Three Mirrors of Dante’s Paradiso

JAMES L. MILLER Three Mirrors of Dante's Paradiso In the first sphere of Paradise, Dante asks his guide* to explain the moon's mottled appearance. Beatrice responds with an elementary lesson in optics, her famous experiment employing three mirrors and a hidden light source (11.94-105). 1 Far from extolling the experimental method, she disparages it as the 'only source' of Dante's knowledge, the 'suol fonte ai rivi di vostr'arti' (96). Her emphatic 'suol' implies a sharp contrast between human knowledge and divine revelation: a contrast also implicit in the double meaning of the word 'esperienza.' Its primary sense, 'experience,' is established in the first canto (72); but in scientific contexts such as II. 94-6, it can also signify 'experiment.' Dependent on experiment, man's knowledge of the cosmos is limited, uncertain, incomplete . By contrast, Beatrice's knowledge depends on the experience of boundless certainty that grace reserves for the soul directly illuminated by God. Mirror imagery recurs in the final canto (115- 32), when Dante himself experiences divine illumination by gazing on the circles of the Trinity. The first two circles appear as rainbows, an image traditionally explained in medieval optical theory as light reflected from convex clouds acting as natural mirrors.2 The light of the second circle is a perfect reflection of the first; by implication, the first circle corresponds to the 'verace speglio,' or 'truthful mirror,' identified with God a few cantos earlier (XXVI. 106). The second circle also functions as a mirror, for on peering into it the pilgrim sees a human image reflected in the divine light. The structure of Paradiso is thus framed by the mirror imagery of two 'esperienze': a physical experiment for its humble prelude; and a spiritual experience for its exalted finale. Dante's nouns 'speglio' and 'specchio,' derived from Latin speculum, are usually translated as 'mirror,' but do not have precisely the same denotations as this modern English word. Mirrors today are normally panes of glass backed with a thin layer of mercury or silver alloy, providing a highly reflective surface. Although such mirrors were first produced in the fourteenth century, they were very rare. In II. 88-<)0, Dante refers to a 'vetro' ('glass') backed with lead and capable of reflecting * I wish to thank my guides, Professor E. von Richthofen and Professor E.A. Synan, for encouraging and illuminating me in the course of preparing this study. UTQ, Volume XLVI, Number 3, Spring 1977 264 JAMES L. MILLER colours, if not sharply defined image·s. Most medieval mirrors, however, were like ancient specula: polished surfaces of metal without glass. Because these absorbed light and were apt to tarnish, they tended to cast dimmer reflections than modern glass mirrors. Consequently, when Dante compares God to a 'truthful mirror,' incapable of distorting images , the force of his metaphor is intensified by contrast with the typical metallic mirrors of his own day. In some contexts, Dante's mirror vocabulary implies not only the reflection of light, but also its transmission through a reflecting medium. For example, the comparison of eyes to 'spegli' (xxx.85) seems to require the sense of 'optical glass' rather than 'mirror.' Throughout this study, the terms 'optical glass' and 'lookingglass ' will serve to translate 'speglio,' 'specchio,' and 'speculum' whenever these words signify a surface through which light is conveyed, as well as from which it is reflected. Beatrice's optical experiment prefigures Dante's final experience in several respects. As Allen Tate has remarked,) only two mirrors are strictly necessary for the experiment; yet Beatrice insists on three mirrors , as if to balance the three circles in the final canto. The arrangement of the mirrors (two side by side, the third farther ofO anticipates the design of the circles (two side by side, the third eman ating from them). Both episodes stress the unvaried brightness of the reflected light. The fire in the third mirror shines as brightly as in the first and second; similarly, the fire in the third circle radiates equally from the Father and the Son (n.105, xxxm.120). In both episodes, the pilgrim contemplates a reflected image, solves a difficult problem, and grasps an elusive principle . His problem in the first heaven is a mystery of physics: why is the moon variegated? Instructed byBeatrice, he discards his own hypothesis about variations in lunar density, and discovers the true 'formal principio ' ('formative principle') in the different capacities of created things to receive God's illumination (11.139-48). His problem in the final heaven is a mystery of theology: why is Christ dual-natured? Again Dante puzzles over a formative 'principio' (xxx111.135), and likens his problem to squaring the circle, an insoluble brain-teaser(133-5). As a poet, hefails to express the solution; but as a pilgrim, he successfully discerns the principle in a sudden flash of insight, just as earlier he succeeded in understanding the optical law governing Beatrice's experiment.The two intellectual achievements balance each other at opposite ends of the cantica. These correspondences between the two episodes are offset by significant contrasts. Beatrice's mirrors are material objects belonging to the temporal realm of common human experience; the circles of the Trinity are spiritual forms illuminating the eternal realm beyond the material cosmos. This distinction affects the relation of the viewer, the light source, and the reflecting surfaces in the two episodes. For Beatrice's THREE MIRRORS OF DANTE's Paradiso 265 ILLUSTRATION 1 Diagram of Beatrice's optical experiment of Paradiso 11.97-105 Although the relative positions of the viewer, light source, and mirrors are all accurately represented in this diagram of Beatrice's optical experiment, Paradiso u.97- 105, the illustrator has missed one detail; the reflection in the mirror farthest from the viewerought to be smaller than the images in