Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Paradiso, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Earthly and Heavenly Justice
Creation and God’s Providence
God’s Character and Will
Vision, Knowledge, and the Pursuit of God
Language and the Ineffable
Summary
Analysis
Dante reflects on the foolish efforts of the human mind, which runs pointlessly after such things as law, medicine, politics, trickery, and leisure. He, on the other hand, has been freed from all such things, following Beatrice to Heaven instead. Still in the sphere of the sun, the dancing souls gather in a circle, looking like a candle chandelier. Thomas Aquinas senses that Dante has questions—Dante wants to better understand some of the things that Aquinas said earlier about his fellow souls.
Dante is not literally denouncing the importance of the mind; he is simply comparing the emptiness of earthly pursuits and indulgences compared to what should be humanity’s greatest delight—the pursuit of God in Heaven. This contempt for earthly things will characterize Aquinas’s speech in this canto.
Themes
Aquinas explains that God, in his providence, provided two “princes” who would help guide the Bride of Christ (the Church) to her Beloved (Christ). One of these men was characterized by “burning love,” while the other had shining intelligence. Though different, both of these men are equally deserving of praise, because “their different actions [served] a single plan.”
Thomas Aquinas himself was a member of the Dominican order; he will spend most of this canto praising St. Francis (who had “burning love”), head of the rival Franciscan order, instead of Dominic, the head of Aquinas’s own Dominican order. This demonstrates the loving fellowship enjoyed in Heaven. The differences between the two men also highlight God’s providence, which always works toward a unified plan.
Themes
Aquinas begins by describing Francis of Assisi and his lifelong love affair with a girl called Poverty. Poverty was a scorned, abandoned widow when Francis united himself to her, but Francis soon gathered a like-minded band around the two of them. Saint Dominic worthily followed in Francis’s footsteps when it came to poverty, but later generations of his flock have wandered astray after riches.
Here Aquinas praises Francis’s abandonment of earthly riches in pursuit of poverty, which he personifies as a desirable lady, albeit a widow (the Church of the day having lost sight of her virtues). Francis exemplifies Dante’s attitude at the beginning of the canto, scorning the things of the world because they pale in comparison to the beauties of Heaven. Aquinas, again, is himself a Dominican, and he doesn’t hesitate to condemn the Dominicans’ failure to match the Franciscans’ detachment from riches.
Themes
