, in Paradise, the sign of justice. It appears at two moments that the poem links: in the mouth of Justinian, in the heaven of Mercury, who recounts his history since Constantine turned it against the course of heaven, and in the heaven of Jupiter, where the souls of the just gather in the form of an eagle and speak with a single voice. The first is history, the second is vision. In the first the emperor judges who appropriates the sign and who opposes it, the two sides with the same symmetry. In the second the eagle is made of thousands of lights that first draw loose letters, then a sentence that counsels those who judge the earth, and finally the head and neck of the bird. It speaks in the first person singular, in the name of all the souls, and answers the doubt of Dante about the man of the Indus. In its eye are Rhipeus and the light that the common reading identifies with Trajan.
Where It Appears
In Canto VI, the story begins with Constantine's gesture:
Poscia che Costantin l’aquila volse / contr’ al corso del ciel, ch’ella seguio / dietro a l’antico che Lavina tolse, after Constantine turned the eagle against the course of heaven, which it had followed behind the ancient one that Lavinia took.
The criterion of judgment comes before the list:
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 there moves against the sacrosanct sign both he who appropriates it and he who opposes it.
And the accusation falls on both sides:
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 to the public sign the yellow lilies, and the other appropriates it for a party, so that it is hard to see who errs more.
In Canto XVIII the souls write like flocks of birds, and the sentence is a command to those who govern:
‘DILIGITE IUSTITIAM’, primai / fur verbo e nome di tutto ’l dipinto; / ‘QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM’, fur sezzai., Diligite iustitiam were the first, verb and noun of the whole painting; qui iudicatis terram, the last.
Once settled, they draw the bird without a human painter:
e quïetata ciascuna in suo loco, / la testa e ’l collo d’un’aguglia vidi / rappresentare a quel distinto foco. / Quei che dipinge lì, non ha chi ’l guidi; / ma esso guida, e da lui si rammenta / quella virtù ch’è forma per li nidi., and each one settled in its place, I saw the head and neck of an eagle represented by that distinct fire. He who paints there has no one to guide him; but he guides, and from him is remembered that power which is the form for the nests.
In Canto XIX it speaks:
ch’io vidi e anche udi’ parlar lo rostro, / e sonar ne la voce e «io» e «mio», / quand’ era nel concetto e ‘noi’ e ‘nostro’., when I saw and also heard the beak speak, and in its voice "I" and "mine" sound, when in thought it was "we" and "ours".
The answer to Dante's doubt refuses the place of the judge:
Or tu chi se’, che vuo’ sedere a scranna, / per giudicar di lungi mille miglia / con la veduta corta d’una spanna?, now who are you, who want to sit in the chair to judge from a thousand miles away with the short sight of a span?
The Eagle's answer may sound unsatisfying, because it refuses the place of the one who asks instead of explaining the case.
In Canto XX it shows the six spirits of the eye and the brow, and among them Rhipeus and the one the common reading takes as Trajan:
Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante / che Rifëo Troiano in questo tondo / fosse la quinta de le luci sante?, who would believe, down in the wandering world, that Rhipeus the Trojan, in this circle, was the fifth of the holy lights?
What It Means
The eagle says two things that seem opposed. On the one hand, it is the empire as an instrument of providence: the sign has a divine origin, and whoever takes it for a party or fights it errs. On the other, it is a justice that no mortal reaches: the human eye in the high sea does not see the bottom, and whoever sits to judge from afar measures badly. The two sides meet in its subject, an I made of we, which gives the discourse of justice a voice without an owner. The poem also makes the eagle change its function: in Mercury it is matter of earthly politics, in Jupiter it is the place where politics falls silent before the justice of God.
The text supports two readings. On the first, the eagle is the defense of the empire against the political Church, and the heaven of Jupiter only confirms what Justinian said. On the second, it is the critique of the claim of any earthly sign to speak justice, and the discourse on the man of the Indus and on Rhipeus shows that God's justice is greater than the empire. The two coexist, and the poem does not reconcile them.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Justice and law, Knowledge and wisdom, Faith.
- Themes of the work: Justice and law, Faith.
- Characters: Justinian, Dante, Beatrice.
- Related symbols: the cross of Mars, the ladder of Saturn.