the other two mirrors, as indicated in lines lOJ-4· The illustration has been reproduced by permission of the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana from MS Laur. Plut. 40.1, folio 217'' and is shown here about 1 1h x actual size; the manuscript dates from 1456 and is of North Italian provenance. It is reproduced in Peter Brieger, Millard Meiss, and Charles S. Singleton, llhmzinated Man11scripts of th e Divine Comedy, Bollingen Series LXXXI (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1969), 11,430, figured, and discussed briefly atJ, 183-4; a similar diagram from another manuscript is shown in the same volume, IIJ4Jl, figure b. experiment, these three components are carefully separated: the light source is set behind the viewer; the mirrors are placed at distinct intervals before the eye; and the viewer remains detached from the light source, which he cannot see directly, and from the mirrors, which do not cast back his reflection. So discrete are the parts of the experiment that they could easily be analysed on a diagram (see illustration 1). The opposite impression is suggested in Canto xxxm. All the components of Dante's final vision merge with each other, so that the formerly distinct relations between light source, mirrors, and viewer Jose definition . No longer is the light hidden from the pilgrim, for he directly observes it with his transformed eyes; nor is the pilgrim completely detached from the mirrors, for he identifies a human image in the second 266 JAMES L. MILLER circle. Unlike the material mirrors, the circles are not separate reflecting surfaces, but inseparable images of each other. The second circle is reflected from the first, and the third from the first and second. The final vision eliminates even the distinction between mirrors and light source, for the mirrors themselves are ablaze. The eternal light emanating from the first circle is not passively reflected from the 'speglio' of God, but actively produced by it. To such a visionary synthesis, conventional distinctions of optical analysis are inapplicable. No diagram could possibly reproduce this 'esperienza.' If Beatrice's experiment is interpreted in a literal sense only, then the contrast between the two episodes is a simple opposition of matter and spirit, or analysis and synthesis. However, the reflections in the three mirrors have more complex implications than their immediate bearing on lunar blotches. The experiment is also the prologue to Beatrice's exposition of cosmic order (n.112-38). Generalizing from experimental observations, she reasons that the diverse potencies in created things emanate from a single source of light d iffused from the Prime Intelligence to the stars and below. Interpreted allegorically, the concealed light ofthe experiment corresponds to the divine light illuminating the universe; the mirrors represent the multiplicity of created things receiving the divine illuminations and reflecting the light of the Creator. Creation becomes a hierarchy of mirrors, each casting an image of God. The farther off the individual mirror is from God, the smaller the image of Him it reflects, but his brightness never diminishes. The allegorical correspondence ofmirrors (creation) and image (divine light) is reversed in xxxrn.137-8, when Dante views the 'imago,' or 'image,' in the circle of the Son. Whereas created forms had previously reflected the divine light, now the divine light reflects a created form. Understandably, the pilgrim is bewildered by this inversion of reflector and reflection, for no longer do the principles established in Beatrice's experiment govern his experience. All such principles have been superseded by direct revelation of the Trinity. The 'speglio' of God is revealed as the source of all informing light, and therefore the source of all images, including the mirroring circles of the Trinity and the human image reflected in Christ. For the most part, Dante's many references to mirrors between Cantos nand xxxm prove to be variations on two fundamental m etaphors: the mirror of creation (speculum inferius, or 'lower mirror'); and the mirror of God (speculum superius, or 'upper mirror'). The ancestry of these metaphors deserves dose attention, for mirror symbolism was central to the philosophical traditions that shaped Dante's intellectual concerns.4 Until the thirteenth century, the two specula bore little explicit relation to each other, having developed independently in philosophical and theological texts; but in the heyday of scholasticism, they were often THREE MIRRORS OFDANTE'sParadiso 267 associated by antithesis or analogy. The mirrors of Paradiso especially reflect the thought of Bonaventure and Aquinas, whom Dante respectfully assigned to the Heaven of the Wise. Their interpretations of the two metaphors not only influenced the cosmology of Paradiso, but also may have affected Dante's concept of poetic imagery. The speculum inferius was a central image in the philosophy of Bonaventure, who frequently interpreted creation as a hierarchy of divine reflections. The immediate source for his mirror imagery is usually sciptural: for example, in Wisdom 7=26, wisdom is said to be a 'speculum sine macula Dei majestatis' ('a spotless mirror of God's majesty'). In his commentary on this text, Bonaventure identifies other sources for the metaphor and explains how the levels of creation reflect God with varying degrees of clarity: Speculum etiam est Angelus, secundum Dionysium, purum et clarissimum, licet immaculatum actu, maculatum tamen potentia, saltern remota. Speculum etiam est spiritus humanus, in quo relucet imago ctivina, maculatum actu et potentia. Speculum etiam dicitur omnis creatura, quia per earn, tanquam per ejus vestigium, repraesentantur Dei invisibilia: 'lnvisibilia Dei per ea, quae facta sunt, a creatura mundi intellecta conspiciuntur.' 'Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate.'5 According to Dionysius, an angel is alsoa pure and mostclearmirror; although it is spotless in its act, it is nevertheless sullied in its potency, being at least at some remove [from the level of God's power]. The human spirit is also a mirror, sullied in its act and potency, in which the divine image shines. All creation is said to be a mirror also, since the invisible things of God are represented in it, as it were through a trace ofHim: 'For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made' [Romans 1:20]. 