Measure seven times but don't forget to pray

(Paradiso, Canto XXXII): Celestial beauty

Welcome to Dante Read-Along! ✨

(If this post appears truncated in your inbox you can read it on the web by clicking here. )

Welcome to Dante Book Club, where you and I descend into Hell and Purgatory to be able to ascend to Paradise. Our guide in Paradise is Beatrice, and in this thirty second, penultimate Canto, Dante gazes upon the Saints of the Celestial Rose. You can find the main page of the read-along right here, reading schedule here, and the list of chat threads here.

In each post you can find a brief summary of the canto, philosophical exercises that you can draw from it, themes, character, and symbolism explanations.

All the wonderful illustrations are done specially for the Dante Read-Along by the one and only Luana Montebello.

This Week’s Circle ⭕️

Tenth heaven of the Empyrean - the White Celestial Rose - Mary at the pinnacle - Bernard points out the saints in their thrones on the petals - Predestination and the souls of innocent children - Dante sees more saints - He needs the intercession of Mary - Bernard begins a final prayer.

Canto XXXII Summary:

As Dante and St. Bernard gazed upward at the Queen of Heaven, the Virgin Mary in her seat at the pinnacle of the white Celestial Rose, Bernard began to speak, pointing out the blessed souls who sat in the petals of the Rose.

Before beholding the Divine Essence, Dante must first prepare himself by contemplating the saints in glory. Those whom St. Bernard indicates, beginning with the Virgin Mary, are all, in one way or another, connected with the story of the Redemption. In the almost rigid precision and symmetry of the ranks of the blessed, the perfection of the divine order is conveyed.¹

Directly below Mary sat Eve, whose wound Mary had healed; that wound was the effect of the first sin, Eve yielding to temptation.

Now this same original justice was forfeited through the sin of our first parent, as already stated; so that all the powers of the soul are left, as it were, destitute of their proper order, whereby they are naturally directed to virtue; which destitution is called a wounding of nature. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, q. 85, a. 3

Mary and Eve were on the first two tiers of petals, and below Eve sat Rachel, with Beatrice on her left from Dante and Bernard’s point of view in the center of the flower. Dante had seen Rachel, a symbol of contemplation, in his third dream in Purgatory alongside her active sister Leah; her husband was the patriarch Jacob. Virgil had made note of their seats long ago in the second canto of the Inferno.

Bernard continued to name those who occupied each seat, tier by tier; after Rachel came Sarah, whose husband was Abraham and who was the mother of Isaac. Below Sarah was Rebecca, wife of Isaac and mother of the twins Jacob and Esau, then Judith, who had rescued her people when, through bravery and intrigue, she had cut off the head of the Assyrian King Holofernes.

And Judith stood before the bed praying with tears, and the motion of her lips in silence, Saying: Strengthen me, O Lord God of Israel, and in this hour look on the works of my hands, that as thou hast promised, thou mayst raise up Jerusalem thy city: and that I may bring to pass that which I have purposed, having a belief that it might be done by thee. And when she had said this, she went to the pillar that was at his bed’s head, and loosed his sword that hung tied upon it. And when she had drawn it out, she took him by the hair of his head, and said: Strengthen me, O Lord God, at this hour. And she struck twice upon his neck, and cut off his head, and took off his canopy from the pillars, and rolled away his headless body. Judith 13:6-10

Bernard named the last figure in the tiers, Ruth, the great-grandmother of King David; he had atoned through the poetry of his Psalms for his actions of taking another’s wife and then seeing that the man—Uriah—was killed in battle. Bathsheba became the mother of King Solomon. This row of Hebrew women were all from the time before Christ.

Thus a most remarkable feature of the seating arrangement and total order of the rose is made manifest: the seats in the direct line below Mary are all occupied by Hebrew women of the Old Testament who, by such a line, together with one directly across from them, divide vertically the entire amphitheater into two equal parts, from top to bottom.²

That dividing line between groups indicated those born before Christ on one side, and those born after on the other. The exceptions were Mary, who embodied both A.D. and B.C., and as we shall see, John the Baptist, who also embodied both time periods, and who was seated opposite Mary on the other side of the rose.

The petals on the side in which all of those who lived before Christ were full, with all the seats taken; the old covenant was occupied and complete. The other side, with those who came after the new covenant, still had empty seats; there were still more occupants who had not yet arrived. They were waiting on fullness.

