Angels and Creation in Paradiso 29

The encyclopedic tension resulting from placing knowledge at the foundation of Dante’s theological vision of history, as Giuseppe Mazzotta has eloquently argued, is a visible trait of the cosmological system deployed in the Commedia.¹ Underlying the connection that Dante establishes between angelic choirs and celestial spheres is the fundamental question of the reconciliation between creation and cosmology. Against this intellectual backdrop, Dante elaborated his providential view of angels as instruments of cosmic order and necessary elements to assure the logical and theological completeness of the Commedia. Essential to attributing a providential role to spiritual substances were two related philosophical questions. The first concerned the attribution of both contemplative and active operations to angels; the second, strictly related to the first, concerned the definition of angelic nature. To both questions Dante provided innovative answers that reveal a desire to reconcile Christian angelology with Aristotelian cosmology in a poetic synthesis that relies on his theological and historical vision of the cosmos.

By considering contemporary doctrines on angels through the filter of Scholastic thought, Dante created a system in which the angels’ illuminative and cosmological functions as movers of the celestial spheres, represented a response to the theological and philosophical issue of mediation between the divine and the sensible spheres. Angels in the Commedia are the spiritual links between divine and worldly orders that operate within the limits and in the perspective of human salvation. They receive and reflect divine light and, in connection with their contemplative and enlightening functions, they act as celestial movers and intervene to guide humankind on their path to salvation. Their role presupposes the combined action of illumination and motion. By overcoming the traditional separation between angelic contemplative and active functions, Dante created a bridge between the sphere of creation and that of cosmology. This study explores the relationship between angelic nature and operations, and focuses on Paradiso 29. It shows that these two elements of Dante’s angelology, the essence and the functions of separate substances, are strictly connected and essential to define the providential perspective of the Commedia.

Angelic Nature and the Relationship Between Contemplative and Active Operations

Dante attributed to angels both contemplative and active functions and posited between them a strict logical relationship that hinged on the reception and reflection of divine light. In the Commedia, angels are illuminative cosmic forces who transmit to celestial bodies the principles of motion and informative virtues, thus activating the celestial influence on generation, corruption and human natural inclinations. In order to be movers, and thus to function as instrumental connectors between spiritual and material realities, Dante not only needed to attribute to angels both purely intellectual and material active operations, but he also needed to structure contemplative and operative moments as intimately connected in view of their unique providential end. He thus conceived of contemplation as conducive of the divine knowledge (science) that enabled angels to operate according to the teleological design embodied in the Incarnation and the Redemption. In this view, angels are substances perpetually in act, naturally pure forms whose operations hold in balance providential and human history. The resolution of contemplation into operation makes these two forms of angelic activity neither logically nor temporally separable, given that in the Intelligences knowledge transforms itself into action without the need for a conceptual medium. Knowing and acting, seeing and participating in the economy of salvation are two distinguishable but not separable aspects of angelic functions in the Christological universe of the Commedia.

Dante’s conception of contemplative and active operations in essentially ‘practical’ terms was a necessary premise so as to attribute to angels the role of celestial movers. Only in this way the hierarchical structure of angelic choirs could span across spiritual and material realms without the need to assume animation of the heavens, or superior and inferior ranks of spiritual substances (one contemplating, the other acting) as Avicenna had done, followed in Dante’s times by Christian theologians such as Giles of Rome.

That angels could perform contemplative and active operations was generally refuted as implying that angels could pass from one function to the other, suggesting...