page_title: Paradiso (Dante)
section_title: Eighth Sphere (The Fixed Stars: Faith, Hope, and Love)
hierarchical_section_title: Paradiso (Dante) / The Spheres of Heaven / Eighth Sphere (The Fixed Stars: Faith, Hope, and Love)
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 the Fixed Stars is the sphere of the church triumphant. From here (in fact, from the constellation Gemini, under which he was born), Dante looks back on the seven spheres he has visited, and on the Earth (Canto XXII):
  My eyes returned through all the seven spheres
  
  and saw this globe in such a way that I
  
  smiled at its scrawny image: I approve
  
  that judgment as the best, which holds this earth
  
  to be the least; and he whose thoughts are set
  
  elsewhere, can truly be called virtuous.
  Here, Dante sees the Virgin Mary and other saints (Canto XXIII). St. Peter tests Dante on faith, asking what it is, and whether Dante has it. In response to Dante's reply, St. Peter asks Dante how he knows that the Bible is true, and (in an argument attributed to Augustine) Dante cites the miracle of the Church's growth from such humble beginnings (Canto XXIV):
  Say, who assures you that those works were real?
  
  came the reply. The very thing that needs
  
  proof no thing else attests these works to you.
  
  I said: If without miracles the world
  
  was turned to Christianity, that is
  
  so great a miracle that, all the rest
  
  are not its hundredth part: for you were poor
  
  and hungry when you found the field and sowed
  
  the good plant once a vine and now a thorn.
  St. James questions Dante on hope, and Beatrice vouches for his possession of it (Canto XXV):
  There is no child of the Church Militant
  
  who has more hope than he has, as is written
  
  within the Sun whose rays reach all our ranks:
  
  thus it is granted him to come from Egypt
  
  into Jerusalem that he have vision
  
  of it, before his term of warring ends.
  Finally, St. John questions Dante on love. In his reply, Dante refers back to the concept of "twisted love" discussed in the Purgatorio (Canto XXVI):
  Thus I began again: My charity
  
  results from all those things whose bite can bring
  
  the heart to turn to God; the world's existence
  
  and mine, the death that He sustained that I
  
  might live, and that which is the hope of all
  
  believers, as it is my hope, together
  
  with living knowledge I have spoken of
  
  these drew me from the sea of twisted love
  
  and set me on the shore of the right love.
  
  The leaves enleaving all the garden of
  
  the Everlasting Gardener, I love
  
  according to the good He gave to them.
  St. Peter then denounces Pope Boniface VIII in very strong terms, and says that, in his eyes, the Papal See stands empty (Canto XXVII).
caption: St. James, who questions Dante on hope (painting by Rembrandt), Canto 25.
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