Dante’s conviction that both Pope and Emperor have a divinely-ordained mission to fulfil on earth also emerges very clearly from Justinian’s account of the history of Rome which takes up much of Paradiso vi. Indeed, it seems to be precisely in order to make this point that Justinian tells this story, even though its details are well-known, certainly to Dante-character and to Dante’s first readers, as is signalled by the way in which Justinian keeps repeating ‘as you know’ (‘Tu sai […] E sai […] Sai’ (Par., vi. 37, 40, 43)).
The story of Rome is told here as the story of the eagle, Rome’s sign and standard, as it moves from place to place (from East to West and then back from West to East) and from one individual or group to another, from the city’s earliest history to the time of writing. But this eagle is precisely a ‘sacrosanto segno’ [sacrosanct emblem] (Par., vi. 32), and Justinian’s is
30 ‘Duos igitur fines providentia illa inenarrabilis homini proposuit intendendos:
beatitudinem scilicet huius vite […] et beatitudinem vite ecterne’ [Ineffable providence has thus set before us two goals to aim at: i.e. happiness in this life […] and happiness in the eternal life] (Mon., III. xv [xvi]. 7).
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not so much a lesson in history as in salvation history, for this story is not merely a chronological account of a sequence of historical events, but builds to (and falls away from) a climactic moment, the moment when providential and temporal plans come together, when the divine Christ becomes also human.
Thus, the passing of the imperial emblem from the hands of the city’s founders to the early kings, and on to the heroes of the Republican period is all presented as mere preparation for the time when it would reach the hands of the emperors, under whom, finally (and uniquely), the world would attain perfect peace – a peace willed both by God (‘’l ciel’) and by Rome:
Poi, presso al tempo che tutto ’l ciel volle redur lo mondo a suo modo sereno,
Cesare per voler di Roma il tolle. […]
Con costui [Augustus] corse infino al lito rubro con costui puose il mondo in tanta pace
che fu serrato a Giano il suo delubro. (Par., vi. 55-57, 79-81)
[Then, near to the time when all the heavens wished to reduce the world to their own serene measure, Caesar took it by the will of Rome. […] With him [Augustus] it coursed as far as the Red shore, with him it brought such peace to the world that Janus’ temple was barred up.]
The word ‘pace’ [peace] at the end of line 80, marks the climax, not only of this canto, but of history itself, for – although Justinian does not make this explicit here – it is the peace achieved by Augustus which creates the conditions necessary for the birth of Christ, as Dante explains in the Monarchia:
[N]on inveniemus nisi sub divo Augusto monarcha, existente Monarchia perfecta, mundum undique fuisse quietum. Et quod tunc humanum genus fuerit felix in pacis universalis tranquillitate hoc ystoriographi omnes […] dignatus est; et […] Paulus ‘plenitudinem temporis’ statum illum felicissimum appellavit. (Mon. i. xvi. 1-2)
[[W]e shall not find that there ever was peace throughout the world except under the immortal Augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed. That mankind was then happy in the calm of universal peace is attested by all historians […] and […] Paul called that most happy state ‘the fullness of time’.]
The universal peace achieved under Augustus in the plenitudo temporis clearly opposes that universal lack of peace exemplified in contemporary
Divided City, Slavish Italy, Universal Empire 133 Italy in the parallel passage of Purgatorio vi; but Dante also makes clear, through Justinian’s account, that this is a unique occurrence – that there never has been universal peace in all the world under a perfect world monarch except at this moment under Augustus. Everything that happens before this moment is just a preparation for it, and all that happens after it is a mere historical falling-away.
Moreover, Dante does not stop here, for Christ’s mission on earth necessitated not only his birth, but also his death. For this reason, although, as an earthly emperor, Tiberius was a much less obviously positive character than Augustus, Dante gives him particular prominence here for his role in effecting the Crucifixion, through which sins are forgiven and the way to Heaven, closed by the Fall, is reopened:
Ma ciò che ’l segno che parlar mi face fatto avea prima e poi era fatturo
per lo regno mortal ch’a lui soggiace, diventa poi in apparenza poco e scuro, se in mano al terzo Cesare si mira
con occhio chiaro e con affetto puro:
ché la viva Giustizia che mi spira li concedette, in mano a quel ch’i’ dico,
gloria di far vendetta a la sua ira. (Par., vi. 82-90)
[But what the emblem that makes me speak had done earlier, and was to do later for the mortal realm that is subject to it, seems little and obscure if it is watched in the hand of third Caesar [Tiberius] with clear eye and pure affect: for the living Justice that inspires me granted it, in the hands of the one of whom I speak, the glory of taking vengeance for his anger.]
Dante’s praise of Tiberius may seem hyperbolic, but, seen sub specie aeternitatis, the importance of the judgement which he passes on Christ can scarcely be overstated;31 for if Christ is to take upon himself the sins of the whole world, then he must be punished ‘justly’, that is, by a legally constituted authority – one with authority over that whole world whose sins are being punished. Where the Convivio had given a more pragmatic reason for the Empire to be universal in the here-and-now – that is, in order to eliminate cupiditas –, Paradiso vi presents a more theological justification for the universal nature of Empire, at least at its inception – that is, in order
31 ‘The qualifications of Tiberius for inclusion here are uniquely theological’ (Robert Hollander and Albert Rossi, ‘Dante’s Republican Treasury’, Dante Studies 104 (1986), 59-82 (p. 62)).
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that the birth and death of Christ in that human form which Justinian had initially denied, but whose necessity he here enthusiastically embraces, carry out its ordained function in salvation history.32
Returning to Purgatorio, then, it is a sign of Dante’s increasing lack of hope for any possible solution to the crisis of Italy’s corruption that, in his despair, even the effectiveness of the Crucifixion comes to be called into question. With a typically bold syncretist flourish, Dante turns to Christ directly, addressing him as the Roman god, Jupiter, and asking: ‘O sommo Giove / che fosti in terra per noi crucifisso, / son li giusti occhi tuoi rivolti altrove?’ [O highest Jove, who were crucified on earth for us, are your just eyes turned elsewhere?] (Purg., vi. 118-20). Has God, who so loved the world that he sent his own son to be crucified for its sake, Dante asks, now abandoned it entirely? This is surely a rhetorical question, and one to which the poet provides the answer in the next lines, reminding his readers of their human limitations: those same limitations, indeed, which make it so difficult for them to live in peace with one another, especially when proper guidance and leadership is lacking.
O è preparazion che ne l’abisso del tuo consiglio fai per alcun bene
in tutto de l’accorger nostro scisso? (Purg., vi. 121-23)
[Or is it a preparation that in the abyss of your counsel you are making, for some good utterly severed from our perception?]
Christ’s victory over death and sin cannot have been in vain; rather, the divine purpose behind Italy’s political difficulties must simply be incomprehensible to those immediately caught up in it. Perhaps, indeed, the poet consoles himself, God has a remedy for Italy’s slavishness already in hand.