This is the fourth and final article in this particular Dante series. We remember that we read Dante because he addresses the big questions of truth and reality, and we saw how in Hell the issue of free will is of paramount importance. Subsequently, we discovered that although Purgatory and Hell seem similar in that they are both places of suffering, they differ fundamentally. In the former, there is hope and ultimately beauty, whereas in the latter, there is only despair and profound ugliness. These differences reflect the choices that individuals make in their lifetimes, and these choices are themselves all part of a psychological mind-set or disposition.
But what of Heaven, the third and final stage of Dante’s upward ascent toward God? Is that some boring place where we are destined to sit around listlessly singing hymns? How is it different from the other two psychological and spiritual places?
First, of course, we see that Heaven is a place where there is no pain or suffering, no psychological angst or guilt, and none of the three major psychological problems humans experience of blame, projection, and denial. It’s Paradise, in fact!
Venus Ruling
Heaven, in fact, is full of great sinners! An example that especially illustrates this point can be found in Canto 9. As Dante ascends the levels of Heaven, the occupants are at first grouped according to their ruling planet: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, and so on. Each planet deals with a certain disposition.
Unsurprisingly, Venus is where we find individuals preoccupied in their earthly life with passion, sex, and love; and here we meet a noblewoman, Cunizza da Romano.
What is surprising is that Cunizza first married a Guelph leader for political advantage. Then she had the poet Sordello as a lover for several years, and then later had a love affair with the knight Enrico da Bovio. Following Enrico’s death, Cunizza married (at her brother’s command) Count Aimerio. Then if that were not enough “love,” it is believed that she married a nobleman from Verona, and on his death, married her brother Ezzelino’s astrologer from Padua! The point is, she certainly had—for the time and her station—an exceptional love life.
We might recall at this point arguably the most famous canto in all of the “Divine Comedy,” that of the love affair between Paolo and Francesca, in Canto 5 of Hell. This canto is justly famous for many reasons, but not least is the fact that Dante himself faints with pity at the end of the scene. (Virgil upbraids him about this in the next canto because such a response to the sufferings of Francesca suggests, albeit obliquely, that God has got his judgment wrong in this case.)
As Cunizza herself says (in Mark Musa’s translation), facing Dante, “But gladly I myself forgive in me/ what caused my fate.” Notice those critical words there: “Gladly I myself forgive in me.” There is in them what we would nowadays call self-acceptance. She had no wrong intentions, although her passions may have been excessive. For example, there is something of the true medieval concept of chivalry and gallantry in the occupations of two of her lovers: Sordello was a troubadour poet, and Enrico da Bovio, with whom Cunizza traveled widely, was a knight.
In short, she was led from one love to another, but always in the spirit of love itself. It was likely more spiritual or more in accordance with the mores of her time to have entered a nunnery and renounced the flesh altogether, but that—under the sway, as it were, of Venus, her guiding planetary influence—wasn’t her way. She was destined to enjoy the flesh fully—“gladly” as she says—even though there may have been excess in it.
As a short sidebar, it is worth commenting here that we are not to understand this position as being Dante’s endorsing astrology as we understand it now: that is, as predicting the future in some Christmas cracker kind of way. Rather, the ancients understood that there was a profound connection between what was below (the Earth) and what was above (the heavens and the stars): One mirrored the other, and not least in our understanding of who we are.
Dante himself proudly mentions that he was born under the Gemini star sign, and regards this as significant as to the kind of person he is. In this sense, then, we can interpret the planetary signs as being analogous to personality types. If Myers-Briggs delineates 16 types of personality, well, with astrology we have 12.
Entering Life via the Narrow Gate
But to return to Cunizza, she has done that very difficult thing, which is to enter life via the narrow gate, for the broad gate through which most people go leads to not-life, or more dramatically, to destruction. Her path reflects what former vicar and British Member of Parliament Christopher Bryant talks about when he says, “One of the rewards of the journey will be that of becoming more and more completely what one essentially is.” If we put this in modern, Jungian terms, what it means is accepting the shadow side of one’s personality. It is the integration of the whole self or soul.No, within us there is something deeply disruptive and disturbing, and it is better, so our ego continually reasons, if other people don’t see it. Eventually, of course, if we repress the shadow long enough, we begin to believe it isn’t there. At that point, the only inkling of its existence left to us will be through our dreams, often nightmares.
Writer Thomas Moore observed, “When soul is neglected, it doesn’t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning.” In other words, in Christian terms, this leads to sin. We fail to take responsibility for our own soul, and this leads to its own loss.
Accepting Our Paths Graciously
This, then, is not just a Christian understanding, although Dante explicitly links it to Christian revelation, but the process of becoming who one truly is runs through all wisdom literature. Monbourquette says, “The mystics [called it] the night of faith; the myths of Osiris and of Dionysus described it through images of dismemberment of the person … More familiar to some is Christianity’s comparison of it to the death of the old person and to a crucifixion.”It’s remarkable that science, through Jung, some 600 or so years later, discovers what Dante reveals in his poem. And we need to grasp just how comprehensive that vision of human nature and its frailties is. There are nine levels of heaven before we reach the Heaven of heavens at level ten, or what is called the Empyrean. At each level, the astrological order is followed. So first, at the Moon, we find the sinners who broke their vows (the inconstant moon of popular romantic songs!), sometimes unintentionally, but nevertheless they were at fault.
Then at volatile Mercury, we find the swift seekers after fame and glory. Venus we’ve met—the excess of passion or love. After Venus, the Sun, and as is appropriate with its association with light, we find the wise spirits, among them the wisest man who ever lived, King Solomon. But as we know (1 Kings 11:4), he was a deep sinner too.
From the Sun we move to Mars, the warlike planet. It is worth commenting here how all-embracing the scope of the sins are: Venus for love, and Mars for war—opposite tendencies yet both leading to sin as well as redemption. Here Dante meets his own great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, an old warrior who died fighting in the Second Crusade.
Jupiter holds the spirits of those rulers and kings who led the world. But above them, at Saturn, are the contemplatives—those who devoted their lives to asceticism and devotion to God.
Beyond Saturn, we reach the Fixed Stars where we find Adam and the three major Apostles; it need hardly be noted that Adam was a sinner, or that the apostle Peter was, given all his gaffes recorded in the Gospels. And so on, to the final vision.