Upon one side,
there where the Rose is ripe, with all its petals,
are those whose faith was in the Christ to come;
and on the other side—that semicircle

whose space is broken up by vacant places—
sit those whose sight was set upon the Christ
who had already come.
xxxii.21-27

The fact is that we glimpse here, in the poet’s conception, a completely overriding desire to witness, in God’s providential plan and His foreordained seating arrangement of His amphitheater, the principle of symmetry and balance, a principle everywhere apparent in His creation of the universe itself, which Dante’s great poem everywhere mirrors in itself. But that principle, carried out so exactly in the rose and its petals, puts something of a strain on Christian doctrine and a cardinal tenet of the faith, namely, that Christ’s coming did count for more than this balance with salvation out of B.C. time.³

This bit of theology was Dante’s own, as he looked at the greater frameworks that informed this highest heaven; that there were a certain number of seats to fill to completion was “according to God’s providential plan, as conceived by the poet.”⁴

Dante and Bernard, during this inventory of the saints, were standing in the yellow center of the great amphitheater of the Rose, looking upward to all of these figures. Bernard pointed out those seated directly across from the row of women; beginning at the top and mirroring Mary’s place was John the Baptist. He was the forerunner of Christ who had wandered in the wilderness, surviving on locusts and honey while preaching his message of repentance. He was later beheaded at the wishes of Salome, who was granted a boon by King Herod, and through the influence of her mother, asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

But when Herod’s birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist’s head in a charger. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath’s sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother. Matthew 14:6-11

John, predestined for his role, was born with purpose and holiness, and had been in Limbo for two years after this execution, until the crucifixion and Christ’s Harrowing of Hell.

But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb.
Luke 1:13-15

Below John’s seat, continuing the line of Saints, were St. Francis of Assisi, whom we learned of in the sphere of the Sun from St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Benedict, of whom we heard in the sphere of Saturn. St. Augustine was next, a figure of whom we have heard hardly a thing through Dante’s work by name, although his ideas, especially on ordo amoris, or the rightly ordered loves, permeate the work, especially in Virgil’s discourse on love in the very center of the Purgatorio and of the entire Commedia.

The element on which Dante was divided from the theology of Augustine was on the role of Empire, especially the Roman Empire, which Augustine saw as working against theology, where, for Dante, the whole lineage of the Roman Empire gave it a divine purpose. Add to that brief mention the missing St. Dominic in this scheme, and the arrangement gives food for thought for Dante scholars.

Thus the poet has chosen for the highest seats, after that of the great John, only three names of saints (in contrast with the six of Hebrew women under Mary directly opposite), all of whom lived, it is clear, in A.D. time. Hence we are to admit another feature of God’s symmetry and balance here: both Mary and John span B.C. and A.D. time. But the figures under Mary all belong to the Old Testament sector, whereas the three saints mentioned here (and presumably those unnamed who continue the line) belong to the A.D. half.⁵

Benedict pointed out that this arrangement showed the foresight of the mind of God, and that the arrangement was thus perfect; the empty seats would be filled on the side of those who came after Christ, to match the side that was already complete.

He continued to explain who held the seats in the center circles of the rose; these were all children who had died before the age of reason and maturity, before they could make decisions that affected their own souls. These were of the elect because of the merits of their parents:

And know that there, below the transverse row
that cuts across the two divisions, sit
souls who are there for merits not their own,

but-with certain condition-other’ merits;
for all of these are souls who left their bodies
before they had the power of true choice.
xxxii.40-45

Dante strayed from established doctrine in his next idea, for where the medieval theologians had one concept of how the bodies of the redeemed would look to be in the prime of life, no matter at what age they died, Dante presented them at their age of death, apparent with the children in the center and the aged countenance of Bernard.

In his striking departure from current belief, Dante was influenced certainly by a desire for significant visible contrast and also, we may conjecture, by that love of little children which he has more than once revealed. The sweet conception of an encircling sea of baby faces, all twittering with baby voices, must have charmed him as it charms us.⁶

Bernard saw that the arrangement of the children in higher or lower seats confused Dante; if they were not there based on their own merit, then what significance did their different seats have, and were some considered higher than the others based on this positioning? How were the degrees

of beatitude determined? This pointed to the concept of predestination, which Bernard spent some time explaining.