'For now we see through a glass, darkly' [1 Corinthians 13:12]. In this passage, the metaphor of the mirror unites two ancient ideas: Augustine's doctrine of divine illumination; and Aristotle's distinction between potency and act. The angels afford the clearest reflection ofGod, because their nature is so highly perfected that they are unsullied by matter and change ('immaculatum actu'). The clarity of the angelic mirror is flawed in only one respect. Although the angelic nature is closest to God's, its powers do not equal his ('maculatum tamen potentia'). Only God has the supreme power to create from nothing, to bestow existence on the forms conceived in the Divine Mind. Like the material mirrors of Beatrice's experiment, the angelic mirrors can reflect or transmit light, but never create it. Compared with the angels, man is a far inferior mirror: tarnished in potentia, because his soul's powers are restricted by the body, but also in actu, because his composite nature {partly material, partly spiritual) is 268 JAMES L. MILLER subject to dissolution. Despite these imperfections, man still manages to reflect the divine image, because God directly illuminates the intellectual faculty of the human soul, and allows it a dim perception of immutable truths. The lowest mirrors are those material things that possess no rational soul, and consequently cannot produce an image of God, but only a faint trace. Bonaventure's distinction between image and trace ('imago' and 'vestigium') reflects his belief in the baseness of material creation, but also his Franciscan conviction that even the lowliest objects of nature· reveal the presence of their invisible Creator. This ambivalent attitude to the material world deeply affects Bonaventure's interpretation of the speculum inferius. The mirror of creation may reveal the disparity between God and his creation, the lessening degrees of perfection down the scale of being; or it may reflect the unity of Creator and creation, the uninterrupted participation of the cosmos in God's order. Besides its cosmological significance, the mirror of creation also expresses the ascending stages in man's understanding of God and the divine order. First, the human intellect peers into the mirror of the physical world and perceives God's traces in the design of the cosmos. Because God Himself is not apprehended by the senses, the lowest mirrors cast only dim reflections of the Creator. Like St Paul, Bonaventure regarded the cosmos as a 'glass' through which we see God 'darkly.' Second, the mind looks upon itself as an inner mirror, separated from material obscurities and reflecting the divine light. Bonaventure often elaborates on this Augustinian theme in discussing the stages of contemplation ; for example, anima videt se, sicut speculum; deinde angelos, sive intelligentias, sicut lumina, et sicut medium delativum: sive videt se, sicut in specula; in intelligentia , sicut in medio delativo lucis aetemae, et contemperativo;6 the soul sees itself as a mirror, then it sees the angels or intelligences as luminaries and conveying media. In other words, it sees within itself as in a mirror, and within intelligence[s] as in a medium which conveys the eternal light and leads to contemplation.' The third stage in the soul's ascent is contemplation of the angels, whose superior intellects directly receive the light of God's truth. By transmitting this brilliance to the lower orders of creation, they act as mirrors of divine knowledge, and are so described by Pseudo-Dionysius.8 In Bonaventure's terms, the looking-glass of the angelic intellect is a conveying medium ('medium delativum') for the supreme certainties emanating from the Divine Mind. By the twelfth century, the speculum inferius had already been divided into its three subordinate mirrors (divine nature, human soul, material THREE MIRRORS OF DANTE'S paradiso 269 nature). In the Anticlaudianus of Alain de Lille, Reason is portrayed as a woman holding a threefold mirror (1.450-510). In the first glass, she perceives the system of causes operating in the physical world, the union of matter and form, the accidental qualities of created things, the mutability of contingent existence. The second glass shows her a higher degree of reality, the immutable world of spiritual substances, the simplicity of forms released from matter. Finally, in the third, she contemplates the ultimate exemplar of all things, and sees Qualiter in mundo fantasma resultat ydee, Cuius inoffensus splendor sentitur in umbra;9 how the image of the idea is reflected in the universe and the idea's pure splendour is sensed in its copy. to Alain's elaborate description of the threefold mirror is significant for two reasons. First, it illustrates that the ascending mirrors of knowledge imply the descending mirrors of being. Second, the figure ofReason with three mirrors is reminiscent of Beatrice with her three mirrors. Like Alain's Reason, Beatrice often functions as a philosophical mentor, especially in Paradiso n, when she lectures on cosmic order; moreover, the heavenly journey and philosophical allegory of the Anticlaudianus make Alain's poem an obvious analogue of the third cantica. If Dante was in fact influenced by Alain, then Beatrice's three mirrors might correspond not only to the Trinity, but also to the three stages of contemplation traditionally associated with the speculum inferius. Dante refers to the mirror (or mirrors) of creation throughout Paradiso. Following the authority of Pseudo-Dionysius, he describes the eternal ray of God's goodness as 'specchiato,' 'mirrored,' in the nine orders of angels (xii1.59). God is later praised by Beatrice for having created so many mirrors of Himself (xxrx.143-5): Vedi l'eccelso omai e Ia larghezza de I'ettemo valor, poscia che tanti speculi fatti s'ha in che si spezza, uno manendo in se come davanti. 