Time’s Scissors: When the Past Becomes a Mirror

(Paradiso, Canto XVI): How Dante turns nostalgia into a moral act: a lesson for our century.

The true life is not the life in the past, or in the future, or in the present, but the eternal life which is outside of time.

~ Leo Tolstoy

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 sixteenth Canto, we hear Cacciaguida’s exposition on the rise and fall of nobility in Florence. 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 ⭕️

The fifth celestial sphere of Mars, continued - Dante meditates on true nobility - The nobility of family versus the nobility of character - Dante asks Cacciaguida for the ancestry and history of Florence - Noble Florentine families once flourished - Families now in decay and corruption - Cacciaguida laments the downfall of Florence.

Canto XVI Summary:

For the divine seed does not fall on a lineage, that is on a family stock, it falls on individual persons; and as will be demonstrated below, the stock does not make individuals noble; rather individuals make the stock noble.
Dante, Convivio IV.xx.5

Dante considered the way that those on earth regarded the importance of nobility, placing undue credit on it; he even admitted his own guilt, that he also had seen it as too important in contrast to the true nobility that he saw now in the fifth celestial sphere of Mars.

Nobility of mind is the one and only virtue.
Juvenal, Satires viii.20

Such a prize as earthly nobility could not last; if new honors were not continually added during ensuing generations, and if each generation was not continually more noble than the last, then the strength of that nobility in a family line would wear away with time, bringing with it a gradual decline. But this was not the ultimate practice of nobility as he now saw it in the heavens; the heart of man on earth was weak, and did not yet understand heavenly love and nobility.

From one beginning rises all mankind;
For one Lord rules and fathers all things born.
He gave the sun his light, the moon her horns,
And men to earth and stars to deck the sky;
He closed in bodies minds brought down from high,
A noble origin for mortal men.
Why then proclaim your kin and ancestry?
Look whence you came and see who made you, God.
No man is base except through sin he quit
His proper source to cherish meaner things.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy III.vi.29-38

In opening with this idea of nobility as he was meeting with Cacciaguida, his ancestor, Dante set the stage for the exploration of the noble houses of Florence, his ancestral home, and what set about their downfalls. Dante wrote, in his works the Vita Nuova and the Convivio, extensively on true nobility; he wrote that love was a key component for its realization, far and above simple family connections, as well as the importance of wisdom and philosophy in the life of one attaining to nobility.

Dante addressed the singular Cacciaguida with the grammatical usage of the plural form of “you”; this construction was an indicator of honor, as it had been first used in addressing Julius Caesar, which set it apart as a distinctive use. As he did so, however, Beatrice gave a discreet smile as if to acknowledge Dante’s prideful words concerning his own nobility. This smile served the same purpose as the cough that the Lady of Malehault gave to Queen Guinevere to let her know her motives toward Lancelot were known, when Guinevere thought they were hidden.

The Lady of Malehault, in whose castle Lancelot had for some time secretly lived unrecognized, was hiddenly in love with him—Guinevere, after having drawn from Lancelot the avowal of his love, asks: ‘Whence comes this love of yours for me?’ Then it is that (in some manuscripts but not in all) the Lady of Malehault coughs.¹

For Dante Read-Along by the one and only Luana Montebello

Cacciaguida had concluded relating his origins and the events of his life at the end of canto xv, and after Dante’s meditation on the nature of nobility, he began to speak to his ancestor:

So did my speech begin: “You are my father;
you hearten me to speak with confidence;
you raise me so that I am more than I.

So many streams have filled my mind with gladness—
so many, and such gladness, that mind must
rejoice that it can bear this and not burst.
xvi.16-21

He then proceeded with his questions; to know Cacciaguida’s ancestors and childhood, (though we just heard much of this in canto xiv) as well as of the lineage of Florence, whose patron was St. John the Baptist, those referred to as the “sheepfold of St. John” (25). That sheepfold indicated the small and simple days of old Florence, and Dante also wanted to know its lineage and what families were worthy of the high office to which the nobility spoken of in the beginning of the canto was embodied.

