Abstract
This chapter discusses the 24 figures of wisdom and prudence that are seen in the heaven of the sun, one of the most beautiful sections of the Paradiso. They are headed by Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura. These theologians, a Dominican and a Franciscan, respectively, give the lives of Francis of Assisi and Dominic, the Dominican praising the Franciscan and the Franciscan the Dominican. This pattern of reconciliation is matched by the way Aquinas speaks of Siger of Brabant, and Bonaventura praises the prophetic utterances of Joachim of Fiore, while the speakers include Solomon, whose wisdom is defined. The chapter probes all these themes, while noting the dancing and singing, the attention to the idea of the Trinity, and the way in which these grave theological figures are turned into dancing women.
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Notes
- 1.
For Trinitarian doctrine from the emanationism of Plotinus, and his threefold division of Being-Life-Intellect, through to Bonaventure, see McGinn (2007: 137–155). The theology of the Spirit proceeding from Father and Son differs from the Byzantine church, where it proceeds only from the Father.
- 2.
- 3.
On points raised by Siger, see (Dales 1990: 140–145, and 31, 64, 153, 172–173), and Mahoney (1974: 531–553). Maurer (1955: 233–239) asserts that no one held the doctrine of the double truth as it was condemned in 1277. See Mazzotta (1993: 112–115), Tambling (2010: 113–117). Recent work comes from Luca Banchi, ‘A “Heterodox” in Paradise? Notes on the Relationship between Dante and Siger of Brabant’; Bryan Brazeau, ‘“I Fight Auctoritas, Auctoritas always Wins”: Siger of Brabant, Paradiso X and Dante’s Textual Authority’; and Zygmunt Baránski, ‘The Temptations of a Heterodox Dante’, in Ardizzone (2015: 78–105, 106–125, 164–196). On Cavalcanti, see Cornish (2000a).
- 4.
They indicate a new authority which the clerici were gaining by the thirteenth century. Here, heresy was treated more authoritatively as with the pantheistic Almaricians—see Thijissen (1996: 43–65).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Giotto condenses different images from the Assisi frescoes, showing several things happening in each. Francis seems less mystical, with no posthumous miracles, and with visionary experiences associated with him reduced from the Assisi basilica nine, to two. Smart (1971: 109–117), Cook (2004: 144–145). For Dante and the Assisi frescoes, see Herzman (2005: 189–210.)
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Petrocchi’s edition, the standard for modern texts, reads ‘pianse’; Auerbach thinks this shows a preference for ‘good taste’ (238). Auerbach’s reading is defended in Needler (1969).
- 11.
The language derives from Ubertino: Gardner quotes: ‘when, by reason of the height of the Cross, even thine own Mother (who nevertheless alone did then faithfully worship Thee, and was joined by agonised love to Thy passion), even she, I say, and such a Mother, could not reach up to Thee; Lady Poverty with all her penury, as Thy most dear servitor, held Thee more than ever closely embraced, and was joined most intimately [precordialibus] to Thy sufferings’ (Gardner 1913: 235).
- 12.
Derbes (1996: 154–156); for an illustration, see 148. Derbes cites Bonaventura on Francis: ‘he made a ladder by which he might mount up and embrace Him who is all-desirable’ (156) and incidentally enables a connection to be made between this bounding up, and running (cp. Para. 11.59). Compare the Cistercian Adam of Perseigne (c.1145–1221), writing to a nun on ‘the merits of the cross’: ‘if you do not refuse to copulate with your husband [Christ] on such a bed you shall achieve one day the glory of a nuptial bed which knows nothing of cross or pain’ (quoted, Fleming, 252).
- 13.
Derbes (1996: 92, 133), notes the connection between the cord Francis binds on himself and the new stress in pictures of the Passion on Christ being bound: one becomes an image of the other; compare Isaiah 3.24. The pride/humility of the market-place in Purg 11.136–142 gives another comparison.
- 14.
Chiarenza (1993: 164). She draws on the nakedness and shame that the feminine figure of Justice has been reduced to in the canzone ‘Tre donne’; see lines 28, 91, 92 (Rime no. 81).
- 15.
Chaucer: ‘whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth / Inspired hath in every holt and heeth / The tendre croppes’ (Prologue to the Canterbury Tales lines 5–7).
- 16.
Portugal separated from Galicia by 1179; it is alluded to in Para.19.139.
- 17.
Frontiers between Islam and the Christian rulers were permeable, as with Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar: El Cid (born 1040s). El Cid was hospitable to both sides, while advising Alfonso VI, ‘Emperor of all the Spains’. Whereas the Chanson de Roland (c.1100—see Para.18.43) shows division between the Christians and the Muslims, the Cantar de Mio Cid (1201–1207), contemporary with Dominic, shows the slow ascendancy of the Christians in Castile, describing events between 1043 and 1099.
- 18.
Reeves (1976: 1–28 and 65–65) for Dantean derivations from Joachim. See Marjorie Reeves and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 297–329 for the influence of this book upon Dante’s visual imagination, deriving the sky-writing of Paradiso 18.94–108 from the Liber Figuram. For Dante and the Joachites, see Davis (1957: 239–243).
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
Langland (2008), C Text, XI: 212–221; see note vol. 2 pt 2, 594–595.
- 22.
See Rachel Jacoff’s ‘“Our Bodies, Our Selves”: The Body in the Commedia’ in Stewart and Cornish (2000: 119–138); and, in the same volume, Marguerite Chiarenza, ‘Solomon’s Song in the Divine Comedy’, 199–208.
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Tambling, J. (2021). Dancing in the Sun: Paradiso—Cantos 10–14. In: The Poetry of Dante's Paradiso. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65628-7_3
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