Leonardo da Vinci — The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne

Paradise was a place where all was placed in the most perfect order; chance or accident were impossible, as impossible as the idea of lack through hunger or thirst. All those here were fulfilled in perfection, as was right according to the heights to which they had risen. What was before his eyes fit in exact correspondence of perfect order; in essence, the everlasting law of predestination. So the children were not simply placed in their seats; there was a reason behind the order:

Thus these souls who have, precociously,
reached the true life do not, among themselves,
find places high or low without some cause.
xxxii.58-60

God’s grace is more or less, in proportion to the greater or lesser merit of the soul that receives it. This does not mean that the soul earns grace by its merit, but that the relationship between grace and merit is such as to accord perfectly with divine justice, which is the will of God. This is so difficult a concept for mortal minds that it is not surprising that, even at the very culmination of his sublime vision, Dante is still in need of illumination concerning it.⁷

Bernard admitted that this fact must just be accepted, even if not completely understood; but here he also reminded us that in Virgil’s speech on love in the center of the Commedia, that love could not cease in its striving until it came face to face with the object of its desire; and in this case, that desire was the vision of God:

The King through whom this kingdom finds content
in so much love and so much joyousness
that no desire would dare to ask for more,

creating every mind in His glad sight,
bestows His grace diversely, at His pleasure—
and here the fact alone must be enough.
xxxii.61-66

Bernard gave an example which would help Dante better understand; the twins of Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, were at odds with each other even within the womb, an example of the unpredictability of human roles in service to a larger order.

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
Romans 9:10-14

---

Our halo, or reward, in Heaven is proportionate to the grace bestowed on us at birth. The odd expression, ‘the color of the hair of that grace,’ was evidently suggested by Esau’s red hair. Esau, without apparent reason, differed in looks from Jacob, just as he differed from him in character and in divine favor.⁸

Bernard then explained how merit was proven in the days before Christ and what proofs were needed in the time after, so that the merit of parents could be passed down to include their young children. In the first age of humanity, from Adam to Abraham, the days of the patriarchs of the Old Testament, to profess one’s faith was sufficient. Yet the time came that an external proof was necessary, and that was when the circumcision of males became a requirement of proof after the time of Abraham. Then there was yet another way, and after Christ, it was baptism that gave this proof; after this turning point of the age of grace, then, children had to be baptized at birth; without that baptism, they were then placed in Limbo if they died young, not in Paradise.

In early centuries, their parent’s faith
alone, and their own innocence, sufficed
for the salvation of the children; when

those early times had reached completion, then
each male child had to find, through circumcision,
the power needed by his innocent

member; but then the age of grace arrived,
and without perfect baptism in Christ,
such innocence was kept below, in Limbo.
xxxii.76-84

Dante, in this exposition upon children being placed either in Paradise or in Limbo, had Bernard contradict his true position in life, in which he “shrinks from the appalling conclusion that unbaptized children are doomed to Limbo.”⁹ Perhaps it is only in this highest place of Paradise that the truth of these most intriguing questions can be attempted.

Fra Angelico - Annunciation

But, Bernard seems to steer them away from theological wrangling and back to the vision that is before them of the Celestial Rose, and of Mary seated at the center pinnacle, coming full circle from their visual journey around the amphitheater of Saints. For it is only through her intercession that Dante would be prepared for the final and ultimate vision.

Look now upon the face that is most like
the face of Christ, for only through its brightness
can you prepare your vision to see Him.
xxxii.85-87

Dante looked above and saw the joy of all the angelic intelligences raining down upon Mary in a pageant of perfect vision and grace, surpassing every sight that he had yet seen. Although we recognize the angel as Gabriel who then sang the Ave Maria as the elect in their thrones along with all the host of heaven responded, Dante had to ask Bernard—who radiated in the light given off by Mary just as Venus was illuminated by the Sun—who this angel was, who to him seemed the most beautiful of all:

O holy father—who, for me, endure
your being here below, leaving the sweet
place where eternal lot assigns your seat—

who is that angel who with such delight
looks into our Queen’s eyes—he who is so
enraptured that he seems to be a flame?
xxxii.100-105

Bernard praised the angel Gabriel as the most blessed of all the angelic beings, and it was he who had handed the palm of triumph to Mary at the annunciation. But Bernard had more individuals to identify, and told Dante to look as he named them.

On either side of Mary sat Adam and St. Peter—sitting in their proper positions of before and after Christ; Adam who brought to humanity the bitter consequences of sin, and St. Peter, identified through mention of the keys of the kingdom given to him by Christ.

The angel at the gate of Purgatory proper holds the keys to that realm. And now, by the turn of phrase here, the keys are said to be ‘keys to this lovely flower,’ the Rose. St. Peter’s keys were also remembered when Dante was passing his ‘entrance examination’ with Peter himself.¹⁰

Next to Peter was St. John, the author of the book of Revelation, who had seen the trials of the church, the Bride of Christ, won through the cross, before his own death. Next to Adam was the patriarch Moses who led the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.

