Beatrice concludes her grand discourse on free will by offering a Biblical and a classical reference for taking (and keeping?) foolish vows. She then offers a series of exhortations that seem to have little do with vows and become almost uninterpretable.
Read MoreBeatrice finally answers the question of how you can make up for broken or unfulfilled vows. She offers an accounting scheme: one hundred and fifty per cent of what’s been vowed can be substituted. But what happens when you vow something that’s beyond any financial worth?
Read MoreBeatrice begins her final discourse on free will with her premise: free will is the greatest gift given to humans and angels. But even free will can will its own loss with a self-limiting vow, from which it’s hard to understand any notion of restitution.
Read MoreBeatrice begins to answer Dante’s question about making good on unfulfilled (or even broken) vows with a tightly-woven chain of ideas that leads to the generous and compassionate statement that all things have a vestige of the eternal light in them. But vows still need to be litigated if broken, including ones the poet himself may have made.
Read MoreBeatrice has concluded her answers to questions about the souls’ place in the heavens and (more importantly) about free will. Her answers may satisfy the pilgrim Dante intellectually as his understanding continues to scale the peaks but her answers have also prompted a more personal response from him: What about my own unfulfilled vows?
Read MoreBeatrice develops a sub-point on the concept of free will that proves—at least if you accept the reasoning from Aristotle and Aquinas—that Piccarda and Constance were indeed guilty of breaking their vows, even if they didn’t want to break them. Wanting doesn’t overcome their actions.
Read MoreBeatrice takes apart the pilgrim Dante’s second doubt: Is God unjust for relegating Piccarda and Constance to the lowest sphere of heaven? Beatrice launches into a hard, troubling argument about free will . . . and about how your actions are your fault, even when force is used to make you do something.
Read MoreAfter a warning to his readers (or maybe just some of his readers) to go home, Dante ascends into the moon with Beatrice. They enter the diaphanous and aesthetic mystery of the universe standing in the pearl of the heavens . . . and thereby proving the incarnation of Christ (if you believe Dante’s journey really happened).
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