Dante and the Beatific Vision

In light of the beatific vision, “The Divine Comedy” should be read as an avenue for personal formation because it is a deeply interactive work. As Dante learns to reorder his affections, readers are challenged to reorder theirs along with him. Readers are meant to learn by doing, by going on the journey with Dante.

Dante’s journey of reordering his soul reaches its end in Canto Thirty-Three of Paradise, where he beholds the beatific vision. Although the story of The Divine Comedy is about the afterlife, it was written to affect the present life, and the beatific vision in Canto Thirty-Three is the fullest expression of this concept. Dante argues that there is something disordered about reality and man’s affections that can lead them to inferno. However, the beatific vision is the fullness of hope because it means that man can reorder his affections into proper alignment with God’s and experience fullness of life as Dante does in the beatific vision. Through the beatific vision, Dante argues for ordered living, where God and man are in proper relation to one another, in opposition to contingent living, where man does not honor God in His proper place. Dante writes The Comedy in such a way that implores readers to reorder their lives as Dante does. Dante ends The Divine Comedy with the beatific vision because he is encouraging the reader to live better in light of future glory.

Canto Thirty-Three of Paradise is essential to interpreting the entire Divine Comedy because the beatific vision is evidence for Dante’s argument against contingent living. The beatific vision is the natural ending for The Comedy. Dante’s journey could not possibly end any other way. Edward Hagman, a Franciscan monk and scholar, argues that the poet’s journey is a pilgrimage from isolation to participation. Hagman’s point is that Dante begins his journey in the isolation and darkness of the Inferno and ends his journey in Paradise, where Dante experiences the glory of God through the beatific vision. Hagman writes: “[I]f Dante’s ineffable vision of God represents the summit of his entire journey, it must also be a major key to the understanding of the entire Commedia” (2). Hagman’s assertion is extremely helpful in framing how Canto Thirty-Three should be read because he acknowledges that Dante’s vision is greater than words can describe, while still being significant in framing every Canto that proceeds Canto Thirty-Three.

In addition, Canto Thirty-Three is the pinnacle of Dante’s journey because in it he succeeds in properly ordering his affections. Throughout Dante’s journey his character is being shaped by his experiences until it reaches its most blessed form in the beatific vision. This idea is expressed in the prayer of St. Bernard to the Virgin Mary when Bernard asks Mary to permit Dante to see God:

This Pilgrim who has witnessed, coming from
the lowest pool of all the universe,
the lives of soul and soul in every realm,
Now bends his knee to you, to gain such force
by grace, that he may lift his eyes higher
unto his final healing and its source. (Paradise 33.22-27)

St. Bernard artfully describes the entirety of Dante’s journey that begins in “the lowest pool of all the universe,” which is hell or Inferno. After describing where Dante has been, St. Bernard goes on to describe Dante’s current position in the Empyrean, implying that Dante has completed the process of reordering his soul that began in the Inferno. It is apparent that Dante has completed this process because Dante can now humble himself, “bend[ing] his knee” before Mary and petitioning to see God who is his “final healing.” Each lesson Dante learns throughout his journey has prepared him for this moment and made him fit to be in God’s presence.

Moreover, prominent Dante Scholar and author Charles Williams argues that in writing the Paradise, Dante “contemplates the beatitude of mankind” (221). This distinction is helpful because it highlights the cosmic significance of the story that Dante is telling. Williams highlights Dante’s contemplation as having universal ramifications. In more exhaustive terms, he describes Dante’s third canticle: “The Paradiso is concerned to exhibit beatitude; that is—proper relationship between men and men and men and God” (Williams 190). “Proper relationship between men and God” is characteristic of ordered living which brings about flourishing or blessedness. “Exhibiting beatitude”, as Williams says, could be a reference to the beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel. Yet, “proper relationship between men and men and men and God” seems to describe the greatest commandment, which includes love of God and love of neighbor. Thus, Paradise, and more specifically the beatific vision, exist to exhibit the love that exudes from man in right relationship with God.

Furthermore, understanding the beatific vision is essential to understanding how The Comedy should be interpreted because it reveals The Comedy’s theological significance. Robert Hollander argues that Dante “referred to two kinds of allegory,” which he called the “allegory of the poets” and the “allegory of the theologians.” According to Hollander, Dante argues for a theological interpretation of The Comedy:

Rather than employ the allegory of the poets, which admitted, even insisted, that the literal sense of a work was untrue, [Dante] chose to employ the allegory of the theologians, with the consequence that everything recounted in the poem as having actually occurred is to be treated as “historical,” since the poet insistently claims that what he relates is nothing less than literally true.

