Commentary Par XX 130-148

The fourth and final section of this canto addresses itself to a question that has always troubled Christians (as is focally shown in many of the writings of Augustine): predestination.  Reiterating Thomas's criticism of our all-too-human desire to speculate upon the likely salvation or damnation of our neighbors ([Par XIII 139-142]), the Eagle now portrays as cosmic the unknowing that surrounds God's purpose.  Not even the immortal just souls in the Empyrean know all the Elect (see [Par XX 72] for the less dramatic notice of the shortness of mortal vision in this regard).  This comes as something of a surprise, as Torquato Tasso noted (DDP Tasso.Par.XX.133-135), since everything we have previously learned about this topic would clearly seem to indicate that the saved know, in God, all things that exist (see, inter alia, [Par V 4-6], [Par VIII 85-90], [Par IX 73-75], [Par XV 49-51], [Par XVII 13-18], and [Par XIX 28-30], as well as C.Par.IV.16-18 and C.Par.XIV.7-9); however, Dante's enthusiasm for the subject seems to have led him into at least a possible self-contradiction, since what is said here denies that even the blessed can have complete knowledge of what God has in His mind.  Gragnolati (Grag.2005.1, passim) argues that after the general resurrection God's thought will be knowable by all the saved, since the poet has created no mechanism for latter-day salvations specifically set aside for virtuous non-Christians, though, of course, all things are possible in God (and thus one is free to intuit the salvation of one's favorite Martian or a particularly sympathetic Buddhist maiden aunt).  On this vexed passage see Trottmann (Trot.2001.1), pp. 191-97, and Gragnolati (pp. 162-63), arguing that the 'surprises' include not only the identity of those not yet saved, but of some unbaptized pagans already saved.  This argument is not on solid ground, at least not in its second instantiation, since we assume that both Trajan and Ripheus are known to all the blessed and that, as a result, all other 'converted' pagans must be, too.  As for its first part, Dante's apparent assertion that the blessed do not know the identities of those not yet saved, it certainly seems to violate the principle that whatever God knows the saved can read in His mind, as Tasso noted.  From [Par XV 49-51] we have learned that Cacciaguida knew that Dante was inscribed in the Book of Life.  And so we must wonder how thoroughly the poet held to this apparent revision of his earlier view, as much as we must honor it.  Such self-contradictions are only to be expected, particularly in the work of a poet, since we can find even practitioners of supposedly systematic theology (or philosophy) at times contradicting themselves.  If we allow even St. Thomas, a rigorist if ever there were one, an occasional fairly clamorous denial of a previous position, we should be aware that a poet is (or may feel himself to be) less constrained by such demands than is a theologian or a philosopher.

Venturi (DDP Venturi.Par.XX.135) was apparently the first commentator to refer to part of the collecta ('collect' -- originally a short prayer recited to Christians gathered ['collected'] for a service) known as 'the Collect for the living and the dead': 'Deus, cui soli cognitus est numerus electorum in superna felicitate locandus' (God, to whom alone is known the number of the elect that is to be set in supernal bliss).  This prayer, once it was cited by Venturi, had a certain afterlife in the commentators right through the nineteenth century, but for some reason has been allowed to vanish in our time.  Nonetheless, while it does give us an official teaching of the Church regarding the limits of the knowledge of those in the Empyrean, it certainly is at odds with what the poem has led us to expect, as Tasso observed.  As Carroll (DDP Carroll.Par.XX.130-132) pointed out, reference to this particular 'collect' found its way to Thomas's greatest work: 'In Summa, I, q. xxiii, a. 7, Aquinas says: "Some say that out of mankind as many will be saved as angels fell; some, as many as angels remained; some as many as angels fell, and over and above, as many as the number of angels created.  But it is better to say that to God alone is known the number of the elect who are to be set in supernal bliss" (as the Collecta pro vivis ac defunctis has it).'  The teaching embedded in this prayer thus probably enjoyed a certain authority in Dante's eyes.