page_title: Paradiso (Dante)
section_title: Seventh Sphere (Saturn: The Contemplatives)
hierarchical_section_title: Paradiso (Dante) / The Spheres of Heaven / Seventh Sphere (Saturn: The Contemplatives)
caption_attribution_description: Divine Comedy. Dante
context_page_description: Paradiso is the third and final part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno and the Purgatorio. It is an allegory telling of Dante's journey through Heaven, guided by Beatrice, who symbolises theology. In the poem, Paradise is depicted as a series of concentric spheres surrounding the Earth, consisting of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile and finally, the Empyrean. It was written in the early 14th century. Allegorically, the poem represents the soul's ascent to God.
context_section_description: The sphere of Saturn is that of the contemplatives, who embody temperance. Dante here meets Peter Damian, and discusses with him monasticism, the doctrine of predestination, and the sad state of the Church (Cantos XXI and XXII). Beatrice, who represents theology, becomes increasingly lovely here, indicating the contemplative's closer insight into the truth of God:
  She did not smile. Instead her speech to me
  
  began: Were I to smile, then you would be
  
  like Semele when she was turned to ashes,
  
  because, as you have seen, my loveliness
  
  which, even as we climb the steps of this
  
  eternal palace, blazes with more brightness
  
  were it not tempered here, would be so brilliant
  
  that, as it flashed, your mortal faculty
  
  would seem a branch a lightning bolt has cracked.
caption: Dante and Beatrice meet Peter Damian, who tells of his life, and discusses predestination (miniature by Giovanni di Paolo), Canto 21.
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