The Triumph of Truth
(Paradiso, Canto X): Thomas Aquinas, Averroes and multiple pathways to truth
“Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says them later”
~ Michel de Montaigne
Welcome to Dante Read-Along! ✨
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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 tenth Canto of the Paradiso, we find the garland of the philosophers in the sphere of the Sun. 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 ⭕️
Dante and Beatrice ascend from Venus to the Sun - The garland of souls in the sun - The wise theologians and philosophers - Thomas Aquinas names the twelve souls that make up the garland - Divine music meets Dante’s ears.
Canto X Summary:
As a work on the nature of the ordered versus the disordered life—body, mind, and soul—Dante’s sight embodied that nature as it grew toward a more ordered sense of perfection. The higher he ascended, the more light he was capable of seeing; he felt the underlying power of the universe expressed through the Trinity of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Paradiso celebrated this order through higher and higher expressions of light.
Pull: And harmony, whose movements are akin to the orbits within our souls, is a gift of the Muses, if our dealings with them are guided by understanding, not for irrational pleasure, for which people nowadays seem to make use of it, but to serve as an ally in the fight to bring order to any orbit in our souls that has become unharmonized, and make it concordant with itself.
Plato Timaeus 47.d-e
Dante pointed out the importance of the heavenly cycles, and invited the reader to feast on the contemplation of the perfection of divine order as manifested by those movements. First he looked at the crossing of two heavenly motions; one, the circle of the planetary movements around the earth, and the other, the movement of the sun along the ecliptic, or celestial sphere of the zodiac. These motions cross at the spring and autumn equinoxes, and without them there would be no seasons, no generation of species, and no life.
Now, reader, do not leave your bench, but stay
to think on that of which you have foretaste;
you will have much delight before you tire.
I have prepared your fare; now feed yourself,
because the matter of which I am made
the scribe calls all my care unto itself.
x.22-27
Through the sweetness of what I taste in what I gather bit by bit, motivated by compassion, not forgetting, I have set aside something for those who are miserable, which I presented to them already some time ago, and thus left them wanting more. Wishing now to set the table for them, I intend to make a general banquet out of what I have shown them, and with that bread which is needed for food that has been made in such a manner, without which they might not find it edible.
Dante, Convivio I.i.10-11
Dante spoke of the great Sun, which shone down both power and the structure for the passage of time on the earth. It spun, in his understanding, in apparent spirals, which accounted for the change in the time of its rising throughout the year. Their ascent from Venus to the Sun happened quickly:
And I was with him, but no more aware
of the ascent than one can be aware
of a sudden thought before it starts.
x.34-36
While the previous three planets, the Moon, Mercury, and Venus, were good and beneficial, they were still in the shadow of the earth. That close proximity accounted for the natures that resided, in spirit, in each sphere. Now that their ascent had taken them further up to the realm of the Sun, they were growing into a stronger sense of Divinity and light, the path to an even better realm that sat more firmly within God’s glory and away from shadows.
As in the Inferno and Purgatory, so now in Paradise, the tenth Canto constitutes the beginning of another section of the poem. To mark this division, there is a pause in the narrative, and what may be called a new prologue opens the canto, recalling to our notice the ultimate theme of the whole work: the mystery of the Holy Trinity.1
So bright were the souls encompassed here that they shone brighter than the sun itself.
Though I should call on talent, craft, and practice,
my telling cannot help them be imagined;
but you can trust—and may you long to see it.
And if our fantasies fall short before
such heights, there is no need to wonder; for
no eye has seen light brighter than the Sun’s.
x.43-46
The glory was so great that Dante was filled with praise, and his words created a sense of upliftment, expressing more light, more grace, and more thanks. Imagine being in a space where your state of being was encompassed by such heavenly ascent.
Nothing perceptible by the senses in all the world is more worthy of being considered an image of God than is the sun, which illuminates with sensible light first itself and then all the celestial and elemental bodies: likewise, God illuminates with intellectual light first himself and then the celestial and other creatures endowed with intellect.
