Paradiso

Dante and Beatrice have now reached the Sun, “[n]ature’s sublime and greatest minister” (10: 233). Dante is overwhelmed by the Sun’s beauty and majesty and compares it to God, to whom he feels totally willing to yield himself “with absolute assent.” Many souls surround Dante and Beatrice like “flashing lights of blinding brightness” (10: 235). One of them begins to speak to Dante and identifies himself as the theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).

Thomas introduces the souls of eight other theologians and sages from various periods of history: his teacher Albert the Great, Francesco Graziano, Peter Lombard, King Solomon, Dionysius the Areopagite, Paulus Osorious, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, Richard of St. Victor, and Siger of Brabant. Dante hears the wheels of the heavens turning with a music of incredible sweetness.

Dante begins by contrasting the vanity of human ambition and pleasure with the spiritual joy he feels with Beatrice in heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas now speaks again: He senses that Dante wants him to explain further something that he said in Canto 10, alluding to the “sheep” of his “flock,” or religious order.