At the question, Cacciaguida’s light shone like an ember bursting to life, just like the blush that infused Medea when she thought of her love for Jason in the myth of the Golden Fleece:

A suffusing glow
spread across her countenance completely,
as when a spark that has been hidden under
a crust of ash is nourished by a breeze
and comes to life again as it’s stirred up,
regaining all the vigor it once had;
Ovid Metamorphoses vii.120-125

Cacciaguida began to speak in an old and sweet archaic Florentine tongue, and thus began a long and detailed speech about the intricacies of lineage and the fortunes of a host of Florentine families. He marked the beginning of his discourse by speaking briefly about his own ancestry, hearkening back to the moment that the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was blessed-Ave; the Florentine calendar dated the new year from the Annunciation, on March 25.

He counted 580 revolutions of Mars since that moment unto his own birth, noting its passage through the constellation Leo; mathematically, given the length of time of the revolutions of Mars, Cacciaguida’s year of birth was marked at 1091.

Apparently the kinship between Leo and Mars is to be found in this attribute of courage, not in any specific astrological belief of the time.²

He indicated in what portion of the city he had been born, near where the annual horse race was run, finishing at the Porta San Piero. The population of Florence had been so much smaller then; Cacciaguida slowly began to make his commentary on the groupings of families through the generations and blending of communities that would make up the Florence that Dante knew. Cacciaguida was not always encouraging in his thoughts that the communities were better off keeping to themselves and not mixing with others.

What follows is a dense and often elliptical account which is not always easy for the modern reader to penetrate, but which might be compared to one of those tragic stories from recent history where hitherto peaceable communities have been torn apart by a sudden revival of ethnic, or sectarian disputes.³

If those who, in the world, go most astray
had not seen Caesar with stepmothers’ eyes,
but, like a mother to her son, been kind,

then one who has become a Florentine
trader and money changer would have stayed
in Semifonte, where his fathers peddled.
xvi.58-63

Here he referred to the power that the Church held in political affairs; in a scathing rebuke, he compared the Church to a hostile stepmother who worked to influence Caesar, or the Emperor. If the Church had kept to spiritual ideals and not been involved in politics, many of the unrest surrounding Florence could have been prevented, or handled differently.

With the proverbial expression of a blind bull, he inferred that the growth in the size of the changing population did not indicate more strength and nobility, only a growth in simple numbers, noting the disadvantaged position.

He considered certain fallen families whose fortunes were unable to be changed, that indicated the possibilities of whole cities falling from a high estate. The shifting tides of Fortune acted on Florence just as the tides of the sea, changing as often as the phases of the moon:

All things that you possess, possess their death,
just as you do; but in some things that last
long, death can hide from you whose lives are short.

And even as the heaven of the moon,
revolving, respiteless, conceals and then
reveals the shores, so Fortune does with Florence;
xvi.79-84

Here began a detailed and exhaustive list of the families of Florence; while this list may not deliver a movement of the plot, or an explanation of the realm of Mars, or even the sights that Dante saw in Paradise, it does serve as a historical record, placing the poem in time, and proves the deep care that Dante felt toward the ancestry of his homeland. The chronicle can be compared to similar genealogical lists in the Old Testament, or the listing of ships or the death of soldiers during battle in Homer’s Iliad, which at times seems to go on interminably.

All of the commentators explain in detail the background and inner workings of these family connections. The deeds of forty family groups and the actions of their descendants are described, closing, after the twists and turns of families and fortunes, with the disgrace and murder that ultimately brought about the split between the Guelph and Ghibelline political factions, which were contemporary with Dante’s time and known to him only too well:

The house of Amidei, with which your sorrows
began—by reason of its just resentment,
which ruined you and ended years of gladness—

was honored then, as were its close companions.
O Buondelmonte, through another’s counsel,
you fled your wedding pledge, and brought such evil!
xvi.136-140

The reference is to the well-known story of the murder of Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti in 1216. This young nobleman was betrothed to a lady of the Amidei family, but forsook her for a daughter of the house of the Donati. The kinsmen of the insulted lady waylaid and slew him at the foot of the statue of Mars, ‘that mutilated stone,’ as he rode into the city on Easter Day…The murder was generally regarded as the beginning of the feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines of which Dante himself was a victim.⁴

Cacciaguida lamented that it would have been better had Buondelmonti drowned before breaking off the engagement, saving Florence from the fallout of the Guelf Ghibelline split.

