The ascent to the Third Heaven, or that of Venus, where are seen the spirits of Lovers. Of this Heaven Dante says, Convito, II. 14:--
"The Heaven of Venus may be compared to Rhetoric for two properties; the first is the brightness of its aspect, which is most sweet to look upon, more than any other star; the second is its appearance, now in the morning, now in the evening. And these two properties are in Rhetoric, the sweetest of all the sciences, for that is principally its intention. It appears in the morning when the rhetorician speaks before the face of his audience; it appears in the evening, that is, retrograde, when the letter in part remote speaks for the rhetorician."
For the influences of Venus, see Canto IX. Note 33.
In the days of "the false and lying gods," when the world was in peril of damnation for misbelief. Cypria, or Cyprigna, was a title of Venus, from the place of her birth, Cyprus.
3. The third Epicycle, or that of Venus, the third planet, was its supposed motion from west to east, while the whole heavens were swept onward from east to west by the motion of the Primum Mobile.
In the Convito, II. 4, Dante says:
"Upon the back of this circle (the Equatorial) in the Heaven of Venus, of which we are now treating, is a little sphere, which revolves of itself in the heaven, and whose orbit the astrologers call Epicycle." And again, II. 7: "All this heaven moves and revolves with its Epicycle from east to west, once every natural day; but whether this movement be by any Intelligence, or by the sweep of the Primum Mobile, God knoweth; in me it would be presumptuous to judge."
Milton, Par. Lost, VIII. 72:--
"From man or angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire; or, if they list to try
Conjecture, He his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes; perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model heaven
And calculate the stars; how they will wield
The mighty frame: how build, unbuild, contrive,
To save appearances how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."
See also Nichol, Solar System, p.7: "Nothing in later times ought to obscure the glory of Hipparchus, and, as some think, the still greater Ptolemy. Amid the bewilderment of these planetary motions, what could they say, except that the 'gods never act without design;' and thereon resolve to discern it? The motion of the Earth was concealed from them: nor was aught intelligible or explicable concerning the wanderings of the planets, except the grand revolution of the sky around the Earth. That Earth, small to us, they therefore, on the ground of phenomena, considered the centre of the Universe,--thinking, perhaps, not more confinedly than persons in repute in modern days. Around that centre all motion seemedto pass in order the most regular; and if a few bodies appeared to interrupt the regularity of that order, why not conceive the existence of some arrangement by which they might be reconciled with it? It was a strange, but most ingenious idea. They could not tell how, by any simple system of circular and uniform motion, the ascertained courses of the planets, as directly observed, were to be accounted for; but they made a most artificial scheme, that still saved the immobility of the Earth. Suppose a person passing around a room holding a lamp, and all the while turning on his heel. If he turned round uniformly, there would be no actual interruption of the uniform circular motion both of the carrier and the carried ; but the light, as seen by an observer of the interior, would make strange gyrations. Unable to account otherwise for the irregularities of the planets, they mounted them in this manner, on small circles, whose centres only revolved regularly around the Earth, but which, during their revolutionary motion, also revolved around their own centres. Styling these cycles and epicycles, the ancient learned men framed that grand system of the Heavens concerning which Ptolemy composed his 'Syntax.'"
Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost,
"This wimpled, whining, purblind, waywa~ boy;
This senioriunior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents."
Cupid in the semblance of Ascanius. Aeneid, I. 718, Davidson's Tr.
She clings to him with her eyes, her whole soul, and sometimes fondles him i:1 her lap, Dido not thinking what a powerful god is settling on her, hapless on~. Meanwhile he, mindful of his Acidalian mother, begins insensibly to efface the memory of Sichaeus, and with a living flame tries to prepossess her languid affections, and her heart, chilled by long disuse."
Venus, with whose name this canto begins.
Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I. Ch. 3, says that Venus "always follows the sun, and is beautiful and gentle, and is called the Goddess of Love."
Dante says, it plays with or caresses the sun, "now behind and now in front." When it follows, it is Hesperus, the Evening Star; when it precedes, it is Phosphor, the Morning Star.