145 Behold now the height and breadth of the Eternal Goodness, since it has made itselfso many mirrors wherein it is reflected, remaining in itselfOne as before. Mirror imagery in Paradiso may also express the pilgrim's intellectual experience; for example, in XXI.16-18, Beatrice commands Dante to make optical glasses of his eyes in order to understand the visions of the contemplatives: Ficca di retro ali occhi tuoi la mente, e fa di quelli specchi a Ia figura che 'n questo specchio ti sara parvente. t6 270 JAMES L. MILLER Fix your mind after your eyes, and make of them mirrors to the figure which in this mirror [the planet Saturn] shall be shown to you. Even the briefest reference to 'specchio' may have complex philosophical associations. In describing the soul of Cacciaguida as 'quello specchio beato' ('that blessed mirror'), Dante implies the hierarchy of being and the stages of contemplation traditionally expressed by the speculum inferius (xvm.2). As a mirror in the hierarchy of creation, the blessed soul reflects the eternal light ofGod and thehigh degree ofperfection afforded to purely spiritual beings; and as a mirror of divine knowledge, Cacciaguida directs the rays of eternal truth to the looking-glasses of the pilgrim's eyes and thence to his intellect. Compared with the mirror of creation, the mirror of God was a rarer but no less significant metaphor for thirteenth-century philosophers. Thomas Aquinas presents a detailed exposition of it in his Quaestiones disputatae de veritate. Like most Christian thinkers, Thomas was hesitant to compare God to a material object, and in the following passage, he stresses the purely metaphoric status of the eternal mirror: in rebus spiritualibus dicatur esse speculum id in quo alia repraesentantur, sicut in speculo materiali apparent formae rerum visibilium. Sic ergo dicunt quidam, ipsam mentem divinam, in qua omnes rerum rationes relucent, esse speculum quoddam; et dici aeternitatis speculum ex hoc quod est aetemum, quasi aeternitatem habens. Dicunt igitur, quod istud speculum videri potest dup/iciter. Vel per essentiam suam, secundum quod est beatitudinis obiectum ; et sic non videturnisi a beatis,velsimpliciter vel secundum quid, sicut in raptu. Vel prout in eo resultant rerum similitudines; et sic proprie videtur ut speculum.11 in spiritual things we call that a mirror in which other things are represented, just as the forms ofvisible things appear in a material mirror. Therefore, some say that the divine mind, in which all the intelligible characters ofthings shine forth, is a kind of mirror, and that it is called the mirror of eternity because it is eternal, inasmuch as it has eternity. Accordingly, they say that that mirrorcan be seen in two ways. It can be seen either through its essence, as the object of beatitude, and in this way it is seen only by those who have beatitude in its fullness or in some respect, as those in rapture. Or it can be seen in so far as the likenesses of things are reflected in it, and in this way it is properly seen as a mirror. 12 Thomas distinguishes two ways of looking at the mirror of God. First, one might perceive the divine mirror as an object in itself, provided that one has reached so high a state of perfection that the essence of God is fully revealed. Only the angels and the blessed are granted this privilege fully, although prophets in rapture may be allowed glimpses of the eternal mirror. The second way is to observe the universal forms of created things reflected in the DivineMind. While Thomas admits this as THREE MffiRORS OF DANTE'sParadiso 271 the more acceptable sense of the metaphor, he carefully qualifies its implications. God is not the mirror of particular created things, for this would imply that creation antedated God, and that the Divine Mind was merely reflecting them passively. Instead, God mirrors the universal forms of things in an active sense, as if a mirrorwere suddenly capable of producing likenesses without any pre-existing object placed before it. The images produced by the eternal mirror are more properly called exemplars than reflections; yet Thomas permits the metaphor of the mirror because it helps to suggest the similarity between particular created things and their universal forms. In the early thirteenth century, the interpretation of the speculum superius needed less qualification because of its association with the metaphysics of light. Proponents of this doctrine, such as Robert Grosseteste , established an influential distinction between two types oflight, lux and lumen .13 While lumen was the reflected light visible in the material cosmos, lux was the primal light radiating directly from God, and possessing the power to create forms in the Divine Mind or inchoate matter. Although distinguishable, the two types of light were analogues of each other, not opposites. Presupposing a correspondence between lumen in the material cosmos and lux in the spiritual cosmos, the metaphysicians of light easily admitted the comparison of God to a mirror: just as reflected light entails a material mirror, so primal light entails a spiritual mirror. Accordingly, William of Auvergne describes God as a 'speculum forrnificum' ('a mirror productive of forms'), in which the first intelligibles are reflected with perfect limpidity.14 Although Aquinas rejected the analogical reasoning of the metaphysics of light, Dante retained traces of its terminology, particularly the distinction between lux and lumen. In xxxiii.124-8, the circle of the Father produces eternal 'luce,' while the light from the second circle appears as reflected 'lume.'15 The doctrines of the metaphysics of light may also clarify the puzzling human 'effige,' 'likeness,' observed in the second circle (131) . While this vision is a particular image reflected in the 'lume' of Christ, it is also a general likeness formed by the 'luce' of God. Dante recognizes the unique form of the incarnate Christ in the universal form of humanity. Allen Tate has argued that the image in the circle is a reflection of the pilgrim himself, and therefore a symbol of self-knowledge.16 Unless this interpretation is considerably qualified, it is misleading and historically unjustified. The text does not read 'mia effige' but 'nostra effige' (xxxm.131), implying that the pilgrim sees far more than his own reflection . He sees 'our' reflection, a general image of humanity. This 'nostra' in the final lines of the Paradiso is as significant as the more famous 'nostra' in the first line ofthe Inferno, for both emphasize the universality of Dante's vision. 