Dante Convivio III.xii.7
Dante was prepared for the encounter with light, life, and love as Beatrice joyfully encouraged him to give thanks for all of the elements drawing them upward:
No mortal heart was ever so disposed
to worship, or so quick to yield itself
to God with all its gratefulness, as I
was when I heard those words, and all my love
was so intent on Him that Beatrice
was then eclipsed within forgetfulness.
x.55-60
An eclipse within the sun itself.
Here began the introduction of the garland of philosophers, a circle of twelve souls made of light that had belonged to the philosophers and theologians who, on earth, had made up the groundwork of transformative literature. These are the inspirations and texts rationalizing and benefitting life on earth that informed all of the background of Dante’s poem; with Dante and Beatrice as two poles at the center, these wise ones gathered into a crown, or garland, around them, creating a circle of their starry souls.
The souls who appeared in the lower spheres of Paradise still possessed the delicate outline of human faces. Now the figures that Dante meets display themselves as lights, fires and thunderbolts, all intensely active, all forming patterns—constantly varied from sequence to sequence—of circles, rectangles, illuminated words and rising spirals.2
The circle of wise ones resembled a halo girdled round the Moon, glowing brightly—Diana, the daughter of Latona—on a misty night. Dante, in a moment of retrospection, noted that he had brought home to earth with him so many memories from Paradise, each one as a jewel in his memory, and yet the ineffable singing of those souls was one of the jewels that would stand out among the rest. Anyone who had been able to ascend on wings and see such sights would have no words to communicate what they’d seen, could never explain them without sounding mute.
The souls circled round Dante and Beatrice three times—think of the image of the Trinity that opened this canto. They stayed as fixed poles in the center of this dance, as if waiting for the next signal call that would let them continue on in their progression.
Thematically, Dante’s concern is with the various forms of moral energy that come to fruition in Paradise. Each of the heavens celebrates one of the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, courage, justice and temperance—and the souls who are named in these spheres are those who have devoted their lives, respectively, to philosophy, to self-sacrifice, to the pursuit of rectitude and to the cultivation of self-control.3
One of these souls began to speak:
Because the ray of grace, from which true love
is kindled first and then, in loving, grows,
shines with such splendor, multiplied, in you,
that it has led you up the stair that none
descends who will not climb that stair again,
whoever would refuse to quench your thirst
with wine from his flask, would be no more free
than water that does not flow toward the sea.
x.83-90
Indicating that Dante would indeed achieve salvation, this first soul agreed to quench his thirst with the draught of knowledge that Dante so sought. The soul recognized that Dante wanted to know who the twelve souls surrounding him and Beatrice were, and was prepared to tell him.
The first soul that the speaker pointed to was Albert of Cologne, better known as Albertus Magnus, a Dominican monk and the teacher of the speaker, the veritable Thomas Aquinas upon whom Dante had drawn so strongly for the theology of the Divine Comedy.
Albertus was a most voluminous writer, his collected works (printed at Lyons in 1651) filling twenty-one folio volumes. Six are devoted to commentaries on Aristotle, five on the Scriptures, two on Dionysius the Areopagite, three on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the remaining five continuing the Summa Theologiae, Summa de Creaturis, a treatise on the Virgin, and various opuscula, one of which is on alchemy. Albertus was the earliest among the Latins, as Avicenna had been among the Arabs, to make known the complete doctrine of Aristotle; he wrote not merely commentaries but paraphrases and illustrative treatises on each of Aristotle’s works.4
Thomas Aquinas’ life and work, and the influence his writings had on Dante, could be studied endlessly. Although Dante never named him in earlier cantos as being of influence, many of his claims lead directly to Aquinas’ teachings. He was the student of Albertus Magnus, but outshone his teacher to become one of the most well known theologians of the Scholastics, and looked at the philosophy of Aristotle and used its method and structure to examine the Christian tradition; he also wrote commentaries on Aristotle and was studied by theologians throughout the Middle Ages and onward. He studied under Magnus in Cologne and they traveled together to Paris when Aquinas received his doctorate. He came from noble birth, his father being the count of Aquino in Campania, Italy, but joined the Dominican order in 1243. He spent his life traveling and teaching, and his life’s work was the famous Summa Theologiae.
