What It Is
In the Earthly Paradise, a flash runs through the whole forest and a sweet melody runs through the luminous air. Seven trees of gold, which distance made seem so, are in truth candelabra, which leave behind them the air painted in seven bands in the colors of the rainbow. Beneath that sky come twenty-four elders, two by two, crowned with lilies, and then four animals crowned with green, each with six wings full of eyes. In the space between them there is a triumphal chariot with two wheels, drawn by a griffin: in the part that is bird, the limbs are gold, and in the other body white, mixed with red. Beside the right wheel dance three ladies, one red, one of emerald and one of snow; beside the left, four, dressed in purple, and one of them has three eyes in her head. Behind come two old men, four of humble aspect and one alone who comes sleeping. The commentators' tradition reads the elders as the books of the Old Testament, the animals as the evangelists, the chariot as the Church, the griffin as Christ in his two natures, the three ladies as the theological virtues and the four as the cardinal ones. The poem gives colors, gestures and numbers, and not those names.
Where It Appears
The procession fills Canto XXIX of Purgatory. The poet refuses to spend more rhymes on the four animals and sends the reader to Ezekiel:
ma leggi Ezechïel, che li dipigne / come li vide da la fredda parte / venir con vento e con nube e con igne; / e quali i troverai ne le sue carte, / tali eran quivi, salvo ch’a le penne / Giovanni è meco e da lui si diparte, but read Ezekiel, who paints them as he saw them come from the cold side, with wind and cloud and fire; and such as you will find them in his pages, such were they there, except in the wings: in that John is with me and departs from him.
The procession stops when the chariot stands before Dante, with a thunderclap:
E quando il carro a me fu a rimpetto, / un tuon s’udì, e quelle genti degne / parvero aver l’andar più interdetto, / fermandosi ivi con le prime insegne, And when the chariot was before me, a thunder was heard, and those worthy people seemed to have their going hindered, halting there with the first standards.
In Canto XXX of Purgatory, from the cloud of flowers above the chariot, Beatrice appears, and in Canto XXXI of Purgatory Dante sees in her eyes the griffin, the beast of two natures:
Come in lo specchio il sol, non altrimenti / la doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava, / or con altri, or con altri reggimenti, As the sun in a mirror, so in her eyes the double beast shone, now in one fashion, now in another.
In Canto XXXII of Purgatory the griffin ties the pole of the chariot to the bare tree, which flowers again:
gridaron li altri; e l’animal binato: / «Sì si conserva il seme d’ogne giusto, the others cried out; and the animal of two natures: Thus is kept the seed of every just one.
Then the chariot is attacked by an eagle, a fox and a dragon, and ends covered in feathers and transformed into a monster. Above it there appears:
Sicura, quasi rocca in alto monte, / seder sovresso una puttana sciolta / m’apparve con le ciglia intorno pronte, Secure, almost a fortress on a high mountain, a loose whore sat upon it and appeared to me, with her eyes ready all around.
In Canto XXXIII of Purgatory Beatrice gives the prophecy in number, and calls it obscure:
nel quale un cinquecento diece e cinque, / messo di Dio, anciderà la fuia / con quel gigante che con lei delinque, in which a five hundred ten and five, sent by God, will slay the thief with that giant who sins with her.
What It Means
The chariot is the center of the procession and the object of the attack, and that is the point of the symbol: what the poem paints with the greatest solemnity is also what it shows suffering, in the same place, the gravest corruption. The commentators' reading makes of the eagle the Empire, of the fox heresy, of the feathers the temporal power given to the Church, of the whore the Curia, and of the giant the king of France. The poem here does not give those names; it gives the scene.
The procession and the monster are two images of the same vehicle, and the difference between them is only what was allowed to be done to it. What joins the procession to Beatrice's accusation is the vocabulary of sight: both ask that Dante look and write, one through splendor and the other through shame. There are two readings for the five-hundred-ten-and-five: a messenger of God who will slay the thief and the giant, with the Roman letters read as DUX in the most widespread reading, or an obscurity that Beatrice cultivates because she speaks to one who will not understand now. The text leaves both, and the riddle has remained open.
Relationships
- Default themes: Politics, Guilt, Redemption.
- Themes of the work: Politics, Redemption.
- Characters: Beatrice, Dante, Matelda.
- Neighboring symbols: Lethe and Eunoe, the river the procession skirts and that Dante crosses after it.