272 JAMES L. MILLER Tate is correct in regarding mirror images as a symbol of knowledge; but the images in the mirror of God represent the eternal forms conceived by the Divine Mind, not the self-knowledge of a particular mortal. As Aquinas remarks in De veritate, the speculum superius represents God's foreknowledge, which the blessed could gaze upon in order to perceive the essences of things or the course of future events: tiber praescientiae Dei nihil aliud esse videtur quam aetemitatis speculum, in quo ab aetemo omnes formae rerum resplendent.I7 the book of the foreknowledge of God seems to be nothing else but the mirror of eternity, in which all the forms of things shine forth from eternity. Precisely this sense of the metaphor informs Adam's reference to the 'verace speglio' in XXVI.to6-8. After approaching Dante, the soul explains that he read the pilgrim's thoughts by observing them in the mirror of God's foreknowledge. In this context, the mirror of God seems to produce likenesses of specific things and events; but, as Aquinas taught, these particular images are reflections in the universal forms that subsume them. Consequently, when Dante recognizes the 'imago' of man in the second circle, his vision is less a triumph of self-knowledge than an insight into the forms conceived by the Divine Mind. A comparable experience would be the rapture of prophets who have glimpsed the eternal mirror.ln his final rapture, the pilgrim becomes a mirror image of Christ Himself; just as the Son appears as a man united with the eternal circling of the Trinity, so Dante ultimately appears as a man united with the eternal circling of the cosmos. Dante's pilgrimage through Paradise may be summarized as a transition from the speculum inferius to the speculum superius. As Bonaventure and Aquinas interpreted these metaphors, the journey from the lower mirror to the upper is both a progress up the scale of being, and an intellectual advance through ascending levels of contemplation. However , Dante did not merely extract the two mirrors from their philosophical framework and poise them at opposite ends ofParadise. He was more concerned to dramatize the pilgrim's psychological transition from the lower mirror to the upper. What would be the experience of a man who found himself passing through a universe of mirrors to a mirror of the universe? This was his prevailing concern in Paradiso, not the abstract relations between two scholastic commonplaces. Had he been purely a philosopher, he might have contrasted the two mirrors as schematically as Aquinas did in the following passage: Sed a mente divina resultant rerum futurarum species in mente prophetae, sicut a speculo superiori in speculum inferius. Ergo ex hoc quod propheta intuetudn sua mente species receptas a mente divina, non debet dici videre in mente divina, sed in propria mente. Sed mens propria non est speculum aetemitatis, sed temporale.1s THREE MIRRORS OF DANTE'S Paradiso 273 But the species of future things come into the mind of the prophet from the divine mind, as into a lower mirror from a higher mirror. Therefore, the fact that the prophet sees in his own mind species received from the divine mind does not force us to say that he sees them in the divine mind, but rather in his own mind. But his own mind is not the mirror of eternity, but a mirror dependent on time. This schema of opposing qualities (lower-upper, temporal-eternal, human-divine) is presupposed by the poet, but not highlighted. Dante's journey from the mirror of creation to the mirror of God is presented as a complex psychological development in Cantos xxvm- xxx. The stages of this transition are marked by three mirror images which draw the ends of Dante's cosmos (and his cantica) together. The first of these images is expressed in an elaborate simile (xxvii1.4-9). Gazing on Beatrice's eyes, the pilgrim sees a reflection of the brilliant light at the centre of the angelic circles. The comparison of eyes to looking-glasses is one of Dante's commonest variations on the speculum inferius, and would need little explanation ifitsimply expressed the conventional transmission of knowledge from the invisible spiritual realm through a medium delativum to the mortal intellect. However, Dante does the unexpected: he turns away from the reflection and dares to behold the light itself. This action is likened to peering behind one's back at a burning torch, whose light had previously been visible only in a glass: come in lo specchio fiamma di doppiero vede colui che se n'alluma retro, prima che l'abbia in vista o in pensiero, e se rivolge per veder se 'Ivetro li dice il vero, e vede ch'el s'accorda con esso come nota con suo metro; 4 7 as one who sees in a mirror the flame of a torch which is lighted behind him before he has it in sight or in thought, and turns round to see i1 the glass tells him the truth, and sees that it accords with it as a song w ith its measure. This simile recalls the optical experiment of the second canto, in which a light source was also concealed behind the viewer. Beatrice's mirrors have been replaced by her eyes, and the viewer is no longer prevented from turning round to see the light. These changes imply a psychological transformation in the pilgrim. Having transcended the speculum