Hollander’s point is that Dante’s insistence on The Comedy being interpreted theologically means that the events in The Comedy should be read historically as though they really happened. Hollander’s assertion is reflected in Dante’s letter to his patron, Cangrande della Scala, in which he gives instructions for interpreting Paradise with consideration to the whole Comedy. Dante describes Paradise’s specific subject literally as “the state of blessed souls after death” (364). However, the subject of whole work allegorically is: “how man by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, becomes liable to the justice that rewards or the justice that punishes” (364). Dante is dealing with a four-fold medieval theological interpretation that includes a literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical sense. The literal interpretation of Paradise describes the most obvious meaning, which Dante says is “the state of blessed souls after death,” and the allegorical sense is how “man by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, becomes liable to the justice that rewards or the justice that punishes.” The moral sense is about souls moving from a state of sin to grace and removing people living in the misery of the present life to a state of bliss and blessedness in the next life. Finally, the anagogical sense is the departure of the soul from the sinful state of this world to the grace-filled state of eternity.

These levels of interpretation are significant when examining the beatific vision because they reveal the importance of ordered living. The beatific vision is the completion of a properly ordered life that includes a blessed state that is justly rewarded according to merit. Examining the vision also gives insight to the moral foundations of the world in which a Christian sufferers under sin in life but is rewarded after their death, connecting to the overall narrative of the soul’s transformation from a state of sin to a state of grace. Dante through The Comedy is dramatizing the Christian story of transformation in a way that is specific to his personal life. Yet, through describing his individual experience in detail, Dante relates his narrative to a universal human desire to transcend.

Considering the theological interpretation, The Divine Comedy is a story about the next life meant to influence how people are currently living. This idea is expressed even in Purgatory, where Beatrice commends Dante with these words: “for the world that lives so wickedly, / keep your eyes on the chariot. Once returned, / be sure you write down everything you see” (Purgatory 32. 103-105). Here, Dante is artistically blurring the lines between the character and the poet. Beatrice tells Dante to pay close attention to the things of heaven so that he can write them down in order to influence “the world that lives so wickedly.” Paradise is a picture of the potential of a fleeting and sinful life becoming redeemed with universal importance. Williams asserts that Paradise is an image of the whole redeemed universe and an image of the redeemed way (192). Working from Williams’s framework, Dante’s sublime experience before God in Canto Thirty-Three is not simply Dante’s redemption. His experience is instead a picture of life as it should be and as it can be for those who order their life in accordance with the will of God. The beatific vision takes on a communal value because it exalts God to his necessary position above all things. The beatific vision is the highest expression of God’s preeminence, where all humanity is seeing God as he really is. The human will decrease so that the divine may increase, and life becomes as it is meant be. God will finally be recognized by all creation as the Lord of the universe.

Subsequently, when describing the beatific vision, paying attention to The Comedy’s allegorical sense is especially necessary because the beatific vision is indescribable. Throughout Canto Thirty-Three, Dante continually clarifies that his words are insufficient in communicating his experience. Dante recounts his words as, “a weak glimmer in the haze” (Paradise 33.90). After Mary grants Dante permission to see God, Dante warns that his language will fall short of the experience: “From this point on / Whatever human language can convey / must yield to vision” (54-56). The beatific vision is such a sublime experience that words cannot capture its fullness and beauty. It seems strange that Dante would end his intricate Comedy with something that cannot be thoroughly explained with words. Even so, Dante’s inability to explain the vision in explicit speech signifies the deep significance of the beatific vision. Dante, in his Letter to Cangrande della Scala, explains that metaphors can hint at deep truths that are difficult to describe: “Plato gives a sufficient hint of this truth in his works by turning to metaphors, for he saw many things by intellectual light which he could not express in direct speech” (371). Dante’s point is that difficult philosophical concepts that can be understood deep within the intellect cannot always manifest themselves in words because the ideas are lofty. Even though these ideas can be difficult to grasp and communicate, it is still worthwhile to try to grasp them with metaphor as an aide. Even though the beatific vision is difficult to describe, Dante still finds it supremely necessary to end his work attempting to describe it because of its deep moral significance.

It is also important to note what Dante means by vision because it clarifies the nature of the beatific vision. Dante says that Plato “saw many things by intellectual light” (371). Throughout Canto Thirty-Three, Dante references sight and vision but he is not talking about a physical sight. He is instead describing a sort of mental gaze or divine illumination that takes place in the soul. Classifying Dante’s journey as one of deification, theologian Hans Borsema  puts it this way: “in deification, speech gives way to vision” (Borsema p. 222). What Boersma means is that as Dante experiences the beatific vision, he participates in the life of God such that Dante no longer perceives reality through speech but now perceives it through the sight of his soul. This reading is evident considering a description of Dante’s journey through Paradise found in Canto One: “To signify man’s soaring beyond man / words will not do; let my comparison / suffice for them for whom the grace of God / Reserves the experience” (1.70-73). “Man’s soaring beyond” is how Anthony Esolen translates Dante’s neologism transumanar or trans-human. Experiencing the beatific vision, and more broadly experiencing Paradise, is so difficult to describe that Dante has to create new language. Jeffery Russell explains this phenomenon as “Dante the poet, knowing that what he has seen is beyond human language, must accommodate his readers as God accommodates him, using language, and even pressing through with neologisms, in order to describe what is beyond description” (Russell 165). Russel is right in his evaluation because the significance of the beatific vision is so great that Dante includes it as the end of his journey even though his speech about it requires accommodation.