Across the Rose from Mary, with these figures by her side, opposite of Peter, was Mary’s mother St. Anna, who had eyes only for her lovely daughter; she gazed upon Mary rather than up above.

St. Anna, the mother of Mary, sits directly opposite St. Peter. This gives her the position of honor, since it places her to the right of John the Baptist, so that in this respect her seat corresponds to that of Peter, to the right of Mary. To conceive that Anna keeps her gaze constantly on her daughter, on the opposite rim of the great amphitheater, even as all the while she continues to join in the chorus that sings the praises of the Lord, is a strikingly human touch introduced by the poet at this point.¹¹

While Anna was opposite Peter, Lucy, on the other side of of John the Baptist, was opposite Adam; she was the saint who, on Mary’s urging, had interceded with Beatrice to look to her faithful one’s—Dante’s—lost condition far back in the beginning of the Inferno, after which Beatrice passed the message on to Virgil in Limbo.

Tenth Heaven, or Empyrean

These were the souls of the elect pointed out to Dante; and with that, Bernard signaled the end, not just of these introductions, but of our journey, of the poem, and of Dante’s long climb upward; for now, like the humble tailor, they must make the best use of what was before them—time—in order to see the journey through to its final and magnificent conclusion. Dante was in the liminal space between comprehension of the mechanics of Paradise and the final all encompassing vision of that which informs all that he has so far seen and experienced, the One:

But time, which brings you sleep, takes flight, and now
we shall stop here—even as a good tailor
who cuts the garment as his cloth allows—

and turn our vision to the Primal Love,
that, gazing at Him, you may penetrate—
as far as that can be—His radiance.
xxxii.139-144

“As far as that can be…” How deeply can Dante penetrate, on his own, the light of God?

That touch brings out an accepted point of doctrine regarding the beatific vision on the part of human soul or angel, on the part of any and all creatures, namely, that each sees according to the measure of the divine endowment of capacity made by the Creator when He creates the soul.¹²

---

The tercet states completely the final “act” of the Comedy in precise terms, and the reader should reflect on the cardinal fact that Dante the pilgrim, though in this Empyrean heaven he has been made ready for the final vision of God by all he has seen, has been seeing by reflected light all the while and has never actually ventured to look directly upwards into the descending light of glory through which alone the vision of God face to face can be had.¹³

Yet if in Dante’s desire to ascend he should lose trust in his own ability to rise up so high, he must ask for grace through prayer to Mary, the intercessor-she had intervened at the very beginning, when moving through Lucy and Beatrice to intercede for the lost Dante, and here, for the final vision, she will intercede again, that he may experience that moment as fully as is possible.

It is for Bernard, with his words, so aligned with Dante’s heart, that will show him how. He began to pray.

---

💭 Philosophical Exercises

‘The Virgin Mary’ (from The Divine Comedy, Paradise)), 1 May 1807 After John Flaxman RA (1755 - 1826)

My dear reader, at the start of our journey I told you that Dante’s Divine Comedy is an encyclopaedia.

It is an encyclopaedia of everything that works and dwells within our psyche.

The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once suggested that myth is an answer to a question we have not yet learned how to ask. And Dante’s Divine Comedy feels very much like that: a vast answer to one of the most important questions a human being can ask about life as a whole.

As the Russian psychologist Rada Granovskaya wrote in her book Psychology of Faith, faith is a way of organising the separate parts of our psyche into one unified whole. And it is precisely this act of unification that Dante is moving toward in the final cantos of Paradiso.

But what does it actually mean to organise the separate parts of our psyche?

What does it mean to see everything as a whole?

The reason Dante had to travel through all the circles of Hell, all the terraces of Purgatory, and all the celestial spheres is that only now, with Saint Bernard as his guide, is he able to stand outside of time. Time no longer flows here. Nothing unfolds chronologically. Everything is present at once.

It is as if our ordinary life were like standing beside a great painter — someone like Caravaggio — watching him create a masterpiece stroke by stroke. In that position, we can admire individual movements of the hand, but we cannot yet see the painting as a whole. Here, in this moment of the journey, Dante is no longer watching the strokes. He is allowed to step back and contemplate the finished work.