Buondelmonti was killed at the foot of the statue of Mars that had been placed as a protection for the city, almost as a sacrificial victim to war at the outset of that split. The noble families that had ruled in the past had ended here, in discord and disillusion.

Those families of old would not have supported the desecration of their flag by dragging it through the dust, or by reversing its colors, as the Guelfs did on the expulsion of the Ghibellines.

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💭 Philosophical Exercises

Understand that your life is not in your body, but in your spirit, in your soul, and that this ‘you’ is eternal.

~ Leo Tolstoy

The Infant Saviour’ (from The Divine Comedy, Paradise ), 1 May 1807

There is something profoundly moving about Paradiso XVI; and that is even in Paradiso, even in this high realm, one can have shortcomings. Let me explain.

The canto opens with an astonishing admission - “O poca nostra nobiltà di sangue” — “O our meager nobility of blood.” Dante, even in Heaven, cannot help but feel pride in his lineage, pride in the bloodline that connects him to his ancestor Cacciaguida.

It almost feels like the contrapasso technique Dante used in the Inferno, where the damned were punished by the opposite expression of their sin. Here, in the realm of Mars, where Cacciaguida speaks of lineage and pride, Dante recognises, rather than suffers from, his own pride.

As I have mentioned in the previous post the heaven of Mars, which began in Paradiso XV, it is the heaven of lineage, of history, of ancestry, of the blood that binds. It is the most human of heavens, where affection, pride, and memory are still alive, and where Dante faces the deepest paradox of existence: that even the things we know to be transient still hold meaning for us.

Cacciaguida, radiant in his light, speaks not as a saint detached from the world but as an ancestor whose love is still grounded in history. He recalls the Florence of his youth — a smaller, purer city, untouched by the corruption and division of Dante’s time. His description feels almost like a dream: a Florence of honesty, of modesty, of balance. But then, like a shadow creeping across a sunlit wall, the tone darkens. For time has been at work. Time, Dante tells us, “goes around with its scissors” — “lo tempo va dintorno con le force.”

It cuts away at everything human, shortens every cloak, unless we mend it daily with new material.

You are indeed a cloak that soon wears out,
so that if, day by day, we add no patch,
then circling time will trim you with its shears.

~ lines 7-9, Canto XVI (Mandelbaum)

It’s one of the most haunting metaphors in the entire poem. Time’s scissors - silent, relentless - trim the fabric of human achievement, generation after generation. Our families fade, our names disappear, our cities crumble. And yet, in the same gesture that acknowledges destruction, Dante gives us a philosophy of preservation. If time cuts, then art must sew. If life shortens, then memory must lengthen. The only way to resist time’s shears is through renewal through conscious acts of remembrance, creativity, and love.

II.

In his Life, Leo Tolstoy asked one of the most piercing questions that can confront a human being:

What is the purpose of life if after we die, the world continues unchanged, beating on with its indifferent rhythm, and our name fades from memory?

For Tolstoy, the tragedy of existence lies not merely in death, but in the world’s indifference to our having lived. His answer is strikingly close to what Dante intuited in this canto: that the meaning of life cannot rest on the fragile foundation of the self. If all that we do is bound to the ego, then our deeds perish when we do.

Therefore, said Tolstoy, one must act with an eternal purpose to contribute something that allows life to continue even after our own disappearance. Our actions should not serve our vanity, but the continuity of the world; not our name, but the survival of meaning.

