Paradiso (109 page)

53–54.
   
Ascesi
: For the phrase describing Francis as “quasi Sol oriens in mundo” (like the Sun rising on the world) by one of his chroniclers, Bernardo da Bessa, see Baldelli (Bald.1973.1), p. 105; this source was perhaps first cited by Daniello (comm. to verse 50). Perhaps the only commentator to be properly puzzled by what this verse means, whether in Dante’s formulation itself or in more than six hundred years of commentary that have yet to produce a convincing resolution, is Chimenz (comm. to vv. 52–54). But no one apparently has thought of the most simple reason that might have made Dante prefer “Orïente” to “Ascesi”: the tenses of the Latin verb and participle. “Ascesi” (“I have risen,” certainly a Christlike enough word) yields to “Orïente” (rising) because the second word is present tense, that is, not confined to the past. Francis, like Christ, is
always
rising, leading us Heavenward.

The first commentator to turn to Bonaventure’s life of Francis for a source, a practice of many contemporary glossators, was apparently Lombardi (comm. to vv. 53–54): “Vidi Alterum Angelum ascendentem ab ortu Solis, habentem signum Dei vivi” (I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God [Apocalypse 7:2]). We may note that St. Bonaventure’s biblical formula also makes use of a present participle—two of them, in fact. Bosco (Bosc. 1966.1), p. 322, privileges the Apocalypse over Franciscan writings as compelling Dante’s attention, but not convincingly, since Dante may have been reminded of the Apocalypse precisely by Bonaventure.
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55.
   
Dante puns on the Sun again, using a metaphoric valence for his birth (
orto
[rising]) more readily associated with the rising of a star or planet in the sky.
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56–57.
   Again Francis, beginning his career of service to God and humankind, is seen as the Sun, now preparing the earth to be fruitful.
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58–60.
   Francis’s father raised his son to pursue the life of commerce, as he himself had done. Dante has boiled down into a single tercet the dramatic story of Francis’s public rejection of his father’s plans for him, taking the clothes off his back to return them to him in a public square of Assisi. This choice is represented here by his “marrying” Lady Poverty. (One of the popular Franciscan narratives of the thirteenth century was the
Sacrum commercium beati Francisci cum domina Paupertate
. For an attempt to establish Dante’s acquaintance with this work as already revealed in passages in
Purgatorio
, see Havely [Have.1996.1].) That conceit gives the controlling image to the next fifty verses (58–117). And, while even indirect reference to the conflict between the Spiritual and Conventual Franciscans will not confront the reader until the next canto (XII.124), it is clear from the outset that Dante essentially sides with the Spirituals, whose central and urgent position was the radical insistence on the Church owning nothing, a view that happens to coincide with Dante’s political views. This is not to say that his religious feelings about poverty were ungenuine, but merely to point out that a secondary reason for them does exist. Manselli, “francescanesimo,”
ED
III (1971), pp. 14a–16b, points out that the fourteenth-century struggle within the order had its roots in the papacy of Celestino V, in the waning years of the thirteenth century, when a group of Franciscans received permission to split off and form their own “sub-order.” They were fairly soon forced to flee Italy (most of them for Greece). This group included John of Peter Olivi and Ubertino of Casale, both of whom eventually resurfaced in Florence. For a recent discussion in English of Dante’s views of the Spiritual Franciscans, see Havely (Have.2004.1).
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60.
   In the past sixty years there has been dispute over the somewhat curious phrase “la porta del piacere” (lit., “the door of pleasure”), generally understood to understate the aversion to poverty, that is, none opens the door to her gladly, none welcomes poverty into his heart. This became “the doorway to pleasure” (
die Pforte der Lust
[
Neue Dantestudien
, Istanbul, 1944, p. 80]) in Auerbach’s (Auer.1944.2, pp. 88–89) formulation (his translator does not help his case, making
porta
plural, while it is singular, and mistranslating
piacere
in her “gates of desire,” if one must admit that
translating the phrase presents something of a problem). If most were scandalized by this reading, it has found support in some quarters, for example, Marguerite Mills Chiarenza (Chia.1993.1). The core of Auerbach’s interpretation, possibly the most controversial point in a series of works dealing with Dante that were hardly intended to be without cause for controversy, may be represented in a single sentence: “It seems to me absolutely necessary to interpret the opening of the gates of desire in the proper sense as a sexual act, and thus
porta
as the gateway to the feminine body” (p. 88). For some of the many counterarguments, see Bonora (Bono.1987.1), pp. 242–43; Pasquini (Pasq.1996.1), pp. 422–23; see also Pasquini (Pasq.2001.1), pp. 193–94. What supporters of Auerbach’s reading fail to take into account is that it is the male in the metaphor who opens
his
“porta del piacere” to the lady, thus rendering his entire argument inapplicable.
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61–63.
   In 1207, before the court of the bishop of his hometown and
coram patre
(Latin: “in the presence of his father”), he renounced his family and the life that had been chosen for him to follow Christ. In no other figure in the history of the Church does the concept of the “imitation of Christ” have so obvious and central a relation as it has in the life of Francis of Assisi.

His “spouse,” Poverty, once chosen, becomes increasingly more precious to him; as we will shortly find out (vv. 64–66), she had been married once before, and her previous husband had been no one less than Jesus.
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64–66.
   While at first the reader is perhaps not sure as to the identity of Poverty’s first husband, it will soon (at verse 72) become clear that she was Jesus’ “wife,” left a widow by the Crucifixion in a.d. 34, and remaining “unmarried” for 1,173 years, unwanted by any other suitor, until Francis’s vow in 1207.