His most important and influential work is the famous Summa Theologiae, in which he attempted to present a summary of ‘all accessible knowledge, arranged according to the best method, and subordinate to the dictates of the Church.’ It is an exposition of the teachings of the Church in the light of the philosophy of Aristotle and his Arabian commentator.5
Thomas Aquinas went on to name the rest of the wise ones in that garland of philosophers; how far away the despair of hell and even the joyful struggle of Purgatory are here, in the company of the purified celestial inhabitants of the sun, those who inspired the great ideas of the past.
The third soul identified was that of Francesco Graziano, author of the Decretum Gratiani, a text that reconciled the formal laws of the church canon, or ecclesiastical laws, with those of the secular law. Gratiano also compiled canon law from the decrees of past popes, the apostles, the scriptures, and of church council.
Next in the garland was Peter Lombard, whose text Sententiarum Libri Quatuor—Sentences in Four Books, or often called just the Sentences—gathered the saying of the church Fathers, and was an important text studied in theological schools. He was a student of the theologian Hugh of St. Victor. In the opening of his famous work, he compared his offering as being as humble as the offering of a poor widow:
Desiring to contribute somewhat of our poverty and our little store [of knowledge] to the treasury of the Lord, as did the poor widow [her two mites].6
The fifth celestial light was King Solomon, builder of the temple and author of the Old Testament books the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. He was known for his deep and abiding wisdom.
The fifth light, and the fairest light among us,
breathes forth such love that all the world below
hungers for tidings of it; in that flame
there is the lofty mind where such profound
wisdom was placed that, if the truth be true,
no other ever rose with so much vision.
x.109-114
There was debate over the fate of Solomon, even in all his wisdom; was he saved, due to his piety, or did his actions of idolatry damn him? This was the knowledge that all the world hungered for, and Dante makes clear his stance that Solomon was indeed saved.
Next in the garland was Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite, author of a number of works, including The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology, and The Celestial Hierarchy, from which Dante drew on to populate his own work, to place the nine orders of angels within their celestial spheres according to their function and purpose.
Pseudo-Dionysius had been thought to be one Dionysius from the New Testament book of Acts who was converted by Paul, but later scholarship disproved that connection, dating the text not back to biblical times but to 5th century Neoplatonists, hence the “pseudo” before the name.
And thus, just as before we had to arrive at the first cause of that same being, now both of essence and of virtue. For which reason it is obvious that all essence and virtue comes from the first, and the inferior intelligences receive as if from something emitting rays, and they pass on the rays of the superior to their inferiors, like mirrors. Which Dionysius is seen to touch upon when speaking of the celestial hierarchy.
Dante, Letter to Can Grande 20
Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Acts 17:34
The seventh soul was Paulus Orosius, a priest and historian, contemporary of St. Augustine, and author of the text Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII, or Seven Books of History against the Pagans, written as proof that civilization had not been harmed by the advent of Christianity, as was claimed by certain Pagan groups. Dante used his book widely as a reference.
The eighth soul in the garland was that of Severinus Boethius, best known for his work The Consolation of Philosophy, but also the author of works on music and mathematics, as well as Latin translations of the works of Aristotle. His works were influential from the time of their writing in the sixth century through the Renaissance and beyond. In life, he was unjustly accused of conspiring against King Theodoric of the Ostrogoths in his high position of government, imprisoned, and eventually tortured and killed. His works were incredibly influential on Dante.
The last three lights that Thomas Aquinas pointed out came in quick succession; Isidore of Seville was a seventh century archbishop and author of the encyclopedic Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX and the Libri Sententiarum, among others.
Bede, often called the Venerable Bede, was an Anglo Saxon monk whose Ecclesiastical History of the English People was a staple text throughout the Middle Ages, and Richard of St. Victor, also a student with Peter Lombard of Hugh of St. Victor, wrote commentaries on the scriptures.
