Chapter 58

Denunciation by St. Peter of his degenerate successors.—Dante gazes upon the Earth.—Ascent of Beatrice and Dante to the Crystalline Heaven.—Its nature.—Beatrice rebukes the covetousness of mortals.

“To the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit be glory,” all Paradise began, so that the sweet song was inebriating me. That which I was seeing seemed to me a smile of the Universe; for my inebriation was entering through the hearing and through the sight. O joy! O ineffable gladness! O life entire of love and of peace! O riches secure, without longing![1]

[1] Which leave nothing for desire.

Before my eyes the four torches were standing enkindled, and that which had come first began to make itself more vivid, and in its semblance be came such as Jove would become, if be and Mars were birds, and should interchange feathers.[1] The Providence which here apportions turn and office, had imposed silence on the blessed choir on every side, when I heard, “If I change color, marvel not; for, while I speak, thou shalt see all these change color. He who on earth usurps my place, my place, my place, which is vacant in the presence of the Son of God, has made of my burial-place a sewer of blood and of stench, wherewith the Perverse One who fell from here above, below there is placated.”

[1] The pure white light becoming red.

With that color which, by reason of the opposite sun, paints the cloud at evening and at morning, I then saw the whole Heaven overspread. And like a modest lady who abides sure of herself, and at the fault of another, in bearing of it only, becomes timid, even thus did Beatrice change countenance; and such eclipse I believe there was in heaven when the Supreme Power suffered.

Then his words proceeded, in a voice so transmuted from itself that his countenance was not more changed; “The Bride of Christ was not nurtured on my blood, on that of Linus and of Cletus, to be employed for acquist of gold; but for acquist of this glad life Sixtus and Pius and Calixtus and Urban[1] shed their blood after much weeping. It was not our intention that part of the Christian people should sit on the right hand of our successors, and part on the other; nor that the keys which were conceded to me should become a sign upon a banner which should fight against those who are baptized;[2] nor that I should be a figure on a seal to venal and mendacious privileges, whereat I often redden and flash. In garb of shepherd, rapacious wolves are seen from here-above over all the pastures: O defence of God, why dost thou yet lie still! To drink our blood Cahorsines and Gascons are making ready:[3] O good beginning, to what vile end behoves it that thou fall! But the high Providence which with Scipio defended for Rome the glory of the world, will succor speedily, as I conceive. And thou, son, who because of thy mortal weight wilt again return below, open thy mouth, and conceal not that which I conceal not.”

[1] Early Popes martyred for the faith.

[2] A reference to the war which Boniface VIII. waged against the Colonnesi. See Inferno, Canto XXVII.

[3] John XXII., who came to the Papacy in 1316, was a native of Cahors; his immediate predecessor, Clement V., 1305-1314, was a Gascon. The passage is one of those which shows that this portion of the poem was in hand during the last years of Dante's life.

[4] In midwinter, when the sun is in Capricorn.

Even as our air snows down flakes of frozen vapors, when the horn of the Goat of heaven touches the sun,[1] so, upward, I saw the aether become adorned, and flaked with the triumphant vapors[2] that had made sojourn there with us. My sight was following their semblances, and followed, till the intermediate space by its greatness pre. vented it from passing further onward. Whereon my Lady, who saw me disengaged from upward heeding, said to me, “Cast down thy sight, and look how thou hast revolved.”

[1] The spirits.

Since the hour when I had first looked, I saw that I had moved through the whole are which the first climate makes from its middle to its end;[1] so that I saw beyond Cadiz the mad track of Ulysses, and near on this side the shore[2] on which Europa became a sweet burden. And more of the site of this little threshing-floor would have been discovered to me, but the sun was proceeding beneath my feet, a sign and more removed.[3]

[1] From Dante's first look downward from the Heavens, at the end of