Dante has outdone himself. The writings about Francis (who was practically the cause of the explosion of the biography industry all by himself [there were at least eight “lives” produced within the century of his death]) have, except for the Gospels, no antecedents. Dante’s addition to existing Franciscan material is spectacularly original in its reworking of the basic narrative found in Bonaventure and others. Dante expands the role of poverty not so much conceptually (the devotion to poverty is the keystone of all Franciscan writings) but stylistically, making his saintly life an allegorical tale of his relationship to her. He can, given the abundance of “official lives,” count on his readers to fill in the by-then familiar historical details.

For the influence of Franciscan lyric poetry (and especially that of Iacopone da Todi) on Dante, see Vettori (Vett.2004.1), pp. 120–22. Luciano Rossi (Ross.2002.1), pp. 170–72, follows up a suggestion of Lucia Battaglia Ricci (Batt.1997.1), p. 42, and argues that Dante’s eleventh canto reflects Francis’s
Laudes Creaturarum
(see the note to
Inf.
I.117).

It seems possible that the author of the
Commedia
has, improbable as this may seem, gone beyond the prideful bearing that afflicted so much of his earlier work and attained a kind of humility (see Hollander [Holl.2003.2]). For the crucial role of Francis in the development of that humility, particularly as counterforce to the arid intellectual pride that leads to heresy, see Veglia (Vegl.2000.1), pp. 75–97.
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67–69.
   Not content with making Poverty the “wife” of Jesus and then of Francis, Dante invents her presence in classical epic, adding her to the participants in that scene in Lucan (
Phars
. V.515–531) in which Caesar’s bellowing, bullying manner cannot impress the poverty-stricken fisherman, Amyclas (see Dante’s earlier treatment, without mention of Lady Poverty, in
Convivio
IV.xiii.12), not evincing fear because he has nothing of which to be robbed.

Occasionally, a reader (e.g., Carlo Grabher, comm. to vv. 64–75) complains that this bit of business seems overly cerebral (along with the next
exemplum
, the presence of Poverty on the Cross with Jesus). It surely reveals the high regard Dante held for Lucan’s text, putting a moment from its narrative not only alongside one from the Bible (a familiar enough Dantean technique), but alongside one of the supreme moments in the Bible, Jesus’ death on the Cross; yet Grabher’s point is well taken.
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70–72.
   If Lady Poverty’s loyalty to Amyclas had won her no friends for more than a millennium, this result is all the more surprising in that she was the last one to solace Jesus in His final agony.
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72.
   A much-debated line, from the earliest days to the present. Is the verb in this line
pianse
(wept), as Petrocchi has decided, or is it
salse
(climbed), as Benvenuto da Imola insisted (comm. to vv. 70–72)? Evidently, the shocking and otherwise unheard-of act that is portrayed if the reader accepts the second option has kept some commentators on the side of the version of this verse contained in the Codice Cassinese, in which we find
pianse
. As always, we are constrained (as we should be) by our decision to follow Petrocchi’s text; on this occasion, we would have gladly been governed by Benvenuto’s reading of the line.
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73.
   
Thomas is concerned lest he had allowed his speech to become
chiuso
(dark, unclear), and we consequently not understand of whom and of what he spoke, thus reflecting his characterization (vv. 22–24) of his figurative speech in the previous canto (most specifically
Par.
X.96, his metaphor of fattening sheep, on which he has been expanding here) as not being
aperta
(clear). Once again one may witness, behind the text, Dante’s desire to deal with Thomas’s attacks on the unreliable nature of poetic speech (see Hollander [Holl.1976.1]).
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74.
   Finally we hear the name of this hero of the religious life. Ernesto Trucchi (comm. to vv. 55–57) revives the account of a certain preacher, named Chalippe, who, in town to address the faithful of Lucca during the Lenten observances of 1689, was shown names engraved in stone by a canon of Lucca named Moriconi. These were two Luccan brothers, one of whom, Bernardo Moriconi, left his native city and settled in Assisi. His son, Pietro (Bernardone, after his father) Moriconi, married a noblewoman by the name of Pica Bourlement. In 1181 they had a son, baptized (at the mother’s instigation, since the father was away at the time) as Giovanni. Upon his return to Assisi, Pietro Bernardone was furious, since he had wanted his son to bear the name of Francesco (the adjective for “French” in Italian) to honor his own pleasure in association with France, the country where he had made his fortune as a merchant. Accordingly, the day of the boy’s confirmation, Pietro had his name changed. And that, apparently, is how Francesco d’Assisi got his name.
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76.
   See Porcelli (Porc.2000.1), pp. 1–5, for a discussion of the word
concordia
(harmony) as a key to understanding the cantos of the Sun.
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77–78.
   Indeed, the growing love between Francis and his lady, Poverty, is a form of
concordia
developed out of apparent discord: the first description of poverty as something, like death, that no one willingly welcomes.
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79–84.
   The first followers of Francis, those who were eventually gathered into the Order of Friars Minor (so called by Francis in his first Rule, indicating their humility, i.e, that they were “lesser brothers”), are now presented: Bernard of Quintavalle (a fellow townsman of Assisi, also from a wealthy family, who was so impressed by Francis’s actions that he sold all his possessions in benefit of the poor and became his first follower; Francis considered Bernard his “first born”); Giles and Silvester, both also of Assisi—the first was also among the earliest of Francis’s followers and lived until 1262;
Silvester was already a priest, who, when he had a dream in which Francis killed a dragon menacing the city, joined the group; he died circa 1240.

The sensuous delights of going barefoot are portrayed as the freedom of the soul in unstinting love of Christ. We note how the heat increases in these lines: Bernard is described with a past definite (
si scalzò
) as having taken his shoes off, but then the verb is repeated in the present tense (
scalzasi
) for Giles and Silvester. Those uses of the “historical present” intensify the feeling of liberation as, one by one, Francis’s followers begin also to fall in love with this ugly woman.
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