inferius, Dante is now prepared to receive the direct illumination of God. No longer must he see 'through a glass, darkly.' In the very act of turning away from the mirror, the pilgrim can affirm the truth of its reflections. He compares the image in Beatrice's eyes with the central light of the angelic circles, and concludes that the looking-glass h as not distorted reality. His conclusion accords with Bonaventure's belief that the Su- 274 JAMES L. MILLER preme Truth is revealed with greatest clarity by the mirrors closest to God. The pilgrim now sees the light source and the mirrors simultaneously , and this new vantage-point affords a greater understanding of divine unity. While the light of God creates innumerable images of itself in the mirrors of the angels, it remains a unity as before, 'uno manendo in se come davanti' (XXIX.145). The light source slowly vanishes and with it disappears the vision of the speculum inferius. In xxx.10ff, Dante suffers an interval of darkness which prepares him for the vision of the eternal mirror. During this interval, he expresses his psychological preparation as a process of making 'migliori spegli' ('better looking-glasses') of his eyes by dipping them in the luminous river separating the material cosmos from the spiritual (85- 7). This is the second of the mirror images marking the pilgrim's transition to the Empyrean. In the waters above the Firmament , new 'spegli' are fashioned to replace the material mirrors discarded in the simile of the burning torch . Like the first image, the second recollects a much earlier incident in Dante's pilgrimage: his cleansing in the streams of the Earthly Paradise. However, unlike the river Lethe, which had acted as a 'specchio' of the pilgrim's sinfulness (Purgatorio xxiX.6g), the river of light reflects the sinless state which the pilgrim will soon experience. The beaming of light off a surface of water is often associated with mirror reflections throughout the Commedia (e.g., Purgatorio xv.16, Paradiso m.to-n); but the luminous river is different from these natural mirrors, for the light emanates directly from the stream and is not reflected off the water's surface. The light, in fact, is the water. By combining in one image the light source and the reflecting medium, the river of light prefigures the speculum superius. As well as making better looking-glasses of the pilgrim's eyes, the water above the Firmament is a mirror in its own right. After passing through the river and rising into the Empyrean, Dante casts a retrospective glance at the Crystalline Sphere. The heights of the Celestial Rose now appear as a hillside mirrored in water at its foot (xxx.109-114): E come clivo in acqua di suo imo si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno, quando enel verde e ne'fioretti opimo, si, soprastando al lume intorno intorno, vidi specchiarsi in pill di mille soglie quanto di noi lasu fatto ha ritomo. 109 112 and as a hillside mirrors itself in water at its base, as if to look upon its own adornment when it is rich in grasses and in flowers, so above the light round and round about in more than a thousand tiers I saw all that of us have won return up there. The repeated verbs of this passage ('si specchia,' 'specchiarsi') em- THREE MffiRORS OF DANTE's Paradiso 275 phasize the third mirror image in the pilgrim's transition to the spiritual cosmos. In discussing this simile, some commentators have identified the water mirror as the convex surface of the Primum Mobile;19 but surely the water at the base of the flowering hillside recalls the river of light with its green banks and flowers. The downward curves of the Primum Mobile are the reflection of the upward curves of the Celestial Rose, and the intervening mirror is the river of light, not the crust of the Crystalline Sphere. By extension, the entire structure of Dante's material cosmos becomes an inverted mirror image of the spiritual cosmos. The still centre of the material world (Earth) matches the still centre of the spiritual world (God); the nine ascending spheres of the lower cosmos reflect the nine descending circles of the angels; the curved surface of the Primum Mobile reverses the curved surface of the Celestial Rose. Between them flows the river of light. When Dante approaches it from below, he sees a reflection of the Empyrean; when he observes it from above, he sees thereflected summitof the Primurn Mobile. Not only is his pilgrimage in Paradiso a journey from the mirror of creation to the mirror of God, but also a passage through a third mirror lying between. The river of light is like the speculum inferius in that it conveys images from a higher level of being; but unlike the mirrorof creation, it seems to have no objective existence outside the pilgrim's mind. Its first appearance is like an hallucination or a flash of insight. With the suddenness of lightning, the river of light pours into the darkness of the pilgrim's soul. The clarity of this vision deceives him into thinking it real, but Beatrice hastens to explain that it is but a shadowy preface of the truth (xxx.78). When Dante passes through the river, its vivid impression is transmuted into metaphor, a poetic medium delativum for the transhuman experience. The material cosmos only seems to be an upside-down image of the spiritual cosmos. However, this subjective impression is not the true metaphysical correspondence between the two realms. In xxVIII.7off, Beatrice had corrected this illusion by stressing that the ninth sphere matches the first angelic circle, the eighth sphere the second circle, and so on. The symmetry of the two worlds is not an optical inversion, but an invisible correspondence based on the inherent potencies of created things. Nevertheless, when the pilgrim rises into the Empyrean, his imagination conceives the lower world as a mirror image of the higher. Why did Dante introduce an imaginary mirror at this turning-point in his poem? The implications of 'si specchia' and 'specchiarsi' are not scientific, like the conclusion of