The rapidity of the motion of the spirits, as well as their brightness, is in proportion to their vision of God. Compare Canto XIV. 40 :--
Its brightness is proportioned to the ardour, The ardour to the vision ; and the vision Equals what grace it has above its worth."
Their motion originates in the Primum Mobile, whose Regents, or Intelligences, are the Seraphim.
Made visible by mist and cloudrack.
The Regents, or Intelligences, of Venus are the Principalities.
This is the first line of the first canzone in the Convito, and in his commentary upon it, II. 5, Dante says: "In the first place, then, be it known, that the movers of this heaven are substances separate from matter, that is, Intelligences, which the common people call Angels." And farther on, II. 6:
"It is reasonable to believe that the motors of the Heaven of the Moon are of the order of the Angels ; and those of Mercury are the Archangels; and those of Venus are the Thrones." It will be observed, however, that in line 34 he alludes to the Principalities as the Regents of Venus; and in Canto IX. 6i, speaks of the Thrones as reflecting the justice of God :--
"Above us there are mirrors, Thrones you call thern,
From which shines out on us God Judicant ;"
thus referring the Thrones to a higher heaven than that of Venus.
After he had by looks asked and gained assent from Beatrice.
The spirit shows its increase of joy by increase of brightness. As Picarda in Canto III.67:--
"First with those other shades she smiled a little;
Hereafter answered me so joyously,
She seemed to burn in the first fire of love.
And Justinian, in Canto V. 133:--
"Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself
By too much light, when heat has worn away
The tempering influence of the vapours dense,
By greater rapture thus concealed itself
In its own radiance the figure saintly."
The spirit who speaks is Charles Martel of Hungary, the friend and benefactor of Dante. He was the eldest son of Charles the Lame (Charles II. of Naples and of Mary of Hungary. He was born in 1272, and in 1291 married the "beautiful Clemence," daughter of Rudolph of Hapsburg, Emperor of Germany. He died in 1295, at the age of twenty-three, to which he alludes in the words,
"The world possessed me Short time below."
That part of Provence, embracing Avignon, Aix, Arles, and Marseilles, of which his father was lord, and which he would have inherited had he lived. This is "the great dowry of Provence," which the daughter of Raymond Berenger brought to Charles of
Anjou in marriage, and which is mentioned in Purg. XX. 61, as taking the sense of shame out of the blood of the Capets.
The kingdom of Apulia in Ausonia, or Lower Italy, embracing Bari on the Adriatic, Gaeta in the Terra di Lavoro on the Mediterranean, and Crotona in Calabria; a region bounded on the north by the Tronto emptying into the Adriatic, and the Verde (or Gangliano) emptying into the Mediterranean.
The kingdom of Hungary.
Sicily, called of old Trinacria, from its three promontories Peloro, Pachino, and Lilibeo.
Pachino is the south-eastern promontory of Sicily, and Peloro the northeastern. Between them lies the Gulf of Catania, receiving with open arms the east wind. Horace speaks of Eurus as riding the Sicilian seas."
Both Pindar and Ovid speak of the giant Typhoeus, as struck by Jove's thunderbolt, and lying buried under Aetna. Virgil says it is Enceladus, a brother of Typhoeus. Charles Martel here gives the philosophical, not the poetical, cause of the murky atmosphere of the bay.
Through him from his grandfather Charles of Anjou, and his father-in-law the Emperor Rudolph.