Finally, the last named soul was Siger of Brabant, whose placement next to Thomas Aquinas was significant statement regarding how differences cease to be of interest in the heavenly spheres:
His position beside St. Thomas, on his left, is the most striking juxtaposition in the circle. St. Thomas and Siger had been opponents on earth in the dispute that arose in the University of Paris concerning the expounding of Aristotle in the light of the commentary by Averroës.7
With these introductions in place, the larger exposition that will continue in the celestial sphere of the Sun can now begin, and will extend across the next four cantos. Yet before that, the orderly motions of the garland of souls of light began to move again, as dependable as the calls to prayer in a monastery or the gears of a mechanical clock.
As the wheel of the souls rotated, the sweet harmonies of those voices joined in an ineffable song only possible in those exalted realms of light.
💭 Philosophical Exercises
“If wisdom were offered me on the one condition that I should keep it shut away and not divulge it to anyone, I should reject it“
~ Seneca
I.
My reader might recall that, in one of the cantos, I noted how the great Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov described what makes writers great in the first place.
He said that it is not only the ability to tell a gripping story that makes a writer great—although, of course, telling a great story is an essential part of it. It is not even the philosophical, symbolic depth that distinguishes a great writer from a mediocre one. Rather, what makes a great writer great is the ability to use language in a unique way—in a way that has never been done before—to tell an exceptional and profound story.
And, of course, Dante ticks all the boxes. He ticks the box of telling a gripping story; he also ticks the box of telling a story that is incredibly layered and saturated with symbolic and philosophical meanings. Moreover, in each canto—in each of the one hundred cantos—he uses a new, fresh, and appropriate technique that marks him as an exceptional genius.
II.
Before we proceed to the deep and exceptionally important meaning of this canto, which Dante expresses with his exceptional literary talent, I would like to illustrate what it means to participate in the harmony of the cosmos, in the harmony of the divine order. The metaphor that I would like to use is that of an exceptionally delicious meal, a meal that perhaps your mother used to prepare for you. You taste that meal and, each time it touches your palate, you can feel how balanced the different spices and ingredients are, and how they all come together in a single symphony that you sense each time you taste it. At some point, perhaps you forgot to ask your mother to give you the recipe, and you started investigating what made that delicious meal what it was. You even found out the exact ingredients, the exact proportion of spices that she used, but despite investigating all of this, you could still sense that there is something missing in the meal, that you cannot prepare it in the same way.
Participation in divine truth is similar. We can taste it when we “eat”; we can feel how everything together works in harmony. And the reason why the Church promoted science—and thus gave birth to universities—is to understand each ingredient, each spice, and its proportion in this wonderfully delicious symphony that we call the universe. We can taste it, we can feel it, and each one of us can eat this delicious meal starting from a different ingredient. Some of us will first taste the vegetables in it; others will perhaps taste the meat that is part of the meal. But although I might start eating the meal from the meat and you might start from the vegetable that is in it, these two ingredients are still together in the same dish, and you and I participate in and taste this delicious meal in the same way, although we start from different angles. And I think this is the key that I would like to explore in the next section.
III.
In this canto, Dante uses an exceptional technique to harmonise all the great thinkers whom we are going to see, because Canto 10 is a breaking point. We are escaping the three spheres that lived under the shadow of the earth—Venus, Mercury, and the Moon—and we are going toward the heavenly spheres. What is remarkable is that Venus, the sphere of love, had only two cantos dedicated it, whilst the Sun, where we are right now, is going to continue for the next five cantos, until Canto 14, and Canto 14 itself is dedicated—two‑thirds of it—to the Sun.
The technique that Dante applies here, as noted by the exceptional Dante scholar Teodolinda Barolini, is called chiasmus, from the Greek χιάζω (chiázō), meaning “to shape like the letter chi.” It is a rhetorical trope in which one creates an imaginary cross between two sets of words, in verse or in prose. It mirrors a pattern A–B–B–A, so the second reverses the first. For example: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” By crossing the parts, chiasmus makes linear language feel circular and balanced, as if closing a loop. Dante exploits this in the heaven of the Sun to express many kinds of wisdom, unified in one harmony. Beyond numerous verbal A–B–B–A turns, he builds structural chiasmi, most famously when Thomas Aquinas (a Dominican) praises St Francis in Canto 11 and St Bonaventure (a Franciscan) praises St Dominic in Canto 12.