Beatrice's experiment; nor are they theological, like the reflections of the Trinity. The metaphor of the mirrored hillside has, instead, a rhetorical function. It persuades the reader that he has followed the pilgrim from an insubstantial image of truth to the truth itself, as if passing from a looking-glass world through a mirror into the real world. What the pilgrim knew as real through physical 276 JAMES L. MILLER experiment proves to be only a reflection of spiritual experience. Dante has not merely stated this; he hasrecreated the sensation of'trasumanar,' 'passing beyond human limits' (1.70), in the metaphoric language of the Paradiso. When the pilgrim perceives a brilliant 'imago' on one level of Paradise, it seems utterly real; but when he looks back on it from a higher state, the reality of the image becomes only a metaphor of the truth grasped at a higher level. This implies a relation between Dante's metaphysics and his poetics. Could Dante's universe of poetic images resemble God's universe of mirror images? In other words, could the arrangement of poetic images in Paradiso imitate the hierarchy of mirror images in the speculum inferius ? Throughout the third cantica, the ambiguous terms 'imago' and 'imagine' may signify either the forms reflected in the mirror of creation, or the mental pictures conveyed in metaphor. Often both senses metaphysical and poetic- inform a particular usage of these terms. For example, in xx.139, Dante describes the Eagle of Divine Justice as 'quella imagine divina' ('that divine image'). This phrase might be interpreted metaphysically, in that the bird, formed from the individual mirrors of the just souls, reflects the divine form of justice; on the other hand, 'imagine' might have a purely poetic sense, implying that the same bird, interpreted as a symbol in the allegory, depicts a theological abstraction in vivid metaphorical terms. Such ambiguity is possible in the Paradiso, because the system of correspondences inherent in a universe of mirrors may be imitated in the patterns of recurrent symbolic images in the poem. Like the graded mirrors of creation, the poetic symbols which Dante recalls on higher and higher levels of Paradise may represent closer and closer approximations of the pilgrim's divine experience. The poem, then, becomes a verbal speculum in which recurrent images reflect each other with increasing likeness to their heavenly exemplars.20 This poetic process of mirroring is exemplified in the image of the angelic dance reflected on various levels of Paradise. Dante first sees the dance in the Earthly Paradise, where the Seven Virtues imitate the circular motion of the chariot wheels in the pageant of the Church Militant. The dancers are divided into two rounds, reflecting the hierarchical distinction between cardinal and theological virtues, but also the harmonious union of these qualities in the moral perfection of the soul. The dance is described as 'angelic' (Purgatorio xxx1.132), and the dancers remark that on earth they are nymphs, and in heaven stars (to6). In Paradiso x-xm, the dance of nymphs is transformed into a dance of stars. Again the circular motion imitates a 'rota,' or 'wheel'; but at this higher level, the 'rota' is not an earthly chariot wheel, but the wheeling spheres of the cosmos. Though the dancers have changed from virtuous maidens into the stellified souls of the Wise, they retain their earlier identity in metaphor (x.79): 'donne mi parver, non da ballo sciolte' ('they seemed as THREE MIRRORS OF DANTE'S Paradiso 277 ladies not released from the dance'). As in the Earthly Paradise, the choreographic pattern in the Heaven of the Sun initially separates the dancers into two rounds: one for those who were wise in the pursuit of truth (Dominicans); and one for those who found wisdom in the service of love (Franciscans). In the Heaven of the Fixed Stars, the dance of the Virtues is performed in a new guise before the festive hosts of the Church Triumphant (xxiV.16-17). Representing the theological virtues in the same starry forms as the Wise, the apostles Peter, James, and John dance around Beatrice, who was also the centre of the theologians' round. The ultimate version of all these earlier dances is the circling of the angels about the still point of light in xxVII1.22ff; theirmotion encompasses and transcends the angelic rings of the Virtues, the concentric rounds of the stars, the double dance of the Wise, and the fiery carol of the apostles. The angelic circles are the exemplar of all these ordered motions, the truth of which the earlier dances are shadowy prefaces. As the brief outline of the dance image has suggested, certain recurring symbols in Dante's allegory may be patterned on the metaphysical hierarchy of created specula. The basis for such allegory is a vertical gradation of divine images reflecting each other along an ascending scale of perfection. By organizing poetic images according to this principle, Dante was also imitating God's way of writing. Medieval philosophers often described the Bibleas aspeculum reflecting all thelevels of creation; for example, in the same gloss on Wisdom in which the three levels of creation are likened to mirrors, Bonaventure adds: 'Speculum etiam est sacra Scriptura' ('Holy Scripture is a mirror also').21 As a level of creation in its own right, the Bible reflects all the wisdom of God. In another biblical commentary, Bonaventure remarks: Haec sapientia surgit ex multis mysteriis, sicut ex multis speculis fiunt multiplicationes radiorum et ignium.22 This wisdom results from many mysteries of the Scriptures, as out of many mirrors there results a multiplication oflight rays and fires. So may Dante have regarded the wisdom in his divine poem, whose symbolic structure, like the cosmos, was composed of many mirrors reflecting the light of God. Dante's term 'imago' (with its mirror connotations) indicates an important organizing principle behind the complex symbolism of the Paradiso. If the poet believed in a cosmos which mirrored God in