He looks upon the entire metaphorical painting of creation. At its centre stands Mary, and beneath her feet stands Eve — the two women who mirror the entire human story. If Eve led humanity out of Paradise, Mary made it possible for humanity to return. The fall and the restoration are no longer scattered events; they are held together in a single image.

This is the beauty of Mary being placed at the focal point — in the same way that an artist unifies a composition not by equal strokes, but by a centre that gives proportion to every stroke. Each stroke is unique and different, not equal, yet each is in its rightful place, at the right moment.

To stand outside of time is like reading history on the pages of a book. You can see what happened and in what order. You can observe individuals, institutions, environments, and circumstances, and how they interacted with one another. The actions within that history are complete. Nothing is still unfolding.

But not everyone is capable of being a fair historian. Some people read history and draw conclusions that exist only inside their own minds rather than on the pages of history itself. It requires profound training to look at history without projection — to judge it, to understand it, and to grasp human action as it truly was.

Dante undergoes precisely this training. Standing here, he is finally able to look at the divine order itself — an order in which nothing is superfluous, nothing superficial, nothing incoherent. It has taken him the entire journey to acquire the inner discipline required to see reality from this perspective, to understand it, and to contemplate it without distortion.

And this is why, when Dante now sees the children — even the unbaptised children — seated within the Celestial Rose, he is able to understand what would otherwise appear unjust or incomprehensible. He sees clearly that we are born with a certain capacity, and we are born with freedom of will. It is through our freedom of will that we may realise the capacity we were given.

God knows that children, even unbaptised children, possess divine grace within them, and that they were born with a capacity — even if that capacity was never brought into action through choice or effort. And for that reason, they too have their own appropriate and rightful place within the divine order.

From this vantage point, difference is no longer hierarchy. It is harmony. Fulfilment does not come from having more than others, but from fully inhabiting what one is.

This vision, for me, has revealed many things — and it will take me a lifetime to fully comprehend them. But one of the great temptations of our time is the belief that we stand outside of history. As if we were lifted out of it. As if history were something that happens elsewhere, to others.

Yet just as we have a mother and a father, grandparents and a biological past, we are also shaped by our place in history. The events that happen around us are not external to us. They are inseparable parts of the divine order as it unfolds.

Each one of us is a part of history. And this is why Dante reminds us, at the very beginning of the Divine Comedy, that the darkest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of crisis, choose neutrality.

We explored this idea at the start of our journey, but it gains a deeper meaning here. Dante himself was shaped by the clashes between the Black and White Guelphs, by political conflict, exile, and responsibility. He did not observe history from a distance. He was implicated in it.

And so are we.

To see the divine order is not to escape responsibility. It is to recognise that we are already inside the painting — not spectators, but strokes — each placed in a particular moment, bearing meaning, and accountable for the role we play.

---

This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭

(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)

I. Empty seats of Celestial Rose

One of the most quietly unsettling details in this canto is something that is not immediately visible unless Bernard points it out: the empty seats in the Celestial Rose.

On one side, the Rose is full. Those who lived before Christ, whose faith was in what was to come, occupy every place allotted to them. Their story is complete. On the other side, the side of those who lived after Christ, there are gaps. Vacant places. Seats that have been prepared but not yet filled.

This detail matters more than it seems. It tells us that while the divine order is complete in its design, history itself is not complete in its unfolding. Paradise contains not only what has been, but what is still becoming. Even here, at the summit of vision, time has not been erased entirely; it has left its trace in the form of absence.

This is what rescues Dante’s vision from fatalism. The order of the Rose is not a frozen caste system. It is teleological, oriented toward fullness. The empty seats are not signs of exclusion, but of invitation.

They remind us that history still matters. That choice still matters. That neutrality is not innocence. We are not merely observers of the painting. We are still among the strokes that have yet to find their final place.

---

Quotes 🖋️

(The ones I keep in my journal as reminders of eternal wisdom):

But time, which brings you sleep, takes flight, and now
we shall stop here—even as a good tailor
who cuts the garment as his cloth allows—

and turn our vision to the Primal Love,
that, gazing at Him, you may penetrate—
as far as that can be—His radiance.

~ lines 139- 144, Paradiso, Canto XXXII

---

1. Dorothy L. Sayers, Paradise 338

2. Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on the Paradiso 536

3. Singleton 537

4. Singleton 537

5. Singleton 539

6. C. H. Grandgent, La Divina Commedia

7. Sayers 341

8. Singleton 544

9. Singleton 548

10. Singleton 552-3

11. Singleton 553

12. Singleton 557

13. Singleton 556