Paradiso 2--Mercury: Cantos 5-7

[Laurel]

Dante and Beatrice rise to Mercury in the middle of Canto 5.

CANTO V.

--The sanctity of vows, and the seriousness with which they are to be made or changed.

--Ascent to the Heaven of Mercury.

--The shade of Justinian.

CANTO VI.

--Justinian tells of his own life.

--The story of the Roman Eagle.

--Spirits in the planet Mercury.

--Romeo.

CANTO VII.

--Discourse of Beatrice.

--The Fall of Man.

--The scheme of his Redemption.

[Laurel]

Here's how Canto 6 begins in the Charles Eliot Norton translation, with his footnotes:

After Constantine turned the Eagle counter to the course of the heavens which it had followed behind the ancient who took to wife Lavinia, [1] a hundred and a hundred years and more [2] the bird of God held itself on the verge of Europe, near to the Mountains [3] from which it first came forth, and there governed the world beneath the shadow of the sacred wings, from hand to hand, and thus changing, unto mine own arrived. Caesar I was, [4] and am Justinian,

[1] Constantine, transferring the seat of Empire from Rome to Byzantium, carried the Eagle from West to East, counter to the course along which Aeneas had borne it when he went from Troy to found the Roman Empire. [2] From A. D. 324, when the transfer was begun, to 527, when Justinian became Emperor. [3] Of the Troad, opposite Byzantium. [4] On earth Emperor, but in Heaven earthly dignities exist no longer.

[rbehr]

Here are a couple of comments from Teaching Company Lectures on Canto VI of Paradiso. 

1. This is the only Canto in Divine Comedy where one speaker, Justinian, speaks for the entire Canto.  
2. This Canto is a continuation of the discussion of politics in Canto VI in the Inferno and Purgatario.  Souls here have more insight into politics and can see the broader historical perspective on politics.  
3. Line 10 of the Canto, "Caesar I was and am Justinian" indicates that souls in Heaven have no titles.  Now he is Justinian, not Caesar Justinian.  
4. Lines 16 to 25 indicate:
   a. that Dante believed that for a State Leader to succeed, he had to have his religious house in order.
   b. Dante believed in separation of State and Church.  Justinian ruled the State and the Pope ruled the Church. 
5. The Eastern Roman Empire continued for almost 1,000 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the invading German Barbarians.  I didn't realize this and am going to look more into the I'm going educate myself more on the history of Byzantium.

    

Message Edited by rbehr on 07-09-2009 07:52 PM

[Laurel]

Very helpful, Rae. Thanks! Yes, Byzantium is a very interesting study of which I know little. It gets you into Russian history, too.

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rbehr wrote:

Here are a couple of comments from Teaching Company Lectures on Canto VI of Paradiso. 

1. This is the only Canto in Divine Comedy where one speaker, Justinian, speaks for the entire Canto.  
2. This Canto is a continuation of the discussion of politics in Canto VI in the Inferno and Purgatario.  Souls here have more insight into politics and can see the broader historical perspective on politics.  
3. Line 10 of the Canto, "Caesar I was and am Justinian" indicates that souls in Heaven have no titles.  Now he is Justinian, not Caesar Justinian.  
4. Lines 16 to 25 indicate:
   a. that Dante believed that for a State Leader to succeed, he had to have his religious house in order.
   b. Dante believed in separation of State and Church.  Justinian ruled the State and the Pope ruled the Church. 
5. The Eastern Roman Empire continued for almost 1,000 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the invading German Barbarians.  I didn't realize this and am going to look more into the I'm going educate myself more on the history of Byzantium.

    

Message Edited by rbehr on 07-09-2009 07:52 PM

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[rbehr]

Canto VI of Paradiso aroused my interest in the Byzantine Empire.  Here's a super-brief timeline on the Eastern Roman (Byzantine)
285AD - Diocletian splits Roman Empire into two halves.
330AD - Emperor Constantine moves the seat of the administration to Constantinople, ending the traditional Roman Empire.
476AD - Western Portion of Roman Empire falls to Goths (German Barbarians).
550AD - Justinian, Emperor of Byzantium, codifies Roman Law and attempts, but fails, to restore The Traditional Roman Empire. 
1453AD - Eastern Portion of Roman Empire (Byzantium) falls to Ottoman Empire.

Here is a good interactive map that shows the stages of the Eastern Roman Empire and a Sparknotes discussion with some detail on the time of the collapse of the traditional Roman Empire and Diocletian and Constantine's rule.  

I'm not a history buff, so if anyone sees an error above, please let me/us know.  

[rbehr]

The Teaching Company Lectures on Dante compare Romeo di Veillenure's place in heaven in Canto VI of Paradiso (Lines 127 to 142) with Pier dell Vigne's place in Hell in Inferno Canto XIII.  Both suffered a similar fate in that they were wronged and lost their position at a court.   But, Romeo humbly accepted his fate and ended up in heaven and being praised by an emperor (Justinian) while Pier focused on himself and the harm done to him, committed suicide, and ended up in Hell.  

[Laurel]

Very interesting. There must be all sorts of little germinal novels in this work.

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rbehr wrote:
The Teaching Company Lectures on Dante compare Romeo di Veillenure's place in heaven in Canto VI of Paradiso (Lines 127 to 142) with Pier dell Vigne's place in Hell in Inferno Canto XIII.  Both suffered a similar fate in that they were wronged and lost their position at a court.   But, Romeo humbly accepted his fate and ended up in heaven and being praised by an emperor (Justinian) while Pier focused on himself and the harm done to him, committed suicide, and ended up in Hell.  

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[Choisya]

Sissons sees quite a lot of Greek classicism in this Canto. 

L1-12 The medieval paradox of 'Buridan's donkey' caught between two equally attractive bales of hay refers back to Aristotle.

L23-25 refer to Plato's conception in the Timaeus that souls proceeded from the stars and were noble, more or less, according to the nobleness of the star, and then returned or 'reversed' to the star in a process of reincarnation.  

L40-48 Dante held the Aristotlean and Thomist view of the mechanics of comprehension, viz.  that cognition is based upon sensory experience (eg: 'all our knowledge originates from sense' Summa Theologica.) Since Dante is alive in the flesh, his acquisition of knowledge in the Beyond is limited to this pedestrian process (sensation>imagination>intellection), whereas angels and the disembodied souls achieve cognition directly, with no intermediary stages. Piccarda's appearance in the Spheres of the Moon is momentary, and merely in charitable condescension to Dante's limited means of cognitiion.

L55-6 appear to hint at the possibility of a reconciliation of Platonic and orthodox thought, suggesting that Plato might have been referring obliquely to astral influences as determining man's atttributes and personalaity, an idea partially accepted by Dante but with important reservations. 

L70-72 infer that Logic, not faith, is required to solve the problem of Piccarda's and Constance's occupation of the lowests of the celestial states.

L129  For Dante, following Aristotelian thought, there is nothing in nature that is vain or futile. The intellectual problems that man poses for himself therefore must have answers, to be found, if not in rational philosophy alone, then (for Dante) in philosophy illuminated by revealed Christian truth and doctrine.

[Minos]

you left out when Constantinople was sacked for the final time by crusaders in the 1480's A.D.

[Choisya]

That's because the Divine Comedy was written between 1308 and 1321, when Dante died. 

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Minos wrote:
you left out when Constantinople was sacked for the final time by crusaders in the 1480's A.D.

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