So why does he use this unique technique in this canto? What is the meaning behind it? This is where we find Dante’s genius, because he uses it in a realm where we see the main thinkers of the divine sphere. We will encounter many characters in the next several cantos, and each of them will be unique.
IV.
There is a reason why Dante uses this circular motion. In the sphere of the Sun, everything revolves around the circle. Here we see Dante and Beatrice standing at the centre, with the different circles surrounding them. They are at equal distance from every figure that we are going to explore in the next five cantos. For example, the distance between Dante and Thomas Aquinas, with whom he converses in this canto, is the same as the distance between Dante and Siger of Brabant. Although those two thinkers could not be more different, they arrived at the same truth by different means. In a similar way, as in my metaphor, you and I could have eaten the same delicious meal: you might begin by tasting the vegetables in it, while I might begin with the meat; yet we would be tasting the same meal. We would begin from different parts, yet arrive at the same taste; we would be participating in the same truth. This is the circular motion of this sphere.
We are all relatively familiar with Saint Thomas Aquinas, yet we know little of Siger of Brabant. Interestingly enough, an Italian painter named Andrea di Bonaiuto made a fresco showing the triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas over everyone else, including Siger of Brabant, who was a follower of the Muslim philosopher Averroes. Once again Dante is controversial: he not only places Averroes in the Limbo of Inferno among Virgil, Homer, Caesar, and others; he also takes Averroes’ follower, Siger of Brabant, and places him in Heaven. Thomas Aquinas and Siger of Brabant were very different thinkers; and yet, what Dante tells us is that one arrives at the same truth by different means.
On a personal note, I would like to say that my wife and I are very different from each other: her mind is more scientific, whilst mine is often described as artistic. And yet we arrive at the same truth from different angles. Her scientific outlook and my artistic vision of the world do not contradict each other; they show this cosmological truth from different perspectives. I would like my reader to treat this part of the exploration as Part One of the Sun, since it is difficult to express the full wisdom of it without weaving together all five cantos of the Sun.
This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭
(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)
I. What Makes You Live is This
I have selected the first few lines of this canto because, in my opinion, they exemplify the absolute beauty and wisdom of Dante and of the Christian worldview. Dante begins by saying that God causes creatures by intellect and will.
What does this mean? Take the example of a carpenter who sets out to create something. The first step, when he begins to create, is the word conceived in his mind. The word is, of course, the idea, the concept, the image call it what you will; you know it yourself. Yet this image, this word, this idea would be completely useless without the second power of God, namely love, or what is called the Holy Spirit.
To convert the word, the idea, into the actual thing requires the will, or, as Dante describes it, love.
II. Knowledge as Participation
We’ve spoken about this in our Philosophical Exercises section, and yet there is so much more to say. Imagine learning to swim. You go to the most experienced swimmer you know, someone you’ve watched cross vast lakes and rivers and ask: Teach me how to swim. They show you the strokes, how to stay afloat, and you leave thinking you’ve learned.
But the moment you enter the water, you realise you know nothing. Without having participated, without tasting the water yourself, you lack the very skills you thought you had.
Participation, action, will, thought - these are essential.
Quotes 🖋️
(The ones I keep in my journal as reminders of eternal wisdom):
Gazing upon His Son with that Love which
One and the Other breathe eternally,
the Power—first and inexpressible—
made everything that wheels through mind and space
so orderly that one who contemplates
that harmony cannot but taste of Him.
Then, reader, lift your eyes with me to see
the high wheels; gaze directly at that part
where the one motion strikes against the other;
~ lines 1-9, Paradiso, Canto X
Dorothy L. Sayers, Paradise 139
Robin Kirkpatrick, Paradiso 367
Kirkpatrick 367
Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on the Paradiso 184-85
Sayers 142
Singleton 187
Sayers 147