all its parts, then the very symbols he habitually selected - roses, rivers, birds, dancers- would be divine images in fact as well as in word. The significance of 'imago' in the third cantica depends on which of three mirrors reflects it. If reflected in the speculum inferius, it is the ray of divine light glinting in every facet of creation and revealing the unity of 278 JAMES L. MILLER God's order. If reflected in the speculum superius, it is a universal form in the Divine Mind, or an eternal exemplar after which the Creator modelled the particulars of his cosmos. If reflected in the river of light, it is an insight of the imagination, a mental 'parvenza' ('appearance') whose reality is.transformed into poetic metaphor at a higher stage of vision . By interpreting the images in these three mirrors of Paradise, the pilgrim rises from the hypotheses of scientific experiment to the certainties of divine experience. NOTES 1 In this study, all quotations and extended translated passages of the Commedia are from The Divine Comedy, ed and trans Charles S. Singleton, Bollingen Series LXXX (Princeton: Princeton University Press 197o-5). 2 Dante firmly adhered to the ancient theory that rainbows are natural mirror images, akin to reflections in water(Purgatorio xxv.91- 3,Paradiso xxxm.119). For the classical sources of this theory see Seneca, Naturales quaestiones 1.iii.11-14; and Aristotle, Meteorologica m.ii.3728 17-372b9. In the thirteenth century, these authorities were challenged by Robert Grosseteste, who explained the origin ofrainbows as the refraction oflight through cloud layers varying in dens ity; see De it·ide seu de iride et specula, in Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, ed Ludwig Baur (Munster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhand.lung 1912), p 76. Despite Grosseteste's wide influence, the reflection theory continued to appear in popular medieval optical treatises; see John Pecham, Perspectiva communis m.18, in fohn Pecham and the Science of Optics, ed and trans David C. Lindberg (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press 1970), p 233. See also Patricia J. Eberle, 'The Lovers' Glass: Nature's Discourse on Optics and the Optical Design of the Romance ofthe Rose,' in this issue, pp 241-62. 3 'The Symbolic Imagination: The Mirrors of Dante,' in The New Orpheus: Essays toward a Christian Poetic, ed Nathan A. Scott, Jr (New York: Sheed and Ward 1964), p 113, mo. · 4 The classical and early medieval history of the image of the mirror has been summarized by Sister Ritamary Bradley, 'Backgrounds of the Title Speculum in Mediaeval Literature,' Speculum, 29 (1954),1oo-15. Ihave derived the terms speculum inferius and speculum superius from Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate q.12 a.6 ob.8, ed P. Fr. Raymundus Spiazzi (Turin: Marietti 1953), p 247· 5 A.C. Peltier, ed, Sancti Bonaventurae opera omnia (Paris: Ludovicus Vives 1867), X, 56a; translation by the author. 6 In Hexaemeron v, ed Peltier, Opera omnia, IX, 6ta; see St Augustine, Soliloquiorum fiber secundus, ed J.-P. Migne, PL, vol. 32 (Paris: Garnier 1877), col 903. 7 Jose de Vinck, trans, The Works of Bonaventure (Paterson, NJ: St Anthony Guild Press 1970), v, 92. 8 De divinis nominibus IV.xxii, ed ].-P. Migne, PG vol3 (Paris: Garnier 1889), col 724B. THREE MIRRORS OF DANTE's Paradiso 279 9 Anticlaudianus 1.500-1, ed R. Bossuat (Paris: Vrin 1955), p 71. 10 Anticlaudianus, trans James J. Sheridan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 1973), p 65. 11 Quaestiones disputntae de veritate, q.12 a.6 r.A, ed Spiazzi, pp 248-9. 12 Aquinas, Truth, trans James V. McGlynn (Chicago: Henry Regnery 1953), II, 1}5-6. 13 See De luce seu de inchoatione formarum, in Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, ed Baur, pp 51-9. 14 Guilelmus Arvernus, De anima VII.6, in Opera omnia (Paris: Pralard 1674), 11, 211. 15 Dante does not consistently distinguish 'luce' and 'lume'; for example, 'da luce a luce' (I1.145) should strictly be'da lume a lume,' since only the reflected light of the material cosmos is signified in the context. In xxxm.124-8, however, the poet contrasts the primal light of the Father and the reflected light of the Son, so that the terms 'luce' and 'lume' here serve to emphasize a specific theological distinction. 16 Tate, 'The Symbolic Imagination: The Mirrors of Dante,' p 113. 17 Quaestiones disputatae de veritate q.12 a.6 ob.1, ed Spiazzi, p 247; Truth, trims McGlynn, p 132. 18 Quaestiones disputatae de veritate q.12 a.6 ob.8, ed Spiazzi, p 248; Truth, trans McGlynn, p 133. 19 Robert Grosseteste regarded the Primum Mobile as a primordial mirror formed by the first infinite extension of lux. The light that bounced back from the inner surface of the Primum Mobile to form the various spheres of the material cosmos was lumen. See Deluce seu de inchoatione formarum, in Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, ed Baur, pp 54- 5. In Paradiso xxx.1o6ff, the Primum Mobile does not act as a mirror in Grosseteste's sense, but as a transparent medium through which the divine lighfis transmitted to the material cosmos. 20 The medieval concept of language as a mirror of creation, and therefore of God's Word ordering the cosmos, has been traced to Augustinian sources by Marcia L. Colish in The Mirror of l.anguage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1968). In discussing the Divina Commedia, Colish convincingly demonstrates that Dante's poetic theory was closely related to the Augustinian concept of words 'as the basic symbolic intermediaries in the process of knowledge' {p 316). I would extend Colish's argument by relating Dante's patterns ofpoetic imagery not only to a theory ofknowledge, but also to a theory of being, i.e., the metaphysical hierarchy of divine reflections underlying the structure of the cosmos itself. 21 Peltier, ed, Sancti Bonaventurae opera omnia, x, 56a. 22 In Hexaemeron u, ed Peltier, Sancti Bonaventurae opera omnia, IX, 37; de Vinck, trans, The Works ofBonaventure, v, 31. ...