The Expanding Community of Women in the Moon: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 109 - 130

Piccarda Donati doesn’t stop her monologue with the cryptic line about her life after the convent. She turns to another figure in the lunar landscape: Constance I of Sicily, the Holy Roman Empress and mother of Frederick II, the stupor mundi.

Piccarda offers Constance a parallel life to her own. The problem is, Piccarda’s account doesn’t match the historical record.

But maybe Dante has other fish to fry. Maybe he’s more interested in Constance’s son, the Holy Roman Emperor that many are insistent on calling “the anti-Christ.”

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work through the final lines of Canto III, the shortest canto of PARADISO.

The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:22]  My English translation of PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 109 - 130. If you’d like to read along or drop a comment about this episode, scroll down this page.

[03:02]  Linguistic and poetic details at the end of Canto III: shades, dark spots in redemption, Narcissus, line rhythms, and a seal in the wax.

[10:24]  Constance I of Sicily, the mother of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the grandmother of Manfred (PURGATORIO, Canto III).

[14:17]  Parallels with the Donati family in COMEDY and a possible rehabilitation for Frederick II.

[17:17]  The sphere of the moon, a community of women (only women?)

[20:10]  When they vanish, where do they go?

[21:36]  Rereading the passage: PARADISO, Canto III, lines 109 - 130.

My English translation of PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 109 - 130:

[Piccarda continued:] “And [as to] this other splendor on my right side

Who shows herself to you and catches on fire

From all the light of our sphere,

“What I say for myself, she understands about herself.

She was a sister and like me had the

The shadow of the holy wimple ripped off her head.

“But after she was again made to return to the world

Against her wishes and against all good conventions,

She was never made to strip off the veil from her heart.

“This is the light of the great Constance,

Who bore the third and final power

To the second wind from Swabia.”

She spoke to me in this way and then began singing Ave,

Maria, and while singing, vanished,

Like a heavy thing in deep water.

My sight altogether followed her

As long as was possible; then when it lost her,

It turned to the proof of its greater desire

And was fully engaged with Beatrice.

But this one burned so brightly in my gaze

That at first my vision couldn’t endure [it].

And that made me slower in asking a question.