Cacciaguida’s long catalogue of old Florentine families (the “Florentine phonebook,” as Teodolinda Barolini calls it) may at first seem tedious to modern readers. But it is, in truth, one of the most beautiful acts of preservation in literature.

Each name Dante records, each family he mentions, is rescued from the oblivion of time. Even as Cacciaguida laments their disappearance, Dante immortalises them through the act of writing.

“Le vostre cose tutte hanno lor morte” — “All things that you possess, possess their death.” But by naming them, by remembering them, he gives them a second life.

This, I think, is the heart of Paradiso XVI. It is not only about Florence; it is about mortality and the fragile continuity of culture. Dante is not just preserving the memory of his city, instead he is preserving the memory of what it means to belong. Every name he records, every vanished lineage, becomes a piece of human history caught in these lines. The canto transforms loss into legacy, the decay of time into the permanence of art.

And yet, this is not a simple nostalgia. Even if it is, Dante’s nostalgia is not naïve. He does not propose a return to the past, nor does he idealise it beyond recognition. He knows that Cacciaguida’s Florence - that tranquil, “pure” city - was as mortal as any other.

The past itself is not the goal; it is the measure. What matters is not to rebuild what was lost but to keep alive the spirit of virtue that once animated it. Dante’s memory is not sentimental but moral. It teaches that the past is not an escape from the present but a challenge to it.

About six months ago, I visited one of my favourite cities in the world - Prague, in Czechia. It is an extraordinarily beautiful city, often called the City of Palaces, because its countless buildings look like miniature palaces in which great figures of the past once lived. One walks through its streets and cannot escape the feeling of moving inside a single vast palace open to the air.

And yet, as I walked through it, I felt a quiet sadness. These palaces, magnificent as they are, feel like ruins preserved by the care of modern people who can no longer build as those before them did. The quality of the human being has changed — or perhaps diminished — and on those noble façades now hang the loud and garish signs of modern brands, like an insult to the past.

Even while stunned by Prague’s beauty, I could not help but feel that I was walking through a fallen city. These kinds of buildings will never be made again, not because we lack the tools, but because we lack the spirit. And this, I think, is exactly what Dante teaches in this canto: that the past is not there for us to sentimentalise or merely preserve like a museum exhibit. It is there to measure us.

When we look at what our ancestors built — in stone, in art, in virtue — and then look at what we build today, we are forced to confront the uncomfortable truth that not all progress is upward. In that sense, the past is not a comfort but a mirror — one that should humble us.

Reading this canto today, especially after visiting Prague, I can’t help but think about our own cities: how quickly they change, how swiftly communities disappear. Language, identity, memory — all of these are trimmed by the same scissors of time.

Cacciaguida’s lament could be spoken by anyone who has watched their homeland alter beyond recognition. And Dante’s response, to write, to remember, to record, remains one of the few antidotes we have.

When I read Dante here, I hear a voice speaking across centuries to anyone who has ever lost a home, a family, or a city. It tells us that even as time erases what we love, our words can still hold the outlines of what was — and perhaps even what could be again. Time’s scissors will always cut, but every act of memory is a small repair. Dante reminds us that we may not conquer time, but we can answer it , not with despair, but with the quiet work of remembrance.

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This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭

(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)

I. Homer’s Catalogue of Ships

In Canto XVI, there’s something almost sacred in the act of naming. It is hard to ignore the resemblance to Homer’s catalogue of ships in the Iliad. Cacciaguida’s list serves a purpose akin to Homer’s: while Homer sought to preserve the memory of the ships and warriors who sailed to Troy, Cacciaguida safeguards the citizens of Florence.

Both poets, through the act of naming, rescue their worlds from oblivion.

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Quotes 🖋️

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

You are indeed a cloak that soon wears out,
so that if, day by day, we add no patch,
then circling time will trim you with its shears.

~ lines 7-9, Paradiso, Canto XVI

caption...

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1. Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on Paradiso 268

2. Singleton 270

3. Robin Kirkpatrick, Paradiso 399

4. Robert Hollander, Paradiso 450