What It Is
The ladder of Saturn is a ladder the color of gold, raised so high that the sight of Dante does not follow it, and down which splendors descend, like jackdaws that move together at daybreak to warm their cold feathers. It appears in the seventh heaven, that of Saturn, which the poem does not name: it calls it the crystal that bears the name of the dear chief under whom all malice lay dead, a memory of an age without evil. It is the ladder of the contemplatives. In Canto XXII, Benedict says that it reaches to the last sphere and that no one any longer lifts his feet from the earth to climb it, and the ladder that Dante sees is the one the patriarch Jacob saw, laden with angels. At the other end, the one who climbs is Dante, carried by Beatrice with a sign, and not by the steps themselves. The splendors that descend are souls: Peter Damian and Benedict, among others, speak of a world in which the abbeys have become caves and the cowls sacks full of bad flour.
Where It Appears
The ladder appears in Canto XXI:
Dentro al cristallo che ’l vocabol porta, / cerchiando il mondo, del suo caro duce / sotto cui giacque ogne malizia morta, / di color d’oro in che raggio traluce / vid’ io uno scaleo eretto in suso / tanto, che nol seguiva la mia luce., within the crystal that bears the name, circling the world, of its dear leader under whom all malice lay dead, of the color of gold in which a ray shines through, I saw a ladder raised upward so far that my light did not follow it.
The soul that descends explains the silence of heaven and the limit of Dante, and gives the rule of not presuming to move one's feet toward such a goal:
E al mondo mortal, quando tu riedi, / questo rapporta, sì che non presumma / a tanto segno più mover li piedi. / La mente, che qui luce, in terra fumma; / onde riguarda come può là giùe / quel che non pote perché ’l ciel l’assumma»., and to the mortal world, when you return, report this, so that no one presumes to move his feet any more toward so great a mark. The mind that shines here smokes on earth; so consider how it can down there what it cannot, even though heaven takes it up.
The satire of the prelates is of the body:
Cuopron d’i manti loro i palafreni, / sì che due bestie van sott’ una pelle: / oh pazïenza che tanto sostieni!»., they cover their palfreys with their cloaks, so that two beasts go under one skin: O patience, you who bear so much!
In Canto XXII Benedict names the ladder after Jacob's:
Infin là sù la vide il patriarca / Iacobbe porger la superna parte, / quando li apparve d’angeli sì carca., as far up there the patriarch Jacob saw it extend its upper part, when it appeared to him so laden with angels.
The passage from Genesis:
And he had a dream: he saw a ladder, which, resting on the earth, touched the heavens with its top; and angels of God went up and down by the ladder. At the top stood the Lord, who said to him: "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; I will give to you and to your descendants the land on which you lie. Your descendants will be as numerous as the grains of dust on the ground; you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south, and all the families of the earth will be blessed in you and in your descendants. I am with you, to keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land, and I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you."
And the complaint:
Le mura che solieno esser badia / fatte sono spelonche, e le cocolle / sacca son piene di farina ria., the walls that used to be an abbey have become caves, and the cowls are sacks full of bad flour.
Benedict's method is to look at the beginning and then at where one has arrived:
Pier cominciò sanz’ oro e sanz’ argento, / e io con orazione e con digiuno, / e Francesco umilmente il suo convento; / e se guardi ’l principio di ciascuno, / poscia riguardi là dov’ è trascorso, / tu vederai del bianco fatto bruno., Peter began without gold and without silver, and I with prayer and fasting, and Francis humbly his convent; and if you look at the beginning of each, and then look at where it has run, you will see the white made dark.
At the top, Dante looks down and sees the Earth small:
L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci, / volgendom’ io con li etterni Gemelli, / tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci, the little plot of ground that makes us so ferocious, as I turned with the eternal Twins, appeared to me entire, from the hills to the mouths.
What It Means
The ladder says that contemplation is a path with rungs, and the poem shows the price of leaving it unused. It is opposed, by contrast, to the foreign ladder of exile, which Cacciaguida said Dante would have to climb and descend:
The sentence of exile, in the mouth of Cacciaguida.Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta / più caramente; e questo è quello strale / che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta. / Tu proverai sì come sa di sale / lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle / lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale.You will leave behind everything you love most dearly, and this is the first arrow that the bow of exile shoots. You will try how the bread of others tastes of salt, and how hard a path it is to go down and up by the stairs of others. It is the autobiographical heart of the poem: Dante writes the Comedy already exiled, and places in the mouth of his own ancestor the exact image of the humiliation he was living as he wrote it.
Here the ladder is the one no one climbs, whereas there it is the one the exile climbs against his will. The image joins Jacob, Benedict and Dante: the patriarch saw it, the saint says where it ends, and the pilgrim climbs it without feet.
The text supports two readings. On the first, the ladder is the invitation to the contemplative life, which remains open to whoever knows how to climb. On the second, it is the accusation of one who sees the emptiness: the rule of Benedict has become worn-out paper, a ladder with no one to climb it, and the poem speaks more of abandonment than of the path.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Religion, God and the divine, Faith.
- Themes of the work: Faith, God and the divine.
- Characters: Dante, Beatrice, Saint Peter.
- Related symbols: the cross of Mars, the point of light and the nine choirs.