The Sicilian Vespers and revolt of Palermo, in 1282. Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VI. 155: "It was at a festival on Easter Tuesday that a multitude of the inhabitants of Palermo and the neighbourhood had thronged to a church, about half a mile out of the town, dedicated to the Holy Ghost. The religious service was over, the merriment begun ; tables were spread, the amusements of all sorts, games, dances under the trees, were going gaily on; when the harmony was suddenly interrupted and the joyousness chilled by the appearance of a body of French soldiery, under the pretext of keeping the peace. The French mingled familiarity with the people, paid court, not in the most respectful manner, to the women ; the young men made sullen remonstrances, and told them to go their way. The Frenchmen began to draw together. 'These rebellious Paterins must have aims, or they would not.venture on such insolence.' They began to search some of them for arms. The two parties were already glaring at each other in angry hostility. At that moment the beautiful daughter of Roger Mastrangelo, a maiden of exquisite loveliness and modesty, with her bridegroom, approached the church. A Frenchman named Drouet, either in wantonness or insult, came up to her, and, under the pretence of searching for arms, thrust his hand into her bosom. The girl fainted in her bridegroom's arms. He uttered in his agony the fatal cry, 'Death to the French ! ' A youth rushed forward, stabbed Drouet to the heart with his own sword, was himself struck down. The cry, the shriek, ran through the crowd, 'Death to the French!' Many Sicilians fell, but, of two hundred on the spot, not one Frenchman escaped. The cry spread to the city: Mastrangelo took the lead ; every house was stormed, every hole and corner searched ; their dress, their speech, their persons, their manners, denounced the French. The palace was forced ; the Justiciary, being luckily wounded in the face, and rolled in the dust, and so undetected, mounted a horse, and fled with two followers.
Two thousand French were slain. They denied them decent burial, heaped them together in a great pit. The horrors of the scene were indescribable ; the insurgents broke into the convents, the churches. The friars, especial objects of hatred, were massacred; they slew the French monks, the French priests. Neither old age, nor sex, nor infancy was spared."
Robert, Duke of Calabria, third son of Charles II. and younger brother of Charles Martel. He was King of Sicily from 1309 to 1343. He brought with him from Catalonia a band of needy adventurers, whom he put into high offices of state, "and like so many leeches," says Biagioli, "they filled themselves with the blood of that poor people, not dropping off so long as there remained a drop to suck."
Sicily already heavily laden with taxes of all kinds.
Born of generous ancestors, he was himself avaricious.
Namely, ministers and officials who were not greedy of gain.
In God, where all things are reflected as in a mirror. Rev. xxi. 6: "I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end." Buti interprets thus : "Because I believe that thou seest my joy in God, even as I see it, I am pleased; and this also is dear to me, that thou seest in God, that I believe it."
Convito, III. 14 : "The first agent, I that is, God, sends his influence into some things by means of direct rays, and into others by means of reflected splendour. Hence into the Intelligences the divine light rays out immediately ; in others it is reflected from these Intelligences first illuminated. But as mention is here made of light and splendour, in order to a perfect understanding, I will show the difference of these words, according to Avicenna. I say, the custom of the philosophers is to call the Heaven light, in reference to its existence in its fountain head; to call it ray, in reference to its passing from the fountainhead to the first body, in which it is arrested; to call it splendour, in reference to its reflection upon some other part illuminated."
If men lived isolated from each other, and not in communities.
Aristotle, whom Dante in the Convito, III. 5, calls "that glorious philosopher to whom Nature most laid open her secrets;" and inInf. IV. 131, "the master of those who know."
The Jurist, the Warrior, the Priest and the Artisan are here typified in Solon, Xerxes, Melchisedec, and Daedalus.
Nature, like death, makes no distinction between palace and hovel. Her gentlemen are born alike in each, and so her churls.
Esau and Jacob, though twin brothers, differed in character, Esan being warlike and Jacob peaceable. Genesis XXV. 27: "And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents."
Romulus, called Quirinus, because he always carried a spear (quiris), was of such obscure birth, that the Romans, to dignify their origin, pretended he was born of Mars.
Convito, III. 3 "Animate plants have a very manifest affection for certain places, according to their character ; and therefore we see certain plants rooting themselves by the water-side, and others upon mountainous places, and others on the slopes and at
the foot of the mountains, which, if they are transplanted, either wholly perish, or live a kind of melancholy life, as things separated from what is friendly to them."
Another allusion to King Robert of Sicily. Villani, XII. 9, says of him: "This king Robert was the wisest king that had been known among Christians for five hundred years, both in natural ability and in knowledge, being a very great master in theology, and a consummate philosopher." And the Postillatore of the Monte Cassino Codex: "This King Robert delighted in preaching and studying, and would have made a better monk than king."