Furthermore, understanding Dante’s neologism transumanar is important in understanding the beatific vision because it explores the divine mysteriousness of the vision. Boresma puts it together like this: “[On] [Dante’s] understanding, vision exceeds language: it is through our vision of God that he, as the object of our hope, enters us and transhumanizes us” (253). Boresma is emphasizing the high experience of the beatific vision where God, by his presence, allows the Christian to transcend the known human experience. Dante echos this transcendence when he writes:

Summit of light that lift yourself so high
above the mind of mortal man, restore
some slightest shade of your theophany
And grant then to my tongue sufficient power
to leave the palest flicker of your Glory
to readers of a latter day and hour. (Paradise 33.67-72)

The transhuman element is conveyed through the phrase “above the mind of mortal man.” Again, Dante is acknowledging the limitations of his speech because he is asking God to restore to his memory the sight of his Glory. More importantly, Dante asks for the memory of God’s glory so that he can communicate it to “readers of a latter day and hour.” Dante is explicitly referencing the reader because that is for whom the depiction of the vision is intended. The reader is meant to be affected by this vision in a way that convicts him towards reordering his own life.

For further clarity, it is important to note that when Dante describes the beatific vision, he is describing the pinnacle of human experience. When Dante experiences the beatific vision, all his desires and longings are fulfilled. The three Christian virtues—faith, hope, and love—are necessary to sustain the Christian in the present life. However, in the next life, during the beatific vision love is the only virtue that remains because faith and hope are no longer necessary. The pilgrim is in the presence of the glory of God, which was the object of his faith and hope. The beatific vision is the event that is hoped for. Dante says it like this: “the truth that I longed for came to me” (Paradise 33.140). Dante is experiencing the greatest form of satisfaction and rest that can only take place in the presence of God. Dante’s famous last lines beautifully capture the idea that all desire is satisfied in the presence of God: “Already were all my will and my desires / turned—as a wheel in equal balance—by / The Love that moved the sun and the other stars” (33.143-45). The image of the wheel turning represents the will of man coming into perfect harmony with the will of God. The greatest thing that a human can experience is for his desires to come into perfect harmony with the triune God. In this harmony, Dante experiences the greatest freedom, satisfaction, and love that any human could hope for. When Dante reaches the beatific vision, his reordering is complete, and when the reader reaches the beatific vision with Dante, he sees his potential destiny in stark opposition to the Inferno. Dante, by attempting to describe the beatific vision, is showing why it is necessary to be reordered.

Ultimately, in light of the beatific vision, The Divine Comedy should be read as an avenue for personal formation because it is a deeply interactive work. As Dante learns to reorder his affections, readers are challenged to reorder theirs along with him. Readers are meant to learn by doing, by going on the journey with Dante. Just as Dante is the apprentice of Virgil, then Beatrice, and finally God Almighty, the reader too is supposed to become an apprentice of what is good and what is beautiful. However, Paradise—especially the beatific vision—is beyond teaching. Dante invites the reader to participate in the vast experience that is the beatific vision. Through the beatific vision Dante displays life without separation between God and his creation.

Any reading of The Divine Comedy that excludes the reader’s personal role in the comedy is insufficient. The Christian hope for the beatific vision is the foundation for how to best order their affections and priorities in this current fleeting life. The Comedy, beginning in the desolation of Inferno and ending in the fullest presence of God in Paradise, shows life as it should be and as it could be. The story of The Divine Comedy is a profound reflection on reality and what it means to be human. Each ring of Inferno is built by the tragic stories, each stage of Purgatory is marked by pilgrims seeking the face of God, and sweet Paradise is filled with those experiencing the fullness of God and the fullness of life itself. Every human story has a place in The Comedy’s story, and the reader has a unique opportunity to change his eternal destiny as he climbs with Dante to the heights of living.

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Works Cited:

Alighieri, Dante. “Appendix A: Letter to Cangrande della Scala.” Paradise. Translated by J. M. Dent, Modern Library, 2007, p. 361-372.

—. Paradise. Translated by Anthony Esolen, Modern Library, 2007.

Boersma, Hans. “Speech and Vision: Dante’s Transhumanizing Journey.” Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018, p. 219-251.

Hagman, Edward. “Dante’s Vision of God: The End of the Itinerarium Mentis.” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, no. 106, 1988, pp. 1–20.

Hollander, Robert. Allegory in Dante. https://dante.princeton.edu/pdp/allegory.html. Accessed 4 Oct. 2023.

Russell, Jeffrey Burton. “The Heavenly Paradise?” A History of Heaven: The Singing

Silence, Princeton University Press, 1997.

Williams, Charles. The Figure of Beatrice. Noonday Press, 1961.

The featured image is “Color modifications of an 1867 Public Domain image by Gustave Doré, of Dante Alighieri and Beatrice Portinari gazing into the Empyrean Light,” courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.